March 5, 2006
BOOK REVIEW: Norman Ritter

University of Maine high-honors graduate Sarah Gamertsfelder Webber is one of 12 young historians who, in the summer of 2003, researched and edited some 15 antislavery writings that predated by several decades William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe and other abolitionists of the mid-1800s. Their work has just been published in a revealing book.

Most of the texts had been out of print and forgotten for almost two centuries. Two of them document that a Philadelphia Quaker, Anthony Benezet, started a school for black children in his own home in the 1750s and for 25 years produced pamphlets exposing the evils of slavery that were widely read in Britain as well as in America.

In another Quaker pamphlet, published anonymously by David Cooper, the New Jersey farmer traces African slavery to "the power of prejudice" that leads whites "to consider people with a black skin, on a footing with domestic animals, form'd to serve and obey, whom they may kick, beat, and treat as they please."

Cooper's authorship was not known until the 20th century, but he was not a shy advocate. On three occasions, Cooper visited Congress to urge the abolition of slavery, and in 1789 he appealed to George Washington, the newly elected president.

The collection's publisher is the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, of New York City. General editor of the project is the institute's president, James G. Basker, the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of English at Barnard College, Columbia University.

In his introduction, Basker lauds the Gilder Lehrman History Scholars as "the best in a rising generation of history scholars." The pool of applicants comprised more than 400 history majors from some 200 colleges and universities in the United States.

The former Sarah Gamertsfelder of Pembroke, who now lives in Chelmsford, England, with her husband, Paul Webber, wrote the introduction to the chapter titled "The Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade." It derives from Jonathan Edwards' sermon preached before the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom, and for the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Holden in Bondage, in New Haven in 1791.

"Edwards the younger," she writes, "was an eminent New England Congregationalist minister and was best known for his belief in the New Divinity, a theological movement characterized by a break from orthodox Calvinism . . . He had inherited most of his theology from his father (Jonathan), but, unlike the elder Edwards, who had been a slave owner, the younger Edwards spoke out against both slavery and the slave trade in this energetic sermon, in which he argues that slavery is neither condoned nor endorsed in the Bible."

In "Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised our Nation," Cokie Roberts describes family life when the elder Edwards was presiding over the Great Awakening, a spiritual movement akin to modern revivals.

"Those were the years when Esther (the younger Jonathan's sister and the future mother of Aaron Burr) and her ten brothers and sisters were growing up. Because the Great Awakening came under attack from traditional religions, Edwards exerted a good deal of energy defending his movement.

"Apparently he could spend up to thirteen hours a day locked in his study, leaving his wife, Sarah, to tend to the books, the household, the parishioners, and, of course, the children."

In his New Haven sermon, the younger Edwards derided the hypocrisy of the Declaration of Independence's clause that "all men are created equal" but did not call for the immediate emancipation of slaves. After describing the horrors of the slave trade ("live coals applied to the mouths" of those trying to escape their persecutors), Edwards refuted the justification of slavery based on biblical support.

"The right of slavery is inferred from the instance of Abraham, who had servants born in his house and bought with his money," Edwards said. "But it is by no means certain that these were slaves, as our Negroes are." His practice of citing scripture to oppose slavery was later used by abolitionists.

Gamertsfelder writes that Edwards had endorsed gradual emancipation because of "widespread fear that anti-slavery radicalism would lead to slave insurrections," and he did not advocate complete equality. She says "his own sermon takes on a racist tone at the end when he discusses the general fear of miscegenation."

Gamertsfelder graduated summa cum laude in the UMaine Class of 2005. She was a sophomore when she was selected for the first Gilder Lehrman summer scholarship program.

"The whole experience of being in Manhattan was particularly meaningful," she said in a recent phone call from England. "I discovered how much I was capable of, both academically and personally." That led to her studying abroad and researching primary sources for her honors and history theses. She majored in British history and minored in English.

The other 11 chapters of "Early American Abolitionists" were edited by scholars from Texas Technological University, Oregon State, Stanford, Tennessee State, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame, Columbia, St. Olaf and Harvard. The scholars' subjects range from the "inslaving, importing and purchasing of Negroes" and "observations on slave-keeping" to a 23-page poem in two cantos titled "The American in Algiers," originally published in 1797.

The anonymous poet compares the plight of an American seaman captured by Barbary pirates and sold into slavery in Algeria to the agony endured by an African torn from his home and transported in "clanking chains" to America, where he was held in bondage. "The author seeks to show that the Algerian and American slave systems are equally cruel, and that America is no more justified in practicing slavery than Algeria," writes the chapter editor, J. Micah Guster of Tennessee State.

"Early American Abolitionists" is available free of charge to history teachers, professors and institutional libraries by emailing the institute: resources@gilderlehrman.org. It plans to make the book available for commercial use.

Norman Ritter reported civil rights developments for Life magazine.

As published in the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram.