THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

People of Great Britain, marked a shift from the metaphorical to the literal. 94 Burn
planned “to excite very opposite emotions” from those caused by Fox. Rather than
encouraging a sentimental response, which may or may not lead to action, Burn hoped to
disgust people into abstention by convincing his readers that “either in Puddings, Pies,
Tarts, Tea, or otherwise, that they literally, and most certainly in so-doing, eat large
quantities of that last mentioned Fluid [blood], as it flows copiously from the Body of the
laborious slave.” However, Burn went beyond the standard trope of blood-stained sugar,
as he described in great detail the physical conditions of slavery in the sugar colonies.
Sweat, lice, and jiggers all contaminated the sugar produced by African slaves in the
West Indies and were in turn consumed by Britons. After piling horror upon horror, Burn
concluded with the story of a British wine merchant who opened a cask of West Indian
rum and discovered inside “the whole body of a roasted Negro.” 95 Burn’s Address
highlights the shift toward a more literalist, anti-sentimental interpretation of the slave-
sugar boycott.
Critics of Burn, however, suggested that abstainers were inconsistent because
sugar was not the only product produced by slave labor. One critic asked, “[H]ow
anybody who will not eat Sugar because it is eating Negro flesh, can handle gold or
silver, or feed themselves with silver spoons or forks; for if eating Sugar is eating
Negroes flesh, sure every time anybody puts a fork or spoon in their mouths, it is putting
94
Charlotte Sussman describes Burn’s tract as the “paranoid double” of Fox’s Address. Sussman,
Consuming Anxieties, 119.
95 Burn, A Second Address, 1-12.
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