Wisdom Higher Than a Fool Can Reach: The Amazing Life of Poetess Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley was an amazing and intriguing woman who became a famous and noteworthy poetess in the latter eighteenth century. And what is most intriguing is that in an age of slavery and discrimination she was black. Here, Christopher Benedict tells her story…

The frontispiece to Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects.

On Being Brought from Africa to America

“Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, that there’s a Savior too,

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

‘Their colour is a diabolical die.’

Remember, Christians, Negroes black as Cain,

May be refin’d and join th’ angelic train”

This eight line poem was written in 1768 by a young woman of fourteen named Phillis Wheatley. That it, and some 145 others she composed, would alternately subject her to the chaotic complexities of renown and acclaim, the attention of British nobility and America’s Founding Fathers, a tribunal before Boston’s most esteemed magistrates, ministers, and men of letters, not to mention the dismissive scorn of later, more enlightened and less subordinate generations can be best understood by taking the very nature of her blurred identity into consideration.

Her forename was gleaned from Timothy Finch’s schooner the Phillis, which deposited the seven year-old “slender, frail female child” on the Boston wharf at Beach Street on July 11, 1761 after plundering Guinea’s Isles de Los, Sierra Leone, and Senegal (where she is believed to have lived) of its inhabitants for use as human merchandise in America’s slave trade. The assignation of Phillis’ last name would result from her having been purchased, sickly and nearly naked but for a bit of soiled carpet, by Susanna Wheatley “for a trifle” (fewer than £10) to serve as housemaid.

The home, owned by affluent tailor and merchant John Wheatley, was located near Massachusetts’ original State House and within easy earshot, in years soon to come, of the Stamp Act riots and later the Boston Massacre, claiming the life of the Revolution’s first known black martyr Crispus Attucks, which Phillis would document in verse with On the Affray in King Street, on the Evening of the 5th of March, 1770.

Phillis achieved literacy through a combination of Susanna’s encouragement, the tutelage of the Wheatley’s teenaged children Nathaniel and Mary, and Phillis’ own natural desire for extracting sustenance from their English, Latin, Greek, and biblical lessons with an insatiable hunger for knowledge.

Such an impression did Phillis make on John Wheatley that he attested to her phenomenal scholarly advancement, noting that, “she, in sixteen months’ time from her arrival, attained the English language, to which she was an utter stranger before” and “as to her writing, her own curiosity led to it.”   

In 1765, she had already committed to paper her first poem, To the University of Cambridge in New England, and had another, On Messrs Hussey and Coffin, submitted by Susanna to the Newport Mercury, published only two years later, the first by a black woman in America.

Susanna, who by this time had excused Phillis from her previously appointed chores to perfect her chosen craft, would facilitate the collection of her early works into a proposed book containing 28 titles through advertisements that ran through the February to April 1772 editions of the Boston Censor, a Tory newspaper. Owing to the popular misapprehension that a simple slave girl could have been in no way responsible for these supposedly original creations, few offers for the requested 300 subscriptions to fund the project came forth.

On Virtue

“I cease to wonder, and no more attempt

Thine height t’ explore, or fathom thy profound

But, O my soul, sink not into despair,

Virtue is near thee, and with gentle hand

Would now embrace thee, hovers o’er thine head”

It is impossible to imagine the emotional state of Phillis, not yet twenty years old, only a little more than half of which had been spent as a kidnapped stranger in a strange land and even fewer familiar with its linguistic peculiarities, being asked to appear before a committee of eighteen of the colony’s most prestigious citizens to verify the authenticity of her writings and, in essence, become a spokesperson (quite literally) of her entire race.

In October 1772, at the urging of John Wheatley, Phillis was interrogated at length (most likely at Boston’s Town Hall) by an assemblage which included among its celebrated quilled pens and powdered wigs, those of Governor Thomas Hutchinson, Lieutenant-Governor Andrew Oliver, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Joseph Green, and the Reverends Charles Chauncy, Samuel Cooper, and Samuel Mather (son of Cotton Mather, who played a fringe role in the 1692 Salem Witch Trials).

Though there is no surviving transcript with which to flesh out the details of how they arrived at their conclusion, the matter was resolved to the satisfaction of all present, to the degree that when Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was finally published the following year, Phillis’ book was printed with the following testimonial, bearing the signatures of all eighteen of her questioners:

We whose Names are under-written, do assure the World, that the Poems specified in the following Page, were (as we verily believe) written by Phillis, a young Negro Girl, who was but a few Years since, brought an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa, and has ever since been, and now is, under the Disadvantage of serving as a Slave in a Family in this Town. She has been examined by some of the best Judges, and is thought qualified to write them.

With skepticism rampant throughout the colonies, Susanna had gotten a copy of the manuscript in the hands of London publisher Archibald Bell by employing as a courier the captain of her husband John’s England-bound commercial trade ship. Phillis had already established a readership across the Atlantic thanks to the success of the widespread 1770 publication of On the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield, her requiem for the recently deceased evangelical preacher, beloved both in the United Kingdom and its colonies. She would soon be accepted and treated as a celebrity, rubbing shoulders with royalty, having accolades and gifts heaped upon her by icons even in their own time and whose books today line our shelves and whose portraits adorn our currency. 

An Hymn to the Evening

“Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr’s wing,

Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.

Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,

And through the air, their mingled music floats.”

So that she could personally supervise the publication of her book, Susanna sent Phillis, chaperoned by the Wheatley’s son Nathaniel, to London whereupon she was squired about town to see the sights, including a tour of the Tower of London with Granville Sharp, one of the first English abolitionists.

She was received by the Earl of Dartmouth, who gave her the five guineas necessary to purchase the collected works of Alexander Pope, and was presented with a folio edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost by one-day Lord Mayor Brook Watson.

Even Benjamin Franklin, who was in London grieving the case for peaceful independence on behalf of the American colonies before the classes of the British citizenry, from the highest to most humble, deviated from his schedule of oratory and article writing to spend time with Phillis. She thought highly enough of him that she intended to dedicate her next book to the bespectacled diplomat. 

A momentous meeting with King George III, for whom she had written To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty in 1766 following his repeal of the Stamp Act, unfortunately did not occur as Susanna Wheatley’s health suffered a sudden decline, necessitating the immediate return of Phillis and Nathaniel. Susanna improved physically (for the time being) and, though Phillis would continue to live with them, she and John emancipated her shortly after her abrupt homecoming. A shipment of her books arrived at the New Haven customs office from London which she solicited by subscription, even imploring local publishers not to use them as a template from which to print and distribute copies of their own and, thus, undercutting her independent endeavor.

As heady as 1773 was for Phillis, the following year would prove just as sobering, bringing as it did the British occupation of Boston, the death of Susanna, and the resulting grief-stricken flight of John to points unknown. Phillis left for a time as well, living with the Wheatley’s daughter Mary and her husband in Providence until just before the Redcoats had been driven out of Boston.

A handwritten letter was sent by Phillis in October 1775 to Continental Army headquarters in Cambridge, MA addressed to the subject of her poem His Excellency General Washington, a copy of which was enclosed, “though I am not insensible of its inaccuracies”.

Four months later arrived a personal reply wherein George Washington apologized for “the seeming but not real neglect” of his delayed response while self-deprecatingly worrying over “however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyric”. His effusive praise is augmented by an invitation for Phillis to call upon him, adding that “I shall be so happy to see a person so favored by the Muses”.

She did, weeks later, journey to from Boston to Cambridge where the General and his officers lavished their attentions upon her and Washington pledged to reprint her poem, a promise he made good on when it appeared in the March 1776 Virginia Gazette. Thomas Paine followed suit, publishing her ode to General Washington in the April edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette. 

An Hymn to the Morning

“Ye shady groves, your verdant gloom display

To shield your poet from the burning day,

Calliope awake the sacred lyre,

While thy sisters fan the pleasing fire.”

Voltaire lent his endorsement to Phillis Wheatley’s work and she was sent a package from John Paul Jones, just prior to his embarking for Paris aboard the warship Ranger, containing praise of her writing along with hand selected copies of his own. 

