SLAVERY AND SILENCE
SLAVERY
AND SILENCE
LATIN AMERICA AND THE U.S. SLAVE DEBATE
PAUL D. NAISH
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2017 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved.
Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation,
none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means
without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Naish, Paul D., 1960–2016, author.
Title: Slavery and silence: Latin America and the U.S. slave debate / Paul D. Naish.
Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
[2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017012496 | ISBN 9780812249453
(hardcover: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Slavery—Political aspects—United States—History—19th
century. | Slavery—Latin America—History—19th century. | United
States—Race relations—History—19th century. | Whites—United
States—Attitudes—History—19th century. | Racism—Political
aspects—United States—History—19th century. | Conversation—Political
aspects—United States—History—19th century. | Political culture—United
States—History—19th century.
Classification: LCC E441 .N35 2017 | DDC 306.3/62098—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017012496
[T]here are gentlemen, not only from the Northern, but
from the Southern States, who think that this unhappy
question—for such it is—of negro slavery … should never
be brought into public notice … Sir, it is a thing which
cannot be hid … you might as well try to hide a volcano,
in full operation …
—John Randolph, 1826
“Shadow,” said he,
“Where can it be—
This land of Eldorado?”
—“Eldorado,” Edgar Allan Poe, 1849
Contents
Introduction. Surrounded by Mirrors
Chapter 1. Never So Drunk with New-Born Liberty
Chapter 3. The Problem of Slavery
Chapter 4. Conquest and Reconquest
Chapter 5. An Even More Peculiar Institution
Publisher’s Note
Sadly, Paul Naish died before finishing this book. His friend and former classmate, Evan Friss of James Madison University, assumed responsibility for seeing the work through the final stages of production.
Preface. Creatures of Silence
The early twenty-first century has been marked by a series of crimes and tragedies revealing, to the apparent surprise of many Americans, the longevity and pervasiveness of racism in the United States. Despite the fiftieth anniversary of important landmarks of civil rights legislation and the election of the nation’s first African American president, a “postracial” future has not arrived. The bluntly discriminatory administration of justice reveals that the day-to-day lived experience of many nonwhite Americans differs significantly from that of whites. These sadly repeated discoveries of crude discrimination inspire equally regular calls for a “national conversation on race.”
Considering how much the subject of race is openly debated at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it seems surprising that the need for further discussion is consistently invoked. But in the United States, race, for all its notoriety, is usually talked about in intimate contexts
