In "The Slumbering Volcano," Maggie Montesinos Sale investigates depictions of nineteenth-century slave ship revolts to explore the notion of rebellion in formulations of United States national identity. Analyzing how such revolts inspired citizens to debate whether political theory directed at free men could be extended toward blacks, Sale compares the reception of fictionalized versions of ship revolts published in the 1850s--"Benito Cereno" by Herman Melville and "The Heroic Slave" by Frederick Douglass--with the previous decade's public accounts of actual rebellions by enslaved people on...

In "The Slumbering Volcano," Maggie Montesinos Sale investigates depictions of nineteenth-century slave ship revolts to explore the notion of rebellion in formulations of United States national identity. Analyzing how such revolts inspired citizens to debate whether political theory directed at free men could be extended toward blacks, Sale compares the reception of fictionalized versions of ship revolts published in the 1850s--"Benito Cereno" by Herman Melville and "The Heroic Slave" by Frederick Douglass--with the previous decade's public accounts of actual rebellions by enslaved people on...