HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
EVENTS OF 1837
General Events of 1838 SPRING JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH SUMMER APRIL MAY JUNE FALL JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER WINTER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER
Following the death of Jesus Christ there was a period of readjustment that lasted for approximately one million years. –Kurt Vonnegut, THE SIRENS OF TITAN
1838
January February March Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 1 2 3 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 28 29 30 31 25 26 27 28 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 April May June Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 29 30 27 28 29 30 31 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
EVENTS OF 1839 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 July August September Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 1 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 29 30 31 26 27 28 29 30 31 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 October November December Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 1 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 28 29 30 31 25 26 27 28 29 30 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Read Henry Thoreau’s Journal for 1837 (æt. 20)
Read Henry Thoreau’s Journal for 1838 (æt. 20-21)
Read Henry Thoreau’s Journal for 1839 (æt. 21-22)
Read Henry Thoreau’s Journal for 1840 (æt. 22-23)
Read Henry Thoreau’s Journal for 1841 (æt. 23-24)
Read Henry Thoreau’s Journal for 1842 (æt. 24-25)
Read Henry Thoreau’s Journal Volume for 1845-1846 (æt. 27-29)
Read Henry Thoreau’s Journal Volume for 1845-1847 (æt. 27-30)
Read Henry Thoreau’s Journal Volume for 1837-1847 (æt. 20-30)
“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. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
22D STANZA: 1838/1839
Henry Thoreau’s 22d stanza began on his birthday, July 12th, Thursday, 1838.
The Thoreau family apparently did not make much of holidays or birthdays — but this was a birthday we now consider symbolic, the 21st — the day after which in our culture every male is entitled to profess himself a grown man.
The question would be, however, whether by the year 1838 such a 21st birthday was being regarded as the gateway to full adulthood, or whether that able-to-drink-alcohol cultural artifact is of a more recent provenance. And if it were already the convention, why is there not something reported as going on, similar to the “chiving” that goes on now as a young man approaches that transition-to-full-adulthood milestone? In the JOURNAL, and in various other historical records I have been consulting, one detects none of this sort of chiving. • Henry Thoreau lost a tooth. • His brother John reopened the defunct Concord Academy and he became a teacher there. The family was living in the Parkman House on the site of the present Concord Free Public Library building. It was in this home that they would hold this school. • An exhibition of hot-air balloon ascension toured Massachusetts. • The rather humorlessly self-righteous James Russell Lowell was rusticating in Concord during this year, having been temporarily expelled from Harvard College for some infraction of college regulations. He was being tutored by the utterly humorlessly self-righteous Reverend Barzillai Frost. They must have made quite a pair! • At Harvard College, Gore Hall was constructed. • Little Louisa May Alcott, about age 5, who had already while a toddler almost drowned in the Boston frogpond, wandered away from home and was found late in the evening by a town crier, huddled on a doorstep in Bedford Street. • The 1st Universalist Society of Concord was gathered. • A Nonresistance Society was formed in Boston, all the members of which were abolitionists because they understood slavery to be a form of violence. • The United States House of Representatives resolved not to accept any more antislavery petitions. • Start of the “Underground Railroad.” • The Reverend Orestes Augustus Brownson began his Boston Quarterly Review. • The Reverend William Ellery Channing suggested that the primary focus of our energies should be toward our own rectification, rather than the rectification of society. The Reverend Brownson retorted that systemic societal problems can never be rectified through self-culture. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 • Some 200 trees were being planted along the road to the Battle Monument. A burial site for the fallen redcoats in Concord or Lexington was disturbed by a phrenologist who would use the skulls he obtained as exhibits.
BACKGROUND EVENTS OF 1838 BACKGROUND EVENTS OF 1839
THE RHODE-ISLAND ALMANAC FOR 1838. By Isaac Bickerstaff. Providence, Rhode Island: Hugh H. Brown. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 While the rather humorlessly self-righteous James Russell Lowell was rusticating in Concord, Massachusetts during this year, having been temporarily expelled from Harvard College for some infraction of college regulations. He was being tutored by the utterly humorlessly self-righteous Reverend Barzillai Frost. They
must have made quite a pair! In this year Lowell would graduate from Harvard as Class Poet despite being quite unable to attend his Class Day and deliver the poem which he had composed for the occasion because he HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
was being ostracized in Concord, so the poem would be published in Cambridge by Metcalf, Torry & Ballou.
One of the poetaster’s biographers would speak of this poem as “immortalizing, to Lowell’s later regret, his reactionary tendencies and sophomoric opposition to the new thoughts and reforms then coming into fashion [such as] Transcendentalism, abolition, woman’s rights, and temperance … Typical of the poem’s style … are these lines directed against Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had just delivered his famous address before the Divinity College students in Cambridge … [lines the level of which] never rises above that of diatribe: they are abusive in their denunciation, unmemorable in phrasing, and humorlessly self-righteous”: They call such doctrines startling, strange, and new, But then they’re his, you know, and must be true; The universal mind requires a change, Its insect wings must have a wider range, It wants no mediator — it can face In its own littleness the Throne of Grace; WALDO EMERSON For miracles and “such things” ’t is too late, To trust in them is now quite out of date, They’re all explainable by nature’s laws— Ay! if you only could find out their CAUSE!… Alas! that Christian ministers should dare To preach the views of Gibbon and Vol tair e ! HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
Charles Pickering had been raised in Wenham, Massachusetts and after attending Harvard College and Harvard Medical School had set up practice in Philadelphia. He had become the librarian and curator of the Academy of Natural Sciences, and at this point was selected to be one of the scientists (functioning primarily as a botanist, but also as a herpetologist and an ichthyologist) with the US South Seas Exploring Expedition (until 1842).
Dr. Asa Gray had planned to participate in the US South Seas Exploring Expedition but delays would lead him to withdraw.
WALDEN: What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring PEOPLE OF Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in WALDEN the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road.
CHARLES WILKES He was appointed professor of botany at the newly formed University of Michigan. Publication of the 1st volume of Professor John Torrey’s A FLORA OF NORTH AMERICA (NY: Wiley & Putnam, 1838-1843), with Professor Gray as a full collaborator. BOTANIZING HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 The three volumes of Thomas Carlyle’s THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: A HISTORY were printed in Boston by the firm of C.C. Little and J. Brown, as two volumes. A copy of this set would be in the personal library of Henry Thoreau and he would refer to the work in his journal. FRENCH REVOLUTION, I FRENCH REVOLUTION, II
SARTOR RESARTUS was printed in England with its anonymous preface by Waldo Emerson touting it as “a Criticism on the Spirit of our Age” and characterizing it as philanthropic, as pure in its moral sentiment, and as commending itself to the heart of “every lover of virtue.” Per BARTLETT’S FAMILIAR QUOTES here is the sum total of what this volume contains that is of continuing import for the quotemongers and toastmasters among us: As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden, — “Speech is silvern, Silence is golden;” or, as I might rather express it, Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity. — Book III. Chapter III.
SARTOR RESARTUS STUDY THIS STRANGENESS
During this year Professor Cornelius Conway Felton of Harvard College got married with Mary Whitney, who had been born on May 5, 1815 to Asa Whitney and Mary Whitney (she would die on April 12, 1845 at the age of 30, after producing two daughters, Mary S. on April 30, 1839 and Julia W. on August 24, 1842).1
A group of undergraduates had in September 1835 begun to publish a magazine of their own writings and would continue this effort until June 1838. The undergraduate David Henry Thoreau had taken no part in such activity. At this point the group reissued the accumulating materials as a 3d book volume:2 HARVARDIANA, VOL. IV
Volume IX of the Reverend Professor Jared Sparks of Harvard’s THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY. LIBRARY OF AM. BIOG. IX
This volume encompassed three contributions:
1. According to a genealogy of the Felton family: “Some of the newspapers said in speaking of the wealth of the literary men of Cambridge, that Prof. Felton had been equally fortunate in his matrimonial connections in regard to wealth with the other professors, viz: Everett, Palfrey, Longfellow, Lowell and Norton, by marrying fortunes in expectancy or possession.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 •LIFE OF BARON STEUBEN by the Reverend Francis Bowen LIFE OF BARON STEUBEN
•LIFE OF SEBASTIAN CABOT by Charles Haywood, Jr. LIFE OF SEBASTIAN CABOT
•LIFE OF WILLIAM EATON by Professor Cornelius Conway Felton LIFE OF WILLIAM EATON
Louisa May Alcott, about age 5, who had already while a toddler almost drowned in the Boston frogpond, wandered away from home and was found late in the evening by a town crier, huddled on a doorstep in Bedford Street. THE ALCOTT FAMILY
Charles T. Jackson, who had in the previous year climbed Mount Ktaadn, in his 2D REPORT ON THE GEOLOGY OF MAINE, wrote of Mount Kineo: TIMELINE OF THE MAINE WOODS Hornstone, which will answer for flints, occurs in various parts of the State, where trap-rocks have acted upon silicious slate. The largest mass of this stone known in the world is Mount Kineo, upon Moosehead Lake, which appears to be entirely composed of it, and rises 2. There would be three such volumes, labeled Volume I, Volume II, and Volume IV. There does not seem to have been a Volume III published in this book form (apparently it was produced only in monthly magazine form) and no electronic text as yet exists, for the Volume I that had been published. The editorial board for this final volume consisted of Rufus King, George Warren Lippitt, Charles Woodman Scates, James Russell Lowell, and Nathan Hale, Jr., and they worked out of student room #27 at Massachusetts Hall. The illustration that they used on the cover page of their magazine was of University Hall: HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 seven hundred feet above the lake level. This variety of hornstone I have seen in every part of New England in the form of Indian arrow-heads, hatchets, chisels, etc., which were probably obtained from this mountain by the aboriginal inhabitants of the country.
DR. JACKSON’S 2D RPT.
THE MAINE WOODS: Ktaadn, whose name is an Indian word signifying highest land, was first ascended by white men in 1804. It was visited by Professor J.W. Bailey of West Point in 1836; by Dr. Charles T. Jackson, the State Geologist, in 1837; and by two young men from Boston in 1845. All these have given accounts of their expeditions. Since I was there, two or three other parties have made the excursion, and told their stories. Besides these, very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters, have ever climbed it, and it will be a long time before the tide of fashionable travel sets that way. The mountainous region of the State of Maine stretches from near the White Mountains, northeasterly one hundred and sixty miles, to the head of the Aroostook River, and is about sixty miles wide. The wild or unsettled portion is far more extensive. So that some hours only of travel in this direction will carry the curious to the verge of a primitive forest, more interesting, perhaps, on all accounts, than they would reach by going a thousand miles westward.
CHARLES TURNER, JR. JACOB WHITMAN BAILEY DR. CHARLES T. JACKSON EDWARD EVERETT HALE WILLIAM FRANCIS CHANNING
Henry Thoreau would comment in THE MAINE WOODS that he had himself found hundreds of arrow-heads made of the same material. It is generally slate-colored, with white specks, HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 becoming a uniform white where exposed to the light and air, and it breaks with a conchoidal fracture, producing a ragged cutting edge. I noticed some conchoidal hollows more than a foot in diameter. I picked up a small thin piece which had so sharp an edge that I used it as a dull knife, and to see what I could do, fairly cut off an aspen one inch thick with it, by bending it and making many cuts; though I cut my fingers badly with the back of it in the meanwhile.
Breveted Major James Duncan Graham of the US Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers was assigned to reconnaissance and surveys for military defenses in Maine. Re-publication of his 1835 A REPORT UPON THE MILITARY AND HYDROGRAPHICAL CHART OF THE EXTREMITY OF CAPE COD: INCLUDING THE TOWNSHIPS OF PROVINCETOWN AND TRURO, WITH THEIR SEACOAST AND SHIP HARBOR: PROJECTED FROM SURVEYS EXECUTED DURING PORTIONS OF THE YEARS 1833, 1834, AND 1835 (United States. Topographical Bureau; this included a map of Provincetown and Truro).
CAPE COD: The Harbor of Provincetown —which, as well as the greater PEOPLE OF part of the Bay, and a wide expanse of ocean, we overlooked from CAPE COD our perch— is deservedly famous. It opens to the south, is free from rocks, and is never frozen over. It is said that the only ice seen in it drifts in sometimes from Barnstable or Plymouth. Dwight remarks that “The storms which prevail on the American DWIGHT coast generally come from the east; and there is no other harbor on a windward shore within two hundred miles.” J.D. Graham, who GRAHAM has made a very minute and thorough survey of this harbor and the adjacent waters, states that “its capacity, depth of water, excellent anchorage, and the complete shelter it affords from all winds, combine to render it one of the most valuable ship harbors on our coast.” It is the harbor of the Cape and of the fishermen of Massachusetts generally. It was known to navigators several years at least before the settlement of Plymouth. In Captain John Smith’s map of New England, dated 1614, it bears the name of JOHN SMITH Milford Haven, and Massachusetts Bay that of Stuard’s Bay. His Highness, Prince Charles, changed the name of Cape Cod to Cape James; but even princes have not always power to change a name for the worse, and as Cotton Mather said, Cape Cod is “a name which I suppose it will never lose till shoals of codfish be seen swimming on its highest hills.”
REVEREND COTTON MATHER CHARLES I HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 The 1st Universalist Society of Concord was gathered. (It would be laid down in 1857 when their Reverend went into the business of manufacturing pencils.)
It was at about this point that Thoreau was struggling to come to grips with why it was that the American pencil was so inferior to the European pencil. Since he knew his family’s graphite to be of excellent quality, though apparently not pure enough or not occurring in large enough pieces to be used without being ground and mixed with binding substances as could be done with the Borrowdale graphite ore, Thoreau inferred that the problem must be in the filler materials that were being utilized, or perhaps in the lead-making process. The Thoreaus were still mixing ground graphite, wax, glue, and spermaceti into a paste, and brushing or pouring this while warm and soft into the grooves of their wooden cases. Thoreau hit the books to get some clue as to what was in good European pencil lead mixtures which made possible the “polygrade” pencils, the hardness or softness of which depended upon the proportions of clay and graphite used, or what different process the European pencil manufacturers might be following. It has been offered that the Johann Faber pencil factory of Nürnberg provided the model which Thoreau was trying to emulate, but this is probably not accurate, as we are not sure that very many pencils marked as produced in Germany were at that time being manufactured by this Conté process. It is true that the Faber family had begun in 1837 to use the Conté process for at least some of their German pencils, but to impress the customer with their quality they were needing to offer these pencils as if they had been produced by a firm “Pannier & Paillard” of Paris.
Thoreau may have been aware that he could obtain fine clay at the Phoenix Crucible Company in Taunton MA or at the New England Glass Company in West Cambridge. He did obtain a good grade of clay from somewhere, and proceeding to experiment with it, he found that while he could immediately produce a harder and blacker pencil lead. This unfortunately did little to solve the problem of grittiness, and so he decided to attempt to correct this fault during the graphite grinding process. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Formation of a Nonresistance Society in Boston. All the members were abolitionists, the reason being that slavery was understood as a form of violence. If one could create a world in which there was no resistance to evil, it would be a world in which there could be no slavery, because this would be a world which lacked the “martial spirit” which was “the same as the spirit of slaveholders, a spirit which leads men to dominate over his brother, to crush and despoil him.” The general agent of the new society was the Reverend Henry C. Wright. The vote to establish the constitution written by William Lloyd Garrison was 30 to 13. Wendell Phillips and William Ladd were in attendance but declined to join. Arthur Tappan would decline to join such a group.
Elizur Wright, Junior relocated to Boston where successively he would edit several gazettes. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 The United States House of Representatives resolved that there would be no more antislavery petitions.
Start of the “Underground Railroad”:
This “railroad” (metaphor) organized by US abolitionists was transporting a select few border-state slaves to freedom in Canada, but the slavery interests in Philadelphia were playing upon the fears of Irish immigrants and other working people who worried that freed slaves might take their jobs or drive down wage rates. In an effort to disrupt such antislavery meetings, a Philadelphia mob would burn down the newly constructed and magnificent Pennsylvania Hall on May 17th.3
3. Webb, Samuel. HISTORY OF PENNSYLVANIA HALL, WHICH WAS DESTROYED BY A MOB ON THE 17TH OF MAY, 1838. Philadelphia, Merrihew and Gunn, 1838. 8vo 200pp. with a frontispiece of Pennsylvania Hall, a spectacular plate of the Hall in flames, and a plate of the Hall after the fire. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
“The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free, that is the task.” — André Gide, THE IMMORALIST translation Richard Howard NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970, page 7
George Bourne’s PICTURE OF SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (Boston) described, however, not an underground railroad but a reverse underground railroad, averring that “Nothing is more common than for two of these white partners in kidnapping ... to start upon the prowl; and if they find a freeman on the road, to demand his certificate, tear it in pieces, or secrete it, tie him to one of their horses, hurry off to some jail, while one whips the citizen along as fast as their horses can travel. There by an understanding with the jailor who shares in the spoil, all possibility of intercourse with his friends is denied the stolen citizen. At the earliest possible period, the captive is sold out to pay the felonious claims of the law ... and then transferred to some of their accomplices of iniquity ... who fill every part of the southern states with rapine, crime, and blood.”
According to Joseph Felt’s ANNALS OF SALEM, in this year an exhibition of a balloon ascension was touring Massachusetts. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
A “villa book” was published by Longman in London, THE SUBURBAN GARDENER, AND VILLA COMPANION by John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843). Would Henry Thoreau ever consult this as a source for his architectural remarks in WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS?
REPLICA OF SHANTY
EMERSON’S SHANTY
Henry Thoreau lost a tooth. DENTISTRY HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 John Claudius Loudon’s ARBORETUM ET FRUTICETUM BRITANNICUM reported that “In the settlements of the Hudson’s Bay Company, tents are made of the bark of [the canoe birch B. papyracea], which, for that purpose, is cut into pieces twelve feet long and four feet wide. These are sewed together by threads made of the white
spruce roots, already mentioned; and so rapidly is a tent put up, that a circular one of twenty feet in diameter, and ten feet high, does not occupy more than half an hour in pitching. The utility of these ‘rind tents,’ as they are called, is acknowledged by every traveller and hunter in the Canadas. They are used throughout the whole year; but, during the hot months of June, July, and August, they are found particularly comfortable”: HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
CAPE COD: Our way to the high sand-bank, which I have described PEOPLE OF as extending all along the coast, led, as usual, through patches CAPE COD of Bayberry bushes, which straggled into the sand. This, next to the Shrub-oak, was perhaps the most common shrub thereabouts. I was much attracted by its odoriferous leaves and small gray berries which are clustered about the short twigs, just below the last year’s growth. I know of but two bushes in Concord, and they, being staminate plants, do not bear fruit. The berries gave it a venerable appearance, and they smelled quite spicy, like small confectionery. Robert Beverley, in his “History of Virginia,” BEVERLEY published in 1705, states that “at the mouth of their rivers, and all along upon the sea and bay, and near many of their creeks and swamps, grows the myrtle, bearing a berry, of which they make a hard brittle wax, of a curious green color, which by refining becomes almost transparent. Of this they make candles, which are never greasy to the touch nor melt with lying in the hottest weather; neither does the snuff of these ever offend the smell, like that of a tallow candle; but, instead of being disagreeable, if an accident puts a candle out, it yields a pleasant fragrancy to all that are in the room; insomuch that nice people often put them out on purpose to have the incense of the expiring snuff. The melting of these berries is said to have been first found out by a surgeon in New England, who performed wonderful things with a salve made of them.” From the abundance of berries still hanging on the bushes, we judged that the inhabitants did not generally collect them for tallow, though we had seen a piece in the house we had just left. I have since made some tallow myself. Holding a basket beneath the bare twigs in April, I rubbed them together between my hands and thus gathered about a quart in twenty minutes, to which were added enough to make three pints, and I might have gathered them much faster with a suitable rake and a large shallow basket. They have little prominences like those of an orange all encased in tallow, which also fills the interstices down to the stone. The oily part rose to the top, making it look like a savory black broth, which smelled much like balm or other herb tea. You let it cool, then skim off the tallow from the surface, melt this again and strain it. I got about a quarter of a pound weight from my three pints, and more yet remained within the berries. A small portion cooled in the form of small flattish hemispheres, like crystallizations, the size of a kernel of corn (nuggets I called them as I picked them out from amid the berries). Loudon says, that “cultivated trees are said to yield J.C. LOUDON more wax than those that are found wild.” (See Duplessy, Végétaux DUPLESSY Résineux, Vol. II. p. 60.) If you get any pitch on your hands in the pine-woods you have only to rub some of these berries between your hands to start it off. But the ocean was the grand fact there, which made us forget both bayberries and men. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
CAPE COD: In the north part of the town there is no house from PEOPLE OF shore to shore for several miles, and it is as wild and solitary CAPE COD as the Western Prairies –used to be. Indeed, one who has seen every house in Truro will be surprised to hear of the number of the inhabitants, but perhaps five hundred of the men and boys of this small town were then abroad on their fishing-grounds. Only a few men stay at home to till the sand or watch for blackfish. The farmers are fishermen-farmers and understand better ploughing the sea than the land. They do not disturb their sands much, though there is a plenty of sea-weed in the creeks, to say nothing of blackfish occasionally rotting on the shore. Between the Pond and East Harbor Village there was an interesting plantation of pitch-pines, twenty or thirty acres in extent, like those which we had already seen from the stage. One who lived near said that the land was purchased by two men for a shilling or twenty-five cents an acre. Some is not considered worth writing a deed for. This soil or sand, which was partially covered with poverty and beach grass, sorrel, &c., was furrowed at intervals of about four feet and the seed dropped by a machine. The pines had come up admirably and grown the first year three or four inches, and the second six inches and more. Where the seed had been lately planted the white sand was freshly exposed in an endless furrow winding round and round the sides of the deep hollows, in a vortical spiral manner, which produced a very singular effect, as if you were looking into the reverse side of a vast banded shield. This experiment, so important to the Cape, appeared very successful, and perhaps the time will come when the greater part of this kind of land in Barnstable County will be thus covered with an artificial pine forest, as has been done in some parts of France. In that country 12,500 acres of downs had been thus covered in 1811 near Bayonne. They are called pignadas, and according to Loudon “constitute the principal riches of the inhabitants, where J.C. LOUDON there was a drifting desert before.” It seemed a nobler kind of grain to raise than corn even. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Gore Hall was constructed (the image below is as of 1855, before its expansion): HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 This would be expanded to function as the Harvard Library until 1913 when its site would be cleared for the construction of Widener Library (the image is as of 1876):
The Reverend Orestes Augustus Brownson began the Boston Quarterly Review. He wrote to Martin Van Buren, the Democratic president of the United States, that: “I wish … to say that this Review is established for the purpose of enlisting Literature, Religion, and Philosophy on the side of Democracy.” He offered that democracy was not merely the tenet of the President’s political party, was not merely an institution of majority rule, but was a spiritual movement, and a social and philosophical doctrine. Democracy represented “the movement of the masses towards a better social condition than has heretofore existed,” and thus constituted the more perfect application of Christian principles to humankind’s social and political relations. The task facing the Democrats was to put an end to privilege and to the political party of the Whigs, and to the moneyed interests which that apparatus served.
The Reverend William Ellery Channing declared, in his essay “Self-Culture,” that the primary focus of our energies should be upon our own rectification rather than the rectification of society in general, which was an end in itself rather than merely a means to a greater end. In reaction to this, the Reverend Brownson would declare, in his essay “The Laboring Classes” in his Boston Quarterly Review for July 1840, that “Self-culture is a good thing, but it cannot abolish inequality, nor restore men to their rights.”4 1ST QUARTER, 1838 2D QUARTER, 1838 3D QUARTER, 1838 4TH QUARTER, 1838
4. Refer to Robinson, David. APOSTLE OF CULTURE: EMERSON AS PREACHER AND LECTURER. Philadelphia PA: U of Pennsylvania P, 1982. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In this year Spiridione Gambardella painted the portrait of the Reverend Channing which is now, thanks to Mary Channing Eustis, on display at the Andover-Harvard Theological Library of the Harvard Divinity School, 45 Francis Avenue in Cambridge. It may be that this frequently reproduced engraving has been created on the basis of this portrait: HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In London, publication of Alexander Walker’s INTERMARRIAGE: OR THE MODE IN WHICH, AND THE CAUSES WHY, BEAUTY, HEALTH, AND INTELLECT RESULT FROM CERTAIN UNIONS, AND DEFORMITY, DISEASE AND INSANITY FROM OTHERS; ... EACH PARENT BESTOWS ON CHILDREN IN CONFORMITY WITH CERTAIN NATURAL LAWS. (Since a copy of this would be found in the library of Bronson Alcott at the point of his death, it is rather likely that Henry Thoreau had had access to it. It would be interesting to find out what this volume had to offer about cases of racial mixture, as in the case of the mulatto young lady Mary Ann Shadd who in this year was FEMINISM graduating from the Quaker Boarding School in West Chester near Philadelphia and going on to become herself a teacher of children.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In Blackwood’s Magazine, Thomas De Quincey’s tales of terror “The Household Wreck” (January) and “The Avenger” (August). In Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, two articles on his “Recollections of Charles Lamb.”
THE PROSE WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB. IN THREE VOLUMES (London: Edward Moxon). Henry Thoreau would quote from “Specimens from the Writings of Fuller, the Church Historian” in this set of volumes in his journal for Fall 1846 and at two places in A WEEK. LAMB’S PROSE WORKS, I LAMB’S PROSE WORKS, II LAMB’S PROSE WORKS, III
A WEEK: If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are PEOPLE OF not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon A WEEK the walls of the temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far to seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes shape and confirms some story which we had read. As Fuller said, commenting on the zeal of Camden, “A broken urn is a whole evidence; or an old gate still surviving out of which the city is run out.” When Solon endeavored to prove that Salamis had formerly belonged to the Athenians, and not to the Megareans, he caused the tombs to be opened, and showed that the inhabitants of Salamis turned the faces of their dead to the same side with the Athenians, but the Megareans to the opposite side. There they were to be interrogated.
THOMAS FULLER WILLIAM CAMDEN LAMB ON FULLER HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
A WEEK: What is called common sense is excellent in its PEOPLE OF department, and as invaluable as the virtue of conformity in the A WEEK army and navy, — for there must be subordination, — but uncommon sense, that sense which is common only to the wisest, is as much more excellent as it is more rare. Some aspire to excellence in the subordinate department, and may God speed them. What Fuller says of masters of colleges is universally applicable, that “a little alloy of dulness in a master of a college makes him fitter to manage secular affairs.” “He that wants faith, and apprehends a grief Because he wants it, hath a true belief; And he that grieves because his grief’s so small, Has a true grief, and the best Faith of all.” Or be encouraged by this other poet’s strain, — “By them went Fido marshal of the field: Weak was his mother when she gave him day; And he at first a sick and weakly child, As e’er with tears welcomed the sunny ray; Yet when more years afford more growth and might, A champion stout he was, and puissant knight, As ever came in field, or shone in armor bright. “Mountains he flings in seas with mighty hand; Stops and turns back the sun’s impetuous course; Nature breaks Nature’s laws at his command; No force of Hell or Heaven withstands his force; Events to come yet many ages hence, He present makes, by wondrous prescience; Proving the senses blind by being blind to sense.”
THOMAS FULLER LAMB ON FULLER HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 The Boston Society of Natural History elected Curators for its various departments of knowledge.
Schoolmaster George Barrell Emerson (above) was offered the Fisher Professorship in Natural History at Harvard College, but elected to remain instead with his Boston school for young ladies (a few years later he would support Asa Gray’s appointment to this professorate). When Professor Gray would donate his herbarium to the university, the schoolmaster would be instrumental in raising funds with which to endow it. After the transfer of this herbarium to the college, the schoolmaster would serve on its visiting committee for the herbarium and Professor Gray would turn to him when funds were needed to advance its work.
A 3d edition of the Reverend Professor Edward Hitchcock’s state-subsidized REPORTS ON THE GEOLOGY, MINERALOGY, BOTANY, AND ZOÖLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS, MADE AND PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THAT STATE (the Concord lyceum like every other town lyceum would possess a freebie copy of this — available for the perusal of Henry Thoreau). HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 At some point between this year and the year 1844, one or another of the burial sites for the fallen redcoats in Concord or Lexington was disturbed by Doctor Walton Felch, a phrenologist who had obtained the prior permission of Town selectmen. He would later be using the two skulls he obtained in his lectures and exhibitions. DIGGING UP THE DEAD
After his death one of these skulls would disappear but one, with a bullet hole, would be recovered by the Concord Antiquarian Society. In darkness and secrecy on the night of December 5, 1891, Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar and a helper would reinter that skull, and would choose to do so at the Old North Bridge gravesite in Concord. It is not known for sure, however, from which burial locale this skull had originally been removed.
Noah Webster became president of the New Haven Common School Convention.
The Thoreaus were living in the “Parkman House, to fall of 1844,” on the site of the present Concord Free Public Library building in Concord (which would not be erected until 1873). It was in this home that the Thoreau brothers would hold their school.
CONCORD ZOOM MAP
In Concord, some 200 trees were being planted along the road to the Battle Monument.
Ephraim Merriam was chosen representative for Concord to the General Court of Massachusetts.
Nathaniel Baker died in Lincoln. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Possibly in this timeframe Henry Thoreau was already studying a book from Waldo Emerson’s library, the 2d edition of Baron Joseph-Marie de Gérando’s HISTOIRE COMPARÉE DES SYSTÉMES DE PHILOSOPHIE, CONSIDÉRÉS RELATIVEMENT AUX PRINCIPES DES CONNAISSANCES HUMAINES, for we find comments in his “Miscellaneous Extracts” notebook dating approximately to this timeframe, on Professor Christian Garve’s “Sur la Manière d’Écrire l’Histoire de la Philosopie.” SYSTÈMES DE PHILOSOPHIE I SYSTÈMES DE PHILOSOPHIE II SYSTÈMES DE PHILOSOPHIE III SYSTÈMES DE PHILOSOPHIE IV
In this year the British government disassociated the East India Company from obligations into which it had entered, to maintain the temples of India. Forget your promises, that’s an order!
The Reverend William Adam abandoned India and joined his family in the United States. He would further journey from Boston to London, to attend the initial meeting of an antislavery group, the British India Society.
James Robert Ballantyne’s A GRAMMAR OF THE HINDUSTANI LANGUAGE (Edinburgh).
Monier Williams matriculated at King’s College School, Balliol College of Oxford University.
At the end of the journal entries for this year, Waldo Emerson listed his readings in Oriental materials during the period: “Hermes Trismegistus; Synesius; Proclus; Thomas Taylor; Institutes of Menu; Sir William Jones, Translations of Asiatic Poetry; Buddha. Zoroaster; Confucius.”
Again Emerson copied extracts from the Confucian canon into his journals, extracts such as “Action, such as Confucius describes the speech of God.” EMERSON AND CHINA
M.J. Pauthier translated the TAO TÊ CHING into French.5
LIGHT FROM CHINA TAOISM
5. Lyman V. Cady’s inference that Henry Thoreau could not have encountered Taoism, based as it was on incomplete evidence about the sorts of Taoist reading material available in Indo-European languages during Thoreau’s lifetime, must now be subjected to reexamination. A Latin version of the TAO TÊ CHING would be created by Jesuits, and two German translations would appear, during the 1840s. These were all, of course, languages that Thoreau could read. David T.Y. Ch’en has become convinced on the basis of new evidence of the 19th-Century availability of such translations, and on the basis of detective work among several strands of converging internal evidence, and on the basis of a series of seven paradoxes written into Thoreau’s journal on June 26, 1840, that Thoreau had as of that date just been perusing one or another of the translations of Lao-tze, most likely this one by Pauthier. – For more information, refer to that entry for June 26, 1840. CHINA THOREAU AND CHINA HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 According to Anita Haya Patterson’s FROM EMERSON TO KING: DEMOCRACY, RACE, AND THE POLITICS OF PROTEST (NY: Oxford UP, 1997, pages 131-2), at this point Waldo Emerson’s journal demonstrates that Emerson was ready to naturalize genocide:
Each race of man resembles an apple or a pear, the Nubian, the Negro, the Tartar, the Greek, he vegetates, thrives, & multiplies, usurps all the soil & nutriment, & so kills the weaker races.
She goes on to point up the fact that although Emerson, like so many of his contemporaries who were presuming their own race to be inherently and intrinsically superior, was wont to speculate bloodily that the inferior nonwhite races would most likely be exterminated, this is far from all the information and guidance that we might extrapolate from these foul droppings of his pen — if we can bring ourselves to pay careful attention: HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
The sheer weight of evidence that proves the fact of Waldo Emerson’s racism is disturbing. However, we would miss the focus of this discussion –namely, the historical function of racism in Emerson’s writings– were we simply to dismiss him for exhibiting the racist perceptions of his time.... Emerson’s racism is central to his vision of American nationality — a compelling, myopic vision that must be viewed in the context of a violent policy of westward expansion that prevailed in nineteenth-century America. In NATURE, Emerson’s unmistakable reference to the raciality of the American self allows him to situate that self at the brink of egocentric absolutism: at the same time he expresses a near disavowal of human society represented by ties to the liberal-democratic state in NATURE, Emerson’s racist imagination of the white, male body of Columbus is a framework for social cohesion. For Emerson, race functions to express both a threat to and an affirmation of social order. Generally speaking, Emerson’s racist vision of the representative self is essential for his articulation of a call to revolution — what Henry Thoreau (and, much later, [the Reverend] Martin Luther King, Jr.) would designate as “civil disobedience.”
“Waldo Emerson’s profound racism abated over time, but it never disappeared, always hovering in the background and clouding his democratic vision. Like all too many of his fellow intellectuals, throughout his life and works Emerson remained convinced that the characteristics that made the United States, for all its flaws, the great nation of the world were largely the product of its Saxon heritage and history. Here, alas, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s democratic imagination largely failed him.” — Peter Field HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
YOU SEE, I’M A WHITE MAN HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 According to Professor Walter Roy Harding’s THE DAYS OF HENRY THOREAU (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966):
“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar” WALTER HARDING’S BIOGRAPHY Chapter 4 (1837-1838) -After graduation from Harvard, Henry David Thoreau taught school in Concord but quit after two weeks as a result of a dispute over corporal punishment. He searched in vain elsewhere for a teaching position. He then turned to his father’s pencil business and through Harvard library research developed a superior pencil. Thoreau was developing his friendship with Waldo Emerson, who introduced him to members of the “Hedge Club” (begun in 1836) who became known as the Transcendentalists. Some members of the Hedge Club were: FH Hedge, Rev George Ripley, Rev Orestes Brownson, Rev Jones Very, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, Bronson Alcott, Rev Theodore Parker, C.P. Cranch, Rev John Sullivan Dwight and Thoreau (in fall of 1837.) The Emerson/Thoreau friendship flourished. Many like Lowell saw him as an inferior copy of Emerson, but Emerson defended Thoreau’s originality. Bronson Alcott moved to Concord to be near Emerson and became a friend of and influence upon Thoreau. Thoreau delivered his first lecture to the Concord Lyceum on April 11, 1838. (Robert L. Lace, January-March 1986) HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Per Professor Walter Roy Harding’s THE DAYS OF HENRY THOREAU. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965: “A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar” Chapter 5 (1838-1841) -Henry Thoreau opened his own tutoring service in June 1838 and by October he had taken over as master of Concord Academy, where he was soon joined by his brother John. John taught the “English branches” and Henry Greek, Latin, French, physical and natural sciences, philosophy and history. The school was successful and very highly regarded but was discontinued after 3 years due to John’s illness. John and Henry left for a trip on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers on Aug 31, 1839. The fourteen day journey “on the surface was simply a vacation lark of the two young men. But as the years passed, it had a growing significance in Thoreau’s mind.” The trip provided much of the eventual material for A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS. (Robert L. Lace, January-March 1986)
“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar” Chapter 6 (1839-1842) Thoreau’s Loves -Ellen Devereux Sewall visited Concord and the Thoreau house in June of 1839. Henry fell deeply in love with her and began to write love poems immediately. His brother John also fell for her, and went to visit her immediately after their river trip (at Scituate). Henry “stepped aside” for brother John, whose proposal of marriage was refused. Henry proposed later by mail but, as his journal indicates, expected the refusal he received. Henry never forgot Ellen and shortly before his death avowed “I have always loved her.” Henry fell in love again in 1842 with Mary Russell but it came to nothing. After 1842 Henry Thoreau was a confirmed bachelor and outwardly portrayed a Victorian aversion to the subject of sex. (Robert L. Lace, January-March 1986) HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”
Chapter 7(a) (1839-1843) -On Sept 18, 1839 the Hedge Club proposed the creation of the Dial. Margaret Fuller was the first editor. Henry Thoreau published the following in the Dial: 1st issue -poem “Sympathy” (for Ellen Devereux Sewall) July 1840 -short critical essay on Aulus Persius Flaccus - Roman poet July 1841 -“Sic Vita” Oct 1841 -poem on friendship July 1842 -(Waldo Emerson now editor) NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS and “My Prayer” Oct 1842 -8 poems “The Black Knight,” “The Inward Morning,” “Free Love,” “The Poet’s Delay,” “Rumors from an Aeolian Harp,” “The Moon,” “To a Maiden in the East” and “The Summer Rain.” It turned out to be a better than average addition due to the quality of the contributions. October 1843 “A Winter Walk” (essay) January 1844 -Pindar translation and appreciative essay on the anti-slavery weekly Herald of Freedom. In all Thoreau published 31 poems, essays and other contributions in the Dial. The Dial dissolved as the Transcendentalists drifted apart, but Thoreau “still kept the flame of Transcendentalism burning in his own life.” (Robert L. Lace, January-March 1986) HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Leverenz, David. “The Politics of Emerson’s Man-Making Words,” PMLA 101 (1986), 38-56. “A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”
Starts out with an anecdote about a professor who tried to write a book about Emerson and never got it finished. Jonathan Bishop: “There is something at the heart of Emerson’s message profoundly recalcitrant to the formulations of the discursive intelligence. Emerson wrote to Thomas Carlyle in 1838: “Here I sit & read & write with very little system, & as far as regards composition with the most fragmentary result: paragraphs incompressible each sentence an infinitely repellent particle” (CORRESPONDENCE 185). Also picks up on Harold Bloom (Yale) and Woody Hayes (Ohio State) both tooling around the country talking about how Emerson is their spiritual leader, and gives them (us?) “access to manly power” (38). The main argument begins with the early essays (“Self-Reliance” etc.), where the word “man” should not be seen as inclusive. Emerson’s modern, democratic, individualized “man” is not king, and he is also not a woman — several JOURNAL passages emphasize that. Power should be in the man’s mind, not in government or property. The second section points to Emerson’s proposal that a “new cultural elite” should run things, and that you don’t have to be rich to get into that crowd. There’s a bit on how Waldo Emerson resented his minister father, the Reverend William Emerson, who favored Waldo’s brothers — Mary Moody Emerson helped him get free of his father. He developed an “evangelical political fantasy” (46) that the Smart People would have to counter more obviously powerful groups who were taking over the frontier — this matches typical New England fantasies. It also picks up on general social changes between 1825 and 1850, where shopkeeping and the Boston brahmins were replaced by managers and professionals. These new men took over. [cf. EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS for a similar history of these years. People simply stopped asking Adamses to be president.] The third section deals with Emerson’s later sense of powerlessness, in contrast to “The nonchalance of boys who are sure of dinner” (“Self-Reliance”). Several biographers blamed Emerson’s “inhibited” mother for his depressive strategy and emotional withdrawal. (Ruth Haskins Emerson died in 1853. ) Leverenz dislikes the evasiveness of “Experience,” not just Emerson’s inability to deal with his son’s death, but his “impersonal geometry” (52): “Two human beings are like globes, which can touch only in a point” (“Experience”). The general conclusion is that Emerson’s obsession with power masks rivalry, fears of failure, and a shifting society that he could not control — “alienated liberalism” (53).
[DR 5/89] HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
26-year-old Jehiel Lillie’s PHILIP, OR THE INDIAN CHIEF was performed by the cadets at Vermont’s Norwich Military Academy. The gist of this seems to have been, why did our white ancestors perp so as to almost make it necessary for us to be embarrassed for them –or shamed even– when the eventual extermination of native Americans and their culture was so obviously an inevitability and therefore nothing unseemly was needed.6
Bad white ancestors! Shame on you for being caught red-handed, embarrassing your heirs!
Yet again Timothy Dexter’s A PICKLE FOR THE KNOWING ONES: OR, PLAIN TRUTHS IN A HOMESPUN DRESS.
Samuel L. Knapp’s LIFE OF TIMOTHY DEXTER; EMBRACING SKETCHES OF THE ECCENTRIC CHARACTERS THAT COMPOSED HIS ASSOCIATES (Boston: Published by G.N. Thomson, 32 Washington Street). Knapp joked that “There are but few men who are sufficiently attentive to their own thoughts, and able to analyze every motive or action. Among these, Timothy Dexter was not one.”
Prideaux John Selby became one of the editors of the Annals of Natural History, Or Magazine of Zoology, Botany, and Geology (new name for the Magazine of Zoology and Botany).
Joseph Wolff was ordained priest by Richard Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor, and received the rectory of Linthwaite in Yorkshire (Trinity College in Dublin awarded an honorary LL.D.).
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Stoddart, a British officer, was taken prisoner by Emir Nasrullah Khan of Bukhara on the Silk Road.
Francis Galton began medical training in Birmingham.
Christopher Dunkin became secretary to Canada’s Education Commission, and then the Postal Service Commission.
A 2d edition of Edward Jesse’s 1835 GLEANINGS IN NATURAL HISTORY, THIRD AND LAST SERIES. TOWHICH ARE ADDED NOTICES OF SOME OF THE ROYAL PARKS AND RESIDENCES (London).7 GLEANINGS IN NATURAL HISTORY
George Payne Rainsford James’s THE HUGUENOT; A TALE OF THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS.
A new Austrian government allowed Count Francesco Arese to return to Italy.
William Henry Harvey’s THE GENERA OF SOUTH AFRICAN PLANTS (Cape Town). 6. Jehiel Lillie (1812, Tunbridge, Vermont-1875, Selma, Alabama) matriculated at the Norwich Military Academy in 1835 and received his A.B. in 1838. Afterward he would study for the law and in 1839 be admitted to the bar of Orange County at Chelsea, Vermont, relocating his law practice to Selma, Alabama in 1842. This play in the north in which white men acted the roles of both races (How! Ugh!) may be only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, or only one of the cute white little baby seal cubs that need to be clubbed. We badly need to locate the drama he must have authored about the race slavery of the south — a dramatization in which of course white actors would similarly play the roles of both races (Yessuh, Massah!). –Or, maybe not. 7. Many American publishers consider Henry Thoreau to fall within their category “nature writer” — some have considered him the creator of this category in America, others derogate him as one of it poorest exemplars because he fails to focus on the pleasantries they vend. It may be useful, therefore, to contrast Thoreau with a well-published “nature writer” of his own period such as this Edward Jesse, Esquire — why don’t you struggle to detect some similarities with the life or writings of Thoreau? HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
Although Nicolò Paganini had sought various treatments for his throat malady, including homeopathic remedies, in Paris, this had been to no avail. Nonetheless he had been able to attend concerts of Hector Berlioz’s music. His gambling casino in Paris being a failure, for the benefit of his throat he relocated to Marseilles and then Nice.
Dr. Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan’s A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE HON. LOUIS JOSEPH PAPINEAU, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY OF LOWER CANADA was published in the Sentinel of Saratoga Springs, New York.8
This year’s currency inflation would be:9
1830 $111 £87.2
1831 $104 £95.9
1832 $103 £88.8
1833 $101 £83.4
1834 $103 £76.9
1835 $106 £78.1
1836 $112 £86.8
1837 $115 £89.0
1838 $112 £89.6
1839 $112 £96.1
1840 $104 £97.9
8. In the previous year Dr. O’Callaghan and Speaker Papineau had fled together to the US upon the failure of the Canadian insurrection. 9. Get a sense of what this amounts to in today’s money, at:
1838 1838
Edward William Lane began to publish a translation of the ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, in monthly parts. Lane’s version was bowdlerized, and yet included an exceedingly suggestive illustration by William Harvey.
1,001 NIGHTS
In the REPORTS OF THE COMMISSIONERS ON THE ZOÖLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE STATE (Massachusetts House Documents, No. 72), pages 105-107 consisted of a report by Augustus Addison Gould on molluscous and the other lower animals. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 During this year and the following one, Henry Hallam’s INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE IN THE 15TH, 16TH AND 17TH CENTURIES. HALLAM’S LITERATURE, I HALLAM’S LITERATURE, II HALLAM’S LITERATURE, III HALLAM’S LITERATURE, IV
This would be accessed by Henry Thoreau, and he would in 1846 place reminders in his journal in regard to further readings in European literature which he was intending to pursue.
Having been forced to sell his Newfoundland farm at a loss, and hard up for cash, Philip Henry Gosse taught for a bit less than eight months for Reuben Saffold, the owner of Belvoir, a slave plantation near Pleasant Hill, Alabama.
Gosse studied and drew the local flora and fauna (he sighted nor only turtledoves Zenaida macroura but also the ivory-billed woodpecker Campephilus principalis, now extinct) and recorded negative impressions of race slavery. This would be published in 1859 as LETTERS FROM ALABAMA, (U.S.) CHIEFLY RELATING TO NATURAL HISTORY (a book that would be accessed by Henry Thoreau). LETTERS FROM ALABAMA ALABAMA/GOSSE (YOU-TUBE)
Midshipman James Melville Gilliss became a Lieutenant. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Caleb G. Forshey clambered up the high bluffs of Natchez along the Mississippi River and “looked down upon the Concordia plantations and the vast Mississippi alluvion and deemed it worthy the ambition of a hero to undertake its rescue” (clearly, here was an engineer-type who was bartering his soul in a Faustian equation of uselessness with wickedness). Ein Sumpf zieht am Gebirge hin, Verpestet alles schon Errungene; Den faulen Pfuhl auch abzuziehn, Das letzte waer das Hoechsterrungene, Eroeffn ich Raeume vielen Millionen, Nicht sicher zwar, doch taetig-frei zu wohnen.
From this year into 1841, Friedrich Gerstäcker would be wandering about in the new state of Arkansas, hunting to feed himself and working to support himself while paying attention to the tales of the frontier folk. He came across, for instance, a free black storekeeper of Independence County between Batesville and Oil Trough, Lewis Nailer, who himself owned two black slaves (such free Negroes would tolerated in the state until the last day of the year 1859). A romantic experience of the author in the northwestern district of Arkansas has been reprocessed, it would seem, in the 20th-Century musical Brigadoon. The descendants of the Quaker family of John McKinney, Sophie McKinney, and John England Myers can be proud, for their pioneer forebears have been beamed up from the “isolated, remote White River valley in Madison Co., Arkansas” onto the Broadway stage (by way of the almost forgotten short story GERMELSHAUSEN and the repositioning of the village to Scotland by Alan Jay Lerner and Friedrich Lowe).
“Never in my life had I felt from the first moment so completely domesticated as with these people.”
The wandering German did not keep a daily diary and would begin to write up a narrative only safely returning from what he would term “the wilds of America.” The author would marry, back in Germany, and have children, and although he would return to America twice more it seems that he would make no attempt to seek out his former Ozark Quaker sweetheart (that was probably well enough, because Sophie had died in 1843).
Charles Louis Flint, at the age of 14, went to live with an uncle in Norway, Maine.
For part of this school year, although he would not take a degree, David Greene Haskins studied at the Andover Theological Seminary (he would obtain his principal theological training later in Roxbury, by the private instruction of the Reverend Mark Anthony DeWolfe Howe, who afterwards would become bishop of Central Pennsylvania).
After leaving Andover he would teach for a while in Jamaica Plain, while serving as a private tutor for the son of General McNeil, who was being fitted to enter West Point. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Henry William Herbert’s CROMWELL. AN HISTORICAL NOVEL.
In France in this year the feat was being accomplished, of measuring the distance to a star. ASTRONOMY
The 1st “steamer” was venturing onto the streets. The first photographs were being taken. And, Joseph- Héliodore-Sagesse-Vertu Garcin de Tassy was elected to take the seat at the Institut de France (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres) vacated upon the death of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, becoming a Chevalier de la Legion de honnoeur.
An English edition of Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s HISTOIRE DE LA RÉVOLUTION D’ANGLETERRE DEPUIS CHARLES I À CHARLES II, in two volumes (Oxford). HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 William MacGillivray’s A HISTORY OF BRITISH QUADRUPEDS.
The Camden Society was founded in honor of William Camden. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Once the British Government had taken over, the annual subsidy of £90,000 that it had cost the East India Company to maintain St. Helena was no longer available. The order of the day was belt-tightening economy, and there were many cases of hardship when Company servants were dismissed from their posts. Many families and over a hundred young men, finding life difficult and seeing no prospect of improvement, emigrated to the Cape of Good Hope.
A missionary, of course, must have a wife. The Reverend William Ellis remarried with Sarah Stickney (1799- 1872), a published author of books on the roles of women in society.10
The Reverend Ellis had been asked by the directors of the London Missionary Society to write up his
10. She had started out as a Quaker but had become an Independent or Congregationalist. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 researches about the island of Madagascar, and this appeared as a 2-volume HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 By this point Alexander William Doniphan was serving as a brigadier general in the Missouri state militia. Leading a force of state troops, he arrested Joseph Smith and other Mormon leaders and ordered them to leave Missouri. However, when he received orders to execute Smith, he ignored them, and prevented vigilantes from harming Mormon leaders.
James Ellsworth De Kay’s “Zoological Dept” SECOND ANNUAL REPORT OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE STATE MADE FEBRUARY 20, 1838. Albany, New York (abstracted and reviewed in the American Journal of Science Volume 36:1-49).
The former recipient of the village Poor Relief, the successful “fossilist” Mary Anning, was awarded an annuity by the British Association of the Advancement of Science and a stipend by the Geological Society. She would become the initial honorary member of the newly founded Dorset County Museum — which today is at the site of the cottage in which she had been born.
At the age of 18, after completing his education at Eton in England, Roualeyn George Gordon-Cumming enlisted in the service of the East India Company as a cornet in the Madras Light Cavalry.
Loring Dudley Chapin was elected to the New York legislature on behalf of a “Native American” party which he had helped to create by joining the “Whigs” to the “American Party.”
William Carpenter became the editor of the Era.
Edward George Earle Bulwer was created a baronet. His novel ALICE and play The Lady of Lyons. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
Sir David Brewster FRS was appointed principal of the united colleges of St Salvator and St Leonard, University of St Andrews.
The Reverend Joseph Bosworth’s DICTIONARY OF THE ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGE. BOSWORTH’S ANGLOSAXON
Alexander Wilson’s THE FORESTERS; A POEM, DESCRIPTIVE OF A PEDESTRIAN JOURNEY TO THE FALLS OF NIAGARA, IN THE AUTUMN OF 1804 (Pennsylvania: Joseph Painter). NIAGARA FALLS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Despite his lack of scholarly preparation, the Reverend Charles Brooks was elected Professor of Natural History in the University of the City of New York.
The Reverend Professor Henry Hart Milman edited Edward Gibbon’s DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Also in this year, A SELECTION OF PSALMS AND HYMNS, ADAPTED TO THE USE OF THE CHURCH OF ST. MARGARET, WESTMINSTER, BY H.H. MILMAN. By Henry Hart Milman, Westminster St. Margaret (London: J.B. Nichols and Son). HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Asher Benjamin’s THE BUILDER’S GUIDE. In this year and the following one he would design the Fifth Universalist Church at 74 Warrenton Street in Boston (now the Charles Playhouse). He designed this building, as you can see below, with two shops at street level that the congregation could rent out in order to generate church funds.
Stephen Symonds Foster graduated from Dartmouth College. While a student he had refused to participate in military drill and in consequence had been jailed.
(He would persist in this path of “intransigent righteousness.” For instance, while attending the Union Theological Seminary in New-York, when refused permission to hold a prayer meeting against war he would abandon such studies and content himself instead with becoming an itinerant preacher.)
George Bancroft got married for a 2d time, with the widow Elizabeth Davis Bliss.
Samuel Slaughter Bailey was born. The father, Lieutenant Jacob Whitman Bailey, at this point became West Point’s acting professor of Chemistry, Mineralogy and Geology. During the same year, the laboratory at the United States Military Academy would burn down. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
Ebenezer Bailey established a school for boys in Roxbury. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Singing Grass, the “squaw” of Kit Carson, gave birth to a 2d daughter but developed a fever shortly after the birth, and would die a some point within the following couple of years.
James Pierson Beckwourth was an Indian trader on the Arkansas River, working out of Fort Vasquez, Colorado, near Platteville, Colorado with the Cheyennes. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
George Back’s NARRATIVE OF AN EXPEDITION IN HMS TERROR, UNDERTAKEN WITH A VIEW TO GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERY ON THE ARCTIC SHORES, IN THE YEARS 1836-37 (London, J. Murray). THE FROZEN NORTH
Dr. John Aitken Carlyle became travelling physician to the duke of Buccleuch, and returned with him to Europe. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Charles Darwin formulated a new theory of natural selection, but due to a responsibility which he deeply felt in regard to its not fully thought out but obviously manifold implications for the practices of religion, politics, and culture, was careful to tell no-one. EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS
After having published for a decade about fossil fishes, Louis Agassiz would until 1842 be publishing about the fossil echinoderms of Switzerland.
Although Professor Thomas Bell had supported the arrangements for publication of ZOOLOGY OF THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. BEAGLE, he had been very slow to make progress on the work, and though the first parts of work were at this point published, Part 5, his contribution on reptiles, would not be published until 1842 and 1843 — and then subsequently he would neglect to take any action at all in regard to the crustacea. THE SCIENCE OF 1838
Friend William Henry Farquhar built “The Cedars.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 The Reverend William Ingraham Kip became rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Albany, New York.
The Union Theological Seminary conferred its D.D. degree upon Chester Dewey.
In New York, the Scottsville and Le Roy Railroad was built at the cost of $40,0000, using wooden rails. It only reached from Scottsville to Caledonia.
Asa Fitch decided to start studying agriculture and entomology. He began to collect and study insects for New York State.
The formative meeting of the American Association of Geologists took place at the home of Ebenezer Emmons in Albany, New York (this organization was the predecessor of the American Association for the HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Advancement of Science). In this year he named the Adirondack region of mountains.
THE SCIENCE OF 1838
French novelist George Sand began a 9-year liaison with composer Frédéric François Chopin. She continued to scandalize Europe with her masculine attire and cigar smoking.
In 1827 Leroux had extracted Salicin, an ingredient of willow bark used to relieve fever and rheumatic pain. At this point, salicylic acid was manufactured from salicin. (In 1853, acetylsalicylic acid would be synthesized by Charles Gerhardt. From 1884 to 1894 the aspirin family of pain and fever relievers would be being introduced by the German chemical industry — think Bayer.)
Having, they considered, obtained about enough money from show business, and having achieved their US citizenship, Chang and Eng took the name of Bunker (after a friend of theirs in Boston), and purchased a plantation in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina.
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevski, but not his older brother Mikhail, was admitted to St. Petersburg’s Academy of Military Engineers.
On page 54 of B. Drake’s TALES, &C., issued in Cincinnati: Why did you play Sam Patch, and jump into the river?
In SKETCH OF THE CIVIL ENGINEERING OF NORTH AMERICA (London), engineer David Stevenson devoted an entire chapter to the American tendency to move houses around. CHAPTER XII. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 HOUSE-MOVING. In consequence of the great value of labour, the Americans adopt, with a view to economy, many mechanical expedients which, in the eyes of British engineers, seem very extraordinary. Perhaps the most curious of these is the operation of moving houses, which is often practised in New York. Most of the old streets in that town are very narrow and tortuous, and in the course of improving them, many of the old houses were found to interfere with the new lines of street, but instead of taking down and rebuilding those tenements, the ingenious inhabitants have recourse to the more simple method of moving the whole en masse, to a new site. This was, at first, only attempted with homes formed of wooden framework, but now the same liberty is taken with those built of brick. I saw the operation put in practice on a brick house, at No. 130 Chatham Sheet, New York, and was so much interested in the success of this hazardous process, that I delayed my departure from New York for three days, in order to see it completed. The house measured fifty feet in depth by twenty-five feet in breadth of front, and consisted of four storeys, two above the ground-floor, and a garret-story at the top, the whole being surmounted by large chimney-stacks. This house, in order to make room for a new line of street, was moved back fourteen feet six inches from the line which the front wall of the house originally occupied, and as the operation was curious and exceedingly interesting in an engineering point of view, I shall endeavour, by referring to the accompanying diagrams, to describe the manner in which it was accomplished. Fig. 1 is an elevation of the gable, and fig. 2 an elevation of the front of the house.
The first step in the process is to prepare a foundation for the walls on the new site which the house is intended to occupy. A trench is next cut round the outside of the house, and the lower floor being removed, the earth is excavated from the interior, so as to expose the foundations of the side walls and HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 gables, which are represented in the cuts by a. Horizontal beams of wood, marked b, measuring about twelve inches square, are then arranged at distances of three feet apart from centre to centre, at right angles to the direction in which the house is to be moved, their ends being allowed to project about three feet each beyond the building, through holes drifted in the gables for their reception, as shown at b, b, in fig. 2. A series of powerful screw-jacks, marked c, amounting perhaps to fifty in number, are then placed under the projecting ends of the horizontal beams b. The screw-jacks, as shown in the diagrams, generally rest on a beam of wood bedded in the ground, but in some cases they are placed on a foundation of stone. They are carefully ranced or fixed, so as to prevent them from kanting or twisting on the application of pressure.
When the process has reached this stage, the screw-jacks are worked so as to bring the upper sides of the horizontal beams b, into close contact with the gables, through which they pass, and the intermediate portions of the walls, between the several points of support, being carefully removed, the whole pressure of the gables is brought to bear on the horizontal beams b, which rest on the screw-jacks c. Two strong beams d, e are placed, one resting above the other, under each gable (a part of which is removed for their reception), at right angles to the horizontal beams b; the lower beam e rests on the old foundation of the house, which is levelled for its reception, and the upper beam d is firmly fixed, by means of cleats of wood and spikes, to the horizontal beams b, passing through the house. The lower beams form the road, as it were, on which the upper ones, supporting the house, slides. The lower beams are accordingly extended, as shown at e, fig. 1, by means of similar beams, resting on a firm foundation, to the new site of the house. After the beams d, e have been securely placed close under the horizontal beams b, the screw-jacks are unscrewed, and the whole weight of the gables is again made to bear on the foundations. Holes, at distances of about three feet apart from centre to centre, are next drifted in the front and back walls of the house, through HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 which logs, marked f; are inserted, in the same way as formerly described in the gables. The ends of these logs project about three feet beyond the faces of the walls, and are supported by cross-beams, shown at g, g, fig. 1, the ends of which rest upon the beams , under the gables. The intermediate portions of the front and back walls, between the supporting beams, being removed in the same manner under the gables, the whole weight of the building rests on the lower beams, d and e, on which the motion is to take place. A very powerful screw-jack, shown at h, fig. 1, is fixed, in a horizontal position, to each of the beams e, on which the house is to move. The end of the screw- jacks butt against the upper beams d; and when they are worked, the upper beams, bearing the whole weight of the house, slide smoothly along on the lower beams e. The two beams are well greased; and a groove in the upper, and a corresponding feather on the surface of the lower one, insure a motion in thc direction of their length. The length of the screws in the screw-jacks h, is about two feet; so that if the house is to be removed to a greater distance than that included in their range, they are unfastened, and again fixed to the beam e, when the house is then propelled other two feet. In this way, by prolonging the beams e, and removing the screw-jacks, the house may be moved to an indefinite distance. When the house has been brought directly over the foundation which was prepared for it, and which we shall now suppose to be represented by a in the cuts, the space between the beams f and the foundation a, in the front and back walls of the house, are built up, and also the intermediate spaces between the several beams. Screw-jacks, as shown at c and i, are then ranged all round the house under the ends of the projecting beams; they are now, as formerly, placed on firm foundations, and properly braced, to prevent them from twisting or kanting. These screw- jacks are then all worked, and the weight of the house is transferred to them from the beams d, e, g, which are carefully removed. The space between a a, fig. 1, and the horizontal beams b, which was occupied by the beams d, e, is now built up, and also the intermediate spaces between the beams b. The screw- jacks c are then slackened one after another, and the beams b withdrawn, the space which each occupied being carefully built up before another screw-jack is removed. The same process is performed with the beams f, and the house then rests on its new foundation a, which, in the case I saw in New York, was fourteen feet six inches from the spot on which the house was built. The operation I have attempted to describe is attended with very great risk, and much caution is necessary to prevent accidents. Its success depends chiefly upon getting a solid and unyielding base for supporting the screw-jacks c, i, and for the prolongation of the beam e to the new site which the house is to occupy. It is further of the utmost importance that in working the screws their motion should be simultaneous, which, in a range of 40 or 50 screw-jacks, is not very easily attained. The operation of drifting the holes through the walls also requires caution, aa well as that of removing the intermediate pieces between the beams b and f, which pass through both walls. The space between the beams is only two feet, and the place of the materials removed, is, if necessary, supplied while the house is in the act of moving, by a block of wood which rests on the beams d. The screw-jacks h, by which the motion is produced, HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 require also to be worked with the greatest caution, as the cracking of the walls would be the inevitable consequence of their advancing unequally. Notwithstanding the great difficulty attending the successful performance of this operation, it is practised in New York without creating the least alarm in the inhabitants of the houses, who, in some cases, do not even remove their furniture while the process is going forward. The lower part of the house which I saw moved was occupied as a carver and gilder’s shop; and on Mr Brown, under whose directions the operation was proceeding, conducting me to the upper storey, that he might convince me that there were no rents in the walls or ceilings of the rooms, I was astonished to find one of them filled with picture frames and plates of mirror glass, which had never been removed from the house. The value of the mirror glass, according to Mr Brown, was not less than 1500 dollars, which is equal to about L300 sterling; and so much confidence did the owner of the house place in the success and safety of the operation, that he did not take the trouble of removing his fragile property. I understood from Mr Brown that the whole operation of removing this house, from the time of its commencement till its completion, would occupy about five weeks, but the time employed in actually moving the house fourteen feet and a half was seven hours. The sum for which he had contracted to complete the operation was 1000 dollars, which is equal to about £200 sterling. Mr Brown mentioned that he and his father, who was the first person who attempted to perform the operation, had followed the trade of “house-movers” for fourteen years, and had moved upwards of a hundred houses, without any accident, many of which, as in the case of the one I saw, were made entirely of brick. I also visited a church in “Sixth” Street, capable, I should think, of holding from 600 to 1000 persons, with galleries and a spire, which was moved 1100 feet, but this building was composed entirely of wood, which rendered the operation much less hazardous. The only example of the successful moving of structures entire in this country, is that of the North Pier Lighthouse at Sunderland, a stone tower, 76 feet 2 inches in height, which was moved when the pier was extended in 1841, a distance of 475 feet 7 inches, by Mr John Murray, C.E.11
11. Transactions Institution Civil Engineers. Vol. 3, p. 342. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 The Oxford Skating Society was formed, by a group whose sole interest was in performing group maneuvers with clockwork precision. They skated edges, cross rolls, and threes around a common center. One member, Henry Boswell, experimented with skate irons of different lengths, finally hitting upon the idea of cutting off the toe piece and extending the heel for more support, and then rounding off both toe and heel. The new ice- skate enhanced the precision of these club skaters and would become known as the “club skate.” The Victorians of the Oxford Society would continue to expand simple figures into continuous (combined) figures, announced by a caller, for groups of up to 12. Facing one another, the first partners would skate the announced figure to the orange in the center, cross, exchange places, and leave the center. The next partners repeated as the first left, forming a swift, interweaving type of dance like a country square dance or embryonic precision routine. In the 1800s the British had been fascinated by American Indians when a few from a tribe in New York State had toured England staging “war dances.” Some British ice-skaters supposed that the spread-eagle pose used in such native dancing resembled the turned-out position of something they did on ice. They named a turn, the tracing of which was in the shape of an Indian bow, the “mohawk.” Skaters practiced these mohawks in repetition on a circle 8. There was also a “choctaw” term, named after another tribe, in which the skater went “from the outside forward of one foot to the inside back of the other.”
Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney’s LETTERS TO MOTHERS, which would be republished in London.
Mary Howitt’s BIRDS AND FLOWERS AND OTHER COUNTRY THINGS.
In an attempt to salvage capital punishment, some states allowed the death penalty to be avoided at the discretion of the judge. (By 1963 –with the exception of a small number of rarely committed crimes in a few jurisdictions– the US’s mandatory capital punishment laws would be eliminated.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In Boston, George W. Light printed Dr. William Andrus Alcott’s THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER OR THOUGHTS ON FOOD AND COOKERY.
Henri Jomini, who served with Napoléon for a time, publishes his Summary of the Art of War. With his books, the Swiss general teaches several generations of European and American military officers the art of winning wars by massing forces on a map. Unfortunately, Jomini’s penchant for reducing warfare to a few trenchant principles doesn’t teach his readers much about fighting wars upon the ground, and the result includes the bloodbaths at Gettysburg in 1863 and Sedan in 1870. Still, in fairness to Jomini, it was his goal to explain strategy (which he defined as “the art of bringing the greatest part of the forces of an army upon the important point of the theater of war”) rather than to teach generals how to make rapid decisions on an untidy battlefield.
To reduce violence in the southern United States, Governor John Lyde Wilson of South Carolina develops a new dueling code. The most significant changes were that gentlemen could not refuse a duel because their social status was higher than their challengers, and that fists could be substituted for guns or knives. Unfortunately, as most duelists were mean drunks rather than gentlemen, the new rules only led to eye- gouging, lip-tearing brawls becoming the precursors to gun or knife fights. Such violence was not restricted to the United States, either, and in 1870, the Montreal Gazette reported that the goal of Canadian logging camp wrestlers was to stick “the forefinger of the right hand fast in their antagonist’s hair, and with the thumb — as they term it — gouge out the daylights.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Wealthy New Yorkers begin frequenting “concert saloons.” These were the first modern nightclubs. Owners included John Jacob Astor. (While Astor occasionally gave money to temperance groups, his fortune was based on selling alcohol to Indians. Furs were simply a profitable sideline.) Dance revues, comedy acts, and prizefights were among the entertainment offered. The standards were not high: writing in 1882, James McCabe, Jr., said that in most such clubs, “The liquors furnished are of the vilest description. The girls are hideous and unattractive, and are foul-mouthed and bloated.” As for the name “saloon,” it is a mispronunciation of the French “salon,” meaning “hall.” The name moved west during the 1850s, where it frequently graced broken-down wagons and sod shacks. Western saloons that had female employees were known as “Pretty Waiters,” while those that offered dancing were called “Fandangos.” As for “Hell on Wheels,” those were railroad shows that featured boxing, wrestling, dancing, drinking, gambling, prostitution, and balloon rides. Spittoons existed mainly in the places fancy enough to afford bouncers, as in the rougher bars, fighters were too likely to use them as boxing gloves.
The London Prize Ring Rules replace Broughton’s Rules in English prizefighting. These banned boots with spiked toes, and prohibited seconds from helping a semi-conscious fighter toe his mark at the beginning of a round. The reason was to facilitate wagering.
William Whiting graduated from Harvard Law School. He would begin the practice of law in Boston in October, and would become a prominent art collector. (Through his daughter Rose Standish Whiting of Plymouth, a number of pieces from his collection would come to the Concord Free Public Library. Perhaps the best-known is Washington Allston’s “Romantic Landscape,” now hanging in the Trustees’ Room, which had been exhibited at the Boston Athenæum in 1853.)
Charles M. Hovey introduced a strawberry grown from seed produced by hybridization. (The “Hovey” is now considered to have constituted the 1st fruit variety to originate through breeding on the North American continent.) PLANTS
John Wright Boott of Boston received the 1st shipment of tropical orchids to the US of which we now have any record (however, we also know that other Bostonians already had tropical orchids in cultivation in this year). Boott’s collection would pass to John Lowell, and wind up with Edward Rand. When Rand would sell his estate in about 1865, this orchid and tropical plant collection would pass to the Cambridge Botanic Garden of Harvard College. BOTANIZING
The Kentucky General Assembly began to allow women to vote, if they were widows, and if they had children of school age, and if the school district which their children attended was rural, and if the election was about the school trustees (but if you weren’t a widow, or if you were a widow but didn’t have children, or if your children weren’t in school, or our if they were in a city school rather than a rural school, or if the election wasn’t about the school trustees, then you still couldn’t vote — because you are of the female persuasion and because this is Kentucky). HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 1 1 Hazen Morse and J.W. Tuttle engraved a map of Boston, 15 /2 inches by 9 /2 inches, that would be used in G.W. Boynton’s BOSTON DIRECTORY for 1839 and 1840. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In this year Friend Sarah Moore Grimké published LETTERS ON THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES, AND THE CONDITION OF WOMAn:
Whatever is morally right for a man to do, is morally right for a woman.
ANGELINA EMILY GRIMKÉ SARAH MOORE GRIMKÉ
She and her sister Angelina Emily Grimké Weld would be active in both the suffrage and the abolitionist movements.
John Lyde Wilson’s THE CODE OF HONOR attempted to regulate, and therefore moderate, dueling at such venues as “The Oaks” outside New Orleans and “Bloody Island” in the Mississippi River near St. Louis. Technically, such dueling by white gentlemen was illegal, of course they were being discouraged from honorably killing one another, man to man, but practically, it would have been difficult for a prosecutor, assuming he was willing to try this, to get a jury to convict a gentleman for “defending his honor” against another gentleman if he considered that that other gentleman had impugned it. The book was published in South Carolina, where the law had established a penalty of one year in prison and a fine of $2,000.00 for any person guilty of taking part in a duel — which tells us a lot about the status of “legality” in those years.12
Is this of any importance? Why, yes, anything that pertains to white men is important: I freely admit that, according to white writers, white teachers, white historians and white molders of public opinion, nothing ever happened in the world of any importance that could not or should not be labeled “white.” — W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, “The Superior Race”
12. I ran into precisely the same ideas about the nature of legality in Austin, Texas in 1958, when I went to Woolworths to purchase a pistol. There were laws, of course, regulations having to do with waiting periods and permits and such, but when I inquired at the gun counter about the status of these regulations, the response I received was a grin and the remark “Oh, but you’re not a nigger.” So I paid the man $14.99 for a .455 Webley plus a few dollars for a box of 50 rimmed .45-caliber cartridges, he put them in a paper sack for me, and I walked out onto the Texas street free, white, and twenty-one. I hadn’t even been asked to produce an ID. From this I learned that the purpose of the law is to protect the good people from the bad people, and since then I’ve never had occasion to be surprised at American justice, or at the conduct of our law officers. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
Approximately one of these duels in seven –of the ones which were not interrupted by negotiations between “seconds”– resulted in a death, since it frequently happened that the principals would resolve on the field before exchanging balls, or would prematurely and ostentatiously discharge their ball into the air and thus render themselves defenseless. When wounded, it was traditional to forgive one’s opponent.
After an initial misunderstanding with John L. O’Sullivan, editor of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, over Salem coquette Mary Silsbee, Nathaniel Hawthorne became friendly with him and an active contributor to his journal (he would produce 24 tales and sketches for its pages in the next seven years). Deeply moved by his friend Jonathan Cilley’s having been killed in this rifle duel by a young fellow congressman from the South –this is complicated: because he had supposed Hawthorne to have been supposing that responding to the challenge would be the gentlemanly thing to do– Hawthorne authored a memorial essay for this friend.
The Louisville Journal reported, at some time during this year, that “The trial of John Wilson, who officiated as Speaker of the Arkansas House of Representatives, during the last legislative session of that State, and who walked down from his chair and slew Major T.T. Anthony with a Bowie knife on the floor of the house, took place a few days ago. The verdict of the jury was, not guilty of murder, but excusable homicide.”
James Bowie HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In Washington DC, a Southern city in addition to being our nation’s capital, US Congressman William Graves of Kentucky (using as his “second” Henry A. Wise of Virginia) and US Congressman Jonathan Cilley of Maine fought a duel at long range with rifles in which Graves killed Cilley. There was a general public outcry against such dueling. Even the justices of the US Supreme Court would disapprove of such antics.
The Conway family moved into their new brick home in Falmouth, Virginia near Washington. Methodist prayer meetings would be held regularly, in their basement, for the benefit of themselves as well as for the benefit of the surrounding community. Moncure Daniel Conway’s mother Margaret Eleanor Daniel Conway had been raised as a Presbyterian but had been horrified at the doctrine of predestination and had converted to Methodism under the guidance of her husband Walker Peyton Conway. It is on record that she “used to quote with merry approval the negro hymn — ‘I never foun’ no peace nor res’ / Till I jine the Methodes’.’”
After a secret engagement William James Hubard got married with the very well situated Maria Mason Tabb of Gloucester, Virginia — and was painfully aware that he was marrying up.13
Few would wish a child to marry a poor unknown and I am too sensible of this fact to place myself in a situation to wound the most vulnerable of my feelings. Their quantum of pride is a drop in the ocean to mine. My misfortunes have made me painfully morbid and if I could be driven to derangement I should be mad upon that theme.
