Venture Smith’s narrative represented a revolution in the genre of slave narrative, not because he unknowingly ignored the conventions of the genre but because he intentionally rejected the elements of a classic “slave narrative.” Although the genre evolved constantly, authors, or at least their well-educated, white editors, were undoubtedly aware of the influence of their predecessors in shaping their own narratives. In the particular case of slave narratives, “author” does not necessarily refer to the “writer,” as many such stories were accounted by their subjects orally and recorded and edited by another person or persons prior to publication.
Smith’s “A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But
Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America. Related by Himself” is indebted to the slave narrative tradition established before its own publication, even though he appears to intentionally deviate from that tradition. For instance, the story was not an abolitionist text by any sense of the word, as it was clearly not designed to engage with the ongoing moral debate regarding the transatlantic slave trade or the much more revolutionary concept of abolishing slavery altogether. Of his voyage, Smith has only this to say: “an ordinary passage, except great mortality by the small pox” (13). On the other hand, “Venture’s willingness to resist slavery physically, his refusal to wait for emancipation in the afterlife, and his skepticism about ‘white’ Christianity did anticipate significant aspects of 19th century slave narratives exemplified by Frederick Douglass’s Narrative (1845)” (Caretta 164). Smith was not a revolutionary thinker by any means, as evidenced by his repeated assurance of being a “faithful” slave (Smith 15). He even returned to his master during his only attempt at running away from slavery, but he also complicated the canon of slave narratives.
Many slave narratives focus on the ability of Africans and African-Americans to be “redeemed” through conversation to Christianity. In A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, a Negro Man, Hammon offers the story of his life, structured as a tale of estrangement and renewal, as proof of God’s providence: “They intended to roast me alive. But the Providence of God order'd it otherways, for He appeared for my Help, in this Mount of Difficulty, and they were better to me then my Fears, and soon unbound me, but set a Guard over me every Night” (“A Narrative” 7). Like many other slave narratives, Hammon also brings attention to the fact that he served in the British military (admittedly prior to the American Revolution), as he joined the Royal Navy as a cook.
o George Liele (ca. 1751-1825)
The family was soon moved to the colony of Georgia, where both blacks and whites considered his father to be “the only black person who knew the Lord in a spiritual way in that country.”
George “had a natural fear of God from [his] youth” but a sermon by the Baptist minister Matthew Moore on the necessity of grace disabused him of his belief that good works alone could earn one salvation. After a few months of despair, George felt the call of divine grace, was baptized by Moore, he came a member of Moore’s Buckhead Creek Baptist church. George’s owner was a deacon in the same church. George became the first person of African descent licensed and ordained to serve as a Baptist preacher-missionary in North America. He was soon preaching to both black and white audiences near Savannah, Georgia, where he remained until the British evacuated the city in June 1782.
George had been freed by his owner, sharp, an officer in the British army who was killed during the American revolution. […] The British evacuated Liele, his wife, and their four children to Jamaica in 1783.
Liele’s as-told-to tale was published in London in 1793 in The Baptist Annual Register, for 1790, 1791, 1792, and Part of 1793, and it was distributed by Baptist ministers in several cities throughout the United States, including New York City and Boston.
o John Marrant (1755-1791)
“At the age of thirteen Marrant experienced spiritual rebirth after hearing Whitefield preach in Charleston, probably in early December 1768, at the beginning of what would be the last of Whitefield’s seven North Amrican preaching tours. Because of his family’s opposition to conversion, Marrant sought solace in the wilderness, trusting God to sustain him. He was sentenced to a horrible death when a Native American hunter brought him to a Cherokee town. The miraculous conversion of the executioner, however, gained him a reprieve. […] He taught religion to slaves, despite the objections of their owners, one of whom became the prototype of the excessively cruel white female slave owner, a figure that also appears in Venture Smith’s Narrative.”
Its “black message” was delibered in the “white envelope” formed by the preface of Marrant’s amanuensis/editor, the Reverend William Albridge, and, at least in the fourth edition, a concluding affidavit from Marrant’s landlord.
o Gronniosaw
Royal claim
Testimonies by white people
o Cugoano
Royal claim
Testimonies by white people
o Equiano
Royal claim
“unlettered African” sounds like preface to Smith.
Testimonies by white people
Even more complex than locating Smith’s Narrative in the canon or tradition of the African-British and African-American slave narrative is the challenge of identifying in Smith’s Narrative the “black message in a white envelope,” to use John Sekora’s inspired metaphor describing so-called as-told-to slave narratives (Caretta 166). The metaphor is used to determine the ways and extent to which we, as readers, can distinguish the author’s voice from the writer’s voice. In Smith’s case, the answer may lie in the fact that the differences between his Narrative and its predecessors, successors, and contemporaries are at least as significant as their similarities.
