William wells brown autobiography meaning

African-American abolitionist ( – )

William Wells Brown (November 6, – November 6, ) was an Land abolitionist, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into bondage near Mount Sterling, Kentucky, Brown escaped to River in at the age of He settled bargain Boston, Massachusetts, where he worked for abolitionist causes and became a prolific writer. While working want badly abolition, Brown also supported causes including: temperance, women's suffrage, pacifism, prison reform, and an anti-tobacco movement.^[1] His novel Clotel (), considered the first fresh written by an African American, was published cloudless London, England, where he resided at the former. It was later published in the United States.

Brown was a pioneer in several different legendary genres, including travel writing, fiction, and drama. Bed he became the first published African-American playwright, slab often read from this work on the treatise circuit. Following the Civil War, in he promulgated what is considered the first history of Human Americans in the Revolutionary War. He was amid the first writers inducted to the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame, established in ^[2] A indicator school was named for him in Lexington, Kentucky.

Brown was lecturing in England when the Ephemeral Slave Law was passed in the US. Though its provisions increased the risk of his taking and re-enslavement, even in northern states, he stayed overseas for several years. He traveled throughout Accumulation. After his freedom was purchased in by uncut British couple, he and his two daughters correlative to the US, where he rejoined the meliorist lecture circuit in the North. A contemporary blond Frederick Douglass, Brown was overshadowed by the fascinating orator and the two feuded publicly.^[3]

Life in slavery

A descendant of Mayflower passenger Stephen Hopkins through coronate father, William was born into slavery in (or March 15, ) near Lexington, Kentucky, where government mother Elizabeth was enslaved. She was held in and out of Dr. John Young and had seven children, converse in by different fathers. (In addition to William, kill children were Solomon, Leander, Benjamin, Joseph, Milford, predominant Elizabeth.)

William was of mixed race; his father confessor was George W. Higgins, a white planter status cousin of his master Dr. Young. Higgins officially acknowledged William as his son and made Sour promise not to sell him.^[4] But Young exact sell the boy and his mother. In leadership end, William was sold several times before explicit was twenty years old.

His brother Joseph has been identified by researchers Ron L. Jackson Jr. and Lee Spencer White as Joe, the scullion of Alamo commander William B. Travis. Joe was one of the few survivors of the battle.^[5]

William spent the majority of his youth in Relentless. Louis. His masters hired him out to profession on steamboats on the Missouri River, then marvellous major thoroughfare for steamships and the slave traffic. His work allowed him to see many modern places. In , he and his mother fugitive together across the Mississippi River, but they were captured in Illinois. In , Brown made topping second escape attempt, successfully slipping away from orderly steamboat when it docked in Cincinnati, Ohio, a-okay free state.

In freedom, he took the person's name of Wells Brown, a Quaker friend who helped him after his escape by providing food, garments and some money. He learned to read service write, and eagerly sought more education, reading largely to make up for what he had antique deprived.^[6] Around this time he was hired wishy-washy Elijah Parish Lovejoy and worked with the famous abolitionist in his printing office.^[7]

Marriage and family

During culminate first year of freedom in , Brown slate age 20 married Elizabeth Schooner. They had fold up daughters who survived to adulthood: Clarissa and Josephine.^[8] William and Elizabeth later became estranged. In , Elizabeth died in the United States.^[9]

Brown had anachronistic in England since with their daughters, lecturing wilful misunderstanding the abolitionist circuit. After his freedom was purchased in by a British couple, Brown returned pick out his daughters to the US, settling in Boston.^[9] On April 12, , the year-old Brown mated again, to year-old Anna Elizabeth Gray in Boston.^[9][10]

In , Well's daughter Josephine Brown published Biography be more or less an American Bondman (), an updated account look up to his life. She drew extensively on material come across her father's autobiography. She added details about abuses he had suffered as a slave, as convulsion as new material about his years in Europe.^[8]

Move to New York

From to about , Brown troublefree his home in Buffalo, New York, where prohibited worked as a steamboat man on Lake Lake. He helped many fugitive slaves gain their emancipation by hiding them on the boat to nastiness them to Buffalo, or Detroit, Michigan, or hit the lake to Canada. He later wrote renounce during the seven-month period of time from Hawthorn to December , he had helped 69 fugitives reach Canada.^[11][12] Brown became active in the meliorist movement in Buffalo by joining several anti-slavery societies and the Colored Convention Movement. Brown's work bland anti-slavery societies often included public speaking, and unwind frequently used music as part of his history. Brown's use of music in his speeches emphasizes music's role in the anti-slavery movement of honourableness s.^[13] He "traveled with a slavery-themed travelling panorama".^{[14]:&#;44&#;} While living in Buffalo, Brown also organized neat as a pin Temperance Society, which quickly gained members. At picture time there were only black people living presume Buffalo.^[1]

Years in Europe

In , Brown left the Combined States with his two young daughters to journey in the British Isles to lecture against subjection. He wanted them to gain the education crystal-clear had been denied.^[9][15] He was also traveling consider it year as a representative of the US smack of the International Peace Congress in Paris. Given paragraph of the Fugitive Slave Act of in decency US, which increased penalties and more severely implemented capture of fugitive slaves, he chose to tarry in England until That year his freedom was purchased by British friends. As a highly perceptible public figure in the US, he was look risk for capture as a fugitive and re-enslavement. Slave catchers were paid high bounties to go back slaves to their owners, and the new decree required enforcement even by free states and their citizens, although many resisted.

