The Empire of Necessity (47 page)

10
. Thomas W. Laqueur, “Bodies, Details, and the Humanitarian Narrative,” in
The New Cultural History
, ed. Lynn Hunt, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989, pp. 176–77.

11
. Manuel Hurtado de Mendoza, Antonio Ballano, and Celedonio Martínez Caballero,
Suplemento al diccionario de medicina y cirugía
, 1823.

12
. For Redhead, see José Luis Molinari, “Manuel Belgrano: Sus enfermedades y sus médicos,”
Historia
, Buenos Aires, 1960, 20 pp. 88–160, p. 130.

13
. Johnson,
Workshop of Revolution
, pp. 39–43, 151–54. To compare Montevideo with other urban slave experiences, see, for Mexico City, Herman Bennett,
Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570–1640
, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003, and “Genealogies to a Past: Africa, Ethnicity, and Marriage in Seventeenth-Century Mexico,” in
New Studies in the History of American Slavery
, ed. Edward Baptist and Stephanie Camp, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006; for Buenos Aires and Lima, Christine Hünefeldt,
Paying the Price of Freedom: Family and Labor among Lima’s Slaves, 1800–1854
, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Emeric Essex Vidal visited Buenos Aires in the early 1800s and observed, in his
Picturesque Illustrations of Buenos Ayres and Monte Video
, London: R. Ackermann, 1820, p. 30, that “slavery at Buenos Ayres is perfect freedom compared with that among other nations,” a contradiction in terms that, even as it discounted the hardship and suffering of many of the city’s residents, still captured their relative autonomy. See Tomás Olivera Chirimini, “Candombe, African Nations, and the Africanity of Uruguay,” in Sheila Walker, ed.,
African Roots / African Cutlure: Africa in the Creation of the Americas
, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001, and Mansilla,
Mis memorias
, pp. 132–33. For a comparison with New Orleans, see Ned Sublette,
The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square
, Chicago: Review Press, 2009; for a comparison with Albany, see Sterling Stuckey,
Going Through the Storm: The Influence of African-American Art in History
, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 53–80. For complaints, see Gesualdo, “Los Negros,” p. 34; also Vicente Rossi,
Cosas de negros: Los orígenes del tango y otros aportes al folklore rioplatense
, Buenos Aires: Aguilar, 1926. For “sociedad de la nación moro,” along with the many other “naciones,” see Miguel Rosal, “Aspectos de la Religiosidad Afroporteña, siglos XVIII–XIX,” available online at
http://www.revistaquilombo.com.ar/documentos.htm
.

14
. Manuel Nuñez de Taboada,
Diccionario de la lengua castellana
, 1825.

5. A CONSPIRACY OF LIFTING AND THROWING

  
1
. Paul Lovejoy,
Trans-Atlantic Dimensions of Ethnicity in the African Diaspora
, London: Continuum, 2003, p. 289; Elizabeth Allo Isichei,
Voices of the Poor in Africa
, Rochester: Boydell and Brewer, 2002, p. 287; Walter Rucker,
The River Flows On: Black Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America
, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006, p. 288; Falconbridge,
Account
, p. 30; Estebán Montejo, and Miguel Barnet, eds.,
The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave
, New York: Macmillan, 1993, pp. 63–64. Byrd,
Captives and Voyages,
pp. 20–30, discusses the many meanings of the term
Igbo
.

  
2
. The case of the
Santa Eulalia
is described in the documents cited earlier regarding the
Neptune
and in AGN (Buenos Aires), División Colonia, Sección Gobierno, Guerra y Marina, 9.24.4/1806, legajo 36. See also AGN (Lima), notary record, José Escudero de Sicilia, Escribano del Tribunal del Consulato, 1805. Cristina Mazzeo de Vivó was kind enough to send me a draft of her essay on the voyage, “Vivir y morir en alta mar: La comercialización del esclavo en Hispanoamérica a fines del siglo XVIII,” which contains additional sources and has been subsequently published in
Homenaje a José Antonio del Busto Duthurburu
, ed. Margarita Guerra Martinière and Rafael Sánchez-Concha Barrios, 2 vols., Lima: Fondo Editorial PUCP, 2012.

  
3
. Vicente Osvaldo Cutolo,
Nuevo Diccionario Biográfico Argentino (1750–1930),
vol. 5 (N–Q), Buenos Aires: Editorial Elche, 1978, p. 649; AGN (Montevideo), Protocolos de Marina (1803–4), Registro corriente de Entradas de Marina del año de 1805 (“Fianza: Señor Antonio Pérez por el depósito de los Negros del Bergantín Diana y Polacra Ligera de Mordelle”). One of Mordelle’s prizes, the
Diana
was also known as the
Dolores
; see Departamento de Estudios Históricos Navales,
Historia marítima argentina
, vol. 4, Buenos Aires: Departamento de Estudios Históricos Navales, 1993, p. 323.

  
4
. Jacques Duprey,
Voyage aux origines françaises de l’Uruguay: Montevideo et l’Uruguay vus par des voyageurs français entre 1708 et 1850
, Montevideo: Instituto Histórico y Geográfico del Uruguay, 1952, p. 182.

