Clotel

Henry, having been “[e]ducated in a free state” (151) and having married a woman “who had been a victim to the institution of slavery” (151), is staunchly against slavery, and he sends his two daughters to be educated in the North. He frequently “made himself obnoxious” (151) when speaking with people about his condemnation of slavery. One night at a party he delivers a passionate speech in which he states that slavery will “be the ruin of the Union” (151). He claims that Americans’ mere “boast of freedom” (151) will not lead to their being “respected abroad” (151), for Americans’ actions “will be scrutinised by the people of other countries” (151). He notes that “[d]espotism does not depend on the number of the rulers, or the number of the subjects” (152), for “Rome was a despotism under Nero” (152). In America, he says, “the free white citizens are the rulers” (152), and “[a]ll others are subjects” (152).

Henry goes on, stating that black people in America have “no voice in the laws” (152) to which they are subject; their lives are in the hands of “rulers whom [they] never chose” (152). White people, he says, are despots, for they “fasten iron chains, and rivet manacles on four millions of our fellowmen” (153). He fears that Americans “are fast losing our reputation for honest dealing” (153) and that once a nation’s reputation is destroyed, its “destruction” (153) soon follows. Again comparing America to Rome, he reminds his listeners that that city once was a proud empire and now is nothing.

He concludes by commenting that New Orleans, which has extremely “stringent laws […] against Negroes” (154), recently passed a law that a white man can marry a black woman because a white man desired to marry a wealthy black woman. He alludes to the hypocrisy in the fact that “the law prohibiting marriage between blacks and whites was laid aside for the occasion” (154).

Althesa is proud of her husband for speaking out against slavery.

Brown compares two ships that arrived in America in November of 1620—the Mayflower, which contained good Christians who believed in “[j]ustice, mercy, humanity, [and] respect for the rights of all” (155), and a ship carrying African slaves. The ships represent “good and evil in the New World” (156).

Georgiana’s belief “that all men are by nature equal” (156) is “founded in the school of Christianity” (156). When she learns she is dying of consumption, she gathers the slaves around her and frees them, telling them that if they “are temperate, industrious, peaceable, and pious” (157), they “will show to the world that slaves can be emancipated without danger” (157). She says they must behave “better than whites” (157) in order to serve as an example. She also encourages them to follow Jesus Christ and to educate themselves and their children. She arranges for them to be sent to Ohio. Though some of the slaves ask to stay on the farm and work for wages, they are not by law allowed, “under penalty of again being sold into slavery” (158). Georgiana’s friends have tried to convince her to send them to Liberia, but Georgiana finds the Colonization Society, which advances this deporting of freed slaves, to have “originated in hatred of the free coloured people” (158), stating, “Its pretenses are false, its doctrines odious, its means contemptible” (158).

The slaves weep over and kneel to Georgiana. When they leave for the steamboat, they beg Sam to take care of Georgiana and Carlton. Georgiana dies less than a week later, leaving Carlton distraught over the loss of the woman who “had converted him from infidelity to Christianity; from the mere theory of liberty to practical freedom” (158).

Brown writes that “if departed spirits are permitted to note the occurrences of this world” (160), Georgiana would lament how so many people seek to put an end to the abolitionist movement. He prays that more people like Georgiana will “take the whip-scarred Negro by the hand, and raise him to a level with our common humanity!” (160).