A Culture of Victory, a Culture of Collapse

Oct24 by Dave Mathwin

The evaluations of the historically minded often move like a pendulum. I see this throughout my own life. Initially, like everyone, I thought Napoleon a great genius. But then you think again . . . after all, he lost. And what about what happened in Egypt, to say nothing of Russia? And what of all those armies he beat from 1799-1809–nothing more than decrepit, out-dated Enlightenment entities destined for the trash-heap anyway.

After a while, however, I thought again and gave credit where due. Sure, his armies were the perfect foil for the Austrians and Prussians, but he helped create the French army that formed that perfect foil. Like any great leader he imprinted himself all over his army. And we say that the armies he faced were bound for trash-heap only with the benefit of hindsight. Napoleon put them there, after all.

But . . . he lost.

Writing about The Civil War comes with similar pitfalls. As the states began to come together in the Progressive Era (ca. 1880-1920) we looked for unity and healing from our past, and we lionized Lee as a romantically doomed warrior, who nevertheless, performed heroic feats. Lee’s generalship for that era stood second to none. Beginning in the 1960’s historians swung the narrative. They focused on Lee’s irascible temper, his huge losses, his weak opponents, his strategic failures at Antietam, Gettysburg, and so on.

Joseph Glatthar’s excellent General Lee’s Army brings balance back to this narrative. He studies the army of Northern Virginia in depth and concludes that of course, Lee was a great commander. He helped forge a great army with a great record in the field. He deserves much of the credit he receives.

But . . . he lost, and we do well to remember this. Lee’s ultimate defeat may well have had something to do with Lee, and the army he commanded.

Glathaar shows us how the strengths and weaknesses of Lee and his army come from the same place by looking at culture, demographics, the life of the common solider, and those directly under Lee’s command.

We do have to take into account Lee’s frequent opponent, the Union’s Army of the Potomac. From a pure match-up standpoint, it would have been interesting to have Lee, Longstreet, and Jackson oppose Grant, Sherman, and Thomas for the duration of the conflict. As it happened Lee only faced Grant towards the end of the war, and then Grant had to work with the Army of the Potomac, where he inherited a completely different, and vastly inferior, operational and command culture than what he worked with out west.

In A Savage War, the authors point out that the Army of the Potomac inherited a disproportionate number of soldiers recently graduated from West Point. A West Point education tended at that time to over-emphasize math, engineering, and organization (something that U.S. Grant lamented in his memoirs). Such skills have their place, but should not have pride of place in officer training. Those that drank from the firehose of this approach would inevitably give way to excessive caution. Meticulous organization takes a lot of time. In addition, once you have built something so “pure” and pretty, one might not wish to do anything that might get it dirty. This helps explain why McClellan (tops in his class at West Point) could think himself a great general even though he couldn’t actually win a battle. He was excellent in doing what his education, at least in the narrow sense, trained him to do.

The plodding, rigidly organized Army of the Potomac gave Lee and his men a perfect target given their particular strengths.

Glaathar points out that the men in Lee’s army fully believed in their cause and came with the strongest of motivations. Ante-bellum southern society had the duel influences of the aristocratic planter and the Appalachian border-settlers. Both of these cultures emphasized honor and courage. Both of these cultures preached a vision of manliness that gave way to no one. Letters home from top officers on down the ranks show a constant desire for combat and to prove themselves.

Lee both understood and embodied this himself. Many other accounts of his generalship focus on his ability to psychologically assess his opposite number on the Union side and devise the proper approach accordingly. Glaathar adds to this, showing how Lee knew how to use his men expertly. They proved superlative in the counter-attack, and could march quickly and fight hard back-to-back. We see this at Bull Run, in Jackson’s Shenandoah campaign, and at Chancellorsville, as at other times.

But both the aristocratic planter and border settler culture had its weaknesses, and these too had a significant impact on the war.

Organization:

Appalachian border culture emphasized freedom of initiative and eschewed “systems” like tight and itchy collars. Lack of formal structure gives one great freedom. But an army of tens of thousands needs tight organization to act as a unit. Without this organization, large scale offensives could never be undertaken.

Discipline:

Many in the south seceded because they did not want to be told what to do by anyone they did not like or respect. They tended to run hot and cold alternatively. Sure enough, Lee had a hard time enforcing discipline. We hear a lot about Union armies looting in the South, but Lee’s army at times looted the Virginia countryside for supplies, stole from the bodies of dead Union soldiers,** and had a hard time maintaining equipment. Many went AWOL unexpectedly not necessarily out of cowardice but because “they felt like it.”

Honor and Ego:

The aristocratic nature of the army came through in the upper echelon of the officers. The bickered for position and rank. At times they disobeyed directly if they felt insulted. Some at times seemed to prefer maintaining their honor to winning a battle.

All of these weaknesses would make coordinated action over a large distance difficult. Perhaps this is why Lee spread out his armies in his invasion of the north in 1863. It gave each commander more independence. But . . . when the time came for coordinated action, invariably Lee’s forces could not pull it off.

Shelby Foote wrote that, “Gettysburg was the price the South paid for having Lee command their army.” I’m guessing that he meant at least that no one is perfect. But I surmise that he meant more. The weaknesses of Lee’s army, and of much of southern culture, outed themselves at that battle. There the Confederacy fought a weaker opponent, but in ways that favored Union’s strengths. The good ground and interior lines of the Union forces at Gettysburg played right into the laps of the North’s slower, plodding, yet more bull-headed nature.^

Lee’s 1863 invasion may have been a mistake, but he intuited correctly that the South could not win a long and protracted war. He emphasized the Confederacy’s logistical shortcomings, but the army had cultural shortcomings as well. Perhaps Lee had read and recalled Tocqueville’s thoughts on aristocratic and democratic societies at war. Tocqueville comments that,

In aristocracies the military profession, being a privileged career, is held in honor even in time of peace. Men of great talents, great attainments, and great ambition embrace it; the army is in all respects on a level with the nation, and frequently above it.

We have seen, on the contrary, that among a democratic people the choicer minds of the nation are gradually drawn away from the military profession, to seek by other paths distinction, power, and especially wealth. After a long peace, and in democratic times the periods of peace are long, the army is always inferior to the country itself. In this state it is called into active service, and until war has altered it, there is danger for the country as well as for the army.

It may be remarked with surprise that in a democratic army after a long peace all the soldiers are mere boys, and all the superior officers in declining years, so that the former are wanting in experience, the latter in vigor. This is a leading cause of defeat, for the first condition of successful generalship is youth. I should not have ventured to say so if the greatest captain of modern times had not made the observation.

A long war produces upon a democratic army the same effects that a revolution produces upon a people; it breaks through regulations and allows extraordinary men to rise above the common level. Those officers whose bodies and minds have grown old in peace are removed or superannuated, or they die. In their stead a host of young men is pressing on, whose frames are already hardened, whose desires are extended and inflamed by active service. They are bent on advancement at all hazards, and perpetual advancement; they are followed by others with the same passions and desires, and after these are others, yet unlimited by aught but the size of the army. The principle of equality opens the door of ambition to all, and death provides chances for ambition. Death is constantly thinning the ranks, making vacancies, closing and opening the career of arms.

. . . An aristocratic nation that in a contest with a democratic people does not succeed in ruining the latter at the outset of the war always runs a great risk of being conquered by it.

Dave

*Interesting parallels exist between Lee and Napoleon’s armies. Both faced stiff, rigidly organized opponents. Both emphasized movement, speed, and capitalized on the energy and spirit of their men. Both had great success early, but both also suffered significant setbacks as their respective wars dragged on. Each faced manpower issues, but also, their opponents got better over time and neither Napoleon or Lee made the necessary adjustments based on the improvement in their opponents.

In fairness to the Army of the Potomac, the soldiers displayed extreme courage at Fredericksburg, and were stalwart in the defense at Gettysburg.

**Many southerners decry the actions of Sherman. Glaathar demonstrates that Lee’s army did many of the same things, albeit on a smaller, less organized scale, as Sherman’s army. And . . . they did this not just in Pennsylvania but in Virginia as well.

^Fredericksburg might serve as a good example of these qualities, with a negative outcome.

8th Grade Literature: Mobilis in Mobili

Oct24 by Dave Mathwin

We continued with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea this week and got our first introduction to Captain Nemo.

I hope that the students in the class will not only understand the events of the stories we read, but also understand the meaning of events within the story. That is, the students will hopefully learn to see how literature can entertain them but also challenge them to potentially think and see the world differently. This means learning how to read, in the sense of learning how to discern authorial intent within the text.

So, for example, the characters of Professor Arronax, Ned Land, anmd Conseil assert that the crew of the Nautilus are “pirates” multiple times after entering the vessel. Clearly, Verne means to ask the question as to whether or not Nemo should be considered among likes of Blackbeard. The story may reject this notion, but Verne introduces it to us for a reason. He wants us to entertain the possibility.

