Slumbering Volcano: Stark Contrasts Between Rebellious Slave Leaders in “Benito Cereno” and “The Heroic Slave”

by Andrew A. Oakley

The United States’ westward continental expansion in the first half of the 19th century, made possible by the conquest of lands held by Mexico and Native American tribes, prompted fierce debate between legislators from slave-holding and free states. Should the federal government extend the institution of slavery to these new territories? Territorial expansion and the concomitant slavery debate “provided the principal focus for the sectional political controversies… that eventually reached a climax in the Civil War” (Meier and Rudwick 56-57). A package of five laws, known as the Compromise of 1850, heightened anxiety over the slavery issue. While these laws prohibited the extension of slavery to the new state of California and outlawed slave trading in Washington, D.C., they also included the Fugitive Slave Law, which allowed slaveholders to retrieve escaped slaves in free states and territories, with severe penalties – ranging from imprisonment to confiscation of property – for sympathetic individuals aiding escapees. As it turned out, the more action the federal government took in attempting to alleviate tensions between free and pro-slavery forces, the greater the tensions became, eventually leading to war in 1861.

In the high-strung atmosphere of the 1850s, two slave-revolt novellas, first “The Heroic Slave” by Frederick Douglass and then, two years later, “Benito Cereno” by Herman Melville, were unveiled to the American public. Both works feature slave uprisings on ships transporting black chattel, both plots are based on actual slave mutinies, and both works’ narrators present the narrative primarily through the eyes of free, white, American characters. Furthermore, the two works similarly address the explosive nature of the controversial institution of slavery in the United States. For example, “Benito Cereno” refers to a slave ship as “a slumbering volcano” (1129), while Douglass had used the same description in a speech, “Slavery, the Slumbering Volcano” (see The Frederick Douglass Papers), that he had delivered in New York City on April 23, 1849, about four years before the publication of “The Heroic Slave.” Still, the similarities between the two novellas are largely superficial. Readers can best understand the relationship between “Benito Cereno” and “The Heroic Slave” by studying the underlying differences in their approaches. The greatest divergence is that Douglass uses a slave-hero protagonist to illustrate that blacks can free themselves from slavery through noble personal action – using violence, if necessary – while Melville’s slave leader is an antagonist whose shocking and ignoble use of violence offers strong warnings, but no remedies, concerning slavery.

Historians and critics recognize “The Heroic Slave” as the first work of fiction penned by an American of African racial ancestry. It was published just one year after the appearance of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. “The Heroic Slave” appeared as a series in a weekly publication, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, during March of 1853, and later that same year was reprinted in a collection of anti-slavery writings, Autographs for Freedom, edited by abolitionist Julia Griffiths. As the name implies, “The Heroic Slave” contains a heroic protagonist, Madison Washington, an American-born black slave who manifests dignity and power while leading fellow slaves on a successful revolt that earns them their freedom. Madison Washington was, in fact, the name of a slave who had led a successful 1841 uprising aboard a slave ship, Creole, which had been transporting 134 slaves from Virginia to a slave market in New Orleans. Washington – whose exploits Douglass had trumpeted in several articles and speeches, including his 1849 “Slavery, the Slumbering Volcano” address – and his fellow slaves managed to commandeer the ship to the Bahamas port city of Nassau, where British authorities granted the slaves their freedom.

Douglass found a ready-made, real-life hero in Washington, complete with a name hearkening back to the United States’ founding fathers. “By 1853,” notes William L. Andrews, who is Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Professor of American Literature at the University of Kansas, “Douglass could see in Washington a model of black militancy, aggressive in pursuit of his rights, but self-controlled in his use of violence – in sum, a hero who exemplified an uncompromising commitment to justice balanced by a disposition toward mercy” (12). In the opening paragraph of “The Heroic Slave,” an omniscient narrator, who sees the action primarily through the eyes of secondary white characters sympathetic to the plight of black slaves, introduces the slave-hero as “a man who loved liberty as well as did Patrick Henry – who deserved it as much as Thomas Jefferson – and who fought for it with a valor as high, an arm as strong, and against odds as great as he who led all the armies of the American colonies through the great war for freedom and independence” (21). Yet, while the public worships the white heroes of the American Revolution, the black hero of a smaller revolution against the masters of a slave ship “lives now only in the chattel records of his native state [Virginia]… still enveloped in darkness” (21-22). In an attempt to pull hero Madison Washington out of this darkness and give him a voice – the type of black anti-slavery voice that was routinely silenced and/or ignored in Southern slave-holding states – the narrator offers the story of Washington’s life, much of it through the words of the hero himself. All told, approximately 20 percent of the four-part novella consists of direct quotes from Madison Washington.

