Ohio History Journal

HOWELLS' "BLISTERING AND CAUTERIZING"

 

by Louis J. BUDD

Assistant Professor of English, Duke University

 

As a sexagenarian describing his early manhood, William Dean

Howells reminisced, "If there was any one who had his being more

wholly in literature than I had in 1860, I am sure I should not have

known where to find him."¹ Such testimony cannot be ignored. Yet

it has encouraged our accepting too hastily the trite picture of still

another introverted lad who quietly matured his literary urgings.

Although we will best remember Howells as a novelist and essayist,

to understand him we must recall the citizen who tried always to

shoulder his part of the democratic burden. Although we cannot

controvert his word concerning his adolescent dreams, we can,

through the record preserved in Ohio newspapers, rediscover a youth

who sweated printer's ink and floundered in the main American

current. Howells' coming biographers will profit from reading his

early political commentary. They will enjoy it too.

In his own family, young Howells found several exemplars of

political enthusiasm. His paternal grandfather had felt abolitionist

enough to stand as an elector in 1844 on the Liberty party ticket.

His maternal uncles, the Dean brothers, had remained antislavery

Whigs despite threats of mobbing. His father, most active of all,

expended his life in partisan journalism and earned minor diplo-

matic posts during a busy career closely repeated by Will's brother,

Joseph. Briefly a member of Ohio's first abolition society,² William

Cooper Howells had become a constitutional antislavery man; he

breathed an intransigent humanitarianism into the newspapers he

edited. Although a fervid Swedenborgian, for him political urg-

encies overrode theological problems, and the "question of salvation

was far below that of the annexation of Texas, or the ensuing war

against Mexico, in his regard."3 In time, he led his family to Ohio's

1 Literary Friends and Acquaintance (New York, 1902), 1.

2 Annetta C. Walsh, "Three Anti-Slavery Newspapers," Ohio State Archaeological

and Historical Quarterly, XXXI (1922), 172.

3 W. D. Howells, Years of My Youth (New York, 1916) 22.

334

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Howells' "Blistering and Cauterizing"           335

Western Reserve, where the Underground Railroad ran frequently

and where voters backed Joshua R. Giddings and Ben Wade. By

1854 he had assumed full control of the Ashtabula Sentinel and

influential leadership in a region which threw crucial support in

1856 to the new Republican party. Quite incidentally, he transmit-

ted his values to his children.

The literary-minded son easily might have resented these civic

strenuosities, which at first had brought family hardships. But father

and son worked together, discussed literature congenially, and

"thought a good deal alike"; Will was therefore an "ardent Anti-

slavery man" like his father.⁴ In 1844 he trailed after a Henry Clay

procession with optimistic fervor, and four years later he followed

his father's bolt "as far as a boy of eleven could go," joining a Free

Soil club to shout songs and slogans. This echoing of his parent's

opinions never veered into youthful irreverence. While setting leg-

islative bills into type on the Ohio State Journal in 1851 he seconded

his father's dislike of tyrants by sporting a Kossuth hat, complete

with plumes, after the Hungarian patriot had captivated Columbus

audiences.⁵ Comfortably ensconced in the Western Reserve by his

late teens, he sensed the "high political tumult" and "certainly cared

very much for the question of slavery which was then filling the

minds of men."6 When in 1856 the father served as a clerk in the

house of the Ohio General Assembly, Will, with a staid dependabil-

ity which Orion Clemens had missed in his brother Sam, naturally

helped Joseph supply the editing and editorializing for the ever-

alert Sentinel.

Perhaps young Will's political tinge could be dismissed as pro-

tective coloration if his creative efforts had not proved its deeper

nexus. At the age of sixteen he offered anonymously in the Sentinel

"A Tale of Love and Politics." This story recounted the happy rise

 

4 Quoted in H. H. Boyesen, "Real Conversations--I: A Dialogue Between W. D.

Howells and H. H. Boyesen," McClure's Magazine, I (1893), 6. See also Years of

My Youth, 68, and Mildred Howells, ed., Life in Letters of W. D. Howells (2 vols.,

New York, 1928), II, 131.

