In the middle of the rout, when all was buzz, slip-slop, clack and perfume, who should enter but Tucky Squash! The yellow beauties blushed blue and the black ones blushed as red as they could ... for he was the pride of the court, the pick of all the sable fair ones of Hayti. Such breadth of nose, such exuberance of lip! his shins had the true cucumber curve; his face in dancing shone like a kettle.... When he laughed, there appeared from ear to ear a chevaux de-frize of teeth that rivaled the shark’s in whiteness.... No Long Island Negro could shuffle you “double-trouble” or “hoe corn and dig potatoes” more scientifically.
Here we have the first comic Negro in American fiction, assured of long employment from Irving to Octavus Roy Cohen. Salmagundi likewise includes Caesar, a “weatherbeaten wiseacre of a Negro,” who henpecks his masters, tell stories of ghosts, goblins and witches, and, like a good man Friday, accompanies his master to his sparking and dancing. Caesar is repeated in The Knickerbocker History of New York (1809) as an old crone who would croak:
a string of incredible stories about New England witches—grisly ghost horses without heads,—and hairbreadth escapes, and bloody encounters among the Indians.
“Adventures of the Black Fisherman” in Tales of A Traveler (1824) tells us only that Black Sam or Mud Sam was “supposed to know all the fish in the river by their christian names,” and that he had a “great relish for the horrible,” such as executions, and that all of the urchins felt free to play tricks upon him. Irving does not attempt to give his speech, much less his character.
Cooper. The first American novelist to aim at fullness in his presentation of American life, James Fenimore Cooper naturally included the Negro. Although limited in information and skill, he expanded and improved upon the slight sketches of his forerunners. He presents Negroes of many types. First of all, there is Caesar Thompson, the loyal retainer in The Spy (1821). True to the prevailing literary attitude of the gentry towards underlings, Cooper burlesques his appearance with what passed for humor in those days:
But it was in his legs that nature had indulged her most capricious humor. There was an abundance of material injudiciously used. The calves were neither before nor behind, but rather on the outer side of the limb, inclining forward.... The leg was placed so near the center as to make it sometimes a matter of dispute whether he was not walking backward.
Nevertheless Caesar is shown as crafty, and courageous in the service of his family. Cooper’s interest in Negroes is continued in The Pioneers (1823) in Agamemnon, not a slave but a legal ward, a man-of-all work whose deference does not keep him from mirth at his master’s expense, and Abraham, a free black who shares in the rough frontier life.
A different type is the free Sailor, Scipio Africa, one of the heroes of The Red Rover (1827). In physique, seamanship, self-control, and intelligence he is superior to his sailing mates, but this does not shield him from their petty insults. There is pathos in the scene of his death:
If he is not (a Christian) I don’t know who the devil is. A man who serves his country, is true to his messmate, and has no sulk about him, I call a saint, so far as mere religion goes. I say, Guinea, my hearty, give the chaplain a grip of the fist.... A Spanish windlass would not give a stronger screw than the knuckle of that nigger an hour ago; and now, you see to what a giant may be brought!
In The Last of The Mohicans (1826), Cora Munro, the offspring of a mixed marriage, is shown to be resourceful and strong, above the usual run of Cooper’s “females.” It is worthy of note, since she is the first of a long line of “octoroons,” that her end is tragic.