Declarations in Dialogue: Voices from Outside

1. Declarations in Dialogue: Voices from Outside Abigail Adams’ letters and The Constitution of 1801 by Toussaint L’Ouverture

2. Two Case Studies • In the (north) American colonies, a husband and wife exchange views through letters about who shall be included in the new government to be created by a “Declaration of Independency” • In the French colony of Saint-Domingue, Governor General Toussaint L’Ouverture leads the National Assembly in the writing of a Constitution, sent to Napoléon Bonaparte, ruler of France, in 1801 • How do we interpret the ethos of two writers who make cases against their exclusion from the central promise of the Enlightenment?

3. “All men are created equal” MEN = men • “A careful reading of the main texts of the Enlightenment in France, England, and the colonies reveals that . . . The use of man was in fact literal, not generic” (Kerber 15) In Enlightenment thought, MEN = free Europeans • Immanuel Kant, 1764: “The difference between the two races is thus a substantial one: it appears to be just as great in respect to the faculties of the mind as in color” (from “Observations of the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime”)

4. Enlightenment perspectives on women in the political order Women disqualified from the political participation in most Enlightenment thought on the basis of sex (confinement to reproductive roles) or gender (lacking in qualities of rationality, discipline, strength of character, intelligence) • Women’s weakness disqualifies them from “the distant chase, from war, from the usual subjects of debate” (Condorcet qtd. in Kerber) • Rousseau, Emile: women’s empire: “of softness, of address, of complacency; her commands are caresses; her menaces are tears” BUT . . . • Locke: “Conjugal Society is made by a voluntary Compact between Man and Woman” (62-65). L. entertained the idea of divorce

5. Economic barriers to participation • Coverture: common law tradition (from England) Blackstone, Commentary on the Common Law (1765): “By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband; under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs every thing”

6. The genre of the letter: public or private? • Cicero (1st-century B.C.E.); Elizabeth (16th century) • The characteristic genre of the 18th century: “outpourings of the heart” but also a vehicle for political communication • “Private” but not secret: oriented toward an audience; the epistolary novel (Richardson, Pamela, 1740) • An available means for someone excluded from public spaces and official bodies

7. Abigail Adams, 1744-1818 • No formal education; father a Congregationalist minister; taught reading, writing, and numbers by her mother; access to her father’s library of English and French literature • Married to John Adams in 1764 • Lived in Braintree, Massachusetts; bore 6 children • Second First Lady: 1797-1801 Portrait by Benjamin Blythe, 1766

8. An 18th-century middle-class white woman’s sphere Adams’ house in Braintree, Massachusetts “The Good House-wife,” Colonial Williamsburg Collection

9. What terms best describe Abigail Adams’ ethos? • A. She writes as a citizen to another citizen, making strong arguments for women’s inclusion in the new republic. • B. She writes as a loving wife to her husband. • C. She’s playful and taunting, using humor to persuade. • D. None of the above. • E. All of the above.

10. Abigail’s letters • To Isaac Smith (4/20/1771): using the letter for intellectual exchange, overcoming gender and geographical limitations: the “humble cottage” in Braintree: “in immagination place you by me that I may ask you ten thousand Questions” (235) • To John (3/31/1776): “Remember the Ladies” -- ironic use of the language of rights • restriction on “unlimited power” • “all Men would be tyrants” • we will “foment a Rebelion” • no law without representation • John’s reply (4/14/1776): picks up Abigail’s mocking tone • “I cannot but laugh” • Women: “another Tribe” • “We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems” • “Despotism of the peticoat”

11. Abigail’s letters (cont.) To Mercy Otis Warren (4/27/1776): political action • Proposal of a petition • Given the “natural propensity in Humane Nature to domination,” there should be laws in our favor based on “just and Liberal principals” • Abigail has been making a trial of “the Disintresstedness of his Virtue” Abigail to John (5/26/1776): “we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our Masters”

12. John Adams’ reflections, May 26, 1776 To James Stewart, not a response to Abigail; moral foundations: “in theory” • “Whence arises the right of the men to govern the women, without their consent? Whence the right of the old to bind the young, without theirs? • A series of questions: “why exclude women?” gender argument: their delicacy reproductive obligations: domestic cares coverture problem: influence of men in control of property • Again, “for what reason”? Reasoning proves “you aught to admit women and children” • Response to his own questions: fear of the multitude: ““Depend upon it, Sir, it is dangerous to open so fruitful a source of controversy and altercation as would be opened by attempting to alter the qualifications of voters; there will be no end of it.”