13. These silhouettes are not of this groom and bride, but they are representative silhouette busts actually cut by the groom, of somebody at some time or another. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
The newlyweds would honeymoon in Italy and meet Horatio Greenough and Hiram Powers. Their union would produce William James Hubard, Jr. (February 8, 1845), Ella Hubard (1847), and Lloyd Tabb Hubard (July 6, 1854).
The notes of Luther Martin of Maryland and of Robert Yates of New York in regard to the secret deliberations of the Continental Congress in the creation of the federal Constitution were published as SECRET PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 1787. This was the very first breach of the silence about the manner in which those important decisions had been made that had been tolerated. (The notes kept by James Madison, and turned over to George Washington for safekeeping at Mount Vernon, would not see the light until 1845, two years after his death as the last surviving delegate.)
During this year in a celebrated case Abraham Lincoln was helping to defend Henry Truett, charged with murder. The client would be found not guilty.
Having reached the age of 15, Robert Collyer was apprenticed to a blacksmith. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 “Old Rosin the Beau,” a song so popular that it would serve as a theme song for four different presidential campaigns.
Robert Lucas Chance took out a British patent for his version of the process of casting of mirror glass plates, involving stirring of the molten glass. It would take a decade for this version of the process to become the usual one. GLASS WINDOWS
In 1833, to encourage the development of a silk industry in Massachusetts and to encourage the waves of immigrants to remain rather than moving further toward the West, the legislature had begun to offer a bounty of $1 for each pound of raw silk reeled within the commonwealth, and a penny for each mulberry tree planted. In 1836 the state had disbursed $71.37 in such silk bounties, and in this year it would disburse $350.52 — for this was before the crash of the silk speculation.
The 1st Rhode-Island-operated prison was built, in Providence, on Gaspee Street north of the cove, a 2-story granite structure costing about $1,300 per cell, or a total of $51,500. This building would prove to be unsuitable, and the state would in 1869 land in the Cranston village of Howard in 1869. This land, known as the State Farm, was managed by the Board of State Charities and Corrections until about 1920. Several institutions were built there, including the State Workhouse and House of Corrections, the State Hospital for the Insane, the State Almshouse (renamed the State Infirmary in 1917), the State Prison and Providence County Jail (managed jointly), and the State Reform Schools (the Sockanosset School for Boys, and the Oaklawn School for Girls). The State Workhouse and House of Corrections building held men and women and was also the home for the women’s county jail and for state prison inmates. After the male workhouse inmates were phased out, it would become in 1924 the State Reformatory for Women. It would close in about 1968. The State Prison and Providence County Jail in Cranston would be built in 1878, and this eventually would become the Adult Correctional Institution that we now hold so dear. Federal inmates have also been bunking at this facility from time to time. The governing body for the State Institutions has changed over the years, becoming variously “State Public Welfare Commission,” “Department of Public Welfare,” and “Department ASYLUM of Social Welfare.” Though some of its inmates have been under federal or county jurisdiction, the institutions seem to have always been operated by the state of Rhode Island. The titles “Keeper of the State Prison” and “Warden of the County Jail” are two hats worn by the same apparatchik. DEXTER ASYLUM HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 ENSO In this year and the next there would be famine in India: Largest Scale Global Weather Oscillations 1833-1839 Southern South Pacific Indonesian Australian Indian Annual Nile flood Oscillation current reversal monsoon droughts monsoon 1833 very strong cold La Niña drought adequate deficient extremely poor 1834 absent cold La Niña adequate adequate adequate adequate 1835 moderate cold La Niña drought adequate adequate extremely poor 1836 moderate cold La Niña adequate adequate adequate 2d year, very low 1837 strong warm El Niño moderate + adequate drought deficient 3d year, extremely poor 1838 strong cold La Niña drought adequate deficient 4th year, quite weak 1839 strong cold La Niña adequate adequate adequate 5th year, very low The southern ocean / atmosphere “seesaw” links to periodic Indonesian east monsoon droughts, Australian droughts, deficient Indian summer monsoons, and deficient Ethiopian monsoon rainfall causing weak annual Nile floods. This data is presented from Tables 6.2-6.3 of Quinn, William H. “A study of Southern Oscillation-related climatic activity for AD 622-1900 incorporating Nile River flood data,” pages 119-49 in Diaz, Henry F. and Vera Markgraf, eds. EL NIÑO: HISTORICAL AND PALEOCLIMATIC ASPECTS OF THE SOUTHERN OSCILLATION. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.
With the trade winds blowing from west to east along the equator, the warmer water on top gets pushed toward the western Pacific and the sea surface there is some two feet higher and some fifteen degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it is off Peru and Chile and Equador, where cold nutrient-laden waters are being pulled up from the depths of the ocean. The pool of warm water is half the size of the continental United States. No one knows why sometimes these trade winds blow, as in this year, and why sometimes they do not, as in the previous year. (It may be that there is a butterfly that is beating its wings at the snowline on some mountain in the Himalayas.)
Robert Purvis was chair of a committee of seven persons that drew up a lengthy protest, entitled an APPEAL OF FORTY THOUSAND CITIZENS THREATENED WITH DISFRANCHISEMENT, TO THE PEOPLE OF PENNSYLVANIA. Despite this effort, Pennsylvania would adopt a new constitution that barred black citizens from voting.
Bishop Pompallier, from France, founded the first Marist mission at Hokianga in New Zealand. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Rochester, New York boat tonnage dropped to 408 tons while Oswego boat tonnage reached 6,582 tons and Buffalo boat tonnage reached 9,615 tons. In fact, the flour and bulk wheat receipts at Buffalo had begun to surpass those of New Orleans, Louisiana, the previous leader.
The initial coinage at the new US federal mint in New Orleans was a 50-cent piece (the “O” above the date of this coin, and its great rarity, now makes it worth a half million each on the collectables market — which would amount to an appreciation of some six orders of magnitude).
With Jack Burton about seven years of age, his mother somehow gave offense to their owner Moses Burton, and so Burton sold her to a negro trader for transportation to the slave market of New Orleans, retaining Jack. The orphaned child would transfer his filial affections to Mrs. Burton, his owner’s wife, and would remember her with gratitude. JOHN ANDERSON
Would Jack have appreciated in value by some six orders of magnitude as well were he still legal tender for all debts public and private? Inquiring minds want to know. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 “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
The Chartists presented their 1st petition, with Ebenezer Elliott participating in their Great Public Meeting at Westminster as the delegate from Sheffield.14
In Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery opened.
The Royal Exchange burned down.
Regent’s Park was opened to the public.
An experimental wood pavement was laid in Oxford-street. LONDON
14. From this year into 1849 would be the heyday of Chartism, a working-class movement for the extension of the franchise. The Chartists’ 6-point charter demanded universal suffrage, secret ballot, annual elections, payment of Members, no property qualification for MPs, and equal electoral districts. He would be one of the leaders of Chartism in Sheffield, until the movement began to advocate violence. He would abandon Chartism when it would cease to agitate for repeal of the Corn Laws. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In London, the Greenwich Railway opened, and the London & Birmingham Railway opened, and the London & Southampton Railway between Nine Elms, Vauxhall, and Woking, and the Great Western Railway between Paddington (off Bishop’s Bridge Road) and Maidenhead.
“[The railroad will] only encourage the common people to move about needlessly.” — Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In a letter from James Caleb Jackson to Gerrit Smith: “‘Come out from among them and be ye separate and touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you.’ Jesus Christ—” Clearly, these Come-Outers were purists.15 COME-OUTISM
What the “Come-Outers” believed was that slavery was a much more ubiquitous situation than had been recognized. Any social institution which frustrated the human aspiration for spontaneity or impeded the directness of the governance of God over the human individual amounted to slavery. Perhaps the ultimate example of come-outism was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Joseph Smith and his people moved from Kirtland, Ohio to Far West, Missouri. During this year and the next there would be a de-facto state of war in existence between the Mormons of Far West, Missouri and the other peoples of Missouri. However, by far the greatest concentration of Come-Outers who considered themselves as Come-Outers (200-300 persons) was on Cape Cod.16
One of the strange things about human slavery was how it related to Christian family values, and another of the strange things about human slavery was how it related to our capitalist economy. Here are some illustrations of this strangeness, in the Year of Our Lord 1838. In this year Matilda Lawrence, a slave who had escaped from her Missouri owner, was recaptured in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was brought before a court there, was tried, and was remanded back to Missouri and to her lawful owner. This all seems perfectly usual, but we are disregarding the racial fact that poor escaped and recaptured Matilda was only 1/8th black, and was 7/8ths white, and we are disregarding the Christian family values fact that she was the natural daughter of her owner — which is to say, she was being taken back to serve under enslavement to her own father. In this Year of our Lord 1838, also, a year of national economic depression, things were tough all over. For instance, a Southern plantation owner, the Reverend Doctor William Henry Brisbane, a Baptist minister and a physician, was forced into bankruptcy and against his will and against his better judgment, had to sell off all 22 of his field slaves to a relative, temporarily retaining only his 3 house slaves. (This would eat at him and eventually he would buy them all back at a higher price and set them all free –impoverishing himself and his family for life and earning himself the long-term contempt of his community as a business ne’er-do-well and utterly destroying his credit standing– but for the time being human beings were merely an economic commodity — and this Capitalist economy had his hands tied.)
15. Righteousness is a precious and limited commodity, and the way one obtains it is by taking it away from someone else. Much of the antebellum abolitionist/proslavery struggle among America’s whites was a struggle not over the quality of the lives of American black people (although that was a token in the game) but over the possession of righteousness. Northern whites sought to take possession of righteousness by denying it to Southern whites, who were painted with the pitch-pot of unrighteousness. Meanwhile, Southern whites sought to take possession of righteousness by denying it to Northern whites, who were painted with the pitch-pot of unrighteousness. Southern white painted Northern whites with the pitch-pot of unrighteousness by associating them with blackness, calling them “nigger lovers,” and “amalgamationists.” Northern whites painted Southern whites with the pitch-pot of unrighteousness by associating them with blackness, pointing out the sheer size of the Southern population of mulatto Americans, which was the result of countless semi-secret acts of amalgamation between the white slavemaster males and their female captives (such as, for one example, Sally Hemings). Equally, on both sides, in this struggle to seize the moral high ground, one’s religiosity became *defined* by one’s politics. In the north it would be considered by many white Americans to be impossible for one to be considered “religious,” unless one was against human slavery — an extreme manifestation of this was the “Come-Outers” centering on Cape Cod. Meanwhile, in the south, it would be considered by many white Americans to be impossible for one to be considered “religious,” unless one believed strongly enough in the righteousness of keeping the animal impulses under decent control by use of the tool of human enslavement. 16. These 200-300 Cape Cod Come-Outers were particularly under the influence of Jakob Böhme and Friend George Fox. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 The Reverend William Henry Channing took up a Unitarian pastorate in Cincinnati, Ohio (he would resign in 1841 upon becoming aware that the Gospels were unreliable as history, concluding somehow from this technical detail that Christianity had not been ordained by God).
Charles James Fox became a member of the Unitarian Church in Nashua, New Hampshire (he would teach in its Sunday School).
The Countess Sarah of Concord (formerly “Rumford”) commissioned D.G. Lamont to paint from a sketch by William Lane an oil in which Count von Rumford gazed benevolently upon his only legitimate child while the daughter fondles her favorite lap-dog. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
Richard Townsend’s VISION OF THE WESTERN RAILWAYS.
The 3-mile Carthage horse-car railroad was discontinued, a victim of the Panic of 1837.
Railroad trains were first used in this year to convey traveling circuses from town to town. Eventually some circus trains would be 84 cars long.
The opening of a railroad linking Vienna and Wagram, and one linking Berlin and Potsdam. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Thousands of people were starving in the north of Ireland as crops there failed. The English deliberately began a policy of making the work available in poorhouses even more unpleasant than any lowest-grade work available outside these establishments — in order to discourage access by the poor to this assistance and encourage, instead, emigration.17
Henry Root Colman made his initial annual report of agricultural conditions and resources in Massachusetts.
WALDEN: Fellow-travellers as they rattled by compared it aloud PEOPLE OF with the fields which they had passed, so that I came to know how WALDEN I stood in the agricultural world. This was one field not in Mr. Colman’s report. And, by the way, who estimates the value of the crop which Nature yields in the still wilder fields unimproved by man? The crop of English hay is carefully weighed, the moisture calculated, the silicates and the potash; but in all dells and pond holes in the woods and pastures and swamps grows a rich and various crop only unreaped by man. Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe played the Ranz des Vaches for them.
HENRY ROOT COLMAN THE BEANFIELD
According to this report, by this point fully 85% of Massachusetts had been devoted to farming and livestock. Few farmers owned more than six cows and few owned any horses at all. Oxen, fed in stalls, were usually turned over to drovers in the spring when they were 3 to 5 years old to be driven to the markets at Brighton. Trying to keep the animals from losing more than 100 pounds each, the drovers would pasture them in fields of grass that would be paid for as they made their journey toward Boston. Where there were sheep, they were owned more often in upland towns. The major crops were grasses, corn, oats, rye, wheat, broom corn (which had been introduced circa 1815), hops, barley, buckwheat, teasle, peppermint, and potatoes. AGRICULTURAL REPORT
17. The Poor Law enacted by Britain’s Parliament in 1834 was applied to Ireland at a time when famine was already killing thousands. In the USA in 1998, we are embarking upon precisely the same Draconian policy, by requiring work of all able-bodied Welfare recipients (termed “Workfare”) while classifying such recipients as non-employees, thus rendering it unnecessary to pay such workers the federally mandated minimum wage for employees and rendering it unnecessary to provide such workers with nonsalary benefits. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In this year the US federal mint was producing a “Half Eagle” $5 gold coin:
Gold was discovered in California by a white man who was pulling up wild onions for his sandwich. (This rush, however, would peter out.)
Enoch Cobb Wines’s A TRIP TO BOSTON, IN A SERIES OF LETTERS TO THE EDITOR OF THE UNITED STATES GAZETTE. / BY THE AUTHOR OF “TWO YEARS AND A HALF IN THE NAVY” was printed in Boston by the firm of C.C. Little and J. Brown.
Also, this author’s HINTS ON A SYSTEM OF POPULAR EDUCATION: ADDRESSED TO R.S. FIELD ... CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION IN THE LEGISLATURE OF NEW JERSEY; AND TO THE REV. A.B. DOD, PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS IN THE COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY. BY E.C. WINES.
Also, this author’s HOW SHALL I GOVERN MY SCHOOL? / ADDRESSED TO YOUNG TEACHERS; AND ALSO ADAPTED TO ASSIST PARENTS IN FAMILY GOVERNMENT. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 The Jordan Level of the Erie Canal, between Montezuma and Camillus, was straightened, shortening the stretch by a mile and saving $18,323.72 in cost.
The state floated a bond issue of $4,000,000 for enlarging the Erie Canal.
The New York registry of canal boats was completed.
The Melvilles moved to Lansingburgh in upstate New York, where they would depend upon the assistance of a wealthy relative. Herman Melville began to study engineering and surveying, hoping for a job on the new Erie Canal (but no such job would materialize). Filling in his time, Melville became involved in a public namecalling contest with another young gentleman. They exchanged “silly and brainless loon” for “Ciceronian baboon,” “stranger to veracity” for “moral Ethiopian,” “narrow-minded and jealous” for “child of the devil, full of all subtility and all mischief,” etc. Melville won — if anyone could be said to win at this sort of game.
2,000 men were employed on the Illinois and Michigan Canal.
A national road had been begun in 1811 (which is now approximately followed by the existing US 40). At this point this national road had reached all the way to Illinois (the project would be abandoned because railroad interests were able to convince the public, and the federal government, that such a form of transportation was soon to be obsolete).
US canal engineers Loammi Baldwin II and James Geddes died.
William Roberts was made engineer in charge of construction on the Monongahela Navigation Company, supervising the building of slackwater dam-lock combinations.
The idea of a Portage Canal had to be abandoned after spending some $10,000 on the project.
E.H. Gill joined the James River and Kanawha Canal engineering team and ran a survey from Lynchburg to the headwaters of the James. Edward Hall was hired to run surveys for the western section of that canal.
The London group organized around James Pierrepont Greaves began a coeducational school for boarding students and day students at nearby Ham Common in Surrey and christened it “Alcott House” in honor of the American Bronson Alcott, author of RECORD OF A SCHOOL and CONVERSATIONS WITH CHILDREN ON THE GOSPELS, whom they were considering to be “the Concord Plato.”
Dr. George Combe’s ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE CEREBELLUM BY DRS. GALL, VIMONT, BROUSSAIS, ROGET, HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 RUDOLPHI, PRICHARD, TIEDEMANN; ALSO ANSWERS TO THE OBJECTIONS URGED AGAINST PHRENOLOGY, WITH DR. A. COMBE (Edinburgh: MacLachlan & Stewart). The author visited the United States to investigate the treatment of criminals. His brother Dr. Andrew Combe became personal physician to the British royal family. The Phrenological Association, formed as an alternative to the British Association which had spurned the phrenologists, first met in Newcastle. The Birmingham Phrenological Society was established. It was a good year for phrenology.
In New-York, street addresses on numbered streets began to be distinguished east from west according to which side of 5th Avenue they were on.
During this year and the following one, Nathan Brooks, a staunch Whig, would be campaigning unsuccessfully to represent the Middlesex District in the United States Congress.
Friends Lucretia Mott and James Mott were living on Long Island. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 William Leete Stone’s LIFE OF JOSEPH BRANT — THAYENDANEGA. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Samuel Slocum of Poughkeepsie, New York invented but did not patent a machine that could fabricate pins with a solid head. The machine was an improvement over the pin-making machine that had been patented by John Ireland Howe in 1832. One laborer, tending two such machines, would be able to produce 100,000 such improved pins in an ordinary factory workday of 11 hours. Gradual publication of Thomas Loraine McKenney’s and Hall’s mammoth HISTORY OF THE INDIAN TRIBES OF NORTH AMERICA, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES AND ANECDOTES OF THE PRINCIPAL CHIEFS. EMBELLISHED WITH ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY PORTRAITS, FROM THE INDIAN GALLERY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR, AT WASHINGTON. Philadelphia, F.W. Greenough [etc.], 1838-1844. Here is there illustration of Sequoyah: HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 The project of exploration of the entire northern continent of the “New World” was one that necessitated an army, which it got in this year in a Corps of Topographical Engineers enabled by tax funding from Congress. Geological or natural history surveys funded by state governments had begun in North Carolina in 1823, and by the end of the 1830s such surveys had been initiated by 13 states. In addition the federal government had been funding or assisting with exploration since the expedition of Lewis and Clark, but throughout the 1840s and 1850s the “‘great reconnaissance’ of the American West”18 was being conducted by Army officers.
Lieutenant John Charles Frémont, a protégé of Alexander von Humboldt, led three of these expeditions across the western regions of the North American continent, but there were numerous others:
18. Goetzmann, William H. NEW LANDS, NEW MEN, AMERICA AND THE SECOND GREAT AGE OF DISCOVERY. NY: Viking, 1986. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
The United States Naval Exploring Expedition of Captain Charles Wilkes surveyed the Northwest coast in their global circumnavigation, from 1838 to 1842. Other military explorers were sent out to map the West, especially after the annexation of Texas in 1845, and the beginning of the war with Mexico in 1846. [FOOTNOTE: William H. Goetzmann singles out Lt. William H. Emory’s march to Santa Fe and California as the most spectacular work to come out of the war; the detailed report included the first accurate map of the Southwest and illustrations by the expedition artist John Mix Stanley. From 1848 to 1855, Emory supervised the Mexican Boundary Survey, which not only laid down the astronomically determined boundary and generated a new series of maps, but also included “a tremendous regional survey of the geology, flora, fauna, archaeology, and Indian tribes,” plus consideration of railroad routes.] In the largest concerted effort of all, beginning in 1853 the Army conducted a series of surveys of possible transcontinental railroad routes, which resulted in thirteen volumes of reports amounting to what Goetzmann calls “a very early ecological study, monumental in scope.” Indeed, all of the expeditions resulted in lavishly illustrated Congressional reports. Between 1840-60, sixty works were issued on the West, plus fifteen more on the global naval expeditions, the reports of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and others. Goetzmann estimates the cost to have been between one-quarter and one-third of the entire federal budget, in what amounted to an “incredible federal subsidy,” critical to the professionalization of American science, and unmatched since. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Leopold Deslandes’s A TREATISE ON THE DISEASES PRODUCED BY ONANISM, MASTURBATION, SELF- POLLUTION, AND OTHER EXCESSES:
MASTURBATION HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Benjamin Silliman, Sr.’s son Benjamin Silliman, Jr. joined him in the editing of the American Journal of Science, referred to as the “Silliman Journal.”
Mount Hope cemetery began to accept burials near Rochester, New York, Greenwood Cemetery began to accept burials near Brooklyn, New York, and the Worcester Rural Cemetery began to accept burials near Worcester.
Thomas Chandler Haliburton’s THE CLOCKMAKER, 2d Series.
International copyright law was inadequate, and was very generally disregarded during this period. Plagued by British imitations of his children’s books, Samuel Griswold Goodrich therefore took the bold step of republishing one of these Brit imitations, in Boston: PETER PARLEY’S RAMBLES IN ENGLAND, WALES, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND:
This work is chiefly copied from the London work, which was got up in imitation of the several books which have appeared in this country...
The serial installments of Charles Dickens’s OLIVER TWIST, OR THE PARISH BOY’S PROGRESS continued in Bentley’s Miscellany, making his Artful Dodger utterly infamous, while his NICHOLAS NICKLEBY began.
Meg made many moral rules, and tried to keep them, but what mother was ever proof against the winning wiles, the ingenious evasions, or the tranquil audacity of the miniature men and women who so early show themselves accomplished Artful Dodgers? “No more raisins, Demi. They’ll make you sick,” says Mamma to the young person who offers his services in the kitchen with unfailing regularity on plum-pudding day. “Me likes to be sick.”
ATTITUDES ON DICKENS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 According to Mary Helen Dunlop’s SIXTY MILES FROM CONTENTMENT: TRAVELING THE NINETEENTH- CENTURY AMERICAN INTERIOR (NY: HarperCollins BasicBooks, 1995, page 97), the actual native American had at this point been virtually replaced in non-native American experience, through scarcity and invisibility, by the idea of the primitive and by the artistic representation of the Indian (emphasis added): In 1822, after a residence of one year in Illinois, John Woods wrote, “I have not seen one Indian.” Passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830 further decreased the likelihood that a traveler in the interior would encounter any Indian: by 1838 only 26,700 Indians remained resident east of the Mississippi. Travelers who entered the interior after 1830 had seen more Indians immobilized in murals and marble in the United States Capitol than they would see in the flesh on the landscape of the interior, and they had read more ornate metaphors spoken by Indians on the pages of James Fenimore Cooper’s novels than they would hear syllables uttered by Indians. Fully aware, however, that their worldwide reading audience expected descriptions of so famous a North American fact as its Indian population, travelers wrote in answer to that expectation — and if they were writing as much about Horatio Greenough’s sculpted Indians as about any real persons, they could nonetheless cling to the peculiar confidence that arises from presuming that their subjects were unlikely ever to hear of what travelers said or wrote about them.
The Brunswick rifle, a .704 inch calibre muzzle loading, percussion cap rifle, was issued to the British army and would be used until 1851. Its barrel had two grooves and it fired a lead sphere with a narrow projecting ring or “belt” around it to take this grooving. During loading it was necessary to position the pellet carefully so that this belt touched the bore all round — which caused dangerous delay during volley fire. The barrel demanded frequent use of the ramrod for cleaning. Inaccurate beyond 365 meters, during manufacture by Enfield it would be sighted to 270 meters. FIREARMS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 The father of the Mendel family, Anton, was seriously injured, so much so as to have to give up farming. Johann Mendel decided against returning home to take over the farm, which would therefore pass to his sister Veronica’s husband, Alois Sturm. It becoming necessary for Johann to support himself and his studies, he would do so by tutoring privately. GREGOR MENDEL
The beginning of the geological survey of Newfoundland under J.B. Jukes. Jukes’s field work, 1839-1840, would be confined to what he could observe from the coast. “The interior was filled up partly from a rough personal survey and partly from oral information...” ( J.B. Jukes, EXCURSIONS IN AND ABOUT NEWFOUNDLAND, John Murray: London, 1842). CARTOGRAPHY
1 1 Hazen Morse and J.W. Tuttle engraved a map of Boston, 15 /2 inches by 9 /2 inches, that would be used in the BOSTON DIRECTORY for 1839 and 1840.
MAPS OF BOSTON
Michael Faraday discovered the phosphorescent glow produced by electrical discharges through gases kept at low pressure.
William Frédéric Edwards (1777-1842)’s ON THE INFLUENCE OF PHYSICAL AGENTS ON LIFE, BY W.F. EDWARDS ... [DE L’INFLUENCE DES AGENS PHYSIQUES SUR LA VIE], TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY DR. HODGKIN [Thomas Hodgkin (1798-1866)] AND DR. FISHER. TO WHICH ARE ADDED, IN THE APPENDIX, SOME OBSERVATIONS ON ELECTRICITY, BY DR. EDWARDS, M. POUILLET [M. Claude Servais Mathias Pouillet (1790- 1868)], AND LUKE HOWARD ... AND SOME NOTES TO THE WORK OF DR. EDWARDS. (Philadelphia, Haswell, Barrington and Haswell, 1838).
In Japan, Nakayama Miki was founding the faith-healing Tenri sect.
Prescott’s HISTORY OF THE REIGN OF FERDINAND AND ISABELLA.
Published in this year, by G. Virtue in London, was William Beattie’s (1793-1875) THE WALDENSES; OR, PROTESTANT VALLEYS OF PIEDMONT, DAUPHINY, AND THE BAN DE LA ROCHE. This book utilizing the term “Waldenses” in its title, a term which Thoreau would deploy in WALDEN, was illustrated by W.H. Barlett and W. Brockedon.
A hotel opened in Boston, at the corner of Lincoln Street and Beech Street, which was at that time the new largest hotel in the United States of America. Therefore it was named (of course!) the United States Hotel.
Jöns Jakob Berzelius showed that the presence of iron is what enables blood to absorb as much oxygen as it does. The physician Charles Cagniard de la Tour, at age 61, demonstrates that fermentation depends on the presence of yeast cells.
HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Letitia Landon, “Felicia Hemans, ”in FISHER’S DRAWING-ROOM SCRAPBOOK
Thomas Arnold, EARLY HISTORY OF ROME (completed 1843)
Chorley, AUTHORS OF ENGLAND
Finden, TABLEAUX OF THE AFFECTIONS: A SERIES OF PICTURESQUE ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE WOMANLY VIRTUES
W.E. Gladstone, THE CHURCH AND ITS RELATION WITH THE STATE
Lady Charlotte Guest, MABINOGION
John Kenyon, POEMS, FOR THE MOST PART OCCASIONAL
Edward William Lane, translation of THOUSAND-AND-ONE NIGHTS (through 1840)
Richard Monckton Milnes, MEMORIALS OF A RESIDENT ON THE CONTINENT AND HISTORICAL POEMS
John Edmund Reade, ITALY
Robert Smith Surtees, JARROCK’S JAUNTS AND JOLLITIES
Frances Trollope, THE WIDOW BARNABY
Martin Tupper, PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY
Charles Waterton, ESSAYS ON NATURAL HISTORY . . . WITH AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In the textile mills of the US, 87% of the power was being derived from vertical waterwheels and 13% from steam engines. In America’s flour mills and food mills in general, however, 33% of the power was being derived from steam engines, for several reasons. First, foodstuffs are heavy and involve considerable transportation costs, so it is somewhat more efficient sometimes to bring the power to where the foodstuffs are rather than bring the foodstuffs to where the power is, and second, the food industry often produces waste material which can be used as supplemental fuel under the steam engine’s boiler. The relative cost-efficiencies of water power and steam power were so close to each other at this point that only the sharpest of pencils would express a preference. Water power tended to be a little safer, as it doesn’t involve flames and high pressures.
US banks began again to convert paper money into specie.
Thomas Morton died.
Immanuel Kant’s CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON appeared in an anonymous English translation and Emerson bought a copy and marked a few passages. The translation was poor and Emerson was clueless as to what Kant was talking about.
John Charles Frémont joined the US Army, as a 2d Lt. in the Corps of Engineers.
HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Black Hawk, a famous Sauk warrior, died of old age. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 A new light tower, 42 feet above the water, was erected on Plum Island to replace the one that had been raised in 1788. This new tower was “on Castle Neck, south side of entrance to Ipswich Harbor.”
The SERAPHIM AND OTHER POEMS, by Elizabeth Barrett, her 1st published collection. Shortly after moving for her health to the town of Torquay, near the ocean, her brother would drown and she would become a virtual recluse. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 William Makepeace Thackeray’s YELLOWPLUSH.
If you can find a copy of the Long Islander journal of Huntington, New York for this year of the next, don’t show it to anyone until after you have negotiated, because it’s worth real money: all copies are lost and we no longer have any idea what sort of material Walt Whitman was producing in those early days.
BARTLETT’S FAMILIAR QUOTES preserves for us the following snippets from Thomas Carlyle’s SIR WALTER SCOTT in the London and Westminster Review in this year: • There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also it may be said, there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed. • Silence is deep as Eternity, speech is shallow as Time. • To the very last, he [Napoleon] had a kind of idea; that, namely, of la carrière ouverte aux talents, — the tools to him that can handle them. [in his essay on Mirabeau of 1837, Carlyle had attributed this tools idiom to a “New England book.”] • Blessed is the healthy nature; it is the coherent, sweetly co-operative, not incoherent, self-distracting, self-destructive one! • The uttered part of a man’s life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious part a small unknown proportion. He himself never knows it, much less do others. • Literature is the Thought of thinking Souls. • It can be said of him, when he departed he took a Man’s life with him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of Time.
And in addition it preserves the following from another essay placed in the same journal: • The eye of the intellect “sees in all objects what it brought with it the means of seeing.” — VARNHAGEN VON ENSE’S MEMOIRS
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon won a pension enabling him to devote himself to writing and scholarship.
Ralph Cudworth’s TREATISE ON FREE WILL, ed. John Allen. Of the three great refutations of false ideas which for him summed up all religious and moral truth, in this work he had gone to the mattresses on behalf of the first: HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 • the atomistic materialism of Democritus and Epicurus was quite mistaken, because reality consisted of a supreme divine intelligence and a spiritual world • all pantheistic naturalism was quite mistaken, and all stoicism had been quite mistaken, because humans have complete moral freedom and responsibility (he would beat this to death in his TREATISE ON FREE WILL) • the medieval Nominalists and their successors were quite mistaken, because moral ideas possessed an eternal reality (he would flog this in his TREATISE ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY)
The “Colossus” bridge, the longest timber span in the USA at 340 feet, the flammable span crossing the Schuykill at Philadelphia, became inflamed or enflamed. In 1842 this would be replaced with an inflammable (!) iron-cable suspension bridge, the Fairmount bridge. BRIDGE DESIGN
William Whiting graduated from Harvard Law School. He would begin the practice of law in Boston in October, and would become a prominent art collector. (Through his daughter Rose Standish Whiting of Plymouth, a number of pieces from his collection would come to the Concord Free Public Library. Perhaps the best-known is Washington Allston’s “Romantic Landscape,” now hanging in the Trustees’ Room, which had been exhibited at the Boston Athenæum in 1853.)
Thomas Mayo Brewer graduated from the Harvard Medical School. He would practice medicine for only a few years, as Dispensary Physician at the North End, before choosing to concentrate on writing and politics. He would become one of the editors at a Whig gazette, the Boston Atlas. He would contribute to a number of ornithological publications, including John James Audubon’s ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY (1831-1839): “My young friend Mr. T.M. Brewer says....” NEW “HARVARD MEN” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Mary Rotch, who had a summer house “The Glen” on the outskirts of Newport, Rhode Island, erected a New Bedford home for herself and her companion Mary Gifford at the northwest corner of South 6th Street and Cherry Street (Margaret Fuller would be there with her for awhile; the building would in the 1890s become the Unitarian parsonage).
At some point during this year Margaret wrote in her journal “It is so true that a woman may be in love with a woman and a man with a man.”
On the road to Stonewall,19 Henry David Thoreau defined friendship erotically in an 1838 poem titled “Friendship.” Love is the “connecting link between heaven and earth,” and lovers are “kindred shapes” possessing a “kindred nature.” Indeed, they are intended “to be mates, / Exposed to equal fates / Eternally.” Lovers are like “two sturdy oaks” whose “roots are intertwined insep’rably,” anticipating also Walt Whitman’s choice of the oak as a symbol of manly love. Thoreau argues wittily that “love cannot speak ... without the help of Greek, / or any other tongue” (Read Henry Thoreau’s Journal for 1838 (æt. 20-21), 1:40-43) Plato’s SYMPOSIUM originates the imagery of kindred lovers, and Greek, as the only tongue in which such love can speak, locates the passion within the homoerotic traditions associated with Greece.
News items relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: • Samuel F.B. Morse introduced the “Morse code.” • Invention of the stereoscope by Charles Wheatstone.20 • An electrotyping process was developed that took longer than stereotyping but produced finer quality images, both of illustrations and of text. The process involved making an impression in wax of the original engraving or block of print. This waxen impression would then be brushed thoroughly and evenly with a very minute dusting of plumbago, because graphite is electrically conductive. This graphite-coated mold would be washed with a solution of sulfate of copper over which iron filings would be dusted, and then it would be immersed in an electrolytic solution of acidulated sulfate of copper and a copper coating would be electroplated onto the surface of the coated wax. Copper plates are suspended in this bath, facing but not touching the surfaces that are being coated. Electric current is generated in a separate trough filled with a solution of sulfuric acid, isolated from the trough which holds the materials being plated. The rods which suspend the molds in the acidulated sulfate of copper solution are connected by wires with the zinc plate in the battery trough of sulfuric acid, while the copper plates are connected with the platinum plate in that battery trough, and the circuit is completed. After copper was deposited to a sufficient thickness, the original wax could be melted and removed, and the copper surface then mounted onto the printing plates for backing. This process did not use any significant quantities of graphite, and the copper for the plates was recycled and recycled. The inside of the shells needs to be have a coating of chloride of zinc applied with a brush. Over this one lays a sheet of alloyed foil, and then one can back up the shell mechanically with inferior type metal to give it solidity and the requisite thickness. This backing is created either by pouring in the molten metal, or by dipping the shell in molten metal. Then one places the sheet on a perfectly level iron plate resting on an iron frame, and scrapes away any superfluous type metal. • Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre obtained images on the surface of silver-plated sheets of copper which had been treated with iodine vapor to form a thin coating of light-sensitive silver iodide, and then fixed these images by subjecting them first to hot mercury vapor that attached to the portions of the surface which had been contacted by light, and subsequently to a salt solution which 19. Refer to Bryne R.S. Fone’s A ROAD TO STONEWALL: MALE HOMOSEXUALITY AND HOMOPHOBIA IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1750-1969. 20. In 1849 this stereoscope would be linked by William Brewster with photography. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 removed residual areas of silver iodide not contacted by light. The result of an exposure of 15 to 20 minutes of a plate mounted inside a camera obscura, with the stationary subject outside the pinhole illuminated by the brightest sunlight, was a milky white image of amalgam of mercury upon a 1 1 duller background of silver. The plates, which were 6 /2 inches by 8 /2 inches, were each a unique positive not allowing for duplication, and to us now who have become accustomed to photographs produced by a “negative” process, these images seem left / right reversed — as if we were viewing another person standing beside us at a mirror.21
At first we did not dare look long at the images he produced. We were frightened by the clarity of the men, imagining that these small, indeed tiny, faces fixed on a plate could in turn look back at us! —Charles Dauthendey
As of 1725 Johann Schulze had already been able to note that silver nitrate darkened when exposed to light. At that point in our technological development we had been poised to discover photography, something which had in fact been delayed for another one hundred and thirteen years. What a lag cycle! Why? —The answer to this pertinent question is perhaps to be found in Geoffrey Batchen’s study BURNING WITH DESIRE: THE CONCEPTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 1997). “Historians of science have seen fit to ignore the history of the great discoveries in applied physics, engineering and computer science, where real scientific progress is nowadays to be found. Computer science in particular has changed and continues to change the face of the world more thoroughly and more drastically than did any of the great discoveries in theoretical physics.” — Nicholas Metropolis, “The Age of Computing: A Personal Memoir,” DAEDALUS, Winter 1992: 119-30
21. One wonders how harmful the process of treating these plates with mercury vapor may have been to the daguerreotypist. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 As of 1820 Gideon Mantell and William Buckland had discovered dinosaur remains, and as of 1834, in a stone-quarry in Maidstone, a blast had revealed a mass of rock containing a number of fossil bones of what proved to be an Iguanodon, although it would still not be until 1842 that the anatomist Richard Owen would coin his term “Dinosauria,” or “terrible lizards.” A celebrity painter, John Martin, visited Mantell’s Museum and was inspired by the shaped stones to restore life to the Iguanodon, in its proper setting, preyed on by a Megalosaurus, flanked by a giant crocodilian, watched by a pterodactyl in a diorama of cycads, tree-ferns, and yuccas — by means of a painting. This effort was reproduced in this year as a mezzotint for the first edition of Mantell’s WONDERS OF GEOLOGY, where it appears as the frontispiece to Volume 1. From this year into 1842, he would be churning out dramatic illustrations of feisty dinosaurs, for books written largely for the public. These dragon-like depictions would be hits with their intended audience but many scientists would reject them as inaccurate. An example would be his “The Country of the Iguanodon.” THE SCIENCE OF 1838
From this year into 1842, celebrity painter John Martin would be producing dramatic illustrations of feisty dinosaurs for books being written largely for the general public. These dragon-like popular depictions would be hits with their intended audience but many scientists would repudiate them as imaginative. PALEONTOLOGY
The beginning of the Medical Missionary Society in China. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 The very last record we have of the life of the Reverend William Apess of the Pequot is that in this 41st year of his age the household effects and estate of his family, that had been claimed at the Barnstable, Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas on Cape Cod in an 1836 debt action, were seized and inventoried.
It would appear that this was traced by Thoreau himself.
Most of the Oneida nation of the Iroquois relocated to a reservation near Green Bay, Wisconsin. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In a Louisiana case at law, that of “C.P. Poulard et al v. Delamere et al,” a slave named C.P. Poulard and some of the other former slaves of Julien Poydras sought legal help in forcing the implementation of their deceased slavemaster’s last will and testament. Julien Poydras had specified in his last will and testament that after his death, his slaves were to be maintained with his lands rather than being sold away. He had specified in his last will and testament, also, that his slaves were to be manumitted at age 60, or after 25 years of service, whichever was earlier, and had arranged for an annual stipend to be given to each former slave. The slaves lost on the issue of their manumission, and they also lost on the money issues, and the court did allow them to be sent out to work on another plantation — but they did achieve a stipulation that they could not be sold away, either by the heirs to the plantation or by the first vendee of any property of the estate.
By this point Mackinac Island, which had started out as the Michilimackinac “Green Turtle” burying ground of the Ojibwa, was already firmly established as a summer resort for ailing white people, catering in particular to those suffering from seasonal allergies such as hay fever. In fact some white sufferers would have to be turned away in these early years, not for any lack of willingness on the part of the locals to take their money but for lack of suitable accommodations. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
Richard Henry Dana, Sr. was lecturing on William Shakespeare in Providence, Rhode Island, most likely to classes made up of women.
Charles Armitage Brown’s SHAKESPEARE’S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEMS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Thomas Allen Jenckes, a product of the Rhode Island public schools, graduated from Brown University. He would serve as a tutor at his alma mater in Providence during the 1839-1840 school year.22
22. This public-domain image of Jenckes was obtained from the Library of Congress by Professor Scott A. Sandage of Carnegie- Mellon University, and provided for use in the Kouroo Contexture. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 There was at this point a hot debate going on in Providence as to whether the capital city of Rhode Island ought to expand its public school system beyond its existing elementary schools, by establishing a free high school. Some members of the public objected that creating such a school would encourage the dilution of the local aristocracy, by fostering onto it a bunch of people who had merely attended a free public institution. This would interfere with the apprentice system by tending to “educate children above working for their support.” The free public high school concept would be simmering on the back burner until 1843.
In 1834 the government of Rhode Island had “owed” its education fund $12,884.30. By this point the figure had become $14,662.
The Quakers at the Yearly Meeting School on top of the hill was attempting to be innovative. The school abandoned its four-quarter year for a two-semester year, the winter semester to begin in early November and the summer semester in early May. This change brought a change in vacation patterns as well. Previously, the young scholars had attended as they could and had been able to go back go back and forth between the school and the homes of their parents. Under the new semester system, however, the young scholars would be with their families of origin only during two-week breaks between the semesters.
Friends Rowland Rathbun and Alice Rathbun came to the school as superintendents.
1819-1824. Purinton, Matthew and Betsy. 1824-1835. Breed, Enoch and Lydia. 1829-1835. Gould, Stephen Wanton and Gould, Han- nah, Asst. Supts. 1835-1836. Davis, Seth and Mary. 1837. Breed, Enoch and Lydia. 1838-1839. Rathbun, Rowland and Alice. 1840-1844. Wing, Allen and Olive. 1845-1846. Thompson, Olney and Lydia. 1847. Congdon, Jarvia and Lydia. 1847-1852. Cornell, Silas and Sarah M. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 To supplement the facility of the Children’s Friend Society for white orphan children, an Association for the Benefit of Colored Children was organized and eventually would construct a facility in Providence, Rhode Island (the point to having such separate institutional arrangements, of course, would not have been to keep the children of different races separate, as that could easily have been accomplished within the same institutional arrangement, but would have been to ensure that colored orphans received fewer funds and were treated more poorly that white orphans. To make my point: Also, in this year, in very much the same vein, a mob of the white citizens of Philadelphia, persuaded that “nigger charity” was like throwing money away, would torch their Colored Orphan Asylum.23)
23. No such faculty would be created in Boston — which is probably the single most relevant reason why no such facility would be burned by a Boston mob persuaded that “nigger charity” was like throwing money away. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 On the other side of the globe, the new viceroy in Canton was destroying the illegal opium imports of the British East India Company, a total of 2,640,000 pounds of suspicious vegetable substances, and in consequence Britain was going on the warpath, seizing Hong Kong, forcing trade concessions, and garnering much loot. Meanwhile, in Rhode Island, the governor was William Sprague II and Perry Davis was removing
from Westport, Massachusetts to Pawtucket and then to Taunton, Massachusetts while engaged in the development of his invention, of a mill for grinding grain. In Taunton he would fall ill and would study the effects of certain drugs upon the human system, and he would experiment in the various uses of these drugs, mostly ethanol and opiates, until he became able to concoct a dose capable of curing his own maladies. This Mr. Davis would later vend the following story: “I told my wife that she could not expect to have me with her much longer. A cold settled on my lungs. A hard cough ensued, with pains in my side. My stomach soon became sore, my digestive organs became weak, consequently my appetite failed; my kidneys had become affected. The canker in my mouth became troublesome.... I searched the globe in my mind’s eye for a cure during my illness and selected the choicest gums and healing herbs. These were carefully compounded creating a medicine to soothe the nerves and a balm to heal the body. I commenced using my new discovered medicine with no hope other than handing me gently to the grave.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Charles Lenox Remond began to make speaking tours of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maine as an agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.
The device of the kneeling black female in chains, referencing her femininity and pleading for the support of her peaches-and-cream relative, made its way from England to America, as a companion piece for the similar device that had featured a black male captive:
In Boston, a former slave known only as Joanna published NARRATIVE OF JOANNA, AN EMANCIPATED SLAVE OF SURINAM (from STEDMAN’S NARRATIVE OF FIVE YEARS’ EXPEDITION AGAINST THE REVOLTED NEGROES OF SURINAM). HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 The MEMOIRS OF ELLEANOR ELDRIDGE, one of the few narratives of the life of an early 19th-century free black woman, was published in Providence, Rhode Island by B.T. Albro, Printer. This had been transcribed for Elleanor Eldridge (1784-1845?), who had been gifted with no formal education whatever, by Mrs. Frances Harriet Whipple Green McDougall (1805-1878).
It is probable that William J. Brown knew of this book and was able to draw upon it as a model, since he was living during the same period and as a member of the same free black community and since, like her, he was a lineal descendant of the Narragansett native American family named Prophet, if not of Thomas Prophet himself.
The Baptist justification of slavery which had been published on December 24, 1822 and subsequently had been such a crowdpleaser, that it needed at this point to be reprinted again with its endorsement by the Governor of South Carolina: Rev. Dr. Richard Furman’s EXPOSITION HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 of The Views of the Baptists, RELATIVE TO THE COLOURED POPULATION In the United States IN A COMMUNICATION To the Governor of South-Carolina —————— [SECOND EDITION.] —————— CHARLESTON: PRINTED BY A.E. MILLER No. 4 Broad-st. —— 1838.
Friend John Greenleaf Whittier restored Friend Benjamin Lundy’s Philadelphia journal, the National Enquirer and Constitutional Advocate of Universal Liberty, as the Pennsylvania Freeman.
Friend John Greenleaf Whittier’s “The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother to Her Daughters Sold into Southern Bondage” appeared. This was the poem the 1st 12 lines of which would be quoted in Frederick Douglass’s 1845 narrative as similar to the fate of the generations of children reared by his grandmother Bets: Gone, gone, sold and gone To the rice swamp dank and lone, Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, Where the noisome insect stings, Where the fever-demon strews Poison with the falling dews, Where the sickly sunbeams glare Through the hot and misty air:— Gone, gone, sold and gone To the rice swamp dank and lone, From Virginia hills and waters— Woe is me, my stolen daughters! NARRATIVE The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother to her Daughters sold into Southern Bondage, by Whittier GONE, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone. Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, Where the noisome insect stings, Where the fever demon strews Poison with the falling dews, Where the sickly sunbeams glare Through the hot and misty air; Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone, From Virginia’s hills and waters; HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Woe is me, my stolen daughters! Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone. There no mother’s eye is near them, There no mother’s ear can hear them; Never, when the torturing lash Seams their back with many a gash, Shall a mother’s kindness bless them, Or a mother’s arms caress them. Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone, From Virginia’s hills and waters; Woe is me, my stolen daughters! Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone. Oh, when weary, sad, and slow, From the fields at night they go, Faint with toil, and racked with pain, To their cheerless homes again, There no brother’s voice shall greet them; There no father’s welcome meet them. Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone, From Virginia’s hills and waters; Woe is me, my stolen daughters! Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone. From the tree whose shadow lay On their childhood’s place of play; From the cool spring where they drank; Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank; From the solemn house of prayer, And the holy counsels there; Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone, From Virginia’s hills and waters; Woe is me, my stolen daughters! Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone; Toiling through the weary day, And at night the spoiler’s prey. Oh, that they had earlier died, Sleeping calmly, side by side, Where the tyrant’s power is o’er, And the fetter galls no more! Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone, From Virginia’s hills and waters; Woe is me, my stolen daughters! Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone. By the holy love He beareth; By the bruised reed He spareth; Oh, may He, to whom alone All their cruel wrongs are known, Still their hope and refuge prove, With a more than mother’s love. Gone, gone, — sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone, From Virginia’s hills and waters; Woe is me, my stolen daughters! HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 During this year in which Friend John Greenleaf Whittier was being re-elected to his seat in the Massachusetts legislature,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was issuing his “A Psalm of Life / What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist” (the “Psalmist” in question of course being King David) which Friend John would describe as the “moral engine of an age of action,”
And things are not what they seem.
A PSALM OF LIFE ... Since Professor Charles Follen was no longer teaching German literature at Harvard College, Professor HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Longfellow began to lecture on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s FAUSTUS.
The Reverend Follen became the minister of a Unitarian congregation in New-York (now All Souls), but quickly lost that position due to conflicts with his parishioners over his radical anti-slavery views.
Much of Ansonborough in Charleston, South Carolina was destroyed in a fire.
The Holy See issued a statement condemning the international slave trade, but most of the Catholic bishops in America interpreted this as of course not applying to slavery itself.24
24. Clearly, there’s a terminology problem here. In an effort to resolve this terminology issue, at the Republican National Convention in New-York during August 2004 –at which the Republican Party would for four days make an effort to strip from its face its mask of hostility to the plight of the downtrodden and reveal its true countenance of benevolent conservatism and concern– these people would be sensitively referred to by a Hoosier Republican running for the US Senate as “involuntary immigrants.”
So, perhaps, this is a good point at which to insert a story about involuntary immigrants that has been passed on to us by Ram Varmha, a retired IBM engineer whose father had briefly served as Maharaja after the independence of Cochin. He relates the story as narrated to him by his paternal grandmother who lived in Thripoonithura, Cochin: “When my grandmother (born 1882) was a young girl she would go with the elder ladies of the family to the Pazhayannur Devi Temple in Fort Cochin, next to the Cochin Lantha Palace built by the Dutch (Landers = Lantha), which was an early establishment of the Cochin royal family before the administration moved to Thripoonithura. My grandmother often told us that in the basement of the Lantha Palace, in a confined area, a family of Africans had been kept locked up, as in a zoo! By my Grandmother’s time all the Africans had died. But, some of the elder ladies had narrated the story to her of ‘Kappiries’ (Africans) kept in captivity there. It seems visitors would give them fruits and bananas. They were well cared for but always kept in confinement. My grandmother did not know all the details but according to her, ‘many’ years earlier, a ship having broken its mast drifted into the old Cochin harbor. When the locals climbed aboard, they found a crewless ship, but in the hold there were some chained ‘Kappiries’ still alive; others having perished. The locals did not know what to do with them. Not understanding their language and finding the Africans in chains, the locals thought that these were dangerous to set free. So they herded the poor Africans into the basement of the Cochin Fort, and held them in captivity, for many, many years! I have no idea when the initial incident happened, but I presume it took place in the late 1700s or early 1800s. This points to the possibility that it was, in fact, a slave ship carrying human cargo from East Africa to either the USA or the West Indies. An amazing and rather bizarre story. Incidentally, this is not an ‘old woman's tale’! Its quite reliable. My grandmother would identify some of the older ladies who had actually seen the surviving Kappiries.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 The Bishop of New-York, John Joseph Hughes, who was Irish and had been superintendent of a slave plantation in Maryland in his youth, spoke of slavery as “an evil” rather than as “evil,” because this arrangement of human society had positive consequences — it allowed blacks who would otherwise remain mired in darkness to benefit from contact with good white Christians.
During this year 19 American negreros would clear from Havana on their way to the coast of Africa in order to rescue blacks who would otherwise have remained mired in darkness and allow them to benefit from contact with us good white Christians (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26th Congress, 2d session V, No. 115, page 221).
The negrero Prova spent three months refitting in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. When it sailed out of this harbor it was intercepted by a British warship and discovered to be carrying a cargo of 225 slaves (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 27th Congress, 1st session, No. 34, pages 121, 163-6).
During this year (or possibly during the subsequent year) the American-built negrero Venus, although owned by Spaniards, would be manned by a crew that was made up in part of American citizens (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26th Congress, 2d session V, No. 115, pages 20-2, 106, 124-5, 132, 144-5, 330-2, 475-9). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FEMALE SLAVE was being published, which purported to be authentic slave Autobiography but actually was the literary creation of Mattie Griffith, the all-white daughter of an all-white slaveholder: A literature so diffuse obviously varies widely in style, purpose, and competence. Some books are works of enduring value from a literary as well as a “protest” perspective. The autobiographies of Frederick Douglass, Henry Bibb, and Solomon Northup fuse imaginative style with keenness of insight. They are penetrating and self-critical, superior autobiography by any standards. The quality of mind and spirit of their authors is apparent.... The majority of slave narratives, like most autobiographies, are more parochial and weaker in literary quality. Many are confused.... The very shortcomings of their books as literature in part testify to their authenticity as historical sources. The style of their books is a product of their schooling. A number of slave narratives are of such doubtful validity that they may be shelved at the start. When the authenticity of a “memoir,” THE NARRATIVE OF JAMES WILLIAMS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 (1838), dictated by one black man to the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier, was questioned, Williams was nowhere to be found. The book was withdrawn from publication. James Williams seems to have been a free Negro who culled stories from neighbors and invented others for a little ready cash. The antislavery press is full of warnings against such bogus fugitives. Two other books, THE SLAVE: OR THE MEMOIRS OF ARCHIE MOORE (1836) and THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FEMALE SLAVE (1856), were works of antislavery fiction. The first was written by the American historian Richard Hildreth; the second was composed by Mattie Griffith, the white daughter of a Kentucky slaveholder. Such potential hoaxes led to careful investigation of the stories fugitives wrote for publication. Narrators were subjected to detailed questioning by committees of knowledgeable people; letters were written to former masters and neighbors for corroboration. A tale so seemingly improbable as the life of Henry Bibb led to an extensive correspondence with white Southerners, all of whom verified Bibb’s account — the improbable was the real. Solomon Northup’s fantastic experiences were verified by a basketful of legal documents. Because few slaves were literate enough to write their names, much less their autobiographies, and were thus forced to rely on amanuenses, usually abolitionists, scholars have rightly wondered where the slave’s experience began and that of the antislavery recorder left off. Some have maintained that the typical slave narrative is so doctored that all are suspect as sources. Ulrich B. Phillips, for example, believed that such narratives “were issued with so much abolitionist editing that as a class their authenticity is doubtful.”25
Trial fields of sugar beets were being grown in Northampton and in Oberlin, Ohio. (No attempts to grow either beets or sorghum for sugar in the US would be profitable on any scale until after our Civil War had removed the competition of the slave plantations.) SWEETS WITHOUT SLAVERY
25. Osofsky, Gilbert, comp. PUTTIN’ ON OLE MASSA; THE SLAVE NARRATIVES OF HENRY BIBB, WILLIAM WELLS BROWN, AND SOLOMON NORTHUP. NY: Harper & Row, 1969 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Frederick Douglass and Anna Marie Murray fell in love and became engaged. Douglass took up the violin.
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.26 Did this have something to do with the activities of the New-York Vigilance Committee of which Ruggles had become the Secretary?
26. (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
1838 1838 In this year Sojourner Truth (still as Isabella Van Wagenen) would have been approximately 41 years old. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Friend Joseph John Gurney, the most famous British evangelical Quaker of his day, detoured from a trip down the Hudson River specifically to preach the gospel in Hudson NY, in the lair of “the heretical Hannah Barnard.”
Friend Chuck Fager has analyzed the matter as follows: In 1838, more than a decade after her death, Joseph John Gurney, the most famous British evangelical Quaker of his day, detoured from a trip down the Hudson River specifically to preach his gospel in Hudson, in the lair of “the heretical Hannah Barnard.” I think I understand part of what moved him. There’s something seminal and memorable about Friend Hannah Barnard’s story. For one thing, the version of Quakerism which she articulated and championed has persisted, and even flourished. For another, the repressive orthodox reactions to it have likewise become a depressingly familiar feature of our history. Similarly, Friend Hannah Barnard carried on her ministry decades before Lucretia Mott and other Quaker women activists helped invent what we know today as feminism. Yet her assertiveness and eloquence in stating her case, her tenacity in her own behalf, her refusal to bow to male authority, and her indomitability even in isolation and defeat have hardly been bettered by the self- conscious sisters who came later. For some reason, however, Friend Hannah Barnard’s story has received but scant attention from many of the more prominent Quaker histories. Elbert Russell’s “The History of Quakerism,” and John Punshon’s “Portrait in Grey” mention her only briefly in passing; Larry Ingle’s “Quakers in Conflict” says little more. Even Margaret Bacon’s “Mothers of Feminism” slights her, perhaps because Barnard was more of a “Grandmother” of the movement. The most extensive treatments are in the first volume of Rufus Jones’s “The Later Periods of Quakerism,” and a 1989 study by David Maxey in Quaker History. Perhaps Rufus empathized with her; certainly he had taken his share of brickbats from a new generation of orthodox heresy-hunters. Yet despite its obscurity, Friend Hannah Barnard’s story is in many ways the prototype, or better the archetype of liberal Quakerism. No wonder I imagine her elbowing her way to the front of the long line of liberal Quaker heroes. Joseph John Gurney wrote to his children that he believed he had done well in his preaching at Hudson, and perhaps HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 he did. But Friend Hannah Barnard did pretty well herself.
Friend John Wilbur was accused by several other Rhode Island Quakers of circulating, in his conversation and writings, opinions and statements derogatory to the character of the visiting English evangelical minister, Friend Joseph John Gurney. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In this year ownership of the Saylesville, Rhode Island machine shop and its land was transferred from Granville Olney to his son Elisha Olney (this would not be recorded in Smithfield town records until 1841).
Friend William Basset of Lynn, Massachusetts participated in the founding of the New England Non- Resistance Society and also spoke out publicly against the Quaker meetinghouses which imposed segregated seating upon white and black Friends.
(The “Negro Gallery” had been removed from the Friends meetinghouse in Providence in a renovation in 1822, but as of 1838 was still in existence in the society’s meetinghouse in Saylesville and in fact is in existence there to this day — although of course nowadays nobody thinks of it in that context.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Robert Montgomery Smith Jackson received a doctorate in medicine from the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (he would serve for five years as an Assistant State Geologist).
During this year and the next, Johnson Heed (Martin Johnson Heade) would be working with Edward Hicks, and possibly also with Thomas Hicks who during that period was studying under his older cousin, in Newtown, Pennsylvania. (The portrait of Heade by Thomas Hicks which we have, which would be painted in about 1841, depicts Head as a young man during about this period.)
ELIAS HICKS
In 1829, Richard Field had been allowed to make a silhouette of Friend Elias Hicks and, without his knowledge, Harry Ketchum had painted a portrait. It was from these sources, rather than from the New-York gang’s shattered plaster death mask or the Italian’s sculpture made at the time of death by digging up the corpse, that Henry Inman in this year derived the portrait depicted above. (The date “1838” became apparent on this portrait recently when its inheritor, a Hicks descendant, had it cleaned.) It would be from this portrait that William Ordway Partridge would create the bust which now stands in Friends Historical Library in Swarthmore College.
John James Audubon sent the last of the drawings to his son Victor, who was overseeing the final days of the production of THE BIRDS OF AMERICA in London. The family agreed that they would reunite in New-York at the end of the year. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Edgar Allan Poe was living in New-York, where Harper’s Monthly Gentleman’s Magazine published his novel THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM inspired by the theory of the Symmes Hole.
Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s first novel, RICHES WITHOUT WINGS.
There was a strong Andromedid meteor shower during this year, as there had been in 1798 — this is a shower which we connect with the now-disintegrated periodic Biela’s comet. SKY EVENT HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Harriet Martineau’s RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL:
H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by [email protected] (January, 2001) Harriet Martineau. RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL. Daniel Feller, ed. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000 Reviewed for H-SHEAR by Jamie Bronstein
1838 1838 Christmas. She tours upstate New York, transported by a highly unpleasant canal-boat. She visits American prisons, interviewing prisoners about their crimes, and observes education in action at schools for the deaf and blind. She visits Washington DC, and finds President Jackson feeling paranoid after an assassination attempt. She travels to Jefferson’s Virginia, cuts south to New Orleans, then travels up the Mississippi on a packed steamboat. She visits Cincinnati, which for her encapsulates the promise of the west, and ends her juggernaut among abolitionists in Boston. Everywhere she looks, Martineau sees a cheering prosperity. “The young women all well-dressed, the men all at work or amusement, the farms all held in fee-simple, the stores all inadequate to their custom.” (32) This promise balances out a certain immaturity, which Martineau chronicles like a kindly parent. Although the Americans seem to her to be imitative in their culture and lacking rigor in their science (too easily led into such childish fancies as phrenology, spiritualism, and animal magnetism), she has no doubt that they will eventually settle down to cultural richness. In contrast with some European visitors, even Martineau’s harshest condemnations of the Americans are not very harsh. She finds Southerners deluded about the benefits of slavery, and Northerners largely deluded that colonization is the answer, and hints several times at the possibility that the slavery question will provoke open conflict. Nonetheless, she believes that the honesty and integrity of the American public (in contrast with some of its leaders) will resolve the question. Her book also includes short but bitingly honest sketches of many of the leaders of Jacksonian politics – Jackson, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster, among others. Her willingness to describe their appearances and modes of speaking, their vices and their achievements, originally elicited some bad reviews for the book in the American press, but it makes the book a wonderful resource for students of the period. Most engagingly, Martineau’s somewhat detached and anthropological commentary reveals the otherwise hidden texture of early American life. West Point cadets sneak cigarettes, while lecturing new students about the evils of smoking. A Quaker bridegroom works hard to stifle a laugh during a long silence at his own wedding. Vandals add speech-balloons to the mouths of people portrayed on hotel wallpaper. An “eminent professor” staves off boredom during a Harvard graduation by doodling on the commencement program. Hardy New England boys get their exercise in winter by “coasting” down the snow-covered hills and streets on planks of wood. These little continuities of human nature link the reader to an America that otherwise seems distant and surprising. The edited version of Martineau’s book flows smoothly and feels like an integrated whole — testimony to Feller’s judicious editing. He has also added a helpful index and footnotes that identify most figures and events. Although many contemporary American critics panned Martineau’s book, Feller is an unabashed admirer of Martineau: “Whatever flaws her American books contain are outweighed by her talent for insightful reporting, her great store of good sense, and above all the shining clarity of her moral purpose.” (xix) Anyone looking for student readings on the early republic will want to acquire a copy of RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL, and see whether they agree. Copyright (c) 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission, please contact [email protected].
The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 5th issue of its “omnibus” entitled The Anti-Slavery Examiner, containing “Power of Congress Over the District of Columbia.” TEXT (This would be followed by “Power ... Columbia. With Additions by the Author.” and by “Power ... Columbia. INDEX Fourth Edition.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes became Professor of Anatomy at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
JANUARY
January: Joseph Smith, Jr. fled Kirtland, Ohio, going to Far West, Missouri to find shelter both from the wrath of the law and from disgruntled Mormons.
January: William Wordsworth’s poems, in chronological sequence: • To the Planet Venus. Upon its approximation (as an Evening Star) to the Earth, January 1838 • Composed at Rydal on May Morning, 1838 • Composed on a May Morning, 1838 • Hark! ’tis the Thrush, undaunted, undeprest • ’Tis He whose yester-evening’s high disdain • Oh what a Wreck! how changed in mien and speech! • A Plea for Authors, May 1838 • A Poet to his Grandchild. (Sequel to the foregoing) • Blest Statesman He, whose Mind’s unselfish will • Valedictory Sonnet. Closing the Volume of Sonnets published in 1838 • Sonnet, “Protest against the Ballot” • Sonnets upon the Punishment of Death. In series. • Suggested by the View of Lancaster Castle (on the Road from the South) • Tenderly do we feel by Nature’s Law • The Roman Consul doomed his sons to die • Is ‘Death,’ when evil against good has fought • Not to the object specially designed • Ye brood of conscience — Spectres! that frequent • Before the world had passed her time of youth • Fit retribution, by the moral code • Though to give timely warning and deter • Our bodily life, some plead, that life the shrine • Ah, think how one compelled for life to abide • See the Condemned alone within his cell • Conclusion • Apology • Sonnet on a Portrait of I. F., painted by Margaret Gillies • Sonnet to I. F. • Poor Robin • On a Portrait of the Duke of Wellington upon the Field of Waterloo, by Haydon • To a Painter • On the same Subject • When Severn’s sweeping flood had overthrown • Intent on gathering wool from hedge and brake • Prelude, prefixed to the Volume entitled “Poems chiefly of Early and Late Years” • Floating Island • The Crescent-moon, the Star of Love • To a Redbreast — (in Sickness) • Miscellaneous Sonnets • ’A Poet!’ — He hath put his heart to school • The most alluring clouds that mount the sky • Feel for the wrongs to universal ken • In allusion to various recent Histories and Notices of the French Revolution HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 • Continued • Concluded • Men of the Western World! in Fate’s dark book • Lo! where she stands fixed in a saint-like trance •The Norman Boy • The Poet’s Dream, Sequel to the Norman Boy • The Widow on Windermere Side • Farewell Lines • Airey-Force Valley • Lyre! though such power do in thy magic live • To the Clouds • Wansfell! this Household has a favoured lot • The Eagle and the Dove • Grace Darling • While beams of orient light shoot wide and high • To the Rev. Christopher Wordsworth, D.D. • Inscription for a Monument in Crosthwaite Church, in the Vale of Keswick • On the projected Kendal and Windermere Railway • Proud were ye, Mountains, when, in times of old •At Furness Abbey • Forth from a jutting ridge, around whose base • The Westmoreland Girl. To my Grandchildren — •At Furness Abbey • Yes! thou art fair, yet be not moved • What heavenly smiles! O Lady mine • To a Lady • Glad sight wherever new with old • Love lies Bleeding • Companion to the foregoing • The Cuckoo-Clock • So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive • To the Pennsylvanians • Young England — what is then become of Old • Though the bold wings of Poesy affect • Suggested by a Picture of the Bird of Paradise • Sonnet • Where lies the truth? has Man, in wisdom’s creed • I know an aged Man constrained to dwell • How beautiful the Queen of Night, on high • Evening Voluntaries — To Lucca Giordano • Who but is pleased to watch the moon on high • Illustrated Books and Newspapers • The unremitting voice of nightly streams • Sonnet. (To an Octogenarian) • On the Banks of a Rocky Stream HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 January: This month’s issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:
HARVARDIANA
January: The Rhode Island General Assembly’s Committee to Revise the Penal Code considered a “Report of the Committee On the Abolishment of Capital Punishments” which recommended that the state abolish capital punishment.
January: Professor Edward Everett’s “The Discovery of America by the Northmen” (a critical review of ANTIQUITATES AMERICANÆ, SIVE SCRIPTORES SEPTENTRIONALES RERUM ANTE-COLUMBIANARUM, IN AMERICA. SAMLING AF DE I NORDENS OLDSKRIFTER IN DEHOLDTE EFTERRETNINGER OM DE GAMLE NORDBOERS OPDAGELSEREISER TIL AMERICA, FRA DET 10DE TIL DET 14DE AARHUNDREDE (Edidit Societas Regia Antiquariorum Septentrionalium. Hafniæ, 1837) appeared in the North American Review. NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Henry Thoreau would extract from this for CAPE COD.
CAPE COD: These are the oldest accounts which we have of Cape Cod, PEOPLE OF unless, perchance, Cape Cod is, as some suppose, the same with that CAPE COD “Kial-ar-nes” or Keel-Cape, on which, according to old Icelandic manuscripts, Thorwald, son of Eric the Red, after sailing many days southwest from Greenland, broke his keel in the year 1004; and where, according to another, in some respects less trustworthy manuscript, Thor-finn Karlsefne (“that is, one who promises or is destined to be an able or great man”; he is said to have had a son born in New England, from whom Thorwaldsen the sculptor was descended), sailing past, in the year 1007, with his wife Gudrida, Snorre Thorbrandson, Biarne Grimolfson, and Thorhall Gamlason, distinguished Norsemen, in three ships containing “one hundred and sixty men and all sorts of live stock” (probably the first Norway rats among the rest), having the land “on the right side” of them, “rowed ashore,” and found “auor-aefi (trackless deserts),” and “Strand-ir laang-ar ok sand-ar (long narrow beaches and sand-hills),” and “called the shores Furdu- strand-ir (Wonder-Strands), because the sailing by them seemed long.” According to the Icelandic manuscripts, Thorwald was the first then, — unless possibly one Biarne Heriulfson (i.e. son of Heriulf) who had been seized with a great desire to travel, sailing from Iceland to Greenland in the year 986 to join his father who had migrated thither, for he had resolved, says the manuscript, “to spend the following winter, like all the preceding ones, with his father,” — being driven far to the southwest by a storm, when it cleared up saw the low land of Cape Cod looming faintly in the distance; but this not answering to the description of Greenland, he put his vessel about, and, sailing northward along the coast, at length reached Greenland and his father. At any rate, he may put forth a strong claim to be regarded as the discoverer of the American continent. These Northmen were a hardy race, whose younger sons inherited the ocean, and traversed it without chart or compass, and they are said to have been “the first who learned the art of sailing on a wind.” Moreover, they had a habit of casting their door-posts overboard and settling wherever they went ashore. But as Biarne, and Thorwald, and Thorfinn have not mentioned the latitude and longitude distinctly enough, though we have great respect for them as skilful and adventurous navigators, we must for the present remain in doubt as to what capes they did see. We think that they were considerably further north.
January: The sailing ship Pennsylvania, a fast packet boat, arrived at New-York, having accomplished the voyage from Liverpool in 15 days.
There were eleven negreros flying the Portuguese flag finding their way into American destination ports during this month, and herding their coffles of cargo into local barracoons. The Maria Segundo, master Alburquerque, out of an unknown area of Africa on one of its ten-count-’em-ten known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at a port of Cuba. The Felicidade, master Verriel, out of an unknown area of Africa on one of its nine known Middle Passage voyages, was arriving at a port of Cuba. The Josefina, master Neives, out of an unknown area of Africa on one of its twelve-count-’em-twelve known Middle Passage voyages, was arriving at a port of Cuba. The Magadalena, master Artiage, out of Principe with a cargo of 219 enslaved HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Africans on its first of two known Middle Passages, was arriving at Juraga, Cuba. The Joven Luisa, master Monso, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 291 enslaved Africans on its one and only known Middle Passage, was arriving at Juraga, Cuba. The Dois Amigos, master unknown, out of Quelimane with a cargo of 712 enslaved Africans on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages, was arriving at the port of Baia Sepetiba, Brazil. The Generoso, master unknown, out of Quelimane with a cargo of 800 enslaved Africans on its one and only known Middle Passage, was arriving at the port of Baia Sepetiba, Brazil. The Doze de Outubro, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 322 enslaved Africans on one of its five known Middle Passage voyages, was arriving at the port of Copacabana, Brazil. The Inocente, master unknown, on its first of two known Middle Passages, out of Angola with a cargo of 419 enslaved Africans, was arriving at the port of Taipu, Brazil. The Fortuna de Africa, master unknown, out of Mocambique with a cargo of 712 enslaved Africans on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages, was arriving at the port of Camarioca, Brazil. The Jupiter, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 373 enslaved Africans on one of its five known Middle Passage voyages, was arriving at the port of Ilha Grande, Brazil. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE
January: It became possible, if one changed trains several times, to make it all the way from Boston to Albany by railroad.
January: Salmon Portland Chase made a vigorous argument before the Ohio supreme court that had Matilda escaped from a slave state into Ohio, she would still have been a slave, but since her master/father had himself brought Matilda into the state, she had thereby ceased to be a slave, and since was no longer a slave, Birney could not be fined for harboring her. The court was able to ignore Chase’s constitutional arguments, by dismissing the charge against Birney on mere technical procedural grounds: the indictment turned out to have been defective in having neglected to charge Birney with assisting a fugitive slave.27
27. Our courts have a principle that they ought to dodge such bullets wherever they can, by deciding cases that can be decided upon the narrowest procedural grounds, on those narrow procedural grounds. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 January: Early in this year, it had become obvious on the island of Jamaica, that the emancipation system of apprenticeship instead of slavery simply was not working — because the aggrieved white masters on that island simply were not allowing it to work. How to handle an angry and resentful white man? Well, the first thing to do is, yank the whip out of his hand:
“EMANCIPATION IN THE ... INDIES....” : Parliament was compelled to pass additional laws for the defence and security of the negro, and in ill humor at these acts, the great island of Jamaica, with a population of half a million, and 300,000 negroes, early in 1838, resolved to throw up the two remaining years of apprenticeship, and to emancipate absolutely on the 1st August, 1838. In British Guiana, in Dominica, the same resolution had been earlier taken with more good will; and the other islands fell into the measure; so that on the 1st August, 1838, the shackles dropped from every British slave. The accounts which we have from all parties, both from the planters, and those too who were originally most opposed to the measure, and from the new freemen, are of the most satisfactory kind. The manner in which the new festival was celebrated, brings tears to the eyes. The First of August, 1838, was observed in Jamaica as a day of thanksgiving and prayer.
January: Frederick Douglass later reported that at some point early in this year he had been becoming “quite restless” under slavery: Frederick Douglass’s NARRATIVE
I could see no reason why I should, at the end of each week, pour the reward of my toil into the purse of my master. When I carried to him my weekly wages, he would, after counting the money, look me in the face with a robber-like fierceness, and ask, “Is this all?” He was satisfied with nothing less than the last cent. He would, however, when I made him six dollars, sometimes give me six cents, to encourage me. It had the opposite effect. I regarded it as a sort of admission of my right to the whole. The fact that he gave me any part of my wages was proof, to my mind, that he believed me entitled to the whole of them. I always felt worse for having received any thing; for I feared that the giving me a few cents would ease his conscience, and make him feel himself to be a pretty honorable sort of robber. My discontent grew upon me. I was ever on the look-out for means of escape; and, finding no direct means, I determined to try to hire my time, with a view of getting money with which to make my escape.
