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This study seeks to explore the nature and activities of the anti-abolitionists in the era of British abolition. There were Britons who actively opposed the idea of abolishing the slave trade and West Indian slavery. They published works promoting and defending the trade and the institution of slavery. They challenged abolitionist assertions and claims about life in the colonies and the nature of the slaves and attacked the sentimental nature of abolitionist rhetoric. Proslavery MPs argued in Parliament for the maintenance of slavery and the slave trade. Members of the West Indian interest formed committees to produce their own propaganda and petitions. They also worked with Parliament to develop strategies to ameliorate slavery and end British slaveholding, whilst securing several more years of plantation labour and financial compensation for slaveholders. Politicians, writers, members of the West Indian interest, and their supporters actively fought to maintain colonial slavery and the prosperity of Britain and the colonies. A wide range of sources has been employed to reveal the true nature of the proslavery arguments advanced in Britain in the era of abolition. These include committee minutes, petitions, pamphlets, reviews, manuals, travel writing, scientific studies, political prints, portraits, poetry and song, plays, and the records of every parliamentary debate on slavery, the slave trade, and the West Indian colonies. Specific proslavery and anti-abolitionist arguments have been identified and analysed using these sources, with some commentary on how the setting or genre potentially impacted on the argument being presented. This analysis reveals that economic, racial, legal, historical, strategic, religious, moral, and humanitarian arguments were all used to counter the growing popularity of abolition and emancipation. Proslavery rhetoric in Parliament is also analysed, revealing an active proslavery side committed to fighting abolition. Overall, this study contributes to our current understanding of the timing, nature, and reception of British abolition in Britain by showing that the process was influenced by a serious debate.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Humanities / Master / Master of Philosophy

Many contemporary classical scholars, such as Benjamin Isaac and Denise McCoskey, frame the ancient Athenian attitudes toward their slaves as akin to or the same as White American racism. In this thesis, I argue that Athenian literary representations of slaves, in comparative perspective, are actually only superficially similar to those constructed in White American literature. I survey ancient Greek comedy and tragedy’s representations of slaves and demonstrate that the genres’ slave stereotypes recognise that slaves share with citizens a common humanity. I survey White American literature from the antebellum and Jim Crow eras, and I establish that its stereotyping of Black slaves and freedmen dehumanises them through the construction of racial difference. I argue that this crucial difference between Athenian and White American representations of slaves indicates that the Athenian city-state’s social system did not feature racism as it is articulated by critical race theorists Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Joe Feagin. / Graduate / 0294 / 0591 / 0579 / gbutler@uvic.ca

The purpose of this thesis is to examine rural African-American vernacular Baptist churches built in the years following the Civil War. The case study is centered in Hanover County, Virginia, because of the county's strategic location inrelation to the capital of the Confederacy in Richmond. Due to the overwhelming number of slaves, Anglo-Americans attempted to suppress African identity by forcing slaves to attend Anglo-American churches. A number of African-American congregations were secretly organized during the time of slavery. Until the fall of Richmond in spring 1865, African-Americans were not allowed to assemble publicly without Anglo-American supervision. In the years following Emancipation, African-Americans began separating from the Anglo-American congregations to formindependent churches. Upon separation, worship services were held in brush arbors and/or old shanties and were occasionally held in Anglo-American churches. Eventually, African-American church members acquired land to erect churches of their own. Using Chestnut Grove Baptist Church (circa 1870), Shiloh Baptist Church(circa 1877), Union Baptist Church (circa 1885) and Second Union Baptist Church (circa 1885) in Hanover County as a case study, this thesis asks precisely who built these churches, how they were constructed and why they were built the way theywere built.

ACCOUNT BOOK By Lynda Fleet Perry, MFA A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014 Major Director: Thesis / David Wojahn, Professor, English Department

This thesis examines the diary of Ellen Wallace, a woman who lived in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, during the American Civil War. A diligent diarist, Ellen recorded not only the workings of her farm and household, but also her interactions with slaves, her worries about secession, and her shifting views on President Lincoln, emancipation and the war itself. At the start of the war, Ellen was a staunch Unionist. By war's end, she was a Confederate. This thesis will examine the factors that contributed to Ellen's changing political ideals and how she sought to reconcile her opposing beliefs. Ellen occupied a role rarely discussed in Civil War scholarship: not a member of the southern paternalist society, or a northern abolitionist. Ellen was a slave‐owning woman who supported the Union cause.

Throughout the nineteenth century, New Orleans was repeatedly plagued by yellow fever epidemics. In this paper, cultural representations of yellow fever are considered in three novels: Baron Ludwig Von Reizenstein’s The Mysteries of New Orleans (1854-1855), George Washington Cable’s The Grandissimes (1880), and Mollie Evelyn Moore Davis’ The Queen’s Garden (1900). Because the etiology was unknown during the nineteenth century, yellow fever becomes a floating signifier on which to project the ills they observed in New Orleans society. Yellow fever thus becomes a representation of loose sexual mores, as well as a divinely retributive punishment for slavery, or a sign of adherence to an unequal, antiquated, aristocratic and un-American social system. Yellow fever, in these texts, exposes the struggles with race and racial superiority and illuminates tensions between groups of whites as New Orleans became an American city.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

Thesis advisor: Cynthia L. Lyerly / This dissertation uses an early-modern, transnational lens to examine slavery in eighteenth-century Boston. It serves as a test case for reexamining and reconceptualizing slavery in British North America and the Atlantic World. Rather than the traditional dichotomous conception of slavery and freedom, colonial-era slavery must be understood as part of a continuum of unfreedom. In Boston, African slavery existed alongside many other forms of dependence, including indentured servitude, apprenticeship, pauper apprenticeship, and Indian slavery. Drawing heavily on legal records such as wills and trial transcripts, we can see how African slavery functioned within this complex world of dependency. In this hierarchical, inherently unfree world, enslaved Bostonians were more concerned with their everyday treatment than emancipation. Eschewing modern notions of freedom and liberty and understanding slavery as part of a larger Atlantic World characterized by a culture of unfreedom, this study demonstrates not only how African slaves were able to decode their new homeland and shape the terms of enslavement, but also how marginalized people engrained themselves in the very fabric of colonial American society. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.