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Agency, Race, and Christianity in the Strange Career of Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2014

Andrew Witmer
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Abstract

For several decades, agency has been a central concept in the historical study of Christian missions, yet it remains more frequently invoked than analyzed. This article explores the formulation of evangelical protestant beliefs about human agency in the context of efforts to evangelize the world. It does so by examining the fraught relationship between a Sierra Leonean Christian missionary named Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce and the United Brethren in Christ, an American denomination that first championed and later disfellowshipped him. Wilberforce experienced a fleeting American celebrity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, largely because his story could be told to promote competing interpretations of African agency. This article details the temporal and spatial components of evangelical conceptions of heathenism and human agency, their use by Wilberforce, and their collision with notions of human nature grounded in scientific racism. It draws on private and public interpretations of Wilberforce's story, including his dramatic fall from favor among his evangelical supporters, to argue that historical constructions of agency informed and were shaped by missionary activity. The recovery of Wilberforce's story, and of the debates that swirled around him, advances a new way of studying the relationship between agency and Christian missions.

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Articles
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Church History , Volume 83 , Issue 4 , December 2014 , pp. 884 - 923
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Copyright © American Society of Church History 2014 

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References

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2 Daniel K. Flickinger, “Lecture on Africa” (n.d.) in “Scrapbook 1882–1895,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, United Methodist Church Archives, Madison, N.J (hereafter UMCA). While the manuscript is undated, internal evidence strongly suggests that it was written in the early 1880s.

3 Ibid.

4 Flickinger regularly cited Wilberforce in this way. See Rev. D.K. Flickinger, “Western Africa,” The Missionary Monthly (February 1897): 7; Daniel Flickinger, “Miscellaneous notes for lecture” (n.d.) in “Scrapbook 1882–1895,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA.

5 The story was treasured and frequently retold. See, among many other accounts, Flickinger, Fifty-Five Years of Active Ministerial Life, 109; McKee, William, History of Sherbro Mission, West Africa, Under the Direction of the Missionary Society of the United Brethren in Christ (Dayton, Ohio: United Brethren Publishing House, 1874)Google Scholar, 180; The Missionary Monthly V, no. 11 (November 1901): 4. For additional biographical details, see Daniel Flickinger, “The Book Commended” (n.d.) in “Scrapbook 1882–1895,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA.

6 Daniel Flickinger, “Western Africa No. 5,” in “Scrapbook 1882–1895,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA.

7 For example, see McKee, History of Sherbro Mission, 180–181.

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32 Howe, Making the American Self, 63–77.

33 Ibid., 116. As Howe argues, for evangelicals freedom was closely coupled with control.

34 Throughout the nineteenth century, American protestants worked to limit the sale and consumption of alcohol at home and abroad. Many were convinced that the sale of alcohol in Africa by European traders seriously damaged their missionary efforts. See Flickinger, Daniel K., Ethiopia; Or, Thirty Years of Missionary Life in Western Africa (Dayton, Ohio: United Brethren Publishing House, 1885), 113–114.Google Scholar

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44 McKee, History of Sherbro Mission, 65–68. Webb Keane's work has shaped my analysis here. See Keane, Christian Moderns; Keane, “From Fetishism to Sincerity.”

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50 Makdisi, Ussama, “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity,” The American Historical Review 102, no. 3 (1997): 680–713Google Scholar. It should be noted that Daniel Flickinger was optimistic about the benefits of European colonialism in Africa, praising the efforts of Henry Morton Stanley and his Belgian employers.

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52 See the discussion in Keane, Christian Moderns, 181.

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54 Quoted in McKee, History of Sherbro Mission, 216; Williams, Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa, 16–17.

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58 Ibid. See especially ch. 6.

59 Protestant efforts to convert peoples they continued to view as racial others are also evident in the early modern proselytization of European Jews and Muslims. The author thanks an anonymous reader on this point.