5 A Boy's Town (New York, 1904), 130-136, 238; Years of My Youth, 26-27,

67-68, 77-78.

6 My Literary Passions (New York, 1895), 121-122; "The Country Printer,"

Scribner's, XIII (May, 1893), 539-540.

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336     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

of a printer's boy who won his beloved by secretly composing edi-

torials which swept her father into congress.⁷ The following year, a

long serial entitled "The Independent Candidate," his most ambi-

tious juvenile attempt in fiction, showed sound insight into ward

politics.⁸ Despite patent fumbling and some cynicism about poli-

ticians' motives, its author betrayed pristine faith in a Whig editor

who guarded the commonwealth. Clearly the son had caught his

father's earnestness. When friends urged a western poet to cleave

to art alone, Howells replied:

 

The pool of politics is dirty or not, according as it is a cleanly or un-

cleanly person immersed in it. We cannot forget that Dante . .. was a fervid

politician. The profession of journalism, too, with its wide opportunities of

knowing men and things, may teach the poetic nature, prone to look back

and sigh.⁹

Both father and son had succumbed to a Protestant philosophy of

progress which encouraged and even required the responsible indi-

vidual to redeem his immediate world. For neither did this work-

aday duty conflict with esthetic interests, and the lad felt a thrilling

meetness when George William Curtis, after succeeding with grace-

ful travelogs and gentle social satire, "turned aside from the

flowery paths where he led us, to battle for freedom in the field of

politics."¹⁰ In his eyes, Curtis epitomized the ideal gentlemanly

synthesis of literature, politics, and social religion.

Howells showed up in Columbus in January 1857 to report the

proceedings of the Ohio General Assembly for the Cincinnati

Gazette. The nineteen-year-old journalist brought with him a sin-

cere interest in political action, a faith in the growing Republican

 

7 See the Sentinel for September 1, 1853. This item and the following are accepted

as Howells' in William Gibson and George Arms, A Bibliography of Howells (New

York, 1948), 74.

8 For a long summary of the story, see Edwin H. Cady, "William Dean Howells and

the Ashtabula Sentinel," Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, LIII

(1944), 44-51.

9 "Some Western Poets of Today--William Wallace Harney," in Ohio State Journal,

September 25, 1860. This and most of Howells' items in Ohio newspapers were not

signed. My article cites only those items which have been accepted in Gibson and

Arms, A Bibliography of Howells.

10 My Literary Passions, 146-147. See also "G. W. Curtis," Harper's Weekly,

XXXVI (1892), 868.

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Howells' "Blistering and Cauterizing"         337

party as the instrument for that action, and a working faith in the

party's press. We can feel also his warm eagerness to perform man-

fully in an arena broader than the protective family circle. Sampling

the excited rumors along High Street, he awaited impatiently the

opening session. He must have vowed to send to the ex-Whig

Gazette accounts which would populate the Republican ranks. Ohio

politics counted--that was obvious. His diary mainly recorded state-

house affairs and he later remarked that the winter of 1856-57

passed without his "knowing more of the capital than its official

world." The youth occupied a desk "on the floor of the Senate as

good as any Senator's" and "penetrated in every part" on his news-

hunt, mingling constantly with local solons or the irrepressible

hangers-on of the legislative process.¹¹ His father, who was first

assistant to the chief clerk in the house, had been active in securing

Will's new post; he now took notes for the boy and guided him

constantly.

Apprenticed on the outspoken Sentinel, Will knew what was ex-

pected. Indeed, his extremism surpassed the Gazette's rather cau-

tious support of Salmon P. Chase. His first letter described the new

capitol building and stated austerely that its "ornamenting and

chandeliers may be laid to the charge of the Democratic Party--

profuse ever of two things: promises and money--the promises its

own, the money that of the people." Under current Republican rule

Ohio was therefore "approaching a state of purity and rectitude in

the administration of her affairs, which is as grateful as it is un-

exampled."¹² Of course, the Gazette's clientele desired factual de-

tail also, and the letters often summarized in bare, compact para-

graphs each legislative day. Despite this pull toward routine, Will

could not remain a servile scribe. When he reported "unanswer-

able" arguments for temperance legislation (long a treacherous

issue in Ohio), he further pleaded that this crusade must not dis-

rupt a party "aiming at far mightier reforms." Summarizing a

speech for striking the word "white" from the state constitution, he

asserted that it was "impregnable in argument, glowingly eloquent,

 

11 Years of My Youth, 132-135. Howells' unpublished diary is in the Houghton

Library of Harvard University.

