[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
. This negative point of reference would againbecome relevant before the end of the century, when a wave of Anglo-Americanimperialism in the 1890s dramatized the corrupting effects of domination andshowed its particular dangers when imposed on imagined racial inferiors.Manyscholars have pointed out the pivotal role Carlyle played in initiating a period ofhard racism and brutal imperialism of late Victorian Britain, though Americanmen of letters made Carlyle a less important target of their anti-imperialismthan might have been expected.In the intervening decades, American liberalsput the worst parts of his career in the context of the best.For them, Carlylethe brutalizer of Shooting Niagara remained a vital warning.But they could LIBERAL HIGH TIDE 109not relinquish Carlyle the inspired prophet of Sartor Resartus, whose vindica-tion of cultivated duty and aesthetic truth was simply too precious to reject.42To Exercise Their Minds on the GreatSocial and Political QuestionsPredictions that Union victory would initiate a global wave of democracyseemed to be borne out in the spring of 1867, when within a matter of weeksAmerican and British lawmakers restructured political power as few couldhave imagined just years earlier.The Congressional Reconstruction Act,passed in March, extended the vote to southern freedmen, assuring that theywould be the first group of New World slaves to help set the political terms of apostemancipation settlement.The 1867 British Reform Act seemed almost assignificant, at least to liberal observers.This measure both doubled the size ofthe electorate and demonstrated that Britain could not be insulated from theworldwide advance of popular government.With such transformations underway, even those who had criticized Thomas Carlyle recognized that these tre-mendous changes brought corresponding challenges.43 Most Anglo-Americanliberals looked on this nearly simultaneous expansion of their electorates witha great deal of pride, even if a tinge of anxiety accompanied their optimism.For progressive men of letters, change itself was worthy of congratulation, sinceit assured that the world s two leading exemplars of liberal civilization wouldavoid the dangers of crippling stasis and subsequent declension.Leslie Stephenbroadcast a prevailing view in the Nation, writing, in terms John Stuart Millmight have used, We can only hope that the democratic deluge will at leastput us in motion in some direction or another.Anything is better than sheerstagnation. 44American liberals first began their concerted push to expand suffrage acrosslines of race during the closing months of the war.Early in 1865, James RussellLowell issued one of the strongest Republican cases for African American vot-ing rights in the North American Review, a forum he knew would reach thecultivated American and foreign readers who seemed strongly in need of con-vincing.For Lowell, the developing program involved keeping faith with corenational beliefs. Our war has been carried on for the principles of democracyand a cardinal point of those principles is, that the only way in which to fit menfor freedom is to make them free, the only way to teach them how to use politi-cal power is to give it them. Aware that some people still considered popular 110 LIBERAL HIGH TIDEgovernment unproven, Lowell argued, If we are to try the experiment of de-mocracy fairly, it must be tried in its fullest extent, and not half-way. Achiev-ing the fruit of our victory over the proslavery aristocracy meant acting onthe everlasting validity of the theory of the Declaration of Independence. Nothing less than Americanizing the South would answer present needs, andit should be accomplished by compelling [the South], if need be, to acceptthe idea, and with it the safety of democracy. 45Over the next year, as Lowell became more committed to equal black citi-zenship, he hailed the inevitable advance of democracy in ever more glowingterms.This clumsy boy giant of popular government might be somewhatrude and raw as yet and not too well mannered, but America s democraticmission remained sublimely important: its office was to make the worldready for the true second coming of Christ in the practical supremacy of hisdoctrine, and its incarnation, after so many centuries of burial, in the dailylives of men.We have been but dimly, if at all, conscious of the greatness of ourerrand, while we have already accomplished a part of it in bringing togetherthe people of all nations to see each other no longer as aliens or enemies, butas equal partakers of the highest earthly dignity a common manhood. 