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WILLIAM MURDOCK THE LUNATICK

WILLIAM MURDOCK

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William Murdock HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1754

August 21, Wednesday: William Murdock was born in Auchinleck, Ayrshire, son of a Scott millwright. He apprenticed with his father before joining and in their Soho works at Birmingham at the age of 23.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

William Murdock “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1763

James Watt was sent a Newcomen to repair. While putting it back into working order, Watt discovered how he could make the engine more efficient. Watt worked on the idea for several months and eventually produced a steam engine that cooled the used steam in a condenser separate from the main . James Watt was not a wealthy man so he decided to seek a partner with money. John Roebuck, the owner of a Scottish ironworks, agreed to provide financial backing for Watt’s project. In about this year Dr. Erasmus Darwin, an inveterate tinkerer, sketched a design for a steam and suggested a joint project with Matthew Boulton to construct such a self-powered . (Nothing would come of this, else there might have been a car designated the Darwin rather than a car designated the Porsche.)1

1. Guess what! The first self-powered road vehicle, developed in France in 1769, would be a failure and would be consigned to the Warehouse of Bad Ideas after a road accident in 1771 — and this first self-powered road vehicle would be a failure because it neglected to use an effective steering mechanism such as the arrangement that had already been developed by Dr. Darwin in England.

Guess what! Dr. Darwin would not be the only person to come to Boulton & Watt with the idea of a self-powered vehicle. One of their own engineers, William Murdock, would construct such a vehicle in in 1784 — and after he had on his own hook produced a functioning prototype they would extract a promise from him that he abandon it entirely. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1770

2 Dr. Erasmus Darwin had his portrait done, by Joseph Wright, and began the writing of ZOONOMIA.

His deep small pox pits were of course omitted from the painting.

THE SCIENCE OF 1770

His wife Mary (Polly) Howard Darwin died “after a long and suffering illness.” The grandson Charles Robert 2. Although Dr. Darwin’s grandson Charles Robert would read ZOONOMIA at the age of 16 or 17, he would report later in life that the poem had been without effect on his mind. He hadn’t even retained a memory of what his family’s motto E conchis omnia was, or what it signified. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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would report that “judging from all that I have heard of her, [she] must have been a superior and charming woman.” “They seem to have lived together most happily during the thirteen years of their married life, and she was tenderly nursed by her husband during her last illness.”

In this year he had the new motto E conchis omnia, “Everything from shells,” added to the painting on his coach door of the Darwin family’s coat of arms (which had pictured three scallop shells). The image below is not what was painted on his coach door, but what he would have engraved for a bookplate in the following year:

Unfortunately, the Canon of Lichfield Cathedral, the Reverend Thomas Seward (father of the poet Anna Seward who would fall in love with Dr. Darwin, would be rejected for another, and, after her love’s death, would author a scathing and demonstrably false biography), would spot the reference, and –in satirical verse– would accuse his neighbor of renouncing his creator, and would exhort him to change that “foolish motto.” Great wizard he! by magic spells Can all things raise from cockle shells Dr. Darwin would need to have his coach repainted to remove this offensive material.3 PALEONTOLOGY

The biographer Desmond King-Hele acknowledges that it is Charles Darwin, not his grandfather Erasmus, who created the theory of evolution, but seems not to comprehend why this is so:

Charles Darwin read ZOONOMIA when he was sixteen or seventeen, and also listened to a panegyric in praise of evolution from his 3.Imagine parking in the parking lot of your local fundie church, nowadays, with one of those “Darwin” fish-with-legs logos on the trunk lid of your car! Why was such a motto so offensive? –Because the official story then, which would be the official story during Charles Darwin’s life as well, and would be the official story during Henry Thoreau’s life, and would be the official story at the Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee, and is still the official story, as for instance the official belief system of the Wubya administration of born-again Christians — is that our lives, to be of significance to us, to be meaningful to us, must have a divine purpose and legitimation. (That’s why we attacked Iraq — Wubya’s God told him he needed to “take Saddam out.” Wubya’s administration wasn’t mainly about stealing from the poor and giving to the rich. Wubya’s life, in fact, post-salvation, has divine purpose and legitimation. It is now a life as full of meaning, as once it was full of drunken revels.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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friend Dr Robert Grant at Edinburgh University. “At this time I greatly admired the ZOONOMIA,” he says. But neither Grant nor ZOONOMIA had “any effect on my mind.” This is true: otherwise he would have become an evolutionist before going on the voyage of the Beagle, rather than after. Therefore, perhaps, I should here explicate why it was that creating the theory of evolution was left for Charles, and why it was that the early reading of ZOONOMIA, with its recognition of evolution, did nothing in this regard: it is one thing to regard evolution as a fact, and another thing entirely to create a theory which accounts for it by hypothesizing a plausible mechanism and demonstrating the inevitability of this mechanism. Lots of people regarded evolution as a fact, before Charles created his theory. Almost as many people were perfectly well aware of evolution as a fact in 1770, as had been perfectly well aware in 1491 that the earth was a globe — before Columbus obtained funding to sail west from Spain!

During the , Erasmus would be helping to found The Birmingham Lunar Society, a social club for the great scientists and industrialists of the day. The society would hold its monthly meetings at the Soho House on the Monday night nearest the full moon, and this supposedly was so that the attenders would afterwards be

able to find their way home. This society has been characterized as the think tank of the . Members of the society included the Reverend Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen, Friend Samuel Galton, a wealthy Quaker industrialist who eventually would be disowned due to his manufacture of firearms, William Small, the eccentrics Thomas Day and Richard Edgeworth, the Matthew Boulton who was known as “the creator of Birmingham,” James Watt, William Withering, James Keir, and Josiah Wedgewood.

Other personages linked to this society include Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Rudolph Erich Raspe, and William Murdock, developer of a self-propelled vehicle and the inventor of gas lighting. (Murdock would end his days living at the court of the Shah of Persia, where he would be credited with being an incarnation of Marduk, ancient god of light.) THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM HDT WHAT? INDEX

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DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

William Murdock “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1777

William Murdock entered the engineering firm of Matthew Boulton and James Watt in their Soho works at Birmingham.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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1779

James Watt had spent much time in Cornwall persuading mine owners to buy his Boulton & Watt design of steam engines to drive pumping equipment in mines. Due to ill health, he withdrew from Cornwall and despatched William Murdock as his local representative at in Cornwall to superintend the fitting of Watts steam engines. Murdock would live in Cornwall for 19 years, 16 of which would be in a cottage at Cross Street, Redruth — which today bears a plaque to that effect. He would marry Ann Paynter, the daughter of a Cornish mine overseer, and they would have two sons, William and John. It would be at his cottage in Redruth that he would experiment in distilling coal.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

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1784

James Watt invented an arrangement of connecting rods that guided the rod of a steam engine in a perpendicular motion and produced , thus rendering his 1782 double-acting rotary steam engine an effective design.

As of 1765 all spinning to produce cotton muslin had been by hand. However, during the 1770s in England, Richard Arkwright’s spinning and James Hargreaves’s jenny had transformed this situation and at this point all spinning was by machine, while the production of cotton cloth had increased by a multiplier of 24.4 By 1812 the cost of producing a pound of cotton thread would have declined by one order of magnitude and, by the early 1860s, by two orders of magnitude: 100 times less labor intensive!5

