The history of this famous icon is well known, as at



https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h67.html#:~:text



though there is at least one other, different account of where the icon originated:



https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-92867



In any case,  I’d like to know more about the actual words, “Am I not a Man and a Brother?,” and especially the source of its rhetorical power.



To my mind that power comes from what seems a direct challenge to Jefferson’s “all men are created equal,” but though I can find works where the phrases are mentioned near to each other, I so far have found no comments on the force of what might be a rebuke.   Jefferson must have seen the medallion in some form but I can find no comment by him on it.



I wonder if that phrasing might have appealed to Wedgwood from his membership in the Lunar Society, more particularly perhaps from associating with a fellow member, William Small, onetime Professor at William and Mary and mentor to Jefferson.



Small didn’t leave much to study directly, but his influence on Thomas Day* and Day’s abolitionist writings was powerful—of the same sort, I think, that likely shaped Jefferson’s antipathy to slavery (I know, I know; I don’t mean to reopen that!).



Small died before the Declaration of Independence and long before Wedgwood’s medallion, but I just wonder if Wedgwood might have recalled Small’s mentorship of Jefferson and knowingly approved of a phrasing that would sting.



This probably has to remain speculation, I suppose.



——————————————————————

*As I suggested in N&Q last year, Small likely conveyed to Day details about slavery drawn from his days in Virginia that Day then used.



See my  “Possible Sources for Thomas Day’s Depictions of the Enslaved," Notes and Queries, 69:2, (June 2022), 143–145. https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjac045



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Terry L. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, Emeritus, The College of William and Mary, in Virginia, Williamsburg  23187



Offset Your Carbon Footprint? Choose at https://tinyurl.com/5546274z



Control Methane?  https://earthworks.org

————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Have we got a college?  Have we got a football team?....Well, we can't afford both.   Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.                 --Groucho Marx, in "Horse Feathers."



______________________________________

To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at

https://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html



This list is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).