barnum and race.pdf

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P. T. Barnum, Joice Heth and Antebellum Spectacles of RaceAuthor(s): Benjamin ReissSource: American Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Mar., 1999), pp. 78-107Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30041634

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P.T. Barnum,Joice Heth andAntebellumSpectaclesof Race

BENJAMIN EISSTulaneUniversity

ON 25 FEBRUARY 1836, P. T. BARNUM ORCHESTRATED AN EVENT THATwould launchhis career n show businessandprovidethe nascentmassmedia one of its first great spectacles.1 Joice Heth, an aged AfricanAmericanwomanwhomBarnumhadexhibitedacrossthe Northeastasthe 161-year-old ormernurse of GeorgeWashington,now lay deadonan operating table in New York's City Saloon. 1,500 spectators,including manyof themostimportant ditors n the city,paidfifty centsapiece to watchas Dr.David L. Rogerscarved nto hercorpse.Rogers'"finding"that Heth was a fraud touched off an intense journalisticdebate, in which the penny press-the first entirely commercialnewspapers in the country-took the lead. Through this debate, asurprisingnumberof improvisationson the themesof identity,authen-ticity, and essence were seemingly wrung from Heth's corpse. Alter-nately,she was still alive, dead but a fraud,the real thinganddead,aneverlastingmystery,a waste of time, and about to embarkon a tourofEuropeas a phialof ashes;andthe scientificinquiry nto herdeathwasauthoritative,nvasive,irrelevant,and fraudulent.ReconstructingheHethexhibit-in particular,ts grislyaftermath-through ts coveragein themediaprovidesa microscopicview of someof the unsettlingtransformationshatwere shapingnineteenth-centuryculture.Providinga backdrop or andsometimesintrudingdirectly ntoreportingof the affairwerethe issues of modernizationhatprofoundlyaffectedthe lives of many who saw Heth:the new prestigeof science,social atomization, he emergenceof a commercialmass culture,rapidurbanizationand the expansion of social roles, and a felt loss ofBenjaminReiss is an assistantprofessorof English at TulaneUniversity.

AmericanQuarterly,Vol.51, No. 1 (March1999) 1999AmericanStudiesAssociation78


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P.T.BARNUM,JOICEHETHAND ANTEBELLUMSPECTACLESOF RACE 79

communal,familial, andclass-basedtraditions.Manyof these transfor-mations produced anxieties about status, authenticity,and identity:whatwas the basis of trust n a social interchange nvolving strangers?how could one be sure that an economic transactionwas not fraudu-lent? How could one truly"know"another?2 n several of its aspects,Heth's autopsy appearsas a moment in which science-mediated bypopular ournalismandothermass media-faced some of the crises oflegibility, authenticity,and recognitionbroughton by the process ofmodernization.A related context for the exhibit was the changing meanings of"race" n the antebellum North. In early nineteenth-centuryAmerica,racialdistinctionwas a relatively oose set of discourses,practices,andideas that separatedand elevated one group from others, drawingonlaw, religion,and science with little internalconsistency.The essentiallinkage between race and propertyrights, for example, would notbecome explicitly codified until the 1850s through egal decisions likeDred Scott and legislation like the Fugitive Slave Act; and notions ofthe biological determinismof race were only fully developed in laterdecades throughthe increasedenergiesof anatomistsand otherscien-tists. Heth's itinerantexhibit reflects some of this loose structure, nthat t was a free-floating, mprovisedracialistdisplay,anopen textthatwas given a wide range of readings in local media. These readingsilluminateher variouspublics' notions of race, which were inevitablyfiltered through heirdifferences of region, class, andideology. But indeath, the question of what she meant to her viewers and to readersbecamedisplacedby the moreimperiousquestionof who she was-orrather,who was behindher.The intensifiedfocus on fixing heridentity(which hadalwaysbeen a thread n reactions o herlive exhibit ), ratherthan nterpreting erstory, akes on animplicitlydeterministicovertonewhen viewed within the context of scientific attempts to essentializerace in the antebellumperiod.The Heth autopsy-like otherspectacu-lar displaysof race createdby the emerging mass media-dramatizedsome of the new meaningsof racial identityandprovidedan opportu-nity for whites to debatethem (in a displacedregister)as they gazeduponor readabouthercorpse.The episode thus offers the opportunityto constructan ethnographicminiatureof white antebellumNorthern-ers as they struggledto make sense of the interlocking ssues of racialidentificationandmodernization,andlooked for symbolicresolution othose struggles in popularcultureandthe emergingmass media.


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80 AMERICANQUARTERLY

FreakShow, HistoryLesson, or Disgrace:Heth on TourThe smallscale anditinerancyof Heth'stourwithBarnummark t as

an "earlymodem"entertainment-more consistentwith the wanderingperformers,orators,andcuriosities of the late eighteenthcenturythanthe urbanspectaclesof the mid- to late-nineteenth.3Herfirstexhibitorwas actually not Barnumbut R. W. Lindsay,a hapless showmanfromKentucky,who hadexhibitedher in towns andcities acrossthe South,Ohio, andthe mid-Atlanticstates. Little is knownaboutthis early tour,but when Lindsay couldn't turn a profit, he sold his interest in theexhibitto Barnum,who was at the time working n a drygoods storeinNew York.4Barnumthus became Heth's virtualownerand-with theassistance of a young lawyer named Levi Lyman-displayed her intaverns,inns, museums,railway houses, and concert halls across theNortheast or a periodof sevenmonths,untilherdeath.Startingwith anextended stay in New York,Heth, Barnum,and Lymanmoved on toProvidence, Boston, Hingham, Lowell, Worcester,Springfield,Hart-ford, New Haven, Bridgeport,Newark, Patterson,Albany and manytowns in between, stoppingbackin New Yorkseveraltimes.Whereverthey went, newspapersreportedHeth'scomings andgoings avidly,andcrowdsflockedto hearhertell abouthow shehadwitnessedthebirthof"dear ittle George"andbeen the firstto clothe him andeven to breast-feed him, to hearhersing hymnsshe hadsupposedlytaughthim,andtoask questions about the upbringingof the fatherof the nation.Otherscame tojudge forthemselvesthe authenticityof herclaims,whichweresupportedby an impressive array of documents such as her birthcertificateandbill of sale, as well as by the bodily signs of herold age;andto ponderthe causes andimplicationsof herextraordinaryongev-ity. Her debility was a draw,too, for many came to gaze on-even totouch-her marvelouslydecrepitbody. Joice Heth was advertisedasweighing only forty-six pounds;she was blind and toothless and haddeeply wrinkledskin;she was paralyzed n one armandbothlegs; andher nails were said to curl out like talons. Visitors regularly shookhands with her, scrutinizedher, and sometimes even took her pulse."Indeed,"wrote one observer,"she is a mere skeleton covered withskin, andherwhole appearancevery much resemblesa mummyof thedays of the Pharaohs,taken entire from the catacombs of Egypt."5Doctors andnaturalistswere fascinated.Wellbefore she died-in fact,


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while some were predicting that she would never die-her autopsy wasa greatly anticipated event.6Throughout her travels with Barnum and Lyman, a curious multiva-

lence marked the exhibit of Joice Heth. Did her decrepitude mark her asa human oddity, to be marketed like the Chinese woman with "disgust-ingly deformed" bound feet, the Virginia dwarves, and the Siamesetwins whose paths she often crossed on the touring circuit?7 Was it herscientific value as an embodiment of the different aging processes ofthe different races that merited her display? Was she an attractionbecause of her patriotic value as a living repository of memories of aglorious past? Because she was a storehouse of ancient religiouspractices? Or simply because she was a good performer? An advertise-ment for her exhibit at Niblo's Gardens in New York plays on all ofthese possibilities:

GREAT ATTRACTION AT NIBLO'S-UNPARALLELED LONGEV-ITY. . . . Joice Heth is unquestionably he most astonishing and interestingcuriosity in the world! She was the slave of Augustine Washington (thefather of Gen. Washington) and was the first person who put cloths [sic] onthe unconscious infant who was destined to lead our heroic fatherson toglory,to victory,andto freedom.To use herown languagewhenspeakingofher young master,George Washington,"SHE RAISED HIM!"Joice Hethwas born in the island of Madagascar, on the coast of Africa, in the year of1674, and has consequently now arrived at the astonishing age of ONEHUNDRED AND SIXTY-ONE YEARS!!! She weighs but FORTY-SIXPOUNDS, and yet is very cheerfuland interesting.She retains her facultiesin an unparalleleddegree, converses freely, sings numeroushymns, relatesmany interesting anecdotes of the boy Washington, the red coats, &c., andoften laughs heartily at her own remarks, or those of the spectators. Herhealth is perfectly good, and her appearance very neat... The appearance ofthis marvellousrelic of antiquitystrikesthe beholderwith amazement,andconvinces him thathis eyes are restingon the oldest specimen of mortalitythey ever before beheld. . 8

The tension in this advertisement between claims of Heth's historicalimportance ("SHE RAISED HIM!") and of her status as a monstrouswonder of nature ("she weighs but FORTY-SIX POUNDS") points to atension between identification and objectification, exaltation and deni-gration, nostalgia and disgust that marked her visitors' responses. Thesevacillations take on cultural significance when we consider the culturalpolitics behind differing representations of her body and her narrative.