Francois, the Marquis de Barbe-Marbois, whose request for statistical information on the American colonies inspired Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, had read Phillis’ verses, “in which there is imagination, poetry, and zeal”.

Jefferson, a slaveholding Francophile who would later be lionized by no less than Frederick Douglass, bristled at this praise being accorded the talents of an indentured servant (a black one, anyway-and heaven forbid, a woman - as he pointedly excused from the conversation former European slaves and prisoners Epictetus, Terence, and Phaedrus) who could never qualify as the white man’s cerebral equal.

Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry...Religion, indeed, has produced a Phillis Whatley (his spelling), but it could not produce a poet.

She is thereby reduced to a functional automaton capable of reading and, perhaps, comprehending Milton and Pope, the Athenians and Romans, but, creatively, of no better than their soulless mimicry.

Blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances,” supposed Jefferson’s vile but not unoriginal claim, “are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.

It is noteworthy, illustrates Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard professor and author of The Trials of Phillis Wheatley, that “Wheatley’s freedom enslaved her to a life of hardship.” Fame brought no fortune to Phillis, who married John Peters, a free black man whom Gates describes as a “small-time grocer and sometime lawyer”, in 1778. Their years together were ones of financial and personal strife compounded by the deaths of two infants and the failures of Peters’ business ventures, landing him in debtor’s prison and stranding Phillis at home with another unwell child.

Although a handful of New England newspapers did publish some of her last poems, she was unable to gather subscriptions sufficient to cover the printing costs of her second book and, to add to her humiliation, was forced to take work as a scullery maid.

Phillis Wheatley, only thirty years old, died on December 5, 1784 and was followed a little over three hours later by her infant son. Her own widowed husband was the first to soil her literary legacy by selling the only copy of her manuscript, which to this day has never been found.

Her reputation was called severely into question by black radicals during the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s, when Wheatley was denigrated as “an early Boston Aunt Jemima”, “a colonial handkerchief head”, and reflective of “the nigger component of the Black Experience”.

The spark of this controversy ignited a contemporary reevaluation of her life, beliefs, and writings. Although her prestige is still open to debate and her physical remains are in an unmarked grave somewhere in Boston, Phillis Wheatley was selected in 1993 for inclusion in the Boston Women’s Memorial on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall along with Abigail Adams and Lucy Stone, whose bronze sculptures thoughtfully consider one another from a triangular formation.

“Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind,

At morn’ to wake more heav’nly refin’d,

So shall the labors of the day begin

More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.”

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Sources

• The Trials of Phillis Wheatley by Henry Louis Gates (Basic Civitas Books, 2003)
• Negro Poetry and Drama by Sterling Brown (Westphalia Press,1937)
• A Shining Thread of Hope by Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson (Random House, 2009).
• Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers, Volume 1, edited by Yolanda Williams Page (Greenwood, 2007)
• Benjamin Franklin Holds Up a Looking Glass to the British Empire (Schiller Institute, September 2012)
• http://www.cityofboston.gov

Child Sacrifice in the Ancient World – Did it really happen?

Child sacrifice, while completely repugnant and bizarre to modern eyes, has happened at times in history. In this article, Joe Greenslade investigates the practice of child sacrifice among the ancient Carthaginians. Did they really sacrifice living children? Or did they undertake practices that were somewhat less sinister?

The painting Allegory of Carthage by Francesco di Stefano.

An overview

In the modern world the thought of people conducting human sacrifice is morbid, un-thought of, and despicable.  Before we explore if and why the Carthaginians carried out human sacrifice, it is important that we take a moment to view the mind-set of the ancient Carthaginians. We must not judge them by modern standards; neither must we condemn them as child killing murderers until we have properly explored the evidence provided.

The peoples of the ancient worlds did not know science, not as we knew today.  They rationalized everything that happened with religion.  If there was an outbreak of disease, the gods were unhappy.  If a harvest failed, the gods were unhappy.  If a military campaign failed, it was because the commander had not offered the correct sacrifices before he left.  Everything was rationalized with religion.  In the Greek, Roman, and Carthaginian worlds the gods could be appeased by sacrifice.  The personal sacrifices were usually smaller animals, but the state sponsored sacrifices consisted of larger beasts, usually cows or bulls.  These sacrifices usually revolved around festivals, as the populace would eat the meat in the aftermath.

Although human sacrifice was frowned upon even in the ancient world, with Gelon of Syracuse and the Persians insisting the Carthaginians stop, there were still practitioners.  The Phoenicians were known to have carried out human sacrifice.  This helps us understand roots in Carthaginian sacrifice because it was the Phoenicians that originally set up the colony in North Africa that became Carthage, and in doing so it seems they took it upon themselves to continue the sacrificial practices of their forbears.

The literary evidence

The evidence for child sacrifice comes in the form of literary and archaeological evidence. This points to the Carthaginians using human sacrifice prior to the destruction of the Romans in 146 BC.  We have many ancient sources, mostly Roman, who chronicle the Carthaginians as child sacrificers.  For example Diodorus Siculus tells us of the process.  Diodorus insists that there was a statue with down facing arms that stood over a pit of fire. The young were placed in the arms of this statue and let go, where they rolled down the arms and into the pit.  This process was conducted to appease a Carthaginian deity, most likely Tanit or Baal Hammon.  Plutarch, a Greek biographer who was writing during the period of Roman dominance, wrote that street children would be bought and used for sacrifice.  Quintus Curtius tells us that this practice only died out when Carthage was destroyed, which potentially shows us that the Carthaginians always conducted this ritual.

The problem with these literary sources is that they were written some time after Carthage was destroyed.  They would have been writing with the knowledge that Carthage was an enemy of Rome, so could have been biased.  They were also not contemporary, so would have relied on earlier sources to complete the picture.  Finally, Livy and Polybius, two major sources, fail to mention even briefly that the Carthaginians carried out human sacrifice.  This is important in Polybius’ case because his work was focused on Rome’s conflict with Carthage.  In fact he was supposed to be at Scippio’s side when Carthage was destroyed in 146 BC.

The archaeological evidence

The archaeological evidence is more useful than the literary evidence.  We can put our hands on it, investigate it, see it.  The principles evidence comes from a site in Carthage known as the Tophet.  It was found and excavated in 1921 by P. Gielly and F. Icard.  The excavation revealed many burial urns that contained the ashes and bones of young infants along with some animal remains.  The jump was easy to make; the Carthaginians practiced child sacrifice.  This belief was further enhanced when certain steles at the graveyard were excavated.  One such stele was inscribed with amounts of coin paid by wealthy parents on behalf of their sons.  This could tie in with Plutarch’s works, as street children could have been sought out instead of the wealthy children.  Perhaps poorer families were chosen, families who could not afford the coin.  Another stele seems to show the parents taking pride in having their child sacrificed. It reads “It was to the Lady Tanit Face of Baal and to Baal Hammon that Bomilcar son of Hanno, grandson of Milkiathon, vowed his son of his own flesh.  Bless him you!”

This seems to suggest that these parents had a stele set up to commemorate the sacrifice.  The slightly unsettling aspect of this engraving is that it does not even include the child’s name - just the father and his ancestors.  The stele seems to be a testament to the father.  Another stele has an engraving depicting a priest carrying a baby, most likely to its doom.  These finds of the Tophet seem to fully allow us to believe that the Carthaginians ritualistically sacrificed children to appease their gods.  The literary evidence coupled with this archaeological evidence seems to offer no escape for the Carthaginians, who were of course condemned.  But there is quite a persuasive argument that could still yet exonerate the Carthaginians.

The problem

What could possibly cast doubt in the face of such evidence, both archaeological and literary, you ask?  It is tough to work out, and if you have by now then I salute you, it took me a while longer.  You see, there is an argument that suggests these children were already dead when they were offered up for sacrifice.

