The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law

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1967

Frederick Grimke and American Civilization

Maxwell Bloomfield
The Catholic University o f America, Columbus School o f Law

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Maxwell Bloomfield, Frederick Grimke and American Civilization, 76 OH. HIST. 5 (1967).

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 b y M AXW ELL BLOOM FIELD

The three decades preceding the American Civil War appear in retrospect
as an era of intellectual as well as political turbulence. Everywhere the forces
of romantic subjectivism were gaining ground at the expense of long-
established modes of thought and behavior. In religion the revivalist spirit
placed the heart above the head and swept away the discipline imposed by
ecclesiastical formalism; in philosophy the mechanistic sensationalism of
Locke yielded to more intuitive approaches to the problem of human con­
sciousness; legal concepts of guilt and responsibility trembled before a
mounting pressure to redefine the limits of rational activity; novelists and
poets extolled the solitary hero who enforced his own set of values against a

NOTES ARE ON PAGE 89

 OHIO HISTORY
6

hostile or indifferent world; while in politics a new breed of demagogic

spellbinder arose to captivate mass audiences by appealing to the darker
passions of the underdog.
The ultimate destiny of such a freewheeling society posed an absorbing
problem for contemporary theorists. M ost, like Tocqueville, deplored the
excesses of an unbridled democracy and predicted a continuing trend toward
social disintegration and decline. It remained for a scholarly judge from
a small town in Ohio to discover in the principle of rugged individualism the
great balance wheel of American life. In a wide-ranging study of the national
ethos, first published in 1848, Frederick Grimké undertook to vindicate both
the theory and the operation of democratic institutions. His Considerations
upon the N ature and Tendency of Free Institu tion s remains a significant
contribution to American thought, as well as a unique expression of the
democratic faith of the Age of Jackson.
Grimké’s reputation has long been eclipsed by the more spectacular attain­
ments of other members of his family. Born in Charleston, South Carolina
on September 1, 1791, he was the son of John Faucheraud Grimké, a
Revolutionary War hero and one of the distinguished jurists of the state. His
sisters, Sarah and Angelina, became prominent leaders of the antislavery
crusade, while an older brother Thomas received national acclaim for his
efforts in the cause of education and world peace. Frederick’s public career
was far less impressive, partly because of his temperamental preference for the
study above the forum.
Following his graduation from Yale College at the age of nineteen, he
studied law in South Carolina where he practiced for several years before
emigrating to Ohio in 1818. There he soon settled down in Chillicothe as
President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, a post he held intermittently
for some sixteen years (1820-1836), until his election in 1836 to the Ohio
Supreme Court.
During all this period of intense professional activity Grimké cherished a
taste for broader intellectual pursuits, which gradually became an obsession
with him. As he explained to his close friend, the young Cincinnati lawyer
William Greene:
Sir Jas. McIntosh in his first lecture on the law of nations (the only
one I have ever seen) declares that the professional business which he
then had (1802) was not sufficient to occupy him thoroughly and to
keep his mind in full training, and that he had therefore resorted to a
course of lectures on an interesting branch of science. I may say the
same. If Sir James had not business enough in the city of London, it can
u u exPec*e(? ^ a t a lawyer of ordinary ambition and mental vigor
should have sufficient m Chillicothe. There is this difference, however,
the course of lectures gained him a high and lucrative place in the East
™ eI Htere T , m\ght P.erhaps write forever without its producing any
one effect good, bad, or indifferent, but especially the first.1
1 he trials of authorship notwithstanding, he contributed a number of
essays to such local periodicals as the Scioto G azette (Chillicothe) and the
Ohio S tate Journal (Columbus). In these early productions he explored a
wide variety of subjects, from the nature of the American character to the
 FREDERICK GRIM KE 7

