These are notes for my remarks at the conference in honor of Stephanie M. H. Camp, held May 7-8, 2015 at the University of Washington. I spoke on May 8, about a precirculated paper titled “Fifteen Years a Slave: The Trials of Henrietta Wood.”

My Talk

Introduction

• Still feels like a new project; looking forward to feedback
• New title: I proposed to speak about “Henry/Henrietta: Two Stories of Forced Relocation in the Final Days of the Plantation South,” but in the end the paper I submitted focused only on Henrietta Wood.

What I Originally Envisioned

When I was invited to participate, I was focused on researching Refugeed Slaves brought to Texas by Refugees to Texas during the American Civil War. Estimates vary, but between 50,000 and 150,000 people were brought to Texas during the war by Confederate enslavers fleeing from the front lines, especially after 1863 when a more aggressive Union policy of military emancipation combined with increased Union control over the Mississippi River. We know why these Confederate refugees fled; but we don’t have a full account of how many succeeded and what it means that so many did.¹

Why I was interested:

1. What was the experience of this relocation like for the enslaved? We know much (but still not enough) about those who ran away, but know little about the experiences of those who were “run off.”
2. Absence of collective memory in Texas about slavery or the Civil War, notwithstanding Juneteenth; in fact, as Steven Hahn and other editors have recently said, Texas remained the “last stronghold of de facto slavery,” even after Juneteenth.²
3. Challenge to simplified understanding of the Civil War as one that totally destroyed slavery; experience of refugeed slaves spotlight uneven process of emancipation.³

We can see the unevenness of emancipation in two ways:

• Close up: even some of the most famous stories about the disintegration of plantation slavery, like that of Kate Stone at Brokenburn, actually ended with most of the plantation’s enslaved people in Texas
• Broad scale: The higher estimates of the number of refugeed slaves brought to Texas—150,000—rival the numbers of African American men who enlisted in the Union army (185,000)

None of this suggests that we should change our picture of the Civil War as a war of emancipation and resistance—as the moment of a “general strike” (DuBois) or perhaps even, in Hahn’s terms, as the largest slave rebellion in world history. But it did seem to me significant to talk about this counter-movement of slavery that began at the very moment of slavery’s supposed dissolution, because it spotlights the resilience of slavery and helps explain why new forms of containment and coercion outlived its legal abolition.

Stephanie was already making this point in camp2004, p. 128, in her chapter on the Civil War. On the one hand, she detailed the ways that the “rival geography” of enslaved people came out into the open during the Civil War. But she also noted, though it’s less often remembered, that the “geography of containment” tightened during the War. As she put it, “slaveholders strove to prevent bondpeople from running away to the northern army, devising new techniques and renewing older ones to reinforce their long-standing geographies of containment. Continuity as well as change characterized planters’ wartime responses to black movement.”

Two Stories

I initially planned to use two stories of enslaved people to illustrate this doubling of change and continuity.

The “Henry” of my title referred to an enslaved man who was taken to Texas by a Louisiana sugar planter named Robert Campbell Martin, Sr.. Henry remained there until the autumn of 1865, when Martin set out to return to Louisiana, forcing most of the enslaved people he had “refugeed” to return with him. Somewhere around Berwick Bay in Louisiana, Martin flogged Henry so brutally that it attracted the interest of some nearby black soldiers from the USCT. They approached Martin’s camp to attempt to liberate Henry, but Martin held them off with a firearm and the help of a local white constable. Martin moved on with Henry still in his control.⁴

I first told Henry’s story about a year ago at the OAH in Atlanta, where Richard Blackett was a chair of my panel. In September, now knowing what I was working on, he sent me notice about a woman he had found in a newspaper story named Henrietta Wood:

Caleb:

You need to get your hands on the Ripley Bee (Ohio) for March 6, 20, 1879 for the case of a former freed woman, Henrietta Wood, who was taken in Cincinnati in June 1853 and re-enslaved first in KY and then moved further south. When the war broke out she was in Natchez. Once the Union forces threatened, her owner moved with his slaves to Texas. Sounds familiar? Once word got to slaves in TX that they were free her “owner” promised to hire them if they returned with him to Natchez. To cut a long story short, after [Wood] made it back to Ohio she sued her old owner for re-enslaving her and won.