NARRATIVE January: In Newark, New Jersey, Samuel Ringgold Ward got married with Miss Reynolds of New-York: I afterwards taught for two-and-a-half years in Newark, New Jersey, where I was living in January 1838, when I was married to Miss Reynolds, of New York; and in October 1838 Samuel Ringgold Ward the younger was born, and I became, “to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever,” a family man, aged twenty-one years and twelve days. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 January 1, Monday: A setting of Psalm 42 for solo voices, chorus, orchestra and organ by Felix Mendelssohn was performed for the initial time, in Leipzig.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 1st of 1st M 1838 / I have been favoured today with quiet & feelings of spiritual life & favour, & surely my outward blessings ought to be numbered, for I have received them ——28
RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 2, Tuesday: Joseph Wolff boarded ship in New-York harbor.
January 3, Wednesday: Enoch Cobb Wines wrote from St. Louis to the President of Brown University, the Reverend Doctor Barnas Sears (1802-1880, Class of 1825).
In the evening, before a lecture at the Salem Lyceum, Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody introduced Jones Very to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Elijah Hinsdale Burritt died of the yellow fever, not yet 44 years of age.
January 4, Thursday: Charles Stratton (AKA General Tom Thumb and as Tiny Tim — the dwarf who would be made famous by P.T. Barnum) was born.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 4th of 1st M 1838 / Our meeting was small but the Silence was favourd - A young man from Little Compton was there & preached - I thought he was concerned to do good, but unskilled in his administration — Father also had a short offering — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
28. Stephen Wanton Gould Diary, 1836-1838: The Gould family papers are stored under control number 2033 at the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections of Cornell University Library, Box 9 Folder 16: September 1, 1836-September 20, 1838; also on microfilm, see Series 7 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 January 5, Friday: Carleton Mabee has complained that historians have tended to ignore the fact that Lewis Tappan, unlike his brother Arthur, committed himself to the Peace Testimony and remained faithful to it: “All resort to bloody weapons is anti-Christian.”
President Martin Van Buren declared neutrality in the current Canadian rebellion and warned US citizens not to aid either side.
During the previous December the leaders of the Canadian rebellion, on Navy Island in the Niagara River, had dispatched Thomas Jefferson Sutherland to raise a force of fighting men in Detroit. After they evacuated their Navy Island base, other of these rebels also concentrated in Detroit, and public meetings were held and an invasion force organized. Some came to join the rebellion from as far as Illinois and Kentucky. When US General Hugh Brady ordered that the weapons at the Fort Gratiot arsenal be removed by steamboat in order to keep them out of the hands of these people, the boat became stuck in the ice at St. Clair, Michigan and the weaponry needed to be offloaded onto wagons in order to secure them at the jailhouse in Detroit. On this day the rebels raided that temporary arsenal and absconded with 450 muskets. Later the rebels would also obtain 200 weapons from the unsecured office of the US marshal in Detroit, although these weapons were not being guarded and were perhaps taken with the assistance of the marshal himself.
January 7, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 7th of 1 M / Our meetings were well attended In Both Father Rodman had short testimonies & I thought was favoured - particularly, in the Afternoon Wrote a letter this eveng to John Heald in Ans to his recd 30 ult RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 8, Monday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 8 of 1 M / This Afternoon attended the funeral of Abigail Barker who died on 7th day last the 6th inst she was Aged 72 11 Months & 9 days - daughter of Matthew Barker. — She was buried in the upper burying ground. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 11, Thursday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 11th 1st M 1838 / Father Rodman spoke a little twice in our Meeting today, & tho the Number assembled was small it seemed to me that there were minds present solemnized & under a degree of proffitable reflection. — If my health & other circumstances permit I think to set off on 2nd or 3rd day next for Salem to attend the Quarterly Meeting to be held there 4th & 5th days of next week & also to meet with the Yearly Meetings committee to confer on the State of Society. — This Afternoon I recd a printed copy of the Minutes & doings of the Yearly Meeting held in the 9th Month in Ohio. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 January 13, Saturday: William Lyon Mackenzie, leader of the Canadian insurrection, was arrested in the United States.
January 14, Sunday: Early morning. Not long after a performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the Salle Favart and all the assets of its resident company, the Theatre-Italien, burned to the ground. The Italian director Carlo Severini died when he jumped from the burning building.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 14th of 1st M / In the forenoon Father Rodman had a short testimony & in the Afternoon our Meeting was silent - but both were quiet solid meetings. Brayton Slade dined with us - he is from Fall River & is about to settle in this Town I have for sometime thought of attending the approaching Quarterly Meeting at Salem & to Meet with the Yearly Meetings committee who expect to be there, & within a few days have concluded to go & nothing occuring to prevent I propose to set out in the Stage tomorrow morning - My own health however has of late been so precarious that I feel affraid to be from home in the Winter, & Mother Rodmans is so very weak & feeble that I feel this evening under no small discouragement. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 15, Monday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 15th of 1st M 1838 / Having for sometime felt my mind engaged to attend the approaching Quarterly Meeting at Salem & being on the Yearly Meetings committee appointed to Visit Meetings as Truth may open the way & several of the committee expecting to be there I set out this Morning by Stage thro’ Fall River to Tanton from whence I went on the Rail Road to Boston & put up at the Marlborough House lodged & breakfasted next Morning — After Breakfast took the Stage for Salem - having on Board Benj. U Crowninshield a man of Note in the World who was very pleasant & conversant with all & me in particular - We arrived after a pleasant Journey at a place called Buffums corner in Salem & from thence I walked up to Jonathon Nichols & got to his house some time before dinner & found them glad to see me & very loving & kind - In the Afternoon Brother Jonathon took me up to Enoch Pages in Danvers where We spent most of the Afternoon returning to tea RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 January 17, Wednesday: Reuben Crandall died in Jamaica — of consumption or tuberculosis which he had contracted during his lengthy incarceration in the Washington DC lockup on charges of having attempted to persuade the citizens of our nation’s capital to give up on human enslavement.
On this same day, at the Quarterly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in Salem, Massachusetts, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould was struggling with the spiritual error of those Quakers who, like the Hicksites of 1827, were allowing themselves to become over-preoccupied with the ongoing antislavery crusade to the detriment of their religion. None of your hyperventilation, please — we are white people here, and this “being enslaved” situation isn’t a problem that we need concern ourselves with. He approved a motion by the Yearly Meeting barring the abolition societies from use of Friends meetinghouses for their inciting gatherings in precisely the same mode in which the abolition societies had been barred in Washington from distributing their inciting pamphlets. 4th day / attended Select meeting which was a time of favour the[n?] attended with a sense of weight & some distress things not being all right among them — Dined at Abijah Chases & met in the Afternoon with the Yearly Meeting committee & endeavoured to feel after the mind of Truth & I believe we were favoured with a right sense & right movements, which resulted in private & tender council to a few who appeared to be much involved the spirit of Anti Slavery, or are at least by their heated zeal injuring a good & right cause by intemperate movements, & in some instances injuring themselves, & society in persuing wrong, or at least unseasonable Measures - We thought some good was done & that we went at present as far as Wisdom dictated - Returned to Brother J R & lodged. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 18, Thursday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day / Attended the Meeting at large which like the Meeting yesterday was under a sense of distress, but the Truth broke through in a powerful testimony by John Meader & supplication from his Wife Elizabeth Meader — In the last Meeting Jonathon Nichols was approved as an Elder, which was all the buisness excepting from the Monthly Meeting the Queries - But the subject of Slavery was in my apprehension injudiciously introduced which brought fourth some intemperate zeal & one mans communication reminded me of the Spirit which I saw among the Hixites [Hicksite followers of Friend Elias Hicks] in NYork in 1827 when David Buffum & I attended the Y [Yearly] meeting there - but things were pretty well got over & left for the present — Dined at Jona. Nichols spent the evening & lodged - calling in the evening to visit Jonathons Mother a sweet spirit old friend in the [XX]nd Year of her Age — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
It strikes me that the attitude exemplified above by Friend Gould is precisely the attitude toward human enslavement that Henry David Thoreau criticized, and the attitude exemplified by Friend Elias and his “Hixites” is precisely the attitude that Henry embraced, by way of the influence on him of Friend Lucretia Mott. Here is how Henry would take a flying dig at this not-so-Friendly aberration, in his lecture “A Plea for Captain John Brown”: What sort of violence is that which is encouraged, not by soldiers but by peaceable citizens, not so much by laymen as by ministers of the gospel, not so much by the fighting sects as HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 by the Quakers, and not so much by the Quaker men as by the Quaker women?
January 19, Friday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day took the Stage for Boston & dined at the Marlborough House where I met with our friends of the Y Meeting committee from this Quarterly Meeting Vizt J Meader & Wife, Moses Farnum, M B Allen & Wm Jenkins after dining we took the Rail Road for Providence where we arrived before dark & I went to my esteemed friend S B Tobeys took tea & lodged & spent the evening, giving him some acct of my journey & hearing read some interesting letters which he had Received from divers friends. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 20, Saturday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day Took the Stage & came home, finding My wife & family well, but Mother Rodman more weak & feeble than when I left her & evidently failing fast. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 21, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 21st of 1st M 1838 / Both Meeting well attended & Silent - it did not seem to me to be held for naught as there was some good degree of serious solemnity over the gathering - But Oh the weight & responsibility which rests on those who have the charge of such meetings resting upon them — Cousin Thomas B Gould called & sat a while with us in the evening — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
Man is the artificer of his own happiness. Let him beware how he complains of the disposition of circumstances for it is his own disposition he blames. If this is sour or that rough, or the other steep — let him think if it be not his work. If his look curdles all hearts, let him not complain of a sour reception — if he hobble in his gait, let him not grumble at the roughness of the way — if he is weak in the knees — let him not call the hill steep. This was the pith of the inscription on the wall of the Swedish inn— “You will find at Trolhate HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 excellent bread, meat, and wine, provided you bring them with you!”
THOMAS THOMSON’S SWEDEN DR. THOMAS THOMSON
This would seem to have been an inaccurate rendering of Dr. Thomas Thomson’s text — however, Thoreau was not copying from that text and presumably had not seen it. Our guy had been perusing, instead, the essay “On Self-Controul” in the 3d edition of Richard “Conversation” Sharp’s LETTERS AND ESSAYS IN PROSE AND VERSE (London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1834): Madame De Lambert said to her son “Mon ammi, ne vous permittez que les sottises qui vous feront un grand plaisir” and the advice is often needed. It is surprising how much trouble is sometimes taken by the weak and wicked to defeat their own purposes in wrong-doing. He that seeks too impetuously his own sensual gratification, forgetting that moderation is the indispensable condition of enjoyment, often blunts or altogether destroys the appetite itself, or finds it to be the source of pain instead of pleasure. An inordinate lover of money gets pilloried in the gazette as a bankrupt. An ambitious man, thirsting for power, becomes a mere slave to constituents or to ministers, and a vain man, sighing for applause, and even willing to be envied, makes himself so ridiculous as to be laughed at, instead of being admired. These are vices that blunder in their calculations, but there are others, that spring from a malicious disposition, whose victims are disinterested, in a bad sense, and actually take a sort of insane pleasure from hurting themselves as well as others. They break their neighbours’ windows, but ’tis with their own guineas. Cardan in one of his letters, or in his own life, confesses that it was not unusual with him to drop burning wax on his arm, seeking for excitement even in bodily pain. There is perhaps a superficial resemblance in this strange propensity to the delight that we take in tragedy, and to our sympathy with the afflictions of others; but they are wholly different, both in their origin, and in their nature. In our taste for aesthetic fictions there is no belief that the incidents are real, and our compassion is a kind fellow-feeling that leads to friendly services, and derives its satisfaction from the sufferings of those whom we console or relieve. It is HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 the good emotion and not the bad event that gratifies. The outward circumstance only calls forth the inborn sensibility. At an inn in Sweden there was the following inscription, in English, on the wall “You will find, at Trollhatte, excellent bread, meat and wine, provided you bring them with you” and this will almost serve for a description of human life, so much depends upon the temper that events are met with, and on the prudence that foresees and provides against them. What pleasure can he expect who must always travel with a fretful, discontented, suspicious companion, with whom his dissatisfaction must be perpetual, inasmuch as he cannot be ignorant that the evils infesting him are well-deserved? And the case is much worse should he have the sad advantage of being at once silly and self-satisfied, criminal and tranquil: for this implies the extinction of all that could assuage the suffering, or remove the disease. Fortunately this deadly quiet must be rare, for all men regret the good qualities that they have lost, and the very worst of us like good humour and generosity — in others. RICHARD SHARP’S ESSAYS
WALK: As we went on our way late in the afternoon, we refreshed ourselves by bathing our feet in every rill that crossed the road, and anon, as we were able to walk in the shadows of the hills, recovered our morning elasticity. Passing through Sterling, we reached the banks of the Stillwater, in the western part of the town, at evening, where is a small village collected. We fancied that there was already a certain western look about this place, a smell of pines and roar of water, recently confined by dams, belying its name, which were exceedingly grateful. When the first inroad has been made, a few acres leveled, and a few houses erected, the forest looks wilder than ever. Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement; but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight. This village had, as yet, no post-office, nor any settled name. In the small villages which we entered, the villagers gazed after us, with a complacent, almost compassionate look, as if we were just making our début in the world at a late hour. “Nevertheless,” did they seem to say, “come and study us, and learn men and manners.” So is each one’s world but a clearing in the forest, so much open and inclosed ground. The landlord had not yet returned from the field with his men, and the cows had yet to be milked. But we remembered the inscription on the wall of the Swedish inn, “You will find at Trolhate excellent bread, meat, and wine, provided you bring them with you,” and were contented. But I must confess it did somewhat disturb our pleasure, in this withdrawn spot, to have our own village newspaper handed us by our host, as if the greatest charm the country offered to the traveler was the facility of communication with the town. Let it recline on its Own everlasting hills, and not be looking out from their summits for some petty Boston or New York in the horizon. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
January 24, Wednesday: The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 6th issue of its “omnibus” entitled The Anti-Slavery Examiner, incautiously presenting a “Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave” that had been narrated to Friend John Greenleaf Whittier by a black man (this was also appearing in book form as NARRATIVE OF JAMES WILLIAMS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE; WHO WAS FOR SEVERAL YEARS A DRIVER ON A COTTON PLANTATION IN ALABAMA). The authenticity of what Friend John had produced would immediately be challenged and suddenly this Williams dude, native informant — would be nowhere to be found. –The book would need to be withdrawn from the bookstores. It would come to appear that “Williams” had been a free black American who had culled stories from neighbors, and invented others, for a little ready cash. (The antislavery press of the period is full of warnings against such bogus fugitives, a fact of life which may help us understand how, when Thoreau would make reference to helping “escaping slaves,” he would need to include the telling modifier “real.”).
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 25th of 1st M 1838 / In our first Meeting Father Rodman was engaged in a few words which I thought well adapted — In the last Meeting the buisness that came before us got along with some rubbing but things did as well as I expected - We had several friends to dine with us. Mother Rodman remains weak & low, & it does not seem as if she can remain long — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 27, Saturday: Three companies of US soldiers arrived at Gibraltar, Michigan aboard the steamer Robert Fulton out of Buffalo, to attempt to quiet the border with Canada.
January 28, Sunday: Joseph Wolff arrived at Southampton upon the completion of his Atlantic crossing.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 28th of 1st M 1838 / Our Meetings were both silent -but I thought both were solemn & very quiet seasons. — Recd a kind letter from my friend John Farnum now in Philad. accompnaying a Book oriention[?] which was very acceptable — In the evening we had a short call from our young friends Thomas Nichols, Thos Gould & Thos B Buffum & have in the course of the Day & remainder of the eveng written an Answer to a letter recd some days ago from Ephriam M Huntington respecting a periodical he proposes publishing - my views are that the time has not yet come for him to proceed in it — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 29, Monday: John Davison Rockefeller was born.
January 30, Tuesday: Remanded to the prison of Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, Osceola had become ill and died. News of his death had spread, and Alligator and Billy Bowlegs assumed leadership of the Seminole resistance. The 2d Seminole War would begin, lasting into 1842.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 3rd day 1st m 30th 1838 / This morning took the Stage for Providence & had a head wind & Boistrous time across Bristol ferry but got across Safe, & arrived at Providence in good season to take quarters at my friend Jonathon Congdons where I lodged thro’ the Quarterly Meeting — 4th day attended the Select Meeting & in the Afternoon the Meetg for Sufferings, & in the evening the Tract Society which were interesting Meetings — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
FEBRUARY
February: “XXIII. Meteorological Observations made during a residence in Colombia between the Years 1820 and 1830. By the late Colonel Francis Hall” (The London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Volume XII New and United Series, pages 148-157).
February: The current issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:
HARVARDIANA HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 February: A negrero flying the US flag, name unknown, master unknown, on its one and only known Middle Passage, delivered a cargo of 250 enslaved Africans at a port in Brazil. Another slaver, this one flying the Spanish flag (as shown below), the Con la Boca, master Ferreira, on its one and only known Middle Passage, arrived at its destination, St. Thomas.
This month five Portuguese slavers were arriving in the New World. The Esperanca, master Saldanha, on one of its ten-count-’em-ten known Middle Passage voyages, brought a cargo of 420 enslaved Africans from Principe, arriving at Juraga, Cuba. The Aguia, master unknown, out of Angola on one of its five known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at Campos, Brazil. The Leao, master unknown, out of Benguela on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages, brought a cargo of 600 enslaved Africans, arriving at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Maria Carolta, master unknown, on its first of two known Middle Passages, brought a cargo of 829 enslaved Africans from Angola, arriving at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Carolina, master unknown, out of Quelimane on one of its five known Middle Passage voyages, brought an enormous cargo of 1,050 enslaved Africans, arriving at Campos, Brazil. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE
February: Early in this month, Major General Thomas S. “Trust Me, I’m A White Man” Jesup had promised the Black Seminoles of the Florida swampland “freedom and protection on their separating from the Indians and surrendering,” stipulating that “they should be sent to the West as part of the Seminole nation.” Divide and conquer! By this point all of the long-standing pretense that these people were mere escaped slaves, to be rounded up and marched back north to the plantation belt, had been entirely abandoned. WHITE ON RED, RED ON WHITE “OLD COMERS” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 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.
February: William Henry Brisbane became an abolitionist (his wife Anne Lawton Brisbane would never unite with him in such sentiment), would greatly regret having sold his 22 field slaves rather than freeing them, would vow to buy them back and manumit them, and would transform himself into “the most hated man [by the white people] in the Beaufort District.” He moved with his wife and their three sons to Ohio (eventually then to the West). His wife Anne Lawton Brisbane would be attempting to make ends meet for the family by taking in boarders for $50 per month.29 He attempted to care for his three slaves whom he manumitted, and went steadily down in the world. –A remark by one of his relatives, writing in a later timeframe: “His endeavour to support his Negroes after freeing them was philanthropic (and idiotic).”
February: Friend Angelina Emily Grimké testified before a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature in Boston, on the subject of human slavery.
29. I do not understand this figure. It was possible at that time to obtain room and board in American boarding houses for approximately $1 per week. If Mrs. Brisbane charged each boarder $5 per month, she would need to have ten boarders at a time to receive an income of $50, and I think that most boarding houses could not service ten guests at a time. Mrs. Cynthia Thoreau, at her boarding house in Concord, Massachusetts, presumably never provided hospitality for this number of boarders despite the fact that she employed two helpers! HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 February 6, Tuesday: At Kwa Matiwane Hill in Natal, about 100 Boers and their servants led by Pieter Retief were captured by Zulus who killed them with clubs.
Having been ordered down the Mississippi River from Fort Snelling to Fort Jessup, Dr. John Emerson had there met Eliza Irene Sanford, 23 years of age, who had been visiting her sister (her sister being the wife of a captain there), and on this day they were wed. Afterward the surgeon would send word to Fort Snelling for his slaves Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott to travel down the river and join them.
In the year 1838, said Dr. Emerson removed the plaintiff and said Harriet and their said daughter Eliza, from said Fort Snelling to the State of Missouri, where they have ever since resided. Before the commencement of this suit, said Dr. Emerson sold and conveyed the plaintiff, said Harriet, Eliza, and Lizzie, to the defendant, as slaves, and the defendant has ever since claimed to hold them and each of them as slaves. At the times mentioned in the Plaintiff’s declaration, the defendant, claiming to be owner as aforesaid, laid his hands upon said plaintiff, Harriet, Eliza, and Lizzie, and imprisoned them, doing in this respect, however, no more than what he might lawfully do if they were of right his slaves at such times. Further proof may be given on the trial for either party. It is agreed that Dred Scott brought suit for his freedom in the Circuit Court of St. Louis county; that there was a verdict and judgment in his favor; that on a writ of error to the Supreme Court, the judgment below was reversed, and the same remanded to the Circuit Court, where it has been continued to await the decision of this case. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
MARCH
March: The current issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:
HARVARDIANA
March: Friends Sarah Moore Grimké and Angelina Emily Grimké delivered six lectures in Boston, on the subject of women. FEMINISM SEXISM
Anderson, Bonnie S. JOYOUS GREETINGS: THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S MOVEMENT, 1830-1860. NY: Oxford UP, 2000. Reviewed for H-Ideas by Kathryn Wagnild Fuller ([email protected]), Library, University of Minnesota Duluth.30 The First International Women’s Movement In JOYOUS GREETINGS, Bonnie Anderson identifies and traces the trajectory of an international feminist movement existing between 1830 and 1860. It was not a movement characterized by formal organizations but rather “a matrix of a feminism that transcended national boundaries,” (page 2) with women sharing ideas and tactics and supporting each other through correspondence, publications, visits, and news reports. This 30. H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by [email protected] (February 2002) HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 movement originated mainly among women participating in movements for human justice, often socialist and/or religious, in England, Scotland, France, Germany, the United States, and Sweden. In France and Great Britain, for example, feminism emerged in the early 1830s in Owenite and St. Simonian socialist groups. Similarly, in the United States and England, women joined antislavery movements and utopian communities. Within these groups some women began articulating ideas about the position of women — finding comparisons between the social position of women and the working class, in the case of the socialist groups, and between the position of women and that of slaves among antislavery women. When their calls for changes on behalf of women met resistance, individual feminists turned to each other and established loose associations and, eventually, networks with feminists in other countries. Early interactions took place between English and French women and English and American women, the latter sometimes by visits including that of the English writer Harriet Martineau who made links between the English and American women in her writings about American society. In Germany, where more repressive governments limited forms of social activism than were permitted in France and England, feminist activism did not develop until the 1840s and did so, along with supporters of other social and political causes, in a “behind-the-scenes” way through the free congregation movement. Elsewhere by the early 1840s, feminist activism had waned due to increased exclusion from reform organizations (as with the antislavery movement in the United States and England) or decline of social justice activism (as with the turn of the St. Simonians away from politics and social activism). According to Anderson, the international feminist movement stayed alive during the 1840s largely through publishing and reading by individual feminists and helped by an increase in women’s intellectual writing by women like Charlotte Brontë and George Sand. The growing social and political unrest in the cities of Europe in the late 1840s and the revolutions that took place early in 1848 renewed feminist fervor, especially in France and Germany. Calls for greater political participation and social improvement found expression in writing, petitioning, speaking in public forums, and articulating demands in political assembles. Feminists organized schools and health projects and made other social efforts directed toward improving the situation of women. Anderson also shows that the revolutionary spirit in Europe spurred American women back into action and directly influenced the calling of the Seneca Falls convention in July and feminist activity in the United States. Feminists persisted in the face of opposition, even among fellow radicals, in striving for the full participation they wanted in new governments, the social changes they expected with regard to women, and the end of some forms of male dominance. Anderson identifies 1848 as the beginning of the “heyday” of the first international women’s movement. Publications (including newspapers and journals) increased, women spoke out, and connections among women of different countries became stronger as national groups monitored and were inspired or influenced by activities in other countries. Many actions started by French feminists continued at least until 1853 even in the face of the return of the more HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 conservative governments in the post-revolutionary period. When feminism declined in Europe, the movement in the United States carried forth its spirit and made international issues important concerns and kept contacts with individual European feminists. With the sectional conflict over slavery and the beginning of the Civil War, the American women’s movement was diverted to national goals and feminism lapsed all around. Anderson persuasively demonstrates that feminists of this period had a wide range of interests and goals with regard to women, many of them related to socialism and/or linked to working class and or religious movements. When feminists again became active in the United States and the European countries after 1860, they focused on a more narrow range of issues — specifically voting rights and education. The main point of JOYOUS GREETINGS — the existence of an international feminist movement between 1830 and 1860 makes a significant contribution to the history of feminism and feminist thought. Its publication coincided with Margaret McFadden’s GOLDEN CABLES OF SYMPATHY but differs from that work in extending the roots of international feminism to earlier times and contexts. More significantly, Anderson conceptualizes the movement of the early nineteenth century as having a beginning and end and, therefore, possessing an identity distinct from one that emerged later and which, in Anderson’s view, emphasized suffrage and more conservative goals than the earlier movement. This work also makes contributions to the historiography of feminism in giving emphasis to socialism, religion, and social reform as the ground from which feminism emerged; focusing on activism as an essential element of feminism (while at the same time valuing feminist writings); and making clear the broad agenda of issues in which early feminists were engaged. From her in-depth exploration of the origins of feminism in different national contexts, Anderson presents the beginnings of a comparative history for this crucial period of feminism. While her interpretation emphasizes similarities and links between different national contexts, further work could build on this to get at deeper reasons why feminism emerged when and where it did and how it played itself out in the context of nationalism. Anderson also analyzes the language and ideas of the international feminists including their use of what she calls a “both/and” approach to the position of women in relation to men and social concerns. Several women in the study are shown to hold the belief that women are both equal to men and different from men and to use both positions in advancing their arguments and goals. They also used the same approach in claiming the need for both socialism and feminism. This well-written and engaging study is based on extensive source materials, both published and unpublished, and informed by an impressive amount of secondary literature on the history of women and feminism. Anderson centers her research on the writings and activities of a core group of twenty women and another twenty she refers to as on the “periphery of the core group.” Rather than a biographical approach, however, she develops a narrative focusing on chronology (“volcano time”) and themes (“emancipating themselves”). At first this is somewhat confusing for the reader but cumulatively it enhances the main argument of the book in giving a clearer demonstration of the informality, spontaneity, and complexity of the interactions HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 among women in association with their own countrywomen and those of other nations. In finding and using a large number of materials written by feminists in this study, Anderson was able to clearly demonstrate that sharing of ideas, strategies, and information took place by tracing references within publications by individual women to those in publications and/or correspondence of others. Copyright 2002 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at [email protected] net.msu.edu.
March: Seven Portuguese slaveships found their way to American ports during this month. The Adamster, master unknown, on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages, out of Quelimane with a cargo of 445 enslaved Africans, arrived at the port of Sao Sebastion. The Amalia, master Flores, out of an unknown area of Africa with an unknown number of enslaved Africans on one of its five known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at a port of Cuba. The Dulcinea, master Deyes, out of an unknown area of Africa with an unknown number of enslaved Africans on its second of two known Middle Passages, arrived at a port of Cuba, but maybe not the same port. The Aventureiro, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 550 enslaved Africans on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages, the Constante, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 597 enslaved Africans on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages, and the negrero Jehovah, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 433 enslaved Africans on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages, all three arrived at the port of Ilha Grande, Brazil, bringing a total of 1,580 new slaves to that locality. The General Cabreira, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 337 enslaved Africans on one of its five known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at the port of Baia Sepetiba, Brazil. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 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 GA. 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
March: Although we don’t have a record, Waldo Emerson did get paid, so it would likely have been during this month that he delivered in Framingham, Massachusetts the 6th, and the 7th and final lecture, of his “Human Culture” series.
March 18, Sunday: Randal Cremer was born in Fareham, Wiltshire, England.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd M 18th (1st day) 1838 / I was well enough today to have attended Meetings but it was a Severe Snow & rain Storm all day which prevented me - I wanted to meet with my brethren again, but the state of the weather rendered it imprudent —I have had a long & tedious confinement but have been favoured with a good degree of Patience & resignation — I am yet far from being entirely well, but so much better as not to be under severe suffering, for which I am desirous to feel thankful & believe I am favoured to to feel. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 March 18, Sunday: Overture in D D.26 by Franz Schubert was performed publicly for the initial time, in the Vienna Musikvereinsaal.
March 19, Monday: Richard Wagner’s overture “Rule Britannia” was performed for the initial time, probably in the Schwarzhauptersaal in Riga, with the composer himself conducting.
Senator Morris submitted a number of thorny issues in regard to the slave-trade to the US Senate. “Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to inquire whether the present laws of the United States, on the subject of the slave trade, will prohibit that trade being carried on between citizens of the United States and citizens of the Republic of Texas, either by land or by sea; and whether it would be lawful in vessels owned by citizens of that Republic, and not lawful in vessels owned by citizens of this, or lawful in both, and by citizens of both countries; and also whether a slave carried from the United States into a foreign country, and brought back, on returning into the United States, is considered a free person, or is liable to be sent back, if demanded, as a slave, into that country from which he or she last came; and also whether any additional legislation by Congress is necessary on any of these subjects.”
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 19th of 3rd M 1838 / We recd a kind & very acceptable letter from our daughter Mary A Gould by which we learn the family are well tho’ there are a number Sick around them. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
March 20, Tuesday: In regard to the slave-trade conundrums that Senator Morris had posed to the US Senate on the previous day, Senator Walker felt they could just let such stuff “lie on the table.” When a vote was taken, it turned out that only 9 of the senators really wanted to think about such things, while 32, surprise surprise, were perfectly willing to let the sleeping dogs lie (SENATE JOURNAL, 25th Congress, 2d session, pages 297-8, 300).
March 22, Thursday: Senator Calhoun of South Carolina spoke in the US Senate in response to the speech that Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts had delivered on March 12th. When he had concluded, Webster rose and responded as follows:31 Mr. President,—I came rather late to the Senate this morning, and, happening to meet a friend on the Avenue, I was admonished to hasten my steps, as “the war was to be carried into Africa,” and I was expected to be annihilated. I lost no time in following the advice, Sir, since it would be awkward for one to be annihilated without knowing any thing about it. Well, Sir, the war has been carried into Africa. The honorable member has made an expedition into regions as remote from the subject of this debate as the orb of Jupiter from that of our earth. He has spoken of the tariff, of slavery, and of the late war. Of all this I do not complain. On the contrary, if it be his pleasure to allude to all or any of these topics, for any
31. Edwin P. Whipple’s THE GREAT SPEECHES AND ORATIONS OF DANIEL WEBSTER WITH AN ESSAY ON DANIEL WEBSTER AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE (Boston: Little, Brown, 1879). HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 purpose whatever, I am ready at all times to hear him. Sir, this carrying the war into Africa, which has become so common a phrase among us, is, indeed, imitating a great example; but it is an example which is not always followed with success. In the first place, every man, though he be a man of talent and genius, is not a Scipio; and in the next place, as I recollect this part of Roman and Carthaginian history,—the gentleman may be more accurate, but, as I recollect it, when Scipio resolved upon carrying the war into Africa, Hannibal was not at home. Now, Sir, I am very little like Hannibal, but I am at home; and when Scipio Africanus South-Caroliniensis brings the war into my territories, I shall not leave their defence to Asdrubal, nor Syphax, nor anybody else. I meet him on the shore, at his landing, and propose but one contest. “Concurritur; horae Momento cita mors venit, aut victoria laeta.” Mr. President, I had made up my mind that, if the honorable gentleman should confine himself to a reply in the ordinary way, I would not say another syllable. But he has not done so. He has gone off into topics quite remote from all connection with revenue, commerce, finance, or sub-treasuries, and invites to a discussion which, however uninteresting to the public at the present moment, is too personal to be declined by me. He says, Sir, that I undertook to compare my political character and conduct with his. Far from it. I attempted no such thing. I compared the gentleman’s political opinions at different times with one another, and expressed decided opposition to those which he now holds. And I did, certainly, advert to the general tone and drift of the gentleman’s sentiments and expressions for some years past, in their bearing on the Union, with such remarks as I thought they deserved; but I instituted no comparison between him and myself. He may institute one if he pleases, and when he pleases. Seeking nothing of this kind, I avoid nothing. Let it be remembered, that the gentleman began the debate, by attempting to exhibit a contrast between the present opinions and conduct of my friends and myself, and our recent opinions and conduct. Here is the first charge of inconsistency; let the public judge whether he has made it good. He says, Sir, that on several questions I have taken different sides, at different times; let him show it. If he shows any change of opinion, I shall be called on to give a reason, and to account for it. I leave it to the country to say whether, as yet, he has shown any such thing. But, Sir, before attempting that, he has something else to say. He had prepared, it seems, to draw comparisons himself. He had intended to say something, if time had allowed, upon our respective opinions and conduct in regard to the war. If time had allowed! Sir, time does allow, time must allow. A general remark of that kind ought not to be, cannot be, left to produce its effect, when that effect is obviously intended to be unfavorable. Why did the gentleman allude to my votes or my opinions respecting the war at all, unless he had something to say? Does he wish to leave an undefined impression that something was done, or something said, by me, not now capable of defence or justification? something not reconcilable with true patriotism? He means that, or nothing. And now, Sir, let him bring the matter forth; let him take the responsibility of HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 the accusation; let him state his facts. I am here to answer; I am here, this day, to answer. Now is the time, and now the hour. I think we read, Sir, that one of the good spirits would not bring against the Arch-enemy of mankind a railing accusation; and what is railing but general reproach, an imputation without fact, time, or circumstance? Sir, I call for particulars. The gentleman knows my whole conduct well; indeed, the journals show it all, from the moment I came into Congress till the peace. If I have done, then, Sir, any thing unpatriotic, any thing which, as far as love to country goes, will not bear comparison with his or any man’s conduct, let it now be stated. Give me the fact, the time, the manner. He speaks of the war; that which we call the late war, though it is now twenty-five years since it terminated. He would leave an impression that I opposed it. How? I was not in Congress when war was declared, nor in public life anywhere. I was pursuing my profession, keeping company with judges and jurors, and plaintiffs and defendants. If I had been in Congress, and had enjoyed the benefit of hearing the honorable gentleman’s speeches, for aught I can say, I might have concurred with him. But I was not in public life. I never had been, for a single hour; and was in no situation, therefore, to oppose or to support the declaration of war. I am speaking to the fact, Sir; and if the gentleman has any fact, let us know it. Well, Sir, I came into Congress during the war. I found it waged, and raging. And what did I do here to oppose it? Look to the journals. Let the honorable gentleman tax his memory. Bring up any thing, if there be any thing to bring up, not showing error of opinion, but showing want of loyalty or fidelity to the country. I did not agree to all that was proposed, nor did the honorable member. I did not approve of every measure, nor did he. The war had been preceded by the restrictive system and the embargo. As a private individual, I certainly did not think well of these measures. It appeared to me that the embargo annoyed ourselves as much as our enemies, while it destroyed the business and cramped the spirits of the people. In this opinion I may have been right or wrong, but the gentleman was himself of the same opinion. He told us the other day, as a proof of his independence of party on great questions, that he differed with his friends on the subject of the embargo. He was decidedly and unalterably opposed to it. It furnishes in his judgment, therefore, no imputation either on my patriotism, or on the soundness of my political opinions, that I was opposed to it also. I mean opposed in opinion; for I was not in Congress, and had nothing to do with the act creating the embargo. And as to opposition to measures for carrying on the war, after I came into Congress, I again say, let the gentleman specify; let him lay his finger on any thing calling for an answer, and he shall have an answer. Mr. President, you were yourself in the House during a considerable part of this time. The honorable gentleman may make a witness of you. He may make a witness of anybody else. He may be his own witness. Give us but some fact, some charge, something capable in itself either of being proved or disproved. Prove any thing, state any thing, not consistent with honorable and patriotic conduct, and I am ready to answer it. Sir, I am glad this subject has been alluded to in a manner which justifies me in taking public notice of it; because I am well aware that, for ten years past, infinite pains has been taken to find something, HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 in the range of these topics, which might create prejudice against me in the country. The journals have all been pored over, and the reports ransacked, and scraps of paragraphs and half- sentences have been collected, fraudulently put together, and then made to flare out as if there had been some discovery. But all this failed. The next resort was to supposed correspondence. My letters were sought for, to learn if, in the confidence of private friendship, I had ever said any thing which an enemy could make use of. With this view, the vicinity of my former residence has been searched, as with a lighted candle. New Hampshire has been explored, from the mouth of the Merrimack to the White Hills. In one instance a gentleman had left the State, gone five hundred miles off, and died. His papers were examined; a letter was found, and I have understood it was brought to Washington; a conclave was held to consider it, and the result was, that, if there was nothing else against Mr. Webster, the matter had better be let alone. Sir, I hope to make everybody of that opinion who brings against me a charge of want of patriotism. Errors of opinion can be found, doubtless, on many subjects; but as conduct flows from the feelings which animate the heart, I know that no act of my life has had its origin in the want of ardent love of country. Sir, when I came to Congress, I found the honorable gentleman a leading member of the House of Representatives. Well, Sir, in what did we differ? One of the first measures of magnitude, after I came here, was Mr. Dallas’s [The Secretary of the Treasury] proposition for a bank. It was a war measure. It was urged as being absolutely necessary to enable government to carry on the war. Government wanted revenue; such a bank, it was hoped, would furnish it; and on that account it was most warmly pressed and urged on Congress. You remember all this, Mr. President. You remember how much some persons supposed the success of the war and the salvation of the country depended on carrying that measure. Yet the honorable member from South Carolina opposed this bill. He now takes to himself a good deal of merit, none too much, but still a good deal of merit, for having defeated it. Well, Sir, I agreed with him. It was a mere paper bank; a machine for fabricating irredeemable paper. It was a new form for paper money; and instead of benefiting the country, I thought it would plunge it deeper and deeper in difficulty. I made a speech on the subject; it has often been quoted. There it is; let whoever pleases read and examine it. I am not proud of it for any ability it exhibits; on the other hand, I am not ashamed of it for the spirit which it manifests. But, Sir, I say again that the gentleman himself took the lead against this measure, this darling measure of the administration. I followed him; if I was seduced into error, or into unjustifiable opposition, there sits my seducer. What, Sir, were other leading sentiments or leading measures of that day? On what other subjects did men differ? The gentleman has adverted to one, and that a most important one; I mean the navy. He says, and says truly, that at the commencement of the war the navy was unpopular. It was unpopular with his friends, who then controlled the politics of the country. But he says he differed with his friends; in this respect he resisted party influence and party connection, and was the friend and advocate of the navy. Sir, I commend him for it. He showed his wisdom. That gallant little navy soon fought itself into favor, and HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 showed that no man who had placed reliance on it had been disappointed. Well, Sir, in all this I was exactly of the opinion of the honorable gentleman. Sir, I do not know when my opinion of the importance of a naval force to the United States had its origin. I can give no date to my present sentiments on this subject, because I never entertained different sentiments. I remember, Sir, that immediately after coming into my profession, at a period when the navy was most unpopular, when it was called by all sorts of hard names and designated by many coarse epithets, on one of those occasions on which young men address their neighbors, I ventured to put forth a boy’s hand in defence of the navy. I insisted on its importance, its adaptation to our circumstances and to our national character, and its indispensable necessity, if we intended to maintain and extend our commerce. These opinions and sentiments I brought into Congress; and the first time in which I presumed to speak on the topics of the day, I attempted to urge on the House a greater attention to the naval service. There were divers modes of prosecuting the war. On these modes, or on the degree of attention and expense which should be bestowed on each, different men held different opinions. I confess I looked with most hope to the results of naval warfare, and therefore I invoked government to invigorate and strengthen that arm of the national defence. I invoked it to seek its enemy upon the seas, to go where every auspicious indication pointed, and where the whole heart and soul of the country would go with it. Sir, we were at war with the greatest maritime power on earth. England had gained an ascendency on the seas over all the combined powers of Europe. She had been at war twenty years. She had tried her fortunes on the Continent, but generally with no success. At one time the whole Continent had been closed against her. A long line of armed exterior, an unbroken hostile array, frowned upon her from the Gulf of Archangel, round the promontory of Spain and Portugal, to the extreme point of Italy. There was not a port which an English ship could enter. Everywhere on the land the genius of her great enemy had triumphed. He had defeated armies, crushed coalitions, and overturned thrones; but, like the fabled giant, he was unconquerable only while he touched the land. On the ocean he was powerless. That field of fame was his adversary’s, and her meteor flag was streaming in triumph over its whole extent. To her maritime ascendency England owed every thing, and we were now at war with her. One of the most charming of her poets had said of her,— “Her march is o’er the mountain waves, Her home is on the deep.” Now, Sir, since we were at war with her, I was for intercepting this march; I was for calling upon her, and paying our respects to her, at home; I was for giving her to know that we, too, had a right of way over the seas, and that our marine officers and our sailors were not entire strangers on the bosom of the deep. I was for doing something more with our navy than keeping it on our own shores, for the protection of our coasts and harbors; I was for giving play to its gallant and burning spirit; for allowing it to go forth upon the seas, and to encounter, on an HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 open and an equal field, whatever the proudest or the bravest of the enemy could bring against it. I knew the character of its officers and the spirit of its seamen; and I knew that, in their hands, though the flag of the country might go down to the bottom, yet, while defended by them, that it could never be dishonored or disgraced. Since she was our enemy, and a most powerful enemy, I was for touching her, if we could, in the very apple of her eye; for reaching the highest feather in her cap; for clutching at the very brightest jewel in her crown. There seemed to me to be a peculiar propriety in all this, as the war was undertaken for the redress of maritime injuries alone. It was a war declared for free trade and sailors’ rights. The ocean, therefore, was the proper theatre for deciding this controversy with our enemy, and on that theatre it was my ardent wish that our own power should be concentrated to the utmost. So much, Sir, for the war, and for my conduct and opinions as connected with it. And, as I do not mean to recur to this subject often, nor ever, unless indispensably necessary, I repeat the demand for any charge, any accusation, any allegation whatever, that throws me behind the honorable gentleman, or behind any other man, in honor, in fidelity, in devoted love to that country in which I was born, which has honored me, and which I serve. I, who seldom deal in defiance, now, here, in my place, boldly defy the honorable member to put his insinuation in the form of a charge, and to support that charge by any proof whatever. The gentleman has adverted to the subject of slavery. On this subject, he says, I have not proved myself a friend to the South. Why, Sir, the only proof is, that I did not vote for his resolutions. Sir, this is a very grave matter; it is a subject very exciting and inflammable. I take, of course, all the responsibility belonging to my opinions; but I desire these opinions to be understood, and fairly stated. If I am to be regarded as an enemy to the South, because I could not support the gentleman’s resolutions, be it so. I cannot purchase favor from any quarter, by the sacrifice of clear and conscientious convictions. The principal resolution declared that Congress had plighted its faith not to interfere either with slavery or the slave trade in the District of Columbia. Now, Sir, this is quite a new idea. I never heard it advanced until this session. I have heard gentlemen contend that no such power was in the Constitution; but the notion, that, though the Constitution contained the power, yet Congress had plighted its faith not to exercise such a power, is an entire novelty, so far as I know. I must say, Sir, it appeared to me little else than an attempt to put a prohibition into the Constitution, because there was none there already. For this supposed plighting of the public faith, or the faith of Congress, I saw no ground, either in the history of the government, or in any one fact, or in any argument. I therefore could not vote for the proposition. Sir, it is now several years since I took care to make my opinion known, that this government has, constitutionally, nothing to do with slavery, as it exists in the States. That opinion is entirely unchanged. I stand steadily by the resolution of the House of Representatives, adopted, after much consideration, at the commencement of the government, which was, that Congress has no authority to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 the treatment of them, within any of the States; it remaining with the several States alone to provide any regulations therein, which humanity and true policy may require. This, in my opinion, is the Constitution and the law. I feel bound by it. I have quoted the resolution often. It expresses the judgment of men of all parts of the country, deliberately and coolly formed; and it expresses my judgment, and I shall adhere to it. But this has nothing to do with the other constitutional question; that is to say, the mere constitutional question whether Congress has the power to regulate slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. On such a question, Sir, when I am asked what the Constitution is, or whether any power granted by it has been compromised away, or, indeed, could be compromised away, I must express my honest opinion, and always shall express it, if I say any thing, notwithstanding it may not meet concurrence either in the South, or the North, or the East, or the West. I cannot express by my vote what I do not believe. The gentleman has chosen to bring that subject into this debate, with which it has no concern; but he may make the most of it, if he thinks he can produce unfavorable impressions against me at the South from my negative to his fifth resolution. As to the rest of them, they were commonplaces, generally, or abstractions; in regard to which, one may well feel himself not called on to vote at all. And now, Sir, in regard to the tariff. That is a long chapter, but I am quite ready to go over it with the honorable member. He charges me with inconsistency. That may depend on deciding what inconsistency is, in respect to such subjects, and how it is to be proved. I will state the facts, for I have them in my mind somewhat more fully than the honorable member has himself presented them. Let us begin at the beginning. In 1816 I voted against the tariff law which then passed. In 1824 I again voted against the tariff law which was then proposed, and which passed. A majority of New England votes, in 1824, were against the tariff system. The bill received but one vote from Massachusetts; but it passed. The policy was established. New England acquiesced in it; conformed her business and pursuits to it; embarked her capital, and employed her labor, in manufactures; and I certainly admit that, from that time, I have felt bound to support interests thus called into being, and into importance, by the settled policy of the government. I have stated this often here, and often elsewhere. The ground is defensible, and I maintain it. As to the resolutions adopted in Boston in 1820, and which resolutions he has caused to be read, and which he says he presumes I prepared, I have no recollection of having drawn the resolutions, and do not believe I did. But I was at the meeting, and addressed the meeting, and what I said on that occasion was produced here, and read in the Senate, years ago. The resolutions, Sir, were opposed to the commencing of a high tariff policy. I was opposed to it, and spoke against it; the city of Boston was opposed to it; the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was opposed to it. Remember, Sir, that this was in 1820. This opposition continued till 1824. The votes all show this. But in 1824 the question was decided; the government entered upon the policy; it invited men to embark their property and their means of living in it. Individuals thus encouraged have done this to a great extent; and therefore I say, so long HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 as the manufactures shall need reasonable and just protection from government, I shall be disposed to give it to them. What is there, Sir, in all this, for the gentleman to complain of? Would he have us always oppose the policy adopted by the country on a great question? Would he have minorities never submit to the will of majorities? I remember to have said, Sir, at the meeting in Faneuil Hall, that protection appeared to be regarded as incidental to revenue, and that the incident could not be carried fairly above the principal; in other words, that duties ought not to be laid for the mere object of protection. I believe that proposition to be substantially correct. I believe that, if the power of protection be inferred only from the revenue power, the protection could only be incidental. But I have said in this place before, and I repeat it now, that Mr. Madison’s publication after that period, and his declaration that the Convention did intend to grant the power of protection under the commercial clause, placed the subject in a new and a clear light. I will add, Sir, that a paper drawn up apparently with the sanction of Dr. Franklin, and read to a circle of friends at his house, on the eve of the assembling of the Convention, respecting the powers which the proposed new government ought to possess, shows plainly that, in regulating commerce, it was expected that Congress would adopt a course which should protect the manufactures of the North. He certainly went into the Convention himself under that conviction. Well, Sir, and now what does the gentleman make out against me in relation to the tariff? What laurels does he gather in this part of Africa? I opposed the policy of the tariff, until it had become the settled and established policy of the country. I have never questioned the constitutional power of Congress to grant protection, except so far as the remark made in Faneuil Hall goes, which remark respects only the length to which protection might properly be carried, so far as the power is derived from the authority to lay duties on imports. But the policy being established, and a great part of the country having placed vast interests at stake in it, I have not disturbed it; on the contrary, I have insisted that it ought not to be disturbed. If there be inconsistency in all this, the gentleman is at liberty to blazon it forth; let him see what he can make of it. Here, Sir, I cease to speak of myself; and respectfully ask pardon of the Senate for having so long detained it upon any thing so unimportant as what relates merely to my own public conduct and opinions. Sir, the honorable member is pleased to suppose that our spleen is excited, because he has interfered to snatch from us a victory over the administration. If he means by this any personal disappointment, I shall not think it worth while to make a remark upon it. If he means a disappointment at his quitting us while we were endeavoring to arrest the present policy of the administration, why then I admit, Sir, that I, for one, felt that disappointment deeply. It is the policy of the administration, its principles, and its measures, which I oppose. It is not persons, but things; not men, but measures. I do wish most fervently to put an end to this anti-commercial policy; and if the overthrow of the policy shall be followed by the political defeat of its authors, why, Sir, it is a result which I shall endeavor to meet with equanimity. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Sir, as to the honorable member’s wresting the victory from us, or as to his ability to sustain the administration in this policy, there may be some doubt about that. I trust the citadel will yet be stormed, and carried, by the force of public opinion, and that no Hector will be able to defend its walls. But now, Sir, I must advert to a declaration of the honorable member, which, I confess, did surprise me. The honorable member says, that, personally, he and myself have been on friendly terms, but that we always differed on great constitutional questions. Sir, this is astounding. And yet I was partly prepared for it; for I sat here the other day, and held my breath, while the honorable gentleman declared, and repeated, that he had always belonged to the State-rights party. And he means, by what he has declared to-day, that he has always given to the Constitution a construction more limited, better guarded, less favorable to the extension of the powers of this government, than that which I have given to it. He has always interpreted it according to the strict doctrines of the school of State rights! Sir, if the honorable member ever belonged, until very lately, to the State-rights party, the connection was very much like a secret marriage. And never was secret better kept. Not only were the espousals not acknowledged, but all suspicion was avoided. There was no known familiarity, or even kindness, between them. On the contrary, they acted like parties who were not at all fond of each other’s company. Sir, is there a man in my hearing, among all the gentlemen now surrounding us, many of whom, of both houses, have been here many years, and know the gentleman and myself perfectly,—is there one who ever heard, supposed, or dreamed that the honorable member belonged to the State-rights party before the year 1825? Can any such connection be proved upon him, can he prove it upon himself, before that time? Sir, I will show you, before I resume my seat, that it was not until after the gentleman took his seat in the chair which you now occupy, that any public manifestation, or intimation, was ever given by him of his having embraced the peculiar doctrines of the State-rights party. The truth is, Sir, the honorable gentleman had acted a very important and useful part during the war. But the war terminated. Toward the end of the session of 1814-15, we received the news of peace. This closed the Thirteenth Congress. In the fall of 1815, the Fourteenth Congress assembled. It was full of ability, and the honorable gentleman stood high among its distinguished members. He remained in the House, Sir, through the whole of that Congress; and now, Sir, it is easy to show that, during those two years, the honorable gentleman took a decided lead in all those great measures which he has since so often denounced as unconstitutional and oppressive, the bank, the tariff, and internal improvements. The war being terminated, the gentleman’s mind turned itself toward internal administration and improvement. He surveyed the whole country, contemplated its resources, saw what it was capable of becoming, and held a political faith not so narrow and contracted as to restrain him from useful and efficient action. He was, therefore, at once a full length ahead of all others in measures which were national, and which required a broad and liberal construction of the Constitution. This is historic truth. Of his agency in the bank, and other measures connected with the currency, I have already HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 spoken, and I do not understand him to deny any thing I have said, in that particular. Indeed, I have said nothing capable of denial. Now allow me a few words upon the tariff. The tariff of 1816 was distinctly a South Carolina measure. Look at the votes, and you will see it. It was a tariff for the benefit of South Carolina interests, and carried through Congress by South Carolina votes and South Carolina influence. Even the minimum, Sir, the so- much-reproached, the abominable minimum, that subject of angry indignation and wrathful rhetoric, is of Southern origin, and has a South Carolina parentage. Sir, the contest on that occasion was chiefly between the cotton-growers at home, and the importers of cotton fabrics from India. These India fabrics were made from the cotton of that country. The people of this country were using cotton fabrics not made of American cotton, and, so far, they were diminishing the demand for such cotton. The importation of India cottons was then very large, and this bill was designed to put an end to it, and, with the help of the minimum, it did put an end to it. The cotton manufactures of the North were then in their infancy. They had some friends in Congress, but, if I recollect, the majority of Massachusetts members and of New England members were against this cotton tariff of 1816. I remember well, that the main debate was between the importers of India cottons, in the North, and the cotton-growers of the South. The gentleman cannot deny the truth of this, or any part of it. Boston opposed this tariff, and Salem opposed it, warmly and vigorously. But the honorable member supported it, and the law passed. And now be it always remembered, Sir, that that act passed on the professed ground of protection; that it had in it the minimum principle, and that the honorable member, and other leading gentlemen from his own State, supported it, voted for it, and carried it through Congress. And now, Sir, we come to the doctrine of internal improvement, that other usurpation, that other oppression, which has come so near to justifying violent disruption of the government, and scattering the fragments of the Union to the four winds. Have the gentleman’s State-rights opinions always kept him aloof from such unhallowed infringements of the Constitution? He says he always differed with me on constitutional questions. How was it in this most important particular? Has he here stood on the ramparts, brandishing his glittering sword against assailants, and holding out a banner of defiance? Sir, it is an indisputable truth, that he is himself the man, the ipse that first brought forward in Congress a scheme of general internal improvement, at the expense and under the authority of this government. He, Sir, is the very man, the ipsissimus ipse, who considerately, and on a settled system, began these unconstitutional measures, if they be unconstitutional. And now for the proof. The act incorporating the Bank of the United States was passed in April, 1816. For the privileges of the charter, the proprietors of the bank were to pay to government a bonus, as it was called, of one million five hundred thousand dollars, in certain instalments. Government also took seven millions in the stock of the bank. Early in the next session of Congress, that is, in December, 1816, the honorable member moved, in the House of Representatives, that a committee be appointed to consider the propriety of setting apart this bonus, and also the HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 dividends on the stock belonging to the United States, as a permanent fund for internal improvement. The committee was appointed, and the honorable member was made its chairman. He thus originated the plan, and took the lead in its execution. Shortly afterwards, he reported a bill carrying out the objects for which the committee had been appointed. This bill provided that the dividends on the seven millions of bank stock belonging to government, and also the whole of the bonus, should be permanently pledged as a fund for constructing roads and canals; and that this fund should be subject to such specific appropriations as Congress might subsequently make. This was the bill; and this was the first project ever brought forward in Congress for a system of internal improvements. The bill goes the whole doctrine at a single jump. The Cumberland Road, it is true, was already in progress; and for that the gentleman had also voted. But there were, and are now, peculiarities about that particular expenditure which sometimes satisfy scrupulous consciences; but this bill of the gentleman’s, without equivocation or saving clause, without if, or and, or but, occupied the whole ground at once, and announced internal improvement as one of the objects of this government, on a grand and systematic plan. The bill, Sir, seemed indeed too strong. It was thought by persons not esteemed extremely jealous of State rights to evince too little regard to the will of the States. Several gentlemen opposed the measure in that shape, on that account; and among them Colonel Pickering, then one of the Representatives from Massachusetts. Even Timothy Pickering could not quite sanction, or concur in, the honorable gentleman’s doctrines to their full extent, although he favored the measure in its general character. He therefore prepared an amendment, as a substitute; and his substitute provided for two very important things not embraced in the original bill:— First, that the proportion of the fund to be expended in each State, respectively, should be in proportion to the number of its inhabitants. Second, that the money should be applied in constructing such roads, canals, and so forth, in the several States, as Congress might direct, with the assent of the State. This, Sir, was Timothy Pickering’s amendment to the gentleman’s bill. And now, Sir, how did the honorable gentleman, who has always belonged to the State-rights party,—how did he treat this amendment, or this substitute? Which way do you think his State- rights doctrine led him? Why, Sir, I will tell you. He immediately rose, and moved to strike out the words “with the assent of the State”! Here is the journal under my hand, Sir; and here is the gentleman’s motion. And certainly, Sir, it will be admitted that this motion was not of a nature to intimate that he was wedded to State rights. But the words were not struck out. The motion did not prevail. Mr. Pickering’s substitute was adopted, and the bill passed the House in that form. In committee of the whole on this bill, Sir, the honorable member made a very able speech both on the policy of internal improvements and the power of Congress over the subject. These points were fully argued by him. He spoke of the importance of the system, the vast good it would produce, and its favorable effect on the union of the States. “Let us, then,” said he, “bind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals. Let us conquer space. It is thus the most distant parts of the HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 republic will be brought within a few days’ travel of the centre; it is thus that a citizen of the West will read the news of Boston still moist from the press.” But on the power of Congress to make internal improvements, ay, Sir, on the power of Congress, hear him! What were then his rules of construction and interpretation? How did he at that time read and understand the Constitution? Why, Sir, he said that “he was no advocate for refined arguments on the Constitution. The instrument was not intended as a thesis for the logician to exercise his ingenuity on. It ought to be construed with plain good-sense.” This is all very just, I think, Sir; and he said much more in the same strain. He quoted many instances of laws passed, as he contended, on similar principles, and then added, that “he introduced these instances to prove the uniform sense of Congress and of the country (for they had not been objected to) as to our powers; and surely,” said he, “they furnish better evidence of the true interpretation of the Constitution than the most refined and subtile arguments.” Here you see, Mr. President, how little original I am. You have heard me again and again contending in my place here for the stability of that which has been long settled; you have heard me, till I dare say you have been tired, insisting that the sense of Congress, so often expressed, and the sense of the country, so fully shown and so firmly established, ought to be regarded as having decided finally certain constitutional questions. You see now, Sir, what authority I have for this mode of argument. But while the scholar is learning, the teacher renounces. Will he apply his old doctrine now—I sincerely wish he would—to the question of the bank, to the question of the receiving of bank- notes by government, to the power of Congress over the paper currency? Will he admit that these questions ought to be regarded as decided by the settled sense of Congress and of the country? O, no! Far otherwise. From these rules of judgment, and from the influence of all considerations of this practical nature, the honorable member now takes these questions with him into the upper heights of metaphysics, into the regions of those refinements and subtile arguments which he rejected with so much decision in 1817, as appears by this speech. He quits his old ground of common-sense, experience, and the general understanding of the country, for a flight among theories and ethereal abstractions. And now, Sir, let me ask, when did the honorable member relinquish these early opinions and principles of his? When did he make known his adhesion to the doctrines of the State-rights party? We have been speaking of transactions in 1816 and 1817. What the gentleman’s opinions then were, we have seen. When did he announce himself a State-rights man? I have already said, Sir, that nobody knew of his claiming that character until after the commencement of 1825; and I have said so, because I have before me an address of his to his neighbors at Abbeville, in May of that year, in which he recounts, very properly, the principal incidents in his career as a member of Congress, and as head of a department; and in which he says that, as a member of Congress, he had given his zealous efforts in favor of a restoration of specie currency, of a due protection of those manufactures which had taken root during the war, and, finally, of a system for connecting the various parts of the country by a judicious system of internal improvement. He adds, that it HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 afterwards became his duty, as a member of the administration, to aid in sustaining against the boldest assaults those very measures which, as a member of Congress, he had contributed to establish. And now, Sir, since the honorable gentleman says he has differed with me on constitutional questions, will he be pleased to say what constitutional opinion I have ever avowed for which I have not his express authority? Is it on the bank power? the tariff power? the power of internal improvement? I have shown his votes, his speeches, and his conduct, on all these subjects, up to the time when General Jackson became a candidate for the Presidency. From that time, Sir, I know we have differed; but if there was any difference before that time, I call upon him to point it out, to declare what was the occasion, what the question, and what the difference. And if before that period, Sir, by any speech, any vote, any public proceeding, or by any mode of announcement whatever, he gave the world to know that he belonged to the State-rights party, I hope he will now be kind enough to produce it, or to refer to it, or to tell us where we may look for it. Sir, I will pursue this topic no farther. I would not have pursued it so far, I would not have entered upon it at all, had it not been for the astonishment I felt, mingled, I confess, with something of warmer feeling, when the honorable gentleman declared that he had always differed with me on constitutional questions. Sir, the honorable member read a quotation or two from a speech of mine in 1816, on the currency or bank question. With what intent, or to what end? What inconsistency does he show? Speaking of the legal currency of the country, that is, the coin, I then said it was in a good state. Was not that true? I was speaking of the legal currency; of that which the law made a tender. And how is that inconsistent with any thing said by me now, or ever said by me? I declared then, he says, that the framers of this government were hard-money men. Certainly they were. But are not the friends of a convertible paper hard-money men, in every practical and sensible meaning of the term? Did I, in that speech, or any other, insist on excluding all convertible paper from the uses of society? Most assuredly I did not. I never quite so far lost my wits, I think. There is but a single sentence in that speech which I should qualify if I were to deliver it again, and that the honorable member has not noticed. It is a paragraph respecting the power of Congress over the circulation of State banks, which might perhaps need explanation or correction. Understanding it as applicable to the case then before Congress, all the rest is perfectly accordant with my present opinions. It is well known that I never doubted the power of Congress to create a bank; that I was always in favor of a bank, constituted on proper principles; that I voted for the bank bill of 1815; and that I opposed that of 1816 only on account of one or two of its provisions, which I and others hoped to be able to strike out. I am a hard-money man, and always have been, and always shall be. But I know the great use of such bank paper as is convertible into hard money on demand; which may be called specie paper, and which is equivalent to specie in value, and much more convenient and useful for common purposes. On the other hand, I abhor all irredeemable paper; all old-fashioned paper money; all deceptive promises; every thing, indeed, in the shape of paper issued for circulation, whether HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 by government or individuals, which cannot be turned into gold and silver at the will of the holder. But, Sir, I have insisted that government is bound to protect and regulate the means of commerce, to see that there is a sound currency for the use of the people. The honorable gentleman asks, What then is the limit? Must Congress also furnish all means of commerce? Must it furnish weights and scales and steelyards? Most undoubtedly, Sir, it must regulate weights and measures, and it does so. But the answer to the general question is very obvious. Government must furnish all that which none but government can furnish. Government must do that for individuals which individuals cannot do for themselves. That is the very end of government. Why else have we a government? Can individuals make a currency? Can individuals regulate money? The distinction is as broad and plain as the Pennsylvania Avenue. No man can mistake it, or well blunder out of it. The gentleman asks if government must furnish for the people ships, and boats, and wagons. Certainly not. The gentleman here only recites the President’s message of September. These things, and all such things, the people can furnish for themselves; but they cannot make a currency; they cannot, individually, decide what shall be the money of the country. That, everybody knows, is one of the prerogatives, and one of the duties, of government; and a duty which I think we are most unwisely and improperly neglecting. We may as well leave the people to make war and to make peace, each man for himself, as to leave to individuals the regulation of commerce and currency. Mr. President, there are other remarks of the gentleman of which I might take notice. But should I do so, I could only repeat what I have already said, either now or heretofore. I shall, therefore, not now allude to them. My principal purpose in what I have said has been to defend myself; that was my first object; and next, as the honorable member has attempted to take to himself the character of a strict constructionist, and a State- rights man, and on that basis to show a difference, not favorable to me, between his constitutional opinions and my own, heretofore, it has been my intention to show that the power to create a bank, the power to regulate the currency by other and direct means, the power to enact a protective tariff, and the power of internal improvement, in its broadest sense, are all powers which the honorable gentleman himself has supported, has acted on, and in the exercise of which, indeed, he has taken a distinguished lead in the counsels of Congress. If this has been done, my purpose is answered. I do not wish to prolong the discussion, nor to spin it out into a colloquy. If the honorable member has any thing new to bring forward; if he has any charge to make, any proof, or any specification; if he has any thing to advance against my opinions or my conduct, my honor or patriotism, I am still at home. I am here. If not, then, so far as I am concerned, this discussion will here terminate. I will say a few words, before I resume my seat, on the motion now pending. That motion is to strike out the specie-paying part of the bill. I have a suspicion, Sir, that the motion will prevail. If it should, it will leave a great vacuum; and how shall that vacuum be filled? The part proposed to be struck out is that which requires all debts to government to be paid in specie. It makes a good provision for government, and for public men, through all HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 classes. The Secretary of the Treasury, in his letter at the last session, was still more watchful of the interests of the holders of office. He assured us, that, bad as the times were, and notwithstanding the floods of bad paper which deluged the country, members of Congress should get gold and silver. In my opinion, Sir, this is beginning the use of good money in payments at the wrong end of the list. If there be bad money in the country, I think that Secretaries and other executive officers, and especially members of Congress, should be the last to receive any good money; because they have the power, if they will do their duty, and exercise it, of making the money of the country good for all. I think, Sir, it was a leading feature in Mr. Burke’s famous bill for economical reform, that he provided, first of all, for those who are least able to secure themselves. Everybody else was to be well paid all they were entitled to, before the ministers of the crown, and other political characters, should have any thing. This seems to me very right. But we have a precedent, Sir, in our own country, more directly to the purpose; and as that which we now hope to strike out is the part of the bill furnished or proposed originally by the honorable member from South Carolina, it will naturally devolve on him to supply its place. I wish, therefore, to draw his particular attention to this precedent, which I am now about to produce. Most members of the Senate will remember, that before the establishment of this government, and before or about the time that the territory which now constitutes the State of Tennessee was ceded to Congress, the inhabitants of the eastern part of that territory established a government for themselves, and called it the State of Franklin. They adopted a very good constitution, providing for the usual branches of legislative, executive, and judicial power. They laid and collected taxes, and performed other usual acts of legislation. They had, for the present, it is true, no maritime possessions, yet they followed the common forms in constituting high officers; and their governor was not only captain-general and commander-in-chief, but admiral also, so that the navy might have a commander when there should be a navy. Well, Sir, the currency in this State of Franklin became very much deranged. Specie was scarce, and equally scarce were the notes of specie-paying banks. But the legislature did not propose any divorce of government and people; they did not seek to establish two currencies, one for men in office, and one for the rest of the community. They were content with neighbor’s fare. It became necessary to pass what we should call now-a-days the civil-list appropriation bill. They passed such a bill; and when we shall have made a void in the bill now before us by striking out specie payments for government, I recommend to its friends to fill the gap, by inserting, if not the same provisions as were in the law of the State of Franklin, at least something in the same spirit. The preamble of that law, Sir, begins by reciting, that the collection of taxes in specie had become very oppressive to the good people of the commonwealth, for the want of a circulating medium. A parallel case to ours, Sir, exactly. It recites further, that it is the duty of the legislature to hear, at all times, the prayer of their constituents, and apply as speedy a remedy as lies in their power. These sentiments are very just, HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 and I sincerely wish there was a thorough disposition here to adopt the like. Acting under the influence of these sound opinions, Sir, the legislature of Franklin passed a law for the support of the civil list, which, as it is short, I will beg permission to read. It is as follows:— “Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Franklin, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That, from the first day of January, A.D. 1789, the salaries of the civil officers of this commonwealth be as follows, to wit: “His excellency, the governor, per annum, one thousand deer-skins; his honor, the chief justice, five hundred do. do.; the attorney-general, five hundred do. do.; secretary to his excellency the governor, five hundred raccoon do.; the treasurer of the State, four hundred and fifty otter do.; each county clerk, three hundred beaver do.; clerk of the house of commons, two hundred raccoon do.; members of assembly, per diem, three do. do.; justice’s fee for signing a warrant, one muskrat do.; to the constable, for serving a warrant, one mink do. “Enacted into a law this 18th day of October, 1788, under the great seal of the State. “Witness his excellency, &c. “Governor, captain-general, commander-in-chief, and admiral in and over said State.” This, Sir, is the law, the spirit of which I commend to gentlemen. I will not speak of the appropriateness of these several allowances for the civil list. But the example is good, and I am of opinion that, until Congress shall perform its duty, by seeing that the country enjoys a good currency, the same medium which the people are obliged to use, whether it be skins or rags, is good enough for its own members.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 22 of 3M / I think I have omitted Nine Meetings in succession, it is the greatest absence that has occured in my life on account of sickness, & I believe that has occured at all — Today I attended, tho’ it did not seem as if I was quite well enough, yet I got thro’ the Meeting much more comfortably than I expected & do not find that I am the worse for it in the evening — I believe I am sensible of the favour, & desire to be thankful for it. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
March 23, Friday: Thomas Sully had his 1st opportunity to sketch Queen Victoria.
Luigi Cherubini’s 2d setting of the Requiem was performed for the initial time, at the Paris Conservatoire. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 March 24, Saturday: The Edwina left New-York bound for Mobile, Alabama, where F.A.P. Barnard was to join up with his brother, Captain John Gross Barnard.
French ships blockaded Buenos Aires to enforce indemnity claims and assist rebels in Uruguay.
March 25, Sunday: The Reverend Alexander Young of the Church on the Green offered a sermon on the life and character of the Hon. Nathaniel Bowditch, LL.D., F.R.S. SUCH A SUNDAY SERMON
A review by Ernest Legouve of a performance by Frédéric François Chopin in Rouen appeared in the Revue et Gazette musicale of Paris. Referring to the contest a year ago he wrote “In future when the question is asked, ‘Who is the greatest pianist in Europe, Liszt or Thalberg,’ let the world reply ‘It is Chopin!’”
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 25 of 3rd M 1838 / Attend Meeting this Morning & set quite comfortably - but I was too unwell to go in the Afternoon & have been quite unwell this evening. — Gilbert Congdon from Providence called last evening & spent the night with us - he left us this Morning by the Steam Boat for home - We were glad to have his company & indeed our Providence friends in general are acceptable to us. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
March 27, Tuesday: Following the rebellion in the province of Lower Canada, its Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council were dissolved by Great Britain and a Special Council was appointed to administer that province.
March 28, Wednesday: Franz Liszt played the 1st of 2 concerts in Venice.
