CONTESTED MEANINGS:

AUDIENCE RESPONSES TO THE WEDGWOOD SLAVE MEDALLION, 1787-1839

by
Saadia Nicoe Teresa Lawton

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy
(Art History)
at the
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
2009

UMI Number: 3384492

Copyright 2009 by
Lawton, Saadia Nicoe Teresa

INFORMATION TO USERS

The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy
submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations
and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper
alignment can adversely affect reproduction.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized
copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.

UMI

UMI Microform 3384492

Copyright 2009 by ProQuest LLC
All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

ProQuest LLC
789 East Eisenhower Parkway
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346

A dissertation entitled

Contested Meanings:
Audience Responses to the Wedgewood Slave Medallion, 1787-1839

submitted to the Graduate School of the

University of Wisconsin-Madison
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy

by
SAADIA NICOE TERESA LAWTON
Date of Final Oral Examination: May 14, 2009
Month & Year Degree to be awarded: D e c e m b e r

May

August 2009

it****************************************************************************************

Approval Signatures of Dissertation Committee

Signature, Dean of Graduate School

JU

 Copyright by Saadia N. Lawton 2009

All Rights Reserved

Table of Contents

Abstract

ii

Acknowledgements

iv

List of Illustrations

ix

Introduction

Chapter One

27

Production of Wedgwood's Slave Medallion

Chapter Two

50

Intended Audience Responses: Complex and Contradictory Meanings of the Slave Medallion
Chapter Three

91

Unexpected Responses: Audiences Contest the Form, Function, and Meaning of the Slave
Medallion
Chapter Four

137

Responsive Agents: Black Subjects' Contest and Invert the Slave Medallion's Ascribed
Meanings
Conclusion

186

Bibliography

191

Illustrations

207

ii
Abstract
Contested Meanings: Audience Responses to the Wedgwood Slave Medallion, 1787-1839
investigates how audiences responded to the Wedgwood slave medallion and some of its
subsequent permutations. The project builds upon and challenges the premise that the
Wedgwood slave medallion received universal affirmation and approbation from its different
audiences across time. Theories about audience reception and the intersections of race, class,
gender, and nationality drive this investigation to reveal how commonalities within a given
community cannot serve as indicators that homogenous responses will be manifest. In fact, this
project uses audience reception studies to demonstrate that personal characteristics and
experiences inform unique, individualized understandings of any given object. In the case of the
Wedgwood slave medallion, the object's inherent ambiguity, both in its design elements and in
the multiple meanings its various audiences ascribed to it, gave rise to contested readings by
targeted users and unexpected makers alike. As these audiences grew and split into separate
distinct interpretive communities, individual responses to the object produced new meanings and
new permutations that reflect a complex heterogeneous understanding and negotiation of the
object's imagery.
The dissertation contains four chapters organized by different groups. Starting with the
1787 British production and ending with the 1839 permutation made and used by free African
Americans in Philadelphia, each section uses organizational minutes, ledgers, rare books, diaries,
speeches, newspaper editorials, articles, narratives, images and objects to explore audience
responses as unique case studies. These studies show that even audiences who shared similar
characteristics such as race, class, gender, and nationality reacted to these objects differently.

iii
These case studies evince that commonalities do not imply homogeneous responses. They also
illuminate the relationship between production and consumption to reveal how audience
responses to the slave medallion were a direct result of the object's inherent visual ambiguities
that left it susceptible to contested meanings. This project offers new ways to include and
investigate marginalized and excluded audiences in art history. It reveals the rich conclusions
that pragmatic methods offer studies based on a hypothesis, and encourages scholars to locate
new readings of historical images.

iv
Acknowledgements
Before I give thanks to anyone, I acknowledge the source of everything in my life. I give
thanks and praise to God. I do not believe that any part of this project, from its inception as an
idea, to its completion as a dissertation manuscript, would have been possible without God. It is
because of my faith that I believe the persons involved in this project and the numerous
experiences that either gave me momentum or challenged me were placed in my path to guide
and protect me along the way. For me, the dissertation is more than a project that reflects your
abilities as a scholar, it is a transformative process that makes you look inside and question
yourself at times. This dissertation came to fruition because God believed in me and challenged
me until I realized that I had to believe in and challenge myself. For these reasons I give thanks
and praise to God for the persons mentioned herein and for the roles they each played in
teaching, guiding, challenging, protecting, caring, and raising me up from the student I was into
the scholar I am today. Thank God for you!
When I was a child I spoke as a child
-Corinthians 13:1
Although the face of my committee changed a bit, I am so grateful to those who stuck it
out and continued to work with me. To my co-advisor and chair Dr. Anna V. Andrzejewski,
thank you for being you and for leading by example. Some would argue that there is a risk in
working with junior faculty but they don't consider the total person. If I had to do it all over
again, I would still choose you because you had the one quality that I admire most in any human
being and that's integrity.

Dr. Gail L. Geiger, words can not express just how grateful I am to you and all that you
have done for me. You are amazing! I am honored to have had the opportunity to work with
you. I hope the University of Wisconsin realizes what a gem they have in you. Students are your
number one priority and that is possibly the rarest quality to find in academia with all the
demands placed upon professors. Yet, you find the time. No, you make the time to give and give
and give. I pray that you get as much as you give and that the divine order of life continues to
bless you with the simple abundance that someone so selfless can only appreciate. Thank you.
The assistance and direction given by committee members: Dr. Ann Smart-Martin, Dr.
Beverly Gordon and Dr. Thomas Dale, was immeasurable. Thank you for your time and
patience as I struggled through each successive draft. I hope that this dissertation and the future
research and writings that will evolve out of it, is a reflection of my training in the Material
Culture Studies program. Dr. Smart-Martin and Dr. Gordon have paved the way for scholarship
that takes a second and closer look at the ways audiences responded to material culture. I am
especially grateful that you both have taken on the challenges to locate the voices of women and
minorities. Your direction as teachers in the classroom, coupled with your groundbreaking
research and scholarship inspires me to make contributions to the field and my community by
unearthing the objects and voices rarely seen and heard.
Dr. Thomas Dale, thank you for stepping in and serving on my committee at a moments
notice. Thank you for asking the penetrating questions that challenged me to think outside my
box, and raising my awareness of the potential connections my study will benefit from by
looking at the Classics and the arts of Antiquity. I wish I had more time to work with you
especially on the religious and spiritual meanings assigned to these objects. Last, but not least, I

vi
am totally indebted to the beautiful spirit named Nancy Linh Karls who entered my life a year
ago. Thank you for the kind words, positive energy, and encouragement. Remember our motto:
L.I.G.!
This dissertation was partially funded by fellowships received from the University of
Wisconsin Vilas Travel Grants, the University of Liverpool Widening Project, the National
Gallery of Art, the Institution for Historical Research, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and
the Library Company of Philadelphia. I am grateful for the financial support that all these
institutions supplied. I am also grateful for the moral support and kindness their employees
extended to me during my tenure with them. I would be remised if I did not acknowledge some
of the people who helped identify resources, granted access to archives, and offered guidance
during the developmental stages of this dissertation: Tricia Jenkins, David Cannadine, June
Borell, Gaye Blake Roberts, Helen Burton, Jennifer Milligan, Joana Clark, Younis, Iain WynnJones, James Green, Cornelia S. King, Linda August, Erika Piola, Kathleen Foster, Kim Ivey,
Suzanne Hood, Christopher Densmore, Sean P. Casey, David Burnhauser, Sheena Stoddard, and
Ron Fuchs. A special thanks to Tammi Lawson, Carol Soltis, and Phillip Lapsansky for your
friendship beyond the normal "research visits."
This dissertation was a group project, meaning, a number of people, beyond the obvious
advisors, committee members, and funding institutions, were invested in seeing this project come
to fruition. There was a time when the question, "When will you be done," annoyed me because
I really had no definitive answer, nor could I imagine when that day would come. When I was
unable (or unwilling) to answer this question, family and friends used the train travelling through
a tunnel as a recurring metaphor to describe my condition. I thought I had a train but no track to

vii
run on. They all knew better. Once I realized that I indeed had a track, I did not factor in
moments when there would be mechanical difficulties, derailments, layoffs or staff who might
quit with or without a moments notice, and the inclement weather that would slow me down,
cloud my mind and stop me from saying, "I think I can!" But, there is always a light at the end of
the tunnel! The following people were my rays of light. These individuals were the ones who
believed in me, invested in me and this project, prayed for me, encouraged me, and most of all
inspired me. They realized long ago that the Ph.D. is not glamorous, it's work! The dissertation
and attainment of the Ph.D. is the type of work that challenges everyone, most of all those who
are not writing it. Thank you my beloved family and friends for demanding that my train get
assigned a track, and then commanding me to move forward. Thank you for buying tickets and
taking the ride with me. Thank you for rolling up your sleeves and helping to fix problems when
we broke down. Thank you for pushing my train into the nearest station so that I could rest.
Thank you for never giving up and never giving in, even when Ithe conductor didn't realize,
accept, or assume my own responsibilities to you and our ancestors. Thank you for chanting, "I
think you can!" until it became my mantra.
Thank you mom for raising me with the conviction: "finish what you start." I hope
you're proud of me. To my siblings Crystal, Lonnie and Joseph, thank you for always taking
care of your little sister. To the host of other family members who are too numerous to name I
thank you for the encouragement. I especially want to acknowledge Al Jr., Uncle Kevin and
Aunt Stacey, Cousin Ronnie, and Aunt Floretta for always checking in on me. My dearest circle
of friends: Lisa Collins, Gwendolyn DuBois-Shaw, Marino Bruce, Lisa Crawley, Jesse Reason,

viii
Frank Newman, Hazel Symonette, Dorothy Sanchez, Weese, Meta McGhee, Nicole Harris, Vera
Crowell, and Kim Cherry~"keep swimming, keep swimming"
I am especially indebted to my sisters in Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.: Pearl Rock,
Michelle Rogers, Ismay DaCosta, Phyllis Hill, Natosha Warner, Vic Parker, Minnie Bazzelle,
Pat Jenkins, Barbara Clark, Neysa Smith, Linda O'Neal, Elizabeth Neal, Beatrice Polk, Brenda
Satchell, Deidra Young, Dorothy Talbert-Hersi, D'Veda Mitchell, Gayle Walker, Jacqualine
Ridgley, Janelle Stevenson, Sheila Dean Ross, Sherri Tull-Hubbard, Jackie Aldridge, Renee
Richardson, Stacy Lowery, Veronica Lofton and Regina Gray.
Special thanks goes to Reverend Dunnigan, Minister Kay Anderson, Felicia Books, my
congregation at Cornerstone Fellowship Baptist Church, and anyone who I failed to mention,
thank you.

In loving memory of my father Jesus Leon and Uncle Albert Williams Sr.
Thank you for kind words, encouragement, and teaching by example:
humility, integrity, and perseverance.

IX

Illustrations
1.1 Josiah Wedgwood, Slavery Cameo [black on cane], 1787

207

1.2 Sir Joseph Wright, Two Girls and their Black Servant, 1768-69

208

1.3 Joshua Reynolds, The Temple Family, 1780-1782

209

1.4 Meeting for Sufferings Committee, Minute Book Cover, 1783-1792

210

1.5 Robin Reilly, Appendix C Ornamenting, 1989

211

1.6 Robin Reilly, Oval Frame of Twenty-five Jasper Cameos, 1989

212

1.7 List of Marks Used on Jasper, 1774-1968

213

1.8 Josiah Wedgwood, reverse Anti-Slavery Medallion [black on white], c. 1788

214

2.1 Josiah Wedgwood, Slavery Medallion [white and black], c. 1790

215

2.3 Josiah Wedgwood, Slave Medallion in Necklace [black on white], c 1787

216

2.4 Patch box, c. 1787

217

2.5 Gentleman's Magazine Graphic, 1788

218

2.6 Gentleman's Magazine Plate IIfig. 6, page 209, March 1788

219

2.7 Josiah Wedgwood, Slave Cameo [white on blue jasper], c. 1788

220

2.8 Thomas Holloway, Voyage to Botany Bay, 1799

221

2.9 Josiah Wedgwood, Sydney Cove Commemorative Cameo, 1788

222

3.1 London Committee, Stowage of the British Slave Ship Brookes, 1789

223

3.2 London Committee, The Brooks Broadside, 1808

224

3.3 W. E. Elford, Remarks on the Slave Trade, 1789

225

3.4 William Elford, Plan of an African Ship's Lower Deck, 1789

226

3.5 The Penitential Tyrant frontispiece, 1807

227

3.6 Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Ballot Box, 19th century

228

3.7 Last page of The Penitential Tyrant, 1807

229

3.8 William Hensell, Reproduction of Clay Tobacco Pipe, cl820

230

3.9 William Hensell, Reproduction of Clay Tobacco Pipe, cl820

231

3.10 Boston Letter Foundry, Specimen, No. 844 detail, 1845

232

3.11 Boston Letter Foundry, Specimen, full page advertisement, 1845

233

3.12 Royal Gazette of Jamaica, Criticism of Slave Condition, 1824

234

3.13 Jamaica Royal Gazette, Phoebe, 1826

235

3.14 Question to Professing Christians...., c. 1820

236

3.15 Birmingham Female Society, First Report, 1826

237

3.16 Ladies Department section of The Liberator, 1832

238

3.17 Thomas Halliday, Am I Not A Woman and a Sister?Medal, 1834

239

3.18 Women's Abolitionist Medallion, 1830

240

3.19 Ladies Society, Silk Oval Workbag, ca. 1830

241

3.20 Ladies Society, Silk Rectangular Workbag, 1830

242

3.21 Birmingham Female Anti-Slavery Society, Financial Ledger

243

3.22 Abolitionist Transfer-print Cloth

244

3.23 Reverse of Oval Workbag, ca. 1830

245

3.24 Pin Holder, c. 1830

246

3.25 Reverse Pin Holder, c. 1830

247

3.26 Tea cup

248

3.27 Manikin wearing anti-slavery workbag, 1820s

249

XI

4.1 Patrick H. Reason, Am I Not a Man and a Brother, 1839

250

4.2 Patrick H. Reason, Vigilant Committee Membership Certificate, 1839

251

4.3 Patrick H. Reason, Letterhead, 1838

252

4.4 Patrick H. Reason, Kneeling Slave, c. 1835

253

4.5 Mental Feast Ladies Department in the Liberator, 1832

254

4.6 L. Johnson, Specimen of Printing Types, 1840

255

4.7 American Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Market of America Broadside, 1836

256

4.8 Plan of the City of Washington, 1791

257

4.9 Map of Aquila

258

4.10 The Liberty Bell Cover, 1839

259

4.11 The Liberty Bell Binder, 1839

260

4.12 The Liberty Bell Inside Cover, 1839

261

4.13 Patrick H. Reason, Truth Shall Make You Free, 1839

262

4.14 Robert Douglass, The Boroom Slave, c. 1834

263

4.15 The Boroom Slave frontispiece, 1833

264

4.16 Henry Thomson, The Boroom Slave, 1827

265

1
Introduction
For several decades, scholars from a broad range of disciplines have investigated the
people, events, and objects that contributed to the Anglo-American abolitionist movement
(c. 1780-1865). Without exception, they unanimously cite the Wedgwood slave medallion as one
of the most influential objects produced and acquired by different audiences. Josiah Wedgwood,
a British potter, created the medallion in 1787. The Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the
Slave Trade (SEAST) commissioned Wedgwood to produce an object fashioned after a drawing
of their official seal design that featured a manacled slave in a supplicant posture. Much of the
scholarship about the Wedgwood slave medallion does not consider what audience responses
reveal about a community's acceptance, opposition, and/or negotiation of the object's meaning.
In fact, it was Hugh Honour who cited the slave medallion one of the most influential works by,
for and about black subjects. In acknowledging its influence on other works, Honour contended
that the image on the medallion was an emblem that was "neither startlingly novel nor
disturbingly provocative, it encapsulated ideas already widely accepted while giving them a
more specific meaning."1 Without acknowledging the varied responses however, this scholarship
promotes the notion that all audiences responded to the slave medallion, and variations of it, in
the same way. This is not the case. Evidence from organizational minutes, object orders, gifts to
patrons, newspapers, published literature, and objects that adopt the medallion's visual imagery
shows that audience responses were not universal and simple but varied and complex. In fact,
these responses formed part of an ongoing contested discourse among those who made, used and
the ascribed meanings to the slave medallion.
' Hugh Honour, The Image of the Black (New York: Morrow, 1976), 4:63.

This dissertation examines how different Anglo-American audiences responded to the

Wedgwood slave medallion and some of its subsequent permutations between 1787 and 1839.
The dates mark a period between the moment when Wedgwood converted the Committee seal
design into a medallion, and the moment when a group of quasi-free Philadelphia-based African
American abolitionists commissioned Patrick H. Reason to transform the same design into a seal
for their membership certificate. This dissertation uses the Wedgwood slave medallion as the
source for all permutations produced by different makers and users throughout this period. A
permutation is an object in an altered state. The result is a variation of the original object.
Changes may be found in its medium, materials, and compositional components but something
of the original design is not compromised. Over the half-century investigated in this dissertation,
different audiences consistently made and used the kneeling slave as their central figure for all
object variations. The subject became the one element that ties these different versions to its
source the slave medallion. My study views and uses the slave medallion and alterations made
by intended and unexpected audiences, as a form of response. Alterations to the Wedgwood
slave medallion's imagery provide evidence that audiences contested the meanings its makers
encoded into the object over time. I argue that audience responses were triggered by the object's
ambiguous and ever changing contested appearance. Audience responses reveal how these
changes contributed to object's visual and interpretive complexities. These objects are tangible
evidence that audiences used visual elements to negotiate and oppose earlier meanings.
Both the Committee seal and Wedgwood's slave medallion feature the kneeling slave
figure, an obeisant male who faces the right in profile. With a stoic face, his eyes are fixed and
look towards a point beyond the upper right-hand corner of the picture plane. Perhaps he looks

askance to avert the gaze of his audience. Perhaps something or someone captures his attention.
Who and what he faces remains unknown and purely speculative for the audience. Despite his
tightly sealed lips, the subject poses the question: "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" To whom
this question is posed and why he asks this in such a self-reflective voice is open to
interpretation. The words form an arch in the negative space above his head like a cartoon
balloon that hovers over a stereotyped character. Regardless of why the question is posed and to
whom it is intended, it remains open-ended and invites responses from any reader. This design
element is only one of several ambiguous visual components that sparked contested meanings
and heterogeneous responses from different audiences.
The only design elements that embellish the figure's body are a loincloth and a set of
manacles that connect his wrists to his ankles. Whether or not the loincloth functions as a
symbol of his underdeveloped culture or an indication that he has been physically stripped of all
cultural symbols is questionable. His manacles are social indicators that he is either, a captive, a
criminal, or a slave, but which one is at the discretion of the reader. Repetitive lines define the
axis of his raised forearms and the angularity of his tilted head. With fingers interlaced, he lifts
his arms in an upward motion and his posture mirrors the act of supplication. Both legs bend at
the knee to form 90-degree angles. These angles intersect at the horizontal and vertical axes of
the picture plane. The sole of his left foot, the cnemis of his right leg, and the ball of his right
foot bear the weight of his body and give him balance. Each of these body parts are flushed with
the surface ground. Here too, it is uncertain if he kneels in prayer or if he is captured in the act
of submission as he begs for something from someone.

Silhouetted against a barren light background, his pitch black body kneels on top of an
unidentifiable surface that resembles a rock but functions as a platform. In the absence of an
identifiable setting, the rock-like platform suggests that he is in a liminal state of existence.
Here, he has no origin, no foundation, and no history to define his existence. Or, perhaps he is
suspended in arrested development, waiting for the moment when he evolves into something
from an unknown source. The contrasts between the light and dark values also reinforce his
complexion. He is presented as an anomaly, an extreme, and an "other." Pushed outside of and
projected through the light, his dark body is read as either the absorption of light or is the
absence of color but that too is ambiguous. In this light-dark context, he either functions as a
universal representative or an unidentifiable kneeling object. Taken in its entirety the slave
medallion reveals its own visual ambiguities that empowered its makers and users to define it on
their own terms.
From the moment Committee members distributed the slave medallion to its intended
audience, and throughout moments when unexpected users produced and obtained variations of
the object's imagery, audiences responded verbally and visually. Audience reception came in
these two forms because the object's visual elements were so ambiguous that it allowed
opportunities for multiple interpretations and a plethora of permutations that contest its
meanings. This study shows that audience responses to the slave medallion differed. Each
audience examined in this study performed dual roles as producers and consumers. Regardless
of whether or not the audience is intended, unexpected or represents the subject depicted in the
object's visual imagery, all audiences consist of users, and all users are makers. The roles of
maker and user are not mutually exclusive but fluid identities. Therefore, all audiences, whether

they actually used the medallion, created versions of the object, or, are represented by the
subject, are all makers of the meanings they ascribed to these objects.
Audiences responded by using the medallion as an embellishment on other objects, and
created new objects that appropriated the medallion's imagery. These changes signify that
audiences simultaneously contested the meanings that they and others ascribed to the medallion.
They then became makers in their own right through the production of new objects and new
meanings. In addition to exposing the contradictions that exist among audiences who made and
used the slave medallion, this study identifies and explores the voices of marginalized women
and excluded African Americans who formed their own community of interpretive readers.
Unearthing the voices of these groups is particularly significant for this and future studies
because scholars continue to consider ways to locate and include their story. This study
provides a model to locate their voices. It then fills that void by including these voices as viable
responses that enhance art historical inquiries. To go a step further, this study captures and
presents information about how and why a marginalized or excluded community made and used
variations of the slave medallion. It simultaneously shows how the female and African
American community assigned meanings that accentuated their social identity, address cultural
concerns, highlight their economic contributions, and satisfy their political agendas. These
community voices contested the meanings that various audiences assigned to the object's
compositional components; in particular, they contested and negotiated the meanings different
audiences assigned to the kneeling slave subject over time.

6
Methodology
With these objectives in mind, I framed my research on the ability to address three
issues that dealt with theories, audience identity, and resources respectively. My quest to locate
a theoretical framework to drive this investigation was resolved with reception theory. I
determined that Stuart Hall's description of audience reception offered the best theoretical
framework to direct my study.2 His practical application of reception theory shows how
television producers manufacture a product that they encode with meanings and expect their
targeted audience to understand and decode without contest. Hall's investigation is based on the
work of Robert C. Holub who chronicled the evolution of reception theory in Europe during the
sixties.3 According to Holub audience reception answered an escalating debate that challenged
how scholars analyzed the production of meaning in a literary work. The theory offered a new
approach to scholarly investigations that ultimately shifted the focus from author-text to textreader, placing the onus of how meanings are constructed on the audience. In terms of my
dissertation which investigates a form of material and visual culture, the shift moves the attention
from maker-object to object-user. The user is my audience. Their responses reveal what they
understood to be the meaning that Wedgwood assigned to the slave medallion.
Hall, like so many other theorists who defines this approach maintains that reception
exposes dialectics of oppositional readings that trace back to the production moment. This

Stuart Hall, Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse, (Birmingham [England]: Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1973), 3-5. See also Stuart Hall, "Encoding/Decoding," in Culture, Media,
Language: Working Paper in Cultural Studies, 1972-1979, ed. Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe and
Paul Willis, 128-132 (London: Hutchison, 1980).
3
Robert C. Holub, Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction, (London: Methuen, 1984), 2, 10, 31-32, 36-45. See
also Robert C. Holub, Crossing Borders: Reception Theory, Poststructuralism, Deconstruction, (Madison,
Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 36; 205-210.

notion is also the guiding principle for how I organized my chapters. Starting with a history of
object production and ending with the African American production and response of a varied
object type allows me to unpack the evolution of audience responses in the form of a contested
dialogue about object meaning. Using this approach a historical discourse unfolds to expose
how makers and users encoded and decoded the slave medallion with complex and contradictory
meanings. For this reason, Hall's research is useful because it also reveals how the production
processes and distribution patterns can trivialize audience responses. He argues that the process
is not clear-cut because factors such as identity can trigger alternative readings. In moments
when readers alter the product's meaning they are empowered to contest. In the case of my
study, oppositional readings also reveal more about their relationship with the object's central
figure- the kneeling slave. Information about this relationship provides the context to explore
their role as a respondent and their identity as a member of an interpretive community.
My need to ascertain how different audiences featured in my case studies identified
themselves and how their sense of self complimented or conflicted with the way their respective
community identified them was especially critical for individuals and groups associated with
marginalized and excluded cultures. I contend that identity determined the role that individuals
and groups had within and outside their community as respondents. For this reason, I turned to
the ideas espoused by several scholars from the critical race theory camp.4 Their principles,
which evolved into scholarly discourse of the seventies, address race and racism as key factors
that permeated the sixties; an era marked by political protest and unrest in America. Of the ten

For a comprehensive list of works by key critical race theorists see Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, "Race
Theory: An annotated Bibliography," Virginia Law Review 79, no. 2 (March 1993): 461-516.

8
points that comprise their theoretical framework, my research is most interested in point six
which outlines the intersections of race, class and gender. Kimberle Crenshaw's edited
collection of writings recaptured the remnants of critical race theory to show how these
intersections not only contributed to the formation of audience identity, but also explain how and
why responses reflect oppositional readings by members of the same community.5 For the
purpose of my investigation, I added nationality as another critical identity factor because the
slave medallion moved back and forth between two nations, Britain and America. In addition to
the traffic object, the trafficking of bodies, such as servants, colonists, expatriates, and enslaved
Africans, problematized the ways that nationality is defined. Patricia Hill Collins's work on the
intersections of race, gender, and nation explores how these circumstances impact the politics of
Anglo-American identity.6
Crenshaw's work reinforces how oppositional readings are a consequence of responses
to identity politics made by many people but particularly significant for marginalized or
excluded individuals or groups. My research shows that these communities lack the sociocultural homogeneity that much of the current scholarship presupposes. Therefore, like their
heterogeneous composition as individuals within interpretive communities, their ascription of
object meanings is just as complex, varied, and lacks uniformity. The scholarship that outlines
the object's production, distribution, and consumption histories provides a foundation for this
5

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against
Women of Color," in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement (New York: The New
York Press, 1995), 357-383. See also Lisa Bloom ed., With Other Eyes: Looking at Race and Gender in Visual
Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 1-16.
6
Patricia Hills Collins, "It's All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation," Hypatia 13, no. 3
(Summer 1998): 69-73. See also Inderpal Grewal, "Constructing National Subjects: The British Museum and Its
Guidebooks," in With Other Eyes: Looking at Race and Gender in Visual Culture ed. Lisa Bloom (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 44-57.

9
study, but it does not always shed light on the nuances of the complex matrix that exists between
audience, object, permutation, and meaning.
Finally, my need to identify the textual and visual evidence that proved audiences
responded differently to the slave medallion activated an extensive search that led me to some of
the finest libraries and museum collections in Britain and America. I located audience responses
in numerous archives including the British Library, the University of Keele, the Wedgwood
Museum, the London Society of Friends Library, the Maritime Museums of Liverpool and
London, the archival collections in Derby, Manchester, Bristol, and Birmingham just to name a
few British resources. In America, much of my research was located at the University of
Wisconsin Historical Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Daughters of the
American Revolution Archives, the Library of Congress, the New York Historical Library, the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the University of Delaware Special
Collections, Yale University Special Collections, and the Moorland-Spingara Research Center at
Howard University. Each of these institutions housed manuscripts and objects that served as
tangible evidence that audiences contested the meanings they attributed to the slave medallion
and variations of its design over the fifty year period explored in this dissertation. In addition to
these archived treasures, these institutions provided the resources required to position my study
within the broader scope of research and literature completed on this topic.

Literature Review
The literature that contributes to this study provides information in three critical areas:
the production history of the slave medallion, examples of alterations placed in their historical

10
and political contexts, and a discussion of makers/users roles in the production of the object's
permutations and potential meanings. My examination would not have a foundation without any
of these studies. However, my study answers questions that have gone unexamined. These
studies afford opportunities for an investigation like mine which explores audience reception and
enriches the field with information that presents new perspectives on an object's production
history, distribution process, and consumption patterns, and how these steps lead to diverse
reactions that have the power to construct multiple meanings. Looking at the works that
contribute to each of these categories, this section explains how specific literature anchors this
investigation, how they support the need for a study about audience reception, and how they
opened up opportunities to forge new perspectives and new methods that this study uses.
In the category of the object's production history, L. Richard Smith, J.R. Oldfield,
David Bindman, Kirk Savage, Jill Casid, and Sharon Parson have each made substantial
contributions. L. Richard Smith is the only scholar in this group whose research solely explores
the medallion's production history.7 In outlining the facts, his research conflicts with Oldfield's
work which questions the existence of a prototype for the slave medallion.8 The conflicting
perspectives that exist between Smith and Oldfield set the stage for my first chapter because both
scholars miss a rich opportunity to explore the possibilities of how the production process
involved trials and errors that may have included a mystery object that was the slave medallion's
predecessor. Bindman's work contributes to this debate by presenting evidence that questions

L. Richard Smith, Josiah Wedgwood's Slave Medallion 2nd ed. (Sydney: The Wedgwood Society of New South
Wales, Inc., 1999), 12-17.
8
J. R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Antislavery: The Mobilisation of Public Opinion Against the Slave
Trade, 1787-1807, (Manchester: Manchester University, 1995), 156.

11
the originality of the design.9 Bindman examines the slave medallion in terms of its origins in
eighteenth century visual culture where black bodies function as a sign of class and wealth.
These commodities include historical portraits like Sir Joseph Wright's Two Girls with their
Female Slave (1768-69), a painting that offers a reliable source of the medallion's imagery. My
examination of the medallion's production process builds on Bindman's suggestion that Wright's
portrait offers a credible source of inspiration. Portraits such as this one raise important concerns
about what transpired when makers do not dissolve the old meanings when they produce new
variations of an object.10 The consequence of appropriation and reproduction of past motifs are
that some audiences can read and reactivate the dormant meanings.
Kirk Savage raised similar concerns about the origins of the object's design.11 Savage's
work emphasizes how meanings ascribed to images that pre-date it, influences audience
readings. Savage introduces the image of the kneeling slave on the medallion as a problematic
part of the visual culture of Africans during the colonial period. Savage connects the image to
the Classical imagery of Arrotino but does not place it within archetypal figures used throughout
colonial portraiture. Although his investigation of the kneeling slave addresses how the image
was encoded, read, and used to reinforce notions of servitude, he does not interpret how those
audiences responded to these images. For this reason, my study takes a new and alternative

David Bindman, "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?: British Art and Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century," Res 26
(Autumn 1994): 68-82.
10
For more examples of works that feature the kneeling slave motif and pre-date Wedgwood's slave medallion see
Hugh Honour, The Image of the Black in Western Art Slaves and Liberators, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 1989), 1:88, 94, 100-101,114, 162, 168, 186-192, 213; 2:47, 64, 91, 93, 114, 119, 168, 182. See
also Kim Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England, (Ithaca, New York:
Cornell University Press, 1995), 213-253.
Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America,
(New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997), 21-23, 79-81.

12
approach. It suggests that artistic talents may not have been needed or required to propose the
kneeling slave design. Instead, I argue that the image's ambiguous potential offered enough
exposure to inspire novices to appropriate its appearance and ascribe new meanings on top of the
ones that already existed in its old context.
Beyond issues of production, the origins of the image and its past meanings, scholars
such as Jill H. Casid and Sharon Parsons present compelling evidence that illustrates how object
distribution affects the ways that meanings travel. Casid examines the slave medallion's image
in the context of eighteenth century literary traditions.12 The artistic conventions of representing
blacks in colonial visual culture helped perpetuate notions about the black body as naturally
submissive, bound to the earth, and positioned at the site of reproduction that aided imperial
expansion. She uses the texts of island garden narratives and a series of images that served to
supplement and compliment the narrative. Her discussion about the island garden and the
processes involved in its production, cultivation and maintenance mirror the transfer and
transportation of other foreign bodies into and upon colonial soils. The essay opens up new
ways of examining the effects of empire building and the importance of scientific taxonomies
that helped to code the foreign bodies, fuel stereotypes, and transfer meanings about the black
body through objects.
Sharon Parson's work investigates a broad range of abolitionist visual culture used to
advance the British Empire.13 Her dissertation is an excellent resource for understanding how
the production and consumption of these images affected the politics of the empire and how they
12

Jill Casid, "Inhuming Empire: Islands as Colonial Nurseries and Graves," in The Global Eighteenth Century, ed.
Felicity A. Nussbaum (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 279-295.
13
Sharon Parsons, "Imagining Empire: Slavery and British Visual Culture, 1765-1807" (PhD diss., University of
California, 2000), 96-211.

13
established stereotypes about Africans. She discusses the use of the slave medallion within this
context and its effects on social ideas about black subjects and racial inequalities. Her work is
useful because it is one of the few models that considers the impact that audience involvement
had in the production and consumption of abolitionist objects. In addition, her work covers a
period of revolutionary movements that marks pre-American independence up to the
abolishment of the slave trade. Both Casid's and Parson's work fueled my decision to question
how the object-audience relationship contributed to and defined the identity of both through the
production and use of permutations. This is an issue often overlooked in many studies because it
suggests that both object and audience have the power to define each other while simultaneously
exposing those characteristics that compliment and contradict these meaningful identities.
Although works by Mary Guyatt, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Sam Margolin, and Phillip
Lapsansky all offer a historical overview of the object, their works also contextualize the object
in terms of its political significance. Guyatt's discussion examines how British audiences read
and used the object and what role Wedgwood played in ascribing dual meanings that compliment
and contradict its form and function.14 Guyatt's study is invaluable to my study because it shows
how the medallion possessed conflicted meanings as a form of eighteenth century jewelry and a
piece of propaganda. On the other hand, Grigsby's work contextualizes the image in terms of
how French audiences used black subjects in visual culture.15 She offers an examination of the
encoded black body in images such as the portrait of the Haitian political figure Belley, a black
male from the French colony of St. Dominique. She compares and contrasts the two images to
14

Mary Guyatt, "The Wedgwood Slave Medallion: Values in Eighteenth-Century Design," Journal of Design
History 13, no. 2 (2000): 93-106.
15
Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France, (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2002), 28-32.

14
explain how certain artistic conventions like nudity, absence of speech, submissive postures, and
shackles function to encode the black body with certain meanings. The most useful and original
argument that Grigsby's research offers my investigation concerns the response that abolitionists
works evoked, and how their intended imagery inadvertently helped to perpetuate the association
of black bodies with the social classification of slave. Yet, my research builds on this notion to
consider how and why abolitionist audiences made and used permutations of the slave medallion
to question this association, and in some instances, alluded to the history of white servitude.
Sam Margolin discussed the slave medallion in the context of numerous abolitionist
images made and used for personal and political purposes.16 He introduces several ceramics that
span over seventy years of abolitionist campaigning. Margolin's essay explains how the
medallion's image is associated with objects that possessed political meaning yet functioned as
personal commodities. Like Guyatt, Margolin presents these contradictions between function
and meaning, but neither scholar elaborates on how these dualities problematize the object's
meanings and the role of its makers/users. My project builds on this discussion to offer insight on
the inherent contradictions, and then provides answers about the object's meanings in relation to
the makers/users identity.
The last author in this category used the image to discuss hidden meanings that erupted in
a visual battle between abolitionists that associated with the immediatist doctrine and their
opponents. The debate that ensued between these two abolitionist camps used imagery to

Sam Margolin, "And Freedom to the Slave: Anti-Slavery Ceramics, 1787-1865," in Ceramics in America 2002,
ed. Robert Hunter (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2002), 80-109.

15
negotiate the conditions of slavery.17 Lapsansky's approach is uniquely different from other
scholars because his ideas resonate with Stuart Hall's theoretical framework about oppositional
readings and assesses how some audiences responded to encode/decode meanings. However, his
research is firmly grounded in a specific type of image that was produced and reproduced for
printing purposes. My study looks at a wider range of objects that share the kneeling slave
motif; an image that is not always found in all the graphics that Lapsansky explored. He
contends that several abolitionist images, including variations of the slave medallion, possessed
hidden meanings understood only by its makers and users. Lapsansky's ideas provide a
springboard to discuss whether or not audience readings were limited in scope and how makers
and users negotiated the terms and conditions of these hidden meanings. His research is also
unique because it illustrates the allegorical nature of some images. Although he equates allegory
with the image's capacity to evoke an emotive reaction from its viewers, I apply allegory in its
purist sense; it is a visual story that was constructed by makers/users whose appropriation of the
image altered its context as well and its encoded/decoded meanings. This notion about
allegorical response is especially useful in my investigation of the black audience. I use allegory
to explore how black community members identified with the kneeling slave and then altered the
subject's context to express opposition to notions that blacks lacked agency. This is not
something that Lapsansky explores in his work.
Cheryl Finley, Jean Yellin-Fagan, Lisa Gail Collins, Barbara Lacey, and Michael Hatt all
investigate the image in terms of how alterations change the role and identity of its makers and
17

Phillip Lapansky, "Graphic Discord: Abolitionist and Antiabolitionist Images," in The Abolitionist Sisterhood:
Women's Political Culture in Antebellum America, ed. Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Home 204-206 (Ithaca,
New York: Cornell University Press, 1994).

16
users as well as the meanings they attributed to their revised objects. Finley's work examines the
significance of the Brooke's slave ship as an icon begun during the abolitionist movement and
continues to have meaningful impact on black audiences today. Her dissertation investigates
how black consumers used the image as a form of resistance to challenge notions of memory and
identity.18 The dissertation is helpful to my research because it allow me to elaborate how
images induce the formation of identity and promote agency for marginalized and excluded
communities.
For marginalized communities, Jean Yellin-Fagan's research provides an excellent
overview of American female abolitionist involvement.19 Even though her research focuses on
the ways women made and used permutations of the slave medallion to support the movement,
her perspective in the opening chapter is puzzling because she contends that the female version
of the image maintains power despite the continued use of artistic conventions to prescribe the
subject as object and commodity. While I do not agree with Fagan's perspective about the
image's effect for the black female community it represents, her comments create opportunities
to explore the extent to which trans-Atlantic women shared this view as manufacturers and
marketers of new objects. Her statement raises questions about the extent to which this
sentiment is still true today. Fagan's articulation of female permutations supports my thesis
that a contested discourse continues to persist today for people from the same community. For
example, as representatives of the female community, Fagan and I share similarities in gender.
18

Cheryl Finley, "Committed to Memory: The Slave Ship Icon in the Black Atlantic Imagination," (PhD diss., Yale
University, 2002), vi-ix.
19
Jean Yellin Fagan, Women and Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture, (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1989), 3-26. See also Ruth Bogin and Jean Fagan Yellin, "Introduction," in The Abolitionist
Sisterhood: Women's Political Culture in Antebellum America, ed. Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Home 1-19
(Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1994).

17
However, our readings of the slave medallion and its permutations may differ drastically in part
due to the intersections of race, class, and gender characteristics that contribute how and why we
form our own personal interpretations and understandings of any object's ascribed meanings.
This is as true today as it was during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when interpretive
communities of trans-Atlantic women expressed different reactions towards the slave medallion
and the permutations they created and sold themselves. By comparison, Lisa Gail Collins's work
offers my research an alternative perspective on the object as it relates to issues of race, gender,
and the construction of meanings through myths.20 Collins references the male and female slave
medallions in her discussion about nudity and the black body to emphasize how historical
representations of the black female body constructed a legacy of colonial visual culture practices
that persist today.
The last two scholars whose research provides a springboard to launch my investigation
include Barbara Lacey's examination of eighteenth and nineteenth century American black
representations and Michael Hatt's investigation of black identity and the ability to transform the
image of the body through visual codes.21 Lacey surveys imprints in five categories:
physiological descriptions, travel literature, Protestant tracts, historic sites, and portraits, to show
differences in black representations. Her research aids my investigation because it addresses
notions of agency and draws a correlation between the fugitive slave and the image of the black
suppliant, a principle focal point of my last chapter. Hatt argues that black identity
20

Lisa Gail Collins, The Art of History: African American Women Artists Engage the Past, (New Brunswick, New
Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 38-41.
21
Barbara Lacey, "Visual Images of Blacks in Early American Imprints," The William and Mary Quarterly: A
Magazine of Early American History and Culture 3, no.l (1996): 137-180; Michael Hatt, "Making A Man of Him:
Masculinity and the Black Body in Mid-Nineteenth Century American Sculpture," Oxford Art Journal 13, no. 1
(1992): 21-35.

18
transformation is attainable through the erasure of certain codes that are exchanged for new ones.
He chronicles different racial categorizations to show how those notions affected the image of
the black body. He uses the image of Gordon, a fugitive slave, to examine how oppositional
readings by audiences can change the object's meanings. This essay is especially critical to my
discussion in the last chapter that explores how changes to the visual codes inspired black
communities to oppose the object's ascribed meanings, appropriate its visual codes and then
invert them in order to empower their perspectives and assign new meanings.
To date, only a handful of scholars have ever cited reproductions of the kneeling slave
executed by Patrick H. Reason. Out of these citations, David C. Driskell, James A. Porter, and
Judith Wilson, three of the most prominent scholars whose work on black representation has
established groundbreaking theories and methodologies, only referenced Reason's 1835 stipple
engraving of the female kneeling slave.22 Sharon Patton and Steven Loring Jones discuss
Reason's use of the image to create the Philadelphia Vigilant Committee's membership
certificate.23 Patton referenced this version of Wedgwood's original design as part of a larger
review of objects made by and for the African American community. However, due the larger
scope of her project, the image only received a brief citation. Jones's essay features Reason's
engraving in the context of other nineteenth century works by black artists but the discussion is
limited. The absence of visual analysis that underscores the importance of meanings is a critical
22

David C. Driskell, Two Centuries of Black American Art (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 35-36; James A.
Porter, Ten Afro-American Artists of the Nineteenth Century: An Exhibition Commemorating the Centennial of
Howard University, February 3- March 30, 1967 (Washington: Gallery of Art, Howard University),! 1; Judith
Wilson, "Hagar's Daughters: Social History, Cultural Heritage, and Afro-U.S. Women's Art," in Bearing Witness:
Contemporary Works by African American Women Artists (New York: Spelman College and Rizzoli International
Publications, 1996), 99-100.
23
Sharon F. Patton, African-American Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 74-78; Steven L. Jones, "A
Keen Sense of the Artistic: African American Material Culture in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia," in
International Review of African American Art 12, no. 2 (1995): 15-16.

19
oversight that my research does not make. Unlike Jones, I explore the nuances of the
permutation's imagery within its social, cultural and historical context in order to show how
audiences read and synthesized its complexities. My study places Reason's version in a broader
context of works that compare and contrast its meanings within and outside of the black
community. By tracing its connections to the Wedgwood slave medallion, my work aims to
show how that object triggered contested meanings by African American artists such as Reason.
However, my research also reveals that even the black community contested meanings ascribed
to Reason's work and there is strong evidence that individual preference for other versions of the
kneeling slave were preferred by members of the Philadelphia black community. This evidence
only reinforces my thesis about the heterogeneity of audience responses.
Finally, Marcus Wood includes examples of the Committee's seal and Wedgwood's slave
medallion to consider how these objects form part of the rich visual culture that memorialized
the past.24 Despite his thorough examination of these objects, he does not discuss the work's
capacity to evoke a response in the form of black resistance in a chapter devoted to "Rhetoric
and the Runaway."25 Ironically, he used and identified one of Reason's portraits of Henry Bibb
as an anonymous work in this section, but did not mention the Philadelphia Vigilant
Committee's membership certificate as a form of black rhetoric. For the purposes of this study,
Reason's work drives my last chapter as an example of African American visual response that
reclaimed their agency as a community. In this sense, my theoretical framework leans towards

Marcus Wood, Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America: 1780-1865, (New
Jersey, Routledge, 2000), 19-27.
25
Marcus Wood, "Rhetoric and the Runaway: The Iconography of Slave Escape in England and America," in Blind
Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America: 1780-1865, (New Jersey, Routledge,
2000),, 116-134.

20
Saidya Hartman's ideas about how and when the African American community claims agency as
a form of response to "racial acting out," or as Wood's would regard it as a reaction to "white
memory and identity."
I use Reason's work, along with a few other iterations, to show how, even though the
black voice was oppositional, it contributes to a meaningful discourse about the different
responses that come from makers and users within the same community. My study suggests that
Reason's pictorial variations of the seal's and medallion's design not only sparked but also
exposed the latent black agency that existed within the African American community. That
agency is encoded into the object's visual elements to suggest that the audience used the image
as a means to expose their role as agents. The African American voice serves as the final
response that puts closure on a study that shows the evolution and alteration of a single object
over space, time and audience reception.

Chapter Outline
In Chapter One I unpack the circumstances behind the slave medallion's production
history. The chapter presents the facts about the people, events, and conditions that contributed
to the production process. It starts with the Committee's vision for an official seal to show how
Wedgwood converted that vision into his acclaimed slave medallion. Through the production
history the object's internal evidence explains how Wedgwood manufactured it, and what
meanings he ascribed prior to distribution. Following the methodological approach presented by

Saidya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997), 116-124.