46The zeal that Lowell expressed for democracy in 1865 was confirmed by eachof his closest associates, and together this cohort greeted Radical Reconstruc-tion with as much enthusiasm as they had given to the war for the Union.Hig-ginson echoed Lowell s sense of a sacred moment, exclaiming that througha Red Sea which no one would have dared to contemplate, we have attainedto the Promised Land. Norton was only slightly more subdued in expressinghis hopes that a perfect commonwealth might here become a reality [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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. This negative point of reference would againbecome relevant before the end of the century, when a wave of Anglo-Americanimperialism in the 1890s dramatized the corrupting effects of domination andshowed its particular dangers when imposed on imagined racial inferiors.Manyscholars have pointed out the pivotal role Carlyle played in initiating a period ofhard racism and brutal imperialism of late Victorian Britain, though Americanmen of letters made Carlyle a less important target of their anti-imperialismthan might have been expected.In the intervening decades, American liberalsput the worst parts of his career in the context of the best.For them, Carlylethe brutalizer of Shooting Niagara remained a vital warning.But they could LIBERAL HIGH TIDE 109not relinquish Carlyle the inspired prophet of Sartor Resartus, whose vindica-tion of cultivated duty and aesthetic truth was simply too precious to reject.42To Exercise Their Minds on the GreatSocial and Political QuestionsPredictions that Union victory would initiate a global wave of democracyseemed to be borne out in the spring of 1867, when within a matter of weeksAmerican and British lawmakers restructured political power as few couldhave imagined just years earlier.The Congressional Reconstruction Act,passed in March, extended the vote to southern freedmen, assuring that theywould be the first group of New World slaves to help set the political terms of apostemancipation settlement.The 1867 British Reform Act seemed almost assignificant, at least to liberal observers.This measure both doubled the size ofthe electorate and demonstrated that Britain could not be insulated from theworldwide advance of popular government.With such transformations underway, even those who had criticized Thomas Carlyle recognized that these tre-mendous changes brought corresponding challenges.43 Most Anglo-Americanliberals looked on this nearly simultaneous expansion of their electorates witha great deal of pride, even if a tinge of anxiety accompanied their optimism.For progressive men of letters, change itself was worthy of congratulation, sinceit assured that the world s two leading exemplars of liberal civilization wouldavoid the dangers of crippling stasis and subsequent declension.Leslie Stephenbroadcast a prevailing view in the Nation, writing, in terms John Stuart Millmight have used, We can only hope that the democratic deluge will at leastput us in motion in some direction or another.Anything is better than sheerstagnation. 44American liberals first began their concerted push to expand suffrage acrosslines of race during the closing months of the war.Early in 1865, James RussellLowell issued one of the strongest Republican cases for African American vot-ing rights in the North American Review, a forum he knew would reach thecultivated American and foreign readers who seemed strongly in need of con-vincing.For Lowell, the developing program involved keeping faith with corenational beliefs. Our war has been carried on for the principles of democracyand a cardinal point of those principles is, that the only way in which to fit menfor freedom is to make them free, the only way to teach them how to use politi-cal power is to give it them. Aware that some people still considered popular 110 LIBERAL HIGH TIDEgovernment unproven, Lowell argued, If we are to try the experiment of de-mocracy fairly, it must be tried in its fullest extent, and not half-way. Achiev-ing the fruit of our victory over the proslavery aristocracy meant acting onthe everlasting validity of the theory of the Declaration of Independence. Nothing less than Americanizing the South would answer present needs, andit should be accomplished by compelling [the South], if need be, to acceptthe idea, and with it the safety of democracy. 45Over the next year, as Lowell became more committed to equal black citi-zenship, he hailed the inevitable advance of democracy in ever more glowingterms.This clumsy boy giant of popular government might be somewhatrude and raw as yet and not too well mannered, but America s democraticmission remained sublimely important: its office was to make the worldready for the true second coming of Christ in the practical supremacy of hisdoctrine, and its incarnation, after so many centuries of burial, in the dailylives of men.We have been but dimly, if at all, conscious of the greatness of ourerrand, while we have already accomplished a part of it in bringing togetherthe people of all nations to see each other no longer as aliens or enemies, butas equal partakers of the highest earthly dignity a common manhood. 46The zeal that Lowell expressed for democracy in 1865 was confirmed by eachof his closest associates, and together this cohort greeted Radical Reconstruc-tion with as much enthusiasm as they had given to the war for the Union.Hig-ginson echoed Lowell s sense of a sacred moment, exclaiming that througha Red Sea which no one would have dared to contemplate, we have attainedto the Promised Land. Norton was only slightly more subdued in expressinghis hopes that a perfect commonwealth might here become a reality [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]