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ManynewspapersacrosstheNorthread Heth's exhibitprimarilyas afreakshow.Displays of humancuriosities,or lususnaturae-freaks ofnature-were among the most populartravelingentertainments f thelate eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies,but by the 1830s, thedisplayof grotesquelyembodiedhumanforms was for some a populist,carnivalesque entertainment,and for others an offense to genteelsensibilities.9 The contested meanings of Heth's extraordinarybodyrevealmuchaboutregionalandclass-basednotionsof raceandculturalpropriety,andpointtowarda largerstruggleforculturalpowerin 1830sAmerica. In New York, she was a favorite of the lively Jacksonianpress, includingthe EveningStar, andthe firstthree pennypapers(theSun, the Transcript,and the Herald.) These periodicals, the firstentirely commercialserial publications n America, were perhapsthemost compelling voices of Jacksonian individualism. Their brashdisplaysof hostilityfor theculturemavensof theupperclasses (andforeach other), their sympathies for the urban working and upwardlymobile classes, theirfreedomfrompoliticalpatronage,andtheirfierceegalitarianismorwhitesmixedwith overtanti-black acismall markedtheir distinctivenessfrom the more genteel "six-penny"papers.10Forthe most part,the Jacksonianpresspeddledimages of Heth's debility,her greatappetiteandfondnessfor tobacco, and her grotesqueappear-ance. One article n theEveningStarmentionedthat"hernails arenearan inch long, and the great toes horny and thick like bone andincurvated,ookinglikethe claws of abirdof prey," ndthe Transcript'sreporterwas fascinatedto find thather eyes "areentirelyrunout andclosed."" The popularNew York"knowledgemagazine"Familywentso far as to report hatalthough"food s administeredo herregularly..evacuations ccurbutonce in a fortnight."'2Together, these New York papers and magazines were on thevanguardof mass culture,using new techniques n printing echnologyand distributiono publishmorecheaplyand to garnera wideraudiencethanhad previouslyexisted for printephemera.The frankogling theyencouraged-and performed-was a more risky business in NewEngland,wherethe mediawere still dominatedby the genteel classes,and where stage shows of any kind, let alone displays of human"curiosities," adonly recentlybeentolerated.13Althoughsome paperscontinued the kind of coverage Heth had received in New York,BarnumandLymanhadto respond o a numberof opprobrious eports.In Boston, theWhiggishAtlas complainedof theonslaughtof advertis-


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ing for Heth. Begging her exhibitors to refrain from sullying theircommunicationbox with "puffs" or the show,the editorswrotethat"amore indecentmode of raisingmoney than by the exhibitionof an oldwoman-black or white-we can hardlyimagine."4 The same city'sCourier was more graphic n its disgust. Its protestexpressedfear thatviewers'morals would be corruptedby the display,butit also appealedto readers'sympathyfor Hethherself:

Those who imagine they can contemplatewith delight a breathingskeleton,subjectedto the same sort of discipline that is sometimes exercised in amenagerie to induce the inferior animals to play unnaturalpranksfor theamusementof barren pectators,will find food to theirtasteby visitingJoiceHeth. But Humanitysickens at the exhibition.9

"Those"who so delightedin the display,one might infer,includedthevery editors who were challenging the genteel press' power in theculturalrealm.In responseto these attacks,Barnumand Lymanwisely advertisedHeth's cleanliness and her religiosity,rather hanher freakishness,onthe rest of her New Englandtour.Accordingto a puff piece plantedinthe HartfordTimes, "Thereis nothing in her appearancewhich canpossibly be unpleasant o the minds of the most fastidious."l6Appar-ently to preempt further criticisms, they even printed a pamphletbiographyof Heth, which stressed, in addition to her propriety,theroughnessof her treatment n slaveryand the humanequalitiesof hercurrentexhibitors:

Some of the time since [herpossession by theWashington amily]... she hasbeen very much neglected, laying for years in an outer building, upon thenakedfloor. In speakingof her past condition,she expresses greatthankful-ness, thatProvidenceshouldso kindlyprovidethecomfortsof life, andmakeinfinitely betterher conditionas she approaches owardsthe close of it.17

Behind the differing representationsof Joice Heth lay a radicaldisagreementaboutthe role of the humanbody in public display,thestakes of which were connected to a wider argument about whocontrolled culture.'8 Editors of the "penny-a-liners" ypically sawthemselvesas culturalpopulists, providingwhattheir upwardlymobilereadershipwanted for the cheapest price possible. As James GordonBennett opined in the Herald in 1835, "Formerlyno man could readunless he had $10 to spare for a paper.Now with a cent in his leftpocket, and a quid of tobacco in his cheek, he can purchase more


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intelligence,truth,andwit, thanis contained n suchpapersas the dullCourier& Enquirer, rthe stupidTimesforthreemonths."19 onsump-tion was thus figuredas a kind of empowerment;Bennettencouragedhis readersto imaginethatbuyingthe paperstransformed strugglingworker nto a culturalsuperior.The genteel editors,on the otherhand,viewed their role as guardiansof anexalted realm,to be protected romthe exploitationsof "pennyrascals"and other mercenaryassaults onpropriety.In protestingthe Heth exhibit, the six-penny press' editorsviewed its solicitationof voyeuristicinterestas a kind of nakedpublicaggression that threatened heir moral guardianshipof culture.Whenthe Courier defended Heth's body from "the amusementof barrenspectators," t posed as an embattleddefenderof an exalted culturalsphere,newly undersiege frombelow. The final sentence of the pieceexpresses the enormityof the felt threat:"humanity"-not just thosewithmoney,taste, andmorals-"sickens attheexhibition."Thedistasteof the Whiggishpress for Heth's grotesquebody can thus be readas asynecdochic rejection of all the rabble that were crowding into thepublic sphere,and fashioning, from the groundup, a mass public forthe new mass culture.20

The class-basedculturalskirmishesover Heth'sbody fed as well oncompetingviews of racialdifference.AlexanderSaxtonhaswritten hatfor the Whig coalition, as for the six-penny papers that were theircentral organs,maintainingclass hierarchieswas the primary deologi-cal agenda.Accordingto the genteel world-view,withinthe "spectrumof differences,"racial difference was "simply one among many."Incontrast,anemphasison racialdifferencebolstered he groupsolidarityof the mechanicswho comprised the bulk of the northernJacksonianDemocrats-and the bulk of the penny press' readers.21Although thisgroupperceiveditself as unitedby class interests, t is trickyto defineby the current exicon of class terminology, or it includedapprenticesand journeymen laborers as well as established "master"craftsmen(blacksmiths,hatters,comb-makers,etc.) and capitalist entrepreneurswho had risen from theirranks.22 f theirinterestswere sometimesinconflict, the language of racial solidarity provided an imaginativecategoryto reunitethem, and images of a debased "other" einforcedthe commonalty of whites.23Freak shows, perhaps more than any other popular antebellumpractice, helped disseminate the lessons of racial solidaritybecausethey acted as a hinge between scientific inquiries into racial essence


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P.T.BARNUM, JOICEHETHAND ANTEBELLUMSPECTACLESOF RACE 85

and the popular desire for images of white domination. Exhibitstypicallyhighlighted hephysicalanomaly,grotesque eatures,extremedisability,or exotic racialor culturaldifferenceof the displayed humanobject, and often more than one such quality at a time. For example,towardthe end of the eighteenthcentury,Henry Moss, a black manafflictedwith a disease thatgave him spotted skin,exhibitedhimself inPhiladelphiaandbecamethe subjectof greatpopularattention, nclud-ing thatof BenjaminRush,who concludedthatMoss was undergoinga spontaneous"cure"of his blackness.This popularscientific interestwas institutionalized n the next centuryby Barnum,who exhibited inhis AmericanMuseumAfricanAmericanswith vitiligo, albinism,andmicrocephaly, claiming that they were the "missing links" in anevolutionarychainextendingfromblackto white andfrommonkeytoman. The difference between the earlier and later exhibits is telling.Moss' control of his own exhibit in a majorurbancenter would havebeen unthinkablen the following decades, as racialattitudeshardenedin the Northandas culturalentrepreneursike Barnum,circus manag-ers, and proprietorsof dime museumsbegan to comer the marketonhuman curiosities.24This increasingcontrol of the freak's body wasaccompanied by the incorporationof freakishness into developingnotions of racial science. WhereasRush found that Moss blurredthedistinctionsbetweenwhite andblack,the laterdisplaystendedto refineand enforce those distinctions:the "missing links" demonstrated heracialistimplicationsof the new Darwiniantheories.25Finally,Rush'sinterest n Moss was simplyone voice amongmany aboutthe natureof"humancuriosities,"who were still often viewed in termsof religiouswonder or the rituals of carnival that extended back to medievalEurope.By Barnum'stime-starting with the Heth autopsy-sciencebecame the dominantdiscoursefor interpreting he freak'sbody.26Not surprisingly, hen, the papersthat emphasized Heth's freakish-ness also debated her scientific value.27Central to these discussionswas the "fact"of her extraordinary ld age, the significance of whichwas probed n the Jacksonianpresswhen she grewill toward he end of1835. "JoiceHeth goes South in abouttwo or threeweeks,"the NewYorkHerald announced."She says she cannotspendthe winterin theNorth,wherethe cold is so severeand the nights so long. The Southisher native element."28The Herald was here echoing a notion popularamongearlynineteenth-centurycientiststhat,as one physicianput it,"theAfricanraces arevery susceptibleof cold, andareas incapableof


