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Introduction Overshadowed by the Civil War—and the more than 50,000 books written about it—the cultural life of the United States in the 1850s often seems to be remembered only as a prelude to the great divide in American history.As that decade passed, the paradox of a nation conceived in liberty but permitting and even celebrating slavery was crucial in the breaking up of the American union.This book takes up another major theme in American cultural life of that decade, a widespread and intense concern about the conflict between financial success and righteousness.The prosperity-morality paradox is the subject of this study. Our first book about that decade, Fanatics and Fire-Eaters,1 dealt with political warfare in newspapers’ reporting and commentary on a series of events, upsetting the national equilibrium with overheated words about a series of tinderbox events. Newspapers’ shrill and strident words about the caning of antislavery Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in May 1856 and about the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in March 1857 helped habituate readers to North-South vituperation. As if in a horrifying echo chamber, other divisive events followed: debates over the Lecompton Constitution for Kansas in the winter of 1857; John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry,Virginia, in the fall of 1859; Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860; and the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861. Reading what a large number of Americans read in their newspapers of the 1850s to see what Americans were reading about Northern “Fanatics” and Southern “Fire Eaters,” it became clear that there was another problem commanding Americans’ attention: the stresses prosperity put on morality. While popular written work consulted for this book contained many references to sectional tensions and the reasons for them, the prosperity-morality paradox was part of the social context. This paradox, a less focused but deeply felt concern, was broader than sectional political tensions. And, to some large if indeterminate number of Americans of the time, it was every bit as immediate and pressing. Using newspapers, magazines, and books as their outlets, writers identified and dramatized the troubling paradox. 2 / introduction Americans, and particularly the country’s middle class, were enthralled by their extraordinary economic progress and opportunities. At the same time, however, distress was expressed about what many described as abandonment of republican virtues in the pursuit of prosperity. Republic was a word with many meanings, calling up different images. It evoked Americans’ common heritage, with republican character values symbolized by George Washington and the great revolutionary generation.As invoked in the 1850s, endangered values included honesty, hard work, simplicity in one’s life, and selfless devotion to the common good.2 These and other generally accepted character virtues, many Americans contended, were being sacrificed as the price of that prosperity.To that sense of loss, they added the fear that Christian principles such as compassion for the weak, avoidance of being driven by vanity, and dedication to achieving salvation for themselves and their society were being set aside. Given the popularity of the writings in which concern about this paradox was expressed, it was a compelling and troubling dilemma, a conflict about which many Americans cared deeply. A contributor to the American Whig Review noted,“All strangers who come among us remark the excessive anxiety written in the American countenance.”3 This book is about that anxiety, and about how writers portrayed to their readers that which caused it.Although popularity may not equate to influence, concentrating on examples drawn from the most popular print media provides more than we knew before about what Americans read during the decade before the Civil War. Our assumption was that editors and writers of popular media knew what interested and perplexed their readers and acted on that knowledge. This study is written from the viewpoint that republican values went beyond individuals pursuing self-interest. Instead, generalizing from many references we saw to the republic in the 1850s, republican values resulted in, in John Nerone’s phrase, “a virtuous member of the body politic devoted to the public good.”4 To the sense of endangerment or loss of republican principles,writers and religious leaders emphasized an overlapping theme, the fear that “Christian principles” were being ignored.These threatened values included charitable compassion for the weak, avoidance of being driven by vanity, valuing family over profit-making concerns, and dedication to achieving salvation for themselves and their society. Henry...

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