Chapter 7 Writing about History and Culture from a New Historical Perspective

Working Thesis

Melville’s ‘Benito Cereno’ can be understood as a political commentary on the potential consequences of slavery for the United States.

This working claim is very broad: a reader would certainly ask, “Understood by whom?” “What potential consequences?” and “What kind of commentary?” However, this broad claim gives Paige a starting point. She has isolated a few key terms that she will use as she begins to research the topic further.

Revised Working Thesis 2: The Introductory Paragraph

Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, published in 1855, offers a profound look into the political consciousness of the 1850s. While most critics regard Benito Cereno as a political text mostly for its satirical perspective on America’s use of black slaves, Melville’s story also presents a profound insight into 1850s American self-image in relation to the rest of the world. Specifically, Melville’s construction of the characters of American Captain Amasa Delano and Spanish Don Benito Cereno, and the relationship between them, acts as a way to reflect and comment upon American society of the 1850s. Furthermore, Melville’s adaptation of the plot and characters of Benito Cereno from an actual event demonstrates his interest in current events and politics as motivation for his writing. Without an understanding of the historical events and attitudes of 1850s America, particularly the American belief in Manifest Destiny, readers may miss the chance to read Melville’s work as a political commentary on American society. As a result, it is important to understand the historical events and American attitudes surrounding the publication of Benito Cereno in order to understand Melville’s analysis of American society within his text. An examination of the American attitude of Manifest Destiny during the 1850s and the factual event that Melville based his story on allows for an understanding of Melville’s Benito Cereno as a political commentary on the hypocrisy of America’s domestic and foreign policies.

Paige Caulum

Professor Karlyn Crowley

Introduction to Literature

May 1, 20—

Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno”: A Political Commentary on Manifest Destiny

Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno,” published in 1855, offers a profound look into the political consciousness of the 1850s. While most critics regard “Benito Cereno” as a political text mostly for its satirical perspective on America’s use of black slaves, Melville’s story also presents a profound insight into 1850s American self-image in relation to the rest of the world. Specifically, Melville’s construction of the characters of American Captain Amasa Delano and Spanish Don Benito Cereno, and the relationship between them, acts as a way to reflect and comment upon American society of the 1850s. Furthermore, Melville’s adaptation of the plot and characters of “Benito Cereno” from an actual event demonstrates his interest in current events and politics as motivation for his writing. Without an understanding of the historical events and attitudes of 1850s America, particularly the American belief in Manifest Destiny, readers may miss the chance to read Melville’s work as a political commentary on American society. As a result, it is important to understand the historical events and American attitudes surrounding the publication of “Benito Cereno” in order to understand Melville’s analysis of American society within his text. An examination of the American attitude of Manifest Destiny during the 1850s and the factual event that Melville based his story on allows for an understanding of Melville’s “Benito Cereno” as a political commentary on the hypocrisy of America’s domestic and foreign policies.

The American belief in Manifest Destiny governed how Americans dealt with foreign and domestic affairs during the 19th century. “Manifest Destiny” became the popular term to describe the American belief that Americans were of an “elect nation, destined by Providence to govern the globe” (Emery 49) after the publication of John O’Sullivan’s article “The Great Nation of Futurity” in The United States Democratic Review in 1839. In his article, O’Sullivan describes the popular sentiments of the American people:

We must onward to the fulfillment of our mission—to the entire development of the principle of our organization—freedom of conscience, freedom of person, freedom of trade and business pursuits, universality of freedom and equality. This is our high destiny and in nature’s eternal, inevitable decree of cause of effect we must accomplish it. All this will be our future history, to establish on earth and moral dignity and salvation of man—the immutable truth and beneficence of God. For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America been chosen.… Who, then, can doubt that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity? (O’Sullivan 430)

The concept of America as the chosen nation to spread its ideal republic throughout the world and to liberate oppressed people was accompanied by an increase of American territory westward and the national revolutions of the European colonies in Latin America. To abolitionists such as Melville, this statement stands in stark contrast to the legality of slavery in the Southern half of the United States. The tension between the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and the existence of slavery in America would eventually play a role in the destruction of the Union and the start of the Civil War, as “[t]he commitment of both major parties to Manifest Destiny only raised the question of slavery, the question that American nationalism was supposed to bury” (Rogin 103).

The Napoleonic Wars in Europe during the early part of the 19th century caused Spain to lose its hold on its colonies abroad. As a result, many Spanish colonies in Latin America attempted to gain independence and establish their own governments throughout the 19th century. America supported the struggles of the Latin American natives, as they believed “it is neither to be expected nor desired that the people [of Latin America], far from the reach of the oppressors of Spain, should submit to be governed by them” (“Cuba” 12). In addition, the idea of Manifest Destiny led most Americans to believe that it was America’s duty to help oppressed nations and extend their republican form of government, as they believed in “the philanthropic mission of their country to extend the same [commercial freedoms] throughout the hemisphere” (“Cuba” 15). Americans also believed in spreading their republican institutions westward. Shortly after O’Sullivan’s speech on Manifest Destiny, the United States annexed Texas and signed the Treaty of Guadalupe—Hidalgo, in which the United States gained 525,000 square miles from Mexico. The belief that the American form of government and way of life was “the loftiest developments of human wisdom” (“The Spanish-American Republics” 339) had a profound impact on how Americans were perceived by the rest of the world and governed the ways America interacted with other nations. From Melville’s perspective, however, America’s condemnation of European colonialism conflicted with its enthusiasm for westward expansion. Melville criticizes this hypocrisy through his characterization of Captain Amasa Delano as a self-righteous American and Delano’s description of Don Benito Cereno as a contemptible European. Furthermore, Melville revealed his criticism that these self-important attitudes made America vulnerable to failure by illustrating how Delano’s arrogant attitude leads to his inability to detect the actual situation aboard the ship and his near destruction at the hands of the slaves.

