Egyptian Darkness: Antebellum Reconstruction, "Republicanization," and Southern Illinois in the Republican Imagination, 1854–61

Abstract

Egyptian DarknessAntebellum Reconstruction, "Republicanization," and Southern Illinois in the Republican Imagination, 1854–61 Eric Michael Burke (bio) At 4:00 p.m. on June 23, 1861, the final northbound train of the day crawled out of the swampy confines of Cairo, Illinois, carrying London Times correspondent William Howard Russell away from the "cheerless, miserable place" in which he had sojourned over the previous four days. Four months had transpired since he first arrived in New York City to begin a grand tour of the now fractured United States. His journey had led southward through the urban centers of the Northeast, into the so-called Confederate States of America, and now carried him northward again through the fabled "North-west." Thus far, his return to the "Free States" had been less than impressive. Although his travels throughout the slave South had poignantly illustrated the severely detrimental effects of the peculiar institution on both black and white Americans, he had quite enjoyed partaking as a guest in the luxurious lifestyle of the elite slaveholding class. Now, finding himself crammed into an uncomfortable passenger car alongside scores of "wild-looking banditti" masquerading as soldiers and "a few unfortunate women, undergoing deportation to some less moral neighborhood," he began to wonder if the United States really was "the most enlightened nation in the world," as it so often claimed to be.1 Perhaps in an effort to avoid conversation, Russell peered out of his window into the "wild, flat sea of waving grass, dotted by patch-like Indian corn enclosures" that, together with spotty "forests of dead trees," comprised the southern Illinois landscape. The first station—Mound City—"a mere heap of earth" dotted with "a few log huts and hovels" seemed out of place resting alongside the internationally [End Page 167] renowned and still all but brand new Illinois Central Railroad. As if able to read his mind, the "jolly-looking, corpulent man" seated next to Russell explained at once how the character of the settlers that dwelled in such out-of-the-way places were acknowledged to be "awful warnings to the emigrants not to stick in the south part of Illinois." Further down the track, the larger stations at Jonesboro, Cobden, and Carbondale confirmed such notions. Surrounded by cornfields that "bore a peculiarly blighted and harassed look," none of the communities looked to be "very flourishing nor very civilized."2 Although, he admitted, it was slightly unfair to "judge the condition of a people from the windows of a railway carriage," he nevertheless did just that in his travel diary. "The external aspect of the settlements along the line, far superior to that of slave hamlets, does not equal my expectations," he noted. Beyond a telling volume of "drinking saloons" (four were visible from the tracks in Cobden alone), where Russell was sure "the highest citizen in the place" hobnobbed familiarly with "the worst rowdy in the place," there seemed little to distinguish "one of these civilising centres which the Americans assert to be the homes of the most cultivated and intelligent communities in the world." Taking the opportunity to poke fun at the shortcomings of democracy, he added that, "though they do carry a vote for each adult man, 'locations' here would not appear very enviable in the eyes of the most miserable Dorsetshire small farmer." Indeed, he added, there was "a level modicum of comfort, which may be consistent with the greatest good of the greatest number," as purported by proponents of republican government, "but which makes the standard of the highest in point of well-being very low indeed." As far as Russell could tell, noticing a wooden placard left over from the recent election, which read: "Vote for Lincoln and Hamlin, for Union and Freedom" and was defaced with "bitter words" and "offensive additions," the degeneracy visible from his car window was proof of just that.3 Receiving equal amounts of attention and opprobrium from American readers upon its US publication in 1863, the anti-republican rhetoric and critical outlook on democratic government expressed in Russell's My Diary North and South rankled a still nascent American nationalism made all the more sensitive after two years...