Loyal Subjects: Bonds of Nation, Race, and Allegiance in Nineteenth-Century America

Chapter 3: Pledging Allegiance in Henry James

3 / Pledging Allegiance in Henry James In the 1880s, readers and theatergoers fell in love with the reunion romance .1 Unlike the novels examined in the previous chapter, the stories that held American audiences captive were far from ambivalent about the promise of romantic love. Not only did they heartily embrace the idea of its healing potential, they were also openly nostalgic for the lost elegance of the Old South and explicitly committed to the redemptive power of masculine heroism. As Shenandoah: A Military Comedy (1889), the hit play by Northerner Bronson Howard, makes clear, later reunion romances dispensed with political theorizing.2 In its opening act, two army officers, Kerchival West, a native of New York, and Virginian Robert Ellingham, gaze out on Fort Sumter. Despite having trained together at West Point, having served in the same regiment, and having shared a history of combat , the friends will declare opposing allegiances in the impending war: kerchival. Our Southern friends assure us that General Beauregard is to open fire on Fort Sumter this morning. . . . Are you Southerners all mad, Robert? ellingham. Are you Northerners all blind? We Virginians would prevent a war if we could. But your people in the North do not believe that one is coming. You do not understand the determined frenzy of my fellow-Southerners. . . . I tell you, Kerchival, a war between the North and South is inevitable! kerchival. And if it does come, you Virginians will join the rest. pledging allegiance in henry james / 101 ellingham. Our State will be the battle-ground, I fear. But every loyal son of Virginia will follow her flag. It is our religion! kerchival. My State is New York. If New York should go against the old flag, New York might go to the devil. That is my religion. ellingham. So differently have we been taught what the word “patriotism ” means! . . . kerchival. Bob! I only hope that we shall never meet in battle! ellingham. In battle? The idea is horrible! kerchival. My dear old comrade, one of us will be wrong in this great fight, but we shall both be honest in it.3 This exchange deploys the most familiar elements of the popular reconciliation narratives: both men are “honest” and true to their values; wartime allegiance is akin to religion; the “right” side will win, but questions of “right” and wrong are trumped by issues of honor and personal integrity. The problem of meaning we saw in chapter 2 remains but is no longer fraught: by the 1880s, the war could be seen, at least by some, as “an interregional ‘miscommunication’” rather than a profound political conflict.4 The passive construction of Ellingham’s observation (“So differently have we been taught”) strips the men of responsibility for the political situation. Giving a line with echoes of Daniel Webster’s famous 1830 quip (“Our notion of things is entirely different”) to the Southern officer, Howard weakens the moment’s already attenuated political content.5 True to its comic mode, Shenandoah quickly converts the brutal brothers’ war into one fought by sisters, as Madeline Kerchival squares off against Gertrude Ellingham: madeline. I am a Northern girl. gertrude. And I am a Southern girl. kerchival. The war has begun. gertrude. General Beauregard is a patriot. madeline. He is a Rebel. gertrude. So am I. madeline. Gertrude!—You—you— gertrude. Madeline!—You— madeline. I—I— gertrude. I— 102 / pledging allegiance in henry james both. O—O-h! [Bursting into tears and rushing into each other’s arms, sobbing, then suddenly kissing each other vigorously.] kerchival. I say, Bob, if the North and South do fight, that will be the end of it.6 Using what Peter Brooks has called the “aesthetic of muteness” characteristic of melodrama, the “war” quickly concludes with a reconciliation that is tearful but painless.7 The interlude ends as the Northern officer predicts the future, suggesting that the actual war will end in a comparable manner, effacing the fictional status of Shenandoah itself. But most important for my argument is the Southerner’s assertion that “every loyal son of Virginia will follow her flag!” Ellingham’s association of loyalty and the flag mirrors wartime deployments of the term, but crucially replaces national with state allegiance. Here, as in Miss Ravenel ’s Conversion, it is the Southern officer who expresses the primacy of local affiliation, yet even though the Northerner counters his assertion , the talk turns to...