12 "Letter from Columbus," in Cincinnati Gazette, January 7, 1857.

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338    Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

at times, and sparkling with gems of wit and humor." But his

praise was exceeded by his censure. Many years mellower, he ad-

mitted that he had nursed "such a swollen ideal of the rights and

duties of the press" that he "spared no severity" in his criticism.

Forgetting his disapproval of the expensive capitol adornments, he

sneered at "retrenchment" as a "grievous humbug" used for "killing

every measure which proposes to appropriate a dollar for any liberal,

charitable or scientific purpose." To his later regret he sniped at

proposals for organizing the state militia and groaned when a rele-

vant bill of "forty mortal pages" was read.13 Unsurprisingly, the

political reporter's occupational cynicism veined his writing, yet this

mistrust was muted or else redounded mercilessly on Democrats like

John B. Slough, who had assaulted a fellow house member from the

Western Reserve.

Howells' reports on the Ohio General Assembly prove conclu-

sively that he had been swayed by the reformerism rampant at home

and abroad. His dispatches recounted respectfully the frequent

orations by William M. Corry, state representative from Cincinnati.

"Citizen" Corry, whose sobriquet broadcast his sympathy for Red

Republicanism deriving from a stay in France from 1848 to 1850,

vigorously fanned his reputation for intellectual heterodoxy. Over

six feet tall and wearing a full black beard, he thundered impres-

sively against a bill in the Ohio house as "another attempt to leg-

islate for the dollar against the man." Or Mr. Corry, as the Gazette's

man put it, "of course" inveighed "against all corporations as

dangerous to the right of the people." He especially dazzled

Howells by a call for unicameralism which "seemed convincing by

its mere statement." The youth's letter reproduced very fully this

brief for sweeping revision and advised that it "ought to be con-

sidered, not only by legislators, but all the people in an earnest and

sincere spirit."14 Such praise is most impressive, since Corry as a

 

13 For preceding quotes, in order, see "Letter from Columbus," January 28, March

7, January 13, 1857. See also Years of My Youth, 133.

14 See especially the letters in the Gazette printed on January 28, March 13, 14,

1857. See also Years of My Youth, 137-138. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Ohio

in the Nineteenth Century (Cincinnati and Philadelphia, 1876), pages 610-611, gives

a sketch of Corry's career.

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Howells' "Blistering and Cauterizing"       339

Democrat could have expected severity. It proves Will's drift toward

liberalism and toward a faith in human plasticity--attitudes which,

with four decades of experience added, conjured up his Altrurian

utopia. His later radicalism owed much to the restless ferments of

the 1880's and to Leo Tolstoy's stimulus. Yet its provenance

stretched back to Ohio, which before the Civil War had brewed at

least its share of optimistic philosophies.

Howells' correspondence was effective enough to land him the

Gazette's city editorship in April 1857, but homesickness and sordid

duties soon drove him back to Jefferson, where he again helped to

write the Sentinel. When the legislature reconvened in January

1858, he once more represented the Gazette. Ohio voters had, how-

ever, lost the true light, and Democrats dominated the assembly.

Free now to vent his sarcasm, he complimented the senate as a

chamber where "they take their otium cum dignitate," as a "nice,

quiet place" lacking the "windy clamor" of the house, where "they

make such a noise in doing nothing." He warned that in retailing

Democrats' speeches he was "obliged to adopt the custom of moral

novelists, and leave the greater part of the profanity to the imagi-

nation of the readers." But Gazette subscribers were seasoned

enough to have the active Sam Medary identified as that "experi-

enced old eater of public oats (however mixed with dirt)" over

whose appointment as postmaster of Columbus "more than one

sterling Democrat got drunk." One oasis of virtue remained, for

Chase was still governor. Will defended him indefatigably, retort-

ing to criticism of the governor's appointments with the taunt that

the previous Democratic incumbent had never selected "so much as

a scavenger to wash out his spittoons" unless the applicant were a

faithful hack who had "never voted a split ticket."15 As state and

national politics increased in stridency until shooting drowned the

shouting, young Howells, far from showing the tact for which the

mature critic was loved, lampooned and slandered the enemy with-

out visible queasiness.

