Creating the Culture of Reform in Antebellum America
Explaining how early reformers reshaped the public sphere by redefining the norms of public discourse.
In this study, T. Gregory Garvey illustrates how activists and reformers claimed the instruments of mass media to create a freestanding culture of reform that enabled voices disfranchised by church or state to speak as equals in public debates over the nation’s values. Competition among antebellum reformers in religion, women’s rights, and antislavery institutionalized a structure of ideological debate that continues to define popular reform movements.
The foundations of the culture of reform lie, according to Garvey, in the reconstruction of publicity that coincided with the religious-sectarian struggles of the early nineteenth century. To counter challenges to their authority and to retain church members, both conservative and liberal religious factions developed instruments of reform propaganda (newspapers, conventions, circuit riders, revivals) that were adapted by an emerging class of professional secular reformers in the women’s rights and antislavery movements. Garvey argues that debate among the reformers created a mode of “critical conversation” through which reformers of all ideological persuasions collectively forged new conventions of public discourse as they struggled to shape public opinion.
Focusing on debates between Lyman Beecher and William Ellery Channing over religious doctrine, Angelina Grimke and Catharine Beecher over women’s participation in antislavery, and William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass over the ethics of political participation, Garvey argues that “crucible-like sites of public debate” emerged as the core of the culture of reform. To emphasize the redefinition of publicity provoked by antebellum reform movements, Garvey concludes the book with a chapter that presents Emersonian self-reliance as an effort to transform the partisan nature of reform discourse into a model of sincere public speech that affirms both self and community.
Reviews
“The fundamental argument of Creating the Culture of Reform in Antebellum America is significant and quite original. Garvey explores the nature of reform culture and public discourse in nineteenth-century America, basing his work on a very persuasive demonstration of the close connections between antebellum religious culture and the emerging culture of reform.”
—David M. Robinson, author of Natural Life: Thoreau’s Worldly Transcendentalism
“Makes a significant contribution to the field of antebellum cultural studies in the perceptive way it links antislavery and women’s rights to religious reform. It will be a good starting point for those interested in the broad and important subject of antebellum reform. Because the book is so clearly written, it will appeal to specialists and generalists alike.”
—Robert S. Levine, author of Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity
The Emerson Dilemma: Essays on Emerson and Social Reform
Edited by T. Gregory Garvey
Emerson the Transcendentalist encounters Emerson the reformer.
This gathering of eleven original essays with a substantive introduction brings the traditional image of Emerson the Transcendentalist face-to-face with an emerging image of Emerson the reformer. The Emerson Dilemma highlights the conflict between Emerson’s philosophical attraction to solitary contemplation and the demands of activism compelled by the logic of his own writings.
The essays cover Emerson’s reform thought and activism from his early career as a Unitarian minister through his reaction to the Civil War. In addition to Emerson’s antislavery position, the collection covers his complex relationship to the early women’s rights movement and American Indian removal. Individual essays also compare Emerson’s reform ethics with those of his wife, Lidian Jackson Emerson, his aunt Mary Moody, Henry David Thoreau, John Brown, and Margaret Fuller.
The Emerson who emerges from this volume is one whose Transcendentalism is explicitly politicized; thus, we see him consciously mediating between the opposing forces of the world he “thought” and the world in which he lived.
Reviews
“A collection of authoritative essays treating a subject that is timely and will spur discussion and lively debate on the nature and extent of Emerson’s reformist impulses.”
—Ronald A. Bosco, University at Albany, State University of New York
“The traditional image of Emerson is that of a remote intellectual—an individual drawn to the quiet retreat of his study where he is free to meditate and compose undisturbed by the intrusions of the practical world. This edited collection of eleven original essays challenges that notion. Each essay focuses on the relation between Emerson’s writings, sermons, and speeches and the social and political activism they engendered. What emerges is the image of Emerson putting his ideas into action.”
—Choice
American Society:Essays on American History and Culture
Published by St. Petersburg University Press in St. Petersburg, Russia, this collection of essays is used in American studies course at Russian Universities. The book grew out of Garvey’s work on interdisciplinary curricula while a Fulbright Senior Fellow in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The book addressed a significant problem in the resources available to college instructors in Russia. High School civics and American History texts provided the kind of detailed specifics needed by students with limited knowledge of American government, history, and culture. But these texts were pitched intellectually below the skills of university students. On the other hand, college-level texts addressed the Russian students on an appropriate intellectual level, but assumed a high level of knowledge about the United States. Garvey’s American Society provides essays on history, politics, popular culture, education, and government that simultaneously provide historical background and make sophisticated arguments about the forces that have shaped the United States.