21
Stuart Hall, the information contained in the production process is an important and necessary
step to establish a foundation for an audience reception study. In this chapter scholarship by
Wedgwood specialists such as Hilary Young, Robin Reilly, L. Richard Smith, and Jill Casid, J.R.
Oldfield and Sarah Parson, just to name a few, supplement this study. This scholarship provides
immeasurable insight into the slave medallion's production and sparks critical questions I
explore later in this investigation about audience responses.
Chapter Two shows how Wedwgood and the Committee distributed the slave medallion
and then explores how their intended audiences responded. The chapter relies heavily on
organizational minutes, patron orders, and newspapers to reconstruct the events that surrounded
the ways audiences received and responded to the object. The chapter concentrates on who
formed the intended audience and how British abolitionists established criteria to target a
particular cohort of people who received abolitionist materials including the slave medallion.
Intended audience responses suggest that their understanding of the object's purpose and
meanings varied considerably. In fact, their reactions to the medallion, and the objects they
created using the slave medallion, allowed them to produce new meanings that contradict its
purpose. One of the most critical aspects of this chapter is to show how makers distributed the
slave medallion to intended users. The distribution process continued to expand with each new
user until the audience included those never originally intended to be in possession of these
objects. This aspect of the examination sets the stage for Chapter Three.
Unlike chapter two, which explores the intended audience response through a series of
case studies, the third chapter examines how responses from unexpected makers inform our
understanding about the politics of change and economic practices exercised throughout

22

nineteenth century Anglo-American object production. Unexpected audiences were less

restrictive in their composition because they included abolitionists, anti-abolitionists, those
indifferent to the cause, excluded Africans and marginalized women. Although the chapter looks
at the broad range of communities that comprised the unexpected makers and their unanticipated
uses of the slave medallion, marginalized women are the primary focus. All of these groups
shared a common experience in their efforts to change the form, function, and meanings of the
slave medallion. Conversely, these changes signified a transition in their own identity from
unexpected maker to a viable sustainer of the abolitionist movement. Four case studies are used
to reveal how marginalized trans-Atlantic women made and used workbags that featured
permutations of the kneeling slave figure. Objects like the workbag redefined notions of work as
it relates to leisure and the ways women spent their time. Moving from women of leisure to
working women, their social classification also altered their political identity in the movement
and subsequently played a part in changing her role to a viable economic supporter and sustainer
of the movement.
Moving from the margin to the core, however, did not guarantee that the community's
nucleus was not fractured and fragmented. It was in fact, just that. Just as much as women were
unexpected makers because they produced new variations and new meanings, within their
community there were unanticipated responses to what their activities actually meant for them.
Some women embraced the workbag and the work at fairs as progress, some contested its
significance as a means to spark change, and still some viewed the workbag as an accessory that
happened to have political meanings but was used to embellish their fashionable attire. This
latter perspective was not endemic of change. The unanticipated responses to the workbag and

23

the work that contributed to its production and eventual consumption by other users are evidence
that not all women were in accord with the object's form, function, and meaning. They
negotiated those terms to suit their social needs. Thus, the makers/users and objects investigated
in this chapter reveal how marginalized women changed the object's meanings and how those
changes either affected or coincided with changes to female identities as cultural, political, and
economic figures in society. Beyond the permutations, identity transformations, and changes in
object meaning, there persists a consistent notion that everything but the kneeling slave is
negotiable. Even the female body is negotiated as a site for visual propaganda and economic
stability as objects adorn or embellish it. To this end, the female body was objectified in the
process of producing new versions and meanings. Yet, there remains the eerie notion that the
slave's condition, as depicted by the altered female supplicant's black body on these objects, is
permanent and lacks evolution. A notion that compliments and contradicts the white female
body it is paired against. This unyielding universal meaning is the basis for the African
American response to the slave medallion and its permutations.
Chapter Four concludes this investigation of audience reception by exploring ways that
the black community received the slave medallion. This chapter constitutes a major contribution
to the study and the overall field of art history because it re-introduces Patrick H. Reason's
engraving as proof that the black community held and expressed oppositional readings towards
the slave medallion's image. The image is juxtaposed to the Committee's seal and Wedgwood's
slave medallion, as well as several permutations, in a way that makes the position and opinions
of the black community clear, present, and unavoidable. The chapter's methodological approach
and evidence negates any notion that the black response was missing or non-existent in the

24

annals of object history. In fact, this chapter reveals the greatest contribution that my project
makes to the field. That contribution is the construction of a model to read and examine variable
images and objects made by, for, and about the black subject. The model provides a framework
to recover the stifled voices of marginalized and excluded communities. This model presents
visual evidence alongside the community's voice to reveal their significance as audience
respondents.
Using Reason's engraving as an anchor, I contend that the black community opposed the
longstanding notion that the black subject is incapable of improvement and change. In fact, the
image's compositional components challenge the idea that the black community is incapable of
transcending their abject condition through personal and communal agency. The image, like
others that the black community made and used, projects the notion that the enslaved and quasifree black communities journeyed together through an evolution that involved a codependent
relationship of the others existence. In this sense, the kneeling slave and the free black constitute
a reciprocal identity based on change. Failure for one to succeed means that the other is
adversely affected. The goal in reading Reason's image in the context of this history of audience
responses is to show that the black community's use of the image did not suggest its members
embraced it, but that they too negotiated its visual elements in order to ascribe new meanings
that resonated with their social and political goals. In doing so, the black community responded
directly to the meanings previously ascribed by intended and unintended audiences.
Philadelphia's African American community appropriated and inverted the subject to contest
how and why the kneeling slave existed as a fixed visual component over time, even in the midst
of change.

25

Conclusion
Interest in the objects associated with the abolitionist era continues to flourish today.
With every passing anniversary, new discovery, and thought-provoking inquiry, a new trajectory
is formed which allows us to reconsider what we believe to be true about these objects and the
relationships maintained between makers, users, and the alterations that allowed them to change
the object's meanings. Investigations that target the Wedgwood slave medallion are no different.
This dissertation contributes to the expansion of knowledge about this object because it questions
an ongoing assumption that all audiences responded similarly to it. This study also fills a void
by posing the question to a broad range of audiences that include the African American
community.
By focusing on the production, distribution and social histories associated with object
consumption, this project not only builds upon a rich tradition of scholarship that begs for a
deeper examination of the Wedgwood slave medallion, but it also offers a viable framework for
reading the slave medallion within the same context to reveal alternative iterations of its
meanings. I explore some of these different responses in order to ascertain what implications
they have for the meanings that audiences ascribed to it even if it is impossible to explore all
responses in one project. My project serves as a benchmark to unearth the reasons why
audiences read a single object differently over a period of time. This study offers a foundation to
explore audience reception through object traffic. It outlines the steps required to launch an
investigation of this magnitude. It shows how production processes and distribution practices
affects response, and explains why individual and group identity within a community directs

26
audience readings. These factors contribute to how audiences ascribe divergent meanings to
their altered objects. By exploring these aspects of a single object over time, this project opens
up a meaningful dialogue that will continue beyond this foundation.

27
Chapter One:
Production of Wedgwood's Slave Medallion
On an unseasonably warm winter's day in December 1787, G. Massey, an employee of
Josiah Wedgwood's British pottery factory, inserted his shovel into the kiln to unload a batch of
ceramics.1 Massey carefully pulled the ceramics from a specific location in the oven that
afforded the best temperature for baking these particular biscuit objects.2 As he removed the
objects from the kiln, he inspected them to ensure that they passed Wedgwood's quality
standards and determined whether they were ready for distribution. Pleased by the results of this
batch, he recorded the information in the Oven Book.
7 doz. black pyramid seals of a wax ablacamore large
6 doz. do. do. figures do. do.3
Massey's entry evinces a moment in the production of one of many Wedgwood objects. This
entry affords insight into how Wedgwood's ornamental wares were produced. It shows, through
a simple entry log that denotes quantity, color, shape and object name, one moment in the
production process. That process and the history that is tied to it, is significant for this
investigation because Massey's entry reveals a moment that evoked audience response. Whether
that response is in the form of a simple entry log, or in the form of divergent audiences who
ascribed meanings that contest each others understanding of the object, what transpires during
the production process determines the history of an object's reception.

For weather forecast see Times (London), Issue 940, col. D, December 14, 1787.
For information about the firing process and coding system used to test ceramics see Alfred J. Caddie, "Recent
Discoveries at the Wedgwood Factory," The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, 8, no. 34 (January 1906): 258.
For a discussion about Wedgwood records and the "trials" used to determine firing process, see Harry Barnard, "The
Etruria Museum," The Connoisseur 85 (1930): 296.
3
G. Massey, Oven Book Entry, 7 December 1787, Wedgwood Manuscript Collection, Wedgwood Museum.
2

28
Given the time of production, Massey's entry raises questions about the object's identity,
purpose, and what, if any, is its relationship to Wedgwood's slave medallion (Figure 1.1). L.
Richard Smith and J. R. Oldfield disagree about the significance of Massey's entry, and if it
affords evidence about the slave medallion's production history.4 Smith maintains that the entry
does not provide evidence that Wedgwood produced the slave medallion as early as December
1787.5 Smith contends that the entry is a reference to a fob, a pyramid design made of black
basalt. Oldfield insists that Massey's entry affords some indication that Wedgwood intended the
object for "limited circulation among the Committee's corresponding members."6 It is probable
that both scholars are accurate. While the object may not constitute the actual slave medallion, it
may have served as a precursor during the traditional trial period for Wedgwood wares.7 This
period would have followed the moment the Committee commissioned Wedgwood and afforded
the manufacturer the opportunity to test different object types. If this is the case, then Massey's
entry captures a moment in the slave medallion's production history which opens up a wealth of
opportunity to understand the maker's intention, expectation, and anticipation for his object. The
entry affords some indication of how the object originally looked, what it meant, how it
functioned, and who Wedgwood intended to receive it. Most important, the entry demonstrates
how production is a vastly layered process that holds moments when makers brainstorm their

See Smith Josiah Wedgwood's Slave Medallion, 2nd ed., 17; Oldfield, Popular Politics, 156.
Oven Books between January 1788 and December 1790 are no longer in existence and it is therefore difficult to
ascertain the exact date Wedgwood produced the first batch of slave medallions. See Smith, Josiah Wedgwood's
Slave Medallion, 2nd ed., 16.
6
For more information about how these scholars discuss the only extant Oven Book entry from this period, see
Oldfield, Popular Politics, 156; Smith, Josiah Wedgwood's Slave Medallion, 2nd ed., 16-17.
7
For a discussion about how Wedgwood used pattern books, firing accounts and other records during trial periods to
produce objects see Caddie, "Recent Discoveries," 257-264.
5

29
ideas, test their products, and eventually arrive at what we, the audience, know to be the final
(and perhaps only) object to which we offer a response.
Massey did not describe the object's overall appearance in his entry. Instead, he
identified the object based upon the central figure he called "ablacamore," better known as an
African Moor. Aside from color, how the African Moor looks, what he is doing, and where he is
o

located in the object's design are details that Massey's Oven Book entry does not elucidate.
Therefore, the subject Massey refers to could be the black supplicant who looks askance, as the
words "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" crown his presence. This is the design featured in
Wedgwood's slave medallion and may be the same elements left out of Massey's description.
Information regarding the slave medallion's design, who commissioned it, and how it was
manufactured, are questions that can only be answered through an in depth examination of the
object's production history. In fact, Massey's firing of any Wedgwood's jasperwares only
marked the culmination of arduous work performed by numerous employees, whose unique
skills and knowledge of ceramics contributed to the moment when Massey presented Wedgwood
with 156 ornamental wares primed for his intended audience. Thus, Massey's Oven Book entry
can only tell part of any object's production story. The whole story includes a host of people,
circumstances, and a series of events that provide the necessary segue into an examination of the
object's audience reception.
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the facts behind Wedgwood's production of the
slave medallion. Terry Smith declared production as an act that involves the terms of an object's
8

L. Richard Smith indicates Wedgwood used oven book entries principally as a means to document successful
firing and pay wages, object descriptions were never detailed. See Smith, Josiah's Wedgwood's Slave Medallion,
2nded., 16.

30
making or staging process. She contends that production is the moment when artists and
manufacturers "bring something or someone into view" or "into existence." 9 The process itself
involves a myriad of people, circumstances, and events. This investigation considers the
manufacturer's philosophies about object production, the source of the object's design, and uses
internal evidence to explore the manufacturing process. The investigation concludes with
information about Wedgwood's audience, and suggestions about distribution patterns. By
unearthing this information, the chapter sets the stage for an investigation about audience
reception, one that considers how intended and unexpected users, as well as the African people
represented by the object's subject, responded to the slave medallion. It also provides a
foundation to explore how and why these diverse communities of users responded differently to
the object, and shows that varied reactions are a direct consequence of an object's production
history.

The Production Process: The Maker's Objectives

In 1769, Wedgwood erected his pottery factory in Stoke-on-Trent located near
Newcastle, England. He named the factory Etruria after the prominent ancient Etruscan pottery.
Wedgwood's adoption of this name wedded what the British perceived as the Classic style of art
with the established objective of the Industrial Revolution to mass-produce.10 This meant that

Terry Smith, "Modes of Production," Critical Terms for Art History, ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 237-256.
10
Several scholars have acknowledged that discoveries of Greco-Roman object in Pompeii and Herculaneum
activated the late eighteenth century British neo-Classical art movement. For discussions about these findings and
their impact on Wedgwood's productions, see Robin Reilly and George Savage, Wedgwood Portrait Medallions: An
Introduction, (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1973), 10, 13, 23; C. Louise Avery, "A Gift of Ornamental Wedgwood,"

31
Wedgwood organized people employed in his factory according to trade and assembled them in a
production line, a tradition that continues to this day to a lesser degree and within a more
intimate space.11 The hallmark of Wedgwood's business enterprise is this unique combination of
human power that maintained the art of hand-made crafts while strategically positioning his
crafts persons in workshops to mirror the machine-like effect of an assembly line.
In addition to his mass-produced handmade objects was his personal philosophy about
production. Captured in a catalogue published around the same time he produced the slave
medallion, Wedgwood issued a statement about the ability of reproductions to enlighten minds:
Those who duly consider the influence of the fine-arts on the
human mind, will not think it a small benefit to the world, to
diffuse their productions as wide.. ..as possible. The multiplying
of copies of fine work, in beautiful and durable materials, must
obviously have the same effect in respect to the arts, as the
invention of printing has upon literature and the science: by their
means the principal productions of both kinds will be for ever
preserved, and will effectually prevent the return of ignorant and
barbarous ages.12

Wedgwood's timely statement imparts a wealth of information about his role as the slave
medallion's manufacturer. His philosophies about production and distribution in the art world
give rise to what he believed to be the affects of art on the human mind and the necessity to have
multiple objects broadly diffused in society. Wedgwood was by all standards an enlightened
man. So, it is not unusual that he associated the arts with intellect. Since the human mind is the

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 27, no. 11 (November 1932): 237; Hilary Young ed., The Genius of
Wedgwood (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1995), 13.
11
For a discussion of how Wedgwood's factory was organized into distinct units called "workshops" where his
employees labored according to their specialty see Young, The Genius of Wedgwood, 48-49. During a research visit
to the factory in the summer 2006,1 toured the premises and witnessed the same "production-line" environment.
12
Frederick Rathbone, A Catalogue of the Wedgwood Museum Etruria with Portraits, Illustrations and Facsimiles
of the Marks, (Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent: Josiah Wedgwood and Sons Ltd.): 51.

32

seat of consciousness and the location where opinions are formed, Wedgwood realized early on
that there existed a relationship between his role as an object maker and his audience's
responsibilities as consumers and respondents.
While Wedgwood is clear and direct in his views about the impact of the fine-arts on the
human mind, he is also adamant about the importance of the production process being a part of a
larger continuum in which objects are made, used, and receive responses. However, there was
one caveat. As a person tied to the commercial side of business, Wedgwood also reinforced the
value of multiplying art through copies (i.e: permutations). Wedgwood himself, upheld
reproductions as an asset because they offered consistency and repetition to the human mind, a
1 "^

quality his works shared with the printed medium.

For this reason, when the slave medallion's

production history is considered as part of a larger continuum, it is highly likely that Wedgwood
either, intended, expected, or at least anticipated, that his users would reproduce the object. If so,
then how did those intentions, expectations, and anticipations feed into the object's design?
What bearing did this have on the persons targeted to receive the slave medallion, and was
Wedgwood's idea about the consumer based on a loosely defined pool of patrons? Finally, how
did his business provide the right platform for such an undertaking?
In his own line of commerce, Wedgwood produced decorative arts, objects considered
lower in value to the finer arts such as paintings, sculpture, and architecture. Wedgwood was
well aware of this classification and sought to assure his patrons that not only were his
productions valuable, but also durable and offered longevity. Dating back as early as 1762,
13

Some Wedgwood specialists contend that he was not an artist but a businessman who did not make original
works. His wares are examples of works that were "adapted" or "re-modelled" from casts that his employees
created. See Reilly and Savage, Wedgwood Portrait Medallions, 12-20, 32.

33

when he partnered with the Liverpool-based merchant Thomas Bentley, Wedgwood employed
numerous artists and artisans like George Stubbs, John Flaxman, Henry Webber, and William
Hackwood to prepare models and construct wax and block moulds that replicated original
designs.14 In addition to skilled craft persons, Wedgwood also commissioned prominent artists
such as Sir Joseph Wright of Derby as early as 1778 to paint his wares.15
By the end of 1787, Wedgwood's consumers responded favorably to his wares. His quest
to diffuse wares among the middling class matched his ability to attract commissions from the
upper and ruling classes.16 Among the memberships Wedgwood maintained, his affiliation with
the Royal Academy of the Arts brought him in contact with artists such as Joshua Reynolds who
institutionalized the value of fine arts through an emphasis on design.17 As an active member of
the Lunar Society, he shared scientific philosophies and findings with persons like Erasmus
Darwin, and the August 1787 invitation to join the Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the

For more information about Wedgwood's employment of Hackwood see Anthony Burton, Josiah Wedgwood: A
Biography (New York: Stein and Day, 1976), 97; Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity
Changed the World (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002), 411; Reilly and Savage, Wedgwood Portrait
Medallions, 15-16, 23, 28.
15
During Wright's tenure in Liverpool he corresponded with Wedgwood. See Wright Letter Series, 5 May 1778- 29
April 1784, 1769 Sitter's Book, National Portrait Library. See also Josiah Wedgwood letter to Joseph Wright, April
29, 1784, Wedgwood Manuscript Collection, University of Keele. For information about a letter where Wedgwood
established the terms for Wright's commission see N. McKendrick, "Josiah Wedgwood: An Eighteenth-Century
Entrepreneur in Salesmanship and Marketing Techniques," The Economic History Review, 12, no. 3 (1960): 416.
16
For more information about Wedgwood's historic commissions, everyday jasperwares, and diffusion of objects
among middling population see Rosemary Hill, "Wedgwood Then," Crafts 122 (May/June, 1993): 32-35; Reilly and
Savage, The Portrait Medallions, 13-14, 19; W.B. Honey, "Royal Portraits in Pottery and Porcelain," The
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 70, no. 410 (May 1937): 218-229; Byron A. Born, "Josiah Wedgwood's
Queenware," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 22, no. 9 (May 1964): 289-299; John Thomas, "Wedgwood
Ceramic Portraits," The Connoisseur 98 (1936): 29-35; Bruce Tattersall, "Henry Webber: Art at the Service of
Industry," Apollo 122 (July 1985): 36-42; H. Granville Fell, "Josiah Wedgwood: Master Potter, 1730-1795," Apollo:
A Journal of the Arts 12 (1930): 26-32; Young ed., The Genius of Wedgwood, 18.
17
Several scholars acknowledge the relationship that Wedgwood maintained with Reynolds throughout his career.
Some note Wedgwood's admiration towards Reynolds and sitting for a portrait. See Young, The Genius of
Wedgwood, 13; Reilly and Savage, Wedgwood Portrait Medallion, 26-27; John Thomas, "Wedgwood Ceramic
Portraits," The Connoisseur 98 (1936): 31; Arthur T. Finch, "The Genius of Wedgwood and Modern Ceramic Art,"
American Magazine of Art 21 (1930): 549.

34

Slave Trade combined his interest in art and science with his moral and ethical convictions about
human rights.18 As a manufacturer who used original designs to produce ornamental wares, and
a successful businessman, who guaranteed a broad distribution of art and ideas, Wedgwood
offered patrons a complete package. All of these factors contributed to the Committee's decision
to approached Wedgwood with their seal design. As a result, they commissioned him to create
the slave medallion.

Design Concept: The First Moment of Production

In late spring, a small group of men convened for a private dinner engagement at the
home of Mr. Langton, a close associate of Parliamentarian members. Thomas Clarkson, William
Wilberforce, and Wedgwood's colleague, Sir Joshua Reynolds, were just a few of the prominent
names in attendance. Despite differences in professional vocations, these men shared a mutual
interest in the abolition of the slave trade. As the evening's events progressed, the men shared
their personal convictions about the subject. When it was Reynolds's turn, Clarkson recalls that
he "gave his unqualified approbation of the abolition of this cruel traffic."19 Unlike Wedgwood,
whose public persona was of an active and vocal artisan who disapproved of the slave trade and
slavery, Reynolds's private endorsement to abolish the commercial trade in African bodies may
have constituted a critical turning point in the events that followed. His presence that evening as
the only representative of the fine arts, whose philosophies emphasized design and whose

Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: Free Friends whose Curiosity Changed the World (New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux, 2002), 295-322.
19
Thomas Clarkson, History of Rise, Progress, and Accomplishments of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by
the British Parliament (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808), 1: 252-253.

35
experiences included painting black subjects, is essential to the examination of facts that led up
to the design that later drove the slave medallion's production.20
The founding of the Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was a
direct result of this dinner engagement. Shortly thereafter, the Committee held its first official
meeting in May. By July, the Committee brainstormed ways to make their presence in British
society more visible. Before their meeting adjourned, it was resolved that a "Seal be engraved
for the use of this Society."21 According to the Minute Book, Joseph Woods, Dr. Joseph Hooper,
and Phillip Sansom formed the sub-committee, responsible for the charge "to prepare a design
for the same."22 None of the three, Woods a woolen draper, Hoopera surgeon and
apothecary, or Sansom, had any known artistic experience, but within three months of this
charge, Woods presented the Committee with ".. .a specimen of a design.. .expressive of an
African in Chains in a supplicating Posture with this Motto 'Am I not a Man & a Brother'."23
Despite the fact that Woods presented the design to the Committee, Smith maintains,
"precisely who was responsible for the design of the seal.. .cannot be known."24 Smith finds it

Reynolds's annual discourses elevated the fine arts and design. For Reynolds's ideas about art and science, see
Joshua Reynolds, A Discourse delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, October 16, 1780 (London: Royal
Academy, 1780): 1-6. For his art theory see Reynolds, A Discourse delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy
on the Distribution of the Prizes, December 11, 1780, (London: Royal Academy): 9-32. For notions about the artist
as genius see Reynolds, A Discourse delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution of Prizes,
December 10, 1782, (London: Royal Academy): 5-28.
For a comparison of Reynolds's philosophies about design and Wedgwood's crafts, see David Irwin, "Art versus
Design: The Debate 1760-1860," Journal of Design History, 4, no. 4 (1991): 219-221.
21
Proceedings for the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 5 July 1787, Fair Minute Book 1787-1819,
Add. 21254 folio 13, British Library, London.
22
See Proceedings, 5 July 1787. See also Clarkson, The History of the Rise, 1:450.
23
According to the bibliographic index at the Society of Friends Library, Joseph Hooper followed in a medical
tradition established by his father, John Hooper. His speech is the only scholarship that remains after his passing in
1789. In the speech he cautioned against the intrigues of 'false science.' See Joseph Hooper, A Discourse on the
Best Means of Improving the Science of Medicine (London: J. Phillips, 1788), 14-15, 21-22. See Proceedings, 16
October 1787. See also Clarkson, The History of the Rise, 1:450.
24
See Smith, Josiah Wedgwood's Slave Medallion, 5.

36
problematic that a sub-committee comprised of non-artisans produced a design on their own.
But, his assertion that the sub-committee received assistance from a more capable hand, is not
accompanied by any plausible sources to support his disbelief. Instead, he notes that
Wedgwood's habitual absence from Committee meetings during the winter of 1787 eliminates
him as a potential artistic source for the sub-committee's design.
Smith is not alone in his quest to identify a credible source for the sub-committee's
design. Hugh Honour, Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw, and David Bindman are just a few of the
scholars whose research places the Committee's seal design in the longstanding tradition of
visual tropes.25 This trope involved the placement of an abject black subject in Anglo-American
portrait paintings of persons invested in the commercial trade of African bodies. The black
subject kneels in submission and functions as a means to reinforce wealth and social standing of
the sitters that also shared the pictorial space. Building upon the visual likeness, these scholars
maintain that there existed an association between the subject's posture in portrait paintings and
the Committee's seal design. If these speculations are accurate then there are a few possibilities
that can serve as artistic sources and references for the sub-committee.
Bindman offers as a model the work of Sir Joseph Wright of Derby, whose painting Two
Girls and their Negro Servant (Figure 1.2) premiered at the London's Society of Artists 1770
exhibition.

25

The painting was listed under its original title, A Conversation with Girls (no. 155).

For more information about the visual trope of the black supplicant between the sixteenth and eighteenth
centuries, see David Bindman, "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?: British art and Slavery in the Eighteenth-century,"
Res 26 (Autumn 1994): 68-82; Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, "Negro Portraits: Signifying Enslavement and Portraying
People," in Portraits of a People: Picturing African Americans in the Nineteenth Century, (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2006), 13-25.
26
Algernon Graves, The Society of Artists of Great Britain, 1760-1791, the Free Society of Artists, 1761-1783 (Bath,
Kingsmead Reprints, 1969), 286-287. Wright also exhibited at the Society of Artists from 1765 until 1791. He

37

Horace Walpole, the local art critic, regarded Wright's work as "exceeding fine."27 According to
Wright's niece Hannah, he produced this portrait during his four years tenure in Liverpool,
which lasted from 1768 to 1771. During this time, he interacted with members of the African
Company of Merchants and lodged with the Tate family, who were a well-known merchant
family.29 The portrait represents two females either from the Tate household or another
Liverpool merchant family. They are depicted in a dominant position standing over their
"servant." Her darkened skin complexion contrast against the milky white satin skin of the two
girls. Wright cast all three figures in a neo-Classical context wearing togas. The figures surround
a memorial urn that is elevated on top of a pedestal. The girl standing behind the urn reaches out
to grab some fruit from the basket the supplicant bequeaths to the girl whose back faces the
audience. The circular shape of the grapes is repeated in the beads that drape over the kneeling
figure's thigh. Just behind her, the sail of a slave ship waves in the Liverpool harbor. The ship
is either coming in to port or heading back out into the triangular trade route.
In addition to Wright, the sub-committee may have turned to Reynolds, who was made
aware of their objectives by his attendance at the initial dinner engagement where the idea for a
Committee was conceived. Reynolds's expertise in crafting designs, his vast connections, and
his experience producing portraits like his 1780-82 The Temple Family (Figure 1.3) that featured

made submissions to the Free Society in 1778 and 1783. For more information see Bindman, "Am I Not a Man and
a Brother?, 79; Hannah Wright, Some Account of Joseph Wright 1850, 3 vols., Derby Local Studies Library, Derby
[England].
27
For information about this art review see Graves, The Society of Artists of Great Britain, 286.
28
See Wright, Some Account of Joseph Wright 1850.
29
See Liverpool Papers, 227, The British Library. These papers contain correspondences from Company of
Merchants members to Lord Hawesbury proclaiming their opposition to the anti-slave trade campaign.

38

the kneeling slave, afforded the sub-committee another probable source.30 Reynolds's depiction
of George Grenville, Earle Temple (1753-1813) accompanied by his wife Mary and their son
Richard also uses the kneeling slave as a trope to represent the hierarchical social order of the
time. The supplicant looks upward to Richard with a sense of admiration and awareness that
Wright's black servant looked at her mistresses. Both portraits use the kneeling slave to
represent the continuance of slavery as a social form of art that is handed down to successive
generations along with the objects that represent these ideals. These types of images were so
pervasive and common that they provided a visual reference to the ideas the Committee may
have wanted to address. Therefore, it is plausible that the sub-committee did not seek or receive
any assistance at all.
The sub-committee's specimen of a design was just that, a crudely drawn outline of an
idea or concept they based upon exposure to a visual trope they saw on a regular basis. This
design may have mirrored the one sketched on the cover of the Meeting for Sufferings
Committee Minute Book (Figure 1.4). Housed in the Library of the Society of Friends
manuscript collection, the book covers a period from 1783 to 1792. Given the years that the
minute book covers, the object offers a probable source for an early sub-committee draft. The
sketch resembles what has come to be known as the sub-committee's seal design but the slave
faces the opposite direction. Another obvious difference between the slave medallion and this
sketch is the missing motto, "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?"

Reynolds's George Clive and his Family with an Indian Maid (1765) also depicts kneeling Indian servant who
caters to a child elevated on top of an upholstered chair. His arrangement of kneeling slave and child figure mirrors
the Temple Family. See Joshua Reynolds, Journey in Landers and Holland Account, 1781, Eq.2165, f.6-7, 19, 24,
64-65, The British Library, London.

Without any extant visual source, it is difficult to determine when the sub-committee's
design first appeared. In addition, without documentation that specifically identifies a reference,
the origins of the sub-committee's design remains debatable. However, what happened to that
design is the most important fact in reconstructing the slave medallion's production history and
how it led to the different types of audience responses that contest its meaning. According to
Clarkson, Wedgwood "took the seal.. .for his model."31 This probably occurred some time after
the sub-committee's presentation in October, and just before Massey pulled that first batch of
sample pyramids from the kiln in December. Whenever Wedgwood took the seal for his model,
his receipt of the sub-committee's design marked the second moment of production when the
manufacturer transformed it from a two-dimensional printed form into a three-dimensional
ornamental ware.

Object Construction: The Second Moment of Production

Wedgwood returned to his Etruria factory with the sub-committee's seal design in hand.
Numerous scholars agree that Wedgwood assigned William Hackwood, his chief modeler with
the responsibility to prepare a mould from the sub-committee's design. In the absence of
documentation, it is uncertain if the medallion was the object Wedgwood originally had in mind.
It is likely that he proceeded to identify personnel to work a production line to manufacture an
object on behalf of the Committee. Wedgwood's production line probably ran a series of tests to
determine the best way to construct the object after Hackwood returned with sample block
moulds. One of these may have included a suggestion for a fob similar to the one found in
Thomas Clarkson, History of the Rise, 2:191.

Massey s oven book entry. This was a crucial period in the production history because it
involved a series of trials and errors in order to ascertain the best object to represent the subcommittee's seal design.
During this process, Wedgwood took a number of issues into consideration. His intended
audience was perhaps the most important factor because the recipients of this ornamental ware
required an object that afforded them practical use. Since he received the commission from a
male-dominated Committee, it is plausible that Wedgwood initially proposed to manufacture an
object that offered the Committee's all-male members a pragmatic daily function. A triangular
fob used for pocket watches and signet rings, like the one that Massey extracted from his kiln on
that warm December day in 1787, would have suited that purpose. Whether this object served as
a forerunner to Wedgwood's slave medallion is purely speculative. If it did, then at some point
during the trial period, as Wedgwood labored over decisions about object type, design,
appearance, and materials, he may have realized the need for a unisex piece that allowed the
Committee's message about the slave trade to target a wider audience. It was at this point, that
Wedgwood's concept for the slave medallion a unisex object distributed to Committee
members and their female counterpart, came to fruition.
Shortly after Wedgwood identified and settled on an object type, he placed careful
consideration into the jasperware materials used to make the slave medallion.32 After his
employees ran a series of tests, and presented Wedgwood with samples of those trials, the

For years, Wedgwood's business thrived on his coveted jasperware, a mixture that involved the commercial
export of Cherokee clay from the southern regions of America. See Wedgwood-Bentley Letters, January 1775 to
December 1777, Wedgwood Manuscript Collection, The University of Keele. See also Erasmus Darwin, The
Botanic Garden, A Poem, Part I, Containing The Economy ofVegetation,Part II The Loves of the Plants, with
Philosophical Notes, 4th ed. (London: J. Johnson, 1799), 156.

41
manufacturer reviewed the final products and made some executive decisions. At the time of
Wedgwood's inspection of the trials, his employees may have presented him with several
examples. One, if not all, of these examples featured Wedgwood's trademark white-on-blue
color scheme he used to produce all of his neo-classical wares. Taking stock of the visual
associations that patrons would make between the medallion's subject and his appearance,
Wedgwood probably ordered the production line to change the color scheme so that the object
clearly represented the Committee's beneficiarythe black African. Years later, Clarkson
recalled the effectiveness of Wedgwood's decision to use this color scheme, when he noted that
the manufacturer "produced a beautiful cameo of which the ground was most delicate white, but
the Negro, who was seen imploring compassion in the middle of it, was in his own native
colour."33
Wedgwood's decision to use this color-scheme probably affected other decisions, like
Hackwood's block moulds and the techniques craftspersons employed in their respective
workshops. This color-scheme also challenged some aspects of the production line sequence. L.
Richard Smith and Robin Reilly offer two different perspectives on how Wedgwood's
employees created the slave medallion using various techniques in the ornamentation process.34
Smith contends that Wedgwood adopted a mould-sprigging process to ornament the medallion
and resolve the challenges that the object's black-on-white color-scheme posed. He describes
this process the moment after the craftsperson forced black jasper into a recess of the mould to
form the figure's body:
33

Thomas Clarkson, History of the Rise, 2: 191.

For a more detailed discussion and definitions of ornamenting see Robin Reilly, Wedgwood Jasper (New York:
The World Publishing Co., 1972), 79; Robin Reilly and George Savage, The Dictionary of Wedgwood (Woodbridge,
Suffolk, England: Antiques Collections Club, 1980), 257.
34

42
.. .a prepared disc of the white jasper-body background is placed
on top of this figure, and pressure applied to the disc to fuse it to
the black figure. At the same time this white background disc is
forced into the recesses forming the surrounding lettering. The
whole unit is then lifted up from the plaster mould, the black
figure of the slave coming away with the white background disc
as one unit.35

Smith's hypothesis about mould sprigging implies that Wedgwood's black subject was created
using jasper fully colored throughout the material's body. Alternatively, Reilly described the
same ornamentation process (Figure 1.5) as "pottery decorated in low relief with ornament
stamped or moulded separately and applied to the ware by sprigging."36 Reilly's photograph of
the production process reinforces how hand-crafted materials possess subtle differences. Beyond
the standard stamp or mold used to create the figure, the artist's hand is distinguished by
technique and style. This translates into an altered object with each production. Reilly's
photograph also shows the how in the ornamentation process, sprigging required a slip; a clay or
ceramic body diluted with water to function as a thin cream. Wedgwood used the slip to coat the
surface of the ceramic body.37
Reilly's description compliments what appears to be the classification given to most slave
medallion's in various collections where the subject's body is the result of a black dip.38 This
designation means that the slave medallion's subject is black only on the surface. Given the vast
differences between the three color-scheme types that Wedgwood produced over the years, it is

L. Richard Smith, Josiah Wedgwood's Slave Medallion, 2nd ed., 13.

Reilly and Savage, The Dictionary, 325.
37
This process predates Wedgwood's business. He used it extensively to produce his jasperware. See Reilly and
Savage, The Portrait Medallions, 17.
38
A dip is the application of a darker slip to the surface of a solid jasper color. Dips can be a surface application or
the full submersion of the jasper. See Reilly and Savage, The Dictionary, 122; Robin Reilly, Wedgwood Jasper
(New York: Thames and Hudson), 405.
36

43

possible that Wedgwood implemented different steps within the production line to achieve these
varied appearances (Figure 1.6).
After the craftsperson affixed the black dipped body of the slave to the bat, the slave
medallion moved onto the final workshop where a Wedgwood employee applied an
identification mark (Figure 1.7). The Colonial Williamsburg's slave cameo offers a visual
example of the Wedgwood mark found on the reverse side (Figure 1.8). This mark was a
combination of Wedgwood's name in standard block with the letter 'O' underneath. Eliza
Metyard contends that Wedgwood applied the letter 'O' to "indicate the best period and the
highest quality of ware."39 After the slave medallion received a trademark, a craftsperson
delivered the batch to Massey who fired it in a specific location within his kiln. Massey's keen
ability to identify the oven's "sweet spot" for ceramics guaranteed an evenly baked object that
would not be subjected to potential destruction during the cooling process.
The final product was a compact, portable object that had a smooth texture.40 The
combined effects of color scheme and firing often dictated the object's durability. Wedgwood
decided not to polish the slave medallion. This decision gave the subject a dull, lifeless
appearance. Given eighteenth- century notions about blackness, audiences would have read the
subject's dull, unpolished body as either a cultural reference to evil or as a social statement about

Eliza Metyard, The Wedgwood Handbook: A Manual for Collectors; Treating of the Marks, Monograms, and
Other Tests of the Old Period of Manufacturer; Also Including the Catalogues with Prices Obtained at Various
Sales, Together with a Glossary of Terms (New York: Timothy Trace, 1963), 44-45.
40
For the definition and distinctions between a cameo and a medallion see Josiah Wedgwood, A Catalogue of
Cameos, Intagliios, Medals, and Bas-Reliefs; with a General Account of Vases and the Ornaments, after the Antique
London (London, 1773) 2-5. See also Metyard, The Wedgwood Handbook, 44-45. See also Robin Reilly and G.
Savage, Dictionary of Wedgwood (Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: Antiques Collections Club, 1980), 68-69, 235.

44

death.

These cultural and social meanings were steeped with ambiguities that were contingent

upon the reader's own personal understanding of and experience with the color black.
Wedgwood's understanding and experience working with the color was outlined a decade earlier
in a series of correspondences to Bentley. In one letter he explains that the combination of color
and absence of polish affects the visibility of the object. He wrote, ".. .the black ones are perhaps
cheap enough... The former is not intended to polish, and being black, and a dead black, without
any play of light from its surface, I have condemn'd it as not sufficiently visible.. ."42 Regardless
of what object he referred to, it is clear that Wedgwood's viewed black as a form of
condemnation, an abysmal state that is hopeless as well as lifeless by nature. Thus, the cameo's
subject dipped in blackness and denied the play of light was doomed to death.
Whether associated with evil or death, the subject's body showed up on objects as a corpse-like
figure because he was black and lacked luminosity. Yet, Wedgwood probably based his decision
neither to polish, nor to mount the slave medallion on financial matters. Since he manufactured
the slave medallion pro-bono, any additional work beyond the standard production line services
would have been too costly and time consuming. Classified as a cameo or medallion, the object

For scholarship that chronicles the history of blackness and meanings associated with black subject in art, see
Geoff Quilley and Kay Dian Kriz, eds. An Economy of Colour: Visual Culture and the Atlantic World, 1660-1830,
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 8-9; Jan Nederveen Pieterse, White on Black: Images of Africa
and Blacks in Western Popular Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press), 23-29, 44-45, 125, 203; Jean Devisse,
The Image of the Black in Western Art, From the Demonic Threat to the Incarnation of Sainthood (New York:
William Morrow and Co., 1979), 2: 81-148; Cedric J. Robinson, "The Invention of the Negro," Social Identities 7,
no. 3 (2001): 329-351; Kim Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Genderin Early Modern England
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 211-253.
42
For more information on Wedgwood's thoughts about the importance of a polished object and his association
between the color black and the appearance of being dead see letters to Bentley dated Etruia 14 January 1775, Etruia
17 December 1777. He continues to suggest that these items can be done in an alternative color that may be more
pleasing "than black either dead or polish'd for a handle should be more strikingly visible than that color, or rather
no color, will make it." See also Wedgwood to Bentley 13 November 1778, Wedgwood Manuscript Collection,
University of Keele.

45

complimented Wedgwood's oeuvre. Like his other creations, the design was a reproduction, and
the subject represented a social likeness that possessed a political message. Wedgwood also
distributed the object to a specific audience, the Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the
Slave Trade, who took the liberty as the first users to define the function and meaning of this
obscure object.

Staged Responses: The Final Moment of Production

Since the Committee commissioned Wedgwood to produce the slave medallion and he
used the seal's two-dimensional design to create a model for his three-dimensional object, it is
evident that his intended audience was organizational members. The Committee also had its
own intended audience including the Parliamentarians that Clarkson courted in the moments
before and after the organization's formation. In sum, British men comprised both Wedgwood's
and the Committee's intended audience. The inherent ambiguities of the object coupled with
Wedgwood's philosophy about marketing his products, however, probably contributed to what
became a wide-spread trans-Atlantic market for distribution. That market started with what
Wedgwood regarded as his sponsors and later included unexpected users.
Wedgwood's reliance on the latest fashion trends allowed him to readily identify
sponsors for his commercial goods. In a correspondence that predates the slave medallion's
production, Wedgwood articulated his philosophy about the world of taste and fashion. His
sentiments provide insight into how Wedgwood selected patrons and decided on distribution and
marketing methods in order to affect successful reception by his intended audience:

Fashion is infinitely superior to merit in many respect; and it is

plain from a thousand instances that if you have a favorite child
you wish the public to fondle and take notice of, you have only
to make choice of proper sponcers. If you are luc(ky) in them no
matter what the brat is, black, brown, or fair, its fortune is
made.43
Wedgwood's comparison of fashion to merit illustrates how he viewed the relationship between
the sponsorintended audience, and the bratthe object. He notes that the selection of the
audience dictates the success of the object because in the world of fashion sponsors ape behavior
and this increases the object's palatability. This was certainly the case for the slave medallion.
With its black dipped brat depicted on the object's surface, sponsors who gained access to the
Committee's favorite child, bestowed their pardon and favors upon the dead lifeless kneeling
slave. The object's natural tactile qualities enticed sponsors to run their fingertips across the
surface of subject's black body, stroking the curvilinear lines that formed his silhouette. Then, at
once familiar with this corpse-like child figure in need of a sponsor to act on his behalf, the
audience was invited to answer his plea. Their response echoed the humanitarian customs and
styles of the time the fashionable quest to abolish the slave trade or perhaps even slavery. As
their principal objectives, these responses ascribed the brat a political and contextual meaning in
the world of fashion.
Sarah Parsons's observation that the medallion "was essentially a public image, derived
from a public organization for a public cause, and yet its consumption did not take place in
organized public exhibition rooms, but between individuals in primarily domestic spaces," raises
an interesting insight into how the audience base grew and why the object assumed different

Wedgewood to Bentley, June 19, 1779, Wedgwood Manuscript Collection, University of Keele.

47
forms.44 Scholars such as Jill Casid, Sam Margolin, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, and Jean Fagan
Yellin, just to name a few, offer insight regarding how reception of the slave medallion had a
ripple effect that ultimately produced a multiplicity of permutations.45 Casid and Margolin both
show how the distribution of the slave medallion affected the eighteenth century world of
commerce and modes of print reproduction. Grigsby and Yellin reveal the implication that
adoption of the slave medallion's imagery had on both international and sexual politics. In all
of these studies, the facts about the slave medallion's production have greater implication for
how audiences responded to the object.

Conclusion
The facts about the slave medallion's production included a number of makers and users
including the sub-committee who put forth the design that served as Wedgwood's model, and the
manufacturerWedgwood, and his team of named artisans such as Hackwood and Massey, as
well as several anonymous employees who labored to bring the object into existence. The story
also involved a series of events such as the dinner that preceded the Committee's founding, and
the subsequent development of the sub-committee who later presented the seal's design. There
was also the window of time between the development of the seal's design and the moment the
Committee commissioned Wedgwood to produce a medallion, an event marked by the moment
he obtained the seal's design and brought it back to Etruria.

Parson, "Imagining Empire," 98.

Casid, "Inhuming Empire," 279-295; Margolin, "And Freedom to the Slave," 80-109; Grigsby, Extremities, 2829; Jean Fagan Yellin, Women and Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture (New Haven: Yale
University Press), 3-28.

45

48
There were probably several undocumented historical moments of design development
and object production that could provide answers to outstanding questions. Did Reynolds's
presence at the dinner party contribute significantly to the events that followed in the production
of the sub-committee's seal design? How does the moment when Massey extracted a batch of
pyramid ablacamores from the kiln provide evidence that production of the slave medallion
began? In some instances, where the production history has holes that scholars have attempted
to resolve or to contend, we must pause to consider the various plausible circumstances that
existed and entertain the ongoing "what ifs." All these factors, facts and speculations, ultimately
led up to the production of the slave medallion, its distribution to the manufacturer's audiences,
and responses that this obscure object warranted by intended as well as unexpected users.
As indicated by Clarkson's response, the object's principle design element, Wedgwood's
ability to present the subject "in his own natural colour," offers some inclination of how intended
users responded to the slave medallion. While the subject's color, a black dip applied to the
original white body, was not the object's only unique design element, the subject's color
attracted users' attention. It was also the dominant element used to identify the object as the
slave medallion; a visual cue that certainly formed the basis for responses to its probable
precursor, Massey's pyramid of ablacamore. Even though this feature was unique to the slave
medallion, the object's design is rooted in the sub-committee's charge to visually represent and
bring into existence the Committee's objectives.
This study fills a void in scholarship about audience reception because it re-examines the
assumption that Wedgwood's intended users accepted and agreed upon a universal function for
the slave medallion. In fact, the production history provides a springboard to conduct this

49
investigation because it supports the contention that the object lacked a defined functionality.
Thus, the presumed, and to some degree romanticized, notion that Wedgwood's intended
audience was in accordance with the form and function of the slave medallion is shattered. The
next chapter builds on the evidence put forth here to examine how intended audiences responded
to the slave medallion. It reveals that neither the audience, nor their use of the slave medallion
was homogeneous. As the story unfolds, it shows how intended audiences contested the object's
functionality and thereby ascribed multiple meanings.

