Terms used for/by African-Americans in the 19th century

[George Thompson]

This topic was kicked around here a couple of months ago.  I have just come
upon the following item, from the American Periodical Series file.  The
point of interest to ADS-L comes in the first paragraph, but I will take
the liberty of posting the whole of the note that I took.

            "A Dark Subject."  It has been so common, and so praise-worthy,
to commiserate the unhappy fate of our oppressed fellow-beings -- the
negroes, or, as they call themselves, "De Cullur'd Peeples," that it seems
almost a crime to speak, except in pity, of their errors.  ***

            ***  Their morning labours in the field are changed to a lounge
in Broadway.  Their afternoons are now devoted. not to labour, but to a
ride on horseback, or in some dashing tilbury, by the side of some blooming
white-eyed goddess, to Cato's or to Kensington-house.  Their nights once
were spent in refreshing sleep, but now the streets resound with their
drunken rioting, and horse laughs, and they return from their romantic
promenades in the "African Grove," § and their midnight debaucheries, to
climb into their masters' windows, or more generally to be escorted, by
those enemies to freedom -- those nocturnal despots -- the city watchmen,
to meditate and dream of *happy* equality, in the Watch House.

            ***

            § A lately established ice-cream and punch garden.

            *** This growing evil loudly calls for the reorganization of
"the order of No. 40" §§ to stop its increase.  Could its former members
make some agreement with our worthy watchmen, to let them proceed without
interruption in their "crusades," I have no doubt it would reduce our black
friends once more to becoming humility, and would inculcate a desire of
spending their nights, hereafter, in health-inspiring slumbers.  With some
check on their proceedings, they could enjoy equally as much liberty in
behaving themselves, as in depredating on their masters' property to
*hire*coats and dresses, and to support their dashing equipages.

            §§ An association of boys, who formerly waged war with the
negroes, and cruelly interrupted their evening walks. [footnote]

            ***

            Literary Companion, August 18, 1821, pp. 156-57



If nothing else, this serves to remind us that our ancestors could be
infernal pains in the ass, when in the mood.

All right, my ancestors.  Calvin Trilling wrote somewhere, that the thing
he is most grateful for at Thanksgiving, is that none of his ancestors were
in this country in colonial times, or the 19th C, and so weren't
responsible for whatever happened here then.

This particular guy I can almost forgive, because he mentions the African
Grove.  Almost.


GAT

-- 
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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