Patriots and Peoples

Hemingway and the Black Renaissance

2011-11-17T07:54:00.001-08:00

Ohio State University Press is bringing out an important new book this spring. From the publisher's website:

Hemingway and the Black Renaissance, edited by Gary Edward Holcomb and Charles Scruggs, explores a conspicuously overlooked topic:Hemingway’s wide-ranging influence on writers from the Harlem Renaissance to the present day. An observable who’s who of blackwriters—Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Wallace Thurman, Chester Himes, Alex la Guma, Derek Walcott, Gayl Jones,and more—cite Hemingway as a vital influence. This inspiration extends from style, Hemingway’s minimalist art, to themes of isolationand loneliness, the dilemma of the expatriate, and the terrifying experience of living in a time of war. The relationship, nevertheless, was not unilateral, as in the case of Jean Toomer’s 1923 hybrid, short-story cycle Cane, which influenced Hemingway’s collage-like 1925In Our Time.

Gary Holcomb told me about this book while we were fly fishing in Idaho. I am excited to see it in press.

Why Vietnam? (1965)

2011-10-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

Poking around in a sale bin at my neighborhood grocery store, I found a four DVD set of documentaries: Vietnam: America's Conflict (Mill Creek Entertainment, 2009). I suspect that some or all of these are readily available free elsewhere.

The first in the series is Why Vietnam? (1965) put out by the Department of Defense to highlight aggression by the communists in North Vietnam. The 31 minute film begins with a story of the failure of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to halt Adolf Hitler's aggression. Chamberlain failed to heed the lessons of Benito Mussolini's aggression in Ethiopia, the narrator explains.

The Defense propaganda film--documentary is an inaccurate term--is available at Internet Archive's Movie Archive. There, FedFlix "feature[s] the best movies of the United States Government, from training films to history, from our national parks to the U.S. Fire Academy and the Postal Inspectors, all of these fine flix are available for reuse without any restrictions whatsoever." Using "Vietnam" as a search term produces 170 hits. It seems more than likely that I can find most, if not all, of the fifty films on Vietnam: America's Conflict there.

Publishers Need to Get Historians Involved

2011-10-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

Zachary M. Schrag opines at History News Network:

But I am still left with the sense that the Five Ponds textbooks too casually mix history and myth. As I understand the publisher’s response to my comments, George Washington will continue to kneel in prayer, Eli Whitney alone will revolutionize cotton production, and brave Americans will emerge victorious in the War of 1812.

Now, I imagine few works of history are wholly free from errors; in my own first book I misplaced a department store by two city blocks. But the problems in these books were serious enough to make me wonder if Virginia needs a better way to get historians involved in the writing of history texts for schoolchildren.

Read the whole essay:

Virginia's History Textbooks Still Aren't Accurate—The Publishers Need to Get Historians Involved | History News Network

Conservation Ethos

2011-09-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

My Pacific Northwest history class watched Clearcut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon (2005) last night. This film never fails to generate enthusiastic and contentious discussion. The film is ostensibly about timber, the decline of the prosperous timber industry, and community dissension that resulted from the spotted owl controversy. But, the film hones in on community controversies in the early 2000s that are as much about dress code, religious values, gay awareness groups, body piercings, and a real estate exchange that resulted in litigation.

That film was part of the entry point for tonight's lecture and discussion concerning the construction of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railways in the late nineteenth century, the land grants given to the Northern Pacific to facilitate construction, the sale of many of these lands by Jim Hill to George Weyerhaeuser, and the advocacy of environmentalists Derrick Jensen and George Draffan in Railroads and Clearcuts: Legacy of Congress's 1864 Northern Pacific Land Grant (1995). I bought Jensen and Draffan's book in Republic, Washington in 2001, emailed Draffan to receive additional supporting materials a week or so later, and have been developing a critical narrative response to this text ever since.

Jensen's and Draffan's contention that the excessive land grants claimed by the Northern Pacific in the late nineteenth century were a breach of the public trust is hard to contest. Nor is it easy to set aside their claim that such land grant claims were unlawful abuses of a law that had expired. However, their contention that Congress can and should restore these lands to the public domain is more difficult to swallow. In any case, it is the job of a historian studying such texts of environmental advocacy to investigate the historic claims.

A central claim of this text, other papers by Draffan, Jensen, and others writing for Endgame Research and similar groups, and of critics of the timber industry generally is that the timber companies have irresponsibly over-harvested our national forests, and private forests.

In assessing these claims, as well as historicizing the spotted owl controversy of the early late 1980s and early 1990s, it seems necessary to understand some of the history of notions of forest conservation. Such an inquiry led me to reading the early chapters of John Ise, The United States Forest Policy (1920). This text reviews federal and state legislation affecting forests from the beginnings of English colonization of New England to the time of writing in the early twentieth century.

A Lesson in Sourcing

Ise offers a remarkable passage attributed to Richard Upton Piper, The Trees of America (1855):

When Canada has exhausted her supply, which she must at some time do, where are we to go? In our enjoyment of the present we are apt to forget that we cannot without sin neglect to provide for those who are to come after us. It is a common observation that our summers are becoming dryer and our streams smaller, and this is due to forest destruction, which makes our summers dryer and our winters colder.
Ise, United States Forest Policy, 28

That over-harvesting might have been an issue in the mid-nineteenth century is less surprising than Piper's anticipation of the science of climate change. Naturally, I went looking for this passage in Piper's book. The absence of a footnote and page number in Ise did not facilitate my quest. Even so, I can confidently assert that the quote is spurious. All of the words appear in Piper's book, but in four paragraphs spread across three pages. The punctuation has been altered in the third sentence, and the words are not Piper's, but are words he quoted from some letters of William C. Bryant (the poet). Ise crystallized Bryant's comments into a briefer statement.

"When Canada has exhausted her supply, which she must at some time do, where are we to go?" appears after (8) "In our enjoyment of the present we are apt to forget that we cannot without sin neglect to provide for those who are to come after us" (6).

The third sentence derives from a longer passage:

"It is a common observation," says this correspondent [Bryant], "that our summers are becoming dryer, and our streams smaller. Take the Cuyahoga as an illustration. Fifty years ago large barges loaded with goods went up and down that river, and one of the vessels engaged in the battle of Lake Erie, in which the gallant Perry was victorious, was built at Old Portage, six miles north of Albion, and floated down the lake. Now, in an ordinary stage of the water, a canoe or skiff can hardly pass down the stream.

"Many a boat of fifty tons burden has been built and loaded on the Tuscarawas, at New Portage, and sailed to New Orleans without breaking bulk. Now the river hardly affords a supply of water at New Portage for the canal. The same may be said of other streams — they are drying up. And from the same cause — the destruction of our forests — our summers are growing dryer, and our winters colder." Or perhaps it should be stated, the seasons are becoming subject to greater extremes of heat and cold — of dryness and moisture. Humbolt says, "The clearing of a country of trees has the effect of raising the mean annual temperature; but at the same time greater extremes of heat and cold are introduced." These very extremes are the great sources of mischief to vegetation, and also to the health of man and animals.
Piper, The Trees of America, 51 (emphasis added)

Piper's science, or Bryant's, may differ from science in our day, but both a conservation ethos focused upon the affects of deforestation and incipient concerns about global temperatures were present in the mid-nineteenth century. Piper's book was published the same year that Isaac I. Stevens, who had led previously the Pacific Railroad Expedition to survey a northern route for a rail line, conducted treaties with the Makah, Nez Perce, Yakama, and other tribes.

Ben Franklin On Wine

2011-08-28T15:01:00.000-07:00

Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Attributed to Benjamin Franklin

There are plenty of references to beer in Benjamin Franklin's writings and other papers. His wife, Deborah, mentions beer in a list of household expenses for May 1762. Richard Saunders (one of Franklin's pseudonyms) describes Mead as "the best of Small Beer" (Poor Richard Improved, 1765). In describing objections of the American colonists to the Stamp Act, he noted the "too heavy Duty on foreign Mellasses" interfered in procurement of "one of the Necessaries of Life ... universally a principal Ingredient in their common Beer" (Fragments of a Pamphlet on the Stamp Act). There are also references to Thomas Beer, whom John Adams mentioned, "had been obliged to fly from England, for having assisted American Prisoners to escape" (Adams to Franklin, 18 October 1781).

These references are found easily among the thirty-four to "beer" in the digitized edition of The Franklin Papers at Yale. These papers comprise thirty-nine published volumes and more in the works. A search of the same digital archives produces two hundred twenty-six references to wine.

Ben Franklin's famous quote regarding beer as evidence of God's love appears nowhere in the Franklin Papers at Yale. They do not have the largest collection of his letters. Even so, their digital archive is easy to use, and offers a considerable trove of Franklin's writing.

According to Fred R. Shapiro, editor of The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), the earliest instance of Franklin's beer quote may have been in Beverage World (1 February 1996). This past March, he challenged readers of his Freakonomics column to push that date back earlier with their own research. Shapiro believes, as do many others who have explored the topic, that Franklin's beer quote is a corruption of another less well-known statement regarding divine favor in the watering of the vines that make possible the production of wine.

We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana, as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy! The miracle in question was only performed to hasten the operation under circumstances of present necessity, which required it.
Franklin to Abbé André Morellet

This letter appears nowhere in the Franklin papers at Yale. It does appear in a collection of writings put out by William Temple Franklin, executor of Franklin's literary estate. Both the original letter, in French, and an English translation appear in William Temple Franklin, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, vol. V, 3d ed (London: Printed for Henry Colburn, 1819), pp. 286-291. Google has digitized a copy.

Sourcing

[Lendol] Calder attempts to identify the peculiar signature of the practice of history. He seeks to introduce to his students six "cognitive habits: questioning, connecting, sourcing, making inferences, considering alternate perspectives, and recognizing limits to one's knowledge" (emphasis added).
James Stripes, "Reflective Thinking, Teaching and Learning"

Bloggers often fail to source their work. Politicians fail almost universally. Beer advocates are not particularly prone to verifying that a compelling phrase uttered (or written) by one of America's true greats was indeed so uttered or penned. But, historians (and many journalists) should know better. Those who blog or otherwise write about the American past, or any other past for that matter, should develop the cognitive habits of the historian: questioning, connecting, sourcing, making inferences, considering alternate perspectives, and recognizing limits to one's knowledge.

It galls me that so many folks on the internet quote a part of one paragraph from Franklin's letter on wine, but so few present a verifiable source. It is easy to claim that Franklin never said, "beer is proof that God love us," and to offer an alternate quote concerning wine. But such claims need footnotes. Historians source their work. If there is not a credible primary source (even an edited one), then the claim has no merit.

The Claremont Review of Books offered Franklin's entire letter in 2002, and placed it on the web in 2004. But that esteemed publication, putatively committed to the values of the Founders, offered no indication whether they found the letter laying on their lawn or in some research library somewhere. Even so, by offering the letter whole, they facilitate readers learning some context for the oft-quoted passage.

Perhaps in time a scholar will verify that Franklin's beer quote is neither fraudulent nor apocryphal. If he said it, or wrote it, there may be a letter somewhere. Until then, the supposition that it is a corruption of his letter concerning divination, the love of God, and the daily miracle of rains watering vines stands as most plausible.

Factory Wages and Stock Value

2011-08-25T12:48:00.000-07:00

What would Henry Ford do?

Robert Reich poses this question in "Stock Tip: Be Worried. Workers are Consumers."

Meanwhile, students in the Freshman seminar at UC Berkeley with Professor J. Bradford DeLong are reading, among many other texts, an 1821 letter by Jean-Baptiste Say that suggests consumers are producers:

All those who, since Adam Smith, have turned their attention to Political Economy, agree that in reality we do not buy articles of consumption with money, the circulating medium with which we pay for them. We must in the first instance have bought this money itself by the sale of our produce.

To a proprietor of a mine, the silver money is a produce with which he buys what he has occasion for. To all those through whose hands this silver afterwards passes, it is only the price of the produce which they themselves have raised by means of their property in land, their capitals, or their industry. In selling them they in the first place exchange them for money, and afterwards they exchange the money for articles of consumption. It is therefore really and absolutely with their produce that they make their purchases: therefore it is impossible for them to purchase any articles whatever, to a greater amount than those they have produced, either by themselves or through the means of their capital or their land.
Letter 1, "Letters to Malthus on Political Economy and Stagnation of Commerce"

George Washington, Moses Seixas, "To bigotry no sanction"

2011-08-24T07:05:00.000-07:00

[B]ehold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People--a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance--but generously affording to All liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language, equal parts of the great governmental Machine.
Moses Seixas

An editorial in today's Wall Street Journal describes a campaign launched by the Jewish Daily Forward to make available for public viewing an original letter by George Washington. In the letter, George Washington replies to a letter from a Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island that welcomed him to the city and describes hopes that in the new nation, Jews will enjoy rights that had been denied them in the past. The editorial describes Washington's letter as "one of the greatest statements on religious liberty of all time."

The letter is owned by the Morris Morgenstern Foundation. Morgenstern purchased it in 1949. It had been on public display while on loan to the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum until ten years ago, according to the article in the Forward.

The article in the Forward describes the discovery of letters "detailing a secret tug-of-war between the congregation of Touro Synagogue in Newport and Morris Morgenstern" (Paul Berger, "Papers Reveal Secret Struggle To Display Washington’s Letter").

Since the museum put the document in storage, the new National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia and the Library of Congress have sought to display the letter, to no avail.
Paul Berger, "Papers Reveal"

The letters were found by Beth Wenger during research for her History Lessons: The Creation of American Jewish Heritage (2010).

The opinion piece in the Journal, by former editor of the Forward Seth Lipsky, picks up on quotes in the Forward article that compare the letter's significance to foundational texts of American history, such as the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

The letter is, after all, private property. But it is also a national treasure, containing one of the greatest statements on religious liberty of all time. And the campaign to give it a public home—so it can be leaned over and read as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are—comes at a time when the free exercise of religion is increasingly constrained around the world.
Seth Lipsky, "A Missing Monument to Religious Freedom"

President Washington's letter was written in reply to a letter the previous day welcoming him to Newport. The strong expressions concerning religious freedom in the letter incorporate text from the letter by Moses Seixas, the warden of Congregation Kahal Kadosh Yeshuat Israel. The text of Washington's letter is widely available on the web.

To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island
18 August 1790

Gentlemen.

While I receive, with much satisfaction, your Address replete with expressions of affection and esteem; I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you, that I shall always retain a grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced in my visit to Newport, from all classes of Citizens.

The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet, from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security. If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good Government, to become a great and a happy people.

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my Administration, and fervent wishes for my felicity. May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.

Go: Washington
The Papers of George Washington

The letter of the Congregation is also available.

To the President of the United States of America
Newport Rhode Island August 17th 1790.

Sir

Permit the children of the Stock of Abraham to approach you with the most cordial affection and esteem for your person & merits and to join with our fellow Citizens in welcoming you to New Port.

With pleasure we reflect on those days--those days of difficulty, & danger when the God of Israel, who delivered David from the peril of the sword, shielded your head in the day of battle: and we rejoice to think, that the same Spirit who rested in the Bosom of the greatly beloved Daniel enabling him to preside over the Provinces of the Babylonish Empire, rests and ever will rest upon you, enabling you to discharge the arduous duties of Chief Magistrate in these States.

Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now (with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events) behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People--a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance--but generously affording to All liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language, equal parts of the great governmental Machine: This so ample and extensive Federal Union whose basis is Philanthropy, Mutual Confidence and Publick Virtue, we cannot but acknowledge to be the work of the Great God, who ruleth in the Armies Of Heaven and among the Inhabitants of the Earth, doing whatever seemeth him good.

For all the Blessings of civil and religious liberty which we enjoy under an equal and benign administration, we desire to send up our thanks to the Antient of Days, the great preserver of Men--beseeching him, that the Angel who conducted our forefathers through the wilderness into the promised land, may graciously conduct you through all the difficulties and dangers of this mortal life: and, when like Joshua full of days and full of honour, you are gathered to your Fathers, may you be admitted into the Heavenly Paradise to partake of the water of life, and the tree of immortality.

Done and Signed by Order of the Hebrew Congregation in Newport Rhode Island
Moses Seixas, Warden
Papers of George Washington

Update:

Jonathan Rowe at American Creation posted a link to a news story from the Providence Journal that is worth reading alongside the Jewish Daily Forward story linked above.

Michelle Bachmann, Research Assistant

2011-08-22T10:06:00.000-07:00

An article in The Nation today informs me that Republican Presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann was a research assistant for John Eidsmoe's work leading to publication of Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (1987). I have blogged about this book several times in the past, most extensively in "Calvin and the Constitution" (July 2009), where I point out several errors of fact, interpretation, and methodology in Eidsmoe's scholarship.

The Nation asserts:

Bachmann was a research assistant to John Eidsmoe for his 1987 book Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of our Founding Fathers, in which Eidsmoe wrote “the church and the state have separate spheres of authority, but both derive authority from God. In that sense America, like [Old Testament] Israel, is a theocracy.”
"Rewrite, Sugarcoat, Ignore: 8 Ways Conservatives Misremember American History"

Bachmann discusses the influence of Eidsmoe, and faux-historian David Barton in a video to which the article in The Nation links.

A reasonable working hypothesis suggest itself. Michelle Bachmann's history gaffes proceed not from the pressures of the campaign trail, but from faulty training and cultivation of systemic error.

Study Reveals Tea Party Priorities

2011-08-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

In September 2009, I published "The Joker," highlighting concerns that at least some members of the Tea Party were tapping into a long history of racist iconography--one that can easily be explained away in a manner that may convince those unfamiliar with the history of minstrel shows and Vaudeville. Professor Susurro has a more extensive compilation of Tea Party images highlighting racism and threats of violence at Like a Whisper.

I referenced some arguments with Tea Partiers concerning the size of the crowd at their largest rally. It was later reported that they used historic photos of an entirely different event to contest the somewhat more accurate counts of observers from the mainstream media. See the PolitiFact story.

Earlier this week, The Blue State Post mentioned some research by David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam that allegedly demonstrates,

...priority #1 is not small government with these people! So what do (rank and file) Tea Partiers have in common (from 2006 through today):

They’re white and
have a low regard for immigrants and blacks (*ahem* racist?!)
are disproportionately social conservatives
have a desire to see religion play a prominent role in politics
seek deeply religious elected officials
approve of religious leaders engaging in politics
want religion brought into political debates

Read the whole article at:

Study shows that Tea Party members are vastly Caucasian and have low regard for 'immigrants and blacks'

Update: 26 August 2011

Several people noted that this article and others like it fail to disclose critical questions regarding research methodology. On the Facebook Wall for American Grace (the book), Adam Blum asked, "How did you decide on choosing the 3100 people you called and interviewed? Was it random? If so did you use a computer or just call by address?" I commented that I, too, would like such answers. This morning, the author(s) of American Grace posted, "we've posted some information on our blog and on our website."

They give this link: http://americangrace.org/research.html

Oregon Temperance Society: Beginnings

2011-08-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

Read this entry in a primary source that was reprinted in the Oregon Historical Quarterly many years ago:

11 February 1836

[I]n compliance with a previous invitation all the neighbors visited us at the Mission house P. M. at which time a temperance society was formed the first existing west of the Rocky mountains O[regon] T[erritory]--Three of our neighbors readily signed the temperance pledge, others made frivolous excuses for not signing and others wanted time to consider of the subject. The following day three of them came and signed--The following week J. Lee obtained nine more subscribers there are in all Eighteen members,--O Lord save this rising settlement from the curse of intemperance.

Mission Record Book of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Willamette Station, Oregon Territory, North America, Commenced 1834, ed. Charles Henry Clay, Oregon Historical Quarterly 23 (1922): 242.

Oregon Temperance Society

2011-08-14T08:29:00.000-07:00

Oregon in the 1830s was not a wholly lawless frontier, but with joint occupation by the United States and by England, and with a small non-Indian population, enforcement authorities were far from prominent. United States law banned sale of liquor in Indian Country. The Hudson's Bay Company, England's presence in the region, understood that liquor sales to Indians had a deleterious effect on the fur trade--their business in the region. Young's plan to build a distillery provoked cooperation between HBC employees, American settlers, and missionaries that had recently arrived from the United States with the professed purpose of bringing Christian civilization to Oregon's Native population. The Oregon Temperance Society formed and started a drive to dissuade Young from manufacturing spirits. There was an exchange of letters in January 1837.

Gustavus Hines, A Voyage Round the World: with a History of the Oregon Mission (Buffalo: George H. Derby and Company, 1850) has an account of the formation of the Oregon Temperance Society. Although the bulk of Hines' book is grounded in his personal experiences, the first chapter, which concerns the early history of the Oregon Mission is a secondary work, “drawn from the most reliable sources, and, principally from the short notes of the late Rev. Jason Lee, and the Journal of the late Cyrus Shepherd, the first missionary teacher in Oregon” (xi). Hines reproduces the letters from the temperance society to Ewing Young and Lawrence Carmichael, as well as the reply of these men.

Simple inconsistencies elsewhere in this chapter reduce one's confidence that these letters are error free reproductions, but in the main they are probably faithful. I have conformed to the spelling in Hines, and the italics are his (or in the originals from which he rendered copies).

MESSRS. YOUNG & CARMICAEL:
Gentlemen, – Whereas we, the members of the Oregon Temperance Society, have learned with no common interest, and with feelings of deep regret, that you are now preparing a distillery for the purpose of manufacturing ardent spirits, to be sold in this vicinity; and whereas, we are most fully convinced that the vending of spiritous liquors will more effectually paralyze our efforts for the promotion of temperance, than any other, or all other obstacles that can be thrown in our way; and, as we do feel a lively and intense interest in the success of the temperance cause, believing as we do, that the prosperity and interests of this infant and rising settlement will be materially affected by it, both as it respects its temporal and spiritual welfare, and that the poor Indians, whose case is even now indescribably wretched, will be made far more so by the use of ardent spirits; and whereas, gentlemen, you are not ignorant that the laws of the United States prohibit American citizens from selling ardent spirits to Indians under the penalty of a heavy fine; and as you do not pretend to justify yourselves, but urge pecuniary interest as the reason of your procedure; and as we do not, cannot think it will be of pecuniary interest to you to prosecute this business; and as we are not enemies, but friends, and do not wish, under existing circumstances, that you should sacrifice one penny of the money you have already expended; we, therefore, for the above, and various other reasons which we could urge,
1st. Resolved, That we do most earnestly and feelingly request you, gentlemen, forever to abandon your enterprise.
2nd. Resolved, That we will and do hereby agree to pay you the sum that you have expended, if you will give us the avails of your expenditures, or deduct from them the bill of expenses.
3d. Resolved, That a committee of one be appointed to make known the views of this society, and present our request to Messrs. Young & Carmichael.
4th. Resolved, That the undersigned will pay the sums severally affixed to our names, to Messrs. Young & Carmichael, on or before the thirty-first day of March next, the better to enable them to give up their project.

[Then followed the names of nine Americans, and fifteen Frenchmen, which then embraced a majority of the white men of the country, excluding the Hudson's Bay Company, with a subscription of sixty-three dollars, and a note appended as follows:] (Hines' own words, presumably, although indented as part of the letter)

We, the undersigned, jointly promise to pay the balance, be the same more or less.
JASON LEE
DANIEL LEE
CYRUS SHEPHERD
P. L. EDWARDS

Hines, 19-20

Hines does not give the date of the letter, although the purposes set out in the letter were agreed to at a meeting of the temperance society on 2 January 1837, so perhaps that is the date of the letter. Hines reproduces the reply.

WALLAMETTE, 13th Jan., 1837
TO THE OREGON TEMPERANCE SOCIETY:
Gentlemen, – Having taken into consideration your request to relinquish our enterprise in manufacturing ardent spirits, we therefore do agree to stop our proceeding for the present. But, gentlemen, the reasons for first beginning such an undertaking were the innumerable difficulties placed in our way by, and the tyranising oppression of the Hudson's Bay Company, here under the absolute authority of Dr. McLaughlin, who has treated us with more disdain than any American citizen's feelings could support. But as there have been some favorable circumstances occurred to enable us to get along without making spiritous liquors, we resolve to stop the manufacture of it for the present; but, gentlemen, it is not consistent with our feelings to receive any recompense whatever for our expenditures, but we are thankful to the Society for their offer.
We remain, yours, &c.,
YOUNG & CARNICHAEL.

Hines, 20-21

Alexander Hamilton, "Report on the Public Credit"

2011-07-29T08:38:00.000-07:00

Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury under President George Washington, might be termed the father of the national debt. He suggested that the United States government should issue bonds in order to finance the as yet unpaid debts of the Revolutionary War. Not only should the Federal government pay its own bills at full face value, but it should assume the outstanding debts of the several states too.

Read Hamilton's "Report on the Public Credit" (1790), which is readily available at the Library of Congress American Memory Collection, the Online Library of Liberty, and other locations now including Patriots and Peoples.

Communicated to the House of Representatives,

January 14, 1790.

Treasury Department,

January 9, 1790.

The Secretary of the Treasury, in obedience to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the twenty-first day of September last, has, during the recess of Congress, applied himself to the consideration of a proper plan for the support of the public credit, with all the attention which was due to the authority of the House, and to the magnitude of the object.

In the discharge of this duty, he has felt, in no small degree, the anxieties which naturally flow from a just estimate of the difficulty of the task, from a well-founded diffidence of his own qualifications for executing it with success, and from a deep and solemn conviction of the momentous nature of the truth contained in the resolution under which his investigations have been conducted,—“That an adequate provision for the support of the public credit is a matter of high importance to the honor and prosperity of the United States.”

With an ardent desire that his well-meant endeavors may be conducive to the real advantage of the nation, and with the utmost deference to the superior judgment of the House, he now respectfully submits the result of his inquiries and reflections to their indulgent construction.

In the opinion of the Secretary, the wisdom of the House, in giving their explicit sanction to the proposition which has been stated, cannot but be applauded by all who will seriously consider and trace, through their obvious consequences, these plain and undeniable truths:

That exigencies are to be expected to occur, in the affairs of nations, in which there will be a necessity for borrowing.

That loans in time of public danger, especially from foreign war, are found an indispensable resource, even to the wealthiest of them.

And that, in a country which, like this, is possessed of little active wealth, or, in other words, little moneyed capital, the necessity for that resource must, in such emergencies, be proportionably urgent.

And as, on the one hand, the necessity for borrowing in particular emergencies cannot be doubted, so, on the other, it is equally evident that, to be able to borrow upon good terms, it is essential that the credit of a nation should be well established.

For, when the credit of a country is in any degree questionable, it never fails to give an extravagant premium, in one shape or another, upon all the loans it has occasion to make. Nor does the evil end here; the same disadvantage must be sustained on whatever is to be bought on terms of future payment.

From this constant necessity of borrowing and buying dear, it is easy to conceive how immensely the expenses of a nation, in a course of time, will be augmented by an unsound state of the public credit.

To attempt to enumerate the complicated variety of mischiefs, in the whole system of the social economy, which proceed from a neglect of the maxims that uphold public credit, and justify the solicitude manifested by the House on this point, would be an improper intrusion on their time and patience.

In so strong a light, nevertheless, do they appear to the Secretary, that, on their due observance, at the present critical juncture, materially depends, in his judgment, the individual and aggregate prosperity of the citizens of the United States; their relief from the embarrassments they now experience; their character as a people; the cause of good government.

If the maintenance of public credit, then, be truly so important, the next inquiry which suggests itself is: By what means is it to be effected? The ready answer to which question is, by good faith; by a punctual performance of contracts. State, like individuals, who observe their engagements are respected and trusted, while the reverse is the fate of those who pursue an opposite conduct.

Every breach of the public engagements, whether from choice or necessity, is, in different degrees, hurtful to public credit. When such a necessity does truly exist, the evils of it are only to be palliated by a scrupulous attention, on the part of the Government, to carry the violation no further than the necessity absolutely requires, and to manifest, if the nature of the case admit of it, a sincere disposition to make reparation whenever circumstances shall permit. But, with every possible mitigation, credit must suffer, and numerous mischiefs ensue. It is, therefore, highly important, when an appearance of necessity seems to press upon the public councils, that they should examine well its reality, and be perfectly assured that there is no method of escaping from it, before they yield to its suggestions. For, though it cannot safely be affirmed that occasions have never existed, or may not exist, in which violations of the public faith, in this respect, are inevitable; yet there is great reason to believe that they exist far less frequently than precedents indicate, and are oftenest either pretended, through levity or want of firmness; or supposed, through want of knowledge. Expedients often have been devised to effect, consistently with good faith, what has been done in contravention of it. Those who are most commonly creditors of a nation are, generally speaking, enlightened men; and there are signal examples to warrant a conclusion that, when a candid and fair appeal is made to them, they will understand their true interest too well to refuse their concurrence in such modifications of their claims as any real necessity may demand.

While the observance of that good faith, which is the basis of public credit, is recommended by the strongest inducements of political expediency, it is enforced by considerations of still greater authority. There are arguments for it which rest on the immutable principles of moral obligation. And in proportion as the mind is disposed to contemplate, in the order of Providence, an intimate connection between public virtue and public happiness, will be its repugnancy to a violation of those principles.

This reflection derives additional strength from the nature of the debt of the United States. It was the price of liberty. The faith of America has been repeatedly pledged for it, and with solemnities that give peculiar force to the obligation. There is, indeed, reason to regret that it has not hitherto been kept; that the necessities of the war, conspiring with inexperience in the subjects of finance, produced direct infractions; and that the subsequent period has been a continued scene of negative violation or non-compliance. But a diminution of this regret arises from the reflection, that the last seven years have exhibited an earnest and uniform effort, on the part of the Government of the Union, to retrieve the national credit, by doing justice to the creditors of the nation; and that the embarrassments of a defective Constitution, which defeated this laudable effort, have ceased.