Finally, on February 23, State Senator William H. Safford, Demo-

15 "Letter from Columbus," March 17, 1858. See also letters printed January 7,

February 19, March 8.

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340    Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

crat from Ross and Highland counties, rose to protest against the

"many misrepresentations" and "evident partizan partiality" of the

Gazette's correspondent. Mr. Safford, while willing to allow for the

culprit's youthful indiscretion and his desire for wittiness, suspected

either "party purpose or private malice." The senator had a just

cause, for Howells, summarizing debate over a successful Democratic

move to permit holding of fugitive Negro slaves in Ohio jails, had

dismissed Safford's speech as "egregiously silly and absurd" and had

sneered:

 

He sits on the main aisle in the Chamber, and he ran about in it like

one distracted, thrashing the wind with arms "of wild rejection" and swaying

his body to and fro and lifting himself upon the toes of his boots, and

stooping and surging up again, during the course of his speech, like an

India rubber man with a severe attack of colic.16

 

After stating the senator's complaint, Howells impenitently rejoined

that "mercy to him would be total oblivion of his remarks." But

pressure was obviously exerted, because two days later he felt con-

strained to reprint a summary of the disputed speech. Even so, the

Ohio State Journal on March 1 reproduced an official text of the

original debate, which had "found its way to the public in a garbled

and unfair form, through the correspondence of a partisan paper."

This version showed that Howells even in his grudging retreat had

falsified Mr. Safford's views by omitting key passages.

The venomous feud went on. In the letter printed on February

27, Howells proclaimed that State Representative Hunter Brooke of

Hamilton County had insulted the newspaper press and the Cincin-

nati press in particular. He continued:

 

I expect that Mr. Brooke will rise to a question of privilege, tomorrow

morning, and demand my expulsion for telling you the foregoing. I do it

at my peril, for all reporters have had fair warning not to put anything into

their letters of a nature discreditable to members of this legislature.

 

The letter on March 1 reported that the Democratic Mr. Brooke had

16 "Letter from Columbus," February 19, p. 2. See also another letter on February

19, printed on page 1, and letters on February 24, 26.

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Howells' "Blistering and Cauterizing"           341

again risen to fulminate against the Gazette's account of his speeches.

Howells insisted that he had been accurate, however, and two days

later, noting Mr. Brooke's attack on Governor Chase, snarled that

he would not analyze the speech as a literary production because

"my taste has been formed on indifferent models, and I cannot ap-

preciate sophomoric excellence." After this, his letters cooled down

to more factual summaries, but in mid-March the general tension

precipitated a physical attack on the Cincinnati Commercial's corres-

pondent. Retaliating Republicans complained about Democratic ac-

counts in the Cincinnati Enquirer, whose debate summaries again

drew fire in 1859 from the Ohio State Journal, by then the staunchly

Republican employer of young Howells.

After passing the middle of 1858 in the Sentinel office and cast-

ing his first vote as soon as he was eligible,¹⁷ he delightedly ac-

cepted a subordinate editorship on the State Journal. On November

19 its "Prospectus" had announced new owners, a new staff, and a

new start as a "faithful, fearless, and reliable exponent of Repub-

licanism in Ohio." Under Henry D. Cooke the State Journal was to

show special solicitude for the fortunes of Chase.l⁸ Recommended

by A. P. Russell, Republican secretary of state for Ohio, Howells'

appointment quite obviously depended on his proven willingness to

joust with the Democratic host. Happy to return to Columbus, he

plunged into party circles. He boarded "mostly" with men of the

proper political stripe and in "nearly all" cases visited only Re-

publican homes, which included the governor's mansion. But by now

he needed no memos from the counting room or hints from men of

the hustings. With youthful zeal he justified his elder's choice by

"blistering and cauterizing, and letting blood" with a heated pen.¹⁹

His personal outlet, "News and Humors of the Mail," was de-

signed to cull from other sources the "pressingest news or the

laughablest humor." This eclectic forum was unified by the "un-

natural fondness for liberty which dominates our paste and scis-

 

