Journal of An African Cruiser

Overview

Horatio Bridge portrait, glass negative (1860-75). Artist Unknown. Library of Congress.

Welcome to our website examining Horatio Bridge’s Journal of an African Cruiser and the African Squadron’s journey to Africa in 1843-1844. This website is the product of research conducted by Shien Hauh Leu, Jordan Ivie, Amanda Atkinson, and Erica Massey, graduate students at Southern Methodist University. When we first encountered Bridge’s Journal, we recognized that this text would lend itself well to digital investigations for a variety of reasons. First, the text is a first-hand account of a fascinating but somewhat obscure chapter in American history: the colony of Liberia and American interventions in the politics and economy of western Africa. These accounts demonstrate America’s efforts to declare her arrival as a formidable international power, and offer fascinating first-hand evidence of Americans defining their national identity through encounters with other cultures. This website offers information on the historical background for the Journal, including information about Liberia and the history of the African Squadron

Nathaniel Hawthorne, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing slightly left; by T. Phillibrown. Library of Congress

Second, the Journal is an excellent example of what John Bryant has described as a “fluid text.” The manuscript version of the journal, written by Horatio Bridge during his journey to Africa, is a skeletal account of Bridge’s experiences, offering little in the way of reflection, description, or lengthy analysis. But once Bridge turned the journal over to Nathaniel Hawthorne to prepare it for publication, the text became something entirely different. Part of what we have attempted to do with this website is demonstrate some of the myriad ways that Hawthorne influenced the published version of the journal by providing a digital forum to examine the published text alongside the manuscript version. Bryant says,

“If the texts of written works are fluid texts, then the problem for twenty-first- century criticism is how critics and editors, sharing each other’s roles, will make use of the fact that texts evolve: how postmodern critics might construct meaning out of the textual evolutions they perceive and how editors can engage a kind of critical thinking based on versions to produce editions that facilitate our access to fluid texts” (1044).

A digital forum provides an excellent opportunity to examine both multiple versions of Bridge’s text, and to examine existing accounts of the same events that offer a counterpoint to the Journal. We are not editors in the way that Bryant is using the term, but we would like to offer this website as evidence that the Journal of an African Cruiser is not only a text that would lend itself well to a new, modern scholarly edition, but further that it is a particularly significant, dynamic text that scholars have neglected for far too long.

Goals and Methodology

This website developed over two phases.

1. In the first phase, we conceived of the website as a repository for digital resources and information related to Bridge’s Journal of an African Cruiser and the historical context for its development, including the Liberian recolonization effort and the inception of the African Squadron of the US Navy. We also examined the publication history of the journal, which is particularly notable for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s influence and its inclusion in Wiley and Putnam’s Library of American Books, which Ezra Greenspan describes as “the most important series of original works of American literature ever published to that date or since” (678).
2. In the second phase of development, we narrowed our focus to examine a series of incidents in the book we believe to be particularly noteworthy. Namely, we looked at the African Squadron’s “palavers” and conflict with native African tribes near American settlements. In one of the most dramatic incidents, Bridge and other sailors from the U.S.S. Saratoga burned several villages to the ground in retribution for the murder of sailors from the schooner Mary Carver several years before. In this project, we examine various accounts of these violent incidents: Bridge’s journal, the published version of the journal heavily edited by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Congressional records and letters from Commodore Matthew C. Perry, and accounts published in the African Repository and Colonial Journal. Taken collectively, these accounts provide evidence of early attempts to justify colonial American violence. In the published Journal of a African Cruiser, Hawthorne crafts an account of the violence for a middle class literary audience. Commodore Perry’s letters to the Naval Secretary demonstrate an attempt to provide political and economic narratives to support the violence.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the guidance and support of those who have assisted us with this project. Thanks to Mary Catherine Kinniburgh of the New York Public Library for her assistance with the Bridge holograph journal. Thanks also to Larry Reynolds for his insight into the history of scholarship on the Journal of an African Cruiser and his guidance with our research. Finally we would like to thank Dr. Ezra Greenspan for his guidance during this project.