Bomilcar was perhaps offering up a child that had been stillborn, or had died of a disease.  It is still a form of offering, giving up his dead son’s body - an argument used by Schwartz in 2012.  He put forth the theory that the Tophet was an infant cemetery for those who died young, stillborn and even fetuses.  Schwartz argues that they were offered for sacrifice after death.  He tried to prove this by investigating the teeth of the deceased to ascertain an age of death; by doing this he could cross reference his finds with the high child/infant mortality rate to help prove they were already dead at the time of offering.

Schwartz’s argument is compelling, but it does not change the fact that the Carthaginians believed that the gods could be appeased by the burning of children, being alive or dead.  If this is the case, the ancient sources can be forgiven for thinking the offerings were still alive; indeed, they still could have been, Schwartz’s argument could be wrong.  Whether the children were alive or dead before they tumbled down the arms of the statue into a pit of fire, we’ll never know for certain. I’ll leave each of you to make up your own decision.

The ancient world was a brutal place, but we must not judge them too harshly.  Human sacrifice still has a place in modern society.  The Hindu practice of Sati, for example, where the wife of the deceased husband was placed on the pyre and burned alive along with the body of her husband, was practiced as recently as 2006.

Maybe modern times aren’t so different from ancient times after all.

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Bibliography

Anderson, J (2013). Daily Life through Trade: Buying and Selling in World History. California: ABC-CLIO. 35-37.

Brown, S (1991). Late Carthaginian child sacrifice. Sheffield: JSOT Press. 21-24

Church, A. Gilman, A (1998). The Story of Carthage. New York: Biblo & Tannen Publishers.

Hoyos, D (2010). The Carthaginians. New York: Routledge 94-104

Lancel, S (1997) Carthage: A History. New York: Wiley.

Langdon, S. (1904). The History and Significance of Carthaginian Sacrifice. Journal of Biblical Literature. 23 (1), 79-93.

Markoe, G (2000). Phoenicians. California: University of California Press. 94-95.

Miles, R (2010). Carthage must be destroyed. London: Penguin. 68-98.

Schwartz J.H., Houghton F.D., Bondioli L. & Macchiarelli R. (2011). Bones, teeth, and estimating age of perinates: Carthaginian infant sacrifice revisited. Available: https://www.academia.edu/8420896/Bones_teeth_and_estimating_age_of_perinates_Carthaginian_infant_sacrifice_revisited. Last accessed 26/01/2015.

Scullard, H (1955). Carthage. Greece & Rome, Second Series. 2 (3), 104-106.

Soren, D (1991). Carthage: uncovering the mysteries and splendours of ancient Tunisia. New York: Simon & Schuster. 120-130

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/5273336.stm (Indian Sati)

The Legend of James K. Polk – Did he really plan to make California and Oregon part of America?

James K. Polk, eleventh US President, has gone down in history as the man who finished the westward expansion of America through a great plan to acquire California and Oregon. And even more remarkably, he achieved this very rapidly.

But, did he really have a grand strategy to expand America and achieve a number of great measures? Or did events just play their course? William Bodkin returns to the site and explains the legend of James K. Polk.

A portrait of James K. Polk.

What if the one thing America remembered about a President was false?  James K. Polk, who seemingly came from nowhere to become America’s eleventh President, is remembered for the four “great measures” of his Administration: (1) obtaining California and its neighboring territories following the Mexican War; (2) negotiating the purchase of the Oregon territories from Great Britain; (3) lowering the nation’s tariff on imported goods to promote free trade; and (4) establishing an independent treasury to put an end to the nation’s money problems.  Polk is celebrated for stating, at the outset of his Administration, that he would accomplish these goals in four short years.

Polk’s bold prediction and follow through led another President, Harry Truman, to describe him as the ideal Chief Executive.  Truman famously opined that Polk knew what he wanted to do, did it, and then left.  Unfortunately, while these are unquestionably Polk’s accomplishments, there is little to no evidence that he predicted them.  Instead, the prediction seems to have been created after the fact by one of Polk’s top advisors, historian George Bancroft.

The President From Nowhere

How did Polk become President?  In 1844, John Tyler was winding down William Henry Harrison’s term of office.  Tyler, in becoming President on Harrison’s death, alienated the two dominant political parties in America, the Democrats and the Whigs.  Tyler had angered the Democrats prior to becoming President, when, although a Democrat, he agreed to run with Harrison on the Whig ticket.  When he became President, Tyler governed mostly as a Democrat, angering the Whigs.

Waiting in the wings for the Democrats was Martin Van Buren, yearning to avenge his loss to Harrison.  Van Buren, however, before even receiving the nomination, stumbled on one of the key issues of the day, admitting Texas to the Union.  Texas had declared its independence from Mexico in 1836, seeking to join the United States.  Tyler, in one of the last acts of his Presidency, pushed to admit Texas, but failed.

The presumed Presidential nominees, though, both opposed admitting Texas. Henry Clay, for the Whigs, opposed Texas because it would be admitted as a slave state.  Van Buren, in a political calculation that backfired, claimed he opposed admitting Texas because he didn’t want to insult Mexico.  In truth, Van Buren believed that supporting Texas’s admission into the Union would cost him his traditional, staunchly abolitionist Northeast electoral base.  The gamble failed.  It cost Van Buren the support of the political powerhouse who had actually propelled him to the Presidency: Andrew Jackson.

Jackson favored admitting Texas.  Furious over Van Buren’s position, Jackson summoned Polk, his Tennessee protégé, to The Hermitage.  Polk, still reeling from a run of bad political luck, had been eyeing the Vice-Presidency.  A former Congressman, he had been Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1835-39, largely through Jackson’s support.  He left the Speaker’s chair to become Governor of Tennessee, but served only one term before being ousted in 1841.  In 1843, Polk tried and failed to win back the governor’s mansion.

At his estate, Jackson made his views plain.  Van Buren’s Texas position must be fatal to him.   The nominee would be an “annexation man,” preferably from what was then the American Southwest, meaning, Tennessee.  Polk was the best candidate.  As usual, Jackson got want he wanted.  At the Democrats’ Baltimore convention, Van Buren’s support eroded and the Democrats turned to Polk who narrowly won election over Clay. 

‘Thigh-Slapping” Predictions

Polk, once in office, resolved that despite Jackson’s support, he would himself be President of the United States.  According to Polk’s Secretary of the Navy and Ambassador to Great Britain, historian George Bancroft, Polk set his goals early on.  Bancroft said that in a meeting with Polk during the early days of the Administration, the President “raised his hand high in the air,” brought it down “with great force on his thigh,” and declared the “four great measures” of his administration.  First, with Texas on the road to statehood, the question of Oregon would be settled with Great Britain.  Second, with Oregon and Texas secure, California and its adjacent areas would round out the continent.  Third, the tariff, which was crippling the Southern states economically, would be made less protective and more revenue based.  Fourth, an independent national Treasury, immune from the banking schemes of recent years, would be established. 

Bancroft’s tale is problematic in two respects.  First, such a display was uncharacteristic of Polk.  Polk has been described as peculiarly simple.  He was a straightforward man and not particularly outspoken.  Polk was a workaholic, with few friendships other than his wife, no children, and no interests other than politics.  By most accounts, he was phlegmatic in disposition at best, and unlikely to engage in any dramatic exclamation.

The second problem with this story is that it comes from Bancroft.  While a superb historian, Bancroft is unfortunately a dubious source. He served in Polk’s administration, wholeheartedly endorsed its expansionist policies, and burned to write Polk’s official biography.  Polk rejected Bancroft as administration historian, instead seeking to have his former Secretary of War, William Marcy, do the job. Marcy had been in Washington for the entire administration; whereas Bancroft had left for London in 1846.  Despite this, Bancroft remained loyal to Polk.  By the late 1880s, Bancroft was the only remaining living member of Polk’s cabinet.

This is significant because during the 1880s, a number of historians dismissed Polk as being controlled by events round him and having been bullied into his expansionist policies.  The young historian and future President Theodore Roosevelt took this view, finding Polk’s administration not to be particularly capable.  Other historians viewed the Mexican War as having led to the Civil War, and condemned Polk for it.