latest trends in constitutional law. One of the essays made a strong impression
throughout the state and served as a basis for all his later speculations. It
dealt with the relative merits of ancient and modern literature, or the role
of the past in the shaping of contemporary culture:
It is a subject on which it appears to me nothing effectual, nothing
worthy of the age of thought in which we live has been written. The mind
seems to have been fearful and timid in approaching it. And yet there
are few subjects within the compass of human reasoning, which are
philosophically and practically of greater interest and importance. For
without apprehending it correctly it is impossible for us to understand
the true history of the human mind; and at the same time the right
determination of the question it suggests must necessarily exercise over
education, and therefore over human happiness a decisive and a per­
manent influence.2
In this perennial quarrel between the “Ancients” and the “Moderns,”
Grimké proved himself decidedly a child of the nineteenth century. He found
little to admire in the classic writers of Greece and Rome. Their stock of
information was scanty; their philosophy superficial; their imagery trite and
uninspired; and their powers of reflection and synthesis much overrated.
Their alleged superiority to modern authors was a “delusion” fostered by
pedantic scholars with elitist pretensions and romantics who confused prim­
itivism with freshness and originality.
In fact, the m odem world — the bustling bourgeois world of the nineteenth
century — was a fresher and more exciting place than antiquity could pos­
sibly have been. The “materials of thought” existed in greater abundance
than ever before; scientific discoveries, moral speculations, even the
heightened sensibilities of such poets as Scott and Byron had changed the
very aspect of Nature and added new dimensions to human understanding.
For the first time society was becoming enlightened at every level, thanks to
the spread of literacy. The great men of the present age were springing
“from the lower walks of life” — a theme on which Grimké would later rear
a vast superstructure of ideas. And what need had such leaders for the
abstruse learning of the traditional “gentleman”? Already the public mind
was accommodating itself to the realities of the situation: educational re­
formers with their insistence upon the modernization of the curriculum were
paving the way for the inevitable “total demolition” of the classical ideal
in education.
To substantiate the superior claims of modern culture, Grimké pointed
to such figures as Hume and Adam Smith, Cousin and Constant, Sismondi
and Niebuhr. Significantly, he failed to include a single American intellectual
in his list. The U nited States, in his view, had been too busy exploiting the
material resources of a continent to pay sufficient attention to the life of
the mind:
The thoughts of every one have been perpetually o c c u p i e d with the
animating and ever shifting scene without, and the mind has been
rendered unwilling, and consequently unable, to give itself up to any
pursuit which demanded the intense concentration of its faculties, r or
the same reason th at you do not generally expect the greatest mental
exertion from those individuals who have been bred up m affluence, you
 OHIO HISTORY
8

are not to expect it in those countries, which have been distinguished

for rapid and sudden advancement in the career of wealth, at least,
you are not to look for it, until such countries begin to overflow with
a dense and redundant population. Then, men begin to jostle against
each other in running the race of life; and the prosperity of the country,
ceasing any longer to be exactly identical with that of the individuals
composing it, the finest understandings are exercised and racked tor
the discovery of some new theatre of exertion.1
The “Essay on the Ancients and M oderns” was an optimistic bit 01 special
pleading which left many major questions unanswered. If the United States,
stronghold of middle-class mores, was lagging behind in intellectual attain­
ments, did this augur a comparable decline in the culture of other countries,
once their bourgeoisie obtained supremacy? Did the scramble for material
gain, so characteristic of a commercial society, spell the eventual collapse
of political as well as artistic integrity? W ith the publication of Alexis de
Tocqueville’s Democracy in Am erica (1835), such issues could no longer
be ignored, and Grimké began to ponder the full implications of his thesis.
In 1842 he resigned from the Ohio Supreme Court to write his own study
of American institutions. “Whether in place of the altar and the throne, we
are only creating an hundred headed m onster under the name of popular
freedom may be regarded at least as a subject of legitimate inquiry,” he
wrote to his friend Greene.4 The book took shape slowly as the judge
hammered out his ideas with meticulous care, resolved that his observations
should not parrot those of previous commentators. By August 1846 the
writing was finished; and two years later the Cincinnati firm of H. W. Derby
brought out the work in a sturdy volume of 544 pages. Its appearance on
booksellers’ shelves almost coincided with the outbreak of revolution on
a massive scale in Europe, as country after country felt the shock of popular
insurrection.
A more auspicious moment for the reception of his theories could scarcely
be imagined, Grimké felt. “The minds of men are [every] where intensely
engaged in pondering upon the great problem of free institutions. I could
not well have fallen upon a more interesting period.” 5
The Considerations upon the N ature and T endency of Free Institutions
was not a systematic treatise on government. It rather resembled a musical
composition, a loosely constructed theme with variations. Around a cluster
of basic concepts Grimké moved first in one direction, then in another,
exploring the endless paradoxes of American life.
He began by noting that the egalitarian structure of society in America
had developed naturally out of the nation’s colonial experience. Early
settlers had encountered a virgin wilderness, ill defended by a sparse native
population. The conquest of the Indian proved to be easy; the taming of
nature much less so. From this dual struggle emerged lasting consequences.
e wea ness of the Indian contributed to his rapid disappearance from
areas of colonial settlem ent, leaving the white man master of the field.
ro ems o inequality arising from the presence of a large subject race
living side by side with its conquerors — a phenomenon so familiar to
FREDERICK GRIM KE
9