60 Keane, Christian Moderns, 180.

61 Ibid., 6. Keane concentrates on Protestant citations of inauthentic speech as a sign of enslavement and deprivation of agency through ritualization in Catholicism, Islam, and paganism. The evangelical belief that American missionaries “belonged to a modern movement that would overturn the oppression of native idolatry, Islamic fanaticism, and Catholic superstition” is discussed in Makdisi, “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible,” 680–713.

62 Keane, Christian Moderns, Chapter 4.

63 Hunt, Lynn, Measuring Time, Making History (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2008)Google Scholar, Chapter 2. Hunt notes that many Enlightenment theorists did not view history as inevitably progressive.

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72 Bever, Joseph, The Christian Songster (Dayton, Ohio: United Brethren in Christ Printing Establishment, 1858)Google Scholar, 57.

73 Flickinger, Ethiopia, 48–49.

74 In actuality, as Walter Johnson has argued, a welter of temporal narratives existed in the Atlantic world and in the encounter between Africa and America. This was certainly not a clash of two monolithic temporalities. See Johnson, Walter, “Time and Revolution in African America: Temporality and the History of Atlantic Slavery,” in Rethinking American History in a Global Age, ed. Bender, Thomas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 148–67.Google Scholar

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77 Quoted in ibid., 307.

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79 Blum, Edward J., Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865–1898 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005)Google Scholar, ch. 2; Stauffer, John, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002).Google Scholar

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84 Flickinger, Our Missionary Work, 239–244.

85 Flickinger, Ethiopia, 166.

86 Harris, Nothing but Christ, 162. The strategy, as originally articulated by Rufus Anderson of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and later embraced by the United Brethren and other groups, recognized that with limited funds, dangerous conditions, and relative lack of interest at home, it was simply more efficient to work toward turning the missions over quickly to native pastors. Additionally, Anderson emphasized the great “difference there is between” the “circumstances and states of mind” of civilized peoples, “and those of a heathen and barbarous people.” In his view, even the most faithful and successful missionary dared not hope for “so much social advancement for two or three generations to come, as would make it pleasant to think of leaving his children among the people for whose spiritual well-being he delights to spend his own strength and years.” See Anderson, Rufus, “The Theory of Missions to the Heathen,” in The Missionary Enterprise: A Collection of Discourses on Christian Missions, ed. Stow, Baron (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1846)Google Scholar, 38.

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92 Flickinger, Fifty-Five Years of Active Ministerial Life, 54. And see also Rev. M.F. Keiter, “Our Foreign Mission,” The Missionary Monthly (January 1897): 6.

93 Flickinger, Fifty-Five Years of Active Ministerial Life, 68, 84–85. See also Flickinger, Ethiopia, 122.

94 Daniel K. Flickinger, “Africa” (n.d.) in “Scrapbook 1882–1895,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA. For another public discussion of racial determinism and evangelization, see Daniel K. Flickinger, “Our Pulpit: Africa” (n.d.) in “Scrapbook related to Missions in Africa,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA. There at times appear to be elements in Flickinger's thinking of what historian George Fredrickson termed “romantic racialism.” See Daniel K. Flickinger, “Western Africa,” The Missionary Monthly 1, no. 2 (February 1897): 6. There is also some variability in his statements on race. While in some lectures he categorically dismissed the supposed connections between physical characteristics and intellectual, moral, and spiritual traits, he hedged slightly on the same question in at least one address, judging that it was still an “open question” as to whether “the color of the skin, thickness of the skull and jutting out of the heel” had much to do with “determining the quantity or quality of brains an individual possesses.” For this difference, compare two undated manuscript lectures, both titled “Lecture on Africa” (n.d.) in “Scrapbook 1882–1895,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA.

95 McKee, History of Sherbro Mission, 68–69.

96 Flickinger, Ethiopia, 68.

97 Keane, Christian Moderns, 55.

98 McKee, History of Sherbro Mission, 180–181, Daniel Flickinger, “Africa” (n.d.) in “Scrapbook 1882–1895,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA.

