2023/10/23 by Marcia C. Robinson · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #American Constitutional Law and Politics #Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment
paper · doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197558898.013.25
openalex publication_date 2023/10/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract African American poet-activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper addressed the meaning of democracy in America throughout her long social reform career. In “Our Greatest Want,” a short essay-speech from the high point of her abolitionist career, Harper maintains that democracy is fundamentally a type of free moral society, grounded in the idea of human kinship, and made out of religion. Harper inherits this idea from her uncle, Reverend William Watkins, Jr., and presents it in this piece as a means to counter two features of American democracy that Alexis de Tocqueville identified as religious—or pseudo-religious—namely, the pursuit of wealth and the dynamic of public opinion. Synthesizing and poeticizing her uncle’s and de Tocqueville’s ideas, she challenges her black audience’s disregard for the negative impact of these forces on their people. In the process, she critiques both de Tocqueville and his well-known supporter, Catharine Beecher, for their positions on race and gender.