CONSIDERATIONS

UPON T HE

NATURE AND TENDENCY

OK

FREE INSTITUTIONS.

HY F R E D E R I C K GRIMKE.

CINCINNATI:
H. W. DERBY & CO. , PUBLISHERS.
jV E VV - Y O R K -
A. S. BARNES & CO.
1848.

Title page from first edition

 OHIO HISTORY
10

every European s ta te — never troubled the American pioneer. Here the

“whole field of enterprise” lay open to the whites, who soon developed com­
mon traits of industry and self-reliance in their efforts to exploit the limit­
less expanses of vacant land.
“The leading fact in the history of American civilization undoubtedly
consists in the very equal distribution of the landed property of the country,”
Grimké asserted.6 Any attem pt to fasten feudal tenures upon a backwoods
wilderness was foredoomed to failure. Instead, the New World environment
tended to produce a single large class of farm owners, free of the tensions
which embittered European proprietor and renter groups. As embryonic
capitalists, the American farmers shared the interests and attitudes of urban
businessmen. Conflicts between city and country, which so often disturbed
the internal security of other states, seldom arose in such a pervasive
bourgeois atmosphere.
W ith the reinforcement of the pursuit of property as a foundation for
American institutions went a commitment to popular education and majority
rule. “Where education is widely diffused, the whole population is introduced
into active and useful life, at a much earlier period than could be the case,
if the means of instruction were limited, and difficult to be obtained.” 7 In
private affairs this accent on activity and youth meant increased competition
in the scramble for wealth; on the political level its effects were more far-
reaching.
Each new generation represented fresh insights into major political ques­
tions. So-called “revolutions” in public opinion, such as America had ex­
perienced in 1776, 1801, and 1829 invariably coincided with the rise of
younger groups within the population. The participation of these youngsters
in politics was essential if their views were to influence government policy
in an orderly way. B y balancing youth against age in their political assem­
blies, the Americans secured a broader consensus on pending issues and
guarded against violent action from otherwise excluded pressure groups.
In practice, of course, the admission of vociferous minorities to political
power might seem more calculated to produce anarchy than compromise.
The insults and blows traded on the floor of W estern legislatures during the
1830 s and 1840’s certainly pointed in that direction. B ut these were personal
quarrels, not class conflicts, and they created no tensions among the general
public.
On the fundamentals of a capitalist system , all parties and their adherents
were in agreement. Politicians further operated within the limits set by
written constitutions, themselves a pledge of the uniformity of national
thought:
„ COnSt-ltu Von’ fr/ med by representatives of the people, locks
S w¿thdrl ws fr°m V * field of party strife, almost all those
commnniti'po p 7e f 8n,1Ü f ^F^ful source of discord among other
in the Fnrnnpnn01^ ! 11108^ Í C1V^ comrnotions which have occurred
t i o n s S nJíf’ i* CJ T ed by a disagreement about ques-
with the a n n m l ^ ^ f 1- °Penf * n deba^e in America. The constitution,
with the approbation of men of all parties, has placed them beyond the
FREDERICK GRIM KE 11