The black community of Wilberforce in Canada was having problems with a confidence man named Israel Lewis who was apparently making the rounds soliciting contributions for their survival, and then simply pocketing most if not all of these gifts: ISRAEL LEWIS. MUMPERY Wilberforce, U.C., March 28th, 1836. The board of managers of the Wilberforce settlement, met and passed unanimously the following resolutions — Present, Austin Steward, Philip Harris, Peter Butler, William Bell, John Whitehead, Samuel Peters. Resolved, 1st. That we deeply regret the manner in which our friends in the States have been imposed upon by Israel Lewis; and that we hereby inform them, as a board of managers or otherwise, that we have received less than one hundred dollars of all the money borrowed and collected in the States. Resolved, 2d. That although we have not received one hundred dollars from said Lewis, yet, when we shall have received the funds collected by our agent, the Rev. Nathan Paul, in England, we will refund as far as our abilities will allow and our friends may require, the money contributed for our supposed benefit, by them in the States. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Resolved, 3d. That we tender our sincere thanks to our beloved friends, Arthur Tappan and others, who have taken such deep interest in the welfare of our little colony. Resolved, 4th. That the foregoing resolutions be signed by the whole board, and sent to the States to be published in the New York Observer and other papers. AUSTIN STEWARD, President, PETER BUTLER, Treasurer, JOHN HALMES, Secretary. PHILIP HARRIS, } WILLIAM BELL, } JOHN WHITEHEAD, } Managers. SAMUEL PETERS, } Just prior to the election that had taken place in Rhode Island, Oliver Johnson, the Corresponding Secretary of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society, had written to each of the candidates for governor and lieutenant- governor expressing the views of the abolitionists by posing a series of questions. Mr. Sprague, who was elected governor, had responded from Warwick in the following vein (the answer received from Mr. Childs, who was elected lieutenant-governor, was in a similar vein): DEAR SIR,— Your favor of the 19th inst. requesting of me, in conformity to a resolution of the Executive Committee of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society, an expression of my opinions on certain topics, was duly received. I have no motive whatever for withholding my opinions on any subject which is interesting to any portion of my fellow-citizens. I will, therefore, cheerfully proceed to reply to the interrogatories proposed, and in the order in which they are submitted. 1. Among the powers vested by the Constitution in Congress, is the power to exercise exclusive legislation, ‘in all cases whatsoever,’ over the District of Columbia? ‘All cases’ must, of course, include the case of slavery and the slave-trade. I am, therefore, clearly of opinion, that the Constitution does confer upon Congress the power to abolish slavery and the slave- trade in that District; and, as they are great moral and political evils, the principles of justice and humanity demand the exercise of that power. 2. The traffic in slaves, whether foreign or domestic, is equally obnoxious to every principle of justice and humanity; and, as Congress has exercised its powers to suppress the slave- trade between this country and foreign nations, it ought, as a matter of consistency and justice, to exercise the same powers to suppress the slave-trade between the states of this Union. The slave-trade within the states is, undoubtedly, beyond the control of Congress; as the ‘sovereignty of each state, to legislate exclusively on the subject of slavery, which is tolerated within its limits,’ is, I believe, universally conceded. The Constitution unquestionably recognises the sovereign power of each state to legislate on the subject within its limits; but it imposes on us no obligation to add to the evils of the system by countenancing the traffic between the states. That which our laws have solemnly pronounced to be piracy in our foreign intercourse, no sophistry can make honorable or justifiable in a domestic form. For a proof of the feelings which this traffic naturally inspires, we need but refer to the universal execration in which the slave-dealer is held in those portions of the country where the institution of HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 slavery is guarded with the most jealous vigilance. 3. Congress has no power to abridge the right of petition. The right of the people of the non-slaveholding states to petition Congress for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and the traffic of human beings among the states, is as undoubted as any right guarantied by the Constitution; and I regard the Resolution which was adopted by the House of Representatives on the 21st of December last as a virtual denial of that right, inasmuch as it disposed of all such petitions, as might be presented thereafter, in advance of presentation and reception. If it was right thus to dispose of petitions on one subject, it would be equally right to dispose of them in the same manner on all subjects, and thus cut of all communication, by petition between the people and their representatives. Nothing can be more clearly a violation of the spirit of the Constitution, as it rendered utterly nugatory a right which was considered of such vast importance as to be specially guarantied in that sacred instrument. A similar Resolution passed the House of Representatives at the first session of the last Congress, and as I then entertained the same views which I have now expressed, I recorded my vote against it. 4. I fully concur in the sentiment, that ‘every principle of justice and humanity requires, that every human being, when personal freedom is at stake, should have the benefit of a jury trial;’ and I have no hesitation in saying, that the laws of this state ought to secure that benefit, so far as they can, to persons claimed as fugitives from ‘service or labor,’ without interfering with the laws of the United States. The course pursued in relation to this subject by the Legislature of Massachusetts meets my approbation. 5. I am opposed to all attempts to abridge or restrain the freedom of speech and the press, or to forbid any portion of the people peaceably to assemble to discuss any subject — moral, political, or religious. 6. I am opposed to the annexation of Texas to the United States. 7. It is undoubtedly inconsistent with the principles of a free state, professing to be governed in its legislation by the principles of freedom, to sanction slavery, in any form, within its jurisdiction. If we have laws in this state which bear this construction, they ought to be repealed. We should extend to our southern brethren, whenever they may have occasion to come among us, all the privileges and immunities enjoyed by our own citizens, and all the rights and privileges guarantied to them by the Constitution of the United States; but they cannot expect of us to depart from the fundamental principles of civil liberty for the purpose of obviating any temporal inconvenience which they may experience. These are my views upon the topics proposed for my consideration. They are the views which I have always entertained, (at least ever since I have been awakened to their vast importance,) and which I have always supported, so far as I could, by my vote in Congress; and if, in any respect, my answers have not been sufficiently explicit, it will afford me pleasure to reply to any other questions which you may think proper to propose. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 I am, Sir, very respectfully, Your friend and fellow citizen, WILLIAM SPRAGUE.” APPENDIX F. The following is believed to be a correct exhibit of the legislative resolutions against the annexation of Texas — of the times at which they were passed, and of the votes by which they were passed:— 1. VERMONT. “1. Resolved, By the Senate and House of Representatives, That our Senators in Congress be instructed, and our Representatives requested, to use their influence in that body to prevent the annexation of Texas to the Union. 2. Resolved, That representing, as we do, the people of Vermont, we do hereby, in their name, SOLEMNLY PROTEST against such annexation in any form.” [Passed unanimously, Nov. 1, 1837.] 2. RHODE ISLAND. (In General Assembly, October Session, A. D. 1837.) “Whereas the compact of the Union between these states was entered into by the people thereof in their respective states, ‘in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity;’ and, therefore, a Representative Government was instituted by them, with certain limited powers, clearly specified and defined in the Constitution — all other powers, not therein expressly relinquished, being ‘reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.’ And whereas this limited government possesses no power to extend its jurisdiction over any foreign nation, and no foreign nation, country, or people, can be admitted into this Union but by the sovereign will and act of the free people of all and each of these United States, nor without the formation of a new compact of Union — and another frame of government radically different, in objects, principles, and powers, from that which was framed for our own self-government, and deemed to be adequate to all the exigencies of our own free republic:— Therefore, Resolved, That we have witnessed, with deep concern, the indications of a disposition to bring into this Union, as a constituent member thereof, the foreign province or territory of Texas. Resolved, That, although we are fully aware of the consequences which must follow the accomplishment of such a project, could it be accomplished — aware that it would lead speedily to the conquest and annexation of Mexico itself, and its fourteen remaining provinces or intendencies — which, together with the revolted province of Texas, would furnish foreign territories and foreign people for at least twenty members of the new Union; that the government of a nation so extended and so constructed would soon become radically [changed] in character, if not in HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 form — would unavoidably become a military government; and, under the plea of necessity, would free itself from the restraints of the Constitution and from its accountability to the people. That the ties of kindred, common origin and common interests, which have so long bound this people together, and would still continue to bind them: these ties, which ought to be held sacred by all true Americans, would be angrily dissolved, and sectional political combinations would be formed with the newly admitted foreign states, unnatural and adverse to the peace and prosperity of the country. The civil government, with all the arbitrary powers it might assume, would be unable to control the storm. The usurper would find himself in his proper element; and, after acting the patriot and the hero for a due season, as the only means of rescuing the country from the ruin which he had chiefly contributed to bring upon it, would reluctantly and modestly allow himself to be declared ‘Protector of the Commonwealth.’ We are now fully aware of the deep degradation into which the republic would sink itself in the eyes of the whole world, should it annex to its own vast territories other and foreign territories of immense though unknown extent, for the purpose of encouraging the propagation of slavery, and giving aid to the raising of slaves within its own bosom, the very bosom of freedom, to be esported and sold in those unhallowed regions. Although we are fully aware of these fearful evils, and numberless others which would come in their train, yet we do not here dwell upon them; because we are here firmly convinced that the free people of most, and we trust of all these states, will never suffer the admission of the foreign territory of Texas into this Union as a constituent member thereof — will never suffer the integrity of this Republic to be violated, either by the introduction and addition to it of foreign nations or territories, one or many, or by dismemberment of it by the transfer of any one or more of its members to a foreign nation. The people will be aware, that should one foreign state or country be introduced, another and another may be, without end, whether situated in South America, in the West India islands, or in any other part of the world; and that a single foreign state, thus admitted, might have in its power, by holding the balance between contending parties, to wrest their own government from the hands and control of the people, by whom it was established for their own benefit and self-government. We are firmly convinced, that the free people of these states will look upon any attempt to introduce the foreign territory of Texas, or any other foreign territory or nation into this Union, as a constituent member or members thereof, as manifesting a willingness to prostrate the Constitution and dissolve the Union. Resolved, That His Excellency, the Governor, be requested to forward a copy of the foregoing resolutions to each of our Senators and Representatives in Congress, and to each of the Executives of the several states, with a request that the same may be laid before the respective Legislatures of said states.” [The Preamble and Resolutions were unanimously adopted, Nov. 3, 1837.] 3. OHIO. “Resolved, by the General Assembly of the State of Ohio, That HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 in the name, and on behalf of the people of the State of Ohio, we do hereby SOLEMNLY PROTEST against the annexation of Texas to the Union of these United States. And be it further resolved, That the Governor be requested to transmit to each of our Senators and Representatives in Congress, and to the Governors of each of the States, a copy of the foregoing resolution, with a statement of the votes by which it was passed in each branch of the Legislature.” [Passed by 64 out of 72, the whole number in the House of Representatives — unanomously in the Senate. Feb. 24, 1838.] 4. MASSACHUSETTS. “Resolves against the annexation of Texas to the United States. Whereas a proposition to admit into the United States as a constituent member thereof, the foreign nation of Texas, has been recommended by the legislative resolutions of several States, and brought before Congress for its approval and sanction; and whereas such a measure would involve great wrong to Mexico, and otherwise be of evil precedent, injurious to the interests and dishonorable to the character of this country; and whereas its avowed objects are doubly fraught with peril to the prosperity and permanence of this Union, as tending to disturb and destroy the conditions of those compromises and concessions, entered into at the formation of the Constitution, by which the relative weights of different sections and interests were adjusted, and to strengthen and extend the evils of a system which is unjust in itself, in striking contrast with the theory of our institutions, and condemned by the moral sentiment of mankind; and whereas the people of these United States have not granted to any or all of the departments of their Government, but have retained in themselves, the only power adequate to the admission of a foreign nation into this confederacy; therefore, Resolved, That we, the Senate and House of Representatives, in General Court assembled, do in the name of the people of Massachusetts, earnestly and solemnly protest against the incorporation of Texas into this Union, and declare, that no act done or compact made, for such purpose by the government of the United States, will be binding on the States or the People. Resolved, That his Excellency the Governor be requested to forward a copy of these resolutions and the accompanying report to the Executive of the United States, and the Executive of each State and also to each of our Senators and Representatives in Congress, with a request that they present the resolves to both Houses of Congress.” [Passed MARCH 16, 1838, UNANIMOUSLY, in both Houses.] * * * * * 5. MICHIGAN. Whereas, propositions have been made for the annexation of Texas to the United States, with a view to its ultimate incorporation into the Union: “And whereas, the extension of this General Government over so large a country on the south-west, between which and that of the original states, there is little affinity, and less identity of interest, would tend, in the opinion of this Legislature, greatly to disturb the safe and harmonious operations of the HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Government of the United States, and put in imminent danger the continuance of this happy Union: Therefore, Be it resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Michigan, That in behalf, and in the name of the State of Michigan, this Legislature doth hereby dissent from, and solemnly protest against the annexation, for any purpose, to this Union, of Texas, or of any other territory or district of country, heretofore constituting a part of the dominions of Spain in America, lying west or south-west of Louisiana. And be it further Resolved, by the Authority aforesaid, That the Governor of this State be requested to transmit a copy of the foregoing preamble and resolve, under the great seal of this state, to the President of the United States; also, that he transmit one copy thereof, authenticated in manner aforesaid, to the President of the Senate of the United States, with the respectful request of this Legislature, that the same may be laid before the Senate; also, that he transmit one copy thereof to the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States, authenticated in like manner, with the respectful request of this Legislature, that the same may be laid before the House of Representatives; and also, that he transmit to each of our Senators and Representatives in Congress, one copy thereof, together with the Report adopted by this Legislature, and which accompanies said preamble and resolves.” [Passed nearly if not quite unanimously, April 2, 1838]. * * * * * 6. CONNECTICUT. “Resolved, That we, the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened, do, in the name of the people of this State, solemnly protest against the annexation of Texas to this Union.” [Passed, it is believed, unanimously in both houses.] * * * * * (Those which follow were passed by but one branch of the respective Legislatures in which they were introduced.) 7. PENNSYLVANIA. Resolutions relative to the admission of Texas into the Union. “Whereas the annexation of Texas to the United States has been advocated and strongly urged by many of our fellow-citizens, particularly in the southern part of our country, and the president of Texas has received authority to open a correspondence with, and appoint, a commissioner to our government to accomplish the object; — And whereas such a measure would bring to us a dangerous extension of territory, with a population generally not desirable, and would probably involve us in war; — And whereas the subject is now pressed upon and agitated in Congress; therefore, Resolved, &c, That our Senators in Congress be instructed, and our Representatives requested, to use their influence and vote against the annexation of Texas to the territory of the united States. Resolved, That the Governor transmit to each of our Senators and HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Representatives a copy of the foregoing preamble and resolutions.” [Passed the Senate March 9, 1835, by 22 to 6. Postponed indefinitely in the House of Representatives, April 13, by 41 to 39.] * * * * * 8. MAINE. “Resolved, That the Legislature of the State of Maine, on behalf of the people of said state, do earnestly and solemnly protest against the annexation of the Republic of Texas to these United States; and that our Senators and Representatives in Congress be, and they hereby are, requested to exert their utmost influence to prevent the adoption of a measure at once so clearly unconstitutional, and so directly calculated to disturb our foreign relations, to destroy our domestic peace, and to dismember our blessed Union.” [Passed in the House of Representatives, March 22, 1838, by 85 to 30. Senate (same day) refused to concur by 11 to 10.] * * * * * 9. NEW-YORK. “Resolved, (if the Senate concur,) That the admission of the Republic of Texas into this Union would be entirely repugnant to the will of the people of this state, and would endanger the union of these United States. Resolved, (if the Senate concur,) That this Legislature do, in the name of the people of the State of New York, solemnly protest against the admission of the Republic of Texas into this Union. Resolved, (if the Senate concur.) That his Excellency the Governor be requested to transmit a copy of the foregoing resolutions to each of our Senators and Representatives in Congress, and also to the governors of each of the United States, with a request that the same be laid before their respective Legislatures.” [These resolutions passed the House of Representatives in April, by a large majority — the newspapers say, 83 to 13. They were indefinitely postponed in the Senate, by a vote of 21 to 9.] * * * * * APPENDIX G. The number of petitioners for abolition in the District of Columbia, and on other subjects allied to it, have been ascertained (in the House of Representatives) to be as follows:— Men. Women. Total. For abolition in the District, 51,366 78,882 130,248 Against the annexation of Texas, 104,973 77,419 182,392 Rescinding the gag resolution, 21,015 10,821 31,836 Against admitting any new slave state, 11,770 10,391 22,161 For abolition of the slave-trade between the states, 11,864 11,541 23,405 For abolition of slavery in the territories, 9,129 12,083 21,212 At the extra session for rescinding HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 the gag resolution of Jan. 21, 1837, 3,377 3,377 ———————————————————————— Total, 213,494 201,137 414,631 The number in the Senate, where some difficulty was interposed that prevented its being taken, is estimated to have been about two-thirds as great as that in the House. * * * * * APPENDIX H. [On the 1st of December, one of the secretaries of the American Anti-Slavery Society addressed a note to each of the Governors of the slave states, in which he informed them, in courteous and respectful terms, that he had directed the Publishing Agent of this society, thereafter regularly to transmit to them, free of charge, the periodical publications issued from the office of the society. To this offer the following replies were received:—] GOVERNOR CAMPBELL’S LETTER. JAMES G. BIRNEY, Esq., New York “RICHMOND, Dec. 4, 1837. SIR, — I received, by yesterday’s mail, your letter of the 1st instant, in which you state that you had directed the publishing agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, hereafter, regularly to transmit, free of charge, by mail, to all the governors of the slave states, the periodical publications issued from that office. Regarding your society as highly mischievous, I decline receiving any communications from it, and must request that no publications from your office be transmitted to me. I am, &c, DAVID CAMPBELL.” * * * * * GOVERNOR BAGBY’S LETTER. “TUSCALOOSA, Jan. 6, 1838 SIR, — I received, by due course of mail, your favor of the 1st of December, informing me that you had directed the publishing agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society to forward to the governors of the slaveholding states the periodicals issued from that office. Taking it for granted, that the only object which the society or yourself could have in view, in adopting this course, is, the dissemination of the opinions and principles of the society — having made up my own opinion, unalterably, in relation to the whole question of slavery, as it exists in a portion of the United States, and feeling confident that, in the correctness of this opinion, I am sustained by the entire free white population of Alabama, as well as the great body of the people of this Union, I must, with the greatest respect for yourself, personally but not for the opinions or principles advocated by the society — positively decline receiving said publications, or any others of a similar character, either personally or officially. Indeed, it is presuming a little too much, to expect that the chief magistrate of a free people, elected by themselves, would hold correspondence or give HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 currency to the publications of an organized society, openly engaged in a scheme fraught with more mischievous consequences to their interest and repose, than any that the wit or folly of mankind has heretofore devised. I am, very respectfully, Your ob’t servant, A.P. BAGBY” JAMES G. BIRNEY, Esq., New York. * * * * * GOVERNOR CANNON’S LETTER. [This letter required so many alterations to bring it up to the ordinary standard of epistolary, grammatical, and orthographical accuracy, that it is thought best to give it in word and letter, precisely as it was received at the office.] “EXECUTIVE DEPT.— NASHVILLE. Dec. 12th, 1837. Sir I have rec’d yours of the 1st Inst notifying me, that you had directed, your periodical publications, on the subject of Slavery to be sent to me free of charge &c — and you are correct, if sincere, in your views, in supposing that we widely differ, on this subject, we do indeed widely differ, on it, if the publications said to have emanated from you, are honest and sincere, which, I admit, is possible. My opinions are fix’d and settled, and I seldom Look into or examine, the, different vague notions of others who write and theorise on that subject. Hence I trust you will not expect me to examine, what you have printed on this subject, or cause to have printed. If you or any other man are influenced by feelings of humanity, and are laboring to relieve the sufferings, of the human race, you may find objects enough immediately around you, where you are, in any nonslaveholding State, to engage your, attention, and all your exertions, in that good cause. But if your aim is to make a flourish on the subject, before the world, and to gain yourself some notoriety, or distinction, without, doing good to any, and evil to many, of the human race, you are, pursuing the course calculated to effect. Such an object, in which no honest man need envy. Your honours, thus gaind, I know there are many such in our country, but would fain hope, you are not one of them. If you have Lived, as you state forty years in a Slave holding State, you know that, that class of its population, are not the most, miserable, degraded, or unhappy, either in their feelings or habits, You know they are generally governd, and provided for by men of information and understanding sufficient to guard them against the most odious vices and habits of the country, from which, you know the slaves are in a far greater degree exempt than are other portions of the population. That the slaves are the most happy, moral and contented generally, and free from suffering of any kind, having, each full confidence, in his masters, skill means and disposition to provide well for him, knowing also at the same time that it is his interest to do it. Hence in this State of Society more than any other, Superior intelligence has the ascendency, in governing and provideing, for the wants of those inferior, also in giveing direction to their Labour, and industry, as should be the case, superior intelligence Should HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 govern, when united with Virtue, and interest, that great predominating principle in all human affairs. It is my rule of Life, when I see any man labouring to produce effects, at a distance from him, while neglecting the objects immediately around him, (in doing good) to suspect his sincerity, to suspect him for some selfish, or sinister motive, all is not gold that glitters, and every man is not what he, endeavours to appear to be, is too well known. It is the duty of masters to take care of there slaves and provide for them, and this duty I believe is as generally and as fully complyd with as any other duty enjoind on the human family, for next to their children their own offspring, their slaves stand next foremost in their care and attention, there are indeed very few instances of a contrary character. You can find around you, I doubt not a large number of persons intemix’d, in your society, who are entirely destitute of that care, and attention, towards them that is enjoyed by our slaves, and who are destitute of that deep feeling of interest, in guarding their morals and habits, and directing them through Life in all things, which is here enjoyd by our slaves, to those let your efforts be directed immediately around you and do not trouble with your vague speculations those who are contented and happy, at a distance from you. Very respectfully yours, N. CANNON.” Mr. JAS. G. BIRNEY, Cor. Sec. &c. * * * * * [The letter of the Secretary to the governor of South Carolina was not answered, but was so inverted and folded as to present the subscribed name of the secretary, as the superscription of the same letter to be returned. The addition of New York to the address brought it back to this office. Whilst governor Butler was thus refusing the information that was proffered to him in the most respectful terms from this office, he was engaged in another affair, having connection with the anti-slavery movement, as indiscreet, as it was unbecoming the dignity of the office he holds. The following account of it is from one of the Boston papers:—] “Hoaxing a Governor.— The National Aegis says, that Hollis Parker, who was sentenced to the state prison at the late term of the criminal court for Worcester county, for endeavoring to extort money from governor Everett, had opened an extensive correspondence, previous to his arrest, with similar intent, with other distinguished men of the country. Besides several individuals in New York, governor Butler, of South Carolina, was honored with his notice. A letter from that gentleman, directed to Parker, was lately received at the post office in a town near Worcester, enclosing a check for fifty dollars. So far as the character of Parker’s letter can be inferred from the reply of governor Butler, it would appear, that Parker informed the governor, that the design was entertained by some of our citizens, of transmitting to South Carolina a quantity of ‘incendiary publications,’ and that with the aid of a little money, he (Parker) would be able to unravel the plot, and furnish full information concerning it to his excellency. The bait took, and the money was forwarded, with earnest appeals to Parker to HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 be vigilant and active in thoroughly investigating the supposed conspiracy against the peace and happiness of the South. The Aegis has the following very just remarks touching this case:— ‘Governor Butler belongs to a state loud in its professions of regard for state rights and state sovereignty. We, also, are sincere advocates of that good old republican doctrine. It strikes us, that it would have comported better with the spirit of that doctrine, the dignity, of his own station and character, the respect and courtesy due to a sovereign and independent state, if governor Butler had made the proper representation, if the subject was deserving of such notice, to the acknowledged head and constituted authorities of that state, instead of holding official correspondence with a citizen of a foreign jurisdiction, and employing a secret agent and informer, whose very offer of such service was proof of the base and irresponsible character of him who made it.’” * * * * * GOVERNOR CONWAY’S LETTER. EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS, March 1, 1838. Sir — A newspaper, headed ‘The Emancipator,’ in which you are announced the ‘publishing agent,’ has, for some weeks past, arrived at the post office in this city, to my address. Not having subscribed, or authorized any individual to give my name as a subscriber, for that or any such paper, it is entirely gratuitous on the part of its publishers to send me a copy; and not having a favorable opinion of the intentions of the authors and founders of the ‘American Anti-Slavery Society;’ I have to request a discontinuance of ‘The Emancipator.’ Your ob’t servant, “J.S. CONWAY.” R. G. WILLIAMS, Esq., New York. * * * * * [NOTE.— The following extract of a letter, from the late Chief Justice Jay to the late venerable Elias Boudinot, dated Nov. 17, 1819, might well have formed part of Appendix E. Its existence, however, was not known till it was too late to insert it in its most appropriate place. It shows the view taken of some of the constitutional questions by a distinguished jurist, — one of the purest patriots too, by whom our early history was illustrated.] “Little can be added to what has been said and written on the subject of slavery. I concur in the opinion, that it ought not to be introduced, nor permitted in any of the new states; and that it ought to be gradually diminished, and finally, abolished, in all of them. To me, the constitutional authority of the Congress to prohibit the migration and importation of slaves into any of the states, does not appear questionable. The first article of the Constitution specifics the legislative powers committed to Congress. The ninth section of that article has these words:— ‘The migration or importation of such persons as any of the now existing states shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808 — but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation not exceeding ten dollars for each person.’ I understand the sense and meaning of this clause to be, That HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 the power of the Congress, although competent to prohibit such migration and importation, was not to be exercised with respect to the THEN existing states, and them only, until the year 1808; but that Congress were at liberty to make such prohibition as to any new state which might in the meantime be established. And further, that from and after that period, they were authorized to make such prohibition as to all the states, whether new or old. Slaves were the persons intended. The word slaves was avoided, on account of the existing toleration of slavery, and its discordancy with the principles of the Revolution; and from a consciousness of its being repugnant to those propositions to the Declaration of Independence:— ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident — that all men are created equal — that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights — and that, among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’”
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 28th of 3 M 1838 / I am still poorly as to bodily health there are Mitigations of the disorder under which I have suffered & no extremity as some weeks ago, yet I am not clear from it, & find myself unable to be much about — I am favoured with quietness of mind — I have some outward concerns which might be closer settled, but nothing that would give much trouble were they settled by others RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
March 29, Thursday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 29th of 3 M / Today was Moy [Monthly] Meeting - Mary Shove & Hannah Dennis preached — the buisness or some of it which was before us was exercising & trying — I hope however things will work together for good & come right, but whether they will without greater proving I do not foresee — It is a discouraging time Mary Shove brought a Minute from Swansey Moy [Monthly] Meeting to attend ours, & visit family - she is to commence tomorrow in the Service. - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
March 30, Friday: Le perruquier de la regence, an opera comique by Ambroise Thomas to words of Planard and Dupont, was performed for the initial time, at the Theatre des Nouveautes, Paris.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 30 of 3rd M 1838 / Mary Shove accompanied by Anna Shove of her own Meeting & David Buffum of ours commenced visiting families this Morning & begun with us - She recommended to us Watchfulness, Watchfulness unto prayer, which accorded with our view & concern so that I thought I felt unity with her exercise -But while setting in silence my mind was introduced into the necessity of diging to know our foundation sure & searching so as to come to a conclusion & right understanding in the Truth - This seemed to me peculiarly necessary for Mary, being a young HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Minister & rather new in experience in visiting families - & before the sitting closed I did not feel easy to omit mentioning my concern to her, & to encourage her to search close that she might be favoured with a right understanding, in passing about in the different families she might sit down with — I believe it is the duty of Elders to be faithful & help & encourage Ministers where that is due, & to discourage where it is necessary - & for this judgement they are as accountable as Ministers are for the right exercise of their gift RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
March 31, Saturday: The initial installment of Charles Dickens’s THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY (the installments would run through October 1st of the following year). HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
SPRING 1838
Early Spring: Early in this spring, David Lee Child visited Northampton to size up the area for the creation of sugar from sugar beets, in order to provide a source of sugar which was untainted by involvement in slavery,32 SWEETS and to lecture on the manufacturing process he hoped to use in a factory on downtown Masonic Street. He WITHOUT leased about an acre of rich alluvial soil and planted some of his crop. SLAVERY
Spring: Walter Savage Landor took a house in Bath and wrote three plays ANDREA OF HUNGARY, GIOVANNA OF NAPLES, and FRA RUPERT. These plays are in the form of a trilogy in the 1st of which Fra Rupert contrives the death of Andrea, the husband of Giovanna. In the 2d play Giovanna is suspected but acquitted. In the 3d play Fra Rupert is revealed as the culprit.
After December 23, 1845: ... {One-fourth page blank} Landor’s works are WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 1st A small volume of poems 1793 out of print next Poems of “Gebir” “Chrysaor”, the “Phocaeans” &c The “Gebir” eulogized by Southey & Coleridge Wrote verses in Italian & Latin. The dramas “Andrea of Hungary” “Giovanna of Naples” and “Fra Rupert.” “Pericles & Aspasia” “Poems from the Arabic & Persian” 1800 pretending to be translations. “A Satire upon Satirists, and Admonition to Detractors” printed 1836 not published Letters called “High & Low Life in Italy” “Imaginary Conversations” “Pentameron & Pentalogia” “Examination of William Shakspeare before Sir Thomas Lucy, Knt., touching Deer-stealing.” {One-fourth page blank} Vide again Richard’s sail in “Rich. 1st & the Abbot” Phocion’s remarks in conclusion of “Eschines & Phocion” “Demosthenes & Eubulides” In Milton & Marvel speaking of the Greek poets –he says “There is a sort of refreshing odor flying off it perpetually; not enough to oppress or to satiate; nothing is beaten or bruized; nothing smells of the stalk; the flower itself is half-concealed by the Genius of it hovering round.” Pericles & Sophocles Marcus Tullius Cicero & his Brother Quinctus in this a sentence on Sleep and Death. Johnson & Tooke for a criticism on words. {Three-fifths page blank} ...
Spring: Henry Thoreau was reading Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s ITALIAN JOURNEY (ITALIANISCHE REISE I-II, 1816-1817).
32.Unfortunately, it would be demonstrated eventually to be the case that Americans wanted purity only when it didn’t cost extra. After enormous labors David would have to file for bankruptcy. Lydia Maria Child’s patience would be exhausted, and for a decade she would live separately while consoling herself in the company of a series of young men. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
Spring: Frederick Douglass found an opportunity for his owner to hire him out in Baltimore and have him bring back an income. The deal was, he would be responsible for his own room, board, and tools, and guarantee to bring back to his owner $3.00 per week. But his owner was, of course, suspicious: Frederick Douglass’s NARRATIVE
He unhesitatingly refused my request, and told me this was another stratagem by which to escape. He told me I could go nowhere but that he could get me; and that, in the event of my running away, he should spare no pains in his efforts to catch me. He exhorted me to content myself, and be obedient. He told me, if I would be happy, I must lay out no plans for the future. He said, if I behaved myself properly, he would take care of me. Indeed, he advised me to complete thoughtlessness of the future, and taught me to depend solely upon him for happiness. He seemed to see fully the pressing necessity of setting aside my intellectual nature, in order to contentment in slavery. But in spite of him, and even in spite of myself, I continued to think, and to think about the injustice of my enslavement, and the means of escape.
NARRATIVE HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Spring: Material on the nonviolence of the New England Non-Resistance Society, and its decision that since human government was upheld by force, they could support it not at all, that is, the decision to become straightforward advocates of “nongovernment,” follows: After formation of the New England Non-Resistance Society in 1838, severe censures of “our Fathers” for their use of violence increased dramatically. Charles K. Whipple’s EVILS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR emphasized the themes of mercy and forbearance found in the New Testament. He declared that the Founding Fathers could have won independence through passive resistance and thereby put war on the road to complete abolition. Because of the Fathers’ ill-chosen course, the nation had been established upon false principles and left a legacy of violence. Samuel May, Jr., reminded his cousin [Samuel Joseph May] that “our fathers made a wicked covenant with the supporters of the greatest wrongs man can inflict on their fellow man.” The nation continued to fill the corrupt vessel of the Fathers with war, intemperance, licentiousness, and worst of all, slavery. Instead of freedom and liberty, corruption and irreligion, he believed, were the fruits of independence.... In the spring of 1838, May again confronted the AASS’s executive committee. The society drew criticism from May and the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier, who could not accept its persistent attempts to turn Elijah Parish Lovejoy into a Christ-figure. Cooperating with Whittier and several others, May proposed that the committee reaffirm the society’s “pacific intentions and spirit.” But May failed to persuade his colleagues to disown force as an antislavery tactic.... Lovejoy’s murder reawakened Boston’s interest in the peace question. The city had already begun a lecture series on peace in January 1837, given by May, Henry Ware, Jr., and Channing when William Lloyd Garrison threatened to do to the peace issue what he had done to colonization. Until 1837, the constitution of the American Peace Society (APS) –formed in 1828– distinguished between defensive and offensive wars. Radicals within the APS convinced the body to declare “all war ... contrary to the spirit of the gospel.” The following year George Beckwith, the society’s corresponding secretary, moved to strike out the change. Although they defeated the motion, May, Henry C. Wright, and Edmund Quincy found themselves unable to cooperate with the APS’s conservative membership. They scheduled a new meeting to convene at the Marlboro Chapel on 18 September 1838 to decide the organization’s stand on war.... The Constitution of the New England Non-Resistance Society (NENRS), with its Declaration of Sentiments, was the culmination of antebellum pacifism and nonresistant perfectionism. It repudiated the very idea of force. The society’s rigorous logic mandated that if countries could execute criminals they could also wage war; sanction the dagger within the country, then you sanction the man-of-war on the high seas. The declaration failed to dispose of the problem of self-defense but sought to eliminate all customs that helped create a war mentality, even declaring that military offices were “unlawful.” The society rested upon the idea that the New Testament had superceded the Old Testament and replaced the injunction of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” with HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Spring: Edward H. Faucon signed aboard the Trenton heading for Canton. Catherine Faucon had wanted her father remembered for his public life, as the dashing young captain portrayed by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. in TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST and as a volunteer shipmaster in the Union navy during the Civil War. To accomplish this, she had destroyed her father’s records of his career in China. She would have been horrified to learn that 23 years after her death Jim Kennon, a weekend scuba diver hoping to spear a lingcod, had discovered the wreck of the Frolic, her father’s Baltimore-built opium clipper. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
APRIL
April: Oliver Cowdery was excommunicated and David Whitmer withdrew his membership. The name of the church was changed from The Church of the Latter Day Saints to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
April: The current issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:
HARVARDIANA
April: Forced to resign as Prussian legate to the Vatican, Christian C.J. Bunsen moved on — to England. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 April: Congress tabled the memorials protesting the Cherokee nation removal, and the federal cavalry began to prepare their roundup.
TRAIL OF TEARS
Many Cherokee would hide in the mountains of North Carolina, to avoid this roundup by the military cavalry.
April: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. was confirmed in the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston.
April: The Vincennes, a sloop of war of 780 tons, was allocated as the flagship of the United States South Seas Exploring Expedition. Because of the name of the expedition, the Vincennes would be constantly referred to as the “Ex. Ex.” Other vessels were also allocated: the Peacock, a sloop of war of 650 tons, the Porpoise, a brig of 230 tons, and the store ship Relief. Two New York pilot boats, the 110-ton schooner Sea Gull and the 96-ton schooner Flying Fish were purchased for the expedition to be used as survey vessels close in to shore.
Although this expedition was to be commanded by Commodore Thomas ap Catesby Jones, he would walk away from the project due to illness after lengthy delays originating with the Secretary of the Navy (he would figure in MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE as “Commodore J—”). Command of the expedition would then be offered to Commodore William Branford Shubrick, but he would decline. Attempts to recruit Captain Lawrence Kearney and Captain Gregory and Captain Joseph Smith would also fail. Only then would the planners resort to Charles Wilkes, who had so little experience at sea and in addition a temperament tempted to excess. Of the 342 sailors this martinet would dismiss 62 as unsuitable when the expedition reached one or another port or encountered one or another sailing vessel, 42 would desert the expedition, and 15 would succumb to disease or injury, or drown. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 April: A negrero flying the Portuguese flag, the Feliz Triunvirante, master Sarazabel, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of an unknown number of enslaved Africans on its one and only known Middle Passage, arrived at its destination, Cuba.
INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE A Portuguese slaver, the Mercantile, master Ferreira, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of an unknown number of enslaved Africans on its first of two known Middle Passages, arrived at a port of Cuba. A Portuguese slaver, the Dois Amigos, master Careira, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of an unknown number of enslaved Africans on one of its three known such voyages, arrived at a port of Cuba. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Diligente, master unknown, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 480 enslaved Africans on one of its four known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at the port of HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Havana, Cuba.
A Spanish negrero, the General Espartero, master Bano, out of Principe with a cargo of 455 enslaved Africans Juraga on its one and only known Middle Passage, arrived in Cuban waters. A Portuguese slaver, the Flor de’ Loanda, master M.A.T. Barboza, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 289 enslaved Africans on one of its five known such voyages, arrived at the port of Marica, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Duas Irmas, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 328 enslaved Africans on its second of two known Middle Passages, arrived at the port of Macae, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Marques de Pombal, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 97 enslaved Africans on its one and only known Middle Passage, arrived at Ilha Paqueta, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Camoes, master unknown, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 575 enslaved Africans on its second of two known Middle Passages, arrived at Nassau, Bahamas. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 April 1, Sunday: Waldo Emerson discoursed on theism to some half dozen of Harvard’s Divinity School students. They invited him to address them again, in the Harvard Divinity School chapel, upon their graduation:
Cool or cold windy clear day. The Divinity School youths wished to talk with me concerning theism. I went rather heavyhearted for I always find that my views chill or shock people at the first opening. But the conversation went well & I came away cheered. I told them that the preacher should be a poet smit with love of the harmonies of moral nature.
Franz Liszt played the 2d of 2 concerts in Venice, in Teatro San Benedetto.
Deuxieme Trio Concertant for violin, cello and piano by Cesar Franck was performed for the initial time, in Salle Chntereine, Paris.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 1st of 4th M 1838 / Attended both meetings, but sat rather uncomfortable in the Afternoon, but was not obliged to leave my seat - Father Rodman had short offerings in both Meetings.- Yesterday we had an intersting call from our fr H Dannis —it was interesting to me in that it afforded an opportiunity for me to discharge my duty in great plainness, as to what I apprehended to be her State & the State of society, & particualry of our Monthly Meeting. & of an existing case before it, which is a very trying one — I endeavoured to be plain & honest, & feel satisfaction in my labours. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
April 2, Monday: Waldo Emerson loaned $100.00 to Henry Thoreau.
The Serenade und Allegro giojoso op.43 for piano and orchestra was performed for the initial time, in Leipzig, with the composer Felix Mendelssohn himself at the keyboard. He had written the work in a couple of days (except for the final 15 measures of the piano part, which he composed during the concert). HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 April 4, Wednesday: Jones Very delivered a lecture, his “Epic Poetry” lecture from Salem Lyceum repeated at the Concord Lyceum, after, as was the custom, taking dinner with the Emersons. (In the first week of May, this piece would appear in the Christian Examiner.) He had brought his marked-up copy of NATURE with him to Concord, and Waldo Emerson inscribed it in a penciled scribble with “Har[mony] Of Man With Nature Must Be Reconciled With God,” a restriction on the allowable scope of mystical self-interrogation in regard to which he was expecting that he and Very, as a result of their deliberations together on that day, had come to be able to agree.
Also present at the meal were Henry Thoreau, Professor Cornelius Conway Felton, Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, and the Reverend Barzillai Frost.
Some excerpts from the unperformed opera Ruslan y Lyudmila by Mikahail Ivanovich Glinka were performed for the initial time, in St. Petersburg.
The Sirius, captained by Lt. Richard Roberts, RN, departed from Cork, Ireland heading toward New-York harbor. She would turn out to be much too small to carry adequate fuel for such a crossing.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 4 of 4th M / According to new Stile it is now just 200 years since the Settlement of this Island & just that time since the Deed from the Natives was signed to the first purchasers - A Sermon is now delivering in the 2nd Baptist Meeting House by Author A Ross the Minister of the 1st British Society in commemoration of the event & while I do not approve of the Manner, I can but feel an interest in having some of the events of the last Centiury embodied. it has been an Hundred Years Big with great events in Church & in State. — Many good folkd have lived & died - Many who have been dear to me in life are now in Death, & their remembrance is sweet & may we who remain prepare to meet them — I have lived more than half of the last Century & probaly not much more of the coming half will be occupied by me.— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
April 5, Thursday: In the morning, Waldo Emerson wrote to Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to thank her for forwarding “such wise men as Mr. Very.” Edwin Gittleman’s take on this is “To hear a Harvard divinity student JONES VERY sounding so unlike a student of Harvard Divinity was reassuring.”
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 5th of 4th M 1838 / Attended meeting, which tho’ small was a pleasant comfortable season Father had a little offering to make RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 April 7, Saturday: A few days after his lecture at the Concord Lyceum, Jones Very showed up again, unexpectedly, along with several other Harvard students, in the company of the Professor Cornelius Conway Felton who had taught Sophocles, Euripides, and Homer during Thoreau’s sophomore and junior years at
Harvard College. Waldo Emerson promptly sent out messengers and succeeded in attracting Henry Thoreau, Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar,33 and the Reverend Barzillai Frost to help him entertain these visitors.
On a very successful concert tour, Franz Liszt left Venice for Vienna.
April 8, Sunday: The Great Western set out on its maiden voyage from Bristol, England, to New-York harbor
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 8 of 4 M / Meetings pretty well attended, & pretty solid seasons, especially in the Morning
33. Are we quite certain this was Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar rather than his nephew Rockwood Hoar, son of George Frisbie Hoar? HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 April 10, Tuesday: Franz Liszt arrived in Vienna from Venice.
A rather more than less typical society for abstinence from alcoholic beverages, the Cork Total Abstinence Society, was founded in Ireland by Father Theobald Mathew. In this token preserved by the sworn adherents, the Reverend is depicted doffing his hat and gesturing in benediction before a kneeling group of men and women. “MAY GOD BLESS YOU AND GRANT YOU STRENGTH / AND GRACE TO HELP YOUR PROMISE” The obverse records upon a cross the exact words of their standard pledge of total abstinence, “PLEDGE / I PROMISE TO ABSTAIN FROM ALL INTOXICATING DRINKS / EXCEPT USED MEDICINALLY AND BY ORDER OF A MEDICAL MAN AND TO DISCOUNTENANCE THE CAUSE & PRACTICE OF INTEMPERANCE.”
THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT
April 11, Wednesday: Texas-American Convention to Terminate Reclamations.
In a 140-page diary apparently written by one Timothy Prescott of Concord during the period April 1, 1830- April 12, 1840, there appears the following entry under this date:
“David H. Thorough delivered a lecture before the Lyceum.” Now, let’s see if we can fill in the silences here. In order to figure out what Henry had been offering in this lecture upon which Timothy Prescott made no comment other than getting the lecturer’s name slightly wrong, perhaps we should choose a particular piece of proverbial wisdom and imagine that Henry had been speaking of that particular proverb (that had originally stood for a truth but had become hackneyed and had begun to deceive people and make them forget other important truths with which it is in conflict, so that it had come to “stand for another thing, it may be for a lie”). Henry had just come through an episode in which he had disappointed the Town School’s committee collectively due to the fact that one of them, who had become the group’s secretary perhaps because he was the worst of them, had the disgusting idea that schoolchildren qua schoolchildren were in need of regular feruling, and because also that malign committee had forgotten the important truth, that what we are here for is to try to help other people, rather than hurt them. So, in our effort to figure out what Henry was offering to the inattentive audience at this lecture, let us select the following hackneyed proverbial saying: Spare the rod and spoil the child. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Now, I (Austin Meredith) have chosen the above saying because my maternal grandmother Sylvia Mae Long Mattox, who in my childhood on the farm in Clay City, Indiana used day after day to find one excuse or another to take me down into the basement and whip me until blood filled my socks, since something like this piece of hackneyed proverbial wisdom was to be perused in the BOOK OF PROVERBS in the BIBLE (the one thing besides our weekly newspaper that she allowed herself, or me, to read). She had read this old book through from cover to cover, a chapter a day skipping nothing — she had apparently done this several times over. This saying may well have originally stood for an important truth, of course –for indeed our young are in need of guidance and some guidance must of course be negative– but there are also other important truths such as that we ought to be trying to treat others as we ourselves would want to be treated, etc. My maternal grandmother having forgotten under the influence of this “spare the rod and spoil the child” proverb, that had begun to distract her, these other less convenient truths –such as that we ought to be trying to treat others as we ourselves would want to be treated– so perhaps Thoreau would have opinioned that in her mind this proverb had come to “stand for another thing, it may be for a lie.” What it had come to stand for, it would seem to me – remembering well my situation as a fatherless child with a twisted spine– was the idea that “If it helps me feel good to abuse others, and if I am in charge of someone who is utterly defenseless, then I can allow myself to make up some excuse and I can go ahead.” Her only concern was that I rinse out my socks promptly in cold water, since warm water makes blood stains set in cloth, and since, if my teacher at school saw such stains on my socks, she might raise questions.
So let’s go back to Concord in the 19th Century where we have this school board, and where we have this one member, Nehemiah Ball, who since “[t]he mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest,” apparently was the worst of them all and so they had made him their secretary. This Cro-Magnon school committee had acted as one, embracing the reprehensible attitude of their secretary.
It’s beginning to sound like that lecture had been a Thorough one. Henry offered in this lecture that when such happens to a proverb “we are obliged, in order to preserve its significance, to write it anew.” How had Henry HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 actually written the proverb new on his last day as a teacher in the Concord public school? –He had deliberately attacked six of his pupils at random (one, 13-year-old Eliza Jane Durant, was a maidservant in his own house) without making the usual pretense that this sort of teacherly abuse was any specific punishment for any specific misdeed. One can imagine him saying to himself “If there must be innocent victims of this system in which vicious grown-ups have all the power, at least the young victims will know they are victims.” The school board had failed to comprehend why their teacher had offered this demonstration of the minuscule yet relevant difference between torture and correction — but in this lyceum lecture, was Henry not explaining the matter to them?
Nathaniel Hawthorne to his AMERICAN NOTEBOOKS, as rendered into poetry by Robert Peters:
The Tooth-Pulling A man holds the patient’s head. The country doctor produces a rusty pair of iron forceps. The tooth is wedged between the two largest in the head. The forceps are introduced. A turn of the doctor’s hand. The patient begins to utter a cry, the tooth comes out, bloody, with four prongs. The patient spits out blood, pays the doctor ninepence, pockets the tooth. The spectators are in glee and admiration.
April 11, 1838
Robert Peters. HAWTHORNE: POEMS ADAPTED FROM THE AMERICAN NOTEBOOKS. Fairfax CA: Poet-Skin / Red Hill Press, 1977 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Lecture34
DATE PLACE TOPIC
August 30, Wednesday, 1837, Cambridge MA; Harvard College; “The Commercial Spirit of Modern Times, at about 10:30AM First Parish Meeting House Considered in Its Influence on the Moral Character of a Nation” April 11, Wednesday, 1838, at 7PM Concord MA; Masonic Hall “Society” January 27, Wednesday, 1841, at 7PM Concord MA; Masonic Hall “Is It Ever Proper to Offer Forcible Resistance?”
34.From Bradley P. Dean and Ronald Wesley Hoag’s THOREAU’S LECTURES BEFORE WALDEN: AN ANNOTATED CALENDAR. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Narrative of Event: In a brief chronology of his life penned in his journal on 27 December 1855, Henry Thoreau commented: “Wrote a lecture (my first) on Society, March 14th, 1838, and read it before the Lyceum in the Masons’ Hall, April 11th, 1838" (THE JOURNAL OF HENRY D. THOREAU, ed. Bradford Torrey and Francis Henry Allen, 14 volumes [Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906], 8:66). The inclusion of this event in his thumbnail autobiographical outline suggests both that he thought lecturing important and that he considered this his first real lecture, earlier oral presentations at one or another of the schools he attended notwithstanding. The Concord Lyceum record of the occasion is scant: “April 11 1838 Rev. Mr. Frost informed the Society that Rev. R. Waldo Emerson had kindly and generously volunteered to deliver his course of Lectures [on Human Culture] before the Lyceum. Whereupon, a motion of Hon. Daniel Shattuck, it was Vot ed — That the Lyceum thankfully accept Rev. Mr. Emerson’s offer. After which David Henry Thoreau of Concord delivered a Lecture on Society. Adjourned. H. B. Dennis, Secretary.”35 Thoreau’s was the nineteenth in a course of twenty-six lectures at the Lyceum that season, coming one week after the 4 April lecture on “Epic Poetry” by Jones Very (MASSACHUSETTS LYCEUM, page 148). Of the twenty-six lectures, Waldo Emerson furnished eight (MASSACHUSETTS LYCEUM, page 148). Thoreau was to deliver twenty more lectures before the Concord Lyceum over the next twenty-two years, the final one on 8 February 1860, when his subject was “Wild Apples” (MASSACHUSETTS LYCEUM, page 175). Emerson, by comparison, lectured at the Lyceum more than a hundred times over a fifty-year period (1830-80).
The Concord Lyceum was established in January of 1829 and continued well into the twentieth century. A description of the Masonic Hall, in which Thoreau gave his first Concord lecture, states that it “may be so arranged as to seat 165 persons comfortably and conveniently, with elbow room & leg room in sufficiency. By diminishing the elbow room a little, about 200 persons can be seated, with room for others to stand, should this ever be necessary” (MASSACHUSETTS LYCEUM, page 142). The attendance on 11 April 1838 is not known.
Advertisements, Reviews, and Responses: None known.
Description of Topic: The only portions of the lecture text we have are those Thoreau recorded in his journal under the heading “Scraps from a Lecture on ‘Society’ written March 14th 1838. delivered before our Lyceum April 11th” (JOURNAL 1, 1837-1844, ed. Elizabeth Hall Witherell et al. [1981], pages 35-39). Assuming a lecture that took about an hour to read, the extracted passages, which can be read in about seven minutes, represent just twelve percent of the lecture text.
35.Cameron, Kenneth Walter. THE MASSACHUSETTS LYCEUM DURING THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE. Hartford CT: Transcendental Books, 1969, page 148. This volume contains the surviving records of the Concord, Lincoln, and Salem Lyceums, as well as those of the Lowell Institute of Boston. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 April 12, Thursday: In Vienna, Franz Liszt played some of his music, and that of Czerny, at the home of piano maker Conrad Graf. Friedrich Wieck was there with his daughter Clara Wieck but were impressed. Liszt wrote to Marie d’Agoult that “She is a very simple person, entirely preoccupied with her art, but nobly and without childishness. She was flabbergasted when she heard me. Her compositions are truly most remarkable, especially for a woman. They have a hundred times more invention and real feeling than all the past and present fantasies of Thalberg.”
Henry Thoreau was written to by Josiah Quincy, Sr., President of Harvard College, in Cambridge. Thoreau was applying for a teaching position in Alexandria, Virginia which he would not get.
Sir. The school is at Alexandria the students are said to be young men well advanced in ye knowledge of ye Latin & Greek Classics — the requisitions are qualification & a person, who has had experience in schoolkeeping— Salary $600 a year besides washing & Board duties to be entered on ye 5th or 7th. of May. If you choose to apply I will write as soon as I am informed of it — State to me your experience in schoolkeeping Ys Josiah Quincy Cambridge 12. April 1838. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 With a significant percentage of Canada’s leadership in prison and with prison ships rotting on mud flats visible from American soil, the British began to hang rebel leaders and bury their bodies in unmarked graves. The total would be 10 executions and 58 transportations before they succeeded in stabilizing the situation.
After they succeeded in stabilizing the situation by this small number of dramatic executions and transportations of key figures, of course, the mass exile of ordinary suspect citizens began.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 12 of 4 M / Ruth Davis & Abigail Davis with Zeno Kelley & wife on their way to Philada. Yearly Meeting were at our Meeting today, both had good & acceptable testimonies — A friend was also at Meeting from Indiana by the name of Aaron White, he is brother to Daniel Tisdales wife & a very good looking man - he & the young man with him called this Afternoon & made a pleasant visit to us - he gave me much interesting information of friends in Indiana. — Thomas B Gould went in the Steam Boat this Afternoon for Philada. to attend the Yearly Meeting there. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 April 13, Friday: Miss Prudence Ward wrote more to her sister, Mrs. Edmund Quincy Sewall, Sr. of Scituate:
...To-day, April 13, Henry has had a letter from President Quincy, of Harvard, speaking of a school in Alexandria, Virginia, to be opened the 5th of May. He is willing to take it, and if accepted, this may alter or delay their journey....
What is missing here is an awareness that a guy who has just gotten fired as a schoolteacher and has standards of personal honesty is not going to get hired to a schoolteaching job that requires him to recount his previous schoolteaching experience. HENRY THOREAU
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 13 of 4 M / Aaron White & Francis Fletcher a young man with Aarons daughter & a daughter of Daniel Tisdale spent the forenoon with us their company was interesting & we were glad of further acquaintance with them RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
April 14, Saturday: The Yeoman’s Gazette included the ANNUAL REPORT OF THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE FOR THE YEAR ENDING 6 MARCH 1838, which carried their comment about their experience with teacher Henry Thoreau “None of Concord’s schools this year has fallen below mediocrity. We would however mention an interruption, in the fall term of the Centre Grammar School, and the winter term of District number 4, which was occasioned by a change in masters and produced the usual evil attendant on that event.”
April 15, Easter Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 15th of 4th M 1838 / Our Morning Meeting was a good solid one — Father’s offering was to me (& I apprehend the Meeting generally) a seasonable & satisfacory one. — In the Afternoon we were solid & silent. — My own health tho’ much better, still continues poor - I seldom pass a day without pain & difficulty - yet it looks as if my disorder was gradually diminishing RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
CONVERSATION April 15. Thomas Fuller relates that “in Merionethshire, in Wales, there are high mountains, whose hanging tops come so close together that shepherds on the tops of several hills may audibly talk together, yet will it be a day’s journey for their bodies to meet, so vast is the hollowness of the valleys betwixt them.” As much may be said in a moral sense of our intercourse in the plains, for, though we may audibly converse together, yet is there so vast a gulf of hollowness between that we are actually many days’ journey from a veritable communication. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
GOOD THOUGHTS IN BAD TIMES
April 16, Monday: Samuel Ringgold Ward’s brother Isaiah Harper Ward died of pneumonia, in New-York: [M]y youngest brother, Isaiah Harper Ward, was born April 5th, 1822, in Cumberland County, New Jersey; and died at New York, April 16th, 1838, in the triumphs of faith. He was a lad partaking largely of my father’s qualities, resembling him exceedingly. Being the youngest of the family, we all sought to fit him for usefulness, and to shield him from the thousand snares and the ten thousand forms of cruelty and injustice which the unspeakably cruel prejudice of the whites visits upon the head and the heart of every black young man, in New York. To that end, we secured to him the advantages of the Free School, for coloured youths, in that city — advantages which, I am happy to say, were neither lost upon him nor unappreciated by him. Upon leaving school he commenced learning the trade of a printer, in the office of Mr. Henry R. Piercy, of New York — a gentleman who, braving the prejudices of his craft and of the community, took the lad upon the same terms as those upon which he took white lads: a fact all the more creditable to Mr. Piercy, as it was in the very teeth of the abominably debased public sentiment of that city (and of the whole country, in fact) on this subject. But ere Isaiah had finished his trade, he suddenly HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 took a severe cold, which resulted in pneumonia, and — in death. I expressed a doubt, in a preceding page, as to the legal validity of my brother’s freedom. True, he was born in the nominally Free State of New Jersey; true, the inhabitants born in Free States are generally free. But according to slave law, “the child follows the condition of the mother, during life.” My mother being born of a slave woman, and not being legally freed, those who had a legal claim to her had also a legal claim to her offspring, wherever born, of whatever paternity. Besides, at that time New Jersey had not entirely ceased to be a Slave State. Had my mother been legally freed before his birth, then my brother would have been born free, because born of a free woman. As it was, we were all liable at any time to be captured, enslaved, and re-enslaved — first, because we had been robbed of our liberty; then, because our ancestors had been robbed in like manner; and, thirdly and conclusively, in law, because we were black Americans.
Subsequent to this, the family of Samuel Ringgold Ward relocated from New-York to Newark, New Jersey: After his escape, my father learned to read, so that he could enjoy the priceless privilege of searching the Scriptures. Supporting himself by his trade as a house painter, or whatever else offered (as he was a man of untiring industry), he lived in Cumberland County, New Jersey, from 1820 until 1826; in New York city from that year until 1838; and in the city of Newark, New Jersey, from 1838 until May 1851, when he died, at the age of 68. The Edwina arrived at Mobile from New-York, and F.A.P. Barnard was greeted there by his brother, Captain John Gross Barnard.
The French navy blockaded Veracruz and other ports along the Caribbean coast of Mexico demanding that various Frenchmen be made whole for losses they had sustained during a riot in Mexico City 10 years earlier — reparations the Mexicans had been refusing to pay.
Tsar Nikolai I ordered his Kapellmeister, Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka, to recruit singers from the Ukraine. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 April 17, Tuesday: Dauphin Adolphus Thompson, brother of William Thompson and a North Elba neighbor of the family of John Brown, was born. He was “very quiet, with fair, thoughtful face, curly blonde hair, and baby-blue eyes.” His sister Isabella M. Thompson would marry with Watson Brown and his elder brother Henry Thompson would marry with Captain Brown’s daughter Ruth. Dauphin and William Thompson would be shot dead at Harpers Ferry.
Dauphin
William Death of Johanna Trosiener Schopenhauer, German novelist, essayist, and author of travelogues, mother of Arthur Schopenhauer.
April 18, Wednesday: Franz Liszt appeared in a Vienna concert to benefit victims of recent floods in Pest. This was an enormous success. “Recalled 15 to 18 times. A packed house. Universal amazement. Thalberg hardly exists at the moment in the memory of the Viennese. Never have I had such a success.”
Clara Wieck played Robert Schumann’s Carnaval for Franz Liszt in Vienna, as well as Liszt’s own Divertissement sur la cavatine de Pacini “I tuoi frequenti palpiti.” Clara noted that Liszt made motions as if he were playing along, and moved his body with the music — very obviously he was enjoying himself.
Waldo Emerson lectured at the Concord Lyceum in Concord (this was the introductory lecture of his “Human Culture” series).
April 19, Thursday: Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal,
Then is this disaster of Cherokees brought to me by a sad friend to blacken my days & nights. I can do nothing. Why shriek? Why strike ineffectual blows?
TRAIL OF TEARS Festgesang for chorus and piano by Felix Mendelssohn was performed for the initial time, in Schwaz.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 5th day 19th of 4th M / Our Public & Preparative Meeting got along pretty well T B Goulds the Clerk being absent Thos P Nichols served well in his place The Select Meeting held after the Preparative Meeting was a time of search & close exercise, & tho’ things were plainly stated as to some defects among us — I hope some good was done, at any rate some of us felt as if we had discharged our Duty & am willing to leave the result. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 April 21, Saturday: John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland, the son of Daniel Muir and Ann Gilrye Muir. The family occupied the top floor of a building which is still in existence and the father, Daniel Muir, ran his corn factoring business on the ground floor. Dunbar would be the home town of the Muir family until they would emigrate to the USA in 1849. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 April 22, Sunday, morning: A young Dakota captive of the Pawnee, by name Haxti, was on this morning painted red and black, and branded. Then they shot him through the heart as their sacrifice to the Morning Star.36
That day in Concord, there was a meeting in the First Parish Church at which Waldo Emerson and Squire Samuel Hoar spoke. Emerson helped draft a resolution to be sent to Washington about the savage sacrifice being exacted of the Cherokee nation, and promised to write directly about this to President Martin Van Buren. TRAIL OF TEARS
England had 538 steamboats. The Sirius, captained by Lt. Richard “I’d Go To Sea in a Bathtub” Roberts, RN, 1st to achieve a scheduled ocean crossing, after consuming all of its furniture and one of its masts to supplement what had been a maximum overload of coal, dropped anchor at New-York from Cork, Ireland after a crossing of 18 days, 4 hours, and 22 minutes.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 22nd of 4th M / Attended Meetings - in both Father had short offerings - a day of not much life within RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
36. The Morning Star may have been for them the planet Venus or it may have been the planet Mars. Whichever, this would be the last enactment of this particular religious rite. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 April 23, Monday: Clara Wieck wrote to Robert Schumann about Franz Lizst, “He is an artist whom one must hear and see for oneself... He rates your work extraordinarily highly, far above Henselt, above everything he has come across recently. I played your Carnaval, which quite enchanted him. ‘What a mind!’ he said; ‘that is one of the greatest works I know.’ You can imagine my joy.”
The received wisdom since 1835 had been that, with no island midway across the North Atlantic to act as a re- coaling station, vessels could not carry enough coal to sail across the Atlantic Ocean under steam power. On this date the SS Great Western designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the largest in the world as of this date and the first paddle-wheel wooden hulled steamboatSTEAMBOAT built for transatlantic service, was docking in the New-York harbor after her maiden voyage from Avonmouth. The passage had been accomplished in 12 days and 18 hours (usually the trip had taken at least 15 days) [another source says “a record 15 days and 12 hours” and possibly this discrepancy has arisen because the vessel started from Avonmouth, or Bristol, and refueled at Cork].37
S.S. Great Western HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 April 23, Monday: Congress had tabled the memorials protesting the Cherokee Nation removal, and the federal cavalry had begun to prepare their roundup.
Waldo Emerson had written to President Martin Van Buren about the situation and at this point he commented
37. Although the fast clipper James Baines had once made the run from Boston, Massachusetts to Liverpool, England in 12 days 6 hours with the wind in the best of weather, typical sailing packets under typical weather conditions usually required about three weeks to make an eastbound crossing of the Atlantic and four to six weeks or more for a westbound crossing. The Savannah, a sailing ship fitted with a steam engine, had crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1819, but its eastward run had required 29 1/2 days and had been made mostly under sail since it could carry only enough fuel for an 80-hour burn of the engine. Not one but two wooden liners, the Great Western and the Sirius, were inaugurating transatlantic passenger service under steam during this month. The Sirius was 15 days out of Cork, Ireland while the Great Western (the first steamer expressly constructed for transatlantic service) was 18 days out of Bristol, England. They reached New-York within a day of each other. It would be many years before such steamships would be able to match the best times set by sailing ships traveling with the wind in favorable weather, but this new technology was more independent of the weather and the direction of travel and thus their average trips were very considerably better. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 on this in exasperation in his journal:
This tragic Cherokee business which we stirred at a meeting in the church yesterday will look to me degrading & injurious do what I can. It is like dead cats around one’s neck. It is like School Committees & Sunday School classes & Teachers’ meetings & the Warren street chapel & all the other holy hurrahs. I stir in it for the sad reason that no other mortal will move & if I do not, why it is left undone. The amount of it, be sure, is merely a Scream but sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
TRAIL OF TEARS
Here is Emerson’s “letter to the president” as released to the media: TO MARTIN VAN BUREN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES CONCORD, MASS., April 23, 1838. SIR: The seat you fill places you in a relation of credit and nearness to every citizen. By right and natural position, every citizen is your friend. Before any acts contrary to his own judgment or interest have repelled the affections of any man, each may look with trust and living anticipation to your government. Each has the highest right to call your attention to such subjects as are of a public nature, and properly belong to the chief magistrate; and the good magistrate will feel a joy in meeting such confidence. In this belief and at the instance of a few of my friends and neighbors, I crave of your patience a short hearing for their sentiments and my own: and the circumstance that my name will be utterly unknown to you will only give the fairer chance to your equitable construction of what I have to say. Sir, my communication respects the sinister rumors that fill this part of the country concerning the Cherokee people. The HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 interest always felt in the aboriginal population –an interest naturally growing as that decays– has been heightened in regard to this tribe. Even in our distant State some good rumor of their worth and civility has arrived. We have learned with joy their improvement in the social arts. We have read their newspapers. We have seen some of them in our schools and colleges. In common with the great body of the American people, we have witnessed with sympathy the painful labors of these red men to redeem their own race from the doom of eternal inferiority, and to borrow and domesticate in the tribe the arts and customs of the Caucasian race. And notwithstanding the unaccountable apathy with which of late years the Indians have been sometimes abandoned to their enemies, it is not to be doubted that it is the good pleasure and the understanding of all humane persons in the Republic, of the men and the matrons sitting in the thriving independent families all over the land, that they shall be duly cared for; that they shall taste justice and love from all to whom we have delegated the office of dealing with them. The newspapers now inform us that, in December, 1835, a treaty contracting for the exchange of all the Cherokee territory was pretended to be made by an agent on the part of the United States with some persons appearing on the part of the Cherokees; that the fact afterwards transpired that these deputies did by no means represent the will of the nation; and that, out of eighteen thousand souls composing the nation, fifteen thousand six hundred and sixty-eight have protested against the so-called treaty. It now appears that the government of the United States choose to hold the Cherokees to this sham treaty, and are proceeding to execute the same. Almost the entire Cherokee Nation stand up and say, “This is not our act. Behold us. Here are we. Do not mistake that handful of deserters for us;” and the American President and the Cabinet, the Senate and the House of Representatives, neither hear these men nor see them, and are contracting to put this active nation into carts and boats, and to drag them over mountains and rivers to a wilderness at a vast distance beyond the Mississippi. And a paper purporting to be an army order fixes a month from this day as the hour for this doleful removal. In the name of God, sir, we ask you if this be so. Do the newspapers rightly inform us? Men and women with pale and perplexed faces meet one another in the streets and churches here, and ask if this be so. We have inquired if this be a gross misrepresentation from the party opposed to the government and anxious to blacken it with the people. We have looked in the newspapers of different parties and find a horrid confirmation of the tale. We are slow to believe it. We hoped the Indians were misinformed, and that their remonstrance was premature, and will turn out to be a needless act of terror. The piety, the principle that is left in the United States, if only in its coarsest form, a regard to the speech of men, — forbid us to entertain it as a fact. Such a dereliction of all faith and virtue, such a denial of justice, and such deafness to screams for mercy were never heard of in times of peace and in the dealing of a nation with its own allies and wards, since the earth was made. Sir, does this government think that the people of the United States are become savage and mad? From their mind are the sentiments of love and a good nature wiped clean out? The soul of man, the justice, the mercy that is the heart’s HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 heart in all men, from Maine to Georgia, does abhor this business. In speaking thus the sentiments of my neighbors and my own, perhaps I overstep the bounds of decorum. But would it not be a higher indecorum coldly to argue a matter like this? We only state the fact that a crime is projected that confounds our understandings by its magnitude, –a crime that really deprives us as well as the Cherokees of a country? for how could we call the conspiracy that should crush these poor Indians our government, or the land that was cursed by their parting and dying imprecations our country, any more? You, sir, will bring down that renowned chair in which you sit into infamy if your seal is set to this instrument of perfidy; and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, will stink to the world. You will not do us the injustice of connecting this remonstrance with any sectional and party feeling. It is in our hearts the simplest commandment of brotherly love. We will not have this great and solemn claim upon national and human justice huddled aside under the flimsy plea of its being a party act. Sir, to us the questions upon which the government and the people have been agitated during the past year, touching the prostration of the currency and of trade, seem but motes in comparison. These hard times, it is true, have brought the discussion home to every farmhouse and poor man’s house in this town; but it is the chirping of grasshoppers beside the immortal question whether justice shall be done by the race of civilized to the race of savage man, — whether all the attributes of reason, of civility, of justice, and even of mercy, shall be put off by the American people, and so vast an outrage upon the Cherokee Nation and upon human nature shall be consummated. One circumstance lessens the reluctance with which I intrude at this time on your attention my conviction that the government ought to be admonished of a new historical fact, which the discussion of this question has disclosed, namely, that there exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, a general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill? –We ask triumphantly. Our counsellors and old statesmen here say that ten years ago they would have staked their lives on the affirmation that the proposed Indian measures could not be executed; that the unanimous country would put them down. And now the steps of this crime follow each other so fast, at such fatally quick time, that the millions of virtuous citizens, whose agents the government are, have no place to interpose, and must shut their eyes until the last howl and wailing of these tormented villages and tribes shall afflict the ear of the world. I will not hide from you, as an indication of the alarming distrust, that a letter addressed as mine is, and suggesting to the mind of the Executive the plain obligations of man, has a burlesque character in the apprehensions of some of my friends. I, sir, will not beforehand treat you with the contumely of this distrust. I will at least state to you this fact, and show you HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 how plain and humane people, whose love would be honor, regard the policy of the government, and what injurious inferences they draw as to the minds of the governors. A man with your experience in affairs must have seen cause to appreciate the futility of opposition to the moral sentiment. However feeble the sufferer and however great the oppressor, it is in the nature of things that the blow should recoil upon the aggressor. For God is in the sentiment, and it cannot be withstood. The potentate and the people perish before it; but with it, and as its executor, they are omnipotent. I write thus, sir, to inform you of the state of mind these Indian tidings have awakened here, and to pray with one voice more that you, whose hands are strong with the delegated power of fifteen millions of men, will avert with that might the terrific injury which threatens the Cherokee tribe. With great respect, sir, I am your fellow citizen, RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
In a paper by Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., “They Ought to Enjoy the Home of Their Fathers”: The Treaty of 1838, Seneca Intellectuals, and Literary Genesis,” pages 83-103 in Helen Jaskoski’s EARLY NATIVE AMERICAN WRITING: NEW CRITICAL ESSAYS (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), I have come across references to early Quakerism that were by me entirely unexpected. It seems that there is a reason why there was not “Trail of Tears” for the Senecas of New York during the 1840s, the period in which the Cherokees of Georgia were under the rule of the US Cavalry and were in the process of being removed to the Oklahoma Indian Territory beyond the Mississippi River, and that reason was the considerable influence of the Religious Society of Friends. Although Quakers established a mission among the Allegany Senecas in 1798, other mission groups were not successful until the second and third decades of the nineteenth century. With the missions came schools as part of the machinery for “civilizing” the Senecas.... By [the 1820s] the Senecas were split into factions known as the “Christian party” and the “Pagan party.” The former embraced the efforts of the missionaries and advocated adoption of lifestyles and institutions like those of the whites. The Pagans rejected the missionary influence, and many followed the teachings of Handsome Lake, the Seneca prophet. His visions in 1799 revealed his famous Code, which reflected obvious Quaker influence but which revitalized Seneca society and formed the basis of the Longhouse religion, still vital among modern-day Senecas.38 The first Seneca to make a significant public response to the treaty [of 1838, the one in which they “agreed” to sell the remainder of their New York reservation lands to the Ogden Land Company and emigrate to the Kansas Territory] was Maris Bryant Pierce (1811-1874). Born on the Allegany Reservation, Pierce was educated in a Quaker primary school, at Fredonia Academy, at a college preparatory school in Thetford, Vermont, and finally at Dartmouth College, which he entered in 1836. By that time, he had converted to Christianity and was a member of the Presbyterian Church.... The Senecas were not alone in their efforts to defeat the treaty. Whites in Washington and elsewhere immediately joined them, 38. Anthony F.C. Wallace, “Origins of the Longhouse Religion” in Trigger, Bruce G., ed. NORTHEAST. Volume 15 of HANDBOOK OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS, ed. William C. Sturtevant (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1978, pages 445-8). Handsome Lake and the Longhouse religion are the subject of Wallace’s THE DEATH AND REBIRTH OF THE SENECA (NY: Vintage Books, 1972). For an account of religious factionalism among the Senecas, see Robert H. Berkhofer, Jr.’s _Salvation and the Savage: An Analysis of Protestant Missions and American Indian Response 1787-1862_ (Lexington KY: U of Kentucky P, 1965, pages 135-6). HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 publicizing the fraud, intimidation, and bribery that had surrounded the signing. Pierce’s Buffalo address [of August 28, 1838 at the Baptist Church there] was published [as ADDRESS ON THE PRESENT CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF NORTH AMERICA, WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE SENECA NATION. DELIVERED AT BUFFALO, NEW YORK, BY M.B. PIERCE, A CHIEF OF THE SENECA NATION, AND A MEMBER OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE. (Philadelphia PA: J. Richards, 1839)] and widely distributed.... Substantial support also came from the Society of Friends. The Quakers battled the pro-Ogden spokesmen in the press and through pamphlets, issuing in early 1840 their most significant pamphlet, THE C ASE OF THE S ENECA I NDIANS, in which they attempted to sum up the case. Despite these and other efforts, however, the treaty was ratified on March 25, 1840, and proclaimed by President Martin Van Buren on April 4.... It was an old story. The Ogden Land Company, claiming to be generous, offered one to two dollars per acre for land that to the whites was worth much more ... besides buying chiefs, the land agents and pro-treaty factions used money, brandy, and intimidation to secure the treaty.... The strong public case that Pierce and the Quakers had made to support charges of fraud and intimidation surrounding the Treaty of 1838 at length drew a major response from Senecas on the pro-removal side. It was drafted by the young Seneca chief Nathaniel Thayer Strong (1810- 1872).... There is ... sound evidence that Strong was involved in the bribery efforts by the Ogden agents. Strong published his response to the Quakers in January 1841 as APPEAL TO THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY ON THE CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF THE NEW YORK INDIANS, IN ANSWER TO A BOOK ENTITLED THE CASE OF THE NEW YORK INDIANS, AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS (Buffalo NY: Press of Thomas & Co., 1841; New York: E.B. Clayton, 1841).... Strong defended the actions of the council. Here he was twice concerned, for he had not only signed the treaty but had also interpreted it. The Quakers had charged that the council was called at the instigation of the Ogden Land Company.... Strong’s APPEAL answered the Quakers’ charges of bribery. Customarily, since the first land sale, he argued, the Seneca chiefs had demanded and gotten personal allowances in negotiations. Among those who had benefited from former treaties were Cornplanter, Farmer’s Brother, and Red Jacket.... Addressing his APPEAL “To the Christian Public,” he depicted the Society of Friends as hypocrites, doubly dangerous because of the quietistic posture they assumed. In this case, he said, under the “false banner of friendship and good will,” they had published “gross abuses, garbled statements, and repeated misrepresentations,” which were “as incompatible with the law of Christian charity, as with the rules of candor and fair discussion.” He labeled the Quaker charges that the Senecas had been defrauded an “envenomed arrow shot from the bow of the meek and gentle Quakers.” At the end of his APPEAL, Strong called attention to the Quakers’ stand for abolition, although they were not for freeing the Indians, who were “more effectively shut out from all the privileges which render freedom a blessing, than are the negroes!” It was true that the Indians were not forced to labor, as slaves were, but when they were hungry, sick, or old, he said, they could not ask the whites to take care of them.... [T]he Quakers responded in a pamphlet titled A FURTHER ILLUSTRATION OF THE CASE OF THE SENECA INDIANS, which appeared the following July. In the main, the pamphlet brought the history of the controversy up-to-date and refuted Strong’s HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 major arguments with evidence amassed by the writers, including detailed analysis of documents relating to Senate and executive considerations of the treaty. In addition, they defended William Penn’s record at length, berating Strong as the first and only Indian to attack not only Penn’s good name but that of the Society of Friends as well. They also challenged Strong’s credibility and questioned his motives, pointing out his ties to the Ogden Land Company. As a chief, he had violated his duty as a representative of the Seneca nation and had perverted the authority conferred on him. he was a traitor to his country, they charged. His purpose was “to veil from the public eye” the true condition of the Senecas and “to enlist the sympathy of religious professors” in an unholy cause. He had become the instrument of “selfish and cruel men,” his conduct “perhaps more the result of weakness than wickedness.” Strong’s “literary attainments,” they argued, refuted the basic argument of the Ogden forces that the Senecas were not civilized and should therefore be removed. Although Maris Bryant Pierce had declined to answer Strong’s pamphlet, his mark was on the Quaker response. In refuting Strong’s arguments, the Quakers had quoted extensively from Pierce’s Buffalo ADDRESS of 1838.... The public debate that had raged over the treaty for four years finally led to a compromise. In early 1842 there was a meeting of the secretary of the interior, agents of the Ogden Land Company, and a Friends delegation. The Ogden Company agreed to the writing of a supplemental treaty whereby the Senecas retained title to the Cattaraugus and Allegany reservations but gave up Buffalo Creek and Tonawanda. The Senecas approved this agreement as the best arrangement they could make under the circumstances [Kelsey, Rayner Wickensham. FRIENDS AND THE INDIANS, 1655-1917. Philadelphia PA: Associated Executive Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs, 1917, page 123].... Although [Wa-o-wa-wa-na- onk, or Peter Wilson, a Cayuga living with the Senecas at Cattaraugus] had signed the treaty in 1838, Wilson, like Pierce, had worked earnestly to prevent its ratification by the Senate. In a speech before the annual meeting of Friends at Baltimore on October 29, 1848, Wilson defended efforts by constitutional advocates to wrest control of Seneca affairs from the hereditary chiefs. In the published version of his speech [SPEECH OF WA-O- WA-WA-NA-ONK, AN INDIAN CHIEF, Baltimore MD, 1848], he charged the chiefs with bad management and a betrayal of trust in their mishandling of affairs in 1838. He condemned removal as a failed policy and argued that the Senecas could achieve their destiny in New York.... Thus the debate that followed the Treaty of 1838 formed the backdrop for the beginnings of Seneca literature in English. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 April 25, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson lectured at the Concord Lyceum in Concord. This was the 2d lecture of the series, “The Hand.” Texas-American Boundary Convention.