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enduringa northern limate,as a whitepopulationareof supporting hetorrid sun of Africa."29This idea-most lucidly formulatedby theEnglish anatomist Robert Knox-took on the characterof a racistideologeme in the UnitedStates,as advocatesof slaveryargued hattheSouth,with its semi-tropicalclimate,was as mucha "natural"nviron-mentfor blacks as Africawas.30TheEveningStarused Heth'sold ageto supportthis idea. Far from an anomaly, the paper argued,Heth'slongevity was common among slaves in the Southbut almost unheardof in theNorth.Hersuddennorthernllness testified to the factthat"thecalumniated climate of the South, which has been so decried for itsmarshes,stagnantstreams,and pine barrens, s. . . admirablyadaptedfor the Africanrace."31Amidst the swirlingpossibilities and anxietiesattendingmodernizationand urban ife thatthese papersso brilliantlychronicled, race stood as an island of fixity: in this case, the laws ofnaturedecreed that each race should remainin its properplace, andthose laws could be readon or throughthe body.If freaks were the image of denigration and difference, GeorgeWashington had become, by the early nineteenthcentury, the mostexalted of national icons. Seen as a freak show, the Heth exhibitexaggeratedstereotypicalattributes f blacks:their grotesquematerial-ity, their biological difference from white observers. But seen as aliving relic of the age of Washington,Hethwas sometimesan object ofidentification,even idolization.Audiences melted on hearingher singthehymnsshe had taughthim andtell stories of his youth;as a reporterfor the ProvidenceRepublicanHerald gushed,

when we heardher converse on subjector circumstance. . connectedwiththe birth,the infancy, andchildhoodof the immortalWashington--the mindwas carried away by an intensity of interest, which no other object ofcuriosityhas ever created n our breast.32

"Somebody s raisingmoneyto builda monument o the memory ofWashington," an an item in the New YorkHerald on 25 November1835.Whatprofanation!A monumenthas long since been built to the memoryofWashington.Where is its foundation?In the breasts of free men in bothEuropeandAmerica.Where s its highestpinnacle?Far beyondthe brighteststar n the heavenitself-in thebosomof Himwho livethforeverandever.33

As this articlemakesclear,Washingtonhadpassedbeyondpolitics andinto therealmof myth.Fromhis death n 1799 untilthe outbreakof the


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Civil War, he mythicWashingtonwas by farthe most venerated igurein Americanhistory,and productionof Washingtoniana ne of themostprofitable of patriotic industries. Artists by the dozen painted hisportrait;monumentsto his memory sprangup across the country(theHerald's cries of profanationnotwithstanding),and his face investedcountless trinkets,walls, and mantelpieces with a touch of nobility.Between 1800 and 1860, over fourhundredbooks, essays, and articleson the life of Washingtonappearedn print,most of themoutrageouslyflattering. (The most famous of these was-and continues to be-Mason Weems's 1809 TheLife of Washington,whose famous cherrytree scene Heth claimed to have witnessed.34)A clearly jealous JohnAdams wrote of the "idolatrousworship"accordedhis colleague; hewas deified "by all classes andnearlyall partiesof our citizens,"whoreferred o him as "'ourSavior,''ourRedeemer,' ourcloud by day andourpillarof fire by night,' 'ourstar n theeast,' 'to us a Son is born,'and'ourguide on earth, our advocate in heaven.'"35Such venerationservedas a stabilizing force duringa time of socialupheaval.As the nation underwent ts most rapid period of urbaniza-tion, widespreadanxieties about loss of traditionsurfacedin societyand politics. In this context, legends of the "foundingFathers"pre-sented the heroes of the glorious Revolutionarypast as paternalrolemodels on a nationallevel. As GeorgeForgiehas written:

Society beganto concernitself with child nurtureas a political matterandtosummon models from history at the same time that for essentially economicreasons actualfathersceased to provide. . . automaticmodels of roles theirsons would grow up to play. . . . At a time when expanding economicopportunitymeant thatboys were beginning to needa widerrangeof modelsthantheir surroundingswere likely to provide,history steppedin to supplythem in the form of the foundingheroes.

Andjust as actualfamilies were losing theircohesiveness, disunionona broaderscale was threatening he national "family": t beganto lookas thoughthe Northandthe South couldnot live togetheras one nation.Amidstthese anxieties,GeorgeWashington,as the fatherof all Fathers,stood as a figureof authorityamong squabblingsons. As such, he wassubjectnot only to idolatry,butto the occasional "ritualisticactingoutof patricidal antasies." 6Heth'sexhibitwas only one of manyantebellumculturalproductionsthatminglednostalgiafortheRevolutionaryage withdegrading magesblacks: stage plays, popularliterature,and even minstrel shows often


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voiced longing for the gloriouspast most stronglythrough he mouthsof simplistic African American characters.George Stevens's 1834dramaThePatriot,for instance, presentsthe characterof Sambo,whoclaims he is descendedfromthe servantsof GeorgeWashington.Whenhis masterasksSamboto takeoutthebust of Washingtonanddustit forthe Fourthof July celebration, Sambo replies: "Yes Massa-de bigWashington,me lub him massa! were he 'live, me would hug himmassa, as him Sambo do-dis!", and then brokeinto the "JimCrow"dance routine.37WilliamAndrewshas argued hatthis antebellum ropeof the ridiculousblack patriottook shape in partbecause blacks werepresumed ncapableof progress(unless aidedby whites) andthereforestood outside of history.In the words of Hegel, "Africa s a land ofperpetualchildhood"whose nativesare"capableof no developmentorculture.... As we see themat this day,suchhavethey alwaysbeen."38Stuckin the past, obliviousto the changesaround hem(one versionofthe Heth story has her blissfully ignorantof the identity of AndrewJackson),HethandSambowereportrayedas developmentallystunted,butthey were also inuredfromthe present.These northern tagingsofnostalgia--coming shortly after the final emancipationof slaves innorthern tates-thus expressed a conservative onging for a place andtime in which blacks were perfectly in theirplace. Both the remem-brance of Washingtonand its voicing in black (or blackface) dialectstood as a counterbalance o the changes wroughtby modernizationandthose advocatedby abolitionists.Still, the past was not called forth withoutsome "filialresentment."Heth's exhibit was an opportunity o pay respects to the memory ofWashington, but the image of this freakish black woman havingsuckled "dear little George" (an image that caught on in populardiscussion of the exhibit, thoughHeth herself usuallyclaimed to havebeen a drynurse)pointedto a monstrousperturbationn a culture-widenostalgic idealization, a desire to see one's idols tainted by thegrotesque.At times, the exhibit served to displace resentment owardWashington's impossibly grand historical example by directing itdownward owardblacks.Hethwasjeered in severalpapersforputtingon airs and assumingthe role of "ladyWashington." The ProvidenceDaily Journal, for example, reportedthat she refused to eat chickenbecause "I'd tank you to understanddat I am Lady Washington,andwant as good victuals as anyone."39) ometimes, too, the racial and


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patriotic meanings found in her exhibit clashed. If Joice Heth weretrulywho she claimedto be, thenherexaltedstatuswas almostenoughto erase the social fact of herblackness.This perspectiveoccasionallymadehermarketingappearobscene,even in the worldof the otherwiseenthusiasticpennypapers.Duringherinitialperformances n NewYorkduringAugust 1835, anindignant etterwriternamedHenryCole askedin a letterto the Sun,

why SHE who nursedthe "fatherof ourcountry," he man to whom we oweour presenthappyand prosperouscondition,should at the close of herlife beexhibitedas "ourrarermonstersare."Is there notphilanthropy noughin theAmericanpeople to take care of her, althoughher skin be black?4"Thisraredisplay of sympathy orHethandhersufferingbody stretchedbutdid not breakthe boundsof racistthinking:Cole saw the indignitytakingplace despiteherbeing black.And even thoughCole believedinher unique claim to historical importance, he was still comfortableviewing her as a piece of property,if not quite a commodity. Heconcluded by remindingthe Sun'sreadersthatJoice Heth

is the commonpropertyof our country-she is identifiedwith the historyofthe foundation, rise and progress of our government-she is the soleremainingtie of mortalitywhich connects us to him who was "first in war,firstin peace, first in the heartsof his countrymen"-and as such, we shouldprotectand honorher, and not suffer her to be kept for a show, like a wildbeast, to fill the coffers of mercenarymen.In contrast to Cole, the penny press's editors either scrutinizedJoiceHeth's freakish body for scientific significance or celebrated it ingrotesquerevelry,while the six-pennypress sneeredat it as a sign offilth bubblingup on the cultural andscape.However,Cole saw in thedisplay not so much Heth's freakishnessas the mythic history thatpassed throughher body like breath.And yet this history seemed tohavelittle to do with Heth herself,as its mainfunctionwas to "connectus to him"-that is, whiteviewersto theirsymbolic father. Could"us"includenon-whites?)Cole sympathizedwith Hethby looking pastherbody rather than at it; beyond her body, he saw his own race'smythologicalkinshipto Washington,andit was this thathe wantedtoprotect from mercenaries. The mercenaries-Barnum as well as thepennypress's editors-ultimately had theirway.