17 Pocket diary, 1857-58, entry dated April 9, 1858.

18 E. H. Roseboom, The Civil War Era (History of the State of Ohio, IV, Columbus,

1944), 200-201, 326; Years of My Youth, 144, 156. On December 6, 1858, the State

Journal quoted the Sentinel's wish that Ohio Republicans would give the Columbus

paper "proper support."

19 Years of My Youth, 146.

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342    Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

sors." 20 Will mostly combed other newspapers for items damaging

to Democrats. He reprinted, for instance, the quip that "everybody

who fears the Lord and can write a legible hand, without running

out his tongue, is a Republican." His most strained sarcasm was

directed against pro-slavery southerners. "News and Humors of the

Mail" reproduced slavecatchers' advertisements under the subtitle of

"Sylvan Sports," summarized lynching stories with Swiftean bald-

ness, and kept the Oberlin-Wellington and Zanesville rescue trials

to the fore. Proud of his own caustic thrusts, he accused others of

stealing his "editorialettes." 21 The gentler values which had guided

his home life abdicated temporarily before the slave's demands. Op-

portunely, the promise of the new National Literary Review that it

would be neutral elicited his views on impartiality, and he predicted

that the magazine would suggest "skim-milk thinned with warm

water." 22

While W. C. Howells and Joseph cannonaded the Democrats

from the ramparts of Ashtabula County so vigorously that even the

State Journal deplored their extremism,²³ their Columbus outpost

sniped at the foe. Will followed the Western Reserve's moves, writ-

ing to his brother: "I hope that you and father will keep me posted

in regard to politics. Remember my anxiety is just as lively as your

own." Not above legwork, he conferred with Russell and Cooke

about his father's drive for a senate clerkship.²⁴ All this time he was

immersed in "literary passions" also, but his arcs of interest inter-

sected, as in his successful antislavery poem, "The Pilot's Story."

After John Brown had been penned in durance vile, Will wrote to

his father, "I did hope to see something violent in the Sentinel on the

subject of Harper's Ferry." Deeply moved, he composed a rhymed

tribute to "Old Brown" and another to Gerrit Smith, veteran aboli-

tionist.²⁵ Although he soon saw the ludicrous aspects of Brown's

 

20 "News and Humors of the Mail," in Ohio State Journal, November 30, 1858;

May 25, September 30, 1859.

21 "News and Humors of the Mail," December 22, 24, 1858.

22 "Literary Gossip," in Ohio State Journal, March 22, 1860.

23 The weekly Ohio State Journal, August 9, 1859.

24 M. Howells, Life in Letters of Howells, I, 22, 24-25.

25 Ibid., 26. See "Old Brown," reprinted in Boston Commonwealth, June 24, 1865,

and "Gerrit Smith," in Ohio State Journal, November 15, 1859. See also Howells'

Stories of Ohio (New York, 1897), 227.

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Howells' "Blistering and Cauterizing"           343

scheme, he continued, in the State Journal and in scattered comments

throughout many years, to rank Brown with American martyr-heroes.

When he finally gave ground before twentieth century critics like

Oswald Garrison Villard, he did so with loyal reluctance.

Financial difficulties for the State Journal suddenly deprived Will

of his job in 1860. Then the Columbus publishing firm of Follett

and Foster, presumably counting on his balance of literary and

political seriousness, asked him to prepare a campaign biography of

Abraham Lincoln. Writing from notes made by an emissary, he

ended with a work of deserved flatness. When Chase's boom col-

lapsed, his cohorts had switched to Lincoln, so Howells' unwise

failure to visit Springfield betrayed personal diffidence rather than

indifference. The biography's deadness of tone can better be blamed

on its dignified avoidance of "any effort to distort Lincoln into the

rough half-horse, half-alligator character, whose chief virtue con-

sists in his having mauled rails" (to quote the publisher's blurb).

