The Antebellum Crisis and America's First Bohemians

Conclusion: Iconoclasts in Iconic Times

104 If truth be the first casualty of war, those who seek their livelihood in the pursuit of truth would be advised to consider rethinking their careers.Henry Clappresistedthedynamicsof theescalatingsectionaltensionssopersistently thatEdwardHousecomplainedof the“unusualcarelessnessandrecklessness” of his“ancient”friend.“Nobody knows more surely than yourself the difference between right and wrong, truth and lies, beauty and deformity, reason and madness, white and black.”1 However, the veteran abolitionist simply could not reduce the fact of war as to something like slavery, particularly given what seemed to him to be the rank hypocrisy of the Republican and Unionist coalitions on race. The predicament of bohemianism was part of the broader national crisis , culminating in the breakdown of electoral politics in the United States. Bohemianism made it possible to have a radical critique of society without conclusion Iconoclasts in Iconic Times R “All quiet along the Potomac to-night,” No sound save the rush of the river; While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead, The picket’s off duty for ever. —Ethel Lynn Beers, “All Quiet Along the Potomac” inspired by a newspaper headline of the same title. Conclusion · 105 any compelling need for radical political action. More subtly, bohemians’ flouting of convention opened the possibility for the later commercializing of sensationalism for its own sake. In the end, the first bohemian circles in American history became a direct casualty of the Civil War. Theyear1860providedasuccessionof distractions.InFebruary,therisingstar of midwesternRepublicanism,AbrahamLincoln arrived in Gotham,hoping to remedy the ignorance of him that prevailed in much of the Northeast. Before his scheduled speech at the Cooper Institute on February 27,the local committee took him up to Mathew Brady’s studio, near Bleecker Street, at 643 Broadway, next door to Pfaff ’s.2 Clappandhisfriendshadmoreimmediateproblems.TheirSaturday Press won critical acclaim but could make no money. As Walt Whitman recalled, Clapp waged through 1860“the most heroic fight right along to keep thePress alive.”Stories abounded of Clapp’s lack of management and even of his physically hiding from creditors. He wrote Whitman at least three times in May 1860, the first through Clapp’s brother George, then on his way to Boston. He was“fighting like a thousand Hussars” to establish the Press and at the end of the month needed a hundred dollars“before Saturday night or be in a scrap the horror of which keeps me awake o’ nights.”Although absent for the final scenes,Whitman thought the“generous, careful editor”had simply “tried to carry an impossible load.”3 After his coverage of John Brown’s trial and execution, House began getting assignments previously unavailable to a drama critic. Having earlier written on Asian affairs, he covered the May arrival of the first Japanese embassy in Washington for the Tribune. Because their hosts knew no Japanese and the ambassadors spoke no English, one of their number, the seventeen-year-old Onojirou Noriyuki (or “Tommy”) served as translator by using a pidgin Dutch. As if the newcomers were not confused enough by the receptions in Washington, they were shuttled to other cities. Despite the language barrier, House spent weeks with the visitors and became quite enamored of their culture. When the “Errand-Bearers” spent five days at New York toward the end of June, it moved Whitman to write of them: “First-comers,guests,two-sworded princes,/Lesson-giving princes,leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive, / This day they ride through Manhattan.”4 Their impact on House’s future would prove to be a little less than profound. 106 · Conclusion The shadow of France fell across parts of the city in July.Elmer Ellsworth took his Chicago Zouaves on tour. “The same drill and discipline are not suited to the armies of all countries,”adding that theAmericans drew mostly from the English who acquired it from the Germans.“No longer of so much importance that infantry should be solid, as that the men should be active, agile and acute—that they should act intelligently and bravely, singly, in pairs, in fours, and in tens.” He added that the United States had“the best raw material in the world. The average man of America makes an excellent light infantryman. He has individuality, self-reliance, quickness, familiarity with the use of weapons,and great nervous energy.”Not only would House’s destiny be entwined with that of the Zouaves, but the exhibition moved Fitz-James O’Brien...