Political Antislavery Discourse and American Literature of the 1850s

David Grant

Appalled and paralyzed. Abandoned and betrayed. Cowed and bowed. Thus did Frederick Douglass describe the North in the wake of the compromise measures of 1850 that seemed to enshrine concessions to slavery permanently into the American political system. This study discovers in a feature of political anti-slavery discourse—the condemnation of an enfeebled North—the key to a wide variety of literary works of the 1850s. Both the political discourse and the literature set out to expose the self-chosen degradation of compromise as a threat at once to the personal foundation of each individual Northerner and to the survival of the people as an actor in history. The book fills a gap in literary criticism of the period, which has primarily focused on abolitionist discourse when relating anti-slavery thought to the literature of the decade. Though it owed a debt to the abolitionists, political anti-slavery discourse took on the more focused mission of offering a challenge to the people. Would the North submit to the version of self-discipline demanded by the Slave Power’s Northern minions, or would it tap the energy of the nation’s founding until it embodied defiance in its very constitution? Would the North remain a type for the future slave empire it could not prevent, or would it prophesy national freedom in the simple recovery of its own agency? Literary works in both poetry and prose were well suited to making this political challenge bear its full weight on the nation—fleshing out the critique through narrative crises that brought home the personal stake each Northerner held in what George Julian called an exodus from the bondage of compromise. By the end of 1860 this exodus had been completed, and that accomplishment owed much to the massive ten year cultural project to expose the slavery-accommodating definition of nationality as a threat to the republican selfhood of each Northerner. Stowe, Whittier, Willis, and Whitman, among others, devoted their literary works to this project.

University Press Copublishing Division / University of Delaware Press

Pages: 236 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-61149-383-2 • Hardback • March 2012 • $113.00 • (£87.00)

978-1-61149-502-7 • Paperback • March 2014 • $57.99 • (£45.00)

978-1-61149-384-9 • eBook • March 2012 • $55.00 • (£42.00)

Subjects: History / United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877), History / United States / 19th Century, Literary Criticism / American / General, Social Science / Slavery

Political Antislavery Discourse and American Literature of the 1850s

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Appalled and paralyzed. Abandoned and betrayed. Cowed and bowed. Thus did Frederick Douglass describe the North in the wake of the compromise measures of 1850 that seemed to enshrine concessions to slavery permanently into the American political system. This study discovers in a feature of political anti-slavery discourse—the condemnation of an enfeebled North—the key to a wide variety of literary works of the 1850s. Both the political discourse and the literature set out to expose the self-chosen degradation of compromise as a threat at once to the personal foundation of each individual Northerner and to the survival of the people as an actor in history. The book fills a gap in literary criticism of the period, which has primarily focused on abolitionist discourse when relating anti-slavery thought to the literature of the decade. Though it owed a debt to the abolitionists, political anti-slavery discourse took on the more focused mission of offering a challenge to the people. Would the North submit to the version of self-discipline demanded by the Slave Power’s Northern minions, or would it tap the energy of the nation’s founding until it embodied defiance in its very constitution? Would the North remain a type for the future slave empire it could not prevent, or would it prophesy national freedom in the simple recovery of its own agency? Literary works in both poetry and prose were well suited to making this political challenge bear its full weight on the nation—fleshing out the critique through narrative crises that brought home the personal stake each Northerner held in what George Julian called an exodus from the bondage of compromise. By the end of 1860 this exodus had been completed, and that accomplishment owed much to the massive ten year cultural project to expose the slavery-accommodating definition of nationality as a threat to the republican selfhood of each Northerner. Stowe, Whittier, Willis, and Whitman, among others, devoted their literary works to this project.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / University of Delaware Press

Pages: 236 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-61149-383-2 • Hardback • March 2012 • $113.00 • (£87.00)

978-1-61149-502-7 • Paperback • March 2014 • $57.99 • (£45.00)

978-1-61149-384-9 • eBook • March 2012 • $55.00 • (£42.00)

Subjects: History / United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877), History / United States / 19th Century, Literary Criticism / American / General, Social Science / Slavery

Author

David Grant is a faculty member in the Department of English at Grant MacEwan University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: American Literature and the Political Anti-Slavery Call for Northern Agency
Section 1: The Slave Power and the Responsibilities of the North
Chapter 2: Stowe’s Dred and the Narrative Logic of Slavery’s Extension
Chapter 3: Sovereignty and the Politics of Analogy in Whittier’s “The Panorama”
Section 2: History and the Weakness of the North
Chapter 4: Self-Abasement and Republican Insecurity: Willis’s Paul Fane in Its Political Context
Chapter 5: Ophelia and the Economy of Passion in Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Section 3: Republicanism and the Power of the North
Chapter 6: “Our Nation’s Hope is She”: The Cult of Jessie Fremont in the Republican Campaign Poetry of 1856
Chapter 7: “Fall Behind Me, States!”: Re-examining the Politics of Union in Leaves of Grass

Political Antislavery Discourse and American Literature of the 1850s

David Grant

Political Antislavery Discourse and American Literature of the 1850s

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