Ten Years of Winter: the Cold Decade and Environmental
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TEN YEARS OF WINTER: THE COLD DECADE AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE EARLY 19 TH CENTURY by MICHAEL SEAN MUNGER A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of History and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2017 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Michael Sean Munger Title: Ten Years of Winter: The Cold Decade and Environmental Consciousness in the Early 19 th Century This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of History by: Matthew Dennis Chair Lindsay Braun Core Member Marsha Weisiger Core Member Mark Carey Institutional Representative and Scott L. Pratt Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2017 ii © 2017 Michael Sean Munger iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Michael Sean Munger Doctor of Philosophy Department of History June 2017 Title: Ten Years of Winter: The Cold Decade and Environmental Consciousness in the Early 19 th Century Two volcanic eruptions in 1809 and 1815 shrouded the earth in sulfur dioxide and triggered a series of weather and climate anomalies manifesting themselves between 1810 and 1819, a period that scientists have termed the “Cold Decade.” People who lived during the Cold Decade appreciated its anomalies through direct experience, and they employed a number of cognitive and analytical tools to try to construct the environmental worlds in which they lived. Environmental consciousness in the early 19 th century commonly operated on two interrelated layers. The first was local, encompassing what people saw and experienced around them in their day-to-day lives, communities and localities, including the weather above them and outside their windows and the environmental characteristics they knew and felt they understood. The second was a broader layer, less known and often less knowable, encompassing the world outside of the local which included climate, the region, the planet, the heavens and the cosmos. Many people during the Cold Decade tried to explore and conquer that broader layer—to pull it closer, to define it, in some cases to tame or harness it—and people’s efforts to do this, while different depending on iv who they were and their life situations, had real-world consequences not merely in the Cold Decade itself but in the modernizing world that subsequently emerged. This dissertation examines Cold Decade environmental consciousness in five groups of people, most in the United States but some in Europe and other parts of the world: weather watchers, who kept detailed records on weather phenomena and used this data to discern patterns and theories of climate and weather prediction; diarists , ordinary people who recorded and remarked upon weather and climate phenomena in their journals, and who explored the broader layer by knowing weather and climate through personal experience; doctors, who leveraged weather and climate knowledge for the benefit of their patients; arguers, who conducted an intellectual debate about whether the Earth’s climate was growing warmer or colder; and travelers , people who sought to understand the broader layer through travel and geography. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Michael Sean Munger GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene Tulane Law School, New Orleans University of New Mexico, Albuquerque Portland State University, Portland DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, History, 2017, University of Oregon Master of Arts, History, 2012, University of Oregon Juris Doctor, 1998, Tulane Law School Bachelor of Arts, History, 1993, University of Oregon AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Environmental History History of the U.S. Early Republic PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Attorney, Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt, Portland, Oregon, 2006-2009 Contract Attorney, Law Practice of Sean Munger, Beaverton Oregon, 2004-2006 Attorney, Tonkon Torp LLP, Portland, Oregon, 1998-2004 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Graduate Teaching Fellowship, History, 2010 to Present Graduate Teaching Fellowship, Ethnic Studies, 2016 Cushing Academy Fellowship, Massachusetts Historical Society, 2014-2015 Dibner Research Fellowship in the History of Science, Huntington Library, 2014 vi Thomas T. Turner Memorial Award, Department of History, 2012 PUBLICATIONS: Munger, Sean. “1816: ‘The Mighty Operations of Nature’: Societal Effects of the Year Without a Summer.” Madison Historical Review 10 (2013): Article 3. Munger, Sean. “Bill Clinton Bugged My Brain!: Delusional Claims in Federal Courts.” Tulane Law Review 72, no. 5 (May 1998): 1809-1852. Munger, Sean. “Smith v. Houston Oilers, Inc.: State Law Claims Intercepted in the End Zone.” Tulane Law Review 71, no. 4 (March 1997): 1351-1373. Munger, Sean. “The Weather Watchers: Amateur Climatologists and Environmental Consciousness, 1810-1820.” History of Meteorology 7 (2015): 14-24. vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Heartfelt thanks to Dr. Matthew Dennis of the University of Oregon, and also Professors Lindsay Braun, Marsha Weisiger and Mark Carey, and my husband Cody Climer. Fellowship support for this dissertation was provided by the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Huntington Library and American Antiquarian Society. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. “SOME VIOLENT EFFORT OF NATURE FROM THE EARTH”....................... 1 II. THE LAYERS OF THE WORLD ......................................................................... 5 III. “A MORE SUDDEN AND VIOLENT CHANGE”.............................................. 36 IV. THE WEATHER WATCHERS ........................................................................... 41 V. “HEAVEN SEEMS TO FROWN” ........................................................................ 127 VI. THE DIARISTS..................................................................................................... 131 VII. “THIS DAY ENDED ALL MY HAPPINESS” .................................................. 178 VIII. THE DOCTORS ................................................................................................ 181 IX. “WHEN WILL THE AGE OF WONDERS PASS AWAY?” ............................. 221 X. THE ARGUERS .................................................................................................... 225 XI. “WHILE OTHER SHIPS WERE BECALMED, AND LIFELESS” ................... 264 XII. THE TRAVELERS ............................................................................................. 268 XIII. FROSTIANA ..................................................................................................... 305 XIV. TEN YEARS OF WINTER ............................................................................... 309 REFERENCES CITED................................................................................................ 329 ix CHAPTER I “SOME VIOLENT EFFORT OF NATURE FROM THE EARTH” On the last day of April 1812 the British warship HMS Ringdove , a Cruizer -class brig-sloop commanded by Captain William Dowers, sat at anchor in Kingston Bay, Saint Vincent, in the British West Indies. On the morning of that day Captain Dowers recorded, “Light airs and hazy weather,” and then he began to notice columns of smoke rising above a peak at the northern extremity of the island. This was the mountain known as Soufrière, one of various Caribbean peaks known by this name, French for “sulfur vent.” It rained hard in the evening. After midnight Dowers ordered the Ringdove to raise anchor and get underway. Then: [H]eard a confused loud noise, which at first was thought to be the surf on the beach; it soon increased, and resembled the noise made by the wheels of a heavy loaded waggon, passing rapidly over a bridge. At 1:15 AM abreast of Bucarnent Bay, the noise resembled a dreadful squall of wind, approaching with terrible violence from a distance. Shortened sail, and prepared for it. At 1:20 heard something falling on the water, like large drops of rain; in a few moments afterwards a thick cloud suddenly descended—it fell calm—and stones, from the size of a sparrow’s egg to grape-shot, fell on the deck. 1 The volcano had exploded. The sound wave reached the Ringdove , “dreadfully loud,” and the ship was suddenly enveloped in a cloud of total darkness. The eerie effect was caused by a mixture of airborne sand and ashes ejected from the volcano. As the sea roared around Saint Vincent Ringdove continued sailing through the night. 1 “Account via a Letter by Capt. William Dowers,” The Naval Chronicle for 1813, Containing a General and Biographical History of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom XXIX (January-June 1813), 284. 1 [T]he atmosphere over the N.W. point of the island appears as if illuminated by an immense blaze of fire; vivid zig-zag lightning, perfectly blue, dancing about, in all the various forms of beautiful fire-works, and by its constant light, enables us to see an immense column of smoke, ascending to the height of 5 or 6 miles perpendicular; it then appears to explode, and rolls off in grand and majestic, thick, plumy clouds. The forked lightning occasionally appears to dart through this immense tube of smoke or vapour, and intermingling with its electric matter, seems to seat the heavens in a blaze of fire. At this time we were 5 or 6 miles from Layou, and near 30 from Souffriere. 2 For the next two days Ringdove sailed in and around the zone of the eruption, and Captain Dowers wrote down its effects.