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Ethics and Economics in American Northern Literature, 1837-1900

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Ethics and Economics in American Northern Literature, 1837-1900 University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2016 Moral Margins: Ethics and Economics in American Northern Literature, 1837-1900 John Adam Stromski University of Tennessee, Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Stromski, John Adam, "Moral Margins: Ethics and Economics in American Northern Literature, 1837-1900. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2016. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/3878 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by John Adam Stromski entitled "Moral Margins: Ethics and Economics in American Northern Literature, 1837-1900." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Dawn D. Coleman, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Katy Chiles, Martin Griffin, Chris Magra Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Moral Margins: Ethics and Economics in American Northern Literature, 1837-1900 A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville John Adam Stromski August 2016 Copyright © 2016 by John Stromski. All rights reserved. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have accumulated many debts throughout my life that have collectively cumulated in this moment. Some of my earliest memories are of my parents reading, yet for as much as the three of us have continued the habit, I believe there are only be a handful of books we share having read. Laurie Saulys, Patricia Melei, and Sean Clark were three teachers during my primary and secondary education whose interest and investment in my work continues to influence so much of my relationship to the field: how I read, write, and teach. During my undergraduate and graduate years, the support and guidance of Christopher Hanlon and Dawn Coleman have made me a better researcher and writer than I ever thought possible; under their mentorship the road was not always easy, but that vastly enriched the finish. I have also greatly benefited from conversations with Katy Chiles, Martin Griffin, and Tom Haddox, each of whom has had foundational influences upon the shape of this project. Kim Hunter-Perkins and Katie Burnett are two colleagues, friends, and Skype-buddies who have looked at and discussed countless drafts of this project; they have made my work and graduate school much easier and enjoyable. I cannot begin to imagine how different life would be without the presence of Hannah Ledford, who has been my staunchest supporter in every way. Just as my research focuses on the unconscious and invisible influences of institutions over people, so has Hannah influenced my life in countless ways; though I may not always be able to describe, pinpoint, or uncover those ways, I know they have all been for the better. iii ABSTRACT “Moral Margins: Slavery and Capitalism in American Northern Literature, 1837-1900,” focuses on the intersections of slavery, capitalism, and literature, building on recent historical scholarship on the myriad ways slavery impacted the growth of American capitalism. Nowhere is this relationship more prominent than in the nineteenth century, when slavery experienced its highest levels of economic and political influence. Scholars of capitalism and American slavery have tended to focus on the South, the obvious locus of slavery, but little attention is paid to the North, where this relationship is more veiled. I argue that Northern literature shows the ethical complexities of slavery-based capitalism, affecting issues from the spread of industrialization to the rhetoric of wage labor. This is especially prominent within literature written by laborers, such as The Lowell Offering, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and Life in the Iron Mills, as well as texts written by advocates for Northern workers such as Rebecca Harding Davis, Martin Delany, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Through readings of abolitionist and labor literature, my project shows how slavery and capitalism mutually influenced the ways that all Americans, no matter how distant they believed themselves to be from slaveholding plantations, re-conceived notions of ethics and identity through their market interactions. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER I- The Elysian Market: Northern Capitalism and the Moral Rhetoric of Silk ........... 18 The Character of New England ................................................................................................ 23 The Northampton Association and the Profits of Utopia ......................................................... 27 Fruitlands and the Morus Multicaulis ...................................................................................... 31 The New Northern Agrarianism................................................................................................ 35 Sectionalist Silk ......................................................................................................................... 42 Silk’s Secret Amelioration......................................................................................................... 49 CHAPTER II-The Picturesque Manufactory: The Aesthetics of Non-Slave Labor ..................... 53 Creating the Industrial Picturesque.......................................................................................... 59 Industrial Paternalism .............................................................................................................. 64 Controlling the Middle Ground ................................................................................................ 72 The Picturesque Manufactory ................................................................................................... 77 The Cost of a Unified Landscape .............................................................................................. 84 No Room in Frame for Blame ................................................................................................... 90 CHAPTER III- Fugitive Goods: Black Northerners and the Rhetoric of (Un)Free Labor ........... 93 The Self-Absconding Commodity ............................................................................................ 100 Valuable Things ...................................................................................................................... 112 Trade Value ............................................................................................................................. 121 Inherent Properties ................................................................................................................. 131 CHAPTER IV- Labor in Slavery’s Shadow: Race, Disability, and Post-Slavery Ethics ........... 136 Unsanctioned Benevolence ..................................................................................................... 142 v Deviant Labor ......................................................................................................................... 148 Institutional Benevolence ........................................................................................................ 162 Free Market Benevolence ....................................................................................................... 168 CODA- Moral Determinism: The Unethical Jungle ................................................................... 172 WORKS CITED ......................................................................................................................... 179 APPENDIX ................................................................................................................................. 200 Appendix 1 – Illustrations ....................................................................................................... 201 Appendix 2 – Lydia Maria Child, “The Spider, Caterpillar, and Silk-Worm.” ...................... 215 Appendix 3 – Sarah Josepha Hale, “The Silk-Worm” ............................................................ 216 VITA ........................................................................................................................................... 217 vi LIST OF FIGURES Fig 1.1. The Northampton Association’s Silk Mill..................................................................... 201 Fig. 1.2. Frontispiece to Bronson Alcott’s Fruitlands, by Clara Endicott Sears......................... 202 Fig. 2.1 –David Hunter Strother. Illustration. Swallow Barn. By John Pendleton Kennedy. ..... 203 Fig. 2.2 – Title page of the Lowell Offering, December, 1845................................................... 204 Fig. 2.3 – Boarding-House Regulations of the Middlesex
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