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Death,Dissection, and CulturalCommodificationA yearbefore Joice Hethdied, the body of GeorgeWashingtonwas

the focus of an interestingdebatein Congress.The Senate and Househad established a joint committee to plan a commemoration or theone-hundredthanniversaryof George Washington'sbirth,and a pro-posal emergedto have his remainsremovedfrom MountVernon andplacedin a tombbelow the centerof the U.S. CapitolRotunda.EdwardEverett,a senatorfrom Massachusetts,spoke mainly for Northernerswhen he proclaimedthat the procession of pallbearerswould be aspectacle "unexampled in the history of the world. . . The sacredremainsare. .. a treasurebeyondall price,butit is a treasureof whichevery part of this blood-cemented Union has a right to claim itsshare."41Blood-cemented partners or no, Southernersresisted thisNortherner'sappeal to the "right" o move the body North;the planfalteredas southerncongressmenlined up to keep the body in MountVernon,where it would emphasizeWashington'ssouthernroots. Cut-ting against the lofty symbolism of unity and spiritualitythat theidealized image of Washington nvoked, his actual corpse exerted adownwarddrag,defacinghis memorywith the petty political interestsof the disputantsand, finally, with its own materiality.If Washington'scorpse was supposedto be free from the materialinterestsof antebellumAmericans,the corpse of his supposednurse,who passed away on 21 February1836, neverhad such a clear status.Instead of the spiritualand mythic values ascribedto Washington'scorpse,Heth'sremainswere investedwith overlappingandsometimesconflicting historical, scientific, commercial, and racial values. Thefirst of these values made it a sanctifiedobject, worthyof respect andprotection; he othersmade it fit for rougherusage by anatomistsandeditors. The clash of these meanings,andthe hay thatthe pennypressmade of them, reveal some unspoken but deeply felt beliefs andfantasiesaboutwhatit meantto be white andto be black,what it meantto own oneself andto be owned.In order to probe the riddles of her identity, the penny papersimmediately began clamoring for an autopsy.The Sun providedthelone half-heartednote of dissent:

We weresomewhatsurprisedhata public dissectionof thiskindshouldhavebeen proposed, and were half inclined to question the propriety of thescientific curiositywhichprompted t. We felt as though the personof poor


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old JoiceHeth,shouldhavebeen sacred romexposureandmutilation,not somuchon account of herextremeold age, andthe public curiositywhich shehadalready gratifiedfor the gain of others,as for the high honor with whichshe was endowed in being the nurseof the immortalWashington.42ConsistentwithHenryCole's objectionto Heth's exhibitin life, theSunprofessedto view her autopsynot as an indignityfor Hethherself,butas a mercenaryassaulton the memoryof Washington.But this protestwas disingenuous,for two days earlier, he samepaperhadencouragedthe autopsy on the groundsthat "the anatomyof very aged persons,affordsone of the most curiousandinstructivestudiesin the science,"and afterthe autopsytook place, the Sun never saw fit to impugnitspropriety.43 s opposedto the historicalvalue thatwas presumed o beembedded in Heth's body when she was alive, the Sun saw that heranatomical tatuswas notonly "curiousandinstructive," ut potentiallyprofitableas well, inasmuchas it touchedon issues of race.As planned,Heth's autopsy was an early instance of the imperious gaze ofanatomists,whichmadetheracializedbody a crossroadsof science andpopularculture. A precedentwas set in 1815 with the death of SartjeBaartman the "HottentotVenus"),a native South African woman ofthe Santribewhose steatopygia-an excess of fattytissue thatgaveherabnormallyprominentbuttocks-had made her an object of intensepopularandscientificinterestas she hadbeen exhibitedacrossEurope.When she died, the prominent French zoologist Georges Cuivierdissectedherandpresented o the scientificcommunitya writtenreportandher actual,excised genitals in a jar thatstill remains on a shelf inthe Musdede l'Homme in Paris.44The scrutiny of racial "types" hatbegan with human curiosities like Baartmanand Heth would becomemore thoroughgoing in the researches of the American School ofanatomy, which dominated the field in the 1850s. Led by SamuelGeorge Morton and Louis Agassiz, the American School sought toprovetheAfricanrace's physiological uniquenessandmentalinferior-ity throughsuch means as measuringthe cranial capacity and otherphysical features of large numbersof racially typed specimens.45Aswith the storyof SartjeBaartmann Europe,popularcultureandracialscience in the U.S. existed in a state of symbiosis. The popularpresscommented extensively on the "findings"of these scientists; popularexhibitors (led by Barnum)often called on scientists to authenticatetheirexhibits;andthe exhibitsthemselvesoften led to further cientificresearch.


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The Sun's rationale for dissecting Heth was thus justified byscientific inquiries into racial difference (as was the autopsy ofBaartman). t was also of a piece with wider culturalattitudes owardanatomists'work andtowardthe dead body.Ann Douglas has writtenthat the corpse was imagined in the antebellumperiod as a spiritualobject,abodythathadfoundheavenlyreposeaftera life of competitionand ambition.46But it is necessaryto restrictthis meaningto respect-able white corpses, for those of blacks, the poor,and criminalsusuallymet a different ate.Extending he stigmathesebodiesborein life, theycontinued to be subjected to indignities in death-among them theanatomist'sknife.

Autopsies were a crucialforumfor medical research,but they werealso a socially contested enterprise, charged with the conflictingmeanings of science, religion, race, propriety,and commodification.Obvious as it sounds,white people's legal advantagesover other racestechnically ended at death. The bodies of living white people in theantebellumperiod were a kind of quasi-property,which could not besold or even given as a bequest. But at the moment of death, whitebodies becamein theeyes of the law-as HenryCole wroteaboutJoiceHeth-"the common property of our country."47Body-snatching was inmost statesa misdemeanoroffense,butthepossessionof stolencorpseswas no crime at all-anatomists, surgeons, and medical studentsdepended on the often-illicit traffic in corpses for theirlivelihood andthe furtheranceof knowledge. In a purely legal sense, death erasedsocial difference by converting all bodies into raw materialsfor thepotential researches of the scientific community. This stripping ofprivilegemarkednot only a limit to the advantagesof whiteness,butitwas in oppositionto the exaltationof the corpsein the famouslydeath-obsessed antebellumculture.As a result, sentiment againstanatomistsand acts of "burking"grave-robbing or profit)ran high, and acts ofvigilantejustice againstmedicalschools that trafficked n corpseswerefrequentthroughout he first half of the nineteenthcentury.The racialpolitics of this "mob rule" were consistent with those of the greatdoctors'riotof NewYork n 1788. One later writerdescribed heeventsthatled to the disturbances:

Usually the [medical]studentshad contentedthemselves with rippingopenthe gravesof strangersandnegroes,aboutwhom therewas little feeling; butthis winter they dug up respectablepeople, even young women, of whomthey made an indecentexposure."48


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The ensuing riots and others like them in the early national periodhelped antebellum doctors and anatomists understand that their reputa-tions and even security depended on producing an illusion of socialdistinctions between corpses that reproduced those between livingbodies. Paupers, criminals, and blacks were most prone to be cut open,and, as Todd Savitt has shown, slaves provided the best material formorbid anatomy. Not only were their surviving kin powerless to raisetrouble about the commodification of their corpses, but their bodies hadbeen commodities to begin with.49 The protection of white corpsesfrom desecration and commodification inscribed one of the dominantsocial meanings of race onto the dead. As Priscilla Wald and CherylHarris have shown, the maintenance of racial distinction hinged onconceptions of property rights: whites were the only group that had aninalienable right to own property, including most importantly a Lockeanproperty in the self. Blacks were at the other extreme, since they notonly possessed no such right, but could be bought and sold ascommodities.50 Within the racial hierarchy of antebellum possessiveindividualism, white corpses had an uncanny status. They were clearlythe same objects as the once-living bodies that had occupied a positionof privilege and had been exempt from commodification, but they werenow stripped of this legal protection. The popular outcry against theabuse of white corpses reveals a collective fantasy about the metaphys-ics of racial demarcation: that whites would own themselves inperpetuity, even after death.As Barnum and the penny press' editors saw, the cluster of socialmeanings adhering to Heth's corpse made it an object of considerablevalue. Its connection to Washington made it a curiosity in its own right;and it was prized material for scientists because of its rarity (theremains of medical curiosities usually generated top dollar in themarket for corpses51) and because of its significance in the loadeddebates about race, biology, and region. In addition, Heth's blacknessexempted those responsible for her autopsy from the clamor againsthuman dissection and turned them into actors in a scene of whitedomination. Finally, popular interest in racial science translated herscientific value into commercial value.