reach of the government The authority appertaining to the political

departments is also strictly limited; and thus, a large class of powers
which other governments have been in the habit of dealing with, without
control, cannot be exercised at all. In the same way as religion is
withdrawn from the political world, and has given rise to religious tolera­
tion, the fundamentals of government are also withdrawn from all inter-
ference with by party; and all men agree to think and act alike with
regard to them.*
The propensity of the American public to “think and act alike” on major
issues could scarcely have come as a surprise to readers of Tocqueville or
Mrs. Trollope. B ut where these earlier critics (and their American counter­
parts) had voiced upper-class concern over the emerging mass-mind of the
nation, Grimké discovered countervailing tendencies at work to safeguard
the future of popular government.
Majorities in a republic, he pointed out, were inherently unstable. Repre­
senting no privileged interests apart from the community, they fluctuated in
accord with the popular will. Political parties acted as sounding boards for
new ideas and encouraged citizens to scrutinize each other as carefully as
they watched the operations of government. In less representative systems
lay the real danger of mass subservience and conformity, for “where the
population only feels the pressure of their government, they are apt to herd
together like miserable sheep.” 0
Still, the political activity of the masses was one thing; their capacity for
self-government, something else. Even with the aid of a public school system,
countless individuals seemed destined to go through life with the bare rudi­
ments of an education. The ignorant outnumbered the wise in every country
of the world; but only in America did mere numbers generate power. While
democratic theory demanded that all voters be well informed, democratic
practice placed the future of free institutions in the hands of those least
qualified to comprehend their operation. From this dilemma no escape seemed
possible without undermining the foundations of popular rule.
Grimké himself had no illusions about the virtues of a mass electorate.
“The great majority of persons I m et,” he confessed, “appeared to know
nothing beyond the narrow circle of their daily occupations.” Like the Found­
ing Fathers, he believed that human nature was unchanging and every man
a potential troublemaker, whose selfish drives far outweighed his nobler
qualities. To prevent any small despotic clique from gaining the upper hand,
political power had to be diffused broadly among the population. But where
the old-line Federalists made property ownership the test of a “safe” citizen,
the Democratic ex-judge of the Jacksonian era advocated universal manhood
suffrage: “The lowest class have a stake in the comonwealth as well as
any other class; they are the most defenseless portion of the population; and
the sense of independence which the enjoyment of political rights inspires,
in innumerable instances, acts as a stimulus to the acquisition of property. 10
The ballot box itself was an educational force of uncalculated importance in
shaping the manners of a democratic people. Through its unrestricted use
bourgeois values m ight be disseminated among the entire population. Prop-
 OHIO HISTORY
12

