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Section 3 of Stamped, which includes chapters 11–14, focuses on how various writers and thinkers used emerging forms of mass communication to effectively combat racist ideas in the decades preceding the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. These chapters revolve around the story of the white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who, according to Reynolds, used his white privilege to create a very influential antislavery newspaper, The Liberator. Garrison believed that all enslaved people should be freed immediately, but he stopped short of insisting that everyone should be treated equally. Like many people in Stamped, Garrison is subject to Reynolds’s criticism, but Reynolds does credit Garrison for rejecting colonization, an idea that many white abolitionists were advocating at the time. Colonizationists argued that Black Americans should be freed from slavery and sent back to Africa, despite the fact that few Black Americans had ever set foot on African soil and did not want to go there.
While Garrison’s newspaper was spreading abolitionist ideas, pro-slavery writers countered with various arguments defending the practice of slavery. Chapter 12 points out that people who liked the money slavery made them were quick to churn out “bunk literature and false ‘studies,’” which tried to “prove” that Black Americans were inferior. Black people repeatedly exposed that these so-called studies were based on lies. Virginian Nat Turner organized a rebellion of enslaved people in 1831. News of Turner’s Revolt traveled quickly across the nation, terrifying white enslavers. In addition to fighting their oppressors, many Black people liberated themselves, fleeing enslavement and finding (some) freedom in the North. The most famous of these people was Frederick Douglass, who published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (an account of his experience as an enslaved person) in 1845. Douglass was a magnetic speaker who convinced many that slavery was morally wrong, another example of how ideas circulated in the 19th century. Even so, Reynolds calls out many of Douglass’s ideas as assimilationist.
Fictional Black characters also worked to expose the racist lies supporting slavery, persuading many people to question the morality of the institution. The most important work of anti-slavery fiction was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852. Although the novel was sympathetic to the plight of enslaved people, Reynolds describes the book as “a time bomb.” Written by a white woman, the novel’s depiction of Black people relied heavily on racist stereotypes, and its objection to slavery was grounded in the belief that owning slaves turned white people into bad Christians. Even so, Uncle Tom’s Cabin convinced many white women to fight against slavery.
Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which announced the end of slavery, is another important but problematic piece of writing in the history of American slavery. Although Lincoln is revered by many as “Honest Abe,” Chapter 13 introduces him as “Complicated Abe” because his views on slavery shifted according to political necessity. According to Reynolds, Lincoln began as a rather mediocre politician, but his fortunes improved quickly when he learned how to adapt his position to mollify anxious white voters. As president during the Civil War, Lincoln waited two years to move to end slavery, and even when he did, his proclamation excluded people who were enslaved in Union states. Still, Reynolds points out that Lincoln was assassinated because he freed enslaved Black Americans. As with Douglass and Jefferson, Stamped suggests that Lincoln be remembered for his repugnant beliefs as well as for his admirable accomplishments.
Chapter 14 chronicles the first years of Reconstruction under Lincoln’s woeful successor, Andrew Johnson, which saw a reversal in the nation’s forward progress toward racial equality. After Lincoln’s death, Johnson worked to undo the changes Lincoln had initiated, creating conditions that would guarantee that Black Americans would be neither free nor equal. Although Johnson was impeached and three constitutional amendments were passed—abolishing slavery, guaranteeing equal protection under the law, and granting Black men the right to vote—American society turned its back on Black Americans after 1870, letting terrorism and propaganda once again sway public opinion. Even Garrison, who had labored to end slavery, thought the fight was over. But, seeing the widespread inequalities, Garrison once again took up the torch of freedom, spending his last days trying to help Black Americans move to Kansas where they could be free and equal.
