"Negresses, hooked with white men!"
To some defenders of slavery, the best way to attack the
abolitionists was to argue that their real agenda was, or at any rate the real
effect of their agitation would be, to create a society in which interracial
marriage became the norm. There was little in abolitionist rhetoric to justify
this argument, and the anti-amalgamationists had to ignore all the evidence of
miscegenation under slavery. Nor was the argument received by whites with anything like
the popularity of Dixon's and Griffiths' narratives about rampant black
sexuality early in the 20th century. But this archive would be incomplete
without an example of the way the anti-slavery movement provoked the racist
protests of writers like the anonymous author of this novel. His account of the
horror of racial mingling is full of lines to make modern readers wince, but it
probably spoke for and to a number of readers in its time. How many we can't
tell, though the fact that "Bolokitten" had to pay for the book's publication
himself suggests not many.
A Sojourn in the City of Amalgamation, in the
Year of Our Lord 18--, by "Oliver Bolokitten, Esq." (pseudonym). New York: Published by the
Author, 1835.