Horace Greeley, Southern Hatred, and the Dilemma of Affective Reconstruction

Early national and antebellum American political theorists carefully considered the affective dimensions of politics because they imagined the United States itself as a confederacy of the heart. From the 1790s to the 1850s, diverse writers and orators constructed an "affective theory of the Union" which shaped discussions of harmony and discord, nationalism and sectionalism, Union and disunion. Adherents nationwide understood the Union as a network of states and citizens united not by compulsion or material interest, but by love and affection. As sectional conflict intensified in the 1840s and 1850s, Unionists deployed the theory in the name of compromise, calling for a restoration of affective equilibrium. But disunionists used the theory to justify secession by depicting the Union as already shattered by odium. After 1860, this logic presented Unionists with a perplexing problem: How could a nation built on feelings rather than force be reconstituted through war?

After outlining the pre-Civil War development of the affective theory of the Union, this paper analyzes one prominent Unionist's attempt to resolve the dilemma of affective reconstruction. In an October 1862 essay entitled "Southern Hate of the North," New York editor, reformer, and Republican Horace Greeley denied that wartime hatred precluded heartfelt reconstruction. Among southern whites, Greeley insisted, only the hatred harbored by slaveholders was deeply rooted, and it could be neutralized by emancipation. A revolution in political economy would launch a revolution in southern hearts and promote affective reconstruction. Significantly, the essay appeared during the "hundred days" between the issuance of the preliminary and final Emancipation Proclamations. By situating Greeley's essay within the affective theory of the Union's broader history and in the context of wartime northern politics, this paper underscores the political salience of emotion at a crucial moment in the history of American freedom.