The Grammar of Good Intentions: Race and the Antebellum Culture of Benevolence

by Susan M. Ryan

Overview

Susan M. Ryan explores antebellum Americans' preoccupation with the language and practice of benevolence. Drawing on a variety of cultural and literary texts, she traces how people working and writing within social reform movements—and their outspoken opponents—helped solidify racial and class ideologies that ultimately marginalized even the most "deserving" poor. "The links between race and the relations of benevolence occasioned much soul-searching among antebellum Americans," Ryan explains. "In a period of heated public debate over issues such as slavery, Indian removal, and non-Protestant immigration, the categories of blackness, Indianness, and a generic 'foreignness' came to signify, for many whites, need itself."

Ryan puts familiar literary works such as Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man, Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom, and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin back into dialogue with a broad range of print materials: the reports of charity societies, African American and Native American newspapers, juvenile fiction, travel writing, cartoons, sermons, and tract literature. In the process, she dispels the myth that authors usually classified as literary were responding to a simple and unquestioned cult of benevolence. Rather, she contends, they were participating in the complex and often rancorous debates occurring within the broader culture over how good intentions should be expressed and enacted.

Ryan's inquiry into the antebellum culture of benevolence has implications for contemporary U.S. society, resonating especially with recent debates over welfare reform, the politics of compassionate conservatism, and representations of "welfare queens" and violent urban youth. As Ryan writes, "The conversations that this book reconstructs remind us of our ongoing participation in the national ritual of laying claim to good intentions."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801439551
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	06/06/2003
Series:	7/22/2008
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.88(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Susan M. Ryan is Associate Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studiesat the University of Louisville.

Table of Contents

	List of Illustrations	ix
	Acknowledgments	xi
	Introduction: Toward a Cultural History of Good Intentions	1
1	Benevolent Violence: Indian Removal and the Contest of National Character	25
2	Misgivings: Duplicity and Need in Melville's Late Fiction	46
3	The Racial Politics of Self-Reliance	77
4	Pedagogies of Emancipation	109
5	Charity Begins at Home: Stowe's Antislavery Novels and the Forms of Benevolent Citizenship	143
6	"Save Us From Our Friends": Free African Americans and the Culture of Benevolence	163
	Epilogue: The Afterlife of Benevolent Citizenship	187
	Notes	193
	Index	227

What People are Saying About This

Karen Sánchez-Eppler

The Grammar of Good Intentions is a marvelous book. It offers a way of reframing issues that have become central to the study of nineteenth-century literature and culture, and productively and importantly challenges how they can be seen. Susan M. Ryan makes it clear that the habits and anxieties of benevolence affected how nineteenth-century Americans thought about race.

Carla L. Peterson

Ryan's focus on benevolence as a primary project of antebellum culture is a compelling one and accomplishes many things at once. It brings together a range of activities that are most often treated separately in order to view them as part of the larger humanitarian gesture that characterized this period. The Grammar of Good Intentions effectively breaks down rigid distinctions between public and private spheres, challenges traditional notions of male and female activities, and allows for a discussion of benevolence in the forms of both activism and representation.

Karen Sanchez-Eppler

The Grammar of Good Intentions is a marvelous book. It offers a way of reframing issues that have become central to the study of nineteenth-century literature and culture, and productively and importantly challenges how they can be seen. Susan M. Ryan makes it clear that the habits and anxieties of benevolence affected how nineteenth-century Americans thought about race.

Karen Sánchez-Eppler

"The Grammar of Good Intentions is a marvelous book. It offers a way of reframing issues that have become central to the study of nineteenth-century literature and culture, and productively and importantly challenges how they can be seen. Susan M. Ryan makes it clear that the habits and anxieties of benevolence affected how nineteenth-century Americans thought about race."

