Paradoxes of Prosperity: Wealth Seeking in Pre-Civil War America

1. Communicatiing the Prosperity-Morality Paradox during the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Publishing Boom

•• one Communicating the Prosperity-Morality Paradox during the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Publishing Boom At mid-century,Americans confronted two compelling paradoxes: slavery in a land founded on the value of freedom, and an aggressive pursuit of wealth that enriched the republic at the cost of endangering traditional republican and Christian values. New economic forces delivered prosperity to some and the possibility of raising one’s economic status to many more, but they were accompanied by a growing anxiety that the way to wealth followed a slippery path. To those caught up in that promising but tumultuous time, it was exciting but unnerving. Consequently, change and anxiety were reflected in and impelled by a new mass media substantively different from the past.Now newspapers,magazines , and book publishers all competed for the attention of a substantially new and ever-expanding reading public.While addressing slavery-freedom and prosperity-morality paradoxes,publishers of newspapers,magazines,and books recognized that the two topics caused different responses. Slavery, however treated, created controversy and displeased a substantial body of readers.The prosperity-morality paradox, however, was compelling without being so divisive. 10 / paradoxes of prosperity In an earlier volume, we considered how newspapers both reported on and exacerbated tensions that led to the Civil War.1 In that book, we concluded that the press contributed to, if it did not truly cause, the war. In 2005, historian Edward Ayers saw clearly that newspapers “nurtured anticipation and grievance,” declaring, “Without the papers, many events we now see as decisive would have passed without wide consequence.”2 The same media that overdramatized and so heightened consciousness about sectional strife also confronted readers, time after time, with the dilemma wrapped up in the often-used phrase the “anxious spirit of gain.” In so doing, in both cases, the media contributed importantly to the rise in public anxiety. Over the past three decades, historians have documented the rise of mass media in the United States and taken note of its impact on American life. This study adds to that work, presenting the arguments in leading print media of the 1850s as they publicized and dramatized the prosperitymorality paradox. Establishing with any degree of certainty to what extent the media influenced mid-nineteenth-century public opinion is at least as difficult as doing so in our time. Although the relationship between reader and writer defies precise measurement, it is still critical. This study shows what the producers of selected—and important—publications may have felt or perhaps what they thought troubled American readers. This chapter reviews the factors that made for a maturing communications revolution in the United States by the mid-nineteenth century. The concern here, expressed in broad and general terms, is how some of the most successful entrepreneurs of newly modern mass media described what they and, as they rightly assumed, their readers, perceived to be a great paradox of their time. This revolution in publishing gave effective writers the new opportunity to attract a reading public which itself was more numerous and influential in society than it had ever been. Writing and its dissemination became a business, often a big business. During the 1850s, the dilemmas of people who were both succeeding in the marketplace and possessed the passion to preserve traditional values became subjects for authors and journalists who wrote prolifically and with the greatest success. In their own lives, these writers were faced with those same dilemmas. From the early to mid-nineteenth century, both the producers of the written word and its consumers, the reading public, changed dramatically. In terms of sheer volume, writing and the means of conveying what was written to readers exploded over those few decades.Technological developments in printing made it possible to produce greater quantities of printed Communicating the Prosperity-Morality Paradox / 11 material faster; the growing presence of railroads made the transport of the finished product quicker and cheaper. Newspapers benefited greatly from the rapid growth of telegraph lines after 1844, allowing papers to deliver to readers information that was truly new and so worth their time and money to read. The telegraph made possible the reporting of more recent news, even from the far-off battlefields of the Mexican War. For example, when James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald sent correspondents to Mexico in 1846, Bennett soon figured out a way to expedite moving the news to New York. The Herald supported the...