Complicity and the antebellum moral imagination / David A. Zimmerman.

SeriesCambridge studies in American literature and culture ;
Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; v.200.
Contents Conspiracy, contagion, and Catholic sex talk -- Structure, network, apocalypse -- Systems : organic sin -- Tolerance complicity and Uncle Tom's cabin -- Cotton complicity : markets and moral objects -- The complicity windfall : the Black market and African cotton -- The coffle and the capitol -- Purity rights and the congressional slave trade.
Abstract "Will appeal to scholars, students, and general audiences interested in American history, religion, and reform before the Civil War. Focusing on moral complicity, or participation in social evils and political and economic harms, it addresses topics such as slavery, anti-Catholicism, conspiracies, urban exposés, and Black economic enterprise"-- Provided by publisher.
Abstract "By what routes and on what grounds do moral blame and shame for social wrongs fall on individuals, groups, and institutions? To answer this question is necessarily to excite the moral imagination, to envision our moral connection to social, economic, and political harms that may appear remote or opaque. Between 1830 and 1860, American religious authorities, novelists, abolitionists, market activists, and political insiders trained this imagining. They delineated how moral complicity radiated across urban social networks, criminal conspiracies, political structures, and economic systems. In this original study, David Zimmerman illuminates how new conceptions of moral complicity and participatory sin emboldened activists, animated new literary forms, sparked political controversy, and seeded a plan to racially transfigure the Atlantic economy. In media ranging from gothic convent tales to imperial trade proposals, complicity critics conjured not only the dangers but also the responsive duties and opportunities raised by new forms of sociomoral enmeshment." -- back cover
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references and index.
Issued in other formOnline version http://id.loc.gov/entities/relationships/onlineversion Zimmerman, David A. (David Andrew) 1964- Complicity and the antebellum moral imagination Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2026 9781009685559
Issued in other formebook version : 9781009685559
LCCN 2025054969
ISBN9781009685511
ISBN1009685511
ISBN9781009685542 paperback
ISBN1009685546
ISBNepub

Availability

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Joyner Order on Demand Title Order On Demand ✔ Available Click to order this title