50
Chapter Two
Intended Audience Responses: Complex & Contradictory Meanings of the Slave Medallion

On August 27, 1788, Thomas Clarkson was at home packing his bags in preparation for
his next political campaign tour for the British abolitionist movement. During previous
campaigns, Clarkson found himself in numerous parts of the United Kingdom to collect
information and evidence as well as to garner support and present cogent arguments before world
leaders about the impact of the trans-Atlantic trade on slaves.1 These tours became the hallmark
of Clarkson's role as the spokesperson for the Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave
Trade.2 An essential objective of these tours was the distribution of materials. Committee
minutes dating back to May 22, 1787, indicate that one of their aims was
"procuring...information and evidence... [and] distributing Clarkson's essay and such
publication, as may tend to the abolition of the slave trade."3 As a result of the Committee's
distribution aim, Clarkson always carried his essay. He supplemented this literature with
Wedgwood's slave medallion (Figure 2.1).

Clarkson's pre- and post Committee tour schedule between 1787 and 1790 included trips to Liverpool,
Manchester, Bristol, Gloucester, Chester, Keddleston, Birmingham and Bridgewater. For more information see
Proceedings for the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 12 June 1787-10 June 1788, Fair Minute Book
1787-1819, 21254, British Library Manuscripts Division; Thomas Clarkson, History of Rise, Progress, and
Accomplishments of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament 2 vols. (London: Long,
Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1808), 2: 1-117.
2
Some scholarship refers to the Committee as the Society for Promoting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Thhe
confusion in nomenclature may have originated from local reports of the organization's formation. See "Society
instituted n 1787, for the Purpose of Effecting the abolition of the Slave Trade," William's Liverpool Advertiser,
January 21, 1788.
3
Proceedings for the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 22 May 1787, Fair Minute Book 1787-1819,
Add. 21254/o/. 13, British Library Manuscripts Division.

51
Turning to his checklist of materials, Clarkson realized that his supply of slave
medallions was inadequate. Sitting down at his desk, he took out a sheet of paper, inked his pen,
and wrote a brief note to Wedgwood's agent in London:
Wedgwood was so good as to furnish me, during the last session
of Parliament with several cameos for distribution. Tomorrow I
enter upon a tour through the Southern Counties of the Kingdom
on the subject of the slave trade, and some of these will again
have their use. I should be extremely obliged to you to furnish
me with as many as you can spare.4

Clarkson probably directed his request to Mr. [W]. Greatbatch, known to handle the distribution
of Wedgwood's products.5 Clarkson's request exemplifies how a founding member of the
Committee responded to the slave medallion. His response reveals that the distribution chain
from Wedgwood's factory to Parliamentarians was a process that resembles a ripple effect.
According to Clarkson's request members of the British parliament comprised the Committee's
intended audience. The request also indicates how Committee members like Clarkson, used the
object for distribution during political campaign tours. In addition, Clarkson's request alludes to
the meaning he ascribed to the object on behalf of the Committee: to represent the subject of the
slave trade. Clarkson's request is just one example of how Committee members and
Parliamentarians responded to the slave medallion. Other examples, examined in this chapter,
evince how Wedgwood's and the Committee's intended audience responded differently to the

Thomas Clarkson to Agent for J. Wedgwood, 27 August 1788, Wedgwood Manuscript Collection, Wedgwood
Museum Archives.
5
Eliza Metyard, The Wedgwood Handbook: A Manual for Collectors; Treating of the Marks, Monograms, and
Other Tests of the Old Period of Manufacture; Also Including the Catalogues with Prices Obtained at Various
Sales, Together with a Glossary of Terms (New York: Timothy Trace, 1963), 64. See also Reilly and Savage, The
Dictionary of Wedgwood, (Woodbridge [Eng]: Antiques Collectors' Club Ltd., 1980), 176.

52
slave medallion. These responses vary depending on who comprised the intended audience, how
they obtained the object and which version of the object was received.
The purpose of this chapter is to explore how intended audiences responded to the slave
medallion. As the object's primary users, intended audiences were also makers in their own
right. Their responses to the slave medallion reveal how they read and interpreted the object.
Their responses also reveal to what extent future audiences embraced, contested, and ascribed
meanings to the object. My aim is to show that the intended audience was not a homogenous
community of like-minded individuals despite some common characteristics the Committee used
to identify themselves. Although this abolitionist community shared some similarities, like their
raceAnglo Saxon, and their gendermale, the range of responses exposes different political
agendas. Either they wanted to abolish the trade or they desired to see slavery end. Their varied
responses also reveal that they lacked consensus in their readings and ascription of meaning to
the slave medallion. The intended audiences' failure to reach a consensus about the slave
medallion resulted in an array of permutations they made, used, and ultimately ascribed multiple
meanings that sometimes differed from and contradicted the meaning Wedgwood gave the
object.
This chapter uses four case studies to compare and contrast responses to the slave
medallion that occurred within the first year of Wedgwood's production and distribution
processes. The studies reveal how the complexities of these processes contributed to the
responses that both Wedgwood's clients and the Committee's intended audience expressed.
Audience responses were complex because of the intricate matrix of objects, object makers,
object users, and object meanings. Each of these case studies supports the chapter's central

53

thesis: audience responses underscore the complexities of the object's multiple meanings and
magnify the heterogeneity of the intended audience. For this reason, each case study provides
one example of these complexities at work. For the most part the makers, users, and objects
included in these case studies are all intended, except for moments when Wedgwood produced
and distributed unexpected permutations that carried unanticipated meanings. The diversity of
responses also reveals ambiguities in how intended audiences used the slave medallion, and what
meanings intended users ascribed to the object and its variations.
The first case study examines Clarkson's request for additional medallions in order to
identify the Committee's intended audience and discuss their characteristics. The second case
study explores how Wedgwood's agent, [W.] Greatbatch, supplied patrons other than Clarkson's
Parliamentarian constituency with the cameo. This case reveals how Greatbatch's distribution
practices aided in the expansion of Wedgwood's intended audience and how nonParliamentarian recipients created an environment where proprietary use reflected conflicts
among object, meaning, and function. Rigauld Seymount's request for the slave medallion forms
the basis for the third case study. This case study is interesting because it actually occurred in
the aftermath of Wedgwood's international permutation which altered the meanings of the
object; yet it reveals that local audiences were also confused about the object's meaning and the
Committee's objectives. This study ultimately reinforces my contention that audiences on the
periphery of Clarkson's Parliamentarian recipients assigned an alternative meaning to the object.
This meaning associated the slave medallion with policies to terminate West Indian slavery.
The chapter ends with an international case studyWedgwood's gift to Benjamin
Franklin, the presiding chairman of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of

54
Slavery (PSPAS) in Philadelphia. This case study provides evidence that even Wedgwood
himself produced and distributed different versions of the slave cameo. His permutations altered
the meaning he originally ascribed and evoked unintended and eventually unexpected responses.
Given the relationship that the slave cameo shared with its prototype, the Committee's seal, a
critical issue that this case study addresses is how responses to the slave cameo compare to
audience reception of the Committee's seal. These conditions contributed to diverse readings of
the objects involved, the assignment of multiple meanings that compliment and contrast the
Committee's mission, and a plethora of permutations produced and consumed by makers and
users alike. These case studies prove that makers held different perspectives about objects,
users, and object meanings. The failure for intended audiences to reach a consensus about the
object's ascribed meanings was a direct result of these complexities and attest to the
heterogeneity of responses.

The Committee's Intended Audience: Conflicts and Confusion over Proper and Useful Sponsors
In noting that the cameo proved useful on similar political campaign tours, Clarkson
acknowledged his pattern for distribution among Parliamentarian officials. By targeting this
particular class of individualsEnglish society's eliteClarkson targeted the same type of people
who also received his award-winning dissertation, An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the
Human Species.6 As Clarkson proudly packed the dissertation turned published tract into his

Clarkson's essay was written for Magdalen College at the University of Cambridge. The dissertation answered
Vice Chancellor, Dr. Peter Peckard's question: "Is it Right to Enslave Others Against their Will?" The dissertation
was later published in the Senat-house. For more information see Thomas Clarkson, An Essay on the Slavery and
Commerce of the Human Species, particularly the African (London: J. Phillips, 1786). See also "Universal

55
briefcase, he probably reflected on the local book merchant Mr. Cadell's 1786 prediction.
Located on the Strand, Cadell advised Clarkson that the circumstances of the University's prize
not only elevated public attention to the essay's subject matter but also "would ensure it a
respectable circulation among people of taste."7 By 1787, when the Committee reported that
Clarkson's essay was printed, ".. .and many of them have been distributed to the proper people,"
they merely confirmed Cadell's prediction and identified their intended audience.8
Cadell's ideas about "people of taste" share several similarities with the Committee's
notions about "proper people." Both were upper class white men identified as England's social
elite. These Englishmen set standards for appropriate behavior, virtues, intellect, and determined
what constituted good quality and respectability.9 They held memberships in select clubs and
organizations.10 They also maintained time-honored traditions and embraced notions that
marginalized their female counterparts, and excluded "others" based on prescribed racial
classifications.11 As an integral part of the Committee's intended audience, these Englishmen
distributed the slave cameo to people within their nucleus. Cadell's prediction and the
Committee's successful distribution should have pleased Clarkson, but he remained conflicted
Register," Times (London), September 30, 1786; "Extracts from Clarkson's Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of
the Human Species," Times (London), November 5, 1787.
7
See Clarkson, History of Rise, 1:212.
8
Proceedings, 7 June 1787. See also "Society Instituted in 1787," Williamson's Liverpool Advertiser, January 21,
1788.
9
Woodruff D. Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 1600-1800 (New York: Rouledge, 2002), 8183; see also "Society Instituted," William's Liverpool Advertiser, January 21, 1788.
10
For information about Wedgwood's affiliations see Venetia Murray, High Society: A Social History of the
Regency Period, 1788-1830 (London: Viking, 1998), 166; Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose
Curiosity Changed the World (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002), 70-84.
11
In the two decades of the Committee's existence, no woman or person of African descent ever held membership.
This was in part due to social prescriptions that had gone unchallenged. The combined enforcement and acceptance
of such social prescriptions made women and Africans less appropriate as political personalities and more useful as
political props. For a discussion of an invitation extended to Lady Scarsdale see Clarkson, The History of the Rise,
1:222.

about the intended audience. On the one hand, Clarkson worked alongside Parliamentarian
William Wilberforce to raise the Committee's membership with the appropriate type of people
whom he described as having "seats in parliament, and who had great riches, and widely
extended connections, which would enable them to take up this cause."

On the other hand,

Clarkson was an Englishman of humble beginnings who probably felt distant from this class of
sponsors. Secretly, Clarkson desired this material ".. .to find its way among useful people,"
because he not only felt connected to this class but he also held the conviction that they, "would
think and act with me."13 Clarkson's belief that useful people would produce the best results
reinforces a common misconception that some makers/users held about communities that shared
characteristics such as race, class, gender and nationality. The belief maintains that there is a
correlation between commonalities and homogeneous responses. Clarkson's distinction between
proper and useful people also offers an important insight into the structural differences between
Committee members and the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, whom they
governed.14
Elected, honorary, and corresponding members comprised the Committee.15 These
people included Clarkson, Wedgwood, Chairman Granville Sharp, and James Phillips, the
Committee's corresponding secretary and a member of London's Society of Friends. As a
governing body, these members functioned as the nucleus to the Society. Subscribers formed the

12
13

Clarkson, History of the Rise, 1: 211.

Clarkson, History of the Rise, 1:212.

14

Up until the Committee's formation, the Society of Friend's Meeting for Sufferings petitioned Parliament to
abolish the slave trade. From a religious standpoint their doctrine also opposed the institution of slavery.
15
Twelve founders originally formed the Committee. It was later stipulated that the Committee consist only of
elected and honorary members. Membership was restricted to 30 elected persons who reside in or near London. For
information about membership and organizational structure see Proceedings, 16 December 1788.

57
body of the Society. They financed the movement through subscriptions but did not possess
membership rights.16 British supporters such as Houlbrook and Seymount, two of the
individuals whose case studies I examine later in this chapter, are examples of the Society's
subscribers. The two bodies, the Committee and the Society, collaborated to present a unified
voice, but that was not always a successful goal. For example, at the time Clarkson was
preparing for his campaign tour, Sharp issued a public announcement that commended
petitioners to serve as the collective "voice of humanity" that, he contended, "calls loudly for the
extinction of a traffick which no plea of policy or interest can justify in the eye of reason or
conscious."17
Despite this call for unity among perceived like-minded abolitionists, for several years
the Committee actually maintained a distant relationship from those in the Society. Their
primary point of contact existed in moments when they petitioned Parliament and through the
distribution of materials such as the pamphlets that bore the Committee's seal, Clarkson's essay,
and the slave cameo. In fact, committee relationship with the Society's subscribers was so
remote that six months after the Committee formed, Sharp acknowledged that their failure to
involve subscribers in meetings effectively disenfranchised them:
The remote situation of most of the subscribers creates a
difficulty which cannot be easily obviated. The Committee,
however, beg leave to assure them, that due attention will be
paid to such communications as they may be favoured with,
from individual members, and which it seems impracticable to
obtain from the collective body.18
16

For a comprehensive list of subscribers see Proceedings, 22 May 1787. See also "Society Instituted," 21 January
1788.
17
See Proceedings, 12 August 1788.
18
Granville Sharp, "Report of the Committee Instituted for the Purpose of Effecting the Abolition of the Slave
Trade," in The Gentleman's Magazine 63 (February 1788), 161-162. See also Proceedings 15 January 1788.

58

Together, members and subscribers formed a collective body of political agents called
abolitionist, but what they aimed to abolish is evident in how they used and what they said about
the slave medallion. However, given the diverse personalities within the Committee and the
Society, that vague designation reveals many of the complexities that existed between the two
political bodies and explains why responses to objects such as the slave cameo were contested
within this community.
The absence of uniformity was a condition brought about by the Committee's habitual
failure to grant the Society a voice in the governing body. Although Sharp's circular letter
acknowledged the disconnection between the Committee and the Society, marginalization of its
supporters contributed greatly to the different ways the intended audience responded. Bruce
Laurie contends that the marginalization of useful people not only overshadows their
contributions in reform movements but also problematizes the way we define and examine
intended audience responses. Laurie suggests that, "we need to look at what people did, not
simply at who they were, in order to gain a better idea of why middling people... formed the
foundation of abolitionism..."1 This is especially relevant for studies that examine how different
intended audiences gained access and responded to objects such as the slave cameo. The
heterogeneity of the intended audience further illuminates the reasons why the object was
ascribed multiple meanings. Whether affiliated with members within the Committee's nucleus,
like Clarkson or Wedgwood, or with individuals who formed subgroups outside the collective

Bruce Laurie, Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005),
27.

59
body of abolitionists, like Greatbatch, it is important to explore what these individuals did with
the slave cameo in order to understand why their responses differed. Therefore, it is important to
examine how the distribution process contributed to a distinction between the two bodies.
Different distribution styles caused the abolitionist nucleus to split to form separate communities
of distributors who maintained their own intended audiences. As the sample case studies will
show, while Clarkson distributed to Parliament, Wedgwood distributed to Greatbatch who then
distributed to a host of patrons who passed these objects on to others. In addition, not only did
Wedgwood take liberties to distribute the medallion to his sponsors; he also altered the object's
appearance and distributed a special batch to a non-British abolitionist supporter, only proving
the diversity in meanings ascribed and responses received. The number of sub-groups caused by
this distant relationship and distribution patterns is one of the reasons why the Committee's
intended audience was comprised of a diverse body whose readership contested the meanings
ascribed to the slave medallion long before Clarkson set out on his campaign tour.

Fashion and Politics: The Meaning of Houlbrooke 's Made-Up Object

As early as February 1788 [W.] Greatbatch, Wedgwood's personal assistant, conversed
with Mr. Houlbrooke, a local patron who expressed a desire to obtain four slave cameos. Like so
many other patrons who ordered multiples of a single object, Houlbrooke probably wished to
keep one, and give the others as gifts.20 At the time, patrons unable to obtain the slave medallion
through Clarkson sought other means to access Wedgwood's latest fashion object. Since
Greatbatch served as the medium between Wedgwood and his clients, he knew how to resolve
20

Oldfield, Popular Politics, 158, 180. See also Clarkson, The History of the Rise, 2:191.

60
Houlbrooke's dilemma. On February 28, 1788, Greatbatch shared his plan with Wedgwood. In
a brief note, he indicated that he would "get 4 cameos of the black kneeling from G. Barnet and
make them up for Mr. Houlbrooke to be given to Mr. Swift with the letter."21 Heightened
demands for the slave medallion probably triggered alternative means to supply clients with the
object. Greatbatch's solution to Houlbrooke's request, coupled with the actions involved in
getting the four cameos, provide an excellent glimpse into the complexities of the distribution
process.
The distribution process involved in Houlbrooke's case reveals a complicated intersection
of multiple patrons. As patrons and objects moved through different spaces to arrive at a final
destination, the experience transformed both. The object in its "made up" form became a
permutation, and the patron now in possession of this coveted version became a user. The
complexities, however, did not end there. According to Clarkson, some patrons made up their
slave cameo to coincide with popular eighteenth-century taste:
Some had them inlaid in gold in the lids of their snuff boxes. Of
the ladies, some wore them in bracelets, and others had them
fitted up in an ornamental manner as pins for their hair. At
length the taste for wearing them became general, and thus a
fashion, which usually confines itself to worthless things, was
seen for once in the honorable office of promoting the cause of
justice, humanity, and freedom.22

Clarkson suggested that the slave cameo granted meaning to objects that had little or no political
value. However, the relationship between the slave cameo and its setting was not linear. The
object that the slave cameo became associated with also determined its functionality. In this

21
22

Letter to Josiah Wedgwood, 17 April 1788, 29455-143, Wedgwood Museum Archives, Barlaston [England].
Clarkson, History of the Rise, 2: 191-192.

61
instance where the cameo was used to embellish objects like a household plaque (Figure 2.2), a
lady's necklace (Figure 2.3) and a snuff box, an interesting conflict was created between its
maker and user. In fact, alterations reflect the makers' and users' conflicted interests between
fashion and politics. This relationship further complicated the object's meaning.23

The Object: Snuff Box

Mary Guyatt argues that the slave medallion possessed a dual functionality that combined
fashion with politics during the eighteenth-century.24 With a wide range of possibilities, the
slave cameo fit into a historical body of object types used in ways that allowed the intended
audiences like Houlbrooke to construct new meanings. When patrons like Houlbrooke made
permutations, they subsequently ascribed meanings, assigned object functionality and defined
their role as a proprietor of politics and fashion. For example, Clarkson indicated that some
patrons affixed the slave medallion to the lid of snuff boxes, an embellishment that was similar
in design to the patch boxes men made up for women (Figure 2.4). Assuming that one of
Houlbrooke's made up cameos was a snuffbox, the object, and its association with fashion and
politics, appears to project a conflicted view about the Committee's aim. On the one hand, the
Mary Guyatt, "The Wedgwood Slave Medallion: Values in Eighteenth-Century Design," Journal of Design
History 13, no 2 (2000): 94-95, 99. For information about eighteenth century social taste see John Brewer, The
Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, (New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997),
xv-xxx; Bernard L. Herman, "The Discourse of Objects," in The Stolen House (Charlottesville and London:
University Press of Virginia, 1992), 3-14; Henry Glassie, "Material Culture," in Material Culture, (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1999), 41-86; Jules David Prown, "Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture
Theory and Method," in Material Life in America 1600-1860 ed. Robert Blair St. George (Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1988), 17-37; Ian Hodder, Symbols in Action: Ethnogarcheological Studies of Material Culture,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 8-11; Robert Fletcher, "The Messages of Material Behaviour: A
Preliminary Discussion of Non-Verbal Meaning," in The Meaning of Things: Material Culture and Symbolic
Expression ed. Ian Hodder (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 33-40; Ann Smart Martin, Makers and Users: American
Decorative Arts, 1630-1820 (Madison, Wisconsin; Elvehjem Museum of Art, 1999), 10-22.
24
Guyatt, "The Wedgwood Slave Medallion," 93-106.

62
permutation compliments their political allegiance to the abolitionist movement. On the other
hand, the altered medallion's association with tobacco contradicts their opposition by endorsing
fashionable goods produced by slave labor.25
During the eighteenth century, English men smoked, chewed, or snuffed tobacco. Snuff
was the powdered form of tobacco. Consumption of snuff was a male-bonding ritual that
occurred in exclusive environs of coffeehouse where politics were discussed. The possession of
snuff, in comparison to other tobacco forms, symbolized an affectation of the British
aristocracy.

Tobacco boxes embellished with the slave cameo posed a complex visual

contradiction because they combined fashionable notions about social habits with a cash-crop of
the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In addition, the permutation made a statement about the owner's
relationship to the object's subject. Like the tobacco contained in the box, the black supplicant
was an expendable commodity that could be possessed and altered. Interestingly, Greatbatch
conveys this notion in his reference to the object as the "black kneeling."27 Greatbatch's
description of the object's subject depersonalizes him by emphasizing color and posture above
and beyond his humanity. In fact, looking at the snuff box example, the motto is noticeably
missing. Its erasure implies that the subject's question is irrelevant. The absence of the motto

For information about seventeenth and eighteenth century black figureheads on cameos and how portraiture
influenced this craft see Kim Hall, "An Object in the Midst of Other Objects: Race, Gender, Material Culture," in
Things of Darkness: Economics of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1995), 211-253.
6
Unlike other popular forms of forms of tobacco, snuff eliminated the offensive behaviors of exhaling smoke and
public health concerns associated with bacterial spit. For more information about the use and affects of snuff see,
"Snuff," (London) Times, October 12, 1786; "The Evils of Snuff-Taking," (London) Times, October 14, 1825. See
also Venetia Murray, High Society: A Social History of the Regency Period, 1788-1830 (London: Viking, 1998),
251-252
27
Oven Book records after the 1790s refers to the slave medallion as the "black kneeling." See L. Richard Smith
Josiah Wedgwood's Slave Medallion, 2nd ed. (Sydney: The Wedgwood Society of New South Wales, Inc., 1999),
17-18.

63
also suggests that the answer would be obvious in this context where the black body is among
slave-made goods. Therefore, the question need not be asked. The combination of missing motto
and Greatbatch's description effectively erased the subject's humanity. He remains an object, a
commodity. Anchored in his kneeling posture, he appears to beg, but is really in a state of
arrested development waiting to be made up, used up, and defined upon his owner's whim.
The subject's seemingly fixed condition juxtaposed to the agency that the proprietor
approximates by making, using, and ascribing meanings creates a visual paradox between
fashion and politics. This paradox also illuminates the proprietor's failure to abolish his own
behaviors such as tobacco consumption, and trade in a body of goods. Such alterations
challenged intended audiences to substantiate their consumption of snuff while simultaneously
expressing their allegiance with the Committee's political aim to discontinue commercial trade in
the black bodies that cultivated the products they consumed. However, patrons such as
Houlbrooke might have argued that tobacco is a by-product of slavery, and the tobacco box
really did not present a conflict of interest for those supportive of a campaign to abolish
commercial trade in African bodies. Who knows to what extent these sponsors justified their
actions with their conflicted interest.
The dynamics of object, function, and meaning produced and ascribed by users
problematized the socio-cultural and economic value of the black body in relation to tobacco
consumption. Embellished by a symbol of political and social mores, users changed the function
and meaning of the medallion into a permutation embedded with contradictory meanings about
the owner's position and commitment to the abolitionist movement. These contradictory
meanings became inherent traits that patrons inadvertently affixed to the slave medallion with

each opportunity to make up meanings and ascribe them to permutations. The users' ambiguous
behavior expanded as the slave medallion changed hands and moved within the space and time
of distribution among Wedgwood's and the Committee's intended audience.

Seymount's Ambiguity towards the Slave Cameo's Projected Meaning

Growth in the object's patronage was symbolic of the period's political dynamism.
Rapid expansion was a result of distribution efforts by Clarkson to Parliamentarians and by
Greatbatch to Wedgwood's clients. These Parliamentarians and clients developed an
appreciation for the slave cameo that spread from the Committee's nucleus of intended users,
who viewed the object as a visual aid for the cause, to those on the periphery of these exclusive
communities. Within both communities, these audiences maintained different perspectives about
what was the Committee's cause. Even though these individuals supported the Committee's
objectives, they were often confused about the aim. This is most evident in the case of
Seymount's request for the slave medallion.
On March 18, 1788, Rigauld Seymount, a frequent patron of Wedgwood's London
gallery sent a brief note to the potter.28 The note was a friendly reminder to ensure he would
uphold his promise to supply some slave cameos:
I beg Mr. Wedgwood to deliver to the bearer a dozen small
cameos on the project] of abolishing slavery in the West Indieswhich he was so good as to promise me when I made a late
purchase last Friday noon.29
28

For more details about Wedgwood's galleries, see N. McKendrick, "Josiah Wedgwood: An Eighteenth-Century
Entrepreneur in Salesmanship and Marketing Techniques," The Economic History Review, New Series, 12, no. 3
(1960): 419-424.
29
Rigault Seymount to Josiah Wedgwood, 18 March 1788, 16912-92, Wedgwood Museum Archives, Barlaston
[England].

65

Seymount's request explicitly identified another class of intended users whose reading of the
object further complicated the function and meanings they assigned. In begging Wedgwood to
honor his promise, Seymount simultaneously ascribed a meaning to the slave cameo that
redefined its political purpose. Seymount assumed the object functioned to support a campaign
to abolish slavery in the West Indies. Seymount's tone of certainty about the object's function
and meaning evinces an inherent confusion about the abolitionist cause that existed within some
communities of readers who fell outside of the Committee's nucleus. That confusion stemmed
from inconsistent messages users received from the audience.
Much of this confusion appeared to be an ongoing problem for and coincidentally a result
of Committee members' activities. From the moment its members organized the Committee,
Granville Sharp consistently issued announcements in the local press with the intent to disabuse
the general public, and the Society's subscribers, of the notion that the Committee aimed to
abolish slavery:
It has been suggested with a view to insinuate the
impracticability of success that the intention of the society went
to the abolition of slavery an intention which the committee have
thought necessary to disclaim.... For however acceptable a
temporate and gradual abolition of slavery might be...it never
formed any part of the plan of this society.30

Sharp's public message simultaneously discounts the abolition of slavery as the Committee's
aim, and discredits the Society's intentions. Seymount's request raises some compelling
questions about what was the source of confusion about the Committee's project, and how
supporters honed in on that aim to redefine the slave cameo's meaning. Given the circumstances
30

See Proceedings, 12 August 1788.

66
of Seymount's request, how and why he arrived at this meaning is something that requires a
deeper look into the composition of the Committee versus the Society, and what representatives
of both organizational facets presented as their "project."

The Committee's Project: A Carefully Planned Enterprise

Even though the Committee met on numerous occasions, before and after its formation as
an official organization, its affiliations at home and abroad contradicted its stated political aim to
abolish the slave trade. For instance, Committee membership was comprised of several
individuals associated with the Society of Friends. This religious group had a long history of
petitioning Parliament to abolish both the trade and slavery abroad.31 Even their religious
doctrine forbade them from any participation in the commercial trade and ownership of another
human being.32 The Committee also maintained regular communication with the Pennsylvania
Society (PSPAS), an organization that focused its energies on providing refuge to fugitives with
an aim to abolish American slavery. These activities clearly presented the public and the
Committee's supporters with a false impression, one that contradicted their stated aim. Taking a
closer look at the Committee, it is evident from its structure, previously outlined in the
introduction to this chapter, that the Committee maintained top-down diplomacy. Thus, it is

31

For more information about the Society of Friends political activities, see Meeting for Sufferings Committee on
the Slave Trade Minute Book, 1783-1792, Library of the Religious Society of Friends Manuscript Collection,
London, England.
32

See George Fox, A Collection of Many Select and Christian Epistles, Letters and Testimonies Written on Sundry
Occasions, by that Ancient, Eminent, Faithful friend and Minister of Christ Jesus, (London: T. Sowle, 1698), 2:117;
Pennsylvania and New Jersey Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends, An Epistle of Caution ad Advice,
concerning the Buying and Keeping of Slaves, Philadelphia: James Chattin, 1754; Thomas Bland, "Epistle from the
Yearly-Meeting of the People called Quakers," (London) Times, May 30, 1785.

67
appropriate to consider what messages supporters such as Seymount received from the
Committee's chairperson, and how that information led him to believe that the organization
aimed to abolish slavery in the West Indies. This information also helps clarify why supporters,
like Seymount, associated Wedgwood's slave medallion with that aim.
Sharp was a clever attorney and an advocate for the persecuted, but his role as the
Committee's chairman often conflicted with his actions, affiliations, philosophies and the general
announcements circulated on the organization's behalf. British citizens knew Sharp for his role
in the famous Sommersett case that led to the ruling that slavery on British soil was illegal.33
Although the case was fifteen years old by the time the Committee formed, many British citizens
remembered the lasting effect it had on society. After the ruling, Britain entertained contracts of
apprenticeship and indentured servitude but not slavery. Like his fellow Committee member
Wedgwood, Sharp maintained memberships in organizations commonly identified with their
adamant protestation against the slave trade and slavery.34 In addition to his memberships, he
was also publicly vocal about his position on the slave trade and slavery. For Sharp, the two
institutions held complementary meanings. In a reflective essay, he considered the effects of
these meanings according to English Law:
the term Slave Trade and Slavery.. .are sufficiently known to
comprehend systems of oppression and injustice,... unless we
could conceive, that it had really been thought expedient to try
how far these hateful and illegal terms might be capable of
acquiring a new and opposite meaning, through artful
testimonies produced by prejudiced and interested advocates!35

33

See Case of James Sommerset, 1772, BV Sec. Slavery, New York Historical Society Microfilm Collection
See Granville Sharp to Benjamin Franklin (10 January 1788) Yale University Archives.
35
Granville Sharp, (1805) Serious Reflections on the Slave Trade and Slavery wrote in March 1797 London: Printed
by W. Calvert, Great Shire Lane, Carey Street.
34

68
According to Sharp the two institutions maintained mutual characteristics to oppress and
disenfranchise. Therefore, termination of one without the other precluded amelioration of the
system and perpetuated continued injustice. Seymount's response to the slave medallion reflects
this same comprehension because it was common knowledge that the West Indies was not only
the site for legal British slavery, but it also afforded slavers a commercial market, a space to
season slaves and to accept without question oppression and injustice. In this sense, perhaps for
Seymount, like many other supporters, there was no distinction between the slave trade and
slavery, nor was their any ability for the Committee's project and the slave medallion to obtain a
new and opposite meaning because in his mind the two institutions were not mutually exclusive.
Lastly, it is important to consider how Sharp's role as the Committee's figurehead evoked
reactions to the medallion's image. In his capacity as the spokesperson for the Committee, Sharp
was responsible for drafting, issuing and publishing public statements. Prior to Sharp's 1797
reflections on the correlation between the slave trade and slavery, he also issued a public
announcement on behalf of the Committee in the Gentleman's Magazine. The date of
publication coincided with the timing of Seymount's request. Even though the Committee's seal
accompanied the announcement, the magazine editors featured the image on an alternative page
along with other illustrations.
The proof sheet, which bears the initials G.M., an acronym for Gentleman's Magazine,
was dated and submitted in March 1788, exactly five months after the Committee approved the
seal (Figure 2.5). The proof includes an image that resembles the seal, Fig. 6 of PI. II located at
the lower right hand corner (Figure 2.6). At the top of the plate figures 1 through 3 represent an
innovative architectural design for a cast iron stove. Entitled Representation of a Singular Stove

69
with descending Flute, the stove aims to improve the hazardous conditions of smoke-filled rooms
while simultaneously performing its dual domestic function as furnace and cooker. On the
bottom of the plate, the monastic seal of a York Hospital dedicated to the Virgin Mary appears
on the far left. The hospital's seal features an upright enthroned Mary holding the baby Jesus. A
second figure, which may represent the archangel Gabriel, kneels below her facing a crest.
Together, both seals flank the remains of an ancient pot found in situ at Staffordshire. In this
context, the Committee's kneeling slave figure is juxtaposed with a visual trilogy: the universally
recognized Christian sacrifice and icon of deliveranceJesus, a heated compartment used for
baking that also possesses the capacity to burn or blackenan oven, and a marred container that
beckons the audience to recall the Parable of the Potter's Housepot.36
Placed in this context, the kneeling slave is paired within a complex visual composition.
The figure is totally detached from the words that supply context to the image. Instead, the
Committee's seal is featured among a montage of objects. Some objects, like the stove, convey
ideas about industry and efficiency. Other objects, like the Christian seal possess religious
meanings, and the vase contributes a visual reference to arts of the Antiquities. Placed in
combination on a single page, each of these objects had the capacity to trigger different
reactions. As the Gentleman's Magazine's audience viewed each object, they assigned meanings
to them that were based on their degree of familiarity with what each illustration represented.
Looking at each of these visual components in isolation, and in conjunction with the kneeling
slave, there are several ways that the Gentleman's Magazine readership produced multiple
conflicted meanings about this composition.
36

Jer. 18.

For some readers, the stove's relationship to the kneeling slave beckoned them to
consider the subject's blackness in relation to abnormal temperatures that have the capacity to
darken and even burn. The subject's black skin, as depicted by Wedgwood through a dip or slip
process, reinforces that his color is an anomaly to the culturally approved and accepted norm of
whiteness. For those readers familiar with the Wedgwood enterprise, they associated the oven
with the production process of craft making. Likewise, the oven, beyond its innovative
symbolism as a new product, correlates with a Wedgwood biscuit that is also an anomaly to the
maker's oeuvre. With the emphasis that the oven may have placed on the kneeling slave's
blackness, it is plausible that both possessed a dual function. As stated, the oven functioned as a
furnace and a cooker, but the black subject served as the antithesis of whiteness and the opposite
of freedom.
Alternatively, some audiences may have read a moral message through the visual
elements found in this composition that relate to the religious icons such as Mary, Jesus Christ
and the archangel Gabriel. As a composite, these visual elements would have been read
alongside the marred Staffordshire pot to project an allegorical and metaphoric message about
broken vessels. In this context, the pot is another visual reference to Wedgwood's oeuvre. It
alludes to the parable of the Potter's House in the mind of the reader familiar with that story.
Likewise, the momentous occasion when the archangel Gabriel foreshadows Mary's deliverance
of Jesus into the world, correlates with the universal Christian message that cautions man to turn
away from evil or face consequences of wrath and destruction. The message carries with it a
solution, the sacrifice of Jesus' broken body to pay for sins and ensure salvation. With these

71
visual references in mind, the reader may have made the connection between the three broken
vessels: the bodies of the pot, Jesus, and the kneeling slave.
The double entendre would not have been lost on the reader familiar with religious
scripture and the arts. Reading the two images together, the pot and the kneeling slave elevated
Wedgwood's role as the spiritual and artistic maker who created useful and meaningful vessels.
In this capacity, the associations between the savior and the saved would have been interpreted
by the reader as their responsibility to safeguard the kneeling slave. Wedded together by
symbolic meanings ascribed to these vessels of sacrifice, the suffering bodies of Jesus and the
kneeling slave remained broken and marred like the pot until fixed in the Potter's House. This
message thematically echoed the closing argument in the anonymous scribe's letter to the
Committee and Sharp.
In addition to a page reference that directs the publication's readership to Sharp's
announcement, another page reference directs readers to an anonymous letter. The letter is a
response to what the reader understood to be the Committee's project. It echoes the confusion,
or associations, that the Committee's supporters continued to make between the slave trade and
slavery. In response to the Committee's project, the anonymous scribe imparts his conviction by
noting that, "no partial remedies are to be adopted in behalf of slavery; that we must either leave
our African brethren to their present unhappy fate, or totally abolish a practice which is an insult
on humanity."37 This anonymous respondent represented what Sharp regarded as the
Committee's "voice of humanity." The statement also confirmed Sharp's message that the voice
of humanity would not accept any plea of policy. Instead of policy the letter-writer sees two
7

"Letter to Mr. Urban," The Gentleman's Magazine 63 (January -June 1788): 212.

72
solutions: either let fate step in, or discontinue a practice. According to the author abolition must
be complete and encompass a practice, but the question is which one of the two practices the
slave trade or slavery? The comment reveals the dubious nature of this problem, and confirms
that Seymount was not alone in ascribing meanings to the slave medallion and the seal that tied
the abolition of slavery and the slave trade together as the Committee's project.

The Society's Project: Forecasted Intentions

Between the summer of 1787, when the Committee formed, and the winter of 1788 when
distribution of the slave cameo heightened, intended users such as Seymount forecast that the
Committee's aim was the abolition of slavery in the West Indies. Seymount's response was not
an anomaly for those communities of readers whose experience differed from and fell outside the
of the Committee's nucleus. Seymount's request however, involved an intimate interaction with
the object's manufacturer who was also a Committee member. Seymount's note provides
evidence that the cameo's intended audience comprised at least two distinct interpretive
communities of abolitionists. One of these communities sought to abolish the slave trade, while
the other aimed to dismantle the entire institution of slavery.38
The slave cameo also afforded Society supporters the opportunity to respond to the
Committee's motto: "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" Subscribers such as Seymount projected
a presumed truth about the meaning the slave medallion's makers attached to the object. His
case provides an excellent example of who comprised the Society's voice of humanity, what they
38

For conflicted statements about political objectives see "To the Gentleman of Manchester, calling themselves
Committee for the Abolition of the African Slave Trade," February 4 1788; Williamson's Liverpool Advertiser; "On
Slavery," Times (London) June 3, 1789; "Parliamentary Intelligence," Times (London), May 21, 1789.

73

believed to be the Committee's project, and how they responded to the slave medallion.
Unfortunately, Seymount's case also confirms that many of the Society's supporters did not
speak in the same voice. This audience also did not communicate with the Committee; nor did
they communicate with each other. The absence or lack of communication confirms the
heterogeneous nature of the Committee's intended audience. They constructed and diffused
mixed messages about the slave medallion's meanings and how those meanings related to the
Committee's project.

Putting Closure to Seymount's Ambiguities

Seymount's experience shares a number of similarities with the Greatbatch case study
that reveal how and why different communities of readers attributed multiple meanings to the
slave cameo. Both cases reveal that there was a moment when the client interacted with the
object's maker or a person who worked closely with Wedgwood. Both cases also show that
aside from the client, a number of carriers distributed the slave cameo. It is this multiplicity and
expansion of users from the nucleus that aided in how audience responses continued to conflict
with the Committee's stated aim. Unlike the circumstances that revolve around the Greatbatch
case, where carriers ascribed meanings through fashionable versions that changed the object's
functionality, Seymount ascribed a meaning that contested the Committee's political aim.
Seymount served as the source for the meaning he ascribed to the object. The twelve people he
targeted as recipients of his slave cameo gift were destined to carry both the object as well as
Seymount's interpretation of what the object meant in relation to the Committee's "project."

74
In an attempt to project personal and political goals, both the Committee and their
intended audiences ascribed meanings that went beyond the maker's original idea. Or, did they?
What exactly were Wedgwood's ideas about the slave trade and slavery? How might those ideas
have given rise to the confusion about the Committee's project? Such confusion about the
Committee's "project," and how the object assisted in achieving that goal, was not new. In fact,
the confusion probably started during the production of the object, advanced with each
distribution, and reached its pinnacle in the moments when the intended audiences ascribed
meanings to their own slave cameo. Seymount's request is a passionate expression of his
commitment as an intended audience and user. His words evince how some intended users
responded to the call to serveeven though the Committee's "project," intended audience
readings, and slave cameo's meaning remained ambiguous.

Franklin Contemplates Wedgwood's Subject: The Slave & His Freedom

The conditions that triggered Seymount's response to the slave medallion were not
isolated events. His confusion about the object's subject matter, or "project," proved universal
among Wedgwood's intended audience, and the people who comprised the Committee's support
base. This was especially true for local audiences. The source of that confusion may appear
baffling since both makers- the London Committee and Wedgwood seemed to be in accord
with each other. Thus far, the two variations of the cameo that Wedgwood produced were the
only instances where the object's appearance changed. Certainly a mere change in color from
black-on-white to black-on-cane could not have evoked confusion and caused audiences to
ascribe meanings that contradict the Committee's mission.

75
When Wedgwood distributed a variation of the object outside the British domain, both he
and his international audience attached meanings that problematized the Committee's project. It
is possible that this version of the medallion also contributed to the heterogeneous responses
intended audiences had toward the object. The case of Wedgwood's gift to Benjamin Franklin
exemplifies how production processes and distribution practices once again contributed to
another alternative reading of the slave medallion. Wedgwood's decision to craft and send a
permutation of the slave cameo marked a moment when the intended maker himself assigned
contested meanings to the kneeling slave figure. Wedgwood changed the color of the slave
figure from black to white. A color change had a direct impact on the ascribed meaning that a
black racialized dead figure held in comparison to a lively white character. That version carried
in its visual elements messages and meanings that differed from those maintained in the blackon-white version Clarkson distributed to Parliament, and the black-on-cane edition Greatbatch
made up and sent out to sponsors like Holbrouke, and subscribers like Seymount. Like
Seymount's example, in Franklin's case the Committee and Wedgwood sent mixed messages to
their intended audience. Unlike Seymount's story, Franklin's case study demonstrates that the
distribution of three different objects prompted audiences to respond with contested meanings.
The lively white figure forced Wedgwood's intended audiences, like Franklin, to contemplate
what the supplicant represented for white men in general and for Britain's expatriates in
particular. Franklin's response, though favorable, was pensive.
As the story goes, Wedgwood sent an alteration of the slave medallion as a gift to
Benjamin Franklin, the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery's president.
In comparison to the black-on-white and black-on-cane colored slave medallions Wedgwood

circulated in Britain, the object he sent to Franklin appeared to be a return to his neo-Classical
designs of a white figure on blue background (Figure 2.7). Whether the change was intentional
or inadvertent is questionable, but by changing the color-scheme, Wedgwood altered the
subject's apparent racialized identity from African to European. This color change affected the
way Wedgwood's intended audience, Franklin and the PSPAS, responded to the slave figure.
Instead of viewing the slave figure as Clarkson did a Negro in his own native color, the white
figure assumed a different meaning that forced audiences to contemplate what defined a slave?
Most audiences understood color to be the criteria for chattel slavery. If it were not, then how
was human property a universal experience that superseded racial classifications? According to
Joseph Woods, the London Committee member and sub-committee seal designer, the Roman
philosopher Cicero defined slavery as "the obedience to a broken and abject spirit, possessing no
will of its own."39 This definition makes no reference to race, only to the spiritthe innercharacter of a person's soul affected by an experience that demeans and degrades. For British
expatriates such as Franklin, the white slave figure aroused memories of their own experience as
British servants. In spite of their recent declaration of independence from the metropole, these
users must have considered how their circumstances mirrored the black American slave's
experience.
On February 29, 1788, Wedgwood returned to his office to discover a handwritten note.
Reaching down to grab the small piece of paper, Wedgwood's swollen joints ached from a recent

Joseph Woods, Thoughts on the Slavery of Negroes, (London: James Phillips, 1785), 13. See also Clarkson, The
His to r of the Rise, 1:125.

77
Rheumatic attack.

The note, which opened with well wishes for improved health, quickly

changed to business. A simple inquiry to clarify the means by which Wedgwood desired his
package sent abroad offers the first glimpse into the distribution of this version:
JP will be glad to know whether JW intends sending [pre] sent to
Dr. Franklin himself or whether JP must do it in his nameThe
ships sail tomorrow or next day and JP is making up his [post]
package.41

Although the note does not bear the author's name, it is clear from the context and use of the
third person that no one mentioned in it is responsible for writing it. Instead, the note appears to
summarize either a letter or a personal interaction that occurred between JP and the note's
author.
The note may have come from Greatbatch or another one of Wedgwood's associates.
Regardless of who wrote the note, the author sought clarification about Wedgwood's wishes to
distribute the latest edition of the slave medallion to a new audience of international makers and
users. The reference to JP is probably James Phillips, the Committee member responsible for
correspondence with foreign organizations such as the PSPAS. Feeling pain in his joints,
Wedgwood summoned his nephew to whom he dictated an introductory letter to Franklin. Given
his physical condition, Wedgwood's next step was probably to have an employee prepare the
special medallions for shipment. Tightly packed into a small container and stuffed with straw to
secure the space and limit object mobility, the delicate medallions were ready for shipment.

40

In the opening statement to Franklin, Wedgwood indicates that his nephew drafted the letter on his behalf given
the circumstances behind his recent illness. See letter to Josiah Wedgwood, 29 February 1788, Wedgwood
Manuscript Collection, University of Keele Library.
41
See Letter to Wedgwood, 29 February 1788, 19085-26.

