Summary (Masterpieces of American Fiction)

1876 is written in the form of a journal that Charles Schuyler is keeping for himself. After a more than thirty-year absence, he is returning with his daughter to the United States, which is on the eve of its centennial year. The panic of 1873 (a monetary crisis initiated by the passage in that year of the Silver Act, which ended the coinage of silver and thus reduced the amount of currency in circulation) has wiped out his capital, and he is forced to solicit journalistic assignments and to secure a wealthy husband for his widowed daughter. His main aim is to help Samuel Tilden, governor of New York, get elected president, for which Schuyler hopes to be rewarded with a diplomatic post in France.

Schuyler is a self-described “Rip Van Winkle” who is awakening to what is, for him, a new country. Thus his journal is filled with commentary on the manners and morals of the populace, on the way that Americans speak, dress, neglect to bathe frequently enough, and so on. He is a Europeanized American who is alternately amused and irritated by the crudeness of the cultural and political climate. Mark Twain, for example, is viewed as a kind of professional roughneck whom Schuyler detests. Twain has “cunningly” played “the fool” for his own enormous profit and popularity, but in Schuyler’s view, Twain has also “come to hate himself, but lacks the courage either to crack the mirror or to change, if he could, that deliberately common face which it so faithfully reflects.” Corrupt politicians and businessmen conspire to defraud the public of millions, and thus Schuyler is confirmed in his support of Tilden’s candidacy as a reformer and as one of the few men in public life who is not afraid to expose corruption.

At the same time, Schuyler’s critique of America...

(The entire section is 735 words.)