Beyond showing that the author was antislavery, Howells' book

threw little light on himself. He did preach in it occasionally, as in

writing of Stephen Douglas' "banner" of popular sovereignty:

 

There were old stains upon that gay piece of bunting; stains of blood

from the cabin hearths of Kansas and from the marble floor of the Senate

hall; and a marvelous ill-odor of cruelty hung about it, as if it were, in

fact, no better than the flag of a slave-ship.²⁶

Nevertheless, his Life of Abraham Lincoln is remembered primarily

because its famous subject jotted marginal comments in one copy.

His campaign life of Ohio's Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 was to

show much more firmness and self-confidence.

The late summer of 1860 found Howells traveling toward New

England and planning vaguely a series of articles on Yankee in-

dustry. Reaching Portland, Maine, on July 29 after a week in

Canada, he ejaculated, "Hail! dear land of politics," and he wrote

the next day: "I have a real affection for the politicians who dis-

pute . . . and ring the well-known changes upon Douglas and

 

26 Life of Abraham Lincoln (Springfield, Ill., 1938), 84. This reprint by the

Abraham Lincoln Association reproduces in facsimile Lincoln's marginalia.

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344    Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

Breckinridge, and Lincoln."²⁷ This playful enthusiasm was soon

silenced by his awe of New England literary heroes. But he did not,

during his visit to Concord, forget Hawthorne's own sympathies,

and he praised the Republicanism of Ohio Germans with uneasy

tact. Having returned to Columbus, he composed a lecture treating

Boston "esthetically, politically and civilly."²⁸ This platform-piece

was never delivered, perhaps because its author had reassumed his

labors for the State Journal by September 1860 and was again "firing

the Southern heart." With Samuel Price, he wrote "leading edi-

torials" in the turbulent months between Lincoln's election and the

beginning of war. Positive identification of these items is now im-

possible, but we must realize that he was "writing politics every

day."29 We must realize also that these editorials appeared in one

of the most influential journals in an obviously pivotal state.

The retrospective verdict seems to be that Howells and Price

showed "surprisingly bad judgment." Decades afterward, Howells

restated their stand: "We did not think the Union would be dis-

solved, but if it should we did not think that its dissolution was the

worst thing that could happen."30 This policy was widely supported.

It was encouraged by those who had long preferred disunion to union

with dishonor. It was encouraged also by disciples of the great Amer-

ican peace crusade, and Howells, Quaker and Swedenborgian in back-

ground, had mocked the militia publicly before 1860. From their

tactical line, Howells and Price met "insolence with ridicule and

hypocrisy with contempt," adding copiously to intersectional insults.

Beneath its calm, Howells' Years of My Youth still reflected after

half a century the morally righteous bitterness of his Columbus days.

By May 1861 further business changes had displaced Howells

from the State Journal staff. He kept thinking in terms of the edi-

torial room, and he recommended himself to the New York World

by saying, "I have journalized for four or five years, and know some-

27 "En Passant: Portland, Maine, July 29, 1860," in Ohio State Journal, August 6,

1860; "Glimpses of Summer Travel," in Cincinnati Gazette, August 9, 1860.

28 Letter from Howells to O. W. Holmes, Jr., January 6, 1861. Houghton Library,

Harvard University.

29 Years of My Youth, 229.

30 Ibid., 227. For adverse comment, see Roseboom, The Civil War Era, 373.

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Howells' "Blistering and Cauterizing"              345

thing of political and other writing."31 In the resulting series of

five topical letters he praised the rising militancy of Ohioans, and he

warned against neighborly amity with the border states because

"secession populations are liable to spasms of treason at any mo-

ment." He pleaded particularly against emergency proposals for a

new Union party: "Patriotism is good, but Republican patriotism is

better. The Democratic leaders have still the same organs and af-

fections that they had before they turned their attention to the

public practice of virtue."32 But he had more ambitious plans;

urged by his Columbus friends, he sought a consulship. The know-

ing journalist, who had seen many a plum plucked by the active

aspirant from the hands of a confidently deserving rival, pushed his

claim as Lincoln's biographer. He dispatched an application "signed

by every Republican in the capital, from the Governor down." He

wrote further appeals and finally joined the horde of office seekers

in Washington.³³ In November 1861 he embarked for Venice, amid

his literary projects hoping also, as he ironically remembered, to

wield his consular authority in the decayed Italian port against Con-

federate sea-raiders.