I got that email, and obtained the relevant issues of the Bee around the time I was formulating my paper description and title for this conference. My original plan was to counterpose Henry’s story, a story of limits of emancipation and the continuities of containment, with the story of Henrietta Wood, who would show the possibilities of emancipation. (There was also an iffy James McBride novel allusion brewing in my mind. Hence the title.)

One Story

In the end, however, Henrietta Wood took over, and the paper I precirculated focused only on her story. Partly this is because the more I looked closely at her narrative, the more interesting it became in its own right. (Reference Ed Baptist’s allusion yesterday to Stephanie’s discovery of California letters.) I also found it fruitful to think about Wood’s story through the combined lenses of Stephanie Camp’s work on containment and rival geographies, and recent work on the history of commodification and the empire of cotton in “slave racial capitalism.” Finally, I also decided I had to abandon my simplistic framing of “Henry versus Henrietta,” because the more I learned about her story, the more difficult it was to decide how it should be narrated.

Brief recap of what I know:

• Her narratives give outline of the story (emancipated in 1847, kidnapped in 1853, petition for freedom that was denied in 1854, appeal that failed in January 1855, sold to Lexington slave traders in 1855, purchased in Natchez by Gerard Brandon, placed in the fields and then moved to domestic service, taken to Texas where she remained confined by an overseer until several years after emancipation, her return to the Cincinnati area in 1869 or 1870), together with valuable and sometimes perplexing memories of her family and life before her kidnapping
• national newspaper stories couched the case in debates over reparations and the meaning of her victory
• Zebulon Ward, the man responsible for her kidnapping, was a prominent Kentucky horse breeder and racer, and he was also a lessee of the state penitentiaries in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas
• Gerard Brandon kept a diary in which I believe he mentioned Wood by name
• Have also begun to uncover records of Wood after her return to Cincinnati; she appears in the 1870 census living in the household of her lawyer

Questions

While trying to reconstruct Henrietta Wood’s story for this paper, I found myself wrestling with several questions:

1. What is Microhistory for? Particularly at a historiographical moment when so much work on slavery is writ large? How to combine the general and particular in the way that Stephanie did?
2. What does Camp’s work on the spatial history have to say to historians of “slave racial capitalism”? Though “commodification” was not a key category for Camp, I think they are two sides of the same coin: commodification depended, and always depends, on confinement.

One of the best descriptions of “commodification” in the recent history of capitalism is, I think, Jonathan Levy’s book, which refers to commodification as the “enclosure” of alienable property that could be transferred between buyers and sellers even at a distance. The notion here is drawn from the idea of land commodification, a bordering of ground that could be transferred. Levy uses the same idea of “enclosure” to discuss how risk was commodified, and it’s a useful way to think about what it meant to become a “person with a price.”

But that abstract “enclosure” depended in turn on literal containment. Wood’s movement from freedom to slavery involved a twofold enclosure, from self-ownership to commodity, and from freedom of movement to a world delimited by buildings, doors, fences, and gates.

What are the moments at which this coupling of commodification and containment is clearest? We know about the plantation (Marquese, Finch, Camp, johnson2013, baptist2014), the market (johnson2009). But also at every other space along the way, as several of these papers have shown. Also in the clinical setting (Deidre Cooper Owens), also at the moment of sale and initial enslavement in the African trade (Jessica Johnson and Sowande’ Mustakeem papers) and also at moments of reenslavement or kidnapping (see also rothman2014 for discussion of slavery as kidnapping). By looking at these other spaces of containment, it becomes easier to make visible the ways that containment preceded and outlived what Camp’s subtitle called the “Plantation South” (Robin Kelley’s talk last night).

3. Final question I’ve been wrestling with is how to narrate Wood’s story? The question people immediately ask when I tell them that Wood “Did she win?” Yes, but Ward didn’t exactly “lose” either considering the wealth he had amassed and his role in the origins of convict leasing. She was only awarded $2,500, even though the lawsuit had request ten times that amount.

