In his first eleven years, Herman Melville lived in an environment in which slavery was being gradually legislated out of existence, its shadow receding across New York State. Despite the movement to abolish slavery, however, denials of freedom less severe but no less real were much in evidence. There was, for that matter, little indication that racial equality was being considered by northern whites, most of whom did not oppose southern slavery.

Melville was born in August 1819, a time when slave music and dance enjoyed brilliantly ironic expression in public and private, North as well as South. In New York City and across the state, slaves were observed dancing and making music on street corners and in marketplaces, as if preparing for the Pinkster Festival that, once a year in May for several days and at times in multiple locations, engaged the attention of white spectators. As in expressions of black culture in America generally, participants in festivals revealed but a portion of their art because it was dangerous to communicate clear signs of African spirituality.