A closer look

The Greek Slave

What role did one of the most popular statues in antebellum America play in the political debates about slavery?

by Joshua Brown, The Graduate Center, CUNY (Emeritus)

Note: This resource includes racial stereotypes that were common in nineteenth-century commercial visual media.

Historical Context

Hiram Powers, an American sculptor living in Florence, Italy, created The Greek Slave in 1844. The statue made its debut in England in 1845, and a second version was unveiled in the United States two years later. Wherever it appeared, The Greek Slave met with wild enthusiasm. It was among the most popular works of art of its time, and in reduced scale it was widely reproduced and became a familiar decorative item in the parlors of American middle-class homes.

The figure represents a contemporary Greek woman during the era of the Greek war for independence from Turkey (1821–1829) who has been abducted from her home, stripped naked, shackled, and displayed on the auction block of a slave market in Constantinople.

An Example of Neoclassical Style

Contemporary observers commented in a variety of ways about Powers’s statue. Many viewed her chains as not only indicating her bondage but also that her shamefully naked state was not her fault. The cross dangling from her wrist signified she was a Christian—and now captive in a realm of Islam.

A Statue About Slavery?

Amid praise for its beauty and the compassion it generated, many also interpreted the statue as a comment on slavery in America. The Eastport (Maine) Sentinel, for example, proposed that The Greek Slave “brings home to us the foulest feature of our National Sin; and forces upon us the humiliating consciousness that the slave market at Constantinople is not the only place where beings whose purity is still undefiled are basely bought and sold for the vilest purposes."

The Greek Slave Sparks Criticism

Sometimes the most provocative commentary came from abroad. Great Britain abolished slavery in most of its colonies in 1833. When The Greek Slave was displayed by American exhibitors in London's Crystal Palace in 1851, U.S. slavery had long become a target of British criticism. This cartoon appeared in June of that year in the British satirical weekly Punch. Entitled “The Virginian Slave: Intended as a Comparison to Power’s [sic] ‘Greek Slave,’” and drawn by John Tenniel (best known today as the illustrator of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass), the cartoon commented on the original work through humorous imitation or parody.

The Virginian Slave

Tenniel's drawing emphasized certain meanings that many American admirers of The Greek Slave may have preferred to ignore. There was her pose, resembling the stance of the Powers statue, and her shackles adjacent to the American flag (replacing the statue’s garments). These features, together with the chains and whips encircling the pedestal above the U.S. motto E pluribus unum (Out of many, one), and the linework indicating the figure’s race, served as a rebuke to connoisseurs of The Greek Slave who viewed it only in aesthetic terms.

Antislavery Activists Use the Statue and Cartoon in a Public Protest

Within weeks of its publication, “The Virginian Slave” was used in an antislavery demonstration in London. Walking arms linked, thirteen white British antislavery activists accompanied William and Ellen Craft and William Wells Brown, American escapees from bondage now living in England, into the Crystal Palace on June 21, 1851. The group stopped in front of The Greek Slave. William Wells Brown then displayed the Punch cartoon. Flourishing the clipping, he announced to startled exhibition visitors, “As an American fugitive slave, I place this Virginia Slave by the side of the Greek Slave, as its most fitting companion.”

Contributing to the International Antislavery Cause

News of the event quickly reached the United States through a letter written by a British abolitionist that was first published in antislavery crusader William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator and soon after in Frederick Douglass’ Paper. The writer celebrated the explicit appropriation of the meaning of The Greek Slave for the antislavery cause.

Additional Reading

Joy Kasson, “Mind in Matter in History: Viewing The Greek Slave,” Yale Journal of Criticism 11 (Spring 1998).

Special issue on The Greek Slave, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide (Summer 2016). http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/summer16/

Sarah L. Burns and Joshua Brown, “White into Black: Seeing Race, Slavery, and Anti-Slavery in Antebellum America,” Picturing United States History, https://picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu/white-into-black-seeing-race-slavery-and-anti-slavery-in-antebellum-america/

Related Chapters

The Spread of Slavery and the Crisis of Southern Society, 1836-1848