Bancroft was offended by these assessments.  By the late 1880s, despite Polk’s previous opposition, Bancroft resolved to write a biography of Polk.  The earliest known mention of the “thigh-slapping” conversation is in an unpublished manuscript located in Bancroft’s papers titled “Biographical Sketch of James K. Polk,” apparently written in the late 1880s.  Historian James Schouler, in his “History of the United States of America, Under the Constitution,” first published the story.  Schouler noted that Bancroft had relayed the anecdote to him in a February 1887 letter.  After its initial publication, the “thigh-slapping” story was re-published, gradually taking on a life of its own.

Recent scholarship, however, indicates that Bancroft might have manufactured the incident.  On August 5, 1844, Bancroft wrote an admiring letter to Polk where he inventoried all of the administration’s accomplishments, including the annexation of Texas, the post-war purchase of New Mexico and California, the establishment of the Treasury and the overthrow of the protective tariff.  Bancroft wrote to Polk that these accomplishments “formed a series of measures, the like of which can hardly ever be crowded into one administration of four years & which in the eyes of posterity will single yours out among the administrations of the century.”

Did Bancroft help the “eyes of posterity” look more favorably toward James K. Polk?  It seems likely.  However, an historian, when examining primary sources, can never truly know the intent of historical actors and what motivated their writings.  Despite seeming evidence to the contrary, the ”thigh-slapping” story could have happened as Bancroft said it did.  History, it has been said, is written by the victors.  There are times though, when the person who writes the history determines the identity of the victor and the extent of the victory.

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Finally, William's previous pieces have been on George Washington (link here), John Adams (link here), Thomas Jefferson (link here), James Madison (link here), James Monroe (link here), John Quincy Adams (link here), Andrew Jackson (link here), Martin Van Buren (link here), William Henry Harrison (link here), and John Tyler (link here).

References

• Anthony Berger, “2014 Presidential Rankings, No. 7: James K. Polk,” www.deadpresidents.tumblr.com
• Walter R. Borneman, “Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America,” Random House, 2008.
• Tom Chaffin, “Met His Every Goal? James K. Polk and the Legends of Manifest Destiny,” University of Tennessee Press, 2014.
• Milo Milton Quaife, editor, “Diary of James K. Polk during His Presidency, 1845-1849.” A.C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1910.
• Sean Wilentz, “The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln,” WW Norton and Company, 2005.
• Jules Witcover, “Party of the People, A History of the Democrats,” Random House, 2003.

Spanish Civil War - History of a Battle for Europe’s Soul – Spain’s Great War (Required History)

So, you think that World War 2 began in 1939?

Then you’re evidently not familiar with the Spanish Civil War.

The war was Spain’s Great War. The country suffered death, destruction, and repression on an unprecedented scale. There were large-scale military battles that left tens of thousands dead. The world witnessed some of the largest air battles that it had ever seen. People from all parts of society, from labor unionists to priests, were heartlessly murdered. Extremists and radical groups saw an exponential rise in their size and influence.

But, it was not just Spain that experienced its Civil War. The Spanish Civil War was also Europe’s and the world’s war. There was significant international involvement and interest in the war from the start, and it was a microcosm of the far greater war that was to follow it. It involved battles between democracy and dictatorship, Fascism and Communism, Germany and the USSR. The Great Powers of Europe tested out military strategies and new technologies, while tens of thousands of idealistic foreigners joined the war to battle against Fascism.  At the same time, the great democracies of Britain and France played a more muddled role.

Get the book on Amazon

This introduction to the Spanish Civil War is the second book from George Levrier-Jones. The book considers the brutal war that arose between the political left and right in Spain over the years 1936-1939.

The topics in the book include:

• 19th Century Spain and the path that led to the Spanish Second Republic
• The chronic instability and changes of the Spanish Second Republic
• The major differences between the two sides
• How the 1936 election led to the Spanish Civil War breaking out
• International involvement and the instability of 1930s Europe
• Why the Great Powers of Europe intervened in the war
• The early Nationalist advances in the war
• How General Francisco Franco consolidated the Nationalist side
• The civil war within the Spanish Civil War
• The great Republican counter-attacks and General Franco’s responses
• Events across Spain from Madrid to the Basque Country, and Barcelona to Valencia
• The closing stages of the war
• What the victors did in the years and decades after winning the war

The approximately 100-page book is the perfect complement to the Spanish Civil War History audio series that is available as part of the ‘History in 28-minutes’ podcasts.

So come and join the past – buy the book now!

Communism and Race in the 1930s Deep South

The Deep South has a history of racial animosity, but what happened when somebody tried to unite whites and blacks? Well, in Great Depression era Atlanta, Angelo Herndon tried to do just that. And he did so as a committed Communist. Bennett H. Parten returns to the site and explains what happened when the authorities tried to prosecute Herndon under an antiquated law…

General Research Division, The New York Public Library. (1926 - 1947). Let me live : the autobiography of Angelo Herndon. Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-d7dc-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Atlanta, Georgia is an anomaly, if not an oxymoron. It’s a commercial and industrial oasis in the middle of an agricultural desert, a regional capitol with an international profile, and an emblem of the Old South with an insatiable appetite for modernity. In the early 1930s, the city’s exceptionality emerged again as it somehow juggled being both a hub for Communist activity and a bastion of conservatism. The city, sadly, could only juggle this thorny coexistence for so long.

Fueled by civic boosterism and an influx of Northern capital, Atlanta experienced a period of rapid growth during the first few decades of the 20th century; however, the dawning of the Great Depression brought the engines churning industrial development to a screeching halt. As a result, unemployment lines swelled, the number of homeless grew, and wages were cut, leaving many to survive off of the city’s limited relief budget.

Enter Angelo Herndon. Born in Ohio, Herndon arrived in Atlanta by way of Kentucky and Alabama. While working for the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company in Birmingham, he was exposed to Communism through various labor organizers drifting through the Deep South. Officially joining the party in 1930, Herndon became an organizer and gained a degree of notoriety in Alabama, prompting a string of arrests and his eventual migration to Atlanta.

A volatile city

By the time he arrived in 1932, Atlanta’s relief situation had reached boiling point. The city’s relief budget was exhausted and payments were suspended. A number of citizens pushed the county commissioners to alter the budget so that there was more relief funding, but a number of commissioners believed the level of suffering in the city had been exaggerated, demanding that evidence of such hunger and starvation be proven before altering the budget. In a show of force, Herndon organized and led a “hunger” march on the courthouse in Atlanta that, by the time it was finished, accrued close to 1,000 angry workers demanding a continuation of the relief payments.

Never before had the city seen such a concerted statement on behalf of its working men and women. The march frightened Atlanta’s conservative commercial elite, revealing to them just how volatile and unstable the city had become. What frightened them the most, however, was the social make-up of the marchers. Poor whites as well as poor blacks marched step by step with one another, breaking Jim Crow South’s rigid social hierarchy. Interracial class solidarity on the part of the working men and women would, in the eyes of the business elite, only breed more discontent and challenge the city’s traditional conservative political leadership.

Their response was to simply destroy the movement by attacking where they believed it began: the Communists. Atlanta police began targeting suspected organizers and kept a watchful eye on the post office since the only piece of evidence on the leaflets used to announce the protest was a return address marked P.O. Box 339. Eleven days after the march, on July 11, 1932, Angelo Herndon was arrested while retrieving mail from the box in question.

Herndon was formally charged by an all-white grand jury with “attempting to incite insurrection” under an old statute originally designed to prevent slave insurrections. He received legal counsel from the International Labor Defense, better known as the ILD, whom placed noted Atlanta attorneys Benjamin Davis Jr, the son of a prominent Atlanta newspaper editor and Republican politician, and John Geer at the head of the Herndon case. The two young black lawyers designed a defense that sought to attack the constitutionality of the antiquated insurrection law and Georgia’s judiciary system by calling into question Georgia’s informal practice of excluding African Americans from serving on juries; Herndon’s defense would thus be one that would attempt to strike a major blow to the justice system’s role in preserving Georgia’s Jim Crow laws in addition to exonerating Herndon.