78
Before Wedgwood's employee closed the lid, his nephew placed the letter on top of the
medallions. The packet was ready for embarkation.
James Phillips sent a letter in advance to advise Franklin of the forthcoming packages. In
his letter, Phillips indicated what the contents of both packages would be:
In the Box he will also find a Seal which the Committee here
have been enabled to send by Josiah Wedgwood, their worthy
member, who also sends a letter and a packet for the Doctor.42

Phillips also indicated that Franklin would find books published by the Committee in their box.
The letter reveals that the Committee had a different idea about what materials their international
constituency should receive. While Wedgwood targeted Franklin as the intended recipient for
this new version of the slave cameo, the Committee wished James Pemberton, another PSPAS
member, to receive their books and official seal.
The slave medallions and the seal departed from London's port on board the Harmony
destined for a new life in America.43 Both objects traveled the same outbound route of the transAtlantic trade that carried commerce and commuters. Ships that sailed this route brought raw
materials from the Americas to be converted into commercial goods. The commuters sojourned
from Europe to America due to exile, emigration, or leisure. Both commerce and commuters
shared a common experience. They were both located in dark cramp spaces, with barely enough
room to move, or air to circulate. Together they traveled for almost a month traversing unknown
and unforeseen conditions. Arriving in springtime, the packages reached Philadelphia's port,
42

James Phillips to Benjamin Franklin, 1 March 1788, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Yale Searchable
Documents, http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/
43
See Phillips to Franklin, 1 March 1788. Captain Willet of the Harmony was responsible for the transmission of
objects and correspondence between these men. See Benjamin Franklin to Josiah Wedgwood, 15 May 1787, The
Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Yale Searchable Documents, http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/

where authorities processed and promptly delivered them to Franklin. Opening the packet,
Franklin found Wedgwood's letter that introduced the objects and explained their purpose:
I embrace the Opportunity.. .to inclose for the use of Your
Excellency and friends, a few Cameos on a subject which I am
happy to acquaint you is daily more and more taking possession
of men's minds on this side the Atlantic as well as with you. It
gives me great pleasure to be embarked on this occasion in the
same great and good cause with you...44

Franklin probably reflected on Wedgwood's statement, while simultaneously examining one of

the medallions in the package. Given the object's Greco-Roman appearance, Franklin registered
the design as a reference to the Classics.45
Franklin forwarded the small box containing the Committee's seal and books to
Pemberton. Both men probably shared the contents of their respective packages noting the
differences between the two object types. One was an engraved seal the official insignia of the
London Committee. As a single object Pemberton archived it along with other abolitionist
materials received and recorded it in the minute books under correspondence. The other object,
the white-on-blue slave medallion, possessed no limitations or restriction in use. Unlike the seal,
it was something that Franklin and Pemberton could keep for their own. Given the ample supply
Wedgwood afforded Franklin, it was clear the manufacture encouraged distribution. Franklin's
response to Wedgwood's gift assures that this occurred. Franklin wrote, "I am distributing
among my friends: In whose countenances I have seen such marks of being affected by
Josiah Wedgwood to Benjamin Franklin, 29 February 1788, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Yale Searchable
Documents, http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/
45
See Frank M. Snowden, Jr., "Iconographical Evidence on the Black Populations in Greco-Roman Antiquity," in
The Image of the Black in Western Art, (New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1976), 133-245; Jean Leclant,
"Egypt, Land of Africa, in the Greco-Roman World," in The Image of the Black in Western Art, (New York:
William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1976), 269-288.

80
contemplating the figure of the Suppliant."46 Franklin's words indicate that he witnessed the
emotional impact the object's central figure had on his closest associates. Their emotive
response to the representation of a manacled male is significant because something about the
object arrested the attention of this American audience and put them in a contemplative mode.
What they thought about is tied directly to what they saw and the meanings they read into the
object's central figure whose appearance, at least on the surface of this particular version of the
medallion, looked like an enslaved white man.
Based on a series of letters found in the Franklin Papers collection that date back to the
1760s it is clear that American colonists and their British counterparts defined their
circumstances as a type of master-slave relationship. Looking at what was written in these notes
also provides an insight into Franklin's constituency and the people who may have formed the
audience to which he distributed the cameo. In 1766 a London merchant named Josiah Tucker
wrote to his American nephew regarding the issues that revolved around taxation by British
Parliament on the colony. In noting how oblivious North American men were to the absence of
representation, he also notes that this incident "opened your Eyes! And what a pity is it, that you
have been Slaves for so many Generations, and yet did not know, that you were Slaves until
now."47 Franklin's possession of this correspondence might indicate that this mislead nephew
was one of his companions, and a potential recipient of the white-on-blue slave cameo. It also
provides a reference to what the viewer may have considered to be the significance and meaning
of the white supplicant in relation to their own history.
46

See Franklin to Wedgwood, 15 May 1787.

See Josiah Tucker, London 1766, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Yale Searchable Documents,
http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/
47

81
Franklin also kept a reprinted copy of the 1768 letter from an anonymous Parisian
published in the January 1769 edition of The Public Advertiser, a local London newspaper. In
this letter, the Parisian accuses Britain of double standards when it comes to issues of freedom.
After he acknowledges how the British viewed the situation between France and Corsica, he
compares and contrasts the hypocrisy of British actions towards North Americans:
Yet at this very Moment, while you are abusing us for attempting
to reduce the Corsicans, you yourselves are about to make Slaves
of a much greater Number of those British Americans.48
For Franklin, a prominent figure in the printing press industry, not only was he a part of the
growing trans-Atlantic readership, but the words of this Parisian must have struck a core as a
leader in the colony's ensuing fight for freedom. Certainly, Franklin would have shared and
discussed the contents of this letter with his fellow North Americans and found the same irony
that the Parisian noted. Clearly, in looking upon the white body of the altered slave medallion,
some of this history resonated for Franklin as a viewer and a respondent who contemplated the
supplicant's meaning.
In 1773 Franklin received a letter from Thomas Cushing who addressed the escalating
issues of taxation, representation and the colonist fight for freedom. Cushing, who was based in
Boston, wrote to Franklin during a trip he took to London. He included information about a
recent vote in the House of Representatives regarding Parliamentarian legislation, and interpreted
the meanings of the decision as an indicator that the colonists viewed themselves as slaves.

A Purported Letter from Paris printed in The Public Advertiser, 17 January 1769, The Papers of Benjamin
Franklin, Yale Searchable Documents, http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/

82
The Colonists were sensible if this doctrine was true, they were
nothing but abject Slaves at the Absolute will and disposal of
Parliament, that it never could be the Intention of our Ancestors,
when they first settled this Country, to put themselves in such a
Condition and that it was directly inconsistent with their Charter
which Entituled them to all therightsand privileges of British
Subjects.49

Cushing, being a close colleague and friend of Franklin, may have received one of the slave
medallions. His contemplation of the white manacled figure may have caused him to consider
this not too distant time when he interpreted how the meaning of the colonists' votes indicated an
awareness that their conditions were on par with the "abject slave." If so, then the visual
representation of the white slave might have registered in his mind and forced him to consider
how Colonists identified themselves as abject slaves.
Finally, in 1775, only one year prior to the colonists' declaration of independence, Josiah
Quincy, Sr. the president of Harvard University also wrote to Franklin during his tenure in
London. After thanking Franklin for hospitalities extended to his son, who recently arrived in
Britain, Quincy raised a number of queries that had been published earlier. One particular query
resonates loudly and gives substantial insight into how Franklin's audience pool may have
contemplated the white kneeling slave figure.
Are we Bastards, and not Children, that a Prince, who is
celebrated as the best of Kings, has given his Consent to so many
and such unprecedented and oppressive Acts of Parliament, as if
carried into Execution must eventually render the Condition of
his american Subjects no better that that of Slaves to his british
Subjects?5

Thomas Cushing to Benjamin Franklin, 6 May 1773, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Yale Searchable
Documents,
http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/
50
Josiah Quincy, Sr. to Benjamin Franklin, 25 March 1775, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Yale Searchable
Documents, http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/

83

As painful as it must have been for the colonists to raise this query, and for Quincy to reiterate it
to Franklin, the sentiment was obviously a longstanding idea in the minds of British subjects like
Tucker, observant bystanders like the Parisian, and some colonists whom formed Franklin's
network of friend. Included in this network of friends was Wedgwood, the benefactor of the
altered slave cameo. This object, or to use Wedgwood's own words, the "brat," was like the
bastard in need of a sponsor who would look upon its neo-Classical appearance and contemplate
some of the deeper meanings the manufacturer assigned to the figure's white manacled body.51
Those sponsors were Franklin's friends, such as Josiah Tucker's oblivious nephew, Bostonian
House representative Thomas Cushing, and Harvard University's leading scholar Josiah Quincy
Sr. In addition to these friends, Franklin bequeathed a dozen cameos to his Philadelphian
colleague James Pemberton noting that he already "distributed some, and perceive they have a
very good Effect."52
Clearly, Wedgwood's permutation evoked the response he wanted. His international
audience was pensive and the altered medallions successfully possessed their thoughts. What
they contemplated and how the alterations conjured these thoughts can be answered by
examining the object's production and distribution in the context of historical trans-Atlantic
events. Franklin's response reveals that the slave medallion evoked a reflective state in the
minds of American men. What exactly did these men contemplate and how did Wedgwood's
white figure on blue bat design drive those thoughts is debatable. However, it is possible that the

51

Wedgewood to Bentley, June 19, 1779, Wedgwood Manuscript Collection, University of Keele.
Benjamin Franklin to James Pemberton, 2 May 1788, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Yale Searchable
Documents, http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/
52

84
visual representation of the white manacled figure evoked thoughts of the colonists' plight for
freedom and how their abject slave condition permeated their psyche.
In the letter to Franklin, Wedgwood declared that this period in time was an, "epoch
before unknown to the world," and that "the subject of freedom itself will be more canvassed and
better understood in the enlightened nations."53 What of America's history, people and
experiences made them part of the enlightened nations, and why did Wedgwood target the
PSPAS as recipients of this rare version of the medallion? There is no doubt that in their
contemplative mode, this particular group of American men who fraternized with Franklin
juxtaposed the hypocrisy of their legacy as British indentured servants to their own passive
acceptance of African commerce and slavery. Weighing the similarities and differences between
these two struggles, the words endorsed by Franklin in the Declaration of Independence probably
echoed in their minds:
We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration
and settlement here.54
In addition to these sentiments that encouraged separation from British tyranny, this statement
served as a reminder of circumstances that led to the white man's condition as British servants.
Those circumstances involved Britain's systematic purging of its unwanted citizens who were
exiled to colonies where they labored as indentured servants until they earned their freedom.
Their commercial transport and their arrival in places like North America were conditions that
mirrored the transport of black slaves and commercial objects like the slave cameo.
53

See Wedgwood to Franklin. 29 February 1788.

Franklin was one of nine men in Philadelphia who signed the Declaration of Independence. The document
declares freedom from the British metropole but does not admonish the trade and enslavement of Africans. For the
full document see ushistory.org/Declaration.
54

85

The fact that the year 1788 was ushered in with the establishment of a penal colony in
New South Wales Australia makes contemplation of universal suffering a probable effect of the
white slave figure. England used Botany Bay as a place to transport its second wave of
unwanted subjects. Franklin and enlightened PSPAS members were well aware that Britain sent
its first wave to North America as early as the late seventeenth-century, but these former servants
of the crown cast their bonds in 1776 and established a sovereign nation-state called America.55
Benjamin Franklin was instrumental in seeing that American independence came to fruition and
Wedgwood's gift may have been a ploy to encourage his continued work for universal justice for
all men. If this is true, then this was not the first or the last time Wedgwood used objects to
make political statements. Using his ceramics he captured his audience with subliminal visual
messages that forced them to consider humanitarian connections.
A year after Franklin and Pemberton received Wedgwood's slave medallions and the
Committee's seal, the manufacturer sent a letter to his Lunar Society colleague Erasmus Darwin.
In this letter Wedgwood responded to how Darwin used the slave medallion in relation to the one
he produced to commemorate Botany Bay's founding (Figure 2.8). Wedgwood's discussion of
these images draws attention to the historical commonalities shared between the experiences of
European servants and of African slaves:

A. Roger Ekirch, The Transportation of British Convict to the Colonies, 1718-1775 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987); A. Roger Ekirch "Bound for America: A Profile of British Convicts Transported to the
Colonies, 1718-1775," The William and Mary Quarterly, 42, no. 2 (April 1985): 184- 200; Bernard Bailyn, The
Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), 47-86.

86
The slave cameo comes in so well, and so extremely apropos
where you have placed it, that I should be sorry to have it
removed, as I do not see how it can be so wellfilledup by any
other, especially considering it as a companion to the Hope of
Sydney cove.56
Wedgwood's own response to his product reveals that he was active in the ascription of new
meanings to these objects. He made associations between shared suffering, colonization and
westward expansion. For Wedgwood, these new meanings were obvious deductions that
complemented each other. Yet, as visual companions on Darwin's page they also illuminate
some obvious contradictions.
Both images compliment the canto "Economy of Vegetation," on a page located in the
first part of Darwin's text, The Botanic Garden. This section addresses the commercial trade of
natural goods. Darwin's text includes an allegorical poem "Visit of Hope to Sydney Cove, near
Botany Bay" which chronicles the historic events of the 1770 expedition to Australia that was
led by Lieutenant James Cook. His verses allude to the muse Hope who stands upon a rock to
usher in the expansion of the British Empire. The poem also recalls the 1788 survey of the
Australia's landscape by Captain Arthur Phillips, who was initially charged to locate a potential
site for a British colony. Botanist Joseph Banks, who accompanied Phillips, sent a clay sample
to Wedgwood who subsequently fashioned it into a cameo to commemorate the founding of
Sydney Cove.
Wedgwood's slave cameo is located underneath the printed form of the Sydney Cove
medallion and gives the appearance that the kneeling slave looks up towards the Sydney Cove
56

Josiah Wedgwood to Erasmus Darwin, July 1789, 3:15, 93-95, University of Keele Microfilm Collection. See also
Ann Finer and George Savage, eds., Selected Letters (London: Cory, Adams and MacKay, 1965), 329.

87

image. Thomas Holloway's engraving replicates the image Henry Webber designed to create the
commemorative Sydney cove medallion (Figure 2.9). Both images show the personification of
Hope attended by Peace, Art and Labor. As a companion to the Sydney Cove medallion,
Wedgwood suggests that the Committee seal's imagery shares several commonalities. Perhaps
that commonality is the commercial jasper material used to produce the three-dimensional forms
of both these images. Perhaps it is the epoch quest for freedom that men of a certain race, class,
gender and nationality shared. Or, perhaps it is their existence as two-dimensional versions of an
original design that share historical meanings about servitude. The makers would have assigned
this meaning to the black supplicant in the slave medallion and the only male figure, Labor,
which might also be a reference to the transferred criminal. Despite these possibilities, both
images contained multiple meanings in their visual elements that sparked contested responses by
their different recipients. Several intended makers and users engaged in trade like Wedgwood,
fought for freedom like Franklin, and reproduced original designs to make fashionable political
statements like Holbrouke. Their own activities at times complimented and then at other times
contradicted the meanings they ascribed to these objects.
If these comparisons formed any part of Wedgwood's and of the Committee's intended
audiences' thought processes toward their visual world, then is it any wonder that they were
confused about the abolitionist project like Seymount? In the midst of that confusion, their
contested responses evoked consequences that jeopardized the movement and the object's ability
to produce the type of response Clarkson had hoped for from Parliament. By August 1788 when
Clarkson set out on his political campaign tour the confusion that multiple makers, objects, and
meanings had created for Parliament resulted in that body's inactivity on the issue of abolition.

88

The issue remained tabled for several years without resolution, as intended audiences continued
to acquire, traffic, and assign meanings to the Wedgwood slave medallion and its subsequent
permutations.

Conclusion
As we have seen, long before Thomas Clarkson set out on his political campaign tour in
August 1788, Wedgwood's intended audiences, and persons other than the Committee's targeted
Parliamentarians, responded to the slave cameo. Clarkson's case study provided a point of
departure to launch this part of my investigation because it established the presumed storyline
that most studies project. However, as this chapter unfolded, it revealed that there were three
makers: the Committee, Wedgwood, and the individuals and groups that comprised their
respective audiences. Each maker's intended audience contributed to the complexities that
explain why each permutation of the slave cameo received heterogeneous responses in such a
short period of time. The three makers impacted the different ways the Committee's intended
audience responded to the slave cameo. These case studies prove that while the Committee
clearly targeted a certain type of people to receive the object, those individuals were by no means
a homogenous group. Collectively, Committee members and Society subscribers were
abolitionists, but their responses to the slave cameo reveal ambiguities in the meanings they read
and ascribed to the object.
In addition to Clarkson's case study, this chapter explored three other examples where
either the Committee's or Wedgwood's intended audiences responded differently to the
meanings ascribed to the slave cameo. Each case study offered a deeper understanding of how

89
diverse the intended audience was and how their readings continued to ascribe multiple and
layered meanings that complicated the object. In the case of Greatbatch, his work to supply
Wedgwood's clients with the slave cameo evinced some of the ways that the bodies of the
subject, the object, and the sponsor intersected to construct meanings within the world of
fashion. Of the numerous versions that patrons created, this section focused on the ways that
snuff boxes constructed meanings that revealed the hypocrisies of taste and ethics that ultimately
forced intended audiences to negotiate between the two.
Seymount's case study problematized a longstanding assumption about the meanings
Wedgwood ascribed to the object. This case study began with the trajectory that since
Wedgwood used the Committee's seal as a prototype for production of the slave cameo both
objects shared the same political aim and possessed complementary meanings. This case raised
serious questions, however, about the logic and truth of this proposition. Seymount's case study
affords an opportunity to question Wedgwood's intentions for the slave cameo and the meanings
he expected his audience to derive from the object's visual qualities. It also provides space to
consider what meanings Wedgwood ascribed to the slave cameo and how that meaning
complimented and contradicted the meanings ascribed to the Committee's seal. This case also
questioned to what extent were readings by intended audience on the periphery of the
Committee's nucleus accurate? Or, were they different from the maker's intention?
Furthermore, was that meaning to terminate the slave trade as insisted by the Committee or to
abolish slavery as Seymount suggested?
The final case study of Wedgwood's gift to Franklin further examines the issue of
whether or not, and to what degree Wedgwood ascribed new and different meanings to the slave

cameo for his American audience. In this case study, Wedgwood's alteration of the original
black-on-white or cane-colored design, is a return to the neoclassical white-on-blue jasperware
works that made him famous. With this departure, or return, came a new object, a new reading,
a new response, and a new meaning. The object was a permutation, its meaning was marred in
universal injustices that transcend race, creed and color, and reactions from this unexpected
audience were as unanticipated as the maker's production of the object. Wedgwood's decision
to create a new object and target a new audience Britain's expatriates, or American men
promoted contemplation of the medallion's meaning within America's political history and
struggle for freedom. American audience responses revealed that they viewed and read the
figure as a historical departure that mirrored their own experience. For these unexpected users,
the permutation constructed a universal meaning about the slave's identity and what it meant to
be free.
Combined, these case studies prove that intended audiences responded differently to the
slave cameo. They also show that the distribution patterns and trafficking of objects originated
from the Committee's nucleus and spread out to their intended audiences. Acquisition and
distribution of the slave medallions continued until they were in the hands of the unexpected
maker and user. Although many of the intended audience responses lacked consensus and
uniformity, distribution patterns expanded the recipient pool who participated in the
interpretation and assignment of meanings. The result was complex multiple meanings, divergent
understanding of the abolitionist movement and the objects associated with it. These events
contributed to creating a trajectory where the intended audience evolved into the unintended
audience that demanded the same attention and consideration.

91
Chapter Three
Unexpected Responses: Audiences Contest the
Form, Function, and Meaning of the Slave Medallion
By the end of summer of 1788, Wedgwood's slave medallion changed hands and
subsequently changed form, function, and meanings several times. Unexpected consumers along
with the Committee's intended audiences were responsible for these transformations. The
ambiguous meanings that audiences invested in their alterations were a result of a complex and
fluid object exchange. For example, four broadsides produced at this time show how intended
and unexpected audiences changed the function and meaning of the medallion's imagery through
printed form. These broadsides illustrate plans laid forth by the British Parliament to ameliorate
conditions endured upon slave ships. The Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave
Trade produced two of these images under the direction of Thomas Clarkson (Figure 3.1, 3.2).
William Elford, who presided over the Plymouth Committee for the Abolition of the Slave
Trade, executed the other two images (Figure 3.3, 3.4). Collectively, all four images include a
diagram of the historic Liverpool Brooks slave ship as its principal site. However, it was the
unexpected maker Elford not Clarkson, who used a permutation of the Committee's seal to
embellish his broadside.
The four images that comprise the Brooks broadside series afforded its makers and users
a platform to visually scrutinize how slavers legally transported the regulated number of slaves
on their ships. Knowing that these rights were often misused, the two makers, Clarkson and
Elford, also produced a series that shed light on the atrocities that were a direct consequence of
such abuses. It is evident in what these two makers' elected to highlight, that their

interpretations of these atrocities were dissimilar. Both makers' ascribed meanings to the
kneeling slave figure that contest how the Parliamentarian act changed the slave ship
environment and who was affected by those changes. Cheryl Finely suggests that each image in
the series formed part of successive attempts by both men to improve upon the last. Ultimately,
these "improvements" created a visual dialogue a hotly contested debate between two
abolitionist camps that led to more changes in the form, function, and meaning of the kneeling
slave. Comparatively, these broadsides differed greatly in their use of visual elements.
Clarkson's image featured a slave ship in insurrection (Figure 3.2). Elford's representation used
the seal as a centerpiece (Figure 3.4). In essence, these new elements illustrate the different
ways makers within the same community interpreted the meaning of the new bill. In turn their
interpretative differences were projected to their viewers, and their broadsides conveyed
incongruent notions about the meaning of the kneeling slave.
According to Finely, Elford's use of the Committee seal projects the kneeling slave in the
foreground as the sole representative for a stifled dormant community. As the focal point of the
broadside, the kneeling slave speaks for the masses and expresses his discontent with slave ship
conditions. By contrast, Clarkson's use of a slave ship at the moment of insurrection reveals a
vastly different interpretation of those most affected by slave ship conditions. Insurrection
implied that slavers and crew members, not the kneeling slave, were the real victims of slave
ship conditions. Unable or unwilling to present a representative from the slave community, the
Committee relied solely on former slavers and crew members testimonials to legitimate claims
that slave ship conditions were inhumane, and according to Clarkson's broadside, deadly. If
Clarkson's broadside was a criticism of the bill, then his decision to use a site of insurrection

93
rather than the Committee's seal as its focal point, presents the slaver and crew as victims. By
contrast, Elford's broadside emphasizes the slave as the victim and makes Clarkson's broadside
appear aloof to the slave's concerns. Clarkson's decision to use insurrection may have raised
serious doubts in the readers' mind about the Committee's aim and if their intent was to protect
the slaver, not the slave, from cruelties inflicted upon the slave ship.
One question that this example raises is whether Clarkson and the Committee granted
Elford permission to use the seal. It is clear from Finely's investigation that Clarkson was not
pleased with Elford's change. In addition to Clarkson's displeasure, the controversy reveals that
even though both men subscribed to the British abolitionist movement, their different
perspectivesas evinced by contested meanings ascribed to their respective broadsides
confirm that heterogeneous responses existed within their community. The controversy that
evolved out of the production and distribution of Elford's improved broadside also raises our
awareness about how the Committee defined its intended audience and to what extent they were
privileged with unrestricted rights to make and use the seal and its first by-product the slave
cameo in whatever way they saw fit. To what degree did the Committee expect its users to
manipulate the seal and did those same rules apply to the slave cameo? What did alterations to
the seal and the slave cameo mean for the status of the Committee's audience? If Elford, a longstanding promoter of the abolitionist movement, was discouraged from using the seal, then did
his manipulation of the Committee's visual object signify an altered state in his status as an
intended audience member? If so, then how did changes to the Committee's visual objects aid in
defining makers and their uses of these objects as unexpected responses? In addition, where
does the line between contextual use of the object and visual alteration begin and end?

Furthermore, how do these changes affect the meanings that audiences, such as Elford, applied to
these modified objects?
This chapter maintains that permutations are a form of visual response that represents
answers given through actions. These actions are the audiences' feelings towards the meanings
ascribed to the seal and slave medallion. Social factors such as race, class, gender, and
nationality influenced decisions to change the form, function, and meaning of these objects.
These stimuli influenced audiences to produce new objects with new meanings. Permutations
are indicators that the Committee's audience and their use of these objects were not static but
complex and fluid. Changes to the form and function of the seal's imagery, including its first
permutation the slave cameo altered the meanings of these objects. In order to investigate
this hypothesis, cases where an audience voluntarily and intentionally changed the form,
function, and meaning of the seal and slave cameo are studied. Design alterations, object
modification, and contextual changes to the seal and slave cameo became commonplace since
the object's first production at Wedgwood's factory. This examination of moments when
makers-users altered these objects reveals the frequency to which these conflicts occurred.
This chapter unfolds with a look at unexpected makers. It examines who they were and
how the meanings they ascribed to variations of the slave medallion were bound to their social
identities. No place is this more evident than in the examples such as the workbag, an object
made and used by marginalized women. For this reason, the chapter emphasizes their use of this
object as an unexpected response to the multiple meanings assigned by the makers of the seal
and the slave medallion. The chapter examines the trans-Atlantic production and consumption of

the workbags through changing social histories. It reveals how this object altered their makers'
roles within and outside of the abolitionist movement.

Unexpected Respondents
The unexpected respondents' community is comprised of makers and users from at least
five different categories. As exemplified by the Clarkson-Elford incident, intended users who
modified the object's form function, and meaning, constituted the first class of unexpected
responders. These individuals included abolitionists whose perspectives and objectives differed
from the London Committee. A second group included persons either indifferent or totally
opposed to the movement; these persons were anti-abolitionists. This category is unique because
its participants were still considered a viable part of the movement. The momentum to convert
anti-abolitionists into abolitionist supporters was a common occurrence. The last three
categories included people who represented intersections of race, class, gender and nationality.
Their political alliance with the abolitionist movement varied, but examples of their use of the
slave cameo reveals that many felt an affinity with the kneeling slave's conditions. Their
empathy was so strong that they compared and contrasted their own suffering with socially
prescribed definitions of the slave. This resulted in the appropriation of the slave's identity and
meanings that contested the correlation between color and class. African American communities
historically excluded from the movement, the under- and working-class, and women
marginalized by the dominant white male infrastructure, all represented parts of this latter cohort
of unexpected respondents. Taking a brief look at each of these interpretive communities
reinforces how they each responded differently to the slave cameo's imagery and why they

produced variations of the object that further complicated its already complex meanings.
However, it is the internal rift that transpired within these communities that also prompted
individual responses that contest the group response.

Conflicted Abolitionists Responses

The contested discourse that transpired between Clarkson and Elford about broadside
debate supports two things that this chapter reveals with regard to audience-object relationships.
First, the incident illustrates how audiences, including those targeted by the Committee and
Wedgwood, held different and conflicting views about what the seal and the medallion meant
and how they should be used. Second, the Clarkson-Elford debate reinforces how audience
identity aligned with the form, function, and meanings creators assigned to their objects.
Audiences and objects had one thing in common; they both changed. Modifications signified a
permutation in form, function, meaning, and ultimately audience identity. The social identity of
the audience as meaning makers and object users was fluid and shifted often. For Elford this
meant that his unauthorized, and perhaps to some degree unorthodox, use of the Committee's
seal to improve his broadside resonated in Clarkson's mind as an aberration of his role as an
intended audience member. As a result, his improvements signified a change to the object's
original intent and subsequently made Elford appear more like an unexpected respondent. While
it is unclear if the Committee ever laid forth directions on the appropriate use of these objects
during the distribution process, it is evident that Clarkson deemed certain changes unacceptable
and alterations had an effect on both the audience and the object.

97
Converted Anti-Abolitionists
Anti-abolitionists and persons indifferent to the cause present the second and most
obvious class of people within the unexpected respondent community. What is most compelling
about this class is that the success and momentum of the abolitionist campaign hinged on the
conversion of people in this community. Some examples where Anglo-American abolitionists
compelled anti-abolitionists to change their position and their identity include the WedgwoodSeward correspondence, Thomas Branagan's testimonial, and William Lloyd Garrison's call for
voting reformation. In the Wedgwood-Seward example, Eliza Metyard reminds us of how
Wedgwood raised membership among the opposition. In addition to this, Wedgwood produced
three versions of the slave cameo, conducted fund raising efforts, and maintained an arduous
letter writing campaign. Metyard used Wedgwood's correspondence to the British female scribe
Anna Seward to show how, "in some instances....he had the happiness of converting them to his
own views."1
Wedgwood's letter to Seward reveals how he coerced the author to change her antiabolitionist perspective:
I need no assurance of your sentiments of humanity and mercy
to our brethren of every tribe and colour, for a mind like yours
cannot be limited by any trivial circumstances in its benevolent
wishes, and exertion too your all proper occasions. But many
objections, and of great seeming weight, have been made by
some and acquiesced in by other[s], with the best intentions, to
the effectual extension of the hand of mercy to our poor African
brethren.2

1
2

Eliza Metyard, The Life ofJosiah Wedgwood (London: Husrt and Blackett Publishers, 1866), 2:565.
Josiah Wedgwood to Anna Seward, February 1788, MSS. 18978-26, University of Keele Archives.

98
Wedgwood placed Seward's political identity on the periphery of two separate and distinct
camps of thought: abolition and regulation. By employing this strategy, he indirectly questions
Seward's humanitarianism then cautions her not to fall outside these boundaries because, "I do
not know of any who say there is no necessity for either."3 Seward, like so many other antiabolitionists, feared that abolition would transform British commerce by destroying West Indian
commerce. Her opposition to regulation a common sentiment among anti-abolitionists was
rooted in the belief that Africans could not improve their condition and were therefore incapable
of change. Apparently, the fixed status of the medallion's subject was unlike the fluid nature of
the anti-abolitionists who had the capacity to change their views and identity.
In America, Thomas Branagan's 1807 tract The Penitential Tyrant became the
quintessential testimony of a former slave trader who evinced change in perspective and political
allegiance. Branagan used his text to present two faces of his own conflicted character. Selfdescribed as a sorrowful cruel person, Branagan juxtaposed the image of the penitential tyrant
turned injured Africans' advocate in the book's frontispiece with a version of the seal on the title
page (Figure 3.5). This image-text composition conveyed notions about character conversion
and effectively altered the form, function, and meaning of the Committee's seal. The
frontispiece depicts a man standing before the allegorical American female figure Liberty. She
is surrounded by emblems of sovereigntya shield and bald eagle; refinementmusical tools
and a bust; and avaricea cornucopia. A port serves as the background to this interaction
between Liberty and the penitential tyrant. The port is filled with slave ships that deliver a fresh
crop of black bodies. Despite the symbolic liberty cap draped over her staff to signify freedom,
3

See Wedgwood to Seward, February 1788.

99
the advocate's pleas do not amuse Liberty. Staged at the top of a stacked platform, the
penitential tyrant apes the posture of the kneeling slave. This gesture suggests a connection
between the former slave trader and the injured African.
Branagan's title page proclaims conversion of the slave trader through reformation, but
keeps the kneeling slave fixed in a space of trade and commerce. Beverly Tomek argues that
Branagan's noble strategy to reform the trader, and abolish southern trade actually preserved an
American lifestyle one that relied on the black body for empowerment but removed and erased
it when it became obsolete.4 Despite Branagan's conversion from slaver to abolitionist, he
maintained that the discontinued importation of slaves in the south deterred a practice that, "not
only enhances their riches, but [also] consolidates their political influence."5 However, the
correlation between American economic affluence, political enfranchisement, and slave
representation persisted as an eighteenth-century dejure practice that allowed southerners to
count their slave population for voting and taxation purposes.6
By 1839, the battle over political representation and its potential reformation in American
government was pervasive. The abolition of American slavery seemed to rely heavily on
conversion of two types of people: the cruel southern tyrant like Branagan, and sympathetic
northern voters to which William Lloyd Garrison appealed:
4

Beverly Tomek, "From Motives of Generosity, as well as Self Preservation: Thomas Branagan, Colonizaton, and
the Gradual Emancipation Movement," American Nineteenth Century History, 6, no. 2 (June 2005): 121-147.
Thomas Branagan, The Penitential Tyrant, or, Slave Trader Reformed: A Pathetic Poem, in four Cantos, 2nd ed.,
(New York: printed and sold by Samuel Wood, 1807), preface. See also The Legion of Liberty: Remonstrance of
Some Free Men, States, and Presses, to the Texas Rebellion, Against the Laws of Nature and Nations, (Albany,
1843), 2; www.archives.org/details/legionofliberty.
6
US CONST, art. I, 2. See also "Consttitution of the United States: The Original Seven Articles," in The World
Almanac and Book of Facts 2008 eds. C. Alan Joyce, Elizabeth J. Lazzara, and Sarah Janssen, (New York: World
Almanac Books, 2008), 497; "Constitution of the United Staes of America-1787," in United States Code, 2000 ed.,.
(Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2001), 1: 57.

100
I have always expected to see abolition at the ballot-box. By
converting electors to the doctrine that slavery ought to be
immediately abolished, a rectified political action is a natural
consequence; for where this doctrine is received into the soul,
the soul-carrier may be trusted any where, that he will not betray
the cause of bleeding humanity. 7

Garrision was on a quest to convert electors to an immediatist rather than gradualist doctrine
because the latter only ameliorates the system but the former reforms the anti-abolitionist soul as
well. Although he does not explicitly describe these electors, he targets two contradictory types
of voters: gradualistpeople who wanted slow deliberate steps towards emancipation, and
Q

conservativesthose in favor to continue slavery unchanged. In Garrison's estimation, a change

of soul-carrier to favor immediate abolition had the potential to convert or rectify their political
action.
The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society responded to Garrison's call for rectified
political action with a ballot box (Figure 3.6) that combines political action with religious
conviction to convey messages about conversion. A black female supplicant embellishes the
box's surface. Manacled at her wrist and connected to the grassy earth, two fluted Corinthian
columns embellished with tobacco leaves at the apex, flank her. Enclosed in a double-lined arch
located above the supplicant's head, the words "Remember Your Weekly Pledge," connect the
columns. Striated lines extend upwards from the arch to give the impression of light rays.
7

William Lloyd Garrison, "Abolition at the Ballot Box," The Liberator, June 28, 1839.
Garrison's appeal to convert voters coincided with the British movement to gradually change the West Indian
economy from slave-economy dependency. The Negro Apprenticeship program introduced to remedy economic loss
sparked debates between two abolitionist camps: immediatist and gradualist. The broadside used to oppose the
apprenticeship program featured a black female supplicant. For more information see, Izhak Gross, "Parliament and
the Abolition of Negro Apprenticeship 1835-1838," The English Historical Review 96, no. 380 (July 1981): 560576; Charles H. Wesley, "The Abolition of Negro Apprenticeship in the British Empire," The Journal of Negro
History 23, no. 2 (April 1938): 155-199.
8

Directly underneath the supplicant, an excerpt from First Corinthians states, "Upon the first day
of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God has prospered him."9 The excerpt
originates from a letter written by the Apostle Paul, who had been converted from the cruel
tyrannical character of Saul found in the book of Acts.10 As a former persecutor of Christians,
Saul turned Paul, directed Corinthians to follow God's law and pay tithes. Featured in the next
register of the ballot box is the organization's name, followed by weapons of cruelty: whips,
weights, manacles, and chains wrap around the base of the columns.
The association between an electoral ballot box and weekly tithing rectified political
action for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. At the same time, this rectified political
action, negotiated the form, function, and dual meanings ascribed to the supplicant by voters.
For southern tyrants, the black supplicant represents the means to pay taxes and secure votes
especially in 1807 when the abolishment of the trade made slavers more reliant on her ability to
single-handedly replenish the slave population as well as their financial and political power. For
northern voters she represents a means to convert the Southerner's soul. Branagan conveyed a
similar idea about the converted soul in his closing remarks. On the final page, an image alludes
to the potential fate of a standing white male and black supplicant who share through a link that
binds their manacled wrists together (Figure 3.7). On a boat-shaped ribbon underneath these
figures a premonition states, "Liberty Suspended but will be Restored." Above them,
Branagan's admonition reads, "For 'tis a god-like privilege to save, And he that scorns it is
himself a slave." Branagan's notion is murky as to whose freedom is suspended and needs to be

1 Cor. 16:2.

102
restored. Is it the white man or the black slave, or is it both? Regardless of whose liberty is
suspended, the implication is clear. The failure of anti-abolitionist and persons indifferent to
slave conditions to convert their own soul into a character that serves and saves the racialized
slave placed them into a condition on par with the kneeling slave. In essence, Branagan's notion
implies that the identity of the slave was not confined to black bodies, it was an adaptable
condition for white men too.

Conflicted Lower Class

Impoverished persons embraced the notion that their abject conditions as the underclass
actually made them slaves. In the absence of the need to convert their soul or character as
Branagan's philosophy espoused, lower and working class people changed the definition of slave
to erase race as a classification. Removing race as a modifier made slave a universal identity and
a shared experience. These persons empathized with what the medallion's subject represented in
terms of experience, yet harbored resentment towards enslaved Africans whose stories, always at
the foreground, pushed theirs onto the periphery. Patricia Hollis argues that during nineteenthcentury reform movements, working class white men "led the attack on [the] anti-slavery
campaign" to prove that "the Negro slave was the better off in comparison to the white English
infant and field workers.11 As part of their campaign, Hollis notes that they appropriated the
London Committee's motto, "Am I Not a Man and a Brother" and featured it on their protest

11

Patricia Hollis, "Anti-Slavery and British Working-Class Radicalism in the Years of Reform," in Anti-Slavery,
Religion and Reform: Essays in Memory of Roger Anstey, ed. Christine Bolt and Seymour Drescher (Hamden,
Connecticut: Archon Books, 1980), 302.

banner. Her description of the banner this community used to represent disenfranchised white
laborers also alludes to how they changed the meanings related to the motto.
One popular banner carried frequently in procession showed a
deformed man with the inscription, 'Am I not a man and a
brother?' and underneath it, 'No white slavery'.12

Hollis did not offer a visual representation of this banner, but the words that this community
decided to use are clearly a reference to, and an alternative reading of, the meanings associated
with the Committee's seal and the black kneeling slave figure represented on Wedgwood's slave
medallion. Working class white men used the banner as an oppositional response to the
racialized definitions of slavery that disregarded their disenfranchised experience as a white
slave. Using a deformed white man in place of a kneeling black slave effectively converted the
form, function, and meaning of the kneeling slave's experience from the brutalities of the Middle
Passage trade to the hazards of the rural British field and factory. In the end, it was not black
slavery that these reformists opposed. It was the notion that whites were being subjected to
slave-like conditions that marred their bodies.
David J. Woodcock also unearthed material evidence that supports the notion that
disenfranchised English white male workers viewed themselves as slaves but their reading and
use of the kneeling figure differed.13 The white farm worker used clay tobacco-pipes attributed
to William Hensell of Bull Close, Norwich England. The pipes feature an alternative design of
the kneeling slave to represent the transformation of their social identity (Figure 3.8 - 3.9).

12

Hollis, Anti-Slavery and British Working-Class, 303.

David J. Woodcock, "Pipes attributed to William Hensell, Clay Tobacco-Pipe Maker of Norwich, Norfolk," in
The Archeology of the Clay Tobacco Pipe IX: More Pipes from the Midlands and Southern England, Series 146, ed.
Peter Davey, (Oxford: BAR, 1985), 327.
13

104
Manufactured between 1820s and 1850s, production and consumption of these pipes coincided
with a period of opposition to the apprenticeship program that replaced slavery. The high-relief
design found on the bowl of these pipes juxtaposes the stylized image of the supplicant on the
left side, with a bare-breasted Britannia who stands on the right, and "holds a long vertical staff
surmounted by a pilleus-the cap of liberty," in her right hand, and an olive branch in her left hand
to signify peace.14 Woodstock indicates that the pipes maintained a "distinctly regional
distribution" among agrarian workers who "might have seen themselves as slaves to the earth, let
alone slaves to oppressive masters and overlords."15 Therefore, the clay pipe reveals an
oppositional reading of how race and class were used to define slaves. Made out of a cheap
natural resource, these clay pipes provided an inexpensive means to adopt an old elitist and
fashionable pastime of smoking tobacco. Thus, the object itself holds conflicted meanings about
class distinctions while simultaneously revealing an indifference towards African slavery.
Some of the unexpected lower-class makers who borrowed elements of the slave
medallion's imagery to embellish their objects assigned complex meanings. Their alternative
readings of these compositional components made distinct correlations between the black
supplicant's circumstances and their conditions as disenfranchised white laborers. Yet, the
reformists' and farm workers' ascribed two different meanings to their objects. The reformists
used the image of a deformed man and only borrowed the kneeling slave's words to compare and
contrast their work conditions. The absence or replacement of the black kneeling slave with a
white deformed man suggests that reformists did not see themselves as anything but white men.

Woodcock, Pipes attributed to William Hensell, 327.

Woodcock, Pipes attributed to William Hensell, 330-331.

In this sense, the meanings that their banner carried were opposition to their work condition
while simultaneously supporting black enslavement. Alternatively, the farm workers' applied
the kneeling slave figure on their pipes. Perhaps their use of the black supplicant was meant to
serve as a representation of their own quest for freedom from Britannia's labor laws. The visual
imagery found on their pipes was a means to align their conditions working in the field with the
kneeling slave's cultivation of tobacco crops. In this sense, the farm worker compared
themselves with the kneeling slave, while the reformist, their lower-class community
counterpart, contrasted themselves to the black supplicant. These changes show how alternative
readings within the same community differed as individuals and groups imparted ideas about
their separate political agendas. For some the abject character of a black slave converted into the
agrarian white body did not fit into their ideas, for others it did.

Excluded Blacks
One of the greatest contradictions within the community of unexpected respondents was
the exclusion of the black community because it was their experience, and a representation of
their body used on objects that symbolized the abolitionist cause. For these reasons, their
participation and inclusion in the movement should have been by default. Despite their exclusion
as an interpretive community, they responded to the kneeling slave image. Scholars rarely, if
ever, discuss these responses, however, and as a result, scholarship excludes the black voice.
Without a black voice, the African American response is omitted from historical records.
Although the next chapter explores several examples of the African American
community's reaction to these altered objects as a sign of agency, one of the first responses

originates from the former slave, political activist, and author of his own slave narrative,
Olaudah Equiano. In response to the contradictory positions that Elford's use of the Committee
seal posed for viewers, Equiano applauded his adoption of the seal:
Having seen a plate representing the form in which Negroes are
stowed on board the Guinea ships, which you are pleased to send
to the Rev. Mr. Clarkson, a worthy friend of mine, I was filled
with love and gratitude towards you for your humane
interference on behalf of my oppressed countrymen.

Equiano's response clearly shows that he deemed Elford's broadside an effective representation
of stowage. For him, its imagery raised awareness and encouraged readers to interfere on the
slave's behalf. In this sense, Equiano's unexpected response engaged readers to negotiate their
identity as protester and protector.17 On one level, Equiano's response reads as an endorsement
of the image. His words bear no indication that he was aware of the conflict that ensued between
Clarkson and Elford. Of course, his exclusion and position on the periphery of the movement
may explain his failure to reference these issues. Despite his ignorance of the drama brewing
behind the scenes, Equiano found Elford's work to be a "humane interference." In closing, he
expressed the ultimate emotion, the feelings of love and gratitude for the maker's permutation.
On another level, Equiano's response, like so many expressed by excluded blacks, may reveal
the delicacy with which this community needed to address their benefactors in order to evoke
change.18 It could be that Equiano was careful and selective in his choice of words so as not to

"Olaudah Equiano to the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade at Plymouth," The Public Advertiser,
February 14, 1789. See also Vincent Carretta, The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings (NY: Penguin Classics,
1995), 343.
17
Cheryl Finley, "Committed to Memory: The Slave Ship Icon in the Black Atlantic Imagination," (PhD diss. Yale
University, 2002), 69-70.
18
Hollis, Anti-Slaver and British Working-Class, 295.

provoke any contest. In this sense, he may have appeared to have been on the periphery but fully
aware of the Clarkson-Elford conflict and therefore cognizant of what his unexpected response
might contribute to the debate.