Soon after Heth died, Barnum contacted Dr. David L. Rogers, arespected New York surgeon who had expressed a desire to perform anautopsy on her when she expired. Barnum took Rogers up on his offer,rented the City Saloon in New York, converted its exhibition room into


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a makeshift operating theater, and opened the doors to the public.Despite the steepfifty-centadmissionprice, fifteen-hundredpectatorsshowed up, netting a large profit for Barnum. The spectacle alsoprovided a windfall for the commercial press. The Sun was first onboard,reporting he spectacleof herdismembermentn clinical detail:

On dissecting the heart [Dr. Rogers] found the cardinary coronary]arterynot at all ossified, norwere the valves in general;andit was only at the archof the aorta... thateven the slightestdegree of ossificationwas present.Onexamining the lungshe foundvery extensive adhesionsto the left side.. . and also manytubercles n the lobe, which he presumed o have been thecause of death. On opening the head he found the brainhealthy, and thesuturesof the skullnotonly quitedistinct,but easily separablewiththehand:phenomena,neverbefore observedin very old subjects.52

On the strengthof these findings, Rogers pronounced hatHeth couldhavebeen no morethan eighty yearsold andthatthe whole exhibithadthereforebeen a hoax.But was the corpse even hers? The uncannyaspects of corpses thatmade them such curious objects in antebellumculturewere multipliedin Joice Heth'scase by a kindof extendedculturalandcommercialplaythat set in afterthe autopsy.Twodays afterthe dissection,BarnumandLymanpaida visit to JamesGordonBennett, thenotoriouseditorof theNew YorkHerald (theSun'smaincompetitoramongthepennydailies),and convinced him that Heth was still alive and well and living inConnecticut.The body on the table, they explained,was actually that"of a respectable old negress called AUNT NELLY,who has livedmanyyears in a smallhouse by herself, in Harlaem."53he Aunt Nellytheory,published n theHeraldthe next day, igniteda journalistic ree-for-all,with the Sun,the Herald,andseveral fledglingpennypapersallclaiming to have the truestory. ThoughBennett bought the claim thatHeth was still alive,he persisted n callinghera humbug; heSunclungto its original story based on the autopsy; the Transcriptran a longpiece by another urgeonwho hadbeenpresent,whichrebuttedRogers'findings on scientific grounds(the absence of signs of aging in Hethwas takenas evidence thatthe aging process developeddifferently nherthan in othersubjects);andthe SundayMorningNews thoughtthatnothingwas yet certain.Hopingto havethe last word,the Sunreportedthat Barnum and Lyman confessed to their imposture and werepreparing o take Heth's ashes with them on a tour or Europe,where,accompaniedby "anold male negro who is to rejoice in the name of


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Joice's husband,and to swear he is 180 years old,"they would begintheirhumbug over again.Predictably, he other papersdenounced thisstory as yet anotherof Barnumand Lyman'shoaxes, with the Sun'seditor as the dupe; each paperchargedthe others with fraud,idiocy,perversity,andcharlatanism.54The multiplicityof responsesto the autopsyobscures the fact thatafundamental eduction n the scope of interpretationwas takingplace.EarliernewspaperaccountshadaddressedHeth'sspirituality,herplacein history, and the proprietyof her display, but here the focus wasexclusively on her authenticity,which was reducedto a set of materialfacts:whetherthe body on the tablewas even her; if it was, whether tpossessed the scientific or historicalvalue ascribedto it, andhow onecould know. Amidst the smoke screens and deceptions thrownup byBarnumandthe editors, the task hadbecome to divine Heth's essencerather than to interprether narrativeor place her within a largernarrativeof history.This task of divinationwas not explicitly aboutrace, butthe structureof the event was conditionedby wider scientificand popular inquiries into racial essence. Michael O'Malley hascharted he rise of racial essentialismin the nineteenthcentury againstthe backdropof rapidurbanizationand free-market iberalism.As theeconomy dilated and as social roles for whites grew more variedandunstable,essentialized notions of race served as ballast for anxietiesabout the shifting grounds of identity, status, and authenticity.55nattempting o fix Heth'sidentity, he new massmediaappealed o whitereaderswho looked both to racial science and to popularcultureforsigns of theirown mastery n a time of social andeconomic instability.

ExposureandMasteryIn attempting o "expose" he Hethfraud,the editorsfounda way topush productwhile playfully addressingtheirreaders'anxieties aboutthe deceptions latent in capitalist culture-a theme the commercialpress was in a uniqueposition to address.As KarenHalttunenhas putit, "theproliferationof moveablewealth,especiallynegotiablepaper, nthe earlynineteenthcentury,andthe growingconfusion and anonymityof urban iving, had made possible for the first time a wide variety ofswindles, frauds, forgeries, counterfeiting activities, and other confi-dence games."56The series of exposs-and exposes of exposes-thatfollowed Heth's autopsy offerednumerousvariationson this theme of


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counterfeiture,providing an arrayof deceptions for readersto workthrough,always promisinga final resolution,but always holding out.The epistemological process of readingthe unfolding story-peelingoff the layers of hoax to arrive at "the truth"-provided symboliccompensation orthe strugglesof manyof thepennypapers'readers.Incontrast o the increasing llegibility of the social world,in the genreofthe expose (whichwas a favoriteof thepenny papersandwhich was tobecome perhaps the most popular genre of literaturein the mid-nineteenthcentury), the darkest secrets could always be penetrated,mastered,andpossessed, if only in the culturalrealm.57Seven months afterBarnumandLymandupedBennettwiththeAuntNelly theory, Lyman grantedthe Herald an exclusive interview, inwhich he promised finally to deliver the real story behind Heth'sexhibit. What followed was "the Joice Heth Hoax," a month-longserializedaccount of the entireepisode. This expose to end all exposeswas itself an example of the thing it purported o expose, for in itLyman-who seven months earlierhad convinced Bennett that Hethwas still alive-duped Bennettonce again. The reportingof the hoaxserved as a half-jokingversion of theHerald'smanyserializedexpos6sof notorious frauds, swindlers, and "stock-jobbers."From the firstinstallment, t cast the self-makingnorthernconfidence man or swin-dler as an emblem of Yankee ingenuity, ratherthan of threateninginauthenticity.An unnamed"gentleman romNew England" presum-ably Barnum) visits a Kentucky plantation and is struck by theappearanceof an extraordinarily ld-looking slave woman. Thinking"hardand steady," he New Englanderformulatesa plan to turnthisdecayingmatter ntoprofitby exhibitingheras a curiosity;he offerstheKentuckianowner"an nterest n the speculation,"which the Kentuck-ian accepts.The storygoes on to detail theNew Englander's uccessivemoney-makingschemeswith his new bogus commodity,who calls him"massa."Firsthe dreamsup the GeorgeWashingtonstory and drills itinto his subject; hen,when she begins to objectto performing or him,he contrivesto addictherto whiskey,so thathe canhavesome leveragein compellingherto act;he also pulls out all her teethin order o makeher look older (using liberaldoses of whiskey to drownhercursesandprotests). In this way, the northernmaster becomes an even moreshrewdexploiterof the slave'sbody than his southerncounterpart-heis the trueexemplarof the masterrace, for he can compel blackbodiesto work to the point of death, and beyond. This is because he


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P.T. BARNUM,JOICEHETHAND ANTEBELLUMSPECTACLESOF RACE 97

understands hat laboris not the only basis of value, thatthe northerneconomies of "speculation"andentertainmentprovidenovel opportu-nities to invest in the rawmaterials,even the waste, of the South. JoiceHeth becomes, in his hands,not just a commodity,but an example ofcapitalist alchemy: value produced out of nothing-an ingeniouscounterfeitbill.The serialized "Joice Heth Hoax" cuts off abruptly after seveninstallments-well before the spectacularautopsy is narrated-whenBennett apparentlyrealized that Lyman was pulling his leg again.(Barnumhad of course not "discovered"Heth on a Kentuckyplanta-tion, nor had he invented her story; as he later admitted, she wasexhibitedfirstby R. W.Lindsay.)But in castingthe Barnum-figure s aculturalhero for the same sorts of manipulationsof value and confi-dence that the penny press elsewhere denounced so thoroughly,theHerald voiced its ambivalentrelationto capitalistculture.As the firstpurelycommercial ournalisticenterprise, he pennypress was itself animportantpartof the capitalistexpansionwhose excesses it exposed.Inkeeping with this ambivalence,the penny press portrayedBarnumasthatliminalfigurewho was symbolicof boththe dangersandpossibili-ties of capitalist culture:the confidence man. The essence of socialmobility,theconfidencemanwas in early masscultureeithervilified asan impostor or lionized as an emblem of self-making. Neither role,however, was to be affordedAfrican Americans:in the overlappingrealms of science, law, and popularculture,their natureand identitywere generally seen to be "fixed"-their supposedly inferior statusrendered hemincapableof the self-makingthatwhites both fearedandaspiredto. As Saidiya Hartmanhas argued,one of the purposes ofexhibitionsof AfricanAmericans n popularentertainments othin theSouth and the North was to demonstrate "the possession of thecaptive'sbody by the owner'sintentions.""58n the same storythatcastBarnumas the ultimate confidence man, Heth herself was made toseem a blank slate whom the white man animatedwith his schemes.Her role in the deception was displacedentirely onto the will of thisstrangenorthern"master."This displacementbecame more severe but also more anxious in aseries of mock-confessional texts writtenby Barnumhimself over thefollowing decades. As Bluford Adams has related the story, shortlyafterBarnum'striumphwith Heth came the financial panic of 1837,and Barnumfound himself "atthe bottomroundof fortune'sladder."


