Reconstructing Revenge

In January 1864, the Liberator granted the nation immunity for slavery and said that it was the right thing to do. “Let every man demand that the true ground of justice be taken toward our dark fellow-countrymen,” the... [ view full abstract ]

In January 1864, the Liberator granted the nation immunity for slavery and said that it was the right thing to do. “Let every man demand that the true ground of justice be taken toward our dark fellow-countrymen,” the abolitionist paper announced: “We do not urge the claim of reparation for the past, only of justice for the future.” Not everyone agreed. In fact, for some African Americans, redressing bondage required revenge. My book project recovers that history by examining real and imagined instances of vindictiveness—resentment, bitterness, vengeance—in postbellum black life and letters.

Revenge has long suffered a bad reputation, especially in the discourse of respectability epitomized by Booker T. Washington. But post–Civil War African American history and literature contain a counter-archive. From the resistance of black soldiers to white military leadership, to the righteous anger of the free yet disenfranchised people of Edisto Island, South Carolina, to the revolutionary black avenger at the center of Pauline E. Hopkins’s 1902 novel Winona, African Americans challenged the norms of justice by rethinking what was required for a lasting and genuine peace.

Theirs is a story that both revises academic narratives of the nineteenth century and speaks to our contemporary racial politics. Accordingly, I am imagining this project as a trade monograph that is scholarly in nature but written for a general audience. For the seminar discussion, I will submit the opening pages of my manuscript as well as portions of an academic journal article on this topic.