First published in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine in 1855, “Benito Cereno” reflects the conventional American attitudes of Manifest Destiny and anti-Spanish colonialism. Melville’s characterization of American Captain Amasa Delano, along with Delano’s description of the Spaniard Don Benito, illustrates the concept of the self-important American critical of Europeans. For example, while Delano is depicted as “a person of a singularly undistrustful good nature” (2406), Don Benito is described by Delano as a “of unfriendly indifference” (2410) and “anything but dignified” (2419). In the article “Cuba,” published in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine in January of 1853, similar attitudes of American and Spanish dispositions are expressed. The author of “Cuba” describes Americans as “an enlightened, progressive race” (16), while the Spaniards are “the extreme reverse” (14). Furthermore, Delano repeatedly praises his “charity” (2410) and “benevolent interest” (2412) towards the passengers of the San Dominick, reflecting the American tendency to “feel a lively sympathy for the oppressed everywhere” (“Cuba” 3). The idea that Americans felt they were superior to other nationalities is illustrated in Delano’s claim, “How unlike we are made! What to me … would have been a solemn satisfaction, the bare suggestion, even, terrifies the Spaniard into this trance” (2417). In addition, Delano attributes his success of saving the San Dominick to “the ever-watchful Providence above” (2445), reflecting the belief that America was “under the guidance of a manifest and beneficent Providence” (para. 5), as stated in President Franklin Pierce’s inauguration speech in 1853. These historical events and documents reveal the motivation behind Melville’s characterization of Delano and Don Benito.

The paradox of the belief that Americans were “a great friend of humanity … very anxious to fight for the liberation of enslaved nations and colonies” (Rogin 73) and the use of millions of African slaves in southern America and America’s own westward imperialism was difficult for many Americans, including Melville, to accept. Melville, an abolitionist, used “Benito Cereno” to examine “the false claims and confidences of Manifest Destiny” (Emery 50). Melville comments on the failures of the belief in Manifest Destiny through Captain Delano’s extreme distrust of Don Benito, which causes him to miss the actual situation aboard the San Dominick. While Delano struggles with misgivings against Don Benito, as he “he began to feel a ghostly dread of Don Benito” (2422), and felt Don Benito and Babo had “the air of conspirators” (2421), his sympathy for the blacks never wavers, as he “took to negroes, not philanthropically, but genially, just as other men to Newfoundland dogs” (2435). More than anything, Delano’s suspicions of Don Benito are based on his prejudices against European colonizers as a result of the sentiments of American Manifest Destiny. At the time, American’s were suspicious of Spain’s colonial policies, describing them as “hoary with abuses, and blackened with corruption” (“The Spanish-American Republics” 339). Delano comments that “[b]ut as a nation—continued he in his reveries—these Spaniards are all an odd set; the very word Spaniard has a curious, conspirator, Guy-Fawkish twang to it” (2431). Melville’s reference to Guy Fawkes signals how “fears of ‘the Spaniard’ hand tenanted the minds of Anglo-Saxons since the days of the Gunpowder plot” (Emery 52). Furthermore, Delano attributes the “sad disrepair” (2407) and the “noisy confusion” (2411) of the ship to the “debility … bodily and mental, of the Spanish captain” (2410) and the “sullen inefficiency of the whites” (2410). By blaming Don Benito for the disorder of the ship, “Delano takes a second expansionist tack” (Emery 52) and projects his prejudice of the “pandemonium, enervation, and tyranny” (Emery 53) of the Spanish government onto Don Benito.

Delano’s tendency to blame the Spaniard for his unease aboard the San Dominick causes him to overlook the inherent tensions aboard the ship. In this sense, Delano’s inability to perceive the actual problems of the San Dominick because of his preoccupation with his suspicions of Don Benito reflects the faults of Manifest Destiny, as America was “too busy glancing abroad to notice local friction” (Emery 50). Melville’s political commentary on American values and attitudes is established in the faults of Captain Delano himself. Captain Delano fails to understand the actual situation aboard the ship as a result of his focus on Don Benito, as he “began to regard the stranger’s conduct something in the light of an intentional affront” (2419). An understanding of Melville’s familiarization of the historical event and documents reveals that he based Delano’s missed interpretation of the situation on the ship on what actually happened. According to statements made by Delano, Cereno, and Babo, “[u]p to and including the time of Delano’s departure from the Trial, Babo’s plan was brilliantly achieved, with Delano, on leaving, knowing little more than he did before boarding” (Stuckey and Leslie 265–66). In addition, the documents reveal that the “developments on the Trial remained so impenetrable to [Delano] that he thought Benito Cereno might be his enemy” (Stuckey and Leslie 266). The fact that Delano’s misunderstanding about the situation aboard the ship was factual gives credit to Melville’s use of the story to criticize the delusions created by Manifest Destiny, “for at the same time when national forces, in the fullness of a very genuine vigor, were achieving an external triumph, the very triumph itself was subjecting their nationalism to internal stresses which … would bring the nation to a supreme crisis” (Rogin 102).

Although the 1850s marked the golden age of American westward expansion, “The Spanish-American Republics” expresses the American disdain for Spanish colonialism, claiming Spanish colonialism is “impelled by ambition and avarice, sustained by the proudest monarch in the world, enjoying the full sunshine of royal favor, followed and cheered on by the enthusiasts of a proselyting faith, inflamed by the wildest dreams of conquest, and striking for the dominion of the world” (“The Spanish-American Republics” 338). While Spanish colonialism was “the pursuit of robbery and plunder” (“Cuba” 6), American expansionism, marked by the annexation of Texas in 1845 and the Treaty of Guadalupe—Hidalgo of 1848, was a “noble enterprise” (“Cuba” 10), the result of the “irrepressible desire of states to become united to each other by the ‘New Law of Annexation’” (“Cuba” 10). In the same sense, Delano justifies his plan to take over the San Dominick from Don Benito’s rule, as he claims, “There was a difference between the idea of Don Benito’s darkly pre-ordaining Captain Delano’s fate, and Captain Delano’s lightly arranging Don Benito’s” (2424). Delano’s ability to delusion himself into believing that there is a difference between his plot to take the San Dominick and Don Benito’s supposed plan to pirate Delano’s ship reflects America’s tendency to justify its actions in the same way.

Melville establishes Delano’s justifications for his taking of the San Dominick in order to reveal and criticize the same type of hypocrisy practiced by the Americans in their justification of westward expansion, yet condemnation of European colonialism. It is important to note Melville’s familiarization with the character of the historical Captain Delano, which he discovered through reading Delano’s recordings of his life in Voyages, to understand how Melville structures his commentary on American values. Melville harbored an extreme dislike for Captain Delano as he represented the hypocrisy of American society. For example, although Delano condemns European exploitation of Latin American natives and resources, he also “sees New Guinea, Ceram, Goram, and other isle in their vicinity as places from which great treasures might be secured in exchange for the least costly items” (Stuckey and Leslie, 269). In addition, Captain Delano’s piratical motivations for helping Benito Cereno are revealed in his demands for “half of the ‘Trial’ and all on board her for taking the ship and bringing her safe into port.… This promise [he] made [on assurance] from the Spanish captain of the ‘Trial’” (Stuckey and Leslie 275). Melville uses the duplicity of Delano’s statements in his letters to the Spanish kings in his text to “depict Manifest Destiny as the rhetorical camouflage for a largely ‘piratical’ enterprise” (Emery 54). In more than one letter to the Spanish government, Delano claims, “the services rendered off the island St. Maria were from pure motives of humanity” (Stuckey and Leslie 275), while simultaneously “refus[ing] to accept … ‘three thousand dollars by way of gratification’ from Benito Cereno … instead demand[ing] a larger reward” (Stuckey and Leslie 275). Delano’s insistence on compensation reveals the contradiction between American statements of ideology and the desire to acquire more wealth and property.

Even Benito Cereno comments on American hypocrisy, as he claims, “no one takes more advantage of our alliance and friendship than the Anglo-Americans; they enter our ports frequently, finding protection and assistance which surpasses the limits of hospitality … but it is not surprising that the most generous nation should produce a monster who, deluded by ambition, should choose to ignore the public well-being” (277). Melville’s creation of sympathy for Benito Cereno as a character reveals Melville’s similar attitude towards American policy. In Melville’s story, Delano’s justification for his plan to “with[draw] the command from [Benito Cereno]” and “send her to Conception, in charge of his second mate” (2424) as his desire to redeem the oppressed represents the “interventionism of mid-century Americans” (Emery 53). Furthermore, Melville’s presentation of the contradiction between Delano’s reasoning for his actions as benevolent and his underlying desire to expand his wealth “invalidates the distinction … between American expansionism and the ‘corrupt’ colonialism of European nations” (Emery 55). In addition, Delano’s underlying desire to take command of the ship rather than save the oppressed is revealed by his decision to chase the San Dominick after the Spaniards had escaped, claiming “But to kill or maim the negroes was not the object. To take them, with the ship, was the object” (2449). The fact that Delano plans on keeping the negroes, who would have been considered valuable cargo, showcases that Delano did not go after the ship to save the other Spaniards still aboard the San Dominick or to bring the negroes to justice. Furthermore, despite Don Benito’s urge to Delano to “not give chase” (2448), Delano encourages his sailors to join in the capture of the ship because “[the ship] and her cargo, including some gold and silver, were worth more than a thousand doubloons” (2448). Again, Melville extracted the basis of this scene from the historical statements made by Benito Cereno and Captain Delano, further supporting the concept of Melville’s text as a commentary on American practices. For example, although Delano “observed that Don Benito was ‘frightened at his own shadow’” (Stuckey and Leslie 266) during the chase of the Trial, Delano continues to pursue the ship, as he even “ordered the cannons on the Perseverance to be run out of port holes and fired at the Trial” (Stuckey and Leslie 266). In addition, Melville’s description of Delano promising his crew monetary rewards for capturing the ship is based on the factual events, as Delano claimed in one of his letters, “I promised to my people one half of the ‘Trial’ and all on board her for taking the ship and bringing her safe into port” (Stuckey and Leslie 275). Melville used his text as a way to showcase the greed of the American people and the ultimate failures of the American ideal of Manifest Destiny.