At the age of 30, William Murdock built and tested the first primitive , a model 19 inches long by 14 inches high. He ran the steam engine automobile on a dark night along an unfrequented lane near Redruth Parish Church, scaring the “daylights” out of the local rector. However he was never able to pursue his ideas due to the obstinacy of his employers. He tackled them with a view to getting his ideas adopted as a full. size B & W production model, but was strongly turned down. Not only did they oppose his idea completely, but extracted a promise from him that he should abandon it entirely. It was therefore left to Richard Trevithick, who was a lad of 13 years at the time, to pursue the idea of a self propelled vehicle. There is evidence that Trevithick was a visitor to the Murdock house, although Trevithick’s engine was of a completely different design. Murdock nevertheless kept the engine until his death, when it passed to his son John, who later sold it to Mr. Tangye of Birmingham — it now is owned by Birmingham City Council. 4. Bear in mind that in early periods the Southern states of the United States of America produced no significant amount of cotton fiber for export — such production not beginning until 1789. In fact, according to page 92 of Seybert’s STATISTICS, in 1784 a small parcel of cotton that had found its way from the US to Liverpool had been refused admission to England, because it was the customs agent’s opinion that this involved some sort of subterfuge: it could not have originated in the United States. 5. The mills at Fall River, Rhode Island would prove to possess a number of advantages over other towns engaged in the weaving business. Cargo vessels did not need to venture into the treacherous waters around Cape Cod in order to get there, and in those years before the digging of the Cape Cod Canal that was of considerable importance as the cost for coal and the cost for cotton could be lower there than in a port such as Boston for which the vessels had to push our into the treacherous weather and waters off the Cape. And, of course, the constant streams of immigrant labor (the textile industry was the absolute bottom rung of the ladder for white laborers, with turnovers of “operatives” averaging 5% per week due to the unrelentingly low wages) were accessible there as well as in venues such as Lowell. However, primarily, the advantage of Fall River was in its “weaving weather,” which is to say, its soft and misty air, in which the relative humidity averages out at 74%. Such moist air keeps down static electricity, and thus allows a higher thread tension on the looms, while promoting an even drying of the printed fabrics. Mills located in such a climate can specialize in the finer grades of light printed fabric, which sell at the highest premium. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1791

William Murdock took out a patent for a process for extracting from coal a composition for painting on boats to prevent barnacles from attaching themselves to hulls. The patent included coal tar dyes, which would not be used practically for another 50 years.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

William Murdock “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1792

July 29, Sunday: William Murdock remembered from his childhood how housewives in Ayrshire used to burn a special coal that gave a bright light, which boosted the meagre light provided by oil lamps and candles. He had set up an iron retort in the backyard garden of his cottage at Cross Street in Redruth from which a 70-foot metal tube ran into the living room. On this day he achieved a coal gas flame inside the room, as an illuminant. Others had also experimented with lighting coal gas produced by heating coal, but had not been successful. A Frenchman Le Bon had created a light from a gas produced from burning wood, but this had not caught on. Tradition has it that Murdock had first experimented with burning coal in his Mother’s old kettle and lighting the gas that came out of the spout. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1797

Matthew Boulton used modern manufacturing methods to revolutionize the quality and detail of the national coinage. Aware that the new technology would make forgery that much more difficult, the British Government placed an order for the manufacture of 45,000,000 1-ounce penny and 2-ounce copper twopence pieces. Further orders would follow.

Since the firm of Boulton & Watt consistently opposed William Murdock’s getting any patents for his inventions, in this year he changed employers. B & W would realize their loss and after a year offer him another post in his old firm, as Manager of their Birmingham Engineering Works. JAMES WATT HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1799

William Murdock moved back to Birmingham where he continued to experiment with gas lighting and with practical methods for making, storing, and purifying gas. The main problem faced by Murdock was to find a safe way of providing effective light.

Murdock patented a “D” slide that greatly simplified the mechanism of the steam engine. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1802

James Watt powered his steam engine with the vapors released by heated coal in an enclosed space.6 STEAM ENGINES HISTORY OF RR It was at about at this point, too, at which Watt, working in his old age in the garrett of his home at Doldowlod, Radnorshire, invented his sculpturing machine for the reproduction of original busts and figures.

To celebrate the Peace of Amiens, Matthew Boulton installed two gas lamps outside his Soho factory, which illuminated part of the factory’s exterior.Sir Humphrey Davy created an electric arc lamp (it was crude but it WILLIAM MURDOCK

was an electric light).