No one questions that Captain Nemo is the most important and enigmatic character of the story. The fact that Nemo has lived on in our cultural parlance, and that his character has been adopted into other stories, shows that Verne hit the mark with his creation. Before the characters formally meet Nemo, they are introduced to his motto, another clue to its importance in unlocking the meaning of the story. Around the ship the characters see the letter “N” surrounded by the words

Mobilis in Mobili

The phrase can be translated literally as “Moving in a Moving Thing,” but is better captured more colloquially as “moving within motion,” or some also suggest, “changing within change.”

Verne could be described as a writer of popular fiction, but there is a lot to unpack in this phrase as it relates to the story.

Not coincidentally, the phrase is associated with a submarine and a crew that never touches land. They are always within water, which is continuously fluid and changing its shape. So, from a metaphysical point of view, the Nautilus and her crew must always “change within change,” but this continuous flux becomes in itself a new stasis. Land represents stability, and without land, they will need to continuously adapt. This continuous adaptation still produces recognizable patterns.

This lends insight into Nemo’s later assertion that he is bound by no law other than his own. Without the stability of land, there can be no fixed law of conduct. Yet, this continuos change does produce something resembling stability within Nemo’s personality. His law resembles that of civilization, but it still stands slightly askew, and hopefully the students will see this.

The fact that Nemo’s super submarine is called the Nautilus also reveals much. The word choice has several levels of meaning:

In Greek, the word nautilus means simply, “sailor.”
The nautilus is a sea creature within a shell. It is the sole living creature whose bony structure is in fact a shell. The submarine becomes the skin of the crew, an extension of themselves.
Metaphorically, the grooves of the shell spiral downward continuously, a foreshadowing of the end of the book, as well as a metaphor for Nemo’s life. Under the sea, enclosed in the sub, there would be no natural way to measure the passage of time. Without the ability to mark time, one will be in danger of not being able to discern meaning from experience.

The Nautilus offers a kind of luxury and temporary interest for the scholar, Professor Arronax. But for the more normal Ned Land, the sub is nothing more than a prison. Here again Verne wants us to consider not only if meaning requires time, but also if meaning requires stability. Is the world Nemo built enough to sustain him psychologically and morally, or will it leave Nemo only to the whims of his moods?

We will continue to explore these questions as we get into the meat of the story in the following weeks.

Dave

“The Civil War as a Theological Crisis”

Oct17 by Dave Mathwin

The Enlightenment historian Edward Gibbon pointed out with some ridicule that in the Arian controversy, Christianity got into a kerfuffle over the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet — the iota. At the Council of Nicea Arians wanted the word “homoiousios,” meaning “similar substance” inserted into the creed concerning the nature of Christ. They were comfortable thinking of Jesus in divine terms, but not as an equal to the Father in His essence. Led by Athanasius, the orthodox contingent objected, insisting on the word “homoousious,” meaning “same substance.”

For Gibbon and other Enlightenment oriented thinkers, this all seemed too much. Such minutiae, such trifling, would upset things so unnecessarily. Given that Gibbon liked nothing better than a well-oiled worldly machine, he saw the controversy as so many wrenches in the works. Of course Gibbon missed the point entirely. The difference between viewing Christ as fully God as opposed to merely “God-like” changes one’s conception of the entire universe, creation, and history itself. When it comes to our theological understanding, what we worship will have dramatic consequences.

I’ve always believed that understanding religious belief formed the key to understanding any event in history, be it great or small. Often this is more easily seen in the ancient world, where religion showed on the sleeves much more so than today. But men are men, and as a man thinks, so he is (Prov. 23:7). Mark Noll points out the religious roots and the religious mistakes of both North and South in his excellent The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. Noll’s analysis gets to the heart of the real differences between North and South, and shows how these religious differences formed the roots of the political disagreements that led to war. Both sides professed belief in the authority of the Bible, and both sides reached different conclusions. That’s obvious to anyone, but Noll’s approach shows these different interpretations came from the same source American/Enlightenment source, and that makes this brief work a real treasure.

By 1850 America experienced a deep political crisis, but astute observers of the day saw that the roots went deeper. A Protestant ethos merged nicely with Democratic principles in America quite easily. The individual should be able to read, reason, and think for himself. Both Protestantism and Democratic government rest on the idea that truth always has a “plain” and obvious character. It could be argued that an agreed upon “atmosphere” of sorts existed between Protestant denominations despite their differences (Noll takes this for granted and does not argue the point). But in 1844 both Methodist and Baptist churches (the largest in the U.S. at that time) experienced deep schisms. A broken Church will lead to a broken nation, and leaders from the North and South predicted this. Henry Clay opined that, “this sundering of religious ties . . . I consider the greatest source of danger to our country. In 1850 John Calhoun of South Carolina warned that if the great Protestant denominations finally broke, “nothing would be left to hold the States together except force.”* Noll writes,

If we keep in mind that it was never only a matter of interpreting individual biblical texts, but always a question of putting actively to use the authoritative Book on which the national culture of the United States had been built, then we are in a position to understand why in 1860 battles over the Bible were so important, why divergent views of providence cut so deeply, and . . . why the Civil War illuminated much about the general character of religion in America.

First, the South.

Southern arguments in defense of slavery had the advantage of simplicity and (the apparent) strict fidelity to the Biblical text. They pointed out that . . .

God allowed Israel to have slavery
Abraham and other luminaries owned slaves
Jesus never condemned the institution of slavery
Nowhere in the epistles is slavery ever condemned. In fact, slaves are repeatedly told to obey their masters. Paul, after finding Onesimus, an escaped slave, has him return to Philemon.

Thus, to argue (as abolitionists often did) that anyone who practiced slavery could have nothing to do with Biblical Christianity flies in the face of the entire and obvious biblical teaching on slavery. The case was open and shut.

Northern arguments also strove for stark clarity and simplicity.

The most common arguments usually had the following characteristics:

Slavery had inextricable links to tyranny and moral abuses that the ethic of the Gospel strenuously opposed
Slavery contradicted principles of justice, love, and mercy found throughout the Bible
Slavery went against the general spirit of the “brotherhood of mankind” propounded by certain texts, like Galatians 3:28.

In other words, anti-slavery arguments inevitably used first principles but tended to avoid textual rigor and so failed to deal head-on with what pro-slavery advocates said. Furthermore, many anti-slavery arguments wedded themselves to “natural reason,” “self-evident truths,” and “republican practices” and at times relied on these ideas more than Scripture itself. Thus, as Noll comments, “The primary reason the biblical defense of slavery remained so strong was that biblical attacks on slavery were so weak.” Again, Noll doesn’t dispute that slavery was wrong. His point is one rarely made, that Northern arguments against slavery had some of the same flaws as pro-slavery arguments. Thus, the two ships were likely to pass in the night.

Much better arguments against American slavery existed from some Protestants, and interestingly, some Catholics as well. Such arguments pointed out that . . .

Using Israel as an example for American slavery made the mistake of conflating Israel with America, a mistake Americans had been making for generations.
If the South could used ancient Israel for support, they should be informed by their practices. For one, slaves had rights in Israel, and they did not in the South. For another, Mosaic law prescribed years of Jubilee every 7th year and again at the 50th year in which all slaves were freed and all debts canceled. The South never practiced this. And again, slavery in Israel was not racial, perpetual, or hereditary. The South condemned themselves by asking to be judged by the law.
Certain biblical principles of justice, mercy, and love certainly applied to arguments against slavery. But these more careful Protestant and Catholic voices applied them differently than most abolitionists. For starters, they kept such principles clear of democratic ideology — on which Scripture remains silent at least directly (and pro-slavery arguments pointed this out). The goal for the Christian, according to these arguments, was not so much to live in light of specific texts, but in light of the flow of history itself. If God’s Kingdom is not just coming but is already here in Christ, we have to live in light of the “now” reality of God’s Kingdom. In God’s Kingdom we will not/do not enslave one another. Evidence exists for this not just in Scripture, but in the early history of the Church. Christians worked to liberate slaves and medieval civilization stood as the first major civilization in history to essentially eliminate slavery. It got reintroduced only in the Renaissance, when pagan, Roman concepts of property and ownership tragically got transported back into Europe’s bloodstream.
The Roman example of slavery also condemned southerners, at least to an extent. For one, Roman slavery lacked the racial character of Southern slavery. In one of the best chapters in the book, Noll pulls from numerous sources that show that the real problem for the South was not slavery but race.

So whatever one might say about slavery in a general vacuum, no good arguments existed for slavery as practiced by the ante-bellum South.

Unfortunately such arguments never made it into the mainstream of American cultural life. As to why, we might assume something along the lines of a “short attention span,” but this fits modern times more readily. In fact, audiences flocked to hear discourses and debates of all kinds in the mid 19th century. Lincoln and Douglas in 1858 spoke for many hours at a time to packed audiences. One debate on slavery lasted for multiple hours over multiple days to an audience of several hundred. Rather, the reason lies in the common roots shared by mainstream arguments about slavery on both sides.