With his move to Venice, his Ohio years ended permanently, as

it turned out. However, his interests and alliances showed normal

continuity. He followed the news with ardor, ceasing to write from

Venice for the State Journal "because I found I couldn't avoid

politics and them I'm forbidden to touch." When he assured a

European that Americans were Christians, he pretended to make

"mental exception of the peace democrats" then dangerously active

in Ohio.³⁴ In short, his concern over civic matters pulsated through-

out his life. Returning after the war, he soon arranged for a weekly

letter summarizing New York City's political twists for his old out-

let, the Cincinnati Gazette. By early 1866 he had attached himself

31 Laura Stedman and G. M. Gould, Life and Letters of Edmund Clarence Stedman

(2 vols., New York, 1910), I, 248.

32 "War Movements in Ohio" and "From Ohio," in New York World, May 15,

May 21, 1861. Howells' letter in the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society

Library, dated October 3, 1861, to Dr. Samuel M. Smith, states that his father had

similar views.

33 Years of My Youth, 237; M. Howells, Life in Letters of Howells, I, 37-41.

34 M. Howells, Life in Letters of Howells, I, 54; "Letters from Venice," in Boston

Daily Advertiser, February 6, 1864.

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346    Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

to E. L. Godkin's pro-freedmen Nation. Soon after, he moved on to

the pro-Republican Atlantic Monthly, then to problem novels, and

finally to his "economic" novels and utopian romances. All these

activities were interwoven with political judgments. Reviewing his

Ohio career when he was well into his seventies, the declining

novelist quickened once more over old battles.

A misleading emphasis has become evident in Howells' recollec-

tions of himself as a youth who lived "wholly in literature" and

who was "inwardly a poet with no wish to be anything else." For

he also recalled that while covering legislative doings for the Gazette

he had believed his duties to be the "most important thing in the

world." And of his duties on the State Journal he said:

I suppose that every young man presently attempting journalism feels

something of the pride and joy I felt when I began it; though pride and joy

are weak words for the passion I had for the work. If my soul was more in

my verse, I did not know it, and I am sure my heart was as much in my more

constant labors.³⁵

To resolve this conflict we must first of all recognize that his auto-

biographical writings gracefully overused superlatives. Also, quite

aware that his reminiscences borrowed their appeal from his literary

career, he stressed his esthetic growth. Still more important than

these complications had been the divided state of young Howells'

mind, a not uncommon predicament. After insisting that a "journal-

ist's experience of several years has made it almost necessary to

discuss public affairs," he could in the remainder of a personal letter

forget to expatiate on these matters.³⁶ Political loyalties, personal

anxieties, and creative goals jostled for dominance. If his "soul"

turned toward poetry but his "heart" toward party journalism, such

strife reflected shifting uncertainty but not hopeless division. We

can believe in his disdain of caucuses and ward-heeling realities, but

we can see in his editorial labors a respect for political principles.

Disillusioned by Grantism and its succeeding evils, Howells was

tempted to satirize lightly his militant days on the State Journal. Yet

35 Years of My Youth, 137, 152.

36 Letter to Richard Hildreth, December 22, 1861. Houghton Library, Harvard Uni-

versity.

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Howells' "Blistering and Cauterizing"        347

in trying to describe the matrix which had shaped him he praised the

1850's as an era when statesmen had towered in public stature over

captains of industry. During that era he had served under political

banners with steadfast faith. Beneath all had lain a pervading

ethicism, for the religion of humanity had impressed its demands on

many sensitive Americans. While striving for esthetic expression,

Howells had interpreted the duty of doing good to his fellow

men as the call to civic responsibility. Such is the human paradox

that this high task was not performed with sweet meekness. But if

the young editor in his "blistering and cauterizing" was far from

New Testament tactics, he was much at home in antebellum journal-

ism.

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