I recently finished Matthew Stewart’s An Emancipation of the Mind – Radical Philosophy, the War over Slavery, and the Refounding of America. An Emancipation traces the role played by early 19th century German philosophical currents in reinvigorating the abolitionist movement that culminated in end of slavery in the US.
It was a fascinating read for someone like me, whose knowledge of US history is a bit patchy. I’ve looked at some eras like the Civil War itself deeply and critically, but for many others I have only spotty impressions informed by conventional narratives. Take the abolitionist movement: I had understood it as a steadily growing movement in the Northern states that led to the formation of the Republican party, which eventually captured the presidency, prompting the South’s secession.
But Stewart makes the case that abolitionism, rather than steadily growing in power, had pretty much hit a wall in the early 1800s. An Emancipation tells a story of a successful subversion of the ideals of the American Revolution by the slave-holding class in the South. This anti-democratic counter-revolution was successful not only by being better organized and by skillfully exploiting the minority rights embedded in the US Constitution. It was successful because most of the North was perfectly willing to adopt the South’s values.
It took the influx of ideas bubbling up in Europe – above all in Germany from the likes of Hegel, Marx, and Feuerbach – to galvanize and revive the faltering abolitionist movement. Stewart traces the direct and indirect influence of the German thinkers on figures including Frederick Douglass, Theodore Parker, John Brown, William Herndon, and ultimately on Lincoln himself. An Emancipation is a compelling testimony to the power of ideas to shape the world.
And at the same time, it testifies to the need for ideas to be transmitted by living, breathing people: particular quirky people with their particular quirky talents and passions. It’s not just the radical German ideas that made it across the Atlantic. In the wake of the failed revolutions of 1848 – especially in all the German statelets – it was radical political refugees who crossed the waters, carrying the ideas, yes, but equally importantly, carrying their passion.
Stewart places the – certainly intimate and most likely romantic – relationship between Frederick Douglass and German journalist Ottilie Assing at the narrative center of his book. But it’s a stand in for all human-to-human collisions that changed hearts and minds.
Stewart doesn’t speculate on it, but for me the book raises the question of what role the movement of people played in the history of ideas in Europe. Could the emptying of Germany of its passionate radicals during the second half of the 19th century have contributed to the terrible direction Germany took in the first half of the 20th?
I picked up An Emancipation for unrelated reasons, but t is a serendipitous choice in November 2024.
The Ruminathans 