The mainstream arguments for and against slavery before the Civil War had the following characteristics:

They involve no more than a 1-2 step reasoning process
They insist on the “plain” character of truth. Neither side could be described as anti-intellectual, but arguers for both sides seemed to show an exasperation with the need to develop arguments at all. The truth was so obvious!
Anti-slavery arguments relied on “simple” principle, pro-slavery arguments on isolated small texts. Both arguments only functioned along one track, one line of thought.

Whichever side won the argument (i.e., the war), the future for having the Church influence culture looked bleak. The Enlightenment had done its dirty work.

Subconsciously perhaps, we reject oversimplifications because reality and our experience have more complexity and mystery than the Enlightenment can fathom. Rejecting this truth condemned us to search aimlessly for generations hence to fill the void with politics, “The American Dream,” sex, and the like.** Obviously western theologians could and did make nuanced and complex arguments, but western culture as a whole failed to notice or heed them.

As a buttress to his observations about slavery arguments, Noll includes a section on the idea of God’s providence as debated before and after the war. True to form, both sides found obvious answers to the results of the conflict. For the Southerners, even their defeat showed the rightness of their cause, for “God disciplines those He loves” — i.e. — “We are experiencing discipline, showing God’s love for us, showing the rightness of our cause. For it is often true that the godly rarely prosper in this world.” For the North, their arguments had a simpler character, though no doubt the South would have made them had they won the war. “We won. God was and is on our side. Therefore we were/are right.” Lincoln understood better, and pushed back on this simple approach. We may always know that God has events in His hand, he agreed, but the particular application of His providence often remains a mystery to us. Not even someone of Lincoln’s stature could get others to embrace this more nuanced view.

Noll’s work has great value for his illumination of the state of religion in 19th century America. What makes it even more intriguing is how he reveals what may be the central problem of American political and educational life. Our problem really resides not in short attention spans, not in one political party or the other, not the sexual revolution, or other such movement. Rather, Americans need to grapple with how our democratic ideology meshes with the nature of truth itself.

Dave

*Noll includes some interesting statistics showing the decline of religion and growth of government. This should not surprise us, as Calhoun (not someone I’d like to agree with very often) foretold.

In 1860 about 4.7 million people voted in the presidential election, but in that same year between 3-4 times that many regularly attended church on Sundays. In 2004, about 115 million went to the polls, which equaled the number of regular church attendees in 1860 (Noll should take into account, however, the fact that women and many minorities did not vote in 1860).
In 1860 the number of Methodist clergy alone equaled the number of postal workers. Today the ratio of postal workers to Methodist clergy approximates 9-1.
Before mobilization in 1860 the number of active duty military was about 1/2 the number of clergy in the country. In the early 21st century, before mobilization for the war in Iraq, the ratio of military to clergy was about 3-1.
In 1860 the total income of the churches and religious organizations nearly equaled the federal budget. Today the ratio of federal income to annual religion-related giving is about 25-1.
In 1860 about 400 institutions of higher-learning existed, with nearly all of them run by religious groups.
In 1860 there were 35 churches for each bank. Today there are four churches for each bank.

**In an interesting digression, Noll points out that warfare and dramatic social change have often produced great works of lasting theological depth. One thinks immediately of Augustine’s The City of God, but numerous other examples exist (St. Bernard during the Crusades, and St. Francis experienced a dramatic shift after fighting in a small war. In the modern era, Bonhoeffer comes most clearly to mind). By that model, the Civil War should have, but failed, to produce any significant theological insight, and this reveals a thin theology throughout North and South at that time.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the great storytellers of the 20th century, MacDonald, Lewis, Tolkien, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy — all came from liturgical and historical traditions. Lewis and Tolkien both fought in W.W. I, and O’Connor and Percy both suffered from lifelong illnesses.

8th Grade Literature: Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Oct17 by Dave Mathwin

Greetings all,

This week we mostly took a break from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as students finished their rough drafts of their Song of Roland essays. In the syllabus I handed out at Orientation, I mentioned that we would be seeing two movies this year that fit with the themes of our particular unit. Both Old Man and the Sea and The Song of Roland have similar characters and ask some of the same questions. Both Roland and Santiago

See their life almost wholly through their job/vocation (knight and fisherman)
Dedicate themselves to their task with great courage, risking their life for their “calling.”
Avoid “thinking too much”–analysis leads to paralysis for both men. For both men, the truth of their lives comes in their actions.
Achieve greatness, but they could also both be accused of having too narrow a focus. They have to sacrifice a great deal to become who they are.

Our movie for this unit is Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a documentary about the man many believe to be the greatest sushi chef in the world. His restaurant is small, nestled in the midst of a metro train stop. But foreign dignataries have come to dine at his establishment, and there is a now such a long wait list for diners that one must call long in advance to get a seat.

The movie has a great to reccomend it. It immerses one into the world of sushi and the personality of Jiro. While obviously no documentary can explore every area of anyone’s life, one gets the sense that the film captures the essence of Jiro the man. One can admire a great deal about Jiro:

He has worked with sushi since he was a little boy. He has no real formal training and everything he knows he gleaned from his own experience.
He could have easily grown rich through various means involving franchising, promotionals, etc. but he keeps a low profile. Sure, he is reasonably well off as an individual, but one immediately senses that it is not money, but the craft that drives him.
He has a wholehearted dedication to perfection in his craft. Only a small percentage of what he and his staff make actually gets served.
Critics say the key to his success is the simplicity and purity of his dedication. He serves sushi, and only sushi. There is no music, fancy lights, or even conversation in his restaurant. Nothing is there to distract from the food.

Jiro is probably more evocative of Santiago instead of Roland, but as you can see, he shares similarities with both of them. Both Hemingway and the author of The Song of Roland have a great fondness for their main characters. But their admiration for Santiago and Roland, respectively, is not uncritical. Great literature knows how to ask questions of itself. Jiro Dreams of Sushi also has great admiration for its subject. But it would not be such an influential documentary film if the movie only involved hero worship.

A closer viewing of the film reveals the costs of Jiro’s life and achievements. Like Santiago, he seems a bit of a loner. The movie shows him visiting with friends and family, but this seems added on merely as an attempt to show him as “well rounded.” Jiro does not get that gleam in his eye from visiting family. Like Roland, his dedication to his own sense of calling leaves little room for other voices. As one restaurant critic says, no truly great chef is interested in collaboration. One senses that perhaps he should have retired some time ago and let his son take over, but this seems an impossibility for him.

My hope is that the students will notice some of these shadows around Jiro’s bright sun, and that this might help him understand what we have read so far this year.

10th/11th Grade: Who Owns the Past?

Oct10 by Dave Mathwin

Greetings,

This week we brought some of the events leading up to the Civil War to a close, and examined a few different issues. Studying the Civil War usually brings strong political passions to the fore, and this class has been no exception. I wanted to try and cut to core of what divided the country, and reduce the argument to its essentials.

The past formed a key battleground between the North and South. Both sides claimed sonship from what it meant to be an “American,” and both had different ideas on the meaning of liberty.

The South claimed to be the “heirs of the American Revolution” because

Our founders feared strong central authority, and set up a government designed to give primacy to the states. Lincoln’s Republican administration would (in their view) upset this balance by restricting slavery and inserting themselves into their private lives. The federal government had no right to arbitrate moral questions like slavery for the states. For them to do so amounted to tyranny. “Don’t tread on me,” might have been their motto.
The founders had a vision that was primarily political in nature. They spent a great deal of time discussing the structure of government, and much less on its purpose. If the structure of government changed, what it meant to be an American changed.

The North countered with

The founders vision obviously had political overtones, but primarily had a moral character. The phrase, “All men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,” gives birth to our nation. The founders did not fully follow through on that vision. Therefore, a political system that seeks the perpetuation and extension of slavery can have nothing to do with what our country should be about.
The American Revolution did not fully finish until we found a stable government in the Constitution. The Constitution, ratified by all southern states, sought to form “a more perfect union,” and increased the power of the federal government.
While many founders owned slaves, most of them believed (erroneously) that slavery would die out on its own. The Northwest Ordinance of 1789 banned slavery in the newly created mid-western states, showing that the Federal Government did have jurisdiction over slavery in new territories, and showing that even slave states understood that slavery would not expand into new territory.

These differences have their resonance in many hot-button issues of the day. Should the federal government make you wear a helmet on a motorcycle? Should the federal government have the right to ban gay marriage or abortion? What role do we want to give them in our private lives? How much power should they have to stop evil?

Classical theorists on government like Aristotle drew rationale for the state based on the family, so an analogy of the family might help us. We can imagine the parents as the originators of the family and those most interested in preserving family unity and harmony between siblings (i.e., the federal government). We can put states in the role of grown children. Some children seem to be leading wayward lives. But what control should parents still have? They might urge a child to stop doing ‘x’ behavior, but what if the child did not listen? What power should the parents have? Should they have access to a means of force to compel their 30 year old children to come to a family reunion or face punishment? What kind of punishments can a parent of a 30 year-old mete out anyway?

Obviously the analogy breaks down at points. But for the federal government to assert that slave-owning states must not own slaves sounded to southern states, “You do not have the ability to govern yourselves. You are not equal to us, who have that ability. You are lesser, and therefore we can dictate to you.”

