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COLEMAN-DISSERTATION-2016.Pdf Copyright by Megan Catherine Coleman 2016 The Dissertation Committee for Megan Catherine Coleman certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Revolutionary Representations in Antebellum Periodicals Committee: Martin Kevorkian, Supervisor Wayne Lesser Michael Winship Matthew Cohen Robert Abzug Revolutionary Representations in Antebellum Periodicals by Megan Catherine Coleman, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2016 Revolutionary Representations in Antebellum Periodicals Megan Catherine Coleman, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 Supervisor: Martin Kevorkian “Revolutionary Representations in Antebellum Periodicals” examines invocations of the American Revolutionary War in novels serialized during the mid-nineteenth century. E.D.E.N. Southworth, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Gilmore Simms, and Herman Melville depicted this foundational conflict and its ideological legacies in periodicals ranging from the antislavery National Era to the sectionalist Southern Literary Gazette, “quality” literary magazines including Putnam’s and the Atlantic Monthly, and the popular women’s and family magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book. The first two chapters consider novels that address the legacy of the American Revolution in the antebellum South. Southworth and Stowe portray voluntary manumission as a means for forestalling national dissolution or insurrection in inter- sectional novels published in the National Era. William Gilmore Simms counters their approaches in historical romances that dismiss the imperative of universal emancipation in favor of an assertion of independence from incursive imperial and, subsequently, federal forces. The latter two chapters examine how Melville and Stowe reconciled the narrative aesthetics and demands of biography and romance while complicating the cultural legacies of the Revolution in fictionalized historical biographies of a northern soldier and minister. iv Table of Contents Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Intersectional Sentiments in E.D.E.N. Southworth’s Retribution and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin .................................................8 E.D.E.N. Southworth’s Retribution ................................................................9 Revolutionary Descent .........................................................................15 Moral Retribution.................................................................................20 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin ...............................................27 Civil Disobedience and Higher Law ....................................................29 St. Clares and Sinclairs ........................................................................31 Liberation and Emigration ...................................................................37 Divine Retribution ...............................................................................43 “Dear Little Children”..........................................................................45 Chapter Two: Incursion and Independence in William Gilmore Simms’s Revolutionary Romances ..............................................................................49 Civil Conflict ................................................................................................50 Tories and Scovilites ............................................................................54 Rebels and Regulators..........................................................................60 Partisan Warfare..........................................................................63 Imperial and Federal Incursion .....................................................................67 The Issue of Slavery......................................................................................77 Revolution versus Rebellion .........................................................................85 Chapter Three: Israel Potter and Herman Melville’s Revolutionary Misrepresentations ........................................................................................89 The Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter .............................91 The Sage and the Shuttlecock ..............................................................97 Melville’s Historical Liberties ....................................................................101 Ethan “Ticonderoga” Allen ................................................................103 Exile. ..................................................................................................105 v The Soldier of Fortune .......................................................................110 The Refugee .................................................................................................114 Chapter Four: Romantic Liberalism in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s The Minister’s Wooing ........................................................................................................118 “Perfect” Logics of Life: Samuel Hopkins and Aaron Burr .......................123 Disinterested Benevolence and Slavery .............................................126 The Sermon against Slavery .....................................................131 The Statesman ....................................................................................136 Fate and Providence ....................................................................................140 Inclination and Obligation ..........................................................................145 Providential Liberalism ...............................................................................153 Bibliography ........................................................................................................155 vi Introduction Frank Luther Mott identified the year 1850 as the “beginning of a new era” in American periodical print culture that was heralded by domestic literary periodicals of “a finer and sounder quality than had been known before.”1 The establishment of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in June 1850 was “doubtless the most definitely epochal happening of these years.” The editors of Harper’s sought to “place within the reach of the great mass of the American people the unbounded treasures of the Periodical Literature of the present day” and published a mixture of domestic and foreign content.2 Putnam’s Monthly Magazine followed in January 1853 and was dedicated to the development of a national literature.3 These new “quality” monthlies inspired a trend toward literary publication and serialization in other American periodicals issued at quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily intervals. Editors sought to increase the interest and prestige of their publications and stimulate (re)subscriptions and single-issue sales by featuring literary contributors and many American authors published short stories and serialized longer fiction in order to reach broader audiences. All of the novels examined in “Revolutionary Representations” were originally serialized but have since been primarily discussed critically and historically as volume texts. Michael Lund has observed that the “discrete dates, names, and titles” associated 1 Mott, A History of Magazines, 1850-1865, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1938) 3. 2 “A Word at the Start,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine June 1850:1. 3 See Mott 2:172. Also see Michael Lund, America’s Continuing Story: An Introduction to Serial Fiction, 1850-1900 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993) 46-50; Sheila Post-Lauria, “Magazine Practices and Melville’s Israel Potter,” in Periodical Literature in Nineteenth Century America, eds. Kenneth Price and Susan Belasco-Smith (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995) 127. 1 with authoritative editions of nineteenth-century novels “mask much of the actual experience” of their composition, original publication, and early reception” – elements emphasized throughout the readings in this project.4 Considering the original versions of texts mediated by the context of the periodicals in which they were published raises issues of editorial influence, publication requirements and restrictions, and the political and religious orientations of authors, editors, and publications. In addition to these conditions of composition, serialized texts go hand in hand with social reading practices. Publication schedules modulated releases and enforced interruptions, situating all readers and reviewers “at the same place in the same text at the same moment” – simultaneity which gave rise to a “sense of community” and a “social experience” of reading.5 Although individual issues were more affordable than bound books, customary distinctions between high “literary” and low “popular” culture were not necessarily blurred or effaced in periodical print culture.6 These distinctions were applied to publications and continued to be associated with specific authors. Mott identified Harper’s, Putnam’s, and the Atlantic Monthly (founded in 1857) as “quality” monthlies and Lund observes that publications issued at extended intervals – monthly or quarterly versus daily or weekly – were typically considered more prestigious. “Revolutionary Representations” considers serials in a wide variety of publications.
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