99 Ibid., 178. This source and Wilberforce's own account indicate that both of his parents were converts to Christianity. See Wilberforce, Daniel F., Sherbro and the Sherbros; Or, A Native African's Account of His Country and People (Dayton, Ohio: United Brethren Publishing House, 1886)Google Scholar, 3.

100 Wilberforce, Sherbro and the Sherbros, 16–17.

101 Ibid., 17, 26–27.

102 Luckmann, Thomas, “The Constitution of Human Life in Time,” in Chronotypes: The Construction of Time, eds. Bender, John and Wellbery, David E. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 151–166.Google Scholar

103 Johnson, “Time and Revolution in African America.”

104 J.D.Y. Peel provides support for this conclusion in his discussion of the many ways Yoruba Christians reinterpreted and repositioned themselves and their kin by means of biblical narratives, including through naming practices. See Peel, “For Who Hath Despised the Day of Small Things?,” 593–598.

105 This formulation is meant to highlight Wilberforce's belief, shared with his American evangelical allies, that civilization apart from Christianity was corrupted and corrupting. Wilberforce wrote that even New York City, where he experienced racial prejudice that on one occasion denied him accommodation in four hotels, “needs missionaries to enlighten its people.” Quoted in Flickinger, Ethiopia, 265.

106 Quoted in ibid., 266.

107 Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce to Daniel Kumler Flickinger, August 21, 1896, “Correspondences: Sierra Leone 1895–1905,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA.

108 Flickinger, Fifty-Five Years of Active Ministerial Life, 110; Flickinger, Our Missionary Work, 121–22. Daniel Flickinger, “Editorial,” The Missionary Monthly V, no. 11 (November 1901): 4.

109 “Afric's Sunny Lands: Native African Describes Peculiarities of His Countrymen,” in “Scrapbook 1882–1895,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA.

110 Wilberforce, Sherbro and the Sherbros, 7.

111 Ibid., 24, 29.

112 Fabian, Time and the Other. On race and comparative religion, see Chidester, Savage Systems; and Masuzawa, Tomoko, The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

113 Wilberforce, Sherbro and the Sherbros, 35. Wilberforce expressed himself similarly in a 1901 address to a meeting of United Brethren women. See “Minutes of Twenty-Sixth Annual Session of the Board of Managers of the W.M.A.,” The Missionary Monthly V, no. 6 (June 1901): 8.

114 Wilberforce, Sherbro and the Sherbros, 27.

115 Ibid., 15–16.

116 Ibid., 11.

117 Ibid., 24.

118 Ibid.

119 Peel, “For Who Hath Despised the Day of Small Things?,” 593–595.

120 Quoted in Flickinger, Ethiopia, 299.

121 “Minutes of Twenty-Sixth Annual Session,” 8.

122 Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce to Daniel Kumler Flickinger, October 26, 1902, box 1, UBHC.

123 Lucy K. Wilberforce to Daniel Flickinger, October 2, 1902, box 1, UBHC.

124 Daniel K. Flickinger Diary (1895–1905), February 28, 1896, Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA.

125 Daniel K. Flickinger Diary (1895–1905), February 3, 1896, Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA.

126 Wilberforce, Sherbro and the Sherbros, 30–31.

127 Ibid., 31. Emphasis in original.

128 Ibid., 31–33.

129 Ibid., 24.

130 Ibid., 28–29.

131 Ibid., 11–12. While the practice in question is more precisely termed polygyny, I have followed the usage most common among contemporary writers and referred to it as polygamy throughout this article.

132 Ibid., 10, 13–16, 22.

133 Ibid., 22.

134 Ibid.

135 Ibid., 37.

136 Ibid.

137 Berger, History of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, 445–446.

138 Zimmerman, Andrew, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, The German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010), 43–44.Google Scholar

139 “A Native African,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, February 19, 1886, 4. And for a later reference, see Roy, Joseph E., “Africa and America Illustrated; Their Mutual Relation of History and of Service,” in Africa and the American Negro: Addresses and Proceedings of the Congress on Africa, ed. Bowen, J.W.E. (Miami, Fla.: Mnemosyne, 1969)Google Scholar, 223.