One reason I hesitate to call Wood’s victory in court simply a “win” is the fact that contemporary white newspapers were so quick to see the case as an ending point. As one Cincinnati paper put it, reflecting back on slavery, “It is pleasant to reflect that such days will come again no more to her or any of her race.”⁵ Yet we know where experiments in prison leasing by Zebulon Ward led, and we also know how many others never got a day in court. One of the most haunting parts of Northup’s story is the scene where he leaves and Patsy remains behind. Sowande’ also mentioned the girls who did not survive the ship that Priscilla was on. Likewise, who were those left behind in Wood’s story?

Looking forward to feedback.

Comments from Audience

“And then #StephanieCamp symposium participants entered the mothership…” pic.twitter.com/mD3Qu4qYXe

— Jessica M. Johnson (@jmjafrx) May 8, 2015

Barbara Krauthammer:

McDaniel’s descriptions of Zebulon Ward prompt us to think about the ways in which capitalism is performed or enacted; the constant, speculation, the frenzied efforts to reap profit through plunder; McDaniel’s account underscores the extent to which understandings of property and profit are given life through slaveholders’, traders’ and thieves’ schemes.

Krauthammer also suggested a closer look at gender in the story, particularly on Wood’s relationships with other “refugeed” women and children, to whom she may have been providing health and healing care. The paper also reminded her of Wilma King’s work in “Essence of Liberty,” arguing that “freedom gained meaning through relationships.” Luther Adams followed up on this point about children, and wondered if in addition to reparation suit in Cincinnati there were also “reunions” she was looking forward to. (In the paper I speculated that Wood’s child may have been conceived in Kentucky with a man on Ward’s farm.) He connected the paper to williams2012a.

Finally, Krauthammer said “the judgment in Henrietta Wood’s favor adds a new dimension to our thinking about the ways in which Black lives are ‘valued’.” Not just as “persons with a price” for purchase, pace johnson1999, but as persons whose lost wages or “damages” might be evaluated after emancipation.

There was a question about the purpose for which Wood’s narrative was created. What were its objectives (either by Wood or by former abolitionist who appears to have interviewed her and framed the story)?

The discussion also turned to the question of how emancipation was narrated in the sources themselves. Moon-Ho Jung asked what those narrations tell us about how enslaved people or other parties defined “liberal citizenship” and freedom.

• My initial response was that for Wood it meant freedom of movement (her description of Cincinnati seen through window of room where she was confined), reparation, ability to speak in court and have her story heard.
• Jennifer Morgan suggests “Freedom as Marronage,” idea of movement as crucial to freedom (later echoed in Luther’s closing panel comments that for African Americans, the primary question has not been “what is freedom?” but “where is freedom?”)
• Ed Baptist suggests Wood is possibly contesting notions of liberal citizenship that undergirded previous narratives of emancipation by insisting on reparation. Freedom not just the absence of restraint, but presence of Justice.

Baptist thinks that there may be Pullum and Griffin papers at Duke, and also that the new Schermerhorn book discusses enslaved women who moved between New Orleans and Cincinnati. He also encouraged me to think more about the story Wood tells about her brother Joshua’s scar, especially in light of Mustakeem’s paper on marks left by violence on the body that could be imbued with new meaning by enslaved people. Baptist also talks about scar and recognition/reunion stories in baptist2014.

Someone suggested Wood gives us a new dimension to the Jordan Anderson letter often used. One thing this makes me think about is whether the idea of the $20,000 in reparations was formulated by Wood herself or imposed on the case by journalists. If the former, did she also conceive of reparations for her enslavement prior to 1847? Was the suit a product of her encounters with enslaved people in Deep South?

In response to my point about the question, “Did she win?”, Liz Pryor asked how Wood would answer the question, which made me realize her narrative really doesn’t answer that question. Trails off. Pryor also wondered about the relationship between Wood and Brandon, given her use of the word “coaxed.”

Other Notes from Conference

Barbara Krauthammer mentioned her hope that the work from the conference would be a continuing testament to a community Stephanie Camp built.