Frédéric François Chopin and George Sand were thrown together again at a reception at the home of Manuel Marliani, the Spanish consul in Paris.
The black community in New-York, victimized by the charitable collections of a black confidence man named Israel Lewis who was apparently making the rounds soliciting contributions for the survival of the black Wilberforce colony in Canada, and then simply pocketing most if not all of these gifts, attempted to spread the word as to this man’s activities: New York, April 25th, 1836. MUMPERY At a public meeting of the colored citizens of New York city, held in Phoenix Hall, Thomas L. Jennings in the Chair, and Charles B. Ray, Secretary, the following resolutions were passed unanimously: Resolved, That the thanks of this meeting be tendered to the Rev. Samuel E. Cornish, for the able and satisfactory report of his mission to Upper Canada, especially to the Wilberforce settlement. Resolved, That this meeting deem it their imperative duty, to announce to the public, that in view of facts before them, Israel Lewis39 has abused their confidence, wasted their benevolence, and forfeited all claim to their countenance and respect. Resolved, That a committee of ten, be appointed to give publicity to the foregoing resolutions; also, to the communication from the managers of the Wilberforce settlement, as they may deem necessary in the case. THOMAS L. JENNINGS, Chairman, CHARLES B. RAY, Secretary.
Arthur Tappan was also warning New-Yorkers about this con — but Israel Lewis would turn it all around, and sue the New-York businessman for defamation of character, and filed a nuisance lawsuit against Austin Steward in Wilberforce: It will now appear that I was not the only unfortunate individual who had difficulty with Mr. Lewis. Mr. Arthur Tappan made known through the press, about this time, that Israel Lewis was not a man to be fully relied upon in his statements regarding the Wilberforce colony; and also, if money was placed in his hands for the benefit of the sick and destitute among the settlers, it would be doubtful whether it was faithfully applied according to the wishes of the donors. For this plain statement of facts, Mr. Lewis commenced a suit against Mr. Tappan, for defamation of character; laying the damages at the round sum of ten thousand dollars. It appeared that Lewis valued his reputation highly now that he had elevated himself sufficiently to commence a suit against one of the best and most respectable gentlemen in New York city; a whole souled abolitionist withal; one who had suffered his name to be cast out as evil, on account of his devotion to the colored man’s cause — both of the enslaved and free; one who has, moreover, seen his own dwelling entered by an infuriated and pro-slavery mob; his expensive furniture thrown into the street as fuel for the torch of the black man’s foe; and, amid the crackling flame which consumed it, to hear the vile vociferations of his base
39. It necessarily follows that the public should withhold their money from his subordinate agents. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 persecutors, whose only accusation was his defence of the colored man. This noble hearted, Christian philanthropist, who took “joyfully the spoiling of his goods” for the cause of the oppressed, was the chosen victim of Lewis’ wrath and violent vituperation; and that too, where he was well known as a most honorable, humane gentleman; and all for naming facts which were quite generally known already. Lewis returned to Wilberforce, flushed and swaggering with the idea of making his fortune in this speculation of a law-suit against Mr. Tappan; and to remove all obstacles, he sent a man to me, to say that if I would publish nothing, and would abandon the interests of the colonists, he would give me a handsome sum of money. I soon gave him to understand that he had applied to the wrong person for anything of that kind; and he then laid a plan to accomplish by fraud and perjury, what he had failed to do by bribery. I have before mentioned the fact of my having taken up a note of twenty-five dollars for Mr. Lewis, on condition that he would soon refund the money. I did it as a favor, and kept the note in my possession, until about a year afterward, when I sued him to recover my just due on the note. We had then began to differ in our public business, which led to other differences in our transaction of both public and private matters relating to the colony. He of course gave bail for his appearance at court, and it ran along for some time until he found he could not bribe me to enter into his interests, and then for the first time, he declared that I had stolen the note! And finally succeeded in getting me indicted before the grand jury! In this I suppose Lewis and his confederates had two objects: first, to get rid of me; secondly, that they might have a chance to account for my continued hostility, by saying that it arose in consequence of a private quarrel, and not for any true interest I had in their collecting money deceptively. Lewis appeared so bent on my destruction, that he forgot it was in my power to show how I came by the note. The Court of King’s Bench met, but in consequence of the cholera, was adjourned, and of course, the case must lie over until another year. When the time for the trial drew near, I was, in the midst of my preparations to attend it, counseled and advised by different persons to flee from the country, which I had labored so hard and so conscientiously to benefit, and received in return nothing but detraction and slander. But conscious of my innocence, I declared I would not leave; I knew I had committed no crime; I had violated no law of the land, — and I would do nothing to imply guilt. He who hath formed the heart, knoweth its intent and purpose, and to Him I felt willing to commit my cause. True, the court might convict, imprison, and transport me away from my helpless family of five small children; if so, I was determined they should punish an innocent man. Nevertheless, it was a dark time; I was not only saddened and perplexed, but my spirit was grieved, and I felt like one “wounded in the house of his friends,” — ready to cry out, “had it been an enemy I could have borne it,” but to be arraigned, for the first time in my life, as a criminal, by one of the very people I had spent my substance to benefit, was extremely trying. Guiltless as I knew myself to be, still, I was aware that many incidents had transpired, which my enemies could and would construe to my disadvantage; moreover, Lewis had money, HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 which he would freely distribute to gain his point right or wrong, and to get me out of his way. In due time the trial came on, and I was to be tried for theft! Lewis had reported all through the settlement that on a certain time I had called at his house, and from a bundle of papers which his wife showed me, I had purloined the note, which had caused me so much trouble. To prove this it was necessary to get his wife to corroborate the statement. This was not an easy matter. Mrs. Lewis, indignant and distressed by her husband’s unkindness, had left him and taken up her abode in the family of a hospitable Englishman. After Lewis had been sent out as an agent for the colony, finding himself possessed of sufficient funds to cut a swell, he associated and was made a great deal of, by both ladies and gentlemen in high stations of life; the consequence of which was, he looked now with disdain upon his faithful, but illiterate wife, who like himself had been born a slave, and bred on a Southern plantation; and who had with him escaped from the cruel task-master, enduring with him the hardships and dangers of the flying fugitive. Now her assistance was necessary to carry forward his plans, and he endeavored in various ways to induce her to return, but in vain. When he sent messengers to inform her how sorry he felt for his past abuse, she said she feared it was only some wicked plot to entice her away from the peaceable home she had found. Lewis saw that he must devise some other method to obtain her evidence. He therefore called on the brother of the Englishman in whose family Mrs. Lewis was, and in a threatening manner told him that he understood his brother was harboring his wife, and that he intended to make him pay dear for it. The brother, to save trouble, said he would assist him to get his wife, and that night conducted Lewis to her residence. No better proof can be given that Mrs. Lewis possessed the true heart of a woman, than that the moment her husband made humble concessions, and promised to love and protect her henceforth, she forgave him all his past infidelity and neglect, and looked with hope to a brighter future. In return Lewis presented her with a note, telling her to take it to a certain person and present it, and he would give her twenty dollars on it. This would, he doubtless thought, leave her in his power. As Mrs. Lewis could not read, the unsuspecting wife presented the paper all in good faith. The gentleman looked at her sharply, suspiciously, — and then asked her, if she was not aware that she was presenting him a paper completely worthless! The poor woman was mortified and astonished; and instead of returning to her husband, fled to Wilberforce, and called at our house. Knowing how disastrous to me would be her false statement, and ignorant of her state of mind, I asked her if she had come to assist Mr. Lewis by swearing against me. I saw at once, that she had not yet been informed of her husband’s design. “Swear against you, Mr. Steward!” said she. “I know nothing to swear that would injure you; I have always known you as an honest, upright man, and you need not fear my turning against an innocent person, for the benefit of one I know to be guilty. Nor would I have left my place, had I known what I now do.” So all help and fear was ended in that quarter. When at length the appointed morning arrived, I arose early, but with a saddened heart. I looked upon my wife and helpless family, reflecting that possibly this might be the last time we should HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 all assemble around the breakfast table in our hitherto quiet home, and I could scarcely refrain from weeping. I, however, took my leave, and a lad with me, to bring back a message of the result, if the court found sufficient cause to detain me for trial. But when I found that I must be tried, I felt too unhappy to make others so, and kept out of the lad’s way. He returned without a message; and I took my seat in the prisoner’s box. I had just taken a letter out of the post office, from Rochester, containing recommendations and attestations from the first men in the city, of my good character, which relieved my feelings somewhat: nevertheless, my heart was heavy, and especially when, soon after I took my seat, a trap-door was opened and a murderer was brought up and seated by my side! Chief Justice Robinson, made his appearance in great pomp — dressed in the English court style-then the crier, in a shrill voice, announced the opening of the court, and finished by exclaiming, “God save the King!” His lordship then called the attention of the jury to the law of the land; particularly to that portion relating to their present duty; and the grand jury presented me to the court, for feloniously taking a certain promissory note from the house of Israel Lewis. The King’s Attorney had but one witness, and that was Lewis. He was called to the stand, permitted to relate his story, and retire without any cross-examination on the part of my Attorney; but that gentleman called up three respectable white men, all of whom swore that they would not believe Israel Lewis under oath! Then submitted the case to the jury without remark or comment, and the jury, without leaving their seats, brought in a verdict of “NOT GUILTY.” Thus ended my first and last trial for theft! Oh, how my very soul revolted at the thought of being thus accused; but now that I stood justified before God and my fellow-men, I felt relieved and grateful; nor could I feel anything but pity for Lewis, who, like Haman, had been so industriously engaged in erecting “a gallows fifty cubits high” for me, but found himself dangling upon it. He raved like a madman, clutched the arm of the Judge and demanded a new trial, but he shook him off with contempt and indignation, as though he had been a viper. In his wild fury and reckless determination to destroy my character, he had cast a foul stain upon his own, never to be effaced. I had felt bound to preserve my reputation when unjustly assailed, but it had been to me a painful necessity to throw a fellow-being into the unenviable and disgraceful attitude in which Lewis now stood; and yet, he would not, and did not yield the point, notwithstanding his ignominious defeat. He very soon began to gather his forces for another attack upon me, and followed the same direction for his accusation, — the land purchase. The reader will recollect without further repetition, that as I could purchase no land of the Canada Company, because of their indignation against Lewis, I was glad to accept of the contract he had made with Mr. Ingersoll, for lot number four in the colony; that I paid the sum demanded, and took his assignment on the back of the contract, and as we then were on good terms, it never occurred to me that a witness was necessary to attest to the transaction. But after his failure to prove me a thief; his next effort was to convict me of forgery! It will be remembered that Lewis after selling out to me, returned the contract to Mr. Ingersoll, and that I had lost by the means, the HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 land, and at least five hundred dollars’ worth of improvements. Then I brought a suit against Lewis, to recover the money I had paid him for the contract; and then it was that he asserted and attempted to prove, that I had forged the assignment, and therefore, had no just claim on him for the amount paid. But in this, as in the other case, he met a defeat and made an entire failure. I recovered all that I claimed, which, was only my just due. One would suppose that after so many unsuccessful attempts to ruin me, he would have left me alone, — but not so with Lewis: he had the ambition of a Bonaparte; and doubtless had he possessed the advantages of an education, instead of having been born and bred a slave, he might, like an Alexander or Napoleon, have astonished the world with his deeds of daring. I am, however, no admirer of what the world call “great men,” — one humble, self-sacrificing Christian, like Benjamin Lundy, has far greater claim on my respect and reverence. Lewis, failing in his second attack, backed up as he had been in all his wicked course, by a friend wearing the sacred garb of a minister of the gospel, cooled off, and it became evident to all, that he was meditating some different mode of warfare. To this concealed confederate, I must attach great blame, on account of the influence his station and superior learning gave him, not only over Mr. Lewis, but the colonists generally, and which should have been exerted for the good of all, in truth and honesty.
April 26, Thursday: George Sand sent a mash note to Frédéric François Chopin in Paris: “One adores you. George.”
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 26th of 4th M / The weather being unfavourable in the Morning & my health being such as not to permit of exposure - neither my wife nor I attended the Moy [Monthly] Meeting this Day held at Portsmouth. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 President Basil Manly of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Alabama noted in his diary that: “This morning at 20 minutes before 11 o’clock arrived Prof. F.A.P. Barnard. He had sailed from New York on the 24th of March, via Mobile.” Barnard would become professor of mathematics and natural philosophy, and while in the South, would be a slaveholder.
Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal about his reluctance to make a stir “in the philanthropic mud”:
I fully sympathise, be sure, with the sentiment I write, but I accept it rather from my friends than dictate it. It is not my impulse to say it & therefore my genius deserts me ... Bah!
TRAIL OF TEARS On this day, or possibly the 27th or 28th, Waldo wrote in his journal:
Yesterday P.M. I went to the Cliff with Henry Thoreau. Warm, pleasant, misty weather which the great mountain ampitheatre seemed to drink in with gladness. A crow’s voice filled all the miles of air with sound. A bird’s voice, even a piping frog enlivens a solitude & makes world enough for us. At night I went out into the dark & saw a glimmering star & heard a frog & Nature seemed to say Well do not these suffice? Here is a new scene, a new experience. Ponder it, Emerson, & not like the foolish world hanker after thunders & multitudes & vast landscapes, the sea or Niagara. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 April 27, Friday: This day was chiefly spent in writing a history of this Church from the earliest period of its existence up to this date by Presidents Joseph Smith, Jr & Sidney Rigdon (myself [George W. Robinson] also engaged in keeping this record).
In an article in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, Joseph Fischhof, writing anonymously, compared Clara Wieck favorably with the piano luminaries Sigismund Thalberg, Franz Liszt, and Adolf von Henselt.
A fire broke out in Charleston, South Carolina that would consume a significant part of the city.
April 28, Saturday: Franz Liszt and Sigismund Thalberg dined in Vienna with Thalberg’s adopted father, Prince Moritz Dietrichstein. The Prince commented that he was happy to have “Castor and Pollux” together in his house.
This morning Prests Smith & [Sidney] Rigdon & myself, were invited into attend the High Council; and accordingly attended, the buisness before the high council, was the trial of an case appealed, from the branch of the Church, near gymans [Guymon’s] horse mill; Whereas [blank] [Henry] Jackson was plantiff, and Aaron Lyon defendant. Council called to order. T[homas] B. Marsh &. D[avid] W. Patten, Presiding, It appeared in calling the council to order, that some of the seats were vacated; the council then proceeded to fill those seats: &c. And as there appeared to be no persons to fill Said Seats, Eligible to that office; Presidents Smith & Rigdon, were strongly solisited to act as councilors, or to Preside, and let the then presiding officers sit on the council; &c. They accepted of the former proposal, and accordingly Prest. Smith was choosen to act on the part of the defence, and to speak upon the case, togeth[er] with Geo. W. Harris. and Prest. Rigdon, was chosen to act on the part of the prossecution, and to speak upon the case together with Geo. M. Hinkle, after the council was organized, and op[e]ned by prayer; the notorious case of Aaron Lyon, was called in question; after some arbitrarious speeches, to know whether witnesses should be admitted, to testify against A. Lyon, or whether he should have the privilege of confessing his own Sins, It was desided; that witnesses Should be admited, and also the writen testimony of the said wife of Said Jackson. Now as to this man Lyon, it is a well known
1838 1838 order to paliate the justice of his crime, sadled the whole burden upon the devil, that in scourging the person, who had previously befriended him, and counseled him in his former days; peradventure he might extricate himself from the Snare, of his own setting, and dictation. But, alass!! to[o] late for the old man, the testimony, being closed, and the Sword of Justice, began to be un sheathed, which fell upon the old man like a scour ge of ten thousand lashes, wielded by the hand of President S. Rigdon & George M. Hinkle, inspired by the spirit of justice, accompanied with a flow of elequence, which searched for the feelings, like the sting of so many scorpions, which served to atone for past iniquity. there were no feelings that were not felt after, there were no sores that were not probed, there were no excuses rend[e]red that were not exceptionable. After Justice had ceased to weild his . accordingly, it was decided, that he give up his license as High Priest, and stand as a member in the Church, this in consequence of his being concidered not capable of dignifying that office, &c Council Adjourned Geo. W. Robinson, Scribe
April 29, Sunday: After Liszt’s 3d concert in Vienna, Franz Liszt and Sigismund Thalberg were the dinner guests of Prince Metternich.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 29th of 4th M 1838 / Between 1 & 2 OClock this morning our Dear Friend Benjamin Freeborn Died at His House at Portsmouth, & information was given our in Meeting today that his funeral is to be on 3rd day next at 1 OClock at Friends Meeting house in Portsmouth. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
This day was spent chiefly in meeting with the saints in this place, and in administering unto them, the word of Life.
Governor Everett of Massachusetts wrote from Boston to Edmund Quincy: DEAR SIR,— I have your favor of the 21st, accompanied with the volume containing the account of the tour of Messrs. Thome and Kimball in the West Indies, for which you will be pleased to accept my thanks. I have perused this highly interesting narrative with the greatest satisfaction. From the moment of the passage of the law, making provision for the immediate or prospective abolition of slavery in the British colonial possessions, I have looked with the deepest solicitude for tidings of its operation. The success of the measure, as it seemed to me, would afford a better hope than had before existed, that a like blessing might be enjoyed by those portions of the United States where slavery prevails. The only ground on which I had been accustomed to hear the continuance of slavery defended at the South, was that of necessity, and the impossibility of abolishing it without HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 producing consequences of the most disastrous character to both parties. The passage of a law providing for the emancipation of nearly a million of slaves in the British colonies, seemed to afford full opportunity of bringing this momentous question to the decisive test of experience. If the result proved satisfactory, I have never doubted that it would seal the fate of slavery throughout the civilised world. As far as the observations of Messrs. Thome and Kimball extended, the result is of the most gratifying character. It appears to place beyond a doubt, that the experiment of immediate emancipation, adopted by the colonial Legislature of Antigua, has fully succeeded in that island; and the plan of apprenticeship in other portions of the West Indies, as well as could have been expected from the obvious inherent vices of that measure. It has given me new views of the practicability of emancipation. It has been effected in Antigua, as appears from unquestionable authorities contained in the work of Messrs. Thome and Kimball, not merely without danger to the master, but without any sacrifice of his interest. I cannot but think that the information collected in the volume will have a powerful effect on public opinion, not only in the northern states, but in the slaveholding states.
April 30, Monday: Mormon history: This day was spent by the first Presidency, in writing the history of the Church; and in resitation of grammer lessions, which ressitations is attended to, in the
Souvenir of Vienna op.9 for piano was performed for the initial time, in Graz by the composer, Clara Wieck. There was tumultuous applause.
Nicaragua seceded from the Central American Federation. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
MAY 1838
THE 1ST TUESDAY IN MAY WAS THE ANNUAL “MUSTER DAY,” ON WHICH ALL THE ABLEBODIED WHITE MEN OF A TOWN WERE SUPPOSEDLY REQUIRED TO FALL INTO FORMATION, WITH THEIR PERSONAL FIREARMS, TO UNDERGO THEIR ANNUAL DAY OF MILITARY TRAINING AND MILITIA INDOCTRINATION. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 May: The current issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:
HARVARDIANA
May: The “People’s Charter” was issued.
May: A negrero flying the Portuguese flag, the Carolina, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 280 enslaved Africans on one of its five known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at a port in Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Brilhante, master A.J. Costa, out of Luanda with a cargo of 250 enslaved Africans on one of its seven known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Bom Viaxe, master Proensa, out of an unknown area of Africa with an unknown number of enslaved Africans as cargo, on its one and only known Middle Passage, arrived at a port of Cuba. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Constancia, master Plat, out of an unknown area of Africa with an unknown number of enslaved Africans as cargo, on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at a port of Cuba. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 May: David Lee Child and Lydia Maria Child settled in Northampton to raise sugar beets as an alternative SWEETS sweetener to slavery-produced cane sugar. The Sugar Beet Company had guaranteed David’s salary and WITHOUT expenses. Day after day the husband and wife would begin weeding the rows before dawn while “all the world, SLAVERY except the birds, are asleep.” Their next-door neighbor was a man who had made his money in slave auctioning in Charleston SC, named Thomas Napier, who had of course become a Sunday School teacher in the local Congregational Church — where he of course told the white children that it was God who had consigned the black race to perpetual slavery. The noise of this deacon’s prayers would come through the one window in the little residence of the Childs to disturb them, so David would sing and play his accordion in an attempt to drown it out. When Napier’s sister visited him, she brought with her a personal slave named Rosa, and the Childs attempted to persuade Rosa to flee. They discovered that at one point in her life’s trajectory Rosa had been guaranteed her freedom in writing, but that the document in question was unlocatable. They discovered also that in order for Rosa to flee, she would be forced to abandon her children and all other close relatives and friends, and that she could not even bear to consider such a loss. –Nor would Maria get any better results when she visited downtown hotels and confronted visiting slavemasters in the lobbies with what she described as “candor and courtesy,” attempting to argue slavery with them.
May: Samuel Ringgold Ward heard Gerrit Smith speak: Never shall I forget the first time I heard that model man speak. Standing erect, as he could stand no other way, with his large, manly frame, graceful figure and faultless mannerism, richly but plainly dressed, with a broad collar and black ribbon upon his neck (his invariable costume, whatever be the prevailing fashion), his look, with his broad intellectual face and towering forehead, was enough to charm any one not dead to all sense of the beautiful; and then, his rich, deep, flexible, musical voice, as capable of a thunder-tone as of a whisper — a voice to which words were suited, as it was suited to words; but, most of all, the words, thoughts, sentiments, truths and principles, he uttered — rendered me, and thousands more with me, unable to sit or stand in any quietness during his speech. This was in May, 1838. Mr. Smith was speaking against American Negro-hate. He is a descendant of the Dutch, who have distinguished themselves as much for their ill nature towards Negroes as for anything else. He belonged by wealth and position to the very first circles of the old Dutch aristocracy; he was the constant and admired associate of the proudest Negro-haters on the face of the earth; he had for years been a member of that most unscrupulous band of organized, systematic, practical promulgators of Negro-hate, the Colonization Society: and yet, in Broadway Tabernacle, upon an antislavery platform, in the city of New York (the worst city, save Philadelphia, since the days of Sodom, on this subject), Gerrit Smith stood up before four thousand of his countrymen to denounce this their cherished, honoured, they believe Christianized vice. To mortal man it is seldom permitted to behold a sight so full of or so radiant with moral power and beauty. Among the things he said, I may attempt to recall one sentiment — he asserted that, in ordinary circumstances, a person does not and cannot know how or what the Negro, the victim of this fiendish feeling, has to endure. Englishmen coming to America at first look upon it as a species of insanity. We are not all conscious of what we are doing to our poor coloured brother. “The time was, Mr. Chairman,” said this prince of orators, “when I did not understand it; but when I came to put myself in my coloured brother’s stead — when I imagined myself in his position — when HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 I sought to realize what he feels, and how he feels it — when, in a word, I became a COLOURED MAN — then I understood it, and learned how and why to hate it.” To enforce his personal illustration there was one great fact. Mr. Smith had read of One “who made himself of no reputation,” and he chose to imitate Him. Long, long before the anti-slavery question agitated the American mind, Mr. Smith and his excellent lady had concluded that, by whomsoever they might be visited, no coloured person should be slighted or treated with any less respect in their mansion because of his colour. Mr. and Mrs. Smith knew that they were visited by some of the first families of the land — they were such; their relatives were such; and no inconsiderable number of them were slaveholders. They knew what would be said; but they also knew what was right, and upon that principle had Mr. Smith invariably acted — scorning, spurning, and trampling upon the vile demon of Negro-hate for twenty years before he made that ever memorable speech. Such was his qualification to make such a speech, in such a presence. Now, a man of no position, a mere mechanic or artisan, who makes himself by means of his cause, and who earns his bread by his philanthropy, may talk cheaply enough about what he dares and suffers for the poor slave; but one who, in Mr. Smith’s position, gives untold wealth in lands and money, must be judged otherwise. Mr. Smith has given 120,000 acres of land to coloured people — has sacrificed his position, and, from sympathy with the coloured people, has identified himself with them. Here then we see philanthropy, real, pure, self-sacrificing — philanthropy, indeed, such as very few in any country exhibit, and fewer still in that country. But, God be praised, Gerrit Smith belongs to that few. The honour and pleasure of making that gentleman’s acquaintance was mine in 1839, at his house, in Peterborough. No honour I ever enjoyed do I esteem more highly than that I may call the Honourable Gerrit Smith my personal friend. Of him I say, sometimes, he is the Shaftesbury of America; and those who enjoy the pleasure of knowing both know that I honour the noble Earl in nothing more highly than in speaking of his Lordship as the Gerrit Smith of England, of Europe. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 May 1, Tuesday: Mormon history: This day was also spent in writing Church History, by the first Presidency.
The Reverend Ezra Ripley wrote a letter of introduction for Henry David Thoreau as the young man set out to try to find a teaching job in Maine:
The undersigned very cheerfully hereby introduces to public notice, the bearer, Mr. David Henry Thoreau, as a Teacher in the higher branches of useful literature. He is a native of this town, & a graduate of Harvard University. He is well disposed & well qualified to instruct the rising generation. His scholarship & moral character will bear the strictest scrutiny. He is modest & mild in his disposition & government, but not wanting in energy of character & fidelity in the duties of his profession. It is presumed, his character & usefulness will be appreciated more highly as an acquaintance with him shall be cultivated. Cordial wishes for his success, reputation, & usefulness attend him, as an instructor & gentleman.
When he left for his tour of Maine in search of a teaching position (at a private school where he would have more freedom) he would also carry with him a reference from Emerson: I cordially recommend Mr. Henry D. Thoreau, a graduate of Harvard University in August, 1837, to the confidence of such parents or guardians as may propose to employ him as an instructor. I have the highest confidence in Mr. Thoreau’s moral character and in his intellectual ability. He is an excellent Scholar, a man of energy & kindness, & I shall esteem the town fortunate that secures his Services. [Harding, DAYS, page 65]
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 3rd day 5 M 1st 1838 / After dinner In company with Henry Gould, Isaac Mitchell & Thos P Nichols, with Lydia Ann Gould & Rebecca Mitchell Sat out for Greenwich by way of Wickford & arrived there in season to get land conveyance to Greenwich by Sunsett - We took Quarters at Updikes Tavern & staid there during the Quarterly Meeting on 4th day I attended Select & the Meeting for Sufferings - on 5th day the Meeting at large which was a time of some favour thro’ the Instrumentality of our friend John Meader After dining at Updikes we took the Steam Boat Kingston with the Most riotous & Drunk company I ever Met with who had been down to Newport to the Genl Election. & went to Providence & lodged at Wm Jenkins RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 1, Tuesday: By this point Henry Bibb had been working odd jobs long enough to have acquired a presentable costume. He had also saved $15, but not in the sort of currency which could be used in the South. He therefore took a steamboat to Detroit, Michigan and used the money to purchase dry goods, and a set of false whiskers. He would then hike across Ohio with his dry goods, peddling them, with his destination being Cincinnati. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 May 2, Wednesday: Mormon history: This day was also spent in writing history, and
Waldo Emerson lectured at the Concord Lyceum in Concord. This was the 3d lecture of the series, “The Head.”
Miss Prudence Ward wrote more to her sister in Scituate, Mrs. Edmund Quincy Sewall, Sr.:
...Mr. Thoreau has begun to prepare his garden, and I have been digging the flower-beds. Henry has left us this morning, to try and obtain a school at the eastward (in Maine). John has taken one in West Roxbury. Helen is in another part of Roxbury, establishing herself in a boarding and day-school. Sophia will probably be wanted there as an assistant; so the family are disposed of. I shall miss the juvenile members very much; for they are the most important part of the establishment....
JOHN THOREAU, SR. JOHN THOREAU, JR. HELEN LOUISA THOREAU SOPHIA E. THOREAU
“Went to Maine for a school.” Searching for a teaching position with a letter of recommendation from Waldo Emerson in his pocket, Henry Thoreau was taking a steamer out of Boston past Gloucester’s Eastern Point and Cape Ann to Portland, to travel through Brunswick, Bath, Gardiner, Hallowell, Augusta, China, Bangor, Oldtown, Belfast, Castine, Thomaston, Bath, and Portland and back to Boston. Passing Nahant, he was HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 underimpressed at the sight of the Frederic Tudor “Rockwood” estate and its ugly fences:
THE MAINE WOODS: But Maine, perhaps, will soon be where Massachusetts is. A good part of her territory is already as bare and commonplace as much of our neighborhood, and her villages generally are not so well shaded as ours. We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man. Consider Nahant, the resort of all the fashion of Boston, — which peninsula I saw but indistinctly in the twilight, when I steamed by it, and thought that it was unchanged since the discovery. John Smith described it in 1614 as “the Mattahunts, two pleasant isles of groves, gardens, and cornfields”; and others tell us that it was once well wooded, and even furnished timber to build the wharves of Boston. Now it is difficult to make a tree grow there, and the visitor comes away with a vision of Mr. Tudor’s ugly fences, a rod high, designed to protect a few pear-shrubs. And what are we coming to in our Middlesex towns? — a bald, staring town-house, or meeting-house, and a bare liberty-pole, as leafless as it is fruitless, for all I can see. We shall be obliged to import the timber for the last, hereafter, or splice such sticks as we have; — and our ideas of liberty are equally mean with these. The very willow-rows lopped every three years for fuel or powder, — and every sizable pine and oak, or other forest tree, cut down within the memory of man! As if individual speculators were to be allowed to export the clouds out of the sky, or the stars out of the firmament, one by one. We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for nutriment.
While he was in Oldtown he would meet an old Indian on the dock who would point up the Penobscot and inform Thoreau that:
Two or three miles up that river one beautiful country.
TIMELINE OF THE MAINE WOODS
First week in May: Jones Very’s “Epic Poetry” appeared in the Christian Examiner.
May 3, Thursday: Sylvia Grinnell was born.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in his journal: I have been looking at the old Northern Sagas, and thinking of a series of ballads or a romantic poem on the deeds of the first bold viking who crossed to this western world, with storm- spirits and devil-machinery under water. New England ballads I have long thought of. This seems to be an introduction. I will dream more of this.
May 4, Friday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day attended the School committee & an adjourned Meeting of HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 the Meeting for Sufferings & also a Meeting of the Trustees of O Browns Fund all held at the Meeting House - We returned to Wm Jenkins & lodged - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 5, Saturday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day at 8 OC in the Morning took the Steam Boat Kingston again & returned home - My health tho’ not good, was such that I was pretty comfortable most of the time during my Absence - & we found our family concerns had gone on pretty well, excepting that Polly McClish had not been very well tho’ able to keep about & do what was necessary in family concerns. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
Boston began the first police force in the nation to employ regular officers. However, “Irish need not apply” — the Irish were part of the problem, not the solution to the problem, since the main task which has always faced the police forces of every US town and city has ever been the bending of the law toward the protection of the decent local “us” against the insolent importunity of transients, vagrants, lowlife, in general the “them.” “WASHINGTON, May 5, 1838. To JAMES G. BIRNEY, Esq., Cor. Sec. A.A.S.S. SIR, — I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 1st instant, in which you again refer to the publication of the Correspondence between us, in relation to the measures and designs of the abolitionists. I would have certainly answered yours of the 2d ult., on the same subject, more fully before this, had it not escaped my recollection, in consequence [of] having been more engaged than usual in the business before the House. I hope the delay has been productive of no inconvenience. If I correctly understand your letters above referred to, the control of these papers, and the decision as to their publication, have passed into the ‘Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society;’ and, from their tenor, I infer that their determination is so far made, that nothing I could object would prevent it, if I desired to do so. I was certainly not apprised, when I entered into this Correspondence, that its disposition was to depend on any other will than yours and mine, — but that matters nothing now, — you had the power, and I am not disposed to question the right or propriety of its exercise. I heard of you as a man of intelligence, sincerity, and truth, — who, although laboring in a bad cause, did it with ability, and from a mistaken conviction of its justice. As one of the Representatives of a slave-holding constituency, and one of a committee raised by the Representatives of the slave-holding States, to ascertain the intentions and progress of your associations, I availed myself of the opportunity offered by your character and situation, to propose to you inquiries as to facts, which would make those developments so important to be known by our people. My inquiries were framed to draw out full and authentic details of the organization, numbers, resources, and designs of the abolitionists, of the means they resorted to for the accomplishment of their ends, and the progress made, and making, in their dangerous work, that all such information might be laid before the four millions and a half of white inhabitants in the slave States, whose lives and property are menaced and HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 endangered by this ill-considered, misnamed, and disorganizing philanthropy. They should be informed of the full length and breadth and depth of this storm which is gathering over their heads, before it breaks in its desolating fury. Christians and civilized, they are now industrious, prosperous, and happy; but should your schemes of abolition prevail, it will bring upon them overwhelming ruin, and misery unutterable. The two races cannot exist together upon terms of equality — the extirpation of one and the ruin of the other would be inevitable. This humanity, conceived in wrong and born in civil strife, would be baptized in a people’s blood. It was, that our people might know, in time to guard against the mad onset, the full extent of this gigantic conspiracy and crusade against their institutions; and of necessity upon their lives with which they must sustain them; and their fortunes and prosperity, which exist only while these institutions exist, that I was induced to enter into a correspondence with you, who by your official station and intelligence were known to be well informed on these points, and from your well established character for candor and fairness, would make no statements of facts which were not known or believed by you to be true. To a great extent, my end has been accomplished by your replies to my inquiries. How far, or whether at all, your answers have run, beyond the facts inquired for, into theories, arguments, and dissertations, as erroneous as mischievous, is not a matter of present consideration. We differed no wider than I expected, but that difference has been exhibited courteously, and has nothing to do with the question of publication. Your object, or rather the object of your Committee, is to publish; and I, having no reason to desire it, as you have put me in possession of the facts I wished, and no reason not to desire it, as there is nothing to conceal, will leave yourself and the Committee to take your own course, neither assenting nor dissenting, in what you may finally decide to do. Very respectfully, Your obedient servant, F.H. Elmore.”
May 6, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 6th of 5th M 1838 / Our Meetings were both comfortable — Father had short offerings in both & in the Afternoon, particularly, I thought we favoured.— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 May 7, Monday: The Great Western, the first steamboatSTEAMBOAT put into regular transatlantic service, moved away from Pier I at the Battery in New-York on her return trip to England.
May 8, Tuesday: At a dinner at the house of Astolphe, Marquis de Custine, Frédéric François Chopin and George Sand fell in love. Sand would remember “...I was confused and amazed at the effect this little creature wrought on me. I have still not recovered from my astonishment, and if I were a proud person I should be feeling humiliated at having been carried away by my emotions ... when I had thought that I had settled down for good.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 May 9, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson lectured at the Concord Lyceum in Concord. This was the 4th lecture of the series, “The Heart.”
A lawyer representing the government of the United States of America obtained an order from the British Court of Chancery, for the debentures bequeathed by James Smithson for the creation of a “Smithsonian Institution” dedicated to “the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” This lawyer would convert all the debentures into gold sovereigns and pack these sovereigns into ten, maybe more, cases weighing a thousand pounds each, evidently to carry this half-million in gold back across the Atlantic with his baggage in the hold of the passenger ship! When the US treasury would get it hands on these sovereigns, it would of course before anything else have to melt them down and cast them into proper money, coin of the realm, that is, US coins.40 Whereupon they would give these bright coins to various states in exchange for bond issues, and many of these paper promises would promptly go into default and lose a good portion of their value. And meanwhile persons such as Joel R. Poinsett of the private National Institute for the Promotion of Science would be full of good ideas about how to spend all that money, or what of it was left.
40. Would this be a precedent for the money laundering that would go on during the Nixon years, with the administration moving stacks of hundred-dollar bills into Mexico and swapping the currency there, so that when brought back to the “Plumbers” safe in the White House for disbursement to operatives, no serial numbers would be traceable? Or would it have been simpleminded chauvinism? HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 May 10, Thursday: John Wilkes Booth was born in a log cabin, in the woods of northern Maryland near the Pennsylvania border.
Waldo Emerson wrote to Thomas Carlyle informing him that Henry Swasey McKean had volunteered to correct the proofs of his “Miscellanies” and that McKean had been handed “your Errata” to use during this task. After McKean had left Cambridge for New Hampshire, this editing would be completed by Charles Stearns Wheeler. The result was to be the initial American edition of Carlyle’s CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS: MISC. ESSAYS, VOL. I MISC. ESSAYS, VOL. II MISC. ESSAYS, VOL. III MISC. ESSAYS, VOL. IV
Copies of these volumes would of course be in Henry Thoreau’s personal library.
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka set out from St. Petersburg to the Ukraine to recruit singers for the Imperial Choir.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 10th of 5th M / Meeting nearly silent - small, but some solemnity, & a little life — I feel much on account of Society - Oh that there may be more raised up to bear the burden & stand cloathed upon to move forward in support of the precious cause of Truth, which now suffers much, as Geo Fox used to say “The Seed suffers” & Oh may we have cause to exclaim with him, on the other hand, “The Seed reigneth. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
May 11, Friday: A man in a smoking-room in Boston asked Nathaniel Hawthorne about the Canadian Rebellion, and was informed that
all is finished except the hanging of the prisoners. Then we talk over the matter, and I tell him the fates of the principal men –some banished to New-South Wales, one hanged, others in prison– others, conspicuous at first, now almost forgotten.
WOMEN HANGED IN ENGLAND DURING 1838
Date Name Age Place of execution Crime
May 5 Ann Wycherly 28 Stafford Murder
May 21 Elizabeth Nicholson (Jeffrey) 36 Glasgow Murder
Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:
Last night the moon rose behind four distinct pine-tree tops in the distant woods and the night at ten was so bright that I walked abroad. But the sublime light of night is unsatisfying, provoking; it astonishes but explains not. Its charm floats, dances, disappears, comes and goes, but palls in five minutes after you have left the house. Come out of your warm, angular house, resounding with few voices, into the chill, grand, instantaneous night, with such a Presence as a full moon in the clouds, and you are struck with poetic wonder. In the instant you leave far behind all human relations, wife, mother and child, and live only with the savages — water, air, light, carbon, lime, and granite. I think of Kuhleborn. I become a moist, cold element. “Nature grows over me.” Frogs pipe; waters far off tinkle; dry leaves hiss; grass bends and rustles, and I have died out of the human world and come to feel a strange, cold, aqueous, terraqueous, aerial, ethereal sympathy and existence. I sow the sun and moon for seeds.
May 12, Saturday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 12th of 5th M 1838 / This Afternoon I took a walk round the Hill & called to see Fanny Davis a sick colourd woman - from there I went into the Clifton Burying ground & visited the Graves of several of my Ancestors of the Wanton Clarke & Rodman family -tho’ they all passed out of time before I was in existance yet HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 I love to see their resting place on earth - Many of their Names are familiar to me by the Records of the Monthly Meeting & by anecdotes of many ancient people who remembered some of them, their Devotion too the good cause is yet in rememberance, & I have no doubt their Spirits are in heaven singing Halilujah to the Lord God & the Lamb, whom they served with their whole heart & while on earth. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 13, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 13 of 5 M / Our Meetings were remarkably good solid & nearly silent seasons - In the Morning particularly, I thought I had seldom Known a more reverend quiet setting, it seemed as if the people were sensible what they came to Meeting for & when the Meeting broke they were not in a hurry to leave their seats. Father had a short communication toward the close. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 14, Monday: The Daily National Intelligencer, a Washington gazette, printed a report of Waldo Emerson’s letter to President Martin Van Buren about the Cherokee.
May 14, Monday: Friend Abby Kelley and four other delegates from the Lynn Female Society had come to Philadelphia to attend the 2nd Women’s meeting, along with William Lloyd Garrison, Henry B. Stanton, Henry C. Wright, and women from the Boston and New-York female societies. It would be at this meeting that Abby would address her first promiscuous audience, amid the shouts and stones shattering the glass windows from the pro-slavery mobs. On that basis Theodore Weld would decide to invite Abby to join the speaking circuit.
Although some had expected her to marry “a great strapping nigger” if she married at all, Friend Angelina Emily Grimké married Theodore Dwight Weld, an emphatic white abolitionist unsympathetic to the “non- resistance” cause, on the evening before the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women was to meet at the grand new Pennsylvania Hall.41
One of Angelina’s woman friends had said to her face that “no man would wish to have such a wife.” (Surely, with friends like that, these people didn’t need their enemies.) Friend Angelina omitted “obey” from her vow! For marrying a man who was not a member of the Religious Society of Friends, she was of course disowned by her worship group. Friend Lucretia Mott and other Quakers decided not to be present at this wedding because had they been in attendance they likely would also have been disowned. Whittier solved the problem by waiting outside the door until the official part of the event was complete, so he could truthfully say he was not present for such a wedding ceremony. Friend Abby, however, as always afraid of nothing, defied the discipline of her worship group, openly attending the entire ceremony, and in fact made herself the 1st woman to sign the traditional parchment certificate.
41. This expensive new building dedicated to the right of freedom of speech had a pillared marble entry facing 6th Street, and provided offices and a “free produce” store from which vegetables grown by slave labor were excluded, in addition to its “great saloon” containing blue plush seating for 3,000 people and a platform with a blue damask sofa. The auditorium and offices and store were brilliantly lit with gas, a new innovation. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Though the Grimké sisters at first felt they had found their home in Quakerism, they later found there was “no openness among Friends” on the issue of working against enslavement. Biographer Gerda Lerner says that their “blind loyalty to the Quakers had turned into bitter disappointment.” Their reception at meetings was increasingly “chilly” and they were no longer welcome in the homes of Quaker Friends. At the yearly meeting in 1836, presiding elder Jonathan Edwards stopped Sarah as she rose to speak. Sarah elected to use the incident as a “means of releasing” her “from those bonds which almost destroyed my mind.” As the sisters expected, Angelina Grimké’s 1838 marriage to Theodore Weld provided the pretext for disowning her, and her sister’s membership was revoked for attending the ceremony.42
Friend John Greenleaf Whittier presented a “humorous” poem in which he protested that his buddy Theodore was abandoning him “alone at the desolate shrine,” for he and Weld had once, apparently in bachelor playfulness, taken a joint solemn vow that they would never marry. It would certainly be unsubstantiated, however, and would probably be incorrect, that they had had a homosexual relationship. What is very much more probable is that Whittier, like Henry Thoreau, never experienced sexual congress, even with members of the opposite sex. Thoreau was, we must admit, both small and unhandsome, and, although he confessed to abundant libido, may never really have had significant opportunity. Whittier, on the other hand, although he was tall and slender and striking and attracted many friends both male and female, in his private correspondence gives no particular indication of libido: “my heart is untouched — cold and motionless as a Jutland lake lighted up by the moonlight. I know that they are beautiful — very, but they are nothing to me.”
Soon after the marriage Weld would withdraw to private life on a farm in Belleville, New Jersey. The couple would spend the remainder of their lives directing schools and teaching in New Jersey and Massachusetts.
Middle of May: The Transcendental Club met at the home of the Reverend Caleb Stetson in Medford, Massachusetts.
Present were the Reverends Frederic Henry Hedge, George Ripley, and Theodore Parker, John Sullivan Dwight, Bronson Alcott, Cyrus Bartol, and Jones Very. The topic for the evening was “The Question of Mysticism.”
42. Page 91 in Donna McDaniel’s and Vanessa Julye’s FIT FOR FREEDOM, NOT FOR FRIENDSHIP: QUAKERS, AFRICAN AMERICANS, AND THE MYTH OF RACIAL JUSTICE (Philadelphia: Quaker Press of Friends General Conference, 2009). HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
May 15, Tuesday: Queen Victoria permitted the painter Thomas Sully a long period in which to study her head, face, and shoulders while he elaborated the preliminary paintings of this 18-year-old which are now to be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Also winding up in that museum would be the finished huge oil Sully would produce, after its exhibition tour through Boston, Montréal, Québec, New Orleans, and New-York.
Clara Wieck returned from her triumphs in Vienna to Leipzig, where Robert Schumann has entered another depressive phase.
May 15, Tuesday: In Philadelphia, a mammoth hall had been erected “that the citizens of Philadelphia should possess a room wherein the principles of Liberty, and Equality of Civil Rights, could be freely discussed, and the evils of slavery fearlessly portrayed.” Friend John Greenleaf Whittier offered a grand poem at the dedication of this Pennsylvania Hall structure:
PENNSYLVANIA HALL. NOT with the splendors of the days of old, The spoil of nations, and barbaric gold; No weapons wrested from the fields of blood, Where dark and stern the unyielding Roman stood, And the proud eagles of his cohorts saw A world, war-wasted, crouching to his law; Nor blazoned car, nor banners floating gay, Like those which swept along the Appian Way, When, to the welcome of imperial Rome, The victor warrior came in triumph home, And trumpet peal, and shoutings wild and high, Stirred the blue quiet of the Italian sky; But calm and grateful, prayerful and sincere, As Christian freemen only, gathering here, We dedicate our fair and lofty Hall, Pillar and arch, entablature and wall, As Virtue’s shrine, as Liberty’s abode, Sacred to Freedom, and to Freedom’s God! Far statelier Halls, ’neath brighter skies than these, Stood darkly mirrored in the Ægean seas, Pillar and shrine, and life-like statues seen, Graceful and pure, the marble shafts between; Where glorious Athens from her rocky hill Saw Art and Beauty subject to her will; And the chaste temple, and the classic grove, The hall of sages, and the bowers of love, Arch, fane, and column, graced the shores, and gave HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Their shadows to the blue Saronic wave; And statelier rose, on Tiber’s winding side, The Pantheon’s dome, the Coliseum’s pride, The Capitol, whose arches backward flung The deep, clear cadence of the Roman tongue, Whence stern decrees, like words of fate, went forth To the awed nations of a conquered earth, Where the proud Caesars in their glory came, And Brutus lightened from his lips of flame! Yet in tire porches of Athena’s halls, And in the shadow of her stately walls, Lurked the sad bondman, and his tears of woe Wet the cold marble with unheeded flow; And fetters clanked beneath the silver dome Of the proud Pantheon of imperious Rome. Oh, not for him, the chained and stricken slave, By Tiber’s shore, or blue Ægina’s wave, In the thronged forum, or the sages’ seat, The bold lip pleaded, and the warm heart beat; No soul of sorrow melted at his pain, No tear of pity rusted on his chain! But this fair Hall to Truth and Freedom given, Pledged to the Right before all Earth and Heaven, A free arena for the strife of mind, To caste, or sect, or color unconfined, Shall thrill with echoes such as ne’er of old From Roman hall or Grecian temple rolled; Thoughts shall find utterance such as never yet The Propylea or the Forum met. Beneath its roof no gladiator’s strife Shall win applauses with the waste of life; No lordly lictor urge the barbarous game, No wanton Lais glory in her shame. But here the tear of sympathy shall flow, As the ear listens to the tale of woe; Here in stern judgment of the oppressor’s wrong Shall strong rebukings thrill on Freedom’s tongue, No partial justice hold th’ unequal scale, No pride of caste a brother’s rights assail, No tyrant’s mandates echo from this wall, Holy to Freedom and the Rights of All! But a fair field, where mind may close with mind, Free as the sunshine and the chainless wind; Where the high trust is fixed on Truth alone, And bonds and fetters from the soul are thrown; Where wealth, and rank, and worldly pomp, and might, Yield to the presence of the True and Right. And fitting is it that this Hall should stand Where Pennsylvania’s Founder led his band,. From thy blue waters, Delaware!— to press The virgin verdure of the wilderness. Here, where all Europe with amazement saw The soul’s high freedom trammelled by no law; Here, where the fierce and warlike forest-men Gathered, in peace, around the home of Penn, Awed by the weapons Love alone had given Drawn from the holy armory of Heaven; Where Nature’s voice against the bondman’s wrong First found an earnest and indignant tongue; Where Lay’s bold message to the proud was borne; And Keith’s rebuke, and Franklin’s manly scorn! Fitting it is that here, where Freedom first From her fair feet shook off the Old World’s dust, Spread her white pinions to our Western blast, And her free tresses to our sunshine cast, One Hall should rise redeemed from Slavery’s ban, One Temple sacred to the Rights of Man! HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
Oh! if the spirits of the parted come, Visiting angels, to their olden home; If the dead fathers of the land look forth From their fair dwellings, to the things of earth, Is it a dream, that with their eyes of love, They gaze now on us from the bowers above? Lay’s ardent soul, and Benezet the mild, Steadfast in faith, yet gentle as a child, Meek-hearted Woolman, and that brother-band, JOHN WOOLMAN The sorrowing exiles from their “Father land,” Leaving their homes in Krieshiem’s bowers of vine, And the blue beauty of their glorious Rhine, To seek amidst our solemn depths of wood Freedom from man, and holy peace with God; Who first of all their testimonial gave Against the oppressor, for the outcast slave, Is it a dream that such as these look down, And with their blessing our rejoicings crown? Let us rejoice, that while the pulpit’s door Is barred against the pleaders for the poor; While the Church, wrangling upon points of faith, Forgets her bondsmen suffering unto death; While crafty Traffic and the lust of Gain Unite to forge Oppression’s triple chain, One door is open, and one Temple free, As a resting-place for hunted Liberty! Where men may speak, unshackled and unawed, High words of Truth, for Freedom and for God. And when that truth its perfect work hath done, And rich with blessings o’er our land hath gone; When not a slave beneath his yoke shall pine, From broad Potomac to the far Sabine: When unto angel lips at last is given The silver trump of Jubilee in Heaven; And from Virginia’s plains, Kentucky’s shades, And through the dim Floridian everglades, Rises, to meet that angel-trumpet’s sound, The voice of millions from their chains unbound; Then, though this Hall be crumbling in decay, Its strong walls blending with the common clay, Yet, round the ruins of its strength shall stand The best and noblest of a ransomed land — Pilgrims, like these who throng around the shrine Of Mecca, or of holy Palestine! A prouder glory shall that ruin own Than that which lingers round the Parthenon. Here shall the child of after years be taught The works of Freedom which his fathers wrought; Told of the trials of the present hour, Our weary strife with prejudice and power; How the high errand quickened woman’s soul, And touched her lip as with a living coal; How Freedom’s martyrs kept their lofty faith True and unwavering, unto bonds and death; The pencil’s art shall sketch the ruined Hall, The Muses’ garland crown its aged wall, And History’s pen for after times record Its consecration unto Freedom’s God! HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 May 16, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson lectured at the Concord Lyceum in Concord. This was the 5th lecture of the series, “Intellectual Integrity.”
The tendency to see the very light-skinned Robert Purvis as white was a factor leading to one of the most shameful episodes in Philadelphia history: the burning by a mob of a new abolitionist meeting hall and a black orphanage. When a lawsuit would be brought against the city for not protecting the hall, something utterly surprising would come to light — part of the city’s defense would turn out to be that these abolitionists had brought on the riot themselves “by promoting promiscuous intermingling indoors and out of blacks and whites.” The evidence the city would present of this provocativeness would include the fact that a “white man” had been seen to offer his hand to a black woman as she was getting out of a carriage. Then the pair had strolled, outrageously, arm in arm, into the hall. The sight of such an outrage to public decency had inflamed the mob! Well, it would be belatedly understood, what the mob had seen had been the very light-skinned Purvis courteously assisting his wife, Harriet Purvis, who was so many shades darker in complexion than he.43
Two black women (referred to as “two coloreds” in some depositions of the time) having been seated as delegates to an Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in Pennsylvania Hall, the convention was
obviously not so much “promiscuous” (19th-Century term for the mixing of genders) as it was something far, far more dangerous to law order and public decency, “amalgamated” (19th-Century term for the mixed of races). William Lloyd Garrison, among others, addressed this amalgamated assembly. Notices were posted in Philadelphia asking all citizens with “due regard for property” to “interfere, forcefully if they must” in “preservation of the Constitution.”44
May 17, Thursday: Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, prince de Benevent died at his Paris home.
Franz Liszt performed for the Empress of Austria at court in Vienna.
Dr. Daniel Neall was presiding at the antislavery meeting in Pennsylvania Hall –which had been newly constructed by the abolitionists at a cost of $40,000.00 because of refusal of other hall owners in Philadelphia to rent existing halls– and Friend John Greenleaf Whittier was standing nearby, when glass from the windows showered down, and rioters forced their way onto the platform to declare that the meeting was over: I am here, the president of this meeting, and I will be torn in pieces before I leave my place at your dictation. Go back to those who sent you. I shall do my duty.
43. Imagine a comparable situation, that did not happen. Senator Daniel Webster was so dark-complected that on one occasion a commercial establishment turned him away, presuming that they were dealing with a black American. It was only because he was so very well known as an Alpha Male that this sort of incident did not happen more often. Imagine, what if some situation had arisen in which he had been sighted from a distance or under poor lighting conditions in downtown Boston with a daughter, and the result had been a riot and some theater had gotten burned to the ground! –Well, I guess Boston lucked out on that one, it never happened. 44. In the last session Friend Abby Kelley would urge that white abolitionists ought to be visiting black Americans “in their homes and encouraging them to visit us, receiving them as we do our white fellow citizens.” The reaction of some of the other white abolitionist delegates was that this sort of behavior might amount to the dreaded “amalgamationism” and therefore was certainly not going to be officially sponsored. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Some years after, while visiting in his native State of Delaware, the Doctor would be dragged from the home of some friends to be abused in the street. After these slaveholders were finished with him, he would tell them that he forgave them — for it was not they but Slavery which had done the wrong.45
He would suggest that if they should ever be in Philadelphia and in need of hospitality or aid, they should again call on him. Some years after that, on “6th, 6th month, 1846” to be specific, Friend John would celebrate this hero of gentlemanliness:
DANIEL NEALL. I. FRIEND of the Slave, and yet the friend of all; Lover of peace, yet ever foremost when The need of battling Freedom called for men To plant the banner on the outer wall; Gentle and kindly, ever at distress Melted to more than woman’s tenderness, Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty’s post Fronting the violence of a maddened host, Like some-gray rock from which the waves are tossed! Knowing his deeds of love, men questioned not The faith of one whose walk and word were right; Who tranquilly in Life’s great task-field wrought, And, side by side with evil, scarcely caught A stain upon his pilgrim garb of white: Prompt to redress another’s wrong, his own Leaving to Time and Truth and Penitence alone.
II. Such was our friend. Formed on the good old plan, A true and brave and downright honest man! He blew no trumpet in the market-place, Nor in the church with hypocritic face Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace; Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will What others talked of while their hands were still; And, while “Lord, Lord!” the pious tyrants cried, Who, in the poor, their Master crucified, His daily prayer, far better understood. In acts than words, was simply doing good. So calm, so constant was his rectitude, That by his loss alone we know its worth,
45. Legally, there was a distinction between a slaveowner and a slaveholder. The owner of a slave might rent the custody and use of that slave out for a year, in which case the distinction would arise and be a meaningful one in law, since the other party to such a transaction would be the holder but not the owner. However, in this Kouroo database, I will ordinarily be deploying the term “slaveholder” as the normative term, as we are no longer all that concerned with the making of such fine economic distinctions but are, rather, concerned almost exclusively with the human issues involved in the enslavement of other human beings. I use the term “slaveholder” in preference to “slaveowner” not only because no human being can really own another human being but also because it is important that slavery never be defined as the legal ownership of one person by another — in fact not only had human slavery existed before the first such legislation but also it has continued long since we abolished all legal deployment of the term “slave.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 And feel how true a man has walked with us on earth.
As the delegates left Pennsylvania Hall after the mayor of Philadelphia had demanded the keys and canceled all meetings, at the suggestion of Friend Angelina Emily Grimké the white women delegates took the arms of the black women delegates in order better to protect them from being grabbed as they passed through the pro- slavery mob of 17,000 Philadelphians outside the doors. Standing on the steps of the hall, the mayor gave his lightly coded instructions to the mob:
WE NEVER CALL OUT THE MILITARY. YOU ARE MY POLICE.
How hard was it for the Philadelphia citizens’ mob to figure this? They gave their mayor three cheers and broke down the doors. In addition to piling the plush chairs and adding abolitionist books and papers to these piles, they turned on the illuminating gas to full on to help the building burn brightly.46 Friend John Greenleaf Whittier was running the newspaper office of the Pennsylvania Freeman47 in the front of the building, on an upper story.
I took charge of the “Pennsylvania Freeman,” an organ of the Anti-Slavery Society. My office was sacked and burned by a mob soon after, but I continued my paper until my health failed, when I returned to Massachusetts. The farm in Haverhill had, in the meantime, been sold, and my mother, aunt and youngest sister, had moved to Amesbury MA, near the Friends Meeting- house, and I took up my residence with them. All this time I had been actively engaged in writing for the anti-slavery cause.
46. About a decade later the Philadelphia County Commissioners would pay almost $48,000.00 in compensation for this torching of Pennsylvania Hall. 47. This is the periodical that, later, would publish UNCLE TOM’S CABIN as a serial. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 As the hall burned, volunteer fire brigades pumped streams of water — upon the walls of the surrounding structures to keep them from igniting.
John Greenleaf48 Whittier
48. According to the American Methodist Monthly, Volume II, page 229, John Greenleaf Whittier was descended from a Fouillevert who had fled from Brittagne to England in the early states of the persecution of Huguenots by the French government. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Whittier slapped on a wig and an overcoat and managed to get into and out of the building during the commotion, while the building was burning, to retrieve some writings he considered of importance. Some citizens then wanted to continue by torching the home of the Motts, but a friend ran in front of them shouting “On to the Motts!” — and of course led them down the wrong street. While Friends James and Lucretia Mott sat unarmed in the parlor of their home, which was on 9th Street between Race and Vine (this was before the Motts moved to 338 Arch Street), waiting the outcome, he led the mob on up Race Street and farther and farther away from their home until it dissipated.
The rioters instead turned to burn down Bethel Church (AME) and a nearby Quaker-founded Colored Orphan Asylum (a structure not yet occupied).
Mrs. Mary Merrick Brooks of Concord had taken her step-daughter Caroline Downes Brooks to Philadelphia to attend the women’s antislavery convention in this hall. Caroline wrote from Philadelphia to her friend Elizabeth Prichard to describe the burning. During the late 1830s, presumably during this period, since Caroline was a Sunday school student in Lidian Emerson’s class at the First Parish, presumably Lidian would have had a chance to hear all about this event.
May 17, Thursday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 17th of 5th M 1838 / Nearly a Silent Meeting but pretty solid — I am thinking of late much of our approaching Yearly Meeting - It looks as if it may be a season of some trial & in short what will be the result of the State of things in our Society as they now generally exist I do not forsee — Our great & ancient leaders in this Yearly Meeting are gone, that is David Buffum, Moses Brown & some others — the burthen & management now devolves on a few who have not the weight & Standing which they had but I cannot but hope strength will be afforded in the needful time. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 18, Friday: The anti-slavery women delegates, including Robert Purvis’s black 1st wife Harriet Purvis, tried to continue their 2d antislavery convention of American women by meeting at the Temperance Hall in Philadelphia — but they were banned.
May 19, Saturday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 7th day 19th of 5th M / This Afternoon took a walk up to cousin Henry Goulds & on my return stoped to see our Aged brother Nathan Monro who has been some time confined to the house by sickness & unable to get to Meetings - he seemed very loving & Sweet, & tender in Spirit - my visit was as comfortable as any I have made in some time. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 May 19, Saturday:At 10:30AM in Copenhagen, Søren Aabye Kierkegaard had a mystical experience (his great earthquake den store Jordrystelse experience).
In Concord, the news in the Yeoman’s Gazette was of the Reverend R. Waldo Emerson and the Cherokee and President of the United States Martin Van Buren:Governor Ellsworth of Connecticut wrote from New Haven
MARTIN VAN BUREN to A.F. Williams: MY DEAR SIR,— Just before I left home, I received from you the Journal of Thome and Kimball, for which token of friendship I intended to have made you my acknowledgments before this; but I wished first to read the book. As far as time would permit, I have gone over most of its pages; and let me assure you, it is justly calculated to produce great effects, provided you can once get it into the HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 hands of the planters. Convince them that their interests, as well as their security, will be advanced by employing free blacks, and emancipation will be accomplished without difficulty or delay. I have looked with great interest at the startling measure of emancipation in Antigua; but if this book is correct, the question is settled as to that island beyond a doubt, since there is such accumulated testimony from all classes, that the business and real estate of the island have advanced, by reason of the emancipation, one fourth, at least, in value; while personal security, without military force, is felt by the former masters, and contentment, industry, and gratitude, are seen in those who were slaves. The great moral example of England, in abolishing slavery in the West Indies, will produce a revolution on this subject throughout the world, and put down slavery in every Christian country. With sentiments of high esteem, &c, W. W. ELLSWORTH. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 May 23, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson lectured at the Concord Lyceum in Concord. This was the 6th lecture of the series, “Prudence.”
The Cherokee Nation roundup began while the Southeast was suffering its worst drought on record. Tsali would escape from this roundup and return to North Carolina. TRAIL OF TEARS
Full abolition for the British West Indies was enacted. Friend Joseph Sturge would begin to work through the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society for worldwide abolition of human slavery.
May 24, Thursday: The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 8th issue of its “omnibus” entitled The Anti-Slavery Examiner, containing “Correspondence, between the Hon. F.H. Elmore, one of the South Carolina Delegation in Congress, and James G. Birney, one of the Secretaries of the American Anti- Slavery Society.”
May 25, Friday: Waldo Emerson ’s 35th birthday.
After a detour from his Italian sojourn for a month, Franz Liszt gave his last of 12 highly successful performances in Vienna. He had heard that Marie d’Agoult was seriously ill awaiting him in Venice, and would soon join her. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
May 27, Sunday: Franz Liszt departed Vienna to join the ailing Marie d’Agoult in Venice.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 27th of 5th M / Our Morning Meeting as soon as I took my seat seemed to me to be a season of favour & so it proved for I have not had a Meeting of better feelings, & when it seemed as if solemnity pervaded the whole, in sometem[?] Father was engaged in a few sentences - Silent & solid in the Afternoon - Surely we are not forsaken - Divine goodness & help is near RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
May 28, Monday: Henry Thoreau wrote to Henry Vose from Concord. Concord May 28th —1838. Dear Vose, Concluding that you still live in, or upon, Butternuts, I venture to di- rect to you, accordingly, a purely business letter, which, you must know, is the only species of letter writing I have at all affected for the past winter. I have just returned from a tour to the eastward —Old Town— Bangor, etc. etc. — whither I had gone in search of the whereabouts to establish myself as a furtherer of the liberal arts and sciences, — but unfortunately discovered too late that I was just one month behindhand, or three months too early. If I remember aright you are to commence you[r] studies in the fall; and will accordingly [then] vacate the situation you at present occupy. If this be the case, and the
Page 2 gentleman you are with, wishes to employ a you private tutor anoth- er year, will be so ^ kind as to mention my name to him, and as soon as may be, inform me of his intentions? I have passed my winter and spring very agreeably in old Concord, devoting myself, for the most part, to the cultivation of general literature. Hoping are still that you have been and situated to your mind, ^ I remain [Your] friend and classmate Henry D. Thoreau. Ps. The Whigs have not succeeded in electing A. H. Nelson, county trea- surer, this [S]eason, though they probably will another. Please in- form me just how you are situated — in an official and [S]ocial respect.
Page 3 Postmark: CONCORD MAY28 MAS. 18 3/4Paid 18 3/4PAID
1838 1838 {written upside down} Henry David Thoreau. 1838.
May 29, Tuesday: John George Lambton, Earl of Durham arrived in Quebec as Governor-in-Chief of all British North America.
While sailing along on the St. Lawrence River, the British vessel Sir Robert Peel was boarded by a party of US civilians. Surprise, they put the passengers ashore and torched the vessel, in retaliation for the Caroline.
May 31, Thursday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 31st of 5 M 1838 / Our Monthly Meeting held this day in Town was a season of deep trial & close conflict Father Rodman was concerned to express a few words & as Meeting closed he requested that those who were not Members might withdraw & leave the Members Male & female together after which he expressed his views of a trying case which was expected to come before the Monthly Meeting — I had unity with his remarks & glad of his services - In the last Meeting the trying case was brought up & after much trial concluded, which for the last Nine Months, as been on our Minutes to the great grief & affliction of many concerned Members. — John Weeden, Hannah Almy & her daughter, the wife of Jacob Chase, Dined with us. After dinner I attended the Friend of Ezekial Luther who was with his wife a dilligent attender of our Meetings for many Years, & requested to be buried in Friends Ground & according to our Mode & Manner — He was an inoffensive Man & much beloved & respected by all who knew him tho’ he was not much know, being of very retired turn of Mind. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
JUNE
June: Joseph Smith, Jr., long term husband of Emma Hale Smith, “got married with” Lucinda Pendleton Morgan.
June: This month’s issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:
HARVARDIANA
June: Waldo Emerson’s letter to President Martin Van Buren about the Cherokee was again reprinted in issues of the Christian Register, the Old Colony Memorial, and the Liberator. (We don’t know, however, that the President ever was aware of this letter, either from its original forwarded directly to him at the White House or in any of its published venues.)
June: Fort Snelling, per Captain Frederick Marryat:
Morality and Chastity among the Indians. In many customs the Sioux are closely allied to the Jewish nation; indeed, a work has been published in America to prove HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 that the Indians were originally Jews. There is always a separate lodge for the woman to retire to before and after childbirth, observing a similar purification to that prescribed by Moses. Although there ever will be, in all societies, instances to the contrary, chastity is honoured among the Sioux. They hold what they term Virgin Feasts, and when these are held, should any young woman accept the invitation who has by her misconduct rendered herself unqualified for it, it is the duty of any man who is aware of her unfitness, to go into the circle and lead her out. A circumstance of this kind occurred the other day, when the daughter of a celebrated chief gave a Virgin Feast: a young man of the tribe walked into the circle and led her out; upon which the chief led his daughter to the lodge of the young Sioux, and told him that he gave her to him for his wife, but the young man refused to take her, as being unworthy. But what is more singular (and I have it from authority which is unquestionable), they also hold Virgin Feasts for the young men; and should any young man take his seat there who is unqualified, the woman who is aware of it must lead him out, although in so doing, she convicts herself; nevertheless it is considered a sacred duty and is done.... The [Sioux] men are tall and straight, and very finely made, with the exception of their arms, which are too small. The arms of the squaws, who do all the labour, are much more muscular. One day as I was on the prairie, I witnessed the effect of custom upon these people. A Sioux was coming up without perceiving me; his squaw followed very heavily laden, and to assist her he had himself a large package on his shoulder. As soon as they perceived me, he dropped his burden, and it was taken up by the squaw and added to what she had already. If a woman wishes to upbraid another, the severest thing she can say is, “You let your husband carry burthens.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
READ MARRYAT TEXT HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 June: Henry Bibb took a steamboat at night across the Ohio to a place six miles from Bedford, Kentucky, where his mother Milldred Jackson and his wife Malinda were enslaved. Rapping on a window at night attired in the false whiskers he had purchased in Detroit, he passed to his wife enough money for her and their daughter’s steamboat tickets. He then went back to Cincinnati to wait for them to arrive, but while waiting was betrayed for $300 by bounty hunters pretending to be local abolitionists. He was taken as far as Louisville,
Kentucky but his guard, armed with Bowie knife and pistols, needed to take a dump in a stable, and while his guard’s pants were down around his ankles Bibb made a dash for it and made his way back to Bedford. There he found that, knowing that he had escaped from this guard, a very close watch was being kept over his wife and child. Nothing else being possible at this point, he slipped back into Cincinnati. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 June: A negrero flying the Spanish flag (as depicted below), the Aguila Vengadora, master Garronda, starting with 560 enslaved Africans from Madagascar on its second of two known Middle Passages, dropped anchor at a port of Cuba with only 200 to off-load because 360 had died during that long transit.
Another slaver flying the Spanish flag, the Emprendedor, master Beyga, bringing a cargo of an unknown number of enslaved Africans out of Gallinas on its second of two known Middle Passages, arrived at Trinidad. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Felix, master unknown, bringing a cargo of 321 enslaved Africans out of Principe on its second of two known Middle Passages, arrived at the port of Baia Botafogo, Brazil. A Portuguese slaver, the Fortuna, master Barbosa, bringing a cargo of an unknown number of enslaved Africans out of Sao Tome on one of its five known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at a port of Cuba. A Portuguese slaver, the Felicidade, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 322 enslaved Africans on one of its nine known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at the port of Sao Sebastiao, Brazil. A Portuguese slaver, the Eliza, master Galindo, bringing a cargo of an unknown number of enslaved Africans out of an unknown area on one of its seven known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at a port of Cuba. A Portuguese slaver, the Especuladora, master unknown, sailing from Benguela with a cargo of 309 enslaved Africans on its one and only known Middle Passage, arrived at the port of Ilha Grande, Brazil. A Portuguese slaver, the Esperanca, master unknown, out of Cabinda with a cargo of 400 enslaved Africans on one of its ten-count-’em-ten known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at the port of Ilha Grande, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Andorinha, master unknown, out of Benguela with a cargo of 297 enslaved Africans on one of its four known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at the port of Taipu, Brazil. A Portuguese slaver, the Josefina, master Durarte, bringing a cargo of an unknown number of enslaved Africans out of Sao Tome on one of twelve-count-’em-twelve known such voyages, arrived in Cuban waters. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 A negrero flying the Portuguese flag, the Jove, master unknown, out of Quelimane with a cargo of 432 enslaved Africans on its one and only known Middle Passage, arrived at Campos, Brazil. A Portuguese slaver, the Ligera, master Losa Barti, bringing a cargo of an unknown number of enslaved Africans out of Principe on one of its eight known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at a port of Cuba. A Portuguese slaver, the Ligera, master M. Antonio, bringing a cargo of an unknown number of enslaved Africans out of Rio Pongo on one of its eight known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at a port of Cuba. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Cintra, master unknown, having sailed from Mocambique with a cargo of 756 enslaved Africans on its only known Middle Passage, arrived at the port of Sao Sebastiao, Brazil. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE
June 1, Friday: The final portion of William Chapman Hewitson’s BRITISH OÖLOGY: BEING ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE EGGS OF BRITISH BIRDS, WITH FIGURES OF EACH SPECIES, AS FAR AS PRACTICABLE, DRAWN AND COLOURED FROM NATURE: ACCOMPANIED BY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE MATERIALS AND SITUATION OF THEIR NESTS, NUMBER OF EGGS, &C went through the presses of Charles Empson at Newcastle.
The Boston Transcript announced, somewhat prematurely it would seem, that their intrepid master goldbeater and aeronaut Louis Lauriat was intending to cross over the Atlantic Ocean in his balloon.
June 4, Monday: The British Great Western Railway was opened from Paddington to Maidenhead.
Hector Berlioz signed a document making him director of the Theatre-Italien and King Louis-Philippe himself notarized it (this entire thingie would be rejected in the legislature). HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 June 6, Wednesday: After negotiations between Principal Chief John Ross and General Winfield Scott, a band of the Cherokee nation, in the charge of Lieutenant Edward Deas, was permitted to depart the concentration camps into which they had been herded as they had been driven from their farms in the Cherokee ancestral territory in the Appalachians by the US Cavalry, to travel by river to Fort Coffee in the new Cherokee Nation Territory in Oklahoma Territory. Further removal would be temporarily suspended due to drought and the “sickly season.”
TRAIL OF TEARS
Waldo Emerson to his journal:
When I told Alcott that I would not criticise his compositions; that it would be absurd to require them to conform to my way of writing & aiming, as it would be to reject Wordsworth because he was wholly unlike Campbell; that here was a new mind & it was welcome to a new style; — he replied, well pleased, “That is criticism.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 June 7, Thursday: Letitia Landon got married with George Maclean.
Andrew Jackson Downing got married with Caroline Elizabeth de Wint, daughter of John Peter de Wint of Fishkill Landing. Immediately, the newlyweds would be erecting a house of the husband’s design on a 6-acre tract in Newburgh, New York. During this year he would buy out his brother’s interest in the family nursery and begin composition of the treatise on theory and practice of landscape gardening that he would publish in 1841. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
June 8, Friday: Clara Wieck was able to escape unnoticed from her father’s house in Leipzig and met Robert Schumann at his lodgings to help him celebrate his 28th birthday. “I brought you a present.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 June 12, Tuesday: Hopkins Observatory was dedicated:
June 13, Wednesday: The Committee on Foreign Affairs of the US House of Representatives recommended tabling (in effect, ignoring) all resolutions about Texas.
Waldo Emerson lectured at the Concord Lyceum in Concord. This was the 7th lecture of the series, “Heroism.”
June 15, Friday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts began a long speech before the US House of Representatives on the topic of Texas.
At the middle of the month the Concord Academy opened (t would close prior to the completion of 3 years of instruction, on April 1st, 1841). HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 June 16, Saturday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 2d day.
It was on about this day that Waldo Emerson confided to his journal:
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody brought me yesterday Hawthorne’s Footprints on the seashore to read. I complained that there was no inside to it. Alcott & he together would make a man.
ELIZABETH PALMER PEABODY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
June 17, Sunday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 3d day.