Marginalized Women
In 1838, Mary S. Parker reported at the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women,
that slavery was "a system which... threatens to lay in ruins the fabric of her domestic
happiness."19 As Parker described their common experience, she reminded her sisters that they
are told "it is not within the 'province of woman,' to discuss the subject of slavery," because it is
a political question.20 In Parker's estimation, the question also involved justice, humanity,
morality, and religion virtues that formed the foundation of nineteenth-century womanhood.21
Therefore, the question for Parker related to the female and her home environment as a symbolic
prison or plantation.22 What Parker described was, in her mind and those of her followers, a
system of oppression and injustice, a system that historically and effectively marginalized

Mary S. Parker, "Address to Anti-Slavery Societies," in Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, 2nd ed.
(Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1838), 4-5. For more information women abolitionists and their views on sexual
politics see Jean Fagan Yellin, Women & Sisters: The Antislavery Feminist in American Culture, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1989; Karen Sanchez-Eppler, Touching Liberty: Abolition, Feminism, and The Politics of the
Body, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993; Julie Roy Jeffrey, "Permeable Boundaries: Abolitionist
Women and Separate Spheres," Journal of the Early Republic 21, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 79-93; Mary Kelly, "Beyond
Boundaries" Journal of the Early Republic 21, no.l (Spring 2000): 73-78; Laura McCall, "Shall I Fetter Her Will?:
Literary Americans Confront Feminine Submission, 1820-1860," Journal of the Early Republic 21 (Spring 2001):
95-113; Clare Midgley, Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780-1870 (New York: Routledge, 1992),
94; Kathryn Kish Sklar, "Women Who Speak for an Entire Nation: American and British Women Compared at the
World Anti-Slavery Convention, London, 1840," Pacific Historical Review 59, no. 4 (November 1990): 460.
20
See Parker, Address to Anti-Slavery Societies, 4-5; See also Aileen S. Kraditor, "The Woman Question," in
Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834-1850 (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1969), 39-77.
21
For more information about the nineteenth century notions about true womanhood, see Barbara Welter, "The Cult
of True Womanhood: 1820-1860," American Quarterly 18(1966): 150-174.
22
See Parker, Address to Anti-Slavery Societies, 4.

women within the abolitionist movement. In a word, Parker described the marginalized female
experience as a form of slavery.
Conversely, women like Catharine Beecher viewed the female condition as an
empowered position. According to Beecher, the home provided a space where women harnessed
their most valuable skills. It was in this space that they could combine their roles as mother and
teacher. In her estimation, it was this station in life where women should channel their energies
instead of seeking political offices. In the profession of mother and educator is where Beecher
contended women would find their callingto raise up and teach those who were truly
suffering lower class women. It was this subgroup within the female community that Beecher
felt lacked the proper skills to embrace the tenets of true womanhood. Writing on this subject
years later Beecher recalled the consequences of seeking political power and what effects it had
on family and education. She wrote that, "to open avenues to political place and power for all
classes of women would cause these humble labors of the family and school to be still more
undervalued and shunned."23 To this end, she noted that women in political offices would
stimulate temptations in certain classes that could not handle the exposure.
At the time of Beecher's warning, the temptation for political power was universal
because emancipation helped diffuse the intersections of race, class and gender to some degree.
Prior to this, women like Parker firmly planted the seed of equality amidst the chaos and
confusion of the anti-slavery movement when the intersections of race, class, gender and even
nationality were threatened by social norms and practices of white male power. Then there were

Catharine E. Beecher, Woman Suffrage and Woman's Profession (Philadelphia and Boston: Geo Maclean, 1872),
195.

109
women like Lydia Maria Child who questioned the effectiveness of female organizations which
sought equality. In a letter to Lucretia Mott, Child explains her position on these female
organizations:
I have never very earnestly entered into the plan of female
conventions and societies. They always seemed to me like
half a pair of scissors.. .You will remind me of the great
good done by that society... .1 think their influence has been
very slight.2

Child's activism took form and continued outside the realm of the female organizations. Her
strong stance on their existence expressed in the analogy of women's relation to men as being
equivalent to a half pair of scissors, suggests that she desired equality that allowed women to
work side by side their male counterpart in order to produce change. Her future success in
securing a leading role in the American Anti-Slavery Society only highlighted her opposition to
self-marginalization. Child represents a vastly different position on female equality than the one
espoused by Parker and Beecher.
While Beecher's words reflect the cause and effects of what transpired during the first
quarter of the nineteenth century, Parker's comments foreshadowed the treatment that female
participants would experience during moments like the World Anti-Slavery Convention. At this
meeting, which convened in London in 1840, the movement's dominant white male
infrastructure relegated both foreign and domestic female bodies to the periphery as a reminder

Anna Davis Hallowell, ed., James and Lucretia Mott Life and Letters (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1884),
136.

110
of their marginalized position.

Using Parker's comments and Beecher's words as springboards

to examine the marginalization of women during the abolitionist movement, their work raises
interesting concerns about the dual meaning of domesticity. These concerns involved the
movement and transformation of female bodies, the body politic, and the body of objects
produced, distributed, and consumed by women, within and outside of its domestic spaces. Most
important to this study, their positions reveal the differences that existed within the white female
community where sexual and racial tensions challenged their ability to develop a universal
reading and response to the slave cameo. For American and British women alike, their fractured
community viewed feminine duties as inclusive of matters that affected their domestic spaces.
But how those domestic spaces were structured, and how women negotiated their movement
within and outside of these spaces differed. These differences are an important part of their story
as makers and users whose responses to the slave cameo's imagery were unexpected.
Some marginalized Anglo-American women viewed themselves as stuck in a system of
slavery. This sexual slavery infringed on their political and personal rights.
Karen Sanchez-Eppler contends that in the context of a female abolitionist discourse about
slavery, black and female bodies merge to form an oppositional reading of both subjects:

For information about the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention and the events that transpired, see Kathryn Kish
Sklar, "Women who Speak for an Entire Nation: American and British Women Compared at the World Anti-Slavery
Convention, London, 1840," Pacific Historical Review 59, no. 4 (November 1990): 453-499.
26
For a discussion about the 'separate spheres' ideology during the abolitionist movement see Clare Midgley,
Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780-1870 (London; New York: Routledge, 1992), 94-98. See
also Julie Roy Jeffrey, "Permeable Boundaries: Abolitionist Women and Separate Spheres," Journal of the Early
Republic, 21, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 79-93; Mary Kelley, "Beyond Boundaries," Journal of the Early Republic, 21, no
1 (Spring 2001): 73-78.

Ill
.. .the bodies of women and slaves were read against them, so that
for both the human body functions as the foundation not only of a
general subjection but also of a specific exclusion from political
discourse.27
In spite of this marginalized experience, Eppler contends that women and slaves effectively used
their bodies to negotiate and reclaim their rights:
For women and slaves the ability to speak was predicated upon a
reinterpretation of their flesh. They share a strategy of
liberation: to invert patriarchal readings and so reclaim the body.
Transformed from a silent site of oppression into a symbol of
that oppression, the body becomes within the feministabolitionist discourse a means of gaining rhetorical force.28

It is with this rhetorical force that the body represents intersections of race and gender in order to
address the shared experience of what one American abolitionist regarded as, ".. .the speechless
agony of the fettered slave...."

Some female abolitionists drew parallels between their stifled,

marginalized body and the speechless agony of the enslaved female. Through this comparison
women acknowledged the body's pained position while they simultaneously admonished against
its erasure. 30 Other female abolitionists viewed the supplicant's speechless agony as a place
where she could harness her power as a liberated woman and speak on the slave's behalf. Yet,
others jockeyed in between these two political positions of rhetorical force that responded in
words and actions to the supplicant's pain and their own presumed suffering.

Sanchez-Eppler, Touching Liberty, 18.

28

Sanchez-Eppler, Touching Liberty, 18.

See Proceedings of the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, (New York: W. S. Dorr, 1837), 14.
30
For a discussion about feminism and the use of the body as a metaphor for pain by nineteenth century female
authors see Sanchez-Eppler, "Bodily Bonds," in Touching Liberty, 14-49; Saidya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection:
Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 49-78..
See also Carolyn Sorisio, "The Spectacle of the Body: Torture in the Anti-Slavery Writing of Lydia Maria Child and
Frances E. Harper," Modern Language Studies 30, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 45-66.

112
As female abolitionists sought ways to expose this speechless agony and express their
own concerns within the politics of abolitionist discourse, many were resolved to reproduce antislavery prints. Collectively, Anglo-American female abolitionists viewed printing as the most
effective and affordable means to diffuse their voice. In form, these objects included variations
of the kneeling slave represented as a female. The Boston-Letter Foundry was responsible for
making one of the most widely distributed images (Figure 3.10). Offered to consumers for
seventy-five cents, the foundry assigned the identification code Type 844 to the female
supplicant. It became one of over thousands of different types of printing specimens available to
consumers. On a page featuring several printing options, the supplicant appeared in the lower
left hand corner on the bottom column where three other images of foreign products were listed
above her (Figure 3.11). Among the items were pure sperm oil, a contraption to churn butter,
and a German sheep dog. To her right, there is a column of six items that comprised domestic
goods. Items such as the American eagle, an all-seeing eye, and a compass were just a few of the
domestic specimens presented to consumers. Placed in this context on the page, she is ascribed a
foreign meaning or viewed as an "other." She is not and could never be American-made. Nor
could she claim American heritage or lineage. She is not only a perpetual slave, but also an
absolute foreign commodity. Inexpensive to acquire, but like the other goods among which she
is featured, her function is solely for reproductive purposes. In addition to the connections that
the Boston-Letter Foundry's advertisement made between the supplicant and foreign products,
the makers suggests that this permutation of the kneeling slave was also imported.
The image originally debuted in the 1824 Royal Gazette of Jamaica (Figure 3.12). It
accompanied an article that questioned British tolerance of slave conditions. In fine print,

113
information about an enslaved woman named Eleanor Davidson, mother of two held in the gaol
claims that "she is free, and that John Davidson, a free brown man, of Kingston, is her father."31
Two years later, a reproduction of the image accompanied the pending public sale of a Creole
named Phoebe (Figure 3.13) held in a workhouse who was "marked Nelson on breasts, and I O
on right shoulder."32 Despite the cruel symbols that marked and claimed her body as property,
the announcement noted that "it is very lately ascertained that her right name is Quasheba, and
she belongs to Salisbury-Plain plantation, in St Andrews; Mr John Smith is proprietor."33
Kneeling on a grassy terrain, Phoebe's manacled wrists are bound to the earth. Melissa Dabakis
interprets the significance of this difference in comparison to the London Committee's male
supplicant. She indicates, "unlike her male companion, [she] remained fettered to the ground
and unable to rise."34 A reference to Heb[rews] 13:3 follows underneath. In the absence of a
direct quote from the passage, the pious white female abolitionist must have been familiar with
the reference's covert heed: "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them
which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body." Conjoining the black supplicant's
condition with the white woman's homebound situation, these two stationary bodies shared a
fixed state of existence. Thus, the meaning of the passage resonates in Dabakis's notion that the
radical abolitionist view "collapsed the oppression of slaves with that of women.. ,"35 Like other
audiences, the response from women was unexpected because not only did they empathize with
1

See National Maritime Museum Archives, D/CR/12/8, Liverpool [England]. See also Criticism of Slave
Condition, Royal Gazette of Jamaica, September 18, 1824.
2
"Phoebe," Jamaica Journal and Kingston Chronicles, August 1, 1826.
3
"Phoebe," Jamaica Journal and Kingston Chronicles, August 1, 1826.
4
Melissa Dabakis, "Ain't I A Woman?: Anne Whitney, Edmonia Lewis, and the Iconography of Emancipation," in
Seeing High and Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture ed. Patricia Johnston (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2006), 96.
35
Dabakis, Ain't I A Woman, 96.

114
the slave's condition but they also formed parallels between their disenfranchised lives and the
kneeling slave's suffering as a shared social identity.
The same image then accompanied a news print entitled "Questions to Professing
Christians on the Use of Slave-grown Sugar, Coffee Etc." (Figure 3.14). The depiction provides
facts about slave-grown commodities. With a biblical reference to Proverbs 31:8-9, the audience
is encouraged to "Open thy mouth for the dumb..." By comparison, each reproduction used the
image as a type to represent a particular story about a real female slave. Audiences were
encouraged through these different storylines to question her subjectivity. Whether by virtue of
her presumed name or by dint of her need to have someone speak on her behalf, the story she
articulates was deemed less credible. Her claims to humanity and self-ownership were
contradicted through reports given by her named owner or presumed proprietor. Each
permutation reinforced her inability, or questioned her right to speak. This further striped the
supplicant of her self awareness and possession of her own body. In fact, none of these images
featured the London Committee's motto or any variation of it. By not using the motto, the
makers consciously and deliberately did not ascribe the supplicant a voice. Instead, religious
excerpts, such as Hebrews 13:3, directed audience responses to act on her behalf because she is
foreign property and dumb by nature.
The Birmingham Female Society for the Relief of British Negro Slaves (BPS) used of the
image to embellish their first report in 1826 (Figure 3.15). Considering that the Jamaican Royal
Gazette was a pro-slavery newspaper, this explicit endorsement of the image by a group of
female abolitionists was also an unexpected response. Among their thirteen resolutions, BFS
women aimed to abolish slave traffic and diffuse knowledge of the "real miseries" these

115
activities created for the female supplicant. As we will see, the paradox of this resolution was
that their reproduction of the image, on objects they produced, placed the kneeling female slave
into another form of traffic in the trans-Atlantic market of abolitionist goods. By doing this, the
black female body, the body of objects to which she was affixed, and the body of knowledge as
told through different stories of miseries, were circulated to a wider audience who also
responded.
Two years later, the Birmingham Female Society issued "The Slave's Address to the
British Ladies," as part of their third report. The address charged women not only to help but
also to hear the supplicant's story:
Natives of a land of glory,
Daughters of the good and brave,
Hear the injured Negro's story,
Hear, and help the kneeling Slave.36

Except for Phoebe's announcement, the image shared several similarities with all other the
aforementioned publications. Unlike Phoebe's depiction where a series of horizontal lines define
the background, there is no spatial reference to determine where the figure exists. Instead, she is
set against a solid white background like her male predecessor in Wedgwood's slave cameo.
The absence of spatial reference left the figure once again, open to interpretation, for her
audience to ascribe fascinating stories and meanings about distant places where the real miseries
of slavery occurred. For British ladies whose heritage was in that land of glory where slavery
was no longer permissible nor practiced, to hear the faint cries of the kneeling slave's story was

Birmingham Female Society, Third Annual Report, 1828, The Birmingham City Council Archives, Birmingham
[England].

116
far more remote that their American sisters whose north-south divisions placed the supplicant
squarely in their face and in their home.
As the image travelled to North America its function and meaning changed. In the
United States, the image was placed into a new context with readers whose experience of slavery
was closer to home than the British ladies distant reports. The image acquired a new context in
the states. Its new audience, the international female community, read and ascribed meanings
that related to their own experiences. Although some women never used the image, many
female users produced and acquired several variations. In addition to different permutations,
those who used the image to contest ideas about domesticity and suffering differed too. Among
individuals and groups that comprised the international female audience, differences in race,
class, region, and politics skewed their reading and challenged their ability to develop a unified
community response. Nonetheless, when it debuted in America as part of the Ladies Department
section of the antislavery newspaper The Liberator (Figure 3.16), it was reproduced with a
feminized motto: Am I Not A Woman and A Sister? The revised motto triggered the following
response from one female reader:
Yes! We acknowledge that thou art a woman and a sister.. .the
thought is too revolting, that there is so much indifference
manifested by our own sex, on this subject, although one million
of them are now groaning beneath the same oppressive yoke
with thyself.37

This response suggests a need to equate or relate one's suffering as a woman with that of another
form of suffering as an enslaved being. Yet, the author is clear that there are differences between
37

"The Ladies Department," The Liberator, March 17, 1832.

117
the two types of sufferings. These differences created distance between the white female and the
enslaved black female slave. Therefore, the empathic plea that comes from the two identities,
female and slave, have some similarities and some differences. These two body types shared
gender as a common trait, but the intersections of race, class, and nationality distinguished free
white women from black women, whether enslaved or free.
Interpretations and representations of suffering and empowerment were other
characteristics that complimented and contradicted this shared gendered experiences. Although
the author in The Liberator laments her sisters' aloofness towards the supplicant's suffering, her
hope to unify the female community and arouse homogenous responses is met with one
challengeto identify and dismantle the sexual hierarchy constructed by their shared universal
oppressor. While this would be no minor task, several white women were oblivious to how their
responses helped maintain male dominance and how they acquiesced to this power system.
Through text and image, white women, like the Ladies Department writer, reinforced male
power as a divine right and inheritance. For example, in the full response the writer's repetitive
use of the pronoun "He" positions a masculine entity as the spiritual source of both their agency
and their salvation. This Christian piety and deference to "He" maintains the sexual hierarchy of
power even among mere mortals. "He" gets interpreted as a white male and those who accepted
this social power placed white women thereafter. All others came after the white woman.
Several well known images reinforced this notion of hierarchical ranking that divides and
conquers racialized female bodies. These images cast white women in the role of Liberty
(American) or Britannia (England) endowed with the power to bring salvation to the female
supplicant. As the kneeling slave begs and beckons Liberty or Britannia to aid her and remove

118
her suffering, the white muse who represents national power and strength stands over the
enslaved black woman with the expression of pity and sympathy. In the popular 1830
abolitionist medallion (Figure 3.17) made exclusively to represent the role women played as
abolitionists, we see how racial classifications and class differences limit the potency of sexual
politics. These stratifications maintained the hierarchy of power for white women, despite her
oblivious sentiment that she shares in the same suffering as her darker sister. She holds the
scales of justice in her left hand and extends her right to the supplicant as a gesture of unity. The
biblical excerpt that frames the lower register of the medallion is extracted from the Book of
Psalms. It reads: Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords."38 This scriptural
excerpt echoes the quest to establish unity among and within the white female community, a
bond that some argued had to be established before they could answer the supplicant's question,
"Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?"
Like some of the Anglo-American abolitionist women, Anglo-British abolitionist women
were encouraged to "look around the circle of her own relatives and acquaintances, to discover if
there be not at least one person who may be awakened to compassionate assist, and plead for, our
unhappy slaves."39 By doing this, the body politic of female abolitionism also relied on the
transformation of women from indifference to compassion. Many of these women worked at
home and entertained their intimate circles of friends within this private space. Empowered to
launch a rhetorical attack on the meaning of the slave trade and slavery, women used scriptural
texts and permutations to persuade. In doing so, they made and used objects that altered the
38

Psa. 2:3.
"Card Explanatory of the Contents of the Society's Workbags," Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves,
D/CR/12/27, National Maritime Museum, Liverpool, [England].
39

119
form, function and meaning of the female supplicant. Permutations of objects, such as the
workbag, affords the best example of how female abolitionists opposed sexual politics that
disenfranchised them while they simultaneously negotiated how the intersections of race, class,
and nationality challenged their relationship with all of their sisters. These complexities are
examined through the intersections four different female audiences: two examples of Elizabeth
Margaret Chandler's workbags, the Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves (LS), the
Birmingham Female Abolitionists (BFA), the Boston and the fairs sponsored by the Philadelphia
Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS). These four different audiences of female makers and
users comprise a complex matrix of production, distribution and consumption where the
workbag afforded them a venue to contest meanings ascribed to the female supplicant.

Of Other Bodies: The Politics of Female Slave

Two silk workbags housed at the Daughters of the American Revolution (D.A.R.) form
part of the material history that female abolitionists left behind (Figure 3.18-3.19). The bags
differ in style and appearance, but share some common attributes in their function and meaning.
They also evoked different responses from the female audiences who manufactured and
purchased them. Although the D.A.R. attributes both bags to the Ladies Society for the Relief of
Negro Slaves in England, they identified Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, an American female
abolitionist, as the last owner of these bags. Chandler was born in Centre, Delaware, at the turn
of the nineteenth century but was raised in Philadelphia. Given Chandler's wide connections she
either received the workbag as a personal gift and token of allegiance from her British
girlfriends, or, she acquired her bag through purchase at one of several fairs held in her

hometown. Regardless of how she acquired the workbag, the object is part of a larger discourse
regarding the relationship among four different bodies: the white female body, the black
enslaved body, the female body politic, and the workbag. The latter was one example of the
body of objects that women made and used within the world of trans-Atlantic commerce. In this
example of a single permutation, the patron used the object and the subject represented on it to
negotiate the meaning of the female body politic. In doing so, Anglo-American women
expressed opposition to their social identity. The multiple uses of the workbag subsequently
changed the form, function, and meaning of who they were within the abolitionist movement and
what their relationship was to the female supplicant.40
Like the Ladies Society, the BFA also made, and distributed workbags in the first quarter
of the nineteenth century. The production of workbags transformed an object of embellishment
and leisure into a functional piece suitable for work. One financial ledger reveals that (Figure
3.20), Hudson was paid eleven pounds, three pence for printing, M. Drakeford received eight
pounds, eight shillings, ten pence in cash "for making Bags," and Heely received twelve pounds
and three shilling "for clasps."41 While the bag that forms the basis for this investigation has a
drawstring instead of a clasp, this information affords greater insight into the variety of styles
and forms in which abolitionist women manufactured the workbags. The basic difference
between a drawstring and a clasp is significant because it suggests that the manufacturer

40

For mor information about economic power of female abolitionist see Beverly Gordon, "Playing at Being
Powerless: New England Ladies Fairs, 1830-1930" The Massachusetts Review 27, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 144-160.;
Benjamin Quarles, "Sources of Abolitionist Income," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 32, no. 1 (June
1945): 63-76; Julie Roy Jeffrey, "Permeable Boundaries: Abolitionist Women and Separate Spheres," Journal of the
Early Republic 21, no.l (Spring 2001): 79-93.
41
Female Society for the Relief of British Negro Slaves, 20 July 1826, Birmingham City Council Archive
Collection, Birmingham [England].

considered the functional duplicity of the bag as a private and public object.

While a

drawstring may have been easier to open and close giving the owner efficiency and ease to
access its contents, a clasp afforded greater security to protect valuables.
According to Birmingham records, the women manufactured the workbags out of several
different types of materials including silk, muslin, and cotton. While the objects under
investigation are silk, the production of cotton workbags posed an interesting dilemma that
deserves some attention. To understand how British women negotiated and justified the use of
slave-grown products to produce abolitionist objects and how that dichotomy conflicts and
contradicts with their political purpose we need to consider the social meanings they ascribed to
the workbag. The workbag by definition was a modified fashionable purse designed for the
purpose of carrying out the abolitionist mission. Its association between the slave's body and
work ascribed paradoxical meanings to the object's body because it promoted two conflicting
ideas: the abolition of slavery and trade with the consumption of products from slave labor.
Possession of these bags signified a politically astute and proactive woman who was probably
financially stable enough to use her leisure to do charity work. In addition, while most working
class women could only afford, if not dream of possessing, one bag, the workbag was a social
indicator that this proprietor had the luxury to choose to work. More than likely what female
abolitionists called work was the beginning of community service, or charity work.
The fact that Chandler owned two bags is a probable signifier of her support of the transAtlantic network of abolitionist goods, as well as her belief that these objects had the power to
42
For a discussion of privacy in the evolution of pockets to purses see Yolanda Van de Kroll, "Ty'ed about My
Middle, Next to My Smock: The Cultural Context of Women's Pockets," (master's thesis, University of Delaware),
71-78.

produce change. Her decision to select silk over cotton means that she presumably was aware of
the inherent contradictions that different types of material had on the object, and how a cotton
workbag compromised the integrity of the female body politic, the functionality of the object's
body, and the meanings they assigned to the slave's body. In her poem "The Kneeling Slave,"
Chandler related the themes of work to the slave's body. Chandler states that the kneeling slave
is ".. .the outcast of a frowning fate, Long weary years of servile bondage wait.. .Uncertain
pensioners on a Master's willMidst ceaseless toils renewed from day to day."43 Chandler used
her words to create an image of the kneeling slave's real miseries and tied them to her fate as a
perpetual servant. Without payment for her work, she toils daily in the fields, cutting cane,
processing tobacco, sifting rice, and picking cotton. There is evidence that the production and
use of free-grown cotton was promoted as an alternative resource in Britain, but the production
of some workbags predates this conscious surge to phase out the consumption of this transAtlantic cash-crop.44 Like the tobacco pipes and snuff boxes that Anglo-American men
embellished with the slave medallion, cotton workbags contradicted the socio-political meanings
its makers and users ascribed to these permutations.
Some workbags were decorated with spangling, or beads. The BFA and LS both
consistently used a transferprint version of the kneeling slave to embellish the surface of their
workbags. Robin Reilly and Pat Halfpenny, whose research describes the transferprint process
for creamware, provide insight on how images were affixed to almost any surface. The process
entails several steps that begin with the production of a woodblock, etching, engraving, or stipple
43

Elizabeth Chandler, "The Kneeling Slave," The Liberator, January 28, 1832.
See Estlin Papers, Series B: Bristol and Clifton Auxilary Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, Joseph Sturge, 5 Feb. 1846,
Bristol National Archives, Bristol [England].

44

that provides a foundation for the image.

The English production of abolitionist prints on the

surface of cotton was popular during the eighteenth century. The Birmingham Museum houses a
sample of this type of cloth (Figure 3.21). In this particular print, the cyclical design pattern
illustrates the capture and enslavement of Africans. Although this design does not include the
kneeling slave figure as a part of its motif, it shows how abolitionists produced visual narratives
on textiles and distributed these objects as a means to supplement their work. This particular
cotton print is labeled Traite des Negres or Slave Trade, clearly a French derivative of the
English-copper plate printing process that spread across Europe as a new means to produce
antislavery material culture.
Chandler's oval workbag features an elaborate design that incorporates a permutation of
the female kneeling slave. What is interesting about this image is that it includes two vignettes
separated by space. In the foreground, the female supplicant faces the left. Kneeling under a
palmetto tree, the scenery positions her on one of the British West Indian colonies. Her arm
conceals her bare bosom and a layered wrap cascades down over her leg accenting the natural
feminine curves of her body. Unlike her male counterpart, her unclasped hands drape over her
bent knee. She hangs her head down in a solemn manner to evoke sympathy and melancholy
thoughts in the minds of her spectators. Shackled at the ankles, she is bound to the earth by a
bolt that connects her chains. To her right side, an instrument of labora hoe lies on the
ground. In the background, a group of four men labor in the fields as a slave driver welds a whip

Pat Halfpenny, Penny Plain Twopence Coloured: Transfer Printing on English Ceramics 1750-1850 (Stafford,
England: George Street Press, 1994), 7-8, 14-16, 57-58, 76-77; Robin Reilly, Wedgwood: The New Illustrated
Dictionary, (Antiques Collectors' Club, 1996), 427-428.

overhead. Captured in the moment of a downward stroke, the background vignette imparts what
tools were used to punish slaves for insufficient work.
The Jamaican debate to eliminate the driving whip as a tool for punishment introduced
the cat-o-nine tails as a suitable replacement. In "On Flogging of Women," a report
accompanied by Charlotte Elizabeth's graphic poem, she notes that "it was not even proposed,
that driving in the field, or the flogging of females should be abolished; but merely that the cat
should be substituted for the cart-whip."46 In response to this change, Charlotte proposes to the
planter who bears a Christian name, "O fling the scourge aside; Her tender form may writhe and
bleed, But deeper cuts thy barbarous deed, The female's modest pride." For Charlotte, the
whipping process implied indecent exposure of the female slave's body, a level of exposure that
went beyond the nudity implied by the bare breasted female supplicant whose arms conceal her
and grant her modesty. While this concern is admirable, a greater concern was the means by
which flogging persisted, especially for pregnant women. Barbara Bush's investigation of West
Indian slavery reveals that the act of flogging female slaves differed from males because the
female body had the ability to replenish the slavocracy through reproduction. Due to this unique
quality, it was imperative to protect future generations of slaves, especially at a time when the
surplus of black bodies had been reduced by the abolition of the slave trade. Bush indicates that
punishment did not cease nor did it subside during pregnancy, instead changes in the execution

Charlotte Elizabeth, "On Flogging," Birmingham City Council Archives Collection.

of flogging occurred.

These included digging a hole in the ground and placing the belly in the

earth's cavity in order to execute flogging and simultaneously protect the fetus from harm.
The reverse side of the oval workbag (Figure 3.22) features an excerpt from William
Cowper's 1782 poem Charity. The selected stanza refers to the treatment of slaves by their
Masters who "chain him, and racks him and extracts his sweat." The acquisition of sweat from
the slave's body is a metaphor to the work is does on behalf of the Master. This particular detail
draws an interesting parallel between the slave's body which works without compensation, and
the white female abolitionist's body whose benevolence epitomizes the charity that the transAtlantic world of commerce embodied. Female abolitionists' reprinted the poem on their bags
and subsequently assigned these multiple meanings of work, labor and charity to the object.
Alternatively, Cowper's poem The Task was also associated with this permutation of the
kneeling female slave. In this excerpt, Cowper's words read as a vow to maintain a standard by
which every man is responsible for his, or her, own labor and not imposed on others. The
specific stanza selected to be used with the image, reinforces, and at some level questions, the
tolerance of this forced labor abroad in the colonies and in America:
I would not have a Slave to till my ground
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold, have ever earn'd.
We have no Slaves at homewhy then aboard?

The meanings that women ascribed to this object by using Cowper's stanzas, effectively tied
female political concerns with personal issues in order to oppose their marginalized position in
47

Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650-1838 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 4246.

126
society as a collective body and to alter their identity from obsolete to necessity and from
leisurely to laborious. The excerpt selected also functions as a testament to their position
regarding slavery. It provides a space to raise their stifled voices through an object that
spectators would read and remember.
Their platform questioned how the British government justified the maintenance of
slavery abroad and brought to the fore an inherent political hypocrisy. Did this message
maintain the same effectiveness with white American women whose point of reference for slave
practices was closer to home? Probably not. In combination with the image, the object raises
awareness of how its meanings changed as its audience shifted from British to American femal
respondents. In addition, the workbag traversed a space and time between England and America.
As it moved, its form, function and meanings changed too. Like Chandler, whose introduction to
the workbag may have been like most women, through the fair or bazaar, the object's function as
an economic stabilizer challenged the female abolitionist mission. Production and distribution of
the workbag reinforced the disconnection that existed between the black body and the body
politic. The abolitionist economy relied on a body of objects that helped sustain movement. The
black body continued to be objectified, at work and in service to others.

The Black Body Objectified, Sold and Distributed

There were two ways that women distributed workbags to their audiences. For some
audiences, the workbags were either private gifts that followed a seventeenth century tradition of
gift giving, or public purchases that reflected their power as consumers. Either way, they
financed the abolitionist movement. Vanda Foster notes that some bags were elaborately beaded

silk drawstring purses that were given as gifts and bore "a simple motto such as "Remember the
Pore."48 The motto resembles the female abolitionist creed to "Remember the Slave," an adage
also featured on a transfer print pin cushion that Chandler owned (Figure 3.23-3.24). The same
design was later featured on what remains of a dining service housed at The Friends Library in
London (Figure 3.25). By comparison, both mottoes reinforce the class distinctions that existed
between the meanings ascribed to this body of objects employed to support the movement, the
maker's/user's charitable body, and the afflicted black body.
For audiences who did not receive the workbag as a gift, they found out about the object
through public press. In 1827 British abolitionist Hanna More wrote a few verses to express the
significance of these public events to women and for the objects they attained at these venues:
Here charity assumes new grace,
By wearing Decorations face
Long may the liberal scheme abide
For taste, is virtue, so applied.49

According to More's verse, the work accomplished by the female abolitionist production and
distribution of abolitionist objects such as the workbag were charitable deeds. The face that the
consumer wore after purchase was that of the laborious black female body who received no
respite even when assuming responsibility for decorating the white female body. These
exchanges, though part of a system that sought to equalize the sexes and bring women in from
the margins, were noble acts that involved fashion consciousness.
A decade later on the other side of the Atlantic, the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society, an
interracial group of women, prepared for their abolitionist fair. Using objects, such as the
48
49

Vanda Foster and Aileen Ribero, eds. Bags and Purses, (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1982), 17.
Hannah More Papers, "The Bazaar," 15 July 1827, Add. 42511 / 1 6 , British Library Manuscript Collection.

workbag that were probably donated by their British sisters, they anxiously anticipated the event.
In a letter from African American abolitionist Sarah Forten to Elizabeth Whittier, the tone of her
message exudes excitement as she refers to the objects to be sold. Forten writes that "our society
has been making preparations for the last four months to get up this saleand many very
beautiful fancy productions did they manufacture for the occasion."50 Here again the fashionable
or fancy object is associated with the work done in service of the cause.
With its protracted preparation time, the amount of work involved was obviously extensive.
When we consider that these fairs usually occurred only once a year, the ability to raise monies
for and sustain the movement for the next season became critical. Even with the good intention
behind these activities, objects like the workbag, that were manufactured and sold by free
women, did not necessarily remember the slave or the poor, nor did they narrow the divide
between race, class, and nationality that existed in their community. Instead, the complex
contradictory meanings assigned to these objects helped finance a movement that continued to
exclude, marginalize, and stifle the enslaved and working class people that actually kept it
afloat.51
An early nineteenth century advertisement described the types of materials that women
placed inside the each workbag.52 A copy of the Jamaica Gazette is placed inside every workbag

50

Sarah L. Forten to Elizabeth Whittier, 25 December 1836. See also C. Porter Ripley, ed. The Black Abolitionist
Papers, United States, 1830-1846 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 3: 758.
51
For more information about the abolitionist fairs see Beverly Gordon, Bazaars and Fairs Ladies: History of the
American Fundraising Fair (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1998), 1-12; Deborah Van Broekhoven,
"Better than a Clay Club: The Organization of Anti-Slavery Fairs, 1835-60," Slavery and Abolition 19, no.l (April
1998): 24-45; Benjamin Quarles, "Sources of Abolitionist Income," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 32,
no. 1 (June 1945): 63-76.
52
See "Card Explanatory of the Contents of the Society's Workbags," Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves,
D/CR/12/27, National Maritime Museum, Liverpool, [England].

to provide evidence of the cruelties that slaves faced at the hands of owners. This newspaper
was selected specifically for the various announcements that provided visual proof and
documentation of these events. Descriptions of brandmark, scars and wounds inflicted by the
cartwhip reinforced the fact that cruelty existed on the plantation. The advertisement also
included a mission statement to inform the public of how the funds raised will be directed:
The money raised by the sale of the Society's Work Bags and
Albums, is employed in CIRCULATING INFORMATION, In
relieving NEGLECTED AND DESERTED NEGROES, And in
promoting the EDUCATION OF BRTISH SLAVES.53

The mission statement reinforces how necessary women were to the movement's advancement
and longevity. Women remained detached however from decision-making processes in the
abolitionist movement. Abolitionist women were stifled even in times when their economic
might made them integral, sustainers of the movement. According to Beverly Gordon this silence
was sometimes self-imposed as a means to harness their power as supporters.54 None-the-less
the female group of makers and users continued to be present but averted within the body politic
of wider entire abolitionist movement. It was her alter bag that spearhead her identity from a
woman of leisure to a working sister. When abolitionist sisters transformed the form and
function of their bags, the object challenged the social standards imposed and thrust her body
into the economics of labor rather than leisure.
Beverly Gordon's 1998 investigation of the intricate workings of fairs and bazaars
reveals how the social identity of women altered within this setting. She argues that the activities

53

See "Card Explanatory of the Contents," D/CR/12/27, National Maritime Museum, Liverpool, [England].
Beverly Gordon, "Playing at Being Powerless: New England Ladies Fairs, 1830-1930," The Massachusetts
Review 27, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 144,154, 158.
5

that transpired within this "closed system" constituted work despite evolving trivial criticism that
it was an extension of the domestic sphere.
This trivialization of women's concerns.. ..stemmed from
structurally oppositional gender roles....women's activities were
not really accepted as 'work,' and the vanity fair trope was a
way of reducing women and their interests to superfluity and
meaninglessness.55
Their efforts on behalf of the abolitionist movement were nothing short of meaningful, despite
some changes that their objects experienced in terms of the space, time and meanings that their
trans-Atlantic audiences ascribed to them.
The advertisement concludes with a plea to interested women to "Remember those in
bonds as bound with them, and those that suffer adversity, as being herself also in the body."
The quote originates from Biblical text.56 It ties the social meanings of two bodies together, the
patron and the object's subject by suggesting that co-dependent relationships exist. But what is
the source of that relationship? How was it developed and how did Anglo-Americans allow it to
persist by their use of the workbag?
Changing Social History and Meanings Ascribed to Bags
Vanda Foster's research examines handbags and purses as historically "chameleon
objects, changing their forms and materials radically according to the current tastes and
demands."57 She contends that it is not limited by association to a specific body part, material,
shape or use. The conversion from pouch to pocket and ultimately into (work)bag was dictated
by combination of taste in fashion, public statement about a woman's skill set, and spatial

55

Gordon, Bazaars and Fair Ladies, 6.

Heb.l3:3.
57
Foster and Ribero, eds. Bags and Purses, 6
56

131
demands to store more stuff. Alternatively, Yolanda Van de Krai's scholarship questions how
notions of concealment changed since the seventeenth century. Van de Krol suggests that some
reasons for concealment include the complex needs for women to maintain privacy for their
personal and social longevity.58 How does the conversion of the pocket, from a private object
into public workbag function to change abolitionist female identity from political bystander into
social activist? What did the user intend to reveal about the object and about herself? The
eighteenth-century innovation of attached pockets, purses, and workbags, positioned on the
exterior of one's garment, allowed users to make public statements about society, politics, and
her place within these realms. There is no doubt that the production and consumption of the
female abolitionist workbag forced its users to announce their position on abolitionism to
spectators, and that transformed their bodies from a private space to a public place for
inscription.
According to Foster, the workbag evolved at a time when "fine needlework was an
accomplishment expected of every well-bred woman," and this object became "an important
accessory," that made a public statement about her class and credentials.59 As a collective group
of respondents, women used the workbag to dismantle systems that historically excluded and
marginalized them in different social settings. The workbag established her credentials. Its form
and function projected her dual role and capacity as crafty, intuitive and an economical asset to
the abolitionist movement. Its relationship to her body also helped to redefine her identity in
social circles as well as private settings. The D.A.R. displayed one of their workbags on a

Van de Kroll, "Ty'ed about My Middle," 73-79.

Foster and Aileen Ribero, eds. Bags and Purses, 30.

manikin to show how Chandler would have was worn it (Figure 3.26). This representation
reinforced the object's functional duplicity, its relationship to the female anatomy, and its power
to conceal or reveal one's political position in public. The DAR manikin is fitted in the attire of
that time, equipped with matching bonnet and parasol as fashionable accoutrements. The
manikin reminds us of the functional duplicity that Wedgwood's cameo possessed when made
up in the form of snuff boxes and lockets. Both object types maintained a close relationship to
the body and helped define the user's political identity.
According to Beverly Gordon objects and users maintain relationships based on
proxemics.60 The distance between object and body defines the degree to which identities are
formed by self and read by others. Gordon identified proxemics in terms of four distances:
intimate, personal, social and public. The workbag affords its user the luxury of a range of these
distances because at times it reinforced their involvement and commitment to the abolitionist
movement. The physical touch required to connect with the bag and its contents keeps the user
in constant awareness of her relationship with the kneeling slave and to some degree reminds her
of her own stifled, marginalized condition in society. On a personal level, the workbag is tactile
by nature of its visual qualities. This attribute is especially important for users and non-users
alike because it does not require possession in order for the object's visual codes to be absorbed.
Finally, the bag affords the owner the luxury to make these associations some days and not on
others by its detachable qualities. Unlike pockets, the workbag was not sewn into a woman's
garment and therefore did not have to function as an accoutrement. In essence, as an object, the
60

Beverly Gordon, "Intimacy and Objects: A Proxemic Analysis of Gender-Based Response to the Material World,"
in The Material Culture ofGender/The Gender of Material Culture, eds. Katherine Martinez and Kenneth L. Ames
(Winterthur, DE: Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1997), 237-252.

133
workbag became an extension of the white female abolitionist's body. It served to define and
identify her in social, political and economic terms, and in term she redefined and scripted new
meanings to it.
As a metaphor for the body politic called abolitionists, the female body symbolizes its
dismembered part.61 In its physical form, the white female body functioned as a host for the
objectified black female slave to negotiate an oppositional voice. But, when these bodies
assumed different forms, functions, and meanings, they simultaneously changed and challenged
the social, political identity of its subjects. Mark Rothko once stated that the purpose of art is to
provide a venue for social action.
Art is not only a form of action, it is a form of social action. For
art is a type of communication, and when it enters the
environment it produces its effects just as any other form of
action does. It might be said that its use as a means of social
action is dependent upon the numbers it affects.62

The bodies of objects that marginalized communities of women produced, distributed, and
possessed was a form of social action in response to their condition. Their oppositional stance
against these conditions and the parallels they drew between themselves and the kneeling slave
are compelling contradictions. Their workbag became a means to express the embodiment of a
shared experience and the relationship women maintained with these objects reveal how they
successfully inverted patriarchical readings of these different bodies in order to express
opposition, then negotiate and affix meanings that empowered them as a community.

See Sanchez-Eppler, Touching Liberty, 4-5, 33-34,

Mark Rothko, The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2004), 10.

134
Conclusion
This chapter examined the various unexpected responses that audiences had to the slave
medallion and permutations of its imagery. In the overview, I identified three categories or types
of communities that comprise the audience who expressed unexpected responses. These
included but were not limited to intended audience members who altered the object's form,
function, and meaning, anti-abolitionists or persons indifferent to the political missions. Some of
these persons in the latter category were either susceptible to changing their views, or their
contextual application of the object's imagery altered its meanings from political to satirical. In
addition to these categories, the excluded African and marginalized women formed the last two
types of communities of unintended audiences.
For each community, alterations to the object affected their social and political role as
makers/users of the meanings they ascribed to the permutations they produced and consumed.
After offering some examples of the alterations that exists in each of these communities, the
chapter emphasized how the interpretive communities of marginalized women altered the object
and simultaneously transformed their social identity as political advocates. This group offered
the best examples of how unintended audience responses to the slave medallion compliment the
social and political changes occurring to gender roles during the period examined. The workbag,
Mott's abridged version of Equiano's slave narrative, and the American version of the Hard
Times coin are three of the objects I used to examine how women responded to the slave
medallion.
Of these three permutations, the workbag afforded an opportunity to consider how
changes in form and function altered the meanings men ascribed to an object once deemed a

fashionable accoutrement for leisure into a political statement about work and social
responsibility by its new female makers/users. Mott's abridged version of Equiano's narrative
raised questions about how female authors used the seal to simultaneously authenticate the
African voice and condemn the author as a dead subject no longer capable of evolution or
change. The irony of this example is how female authors transformed the kneeling slave image
into a skeletal figure, represented the enslaved African as a mere framework of a man,
susceptible to manipulation of all who observed and read about him. By stripping the kneeling
slave of his last measure of humanity, he is a void filled only by the empowered voices of the
female users that remade his likeness and his meanings. Finally, the Hard Times coin presents
evidence of how manufacturers introduced an American economic remedy that adopted the
female version of the kneeling slave. In the adoption of this permutation into the American
economic system, makers and users also accepted the adaptation of the meanings ascribed to this
currency by manufacturers of the coin and manufacturers of the laws that relegated the value of
the black female body to its ability to reproduce itself.
While all of these examples afford a sampling of the different ways marginalized women
narrowed responded to the objects, the notion of change is prolific in every instance. Whether
change constitutes a permutation of object form, a transformation in object functionality, a
revised meaning, and ultimately conversion of the maker's/user's identity, change is an
omnipresent and fluid factor among all instances where unintended audience responded. This
omnipresent fluid notion of change, as it applies to the form, function, meaning, and identity of
the unintended audience, also problematizes the subject represented in the object's compositional
components. The subject, an enslaved African, is part of the unintended audience. The

dominant white male abolitionists historically marginalized quasi-free Africans and effectively
excluded slaves from full involvement in the abolitionist movement, just like women. The
Africans' inability to change or improve often served as the basis for marginalization and
exclusion. However, Africans, whether enslaved or quasi-free, formed interpretive communities
that responded both to the notion that they were unable to change and to the slave medallion's
representation.

Chapter Four
Responsive Agents: Black Subjects' Contest and Invert
the Slave Medallion's Ascribed Meanings
On May 31, 1839 a group of black Philadelphians met secretly for the first time at a
private home. The group convened for the sole purpose of organizing into a group called
themselves the Vigilant Committee. They operated as a branch of the Vigilant Association an
organization developed two years prior by Robert Purvis, a local black abolitionist. The
Committee was comprised of free African Americansa classification that included persons
whose legal status may or may not have been rooted in American slavery. Until their demise in
1857, the Committee operated with the sole conviction: "to create a fund to aid colored persons
in distress."1 Even though they armed themselves with the Personal Liberty Laws recently
enacted in Pennsylvania, they recognized that one consequence of aiding and abiding fugitives
might be unpleasant responses from those who opposed their work.2 They also realized
however, that their fate as free African Americans was bound to the fugitives' ability to
transcend their distressed condition. For this reason, the Vigilant Committee served as the
fugitives' watchful agents, ready to respond to appeals for aid.
Not too long after that first meeting, the Committee commissioned Patrick H. Reason, an
aspiring young engraver from New York City, to create their membership certificate. Steven
Loring Jones suggests that it is likely this work was commissioned by either the acting secretary
1

[Philadelphia] Vigilant Committee, Minute Book, 1839-1844, Collection 1121, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
See also "Background Note," http://www2.hsp.Org/collections/manuscripts/v/vigilantll21.htm
2
Pennsylvania passed their personal liberty law in 1826 to offset the effects of the lingering effects of the 1793
Fugitive Slave Laws which forced the return of slaves who absconded. For more information see: Thomas D.
Morris, Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North, 1780-1861, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1974; William R. Leslie, "The Pennsylvania Fugitive Slave Act of 1826," Journal of Southern History, 18,
no. 4 (November 1952): 429-445.