Those against slavery might have used a different analogy. Perhaps here the children are teens, not independent adults. Independent adults are akin to separate nations with their own families, but the U.S. is still a family of 50 states. Parents grant their teens a certain measure of independence. But parents would grant their teen so much freedom that the integrity of the family unit gets jeopardized.

In the excerpts from Democracy in America that we discussed this week, De Tocqueville talked about how the ideals of liberty and equality ultimately compete against each other. We cannot have equal amounts of liberty and equality, so we must choose where the balance lies. Different people would give different priorities to either liberty or equality.

Scholars have debated for years the cause of the war. Some say that war was about slavery, others say that slavery had nothing to do with it, and instead the war centered on the rights of the states. I prefer to split the horns of the dilemma. In 1861 the issue boiled down to Union v. Secession, but slavery formed the vast majority of the subtext related to this question. It lurked underneath most every significant political debate from at least 1846 on, and in some ways, dominated discussions decades before that going back to the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Economic issues did play a part, but they too had a lot to do with slavery. The map below shows the concentration of slaves in the various states. The darker the color, the higher the concentration.

We see how slavery concentrated near water, or in low lying tidewater areas (i.e. Southeastern VA and MD). This in turn led to the predominance of labor intensive cash crops like cotton or tobacco. Below is a map of how various southern counties voted on the secession question. Obviously, not all wanted secession. The South was not monolithic. But there is a striking link between the counties who voted for secession and the presence of slavery. Clearly, the moral question of slavery and the political issue of slavery went hand-in-hand in 1860-61.

Slavery was a national issue in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, in 1820, 1848, 1850, 1854, 1856, and 1859. It was the main topic of discussion in the Lincoln/Douglas debates of 1858. Why did the various compromises on the issue fail? In fact, could they be said to have made things worse? As time went by and slavery became more prevalent, their attitude went from ‘necessary evil’ to ‘positive good.’ What can explain this shift?

I think we can say the following:

Industrialization in England and the north gobbled up cotton produced in the deep south and helped solidify the power of large plantation farms. The North implicated themselves to a degree in this and did not mind getting cheap cotton from the South.
I don’t think we should miss the psychological/moral component. Shakespeare’s line of “Methinks he doth protest too much,” applies here. Those of you have (or remember having) smaller children know that when you say, “It’s time for bed,” and they immediately whine and shout, “I’m not tired! I’m not tired!” are in fact showing how tired they really are.

This hardening of their views on slavery covered over many contradictions. Masters supposedly civilized their slaves, but they constantly feared slave insurrections. Masters claimed to “enlighten” their slaves but often actually educating them was forbidden by law.

As I mentioned earlier a “North=Good, South=Bad” paradigm will not help us understand the period or the war itself. Many northerners differed little in their view of blacks from the South. Had the North treated blacks better, some of the evils of slavery might have been exposed sooner. Of course, there were those in the south who respected blacks and treated them with dignity. But it is still true to say that the North had an anti-slavery bent even if many had ambiguous feelings about abolishing it. And it is still true to say that many in the South wanted not only to preserve, but extend an institution that broke up families and and allowed masters to use other humans as they saw fit.

These differences over slavery also had links to broader cultural differences rooted in the typical differences between urban and rural societies. Generally speaking. . .

Urban areas

View change as a positive
Believe that we “should not stand still”
Look more to the future than the past

and Rural areas

Seek to avoid change whenever possible
Like to be guided by tradition
Look more to past than the future

These different values form different priorities, and this may also help explain the conflict.

The Frontier Garden City

Oct10 by Dave Mathwin

I am no fan of the “Woke” but a few years ago Ross Douthat wrote a piece entitled “A Crisis our Universities Deserve,” which showed me that at the core of this movement lay something admirable. At some point in the 20th century, college lost its emphasis on ennobling the soul, the great virtues, ideas, etc., and became a means to make more money in life. Certainly in the early 90’s, most of the encouragement from society to go to college came in this form. Students today rightly rebel from this, want more from their education than this, and more from life in general. Many “woke” students seek something moral, something transcendent. Douthat commends them for this, at least.

My public school education left me with the impression that the arc of American History bent towards the good, but of course we had x,y,z, and 1, 2,3, things wrong with us. The list of wrong things had grown since my dad’s day, but still stopped just short of overthrowing the basic arc. Subsequent generations have had the scales tipped. Manifest Destiny, the idea that History/God/Fate/Benign Providence wanted/needed America to span the continent, stood very near the core of our things wrong with us, and seemingly impossible to redeem in any way. After reading Henry Nash Smith’s Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth I had the realization that the Woke and the various champions of Manifest Destiny have a great deal in common, including a highly idealistic goals and a bent towards rebellion against the status quo.

This comparison may surprise some, but makes at least temperamental sense to me. My first reaction to the Woke and Manifest Destiny comes from the gut: “Ick . . . it’s just too much work, too much angst and yearning, too much of everything. Enough, already.” I feel Jerry Seinfeld should have a bit on this–he would agree with me, I’m sure. But one needs more of a foundation to denigrate these two major epochs of our country’s past and present, and one has to admire the energy and drive in both movements.

Smith shows that Manifest Destiny had no direct racial motivations. When race entered into the discussion from some, it usually involved spreading “free labor” across the continent to help limit and eventually squeeze out slavery. Manifest Destiny’s sharpest critics in fact often came from pro-slavery camps, who poured cold water on all of the messianic expectations of free labor across the continent. I found it curious as well that the native Indians got little mention. It strikes me not that they were discounted, but rather not counted from the start. Maybe promoters of expansion automatically assumed that the natives would go along with it. More likely, thoughts of overland Asian trade routes, the fusion of independence, wealth, and power, the sweep of empires throughout time–left no room to see particular people such as the natives. Certainly one could critique the impact of the idea on native peoples, but harming them seems absent from the original intent.

At its core, then Manifest Destiny

Believed firmly in America’s unique role in world history
Allied with many of the progressive causes of the day–causes that today would certainly look progressive–grants of free government things (not $, but land), the belief that the hand of government should engineer certain social and political ends.
Believed strongly in unity–national unity, but also a more expansive international unity, for which the United States could hold the standard. Walt Whitman wrote in his A Passage to India that

The people [are] to become brothers and sisters,

Their races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,

The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near,

The lands welded together.

Whitman being Whitman, he waxes rhapsodically about how Man and Nature shall once again fuse together under the “true Son of God”–not sure whom this was supposed to be. We conclude, then, that Manifest Destiny involved not just our national greatness, but

A grand union of all humanity, abolishing all national differences and dismantling the hierarchies of the old, worn out traditional world.

All of these are strongly progressive causes.

The progressive Woke have their virtues, but their virtues lean so far in one direction that they have to overcompensate, consciously or no, towards the other pole. So while they talk of abolishing all forms of difference in some grand human unity on the one hand, with the other they proclaim a certain kind of radical individuality. We see this in their insistence that anyone can do anything they like with their body, sexuality, etc. On the one hand, the Woke can be fiercely anti-authoritarian and anti-institutional, but on the other, as Patrick Deneen has pointed out, they need Government writ-large to protect them from local, more traditionally minded majorities. And, while the Woke encourage a general sort of mixing, they have a hard time mixing in a fruitful manner, i.e., with relationships, marriages, and families.

With the heroes of expansion west, real or fictional, we see the same motifs. Civilization requires cooperation, but Cooper’s Leatherstocking, Whitman’s rhapsodies, and the real Daniel Boone can never settle and build. The unbounded horizon calls more strongly to them than any particular place. They decide things for themselves on the fly. Their freedom from the shackles of civilization gives them a newfound moral clarity and moral authority, for they are freed from all bigotry of place. They see with universal eyes. In his novel Old Hicks the then-famous Charles W. Webber (a product of Princeton), declares of the Texas Ranger that,

With them the primitive virtues of a heroic manhood are all-sufficient, and they care nothing for reverences, forms, and duties, as civilization has them, but respect each others rights and recognize the awful presence of a benign God in the grandeur of the mountain, forest, plain, valley, and river. . . . Such men do not look to society except with disgust . . .

Interestingly, as part of the plot, Webber has the head mountain man romantically pursue the wife of the villain, and marry her despite she actually being the wife of the evil Count. The “Laws of Nature” here easily become the Laws of God, which trumps the laws of man. Similar arguments today justify ditching traditional sexual ethics. For example, those that transition, or “come out,” are granted a carte blanche in their decisions regardless of its impact on those around them, for their very distance from society with these decisions grants them supposed insight and authority.

Webber wrote fictional characters, but life imitated art in some respects with the foremost advocates for the frontier. Francis Parkman, another ivy-league grad (Harvard) traveled west in the summer of 1842 following his sophomore year. In his journal Parkman showed disdain for most of the actual people he met, especially the livestock farmer, a foreshadowing of sorts of the frayed relationship between coastal elites and flyover country. After passing beyond civilization further into the forest, Smith notes that “[Parkman’s] tone changes completely.” The independent woodsman garners immense respect: “He is a remarkably intelligent fellow . . . resolute and independent as the wind.” Smith writes,

Parkman’s antithetical attitudes towards farmers and the hunters of the wilderness illustrate the fact that . . . two distinct “West’s” existed in the minds of many [advocates of the frontier from the east]. The agricultural west was tedious. Its inhabitants belonged to a despised social class. The Wild West was by contrast an exhilarating region of adventure in the open air. Its heroes . . . were in reality not members of society at all, but noble anarchs owning no master, free denizens of a limitless wilderness.