140 Williams, George Washington, History of the Negro Race in America, vol. II (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1883), 572–574.Google Scholar

141 Bruce, Dickson D. Jr., “Ancient Africa and the Early Black American Historians, 1883–1915,” American Quarterly 36, no. 5 (1984): 684–699.Google Scholar

142 Ibid., 695.

143 Williams, George Washington, History of the Negro Race in America (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1882)Google Scholar, 1.

144 Williams, History of the Negro Race in America, 574.

145 Maffly-Kipp, Laurie F., “Mapping the World, Mapping the Race: The Negro Race History, 1874–1915,” Church History 64, no. 4 (1995): 610–626.Google Scholar

146 Washington, Booker T., The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909), 336–338.Google Scholar

147 Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa.

148 Berger, History of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, 349–398.

149 Fetters, ed., Trials and Triumphs, 318–321; Fleming, Trail Blazers in Sierra Leone, 60–61, 69.

150 Kalous, Milan, ed., Cannibals and Tongo Players in Sierra Leone (Auckland: Wright & Carman Ltd., 1974)Google Scholar, 31, 34, 43, 182–183. While this book suffers from editorial weaknesses, it is the only published source for these Sierra Leone Government Archives manuscripts.

151 Ibid., 151–152, 239–246.

152 Fleming, Trail Blazers in Sierra Leone, 159; Flickinger, Fifty-Five Years of Active Ministerial Life, 219–231.

153 The lecture containing these statements is Daniel K. Flickinger, “Africa” (n.d.) in “Scrapbook 1882–1895,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA.

154 Fleming, Trail Blazers in Sierra Leone, 71–80; Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone, 570–591; Mills, Mission Work in Sierra Leone, 120.

155 Flickinger, Fifty-Five Years of Active Ministerial Life, 233.

156 Wilberforce related these events in a letter to Daniel Flickinger reprinted in the Christian Conservator XIII, no. 50 (August 3, 1898): 1; and in another letter published in the same magazine on September 21, 1898. According to Christopher Fyfe, Wilberforce's mother and sister were murdered by rebels. See Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone, 572.

157 Daniel Flickinger, “Editorial,” The Missionary Monthly V, no. 11 (November,1901): 4. See the discussion of the matter by the Acting Governor in Kalous, ed., Cannibals and Tongo Players, 246. See also Sir Luke, Harry, Cities and Men: The First Thirty Years, 1884–1914 (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1953)Google Scholar, I:174.

158 Fleming, Trail Blazers in Sierra Leone, 85–86, 92; Kalous, ed., Cannibals and Tongo Players, 46.

159 Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce to Daniel K. Flickinger, April 8, 1900, box 1, UBHC. In the same collection, see also Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce to Daniel K. Flickinger, May 22, 1900; Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce to Daniel Flickinger, April 29, 1903.

160 The Missionary Monthly V, no. 7 (July 1901): front cover.

161 H.J. Becker, “A Tribute to African Heroes,” The Missionary Monthly (January 1904): 8.

162 See Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce to Daniel K. Flickinger, May 22, 1900, box 1, UBHC.

163 See Daniel Flickinger to Bro. Wilberforce, March 17, 1902, and Daniel Flickinger to Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce, June 8, 1903, both copied into “Diary 1902–1906,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA.

164 See “Report on Governor's tour through Ronietta and Bandajuma Districts” in Kalous, ed., Cannibals and Tongo Players, 246–247.

165 Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce to Daniel K. Flickinger, March 21, 1902, box 1, UBHC.

166 Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce to Daniel K. Flickinger, January 10, 1903, box 1, UBHC.

167 Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce to Daniel K. Flickinger, June 20, 1903, box 1, UBHC.

