Distant Reader - abolitionist-literature-from-haithi

Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-04-23 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader trust process, and the input was a HaithTrust metadata (TSV) file locally cached with the name metadata.tsv. Given the metadata file, associated PDF documents where saved to a a cache and a second set of documents were saved to a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against the plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

The study carrel is 911,263 words long. Each item in the study carrel is, on average, 43,393 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following illustrate the overall size of the study carrel.

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 68. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following illustrate the overall readability of the study carrel.

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

will, slavery, one, slave, slaves, may, free, emancipation, every, us, now, mr, time, man, great, must, people, men, work, many, much, society, years, shall, made, well, said, states, without, two, state, west, day, country, good, first, new, negroes, even, system, among, let, present, master, yet, negro, long, might, little, general

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are: 1) Genius of universal emancipation v. 12 (1831-32), 2) Pamphlets on slavery v.8, and 3) Emancipation in the West Indies. A six months'' tour in Antiqua, Barbados, and Jamaica, in the year 1837 by Jas. A. Thome and J. Horace Kimball .

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

united states, universal emancipation, west india, west indies, west indian, american slavery, let us, fiat justitia, slave trade, justitia ruat, colored people, new york, immediate emancipation, one hundred, great britain, free blacks, white man, colonization society, slavery society, free colored, south carolina, beecher stowe, every thing, indian slavery, human beings, slave states, hundred dollars, gradual emancipation, two years, mr thompson, five years, slave system, years ago, india sugar, well known, free labor, free people, three years, three hundred, many years, short time, two hundred, taken place, one day, southern states, free negroes, colored man, ten years, free states, negro slavery

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are: 1) Genius of universal emancipation v. 12 (1831-32), 2) An inquiry into the character and tendency of the American colonization, and American anti-slavery societies By William Jay , and 3) A voice to the United States of America, from the metropolis of Scotland : being an account of various meetings held in Edinburgh on the subject of American slavery, upon the return of Mr. George Thompson, from his mission to that country .

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the study carrel include:

slavery, slave, god, british west indies, emancipation, west indian slavery, united states, british, west indian produce, slavery society, negro, british government, west indies, west india, great britain, british slavery, west indian oppression, virginia, rev. mr., new orleans, negro slavery, jamaica, british colonies, africa, work equal, west indian slave labours, west indian influence, west indian enormities, west indian committee, west indian colonies, west indian barbarity, west indian, west india sugar, west india slavery.--and, west india planters, west india emancipation, west india colonies, west africa, west, useful work, unmitigated slavery, uncle tom, st. domingo, southern states, south carolina, slavery spirit, remarkable work, r k e, parliament, new york

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be slavery, and The West India question. Immediate emancipation would be safe for the masters;--profitable for the masters;--happy for the slaves;--right in the government;--advantageous to the nation;--would interfere with no feelings but such as are disgraceful and destructive;--cannot be postponed without continually increasing danger. An outline for immediate emancipation; and remarks on compensation By Charles Stuart is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

If your study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of the study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

slavery, slave, slaves, time, man, emancipation, people, men, years, day, country, work, system, negroes, master, state, children, part, freedom, law, power, cause, number, place, means, tion, subject, life, justice, land, way, island, planters, labor, others, liberty, property, year, sugar, population, persons, nothing, abolition, friends, house, estate, laws, condition, rights, right

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

is, be, was, are, have, were, had, been, has, do, made, said, let, being, did, see, make, take, found, having, go, give, say, done, taken, come, called, put, know, given, came, find, work, following, left, told, does, received, seen, become, took, went, brought, get, ing, think, heard, sent, known, believe

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in the study carrel.

Mr., ||, Society, States, West, |, God, United, New, India, c., St., England, Slavery, America, Jamaica, Rev., ., Indies, Africa, Antigua, John, York, Virginia, South, Government, Lord, C., State, B., H., Colonization, Justitia, Fiat, American, Emancipation, Ruat, Britain, Esq, AMERICAN, Canada, Mr, House, East, British, S., Carolina, Cælum, Anti, Dr.

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

it, their, they, we, i, he, his, them, our, its, my, him, her, us, me, you, she, themselves, your, himself, itself, ourselves, thy, myself, thee, one, herself, ex-, ye, yourself, theirs, ours, thyself, mine, o’er, 'em, yours, thither, be-, at-, thine, our-, hi-, em, as-, ther, hor-, him-, withal, unto

Below are words cloud of the study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is this study carrel positive or negative?"

other, free, such, own, great, many, more, same, good, few, little, first, present, colored, white, much, general, human, british, public, last, moral, whole, poor, several, old, large, christian, new, certain, best, immediate, true, better, negro, -, universal, common, necessary, high, able, long, pro-, indian, most, short, less, least, in-, small

not, so, now, more, as, most, very, then, only, up, well, out, even, never, still, also, ever, far, much, thus, here, too, there, soon, yet, about, long, once, however, therefore, away, down, again, generally, off, just, often, all, on, almost, already, no, indeed, first, less, re-, instead, always, longer, back

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

Thank you for using the Distant Reader.