Edmund Wilson, violence, the Civil War, and me. A conversation and reverie

Abstract

To practice history is to converse with the past. Yet historians, many of whom readily admit to intimate relations with their subjects, prefer to conceal the dialogue. Other than Erik H. Erikson, who in a 1969 book openly addressed Mohandas Gandhi, few scholars have laid bare the interaction between present and past, studier and the studied. History is crafted in such exchanges with the evidence. This article begins to probe the lessons, frustrations, and revelations of a historian's dialogue with the dead. Here, a conversation with Edmund Wilson, the famed American literary critic and unacknowledged student of violence, is wrought from his writings. Together historian and subject probe the bounds of American violence and the Civil War to understand how violence shapes the past and how the past shapes understandings of violence.

Keywords:

• Civil War
• violence
• Edmund Wilson
• conversation
• manliness
• narrative

Notes

The speech of Edmund Wilson (Wilson in conversation denoted as ‘Edmund’) is derived from his letters, diaries, and other work. There are occasional, minor edits for continuity, rhythm, and effect, but otherwise the words appear here as they do in Wilson's writings.

^1. Blackstone and Niblack, Runyan v. State (1877), in Brown (1991, 3, 17); Hardin (1961, 125); Holmes in Brown (1991, 3); Brown in Hofstadter and Wallace (1971, 35).

^2. Kahler (1999); Jefferson (1829, 30); Lincoln (1953a, 321); Winthrop in Donald (2009, 254).

^3. Koop and Lundberg (1992); Kotlowitz (New York Times Magazine, May 4, 2008, 52); Chen (New York Times, January 13, 2011); Brown (1975, ix).

^4. Hofstadter and Wallace (1971, 35); Waldrep and Bellesiles (2006, 4); Foote (1997, 4).

^5. Hofstadter and Wallace (1971, 36). Hofstadter believed that freedom and violence operate as independent variables (Hofstadter and Wallace, 1971, 32). Barrington Moore disagreed and found an economic basis for free labor that all but necessitated a tie between freedom and violence (Moore, 1966, 1968). Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., held that great moral dilemmas are resolved through violence (Schlesinger, 2008, 64–66). James Cone believed it a right of the oppressed to meet their oppressors through violence to demand freedom (Cone, 1975).

^6. Here I borrow from Akhil Reed Amar, whose phrase ‘… ballots rather than bullets would decide …’ contemplates the significance of the Constitution. See Amar (2006, 13); Lowell (2011, 424).

^7. Hardin (1961, 6, 75, 111); Schlesinger (1969, 14); Bancroft in Sonnichsen (1988, 7); Jingle in Brown (1975, 117). The interpretation offered in this paragraph counters that of Arthur Schlesinger, who in The Crisis of Confidence found Americans spent by the violence of the Civil War and thus less violent in the years after Appomattox (Schlesinger, 1969).

^8. Lincoln (1953b, 438). ‘Democratic tyranny’ from London Times in Paludan (1996, 265).

^9. Walzer (2000, 34–35); Cunliffe (1968); Paludan (1996, 296); McFeely (2002); Waldrep and Bellesiles (2006, 7). The idea that years of war spread violence across the land aligns well with the work of Ned Blackhawk, who documented the spread of violence among colonial Native Americans in the Southwest (Blackhawk, 2006).

^10. Lawrence and Karem (2007, 5).

^11. Hacker (2011); Gugliotta (New York Times, April 3, 2012, D1). On how the numbers of the dead shift over time and mark new ways to interpret violent events see Lawrence and Karim (2007, 1); McPherson (2000, 633); Hsieh (2011); Neely, Jr. (2007).

^12. Slotkin (2012, xiv); Mills (1956, 60); Weber in Arendt (1970, 35); Slotkin (1973).

^13. Goodall in Marlantes (2011, line 453/3599); Keely (1997).

^14. Wilson (1971, 50–53, 4, 80–81, 77).

^15. Wilson (1971, 355); Dabney (2005, 503).

^16. Wilson (1971, 207).

^17. Dabney (2005, 12).

^18. Wilson (1983b, 640).

^19. Dabney (2005, 499–513); Wilson in Dabney (2005, 510).

^20. Last words in Dabney (2005, 515); Dabney (2005, 514–515).

^21. Wilson's death experience crafted from Nuland (1993, 3, 5, 11–19).

^22. Nuland (1993, 18).

^23. Gilligan (1997, 21–22); Kahler (1999, 158–161); World Bank (n.d.). The homicide rate in America, for example, is above 5.5 homicides per 100,000 people – most industrial nations are below 2. The rate in Denmark, Norway, and Austria is below 1. See United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2008); Schlesinger (1969, 2–6, 25); Wilson (1994, 882); Dabney (2005, 514).

^24. Wilson (1962, xii, xxxi).

^25. Menand (New Yorker, August 8, 2005, 82).

^26. Lawrence and Karim (2007, 9–10).

^27. Dabney (2005, 500, 511, 515, 18).

^28. Random House, Inc. (1998).

^29. Miller (Christian Science Monitor, April 26, 1962, 11); Commager (New York Times, April 29, 1962, 309); Ramsdell (Los Angeles Times, May 27, 1962, A14).