Jacob C. White, Sr. or Purvis himself given his history with another work that featured Cinque
and the uprising of the Amistad which occurred at the same time.3 Reason proposed a
permutation of the Wedgwood slave medallion that featured the kneeling slave as the image's
principal design element (Figure 4.1). In addition to the appropriated kneeling slave figure,
Reason changed several design elements. The subject is featured prominently in the foreground
with a bucolic setting that seems to snake around into the background. Flanked by two scriptural
verses and a revised edition of the London Committee's motto shown above the supplicant's
head, Reason's version functioned as a visual allegory about black identity and agency.
The Vigilant Committee's membership certificate (Figure 4.2) is one of several known
examples where black people appropriated the kneeling slave image. This object represents the
first time a black community responded to contest the multiple meanings that former makers and
users ascribed to this image over time. Starting as early as 1835, when Reason created a female
version of the supplicant, black audiences made and used several variations of this iconic figure
to recast its meanings. This chapter explores how the Vigilant Committee contested the image's
meanings by redefining its visual elements. The membership certificate afforded audiences a
new visual paradigm about black agency. The black community appropriated, then inverted the
image to contest the notion that the black community, as depicted through the subject's black
body, lacked agency. Their responses are indicators that they denounced the notion that

Patrick H. Reason is listed as a member on the Committee of Arrangements to commission a commemorative work
with proceeds aimed to help Amistad captives. See Steven Loring Jones, "A Keen Sense of the Artistic: African
American Material Culture in Nineteeth-Century Philadelphia," International Review of African American Art 12,
no 2 (1995): 15. See also "Notice for Public Exhibition" The Colored American, September 14, 1839; "For the
Colored American," The Colored American, September 28, 1839.

blackness was not synonymous dynamism. While there are several ideas that can be explored in
this image, the ascribed meaning of agency is the central theme of this chapter.
Through processes of appropriation and inversion of the image, the black community
declared their voice an essential part of this unfolding narrative about audience reception to the
Wedgwood slave medallion and its subsequent permutations. The black audience is the
unexpected respondent because they shared a relationship with the objects' subject and subject
matter which was thought to be fixed, stoic and finite. Throughout the three sections that
comprise this chapter, the black voice contested meanings and engaged in a dialogue with those
on the periphery as well as within their community. In doing so, they constructed a new reality
about the black subject which in turn empowered them. The first section examines the
relationship between the black subject and the black community. It explores the complexities of
the kneeling slave to understand how and why they adopted the subject to serve as the sole
representative of the black community's identity. The black community appropriated the
supplicant despite its racially derogatory symbolism and its association with the trans-Atlantic
world of consumer goods. This section reveals what compositional components of the supplicant
they deemed negotiable and how the inversion of certain visual elements empowered them.
Since agency manifests itself in different ways, sections two and three examines two
forms of black dynamism physical movement and the spoken word. Section two compares and
contrasts Reason's permutation with Wedgwood's slave medallion in order to show how the
black artist ascribed a setting and a plot to tell the supplicant's story. The setting is a forested
area and the plot is the evolution of the supplicant from slave to liberated black man. By
including a setting, Reason's image challenges the spatial and temporal qualities in which the

black subject is viewed and understood. It casts the supplicant as responsive to the meanings
previously ascribed by audiences where he is fixed, stoic and unable to transcend his slave
identity. The membership certificate is then examined as a response to an 1836 broadside
created by the New York based American Anti-Slavery Society. The AASS use of the kneeling
slave image is compared and contrasted with the Vigilant Committee's use to ascertain the
subject's role as an agent of his own destiny. Cast in the role as agent, the supplicant is ascribed
two different scenarios that either accepts or contest old paradigms about his destiny.
The final section considers how the black audience responded to the black subject as an
icon who represents a narrated experience. It compares and contrasts narratives written by, for,
and about black audiences to reveal the differences in how the subject is casted as martyr or
agent. Specifically, it looks at the 1835 narrative of the Boroom Slave and the image that
accompanies it. It uses this piece as a means to continue the exploration of the trans-Atlantic
phenomenon where goods are exchanged and the black body gets tied into this activity. It also
continues the exploration of how intersections of race, class, gender, and geography define the
kneeling slave as a stranger. The section begins with an examination of how Reason's
permutation recast the motto from a question into a form of rhetoric that activates the black
voice. Reason's alterations of the motto held implications about the voice's source, who
responds to that voice, and who engages in a dialogue with it. Is it the respondent, the subject,
the reader, the audience, an interpreter or the black vigilant? Or, are they all one in the same to
form some part of the supplicant's verbal and literary identity? This section questions why
Reason negotiated the motto as the source of the black subject's voice and how that voice
established rhetorical speech within and for the black community.

141

Vigilant Interpretations: The Black Community as the Subject

By June 10, 1839 the Vigilant Committee resolved to compensate "those persons who
entertain strangers of a certain description..."4 Reason conveyed this same sentiment in the
membership certificate when he included two scriptural passages that reference laws and
directions for the treatment of foreigners. On the left side of the kneeling slave, a verse from
Deuteronomy 23:15 states, Thou shalt not deliver unto his Master the servant which is escaped
from his master unto thee. On his right side, an excerpt from Matthews 7:12 establishes the
Golden Rule: Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so
to them. With one scripture that originates from the Old Testament and the other that stems from
the New Testament, the two verses flank the supplicant like the alpha and omega of his own
personal narrative.
Reason's permutation is a visual allegory about the Vigilant Committee's strangerthe
kneeling slave's nineteenth century American experience. Even though he appropriated the
subject from Wedgwood's slave cameo, his representation of the kneeling slave appears to
present the figure as a stranger in a strange land. Reason accomplishes this through a spatial
context that is absent in the original design. His use of lines, proportion, light and dark shadows,
and shapes to represent a specific place in time gives the supplicant a context and a story.
Compared to the diminutive figure found in all three versions of the slave cameo, which is
proportioned with the object's space, Reason positioned an enlarged kneeling slave in the

[Philadelphia] Vigilant Committee, Minute Book, 1839-1844, Collection 1121, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
http://www2.hsp.Org/collections/manuscripts/v/vigilantll21.htm

foreground. The supplicant consumes the picture plane and commands the spectator's attention.
Unlike the loincloth that Wedgwood's supplicant sports, Reason's kneeling slave wears a shirt
and pant whose edges are worn and tattered. Wedgwood's kneeling slave rested on a single bent
knee, but Reason's figure poses with both knees firmly planted on the ground.
Depicted in a frontal appearance Reason's supplicant is not shown in profile like
Wedgwood's figure. However, both figures avert the audience's gaze in a manner that reinforces
conventional notions about the black body being subjected to observation without challenge.
Unlike Wedgwood's supplicant who looks off to the upper right corner, Reason depicted his
subject with downcast eyes. Wedgwood's figure exists in a liminal space that is undefined and
offers no context. Reason's subject advances from a thickly forested bucolic setting.
Wedgwood's supplicant poses a question but Reason's stranger makes a definitive statement
about his manhood and role as a brother. With the exception of Wedgwood's permutation for
Franklin, all of the subjects represent an African male. As a single figure that functions to
represent the collective body of a given community, the black subject is a multi-faceted figure.
The image of the kneeling slave had been popularized in America as early as the
eighteenth century with the advent of Franklin's gift. By the nineteenth century, the women's
anti-slavery fairs gave the image a larger audience of consumers.5 In addition, several black
Philadelphians used the image in a form of letterhead to correspond with their friends (Figure
4.3). In a letter dated May 18, 1838 Sarah Mapps Douglass, a member of the racially integrated

For works that reference the sale of objects bearing the kneeling slave emblem see Beverly Gordon, "Playing at
Being Powerless: New England Ladies Fairs, 1830-1930," The Massachusetts Review 27, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 148149; Deborah Van Broekhoven, "Better than a Clay Club: The Organization of Anti-Slavery Fairs, 1835-60,"
Slavery and Abolition 19, no.l (April 1998): 24-45; Benjamin Quarles, "Sources of Abolitionist Income," The
Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 32, no. 1 (June 1945): 63-76.

143
Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, wrote to the noted Massachusetts based anti-slavery
advocate Abbey Kelley.6 In her brief note of thanks to New England women for their
attendance at the last convention, Douglass acknowledges the "vile slander" that comes from
their common enemy and ask Kelley to "accept this little volume in token of my ardent love.. ."7
Unlike other representations of this female supplicant, the presence of the artist's signature at the
base, served as a means to claim this representation of the figure. Douglass' decision to make
use of Reason's version also acts as an endorsement of the figure (Figure 4.4). Her acceptance
of this image came long before the female supplicant was placed back on the market for sale by
the Boston Letter Foundry in 1845.
Prior to the Vigilant Committee's commission, the kneeling slave was also a prominent
visual trope in America used to signify opulence, to distinguish between class and social ranking,
and identify proprietors in relation to their property. Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw and Kim Hall
addressed this phenomenon in their work to reveal how portraits objectified the black body
throughout the nineteenth century.8 In addition to these meanings, the New York based black
publication The Colored American announced a local artist whose anti-slavery window blinds
were drawing attention. This occurred during the same year that the Philadelphia Vigilant
Committee commissioned Reason to produce their membership certificate. Among the many

Several scholars have identified Douglass as one of the black Philadelphians who also drafted a permutation of the
kneeling slave. See Jean Fagan Yellen Women and Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture (New
Haven: Yale University Press), 15.
7
"Sarah Mapp Douglass to Abby Kelley, 18 May 1838," in The Black Abolitionist Papers, United States, 18301846, ed.C. Porter Ripley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 3: 473.
8
Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Portraits of a People: Picturing African Americans in the Nineteenth Century, Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 2006; Kim Hall, "An Object in the Midst of Other Objects: Race, Gender, Material
Culture," Things of Darkness: Economics of Race and Gender in Early Modern England, Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1995.

vignettes featured on these transparent pieces of window dressings was an image that invoked
notions about liberty:
Underneath is the American Eagle, sustaining the Declaration of
Independence, while two kneeling slaves supplicate for the
application, of its sublime truths, to the vindication of their
rights.9

While this latter use inspired ideas about freedom, they remained idyllic for the two supplicants
because they waited for the administration of freedom, instead of activating those rights for
themselves. With all these visual references, regardless of how African Americans came in
contact with the kneeling slave image, they were neither unfamiliar nor unaware of its existence,
its history and its ambiguous encrypted meanings. Still, most trans-Atlantic audiences, including
the black community, viewed the kneeling slave as a transnational icon. As the quintessential
image that objectified the black body and continued its history of presenting the black
community as abject and inactive, then why did the Philadelphia Vigilant Committee appropriate
this image as their representative?
Robert S. Nelson defines appropriation within a poststructuralist context. In doing so, he
considers the relationship that the act of appropriation has to identity and personhood for a given
community. He acknowledges that the process of appropriation is an active engagement. It
differs from influence, which is an "elusive agency, by which someone or something infects,
informs, provokes, or guides the production or reception of the artwork."10 Together the black
interpretive community and the black artist worked as unexpected respondents to produce a new

"Anti-Slavery Window Blinds," The Colored American, June 29, 1839.

Robert S. Nelson, "Appropriation," Critical Terms for Art History, eds. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 118.
10

image of the kneeling slave figure and assigned new meanings. It is the combination of the
Vigilant Committee's commission and Reason's artistic license that constitute an active
engagement. To this end, the Committee's conviction to aid the stranger while maintaining
anonymity was yet another form of active engagement where their agency was covert but the
latent effects of its existence could not be denied.
Looking at the Vigilant Committee's minutes and record of cases, the only descriptive
factors used to identify the stranger were complexion, gender, place of origin, destination, and
what the person told them about their situation.11 These descriptive factors formed the bases for
the stranger's identity. They were also some of the elements Reason applied in his visual
allegory. Even though that allegory was the stranger's personal narrative, it had a universal
appeal. It held within its storyline a commonly shared experience that allowed members of the
black community to embrace the stranger's identity. Several black Philadelphians expressed this
solidarity with the slave. Prominent community figures such as Sarah Louisa Forten and Sarah
Mapps Douglass used their literary genius to articulate their connected identities. Forten's
published poetry contained lines such as "we feel the chains that bind us all," and Douglass used
her "Mental Feast" meetings and abolitionist editorials (Figure 4.5) to warn her community about
the "iron hand" that threatened their identities as free blacks.12 Maries Lindhorst suggests that
Douglass' reference to the iron hand was a direct result of an experience she had of mistaken
identity that nearly stripped her of freedom because the outside community view her as a

11

[Philadelphia] Vigilant Committee, Record of Cases, 1839-1862, Collection 1121, Historical Society of
Pennsylvania. http://www2.hsp.Org/collections/manuscripts/v/vigilantl 121 .htm
12
See Sarah Louisa Forten, "A Prayer," Philanthropist, March 11, 1836. See also Sarah Mapps Douglass, "Mental
Feast," The Liberator, July 21, 1832.

stranger.

Even Robert Purvis attested to this problem of mistaken identity during the

heightened period when black Pennsylvanians' political rights such as suffrage, were being
denied.14 Lindhorst notes some of the legal restrictions placed on black Philadelphian bodies
that traversed the landscape were a direct result of the aid given to strangers. These provisions
not only placed confined free black bodies to their community boundaries but also made it easier
to identify and differentiate between them and the fugitive.
Stuart Hall's discussion of identity in the black community involves a triangular system
that negotiates the subject, forms of agency, and meanings associated with both. What this
means for an object is that it is always evolving and its meanings are never finite. There is
always a production process, a form of agency exercised by both external and internal forces that
continuously defines and redefines the object:
Also, the subject itself is not a completed entity but
something which is produced, through complex and
unfinished processes which are both social and psychic- a
subj ect-in-process.* 5

What this means for the Vigilant Committee's stranger as interpreted and presented as the
subject of their membership certificate is he is not fixed, nor is he stoic. Instead he is in a
process of evolution. For this reason, he is depicted in transition, evolving from his slave past
into his new identity as a free man. The stranger is granted a new context and therefore a new
meaning that actively contest the old ones scripted by other audiences.
13

Marie Lindhorst, "Politics in a Box: Sarah Mapps Douglass and the Female Literary Association, 1831-1833,"
Pennsylvania History, 65, no. 3 (Summer 1998): 263-278.
14
Robert Purvis, Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens threatened with Disfranchisement to the People of
Pennsylvania, (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1838), 17.
15
Stuart Hall, "Introduction to Part Three," Visual Culture: The Reader, eds. Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall (London:
Sage Publications, 1999), 311.

Like so many of the other interpretive communities examined in previous chapters, the
black community is heterogeneous. It is comprised of persons who possess different
characteristics but shared one common conviction: slavery posed an imminent threat to their
identity and livelihood. Each individual had their own unique experience and personal testimony
about being black in America, but collectively they acknowledged their vulnerable identity as the
kneeling slave. Intersections of race, class, gender, and geography challenged the homogeneity
of cultivating a communal response. The absence or denial of human and legal rights reinforced
their identity as the kneeling slave and made them subject to how the dominant society answered
the question about their manhood and humanity. Thus, the question still remains, why did
Patrick H. Reason appropriate the kneeling slave and why did the Philadelphia Vigilant
Community adopt the figure as their representative, if it reminded them of their subordinate
objectified position in American society?
Michael Harris's notions about how and why black audiences adopt pejorative images
about themselves offers some compelling insight into the appropriation process.16 He contends
that the appropriation of images that denigrate the black society is done with the intent to invert
the meanings ascribed to its pictorial representations. In doing so, the objective is "turning a sign
or trope inside out, upside down, to disrupt its meaning and impact."17 Harris indicates that this
inversion process involves the ability to ascribe a new context and re-appropriate the once
damaging image. In this final step, Harris notes that successful reappropriation is evident when
the audience adopts the image once used against them, makes it their own and ultimately
16

Houston A. Baker Jr, "Generational Shifts and the Recent Criticism of Afro-American Literature," Black
American Literature Forum 15 no. 1 (Spring 1981): 3-20.
17
Michael Harris, Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation (Chapel Hill: The University of North
Carolina Press, 2003), 191.

148
succeeds in "controlling it and preventing it from doing further harm."18 Although the Vigilant
Committee's work remained covert, it represented on a local level what the free black American
community did nationally.19 Their membership certificate constitutes a communal response that
expressed opposition but their individual voices reveal the tensions and differences that strained
their activism in a movement that disenfranchised them on different levels. Reason's
permutation provided the black community with a platform to contest meanings that defined
their identity as the stranger. Out of their opposition, the black community altered and inverted
what it meant for the black body to be an agent, actively involved in defining and rescuing self.

In Response of Strange Bodies: The Inversion of Subject and Setting

The seventeenth record entered on 14 August 1839 summarizes the events that led up to
the Vigilant Committee taking custody of a young boy who was destined to be hired out in
Philadelphia. The excerpt reads,
a letter intercepted directed to the number of a house in Shippen
Street, in which resided a man by the name of Day. From the
contents of the letter there is no doubt he intended selling the
boy. We had this man taken before Alderman Hutton who at
once decided that this man had no right to send the boy out of
this state. 20

Harris, Colored Pictures, 192.

For information on the free black community in northern cities and branches of the Vigilant Committee see Emma
Jones Lapsanksy, "Friends, Wives, and Strivings: Networks and Community Values among Nineteenth-Century
Philadelphia Afroamerican Elites," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 108, no. 1 (January
1984), 3-24; Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720-1840,
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 38-65, 66-99, 134-171; James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton,
Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North (New York: Holmes and Meier,
1999), 70; James Oliver Horton, Free People of Color Inside the African American Community (Washington:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 48.
20
[Philadelphia] Vigilant Committee, "Assisting Fugitives Slaves: The Philadelphia Vigilant Committee," Record of
Cases, 1839-1862, MS. 1721, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. See also
http://www.hsp.org/files/vigilantrecordl721.jpg
19

149

According to the records of what transpired, Day stated that he "only intended binding him out,"
but in the end the boy was "taken away and sent to the poor house."" This was one of several
cases recorded in the Vigilant Committee's books. It exemplifies the type of issues the
Committee addressed. Whether or not this particular young boy absconded from his master is
unknown but his presence raised concern. He was a stranger in a strange land. What resonates
most about this story and several other registered cases is how the black body is objectified
through a binding ritual.
David Theo Goldberg writes about this notion of bounded systems within the context of
racist discourse. He argues that society produces institutions that maintain notions about human
subjects as abstract bodies sites to ascribe meanings that establish preference and extend
privilege. In doing so, these bodies, both the subject and the institutions, are bound in systemic
racist discourse. As such, the body is symbolic of an experience:
.. .the body is central to ordinary experience. It offers a unique
paradigm: it is a symbol of a 'bounded system' whose parts and
functions are related in a complex structure, and whose
substance is confined by boundaries and limits that are fragile,
vulnerable, and threatened.22

Using Goldberg's definition of the body, it is easy to understand how the Vigilant Committee's
cases exemplify common occurrences that black Philadelphians experienced. The institutions
that comprised these complex structures involved the black body, abolitionist agents and a vast

21

See [Philadelphia] Vigilant Committee, "Assisting Fugitives Slaves," MS. 1721, Historical Society of
Penssylvania. http://www.hsp.org/files/vigilantrecordl721.jpg
22
David Theo Goldberg, "The Social Formation of Racist Discourse," in Racist Culture: Philosophy and Politics of
Meaning (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 306.

150
landscape of institutions that imposed restrictions. Simon Newman reminds us that
Philadelphia's terrain of institutions such as the almshouse, the gaol or jail, and hospitals were
the norm since the eighteenth century.23 These institutions later perfected a bounded system that
identified bodies as outsiders.
According to Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton, this identification system was
embraced as a reciprocal way of knowing the other as well as the self. For this reason, they
contend that, "[w]hat was revealed or hidden, what was altered or marked, or left alone, provided
indicationsclues, in effect, for others to interpret and form an idea of their chosen identities."
The Vigilant Committee's seventeenth case, like so many of its other cases, offers insight into
how the black community negotiated the identity of these strange black bodies. Within the
fragile boundaries of the vast landscape where social institutions limited black identities, they
managed to find ways to contest the ascribed identity of the black body as fugitive and invert the
runaway into stranger. They achieved this through notes that only described the stranger as a
case with complexion and gender but without a name to maintain anonymity and afford
protection from pursuers who sought to claim these foreign bodies. Through their membership
certificate, they contested the persistence of stereotypical visual clues that society endorsed to fix
ideas about who fugitives were, and what fugitives looked like (Figure 4.6). In doing so, they
responded to both pro-slavery advocates who created these images and their fellow anti-slavery
counterparts whose work sometimes helped perpetuate the identity of black body as slave or
fugitive.
23

Simon Newman, Embodied History: The Lives of the Poor in Early Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 8-11, 16-60.
24
Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton, "Visible Bodies: Power, Subordination and Identity in the EighteenthCentury Atlantic World," Journal of Social History 39, no. 1 (2005): 14.

151
Founded in Philadelphia in 1833 with the intention to abolish the domestic slave trade
and slavery "especially in the District of Columbia," the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS)
listed as an auxiliary goal to "elevate the character and condition of the people of color" through
education and religious instruction.25 A year later, the New York executive committee sent a
message to the mayor that declared their Constitutional rights to "freely speak, write and
publish" their sentiments on any subject as American citizens.

In 1835, Theodore Dwight

Weld initiated a petition drive to expose the truth about how American slavery is practiced in the
nation's capital and critique the hypocrisy inherent in the national rhetoric about liberty. Along
with their petitions, in 1836 the AASS put the Slave Market of America broadside into
circulation (Figure 4.7).
The AASS broadside is a visual allegory featuring a series of nine vignettes organized in
three row and three columns. It objectified American black bodies as national commodities and
enforced the ascribed meanings of slave or fugitive as its only potential identity. As slave or
fugitive, the broadside illustrated how a corporeal bond between the black body and the district's
landscape of capital boundaries and national liberties was institutionalized. AASS achieved this
by employing excessive language to compliment images of the black body. For example, the
kneeling slave is featured in the center vignette on the top row. The subject is enveloped like a
patriotic triptych contextualized by the first vignette in the row, "The Land of the Free" and the
last vignette in that row, "The Home of the Oppressed." The first vignette depicts the moment
when the nation's founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence proclaiming the
25

Theodore S. Wright, "Constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society," American Anti-Slavery Papers,
Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, D.C.
26
"To the Honorable Cornelius W. Lawrence," Omnium-Gatherum Collection, 16 July 1834, Moorland-Spingarn
Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C.

American soil and its inhabitants free from British tyranny and rule. The third vignette captures
what AASS wanted its readers to realize is an ordinary experience in the nation's capital
auctioning of black bodies as commodities.
Flanked by these two scenes, the kneeling slave is featured as the broadside's principal
figure. However, the identity of his black body and its relationship to a bounded system of
institutionalized slavery is the subject of the centerpiece. In the lower left side register he is
depicted as the supplicant. On the opposite side however, his identity is projected as a fugitive.
This dual identity which he shares within the vignette illustrated the complexities of how the
dominate society viewed black bodies. Depicted as either slave or fugitive, the black body is still
bounded by and to the institutions that define it. These traditional subordinate roles still offered
the black audience opportunities to negotiate the meanings they ascribed to both bodies. It also
reveals how the black community vacillated between two American identities that formed a part
of their double consciousness.
In his examination of W.E.B. DuBois's notions about double consciousness within the
black community, Paul Shackel notes how subaltern groups survive this state of two-ness as they
relate to the American landscape. He contends that they "exist along with the dominant
meaning, sometimes in order to seek a more pluralistic history..."

In the African Americans

quest to secure that pluralistic history, they rely on their collective memory which is rooted in
their collective "ordinary experiences" they share as a black community. Those details, nuances,
recollections, and memories inform them about how outsiders view them as the AASS slave or

27

Paul A. Shackel, Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape, (Gainesville, Florida: University of
Florida Press, 2001), 18.

fugitivea bonded identity. So, even though the AASS fugitive s physiological appearance
lacks the stereotypical knapsack and cane that Barbara Lacey and Marcus Wood contend were
used as visual clues to identify the runaway in eighteenth century imprints, his black body is
contextualized and therefore identified by its location.28 The use or reference to a historical
moment like the signing of the Declaration of Independence, to a national emblem like the flag
and the White House, or its association with a geographical sitethe plan of Washington,
defines the black body within the context of objects, people, and places that possess historical
meanings (Figure 4.8).
Pierre Charles L' Enfant, a French architect, is credited with the plans of Washington
D.C.'s landscape but Benjamin Banneker's calculations probably provided a foundation for his
design plans.29 In 1791 Thomas Jefferson assigned the self-taught African American astronomer
and mathematician to assist Andrew Ellicott with the task of surveying the district. As the story
goes, the plans for this historic site were lost after L'Enfant was removed from his duties.
Ellicott had to redesign the map from memory.

Whether or not Ellicott consulted Banneker in

this task is unknown. However, there is no doubt that the final plan a 10 mile (or 100 square
mile) diamond shaped tract, visually resembles the celestial body of Aquila (Figure 4.9). The
Potomac and Eastern rivers form two bodies of water that flow through the region and
28

Barbara Lacey, "Visual Images of Blacks in Early American Imprints," The William and Mary Quarterly: A
Magazine of Early American History and Culture 3, no. 1 (1996): 144; Marcus Wood, Blind Memory: Visual
Representations of Slavery in England and America, 1780-1865 (New York: Routledge 2000), 87-93.
29
For information about Benjamin Banneker biography and scientific works see Silvio A. Bedini, The Life of
Benjamin Banneker: The First African-American Man of Science, Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1999;
Henry E. Baker, "Benjamin Banneker, the Negro Mathematician and Astrologer," The Journal of Negro History 3,
no. 2 (April 1918), 99-118.
30
For more information about the events surrounding the L'Enfant incident in Washington folklore see Coolie
Verner, "Surveying and Mapping the New Federal City: The First Printed Maps of Washington, D.C.," Imago
Mundi 23 (1969): 63-65.

coincidentally the place where they intersect resembles the same location where Aquila's whiplike tail is mapped.
Banneker's assignment came shortly after a brief exchange he had with Jefferson. These
correspondences reveal Banneker's displeasure with the nation's hypocrisy as it rejoiced in its
freedom from the British metropole and simultaneously held black bodies in bondage.31 At the
time, Banneker was the only person to accurately predict a solar eclipse and the first African
American to publish a Farmer's Almanac. Banneker's almanac and his work as a surveyor all
occurred on the rise of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law which made it illegal to interfere with slaves
who abscond. Given the historical relevance that celestial bodies had in directing fugitives
towards the north and freedom, it is compelling to consider how the implications of Banneker's
astrological knowledge, the visual similarities that exist between the district's map and Aquila,
as well as how his work as a surveyor may have contributed to the fluidity of black bodies
moving through and beyond the capital's boundaries.
Some of the evidence that points to the implications astrology had on visual references to
freedom and ascribing agency to the black body during this period are even more striking. In
John Pierpont's 1839 poem The Fugitive's Slave: Apostrophe to the North Star he described the
sojourn of the slave who absconded on his quest for freedom.32 The fourteen stanzas that
comprise his poem connote the Christian light of truth as a visual representation of light that
originates from the constellation of stars- a visual sign also used by abolitionist to direct

Benjamin Banneker to Thomas Jefferson, 19 August 1791, American Memory, Library of Congress. Jefferson to
Banneker, 30 August 1791, American Memory, Library of Congress. See memory.loc.gov/.
32
John Pierpont, "The Fugitives Slave's Apostrophe to the North Star," in The Liberty Bell (Boston: For the
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Fair, 1839), 75-80.

fugitives to safety.

Using this light source to find his way, Pierpont suggests that the fugitive

knows that "thy light and truth shall set me free." In following this light, the fugitive sleeps by
day and travels by night with only the North Star to guide him as he pays homage to it:
as it hangs in the mid heaven flaming,
The homage of some nation claiming.
This nation to the Eagle* cowers;
Fit ensign! she's a bird of spoil:
Like worships like! for each devours
The earnings of another's toil.
I've felt her talons and her beak,
And now the gentler Lion seek.
In this final stanza, Pierpont's use of national iconographythe Eagle provides a dual imagery
that serves to critique America's notion of freedom and simultaneously acknowledge the
encoded visual world of meanings ascribed by black bodies to the constellation. In a footnote,
Pierpont simply states that the * is, "the Constellation Aquila...here meant by the astronomical
Fugitive."34
Reason's interest and knowledge of the constellations may have been the impetus needed
to incorporate a light source in his permutation.

In Reason's depiction of the supplicant for the

Vigilant Committee, he placed high values on the forehead of his subject to indicate that a light
source enters the picture plane from the upper right hand corner. Those high values repeat on the
shackles that bind his wrist, and cast a shadow of his black body on the surface of the landscape
directly behind him. Like the shadow, Reason's supplicant can and will move. He is without

For more information about astrological symbols in the black community see Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond
G. Dobard, Hidden in Plain View: The Secret Story of Quilts & the Underground Railroad, (New York: Anchor
Press, 2000), 7-14, 53-68, 177-183; Maude Wahlman, Signs and Symbols: African Images in African American
Quilts (Atlanta, Georgia: Tinwood, 2001), 39, 60.
34
Pierpont, "The Fugitives Slave's Apostrophe," 80.
35
"Repetition of the Lecture of Astronomy," The Colored American, February 20, 1841.

limitations. He is able to traverse the landscape without binding restrictions. Unlike all three
versions of Wedgwood's medallions, Reason's figure is not set against a vast void. With the
exception of the unidentifiable mound where the supplicant kneels, Wedgwood and the
Committee defined the black body as non-referential. Their subject has no origins, no history,
and no past. In the absence of spatial and temporal references, audiences were invited to
interpret when and where the black subject's narrative begins and ends.
The AASS broadside narrates the story of the once kneeling slave turned fugitive within a
cosmopolitan maze on a quest for freedom that he never successfully attains. Instead, he is
entrapped within the capitol's diamond-like landscape. Standing upright at a slight diagonal in a
runner's stance AASS depict the fugitive at the moment he attempts to traverse the densely
checkered matrix of intersecting streets and avenues. With two-hundred dollars on his head, his
body is marked as a foreign commodity. His aim is to leave behind the abuses of slavery
emblemized by the manacles, cart-whip and sickle in the upper right corner of his window box.
Whether he elects to travel down New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland or Delaware Avenues, all
routes end in one of the three public jails or back to the auction block in the capital's
marketplace. While there are multiple paths, they all end in the same institution that claims the
black body. In this context, the black body as identified as kneeling slave turned fugitive, has no
control, no liberties, and no agency.
The Vigilant Committee's membership certificate responds to these institutionalized
boundaries through an image that allegorizes a stranger's evolution from slavery into freedom.
He appears in the foreground after moving beyond the mountainous background. The condition
of his clothes gives the impression that they have been torn by branches and shrubbery that

latched on to the material fibers as he moved swiftly through a thickly forested maze. Facing a
diagonal on the lower right side of the picture plane the subject stops to kneel before he
continues travelling northeast. Although he is depicted in a moment when his body is firmly
grounded, he is not necessarily fixed nor stoic. He is a subject in process, an agent in control of
his own destiny and his story is part of the universal black experience.

Vigilant Interference or Self-Action: Whose Agency, Subject or Audience?

The Vigilant Committee handled a number of cases and maintained an extensive network
that allowed strangers to select their destination. Resolved cases had a destination that did not
limit them to the almshouse, the gaol or jail, or the hospital, but identified them within a tangible
trans-Atlantic world as a free agent. How stories about the stranger versus the fugitive are told,
visually depicted, and end seems to be one of several critical differences between what appears
on the Vigilant Committee's membership certificate and the AASS broadside. One of the most
notable and obvious changes made in the certificate is how the London Committee's motto
reads. With the aid of Reason's artistic craftsmanship, the Vigilant Committee elected to keep
the same words but drop the question mark that terminated the original motto. Their negotiation
of the question mark and acceptance of the motto's words altered the function of the sentence. It
was no longer a question that empowered the audience, whomever that may be, to answer and
therefore define the kneeling slave's identity. This subtle change turned the motto into a
rhetorical question, one that did not guarantee just anyone the power or right to ascribe meaning
to the black body. Instead, it empowered the kneeling slave to state his identity and embrace the
right to claim his body as man and brother. These ideals of self-empowerment are notions that

were expressed by the black community in general and by the artist in particular, making them
vigilant in awaiting those moments to encourage self-action.
Reason's beliefs in promoting and encouraging one's own agency is captured in the
minutes of the New York Coloured Citizens meeting when he seconded a resolution that was
unanimously adopted for the black community:
The speaker, in the course of his remarks, urged upon the
audience the necessity of self-action, and maintained the ground
that the emancipation of the colored people from political
bondage, depended almost exclusively upon the effects produced
by their united efforts and their own petitions; illustrating the
well known adage, 'God helps them who help themselves.

Reason's motion to acknowledge the importance of self-action and the necessity for the black
community to make their own petitions is reflected in his depiction of the kneeling slave's
words. The voices of the Coloured Citizens speaker, Reason's motion, and the subject's motto
form a community that echo the manifesto published in the nation's first African American
newspaper, Freedom's Journal. In the premiere editorial this black community declared, "We
wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us." I believe that Reason used
the Vigilant Committee's membership certificate as a place to express opposition to the question
of who speaks for the black community by declaring through the kneeling slave's motto that we
speak for ourselves and no longer need anyone to define us. We are men and brothers!
Unlike the Vigilant Committee's alteration, the AASS kept the motto the same. In
maintaining the integrity of the original motto, the AASS reinforced a sentiment conveyed
through the excessive political rhetoric found in their broadside. They identified themselves as
36
37

"Great Mass Meeting," The Colored American, December 12, 1840.

"Editorial," Freedom's Journal, March 16, 1827.

159
the kneeling slave's agent and thus proclaimed their right to interfere. A year after Weld
initiated the petition campaign which culminated in the AASS broadside, he sat at his desk to
write a letter to his fellow abolitionist and future wife, Angelina Grimke. His opening statement
conveys much about his perceived relationship to the kneeling slave and reinforces notions about
the black body's lack of agency:
Ah! Still kneeling, manacled, looking upward, pleading for help!
I caught a sheet at random from a large quantity on the desk of
the office to write you.. .1 had almost dashed my pen upon it
before I saw the kneeling slave!

Weld's initial response to the kneeling slave image that embellished the top of his page seems to
be shock at finding her there. His interjection registers as a moment of relief and reassurance
that she is fixed in her abject condition, bound, if not only to the page but also in the cases that
the AASS declared their right to intervene. Her fixed position ensures his role as agent because
she does not look up to pray, she looks up to plead. This type of supplication is not active
because she looks outside her own body for a source of help. As she pleads for an external
source of power, she also begs the question about her own humanity and empowers others to
ascribe it meaning.
In addition to the way these two different communities used the motto, there is a distinct
difference in the functionality of these objects that also affects their reading and reception. The
AASS broadside is an advertisement that uses persuasive words and images to launch a critical
attack on the nation's ambiguous treatment of enslaved Africans. The V.C. membership

38

Theodore Dwight Weld to Angelina Grimke, 15 December 1837 in Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina
Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke, 1822-1844 ed. Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L Dumond (New York; London: D.
Appleton-Century Company, 1934), 490.

certificate is an official document that records facts, events, and achievements. Keeping the
functionality of both documents in mind, there appears to be an obvious irony when their words
and images are compared and contrasted. The AASS broadside presents a series of facts and
events through their vignettes, but it is the achievement of black community's actions in securing
freedom for the stranger that counterattack the notion that black bodies lack agency.
Signed with her trademark pseudonym Ada, Sarah Forten, a member of Philadelphia's
astute black community in the 1830s, opened the first verse of one of her poems about strangers
with the lines, "Farewell! -but thou wilt soon forget. The stranger though hast seen, and in the
gay and busy world. Forget that I have been."39 Her verse reflects one sentiment held by the
black community that aided strangers that entered Philadelphia. Their comings and goings were
swift. Many of the strangers the Committee assisted moved on to their sister organization in
New York. The Committee also provided opportunities to trans-Atlantic locations such as
Trinidad, Canada, Liberia, and Liverpool, England. Although places such as Canada and Liberia
formed part of their network, these places were settlement options and did not constitute forced
emigration, nor did they form part of a covert colonization scheme. For some, like Sarah Mapps
Douglass's brother, Robert Douglass Jr. who became a Haitian emigrant, only to return a year
later, he viewed such plans favorably. Other people in the black community, like Patrick H.
Reason, expressed opposition to such schemes because they stripped the black body of agency
and denied its rights to claim national identity.40 Several members of the Vigilant Committee
also sought permanence on American soil. They viewed their ability to declare their
39

Ada, "The Farewell," The Liberator, June 30, 1832.

"Great Public Anti-Colonization Meeting," The Emancipator, December 20, 1838; "Great Anti-Colonization
Meeting in New York," The Emancipator, January 17, 1839.

40

161
independence within the American landscape and reap, if not maintain, the liberties afforded to
them as freedmen essential to their identity.
Jeff Malpas maintains that our ability to understand the opinions that an agent has
towards certain objects, we must consider temporal and spatial factors. He writes "understanding
an agent, understanding oneself, as engaged in some activity is a matter both of understanding
the agent as standing in certain casual and spatial relations to objects and of grasping the agent as
having certain relevant attitudesnotably certain relevant beliefs and desiresabout the objects
concerned."41 One of the objects that the black agent stood in relation to throughout the 1830s
and constantly had to negotiate was their identity as American citizens. Inherent to this identity
was the attainment and possession of political rights that national doctrines such as the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution provided. Through their use of political
rhetoric, the black audience questioned the inherent paradox evinced between the nation's words
and actions.
Jacqueline Bacon's work reveals how African American abolitionists adopted the
language of the Declaration of Independence and American Revolutionary themes to position
themselves within the historical and literary discourse about freedom. In doing so, they either
employed the adaptory style which finds commonalities between rhetor and audience, or an
advisory approach which emphasizes tensions in order to contest meanings. Bacon argues that
African American rhetorical traditions involved both. She contends that these persuasive styles
of reading, writing and speaking are all appropriation strategies, "simultaneously invoking and

J. E. Malpas, Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999), 95.

162
recreating their society's dominant text and topoi" because this "allows marginalized rhetors to
turn the language of those in power into a critique of their society."42 Through such
examinations the black community exposed mythologies about their manhood and brotherhood.
In addition, they also ascribed new meanings to text, like the London Committee's motto, which
once had the power to describe and define them through a question that granted the audience
agency to answer.
Although Bacon introduces her research within the scope of David Walker's 1829 Appeal
to the Coloured Citizens of the World, it is important to acknowledge that this text is but one
example of how black audience used national rhetoric to respond to questions about their place
within the American landscape. The 1830s was packed with a series of responses by black
audiences that challenged the meanings assigned to the kneeling slave's identity. Several of
these are not as graphic or aggressive as Walker's voice, but they are examples of how and when
African Americans adopted national themes to persuasively contest meanings about self.
When the British abolished slavery in the West Indies in 1834, the moment gave
American abolitionists a reason to question the perpetuity of the institution. In the aftermath of
West Indian abolition, the African American organ, The Colored American, reported on one of
the New York Political Association's meetings. Reason, who served as an executive committee
member, was present when another praised the "unparalleled sublimity of the moral spectacle
presented in the peaceable emancipation....and drawing a parallel in the greatness of the scene of

Jacqueline Bacon, "Do You Understand Your Own Language?: Revolutionary Topoi in the Rhetoric of African
American Abolitionists," Rhetoric Society Quarterly 28, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 57.

our anticipated triumph in the achievement of our political rights."

In the speaker's assertion

that African American rights were somehow tied to West Indian liberties, he acknowledged, as
did Reason and the Philadelphia Vigilant Committee, the correlation between the politics of
slavery and the politics of freedom that conjoined the kneeling slave's experience and identity
with the black freedman.
By 1837 the marginalized communities of abolitionist women were threatened when the
site of their Philadelphia convention, Pennsylvania Hall, was set ablaze by anti-abolitionists who
wanted to send a message of discontent.44 In response to this, Sarah Mapps Douglass, acting
secretary for the bi-racial Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS) recorded that its
members acknowledged the failure for civil authorities to address the mob that threatened their
lives. In their records, they resolved that,
the principles of the 'Declaration of Independence' were there
advocated and maintained, call upon us for redoubled efforts to
awaken the public mind to a sense of the ruin in which the
enslavement of a part of our countrymen threatens to involve the
liberties of all.

As Douglass reminds her audience of the Declarations principles, that all men are created equal,
she includes her race and gender as part of that universal truth that protects black (female) bodies
in the same way that white (male) bodies were valued, protected, and endowed with inalienable
rights. In recalling these basic principles, Douglass' and the PFASS, acknowledged that as free
"Public Meeting of the Political Association," The Colored American, August 17, 1839.
Beth A. Salerno, Sister Societies: Women's Antislavery Organizations in Antebelleum America (Dekalb: Norther
Illinois University Press, 2005), 85-89. See also Sarah Mapps Douglass, "For the Pennsylvania Freeman,"
Pennsylvania Freeman, June 21, 1838. Margaret Hope Bacon "By Moral Force Alone: The Antislavery Women and
Nonresistance," in The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women's Political Culture in Antebellum America, eds. Jean Fagan
Yellin and John C. Home (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994): 285-288.
45
Sarah Mapps Douglass, "Resolutioon of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society," Pennsylvania Freeman,
June 21, 1838.
44

164
women, both black and white, they are not foreigners, nor strangers to their native land. Neither
were they unaware of their birthright.
A year later, the state of Pennsylvania responded in kind and disenfranchised black
males.46 The act came on the heels of a response the AASS and other white abolitionist received
from Congress to their petition drive. A Gag Rule was put into effect to stifle, if not silence, any
discussions or debates over the subject of abolishing the slave trade.47 Both of these
community's were stripped of their Constitutional and human rights. Reduced to conditions that
paralleled the kneeling slave, who had no right to speak or to act, these events occasioned what
Douglass warned as a threat to all countrymen. In response to the removal of their rights, Purvis
issued an appeal to the state in which he used his voice to represent the forty-thousand African
Americans affected by this decision. In his opinion, one consequence of having lost voting
rights was that African Americans "have lost their check upon oppression, their wherewith to
buy friends, their panoply of manhood.. ."48 Having been stripped of one's manhood was
certainly a setback, a reversal of the fully robed stranger in process to freeman back into the
semi-nude supplicant whose loin cloth made him a modest foreign savage but not a manly
American of gentility. In one stroke of a pen, and without acknowledgement that the black
community was no longer asking a question about their manhood and brotherhood, instead

Eric Ledell Smith, "The End of Black Voting Rights in Pennsylvania: African Americans and the Pennsylvania
Constitutional Convention of 1837-1838, The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 65, no. 3 (Summer
1998): 279-280, 295-296.
47
Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837-1860 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1976), 6-12.
Robert Purvis, Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens Threatened with Disfranchisement, to the People of
Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1838), 4.

165
declaring it through rhetoric, the state ascribed meaning to their identity that erased their status as
freemen and American citizens.
In following the tradition of national rhetoric, Purvis persuasively recalled the work
Pennsylvania abolitionists such as Benjamin Franklin whom "have bound us to our homes here
with chains of gratitude."49 His use of this visual language connects the agent to the supplicant
in a way that identified white abolitionist as the reason why some of the free black population
existed. This, of course, was not withstanding the fact that these same benefactors declared their
independence from any type of binding other than that of the citizen to his native land. As
Purvis's argument closes, he uses more metaphors to draw attention to the hypocrisy of northern
politics and then reinforced the brotherhood that exists between the freeman and the enslaved:
This is not thefirsttime that northern statesmen have 'bowed the
knee to the dark spirit of slavery,' but it is thefirsttime that they
have bowed so low!....Is Pennsylvania.. .to get upon her knees
and repent of her humanity, to gratify those who disgrace the
very name of American Liberty, by holding brethren as
goods...? We freely acknowledge our brotherhood to the slave,
and our interest in his welfare....The very fact that we are deeply
interested for our kindred in bonds, shows that we are the right
sort of stuff to make good citizens of.

In his criticism of the state's action, Purvis elevates the character of the brotherhood that exist
between the black bodies of slave and freedman to suggest that their integrity qualifies them to
be the type of citizens the republic needs.
When the state of New York adopted a similar decision, which stripped African
American men of their voting privileges, Reason was once again in service to the Political
Association. As a member of the Committee of Arrangements, he encouraged resistance of "an
Purvis, Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens, 4.

anti-republican clause" which deprived them of their rights as Empire State citizens. In making
their case, the Committee also used national rhetoric to cite their forefathers' legacy within the
landscape of American bellicose. In doing so, they reinforced their aims as an organization and
suggested that suffrage was a right endowed by progeny, not one of the "privileges measured
according to the complexion of the skin."50 Scholars who study Eighteenth- and Nineteenthcentury black rhetoric agree that the black community used an encoded system of textual signs
and literary symbols to respond to paradoxes inherent in the dominant culture. Through this
rhetorical speech, the black community expressed opposition and contested meanings ascribed to
them by the outsiders.