“The Heroic Slave” contains contrived speeches and incredible coincidences that undermine the plot and the novella’s overall literary reputation. Still, the work is an incredible accomplishment when taking into account that author Frederick Douglass was a self-taught, former slave whose structured education had been virtually non-existent. In Part I of the story, protagonist Madison Washington talks melodramatically and loudly to himself while hiding in the woods of Virginia and planning an escape from his ruthless master. An Ohio farmer, “Mr. Listwell,” who happens to be passing by for unknown reasons, overhears him and is moved by his words; the farmer never reveals himself to Washington, but vows in his own melodramatic soliloquy that “from this hour I am an abolitionist” (25). In Part II, Washington coincidentally runs into Mr. and Mrs. Listwell at their Ohio farm while he heads north on foot toward Canada, where slavery is outlawed; the Listwells listen to his stories about the suffering he has endured under slavery, then they feed him and wish him luck in his travels. Months later, Mr. Listwell finds himself back in Virginia in Part III and again happens to run into Washington, who by now is a recaptured slave and part of a group of blacks who is going to be shipped by slave boat to a slave-trading center. Part IV details the story of Washington’s leadership in a slave mutiny, as told in a Virginia tavern by a sympathetic white sailor, Tom Grant, who had been on board the ship and whose life had been spared.

“The Heroic Slave” is didactic literature because it uses prose to induce the reader to form a specific attitude concerning the socio-political issue of human slavery. The novella’s hero, although portrayed simplistically at times, is the key to Douglass’ attempt to relay three messages to readers: (1) slavery is immoral and indefensible, (2) slaves of African heritage are capable of living in freedom as civilized Americans, and (3) slaves who rebel against their masters to attain liberty are the equivalents of the United States’ founding fathers, who also rebelled against their own masters, the British. Mrs. Listwell embraces Madison Washington’s civilized demeanor when she learns that, during his escape, he has cooked the raw meat from the wild animals he has killed. “It seemed quite a relief to Mrs. Listwell to know that Madison had, at least, lived upon cooked food. Women have a perfect horror of eating uncooked food” (34). Her husband experiences a similar revelation when shaking hands with Madison, who is dressed in a borrowed suit of clean clothes: “It need scarcely be said that Mr. Listwell was deeply moved by the gratitude and friendship he had excited in a nature so noble as that of the fugitive” (35). Even Grant, who is teased by fellow sailors in the tavern in Part IV for failing to stop Washington’s mutiny, manages to praise Washington’s bravery:

I forgot his blackness in the dignity of his manner, and the eloquence of his speech. It seemed as if the souls of both the great dead (whose names he bore) had entered him…. I felt myself in the presence of a superior man; one who, had he been a white man, I would have followed willingly and gladly in any honorable enterprise. Our difference of color was the only ground for difference of action. It was not that his principles were wrong in the abstract; for they are the principles of 1776 (49-50).

 Douglass at one time had been a follower of white abolitionist William Garrison, who claimed that the U.S. Constitution was pro-slavery and who believed that African-Americans should avoid political activity and rebellion in their fight for freedom. Douglass eventually broke with Garrison. In 1851, he “shocked” a meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society by voicing a “radical reading” of the Constitution (Crane 110). The long-term goal of the founding fathers, Douglass claimed, was to bring not only freedom, but also equality to all peoples residing in the United States. What’s more, he came to believe that violence was acceptable in defeating slavery. His switch in politico-historical viewpoint enabled him to portray rebellious slaves as the equivalents of Washington, Payne, Jefferson, and other founders of the United States, thus lending legitimacy to black freedom-seekers in the minds of white readers – even blacks who used violence. The original Creole mutiny left only the slaves’ owner dead, but “it should be noted that in ‘The Heroic Slave’ account, two men are killed during the uprising, the captain and the owner of the slaves” (Lock 65). Thus, Douglass overemphasized his hero’s penchant for bloodshed as a way to leave little doubt that he, the author, found violence unavoidable in the plight of slaves seeking their natural right to liberty. After the success of the slave uprising in the novella, shipmate Grant quotes slave leader Washington in a soliloquy to white sailors:

“You call me a black murderer. I am not a murderer. God is my witness that LIBERTY, not malice, is the motive for this night’s work. I have done no more to those dead men yonder, than they would have done to me in like circumstances. We have struck for our freedom, and if a true man’s heart be in you, you will honor us for the deed. We have done that which you applaud your fathers for doing, and if we are murderers, so were they” (49; italics and capital letters in original).