The trial

But Georgia’s seasoned justice system would not go down without a fight. As the trial commenced, the defense team set its sights toward the legality of all-white grand juries like the one that indicted Herndon. All of the witnesses testified that there had not been a black participant on a grand jury in recent memory, but in the absence of proof that African Americans had been systematically excluded, Judge Wyatt, whom Davis had said “used the law with respect to Negroes like a butcher wielding a knife to kill a lamb,” would not be moved (Davis 62-63). The legal team left the courtroom after the first day in an air of defeat.

The second day started off much better for the defense. The duo of Greer and Davis, with the help of attorneys A.T. Walden and T.J. Henry, launched an attack on the prospective jurors, getting one to confess to Ku Klux Klan membership. The team eventually landed on twelve jurors deemed suitable. The charge of insurrection was then debated. Atlanta policemen Frank Watson was the first to testify, reading off a list of items found in Herndon’s room. The list included rather harmless materials such as membership and receipt books, but Herndon did possess two books, George Padmore’s The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers and William Montgomery Brown’s Communism and Christianism, that emphasized the Communist Party’s policy of self-determination for the South’s “Black Belt”, a stretch of land in the heart of the Deep South that housed large numbers of African Americans. The prosecutor, accompanied by a large map of Georgia, pointed out to the jury that under this policy a large majority of the state would fall under black political leadership, all but destroying the state’s white political stranglehold. But even with this evidence, Davis’s cross examination of Watson revealed that Watson never actually witnessed Herndon distribute radical literature or give a speech with revolutionary intent; Watson had merely seen Herndon checking his mail.

When Angelo Herndon took the stand, the momentum won with the Watson cross-examination again shifted away from the defense. In the witness stand, Herndon unleashed quite an oration, one more idealistic than inflammatory. He unabashedly emphasized the interracial aims of the party, pointing out the immense levels of suffering of both poor whites and poor blacks. He described the horrid conditions of the Fulton County jail, claiming that he had to share a jail cell with a dead man whom was denied proper medical treatment. His most radical claims, though, were made when he blamed the capitalist regime for race baiting, constantly pitting white versus black as a substitute for the natural animosities between the rich and the poor. Needless to say, Herndon’s own testimony did not do him any favors with the jury.

Closing the trial

As for the closing remarks, each of the four attorneys—two defense counselors and two prosecutors—took turns. When it came time, Benjamin Davis, vaunted for his oratory skills, released an emotional critique of the justice Herndon had been served. He charged that Herndon had simply been attempting to better the conditions of Atlanta’s working people in a peaceful way as the march on the courthouse was not violent nor did it cause any harm. According to Davis, Herndon was charged not for inciting insurrection but for being black, and his attempts to unite both races for the common welfare should be lauded. Davis’s remarks drew ire from the whites in the courtroom as well as those in the jury. Whenever he approached the jury box during his summation some of the jurors refused to listen and turned their backs on him. Davis, unfazed, went on. He read from one of the radical pamphlets found in Herndon’s possession that described the lynching and burning of a pregnant black woman. The description was so graphic and Davis’s dramatization so intense, one spectator fainted.

His summation hinged on the inherent irony of supposed “justice” in Georgia: a peaceful interracial Communist protest was condemned as insurrectionary while the justice system turned a blind eye to lynchings and other forms of racial oppression. He concluded his remarks by stating that if a guilty verdict was served, it would be derived only from the “basest passion of race prejudice”, and such a verdict would be “making scraps of paper out of the Bill of Rights” and the Constitutions of both the United States and Georgia (Herndon 351-354). Sadly, such an impassioned plea for justice was rendered fruitless as the white jury found Herndon guilty as charged.

But the battle was not over. Almost immediately, Davis and company submitted their appeal. Over the course of five years, their appeals garnered almost no headway at the national or local level. Finally, in 1937, with his case in the national spotlight—and Let Me Live, Herndon’s newly published autobiography on the bookshelves of civil libertarians and liberal thinkers nationwide—the Supreme Court struck down Georgia’s insurrection stature, arguing that it violated the First Amendment. Herndon was exonerated, and Georgia, a bastion of white conservatism, was forced to release an avowed Communist and radical interracial labor organizer. Jim Crow obviously did not die with Angelo Herndon, but his victory stood as a major blow to conservative Georgia’s ability to deal out so called “justice” in the courtroom.

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Bibliography

Davis, Benjamin J. Communist Councilman from Harlem: Autobiographical Notes Written In A Federal Penitentiary. New York: International Publishers, 1991.

Hatfield, Edward A. "Angelo Herndon Case." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 03 December 2013. Web. 30 June 2015.

Herndon, Angelo. Let Me Live. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Martin, Charles H. The Angelo Herndon Case and Southern Justice. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976. 

Slavery and the Fourth of July: Is This the Land Your Fathers Loved?

Frederick Douglass was born a slave, but his life was to later move into a different world. He became an important figure in the US abolitionist movement in the mid-nineteenth century. Here, Christopher Benedict looks at Douglass’ views on the Fourth of July and whether slaves could really appreciate Independence Day when they were not free.

Frederick Douglass in 1856.

From Plantation to Platform

The Douglass family, which in 1848 consisted of Frederick and his wife Anna, not to mention their five children Rosetta, Lewis, Frederick Jr., Charles, and Annie, settled into their new nine room home at 4 Alexander Place in Rochester, New York.

From here, Douglass contributed to and edited the abolitionist newspaper North Star, embarked upon speaking engagements in New England, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, made the acquaintances of John Brown and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (whose suffrage movement benefitted from his being the sole public voice of assent), lobbied for the desegregation of Rochester’s learning institutions when Rosetta was forced to leave her private school, supported Free Soil candidates Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams, and sheltered numerous fugitive slaves while assisting them with safe passage to Canada.

These surroundings and circumstances may have been a far cry from the Maryland of his birth thirty years earlier, but his youth spent on Holme Hill Farm in Talbot County, and particularly his year as a rented resource to farm owner and brutal overseer Edward Covey, would never fade into distant memory. His mother was an indentured servant named Harriet Bailey and it was believed by fellow slaves, though never confirmed nor denied, that Frederick’s father was also his white master, Aaron Anthony, which would hardly have been an uncommon occurrence.

After escaping Baltimore for Wilmington, Delaware by train in 1838 using protection papers given to him by a merchant seaman, he first sets foot in free territory after reaching Philadelphia by steamer. A second locomotive journey lands Frederick in New York City where he is reunited with Anna after their engagement back in Maryland and abandons his birth name of Bailey in favor of the alias Johnson. It would be at the urging of the welcomed and securely protected black community in New Bedford, Massachusetts that he then dropped the all-too-common Johnson for Douglas, inspired by the character of the Scottish lord from Sir Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake (and adding the additional ‘s’).

Because he had become proficient at the trade of caulking at the Baltimore shipyards of his mostly benevolent former possessors Hugh and Sophia Auld, where he began as bookkeeper after Sophia had taught him to read and write (which was then frowned upon and discouraged, necessitating his own covert self-education), Douglass easily finds work in the storied whaling village, joins the congregation of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and subscribes to William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator.

Invited to appear before an abolitionist fair in Concord, MA which was attended by Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, he then began what would become his hugely successful autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written By Himself, published in 1845 (as an aside, this is still celebrated in New Bedford every February with a community read-a-thon sponsored by its Historical Society, which I proudly got to participate in while an unfortunately short-lived resident of the Bay State in 2011-12).

It begged reason for many to accept that an uncultured black man, one that the bulk of white society took on face value to be an exchangeable and disposable commodity rather than a human being with hopes and dreams and love and hurt in his heart, could compose without generous assistance such a thoughtful, highly articulate work of literature.

Nonetheless, the man born into bondage had not only endeavored toward his liberation, but was now embraced within the most illustrious intellectual circles, walking freely and proudly into their literary salons and halls of academia.

Now a distinguished citizen of Rochester, Douglass was asked to deliver a speech from the stage of Corinthian Hall on July 5, 1852 commemorating the anniversary of America’s independence. The irony, if it was not intentional or, for that matter, even at first apparent to some, would be manifested brilliantly and manipulated scorchingly.

