“I dreamt that the world was on fire”: Boston King’s Memoirs , Visionary Discourse, and Colonial Salvation

Memoirs of Boston King, a Black Preacher appeared in serial form in The Methodist Magazine between March and June 1798. King escaped slavery in South Carolina, joined the British army to fight in the Revolutionary War, eventually resettled in Nova Scotia, and emigrated to Sierra Leone. This essay argues that readings of King’s Memoirs solely as a historical document are inadequate. The essay first summarizes King’s biography and contextualizes it within early Methodist history; a second section reads epiphanic visionary moments in King’s narrative; and a third section considers how colonial and white supremacist thought in the early Methodist church employed King’s narrative as a conversionary instrument.