The article from the Anti-Slavery Almanac that was published in 1837, A mother’s anguish, details how a woman who was a slave ended up killing her children as they were going to be shipped off to slavery. The mother did not want her children to experience what she went through as a slave, and so she killed them in what is such a devastating story. This article was made to show the struggles slave laborers had during the nineteenth century, and to show that they would rather die than live their lives as slaves. “As she lay there, and thought of the toil, and stripes and misery her children must endure, she thought she would rather see them both dead and put in the ground.” [1] This was the mindset a lot of slaves had during the nineteenth century, and so this article was created by a group of abolitionists from the Anti-Slavery Almanac. Their goal was to make a call to its viewers to join the fight against slavery, as well as make a push for the abolition of the horrific forms of labor for good.
This historical source from the Anti-Slavery Almanac shows us just what America was like during the slavery period in the nineteenth century. The slave owners in the south only cared about wealth and were simply greedy. They did not care about the well-being of these slaves and did not have any empathy towards them. They used these slaves for their own personal wealth. The American economy was dependent on these products that was created from slaves, and so the economic system was corrupt. An article from J. Caryle Sitterson critiques historian Eugene Genovese’s views on this slavery system in his article New Light on Slavery and Racism in American History. “Despite Genovese’s critical and analytical treatment of slavery in North and South America and in the light of his own basic criticism of the capitalistic system, some will be disposed to observe that his basic fairness and even sympathetic treatment of Southern slaveholders may stem in part of their antipathy to capitalistic and bourgeois society.” [2] Sitterson is critiquing Genovese’s view and rebuttals this argument by stating that slavery contributed to white racism rather than benefiting the economy.
The World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 took place just three years after the A mother’s anguish article was released. The call for the convention was in response to all of the anti-slavery propaganda that was released during these times such as A mother’s anguish, which shows the need for the abolition of slavery. After hearing stories from slave laborers, abolitionists needed a meeting to push for abolition so no one else must experience what these slaves went through. Convention leader Joseph Sturge wanted a new anti-slavery organization that was based on two principles: one that slave traded is ended by abolition and that abolition is achieved through peaceful power of religious and moral influence. [3] Both American and European abolitionists teamed up to push for emancipation of all slave laborers everywhere and sent a message to leaders in government and pro-slavery supporters through use of anti-slavery propaganda seen in A mother’s anguish.
A mother’s anguish provides a very emotional article both through its words and images. The image we see at the top of the page shows the mother about to strike an axe toward her little children, crying as she is doing it. This shows the impact slavery had on these laborers. The people behind the Anti-Slavery Almanac did not want slavery to continue into the next generation and this is the message they are trying to spread. The article wants its readers to see these effects and try to unite the country to fight back against slavery. Nineteenth century author Cary Harrison was a big anti-slavery narrative pusher. “Harrison not only reveals the moral failure of the whites to hold true to their promise, but also examines the futuristic ramifications of this action as she shows the lives of the African Americans being altered by slavery.” [4] Author Cary Harrison wrote about how white slave owners used to lie to their slaves and so they made them work in these harsh conditions, and how these owners showed no empathy towards them in the process. Harrison describes how African American slaves’ lives were forever ruined because of slavery and white racism, and we can see that with the mother in A mother’s anguish. The impact slavery has on many lives in the nineteenth century is unimaginable and infinite, and many stories from slaves through historical sources just like A mother’s anguish shows just that.
[1] “A Mother’s Anguish.” NYPL Digital Collections. Anti-Slavery Almanac , 1837. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-7589-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.
[2] Sitterson, J. Carlyle. New Light on Slavery and Racism in American History, by C.
Vann Woodward and Eugene D. Genovese. The Southern Literary Journal 4, no. 1 (1971): 87–94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20077430.
[3] Maynard, Douglas H. “The World’s Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840.” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47, no. 3 (1960): 452. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1888877?seq=1
[4] “Vaucluse’s servants: ‘not slaves of ours’–a nineteenth-century southerners’ anti-slavery narrative strategy.” West Virginia University Philological Papers 50 (2003): 1+. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed April 4, 2022). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A115407091/AONE?u=setonhallu&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=32da5113.