Eneas Africanus

47, [1] pp. "Eneas Africanus is perhaps the most popular pro-slavery text in United States' history. Published by Harry Stillwell Edwards (1855-1938) in 1919, this tract's claimed astronomical sales in the millions may have been exaggerated but are nonetheless indicative of the story's enormous popularity. At least 45 editions were published between 1920-2007; they include one Spanish translation (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1920) and a Canadian edition (Toronto: McClellan & Stewart, 1937). An illustrated edition became popular and occasional private editions appeared, like those produced by the Book Club of Texas in 1930 and the Wesleyan Glee Club in 1932. This short story, most frequently sold as a cheap softbound edition, was a publishing phenomenon. These editions sold primarily in Southern states and only in 1940 did a Grosset & Dunlap edition bring the story to a national market. Edwards' story is one of a faithful slave retainer who searches for his old master for years during the Reconstruction period, uninterested in freedom and concerned only to serve his master. It is an early twentieth-century picaresque retelling of popular antebellum pro-slavery fiction portraying contented and faithful slaves. As such, it continues the pro-slavery narrative tradition into the world of post-World War I popular fiction. The narrative, in the form of a series of letters and other texts, begins with a public letter, published in the Atlanta Constitution, from a former Confederate officer, Major George E. Tommey. He requests information on the whereabouts of Eneas, a slave separated from the Tommey family during the war, and the family heirloom bridal cup with whose safekeeping he was charged. What follows are the responses Major Tommey receives from throughout Georgia and other southern states as letter-writers describe their encounters over the years with the singularly canny and yarn-telling Eneas. Throughout his eight-year journey, Eneas searches for his master. The story culminates with the arrival of Eneas and his family, acquired on the road, at the height of the wedding of Major Tommey’s daughter. The bridal cup is restored in the nick of time. Slavery also gains symbolic restoration, for as Eneas informs his now-regained master, his new wife and children share his slave status: “Some folks tell me dey is free, but I know dey b'long ter Marse George Tommey…” (38) Eneas is the perfect slave: even when liberated, he is self-enslaving. Edwards viewed Emancipation as an intrinsic failure, for even for well-satisfied blacks on the Tommey plantation, freedom 'had brought but little of brightness into the lives of these humble people.' Edwards' satiric representations of black characters, while adopting the voice of a sympathetic local colorist, were vicious and racist. In a series of short stories published in the 1880s in Century magazine and other leading journals, Edwards portrayed Emancipation as a farrago and blacks as adult children constitutionally unable to participate in citizenship. Throughout Edwards’ fictions, blacks appear as inherently inferior to whites and content with subservience in a racial hierarchy. Eneas Africanus, published when Edwards was sixty-four years old, was the culmination and greatest success of his career and remained true to his white supremacist views. As George Hutchinson observes, “The book was ‘plantation school’ fiction of the deepest dye, extreme if unintended testimony to the racial delusions to which upper-class white Southerners were prone.” (In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line, Belknap Press, 2006, p. 214) Nonetheless, Eneas Africanus had its appeal as a mythic representation of an African American folk hero. The story received attention from Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson in 1939 and they began writing a musical comedy based on its plot. Paul Robeson rejected an offer to play Eneas but Bill Robinson agreed; however, the play was never produced. (Allen Woll, Black