ANGELINA DOHRE
Special to The Leader
Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alan Taylor hosted a talk at the Williams Center on Sept. 20. Taylor is the Thomas Jefferson Foundation chair at the University of Virginia’s Corcoran Department of History, and is an expert on the history of colonial America and the early U.S. Republic.
Based off of his narrative titled “The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in the Early Republic,” the talk centered around slavery during the early 1800s. Taylor introduced the topic by defining internal enemy as a phrase that Virginians used to describe enslaved people.
“The concept was that there was a potential that, in the night, enslaved people would rise up and kill masters and their master’s families,” he said. “This was a very powerfully held fantasy in Virginia.”
He then went on to discuss how people believed this fantasy could become reality through the use of an external enemy, the British Empire. The fear was that slaves would begin revolting once the British arrived in force on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay in February 1813.
A large portion of the talk was spent on a specific episode of a group of slaves attempting to escape.
“In October of 1814, British warships were present in Chesapeake Bay with overwhelming force, and were encouraging enslaved people to escape to them,” Taylor said. “A handful of enslaved men stole a canoe during this time one night. Somehow, this group of young men managed to break the lock on the canoe and steal it without waking their masters. And instead of going straight to the British, they went across the Potomac river, stole a ferry boat and loaded it up with 17 people.”
This episode showed Taylor several reflecting patterns that correlated with other escapes. He studies these specific types of patterns shown in history, along with documents written by slaves, which he showed later in the discussion. The first noticeable pattern was careful planning among the enslaved people.
“This wasn’t spontaneous. This wasn’t emotional,” he said. “They pulled this off in different stages to involve 17 people who all kept a secret, and indeed, there were other enslaved people that chose not to escape on this night yet still kept the secret.”
Other patterns found were enslaved people escaping who were not limited to one plantation, but came from several different places, such as farms and shops, and they were valuable because of their ages and skillsets.
“Farmers encouraged more enslaved people to become artisans or house slaves, so we found a growing proportion of the enslaved in Virginia had become blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, weavers and more,” Taylor said.
Yet even with the patterns being similar to other escapes, this particular escape had its own unique qualities.
“What made this escape different was there were two young women and three children,” Taylor said. “Over 90 percent of those who escaped from Virginia before the War of 1812 were young men, and by bringing warships right into the bay, it made it possible for family groups to get away.”
Throughout the talk, Taylor showed pictures of several primary sources that were associated with the specific episode described previously.
Freshman social studies adolescent education major Haley Menze was pleased with the sources that were presented. “You don’t usually see them [primary sources] in textbooks; it’s just usually fact after fact,” she said. “He would give us a source and information on it, and he broke it down and showed us evidence in a clear and concise manner that was understandable.”
Taylor ended the talk with a description of the end of the War of 1812, and showed an image that depicted the White House and the Capitol being burned as a result of Americans allowing slavery to still exist.
The discussion was appreciated by people who attended. “It’s cool to see someone who has spent more time on this and investigated something like slavery in America,” Menze said. “I have always had an interest in American history, even back in elementary school.”
Several people who attended the talk were there for help with their history classes, as well. “I’m in Dr. [Jennifer] Hildebrand’s African American Studies class, and this talk fit in really well with what we’ve been learning,” junior social studies adolescent education major Matthew DeWinde said.
The talk was free and open to everyone, and was sponsored by the Graebner-Bennet History Department Cultural Fund of the Fredonia College Foundation.