The Harrisons Go To Jamaica: Race and Sexual Violence in the Age of Abolition

Abstract

This article explores the intersection of race, the abolition of slavery, and the fear of sexual violence in the correspondence of Robert Monroe Harrison. A white Virginian and career diplomat for the United States, Harrison spent his career in the Caribbean, sometimes joined by his wife, Margaret, and their five children. For many years, Harrison's positions could not maintain the family overseas, but in 1831 he was stationed in Jamaica, Britain's largest slave colony, and the family was reunited. But slave rebellion swept the island in 1831, and Parliament abolished slavery in 1834. Harrison feared that sexual violence against whites would be the inevitable result of black emancipation, and, unable to protect his family, Harrison wrote about his fears to his superiors. Harrison's racial fears characterized those of white men faced with black emancipation across time and space. His correspondence is a valuable if disturbing window into the shaping of racist thought.

Keywords

Robert Monroe Harrison American families overseas abolition of slavery race sexual violence Jamaica

References

R. M. Harrison to Louis McLane, June 14, 1834, in Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Kingston, Jamaica , 1796-1906, Record Group 59, T 31, National Archives, College Park, Maryland . Many of the details of Harrison's family come from the research of Derrick Phillips, a descendant of Harrison who has kindly shared his unpublished genealogical work. Harrison's life and career have also been explored in Steven Heath Mitton , “The Free World Confronted: The Problem of Slavery and Progress in American Foreign Relations, 1833-1844” (PhD diss, Louisiana State University , 2005); and Joe Bassette Wilkins Jr. , “ Window on Freedom: The South's Response to the Emancipation of the Slaves in the British West Indies, 1833-1861” (PhD diss., University of South Carolina , 1977).

Seymour Drescher , The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation ( New York: Oxford University Press , 2002); Mary Turner , Slaves and Missionaries: The Disintegration of Jamaican Slave Society, 1781-1834 ( Urbana: University of Illinois Press , 1982); and Michael Craton , Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies ( Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press , 1982).

Research of Derrick Phillips; Mitton , “ Free World Confronted ,” 141-42 ; and New York Times, June 17, 1858.

H. Arnold Barton , Count Hans Axel Von Fersen: Aristocrat in an Age of Revolution ( Boston: Twayne , 1975 ); and Mitton , “ Free World Confronted,” 142, 164 n. 11.

Richard Pares, Yankees and Creoles : The Trade between North America and the West Indies before the American Revolution ( Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press , 1956).

William Henry, Edward Augustus, and Elizabeth Virginia Fairfax Harrison.

R. M. Harrison to John Quincy Adams, August 14, 1823, in Despatches from Antigua, Record Group 59, National Archives , College Park, Maryland ; and Emilia Viotti da Costa , Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood: The Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823 ( New York: Oxford University Press , 1994).

See, for example, R.M. Harrison to Henry Clay, May 3, 1827, in The Papers of Henry Clay , ed. James F. Hopkins and Mary W. M. Hargreaves, 11 vols. ( Lexington: University of Kentucky Press , 1959-1992), 6:518.

Margaret Harrison to Henry Clay, June 16, 1825, in Hopkins and Hargreaves, Papers of Henry Clay, 4:446-47.

10.

Henry Clay to R. M. Harrison, May 14, 1827, in Hopkins and Hargreaves, Papers of Henry Clay, 6:552-54. Harrison's tour is examined in Fred Dellamura , “ The Harrison Report and Its Role in the British American Controversy over the West India Carrying Trade, 1827-1828” (master's thesis, University of Kentucky , 1972).

11.

F. Lee Benns , The American Struggle for the British West India Carrying Trade, 1815-1830 (1923; Clifton, N.J.: Augustus M. Kelley , 1972), 46-188; and Timothy Pitkin , A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of America ( New Haven, Conn.: Durrie and Peck , 1835), 196-213.

12.

