The Library of Congress and the Transformation of Literary Culture in America, 1782-1861

This dissertation examines the history of the Library of Congress from 1782, when the first proposal was made to establish a legislative library for the new nation, until 1861, which marked the firing of Librarian John Silva Meehan, the hiring of Ainsworth Rand Spofford, and the start of the Civil War. This study approaches the Library's history as a case study for analysis of the relationship between the federal government and the world of letters during the early republican and ante-bellum eras. Because of the Library's status as a national, governmental institution devoted to the collection and preservation of literary artifacts, its history provides a revealing perspective from which to study American attitudes toward books, literature, and governmental responsibility for fostering literary achievement. Unlike previous histories of the Library, this dissertation proceeds from the assumption that the Library's development into the nation's premier literary institution was neither inevitable nor straightforward. I focus renewed attention on the ideologies that opposed foundation of a national library in order to explain why, despite numerous calls among nineteenth-century American literati for a national library to be founded in Washington at government expense, the Library of Congress continued to serve a circumscribed, almost purely legislative role until the Civil War. A primary objective of this study is to recover the specific historicity of the Library's development--to situate the Library of Congress in the social, political, and cultural context of early republican and ante-bellum America. This dissertation provides an integrated narrative of Library of Congress development that chronicles the relationships between the Library and the broader political and intellectual trends of nineteenth-century American culture.