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1816: “The Mighty Operations of Nature”: an Environmental 1816: “THE MIGHTY OPERATIONS OF NATURE”: AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER by MICHAEL SEAN MUNGER A THESIS 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 Master of Arts June 2012 THESIS APPROVAL PAGE Student: Michael Sean Munger Title: 1816: “The Mighty Operations of Nature”: An Environmental History of the Year Without a Summer This thesis has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree in the Department of History by: Matthew Dennis Chair Marsha Weisiger Member Lindsay F. Braun Member and Kimberly Andrews Espy Vice President for Research & Innovation/Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2012 ii © 2012 Michael Sean Munger iii THESIS ABSTRACT Michael Sean Munger Master of Arts Department of History June 2012 Title: 1816: “The Mighty Operations of Nature”: An Environmental History of the Year Without a Summer The catastrophic eruption of the Indonesian volcano Mt. Tambora in April 1815, which ejected a cloud of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, plunged the world into a rapid temporary climate change event. A series of bizarre weather anomalies, including snowstorms in June and repeated heavy frosts throughout the rest of the summer, earned 1816 the moniker “the Year Without a Summer.” This paper examines the various ways in which Americans reacted to the climate change—seeking causation explanations through science and superstition, political and religious responses, and the efforts to ap- preciate what the events meant in terms of the world’s changing climate. Through these various reactions, a picture emerges of Americans’ incomplete understanding of science and nature, as well as an uneasy reckoning with the impossibility of fully explaining their environment and the potential dangers it presented to them. iv CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Michael Sean Munger GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon Tulane Law School, New Orleans, Louisiana University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico DEGREES AWARDED: Master of Science, History, 2012, University of Oregon Juris Doctor, 1998, Tulane Law School Bachelor of Arts, History, 1993, University of New Mexico AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: United States History—Early Republic Environmental History PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Teaching assistant, Department of History, University of Oregon, Eugene, 2010-2012 Attorney, Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt P.C., Portland, Oregon, 2006-2009 Attorney, Law Practice of Sean Munger, Beaverton, Oregon, 2004-2006 Attorney, Tonkon Torp L.L.P., Portland, Oregon, 1998-2004 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Thomas T. Turner Memorial Award, Department of History, June 2012 Graduate Teaching Fellowship, History, 2010 to present Research Grant, Department of History, University of Oregon, 2011 Summa cum Laude, Tulane Law School, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1998 v Dean’s Award, Tulane Law School, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1998 PUBLICATIONS: 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. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank my advisor, Matthew Dennis, for his support and help for this pro- ject, and I wish to acknowledge the assistance and encouragement of Marsha Weisiger and Lindsay Braun. I also wish to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Tom Swetnam at the Labo- ratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, the staff of the American An- tiquarian Society archives in Worcester, Massachusetts, and finally Cody Z. Climer and Freddy De La Torre. This paper was supported in part by a research grant provided by the University of Oregon Department of History. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION: PITCHING QUOITS IN THICK OVERCOATS..................... 1 II. WINTER WITHOUT END: A NARRATIVE HISTORY OF THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER ............................................................................................. 9 A. Beginnings: Tambora and “Mountain X” ......................................................... 9 B. 1815 to Spring 1816: The Anomalies Begin ..................................................... 12 C. Summer 1816: Fluctuations and Frost .............................................................. 20 D. Into the Autumn: Frost, Hurricane and Fire...................................................... 24 III. “THE GREATEST ACTIVITY OF THE CAUSE”: SCIENCE, PSEUDOSCIENCE AND THE CAUSATION ARGUMENT .................................... 28 A. The Sunspot Obsession .................................................................................... 28 B. Glaciers, Vapors and Musket Fire: Other Potential Causes............................... 35 C. Causation Arguments and the “Pastiche of Knowledge” .................................. 39 IV. “A GREAT PARTY QUESTION”: POLITICAL RAMIFICATIONS................... 44 A. Political Trends: Moribund Federalists and Sullen Voters ............................... 44 B. The Linchpin Issue: Harvests and Food Security.............................................. 46 C. Climate Change Denial: The Strange Case of the Essex Register .................... 53 D. Putting on a Happy Face: Humor and Jokes..................................................... 59 E. Political Dimensions Considered: An Incomplete Picture ................................ 62 V. “END OF THE WORLD WEATHER”: APOCALYPSE, RELIGION AND FEAR.................................................................................................................. 64 A. Apocalypse: The Bologna Prophecy................................................................. 64 B. Crowding the Churches: Religious Reactions................................................... 69 viii Chapter Page C. Emotional Reactions: Gloom and Melancholy ................................................. 72 D. Cultural and Spiritual Reactions Considered: Confirming Intuition ................ 75 VI. “OUT OF THE ORDINARY COURSE OF THINGS”: GLOBAL WARMING VS. GLOBAL COOLING....................................................................... 78 A. Conceptions of Climate Change Pre-1816........................................................ 78 B. The Debate of 1816: Global Warming vs. Global Cooling............................... 82 C. How Little Things Change: 1816 and Contemporary Climate Debates............ 89 D. Inconvenient Truths: The Meaning of Climate Debates................................... 94 VII. “THE AUTUMNAL EQUINOX IS PAST”: THE AFTERMATH ...................... 100 A. Winter Returns…or Continues.......................................................................... 100 B. Would It Happen Again?................................................................................... 103 C. The Emergence of Scientific Understanding .................................................... 105 D. Modern Scholarship: The Toba Catastrophe and “Mountain X”...................... 112 E. The Long Tail: A Strange Summer Remembered............................................. 116 VIII. CONCLUSION: “THE MIGHTY OPERATIONS OF NATURE” .................... 119 A. What Does It Mean? ......................................................................................... 119 B. The Year Without a Summer as a Challenge to the American Project ............. 121 C. The Year Without a Summer as a Challenge to Historiography....................... 124 D. Unanswered Questions: What Remains to Be Explored................................... 127 E. Epilogue: Watching the Skies ........................................................................... 131 REFERENCES CITED................................................................................................ 135 ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: PITCHING QUOITS IN THICK OVERCOATS In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, Chauncey Jerome, a 67-year-old New England clocksmith, recalled in his memoirs a particularly memorable summer that had occurred forty-four years before. “I well remember on the seventh of June,” he wrote, “while on my way to work...my hands got so cold that I was obliged to lay down my tools and put on a pair of mittens which I had in my pocket.” He noted that it snowed an hour that day. He also described the Fourth of July celebrations in Plymouth, Connecticut: “I saw several men pitching quoits in the middle of the day with thick overcoats on, and the sun shining bright at the same time. A body could not feel very patriotic in such weather.”1 Jerome’s book was primarily a history of the American clock business. Yet the weather anomalies of a summer long past found their way into his memoirs; they were obviously on his mind until nearly the end of his life. He died in 1868. A decade later, another memoir-writer similarly remembered the cold summer of 1816. Sarah Anna Emery, then a young New Hampshire woman, looked back on it in 1879, when she was in her nineties. She recalled Thursday, June 6, the day before the snow squall that Chauncey Jerome remembered. On a trip with relatives to Boscawen, New Hampshire, Emery and her party paused to attend the inauguration of Governor William Plumer. “Our teeth chattered in our heads,” she wrote, “and our feet and hands were benumbed...even
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