In the end, “Douglass’ story specifically challenged the myriad forces marshaled to deny to enslaved people the right to rebellion” (Sale 174).

In stark contrast to protagonist Madison Washington, the leader of the slave revolt aboard the San Dominick in Melville’s “Benito Cereno” stands as the novella’s antagonist. Unlike Washington, Babo’s features resemble those of an animal. Even the antagonist’s name, Babo, smacks of “baboon.” He is pitted against protagonist Amasa Delano, the white, American captain of the Bachelor’s Delight who views Babo in canine-like terms upon first spotting him: “a black of small stature, in whose rude face, as occasionally, like a shepherd’s dog, he mutely turned it up into the Spaniard’s, sorrow and affection were equally blended” (1115). Delano harbors no personal ill will against Babo in particular; the white captain’s racist attitude covers all Africans: “[L]ike most men of a good, blithe heart, Captain Delano took to negroes, not philanthropically, but genially, just as other men to Newfoundland dogs” (1141). This attitude pops up routinely in the first 70 percent of the novella, as narrated from a third-person-limited position. Whereas the narrator in “The Heroic Slave” depicts white characters almost instantly warming up to black slaves, Delano is hopelessly lost in a lifetime of preconceived notions that blind him not only to the potential physical and intellectual capabilities of slaves of African descent, but also deny him access to what is actually taking place on the San Dominick. These notions nearly cost him and Spanish Captain Benito Cereno their lives. “The story thus works precisely to illustrate the dangers of racial stereotyping, and, perhaps more importantly, to undermine those stereotypes by revealing the false distinctions on which they are constructed” (Lock 58).  In the end, the African slaves tend to live up to Delano’s animalistic expectations, although this time they are not so tame. “Babo and compatriots fight for freedom; their behavior during the revolt is horribly atrocious. What they do to Aranda’s body is too terrible for many Westerners to conceive” (Rohrberger 1).

Melville and Douglass were almost exact contemporaries. Douglass was born into slavery in early 1818. Melville was born into a middle-class household about 18 months later. Their environments, however, were as different as black and white in race-obsessed 19th-century America. Douglass had experienced the horrors of slavery firsthand, as emphasized repeatedly in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Perhaps based on these experiences, he chose to cast his only work of fiction in the mode of didactic literature, offering a propagandistic attack against the institution of slavery. In contrast, Melville’s “Benito Cereno," originally serialized in Putnam’s Monthly in October, November, and December 1855, took more of an ambiguous approach to its subject – so ambiguous, in fact, that critics to this day debate the intentions and messages of the work, if indeed it did contain any intended messages. Literary critics, cultural critics and historians can agree that “The Heroic Slave” was an attack on slavery, but they diverge on the meaning of “Benito Cereno.” For example, Jean Fagan Yellin finds “Benito Cereno” to be anti-black and racist in tone, Carolyn L. Karcher envisions Melville as a political and social conservative who feared the negative consequences facing the United States over the slavery issue, and John Bryant suggests that Melville was so open-minded that he was one of the world’s first “multiculturalists.” Maurice S. Lee, an assistant professor of English at Boston University, may have come closest to the truth in his analysis of “Benito Cereno” as allegory: “[W]e can see the San Dominick as a society dominated by a problem it will not or can not bring itself to name – as an allegory of antebellum America where debate over slavery was often preempted, suppressed, and misunderstood” (498).

Unlike Douglass’ protagonist, who is able to find a voice and express himself fully in “The Heroic Slave,” Melville’s antagonist has no voice, despite his ability to speak words while wearing the “mask” of a slave who is, unbeknownst to Captain Delano, a master over Captain Cereno and the Spanish ship’s crew. For even when Babo speaks, he does so in the guise of a slave. Babo and his fellow insurrectionists aboard the San Dominick are “trapped in a mimicry of the old master-slave relationship” (Rogin 209). When he is finally afforded the opportunity to speak, such as after he leaps into Delano’s boat while attempting to stab Cereno, he refuses to do so, not even crying out when Delano “ground the prostrate negro” (1152) with his foot. Babo retains the role of silenced African slave to the end of the story: “Seeing all was over, he uttered no sound, and could not be forced to. His aspect seemed to say, since I cannot do deeds, I will not speak words” (1166).