From this evidence of a favorable disposition given by the former Government, the institution of a new one, clothed with powers competent to calling forth the resources of the community, has excited correspondent expectations. A general belief accordingly prevails, that the credit of the United States will quickly be established on the firm foundation of an effectual provision for the existing debt. The influence which this has had at home is witnessed by the rapid increase that has taken place in the market value of the public securities. From January to November, they rose thirty-three and a third per cent.; and, from that period to this time, they have risen fifty per cent. more; and the intelligence from abroad announces effects proportionably favorable to our national credit and consequence.

It cannot but merit particular attention, that, among ourselves, the most enlightened friends of good government are those whose expectations are the highest.

To justify and preserve their confidence; to promote the increasing respectability of the American name; to answer the calls of justice; to restore landed property to its due value; to furnish new resources, both to agriculture and commerce; to cement more closely the union of the States; to add to their security against foreign attack; to establish public order on the basis of an upright and liberal policy;—these are the great and invaluable ends to be secured by a proper and adequate provision, at the present period, for the support of public credit.

To this provision we are invited, not only by the general considerations which have been noticed, but by others of a more particular nature. It will procure, to every class of the community, some important advantages, and remove some no less important disadvantages.

The advantage to the public creditors, from the increased value of that part of their property which constitutes the public debt, needs no explanation.

But there is a consequence of this, less obvious, though not less true, in which every other citizen is interested. It is a well-known fact, that, in countries in which the national debt is properly funded, and an object of established confidence, it answers most of the purposes of money. Transfers of stock or public debt are there equivalent to payments in specie; or, in other words, stock, in the principal transactions of business, passes current as specie. The same thing would, in all probability, happen here under the like circumstances.

The benefits of this are various and obvious:

First.—Trade is extended by it, because there is a larger capital to carry it on, and the merchant can, at the same time, afford to trade for smaller profits; as his stock, which, when unemployed, brings him an interest from the Government, serves him also as money when he has a call for it in his commercial operations.

Secondly.—Agriculture and manufactures are also promoted by it, for the like reason, that more capital can be commanded to be employed in both; and because the merchant, whose enterprise in foreign trade gives to them activity and extension, has greater means for enterprise.

Thirdly.—The interest of money will be lowered by it; for this is always in a ratio to the quantity of money, and to the quickness of circulation. This circumstance will enable both the public and individuals to borrow on easier and cheaper terms.

And from the combination of these effects, additional aids will be furnished to labor, to industry, and to arts of every kind. But these good effects of a public debt are only to be looked for, when, by being well funded, it has acquired an adequate and stable value; till then, it has rather a contrary tendency. The fluctuation and insecurity incident to it, in an unfunded state, render it a mere commodity, and a precarious one. As such, being only an object of occasional and particular speculation, all the money applied to it is so much diverted from the more useful channels of circulation, for which the thing itself affords no substitute; so that, in fact, one serious inconvenience of an unfunded debt is, that it contributes to the scarcity of money.

This distinction, which has been little if at all attended to, is of the greatest moment; it involves a question immediately interesting to every part of the community, which is no other than this: Whether the public debt, by a provision for it on true principles, shall be rendered a substitute for money; or whether, by being left as it is, or by being provided for in such a manner as will wound those principles and destroy confidence, it shall be suffered to continue as it is, a pernicious drain of our cash from the channels of productive industry?

The effect which the funding of the public debt, on right principles, would have upon landed property, is one of the circumstances attending such an arrangement, which has been least adverted to, though it deserves the most particular attention. The present depreciated state of that species of property is a serious calamity. The value of cultivated lands, in most of the States, has fallen, since the Revolution, from twenty-five to fifty per cent. In those farther south, the decrease is still more considerable. Indeed, if the representations continually received from that quarter may be credited, lands there will command no price which may not be deemed an almost total sacrifice. This decrease in the value of lands ought, in a great measure, to be attributed to the scarcity of money; consequently, whatever produces an augmentation of the moneyed capital of the country must have a proportional effect in raising that value. The beneficial tendency of a funded debt, in this respect, has been manifested by the most decisive experience in Great Britain.

The proprietors of lands would not only feel the benefit of this increase in the value of their property, and of a more prompt and better sale, when they had occasion to sell, but the necessity of selling would be itself greatly diminished. As the same cause would contribute to the facility of loans, there is reason to believe that such of them as are indebted would be able, through that resource, to satisfy their more urgent creditors.

It ought not, however, to be expected that the advantages described as likely to result from funding the public debt would be instantaneous. It might require some time to bring the value of stock to its natural level, and to attach to it that fixed confidence which is necessary to its quality as money. Yet the late rapid rise of the public securities encourages an expectation that the progress of stock, to the desirable point, will be much more expeditious than could have been foreseen. And as, in the meantime, it will be increasing in value, there is room to conclude that it will, from the outset, answer many of the purposes in contemplation. Particularly, it seems to be probable, that from creditors who are not themselves necessitous it will early meet with a ready reception in payment of debts, at its current price.

Having now taken a concise view of the inducements to a proper provision for the public debt, the next inquiry which presents itself is: What ought to be the nature of such a provision? This requires some preliminary discussions.

It is agreed, on all hands, that that part of the debt which has been contracted abroad, and is denominated the foreign debt, ought to be provided for according to the precise terms of the contracts relating to it. The discussions which can arise, therefore, will have reference essentially to the domestic part of it, or to that which has been contracted at home. It is to be regretted that there is not the same unanimity of sentiment on this part as on the other.

The Secretary has too much deference for the opinions of every part of the community not to have observed one, which has more than once made its appearance in the public prints, and which is occasionally to be met with in conversation. It involves this question: Whether a discrimination ought not to be made between original holders of the public securities, and present possessors, by purchase? Those who advocate a discrimination are for making a full provision for the securities of the former at their nominal value, but contend that the latter ought to receive no more than the cost to them, and the interest. And the idea is sometimes suggested of making good the difference to the primitive possessor.

In favor of this scheme it is alleged that it would be unreasonable to pay twenty shillings in the pound to one who had not given more for it than three or four. And it is added that it would be hard to aggravate the misfortune of the first owner, who, probably through necessity, parted with his property at so great a loss, by obliging him to contribute to the profit of the person who had speculated on his distresses.

The Secretary, after the most mature reflection on the force of this argument, is induced to reject the doctrine it contains, as equally unjust and impolitic; as highly injurious, even to the original holders of public securities; as ruinous to public credit.

It is inconsistent with justice, because, in the first place, it is a breach of contract—a violation of the rights of a fair purchaser.

The nature of the contract, in its origin, is that the public will pay the sum expressed in the security, to the first holder or his assignee. The intent in making the security assignable is, that the proprietor may be able to make use of his property, by selling it for as much as it may be worth in the market, and that the buyer may be safe in the purchase.

Every buyer, therefore, stands exactly in the place of the seller; has the same right with him to the identical sum expressed in the security; and, having acquired that right by fair purchase and in conformity to the original agreement and intention of the Government, his claim cannot be disputed without manifest injustice.

That he is to be considered as a fair purchaser, results from this: whatever necessity the seller may have been under, was occasioned by the Government, in not making a proper provision for its debts. The buyer had no agency in it, and therefore ought not to suffer. He is not even chargeable with having taken an undue advantage. He paid what the commodity was worth in the market, and took the risks of reimbursement upon himself. He, of course, gave a fair equivalent, and ought to reap the benefit of his hazard—a hazard which was far from inconsiderable, and which, perhaps, turned on little less than a revolution in government.

That the case of those who parted with their securities from necessity is a hard one, cannot be denied. But, whatever complaint of injury, or claim of redress, they may have, respects the Government solely. They have not only nothing to object to the persons who relieved their necessities, by giving them the current price of their property, but they are even under an implied condition to contribute to the reimbursement of those persons. They knew that, by the terms of the contract with themselves, the public were bound to pay to those to whom they should convey their title the sums stipulated to be paid to them; and that, as citizens of the United States, they were to bear their proportion of the contribution for that purpose. This, by the act of assignment, they tacitly engaged to do; and, if they had an option, they could not, with integrity or good faith, refuse to do it, without the consent of those to whom they sold.

But, though many of the original holders sold from necessity, it does not follow that this was the case with all of them. It may well be supposed that some of them did it either through want of confidence in an eventual provision, or from the allurements of some profitable speculation. How shall these different classes be discriminated from each other? How shall it be ascertained, in any case, that the money which the original holder obtained for his security was not more beneficial to him, than if he had held it to the present time, to avail himself of the provision which shall be made? How shall it be known whether, if the purchaser had employed his money in some other way, he would not be in a better situation than by having applied it in the purchase of securities, though he should now receive their full amount? And, if neither of these things can be known, how shall it be determined, whether a discrimination, independent of the breach of contract, would not do a real injury to purchasers; and, if it included a compensation to the primitive proprietors, would not give them an advantage to which they had no equitable pretension?

It may well be imagined, also, that there are not wanting instances in which individuals, urged by a present necessity, parted with the securities received by them from the public, and shortly after replaced them with others, as an indemnity for their first loss. Shall they be deprived of the indemnity which they have endeavored to secure by so provident an arrangement?

Questions of this sort, on a close inspection, multiply themselves without end, and demonstrate the injustice of a discrimination, even on the most subtile calculations of equity, abstracted from the obligation of contract.

The difficulties, too, of regulating the details of a plan for that purpose, which would have even the semblance of equity, would be found immense. It may well be doubted, whether they would not be insurmountable, and replete with such absurd as well as inequitable consequences, as to disgust even the proposers of the measure.

As a specimen of its capricious operation, it will be sufficient to notice the effect it would have upon two persons, who may be supposed, two years ago, to have purchased, each, securities, at three shillings in the pound, and one of them to retain those bought by him, till the discrimination should take place; the other, to have parted with those bought by him, within a month past, at nine shillings. The former, who had had most confidence in the Government, would, in this case, only receive at the rate of three shillings, and the interest; while the latter, who had had less confidence, would receive, for what cost him the same money, at the rate of nine shillings, and his representative, standing in his place, would be entitled to a like rate.

The impolicy of a discrimination results from two considerations: one, that it proceeds upon a principle destructive of that quality of the public debt, or the stock of the nation, which is essential to its capacity for answering the purposes of money—that is, the security of transfer; the other, that, as well on this account as because it includes a breach of faith, it renders property in the funds less valuable, consequently induces lenders to demand a higher premium for what they lend, and produces every other inconvenience of a bad state of public credit.

It will be perceived, at first sight, that the transferable quality of stock is essential to its operation as money, and that this depends on the idea of complete security to the transferee, and a firm persuasion that no distinction can, in any circumstances, be made between him and the original proprietor.

The precedent of an invasion of this fundamental principle would, of course, tend to deprive the community of an advantage with which no temporary saving could bear the least comparison.

And it will as readily be perceived that the same cause would operate a diminution of the value of stock in the hands of the first as well as of every other holder. The price which any man who should incline to purchase would be willing to give for it, would be in a compound ratio to the immediate profit it afforded, and the chance of the continuance of his profit. If there was supposed to be any hazard of the latter, the risk would be taken into the calculation, and either there would be no purchase at all, or it would be at a proportionably less price.

For this diminution of the value of stock every person who should be about to lend to the Government would demand compensation, and would add to the actual difference between the nominal and the market value an equivalent for the chance of greater decrease, which, in a precarious state of public credit, is always to be taken into the account. Every compensation of this sort, it is evident, would be an absolute loss to the Government.

In the preceding discussion of the impolicy of a discrimination, the injurious tendency of it to those who continue to be the holders of the securities they received from the Government has been explained. Nothing need be added on this head, except that this is an additional and interesting light in which the injustice of the measure may be seen. It would not only divest present proprietors, by purchase, of the rights they had acquired under the sanction of public faith, but it would depreciate the property of the remaining original holders. It is equally unnecessary to add any thing to what has been already said to demonstrate the fatal influence which the principle of discrimination would have on the public credit.

But there is still a point of view, in which it will appear perhaps even more exceptionable than in either of the former. It would be repugnant to an express provision of the Constitution of the United States. This provision is that “all debts contracted and engagements entered into before the adoption of that Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under it as under the Confederation”; which amounts to a constitutional ratification of the contracts respecting the debt in the state in which they existed under the Confederation. And, resorting to that standard, there can be no doubt that the rights of assignees and original holders must be considered as equal. In exploding thus fully the principle of discrimination, the Secretary is happy in reflecting that he is only the advocate of what has been already sanctioned by the formal and express authority of the Government of the Union in these emphatic terms: “The remaining class of creditors,” say Congress, in their circular addressed to the States of the 26th April, 1783, “is composed of such of our fellow-citizens as originally lent to the public the use of their funds, or have since manifested most confidence in their country by receiving transfers from the lenders; and partly of those whose property has been either advanced or assumed for the public service. To discriminate the merits of these several descriptions of creditors would be a task equally unnecessary and invidious. If the voice of humanity pleads more loudly in favor of some than of others, the voice of policy, no less than of justice, pleads in favor of all. A wise nation will never permit those who relieve the wants of their country, or who rely most on its faith, its firmness, and its resources, when either of them is distrusted, to suffer by the event.”

The Secretary, concluding that a discrimination between the different classes of creditors of the United States cannot, with propriety, be made, proceeds to examine whether a difference ought to be permitted to remain between them and another description of public creditors—those of the States individually. The Secretary, after mature reflection on this point, entertains a full conviction that an assumption of the debts of the particular States by the Union, and a like provision for them as for those of the Union, will be a measure of sound policy and substantial justice.

It would, in the opinion of the Secretary, contribute, in an eminent degree, to an orderly, stable, and satisfactory arrangement of the national finances. Admitting, as ought to be the case, that a provision must be made, in some way or other, for the entire debt, it will follow that no greater revenues will be required whether that provision be made wholly by the United States, or partly by them and partly by the States separately.

The principal question, then, must be whether such a provision cannot be more conveniently and effectually made by one general plan, issuing from one authority, than by different plans, originating in different authorities? In the first case there can be no competition for resources; in the last there must be such a competition. The consequences of this, without the greatest caution on both sides, might be interfering regulations, and thence collision and confusion. Particular branches of industry might also be oppressed by it. The most productive objects of revenue are not numerous. Either these must be wholly engrossed by one side, which might lessen the efficacy of the provisions by the other, or both must have recourse to the same objects, in different modes, which might occasion an accumulation upon them beyond what they could properly bear. If this should not happen, the caution requisite to avoiding it would prevent the revenue's deriving the full benefit of each object. The danger of interference and of excess would be apt to impose restraints very unfriendly to the complete command of those resources which are the most convenient, and to compel the having recourse to others, less eligible in themselves and less agreeable to the community. The difficulty of an effectual command of the public resources, in case of separate provisions for the debt, may be seen in another, and, perhaps, more striking light. It would naturally happen that different States, from local considerations, would, in some instances, have recourse to different objects, in others to the same objects, in different degrees, for procuring the funds of which they stood in need. It is easy to conceive how this diversity would affect the aggregate revenue of the country. By the supposition, articles which yielded a full supply in some States would yield nothing, or an insufficient product, in others. And hence, the public revenue would not derive the full benefit of those articles from State regulations; neither could the deficiencies be made good by those of the Union. It is a provision of the national Constitution that “all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.” And, as the General Government would be under a necessity, from motives of policy, of paying regard to the duty which may have been previously imposed upon any article, though but in a single State, it would be constrained either to refrain wholly from any further imposition upon such article, where it had been already rated as high as was proper, or to confine itself to the difference between the existing rate and what the article would reasonably bear. Thus the pre-occupancy of an article by a single State would tend to arrest or abridge the impositions of the Union on that article. And as it is supposable that a great variety of articles might be placed in this situation, by dissimilar arrangements of the particular States, it is evident that the aggregate revenue of the country would be likely to be very materially contracted by the plan of separate provisions.

If all the public creditors receive their dues from one source, distributed with an equal hand, their interest will be the same. And, having the same interests, they will unite in the support of the fiscal arrangements of the Government—as these, too, can be made with more convenience where there is no competition. These circumstances combined will insure to the revenue laws a more ready and more satisfactory execution.

If, on the contrary, there are distinct provisions, there will be distinct interests, drawing different ways. That union and concert of views among the creditors, which in every Government is of great importance to their security and to that of public credit, will not only not exist, but will be likely to give place to mutual jealousy and opposition. And from this cause the operation of the systems which may be adopted, both by the particular States and by the Union, with relation to their respective debts, will be in danger of being counteracted.

There are several reasons which render it probable that the situation of the State creditors would be worse than that of the creditors of the Union, if there be not a national assumption of the State debts. Of these it will be sufficient to mention two: one, that a principal branch of revenue is exclusively vested in the Union; the other, that a State must always be checked in the imposition of taxes on articles of consumption, from the want of power to extend the same regulation to the other States, and from the tendency of partial duties to injure its industry and commerce. Should the State creditors stand upon a less eligible footing than the others, it is unnatural to expect they would see with pleasure a provision for them. The influence which their dissatisfaction might have, could not but operate injuriously, both for the creditors and the credit of the United States. Hence it is even the interest of the creditors of the Union, that those of the individual States should be comprehended in a general provision. Any attempt to secure to the former either exclusive or peculiar advantages, would materially hazard their interests. Neither would it be just that one class of public creditors should be more favored than the other. The objects for which both descriptions of the debt were contracted are in the main the same. Indeed, a great part of the particular debts of the States has arisen from assumptions by them on account of the Union. And it is most equitable that there should be the same measure of retribution for all. There is an objection, however, to an assumption of the State debts, which deserves particular notice. It may be supposed that it would increase the difficulty of an equitable settlement between them and the United States.

The principles of that settlement, whenever they shall be discussed, will require all the moderation and wisdom of the Government. In the opinion of the Secretary, that discussion, till further lights are obtained, would be premature. All, therefore, which he would now think advisable on the point in question would be that the amount of the debts assumed and provided for should be charged to the respective States to abide an eventual arrangement. This the United States, as assignees to the creditors, would have an indisputable right to do. But, as it might be a satisfaction to the House to have before them some plan for the liquidation of accounts between the Union and its members, which, including the assumption of the State debts, would consist with equity, the Secretary will submit, in this place, such thoughts on the subject as have occurred to his own mind, or been suggested to him, most compatible, in his judgment, with the end proposed.

Let each State be charged with all the money advanced to it out of the treasury of the United States, liquidated according to the specie value at the time of each advance, with interest at six per cent.

Let it also be charged with the amount, in specie value, of all its securities which shall be assumed, with the interest upon them, to the time when interest shall become payable by the United States.

Let it be credited for all moneys paid and articles furnished to the United States, and for all other expenditures during the war, either toward general or particular defence, whether authorized or unauthorized by the United States; the whole liquidated to specie value, and bearing an interest of six per cent. from the several times at which the several payments, advances, and expenditures accrued.

And let all sums of continental money, now in the treasuries of the respective States, which shall be paid into the treasury of the United States, be credited at specie value.

Upon a statement of the accounts according to these principles, there can be little doubt that balances would appear in favor of all the States against the United States.

To equalize the contributions of the States, let each be then charged with its proportion of the aggregate of those balances, according to some equitable ratio, to be devised for that purpose.

If the contributions should be found disproportionate, the result of this adjustment would be, that some States would be creditors, some debtors, to the Union. Should this be the case—as it will be attended with less inconvenience to the United States to have to pay balances to, than to receive them from, the particular States—it may, perhaps, be practicable to effect the former by a second process, in the nature of a transfer of the amount of the debts of debtor States, to the credit of creditor States, observing the ratio by which the first apportionment shall have been made. This, whilst it would destroy the balances due from the former, would increase those due to the latter; these to be provided for by the United States, at a reasonable interest, but not to be transferable. The expediency of this second process must depend on a knowledge of the result of the first. If the inequalities should be too great, the arrangement may be impracticable, without unduly increasing the debt of the United States. But it is not likely that this would be the case. It is also to be remarked, that though this second process might not, upon the principle of apportionment, bring the thing to the point aimed at, yet it may approach so nearly to it, as to avoid essentially the embarrassment of having considerable balances to collect from any of the States.

The whole of this arrangement to be under the superintendence of commissioners, vested with equitable discretion and final authority. The operation of the plan is exemplified in Schedule A.

The general principle of it seems to be equitable: for it appears difficult to conceive a good reason why the expenses for the particular defence of a part, in a common war, should not be a common charge, as well as those incurred professedly for the general defence. The defence of each part is that of the whole; and unless all the expenditures are brought into a common mass, the tendency must be to add to the calamities suffered, by being the most exposed to the ravages of war, an increase of burthens. This plan seems to be susceptible of no objection which does not belong to every other, that proceeds on the idea of a final adjustment of accounts. The difficulty of settling a ratio is common to all. This must, probably, either be sought for in the proportions of the requisitions during the war, or in the decision of commissioners, appointed with plenary power. The rule prescribed in the Constitution, with regard to representation and direct taxes, would evidently not be applicable to the situation of parties during the period in question. The existing debt of the United States is excluded from the computation, as it ought to be, because it will be provided for out of a general fund. The only discussion of a preliminary kind which remains, relates to the distinctions of the debt into principal and interest. It is well known that the arrears of the latter bear a large proportion to the amount of the former. The immediate payment of these arrears is evidently impracticable; and a question arises, What ought to be done with them?

There is good reason to conclude, that the impressions of many are more favorable to the claim of the principal, than to that of the interest; at least so far as to produce an opinion, that an inferior provision might suffice for the latter.

But, to the Secretary, this opinion does not appear to be well founded. His investigations of the subject have led him to a conclusion, that the arrears of interest have pretensions at least equal to the principal.

The liquidated debt, traced to its origin, falls under two principal discriminations. One relating to loans, the other to services performed and articles supplied. The part arising from loans was at first made payable at fixed periods, which have long since elapsed, with an early option to lenders, either to receive back their money at the expiration of those periods, or to continue it at interest, till the whole amount of continental bills circulating should not exceed the sum in circulation at the time of each loan. This contingency, in the sense of the contract, never happened; and the presumption is, that the creditors preferred continuing their money indefinitely at interest to receiving it in a depreciated and depreciating state.

The other parts of it were chiefly for objects which ought to have been paid for at the time—that is, when the services were performed, or the supplies furnished; and were not accompanied with any contract for interest.

But by different acts of Government and Administration, concurred in by the creditors, these parts of the debt have been converted into a capital, bearing an interest of six per cent. per annum, but without any definite period of redemption. A portion of the Loan Office debt has been exchanged for new securities of that import; and the whole of it seems to have acquired that character after the expiration of the periods prefixed for repayment. If this view of the subject be a just one, the capital of the debt of the United States may be considered in the light of an annuity at the rate of six per cent. per annum, redeemable at the pleasure of the Government by payment of the principal: for it seems to be a clear position, that, when a Government contracts a debt payable with interest, without any precise time being stipulated or understood for payment of the capital, that time is a matter of pure discretion with the Government, which is at liberty to consult its own convenience respecting it, taking care to pay the interest with punctuality.

Wherefore, as long as the United States should pay the interest of their debt, as it accrued, their creditors would have no right to demand the principal. But with regard to the arrears of interest, the case is different. These are now due, and those to whom they are due, have a right to claim immediate payment. To say that it would be impracticable to comply, would not vary the nature of the right. Nor can this idea of impracticability be honorably carried further than to justify the proposition of a new contract, upon the basis of a commutation of that right for an equivalent. This equivalent, too, ought to be a real and fair one. And what other fair equivalent can be imagined for the detention of money, but a reasonable interest? Or what can be the standard of that interest, but the market rate, or the rate which the Government pays in ordinary cases?

From this view of the matter, which appears to be the accurate and true one, it will follow that the arrears of interest are entitled to an equal provision with the principal of the debt.

The result of the foregoing discussion is this: That there ought to be no discrimination between the original holders of the debt, and present possessors by purchase; that it is expedient there should be an assumption of the State debts by the Union; and that the arrears of interest should be provided for on an equal footing with the principal.

The next inquiry, in order, toward determining the nature of a proper provision, respects the quantum of the debt, and present rates of interest.

The debt of the Union is distinguishable into foreign and domestic.
The foreign debt, as stated in Schedule B, amounts to, principal . . . $10,070,307 00
Bearing an interest of four, and partly an interest of five per cent.
Arrears of interest to the last of December, 1789 . . . 1,640,071 62
———
Making, together . . $11,710,378 62

The domestic debt may be subdivided into liquidated and unliquidated; principal and interest.
The principal of the liquidated part, as stated in Schedule C, amounts to . $27,383,917 74
Bearing an interest of six per cent.
The arrears of interest, as stated in the Schedule D, to the end of 1790, amount to . . . . . 13,030,168 20
———
Making, together . . . $40,414,085 94

This includes all that has been paid in indents (except what has come into the treasury of the United States), which, in the opinion of the Secretary, can be considered in no other light than as interest due.

The unliquidated part of the domestic debt, which consists chiefly of the continental bills of credit, is not ascertained, but may be estimated at 2,000,000 dollars.

These several sums constitute the whole of the debt of the United States, amounting together to $54,124,464.56. That of the individual States is not equally well ascertained. The Schedule E shows the extent to which it has been ascertained by returns, pursuant to the orders of the House of the 21st September last; but this not comprehending all the States, the residue must be estimated from less authentic information. The Secretary, however, presumes that the total amount may be safely stated at twenty-five millions of dollars, principal and interest. The present rate of interest in the States’ debt is, in general, the same with that of the domestic debt of the Union.

On the supposition that the arrears of interest ought to be provided for, on the same terms with the principal, the annual amount of the interest, which, at the existing rates, would be payable on the entire mass of the public debt, would be:
On the foreign debt, computing the interest on the principal, as it stands, and allowing four per cent. on the arrears of interest . . . . . . $ 542,599 66
On the domestic debt, including that of States . . . . . . 4,044,845 15
———
Making, together . . $4,587,444 81

The interesting problem now occurs: Is it in the power of the United States, consistently with those prudential considerations which ought not to be overlooked, to make a provision equal to the purpose of funding the whole debt, at the rates of interest which it now bears, in addition to the sum which will be necessary for the current service of the Government?

The Secretary will not say that such a provision would exceed the abilities of the country, but he is clearly of opinion that to make it would require the extension of taxation to a degree and to objects which the true interest of the public creditors forbids. It is, therefore, to be hoped, and even to be expected, that they will cheerfully concur in such modifications of their claims, on fair and equitable principles, as will facilitate to the Government an arrangement substantial, durable, and satisfactory to the community. The importance of the last characteristic will strike every discerning mind. No plan, however flattering in appearance, to which it did not belong, could be truly entitled to confidence.

It will not be forgotten that exigencies may, erelong, arise, which would call for resources greatly beyond what is now deemed sufficient for the current service; and that, should the faculties of the country be exhausted, or even strained, to provide for the public debt, there could be less reliance on the sacredness of the provision. But while the Secretary yields to the force of these considerations, he does not lose sight of those fundamental principles of good faith which dictate that every practicable exertion ought to be made, scrupulously to fulfil the engagements of the Government; that no change in the rights of its creditors ought to be attempted without their voluntary consent; and that this consent ought to be voluntary in fact as well as in name. Consequently, that every proposal of a change ought to be in the shape of an appeal to their reason and to their interest, not to their necessities. To this end it is requisite that a fair equivalent should be offered for what may be asked to be given up, and unquestionable security for the remainder. Without this, an alteration consistently with the credit and honor of the nation would be impracticable.

It remains to see what can be proposed in conformity to these views.

It has been remarked that the capital of the debt of the Union is to be viewed in the light of an annuity, at the rate of six per cent. per annum, redeemable at the pleasure of the Government by payment of the principal. And it will not be required that the arrears of interest should be considered in a more favorable light. The same character, in general, may be applied to the debts of the individual States.

This view of the subject admits that the United States would have it in their power to avail themselves of any fall in the market rate of interest for reducing that of the debt.

This property of the debt is favorable to the public, unfavorable to the creditor, and may facilitate an arrangement for the reduction of interest upon the basis of a fair equivalent.

Probabilities are always a rational ground of contract. The Secretary conceives that there is good reason to believe, if effectual measures are taken to establish public credit, that the Government rate of interest in the United States will, in a very short time, fall at least as low as five per cent.; and that, in a period not exceeding twenty years, it will sink still lower, probably to four. There are two principal causes which will be likely to produce this effect: one, the low rate of interest in Europe; the other, the increase of the moneyed capital of the nation by the funding of the public debt.

From three to four per cent. is deemed good interest in several parts of Europe. Even less is deemed so in some places; and it is on the decline, the increasing plenty of money continually tending to lower it. It is presumable, that no country will be able to borrow of foreigners upon better terms than the United States, because none can, perhaps, afford so good security. Our situation exposes us, less than that of any other nation, to those casualties which are the chief causes of expense; our encumbrances, in proportion to our real means, are less, though these cannot immediately be brought so readily into action; and our progress in resources, from the early state of the country, and the immense tracts of unsettled territory, must necessarily exceed that of any other. The advantages of this situation have already engaged the attention of the European money-lenders, particularly among the Dutch. And as they become better understood, they will have the greater influence. Hence, as large a proportion of the cash of Europe as may be wanted will be, in a certain sense, in our market, for the use of Government. And this will naturally have the effect of a reduction of the rate of interest, not indeed to the level of the places which send their money to market, but to something much nearer to it than our present rate.

