Chains and Freedom: or, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wheeler, A Colored Man Yet Living, A Slave, A Sailor on the Deep, and A Sinner at the Cross.
Young, Paul C.
Chains and Freedom: or, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wheeler, A
Colored Man Yet Living, A Slave, A Sailor on the Deep, and A Sinner at
the Cross by Peter Wheeler with Introduction by Graham. Russell Gao
Hodges. New York: E. S. Arnold & Co.. 1839; 2009 ed., Tuscaloosa,
AL: The University of Alabama Press, vii + 149 pp.
The Wheeler's slave and escape narrative reminds one of the
current oral interviews that have been conducted and complied in the
last few decades. Graham Russell Gao Hodges is to be commended for
reissuing Peter Wheeler's The Life and Adventures-Hodges'
provides an excellent overview of the circumstances surrounding the
telling of Peter Wheelers tale. Hodges provides the information on
Charles Edward Lester, lawyer, minister and dedicated abolitionist who
interviewed Wheeler and verified his story. Hodges explains that Lester
had to have a number of white citizens familiar with Wheeler to sign the
narrative because during the antebellum era proslavery advocates, north
and south, denied the accuracy of many slave narratives. Similarly,
Hodges informs us that in last thirty years historians have been able to
authenticate numerous antebellum slave narratives.
The narrative is organized in three books; the books are short. The
complete tale is 143 pages. Wheeler claimed his year of birth as 1789,
in New Jersey. And born to a slave mother who talked of his grandfather
"'the African." Wheeler's owner. Job Mather, was a
Quaker. Wheeler's story of his early years is similar to other
slave narratives regarding enslaved children being removed from their
mothers so that they could serve the owner's household in some way.
At a young age Mather used Wheeler as a surrogate child for his grieving
wife, she lost one of her children. Wheeler became a fixture around the
Mather household and played with the other Mather child. Other
narratives also mention enslaved children playing with the master's
children as if they were equals. At age eleven Wheeler's
quasi-idyllic existence, according to Wheeler, changed. The mistress
died and Mather sold Wheeler to Gideon Morehouse. And according to
Wheeler, this was when his "field of trouble" began (p.40)
Wheeler's time with Morehouse was filled with brutality and
humiliation. Morehouse moves his family and Wheeler to Central New York
and during the journey and afterwards Wheeler received numerous beatings
for minor and major infractions of Morehouse's rules. On one
occasion, after they arrived in New York, while they were building the
cabin Morehouse hits Wheeler in the face with an axe and draws blood.
Wheeler commented on the incident: "This warn't (sic) much,
but I tell it to show the natur' (sic) of the man; for anybody will
abuse power, if they have it to do just as they please." (51) There
were other instances of brutality. At one point Morehouse tried to shoot
Wheeler. Even Morehouse's white neighbors commented on his
brutality and one even encouraged Wheeler to run away. Not long after
the shooting incident, Morehouse's neighbors file a complaint and
he was convicted of mistreatment of Wheeler. After fearing that at some
point he may kill Morehouse Wheeler decided to run.
When Wheeler makes his escape he receives assistance from whites
and blacks. In the process of making his escape Wheeler finds employment
as a cook on a boat transporting goods along the Erie Canal, from Albany
to New York. The captain was an abolitionist and aware of Wheeler's
status. On one of the trips down to New York Wheeler signed on to a
merchant vessel and became one of a number of African Americans mariners
that Jeffery Bolster discusses in Black Jacks. Over the course of
Wheeler's years at sea he sails to Gibraltar and back and forth
across the Atlantic. And he describes the vicissitudes of life at sea
form failing overboard to being swindled out of his savings. As the case
with other sailors, he also encountered a slaver carrying five hundred
Africans and commented: "I felt worse. Is spose, and it was
entirely more heat-rend in" to me. because they was my own species;
they warn"! only human beirf s but Africans.'" (p. 118)
Wheeler also commented on international wars as well; "It seem to
be nothirf but a story of blood all the time; ..." He was at sea
during Napoleonic Wars. After Wheeler left the sea he continued to cope
with the uncertainty associated with being an African American working
person in nineteenth century America.
As mentioned above, his contemporaries were skeptical of his tale.
It is understandable because Wheeler's recounting of his sailing
years read like a nineteenth century adventure novel. In addition, the
description of his earlier life was filled with such brutality that its
telling would serve the abolitionists cause well. Finally, it could be
argued that Charles Edward Lester's comments after each chapter
were designed to provoke an anti-slavery reaction. They were laced with
arguments about slavery being anti Christian. Despite the reactions of
proslavcry and antislavery proponents in antebellum America and
today's historians to the narrative. Graham Russell Gao Hodges has
provided historians and others with another insight into northern
slavery. The narrative suggests that the brutality connected with
slavery was not just confined to the South. That observation is
important if historians are to understand the institution of slavery in
its national context rather than just in its regional context.
Finally, again, Hodges resurrection of Wheeler's narrative is
a decent addition to the historians' tool kit for understanding a
national institution. It can also be used as an excellent teaching tool
m advanced high school and undergraduate college classrooms.
Paul C. Young
Assistant Professor of History
Utica College