168 D.F. Wilberforce to Executive Committee of the Domestic Frontier and Foreign Society of the U.B. Church, May 29, 1903, box 1, UBHC. The quotation is from Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce to Daniel K. Flickinger, June 20, 1903, box 1, UBHC.

169 Susan Wilds McArver, “‘The Salvation of Souls’ and the ‘Salvation of the Republic of Liberia’: Denominational Conflict and Racial Diversity in Antebellum Presbyterian Foreign Missions,” in North American Foreign Missions, ed. Shenk, 133–160. See also Porterfield, Mary Lyon and the Mount Holyoke Missionaries, 133–138.

170 Apter, “Africa, Empire, and Anthropology;” Curtin, Philip D., The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780–1850 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964)Google Scholar, 415. For a discussion of the transformation as it applied to missionary work, see Ross, Andrew, “Christian Missions and the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Change in Attitudes to Race: The African Experience,” in The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions, 1880–1914, ed. Porter, Andrew (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2003), 85–105Google Scholar. On the shift among American missionaries toward “a fuller embrace of the secular American empire of Anglo-Saxon men and women,” see Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 175.

171 Harris, Nothing but Christ, 162.

172 B.O. Hazzard reported in a 1901 letter that he had “found no fault” with Wilberforce, though he had not been able to acquire information about his “private life.” See B.O. Hazzard to Daniel Flickinger, February 10, 1901, box 1, UBHC. Wilberforce learned that Stoltz had been investigating him at Flickinger's request and reacted angrily to the situation. See Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce to Rev. A.F. Stoltz, November 12, 1904, “Correspondences: Sierra Leone 1895–1905,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA. On the importance of polygyny for rulership in another West African polity, and the problems this posed for converts to Christianity, see Akyeampong, Emmanuel, “Christianity, Modernity and the Weight of Tradition in the Life of ‘Asantehene’ Agyeman Prempeh I, c. 1888–1931,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 69, no. 2 (1999): 303–304.Google Scholar

173 A.F. Stoltz to Brother Flickinger, December 26, 1904, “Correspondences: Sierra Leone 1895–1905,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA.

174 Board of Missions Executive Comm. Minutes, March 8, 1905, UBHC.

175 “African Missionary Returns to Heathenism,” The Saint Paul Globe, March 10, 1905, 4; “Answers Call of the Wild,” The San Francisco Call, March 10, 1905, 3; “The Atavism of Rev. Wilberforce,” The Buffalo Courier, March 10, 1905, 4; “Back to His First Love,” The Washington Post, September 27, 1905, 6; “Back to Savage Ways,” The Washington Post, September 3, 1905, B1; “Back to Savage Ways,” Rockingham Register, September 12, 1905, 1; “Backsliding of Negro Missionary,” The Ladysmith Daily Ledger, March 13, 1905, 1; “The Call of the Wild,” The Salt Lake Herald, August 18, 1905, 4; “Gone Back to Heathenism,” The Marlboro Democrat, March 17, 1905, 6; “Heathen and Chief of His Tribe,” The Salt Lake Herald, March 10, 1905, 1; “Lured Back to Heathenism,” The Washington Post, March 10, 1905, 1; “Lured Back to Heathenism,” Evening Star, March 9, 1905, 2; “Missionary Turns Devil-Worshiper,” The Watertown Re-Union, May 3, 1905, 6; “Negro Convert Backslid,” New York Times, March 10, 1905, 5; “Tropical Suns and Dusky Damsels Lured Him Back Again,” The Laurens Advertiser, March 15, 1905, 1.

176 “Back to Savage Ways,” B1.

177 “Back to His First Love,” 6.

178 “The Atavism of Rev. Wilberforce,” 4.

179 In the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, the Human Leopard Society, which was powerful in the areas of Sierra Leone where Wilberforce worked, drew its predominantly Sherbro members into ritual killings that reportedly ended in acts of cannibalism. Some British colonial officials speculated that Sherbro men ate human flesh to increase their virility, others that they did so in hopes of acquiring their victims' qualities. For these speculations, see Sir Griffith, William Brandford, preface to Human Leopards: An Account of the Trials of Human Leopards Before the Special Commission Court, by Beatty, K.J. (London: Hugh Rees, Ltd., 1915), v–ixGoogle Scholar; Luke, Cities and Men, 172–173. The British prosecuted the society aggressively.

