Henri Grégoire - An Enquiry Concerning the Intellectual and Moral Faculties and Literature of Negroes

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AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL FACULTIES AND LITERATURE OF NEGROES

Paul Finkelman
Series Editor

FREEDOM ROAD
Howard Fast
Introduction by Eric Foner

JOHN RANDOLPH
Henry Adams
Introduction by Robert McColley

THE LIFE OF WASHINGTON
Mason L. Weems
Introduction by Peter S. Onuf

GETTYSBURG
Edited by Earl Schenk Miers and Richard A. Brown
Foreword by James I. Robertson, Jr.

CLOTEL; OR, THE PRESIDENTS DAUGHTER
William Wells Brown
Introduction by Joan E. Cashin

AN ENQUIRY INTO THE INTELLECTUAL AND
MORAL FACULTIES, AND LITERATURE OF NEGROES
Henri Grgoire
Introduction by Graham Russell Hodges

JOHN BROWN
WE. Burghardt Du Bois
Introduction by John David Smith

AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL FACULTIES AND LITERATURE OF NEGROES HENRI GRGOIRE

A new edition
with an introduction

by GRAHAM
RUSSELL
HODGES

Translated by
David Bailie Warden

First published 1997 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1997 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices
No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use of operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Date

Grgoire, Henri, 17501831.
[De la littrature des Ngres, ou, Recherches sur leurs facults intellectuelles. English]
An enquiry concerning the intellectual and moral faculties, and literature of Negroes /
Henri Grgoire.New ed. / with an introduction by Graham Russell Hodges.
p. cm. (American history through literature)
Originally published: 1810.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 156324912-X (alk. paper).
ISBN 1563249138 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Blacks.
I. Hodges, Graham Russell, 1946 .
II. Title.
III. Series.
HT1581.G72 1997
909.0496dc20
9632359
CIP

ISBN 13: 9781563249136 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 9781563249129 (hbk)

Contents

by Paul Finkelman

by Graham Russell Hodges

Novelists, poets, and essayists often use history to illuminate their understanding of human interaction. At times these works also illuminate our history. They also help us better understand how people in different times and places thought about their own world. Popular novels are themselves artifacts of history.

This series is designed to bring back into print works of literaturein the broadest sense of the termthat illuminate our understanding of U.S. history. Each book is introduced by a major scholar who places the book in a context and also offers some guidance to reading the book as history. The editor will show us where the author of the book has been in error, as well as where the author is accurate. Each reprinted work also includes a few documents to illustrate the historical setting of the work itself.

Books in this series will primarily fall into three categories. First, we will reprint works of historical fictionbooks that are essentially works of history in a fictional setting. Rather than simply fiction about the past, each will be first-rate history presented through the voices of fictional characters, or through fictional presentations of real characters in ways that do not distort the historical record. Second, we will reprint works of fiction, poetry, and other forms of literature that are primary sources of the era in which they were written. Finally, we will republish nonfiction such as autobiographies, reminiscences, essays, and journalistic exposs, and even works of history that also fall into the general category of literature.

Paul Finkelman

In 1809, the Abb Henri-Baptiste Grgoire, a leading French abolitionist, sent a manuscript copy of his latest book, De la littrature des Ngres, to Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States. Although he criticized Jeffersons thesis about innate black inferiority, published in the southerners Notes on the State of Virginia, Grgoire apparently hoped to gain the Americans patronage for a forthcoming English translation of his work. Jefferson, grown testier over the years about his controversial views on slavery and blacks potential, responded with what he regarded as a soft answer to Grgoire. He wrote that his remarks in Notes on the State of Virginia were of a personal nature and admitted that he desired a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to [African Americans] by nature. In a contemporary letter to Joel Barlow, however, Jefferson derided Grgoires study as a collection of fantastic tales and raised suspicions about the quality of the talented blacks cited in the book.1

Despite Jeffersons dismissal, Grgoire succeeded in publishing his work in English in the United States in 1810; it was translated by David Bailie Warden, the acting American consul to France. The book, entitled An Enquiry Concerning the Intellectual and Moral Faculties, and Literature of Negroes; with an Account of the Life and Works of Fifteen Negroes and Mulattoes, Distinguished in Science, Literature and the Arts, influenced African American intellectuals and abolitionists, who, long aware of Grgoires friendliness toward their cause, rapidly internalized his perceptions and methods into their own writings. The book also interested later white sympathizers to the anti-slavery cause. The venerable abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner called Grgoire a hero of humanity. In this century, Haitians, remembering Grgoires warmth to the cause of their freedom, commemorated the centennial of his passing. Grgoires life and works remain significant to studies of slavery and abolition in the age of revolution.2

This is the first modern republication of the original translation, which was reprinted in facsimile thirty years ago. Grgoires book is a seminal contribution to understanding early African American intellectual history. The book deserves wider circulation, which should spur further awareness of French involvement in the trans-Atlantic, multiracial abolitionist movement. Grgoires life and career epitomize the intellectual and spiritual contours of a movement to end slavery and change the world. In this introduction I reacquaint modern readers with Grgoires life, comment on the book itself, and suggest ways it influenced African American writers.

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