Amos Fortune, Free Man

Ath-mun is Fortune’s fictional sister and the princess of the At-mun-shi people. She has a twisted leg—likely a birth defect—and is shy. Fortune loves his sister and leaves her in charge of their people when he is captured and brought into slavery. Ath-mun is Fortune’s driving motivation for being drawn to his second wife, Lydia, who also has an injured leg. Her injury, however, is from abuse suffered on the Middle Passage. Ath-mun is also his motivation for specifically purchasing the freedom of Black women. Yates writes, “Lily, Lydia, Violet, Celyndia—they stood like milestones along his way and behind them all was Ath-mun. Amos held her always in the tender loveliness of her 12 years, and because of her need to be cared for and his longing for her to be cherished, he had dedicated himself to the helpless” (169). Indeed, Fortune attributes all his good deeds to his love for his sister: “It was Ath-mun who had been the fount of freedom to those others, Amos thought” (169). Though Ath-mun does not appear in the narrative after Chapter 1, she remains a strong symbolic presence in the novel.

When Fortune is brought to Boston, he is purchased by Caleb Copeland. Caleb and his wife, Celia, are Fortune’s first enslavers. They are Quakers, a religious group of people who have been historically anti-slavery to varying degrees. Yates uses this fact, in combination with Copeland’s intention to eventually free Fortune, as evidence of the benevolence of slavery. The Copelands are Yates’s invention: In Amos Fortune, The Man and His Legacy, Peter Lambert writes that there are no official historical records of who owned Fortune before his purchase by Ichabod Richardson in 1752 (5). Indeed, the Copelands embody the white savior trope that appears in many fictional retellings of slavery. The concept of the “white savior,” originating in part from Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem “The White Man’s Burden,” refers to the idea that people of color are desperately in need of rescue by a civilized, morally superior white person. This trope reinforces white supremacist ideologies that cast people of color (specifically Black people in this context) as ignorant, savage, and lacking civilization. When the Copelands first acquire Fortune, they regard him as “part animal” (35), and choose to withhold his freedom for his own good, so he can learn how to be “civilized.”

Ichabod Richardson is the second man to purchase Fortune after Caleb Copeland dies and Mrs. Copeland sells Fortune to pay her husband’s debts. Richardson was a historical personage who indeed taught Fortune the craft of tanning in Woburn, Massachusetts (Lambert 5). In comparison to Caleb, Richardson is more “inclined to be stern and with a leaning toward silence” (52). Richardson has a system that he follows repeatedly with whichever Black people he purchases; he would “teach them a trade through the week, make Christians of them on Sunday, pay them—not what he would a white man but what he deemed a just consideration for their service, and give them their freedom before they became too old to enjoy it” (53). Richardson, like Copeland, represents Yates’s vision of a white savior and the benevolent institution of slavery. 

While Copeland represents the civilizing mission of slavery, Richardson represents the professionalization. Richardson also represents the novel’s value of hard work and obedience to authorities: In Chapter 4, it is with Richardson who reminds Fortune that “no good came to a slave except as a reward for his behavior” (55). Such a remark sets up the idea that all of Fortune’s positive experiences are a result of his working hard to obey and please those in authority. He is not entitled to respect as a human being; because he is enslaved, he must earn it.

Lily and Lydia are Amos’s first and second wives, respectively. Because they are both enslaved women at the time when Fortune wants to marry them, each time he chooses to work for years in order to buy their freedom so he can marry them. Lydia (nee Somerset) is a historical person while Lily is likely Yates’s invention (Lambert 6). Fortune’s patient and diligent work to pay for his wives mirrors the biblical story of Jacob who had to work for Laban for seven years in order to marry Laban’s daughter, Rachel. At the end of these seven years, Laban tricked Jacob and gave him his eldest daughter, Leah, in marriage instead. Though upset, Jacob went back to working seven more years so that he could marry Rachel as well. Though Fortune is not tricked into his marriages, his story parallels Jacob’s in the many years of labor he spends to pay for multiple wives.

Both Lily and Lydia fall ill and die very shortly after they marry Fortune. The novel emphasizes these marriages as charitable acts, where Fortune wanted to enable these women to die free. This frames Fortune as a liberator. However, a critical reader might interpret Fortune’s practice differently. Though he is euphemized as a liberator, through another lens Yates’s Fortune could be read as an enslaver. In preparing to purchase Lily’s freedom, Fortune’s intentions are worded as such: “[W]hen I’ve saved up my money again I’ll buy her and make her mine” (70). Though Fortune takes her as his wife, legally, she becomes his property. The same goes for Violet, whose tombstone reads, “Sacred to the memory of Violate by sale the slave of Amos Fortune” (181). Indeed, Fortune purchases each of his wives and Celyndia, and the text never specifies him drafting up manumission papers for them, meaning they legally belong to him. This is a complicated tension that is not explored in the novel.

Celyndia is the young daughter of Violet, Fortune’s third and last wife. Historically, Violet (named Violate Baldwin) was a real person, as was Celyndia though she was likely not Violet’s biological daughter (Lambert 6, 16). Violet fulfills Fortune’s longing for “the sweetness of a home with a woman in it” (82), which he forfeits twice prior because his two previous wives die shortly after marriage. Celyndia represented Fortune’s greatest satisfaction with having purchased someone out of slavery; because she is so young, he is glad that she can grow up with a different outlook on her life’s possibilities as a freewoman. Violet, Celyndia, and Amos Fortune constitute the Fortune family. 

Violet and Celyndia also represent the later part of Fortune’s life when he is beginning to reap the rewards of his hard work in the former portion of his life. The first four chapters of the book are characterized by labor, loss, and hope as Fortune toils with no certainty about his future. The remaining chapters show the fruits of that labor as he gains a family, builds a house and new business, and purchases land. Given that he purchases Violet and Celyndia, making them legally his property, they also represent the moment in Fortune’s life when his status shifts from being property to being a property-owner.

Lois Burdoo was widowed several years prior by her late husband, Moses. The Burdoos were a historically real family; Moses was a blacksmith in Jaffrey who died and left his family destitute, and the Fortunes did take in Polly though it is unclear whether they purchased her at the vendue (Lambert 10-11). In the book, Lois struggles to raise her children; they live in poverty unable to improve their situation. The Burdoo family is a foil for the Fortune family. While the Fortunes are hardworking, Lois Burdoo is described as “a shiftless woman” (136) who is unable “to care for her family and to rise above the conditions of her life” (123). While the Fortunes have reached the height of their wealth and are preparing to purchase land, the Burdoos are so poor that they must rely on charity. Their poverty persists to a point where the town resolves to auction off two of the Burdoo children. Yates interprets their poverty as a moral failing and, conversely, presents hard work as the solution. The whipping that Lois fears her son will endure when auctioned off to Joseph Stewart is interpreted by Fortune as positive character building: “Wings can’t grow without a little suffering” (156). Yates also represents their poverty as a different kind of non-freedom; Fortune says of young Polly Burdoo after she dies, “She wasn’t free when she was so poor” (160). This remark describes poverty as akin to slavery; however, in Yates’s view, it is a self-imposed slavery.