Melville’s exposure of the hypocrisy of Manifest Destiny also functions, finally, as a criticism of slavery in America. The contradiction Melville establishes between Delano’s proclamations of sympathy towards the negroes and his simultaneous treatment of them as slaves exposes Melville’s criticism on America’s condemnation of European use of slavery and its concurrent policy of legal slavery in the South. Melville again uses his characterization of Delano to represent these American views, as Delano’s attempt to liberate Atufal, claiming, “in view of his general docility, as well as in some natural respect for his spirit, remit him his penalty” (2418) is shortly followed by his claim, “‘I should like to have [Babo] here myself—what will you take for him?’” (2424). Americans believed they were supposed to aid the oppressed, as revealed in President Franklin’s inauguration speech as he said, “our country has, in my judgment, thus far fulfilled its highest duty to suffering humanity. It has spoken and will continue to speak, not only by its words, but by its acts, the language of sympathy, encouragement, and hope to those who earnestly listen to tones which pronounce for the largest rational liberty” (Pierce para. 4). However, Melville recognized that the existence of slavery in America was not consistent with these claims of sympathy toward the oppressed. A reading of Melville’s text as a criticism of slavery is validated by the existence of similar hypocritical attitudes toward slavery in the factual Captain Delano. For example, Delano criticizes European enslavement of Latin American natives, as he claims “the natives manifested no hostility toward [the Europeans].… ‘But the Europeans seized and carried them away as slaves, in a most treacherous way’” (Stuckey and Leslie 268). However, according to his writings in Voyages, “Delano had occasion to sail with slaves without evincing the slightest concern” and Delano expressed his views that slaves “were commodities of exchange … and should be exploited as such” (Stuckey and Leslie, 269). Melville used the character of Captain Delano as representative of the American people, who often claimed to be the refuge for oppressed souls, yet engaged in one of the most oppressive human rights abuses themselves.

A close look into the history behind Melville’s Benito Cereno allows us to understand the motivations behind the text and his construction of the characters and plot. Specifically, the hypocrisy of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny alongside America’s criticisms of European colonialism and use of oppression on America’s slaves was the focus of Melville’s commentary on American society. The fact that Melville based his story on an actual event and his characters on actual people makes his criticisms against the American policy of Manifest Destiny even more poignant. In this sense, an examination of historical documents to understand the political and social culture of America in the 1850s is imperative for an understanding of Melville’s construction of characters and plot as a way to criticize American contradictory policies.

Works Cited

“Cuba.” Putnam’s Monthly Magazine 14.5 (Jan. 1853): 3–16. Cornell University Library. Web. 13 Apr. 2009.

Emery, Allan Moore. “‘Benito Cereno’ and Manifest Destiny.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 39.1 (June 1984): 46–68. Web. 13 April 2009.

“Franklin Pierce Inaugural Address: Friday, March 4, 1853.” Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O. Bartleby Books On-Line. Web. 13 Apr. 2009.

Melville, Herman. Benito Cereno. The Norton Anthology: American Literature. 7th ed. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2007. 2405–61. Print.

O’Sullivan, John L. “The Great Nation of Futurity.” The United States Democratic Review 6.23 (Nov. 1839): 426–30. New York: J. & H. G. Langley. Cornell University Library. Web. 13 Apr. 2009.

Rogin, Michael Paul. Subversive Genealogy: The Politics and Art of Herman Melville. Berkeley: U of California P, 1985. Print.

“The Spanish American Republics, and the Causes of Their Failure. Central America.” The American Whig Review 12.34 (Oct. 1850): 337–45. Cornell University Library. Web. 13 Apr. 2009.

Stuckey, Sterling, and Joshua Leslie. “Aftermath: Captain Delano’s Claim against Benito Cereno.” Modern Philology 85.3 (Feb., 1988): 265–87. Web. 13 Apr. 2009.

Stefanie Jochman

Professor John Neary

Introduction to Literature

April 9, 20—

“Words of Lead”: Emily Dickinson’s Poetry and the Grief of the Civil War

In a letter to her friend and advisor Thomas W. Higginson, a colonel in the Union army, Emily Dickinson confessed: “War feels to me an oblique place” (letter 280). For many years, that quotation, in combination with the rarity of Dickinson’s reference to the war in other manuscripts, was misinterpreted as indifference or confusion towards the Civil War. However, Dickinson’s interpretation of the war as “oblique” is the best way to describe the nation-dividing conflict that took place on American soil from 1861–65. The Civil War divided families, friendships, and political parties. Arguably a battle for honor (most of the Confederate soldiers, contrary to popular myth, were not fighting in favor of slavery—they were not wealthy enough to own slaves) the Civil War was a conflict of blurred lines. Union supporters were in favor of preserving the Union, but not all of them were passionate about the abolition of slavery; Confederates, most notably General Robert E. Lee, mourned the idea of dissolving the union, but considered their first loyalty to be to their states. Emily Dickinson was not the only person to whom the war seemed oblique; like any period of wartime, feelings of confusion and sorrow pierced the hearts of those on the home front.

An understanding of the mixed feelings shared by many during the Civil War warrants another examination of Dickinson’s life and work during the war years, her most productive period. An investigation into her family’s connection to the war yields evidence of her father’s intriguing opinion of the conflict (he supported the Union but was disgusted by radical abolitionists), as well as Austin Dickinson’s ability to monetarily “dodge” the draft. Dickinson’s correspondence with Thomas Higginson, who secretly worked with John Brown and was later the commander of one of the Union army’s first black regiments, questions her view of slavery. Also, Dickinson’s willingness to publish several poems in a Union fundraiser suggests that she, though quite silent about politics in her letters, supported the North and its troops. However, the strongest argument for Dickinson’s investment in the “oblique” War Between the States is her own poetry, which frequently focuses on the deaths of soldiers that she and her family had once hosted in their home. Poems like “When I was small, a Woman died” (poem # 596); “It feels a shame to be alive” (# 444); and “Fate slew Him, but He did not drop” (# 1031) reflect Dickinson’s emotional connection to the Civil War, as well as her fascination with the glorified deaths of soldiers. Given the charged atmosphere surrounding Emily Dickinson during the war years—her father’s political activism, Amherst’s installation of a telegraph that transmitted news of the war, Thomas Higginson’s military pursuits, and the loss of dear friends like Frazer Stearn—it is impossible to deny Emily Dickinson’s connection to and knowledge of the Civil War. For Dickinson, the war may have been “oblique,” but her poetry provides clarity for readers trying to grasp a citizen’s reaction to the Civil War.

