Showman and the Slave

In this compelling story about one of the nineteenth century's most famous Americans, Benjamin Reiss uses P. T. Barnum's Joice Heth hoax to examine the contours of race relations in the antebellum North. Barnum's first exhibit as a showman, Heth was an elderly enslaved woman who was said to be the 161-year-old former nurse of the infant George Washington. Seizing upon the novelty, the newly emerging commercial press turned her act--and especially her death--into one of the first media spectacles in American history.In piecing together the fragmentary and conflicting evidence of the event, Reiss paints a picture of people looking at history, at the human body, at social class, at slavery, at performance, at death, and always--if obliquely--at themselves. At the same time, he reveals how deeply an obsession with race penetrated different facets of American life, from public memory to private fantasy. Concluding the book is a piece of historical detective work in which Reiss attempts to solve the puzzle of Heth's real identity before she met Barnum. His search yields a tantalizing connection between early mass culture and a slave's subtle mockery of her master.

A good and engaging read. A mystery story, an attempt to sort through conflicting, often fragmentary, evidence to give the most plausible account of a bizarre, perhaps transformative, moment in American popular culture., This book shares in a long and distinguished tradition of social and cultural histories that transform 'ordinary' events in the past into extraordinary windows onto their worlds., Reiss...uses P.T. Barnum's first hoax, the exhibiting of Joice Heth...to look at race relations in the antebellum North. This was one of the first media spectacles in US history; as such it provides a mirror of mid-19th-century society...Her exhibition and its aftermath brought into prominence several facets of antebellum cultural history, including the role of medical science, the importance of memories of revolutionary unity, attitudes toward death and religion, the role of women in public life, class competition, the effects of urbanization on culture, and the emergence of the mass media. Above all, exhibiting Heth provided ample opportunity for discussion of race and slavery...and for supplying evidence of northern psychological and material involvement in southern slavery. This should become a classic study of antebellum history., Worth reading...Reiss does a fine job in presenting the fascinating story of Barnum's acquisition and display of an old slave woman who claimed to be George Washington's 161-year-old nurse and nanny. Reiss takes us through Heth's tour between the summer of 1835 and her death in February 1836, when a shameless Barnum arranged for a public autopsy (at fifty cents admission) to determine her true age (found to be 76-80 years). Like a detective, Reiss shows how Barnum...skillfully exploited shifting and complex appeals (disgust and condescension toward Heth's race and distorted physical appearance as well as admiration for her linkage with the Founding Father, her humor, family loyalty, and love of religious music)...Reiss also contextualizes each episode, drawing on cultural theorists...but also skillfully using a rich historical literature. Reiss shows how Barnum borrowed from the penny paper and minstrel show to display Heth as a racial 'other,' but he also reveals how Barnum appealed to the very specific patriotic and religious sensibilities of the 1830s to present Heth as a living and highly personal witness to America's founder and as a model Christian overcoming her 'brutish' origins...[Does] what all academic history must, make[s] meanings and sense out of [its] material., Compelling...cogent...provocative...revealing...Reiss uses out-of-the-ordinary events and atypical historical actors to explore cultural norms and social tensions....He effectively probes the exhibition [of Joice Heth] as an indicator of northern racism's depth and complexities...As such, his book enriches a now familiar story laid out by historians like Leon Litwack, Winthrop Jordan, and Reginald Horsman, elucidating, through Geertzian thick description, some of the most innovative means in antebellum America for reproducing and disseminating racist ideas...Reiss has given historians an enticing vantage point from which to pursue the integration of social and cultural history.

Benjamin Reiss is Professor of English, Emory University.