^30. Max Herzberg on Scrolls from the Dead Sea in the Newark News in Wilson (1956b, back cover).

^31. Aaron (1962, 556).

^32. Hacker (2011); Gugliotta (New York Times, April 3, 2012, D1); Atkinson (New York Times, April 27, 1962, 32); Golden (Chicago Daily Defender, February 20, 1971, 9).

^33. Wilson (1962, xi–xii).

^34. Wilson (1962, xv–xvi, xi, xxxii).

^35. Wilson (1962, 438).

^36. Wilson attributes the epigraph to John Brown, however, it is a Biblical citation from Hebrews 9:22. See Dugan (2009, 426).

^37. Kimber (2009); Madison (1887); Turner (1996); Sidney [Beverly Tucker] (1836); Ruffin (1860); Churchill (1901); Dunbar (1901); Mitchell (1936); Kantor (1955); Marsalis (1995); Doctorow (2005); Randall (2001).

^38. Wilson (1962, 618).

^39. Wilson (1962, 3); Dabney (2005, 5); Meyers (2003, 216–218, 386–387).

^40. Wilson (1962, 9).

^41. Wilson (1962, 37).

^42. Stowe (1856, iii–iv).

^43. Wilson (1962, 605).

^44. Wilson (1962, 434).

^45. Wilson (1983a, 46).

^46. Cone (1975, 196).

^47. Wilson (1977, 33).

^48. Meyers (2003, 36–37); Wilson (1967, 207, 225); Dabney (2005, 60).

^49. Dabney (2005, 320–321); Wilson (1947, 414–415).

^50. Wilson in Dabney (2005, 63); Wilson (1947, Europe, 419).

^51. Wilson (1977, 36); Meyers (2003, 38).

^52. Wilson (1983a, 43–44); Wilson (1965, 168); Dabney (2005, 302).

^53. Walzer (2000, 35).

^54. Schlesinger (2008, 64–66); Wilson (1977, 567).

^55. Wilson (1977, 620).

^56. Wilson (1977, 618).

^57. Wilson (1996, 184).

^58. Obama (2006, 98).

^59. Wilson (1996, 184).

^60. Wilson (1947, 419); Wilson (The New Yorker, March 14, 1953, 120).

^61. Wilson (1977, 620).

^62. Wilson (1977, 620).

^63. Vidal (2001, 13); Wilson (1973, 13).

^64. Wilson (1973, 15–16).

^65. Wilson (1941, 275–276, 280, 289). At the time, Wilson was hardly alone in his analysis of the human condition through Greek tragedy. Reinhold Niebuhr, for instance, wrote: ‘The spirit of man expresses itself in his vital energies as well as in the harmonizing force of mind; and while the latter, as the rational principle of order, is the more ultimate (here the dramatists remain typically Greek) there can be creativity in human affairs only at the price of disturbing this order’ (Niebuhr, 1996, 11).

^66. Wilson (1956a, 49–50).

^67. Ramsdell (Los Angeles Times, May 27, 1962, A14).

^68. An online version of the photograph is available in the catalogue of the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Search for it in the ‘Edmund Wilson Papers’.

^69. Dabney (2005, 55).

^70. Years later Wilson makes that exact claim with an allowance that his younger self may have, on occasion, felt different. See Wilson (1956a, 49).

^71. Wilson (1967, 150, 152).

^72. Wilson (1967, 22).

^73. Rotundo (1993, 225).

^74. Gorn (1986); Rotundo (1993, 224–226); Wilson (1967, 152).

^75. Dabney (2005, 3).

^76. Wilson (1967, 24).

^77. Rose (1986, 38–39); Wilson (1962, 184).

^78. Wilson (1967, 17).

^79. Wilson (1967, 22); Mary McCarthy in Meyers (2003, 8); Wilson (1967, 234); Dabney (2005, 29, 11).

^80. Meyers (2003, 65); Dabney (2005, 4); Flower (2006).

^81. Jeanne Ballot in Dabney (2005, 72–73).

^82. For venereal disease, see Dabney (2005, 635).

^83. Wilson (1980, 446); Dabney (2005, 28); Rotundo (1993, 228).

^84. Legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon warns of the dangers of separating sex from violence, see MacKinnon (2007, 286–291).

^85. Wilson (1975, 284).

^86. Dabney (2005, 502–506).

^87. Wilson (1980, 25).

^88. Wilson (1975, 316); Meyers (2003, 102).

^89. Wilson (1950, 335).

^90. Wilson (1950, 429); Wilson (1996, 149).

^91. Wilson (1996, 150).

^92. Wilson (1977, 614–615).

^93. Wilson (1962, 175).

^94. Royster (1991, 322, 340); Sherman in Royster (1991, 126).

^95. Gilligan (1997, 11); Eyerman (2001).

^96. Lerner (1987, 3); Sumner in Donald (2009, 293).

^97. Colonel cited in New York Times (2011, 368); Lowell (2011, 424).

^98. Ayers (2005, 116).

^99. Wilson (1996, 18).