The popular myth promoting Emily Dickinson’s distance from both Amherst society and the Civil War can be partially attributed to the political and social climate of small-town New England during the middle of the 19th century. In The American Civil War, Peter Parish notes that those living in the North were at an advantage because the majority of the war was fought on southern soil. “Small town … New England … followed its familiar pattern, and local news was only occasionally overshadowed by momentous events far away,” writes Parish (374). In fact, the North, despite the loss of its troops, actually benefited technologically and financially from the war. “Northern industry had a growth that was almost explosive … [such that] the North had little trouble in financing the war,” reports Bruce Catton (444–46). Therefore, Emily Dickinson, a single woman in the North with no immediate family fighting in the war, could easily be detached from the day-to-day drain of wartime in a way that most Southerners could not. Furthermore, Amherst was a relatively secluded town. As Millicent Todd Bingham, daughter of Dickinson’s first editor points out: “Until December, 1861, there was no telegraph.… Indeed Amherst was hardly more than a cluster of farms” (65). The war began with the firing of Fort Sumter in April of 1861, and while the Amherst community did receive its news from the Springfield Republican and locally printed Hampshire and Franklin Express (Bingham 121), it is quite likely that, until the telegraph arrived in 1861, immediate and accurate news of the war was rare.

However, the war news that did reach Amherst affected Dickinson and her poetry. A letter to family friend and editor of the Republican, Samuel Bowles, dated March 1862, offers the poem “Victory comes late” (# 690), in which Dickinson writes: “Victory comes late, /And is held low to freezing lips / Too rapt with frost / To mind it!” (letter 257).¹ In his notes on the letter, Thomas Johnson questions the dating of the poem, but also suggests that, had the poem actually been written in 1862, it may have coincided with the death of Bowles and the Dickinsons’ mutual friend, Frazer Stearns (Letters 400). Given the national news surrounding the date of publication, it is even more likely that the poem was written in 1862. An article in the Republican on February 20, 1862, celebrated the Northern victory at Fort Donelson, Tennessee: “The news of the capture … reached town about 1 p.m. The bells were rung, and more tin horns brought into requisition by the students than the priests blew around the walls of Jericho” (Leyda 46). While not a well-known battle, John Y. Simon writes in The Civil War Battlefield Guide that “Fort Donelson … became the site of the first major Confederate defeat in the Civil War. Victory at Donelson started Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant on his road to Appomattox” (17). After a year of solid defeats like that of the first Battle of Bull Run, where Lee’s forces solidly trounced the Union army, the North needed to boost its quickly falling spirits. Fort Donelson helped northerners to re-envision a Union victory in the war. Surely news of the South’s nearly unstoppable forces had reached Amherst and dampened its citizens’ spirits, therefore making the victory at Fort Donelson a cause to celebrate wildly. Dickinson’s “Victory comes late” reflects the feelings of her neighbors at the news of Fort Donelson. The lines regarding “freezing lips/ Too rapt with frost” (2–3) describe the conditions of the soldiers fighting in Tennessee, where “both armies froze when overnight temperatures unexpectedly fell to twelve degrees” (Simon 18). However, both those injuries felt by both the frozen soldiers and their families at home were, like Dickinson writes, “Too rapt with frost!” (3) to be concerned with the lateness of victory. At the very least, a solid Union victory had finally arrived.

As mentioned in the Republican, the students at Amherst Academy were actively involved in the Amherst community. Though secluded, the town of Amherst was a place of superior educational repute, thanks to the college. Emily’s father, Edward Dickinson, was treasurer of Amherst Academy for nearly forty years. The Dickinsons were a prominent, powerful Massachusetts family, and patriarch Edward’s political involvement during the war kept the family financially secure. In fact, the Dickinsons’ wealth allowed them to distance themselves from the battlefield. In 1864, an article appeared in the Republican reporting that Austin Dickinson, Emily’s brother, was drafted into the army, but he quickly paid $500 for a substitute to serve in his place (Leyda 88). Austin and Emily’s father could have assisted in the procuring and purchasing of the substitute, as he was a powerful man in the community and sometimes took part in recruitment programs.² Edward Dickinson was very involved in the Whig party, the precursor to Abraham Lincoln’s Republican party. In 1850, when battles over slavery were reaching a fever-pitch, the Whig party maintained a membership of northern and southern politicians. However, this combination would eventually lead to the party’s destruction. As northerners drifted closer and closer to slavery-intolerant abolitionism, the northern Whigs demanded similar policies within their political party. The Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 permitted the spread of slavery to the West and enraged northern Whigs such that they formed the Republican party with a platform that abruptly halted the spread of slavery. Both the Constitutional Unionist and Republican parties offered prominent positions to Edward Dickinson, but he rejected them in favor of his own political leanings. As Alfred Habegger points out in My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson, “Edward kept clear of all parties, [but] he vigorously backed the northern war effort, offering bounties to volunteers and … condemning not just the South but the spectrum of northern political opinion” (402). He disapproved of radical and outspoken abolitionists who were riling southern tempers, thereby encouraging war.