R. M. Harrison to Daniel Brent, June 7, 1831, April 11, 1832, July 5, 1831, August 22, 1831, and September 12, 1831, detail Harrison's difficulties with his appointment and the first news of “apprehension” in Jamaica. They are all written from Pensacola, Florida. All letters are in Despatches from . . . Kingston, Jamaica; and see Craton, Testing the Chains, 313.

13.

R. M. Harrison to Edward Livingston, April 12, 1832, reports their arrival; and R. M. Harrison to Edward Livingston, April 14, 1832, details his first impressions of the island. Both in Despatches from . . . Kingston, Jamaica.

14.

R. M. Harrison to Edward Livingston, August 12, 1832, in Despatches from . . . Kingston, Jamaica. The emphasis is in the original. All underlining that follows is in the original. For more on the free coloreds, see Gad Heuman , Between Black and White: Race, Politics, and the Free Coloreds in Jamaica, 1792-1865 ( Westport, Conn.: Greenwood , 1981).

15.

R. M. Harrison to Edward Livingston, January 1, 1833, and June 30, 1833, in Despatches from . . . Kingston, Jamaica.

16.

R. M. Harrison to Louis McLane, July 24, 1833, in Despatches from . . . Kingston, Jamaica. Harrison makes similar references to St. Domingo in the dispatches of November 14, 1833, and January 10, 1834. For more on British abolition, see Drescher, The Mighty Experiment.

17.

Bryan Edwards's account of the Haitian Revolution was first published as a single volume: Bryan Edwards , An Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St. Domingo: Comprehending an Account of the Revolt of the Negroes in the Year 1791, and a Detail of the Military Transactions of the British Army in the Years 1793 & 1794 ( London: John Stockdale , 1797). Later, it was reprinted as vol. 4 in several later editions of The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, 4 vols. (reprints, Philadelphia, 1805, 1806, and Baltimore and Charleston, S.C., 1810). For more on Edwards, see David Brion Davis , The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (1975; reprint, New York: Oxford University Press , 1999), 185-87; and Olwyn M. Blouet , “ Bryan Edwards and the Haitian Revolution,” in The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, ed. David Geggus ( Columbia: University of South Carolina Press , 2001), 44-57

18.

Edwards , Historical Survey, 74-75, 79.

19.

R. M. Harrison to Louis McLane, August 18, September 7, November 14, and December 3, 1833, in Despatches from . . . Kingston, Jamaica.

20.

R. M. Harrison to Louis McLane, January 10 and February 4, 1834. Requests for naval protection include July 14, 1833, April 11, 1833, November 14, 1833, December 3, 1833, December 12, 1833, January 10, 1834, May 19, 1834, and June 14, 1834, all in Despatches from . . . Kingston, Jamaica.

21.

R. M. Harrison to John Forsyth, August 11, 1834, in Despatches from . . . Kingston, Jamaica.

22.

R. M. Harrison to John Forsyth, October 8, 1834, in Despatches from . . . Kingston, Jamaica.

23.

Edward B. Rugemer , “The Problem of Emancipation: The United States and Britain's Abolition of Slavery” (PhD diss., Boston College , 2005), ch. 4.

24.

R. M. Harrison to John Forsyth, November 14, 1834, in Despatches from . . . Kingston, Jamaica. Samuel Sharpe is now one of Jamaica's official national heroes. In actuality, most violence during the Baptist War was directed against property, not persons. See Turner , Slaves and Missionaries, 160.

25.

Martha Hodes , White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth Century South ( New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press , 1997); Thomas G. Dyer , “ A Most Unexampled Exhibition of Madness and Brutality: Judge Lynch in Saline County, Missouri, 1859,” in Under Sentence of Death: Lynching in the South, ed. W. Fitzhugh Brundage ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press , 1997), 81-108; and Joan Cashin , “A Lynching in Wartime Carolina: The Death of Saxe Joiner,” in Brundage , Under Sentence of Death, 109-31.