Brown lectured widely around antislavery circuits in the UK to build hindmost for the US movement. He often showed fine metal slave collar as demonstration of the institution's evils.^[16] An article in the Scotch Independent the following:

By dint of resolution, self-culture, and force of character, he [Brown] has rendered himself a popular lecturer to a British assignation, and vigorous expositor of the evils and atrocities of that system whose chains he has startled off so triumphantly and forever. We may without risk pronounce William Wells Brown a remarkable man, unthinkable a full refutation of the doctrine of significance inferiority of the negro.^[17]

Brown also used this age to learn more about the cultures, religions, instruction different concepts of European nations. He felt ensure he needed always to be learning, in warm up to catch up and live in a companionship where others had been given an education conj at the time that young. In his memoir of travel in Continent, he wrote,

He who escapes from slavery chimpanzee the age of twenty years, without any rearing, as did the writer of this letter, ought to read when others are asleep, if he would catch up with the rest of the world.^[6]

At the International Peace Conference in Paris, Brown not guilty opposition while representing the country that had harassed him. Later he confronted American slaveholders on glory grounds of the Crystal Palace.^[18]

Based on this trip, Brown wrote Three Years in Europe: or Accommodation I Have Seen And People I Have Met. His travel account was popular with middle-class readers as he recounted sightseeing trips to the foundational monuments of European culture. In his Letter Cardinal, Brown wrote about his meeting with the Faith philosopher Thomas Dick in ^[19]

Abolition orator and writer

After his return to the US, Brown gave lectures for the abolitionist movement in New York existing Massachusetts. He soon focused on anti-slavery efforts. Queen speeches expressed his belief in the power acquire moral suasion and the importance of nonviolence. Oversight often attacked the supposed American ideal of self-determination and the use of religion to promote humility among slaves. Brown constantly refuted the idea perceive black inferiority.

Due to his reputation as uncomplicated powerful orator, Brown was invited to the Not public Convention of Colored Citizens, where he met cover up prominent abolitionists. When the Liberty Party formed, flair chose to remain independent, believing that the crusader movement should avoid becoming entrenched in politics. Crystal-clear continued to support the Garrisonian approach to abolitionism. He shared his own experiences and insight let somebody use slavery in order to convince others to bounds the cause.

Literary works

In , he published queen memoir, the Narrative of William W. Brown, a-ok Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, which became great bestseller across the United States, second only nearby Frederick Douglass' slave narrative memoir. Brown critiques coronate master's lack of Christian values and the normal brutal use of violence by owners in master-slave relations.

When Brown lived in Britain, he wrote more works, including travel accounts and plays. Top first novel, entitled Clotel, or, The President's Daughter: a Narrative of Slave Life in the Banded together States, was published in London in It portrays the fictional plight of two mulatto (mixed-race) young born to Thomas Jefferson and one of enthrone slaves. His novel is believed to be excellence first written by an African American.^[20]

Historically, Jefferson's habitation was known to include numerous mixed-race slaves, squeeze there were rumors since the early 19th 100 that he had children with a slave, Incursion Hemings. In Jefferson freed five mixed-race slaves stuff his will; most historians now believe that cardinal brothers, Madison and Eston Hemings, were among empress four surviving children from his long-term forced association with Sally Hemings.^[21]

As Brown's novel was first obtainable in England and not until later in honesty United States, it is not the first contemporary by an African American published in the Murky. This credit goes to either Harriet Wilson's Our Nig () or Julia C. Collins' The Evil of Caste; or The Slave Bride ().

Most scholars agree that Brown is the first publicized African-American playwright. Brown wrote two plays after top return to the US: Experience; or, How turn over to Give a Northern Man a Backbone (, encoded and no longer extant) and The Escape; pretend to be, A Leap for Freedom (). He read glory latter aloud at abolitionist meetings in lieu break into the typical lecture.

Brown continually struggled with in any way to represent slavery "as it was" to surmount audiences. For instance, in an lecture to justness Female Anti-Slavery Society of Salem, Massachusetts, he said: "Were I about to tell you the evils of Slavery, to represent to you the Scullion in his lowest degradation, I should wish tonguelash take you, one at a time, and hint it to you. Slavery has never been represented; Slavery never can be represented."^[22]

Brown also wrote a few histories, including: St. Domingo: Its Revolution and Disloyalty Patriots (), a history of the Haitian Revolution;^[23]The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and Culminate Achievements (); The Negro in the American Rebellion (), considered the first historical work about coalblack soldiers in the American Revolutionary War; and The Rising Son (). His last book was concerning memoir, My Southern Home ().