What Emily Dickinson thought of her father’s political efforts is unclear, although Habegger, quoting one of her letters, notes that Dickinson did not look well upon being thrust into the public eye as a politician’s daughter: “‘I hear they wish to make me Lieutenant-Governor’s daughter. Were they cats I would pull their tails, but as they are only patriots, I must forego the bliss.’ Her odd mixture of disdain and respect resembles her father’s mixed signals” (401). In 1864, however, Dickinson approved three poems for publication in Drum Beat, “a fund-raising paper … to raise money for the United States Sanitary Commission” (Dandurand 18).³ Dickinson’s pro bono publication in Drum Beat is significant because it displays a political sectionalism previously unbeknownst to Dickinson scholars. “The poems published … must be seen as her contribution to the Union cause,” asserts Karen Dandurand (22). Dickinson was not a successful poet while she was alive, therefore her donation of the poems during a time when she could rarely publish them for profit suggests that she was sympathetic to the Union. It is interesting to note that the paper raised funds for the Sanitary Commission, especially since, in a letter to Mrs. Samuel Bowles, she admitted that she would not “weave Blankets or Boots” (letter 235) like other women who crafted such items for the Sanitary Commission (Habegger 402).

Perhaps Dickinson was spurred into political action by the threat of Austin’s call to war in the draft of 1864. Perhaps the poems for Drum Beat were Dickinson’s way of healing her good friend Colonel Thomas Higginson’s war wound. Dickinson wrote anxiously to Higginson after learning of his injury: “Are you in danger—I did not know that you were hurt.… I am surprised and anxious, since receiving your note” (letter 290). In the same letter, Dickinson offers Higginson a bit of poetry that reflects both her anxiety over his injury as well as the toll the war was taking on the country. She writes: “The only News I know/ Is Bulletins all day/ From Immortality” (1–3). Far from the telegraph-less confines of secluded Amherst, the opening stanza to “The Only News I know” (# 827) expresses the exhaustion she felt after hearing three years’ worth of war news and surviving the deaths of her Aunts Lavinia and Lamira (Habegger 400). Also present in the letter is a fear that another of her beloved friends will die. In one of the stanzas Dickinson omitted from her letter to Higginson, she writes: “The Only One I meet/ Is God—The Only Street— / Existence—This traversed” (7–9). Death surrounded Emily Dickinson such that she felt she communicated with God as though she herself were dead. The “Bulletins.… From Immortality” that she mentions to Higginson are death notices, which, in Amherst, had already been delivered to several of the college trustees’ families, including that of President Stearns, whose son Frazer died at the battle of Newbern in North Carolina. The death of Frazer Stearns inspired some of Emily Dickinson’s most emotional writings about the war. She writes about Stearn at length in several of her letters to her cousins Louise and Francis Norcross, saying “brave Frazer—’killed at Newbern,’ darlings. His big heart shot away by a ‘minie ball.’ I had read of those—I didn’t think that Frazer would carry one to Eden with him” (letter 255). As Thomas Johnson suggests, “Victory comes late” may have expressed bitterness over Frazer’s death (Letters 400), but another poem, “It don’t sound so terrible—quite—as it did” (# 426), struggles to put into words the pain that Dickinson observed in her brother Austin when he learned of Frazer Stearns’ death:

 

  It don’t sound so terrible—quite—as it did—

    I run it over—”Dead,” brain, “Dead.”

    ………………………………………………

  Turn it, a little—full in the face

    A Trouble looks bitterest—

    Shift it—just—

    Say “When Tomorrow comes this way—

    I shall have waded down one Day.” (1–2, 5–9)

Dickinson expressed concern for Austin in a letter to Samuel Bowles, saying, “Austin is chilled—by Frazer’s murder—He says—his Brain keeps saying over ‘Frazer is killed’.… Two or three words of lead—that dropped so deep, they keep weighing” (letter 256). Dickinson’s words fall like the “words of lead” she wrote about to Samuel Bowles; her speaker—presumably Austin—is so sad and desperate in search of comfort for his grief. The poet’s concern could be extended to the rest of the United States. “It don’t sound so terrible—quite—as it did” makes tears speak, and it accurately describes the disbelief most Americans were feeling during the second year of the Civil War. When the South first fired on Fort Sumter, people on both sides of the conflict believed that the war would last only months. Instead, the war lasted four long and weary years. Citizens in the North and South did their best to “shift” the pain of war so they could cope. Nevertheless, the deaths of Frazer Stearns and other soldiers came as a terrible surprise to their families and the nation. Months after Stearns’s death, Emily Dickinson wrote another letter to Samuel Bowles in which she described an encounter with a Union soldier who had asked for “a nosegay” before leaving for battle. She confesses to Bowles “It is easier to look behind at a pain, than to see it coming” (letter 272), so she turned the soldier away, knowing that the pain of befriending another potentially dead man would be too much for her.

The traumatic deaths of Union and Confederate soldiers left the nation feeling survivors’ guilt. The poem, “It feels a shame to be Alive” (# 444), suggests that Dickinson herself felt guilty to be alive in Amherst when men like Frazer Stearns were dying; she also envies the significance of a military life. She writes:

 

  It feels a shame to be Alive—

  When Men so brave—are dead

  One envies the Distinguished Dust—

  Permitted—such a Head—…

  The price is great—Sublimely paid—

  Do we deserve—a Thing—

  That lives—like Dollars—must be piled

  Before we may obtain?…

Dickinson’s speaker “envies the Distinguished Dust,” indicating her own fascination with the glorified deaths of soldiers. Death is a frequent topic of Dickinson’s poetry, but she attributes a special significance to the death of a soldier, whose ashes are not simply ashes, but “Distinguished Dust.” Further evidence of Dickinson’s fascination with military death is available in her letters. When she describes the homecoming of Frazer Stearns’s body, she tells the Norcross cousins, “Nobody here could look on Frazer—not even his father. The doctors would not allow it … we will mind ourselves of this young crusader—too brave that he could fear to die” (letter 255). Dickinson’s mention of Stearns’s closed casket implies that she would have liked to see the dead body, and her desire to keep Frazer alive in memory suggests a reverence toward his sacrifice.

