Anarchy and Public Discourse

Emerson, Lincoln and the “Mobocratic Spirit” of the 1830s

Bibliographic Data

ID16768916
AuthorsT Gregory Garvey (0009-0004-3217-5857), Todd Garvey (SUNY Brockport, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume14
Issue2
Pages161-182
Publication date2013-06-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Nineteenth Century History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1466-4658 • E-ISSN: 1743-7903
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14664658.2013.813148
OpenAlexW1971886631
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited18

In January 1838, Emerson and Lincoln each gave a lecture on the public violence that reached a crisis with the killing of Elijah Lovejoy. For both men, mobbing represented instabilities in the process of democratization that had structural implications for public discourse. In his Lyceum Address, Lincoln argues that if mobbing became conventionalized it could legitimize an extralegal politics of force and coercion. To counterbalance the pressure he saw mobbing place on civil society, Lincoln asserts the importance of developing a culture of reverence for standards of civility in the public sphere. For Emerson, in his lecture “Heroism,” mobbing marked irrational but intentional efforts to suppress dissenting speech and thought. Especially through attacks on political reformers and other individualists, public violence distorted civil discourse and enforced both conformity and silence. For both Lincoln and Emerson, the experience of mob action challenging civil society in the 1830s marked the proximity of civil to uncivil discourse and influenced their responses to proslavery rhetoric in the 1850s. Though they reacted differently, each articulates the risks of allowing the threatened violence of proslavery rhetoric to co-opt the political structure so that civil discourse acted as a façade legitimizing mob rule

Civility · Dissenting opinion · Individualism · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Rhetoric · Sociology · Theology · Academic Freedom and Politics · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · Law · Philosophy

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