ertyless voters, given a chance to participate in politics, would soon feel the
attraction of a legal system designed to enable all comers to acquire property
on an equal basis. Spurred by envy and a desire for self-improvement, the
lower classes were more apt to become the defenders than the destroyers of
the democratic state.
Besides, a knowledge of political affairs, like other kinds of learning, was
partly intuitive. Did a munitions manufacturer have to understand the
philosophy of chemistry, or a laborer the nature of the mechanical power he
used, in order to do a competent job? Politics involved basic moral issues
which humble folk often perceived more clearly than the sophisticated. Even
by failing to understand the exaggerated importance which party leaders
attached to certain pet measures, the masses might help to “moderate the
ultra views of politicians of all parties.” 11
Grimké thus denied that any irrepressible conflict between numbers and
intelligence lay ahead for America. The lower classes, he maintained, were
more jealous of each other than of their intellectual superiors, to whose
opinions they generally deferred. While self-seeking demagogues might win
mass support for a time, in the end they became unwitting agents of public
improvement. Speaking the language of the people, they aroused popular
interest in political affairs, a condition which led to greater reflection and
inquiry among the masses. More enlightened politicians could then win a
hearing for their views, and the evils of demagoguery would be removed by
the same robust democracy which gave them birth.
A free electorate could be trusted to handle any problem, even the selec­
tion of judges. Having spent half a lifetime on the bench, Grimké entertained
no exalted opinion of judicial integrity, especially at the state level. “Some­
times on peeping into our courts, and seeing who preside there,” he noted
privately in 1846, “I am reminded of the expression of Shakespeare, ‘Handy
dandy, where is the judge, where is the thief.’ ” 12
A judiciary independent of private control safeguarded the workings of
democratic institutions; but judges could not free themselves from the
surveillance of the community they served. Turning the customary conserva­
tive arguments upside down, Grimké charged that a system of indirect
appointment and life tenure for judges encouraged political play from the
bench and perpetuated in office a number of partisan hacks and time-servers.
Popular election for a term of years (ideally between five and ten) might
weaken narrow party loyalties among prospective candidates and make them
better representatives of the public will.
The usefulness of popular opinion as a stabilizing force in American life
extended far beyond politics to influence every corner of society. News­
papers disseminated the most radical views without hindrance, since they
were certain to be checked by the “voluntary censorship” of competing
organs; religious sects, denied government patronage, appealed to the public
for support, a policy which led to majority rule in church affairs and pre­
ven e ® grow o a priestly caste; professional groups were widely
dispersed through the population and enjoyed no special privileges or cen­
tralized organization to set them apart from the untrained majority.
fRBDBBlC K GRIM KE 13

Whei'evel ° ne *"Urne<^’ ^ree interplay of selfish interests seemed to be

t ibuting to social harmony, in the approved style of Adam Smith. Only
C0” oblems arose which defied consensus could such an admirably self-
'f batin g system break down. B u t two potential trouble spots already
r6gUed on the horizon — the proletarian and the Negro slave.
l0°Grimk(‘ Paic* little attention to the urban working class in the first edition
f his C o n sid e ra tio n s. H e assumed that any prospective danger from that
°uarter would be offset by the m obility of American society and the more
humane outlook imparted to the workingman through a common school
education. B u t the revolutions of 1848, which raised the specter of class
war throughout Europe, caused him to qualify his earlier optimism.
In a revised version of his work published in 1856 he pondered the possible
emergence of a rural as well as urban proletariat. Still pinning his hopes on
the continued prevalence of middle-class ideology at all social levels, he
nevertheless predicted th a t:
If the time ever arrives, when the danger to the institutions becomes
imminent, from the banding together of the lowest class, the right of
suffrage will be limited. The maxim of equality is a great regulative, but
not a constitutive principle, of society; a distinction of great importance
in the political world: when it ceases to perform the first function, it
ceases to be a principle in the construction of the government.13
There could be no clearer indication of his leitmotiv: American democracy
was a function of middle-class rule. To extend the egalitarian principle beyond
the limits set by bourgeois practice would be to destroy democracy. In the
name of “free institutions,” then, one m ight as a last resort deny to disaffected
voting blocs — such as the Communists — the power to undermine the
proper goals of representative government.
But the threat of communist subversion appeared pleasantly remote in
antebellum America. Of more pressing concern was the slavery issue and its
political repercussions. Like many another Southerner, Grimké felt that,
culturally, the Negro was racially inferior to the white man and could never
measure up to the responsibilities of middle-class democracy. The emanci­
pation of the slave would only insure the rise of a debased black electorate
Poison the very source of democratic institutions; for any hope of a mass
exodus to Liberia was a philanthropic pipe dream. Under these circumstances
^aveholders had little choice but to m aintain the plantation system handed
nalT1 by their fathers> a way of life in which the hand of a benevolent pater-
• sm was everywhere apparent: “The institution of slavery, when it is
pe£°®ed uPon the African race, may sim ply import, that inasmuch as the
life °. infancy and youth is in their case protracted through the whole of
t° > be em inently advantageous to them, if a guardianship is created
Tru 0Ver and take care of them.” 14
Publi e> masters fulfilled these humanitarian obligations. B ut the well-
Centur1Zed brutalities of the slavocracy were inseparable from nineteenth-
into th family life in general. Philanthropists never extended their inquiries
shattgj,6 '^ttlei'ican home, where illusions of human goodness were likely to
against the reality of a paternal tyrant.
 OHIO HISTORY
14