Dickinson scholar Leigh-Anne Urbanowicz Marcellin discusses the poet’s obsession with soldiers’ deaths as a relation of opposites: “She is both fascinated with and repulsed by the fallen men; they are at once beautiful and hideous and their deaths noble and meaningless” (65). The deaths of those in “It feels a shame to be Alive” were certainly noble and meaningful, as is the death of a soldier in another poem of the Civil War period, “When I was small, a Woman died” (# 596). This poem describes the death of an orphaned son who “Went up from the Potomac / His face all Victory” (3–4). Dickinson celebrates a battlefield death and sees it as an opportunity for a reunion of souls, “proud in Apparition / That Woman and her Boy” (13–14). Here, battle is the soldier’s vehicle of salvation and happiness. Perhaps the poem is Dickinson’s own effort to “shift” the pain of grief. By attributing a higher purpose to death, Dickinson can console herself about the magnitude of casualties. In 1862 alone, the North faced two of its most devastating conflicts: the battle of Antietam, where more American men were lost in one day than any other day of combat in the nation’s history, and the battle of Fredericksburg, where the mistakes of General Burnside cost 12,600 Union lives (Simon 103). The blood and souls of the Civil War demanded Dickinson’s attention and showcased themselves in her work.

As the war progressed, Dickinson stepped away from the deaths of soldiers and narrowed her focus to death itself. Nevertheless, her poetry continued to reflect the events of the war and the emotions surrounding them. Throughout the war, the wounded were sent home to recuperate or be permanently released from their army contracts. However, these soldiers would not return home the same bright-eyed, eager young men they once were. In “Dying! To be afraid of thee” (# 831), Dickinson surmises what the psyche of a war veteran would say to death. To be afraid of death, Dickinson’s speaker suggests, “One must to thine Artillery/ Have left exposed a Friend” (2–3); only one who has seen death can fear it. Men on the battlefield witnessed death in the instant decapitation of cannon fire or a bullet’s swift piercing of the heart. At the poem’s conclusion, Dickinson’s speaker describes “Two Armies, Love and Certainty/ And Love and the Reverse” (11–12). Here, the armies are Heaven and Hell, and the prospect of Hell—or “Love and the Reverse”—is what strikes fear into the hearts of those who have seen death. Dickinson raises a still religiously taboo question: when is killing not a sin? Is one who kills in war destined for Hell? Such questions must have plagued the minds of the hollowed-eyed surviving soldiers of the Civil War.

By 1865, the nation was, not surprisingly, exhausted by war. Similarly, Dickinson’s poetry during the final years is short, sparse, and skeletal. Many of the 1865 poems are only four lines long. Alfred Habegger suggests: “War gave [Dickinson] a powerful vehicle with which to parse her own extremity” (404). One poem, “Fate slew Him, but He did not drop” (# 1031), is an example of Dickinson’s combination of themes. The poem is a description of Christ, “Impaled … on fiercest stakes– / He neutralized them all” (3–4), who overcomes the obstacles thrown by Fate, which, in this poem represents the opposite of God, thereby showcasing Dickinson’s penchant for religious imagery. However, the poem also includes military language. Dickinson writes: “She [Fate] stung him—sapped His firm Advance” (5), implying that Christ was a soldier, or that soldiers were Christ-like in their sacrifice. Christ the Soldier is then, at the poem’s conclusion, “Acknowledged … a Man” (8). The final line presents some trouble, given that Christians believe Christ proclaimed his divinity in the resurrection; however, the concept of Christ the soldier works well with the poem’s conclusion. Young boys left for war with the hopes of becoming men. By using the Christ/soldier imagery, Dickinson questions whether or not the thousands who volunteered for military service accomplished such a feat. Here, Dickinson also criticizes how male-dominated society forced the war upon its young men with the draft. Should they have endured a pain that could be likened to Christ’s on the cross? In her later, death-centered poetry Dickinson presents herself as an objector to the war. She may have supported the goals of the Union forces, but the grief she experienced—even as one so detached from actual battle—made her question the necessity, as well as the methods, of war.

Endnotes

1. Please see the Appendix to read “Victory comes late” and other referenced poems in their entirety.

2. In The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson, Jay Leyda includes documentation of both Austin’s use of a substitute and Edward Dickinson’s involvement in recruitment.

   An excerpt from the Hampshire and Franklin Express, dated July 18, 1862 reads:

   Meeting of the Citizens of Amherst. $100 Bounty Offered to Each Volunteer. …On motion of W.A. Dickinson it was voted, That…the town should pay $100 dollars bounty in addition to what the U.S. and State governments pay…It was here announced by Hon. Edward Dickinson that Mr. William Stearns…had offered a bounty of $25 to every Soldier who should enlist from Amherst not exceeding 36…The following persons guaranteed $100 in case town did not appropriate. (63—the omissions are Leyda’s)

   A record of enlistment for May, 1864, states: “Complete Record of the Names of all the Soldiers and Officers…from Amherst, Mass. During the Rebellion begun in 1861…Names of men who were drafted from Amherst…who furnished substitutes May 1864 Dickinson Wm Austin Paid for substitute 500” (89; the omissions are Leyda’s).

3. Karen Dandurand writes: “‘Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple,’ titled ‘Sunset,’ appeared in the Drum Beat on 29 February; ‘Flowers—Well—if anybody’…titled ‘Flowers’ on 2 March; and ‘These are the days when Birds come back’…titled ‘October,’ on 11 March” (18). None of these poems have a direct reference to war, soldiering, or death; however, both “Flowers—well, if anybody” and “These are the days when Birds come back” are tonally melancholy and desperate. In “Flowers—well, if anybody,” Dickinson describes the flowers as having “Too much pathos in their faces,” a sentiment that could easily be transferred to returning soldiers (9). Nevertheless, the actual publication of the Drum Beat poems is more important than their content when discussing Dickinson’s relationship to the war.