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He workedforseveralyearswith smallcircusesandvarietyacts touringthe U.S. and Canada,then found himself selling blacking,waterproofpaste, cologne, and bear's grease back in the Bowery of New York.Finally,he got a job writingarticlesfor a new commercialpaper, theAtlas, and used the opportunity to reclaim the spotlight. It is notsurprising,as Adamsnotes, thathe used the opportunity o resuscitatehis greathumbugof five yearsearlier.59n a serializednovellaormock-autobiographycalled Adventuresof an AdventurerBeing Some Pas-sages in the Life of Barnaby Diddleum, Barnumtrumpetedhis own(lightly fictionalized) rise in an aggressive, vernacularvoice that wasthe hallmarkof the JacksonianYankee, a shrewd aspiring merchantwho uses his wiles to achieve upwardmobility.60 n this text he retoldthe expose of "TheJoice Heth Hoax" from a particularly gomaniacalperspective:"Crownme withfame-erect amonument o my memory-decree me a romantriumph-I deserve all-I standalone-I have noequal, no rival-I am the king of Humbugs-the king amongprinces,"begins the first chapter on his involvement with Heth.61Here thediscoveryof Hethin Kentucky s given a menacingnew spin. BarnabyDiddleum (for "diddle'um")has heardof the "remarkably ld negrowoman"who "wasswindlingmy friendby herdisgustingpertinacity ocling to life at his expense,"andhe goes to visit masterand slave:

"You wantto get rid of aunt Joice?"said I."I do.""I'll do it. Whatwill you give me?""Oh!"he said laughingly,"shemust die a naturaldeath."Tobe sure,"saidI, "andbe as well or bettertakencare of thannow. I havea crochetin my headby whichI mayprobablymakesomethingout of her. Atall events, I'll take her off your hands if you give me something hand-some."62

The Kentuckian eadilyassents,agreeingto pay Diddleumhalf of whatAuntJoice would cost him if she were to languishanotheryear on hisplantation.This jovial linking of Diddleum's plan for profit to themurderof Joice Hethreveals an aggressionand a will for power overhis touringcompanion hatcontinuesthroughouthetext. "Adventures"repeats scenes from the "JoiceHeth Hoax" in which the new masterdreamsup theWashington tory,yanksout herteeth,anduses whiskeyas a means of control-all now told from the firstperson.I soon got Joyce [sic] into training, and from a devil of a termagant,converted ntoa most docile creature,as willing to do my biddingas the slave


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PT. BARNUM,JOICEHETHAND ANTEBELLUMSPECTACLESOF RACE 99

of the lamp was to obey Aladdin. I discovered her weak point. ...WHISKEY. Her old master, of course, would indulge an old bed-riddencreature n no such luxury,andfor a dropof it, I foundI could mouldher toanything.Writtentwo decades afterthe final abolitionof slaves in the North,the story's emphasis on Diddleum's absolute possession of hisperformer's will reads like a Yankee wish-fulfillment-Diddleumachieves his northernglory by appropriating nd reworkingmaterials(both human propertyand narrative) rom southern slavery.But thestory also betrays a hint of unease about the tractabilityof slaves;Diddleum'sinsistence on the absoluteemptinessof Heth is in tension

with her continuedbackstageswearingandher occasional complicityin the scheme (at one point, Diddleumrefers to her as "a very goodactor"). n a text similarto "Adventures f anAdventurer" alled "TheAutobiographyof Petite Bunkum,"published in pamphlet form in1855, the whiskey thatcements her dependence comes back to hauntthe master. 3 "Infact,"Barnum(or "Bunkum")writes, "theold ladyoccasionallyused to get drunk;andin one instanceshe bestoweduponme the complimentof a black eye, by a blow of her crutch, because Irefusedto 'come down'with anotherhalf pint."The storyof Joice Heth(referred o as "JudyHeath")drunkenlybraining"Bunkum"with hercrutchservesas a mock uprising,one thataccordswiththedynamicsofthe story as a whole. Earlier in the same text, Bunkum overhearsaconversationbetweenHeath andherowner, eadingupto theirarrange-ment for this humanproperty o tourwith the would-be showman:

"How areyou today, aunty?" nquiredMr. Shelby, kindly."Bless de Lord, massa," mumbledthe old woman-"I is alive. When ismassagoin' to let de poorole niggergo to de free States,so dat she may dieand go to glory a free woman?""Well,well; we'll see about t soon,"answeredMr. Shelby,carelessly;andthen, turningto me, he continued,in a low tone-"Thepoor creaturehas takena strange ancy to die in the free States.Sheappears o believe thatif she dies a slave, she can not go to heaven. I wouldinstantly set her free and send her North, were it not on account of thecertaintyof her coming to sufferingandwant."64

Playing to the kindly affections of this "good master,"Bunkum, aYankee,offers to take the slave woman off his hands and fulfill herdreamsof dying in a free state. in the story that follows, though,herdreamis endlessly deferred; heirlife on the roadbecomes a battleof


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wills, in which the northernmaster always has the upperhand andalways pockets the money. When she dies, writes Bunkum, "I shedtears upon her humble grave not of sorrow for her decease-but ofregreton accountof my havinglost a valuableandprofitableproperty."Exposing Heth's sham story of connection to Washingtonhad beenfor the penny papers an exercise in unravelingBarnum'smind, butHeth's own role in the imposturewas left unexamined.So, too, theselatertexts made her a blankslate, butnot without some trouble:she isshown struggling,resisting,even lashingout in violence, andshe mustbe broken,taughtto voice her master'swill. Negating the urgencyofthis comic resistance s the fact thatshe is impelled not by an ongoingsecretdesire for freedom,butby her enslavementto a strongermasterthanBunkum-whiskey.The troubling notion of a slave's resistance to white control thatthese texts laughed off was a recurrentpreoccupation or the pennypapersandin muchantebellumpopularculture n theNorth.Duringthe1830s, in the wake of the Nat Turnerrebellion,newspapersacross theNorth were fascinated with slave uprisings and conspiracies. Pennypressreaders' nsatiableappetite or even rumorsof suchdistanteventsreflects the ambiguousmixtureof envy and anxiety that, accordingtoEric Lott, also characterized he appeal of blackface minstrelsy.Lottshows that for working-class whites, the black insubordinationondisplay on theminstrelstagecouldbe readmetaphorically-the idea ofslave's transgressionwas often made to articulate he resentmentsof"classdifference, ntentionallyor not, by calling on the insurrectionaryresonances of black culture."65Mirroringthe relation of minstrelaudienceto performers, he scene of white workersconsumingimagesof black rebels during the volatile labor situationof the 1830s and1840s in New Yorkhas more than a whiff of "insurrectionaryeso-nance."And just as the comfortingfilter of grease and cork allowedminstrelsy's audiences to dismiss the transgressivebehavior of theminstrel-blacksas anevening'santicfun, the editors of thepennypressexposed slave uprisings, the supremeevidence of slaves' calculatedfury,only to revealthem as hollow.TheHerald-and to a lesser degree,the Sun-pulled off an extraordinaryrickby reportingslave uprisingsin a manner that completely undercut the motive and intelligencebehindthem, and they displacedthatintelligence andmotive onto thefigureof ingeniousif dastardlywhite men. In the seven months'runofthe Herald and the Sun duringthe time when Joice Heth's story was


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reported,hereare fourreportsof uprisings.Oneof them, n Farmington,Tennessee, turnedout to have been instigatedby "some white man,who refusedto tell [therebel slaves] his name"; he otherthree,readerswould be relieved andintrigued o learn, were not uprisingsat all, butwere elaboratehoaxes. 66 One of these involved a southernspeculatorwho wantedto createpanic in the marketsso thathe could profitfromthe ruins.67In these reports, the papers performedthe disciplinaryfunctionof exposingthe fraud-and even morecomfortingly,revealingthatthe transgressionwas not instigatedby those who hadthe higheststakein upsettingthe social order.As Michael Rogin has written, "thewish for basic trust that obliterates the autonomyof the otherbringswith it anxietyover vengeance."68f the pennypressopenly addressed(and profited from) readers' nervousnessabout the manipulationsofuntrustworthy apitalistspeculatorsabovethem,theyassured hemthatblacks,at least, werenot autonomouslycapableof plottingfrombelow.The goal of the various exposures of the Heth hoax was not todiscern how she had come to gull thousandsof white viewers andreaders,but who was behindher; and it was comfortingto find thatitwas aYankee,one whose own story of upwardmobilitywhite northernworking-classreaders could identify with. During Heth's exhibition,many of her visitors had delighted in her animation, her quickresponses to questions, and her improvisedresponses as well as herwell-rehearsedroutine;but in her mass-cultural afterlife, she was adrunken, wearing negrowho spokenothingbuthermaster'swordsonstage, and whose attempts at resistance were laughable. In recycledlegendsof the Heth story,Barnumwas both a capitalistconfidencemananda breakerof slaves, a trader n bogus commoditiesandan emblemof white mastery.