180 J.R. King, superintendent of the United Brethren Mission in Freetown, Sierra Leone, advanced this interpretation in 1906. See Kalous, ed., Cannibals and Tongo Players, 251–253. The same explanation was reported in “African Missionary Promptly Acquitted,” Harrisonburg Daily News, July 12, 1906, 1.

181 “Back to His First Love,” 6.

182 Luke, Cities and Men, 177.

183 “Back to Savage Ways,” B1.

184 Keane, Christian Moderns, 118. Keane is discussing the work of Dipesh Chakrabarty in this passage.

185 “Back to His First Love,” 6.

186 Ibid.

187 A.F. Stoltz to Rev. D.F. Wilberforce, November 14, 1904; and Lena Winkel to Brother Flickinger, October 27, 1905, “Correspondences: Sierra Leone 1895–1905,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA.

188 A.F. Stoltz to Dear Brother, January 21, 1904, box 1, UBHC. Emphasis in original.

189 A.F. Stoltz to Daniel Flickinger, August 9, 1904, box 1, UBHC.

190 Daniel Flickinger to Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce, August 11, 1906, in “Diary 1902–1906,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA.

191 See Milton Wright to Rev. J. Howe, April 3, 1914 and Milton Wright to Rev. J. Howe, June 2, 1914, Milton Wright Papers, UBHC.

192 Flickinger, Fifty-Five Years of Active Ministerial Life, 250.

193 Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce to Rev. A.F. Stoltz, November 12, 1904, “Correspondences: Sierra Leone 1895–1905,” Daniel Kumler Flickinger Papers, UMCA.

194 Quoted in Milton Wright to Jacob Howe, August 21, 1905, Milton Wright Papers, UBHC.

195 Ibid.

196 Kalous, ed., Cannibals and Tongo Players, 250–51, 253.

197 Among other references, see Ibid., 257–60. See also Milton Wright to Rev. J. Howe, July 5, 1906, and Milton Wright to Rev. J. Howe, May 1, 1908, Milton Wright Papers, UBHC; A.F. Stoltz to the Board of Missions, U.B. Church, February 24, 1909, box 1, UBHC. On Wilberforce's 1924 address at an annual conference of the United Brethren church in Sierra Leone, see Fleming, George D., Trail Blazers in Sierra Leone: Volume II (Huntington, Ind.: Hill Crest Lithographing, 1973), 290–291.Google Scholar

198 For an account of the trial by one of the British judges, see Beatty, Human Leopards, 27, 61–70. Many documents from this trial are available in Records of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, Foreign Missionary Society, Sierra Leone, Sub-series: Daniel F. Wilberforce Cannibalism Trial, UMCA.

199 For Wilberforce's denials, see Kalous, ed., Cannibals and Tongo Players, 258, 260.

200 Ibid., 264.

201 For the year of death and burial location, see Fleming, Trail Blazers in Sierra Leone: Volume II, 291. Fleming, who served as a missionary in Sierra Leone and counted Christopher Wilberforce (Daniel's son) as a mentor, officiated at Wilberforce's funeral. See Fleming, Trail Blazers in Sierra Leone, 94.

202 “Editors' Introduction,” 27; Bays, Daniel H. and Wacker, Grant, eds., The Foreign Missionary Enterprise At Home: Explorations in North American Cultural History (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2003).Google Scholar

203 Bederman, Gail, Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).Google Scholar

204 Beatty, Human Leopards, 62.

205 Lake, Marilyn and Reynolds, Henry, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).Google Scholar

206 Johnson, Walter, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013)Google Scholar, 9.

207 Quoted in Flickinger, Ethiopia, 266.