13. John to Abigail, July 2, 1776: public deliberation and consensus on nation-formation set aside the question of women’s inclusion “Time has been given for the whole People, maturely to consider the great Question of Independence and to ripen their judgments, dissipate their Fears, and allure their Hopes, by discussing it in News Papers and Pamphletts, by debating it, in Assemblies ,Conventions, Committees of Safety and Inspection, in Town and County Meetings, as well as in private Conversations, so that the whole People in every Colony of the 13, have now adopted it, as their own Act. —This will cement the Union, and avoid those Heats and perhaps Convulsions which might have been occasioned, by such a Declaration Six Months ago.” Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society

14. Some conclusions • Genre: A. Adams uses the the letter to create a kind of public for the purposes of testing and critiquing Enlightenment ideas. She addresses her husband more as a policy-maker than as an intimate: testing his “disinterestedness.” • The letter, with its context of intimacy, allows for a style different from the high seriousness of “rational-critical” debate. Those excluded from positions of power may adopt alternative styles strategically when high seriousness or direct challenge may not be effective. Rhetoric’s question: what happens when someone speaks or writes? • Abigail’s progressive thinking about women’s rights enters into circulation • J. Adams is led to reflect on his position

15. The colony of Saint Domingue Beard, J. R. (John Relly) (1863). Toussaint L'Ouverture: A Biography and Autobiography. Chapel Hill, NC: Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH. Online Publication

16. The Declaration travels • July 14, 1789: storming of the Bastille Prison, beginning of the French Revolution • August, 1789: Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen • 1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good. • 2. The rights of man: liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. • 11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.

17. “Promissory note” of the Declaration of Independence • “unalienable rights”: alienation, the capacity to be separated from, to give or sell away • “life, liberty, pursuit of happiness” (Locke, Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen: life, liberty, property)

18. circulation “it was precisely this issue of rights and representation for free coloreds that opened the way for slaves in Saint-Domingue to free themselves” (Davis 163). The enslavement of non-Europeans to labor in colonies supported the economic system of the West, “paradoxically facilitating the global spread of the very Enlightenment ideals that were in such fundamental contradiction to it” (Buck-Morss 21).

19. Colonial Slavery: law and economy • Le Code Noir, French legal code regulating treatment of black slaves in the colonies, 1685: legalized slavery, humans as property, allowed for physical torture and killing of slaves; regulations prohibiting assembly; some protections for marriage, family, and children • “The fortunes created at Bordeaux, at Nantes, by the slave-trade, gave to the bourgeoisie that pride which needed liberty and contributed to human emancipation” (Jaurès qtd. in James, Black Jacobins 47). • October, 1789: Appeal to the National Assembly by mulattoes of San Domingue to be seated as representatives of the West Indies; supported by the Amis des Noirs (anti-slavery); petitions denied. • August 1791: insurrection on Saint-Domingue • February 4, 1794: French National Convention outlaws slavery in all French colonies: citizenship to men of any color

20. Toussaint Bréda/L’Ouverture • 1743-1803, born to African parents sold into slavery • Perhaps educated by his French godfather; Jesuit priests • Some literacy; dictated letters • Attained freedom in 1776; owned a plantation and slaves • Joined the rebellion in 1791 Handler and Tuite, The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas. A Visual Record. Digital Media Lab. U of Virginia Library. Toussaint Louverture, Chef des Noirs, Insurgé de Saint Domingue (Paris [1800]). Copy in the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University

21. Toussaint L’Ouverture: Letter to the Directory, November 1797 Declaration, against the reinstitution of slavery: • “the attempts on that liberty which the colonists propose are all the more to be feared because it is with the veil of patriotism that they cover their detestable plans.” • “It is for you, Citizens Directors, to turn from over our heads the storm which the eternal enemies of our liberty are preparing in the shades of silence. It is for you to enlighten the legislature; it is for you to prevent the enemies of the present system from spreading themselves on our unfortunate shores to suly it with new crimes. Do not allow our brothers, our friends, to be sacrificed to men who wish to reign over the ruins of the human species.” • “Do they think that men who have been able to enjoy the blessing of liberty will calmly see it snatched away? • “if . . . this was done, then I declare to you it would be to attempt the impossible: we have known how to face dangers to obtain our liberty, we shall know how to brave death to maintain it.”

22. Haitian Constitution of 1801 Freedoms: • Abolition of slavery (Article 3) • “Men” not divided legally by color (Article 5) • Individual freedom, safety, and property are guaranteed (Title V): each person owns himself Restraints: • Catholic religion is established; no divorce (Title IV) • Colonists must labor in agriculture; workers as family led by the father (Title VI) • Toussaint L’ouverture, governor for life (Title VIII) • Attachment to French government • Governor as censor (Article 39); right of petition but not assembly (Articles 66-67)

23. Conclusions: Liberty and Security without FreedomNo bourgeoisie, no bourgeois public sphere Declaration: bold, passionate, threatening, solidarity with fellow colonists Constitution: a neutral, administrative tone; the ethos of an authoritative leader: • Art 15: the colony as a “tranquil asylum of an active and constant family, of which the owner of the land or his representative is necessarily the father” (Article 15) • “in consideration of the important services that the general has rendered to the colony in the most critical circumstances of the revolution, and per the wishes of the grateful inhabitants, the reins are confided to him for the rest of his glorious life” (Art 28) Presumption of a collection voice-- “the unanimous wishes pronounced by the inhabitants of Saint-Domingue (Article 77)--but phrases praising Toussaint raises questions about how representative the document really was: “indefatigable zeal, . . . rare virtues, . . . unlimited confidence of the inhabitants”

24. For Wednesday/Thursday 19th-century social movement rhetoric: 1848, Declaration of Sentiments Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention How does the Declaration of Sentiments imitate the Declaration of Independence? How does it differ?