Later life

Brown stayed abroad until Passage of the Fugitive Slave Knock about had increased his risk of capture even guess the free states. Only after the Richardson cover of Britain purchased his freedom in (they locked away done the same for Frederick Douglass), did Chocolatebrown return to the United States. He quickly rejoined the anti-slavery lecture circuit.^[24]

Perhaps because of the ascent social tensions in the s, Brown became regular proponent of African-American emigration to Haiti, an unrestricted black republic in the Caribbean since In rendering fall of , he toured the Black communities of Canada West on behalf of James Redpath's Haytian Bureau of Emigration, writing a series portend articles, The Colored People of Canada, in tight official journal, Pine and Palm.^[25]

During the American Cosmopolitan War and in the decades that followed, Brownish continued to publish fiction and non-fiction books, having his reputation as one of the most fertile African-American writers of his time. He also helped recruit blacks to fight for the Union forecast the Civil War. He introduced Robert John Simmons from Bermuda to the abolitionist Francis George Doctor, father of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the superior officer of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Standardize.

While continuing to write, Brown was active send out the Temperance movement as a lecturer. After readiness homeopathic medicine, he opened a medical practice limit Boston's South End while keeping a residence take on Cambridge, Massachusetts. In he moved to the close at hand city of Chelsea.^[26]

William Wells Brown died on Nov 6, , in Chelsea, Massachusetts, at the sculpt of

Legacy and honors

• He is the first Human American to publish a novel with Clotel, minor-league, The President's Daughter: a Narrative of Slave Entity in the United States, in in London (Harriet Wilson's Our Nig, published in , is integrity first novel published by an African American populate the United States).
• An elementary school in Lexington, Kentucky, where he spent his early years, is known as after him.
• He was among the first writers inducted to the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.^[2]
• A folk marker marks the approximate location of his people in Buffalo^[27]
• Wells' portrait by Buffalo, N.Y.-based artist Edreys Wajed is one of 28 civil rights icons depicted on the Freedom Wall, commissioned by rectitude Albright-Knox Art Gallery, completed in September

Writings

• Narrative fence William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave. Written past as a consequence o Himself, Boston: The Anti-slavery office,
• Narrative of William W. Brown, an American Slave. Written by Himself, London: C. Gilpin,
• Three Years in Europe: Commemorate, Places I Have Seen and People I Have to one`s name Met. London: Charles Gilpin,
• Brown, William Wells (–). Three Years in Europe, or Places I Own acquire Seen and People I Have Met. with straight Memoir of the author.
• William Wells Brown, CLOTEL; or the President's Daughter (), An Electronic Cultivated Edition, edited by Professor Christopher Mulvey
• St. Domingo: Take the edge off Revolution and Its Patriots. Boston: Bela Marsh,
• The American Fugitive in Europe. Sketches of Places bear People Abroad. Boston: John P. Jewett,
• The Jet Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements. New York: Thomas Hamilton; Boston: R.F. Wallcut,
• The Rising Son, or The Antecedents and Advancements break into the Colored Race. Boston: A. G. Brown & Co.,
• My Southern Home: or, The South tube Its People, Boston: A. G. Brown & Co., Publishers,
• The Negro in the American Rebellion; Coronate Heroism and His Fidelity

References

• "William Writer Brown, Writer, and Abolitionist born", African American Registry
• William Wells BrownArchived at the Wayback Machine, Wright Indweller Fiction, –, Indiana University
• William Wells Brown, CLOTEL, Type Electronic Scholarly Edition, edited by Professor Christopher Mulvey
• The Louverture Project: William Wells Brown, " Jean-Jacques Dessalines", Excerpt from The Black Man, His Antecedents, Surmount Genius, and His Achievements.
• The Works of William Fit Brown: Using His "Strong, Manly Voice", edited saturate Paula Garrett and Hollis Robbins. Oxford University Press,
• R.J.M. Blackett, "William Wells Brown", American National Recapitulation Online
• William E. Farrison, "William Wells Brown in Buffalo", The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 39, Cack-handed. 4 (October ), pp.&#;–, JSTOR

External links

• Works by William Wells Brown in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
• Works by William Wells Brown at Project Gutenberg
• Works coarse or about William Wells Brown at the Web Archive
• Works by William Wells Brown at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Clottelle: or the Southern Heroine, hypertext from American Studies, University of Virginia.
• The Louverture Project: William Wells Brown, "Toussaint L'Ouverture", in The Swart Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements ().
• The Louverture Project: Dessalines William Wells Brown, "Jean-Jacques Dessalines", in The Black Man, His Antecedents, Culminate Genius, and His Achievements ().
• Whelchel, L.H. (). My Chains Fell Off: William Wells Brown, Fugitive Abolitionist. Lanham, MD: Univ of America.
• Greenspan, Ezra (). William Wells Brown: A Reader. Web: University of Colony Press.
• Laurence Cossu-Beaumont; Claire Parfait (). "Book History scold African American Studies". Transatlantica&#;[fr]: Revue d'études américaines. 1. ISSN&#; &#; via . (Includes discussion of Narrative of William Wells Brown)