Editorial Reviews

In this stimulating, well-written book, Ryan argues that the pre-Civil War 'culture of benevolence' (both private and institutional charity and various forms of 'uplift' for those considered 'needy,' whether 'foreign,' Irish, American Indian, or black) was a 'contest of moral authority at the core of which lay a conflict over the character of the nation as well as the 'conditions and prospects'... of its constituent racial groups.... Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Choice Magazine

Ryan's treatment of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novels Uncle Tom's Cabin and Dred is the strongest and most penetrating part of the book. With incisive and nuanced readings of these texts, Ryan illustrates how, for Stowe, benevolent agency became the marker of American citizenship and how her fiction worked to advance and 'energize' that confluence. Ryan's analytical agility is exemplified here by solid, small-scale readings of pro-slavery novels written in response to Uncle Tom's Cabin.... The Grammar of Good Intentions is a valuable study of a cultural transformation that recast the terms of national unity and American citizenship.... This book will reward the attention of every student of antebellum culture.

New England Quarterly

The antebellum United States was awash with projects to do good. Indeed, a commitment to benevolence was vital to the Protestant middle class's confidence that it exemplified the nation's goodness.... Ryan explores an impressive range of texts spanning the period from Indian removal to the Civil War.... Ryan's interpretations of the etiquette of charity and the meanings of literacy... are insightful, and she makes connections that are often original and occasionally startling.

Journal of American History

"Ryan's focus on benevolence as a primary project of antebellum culture is a compelling one and accomplishes many things at once. It brings together a range of activities that are most often treated separately in order to view them as part of the larger humanitarian gesture that characterized this period. The Grammar of Good Intentions effectively breaks down rigid distinctions between public and private spheres, challenges traditional notions of male and female activities, and allows for a discussion of benevolence in the forms of both activism and representation."

Carla L. Peterson

"The Grammar of Good Intentions is a marvelous book. It offers a way of reframing issues that have become central to the study of nineteenth-century literature and culture, and productively and importantly challenges how they can be seen. Susan M. Ryan makes it clear that the habits and anxieties of benevolence affected how nineteenth-century Americans thought about race."

Karen Sánchez-Eppler

"In the field of new literary historicism, the intersection in antebellum America of sentimentality, masculinity, and citizenship has received rich and renewed attention in recent years. Susan M. Ryan's first book contributes to this growing field of study, building on the work of... others, even as she sets herself apart from certain tendencies in the field. As she does so, Ryan also makes a substantial contribution to the historiography of antebellum reform movements, investigating racial dynamics that historians have long recognized but seldom examined."

Journal of the Early Republic

In the field of new literary historicism, the intersection in antebellum America of sentimentality, masculinity, and citizenship has received rich and renewed attention in recent years. Susan M. Ryan's first book contributes to this growing field of study, building on the work of... others, even as she sets herself apart from certain tendencies in the field. As she does so, Ryan also makes a substantial contribution to the historiography of antebellum reform movements, investigating racial dynamics that historians have long recognized but seldom examined.

-- "Journal of the Early Republic"

In this stimulating, well-written book, Ryan argues that the pre-Civil War 'culture of benevolence' (both private and institutional charity and various forms of 'uplift' for those considered 'needy, ' whether 'foreign, ' Irish, American Indian, or black) was a 'contest of moral authority at the core of which lay a conflict over the character of the nation as well as the 'conditions and prospects'... of its constituent racial groups.... Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

-- "Choice Magazine"

Ryan's treatment of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novels Uncle Tom's Cabin and Dred is the strongest and most penetrating part of the book. With incisive and nuanced readings of these texts, Ryan illustrates how, for Stowe, benevolent agency became the marker of American citizenship and how her fiction worked to advance and 'energize' that confluence. Ryan's analytical agility is exemplified here by solid, small-scale readings of pro-slavery novels written in response to Uncle Tom's Cabin.... The Grammar of Good Intentions is a valuable study of a cultural transformation that recast the terms of national unity and American citizenship.... This book will reward the attention of every student of antebellum culture.

-- "New England Quarterly"

The antebellum United States was awash with projects to do good. Indeed, a commitment to benevolence was vital to the Protestant middle class's confidence that it exemplified the nation's goodness.... Ryan explores an impressive range of texts spanning the period from Indian removal to the Civil War.... Ryan's interpretations of the etiquette of charity and the meanings of literacy... are insightful, and she makes connections that are often original and occasionally startling.

-- "Journal of American History"

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