George Ticknor and the Boston Brahmins (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS63 die institution to resistance to its extension. More people opposed die Kansas-Nebraska Act dian opposed die gag rule, but racism or jealousy of die Soudi's political power, not hostility to slavery, often engendered freesoil sentiment. Even dien, free-soilism and sectional forces alone cannot explain the politics of the 1850's or die defeat of northern Democratic congressmen. In many areas of die North nativism and anti-Catholicism as represented by the Know Nodiings contributed very heavily to die Democratic defeats. Indeed, die very fact diat sectional forces divided Congress for twenty-five years without producing war suggests diat we must look to otiier factors, in addition to real sectional differences, in order to explain die outbreak of die Civil War. Despite these reservations, diis is an important book which everyone interested in the coming of the Civil War should consult. Michael F. Holt Yale University George Ticknor and the Boston Brahmins. By David B. Tyack. (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1967. Pp. xiv, 289. $6.95.) David B. Tyack uses die life of George Ticknor (1791-1871) as a kind of emblem of Boston Brahmin conservatism. Arguing that Brahmmism originated in die Federalist, Calvinist-Unitarian conception of die Commonwealth as organic republic; drew life from the great family fortunes established in Boston in the eighteenth and nineteendi centuries; turned to Europe, especially England, for standards of social and literary decorum; and finally disintegrated under "die accelerating social changes in America" during die nineteenth century, Professor Tyack interprets Ticknor's life as a particular instance of diese general developments. After introducing Ticknor widi a chapter on his "formative years," Professor Tyack explores Brahmin attitudes towards Europe by following Ticknor to the continent and Gottingen University in 1815. When Ticknor returns to Boston in 1819 Professor Tyack analyzes Harvard as Brahmin breeding-ground—this because Ticknor himself taught there for fifteen years and played a leading role in the unsuccessful effort to raise Harvard's standards to diose of die German university. In 1835 Ticknor retires from Harvard and becomes die "autocrat of Nine Park Street," working desultorily on his History of Spanish Literature, dispensing oracular literary pronouncements, and ruling die cultural life of Boston with an iron hand. In diis section Professor Tyack probes die conservatives ' equation of literature, morality, and die organic state and explains why so many who, like Ticknor, did not have to earn a living were nevertheless driven to make tiiemselves useful by keeping die cultural and hence moral tone of the community high and hard. In his last chapter Professor Tyack uses Ticknor's defense of die Fugitive Slave Law, his idolization of political heroes like Washington and Daniel Webster, and his sympadiy widi southern dieories of race to suggest die bankruptcy of die 64CIVIL WAR HISTORY Brahmin ethos in face of die realities of American democracy confronting it in mid-century. So much for summary. Aldiough Professor Tyack succeeds in analyzing the general attitudes of die conservative Brahmin caste better, I think, than anyone thus far has, he fails to justify his central character, George Ticknor , who seems too often a literary device, not a rich and convincing personality . It is rather shocking, for instance, to have been asked to follow the life of a man diroughout a book only to find him dismissed with the following sang-froid: "On the twenty-sixth of January, 1871, at the age of seventy-nine, George Ticknor died as decorously as he had lived." Ticknor seems only occasionally to command Professor Tyack's respect, never his affection. The tactical problems faced by a writer who tries to combine particularistic biography with general history in a single book are knotty, and Professor Tyack has not fully solved them. Yet as a general history the book is excellent. Part of its success stems from Professor Tyack's skill at weaving quoted material from many of Ticknor's contemporaries and near-contemporaries into his own prose, thereby capitalizing, unobtrusively, on his deep and solid research. Part stems from his wit and grace as a writer: from first to last his prose is a pleasure to read. His sense for revealing anecdote is especially good, as when he...