The University Press of Mississippi 

Slavery, Propaganda
and the American Revolution
By Patricia Bradley

A study of how blacks were excluded from the Revolutionary patriots' goals for American
liberation

Under the leadership of Samuel Adams, patriot propagandists deliberately and conscientiously kept the
issue of slavery off the agenda as goals for freedom were set for the American Revolution.

By comparing coverage in the publications of the patriot press with those of the moderate colonial press,
this book finds that the patriots avoided, misinterpreted, or distorted news reports on blacks and slaves,
even in the face of a vigorous antislavery movement. The Boston Gazette, the most important newspaper of
the Revolution, was chief among the periodicals that dodged or excluded abolition. The author of this study
shows that The Gazette misled its readers about the notable Somerset decision that led to abolition in
Great Britain. She notes also that The Gazette excluded antislavery essays, even from patriots who
supported abolition. No petitions written by Boston slaves were published, nor were any writings by the
black poet Phillis Wheatley. The Gazette also manipulated the racial identity of Crispus Attucks, the first
casualty in the Revolution. When using the word slavery, The Gazette took care to focus it not upon
abolition but upon Great Britain's enslavement of its American colonies.

Since propaganda on behalf of the Revolution reached a high level of sophistication, and since Boston
can be considered the foundry of Revolutionary propaganda, the author writes that the omission of
abolition from its agenda cannot be considered as accidental but as intentional.

By the time the Revolution began, white attitudes toward blacks were firmly fixed, and these persisted
long after American independence had been achieved. In Boston, notions of virtue and vigilance were
shown to be negatively embodied in black colonists. These devil's imps were long represented in
blackface in Boston's annual Pope Day parade.

Although the leaders of the Revolution did not articulate a national vision on abolition, the colonial
antislavery movement was able to achieve a degree of success but only in drives through the individual
colonies.

Patricia Bradley is the former director of the American Studies program at Temple University and is
currently Chair of the Temple University Department of Journalism, Public Relations, and Advertising.



August, 6 x 9, 224 pages (approx.)
bibliography, index
ISBN 1-57806-052-4, cloth, $40.00

Domesticity with a Difference 
The Nonfiction of Catharine Beecher, Sarah J. Hale, Fanny Fern, and Margaret Fuller 

By Nicole Tonkovich 

Four professional women of the nineteenth century who prescribed domestic lives for others of their sex

This study of nonfiction written by four of nineteenth-century Ameri-ca's first professional women writers investigates the paradoxes posed by the conflict of their texts with their lives. They were not homemakers, yet in their works they prescribed ideal domesticity for the women of their day. They were not professional educators, yet they wrote authoritatively about educational theory and practice. They were not involved with organized political agitation for women's rights, yet their writings advanced thoughtful, radical revisions to existing social and political structures, particularly the heterosexual family.

  Comparable home, school, and community backgrounds prepared Catharine Beecher, Sarah Josepha Hale, Fanny Fern, and Margaret Fuller to write for the public. Their nonfiction texts expose the contradictions be-tween what they prescribed for other women and how they themselves chose to live outside the traditional domestic world.

  Class, race, age, and geography determined the focus of nineteenth-century women's writing, and as Hale, Beecher, Fern, and Fuller promoted and critiqued one another, they profited reciprocally from the others' work, teachings, and examples. As this study shows, by attending to details of womanly behavior such as language, dress, and manners, their writings contributed to altering women's traditional roles in home, school, and community.

  No previous study has grouped Hale, Beecher, Fern, and Fuller together because each promoted differing political goals. While respecting these differences, this focus on their nonfiction reveals their strong professional links and demonstrates the similar effects of their writings, which prescribed domesticity for the lives of other women while justifying their own professionalism.

Nicole Tonkovich is an assistant professor of literature at University of California, San Diego.  

ISBN 0-87805-993-8, cloth, $40.00s 6 x 9 in.  August 

 February 24, 2000