Liberal Visions of Reconstruction: Lydia Maria Child's A Romance of the Republic and George Washington Cable's The Grandissimes

Abstract

You ought ... make some other arrangement, or presently you, too, will be ... under shadow of Ethiopian. --The Grandissimes When Lee surrendered Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 8, 1865, what has since been labeled first modern had come a sobering conclusion. At a cost much higher than expected by either of warring parties, some old and tenacious issues were finally resolved. As historian David Potter puts it, was dead, secession was dead, and six hundred thousand men were dead. (1) Yet, despite Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, ratification of Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, and Supreme Court's subsequent affirmation of indestructible Union, what would prove be most volatile issue gripping postwar America had been left unresolved. (2) Observed Philadelphia lawyer Sidney George Fisher in 1866: It seems our fate never get rid of question. No sooner have we abolished slavery than a party, which seems [to] be growing in power, proposes suffrage, so that problem--What shall we do with Negro--seems as far from being settled as ever. (3) While Lincoln's inaugural admonition to do all which may achieve and cherish a and lasting among ourselves seemed have been embraced almost universally, profound disagreement prevailed as precise nature of this just peace and practical means by which nationalization could or should be accomplished. Where white supremacists such as Thomas Nelson Page contended that disfranchisement of Negro was permanent good of both radical black activists such as Frederick Douglass demanded inclusion of the in body politic, warning that if black men have no rights in eyes of white men, of course whites cannot have any in eyes of blacks. The result is a war of races, and annihilation of all proper human relations. (4) Amidst this polarized debate between old-school white supremacists and newly energized black activists, white authors writing in Anglo-American humanist tradition, with its deep roots in abolitionist movement, found themselves in an uneasy double bind. On one hand, they clearly recognized legitimacy of demands for unrestricted racial equality and a truly egalitarian society. On other hand, however, they also perceived necessity of asserting undiminished moral and political leadership of their own liberal white middle class. Tarnished by dehumanizing experience of slavery, humanism, apply Georg Lukacs' analysis, had reaffirm itself as both source and standard bearer of social progress. (5) Prior Civil War, bourgeois liberals had habitually professed social progressiveness through their embrace of more or less radical abolitionist tenets and a firm commitment free market economy, which was said reveal a fundamental harmony of interests across class and race lines. Of course, in light of growing labor unrest in industrialized North, such outspoken agitation against chattel slavery and ringing endorsements of free market were hardly void of self-interest. As David Brion Davis has shown within British context, liberal denunciations of slavery opened new sources of moral prestige for dominant social class, helped define a participatory role for middle class activism, and looked forward universal goal of compliant, loyal, and self-disciplined workers. (6) Still, white abolitionists' rejection of racialist thinking and allegiance democratic universalism certainly boded well for four million blacks who escaped bondage after war. In fall of 1865, George William Curtis, former abolitionist circuit speaker and since 1863 editor-in-chief of Harper's Weekly, augured that America's Good Fight would soon result in the total overthrow of spirit of caste by reminding his readers that Government of United States was made by men of all races and all colors, not for white men, but for refuge and defense of men. …