View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Carolina Digital Repository WRITING THE REVOLUTION: RADICALISM AND THE U.S. HISTORICAL ROMANCE, 1835-1860 Timothy Jecmen A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English. Chapel Hill 2007 Approved by Advisor: Philip Gura Reader: Robert Cantwell Reader: Joy Kasson Reader Timothy Marr Reader: Jane Thrailkill ABSTRACT Timothy Jecmen Writing the Revolution: Radicalism and the U.S. Historical Romance, 1835-1860 (Under the direction of Philip Gura) This dissertation examines popular fictions that employed the history and iconography of the American Revolution to promote radical reform movements in the antebellum United States. The project challenges common critical assumptions that historical fictions—and particularly those drawing upon Revolutionary history—are inherently nostalgic and capable of conveying only a limited range of political meanings. Rather than conservative efforts to preserve Revolutionary history, many works of this type were extensions of their authors’ progressive reform efforts. These historical fictions sought to recruit readers to the cause of completing the democratizing work of the Revolution in order to ensure that the people maintained control over their own institutions. The project considers works by authors who circulated among groups and parties that contributed to the democratic tumult of the antebellum period, including Catharine Maria Sedgwick, George Lippard, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. As members—either centrally or peripherally—of opposition political parties, unions, and reform groups, these authors spoke on behalf of, or were received as engaging with, campaigns for labor reform, socialism, and abolitionism. Situating these texts within contemporary radical reform movements reveals that they explicitly endorsed policies such ii as labor reform, socialism, or abolitionism. Even texts by supposedly moderate writers provoked enthusiastic responses from radicals—and chagrin or outrage from conservatives. Reading these texts in light of the controversies and contestations that permeated antebellum culture enables us to recover their radical potential. By re-imagining the past, authors infused their version of Revolutionary history with their own political concerns. This project uncovers within this supposedly conservative genre calls for pension reform for veterans, democratized suffrage, debt relief measures, the formation of unions and socialist cooperatives, and the abolition of slavery. It concludes by examining the dissolution or breakdown of the genre as America neared Civil War and it became increasingly evident that violence, rather than print culture, would be necessary to resolve the nation’s divisions. iii To Mary and Al Eska iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the University of North Carolina English department, which provided a tuition fellowship and travel support. I am indebted to the University of North Carolina libraries, particularly the Interlibrary Services and Rare Books Departments. At Southwestern University I received great assistance from the staff of the A. Frank Smith, Jr. Library Center, particularly the interlibrary loan services staff. I am also indebted to the libraries of Duke University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the American Antiquarian Society. I could not have completed this study without the generous guidance and support of my dissertation committee. I hope to live up to their example of inspired scholarship and devoted teaching. Timothy Marr and Jane Thrailkill showed great enthusiasm for the project, and prodded me to explore new and exciting material. Robert Cantwell’s course on Jane Addams provided a model for socially conscious scholarship, and I have benefited greatly from his encouragement and ideas. Joy Kasson’s mentorship as a scholar and instructor has been invaluable. I must offer particular thanks to Philip Gura, whose commitment to his students and belief in the project—as well as my ability to see it through—has brought me through many difficulties. Among the faculty at the University of North Carolina I appreciate the guidance of Gregory Flaxman, whose skill in the classroom I greatly admire, and John Sweet, who let me masquerade as a historian for a semester and who taught me much about my own discipline. v I am particularly grateful to Jennifer Ho for her personal and professional support, as well as her friendship. Among my colleagues at the University of North Carolina, past and present, I am thankful for the friendship and support of Jennifer Connerley, Michael Everton, Laura Mielke, Tara Robbins, Bryan Sinche, Maura Damore, Kara Rempe, Amy McGuff, Daniel Lupton, Kelly Ross, Anne Bruder, Jennifer Larson, Jonathan Damore, and Andrew Leiter. Kurt Spurlock has been the best officemate and friend I could have wished for. I am ever grateful to Dr. Brennan O’Donnell for steering me through the early stages of my academic career. My determination to become a scholar began in his classroom, and grew as a result of his gentle guidance and bountiful praise. Great personal thanks are due to my father- and mother-in-law, Tom and Peggy Stockton, for their constant encouragement in life and at the bridge table. I am humbled by the generous support and quiet encouragement of my parents, Reid and Tricia Jecmen. I hope to always make them proud. I dedicate this disseration to my grandparents, Mary and Al Eska, for their love and assistance. Most of all I am thankful for the loving support of my wife and colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Stockton, who has introduced me to new ideas, experiences, places, and a happiness without equal. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page One Introduction 1 Two Race, Revolution, and Artisan Republicanism in Catharine Sedgwick’s The Linwoods ………….………………………………..… 19 Three “History is not for such as you”: George Lippard’s Socialist Revolution………….………………………………………………….. 51 Four Tearing Down the Self-Made Man: Reversals of Fortune in Herman Melville’s Israel Potter ...……………………………………... 107 Five “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”: Citizenship and the Right of Revolution in William Cooper Nell’s The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution and Frederick Douglass’s “The Heroic Slave”………………………………………………..…... 162 Six “We are the ones all sides are willing to give up”: False Republicans and Black Revolutionaries in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred ………………………………………………………..…. 212 Conclusion 256 Works Cited 269 vii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION On the morning of July 4, 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette boarded a ferry in lower Manhattan and crossed the East River to Brooklyn. Manhattan had been seized with a spirit of celebration. A midnight cannonade signaled the start of the fiftieth anniversary of independence, and, upon leaving his lodgings shortly after eight o’clock, Lafayette’s secretary, Auguste Lavasseur, noted that “the streets, the public places, and the entrances to the churches, were thronged with people and the air resounded with thanksgiving” (2:217). In Brooklyn, “the weather was very fine,” a resident later recalled. “All the school and Sunday school children of Brooklyn were congregated at the lower end of Fulton Street, and marshaled into two lines, facing inward, with a wide space between them” (Whitman “Apprentices” 122). In this fashion they awaited the General’s landing. Earlier that morning, “the officers and magistrates of New York and of Brooklyn, [had] presented themselves at the General’s lodgings, with a numerous procession of citizens,” and made the following appeal: “We wish,” said they, “that this day of glorious memory may be every year marked by some deed which may have for its object the confirmation of the liberty we owe to the courage of our fathers, and the institutions we owe to their wisdom. We are this day to lay the foundations of an institution that will contribute to this end, as it aids in propagating knowledge among that class of young persons who, by the labour of their hands, contribute so powerfully to the prosperity of our country. A library for the use of artisans is about to be erected in Brooklyn heights, at the expense of funds contributed by our citizens. Let Lafayette lay the cornerstone, and the establishment will be in every particular worthy of its destination.” (2:240). With Lafayette’s consent, the company moved on to Brooklyn, where, “in the presence of a great concourse of citizens,” the General laid the cornerstone. After the ceremony, he returned to Manhattan, “followed by companies of journeymen tailors, shoemakers, bakers, stone-masons, cutlers, coopers, [and] riggers…preceded by their banners….” (2:217). In the early 1860s a writer for the Brooklyn Standard recounted the history of the mechanics’ library in a column on “Brooklyniana.” The paper’s correspondent had been, at the time of Lafayette’s visit, “a lad in his seventh year, [and] remembers the occasion perfectly well, having been present at it” (Whitman “Apprentices” 121-22). According to the account in the Standard , the dedication ceremony was a decentralized and decidedly democratic affair. Though Lafayette led the procession from the ferry stop up to the site at the corner of Henry and Cranberry streets and took his place “in the center of a group of veterans and some of the functionaries of Brooklyn,” the beginning of the ceremony “awaited the arrival, and getting in order, of the children and the rest of the procession” (123). The logistics of the construction site posed certain challenges; “the heaps of stone and earth around,” coupled with the General’s passing down into the excavation to lay the stone upon the foundation, made providing the children with an adequate view a difficult task. Eventually several men took it upon themselves “to lift the smaller fry down the banks of the cellar, and place them in safe positions, etc., so that they might have a fair share in the view and hearing of the exercises” (123).