Mark M. Smith - Listening to Nineteenth-Century America

2001 The University of North Carolina Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Mark M. (Mark Michael), 1968
Listening to nineteenth-century America / Mark M. Smith.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-8078-2657-X (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8078-4982-0 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. United StatesSocial life and customs19th century.
2. United StatesSocial conditions19th century. 3. United StatesHistory18151861. 4. NoiseSocial aspectsUnited StatesHistory19th century. 5. SoundSocial aspectsUnited StatesHistory19th century. 6. SilenceSocial aspectsUnited StatesHistory19th century. 7. Elite (Social sciences)Southern StatesHistory19th century. 8. Elite (Social sciences)Northeastern StatesHistory19th century. 9. Sectionalism (United States)History19th century. 10. North and southHistory
19th century. I. Title.
E166.S62 2001
973.5dc21 2001027541

05 04 03 02 01 5 4 3 2 1

Belling slave bodies

Noise of the northern mob, New York City, 1863

Southern cacophony, Richmond, Virginia, 1863

The silence of ruin, Charleston, South Carolina, 1865

The silence of defeat, Charleston, South Carolina, 1865

1. Population Density, 1830 and 1860

2. Number of Slaves, 1790 and 1860

The University of South Carolinas History Department is home to many listeners who have indulged my musings on the subject of nineteenth-century American aurality with grace, charm, and kindness. The departments fine graduate students have been a constant source of information and support, and I am particularly grateful for the tidbits of evidence thrown my way by Sean Busick, Kathy Hilliard, Aaron Mars, Mike Reynolds, and Rebecca Shrum. For fleeting but helpful conversations I thank Tom Downey, Trenton Hizer, John Hammond Moore, and J. Tracy Power. I was blessed with two superb research assistants in writing this book. Chavvar Penner helped immensely with my research into legal statutes, and my graduate student, Cheryl A. Wells, went entirely beyond the call of duty and often at inexcusably short notice.

This study has also benefited from the advice and leads proffered by several scholars. I remain grateful for the helpful and generous counsel of Ron Atkinson, Joan Cashin, Bobby Donaldson, Walter Edgar, Frank Fahy, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Lawrence Glickman, Kasey Grier, John Oldfield, Bill Pease, and Nan Woodruff. Aspects of this book have been presented to audiences at the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association meeting in March 1997; the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in January 1998; the Department of History, University of California, San Diego, in May 1999; the history department at the College of Charleston in November 1999; and a wonderful and enlightening conference titled Listening to Archives, arranged by Paula Hamilton and Douglas Kahn at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, in November 2000. I remain very grateful for the comments offered on those occasions.

Some of the research for this book was funded by a scholarship grant (summer 1998) from the University of South Carolina, College of Liberal Arts, and by the good graces of the former chair of the universitys history department, Peter W. Becker, and its extraordinary present head, Patrick J. Maney. I should also like to thank the editorial staff of the University of North Carolina Press for their customary efficiency, good cheer, and patience in seeing this book through to completion. Charles Grench, Ruth Homrighaus, and Pamela Upton at the press proved utterly accommodating, and I remain in their debt. My sincere thanks also to Lewis Bateman, who got the project off the ground. For her help with the illustrations and maps, I remain in Tina Manleys debt (again). Stephanie Wenzels copyediting was of the highest order, and this is a better book because of her keen and critical eye.

Several scholars read the entire manuscript, and acknowledging them here is paltry thanks indeed for their insights and suggestions. Few people know more about auditory culture than Hillel Schwartz and Douglas Kahn, and I am supremely grateful for Hillels extraordinarily close reading of the manuscript and Dougs extremely helpful suggestions. Clyde N. Wilson read an early draft with his southern ear, saved me from a few gaffs, and helped me think on a few matters. Michael Fellman deserves special thanks. He helped shape the book in significant ways, and I trust he will hear the difference he has made. I am also grateful for the encouragement my colleague Paul E. Johnson offered during the course of my research and writing. He kept me straight on several matters pertaining to the antebellum North and was always a source of support. Peter A. Coclanis and Eugene D. Genovese were at once my toughest but most valued critics. Peter asked his customarily penetrating questions, and I hope I have gone some way toward answering them. Gene read the manuscript with an unrivaled toughness, passion, and care. The book is much better for it, and as I hope he knows, I remain deeply touched by and grateful for his valued counsel and example.

Jacks deafness, Tesss protectiveness, and Maggies inquisitiveness made writing at home a potentially noisy affair. But as always, Catherine kept the peace and gave me moments of quiet. She is my rock without whom this book would not have been completed. As for Sophia, well, I hope the dedication says it all.

( ( ( LISTENING TO NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA

In simple Quaker dress, determined face framed by dark curls,
the thirty-three-year-old South Carolinian stood before a packed Massachusetts state legislature in Boston on February 21, 1838. Nervous and apprehensive, she prepared to persuade her audience why southern slavery should be abolished and explain womens role in the process. Her jitters were understandable. While sympathetic ears filled the hall, scoffers doubting whether a woman should speak so publicly and politically abounded. Angelina Grimk was not the first American woman to denounce slavery, but until that day none had spoken to a U.S. legislative body.

Hush fell. Mr. Chairman, she began. Her sounds punched the stillness with the force of novelty. She hit stride, regaling listeners with thoughts on the religious and political enormities of bondage. Her voice rang with the authenticity of someone who had witnessed slavery firsthand. In her choice of images Grimk conveyed the wretchedness of the peculiar institution in a way that touched hearts and hardened resolves: I stand before you as a southerner, exiled from the land of my birth, by the sound of the lash, and the piteous cry of the slave.

What she said was heard in more than one sense. Enabling and urging her audience to hear not just her words but also the sounds of bondage was a way to tease at her listeners guts and hearts. For many in the hall who had never actually heard slavery, they could now imagine how it sounded. Of course there were many northerners who could not or did not have the inclination to hear Angelina Grimks aural representation of slavery on February 21. But actual hearing of what she had heard was not necessary because her speech was reprinted in the antislavery newspaper the