ABSTRACT
Thomas Carlyle, the Sage of Chelsea, universally acknowledged as one of the most influential intellectual voices in mid-Victorian Britain, was largely silent about the American Civil War. Wrights closing protestation, we will take in good part the broad hint to make our calls shorter and less frequent at Cheyne Row. Although Carlyle's silence on the Civil War has often been attributed to his living in the Valley of the Shadow of Frederick. Whether Carlyle consciously realized it or not, and whether or not my own assessment of Frederick is the product of a good or a bad reading, his re-presenting of Frederick demonstrated that slowing the current of democracy could not stop it. Near the end of the war, Carlyle would again write to Thompson and again demonstrate his struggle to understand events in America: It is true. The relationship of Walt Whitman, Thomas Carlyle, and their views of democracy is, for the most part, well explored critical territory.