Appendix

To provide the reader with a better understanding of Dickinson’s war poetry, all poems referenced within the essay are printed here in their entirety. All poems, except “Victory comes late,” are taken from Thomas H. Johnson’s The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. “Victory comes late” appears as it was written in Dickinson’s letter to Samuel Bowles, March 1862.

 

  Victory comes late,

  And is held low to freezing lips

  Too rapt with frost

  To mind it!

  How sweet it would have tasted!

  Just a drop!

  Was God so economical?

  His table’s spread too high

  Except we dine on tiptoe!

  Crumbs fit such little mouths—

  Cherries—suit Robins—

  The Eagle’s golden breakfast—dazzles them!

  God keep his vow to “Sparrows,”

  Who of little love—know how to starve!

 

426

  It don’t sound so terrible—quite—as it did—

  I run it over—“Dead”, “Brain”, “Dead”

  Put it in Latin—left of my school—

  Seems it don’t shriek so—under rule.

  Turn it, a little—full in the face

  A Trouble looks bitterest—

  Shift it—just—

  Say “When Tomorrow comes this way—

  I shall have waded down one Day.”

 

  I suppose it will interrupt me some

  Till I get accustomed—but then the Tomb

  Like other new Things—shows largest—then—

  And smaller, by Habit—

  It’s shrewder then

  Put the Thought in advance—a Year—

  How like “a fit”—then—

  Murder—wear!

 

444

  It feels a shame to be Alive—

  When Men so brave—are dead-

  One envies the Distinguished Dust—

  Permitted—such a Head—

  The Stone—that tells defending Whom

  This Spartan put away

  What little of Him we—possessed

  In Pawn for Liberty

  The price is great—Sublimely paid—

  Do we deserve—a Thing—

  That lives—like Dollars—must be piled

  Before we may obtain?

  Are we that wait—sufficient worth—

  That such Enormous Pearl

  As life—dissolved be—for Us—

  In Battle’s—horrid Bowl?

  It may be—a Renown to live—

  I think a Man who die—

  Those unsustained—Saviors—

  Present Divinity—

 

596

  When I was small, a Woman died—

  Today—her Only Boy

  Went up from the Potomac—

  His face all Victory

  To look at her—How slowly

  The seasons must have turned

  Till Bullets clipt an Angle

  And He passed quickly round

  If pride shall be in Paradise—

  Ourself cannot decide—

  Of their imperial Conduct—

  No person testified—

 

  But, proud in Apparition—

  That Woman and her Boy

  Pass back and forth, before my Brain

  As even in the sky—

  I’m confident that Bravoes

  Perpetual break abroad

  For Braveries, remote as this

  In Scarlet Maryland—

 

827

  The Only News I know

  Is Bulletins all Day

  From Immortality.

  The Only Shows I see—

  Tomorrow and Today—

  Perchance Eternity

  The Only One I meet

  Is God—The Only Street—

  Existence—This traversed

 

  If Other News there be—

  Or Admirabler Show—

  I’ll tell it You—

 

831

  Dying! To be afraid of thee

  One must to thine Artillery

  Have left exposed a Friend—

  Than thine old Arrow is a Shot

  Delivered straighter to the Heart

  The leaving Love behind.

  Not for itself, the Dust is shy,

  But, enemy, Beloved be

  Thy Batteries divorce.

  Fight sternly in a Dying eye.

  Two Armies, Love and Certainty

  And Love and the Reverse.

 

1031

  Fate slew Him, but He did not drop—

  She felled—He did not fall—

  Impaled Him on Her fiercest stakes—

  He neutralized them all—

 

  She stung Him—sapped His firm Advance—

  But when Her Worst was done

  And He—unmoved regarded Her—

  Acknowledged Him a Man.

Works Cited

Bingham, Millicent Todd. Emily Dickinson’s Home. New York: Dover, 1967. Print

Catton, Bruce. The American Heritage New History of the Civil War. Ed. James McPherson. New York: Viking, 1996. 444–46. Print.

Dandurand, Karen. “New Dickinson Civil War Publications.” American Literature, 56. 1 (Mar. 1984): 17–27. JSTOR. Web. 4 Nov. 2004.

Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Boston: Little, Brown, 1960. Print.

———. The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Vol. 2. Ed. Thomas Johnson. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1965. Print.

———. “Dying! To be afraid of thee.” Dickinson, Poems 403.

———. “Fate slew Him, but He did not drop–.” Dickinson, Poems 473.

———. “It don’t sound so terrible—quite—as it did–.” Dickinson, Poems 203–4.

———. “It feels a shame to be Alive–.” Dickinson, Poems 213.

———. “When I was small, a Woman died–.” Dickinson, Poems 292–93.

Habegger, Alfred. My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson. New York: Random House, 2001. Print.

Leyda, Jay. The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson. Vol. 2. New Haven: Yale UP, 1960. Print.

Marcellin, Leigh-Anne Urbanowicz. “‘Singing off the Charnel Steps’: Soldiers and Mourners in Emily Dickinson’s War Poetry.” The Emily Dickinson Journal, 9.2 (2000): 64–74. JSTOR. Web. 15 Nov. 2004.

Parish, Peter J. The American Civil War. New York: Holmes & Meier. 1975. Print.

Simon, John Y. “Fort Donelson, Tennessee.” The Civil War Battlefield Guide. Ed. Frances H. Kennedy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. 16–19. Print.