Abstract
In this chapter, Pellar discusses how, instead of using the popular Ship of State motif, the pro-slavery Senator Calhoun used the motif of “cords” and “fabric” as a unifying image of the North and South. Pellar discusses how the “cord” imagery evoked not only the rigging of the “Ship of State” but also the very fabric of the pro-slavery Constitution itself. The dual metaphors of the “Ship of State” and “cords,” which Calhoun and the newspapers brilliantly exploited and repeated again and again for effect, did not fail to embed themselves fully in the attentive consciousness of the country. Pellar then discusses how Melville couldn’t help but utilizes these images in Moby-Dick.
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Notes
- 1.
The word “canvas” originally derives from the Latin, “cannabis,” which is further derived from the Greek, “Kannabis,” both of which mean “hemp.” American Heritage Dictionary, New College Ed.
- 2.
The USS Constitution was a real Ship of State, which Heimert also noted, via the “holy flag” nailed to her mast in Oliver Wendell Holmes’ poem and the Unionist cry of “The flag of the Union nailed to her masts” Heimert 1963, 501.
Bibliography
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Calhoun, John C., “Speech on the Oregon Bill.” June 27, 1848. The Online Library of Liberty. Reprint from, Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun. Edited by Ross M. Lence. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/calhoun-union-and-liberty-the-political-philosophy-of-john-c-calhoun.
Calhoun, John C., “Speech on the Admission of California – and the General State of the Union.” March 4, 1850. The Online Library of Liberty. Reprint from, Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun. Edited by Ross M. Lence. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992. Http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/calhoun-union-and-liberty-the-political-philosophy-of-john-c-calhoun.
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Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. 1851. Edited by Harrison Hayford and Hershel Parker. New York: W. W. Norton, 1967b. Page numbers are to the 1967 edition.
Miller, Marion Mills, ed. Great Debates in American History: From the Debates in the British Parliament on the Colonial Stamp Act (1764–1765) to the Debates in Congress at the Close of the Taft Administration (1912–1913). Vol. 4. New York: Current Literature Publishing Company, 1913.
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Pellar, B.R. (2017). Hemp and Calhoun’s “Cords”. In: Moby-Dick and Melville’s Anti-Slavery Allegory. American Literature Readings in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52267-8_4
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