Eclipse of Empires: World History in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature and Culture

Notes

Notes Introduction 1.Willard,UniversalHistoryinPerspective,iii,526,v;Willard’sHistoricGuide,3. 2. David Levin similarly argues that the Romantic historians such as Prescott and Motley attempted to inculcate “contact with the life, the vital feeling of the Past” in their works (History as Romantic Art, 8). 3. Whelpley, His­tori­cal Compend, 1:157. This quotation is from the 1806–7 edition .Inlatereditions,retitledCompendofHistory,atyporeplacedthewordformwith term in this sentence. 4. Wash­ ing­ ton Irving even uses the label of “empire” to refer to a colony, New Netherland, which he satirically transforms into a great state. The only civilization to which I apply the term empire anachronistically is the Ojibway; nineteenth-­ century U.S. Ameri­cans bent over backward to avoid characterizing North Ameri­can Indian societies as developed and stable in ways that would militate against removal policies, as the denomination “empire” surely would. But Longfellow’s representation of the Ojibwayconformstothesamenarrativepatternfollowedbyotherchroniclersofgreat early modern states. On the ideological distinction made between North Ameri­ can Indians and the Incan and Aztec “empires,” see Wertheimer, Imagined Empires, 13. 5. Callcott, History in the United States, 1800–1860, vii. In 1794, John Payne could write that “nothing upon the plan of” his Epitome of History, an overview of world history, “has yet been attempted” (iv). In contrast, T. M. Merriman admitted in 1860, “It would seem almost superfluous to make any addition to the numerous works already published on the great subject of Universal History” but justified his adding to this number by arguing that “the vastness of the subject is such, and its importancebeingequallygreat ,wemayrestassuredthatitsmeritshavenotyetbeenfully set forth” (The Trail of History, xxix). On the place of history in nineteenth-­ century U.S. culture, see Callcott; Baym, Ameri­can Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790–1860; Cheng, The Plain and Noble Garb of Truth; Pfitzer, Picturing the Past and Popu­ lar History and the Literary Marketplace, 1840–1920; and Van Tassel, Re­ cording America’s Past. 164 / Notes to Pages 3–5 6. Authors who mention in their prefaces that the rise and fall of empires constitutes a key component of world history’s interest and value include Joseph Emerson Worcester in his widely used world history textbook, Elements of History (iv), and Samuel Griswold Goodrich, author of the popu­ lar Peter Parley books for children, in Peter Parley’s Common School History (9). See also Barber, Elements of General His­ tory, 6; Pike, Intellectual Chronology, 5; and Robbins, The World Displayed, 7. This list does not mention any of the many authors who do not use the phrase explicitly in their prefaces but who organize their material according to the rise and fall of empires patternandtherebyconformtothestandardformatforbooksofthistype,whichproceed chronologically from the creation of the world forward through the rise and fall of each major world empire. 7. Choate and Brown, The Works of Rufus Choate, 2:422. 8. The Gladiator opened on Sep­ tem­ ber 26, 1831 (Bird completed it in April of that year as a submission to Forrest’s annual playwriting competition). Nat Turner’s rebellion began on August 22, 1831, and Turner remained at large until Oc­to­ber. On the multiple aspects of the play’s contemporary relevance, see Richards, headnote to The Gladiator, 167–68. All quotations from the play will refer to Bird, The Gladiator (hereafter cited parenthetically in the text). 9. Walt Whitman once observed that The Gladiator “is as full of ‘Abolition­ ism’ as an egg is of meat.” On the other hand, Curtis Dahl argues that while Bird’s “Thracian rebels are pictured as noble and generous,” his correspondence indicates that he did not view slave revolt in the United States so favorably. See Whitman, “The­ Gladiator—Mr. Forrest—Acting,” 69; Dahl, Robert Montgomery Bird, 59. 10. Edwin Forrest marked this speech to be cut from the script, so audiences may not have heard it, but Bird clearly did intend for the eventual decline of Rome to be part of the meaning of the play’s conclusion. 11. In this vein, John Carlos Rowe has written of “the diverse inter-­and intra­ cultural areas of the new Ameri­ can Studies” (The New Ameri­ can Studies, 4). 12. This attempt frequently occurs in discussions of wealthy, white male ­ writers, because separating the transnationalist practices of women and people of color from their intra­ national identities and domestic politics never seems feasible, as indeed it shouldn’t for white men either. On “pluralism” and transnationalism as separate “branches” of scholarship, see Messmer, “Toward a Declaration...