ConclusionandPostscript:The DarkSubjectAs the Joice Heth episode progressedfrom itinerantroad show tourbanspectacle,fromwondrousdisplayof humancuriosity to medicalspecimen, from historicalrelic to fraudulentcommodity, it traversedmany of the geographicaland conceptual spaces of the modernizingantebellum North. Her living display had been given a range ofreadings contingent on the regional and ideological interests of hervisitors. Her autopsy, in contrast, shows mass media and scienceconvergingon the black body in searchof a fixed text in a fluxional


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world: if Barnum'sdeceptions-like the text of modem life-werehard to read,Heth'sbody was not. In this sense the autopsyanticipatesthe work of racialanatomists, ike one Dr. Caldwell,whose "personalexamination of dissection of the entire negro anatomy," ed him toconclude that it is easier to "distinguishan Africanfrom a Circassianskeleton"thana thatof a dog from a hyena, a tiger from a panther,ora horse from an ox.69 This type of work established racial difference asa zone of distinct legibility and fixed boundaries; his essential fixity,when reported n the popularpress, was a dialecticalcounterweight othe popular ascinationwithhoaxes, confidencegames,and conspiracytheoriesthatgrew out of modernanxietiesof authenticity, tatus, trust,and recognition. The autopsy can also help us perceive the linksbetween nascent racial essentialism and the grotesquepopularessen-tialism of the freak show and minstrelsy,which were beginning toemerge as dominant mass cultural representationsof blacks in themodernizing,urbanizing North. Scientific ideas about the biologicalnature of racial difference provided a conceptual framework forpopular images of degraded, deformed, and otherwise humiliatedblacks on stage. As these links suggest, the shifting and sometimesconflicting meanings found in the Heth display, the autopsy,and thevarious exposures do not simply constitute a paratacticsequence ofsometimescontradictorynterpretations.Rather, hey illustrate hatherexhibit was a profoundlyoverdeterminedevent whose majorthemescontinuedto fascinatescientistsandpurveyorsof mass culturethroughthe mid-nineteenth entury,andwhose minorones appearnow as roadsnot taken.Barnum himself circled back in his writings to the Heth exhibitseveral more times throughouta long and varied career.In his 1855autobiography, e finally gave awaythe secretthathe hadnot dreamedup the Heth act, but had seen Lindsay'sexhibit of her in Philadelphiaand decided to purchase her and continue the tour himself. "Thequestionnaturallyarises,"he wrote,

if Joice Heth was an impostor, who taught her these things? and howhappened t thatshe was so familiar,notonly withancientpsalmody,butalsowiththe minutedetailsof theWashington amily?To all this,I unhesitatinglyanswer,I do not know.I taught her none of these things. She was perfectlyfamiliarwith themall beforeI ever saw her,andshe taughtme many facts inrelation to the Washington amily with which I was not beforeacquainted.70


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In what was to prove the penultimate "final"exposure of the Heth story,Barnum reversed course by suggesting that he was not Heth's absolutemaster-that he had in fact been gulled by Heth as much as any visitorhad been. Despite this disarming admission, Barnum took pains toshow that he had still been firmly in control of the exhibit, dreaming upever more complex schemes of deception-such as passing her off asan automaton and averting abolitionist protests of the exhibit byclaiming that proceeds of the exhibit went toward freeing slaves-thatculminated in the autopsy itself. But in the next edition of hisautobiography, in 1869, he retold the story with something like shame.Barnum had by this time remade himself from a Jacksonian Democratinto a Republican politician; in 1867, he ran an unsuccessful campaignfor Congress, and he went on to become Mayor of Bridgeport in 1875.Ever the opportunist, he enthusiastically endorsed the Republicanplatform, including the granting of franchise for the newly freed slaves,and he now cast himself as a defender of African American freedoms.In looking back on his own potentially embarrassing career as anorthern slaveowner, he wrote that the Joice Heth exhibit was "the leastdeserving of my efforts in the show line... a scheme in no sense of myown devising." And as to the identity of Heth, he claimed to be asignorant as anyone else. All he could say about the results of theautopsy, whose mystification he had spent months producing, was that"the doctors disagreed, and this 'dark subject' will probably always beshrouded in mystery." As for the dark subject's story, he wrote, "Ihonestly believed it to be genuine; something, too, which... I did notseek, but which by accident came in my way and seemed to compel myagency."71This turnabout owes much to the rhetorical demands of thesituation Barnum found himself in, but his denial exceeds thosedemands. Not only was his role in the exhibit an "accident," but "it"-or Joice Heth herself-"seemed almost to compel my agency." Entre-preneurs of culture in the antebellum North had borrowed images fromthe slave-owning South to construct fantasies of northern white mas-tery, in which the slave's body was subjected to the modern disciplinesof scientific and mass-cultural scrutiny. In the process, the slave's mindhad been repressed; but now it returned, after the war, to haunt thenorthern master.


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NOTES1. Chief sourcesfor the BarnumandHethstoryare P. T. Barnum,TheLife of P. T.Barnum, Writtenby Himself (London, 1855), 81-103; Barnum,Struggles and Tri-umphs, or, Forty Years'Recollections of P. T. Barnum,ed. Carl Bode (New York,1981), 79-88; Neil Harris,Humbug:TheArtof P. T.Barnum(Chicago 1973), 20-26;A. H. Saxon, P. T.Barnum:TheLegendand the Man (New York, 1989), 67-85; andBluford Adams, E Pluribus Barnum: The Great Showmanand the Making of U.S.Popular Culture(Minneapolis,Minn., 1997), esp. 2-10. I thankthe authorof this lastwork for making proofs of his book available to me before publication,and for hishelpful suggestionson this manuscript.2. My framing of these questions has been influenced by Karen Halttunen,ConfidenceMen and Painted Women:A Study of Middle Class Culturein America

(New Haven, Conn., 1982); and John Kasson, Rudeness and Civility: Manners inNineteenth-Century merica(New York:,1990). A studythatplaces thepennypressinthis cultureof confidenceis Andie Tucher,Frothand Scum(ChapelHill, N.C., 1994).For a discussion of Barnum's career in relation to issues of urbanizationandtechnological advances, see Neil Harris' classic, "The OperationalAesthetic," inHumbug, 59-90.3. See Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modem England (1978 Hants,England, 1988); and Richardson Wright, Hawkers & Walkers in Early America:Strolling Peddlers, Preachers, Lawyers, Doctors, Players, and Others, from theBeginning to the Civil War(Philadelphia,1927).4. On Lindsay,see Barnum,Life, 84-86. Evidenceof Lindsay andHeth's Southerntouris in "Rathera Tough Story,"AlexandriaGazette, 17 Jan. 1835; and "161 YearsOld,"Boston Evening Transcript,6 July 1835.5. "Longevity,"New YorkBaptist,repr. n Springfield MA)Gazette,16 Sept. 1835.6. Barnum,Life, 100; "AtLast!"New YorkEveningStar, 23 Feb. 1836.7. Forreportsof Afong Moy, the Chinesewomanwithboundfeet, see "TheChineseLady,"New YorkTranscript, une 26, 1835;BostonEvening Transcript,31 July 1835;Republican Herald [Providence, RI], 2 Sept. 1835. On the Virginia dwarves, see"Amusements,"New YorkEvening Star, 29 Oct. 1835. On the Siamese twins, seeBoston MorningPost, 18 Aug. 1835.8. New YorkSun, 21 Aug. 1835.9. See RobertBogdan,FreakShow:PresentingHumanOddities or Amusement ndProfit (Chicago, 1988). Bogdan, the pioneeringhistorianof the freak show, uses thedateof 1840 to mark hebeginningof the "goldenage"of the freakshow becausepriorto that date freakswere not exhibited in such extravaganzasas circuses or carnivals;just as significantly, Barnumhad not yet opened his AmericanMuseum,in which theexhibit of freaks became a central component of an importantmass-culturalurbaninstitution(p. 10). In this sense, the Heth tourwas still very much a partof the earlymodernor pre-massculturaltraffic in humanoddities, as she traveledfrom town totown as an isolatedexhibit.10. I am drawingprimarilyon AlexanderSaxton, "TheJacksonianPress,"in TheRise and Fall of the WhiteRepublic:Class Politics and Mass Culturein Nineteenth-CenturyAmerica(Londonand New York, 1990), 95-108. See also MichaelSchudson,Discovering the News: A Social Historyof AmericanNewspapers(New York, 1978);andAndie Tucher,Froth and Scum: Truth,Beauty, Goodness,and the Ax Murder inAmerica's First Mass Medium(ChapelHill, N.C., 1994).


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11. "JoiceHeth,"New YorkEveningStar, 22 Aug. 1835; "EyeballsWearingOut,"New YorkTranscript,24 Aug. 1835.12. "JoiceHeth, Aged 161," TheFamily Magazine, or, GeneralAbstractof UsefulKnowledge,vol. 3 (1835), 155-156.13. See PeterBenes, "ItinerantEntertainersn New EnglandandNew York, 1687-1830," in Itinerancyin New England and New York:The Dublin Seminar or NewEnglandFolklifeAnnualProceedings, 1984 (Boston, 1984), 112-130.14. BostonAtlas, 16 Sept. 1835.15. "JoiceHeth,"Boston Courier,8 Sept. 1835.16. "Joice Heth,"HartfordTimes, 17 Oct. 1835.17. TheLife of Joice Heth, TheNurse of George Washington New York, 1835), 5.Copies of this raretext are held in the libraryof the New-YorkHistoricalSociety andthe AmericanAntiquarianSociety.18. My discussion of the grotesquebody's role in debates aboutculturalproprietyhas been influencedby PeterStallybrassandAllon White, ThePolitics and Poetics ofTransgression Ithaca,NY, 1986).19. New YorkHerald, 12 Aug. 1835.20. See MichaelWarner,"TheMassPublicandtheMassSubject," nHabermasandthe Public Sphere,ed. CraigCalhoun(Cambridge,Mass., 1992), 382.21. Saxton, TheRise and Fall of the WhiteRepublic,70, 103.22. SeanWilentz, ChantsDemocratic: New YorkCityand theRise of theAmericanWorkingClass, 1780-1850 (New York, 1984), 29.23. Saxton, TheRise and Fall of the WhiteRepublic, 105.24. See MichaelMitchell,Monstersof the GildedAge: The Photographsof CharlesEisenmann(Toronto,1979).25. See James W. Cook, Jr., "Of Men, Missing Links, and Nondescripts:TheStrangeCareerof P. T. Barnum's 'What Is It?' Exhibition," n RosemarieGarlandThomson,Freakery:CulturalSpectaclesof theExtraordinaryBody(New York, 1996),139-157.26. See Rosemarie GarlandThomson, "Introduction:From Wonder to Error," nFreakery,1-19; andThomson,"TheCulturalWork of AmericanFreakShows, 1835-1940," in ExtraordinaryBodies: Figuring Physical Disability in AmericanLiteratureand Culture (New York, 1997), 55-80.27. See Bogdan, Freak Show, andTodd L. Savitt, "Blacksas Medical Specimens,"in Medicine and Slavery: The Diseases and Health Care of Blacks in AntebellumVirginia (Urbana,Chicago, Ill., 1978), 281-307.28. "JoiceHeth,"New YorkHerald, 2 Dec. 1835.29. Quoted in Savitt,Medicineand Slavery,35-41.30. On Knox, see Evelleen Richards,"The 'MoralAnatomy' of RobertKnox:TheInterplaybetween Biological and Social Thoughtin VictorianScientific Naturalism,"Journalof the Historyof Biology 22 (1989): 273-436.31. "Longevity n America amongtheNegroes:ItsCauses,"New YorkEvening Star,repr.Boston Transcript,22 Sept. 1835.32. ProvidenceRepublicanHerald, 30 Aug. 1835.33. New YorkHerald, 25 Nov. 1835.34. "JoiceHeth-Washington Family, &c.," TheAlbion, or British, Colonial, and

Foreign WeeklyGazette, 29 Aug. 1835.35. BarrySchwartz,George Washington:TheMakingof anAmericanSymbol(NewYork, 1987), 194.36. GeorgeB. Forgie,Patricide in the House Divided:A Psychological Interpreta-tion of Lincolnand His Age (New York, 1979), 29.


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37. Quotedin RichardMoody, America Takes the Stage: Romanticism nAmericanDrama and Theatre,1750-1900 (Bloomington,Ind., 1955), 68.38. William L. Andrews, "Inter(racial)textualityn Nineteenth-CenturySouthernLiterature,"n Influenceand Intertextualityn LiteraryHistory, eds. Jay ClaytonandEric Rothstein(Madison,Wis., 1991), 304.39. "A Good 'Un,"ProvidenceDaily Journal, 27 Aug. 1835.40. Henry Cole, "Tothe Editors of the SUN," New YorkSun, 20 Aug. 1835.41. Quoted in Schwartz,George Washington,2.42. "Dissectionof JoiceHeth.-Precious HumbugExposed,"New YorkSun,26 Feb.1836.43. "Deathof Joice Heth,"New YorkSun, 24 Feb. 1836.44. Thomson,ExtraordinaryBodies, 71, 76.45. Quotedin StephenJ. Gould,TheMismeasureof Man (New York, 1981), 51-54.46. Ann Douglas, TheFeminizationof AmericanCulture(1977; New York, 1988),200-226.47. The paradox is that because (white) human beings were valued more thananimals, in deaththey were grantedfewer legal distinctions.Althoughgrave-robbingwas illegal, it was not a crime to keep a stolenhumancorpse,because to classify suchpossessionas crime wouldbe to classify thedeadhumanbodyas a typeof property hatcould be exchangedby contractor mutualconsent:a potentialcommodity.Possessionof a stolen dead cow or pig, on the otherhand, was considereda seriouscrime in theAnglo-Americancommon law tradition.See Ruth Richardson,Death, Dissection andtheDestitute (London,1987). For the Americancontext of nineteenth-centurymorbidanatomy, see Gary Laderman, The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes TowardDeath, 1799 -1883 (New Haven, Conn., 1996), 73-85.

48. J. T. Headley,TheGreatRiotsofNew York,1712 to 1873 (New York, 1873), 57.49. Savitt, "Blacksas MedicalSpecimens,"281-282, 290-293.50. Cheryl Harris,"Whitenessas Property,"HarvardLaw Review, 1106 (1993):1709-1791; Priscilla Wald, "Termsof Assimilation:Legislating Subjectivity in theNew Nation,"in Culturesof UnitedStates Imperialism,ed. Donald Pease and AmyKaplan(Durham,NC, 1993), 59-84. Both Wald and Harrisfocus on the Dred Scottdecision of 1854 as the moment in which this state of affairs was formalized;butclearly thatdecision, which held thatno "personsof Africandescent"could becomecitizens because they held no inalienable right to self-possession, justified a pre-existing racialstratificationas much as it stipulateda new arrangement.51. In Death Dissection and the Destitute,Richardson ells the storyof the case of"The IrishGiant,"a man well over seven feet tall who was exhibitedin Londonanddied in 1783. Despite his explicit arrangements o be buried at sea, his body wasobtainedby the body snatcherJohnHunter,who bribedthe undertaker pproximately500 poundsto remove it fromthe coffin before the funeral(57-58).52. "Dissectionof Joice Heth-Precious HumbugExposed."53. "AnotherHoax,"New YorkHerald, 27 Feb. 1836.54. "AnotherHoax,"New YorkHerald,Feb. 27, 1836;"JoiceHeth,"New YorkSun,27 Feb. 1836;"AnImportantDiscovery,"New YorkEveningStar,27 Feb. 1836;"JoiceHeth,"and"Dissectionof Joice Heth,"New YorkTranscript,27 and28 Feb., 3 March1836; "Joice Heth,"SundayMorningNews, 28 Feb. 1836; "TheJoice Heth Hoax,"New YorkHerald, 29 Feb. 1836; "TheHeth Humbug,"New YorkSun, 1 March1836;"TheJoice HethHoax,"New YorkHerald, 2 March1836;"ImpostureDefended,"NewYorkSun, 2 March1836.


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P.T.BARNUM,OICEHETHANDANTEBELLUMPECTACLESFRACE 10755. Michael O'Malley, "Species and Specie: Race and the Money Question inNineteenth-CenturyAmerica,"AmericanHistoricalReview, 99 (Apr., 1994):369-395.56. KarenHalttunen,ConfidenceMenand PaintedWomen:A Studyof Middle-ClassCulturein America (New Haven, Conn., 1982), 7.57. Forbroaderstudiesof the connectionsbetweenJacksonianpolitics andculturalformsemphasizingepistemologyand authenticity, ee Halttunen,ConfidenceMenandPainted Women,and John Kasson, Rudeness and Civility:Manners in Nineteenth-CenturyAmerica(New York:,1990). A studythatplacesthepennypressin thiscultureof confidenceis Tucher,Frothand Scum.For discussionof Barnum n relation o theseissues, see Neil Harris'sclassic, "TheOperationalAesthetic," n Humbug:The Art ofP. T.Barnum(Boston, 1973), 59-90.58. Saidiya V. Hartman,Scenes of Subjection:Terror,Slavery,and Self-Making nNineteenth-CenturyAmerica (New York, 1997), 39.59. Adams,E PluribusBarnum,8-9.60. On the Jacksonianvernacular,see Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the WhiteRepublic, 117-123. Adams also comments on the Jacksonianpolitics in E PluribusBarnum,2-10.61. "Adventuresof an Adventurer,Being Some Passages in the Life of BarnabyDiddleum,"New YorkAtlas, 11 April 1841.62. "Adventures," 5 April 1841.63. As Michael Denning has noted, pamphletstorieswere one of the cheapest andmost widely distributed formats for antebellumliterature. See Denning, MechanicAccents: Dime Novels and Working-ClassCulture n America, (London, 1987), 11.64. Autobiographyof Petite Bunkum,The YankeeShowman(New York, 1855), 23.The authorship f this strangepamphlet s problematic.Thoughit has the braggadocio

and maliciousness of "Adventuresan Adventurer"-which was clearly written byBarnum-it is also more hastily written,andcould have been simply a parodyof thefirst edition of Barnum'sautobiography,which was publisheda few monthsearlier.The "Editor'sNote"at theend statesthat t is a piece of "gratuitous uff"for the "greatYankeeshowman,"andit couldbe thatBarnumallowedthe publicationof BunkumbyG. F. Harris o compensatefor Redfield's having won the rightsto his autobiography.My own sense is that Barnum and the editor collaborated, for its distortions ofBarnum's autobiographyare too close to Barnum's earlierjournalistic voice to becoincidental.65. EricLott,Love and Theft:BlackfaceMinstrelsyandtheAmericanWorkingClass(New York, 1993), 84.66. "Attempted nsurrection,"New YorkHerald, 2 Sept. 1835.67. "Negro Insurrection n Virginia,"New YorkHerald, 25-26 Nov. 1835; "Ru-mored Negro Insurrectionat the South,"New YorkSun, 25 July 1835; "A VillainousHoax,"New YorkSun, 22 Feb. 1836.68. Michael Rogin, "'The Sword Became a FlashingVision': D.W. Griffith'sTheBirth of a Nation," in TheNew American Studies:Essaysfrom Representations,ed.Philip Fisher (Berkeley,Calif., 1991), 379.69. Quotedin "Onthe Unity of the HumanRace,"SouthernQuarterlyReview, 10,(Oct., 1854): 299.70. Barnum,Life, 89.71. Barnum,Strugglesand Triumphs,80.

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