As With Rivers, So With Nations

Treading lightly while wading toward troubled waters, Douglass begins on a misleadingly modest note, offering apologies for “my limited powers of speech” and “distrust of my ability”, professing to have thrown “my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together” owing to “little experience and less learning”.

Douglass compares the deliverance of the country’s political freedom to the Passover celebrated by the emancipated children of god, noting the buoyancy inherent to the Republic’s relatively youthful age, 76 years, which he remarks is “a good old age for a man, but a mere speck in the life of a nation.” Perhaps, Frederick suggests, “Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow.” 

Interestingly, Douglass refers to the free and independent states of America through the use of feminine pronouns, whether as a repudiation of their former British fatherland and/or the noble words and deeds of the nation’s Founding Fathers he feels are now being bastardized, or as an unspoken remembrance of his own birth-giver, the mother he last saw at the age of 7 or 8 when she presented him with a heart-shaped ginger cake and the pet name “Valentine”. 

“Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages,” says Douglass. “They might sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away on their angry waves the accumulated wealth of toil and hardship.”

While the river “may gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on serenely as ever,” Douglass begins the shift in his discourse with the warning that “it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory.”

Dastards, Brave Men, and Mad Men

Conceding that “the point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable”, the nation’s founders were, in Douglass’ estimation, “brave men” and “great men”, also “peace men” who nonetheless “preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage”, “quiet men” who “did not shrink from agitating against oppression”, and men who “believed in order, but not in the order of tyranny.”

Likewise, they had intentionally not framed within their Declaration and Constitution the idea of an infallible government, one which Douglass believed had since become fashionable, while falling out of repute was the deliberate action of “agitators and rebels...to side with the right against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor.”

Douglass’ assertion was that the natural clash of these contemporary ideologies culminated in the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which made legalized sport of hunting down and returning runaway slaves to their masters, and a grotesquely profitable one at that.

George Washington, Douglass pointed out, “could not die until till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men.”

He drives this point home by quoting from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”

Inhuman Mockery

Now comes Douglass’ direct confrontation of the question pertaining to why he was called upon to give this address on this occasion, the answer to which lay in the larger matter of whether the “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” Thomas Jefferson bequeathed to America’s countrymen were rights that extended to him, as well as his kith and kin. If there remained any doubt about the reply, Douglass demolished it.

“The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”

Unable to equivocate or excuse the great blasphemy of human slavery which made a mockery not only of the Constitution but of the Bible, Douglass declared to his “Fellow Americans” that “above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.”

He raises next the hypothetical argument of whether he and fellow abolitionists would be better served to “argue more and denounce less...persuade more and rebuke less.”

Again, his condemnation of these tactics arrives swift and decisive as a lightning strike.

“Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters?”

To do so, Douglass insisted would “make myself ridiculous and to offer an insult to your understanding.”

Unholy License

If the “peculiar institution” of slavery was upheld by American religion in addition to American politics, was it to be viewed as somehow supernal?

That the church largely ignored the Fugitive Slave Act as “an act of war against religious liberty”, how else could its rituals be regarded, Douglass wonders, but as “simply a form of worship, an empty ceremony and not a vital principle requiring benevolence, justice, love, and good will towards man?”

To this says Douglass, “welcome infidelity, welcome atheism, welcome anything in preference to the gospel as preached by those Divines.”

Using the word of god against itself with incendiary righteousness, he recites from the book of Isaiah. “Your new moons, and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. They are a trouble to me, I am weary to bear them, and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed. Judge for the fatherless, plead for the widow.”

Among the exceptionally noble men that Douglass gives name to are Brooklyn’s abolitionist firebrand Henry Ward Beecher, Syracuse’s Samuel J. May, and Reverend R. R. Raymond who shared the platform with him that day. Douglass charges them with the task of continuing “to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal, and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slave’s redemption from his chains.”

Penetrating the Darkness

The Constitution will always remain open to the interpretation of those whose will is to bend and stretch the wording of its amendments one way or another to the advancement of a specific agenda. Regardless, Frederick Douglass maintained that it is “a glorious liberty document” in which “there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing” that is slavery.

Similarly, he drew encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, “the great principles it contains, and the genius of American institutions.”

Knowledge and intelligence, time and space, were colliding in many wonderful ways which gave Douglass, ultimately, reason for hope and optimism.

“Notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented...I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport, or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light.”

And, despite the fact that they would shortly thereafter experience a bitter falling-out, Douglass ended on a conciliatory note, courtesy of a passage from William Lloyd Garrison:

In every clime be understood

The claims of human brotherhood

And each return for evil, good

Not blow for blow

That day will come all feuds to end

And change into a faithful friend

Each foe

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Sources

• What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, speech delivered by Frederick Douglass July 5, 1852 in Rochester, NY
• Autobiographies: Narrative of the Life, My Bondage and My Freedom, and Life and Times by Frederick Douglass, edited and with notes by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Library of America, 1994)

The Intriguing Lost Conversation of the Civil Rights Movement: The Writer and the Monk - James Baldwin and Thomas Merton

Racial tensions have sadly been all too common in the United States over the years. Recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere are but the latest in a long line of racial issues. Here, Edward J. Vinski presents a fascinating view on race in America, with the help of two very different people who wrote at the height of the American Civil Rights movement.

Photograph of a Young Woman at the Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. with a Banner, 1963. From the U.S. Information Agency.

When one reads, one enters into a conversation with the writer. Such conversation, although naturally different from the more traditional face-to-face method, allows us to travel across time and distance and even to resurrect the dead. This, of course, is only in a manner of speaking, but in the world of letters the conversation is real. We may hear the words of persons long since dead and descriptions of places we might never visit.

For a brief moment during the height of America’s Civil Rights movement, an unconventional conversation occurred between two men: one, James Baldwin, an African American writer living in Europe, the other, Thomas Merton, a white Trappist monk living in a Kentucky monastery.  While their different backgrounds alone might make their interaction appear somewhat unusual, they shared a social consciousness that transcended their worlds. In this, they were, perhaps, more similar than they might initially seem.  What makes their conversation truly unique, however, is the way they communicated to each other and ultimately to their readers: they conversed primarily through a series of letters not addressed to each other.

The “Correspondence”

In his 1963 book The Fire Next Time, Baldwin demonstrates what it means to be black in America and how whites are, in fact, viewed by their black counterparts. The two essays take the form of letters[1]. The first and shorter of the two, “My Dungeon Shook”, is written as a “Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation.” In it, Baldwin describes his own father, recalling that “he was defeated long before he died because at the bottom of his heart, he really believed what white people said about him” (Baldwin, 1963/1985, p. 3), and he admonishes his nephew that “you can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger” (p. 4). Through this initial statement, Baldwin shows the connection between the movement toward black freedom and that of white freedom as well. By using the offensive word “nigger” he underscores this fact that American Blacks are an invention of White Americans. It is this creation that causes “defeat “ in those created, as in the case of the senior Baldwin, and it is the crime of which Baldwin accuses his countrymen. He writes that they are destroying:

Hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it […] but it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime (p. 5).

Their so-called innocence lies in the fact that White America fails to see the crime. “They are, in effect,” Baldwin writes, “still trapped in a history they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it” (p. 8). As such, the truth about integration is not that it means the acceptance of blacks by whites. Rather, Baldwin tells his nephew, “the terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them” (p. 8).