6.Within the next decade, the business of producing these coal vapors for “gaslight” would thrive. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1803

At the plant in Soho, Birmingham, England the foundry interior was entirely illuminated by gas. Other places nearby, such as the Phillips and Lee , began to use gas lighting. Soon afterwards Boulton & Watt began to sell lighting and heating equipment and William Murdock became a partner in the business. It would not be long before all large factories used such gas lighting. JAMES WATT MATTHEW BOULTON

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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1805

A Manchester Mill Owner, Mr. George Lee of Phillips & Lee, ordered William Murdock’s coal-gas lights. Although he would not be encouraged to patent the invention, he would be awarded the Gold Medal by the Royal Society in recognition of his achievements. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1808

William Murdock read a paper before the Royal Society detailing his discovery of a coal-gas system of lighting. Frederick Winsor came from Germany to London at this time claiming to have a gas system of lighting, but his ideas were believed to have been obtained whilst working for Le Bon. He was trying to float a company called the Great National Light and Heat Company and would seek a Parliamentary Bill in 1809. His solicitor wrote to Mr. George Lee of Phillips & Lee in Manchester, since his Mill was one of the largest in the country, at the time, asking for his views on his gas lighting system. Mr. Lee being very supportive of Murdock extolled his gas lighting system stating that he had been the first in the field. Lee’s views were made public with the effect that Winsor began to be stonewalled by the British, and eventually his Parliamentary Bill would be thrown out. However Winsor would form another company later, The Gas Light & Coke Company, and it would light some streets of London in 1813. Within 10 years most of the major cities in the would be using gas illumination. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1812

John Lauris Blake received an AB degree at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Henry Cogswell Knight, graduating from Brown University, described Rhode Island. HENRY COGSWELL KNIGHT

The National Light and Heat Company was founded. The first coal-gas street lighting would begin two years later. WILLIAM MURDOCK

David Melville was in this year lighting his home in Newport, and the street itself, and his factory in Pawtucket, by means of coal gas. This was attracting considerable attention.

FIRE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1814

The streets of the district of St. Margaret’s Westminster, London were the 1st to be illuminated by gas. WILLIAM MURDOCK HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1815

By this point, with the help of William Murdock, “B&W” had developed into a gigantic concern. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1819

The 2d volume of Friend Luke Howard’s THE CLIMATE OF LONDON, DEDUCED FROM METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS, MADE AT DIFFERENT PLACES IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE METROPOLIS (London, W. Phillips, sold also by J. and A. Arch, two volumes, 1818-1820): The names ... were intended as arbitrary terms for the structure of clouds, and the meaning of each was carefully fixed by a definition ... (Local terms) take away from the nomenclature its present advantage of constituting ... an universal language, by means of which the intelligent of every country may convey to each other their ideas without the necessity of translation. And the more this facility of communication can be increased, by our adopting by consent uniform modes, terms, and measures for our observations, the sooner we shall arrive at a knowledge of the phenomena of the atmosphere in all parts of the globe, and carry the science to some degree of perfection. HOWARD PUBLICATIONS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Friend Luke had discovered the phenomenon we now understand as the urban heat island, by noticing that an urban center like London was warmer at night than the surrounding countryside. After making a 9-year comparison between temperature readings in London and its environs showing that on average “Night is 3.70° warmer and day 0.34° cooler in the city than in the country,” he inferred that the extensive consumption of heating fuel and the resultant production of smoke in the city was enough to alter the local climate.

It is of course no wonder that London was modifying the local climate! By this point, 288 miles of gas pipes had been laid under its pavements to supply 51,000 burners. WILLIAM MURDOCK

According to Volume VIII of REES’S ENCYCLOPÆDIA, edition of 1819, containing Friend Luke’s entry for CLOUD, “a vifible aggregate of minute drops of water fufpended in the atmofphere,” what follows is a statement of the previous hypothesis as to the nature of clouds, the prevailing concept that is to be challenged by his new theory and classification: It is concluded, from numerous obfervations, that the particles of which a cloud confifts are always more or lefs electrified. The hypothefis, which affumes the exiftence of veficular vapour, and makes the particles of clouds to be hollow fpheres, which unite and defcend in rain when ruptured, however fanctioned by the authority of feveral eminent philofophers, does not feem neceffary to the fcience of meteorology in its prefent ftate ; it being evident that the of the particles is not more perfect than it ought to be, if we regard them as mere drops of water. In fact they always defcend, and the water is elevated again only by being converted into invifible vapour. Having written that, Friend Luke proceeds almost directly to his scheme of classification: Clouds are fufceptible of various modifications. By this term is intended the ftructure or manner of aggregation, in which the influence of certain conftant laws is fufficiently evident amidft the infinite leffer diverfities refulting from HDT WHAT? INDEX

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occafional caufes. Hence the principal modifications are as diftinguifhable from each other, as a tree from a hill, or the latter from a lake ; although clouds, in the fame modification, compared with each other, have often only the common refemblances which exift among trees, hills, and lakes, taken generally. There are three fimple and diftinct modifications, which are thus named and defined. And Friend Luke proceeds directly into his nomenclature scheme.