While Grimké believed that a majority of whites, North and South,

shared his racial outlook, he noted that slavery was becoming a more ex­
plosive political issue every year. M isguided fanaticism offered a partial
explanation for this phenomenon; but its roots lay in the opportunism of a
new class of politicians rising in the nonslaveholding states. We cannot hide
our eyes to the fact,” he wrote in 1850, “that the radical, the abolition party
in the free states, are in reality fighting their own fellow citizens, through the
men of the South.” 1' Six years later he spelled out this thesis even more
clearly, in regard to the rapidly growing Republican party.
The Republicans represented “an array of one class of society against
another.” Their leaders were second-rate politicians who saw in the manifold
aspects of the slavery question a lever by which to dislodge more responsible
old-line statesmen. In Boston, for example, “new men” of the stamp of
Wendell Phillips, Josiah Quincy, and William Lloyd Garrison had long chafed
under the sway of a conservative elite led by Daniel Webster. Now, with the
death of Webster and other nationalist-minded politicians of the old school,
these parvenus were busily constructing their own party on narrow sectional
lines. Similar groups were at work throughout the North and West, heedless
of the effect which their local feuds m ight have on the future peace of the
entire Union.16
The extent of the danger depended, of course, upon the mechanics of
federal politics and here, as elsewhere in the American system, Grimké
thought he discerned a built-in safety valve. He compared the Union to a
private association in which each member, having freely joined, became bound
by the joint will of the group in carrying out the purposes of the club. No
individual could set up his own program against that of the majority any
more than a single state could veto a federal law. For, Taylor and Calhoun
notwithstanding, each state by its entrance into the Union alienated part of
its sovereignty to the whole body of states, which together created a central
government. This joint procedure placed federal power forever beyond the
control of the separate states and insured that in national affairs the will of
the majority would prevail. B ut just as in private life a disgruntled individual
might always resign from his club, so a state inveterately opposed to federal
policies enjoyed one ultimate recourse: the right of secession.
Properly understood, secession implied no aggressive assertion of state
power, but was an admission of weakness in the face of a prevailing national
consensus:
Instead of forcible resistance to the federal head, instead of unlawful
attempts to annul the laws of the Union, while the member is within it,
^ aí; member is at liberty quietly to depart, while others retain their
position m the confederacy. This is one of the most important attributes
• ^, ,ra g°Yernment. Secession is the instrument happily substitued
in the place of open hostility to the laws. So that in the confederate
form of government, the law itself provides against those great emer­
gencies which in other countries are said to make laws for themselves.’■
_ The secession argument appealed the more strongly to Grimké in that
ne was convinced the nation would divide naturally into three or four inde­
FREDERICK GRIM KE
15

