1834

 

John Greenleaf Whittier publishes Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform. They include:

 

The Slave-Ships 

“ALL ready?” cried the captain;

    “Ay, ay!” the seamen said;

“Heave up the worthless lubbers,—

    The dying and the dead.”

Up from the slave-ship’s prison

    Fierce, bearded heads were thrust:

“Now let the sharks look to it,—

    Toss up the dead ones first!”

 

Corpse after corpse came up,

    Death had been busy there;

Where every blow is mercy,

    Why should the spoiler spare?

Corpse after corpse they cast

    Sullenly from the ship,

Yet bloody with the traces

    Of fetter-link and whip.

 

Gloomily stood the captain,

    With his arms upon his breast,

With his cold brow sternly knotted,

    And his iron lip compressed.

 

“Are all the dead dogs over?”

    Growled through that matted lip;

“The blind ones are no better,

    Let’s lighten the good ship.”

 

Hark! from the ship’s dark bosom,

    The very sounds of hell!

The ringing clank of iron,

    The maniac’s short, sharp yell!

The hoarse, low curse, throat-stifled;

     The starving infant’s moan,

The horror of a breaking heart

    Poured through a mother’s groan.

 

Up from that loathsome prison

    The stricken blind ones came:

Below, had all been darkness,

    Above, was still the same.

Yet the holy breath of heaven

    Was sweetly breathing there,

And the heated brow of fever

    Cooled in the soft sea air.

 

“Overboard with them, shipmates!”

    Cutlass and dirk were plied;

Fettered and blind, one after one,

    Plunged down the vessel’s side.

The sabre smote above,

    Beneath, the lean shark lay,

Waiting with wide and bloody jaw

    His quick and human prey.

 

God of the earth! what cries

    Rang upward unto thee?

Voices of agony and blood,

    From ship-deck and from sea.

The last dull plunge was heard,

    The last wave caught its stain,

And the unsated shark looked up

    For human hearts in vain.

 

        . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

Red glowed the western waters,

    The setting sun was there,

Scattering alike on wave and cloud

    His fiery mesh of hair.

Amidst a group in blindness,

    A solitary eye

Gazed, from the burdened slaver’s deck,

    Into that burning sky.

 

 “A storm,” spoke out the gazer,

    “Is gathering and at hand;

Curse on ’t, I’d give my other eye

    For one firm rood of land.”

And then he laughed, but only

    His echoed laugh replied,

For the blinded and the suffering

    Alone were at his side.

 

Night settled on the waters,

    And on a stormy heaven,

While fiercely on that lone ship’s track

    The thunder-gust was driven.

 “A sail!—thank God, a sail!”

    And as the helmsman spoke,

Up through the stormy murmur

    A shout of gladness broke.

Down came the stranger vessel,

    Unheeding on her way,

So near that on the slaver’s deck

    Fell off her driven spray.

 “Ho! for the love of mercy,

    We’re perishing and blind!”

A wail of utter agony

    Came back upon the wind.

 

 “Help us! for we are stricken

    With blindness every one;

Ten days we’ve floated fearfully,

    Unnoting star or sun.

Our ship’s the slaver Leon,—

    We’ve but a score on board;

Our slaves are all gone over,—

    Help, for the love of God!”

 

On livid brows of agony

    The broad red lightning shone;

But the roar of wind and thunder

    Stifled the answering groan;

Wailed from the broken waters

    A last despairing cry,

As, kindling in the stormy light,

    The stranger ship went by.

 

            . . . . . . . . .

 

In the sunny Guadaloupe

    A dark-hulled vessel lay,

With a crew who noted never

    The nightfall or the day.

The blossom of the orange

    Was white by every stream,

And tropic leaf, and flower, and bird

    Were in the warm sunbeam.

 

And the sky was bright as ever,

    And the moonlight slept as well,

On the palm-trees by the hillside,

    And the streamlet of the dell:

And the glances of the Creole

    Were still as archly deep,

And her smiles as full as ever

    Of passion and of sleep.

 

But vain were bird and blossom,

    The green earth and the sky,

And the smile of human faces,

    To the slaver’s darkened eye;

At the breaking of the morning,

    At the star-lit evening time,

O’er a world of light and beauty

    Fell the blackness of his crime.