In his long-form essay “Letters to a White Liberal”, written in response to The Fire Next Time, Merton recognizes this very assumption among whites that white society is somehow superior to that of blacks. Perhaps more accurately, White America exists under the assumption that it has somehow achieved perfect human completeness.  From this perspective, as Baldwin suggests, blacks are “to be accepted into white society” (Merton, 1964, p. 58). Baldwin and Merton both call attention to the fact that equality does not mean the elevation of one group to the standards of the other. Rather, true integration and equality requires movement on both sides. “Your sister and I have every right to marry if we wish to,” writes Baldwin, “[…] if she cannot raise me to her level, perhaps I can raise her to mine” (Baldwin, 1963/1985, p. 96). Merton concurs. In the only direct correspondence between the two men, Merton wrote a letter to Baldwin shortly after he read The Fire Next Time. In it, he states that human completeness comes only from the realization that “I am therefore not completely human until I have found myself in my African and Asian and Indonesian brother because he has the part of humanity which I lack” (Merton, 1964/2008, p. 226).[2]

Even if true equality means that blacks must unilaterally become more like whites, Baldwin questions whether blacks would accept these conditions. He writes that:

I do not know many Negros who are eager to be ‘accepted’ by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don’t want to be beaten over the head by the whites […] white people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this […] the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed (Baldwin, 1963/1985, p. 21).

Years earlier, Merton had come to a similar conclusion. Working for a time among Harlem, New York’s poor, sick and dispossessed at Baroness Catherine de Hueck’s Friendship House led him to conclude that “there is not an Negro in the whole place who does not realize, somewhere in the depths of his nature, that the culture of the white man is not worth the dirt in Harlem’s gutters” (Merton, 1948/1976, p. 386). Not only do they not wish to be integrated in to such a world, the sickness, drugs and death of Harlem stood not only as a contrast to the corruption and greed of white society, but as an indictment against that very society. Reflecting on what he saw, Merton concluded that such pockets of resistance against White American society may be all that prevents God’s wrath from wiping that very society from the planet.

While both men recognize that the races need each other to achieve perfection, they also acknowledge that awareness of this fact is difficult for people to grasp. Baldwin indicates that such a realization is more difficult for those in power writing that “people are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal […] but they love the idea of being superior” (Baldwin, 1963/1985, p. 87). For whatever reason, Americans have long mistrusted standards of civilization that are not cut from the European model. As a result, white Americans have come to believe that they possess something “[…] that black people need or want.  And this assumption […] makes the solution to the Negro problem depend on the speed with which Negroes accept and adopt white standards” (p. 93).

Merton concurs. Whites, according to him, all too frequently assume that they have nothing to gain from blacks and that black society is therefore “more or less worthless” (Merton, 1964, p. 59), thus echoing the sentiment expressed in his letter to Baldwin. The truth that both writers present is that “different races and cultures are correlative. They mutually complete each other” (Merton, 1964, p. 61).

The problem is that the self-knowledge necessary to change this perception would require an abandoning of the most cherished American myths: that of “freedom-loving heroes” (Baldwin, 1963/1985, p. 100). These are the myths that whites believe and about which blacks know better[3]. As such, most blacks “dismiss white people as slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing” (p. 101). Blacks can’t hate whites, according to Baldwin, because they know how much whites have to lose if integration was to become complete, and that the fear of this loss is such that it is impossible for whites to act with love toward them.

Merton draws the same conclusion, writing:

If the Negro […] enters wholly into white society, then that society is going to be radically changed. This, of course is what the white South very well knows and it is what the white Liberal has failed to understand (Merton, 1964, p. 8).

Equality, thus, can only be obtained through sacrifice particularly on the part of whites. The world they knew will be radically altered on economic, social, and psychological levels. But this is the price to be paid for a new society. “The only way out of this fantastic impasse is for everyone to face and accept the difficulties and sacrifices involved, in all their seriousness, in all their inexorable demands” (Merton, 1964, p. 9).       

The writer and the monk bring their respective books to a close with calls to action. Baldwin attempts to rally “the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks” of America. “If we […] do not falter in our duty now, we may be able […] to end the racial nightmare and achieve our country, and change the history of the world” (Baldwin, 1963/1985, p. 104-105). But if we fail, he writes, the prophecy of the old spiritual will come to pass: “God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, the fire next time!” (p. 105).

Merton’s ending is, perhaps, less dramatic, but just as powerful. Recognizing the difficulty that whites have in understanding the message of the Black Americans, he writes:

This is the message which the Negro is trying to give white America. I have spelled it out for myself, subject to correction, in order to see whether a white man is even capable of grasping the words, let alone believing them (Merton, 1964, p. 70).

Then, acknowledging that the truly prophetic vision of a racially equal America’s potential can only come from the perspective of Blacks, he brings this message home: “For the rest, you have Moses and the prophets. Martin Luther King, James Baldwin and the others. Read them, and see for yourself what they are saying” (p. 70).

Conclusion

The passage of the thirteenth amendment abolished slavery in the United States, but it did not end racial injustice. The Brown vs. The Board of Education court decision helped integrate American schools, but did not end racial inequality. The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s did not end racial tensions. The last half-century has been one in which periods of relative calm are punctuated by flare-ups of old resentments and suspicions. The events of Ferguson, Missouri; Staten Island, New York; and Baltimore, Maryland have been nothing but the most recent examples of long-simmering racial tensions boiling over. With each event, there are calls for a national conversation on race. Sadly, people on both sides of the divide often bristle at and deflect any real attempts at open discussion. In the meantime, opportunists seek to achieve their own ends. In so doing, they add a further level of distraction to matters, often doing little more than confirming the worst fears of those on whichever side they seem to oppose.

The truth is that the story of America is intertwined with the messy story of racism, and until the entire nation comes to grips with this disturbing fact, it is likely that a resolution to the problem will continue to elude us. Fifty years ago, Thomas Merton and James Baldwin exchanged “letters” devoted to this topic. If there is any significant lesson to be learned from their “correspondence” it is this: racism in America will not be solved by the nation’s liberals or conservatives, politicians or activists.

Rather, change will be brought about by its prophets who can see the problem from a self-critical, but not self-condemning perspective.

Did you find this article thought provoking? If so, tell the world… Tweet about it, share it, or like it by clicking on one of the buttons below.

Author’s note

I ask to be excused a slight stylistic indulgence.  In light of my thesis that the written word allows a measure of immortality, I have written most of this piece in the present tense. I believe that the conversation is too important to have simply happened once and for all in the past. Rather I believe that Merton and Baldwin continue to speak to each of us to this very day.  

References

Baldwin, J. (1963/1985). The fire next time. New York: The Modern Library.

Campbell, J. (1991) Talking at the gates: A life of James Baldwin. New York: Viking.

Leeming, D. (1994). James Baldwin: A biography. New York: Arcade

Merton, T. (1948/1976). The seven storey mountain. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company.

Merton, T. (1963/2008). Letter to James Baldwin. In W.H. Shannon and C.M. Bochen (Eds.). Thomas Merton: A life in letters. New York: Harper One.

Merton, T. (1964). Seeds of destruction. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Footnotes

1. The New Yorker, in which the essays were published before being collected in The Fire Next Time, required that all submissions be in the form of a “Letter from….” (Campbell, 1991)

2. As not all of Baldwin’s personal papers have been released to the public, I am not aware of whether he replied to Merton. 

3. This is not an exclusively American problem. While visiting an elementary school in Senegal, Baldwin was outraged to find the children’s textbook referring to their ancestors from Gaul (Leeming, 1994)

Gin in 18th century England… Could prohibition work?

Gin arrived in Britain in the late 17th century following the arrival of a new monarch from the Netherlands, King William III. Here, Janet Ford tells the story of how gin’s extraordinary popularity in 18th century England led to Parliament trying to restrict its sale… And how successful these Gin Acts were.

The Gin Shop, a cartoon about drinking too much. By George Cruikshank, 1829.

How popular was gin?

It was estimated that in the year 1730, 10 million gallons of gin were produced. The average Londoner got through 14 gallons of gin a year or two pints a week - which is a lot of gin!

Why was gin so popular?

The main reasons why gin was so popular were the price, its strength and the life of the working classes, who drank it the most. Gin was very cheap, which allowed the poor to drink it. Gin was much more stronger than ale and beer, and so would get people drunk quicker. But life for the working class during the 18th century was difficult, as living conditions were poor, and so having a cheap and strong drink would have numbed the pain of real life and given the poor and working class some relief from their stresses.

