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

• Published in: ELH Vol. 90; no. 1; pp. 167 - 203
• Main Author: Holstun, Jim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• 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

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...