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Herman Melville

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Herman Melville “THE BIBLE – WE CANNOT DO WITH IT AS IT IS” HERMAN MELVILLE 1754 During this year appeared the Reverend Jonathan Edwards’s FREEDOM OF THE WILL, a piece of Calvinism dealing with the relations of the human will with predestination and grace, nicely calculated to inspire the reader to accept the inevitable with grace. Herman Melville would refer to this treatise in his BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER. HDT WHAT? INDEX HERMAN MELVILLE HERMAN MELVILLE 1614 April 24(?), Thursday: With the blessing of the father of the bride, the widower John Rolfe and young Pocahontas, the frolicsome one, were wed.1 The bride had received baptism under the English name “Rebecca Rolfe.” This marital liaison is credited with bringing 8 years of racial accord. Pocahontas’s white spouse was of the opinion that the people like him on the Virginia coast, white people, were “a peculiar people, marked and chosen by the hand of God.” Let us hope this husband somehow found a way to presume that his replacement wife, also a member of a peculiar people, had been likewise marked and chosen by the hand of God.2 At Jamestown on the Virginia coast, according to Ralph Hamor, “The Towne it selfe by the care and providence of Sir Thomas Gates, who for the most part had his chiefest residence there, is reduced into a handsome forme, and hath in it two faire rowes of houses, all of framed Timber, two stories, and an upper Garret, or Corne loft high, besides the three large, and substantial Storehouses, joyned together in a length some hundred and twenty foot, and in breadth forty, and this town hath been lately newly, and strongly impaled, and a faire platforme fro Ordence in the west Bulwarke raised: there are also wothout this towne in 1. John actually had to deliberate over marrying this lass, apparent age about 14: would the other white people suppose that he was coupling with her out of a “hungry appetite,” would they suppose that what he wanted to do was to “gorge” himself upon sexual “incontinency”? Would he be seen as guilty of an “unbridled desire of carnal affection”? His ongoing meditations on this topic he described in his journal as a “mighty war.” Finally the reluctant bridegroom reassured himself that this would be one of the “pious duties of a Christian,” that this would be “godly labor,” and that he could therefore indulge himself in miscegenation with “an unspotted conscience.” 2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX HERMAN MELVILLE HERMAN MELVILLE the Island, some very pleasant, and beautifull houses, tow Blockhouses, to observe and watch least the Indians at any time should swim over the back river, and come into the Island, and certain other farme houses.” “No sooner was he thus fenced, and in a manner secured from the Indians, but his next worke (without respect to his owne health or particular welfare) was building at each corner of the towne, very strong and high commanders or watch-towers, a faire and handsome Church, and storehouses, ... There is in this town 3 streets of well framed houses, a hansom Church, and the foundations of a more stately one laid, of Brick, in length, an hundred foote, and fifty foot wide, beside Store houses, watch houses, and such like: there are also, as ornaments belonging to this Town, upon the verge of this River, five faire Block houses, or commanders, wherein live the honesteo sort of people, as in Farmes in England. ... by name, Hope in faith, Coxen Dale, secured by five Forts, called, Charity Fort, Mount malado, a retreat, or guest house for sick people, a high seat, and wholesome aire, Elizabeth Fort, and Fort patience: and heere hath Mr. Whitacres chosen his Parsonage, or Church land ... called Rocke Hall ...” 2. The chauvinist idea that the whites were God’s chosen people is not an idea which had to wait to begin only with the Pilgrim Fathers in their “City upon a Hill,” Boston. By the time of the American revolt, the 13 original colonies had become God’s chosen people. By 1850 Herman Melville would be able to write in all seriousness that “We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people — the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.... God has predestined, mankind expects, great things from our race; and great things we feel in our souls. The rest of the nations must soon be in our rear. We are the pioneers of the world; the advance-guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things, to break a new path in the New World that is ours.” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX HERMAN MELVILLE HERMAN MELVILLE 1773 December 16, Thursday: Under cover of a public protest meeting at Faneuil Hall and the Old South Meeting House, a group of white Bostonians disguised as Mohawk sneaked onto Griffin’s Wharf and silently boarded three cargo vessels. They carefully lowered 342 chests of tea leaves belonging to the East India Company into the foul brackish waters of the harbor without causing any splashes. Several tons of tea were destroyed, and the crew of a British frigate moored some 500 yards away heard nothing. This was not, as you may have been instructed in your public schooling, in protest against the import tax placed on tea leaves by the government. It was, instead, a protest over a tax exemption that King George III had granted, that favored this one company over others in the tea trade. 4 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX HERMAN MELVILLE HERMAN MELVILLE Some of these public-spirited vandals stole some of the East India Company’s duty-free tea. When the organizers of this event discovered one of their number with tea leaves stuffed down his pants, they got out the tar and feathers and made an honorary Negro out of him.3 Please note that, although in some circles it is considered impolite to point this out, these white people were following a long tradition of white people, of disguising themselves as non-white people in order to perpetrate some necessary and therefore serious piece of white mischief.4 Some have been proud to record that one of Herman Melville’s grandfathers, Major Thomas Melvill (sic), attended this party. In fact this racist incident has been touted as a piece of our nation’s proud history, despite its consonance with many other incidents in which white people masqueraded as non- white people in order to be able to murder as non-white people murder but as white people do not murder, to torture as non-white people torture but as white people do not torture, and to rape as non-white people rape but 3. Or perhaps an honorary chicken, I don’t know. The tea leaves he stuffed down his pants, confiscated as evidence, are still on display at the Old State House. 4.You can see from the above that white people can disguise themselves as non-white people when they need to be mischievously destructive — I suppose because non-white people are known by white people to be natural, and therefore to be naturally mischievously destructive? We saw the same thing happen again, more recently, in 1992, when a white man murdered his white wife near the Boston waterfront and then brazenly informed the police that he saw a black man murder her. Because the murderous husband told the police that the murderer was black, the police of course believed this white man for quite some time and went around looking for some black perp to arrest, until the husband lost his nerve and committed suicide. (You probably saw this on the TV news, and, let me bet, you probably made no connection between this and the Boston Teaparty which you learned about in public school despite the entirely insignificant fact that these two events happened within about a mile of each other, one in 1773 and one in 1992 — and, also, despite the entirely significant fact that both misdeeds involved the deployment of racist stereotypes by white perps.) “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX HERMAN MELVILLE HERMAN MELVILLE as white people do not rape. 6 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX HERMAN MELVILLE HERMAN MELVILLE 1776 July 4, Thursday: It was a cloudy day, and the temperature was but 76 degrees Fahrenheit. In North America, the process that had begun when a crafty old politician named Benjamin Franklin had been placed on a Constitutional Committee of Pennsylvania to draft a declaration of the independence of the former North American seacoast colonies of Great Britain was brought to fruition, in that a broadside to that effect was on this date roughly printed off in Philadelphia. JOHN TRUMBULL The more alterations Congress made on his draft, the more miserable Jefferson became. He had forgotten, as has posterity, that a draftsman is not an author. READ THE FULL TEXT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 7 HDT WHAT? INDEX HERMAN MELVILLE HERMAN MELVILLE This date saw, also, the publication of Adam Smith’s AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. The point at which Professor Smith writes about pin-manufacture (Chapter 1, page 3), as the basis for division of labor and therefore for the wealth of nations, is displayed on a following screen. An extract from its section “The cost of Empire” is on subsequent screens: [see following] Certain American business types would come to regard this latter document, possibly on account of its publication date and possibly for some other reason, as their real Declaration of Independence, although by 1844 Friedrich Engels would be challenging such an attitude toward freedom in his THE CONDITION OF THE WORKING MAN IN ENGLAND and by 1855 Herman Melville would be challenging such an attitude toward freedom in his BENITO CERENO.
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