A NOTE TO THE READER ON LANGUAGE
Language shapes history and our understanding of history. When writing about an institution predicated on racism, choices about language have a bearing on the interpretation advanced by the historian and on the experience of the reader. It is important not to reinforce the language of subjugation, exploitation, and indignity that the past projects into the present. Guided by that principle, I have made some decisions about language that I wish to briefly explain.
My strong preference is to refer to people by their names whenever possible. Since racialized statuses and identities define every single person whose story I share—there is nothing color-blind about American history—I also regularly refer to “African Americans,” “Black people,” “Black New Yorkers,” “whites,” and “white New Yorkers” in exactly these terms. This choice reflects not only current and emerging usage standards but also the historical ways in which origins, descent, and physical identifiers shaped life experiences, as enforced by law and culture. When a white person’s ethnicity, religion, or ancestral origin is significant, I have described that person accordingly—for example, as a Huguenot.
When referring to people made subject to the laws, practices, demands, and abuses of the institution of slavery, I often used the word “enslaved” as both a noun and an adjective. This word draws attention to the fact that a person’s status or subordination was imposed—more to the point, that some people imposed enslavement on others. That such an imposition was a matter of course and custom for many years in many places does not change the importance of drawing attention to that fact. When writing about slavery as an institution, a concept, and a metaphor, I generally use the words “slavery” and “slave.” I also use these words when drawing attention to the perspective of the people claiming ownership or enforcing the subordination of a particular individual or group of individuals. The same is true when I use the word “master” or “slaveholder,” even though these terms are in no way morally neutral characterizations. All people who claimed ownership of others were also “enslavers.”
When quoting historical documents, which I do quite a lot, I retained the usage and spelling of the original. Capitalization at the beginning of quotations has been standardized for grammatical consistency but has otherwise been preserved from the original. The language that the people quoted in this book used to describe themselves and others overlaps with but, unsurprisingly, is not identical to our own. The gamut of cruelty, callousness, caring, and commitment expressed by members of the Jay family and others whom I quoted is bound to strike readers in a variety of ways. When writing about themselves and others publicly or privately, authors of whatever race and class often had specific political or moral intent; word choices frequently expressed varying degrees of privilege, habit, and common parlance. I tried to avoid repeating patently offensive language while still presenting evidence of the historical language used to describe enslavement, emancipation, and freedom.
There are two glaring exceptions regarding offensive language. In chapter 12, I quote a diarist who uses a word that drives home racist contempt for John Jay II’s efforts to advance the rights of Black Episcopalians. At the beginning of chapter 10, which focuses on mid-nineteenth-century racism, I reproduce a lightly edited version of a deeply troubling story that abolitionist David Lee Child shared in a November 1841 edition of the National Anti-Slavery Standard. The story hinged on the public use of the same word the diarist in chapter 12 used privately. The word was meant to wound and offend then, as it most assuredly does now. Child forced his readers to confront racial obscenity as a form of aggressively harmful language and action. I quote this language with the same trust that abolitionist Child had in the good faith and solidarity of his readers as they struggled against American racism. Their struggle remains ours.