The influence which the funding of the debt is calculated to have in lowering interest has been already remarked and explained. It is hardly possible that it should not be materially affected by such an increase of the moneyed capital of the nation as would result from the proper funding of seventy millions of dollars. But the probability of a decrease in the rate of interest acquires confirmation from facts which existed prior to the Revolution. It is well known that, in some of the States, money might, with facility, be borrowed, on good security, at five per cent., and, not unfrequently, even at less.

The most enlightened of the public creditors will be most sensible of the justness of this view of the subject, and of the propriety of the use which will be made of it. The Secretary, in pursuance of it, will assume, as a probability sufficiently great to be a ground of calculation, both on the part of the Government and of its creditors, that the interest of money in the United States will, in five years, fall to five per cent., and, in twenty, to four. The probability, in the mind of the Secretary, is rather that the fall may be more rapid and more considerable; but he prefers a mean, as most likely to engage the assent of the creditors, and more equitable in itself; because it is predicated on probabilities, which may err on one side as well as on the other.

Premising these things, the Secretary submits to the House the expediency of proposing a loan, to the full amount of the debt, as well of the particular States as of the Union, upon the following terms:

First. That, for every hundred dollars subscribed, payable in the debt (as well interest as principal), the subscriber be entitled, at his option, either to have two thirds funded at an annuity or yearly interest of six per cent., redeemable at the pleasure of the Government by payment of the principal, and to receive the other third in lands in the Western territory, at the rate of twenty cents per acre; or to have the whole sum funded at an annuity or yearly interest of four per cent., irredeemable by any payment exceeding five dollars per annum, on account both of principal and interest, and to receive, as a compensation for the reduction of interest, fifteen dollars and eighty cents, payable in lands, as in the preceding case; or to have sixty-six dollars and two thirds of a dollar funded immediately, at an annuity or yearly interest of six per cent., irredeemable by any payment exceeding four dollars and two thirds of a dollar per annum, on account both of principal and interest, and to have, at the end of ten years, twenty-six dollars and eighty-eight cents funded at the like interest and rate of redemption; or to have an annuity, for the remainder of life, upon the contingency of fixing to a given age, not less distant than ten years, computing interest at four per cent.; or to have an annuity for the remainder of life, upon the contingency of the survivorship of the younger of two persons, computing interest in this case also at four per cent.

In addition to the foregoing loan, payable wholly in the debt, the Secretary would propose that one should be opened for ten millions of dollars, on the following plan:

That, for every hundred dollars subscribed, payable one half in specie and the other half in debt (as well principal as interest), the subscriber be entitled to an annuity or yearly interest of five per cent., irredeemable by any payment exceeding six dollars per annum, on account both of principal and interest.

The principles and operation of these different plans may now require explanation.

The first is simply a proposition for paying one third of the debt in land, and funding the other two thirds at the existing rate of interest and upon the same terms of redemption to which it is at present subject.

Here is no conjecture, no calculation of probabilities. The creditor is offered the advantage of making his interest principal, and he is asked to facilitate to the Government an effectual provision for his demands, by accepting a third part of them in land, at a fair valuation.

The general price at which the Western lands have been heretofore sold, has been a dollar per acre in public securities; but, at the time the principal purchases were made, these securities were worth, in the market, less than three shillings in the pound. The nominal price, therefore, would not be the proper standard, under present circumstances, nor would the precise specie value then given be a just rule; because, as the payments were to be made by instalments, and the securities were, at the times of the purchases, extremely low, the probability of a moderate rise must be presumed to have been taken into the account.

Twenty cents, therefore, seems to bear an equitable proportion to the two considerations of value at the time and likelihood of increase.

It will be understood that, upon this plan, the public retains the advantage of availing itself of any fall in the market rate of interest, for reducing that upon the debt; which is perfectly just, as no present sacrifice, either in the quantum of the principal, or in the rate of interest, is required from the creditor.

The inducement to the measure is, the payment of one third of the debt in land. The second plan is grounded upon the supposition that interest, in five years, will fall to five per cent.; in fifteen more, to four. As the capital remains entire, but bearing an interest of four per cent. only, compensation is to be made to the creditor for the interest of two per cent. per annum for five years, and of one per cent. per annum for fifteen years, to commence at the distance of five years. The present value of these two sums or annuities, computed according to the terms of the supposition, is, by strict calculation, fifteen dollars and the seven hundred and ninety-two thousandth part of a dollar—a fraction less than the sum proposed.

The inducements of the measure here, are the reduction of interest to a rate more within the compass of a convenient provision, and the payment of the compensation in lands.

The inducements to the individual are, the accommodation afforded to the public; the high probability of a complete equivalent; the chance even of gain, should the rate of interest fall, either more speedily or in a greater degree than the calculation supposes. Should it fall to five per cent. sooner than five years, should it fall lower than five before the additional fifteen were expired, or should it fall below four previous to the payment of the debt, there would be, in each case, an absolute profit to the creditor. As his capital will remain entire, the value of it will increase with every decrease of the rate of interest.

The third plan proceeds upon the like supposition of a successive fall in the rate of interest, and upon that supposition offers an equivalent to the creditor: One hundred dollars, bearing an interest of six per cent. for five years, or five per cent. for fifteen years, and thenceforth of four per cent. (these being the successive rates of interest in the market), is equal to a capital of $122.510725 parts, bearing an interest of four per cent., which, converted into a capital bearing a fixed rate of interest of six per cent., is equal to $81.6738166 parts.

The difference between sixty-six dollars and two thirds of a dollar (the sum to be funded immediately) and this last sum is $15.0172 parts, which, at six per cent. per annum, amounts, at the end of ten years, to $26.8755 parts—the sum to be funded at the expiration of that period. It ought, however, to be acknowledged that this calculation does not make allowance for the principle of redemption, which the plan itself includes; upon which principle, the equivalent, in a capital of six per cent., would be, by strict calculation, $87.50766 parts.

But there are two considerations which induce the Secretary to think that the one proposed would operate more equitably than this: One is, that it may not be very early in the power of the United States to avail themselves of the right of redemption reserved in the plan; the other is, that with regard to the part to be funded at the end of ten years, the principle of redemption is suspended during that time, and the full interest of six per cent. goes on improving at the same rate, which, for the last five years, will exceed the market rate of interest, according to the supposition.

The equivalent is regulated in this plan by the circumstance of fixing the rate of interest higher than it is supposed it will continue to be in the market, permitting only a gradual discharge of the debt, in an established proportion, and consequently preventing advantage being taken of any decrease of interest below the stipulated rate.

Thus the true value of eighty-one dollars and sixty-seven cents, the capital proposed, considered as a perpetuity, and bearing six per cent. interest, when the market rate of interest was five per cent., would be a small fraction more than ninety-eight dollars; when it was four per cent., it would be one hundred and twenty-two dollars and fifty-one cents. But the proposed capital being subject to gradual redemption, it is evident that its value, in each case, would be somewhat less. Yet, from this may be perceived the manner in which a less capital, at a fixed rate of interest, becomes an equivalent for a greater capital, at a rate liable to variation and diminution.

It is presumable that those creditors who do not entertain a favorable opinion of property in Western lands will give a preference to this last mode of modelling the debt. The Secretary is sincere in affirming that, in his opinion, it will be likely to prove, to the full, as beneficial to the creditor as a provision for his debt upon its present terms.

It is not intended, in either case, to oblige the Government to redeem in the proportion specified, but to secure to it the right of doing so, to avoid the inconvenience of a perpetuity.

The fourth and fifth plans abandon the supposition which is the basis of the two preceding ones, and offer only four per cent. throughout.

The reason of this is, that the payment being deferred, there will be an accumulation of compound interest, in the intermediate period, against the public, which, without a very provident administration, would turn to its detriment, and the suspension of the burthen would be too apt to beget a relaxation of efforts in the meantime. The measure, therefore, its object being temporary accommodation, could only be advisable upon a moderate rate of interest.

With regard to individuals, the inducement will be sufficient at four per cent. There is no disposition of money, in private loans, making allowance for the usual delays and casualties, which would be equally beneficial as a future provision.

A hundred dollars advanced upon the life of a person of eleven years old would produce an annuity1 —
Dolls. Parts.
If commencing at twenty-one, of . . 10.346
If commencing at thirty-one, of . . 18.803
If commencing at forty-one, of . . 37.286
If commencing at fifty-one, of . . . 78.580

The same sum advanced upon the chance of the survivorship of the younger of two lives, one of the persons being twenty-five, the other thirty years old, would produce, if the younger of the two should survive, an annuity2 for the remainder of life, of twenty-three dollars, five hundred and fifty-six parts.

From these instances may readily be discerned the advantages which these deferred annuities afford, for securing a comfortable provision for the evening of life, or for wives who survive their husbands.

The sixth plan also relinquishes the supposition, which is the foundation of the second and third, and offers a higher rate of interest, upon similar terms of redemption, for the consideration of the payment of one half of the loan in specie. This is a plan highly advantageous to the creditors who may be able to make that payment, while the specie itself could be applied in purchases of the debt, upon terms which would fully indemnify the public for the increased interest.

It is not improbable that foreign holders of the domestic debt may embrace this as a desirable arrangement.

As an auxiliary expedient, and by way of experiment, the Secretary would propose a loan upon the principles of a tontine1 —

To consist of six classes, composed respectively of persons of the following ages:

First class, of those of 20 years and under.

Second class, of those above 20, and not exceeding 30.

Third class, of those above 30, and not exceeding 40.

Fourth class, of those above 40, and not exceeding 50.

Fifth class, of those above 50, and not exceeding 60.

Sixth class, of those above 60.

Each share to be two hundred dollars; the number of shares in each class to be indefinite. Persons to be at liberty to subscribe on their own lives, or on those of others nominated by them.
The annuity upon a share in the first class, to be $ 8 40
Upon a share in the second . . . . 8 65
Upon a share in the third . . . . 9 00
Upon a share in the fourth . . . . 9 65
Upon a share in the fifth . . . . . 10 70
Upon a share in the sixth . . . . . 12 80

The annuities of those who die to be equally divided among the survivors, until four fifths shall be dead, when the principle of survivorship shall cease, and each annuitant thenceforth enjoy his dividend as a several annuity during the life upon which it shall depend.

These annuities are calculated on the best life in each class, and at a rate of interest of four per cent., with some deductions in favor of the public. To the advantages which these circumstances present, the cessation of the right of survivorship, on the death of four fifths of the annuitants, will be no inconsiderable addition.

The inducements to individuals are, a competent interest for their money from the outset, secured for life, with a prospect of continual increase, and even of a large profit to those whose fortune it is to survive their associates.

It will have appeared that, in all the proposed loans, the Secretary has contemplated the putting the interest upon the same footing with the principal. That on the debt of the United States, he would have computed to the last of the present year; that on the debt of the particular States, to the last of the year 1791: the reason for which distinction will be seen hereafter.

In order to keep up a due circulation of money, it will be expedient that the interest of the debt should be paid quarter-yearly. This regulation will, at the same time, conduce to the advantage of the public creditors, giving them, in fact, by the anticipation of payment, a higher rate of interest; which may, with propriety, be taken into the estimate of the compensation to be made to them. Six per cent. per annum, paid in this mode, will truly be worth six dollars and the one hundred and thirty-five thousandth part of a dollar, computing the market interest at the same rate.

The Secretary thinks it advisable to hold out various propositions, all of them compatible with the public interest, because it is, in his opinion, of the greatest consequence that the debt should, with the consent of the creditors, be remoulded into such a shape as will bring the expenditure of the nation to a level with its income. Till this shall be accomplished the finances of the United States will never wear a proper countenance. Arrears of interest, continually accruing, will be as continual a monument, either of inability or of ill faith, and will not cease to have an evil influence on public credit. In nothing are appearances of greater moment than in whatever regards credit. Opinion is the soul of it; and this is affected by appearances as well as realities. By offering an option to the creditors between a number of plans, the change meditated will be more likely to be accomplished. Different tempers will be governed by different views of the subject.

But while the Secretary would endeavor to effect a change in the form of the debt by new loans, in order to render it more susceptible of an adequate provision, he would not think it proper to aim at procuring the concurrence of the creditors by operating upon their necessities.

Hence, whatever surplus of revenue might remain, after satisfying the interest of the new loans and the demand for the current service, ought to be divided among those creditors, if any, who may not think fit to subscribe to them. But for this purpose, under the circumstance of depending propositions, a temporary appropriation will be most advisable, and the sum must be limited to four per cent., as the revenues will only be calculated to produce in that proportion to the entire debt.

The Secretary confides, for the success of the propositions to be made, on the goodness of the reasons upon which they rest; on the fairness of the equivalent to be offered in each case; on the discernment of the creditors of their true interest, and on their disposition to facilitate the arrangements of the Government, and to render them satisfactory to the community.

The remaining part of the task to be performed is to take a view of the means of providing for the debt, according to the modification of it which is proposed.

On this point the Secretary premises that, in his opinion, the funds to be established ought, for the present, to be confined to the existing debt of the United States; as well because the progressive augmentation of the revenue will be most convenient, as because the consent of the State creditors is necessary to the assumption contemplated; and though the obtaining of that consent may be inferred with great assurance from their obvious interest to give it, yet, till it shall be obtained, an actual provision for the debt would be premature. Taxes could not, with propriety, be laid for an object which depended on such a contingency.

All that ought now to be done respecting it is to put the matter in an effectual train for a future provision. For which purpose the Secretary will, in the course of this report, submit such propositions as appear to him advisable.

The Secretary now proceeds to a consideration of the necessary funds.
It has been stated that the debt of the United States consists of the foreign debt, amounting, with arrears of interest, to . . . . . $11,710,378 62
And the domestic debt, amounting, with like arrears, computed to the end of the year 1790, to . . . . 42,414,085 94
———
Making, together . . $54,124,464 56

The interest on the domestic debt is computed to the end of this year, because the details of carrying any plan into execution will exhaust the year.
The annual interest of the foreign debt has been stated at . . . . $ 542,599 66
And the interest on the domestic debt, at four per cent., would amount to . . . . . 1,696,563 43
———
Making, together . . $2,239,163 09

Thus, to pay the interest of the foreign debt, and to pay four per cent. on the whole of the domestic debt, principal and interest, forming a new capital, will require a yearly income of $2,239,163.09—the sum which, in the opinion of the Secretary, ought now to be provided, in addition to what the current service will require.

For, though the rate of interest proposed by the third plan exceeds four per cent. on the whole debt and the annuities on the tontine will also exceed four per cent. on the sums which may be subscribed; yet, as the actual provision for a part is in the former case suspended, as measures for reducing the debt by purchases may be advantageously pursued, and as the payment of the deferred annuities will of course be postponed, four per cent. on the whole will be a sufficient provision.

With regard to the instalments of the foreign debt, these, in the opinion of the Secretary, ought to be paid by new loans abroad. Could funds be conveniently spared from other exigencies for paying them, the United States could illy bear the drain of cash, at the present juncture, which the measure would be likely to occasion.

But to the sum which has been stated for payment of the interest must be added a provision for the current service. This the Secretary estimates at six hundred thousand dollars,1 making, with the amount of the interest, two millions eight hundred and thirty-nine thousand one hundred and sixty-three dollars and nine cents.

This sum may, in the opinion of the Secretary, be obtained from the present duties on imports and tonnage, with the additions which, without any possible disadvantage, either to trade or agriculture, may be made on wines, spirits (including those distilled within the United States), teas, and coffee.

The Secretary conceives that it will be sound policy to carry the duties upon articles of this kind as high as will be consistent with the practicability of a safe collection. This will lessen the necessity, both of having recourse to direct taxation, and of accumulating duties where they would be more inconvenient to trade and upon objects which are more to be regarded as necessaries of life.

That the articles which have been enumerated will, better than most others, bear high duties, can hardly be a question. They are all of them in reality luxuries; the greatest part of them foreign luxuries; some of them, in the excess in which they are used, pernicious luxuries. And there is, perhaps, none of them which is not consumed in so great abundance as may justly denominate it a source of national extravagance and impoverishment. The consumption of ardent spirits, particularly, no doubt very much on account of their cheapness, is carried to an extreme which is truly to be regretted, as well in regard to the health and morals as to the economy of the community.

Should the increase of duties tend to a decrease of the consumption of those articles, the effect would be in every respect desirable. The saving which it would occasion would leave individuals more at their ease, and promote a favorable balance of trade. As far as this decrease might be applicable to distilled spirits, it would encourage the substitution of cider and malt liquors, benefit agriculture, and open a new and productive source of revenue.

It is not, however, probable that this decrease would be in a degree which would frustrate the expected benefit to the revenue from raising the duties. Experience has shown that luxuries of every kind lay the strongest hold on the attachments of mankind, which, especially when confirmed by habit, are not easily alienated from them.

The same fact affords a security to the merchant that he is not likely to be prejudiced by considerable duties on such articles. They will usually command a proportional price. The chief things, in this view, to be attended to, are, that the terms of payment be so regulated as not to require inconvenient advances, and that the mode of collection be secure.

To other reasons, which plead for carrying the duties upon the articles which have been mentioned, to as great an extent as they will bear, may be added these: that they are of a nature, from their extensive consumption, to be very productive, and are amongst the most difficult objects of illicit introduction.

Invited by so many motives to make the best use of the resource which these articles afford, the essential inquiry is, in what mode can the duties upon them be most effectually collected?

With regard to such of them as will be brought from abroad, a duty on importation recommends itself by two leading considerations: one is, that, meeting the object at its first entrance into the country, the collection is drawn to a point, and, so far, simplified; the other is, that it avoids the possibility of interference between the regulations of the United States and those of the particular States.

But a duty, the precautions for the collection of which should terminate with the landing of the goods, as is essentially the case in the existing system, could not, with safety, be carried to the extent which is contemplated.

In that system, the evasion of the duty depends, as it were, on a single risk. To land the goods in defiance of the vigilance of the officers of the customs, is almost the sole difficulty. No future pursuit is materially to be apprehended. And where the inducement is equivalent to the risk, there will be found too many who are willing to run it. Consequently, there will be extensive frauds of the revenue, against which the utmost rigor of penal laws has proved, as often as it has been tried, an ineffectual guard.

The only expedient which has been discovered, for conciliating high duties with a safe collection, is the establishment of a second or interior scrutiny.

By pursuing the article, from its importation into the hands of the dealers in it, the risk of detection is so greatly enhanced, that few, in comparison, will venture to incur it. Indeed, every dealer who is not himself the fraudulent importer, then becomes in some sort a sentinel upon him.

The introduction of a system founded on this principle in some shape or other, is, in the opinion of the Secretary, essential to the efficacy of every attempt to render the revenues of the United States equal to their exigencies, their safety, their prosperity, their honor.

Nor is it less essential to the interest of the honest and fair trader. It might even be added, that every individual citizen, besides his share in the general weal, has a particular interest in it. The practice of smuggling never fails to have one of two effects, and sometimes unites them both. Either the smuggler undersells the fair trader, as, by saving the duty, he can afford to do, and makes it a charge upon him, or he sells at the increased price occasioned by the duty, and defrauds every man who buys of him, of his share of what the public ought to receive; for it is evident that the loss falls ultimately upon the citizens, who must be charged with other taxes to make good the deficiency and supply the wants of the State.

The Secretary will not presume that the plan which he shall submit to the consideration of the House is the best that could be devised. But it is the one which has appeared to him freest from objections, of any that has occurred, of equal efficacy. He acknowledges, too, that it is susceptible of improvement, by other precautions in favor of the revenue, which he did not think it expedient to add. The chief outlines of the plan are not original; but it is no ill recommendation of it, that it has been tried with success.

The Secretary accordingly proposes—

That the duties heretofore laid upon wines, distilled spirits, teas, and coffee, should, after the last day of May next, cease; and that, instead of them, the following duties be laid:

Upon every gallon of Madeira wine, the quality of London particular, thirty-five cents.

Upon every gallon of other Madeira wine, thirty cents.

Upon every gallon of Sherry, twenty-five cents.

Upon every gallon of other wine, twenty cents.

Upon every gallon of distilled spirits more than ten per cent. below proof, according to Dicas’ hydrometer, twenty cents.

Upon every gallon of those spirits under five and not more than ten per cent. below proof, according to the same hydrometer, twenty-one cents.

Upon every gallon of those spirits, of proof, and not more than five per cent. below proof, according to the same hydrometer, twenty-two cents.

Upon every gallon of those spirits, above proof, but not exceeding twenty per cent. according to the same hydrometer, twenty-five cents.

Upon every gallon of those spirits, more than twenty, and not more than forty per cent. above proof, according to the same hydrometer, thirty cents.

Upon every gallon of those spirits, more than forty per cent. above proof, according to the same hydrometer, forty cents.

Upon every pound of Hyson tea, forty cents.

Upon every pound of other green tea, twenty-four cents.

Upon every pound of Souchong and other black teas, except Bohea, twenty cents.

Upon every pound of Bohea tea, twelve cents.

Upon every pound of coffee, five cents.

That, upon spirits distilled within the United States, from molasses, sugar, or other foreign materials, there be paid:

Upon every gallon of those spirits, more than ten per cent. below proof, according to Dicas’ hydrometer, eleven cents.

Upon every gallon of those spirits, under five, and not more than ten per cent. below proof, according to the same hydrometer, twelve cents.

Upon every gallon of those spirits, of proof, and not more than five per cent. below proof, according to the same hydrometer, thirteen cents.

Upon every gallon of those spirits, above proof, but not exceeding twenty per cent. according to the same hydrometer, fifteen cents.

Upon every gallon of those spirits, more than twenty, and not more than forty per cent. above proof, according to the same hydrometer, twenty cents.

Upon every gallon of those spirits, more than forty per cent. above proof, according to the same hydrometer, thirty cents.

That, upon spirits distilled within the United States, in any city, town, or village, from materials of the growth or production of the United States, there be paid:

Upon every gallon of those spirits, more than ten per cent. below proof, according to Dicas’ hydrometer, nine cents.

Upon every gallon of those spirits, under five, and not more than ten per cent. below proof, according to the same hydrometer, ten cents.

Upon every gallon of those spirits, of proof, and not more than five per cent. below proof, according to the same hydrometer, eleven cents.

Upon every gallon of those spirits, above proof, but not exceeding twenty per cent. according to the same hydrometer, thirteen cents.

Upon every gallon of those spirits, more than twenty, and not more than forty per cent. above proof, according to the same hydrometer, seventeen cents.

Upon every gallon of those spirits, more than forty per cent. above proof, according to the same hydrometer, twenty-five cents.

That, upon all stills employed in distilling spirits from materials of the growth or production of the United States, in any other place than a city, town, or village, there be paid the yearly sum of sixty cents, for every gallon, English wine measure, of the capacity of each still, including its head.

The Secretary does not distribute the duties on teas into different classes, as has been done in the impost act of the last session; because this distribution depends on considerations of commercial policy, not of revenue. It is sufficient, therefore, for him to remark, that the rates above specified are proposed with reference to the lowest class.

The Secretary, conceiving that he could not convey an accurate idea of the plan contemplated by him, for the collection of these duties, in any mode so effectual as by the draught of a bill for the purpose, begs leave, respectfully, to refer the House to that which will be found annexed to this report, relatively to the article of distilled spirits; and which, for the better explanation of some of its parts, is accompanied with marginal remarks.

It would be the intention of the Secretary that the duty on wines should be collected upon precisely the same plan with that on imported spirits.

But, with regard to teas and coffee, the Secretary is inclined to think that it will be expedient, till experience shall evince the propriety of going further, to exclude the ordinary right of the officers to visit and inspect the places in which those articles may be kept. The other precautions, without this, will afford, though not complete, considerable security.

It will not escape the observation of the House that the Secretary, in the plan submitted, has taken the most scrupulous care that those citizens upon whom it is immediately to operate, be secured from every species of injury by the misconduct of the officers to be employed. There are not only strong guards against their being guilty of abuses of authority; they are not only punishable, criminally, for any they may commit, and made answerable in damages, to individuals, for whatever prejudice these may sustain by their acts or neglects; but even where seizures are made with probable cause, if there be an acquittal of the articles seized a compensation to the proprietors for the injury their property may suffer, and even for its detention, is to be made out of the public treasury.

So solicitous, indeed, has the Secretary been to obviate every appearance of hardship, that he has even included a compensation to the dealers for their agency in aid of the revenue.

With all these precautions to manifest a spirit of moderation and justice on the part of the Government; and when it is considered that the object of the proposed system is the firm establishment of public credit; that, on this depends the character, security, and prosperity of the nation; that advantages, in every light important, may be expected to result from it; that the immediate operation of it will be upon an enlightened class of citizens, zealously devoted to good government, and to a liberal and enlarged policy; and that it is peculiarly the interest of the virtuous part of them to co-operate in whatever will restrain the spirit of illicit traffic; there will be perceived to exist the justest ground of confidence that the plan, if eligible in itself, will experience the cheerful and prompt acquiescence of the community.

The Secretary computes the net product of the duties proposed in this report at about one million seven hundred and three thousand four hundred dollars, according to the estimate in Schedule K, which, if near the truth, will, together with the probable product of the duties on imposts and tonnage, complete the sum required.

But it will readily occur, that in so unexplored a field there must be a considerable degree of uncertainty in the data; and that on this account it will be prudent to have an auxiliary resource for the first year in which the interest will become payable, that there may be no possibility of disappointment to the public creditors ere there may be an opportunity of providing for any deficiency which the experiment may discover. This will, accordingly, be attended to.

The proper appropriation of the funds provided and to be provided seems next to offer itself to consideration.

On this head, the Secretary would propose that the duties on distilled spirits should be applied, in the first instance, to the payment of the interest on the foreign debt.

That, reserving out of the residue of those duties an annual sum of six hundred thousand dollars for the current service of the United States, the surplus, together with the product of the other duties, be applied to the payment of the interest on the new loan, by an appropriation coextensive with the duration of the debt.

And that, if any part of the debt should remain unsubscribed, the excess of the revenue be divided among the creditors of the unsubscribed part by a temporary disposition, with a limitation, however, to four per cent.

It will hardly have been unnoticed that the Secretary has been, thus far, silent on the subject of the Post Office. The reason is, that he has had in view the application of the revenue arising from that source to the purpose of a sinking fund. The Postmaster-General gives it as his opinion that the immediate product of it, upon a proper arrangement, would probably be not less than one hundred thousand dollars. And, from its nature, with good management, it must be a growing, and will be likely to become, a considerable fund. The Postmaster-General is now engaged in preparing a plan which will be the foundation of a proposition for a new arrangement of the establishment. This, and some other points relative to the subject referred to the Secretary, he begs leave to reserve for a future report.

Persuaded, as the Secretary is, that the proper funding of the present debt will render it a national blessing, yet he is so far from acceding to the position, in the latitude in which it is sometimes laid down, that “public debts are public benefits”—a position inviting to prodigality and liable to dangerous abuse—that he ardently wishes to see it incorporated as a fundamental maxim in the system of public credit of the United States, that the creation of debt should always be accompanied with the means of extinguishment. This he regards as the true secret for rendering public credit immortal. And he presumes that it is difficult to conceive a situation in which there may not be an adherence to the maxim. At least, he feels an unfeigned solicitude that this may be attempted by the United States, and that they may commence their measures for the establishment of credit with the observance of it.

Under this impression, the Secretary proposes that the net product of the Post Office to a sum not exceeding one million of dollars be vested in commissioners, to consist of the Vice-President of the United States, or President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Chief Justice, Secretary of the Treasury, and Attorney-General of the United States, for the time being, in trust; to be applied by them, or any three of them, to the discharge of the existing public debt, either by purchases of stock in the market, or by payments on account of the principal, as shall appear to them most advisable, in conformity to public engagements; to continue so vested until the whole of the debt shall be discharged.

As an additional expedient for effecting a reduction of the debt, and for other purposes, which will be mentioned, the Secretary would further propose, that the same commissioners be authorized, with the approbation of the President of the United States, to borrow, on their credit, a sum not exceeding twelve millions of dollars, to be applied:

First.—To the payment of the interest and instalments of the foreign debt, to the end of the present year, which will require 3,491,932 dollars and 46 cents.

Secondly.—To the payment of any deficiency which may happen in the product of the funds provided for paying the interest of the domestic debt.

Thirdly.—To the effecting a change in the form of such part of the foreign debt as bears an interest of five per cent. It is conceived that for this purpose a new loan at a lower interest may be combined with other expedients. The remainder of this part of the debt, after paying the instalments which will accrue in the course of 1790, will be 3,888,888 dollars and 81 cents.

Fourthly.—To purchase of the public debt, at the price it shall bear in the market, while it continues below its true value. This measure, which would be, in the opinion of the Secretary, highly dishonorable to the Government if it were to precede a provision for funding the debt, would become altogether unexceptionable after that had been made. Its effect would be in favor of the public creditors, as it would tend to raise the value of stock; and all the difference between its true value and the actual price would be so much clear gain to the public. The payment of foreign interest on the capital to be borrowed for this purpose, should that be a necessary consequence, would not, in the judgment of the Secretary, be a good objection to the measure. The saving, by the operation, would be itself a sufficient indemnity; and the employment of that capital, in a country situated like this, would much more than compensate for it. Besides, if the Government does not undertake this operation, the same inconvenience which the objection in question supposes, would happen in another way, with a circumstance of aggravation. As long, at least, as the debt shall continue below its proper value it will be an object of speculation to foreigners, who will not only receive the interest upon what they purchase, and remit it abroad, as in the case of the loan, but will reap the additional profit of the difference in value. By the Government's entering into competition with them, it will not only reap a part of the profit itself, but will contract the extent, and lessen the extra profit of foreign purchases. That competition will accelerate the rise of stock; and whatever greater rate this obliges foreigners to pay for what they purchase, is so much clear saving to the nation. In the opinion of the Secretary, and contrary to an idea which is not without patrons, it ought to be the policy of the Government to raise the value of stock to its true standard as fast as possible. When it arrives to that point, foreign speculations (which, till then, must be deemed pernicious, further than as they serve to bring it to that point) will become beneficial. Their money, laid out in this country upon our agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, will produce much more to us than the income they will receive from it.