Sidney Rigdon preached his famous “Salt Sermon,” directed at those who had opposed Joseph Smith, Jr. Two days later, eighty Mormons would sign a statement (the Danite Manifesto) warning the dissenters to “depart, or a more fatal calamity shall befall you.” The Mormons formed the “Danites.” Dissenters Whitmer, Cowdery, and others would depart from Far West, Missouri.
Chaplain in Ordinary to Her Majesty Walter Farquhar Hook, D.D. preached a sermon “Hear the Church” in the Chapel Royal of St. James’ Palace.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 17th of 6th M 1838 / Our Meetings were both favoured seasons — Our friend Moses Beede was with us & in both Meetings favoured in testimony much to the satisfaction & comfort of the Audience. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 2nd day [Monday] 18th of 6th m / Our friend Joseph John Gurney Was at an appointed Meeting at Portsmouth & at 5 OC this Afternoon in Newport - It was a solid good Meeting & his preaching to my satisfaction — After trying to get over the ferry towards Narragansett & finding the Boat not their, the Wind blowing hard & getting late he & his companions Henry Hinsdale returned to our house & took tea & before he left he had a religious opportunity with us much to our comfort & consolation. — 5th day 21st of 6th M / Our Meeting was small — Anna D Wing preached & Father Rodman spoke with his Hat on, under the Authority of an Elder. The Clerk of the Preparative Meeting being absent Thos B Buffum served for the time, it being his first essay. 1st day [Sunday] 24th of 6th M / Both our Meetings were solid seasons & father had offerings in both — In the Afternoon the HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 gathering was rather smaller than usual. 5th day 28th of 6th M 1838 / My wife thought it best for her not to go to Portsmouth to attend Moy [Monthly] Meeting as it was rainy & Polly quite unwell & not fit to be left alone. — So I took the Stage Goe. Bowen in Company & went. when we got there we found our Friend John Scott & his companion Mahlon Day - he was engaged in a precious testimony & living prayer — in the last Meeting the buisness was pretty well conducted & closed pretty satisfactorily - J Scott having a Meeting appointed this Afternoon at Swansey they returned to Fall River immediately after Meeting The Stage having returend from Bristol Ferry was in waiting when the Meeting Broke & we got in & rode home without wating for dinner & was at home a little before 3 OClock & I do not remember of returning quite so soon before. —
June 18, Monday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives, on the expansive topic of Texas, for a 4th day.
Having undergone a total of four blasphemy trials, and Massachusetts Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw having come to the opinion that the Commonwealth was obligated to protect its citizens against “an intended design to calumniate and disparage the Supreme Being, and to destroy the veneration due to him,” the convicted atheist and blasphemer Abner Kneeland was consigned to 60 days in the Boston lockup. (Presumably while there he was of incredible benefit to other prisoners, by instructing them in the tenets of Universalist doctrine.) Presumably it was while he was there that he prepared A REVIEW OF THE TRIAL, CONVICTION, AND FINAL IMPRISONMENT IN THE COMMON JAIL OF THE COUNTY OF SUFFOLK OF ABNER KNEELAND FOR THE ALLEGED CHARGE OF BLASPHEMY. The Reverend William Ellery Channing put together a petition for his pardon based upon the principles of freedom of speech and press, which was signed by many prominent people, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, George Ripley, William Lloyd Garrison, and Bronson Alcott. The Reverend Hosea Ballou, who did not sign the petition, did visit his old friend in jail. When the jail doors opened, Kneeland relocated to Iowa to initiate a small utopian community that was to be known as Salubria (it was near what is now Farmington).
During his childhood in Alton, Illinois, John Stetson Barry had determined to prepare himself for the ministry. In this year he returned to Massachusetts to study under the Reverend Hosea Ballou in Boston (there was no Universalist College). After his ordination he would initially serve the Universalist congregation of West Amesbury MA (has become Merrimac), but would begin to serve instead Weymouth in 1839, West Scituate in 1841, Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1844, and finally Needham beginning in 1855. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 June 18, Monday: According to an article in the Caledonian Mercury of Edinburgh, Scotland, Major Thoreau and Lieutenant Durham of the 37th (North Hampshire) Regiment of Foot had obtained leave of absence. MAJOR JOHN THOREAU
June 19: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 5th day.
The band of the Cherokee nation in the charge of Lieutenant Edward Deas of the US Army arrived at Fort Coffee in the new Cherokee Nation Territory in Oklahoma Territory.
TRAIL OF TEARS
(Later in June, several more bands of the Cherokee nation in the charge of officers of the US Army would set out from the Appalachian concentration camps to travel to Fort Coffee in the new Cherokee Nation Territory in Oklahoma Territory. These bands, however, due to low water, would be directed overland through Arkansas, and more than 200, mostly the elderly and the very young, would perish en route.)
June 20: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 6th day.
June 21: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 7th day.
At about this day, Nathaniel Peabody Rogers was taking responsibility for Concord, New Hampshire’s Herald of Freedom. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 June 22, Friday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for an 8th day.
The Reverend Horatio Wood was called from Walpole, New Hampshire to take charge of a society in Tyngsborough, new Lowell, Massachusetts, which was in a state of transformation from Calvinism to Liberalism.
June 23, Saturday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 9th day.
June 24, Sunday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 10th day. A whole lot remained to be said about the statehood of Texas, and the state of the nation, and the idea of admitting another slave state to our Union.
Waldo Emerson to his journal:
Alcott has the great merit of being a believer in the soul. I think he has more faith in the Ideal than any man I have known.
June 25, Monday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 11th day. This was such an important topic that it was hard to say enough about it.
June 26, Tuesday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas, a topic on which his interest showed as yet no signs of flagging, for a 12th day. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
June 27, Wednesday: Continuing to hold the floor of the US House of Representatives and yielding to no other speaker, Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his examination of the expansive topic of Texas for a 13th day.
June 28, Thursday: Queen Victoria of Great Britain was crowned in Westminster Abbey. There would not be another British coronation in 64 years.
In her crown she was as pretty as a picture.
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka reported to St. Petersburg about his very successful trip to Ukraine to recruit choristers — 25 boys had already been found.
Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas — for a 14th day.
June 29, Friday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 15th day. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 June 30, Saturday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas, for a 16th consecutive day.
Lord King was created the Earl of Lovelace.
The following news item appeared on page 2 of the Concord Freeman:
EXHUMATION OF THREE INDIAN BODIES. While several men were employed last week in digging a ditch in a meadow, not far from the house of Mr. Israel H. Brown in Sudbury, they disinterred the bodies of three Indians, in a most wonderful state of preservation. There was no appearance on the surface of the ground, that indicated a place of sepulture [sic], and the discovery was purely accidental. The bodies were found about five feet from the top of the meadow, the three lying side by side. A kind of white dust lay immediately over them, seemingly the decayed remains of a cloth, or something else, which had been spread over them. When this was removed, and the air had free access to the bodies, the long straight hair which seemed as perfect as upon a living being, immed-
June 31, Sunday: Business anxieties, Clara Wieck’s departure for Dresden, her father’s refusal to assent to their union, and too much alcohol combined to produce an emotional collapse in Robert Schumann (he would recover). HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
iately crumbled to dust. This was, however, the only alteration which an exposure to the atmosphere made. The skin seemed to have shrunk and dryed [sic] upon the bones gradually as the flesh corrupted, and had assumed a dark, dingy color, not unlike that of an Egyptian mummy.— The features appeared to have retained on all the same expression as when death overtook them — an expression of terrific sternness, such as must have been assumed either at a moment of great anguish or passion. In various parts of the body of the one which lay in the centre were holes, which might have been made by a bullet or bayonet, and on the head of one of the others, the skin was parted, showing a fracture on the skull bone, which was evidently produced by a severe blow from some sharp-edged instrument; on one no mark of a violent death was visible, the skin being to appearance unbroken. A number of arrow heads, and a tomahawk nearly eaten up with rust, were found a few feet off. The bodies were raised and carefully removed, and it is the present intention of those who discovered them to place them in the New England Museum, where the public will be enabled to view them, with the many curiosities and wonders which have been collected there. The meadow in which these entombed warriors were dug up is chiefly valuable for its excellent turf, and to the nature of the soil, may be attributed the singular preservation of the bodies, a conclusion amply sustained by similar discoveries, which are familiar to the public. The meadow lies near to the spot, where the gallant Wadsworth and his little band were massacred by the Indians, on the memorable 18th of April, 1676; and it is not improbably to suppose, that these Indians were killed on that fatal day, and were buried by their comrades on the spot where they have lain undisturbed for over a century and a half.—[Com.] HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
SUMMER 1838
Summer: Alfred Lord Tennyson was spending the season at Torquay and writing “Audley Court.”
Summer: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was spending the season at Newport on Aquidneck Island. He had formed connections there with George W. Greene and with Samuel Ward, a brother of Julia Ward (Howe) whom he had met in Europe, and had prepared for his visit by a perusal of John Callender’s 1739 work, AN HISTORICAL DISCOURSE, ON THE CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS OF THE COLONY OF RHODE ISLAND. When he visited 19-year-old Julia, most likely at the Ward family residence called “Buttonwood” or “Redwood Lodge,” she called him “Longo” — and he caught a bad cold by sleeping with the window wide open. The group visited the mysterious Old Stone Mill or Round Tower, and ventured intrepid speculations as to the ancientness of its origins.
Summer: “Commenced school in the house in summer of 1838.” Henry Thoreau taught the older students classics, mathematics, and nature study.
This year’s annual convention of the New England Anti-Slavery Society was the 1st to be held in the Marlborough Chapel, dedicated to “the cause of humanity and free discussion.” Boston’s proslavery mob couldn’t burn this hall down because it stood too close to the Marlborough Hotel. At the meeting, over the protests of a group of ministers of the gospel who were insisting that such a radical step would be “injurious to the cause of the slave,” through bringing their Society into general disrepute, it was decided to admit women to membership. Much of the convention’s time and attention would be consumed in infighting over whether these new female members would be permitted to participate on committees, in motions to dissolve committees that had a woman member, and in dealing with male members who found themselves unable to read aloud in public words that had been written by a female member. A minister pointed to ISAIAH 3:12 to prove that having WOMEN RULE was the ultimate debasement which a Christian society could undergo, and alleged that since a woman had helped to write the convention’s declaration and that since women had cast ballots, therefore “Women ruled the convention.” [As for] my people, children [are] their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause [thee] to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. MISOGYNY HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Friend John Greenleaf Whittier sided with these ministers who considered women’s rights to be “an irrelevant FEMINISM topic.”
The Christian Mirror asked its male readers whether they would want their own wives to be shorn of their honor by allowing them to be “closeted in close consultation with two men, in the preparation of a public document?” Friend James Mott, a husband not unreasonably afraid of his wife, reasonably commented that the overarching principle was “human rights” — and proceeded impolitely to draw the obvious parallel between, on the one hand, the northern gentleman abolitionist struggling for control over his wife, and, on the other, the southern slavemaster struggling to hold his slave property. SLAVERY HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Midsummer: In midsummer William Lloyd Garrison announced that the formation of a Non-Resistance Society was being contemplated. The 1st organizers for this new society would be the Reverends Henry C. Wright and Samuel Joseph May, Friend Abby Kelley, John A. Collins, and Edmund Quincy.
Late that summer, James Russell Lowell, who was to become the most influential literary figure of the mid- 19th century, came in contact with Henry Thoreau at Waldo Emerson’s place: I saw Thoreau last night and it is exquisitely amusing to see how he imitates Emerson’s tone and manner. With my eyes shut I shouldn’t know them apart. [from a letter quoted in Harding, HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
THOREAU AS SEEN, page 180] This was how Priscilla Rice Edes, another Concord resident, saw him in those years: “David Henry” after leaving college was eccentric and did not like to, and so would not, work. The opposite of John in every particular, he was [a] thin, insignificant, poorly dressed, careless looking young man,... [Harding, THOREAU AS SEEN, page 181] HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
JULY
July: The final issue of Harvard College’s undergraduate subscription literary magazine, the HARVARDIANA:
HARVARDIANA
July: Charles Darwin jotted himself a 3-page note, balancing the pros and cons of marriage, and considering plans for his future.
July: Over 13,000 members of the Cherokee nation were being held in concentration camps awaiting a break in the severe drought. Approximately 1,500 would die during this confinement. TRAIL OF TEARS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 July: Their monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends disowned Friends Angelina Emily Grimké Weld and Sarah Moore Grimké. The reason given for their disownment of Friend Angelina was that she had married a non-Quaker. The reason given for their disownment of Friend Emily was that she had attended her sister’s illicit wedding to a non-Quaker. The sisters and Theodore Dwight Weld removed to Fort Lee, New Jersey, where the sisters would work in local petition campaigns.
July: A negrero flying the Spanish flag (as shown below), the Irene, master Ageo, sailing from the island of Madagascar with a cargo of an unknown number of enslaved Africans on its only known Middle Passage, arrived at a port of Cuba. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Angerona, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 334 enslaved Africans on its second of two known Middle Passages, arrived at the port of Copacabana, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Commodore, master unknown, out of Quelimane with a cargo of 385 enslaved Africans on its first of two known Middle Passages, arrived at the port of Taipu, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Brilhante, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 407 enslaved Africans on one of its seven known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at the port of Macae, Brazil.
INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE
July 1, Sunday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 17th day.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 1st of 7th M 1838 / Both our Meetings were seasons of exercise & some distress from unsavory & in my opinion HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 unauthorised preaching from one who Stands in the Station of a Minister from a Neighbouring Quarterly Meeting - Some care was taken by the Elders. — In the evening a couple of young friends called to see us - it is evident they need care from over heated zeal in a good cause, & I am affraid they will hurt themselves & injure society We endeavoured to extend such care as we thought prudent but it was evident the season of their help has not yet come, they are both too strong to admit of much being done for them. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
July 2, Monday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for an 18th day.
A statute went into effect, altering the nature of liquor licenses. No further licenses would be issued that permitted the sale of less than 15 gallons at a time, which meant of course that there could be no further increase in the number of retail liquor stores or saloons or taverns or pubs. Nathaniel Hawthorne met a fellow pub-crawler who spoke with great bitterness against the new license law, and vowed
if it be not repealed by fair means, it shall be by violence, and that he will be as ready to cock his rifle for such a cause as for any other.
July 3: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 19th day.
Our national birthday, the 4th of July, Wednesday: This was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 34th birthday.
The Reverend Frederic Henry Hedge’s AN ORATION, PRONOUNCED BEFORE THE CITIZENS OF BANGOR: ONTHE FOURTH OF JULY, 1838. THE SIXTY-SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE (Published at the request of the city government; Bangor: Samuel S. Smith, printer). TO THE CITIZENS OF BANGOR
The balloon of the intrepid master Boston goldbeater and aeronaut Louis Lauriat graced the skies above historic Salem, Massachusetts, and a good time was had by all. However, as usual, because of the promise to liberate the slaves of the British West Indies beginning August 1st of this year, black American communities and those concerned for them continued to pointedly ignore the national birthday in favor of that August eventuality. In Providence (Moshasuck), Rhode Island, a procession included 29 veterans of the revolution. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
The White House was closed to the public because “the President has lately lost, by death, a near relative.”
In Charlottesville, Virginia, the Declaration of Independence was read from an “original draft, in the handwriting of Mr. Jefferson.” THOMAS JEFFERSON
At Fort Madison, Iowa, headman Black Hawk delivered a 4th-of-July address. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY
At the US House of Representatives, Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech on the expansive topic of Texas for a 20th day.
Sidney Rigdon preached another sermon to the Mormons of a similar nature to his “Salt Sermon,” stating “And that mob that comes on us to disturb us; it shall be between us and them a war of extermination; for we will follow them till the last drop of their blood is spilled, or else they will have to exterminate us.”
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 4th of 7th M 1838 / This has been a day of much stir in Town as it always is — My mind & feelings however has been preserved in the quiet — This morning our Friend Joseph Bowne came to town from Portsmouth where he had an appointed a Meeting yesterday — finding it not a Suitable day to appoint a Meeting here he concluded to spent the day at D Buffums in resting & writing home to his friends - to be at our Meeting tomorrow & the appointment has been forwarded accordingly. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
July 5, Thursday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 21st day.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 5 of 7 M 1838 / Our friend Joseph Bowne attended our Meeting which was a time of Divine favour - he was largely engaged in testimony much to our satisfation edification & comfort. — In the Afternoon I attended a Meeting with him on Connanicut appointed at 5 OC in the Afternoon which was a time of Watering indeed I never saw more of the prevalence of Divine Authority & an audience more generally affected. — On our way to the Meeting we stoped at Joseph Greenes & visited Anne & Mary who were truly glad to see us. — We came directly to the Ferry from the Meeting house & arrived at home before sun set. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
July 6, Friday: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 22nd day.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 6th of 7th M 1838 / This Morning we rose early & took the New York boat for Providence & got to Wm Jenkins by their breakfast time, but as we breakfasted on board the Boat we did not need any — After assisting in making some appointments for our friend Joseph Bowne I left him at Wm Jenkins’s & Attended to some buisness I had in Town — returned to Wm Jenkins to Dine & took the Afternoon Boat & returned home after spending about 10 hours in Providence — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
July 7, Saturday: As the long session of the US House of Representatives ground to an ending, Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts still refused to yield the floor, still delivering his expansive speech on the large topic of Texas which had begun on June 15th and at this point was in its 23rd day. The administrative arm of the federal government would call off its plans to annex Texas.
Brevetted major James Duncan Graham belatedly receiving his full commission as Major in the US Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers. He would be serving, into the following year, on a Court of Inquiry at St. Louis, Missouri.
July 8, Sunday: Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin was born.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 8th of 7 M / Our friend Richard Mott attended Our Meeting in Newport this Morning in which he was favoured to get hold of our State & administer comfort to some who were heavy hearted - at the close of the Meeting he requested the Afternoon Meeting should be defered till 5 OClock & a general invitation given to the people of the Town — which was done. a very large meeting gathered, it was rather long in getting together but it consisted of the most respectable inhabitants of the Town who were very attentive to a truly gospel testimony, in which our friend was much favoured — a number of the Ministers of the Town were present as well as some of the Most religious & well informed of their persussions — West the Minister of the New episcopal Church gave out the Meeting at the close of his afternoon Meeting, & defered his evening Meeting on the occasion - This is a view of liberality never before done by that persuasion - it was once asked but refused — Richard took tea & lodged at Mary Williams but our friend Abraham Sherman Jr who came with him from New Bedford returned home with us, again lodged & took tea RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
Henry Thoreau wrote to John Thoreau, Jr. about the prospect of teaching private school there in Concord. Concord July 8th 38— Dear John, [We] heard from Helen today and she informs us that you are coming home by the first of August, now I wish you to write, and let me know ex- HELEN LOUISA THOREAU actly when your vacation take[ ]place, that I may take one at the same time. I am in school from 8 to 12 in the morning, and [form] 2 to 4 in the afternoo[n]; after that I read a little Greek or English, or for variety, take a stroll in the fields. We hav not had such a year for berries this long time —the earth is actually [b]lue with them. High bluberries, three kinds of low—thimble and
Page 2 rasp-berries constitute my [diet] at present. (Take notice—I only diet between meals.) Among my deeds of charity I may reckon the picking of a cherry tree for two helpless single ladies who live under the hill[-]—but i’faith it was robbing Pet[er] to pay Paul—for while I was exalted in charity towards them, I had no mercy on my own [stomach]. Be advised, my love for currants continues. The only addition that I have made of late to my stock of ornithological information—is in the shape, not of a Fring. [M]elod. but surely a mel- odious Fringilla--the F. [J]uncorum, or rush sparrow. I had long know him by his note but never by name. Report says that Elijah Stearn[s] is going to take the town school.
Page 3 I have four [scholars], and one more engaged. Mr. [Fenner] left town [yest-] terday. Among occurrences of ill omen, may be mentioned the cra falling out HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 and cracking of the inscription stone of Concord monument. Mrs Lowell and children are at Aunt’s. Peabody walked up last Wednesday— spen[t] the night, and took a stroll in the woods. Sophia says I mu[ ] leave off and pen a few lines for her to Helen. S Good bye. Love from all and among them yr aff brother H D T
Postmark: CONCORD Jul 10 Address: John Thoreau West Roxbury Mass. Postage: 6
July 9, Monday: Completion of the 2d (long) session of the 25th federal Congress. Human enslavement was still legal in these United States of America, the land of the free and home of the brave.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 9 of 7 M / R Mott came & took breakfast with us —after which A Sherman returned home by Stage to New Bedford —Richard called to see his cousins Martha Carpenter & Avis C Howland in the forenoon — went over to the Point & dined at Mary Williams’s & at 3 OC PM took the Steam Boat Kingston for Providence intending to have a few Meetings thereaway & go to Greenwich on his way home. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
July 10, Tuesday: Jöns Jakob Berzelius suggested to Gerard Johann Mulder that he use the name “proteins” for the class of biological molecules he had just discovered.
July 12, Thursday: Iowa was organized as a separate new territory of the United States of America (that area had previously been part of the Wisconsin territory). HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Henry Thoreau’s 22d stanza began on his birthday, July 12th, Thursday, 1838.
The Thoreau family apparently did not make much of holidays or birthdays — but this was a birthday we now consider symbolic, the 21st — the day after which in our culture every male is entitled to profess himself a grown man.
The question would be, however, whether by the year 1838 such a 21st birthday was being regarded as the gateway to full adulthood, or whether that able-to-drink-alcohol cultural artifact is of a more recent provenance. And if it were already the convention, why is there not something reported as going on, similar to the “chiving” that goes on now as a young man approaches that transition-to-full-adulthood milestone? In the JOURNAL, and in various other historical records I have been consulting, one detects none of this sort of chiving. • Henry Thoreau lost a tooth. • His brother John reopened the defunct Concord Academy and he became a teacher there. The family was living in the Parkman House on the site of the present Concord Free Public Library building. It was in this home that they would hold this school. • An exhibition of hot-air balloon ascension toured Massachusetts. • The rather humorlessly self-righteous James Russell Lowell was rusticating in Concord during this year, having been temporarily expelled from Harvard College for some infraction of college regulations. He was being tutored by the utterly humorlessly self-righteous Reverend Barzillai Frost. They must have made quite a pair! • At Harvard College, Gore Hall was constructed. • Little Louisa May Alcott, about age 5, who had already while a toddler almost drowned in the Boston frogpond, wandered away from home and was found late in the evening by a town crier, huddled on a doorstep in Bedford Street. • The 1st Universalist Society of Concord was gathered. • A Nonresistance Society was formed in Boston, all the members of which were abolitionists because they understood slavery to be a form of violence. • The United States House of Representatives resolved not to accept any more antislavery petitions. • Start of the “Underground Railroad.” • The Reverend Orestes Augustus Brownson began his Boston Quarterly Review. • The Reverend William Ellery Channing suggested that the primary focus of our energies should be toward our own rectification, rather than the rectification of society. The Reverend Brownson retorted that systemic societal problems can never be rectified through self-culture. • Some 200 trees were being planted along the road to the Battle Monument. A burial site for the fallen redcoats in Concord or Lexington was disturbed by a phrenologist who would use the skulls he obtained as exhibits.
BACKGROUND EVENTS OF 1838 BACKGROUND EVENTS OF 1839 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
“My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.” — Henry Thoreau
July 13: An advertisement in the Wilmington [North Carolina] Advertiser: Ranaway, my Negro man Richard. A reward of $25 will be paid for his apprehension, DEAD or ALIVE. Satisfactory proof will only be required of his being killed. He has with him, in all probability, his wife Eliza, who ran away from Col. Thompson, now a resident of Alabama, about the time he commenced his journey to that state. D.H. RHODES.” From the St. Louis Gazette: A wealthy man here had a boy named Reuben, almost white, whom he caused to be branded in the face with the words; “A slave for life.” SLAVERY HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 July 15, Sunday: The Reverend Waldo Emerson addressed a small audience in the chapel of the Harvard Divinity School, on problems that would face graduating students as new Unitarian ministers. This would be printed by James Munroe in Boston (and we may note in the copy of this that has been preserved at the Harvard library, that it was inscribed to Henry Thoreau by Emerson): DIVINITY SCHOOL ADDRESS
Although he actually said little that had not been said before, there would be a storm of protest. One educator who believed in the conductivity of cowhide (Harvard College’s Dexter Lecturer in Biblical Literature Andrews Norton) would write to a public newspaper (the Boston Daily Advertiser) and suggest that the “people” should “whip that naughty heretic.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, however, decided that Waldo was
the greatest man that ever lived.
Emerson himself would ascertain that the Reverend Professor Norton was feminine:49
The feminine vehemence with which the Andrews Norton of the Daily Advertiser beseeches the dear people to whip that naughty heretic ....
John Quincy Adams would write in his diary about this “crazy address and oration,” and so we know that he considered “An Address” to have displayed for all to see that Emerson was “ambitious of becoming the founder of a sect, and thinks there is an urgent necessity for a new revelation.” Picking up on this a century and a half later, in his 1992 book on the American Religion and the emergence of the US as a post-Christian nation, Harold Bloom has quoted the “An Address” of this date in support of his contention that it is Emerson who is at the source of the deepest idiocy of our American character, our self-worship which amounts to a heathen idolatry and a turning away from God:
49. Precisely how Waldo Emerson obtained this information as to the Reverend Professor Andrews Norton’s genitalia has not become a matter of historical record. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his World. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, “I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.” But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this high chant from the poet’s lips, and said, in the next age, “This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a man.” The idioms of his language and the figures of his rhetoric have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece and of Egypt, before. He spoke of miracles; for he felt that man’s life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the fallen rain. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In this Divinity School Address Emerson employed words such as “routine,” “extinct,” and “famine” in characterization of the state of preaching and worship in Unitarian churches of the time. He started with generalities: “Whenever a pulpit is usurped by a formalist, then is the worshipper defrauded and disconsolate. We shrink as soon as the prayers begin, which do not uplift, but smite and offend us.” But then he went on to very, very specific deployment of frosty imagery, suggesting that frost outside the church inspired him more than the Reverend Frost inside: “I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to say I would go to church no more.... A snow-storm was falling around us. The snow-storm was real, the preacher merely spectral, and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out of the window behind him into the beautiful meteor of the snow. He had lived in vain. He had no one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or chagrined. If he had ever lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it. The capital secret of his profession, namely to convert life into truth, he had not learned.” We do now know how the Reverend Barzillai Frost reacted when he heard of this — but he must have heard of it from many pairs of lips. THE LIST OF LECTURES
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 15th of 7 M / Our Meetings both today & last 5th day were silent - rather small tho’ there were a number of Philadelphians here who are spending a little time for the advantages of our cool breezes — It is a low time, but some HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 favour experienced — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
July 19, Thursday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 19 of 7 M / Meetings small but solid & comfortable. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
July 20, Friday: Pardon Crandall died at Canterbury, Connecticut.
Construction began on the Clinton-Kalamazoo Canal.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 20 of 7 M / After calling to See Father Rodman this Afternoon, who is quite weak & feeble — I walked up to Cousin Henry Goulds, where I found our frineds Seth & Mary Davis who are bound on a Religious Visit to some parts of the State of NYork -took tea & waited on them to the Steam Boat on their way. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
July 22, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 22nd of 7 M 1838 / Our Meetings pretty well attended tho’ silent & I thought there was a labour to get down to the experience of life, but was sensible both were low times. - Oh that we were more in the profession of that spirit which give life & animation to the soul I feel the need of it in my self, & on setting down in our Meetings today my head craved help, to go in & out before the people with consistency, & a censer of insence in my hand, & leanness was not wholly mine. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
July 24th, Tuesday, or 25th, Wednesday: The Reverend Waldo Emerson lectured in Hanover on “LITERARY ETHICS” before the literary societies of Dartmouth College.50 The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self- trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do. This is the moral of the Plutarchs, the Cudworths, the Tennemanns, who give us the story of men or of opinions. Any history of philosophy fortifies my faith, by showing me, that what high dogmas I had supposed were the rare and late fruit of a cumulative culture, and only now possible to some recent Kant or Fichte, — were the prompt improvisations of the earliest inquirers; of Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Xenophanes. In view of these students, the soul seems to whisper, “There is a better way than this indolent learning of another. Leave me alone; do not teach me out of
50. Lawrence Buell’s comment on this talk is that it represented the 1st time any major literary figure had ever attempted to define an ethics of the literary, and that it wasn’t much of a start. He says he’s personally underwhelmed, and considers “LITERARY ETHICS” as merely a watered-down repetition of the talk the reverend had given in the previous summer at Harvard College, “THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR” — with some gratuitous wilderness stuff thrown in to remind his audience that compared to his alma mater, their Dartmouth College was an intellectual backwater. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Leibnitz or Schelling, and I shall find it all out myself.” IMMANUEL KANT JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE THE LIST OF LECTURES In his “autobiography,” John Shepard Keyes would later reminisce about how he and his father John Keyes had accompanied Emerson on this lecture expedition: I can remember best my trip to Dartmouth College Hanover NH It was Fathers alma mater, and he perhaps thought it would be a better place for me than Cambridge. So as Mr Emerson was to make the address there before the literary societies we took him in charge and starting Saturday morning journeyed around Monadnock as it seemed to me all day and reached Keene N.H. at dark. Here we staid at the Cheshire House then a famous hostelry and as I had never been out of the state before I enjoyed myself greatly Father had friends there Gen Perry & others Mr Emerson was known and cordially welcomed by them And I saw that pleasant town over Sunday under favorable auspices. At dark that night we took the stage again for Walpole and after a striking drive by lamplight safely were housed at the tavern at Bellows Falls for a sleep, broken by the roaring waters, which I was out very early to see in all their romantic wildness. With Mr. Emerson my father who was quite familiar with them, showed us their huge worn pits and rocky ledges and points of interest until breakfast and the stage called us to resume the journey. All that day we rode up the Connecticut River admiring much its beautiful valley meadows hills and waters reaching Hanover late in the evening to find it bustling with commencement festivities. Mr E was carried off by the societies, and we found rooms and friends at the hotel. The next day Father renewed his youthful memories of people and places, he knew thirty years before finding less change than I had thought possible, while I left to my own devices strolled about the college campus and buildings making vastly unfavorable comparisons of it to my Cambridge. It was in holiday garb but even that was tame and poor beside the rich and dashing Harvard. At the hotel was a bride the wife of a friend of Fathers a Mr. Spaulding of Nashua, a very young and lovely lady, and I paid her very assiduous attention which her old husband smiled on complacently and she accepted graciously in his absence at the college meetings he attended— Of the commencement I remember but little only in my sophomoric conceit I thought the speakers green, and I fear was more impressed with the brides looks than with all orations &c. The address of Mr Emerson was a revelation to all who heard it, and reading it lately since its publication in the new edition of his works I was reminded of the stir to the life and spirit of those who heard it and his power and eloquence then for the first time. It made a great sensation partly because it shocked the orthodoxy and old-fashioned notions of the college and mainly because it voiced the new aspirations then just beginning to be felt all over New England. He received much admiration and attention from every one there, and we came in as his friends for a share of it though I confess that even the bride overlooked her soph for the sages conversation to my mortification. At the ball which closed the festivities I got even however as the lady danced finely dressed splendidly and shone so fairly as the belle in her wedding dress and cameo necklace, that I as her escort for her husband was too HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 old to dance was in high feather again— We parted after supper with arrangements all made by me, to have a special stage for our drive home with a select party, and I dreamed of her I feel sure, for I thought I had never seen anyone so lovely — and some of the seniors treated me to a parting bumper in return for their introductions to the bride and Mr Emerson. We started early next morning in an extra stage, in which Mr Emerson Father Mr. Spaulding and several friends of theirs of the college or old graduates, and on the outside Mrs Spaulding and myself with the driver, and we climbed very deliberately over the long hills that make the back lane of New Hampshire The days ride was long hot and dusty Mrs S. sought the shade and comfort of the inside and I helped the driver & at last after dark, and with the incident of losing our way & the driver’s getting off to climb a guide post and see what it said an experience I never knew repeated in all my staging, we reached Concord N.H. quite late in the evening. We were all too tired to do much but sleep except Mr. Emerson who had preached there years before and knew many of the people, and saw some of them late as it was. The next morning we looked over the town which I remember seemed smaller than our Concord, although it was the state capital and had some good buildings. It was always called then ‘New’ Concord by Massachusetts people to distinguish it from ours, and was new looking. We took the Mammoth road line of stages because the driver promised me to drive 6 horses a feat I had never tried before, and I forget whether that parted us from the Spauldings or whether we left them at Nashua. Anyhow we reached Lowell in season to get brought in a carry all home Saturday night after an exciting and eventful week. My first journey from home of any length. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY
July 26, Thursday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 26th of 7 M / Today was our Monthly Meeting held in Newport - the part for worship was held in silence — The usual queries were Answered, & the usual buisness preparatory to the Quarterly Meeting —- Joshua Shove & Ruth Dennis published their intentions of Marriage with each other & were referred to next Monthly Meeting for an answer, which it is most likely will be favourable to a final consumation Our friends Job Anthony & Stephen Chase & Ruth his wife dined with us. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 July 28: A reward was offered in the pages of the North Carolina Standard.
TWENTY DOLLARS REWARD. — Ranaway from the subscriber, a negro woman and two children; the woman is tall and black, and a few days before she went off I BURNT HER ON THE LEFT SIDE OF HER FACE: I TRIED TO MAKE THE LETTER M, and she kept a cloth over her head and face, and a fly bonnet over her head, so as to cover the burn; her children are both boys, the oldest is in his seventh year; he is a mulatto and has blue eyes; the youngest is a black, and is in his fifth year. MICAJAH RICKS, Nash County.
In roughly this timeframe: One of my neighbors sold to a speculator a negro boy, about 14 years old. It was more than his poor mother could bear. Her reason fled, and she became a perfect maniac, and had to be kept in close confinement. She would occasionally get out and run off to the neighbors. On one of these occasions she came to my house. With tears rolling down her cheeks, and her frame shaking with agony, she would cry out, “Don’t you hear him — they are whipping him now, and he is calling for me!” This neighbor of mine, who tore the boy away from his poor mother, and thus broke her heart, was a member of the Presbyterian church. — Rev. Francis Hawley, Baptist minister, Colebrook CT.
A colored man in the city of St. Louis was taken by a mob, and burnt alive at the stake. A bystander gives the following account of the scene: — After the flames had surrounded their prey, and when his clothes were in a blaze all over him, his eyes burnt out of his head, and his mouth seemingly parched to a cinder, some one in the crowd, more compassionate than the rest, proposed to put an end to his misery by shooting him, when it was replied, that it would be of no use, since he was already out of his pain. “No,” said the wretch, “I am not, I am suffering as much as ever, — shoot me, shoot me.” “No, no,” said one of the fiends, who was standing about the sacrifice they were roasting, “he shall not be shot; I would sooner slacken the fire, if that would increase his misery;” and the man who said this was, we understand, an officer of justice. — Alton Telegraph. SLAVERY
July 29, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 29th of 7 M / In our Morning Meeting Eliza Chase offered a few words by way of testimony - Both Morning & Afternoon were solid good Meetings & I am sometimes led to admire how still & reverent the people sit when there is so little oral testimony HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 given — Marmaduke Cope came home & took tea with us & set the evening, very interstingly to us. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
July 31, Tuesday: Fanny Elssler danced at Boston’s Tremont Theater.
As of midnight, all enslaved people in the British Empire were to be free people. That declaration applied also, technically at least, to all negrero vessels at sea. This was their last night as slaves. Thousands gathered in town centers and in churches. The Queen’s Emancipation Proclamation was read out again at midnight. Thousands climbed to hilltops, many climbed trees, to greet the first rays of the dawn of freedom.51
51. In the United States of America, of course, because we had struggled and won our freedom from the British Empire, nobody got freed on this day. Those Americans who were enslaved remained enslaved. Just like that. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
AUGUST
August: Danite skirmished with anti-Mormons who were attempting to prevent Mormons from voting at Gallatin. In four counties of Missouri, what was essentially a small civil war broke out. MORMONISM
August: Professor Charles Lyell’s THE ELEMENTS OF GEOLOGY, which, from being originally an expansion of one section of THE PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY: AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE FORMER CHANGES OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE BY REFERENCE TO CAUSES NOW IN OPERATION, had become a standard work on stratigraphical and palaeontological geology. This book would go through six editions in Lyell’s lifetime (some intermediate editions being styled MANUAL OF ELEMENTARY GEOLOGY), and in 1871 a smaller work, the STUDENT’S ELEMENTS OF GEOLOGY, would be based upon it.
August: A negrero flying the Portuguese flag, the General Espartero, master Barreiro, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 502 enslaved Africans on its first of two known Middle Passages, arrived at a port of Cuba. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Escorpion, master Garlos, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 273 enslaved Africans on its second of two known Middle Passages, arrived at Juraga, Cuba. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Maria Segundo, master Pegada, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of an unknown number of enslaved Africans on one of its ten-count-’em-ten known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at a port of Cuba. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Dois de Fevereiro, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 324 enslaved Africans on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at the port of Macae, Brazil. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 August: In the Aquohee concentration camp, the Cherokee Nation headmen met in council and reaffirmed the sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation. John Ross was appointed to be the superintendent of the removal. TRAIL OF TEARS
August: In Hungary, Lajos Kossuth was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment for subversive journalism.
August: At Harwinton, Connecticut, rioters drove a herd of pigs into a crowd being harangued by Erasmus Darwin Hudson (an abolitionist lecturer who after the US Civil War would become renowned and respected as an inventor of artificial limbs).
August: WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, VIRGINIA, per Captain Frederick Marryat.
Whittling Women; Naming Slaves.
I passed many pleasant days at this beautiful spot, and was almost as unwilling to leave it as I was to part with the Sioux Indians at St. Peters.’ Refinement and simplicity are equally charming. I was introduced to a very beautiful girl here, whom I should have not mentioned so particularly, had it not been that she was the first and only lady in America that I observed to whittle. She was sitting one fine morning on a wooden bench, surrounded by admirers, and as she carved away her scat with her pen-knife, so did she cut deep into the hearts of those who listened to her lively conversation. There are, as may be supposed, a large number of negro servants here attending their masters and mistresses. I have often been amused, not only here, but during my residence in Kentucky, at the high-sounding Christian names which have been given to them. “Byron, tell Ada to come here directly.” “Now, Telemachus, if you don’t leave Calypso alone, you’ll get a taste of the cow-hide.”
LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY, per Captain Frederick Marryat, August 1838. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Accuracy of Martineau’s Account; Fear of Violence by Slaves Exaggerated.
Lexington is a very pretty town, with very pleasant society, and afforded me great relief after the unpleasant sojourn I had had at Louisville. Conversing one day with Mr. Clay, I had another instance given me of the mischief which the conduct of Miss Martineau has entailed upon all those English who may happen to visit America. Mr. Clay observed that Miss Martineau had remained with him for some time, and that during her stay, she had professed very different, or at least more modified opinions on the subject of slavery, than those she had expressed in her book: so much so, that one day, having read a letter from Boston cautioning her against being cajoled by the hospitality and pleasant society of the Western States, she handed it to him saying, “They want to make a regular abolitionist of me.” “When her work came out,” continued Mr. Clay, “although I read but very little of it, I turned to this subject so important with us, and I must say I was a little surprised to find that she had so changed her opinions.” The fact is, Miss Martineau appears to have been what the Kentuckians call, “playing ’possum.” I have met with some of the Southern ladies whose conversations on slavery are said, or supposed to have been those printed by Miss Martineau, and they deny that they are correct. That the Southern ladies are very apt to express great horror at living too long a time at the plantations, is very certain; not, however, because they expect to be murdered in their beds by the slaves, as they tell their husbands, but because they are anxious to spend more of their time at the cities, where they can enjoy more luxury and amusement than can be procured at the plantations. Everybody rides in Virginia and Kentucky, master, man, woman, and slave, and they all ride well: it is quite as common to meet a woman on horseback as a man, and it is a pretty sight in their States to walk by the church doors and see them all arrive. The churches have stables, or rather sheds, built close to them, for the accommodation of the cattle.
READ MARRYAT TEXT HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 August-September: Some ten groups of members of the Cherokee Nation cumulating to more than 10,000 persons set off from the US Cavalry’s Appalachian concentration camps toward the Oklahoma Territory.
TRAIL OF TEARS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 August 1, Wednesday: William Lloyd Garrison orated at Charles G. Finney’s Broadway Tabernacle in Manhattan (because of the promise to liberate the slaves of the British West Indies beginning on this date, black American communities and those concerned for them had been pointedly ignoring the 4th of July in favor of the 1st of August).
Completion of the process of emancipation of all slaves in the British West Indies under six years of age, and the binding of all other slaves there as apprentices for the term of 5 to 7 years (later this would be reduced to 2 years) to be followed by emancipation, which had begun on August 1, 1834 under conditions of the Abolition Act of August 28, 1833. As a condition of their cooperation the white “owners” of these black and red “slaves” had received some £20,000,000 in compensation.
“EMANCIPATION IN THE ... INDIES....”: Parliament was compelled to pass additional laws for the defence and security of the negro, and in ill humor at these acts, the great island of Jamaica, with a population of half a million, and 300,000 negroes, early in 1838, resolved to throw up the two remaining years of apprenticeship, and to emancipate absolutely on the 1st August, 1838. In British Guiana, in Dominica, the same resolution had been earlier taken with more good will; and the other islands fell into the measure; so that on the 1st August, 1838, the shackles dropped from every British slave. The accounts which we have from all parties, both from the planters, and those too who were originally most opposed to the measure, and from the new freemen, are of the most satisfactory kind. The manner in which the new festival was celebrated, brings tears to the eyes. The First of August, 1838, was observed in Jamaica as a day of thanksgiving and prayer. Sir Lionel Smith, the governor, writes to the British Ministry, “It is impossible for me to do justice to the good order, decorum, and gratitude, which the whole laboring population manifested on that happy occasion. Though joy beamed on every countenance, it was throughout tempered with solemn thankfulness to God, and the churches and chapels were everywhere filled with these happy people in humble offering of praise.”
Therefore, David Lee Child had issued a handbill calling upon his neighbors in Northampton — to celebrate with him this freeing of the slaves of the British West Indies. On this morning he found a copy of his handbill nailed to his own door, with the word “persons” struck out and replaced by the word “NIGGERS.” Locally, support was stronger for the American Colonization Society, which believed that although blacks were inherently inferior and should forever be refused citizenship, “we” should find a way to kindly ship them all back where they came from — this sort of repulsive attitude represented, not the right nor the center, but the extreme far left of acceptable political opinion. As an expression of this sort of attitude toward race, even the town tax list itself was racially segregated, with the names and assessed taxes of black residents listed only after all names and assessments of white residents had been listed.
In New Bedford, on this anniversary of the emancipation of the slaves of the British West Indies, there was an ad trumpeting a “commemoration of the anniversary of the abolishment of slavery in the British West Indies.” On that occasion, the Reverend Orange Scott addressed the group at the Methodist Chapel on Elm Street in Fairhaven; the meeting being sponsored by the Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 1st of 8th M 1838 / We rode to Portsmouth & attended the Select Quarterly which was a time of Some favour tho’ the life was low in the forepart of it — Mary Shove opened the service in a short lively & I thought pertinent testimony - She was HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 followed by John Meader powerfully & pertinently - & Elizabeth Wing in supplication Ths buisness was gone thro’ & pretty well conducted & some feeling remarks were made on the State of the Church on reading the Answers to the Queries. — We dined at Susanna Hathaways after which we went down to the Farm where Uncle Stanton lived on a little buisness & then came home before dark. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
August 2, Thursday: By a unanimous decision, Cesar Franck won First Prize in piano at the Paris Conservatoire.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5 day 2nd of 8th M / Went again to Portsmouth & attended the Quarterly Meeting at large — Our Friend Thomas Anthony was favoured in an excellent & well adapted testimony followed by our dear Aged friend Benjamin Buffington whose voice seemed as much like a voice from Canaan as any I ever heard & was I believe the first time I ever heard him in a Public Quarterly Meeting — John Meader followed in testimony, but I ought to have mentioned that after T Anthony our beloved young brother Saml B Tobey appeared acceptably & pertinently to the feelings of Many present. — The buisness of the last Meeting was well conducted - Our friend John Meader returned the certificate granted him sometime ago to perform religious visit in some parts of the State of Connecticut & also some parts of NYork — Certificates were granted to John & Elizabeth Meader, to pay a religious visit in some parts of Pennsylvania, & to attend Baltimore Yearly Meeting. — We dined at Stephen Chases & returned home. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
August 3, Friday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 3rd of 8th M 1838 / Took the Steam Boat this Morng & went to Providence, got there in season to attend the School committee — Several other conferences were also had of other committees from the Yearly Meeting & had a Meeting of the General Tract Society in the evening — It was a day of very close occupancy of time that at night I was pretty much exhausted - Lodged at the School House. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
August 4, Saturday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day Took breakfast at Jon Congdons — Attended the Meeting for Sufferings, & an adjournment of the Trustees of O Browns Fund - Dined at Dr Tobeys & spent the Afternoon in attending to a little buisness & calling on some of my old friends. At 5 OC took the Steam Boat Massachusetts & came home, having a pleasant HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 & interesting passage down the river, a number of my friends & acquaintances being on board, & among others my brother Isaac & wife who left home this morning she having spent the day with her relations in Providence & he in Boston, returning in season to take the Steam boat home with his wife -this was rapid traveling & would not have been credited in less time than 30 Years ago. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
August 5, Sunday: Henry Thoreau made a distinction between an inferior kind of sound and a superior kind, earthbound sounds seeming to “reverberate along the plain, and then settle to earth again like dust” while “sphere music” seems to bounce off the steeples and hill-slopes up into the skies. He also made a distinction between the written and the preached word, or between words from dark places and from dungeons and from the Harvard academy-hall within which is “weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth — without, grain fields and grasshoppers, which give those the lie direct.”:
August 5th. Sphere music Some sounds seem to reverberate along the plain, and then settle to earth again like dust; such are Noise — Discord — Jargon. But such only as spring heavenward, and I may catch from steeples and hill tops in their upward course, which are the more refined parts of the former –are the true sphere music –pure, unmixed music –in which no wail mingles. Divine Service in the Academy-Hall. In dark places and dungeons these words might perhaps strike root and grow –but utter them in the day light and their dusky hues are apparent. From this window I can compare the written with the preached word –within is weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth — without, grain fields and grasshoppers, which give those the lie direct.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 5th of 8th M 1838 / Our Meetings were both Silent but very solid good seasons — We have in Town several Philadelphians members of Society who attend Meetings - The solid sitting of some of them is very satisfactory & their presence in our Meetings feels helpful - I particularly esteem Marmaduke Cope & wife & Henry Longstreth there are divers others whom I am not so well acquiainted with, but I love to see them come to Meeting. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
August 6: Abraham Lincoln was re-elected to the Illinois General Assembly, and became the floor leader for the Whigs.
At a mass meeting of workingmen’s groups in Birmingham “The Charter” was adopted as the centerpiece of a united, national labor movement. The document advocated household suffrage, payment of parliament members, and abolition of property qualifications among a list of other insufferable demands — within the following couple of years 500 chartist leaders would find themselves in prison. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Early August: Early in the month, after being alerted to the fact that Frederick Douglass had attended a camp meeting without first asking for permission, his suspicious owner stopped hiring him out as a calker. Too much such mixing with free people might be going to his head! He was sent instead into a slave gang working in the fields.
From this point into August, some ten groups of members of the Cherokee Nation cumulating to more than 10,000 persons set off from the US Cavalry’s Appalachian concentration camps toward the Oklahoma Territory. TRAIL OF TEARS
August 9, Thursday: The 1st Perseid meteor shower to have been correctly anticipated and predicted, showed up exactly on schedule. Edward Claudius Herrick had deduced the autumnal nature of this phenomenon from reports of August showers in the years 1781, 1798, 1823, 1833, and 1836, and had inferred that the showers were annual from the fact that Irish peasants had fallen into the habit of referring to these meteors as the burning tears of St. Lawrence, whose annual festival is on the 10th of August. ASTRONOMY SKY EVENT
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 5 day 9 of 8th M / Our Meeting was small but a pretty solid & very quiet season. Father Rodman was at Meeting, the first he has attended in several Weeks & had a few words to offer — It is a privilege to set down with our friends in solemn silence & labour for the arisings of Divine life in the soul, & though the seed seemed to lay low, it seemed to me our Meeting was not in vain. -7th day 11th of 8th M / This morning by the Steam Boat, Clarke Shove & several others returned from Saratoga Springs who were there at the death of Charles Jenkins & attended his funeral — I did not see them being out when they called at our house. The account they left with my Wife of Charles removal, renew’d the feelings I had when I first received the Intelligence - He died on 1st day the 29th of 7th Month In the 21st year of his Age & was intered on 3rd day the 31st After a Solemn meeting RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
August 10, Friday: Henry Thoreau made some comments in his journal, on the nature of the time of the universe:
August 10th. The Time of the Universe. Nor can all the vanities that so vex the world alter one whit the measure that night has chosen –but ever it must be short particular metre. The human soul is a silent harp in God’s quire whose strings need only to be swept by the divine breath, to chime in with the harmonies of creation. Every pulse beat is in exact time with the crickets chant, and the tickings of the deathwatch in the wall. Alternate with these if you can. TIME AND ETERNITY
Henry would recycle this reference to the cricket and to the deathwatch beetle into his essay on the NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.
In the autumn days, the creaking of crickets is heard at noon over all the land, and as in summer they are heard chiefly at night-fall, so then by their incessant chirp they usher in the evening of the year. Nor can all the vanities that vex the world alter one whit the measure that night has chosen. Every pulse-beat is in exact time with the cricket’s chant and the tickings of the deathwatch in the wall. Alternate with these if you can.
Edgar Allan Poe may have seen this; it may have been inspiration for his short story using the deathwatch beetle. However, that is rather unlikely, as Thoreau in “Natural History of Massachusetts” and Poe in “The Tell-Tale Heart” evoke considerably different complexes of thought and emotion in regard to the hearing of the deathwatch in the still of the night.
Note Thoreau’s careful use of the “human as instrument” theme, similar to his use of this theme on September 30, 1851, when he would write that “As the wood of an old Cremona52 its very fibre perchance harmoniously transposed & educated to resound melody has brought a great price–so methinks these telegraph posts should bear a great price with musical instrument makers– It is prepared to be the material of harps for ages to come, as it were put a soak in & seasoning in music....,” and similar to what he would write in “What shall it Profit,” his most carefully considered sermon, “It occurred to me when I awoke the other morning –feeling regret for some intemperance of the day before which had dulled my sensibilities– that man was to be treated as a
52. The famous violin-makers Nicola Amati (1596-1684), Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737), and Guiseppe Guarneri (1683-1745) had lived and worked in Cremona, Italy, in the Po river valley. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 musical instrument, and if any viol was to be made of sound timber, and kept tuned always, it was he — so that when the bow of events is drawn across him, he may vibrate and resound in perfect harmony. A sensitive soul will be continually trying its strings to see if they are in tune. A man’s body must be rasped down exactly to a shaving. It is of far more importance than the wood of a Cremona violin,” and similar to “There was a time when beauty and music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them.... Man should be the harp articulate.”
William M. White53 would later present a version of this journal entry as poetry:
The human soul is a silent harp in God’s quire, Whose strings need only to be swept By the divine breath To chime in with the harmonies of creation.
Every pulse-beat is in exact time With the cricket’s chant, And the tickings of the death-watch in the wall.
Alternate with these if you can.
The Reverend Convers Francis wrote to the Reverend Frederic Henry Hedge in Bangor, Maine summarizing the Emerson lecture at the Harvard Divinity School and reporting upon the reaction to it: Have you heard that Waldo Emerson delivered the sermon this summer to the class at the Divinity School, on their leaving the seminary? I went to hear it, & found it crowded with stirring, honest, lofty thoughts. I don’t know that anything of his has excited me more. He dwelt much on the downfallen state of the church, i.e. the want of a living, real interest in the present Christianity (where I think he rather exaggerated, but not much), on the tendency to make only a historical Christ, separated from actual humanity, — & on the want of reference to the great laws of man’s moral nature in preaching. These were his principal points, & were put forth with great power, & sometimes (under the first head especially) with unique humor. The discourse was full of divine life, — and was a true word from a true soul. I did not agree with him in some of his positions, & think perhaps he did not make the peculiar significance of Jesus so prominent as he ought, — though I am inclined to believe not that he thinks less of Jesus than others do, but more of man, every man as a divine being. — The discourse gave dire offense to the rulers at Cambridge. The dean & Mr. Norton have pronounced sentences of fearful condemnation, & their whole clique in Boston & Cambridge are in commotion. The harshest words are not spared, & “infidel” & “atheist” are the best terms poor E. gets. I have sometimes thought that to Mr. E. & his numerous detractors might be applied what Plato says of the winged soul, that has risen to the sight of the absolute, essential, & true, & therefore is said by the many to be stark
53. A library building at the University of Colorado is named for a William M. White, Class of 1933. I wonder if that is the same William M. White. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 mad. — the multitude are not aware that he is inspired.
Per HOWE’S BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX OF TWELVE UNITARIAN MORALISTS, PAGE 77: Henry Ware, Jr., his father’s colleague at the Harvard Divinity School, attempted to counteract Emerson’s address with a sermon he preached in the Harvard Chapel soon after classes resumed in September. Ware entitled his own address “The Personality of the Deity” and focused his attention upon the doctrine of God. He contrasted Unitarian orthodoxy (if the term be not contradictory) with certain other opinions he let remain nameless. The Unitarian God stood above and beyond the natural order, as Ware defined Him, and should not be confused with nature itself. Furthermore, to use the word “God” to refer to abstract concepts like “beauty” or “virtue” was “to violate the established use of language.” God was a conscious personality, and to apply His name to either the universe itself or to inanimate abstractions was a pitiful disguise for atheism. While the younger Ware politely refrained from identifying any local crypto-atheists, his target was obvious. Even so, his statement elicited no rebuttal from Emerson. Ware himself did not press the issue further, very likely because he and Emerson had long been personal friends. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 August 12, Sunday: Frederick Douglass resolved to escape on September 3d. Anna Marie Murray,54 his betrothed, sold one of her two featherbeds to obtain money for his train ticket, and prepared for him a sailor costume. The all-important seaman’s protection papers he would need for his cover story, papers ordinarily used by American merchantmen abroad, he borrowed from a retired free friend.55
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD Giuseppe Verdi’s infant Virginia died in Busseto.
Scherzo for piano op.10 was performed for the initial time, by the composer Clara Wieck in Leipzig.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 12th of 8 M 1838 / Our meetings today were both Silent, but solid good Seasons. — I hope we shall not all perish for want of food, there is that to be met with & experienced in solemn Silence which norishes the soul & Oh that we may find a true place of waiting whereby the true seed & the kingdom may be witnessed — I feel, I do solemnly feel of sitting at the head of such a Meeting as ours, which tho’ far smaller than it was long since my rememberance is nevertheless what may now be called a large Meeting - often mixed with those who are looking for words, & I have often been surprised to find, how much solemnity & quiet is spread over us & seems to reach even those who are unacquainted with our mode of Worship. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
54. The Hortons say, on their page 227, “with the help of a free black woman named Anna and contacts in the underground railroad....” Had Douglass had any such contacts in the Underground Railroad organization he would not have wound up sleeping on the streets in New-York, ridiculously vulnerable to recapture. 55. This man, whoever he was, was, it seems, on the basis of mere fellow-feeling, taking a truly enormous risk. What if Douglass had been detected during his escape, and these papers seized? Would not the white retribution against this man have been instant and magnificent? Anna could always have claimed that she had no idea what that Freddy Bailey had been up to, and anyway, she had personal motivation for rendering assistance as her life prospects were directly and intimately tied up with Douglass’s life prospects. But what could this man have claimed that would have taken the rope from around his neck, and would have saved him from enslavement in Douglass’s place? I believe it has repeatedly been noticed that in Douglass’s NARRATIVE he very much failed to give proper recognition to his betrothed for her necessary assistance during his escape, but I believe it has not been noticed that the necessary assistance rendered by this anonymous retired black sailor was even more risky — and in the narrative would go, equivalently, almost unrecognized. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 August 13, Monday: A comet visible on this night appeared to contemporary observers as a restful kernel in the magazine of the universe, roughly like this:
Henry Thoreau’s journal remark of this date, which I suppose may well have been prompted by this apparition, has been utilized in the following manner by Barbara Novak on pages 27-28 of a survey volume edited by John Wilmerding, AMERICAN LIGHT: THE LUMINIST MOVEMENT 1850-1875; PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC: Harper & Row, 1980), in an attempt to define Luminism: On Silence We can also say that stroke, carrying action, implies sound. A key correlative of luminism is silence. Luminist silence, like luminist time, depends on measured control. Without movement between strokes or between units of form, we hear nothing. Luminist silence implies presence through the sense of thereness rather than through activity. Inaudibility is a correlative of immobilized time and objects. Contemporary critics spoke of Kensett’s repose. Yet luminist silence, in the repose of inaction, represents not a void but a palpable space, in which everything happens while nothing does. We have here a visual analogue of Eckhart’s “central silence,” and Thoreau’s “restful kernel in the magazine of the universe.”
ASTRONOMY
August 13, Monday: John Farmer died. The body would be interred at Concord, New Hampshire.
August 14, Tuesday: A final music program was offered by students at the Hawes Grammar School in South Boston. The experiment of music in the public schools by Lowell Mason was generally deemed to have been successful.
August 15, Wednesday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 15th of 8th M / Polly McClish who lived in this house with Aunt Nancy Carpenter, has for sometime been expecting to go to NYork to live with her son & the time has now come when she expects to leave, having remained with us since Aunt Nancys decease - By her Will she gave Polly a Legacy of $100 & various Articles of house hold furniture - I have this day Paid her the Money & taken her receipt for the whole bequest, which is a HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 considerable weight from my mind RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
August 16, Thursday: The hulk of the Temaire was sold at auction to John Beatson, a ship breaker of Rotherhilde, for £5,530. The age of sail was over.
A group of teachers organized a few years earlier in Boston, called the “Musical Convention,” adopted resolutions on the teaching of music, all directly from the ideas of Lowell Mason.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 16th of 8 M 1838 / Our meeting was unusually small, a number who usually attend were absent & I hope it was necessarily, or rather justifiably so — I know there are occasions which justify absence from Meeting but it certainly is our duty to guard against their occurence & to do all dilligence to let our light shine that, those disposed may take no advantage of our example - We Sat in Silence - Father is increasingly unwell & whether it will ever be, that he sits with us again, is uncertain. I visited him this Afternoon & found him very poorly, & his infermity & weakness increasing upon him. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 August 17, Friday: Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Western arrived in New-York’s harbor after a 15-day steam across the Atlantic from Bristol, England and the age of steam was begun. The largest steamship in existence had been 208 feet long, whereas this huge new one measured 236 feet. The Shipping and Mercantile Gazette declared that “the whole of the mercantile world ... will from this moment adopt the new conveyance.” Over the next eight years, this new steamship would make 60 crossings.
Lorenzo da Ponte died in New-York at the age of 89. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Nathaniel Hawthorne visited the natural bridge in North Adams, Massachusetts. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 August 18, Saturday: Lieutenant Charles Wilkes sailed from Norfolk, Virginia, in command of a squadron of five vessels and a store-ship, to explore the southern seas. The main ship of this group, the Vincennes, a sloop of war of 780 tons, would be referred to as the “Ex. Ex.” because of the name of the exploring expedition. He would visit Madeira, the Cape Verd islands, Rio de Janeiro, Tierra del Fuego, Valparaíso, Callao, the Paumotou group, Tahiti, the Samoan group (which he would survey and explore), Wallis island, and Sydney in New South Wales.
During its circumnavigation of the globe, the United States South Seas Exploring Expedition would survey the Northwest coast of the North American continent. The expedition was our 1st funded and outfitted by the US federal government. Although Wilkes would be credited with discovering Antarctica in 1840, Nathaniel Palmer, a fur-seal hunter, had previously sailed far enough south, in 1820, to be entitled to some credit as well.
This expedition was something which would be duly noted in WALDEN under the rubric “that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense”:
WALDEN: What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring PEOPLE OF Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in WALDEN the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road.
CHARLES WILKES HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
INTELLIGENCE: Exploring Expedition. The United States Corvette Vincennes, Captain Charles Wilkes, the flag ship of the Exploring Expedition, arrived at New York on Friday, June 10th, from a cruise of nearly four years. The Brigs Porpoise and Oregon may shortly be expected. The Expedition has executed every part of the duties confided to it by the Government. A long list of ports, harbors, islands, reefs, and shoals, named in the list, have been visited and examined or surveyed. The positions assigned on the charts to several vigias, reefs, shoals, and islands, have been carefully looked for, run over, and found to have no existence in or near the places assigned them. Several of the principal groups and islands in the Pacific Ocean have been visited, examined, and surveyed; and friendly intercourse, and protective commercial regulations, established with the chiefs and natives. The discoveries in the Antarctic Ocean (Antarctic continent, — Observations for fixing the Southern Magnetic pole, &c.) preceded those of the French and English expeditions. The Expedition, during its absence, has also examined and surveyed a large portion of the Oregon Territory, a part of Upper California, including the Columbia and Sacramento Rivers, with their various tributaries. Several exploring parties from the Squadron have explored, examined, and fixed those portions of the Oregon Territory least known. A map of the Territory, embracing its Rivers, Sounds, Harbors, Coasts, Forts, &c., has been prepared, which will furnish the information relative to our possessions on the Northwest Coast, and the whole of Oregon. Experiments have been made with the pendulum, magnetic apparatus, and various other instruments, on all occasions, — the temperature of the ocean, at various depths ascertained in the different seas traversed, and full meteorological and other observations kept up during the cruise. Charts of all the surveys have been made, with views and sketches of headlands, towns or villages, &c., with descriptions of all that appertains to the localities, productions, language, customs, and manners. At some of the islands, this duty has been attended with much labor, exposure, and risk of life, — the treacherous character of the natives rendering it absolutely necessary that the officers and men should be armed, while on duty, and at all times prepared against their murderous attacks. On several occasions, boats have been absent from the different vessels of the Squadron on surveying duty, (the greater part of which has been performed in boats,) among islands, reefs, &c., for a period of ten, twenty, and thirty days at one time. On one of these occasions, two of the officers were killed at the Fiji group, while defending their boat’s crew from an attack by the Natives.
August 19, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 1st day 19th of 8th M 1838 / We had a comfortable silent Meeting this Morning — In the Afternoon Eliza Chase had a short offering, which savored with me & it seems to me that both our Meetings today were solemn favoured seasons — certainly many come & sit with us who do not appear to be desirous of Words, but know the value of true silence I felt so much for a young man (JW) who is generally in attendance with us on 1st days that I felt disposed to speak with him after Meeting & encourage him to hold on his way & that tho’ his outward vision was dim being nearly blind from his birth, Yet I told him I believe that thro’ the Power of Truth his inward sight might be made clear, so that he might walk & not stumble —he received my remarks with much feeling, & I was glad I attended to this little pointing of duty RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
August 22, Wednesday: Olive Wiley got married with the Reverend Samuel Randall.
Henry Thoreau wrote in his journal:
SCRIPTURE
August 22. How thrilling a noble sentiment in the oldest books, — in Homer, the Zendavesta, or Confucius! It is a strain of music wafted down to us on the breeze of time, through the aisles of innumerable ages. By its very nobleness it is made near and audible to us.
August 23, Thursday: Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts, one of the 1st colleges for women in the USA, graduated its 1st students.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 23rd of 8th M / Our Meeting was small, but comfortable & good - a number was absent in consequence of Sickness either of themselves or families & some were our of Town. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
August 25, Saturday: A Rondo-finale to Saverio Mercadantes opera I Briganti for soprano and orchestra by Otto Nicolai was performed for the initial time.
August 26, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 26th of 8th M / Our Meetings were both rather small, but solid & good Seasons. & it seemed to me the Solemnity was rather remarkably over the Morning — NO preaching — At the close in the Morning the funeral of Lydia Cornell was spoken of to be from the House of her Husband Walter Cornell in Portsmouth tomorrow at 1 OC at the house to proceed to this Town & the remains to be intered in Friends burying ground Near the Meeting house Father Rodman continues very feeble & low — Sits up but a few Minutes at a time & Seems to be gradually sinking — He said today HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 I know it is an Awful thing to Die but I am willing to go whenever it please the Lord to take me. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS Henry Thoreau wrote in his journal:
EVENING SOUNDS
August 26. How strangely sounds of revelry strike the ear from over cultivated fields by the woodside, while the sun is declining in the west. It is a world we had not known before. We listen and are capable of no mean act or thought. We tread on Olympus and participate in the councils of the gods.
HOMER
It does one’s heart good if Homer but say the sun sets, — or, “As when beautiful stars accompany the bright moon through the serene heavens; and the woody hills and cliffs are discerned through the mild light, and each star is visible, and the shepherd rejoices in his heart.”
August 27, Monday: The Eastern Railroad was opened for travel to and from Boston.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 8th M 27 1838 / This Afternoon the remains of Lydia Cornell were brought from Portsmouth to Newport & inter’d in Friends burying ground on the South side of her Sister Sally Slocum & in the row where her Father & Mother John & Elizabeth Hadwin were interd, which is in the burying grong Near our Meeting House She was Aged 62 Years 8 Months & 12 days RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
August 28, Tuesday: Eliezer T. [or J.] Marsh of Thetford, Vermont [or Cabot] got married with Martha Baker of Waltham.
Largely through the efforts of Lowell Mason, the Boston School Committee ordered that music become a regular part of the curriculum. This decision would come to be regarded as the “Magna Carta of Music Education in the United States.” Mason would be hired to teach and authorized to hire whatever assistants and purchase whatever materials he needs.
Most of the Cherokee Nation began the Trail of Tears, Nunna daul Tsuny, their forced removal from Georgia to Oklahoma. TRAIL OF TEARS
August 29, Wednesday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 8th M 29 1838 / Information came to Town this Morning of the decease of our Friend Benjamin Mott, after he had eaten his breakfast & walked out round the door soon [he] came in leaning his head on a Chair Died immediately - A solemn Warning to all He was an Elder in Society & had been very useful. It HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 seemed as if his concern for Truth & the Welfare of our Society, as the last time I was at his house he expressed much anxiety for its welfare & particularly that Ancient Quakerism should be supported adverting to Seasons of Early life when his mind had been affected by that spirit which visits the Youthful Mind. He particularly spoke of family opportunities which his Father Jacob Mott used to encourage & spent the time in sitting solidly together & in reading the Scriptures & writings of Friends he was Aged 80 Years 7 Months & two Days This Afternoon Nephew Thos D Rodman set some time with us & took tea, his visit was truly interesting RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
August 30, Thursday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 8 M 30th 1838 / Today is our Moy [Monthly] Meeting held at Portsmouth. I was unable to attend it, & consequently my wife did not go — I have had many callers in a friendly way & some of them interesting tho’ I have felt quite feeble — In the Afternoon Cousin Henry Gould called & informed me they had a good Moy [Monthly] Meeting that Mary Hicks appeared in Supplication & that our frd Benj. Buffungton from Fall River was there & was favourd in a lively testimony — he said also things went well in the last Meeting. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
August 31, Friday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:
Yesterday at anniversary. Steady, steady. I am convinced that if a man will be a true scholar, he shall have perfect freedom. The young people & the mature hint at odium, & aversion of faces to be presently encountered in society. I say no: I fear it not. No scholar need fear it.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 8th M 31st 1838 / Today Our friend Benjamin Mott was intered in the burying ground at our Meeting House in Portsmouth He was in the 81 Year of his Age - He was son of Jacob Mott & Hannah his wife & the last Male of a long & Noble line of Ancestors who have been ornaments in our Monthly Meeting on Rhode Island from its commencement - & tho’ he is the last of much standing being himself an Elder in society - yet there is some reason to hope the respectability will or may not, be lost in his son Jacob & his family who I hope may come up in the line of usefulness — And altho’ Benjamin has not appeared to be so deeply baptized as some of his predecessors, yet he has been concerned for the welfare of our Society & that the principles of it may be kept pure as professed by the primitive Quakers - This he manifested on various occasions, particularly to me when I returned with HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 my wife to his House after our Select Meeting 18th of 7th M last when we had an interesting visit at his house - He was out at Meeting Several times afterwards & attended our Qry Meeting held at Portsmouth 4th & 5th of this Month & the Morning he died he went out & walked round his House attending to some little buisness, on returning to his house went in & set down on which he family perceived him to be in some difficulty & went to him, but found him quite gone before they could lay him on a Couch which stood handy - I have no doubt his last days were his best days & that his end was in Peace. — Sister E R Nichols & Br D Rodman arrived last evening from Salem & Lynn on a visit To Father Rodman, who is evidently wearing out & sinking fast This evening Br David called to see us we were glad to see him. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
SEPTEMBER
September: A Portuguese negrero, the Dois D’Abril, master unknown, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 477 enslaved Africans on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at Sao Sebastiao, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Montana, master Griana, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 213 enslaved Africans on its first of two known Middle Passages, arrived at a port of Cuba. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Bellona, master unknown, Congo River with a cargo of 374 enslaved Africans on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at Campos, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Ala, master unknown, delivered a cargo of 200 enslaved Africans on its one and only known Middle Passage, arrived at a port of Cuba. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Arcania, master unknown, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 500 enslaved Africans on its second of two known such voyages, arrived at Ilha Grande, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Asseiceira, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 400 enslaved Africans on its second of two known Middle Passages, arrived at the port of Catuamo, Brazil. A Portuguese slaver, the Josefina, master unknown, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 345 enslaved Africans on one of its twelve-count-’em-twelve known such voyages, arrived at Rio de Janeiro. A Portuguese slaver, the Inocente, master unknown, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 317 enslaved Africans on its second of two known Middle Passages, arrived at the port of Ilha Grande, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Jupiter, master unknown, out of Cabinda with a cargo of 436 enslaved Africans on one of its five known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at the port of Armacao, Brazil. A Portuguese slaver, the General Cabreira, master unknown, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 150 enslaved Africans on one of its five known such voyages, arrived at the port of Ponta Negra, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Gabriel, master Giraud, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 340 enslaved Africans on its first of two known Middle Passages, arrived at a port of Cuba. A Portuguese slaver, the Lavandeira, master San Martin, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of an unknown number of enslaved Africans on its first of two known Middle Passages, arrived at a port of Cuba. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September: The Reverend Orestes Augustus Brownson was appointed to the Boston Custom House, a political patronage plum.
(Nathaniel Hawthorne would in January 1839 be appointed there as well.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September: Henry Thoreau wrote out a receipt which still exists. It was for $7.19 paid by the prominent lawyer, Squire Nathan Brooks, for Thoreau’s instruction of his son George Merrick Brooks (a boy who would go on to become a lawyer, a member of the House of Representatives, and then a judge) at the Concord Academy.
During the late 1830s, presumably during this period, Squire Nathan Brooks’s daughter Caroline Downes Brooks was a Sunday school student in Lidian Emerson’s class at the First Parish.
The rotting hulk of the fighting Temaire, long since stripped first of her guns as a supply vessel and then, in 1812, of her masts as a prison hulk moored in a mudflat, was at this point hauled by two steam tugs to the ship- dismantling yards at Rotherhilde. The Temaire had been the vessel behind Admiral Nelson’s Victory in the line of battle at Trafalgar. J.M.W. Turner had painted this in his 1806 “The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizzen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory.” He would paint a second image, of the ship being hauled its last 55 miles in the sunset, in 1839. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September: The Surgeon General having responded favorably to the latest petition from the troublesome surgeon, Dr. John Emerson, who in the spring had gone down the Mississippi to get married, the Emersons were at this point able to travel back up the Mississippi river to Fort Snelling. The white family, and their servants Mr. Dred Scott and Mrs. Harriet Robinson Scott, would remain in the territory until Dr. Emerson finally made himself too much trouble for the US military in the fall of 1840. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September: LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY, per Captain Frederick Marryat, September 1838.
Health, Mortality, and Childbearing.
That this has been a very unhealthy season is certain, but still, from all the information I could obtain, there is a great mortality every year in the districts I have pointed out; and such indeed must be the case, from the miasma created every fall of the year in these rich alluvial soils, some portions of which have been worked for fifty years without the assistance of manure, and still yield abundant crops. It will be a long while before the drainage necessary to render them healthy can be accomplished. The sickly appearance of the inhabitants establishes but too well the facts related to me; and yet, strange to say, it would appear to be a provision of Providence, that a remarkable fecundity on the part of the women in the more healthy portions of their Western States, should meet the annual expenditure of life. Three children at a birth are more common here than twins are in England; and they, generally speaking, are all reared up. There have been many instances of even four.
READ MARRYAT TEXT HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September: When the drought broke, the Cherokee Nation prepared to embark on its forced exodus to the new Indian Territory in Oklahoma. John Ross was able to obtain additional funds for food and clothing. TRAIL OF TEARS
September 2, Sunday: Queen Liliuokalani (last queen of Hawaii) was born.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 2nd of 9 M 1838 / Our Meetings both silent but pretty well attended - They were solid good Meetings & I was instructed with the solid reverend sitting of the people & to me it is wonderful how quiet & retired, how settled the Minds of Most or all who attend are, & how little thirst there is after words. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 3, Monday:
Frederick Douglass set out by boarding in some way a freight boat belonging to “Colonel” Lloyd, and then by boarding the train from Baltimore in darkest Maryland to Wilmington, Delaware using as his cover seaman’s protection papers he had obtained from a retired friend.56 His 1st day of freedom began in the evening when the steamer to which he had transferred from the train reached the dock at Philadelphia.57 For the duration of slavery, he would not be able to be frank about how he had escaped, without endangering the free persons who had aided him and without closing that particular escape hatch to those still enslaved:
According to my resolution, on the third day of September, 1838, I left my chains, and succeeded in reaching New York without the slightest interruption of any kind. How I did so, –what means I adopted, –what direction I travelled, and by what mode of conveyance, –I must leave unexplained.
