"Its History Is Written in Blood": The English Civil War in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, 1829–1909

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Author:
Hancock, William
Graduate Program:
English
Degree:
Doctor of Philosophy
Document Type:
Dissertation
Date of Defense:
June 01, 2026
Committee Members:
Garrett Sullivan, Major Field Member
Claire Bourne, Major Field Member
Christina Snyder, Outside Unit & Field Member
John Marsh, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Hester Blum, Special Member
Benjamin Schreier, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies
Keywords:
nineteenth-century
American
United States
literature
English Civil War
Oliver Cromwell
Charles I
Roundhead
Cavalier
regicides
Sir Walter Scott
James Fenimore Cooper
Nathaniel Hawthorne
William Alexander Caruthers
John Esten Cooke
Wilson J. Vance
Thomas Carlyle
Joel T. Headley
Henry David Thoreau
Mark Twain
Theodore Roosevelt
Abstract:
This dissertation examines the English Civil War’s literary and cultural afterlife in nineteenth-century America. It seeks to answer the following research questions: Why did the seventeenth-century English past capture the imagination of nineteenth-century American writers? What did these writers hope that contemporary American readers would glean from this history? American writers of this period continually revisited the history of Stuart and Cromwellian England in their search for a proto-origin story for the United States or, if you will, a founding before the Founding. An American excavation of such a distinctly English conflict might seem strange in light of the century’s nationalist surge, but this fixation on the events and personages of the English Civil War was in fact part of the very project to develop a distinctly American literature and culture. The engagement with the seventeenth-century English past was done in the service of the nineteenth-century American present, with Americans instrumentalizing historical memory of the English Civil War in support of varying—and often contradictory—ideological projects. To populate stories (whether fictional or nonfictional) that were really about themselves, nineteenth-century American writers plucked archetypes and dramatis personae from the shared mythos of the Interregnum and Restoration eras: the Roundhead, the Cavalier, the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, the House of Stuart (Charles I, Charles II, and Prince Rupert), and the regicides. These English foes were then conscripted into American battles waged over issues spanning the long nineteenth century, ranging from chattel slavery in the antebellum period to the rise of America as an overseas empire at the turn of the century. The texts explicated in this study are prose narratives drawn from an eighty-year period that begins in the Early Republic and ends in the Progressive Era. Chapter 1 examines the trope of the exiled New England regicide in relation to indigeneity in the works of Sir Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Chapter 2 investigates how the Cavalier archetype was repurposed for an American setting in the novels of William Alexander Caruthers, John Esten Cooke, and Wilson Vance. Chapter 3 explores the disparate ideological ends to which Joel T. Headley and Henry David Thoreau leveraged American memory of Oliver Cromwell. Finally, chapter 4 takes up Mark Twain and Theodore Roosevelt’s literary engagements with the Roundhead cause at the turn of the century.