“The Sense of Liberty”

Abstract

Abstract The chapter explores how Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery fiction took on increasingly Romantic dimensions as she interrogated the political significance of emotions in the aftermath of the Compromise of 1850. It places Stowe in a transhistorical conversation about the relationship between intellect and emotion running from Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville to John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum in order to reconceptualize the relationship between liberalism and sentimentality in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and Dred (1856), both of which pivot around patently Romantic figures. It also explores how Stowe emphasized the concept of liberty, and the affective experiences it frequently elicits, as a way to overcome political impasse.