pendent confederacies at some future date. Cultural ties would then super­
sede narrower political loyalties, with studies such as his helping to link the
several republics in a nexus of common institutions, manners, and ideas. “It
is the maintenance of one civilization, not the maintenance of one union,
which we are m ost deeply interested in,” he declared, underscoring the
broader implications of his work.18
On its first appearance in 1848 the Considerations scored a modest success.
Western reviewers generally praised it; those in the East tended to be cool!
While Grimké had never expected to attract a wide popular audience, he
expressed disappointment at what he considered the provincialism of East
Coast critics. I verily believe if the work had appeared as from the pen of
Webster or Calhoun, it would have had an unlimited circulation,” he com­
plained. “Its being written in a small town, in the heart of a western State,
sheds a damper over the minds of the dull; and they are Legion, and an
author has no more chance of justice, than an angel would have in Pande­
monium.” 1:1
Francis Lieber, the noted political scientist and educator, however,
regarded the book with unqualified admiration. It was adopted by the
University of Virginia as the standard text in political philosophy courses;
and as late as 1854 Grimké reported “constantly receiving testimonials” from
readers, some of whom found the Considerations superior even to Tocque-
ville’s classic study of American democracy.20 Encouraged by these marks
of favor and by the gradual disappearance of the 1100 copies already printed,
the judge brought out a “corrected and enlarged” edition of his work in 1856,
though by that time the state of popular opinion in most parts of the country
scarcely justified his reiterated faith in the moderation of middle-class
Americans.
Perhaps this outward display of confidence in the future was a case of
whistling in the dark where the public was concerned, for in private Grimké
was deeply alarmed over the growing violence of the national temper. “I
think our country is now passing through a more trying and critical period
than has occurred since the foundation of the government,” he informed
Greene in September 1856:
The Union m ay be dissevered, and if it is, feuds and animosities will
as certainly grow up in the parts dismembered. They may disclose
themselves very gradually at first, but in the end they will be equally
violent. An extensive country is favorable to reflexion, and is one of the
cures for those intestine animosities, which will always exist, but
which burn more fiercely the narrower the bounds within which they
are confined. Let us keep together, until nature points to a separa-
tion.21 .
Sadly he watched as the political crisis worsened and as one projected
compromise after another failed to satisfy the emotional demands of a hope­
lessly divided population. Secession, when at last it came, left him in a state
of shock from which he sought relief through abandoning for a time all serious
interest in political affairs. But he could not remain indifferent to the con­
stitutional problems raised by a civil war, and soon found better therapy in
writing a series of “reflections” on current events for the Chillicothe papers.
 16 OHIO HISTORY

In these essays Grimke continued to plead for the principle of peaceful

secession and denounced the wholesale violations of civil liberties which, he
claimed, characterized the Lincoln administration’s treatment of suspected
civilian traitors. He clung to the hope that civilized values would yet reassert
themselves, that somehow the essential oneness of the American people
would penetrate even the battlefields. One of his last letters, written at
Chillicothe in March 1862, described his dream of an impending reconcilia­
tion between the warring confederacies:
The horizon seems to be clearing off now, and the clouds which
looked so dark and threatening are gradually giving way to a brighter
day. The peaceful and tranquil termination of our troubles is an event on
which my attention has been rivetted from the beginning. It will be the
crowning glory of free institutions.22
Eleven months later Grimké was dead in his bachelor quarters at the old
Madeira Hotel. While the “Brothers’ War” pursued its relentless course in
defiance of his theories, he added a last footnote to his work from beyond the
grave. By the terms of his will one copy of the Considerations was forwarded
to the Federal government at Washington, while another was shipped to the
Confederate authorities in Richmond. It was an appropriate gesture from
one who had never learned to distinguish one white American from another.
The passing of Grimké and his generation marked the end of a political
tradition in America. Four years of bloody fighting helped to centralize power
more firmly in Washington and destroyed forever the idea that the Union
was a voluntary association of states. B ut the triumph of Northern arms
meant the strengthening of middle-class mores as well, and in this context
the judge’s observations retain a perennial freshness.
As an apologist for bourgeois civilization, he saw the positive contribution
which a high standard of living could make to the development of the popular
mind. As an exponent of bourgeois liberalism, he accepted political experi­
mentation by the masses with a wry tolerance comparable to that of Holmes
and later judicial pragmatists. And as a philospoher of free institutions, he
looked forward to a day when public opinion would regulate the world
community as it did the American republic. In that vision of “one great
commonwealth” of representative states, Frederick Grimké read the final
justification of middle-class democracy.

