Guerrilla inscription: Transatlantic abolition and the 1851 census

ABSTRACT

This article reimagines the transatlantic climate of abolition by a focus on a specific incident. Wilson Armistead, a Yorkshire Quaker merchant, abolitionist, and prolific author, hosted the African American fugitives Ellen and William Craft in his house in Leeds in 1851, when they were on a lecture tour of the UK. In a typically quiet (yet bold) abolitionist act of what I call guerrilla inscription, he ensured that they were recorded in the UK census as fugitives. As the Crafts were well-known figures who received sympathetic attention, this unprecedented action was widely covered in the press. Yet subsequently it passed into obscurity. My paper explores this forgotten story to ask how state documents can be subverted for means other than which they are intended, and to reflect on what happens when abolitionists and academics meet in the archive.

KEYWORDS:

• Transatlantic abolition
• census records
• Wilson Armistead
• Ellen and William Craft
• Quakers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Bridget Bennett is Professor of American Literature and Culture in the School of English, University of Leeds. This article is part of a larger research project titled “The Dissenting Atlantic: Archives and Unquiet Libraries, 1776–1865,” which is supported by a Major Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust which she will take up in September 2020.

Notes

1 Rediker, The Fearless Benjamin Lay, 2.

2 Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, 1–2.

3 See www.booktraces.org.

4 Gikandi, “Rethinking the Archive of Enslavement,” 93.

5 Gardner, “Accessing Early Black Print,” 27.

6 See Taylor and Loeb, “Librarian is my Occupation.”

7 Augst and Carpenter, eds. Institutions of Reading and McHenry, Forgotten Readers.

8 Gruber Garvey, “Nineteenth-Century Abolitionists,” 361–362.

9 Hodges, David Ruggles, 135.

10 Hochman, “Investing in Literature.”

11 I develop this further in an article tentatively titled “Philanthropy and the Unquiet Library” for a collection to be published by Bloomsbury in 2021, titled United States Philanthropy at Home and Abroad: From Civil War to Cold War.

12 Pfaelzer, “Hanging Out,” 140.

13 Huzzey, Freedom Burning, 219.

14 Brown urges us to use multiple sources when writing black historiography, “published materials” and “public materials.” Brown, “Death-Defying Testimony,” 132. The latter include “newspapers, city directories, maps, shops and stock inventories, census reports, wills, and legal documents.”

15 Nicholls, “Richard Cobden,” 354.

16 Liddington, Crawford, and Maund, “Women do not count,” 106. Women (and sometimes male supporters) protested at a piece of record-keeping that acknowledged their obligations as wives and the mothers of children without according them the privileges of citizenship. Other examples of this kind of guerrilla inscription Dorothea Rock’s assertion that: “I, Dorothea Rock, in the absence of the male occupier, refuse to fill up this Census paper as, in the eyes of the Law, women do not count, neither shall they be counted.” Ibid., 108.

17 Ibid., 111–112.

18 Blackett, “Fugitive Slaves,” 42.

19 “England and Wales Census, 1851.” Wells Brown was staying in the household of Elizabeth and Philipp Clark. Also, in the property that night were other family members, a number of servants and nine lodgers, including Wells Brown. Two were from Ireland, one from Scotland and the others, with the exception of Wells Brown and a Danish lodger, were from England.

20 Ibid.

21 Key texts include Blackett, “Fugitive Slaves in Britain” and “The Odyssey of William and Ellen Craft”; McCaskill, “The Profits and Perils of Partnership” and Love, Liberation, and Escaping Slavery.

22 Craft, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, 4.

23 “Singular Escape of Two Slaves from Georgia.” Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury, 10 March 1849, 2. The letter was written in Philadelphia and dated 30 December 1848. Similar pieces were published in The Newcastle Courant on 30 March 1849 and The Hull Packet and East Riding Times, 6 April 1849.

24 Midgley, The Churches and the Working Classes, 120–121. This was a decade after the passing of the Toleration Act of 1689, which allowed Nonconformists freedom of worship. For the figures from the 1851 census see “Census of 1851,” The British Friend, July 1851, 165–166.

25 This would be a central element of the rest of his short life: his abolitionist activities would be commented on in The Liberator throughout the 1850s. See, for instance, “Twentieth National,” 2; “Prof. Allen in Leeds, England,” 1; “The Twenty-First National Anti-Slavery Bazaar,” 1.

26 “Negroes are Men,” 2.

