The grammar of good intentions : race and the antebellum culture of benevolence
Susan M. Ryan explores antebellum Americans' preoccupation with the language and practice of benevolence. Drawing on a variety of cultural and literary texts, she traces how people working and writing within social reform movements - and their outspoken opponents - helped solidiy racial and class ideologies that ultimately marginalized even the most "deserving" poor. Ryan puts familiar literary works such as Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man, Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom, and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin back into dialogue with a broad range of print materials: the reports of charity societies, African American and Native American newspapers, juvenile fiction, travel writing, cartoons, sermons, and tract literature. -- from back cover
History
xii, 235 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780801439551, 9780801489853, 0801439558, 0801489857
51647734
Introduction: toward a cultural history of good intentions
Benevolent violence: Indian removal and the contest of national character
Misgivings: duplicity and need in Melville's late fiction
The racial politics of self-reliance
Pedagogies of emancipation
Charity begins at home: Stowe's antislavery novels and the forms of benevolent citizenship
"Save us from our friends": free African Americans and the culture of benevolence
Epilogue: the afterlife of benevolent citizenship