* 

In the spring of 1834, Captain Benjamin Obear paid a large sum of money for permission to bring an 18-year-old Chinese woman called Afong Moy to the U.S. He believed Afong would help him sell Chinese goods to American citizens. Afong’s tour was expected to last two years. We do not know if Afong had any say in the decision that would change her life.

 

Afong set sail from Guangzhou, China, traveling south along the Pearl River before crossing the Pacific Ocean to Indonesia. Next, she crossed the Indian Ocean before traveling around the southern tip of Africa. The final leg of her journey was crossing the Atlantic Ocean to reach New York City. The trip took about six months, and Afong probably endured bad food, dangerous weather, and hours of boredom.

 

When Afong finally arrived in New York City in October of 1834, she was the first recorded Chinese woman to visit the United States. Her arrival caused a big stir. Just a few weeks later, Benjamin put Afong to work. He made her the centerpiece of an exhibition of Chinese goods, hoping that her novelty would attract curious shoppers. Her early appearances were staged inside Benjamin’s home. Afong was seated in a throne-like chair in the center of the room. She was dressed in traditional Chinese clothing, and her feet were prominently displayed on a stool in front of her. An assortment of Chinese antiques and goods were artfully arranged around her. Visitors paid 50 cents to see the scene and were encouraged to ask her questions about her life in China. An interpreter was provided to assist with these exchanges.

 

Afong’s exhibition was a huge hit. She represented a country and culture that was completely foreign to most Americans, so thousands paid to see her. Even Vice President Martin Van Buren stopped by. Afong’s exhibition sparked a fad in Chinese goods and fashions, just like Benjamin had hoped. But the scene staged by Benjamin sent a very clear message: Afong was a commodity like the objects arranged around her. Her visitors did not see her as entirely human, and this resulted in a general attitude of disrespect. For example, it is likely that Afong Moy was not her given name, but rather a nickname used by Benjamin because it was easier than properly pronouncing her full name. But local newspaper accounts did not even respect her nickname. “Miss Julie Foochee-ching-chang-king,” “Madame Ching Chang Foo,” and “Miss Keo-O-Kwang King” were some of the many names newspapers made up to announce Afong’s arrival in the city. These racist names contributed to Afong’s dehumanization.

 

What fascinated visitors the most were Afong’s bound feet. Foot binding was a Chinese cultural practice that dated back to the 900s. Mothers would break the toes of young girls and wrap their feet in such a way that the bones arched over time. By the time a girl reached adulthood, her feet might be only three inches long. Foot binding served many cultural functions in China in the 1800s. It was considered a mark of beauty and refinement. Bound feet made it very difficult for women to walk, so families that bound their daughters’ feet were telling the world that they did not need their daughters to work. Many Chinese women had a complicated relationship with their bound feet. They were very painful and required constant care and attention to prevent injury or infection. But they were also a symbol of a woman’s social standing and her value to her family and community.

 

The American audiences who visited Afong did not understand any of this cultural context. They were simply shocked when they saw how tiny Afong’s feet were, and then equal parts horrified and titillated when they learned about the practice of binding. Visitors took Afong’s bound feet as further proof that she was not quite human. They also took it as a sign that Chinese culture was inferior to American culture. 

 

She was taken on tour in 1835, saw a good part of the United States, and even met President Andrew Jackson. Eventually, the people who controlled her fell on hard times, and she did, too. In 1847, P.T. Barnum took her on tour again, but by 1851, she had been replaced by a younger Chinese woman, and she disappears from history forever.

 

The New York Times has a slightly different take, reporting that Afong Moy was only fourteen when she arrived in New York, “brought by a pair of merchant brothers who struck a deal with her father in China to put her in a museum for two years, on display.” The girl was then marketed as a curiosity. 

Crowds paid to watch her brew tea, eat with chopsticks and walks around the room on her bound feet. “It’s a performance of cultural identity, and she is happy to enact it — enthusiastic, even, at the start. Cheerfully naïve, unsuspecting of the world’s cruelty, she views herself as an educator, fostering understanding.”