Trope or Truth Shall Make You Free

In the same year that the Vigilant Committee commissioned Reason to produce their
membership certificate the artist created a frontispiece for the Liberty Bell (Figure 4.10-11). The
Liberty Bell was a series of writings published in Boston by the Friends of Freedom to provide
financial support for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Fairs. The publication had a lifespan of
nine years ending with its final edition in 1845. The publication is remembered as one of the
premiere historical works that contained writings by a number of prominent abolitionists. With
contributions from writers such as Frederick Douglass, Thomas Clarkson, William Lloyd
Garrison, Harriet Martineau and John Pierpont, just to name a few, the Liberty Bell became one

"Public Meeting of the Political Association," The Colored American, October 12, 1839; "Public Meeting of the
Political Association," The Colored American, October 19, 1839; "Preamble and Constitution of the New York
Association for the Political Elevation and Improvement of the People of Color," The Colored American, June 23,
1838.

167
of the first publications that reveal how the intersections of race, class, gender, and nationality
were present in the nation's movement to abolish slavery.
The kneeling slave is one of several figures that adorn the imagery featured in the gold
leaf embossed stamp press. The press is the sole image that embellishes the book's cover and
introduces its subject matter by wedding a symbol of freedom with an icon of enslavement. In
the image the kneeling slave looks up to the muse Liberty to plead for protection. Liberty is
portrayed as a white female figure and continues to maintain the visual trope of the black body
finding salvation in the body of the white nation as epitomized by Liberty. This visual
introduction to the book's content sets the stage for further visual and literary complexities that
appear throughout the text. On the inside cover another image has no figures represented (Figure
4.12). There are only reminders of an enslaved body that once existed but is now erased. A set
of shackles located underneath a bell that hangs off a tree branch serves as a reference to the
kneeling slave. The hanging of the bell presents an eerie visual reference to the black body being
extinguished and recalls another trope in the nation's historical rhetoric: Give Me Liberty or
Give Me Death! Thus, the body of the bell functions as a visual metaphor of the absent black
body and the female embodiment of the muse Liberty.
Once the reader moves beyond the contrast of freedom and enslavement featured on the
cover and the erasure of the black body on the inside cover, Reason's engraving The Truth Shall
Make Your Free is featured thereafter (Figure 4.13). Truth is a complex arrangement of several
scenes that comprise a visual allegory about salvation. The image is read clockwise as a series of
events in the life of any emancipated slave unfolds. The first scene begins with the arrival of a
slave ship in the distant harbor. The American landscape where the ship arrives is marked by a

national iconthe flag. A slave driver holding a cart-whip in hand stands to the right of the
American flag while an auctioneer raises his left hand to signal that the sale of a slave is nearly
final. A potential owner inspects the slave's mouth directly underneath the location where the
auctioneer stands. Moving closer to the lower right register of the image, a young white girl
holds literary instructions for her three slaves. A group of four emancipated slaves form a semicircle on the lower left side. The group includes a standing mother with her new born in arms, a
reclining male figure whose broken manacles dangle over his right bicep and terminate on the
ground under his right leg, and the kneeling slave. With the exception of the supplicant, whose
attention is directed towards the viewer, the freed slaves focus on the central figure a white
angelic woman who holds a Bible in her raised left hand, and makes a welcoming gesture with
her right arm. An illuminating light shines behind her head and forms a nimbus to give her a
spiritual context. She represents the visual and literary tropes that wedded truth to freedom. In
the final two scenes that transpire behind her, two black men are confronted by two white men.
One grabs the arm of the suspected fugitive to claim his black body and bind him as a slave of
the American landscape. In the distance, a black community appears to be in the process of
building a schoolhouse, as they take ownership of their fate and attempt to control their own
lives.
Both of the works that Reason completed in 1839 share one commonality the artist
altered the condition of the London Committee's motto. In the V.C. membership certificate, he
changed the motto so that it would read like a rhetorical question. In Truth, Reason completely
eliminated the motto so that the only context the kneeling slave had was through the words in the
title: Truth Shall Make You Free. By doing this, Reason inverted the context in which his

169
audience read the subject in relation to the words included in the visual. To take this a step
further, Reason's Truth appropriates a verse from the Gospel of John, verse 8:32. Those in his
audience familiar with this verse would know that it relates to the moment when Jesus confronts
his Hebrew followers to inform them that they too will be set free if they continue to abide by the
word. In response, and perhaps in their limited perspective of bondage, they remind Jesus that
having come from the lineage of Abraham, they were never servants and therefore need not be
delivered. It is then that Jesus reminds them that all have sin and fail short of God's glory. It is
by virtue of their sins that they are still in bondage but can be made free.
Given the ecclesiastical meanings that Reason placed the kneeling slave into in Truth,
this blatant context opens the image up to responses from different individuals and groups. At the
same time Truth seems to function as a visual response to questions regarding the African
American's ability to embrace Christianity or vice versa. If Reason ascribed Truth with visual
codes to question the institutionalized racism found in American life and culture, then his
intended audience is not limited to the Liberty Bell's readership. His audience also included
anyone who thought they were free of sin from the wrongs of American slavery, the slave trade
and the institutions that support these racist systems. Anyone who failed to realize the part they
played in the production, consumption, and distribution of black bodies, as objects, were sinners.
Anyone who fooled themselves into believing in the trope instead of the truth about the kneeling
slave contributed to institutions that controlled, excluded, marginalized and erased the black
voices. The problem in the deliverance of Reason's message about truth is as Ralph Thompson

acknowledges was rather ineffective because "the Liberty Bell circulated among those people
who already knew and accepted the tenets it upheld."51
According to Sharon Patton, Reason's work on the V.C. membership certificate
"...counters the stereotype of Wedgwood's Christian image of blacks as docile."52 Meaning,
audiences viewed Wedgwood's supplicant as easily managed and lacking free will. The stranger
in the certificate, however, is independent and responsible for his own self-action. In her
analysis, Patton also contends that one of the meanings assigned to the Wedgwood slave
medallion are notions of Christian pathosqualities found in speech and writing that evoke pity
and were used by makers to persuade their audience to sympathize. Reason's work moves
beyond these tropes to contest the stories told about and meanings ascribed to the kneeling slave.
In doing this, his work both empowered the black community through a simple membership
certificate, but it also critiques black community for their failure to acknowledge their own
contribution in empowering racist systems. One way the individuals and groups within the black
community empowered these systems and the racist meanings others associated with the
kneeling slave was in their active procurement and reproduction of images that carried notions
about African Americans their salvation, and their ability to transcend abject conditions without
the assistance of benevolent white patrons.
In 1834, upon the request of Mary Anne Dickerson, a free black woman in Philadelphia,
Robert Douglass, an artist and the brother of Sarah Mapps Douglass, produced a pen and ink
wash drawing of the Boroom Slave (Figure 4.14). Dickerson's permutation was housed in a
51

Ralph Thompson, "The Liberty Bell and Other Anti-Slavery Gift-Books," The New England Quarterly 7, no. 1
(March 1934): 163.
52
Sharon F. Patton, African American Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 78.

171
quarto size album-scrapbook, very popular during that period. The gilt ornamental border that
embellished the red morocco album had as its centerpiece a gilt aeolean harp accented by a blind
stamped leaf and flora design pattern. The object alone signified prosperity, culture, and
refinement. The eighty pages contained in Dickerson's album included landscape paintings by
prominent artist such as Asher B. Durand and samplings of poems prepared by her active
abolitionist sister friends such as Sarah Mapps Douglass and Sarah Forten. These albums were
produced over an extended period of time and Dickerson probably started her album during the
early 1830s when she entered grade school. Directly underneath Douglass' permutation, the
words from the English poet William Shenstone read:
When the grim lion urged his cruel chace,
When the stern panther, sought his midnight prey,
What fate reserved me for this Christian race?
O race more polished, more severe than they.
The coupling of Shenstone's words which conveys Christian peity with an image that had at least
two potential sources for Dickerson's interest, underscore the paradoxical nature of the kneeling
slave and the meanings ascribed to it by the master narratives that created it. To this end, like
Reason's Truth the ecclesiastical rhetoric that the black audience embraced helps to
contextualize this paradoxical pairing of image and texts.
In Dickerson's album, Shenstone's stanza alludes to the Christian's destiny as a racea
communal body that is refined and austere. It uses this metaphor to compare and contrast the
self to non-believers. In the Library Company of Philadelphia's 1993 report, the Dickerson
album is described as a pedagogical instrument.53 Filled with materials that the Dickersons'
53

Phillip Lapsansky, "Afro-Americana: Meet the Dickersons," in Annual Report, The Library Company of
Philadelphia (1993): 22-23.

172
schoolmistress Ms. Douglass used to promote "neatness, taste, and cultivated expression," it is
also recognized that "the charm, elegance, and beauty of these albums should not hide the fact
that they are documents of conflict and struggle."54 What evidence of conflict and struggle could
possibly exist in an album filled with such refinement? What struggle, beyond her obvious need
and desire to cultivate improved taste, exudes from the album of such a well-bred free black girl?
How does the Douglass's pen and ink provide insight into the potential conflict and struggle that
Dickerson experienced, and how might that information afford evidence of the issues that the
Philadelphian black community faced as well?
Tracing the history of this image backwards, its association with several master narratives
becomes apparent. The image appeared in Lydia Maria Child's 1833 tract An Appeal in Favor of
that Class of Americans Called Africans (Figure 4.15) Child's story describes the painful
experience of a slave subjected to corporal punishment by her master. In doing so, she offers
fourteen propositions that summarize various forms of acceptable corporal punishment found
within the plantocracy. According to Carolyn Sorisio this form of rhetoric allowed Child to
construct a collective body of the slavocracy that envelops individual experiences and thus
presents it to the reader with the intent to persuade them to act.
What readers receive, instead, is a sense of constant lashing, a continuous
maiming of the collective slave body. Rather than looking at the marks
on any one slave's body, or trying to represent his or her individual pain,
Child focuses on the scars made on the overall 'body' of the slave
population. One advantage Child gains through this technique is that
readers cannot dismiss 'a' story as false. They have to listen to the level
of pain that is consistently and regularly applied to slaves' bodies.

54

Lapsansky, "Meet the Dickersons," 17-24.

Carolyn Sorisio, "The Spectacle of the Body: Torture in the Antislavery Writing of Lydia Maria Child and
Frances E. W. Harper," Modern Language Studies 30, no.l (Spring 2000): 55.
55

While readers are challenged to dismiss the story as erroneous or a fabrication, this technique of
repetition used by other writers reveals how one slave story is trivialized in master narratives.
Child's narration attempts to transfer the reader from position of spectator to spokesperson by
placing them within the body of the slave's experience.
Sorisio's examination of Child's tract acknowledges its paradoxical nature within the
antislavery discourse. It is this form of rhetoric that permeates the intersections of race, class,
gender, and geographical boundaries to encourage communication between writer and reader.56
In order to represent this discourse, Sorisio argues that Child employed techniques that study the
corporeal nature of slavery in terms of the slave's tortured body.57 Child's techniques actually
represent power relationships negotiated between three bodies: the author, the reader, and the
characters in her story. In the case of Child's Appeal those characters include the slave
represented by a tortured black body, the master represented by an exonerated white male body,
and the reader whose body is challenged with the right to intervene, repeat, or contest the story.
According to Hayden White, a narrative is "a solution to a problem of general human
concern, namely the problem of how to translate knowing into telling, the problem of fashioning
human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning that are generally human
rather than culture-specific."58 Slave narratives had been employed by the black community as a
solution to two problems. It allowed them to speak their own truth about their experiences and it
empowered them to express opposition to conditions that threatened their community. The
problem with most slave narratives was they were undervalued and often discounted or
56

Sorisio, "The Spectacle of the Body," 45.

Sorisio, "The Spectacle of the Body," 47-48.
58
Hayden White, "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality," in On Narrative ed. W.J.T. Mitchell
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 1.
57

discredited by more credible voices outside the black community. Some of these voices narrated
stories from, about and for the master.
Sorisio believes that Child used these techniques to challenge her readers to diminish the
potency of the master narrative. She contends that master's text is empowered only if he has a
captive audience. Therefore, the power of the master narrative "depends on his being able to
control its circulation and reception."59 But it is Child's voice, not the slave that retells this story.
Thus, the perspective is still told from outside the slave's body. At some degree the narrative is
empowered by Child's retelling and through her circulation to audiences like Dickerson who
were not only exposed to, but potentially horrified by, the slave's experience. As a refined child
of the Philadelphia free black community, Dickerson formed a new body of readers.
Distribution, reception, and responses from this body must have included some level of internal
conflict and struggle over her privileged identity as a free black whose body would never
experience the torment and torture endured by the female supplicant.
Child's use of the Boroom Slave image to embellish her text constructs a paradox about
the source of power as Christian truth or narrative and visual trope. Did these things reside
within the plantocracy's body as represented by the master, the slave's body as depicted by the
image of the Boroom Slave, or her body of readers as exemplified by the young Miss Dickerson?
This pairing also raises the question who tells the story, who knows the truth and why do these
three bodies vie for control over the black body? In essence, it reveals how the black body
became the site for negotiation over rhetoric, and the power to tell and know the truth. The
persistence of the master's control stems from an escalated fear instilled in the slave and the
59

Sorisio, "The Spectacle of the Body," 52.

175
reader who both dare speak the truth. Sorisis notes that in Child's story, "slaves are repeatedly
warned that this spectacle must remain a secret, with similar torture the toll of telling."60 Despite
Child's proclamation at the beginning of the story that "the negro's fate depends entirely on the
character of his master," it is the character of black readers such as Dickerson, who stand as
examples of potential agents who question this proposition and are locked in a conflict and
struggle to tell the truth about the abuses that the slave's black body endured. '
In 1825 a British woman named Mrs. Sarah Lee (formerly Mrs. T.E. Bowdich), wrote
and published The Boroom Slave. The story was then published in the 1828 Forget-Me-Not
series produced by the female literary circuit in London.62 The same series was also published
and sold at fairs in Philadelphia Since Lee accompanied her former husband on his second
voyage to Africa, her story was deemed a first-hand truthful account of the effects the slave trade
had on the black body. Following its trans-Atlantic journey, the story was reprinted again in the
May 1829 edition of the African Repository, the main organ of the American Colonization
Society founded in Liberia in 1817.

In the 1835 reprint of the story, Lee reflected on how all

her life she had "been occupied by facts, and felt, that anything I could produce would be sadly
misplaced in a work of fiction."64 Lee's facts formed the basis for the Boroom Slave story to tell
the truth about the African slave trade and how the black body was redeemed through acceptance
of Christian faith.
60

Sorisio, "The Spectacle of the Body," 52.

Child, Appeal, 28.
62
Mrs. E. Bowditch "The Boroom Slave" in Forget Me Not: A Christmas and New Year's Present edited by
Frederic Shoberl (London: 1828), 37-77.
63
Mrs. E. Bowditch, "The Boroom Slave," The African Repository and Colonial Journal 5, no. 3 (May 1829): 6585.
64
Sarah Lee, "Introduction" in Stories of Strange Lands and Fragments from the Notes of a Traveller (London:
Edward Moxon, 1835), xi.
61

The story chronicles the experience of a care-free African princess named Inna who hails
from the village of Melli, in the country of Boroom. In her youthful years she was said to be
graceful and beautiful capturing the eye of many men. However, she was destined to marry a
chief. Warned on numerous occasions not to travel outside the boundaries of her community,
Inna was captured one day by slavers and sold to a couple who resided at an English settlement
not far from her home. After being stripped of her African symbols and educated in English
ways and literacy, she realizes that her salvation lies in her conversion to Christianity. Only then
is she permitted to return home. According to Honour, Inna's ennobled presence effects a "little
reformation" that decreases the act of human sacrifice, and embraces the changes that English
colonizers bring to a region that reaps the benefits of the slave trade.65 The exact moment when
this reform occurs Inna's mistress informs her that, "there must be some powerful motive to
induce an unlettered being to admit truths which are not evident to the senses; and before a
savage can be truly converted, we must make him sensible of the advantages of embracing a new
faith."66 The 'we' that Lee refers to are the colonizers, who have transported Africans to strange
lands in order to form an isolated and controlled community of black bodies. The truth she
admitted were acknowledgment of a non-Christian past.
The story inspired artist Henry Thomson to produce a painting of the same name (Figure
4.16). Thomson's Boroom Slave represents this moment when Inna is motivated by truth to
embrace Christianity. It is this original work by Thomson that embellished Child's publication
as an engraved frontispiece. The image's association with the original story and Child's Appeal

66

Hugh Honour, The Image of the Black in Western Art, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 4:130-131.
T.E. Bowditch, "The Boroom Slave," The African Repository and Colonial Journal 5, no. 3 (May 1829): 81.

created two sources where the literary trope of Christian salvation is reinforced. One or both
stories inspired Mary Anne Dickerson to have Robert Douglass reproduce its likeness for her
private collection. Hugh Honour indicates that Thomson's depiction of the Boroom slave
followed Mrs. Bowditch's story of the same name precisely.

In doing so, Thomson captures a

moment that Honour describes as "the first flash of religious experience," to produce a
representation that "demonstrates the smoothness of the transition from abolitionist to colonialist
images."

Honour identifies this image as an example of how artists used permutations to

convert visual representations that once depicted the power to destroy its subject, into the power
to control them. This is an interesting paradox because the power to control ultimately translates
into a self-destructive power. By employing these techniques of representation artists, authors,
readers, and the black audiencelike Dickerson all have some power to produce and assign
meanings that control the subject.
Thomson's use of pictorial devices such as a lightning bolt that strikes on the far right
side of the Boroom Slave produce the first flash of religious experience within a given space and
time, but not necessarily a spiritual conversion of the black body. Transformation occurs in the
scene, not in the Boroom Slave, for it is only after the black body is fully knowledgeable of what
this change means and its advantages that change will occur. This last point is critical to the
meanings ascribed to the kneeling slave's black body. The ability and willingness for the black
community to embrace Christianity was historically challenged. Legally, the profession of
religious truths by the enslaved body did not ensure liberty. Politically, the adoption of

Honour, The Image of the Black, 1:130-131.

Honour, The Image of the Black, 1:130.

Christianity by free African Americans like Dickerson did not necessitate that the white
Christian community would embrace them into the body of faith, an issue that resulted in the
establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal church in Philadelphia.69 As the menacing
darkness of billowing clouds transition into a state of enlightened freedom, the picturesque
enslaved princess kneels in the perpetuity of prayerful submission. The symbols of her heathen
past a turban, plume, and beadsremain at her right side, she embraces the body of
Christianity but not vice versa.
Norman L. Kleebatt's examination of paintings produced by black artist that are based on
master narratives reveals the tensions that persist when "the artist has appropriated a literary
theme from an 'empowered' author whose text positively affirms the artist's racial, ethnic,
and/or religious difference." In his consideration of the master narratives written by Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kleebatt reveals that both texts, "advocated
religious equality in a society that remains predominately gentile..." however, ".. .Stowe
championed slavery's abolition but cosigned blacks to a normatively white and Christian
world."70 Mrs. Lee's story about the Boroom Slave can be viewed in this same manner as an act
of consignment where the objectified body is merely passed over from one patriarchal system of
dominance into another. As the kneeling slave changes hands from white master to white father,
the images associated with it reproduce the meanings ascribed to the truth about who controls the
black body, where its agency lies and what power can release it from this unspeakable torture.

W.E.B DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study ed. Henry Louis Gates (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2007), 12, 141-146, 148-150, 162-163.
70
Norman L. Kleebatt, "Master Narratives/ Minority Artists," Art Journal 57, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 32.

179
It is uncertain whether or not Dickerson's desire to have a replica of this image was based
on her reading of Child's Appeal, or derived from her familiarity with the original story of the
same, The Boroom Slave. What is important is that this permutation is tied to a master narrative,
one that either challenges its reader to serve as an agent of change for the black body that
experiences corporal abuses or recognizes the moment when the black body embraces
Christianity as the only truth that will offer deliverance. Several of these stories repeat a linear
perspective about enslaved Africans that were condescending and beguiling towards African
cultural ways. In Ann Smart Martin's examination of how slaves participated in the retail market
of the eighteenth century, she considered some of the reasons why they selected certain objects.
Remaining mindful that consumption patterns are driven by desires and pleasures, Martin
reminds us that slaves had to operate within "two overlapping circles:" one that involved work
for the master and the other for themselves.71 As they negotiated this reality, which also "set the
boundaries" for their retail dealings, we must remember that despite the free status of black
Philadelphians, they also had to negotiate their lives as consumers within and outside the
dominant world.
With this in mind, some free black audiences may have used these pictorial narratives to
contest their place outside the margins of the mainstream cultural landscape. Some may have
appropriated it as a means to accept the ecclesiastical message of redemption while
simultaneously rejecting the meanings ascribed by the master narrative which suggest that the
black body was unworthy and unable to embrace Christianity. Possession of the image may have

71

Ann Smart Martin, Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia (Baltimore,
Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 174.

provided the reader a visual reminder of what the master narrative tells them about their identity
versus what they know to be true. It may also have offered them a means to remember their
duties to the body of a community they could empathize with, but could never truly relate to or
share in their experience. Finally, black representation outside of self portraits, were probably
scarce, making permutations of other works a viable choice. Whatever the reason for their
consumption when black community members like Dickerson selected images such as the
Boroom Slave, they participated in the paradoxical discourse that transpired between the master
narrative's readers and writers. At the same time, they were had the opportunity to accept or
contest meanings ascribed to its visual allegory. Through all these interactions and experiences,
they responded to the visual and literary tropes about the kneeling slave and assigned their own
truths.

Conclusion
This chapter examined how the American black community responded to the multiple
meanings other audiences ascribed to the Wedgwood slave medallion's imagery and its
subsequent versions. For over a half-century, audiences outside the perimeters of the black
community assigned meanings to the kneeling slave figure that defined black identity and set
standards on how to gauge black agency. This chapter took a look at why Philadelphia's free
black community appropriated the image for the purposes of representation, and how they
negotiated its meanings in order to empower themselves. Their responses reveal what they
deemed important to their identity as black Americans and how they used the image to contest
how outsiders defined them. Through an appropriation process, members of this black

181
community inverted the image and its former meanings in order to affix new definitions of selfaction. In the end, the black community's responses were just as varied and different as any
other community examined in this dissertation.
The different responses examined in this chapter range from a membership certificate
commissioned by a male-dominated organization of black abolitionists, to individual selections
and preferences made by black female consumers who embraced permutations that exacted
master narratives. These examples demonstrate the principal thesis of this dissertation:
audiences responded differently to the Wedgwood slave medallion and its subsequent versions.
Even when the responses stemmed from a specific community of interpretive readers who shared
some commonalities, as individual and group audience members, they brought their own unique
experiences that informed their decision to accept or contest the meanings others ascribed to the
object and its numerous variations. For the black community, evidence of response is pivotal to
understanding and appreciating the full story of the Wedgwood slave medallion and its
permutations. Exclusion of their voice denies their notions of identity ever existed and questions
whether or not they acted as agents of change before we can contemplate the possibility of
response. To this end, this chapter was intentionally structured to move from the larger picture
of the black community's response to a smaller scope that focused on individual black reactions.
Thus, it started with Patrick H. Reason's production of the African American Vigilant
Committee's membership certificate, moved to Reason's Truth Shall Make You Free and
concluded with Mary Anne Dickerson's version of the Boroom Slave.
This was done in order to show how collective experiences contribute to the production
of objects that reflect community responses, but it is the intersections of race, class, gender, and

nationality as evinced through the location of the black body on the landscape, that forms the
basis for the complex matrix of individual opinions. Even in the case of Patrick H. Reason, his
1835 permutation of the kneeling female slave proves that, in the absence of community voices,
the reproduction of an image reveals very little contest. However, when there are multiple
voices contributing to the dialogue and social events that aid in generating new perspectives, the
altered object, as featured in the membership certificate, evolved into a response that contested
meanings. It was only in the aftermath of this membership certificate that Reason returned to the
kneeling slave image, as an individual with social experiences and political exposure, to create
another visual allegory in Truth, in which the image contributed to a new genre of rhetoric that
contested the tropes associated with black identity and agency to embrace their own truth as an
interpretive community.
By taking a closer look at these contested responses through a thorough visual analysis
that contrast and compares permutations produced by black makers and users, this chapter
considered how the Philadelphian black community justified their use of a powerful abolitionist
icon. It also shows how they then added to and modified those compositional components they
viewed as damaging to contest encrypted codes that granted meaning to the subject and defined
them as a collective group. Ultimately, this chapter provided an examination in an unfolding
narrative about the different audiences whose responses to the Wedgwood slave medallion's
imagery is captured in their production and consumption of objects that bare the image. By
examining the black community responses, this chapter upheld the black voice as an essential
part of the vast heterogeneous audience responses that made and used this historic image.
Secondly, inclusion of the black response continues to fill a void that has been either missing,

ignored, and denied in previous scholarship that investigates objects that bare the black subject
as a principle design element. Inclusion of the black response in this instance helps to raise
awareness about its existence, proves that the black response has always existed and been
available to us, and it effectively challenges what we have known and believed to be true about
who responded, why they responded and questions if they in fact responded in accordance with
each other at all times.
One question that this chapter did not ask but is often raised in the minds of readers and
by scholars is how effective was it for the nineteenth-century black community to adopt an
image such as the kneeling slave figure, knowing that its historical production, consumption and
meanings bound their identity to an objectified abjectness and grounded their agency as
irreversibly fixed and stoic. Although his definition of appropriation and inversion help
formulate some of the responses considered in this chapter, Michael Harris is troubled by
Africans Americans who appropriate certain stereotypical images because he believes that the
meanings ascribed to them by persons outside the black community are far to damaging to every
gain control and alter in an effort to empower.72
In the quintessential speech given by Audre Lorde, she questioned the effectiveness of
using what she called the 'Master's Tools,' which are the devices and objects such as the
Wedgwood slave medallion to invert the power its ascribed meanings possess. In pondering the
consequences of this approach, Lorde believed that "...only the most narrow perimeters of
change are possible and allowable." In conclusion, Lorde contends that ".. .the master's tools
will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own
72

Michael Harris, Colored Pictures, 190.

game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change." If this is so then how
effective is in terms of ascribing new meanings to objects that have a history of makers and
users, production processes and distribution patterns that expand and contract in ways that
intersect across a broad spectrum of audiences who respond differently? Even with the smallest
measure of change, for the nineteenth-century black community, may have been more significant
to them then, than what we could imagine today.
Norman Kleebatt suggests that even though "nineteenth-century attitudes toward the
Other seem to have necessitated a significant accommodation to the host culture on the part of
the outsider, the minority artist could express group pride by clever selection of subject
matter."73 Patrick H. Reason's versions of the Wedgwood slave medallion are often overlooked,
overshadowed and ignored by scholarship. The value of his work is immeasurable when his
presence as one of very few acting black engraver during this heightened period of abolitionist
work of the nineteenth century is taken into consideration.74 In the absence of Reason's
permutation, the black response, as exemplified through a community and an artist, to the
Wedgwood slave medallion and its subsequent permutations cease to exist.
Reason's oeuvre affords scholars that examine abolitionist imagery the opportunity to
consider what the black community knew and what they believed about their identities, how they
elected to act, represent and contest those who opposed their ideas. Taking this into
consideration, Reason probably viewed his art as an extension of the identity and agency of the
black community. They are both subjects in process. On the fourth of July in 1839, Reason
73

Kleebatt, "Master Narratives," 32.

Erika Piola, "Object, Producer, and Consumer of Popular Prints: A Study of Afro-Americana Graphics at the
Library Company of Philadelphia," Imprint 27, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 18.
74

presented a dissertation to the Phoenixoman Society. In his paper, he compared art to the life of
a plant, how it grows and its capacity to improve. Like the black subject in process, Reason
exclaimed that art "is a plant that grows naturally in many soils, but without culture scarce to
perfection in any soil; it is susceptible of much refinement, and is by proper care greatly
improved."

Hence, Reason's alternative readings and versions of the kneeling slave provide

fertile soil to locate different black responses and consider how the African American
production, distribution and trafficking of the subject in process provides a trajectory to contest
previously assigned meanings.

Patrick H. Reason, "Dissertation on Fine Art," The Colored American, July 13, 1839.

Conclusion
This dissertation explored how different audiences responded to the Wedgwood slave
medallion and some of its subsequent permutations. The investigation covered a half-century
(1787-1839) of documented verbal reactions and visual permutations attributed to the original
design. I used these materials to show how Anglo-American audiences contested, altered, and
assigned meanings to a set of related objects that featured the kneeling slave as the central figure.
The investigation questioned the assumption that Wedgwood's slave medallion was always wellreceived by all its users. In fact, the investigation revealed that audiences who acquired the
object and altered it for their own agendas challenged earlier meanings. I reconstructed the
production process in Chapter one to show how the slave medallion was manufactured, who its
makers targeted as recipients, and what responses makers expected. As the foundation of
audience responses, the production process underscored how the object's inherently ambiguous
imagery gave rise to divergent responses. Chapter two focused on how individuals within the
maker's intended audience distributed and acquired the object. Chapters three and four
investigated group responses from female community and the African American community
respectively. Studying audience responses reinforced the relationship between makers, users,
object, and meaning.
Through a series of case studies, I showed how certain individuals and groups within a
particular community responded to these objects. However, the characteristics that differentiate
individuals and groups further complicated the already complex object transactions that occurred
within and outside each community. My study highlighted the nuances of these community
interactions to show how the intersections of race, class, gender and nationality trivialized the

ways audiences read and responded to the slave medallion. The actual parsing out of differences
that exists between individuals and groups that comprise a community demands greater attention
for a project of this scope. In addition, in locating and using the voices of individuals and
groups, this study would have benefitted from some clarification on how these people identified
with or were defined by their own community.
My ultimate goal was to question the notion that audience responses to the Wedgwood
slave medallion was one of universal acceptance. The notion of universal acceptance stemmed
from some scholarship that focused on the object, and permutations of its imagery, within a
vacuum of makers and users who appeared to share similar characteristics, agendas and ideas
about the object's meanings but did not always agree. In reality, this audience was a mixed bag
of individuals and groups who disagreed about the meanings they attributed to these objects.
This occurred within and outside of their respective community and resulted in the contested
meanings they assigned to the slave medallion and alterations of the original design. In order to
argue that contested meanings continued to be ascribed to these objects, I mapped out the slave
medallion's history. I chronicled this history from the object's moment of inception amongst a
group of London abolitionists until a group of individuals within the African American
community appropriated the object's imagery for their own purposes. My objective was to
unveil these varied responses through individual and group voices as well as the evidence
provided in their altered objects. I especially aimed to locate, unearth, and use the voices and
objects of individuals and groups who identified with traditionally marginalized and excluded
community, such as women and African Americans.

As with any study, it is not always possible to locate all evidence needed to support the
premise. This is especially true when the investigation focuses on individuals and groups from a
historically remote time and space. Nonetheless, the ability to locate and capture the voices of
people who have traditionally been undervalued, marginalized and excluded is an essential task
any scholar must undertake in order to provide a broader perspective of how objects were made,
used and received by each community. In an ideal situation, access and availability of materials
needed to prove a hypothesis is abundant. In the case of this study, those voices were not always
there. When those voices were either unattainable or unavailable, I deferred to moments when
that audience manufactured and used alterations of the original object, or design, to provide
proof that the individual or group responded through visual and material culture. This enabled
me to argue that reception existed through the Anglo-American traffic of images, motifs and
objects that related to the original design. My investigation of this traffic allowed me to debut
objects made and used by the African American community that are rarely if ever considered in
the field.
Using proof of object traffic, I showed how different groups appropriated and then
changed the image to fit their agenda. A closer reading of these altered objects would have
illuminated the connections and differences that existed between the original object and its
altered state. This is certainly something that I will attend to with more detail as I continue to
investigate these objects. Visual analysis of the changes might also reveal how audience
responses are linked to the original object's inherent ambiguities. An object's visual evidence
can reveal that certain compositional components read in isolation will trigger one response from
an individual or group and quit another from a different audience.

Ultimately, this dissertation offers a workable model to investigate the traffic of a single
object over time. As I advance this dissertation into a larger project, I will explore other
iterations of the Wedgwood slave medallion that deserve attention, like the numismatic
collection of coins housed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. As an
inherently tangible and transferrable object, these half-penny coins were produced and used
during periods of economic downturn throughout the Anglo-American empires. These objects,
that feature the kneeling slave as a supplemental motif on the obverse side of each coin, offers a
wealth of information to ascertain what correlations its makers and users made between the
economic traffic of goods, the eminent abolition of the slave trade and slavery, and the
persistence to place monetary value on the black body.
The model also reveals what some of the broader implications are to advance studies that
have already explored iterations of the same object. For example, Edmonia Lewis's Forever
Free, is a work that consistently receives scholarly attention. This model provides a new
dimension to reflect upon and possibly recast former investigations that do not take into account
how the traffic of the kneeling slave image and audience responses contributed to Lewis's
decisions to appropriate the image as a form of visual politics. This type of study has the
potential to explain how and why African American expatriates, like Lewis, maintained
connections with home through their adaption and use of images that held resonance for the
African Diaspora community. Then there are cultural landmarks such as Tuskegee University's
statue Lifting the Veil, that offer an opportunity to explore why the black community
appropriated and inverted the kneeling slave image to contest notions that upheld the absence of
black agency, to enforce ideals about self-determination through education. As a form of

sculptural design, it provides an opportunity to explore how the black community recast the
image of the Lincoln memorial to feature a prominent black leader. Returning to Kirk Savage's
groundbreaking study, juxtaposition of these two monuments provides a forum to examine what
meanings the black community ascribed to this new iteration.
This model basically uncovers the implications for audience reception, how individuals
and groups use the object differently, and why they assign certain meanings. Most salient is its
capacity to unearth and study audience responses that are difficult to locate like the African
American community. Using both documented and visual evidence available, it is possible to
gain new insight on both the complexities of a single object over time, space, and varying
responses by individuals and groups that comprise its trans-national audience. As I continue to
ground my investigation upon the traffic of objects, I will frame my findings within the scope of
how race, class, gender, and nationality activate audience responses. With this in mind, I must
acknowledge the historical significance of debates about black representation, and ultimately
contend with the evolving notion that this is the "post-race" era. What these ideas mean for how
art by, for, and about black subjects effects scholarly examinations such as mine will also
determine how the field recognizes the significance of the voices that responded to objects that
are as timely as the investigations that unearthed them.

191
Bibliography
Adams, Elizabeth Bryding. The Dwight and Lucille Beeson Wedgwood Collection at the
Birmingham Museum of Art. Birmingham, Alabama: Birmingham Museum of Art, 1992.
Alexander, L. T. "Clay Tobacco Smoking Pipes from the Caleb House." The Archeological
Society of Delaware 9 (June 1978): 1-43.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr, eds. Identities. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1995.
Anti-Slavery Album. National Maritime Museum Archives. Liverpool [England].
Avery, C. Louise. "A Gift of Ornamental Wedgwood." The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Bulletin. 27, no. 11 (November 1932): 237-238.
Bacon, Jacqueline. The Humblest Stand Forth: Rhetoric, Empowerment, and Abolition.
Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002.
, and Glen McClish. "Reinventing the Master's Tools: Nineteenth-Century African-American
Literary Societies of Philadelphia and Rhetorical Education." Rhetoric Society Quarterly. 30, no.
4 (Autumn 2000): 19-47.
. "Do You Understand Your Language?" Revolutionary Topoi in the Rhetoric of African
American Abolitionists." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 28, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 55-75.
Bailyn, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1986.
Barnard, Harry. "The Etruria Museum." The Connoisseur 85, no. 1 (1930): 295- 299.
Barnes, Gilbert H, and Dwight L. Dumond. eds. Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina
Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke, 1822-1844. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1934.
Bedford, J. Wedgwood Jasperware. New York: Waker, 1965.
Bermingham, Ann, and John Brewer, eds. The Consumption of Culture, 1600-1800: Image,
Object, Text. Consumption and Culture in the 17th and 18th Centuries. London: Routledge,
1995.
Bindman, David. "Am I Not A Man and A Brother?: British Art and Slavery in the Eighteenth
Century." Res 26 (1994): 68-82.

192
Bloom, Lisa. ed. With Other Eyes: Looking at Race and Gender in Visual Culture. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Boime, Albert. The Art of Exclusion: Representing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century.
Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.
Bobo, Jacqueline. Black Women as Cultural Readers. New York: Columbia University Press,
1995.
. "The Subject is Money": Reconsidering the Black Film Audience as a Theoretical
Paradigm." Black American Literature Forum. Black Film Issue. 25, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 421432.
Bolt, Christine, and Seymour Drescher, eds. Anti-Slavery, Religion and Reform: Essays in
Memory of Roger Anstey. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1980.
Bourne, George. Slavery Illustrated in its Effects upon Woman and Domestic Society. Boston:
Isaac Knapp, 1837.
Born, Byron A. "Josiah Wedgwood's Queenware." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin,
New Series 22, no 9 (May 1964): 289-299.
Branagan, Thomas. The Penitential Tyrant; or Slave Trader Reformed: A Pathetic Poem, in Four
Cantos. 2nd ed. New York: Samuel Wood, 1807.
Brewer, John. The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century.
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997.
, and Susan Staves, eds. Early Modern Conceptions of Property. New York: Routledge, 1996.
, and Roy Porter, eds. Consumption and the World of Goods. London: Routledge, 1993.
Bristol and Clifton Auxiliary Ladies Anti-Slavery Manuscripts. Bristol National Archives.
Bristol Record Office. Bristol, England.
Bryson, Norman, Michael Holly and Keith Moxey eds. Visual Culture: Images and
Interpretation. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1994.
, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey eds. Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation.
Oxford: Polity Press, 1991.
Burton, Anthony. Josiah Wedgwood: A Biography. New York: Stein and Day, 1976.
Burton, W. Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1972.

193

Bush, Barbara. Slave Women in Caribbean Society 1650-1838. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1990.
Caddie, Alfred J. "Recent Discoveries at the Wedgwood Factory." The Burlington Magazine for
Connoisseurs 8, no 34 (January 1906): 257-264.
Child, Lydia Maria. History of the Condition of Women, in Various Ages and Nations. Boston: J.
Allen and Co., 1835.
. An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans called Africans. Boston: Allen and Ticknor,
1833.
Clarkson, Thomas. History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishments of the Abolition of the
African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament. 2 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and
Orme, 1808.
Collins, Lisa Gail. The Art of History: African American Women Artists Engage the Past. New
Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2002.
Collins, Patricia Hill. "It's All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race and Nation." Hypoxia
13, no. 3 (Summer 1998): 62-82.
Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Fair Minute Book 1787-1819. British Library,
London.
Crenshaw, Kimberle Williams, ed. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the
Movement. New York: The New York Press, 1995.
Darwin, Erasmus. The Botanic Garden, A Poem, Parti. Containing the Economy of Vegetation.
Part II. The Loves of the Plants. With Philosophical Notes. 4th ed. London: J. Johnson, 1799.
Davey, Peter, ed. The Archeology of the Clay Tobacco Pipe: IX More Pipes from the Midlands
and Southern England. Oxford: B.A.R. British Series, 1985.
Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic. "Race Theory: An annotated Bibliography." Virginia Law
Review 79, no. 2 (March 1993): 461-516.
Devisse, Jean. The Image of the Black in Western Art. From the Demonic Threat to the
Incarnation of Sainthood. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1979.
Driskell, David C. Two Centuries of Black American Art. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.

194
Drescher, Seymour. "Capitalism and Slavery after Fifty Years." Slavery and Abolition: A
Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 18, no. 3 (December 1997): 212-227.
Edwards, Clive. " 'Home is Where the Art Is': Women, Handicrafts and Home Improvements,
1750-1900." Journal of Design History. 19, no. 1 (2006): 11-21.
Ekirch, A. Roger. The Transportation of British Convict to the Colonies, 1718-1775. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1987.
. "Bound for America: A Profile of British Convicts Transported to the Colonies, 1718-1775."
The William and Mary Quarterly, 42, no. 2 (April 1985): 184- 200.
Estlin Papers. 1840-84. Bristol National Archives. Bristol Record Office. Bristol, England.
Evans, Jessica, and Stuart Hall, eds. Visual Culture: The Reader. London: Sage Publications,
1999.
Farrington, Lisa E. Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Fell, H. Granville. "Josiah Wedgwood: Master Potter, 1730-1795." Apollo: A Journal of the Arts
12 (1930): 26-32.
Female Society for the Relief of British Negro Slaves. Birmingham City Archives. Birmingham,
England.
Ferguson, Moira. Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery, 1670-1834.
New York: Routledge, 1992.
Finch, Arthur T. "The Genius of Wedgwood and Modern Ceramic Art." American Magazine of
Art 21, no. 10 (October 1930): 547-558.
Finer, Ann, and George Savage, eds. Selected Letter. London: Cory, Adams and MacKay, 1965.
Finley, Cheryl. "Committed to Memory: The Slave Ship Icon in the Black Atlantic Imagination."
PhD diss. Yale University, 2002.
Ford, C. "People as Property." Oxford Art Journal 25, no. 1 (2002): 1-16.
Fox, George. A Collection of Many Select and Christian Epistles, Letters and Testimonies
Written on Sundry Occasions, by that Ancient, Eminent, Faithful friend and Minister of Christ
Jesus. London: T. Sowle, 1698.

195
Gates, Jr., Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Gates, Henry Louis. "The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of the
Black." Representations 24 (1988): 129-155.
. Figures in Black: Word, Signs, and the 'Racial' Self. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
, ed. 'Race,' Writing, and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
. Black Literature and Literary Theory. New York: Metheun, 1984.
Gilroy, Paul and Lawrence Grossberg, and Angela McRobbie, eds. Without Guarantees: In
Honour of Stuart Hall. London: Verso, 2000.
Gilyard, Keith ed. Race, Rhetoric, and Composition. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: HeinemannBoynton/ Cook, 1999.
Gloversmith, Frank ed. The Theory of Reading. Brighton and Totown, New Jersey: Harvester
Press, 1984.
Goldberg, David Theo. Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning. Oxford
[England]: Blackwell, 1993.
Gordon, Beverly. Bazaars and Fair Ladies: The History of the American Fundraising Fair.
Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1998.
. "Women's Domestic Body: The Conceptual Conflation of Women and Interiors in the
Industrial Age." Winterthur Portfolio. Gendered Spaces and Aesthetics. 31, no. 4 (Winter 1996):
281-301.
. "Playing Powerless: New England Ladies Fairs, 1830-1930." The Massachusetts Review. 27,
no. 1 (Spring 1986): 144-160.
Graves, Algernon. The Society of Artists of Great Britain, 1760-1791, The Free Society of
Artists, 1761-1783. Bath: Kingsmead Reprints, 1969.
Gregg, R. Eighteenth-Century Wedgwood at the Paine Art Center. OshKosh: Paine Art Center
and Arborteum, 1965.
Grigsby, Darcy Grimaldo. Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

196
Guyatt, Mary. "The Wedgwood Slave Medallion: Values in Eighteenth-Century Design."
Journal of Design History 13, no. 2 (2000): 93-106.
Halfpenny, Pat. Penny Plain Twopence Coloured: Transfer Printing on English Ceramics, 17501850. Stafford, England: George Street Press, 1994.
Hall, Kim. Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England.
Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1995.
Hall, Stuart, and Jessica Evans, eds. Visual Culture: The Reader. London: Sage Publication,
1999.
. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Culture, Media, and
Identities. London: Sage in association with the Open University, 1997.
, and Paul du Gay, eds. Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage Publications, 1996.
. "The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis of the Humanities." October. 53 (Summer
1990); 11-23.
. "Encoding/Decoding." Culture, Media, Language: Working Paper in Cultural Studies, 19721979 edited by Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe and Paul Willis, (University of
Birmingham: Hutchison and Co. Ltd., 1980): 128-138.
. "Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse." Stenciled Occasional Paper Media
Series. 7. (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. 1973): 120.
Hallowell, Anna Davis, ed. James and Lucretia Mott Life and Letters. Boston: Houghton,
Mifflin and Co., 1884.
Harris, Michael. Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation. Chapel Hill: The University
of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Hartigan, Lynda Roscoe. Sharing Traditions: Five Black Artists in Nineteenth-Century America.
Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985.
Hartman, Saidya V. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in NineteenthCentury America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Hatt, Michael. "Making A Man of Him: Masculinity and the Black Body in mid-Nineteenth
Century American Sculpture." Oxford Art Journal 15, no. 1 (1992): 21-36.

197
Higgins, Paula, and Lori Blaser. A Passion for Purses, 1600-2005. Atglen, Pennsylvania:
Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2007.
Hill, Rosemary. "Wedgwood Then." Crafts 122 (May/June 1993): 32-35.
Hodder, Ian, ed. The Meaning of Things: Material Culture and Symbolic Expression. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Holly, Michael Ann. Past Looking: Historical Imagination and the Rhetoric of the Image. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1996.
Holub, Robert C. "Responses-Credibility: The Next Challenge." The German Quarterly 80, no. 4
(2007): 424.
. Crossing Borders: Reception Theory, Postconstructuralism, Deconstruction. Madison,
Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.
. Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction. New Accounts edited by Terrence Hawkes
London: Methuen, 1984.
. "Trends in Literary Theory: The American Reception of Reception Theory." The German
Quarterly 55, no. 1 (January 1982): 80-96.
Honey, W.B. "Royal Portraits in Pottery and Porcelain." The Burlington Magazine for
Connoisseurs 70, no. 410 (May 1937): 218-229.
Honour, Hugh.. The Image of the Black in Western Art. Vol. 4. New York: Morrow, 1976.
Hooper, Joseph. A Discourse on the Best Means of Improving the Science of Medicine; Delivered
at the Anniversary of the Medical Society of London in 1787. [London]: Published by order of
the Society, and printed by J. Phillips, 1788.
Horton, James Oliver. Free People of Color: Inside the African American Community.
Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993.
, and Lois E. Horton. Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the
Antebellum North. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1999.
Hunter, Robert. Ceramics in America 2002. Hanover: University Press of New England, 2002.
Hunting, Penelope. The Medical Society of London, 1773-2003. London: Medical Society of
London, 2003.

