Conservation Ethos

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

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

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"

[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

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.