Cooper thus anticipates later creators of Negro characters, presenting the faithful house servant, the courageous man of action, and the octoroon doomed to tragedy. Though crudely recorded, his dialect rises above the usually impossible Negro speech in early novels. No abolitionist, Cooper still did not favor slavery, and honest observer that he was, he refuses to see the Negro, even when grotesquely described, as subhuman.
Simms. William Gilmore Simms, of South Carolina, differed from Cooper, his northern model, in that he defended slavery ardently. In his fiction, however, Negroes are presented without excessive argument. They range from the obsequious house-servant to the brave freeman. Hector, in The Yemassee (1832) is a heroic slave, participating gallantly in the Indian warfare, volunteering for perilous service, warning blockhouses, and rescuing his master. He is extremely loyal and refuses to be freed.
I d—n to h—-, maussa, if I gwine to be free.... ’Tis onpossible, maussa.... Enty I know wha’ kind of ting freedom is wid black man? Ha! you make Hector free, he turn wuss more nor poor buckrah—he tief out of de shop—he git drunk and lie in de ditch....
This passage is the first and most influential example of a scene soon to be hackneyed. Caesar in Guy Rivers (1834) is subservient, but cunning and philosophical. The Partisan (1835) gains in interest because of the presence of Tom, who is such a good cook that Porgy, his gourmet master, will not brook his being abused. Tom repays by keeping his master fat and happy “so long as dere’s coon and possum, squirrel, patridges and dub, duck in de ribber, and fish in de pond.”
Simms’ Richard Hurdis (1838) shows slaves accompanying their masters on the move to the Alabama frontier, dancing, singing, sometimes listening to a fellow slave’s impromptu verses:
In them he satirized his companions without mercy ... and did not spare his own master, whom he compared to a squirrel that had lived upon good corn so long that he now hungered for bad in his desire for change.
In The Forayers (1855) Cato is a slave-driver, courageous and devoted to his family, and Benny Bowlegs, another driver, is
a moral steam engine. He pushed his master as well as his brother slaves.... Push at the beginning, push in the middle, push at the end, and Ben’s pushing made crops.
The Wigwam and The Cabin (1845) a collection of stories, is unusual in showing Negroes at the center of the picture. “The Loves of The Driver” casts side-lights upon plantation customs, and the “Lazy Crow” is the first to portray Negro superstition and folkways.
In numbers, and a certain rudimentary realism, the Negro characters in Simms’ many novels go beyond those of any other early nineteenth century novelist. Simms bungles when he tries to record the Gullah dialect, but the effort is worthy of comment. Striving to be accepted as a southern gentleman, Simms shows his slaves, generally, to be well cared for and contented. Nevertheless, his urge to realism kept him from showing slavery to be an endless picnic. Masters held forth freedom as a reward for service; they knew, if the contented slaves did not. All in all, however, Simms is noteworthy more for the extensiveness of his gallery of Negroes than for any depth of characterization.