The Secretary contemplates the application of this money through the medium of a national bank, for which, with the permission of the House, he will submit a plan in the course of the session.

The Secretary now proceeds, in the last place, to offer to the consideration of the House his ideas of the steps which ought, at the present session, to be taken toward the assumption of the State debts.

These are, briefly, that concurrent resolutions of the two Houses, with the approbation of the President be entered into, declaring in substance:

That the United States do assume, and will, at the first session in the year 1791, provide, on the same terms with the present debt of the United States, for all such parts of the debts of the respective States, or any of them, as shall, prior to the first day of January, in the said year, 1791, be subscribed toward a loan to the United States, upon the principles of either of the plans which shall have been adopted by them, for obtaining a reloan of their present debt.

Provided, that the provision to be made, as aforesaid, shall be suspended, with respect to the debt of any State which may have exchanged the securities of the United States for others issued by itself, until the whole of the said securities shall either be re-exchanged or surrendered to the United States.

And provided, also, that the interest upon the debt assumed, be computed to the end of the year 1791; and that the interest to be paid by the United States commence on the first day of January, 1792.

That the amount of the debt of each State, so assumed and provided for, be charged to such State in account with the United States, upon the same principles upon which it shall be lent to the United States.

That subscriptions be opened for receiving loans of the said debts, at the same times and places, and under the like regulations, as shall have been prescribed in relation to the debt of the United States.

The Secretary has now completed the objects which he proposed to himself to comprise in the present report. He has for the most part omitted details, as well to avoid fatiguing the attention of the House as because more time would have been desirable, even to digest the general principles of the plan. If these should be found right, the particular modifications will readily suggest themselves in the progress of the work.

The Secretary, in the views which have directed his pursuit of the subject, has been influenced, in the first place, by the consideration that his duty, from the very terms of the resolution of the House, obliged him to propose what appeared to him an adequate provision for the support of the public credit, adapted at the same time to the real circumstances of the United States; and, in the next, by the reflection that measures which will not bear the test of future unbiassed examination, can neither be productive of individual reputation nor (which is of much greater consequence) public honor or advantage.

Deeply impressed, as the Secretary is, with a full and deliberate conviction that the establishment of the public credit, upon the basis of a satisfactory provision for the public debt, is, under the present circumstances of this country, the true desideratum toward relief from individual and national embarrassments; that without it these embarrassments will be likely to press still more severely upon the community; he cannot but indulge an anxious wish that an effectual plan for that purpose may during the present session be the result of the united wisdom of the Legislature.

He is fully convinced that it is of the greatest importance that no further delay should attend the making of the requisite provision: not only because it will give a better impression of the good faith of the country, and will bring earlier relief to the creditors, both which circumstances are of great moment to public credit, but because the advantages to the community, from raising stock, as speedily as possible, to its natural value, will be incomparably greater than any that can result from its continuance below that standard. No profit which could be derived from purchases in the market, on account of the Government, to any practicable extent, would be an equivalent for the loss which would be sustained by the purchases of foreigners at a low value. Not to repeat, that governmental purchases to be honorable ought to be preceded by a provision. Delay, by disseminating doubt, would sink the price of stock; and, as the temptation to foreign speculations, from the lowness of the price, would be too great to be neglected, millions would probably be lost to the United States.
All of which is humbly submitted.

Alexander Hamilton,

Secretary of the Treasury.

John McCain and the Tea Party

2011-07-27T19:50:00.000-07:00

John McCain took issue with the Tea Partiers and others holding to fantasies with strong language on the Senate floor earlier today.

The End of Borders

2011-07-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

Patriots and Peoples began with a shopping trip to Borders books. Soon, Borders will be no more. This blog will go on, but how will other brick and mortar stores fare? It seems that I rarely visit Auntie's Bookstore, my local independent. Instead I carry a feed from Amazon in the column highlighting books that I've mentioned recently in this blog. The best bookstore between Seattle and Denver, Bookpeople of Moscow, has an uncertain future now that Bob Greene is retired. Bob often seemed as though he was one of my professors in graduate school in the sense that he frequently recommended books that would illuminate some aspect of problems that I was exploring. His recommendations were usually spot-on, and he was rewarded with a large share of my discretionary income.

Big Box stores do not offer this personal touch. Of course the employees can recommend books, but how often are their recommendations built on knowledge both broad and deep of me as a reader and scholar, and of the worlds of scholarship I tend to inhabit. It helped that Bob's partner was the director of the graduate program in which I was enrolled. But, I get the sense that many of his regular customers in other fields far different had similar experiences. Bob is a man of the world, and a man of books. Barnes & Noble employees seem to be book lovers, but their tastes run to genre literature more often that belles lettres; their knowledge of history seems grounded more in the History Channel than the output of Cornell University Press.

The largest selection of books available for browsing and purchase in Spokane is found at Barnes & Noble near the Spokane Valley Mall, but Barnes & Noble at Northtown Mall is nearer my house. Hastings has a better selection of Culture studies, including historic works by and about American Indians. Trips to Seattle, Bellevue (a Seattle suburb), or to the Tri-Cities usually permit a stop at one of the Barnes & Nobles there, and I'm always pleased to see that Big Box does not always mean the sort of homogenized junk that fills Spokane's stores. Of course, Seattle has much better choices: University Bookstore near the University of Washington (AKA Purple Puppy Pound from the point of view of this Cougar), and Elliott Bay Book Company. David Ishii Bookseller closed in 2005, a loss to the region.

The nearest Borders was handy because it was near the path between home and work. Its selection when it first opened exceeded Barnes & Noble Northtown, but that changed in the recent past. In the first year of its operation, I bought a couple of William Faulkner's texts from this store, but as they sold they were not replaced. Someone else also bought some Faulkner and the selection diminished. The opportunity to browse among a nearly full collection of inexpensive paperbacks by America's best novelist vanished, presumably because the sales were slow.

Borders never had the selection of chess books stocked by Auntie's (thanks to a chess enthusiast working at Auntie's many years), but it was better than Barnes & Noble for awhile. However, the last time I visited Borders, there were two chess books that were not worthless junk, and I reduced their inventory by one-half. I won't miss the absence, nor the time I wasted going in hoping that something had changed.

I'm gonna miss Borders' history section, and their new book tables in the front, and some of the bargain books. I'm gonna miss them a lot less than I would have had they closed four years ago when they had an impressive selection of literature (including Proust and Faulkner), U.S. history that is not military history (including Zinn and Schweikart), chess, and Pacific Northwest history, AKA regional that is not travel guides.

The End of Browsing

Browsing has changed. These days I'm more likely to browse by downloading a Kindle sample. I spent decades developing the ability to pick up a book in a library or bookstore, read the table of contents, examine the notes and bibliography, read the beginnings of a few paragraphs, and make my assessment. Does the work contribute something new? Does the author demonstrate sufficient mastery of his or her topic to warrant the elimination of trees that went into publication? Kindle samples do not permit this sort of analysis, but Google Books previews often do.

I can still browse at Costco, but their selection has deteriorated in the past two years. Before Senator Obama became President Obama, they carried his Dreams from My Father, and John McCain, Faith of My Fathers. Now they seem to have piles of screeds by Glenn Beck and a host of others pushing similar nonsense, but nothing on the other side.

Browsing is one form of reading that often leads to more time in a chair turning pages, growing, learning, thinking. Ebooks take away, or alter, the process of turning pages. But, some fear that ebooks are part an resistible trend away from reading itself. Hundreds of writers are musing over the meaning of the closing of Borders as though the failure of this behemoth is symptomatic of disturbing trends. "Electronic Book: The End for Borders" looks to have been published a few months ago. "Borders Closure and the End of the Book" appeared early this week. Google "borders books end of reading" as I did, and you can find many more.

Reagan Mythology

2011-07-18T07:34:00.000-07:00

Paul Rosenberg offers an assessment of President Reagan's legacy far more realistic than the one driving Tea Partiers and even President Obama, whom Rosenberg opines, "is as drunk on Reagan's kool-aid as anyone else in Washington today."

He explains,

Reagan was a disaster for the American economy in at least four fundamental ways:

... Under Ronald Reagan, the US went from being the world's largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in just a few years

... the number of unionised jobs and the number of jobs with American companies declined even further.

... The income stagnation that began under Reagan has had a devastating impact on personal savings.

... Before Reagan, debt really wasn't a problem for America.

The article begins:

As things stand today, the US is hurtling toward a budget showdown in less than a month. Either President Obama will once again capitulate to extreme Republican budget-slashing demands, making Democrats seem as much of a threat to Medicare as Republicans, and virtually ensuring a GOP electoral sweep in 2012, or the US will default on its debt for the first time in its history, most likely plunging the world economy back into another five-continent recession, also costing Democrats the 2012 elections.

Read the rest at Reagan mythology is leading US off a cliff - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Hat tip to Millard Fillmore's Bathtub for bringing this editorial to my attention.

Johnny Appleseed

2011-07-15T07:06:00.000-07:00

Long, long after,
When settlers put up beam and rafter,
They asked of the birds: "Who gave this fruit?
Who watched this fence till the seeds took root?
Who gave these boughs?" They asked the sky,
And there was no reply.
But the robin might have said,
"To the farthest West he has followed the sun,
His life and his empire just begun."
Vachel Lindsey, "In Praise of Johnny Appleseed" (1923)

In my pre-teen and early teen years, I read every book presenting American folktales and legends that was available in our little Air Force base library. Some of my favorites included stories of deforestation (Paul Bunyan), the futile battle against mechanization (John Henry), and the introduction of alien plant species (Johnny Appleseed). The books that pulled me into these stories were fanciful and aimed at young readers. The stories were uprooted from their origins as descriptions of actual lives, exaggerated the known facts, and worked into the realm of myth.

The real Johnny Appleseed died in Indiana in 1845, according to an obituary printed in the Fort Wayne Sentinel (22 March 1845). He was tall, a preacher taken with Emanuel Swedenborg's writings, and planted nurseries rather than spreading seeds willy-nilly. A recent book delves into the myth and known history, making a strong effort to separate the two. Howard Means, Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story (2011) offers a detailed biography of the life, activities, and beliefs of John Chapman, the real Johnny Appleseed.

As I remember the stories, I was free to imagine that his seed sowing enterprise took him further west, and that he might have ended his days near present-day Wenatchee. My memory is almost certainly faulty and found its freedom in confusion between the Northwest of early American history--the Ohio Country--and the far Northwest, or Pacific Northwest--a term created by railroad publicists in the late nineteenth century. Even the Disney short, Johnny Appleseed (1948), which I almost certainly watched sometime in the 1960s or early 1970s, places Johnny Appleseed in the Ohio country.

The heart of the Disney film pits cultivation of orchards and promotion of religion against a vast wilderness of dangerous animals. Indians appear on the margins, part of the crowd singing and dancing during the harvest festival. The wary animals first believed the human who moved into a clearing and began to plant seeds was a curious intruder who needed to leave. But, none could tell him so. Finally a skunk went out to investigate and was on the verge of attacking, when Johnny began to stroke its fur. The hero of the story wins over the animals. The narrator emphasizes that he is the first human they had seen without knife or gun. Johnny Appleseed thus fits into the mythic structure of humanity's shift from hunting to cultivation, a reflection of the Neolithic revolution and the rise of civilization. The human story of the beginnings of civilization as long ago as ten millennia ago gets repeated in the New Eden, the American wilderness. See "Neolithic Revolution and American Indians" for another episode in this mythic story.

Apples and Cherries in the Pacific Northwest

Today, Washington state leads the United States in apple production. New York City might be the "big apple," but the apple is more a symbol of the far Northwest than of anywhere else. The apple has become as much a symbol of Pacific Northwest regional culture as the salmon and the seemingly endless evergreen forests. But, while salmon have all but disappeared from every region outside Alaska (and even there the proposed Pebble Mine threatens the last watersheds in full health), and while timber jobs in Washington have become scarce, the apple thrives.

John Chapman never made it this far west. The origins of apples in the Pacific Northwest begin in the Willamette Valley and just over the Columbia River at Fort Vancouver. In the 1820s, the Hudson's Bay Company cultivated many food growing plants from seeds. From these plants, Joseph Garvais cultivated the first substantial apple orchards. Contemporaneous with John Chapman in the Ohio Country, Garvais and other retired Hudson Bay Company employees developed agriculture in Oregon Country.

But it was the introduction of grafted fruit trees that caused the region's agriculture to blossom. These first arrived via wagon along the Oregon Trail courtesy of an Iowa farmer who headed west. In 1847, Henderson Lewelling crossed the country with his family and three wagons. Two of the wagons transported some seven hundred small trees. Once in Oregon, Lewelling went into the nursery business with William Meek. When the gold rush lured Lewelling and Meek to California, where they saw opportunity for more profits developing agriculture, they sold their nursery in Milwaukie, Oregon to Henderson's younger brother, Seth. According to Ronald Irvine, The Wine Project (1997), Meek won an award for wine at the California State Fair in 1859.

Seth Lewelling thrived in the nursery business. His foreman for the orchards, Ah Bing, has been immortalized in the name of a popular fruit that he helped originate. Today, Washington state not only leads the nation in sweet cherry production, but accounts for more than half of the nation's total production.

In the world of legend and myth, everyone knows of Johnny Appleseed. The story of agriculture in the far Northwest, however, offers many less well-known, but every bit as compelling stories of such men as Joseph Garvais, Henderson Lewelling, and Ah Bing.

Thomas Jefferson: Oenophile

2011-07-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

During his first term as President, Jefferson spent seventy-five hundred dollars—roughly a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in today’s currency—on wine, and he is generally regarded as America’s first great wine connoisseur.
Patrick Radden Keefe, "The Jefferson Bottles"

Thomas Jefferson has long been one of the most interesting American leaders. He wrote the Declaration of Independence with a small amount of editing help from his colleagues. He designed his own home, a marvel of architecture. He argued persuasively with Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, perhaps the leading theorist concerning evolution a century prior to Charles Darwin, but who made some astounding statements concerning the deficiency of North American air and its lack of large fauna. Jefferson gathered specimens of fauna that dwarfed those in Europe to prove Buffon wrong. Jefferson played the violin, studied languages, experimented with agriculture, and maintained a life-long correspondence with his rival in the most fiercely contested election in the early national period of United States politics, John Adams.

Thomas Jefferson also loved wine.

In keeping with the focus of Patriots and Peoples, I scanned the indices of A Patriot's History of the United States and of A People's History of the United States for references to Jefferson's oenophilia. The term wine is not indexed in either book, but both contain ample references to Jefferson. Howard Zinn focuses on Jefferson's contribution to politics, saying nothing about his architecture, science, or social views with two exceptions: he credits the spirit of the times rather than personal views of the man for the fact that Jefferson remained a slave owner to his death (see "Thomas Jefferson: Abolitionist?"). The second reference to his cultural values comes in a section concerned with the "cult of domesticity," where Zinn notes Emma Willard contradicting Jefferson's views that women's education should emphasize "the amusements of life ... dancing, drawing, and music" (as quoted in A People's History, 118).

Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen offer a thumbnail sketch of Jefferson the man in A Patriot's History. They mention his interest in wine in a single sentence: "After the war, as American ambassador to France, he developed a pronounced taste for French food, wine, and radical French politics" (133). For much of the targeted audience of the ultra-conservative Patriot's History, this sentence is sufficient to damn Jefferson.

My interest in Jefferson and wine was provoked last week when I started reading The Billionaire's Vinegar (2008) by Benjamin Wallace. There are indications scattered around the web that a film based on Wallace's book is in development. Reports of the movie rights being optioned were released in January 2008 before the book's release. Movie Insider gives 2012 as the tentative date for the movie's release. There's certainly plenty of drama in the story as William Koch spends more than a million dollars hiring former FBI investigators and similar sleuths to build evidence against Hardy Rodenstock, the man behind the sale of dozens of bottles reputedly once owned by Jefferson. Kip Forbes bid 106,000 pounds for the alleged 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux that instantly became the most expensive bottle of wine in history. Koch spent many thousands less for the bottles that he bought.

The Billionaire's Vinegar opens with a description of the auction where Forbes set a record bid. Much of the story of the auction itself derives from "A Piece of History" in The New Yorker, 20 January 1986. This opening chapter narrates the development of the wine expertise of auctioneer Michael Broadbent, whose opposition to his portrayal later in the book led to a lawsuit that led to Random House agreeing not to distribute the book in the United Kingdom (one wonders whether the film will suffer similar barriers).

The second chapter focuses on Jefferson. I started this book as one of several Kindle samples dealing with history and culture of vitas vinifera cultivation, wine production, and consumption of the beverage that led to Benjamin Franklin's frequently corrupted line, "Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy!" Freakonomics has a brief entry by the editor of The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), Fred R. Shapiro, concerning the origins of Franklin's quote, the process of authenticating this little detail of the past, and the corruption of Franklin's expression by beer-swilling enthusiasts.

The Kindle sample offers a few pages of this chapter, just enough to hook this angler. I shelled out the $12 needed to get to the end of the chapter and gain access to the notes. Having done so, I read the rest of the book. I learned more about the world of rare wines and forgeries than I had anticipated as among my interests. Having read this book, there's a lot more that I'll be attentive to when the next issue of Wine Spectator arrives in the mail box. Meanwhile, I'm now attending to more Kindle samples:

John Hailman, Thomas Jefferson on Wine (2006)
Charles A. Cerami, Dinner at Mr. Jefferson's: Three Men, Five Great Wines, and the vening that Changed America (2011)
Tyler Colman, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink (2008)

Another book of interest is not available as an ebook, but may arrive via the mail in hardcover sometime in the near future.

James Gabler, The Wines and Travels of Thomas Jefferson (1995)

Washington Wine: An Epicurean History

2011-07-10T17:54:00.000-07:00

Missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman lived in the Walla Walla valley 1836-1847. Grapes were among the plantings in their garden, but they were teetotalers and did not make wine. They did, however, observe others drinking local wine during their visits to Fort Vancouver. According to Walter J. Clore's chronology in the appendix of The Wine Project: Washington State's Winemaking History (1997) by Ronald Irvine, the Hudson's Bay Company began growing grapes at Fort Vancouver 1824-1825. These were grown from seeds brought over from England and of unknown variety.

By the time of the Civil War, there were more than 80 varieties of grapes growing in the Walla Walla Valley. Italian immigrant Frank Orselli was selling wine by 1865. In 1876, the Walla Walla Statesman reported that he "has been experimenting in making wine" (Irvine and Clore, 406).

During Prohibition it was legal for a head of household to make 200 gallons of wine per year for personal use. A few commercial winemakers, especially in California, managed to limp along during these dark years making communion wine for the Catholic Church. Two years after the repeal of Prohibition, the Washington Wine Producers Association was established.

In 1960, Walter Clore and associates began grape growing research for Washington State University. This publicly funded research joined forces with private enterprise over the next several decades to develop the largest North American wine industry outside of California. Today, Columbia Valley wines are world renowned and the Walla Walla Valley bustles with tourists during the summer months. They come along the Lewis and Clark Trail, and via other routes, to visit the missionary graves at the Whitman Mission, and they come to sample and buy Washington wines.

My Wine Journey

Like the Whitmans, I spent a couple of years as a teetotaler in the 1980s. Fortunately, that period had come to an end by the time that I attended my first academic conference as a graduate student, the 1989 Pacific Northwest American Studies Association annual conference. It was held at Whitman College, and the Saturday evening banquet began with a bus ride west to Lowden (formerly known as Frenchtown). We had hors d'oeuvres, wine, and dinner at L'Ecole No. 41 winery, Walla Walla's third winery in the modern era. They were just beginning to garner accolades from the international community. I'm fuzzy on some aspects of my personal history, but I might credit the wine I had that evening for the fact that for the better part of the next decade, choosing wine instead of beer or bourbon invariably meant that I would choose a Merlot from Washington state.

I have not had a glass of bourbon since May, and I've drank very little beer. Credit wine. The past few years I've been developing the beginning of some interest in wine, and beginning to educate my palate. Perhaps four years ago, my wife and I sat down with Kevin Zraly, Windows on the World: Complete Wine Course (2007), reading and drinking our way through a glass each of Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay. The past few months, I've been rediscovering the wines grown in my home state. I'm learning to pair some of these wines with food. Yesterday, we tasted some wine at the Spokane Public Market and came home with some Bridge Press Cellars Pinot Blanc--a Spokane wine made from Willamette Valley, Oregon grapes.

I'll return to wine history in a future blog post. For now, take a look at this gallery of meals and some of my own recipes.

Food and Wine Gallery

I learned to cook from my mother when I was quite young, and also learned some cooking in the Boy Scouts. In 1975, over a campfire I cooked two dozen eggs over easy without breaking one. In the past two years, I've been learning new cooking methods from Food & Wine Magazine. Recently I started photographing some of my meals and posting the images to Facebook. Many of the recipes come from the magazine. I was surprised, thus, to discover that my pairings with Washington wines rarely featured recipes from this magazine, but from other magazines and cookbooks, and mostly my own inventions. Even so, the influence of Food & Wine is evident in many details.

In late spring or early summer most years, fresh Copper River salmon becomes available in Spokane grocery stores. I usually buy one fish and get four or five meals--some steaks, some fillets. This year, as the price kept dropping due to an abundant catch, I bought three fish. I butterflied the second one and smoked it on my gas grill. It was topped with a rub of herbs and spices, but I failed to record the mixture. The salad is an old standard of fresh basil from the garden, tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese. I snapped the photo before drizzling the balsamic vinegar. A few spears of asparagus were grilled over the flame on one side of the grill as the salmon finished. These were first sprayed with olive oil and lightly sprinkled with salt and pepper. The wine was a 2008 Waterbrook Melange Noir (less than $15).

Waterbrook Winery was founded in 1984 as Walla Walla's fourth modern winery. When my spouse, my sister and her spouse, my nephew and his girlfriend, and I made our recent pilgrimage to Walla Walla for wine tastings, we began with a wonderful hour on the patio at Waterbrook. This meal with Alaska Sockeye and Washington wine was one month prior to that trip.

Our second winery on that trip was L'Ecole No. 41, where I had eaten dinner in 1989. My trip there with a bunch of college English and history teachers is the earliest memory that I have of eating dolmades. Since then, I have learned to make them, and they were hors d'oeuvres for the anniversary dinner that I prepared for my wife last month.

Naturally, we tasted and purchased some Merlot when we visited L'Ecole No. 41. We did not start with the Merlot. Prior to the trip, I had been reading Paul Gregutt, Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide (2007). He praises the success of L'Ecole's Semillon, and we began with that. My wife generally refuses to get interested in any wine that we can see through, but she liked the Semillon. She found the Estate Luminesce exciting! We returned with a couple of bottles of each. When she found some enticing summer recipes in an article in More magazine the following week, I had the beginning of a fine pairing. I made the cold cucumber and honeydew soup from "Picnics for Grownups," pulled an old walleye recipe from America's Favorite Fish Recipes (1992) for some Alaskan cod, and served one of the bottles of Luminesce.

When I started reading Food & Wine, they seemed obsessed with flatiron steak, and I've made a couple of their recipes. After the Fourth of July weekend included some heavy eating with family, we were in the mood for some salads. I made a simple green salad with my own something like Caesar dressing on Tuesday, followed it up with the cucumber soup and cod above on Wednesday, and on Thursday used some of Tuesday's dressing to marinade asparagus and broccoli.

Something Like Caesar

1 Tbs grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
olive oil (about 4 Tbs)
2 anchovies finely chopped
2 cloves garlic minced
1 Tbs Dijon Mustard
1 Tbs Worcester Sauce
salt and pepper

I put the cheese in the bottom of my salad bowl and cover it with olive oil. Then add the anchovies, garlic, mustard and Worcester Sauce and stir, adding more olive oil until the consistency seems about like bottled Caesar. A little bit of salt and a little more pepper, more stirring, and the dressing is done.

The quantity is too much for one salad feeding two or three people, so I spoon about two-third's of the dressing into a container that goes into the refrigerator. Leaving the portion that I plan to use, I then put my greens on top of the dressing and gently stir. Putting the greens on the dressing and mixing instead of the dressing on the greens is a technique that I've adopted from several recipes in Food & Wine, and from "Chef Bobby Flay's Salad Smarts," a sidebar in Food & Wine Annual Cookbook 2011 (42).

In preparing the asparagus and broccoli dish in the photo, I first retrieved the dressing from the refrigerator and let it come up to room temperature. Then, I prepared the steak marinade by putting a diced onion, rosemary, and sage in the Magic Bullet to mostly liquify. I spread the mixture on the steak and let it sit for an hour or so. I washed the asparagus, breaking off the thickest part of the stems, and washed the broccoli. In a plastic bag, I spooned some of the leftover dressing on the vegetables, closed the bag with plenty of air inside and shook to coat. I let the vegetables sit on the counter for most of an hour.

When it was time to cook, I scraped the onion mixture off the steak. I grilled the vegetables in a grilling basket. When they were nearly done, I started grilling the steak (about four minutes per side). Meanwhile, I sauteed the onions in some olive oil with fresh oyster mushrooms. After removing the steak from the grill, I sliced it, placed four slices on each plate and topped with the mushroom and onion mixture, then plucked a couple of cilantro flowers and set these on top.

The steaks and vegetable mix were served with a bottle of 2008 Waterbrook Cabernet Sauvignon.

At the Spokane Public Market, yesterday, we found some fresh Walla Walla sweet onions, and some lamb steaks from a local farmer. I mixed some dried mint with smaller amounts of cumin, and thyme, sprinkled it on the lamb steaks, and let set an hour.

I quartered half an onion, then sliced it. I sauteed the onion in olive oil until it started to brown, then added one-half cup Moscato wine and cooked until the wine evaporated. Then I added a handful of walnuts that I had roasted in the oven for eight minutes at 350 F.

While the onions and walnuts continued to brown on medium heat, I started the steaks, grilling seven or eight minutes per side. I poured a little white wine vinegar into the pan with the onions and nuts, and cooked until it evaporated. During the last two minutes of cooking the steaks, I threw about three cups of baby spinach leaves into the pan with the onions--stirring constantly until thoroughly wilted.

The lamb and spinach were served with a bottle of Woodward Canyon non-vintage red. The bottle had been opened earlier for the hors d'oeuvres, plank grilled figs with pancetta and goat cheese, a recipe from Epicurious.com. Woodward Canyon was Walla Walla's second modern winery, and it was the third we visited during our pilgrimage. Their non-vintage red was the discovery of the trip--an extremely nice wine for $19 per bottle.

Our wine budget accommodates very few wines above $20 per bottle, and generally only on special occasions. During a trip to Walla Walla this spring for a work conference, my wife picked up a couple of Spring Valley Vineyard wines that are expensive by our standards. We opened a bottle of 2007 Frederick for our anniversary. I fixed a four-course meal for the occasion. It was a study in pairings.

The first course consisted of dolmades (my recipe) and goat cheese stuffed grape leaves from Food & Wine. To be honest, the $50 bottle of Frederick did not seem particularly impressive with the hors d'oeuvres. It was good, but not great.

The second course was a beet, pickled cheery, and crispy shallot salad from Food & Wine. It clashed with the wine, bringing out bitter flavors.

For the main course, I grilled a Turkish rack of lamb from Jamie Purviance, Weber's Time to Grill (2011). Together with Frederick, the lamb was exquisite and the wine showed its grace and complexity. It was a perfect pairing. After the main course, we were satiated and delayed dessert for a few hours.

Dessert was another Food & Wine recipe, except that I added some goat cheese and nuts. We ate the dessert with a glass of the plum wine used to marinate the plums.

Nixon Now!

2011-07-07T06:09:00.000-07:00

Rick Perlstein shared this link on Facebook. Campaign songs from former President Richard Nixon's political career proposed as a soundtrack for Perlstein's Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008).

Warning: these songs may induce nausea, particularly for anyone old enough to remember Nixon.

14 Propaganda Techniques Fox "News" Uses to Brainwash Americans | | AlterNet

2011-07-04T10:06:00.000-07:00

There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship - the society characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded.

"small land holders are the most precious"

2011-06-29T07:48:00.000-07:00

One text always leads to another. As I continue my efforts to comprehend the incomprehensible, to probe into the foundations of the hyper-conservatism of the present American political landscape, I set out to peruse a classic text: Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition (1962). The text was originally published as Liberalismus (1927) and initially the English translation was titled The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth, but Mises sought to "reclaim" the term liberal from those he regarded as socialists, and so the present title. I'm reading the etext edition from the Online Library of Liberty.

After the amusing Introduction, the meat of the argument begins with a chapter titled "Property". There Mises offers:

The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production (for in regard to commodities ready for consumption, private ownership is a matter of course and is not disputed even by the socialists and communists). All the other demands of liberalism result from this fundamental demand.

Such a yoking of notions of freedom and liberty to notions of private property immediately brings to my recall Charles A Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913). Simultaneously, I think of Thomas Jefferson and his celebration of the Yeoman farmer as the backbone of American self-government.

