Thesis advisor: David Quigley / Chiefly an effort in cultural, intellectual, and political history, this dissertation is concerned primarily with the American North between the 1830s and the 1860s. The study explores the critical connections that contemporaries drew between childrearing, the home, and the exercise and preservation of individual liberty in a rapidly changing United States. Before, during, and after the Civil War, Northerners celebrated the autonomy of American youngsters. But they did so with bated breath and furrowed brow. Leaving home—potentially a profound expression of personal autonomy for a young person—generated both encouragement and trepidation. Young people on their own, beyond the threshold of their families’ homes, outside the ambit of mothers and fathers: this appeared to contemporaries an intractable fact of life—and a perilous one. Of singular concern was temptation: a cunning, ruthless, and virulent force to which young people seemed highly, maybe uniquely, susceptible. To Northerners living through the nineteenth century’s tumultuous middle decades, temptation was a pressing problem; not least, it was a pressing political problem, a grave threat to individual liberty. Nineteenth-century Northerners, especially those of a Whiggish cast of mind, generally believed that the maintenance of liberty required that citizens follow the law, and they held parents, above all others, responsible for investing their children with respect for the law. But a freedom dependent on law-following alone, and on the formal power of the state that the law embodies, was not the freedom that all Northerners idealized. Many preferred that freedom be preserved less by officials acting upon individuals than by individuals acting upon themselves. From this perspective, young citizens were to emerge from their parents’ homes equipped not only to follow the law—that is, to be governed—but also to self-govern. This entailed, among other things, preparing young people to confront and overcome temptation, the enemy of self-governance. Drawing upon a wide array of sources, including periodicals, personal correspondence, popular literature, and Christian sermons, The Perfection of Government: Childrearing, Freedom, and Temptation illustrates how contemporaries harnessed the power of childrearing and home life to meet this formidable challenge. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_109834 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Sterrett, Isaiah |
| Publisher | Boston College |
| Source Sets | Boston College |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, thesis |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. |
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