The Gin Acts

There were various acts brought in which aimed to restrict the sale and consumption of gin, with the Acts of 1729, 1736, 1749, 1751 and 1760. The 1736 Act, ‘taxed retail sales at 20 shillings a gallon and made selling gin without a £50 annual licence illegal’ (1) and the 1751 act, ‘lowered the licence fee and forced distillers to sell only to licensed retailers trading from respectable premises’ (2). In general, Parliament wanted to make gin difficult to make and sell to the nation.

Why laws were brought in?

There were various reasons why parliament and religious figures, who were also against gin, wanted to make gin difficult to sell and make.

One of the main reasons was the link between gin and crime. Many of those who wanted to ban it believed that gin increased crime. To an extent this would have been true; however, as gin was so popular, banning it could have increased crime, as those who wanted the drink, would have done anything to get it. One of the main examples of a crime being committed that was related to gin was that of Judith Dufour. Judith had been drunk on gin at work, which was normal for her. She also had a two-year-old daughter, who was found naked, apart from a scarf around her neck, strangled in a field. It was found that she had been killed by her own mother, while she was drunk on gin. These stories would have frightened not just politicians and religious figures, but also the general public.

Another reason was the role of women. Beer and ale were mostly drunk by men and not women. But this was not the case for gin, as both sexes drank it. As gin was sold in alehouses, women were starting to drink in them. Parliament and religious figures believed that this increase in interaction between men and women would increase prostitution and corrupt women.

The Effects of the Acts on Gin

One of the major effects the acts had was nothing at all. Gin was still made, sold and drank in various places, such as street corners and gin shops, throughout the 18th century. When the 1729 Act was brought in, production and the amount of gin which was drank did dip, but production increased in the 1730s.

One of the reasons why gin was still made were loopholes in the acts. The First Gin Act stated that gin was made with ‘juniper berrie, or other fruit, specie or ingredients’ (3) - which is what it is made out of. However, a loophole was that people would simply not put juniper berries in gin but use other ingredients in order to produce legal gin. This did make gin slightly dangerous, especially as some people put turpentine in their ‘gin’. If it gave gin a bad taste, the drinkers would not have cared, as they drank gin to get drunk, but it was still dangerous. Another loophole was related to the amount of gin sold. It was only illegal to sell gin if less than a gallon was sold. Many people actually bought over a gallon in order to still have gin. In most cases, it was either wasted, as it was a great deal of gin and storing it was difficult, or people drank it all and became ill or even died.

There was a great deal of criticism toward the reformers, as the acts were seen as discrimination towards the working class. This was due to them being the main group who drank it, even if the middle and upper classes were not excluded from drinking gin. Interestingly, the upper classes also drank illegal drinks, as they drank imported brandy, but there were far fewer consequences for them. It was such behavior which encouraged the working class to carry on making and selling the drink, as if the upper classes could do it, why not them? This discrimination made the working class less willing to compromise with Parliament as they were not being treated equally. 

The acts had a negative effect, as there was an increase in violence. There were many riots by the working class, as their drink was being taken away from them and they were being controlled by the upper classes. Another reason for the violence were fines. Those who were found selling gin were fined £10, which was a great deal of money to the poor and working classes. If they were informed on by their neighbors and were found guilty, that person who had informed on them was given some or all of the money. This would have been seen as a good deal, as they were given money without doing much work. However, if informers were found, they were attacked and, in some cases, killed.

In the late 18th century, the production, selling and drinking of gin declined. This was partly due to new acts, such as those of 1751 and 1760 being brought in, which were more about compromise than pure prohibition. Even so, the decline in use was mostly down to the bad harvests, which started in 1757. Parliament put a ban on exports of grain for a few years, which made the distillers angry, but Parliament was more concerned over food for the general population than the distillers. The acts and the bad harvests made gin very expensive for the poor, and most went back to the cheaper alternative of beer.

In the later 18th century, there was the introduction of gin brands, with Gordon’s in 1769 and Plymouth Gin in 1796. Parliament considered such brands both positive, as only a select few were making gin, and negative, as gin was still being made and in some ways became more established as bigger companies were making it.

Were the Acts successful?

To an extent the acts were successful, as they did make gin more difficult to sell. However, the acts actually made the situation much worse in other ways, as they increased violence and worsened the quality of gin. But more importantly, gin never disappeared, even with the decline, as there was still bootleg gin or brands.

And finally, gin has now become very much part of our culture.

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References

• 1/2 www.history.co.uk/study-topics/history-of-london/18th-century-gin-craze
• 3 Patrick Dillon, The Much Lamented Death of Madam Genava, (Review, 2002) p88

Bibliography

• Gin Lane, www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pd/w/ william_hogarth,_gin_lane.aspx
• www.history.co.uk
• www.self.gutenberg.org
• Patrick Dillon, The Much Lamented Death of Madam Genava, (Review, 2002)

Cold War History - Are we friends or enemies? – From the Vietnam War to Détente – Part 2: 1962-1979 (Required History)

In an unstable world, how do you know who your friends and enemies are?

You don’t.

The Cold War was international affairs for the second half of the 20th Century. Nuclear weapons testing, civil wars in all corners of the globe and the race for economic dominance were all key spheres of the Cold War, although they were just a few elements of a very complex global puzzle. More so than the great battles between Carthage and Rome in Ancient times or the Napoleonic Wars, the Cold War defined our world. But, there was one key difference between the Cold War and earlier major wars. Due to advances in technology and communications, the Cold War touched most countries on earth.

Get the book on Amazon

This introduction to the middle years of the Cold War tells the story of the great clash between the Communist Soviet Union and the capitalist USA. It considers events in an intriguing age for international relations. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, there were calls to avert the risk of another nuclear near-miss, and this did lead to an improvement in the super-power relationship; however, underneath this improvement, there remained great tension. To further complicate the situation, China and Europe both became increasingly powerful and assertive. In the world of the 1960s and 1970s, it was hard to know who to trust and who to fear.

Get the book on Amazon

The topics in the book include:

• The Vietnam War and its impact on the Cold War
• Decolonization and the opportunities that arose from it for the super-powers
• The growing power of Western Europe and a major change in Czechoslovakia
• The historic changes in the relationship between Mao Zedong’s China and the super-powers
• The super-powers as friends? Détente, Richard Nixon, and Leonid Brezhnev
• The major nuclear agreements and the arms race
• How serious tensions emerged once more

The approximately 90-page book is the perfect complement to the Cold War History audio series that is available as part of the ‘History in 28-minutes’ podcasts.

Cold War History - To the brink of nuclear destruction – From World War 2 to the Cuban Missile Crisis – Part 1: 1945-1962 (Required History)

Do you know why the world came to the brink of nuclear war?

Two words – ‘Cold War’.

The Cold War was international affairs for the second half of the 20th Century. Nuclear weapons testing, civil wars in all corners of the globe and the race foreconomic dominance were all key spheres of the Cold War, although they werejust a few elements of a very complex global puzzle. More so than the greatbattles between Carthage and Rome in Ancient times or the Napoleonic Wars, the Cold War defined our world. But, there was one key difference between the Cold War and earlier major wars. Due to advances in technology and communications, the Cold War touched most countries on earth.

Get the Book on Amazon

This introduction to the early years of the Cold War is the debut book from George Levrier-Jones. He tells the story of the great clash between the Communist Soviet Union and thecapitalist USA. George’s fast-paced, concise writing style will allow you to quickly learn about the key events of the Cold War, and to find out how the world came to the cusp of nuclear annihilation.

Get the Book on Amazon

The topics in the book include:

• The origins of the Cold War and why the USSR and USA emerged from World War 2 as super-powers
• How the Soviet Union and the USA quickly went from war-time allies 
• to enemies
• The key changes in post-war Europe
• The Berlin blockade and the building of the Berlin Wall
• Events in East Asia - the Chinese Civil War and why the Korean War became integral to the Cold War
• Nuclear weapons development
• Uprisings and revolutions in Eastern Europe in the 1950s, including the Hungarian revolution
• The most dangerous event of the early Cold War years, the Cuban Missile Crisis

The approximately 80-page book is the perfect complement to the Cold War History audio series that is available as part of the ‘History in 28-minutes’ podcasts.