Americans who worked to abolish slavery in the United States made various arguments against the institution, and the unique suffering of female slaves was a key part of abolitionist critiques. Slave women, in addition to enduring the same conditions as men, were routinely raped by masters and overseers. Abolitionists argued that this was a criminal act against helpless women, and they also drew attention to the paradoxical situation of the children who resulted from these sexual assaults. By law, mixed-race children born to enslaved mothers were always considered slaves, regardless of whether they appeared to be white, which some did. Beyond the moral argument that enslaved women should be protected from sexual abuse, abolitionists also drew attention to this hypocritical practice of enslaving children who had been fathered by free white men.
Slavery was almost unquestionably the most important issue of the nineteenth century. Women were frequently at the center when slavery debates were translated into visual images.
Practial Amalgamation: Musical Soiree. c. 1839
Practical Amalgamation: The Wedding. c. 1839
These two images are part of a series of satirical prints created by artist Edward Williams Clay in 1839. The Practical Amalgamation series illustrates the fears of many whites who believed that freeing slaves would lead to a dangerous mixing of races. Although the dangers seemed self-evident to many Americans at the time, today it is difficult to understand what worried them so. Even some abolitionists of the time were concerned about how black freedom might change American society, and Clay’s prints express deep fears that if blacks socialized freely with whites, the inevitable result would be marriages between black men and white women, a prospect that seemed to them to endanger the very fabric of American life.
These lithographs from Clay’s Practical Amalgamation series represent blacks as grotesque and ridiculous, the most common way of representing African Americans at the time. This standard was borrowed directly from the minstrel show, in which performers (who were usually, but not always, white) blackened their faces and delighted white audiences with their caricatured performances. Minstrel shows were the most popular entertainment of the nineteenth century.
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Image of Practical Amalgamation:
Musical Soiree c. 1839. 33 x 42 cm
Image of Practical Amalgamation:
The Wedding c. 1839. 36 x 57 cm
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Practial Amalgamation: Musical Soiree. c. 1839
In Musical Soiree, blacks and whites are gathered in a beautifully decorated room for an evening of musical entertainments. This fancy gathering of well-behaved and respectable acquaintances closely resembles other prints that depicted middle- or upper-class white social events; however, the mixing of races here marks a radical departure from such images. The blacks in this scene are rendered with freakish facial attributes that would have reminded contemporary viewers of the way blacks were ridiculed in minstrel performances. Depicting groups and individuals as grotesque, as we see here, was a powerful method for denigrating the types of people these images were meant to represent. Such representations suggested that such figures were more worthy of ridicule than respect. The contrast between the idealized beauty of the white women and the exaggerated features of the black woman singer is particularly striking here.
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Detail from Practical Amalgamation:
Musical Soiree c. 1839. 33 x 42 cm
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Practical Amalgamation: The Wedding. c. 1839
The Wedding takes white anxiety about race mixing to its logical extreme: here, a beautiful and virtuous white woman is being married to an absurdly unattractive black man. The notion that whites would allow a black man to preside over such a solemn occasion would have seemed an outrageous idea to most white Americans. The figure behind the couple seems to be a portrait, and it is significant that this man stares straight at the viewer—he probably represents a well-known abolitionist, perhaps Henry Highland Garnett. The tall white man at the right, with a portly black woman on his arm, represents one of the most radical of white New England abolitionists, William Lloyd Garrison, who advocated interracial marriage.
The bride is rendered according to nineteenth-century artistic ideals of womanly beauty, and both her beauty and her demure comportment suggest that she is also a paragon of womanly virtue. The grotesque and silly figure of the groom, on the other hand, suggests to the viewer that this man should be ridiculed, reviled, or both. In its juxtaposition of ideal white beauty and virtue, on the one hand, and grotesque black manhood on the other, this scene gives shape and form to widespread white anxiety about black freedom and equality. This print uses satire and caricature to express emotional and irrational fears of black freedom, equality, and integration into white society.
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Detail from Practical Amalgamation:
The Wedding
c. 1839. 36 x 57 cm
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Beauties of the extension
of the area of slavery. c. 1850–1860
Here the artist uses "beauty" in an ironic way, to comment on two of the effects of slavery: the rape of enslaved black women by white men, and the enslavement of the mixed-race children who resulted from these assaults. The kneeling woman at center is a slave, and she is also the daughter of the slave master who stands second from the left. Her slave mother stands at her side, and her free, white half-brother is at the far left in the scene.
This image can also be read more literally, for the way the word “beauty” draws attention to the endangered, biracial young woman. As the title suggests, the young woman is indeed beautiful, but she is still enslaved, even though she is as much white as she is black. Her appearance is strikingly different from most mainstream images of black women, who were usually depicted as grotesque and ludicrous objects of ridicule. This slave’s beauty was important to the abolitionists’ task of garnering white sympathy for their cause. Her likeness to conventional white female beauty was meant to humanize the slaves she represented, and to thus highlight the extreme horrors of American chattel slavery.
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Detail from Beauties of the extension
of the area of slavery
c. 1850-60, 36 x 44 cm
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Practical illustration of the Fugitive Slave Law. Edward Williams Clay (?), c. 1850?
This complex political cartoon comments on disagreements between abolitionists, depicted on the left, and supporters of the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, depicted on the right. The 1850 legislation was designed to strengthen Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. Both laws mandated, among other things, that free states must return runaway slaves to their owners.
Abolitionists (and opponents of the Fugitive Slave Laws) are represented on the left. The black woman represents African American slaves, and radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison defends her against a group of slave catchers, who approach from the right (one is riding on the back of Secretary of State Daniel Webster). The dignified black man standing behind Garrison and holding a pistol is extremely unusual for an era in which black men were usually depicted either as defenseless, supplicating slaves, or in the grotesque guise of characters from blackface minstrel show performances. Here, this man is rendered as a brave and handsome defender of women, embodying the standard ideal of white manhood. The manly power of Garrison and the black man behind him emphasizes the woman’s helplessness and dependence, qualities that were widely considered natural attributes of womanhood. Notably, the black man and woman in this image both conform to standard representations of white beauty, a feature that cues the reader to view them sympathetically.
This artist who created this lithograph, Edward Williams Clay, produced many satirical prints that ridiculed blacks and their aspirations to equality. He is especially well known for two series of such prints: his Life in Philadelphia series (1828-1830) and Practical Amalgamation (1839; see prints above). In Practical illustration of the Fugitive Slave Law, at first glance, Clay’s sympathetic rendering of the two African American figures suggests that the artist supports the abolitionist cause.
There, are, however, subtle details that subvert this reading. For instance, the slave woman’s shapely leg is boldly outlined under her dress, and an ankle peeks out from beneath her skirt. In an era when any suggestion of women’s legs, ankles, or feet was considered erotic, touches like these encouraged a nineteenth-century viewer to see this female figure as an object of erotic titillation, instead of a symbol of a national humanitarian crisis that demanded urgent attention.
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Image of Practical Illustration
of the Fugitive Slave Law
c. 1850? 30 x 38 cm
Detail from Practical Illustration
of the Fugitive Slave Law
c. 1850? 30 x 38 cm
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