Advocates for Manifest Destiny could, like the Woke, see civilization in sweeping terms, and they could see the heroic individual. They both have a harder time with groups in between these categories, the basic societal building blocks of villages, farms, towns, etc.

A competing mythos, that of the west as paradisal garden, also informed America’s westward push. This motif had more to say for it, as it usually involved families, but still had its rose-colored glasses. Timothy Flint wrote against attitudes like Parkman’s, and gloried in farm life, writing in 1827:

Thousands of independent and happy yeoman reside [in the west], with their numerous, healthy, and happy families about them, with the ample abundance that fills their granaries, with their young orchards, whose branches must be propped to sustain the weight of their fruit, beside their beautiful rivers and beech woods, in which the squirrels skip, the deer browse, and the sweet red-bird sings, and with the prospect of settling their children on any of the dozens of farms that surround them.

James Lanman echoed such ideas in the 1830’s . . .

If, as has been remarked by distinguished statesman, cities are the sores of the political body where the bad matter of the state concentrates what healthful attitudes of mind and body are afforded by agricultural enterprise. The exhilarating atmosphere of rural life, the invigorating exercise afforded by its various occupations, the pure water, the necessities supplied for daily existence, leading to early and virtuous marriages, all point to this pursuit as best adapted to the comfort of the individual man.

I do not like to agree with the anti Free-soil crowd (often, though not always, secessionists and pro-slavery) on much of anything, but the “Messenger” was on to something in 1856, when it opined that

Farming is hardly a pleasant occupation, and the idea that it is comes from dreamers and poets. The actual, manual operations of farming are irksome and repulsive to the great mass of mankind.

Alas, reality set in for the devotees of the garden myth shortly after the Civil War. Smith writes,

The yawning gap between agrarian theory and post-war reality . . . comes out in the farmer’s crusades of the last 25 years of the 19th century. The western farmer had been told that he was not a peasant but a peer of the realm; that his contribution to society was basic, and all others peripheral or parasitic, in comparison cities were sores on the body politic. . . . He had been told that he was compensated for any austerity in his mode of life by receiving shelter from the temptations of luxury and vice, and against the ups and downs of the market. His outstanding characteristic was his independence of character and condition.

But after the Civil War Republican policy obviously favored the city against the country, the merchant against the farmer. And the western farmer found that instead of being independent, he was at the mercy not only of the Chicago and New York and Liverpool grain pits, but also of the railways and steamships lines that he must rely on to get his crop to market

I have read most of the volumes of Toynbee’s unabridged A Study of History. I think him a great master and I owe him a great debt, but I found the central theme of Volume III, which describes the growth of civilizations after their infancies, so annoying I stopped reading about halfway through some years ago. I have yet to pick it up again. Toynbee rightly reacted against material measures of progress. A civilization surely must be able to advance in more ways that territory and GDP. Toynbee developed a different approach, which meant a good start. But he ended with what he called “etherealization.” The idea seems to run along the lines of

A civilization develops an idea or technique that works for them, but that idea/process, has a limited growth potential because it is anchored to its locality
The civilization then extracts the core of the idea, removing it from its trappings, thus making it more transferrable across space.
This allows for more sharing of ideas, etc. which aids growth. The process is essentially cooperative and other oriented.

He takes, as an example, the alphabet as an etherealization of language, as opposed to ideograms. Alphabets transfer across cultures relatively easily, but China’s writing, among other things, will not allow for this, keeping them isolated.

Toynbee often nods via anecdote and analysis to “the old ways are best.” He wasn’t always consistent in his ideas, but this is not a fault. He usually explored possibilities as opposed to asserting things absolutely. But etherealization shows Toynbee’s weakness for too much generality, too much “Platonism” (but only in the worst sense of that word). Lifting something too far off the ground tends to make it dangerous and destabilizing to society, like a steroid. Supporters of Woke politics, and mid-19th century supporters of Manifest Destiny, have this same problem. What masks itself as “progress” in fact only abstracts what in embodied form might actually be good, though less dramatic, ideas.

American history mashes together so many competing concepts. Sometimes this results in great creative tension. We get into trouble when succumb to the lure of the unbounded everything America has always foolishly promised.

We should note that the Old Testament takes a dim view of cities. Cain builds the first one, from which evil and violence come, and then you have Sodom, the cities built by Hebrew slaves for Pharaoh, Babylon, Ninevah, and the like. But the end of the New Testament shows the final restoration taking place with a garden within a city–even cities get redeemed in God’s providence over history. So, the frontier, the farm, the city–every civilization that actually functions needs all three.

Dave

8th Grade Literature: Introduction to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Oct3 by Dave Mathwin

Next week we will start our next book for the year, Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Verne’s stories captivated the people of his time. Many of his books have been made into movies, which is one measure of cultural resonance. His stories had straightforward plots and generally stock characters, which aided their serialization into the popular magazines of the day. So on one level, I hope that the students enjoy the story as an adventure tale.

But like any great author, a particular worldview informs the work, and the story raises interesting questions for us to consider.

The Relationship Between Technology and Freedom

Verne wrote in the mid-late 19th century, a time of enormous technological change, perhaps a shift greater than what we have experienced the last twenty years or so. The Industrial Revolution not only remade the economy, it shifted how we worked and lived as a society. This period saw the spread of democratic ideals throughout Europe and America as well, and the casting off of traditional institutions and ideas. Elites across the western world lost a great deal of status, which culminated in World War I. So one the one hand, the growth of political freedom and technology went hand in hand.

Yet in our day, we see that the relationship between technology and freedom is not so straightforward. Our phones give us immediate access to information everywhere, but they also track us and have a way of fixating our attention. Computers allow us to be more creative and productive at work but this also means that work can follow us anywhere at anytime. Cars allow us to roam with more speed and flexibility than at any previous time in history but they break down frequently and require us to work long hours to maintain them.

This paradox is not confined to our day. For example, most saw the obvious benefits of the Industrial Revolution in the abundance of goods at cheaper prices for a great mass of people. In very real ways, the standard of living went up. To achieve this, millions of people had to work menial, robotically repetitive jobs in factories for 12-14 hours a day.

In Verne’s story, Captain Nemo consciously sought to free himself from the constraints of civilization’s laws and mores, and takes to the sea . . . where he spends his life confined in a metal shell. The Nautilus gives and takes away from Nemo and his crew in equal measure. We shall explore this relationship as we read.

The Relationship Between Man and Society

We often define freedom as the absence of constraints, i.e., no one tells me what to eat for lunch, or what movie to see, or who to vote for. In this respect Nemo and his crew are “free.” But as already noted, this form of freedom comes with a price. Philosophers and theologians outline another view of freedom, one where the constraints put upon us actually aid us in achieving our proper ends as men and women. For example, a train is certainly constrained by the tracks on which it moves. Yet those very constraints help the train be what it what it was created to be. Without tracks, a train cannot fulfill its proper “end,” or (to use Aristotle’s phrase) “telos.” A train sitting in the woods has no freedom to be a train.

So too, our families, communities, and our country certainly put constraints upon us. Children and adults alike resent them at times. We might rather play the video game than do our homework. We might rather finish our movie than clean the kitchen or change the diaper of a crying child. On a societal level, our politicians can annoy and disappoint us, and we may pine for other lands where the grass seems greener. Captain Nemo is the classic “tortured soul” that our culture has trained us to admire. We can certainly appreciate Nemo’s courage, intelligence, and devotion to his crew. But we need to see how Nemo’s separation from civilization has also warped his sensibilities. Our connections to those around us shape who we are, and without them, we are left with the freedom of the void.

Many business leaders, politicians, and the like, reflect that it is “lonely at the top.” I remember my pastor in college confiding to me that most all of his truly good friends were other pastors. They shared a common bond that others cannot quite relate to. So too, a ship’s captain will likely find the highest level of kinship with other captains. But because Nemo has severed ties with the world, he cut himself off from the possibility of that kinship. He has his ship, his books, and his studies, to comfort him.

8th Grade Literature: The Joy of Battle

Sep26 by Dave Mathwin

This week we continued with The Song of Roland and delved into the topic of the violence in the story.

Those familiar with this story will note partial similarities to Homer’s The Iliad, and perhaps these similarities were intended by the author. Both stories have extended battle scenes with vivid descriptions of the violence, with limbs cracked, armor pierced, heads split, and so on. Both stories have their authors and their characters exulting in the carnage. Here is just one example:

Gradonies was bold and brave, a strong intrepid fighter. Now he finds himself faced with Roland. And though he has never seen him before, he recognizes him by his proud face, noble body, his regard for bearing, and he is filled uncontrollable dread. He tries to escape but fails, for the Count strikes him with such force that the blow splits the helmet, nose piece and all, cleaves through his nose, and his mouth, and his teeth, and his whole body and the coat of linked chain mail encasing it, the gilded saddle, both sides of the silver saddle tree, and deep into the horse’s back. He kills them both. Nothing could have saved them.