Venture Smith’s as-told-to account is prefaced by the voice of a white amanuensis and editor. Like those of Gronniosaw, Marrant, George, and Liele, as well as later editions of Equiano’s autobiography, Venture Smith’s Narrative is framed by testimonies from white people attesting to the subject’s character. Smith’s editor writes, “The reader is here presented with an account, not of a renowned politician or warrior, but of an untutored African” (iii) is reminiscent of Equiano’s having described himself as an “unlettered African,” (Equiano iv) and his own Narrative as “the history of neither a saint, a hero, nor a tyrant” (Equiano 2). Like Gronniosaw, Cugoano, and Equiano, Smith’s narrative reports that he comes from a noble or royal line in Africa, having been enslaved there and forcibly introduced, like them, to the Christian New World as a “stranger.” Despite all these similarities, however, the differences between Venture Smith’s Narrative and its predecessors are even more significant.
Whoever served as Venture Smith’s amanuensis (since there is some debate about whether or not Elisha Niles actually recorded these events), he offers Benjamin Franklin and George Washington as models against which Smith can be measured: “The reader may here see a Franklin and a Washington, in a state of nature, or rather in a state of slavery” (iii). By 1798 when this work was published, Franklin and Washington had both been firmly established as national heroes. The Narrative, however, reveals Venture Smith to be someone who, unlike Franklin, did not epitomize the self-made man who provides inspiration and optimism for a new nation. Nor does the account of his life endorse the military and political values represented by Washington, the general father of his country. On the contrary, the American Revolution is completely erased in the Narrative itself, an erasure more likely made by Smith than by any editor who celebrates Washington. Venture Smith’s predecessors Hammon, Marrant, Liele, Gronniosaw, and Equiano all point out that they each served in the British military forces before and during the American Revolution. The editor of his work tries to shape Smith as a patriotic former slave, but his own account ruins that perception with complete apathy towards the Revolutionary War.
The tension between Smith’s editor, who apparently seeks to contain Venture’s voice within a “white envelope,” and the “black message” heard in the narrative possesses a far greater gap than the one found in any such preceding story. The editor’s condescending attitude toward Venture is challenged by Venture’s own assertive behavior within the narrative: “The subject of the following pages, had he received only a common education, might have been a man of high respectability and usefulness; and had his education been suited to his genius, he might have been an ornament and an honor to human nature” (Smith iii). Given the impact the preface has on the reading of Smith’s narrative, the question must be asked how much of Venture’s story has been manipulated, warped, or even erased by his white editor: “For many scholars, the power of whites to omit, arrange, correct, and otherwise manipulate the dictated stories of slaves and former bondsmen sabotaged the unique black perspectives that texts such as Smith's might otherwise have illuminated” (Desrochers 43).
The greatest separation between Venture Smith and the cultural values of the United States, the depiction of religion and the significance of Africa is reflected in the most glaring discrepancy between his tale and those of his predecessors, as well as between the “envelope” and “message” of his Narrative. One-third of Smith’s account is devoted to his experiences in Africa, which retains its cultural and ethical value throughout his life. As Venture notes twice (pg. 6 and 11), memories of Africa remain “to this day fresh in [his] mind” (11). Unlike the depictions in earlier narratives, however, Smith’s life in both Africa and America is markedly devoid of religion. His only reference to his African religion is to an “Almighty protector” (Smith 6), but unlike other authors of African descent, he neither compares nor contrasts his African faith and Christianity. Venture’s few references to religion in America undermine his editor’s prefatory characterization of the United States as “this Christian country” (Smith iii). For Gronniosaw, alienated from his African homeland, he reaches American religious values quickly replace those of benighted Africa. For Equiano, many African cultural, political, and religious values herald the superior ones he finds in the European world. For Smith, however, African ethical values retain their superiority even after his exposure to American values and Christianity. The treatment of Christianity throughout the Narrative rejects the legitimacy of associating Venture Smith, characterized in the Certificate as having been “a faithful servant,” with the exemplary Christian “good and faithful servant.”
For Venture Smith, neither the patriotic man promoted in the Narrative’s preface nor the claim that the new United States is a “Christian country” offers an accurate portrayal of his contributions to the slave narrative genre. Although similar in form to earlier narratives by and about people of African descent, Smith’s Narrative is unprecedented both in its rejection of the Christian and nationalist ideologies that underlie them and in how strongly his “black message” resists the “white envelope” that tries to contain it.