I found a few passages in Heroic Slave that relates to our questioning of the sea and its relevance in American literature, especially during this time period.
On p46...
"It is quite easy to talk of flogging niggers here on land, where you the sympathy of the community, and the whole physical force of the government...but sir, I deny that the negro is, naturally, a coward, or that you theory of managing slaves will stand the test of salt water...It is one thing to manage a company of slaves on a Virginia plantation, and quite another thing to quell an insurrection on the lonely billows of the Atlantic, where every breeze speaks of courage and liberty."
This quote was said by the first mate of the ship that Madison Washington and the other slaves on board took over. Reference to the sea in American literature was common, and I think that when it comes to literature concerning slavery, this quote pretty much explains why the sea is always included. It is basically explaining that when one is on the sea, the laws of the land don't apply. So, whereas slaves and even freed black men were very limited by law on US soil, moving off shore was a completely different scenario. This was especially so if the numbers of the enslaved was close to or higher than the whites trying to keep them in bondage. The sea offered to the oppressed an opportunity to pursue insurrection against such inequality. Without, as the first mate mentioned, societal support for such oppression, the potential power and potential success of insurrection rises greatly on the sea.
I enjoyed this work much more than Pym, and although the coincidental events in Heroic Slave did at times seem too lucky to be real, I could still appreciate the main issue behind this work, which was an abolitionist work exploring possibilities of a true event, revealing the brutality of the South's slave society, exposing the ridiculousness of many Southerner's ideas behind slavery (i. e. it's ridiculous to regard people as property, as the Nassau natives pointed out) and serving as propaganda for abolitionists.
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I agree with your comment, especially the part where you talk about the laws of the land not applying when at sea. Active resistance was much more feasible at sea because of the lack of "societal support" for the oppressers and the increased potential for escape by the oppressed. I found a passage at the beginning of the book (pg. 4) that relates to your quote; it states, "About twilight on the ninth day, Madison, it seems, reached his head above the hatchway, looked out on the swelling billows of the Atlantic, and feeling the breeze that coursed over its surface, was inspired with the spirit of freedom. He leapt from beneath the hatchway, gave a cry like an eagle to his comrades beneath, saying, "We must go through!" The sea certainly inspired those that were not free and induced them to seek their freedom with fervor. In each of the stories that we have read we have seen how the sea correlates with freedom. Given the vast amount of peoples that were not free, whether it be because of religion, race, etc., it makes sense that it would have been a popular literary topic during the time period.
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