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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Michael A. Rockland
Michael A. Rockland*
Affiliation:
Douglass College, Rutgers University
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Extract

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento is little known in the United States, but he is one of Latin America's greatest men. Man of letters, educator, revolutionary, statesman, there was little in which Sarmiento did not excel. One writer has described him as “the most powerful brain America has produced,” and another has said that “America has not produced another man like him nor does Europe have in its history a personage who resembles him.” Sarmiento is the author of Facundo, one of the outstanding works in Latin American literature; he was the founder of public education in South America (he is often described as “the Horace Mann of South America”); and he was president of Argentina during the period of national unification (which has led one writer to call him, “The Abraham Lincoln of Argentina”).

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 1970 , pp. 271 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1970

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References

1 Carlos Pellegrini as quoted in Crawford, W. Rex, A Century of Latin American Thought (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1961), p. 42 Google Scholar; Rojas, Ricardo in El Pensamiento Vivo de Sarmiento (Buenos Aires, 1941), p. 18.Google Scholar

2 José de Barreiro, “Paralelo de Sarmiento y Lincoln,” Comentario (Buenos Aires) October-November-December 1958, p. 18.

3 Bunkley, Allison Williams, Life of Sarmiento (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1952), ch. 24.Google Scholar

4 Nicolás Avellaneda, who followed Sarmiento in the Argentine presidency, as quoted in Montaña, Oscar Antonio, “Sarmiento, Embajador en Estados Unidos,” Sarmiento, Cincuentenario de su muerte (Buenos Aires, 1938), 5: 153.Google Scholar

5 Travels in the United States in 1847 is the third book of Sarmiento's Viajes, entitled Estados Unidos. The Viajes is volume 5 in the Sarmiento Obras Completas. The author recently completed the translation of Travels into English, and it will be published shortly. References to the Obras in this article are to the second edition (Buenos Aires: Luz del Día, 1948-1956).

6 Lord Bryce, in his less well-known book, South America, Observations and Impressions, compares the various Latin American nations with the United States, concluding that Argentina, “is the United States of the Southern Hemisphere.” (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1912), p. 315.Google Scholar More than any other person, Sarmiento was responsible for bringing this about.

7 Obras, 31: 197; article written October 9,1865, for ElZonda, Obras, 24: 71.

8 Letter of October 7, 1865, to Mann, Mary, Boletín de la Academia Argentina de Letras 3, no. 9 (1935) :77.Google Scholar

9 Carilla, Emilio, El Embajador Sarmiento (Santa Fe, Argentina: Universidad Nacional de Litoral, 1961)Google Scholar, devotes several pages to the Longfellow-Sarmiento relationship.

10 Letter of July 8, 1865, Obras, 30: 57-60. For an account of the Sarmiento-Horace Mann relationship available in English, see Stewart, Watt and French, William Marshall, “The Influence of Horace Mann on the Educational Ideas of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 20 (February 1940): 12–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Longfellow's Journal (1863-1869), ms, p. 84, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Also see Longfellow, Samuel, Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow With Extracts From his Journals and Correspondence (Boston, 1896), 2: 428.Google Scholar

12 Williams, Stanley T., The Spanish Background of American Literature (New Haven: Ticknor and Company, 1955), p. 42.Google Scholar

13 Quoted in Wagenknecht, Edward, Longfellow, A Full-Length Portrait (New York, 1955), p. 42.Google Scholar

14 Addressee unknown, letter dated December 13, 1865, Obras, 29: 82.

15 Obras, 30: 207-208. Originally published in New York, 1866 (the title in English is “Schools: Foundation of the Republic and of its Prosperity in the United States”).

16 Abeledo, Amaranto, “En torno a los viajes de Sarmiento a los Estados Unidos,” Revista de Educación (Buenos Aires), March 1957, p. 14.Google Scholar

17 Letter of March 14, 1866, Longfellow Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

18 Correas, Edmundo, Sarmiento and the United States (Gainesville, Fla.: University of Florida Press, 1961), p. 26.Google Scholar

19 The title page of Mary Mann's translation reads: Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants: or Civilization and Barbarism, with a Biographic Sketch of the Author by Mrs. Horace Mann (New York, 1868). The excerpt quoted is found on p. 11 of the 1961 Collier paperback edition (New York).

20 The letter to Juana Manso is of April 5, 1866, Obras, 29:106, 107; the Longfellow obituary is found in Obras, 45:346.

21 Undated, Longfellow Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, probably of early 1868.

22 Obras, 27 (New York, 1865). Appleton was the publisher.

23 Boletín de la Academia Argentina de Letras 4, no. 15 (1936):456.

24 Longfellow Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

25 Letter of March 19, 1866, Boletín de la Academia Argentina de Letras 4, no. 13(1936):93.

26 Letter of March 30, 1866, kept in a display case in the Sarmiento Museum in Buenos Aires, incorrectly labeled as a letter from “H. Goodfellow.”

27 Letter of April 5, 1866, Obras, 29:106, 107.1 have left Sarmiento's translation from Longfellow in Spanish, so it can be readily compared with the Longfellow letter.

28 Undated latter, but surely of spring, 1867, Longfellow Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

29 Undated, but surely of spring, 1867, Luiggi, Alice Houston, “Some Letters of Sarmiento and Mary Mann,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 32 (May 1952) :205.Google Scholar

30 According to Sarmiento, he was awarded the degree “for the services he rendered to education in South America,” letter to Mary Mann of June 24, 1868, Boletín de la Academia Argentina de Letras 4, no. 14 (1936) :345.

31 Letter of July 10, 1867, Longfellow Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

32 Letter of December 24,1882, Obras, 37:22.

33 Obras, 45:346.