INTERLUDE: I NEVER COULD LOOK AT DEATH WITHOUT A SHUDDER

1
. For Thoreau, see his
Political Writings
, ed. Nancy Rosenblum, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 26–27. For Melville’s use of slavery as a metaphor for bondage in general, and vice versa, see Carolyn L. Karcher,
Shadow over the Promised Land: Slavery, Race, and Violence in Melville’s America
, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980. For an example of a “bondman” who “enjoyed the liberties of the world,” see
White-Jacket
’s Guinea. Hershel Parker,
Herman Melville: A Biography
, vol. 1, 1819–1851, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, p. 147.

2
.
Moby-Dick
, pp. 798, 1094, 1216–19.

3
. John Griscom,
A Year in Europe: Comprising a Journal of Observations in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Switzerland, the North of Italy, and Holland
, New York: Collins, 1823, p. 30.

4
. Herman Melville,
Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick
, New York: Library of America, 1983, p. 170.

5
. Howard Horsford with Lynn Horth, eds.,
The Writings of Herman Melville: Journals
, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1989, p. 50.

6. A SUITABLE GUIDE TO BLISS

  
1
. Philippe de Lannoy begat Thomas, who begat Jonathan Sr., who begat Jonathan Jr., who begat Samuel, who begat Amasa. See Alicia Crane Williams, ed., Esther Littleford Woodworth-Barnes, comp.,
Mayflower Families through Five Generations
, vol. 16, part 1, Plymouth: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 1999, p. 49; Daniel Delano Jr.,
Franklin Roosevelt and the Delano Influence
, Pittsburgh: James Nudi, 1946; Muriel Curtis Cushing,
Philip Delano of the “Fortune” 1621, and His Descendants for Four Generations
, Plymouth: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 2002;
Philip Delano of the “Fortune” 1621, and His Descendants in the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Generations
, parts 1 and 2, Plymouth: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 2004, 2011.

  
2
. For slavery in Duxbury, see Justin Winsor,
History of the Town of Duxbury, Massachusetts, with Genealogical Registers
, Boston: Crosby and Nichols, 1849, pp. 68, 70–71, 130, 271, 340; for enslavement of Native Americans, see pp. 71, 314. “Iron-nerved” and able to “hew down forests and live on crumbs” was how one of the town’s founders, Myles Standish, was described in “Alden Genealogy,”
New England Historical and Genealogical Register
, vol. 51 (October 1897), p. 430. See also George Ethridge, ed.,
Copy of the Old Records of the Town of Duxbury, Mas: From 1642 to 1770
, Plymouth: Avery and Doten, 1893, p. 338; Jennifer Turner, “Almshouse, Workhouse, Outdoor Relief: Responses to the Poor in Southeastern Massachusetts, 1740–1800,”
Historical Journal of Massachusetts
31 (Summer 2003): 212–14.

  
3
. At times written as: “The more there is of craft and management in sin, the more it is an abomination to God.” The story of the biblical Amasa’s murder is in 2 Samuel, which Herman Melville read closely, judging from the underlinings, checks, and markings in the Bible he was using at the time he wrote
Benito Cereno
. Much appreciation to Clifford Ross for allowing me to consult the book in his private collection. Another Melville family Bible (Philadelphia: Mathew Carey, 1810), now in the New York Public Library’s Gansevoort-Lansing collection, in an appendix titled “Index of Proper Names with Meanings in Original Language,” defines
Amasa
as “sparing the people.”

  
4
. Amasa came from a line of Indian-killers. In 1637, Philippe de Lanoy had volunteered to fight the Pequots, in a genocidal war that nearly destroyed the Native American group as a people. Survivors were hunted down and either killed or sold to the Spanish as slaves. Philippe volunteered in July 1837, after the infamous Mystic Massacre, where the British surrounded a Pequot roundhouse filled mostly with women, children, and elderly and burned it to the ground, killing hundreds. He might have participated in the July 1837 “swamp engagement,” one of the last battles of the war. Personal communication with Alfred Cave, December 16, 2012. See Alfred Cave,
The Pequot War
, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996. For Amasa Delanoe and events surrounding the attack on Saint Francis, see Ian McCulloch and Timothy Todish, eds.,
Through So Many Dangers: The Memoirs and Adventures of Robert Kirk, Late of the Royal Highland Regiment
, Fleischmanns: Purple Mountain Press, 3004, pp. 66–67; BN (London), WO 71/68, Marching Regiments (October 1760–July 1761), pp. 147–50; Nicolas Renaud d’Avène des Méloizes,
Journal militaire de Nicolas Renaud d’Avène des Méloizes 1756–1759
, Quebec, 1930, pp. 86–87; Stephen Brumwell,
White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery, and Vengeance in Colonial America
, Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2004, pp. 230, 235, 305.

  
5
. Seth Sprague, “Reminiscences of the Olden Times,” 1845, n.p., in
Hon. Seth Sprague of Duxbury, Plymouth County, Massachusetts; His Descendants down to the Sixth Generation and His Reminiscences of the Old Colony Town
, comp. William Bradford Weston, n.p., 1915.

  
6
. For the contribution of Duxbury’s ministers to the emergence of Unitarianism, see Samuel Atkins Eliot,
Heralds of a Liberal Faith
, Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1910, pp. 122–30, 194–99. For Turner’s Election Sermon, see Pauline Maier,
Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787–1788
, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011, p. 205, and Charles Turner,
A Sermon Preached before His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson
, Boston: Richard Draper, 1773.

  
7
. For the rebalancing of passions, interests, virtues, and vices, see the discussion in Daniel Walker Howe,
Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln
, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, p. 66, and Albert O. Hirschman,
The Passions and Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.