A “World-Historical Idea”: The St. Louis Hegelians and the Civil War

Journal of American Studies

Volumn 34, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 447-464

  Good, James A ^a  

^a RICE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85012453747     PISSN: 00218758     EISSN: 14695154     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021875851006383     Document Type: Article

References (43)

1. Kurt F. Leidecker, Yankee Schoolteacher : The Life of William Torrey Harris (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946), 316ff. and Denton Snider, The St. Louis Movement in Philosophy, Literature, Education, Psychology, with Chapters of Autobiography (St. Louis: Sigma Publishing Company, 1920), 66ff., 138-212.
2. Louis J. Block, “The Philosophic Schools of St. Louis, Jacksonville, Concord and Chicago,” in A Brief Report of the Meeting Commemorative of the Early Saint Louis Movement in Philosophy, Psychology, Literature, Art and Education, ed. David H. Harris (St. Louis: n.p., 1922), 25. Austin Warren, “The Concord School of Philosophy,” New England Quarterly, 2 (Apr. 1929), 199-233. Henry A. Pochmann, New England Transcendentalism and St. Louis Hegelianism : Phases in the History of American Idealism (Philadelphia : Carl Shurz Memorial Foundation, 1948) Leidecker, 357-72, 403-21.
3. Karl Rosenkranz, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2 (1868), 55. One hundred and twenty nine pages in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy were devoted to translations of Rosenkranz's commentary on Hegel. See “ Index,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 15 (1881), 442. Ludwig Feuerbach and J. H. Fichte were also auxiliary members. For an extensive list of members of the St. Louis Philosophical Society see William Schuyler, “German Philosophy in St. Louis,” The Bulletin of the Washington University Association, no. 2 (23 Apr. 1904), 72-73.
4. Snider, The St. Louis Movement, 29.
5. On the St. Louis Hegelians’ anti-elitism as an Americanization of Hegel see, Frances Harmon, “The Social Philosophy of the St. Louis Hegelians” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1943). Harris was more progressive on gender than race. Under his supervision the St. Louis public schools had an inordinate number of women in administrative positions and paid women and men equally, paying all teachers and administrators exceptionally well. Harris also allowed women to retain their jobs when they married. Stephen L. McIntyre, “ ‘Our Schools are Not Charitable Institutions ‘ : Class, Gender, Ethnicity, and the Teaching Profession in Nineteenth-Century St. Louis,” Missouri Historical Review, 92 (Oct. 1997), 27-44.
6. Harris, Psychologic Foundations, 291.
7. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1956), 86.
8. Snider ultimately conceded that they were caught up in the “Grand Illusion ” propagated by St. Louis boosters, but claimed that their grounding in philosophy equipped them to rise above the particular passions of the moment, which were shattered when the 1880 census showed that Chicago had surpassed the city in size and economic importance. Snider, St. Louis Movement, 70-137.
9. Snider, Ten Years’ War, 219-43.
10. Michael Fellman, Inside War: The Guerilla Conflict in Missouri during the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
11. Snider, The St. Louis Movement, 143-44.
12. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1956), 21. Snider discusses the Phenomenology of Spirit as Hegel's effort to understand the French Revolution and Napoleon in Modern European Philosophy, 681-83.
13. Frederick Henry Hedge was the first translator of Hegel in America. His Prose Writers of Germany, which contained translations of works by Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, among others, went through five editions from 1847 to 1870. Pochmann, German Culture in America, 583-84, note 707.
14. Snider, The St. Louis Movement, 344, cf. 13.
15. For details on Brokmeyer's life see, E. C. Brokmeyer to Charles M. Perry, 14 June 1929, in Charles Milton Perry, ed., The St. Louis Movement in Philosophy : Some Source Material (Norman, Okla.: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1930), 49-50; and Schuyler, “German Philosophy in St. Louis,” 63-74. Harris claims Brokmeyer was suffering from “ billious fever,” in “Books That Have Helped Me,” 147-49. Harris, George Stedman and J. H. Watters “clubbed together and out of their slender means paid for Brokmeyer's support while he should translate the Greater Logic of Hegel for their use and edification. ” Schuyler, “German Philosophy in St. Louis,” 68.
