American Solipsism: How Sectional Differences in American Culture Affected the Reception of the Congo Reform Movement, 1890-1905

Abstract

As part of HST 390: Research Methods, this paper seeks to look at how Civil War sentiments regarding slavery, and Africans by extension, influenced American reporting on the Congo crisis by comparing news reports from the North, South, and African Americans. There were varying publications criticizing Leopold II’s reign while others glorified his work for its industrial development. The author’s goal was to look at these varying opinions and see how they corresponded with the values of the former Union and Confederate states to determine if there was a connection and if it supported their idea that the call for reform would be from the same source as the call for abolition. The text focuses on individual newspaper reports from the period that are contextualized by modern scholarship.