Black Abdiel and the Higher Law: James Monroe Whitfield vs. the Fillmore Faction

As English Romanticism rejects Neoclassicism, so Antebellum Black Romanticism rejects the slavery-friendly White Unionism embodied in the Compromise of 1850. In Millard Fillmore's Buffalo, the Black Romantic barber-poet James Monroe Whitfield damned Daniel Webster as a traitor to Abolition (&qu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inELH Vol. 90; no. 1; pp. 167 - 203
Main Author Holstun, Jim
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.03.2023
Subjects
Abolition of slavery
Abolitionists
American history
British & Irish literature
Conventions
Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)
English literature
Fugitive Slave Act 1850-US
Library associations
Milton, John (1608-1674)
Poetry
Presbyterian churches
Revolutions
Sermons
Slavery
Whitfield, James Monroe (1822-1871)
Canada
United States > US
Ireland
Europe
Kentucky
France
Michigan
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Summary:As English Romanticism rejects Neoclassicism, so Antebellum Black Romanticism rejects the slavery-friendly White Unionism embodied in the Compromise of 1850. In Millard Fillmore's Buffalo, the Black Romantic barber-poet James Monroe Whitfield damned Daniel Webster as a traitor to Abolition ("The Arch-Apostate") and Buffalo's Reverend John C. Lord as a hireling Unionist priest ("How Long"). For White Unionists, Scripture blesses the slaveholding Davidic kingdom of the present, founded in compromise and positive law. For Black Romantics like Whitfield, Scripture blesses the liberated republic of the future, founded in Milton's prophetic tradition and in an Abolitonist higher law.
ISSN:0013-8304
1080-6547
1080-6547
DOI:10.1353/elh.2023.0006