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The US Novel and the War of 1812

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The US Novel and the War of 1812 The US Novel and the War of 1812 Ed White, University of Florida The relationship of a literary genre to a geopolitical military conflict is most easily and traditionally examined thematically, by considering the imaginative treatment of the event and Not only does such an approach relegate the text to a reactive position, as a kind of vantage-point for the event, but more critically it assumes that of course the genre has something to say, and can say something, about the event in question. There is a scandalous counter-possibility, however namely, that the literary genre does not different one. Such is the case with the US novel and the War of 1812. One can outline the parameters of the problem succinctly. From 1800 to 1820, US novel production holds more or less steady. There are a few years that see two or three more or less novels than usual, but throughout this period, about four or five novels appear per year. This holds for the war years as well 1813 may be a slower year, 1816 a heavier one, because of the war, but in general, the war changes nothing about the steadily meager publication of novels throughout the 1810s. We can contextualize this briefly by looking at the publication of stand-alone volumes of poetry. The first decade of the nineteenth century saw the publication of roughly 130 monographs,1 while the 1810s (1811-20) saw roughly 230. In this case, the war clearly inspired and provoked poetic production, with a jump from eleven volumes in 1810 to twenty-four in 1812, twenty-seven in 1 129 according to Wegelin; I have not included 1800, which saw 24 volumes (compared with 8 in 1801 or 12 in 1802, since the dramatic number appears to have resulted from Washington’s death. 1 1813, and nineteen in 1814. This is not surprising, since poetry of the moment was often occasional or to put this differently, imaginative occasional writing typically took a poetic form. But at issue here is also the stylistic complexity of the respective genres, a point we can illustrate through the most long- . I would venture here a quick defamiliarization of the first of the four stanzas: O say can you see by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? This consideration of the flag is perhaps notable for two literary maneuvers: first, the supple overlaying of the metonymic and the metaphorical, such that the flag is at once an obvious and of an actual flag after an actual battle); and second, the density of narrative time, such that the stanza can accommodate a micro- What this brief example confirms, I think, is a perhaps counter-intuitive point about prose and poetry for the 2 conventions of poetry were best suited to an engagement with historical events, whereas those of accommodate such an event. This point can be neatly illustrated through the one novel of the decade to attempt an The Champions of Freedom, which appeared in 1816 the ambitious subtitle or, The Mysterious Chief. A Romance of the Nineteenth Century, Founded on the War between the United States and Great Britain, was perhaps the longest novel to have yet appeared in the United States. Published a mere The Spy,2 Champions shows few of the conventions of the Scott- Cooper tradition Champions a fascinating read today. The novel follows the career of George Washington Willoughby, son of a revolutionary veteran, and whose introduction speaks to the narrative challenges faced by army who relocates to the frontier where he wishes for a son, only to receive a promise from the Mysterious Indian Chief of the subtitle, who prophesies the birth and glory of the son. -year appointee to the US Supreme Court, and deceased six years before Woodworth publishes his novel. These basic contours a fictional father linked to both Washington and a Native 2 ...and two years after Scott’s Waverly (1814). 3 American spirit, and a mother who is the daughter of an actual prominent public official may illustrate the challenges and temptations of the novelist of the war. Where Walter Scott crafted the neutral, mediocre observers as central figures, the tradition of the moralistic novel, patriotic partisanship, and the conservative formulation of historical verisimilitude exemplified in contemporary state histories3 resulted in this very different to blend fiction and history, and by the final third, its protagonist is typically receiving letters that read like newspaper reports,4 or carrying on conversations about the war in which subjectivity yields to reportage. first sprig of those laur ional historical narrative increasingly places on the novel, which reads more and more like a magazine, alternating between a romance subplot and large segments of text lifted from newspapers, including blow-by-blow accounts of battles and biographical sketches of prominent military figures. The challenges of the text may explain, as well, why the novel defers consideration of the war for the first third, which is devoted to an interesting subplot 3 See the overview in “History as Literature,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early American Literature, ed. Kevin J. Hayes (Oxford, 2008), 569-92. 4 A sample: “The following officers are spoken of as having signalized themselves on this brilliant occasion: lieutenants Brooks, Smith, Edwards, Turner, and Packet; midshipmen Forest, Lamb, Clarke, Claxton, and Swartwout; sailing master Taylor and Champlin; pursers M’Grath and Hambleton; and captain Brevoort, of the army, who acted as a volunteer, in the capacity of a marine officer, on board the Niagara, and did great execution with his rifle. Brooks, Lamb, and Clarke, are fallen, no more to rise. Hambleton, who volunteered his services on deck, was severely wounded, late in the action. Claxton and Swartwout are also badly wounded.” 4 ighbors. This subplot is perhaps the most fascinating of ideological reorientations undertaken by the novel, as Irish Catholics are sympathetically portrayed as US counterparts (both victimized by the British), and easily assimilable immigrants; yet the pressures of historical explication mean this subplot is largely could not envision the narrative blend just over the horizon. The Champions of Freedom with the war than the formal obstacles to such an engagement; in other words, it illustrates, as an exception, why the novel does not flourish with and through the war. To reformulate some of the implicit observations above, I would identify X primary challenges: 1. The historiographic imperative of reportage and documentation rendered difficult the gaps, distance The burden of narrative density (the demand for facts even to the point of statistical data) consequently undermined the ability to combine the different temporalities that one 2. The relatively conservative focus on the bourgeois character of high status rendered difficult both the ideological problematization of the war and the clear distinction of fictional and historiographic elements. The character had to be prominently imbricated in events, with the awkward consequence of an accidental fictionalization of historical personages. 5 3. The ideological demands of a war narrative (whether pro or con) sharply undercut the potential stylistic complexity of metaphorical and metonymic elements.5 Where poetry could take a basic patriotic relationship (citizen loves nation) and complicate it lyrically with temporal complications and expansive connotation, a partisan account within years of the war could not risk any potential ambiguities.6 Thus the scandalous proposition that the US novel, given its development, could not really register the War of 1812. But here I would like to return to and complicate the literary-historical problem with which I began. Is it possible that the relationship between the war and the novel is better considered in the reverse direction? That is, instead of asking how the novel registered or responded to the war, we might ask how the war registered the novel. More precisely: perhaps the development of the novel tells us something about the ideological possibilities for the war and how it was experienced an important project given our tendency to tell the story as one of political parties at odds. I would rather suggest here that the War experience illustrates the consolidation of Democratic-Republican hegemony during the Jefferson and Madison years. This achievement was hardly simple, and we may remember that the novel, with only a few exceptions, was the purview of northeastern Federalist writers largely united in their disdain for the Shays Rebellion, their enthusiasm for Washington and Adams, their endorsement of strict 5 It is not that the novel simply endorsed the war, for it traced events to offer a critique of US administrative culture: “To repair the misfortunes and redeem the honor of the American arms, was the grand object on which the congregated wisdom of the nation was now exercised; the first step to the attainment of this desirable end, was the abandonment of that system of favoritism to which the recent disasters were thought to be attributable.” But this brief note of critique is generally masked by the confident hegemony of this formulation of the novel’s title: “Brown, Scott, Ripley, Gaines, Swift, Miller, and some others of well-tried talents and courage, now stood forth as the bulwark of their country—the real CHAMPIONS OF FREEDOM. Each of them commanded the confidence of their country; but, as commander in chief, the eyes of every unprejudiced freeman were directed to Brown, and government confirmed their choice by elevating that hero to the rank of major-general.” 6 This may account for Cooper’s return, in 1821, to the American Revolution.
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