And another, this one involving not just a ‘regular’ soldier, but a high ranking clergyman, the Archbishop Turpin:

Nothing can turn [the Archbishop] aside: he charges against Abisme and strikes him on the shield studded with amethysts and blazing rubies, which a devil in Val Metas had given to the Emir Galafres, who in turn presented it to Abisme. Turpin strikes him; he does not spare him; and after one blow I don’t think the shield was worth a farthing. He chops through the body from one side to the other and kicks the corpse onto the bare ground.

The French say: “That was a noble stroke! The cross will not suffer while the Archbishop is there to protect it.”

We might expect such similar language from Homer’s tale of pagan Greece, but The Song of Roland fashions itself squarely within a Christian worldview, and means to communicate a Christian message. We might understand as Christians the need for violence at times. But violence is necessary only when something is wrong in the world. Some might assume that if we must fight, we should conflicted about it and have a heavy heart about our task. Above all, we certainly should not revel in it.

Whatever you may think about this sentiment (and it is one shared by many moderns, Christian or otherwise), it certainly was not one shared by the author, and we should consider why.

I remember years ago my next door neighbor had her grandson living with her on the weekends for a few months. He was in training to be a police officer. When I asked where he hoped to be assigned, she replied, “He wants to be right in the thick of it in downtown Baltimore. He wants to be where the action is.” Naturally this attitude worried his grandmother, but she said most of his academy friends felt the same way.

Some of you may know that one of my sons recently graduated from his training to be a firefighter, and is now working regular shifts at a local station. His first week was slow. Sure, a few interesting things happened on some other shifts, but his shift had it easy. This meant some downtime at the station, and some light days. You might think that a job where not much happened might be appealing, but my son was frustrated. In his view, he didn’t become a firefighter to play cards. He wanted action.

One can have two perspectives on this:

These are the wrong attitudes to have. If one wants “action” as a police officer or firefighter, then one “wants” crime and property destruction to occur. The world would be better without crime or fires or medical emergencies. We do have to deal with them, but we should not be “excited” to deal with such things.
Since crime and fire do exist, we need to have people trained to deal with them. If we need to deal with them, wouldn’t it be better to enjoy the work? Is fighting crime or fire something one can do to the glory of God? If so, they should ideally find joy in the task. Probably, the cop who enjoyed the job is more likely to be better at it than someone who hated it.

One might think that Roland as a character belongs to the past, but not necessarily. He is a type, although one we don’t see much of anymore. In CS Lewis’ autobiography Surprised by Joy he recounts his experiences meeting different kinds of soldiers in the trenches of WW I. He writes,

Perhaps the best of all us was Wallie. Wallie was a farmer, a Roman Catholic, a passionate soldier (the only man I ever met who really longed for fighting) and gullible to the [highest degree]. The technique was to criticize the Yeomanry. Poor Wallie knew that it was the bravest, the most efficient, the hardest and cleanest corps that ever sat on horses. He knew all that inside, having learned it from an uncle in the Yeomanry when he was a child. But he could not get [his words] out. He stammered, and contradicted himself, and always came at last to his trump card: “I wish my Uncle Ben were here to talk to you. He’d tell you.” Mortals must not judge but I doubt whether any man who fought in France who was more likely to go straight to Heaven if he were killed. I would have been better employed cleaning his boots than laughing at him. I may add that I did not enjoy the short amount of time I spent in the company he commanded. Wallie had a genuine passion for killing Germans and a complete disregard of his own or anyone else’s safety. He was always striking out bright ideas at which the hair of us subalterns would stand on end. Luckily, he could be easily dissuaded by any plausible argument that occurred to us. Such was his valor and his innocence that he never suspected us of any but a military motive.

Charlemagne’s battle cry is “Mountjoy!” and his sword is named “Joy” (as translated from the French), so we know his approach. Some might assume that Charlemagne was a war-mongering sadist, but the story will not allow for this interpretation. Among other things, there are the last lines in the book, which read,

The King has gone to bed in his vaulted bedroom. God sends St. Gabriel to visit him, and he says, “Charles summon all of the hosts of your Empire and enter the land of Bire by force of arms, and rescue King Vivien, for the pagans have laid seige to him in the city of Imphe, and the Christians there are pleading and crying out for you.”

The Emperor does not wish to go.

“Oh God,” says the King, “my life is a burden!” And the tears run from his eyes and he rends his white beard.

We should not read this as Charles contradicting himself or his life’s work. Rather, a faithful reading of The Song of Roland causes us to examine our own life critically, just as Charlemagne had to do with his.

Old Virginia

Sep19 by Dave Mathwin

I have read very few books on the topic of American slavery, but Alan Taylor’s The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 is the best book I’ve read on the subject. It has gotten national attention, and deservedly so. Taylor reveals alternate angles and puts a human faces on a great national disaster. He avoids getting preachy, and he doesn’t need to be, for his writing, and the story he tells, does it for him.

As to why one should focus on Virginia. . . . Well, first, it’s his area of expertise. But Virginia arguably had more influence on the founding of this nation than any other state, and so the focus has justification in any sense. Virginia has more than slavery in its history of course, but slavery had an enormous impact on us as a whole, and so in some ways Virginia’s story is America’s as well.

Two things make this book a great success.

Taylor puts special focus on the lives of struggling plantation owners. Some of them believe, or at least almost believe, in the injustice of slavery. But they also felt trapped. Many had debts from living the required “Virginia Gentlemen” lifestyle that needed paid off. Many farms started failing due to bad weather and failing soil. Many also worried that freeing slaves might create a de facto army of those who would eagerly do them in. In their minds at least (Taylor’s book has copious original source footnotes) they had inherited tiger riding from their fathers and could not get off. Many at least wanted no more slaves in Virginia than they already had, for fear of tipping the ethnic balance against them even more. But again, they trapped themselves by their view of slaves as property. The whole practice of slavery built itself on a certain idea of property, and the liberty of property. Within this framework ownership of slaves could never be restricted. Countless idealistic 20 year olds become weary and defeated 40 year old inheritors of failing estates. The web of of sin ensnared just about everyone, including many who initially wanted nothing to do with it.

Of course this sense of feeling trapped had a way out, but it would involve not just tinkering with the existing social system, but destroying it root and branch. Most simply did not have either the vision or the courage to do this (as an aside — if we judge a man by his contemporaries George Washington shines brightly while Jefferson flows along with the mass. Washington not only freed his slaves but provided land for them and a fund for their medical care. This may have been easier for him because he had no children, but still, he who sought so much to be a Virginia gentlemen for much of his life willingly let that go at the end. Of course this does not excuse everything, but should be noted).

This web involved not only personal contradictions but political ones as well. Virginia state politics routinely pitted county vs. county, so certainly they had no love for the federal government. But when war with the British came many demanded federal troops to protect their plantations and prevent slaves from running away, and many demanded federal restitution for runaway slaves. At least in Taylor’s book, few if any saw the hypocrisy in this, a willful blindness that sin often creates.

Another fascinating plot in the book deals with the impact of the American Revolution on slavery in Virginia. Many founders believed that slavery would die out hopefully on its own within a generation of the American victory. Many perhaps followed Jefferson’s assertion (in his original draft of the Declaration) that slavery had a lot more to do with the British than the Americans, and once they left, the condition of slaves would inevitably improve.

The laws of primogeniture seek to keep estates intact by preventing them from suffering division among multiple heirs. As long as slaves counted as part of an estates’ property, freeing them brought many difficulties under primogeniture law and custom. In abolishing primogeniture laws, many may have thought that their absence would indirectly help slavery disappear. But in increasing social and political freedom, they increased their economic freedom as well. In a cruel twist of unintended consequence, slave owners now found many more ways to profit from their slaves, including selling and even renting them at much greater rates. And this meant, first, that slave families got broken up much more frequently than before. Secondly, it meant that the possibility of some cordiality and respect for slaves by masters (Taylor shows how this did happen on occasion) due to familiarity and stability eroded quickly. In other words slaves became much more like disposable assets rather than valuable family heirlooms. Finally, the extra profits from slavery made a political solution to the problem much more difficult. Too many hands got dirty.

Matters complicated themselves further during the War of 1812, when invading British armies sought to liberate slaves whenever possible. Many slaves “switched sides” and served with British regiments as scouts and guides in what was unfamiliar territory for the British. Who does one root for in these circumstances?

Today we cannot safely distance ourselves from this and claim it has nothing to do with us. Maybe your entire family grew up in Maine. But Virginia’s story is part of all Americans, and the state certainly played an unusually significant rol in the founding of the United States. We have to face this, and should not spare anyone in any era. Marginal Revolution recently posted the following blurb on George Washington (full article can be found here)

During the president’s two terms in office, the Washingtons relocated first to New York and then to Philadelphia. Although slavery had steadily declined in the North, the Washingtons decided that they could not live without it. Once settled in Philadelphia, Washington encountered his first roadblock to slave ownership in the region — Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780.