Consequently, I find myself reading a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison from Fontainebleau outside of Paris, France. Jefferson wrote a nine where he meant to write an eight, and so the letter appears in volume 8 rather than volume 4 of Paul Leicester Ford, The Works of Thomas Jefferson (1904-5). As with the works of Mises, the Online Library of Liberty has a digitized and searchable edition. Here is the complete letter, as published there.

Dear Sir,—

Seven o’clock, and retired to my fireside, I have determined to enter into conversation with you. This is a village of about 5000 inhabitants when the court is not here & 20,000 when they are, occupying a valley thro’ which runs a brook and on each side of it a ridge of small mountains most of which are naked rock. The King comes here, in the fall always, to hunt. His court attend him, as do also the foreign diplomatic corps. But as this is not indispensably required & my finances do not admit the expense of a continued residence here, I propose to come occasionally to attend the King’s levees, returning again to Paris, distant 40 miles. This being the first trip I set out yesterday morning to take a view of the place. For this purpose I shaped my course towards the highest of the mountains in sight, to the top of which was about a league. As soon as I had got clear of the town I fell in with a poor woman walking at the same rate with myself & going the same course. Wishing to know the condition of the laboring poor I entered into conversation with her, which I began by enquiries for the path which would lead me into the mountain: & thence proceeded to enquiries into her vocation, condition & circumstances. She told me she was a day labourer, at 8. sous or 4d sterling the day; that she had two children to maintain, & to pay a rent of 30 livres for her house, (which would consume the hire of 75 days) that often she could get no emploiment, and of course was without bread. As we had walked together near a mile & she had so far served me as a guide, I gave her, on parting, 24 sous. She burst into tears of a gratitude which I could perceive was unfeigned because she was unable to utter a word. She had probably never before received so great an aid. This little attendrissement, with the solitude of my walk led me into a train of reflections on that unequal division of property which occasions the numberless instances of wretchedness which I had observed in this country & is to be observed all over Europe. The property of this country is absolutely concentrated in a very few hands, having revenues of from half a million of guineas a year downward. These employ the flower of the country as servants, some of them having as many as 200 domestics, not labouring. They employ also a great number of manufacturers, & tradesmen, & lastly the class of labouring husbandmen. But after all there comes the most numerous of all the classes, that is, the poor who cannot find work. I asked myself what could be the reason that so many should be permitted to beg who are willing to work, in a country where there is a very considerable proportion of uncultivated lands? These lands are undisturbed only for the sake of game. It should seem then that it must be because of the enormous wealth of the proprietors which places them above attention to the encrease of their revenues by permitting these lands to be laboured. I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers & sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic measure, and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, & to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour & live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment but who can find uncultivated land shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small land holders are the most precious part of a state.
Jefferson to Madison, 28 October 1785

My first question concerned the correspondence of Jefferson's views with those of Mises. Jefferson seeks the good of all. Mises asserts, "liberalism was the first political movement that aimed at promoting the welfare of all" (Liberalism, 22). Mises admits that liberalism and socialism share this goal, differing principally in their methods.

Both Mises and Jefferson emphasize the rights of property. But Jefferson's notion of the commons ("The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour & live on") is an idea that I have yet to encounter in my reading of Mises. Moreover, one gets the impression from Mises that Jefferson's scheme of progressive taxation might proceed from principles that he would call socialist, distinguishing them from liberal.

Reading this letter of Jefferson's creates doubts concerning some of Mises' historical claims with respect to eighteenth century classical liberalism, but it does offer evidence for some of his claims. Mises labors to see all economic theory as bipartite: liberalism vs. socialism. Jefferson draws from and engages with a somewhat more nuanced view.

John Adams and the Holy Ghost

2011-06-11T07:38:00.000-07:00

This morning I was browsing at American Creation, a high quality history blog. I read and watched videos in an old post, "David Barton: Liar" (2009). It is identified as one of their most popular posts. In the videos Chris Rodda, author of Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History (2006), discusses some of her problems with Barton. She presented him with a copy of her book at one of his lectures. A few months later he mentioned the episode on his radio show, but fabricated a conversation that did not occur. She discusses his lie, plays a video of the conversation to support her version of the event, and then discusses his creative misreading of a letter that John Adams wrote to Benjamin Rush in 1809--part of his lecture that night. Barton owns the original letter and has posted a photo of the letter with a modernized transcription on the WallBuilders website.

In May this year, Barton appeared on The Daily Show where he was confronted regarding his reading of the letter. Warren Throckmorton's post lays out the context that Barton ignores (because it reveals how wrong he is concerning Adams' meaning. In the blog entry, "David Barton and John Adams--The Holy Ghost Letter, Throckmorton offers some choice links to others who have refuted some of Barton's claims.

After a quick run through several blog entries, I went to the Online Library of Liberty to search the ten volume The Works of John Adams at Online Library of Liberty. I sought the Holy Ghost in this voluminous work, finding a mere six entries. One seems in the spirit of what Rodda, Throckmorton, and others are saying regarding Adams' presentation of views that he held in contempt: a letter to F.A Vanderkemp, 13 July 1815. The key paragraph states:

My friend, again! the question before mankind is,—how shall I state it? It is, whether authority is from nature and reason, or from miraculous revelation; from the revelation from God, by the human understanding, or from the revelation to Moses and to Constantine, and the Council of Nice. Whether it resides in men or in offices. Whether offices, spiritual and temporal, are instituted by men, or whether they are self-created and instituted themselves. Whether they were or were not brought down from Heaven in a phial of holy oil, sent by the Holy Ghost, by an angel incarnated in a dove, to anoint the head of Clovis, a more cruel tyrant than Frederic or Napoleon. Are the original principles of authority in human nature, or in stars, garters, crosses, golden fleeces, crowns, sceptres, and thrones? These profound and important questions have been agitated and discussed, before that vast democratical congregation, mankind, for more than five hundred years. How many crusades, how many Hussite wars, how many powder plots, St. Bartholomew’s days, Irish massacres, Albigensian massacres, and battles of Marengo have intervened! Sub judice lis est. Will Zinzendorf, Swedenborg, Whitefield, or Wesley prevail? Or will St. Ignatius Loyola inquisitionize and jesuitize them all? Alas, poor human nature! Thou art responsible to thy Maker and to thyself for an impartial verdict and judgment.
Adams to Vanderkemp, Accessed from http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2127/193560/3102804 on 2011-06-11

Adams writes of holy oil direct from the Holy Ghost being used to anoint the heads of kings. But to say that he believes such stories strikes me as a stretch.

Rethinking Sarah Palin and Paul Revere

2011-06-10T18:43:00.000-07:00

The prescriptions for how to create a more effective high school history course that I discussed this morning in "The American Story" might serve as guideposts for the place of history in modern life. Consider the recent controversy regarding former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's creative misreading of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. The debate hinged upon whether her facts were garbled, grossly in error, or perhaps even strangely accurate (whether by accident or by design). Is factual inaccuracy the crux of the problem the Left and some of the Right have with her comments?

Central to Palin's view of America is her understanding of the heart of the American story. Her initial statement as it appeared on CNN ended with two key words: free and secure. The American revolution was a struggle against tyranny, a quest for freedom. She explained to Chris Wallace how Americans need to look to the past, to the victories of our founders, in order to navigate our way through the present and build a strong future. She sees in the American past, especially in the American revolution and the foundations of our government, a model for our future. America for Palin is an idea that needs restoration.

I'm publicizing Americana, and our foundation, and how important it is that we learn about our past and our challenges, and victories throughout American history, so that we can successfully proceed forward. Very heady days, rough waters ahead of us, Chris. We need to make sure that we have a strong grasp of our foundational victories so that we can move forward.
Palin to Chris Wallace, FOX News Sunday, at 14:13

There's not a clear sense in her comments that she is practicing "sourcing" as historians do, grounding her work in primary texts. On the other hand, visiting historic sites is another form of sourcing. Gazing at the U.S. Constitution under glass is not the same thing as reading The Federalist Papers or The Anti-Federalist Papers, but it's an activity few historians would discourage.

Palin's gaffe drove me to Paul Revere's 1798 letter, as it did for some of her supporters. We found different things there: I found in Revere's words a clear narrative at odds with Palin's, but Conservatives4Palin found support for her claim that he warned the British.

Those quibbling with Governor Palin’s statements have their history incomplete. During Paul Revere’s ride he was stopped by British soldiers, which Revere recounts in a 1789 letter maintained by the Massachusetts Historical Society ,in his original language (emphasis mine):

I observed a Wood at a Small distance, & made for that. When I got there, out Started Six officers, on Horse back,and orderd me to dismount;-one of them, who appeared to have the command, examined me, where I came from,& what my Name Was? I told him. it was Revere, he asked if it was Paul? I told him yes He asked me if I was an express? I answered in the afirmative. He demanded what time I left Boston? I told him; and aded, that their troops had catched aground in passing the River, and that There would be five hundred Americans there in a short time, for I had alarmed the Country all the way up.
"Governor Palin Gives the Media a History Lesson on Paul Revere's Midnight Ride"

Despite the typos (1789 instead of 1798, for instance), their history is a credible example of sourcing. Several other historians have acknowledged that Palin got this fact more or less correct, even if by accident. Even more important, it seems to me, Conservatives for Palin emphasize the heart of the American story as Palin and most of her admirers understand it: "Governor Palin’s bus tour has been successful in allowing her to highlight the greatness of the history of America."

In his concession speech in the 2008 election, Senator John McCain emphasized the greatness of America. But his spin differed from that now advocated by Palin. He noted and congratulated Barack Obama as the first African American elected President, contrasting it with shameful episodes when a Black man having dinner in the White House created grief for the President who invited him--Republican Theodore Roosevelt (see "Booker T Washington's White House Dinner").

Whether or not Paul Revere rang bells, whether or not he warned the British are questions that keep us fixated on the factoids--those pieces of historical knowledge that drove my classmates as far from history as they could get. We should be debating and discussing Sarah Palin's vision, and even more the visions of those who have actually declared their candidacy for President. We should be discussing and debating the American story. Do we look to the past for heroes who guide us into the future? Do we emulate the leaders of earlier generations, or do we rise above their prejudices?

The American Story

2011-06-10T10:28:00.001-07:00

George Chalich was a high school teacher who inundated the junior class with factoids. I loved the factoids he gave us, but hated the slow pace of presentation and the alienating absence of dialogue. We memorized, to the last comma, the preamble to the U.S. Constitution; lengthy definitions of socialism, communism, totalitarianism, republicanism, and democracy; salary schedules for the federal judiciary, members of Congress, and the President; and the eight characteristic behaviors of the "good citizen": I can recall the first two: 1) "a good citizen votes;" 2) "a good citizen votes intelligently." Chalich's stories evoked an alternative vision of good citizenship. Drawing on his Serbian heritage, his story of the beginnings of the First World War becomes a lesson in historiography: "Gavrilo Princip was a Serbian patriot, the newspapers never get it right." The so-called assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand was not a criminal act, but an assertion of the patriotism of a nation within.
Spring Wind Rising (1994), 185-186.

We sat in our straitjackets, took notes, and made efforts to memorize George Chalich's lists. Most of my classmates learned to hate history. Skill at memorization was not high among the talents of teenagers in the 1970s. Even those good at it rarely look back with fondness upon the experience. It should be clear that the pedagogy of memorization is far from an exemplary model for nurturing historical knowledge, let alone historical thinking in high school students. Nor does this failed pedagogy serve the adults who return to school in middle age.

Teachers who are passionate for history should infect students with their enthusiasm, not inoculate them against outbreaks of history mindedness. In a recent National History Center roundtable, the panelists agreed, "that instilling the love of history into students’ lives was the most important objective in a survey course." Salt Lake City, Utah teacher Fiona Halloran notes, "Students come to class hoping for pleasure but fearing pain." She suggests liberty in their writing assignments:

Offering students liberty means asking them to write essays about dissent, identity, and hunger. What do those things mean? Let them decide. As they struggle to match historical events and ideas to concepts like resistance, they will have to wrestle with the most difficult questions history has to offer. ... [Assessment liberty] invites students to tell you about the ideas they found most compelling and their work is therefore brighter, more forceful and more specific.
Halloran, "Historical Gardening"

San Francisco's Valerie Ziegler emphasizes teaching students the process of producing history, and also gives them room for decision. She draws from the Reading Like a Historian project of the Stanford History Education Group (a project led by Sam Wineburg whose Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts I have mentioned in "Reflective Thinking, Teaching and Learning" and other posts). She looks to students to create their own answers to historical questions.

Each lesson in this curriculum begins with a debatable historical question that requires students to formulate answers based on their reading of historical evidence. My students leave my class with confidence in their reading, writing and understanding of how the story of history is told. They develop skills they can use beyond high school.
Ziegler, "Crafting a Love for History"

Chalich's memorization scheme aimed at cultivating a sense of citizenship (voting, not assassinating heads of states). Today's emphasis upon teaching and learning (the lingo that replaced the term pedagogy) cultivates behaviors that are necessary to an engaged and effective citizenry. Several panelists emphasized historical thinking as central to successful democracy.

In the final analysis the effective U.S. history course fosters active citizenship. History education is the best way to reach for equity, social justice, and new hope. Sitting in our classrooms today are the century’s new leaders; within them the seeds of true equity, gentleness, compassion and service are sown.
David Mitchell, "Primary Sources: The Seeds for Student Growth"

By examining how previous generations of citizens grappled with the issues, students see that they too have a role in shaping the events of their time. They have a stake—more to gain—in looking at how we got to this point. The spirited debate over who should bear the cost of the national road two hundred years ago is the health care debate of today.
William E. White, "The Idea of America"

Andrew Johnson explains in "Let the Questions Guide You," his contribution to the roundtable, how his course is built around four central questions. Well-informed readers will recognize the sources of his questions in famous political speeches and poems.

Each quarter of the school year is framed with a guiding question. “Was this nation conceived in liberty?” compels a study of colonial times, the Revolution and the Constitution, and the Washington and Adams administrations. The question itself constitutes both a compelling essay question as well as a sorting tool for what content to include and what to leave out. Similarly, “Is our government of the people, by the people, and for the people?” compels a study of the abolition movement, the Civil War, and Progressivism.
Johnson, "Let the Questions Guide You"

Lendol Calder, whose "uncoverage" model clearly influences the other panelists, discusses an assignment he uses the first week of his college U.S. history survey.

In the first week of my course, students write a two-page history of the United States. I don’t allow them to look anything up, which makes students think I am testing their factual knowledge. In fact, I use the assignment to learn what students think the story of American history is. By “story” I mean the basic interpretive frame they use to make sense of the American past.
Calder, "But What is Our Story?"

Calder emphasizes that factual recall is not the forte of a well-trained historian so much as an inquiring mindset.

The mark of historical mindedness is not recalling that “this happened and then that happened.” Rather, it is a distinctive sort of questioning and a distinctive method of discovery supported by certain habits, skills, and dispositions.
Calder, "But What is Our Story?"

All of the panelists emphasize student engagement with primary sources. They each emphasize at least some of the processes Calder has called the cognitive habits of the historian: "questioning, connecting, sourcing, making inferences, considering alternate perspectives, and recognizing limits to one's knowledge"(Calder, "Uncoverage: Toward a Signature Pedagogy for the History Survey," The Journal of American History (March 2006), 1364).

Palin's Gaffe and Her Apologists

2011-06-08T07:23:00.000-07:00

It’s so important for Americans to learn about our past so we can clearly see our way forward in challenging times; so, we’re bringing attention to our great nation’s foundation.
Sarah Palin, SarahPAC

The news has slowed concerning former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's gaffe, and some of what was there in the beginning seems gone.

The Boston Herald offered this passage in a much copied article:

But Cornell law professor William Jacobson, who asserted last week that Palin was correct, linking to Revere quotes on his conservative blog Legalinsurrection.com, said Palin’s critics are the ones in need of a history lesson. “It seems to be a historical fact that this happened,” he said. “A lot of the criticism is unfair and made by people who are themselves ignorant of history.”
"Experts Back Sarah Palin's Account"

It's a compelling quote. As Jacobson is a law professor at an elite university, I eagerly went to his blog seeking an able explanation and defense of this judgement: Palin's remarks are more accurate than those of her critics.

Searching for this quote, or even the word "ignorant" in Jacobson's blog bears no fruit. Perhaps the quoted lines are from an interview. Perhaps they originally appeared in the post obliquely referenced, but edits removed them.

Jacobson has several posts over the past few days:

"So Now All These People Will Apologize to Sarah Palin About Paul Revere, Right?" 3 June 2011

Noting that Palin's version "seemed odd," Jacobson found that Conservatives4Palin had quoted Paul Revere's 1898 letter and repeats their quote.

“I'm not a potted plant. I'm here as the blogger. That's my job.” 4 June 2011

He takes issue with a comment on his blog that accused him of "offering cover" to a politician who deserves scorn.

"Deranged Propagandist" 4 June 2011

Notes that Andrew Sullivan linked to his blog via the label "deranged propagandist".

"Anti-Palinites Go All In On Epistemic Closure," 6 June 2011

Renders accusations against Palin's critics for committing the errors they attempt to pin on her.

The debate also shifted, from she was wrong as to the fact of the warning to she was wrong as to Revere's intent. The goal posts constantly were moved. All in all, there was an intellectual shut down by those on the left and right who don't like Palin, an unwillingness to consider facts which contradicted their narrative.

"Suffolk Univ. History Prof. - Palin Right About Paul Revere," 6 June 2011

Links to the NPR interview with Robert Allison that I discuss in "Paul Revere's Bells".

"I Demand That Obama Recite The Longfellow Poem From Memory," 8 June 2011

Clever turn of the whole controversy against our current President.

Paul Revere's Ride

In his first post, Professor Jacobson searched David Hackett Fischer's Paul Revere's Ride (1994) for "Paul Revere bells and gunshots," finding this passage: "A townsman remembered that 'repeated gunshots, the beating of drums and the ringing of bells filled the air'" (150). Something along those lines was my second response (after finding Revere's letter) and I bought the eBook from Google. I started reading it from the beginning, but jumped forward to the passages relevant to Palin's version.

The text read fine on my notebook and desktop computers, but Google's iPad app utterly failed after purchasing the book. After nearly twenty-four hours of frustration, I deleted the app, then reinstalled it. Last night I was able to read Fischer's book as I fell asleep. His description of General Thomas Gage's frustration with colonials seems apropos. If Gage's view has any credibility as Fischer presents it, his observation of colonial contradictions establishes a stronger connection between today's Tea Partiers and the original Boston Tea Party.

General Gage reminded himself that most of these infuriating provincials were British too--blood of his blood, flesh of his own freeborn nation. They had been allowed more liberties than any people on the face of the globe, yet they complained that he was trying to enslave them. They were taxed more lightly than the subjects of any European state, but refused even the trivial sums that Parliament had levied upon them. They professed loyalty to their rightful Sovereign, but tarred and feathered his Royal officers, and burned His Majesty's ships to the water's edge.
Paul Revere's Ride, 31

That a tax revolt might be led by those who paid the least taxes seems as true of the eighteenth century Boston smugglers who organized the Tea Party as of those that lead today's group that claims their mantle.

Paul Revere's Bells

2011-06-07T07:14:00.000-07:00

…he who warned the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and, um, makin’ sure as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we’re gonna be secure and we were gonna be free. And we we’re gonna be armed.
Sarah Palin

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's comment about Paul Revere warning the British and ringing bells went viral over the past weekend. Many heap scorn upon her for ignorance, but others have sought to spin her remarks in a way that presents them as free of essential error. Most Americans in 1775 considered themselves British, or at least British subjects (Paul Revere was the son of a French Huguenot father and an English mother).

Palin's defiance when her history was challenged by FOX's Chris Wallace, feeble though his challenge was, has been reposted as often as her original remarks. Typical of the scorn for Palin's version and the subsequent efforts of her fans to alter Wikipedia is Business Insider:

Paul Revere was "warning the British" that night, Palin says, refusing to admit that she just worded her riff badly. ... [Palin's fans] tried to add citations to support the idea that Revere "rang bells" on his ride. (He didn't).
"Sarah Palin Fans Trying To Rewrite Wikipedia History Of Paul Revere's Ride To Match Her Crazy Version," http://www.businessinsider.com/sarah-palin-fans-try-to-rewrite-wikipedia-history-of-paul-reveres-ride-2011-6

On the other hand, National Public Radio, served up a story that supports her views. Melissa Block interviewed historian Robert Allison, chair of history at Suffolk University in Boston.

Prof. ALLISON: Well, he's not firing warning shots. He is telling people so that they can ring bells to alert others. What he's doing is going from house to house, knocking on doors of members of the Committees of Safety saying the regulars are out. That is, he knew that General Gage was sending troops out to Lexington and Concord, really Concord, to seize the weapons being stockpiled there, but also perhaps to arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams, leaders of the Continental Congress, who were staying in the town of Lexington.
...
BLOCK: So you think basically, on the whole, Sarah Palin got her history right.
Prof. ALLISON: Well, yeah, she did. And remember, she is a politician. She's not an historian. And God help us when historians start acting like politicians, and I suppose when politicians start writing history.
How Accurate Were Palin's Paul Revere Comments? http://m.npr.org/news/U.S./137011636

For the most part, Allison's comments are consistent with David Hackett Fischer's account in Paul Revere's Ride (1994), probably the best single reference for events in the life of Paul Revere.

[O]nce in the town of Medford, [Revere] went quickly about the task of awakening that community with remarkable economy of effort. He rode directly to the house of Captain Isaac Hall, commander of Medford's minutemen, who instantly triggered the town's alarm system. A townsman remembered that "repeated gunshots, the beating of drums and the ringing of bells filled the air."
Paul Revere's Ride, 140.

There were bells ringing alongside Revere's route, as well as the routes of the other riders. These bells were set off as a consequence of the actions of the riders. Even so, although Revere himself had been a church-bell ringer in his youth and a maker of bells in his profession, he was not ringing the bells himself. He proceeded by stealth. Fischer's narrative offers many a dramatic moment, such as when Revere quietly moved across the mouth of the Charles River and directly under the guns of the warship HMS Somerset (116).

Palin is not crazy to remember bells, but Allison's, "on the whole, Sarah Palin got her history right" seems rather too generous. She botched the story, even though she got some things half-right. If nothing else, the alarm system, the stockpile of cannon and gunpowder, and the ringing of bells all serve to refute Palin's notion that some sort of individual right to bear firearms (as distinct from a "well-regulated militia") was at issue in Paul Revere's midnight ride. The best that can be stated in Palin's defense might be to rate her comments as "barely true," as did PolitiFact. Of the fifty rulings on Palin's statements by this fact-checking resource, twenty-three have scored better than "barely true".

[Addendum 15 August 2011: PolitiFact has changed "barely true" to "mostly false," a better description of what is has meant for a long time. They state at the bottom of the linked page: "Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False."]

Palin's misunderstanding of the minutemen correlates well with her distorted views of eighteenth century New England notions of liberty. Early in Fischer's text, he offers a provocative chiasmus that emphasizes a massive difference in the notions of liberty propagated by today's Tea Partiers and those responsible for the original Boston Tea Party, among whom Revere was one of the leaders.

[Paul Revere] believed deeply in New England's inherited tradition of ordered freedom, which gave heavy weight to collective rights and individual responsibilities--more so than is given by our modern calculus of individual rights and collective responsibilities.
Paul Revere's Ride, 16

The eighteenth century is foreign to modern Americans. Only a deep study of history mired in primary sources will develop the sort of sensibility and understanding needed to translate eighteenth century ideologies into twenty-first century folksy soundbites. There is little in Sarah Palin's background to suggest that she has done this sort of extensive reading, nor that she has any inclination to do so.

Palin quote from Elaine Magliaro, "The Bells are Ringing: Sarah Palin and the Revised Story of Paul Revere's Ride," Jonathan Turley blog (4 June 2011) http://jonathanturley.org/2011/06/04/the-bells-are-ringing-sarah-palin-and-the-revised-story-of-paul-revere's-ride/. Other transcripts of her spoken comments differ slightly. I posted the video of Palin's remarks in yesterday's "Paul Revere's Ride".

Paul Revere's Ride

2011-06-06T10:18:00.000-07:00

Paul Revere's letter to Jeremy Belknap (1798) offers his own account of an event that has been much memorialized, mythologized, and misunderstood in the centuries since. The complete letter is available from the Massachusetts Historical Society.

In Medford, I awaked the Captain of the Minute men; & after that, I alarmed almost every House, till I got to Lexington. I found Mrs. Messrs. Hancock & Adams at the Rev. Mr. Clark's; I told them my errand, and inquired for Mr. Daws; they said he had not been there; I related the story of the two officers, & supposed that He must have been stopped, as he ought to have been there before me. After I had been there about half an Hour, Mr. Daws came; after we refreshid our selves, we and set off for Concord, to secure the Stores, &c. there.
Paul Revere to Jeremy Belknap

Compare Revere's recollection with this one:

Sarah Palin's account differs from Revere's, from accounts by leading historians (David Hackett Fischer's account is cited most often), from Wikipedia before her followers attempted to rectify the omission, and even differs substantially from the account in the not always reliable right-wing history in A Patriot's History of the United States (2004) by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen. Although a few details that she places near the center of her narrative can be found at the edges of the narrative in A Patriot's History.

[General Thomas Gage] issued orders to arrest the political firebrands and rhetoricians Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were reported in the Lexington area, and to secure the cannons from the colonists. Gage therefore sought to kill two birds with one stone when, on the night of April 18, 1775, he sent 1,000 soldiers from Boston to march up the road via Lexington to Concord. If he could surprise the colonials and could capture Adams, Hancock, and the supplies quietly, the situation might be defused. But the patriots learned of British intentions and signaled the British route with lanterns from the Old North Church, whereupon two riders, Paul Revere and William Dawes left Boston by different routes to rouse the minutemen. Calling, "To Arms! To Arms!" Revere and Dawes's daring mission successfully alerted the patriots at Lexington, at no small cost to Revere, who fell from his horse after warning Hancock and Adams and was captured at one point, but then escaped.
A Patriot's History, 72-73.

Palin's account garbles these events with half-truths and egregious error, much as Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's placement of Lexington and Concord in New Hampshire brought scorn upon her and raised doubts whether any of the Tea Party leaders know enough American history to pass a high school exam.

Needless to say, my blog feed this morning has listed quite a few references to historians and journalists skewering Palin's account. Ed Brayton asserts, "she babbles like an unprepared freshman in history class." Larry Cebula develops this theme with a clip from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and also draws attention to revisions of Wikipedia by Palin apologists. He notes, "she tries to fake her way through with the unprepared student's classic recipe of one-half facts that are wrong and one-half trumpeting what the student believes are the key themes of the course." John Fea repeats Andrew Sullivan's harsh psychoanalysis of Palin, "[o]ne of the most pernicious and dangerous features of Palin is her clinical refusal to understand reality, to accept error, to acknowledge when the facts she has cited are not actually facts, but delusions." Sullivan also comments upon Wikipedia vandalism. The Washington Post employs the Wikipedia entry war as its lead to observe the differences between Michelle Bachmann admitting her error and turning into a joke about liberal Massachusetts and Sarah Palin's claim, "I didn't mess up." Kurt Weldon's brief entry offers a memorable line: "Ignorance is not merely bliss--it's mandatory."

Paul Revere and the Second Amendment

Palin's effort to connect Revere to what would become an issue of gun control and interpretations of the Second Amendment does adhere to a theme in some histories.

He who warned, uh, the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms.
Sarah Palin

Schweikart and Allen note:

[T]he people of Massachusetts established a revolutionary government and raised an army of soldiers known as minutemen (able to fight on a minutes notice).
A Patriot's History, 72

Revere stated clearly that warning the minutemen of British troop movements was his first task.

Schweikart and Allen also position themselves in a debate regarding the extent of firearm and large weapon possession in revolutionary Massachusetts.

[G]uns were so prevalent that citizens did not need to list them specifically. On the eve of the Revolution, Massachusetts citizens were well armed, and not only with small weapons but, collectively, with artillery.
A Patriot's History, 72.

It is clear, even from this pro-gun account from a pair of far-right historians, that Massachusetts established a "well-regulated militia" to serve at the behest of the revolutionary colonial government. Moreover, I rarely hear conservative advocates of the Second Amendment pushing for my right to have an M1A1 Abrams tank in the driveway and surely that is much closer in spirit to the possession of cannon in 1775. Palin seems to want to push this issue a bit farther than Schweikart and Allen, although theirs may be the text that she is misremembering.

Palin's Apologetics

Former Governor Sarah Palin did get something right in a strange twist of fate. In an interview with Chris Wallace on FOX, Palin said:

Reporters don't seem to be understanding it. Even your own Shep Smith there on FOX News, he announced the other day that I was on some publicity tour. I wanted to say, Shep, take it one step futher, what am I publicizing on this tour? I'm publicizing Americana, and our foundation, and how important it is that we learn about our past and our challenges, and victories throughout American history, so that we can successfully proceed forward. Very heady days, rough waters ahead of us, Chris. We need to make sure that we have a strong grasp of our foundational victories so that we can move forward.
Palin to Chris Wallace, FOX News Sunday, at 14:13

She certainly publicizes the need to learn history every time she speaks about the past, for inevitably she makes the news by getting facts mixed up. She then stays in the headlines by insisting that she did not get things wrong. The more she offers her distorted understanding, the more clearly she publicizes the need to learn history. In the long-run that strategy will backfire, but the short-run is her forte.

Palin's English

Finally, we should not overlook this comic piece by Craig Medred in the Alaska Dispatch: "Sarah Palin's Problem is Her English, Not Her History." Palin speaks the rare dialect Northeast Wasillian.