Ed Baptist told story of research trip to Durham where she discovered the California letters from camp2004.

Stephanie Smallwood: violence against black bodies was not just rationalized but naturalized. How do we explain how “persons with a price” were so violently abused? (Struggle of presentation to students). Important to be interested in the experience of enslavement, but not just through the way that enslaved people understood that experience.

Smallwood argued, building on comment on Marques paper, that antislavery and free trade ideology in some ways aided the expansion of “slave racial capitalism”; these treaties were also treaties for the promotion of commerce (Palmerston); the slave trade didn’t end so much as it moved

Finch’s paper asked what the rival geography idea can do for thinking about other counter-hegemonic practices within the plantation space. At various moments in the conference, concepts of “rival corporeality” (Finch), “rival memory” (Reddy), and “rival chronology” came up.

Sharla Fett: we need more work showing the effects of macroeconomic shifts in enslaved people’s experiences: “a body politics of second slavery.”

Finch’s paper gave example of how the act of labor itself, and not just violence designed to coerce labor, was a bodily trauma (disembodiment of mind, suspension of time–makes me think of Wood’s comments about forgetting how to go forward).

Vanessa Holden gave interesting paper on women’s involvement in “Southampton Rebellion.” Why did these men think it would be a good idea? Only if they had communities of support from multiple enslaved people, including women. Holden: “we tend to think of the revolt as history but not as an event with a history” and also with an aftermath. We need to think not only about the rebellion itself, but about those who survived the rebellion. Most of those survivors were women, and it was women who helped community members survive the aftermath.

Chandan Reddy: “rival memory” (do bonds people have very different understandings of memory itself? Jennifer James work on “ecomelancholia,” ecophobia the inspiration here). Instead of pathologizing memory, perhaps we need to recognize that African Americans have a different sense of pastness itself, “a form of mourning marked by its resistance to termination.”

Kali Gross: Camp’s commitment to resistance was not limited to her scholarship. What are our roles and responsibilities? She generously gave her work and time. She had an understanding of vulnerability of black women activists in academia. She turned every site she occupied into sites of resistance. She could disagree but in ways that preserved relationship. She also took that beyond the academy (her work in prisons, Seattle zoo).

Dangers of social media, according to Kali Gross: how to compress complexities into bite-size essays? also, does egoism and careerism creep in? Should we just do our work instead of trying to be famous? Or is the work of black history or black studies itself changing?

Luther Adams:

• says Stephanie’s book reminds him of Stephanie: “Slim but powerful,” full of big ideas.
• Emphasizes that she was extraordinarily generous, yet never asked for much from others.
• She never lost sight of enslaved people as people (maybe one reason that she doesn’t use the term commodification).
• “The more unstable the borders are the more they are policed.”
• Camp’s emphasis on culture is really an emphasis on everyday life.
• Black people were held captive, that’s the essence of slavery that camp2004 identified. People didn’t just seek freedom, they sought family. And sometimes there is no redress. But Stephanie’s work is not a work of despair. “Movement toward freedom is an ever ongoing movement.”

Jennifer Morgan: 2004 saw the second and third monographs on enslaved women to be published since 1985 book by White. Camp created space for African American women’s history. It was about the women: finding their lives was itself an exhilarating pleasure, the “pleasures of resistance.” Women’s history not just contributionist but transformative. Also requires collaboration to support that work.

Robin Kelley: using the academy to create “fugitive spaces” and rival geographies. Not just to translate scholarship to different audiences. “Black Study” is not just about black people, but about a critique of Western civilization itself.

Conversation on Thursday with Luther Adams about Henrietta Woods work:

• He likes to teach Northup because of his eye for the different forms of labor that slaves did in different contexts
• Wood’s could be a story about the limits of the law, both to protect her and to redress the wrongs done to her
• what was the experience like for a free woman who undergoes the process of enslavement?
• “Did she win?”
• look for short-term fellowships from Kentucky Historical Society

Kali Gross suggests looking at Mary Berry’s biography of Callie House, early advocate of reparations who had also been formerly enslaved.