The act began dismantling slavery, eventually releasing people from bondage after their 28th birthdays. Under the law, any slave who entered Pennsylvania with an owner and lived in the state for longer than six months would be set free automatically. This presented a problem for the new president.

Washington developed a canny strategy that would protect his property and allow him to avoid public scrutiny. Every six months, the president’s slaves would travel back to Mount Vernon or would journey with Mrs. Washington outside the boundaries of the state. In essence, the Washingtons reset the clock. The president was secretive when writing to his personal secretary Tobias Lear in 1791: “I request that these Sentiments and this advise may be known to none but yourself & Mrs. Washington.”

Ugh.

Kenneth Clark made the astute observation in his Civilisation series that a society really depends on confidence — confidence in institutions, in laws, in “what we’re about,” and in each other. Without this belief, civilization will collapse quickly, for the foundation upon which our laws, economy, etc. stand will cease to exist. With it, a society can withstand even great disasters (i.e. Rome in the 2nd Punic War). And this raises the problem of how we teach our past. What will happen to us if we can have no “confidence” in the sense Clark meant it?

Someone recently asked me the great question, “Is it the duty of a Christian teacher to promote patriotism, love of country, and devotion to the American way of life?”

To me this question should receive a strong and resounding “No,” in the main, but with a smaller, qualifying, parenthetical “Sort of,” attached to the epilogue of the “No.”

As C.S. Lewis pointed out in Mere Christianity Christians easily fall into the trap of what he called “Christianity and. . . ” We should apply our Christianity to all areas of life certainly, but “Christianity and Pacifism,” or “Christianity and Low Taxes,” easily morphs into “Pacifism and Christianity,” which then leaves you with just “Pacifism.” The Truth stands above all civilizations and must remain so in order that civilizations might learn, repent, and change. Whenever the Truth gets co-opted into an agenda for creating citizens, Truth is the first casualty, but down the line the civilization gets harmed by the collateral damage. The City of God must never get confused with the City of Man, for the good of both.

But. . . Christians are also called to love particular places, and invest in those around them. We don’t live disembodied lives, we live as unique people in unique contexts. To hate and denounce the history of one’s country, or merely to live apart from it in a disembodied state to me seems akin to hating one’s own body. I don’t appreciate the whitewasher of our country’s sins, but his fault is almost always childlike, like the 8 year old who believes that the sports team he roots for always wears the white hat. I have much less stomach for the cynical debunker of everything, of the professor who only seeks to get students not to believe in anything, in order that they might believe only in the professor.

A third type exists, seen in what I suspect may be the trend in high school history textbooks today. This path seeks to uncritically praise other cultures (especially non-western cultures) while giving hefty criticism to one’s own (I have seen this with my oldest son’s textbook). This has the appearance of humility, i.e. “think of others as better than yourselves.” But I think it falls short of that, for it’s not rooted in an actual love of one’s own place. The “virtue” comes at far too cheap a price. This approach reminds me of the teenager who thinks that his parents are hopelessly stupid — if only we could be like this family, or that family, or any other family but their own. In other words, this view falls fails as an intellectually mature perspective.

Christian teachers do not have a duty to “see the best side of everything,” but they should encourage a healthy sense of appreciating where they are, for it is where God has placed them. We must come to terms with our country just as we must come to terms with ourselves. But hating oneself is not Christian. St. Francis used the term “Brother Ass” for his body/himself. Chesterton made the great point that, like a donkey, our bodies can be stubborn, stupid, foolish, and even willfully spiteful at times. But how could one really hate a donkey? Just look at that face!

The term, and the attitude seem appropriate to have towards one’s country. “No one hates his own body” (Eph. 5:29). I am guessing that just about every nation could qualify for the moniker, “Brother Ass.” I confess I don’t know exactly what this means in light of our past with slavery, Native Americans, and so on. I also couldn’t say how African-Americans, for example, might react to my proposed metaphor. But for now . . . it will serve as a place for me at least to start.

Dave

8th Grade Literature: The Dog of God

Sep19 by Dave Mathwin

Those who say that all great literature lends itself to multiple interpretations speak truly . . . up to a point. Great stories have a points of tension in them, both for the characters and the reader. But the variety of interpretations is not infinite. Among other things. our interpretations should be constrained by the text, and we should look for clues in the text–and the worldview from which the author wrote–to clue us in on how we should read the story. Part of being a good reader involves being a good person. You listen and seek to understand. You show willingness to take the author seriously and refrain from imposing one’s own agenda on the story.

Part of our problem in following this advice is that we live in a time in love with ambiguity. One need only look at the plethora of stories in which we are encouraged to take the side of those we formerly thought of as villains, who have been “tragically wronged and misunderstood” (such as the movies Cruella, or Wicked, or even Shrek) for example. Other controversial historians suggest that maybe Churchill was the “real” bad guy of World War II. Others indulge in Holocaust denial. The list could go on. In short, we don’t like our narratives neat and tidy anymore. This is very likely not a sign of sophistication, but of boredom. We don’t have the strength, as Chesterton noted, to see the sun come up every day and rejoice like a little child, and say “Do it again!”*

In earlier ages of any civilization, one usually sees more confidence, with stories that avoid inversion. The Song of Roland is one of these kinds of stories. That’s not to say that it never asks questions or paints its characters all one color. The trick is knowing how to read the story like a person of that time would read it, to see where we have solidity and where the narrative is open to interpretation.

For example, Shakespeare’s Hamlet has many points in the story around which the narrative turns. First and perhaps foremost is the ghostly appearance of Hamlet’s father. Most moderns take it as a given that Hamlet should act as the ghost commands, and it is his failure to act that condemns him. But if we give credence to the Christian context in which Shakespeare wrote, we see that

Hamlet’s father (if it is his father) insists that Hamlet commit murder to avenge him and give his spirit peace. Murder and vengeance to help someone in the afterlife does not sound like sound Christian doctrine to me.
The ghost’s appearance involves the upending of the natural order, turning night to day.
Hamlet’s friends are all either afraid or deeply skeptical of the ghost. They urge Hamlet not to listen. Hamlet ignores them.
The ghost is associated with sulphur and torment in the text. This is not a particularly subtle point about the origins of the ghost.
Hamlet ultimately following the ghost’s advice leads to the overthrow of the kingdom and the death of most everyone around him.

There are plenty of points open for debate about Hamlet, as it is one of the great plays of western civilization. But how we should view the ghost is not one of them. We have a place to begin.**

The basic narrative of The Song of Roland runs as follows:

Charlemagne has conquered much of Spain, but has one remaining stronghold to tackle. His army is weary, so perhaps he could make a deal rather than fight?
Marsiliun (the pagan holdout king) is also looking for a way to avoid all out war with Charlemagne, but he doesn’t want to lose his honor and merely surrender.
Ganelon, insulted (perhaps legitimately, perhaps not) by Roland, conceives of a plan. He goes to Marsiliun and offers to trick Charlemagne and get him to leave only a portion of his force in Spain while the rest of his army retreats.
Ganelon puts a cherry on top and also ensures that Roland and the cream of Charlemagne’s army will remain behind. Marsiliun can then attack and overwhelm Charlemagne’s vastly outnumbered rear guard, which will cripple Charlemagne’s army for good.

The story has moments when both Ganelon and Marsiliun are given praise for various traits, such as courage, nobility, and cleverness. Ah, we moderns might think, might Charlemagne, that vicious conqueror, be the true villain? Perhaps Ganelon really was wronged and got his just revenge on Roland?

There is a point in the story, however, when the author expresses his thoughts in a way quite possibly obscure to us, but absolutely clear to the medieval mind. This happens with the dream of Charlemagne in lines 725-36. In his vision, Charlemagne sees a boar and a leopard attack him. From within the castle comes a large hound, who begins fighting both the boar and the leopard.

For us, when we see an animal, we see its physical characteristics and classify it accordingly. We may ascribe some meaning to the animal, such as “dog’s are man’s best friend,” or that cat’s are enigmatic, but we tacitly assume that these meanings are not inherent to the animal, but imposed somewhat arbitrarily by culture, and hence not entirely “real.” The medievals had the opposite approach. They started with meaning first, and then went to physicial characteristics. When they saw an animal, they first saw what it signified in the spiritual life, and then saw its particular physical attributes.

In Charlemagne’s vision we have three animals:

The boar–the boar was of course a pig, and pigs in Scripture were unclean. Pigs were emblematic of those who wallow in filth (sin) and have no discernment about what they eat (i.e., they are driven wholly by appetite and have no moderation). But, no question, boars could be fierce and courageous beasts. Hunting a stag might mean an enjoyable afternoon. But hunting boar was a serious, dangerous business. Marsiliun is the boar, the dangerous pagan king. He is admired for his ferocity and courage, but he cannot change and cannot repent. He must be hunted and destroyed.
The leopard–the medievals saw the leopard as the result of “adultery” between the lion (leo) and the “pard” (perhaps the panther?). This might account for the mixed, spotted coat of the leopard. The leopard will therefore be cunning and treacherous. The leopard lives in “two worlds” but is at home in neither. Thus, Ganelon is the leopard, the traitor, the one who cannot be praised either as an honest, valiant pagan or a “clean” Christian knight. He is not “misunderstood.” He is the story’s greatest villain.
The dog, which requires a fuller treatment below.