His sweetheart Anna Marie Murray, since she was a free woman, would be able to join him immediately.
56. A friend indeed, as this was a risky business — if he is detected, and if these papers are captured, his friend, if his neck slips through an immediate noose, will at the very least be convicted of grand larceny, and find himself enslaved at hard labor for the remainder of his natural life. Here, by way of illustration, is the Seaman’s Protection Certificate that would be issued for the 21- year-old “light African complexion, black woolly hair and brown eyes” sailor named Samuel Fox on August 12, 1854:
57. We may well elect to celebrate this in lieu of an unknown slave birthday: “It has been a source of great annoyance to me, never to have a birthday.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 We know that because of Frederick Douglass’s 1881 article in The Atlantic Monthly:
… I arranged with Isaac Rolls, a Baltimore hackman, to bring my baggage to the Philadelphia train just on the moment of starting, and jumped upon the car myself when the train was in motion. Had I gone into the station and offered to purchase a ticket, I should have been instantly and carefully examined, and undoubtedly arrested. In choosing this plan I considered the jostle of the train, and the natural haste of the conductor, in a train crowded with passengers, and relied upon my skill and address in playing the sailor, as described in my protection [papers describing a free black sailor, loaned to Douglass at great risk by a friend], to do the rest. One element in my favor was the kind feeling which prevailed in Baltimore and other sea- ports at the time, toward “those who go down to the sea in ships.” “Free trade and sailors’ rights” just then expressed the sentiment of the country. In my clothing I was rigged out in sailor style. I had on a red shirt and a tarpaulin hat, and a black cravat tied in sailor fashion carelessly and loosely about my neck. My knowledge of ships and sailor’s talk came much to my assistance, for I knew a ship from stem to stern, and from keelson to cross-trees, and could talk sailor like an “old salt.” I was well on the way to Havre de Grace before the conductor came into the negro car to collect tickets and examine the papers of his black passengers. This was a critical moment in the drama. My whole future depended upon the decision of this conductor. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
Agitated though I was while this ceremony was proceeding, still, externally, at least, I was apparently calm and self-possessed. He went on with his duty—examining several colored passengers before reaching me. He was somewhat harsh in tome and peremptory in manner until he reached me, when, strange enough, and to my surprise and relief, his whole manner changed. Seeing that I did not readily produce my free papers, as the other colored persons in the car had done, he said to me, in friendly contrast with his bearing toward the others: “I suppose you have your free papers?” To which I answered: “No sir; I never carry my free papers to sea with me.” “But you have something to show that you are a freeman, haven’t you?” “Yes, sir,” I answered; “I have a paper with the American Eagle on it, and that will carry me around the world.”
With this I drew from my deep sailor’s pocket my seaman’s protection, as before described. The merest glance at the paper satisfied him, and he took my fare and went on about his business. This moment of time was one of the most anxious I ever experienced. Had the conductor looked closely at the paper, he could not have failed to discover that it called for a very different-looking person from myself, and in that case it would have been his duty to arrest me on the instant, and send me back to Baltimore from the first station. When he left me with the assurance that I was all right, though much relieved, I realized that I was still in great danger: I was still in Maryland, and subject to arrest at any moment. I saw on the train several persons who would have known me in any other clothes, and I feared they might recognize me, even in my sailor “rig,” and report me to the conductor, who would then subject me to a closer examination, which I knew well would be fatal to me. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
Though I was not a murderer fleeing from justice, I felt perhaps quite as miserable as such a criminal. The train was moving at a very high rate of speed for that epoch of railroad travel, but to my anxious mind it was moving far too slowly. Minutes were hours, and hours were days during this part of my flight. After Maryland, I was to pass through Delaware—another slave State, where slave-catchers generally awaited their prey, for it was not in the interior of the State, but on its borders, that these human hounds were most vigilant and active. The border lines between slavery and freedom were the dangerous ones for the fugitives. The heart of no fox or deer, with hungry hounds on his trail in full chase, could have beaten more anxiously or noisily than did mine from the time I left Baltimore till I reached Philadelphia. The passage of the Susquehanna River at Havre de Grace was at that time made by ferry-boat, on board of which I met a young colored man by the name of Nichols, who came very near betraying me. He was a “hand” on the boat, but, instead of minding his business, he insisted upon knowing me, and asking me dangerous questions as to where I was going, when I was coming back, etc. I got away from my old and inconvenient acquaintance as soon as I could decently do so, and went to another part of the boat. Once across the river, I encountered a new danger. Only a few days before, I had been at work on a revenue cutter, in Mr. Price’s ship-yard in Baltimore, under the care of Captain McGowan. On the meeting at this point of the two trains, the one going south stopped on the track just opposite to the one going north, and it so happened that this Captain McGowan sat at a window where he could see me very distinctly, and would certainly have recognized me had he looked at me but for a second. Fortunately, in the hurry of the moment, he did not see me; and the trains soon passed each other on their respective ways. But this was not my only hair-breadth escape. A German blacksmith whom I knew well was on the train with me, and looked at me very intently, as if he thought he had seen me somewhere before in his travels. I really believe he knew me, but had no heart to betray me. At any rate, he saw me escaping and held his peace.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 9th M 3rd 1838 / Mary McClish left us by the Steam Boat with her Son, for New York expecting to live with him & his family at West Chester about 12 Miles from the City. She came into this house to live with Aunt Nancy Carpenter on the 3rd day of 5th M 1808 & remained with her in faithful service until her death which occured the 10th day of the 9th M 1834 — After which we took the house & family & she continued in Service 4 Years lacking just one Week — thus she has been a faithful & agreeable HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 inmate in this house for 30 Years & about 4 Months —- her health has been declining for some time & particularly the last 6 Months & I hope the change of Air & situation will be advantagious to her — She was born in Newport 5 M 30th 1773, which makes her 65 Years & about 4 Months Old I respect her for her many kindnesses & goods services & really desire her last days may be her most tranquil & happy - I have paid her the Legacy which Aunt Nancy gave her in her Will, & also Settled with her for all her services. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 4, Tuesday: Frederick Douglass, on his escape from the border American South, arrived in the only relative security of New-York:
On the morning of the fourth of that month, after an anxious and most perilous but safe journey, I found myself in the big city of New York, a FREE MAN— one more added to the mighty throng which, like the confused waves of the troubled sea, surged to and fro between the lofty walls of Broadway. Though dazzled with the wonders which met me on every hand, my thoughts could not be much withdrawn from my strange situation. For the moment, the dreams of my youth and the hopes of my manhood were completely fulfilled. The bonds that had held me to “old master” were broken. No man now had a right to call me his slave or assert mastery over me. I was in the rough and tumble of an outdoor world, to take my chance with the rest of its busy number. I have often been asked how I felt when first I found myself on free soil. There is scarcely anything in my experience about which I could not give a more satisfactory answer. A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath and the “quick round of blood,” I lived more in that one day than in a year of my slave life. It was a time of joyous excitement which words can but tamely describe. In a letter written to a friend soon after reaching New York, I said: “I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den of hungry lions.” Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil. During ten or fifteen years I had been, as it were, dragging a heavy chain which no strength of mine could break; I was not only a slave, but a slave for life. I might become a husband, a father, an aged man, but through all, from birth to death, from the cradle to the grave, I had felt myself doomed. All efforts I had previously made to secure my freedom had not only failed, but had seemed only to rivet my fetters the more firmly, and to render my escape more difficult. Baffled, entangled, and discouraged, I had at times asked myself the question, May not my condition after all be God’s work, and ordered for a wise purpose, and if so, Is not submission my duty? A contest had in fact been going on in my mind for a long time, between the clear consciousness of right and the plausible make- shifts of theology and superstition. The one held me an abject slave—a prisoner for life, punished for some transgression in which I had no lot nor part; and the other counseled me to manly endeavor to secure my freedom. This contest was now ended; my chains were broken, and the victory brought me unspeakable joy. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
But my gladness was short-lived, for I was not yet out of the reach and power of the slave-holders. I soon found that New York was not quite so free or so safe a refuge as I had supposed, and a sense of loneliness and insecurity again oppressed me most sadly. I chanced to meet on the street, a few hours after my landing, a fugitive slave whom I had once known well in slavery. The information received from him alarmed me. The fugitive in question was known in Baltimore as “Allender’s Jake,” but in New York he wore the more respectable name of “William Dixon.” Jake, in law, was the property of Doctor Allender, and Tolly Allender, the son of the doctor, had once made an effort to recapture MR. DIXON, but had failed for want of evidence to support his claim. Jake told me the circumstances of this attempt, and how narrowly he escaped being sent back to slavery and torture. He told me that New York was then full of Southerners returning from the Northern watering-places; that the colored people of New York were not to be trusted; that there were hired men of my own color who would betray me for a few dollars; that there were hired men ever on the lookout for fugitives; that I must trust no man with my secret; that I must not think of going either upon the wharves or into any colored boarding-house, for all such places were closely watched; that he was himself unable to help me; and, in fact, he seemed while speaking to me to fear lest I myself might be a spy and a betrayer. Under this apprehension, as I suppose, he showed signs of wishing to be rid of me, and with whitewash brush in hand, in search of work, he soon disappeared. This picture, given by poor “Jake,” of New York, was a damper to my enthusiasm. My little store of money would soon be exhausted, and since it would be unsafe for me to go on the wharves for work, and I had no introductions elsewhere, the prospect for me was far from cheerful. I saw the wisdom of keeping away from the ship- yards, for, if pursued, as I felt certain I should be, Mr. Auld, my “master,” would naturally seek me there among the calkers. Every door seemed closed against me. I was in the midst of an ocean of my fellow-men, and yet a perfect stranger to every one. I was without home, without acquaintance, without money, without credit, without work, and without any definite knowledge as to what course to take, or where to look for succor. In such an extremity, a man had something besides his new-born freedom to think of. While wandering about the streets of New York, and lodging at least one night among the barrels on one of the wharves, I was indeed free—from slavery, but free from food and shelter as well.... HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
The last point of imminent danger, and the one I dreaded most, was Wilmington. Here we left the train and took the steam-boat for Philadelphia. In making the change here I again apprehended arrest, but no one disturbed me, and I was soon on the broad and beautiful Delaware, speeding away to the Quaker City. On reaching Philadelphia in the afternoon, I inquired of a colored man how I could get on to New York. He directed me to the William-street depot, and thither I went, taking the train that night. I reached New York Tuesday morning, having completed the journey in less than twenty-four hours. My free life began on the third of September, 1838....
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 4th of 9 m 1838 / I was aware that Polly McClish’s leaving us would occasion a blank & be a loss in our family - but really today it has been more lonesome than I could have anticipated. it is now after tea & there is no doubt if nothing has happened to them they are at their home in West Chester where I desire them may be all peaceful & happy together My Wife has got along with the buisness of the day with as much ease & facility as can be expected, but the care & confinement as well as the labour is far more than I desire or intend shall fall upon her, as soon as we can find some suitable person to employ, we shall embrace the opportunity, tho’ I do not expect that Pollys place will be easily filled, for she has been general caretaker in this house & family for over 30 Years & knew the ways & peculiarities of it beyond any that will come after her RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 5, Wednesday: After sleeping on the wharves for a number of nights to evade detection by the sort of slave-catchers who routinely watched the black boarding houses in hope of obtaining rewards, Frederick Douglass was rescued from the only relative security58 of the streets of New-York:
... I kept my secret to myself as long as I could, but I was compelled at last to seek some one who would befriend me without taking advantage of my destitution to betray me. Such a person I found in a sailor named Stuart, a warm-hearted and generous fellow, who, from his humble home on Centre street, saw me standing on the opposite sidewalk, near the Tombs prison. As he approached me, I ventured a remark to him which at once enlisted his interest in me. He took me to his home to spend the night, and in the morning went with me to Mr. David Ruggles, the secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee, a co-worker with Isaac T. Hopper, Lewis and Arthur Tappan, Theodore S. Wright, Samuel Cornish, Thomas Downing, Philip A. Bell, and other true men of their time. All these (save Mr. Bell, who still lives, and is editor and publisher of a paper called the “Elevator,” in San Francisco) have finished their work on earth. Once in the hands of these brave and wise men, I felt comparatively safe....
NARRATIVE LEWIS TAPPAN DAVID RUGGLES GEORGE THOMAS DOWNING ISAAC T. HOPPER
September 6, Thursday/7, Friday: A steamer, the SS Forfarshire, being wrecked on one of the Farne Islands on it voyage from Hull to Dundee, Grace Horsley Darling, daughter of the keeper of the lighthouse, induced her father William Darling to assist her in rowing a small boat through the heavy seas in the rescue of nine persons.
Emperor Ferdinand of Austria was crowned King of Lombardy in Milan Cathedral. Among those attending was Franz Liszt.
Bernardino Fernandez de Velasco Enriquez de Guzman, duque de Frias replaced Narciso de Heredia y Begines de los Rios, conde de Ofalia as prime minister of Spain.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 6th of 9th M 1838 / Our Meeting was quite small & Silent, but it was nevertheless to me & I doubt not to others a good Meeting. — I know not that our numbers will ever be increased, & it sometimes feels discouraging to look at this Meeting, when I was a boy & now at the present time When I first remember it all three of the high seats were filled with Ancient Men & now there are but four on the 2nd & about 6 on the 1st rising seat & our numbers at times quite small. - tho’ we usually on first 58. The Hortons say, on their page 227, “with the help of a free black woman named Anna and contacts in the underground railroad....” Had Douglass had any such contacts in the Underground Railroad organization he would not have wound up sleeping on the streets in New-York, ridiculously vulnerable to recapture. UNDERGROUND RAILROAD HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 day forenoon have a pretty large gathering. —7th day 8 of 9 M 1838 / This Afternoon attended the Funeral of Anne Barker daughter of the late Matthew & Mary Barker. - She was in the 63 Year of her Age & all that time to tend like a child being not only Idiotic but helpless in body & unable to help herself in any way - she had been taken care of by Friends ever since her parents died — It is honorable to our society that they take care of their own Poor never suffering any to be chargeable to the Town & This poor woman has cost society probably more than $2000 in the time Friends have taken Charge of her RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
September 7, Friday: Henry Thoreau wrote in his journal: HOMER
September 7. When Homer’s messengers repair to the tend of Achilles, we do not have to wonder how they get there, but step by step accompany them along the shore of the resounding sea. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 8, Saturday: Giuseppe Verdi and his wife arrived in Milan during the coronation festivities for Emperor Ferdinand as King of Lombardy. He was there in an attempt to stage his opera Oberto.
Waldo Emerson to his JOURNAL:
Henry Thoreau told a good story of William Parkman, who (kept store) lived in the house he now occupies, & kept a store close by. He hung out a salt fish for a sign, & it hung so long & grew so hard, black & deformed, that the deacon forgot what thing it was, & nobody in town knew, but being examined chemically it proved to be salt fish. But duly every morning the deacon hung it on its peg.
(During this year, on the Georges Bank, a fisherman brought up a humongous cod that would weigh in at 180 pounds.)
This early story about Deacon William Parkman of the general store on Main Street (near where the Concord Free Public Library now stands) would later be worked into the WALDEN text as:
WALDEN: This closed car smells of salt fish, the strong New PEOPLE OF England and commercial scent, reminding me of the Grand Banks and WALDEN the fisheries. Who has not seen a salt fish, thoroughly cured for this world, so that nothing can spoil it, and putting the perseverance of the saints to the blush? with which you may sweep or pave the streets, and split your kindlings, and the teamster shelter himself and his lading against sun wind and rain behind it, –and the trader, as a Concord trader once did, hang it up by his door for a sign when he commences business, until at last his oldest customer cannot tell surely whether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral, and yet it shall be as pure as a snowflake, and if it be put into a pot and boiled, will come out an excellent dun fish for a Saturday’s dinner.
WILLIAM PARKMAN
September 9, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 9th of 9th M 1838 / I awoke early this Morning by day light & as I lay in Bed saw the Steam Boat Richmond pass, & as the carriages returned heard one Stop at our door & a hard knock on the door & who should it be but our dear children & grandchild from Hudson, whom we were truly glad to see - indeed we were rejoiced to see them, there arrival was unexpected, but not the less pleasing — Before Meeting John went up to see his Grandfather Rodman who is very low, but knew his voice & was glad he came, tho’ his eye sight is so gone as not to be able to distinguish countenances Our Meetings were both silent & very Solid good seasons. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
September 10, Monday: Benvenuto Cellini, an opera semi-seria by Hector Berlioz to words of de Wailly, de Barbier and de Vigny, was performed for the initial time, at the Paris Opera. Giacomo Meyerbeer had come to Paris to see it. It was not a success; there were many whistles from the audience.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 9th M 10th 1838 / On calling to see Father Rodman this Afternoon, I found him increasingly weak & feeble - on asking him how he did he told me he was in a poor weak condition, but hoped he should be favoured with patience to the end - that he felt resigned to the event of death & trusted he should be favoured to meet it in quiet resignatiion — I told him I had no doubt he would be favoured at the last & that I was sensible that the Religion which he had professed in his youth would continue with him - he said he trusted it would & had boun[d] him up thro’ a long life fraught with many trials, & if it had not have been for religion he must have sunk under his many trials, hence he was confident he had not trusted in vain, that the religion which he had experienced & been made partaker of was no cunningly devised fable but the Truth as it is in Jesus Christ He remarked that however necessary good works were, they were not to be trusted in for salvation - but all was thro’ the Mercy & mediation of Jesus Christ - At this time he told me that John had been up to see him & had brought his child but that the child was so young she would not come near him, but that he had felt a blessing in his mind for her from the time he heard of her birth. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
September 13, Thursday: Friedrich Wilhelm replaced Friedrich Hermann Otto as Prince of Hohenzollern- Hechingen. Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka and his travelling companions returned to St. Petersburg with a troop of new boys for the Imperial Choir.
James Thomas Fields delivered an Anniversary Poem before the Mercantile Library Association of Boston (he would print this at the firm of his employer William D. Ticknor at the corner of Washington and School Streets). ANNIVERSARY POEM
Early in September, Jones Very had felt within himself the gradual coming of a new will, somewhat like his old wicked self-will but different in that “it was not a feeling of my own but a sensible will that was not my own,” a will “to do good.” There was “a consciousness which seemed to say —‘That which creates you creates also that which you see or him to whom you speak.’” By Thursday, September the 13th, Very was convinced that he had acquired an “identification with Christ.” Moved entirely by this spirit within, he began to declare to all about him at Harvard College that the coming of Christ was at hand. That evening he went to the study of the Reverend Henry Ware, Jr., who was working up his alarmed response to Waldo Emerson’s address at the Divinity School, a response directed against Emerson’s “doctrine of the Divine Impersonality,” which he was scheduled to deliver at the Divinity Hall Chapel on September 23d. Ignoring theology students who happened to be in the professor’s study, Very proceeded to parse Matthew chapter 24 to the professor and to insist that what he was offering was eternal, revealed truth. Ware could not agree with Very’s parsing of the chapter, so Very pulled out his big gun: HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 “You are doing your own will, and not the will of your Father.”59
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 13th of 9th M 1838 / Our Meeting was very small owing to the Rain & Stormy weather but to me a good solid comfortable Meeting to me. — Father Rodman remains very low & looks like passing away soon - he is past much speaking & can scarcely be understood at all — his Mouth is very sore & he refuses sustanance or drink he has however appeared to know several who have called to see him & has particularly recognized D Buffum - Yesterday he noticed John & Mary & tried to talk with them, but failed of making them understand much he said. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
September 13, Thursday-14, Friday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:
I went to New Bedford & Mr D. was in a frolicsome mood, & got up from supper in the evening, & said, “Come let us have some fun,” & went about to tickle his wife & his sisters. I grew grave, &, do what I could, I felt that I looked like one appointed to be hanged.
HANGING NEW BEDFORD MA
59. Which although it was true enough to be painful –for in fact the Reverend Professor Henry Ware, Jr. was one of these “heroic champion of the consensual reality” types– or false enough –for in fact the Reverend Professor Ware Junior was trudging along as un-clumsily as he could in the theological footprints of his father, the Reverend Professor Ware Senior– definitely was not a helpful thing to point out. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 14, Friday: In the morning the Harvard College tutor in Greek, Jones Very, began to inform his classes of his divine inspiration: “Flee to the mountains, for the end of all things is at hand.”60 According to a letter of a student, which had been posted to the student’s family before Very’s announcement of his inspiration:
[Very] bases all these instructions on the submission of our will to that of God: to adapt everything to that: to act, to speak, to move only as it is conformable to his will: then, when we have arrived at the degree of excellence, we shall see God; we shall be able to form ideas of him suitable to his nature and attributes; one glance into the works of Creation will afford us more instruction than a life of intense study of Greek and Latin, of arts and sciences: We are not to consider our bodies as our own, Mr. Very tells us, but as given us by God to be subservient to our souls; that is to say, to the influence of the spirit of God in us; and this is manifested in the conscience, which is His voice speaking to us, when we are doing our own will: he knocks, and too often is refused admittance: “he comes unto his own, and his own receives him not”: Now this is to be revolutionized. Whatever we are called upon to do, we must consider if it is God or our own evil desires which call on us to act thus: Conscience will tell us in a moment: and we must act accordingly: then God will take up his abode in us, and we shall feel his presence, which we cannot immediately do in our present state: Study is not to be a mechanical performance, but a duty imposed on us by the will of God, to render us better and happier: thus we must always consider it, without regards to marks of merit or demerit.
Very’s deportment on that infamous day was such as to make this student regret that the letter had already been posted. For, very clearly, something was going seriously awry in this inspiration business, and Tutor was self- combusting.
Later that day Very delivered an unscheduled address to the debating club at the Divinity School, pointing out to them that while they were merely doing their own wills, he himself was “no longer a man.” It was the Holy Spirit which spoke to him and through him, and he was merely passing on what was being imparted to him, which was “eternal truth” insofar as he had become convinced that he was at least temporarily able to transmit it without altering it in any way.61 That night one of the students who had been present at several of Very’s outbursts wrote in his diary that it was “very much as Geo Fox is represented to have done, and to have very similar views.” On the evening of the 14th, also, President Josiah Quincy, Sr. appeared at the dormitory room of Charles Stearns Wheeler to ask that he immediately assume responsibility for Very’s classes in Greek, and
60. Presumably this was a reference to the White Mountains in which Very had recently vacationed. No, maybe it was “flee to the mountain” that Very had hollered, and maybe it was a reference to the vicinity of solitary Mount Monadnock, which was closer than New Hampshire and at which the Narragansetts had taken refuge during the race riot known as “King Philip’s War.” Well, whatever. 61. Recent research into this Joan of Arc phenomenon suggests that it has something to do with unconscious “subvocalization,” in which the muscles of the voicebox exercise themselves without the blast of air which produces audible speech and in which the patient, instead of disregarding this phenomenon, for purpose of achieving a higher social status or for purpose of becoming the center of attention attempts to interpret what he or she is perceiving and ascribes it as a communication from holy authority. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 to describe Very as being in a state of “nervous collapse.”
Very’s discourse … sounds surprisingly like a recast of Emerson’s Address. While Very colored the “instructions” with his own non-Emersonian diction and qualifications, and interpreted and applied Emerson’s remarks in a more literal and specific way than Emerson intended, the relationship is clear. This was Very’s less formal equivalent of the declaration of independence for man teaching, delivered to freshman students instead of Divinity School graduates.
Henry Thoreau advertised in the Concord Freeman, announcing the second term of the Concord Academy.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 14th of 9th M 1838 / Father Rodman was so low last night that I thought it best to stay in the house Anthony V Taylor being there to Watch with him — At about 35 minutes part one this Morning he breathed his last, his departure being so easy HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 & calm that it was difficult to tell whether he was gone, or in a quiet sleep RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 15, Saturday: Jones Very’s brother Washington, a Freshman, was asked to escort him home to Salem. Very wanted to go through Concord and speak with Waldo Emerson, but was disregarded. His younger brother allowed him, however, to post a letter to Emerson with a promised manuscript on William Shakespeare:
My Brother
I am glad at last to be able to transmit what has been told me of Shakespeare ’tis the faint echo of that which speaks to you now. That was the utterance of the soul still in its travail but the hour is past of which I have often spoken to you and you hear not mine own words but the teachings of the Holy Spirit. Rejoice with me my brother and give thanks with me to the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who have now taken me to themselves and will not let me go any more from them. I feel that the day now is when “the tabernackle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people.” The gathering time has come and the harvest is now reaping from the wide plains of earth. Here, even here the will of the Father begins to be done as in heaven. My friend I tell you these things as they are told me and hope soon for a day or two of leisure perhaps in two or three weeks when I may speak with you face to face as I now write....
Edwin Gittleman glosses Very’s “Shakespeare” of the December 1837-September 1838 period as a “Poetics of Revelation” and as an “omnium-gatherum of his basic attitudes ... both a spiritual autobiography and a blueprint for action.” He characterizes both Very’s “Shakespeare” and his “Hamlet” as “more revealing as autobiography than as literary criticism.” I will attempt the feat of glossing Gittleman’s gloss: HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
In [“Shakespeare”] Very contrasted the man of [mere] genius (exemplified by Shakespeare) with the man of virtue (clearly Very himself, but figured as Christ).... Very [had] once told Emerson that if he could first “move Shakespeare” he could then “move the world.”... Shakespeare’s mind functioned spontaneously, without deliberate control. Its actions were not willed but reflexive and automatic ... in harmony with Nature ... childlike.... The child, like Nature, just is and automatically loves whatever else is. The man of genius, with his undifferentiated love of activity and existence, is thus a child-man, retaining his prelapsarian heritage through unwitting obedience to the Divine Will.... [However, b]ecause the obedience of the virtuous man is conscious, his greatness is superior to that of genius[,] ... moral rather than [merely] innocent.... Since man’s mind is so constituted by nature that it is not his own, he sins whenever he acts as if it were. He must therefore learn from genius and revelation that his “highest glory” consists of “conscious submission” to the Divine Will.... If ... the poet ... depicts “what ought to be, his teaching is false and ineffectual; it is then merely the handiwork of his own mind. But if “what is” is seen and understood “with a spirit more nearly allied to Him who sees all things as they are,” then poetry will exhibit God’s presence.... The only proper subject ... is “what is” — the “ever new, ever changing aspect of nature and of man.” ... [V]irtue need not be “brightened” nor vice “darkened” by the poet’s independent judgment.
Evidently, at about this point, although the promise was not publicized, Very was pledging to his mother and siblings that whatever the outcome of this Jesus-Christ venture of his, he would “come out of it” before a year had passed.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 15th of 9th M / This evening Steam Boat bore away our dear Son & daughter with our interesting & truly lovely grandchild, we regretted they could not stay to the funeral of their Grandfather Clarke Rodman, which is to be tomorrow After Meeting in the Afternoon but their child not being well, & having staid one day longer than they expected to, they were anxious to return to their home, & under the considerations we were reconciled to their going being truly thankful for their company as long as we have had it, & in particular that they came while their Grandfather was living & could know they were with him. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 15, Saturday: Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray Douglass were wed in New-York:
... With Mr. Ruggles, on the corner of Lispenard and Church streets, I was hidden several days, during which time my intended wife came on from Baltimore at my call, to share the burdens of life with me. She was a free woman, and came at once on getting the good news of my safety. We were married by Rev. J.W.C. Pennington, then a well-known and respected Presbyterian minister. I had no money with which to pay the marriage fee, but he seemed well pleased with our thanks. Mr. Ruggles was the first officer on the “Underground Railroad” whom I met after coming North, and was, indeed, the only one with whom I had anything to do till I became such an officer myself. Learning that my trade was that of a calker, he promptly decided that the best place for me was in New Bedford, Mass. He told me that many ships for whaling voyages were fitted out there, and that I might there find work at my trade and make a good living. So, on the day of the marriage ceremony, we took our little luggage to the steamer John W. Richmond, which, at that time, was one of the line running between New York and Newport, R.I. Forty- three years ago colored travelers were not permitted in the cabin, nor allowed abaft the paddle-wheels of a steam vessel. They were compelled, whatever the weather might be,—whether cold or hot, wet or dry,— to spend the night on deck. Unjust as this regulation was, it did not trouble us much; we had fared much harder before....
This may certify, that I joined together in holy matrimony Frederick Johnson and Anna Murray, as man and wife, in the presence of Mr. David Ruggles and Mrs. Michaels. NARRATIVE__ JAMES W.C. PENNINGTON > NEW YORK, Sept. 15, 1838
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD This David Ruggles had been born free in Connecticut. This Presbyterian minister, however, the Reverend Dr.
James W.C. Pennington DD, was himself an escaped slave formerly known as Jim Pembroke, and had also HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 escaped from darkest Maryland.
ANNA MURRAY DOUGLASS FREDERICK DOUGLASS
September 16, Sunday: Early in the morning Jones Very made the rounds, attempting to baptize the ministers of Salem as they were attempting to make their final preparations for church worship and sermonizing performances. “The coming of Christ is at hand.” What confrontations these must have been. When he attempted to baptize the Reverend Lucius Bolles, the local Baptist, he was bodily put out of the home. The Reverend Charles Wentworth Upham of Salem’s upscale First Church, by way of contrast, did not lay his own hands on Very, but did advise him that his hero Waldo Emerson was nothing but an Atheist, and did warn him that, by force if necessary, he was very likely on his way to the insane asylum. I don’t know the sequence of the baptisms, but Very did not overlook to attempt to baptize his own Unitarian minister, the Reverend John Brazer of the North Church that Very had joined during the summer of 1836. Among the houses that Very then visited was 53 Charter Street, the home of his friend Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. Standing uncomfortably close to her, he placed his hand on her head and declaimed: “I come to baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” “I am the Second Coming.” “This day is this fulfilled.” Etc. Peabody’s understanding was that “These impulses from above I think are never sound minded. The insanity of Quakers (which is very frequent under my observation) always grows out of it or rather begins in it.” Edwin Gittleman’s comment is that the young lady was “relieved that it was nothing worse than the consummation of a spiritual marriage.” By noon Peabody had gone rushing off in a fruitless attempt to placate the furious Reverend Upham, and was with Lydia Very, the mother, at the Very home at 54 Federal Street, with Very upstairs resting in his chamber. That evening Very again appeared at her door, and presented her with a folio sheet on which he had inscribed four double columns of sonnets written under the control of the Holy Ghost. Very had exaggerated ideas of his own status, but our polite society has no difficulty tolerating this in any number of individuals. What the established religious society cannot tolerate, however, point number one, is competition. Ministers, for instance, react with peculiar hostility to other ministers who are attempting to spirit away contributing members of their own flock. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Very was attempting to make converts and obtain followers, and that sort of conduct was in another category from simple grandiloquence. What an established religious society cannot tolerate, also, point number two, is being held up to ridicule in front of other established religious societies. What the Salem Unitarians in particular could not tolerate was that the local religion people were perceiving, in Very’s difficulties, a manifestation of the presumptuousness of their Unitarianism. They were embarrassed, they were intensely embarrassed. Edwin Gittleman’s comment on this is “Further scandal could be avoided only by providing him with an audience immune to his corrupting influence. Such an audience was conveniently available at the McLean Hospital in nearby Charlestown.” That night the Very home was raided and Very was escorted away, clutching his dog-eared Bible, over the screams of his mother that –at least physically– he was “endangering no one, not even himself.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 16, Sunday: Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray Douglass, as Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Johnson, were put by David Ruggles aboard the steamer John W. Richmond from New-York to Aquidneck Island62 in Rhode Island and there boarded a stagecoach headed toward the whaling port of New Bedford in the company of Friends Joseph Ricketson, Junior and William Congdon Taber.63
In New Bedford, known as a liberal town, the outlaw bridegroom would be seeking (but not finding, due to race prejudice) employment as a caulker — and would be put to work on the docks as a stevedore.
62. There is possible irony here, that might be looked into. What is the probability that Anna’s and Frederick’s black ancestors had been brought to this continent in ships owned by the international slavetraders of Newport? 63. Although Frederick Douglass’s various narratives all make the encounter in Newport seem quite accidental, it is rather more likely that David Ruggles had passed the word to the local anti-slavery society, and that Friends William Congdon Taber and Joseph Ricketson, Junior had been expectantly waiting for them to disembark from the steamer. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
ANNA MURRAY DOUGLASS FREDERICK DOUGLASS
We arrived at Newport the next morning, and soon after an old fashioned stage-coach, with “New Bedford” in large yellow letters on its sides, came down to the wharf. I had not money enough to pay our fare, and stood hesitating what to do. Fortunately for us, there were two Quaker gentlemen who were about to take passage on the stage,— Friends William C. Taber and Joseph Ricketson, —who at once discerned our true situation, and, in a peculiarly quiet way, addressing me, Mr. Taber said: “Thee get in.” I never obeyed an order with more alacrity, and we were soon on our way to our new home. When we reached “Stone Bridge” the passengers alighted for breakfast, and paid their fares to the driver. We took no breakfast, and, when asked for our fares, I told the driver I would make it right with him when we reached New Bedford.
WILLIAM C. TABER JOSEPH RICKETSON
“The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free, that is the task.” — André Gide, THE IMMORALIST translation Richard Howard NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970, page 7
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 16th of 9 M 1838 / I was so unwell for several days past that I could go out but little & have not attended Meetings today, but felt Able to be at the funeral of my Venerable Father in law Clarke Rodman, which was after the Afternoon Meeting - It was very numerously attended by people of all persuasions, & the sitting at the house was a very solemn Season leaving an evidence that words are not necessary to produce an evidence to the Truth but that it may be experienced in solemn Silence The only expressions were from Hannah Dennis simply the expression of the Scripture passage “Mark the perfect Man & behold the upright, for the end of that Man is peace.”- this simply expressed, without enlargement, left a precious savor & I never felt more unity with Hannah on any occasion. —- At the grave we had a Silent Solemn pause & the countenances of the people exhibited a reverence & respect not usually discoverable to the HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 same extent on such occasions -
RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 17, Monday-October 17, Wednesday: Jones Very “was carried to the Insane Hospital.” He would spend a month under the observation of a Doctor Bell in the McLean mental asylum in Charlestown MA.64 He took long walks about the grounds and into the nearby countryside. He thought a lot about Hamlet the mad prince of Denmark, and began writing his essay on the character of Hamlet. After the first week under custody, he made an agreement that he would abandon his “duty” to “promulgate” the truths that were being revealed to him. However, at the end of the month Doctor Bell had to conclude that his patient’s condition was unchanged. He had come in subject to no signs of clinical depression of nonfunctionality, and he was still perfectly cheerful. He had never been manic or subject to mood swings, and he was still stable. He came in physically healthy and was still in very appropriate physical health. Above all, there hadn’t been any hint of violence in his behavior or in his talk prior to his commitment, and nothing showed up during his stay. He was merely an inconvenience to society. Therefore he was discharged, and was discharged on the basis of a very sensible and correct awareness that, whatever the problem was, the asylum would not be able to help him resolve it.
The MCLEAN ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE is under the direction of the trustees of the Massachusetts General Hospital, it being a branch of that institution; and although located in Somerville, it may not be amiss to describe it here. It is about one mile from Boston, on a delightful prominence, and consists of an elegant house for the superintendent, with a wing at each end, handsomely constructed of brick, for the accommodation of the inmates, and has a large hall fifty feet long by twenty-five feet wide and fourteen high. The institution is supplied with billiard tables, &c., for the amusement of the inmates, who here receive not only the care, comforts, and attention, but the luxuries and retirement, which they had enjoyed at home. The male boarders and the female boarders have apartments in buildings entirely separated, and attended solely by persons of their own sex. No newspapers, pamphlets, or books are admitted without the assent of the attendant physician. Two practitioners in physic and two in surgery are annually appointed by the board of trustees, to act as a board of consultation. Two of the board of trustees form the visiting committee for the month, and each month are succeeded by two others. They meet at the asylum every Tuesday, to act upon applications for admission and discharges. “They shall fix the rate of board so low as to make it as much a charitable institution as its funds will permit, always regarding the circumstances of the respective boarders, and the accommodation they may receive.” The lowest rate of board is three dollars per week.
Publication of Die Schule der Gelaufigkeit op.229 by Carl Czerny was announced in the Wiener Zeitung.
64. McLean Hospital in Belmont MA would also periodically accommodate Robert Lowell (1917-1977), Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), and Anne Sexton (1928-1974). Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) would be applied to Sylvia Plath’s brain following a suicide attempt during her senior year at Smith College (refer to her THE BELL JAR). Anne Sexton’s floating through the corridors of McLean’s would be explained as her teaching of a poetry workshop there. (For a time in America, being mentally ill would be taken to be almost a credential validating one’s poetry, just as, for a male poet, acting effeminate had once been taken to be evidence of the poetic calling.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 18, Tuesday: 160 delegates attended the Peace Convention in the Marlboro Chapel of Boston.
This meeting creating the New England Non-Resistance Society is notable not only for creating a chain of influence that extends down through Lev Nikolævich Tolstòy and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. to us,65 but also for a feminist “first”: William Lloyd Garrison uttered, from the platform, the new locution “his or her” — a locution deliberately designed to de-privilege the male as the normative specimen of the human being.
There was a smile on the countenance of many abolition friends while others in the Convention looked grave.
However, the smiles lasted longer than the grave looks: immediately that Friend Abby Kelley called a minister to order for speaking out of turn, the “woman-contemners” marched out of the meeting.
Garrison wrote the “Declaration of Sentiments” for this assembly:
We cannot acknowledge allegiance to any human government.... Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind.... As every human government is upheld by physical strength, and its laws are enforced virtually at the point of the bayonet, we cannot hold any office which imposes upon its incumbent the obligation to compel men to do right, on pain of imprisonment or death. We therefore voluntarily exclude ourselves from every legislative and judicial body, and repudiate all human politics, worldly honors, and stations of authority. If we cannot occupy a seat in the legislature or on the bench, neither can we elect others to act as our substitutes in any such capacity.... While we shall adhere to the doctrines of non-resistance and passive submission to enemies, we purpose to speak and act boldly in the cause of God, to assail iniquity in high places.... It will be our leading object to devise ways and means for effecting a radical change in the views, feelings and practices of society respecting the sinfulness of war, and the treatment of our enemies.
65. Although the society put out a bimonthly publication named The Non-Resistant (until 1842), public newspapers quickly characterized this un-Christian attitude of nonresistance to evil as “No-Governmentism.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 25 of the 160 delegates were able to commit their lives to the principle that
evil can be exterminated from the earth only by good; that it is not safe to rely on an arm of flesh, –upon man, whose breath is in his nostrils– ...we shall submit to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, obey all the requirements of government, except such as we deem contrary to the commands of the gospel, and in no wise resist the operation of law, except such as we deem contrary to the commands of the gospel; and in no wise resist the operation of law, except by meekly submitting to the penalty of disobedience. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 18, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal in regard to the annular (partial) solar eclipse (#7260) that passed from Hudson Bay down across northern New England: SUN
This P.M. the Eclipse. Peter Howe did not like it for his rowan would not make hay: and he said “the sun looked as if a nigger was putting his head into it.”
Well, in some sense Peter Howe of Concord was right, black people were indeed raising their head into the sunshine. For on this day of eclipse Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray Douglass, as free Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Johnson, were arriving in their new hometown, New Bedford:
We arrived at Newport the next morning, and soon after an old fashioned stage-coach, with “New Bedford” in large yellow letters on its sides, came down to the wharf. I had not money enough to pay our fare, and stood hesitating what to do. Fortunately for us, there were two Quaker gentlemen who were about to take passage on the stage, —Friends William C. Taber and Joseph Ricketson,— who at once discerned our true situation, and, in a peculiarly quiet way, addressing me, Mr. Taber said: “Thee get in.” I never obeyed an order with more alacrity, and we were soon on our way to our new home. When we reached “Stone Bridge” the passengers alighted for breakfast, and paid their fares to the driver. We took no breakfast, and, when asked for our fares, I told the driver I would make it right with him when we reached New Bedford. I expected some objection to this on his part, but he made none. When, however, we reached New Bedford, he took our baggage, including three music-books, —two of them collections by Dyer, and one by Shaw,— and held them until I was able to redeem them by paying to him the amount due for our rides. This was soon done, for Mr. Nathan Johnson not only received me kindly and hospitably, but, on being informed about our baggage, at once loaned me the two dollars with which to square accounts with the stage-driver. Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Johnson reached a good old age, and now rest from their labors. I am under many grateful obligations to them. They not only “took me in when a stranger” and “fed me when hungry,” but taught me how to make an honest living. Thus, in a fortnight after my flight from Maryland, I was safe in New Bedford, a citizen of the grand old commonwealth of Massachusetts....
WILLIAM C. TABER JOSEPH RICKETSON NATHAN JOHNSON Mary J. Tabor would allege in 1907 something that does not jibe with the popular appreciation of Frederick Douglass that is gathered from reading of his NARRATIVE, to wit, that at this point, with him arriving at freedom in New Bedford, he was not yet able to read, let alone to write. She would allege that in New Bedford after his escape from slavery, it had been her relative William C. Taber who had found for Douglass the HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 stevedoring work he mentions on the wharves (help not acknowledged in Douglass’s written account), and she would allege that at this point Douglass had been taught to read by her relative, the New Bedford bookseller Charles Taber: Owing to the anti-slavery principles of Friends, New Bedford early became a station on the “underground railroad,” and if a fugitive slave could once reach this haven of rest, he felt almost safe from pursuit, public opinion being so strong that in the days of the Fugitive Slave Law it would have been impossible to capture a runaway slave in this town. Frederick Douglass, one of the most remarkable of colored men, passed some time here in safety, and always retained a most grateful recollection of his sojourn among the Quakers. It happened on this wise: Having made his escape from slavery and reached Newport after many perils, he was very anxious to come to New Bedford, that place being known among the slaves as a heaven upon earth. Hearing the name called out, he peeped shyly around the corner of a building and gazed longingly at the state coach which was filled with “women Friends” on their way home from New England Yearly Meeting. William C. Taber, sitting on the top of the coach, observed the pleading eyes, and said, “Yes, friend, it is all right, climb up here beside me.” No sooner said than done, William C. Taber paid his fare, brought him to his own house, and found work for him on the wharves, as he had been a stevedore at the South. While in New Bedford, he was taught to read by Charles Taber. Thus the distinguished orator was launched on the road to fame. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 What we have, above, is essentially an assertion that when Douglass arrived in New Bedford aboard that stage from Newport, Rhode Island, he could not yet read, let alone write. —That that is importantly discordant with the fulsome manner in which the NARRATIVE is now conventionally read, is something that goes without saying.
For their wedding document, the newlyweds had adopted the family name Johnson, but soon this came to seem an unwise selection. At the time the Douglasses were there, New Bedford had the highest per capita income in America. When the fugitive slave Freddy Bailey, then calling himself Frederick Johnson, arrived at the home of Nathan Johnson and Mary “Polly” Johnson in New Bedford (the Douglasses are not the only guests
This is the recent dedication of a plaque at the site, attended by descendants of the original participants:
documented to have found refuge for a time at 21 Seventh Street, next door to the Friends meetinghouse),
Nathan was reading Robert Burns, and within a day or two Johnson would rename him after the hero Douglas HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 in LADY OF THE LAKE, as Frederick Douglass. (Frederick decided to spell it “Douglass” because there were some black families in New Bedford who were spelling their name that way.)66
66. But why did Freddy Bailey alias Fred Johnson accept the proffered name “Douglass”? Merely because it had been suggested to him? I think not! The Following is from a collection of Douglass’s speeches entitled LECTURES ON AMERICAN-SLAVERY, which would be published in 1851:
It is often said, by the opponents of the Anti-slavery cause that, the condition of the people of Ireland is more deplorable than that of the American slaves. Far be it from me to underrate the sufferings of the Irish people. They have been long oppressed; and the same heart that prompts me to plead the cause of the American bondman, makes it impossible for me not to sympathize with all the oppressed of all lands. Yet I must say that there is no analogy between the two cases. The Irishman is poor, but he is not a slave. He may be in rags, but he is not a slave. He is still the master of his own body and can say with the poet, “The hand of Douglass is his own.”
Thus in all probability the name was chosen because although it was intentionally opaque it nevertheless suggested, at least to its bearer, in the idea that “The hand of Douglass is his own,” the same sort of thing that was suggested in that time by the more usual name “Freeman” meaning “the free man.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
ANNA MURRAY DOUGLASS FREDERICK DOUGLASS
The first thing these Douglasses with a wedding certificate in the name of Johnson, but with no manumission papers to produce for the husband whether he was named “Mr. Douglas” or “Mr. Johnson,” discovered in “free” New Bedford was that racial prejudice would prevent the husband from using his skills as a ship calker. It was explained that all the white calkers would quit. Work was found for him, by Friend William C. Taber, as a stevedore, carrying oil aboard a vessel, and he then had to saw wood, shovel coal, sweep chimneys, and roll casks in an oil refinery. However, accounts of such Jim Crow experiences would not fit into the narrative he later needed to tell to righteous Northern abolition audiences, for whom South=Them=Evil meant North=Us=Good, and so Douglass ordinarily suppressed this experience of racial prejudice in New Bedford.67
Finding my trade of no immediate benefit, I threw off my calking habiliments, and prepared myself to do any kind of work I could get to do.
67. If “French” innocence consists in the refusal to be shamed by the nature of one’s pleasures, and if the “German” variety consists in an awareness that so long as one is sacrificing oneself, no-one has a right to object to one’s sacrificing them as well, and if the “English” consists in a principled refusal to take responsibility for one’s obedience to improper instructions from one’s betters, and the “Italian” in not happening to notice where you have your hand, then the innocence of the USer must consist in a refusal or a failure to recognize evil of which we ourselves are the beneficiaries. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Although a skilled craftsman could not get work in his craft in that city at that time, due entirely to the color of his skin, Frederick Douglass did not speak of this until 1881 , when in a reference to “the test of the real civilization of the community,” he suggested that the New Bedford of the 1840s had failed that test:
I am told that colored persons can now get employment at calking in New Bedford. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In fuller detail:
... The name given me by my dear mother was no less pretentious and long than Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. I had, however, while living in Maryland, dispensed with the Augustus Washington, and retained only Frederick Bailey. Between Baltimore and New Bedford, the better to conceal myself from the slave-hunters, I had parted with Bailey and called myself Johnson; but in New Bedford I found that the Johnson family was already so numerous as to cause some confusion in distinguishing them, hence a change in this name seemed desirable. Nathan Johnson, mine host, placed great emphasis upon this necessity, and wished me to allow him to select a name for me. I consented, and he called me by my present name—the one by which I have been known for three and forty years—Frederick Douglass. Mr. Johnson had just been reading the “Lady of the Lake,” and so pleased was he with its great character that he wished me to bear his name. Since reading that charming poem myself, I have often thought that, considering the noble hospitality and manly character of Nathan Johnson —black man though he was— he, far more than I, illustrated the virtues of the Douglas of Scotland. Sure am I that, if any slave-catcher had entered his domicile with a view to my recapture, Johnson would have shown himself like him of the “stalwart hand.” ...My “Columbian Orator,” almost my only book, had done nothing to enlighten me concerning Northern society. I had been taught that slavery was the bottom fact of all wealth. With this foundation idea, I came naturally to the conclusion that poverty must be the general condition of the people of the free States. In the country from which I came, a white man holding no slaves was usually an ignorant and poverty-stricken man, and men of this class were contemptuously called “poor white trash.” Hence I supposed that, since the non-slave-holders at the South were ignorant, poor, and degraded as a class, the non-slave-holders at the North must be in a similar condition. I could have landed in no part of the United States where I should have found a more striking and gratifying contrast, not only to life generally in the South, but in the condition of the colored people there, than in New Bedford. I was amazed when Mr. Johnson told me that there was nothing in the laws or constitution of Massachusetts that would prevent a colored man from being governor of the State, if the people should see fit to elect him. There, too, the black man’s children attended the public schools with the white man’s children, and apparently without objection from any quarter. To impress me with my security from recapture and return to slavery, Mr. Johnson assured me that no slave-holder could take a slave out of New Bedford; that there were men there who would lay down their lives to save me from such a fate.
September 19, Wednesday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th da 19 of 9th M 1838 / Today I Mailed a letter to Br David HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Rodman giving some account of Fathers last Moments &c. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
September 20, Thursday: In Boston’s Marlboro chapel, several hundred people helped found the New England Non-Resistance Society.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 20th of 9th M 1838 / Our Meeting today was small, & silent, but to me a season of feeling - I could but reflect that we should never see Father Rodman in his seat again, & how poorly it was now to be occupied - We are now reduced to three who are to Sit at the head of the Meeting & Oh the weight & responsibility which devolved upon us — Our poor Society what is it coming to - I can but feel a hope it will be sustained - that the Great Shepherd of the Flock will extend his gathering Crook & feed his tender lambs - But Oh the weakness which surrounds us RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
September 21, Friday: At the St. Louis dock, Dr. John Emerson and his bride, and their slaves Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott, transferred to the steamboat Gypsy.
The balloon of the intrepid master Boston goldbeater and aeronaut Louis Lauriat graced the skies above historic Concord, New Hampshire. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
September 22, Saturday: Henry Thoreau’s advertisement about the second term of the Concord Academy appeared in the Yeoman’s Gazette. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 22, Saturday: On the fifth day after the family’s arrival in New Bedford and selection of its new name, presumably on September the 22d, Frederick Douglass went looking for work, and was helped out by the family of a local Unitarian Reverend: [see the following screens] HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
The fifth day after my arrival, I put on the clothes of a common laborer, and went upon the wharves in search of work. On my way down Union street I saw a large pile of coal in front of the house of Rev. Ephraim Peabody, the Unitarian minister. I went to the kitchen door and asked the privilege of bringing in and putting away this coal. “What will you charge?” said the lady. “I will leave that to you, madam.” “You may put it away,” she said. I was not long in accomplishing the job, when the dear lady put into my hand TWO SILVER HALF-DOLLARS. To understand the emotion which swelled my heart as I clasped this money, realizing that I had no master who could take it from me,—THAT IT WAS MINE— THAT MY HANDS WERE MY OWN, and could earn more of the precious coin,—one must have been in some sense himself a slave. My next job was stowing a sloop at Uncle Gid. Howland’s wharf with a cargo of oil for New York. I was not only a freeman, but a free working-man, and no “master” stood ready at the end of the week to seize my hard earnings. The season was growing late and work was plenty. Ships were being fitted out for whaling, and much wood was used in storing them. The sawing this wood was considered a good job. With the help of old Friend Johnson (blessings on his memory) I got a saw and “buck,” and went at it. When I went into a store to buy a cord with which to brace up my saw in the frame, I asked for a “fip’s” worth of cord. The man behind the counter looked rather sharply at me, and said with equal sharpness, “You don’t belong about here.” I was alarmed, and thought I had betrayed myself. A fip in Maryland was six and a quarter cents, called fourpence in Massachusetts. But no harm came from the “fi’penny- bit” blunder, and I confidently and cheerfully went to work with my saw and buck. It was new business to me, but I never did better work, or more of it, in the same space of time on the plantation for Covey, the negro- breaker, than I did for myself in these earliest years of my freedom. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
Notwithstanding the just and humane sentiment of New Bedford three and forty years ago, the place was not entirely free from race and color prejudice. The good influence of the Roaches, Rodmans, Arnolds, Grinnells, and Robesons did not pervade all classes of its people. The test of the real civilization of the community came when I applied for work at my trade, and then my repulse was emphatic and decisive. It so happened that Mr. Rodney French, a wealthy and enterprising citizen, distinguished as an anti-slavery man, was fitting out a vessel for a whaling voyage, upon which there was a heavy job of calking and coppering to be done. I had some skill in both branches, and applied to Mr. French for work. He, generous man that he was, told me he would employ me, and I might go at once to the vessel. I obeyed him, but upon reaching the float-stage, where others [sic] calkers were at work, I was told that every white man would leave the ship, in her unfinished condition, if I struck a blow at my trade upon her. This uncivil, inhuman, and selfish treatment was not so shocking and scandalous in my eyes at the time as it now appears to me. Slavery had inured me to hardships that made ordinary trouble sit lightly upon me. Could I have worked at my trade I could have earned two dollars a day, but as a common laborer I received but one dollar. The difference was of great importance to me, but if I could not get two dollars, I was glad to get one; and so I went to work for Mr. French as a common laborer. The consciousness that I was free—no longer a slave—kept me cheerful under this, and many similar proscriptions, which I was destined to meet in New Bedford and elsewhere on the free soil of Massachusetts. For instance, though colored children attended the schools, and were treated kindly by their teachers, the New Bedford Lyceum refused, till several years after my residence in that city, to allow any colored person to attend the lectures delivered in its hall. Not until such men as Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Horace Mann, Sr. refused to lecture in their course while there was such a restriction, was it abandoned. Becoming satisfied that I could not rely on my trade in New Bedford to give me a living, I prepared myself to do any kind of work that came to hand. I sawed wood, shoveled coal, dug cellars, moved rubbish from back yards, worked on the wharves, loaded and unloaded vessels, and scoured their cabins. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 22, Saturday: Shortly after the total solar eclipse of the afternoon of September 18th had been visible in New England, Nathaniel Peabody Rogers published the following article in Concord, New Hampshire’s anti-slavery paper Herald of Freedom:
ECLIPSE OF THE SUN. We had a fine opportunity, on our way from Plymouth to Concord, to witness this grand conjunction of the mighty orbs of the sky –this conflict of the “greater and lesser lights”– the lesser obscuring the greater, as is sometimes the case among sublunary bodies, by force of position. The glorious sun was indeed “sick almost to doomsday,” –and it was pitiful to see his regal distress, and with what dignity and decency he drew around him his robe of clouds, to hide his disaster and shame from the smoked-glass gaze of mortals. The atmosphere and the landscape sombered at his obscuration, and he looked, as the foul intrusion overshadowed his disk, like a noble nature seized upon, darkened, marred and smothered to blackness and darkness, by the Genius of slavery. The envious eclipse passes off, and the released luminary shines on gloriously again in mid heaven. Slavery is perpetual eclipse –sickness to “doomsday” –eternal obscuration. May God in his mercy rectify the erring orbs of life, to prevent and remove such fatal moral conjunctions. All animate creation seemed to apprehend and notice instinctively the malady of the heavens. The few birds that remain extant at this unmusical season, gave token of their apprehension of night-fall by betaking themselves to the topmost boughs of the trees — to get as late a good-night as they could, from the blessed luminary whose good morrow they hail with such choral gladness, in that joyous season when “the time of the singing of birds is come.” The cricket and the grasshopper, in the fields by the road side, set up, as night came down, their twilight hum, and blew their “drowsy bugle.” A drove of cattle, through which we passed, on the way to Brighton –like a coffle from the city of WASHINGTON to Alabama– halted, as the drover told us, as if the hour for putting up at night had come. And our own good steed, refreshed by the coolness of the temperature, and warned by the deepening shadows, set up his evening trot, in full remembrance, as well as his master, of Concord hospitality –for he has a “memory like a horse”– and had every visible and ostensible reason to believe, that stable-time and release from the harness were at hand. Would that the poor human cattle of the republic could realize such a season! But neither night nor eclipse brings respite to them. THEY ARE SLAVES. At the height of the obscuration, the sky wore the appearance of real sunset — a sunset far up from the horizon, with blue sky below, between it and the hills. The passing off of the eclipse was invisible, by reason of the thick, hard, night-looking clouds, and the sun did not reappear to give assurance of his recovery. May it not be emblematic of the extinction of slavery in this country amid the gloomy shadowings and night of insurrection, which our friend, the Observer, deprecates with such deep shuddering — while the prospect of eternal slavery he can look on with most serene composure. The “specious twilight” of the eclipse gradually put on evening’s bona fide enshroudings, and settled into ——— but we forget that our eclipse was seen by all our readers, and will leave them, with the wish, that the sun may rise upon them again on the morrow, all unmarred and unscathed by his conflict with the “dirty planet,” and light them all on the way to a day of anti-slavery gratitude and duty.
(We may trust that in particular this will be true for one new black family in New Bedford.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 After September 22: At some subsequent point, Frederick Douglass found steadier work, hard unskilled HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 labor at a brass foundry:
I afterward got steady work at the brass-foundry owned by Mr. Richmond. My duty here was to blow the bellows, swing the crane, and empty the flasks in which castings were made; and at times this was hot and heavy work. The articles produced here were mostly for ship work, and in the busy season the foundry was in operation night and day. I have often worked two nights and every working day of the week. My foreman, Mr. Cobb, was a good man, and more than once protected me from abuse that one or more of the hands was disposed to throw upon me. While in this situation I had little time for mental improvement. Hard work, night and day, over a furnace hot enough to keep the metal running like water, was more favorable to action than thought; yet here I often nailed a newspaper to the post near my bellows, and read while I was performing the up and down motion of the heavy beam by which the bellows was inflated and discharged. It was the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, and I look back to it now, after so many years, with some complacency and a little wonder that I could have been so earnest and persevering in any pursuit other than for my daily bread. I certainly saw nothing in the conduct of those around to inspire me with such interest: they were all devoted exclusively to what their hands found to do. I am glad to be able to say that, during my engagement in this foundry, no complaint was ever made against me that I did not do my work, and do it well. The bellows which I worked by main strength was, after I left, moved by a steam-engine. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
September 22, Saturday: Henry Thoreau’s advertisement about the second term of the Concord Academy appeared in the Yeoman’s Gazette. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 23, Sunday: The Reverend Convers Francis of Watertown exchanged pulpits for the day with the Reverend Ezra Ripley of Concord. His prooftext for the Concord morning service was John 6:47 and his topic was “He That Believeth on the Son Hath Everlasting Life.” His prooftext for the afternoon service was Acts 21:11 and his topic was “The Language of Action.”
September 24, Monday: Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody wrote to Waldo Emerson in regard to the situation of Jones Very: ... I have feared insanity before. — I thought (at the time) that the visit to Groton showed it. — These impulses from above I think are never sound minded — the insanity of Quakers — (which is very frequent under my observation) always grows out of it — or rather begins in it.
September 26, Wednesday: Gaetano Donizetti’s opera seria Poliuto, already in production, was banned by the King of Naples because, offensively, its subject was a saint.
September 27, Thursday: Robert Schumann departed Leipzig for Vienna to explore the possibilities of moving there with Clara Wieck. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 28, Friday: The drought having broken and headman John Ross having been able to obtain additional funds for travel food and clothing, this was the date on which some 1,200 members of the Cherokee Nation led by headman Cherokee John Benge, in the process of being wedged out of their homeland, departed from the Appalachian concentration camps into which they had been hounded by the US Cavalry in the direction of the Oklahoma Indian Territories. For most this was the point at which the “Trail of Tears” began.68
Charles Darwin was reading in the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus’s ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLES OF POPULATION (repeatedly revised and republished since 1798) when he had his moment of illumination. He was reviewing Malthus’s argument that growth in population, if entirely unchecked, must of necessity quickly outstrip all possible supplies of food, and inevitably lead to such a struggle for limited resources as would cause the death of losers. Copying the Reverend’s principle into his notebook, he added a comment of his own, his very 1st metaphor in regard to what would become his theory of descent with modification: One may say there is a force like a hundred thousand wedges trying [to] force every kind of adapted structure into the gaps in the oeconomy of nature, or rather forming gaps by thrusting out weaker ones. This is the insight which Darwin would hone and sharpen through the next two decades of speculation. In the very lengthy initial version of The Origin of Species, which would not be published during his lifetime, he would develop this wedge metaphor in great detail, and then he would compress this account of the metaphor for his shorter book which he would get published in 1859: Nature may be compared to a surface covered with ten thousand sharp wedges, many of the same shape and many of different shapes representing different species, all packed closely together and all driven in by incessant blows: the blows being far severer at one time than at another; sometimes a wedge of one form and sometimes another being struck; the one driven deeply in forcing out others; with the jar and shock often transmitted very far to other wedges in many lines of direction. This was the root of the idea that if favorable variations of a species would naturally tend to be preserved while unfavorable variations would naturally tend not to be preserved then, without the external intervention of any guiding hand or intention, the form of a species would “naturally” tend statistically to drift in the direction of adaptation for survival in its niche precisely as if it were subject to “artificial” selection by a breeder such as a breeder of pigeons: On an average every species must have same number killed year with year by hawks, by cold, & c. — even one species of hawk decreasing in number must affect instantaneously all the rest. The final cause of all this wedging must be to sort out proper structure....
68. This initial group of Cherokee would reach its destination beyond the Mississippi on January 17, 1839. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September 29, Saturday: Henry Thoreau’s advertisement about the 2d term of the Concord Academy appeared a second time in the Yeoman’s Gazette. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
FALL 1838
Fall: The railroad from Boston reached Nashua, New Hampshire, rendering steam travel along the Merrimack River totally unnecessary. The steamboat Herald sank near the entrance of the Middlesex Canal into the Merrimack at Wicasee Falls near Tyng’s Island.
