Gregg Crane examines the interaction between civic identity and race and justice within American law and literature in this study. He recounts the efforts of literary and legal figures to bring the nation's law in accord with the moral consensus that slavery and racial oppression are evil. Covering such writers as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass, and a range of novelists, poets, philosophers, politicians, lawyers and judges, this original book will revise the relationship between race and nationalism in American literature.
Author(s): Gregg D. Crane
Series: Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 312
Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Series-title......Page 5
Title......Page 7
Copyright......Page 8
Dedication......Page 9
Contents......Page 11
Acknowledgments......Page 12
Introduction......Page 15
CHAPTER 1 Higher law in the 1850s......Page 26
HIGHER LAW PRECEDENTS......Page 32
THE REPUBLICAN TRADITION......Page 34
RIGHTS......Page 37
RESEMBLANCE: IDENTITY AS POLITICS......Page 40
RELIGION......Page 41
PROGRESS......Page 43
COSMOPOLITANISM......Page 44
THE EBB OF HIGHER LAW......Page 46
HIGHER LAW AND CONSENT......Page 54
A POLITICAL BENCHMARK FOR HIGHER LAW IN THE 1850S......Page 60
CHAPTER 2 The look of higher law: Harriet Beecher Stowe's antislavery fiction......Page 70
STOWE'S HIGHER LAW PICTURES......Page 73
STOWE AND SUMNER......Page 91
CHAPTER 3 Cosmopolitan constitutionalism: Emerson and Douglass......Page 101
LABILE JUSTICE AND THE SCIENCE OF LIBERTY–EMERSON’S HIGHER LAW THEORY......Page 106
DOUGLASS’S COSMOPOLITAN CONSTITUTIONALISM......Page 118
CHAPTER 4 The positivist alternative......Page 145
THE COLOR OF POWER: MARTIN DELANY AND ROGER TANEY......Page 152
DRED SCOTT......Page 162
HOLMES’S FATALISM......Page 172
BLACK COMEDY: BLACK CITIZENSHIP AND JIM CROW POSITIVISM......Page 179
CHAPTER 5 Charles Chesnutt and Moorfield Storey: citizenship and the flux of contract......Page 197
INTRODUCTION......Page 237
1 HIGHER LAW IN THE 1850S......Page 238
2 THE LOOK OF HIGHER LAW: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE’S ANTISLAVERY FICTION......Page 252
3 COSMOPOLITAN CONSTITUTIONALISM: EMERSON AND DOUGLASS......Page 262
4 THE POSITIVIST ALTERNATIVE......Page 274
5 CHARLES CHESNUTT AND MOORFIELD STOREY: CITIZENSHIP AND THE FLUX OF CONTRACT......Page 290
Index......Page 307
