Uncle Tom's Cabin, the Pacific Railroad Surveys, De Bow's Review and American Literature Up To Secession and War

James Lutzweiler

Sergeant Major
Joined
Mar 14, 2018
Fellow Posters,

I am in the process of compiling a bibliography of mostly significant antebellum American literature (NOTE: NOT "Southern" literature but ALL "American" literature which does, of course, include "Southern" literature), though I have interest even in ephemera. Will you please add titles --and some commentary about the titles, if you wish-- to my list?

My pursuit of a more comprehensive list of such titles is rooted in my belief that Uncle Tom's Cabin (UTC) has received far more weight than the weight to which it is due. Important? No doubt. Very important? No doubt. Exclusively important? No. I, for example, believe that the magisterial Pacific Railroad Surveys (1854-1860) (PRS) of Jefferson Davis (whose 13 volumes were in Lincoln's personal library) were more important than UTC in the Antebellum. Sure, I might be wrong, and the standards for measurement are surely subjective, barring some significant discovery. The number of copies sold is only one standard. The number of square miles affected is quite another.

In all events, I am chasing all the significant the antebellum literature I can find that shaped American minds, Northern, Southern, Western, Southwestern, etc. My search has been prompted by the belief that Civil War historians who argue, mistakenly in my view, for slavery as the primary factor in the coming of Secession and War are myopically steeped primarily in literature, like UTC, about the South instead of literature about ALL of American antebellum concerns --e.g., works like Commodore Matthew Perry's equally magnificent 3-volume Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan, completed in late 1857, or the Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842 and to Oregon and California in the Years 1843-44, published in 1845 by 1856 U.S. Presidential nominee and Republican, John C. Fremont. Herman Melville's Typee would certainly be on such a list, showing America's ever-increasing interest in the Pacific every bit as much as interest in the concerns of Planters.

So, there you have it. What titles will you add to my list? I would fully expect someone to mention Edmund Ruffin's important 1860 novel, Anticipations of the Future, to Serve as Lessons for the Present Time: In the Form of Extracts of Letters from an English Resident in the United States, to the London Times (sic), from 1864 to 1870 but perhaps overlook The Central Gold Region (1859) by Colorado's territorial Governor, William Gilpin, who envisioned Denver as the commercial center of the earth by means of a railroad radiating outward and inward therefrom in all directions including a railroad over the Bering Straits to China. Let us not leave that out, of course

So, help me please, if you are so inclined. Speeches ("Cotton is King," Jeff Davis's January 5, 1861, speech to Congress, etc.), tracts, pamphlets (like one in chicago's Newberry Library, produced by the Illinois Central Railroad, hyping southern Illinois --rather than South Carolina-- as a new Garden of Eden for immigrants), etc., ALL ARE WELCOME CONTRIBUTIONS to this projected bibliography. Preferably from 1830--1861, but certainly there are good exceptions.

James Lutzweiler
Archivist (1999-2013), Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
 
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