The case of "The dyed-in-the-wool abolitionists" in Mark Twain country, Marion County, Missouri : an examination of a slaveholding community's response to radical abolitionism in the 1830s and 1840s
In September 1841, three radical abolitionists, George Thompson, James Burr, and Alanson Work, from the Mission Institute near Quincy, Illinois, were convicted in Marion County, Missouri, for attempting to steal slaves in the case Missouri v. Thompson, Burr, and Work . Mark Twain's father, John M. Clemens was on the jury, and the community's reaction to the case likely had a formative effect on Twain's views of slavery. This dissertation examines the ideological and social effects of abolitionism on a slaveholding community; it argues that the residents needed to construct fictions--especially the story that the slaves betrayed the abolitionists--in order to convince themselves, as well as hostile outsiders, that slavery as practiced in the county was a moral and benevolent institution. Through examination of court records, the study concludes that the slaveholders coerced the slaves into cooperating in the arrest of the three men. This study locates the case--one of the five most radical acts committed by white abolitionists before John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry--within the socio-economic and cultural dynamics of the community. A principal focus is the relationship between the original southern settlers, the several hundred northeastern immigrants who came to the county in the 1830s--locally called the "Eastern Run"--And the slaves and free blacks. It argues that Hannibal, far from being the quintessential southern border town, was in reality a burgeoning commercial society, and that the institution of slavery and the consensus within the southern community were already under stress, exacerbating tensions surrounding the case and heightening its significance
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 2003
University of Missouri-Columbia