(I conclude from the above that Dr. Brad Dean’s hypothesis –that Thoreau obtained his cloud categories from a perusal of the 1832 republication of Howard’s 1803 pamphlet– is unfounded. Thoreau could at any time have obtained the information that he obtained, not out of some special but undocumented source, but instead out of a readily available encyclopedia.)

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

William Murdock “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In London, Piccadilly Circus was constructed as part of Regent Street developments.

William Bullock sold off his collection of more than 32,000 curiosities, converting his London museum into an exhibition space: the Piccadilly Egyptian Hall.

At some point, perhaps not in this exact timeframe, William Murdock developed a steam .7

7. Archimedes had toyed with this during the siege of Syracuse, Sicily, but had obviously been unsuccessful. Leonardo da Vinci had made a vague sketch of one. On May 15, 1824 Jacob Perkins of Massachusetts would be granted a British patent for a steam cannon. Just before the US Civil War one would be devised in Boston that relied upon centrifugal as well as a steam engine, but its inventor would be intercepted while attempting to deliver it to the Confederacy. I wonder who invented the water pistol. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1830

William Murdock retired from the firm of Boulton & Watt as a partner and purchased a retirement home in Cornwall at Sycamore Hill, . JAMES WATT MATTHEW BOULTON HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1839

November 15, Friday: Betsey Thoreau (Maiden lady) died in Concord.

William Murdock died in Birmingham, Warwickshire at the age of 86.

Abolitionists met in Warsaw, New York to form a Liberty Party, with the black abolitionist Reverends Samuel

Ringgold Ward and Henry Highland Garnet as leading supporters, accepting James Gillespie Birney as their

candidate for President of the United States and Pennsylvania’s Francis J. Lemoyne for his Vice-President. Boycotts of crops produced by slave labor were organized (knowing that if the market for cotton were to collapse, slavery would not be able to survive, Garnet would try to organize in England a worldwide HDT WHAT? INDEX

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boycott).

Samuel Ringgold Ward would attempt to explain, later, this foray into American politics: [T]he abolitionists, such as those with whom it was my honour to be associated, inquired how far they could wield their political powers, with the parties of the day, innocently. About the time to which I was referring —viz., 1839-40— they began to see the great fact, that the political parties of the country departed as widely from the old maxims of democracy and republicanism as did the Churches from the gospel. They saw the North divided into two great parties, wielding two thirds of the votes of the nation, each of these having Southern members who controlled them, and both of them catering for the largest share of the Southern vote, which was about one third of the entire suffrage. They saw the best, highest offices, given freely to Southern men, on purpose to propitiate the South; while the South demanded and accepted this unnatural, undue, and disproportioned amount of power and emolument, both as the price of their aid to the party giving them, and as a means of securing the interests of slavery. Hence it was that the diplomatic agents of the country were sure to be Southerners, or pro- slavery men. Who ever knew any other character at the Court of St. James, or the Court of St. Cloud? Hence it was, too, that ere a Northern man could be qualified for any post of honour in the national gift, he must prove himself to have been always entirely free from the least taint of abolitionism, or to have been thoroughly purged of it, if he had ever been so much as reasonably suspected of it. At the same time, in Northern HDT WHAT? INDEX

