Reconsidering Henry Highland (and Julia Williams) Garnet’s “Address to the Slaves” as Collaborative Text

• In Event: Colored Conventions in the Nineteenth Century and the Digital Age

Abstract

This talk reconsiders Henry Highland Garnet’s “An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America. (Rejected by the National Convention, 1843)” as a collaborative text that went through at least three revisions: 1) in a committee that included then-rival Frederick Douglass during the 1843 National Colored Convention, 2) for publication with David Walker’s Appeal in 1848, and 3) further and/or separate revisions by either Garnet or James McCune Smith for inclusion in Smith’s prefatory biography of Garnet for his 1865 Memorial Discourse. While we do not have access to the address Garnet delivered in 1843, we know from convention minutes that it underwent some revision before coming to a vote. The 1848 and 1865 printed versions differ enough in typography and content to constitute distinct editions on their own. This print history offers a case student in the conventions’ insistently collaborative nature.

This talk then turns to consider one of Garnet’s collaborators in more detail: Julia Williams Garnet, who Garnet revealed in an 1844 defense of his “Address” was the only person to offer substantive criticism before his delivery in 1843. How might her involvement shift the way we talk about “The Address to the Slaves?” Williams Garnet’s extensive experience with organizing and crafting addresses for antislavery conventions would have made her an ideal consultant, if not collaborator, as Garnet drafted the 1843 “Address.” Aside from a single reference, however, the archive is silent on how much influence she had on Garnet’s message. I offer an extended discussion of her life leading up to the convention, because Williams Garnet’s own history of activism in Boston might shed light on her political thought. As Garnet was making a name for himself through the Liberty Party and New York State Conventions, Julia Williams was engaging in local and national organizing through the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) and Boston religious organizations. That work dissolved when Williams refused to support white BFASS members’ pro-Garrisonian policies.

When Garnet cites Williams Garnet’s contribution in a letter defending the “Address” against Maria Chapman’s accusation that he and the convention were acting under white manipulation. Williams Garnet’s history, then, becomes central to how Garnet represented the 1843 convention to the public. Particularly for Boston readers, her name would have signaled that he was not alone in his refusal to submit to white “guidance.” The Garnets’ relationship points to ways women may have participated in the colored conventions (organizing local meetings and fairs, overseeing activities while their husbands traveled as lecturers and delegates, building a literate political base, etc.) even when their labor went uncredited. This presentation ends by reflecting on how the Colored Convention Project’s own collaboration practices, its online exhibition space, and its methodological interventions in recovering the labor and voices of women like Williams Garnet.

Author

• Derrick R. Spires, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign