The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 73rammed home, time and again, that the white people of the new republic are in
breach of divine law and their own professed allegiance to “natural rights.” “’Twas as
Exelent note that I Lately read in a modern piece and it was this,” Haynes remem-
bers, “O when shall America be consistantly Engaged in the Cause of Liberty!” And
he concludes with a prayer addressed to white Americans: “If you have any Love to
yourselves, or any Love to this Land, if you have any Love to your fellow-man, Break
these intollerable yoaks.”
A similar commitment to the idea of brotherhood characterizes the work of Prince
Hall (1735?–1807). Hall was a member of the Masonic order. He considered it the
duty of Masons, as he put it in “A Charge Delivered to the African Lodge, June 24,
1797, at Menotomy” (1797), to show “love to all mankind,” and “to sympathise with
our fellow men under their troubles.” The author of numerous petitions on behalf of
Masons and free blacks in general, for support of plans for blacks to emigrate to Africa
and for public education for children of tax-paying black people, he was also a strong
opponent of slavery. His petition “To the Honorable Council & House of
Representatives for the State of Massachusetts-Bay in General Court assembled
January 13th 1777” (1788) asks for the emancipation of “great number of Negroes
who are detained in a state of Slavery in the Bowels of a free & Christian Country.”
And, in it, like Haynes, Hall uses the rhetoric of the Revolution against its authors.
Slaves, he points out, “have, in common with all other Men, a natural & unalienable
right to that freedom, which the great Parent of the Universe hath bestowed equally on
all Mankind.” Freedom is “the natural right off all Men – & their Children (who were
born in this Land of Liberty) may not be held as Slaves after they arrive at the age of
twenty one years.” Hall was tireless in his support of any scheme intended to advance
the cause of black freedom and equality. He was also acutely aware of how different
were the futures of the different races in “this Land of Liberty:” “thus my brethren,” he
declared once, “we see what a chequered world we live in.” And he was never reluctant
to use republican, as well as biblical, rhetoric, to point that difference out.
Haynes was born into freedom. Hall was born into slavery and then freed. Olaudah
Equiano (1745–1797) was born into freedom in Africa; he was enslaved, transported
first to Barbados and then to Virginia, bought by a British captain to serve aboard
his ship, and then finally in 1776 became a free man again. All this became the sub-
ject of a two-volume autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano, or Gustavus Valla, the African, Written by Himself. Published in 1787 and
subscribed to by many of the leading abolitionists, it established the form of the
slave narrative and so, indirectly or otherwise, it has influenced American writing –
and African-American writing in particular – to the present day. “I offer here the
history of neither a saint, a hero, nor a tyrant,” Equiano announces. “I might say my
sufferings were great,” he admits, “but when I compare my lot with that of most of
my countrymen, I regard myself as a particular favorite of heaven, and acknowledge
the mercies of Providence in every occurrence of my life.” As that remark suggests,
Equiano follows the tradition of spiritual autobiography derived from St. Augustine
and John Bunyan and used by American Puritans and Quakers, but he adds to it the
new dimension of social protest. He also begins by painting an idyllic portrait of lifeGGray_c01.indd 73ray_c 01 .indd 73 8 8/1/2011 7:54:57 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 57 AM