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localities the friends and members of these parties sought to cajole and seduce abolitionists into voting with one or the other of them, under the plea that it was more favourable to the anti-slavery cause than its opposite, while manifestly both were the tools and the props of the slave powers. Abolitionists did not fail to see, that to vote with either of these parties was alike repugnant to their cherished principles and to their self- respect. Then, they must do one of two things; either refrain from voting altogether, or concentrate their votes upon candidates of their own selection — in other words, form a political party upon anti-slavery principles. They adopted, wisely, the latter. That party was formed in August, 1840, at Syracuse. I then became, for the first time, a member of a political party. With it I cast my first vote; to it I devoted my political activities; with it I lived my political life — which terminated when, eleven years subsequently, I left the country. As the abolitionists saw the Churches were trampling under foot the fundamental principles of Christianity, touching slavery, so they saw the Government and the political parties to be false to their own sworn principles of freedom and democracy. They departed from the constitution, which was made “to secure the blessings of liberty,” and which ordained that “no man shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law.” The Whigs denied the faith of their revolutionary fathers, whose Whiggism was but another name for self-sacrificing love of liberty. The Democrats, claiming Thomas Jefferson as their father and boasting of his having written the Declaration of Independence, hated nothing so intensely as Jefferson’s writings against slavery — and that very Declaration of Independence, when, among “ALL MEN” in it declared to be entitled by God to the unalienable right to liberty, Negroes were said to be included. Both professed to be admirers of the great Washington; but neither of them, like him, coveted the opportunity of using his political power against slavery in his native State. What the abolitionists then demanded, and now contend for, is the simple application of the principles of the Declaration of Independence to the black as well as the white, and that the former should share the benefits secured by the constitution as well as the latter. Believing just what the Declaration of Independence says, that the right of man to liberty is unalienable, they hold that no enactments, no constitutions, no consent of the man himself, no combinations of men, can alienate that which is by God’s fiat made unalienable. They agree with England’s greatest living jurist, Henry Peter Brougham, that the idea that man can be the property of man is to be rejected as a “wild and guilty phantasy”: neither overlooking nor neglecting other great questions with which governments and parties have to do, they make their basis principle the unalienable right of man “to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It was to the promulgation of these political principles, and of those religious principles to which I referred in the preceding pages, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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that, as an agent of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society, it was my duty and my pleasure to devote myself. This duty brought me into contact with all classes of the enemies of the cause — made me familiar with all the different objections urged against it on the one hand; and it gave me the ever-to-be- remembered pleasure of meeting all classes of abolitionists, profiting by their suggestions, accepting their hospitalities, rejoicing in their sympathies, and sharing their devotions. A truer, a more discerning set of men, America does not hold. They are fully alive to the issue before them. They see that, if the principle be admitted that a black man may be legally, righteously enslaved, so may any other man; that slavery is altogether regardless of the colour of its victims: that its encroachments upon the right of petition, the freedom of the press, the freedom of speech — its whipping, tarring and feathering, and lynching, white abolitionists at the South — its enslavement of the light-coloured children of white men — its unscrupulous, insatiate demands, nature, character — all make it the enemy of any and every class opposing it, willing to jeopard and to destroy the liberties of any whom it can crush as its victims. They see that the real political issue is, not whether the black man’s slavery shall be perpetuated, but whether the freedom of any Americans can be permanent. Blessings on the men who, at all hazards, are prepared to welcome and to meet that issue, with all its sacrifices and all its consequences! Whether they succeed or not, whether there is sufficient soundness and vitality in the republic to admit of its being saved or not, they, let the worst come, will ever bear in their bosoms the satisfaction of having done their duty in times of the utmost trial. Yea, blessings on that fearless band! Allow me once more to state, what I fear Englishmen but too seldom and too slightly consider — 1. The religious issue betwixt the American antislavery men and their opposers is deep, radical, vital, involving the religious weal or woe of the American Church. 2. The political issue is as deep, radical, and vital, in its kind: involving the safety, the stability — not the unity alone, but the very existence, of the republic. It is not like the emancipation question in Great Britain, or the corn-law question, or the reform question. It is not, What are the powers and scope of the Government, to what limit do they extend, to what classes do they apply, and of what improvements are they capable? It is a question affecting all classes, involving the fate of the whole people, undermining the basis of their best institutions, lying at the root of all constitutional government, and in its grasp including the whole range of American rights. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

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 product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: April 11, 2014

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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 ). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

WILLIAM MURDOCK WILLIAM MURDOCK

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in 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 . Arrgh.