| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Stephen John Hartnett. Democratic Dissent and the Cultural Fictions of Antebellum America. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 2002. Pp. x, 230. $34.95.

In these four case studies, Stephen John Hartnett presents what he calls a "rhetorical history" (p. 6) of political persuasion in antebellum America. The focus here is not on the history of rhetoric, and certainly not on nuanced close readings of specific texts, but instead on a broadly rhetorical analysis of the workings of the mid-century public sphere. Exploring the "discursive conditions of American democracy" (p. 7) and "the sheer rhetoricality of democratic dissent" (p. 3), Hartnett himself is strongly rhetorical in bringing his points home, especially in relation to his central arguments about class and race. But over the course of the book's four chapters, these arguments change quite dramatically. The first three chapters—on abolition, white supremacy, and Manifest Destiny—develop a dark vision along the lines of Sacvan Bercovitch's studies of American rhetoric and ideology, describing an omnivorous, no-exit discursive system that makes true dissent impossible as it defuses and assimilates even the most radical critiques. But Hartnett's final chapter on Walt Whitman's experiments with democratic representation reverses course, suddenly suggesting a much more positive vision of possibilities for vital dissent that would allow "the rhetorical give-and-take of democracy to thrive" (p. 169). . . .

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