Many mid-nineteenth-century American astronomers who added little or nothing to the advancement of knowledge nevertheless merit attention for their efforts to advance science in a developing nation. They wrote needed textbooks, developed scientific exchanges, and attempted, not always with lasting success, to establish scientific institutions. O. M. Mitchel's trials with the Cincinnati Observatory and his journal The Sidereal Messenger are more sympathetically understood in the context of science in a developing nation than as scientific research. The theme of science in (...) a developing nation leads to a Whiggish approach to nineteenth-century American science, an approach in this particular case warranted by historical evidence. (shrink)