Portrayals of violence in “Benito Cereno” fall far short of the concept of nobility of violence used by Madison Washington in “The Heroic Slave.” While Washington views violence as a repugnant but necessary means toward achieving individual liberty, “Benito Cereno” shows violence as a destructive force threatening the natural social hierarchy. Maggie Montesinos Sale, cultural critic and assistant professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Columbia University, points out that Delano “imagines any threat to himself and his authority as an upheaval of the natural order” (150). He fails to consider the possibility that liberty is a natural right for all of humanity. The savage brutality of the slaves’ attacks – particularly the stripping of murdered slave owner Aranda’s body down to its bones – drains violence of any claim as a noble approach to freedom. In addition, the violence is one-sided. Nowhere in “Benito Cereno” does the narrator describe the slave-related violence perpetrated against Africans qua slaves. Instead, the Africans cause the violence. “The Heroic Slave,” on the other hand, catalogues a long list of slave-owner cruelty against Madison Washington before he lifts a finger against the white defenders of slavery. Therefore, in their contexts, Washington’s violence is justified; Babo’s violence is not.
 
The divergent fictional approaches to slave rebellion by Melville and Douglass contributed in unique ways to the national debate on American slavery less than a decade before the start of the Civil War. Readers first read “The Heroic Slave” as a call for the abolition of slavery, but by the end of the 19th century it remained a work with a contemporary message, as its comparisons of slaves with U.S. founding fathers was interpreted as a call for equality among all races. Douglass’ single piece of fiction made “equal rights for African American men part of a new narrative of national identity,” according to Sale (194). Melville’s approach to similar subject matter contained greater literary value and, perhaps as a consequence, was less preachy and more ambiguous in terms of passing on a “message” to readers. It called attention to the complex, soul-destroying institution of slavery as a threat to a relatively new nation that was barely seven decades old. While both novellas are nearly diametrically opposed to each other in their treatments of leaders of slave mutinies, their narratives form a cohesive attack on an institution that, by 1865, would die a violent death on U.S. battlefields.

WORKS CITED

Andrews, William L. “Introduction.” Three Classic African-American Novels. New York: Penguin Group, 1990. 7-21.

Bryant, John. “The Persistence of Melville: Representative Writer for a Multicultural Age.” Melville’s Ever-Moving Dawn. Eds. John Bryant and Robert Milder. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997. 3-30.

Crane, Gregg D. Race, Citizenship, and Law in American Literature. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Douglass, Frederick. “The Heroic Slave.” Two Slave Rebellions at Sea. Eds. George Hendrick and Willene Hendrick. St. James, N.Y.: Brandywine Press, 2000. 21-51.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. New York: The New American Library Inc., 1968.

“Slavery, the Slumbering Volcano.” The Frederick Douglass Papers. Series One, Vol. II. Ed. John W. Blassingame, et al. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979. 154-158.

Karcher, Carolyn L. Shadow Over the Promised Land: Slavery, Race, and Violence in Melville’s America. Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.

Lee, Maurice S. “Melville’s Subversive Political Philosophy: ‘Benito Cereno’ and the Fate of Speech.” American Literature 72 (2000). 495-519. The Duke University Press. Project Muse database. Centenary College Library, Hackettstown, N.J. 04 November 2006.
 
Lock, Helen. “The Paradox of Slave Mutiny in Herman Melville, Charles Johnson, and Frederick Douglass.” College Literature 30 (2003). 54-70. West Chester University. Project Muse database. Centenary College Library, Hackettstown, N.J.  04 November 2006. <http://muse.uq.edu.au.centhsally.centenarycollege.edu:2048/journals/college_literature>

Meier, August, and Rudwick, Elliott. From Plantation to Ghetto. 3rd ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 1976.

Melville, Herman. “Benito Cereno.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter 6th ed. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003. 1111-1167.

Rogin, Michael Paul. Subversive Genealogy: The Politics and Art of Herman Melville. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1985.

Rohrberger, Mary. “Benito Cereno: Overview.” Reference Guide to Short Fiction, First Edition (1994). Ed. Noelle Watson. St. James Press. Literature Resource Center database. Centenary College Library, Hackettstown, N.J. 09 November 2006. <http://galenet.galegroup.com.centhsally.centenarycollege.edu:2048/servlet/>

Sale, Maggie Montesinos. The Slumbering Volcano: American Slave Ship Revolts and the Production of Rebellious Masculinity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 1997.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly. Garden City, N.Y.: International Collectors Library, 1981.

Yellin, Jean Fagan. “Black Masks: Melville’s ‘Benito Cereno.’” American Quarterly 22 (Autumn 1970). 678-689. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Project Muse database. Centenary College Library, Hackettstown, N.J. 12 December 2006. <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici>