Transatlantic Visions and Revisions of Race: Hawthorne, Joseph Jenkins Roberts, and the Editing of Journal of an African Cruiser

Abstract

A strong argument can be made that the Journal of an African Cruiser, by an Officer of the U.S. Navy (1845) should be included in The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, for evidence indicates that his "editing" of the manuscript of his friend Horatio Bridge was a major creative effort. When Hawthorne submitted the edited text to Evert Duyckinck, who published the book as the first volume of Wiley and Putnam's "Library of America Books," he admitted, "My own share of it is so amalgamated with the substance of the work, that I cannot very well define what it is." (1) In one of the few substantial studies of the project, Patrick Brancaccio observes that Hawthorne "served more as a ghostwriter than editor," and points out that "the thematic organization and ironic and morally ambiguous point of view clearly betray Hawthorne's hand" (Brancaccio 33). A comparison of a portion of Bridge's 1843-44 manuscript journal (in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library) with the published book has revealed that Hawthorne ameliorated Bridge's racism, softened his callousness, and made him a more introspective and peace-loving author, much like Hawthorne himself. (2) Hawthorne, however, I have found, was not the only editor of Journal of an African Cruiser. Joseph Jenkins Roberts, the black Governor of Liberia, edited the book as well, at the request of Bridge, who took the published book with him to Africa in 1846, on his third cruise to the region, and asked his friend Roberts to offer corrections and revisions for a second edition, which Roberts did. The bound 1845 book contains Roberts' marginalia in ink on the pages and his commentary in Bridge's hand on pieces of paper of various sizes, tipped onto the printed pages, with quotation marks and Roberts' initials. The expanded and revised second edition of Journal of an African Cruiser was never published (a reprint of the first edition appeared in 1853, with Bridge's name on the title page for the first time); however, the materials Bridge collected exist in Bridge's personal copy of the book and in the 1846 manuscript journal Bridge kept on his voyage (both preserved in the Bowdoin College Library Special Collections). In the front and the back of the 1846 journal, Bridge wrote the following note: "In case of my death I wish this journal and my copy of the 'Journal of an African Cruiser' in which I have made notes, given to my friend Nath. Hawthorne Esq of Salem Mass. For his own use & benefit." (3) Bridge obviously hoped that someday he or Hawthorne could prepare the new volume for publication. Some of the topics Bridge elaborated upon in his new material were the price of slaves, forms of government of the native tribes, native religion, the trial of witchcraft, the racial mixing of Britains and natives on the Gold Coast, the vices of civilization acquired by natives, and the nature of the fever and sickness visited upon outsiders to the region. For the most part, Governor Roberts added little on these topics. What he addressed most frequently and firmly with his comments and corrections were racial issues, specifically the assumptions Bridge and Hawthorne made about the importance of race among whites, black settlers, and West African natives. As I hope to show in this essay, an examination of Roberts' diplomatic critique of the Bridge-Hawthorne book provides a rare opportunity to see a transatlantic social text being created. The process features a self-taught American-African trying to educate two white Bowdoin College graduates living across the Atlantic. I In his 1846 journal, Bridge acknowledged the help of both friends in his ongoing authorship: When I returned from an African cruise and gave my journal and memoranda to a close friend and classmate [Hawthorne] to be edited and published, it was with little expectation of producing, by our joint labors, so successful a volume. From different causes however it proved one of the popular effemerals of the time. …