National Rifle Association member that she is, Palin certainly knew Revere wasn't firing off "warning shots.” There were no warning shots in the days of the single-shot, hard-to-reload musket. Nobody wasted shots, let alone ammunition, on warnings. They shot to try to hit something. Palin just slipped up there with her messaging, which is easy to understand because her problem has never been her history so much as her grammar and vocabulary.
...
This is nothing new. Palin has always spoken some form of Wasillian, or even maybe Northeast Wasillian, an extremely rare dialect.
Medred

On a blog that picked up this piece, a commentator noted that Northeast Wasillian is Palin's third language, after "Ida-the-ho-ian and Wasillian."

Editing note: In the original post I miss attributed to John Fea words of Andrew Sullivan that he quoted on his fine history blog. I have corrected the error. Andrew Sullivan is not in my blog feed, while The Way of Improvement Leads Home is one that I read regularly.

Beware Amazon Marketplace

2011-05-06T08:14:00.000-07:00

In 2001 I ordered a book described as new that was priced low. It was the Library of America edition of works by one of America's foremost writers, James Baldwin. My card was charged, but the book never shipped. The dealer, a second-party used dealer in Oregon selling through Amazon, employed several delaying tactics in response to my queries. Amazon told me to contact the dealer directly. They offer this advice up-front, but hide well the process of contacting them directly. Finally, after two months, I demanded a refund from Amazon. Because more than sixty days had transpired since the original order, they refused.

I was furious and resolved to cease all business with Amazon.

It was five years before I relented and bought another book from Amazon--two actually: Chess Bitch by Jennifer Shahade and Breaking Through by Susan Polgar. I had been buying from Amazon nearly monthly prior to this problem. After four years of occasional orders from the online giant, I cautiously placed another order through a second-party dealer. The book arrived as described, and I placed a couple more orders, always making certain that the rating was five-stars and 100%.

Last week, I ordered a book from jwbasilbooks via Amazon. Their rating seemed strong, although a mere 98% going back one year, and down to 93% for the lifetime of their work through Amazon. The order was cancelled the next day.

Greetings from Amazon.com,

We're writing to inform you that your order 002-6768021-8472203 from jwbasilbooks has been canceled because the item(s) you purchased were out of stock. Please return and place your order again at a later time.

Our sellers strive to minimize canceled orders. We're sorry for the inconvenience this has caused. Your credit card was not charged for this order. If you have any questions regarding the cancelation of this order, please contact jwbasilbooks.

If you're still interested in this item, please search for it again on Amazon.com.

from the email

I tried rating the seller because they indicated quite clearly that the item was in stock. I realize that books do go out of stock between the time a book is ordered and when it is packaged for shipping. When the print run is too small on a surprise bestseller, this inconvenience is common. Obscure academic books published half a decade ago, however, do not fly off the shelves. Rather, a bookstore that mines the inventory of other bookstores, as I think is the case for this seller, does not keep its inventory up-to-date. As long as they are selling exclusively through eBay and Amazon, many hundreds or even thousands of cancelled orders will not affect their rating. When they are able to deliver as promised, they get good marks. When they fail, one person knows.

I've ordered the book for a few dollars more from AbeBooks.com. They have yet to fail me.

As I learned back in 2002, Amazon makes efforts to hide the "contact us" option on their website. It took less effort this time--only eight or ten clicks--but I was able to email this note:

It should be possible to rate sellers that cancel orders. I am deeply suspicious that some cancel many orders. A dealer that lists an old and obscure item as in stock, then cancels an order because the item is out of stock SHOULD NOT HAVE A 100% RATING OVER THE PAST 30 DAYS!

Addendum:

Amazon replied to my complaint:

Hello,

I understand that you'd like have the possibility to rate the seller even though the order is canceled

Even though orders canceled by sellers no longer appear in Your Account, you can still leave feedback for sellers who canceled the order by clicking the "Your Account" link on the top right-hand side of the Amazon.com homepage.

Go to the Orders section and click "Leave Seller Feedback".

from the email

jwbasilbooks no longer shows 100%!!

Harpoon Books has processed the order that I placed through AbeBooks. Brian W. Richardson, Longitude and Empire: How Captain Cook's Voyages Changed the World (2005) is on its way.

The Haymarket Affair: Contrasting Histories

2011-05-04T06:41:00.000-07:00

On this day in 1886, thousands of people gathered for a protest rally at Haymarket Square in Chicago. The previous day, police had fired into a crowd of strikers who had been confronting strikebreakers at the McCormick Harvester Works. Two striking workers were killed, perhaps more. The Chicago Daily News reported six deaths, and this figure was repeated by August Spies in his circular calling workers to arms (Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy [1986], 190).

Howard Zinn reports four deaths in his A People's History of the United States (1980) and quotes part of Spies' leaflet:

Revenge!
Workingmen to Arms!!!
...You have for years endured the most abject humiliations, ... you have worked yourself to death ... your Children you have sacrificed to the factory lord--in short: you have been miserable and obedient slaves all these years: Why? To satisfy the insatiable greed, to fill the coffers of your lazy thieving master? When you ask them now to lessen your burdens, he sends his bloodhounds out to shoot you, kill you!
... To arms we call you, to arms!
as quoted in Zinn, 270-271 (ellipses in Zinn)

This circular was published and distributed the evening of 3 May 1886 and set the stage for tensions the following evening at Haymarket Square. According to Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, A Patriot's History of the United States (1994), "August Spies set the table for more violence" (439). Schweikart and Allen quote the first three sentences of the circular, "Revenge! Workingmen, to arms! Your masters sent out their bloodhounds!" (439).

Tensions had been building for months. On one side were the police, the state militia, the leaders of industries, a "Citizens' Committee" that met daily to plot strategy. On the other side were members and leaders of labor unions. The Chicago Mail, Zinn tells his readers, had suggested on 1 May watching and making an example of Albert Parsons and August Spies of the International Working People's Association: "Keep them in view. Hold them personally responsible for any trouble that occurs. Make an example of them if trouble occurs" (as quoted by Zinn, 270).

Despite the militant rhetoric, the protest at Haymarket Square was peaceful. As it was nearing its conclusion, 180 police marched towards the speakers stand. Then a bomb exploded, "wounding sixty-six policemen, of whom seven later died" (Zinn, 271). One died instantly (see summary at "The Dramas of Haymarket").

Police reacted quickly to the blast, firing into the crowd, killing at least four demonstrators. There are accounts that suggest many of the wounds suffered by the police were due to friendly fire.

The Chicago History Museum's website offers a good synopsis of the effects of the melee:

Acting with overwhelming public support, the police arrested dozens of political radicals. In the trial that followed, eight anarchists were found guilty of murder. After appeals to the Illinois and United States Supreme Courts failed, four of the defendants were executed on November 11, 1887.
"The Dramas of Haymarket," http://www.chicagohistory.org/dramas/overview/over.htm

Howard Zinn list those executed: "Albert Parsons, a printer, August Spies, an upholsterer, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel" (271). Schweikart and Allen mention the conviction for murder and the governor's pardon of three. A Patriot's History does acknowledge, "trials produced evidence that anarchists only loosely associated with the Knights had been involved" (439). Zinn is more specific:

Some evidence came out that a man named Rudolph Schnaubelt, supposedly an anarchist, was actually an agent of the police, an agent provocateur, hired to throw the bomb and thus enable the arrest of hundreds, the destruction of the revolutionary leadership in Chicago.
Zinn, 271-272.

Patriot's and People's Contrasts

Howard Zinn does not list specific sources for quotations, but has an extensive bibliography for each chapter. Larry Schweikart and Paul Allen source every quotation. Absent from their citations are the standard left-wing labor histories found in Zinn's list, such as Philip Foner, A History of the Labor Movement in the United States, 4 vols. (1947-1964). Neither text cites The Haymarket Tragedy (1986) by Paul Avrich, which was published several years after Zinn's text. Avrich credits the compositor, Hermann Pudewah, for the word "revenge" at the beginning of Spies' circular.

More telling differences emerge in the spin of these two texts. A Patriot's History offers minimal information concerning the labor movement, and credits the well-known Knights of Labor for the protest activities. A People's History crafts a more detailed account of a multitude of organizations, naming Spies' International Working People's Union, one of several engaged in organizing the strike at McCormick Harvester Works. It highlights the struggle for the eight-hour work day, while A Patriot's History manages to discuss union organizing and strikes without naming a single issue. A Patriot's History does manage, however, "High wages also diminished the appeal of organized labor" (438). In contrast, A People's History emphasizes immigrant labor, noting, "There were 5 1/2 million immigrants in the 1880s, 4 million in the 1890s, creating a labor surplus that kept wages down" (266).

Patriotic Logic (or Lack Thereof)

2011-04-29T10:07:00.000-07:00

When I am reading, I frequently go back and reread a passage. Most often I have missed something due to inattention or interruption, as when my wife whispers sweet nothings in my ear. Many times I go back because I find it difficult to understand a text. With some writers--William Faulkner, Jacques Derrida, Marcel Proust,--expectations of comprehension begin with the second reading. Occasionally, rereading a passage is necessary because I have some expertise in the subject, but the authors that I am reading most clearly do not. This last was my experience this morning while reading A Patriot's History of the United States (2004).

Several alternative policies had been attempted by the United States government in its dealings with the Indians. One emphasized the "nationhood" of the tribe, and sought to conduct foreign policy with the Indian tribes the way the United States would deal with a European power. Another, more frequent, process involved exchanging treaty promises and goods for Indian land in an attempt to keep the races separate.
Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, A Patriot's History, 207

How are treaties an alternative to dealing with Indian nations in ways comparable to dealing with foreign powers? Perhaps the authors of A Patriot's History imagine some distinction here that they fail to explain, but it defies logic. Quite simply, they offer incomprehensible nonsense to confuse the fundamental relationship between Indian tribes and the United States. Consider, for example, President Reagan's recognition of a government-to-government relationship between the U.S. and Indian tribes (for some reason the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library links to the text on the Environmental Protection Agency's website). The four-page policy statement begins:

On January 24, 1983, President Ronald Reagan issued an American Indian policy statement which reaffirmed the government-to-government relationship of Indian tribes with the United States.
http://www.epa.gov/tp/pdf/president-reagan83.pdf

Schweikart and Allen feel a need to put the word nationhood in quotes to generate some distance from what they fail to understand. Their favorite President's policy, however, explicitly states, "President Reagan’s policy supports: ... Specific acknowledgment of the governmental status of Indian tribes."

These days many of Reagan's most ideologically committed followers call themselves Constitutionalists. As they gain power, we can hope that they have read the Supremacy Clause:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.
U.S. Constitution, Article VI (emphasis added)

Does the supremacy clause apply to treaties with American Indian nations?

The U.S. Supreme Court thinks so. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), which A Patriot's History mentions on the next page, the U.S. Supreme Court found actions of the state of Georgia "repugnant to the Constitution" because these actions violated treaties with the Cherokee and laws of Congress. In discussing the first treaty the United States made with an Indian nation: the treaty with the Delawares, 1778, the Court noted, "[t]his treaty, in its language, and in its provisions, is formed, as near as may be, on the model of treaties between the Crowned heads of Europe" (31 U.S. 515, at 550). That Indian tribes had become dependent upon the U.S., does not diminish their sovereignty:

The very fact of repeated treaties with them recognizes it, and the settled doctrine of the law of nations is that a weaker power does not surrender its independence -- its right to self-government -- by associating with a stronger and taking its protection. A weak State, in order to provide for its safety, may place itself under the protection of one more powerful without stripping itself of the right of government and ceasing to be a State.
Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, at 560-561

A Patriot's History offers a view at odds with the Constitution, with the Supreme Court's interpretation of our Supreme Law, and even with the formal declaration of Indian policy by the patron saint of the Conservative Revolution. Schweikart and Allen seem quite alone in their reading of history.

Misplaced Emphasis

2011-04-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

The book table at Costco proves an irresistible lure, but the barbs there leave my jaw aching. Increasingly since the historic election of 2008, there have been stacks of right-wing diatribes by authors with little regard for accuracy of facts or analysis. But good books remain among the chaff. I'll be sorely tempted by Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol 1 (2011) on the next trip because I've found that the Kindle edition is not well suited for this sort of scholarly text and the price at Costco is $1.02 less than at Amazon. I nearly bought Life (2010) by Keith Richards, and may yet when the paperback comes out in a few months if they carry it. I've bought and read two books on the Battle of Little Big Horn--both were disappointing histories.

Off and on over the past week, I've been trying to labor through a book that I thought would be a quick and interesting read. I bought Richard Kluger, The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek (2011) from Costco in February with plans to read it during spring break. Last Monday I started. The Forward appalled me for its abysmal failure to mention tribal sovereignty while pretending to lay out the critical historical framework at the heart of the Medicine Creek Treaty of 1854. Reading further has been slogging through questionable factual assertions (I need to do some fact checking on several points) and episodes in misplaced emphasis.

This morning I came upon this sentence:

Scholars have estimated that by 1850, the aboriginal population in North America--besieged by the invaders' explosive weaponry, wondrous technology, contemptuous cruelty, and irresistible pathogens, as well as the Indians' own ever-deepening despair--was just one-tenth of what it had been when Columbus first ventured ashore. (57)

Kluger gets the demography correct, but fails to explain it well. Beginning with weapons and technology demonstrates that he has read neither my "Superior European Technology" nor Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus (2005)--another text that I found at Costco. He also reveals his failure to comprehend the significance of ecological damage, easily rectified for starters by reading William Cronon, Changes in the Land (1983). Most egregious is the way that he seems to put disease behind conscious imperialism and technology in his explanation of traumatic demographic change.

Kluger sets up the reader to expect that he would comprehend the significance of ecological changes on the previous page:

Essential to this metamorphosis would be correcting the red race's attitude toward the land, which they shrank from actively cultivating but regarded as a hallowed preserve ... Such footloose practices were deemed unsuitable for a civilized society. Instead, the Indians needed to buckle down within far less expansive territory, where they would work the soil as the Scriptures directed (see Genesis 9:1) and make it flourish. (56)

The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek concerns peoples and events in the southern Puget Sound Basin, so the failure of a historical gloss to recognize the cultivation of corn, beans, and squash by everyone from the Pueblos of New Mexico to the Seneca of New York might be forgivable. The Neolithic Revolution emerged in Meso-America and southern China approximately the same time that it emerged in the Fertile Crescent. Even so, the U.S. Supreme Court encoded this common stereotype of Indian hunters and gatherers with respect to those indigenous to the Ohio River Valley in Johnson v. McIntosh (1823) and with respect to the plantation owning Cherokee in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1832). As a description of Anglo-American attitudes, if not American Indian realities, Kluger's gloss serves its purpose.

Ten years ago I revealed my own understanding of the role of disease in the European conquest:

Epidemic disease was the decisive factor in the European conquest. Epidemics not only eliminated entire communities, but the resulting sociocultural disruption created conditions that made Native peoples more receptive to European trade items and religious ideas.
James Stripes, "Native Americans: An Overview," Encyclopedia of American Studies, vol. 3 (2001), 198.

One of my first entries for this blog, "Practicing Objectivity," quoted that tertiary source. This morning I am reminded how easily historians searching for a new writing topic without adequate grounding in the scholarship will easily miss the critical significance and fall into popularly believed errors--technology conferred minimal advantages to Europeans, and when it did it was swords and cannons more than personal firearms. Disease was the decisive factor, followed closely by assaults on the land. Technology ultimately assisted, but only after the initially tenuous foothold was well established. Then, the plow did more to facilitate conquest than did the gun.

George Bancroft

2011-04-08T07:50:00.000-07:00

In his History of the United States (1875), George Bancroft highlights the authority of the Second Continental Congress that began meeting in May 1775.

Whom did they represent? and what were their functions? They were committees from twelve colonies, deputed to consult on measures of conciliation, with no means of resistance to oppression beyond a voluntary agreement for the suspension of importations from Great Britain. They formed no confederacy; they were not an executive government; they were not even a legislative body. ... They had no treasury; and neither authority to lay a tax, nor to borrow money. They had been elected, in part at least, by tumultuary assemblies, or bodies which had no recognized legal existence.
Bancroft, History of the United States, 353-354

Bancroft's fidelity to primary sources was nearly pathological, according to Richard Vitzthum.

While some historians improve their work through revision, Bancroft did not. Revision tended to carry him further and further away from his evidence, a temptation that he, of all historians, would have been well advised to resist. When he revised, he did not go back and restudy his sources: thus his first editions reflect his fullest immersion in the evidence.
Richard C. Vitzthum, "Theme and Method in Bancroft's History of the United States," New England Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 3 (1968), 363, note 4.

But fidelity is perhaps the wrong word. The sources adorned more than they informed Bancroft's narratives.

The omnicompetent narrator of the History merely fits useful ideas and phrases from the sources into his own interpretive context. His disregard for the context in which they originally appeared is often complete. ...
[T]he History is based as often on secondary as on primary sources, belying Bancroft's claim here that he chiefly used primaries ... in saying he "derived" his narrative from source material, he means he has raised it to the level of philosophy.
Vitzthum, 372

Whether primary or secondary, Bancroft's citations are incomplete.

Bancroft to a large extent based his narrative on source material, both manuscript and printed, but ... did not scorn to employ secondary works which he considered reliable. ... The chief criticism of the historian's use of sources--which is one of technique--is that his style of citation is not sufficiently complete always to give the reader the information necessary for checking up or for himself locating the source.
Watt Stewart, "George Bancroft Historian of the American Republic," Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol. 19, No. 1 (1932), 80.

Unreasonable Expectations

2011-04-05T17:30:00.001-07:00

Martin Cruz Smith writes mystery novels. Although he is reputedly of Pueblo and Yaqui ancestry, his inclusion among prolific Native American writers often seems overlooked. His The Indians Won (1970) anticipates an alternate history of the Cold War if the United States had failed to subdue the tribes of the Plains after the Custer debacle. But his subsequent writing did not foreground Indian themes.

Jorge Luis Borges challenges the expectations that come along in efforts to define national literature, or that of a racial group.

I wish to note another contradiction: the nationalists pretend to venerate the capacities of the Argentine mind but wish to limit the poetic exercise of that mind to a few humble local themes, as if we Argentines could only speak of neighborhoods and ranches and not of the universe.
"The Argentine Writer and Tradition," in Selected Non-Fictions, 424

Because what I know of Argentine literature is limited to Borges, this lecture stimulates my thinking about other literatures: American, American Indian, Pacific Northwest Regional, ...

To Establish Justice

2011-03-15T08:14:00.000-07:00

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ...
Preamble, United States Constitution

I might have become an attorney. During my junior year of college I attended the prelaw meetings, consumed advice concerning preparation for law school, digested information from representatives of law schools that visited my college to discuss legal careers, took steps to prepare for the LSAT. Moral qualms put an end to this activity.

Two Political Science courses--Constitutional Law (PolS 300) and Civil Liberties (PolS 402)--cultivated my interest in the Bill of Rights, my commitment to equal justice under law, and some minimal comfort with legalese. The entire sequence of U.S. history courses that I packed under my belt broadened my understanding of the ongoing struggle to bring American realities in line with American ideals. President Reagan, who assumed command during my sophomore year, may have echoed John Winthrop's appropriation of a metaphor from the Sermon on the Mount to describe the U.S. nation as a "city upon a hill," but the light, it seemed to me, was directed into people's eyes more so than upon the path toward justice. Embarking upon a massive program of consuming U.S. history texts while watching the President serve up the imaginary food of Peter Pan's banquets proved to be a recipe for indigestion.

The Bill of Rights was under attack. American liberties struggled against the rhetoric of freedom. American values were the daily fare. More and more, however, the meat and potatoes that tasted so good appeared to be full of unnatural additives. They added flavor and aided digestion, but evidence began coming to light that cancer would be the long-term consequence of such a diet.

How should I earn my slice of the American pie? Defending guilty criminals seemed to be the means of keeping civil liberties off the butcher's block. Cultivating the raw truth that revealed how history books had been cooked appealed more fully to my sense of moral fiber. My stomach ached less when I contemplated prosecuting those that lied about the past than when I contemplated protecting those that might be guilty from a rush to judgment on the basis of inadequate or tainted evidence. I remained committed to my youthful quest to become a history teacher. I chose history over law, and in graduate school the history of Federal Indian law pulled me back to a steady diet of legalese.

Neolithic Revolution and American Indians

2011-03-12T11:34:00.000-08:00

In Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (1999 [1980]), we read:

On their own, the Indians were engaged in the great agricultural revolution that other peoples in Asia, Europe, Africa were going through about the same time. (18)

Zinn proceeds to observe the contrast between the "egalitarian communes" of hunter-gatherers with the development of "divisions of labor among men and women," the rise of priests and chiefs, and other aspects of the cultures of settled populations of agriculturalists. Although he hints of an underside of the development of agriculture, his focus notes the achievements of civilization in the Americas prior to the European invasion.

He dwells less upon the differences between "nomadic hunters" and agricultural peoples in the Americas than upon describing social relations among the Haudenosaunee (he uses the term League of the Iroquois). Zinn describes property values and gender relations in such as way as to support a generalization.

So, Columbus and hsi successors were not coming into an empty wilderness, but into a world which in some places was as densely populated as Europe itself, where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations among men, women, children, and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps any place in the world. (21)

Zinn mentions in passing the Moundbuilder Culture, but omits discussion of their religion--some form of sun worship,--and neglects elaboration of its hierarchical arrangements aside from the passing phrase, "more surplus to feed chiefs and priests" (18-19).

Just as he faults Samuel Eliot Morison, Zinn opens himself to criticism. He observes that Morison's Christopher Columbus, Mariner (1954) mentions genocide as a consequence of policies initiated by Columbus, but then moves on to emphasize positive achievements. Zinn opines:

To state the facts, however, and then to bury them in a mass of other information is to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm: yes, mass murder took place, but it's not that important--it should weigh very little in our final judgements; it should affect very little what we do in the world. (8)

As Morison quickly brushed past the issue of genocide, Zinn brushes past the hierarchical arrangements and theocratic states that emerged along the trail of corn in order to romanticize the American Indian past.

Pandora's Seed

Spencer Wells does not romanticize Neolithic peoples in Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization (2010). Wells presents data from a 1984 study of skeletal remains in the eastern Mediterranean by J. Lawrence Angel that demonstrates substantive indices of health decrease--pelvic inlet depth, average stature, and median life span--during the Mesolithic (9000-8000 BCE), Early Neolithic (7000-5000 BCE), and Late Neolithic (5000-3000 BCE). Wells notes similar patterns in the Americas, "the data shows that the transition to an agricultural lifestyle made people less healthy" (24).

How can we explain the massive increase in human population and the dominance of agriculture, which has pretty much completely replaced hunting and gathering in every inhabited corner of the world, when it didn't improve people's lives? (24)

It would seem that hunter-gatherers had an evolutionary advantage, yet agriculturalists prevailed. How was this victory achieved?

Although Wells poses this question, his focus concerns more centrally the long-term consequences of the Neolithic upon modern society, including the impact of a carbohydrate based diet upon general health and even how such changes so long ago contribute to global climate change. Along the way, however, he discusses the work of William H. McNeill (Plagues and Peoples [1976]) and Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel [1997]). These works address how peoples from Europe prevailed over peoples in the Americas. Although the Neolithic Revolution transformed the Fertile Crescent, MesoAmerica, and southern China approximately the same time, the revolution in the Americas was principally plant oriented, while elsewhere domestication of animals proceeded apace. From these animals came the diseases that devastated the Indians when Europeans arrived.

People's versus Patriot's

Although Zinn skirts past the unpleasant side of the Neolithic Revolution in the Americas to advance his excoriation of the heroes of conquest, Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen take a different tact. A Patriot's History of the United States (2004) draws upon other studies that document deleterious effects of the Neolithic Revolution to argue for an insignificant demographic impact of the European invasion. There is no need to repeat here all that I have written concerning the claims of Schweikart and Allen and how they distort the science they cite. I address elements of their fantastic edifice in "Larry Schweikart's Claim" (looking at his History News Network plug for the book), "Footnote to Larry Schweikart's Claim" (examining his source, The Backbone of History, and how he distorts its findings), and "Origins of Malaria" (investigating A Patriot's most outlandish claim).

I note in "Origins":

Civilization made us sick, but it also made us more numerous so we could impose our will on those otherwise more fortunate. The maladies that afflicted Europeans contributed in significant measure to their global expansion.

As a working hypothesis, I am prepared to put forth the claim that Zinn's history distorts through conscious and open bias that romanticizes Indians, while Schweikart and Allen distort either through abysmal scholarship or through flagrant dishonesty.

American Wealth: Timber

2011-01-28T10:08:00.000-08:00

The history of the United States is fundamentally a history of rapid exploitation of immensely valuable natural resources. The possession and exploitation of these resources have given most of the distinctive traits to American character, economic development, and even political and social institutions. Whatever preeminence the United States may have among the nations of the world, in industrial activity, efficiency and enterprise, in standards of comfort in living, in wealth, and even in such social and educational institutions as are dependent upon great wealth, must be attributed to the possession of these great natural resources; and the maintenance of our preeminence in these respects is dependent upon a wise and economical use of remaining resources. Thus the question of conservation is one of the most important questions before the American people ...
John Ise, The United States Forest Policy (1920), xix.

Remember this: this text criticizing wasteful over-cutting of timber and other wanton exploitation of the sources of American wealth was published in 1920. Its criticism of wrong-headed government actions was published a dozen years prior to the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the office of President of the United States. Long before publicly funded welfare existed for the poor and destitute, it existed for the railroads. These railroads, and companies with which they made sweet deals (Weyerhaeuser), came to own most of the nation's timber resources.

The three largest timber holdings in the United States— those of the Southern Pacific, the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, and the Northern Pacific—aggregated about 9,000,000 acres of timber land—since the forfeiture of the Southern Pacific lands in Oregon, only about 7,000,000 acres—some of it among the finest in the world. The five largest holdings in the country included 12,794,000 acres, an average of 2,560,000 acres each. Among holdings smaller than these were 9 of from 500,000 to 1,500,000 acres, averaging almost 1,000,000 acres each; 27 holdings of from 300,000 to 500,000 acres each; 48 holdings of from 150,000 to 300,000 acres; 124 of from 75,000 to 150,000 acres; and 520 holdings of between 18,000 and 75,000 acres. Thus 733 holders owned in fee a total of 71,521,000 acres of timber land and land owned in connection with or in the vicinity of this timber land—an average of nearly 100,000 acres each. There were also 961 smaller holders owning a total of 6,731,000 acres, an average for each of 7,000 acres—the equivalent of forty homesteads. This makes a total of over 78,000,000 acres owned in fee by 1,694 holders—nearly one twentieth of the land area of the United States, from the Canadian to the Mexican border.
John Ise, The United States Forest Policy (1920), 317.

Indian Names: Nez Perce

2011-01-15T07:24:00.000-08:00

Tribal names, as the names Native, Native American, Indian, American Indian, Native American Indian, are inventions more often than not. Some of these inventions stem from simple confusion, as when Captain James Cook heard the Nuu-chah-nulth offering instructions on where to anchor his ship, he heard "Nootka" and gave them that name. Some names are corruptions of what their enemies call them, as is the case with Sioux. Some names remain shrouded in the mists of time.

Already by 1835, the reasons for calling the Salish people in Montana, Flathead, and for calling the Ni-Mii-Puu, Nez Perce, had been forgotten. At least Samuel Parker could not discern the reasons during his travels.

I was disappointed to see nothing peculiar in the shape of the Flathead Indians, to give them their name. Who gave them this name, or for what reason, is not known. Some suppose it was given them in derision for not flattening their heads, as the Chenooks and some other nations do, near the shores of the Pacific. It may be so, but how will those, who indulge this imagination, account for the Nez Perces being so called, since they do not pierce their noses. That those names are given by white men, without any known reason, is evident from the fact, that they do not call each other by the names which signify either flat head or pierced nose.
Samuel Parker, Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains (1838), 76.

Many years ago, when I was a graduate student, my friend Otis Halfmoon told a class that I was teaching that the name Nez Perce probably stems from the Ni-Mii-Puu sign language term for themselves in which they pointed from right to left across their face to indicate that they had crossed over between those mountains. He speculated that someone thought they were piercing their noses with the gesture, adding that he is glad they did not think it was an act of cleaning their noses.

Young's Cauldron

2011-01-03T06:46:00.000-08:00

In early 1836, Ewing Young purchased a large iron cauldron from Courtney Walker. Walker had the job of disposing of the goods left behind by Nathaniel Wyeth's abandoned Columbia River enterprise. A successful ice merchant in New England, Wyeth had come west with dreams of making a fortune packing and shipping Pacific salmon for consumption outside the region. Along the way, Wyeth also sought profits from trapping for furs, brokering timber sales, and importing goods to Oregon from Hawaii and the east coast. Wyeth's Oregon enterprise failed to turn a profit so he liquidated his assets in the region and returned to the ice business. Meanwhile, Young had carried on successful trade between New Mexico and Missouri for more than a decade before working his way west to California, and from California driving a herd of horses into Oregon. Wyeth's cauldron had been shipped to Oregon for pickling salmon. Young originated from Tennessee and saw in the kettle potential for preparing sour mash that he could then distill into whiskey.

