Department of History
Temple University
“For her ability as a poet ‘Grace Greenwood’ thanked her mother—except in the matter of her name. Could there be a more... unliterary appellation than Sara Jane Clarke...?”[1] Born on September 23, 1823 in western New York State of New England stock, Clarke was reared in an educated and reformist household, and she turned to writing at an early age, publishing anti-slavery poetry in abolitionist journals. By her early twenties, she had adopted writing as a profession, as well as the “Grace Greenwood” pseudonym, and she soon appeared on the masthead of Godey’s Lady’s Book as an assistant editor.[2] In 1849 her friend, John Greenleaf Whittier, asked her to accept a commission from the National Era, a Washington, D.C. anti-slavery journal edited by him and Gamaliel Bailey. Southern newspapers noted her byline in the Era and consequently put pressure on Louis Godey to remove her from the Lady’s Book, a journal also popular in the South. In February 1850, her name was removed from the masthead.[3]
At the Era, Bailey offered her the chance to continue writing and to move to Washington. She accepted his offer and one from the Saturday Evening Post and arrived in the capital in June 1850.[4] Greenwood was noted for her poetry, prose, and travel sketches in the Lady’s Book, and her informal letter-style columns quickly became popular. She concerned herself with a variety of subjects, but she concentrated mostly on the practice of politics in Washington. Her writings, although eclectic in subject matter, illustrate at least one significant point: on the national stage that was antebellum Washington, the line between the political and social worlds was fuzzy at best, if not non-existent.
More importantly, these “Letters from the Capitol” as they were usually titled, point to a much broader understanding of what “politics” meant in mid-nineteenth-century Washington. For Greenwood, it was best explained as a staged drama. The politicians were actors and as such the focus of attention, but they formed, in reality, a small part of the production. Just as important was the audience—male or female, northern or southern, radical or conservative—that had the power to accept or reject, in myriad ways, the action on stage. There were also those behind the scenes—party hacks, newspaper editors, agitators of various persuasions, etc.—who attempted to “manage” what was produced on the political stage. Paramount for Greenwood, however, was how she understood her role and its function. Greenwood cast herself as the critic, implying that she had the authority to interpret the action on stage for an extended, and in some ways passive, audience. For a time, she mediated politicians’ actions and characters to the readership of a primarily political newspaper. Not only Bailey, but also Greenwood, a woman, gave the Era’s readership access to a critical stance. By so doing, she appropriated the power to alter or construct ideas about politics, masculinity, and performance in antebellum America.