LIBERTY AND SELF-CONTROL: REPUBLICAN VALUES IN THE CIVIL WAR NORTH

EARL J HESS, Purdue University

Abstract

This study examines popular republican values held by mid-nineteenth century Northerners and how those values and ideas were involved in the issues arising from the Civil War. It focusses on key aspects of republican culture in America, such as democracy, egalitarianism, individualism, and the need to balance self-good with common-good through the practice of self-control on the individual as well as the collective, or political, level. It combines intellectual, cultural, and military history in an effort to understand how a society emotionally and intellectually reconciled the horrors of a long, costly war effort with their motives for prosecuting it. Using published and unpublished letters, diaries, and memoirs of both common Northerners as well as members of the intellectual elite, the study identifies ways in which Northerners saw those key components of republicanism threatened by the slavepower and the creation of a Southern confederacy. The study discusses how Northerners created positive self-images as well as negative images of their enemies by using republican values. The adoption of radical policies to prosecute the war created ideological division within the North, further illustrating the way in which republicanism delineated the sectional conflict. Finally, the study examines post-War uses of republican values in evaluating what the conflict meant for American civilization. Republicanism was self-created among members of the Civil War generations of the North. Their source for this self-satisfying cultural identity was the heritage of the founding fathers as altered by the modernizing trends experienced by the North in the nineteenth century. Their republicanism was a blend of old, classical ideals and new, liberal attitudes toward commerce, nationality, and morality. At times Northerners were able to reconcile the conflicting elements of this heritage with themselves, and to reconcile the heritage itself with the issues of the war; at other times, they were not able to do so. The overarching theme of this study is how they were able to make sense of the war in terms of republicanism, how Northerners viewed the conflict as the supreme test of America's ability to preserve free government.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

American studies

COinS