The Passing of Grandison

The story takes place in the United States in the early 1850s, at the time of anti-slavery sentiment and the abolitionist movement in the northern states, and after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. In Chesnutt's story, the aspect of racial passing is addressed on both a narrative and textual level in order to illustrate a "destabilization of constructs of race, identity, and finally of textuality itself".