Oregon was not a wholly lawless frontier, but with joint occupation by the United States and by England, and with a small non-Indian population, enforcement authorities were far from prominent. United States law banned sale of liquor in Indian Country. The Hudson's Bay Company, England's presence in the region, understood that liquor sales to Indians had a deleterious effect on the fur trade--their business in the region. Young's plan to build a distillery provoked cooperation between HBC employees, American settlers, and missionaries that had recently arrived from the United States with the professed purpose of bringing Christian civilization to Oregon's Native population. The Oregon Temperance Society formed and started a petition drive to dissuade Young from manufacturing spirits.

Book Prices: Two Artifacts

2010-09-12T16:43:00.000-07:00

Reading through one of my old journals in the quest for a poem that I wrote eighteen to twenty years ago because my nineteen year old son said some things that reminded me of its central metaphor (dissipation of smoke), I stumbled across an entry that contains a list of books purchased, retail outlets, and total price spent over approximately one week. The number of texts acquired in that week seems excessive until I compare in to the number I have acquired in the past week.

One book appears in both lists.

Journal Extract

4 January 1990

I've gone hog wild the past few days in purchase of books. In San Francisco, at City Lights Books: Mohamed Choukri, For Bread Alone, trans. Paul Bowles; at Manzanita Used Books, downstairs from John and Kay*: Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard, A History of Anthropological Thought; at the AHA [American Historical Association] conference: Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers; and Robert V. Remini, The Life of Andrew Jackson.

On the trip back to Washington at the Trees of Mystery Gift Shop: Marcelle Masson, A Bag of Bones: Legends of the Wintu Indians of Northern California.

Back in Seattle [before the trip back to the eastern part of the state and Washington State University where I was in my first year of PhD work], at Target: Gary Larson, The Prehistory of the Far Side; and Tony Hillerman, A Thief of Time (which I read that night); at Shorey's: Carl L. Becker, The Declaration of Independence; Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men; and Click Relander, Drummers and Dreamers; at Left Bank Books: Louise Erdrich, Jacklight; Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization; Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century; and Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks; and at the University Book Store: Joseph Epes Brown, The Sacred Pipe; and Claude Levi-Strauss, Triste Tropiques. The total price of these books was approximately $125.00.

Before this list in my journal, I wrote a paragraph that connected a comment in the last book listed to a book by one of my graduate studies professors.

At the end of "Sao Paulo" in Triste Tropiques is a description of attitudes among students at a freshly founded university that would bear juxtaposition with [Albert J.] von Frank's The Sacred Game. Levi-Strauss describes his students as hungry for new ideas to adorn rather than to inform. This hunger for intellectual adornment rather than eagerness to understand the development of the ideas is a form of provincial mentality. However, Levi-Strauss should not be construed as simply claiming that the European scholar's quality of mind is superior. Earlier in his narrative he describes how his own education taught him to reduce all systems to a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis (he does not use these terms).

Second Artifact

At the beginning of the long Labor Day weekend, my wife and I went to Best Buy to look at memory chips for my camera and the Nook and Kindle readers. We left the store with none of these, but with two new iPads and some of the gear designed to protect them and enhance their use. Naturally, the iBooks reader was my first download from the App Store. It comes with A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh. I've added thirty-eight more books since then, including (I will not list them all) Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century; Ludvig von Mises, Economic Freedom and Interventionism; John Adams, Revolutionary Writings; Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Montaigne -- Complete; James Joyce, Ulysses; Ambrose Bierce, Write It Right (I own this in paperback, too); Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (I also have the Library of America hardback edition); Marcel Proust, Swann's Way (I have a newer translation in paperback); William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience; Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room; and Carl L. Becker, The Declaration of Independence (see the list above).

The iBooks reader is one of six book reading and storage apps that I have installed so far. In the Kindle Reader, I have nine full books and three samples in addition to the free dictionary that came with it. These include Memoirs of William T. Sherman (about $2); William Gibson, Zero History (at ~$14, my most expensive purchase out of the approximately $35 that I've spent on books the past week); Greg Gibson, It Takes a Genome; Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species; Karsten Muller, The Chess Cafe Puzzle Book; and the two volumes of Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (another text that I have in paperback).

In the Nook Reader, I have Bram Stoker, Dracula; and Rudyard Kipling, Kim. In other readers, I have such texts as Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations; Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason; Fernando Pessoa, 35 Sonnets; Sun Tzu, The Art of War; James Wilson, Collected Works, vol. 1; Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; and quite a few more.

Accounting

Are books more expensive now than they were twenty years ago?

In the last days of 1989 and the first few of 1990 I drove from San Francisco to Seattle and managed to acquire fifteen books for $125. In the waning days of summer in 2010, after acquiring a device that cost some $600+ I managed to acquire fifty books or so for less than $40 without leaving my living room.

* John and Kay were friends of one of my professor's that put myself and another graduate student up while we attended an academic conference. It was in their home that I heard for the first time Allen Ginsberg reading Howl on vinyl.

Addendum: my wife reminded me that iBooks comes pre-installed on the iPad.

Snippets

2010-07-16T07:41:00.000-07:00

Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Non-Fictions (1999) sits in a certain room of my house where I spend a lot of time waiting. By the end of 2010 I should have finished reading it through in one to five minute segments. There I read this morning the passage I read two days ago, being reminded anew of a passage in another book completed two weeks ago.

Borges' note on method:

I let them talk; I carefully avoided formulating questions that might suggest determined answers.
Borges, "A History of the Tango," 394

Lembke's critique:

In fact, there was much more wrong with his testimonies than he acknowledged to his readers. In the first place there is [Bob] Greene's [Homecoming (1989)] own leading question: "Were you spat upon?" Had he asked a more neutral question such as, "What were your homecoming experiences?" the veterans' responses would be much more valid.
Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (1998), 80

This Old House

2010-07-14T19:30:00.000-07:00

Someone built a house near the banks of the Spokane River, and at some point in the past it was abandoned.

Assumptions

2010-05-11T06:50:00.000-07:00

This message came in an email titled "New from an author you love."

Since you've bought something by Larry Schweikart in the past, we thought you might enjoy this new release: Seven Events That Made America America: And Proved That the Founding Fathers Were Right All Along, available June 1, 2010. Get it at a Borders store near you, or pre-order it now at Borders.com and enjoy it in no time!

It might be worth noting that Schweikart's writing interests me principally because it offers a study in shoddy scholarship, logical and factual errors, distortions, propaganda, ...

Howard Zinn's work offers numerous gaps, omissions, and exaggerations to serve his political ideology. But egregious factual errors and gross misrepresentations of source material are rare. I purchased Schweikart's A Patriot's History of the United States (co-written with Michael Allen) from Borders a few years ago. When I browse in my local store, I look at other works by Schweikart and then re-shelve them and buy something else (or leave without making a purchase).

A Patriot's History of the United States clearly aims to counter Zinn's A People's History of the United States, but the real model adversary for Schweikart is Ward Churchill. Schweikart even says so, "I hope Ward Churchill is on TV every night. Every time he talks we sell another hundred books" (Patriot's History, xiii).

Stereotypes

2010-03-29T06:20:00.000-07:00

Frederich Engels, co-author with Karl Marx of the core texts outlining the prospects of communism, offers one stereotype of American Indians:

Everything runs smoothly without soldiers, gendarmes, or police, without nobles, kings, governors, prefects or judges; without prisons, without trials. All quarrels and disputes are settled by the whole body of those concerned. . . . The household is run communistically by a number of families; the land is tribal property, only the small gardens being temporarily assigned to the households -- still, not a bit of our extensive and complicated machinery of administration is required. . . . There are no poor and needy. The communistic household and the gens know their responsibility toward the aged, the sick and the disabled in war. All are free and equal -- including the women.
Frederich Engels, The Origin of the Family (1884)

Chief Justice John Marshal of the United States Supreme Court, writing a half century earlier, offered a more negative assessment:

But the tribes of Indians inhabiting this country were fierce savages, whose occupation was war, and whose subsistence was drawn chiefly from the forest. To leave them in possession of their country was to leave the country a wilderness.
Chief Justice John Marshall, Johnson v. McIntosh (1823)

Both men were wrong.

Art of History

2010-03-28T20:07:00.000-07:00

Historical narrative imposes order upon chaos. The historian employs deception, omission, distraction, distortion, repetition, simplification, figurative language and images, slander, generalities, card stacking, ...

World Malaria Day

2010-03-08T08:24:00.000-08:00

I have written several posts on this blog concerning the historical impact of disease. Many diseases continue to ravage modern populations. Malaria is the most prolific killer. As average global temperatures rise, the regions hospitable to the parasites that cause malaria will grow. Much can be done to protect those in affected regions.

Read more of the following at the website for World Malaria Day.

World Malaria day--A Day to Act

25 April 2010 is a day of unified commemoration of the global effort to provide effective control of malaria around the world. This year's World Malaria Day marks a critical moment in time. The international malaria community has less than a year to meet the 2010 targets of delivering effective and affordable protection and treatment to all people at risk of malaria, as called for by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon.

World Malaria Day represents a chance for all of us to make a difference. Whether you are a government, a company, a charity or an individual, you can roll back malaria and help generate broad gains in multiple areas of health and human development.

Who Was Fritz Kraemer? And Why We Should Care

2010-01-31T17:42:00.001-08:00

Who Was Fritz Kraemer? And Why We Should Care

by Luke A. Nichter

Whether Vietnam, Iraq, or now Afghanistan, wars come and go, but the real battle is a philosophic one between two sects of conservatives. In The Forty Years War: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons from Nixon to Obama, authors Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman challenge readers to examine the role of a little-known Pentagon figure named Fritz G.A. Kraemer. Colodny and Shachtman argue that Kraemer was the leading intellectual behind what became known as the neo-conservative movement, witnessed by the fact that Kraemer influenced so many high-ranking conservative figures over the course of six decades.

Continue reading at History News Network.

Posted using ShareThis

After the Carnage

2010-01-01T17:25:00.000-08:00

A single train engine ran through a flock of sheep leaving a bloody mess. Then,

Presley saw again, in his imagination, the galloping monster, the terror of steel and steam, with its single eye, Cyclopean, red, shooting from horizon to horizon; but saw it now as the symbol of a vast power, huge, terrible, flinging the echo of its thunder over all the reaches of the valley, leaving blood and destruction in its path, the leviathan, with tentacles of steel clutching into the soil, the soulless Force, the iron-hearted Power, the monster, the Colossus, the Octopus.
Frank Norris, The Octopus (1901)

My recollections of reading this novel nearly twenty years ago are vague. McTeague (1899) is far more memorable. Never far from my consciousness is the scene early on when McTeague gets a billiard ball stuck in his enormous jaws, and the panic that shows in his eyes until the ball flies across the room after a hard pat on the back. Likewise, Trina's bedding with her gold remains an unforgettable image. Somehow, The Octopus carried less weight in that graduate seminar so long ago. Norris's grand novel offered a strong metaphor at the center, but a less memorable story than his story of a dentist. Did we really read the book?

In any case, another effort to get through Frank Norris's tale was stimulated last night when I began anew my reading of the classic biography of President Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1898, there had been twenty multi-million-dollar industrial trusts; now, there were one hundred and eighty-five. The proliferation evoked an image, in many minds, of a constrictive organism stretching out to every extremity of American civilization. Hence the title of Frank Norris's new antitrust novel: The Octopus.
Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (2001)

Holiday Cheer

2009-12-17T07:23:00.000-08:00

I've been neglecting my work on A Patriot's History of the United States and A People's History of the United States this fall due to preoccupation with other matters, but I have not entirely forgotten this blog. For my two or three loyal readers anxiously waiting for more output, I can offer only links to two tidbits of heart-warming cheer.

Bob Dylan's "Must be Santa" from YouTube (thanks to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz for sharing the link)

Rick Perlstein's "The 1960s, Refracted," published yesterday in The American Prospect.

Cursed Hops

2009-11-29T12:58:00.000-08:00

Ezra Meeker was a pioneer in developing the agriculture of Washington state, including the first hops. Today, there are no hops grown in western Washington, but the Yakima Valley grows more than 70% of US hops, and accounts for 1/4 of the world's production. See "Crop Profile for Hops in Washington" (1999).

Hops have one use: making beer. Not surprisingly, churches that were active in the movement advocating Prohibition celebrated the insect infestation that destroyed hops in western Washington in the late nineteenth century. A letter Ezra Meeker sent to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in September, 1895 reveals cultural and ideological faultlines. Meeker reprinted the letter in Ventures and Adventures of Ezra Meeker (1909).

To the Editor:
In this morning's reprt of the Methodist conference I notice under the heading "A Curse on the Hop Crop," that Preacher Hanson, of Puyallup, reported he had some good news from that great hop country--the hop crop, the main support of the people was a failure; the crop had been cursed by God. Whereupon Bishop Bowman said "Good" and from all over the room voices could be heard giving utterance to the fervent ejaculation, "Thank God."
For the edification of the reverend fathers and fervent brethren I wish to publish to them and to the world that I have beat God, for I have 500 acres of hops at Puyallup and Kent that are free from lice, the "curse of God," and that I believe it was the work of an emulsion of whale oil soap and quassie sprayed on the vines that thwarted God's purpose to "curse" me and others who exterminated the lice.
One is almost ready to ask if this is indeed the nineteenth century of enlightenment, to hear such utterances gravely made by men supposed to be expounders of that great religion of love as promulgated by the Great Teacher.
I want to recall to the memory of the Rev. Mr. Hanson that the church in which he has been preaching for a year past was built in great part by money contributed from gains of this business "Cursed by God." For myself I can inform him that, as a citizen of Puyallup, I contributed $400 to buy the ground upon which that edifice is built, every cent of which came from this same hop business "cursed by God." I would "thank God" if they would return the money and thus ease their guilty consciences.
Ezra Meeker
(Ventures and Adventures, 288-289)

Meeker points out that his hops failed nevertheless, and that he did not get back his $400.

Thinking Historically with Adult Students

2009-11-09T07:03:00.000-08:00

(This post began as a response to the first in a series concerning Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts (2001) on John Fea's blog: The Way of Improvement Leads Home, "Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts--Part One.")

I teach adult students--minimum age is 25--in six week classes that usually meet twice per week for 3 1/2 hours (there's an option of once per week and two eight-hour Saturdays). I lecture too much in these classes. The lectures give me a sore throat, and are grueling endurance tests for the students, but they also stimulate innovative uses of PowerPoint.

A new class begins tonight: Pacific Northwest History. My usual first week lectures include a 42 slide presentation ("Inventing a Hinterland") and another 60 slide presentation ("Historiography and Colonization"). Both presentations offer up some gems, but can be deadly if I fail to engage the students in thinking historically.

I tend to get some mileage from images and text from George Vancouver's journal concerning some enigmatic poles. Vancouver died failing to comprehend their purpose, and I reveal the findings of ethnography only after considerable effort on the part of the students to comprehend their purpose from Vancouver's descriptions.

In the past, I have presented an extract from the pen of Captain James Cook as a photocopy with the title "hostilities expected":

During these visits they gave us no other trouble than to guard against their thievish tricks. In the morning of the 4th we had a serious alarm. Our party on shore, who were employed in cutting wood and getting water, observed that the natives all around them were arming themselves in the best manner they could, those who were not possessed of proper weapons preparing sticks and collecting stones. On hearing this I thought it prudent to arm also, but, being determined to act upon the defensive, I ordered our workmen to retreat to the rock upon which we had placed our observatories, leaving the natives in quiet possession of the ground. Our fears were ill- grounded. These hostile preparations were not directed against us, but against a body of their own countrymen, who were coming to fight them; and our friends of the sound, on observing our apprehensions, used their best endeavors to convince us that this was the case. We could see that they had people looking out on each point of the cove, and canoes frequently passed between them and the main body assembled near the ships. At length the adverse party, in about a dozen large canoes, appeared off the south point of the cove, when they stopped, and lay drawn up in a line of battle, a negotiation having commenced. Some people in canoes, in conducting the treaty, passed between the two parties, and there was some speaking on both sides. At length the difference, whatever it was, seemed to be compromised, but the strangers were not allowed to come alongside the ships, not to have any trade or intercourse with us. (Italics added)
James Cook, Captain Cook’s Voyages Round the World (1897), 427

It is a remarkable passage that should provoke a number of useful questions. I like to highlight the potential for miscommunication and misunderstanding. The novelty of Northwest Coast social and economic conventions, not yet understood by Cook and his crew (and probably not much understood at the end of their month in Nootka Sound) become evident in the expectations of attack when their "friends" are arming themselves against "strangers". Yet, Cook almost seems to comprehend that control of international trade was a central motivation for the threat of hostilities.

Even the name Nootka stems from misunderstanding. A separate handout has this passage alongside another from the same source. I label them "Nuu-chah-nulth orature".

So, the Chief told them to go out there again and see, you know. … They started making signs and they were talking and they were saying, ‘Nu-tka-icum.’ ‘Nu-tka- icum,’ they were saying. That means, ‘You go around the harbour [to find better anchorage].’ So Captain Cook said, ‘Oh. They’re telling us the name of this place is Nootka.’ That’s how Nootka got its name.
… But the Indian name is altogether different. …
We call white people ‘Muh-mul-ni’ because … they came in boats that looked high and strange to us, and muh-mul- ni means ‘houses on the water.’ Those people seemed to be in houses floating on the water.”
Mrs. Winnifred David, Sound Heritage, vol. 7 (1978); quoted in Ruth Kirk, Tradition and Change on the Northwest Coast (1986), 201

I generally try to get the students to frame some historical questions stemming from these passages. In place of their own questions, they usually leave with some of my generalizations about mutually beneficial trade and the failures on intercultural communication.

Tonight, students are receiving as photocopies the chapter in Cook's A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (1784) from which this passage is extracted. They are also receiving the Sound Heritage article "The Contact Period as Recorded by Indian Oral Traditions," edited by Barbara S. Erfrat and W.J. Langlois that was Ruth Kirk's source for the brief extracts in her book.

When we meet for the second time, Wednesday, I will expect that they have read these twenty-five pages and written half a dozen questions that require research to answer.

My plan tonight is to start with the questions:

1. What is history?
2. Why does history merit our attention?
3. What are the boundaries of the Pacific Northwest?

All of these questions are addressed to an extent in my PowerPoint presentations, which we may or may not get to.

Getting it Right

2009-09-30T22:36:00.001-07:00

Still working on an article that no one will ever read for an encyclopedia that no one will ever buy, I just came across a few marvelous articles on the Blackfeet Nation's newly designed website. Last week, the site had a modest welcome page and no links. Today, the site seems almost complete.

The writing about Blackfeet history is fresh, fervent, and perhaps well-described as Blackfeet Nationalist. Under "Our History," the site offers an article, "We Come From Right Here." I had to read this as quickly as possible because I've long known that the Piegan Blackfeet insist they have been in Montana 10,000 years, while most books state they were migrating southwest fresh from the Canadian Prairies about the time they fell into a fight with Lewis and Clark on the explorers' return from Oregon in 1806. Some of the history books put the Blackfeet in Montana a century or two before that.

But scholars write books and give lectures and huff and puff about times in which they never lived, worlds into which they never stepped foot, and languages they can never hear spoken by the ancients they study. As an example of how little is really known about Indians in the pre-Columbian period, experts can’t even agree if the population of the Americas was 8 million or 112 million. If they know so little that they can’t get within an order of magnitude of each other, why bother guessing about anything else?
"We Come From Right Here"

The link may change, and the text, too. The site is still under construction. Readers of this blog may know what I think of these population figures. If not, click the "depopulation" link below and read away.

Errors of Fact

2009-09-26T08:17:00.000-07:00

I'm not blogging much of late because I'm struggling to finish an overdue encyclopedia article that compresses all of Montana Indian history into sixty or so double-spaced typewritten pages. Along the way, I'm reading and rereading every book in my library that bears on the subject, probing the depths of the web, and working JSTOR for all it's worth.

The Error

This morning's coffee goes down with a few pages of light reading in The Lance and the Shield: the Life and Times of Sitting Bull (1993) by Robert M. Utley. It seems fair to say that no one knows more about the military history of the nineteenth century Western frontier than Utley. Indeed, the Western History Association's award for the best book each year concerned with the military history of the frontier is called the Robert M. Utley Book Award.

Imagine my dismay, then, when I read the following sentence:

In the summer of 1866 the army built three posts along the Bozeman Trail: Forts Reno, Phil Kearny, and C.F. Smith.
Utley, The Lance and the Shield, 71

In 1865, the U.S. Army sent General Patrick Edward Connor’s Powder River Expedition into northeast Wyoming and southeast Montana with hopes of pacifying the Indians who resented travel through their hunting lands. The expedition established Fort Connor in August 1865 (renamed Fort Reno in November 1865) on the upper Powder River in Wyoming, and then left the region.

Connor split his forces into an ambitious three-pronged assault to converge on the Powder River. His orders to his subordinates stated, “You will not receive overtures of peace or submission from Indians but will attack and kill every male Indian over twelve years of age.”* General John Pope, upon learning of these orders, insisted that steps to countermand them be put immediately into action. The Army did not need more bad press of the sort generated in the wake of the brutal Sand Creek Massacre in southeast Colorado. Nevertheless, the expedition continued with Connor’s orders intact.

No friendly Indians were encountered during the campaign, and there were few significant engagements with hostiles. One band of Arapahos was attacked on the Tongue River, losing their winter food stores, clothing, and most of their horses. Several bands of Lakota—Hunkpapas, Blackfeet, Miniconjou, and Sans Arc—harassed Connor’s two eastern columns marching together up the Powder River. The soldiers were well armed and two thousand strong, but were on the verge of starvation, and suffering from the drought. A summer storm brought sudden cold and wet conditions, killing most of the Army’s mules. Further upriver, Oglala led by Red Cloud and Cheyenne led by Little Wolf continued the attacks.

The Army’s efforts seemed to embolden, rather than pacify the Sioux (mostly Lakota), Cheyenne, and Arapaho that had been wresting the area from the Crow, and attacking immigrants. Fort Reno became the first of three forts along the Bozeman Trail that aggravated the Lakota and Cheyenne.

The following summer, troops under the command of Col. Henry B. Carrington built Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming and Fort C.F. Smith on the Bighorn River in Montana.

If Utley can make such an error, anyone can. Of course, some writers make more errors than others. This sentence stands out in Utley's work because it is rare.

*H. D. Hampton, “The Powder River Expedition 1865,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 14 (Autumn 1964): 8-9.

The Joker

2009-09-14T20:21:00.000-07:00

I felt a sense of revulsion when I saw in the newspaper the image of Batman's Joker now covering Obama's face. My immediate sense was that this image carried a threat of violence against the President himself, and this sense was mixed up with the recognition of the old racist tradition of black-face from Vaudeville.

Threatening the President with harm? Racism?

I'm not certain.

Because of certain work obligations, I'm deferring the work I planned to do on President Bush the Elder's education program and his speech to school children in 1991. Meanwhile, I've been arguing on Facebook with a couple of aspiring members of Congress that were part of the Tea Party protest this past weekend, arguing about the size of the event, which looks from the films to be less than 200,000 if not close to the ABC estimate of 60,000 to 70,000. Certainly the crowd was no where near the two million they claim.

This evening they started attacking the Obama Administration for playing the so-called "race card." My quest for context led me to a stunning piece in the Boise Weekly, "Tea Party Inspired by Racial Fears" by Nathaniel Hoffman. Hoffman's summary of the motives of the crowd, as he sees it, may not be one hundred percent accurate, but it's an interesting perspective:

A few common themes unite the Tea Partiers, as far as I can tell: some evolving form of Christian patriotism, an aversion to paying taxes, fear of police with an equal and contradictory adoration of the law and the military, and a personal reading of the Constitution and Founding Fathers that borders on idolatry.
Hoffman, "Racial Fears"

Most of the rest of the article highlights ways that racism might at least appear to be an underlying issue. I'm not certain that Hoffman is correct, but it's food for thought.

Benefits of History

2009-09-07T21:24:00.000-07:00

You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free.
Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama Back to School Event, 2009

How does history teach critical thinking skills?

Obama, Bush, School Speeches

2009-09-07T16:39:00.000-07:00

On 8 September 2009, President Barack Obama will address the nation's school children. Notification of this upcoming speech set off a storm of controversy; I highlighted some of the extreme rhetoric present in one online discussion site in "Say What? Obama and the Children." A more productive consequence of the firestorm was that it drove me, a historian, to look at another Presidential speech: President George Bush's 1991 address to students at Alice Deal Junior High (now called Alice Deal Middle School).

President Obama's speech is available on the White House website.

On 1 October 1991, President Bush addressed students in Cynthia Mostoller's classroom at Alice Deal Junior High in Washington DC. The message was broadcast live over CNN, PBS, the NBC radio network, and the now defunct Mutual Broadcasting System.

House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt criticized the speech, according to the Washington Post, "the Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students." The cost was $26,750. The Scripps Howard News Service called it the "Bush teach-in" and highlighted the political significance.

Bush's appearance was part of a White House effort to discredit Democratic charges that he has no domestic agenda by promoting the education goals he laid out for the nation six months ago.
"Bush Tells Children Stupidity is Not Cool," Scripps Howard News Service (2 October 1991)

The Baltimore Sun compared Bush's effort to the style of President Theodore Roosevelt, "the effect was part bully pulpit, part campaign ad" (quoted in The Volokh Conspiracy).

I'm in the process of writing something focused on the context of Bush's speech. Look for "Revolutionize American Education" later this week.

For clearheaded, rational analysis of why Obama's speech, as well as it's predecessors by President Reagan and President Bush should all be resisted, read Popehat's "Why I Oppose President Obama Speaking to the Nation's Schoolchildren."

Update, 8 September 2009

The Billings Gazette (Montana) has a video of local students' reactions.

Rush Limbaugh

2009-09-06T14:02:00.000-07:00

When I started following Rush Limbaugh, I was in One Way Books, a Christian bookstore, and the manager, a friend asked me to listen to a radio show, which he then turned on. As I recall it was one of those call-in shows that were popular in the 1980s. Folks would call in with comments, and the host would call them names (like stupid) and start attacking their views as uninformed or ignorant. During these verbal assaults, the mere mention of CNN, NBC, or the New York Times as anything other than leftist propaganda would make the caller's comments something that could be attacked because of its source.

I recall that his show was broadcast from Sacramento, but it may have been shortly after he moved to New York in 1988 that I first heard him.

Revolutionize American Education

2009-09-06T05:27:00.000-07:00

On 1 October 1991, President George Bush addressed a classroom of students at Alice Deal Junior High in Washington DC (now called Alice Deal Middle School). He spoke in Cynthia Mostoller's classroom, but the message was broadcast live over CNN, PBS, the NBC radio network, and the now defunct Mutual Broadcasting System.

House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt criticized the speech, according to the Washington Post, "the Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students." The cost was $26,750. The Scripps Howard News Service called it the "Bush teach-in" and highlighted the political significance.

Bush's appearance was part of a White House effort to discredit Democratic charges that he has no domestic agenda by promoting the education goals he laid out for the nation six months ago.
"Bush Tells Children Stupidity is Not Cool," Scripps Howard News Service (2 October 1991)

The Baltimore Sun compared Bush's effort to the style of President Theodore Roosevelt, "the effect was part bully pulpit, part campaign ad" (quoted in The Volokh Conspiracy).

Six months earlier, in an address to the nation, President Bush had explained that funding for education has failed to improve our nation's schools.

Let's stop trying to measure progress in terms of money spent. We spend 33 percent more per pupil in 1991 than we did in 1981 -- 33 percent more in real, constant dollars. And I don't think there's a person anywhere, anywhere in the country, who would say that we've seen a 33-percent improvement in our schools' performance.
Bush, "Address to the Nation on the National Education Strategy," 18 April 1991

He offered an alternative to funding: revolution.

Dollar bills don't educate students. Education depends on committed communities, determined to be places where learning will flourish; committed teachers, free from the noneducational burdens; committed parents, determined to support excellence; committed students, excited about school and learning. To those who want to see real improvement in American education, I say: There will be no renaissance without revolution.
Bush, "Address to the Nation on the National Education Strategy," 18 April 1991

These addresses to the nation, and then to the nation's youth stemmed from warranted optimism concerning George Bush's hope to leave a legacy as the "Education President". In September of his first year in office, he convened an Education Summit with all fifty governors to set national education goals.

By the year 2000, every child must start school ready to learn.
The United States must increase the high school graduation rate to no less than 90 percent.
And we are going to make sure our schools' diplomas mean something. In critical subjects -- at the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades -- we must assess our students' performance.
By the year 2000, U.S. students must be first in the world in math and science achievement.
Every American adult must be a skilled, literate worker and citizen.
Every school must offer the kind of disciplined environment that makes it possible for our kids to learn. And every school in America must be drug-free.
http://www.nationalhistoryday.org/About.htm

Say What? Obama and the Children

2009-09-04T10:07:00.000-07:00

President Obama wants to address the nation. He wants his address broadcast in school classrooms.

The Associated Press: "Obama speech to students draws conservative ire"

This is communism.

Hell-NO! Sorry, but I just don't agree with you Mr. President. Socialist programs are what failure is made of, and you sir, are setting this country up for failure. I do not want you influencing my child with your "The Government will solve all your problems" attitude. I would rather have my child realize that it takes hard work and effort to achieve success in this country, and he won't learn that from any politician. I do not want him to rely on government handouts--those only lead to more dependency on other failed government programs.
Greg

This is Nazism.

Why not, Hitler did it
Jack

This violates the authority of parents.

