Britain as Prophecy

Chapter 4 explores the idea of the “choreography of reform” in performances by the Horace Mann and Horace Greeley. Upon returning from a tour of Britain in 1845, Mann felt compelled to tell his fellow Americans about the failings of the English education system. Five years later, Greeley returned from the 1851 Great Exhibition, proclaiming that he had witnessed the future. They toured the United States over the course of the next decade performing pieces that cast them as seers and oracles, using British futurity as a means of imagining starkly distinct national futures for the republic. In doing so, they transformed their findings into elaborate oratorical tours de force that reveal the blending of social science and sentiment in lecture hall reform rhetoric. This chapter uses their performances to show how transatlantic reformers transitioned not only between print and public speech, but also between strikingly different discourses and registers.