ABSTRACT
Over the last 30 years, historians under the influence of a new appreciation of the importance of political language have stressed the continuities between the radicalism of the Chartist era and the emergence of socialism in the late nineteenth century. Fusing pre-industrial radical ideas about the incorruptible people with a sometimes searing analysis of the iniquities of industrial capitalism, Reynolds offered a counter-narrative of the English nation steeped in a deep distrust of all established authority. The enfranchisement of the former slaves during Reconstruction was, for Reynolds's, of chief interest for the way in which it highlighted how backward England was by comparison, even after the 1867 Reform Act. In the decades after the Civil War, British attitudes towards the United States began to shift. Contributors to Reynolds's generally portrayed the United States as a counterpoint to the corruption and excess of the British monarchy.