Hyde, Melissa, and Jennifer Milam, eds. Women, Art, and the Politics of Identity in EighteenthCentury Europe. Ashgate, 2003.
Irwin, David. "Art versus Design: The Debate 1760-1860." Journal of Design History 4, no. 4
(1991): 219-232.
Jacobs, Donald M. Courage and Conscience: Black and White Abolitionists in Boston.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
Jauss, Hans Robert. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Mineapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1982.
Jeffrey, Julie Roy. "Permeable Boundaries: Abolitionist Women and Separate Spheres." Journal
of the Early Republic 21, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 79-93.
Jennings, Judith. "A Trio of Talented Women: Abolition, Gender, and Political Participation,
1780-91." Slavery and Abolition 26, no. 1 (2005): 55-70.
Jewitt, Llewellynn. The Wedgwoods: Life of Josiah Wedgwood. London: Virtue Bros and Co,
1865.
Johnston, Patricia, ed. Seeing High and Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual
Culture. Berkeley: University of California, 2006.
Jones, Amelia, ed. The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Jones, Steven L. "A Keen Sense of the Artistic: African American Material Culture in
Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia." International Review of African American Art 12, no. 2
(1995): 4-29.
Kelley, Mary. "Beyond the Boundaries." Journal of the Early Republic 21, no. 1 (Spring 2001):
73-78.
Kleeblatt, Norman "Master Narratives/ Minority Artists." Art Journal 57, no 3 (Fall 1998): 2935.
Lacey, Barbara. "Visual Images of Blacks in Early American Imprints." The William and Mary
Quarterly: A Magazine of Early American History and Culture 3 rd ser. 53, no.l (1996): 137-180.
Lapsansky-Werner, Emma Jones. The Black Presence in Pennsylvania: "Making It Home."
University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania Historical Association, 2001.

199
Lapsansky, Emma Jones. "Friends, Wives, and Strivings: Networks and Community Values
among Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia Afroamerican Elites." The Pennsylvania Magazine of
History and Biography 108, no. 1 (January 1984): 3-24.
Lapsansky, Phillip. "Afro-Americana: Trans-Atlantic Antislavery." The Annual Report of the
Library Company of Philadelphia for the Year 2004. Presented at the Annual Meeting. (May
2005): 39-51.
Lapsansky, Phillip. "Afro-Americana: In a Garden of Radical Gentility." The Annual Report of
the Library Company of Philadelphia for the Year 1998. Presented at the Annual Meeting. (May
1999): 25-35.
. "Afro-Americana: Moses Roper, at Home and Abroad." The Annual Report of the Library
Company of Philadelphia for the Year 1996. Presented at the annual Meeting. (May 1997): 2338.
Laurie, Bruce. Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005.
Lee, Sarah R. "The Boroom Slave." The African Repository and Colonial Journal 5, no. 3 (May
1829): 65-85.
Lewis, Samella. African American Art and Artists. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1990.
Lindhorst, Marie. "Politics in a Box: Sarah Mapps Douglass and the Female Literary
Association, 1831-1833." Pennsylvania History. 65, no.3 (Summer 1998): 263-278.
Liverpool Papers. The British Library, London.
Logan, Rayford W, and Michael R. Winston, eds. Dictionary of American Negro Biography.
New York: W.W. Norton and Co, 1982.
Lorde, Audre. "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," in Sister
Outsider: Essays and Speeches.. The Crossing Press Feminist Series. Trumansburg, New York:
Crossing Press, 1984.
Loring, Sterling. "A Keen Sense of the Artistic: African American Material Culture in 19th
Century Philadelphia." International Review of African American Art 12, no 2 (1995): 4-29.
Malpas, J.E. Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999.

200
Margolin, Sam "And Freedom to the Slave: Anti-Slavery Ceramics, 1787-1865." In Ceramics in
America 2002, edited by Robert Hunter 80-109. Hanover: University Press of New England,
2002.
Martin, Ann Smart. Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia.
Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
., and J. Ritchie Garrison, eds. American Material Culture: The Shape of the Field.
Winterthur, Delaware: Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 200
. Makers and Users: American Decorative Arts, 1630-1820, from the Chipstone Collection.
Madison, Wisconsin: Elvehjem Museum of Art, 1999.
Martin, Tony. "The Banneker Literary Institute of Philadelphia: African American Intellectual
Activism before the War of the Slaveholders' Rebellion." The Journal of African American
History. 87 (Summer 2002): 303-322.
Martinez, Katherine, and Kenneth L. Ames, eds. The Material Culture of Gender/The Gender of
Material Culture. Winterthur, Delaware: Henry Francis duPont Winterthur Museum, 1997.
McKendrick, N. "Josiah Wedgwood: An Eighteenth-Century Entrepreneur in Salesmanship and
Marketing Techniques." The Economic History Review, New Series 12, no 13 (1960): 408-433.
Metcalf, Eugene W. "Black Art, Folk Art, and Social Control." Winterthur Portfolio 18, no. 4
(Winter 1983): 271-289.
Metayard, Eliza. The Wedgwood Handbook: A Manual for Collectors Treating of the Marks,
Monograms, and other Tests of the Old Period of Manufacture. Peekskill, New York: Timothy
Trace, 1963.
. The Life of Josiah Wedgwood. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1865.
Midgley, Clare. Women Against Slavery: The British Campaign, 1780-1870. New York:
Routledge, 1992.
Millford, H. S, ed. The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper. London: Henry Frowde,
1905.
Minute Book of the Vigilant Committee of Philadelphia. Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. The Visual Culture Reader. New York: Routledge, 1998.
Mitchell, W. J. T, ed. The Politics of Interpretation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1982.

. On Narrative. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Morgan, Gwenda, and Peter Rushton. "Visible Bodies: Power, Subordination and Identity in the
Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World." Journal of Social History 39, no.l (2005): 39-64.
Mtubani, Victor C. "The Black Voice in Eighteenth-century Britain: African Writers against
Slavery and the Slave Trade." Phylon: The Atlanta University Review of Race and Culture 45,
no. 2 (1984): 85-134.
Nash, Gary B. Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 17201840. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Nelson, Charmaine A. "White Marble, Black Bodies and the Fear of the Invisible Negro:
Signifying Blackness in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Neoclassical Sculpture." RACAR 27, no. 1-2
(2000): 87-101.
Nelson, Robert S, and Richard Shiff, eds. Critical Terms for Art History. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Nussbaum, Felicity A, ed. The Global Eighteenth Century. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2003.
Oldfield, James R. Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The Mobilisation of public opinion
Against the Slave Trade, 1787-1807. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995.
Omnium Gatherum (OG) Manuscript Collection. Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. Howard
University, Washington, D.C.
Painter, Nell Irvin. Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings,
1619 to Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Parker, Mary S. "Address to Anti-Slavery Societies." Anti-Slavery Convention of American
Women. Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1838.
Parsons, Sharon. "Imagining Empire: Slavery and British Visual Culture, 1765-1807." PhD diss.
California: University of California, 2000.
Patton, Sharon F. African-American Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Pease, Jane H, and William H. Pease. They Who Would be Free: Blacks' Search for Freedom,
1830-1861. New York: Atheneum, 1974.

202

Pennsylvania and New Jersey Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends, An Epistle of Caution ad
Advice, concerning the Buying and Keeping of Slaves, Philadelphia: James Chattin, 1754.
Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers. Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Piola, Erika. "Object, Producer, and Consumer of Popular Prints: A Study of Afro-Americana
Graphics at the Library Company of Philadelphia." Imprint 27, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 12- 22.
Porter, James A. Ten Afro-American Artists of the Nineteenth Century: An Exhibition
Commemorating the Centennial of Howard University, February 3- March 30, 1967.
Washington, D.C.: Howard University, 1967.
Purvis, Robert. Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens Threatened with Disfranchisement, to the
People of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1838.
Putzi, J. "The Skin of an American Slave: African American Manhood and the Marked Body in
Nineteenth-Century Abolitionist Literature." Studies in American Fiction 30, no. 2 (Autumn
2002): 181-206.
Quarles, Benjamin. Black Abolitionists. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.
. "Sources of Abolitionist Income." The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 32, no. 1 (June
1945): 63-76.
Quilley, Geoff, and Kay Dian Kriz, eds. An Economy of Colour: Visual Culture and the Atlantic
World, 1660-1830. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003.
Rathbone, Frederick, and Josiah Wedgwood and Sons. A Catalogue of the Wedgwood Museum.
Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent: Josiah Wedgwood and Sons Ltd, 1909.
Reilly, Robin. Wedgwood Jasper. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1994.
. Josiah Wedgwood, 1730-1795. London, Macmillan, 1992.
. Wedgwood. New York: Stockton Press, 1989.
, and George Savage. The Dictionary of Wedgwood. Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: Antiques
Collections Club, 1980.
, and George Savage. Wedgwood Portrait Medallions: An Introduction. London: Barrie &
Jenkins, 1973.
Reynolds, Joshua. A Discourse delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the
Distribution of Prizes, December 10, 1782. London: Royal Academy, 1782.

Reynolds Manuscript. Journey in Landers and Holland Account, 1781. The British Library,
London.
. A Discourse delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, October 16, 1780. London:
Royal Academy, 1780.
. A Discourse delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution of the Prizes,
December 11, 1780. London: Royal Academy, 1780.
Ribero, Aileen ed. Bags and Purses. London: BT Batsford, Ltd, 1982.
Ripley, C. Porter, ed. The Black Abolitionist Papers. Vol. 3, United States, 1830-1846. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Robinson, Cedric J. "The Invention of the Negro." Social Identities. 7, no. 3 (2001): 329-361.
Robinson, Jontyle Theresa, and Maya Angelou. Bearing Witness: Contemporary Works by
African American Women Artists. New York: Spelman College and Rizzoli International
Publications, 1996.
Rothko, Mark. The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art. New Haven: Yale University Press,
2004.
Rothstein, Natalie. Four Hundred Years of Fashion. London: Victoria and Albert Museum,
1984.
Said, Edward. "Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies, and Community." In The Politics of
Interpretation, edited by W.J.T. Mitchell, 7-32. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Sanchez-Eppler, Karen. Touching Liberty: Abolition, Feminism and the Politics of the BodyL
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War and Monument in NineteenthCentury America. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Shackel, Paul A, ed. Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape. Gainesville,
Florida: University Press of Florida, 2001.
Sharp, Granville. Serious Reflections on the Slave Trade and Slavery wrote in March 1797
London: Printed by W. Calvert, 1805.
. "Report of the Committee Instituted for the Purpose of Effecting the Abolition of the Slave
Trade." The Gentleman's Magazine 63 (February 1788): 161-162.

204

Sewell, Richard H. Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837-1860.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
Shaw, Gwendolyn DuBois. Portraits of a People: Picturing African Americans in the Nineteenth
Century. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006.
Sheppard, Thomas. Early Hull Tobacco Pipes and Their Makers. 2nd ed. Hull: Brown and Sons,
1912.
Sklar, Kathryn Kish. Women's Rights Emerges within the Antislavery Movement, 1830-1870: A
Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000.
. "Women Who Speak for an Entire Nation: American and British Women Compared at the
World Anti-Slavery Convention, London, 1840." Pacific Historical Review 59, no. 4 (1990):
453-499.
Smith, Eric Ledell. "The End of Black Voting Rights in Pennsylvania: African Americans and
the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention of 1837-1838." Pennsylvania History. 65, no.3
(Summer 1998): 279-299.
Smith, L. Richard. Josiah Wedgwood's 'Slave Medallion'. Sydney: The Wedgwood. 2nd. ed.
Sydney: The Wedgwood Society of New South Wales, 1999.
. Josiah Wedgwood's 'Slave Medallion'. Sydney: The Wedgwood Press, 1986.
Smith, Woodruff D. Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 1600-1800. New York:
Rouledge, 2002.
Sorisio, Carolyn. "The Spectacle of the Body: Torture in the Antislavery Writing of Lydia Maria
Child and Francies E. W. Harper." Modern Language Studies 30, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 45-66.
Tattersall, Bruce. "Henry Webber: Art at the Service of Industry." Apollo 122 (July 1985): 3642.
Thale, Mary. "Women in London Debating Societies in 1780." Gender and History 7, no. 1
(April 1995): 5- 24.
Thomas, John. "Wedgwood Ceramic Portraits." The Connoisseur 98 (1936): 29-35.
Thompson, Martyn P. "Reception Theory and the Interpretation of Historical Meaning." History
and Theory 32, no. 3 (October 1993): 248-272.
Thompson, Ralph. "The Liberty Bell and Other Anti-Slavery Gift-Books." The New England
Quarterly 1, no. 1 (March 1934): 154-168.

Thale, Mary. "Women in London Debating Societies in 1780." Gender History 7, no. 1 (1995):
5-24.
Uglow, Jenny. The Lunar Men: Free Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World. New York:
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002.
Valverde, Mariana. "Identity Politics and the Law in the United States." Feminist Studies 25, no.
2 (Summer 1999): 345-361.
Van Broekhoven, Deborah. "Better than a Clay Club: The Organization of Anti-Slavery Fairs,
1835-1860." Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 19, no. 1 (1966):
24-45.
Van de Krol, Yolanda. "Ladies' Pockets." Antiques Magazine (March 1996): 438-444.
Van de Krol, Yolanda. "Ty'ed about my Middle, Next to my Smock: The Cultural Context of
Women's Pockets." Newark: University of Delaware, 1994.
Verner, Coolie. "Surveying and Mapping the New Federal City: The First Printed Maps of
Washington, D.C." Imago Mundi 23 (1969): 59-72.
Walpole, Horace. Anecdotes of Painting in England, with Some Accounts of the Principal Artists,
and Incidental Notes on Other Arts. Strawberry Hill: printed by Thomas Farmer, 1782.
Wedgwood Manuscript Collection. Wedgwood Museum.
Welter, Barbara. "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860." American Quarterly 18 (19): 150174.
Weston, Helen D. "Representing the Right to Represent: The Portrait of Citizen Belley, ExRepresentative of the Colonies by A-L Girodet." Res 26 (Autumn 1994): 83-99.
Wiegman, Robyn. American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender. Durham: Duke
University Press, 1995.
Wilckens, Henry. Letters, Concerning the Slave Trade, and With Respect to Its Intended
Abolition by a Merchant to His Friend, on the Continent. Liverpool: Ann Smith, 1793.
Wood, Marcus. Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America:
1780-1865. New Jersey: Routledge, 2000.
Woods, Joseph. Thoughts on the Slavery of Negroes. London: J. Phillips, 1785.

206
Wright Manuscripts. National Portrait Library.
Wright, Hannah. Some Account of Joseph Wright 1850. 3 vols. Derby Local Studies Library,
Derby [England].
Yee, Shirley J. Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism, 1828-1860. Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1992.
Yellin, Jean Fagan, and John C. Van Horn, eds. The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women's Political
Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.
. Women and Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1989.
Young, Hilary, ed. The Genius of Wedgwood. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1995.

Figure 1.1 Josiah Wedgwood modeled by William Hackwood, Slave Cameo, 1787, black on
cane-color jasper. 1.29 in. diameter (3.3 cm.), Trustees of Wedgwood Museum, Barlaston,
Stoke-on-Trent, England.

 , * ,

.;,'

. ' - -

.::

'

ii

;.r

'.:.

';-

J.

>

H*

...:

- -^
V

i
'

".

":

'

r_

i"S?

H>

3 &

'yP *i^ *

^SBKW?^"

:'

'

';

! - ' .

/
//

<*#
,-"'** *
,

'

'->* '*
'Ji-Vi.
.
^ '#/"'

..

f)'J:

"'''

'

'

"

"

'

'

'/

....

y f

''

'

Figure 1.2 Sir Joseph Wright of Derby, Two Girls and their Black Servant, 1768-69. oil on
canvas, 50 x 40 in (127 x 101.6 cm), Private Collection.

209

Figure 1.3 Joshua Reynolds, The Temple Family, 1780-1782, 98.88 x 72.05 in. (241 x 183 cm.),
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

210

Figure 1.4 Meeting for Sufferings Committee on the Slave Trade, Minute Book Cover, 17831792, Library of the Society of Friends, London [England].

211

:S#SliClfeS^

ipiifif

4*4.
mXA&t-svfxn
(!) A fH% 'i,?l'f k'U{t
filmed m Mf> <*f >' k'mf
M$ik M&4i tip K$t%* m
ijl
Thi.thf.kte;>
fcWMMTrtf m H lit IfikJ
Umk mtiAi,
the mt&flh cfajr wM
lahtnfmi: it.
if.) Shtpaimx tk; iktuHs
nwfy/#? weft, j Ckf kmg pe,fn-J

'r, Afflpaf,-.-: *.">

fV&f/*-**>;*#? ^ ^

mi\ifr>i

mtitit it. ifrtfimi KsiUn' !kt tfhtj s<< A w .

efttki mints

Figure 1.5 Robin Reilly, Appendix C Ornamenting, 1989, (Wedgwood Jasper, New York:
Thames & Hudson).

212

Figure 1.6 Robin Reilly, Oval Frame of Twenty-five jasper cameos illustrating coloured
grounds, 1989, (Wedgwood Jasper, New York: Thames & Hudson).

213

..XlVK^S i ; A > i ^ t i K " - 3 * | t * R f t f t y

l<M$

'WeJgv^toit

"ft t,W>i

-.H>.'iiwJ:til*;-.ihturn- '-;-'
,.i <>< (it>,4mt.i<u.f>tl.4 -,_..,
w.mvjnmi ri<nw*UiK,
-;.|vl**\v<:

.'' T ' '

''iimm-iiW txi .itl tvonri* *

Uiij im-t^Nm, i""M W, J:
Kit ll.H' i ',Ut!i'it>"

\\*Jfc:ft.

SUV*

\\,v,;.>.M

.AmpH-wJ tti wiv^nwH

^ .n*w. .mil mui',iH*v.
I &>, wiih t!c
t '.ts,t!<f,i' mxnlx*.
,H,iKstf\ ilw l4i<tlwu(
twmlm **>tH ' www.
H.IH' I'S.tl StlipH'swU l.itk,
j.i*.' !lv i> ilin'bh,'.!sl %bv W.l! m U ^ H n
UHU.tlK jv,>U!,H!\> ItUlfc i>l
S\W f.SVi'SX til |.t\>n Willi

C,%HHf

liw|<KAy ih.ttV, vj(yi%'"

m w e , 'uwfkt' *J*> *
i.iyjv / JIK) n. all lypcv
of uiv ,i?si -vs..
Knowwin "opP* :nM*"
linvti *.' m.itk. w .:-....
Jtstmgutvlt M 1'iom 7. '

I ituMi.it ' J l krarci, ( ( '

watt im *owl*ir vtjtis
i ite.wl n u w urety t>n

S. Wl S.\VtM> is M\V

Vcijf I*K' m!*wfd m.itk

<3. HIM \St NV* m.tt*LH*S*

'' - '*

KJM.''Jjini fiuifc. S t

K>.

tsnjn.NW.! in.iil>\ >

v 1 ! ^ y - i w ,'
i. : i I;I \ ii itis,>ittnK*t>.

!* \ 1 i ! %

Figure 1.7 L/sf of Marks Used on Jasper, 1774-1968.

*"\c^"\

S i v ' W Vnmnuv* >t

iin\*\i ttislicv, v.iUiHS>ty
gMttjufti. imprewU on uty
IvJtc*. tSoo i o .

214

Figure 1.8 Josiah Wedgwood and William Hackwood, Slavery Medallion reverse, c. 1790, white
and black unglazed stoneware [jasper], 1 1/8 in. x 1 1/16 in. (2.54 cm. x 2.7 cm.), Colonial
Williamsburg Ceramic Collection, Colonial Williamsburg, accession no. 1982-202. (Courtesy
of Colonial Williamsburg).

'.

>

' ! ;

r"

ft:''; 'i-: "'i,' ;

i
i

' 1,
'l,

'

I,

J"' fF .*"-*'
^

-'

"* -*MMF ^Tg^~

Figure 2.1 Josiah Wedgwood and William Hackwood, Slavery Medallion, c. 1790, white and
black unglazed stoneware [jasper], 1 1/8 in. x 1 1/16 in. (2.54 cm. x 2.7 cm.), Colonial
Williamsburg Ceramic Collection, Colonial Williamsburg, accession no. 1982-202. (Courtesy
of Colonial Williamsburg)

216

Copyright- BCC Museum^ 2002/2003

Figure 2.2 Josiah Wedgwood, Slave Medallion in Jasperware plaque, jasperware, Port Cities
Maritime Museums Collection, Bristol, England. Database ID 432.

217

Figure 2.3 Slave Medallion Necklace, c 1787, black basalt figure on white jasper, 1 1/8 in. x 1 V*
in., Smithsonian Collection, Washington, D.C., Gift of Lloyd E. and Vivian S. Hawes, cat. no.
68.150

218

4. - . ,

Figure 2.4 Patch box Slave medallion mounted on gold on crystal, c.1787, 1 in. (2.54 cm.),
Buten Museum of Wedgwood Collection, reproduction from Harry Buten's Wedgwood ABC but
Not Middle E

219

Figure 2.5 Gentleman's Magazine Template, 1788, Wedgwood Manuscript Collection at the
University of Keele, Keele

220

'^i"S<<$is*-:

jfe,.

'"'"fit

Ox

m
f.
f

p^.-

?/' "' " ''Si.*,

>

'"v1

' . V.:

Figure 2.6 Gentleman's Magazine Plate IIfig. 6, page 209, March 1788

221

Figure 2.7 Josiah Wedgwood modeled by William Hackwood, Slave Cameo, c. 1788, white on
blue jasper, 1 1/4 in. 1 1/8 in. (3.2 cm. x 2.9 cm.), American Philosophical Society Records,
Philadelphia, Presented by Charles Pemberton and Mary Fox with Franklin Papers, 1840.0l.C.29

222

4:1?

t&Z

v*&

M^

USA

IV
F.
' ^vv

-Wit

rf >,

Figure 2.8 T. Holloway after Henry Webber, Voyage to Botany Bay, 1799, engraving, University
of Delaware Special Collections, Newark

1 #
-~f

i'nv
;

, v

.-- --,'/
v

'i

A
'<

'*

iW-lf
:\

swp-

"!i*!^_

Figure 2.9 Josiah Wedgwood after design by Henry Webber, Sydney Cove Commemorative
Cameo, 1788, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

T0W*6t Of THI BRltlSH sys*t MM* M 9 0 M * VHDtft TW(

IIBCrtATKU lAVIi TRA,IK

\
t "i
1 ,.

.yu^nfii-y.

yt"

f*A* 4* Jimt*

LIT.

. , . ! . . .I

i,

W g l I,

,i

I -

OP'S* =.Si8 SV-f S^f&ftLI C.t Z3? ${,*(!&

i>MMMbu*Mb

-i\*r* - sr ^ r "5*r" (f-"-rir j-.jcg^*****' *<?*

Figure 3.1 Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, Stowage of the British Slave Ship
Brookes Broadside, copper engraving, 1789

Ww~

Figure 3.2: Thomas Clarkson, The Brooks, 1808, University of Delaware Microfilm Collection

226

frftofe^^tfa^^te^-^

^y^*^^^r*#^f^f~*fi'

R EM J R K S m the S LAVE

r'*~:

T R A D Er

And,pu*olfl3ed by order of the Pcnnfylvania icciuty ibrpnaoofing'thc ABOLITION of QSveiy* &c.

t^^-^wStipfjAii^^tipr^^gfmnatfintWki

il tiab*^

* m J m r ^ l l * f ^ i . ^ , *l M * > i P - * i M r t r ^ . paw.

iHJn m i l gcfr ttcec!, *a*m>y

. _ .
i, h prffcd itwu|}> ifcter 5AM i
fW*>*'*lfa!li)'*&0Viii ptn
_
V tim tff &.&*>**. r**-pmhinalW' intkiaiixtr&Mt ibW
owirfiaewwff^Wi'W*, nl fa**-A* lwfrt& * " . nut
inUsnaaoMinMl* jtiMftSAtii, 4 itsr ttt^flJr ftnsliwt tni
pUBSWtMnp.rfj*ow<aniiBr, t ( M , - t a p . t l * r
!*)<*{9:ptwirftsWar, t u t s * * * t M * P ( i n - f t a * t a d *
*ffa ranitM.

fff^tMfiriWf/A-JtiiiitetiiCTiwM, fce3E*wi-% few, si Cn^C-

" It(,&idt>s-ilEoi!ltli*('i3ii*', rim^ Srepritusrf t>

k Mt ulttJnfclt * * d l,B&y irflU B*fc tan <f'i* t6
t W , **!:hrin imnii AnoA^MtS iwaolife&i wfiarftjFfca,

4KMJI t&i,hmmi. HithtbmUiaj

iBa&, A*tw;afc, if btf

Jmr, i W isaB tte oArf5rfC;t*t Briufc* l i n n jOtti

w i

* ^ ^ 5 ^ * ^ ^ ' 1 * " ! ' W <to .N* fc-* taaM-t*tliMttfc>r{WEca>t

t w * ftmafo B . ' 1 M 4 i t -

, est y , *fitt^t <qr Attunsfari! rd tine SrtWi' i * Htnea ita>

I"!?-

*^^-^^T?*ft^J-^d'l!SJ!

f R x d - v $ i > n l K i tiffhrt^stht h o t r f R W terma .

ISM. V**>lit5MWlpojrfkiiidji>. tiawtafh Itnt.

^ w - & ^ E . f c *"J**J?te,M*to***** ta*sYy3*

bt.Utto Ah dtitp&SAvttft
B

to*,tin.fc^fcg,)t^^aBafoo

tt iMKn ftjeSs, B ? I A . (O e*
JW **>-*

ut^H&le*, dv|Ht& put of rtMt4ib

Figure 3.3: W.E. Elford, Remarks on the Slave Trade, 1789, engraved broadside with letterpress,
Library Company of Philadelphia Print Collection

227

^ ^ " ^

d J g i r t l IJlMMIW PP^fc i m

iiMlH''i"
-...
., ^ r
^igk^tw **M mm,, mm* ***m ** " ' #
t m w i w y w r o % MS Hi mm * fc .iWim
, mmmmimw^mammmImmmm^mmrnh pnMui.
j
I p 8 * . . * " '
* * . * liMi,<
_

'm*.j&m m smm *'mm* m imw w * * t~-rfi

'iwii *: iiiiiiiin. Ai.fc-M M i y n h . y
I f H H p M j M f l & J p K K f ^ l f f p i H P W f c i l P ?'ff??fffflMIW

__.

; a r f - V ft "iha?.**T 4*> r**'r ^ - * >

'
I M r < > A ' i f m I M . In-.i t;tar$,-s

iW:f* p3^&,*,,fe-:|r&-&s% M %|^f|u

E^Mtjiiiksx,, '4 f K m ' f i i E -' oops.* R- |

c - fHa-'lr^-Traf.fcft! fej|Ha ( u > < I'T.3

I - i f * t , ' f c t ! ~ ~ j -"J*"HM i ^JKJ>"

^^sss^rrss^.

^iss:
'PjUpaipTf'

MMITW &,mjmmW?'W>mMxmQ.ia &!1st Ball

K K % A - M U u i " M W . tat*IS k ^ I K B

-*'*. I V W

BIT k i ^ I * * 9&S

SS?^1,
Copyright BCC Record O f f i c e r 2002/2003

Figure 3.4 William Elford, F/an of an African Ship's Lower Deck with Negroes in the Proportion
of only One to a Ton, 1789, copper engraving, 6 % x 16 in. (17.15 x 40.64 cm.), Bristol City
Council Record Office Collection

-v

>

i- -;

')

&'

.-i

PATHETIC POEM*
^ -*, -

is Fpoa CAHTOS.

MT THOMAS
i

BSANA6AH.

THE SECOND EPITIO^f, ES&ARGBS,

-' AM I HOT A MAS, ASS A BSOTKEE .'

a*
PRISTEO A3T0 SOLD B Y s i , 1 * - ' ' '

" '"'':

Figure 3.5 Frontispiece The Penitential Tyrant, 1807, Library Company of Philadelphia Rare
Book Collection

229

IHttiiMi9MlMi

.*\W\V

Figure 3.6 Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Ballot Box, 19th century, (7.7cm. x 6 cm. x 4.4
cm.), Boston Public Library Collection

230

T"^1

f i < i'..

* T t

ICTT*

1 ^ ^ / ^ * > ^

* \\ ^

-I t,
, t* -

'i %-

4rt ~2tk /to .> /

,
j
'* a . t f f f .

' -" '" |

Figure 3.7 Last page of The Penitential Tyrant, 1807, Library Company of Philadelphia Rare
Book Collection

231

<^K^-Kj<^w2MrajNrg J J L 5 S S :

<^KV-K-K-K-KW?M1BM^
% !&.&*-*-<*-^

Figure 3.8 William Hensell, Clay Tobacco Pipe, c. 1820

232

c||>}<-V:*-K-K

Figure 3.9 William Hensell, Clay Tobacco Pipe, drawing, c.1820

233

p i

irJ?l ^
Figure 3.10 Boston Letter Foundry, no. 844 The Kneeling Slave, Engraving, Rare Book and
Manuscript Library Collection, Columbia University

234

Figure 3.11 Boston Letter Foundry, Full page advertisement featuring no. 844 Kneeling Slave,
Engraving, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University

| t , -,<v |

i ^

4 i .'is -5

,-

ir

*"

to

<f

' >*} 4..

?*'**- f

in

* l |

"*'

^'

if. . &

"-' Hh 1%. *

-'

I - * .f

' t n Oie J&jral'CiaeMrsf JisaaSea, of the 18ft SeM. UML Is es.

taineii the following advertisement .
*

, toesE.Svl,p, J02.
'Slavery is 50 vii and rsherahlcaa eatataof man, and sodi.
"re-tij e p ^ t * to tlmgeneratis temper sad cranio* efmir ?<.
'ttea; that t i s ht>f% to be eaacelvetf, tint a s rasli-Iimap, mdi
" l e w s gstftenas, should plead for ft."

Figure 3.12 Royal Gazette of Jamaica, Criticism of Slave Condition, 18 September 1824
National Maritime Museum of Liverpool Microfilm Collection

M*$., /*4> -j.

Jtmmm JfotMl Gustff# fief* f 183C*

33-4g
8piunMi~Towii WftrfcitotiiQ,
B*iltt!fo-Uv**hy grvi'ttt tl**t wrote**tineandicnnDnlliiraetf !?
1% ialEi-n OMtof tii #wrkbn-, pcwr to Monday ihc 3*nli day of
cJcilii<r Mffif-tj ute will on tlinl day, beturtreii tlie haitt* of 10 Vnd
IS w't'leek ia flic forenoon, bus piti tip to Public Sale, iuift *U|BI to
ib; Idgheatand be*t bilcte>rwnl lire t^ro^-KeysTti'varnJti tM. Twwn,
ti;!|rciljly to the WOIMUHIH.* Law now in' forts, for pu\mnal of
i-icr fees.
FH(EMEt tt Creak, 5 feet 4 | feeing essarfeW ^ML$%iM m
Jirat*!*, ami 1Q m right thuuidtr* jirxt *uM t ime Mm* tifahrriMt
a ff*e JJiaeli, i 'Veta, sceflflilf, to TiitHim* Oi!v'crf Esq,. Si, .Win's,
bnt it 3* very ialttj" aseertaiitiM tttut Iter rfqflu wo is Utisixtitffea,
awl Ae betottgMt* &.1i!bufj'J*Wtt. plantation,, fn St, Andrew4*;
Mr John Smith I* |if*|wfelr.
_
May 14
s
Ordered, lhtl ihfe stli***e lie piiUtidkgil in ifae IfeiMpupers appointed ny Law, for F%lt Wuek*.
By e-rdw f lite ConMm*rfiwTii
T.. Iliv^SJALyi, JSMI*I
" To admit &jtawr**.pfifa,B>w- <f cae* caul !?> and p rftptj' gu *Mfi> awi
IgjSlr*'MM*jJ flfc cncb,|fect a,**lB*1 III*1 l-MJOah-^''*
LrMr**<f J - 1U Kutm.xn-, Ifit|- i* W w t ( w i l l i*rspfiirtiif,|Sa tfos Bffltttii

rflfei

Figure 3.13 Jamaica Royal Gazette, Phoebe, 7 October 1826, Birmingham City Council
Archives Collection

V: J> -.-**.
--#
* 4 &>
t
.< ./. 'fV *. w* "? **

t* ,

.sr *t s

ff
i

" t o .i

"--, '
%

'

(, -f : a r , l(Ut, *QUESTIONS TO PROFESSING CHRISTIANS

2%e 7se of Slave-grown Sugar> Coffee, 8$c.

WHICH crime is the worst?1st that of stealing men, woman nd children nud !!
ing them? or, 2ndlyE that of baying these stolen men, &&. and dooming them and their
posterity for ever, to a cruel, and hopeless bondage, to interminable and nucempeas&fsft
toil, (under the lash of the cart whip) and to moral and intellectual degradation, and the '
captivity, imprisonment, and death of the soul T or, 3rd1y, that of pttKasiog the produce
of their toil, end bribing the " Men-stealers," or sellers, or posseeton, by paying tfaem a
higher price (two millions annually in bounties, &&*) than for the same commodity produced by freelancer? or, 4thly, that of partaking of it when bought by aiwihcr, whem *
yarn, hare denounced as a criminal for BO doing? Is the pBrehaser ay thing less than & /
receiver of stolen goods? Is not the consomer, in this instance, 6 greater deJfcijaTOt, ;
having condemned the thief, and then become ''partafcerof Mssittf* BeesheWtsaKc- >
lion and encourage Mm, by sharing in the spoil ? " H e that breaketh ifei .W*% -!&'
nr-poiat, is he not guilty of all?" May he not justly tremble ntthe or$ of God. which i
threatens with an iteration very striking, to take vengeance in kind on all injustice, cruelty )
and oppression ? Does not be who neglects to dissuade all over whom he has imitieuce *?
from making ose of the "accursed thing," in my form, and on any cewafcn, fiotatetbev
injuncUon "thou ahaU in any wise rebnke thy neighbour* and not suffer sis upon him?**
He that knoweth to do good and doeth it no^ to him it is sin."
If the consumption of slave-grown Sugar, proceed fromthodghtlessness, fbmlheJear
of men, of being esteemed singular or over scrupulous, or of giving eSeaee y vmo9%$
condemning others, or from want of self-denial in gratifying the taste, ee from wSfel ijnoranee or the actual condition of our own slaves, or on pretence of its being npoHgeal <jes.
sieo ; will these or any such pleas avail before God, when *judgment shell he laid to the
line andrighteousnessto the plummet?**Ismakxxvtii. 17.
- Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do y 'even so to them.** *i
you, therefore, wereaslave what would you wish me to do for yen? I* aot 'i&rf <hc feeasura of our duty to our fellow subjects, the British slaves? * * * * 0 e h*t t*e*lh
a man and aelleth himj or if he bsjinmdm A** Amd shall sorely be put to death/*m
xxt 10. "Woe So him that oseth bis ae%hheur*8?serice wtthout wages, end" giveUa him
not for his work."/cr. %%% 13. BHen-etealdrtf*f a n classed with "mso-slsyew* *a&
murderers of fathers and mothers," && beTim. % 10. And among those dntiatd to bo *
"utterly barot withfire,"are named dealers fa "slaves nad seals of men."Jver- xtlii IX

f'ii:

,.<*' .iS-lffl?:';

*Op thy mw*. jodgerigtrteoBily,,'&!$$ed tbs:sots of ^ (ewa^iB^.'*Wrf*Bfc%

. *13*it may plwuoTbtatotisre mercy upon H H M k i d i ^ i M M t w * ' ^ 4 W * H ^ r 3

Figure 3.14 Question to Professing Christians on the Use of Slave-grown Sugar, Coffee, c.1820,
National Maritime Museum of Liverpool Microfilm Collection

238

FIRST .REPORT

THE F E M A L E 3 0 CI I T Y,
f :SC

TOR tili'd. EsPlitF M*

Britfrffl Xttpra iata#.

W;;:J l l r j iS toil* l,i>o ,fa r b n a r t s al a - j s i ^ i j ., fa, *jU THMi I6*P*:,>fc'?'"^'

.si.fcsa

tteirfa,

a r l ' ^ ; i l ^ | r t I r i l B y ^ l l t a t / a f r&:E=Bi3ss rr.iq!*

an -*-*> 'tg'itej rMiSirr hj MmU,:i3 ailtarfi t a , j w tib,nSo=^,P. tii.

IBftU.

Figure 3.15 Birmingham Female Antislavery Society, The First Report of the Female Society for
the Relief of the British Negro Slave, 1826, engraving, National Maritime Museum of Liverpool
Microfilm Collection

l-.;-yJ-^5

>y y

,"-'^ t"ifr

"i;y-":^i

jfi*"%* <s r i r j f ^ '* ^ J* *

' v, r ~ l

, v

"*

" > " ' " : - - - ~ r ~ - -

^ j ~

* *

i - 1 )

is*

5M3-H-'j>-,f

:*'*;?%

DKI

Figure 3.16 Ladies Department section of The Liberator, Am I Not A Woman and A Sister?,
engraving, March 1832, Library of Congress Microfilm Collection

240

1 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ %

,"*

-* .

- f

Figure 3.17 Women's Abolitionist Medallion, 1830. Wilberforce House, Hull City Museums and
Art Galleries Collection, Hull [England]

Figure 3.18 Attributed to the Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves in England, Workbag,
c.1830, silk, Gift of Mrs. Erwin L. Broecker, Daughters of the American Revolution Museum
Collection, Washington, D.C.

242

Figure 3.19 Attributed to the Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves in England,
Rectangular Workbag, c. 1830, silk, Gift of Mrs. Erwin L. Broecker, Daughters of the American
Revolution Museum Collection, Washington, D.C.

~*r~ *sjr*'it'"

.jSL^yi'^.y*^

m*2t~6*-;**& >

A,
Pfe^A,;--;-^uiry.'.

7i

-*

~~y&~-.

*2_..#r:,:3t&,

S^^^&JM

\rJt**-+~-

71::/;. J-*. &

C-A~^ ,J.

\a.H*r-l

p!fcj^sLfi tJf&^^-frf 4**>6**

p

^ / V

i^.-*T?^*--

?-*"\

Jtf*

<jwtezk
&:.-<miM

Figure 3.20 Birmingham Female Anti-Slavery Society, Financial Ledge, Birmingham City
Microfilm Collection, Birmingham, [England]

244

Wl

pr_*f*?> y&&'J

'imm/w
'&&.

C^^gf**

V ' '

$1M^"^TT***^"

Figure 3.21 Abolitionist Transfer-print Cloth, 18th century. Bristol City Council Museum
and Art Gallery

245

""""W-

Figure 3.22 Attributed to the Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves in England, Oval
Workbag (reverse), c. 1830, silk, Gift of Mrs. Erwin L. Broecker, Daughters of the American
Revolution Museum Collection, Washington, D.C.

Figure 3.23 Pin Holder, c. 1830, silk over cardboard and steel pins, owned by Elizabeth
Margaret Chandler, Gift of Mrs. Erwin L. Broecker, Daughters of the American Revolution
Museum Collection, Washington, D.C.

247

WW
:fjp;:H , . * ' , % = , . . , *

'*-'

f
Figure 3.24 Pin Holder (reverse), c. 1830, silk over cardboard, steel pins, owned by Elizabeth
Margaret Chandler, Gift of Mrs. Erwin L. Broecker, Daughters of the American Revolution
Museum Collection, Washington, D.C.

^Fftf.

b* i. i

f:!^

yf,,

Figure 3.25 Tea CM/?, kneeling slave transfer print motif, Library of the Society of Friends
Collection, London [England]

249

Figure 3.26 Manikin Wearing Anti-Slavery Workbag, Natalie Rothstein, ed., Four Hundred Years
of Fashion (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1984), 36, 131

250

. .v<f
%

A. "' '

,lV

H't* ,

Figure 4.1 Patrick H. Reason, Am I Not A Man and A Brother, 1839. Engraving 5.2 x 4 cm.
Collection of the Moorland-Spingarn Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C.

>::M'M.mm

".'

&> interna so lo tfwm

fcSutva. IS,

" Cent. SUA. .

*^iS:;iS;;% ^ i i ^ S r t '
y Kt

t a lEttarAa.
-:OF'.TME
%

.^2SS^Hf

S i l l l f f S l ,
PUKVIS, tfregUteBb

IMJB^.WHnrg,

s^SftS^^jfe^'flll

Figure 4.2 Membership Certificate, Philadelphia Vigilant Committee, 1839. Patrick H. Reason,
Engraving 5.2 x 4 cm. Collection of the Moorland-Spingarn Center, Howard University,
Washington, D.C.

'"r'.-:."-.. -tie-:'*-,

if.,

Figure 4.3 Patrick H. Reason, Letterhead, Sarah Mapps Douglass to Abbey Kelley, 18 May
1838. Library of Congress Manuscripts Division.

253

Figure 4.4 Patrick H. Reason, Am I Not A Woman and a Sister?, Stipple engraving, c. 1835.
Harold Washington Library Newspaper Collection and National Afro American Museum and
Cultural Center, Wilberforce, Ohio..

254

Figure 4.5 "Mental Feast" Ladies Department, The Liberator, July 21, 1832 .

255

r s

A*

t 1
St*--

v
&

is

.MS.
-I-,'-'

sr*~

-i-.v

".s*"5, *.,& s*. ^

iV

ar

.!';, i ,-.!i..e.;;.jKi;;>

Figure 4.6 L. Johnson, Specimen of Printing Types, 1840.

256

IB wr^%ifi? w ' w f M wiwa^tawB^tK.

- tgig US** *^'-:tPSr!SS0,imaP^'*

3 K a r f ^ S ; ' S "'C

sl
8

S ^ B ' W r Vm^fs^ii

t% f 11,. P l ^ c - f P -B- B IS" C %=S .3 ^*f i f f l l ^ d ff3^.DJ Bti.B*-:VF

?*ste

fe

i- ,

Figure 4.7 William S. Dorr for American Anti-Slavery Society, Slave Market of America, 183536. Letterpress with nine wood-engravings. 64.2 x 48.5 cm. Library of Congress.

257

Figure 4.8 Thackara and Vallance, Plan of the City of Washington, 1791. 21 x 26 cm. Library of
Congress Geography and Map Division.

258

umm.

M7f

'*%

Sag ill 3

AcflLiSiO

H&reiita

p/'\MSe7S1
SC;ffJ::'-S
1

-Jfe** &

"'"'jJ

Mil'"*;
O

M'72

Figure 4.9: Map of Aquila.

259

Figure 4; 10 The Liberty Bell Cover, 1839. Library Company of Philadelphia.

260

Figure 4.11 The Liberty Bell Binder, 1839. Library Company of Philadelphia.

4 *!
.
'

- ' I ^ Y *

< } ->1

^
1

( 4, >

"

- *

i**^".JS''

-- <

1*
, f,

j , -

.'

f ,- . r ,', - - f ,.-,

4_

. , 4 .

>

V-"

* * *

HfeU -4

1 -t*jtf

>

'

&

*"

' 'Jf**''''

. ^

~V"

Figure 4.12 The Liberty Bell Inside cover, 1839. Library Company of Philadelphia.

%:&f$sW^'i tW ft*. v^<-,(*n,\

Figure 4.13 Patrick H. Reason, Truth Shall Make You Free, 1839. 3.75 x 3.5 in (10 x 9 cm
Library Company of Philadelphia Print Collection.

liltsil

.t#-'

>%
i

,'V

jSiki^.
Jvr

jV-Jir

"

i V-

.K~?l>t

Sift***.

.*,*'<

iV-fza.f~

V+a- S-0&

rs^

~jf^

^ - ^ 3 - c f - ^jfe* , ,

k.

Wf^'fZj'&^f^ss-'

/.t^fn'

rsjp

j^"1*^"

^*Z?

Jtftft. i >.^-s ~^3-

s I

Figure 4.14 Robert Douglass, The Boroom Slave, c. 1834. pen and ink wash, 9.5 x 7.5 in (25 x
19 cm). Mary Anne Dickerson Album. The Library Company of Philadelphia Art Collection.

pit

Vf

J-

>}

%f

'Si3SP!

Figure 4.15 T/ie Boroom Slave, frontispiece An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans
Called Africans, 1833. The Library Company of Philadelphia Rare Book Collection.

Figure 4.16 Henry Thomson, The Boroom Slave, 1827. 127 x 92.7 cm.