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Copyright by Anna Rebecca Stewart 2012 The Dissertation Committee for Anna Rebecca Stewart certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Beyond Obsolescence: The Reconstruction of Abolitionist Texts Committee: Coleman Hutchison, Co-Supervisor Michael Winship, Co-Supervisor Evan Carton Gretchen Murphy Jacqueline Jones Beyond Obsolescence: The Reconstruction of Abolitionist Texts by Anna Rebecca Stewart, 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 2012 Dedication For Sam, with love and gratitude. Acknowledgements As an avid reader of acknowledgements sections, I am always curious about the conversations that sparked and enlivened projects as well as the relationships that sustained their writers. As I turn to write my own for this dissertation project, I realize just how impossible it is to sum up those intellectual and personal debts—the many kindnesses, questions, and encouragements that have helped me navigate this dissertation process and my own development as a thinker and writer. Coleman Hutchison and Michael Winship have been staunch supporters and careful readers, modeling the kind of mentor-teacher-scholars that we all aspire to be but can often only hope to become through the gift of such examples. Early in my graduate school career, Michael taught me a valuable lesson about not committing to projects, even short semester papers, that did not capture my imagination and interest. Our conversations kept me engaged and deep in the archive, where my project first began to take shape and where I found my footing as a researcher. I remain grateful for this and for Michael’s continued generosity as a scholar and person. I had the good fortune to begin working with Cole almost as soon as he arrived on the Austin campus, and he has been instrumental in pushing me to think both broadly and deeply about the shape of my inquiry, seeing possibility in the embryonic stages of the project and raising questions that still continue to challenge me toward a more robust engagement with a variety of texts. Cole’s intellectual curiosity and genuine thoughtfulness have heartened and inspired me more than he knows, and I feel lucky to consider him a mentor and friend. At the University of Texas, I have benefitted from a lively academic community of scholars and teachers. Committee members Evan Carton, Gretchen Murphy, and v Jacqueline Jones have offered much-appreciated encouragement and incisive commentary at various stages of this project. Phillip Barrish, Martin Kevorkian, and Carol MacKay responded to earlier iterations of this work, and Wayne Lesser—in addition to providing feedback on some of my preliminary arguments and their framing—has been a graduate advisor and general advocate extraordinaire for those of us in the English department. Indeed, Wayne Lesser and Elizabeth Cullingford have ensured that this department sustains and champions the intellectual and pedagogical engagements so crucial to vibrant academic communities. I am grateful for the crucial support provided by an Andrew W. Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Completion Fellowship as well as a Continuing Fellowship from UT’s Office of Graduate Studies. The Library Company of Philadelphia and the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, Massachusetts, furnished short-term research fellowships that allowed me to examine key archival collections for this project. Along the way, curators and librarians in Philadelphia, Worcester, and at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas kindly shared their considerable expertise and suggested avenues for further inquiry. On a personal level, my debts and acknowledgements run deeper still. My parents instilled in me an abiding love of books, and more particularly books about history and literature. (I still cringe a bit when I remember lugging, as a ten year-old, a massive history of Virginia to the beach after a friend invited me on her family’s vacation.) Beyond an affection for heavy tomes, Mom, Dad, and my sister Ellen have been steadfast and unstinting in their encouragement as I pursued this long, strange process—perhaps most clearly evidenced by my mother’s game decision to attend a Modern Language Association conference so that she could hear me deliver a paper. More recently, I have had the added blessing of marrying into another large, warm family vi whose appreciation for books, ideas, and conversations has gladdened a pursuit that can be difficult to understand outside of the academy’s walls. And finally there’s Sam, to whom I owe so much that my heart is full even as I write this. Sam has read every word and heard every argument laid out in the pages that follow, and I am immensely grateful for his perspective and keen commentary, a testament to the thoughtful engagement and generous spirit that define his own work and writing—and indeed, his life more broadly. More than this, I am grateful for the gift of a journey made lighter and infinitely more interesting by its being shared with him. Thank you, Sam, for everything, and especially for the daily reminders of a life abundant in its many gifts. vii Beyond Obsolescence: The Reconstruction of Abolitionist Texts Anna Rebecca Stewart, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 Supervisors: Coleman Hutchison and Michael Winship Antebellum abolitionist writing has long been revered by cultural historians and literary scholars for its social and political role in bringing about the end of slavery in the United States. But what happened to abolitionist texts, which originally urged a pointed and timely social agenda, after emancipation? Most critical conversations around major abolitionist texts focus on their original publications. This study, however, demonstrates the significance of the republication, adaptation, and reception of those texts years later, well after slavery had been abolished but when the many legacies of slavery still defined a rapidly evolving political culture. Drawing on archival research and the methodological tools of book history, “Beyond Obsolescence” traces and analyzes texts that were revised, adapted, and republished during Reconstruction (1863 to 1877)—a time during which linguistic and narrative revisions both reflected and helped to produce the dramatic shifts occurring across the social landscape of the United States. The dissertation investigates a series of case studies that propose a way to read such textual revision in relationship to the shifting political culture of Reconstruction and the changing identities of African Americans within that political culture. Through a consideration of the writings and revised texts of Harriet Jacobs, Lydia Maria Child, William Wells Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and George Aiken, the project viii demonstrates how writers, editors, and playwrights reshaped their work in response to the demands of their audiences as well as public debates about the meaning of slavery, emancipation, and Constitutional change. These dynamic texts would keep alive a rich tradition of abolitionism even as they underwent revisions to meet the exigencies of a postbellum environment. Ultimately, “Beyond Obsolescence” provides a novel account of some of the most familiar anti-slavery texts and brings to light a crucial but overlooked history of US abolitionist literature. ix Table of Contents Uncertain Afterlives: Abolitionism and Its Literature in the Wake of the Civil War ...................................................................................1 The Fate of Abolitionist Literature in 1865 ..................................................15 Materials and Method ...................................................................................28 Chapter Summaries .......................................................................................36 Lives Reconstructed: Slave Narratives in The Freedmen’s Book ..........................40 Incidents in the Life of The Freedmen’s Book..............................................43 The Good Grandmother; or, Harriet Jacobs circa 1865 ................................64 Linda’s Disappearance and Genres of Postbellum Literature .......................80 Reconsidering Child’s Revisions ..................................................................86 “Passing Into History”: Clotel’s Revisions and an Uncertain Black Future ........104 Black Readers in Flux: Miralda, the Weekly Anglo-African, and Haitian Emigration ...............................................................................111 “I Love My Country Still”: Endorsing the Union with the 1864 Clotelle .................................................................................136 “Incidents which have passed into history”: The 1867 Clotelle and Emancipation’s Legacy ..........................................152 “Poor Tom Still a Slave": Uncle Tom’s Cabin Under Reconstruction ................168 The Development of the Aiken-Howard Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the 1850s .................................................................178 Uncle Tom’s Cabin during Radical Reconstruction ...................................193 “Adapted to the Sentiment of the Times”: Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the End of Reconstruction ......................................219 Coda: The End?....................................................................................................233