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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.