His speech is NOT his decision to make. It is the parents choice. I already informed the school that my daughter is NOT to hear his garbage. I told her there will be problems if they show it. The teacher said she wasn't sure if she would show it or not. When I told her don't want her to show it she said i just reinforced her idea NOT to show it as it is up to the parents NOT the teachers.
Mike

More quotes from Facebook:

Schools are run by the state not the federal government. Obama needs to stick with where his jurisdiction lies. I will not let my children see this video. We are not a communist society...the president is not responsible for telling children what to learn in school, that is a parent's job.
Emily

I am not a NAZI like obamanation...I believe in FREEDOM and CHOICE...not HIS idea of what I need!!!
Paul

Regardless of potential socialism, we as parents should have a right to decide whtat our children see! I certainly do not want my child wondering "what the president wants from me". Most are right, the longer Obama is in office, the more I am reminded of Hitler and Stalin. May the Lord help us!
Abagail

No way I want this guy pushing his socialist agenda in my school. You people are blind if you don't think he will. This man should ashamed of showing his face to the young people who soon will be paying for his screw up. All this guy is looking for is votes for reelection.
Stu

This is POLITICALLY motivated and that is why people are pissed! It is not the President trying to do anything for kid's. It's Political! It couldn't be at a worse time and the whole "MANDATORY" thing is ridiculous. Nobody is racist! Everybody needs to stop throwing the RACE CARD every chance they get. The guy is half white so shut up!!!!!!
Dave

Keep Gov. out of almost everything except Military and infrastructure.Keep children away from the Government so they will not be brain washed intothinking the Gov. is the answer to lifes problems.The Gov. taxes business out of existence and then wonders where all the jobs went.How many people work in a factory anymore,not many I bet,people used to but now we don't make anything because all of our stuff is made in China or the like country and we buy the cheap crap and think we are saving money.Does anyone remember when Walmart was buy America?Now it has changed to Chinamart.
Ronnie

Besides, why interrupt education just to say "stay in school, education is important, etc"?? The kids are in school!! Why make an excuse to tell them the obvious? Sorry, but that seems suspicious to me. I think he has other motives.
Gabby

Why in the world would I let anyone give a speech to my children without my consent. I don't even let them watch Obama at home why would I allow it at school. David, not allowing my children to be given a speech to by him is not dumb electing a President that cares nothing for its people is dumb. And John, do you not know what Hitler did to the people of the world. Hmm what do you call driving our economy into the ground and taking from the common man trying to make a honest living to give to the lazy man waiting for a hand out. I wouldn't say its Hitler like but its not much better. Wrong is Wrong no matter how you spin it. I say we ALL PRAY thats what our schools need GOD.
Heather

The adults in this Country are screwed up enough right now, so now he wants to screw up my kids??? Hell no... They'll be absent that day at the beach...
Rob

I predict an upsurge in homeschooling.
Ted

Displaying 10 of 14090 posts.

Does that render the conservative response clear enough?. The comments are posted faster than I can read them. I read a page, advance to the next page (older), and I'm looking at one that was created after the one I just read because page one is now page four.

These comments are posted in response to a Facebook poll:

Should President Obama be allowed to do a nationwide address to school children without parental consent?

As of 10:17 am Pacific Time

Yes 41,046 (33.1%)
No 78,128 (63.0%)
I don't care 4,885 (3.9%)

Certainly, President Obama's plan to speak to school children is unprecedented. When President George Bush spoke, it was only to millions.

What is History?

2009-09-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

Notes from reading the first chapter of Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft (1953)

"How ... can one make of phenomena, having no other common character than that of being not contemporary with us, the matter of rational knowledge?" (Bloch, 22)

The word history applies to any study of change through time (Bloch, 23)

"In any study, seeking the origins of a human activity, there lurks the same danger of confusing ancestry with explanation." (Bloch, 27)

"...to the great despair of historians, men fail to change their vocabulary every time they change their customs." (Bloch, 28)

"...a historical phenomenon can never be understood apart from its moment in time." (Bloch, 29)

"Some, who consider that the most recent events are unsuitable for all really objective research just because they are recent, wish only to spare Clio's chastity from the profanation of present controversy....In truth, whoever lacks the strength, while seated at his desk, to rid his mind of the virus of the present may readily permit its poison to infiltrate even a commentary on the Iliad or the Ramayana." (Bloch, 31-32)

"It is therefore advisable to define the indisputable peculiarities of historical observation in terms which are both less ambiguous and more comprehensive."
"Its primary characteristic is the fact that knowledge of all human activities in the past, as well as of the greater part of those in the present, is, as Francois Simiand aptly phrased it, a knowledge of their tracks. Whether it is the bones immured in the Syrian fortifications, a word whose form or use reveals a custom, a narrative written by the witness of some scene, ancient or modern, what do we really mean by document, if it is not a 'track,' as it were--the mark, perceptible to the senses, which some phenomenon, in itself inaccessible, has left behind?" (Bloch, 45-46)

"...we have no other device for returning through time except that which operates in our minds with the materials provided by past generations." (Bloch, 47)

The past cannot change. "But the knowledge of the past is something progressive which is constantly transforming and perfecting itself." (Bloch, 48)

Facebook 101

2009-08-29T11:35:00.000-07:00

In the past week, I have built a chain of big box stores and a 5-star resort and casino. I also have stolen over a billion dollars from business rivals and killed more than one hundred. I have become a successful developer with a penchant for violence.

They call it social networking.

For the past week, on Facebook, I have spent a few five-minute blocks of idleness playing Mafia Wars.

Worth Another Look

2009-08-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

[Roland Barthes'] researches into the structure of narrative have granted him a conviction (or a reprieve), a conviction that all telling modified what is being told, so that what the linguists call the message is a parameter of its performance. Indeed, his conviction of reading is that what is told is always the telling. And this he does not arraign, he celebrates.
Richard Howard, "A Note on S/Z," xi

Patriots and Peoples is not a news blog, but an archive of articles concerning history (and occasionally current events). I offer this author's guide to those posts that deserve to live beyond the day they were written. Read a few. Make some comments. Join a conversation.

"November 29: This Day in History"
Massacres and video games. No, this post addresses neither the addictive Facebook game, MafiaWars, nor Cabela's "Big Game Hunter" for the Wii. November 29 is remembered as the day the first commercial video game was announced, one of the most horrific massacres of Indians, and a massacre of settlers by Indians that helped a territory gain statehood.

"Washington, Adams, Jesus"
The United States is a Christian nation! That's what a lot of people say. One of the proof texts is the exemplary life and Calvinist heritage of our second President, John Adams. This post initiates my entry into this debate.

"Superior European Technology"
Everyone knows that Europeans arrived in the Americas with technology that astounded the natives, except that it's a lie, or, at best, barely true in PolitiFact's sense of the term. The American indigenes were astounded at the noise and destructive power, and they sought a few firearms of their own. But guns were far from superior to bows and arrows--each had their merits.

"President Polk and the National Honor"
Polk expanded the geographical size of the United States more than any predecessor save Jefferson. This post is a study of his political rhetoric that generates curiosity: what other President might I have been thinking about while exploring Polk's sense of honor? In "Pioneers, Laborers, Slaves," I offer a historical perspective as grounds for critique of some of the rhetoric in President Obama's inaugural address. "Booker T Washington's White House Dinner" elucidates the controversy that Senator John McCain chose to highlight in honor of Barack Obama's historic achievement during his concession speech at the end of the election of 2008.

"Depopulation: Ubelaker's Low Estimate"
No one knows how many people lived in the Americas in 1500, nor for centuries after. Thus, the efforts to estimate the aboriginal population of the Americas is fraught with controversy. This post offers a careful reading of the lowest credible estimate, and how the authors of A Patriot's History of the United States manipulate the data to minimize the effects of disease. This post is one example of reading a text through careful scrutiny of footnotes.

"America was not a disease-free paradise"
The title of this post comes from a sentence in "Eden", a chapter in Shepherd Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (1999). The sentence is quoted in Schweikart and Allen, A Patriot's History of the United States (2004) as adornment. Krech's research does not inform the narrative offered by these ideologically historians. They cite his work to make it look as though they have explored the best work on the topic of disease, but they invest the meaning of his words with their own irresponsible distortions.

"Origins of Malaria"
At the beginning of "civilization," or the neolithic revolution in Africa, malaria began to infect human populations. From that moment on, the most civilized were the most ill at least until twentieth century sanitation and medicine.

"Depopulation and Demography: A Patriot's History Bibliography"
Speaking of reading footnotes: this post is a gateway other posts. It contains an annotated bibliography of the sources listed in A Patriot's History concerned with pre-Columbian demography. When I discuss a specific source in greater detail, there is a link.

"The Burning of the Boats"
I learned in my first college history class how Hernan Cortés burned his ships to assure success in the effort to conquer Mexico. It's an old story from Spain, as Tariq, the Muslim conqueror of Spain in the eight century did the same on the point of land that now bears his name--Gibraltar (Tariq's rock). In the case of Cortés, this legend is false.

"Reflective Thinking, Teaching and Learning"
While thinking of undergraduate education, take a look at these musings concerning pedagogy of my professors as teachers, and of my teaching as a professor. Is that chiasmus self-critique? Read and judge.

This list will grow, and possibly change, as I reread all that I have written here. I'm open to suggestions.

Fresh Roasted Martian Coffee

2009-08-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

I rarely agree with my Representative in Congress. We do not share the same political commitments, nor the same priorities. Even so, she is among my "friends" on Facebook. As a consequence, I saw the update when she spoke at the ribbon cutting for the opening of the North Spokane Corridor, the first drivable leg of the North-South Freeway first proposed in 1946. She (or a staffer) posted a photo on TwitPic, and her Facebook page offered a link.

There are plenty of reasons to question new freeway construction, such as the role it plays in the development of sprawl. I tend to think the construction is too little, too late as far as relieving congestion, but the project offers the opportunity to raise some other questions of my Congresswoman. So, I asked a question of her through this social networking site, although I'm skeptical that she will respond.

Cathy, what are you doing to make certain the project gets completed while there is still petroleum on the planet, and to support the development of vehicles that run on other fuels so the new freeway connecting I-90 to Wandermere will not have been an egregious waste of taxpayer money?

In the ensuing conversation with other "friends" of Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, others had questions too.

Garlan Cutler: I was not there but I hope you reminded the folks that, President Obama's mandated health care reform, He will make it work. . Seniors Citizens at 68 years of age will be mandated to CHECK OUT OF MEDICARE to reduce the growth in cost of END-OF-LIFE HEALTH CARE SPENDING. If you are still around at age 70 you will be mandated to CHECK OUT OF THE SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM, that is all the longer that he is guaranteeing you to live.

There should be no doubt that Representative McMorris Rodgers opposes H.R. 3200, as well as nearly everything else President Obama favors. Her constituents, by and large, believe that Obama's central goal is to render the United States of America a socialist state, particularly with respect to health care. She supports these constituents well.

Garlan Cutler is preaching to the choir, as they say. I did not argue with this nonsense. But others took up the mantle. One "friend" of Representative Rodgers told Cutler that he was "sadly misinformed." Another stated, "[s]ome liar has scared you to death"; medicare is safe. Cutler read these efforts to console, and responded with a clear summary of history.

Garlan Cutler: Just look that the history of the world governments and read between the lines and dont be fooled

There's not much to respond to. there. History, as one legal scholar put it so well, "is a protean activist useful for legitimating a predetermined result." If history itself can prove anything, how will anyone be able to pin down what is read "between the lines"?

In the responses to Representative Rodgers' "status," the health care debate was temporarily suspended to allot space for a question directed at yours truly.

Mike Hen: James, do you really think that we will run out of oil? Are you familiar with the new reserves found in Brasil? Are you familiar with the seeps in California or the Gulf of California? Do you really think the project will take a couple of hundred years?

I replied, but without much specificity as the comments went into a second day. My creed with respect to the oil reserves is this: whether they will run out is not a question; there is a question of when. Will I live to see their exhaustion? Petroleum, I had learned in my youth, derives from dead organic matter--brontosaurus and tyrannosaurus rex and their social network--compressed for millions of years. Oil is mined from the earth; it is not renewable.

I added my own lesson from history, with a bit of future projection thrown in, and a smiley.

The world that oil wrought was the twentieth century. That the twenty-first will differ in the main is crystal clear--just look into the ball ;-).

Mike Hen continued with questions and more links; my belief in dinosaur origins was put to the test.

Mike Hen: James, perhaps you'd like to comment on this. There are a number of theories out there that might lead to a reduced concern for the future. One of the considerations is that the atmosphere of Titan is chock full of the organics that are being talked about here. Nature in the raw as it were.

First, I attacked the source, calling WorldNet Daily less than credible, but acknowledged that the story, if true, could lead to revisions of my theory. Then added some practical concerns: I'm not ready to pay for spaceships through a tax on my Chevron Card.

Mike, thanks for the links, although it would be nice to see a source more credible than WorldNet Daily for the possibilities that science might need to significantly revise our understanding of how crude oil is formed. As for tapping reserves in outer space, the consequences for prices at the gas pump seem likely to be unpopular.

Still, it's something to think about.

Then, I did some web surfing, and came up with a science site that corroborated the WND story, albeit with the skepticism endemic to scientists. The LiveScience article also enriched my volcabulary with some new terms that I immediately put to use.

[I]t is a science source rather than an opinion oriented "news" source. According to LiveScience, abiogenic petroleum likely requires thousands of years, just as biogenic petroleum.

Hen thanked me--the civility of our discourse might serve as a model for some of those in Congress--and he continued the interrogation.

Mike Hen: James, an interesting article. The main thing that I came away from it with is 'we don't know how it's done or how long it takes.' It seems the scenario is not quite as bleak as you originally painted it.

BTW, do you have any energy sources that can handle the current requirement without disrupting today's society? If not then I'll have to stick with the current source and I believe that others will reconsider their earlier stand on the green revolution.

BTW 2, I looked at the author not the media presenter, in the WND story. I have no affinity for WND and considered the story in terms of the author's quals.

BTW 3, [;)] Boy do I wish we could drill on Titan, and maybe vacation on Mars.
Enough of my flights of fantasy! Have a good one.

I imagine sitting in a Starbucks on Mars, continuing this conversation with another as unpersuaded by my arguments as I am of his.

Mike, we seem to view the world, especially the past and future, from substantially different perspectives. I do not see the complete depletion of petroleum as "bleak," nor societal change as disruptive. Society has never been static. To say that the twentieth century was petroleum centered and that the twenty-first likely will not have been so when we are dead and it is history is not to paint a bleak picture of the future, but to imagine possibilities--I'll warrant that drilling on Titan is also imagining possibilities, as is sipping fresh roasted Martian coffee!*

My original question to Representative Rodgers might be rephrased thus: Are you pursuing legislation that is not rooted in static notions of twentieth century realities as normative for our future? I hope not, although I fear that such is precisely the case.

That's where I left it this morning, except that I pasted the whole conversation into this space with a brief headnote.

My title deserves more. The original post is embarrassing.

This afternoon, I rewrote the blog post. Being the archivist that I am, I preserved the original in a post with a date nearly two years ago. Blogger's editing quirks permit a few liberties that I'm beginning to explore. Follow the hyperlink to my archive of the original post if you wish to make fun of my copy and paste laziness.

Addenda 25 August 2009

Last night, Mike Hen added a final note to our conversation. It's clear that we have some agreement regarding our disagreement, and some shared values and perspectives, despite seemingly adverse political priorities.

James, I'll accept your analysis on our viewpoints as accurate, although I'm not against a change in energy sources in the slightest. What I am against is change that would damage our society in any way.

The lure of the uncertain future is best answered on an individual basis with little change, in society, being felt until it has been vetted by forerunners.

Again I ask, what can you put in my tank tomorrow so that I can get to work. Twenty years in the future is well past the point that I'm willing to wait in order to keep from losing my present job.

I'll also agree that the only thing that is constant is change, the only thing we're quibbling about is the speed.

Thanks Mike. I enjoyed the exchange.

*The link to this coffee company was added after I Googled "Martian coffee" and found my blog on page two. This coffee company was next in their list. Their correction to some misconceptions concerning The War of the Worlds deserves a visit.

Paleontology of Delusion

2009-08-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."
Magnolia (1999)

When I watched Magnolia, I thought the narrator was referring to a book by William Faulkner, and that perhaps the narrator or writer had the quote incorrect.

I watched Magnolia in 2001 or thereabouts after it came out on video, shortly after making reading Faulkner a priority. I had read the usual "Barn Burning" and "A Rose for Emily" in high school or college. In graduate school, one professor assigned Sanctuary (1931), and an assigned text in a literary criticism class demanded familiarity with Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Moreover, Calvin Martin's The American Indian and the Problem of History (1987) drove me into "The Bear," and from there into Go Down, Moses (1942). For the most part, however, I remained egregiously ignorant of Faulkner. I passed up a seminar called Southern Literature because I was appalled that two-thirds of the texts were by one author.

In 2000 I selected Go Down, Moses as one of the texts I would teach in my introductory literature class (yep, I'm nuts), and decided it was time to begin washing away my ignorance of twentieth-century America's greatest writer.

Despite my ignorance, I have been familiar for many years with the sentiment that the past has its own ideas about when we can leave it behind, and that this idea could be attributed as a line from Faulkner. Requiem for Nun (1951) remains on my "to read" list, rather than among the dozen or so texts that I've perused. Even so, for many years I have quoted, and misquoted, and have heard others quote and misquote the line: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

Google knows everything

A few days ago, on my Facebook page, I placed the line from Magnolia next to Faulkner's, which had been in the "about me" box for awhile. Last night, I posted the movie line as "my status". This morning I discovered how my status update failed as communication when a friend mistook it as a statement of my psychological journey, rather than what I intended: a fishing expedition to locate Paul Thomas Anderson's source. Anderson wrote and directed Magnolia.

Searching for the quote, "We may be through with the past," via Google produces pages and pages of references to Magnolia. Often I stop there. If the fish won't rise to the surface, I can do something else. Indeed I stopped fishing several times, before returning anew. After wading through perhaps five pages, I found The Internet Movie Database's Magnolia trivia. The note references The Natural History of Nonsense (1946) by Bergan Evans as the source of the line. Evans' book also is the source for the idea that it could rain frogs.

My belief that it was an instance of Faulkner misquoted proved incorrect. The Natural History of Nonsense precedes Requiem for a Nun. Perhaps Evans' book is Faulkner's source for Gavin Stevens' memorable line?

The first chapter, "Adam's Navel," begins:

We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us. Ideas of the Stone Age exist side by side with the latest scientific thought. Only a fraction of mankind has emerged from the Dark Ages, and in the most lucid brains, as Logan Pearsall Smith has said, we come upon "nests of woolly caterpillars." Seemingly sane men entrust their wealth to stargazers and their health to witch doctors.
Evans, The Natural History of Nonsense, 5

Before this chapter begins, the text offers several quotable epigrams in the front-matter. The Preface, for instance:

This book is a contribution to the natural history of nonsense. It is a study in the paleontology of delusion. It is an antibody for all who are allergic to Stardust. It is a manual of chiropody for feet of clay.
Evans, The Natural History of Nonsense, vii

History is the Memory of States

2009-08-21T00:26:00.000-07:00

In the opening chapter of A People's History of the United States (1980), Howard Zinn explains his bias. His history examines case studies of the downtrodden—African Americans, laborers, women, anti-war activists—rather than constructing a narrative that covers the breadth of the main events in American history. In a critical paragraph, he marks clearly his disagreement with Henry Kissinger.

"History is the memory of states," wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen's policies. From his standpoint, the "peace" that Europe had before the French Revolution was "restored" by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation—a world not restored but disintegrated.
Zinn, A People's History, 9-10

Does Zinn accurately represent the views of those they cite? Do he quote accurately? Out of context? Here are the two paragraphs in which the sentence appears.

A physical law is an explanation and not a description, and history teaches by analogy, not identity. This means that the lessons of history are never automatic, that they can be apprehended only by a standard which admits the significance of a range of experience, that the answers we obtain will never be better than the questions we pose. No profound conclusions were drawn in the natural sciences before the significance of sensory experience was admitted by what was essentially a moral act. No significant conclusions are possible in the study of foreign affairs—the study of states acting as units—without an awareness of the historical context. For societies exist in time more than in space. At any given moment a state is but a collection of individuals, as positivist scholars have never wearied of pointing out. But it achieves identity through the consciousness of a common history. This is the only "experience" nations have, their only possibility of learning from themselves. History is the memory of states.

To be sure, states tend to be forgetful. It is not often that nations learn from the past, even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it. For the lessons of historical experience, as of personal experience, are contingent. They teach the consequences of certain actions, but they cannot force a recognition of comparable situations. An individual may have experienced that a hot stove burns but, when confronted with a metallic object of a certain size, he must decide from case to case whether it is in fact a stove before his knowledge will prove useful. A people may be aware of the probable consequences of a revolutionary situation. But its knowledge will be empty if it cannot recognize a revolutionary situation. There is this difference between physical and historical knowledge, however: each generation is permitted only one effort of abstraction; it can attempt only one interpretation and a single experiment, for it is its own subject. This is the challenge of history and its tragedy; it is the shape "destiny" assumes on the earth. And its solution, even its recognition, is perhaps the most difficult task of statesmanship.
Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored: Europe after Napoleon: The Politics of Conservatism in a Revolutionary Age (1964 [1957]), 331-332 [emphasis added]

From this brief passage, it seems that Kissinger's statement has to do with the nature of diplomatic history, and does not exclude the sort of cultural history Zinn favors. It may be true that Kissinger's text does not address the experiences of the suffering masses, but what does such an orientation do to the subfield of diplomatic history? Kissinger's book, it must be remembered, started as a doctoral dissertation at Harvard. His professors were not expecting a dissertation on social history.

Washington, Adams, Jesus

2009-08-20T08:19:00.001-07:00

Jesus is benevolence personified, an example for all men.
John Adams

How significant was Christianity to the American Revolution? To the Constitutional Convention, and to the Constitution? How significant were Christianity and Biblical precepts to the practice of government by members of the revolutionary generation?

These questions concerning the influence of Jesus Christ in America derive from broader questions.

What principles of philosophy were central to the ideas of government embraced by the men that wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, and that governed the the incipient nation that emerged? Who influenced the Founders, as we have come to call this group of men? How did they derive our system of government from their influences?

Entire careers are built on these historical questions. Historians pursue answers; politicians embrace or denounce their interpretations; pundits proclaim their conclusions.

A Patriot's History of the United States (2004) by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen offers:

Many of his biographers trumpeted Washington's faith, and a famous painting captures the colonial general praying in a snowy wood, but if Washington had any personal belief in Jesus Christ, he kept it well hidden. Like Franklin, Washington tended toward Deism, a general belief in a detached and impersonal God who plays no role in human affairs.
Schweikart and Allen, 130

Washington's successor as President brought a different faith into the Executive office (our standard metonymy, the White House, becomes available for the first time in the administration of Thomas Jefferson).

A brilliant attorney, patriot organizer, and Revolutionary diplomat, Adams exuded all the doctrinal religion missing in Washington, to the point of being pious to a fault. ... Adams brought a sense of the sacred to government that Washington lacked, placing before the nation an unwavering moral compass that refused compromise.
Schweikart and Allen, 131

There is a tendency to use labels among some who inquire into the faith of the men that wrote our founding documents and that served in the government thus established. John Adams was a Christian, and a Calvinist at that. Benjamin Franklin was a Deist. Thomas Jefferson was a Theist, or perhaps an Atheist, according to Abigail Adams and others that wish to embrace, condemn, or mourn his philosophy. These labels become points of contention; questioning their accuracy foments debate that drives scholars back into the archive, their place of refuge.

These labels illuminate and obfuscate. They might shed light on the beliefs of a man or woman. Although John Adams may have wavered in his faith during his later years, his wife Abigail remained devout. There is no question that James Madison considered a career in the ministry. That his family was Episcopal,* but sent him to a Presbyterian college is easily established. The influence of John Calvin's idea of total depravity upon Madison's concepts of government is less clear and open to debate.

John Adams was the child of New England Puritanism. He was "pious to a fault," Schweikart and Allen explain. His devout faith or his abrasive personality isolated him among his peers at the Second Continental Congress. The Declaration of Independence was his idea, but it would have been rejected if he proposed it. Some delegates voted against whatever Adams put forth. In order to circumvent this animosity, Adams worked behind the scenes, prompting other men to put forth his ideas as if they were their own.

Some historians consider John Adams the worst President in U.S. history, surpassed in infamy only by George W. Bush (stay with me conservative readers, please--assessments of Bush are not yet history). Schweikart and Allen, although they do not shrink from assessing his failures, credit him with "establishing the presidency as a moral, as well as a political, position" (131). Richard Nixon was a crook; Jimmy Carter was a morally grounded incompetent; George W. Bush was born again; William Jefferson Clinton was a morally bankrupt philanderer. All these assertions, whether accurate or not, stand on the foundation of John Adams' moral leadership, upon the rock of his faith.

Researching Patriots

When I read A Patriots History of the United States, or most any other book for that matter, I tease the text with a set of mundane questions concerning scholarship.

How accurate are the contentions? What supporting evidence is presented? Do they accurately represent the views of those they cite? Do they quote accurately? Out of context? Who agrees with them? Who disagrees? How does this contention compare to assertions of other historians? Where does their ideology illuminate their subject? Where does it obscure?

What did John Adams have to say for himself? What did he say about his religious faith, about God, about Jesus?

The Online Library of Liberty has digitized and rendered searchable the ten volume The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author (1856), edited by Charles Francis Adams. This text seems a good enough place to begin, so I entered God into the search box only to learn that search terms must have at least four letters. Jesus was more productive. The name of Jesus appears twenty-eight times in these ten volumes.

The scattered references to Jesus across Adams' writing vary in their focus, but appear in the author's autobiography, as well as his letters. There is one instance in a critically important text for considering his philosophy of government in the years leading up to the Revolution: "A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law" (1865). Of those that settled America, and their resistance to residual feudalism, Adams offered:

They knew that government was a plain, simple, intelligible thing, founded in nature and reason, and quite comprehensible by common sense. They detested all the base services and servile dependencies of the feudal system. They knew that no such unworthy dependencies took place in the ancient seats of liberty, the republics of Greece and Rome; and they thought all such slavish subordinations were equally inconsistent with the constitution of human nature and that religious liberty with which Jesus had made them free.
The Works of John Adams, vol 3, 454

This passage does not speak to Adams' personal faith, but it demonstrates part of his understanding of the faith of his forebears.

We learn more of a personal nature from a batch of letters to several friends, including Thomas Jefferson. During the winter 1816-1817 Adams' reading included Origine de tous les Cultes, ou la Réligion Universelle (The Origin of All Worships) by Charles François Dupuis, published in twelve volumes in 1795 and in an abridged version in 1798. Adams, if I read his letters correctly, first read the twelve volumes, then borrowed Jefferson's copy of the abridgment and read that.

Dupuis rejected the notion of revelation, even comparing Jesus to a ghost.

We shall therefore not investigate, whether the Christian religion is a revealed religion. None but dunces will believe in revealed ideas and in ghosts. The philosophy of our days has made too much progress, in order to be obliged to enter into a dissertation on the communications of the Deity with man, excepting those, which are made by the light of reason and by the contemplation of Nature.
Charles François Dupuis, The Origin of All Religious Worship (1872 [1798]), 216

Adams did not agree with Dupuis, but confessed that he lacked the time or knowledge of the world's mythologies to write the necessary rejoinder. He did consider Dupuis more stimulating than his other reading that winter. He told Jefferson that Dupuis offered more novelty.

I must acknowledge, however, that I have found in Dupuis more ideas that were new to me, than in all the others. My conclusion from all of them is universal toleration. Is there any work extant so well calculated to discredit corruptions and impostures in religion as Dupuis?
Adams to Jefferson, 12 December 1816

The lessons he derives include both the need for purification of Christianity and tolerance of beliefs. Dupuis does not persuade him of his thesis that Christianity derives from ancient worship of the sun, but the text provokes inquiry into "superstition and fraud" that weave themselves into Christian faith. Adams letter two days after Christmas 1816 to Francis Adrian van der Kemp sums up the major themes, and provides the text for my epigraph above.

Jesus is benevolence personified, an example for all men. Dupuis has made no alteration in my opinions of the Christian religion, in its primitive purity and simplicity, which I have entertained for more than sixty years. It is the religion of reason, equity, and love; it is the religion of the head and of the heart. ...

How could that nation preserve its creed among the monstrous theologies of all the other nations of the earth? Revelation, you will say, and especial Providence; and I will not contradict you, for I cannot say with Dupuis that a revelation is impossible or improbable.

Christianity, you will say, was a fresh revelation. I will not deny this. As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed? How has it happened that all the fine arts, architecture, painting, sculpture, statuary, music, poetry, and oratory, have been prostituted, from the creation of the world, to the sordid and detestable purposes of superstition and fraud?
John Adams to F. A. Vanderkemp, 27 December 1816

Searching for Jesus in the writings of John Adams does not fully answer the question, but it provides a framework for inquisitive reading.

*This word is employed in John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (1987), 94 ff. However, for the time leading up to the Revolution, the Episcopal Church in America remained Anglican. The creation of the Episcopal denomination is part of the process of separation from England. In the context above, the word Episcopal strikes me as anachronistic. On the other hand, calling Madison Anglican might connote questions concerning his patriotism. See "Calvin and the Constitution" for more concerning Eidsmoe's views of Madison, and some links concerning Calvin's influence.

Addendum:

Jonathan Rowe also quotes from Adams letter to F.A. van der Kemp in a post for American Creation that is cross-posted on his own blog.

A Patriot's Blog: Larry Schweikart

2009-08-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to observe that Larry Schweikart has a blog: A Patriot's History of the United States.

His blog states that it is "the official blogspot of 'A Patriot's History of the United States'." Mine is critique.