27 Armistead, “Reminiscences,” 261.

28 He discussed Dickens’ meeting with Laura Bridgman of the Perkins Institute when he made his own visit there. See Armistead, “Reminiscences,” 57.

29 William Nell informed Amy Post that after dining with Lewis Hayden on 14 July 1850 he went to visit Robert Morris. Here, presumably, he heard of Armistead’s visit since he immediately adds that he hopes to meet the Yorkshireman. Amy and Isaac Post were active members of the Underground Railroad in Rochester. William Cooper Nell to Amy Post, 15 July 1850.

30 Armistead, “Reminiscences,” March 1852, 57.

31 Armistead, “Reminiscences,” April 1851, 94.

32 He writes that “Being deeply interested in the progress of the Negro race, in a moral and intellectual point of view, I shall frequently have to advert to the many proofs of advancement amongst them that came under my observation; ample opportunities offered for ascertaining this, and witnessing a decided onward movement.” Ibid., 95.

33 For instance, Davis and Bilder write that “It seems likely that the two men would have crossed paths, but we found no direct evidence that they knew each other.” “The Library of Robert Morris,” 22.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid., 95–96. See the difference between the 1846 and 1849 editions of Adams’s New Directory of the City of Boston for evidence of this. The later edition is integrated.

36 Ibid., 96.

37 The evidence they gave of the lives of enslaved African Americans would be used by abolitionists. See Clarke, Present Condition. Whether or not Armistead knew that the slave schedules existed is not clear.

38 Lewis Hayden; line 27, Massachusetts: City of Boston; United States Census, 1850 (NARA Microfilm Publication M432, roll 336); Washington D.C.,: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d. National Archives, United States of America (hereafter NARA): Series M432, Roll 336. Massachusetts: City of Boston.

39 “William and Ellen Crafts [sic] the Fugitive Slaves from Boston,” 6.

40 Collison, Shadrach Minkins, 84–85; 130–133; 193–196. Armistead writes of his visit to the Perkins Institute and Asylum for the Blind and his meeting with its director, Grindley Howe, in “Reminiscences,” February 1852, 30–32. As Albert Von Frank shows, all three actively defended Anthony Burns. Von Frank, The Trials of Anthony Burns, see indexed references.

41 “Advertisements & Notices.” Further details of their appearance locally are given in elsewhere. See, for instance, “Local Intelligence.”

42 For more on this see Foreman, “Who’s Your Mama?” and Millette “Exchanging Fugitive Identity.”

43 For more on this see Morgan, “Crossing Boundaries,” 163.

44 For more on this, see Brook’s discussion of “Afro-alienation acts,” Bodies in Dissent, 3–6.

45 “Anti-Slavery Meeting in Newcastle,” 4.

46 “Public Meeting in York,” 6.

47 Armistead, “Remarkable Return in the Census. Disgrace to America,” 106.

48 “Remarkable Return in the Census.” Hereford Journal, 4 and “Remarkable Return in the Census” Cheltenham Chronicle, 4.

49 “William and Ellen Craft” and “American Slavery” Bristol Mercury and West Counties Advertiser, 8. See also “Fugitive Slaves,” 8. On the Craft’s work in the West Country see Blackett, “Fugitive Slaves,” 48–49.

50 “He must be a person of intelligence and activity; he must read and write well, and have some knowledge of arithmetic; he must not be infirm or of such weak health as may render him unable to undergo the requisite exertion; he should not be younger than 18 years of age or older than 65; he must be temperate, orderly and respectable, and be such a person as is likely to conduct himself with strict propriety, and to deserve the goodwill of the inhabitants of his district.” Cited in Higgs, Making Sense of the Census Revisited, 16.

51 Ibid., 17. Much of the following information is taken from Higgs’ book.

52 Cheshire, Results of the Census, 12.

53 Higgs, Making Sense of the Census Revisited, 18.

54 Liddington, Crawford, and Maund, “Women do not count,” 117.

55 The Poll Book of the Leeds Borough Election of 1847, 3 and 5; The Poll Book of the Leeds Borough Election, July 1841.

56 See Fraser’s discussions in “Politics and Society in the Nineteenth Century” and “Areas of Urban Politics.”

57 “Births, Deaths, Marriages and Obituaries,” 1.

58 “Election of Clerk to the Guardians,” 3. See also “The Coming Election of Leeds Guardians,” 5.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was supported by the School of English, University of Leeds and the Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute.