TENNESSEE HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1566
Juan Pardo explored sections of Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1768
November 5, Saturday: The Iroquois signed the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, negotiated by Sir William Johnson, ceding Indian lands south of the Ohio River and east of the Tennessee River and southward to the border of North Carolina in what would become Kentucky to the British crown. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1769
The 1st operating automobile was built, in France, by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot; it was steam driven.
Shawnees captured Daniel Boone but release him after taking his goods and gear. Boone had opened the “Wilderness Road” into Kentucky, Tennessee, and western Virginia, although the region was clearly delineated on a 1763 treaty as Shawnee and Cherokee lands. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1772
In the Tennessee territory, John Sevier organized an independent republic to be known as Watauga.
Samuel Adams began to form a network of “committees of correspondence.”1 At Boston Town Meeting, Adams published a list of rights. From this year into 1774 Elbridge Gerry would be serving in the colonial legislature, coming there under the influence of Adams, and would be participating in the Marblehead and the Massachusetts committees of correspondence.
In the American colonies, a wide variety of currencies were in circulation. The most preferred of the coins was a silver dollar produced by such mints as that in Mexico City and denominated the “8 Reales.” It was 39.5 millimeters in diameter and contained 27.07 grams of .903 alloy silver. [IMAGE] 1. Sort of like communist “cells.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
Benjamin Thompson moved to Rumford (Concord, New-Hampshire) to play tutor. Sarah Walker, its richest widow and in her hot thirties, sought him:
She married me, not I her!
But he also took the eye of Governor John Wentworth of New-Hampshire, by how well he sat his mount and wore his Hussar’s cloak.2
2. A good guess is that Thompson was what Woody Allen would in good humor refer to as a “switch hitter” — with twice as many chances of getting a date of a Saturday night. Try not to be jealous. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1773
The Watauga Association was organized by John Sevier and James Robertson to govern the trans-Appalachian settlements in present day eastern Tennessee. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1775
May 19, Friday: In full view of the fancy summer cottages of the Boston aldermen in Chelsea, there was a battle between the colonials and the loyalists over Pudding Gut, the span of water between Point Shirley and Deer Island in Boston Harbor. The battle was won by the colonials.
On about this day William Bartram was departing from Fort Prince George and crossing Oconee Mountain. He would cross the Chatooga River at Earl’s Ford and follow Warwoman Creek. He would pass through Clayton and then travel north along the Little Tennessee River. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1781
December 25, Tuesday: Some or all of the String Quartets op.33 by Joseph Haydn were performed publicly for the initial time, at the Vienna home of Countess von Norden (but they may have been performed earlier at Esterháza).
This day initiated a 7-day campaign by the local white militias against Cherokees in Tennessee, that would destroy 10 large Cherokee towns, consume 1,000 homes, kill 29, and imprison 17. AMERICAN REVOLUTION HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1786
David Crockett was born in Tennessee.3
3. The movie “The Alamo,” perhaps to associate him more closely with the firearm known as “the Kentucky squirrel rifle,” would suggest that he had been born in Kentucky. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1796
June 1, Wednesday: Tennessee became the 16th state. Andrew Jackson’s service as a member of the Tennessee constitutional convention would lead to his election as the state’s 1st representative in the federal Congress. In Washington DC his strong anti-British sentiments would set him in opposition to the federal administration. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1797
Tennessee congressman Andrew Jackson’s alliance with Senator William Blount of Tennessee, against a Tennessee faction led by Governor John Sevier, brought about Congressman Jackson’s rise to the federal Senate (personal financial difficulties would induce him to resign that post during April of the following year). HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1798
April: Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote “Fears in Solitude.”
Personal financial difficulties led to Andrew Jackson’s resignation as a federal Senator from Tennessee.
September: Andrew Jackson was appointed to the superior court of Tennessee, and this appointment would relieve his economic situation (he would continue in this judicial trajectory until 1804).
Burwell Bassett Jr., a nephew of George and Martha Washington, traveled to New Hampshire on business and tried to convince Oney Judge Staines to return with him. By this point, she was married to the free seaman Jack Staines who was away at sea, and was the mother of the infant Eliza. She of course refused to return to Virginia with him. Bassett was Senator Langdon’s houseguest, and in the course of a dinner revealed his plan to kidnap her and return her securely to her enslavement at Mount Vernon. (I have no idea whether Burwell’s plan contemplated his kidnapping also her newborn Eliza Staines, who would likewise under existing law have been born as Martha’s dower property — but wouldn’t it have been unthinkably cruel to tear this newborn infant from its mother’s breast and abandon it in New Hampshire to starve?) This time Langdon helped Ona, secretly sending word for her to immediately go into hiding. Bassett was obliged to return to Virginia without her. Although George and Martha Washington could have used the federal courts to recover Staines — the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act which he had signed into law required a legal process to return an escaped slave over state lines and any such court case would be part of the public record and would attract unwelcome attention.
With Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth issued LYRICAL BALLADS. Coleridge’s contributions included “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “The Nightingale.”
The publication may function for us to illustrate the nature of our culture’s myth of sole authorship, for it appeared without any author’s name attached to it. Within this volume several references of the prefatory Advertisement were to monolithic constructs such as “the author,” “his expressions,” “his personal observation,” “his friends,” and to “the author’s own person,” yet the volume included poems bearing the titles “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Tintern Abbey” which we now routinely ascribe to different British poets. There would be subsequent editions, in 1800, in 1802, and in 1805, in which the prefatory materials would mention “the assistance of a Friend,” but the title page would be extended only to mention “By W. Wordsworth” and the name “S.T. Coleridge” would nowhere appear. Only in 1817 would Coleridge obtain credit for his “The Ancient Mariner” and “The Nightingale” and other poems. Why was this? —For two overlapping reasons, neither of which has to do with Wordsworth wanting to take undue credit for another’s productions. First, in a very important respect the affiliation between these two poets and their writerly collaboration was so intense that in a very important manner a number of these poems actually were co- authored, and, second, the myth of solitary genius which was prevalent in those days, a myth inherited from the legitimation myth current for sacred scripture, and the myth of undivided authorial authority which was HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE prevalent in those days, a myth inherited from the legitimation myth current for kingship or sole-leader status (Führerprinzip), were so overwhelming, that they simply had to be deferred to as the default understanding
This famous book, which included Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” introduced Romanticism into England.
In this month the boy friends, and Dorothy Wordsworth, went together to Germany to learn of Herr Professor Immanuel Kant’s Transcendental idealism. Coleridge would prepare himself in Germany to argue, for the benefit of his friends in England, that as soon as we knew enough about universal science, and the manner in which attractive and repulsive forces created a web of interactions throughout nature, both our ideas about matter and our ideas about deity would be seen as subsumed within one simple explanatory structure, as “different modes, or degrees in perfection, of a common substratum.” This would impress almost everyone. Coleridge, in Germany in this year and the next, would be studying under Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the professor of natural history who had in the 1770s classified the human races into 28 varieties and attributed the differences between these varieties to varying sorts of degeneration or deterioration on account of influences of gender, of geography, or both gender and geography, from a uniform originary white male standard. However, while Herr Professor Blumenbach had thus laid the groundwork for the Nazi racial thinking which would come later by coined the term “Caucasian,” the term “Aryanism” had not yet come into HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE being and he presumed Semites to be a portion of his honorable white race.4 As [Martin] Bernal has argued in one of the most interesting parts of [BLACK ATHENA: THE AFROASIATIC ROOTS OF CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. VOLUME I, THE FABRICATION OF ANCIENT GREECE 1785-1985 (London: Free Association Books, 1987, page 220)], the curious and disturbing fact is that the rise of professional scholarship and the transmutation of knowledge into the different forms of academic disciplines, decisively established at the University of Göttingen (founded in 1734) and then in the new university of Berlin and elsewhere, was intimately bound up with the development of racial theory and the ordering of knowledge on a racial basis. As [Edward W.] Said observes, “What gave writers like [Joseph Ernest] Renan and [Matthew] Arnold the right to generalities about race was the official character of their formed cultural literacy” [ORIENTALISM: WESTERN REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ORIENT (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, page 227)]. The blunt fact that has even now not been faced is that modern racism was an academic creation. What we are dealing with here is the dominance of racial theory so widespread that it worked as an ideology, permeating both consciously and implicitly the fabric of almost all areas of thinking of its time. This racialization of knowledge demonstrates that the university’s claim to project knowledge in itself outside political control or judgement cannot be trusted and, in the past at least, has not been as objective as it has claimed; the university’s amnesia about its own relation to race is a sign of its fear of the loss of legitimation.
4. Refer to THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL TREATISES OF JOHANN FRIEDRICH BLUMENBACH [1775-1795], edited and translated by T. Bendyshe and published by the Anthropological Society in London in 1865. Young, Robert J.C. COLONIAL DESIRE: HYBRIDITY IN THEORY, CULTURE AND RACE (London: Routledge, 1995, page 64). HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1802
Judge Andrew Jackson was designated as the new major general over the Tennessee militia. Retiring from the bench, he dedicated himself to development of a new home at The Hermitage, a few miles northeast of Nashville, where the uncertainties of cotton growing were partly forgotten in the pleasantries of tending to thoroughbred horses.
February 17, Wednesday: Issachar Jacox Roberts was born in Sumner County, Tennessee. After learning to read and write in “occasional sessions in country schools” in the western part of the American south, he would study for about 6 months at a Baptist institution of education in Greenville, South Carolina known as “Furman University” but would be expelled for erratic behavior, and after that there would be no formal education of any sort. Although he would lose his connection with the Southern Baptist Convention of the Baptist faith, he would nevertheless become a Christian missionary to China.
“HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE.
Tennessee “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1805
At about this point the gazettes in the United States began a practice of posting the names and deeds of men who were too cowardly to accept challenges to duel. Such postings were often harsh, as were the responses. For example, after a Southern duelist named Charles Dickinson hired space in a newspaper to characterize Major General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee as “a damned liar, a worthless scoundrel, a poltroon, and a coward,” and then went on to do the unforgivable, describing Jackson’s wife as a harlot. Old Hickory responded by taking Dickinson’s shot, then calmly gut-shooting the man.
For $75,000, Aaron Burr sold half of Greenwich Village north of the city of New-York to John Jacob Astor. In this year Major General Jackson received Burr as his guest at the Hermitage, apparently crediting that the agenda of this filibuster was not anything disloyal to the United States of America, but merely to seize the Mexican possessions of the nation of Spain. Although Jackson would eventually become more aware about what this dude was actually up to, in later years he would reaffirm his faith that Burr had been merely a misunderstood patriot, and one beset by a pursuing political enmity, the enmity of President Thomas Jefferson. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1806
The family of 11-year-old James Knox Polk relocated from North Carolina to Tennessee.
July 19, Saturday: Alexander Dallas Bache was born in Philadelphia, the son of the journalist Richard Bache, Jr. and Sophia Burrell Dallas (he was thus a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin).
Josiah Gregg was born in Overton Country, Tennessee (when he was 6 his family would trek to Missouri; he would suffer all his life from TB). HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1807
April: Mrs. Elizabeth Houston moved with her 9 children including her son Sam to a farm on Baker Creek, some 10 miles south of Maryville, Tennessee. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1808
The beginning of the American Agency System: The Insurance Company of North America appointed independent agents in Kentucky, western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and Tennessee to market fire insurance. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1809
Sam Houston, unhappy with farming and storekeeping, went to live with a band of some 300 Cherokee on Hiwasee Island in the Tennessee River near present-day Dayton, Tennessee.
October 11, Wednesday: George Gordon, Lord Byron and Hobhouse left Janina for Tepelene to visit the Ali Pacha. Byron wrote “Lines Written During a Thunderstorm.”
Traveling east along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee on his way from St. Louis to the District of Columbia, Meriwether Lewis committed suicide at Grinder’s Stand, an inn south of Nashville.5
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 11 of 10 Mo// The day has passed without any thing remarkable the same rounds as usual & the mind in the same state as usual Oh when shall I feel more of the incomes of love & Life in my heart —— Sister Ruth spent the Afternoon & evening with us very agreeably on our parts — ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
5. Later, theories that he had been murdered would arise, but neither William Clark nor Jefferson doubted the original, on-site reports that Lewis had simply shot himself. Few historians give credence to the murder theory. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1810
TRAVELS ON AN INLAND VOYAGE THROUGH THE STATES OF NEW-YORK, PENNSYLVANIA, VIRGINIA, OHIO, KENTUCKY AND TENNESSEE, AND THROUGH THE TERRITORIES OF INDIANA, LOUISIANA, MISSISSIPPI AND NEW-ORLEANS; PERFORMED IN THE YEARS 1807 AND 1808; INCLUDING A TOUR OF NEARLY SIX THOUSAND MILES. WITH MAPS AND PLATES. BY CHRISTIAN SCHULTZ, JUN. ESQ. (two volumes; New-York: Printed by Isaac Riley). AN INLAND VOYAGE HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1811
While Matthew Fontaine Maury was 5 years of age his family relocated from Virginia to Franklin, Tennessee. He would think to emulate the career of an older brother, Flag Lieutenant John Minor Maury, a pirate fighter, until, after Lt. Maury had died of yellow fever, Matthew’s father Richard Maury would refuse to consider allowing his younger son to enlist. Matthew would contemplate a career beginning at the West Point Military Academy, until his family would be able to use its connections and the influence of Senator Sam Houston to secure for him at the age of 19 a direct Naval appointment.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
December 16, Monday: As the great comet Flaugergues (C/1811 F1) had been receding, its tail had been lengthening, from 24 degrees to 70 degrees. SKY EVENT
Centered in northwestern Arkansas, there were two enormous (~7.2-8.1 Richter) earthquake shocks, the 1st at 2:15AM and the 2d at 8:15AM. They said the Mississippi River flowed backwards (which would be to indicate that a seismic “seiche” propagated upriver). It would be alleged that this had been forecast months before by Tecumseh.
John James Audubon, in Kentucky, hearing the roar of the New Madrid, Missouri earthquake6 and noticing the effects of the enormous earthquake (still inadequately understood) in strange brightenings and darkenings of the sky, presumed that a tornado might be approaching and sought shelter from it.7 Just as the steamboat New Orleans came out into the smooth waters of the Mississippi, heading downriver after the rapids known as the Falls of the Ohio, without warning the quake struck and the normally very smooth waters of the Mississippi River became agitated into the same sort of turbulent maelstrom from which this steamboat had
Tennessee “Stack of the Artist of 6. Am I sure that this is not a reference to the earthquake that would occur on February 7, 1812 at 4:45AM? 7. Notice that it had not yet been clearly established, that comets were extra-atmospheric, astronomical in nature. Some natural philosophers were still holding to a theory that actually a comet was a type of long-lasting atmospheric disturbance, and therefore quite close to the surface of the earth and able to exert a direct influence upon us. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE just emerged. Church bells were heard to ding in Boston as the first of four major temblors ripped along the
New Madrid faultline which runs from Arkansas to Illinois. In this initial temblor, presently estimated at 8.1 on the Richter scale, treetrunks snapped — but because of low white population density, only a few dozen people were reported as having been killed. Soil liquefaction along the Mississippi River was, according to our Federal Emergency Management Agency, similar to that experienced during the great Kobe quake of January 1995, and as a result the great river ran backward for three days. Were a temblor of Kobe’s 7.0 magnitude to strike along the New Madrid faultline at 9:30AM on some day under our current conditions –and it is estimated that there is a significant probability that some such temblor will occur– the Arkansas State Office of Emergency Services estimates that 14,000 people will die and there will be 240,000 homeless. Since there are presently five major oil and natural gas pipelines running across this faultline, conveying heating fuel to the Eastern seaboard states, if this inevitable disaster should strike during a winter a significant portion of our nation will be subjected to a chilling brush with reality.8 8. According to our National Research Council, writing as of 1994, it is simply not yet known “whether the relocation of materials on the surface of the earth is dominated by the slower but continuous fluxes operating all of the time or by the spectacular large fluxes that operate during short-lived cataclysmic events.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE There would be follow-on major earthquakes on January 23, 1812 and on February 7, 1812. After this series of major quakes, there would be a new lake in Tennessee, Reelfoot Lake, that had not existed in 1810.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 16th of 12 M // My H not being Smart I set most of the evening at home & entertained her & myself in reading Sillimans Journal ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1812
January 23, Thursday: At 9AM there was a follow-on major (~7.0-7.8 Richter) earthquake along the New Madrid fault, continuing the damage that had begun on December 16, 1811. After this string of quakes, there would be a new lake in Tennessee, Reelfoot Lake, that had not existed in 1810.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 23 of 1 Mo// This is the day we have concluded on to pay the last duties to the remains of our dear father, his corpse retains its placidity & is no way alter’d from yesterday. — The funeral was at 2 OClock at the house attended by many friends & respectable inhabitants of the town, for he was a man of good Report & unblemished Character, but there was not near as many attended as would have done had the going been more safe, much snow was on the Ground & the walking very slippery — After about an hours setting at the house our friend D Buffum observed that such a Solemn pause on such occasions was very proper & useful in giving time for reflections, that the turn must soon be hours & he then thought if all were easy it was a suitable time to proceed to the last Duties — Which we did, & during the time of the funeral, I think I can say for us all, Our minds were favor’d with as much composure as could be expected on an occasion so trying, so deeply afflicting Altho’ Our dear father had lived to the Advanced Age of nearly 73 Years & from his numerous infermities of body, it could not be expected he could live much longer to go in & out before us, yet, the event is hard to bear, we shall feel his loss each succeeding day of our lives, & very expecially Our dear & affectionate Mother who will feel as a Stricken Deer or Sparrow on the house top. We much regret, the weather has been such that we could not have the company of our Cousins Peleg Gardiner & Wife, & Lewis L Clarke from Narragansett, it would have been a peculiar Stay & comfort expecially to Mother, but we could not even send them Word of our Situation. — ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
February 7, Friday: At 4:45AM there was another follow-on major (~7.4-8.0 Richter) earthquake along the New Madrid fault, completing the series that had begun on December 16, 1811 and continued on January 23, 1812. After this series of major quakes, there would be a new lake in Tennessee, Reelfoot Lake, that had not existed in 1810. I’m sure there couldn’t have been any connection, but at Landport in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, Charles Dickens (Charles John Huffam Dickens) was born into a family beleaguered by debt. His father John Dickens, son of a butler and a housekeeper at Crewe Hall, had risen to the post of clerk in the Navy Pay Office. His mother Elizabeth Barrow was the daughter of a senior clerk in that Navy Pay Office.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 7 of 2 Mo// My mind has for Several days been brought under close exercise, from an apprehension that Duty will lead me to write a letter to Uncle Benjamin Gould touching the things of his everlasting Peace, but peculiar circumstances render the HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE performance of it a great trial, & how it will terminate in my mind I cannot tell at present. I do most ardently wish him well, & at this time my secret Prayer is that his last days may be his best Days ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1813
November 9, Tuesday: The Emperor Napoléon I reached St. Cloud from the German front.
The allied administration in Osnabrück handed over power to an administration from Hannover.
The Tennessee militia defeated Creek Indians at Talladega, Alabama. 300 Creeks were killed. 15 whites were killed. 110 Creeks were wounded. 85 whites were wounded.
With the death of Noah Webster, Jr.’s father Captain Noah Webster, Sr., his name would become Noah Webster, Esq. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1814
May 1, Sunday: Andrew Jackson was commissioned a major general in the regular army with command of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 1 of 5th Mth 1814 / Our Meetings were both Silent & I considerd lean poor seasons - - After meeting took tea with My H & John father Rodmans RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
Mid-December: Andrew Jackson arrived in New Orleans none too soon, for the British had anchored their fleet in Mississippi Sound and were disembarking their troops on the banks of the Mississippi some 10 miles below New Orleans. From their position on the Plains of Chalmette they launched a series of strikes against the city. Jackson countered with a polyglot mixture of Louisiana militia, Tennessee and Kentucky riflemen, and Baratarian pirates. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1816
Sam Houston was named an Indian sub-agent in Tennessee.
“The fractional currency, in this and all the States at this period, was very generally the Spanish coins of 25, 12½, and 6¼ cents, and they were denominated in the several States as follows: In New England, Kentucky, and Tennessee the dollar was divided into 6 shillings, and the coins were termed quarters, ninepence, and fourpence ha’penny. In New York, Ohio, and Michigan the dollar was divided into 8 shillings, and the coins were termed sixpence, one shilling, and two shillings, according to value. In New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland the dollar was divided into 7 shillings and sixpence, and the divisions were termed quarters, elevens, and fips; in South Carolina and Georgia, into 4 shillings and eightpence, and the divisions were known as quarters, bits, and picayunes. In consequence of the derangement of the currency by the war with Great Britain, and the failure of many country banks, provisions were scarce and dear: milk, 12½ cents per quart; flour, $15 per barrel; and, a year later, butter, beef, lard, pork, and potatoes were imported from Belfast.”
September 24, Tuesday: Algeria signed peace terms with Great Britain, promising to restrict piracy, abolish the enslavement of Christians, and release 1,083 Europeans who had been being held for ransom.
The Cherokee Nation, by a treaty, limited itself on the south side of the Tennessee River to the parallel of Huntsville. In the fall, at 2 treaties, the Chickasaws and Choctaws relinquished all claim to territory east of the Tombigbee, except the valley of Bear Creek. The consideration for these cessions was, with the Cherokees, $6,000 cash, and a promise of an annuity for 10 years of $6,000. They also received $5,000 cash for relinquishing all claim to any part of South Carolina. The Chickasaws received $4,500, a promise of an annuity for 10 years of $12,000, and gifts to some of the chiefs. The Choctaws received $10,000 cash, and a promise of an annuity for 20 years of $6,000. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1817
November 30, Sunday: Native Americans attacked a boat on the Appalachicola River that was carrying supplies to Fort Scott on the Flint River, a boat containing about 40 men and a number of women and children, and killed all except 6 men and 1 woman. They were retaliating for an attack that had been made by General Gaines upon the Indian village of Fowltown, a few miles below Fort Scott, in order to force the natives to surrender some murderers who had found refuge with them. When this frontier news would arrive, General Andrew Jackson would be sent to take command in person, and given authority to call on the militia from Tennessee.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his diary: 1st day 30th of 11th M 1817 / At Meeting this forenoon we had the company of Obadiah Davis & Ruth his wife, who were both acceptably engaged in testimony & endeavord to awaken our minds to a sense of duty They went out of town After meeting — In the Afternoon we had a silent meeting & to me it was a season of activity as respects the creature; I wrestled a little, but alass could not boast of much overcoming. — Set the evening with my H at the late residence of our friend Thos Robinson - I missed the dear old folks from their corners by the sides of the fireplace & their very interesting conversation with which I have been many times entertained, instructed & edified, but Alass they are Gone to their rest, after long lives of usefulness in the World, & may we who remain endeavor to fill their stations with equal propriety in our several sphears, then when the Awful separation which they have recently passed thro’, of Soul & body, comes to us, survivors may trust with equal confidence that our heads are laid in rest & our spirits joined with those that are blessed. - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1818
January 6, Tuesday: General Andrew Jackson sent off a letter to President James Monroe by way of Representative John Rhea of Tennessee, proposing that in a campaign of less than 60 days he would seize Spanish Florida. (When he would receive no response, he would presume tacit approval and begin the assault, presumably under the principle that it is easier to apologize for success than to obtain prior formal permission for adventurism.)
Great Britain annexed the dominions of the Holkar of Indore while the Rajputana States were placed under British protection.
Dervis Mehmed Pasha replaced Mehmed Emin Rauf Pasha as Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire.
Spring: Sam Houston was appointed Adjutant General of the state of Tennessee, with the military rank of Colonel. He began reading law in Judge James Trimble’s law office in Nashville (6 months later he would pass the bar and begin law practice in Lebanon, Tennessee).
December: A portion of the Missouri Territory organized to request the granting of statehood. As a border they chose an extension westward of the 36° 30'' boundary between Kentucky and Tennessee. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1819
Sam Houston was nominated for and won the office of Attorney General of the Nashville District in Tennessee.
September 14, Tuesday: Notice of the death of Jonathan Plummer on the previous day appeared in the Newburyport Herald: “Yesterday afternoon Mr. Jonathan Plummer, aged 58, poet laureate and preacher to their majesties the sovereign people.”
We know, from a report in the Nashville, Tennessee Clarion of this date, that the initial newspaper to be published in Texas, the Texas Republican, had begun to be published by Eli Harris, formerly of Franklin, Tennessee, who had originated in North Carolina. It had been issued a month earlier in Nacogdoches by General James Long and seems to have been edited by a member of his “Supreme Council,” Horatio Bigelow (no copy of it seems to have been preserved).
John Keats posted, from Lombard Street in London, a letter to Fanny Brawne that he had begun to compose on Fleet Street on the morning of the previous day: My dear Girl — I have been hurried to town by a Letter from my brother George; it is not of the brightest intelligence. Am I mad or not? I came by the Friday night coach and have not yet been to Hampstead. Upon my soul it is not my fault. I cannot resolve to mix any pleasure with my days: they go one like another, indistinguishable. If I were to see you to-day it would destroy the half comfortable sullenness I enjoy at present into downright perplexities. I love you too much to venture to Hampstead, I feel it is not paying a visit, but venturing into a fire. Que feraije? as the French novel writers say in fun, and I in earnest: really what can I do? Knowing well that my life must be passed in fatigue and trouble, I have been endeavouring to wean myself from you: for to myself alone what can be much of a misery? As far as they regard myself I can despise all events: but I cannot cease to love you. This morning I scarcely know what I am doing. I am going to Walthamstow. I shall return to Winchester to-morrow; whence you shall hear from me in a few days. I am a Coward, I cannot bear the pain of being happy: ’t is out of the question: I must admit no thought of it. Yours ever affectionately John Keats.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 14th of 9 M / ANN McCOY a young woman from Savanna who has boarded a few weeks at Aunt Anne Carpenters, left Town for Providence. - Her conduct has been such as has endeared her all her acquaintance, & we parted with her with regret. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
November 11, Thursday: Three white families from Rockaway, New Jersey arrived at the Cherokee Mission at Brainerd on Chickamauga Creek, near the border between Georgia and Tennessee, to help maintain that settlement: the family of Abijah Conger, the family of John Vail, and the family of John Talmage.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE 5th day 11th of 11th M 1819 / Our meeting was pretty well attended, to me a season of not so much sensibility as at some times yet no so hard as I have experienced — A few words were spoken in the ministry — the propriety of which I hardly dare judge of. - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1820
October 28, Saturday: Mary Jane Richardson was born in Tennessee. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1821
The lawyer Charles Grandison Finney persuaded himself that he was the beneficiary of a “retainer from the
Lord Jesus Christ to plead His cause.” He began a career of helping himself by helping others that would make him into “the father of modern revivalism.” His highly charged preaching often accomplished an emotional catharsis which was then known as the “salvation experience” and which then was considered to need to prove itself through social action. Finney was a close friend of the rich men Lewis Tappan and Arthur Tappan, who
rented the Chatham Street Theater in New-York for his use. Revivalism, Salvation, and Abolitionism — enslavement equals sin:
When I first went to New York, I had made up my mind on the question of slavery, and was exceedingly anxious to arouse public attention to the subject. I did not, however, turn aside to make it a hobby, or divert the attention of the people from the work of converting souls.
It was sin but if it was merely a sin of other persons, then it was a secondary issue to the issue of one’s own personal salvation, and the evil of this sin was to be explored, Finney’s attitude was, only if it “can be made an appendage of a general revival.” Finney was as alienated by radical anti-slavery talk as he was by slavery itself. Although he would not allow slavemasters to join his church, he also was hostile to the idea of blacks and whites sitting together in church. As a matter of fact, he was even hostile to the idea of two choirs, one black and one white, being permitted to sing the same hymns at the same time.
The slave Johann Samuel died poor and marginalized in the white Moravian religious community which in HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE 1771 had accepted him. At first his white coreligionists has been able to accept him more or less as a peer, albeit enslaved, but over the years there had been a dwindling commitment among Moravians to the equality of all true believers in their faith. His black children would be acceptable only within a new black church sponsored by the Moravians. For more on this, consult Jon F. Sensbach’s A SEPARATE CANAAN: THE MAKING OF AN AFRO-MORAVIAN WORLD IN NORTH CAROLINA, 1763-1840 (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1998). A rump group of Northern congressmen nominated John Caldwell Calhoun for president. –Three times this man would see a chance to get himself made president, and three times there would be an autobiographical campaign biography produced (anonymous of course and written in the third person).
LET US CONQUER SPACE. Sam Houston resigned from the office of Attorney General of the Nashville District in Tennessee to return to private law practice. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE David Crockett was elected to the Tennessee legislature.
(He was on his way to being elected to the national Congress in 1827, on the basis, mostly, of a real gift for publicity.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE Friend Benjamin Lundy, an Ohio saddlemaker, urged the abolition of slavery and began publication of his antislavery newspaper Genius of Universal Emancipation. He would soon relocate to Greenville, Tennessee, and would further relocate to Baltimore in 1824. A slavetrader would attack and severely injure him in 1828 — but Lundy would enlist the support of William Lloyd Garrison as associate editor for 6 months beginning in September 1829.
“It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141
March 18, Sunday: Issachar J. Roberts was converted in a Baptist service at Shelbyville, Tennessee.
May 13, Sunday: Issachar J. Roberts was baptized by the Reverend William Martin in Shelbyville, Tennessee.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 13 of 5 M / In the Morning a large Solid & favord Meeting our Frd D Buffum was engaged in a weighty lively & pertinent testimmony on the Subject of Silent Meetings The dear old mans shines bright & is remarkably green in old age. —Hannah Dennis followed him in a corresponding testimony, sweet lively & in Authority — Silent in the Afternoon but a good Meeting Sister Elizabeth teek tea & spent the evening with us. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE October: Sam Houston was elected by his fellow officers to the position of Major General in the Tennessee state militia. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1822
Our national birthday, Thursday the 4th of July: Hezikiah Prince Jr. lived in the small port town (for the coasting trade) of Thomaston, Maine, and in his journal of 1822-1828 (published by the Maine Historical Society in 1965) he described the July 4th celebrations there. A modest celebration this year was:9 ushered in by the discharge of cannon ... the ringing of bells, and the halloos of the true Sons of Liberty.... The spirit and patriotism of ’76 seamed still to flame in the breast of every citizen, especially the young who appeared very much animated. The few surviving veterans around us ... appeared to renew their age and glow with the same spirit which filled their breast in those ever to be remembered days. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY Judge Bushrod Washington announced that since Mount Vernon was his private property, he was no longer going to tolerate the celebrants who were in the habit of coming up the river to indulge themselves at annual “Steam-boat parties” and “eating, drinking, and dancing parties.”
In Saratoga County, New York, 5,000 citizens and 52 authentic soldiers of the Revolution assembled at the field upon which General Burgoyne had surrendered on October 17th, 1777.
In Nashville, Tennessee, after Governor William Carroll presented a sword to General Andrew Jackson, as might well be expected, both these dignitaries made speeches.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 4th of 7 M / In the forenoon meeting Hannah Dennis appeard in supplication, then D Buffum in solemn impressive testimony. - Then Hannah Dennis & then Jonathon Dennis in testimony. - it was a solemn favoured testimony. — In the Afternoon the meeting was Silent & good — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
9. This was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, or Hathorne’s, 18th birthday. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1824
December 1, Wednesday: Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: “Report of the Secretary of the Navy.” –AMERICAN STATE PAPERS, NAVAL AFFAIRS, I. No. 249.
In the national election, for the 2d time in American political history, no candidate achieved a majority of the total electoral votes in the Electoral College and the body became deadlocked. The decision of who would become President would need to be held over to be determined in the House of Representatives in the following year (131 electoral votes, just over half of the 261 total, were necessary to elect a candidate as the president; votes were counted for the initial time in this election, but that had no effect on the outcome; the 12th Amendment to the US Constitution dictated that Congress turn over the presidential election to the House of Representatives). Would it be General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee with 99 electoral votes and 153,544 popular votes, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams with 84 electoral and 108,740 popular votes, Secretary of State William H. Crawford of the Democratic-Republican party (who had suffered a stroke before the election) with 41 electoral votes, or Henry Clay of Virginia with 37 electoral votes? (Clay, allowed by this to become the President-maker, would throw his electoral votes in the direction of Adams in exchange for being appointed as Adams’s Secretary of State — the repercussions of this deal would split the Democratic- Republican party into Whigs and Democratic-Republicans.)
The Quaker traveling preacher, Elias Hicks, bluntly embraced in a sermon in Philadelphia what must be the ultimate consequence of religious leveling, to wit, that: “We are on a level with all the rest of God’s creatures.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE December 7, Tuesday: The Reverend Henry Root Colman’s A DISCOURSE ON RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS: DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF THE INDEPENDENT CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, IN BARTON SQUARE, SALEM, TUESDAY, 7 DEC. 1824.
After traveling for a month, General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee arrived in the District of Columbia to await the outcome of the hung presidential election.
A hack version of Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischutz, called Robin des bois ou les trois balles, opened at the Theatre de l’Odeon in Paris (this would have a run of more than 300 performances).
Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: “Documents accompanying the Message of the President ... to both Houses of Congress, at the commencement of the Second Session of the Eighteenth Congress: Documents from the Department of State.” – HOUSE DOCUMENT, 18 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1. pp. 1-56. Reprinted in SENATE DOCUMENT, 18 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1. (Matter on the treaty of 1824.) “It is a cause of serious regret, that no arrangement has yet been finally concluded between the two Governments, to secure, by joint co-operation, the suppression of the slave trade. It was the object of the British Government, in the early stages of the negotiation, to adopt a plan for the suppression, which should include the concession of the mutual right of search by the ships of war of each party, of the vessels of the other, for HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE suspected offenders. This was objected to by this Government, on the principle that, as the right of search was a right of war of a belligerant towards a neutral power, it might have an ill effect to extend it, by treaty, to an offence which had been made comparatively mild, to a time of peace. Anxious, however, for the suppression of this trade, it was thought adviseable, in compliance with a resolution of the House of Representatives, founded on an act of Congress, to propose to the British Government an expedient, which should be free from that objection, and more effectual for the object, by making it piratical.... A convention to this effect was concluded and signed, in London,” on the 13th of March, 1824, “by plenipotentiaries duly authorized by both Governments, to the ratification of which certain obstacles have arisen, which are not yet entirely removed.” [For the removal of which, the documents relating to the negotiation are submitted for the action of Congress].... “In execution of the laws for the suppression of the slave trade, a vessel has been occasionally sent from that squadron to the coast of Africa, with orders to return thence by the usual track of the slave ships, and to seize any of our vessels which might be engaged in that trade. None have been found, and, it is believed, that none are thus employed. It is well known, however, that the trade still exists under other flags.” HOUSE JOURNAL, 18th Congress, 2d session, pages 11, 12, 19, 27, 241; HOUSE REPORTS, 18th Congress, 2d session, I. No. 70; Gales and Seaton, REGISTER OF DEBATES, I. 625-8, and Appendix, page 2 ff. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1825
Birth of Ebenezer Elliott’s and Fannie Gartside Elliot’s 10th child, Norah Elliott.
Tom Bell the Wild West desperado was born as Thomas J. Hodges in Rome, Tennessee.10
December: Fanny Wright began her 1st social experiment providing funds for a 640-acre settlement of slaves on a piece of virgin ground she called Nashoba, on the Wolf River in south-western Tennessee near what is now Memphis, which was seen as a step to their gradual emancipation and colonization somewhere outside the USA. She purchased slaves with the intent of eventually freeing and expatriating them, and settled them at Nashoba while they were in the process of learning how to manage their own lives. The scheme was based on the prospect that it would become self-funding and inevitable, and would end American slavery: slaves who understood their owner’s good intent would work so much harder and so much smarter than slaves ordinarily worked as quickly to accumulate the means by which they might be freed — and indeed generate seed capital for repetitions of this process. While the process was under Fanny’s personal guidance, with the assistance of George Flower (presumably her lover), the enterprise did well. William Maclure was “astonished that everything proceeded so smoothly.... The slaves worked hard without coercion — even without apparent direction.” But George Flower would return to his wife, and Fanny would contract malaria.
10. Tom Bell the colonial American confidence man was a very different person from this Wild West outlaw of the 19th Century. For the 18th-Century colonial rogue, refer to Steven C. Bullock’s “A Mumper among the Gentle: Tom Bell, Colonial Confidence Man” in The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., Vol. 55, No. 2. (Apr., 1998), pp. 231-258. For the 19th-Century outlaw, see Drago, Sinclair. ROAD AGENTS AND TRAIN ROBBERS: HALF A CENTURY OF WESTERN BANDITRY (NY: Dodd, 1973); Sifakis, Carl. ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN CRIME (NY: Facts on File Inc., 1982); Secrest, William B. CALIFORNIA DESPERADOES – STORIES OF EARLY OUTLAWS IN THEIR OWN WORDS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1827
When the Englishwoman Frances Trollope came to America during this year, eventually after a number of false starts it would be to attempt to found a sort of department store in Cincinnati.
She would lose her blouse. Although ostensibly Trollope had come to America out of admiration for Fanny Wright, she was here also because in England her family had gotten into such financial circumstances that it might at any moment lose its respectability. Trollope transplanted her family to this side the Atlantic, built that bazaar in Cincinnati, established her son Henry in school, and during her three years and a half years here would see Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. When she would return to England in 1831, she would set about writing her book DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS, catering (bad doggie!) to our desire to have ourselves sniffed at, which she would publish in 1832 at the age of fifty. The book would so exercise us that it would be put out in four editions within a single year! Her son Anthony would eventually observe that “It will not be too much to say that it had a material effect upon the manners of the Americans of the day, and that this effect has been fully appreciated by them. No observer was certainly ever less qualified to judge the prospects, or even of the happiness of a young people. No one could have been worse adapted by nature for the task of learning whether a nation was in a way to thrive... Her volumes were very bitter, but they were very clever, and they saved the family from ruin.”
Fanny Wright needed to be absent from Nashoba due to her malaria and general poor health, and during her absence there was a motivation problem and a free-love scandal. The white managers of Nashoba resorted to problematic motivators such as whipping and one of them openly cohabited with a free mulatto woman.
October 1, Monday: Russian troops occupied Yerevan.
Sam Houston was inaugurated as governor of Tennessee, replacing 2-term Governor William Carrol.
Riga’s schoolhouse opened.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE 2nd day 1st of 10th M 1827 / This Afternoon I crossed both Ferrys & went to Narragansett to Clean James Robinsons clock, when I got on the Narragansett side I found an oxx cart there in which I rode as far as Tower Hill Meeting House & then got out & went over across to James Robinsons on foot & reached his house a little after candle light. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1828
There is an 1828 speech entitled “Not Yours to Give,” by Tennessee Congressman David Crockett (1786- 1836, Congress 1827-1831), currently being quoted by libertarians and conservatives, that appears to be utterly spurious. The story is that under the influence of constituent Horatio Bunce, Congressman Crockett delivered this speech to Congress condemning public relief as inconsistent with the Constitution. Crockett was a darling of the Whigs (and their successors) after turning against Andrew Jackson in 1829-1830, splitting with Jackson over land reform and Indian removal among other issues, and even after his death he was used as a cats-paw to attack the Democrats. Crockett mythologized himself during his lifetime as frontiersman, and it is now difficult to separate any truth out of what has been put on the record from this political/popular media creation he enabled. This speech was first alleged in the January 1867 issue of Harper’s Magazine, as “Davy Crockett’s Electioneering Tour,” by a “James J. Bethune” (this was a nom de plume employed by Edward S. Ellis, 1840- 1916. This “Bethune” published another piece in Harper’s Magazine, “Walter Colquitt of Georgia,” also about a wonderful speech which was had not been recorded except in his own later reconstruction. He was most well known for his dime novel DEERHUNTER and other Wild West tales.) Although Edward S. Ellis also alleged that Bunce’s opposition to Crockett had originated in a vote Crockett made in favor of relief for victims of a fire in Georgetown, that fire had occurred not in Georgetown but in Alexandria and the vote in question had occurred on January 19, 1827 before Crockett had become a congressman. Edward S. Ellis positioned his 1867 “Bethune” article in his 1884 edition of THE LIFE OF COLONEL DAVI D CROCKETT although he had not included it in his original 1861 book about Crockett. We note that Ellis could not himself have been present at this unrecorded speech because it had been allegedly delivered some 12 years before his own birth. According to Gale and Seaton’s REGISTER OF DEBATES FOR THE HOUSE ON APRIL 1, 1828, although there had been a debate about whether to award funds to a Widow Brown after which Crockett had requested a roll-call vote and voted against that appropriation, this person had been the widow of a general rather than of a naval officer and Crockett had been absent during the discussion. Contrary to what the “Bethune” article in Harper’s Magazine asserted, this bill passed not only in the House but also in the Senate.
January: Frances Trollope observed:
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE. EDUCATION OF NEGROES.
Miss Wright, then less known (though the author of more than one clever volume) than she has since become, was the companion of our voyage from Europe; and it was my purpose to have passed some months with her and her sister at the estate she had purchased in Tennessee. This lady, since become so celebrated as the advocate of opinions that make millions shudder, and some half-score admire, was, at the time of my leaving England with her, dedicated to a pursuit widely different from her subsequent occupations. Instead of becoming a public orator in every town throughout America, she was about, as she said, to seclude herself for life in the deepest forests of the western world, that her fortune, her time, and her talents might be exclusively devoted to aid the cause of the suffering Africans. Her first object was to show that nature had made no difference between blacks and whites, excepting in complexion; and this she expected to prove, by giving an education perfectly equal to a class of black and white children. Could this fact be once fully established, she conceived that the Negro cause would stand on firmer ground than it had yet done, and the degraded rank which they have ever held amongst civilized nations would be proved to be a gross injustice. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
January: Frances Trollope observed:
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE. BOARDING HOUSE HABITS.
But we presently found that the rain which had fallen during the night would make it hazardous to venture through the forests of Tennessee in any sort of carriage; we therefore had to pass the day at our queer comfortless hotel. The steam-boat had wearied me of social meals, and I should have been thankful to have eaten our dinner of hard venison and peach-sauce in a private room; but this, Miss Wright said, was impossible; the lady of the house would consider the proposal as a personal affront, and, moreover, it would be assuredly refused. This latter argument carried weight with it, and when the great bell was sounded from an upper window of the house, we proceeded to the dining-room. The table was laid for fifty persons, and was already nearly full. Our party had the honour of sitting near “the lady,” but to check the proud feelings to which such distinction might give birth, my servant, William, sat very nearly opposite to me. The company consisted of all the shop-keepers (store-keepers as they are called throughout the United States) of the little town. The mayor also, who was a friend of Miss Wright’s, was of the party; he is a pleasing gentlemanlike man, and seems strangely misplaced in a little town on the Mississippi. We were told that since the erection of this hotel, it has been the custom for all the male inhabitants of the town to dine and breakfast there. They ate in perfect silence, and with such astonishing rapidity that their dinner was over literally before ours was begin; the instant they ceased to eat they darted from the table in the same moody silence which they had preserved since they entered the room, and a second set took their places, who performed their silent parts in the same manner. The only sounds heard were those produced by the knives and forks, with the unceasing chorus of coughing, &c. No women were present except ourselves and the hostess; the good women of Memphis being well content to let their lords partake of Mrs. Anderson’s turkeys and venison, (without their having the trouble of cooking for them) whilst they regale themselves on mush and milk at home. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE December 3, Wednesday: The Democrat from Tennessee, General Andrew Jackson, was elected President of the United States of America, with 648,286 popular votes and 178 electoral votes.
Presumably you are unaware, as Donald Trump is unaware, that of all the United States presidents, Jackson is the very least likely to have actually been born a citizen. There was in fact a “birther” controversy in this year, a controversy that compares and contrasts with the controversies generated by Trump in 2015-2016 over whether Barak Obama had been born in Hawaii as he claimed, or in Kenya. There is the possibility that Jackson was using a younger brother’s birth certificate as his own, for according to an unnamed midwife he had been born at sea “three days from land” while his parents Andrew Jackson and Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson were on their way across the Atlantic Ocean from County Antrim, Ireland. This is per Alan Eckert’s THE FRONTIERSMEN: A NARRATIVE, and I do not myself regard Eckert as a top-caliber historian, but rather as a mere popularizer, and it seems clear that when he claimed that this voyage had occurred in 1755, he was for some reason off by an entire decade: the Jackson parents came to the New World in 1765 (maybe this was merely a typo in his trade press book?). The candidacy was valid because what Article II actually says is “a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution,” and Jackson fought as a teenager in the Revolution and was indubitably that. On this basis he was exactly as legit as George Washington and others of that period. The political controversies of the period also included challenges as to whether Jackson’s father was a bigamist, or perhaps a man of color, and as to whether Jackson’s mother was perhaps a common prostitute (birthers then weren’t any politer than they are now).
“A large and respectable meeting of the citizens of Concord was convened ... at the Centre brick school-house, pursuant to public notice given by Rev. Dr. Ripley after the religious exercises on Thanksgiving Day [that was the week before], to take into consideration the expediency of forming a Lyceum in Concord.” John Keyes became the chairman of that Concord Lyceum project, and Lemuel Shattuck became its secretary. A committee consisting of Samuel Hoar, John Keyes, Nathan Brooks, Daniel Shattuck, Daniel Starr Southmayd, Samuel Burr, Daniel Stone, and Lemuel Shattuck was charged to prepare a constitution for this new society.
In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 3 of 12 M / Our week day Meeting which Mary B Allen Attended & had searching & powerful labour much to my consolation & edification & I have no doubt she spoke to the States & condition of many present. — Called a little while at Moses Browns on buisness found him more bright than yesterday — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1829
January 22, Thursday: According to an almanac of the period, “Four hundred and fifty Indians belonging to the army of the Provinces under the command of Molina, surprised and cut to pieces by General Lavalle, provisional Governor of Buenos Ayres.” CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS
Sam Houston got married with Eliza Allen, 18-year-old daughter of a well-to-do planter, in her father Colonel John Allen’s plantation home on the Cumberland River 3 miles south of Gallatin, Tennessee (for some reason this marriage was over essentially before it even began).
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 22 of 1 M / Attended the Preparative & Select Meeting in Providence - Wm Almy preached & Lydia Breed prayed. —the children at the School attended & I was glad of their company. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 30, Friday: 26 According to an almanac of the period, “Byram Cotton Factory in Conecticut burnt; loss $100,000.” CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS
Mirjams Siegesgesang D.942 by Franz Schubert was performed for the initial time — at a memorial concert on the eve of what would have been the composer’s 32d birthday.
Sam Houston announced as a candidate for re-election as Governor of Tennessee. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
April 16, Thursday: In the ugly aftermath of the breakup with his 18-year-old bride, Sam Houston resigned as governor of Tennessee.
According to an almanac of the period, “General Lamar embarks at Patia for Guayaquil with 1200 troops and 200 horses for the purpose of recommencing hostilities with the Peruvians.” CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1830
Nathan Roberts was stationed in Washington DC to supervise construction on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. The US Government employed him as Chief Engineer to investigate a Muscle Shoals canal on the Tennessee River. William Roberts was made resident engineer of the feeder canal between Pine Grove, Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia Water Works. Charles Ellet went to France to study engineering.
June 17, Thursday: After his 1st year in office, President Andrew Jackson and his entourage headed home for Tennessee.
July 28, Wednesday: Andrew Jackson went to Franklin, Tennessee, home of John Henry Eaton, where he witnessed, for a change, the greatest courtesies being extended to Peggy Eaton (courtesies which Jackson was unable to obtain for her, even in his own household).
In the Paris fighting, the Hotel de Ville changed hands three times. Citizens captured cavalry barracks in the Rue de Babylone. A tricolor flag appeared atop Notre Dame. In his loge in the Institute, composing his Prix de Rome cantata, Hector Berlioz heard the gunfire and drums.
Der Alchymist, an opera by Louis Spohr to words of Schmidt under the pseudonym Pfeiffer after Irving, was performed for the initial time, in the Kassel Hoftheater.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 28th of 7 M / Our first Meeting was silent - but to me a season of feeling & close reflection. — The last (Moy [Monthly]) was a time of exercise - mingled with pain & encouragement. - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
August 23, Monday: Heinrich replaced Friedrich Ferdinand as Duke of Anhalt-Kothen. Ludwig replaced Heinrich as Prince of Anhalt-Kothen-Pless.
President Andrew Jackson confronted a Chickasaw delegation at the Presbyterian church in Franklin, Tennessee (not insignificantly, this was the hometown of the Secretary of War), providing them an ultimatum to move to new territories across the Mississippi River — or else suffer the consequences. The Choctaw were also supposed to have arrived at this “conference” but for some reason didn’t show up. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1832
May 7, Monday: The Treaty of London, signed by Bavaria, France, Russia and the United Kingdom, recognized the independence of Greece under a new king — Otto of Wittelsbach, Prince of Bavaria.
“Days of May”: Revised Reform Bill defeated in Lords; Grey asked for new Peers and the King balked; Grey resigned as Prime Minister.
Sam Houston addressed the US House of Representatives on his own behalf. He would be reprimanded by that body for having beaten one of its members with his cane on Pennsylvania Avenue. We don’t normally do that sort of Tennessee thing here in Washington DC. You can’t believe how nice we are to each other.
August 18, Saturday: The Liberator.
Sam Houston went to The Hermitage in Nashville, Tennessee to meet with President Andrew Jackson. Jackson would be reported to have given or loaned money to Houston to go to Texas. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1834
David Crockett published his autobiography of frontier life, NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF DAVI D CROCKETT OF THE STATE OF TENNESSEE:
Bear Hunting in Tennessee But the reader, I expect, would have no objection to know a little about my employment during the two years while my competitor was in Congress. In this space I had some pretty tuff times, and will relate some few things that happened to me. So here goes, as the boy said when he run by himself. In the fall of 1825, I concluded I would build two large boats, and load them with pipe staves for market. So I went down to the lake, which was about twenty-five miles from where I lived, and hired some hands to assist me, and went to work; some at boat building, and others to getting staves. I worked on with my hands till the bears got fat, and then I turned out to hunting, to lay in a supply of meat. I soon killed and salted down as many as were necessary for my family; but about this time one of my old neighbours, who had settled down on the lake about twenty-five miles from me, came to my house and told me he wanted me to go down and kill some bears about in his parts. He said they were extremely fat, and very plenty. I know’d that when they were fat, they were easily taken, for a fat bear can’t run fast or long. But I asked a bear no favours, no way, further than civility, for I now had eight large dogs, and as fierce as painters; so that a bear stood no chance at all to get away from them. So I went home with him, and then went on down towards the Mississippi, and commenced hunting. We were out two weeks, and in that time killed fifteen bears. Having now supplied my friend with plenty of meat, I engaged occasionally again with my hands in our boat building and getting staves. But I at length couldn’t stand it any longer without another hunt. So I concluded to take my little son, and cross over the lake, and take a hunt there. We got over, and HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE that evening turned out and killed three bears, in little or no time. The next morning we drove up four forks, and made a sort of scaffold, on which we salted up our meat, so as to have it out of the reach of the wolves, for as soon as we would leave our camp, they would take possession. We had just eat our breakfast, when a company of hunters came to our camp, who had fourteen dogs, but all so poor, that when they would bark they would almost have to lean up against a tree and take a rest. I told them their dogs couldn’t run in smell of a bear, and they had better stay at my camp, and feed them on the bones I had cut out of my meat. I left them there, and cut out; but I hadn’t gone far, when my dogs took a first-rate start after a very large fat old he-bear, which run right plump towards my camp. I pursued on, but my other hunters had heard my dogs coming, and met them, and killed the bear before I got up with him. I gave him to them, and cut out again for a creek called Big Clover, which wa’n’t very far off. Just as I got there, and was entering a cane brake, my dogs all broke and went ahead, and, in a little time, they raised a fuss in the cane, and seemed to be going every way. I listened a while, and found my dogs was in two companies, and that both was in a snorting fight. I sent my little son to one, and I broke for ttother. I got to mine first, and found my dogs had a two-year-old bear down, a-wooling away on him; so I just took out my big butcher, and went up and slap’d it into him, and killed him without shooting. There was five of the dogs in my company. In a short time, I heard my little son fire at his bear; when I went to him he had killed it too. He had two dogs in his team. Just at this moment we heard my other dog barking a short distance off, and all the rest immediately broke to him. We pushed on too, and when we got there, we found he had still a larger bear than either of them we had killed, treed by himself. We killed that one also, which made three we had killed in less than half an hour. We turned in and butchered them, and then started to hunt for water, and a good place to camp. But we had no sooner started, than our dogs took a start after another one, and away they went like a thunder-gust, and was out of hearing in a minute. We followed the way they had gone for some time, but at length we gave up the hope of finding them, and turned back. As we were going back, I came to where a poor fellow was grubbing, and he looked like the very picture of hard times. I asked him what he was doing away there in the woods by himself? He said he was grubbing for a man who intended to settle there; and the reason why he did it was, that he had no meat for his family, and he was working for a little. I was mighty sorry for the poor fellow, for it was not only a hard, but a very slow way to get meat for a hungry family; so I told him if he would go with me, I would give him more meat than he could get by grubbing in a month. I intended to supply him with meat, and also to get him to assist my little boy in packing in and salting up my bears. He had never seen a bear killed in his life. I told him I had six killed then, and my dogs were hard after another. He went off to his little cabin, which was a short distance in the brush, and his wife was very anxious he should go with me. So we started and went to where I had left my three bears, and made a camp. We then gathered my meat and salted, and scuffled it, as I had done the other. Night now came on, but no word from my dogs yet. I afterwards found they had treed the bear about five miles off, near to a HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE man’s house, and had barked at it the whole enduring night. Poor fellows! many a time they looked for me, and wondered why I didn’t come, for they knowed there was no mistake in me, and I know i they were as good as ever fluttered. In the morning, as soon as it was light enough to see, the man took his gun and went to them, and shot the bear, and killed it. My dogs, however, wouldn’t have anything to say to this stranger; so they left him, and came early in the morning back to me. We got our breakfast, and cut out again; and we killed four large and very fat bears that day. We hunted out the week, and in that time we killed seventeen, all of them first-rate. When we closed our hunt, I gave the man over a thousand weight of fine fat bear- meat, which pleased him mightily, and made him feel as rich as a Jew. I saw him the next fall, and he told me he had plenty of meat to do him the whole year from his week’s hunt. My son and me now went home. This was the week between Christmas and New- year that we made this hunt. When I got home, one of my neighbours was out of meat, and wanted me to go back, and let him go with me, to take another hunt. I couldn’t refuse; but I told him I was afraid the bear had taken to house by that time, for after they get very fat in the fall and early part of the winter, they go into their holes, in large hollow trees, or into hollow logs, or their cane-houses, or the hurricanes; and lie there till spring, like frozen snakes. And one thing about this will seem mighty strange to many people. From about the first of January to about the last of April, these varments lie in their holes altogether. In all that time they have no food to eat; and yet when they come out, they are not an ounce lighter than when they went to house. I don’t know the cause of this, and still I know it is a fact; and I leave it for others who have more learning than myself to account for it. They have not a particle of food with them, but they just lie and suck the bottom of their paw all the time. I have killed many of them in their trees, which enables me to speak positively on this subject. However, my neighbour, whose name was McDaniel, and my little son and me, went on down to the lake to my second camp, where I had killed my seventeen bears the week before, and turned out to hunting. But we hunted hard all day without getting a single start. We had carried but little provisions with us, and the next morning was entirely out of meat. I sent my son about three miles off, to the house of an old friend, to get some. The old gentleman was much pleased to hear I was hunting in those parts, for the year before the bears had killed a great many of his hags. He was that day killing his bacon hogs, and so he gave my son some meat, and sent word to me that I must come in to his house that evening that he would have plenty of feed for my dogs, and some accommodations for ourselves; but before my son got back, we had gone out hunting, and in a large cane brake my dogs found a big bear in a cane-house, which he had fixed for his winter-quarters, as they some. times do. When my lead dog found him, and raised the yell, all the rest broke to him, but none of them entered his house until we got up. I encouraged my dogs, and they knowed me so well, that I could have made them seize the old serpent himself, with all his horns and heads, and cloven foot and ugliness into the bargain, if he would only have come to light, so that they could have seen him. They bulged in, and in an instant the bear followed them out, and I told my friend to shoot him, as he was mighty HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE wrathy to kill a bear. He did so, and killed him prime. We carried him to our camp, by which time my son had returned; and after we got our dinners we packed up, and cut for the house of my old friend, whose name was Davidson. We got there, and staid with him that night; and the next morning having salted up our meat, we left it with him, and started to take a hunt between the Obion lake and the Red-foot lake; as there had been a dreadful hurricane, which passed between them, and I was sure there must be a heap of bears in the fallen timber. We had gone about five miles without seeing any sign at all; but at length we got on some high cony ridges, and, as we rode along, I saw a hole in a large black oak, and on examining more closely, I discovered that a bear had clomb the tree. I could see his tracks going up, but none coming down, and so I was sure he was in there. A person who is acquainted with bear- hunting, can tell easy enough when the varment is in the hollow; for as they go up they don’t slip a bit, but as they come down they make long scratches with their nails. My friend was a little ahead of me, but I called him back, and told him there was a bear in that tree, and I must have him out. So we lit from our horses, and I found a small tree which I thought I could fall so as to lodge against my bear tree, and we fell to work chopping it with our tomahawks. I intended, when we lodged the tree against the other, to let my little son go up, and look into the hole, for he could climb like a squirrel. We had chop’d on a little time and stop’d to rest, when I heard my dogs barking mighty severe at some distance from us, and I told my friend I knowed they had a bear, for it is the nature of a dog, when he finds you are hunting bears, to hunt for nothing else; he becomes fond of the meat, and considers other game as “not worth a notice,” as old Johnson said of the devil. We concluded to leave our tree a bit, and went to my dogs, and when we got there, sure enough they had an eternal great big fat bear up a tree, just ready for shooting. My friend again petitioned me for liberty to shoot this one also. I had a little rather not, as the bear was so big, but I couldn’t refuse; and so he blazed away, and down came the old fellow like some great log had fell. I now missed one of my dogs, the same that I before spoke of as having treed the bear by himself sometime before, when I had started the three in the cane break. I told my friend that my missing dog had a bear somewhere, just as sure as fate; so I left them to butcher the one we had just killed, and I went up on a piece of high ground to listen for my dog. I heard him barking with all his might some distance off, and I pushed ahead for him. My other dogs hearing him broke to him, and when I got there, sure enough again he had another bear ready treed; if he hadn’t, I wish I may be shot. I fired on him, and brought him down; and then went back, and help’d finish butchering the one at which I had left my friend. We then packed both to our tree where we had left my boy. By this time, the little fellow had cut the tree down that we intended to lodge, but it fell the wrong way; he had then feather’d in on the big tree, to cut that, and had found that it was nothing but a shell on the outside, and all doted in the middle, as too many of our big men are in these days, having only an outside appearance. My friend and my son cut away on it, and I went off about a hundred yards with my dogs to keep them from running under the tree when it should fall. On looking back at the hole, I saw the HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE bear’s head out of it, looking down at them as they were cutting. I hollered to them to look up, and they did so; and McDaniel catched up his gun, but by this time the bear was out, and coming down the tree. He fired at it, and as soon as it touch’d ground the dogs were all round it, and they had a roll-and-tumble fight to the fact of the hill, where they stop’d him. I ran up, and putting my gun against the bear, fired and killed him. We now had three, and so we made our scaffold and salted them up. In the morning I left my son at the camp, and we started on towards The harricane; and when we had went about a mile, we started a very large bear, but we got along mighty slow on account of the cracks in the earth occasioned by the earthquakes. We, however, made out to keep in hearing of the dogs for about three miles, and then we came to the harricane. Here we had to quit our horses, as old Nick himself couldn’t have got through it without sneaking it along in the form that he put on, to make a fool of our old grandmother Eve. By this time several of my dogs had got tired and come back; but we went ahead on fact for some little time in the hurricane, when we met a bear coming straight to us, and not more than twenty or thirty yards off. I started my tired dogs after him, and McDaniel pursued them, and I went on to where my other dogs were. I had seen the track of the bear they were after, and I knowed he was a screamer. I followed on to about the middle of the harricane; but my dogs pursued him so close, that they made him climb an old stump about twenty feet high. I got in shooting distance of him and fired, but I was all over in such a flutter from fatigue and running, that I couldn’t hold steady; but, however, I broke his shoulder, and he fell. I run up and loaded my gun as quick as possible, and shot him again and killed him. When I went to take out my knife to butcher him, I found I had lost it in coming through the harricane. The vines and briars was so thick that I would sometimes have to get down and crawl like a varment to get through at all; and a vine had, as I supposed, caught in the handle and pulled it out. While I was standing and studying what to do my friend came to me. He had followed my trail through the harricane, and had found my knife, which was mighty good news to me; as a hunter hates the worst in the world to lose a good dog, or any part of his hunting-tools. I now left McDaniel to butcher the bear, and I went after our horses, and brought them as near as the nature of case would allow. I then took our bags, and went back to where he was; and when we had skin’d the bear, we fleeced off the fat and carried it to our horses at several loads. We then packed it up on our horses, and had a heavy pack of it on each one. We now started and went on till about sunset, when I concluded we must be near our camp; so I hollered and my son answered me, and we moved on in the direction to the camp. We had gone but a little way when I heard my dogs make a warm start again; and I jumped down from my horse and gave him up to my friend, and told him I would follow them. He went on to the camp, and I went ahead after my dogs with all my might for a considerable distance, till at last night came on. The woods were very rough and hilly, and all covered over with cane. I now was compel’d to move on more slowly; and was frequently falling over logs, and into the cracks made by the earthquakes, so that I was very much afraid I would break my gun. However I went on about three miles, when I came to a good big creek, which I waded. It was very cold, and the creek was about knee-deep; HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE but I felt no great inconvenience from it just then, as I was all over wet with sweat from running, and I felt hot enough. After I got over this creek and out of the cane, which was very thick on all our creeks, I listened for my dogs. I found they had either treed or brought the bear to a stop, as they continued barking in the same place. I pushed on as near in the direction to the noise as I could, till I found the hill was too steep for me to climb, and so I backed and went down the creek some distance till I came to a hollow, and then took up that, till I come to a place where I could climb up the hill. It was mighty dark, and was difficult to see my way or anything else. When I got up the hill, I found I had passed the dogs; and so I turned and went to them. I found, when I got there, they had treed the bear in a large forked poplar, and it was setting in the fork. I could see the lump, but not plain enough to shoot with any certainty, as there was no moonlight; and so I set in to hunting for some dry brush to make me a light; but I could find none, though I could find that the ground was torn mightily to pieces by the cracks. At last I thought I could shoot by guess, and kill him; so I pointed as near the lump as I could, and fired away. But the bear didn’t come, he only clomb up higher, and got out on a limb, which helped me to see him better. I now loaded up again and fired, but this time he didn’t move at all. I commenced loading for a third fire, but the first thing I knowed, the bear was down among my dogs, and they were fighting all around me. I had my big butcher in my belt, and I had a pair of dressed buckskin breeches on. So I took out my knife, and stood, determined, if he should get hold of me, to defend myself in the best way I could. I stood there for some time, and could now and then see a white dog I had, but the rest of them, and the bear, which were dark coloured, I couldn’t see at all, it was so miserable dark. They still fought around me, and sometimes within three feet of me; but, at last, the bear got down into one of the cracks, that the earthquakes had made in the ground, about four feet deep, and I could tell the biting end of him by the hollering of my dogs. So I took my gun and pushed the muzzle of it about, till I thought I had it against the main part of his body, and fired; but it happened to be only the fleshy part of his foreleg. With this, he jumped out of the crack, and he and the dogs had another hard fight around me, as before. At last, however, they forced him back into the crack again, as he was when I had shot. I had laid down my gun in the dark, and I now began to hunt for it; and, while hunting, I got hold of a pole, and I concluded I would punch him awhile with that. I did so, and when I would punch him, the dogs would jump in on him, when he would bite them badly, and they would jump out again. I concluded, as he would take punching so patiently, it might be that he would lie still enough for me to get down in the crack, and feel slowly along till I could find the right place to give him a dig with my butcher. So I got down, and my dogs got in before him and kept his head towards them, till I got along easily up to him; and placing my hand on his rump, felt for his shoulder, just behind which I intended to stick him. I made a lounge with my long knife, and fortunately stock him right through the heart; at which he just sank down, and I crawled out in a hurry. In a HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE little time my dogs all come out too, and seemed satisfied, which was the way they always had of telling me that they had finished him. I suffered very much that night with cold, as my leather breeches, and every thing else I had on, was wet and frozen. But I managed to get my bear out of this crack after several hard trials, and so I butchered him, and laid down to try to sleep. But my fire was very bad, and I couldn’t find any thing that would burn well to make it any better; and I concluded I should freeze, if I didn’t warm myself in some way by exercise. So I got up, and hollered a while, and then I would just jump up and down with all my might, and throw myself into all sorts of motions. But all this wouldn’t do; for my blood was now getting cold, and the chills coming all over me. I was so tired, too, that I could hardly walk; but I thought I would do the best I could to save my life, and then, if I died, nobody would be to blame. So I went to a tree about two feet through, and not a limb on it for thirty feet, and I would climb up it to the limbs, and then lock my arms together around it, and slide down to the bottom again. This would make the insides of my legs and arms feel mighty warm and good. I continued this till daylight in the morning, and how often I clomb up my tree and slid down I don’t know, but I reckon at least a hundred times. In the morning I got my bear hong up so as to be safe, and then set out to hunt for my camp. I found it after a while, and McDaniel and my son were very much rejoiced to see me get back, for they were about to give me up for lost. We got our breakfasts, and then secured our meat by building a high scaffold, and covering it over. We had no fear of its spoiling, for the weather was so cold that it couldn’t. We now started after my other bear, which had caused me so much trouble and suffering; and before we got him, we got a start after another, and took him also. We went on to the creek I had crossed the night before and camped, and then went to where my bear was, that I had killed in the crack. When we examined the place, McDaniel said he wouldn’t have gone into it, as I did, for all the bears in the woods. We took the meat down to our camp and salted it, and also the last one we had killed; intending, in the morning, to make a hunt in the harricane again. We prepared for resting that night, and I can assure the reader I was in need of it. We had laid down by our fire, and about ten o’clock there came a most terrible earthquake, which shook the earth so, that we were rocked about like we had been in a cradle. We were very much alarmed; for though we were accustomed to feel earthquakes, we were now right in the region which had been torn to pieces by them in 1812, and we thought it might take a notion and swallow us up, like the big fish did Jonah. In the morning we packed up and moved to the harricane, where we made another camp, and turned out that evening and killed a very large bear, which made eight we had now killed in this hunt. The next morning we entered the harricane again, and in little or no time my dogs were in full cry. We pursued them, and soon came to a thick cane brake, in which they had stop’d their bear. We got up close to him, as the cane was so thick that we couldn’t see more than a few feet. Here I made my friend hold the cane a little open with his gun till I shot the bear, which was a mighty large one. I killed him dead in his tracks. We got him out and butchered him, and in a little time started another and killed HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE him, which now made ten we had killed; and we know’d we couldn’t pack any more home, as we had only five horses along; therefore we returned to the camp and salted up all our meat, to be ready for a start homeward next morning. The morning came, and we packed our horses with the meat, and had as much as they could possibly carry, and sure enough cut out for home. It was about thirty miles, and we reached home the second day. I had now accommodated my neighbour with meat enough to do him, and had killed in all, up to that time, fifty-eight bears, during the fall and winter. As soon as the time come for them to quit their houses and come out again in the spring, I took a notion to hunt a little more, and in about one month I killed forty-seven more, which made one hundred and five bears I had killed in less than one year from that time. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE 11 David Crockett. A NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF DAVID CROCKETT OF THE STATE OF TENNESSEE. 1834. LIFE OF DAV ID CROCKETT
Facsimile edition with annotations and introduction by James A. Shackford and Stanley J. Folmsbee. Knoxville TN: U of Tennessee P, 1973
11. This book contains the first known use of the term “pinhook,” a synonym for “petty, small-time” meaning “to act as a pinhooker, ... a small-time speculator in farm products, esp. tobacco, esp. one who buys directly from farmers” (a little settlement locally known as Pinhook would develop roughly where the traffic circle of the Erwin Tower is in present-day Durham, North Carolina). HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”
David Crockett declares in the preface to this “autobiography” that he means to correct the misinformation about his life that had been popularized by the preceding year’s THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF COLONEL DAVID CROCKETT OF WEST TENNESSEE (reprinted that same year as SKETCHES AND ECCENTRICITIES OF COLONEL DAVID CROCKETT OF TENNESSEE). Crockett claims not to have known the author of that work, but in fact, the author — Matthew St. Clair Clarke, a clerk in the House of Representatives — had operated as Crockett’s ghost writer on the book, just as Thomas Chilton, a congressman from Kentucky, would later ghost-write the NARRATIVE for Crockett. Despite Crockett’s assertion that the “whole book is my own, and every sentiment and sentence in it,” Chilton added many grammatical errors and colorful colloquialisms in order to add flavor to Crockett’s frontier stew. Still, the guiding spirit is Crockett’s, and the autobiography is the most authentic document we have of the historical Crockett. Folmsbee offers three reasons for the importance of the NARRATIVE: As a literary work, it is one of the earliest autobiographies to be published, only a decade and a half after the virtually complete version of the first of all, Benjamin Franklin’s. Another American success story, it belongs in the long series of autobiographies telling similar stories, from Franklin to Malcolm X. It is also a very early extended example of American humor, the first of the Southwest variety, appearing just a year after Seba Smith’s LIFE AND WRITINGS OF MAJOR JACK DOWNING OF DOWNINGVILLE (Boston, 1833), the first example of the Yankee variety. It is, furthermore, a document of importance in the history of American English, being replete with dialectical usages, proverbial expressions, and spellings representing non-standard pronunciations. Crockett is credited, in fact, with being the first to use in print some half a dozen such locutions. His NARRATIVE is, finally, a historical document. (ix) The NARRATIVE was designed as a campaign document to help Crockett win re-election to the US House of Representatives in 1835, but it was more effective as the impetus for the immensely popular Crockett almanacs that burst upon the scene that same year and for the widespread popularization of Old Southwest humor. (Crockett lost the election.) The text that Shackford and Folmsbee use is an authentic first edition. This is important because the best-known twentieth-century edition (AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DAVID CROCKETT, with an Introduction by Hamlin Garland, 1923) contains in addition to the original work two spurious accounts of Crockett’s life: AN ACCOUNT OF COL. CROCKETT’S TOUR OF THE NORTH AND DOWN EAST, comprised mainly of newspaper reprints, and COL. CROCKETT’S EXPLOITS AND ADVENTURES IN TEXAS, which purports to be the reproduction of a diary found at the Alamo. The facsimile pages are accompanied by extensive notes, primarily of a historical nature and somewhat deficient from a literary standpoint.
(Lane Stiles, Winter 1992) HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1834
September: Harriet Martineau arrived in the US determined to write the condition of American morals and its effect on our institutions, comparing and contrasting “the existing state of society in America with the principles on which it is professedly founded; thus testing Institutions, Morals, and Manners by an indisputable, instead of an arbitrary standard.” She would spend the next two years touring in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Michigan, and Illinois, and would return to England in August 1836. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1835
December 7, Monday: Opening of the 1st session of the 24th US Congress, with 141 Democrats and 95 Whigs. James Knox Polk (Democrat of Tennessee) became Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Elijah Hinsdale Burritt was elected as moderator of the New Britain Ecclesiastical Society.
Opening of the 1st steam railway in Germany, the line between Nürnberg and Fürth.
At the end of the year the Federal German Diet attempted to force a nationwide ban on all works by Heinrich Heine. In Paris he would find himself surrounded by police spies, and what had begun as a voluntary exile would become a forced one. ANTISEMITISM HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1836
August: Harriet Martineau had toured in the US since September 1834, investigating the condition of American morals and its effect on our institutions and comparing and contrasting “the existing state of society in America with the principles on which it is professedly founded; thus testing Institutions, Morals, and Manners by an indisputable, instead of an arbitrary standard,” in the states of New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Michigan, and Illinois. At this point she was on her way back to the mother country to report what she had observed. It has been frequently mentioned to me that my being a woman was one disadvantage; and my being previously heard of, another. In this I do not agree. I am sure, I have seen much more of domestic life than could possibly have been exhibited to any gentleman travelling through the country. The nursery, the boudoir, the kitchen, are all excellent schools in which to learn the morals and manners of a people.
December 5, Monday: Opening of the 2d (lame duck) session of the 24th US Congress, with 141 Democrats and 95 Whigs. James Knox Polk (Democrat of Tennessee) was Speaker of the House of Representatives. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1838
Frederick Douglass and Anna Marie Murray fell in love and became engaged. Douglass took up the violin.
ANNA MURRAY DOUGLASS
FREDERICK DOUGLASS David Ruggles, who had acquired a heroic reputation for his help to escaping slaves (he would help some 600 persons in total, including in the course of this year Frederick Douglass), was kicked down a stairway by some white people who did not appreciate his plagiarism.12 Did this have something to do with the activities of the New-York Vigilance Committee of which Ruggles had become the Secretary?
In about this year, becoming fully adult, John Jones completed his apprenticeship in tailoring under Richard Clere and found further apprenticeship employment in Memphis, Tennessee, where he made friends with a free black named Richardson, a blacksmith, forming “a strong attachment for his daughter Mary.” Richardson and his family moved to Alton, Illinois and as soon as he finished his apprenticeship, Jones made plans to follow. However, when the tailor Richard Clere died, family heirs tried to make out that John Jones was a family slave and attempted to sell him to planters moving to Texas. Jones obtained a horse and returned to Greene City, North Carolina to collect evidence that he was free.
12. (Relying here, of course, on the restricted etymological root sense of the term “plagiarism” –as in the alienation of the affections of one’s slave property– rather than on the modern rather more extended usage of that term.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE February: 15,665 of the Cherokee Nation petitioned the US Congress in opposition to the Treaty of New Echola. TRAIL OF TEARS
[L]ike the thousands of Irish woodkernes whom Lord Deputy Chichester shipped by force to Sweden, at a stroke thousands of Cherokee families were uprooted in 1837 and 1838 from their ancestral lands in northern Georgia and Alabama, western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, and force-marched over the Trail of Tears a thousand miles to a country that was, as Sweden to the Irish, “remote and of no good fame to them.” The protesting Cherokees invoked United States government treaty promises; but as it had been with the king’s mislaid reassurances to O’Dohety, it was “already too late,” gold having been discovered within Cherokee lands in northern Georgia ten years before. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE March: Outraged citizens throughout the US memorialized Congress on behalf of what remained at this point of the Eastern Cherokee Nation. The map below shows the boundaries of the Eastern Cherokee prior to removal. Much of this land shown as red, however, had already been overrun by the whites, who had for instance already seized Vann’s home at Springplace, Major Ridge’s home at Rome GA, and Chief John Ross’s home at Rossville, Georgia. The Cherokee council had found it necessary to conduct its meetings at Red Clay on the Tennessee border because the activities of the Georgia Militia were preventing them from making use of their capital at New Echota:
Pre-Contact
After Revolution
Remainder
In fact, in this land grab, the Georgia Land and Gold Lotteries had already portioned out the Cherokee lands in that state among white lottery winners. TRAIL OF TEARS HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1839
Summer: Sam Houston continued his trip through the states, visiting Andrew Jackson at The Hermitage near Nashville, Tennessee. On his return to Mobile, Alabama, Margaret Lea agreed to get married with him. On his return to Nacogdoches, Texas, he made a speech denouncing President Lamar’s campaign against the Indians (his old friend Cherokee Headman Bowl had been killed). HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1840
In his early manhood Wilson Flagg had gone off on a solitary pedestrian tour from Massachusetts through Tennessee and Virginia and back. He had also been lecturing at that point in his life, on natural science. Meanwhile he had been developing a penchant for political blogging, and was frequently contributing to the Boston The Boston Weekly Magazine; devoted to Morality, Literature, Biography, History, the Fine Arts, Agriculture, &c. &c. and the Post. By this point, however, he had abandoned his political blogging and turned almost exclusively toward writing for the agricultural journals and for The Atlantic Monthly (his articles for Hovey’s Magazine of Horticulture would eventually be recycled in book form as STUDIES IN THE FIELD AND FOREST).
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
March 1, Sunday: The Reverend Frederic Henry Hedge preached at the Union Street church in Bangor, Maine on PRACTICAL GOODNESS THE TRUE RELIGION (Bangor: Printed by Samuel S. Smith; Boston: Printed for the American Unitarian Association by J. Munroe & Company).
In a small stone building near Nashville, Tennessee’s 1st public mental health care facility began. This is the facility that would be viewed during November 1847 by a horrified Dorothea Dix, who would inform the state legislature of deplorable conditions. A new hospital, the Central State Hospital for the Insane near Nashville, would open in 1852.
July: Thomas Mayne Reid, Jr. left New Orleans after having worked for some half year as a clerk for a corn factor (trader in the corn market), a “storekeeper,” and a “nigger driver.” It has been alleged that he quit rather than whip slaves. He would take a position as tutor of the children of Dr. Peyton Robertson on a plantation near Nashville, Tennessee, and then begin a private “New English, Mathematical, and Classical School” in Nashville.
Tennessee “Stack of the Artist of HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1841
July: A small red cloud appeared in a sky which was otherwise clear, above a tobacco field in Wilson County in Tennessee, and the slaves experienced what a local physician, Dr. W.P. Sayle, would take samples of “with my own hands” from “some green tobacco leaves” and report to the University of Nashville as having been a shower of “blood, muscular fiber, adipose matter,” the greatest part of which had been the blood.
WALDEN: Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness.... At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the seacoast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.... I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp, — tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood!
RAINS OF BLOOD, &C. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1844
During this period Nathaniel Hawthorne’s friend John L. O’Sullivan was helping get out the Democratic vote in New York, on behalf of James Knox Polk from Tennessee. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1845
Elizur Wright, Jr.’s poem “The Fugitive Slave to the Christian” saw publication as part of George Whitefield Clark’s THE LIBERTY MINSTREL (New-York: Leavitt & Alden, 7 Cornhill, Boston: Saxon & Miles, 205 Broadway, N.Y.: Myron Finch, 120 Nassau St., N.Y.: Jackson & Chaplin, 38 Dean St., Albany, N.Y.: Jackson & Chaplin, corner Genessee and Main St., Utica, N.Y.). THE LIBERTY MINSTREL HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE Henry Thoreau would extract from this poem in WALDEN:
WALDEN: Some who had more wits than they knew what to do with; PEOPLE OF runaway slaves with plantation manners, who listened from time WALDEN to time, like the fox in the fable, as if they heard the hounds a-baying on their track, and looked at me beseechingly, as much as to say,– “O Christian, will you send me back?” ELIZUR WRIGHT One real runaway slave, among the rest, whom I helped to forward toward the northstar. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
The Democrat James Knox Polk became President of the United States of America (until 1849). His Vice President was George M. Dallas. In a cost-cutting measure, Sarah Polk, new first lady, fired about 10 hired servants at the White House, rearranged its basement into a slave barracks, and staffed the place with slaves from their home place in Tennessee. They would purchase several more slaves from relatives and friends during the first three years of their occupancy of the White House.
The Methodist Episcopal Church in America split into northern and southern conferences after Georgia bishop James O. Andrews resisted an instruction that he either give up his slaves or quit his bishopric.
To show their strong sense of gratitude for Salmon Portland Chase’s defense of Samuel Watson, a runaway slave, and for his other undertakings on behalf of slaves, he was presented with a sterling silver pitcher, as a testimonial of gratitude for his efforts in the Watson case and for other services. The pitcher bore the following inscription: A testimonial of gratitude to SALMON P. CHASE FROM THE COLORED PEOPLE OF CINCINNATI, for his various public services in behalf of the oppressed and particularly for HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE his ELOQUENT ADVOCACY OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN in the case of Samuel Watson, who was claimed as a fugitive slave, Feb. 12, 1845. Accepting the gift Chase declared that: True democracy makes no inquiry about the color of the skin, or the places of nativity, or any other similar circumstances of condition. Whenever it sees a man, it recognizes a being endowed by his Creator with original inalienable rights... I regard, therefore, the exclusion of colored people from the election franchise as incompatible with true democratic principles. When Chase would become governor of the state of Ohio, 1856 to 1860, during the summers he would serve proponents of slavery lemonade from that silver pitcher at the governor’s mansion. (Lemonade had been being sweetened with slavery’s cane sugar for some time, so we may wonder whether he served the beverage from this pitcher sweetened or unsweetened.)
At some point in the mid-1840s, Americus Symmes, son of Captain John Cleves Symmes, erected in Hamilton, Ohio a memorial to his father and his father’s hairbrained THEORY OF CONCENTRIC SPHERES:Capt. John Cleves Symmes as a Philosopher, and the originator of Symmes Theory of Concentric Spheres and Polar voids; He contended that the Earth is hollow and habitable within.
Capt. JOHN C. SYMMES a Native of HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE New Jersey, died in May 1829 Aged 49 yrs. & 6 months.
Capt. John Cleves Symmes entered the Army of the U.S. as an Ensign in the year 1802. He afterward rose to the rank of Captain, and performed daring feats of Bravery in the Battles of Lundy’s Lane and sortie from Fort Erie. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE This memorial –of course– was topped by –what else– a hollow globe. The following was drawn by the son: HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE March 4, Tuesday: On the East Portico in Washington in a drenching rain, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger Brooke Taney administered the oath of office as President of the United States of America to the former governor of the state of Tennessee and former speaker of the US House of Representatives, James Knox Polk.
The new president delivered his Inaugural Address. As a publicity stunt for new technology, the events of this ceremony were being telegraphed to Baltimore by Samuel F.B. Morse in real time, that is, as they occurred. Polk would serve in this capacity until March 3, 1849 and would go down in our history books as the 1st of our presidents to be survived by his mother.
Lewis Cass became a US Senator representing Michigan. In the 30th Congress he would serve as chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE When the faithful Democratic party hack Nathaniel Hawthorne would be rewarded with an appointment by this new Democratic President James Polk as the “Surveyor” of the Salem Custom House –the federal-revenue-producing harbor site at which federal taxes were assessed and paid on trade goods–
the author became not merely some flunky, not merely some guy doing a routine job, but the chief civilian officer of that important Custom House:
This was a key appointment, to a post that had during colonial times been held by a representative of the King himself, that had then been taken over by our new federal government. Being the Surveyor was a really, really big deal, and this was at least historically a really, really important, revenue-producing port.
THE SCARLET LETTER: On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly this strange, indolent, unjoyous attachment for my native town that brought me to fill a place in Uncle Sam’s brick edifice, when I might as well, or better, have gone somewhere else. My doom was on me, It was not the first time, nor the second, that I had gone away –as it seemed, permanently– but yet returned, like the bad halfpenny, or as if Salem were for me the inevitable centre of the universe. So, one fine morning I ascended the flight of granite steps, with the President’s commission in my pocket, and was introduced to the corps of gentlemen who were to aid me in my weighty responsibility as chief executive officer of the Custom- House. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
While Surveyor at this establishment, however, Hawthorne would lay off a couple of his subordinates, mere inspectors — and would thus incur the anger of some local Salem political bosses, who would presume that he had laid off these men because he disapproved of their political affiliations.13
May: Sam Houston and his family began a trip to visit former President Andrew Jackson on his plantation The Hermitage near Nashville, Tennessee.
13. Writers who are known to have supplemented their authorial income by serving in addition as revenue agents: the Reverend Orestes Augustus Brownson, Robert Burns, Chaucer, Hawthorne, and Herman Melville. (Not to mention, according to MATTHEW 9:9, the author of the gospel according to Matthew.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1846
December 4, Wednesday: Jefferson Davis cast his electoral vote for incumbent Democratic President James Knox Polk from Tennessee.
William Lloyd Garrison departed for Europe, William Cooper Nell presided over the farewell activities (as Secretary and a member of the Business Committee, he would also organize the reception upon Garrison’s return). HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE June 8, Sunday: Frederick Douglass lectured in Springfield, Massachusetts. At his Hermitage plantation near Nashville, Tennessee, former President Andrew Jackson died.
When the family of Sam Houston arrived they learned that they were an hour too late.
Even in his years of retirement at the Hermitage, Jackson had remained a potent force in the Democratic party. His final years, however, had been primarily plagued by the personal financial distress that had resulted from his having assumed the debts of an improvident adopted son, Andrew Jackson, Jr. His remaining political efforts had been in support of US annexation of another slave state, Texas, an agenda that had caused him to switch his backing in 1844 from Martin Van Buren to James K. Polk in the contest for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Jackson had lived long enough to celebrate not only passage of the Texas annexation treaty but also the victory of Polk over Jackson’s old opponent, Henry Clay. Did you suppose someone as wicked as this would live forever?
He would be buried beside Rachel Donelson Robards Jackson. Within a few weeks the American nation would HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE have learned of this death: HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
Our national birthday, Friday the 4th of July: This was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 41st birthday, and the flag was gaining another star as the State of Florida was entering the Union as our 27th state, making the score in this land of the free and home of the brave to amount to 14 states for human slavery versus 13 states agin it:
Ordinance of the Convention of Texas.
In Washington DC, the cornerstone of Jackson Hall was being laid and a good time was being enjoyed by all these American patriots who were equating patriotism with inebriation, but on the grounds south of the Executive Mansion, some drunken celebrant fired off a dozen rockets into the crowd, killing James Knowles and Georgiana Ferguson and injuring several others — collateral damage due to friendly fire.
In Ithaca, New York, a celebration cannon, evidently overcharged with powder, blew apart, killing three. TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
Ex-president John Tyler delivered an oration at William and Mary College.
In Nashville, Tennessee, the corner-stone of the State House was laid. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY
What to the slave is the 4th of July? On this day and the next Frederick Douglass was lecturing in Athol, Massachusetts. Henry Thoreau began to sleep in the open frame of the new shanty “as soon as it was boarded and roofed…” not only on the anniversary of independence, but also on the day on which the US took the Texas territory from Mexico. Had he remained in Concord that day, he would have been subjected not only to offensive parades with flag-waving, but also to much offensive pro-war oratory. TIMELINE OF WALDEN EMERSON’S SHANTY
WALDEN: When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident was on Independence Day, or the fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night.The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited the year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music.The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth every where. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
We need not presume that he intended the date to have any metaphorical significance, as in the idea that moving to the shanty was his Declaration of Independence from human society. On this day of Thoreau’s removal, an article appeared in the New-York Daily Tribune calling for a return to “the narrow, thorny path where Integrity leads.” This article was authored in full awareness of the course Thoreau was following in Concord, for this sentiment had been penned by Margaret Fuller.
Years later, on May 1, 1850 to be exact, Thoreau recollected an incident of this day, that “The forenoon that I moved to my house –a poor old lame fellow who had formerly frozen his feet –hobbled off the road –came & stood before my door with one hand on each door post looking into the house & asked for a drink of water. I knew that rum or something like it was the only drink he loved but I gave him a dish of warm pond water which was all I had, nevertheless, which to my astonishment he drank, being used to drinking.”
Thoreau lived HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
“At Walden, July, 1845, to fall of 1847, then at R.W.E.’s to fall of 1848, or while he was in Europe.”
At about this time, more or less, a number of people’s acquaintance’s lives were changing: for instance, Giles Waldo, whom Thoreau had chummed around with in New-York, was sailing to become vice consul at Lahaina in the Sandwich Islands, and George Partridge Bradford was abandoning the private school he had attempted to set up in Waldo Emerson’s barn to begin a private school in Roxbury MA.
Thoreau wrote the following sometime after he moved to his new shanty at Walden Pond, about the drumming of the ruffed grouse:
After July 4: {one-fifth page blank} When I behold an infant I am impressed with a sense of antiquity, and reminded of the sphinx or Sybil. It seems older than Nestor or Jove himself, and wears the wrinkles of Saturn. Why should the present impose upon us so much! I sit now upon a stump whose rings number centuries of growth– If I look around me I see that the very soil is composed of just such stumps — ancestors to this. I thrust this stick many aeons deep into the surface — and with my heel scratch a deeper furrow than the elements have ploughed here for a thousand years– If I listen I hear the peep of frogs which is older than the slime of Egypt — or a distant partridge [Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus (Partridge)] drumming on a log — as if it were the pulse-beat of the summer air. CURRENT YOUTUBE VIDEO I raise my fairest and freshest flowers in the old mould. –Why, what we call new is not skin deep — the earth is not yet stained by it. It is not the fertile ground we walk upon but the leaves that flutter over our head The newest is but the oldest made visible to our eyes. We dig up the soil from a thousand feet below the surface and call it new, and the plants which spring from it.
After July 4: Night and day — year on year, / High & low — far and near, / These are our own aspects, / These are our own regrets…. / I hear the sweet evening sounds / From your undecaying grounds / Cheat me no more with time, / Take me to your clime. 1842, 1845, 1848: Night and day, year on year, / High and low, far and near, / These are our own aspects, / These are our own regrets…. / I hear the sweet evening sounds / From your undecaying grounds; / Cheat me no more with time, / Take me to your clime. (WEEK 389) (Johnson 388-9) HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1847
During this year a curious incident would take place during an antislavery convention in Salem, Ohio. At the convention an alert would be passed, that a Tennessee couple was going to be passing through town, and that accompanying them would be their slave. These abolitionists and a goodly number of Salem townspeople duly assembled at the train depot, and when the train in question arrived, Charles Burleigh and Henry Blackstone boarded the carriage and confronted the couple. When the slave, a 12-year-old girl, was asked if she wanted to be free, she indicated that she did. Later that day in Salem, surrounded by white girls her own age, she would be rechristened as “Abby Kelley Salem” in honor of Abby Kelley Foster, the abolition activist who had done so much to convert the town, and of the town in which this glorious event was transpiring. Miss Salem would be taken into the home of a local white family and reared to adulthood (it’s almost enough to make one believe in America).
April: Hung Hsiu Ch’üan the scholar-manque would study Christianity for a couple of months under the tutelage of a Reverend Issachar J. Roberts , a Tennessee Baptist who had been in China since 1837, and then (upon being belatedly informed that his new status in the Christian community would definitely not include his being the recipient of any pecuniary compensation whatever) joined the movement known as the Pai Shang-ti Hui or The God Worshipers’ Society which had been initiated among the peasantry of Kwangsi province by his friend Feng Yün-shan . He would become successful beyond the wildest dreams of any Tennessee Baptist, as the T’ien-wang –the Heavenly King– of a far-flung Chinese Christian movement. He would be able to plot an entire galaxy of stars in his heavenly crown right up to the point at which, at the unfortunate conclusion of the largest and bloodiest civil war our planet has ever known, he would need to off himself.
THE TAEPING REBELLION Andrew Twombly Foss became an agent of the Baptist Church North. He would later serve the American Anti- Slavery Society and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society as an agent, lecturing widely in the North and West till the US Civil War. (There is an article by Guy S. Rix on his life, at The New England Historic Genealogical Society.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1848
Elihu Burritt’s VOICE FROM THE FORGE (London: Charles Gilpin).
The beginning of Burritt College in Spencer, Tennessee. HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
1849
June 5, Tuesday: At the age of 53, James Knox Polk succumbed to the cholera. The body would be placed in a grave at the municipal cemetery on the edge of Nashville, Tennessee in compliance with a law regulating the disposition of cholera victims. Then it would be relocated in May 1850 in accordance with the President’s will, to Polk Place, his home near the capital building, and then when the will would be tested in court and found to amount to an illegal perpetuity for blood descendants, and Polk Place would be torn down, it would be relocated again on September 19th, 1893 onto the grounds of the Capitol building in Nashville, at a grassy site which unfortunately is not wheelchair-accessible. There is, as of 2017, a proposal to relocate the remains yet a 4th time, from their present position shadowed by an equestrian statue of Polk’s mentor Andrew Jackson to a final resting place at the James K. Polk Home and Museum in Columbia. “He wanted to be buried at home,” the custodian of the 1816 structure now recounts. DIGGING UP THE DEAD HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote Henry Wadsworth Longfellow expressing an intent to avenge himself for the manner in which he was being removed from his overlordship of the Salem Custom House. That he had obtained such a cushy posting through the nefarious processes of political patronage was just fine (because he was such a fine fellow that he deserved to have fine things happen to him), but it was unconscionable that he might lose such a cushy posting through the nefarious processes of political patronage (because he was such a fine fellow that he didn’t deserve to have such a thing happen to him). This just wasn’t right!
A CUSHY POLITICAL PLUM, THE REWARD FOR PARTY LOYALTY HOW UNFAIR THAT I SHOULD BE SO SUDDENLY DEPRIVED OF IT! HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2017. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: April 25, 2017 HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in HDT WHAT? INDEX
TENNESSEE TENNESSEE the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with