In November 1838, abolitionist James Birney announced the American Anti-Slavery Society’s (AASS) withdrawal of one of its publications: the Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave, Who Was for Several Years a Driver on a Cotton Plantation in Alabama. Announced in The Liberator (2 Nov. 1838), the withdrawal was a serious blow to the AASS since Williams’s narrative, its first full-length fugitive slave narrative, was a runaway bestseller that had been widely reprinted and circulated during the year (“Narrative”). Ironically, the narrative’s popularity precipitated its subsequent downfall when it came to the attention of readers from the Alabama region that Williams described as his home turf. These readers accused the narrator of being an “imposter.” One newspaper editor in particular, J. B. Rittenhouse of the Alabama Beacon, led the attack, raising enough doubts about the slave narrator’s credibility to imperil the Society’s national reputation and antislavery work. Rittenhouse claimed that it was a slander on the individuals it named, a “gross fiction,” a “foul fester of falsehood,” and a “‘weak invention of the enemy’” (Alabama Beacon, 29 Mar. 1838; reprinted in [Untitled item], The Emancipator, 19 Apr. 1838). Rittenhouse’s objections to the narrative were not surprising given the disparaging light it cast on local slave owners, but Birney was taken aback by the charges against the narrative’s protagonist. He assured The Emancipator’s readers that “it [would be] saying too much for the powers of the man, to suppose that James, in his circumstances, could bring out such creations as the theory of the nonexistence of the facts implies” ([Untitled item]). Not even a “lying

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逃亡奴隶，逃亡小说家：詹姆斯·威廉姆斯的叙事 (1838)

1838 年 11 月，废奴主义者詹姆斯·伯尼宣布美国反奴隶制协会 (AASS) 撤回其出版物之一：美国奴隶詹姆斯·威廉姆斯的叙述，他在阿拉巴马州的一个棉花种植​​园当了几年的司机。《解放者》（The Liberator）（1838 年 11 月 2 日）宣布退出对 AASS 是一个严重的打击，因为威廉姆斯的第一部完整的逃亡奴隶叙事是一本失控的畅销书，在这一年中被广泛转载和传播（“Narrative ”）。具有讽刺意味的是，当威廉姆斯描述为他的家乡阿拉巴马州地区的读者注意到该地区时，这种叙事的流行导致了其随后的垮台。这些读者指责叙述者是“冒名顶替者”。特别是一位报纸编辑，阿拉巴马灯塔的 JB Rittenhouse，领导了这次袭击，对奴隶叙述者的可信度产生足够的怀疑，从而危及该协会的国家声誉和反奴隶制工作。里顿豪斯声称这是对其命名的个人的诽谤、“粗俗的虚构”、“虚假的恶作剧”和“敌人的弱小发明”（阿拉巴马灯塔，1838 年 3 月 29 日；重印于 [ Untitled item]，《解放者》，1838 年 4 月 19 日）。鉴于它对当地奴隶主的贬低，里顿豪斯对叙事的反对并不奇怪，但伯尼对叙事主角的指控感到震惊。他向《解放者》的读者保证，“对于这个人的力量来说，假设詹姆斯在他的情况下能够像事实不存在的理论所暗示的那样创造这样的作品，这[将]说得太多了”（[无题物品]）。甚至不是“说谎”