16. Brokmeyer, A Mechanic's Diary, 111-13. The Diary was published posthumously by Brokmeyer's son. William Goetzmann notes many historical inaccuracies in the book and concludes that Brokmeyer “intended it to be a utopian extension of his own experiences rather than a strictly historical account. ” Goetzmann, ed., The American Hegelians : An Intellectual Episode in the History of Western America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), 35.
17. J. G. Woerner, The Rebel ‘s Daughter : A Story of Love, Politics and War (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1899), 291. Woerner was a lawyer, esteemed legal scholar, long-time probate judge in St. Louis, and member of the Philosophical Society. On the identification of the characters in the novel see, Goetzmann, ed., The American Hegelians, 326.
18. Snider, The St. Louis Movement, 13.
19. Pochmann, German Culture in America, 270, Brokmeyer made his translation of Hegel's Science of Logic from Leopold von Henning's 1841 edition. Leidecker, Yankee Schoolteacher, 318.
20. Brokmeyer to Harris, 1 May 1861, Box 1, W. T. Harris Papers, Missouri Historical Society (hereafter MHS) Collections.
21. Brokmeyer to Harris, 5 Sept. 1861, Box 1, W. T. Harris Papers, MHS Collections.
22. Woerner, 459.
23. Brokmeyer to Harris, 8 Nov. 1862, Box 1, W. T. Harris Papers, MHS Collections. Cf. Snider, The St. Louis Movement, 141-42.
24. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Missouri, 1st Session of the 22nd General Assembly, 33, 34, 52. MHS Library.
25. Brokmeyer, “Speech of Mr. Brokmeyer of Warren County, In Support of Resolutions Introduced by him, Endorsing the National Administration.” Delivered in the House of Representatives, 15 January 1864. Pamphlet, MHS Library.
26. Harris to Dr. Peckham, 26 June 1861, Box 10, W. T. Harris Papers, MHS Collections.
27. Harris, “Philosophy of History,” Missouri Republican, 8 Oct. 1861. (Signed “H” identified as Harris by Leidecker in Yankee Schoolteacher, 204-6.
28. Harris, “Philosophy of History,” Missouri Republican. Cf. Harris’ journal entry for 20 July 1865, Journal, Box 10, W. T. Harris Papers, MHS Collections.
29. Denton Snider, Abraham Lincoln : An Interpretation in Biography (St. Louis: Sigma Publishing Company, 1908). Denton Snider, The State, Specially the American State, Psychologically Treated (St. Louis: Sigma Publishing Company, 1902).
30. Robert C. Whittemore claims that Snider was “ the one truly original thinker ” of this trio. Whittemore, Makers of the American Mind (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1964), 268. Cf. James Wayne Dye, “Denton J. Snider's Interpretation of Hegel,” The Modern Schoolman, 46 (Jan. 1970), 155.
31. Snider, Ten Years’ War, 526.
32. Ten Years’ War., 187; Snider, The State, 492; Snider, The St. Louis Movement, 52, 59, 62. Cf. Hegel's claim that although world-historical individuals have “no consciousness of the general Idea they [are] unfolding,” they are “ thinking men, who [have] an insight into the requirements of the time. ” When world-historical individuals’ purpose is fulfilled “ they fall off like empty hulls from the kernel. ” Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 30, 31.
33. Snider, Ten Years’ War, 230; Denton Snider, Biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson (St. Louis: W. H. Miner, Co., 1921), 347-49. One might quibble with Snider's belief that Lincoln acted within the parameters of established institutions by noting his suspension of the writ of Habeas Corpus during the war.
34. Snider, Ten Years’ War, 373-74, 323.
35. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 96.
36. Snider, Ten Years’ War, 323, 317, 316, 321-22, 323.
37. W. T. Harris, “To the Reader,” JSP, 1 (Jan. 1867), 2.
38. E. C. Brokmeyer to Charles M. Perry, 5 July 1929; and E. C. Brokmeyer to Cleon Forbes, 16 Jan. 1929; both reprinted in Perry, ed., The St. Louis Movement in Philosophy, 48, 50.
39. W. T. Harris, March 1877 notebook, Box 10, W. T. Harris Papers, MHS Collections. Cf. Harris, Psychologic Foundations, “The Psychology of Infancy,” 295-321.
40. Harris to Snider, 24 Sept. 1906, Box 1, W. T. Harris Papers, MHS Collections.
41. Harris, Psychologic Foundations, 282, 289, 287, 281. In this discussion, Harris compares his theory of self-estrangement to that of Rosenkranz.
42. Alcott, The Journals of Bronson Alcott, 499.
43. Mrs. D. H. Harris, “The Early St. Louis Movement and the Communal University,” in A Brief Report of the Meeting Commemorative of the Early Saint Louis Movement, 31-47.