Dissertation
The godforsaken slave: black doubt and the problem of evil in American antislavery literature, 1760-1865
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Autumn 2021
DOI: 10.17077/etd.006336
Abstract
I, most broadly, set out in this dissertation to interrogate the tight-knit relationships between American antislavery literature—from the late 1820s until the Civil War—and its intense preoccupation with the problem of evil and black doubt. I am keenly interested in a literary topos and rhetorical stratagem of the antislavery movement, and yet also, a historical reality, too, within antebellum America: the godforsaken slave. But what, then, is the godforsaken slave? Antebellum slaves—either as historical, real-life persons or fictional creations within the antislavery imagination—who doubted in, skeptically questioned, or summarily rejected belief in an all-loving, all-powerful God given the immense suffering and pain slavery wrought. This was the theological “problem of evil” godforsaken slaves wrestled with: 1) if God was all-good, all-knowing, and always just, and 2) if God was all-powerful, then 3) why does he allow suffering and pain to exist (e.g. slavery)? Doubts, quite naturally, festered.
However, as recent historical scholarship has shown, widespread cultural anxieties and fears over religious doubt, skepticism, agnosticism, infidelity, and atheism threatened not only the survival of churches and the salvation of souls, but also the fate of the nation in antebellum America. Antislavery writers capitalized on this by dramatizing godforsaken slaves as they suffered under the existential weight of the problem of evil and slavery, and thus, sparked religiously-anxious audiences to feel for, and stand with, the spiritually-troubled slave either to mitigate slavery or abolish it completely. I trace out the broadest contours of this fictional topos and historical phenomenon as the antislavery movement picked up steam in the late 1820s and early 1830s. Up until the Civil War, many antislavery novelists, short story writers, poets, songsters, autobiographers, orators, preachers, illustrators, columnists, prose writers, and more made the godforsaken slave soar to new popular heights as it dramatized slaves’ lowest of existential lows in order to not only advocate for bodily freedom, but also spiritual liberation.
Since the early nineteenth century, racial and religious stereotypes of pious slaves or naturally religious blacks have hidden from view the feelings of intense doubt, skepticism, or even atheism many of these fictional black representations or real-life, historical slaves articulated in their antislavery sentiments. Most scholars and critics across the humanities and social sciences have thus assumed these less-than-pious sides of slave faith had little or nothing to do with pre-twentieth century black (literary) America or African American religious history. Some recent studies have even attempted to correct this picture by reading these doubts and skepticisms as evidence of a black “secularization” thesis: in short, as the West modernizes, it inevitably and ineluctably secularizes. However, the godforsaken slave—in reality or by representation—was neither evidence of the pious slave’s spiritual certitude or eternal hope, nor proof of (black) secularization in its infancy, but something quite different: antebellum slaves caught within the existential throes of faith in the early stages of nineteenth-century “secularization,” and part of a postsecular argument by American antislavery writers to thwart slavery’s faith-decimating, soul-crushing, and desacralizing nature by redeeming black faith and saving slave souls through attacking slavery or abolishing it altogether.
This, then, sets up my overall thesis: in a word, the representations (and real-life experiences) of the godforsaken slave, in its 1) historical existence prior to the Civil War, was 2) an existentially raw and authoritative voice for protesting the soul-crushing and faith-shattering institution of slavery; by the mid-nineteenth century, the trope’s theological and historical 3) evolutions and malleable character had led to its substantial growth in existential intensity, as its 4) interracial and justice-minded politics from both black and white antislavery writers called for an end to slavery’s injustices by appealing to slave doubts in, and skepticism towards, God’s divine justice as a horror in itself within an antebellum culture increasingly worried over the presence of doubt, skepticism, atheism, deism, and other non-Christian beliefs. I, ultimately, read the godforsaken slave as a 5) postsecular argument for resurrecting black faith and liberating slave souls from spiritual bondage in, and through, dramatized scenes of, ironically, slave doubt and skepticism that appealed to far deeper religious motivations for the antislavery cause in audiences’ souls than secular Enlightenment ideals or human freedom could ever reach.
I weave this five-fold argument in and out of each of the forthcoming chapters, which are organized around distinct antislavery genres. Chapter one is my extended introductory chapter used to carefully historicize, robustly theorize, and properly conceptualize the godforsaken slave before understanding its importance in the history of the American antislavery movement. Chapter two, then, examines the emergence of the godforsaken slave as a political argument within antislavery prose at the very inception of the antislavery movement in the late 1820s and 1830s. Chapter three focuses on the “spoken-and-heard” nature of the godforsaken slave as antislavery poets, songsters, and orators attempted to humanize slaves through doubt-ridden and soul-harrowing sounds. Chapter four turns to the antebellum slave narrative as a particularly rich genre for exploring how former slaves told stories of spiritual liberation—not just pleas for black freedom—through both scenes of faithful and faithless slaves trapped within godforsaken distress. At last, chapter five reveals how antislavery fiction in the 1850s and early 1860s dramatized the godforsaken slave by taking it to new lengths, literally, and new heights, emotionally, rhetorically, and aesthetically, after the wild success of Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In the epilogue, I finish with how the godforsaken slave helped to register the radical divisions within Civil War America, and what it might augur for a post-slavery, post-war nation.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- The godforsaken slave: black doubt and the problem of evil in American antislavery literature, 1760-1865
- Creators
- Ryan David Furlong
- Contributors
- Lori Branch (Advisor)Ed Folsom (Committee Member)Lena Hill (Committee Member)Bluford Adams (Committee Member)Matthew Brown (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- English
- Date degree season
- Autumn 2021
- DOI
- 10.17077/etd.006336
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- xii, 405 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2021 Ryan David Furlong
- Language
- English
- Description illustrations
- illustrations
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 369-405).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
If God was all-good and all-knowing, and if God was all-powerful, then why did he allow suffering to exist? Theologically speaking, this is known as the problem of evil. Where was God? Why didn't he intervene? Was he good or just? Did he even exist? Antebellum slaves—both as real-life, historical actors and fictional portraits—were regularly dramatized by black and white antislavery writers with these same soul-harrowing doubts and existentially-troubling questions. This was the godforsaken slave. But, why so? In antebellum America, worries over religious doubt, skepticism, atheism, deism, and non-Christian beliefs were on the rise as the first early whispers and rumors of what we, now, in the twenty-first century take to be our post-Christian, secular age. Antislavery writers exploited these religious anxieties for the antislavery cause by showing slaves drowning in crises of faith due to the severe bodily sufferings and psychological traumas of slavery. If antebellum readers and audiences would not sympathize with the suffering of slave bodies, then surely they would fight to free slave souls from a faith-crushing and soul-killing institution like slavery. Ironically, the godforsaken slave became, in all its spiritual woes and doubts, a powerful antislavery trope not only to break literal chains and win black freedom, but also to liberate black faith and slaves’ eternal souls from the shackles of spiritual bondage. When the Civil War broke out, the godforsaken slave was one reason why men bled and died for the suffering slave: lost souls and errant faiths.
- Academic Unit
- English
- Record Identifier
- 9984210642602771
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