Fall: The Alcotts moved to Number 6, Beach Street in Boston and gave up renting the basement of the Masonic Temple for their schoolroom. The few remaining pupils, which of course included the Alcott girls, would now be educated in their home. There were still nearly 20 students, but they were paying only $6.00 to $12.00 per quarter. The family income had dropped to less than $500.00 per year. Abba Alcott was pregnant for the seventh time, with the baby due in the summertime. Bronson Alcott began to supplement his income by giving evening “conversations,” often for less than $1.00 per evening. THE ALCOTT FAMILY
Fall 1838-Winter 1838/1839: During this fall and winter season, when only 2,000 Cherokees had begun their westward trek by the deadline set in the treaty of December 29, 1835, the US Cavalry began a campaign of search and forced concentration into racial camps, in preparation for relocation. During the fall and winter, the tribal groups were escorted by the white cavalry along what would come to be known as the “Trail of Tears.” TRAIL OF TEARS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 September: The last of the Pottawatomie of Indiana were rounded up and removed by county militiamen called up to state service for that purpose by the Governor and led by a General Tipton: “Many of the Indian men were assembled near the chapel when we arrived, and were not permitted to leave camp or separate until matters were amicably settled and they had agreed to give peaceable possession of the land sold by them.” Anything that might be used as a weapon was confiscated. Tipton managed to collect together 859 individuals, disproportionately the very old or very young. A Catholic missionary, Father Petit, describes the final Christian worship service: “At the moment of my departure I assembled all my children to speak to them for the last time. I wept, and my auditors sobbed aloud. It was indeed a heartrending sight, and over our dying mission we prayed for the success of those on their way to the new hunting grounds. We then with one accord say, ‘O Virgin, we place our confidence in thee.’” When the march order was given on the early morning of September 4th, the weather was very hot and dry. The native Americans were marched single file on foot to cross Indiana, Illinois, and the Mississippi River. Before reaching the pioneer settlement at Logansport there were many deaths. The whites too were getting sick and many were permitted to return to their homes, astride Indian ponies taken from the detainees. On the way through the Wabash Valley, the suffering increased so much that General Tipton allowed Father Petit to come to the scene: “On Sunday, September 16, I came in sight of my poor Christians, marching in a line, and guarded on both sides by soldiers who hastened their steps. A burning sun poured its beams upon them, and they were enveloped in a thick cloud of dust. After them came the baggage wagons into which were crowded the many sick, the women and children who were too feeble to walk... Almost all the babies, exhausted by the heat, were dead or dying. I baptized several newly-born happy little ones, whose first step was from the land of exile to heaven.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
OCTOBER
October: A negrero flying the Portuguese flag, the Ganges, master unknown, out of Quelimane with a cargo of 721 enslaved Africans on its first of two known Middle Passages, arrived at the port of Ponta Negra, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Firmeza, master unknown, out of the Congo River with a cargo of 475 enslaved Africans on one of its four known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at Alto Moira, Brazil. A Portuguese slaver, the Maria Segundo, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 417 enslaved Africans on one of its ten-count-’em-ten known such voyages, arrived at the port of Baia Sepetiba, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Maria Virginia, master unknown, out of Sao Tome with a cargo of 394 enslaved Africans on its one and only known Middle Passage, arrived at the port of Sao Sebastiao, Brazil. A Portuguese slaver, the Constancia, master Rodriguez, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 213 enslaved Africans on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages, arrived in Cuban waters. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Almedia, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of an unknown number of enslaved Africans on its one and only known Middle Passage, arrived at Rio, Brazil. A Portuguese slaver, the Amalia, master Alves, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of an unknown number of enslaved Africans on one of its five known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at Trinidad. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE
October: The Reverend Orestes Augustus Brownson had an article in the Boston Quarterly Review about Waldo Emerson’s “Divinity School Address” at the Harvard Divinity School: ART. VII.—An Address delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday Evening, 15 July, 1838. By RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Boston: James Munroe & Co. 1838. 8vo. pp. 32. This is in some respects a remarkable address,—remarkable for its own character and for the place where and the occasion on which it was delivered. It is not often, we fancy, that such an address is delivered by a clergyman in a Divinity College to a class of young men just ready to go forth into the churches as preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Indeed it is not often that a discourse teaching doctrines like the leading doctrines of this, is delivered by a professedly religious man, anywhere or on any occasion. We are not surprised that this address should have produced some excitement and called forth some severe censures upon its author; for we have long known that there are comparatively few who can hear with calmness the utterance of opinions to which they do not subscribe. Yet we regret to see the abuse which has been heaped upon Mr. Emerson. We ought to learn to tolerate all opinions, to respect every man’s right to form and to utter his own opinions whatever they may be. If we regard the opinions as unsound, false, or dangerous, we should meet them calmly, refute them if we can; but be careful to respect, and to treat with all Christian meekness and love, him who entertains them. There are many things in this address we heartily approve; there is much that we admire and thank the author for having uttered. We like its life and freshness, its freedom and independence, its richness and beauty. But we cannot help regarding its tone as somewhat arrogant, its spirit is quite too censorious and desponding, its philosophy as indigested, and its reasoning as inconclusive. We do not like its mistiness, its vagueness, and HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 its perpetual use of old words in new senses. Its meaning too often escapes us; and we find it next to impossible to seize its dominant doctrine and determine what it is or what it is not. Moreover, it does not appear to us to be all of the same piece. It is made up of parts borrowed from different and hostile systems, which “baulk and baffle” the author’s power to form into a consistent and harmonious whole. In a moral point of view the leading doctrine of this address, if we have seized it, is not a little objectionable. It is not easy to say what that moral doctrine is; but so far as we can collect it, it is, that the soul possesses certain laws or instincts, obedience to which constitutes its perfection. “The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws.” “The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul.” The moral sentiment results from the perception of these laws, and moral character results from conformity to them. Now this is not, we apprehend, psychologically true. If any man will analyze the moral sentiment as a fact of consciousness, he will find it something more than “an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul.” He will find that it is a sense of obligation. Man feels himself under obligation to obey a law; not the law of his own soul, a law emanating from his soul as a lawgiver; but a law above his soul, imposed upon him by a supreme lawgiver, who has a right to command his obedience. He does never feel that he is moral in obeying merely the laws of his own nature, but in obeying the command of a power out of him, above him, and independent of him. By the laws of the soul, we presume, Mr. Emerson means our instincts. In his Phi Beta Kappa Address, reviewed in this journal for January, he speaks much of the instincts, and bids us “plant ourselves on our instincts, and the huge world will come round to us.” The ethical rule he lays down is then, “follow thy instincts,” or as he expresses it in the address before us, “obey thyself.” Now if we render this rule into the language it will assume in practice, we must say, obey thyself,—follow thy instincts,—follow thy inclinations,—live as thou listest. Strike out the idea of something above man to which he is accountable, make him accountable only to himself, and why shall he not live as he listeth? We see not what restraint can legitimately be imposed upon any of his instincts or propensities. There may then be some doubts whether the command, “obey thyself,” be an improvement on the Christian command, “deny thyself.” We presume that when Mr. Emerson tells us to obey ourselves, to obey the laws of our soul, to follow our instincts, he means that we shall be true to our higher nature, that we are to obey our higher instincts, and not our baser propensities. He is himself a pure minded man, and would by no means encourage sensuality. But how shall we determine which are our higher instincts and which are our lower instincts? We do not perceive that he gives us any instructions on this point. Men like him may take the higher instincts to be those which lead us to seek truth and beauty; but men in whom the sensual nature overlays the spiritual, may think differently; and what rule has he for determining which is in the right? He commands us to be ourselves, and sneers at the idea of having “models.” We must HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 take none of the wise or good, not even Jesus Christ as a model of what we should be. We are to act out ourselves. Now why is not the sensualist as moral as the spiritualist, providing he acts out himself? Mr. Emerson is a great admirer of Carlyle; and according to Carlyle, the moral man, the true man, is he who acts out himself. A Mirabeau, or a Danton is, under a moral point of view, the equal of a Howard or a Washington, because equally true to himself. Does not this rule confound all moral distinctions, and render moral judgments a “formula,” all wise men must “swallow and make away with”? But suppose we get over this difficulty and determine which are the higher instincts of our nature, those which we must follow in order to perfect our souls, and become,—as Mr. Emerson has it,—God; still we ask, why are we under obligation to obey these instincts? Because obedience to them will perfect our souls? But why are we bound to perfect our souls? Where there is no sense of obligation, there is no moral sense. We are moral only on the condition that we feel there is something which we ought to do. Why ought we to labor for our own perfection? Because it will promote our happiness? But why are we morally bound to seek our own happiness? It may be very desirable to promote our happiness, but it does not follow from that we are morally bound to do it, and we know there are occasions when we should not do it. Put the rule, Mr. Emerson lays down, in the best light possible, it proposes nothing higher than our own individual good as the end to be sought. He would tell us to reduce all the jarring elements of our nature to harmony, and produce and maintain perfect order in the soul. Now is this the highest good the reason can conceive? Are all things in the universe to be held subordinate to the individual soul? Shall a man take himself as the centre of the universe, and say all things are for his use, and count them of value only as they contribute something to his growth or well-being? This were a deification of the soul with a vengeance. It were nothing but a system of transcendental selfishness. It were pure egotism. According to this, I am everything; all else is nothing, at least nothing except what it derives from the fact that it is something to me. Now this system of pure egotism, seems to us to run through all Mr. Emerson’s writings. We meet it everywhere in his masters, Carlyle and Goethe. He and they may not be quite so grossly selfish as were some of the old sensualist philosophers; they may admit a higher good than the mere gratification of the senses, than mere wealth or fame; but the highest good they recognise is an individual good, the realization of order in their own individual souls. Everything by them is estimated according to its power to contribute to this end. If they mingle with men it is to use them; if they are generous and humane, if they labor to do good to others, it is always as a means, never as an end. Always is the doing, whatever it be, to terminate in self. Self, the higher self, it is true, is always the centre of gravitation. Now is the man who adopts this moral rule, really a moral man? Does not morality always propose to us an end separate from our own, above our own, and to which our own good is subordinate? No doubt it is desirable to perfect the individual soul, to HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 realize order in the individual; but the reason, the moment it is developed, discloses a good altogether superior to this. Above the good of the individual, and paramount to it, is the good of the universe, the realization of the good of creation, absolute good. No man can deny that the realization of the good of all beings is something superior to the realization of the good of the individual. Morality always requires us to labor for the highest good we can conceive. The moral law then requires us to seek another good than that of our own souls. The individual lives not for himself alone. His good is but an element, a fragment of the universal good, and is to be sought never as an end, but always as a means of realizing absolute good, or universal order. This rule requires the man to forget himself, to go out of himself, and under certain circumstances to deny himself, to sacrifice himself, for a good which does not centre in himself. He who forgets himself, who is disinterested and heroic, who sacrifices himself for others, is in the eyes of reason, infinitely superior to the man who merely uses others as the means of promoting his own intellectual and spiritual growth. Mr. Emerson’s rule then is defective, inasmuch as it proposes the subordinate as the paramount, and places obligation where we feel it is not. For the present, then, instead of adopting his formula, “obey thyself,” or Carlyle’s formula, “act out thyself,” we must continue to approve the Christian formula, “deny thyself, and love thy neighbor as thyself.” But passing over this, we cannot understand how it is possible for a man to become virtuous by yielding to his instincts. Virtue is voluntary obedience to a moral law, felt to be obligatory. We are aware of the existence of the law, and we act in reference to it, and intend to obey it. We of course are not passive but active in the case of virtue. Virtue is always personal. It is our own act. We are in the strictest sense of the word the cause or creator of it. Therefore it is, we judge ourselves worthy of praise when we are not virtuous. But in following instinct, we are not active but passive. The causative force at work in our instincts, is not our personality, our wills, but an impersonal force, a force we are not. Now in yielding to our instincts, as Mr. Emerson advises us, we abdicate our own personality, and from persons become things, as incapable of virtue as the trees of the forest or the stones of the field. Mr. Emerson, moreover, seems to us to mutilate man, and in his zeal for the instincts to entirely overlook reflection. The instincts are all very well. They give us the force of character we need, but they do not make up the whole man. We have understanding as well as instinct, reflection as well as spontaneity. Now to be true to our nature, to the whole man, the understanding should have its appropriate exercise. Does Mr. Emerson give it this exercise? Does he not rather hold the understanding in light esteem, and labor almost entirely to fix our minds on the fact of the primitive intuition as all- sufficient of itself. We do not ask him to reject the instincts, but we ask him to compel them to give account of themselves. We are willing to follow them; but we must do it designedly, intentionally, after we have proved our moral right to do it, not before. Here is an error in Mr. Emerson’s system of no small magnitude. He does not account for the instincts nor legitimate them. He does not prove them to be divine forces or safe guides. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In practice, therefore, he is merely reviving the old sentimental systems of morality, systems which may do for the young, the dreamy, or the passionate, but never for a sturdy race of men and women who demand a reason for all they do, for what they approve or disapprove. Nor are we better satisfied with the theology of this discourse. We cannot agree with Mr. Emerson in his account of the religious sentiment. He confounds the religious sentiment with the moral; but the two sentiments are psychologically distinct. The religious sentiment is a craving to adore, resulting from the soul’s intuition of the Holy; the moral sense is a sense of obligation resulting from the soul’s intuition of a moral law. The moral sentiment leads us up merely to universal order; the religious sentiment leads us up to God, the Father of universal order. Religious ideas always carry us into a region far above that of moral ideas. Religion gives the law to ethics, not ethics to religion. Religion is the communion of the soul with God, morality is merely the cultus exterior, the outward worship of God, the expression of the life of God in the soul: as James has it, “pure religion,—external worship, for so should we understand the original,—and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” But even admitting the two sentiments are not two but one, identical, we are still dissatisfied with Mr. Emerson’s account of the matter. The religious sentiment, according to him, grows out of the soul’s insight of the perfection of its own laws. These laws are in fact the soul itself. They are not something distinct from the soul, but its essence. In neglecting them the soul is not itself, in finding them it finds itself, and in living them it is God. This is his doctrine. The soul then in case of the religious sentiment has merely an intuition of itself. Its craving to adore is not a craving to adore something superior to itself. In worshipping then, the soul does not worship God, a being above man and independent on him, but it worships itself. We must not then speak of worshipping God, but merely of worshipping the soul. Now is this a correct account of the religious sentiment? The religious sentiment is in the bottom of the soul, and it is always a craving of the soul to go out of itself, and fasten itself on an object above itself, free from its own weakness, mutability, and impurity, on a being all-sufficient, all-sufficing, omnipotent, immutable, and all- holy. It results from the fact that we are conscious of not being sufficient for ourselves, that the ground of our being is not in ourselves, and from the need we feel of an Almighty arm on which to lean, a strength foreign to our own, from which we may derive support. Let us be God, let us feel that we need go out of ourselves for nothing, and we are no longer in the condition to be religious; the religious sentiment can no longer find a place in our souls, and we can no more feel a craving to adore than God himself. Nothing is more evident to us, than that the religious sentiment springs, on the one hand, solely from a sense of dependence, and on the other hand, from an intuition of an invisible Power, Father, God, on whom we may depend, to whom we may appeal when oppressed, and who is able and willing to succor us. Take away the idea of such a God, declare the soul sufficient for itself, forbid it ever to go out of itself, to HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 look up to a power above it, and religion is out of the question. If we rightly comprehend Mr. Emerson’s views of God, he admits no God but the laws of the soul’s perfection. God is in man, not out of him. He is in the soul as the oak is in the acorn. When man fully developes the laws of his nature, realizes the ideal of his nature, he is not, as the Christians would say, god-like, but he is God. The ideal of man’s nature is not merely similar in all men, but identical. When all men realize the ideal of their nature, that is, attain to the highest perfection admitted by the laws of their being, then do they all become swallowed up in the One Man. There will then no longer be men; all diversity will be lost in unity, and there will be only One Man, and that one man will be God. But what and where is God now? Before all men have realized the ideal of their nature, and become swallowed up in the One Man, is there really and actually a God? Is there any God but the God Osiris, torn into pieces and scattered up and down through all the earth, which pieces, scattered parts, the weeping Isis must go forth seeking everywhere, and find not without labor and difficulty? Can we be said to have at present anything more than the disjected members of a God, the mere embryo fragments of a God, one day to come forth into the light, to be gathered up that nothing be lost, and finally moulded into one complete and rounded God? So it seems to us, and we confess, therefore, that we can affix no definite meaning to the religious language which Mr. Emerson uses so freely. Furthermore, we cannot join Mr. Emerson in his worship to the soul. We are disposed to go far in our estimate of the soul’s divine capacities; we believe it was created in the image of God, and may bear his moral likeness; but we cannot so exalt it as to call it God. Nor can we take its ideal of its own perfection as God. The soul’s conception of God is not God, and if there be no God out of the soul, out of the me, to answer the soul’s conception, then is there no God. God as we conceive him is independent on us, and is in no sense affected by our conceptions of him. He is in us, but not us. He dwells in the hearts of the humble and contrite ones, and yet the heaven of heavens cannot contain him. He is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. He is above all, the cause and sustainer of all that is, in whom we live and move and have our being. Him we worship, and only him. We dare not worship merely our own soul. Alas, we know our weakness; we feel our sinfulness; we are oppressed with a sense of our unworthiness, and we cannot so sport with the solemnities of religious worship, as to direct them to ourselves, or to anything which does not transcend our own being. Yet this worship of the soul is part and parcel of the transcendental egotism of which we spoke in commenting on Mr. Emerson’s moral doctrines. He and his masters, Carlyle and Goethe, make the individual soul everything, the centre of the universe, for whom all exists that does exist; and why then should it not be the supreme object of their affections? Soul- worship, which is only another name for self-worship, or the worship of self, is the necessary consequence of their system, a system well described by Pope in his Essay on Man: Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine, HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Earth for whose use? Pride answers, “’T is for mine: For me, kind nature wakes her genial power, Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower; Annual for me, the grape, the rose, renew The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew; For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings; For me, health gushes from a thousand springs: Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; My footstool earth, my canopy the skies.” To which we may add, While man exclaims, “See all things for my use!” “See man for mine!” replies a pampered goose: And just as short of reason he must fall Who thinks all made for one, not one for all. Mr. Emerson has much to say against preaching a traditional Christ, against preaching what he call historical Christianity. So far as his object in this is to draw men’s mind off from an exclusive attention to the “letter,” and to fix them on “the spirit,” to prevent them from relying for the matter and evidence of their faith on merely historical documents, and to induce them to reproduce the gospel histories in their own souls, he is not only not censurable but praiseworthy. He is doing a service to the Christian cause. Christianity may be found in the human soul, and reproduced in human experience now, as well as in the days of Jesus. It is in the soul too that we must find the key to the meaning of the Gospels, and in the soul’s experience that we must seek the principal evidences of their truth. But if Mr. Emerson means to sever us from the past, and to intimate that the Christianity of the past has ceased to have any interest for the present generation, and that the knowledge and belief of it are no longer needed for the soul’s growth, for its redemption and union with God, we must own we cannot go with him. Christianity results from the development of the laws of the human soul, but from a supernatural, not a natural, development; that is, by the aid of a power above the soul. God has been to the human race both a father and an educator. By a supernatural, —not an unnatural— influence, he has, as it has seemed proper to him, called forth our powers, and enabled us to see and comprehend the truths essential to our moral progress. The records of the aid he has at different ages furnished us, and of the truths seen and comprehended at the period when the faculties of the soul were supernaturally exalted, cannot in our judgment be unessential, far less improper, to be dwelt upon by the Christian preacher. Then again, we cannot dispense with Jesus Christ. As much as some may wish to get rid of him, or to change or improve his character, the world needs him, and needs him in precisely the character in which the Gospels present him. His is the only name whereby men can be saved. He is the father of the modern world, and his is the life we now live, so far as we live any life at all. Shall we then crowd him away with the old bards and seers, and regard him and them merely as we do the authors of some old ballads which charmed our forefathers, but which may not be sung in a modern drawing-room? Has his example lost its power, his life its quickening influence, his doctrine its truth? Have we HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 outgrown him as a teacher? In the Gospels, we find the solution of the great problem of man’s destiny; and, what is more to our purpose, we find there the middle term by which the creature is connected with the Creator. Man is at an infinite distance from God; and he cannot by his own strength approach God, and become one with him. We cannot see God; we cannot know him; no man hath seen the Father at any time, and no man knoweth the Father, save the Son, and he to whom the Son reveals him. We approach God only through a mediator; we see and know only the Word, which is the mediator between God and men. Does Mr. Emerson mean that the record we have of this Word in the BIBLE, of this Word, which was made flesh, incarnated in the man Jesus, and dwelt among men and disclosed the grace and truth with which it overflowed, is of no use now in the church, nay, that it is a let and a hindrance? We want that record, which is to us as the testimony of the race, to corroborate the witness within us. One witness is not enough. We have one witness within us, an important witness, too seldom examined; but as important as he is, he is not alone sufficient. We must back up his individual testimony with that of the race. In the Gospel records we have the testimony borne by the race to the great truths it most concerns us to know. That testimony, the testimony of history, in conjunction with our own individual experience, gives us all the certainty we ask, and furnishes us a solid ground for an unwavering and active faith. As in philosophy, we demand history as well as psychology, so in theology we ask the historical Christ as well as the psychological Christ. The church in general has erred by giving us only the historical Christ; but let us not now err, by preaching only a psychological Christ. In dismissing this address, we can only say that we have spoken of it freely, but with no improper feeling to its author. We love bold speculation; we are pleased to find a man who dares tell us what and precisely what he thinks, however unpopular his views may be. We have no disposition to check his utterance, by giving his views a bad name, although we deem them unsound. We love progress, and progress cannot be effected without freedom. Still we wish to see certain sobriety, a certain reserve in all speculations, something like timidity about rushing off into an unknown universe, and some little regret in departing from the faith of our fathers. Nevertheless, let not the tenor of our remarks be mistaken. Mr. Emerson is the last man in the world we should suspect of conscious hostility to religion and morality. No one can know him or read his productions without feeling a profound respect for the singular purity and uprightness of his character and motives. The great object he is laboring to accomplish is one in which he should receive the hearty cooperation of every American scholar, of every friend of truth, freedom, piety, and virtue. Whatever may be the character of his speculations, whatever may be the moral, philosophical, or theological system which forms the basis of his speculations, his real object is not the inculcation of any new theory on man, nature, or God; but to induce men to think for themselves on all subjects, and to speak from their own full hearts and earnest convictions. His object is to make men scorn to be slaves to routine, to custom, to established creeds, to public opinion, to the great names of HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 this age, of this country, or of any other. He cannot bear the idea that a man comes into the world to-day with the field of truth monopolized and foreclosed. To every man lies open the whole field of truth, in morals, in politics, in science, in theology, in philosophy. The labors of past ages, the revelations of prophets and bards, the discoveries of the scientific and the philosophic, are not to be regarded as superseding our own exertions and inquiries, as impediments to the free action of our own minds, but merely as helps, as provocations to the freest and fullest spiritual action of which God has made us capable. This is the real end he has in view, and it is a good end. To call forth the free spirit, to produce the conviction here implied, to provoke men to be men, self-moving, self-subsisting men, not mere puppets, moving but as moved by the reigning mode, the reigning dogma, the reigning school, is a grand and praiseworthy work, and we should reverence and aid, not abuse and hinder him who gives himself up soul and body to its accomplishment. So far as the author of the address before us is true to this object, earnest in executing this work, he has our hearty sympathy, and all the aid we, in our humble sphere, can give him. In laboring for this object, he proves himself worthy of his age and his country, true to religion and to morals. In calling, as he does, upon the literary men of our community, in the silver tones of his rich and eloquent voice, and above all by the quickening influence of his example, to assert and maintain their independence throughout the whole domain of thought, against every species of tyranny that would encroach upon it, he is doing his duty; he is doing a work the effects of which will be felt for good far and wide, long after men shall have forgotten the puerility of his conceits, the affectations of his style, and the unphilosophical character of his speculations. The doctrines he puts forth, the positive instructions, for which he is now censured, will soon be classed where they belong: but the influence of his free spirit, and free utterance, the literature of this country will long feel and hold in grateful remembrance.
October: In Newark, New Jersey, Samuel Ringgold Ward, Jr. was born to Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Ringgold Ward: I afterwards taught for two-and-a-half years in Newark, New Jersey, where I was living in January 1838, when I was married to Miss Reynolds, of New York; and in October 1838 Samuel Ringgold Ward the younger was born, and I became, “to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever,” a family man, aged twenty-one years and twelve days. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 October: The Reverend Horatio Wood began his ministry in Lowell, Massachusetts (the reverend used to be a teacher in Concord — did Henry Thoreau remember him?).
The rivalry between the Concord Light Infantry company and the Concord Artillery company culminated in their hiring of two competing bands from Boston. As the two groups paraded, each attempted to crowd out their enemy’s marching formation and tangle their enemy’s feet by the beat from a different drummer (this happened on Concord common — did Henry witness this?). HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 October 1, Monday: Lord Auckland, Governor-General of India, fearing that the Afghans were going to make overtures to Russia, ordered into existence a British force for service across the Indus River and announced an invasion of Afghanistan.69 AFGHANISTAN
Friedrich Wieck advised his daughter Clara that he would never consent to her entering into a marriage with Robert Schumann.
Conservatoire student Cesar Franck began 2 courses in Paris in piano for amateurs: one for the gents, the other for the ladies.
Stephen Wanton Gould died in Newport, Rhode Island at the age of 57.
RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 69. Afghanistan is such a prosperous and unproblematic place, everybody always lusts after it. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
October 3, Wednesday: Robert Schumann arrived in Vienna from Leipzig, to explore possibilities of moving there.
October 6, Saturday: The Dundee and Arbroath Railway opened.
Troops intervened in Dewitt, Missouri because the townspeople had besieged the Mormons (over the following three weeks the Mormons would rampage through Daviess and Caldwell Counties, killing livestock and torching some 150 homes).
Henry Thoreau wrote from Concord to the Reverend Andrew Bigelow of Taunton, Massachusetts about a teaching position he had learned was open. Concord Oct. 6th—38 Sir, I learn from my [b]rother and sister, who were recently employed as teachers in your vicinity, that you are at present in quest of some one to fill the vacancy in your high school, occasioned by Mr. Bellow[’s] withdrawl. As my present school, which consists of a small number of well advanced pup[ ]ls, is not sufficiently lucrative, I am advised to make application for the situation now vacant. I was graduated at Cambridge in —37, and have since had my share of experience in school-keeping. I can refer you to the— President and Faculty of Harvard
Page 2 College—to Rev. Dr. Ripley, or Rev. R. W. Emerson—of this town, or to the parents of my present pupils, among whom I would men- tion— Hon. Samuel Hoar—Hon. John Keyes—& Hon. Nathan Brooks. Written recommendations by these gentlemen will be pro- cured if desired. If you will trouble yourself to answer this letter im- mediately, you will much oblige your humble Servant, Henry D. Thoreau
Page 3
October 6, Saturday: In the course of a letter to his sister Helen Louisa Thoreau in Taunton, we learn as much as we need to know about the sort of philosophical materials Harvard College was inflicting upon its young scholars in this period, and we learn also as much as we need to know, of the extent to which scholar Henry had been able to distance himself from such “academic” philosophastering. This letter reminds us of the context in which Henry Thoreau could write “There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers”: HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Concord Oct. 6th –38. Dear Helen, I dropped Sophia’s letter into the box immediately on taking yours out, else the tone of the former had been changed. I have no acquaintance with “Cleavelands First Lessons,” though I have peeped into his abridged Grammar, which I should think very well calculated for beginners, at least, for such as would be likely to wear out one book, before they would be prepared for the abstruser parts of Grammar. Ahem! As no one can tell what was the Roman pronunciation, each nation makes the Latin conform, for the most part, to the rules of its own language; so that with us, of the vowels, only a has a peculiar sound. In the end of a word of more than one syllable, it is sounded like ah– as pennah, Lydiah Hannah, &c. without regard to case.– but da is never sounded dah because it is a monosyllable. All terminations in es and plural cases in os, as you know, are pronounced long – as homines (homin;amese) dominos (domin;amose) or in English Johnny Voss. For information see Adam’s Latin Grammar – before the Rudiments– This is all law and gospel in the eyes of the world – but remember I am speaking as it were, in the third person, and should sing quite a different tune, if it were I that made the quire. However one must occasionally hang his harp on the willows, and play on the Jew’s harp, in such a strange country as this. One of your young ladies wishes to study Mental Philosophy–hey?– well tell her that she has the very best text book that I know of already in her possession. If she do not believe it, then she should have bespoken a better in another world, and not have expected to find one at “Little and Wilkins’.” But if she wishes to know how poor an apology for a Mental Philosophy men have tacked together, synthetically or analytically, in these latter days – how they have squeezed the infinite mind into a compass that would not nonpluss a surveyor of Eastern Lands – making Imagination and Memory to lie still in their respective apartments, like ink-stand and wafers in a l{MS torn} escritoire–why let her read Locke–or Stewart, or Brown. JOHN LOCKE The fact is, Mental Philosophy is very like poverty–which, you know, DUG. STEWART begins at home; and, indeed, when it goes abroad, it is poverty itself. THOS. BROWN Chorus. I should think an abridgment of one of the above authors, ABERCROMBIE or of Abercrombie, would answer her purpose. It may set her a- thinking. Probably there are many systems in the market of which I am ignorant. As for themes –say first “Miscellaneous Thoughts”– set one up to a window to note what passes in the street, and make her comments thereon; or let her gaze in the fire, or into a corner where there is a spider’s web, and philosophize –moralize –theorize, or what not. What their hands find to putter about, or their Minds to think about,– that let them write about.– To say nothing of Advantages or disadvantages – of this, that, or the other. Let them set down their HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 ideas at any given Season – preserving the chain o f thought as complete as may be. This is the style pedagogical. I am much obliged to you for your peice of information. Knowing your dislike to a sentimental letter I remain Yr affectionate brother. H D T
October 9, Tuesday: Criticized for having been too lenient toward the rebels, Lord Durham resigned as Governor-in-Chief of Canada.
October 10, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:
“Everything must come round, & be told in proper time” said Belzoni.
October 11, Thursday: From this day until January 7, 1839, a group of 660 members of the Cherokee nation who had been supporters of the Treaty of New Echota would be being led by John Bell over a distinct route, from the Appalachians to the Oklahoma Territory. It is possible that a different route had been selected for this group in order to avoid conflict with other Cherokees who had been enraged by this group’s complicity with the US government.
TRAIL OF TEARS HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 October 12, Friday: The US federal congress having failed to act, the Republic of Texas withdrew its request for annexation.
The following advertisement appeared in a Southern gazette: $50 REWARD. — I will give the above reward of fifty dollars for the apprehension and securing in any jail, so that I get him again, or delivering to me in Dandridge, E. Tennessee, my mulatto boy named Preston, about twenty years old. It is supposed he will try to pass as a free WHITE MAN. JOHN ROPER.
SLAVERY
October 15, Monday: Letitia Landon died at Cape Coast (now Ghana).
October 16, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:
Here came on Sunday Morning (14th) Edward Palmer & departed today, a gentle, faithful, sensible, well-balanced man for an enthusiast. He has renounced since a year ago last April the use of money. When he travels he stops at night at a house & asks if it would give them any satisfaction to lodge a traveller without money or price? If they do not give him a hospitable answer he goes on but generally finds the country people free & willing. When he goes away he gives them his papers or tracts. He has sometimes found it necessary to go 24 hours without food & all night without lodging. Once he found a wagon with a good buffalo under a shed & had a very good nap. By the seashore he finds it difficult to travel as they are inhospitable. He presents his views with great gentleness; & is not troubled if he cannot show the way in which the destruction of money is to be brought about; he feels no responsibility to show or know the details. It is enough for him that he is sure it must fall & that he clears himself of the institution altogether.
October 18, Thursday: George Sand, her two children and maid departed Paris for Mallorca. Few of their friends were aware that she was on her way, and Frédéric François Chopin only informed 4 close friends that he would soon follow. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 October 19, Friday: Waldo Emerson confided to his journal that he considered vehemence to be a feminine characteristic (the religion of women is exterior, that of men interior):
The feminine vehemence with which the Andrews Norton of the Daily Advertiser beseeches the dear people to whip that naughty heretic is the natural feeling in the mind whose religion is external.... The aim of a true teacher now would be ... to teach the doctrine of the perpetual revelation.
Here is the message of the Reverend Doctor Andrews Norton, on Transcendentalism and the influence of Emerson: he suggested that the danger was that what high minds would hold as high ideas, of individuality and self-reliance, ordinary minds would establish as low ideas, enabling a boundless self-conceit. Not that this sentiment was unique to the Reverend Norton — but seldom has the issue been paraphrased so politely.
A student fable of record, from this period, is that a number of Unitarian divines went to Heaven in a group. Perhaps they were all in the same train accident? The Reverend Doctor Henry Ware, Sr., who held the Hollis Chair of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School, is characterized in this fable as going “It is better than we deserve.” The Reverend William Ellery Channing of the Federal Street Church in Boston goes “This is another proof of the dignity of human nature.” The Reverend Ezra Stiles Gannett goes “There must be some mistake,” and hurries away. The Reverend Doctor Andrews Norton goes “It is a very miscellaneous crowd.”
October 20, Saturday: Jones Very visited Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and apologized for having been so “intoxicated with the Holy Spirit.” He was completing his “Hamlet” essay and preparing to deliver it to Waldo Emerson in Concord. When Very told her about the visit he had just been paid by their Unitarian pastor of Salem’s North Church, the Reverend John Brazer, Elizabeth was enraged with the man’s insolence. A miracle, indeed! But she also told him that he should take this medication. —Because if he was sick the medicine could purge him, but no medicine could purge Truth.70
Emerson to his journal:
What said my brave Asia concerning the paragraph writers, today? that “this whole practice of self justification & recrimination betwixt literary men seemed every whit as low as the quarrels of the Paddies.”
70. Hey, good thinking! HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 October 21, Sunday: Gaetano Donizetti arrived in Paris, moving into the apartment house in which Adolphe Adam resided.
The steamboat Gypsy bearing Dr. John Emerson and his bride and their slaves reached Fort Snelling at the juncture of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. During this trip up from St. Louis one of the children of Harriet Robinson Scott and Dred Scott, Eliza, the first child to survive and the first daughter, had been born. She had been born north of the Missouri line, which is to say, in free territory. –Would that mean that she had been born free?
A few old citizens who were youths in 1835-1838, and who have died recently, remembered Dred Scott and Harriet when they were at Fort Snelling. Wm. L. Quinn, the noted half-blood scout, son of Peter Quinn, who lived near the fort, often said that Dred and his wife were apparently of pure African blood, jet black and shiny; that they were mildly disposed, inoffensive people, but of a low order of intelligence and did not like the Indians. Dred was fond of hunting and quite successful as a deer- stalker.... At first the Sioux were greatly diverted by the negroes. They called the black people “black Frenchmen” (Wahsechon Sappa), followed them about, felt their wooly heads, and then laughed heartily. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 October 23, Tuesday: From this date until March 24, 1839, the last large group of the Cherokee nation, 1,766 persons led by Peter Hildebrand, would be attempting to travel from the Appalachian concentration camps to the Oklahoma Territory, but would be held up for a month alongside the Gasconade River in Missouri, too sick to move forward. They had left behind, hiding in the Cherokee ancestral caves in the Appalachian mountains, a number of others such as the sons of Matiyuh who had evaded the initial roundups by the US Cavalry into the concentration camps in the valleys. TRAIL OF TEARS
German astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel wrote from Konigsberg to Sir J. Herschel Bart telling him that the distance from Earth to the star 61 Cygni (Alpha Centauri), the star system that happens to be closest to us at a distance of 11.4 light years, had been measured, using the parallax method.71
(It would seem, from the content of WALDEN, that Henry Thoreau would make himself familiar with this astronomical discovery and its significance for the history of ideas.)
71. His calculation was remarkably accurate, being off by less than 10%, and this was the 1st time the distance of a star other than our sun Sol had been reliably estimated and amounted to a shattering revelation since it demolished a fundamental division in astronomy, that between the sub-aetherial realm of changefulness which existed, on the one hand, within the orbit of the moon or perhaps within the orbits of the wandering planets, and on the other hand the aetherial realm of the fixed and eternal stellar canopy. This discovery removed one of the two final objections to the heliocentric model of the solar system that had been sponsored by Copernicus –to wit, it removed the fact that the geoheliocentric model sponsored by Brahe had been superior because the Copernicus model required a stellar parallax due to the motion of the earth about the sun –but such parallax had not yet been observed. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
WALDEN: We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?
NICOLAS COPERNICUS TYCHO BRAHE TYCHONIAN/COPERNICAN
October 24, Wednesday: Jones Very went to Concord with his completed “Hamlet,” to spend what would amount to five days with the Emersons. Waldo Emerson found him very narrow and focused, like a microscope, but marveled at the magnitude at which Very was able to examine those things which passed under this narrow focus. Edwin Gittleman’s comment is that “Very struck a balance between oddity and good sense which Emerson could not resist.”
October 24. It matters not whether these strains originate there in the grass or float thitherward like atoms of light from the minstrel days of Greece. “The snowflakes fall thick and fast on a winter’s day. The winds are lulled, and the snow falls incessant, covering the tops of the mountains, and the hills, and the plains where the lotus tree grows, and the cultivated fields. And they are falling by the inlets and shores of the foaming sea, but are silently dissolved by the waves.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
October 25, Thursday: Alexandre-Cesar-Leopold Bizet was born in Paris, first (and, it would turn out, only) child of Adolphe Armand Bizet, singing teacher, and Aimee Marie Louise Leopoldine Josephine Delsarte, amateur pianist and daughter of an inventor. This child would be baptized as “Georges” on March 16th, 1840 — but such a name does not appear on this birth certificate.
The Apostle David W. Patten was killed while leading Danites against the Missouri militia in the “Battle of Crooked River.” The Apostle Parley P. Pratt killed a militiaman and wounded another who, lying unconscious, was mutilated by the Danites. MORMONISM
October 27, Saturday: Jones Very’s autobiographical sonnet “The New Birth” was published in that day’s Salem Observer. It must have been perused with great interest by all the persons who had been involved in or who had heard about the recent difficulties at the Harvard Divinity School. Read between the lines, folks! What had happened to produce these startling events in Salem and Boston, Very said in effect, was that shortly before, at Harvard University, he had taken off his human crown of pride and laid it in the dust. This startling behavior which he had exhibited was what they should have expected of a person who had become capable of abandoning the false pride which keeps society on these stupid rails upon which it runs:
’Tis a new life — thoughts move not as they did With slow uncertain steps across my mind; In thronging haste fast pressing on they bid The portals open to the viewless wind, That comes not save when in the dust is laid The crown of pride that gilds each mortal brow, And from before man’s vision melting fade The heavens and earth; their walls are falling now— Fast crowding on, each thought asks utterance strong; Storm-lifted waves swift rushing to the shore, On from the sea they send their shouts along, Back through the cave-worn rocks their thunders roar; And I, a child of God by Christ made free, Start from death’s slumbers to Eternity.
Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issued an “extermination” order against the Mormons.
Frédéric François Chopin departed from Paris, to meet George Sand in Perpignan. Their ultimate destination would be Mallorca. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 October 28, Sunday: In a dark mood, Jones Very snapped at the pregnant Mrs. Lidian Emerson while she was attempting to ingratiate herself. He announced that this was his “day of hate.” The spirit had informed Very that Waldo Emerson was “not right,” and he explicated this by instructing his host that obedience was primary and charging that Emerson was not allowing it to be primary in his own life. He announced that he hated this entire family, and when frank cheer was displayed at receiving such a candid remark, he became perplexed. That evening was the meeting of local Sunday School teachers in the Emerson home, and having failed to have much of an impact upon the family, Very quite pecked the Reverend Barzillai Frost, an easy target, into little pieces.
Giuseppe Verdi resigned as maestro di musica in Busseto.
In Vienna, Sigismond Thalberg told Robert Schumann, “there is nothing more to be done with the combination of piano and orchestra.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 October 29, Monday: Waldo Emerson drove Jones Very as far as Waltham. Very was on a pilgrimage to Cambridge, to attempt to persuade the officials of the Harvard Divinity School to take him back. (Would this be this the miracle the Reverend John Brazer had asked Very to produce as a sign? No, the age of miracles is past.) Watching him off, Emerson thought “He is gone into the multitude as solitary as Jesus.” At Harvard, Very sought out various officials, who politely heard him out. With no objection from anyone, he would stay in Cambridge for over a week, but of course there was never any consideration of allowing him to return to his status there. During the course of the week they were even able to obtain from him, to save all appearances, the submission of a written resignation — for it turned out that the tiny sardines of job and salary and position and status and career and prestige didn’t make all that much difference to Very, who had decided that he was the designated fisher of men.
October 30, Tuesday: At Haun’s Mill, Missouri 17 Mormons were massacred by a non-Mormon militia under Sheriff William Jennings of Caldwell County (this militia unit seems unlikely to have been aware of Governor Boggs’s “extermination” order of October 27th).
George Sand, with her two kiddies, arrived in Perpignan.
October 31, Wednesday: Joseph Smith, Jr. surrendered to the Missouri militia at Far West. He would spend months in Liberty Jail awaiting trial.
Frédéric François Chopin arrived in Perpignan (George Sand had arrived on the previous day). They would board ship for Barcelona. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
NOVEMBER
November: From this month until November 1839, Professor Asa Gray would be traveling in Europe for the purpose of purchasing books for the University of Michigan while visiting various herbaria. BOTANIZING
November: Thirteen contingents of the Cherokee nation crossed Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois, and the 1st groups reached the Mississippi River, only to be unable to cross due to ice floes.
TRAIL OF TEARS
November: During the night after an abolitionist lecture, while Erasmus Darwin Hudson slept, his horse’s tail was cut off and the meeting house at which he had spoken that day was blown up with 25 pounds of gunpowder under the pulpit.
November: What would become known as the “Battle of the Windmill” took place at Prescott in Upper Canada.
November: Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody persuaded George Bancroft to offer Nathaniel Hawthorne a job.
During this period Jones Very was in the habit of sending offprints of his poems from the Salem Observer to friends and acquaintances. For at time Bronson Alcott was receiving such clippings each week, and was pasting or copying them into his journal. Henry Thoreau received at least three such clippings of at least six sonnets and during this month copied a couple of them into his “Miscellaneous Extracts” notebook. Unannounced, Very appeared at the home of Hawthorne and performed his ceremony of laying on of hands — Hawthorne meekly bowed his head for this and afterward commented that Very had managed to attain the “entire subjectiveness” which he had attempted to depict in 1833 in his “The Story Teller” in the figure of the minister (refer to the story “The Seven Vagabonds” which Hawthorne would insert into the December 1851 edition of TWICE-TOLD TALES). Hawthorne also suggested that as long as Very could author good sonnets, he might remain as he was. Edwin Gittleman comments that “It is almost as if Very were an invention of Hawthorne’s own Gothic imagination, a character whom he felt he understood completely, and for whom he was in a sense morally responsible.” However, for years Hawthorne would avoid Jones, although the fellow kept turning up at his doorstep: “Night before last came Mr. Jones Very; and you know he is somewhat unconscionable as to the length of his calls.”
During this and the following month, Jones Very would be coming gradually to the recognition that his function was being entirely fulfilled in the teaching of the message he was receiving, with no obligation to seek HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 the assent of his victims. He was becoming, if unpleasant, at least tolerable. Also, he was coming to an appreciation of the fact that his orders to chop down the tree of self could not be implemented, because the recipients of this advice could not imagine what acceptable small step, which they understood how to take, could come first, and because they were wary of beginning a journey in which they might lose themselves and be unable to retrace their steps. He began to attempt to identify specifically what it was, for each person, that that person was clutching in the place of God, and demand of that person that he or she let go of their attachment to that specific thing. Because, of course, that was what sin was: attachment to something other than or in place of God, however innocent the thing might be in itself. When people began to receive the reward of the Holy Spirit for their sacrifice of their most precious clutching, then of their own free will they would accept Very as their Savior. Of course, this psychodrama of confrontation has always worked well at the level of story. (The story is, Buddha was able to pull off such a confrontation, on occasion. The story is, Jesus was able to pull off such a confrontation, on occasion. There aren’t many stories in which Jesus or Buddha went “Follow me!” and somebody went “Oh, get a life, will you?” Nevertheless, the reaction to Very was such at to make one wonder whether these confrontations ever actually worked, except at the indirect level, the level at which they are a story being recounted of some alleged prior confrontation rather than an actual face-to-face contemporary confrontation. It may well be that we have a category mistake here, a category mistake which keeps recurring due to our presumption that we can’t pay attention to such a story unless the event “actually happened.”) Anyhoo, here is the cast and the sins of which they were guilty: • The Reverend William Ellery Channing was clutching “Rectitude” instead of God. • Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was clutching “Truth” instead of God. • Waldo Emerson was clutching “Thought” instead of God. • Bronson Alcott was clutching “Spiritual Curiosity” instead of God. • Sophia Amelia Peabody was clutching “Imagination” and “Resignation to Pain” instead of God.
Of course, an immediate riposte would be to accuse Jones Very himself of clutching “Obedience” instead of God, and ask him to pry his damn fingers off it. As inversion-advice goes that wouldn’t have been half bad, but of course Very was no more capable of letting go of “Obedience” than Waldo would have been of letting go of “Thought.” One is reminded of the Sufi poet who went (I paraphrase) “When one renounces all things, the final item one must renounce is Renunciation.”
November: Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Emily Grimké Weld, and Sarah Moore Grimké began work on AMERICAN SLAVERY AS IT IS. They were residing in a cottage in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and the sisters were laboring in this cottage to cull articles and advertisements from some 20,000 southern newspapers while the husband was commuting by ferry across the Hudson to an office on Manhattan Island to assemble this documentary study.72 Note that Theodore Weld was a leader in the opposition to the “non-resistance” movement within abolitionism, and was derogating this attitude –based on the Sermon on the Mount’s injunction “resist not evil”– as:
the will a wisp delusions of non-resistance.
NON-RESISTANCE
72. Charles Dickens, who visited the US in 1842, would base the antislavery chapter of his AMERICAN NOTES largely on the material in this study. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 November: With no old age pensions available on St. Helena, friendly societies were founded to provide sickness, death, and old age care. In this month, for instance, the Mechanics and Friendly Benefit Society was instituted, and it would be followed in 1847 by the St. Helena Poor Society, in 1871 by the Foresters, the in 1878 by the St. Helena Church Provident Society. ST. HELENA THE HISTORIC
The Queen of Spain, recognizing that there existed a loophole in the law against the international slave trade because, once the cargo of a slave ship had successfully been sneaked ashore, that cargo was legally slaves, issued a royal decree. She urged the Captain General of Cuba to impose the strictest controls upon this continuing recruitment of slaves.
(Her royal ukase would of course be ignored.) LA AMISTAD
A negrero flying the US flag, the Escorpion, master unknown, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 250 enslaved Africans on its one and only known Middle Passage voyage, arrived at Nassau, Bahamas. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Generoso Feliz, master unknown, out of Quelimane with a cargo of 725 enslaved Africans on its first of two known Middle Passages, arrived at the port of Ilha Grande, Brazil. A Portuguese slaver, the Cerca, master unknown, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of an unknown number of enslaved Africans on its only known such voyage, dropped anchor at Matanzas, Cuba. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Chiva, master unknown, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 140 enslaved Africans on its one and only known Middle Passage voyage, arrived at a port of Cuba. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Andorinha, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 293 enslaved Africans on one of its four known Middle Passages, arrived at the port of Baia Botafogo, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Minerva, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 304 enslaved Africans on its second of two known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at the port of Ponta Negra, Brazil. The Portuguese slaver Maria Segundo, master unknown, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 216 enslaved Africans on one of its ten-count-’em-ten known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at a port of Cuba. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Esperanca, master unknown, out of Cabinda with a cargo of 600 enslaved Africans on one of its ten-count-’em-ten known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at Rio de Janeiro. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Flor de’ Loanda, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 377 enslaved Africans on one of its five known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Lealdade, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 357 enslaved Africans on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 November 1, Thursday: Frédéric François Chopin, George Sand, her children, and her maidservant boarded a vessel in Vendres heading toward the port of Barcelona.
November 5, Monday: From George Templeton Strong’s New-York diary:
Two things I’m sorry to see in this election: one, the introduction of abolitionism into politics, which may play the devil with our institutions and which is at any rate a new force brought into the system, with an influence now almost inappreciable, but which may grow greater and greater till it brings the whole system into a state of discord and dissension, from which heaven preserve it! The other is the increasing tendency of the Whig party to absorb all the wealth and respectability, and of the Democratic (so called) to take in all the loaferism of the nation, a tendency which may bring us finally to be divided into two great factions, the rich and the poor; and then for another French Revolution, so far as American steadiness and good sense can imitate French folly and bloodthirstiness.
Honduras seceded from Central America.73
November 7, Wednesday: Frédéric François Chopin, George Sand, her children, and her maidservant board ship in Barcelona heading toward the island of Mallorca.
November 8, Thursday: Frédéric François Chopin, George Sand, her two children, and her maidservant arrived in Palma, Mallorca, where Chopin intended to finish his Preludes op.28.
The Theatre de la Renaissance opened in Paris, authorized to show plays with or without music. Its first production would be the premiere of Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo.
November 9, Friday: The balloon of the intrepid master Boston goldbeater and aeronaut Louis Lauriat being unable on this day to bear aloft the weight of the father, the father sent aloft his 10-year-old son, alone. BALLOONING
73. And sailed away? HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 November 10, Saturday/11, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal:
My brave Henry Thoreau walked with me to Walden this P.M. and complained of the proprietors who compelled him to whom as much as to any the whole world belonged, to walk in a strip of road & crowded him out of all the rest of God’s earth. he must not get over the fence; but to the building of that fence he was no party. Suppose, he said, some great proprietor, before he was born, had bought up the whole globe. So had he been hustled out of nature. Not having been privy to any of these arrangements he does not feel called on to consent to them & so cuts fishpoles in the woods without asking who has a better title to the wood than he. I defended of course the good Institution as a scheme not good but the best that could be hit on for making the woods & waters & fields available to Wit & Worth, & for restraining the bold bad man. At all events, I begged him, having this maggot of Freedom & Humanity in his brain, to write it out into good poetry & so clear himself of it. He replied, that he feared that that was not the best way; that in doing justice to the thought, the man did not always do justice to himself: the poem ought to sing itself: if the man took too much pains with the expression he was not any longer the Idea himself. I acceded & confessed that this was the tragedy of Art that the Artist was at the expense of the Man; & hence, in the first age, as they tell, the Sons of God printed no epics, carved no stone, painted no picture, built no railroad; for the sculpture, the poetry, the music, & architecture, were in the Man. And truly Bolts & Bars do not seem to me the most exalted or exalting of our institutions. And what other spirit reigns in our intellectual works? We have literary property. The very recording of a thought betrays a distrust that there is any more or much more as good for us. If we felt that the Universe was ours, that we dwelled in eternity & advance into all wisdom we should be less covetous of these sparks & cinders. Why should we covetously build a St Peter’s, if we have the seeing Eye which beheld all the radiance of beauty & majesty in the matted grass & the overarching boughs? Why should a man spend years upon the carving an Apollo who looked Apollos into the landscape with every glance he threw? HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 November 12, Monday: A note from Waldo Emerson invited Henry Thoreau to a picnic with the ladies at the base of Fair Haven cliff. Specifically, Thoreau was to bring his flute.74 H.G.O. Blake was there, visiting Emerson, and of course he and Thoreau knew each other from their years at Harvard College, but it does not seem that Blake was cultivating Thoreau at this point in his life.
November 13, Tuesday: A French admiral disembarked at Veracruz to deliver a French demand for 600,000 Mexican pesos, in reparation for a French bakery that had been damaged during a riot 10 years ago in Mexico City.
November 15, Thursday: Richard Wagner began a series of subscription concerts in Riga.
74.At this point Thoreau was beginning to use his father’s flute of fruitwood, brass, and ivory which is now on display in Concord Museum, although his father did not formally present him with the flute until 1845. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 November 18, Sunday: Waldo Emerson to his journal, in a comment that probably had to do with Thoreau and may have had to do with something that happened at the picnic on November 12th:
The manners of young men who are still engaged heart & soul in uttering their Protest against society as they find it, are perchance disagreeable; their whole being seems rough & unmelodious; but have a little patience. And do not exaggerate the offence of that particular objection which with such undue and absurd dogmatism they make every day from morn till dewy eve. The institutions of society come across each ingenuous & original soul in some different point. One feels the jar in Marriage; one in Property; one in Money; one in Church; one in social Conventions; one in Slavery; one in War; each feels it in some one & a different point according to his own circumstance & history & for a long time does not see that it is a central falsehood which he is contending against, & that his protest against a particular superficial falsehood will surely ripen with time & insight into a deeper & Universal grudge.
Oakley, the estate of Harrison Gray Otis
November 20, Tuesday: Charles Wesley Slack’s “Character of Columbus” (2-page School Essay, signed by the student).75
November 27, Tuesday: French troops bombarded Fort San Uan de Ulna in Veracruz harbor in an attempt to persuade the Mexicans that they ought to pay compensation for French victims of civil disturbances in Mexico.
Cardinal Ostini, Archbishop of Iesi, issued an edict “against the abuse of theatrical music in churches.” This was based on recent conversations he has had with Gaspare Spontini.
November 28, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau wrote to Charles Stearns Wheeler from Concord, asking him to deliver a lecture at the Concord Lyceum toward the middle of December. Concord Nov. 28th 1838.
75. Stimpert, James. A GUIDE TO THE CORRESPONDENCE IN THE CHARLES WESLEY SLACK MANUSCRIPT COLLECTION: 1848-1885. Kent State University, Library, Special Collections HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Friend Wheeler, Does it jump with your inclinations and arrangements to read a lecture before our Lyceum on the second or third week of December? Mr. Frost informs me that to such date we are supplied, and no further— So, concluding that you are not lacking in bowels of compassion I have ventured to indite this epistle. We must trouble you to say definitely on which, of in either of the above evenings or on any other, you will do us this favor. If you chance meet any one in the course [] of the winter, who is desirous to express his thoughts publicly, will you please suggest our town? From yr. Classmate Henry D. Thoreau (one of the Curators)
November 30, Friday: Great Britain declared a protectorate over Pitcairn Island.
France and Mexico traded declarations of war. French forces liberated the port of Veracruz, in the process virtually destroying it.
The Ohio Lunatic Asylum, in Columbus, opened to receive inmates. (The cornerstone for this building had been laid by convict laborers from the Ohio Penitentiary on April 20th, 1837. Its 1st inmates were former patients of the Commercial Hospital and Lunatic Asylum of Cincinnati, the state’s initial mental hospital — that Cincinnati hospital having been purchased by private owners earlier in 1838.)76 PSYCHOLOGY
76. Street, W.R. A CHRONOLOGY OF NOTEWORTHY EVENTS IN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 1994 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
WINTER 1838/1839
Winter: The Childs’ sugar beet business in Northampton encountered a severe crisis during the late winter while David Lee Child was refining his first batch of sugar in the factory downtown. They discovered that some processing equipment which David had bought in France was rusting on the New-York dock because the Illinois Company, which had guaranteed payment, had refused to pay a bill of more than $300 due on its SWEETS delivery. For awhile Lydia Maria Child considered making candy out of the sugar beets to earn the money to WITHOUT get this new equipment out of hock, but finally she would have to go to Boston alone to find paid employment. SLAVERY
Winter: Two months after the Alcott family had been forced to move to Boston’s South End, Abba Alcott, pregnant for the 6th time, had a 2d miscarriage. She was so near death that her doctor resided at the Alcott home for two weeks.
Winter: The steamboat Herald which had sunk in the Merrimack River was raised in the ice and skidded to the shore, where it was enlarged and refitted as a side-wheel excursion steamer capable of taking 500 passengers on an outing along waterways that would never again be used for bulk cargo. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Lecture Season: The 10th course of lectures offered by the Salem Lyceum consisted of:
The Salem Lyceum — 10th Season George Catlin The Character, Customs, Costumes, &c. of the North American Indians (six lectures in all) Jared Sparks Causes of the American Revolution Hubbard Winslow The Sun C.H. Brewster The Sources of National Wealth Charles T. Torrey of Salem Common School Education Ephraim Peabody The Capacity of the Human Mind for Culture and Improvement Henry K. Oliver of Salem The Honey Bee Robert C. Winthrop Popular Education Professor Adams Geology Simon Greenleaf The Legal Rights of Women Henry Ware, Jr. Instinct Joshua H. Ward of Salem Life of Mohammed Henry W. Kinsman Life and Times of Oliver Cromwell Abel L. Peirson of Salem Memoirs of Count Rumford Convers [Converse??] Francis The Practical Man John Lewis Russell of Salem The Poetry of Natural History John Wayland of Salem The Progress of Democracy Alexander H. Everett The Discovery of America by the Northmen Samuel Osgood The Satanic School of Literature and its Reform Horace Mann, Sr. The Education of Children HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Winter: Here is a view of the Cherokee “Trail of Tears” created by Robert Lindneux in 1942, in the Woolaroc Museum at Bartlesville, Oklahoma:
As an expression of US national government and state government racial policy, strolling Indians77 were herded by the US Cavalry under General Winfield Scott from their South Carolina and Georgia farms to what is now northeastern Oklahoma, so that white settlers could seize these farms. After a week of agonizing in his journal over whether it would be seemly for him, Waldo Emerson write a letter to the President, expressing himself as opposed to this policy. Of 18,000 Cherokees who began the enforced trek without provisions, 4,000 died of exposure and starvation along this trail. Others, attempting to hide out in caves in the mountains of their homeland, were hunted down. The disobedient were executed by firing squads under US Cavalry supervision, such execution squads being –as a matter of US strategy– made up exclusively of hired Cherokees. This was to become known as the Cherokee nation’s Trail of Tears. One of my great-great-great-great grandfathers, Buff Sharpe, chucking this whole scene after his father had surrendered and had been executed by firing squad, relocated to the “Indian Territories” then being reconstituted in Indiana. At that time these territories were supposed to include only the part of Indiana below the “National Highway” that ran through Indianapolis and Terre Haute, because white intrusives had been playing a negotiation game of “half of yours for me and half for you” and then again “half of yours for me and half for you,” and all the northern half of the Indian Territories of Indiana had already been reclassified and white settlements there legitimated after the fact. Buff Sharpe sought, unsuccessfully, to legitimate himself by marrying, or cohabiting with, a white woman.78 TRAIL OF TEARS
77. Cf. Chapter I of WALDEN. 78. As an interesting little aside to our racist American culture, if you haven’t already realized this by reading the story I have told of the West Point graduate Captain Seth Eastman and his local or squaw wife Lucy “Stands Like a Spirit” Eastman at Fort Snelling and his local daughter Mary Nancy Eastman, it happens to be a real big deal whether it is a man of color marrying a white woman –which is terribly shameful for whites because this woman can only be some slut who has been forced to marry down due to unnatural sexual lusts or general unworthiness– or whether it is a white man consenting to shack up with a woman of color, which is not so terrible because whites can always regard this as an arrangement of convenience and its not so bad for a man to satisfy lusts as for a woman to have lusts (and he can walk away from his half-breed spawn later when he starts a “real” family). And thus it was that in my family a few years ago I caught my own sister, living near Washington DC, telling her children that one of our ancestors was an “Indian Princess”! She was really shaken up when I hollered at her for unconsciously rewriting our genealogy in her mind in such a manner as to make it more socially acceptable! HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
DECEMBER
Toward the end of the year, while Frederick Douglass had been in New Bedford for but a few months, he was offered a free trial subscription to the Liberator. Frederick Douglass’s NARRATIVE
In about four months after I went to New Bedford, there came a young man to me, and inquired if I did not wish to take the “Liberator.” I told him I did; but, just having made my escape from slavery, I remarked that I was unable to pay for it then. I, however, finally became a subscriber to it. The paper came, and I read it from week to week with such feelings as it would be quite idle for me to attempt to describe. The paper became my meat and my drink. My soul was set all on fire. Its sympathy for my brethren in bonds — its scathing denunciations of slaveholders — its faithful exposures of slavery — and its powerful attacks upon the upholders of the institution — sent a thrill of joy through my soul, such as I had never felt before! I had not long been a reader of the “Liberator,” before I got a pretty correct idea of the principles, measures and spirit of the anti-slavery reform. I took right hold of the cause.
December: Nicolò Paganini secured the sum of 20,000 francs for the benefit of Hector Berlioz.
December: During the last month of this year and the first month of the following year, the English would be hanging various Canadian rebels in London, in Kingston, and in Montréal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838
December: At some point in 1837 Margaret Fuller had accepted an offer of $1,000.00/year from Rhode Island, and had left the Temple School of Bronson Alcott in Boston, where things were on a downward spiral due to extremely hostile reactions from Boston parents, to teach at Providence’s Greene Street School. (Remember that a year prior to this Thoreau’s position at Concord’s Central Grammar School, where he was to supervise two male teachers making $100.00/year and two female teachers making $40.00/year in a school having over 300 students as well as himself teach 100 boys, had been worth only half that $1,000.00/year despite the fact that he possessed a college diploma! — Fuller’s salary alone is enough to indicate that not only were the demands to be made on her in Rhode Island to be extreme, but also that for some reason the situation there must have been dicey.) By this point, in December, exhausted, she explained to her girls that she simply must resign her position. She wrote about this, that “I have behaved much too well for some time past; it has spoiled my peace.… Isolation is necessary to me, as to others. Yet I keep on ‘fulfilling all my duties,’ as the technical phrase is, except to myself.”
December: “Unitarian Reform: Number 2: History,” Western Messenger.
December: A negrero flying the Portuguese flag, the Ligeiro, master unknown, out of Benguela with a cargo of 209 enslaved Africans on one of its four known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at the port of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Fortuna, master unknown, out of Quelimane with a cargo of 602 enslaved Africans on one of its five known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at the port of Campos, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Flor do Rio, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 413 enslaved Africans on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at the port of Armacao, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Enpiqueta, master Garcia, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 130 enslaved Africans on its one and only known Middle Passage, arrived at Juraga, Cuba. The Portuguese slaver Esperanca, master Saldanha, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 430 enslaved Africans on one of its ten-count-’em-ten known such voyages, arrived at the port of Juraga, Cuba. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Dois Irmaos, master unknown, out of Angola with a cargo of 573 enslaved Africans on one of its four known Middle Passages, arrived at the port of Ilha Grande, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Diligente, master E.R. da Silva, out of Benguela with a cargo of 302 enslaved Africans on one of its four known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Brilhante, master Garcia, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 240 enslaved Africans on one of its seven known Middle Passage voyages, arrived at Juraga, Cuba. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 December: A contingent of Cherokees led by Chief Jesse Bushyhead camped near what is now the Trail of Tears Park. John Ross left the Cherokee concentration camps with the last group, bringing with him the records
and laws of the Cherokee Nation. of the 5,000 Cherokees trapped east of the Mississippi by the ice floes, many died. A final contingent, made up of elderly and disabled members of the Cherokee nation under the leadership of John Drew, were sent out by riverboat from the Cherokee concentration camps in the Appalachians to travel to Fort Coffee in the new Cherokee Nation Territory in Oklahoma Territory. TRAIL OF TEARS
December: “Wrote an essay on Sound and Silence.” In the course of this essay Henry Thoreau quoted from Thomas Gray.79
Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Thoreau’s most recent biographer, has charged that the essay, which eventually became the ending of WEEK, was “dogged by a persistent, mechanical perversity of paradox.” A good book is the plectrum with which our silent lyres are struck– In all epics, when, after breathless attention, we come to the significant words “he said”– then especially our inmost man is addressed. — — We not unfrequently refer the interest which belongs to our own unwritten sequel — to the written and comparatively lifeless page. Of all valuable books this same sequel makes and indispensable part– It is the author’s aim to say, once and emphatically, “he said” This is the most the book maker can attain to. If he make his volume a foil whereon the waves of silence may break, it is well. It is not so much the sighing of the blast, as that pause, as Grey expresses it, “When the gust is recollecting itself,” that thrills us, and is infinitely grander than the importunate howlings of the storm.80
79. Thomas Gray. POEMS OF MR. GRAY, TO WHICH ARE ADDED MEMOIRS OF HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS, BY WILLIAM MASON. York: A. Ward, 1778. Volume IV, 60. 80.The poet W.H. Auden has in 1962 brought forward a snippet from this as:
THE VIKING BOOK OF APHORISMS, A PERSONAL SELECTION BY W.H. AUDEN...
Pg Topic Aphorism Selected by Auden out of Thoreau
278 Writers and Readers It is the author’s aim to say once and emphatically, “He said.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 December: Henry Thoreau was definitely aware of the existence of the Magicicada cicada swarms, for in his manuscript for “Moonlight,” after the comments “Every melodious sound is the ally of Silence — a help and not a hindrance to abstraction and “Certain sounds more than others have found favor with the poets only as foils to silence.,” he inserted Henri Estienne II’s “Anacreon’s Ode to the Cicada” from CARMINUM POETARUM 81 NOUEM, published in 1554. Anacreon’s Ode to the Cicada
We pronounce thee happy, cicada, For on the tops of the trees, Sipping a little dew Like any king thou singest. For thine are they all, Whatever thou seest in the fields, And whatever the woods bear. Thou art the friend of the husbandmen. In no respect injuring any one; And thou art honored among men, Sweet prophet of summer. The muses love thee, And Phoebus himself loves thee, And has given thee a shrill song; Age does not wrack thee, Thou skilful – earth-born – song-loving, Unsuffering – bloodless one; Almost thou art like the gods.
You will note that he would not have been doing this because he had been listening to the cicadas, because this is the wrong season of the year for the cicada swarm and also because he hasn’t heard the singing of the 17- year cicada since the late spring of 1826, at which point he had been but 8 years old. He never mentions that he remembers having heard it then, and, when this phenomenal New England swarming occurs again in the late spring of 1843, he still makes no entry in his journal. I’ve been trying to figure out why Thoreau, who as a 1st-order approximation seems always to have been interested in anything and everything, didn’t pay particular attention to this every-17th-year swarming of the cicada. These swarm years have of course been being documented, since they were already regular like clockwork in the days of the Pilgrims. It seems to be some sort of neural circuit in the cicada nymph’s subesophageal ganglion that ticks off the cycles of warmth and cold until it reaches 17 seasons. Then a different system, perhaps partly based on temperature and partly on pheromones, kicks in to determine the precise day and hour of the venturing aboveground for purposes of mating. The reproductive strategy followed here, of course, is that of overwhelming predatory birds with food, so that they are already gorged and so that there are still a plenty of insects left to attract one another through their fiddling, and mate, and drop the eggs that will create the next generation of nymphs to spend 17 years sucking on their tree roots.
81. An inclusion Thoreau would suppress either because he had transferred it to NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS as a comment on insects or while he was in the process of transforming this into the ending of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS. This is the person in the same generation of the Genevan publishing family Étienne who had published, in 1572, the TLG which would have been utilized by Thoreau and which would still be in use into the 19th Century. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 As the truest Society approaches always nearer to Solitude — so the most excellent Speech finally falls into Silence. We go about to find Solitude and Silence, as though they dwelt only in distant glens and the depths of the forest– venturing out from these fastnesses at midnight.– Silence was –say we– before even the world was, as if creation had displaced her — and were not her visible frame-work and foil. — — It is only favorite dells that she deigns to82 frequent, and we dream not that she is then imported into them, when we wend thither –As Selden’s butcher busied himself with looking after his knife, when he had it in his mouth. For where man is, there is Silence. Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself. — — — If the soul attend for a moment to its own infinity, then and there is silence. She is audible to all men –at all times –in all places –and if we will we may always hearken to her admonitions.
Silence is ever less strange than noise — — lurking anid [amid] the boughs of the hemlock or pine — just in proportion as we find ourselves there. — — — — The nuthatch, tapping the upright trunks by our side, –is only a partial spokesman for the solemn stillness.
She is always at hand with her wisdom, by road sides and street corners –lurking in belfries –the cannon’s mouth –and the wake of the earthquake –gathering up and fondling their puny din in her ample bosom. Those divine sounds which are uttered to our inward ear –which are breathed in with the zephyr –or reflected from the lake –come to us noiselessly bathing the temples of the soul, as we stand motionless amid the rocks.
The halloo is the creature of walls and mason work –the whisper is fittest in the depths of the wood –or by the shore of the lake –but silence is best adapted to the acoustics of space.
All sounds are her servants and purveyers –proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought after. Behind the most distinct and significant, hovers always a more significant silence which floats it. The thunder is only our signal gun, that we may know what communion awaits us– Not its dull sound, but the infinite expansion of our being which ensues we praise –and unanimously name sublime.
All sound is nearly akin to Silence — it is a bubble on her surface which straightway bursts, an evidence of the strength and prolifickness of the undercurrent. — — It is a faint utterance of Silence –and then only agreeable to our auditory nerves– when it contrasts itself with the former. In proportion as it does this –and is a heightener and intensifier of the Silence– it is harmony and purest melody.
Every melodious sound is the ally of Silence — a help and not a hindrance to abstraction.83
Silence is the universal refuge — the sequel of all dull discourses and all foolish acts –as balm to our every chagrin –as welcome after satiety as disappointment. That back-ground which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure he [illegible: “we”?] may have made in the fore ground, remains ever our inviolable asylum. With what equanimity does the silent consider how his world goes –settles the awards of virtue and justice –is slandered and buffetted never so much and views it all as a phenomenon– He is one with Truth –Goodness – Beauty.– no indignity can assail him –no personality disturb him. — — — — — — The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks — and is a hearer along with his audience. Who has not hearkened to her infinite din? She is Truth’s speaking trumpet — which every man carries slung over his shoulder, and when he will may apply to his ear. She is the sole oracle –the true Delphi and Dodena– which kings and courtiers would do well to consult — nor will they be balked by an ambiguous answer. Through her have all revelations been made. Just as far as men have consuted [consulted] her oracle, they have obtained a clear insight, and their age been marked for an enlightened one. But as often as they have gone gadding abroad to a strange Delphi –and her mad priestess– they have been benighted –and their age Dark or Leaden.– These are garrulous and noisy eras –which no longer yield any sound –but the Grecian, or silent and melodious, Era, is ever sounding in the ears of men.
At evening, Silence sends many emissaries to me — some navigating the subsiding waves which the village murmur has agitated.
It were vain for me to interpret the Silence — she cannot be done into English– For six thousand years have men translated her, with what fidelity belonged to each, still is she little better than a sealed book. A man may run on confidently for a time, thinking he has her under his thumb, and shall one day exhaust her, but he too must at last be silent, and men remark only how brave a beginning he made. For when he at length dives into her, so vast is the disproportion of the told to the untold, that the former will seem but the bubble on the surface 82.TABLE TALK OF JOHN SELDEN, in Young, LIBRARY OF OLD ENGLISH PROSE WRITERS, II. 83.At this point Thoreau inserted “Ode to the Cicada” from Henry Estienne’s CARMINUM POETARUM NOUEM, published in 1554, a poem which he would later delete. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 where he disappeared.
Never the less will we go on –like those Chinese cliff swallows, feathering our nests with the froth– so they may one day be bread of life to such as dwell by the sea shore. (1, 60-4)
December 2, Sunday: Thomas Carlyle wrote to Waldo Emerson about the American publication of two volumes of his MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS: To my two young Friends Henry S. McKean (be so good as write these names more indisputably for me) and Charles Stearns Wheeler, in particular, I will beg you to express emphatically my gratitude; they have stood by me with right faithfulness, and made the correctest printing; a great service: had I known that there were such eyes and heads acting in behalf of me there, I would have scraped out the Editorial blotches too (notes of admiration, dashes, “we thinks” &c &c, common in Jeffrey’s time in the Edinr Review) and London misprints; which are almost the only deformities that remain now. It is extremely correct printing wherever I have looked, and many things are silently amended; it is the most fundamental service of all. MISC. ESSAYS, VOL. I MISC. ESSAYS, VOL. II
December 3, Monday: Opening of the 3d (lame duck) session of the 25th US Congress. At this session a new Whig Representative was seated, named Joshua Reed Giddings. He would serve until March 22, 1842, when he would resign after, in response to his motion in defense of the slave mutineers in the Creole case, a vote of censure had been passed upon him by the House. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 December 5, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson lectured in Boston.
This was lecture Number 1 of a series of ten on “Human Life,” and was entitled “The Doctrine of the Soul.”84 He had sent Jones Very a freebee ticket and had invited him to come along afterwards from the Masonic Temple to the Reverend Cyrus Bartol’s home for a session of the Transcendental Club.
Coming into Boston from Salem, Very arrived early and went first to the home of the Reverend William Ellery Channing, finding Wendell Phillips and the Reverend James Freeman Clarke there and proceeding to expound for three hours with the elderly Reverend Channing listened patiently and carefully and sympathetically. Channing’s conclusion was that those who had presumed Very to have lost his Reason were mistaken, as what he had lost was merely his Senses.The relationship between Unitarian ministers and anti-slavery advocates cannot be understood unless one takes class differences into account: They were gentlemen; they occupied a high position in the community; they belonged to a privileged order.... With the solitary exception of Wendell Phillips, who was regarded as an aristocratic demagogue, the Abolitionists were poor, humble, despised people, of no influence; men one could not ask to dine.85
84. Summaries of the lectures are in Cabot, Volume II, pages 733-737. The net receipts for the series would be $461.92 85. Octavius Brooks Frothingham’s BOSTON UNITARIANISM, 1820-1850. NY, 1890, pages 196-7. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 In fact, the class segregation was so manifest that there is only one occasion on which the Reverend William Ellery Channing and William Lloyd Garrison were in the same room at the same time, and that was when they encountered one another quite by accident at the meeting of a legislative committee. One of the biographers of Channing, John W. Chadwick, has referred to his persistent refusal to have anything to do with such people as “the most inexplicable feature of his antislavery career, and the most unfortunate.”
December 6, Thursday: French forces attacked out of San Juan de Ulúa into the port of Veracruz, devastating the Mexican troops and the town itself.
Bernardino Fernández de Velasco Enríquez de Guzmán y López Pacheco, Duke of Frias replaced Narciso Heredia y Begines de los Ríos, conde de Ofalia as prime minister of Spain.
Waldo Emerson began a series of lectures on “Human Life” in the Masonic Temple at Tremont Place in Boston (the series would end abruptly on February 20th because of a “pest of a cold”).
December 9, Sunday: Evaristo Pérez de Castro y Colomera replaced Bernardino Fernández de Velasco Enríquez de Guzmán y López Pacheco, Duke of Frias as prime minister of Spain. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 December 10, Monday: Senator Daniel Webster wrote from Boston to John P. Hine in New Hampton, New Hampshire, wishing him well with his invention and informing him that although he would be glad to be of assistance he would not be able to advance funds.86
Sam Houston turned over the Presidency of the State of Texas to Vice-President Mirabeau Lamar after two years — two years during which he had stabilized the currency, secured the safety of the borders, and gained recognition by the United States of America.
Bronson Alcott analyzed the case of Jones Very:
Is he insane? If so, there yet linger glimpses of wisdom in his memory. He is insane with God; diswitted in the contemplation of the holiness of Divinity. He distrusts intellect; he would have living in the concrete, without the interposition of the meddling, analytic head. Curiosity he deems impious. He would have no one stop to account to himself for what he has done, deeming this hiatus of doing, a suicidal act of the profane mind. Intellect, as intellect, he deems the author of all error. Living, not thinking, he regards as the worship meet for the soul. This is mysticism in its highest form.
December 12, Wednesday: In the US House of Representatives, the Atherton gag resolution in regard to discussion of the slavery issue, a resolution based upon the principle of states’ rights, was enacted by a vote of 126 over 78.
In Canton, local officials were preparing to crucify the proprietor of an opium den when some off-duty American sailors destroyed their cross. A riot ensued, which eventually dissipated upon the arrival of police.
December 13, Thursday: An attempt was made to suspend the rules of our federal House of Representatives, in order temporarily to permit some consideration of the issue of human enslavement as practiced in the United States of America.
December 14, Friday: In the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, Robert Schumann wrote glowingly of the soon to be published Impromptus D. 935 of Franz Schubert.
86. Stimpert, James. A GUIDE TO THE CORRESPONDENCE IN THE CHARLES WESLEY SLACK MANUSCRIPT COLLECTION: 1848-1885. Kent State University, Library, Special Collections HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 December 15, Saturday: In Palma, Frédéric François Chopin, George Sand, and her two children were forced out of their lodgings. The proprietor has learned that Chopin’s constant coughing was probably due to tuberculosis; also, he had surmised that the two were unmarried. They traversed a 16-kilometer rocky road, with their furniture, to Valldemosa.
December 16, Sunday: Boers withstood an attack by 10,000 Zulus on the Blood River, Natal, thus securing their position in the region. This day would come to be celebrated as “Die Gelofte,” “The Day of the Vow” (it has recently been renamed as “The Day of Reconciliation”).
Hector Berlioz conducted an orchestral concert at the Conservatoire featuring music by Gluck and by himself, with Nicolò Paganini, frail and ill with throat cancer, in the audience. Although the piece “Harold in Italy” had been composed originally for him, this was the 1st time he had heard it. At the completion of the curtain calls he came on stage with his son Achille and whispered in the ear of his son and beckoned him to stand on a chair. The young man proclaimed, “My father says he is so moved and overwhelmed, he could go down on his knees to you.” Grasping the arm of Berlioz he drew him back to the platform, then knelt and kissed his hand. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 December 18, Tuesday: While Hector Berlioz was bedridden due to bronchitis, Achille Paganini entered his room, handed over an envelope, and departed indicating that no response was required. The note in the envelope: “Beethoven being dead, only Berlioz could make him live again; and I, who have enjoyed your divine compositions, worthy of the genius that you are, beg you to accept as token of my homage 20,000 francs, which will be remitted to you by Baron Rothschild on your presenting the enclosed. Ever your affectionate friend Nicolò Paganini.”
Robert Schumann was once again suffering terrible bouts of depression, that would continue on December 19th and December 25th.
December 21, Friday: William White Cooper became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (in the United Kingdom, doctors who gain this qualification discard the honorific “Dr” and use instead “Mr” or “Ms”). During this year and the following one, he was taking notes during Sir Richard Owen’s lectures on comparative anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Owen would be sufficiently impressed with these notes to award him a prize. His class notes would be published in 1843.
Frédéric François Chopin, George Sand, and her two children arrived in Valldemosa. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 December 22, Saturday: According to a letter by Friend Samuel Rodman, “Called in the evening to see my Aunt Mary [Mary Rotch] in her new habitation [in New Bedford], into which she moved on the sixth inst. She and her friend and protege, Mary Gilford, seem now snugly and permanently fixed under their own roof, which I doubt not will be more comfortable and agreeable than then-hitherto migratory state and habits. The scale of their house and its finish is unostentatious and unpretending, in unison with the modest merit and unambitious character of my Aunt.”
James Gillespie Birney recorded that upon encountering the Reverend Leonard Bacon aboard a steamboat, he had inquired whether it actually was true, that Bacon had said “During the prevalence of fanaticism in New England, a quaker-woman was known publicly to walk through the streets of Salem –naked as she was born– but Miss Grimké has not yet made such an exhibition of herself.” When Bacon responded making light of this, Birney said “I wish no further intercourse with you.” ANGELINA EMILY GRIMKÉ WELD
Nevertheless, as they were disembarking and going their separate ways, this sexist reverend observed to Birney:
“You will be ashamed of yourself.”87
87. Indeed in the year 1662 Friend Deborah Wilson had wandered the streets of Salem “naked as the day she came into the world,” in an attempt to dramatize to the Puritans the nakedness of their sin. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 December 24, Monday: The Ottoman Empire granted a constitution for Serbia but retained ultimate control.
Publication of Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka’s COLLECTION OF MUSICAL PIECES FOR 1839 was announced in Severnaya pchela.
At the suggestion of their pastor, the Reverend Adin Ballou, a congregation in Mendon instituted a celebration of the holiday known as “Christmas.” (The record does not, however, indicate that they deviated so far toward pagan custom as to exchange gifts with one another on this holy day.)88
Soon after this event, the Reverend Ballou became convinced that it was utterly futile to attempt to evade the command of Jesus “Resist not evil,” utterly futile to attempt to remove evil from the earth by tactics that simply piled evil on top of evil, and renounced, for him finally, all use of that principle relied upon by righteous people everywhere in all ages, “Peacably, if we can; forcibly, if we must — the shibboleth of all the defenders of violence and bloodshed since the world began.” He authored a tract titled “Standard of Practical Christianity” only to find that his fellow ministers were “breaking their bond of fellowship” with him on account of the passive perversity of this new leading.89 James Thomson, a Roxbury, New York farmer, ... recorded visiting in his diary in several different years, even if he did not always mention that it was Christmas day: December 1838 25 Tuesday was Christmas Father went over to Bovina to see John Kirstel and John & Walter Hamelton & Isabela & Helen with old Mary McAdams come here in the Evening a visiting And the School Master Staid all night 26 Wednesday was more pleasent Jenet and Father went to Roxbury and got back a litle after dark. I threshed Some oats December 1839 25 Wedensday was a fine day being Clear in the morning Father went to the mill. And Walter and Isabel Hamelton come hear a visiting this Evening 26 Thursday was a fine day Jenet & John went to Alexander Johnstons & James Russls with the Sleigh December 1840 24 Thursday was a Cold day Robert White Came here last night and is here today 25 Christmas was a clear but very Cold day Robert 88. Thomas Nast is usually credited with creating our modern image of the jolly fat Santa Clause in the red fur-trimmed suit, and this despite the fact that he cartooned in black and white(!) — However, in this Year of Our Lord 1838, before Nast had even been conceived let alone born, Robert Weir had done a number of nice paintings of this Saint Nicholas. See Lauretta Dimmick, “Robert Weir’s Saint Nicholas: A Knickerbocker Icon,” Art Bulletin (Sept. 1984) See also Stephen Nissenbaum’s “Revisiting ‘AVisit from St. Nicholas’: The Battle for Christmas in Early Nineteenth-Century America” in James Gilbert, Amy Gilman, Donald Scott, and Joan Scott, eds., THE MYTHMAKING FRAME OF MIND: SOCIAL IMAGINATION AND AMERICAN CULTURE (1993) 89. Baker, Lisa B. CHRISTIANITY, SECULARIZATION, AND CHRISTMAS IN THE UNITED STATES 1850 AND TODAY. Religious Studies/Sociology Senior Thesis for Professors Gary Herion and Ed Ambrose, May 1999 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 McFarland & me wen to December 1857 23 Wednesday- It was cold today and the ground frose up we started for home about noon called at Margaritsvill & New Kingston & got home after dark 24 Thursday- This was a pritty cold day I went over to Bovina in the afternoon called at A H & Sandy Johnstons and at Isaac Maynerds then went to Robert McFarlands and staid all night (Thomson 1838-40, 1857) It is hard to say which characters are family and which are friends, but clearly in the experience of James Thomson, the Christmas season is for visiting others. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Late in the year, Herman Melville was walking the streets daily in the vicinity of the New Bedford waterfront, while Frederick Douglass was doing the same. Wouldn’t it have been nice if these two manual laborers Douglass and Melville, who would become the authors of personal narratives of white racist abuse of
non-whites, had met and had gotten to know each other? –But in that day, if they passed each other in the street in public as strangers of different races, they would have each been inhibited from relating to the other except in the most perfunctory and functional manner. Besides, compared to Douglass, seaman Melville was still wet behind the ears.
At this point Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass were living in a small rented house at 157 Elm Street and had joined the New Bedford Zion Methodist Church after having discovered that all the other Methodist churches in New Bedford had racially segregated pews. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 Toward the end of the year, while Frederick Douglass had been in New Bedford for but a few months, he was offered a free trial subscription to the Liberator. Frederick Douglass’s NARRATIVE
In about four months after I went to New Bedford, there came a young man to me, and inquired if I did not wish to take the “Liberator.” I told him I did; but, just having made my escape from slavery, I remarked that I was unable to pay for it then. I, however, finally became a subscriber to it. The paper came, and I read it from week to week with such feelings as it would be quite idle for me to attempt to describe. The paper became my meat and my drink. My soul was set all on fire. Its sympathy for my brethren in bonds — its scathing denunciations of slaveholders — its faithful exposures of slavery — and its powerful attacks upon the upholders of the institution — sent a thrill of joy through my soul, such as I had never felt before! I had not long been a reader of the “Liberator,” before I got a pretty correct idea of the principles, measures and spirit of the anti-slavery reform. I took right hold of the cause. HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 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 2015. 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: August 12, 2015 HDT WHAT? INDEX
1838 1838 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
1838 1838 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
General Events of 1838 SPRING JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH SUMMER APRIL MAY JUNE FALL JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER WINTER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER
Following the death of Jesus Christ there was a period of readjustment that lasted for approximately one million years. –Kurt Vonnegut, THE SIRENS OF TITAN
GO ON TO EVENTS OF 1839