T H E A U T H O R : M axwell Bloomfield is
A ssistant Professor of History at The
Catholic U niversity of America.
 NOTES í f n
FREDERICK GRIMKE AND AMERICAN CIVILIZATION: A
JACKSONIAN JURIST’S APPRAISAL
1. Frederick Grimké to William Greene, February 28, 1828. Greene Papers, The
Cincinnati Historical Society. William Greene (1797-1883) came from a Rhode Island
family which had been prominent in state politics for three generations. Following his
graduation from Brown University in 1817, he studied law at Judge Tapping R eeve’s
famous Litchfield Law School, Litchfield, Connecticut. From the early 1820’s, when
he moved to Ohio to pursue his legal career, until his return to Rhode Island in 1862,
he played an active role in the civic and cultural life of Cincinnati. H is Whig- Republican
political orientation, while inimical to th e Democratic views of Grimké, did not
lessen their friendship. John Howard Brown, ed., L am b’s Biographical D ictionary of
the United S tates (Boston, 1900-1903), III, 399.
2. Grimke to Greene, August 16, 1827, Greene Papers.
3. Frederick Grimké, A n Essay on th e A ncients and M oderns (privately printed,
n.d.), [205],
4. Grjmké to Greene, September 12, 1844, Greene Papers.
5. Grimké to Greene, M ay 8, 1848, Greene Papers.
6. Frederick Grimké, Considerations upon the N ature and T endency of Free In­
stitutions (Cincinnati, 1848), 312.
7. Ibid., 268.
8. Ibid., 168.
9. Ibid., 115.
10. Frederick Grimké, Considerations upon the N ature and T endency of Free In ­
stitutions (2d printing, N ew York and Cincinnati, 1856), 79; 81-82. This “corrected
and enlarged” edition incorporated much new material, including an entire chapter
on the right of secession and another on the “ultimate destiny” of free institutions.
11. Grimké, Considerations (1st printing), 277.
12. Grimké to Greene, January 12, 1846, Greene Papers.
13. Grimké, Considerations (2d printing), 667.
14. Grimké, Considerations (ls t printing), 327.
15. Grimké to Greene, December 10, 1850, Greene Papers.
16. Grimké to Greene, February 19, 1856, Greene Papers. Grimké was mistaken,
of course, in suggesting that “Republican” and “abolitionist” were synonymous terms.
In fact the radical abolitionists, such as Garrison and Phillips, opposed political action at
this time and took no part in the organization of the Republican party.
17. Grimké, Considerations (2d p rin ting), 485.
18. Grimké, Considerations ( ls t printing), 263.
19. Grimké to Greene, November 30, 1849, Greene Papers.
20. Grimké to Greene, M ay 1, 1854, Greene Papers.
21. Grimké to Greene, September 27, 1856, Greene Papers.
22. Grimké to Greene, March 30, 1862, Greene Papers.
23. Henry Howe, H istorical Collections of Ohio (Columbus, 1891), III, 189.

THE OHIO FREE SOILERS AND PROBLEMS OF FACTIONALISM

1. The most com plete accounts of the Ohio Free Soil party are included in Theodore
Clarke Smith, T h e L ib e rty and Free S oil P arties in the N orthw est, Harvard Historical
Studies VI (N ew York, 1897), and Edgar A. Holt, “Party Politics m Ohio, 1840-1850,
0 C Á r c L e o £ 7 ic a l an d H istorical Q u arterly, X X X V III (1929) 47-182 260-402.
See also Francis P. Weisenburger, T he Passing of the Frontier (Carl Wittke, ed.,
The H istory of Ohio, III, Columbus, 1941), 470-479; and Eugene H. Roseboom, The
Civil War Era, 1850-1873,{ibid., IV , 1944), 256-276
2. For Chase’s role in the events of 1847 and 1848 see Joseph G. Rayback The
Liberty Party Leaders of Ohio: Exponents of Antislavery Coalition, Ohio Archae-