The medievals caught both the spiritual ambiguity of the dog in Scripture and Jewish tradition, as well observing how dogs behaved. On the one hand, against dogs, you have

Dogs are often associated with corpses and refuse
False prophets are sometimes called “dogs”
Dogs eat blood (I Ki 21:19) and return to their own vomit.

But . . .

The Book of Tobit has a dog as a faithful companion and guardian, akin to the archangel Raphael.
In Jesus’ parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, it is a dog who stays faithful to Lazarus, and “heals” him through the licking of his wounds.
In the story of Canaanite woman who agrees to be a “dog” and receive “scraps,” Jesus commends her faith and humility.

In short, dogs came to be viewed positively overall, even if they were a bit wild. Still, it was their tenacious loyalty and obedience that won over the medieval heart.

Roland is the dog in the vision. Here we have both “firmness” and ambiguity in the story. Roland is the good guy. But as the story states, he is a bit wild and uncouth. He is absolutely faithful and displays a true humility of service. It is also true that things might have gone better for everyone in the story if he was a little smarter, and if he could match Ganelon’s cunning. But then, if Roland had these qualities, he would not be a “dog.” He would not be the Roland we know.

Ambiguity in our stories can make them interesting and can test our particular way of seeing the world. But if we don’t know how to see a text as its original audience heard it, we will simply be left in the worst place of all–our own particular predilections and prejudices. We will be stuck in our time and place.

This post here further explores ancient and medieval dog symbolism, for those who wish a deeper dive.

Have a great weekend,

Dave

*The actual quote is, “The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is not due to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say “Do it again”, and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.”

**I know that many will disagree with me about this, and I am not a Shakespeare expert. But one counter people put forward to the ghost’s possibly benign intentions is that Hamlet muses whether or not the ghost be from Heaven or Hell. This is no evidence at all. Hamlet is not a reliable narrator. He might actually be crazy. This might be the secret reason why he was not made king after his father’s death. This could be an interesting point of contention. Maybe Hamlet is a depressive nutcase from the very beginning! Again, I’m all about tension, interpretation, and ambiguity in great literature, but we need to look for clues as to where to find it.

The Internet of Things

Sep12 by Dave Mathwin

Nature is not always “natural.” We “naturally” recognize a standard above nature. For example, nuclear weapons are made from the very stuff of nature (atoms, etc.) but strike as distinctly unnatural in their effect. We understand that technology in warfare has progressed over time. We can process at least some of these changes as a kind of natural progression of what has always been. So, a rifle is akin to a bow and arrow, artillery has its origins in the catapult, and so on. But nuclear weapons turns nature itself against us. Watching nuclear weapons detonate can transfix us with a kind of horrifying beauty. We know that we have encountered something on a different plane . . .

Historians and others have many explanations for our current cultural moment, and I will try my hand in what follows.

I recently heard a priest online state that, “We are still fighting World War I.” Obviously he wasn’t referring to the physical fighting, or the geopolitical situation. Germany, England and France are friends now, more or less. I suspect that he meant that we still fight the war in cultural or religious sense, that we have not understood or solved the central question of the war, which I think runs like so:

How is it that a culture brimming with confidence and optimism (in general), possessing an overwhelming share of global GDP, and controlling in a direct or indirect way perhaps as much as 50% of the globe, throw it all away in a mind-numbingly horrific 30 stretch (1914-45)? Again, while western civilization ca. 1900 had real flaws, we can envy their confident, secure identity and purpose. We have never as a culture come to terms with why western civilization tumbled down the hill, and we still have not learned the basic lessons that period can teach us.

In the biblical narrative, mankind begins by living in Eden, a garden on a mountain. After their exile from Eden, they come down from the mountain, closer, in a sense, to Earth, farther from communion with God. Immediately, Cain’s descendents go further into the earth, using what dig up to build cities and other implements of iron (Gen. 4:22). With this knowledge they tame animals. They gain the power to manipulate nature. But this power makes them uneasy and thin-skinned. It brings them no security–in fact, one could argue that Lamech’s speech (Gen. 4:23-24) comes either from fear, hubris, or both. The Scriptural pattern then is*

Increase of Power=Increase of Vulnerability=Violence, Destabilization, and Dislocation

This sense of “dislocation” struck Cain with full force just after demonstrating his possession of power over the life of his brother (Gen. 4:14).

Of course western civilization has significantly increased its power by using raw materials of the earth in the Industrial Revolution. Our physical power increased exponentially, but not via new machines only. We should also see the preceding political movements towards more democracy as a movement “down the mountain.” Monarchy is a “top of the mountain” form of governance. It concentrates identity into a single point. This concentration, however, limits possibility and potential, which in turn limits power. Moving “down the mountain” gives more possibilities, more “weight,” to political actions (the bottom of the mountain is obviously heavier than the top). Thus, we can see our Constitution as a kind of technological development, one that increased our power vis a vis the rest of the world. If the pattern holds, it should have also made us more “touchy” and prone to violence.

Most shake their heads in disbelief when they see what triggered W.W. I. The various chains of causation–the German navy, Russian interest in the Balkans, Austria-Hungary’s weakness, etc. have a logic to them. But I wouldn’t buy any argument that said that all this was worth war. It seems to me that we see every major power an with advanced case of touchiness and paranoia, a grave sense of insecurity. World War I has a parallel in the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. By 431 B.C. Athens had grown wealthy and extended its territorial reach throughout the Aegean Sea. But rather than have all of this make them more secure, it seemed to open them up to great fear about it being taken away. As with Lamech and Germany, Athens went to war in the end over the Sparta’s reaction to the Megaran decree–an insult only in the barest sense of the word. To those that say, “If it wasn’t the Megaran decree it would have been something else,” I agree. But this proves my point. Touchy people will get mad at just about anything.

If the Industrial Revolution represented a movement down the mountain to what lies underneath it, so nuclear weapons means traveling even further down into the physical structure of matter itself. What could be more “natural?” This of course granted us enormous destructive power. But surely, it is not natural that handful of people scattered throughout the world should have the ability wipe out billions of people in under 30 minutes. Wielding a knife gives one power, but it is very difficult to accidentally hurt or kill someone else with a knife. A gun gives more power, and hence, it is easier to accidentally–or intentionally–kill someone with a gun.

With nuclear weapons, a small accident, malfunction, or misunderstanding–let alone an actual act of malice–could kill millions.

We need not restrict our purview to weapons only. Cars, for example, give us great power to move quickly. But to enable this, we had to construct roads, a massive traffic apparatus, etc. that leaves us vulnerable to serious injury and death. We could drive well, and our car could work perfectly. But many things are outside of our control. If someone else makes a mistake, or if someone’s else truck blows a tire, it could endanger us easily.

Other digital technology, such as the internet, continues our journey down the mountain. We can manipulate atoms now to vastly increase our communicative ability. We can gain information from anywhere, know anything from any time, and so on. We all know the satisfaction that comes from shopping online, watching a funny youtube, and so on. But virtually every commentator on our current cultural situation acknowledges that internet often hurts more than it helps. With Twitter perhaps especially, we experience the destabilization that comes with chaos. Twitter gives us a sea of information with no editing, structure, or system to guide us. We talk of the “Internet of Things” as it relates to connecting our appliances and other tools to the worldwide web. The moniker is ironic–what the internet gives us is a plethora of “things” with no coherence.

If we mistrust each other it is not because of our weakness but because of the outsized power we possess. At the top of the mountain we can orient ourselves, we can locate ourselves vis a vis our surroundings. At the bottom, however, we have only multiplicity and no unity. This in turn has led to an acute sense of dislocation, which in turn feeds a tendency towards all the wrong kinds of identity, as we have seen recently.**

Fixing western civilization–we all want to see the day, in theory at least. But coming to a solution will mean lightening our load to climb back up the mountain.

Dave

*We see this not just in Genesis 4. The Tower of Babel could be another example of Increase of Power=Dislocation–quite literally in that case. In 1 Samuel 24, King David takes a census, something for which he is punished. It seems incomprehensible to us that taking a census should be a sin. Yet, in the narrative even the amoral Abner warns David against taking this action. If we see the pattern, a census increases ones knowledge of “particulars” dramatically. It is a journey “down the mountain” that makes David quite vulnerable. Abner’s reaction should clue us into the innate understanding they had of this pattern, the danger of David “trying to throw his arms around the world.”

It should not surprise us, then, to see a repeat of this pattern as the New Testament begins. It is not a coincidence that the birth of Christ, the King who would in time destroy the Roman Empire, is preceded by a census (Luke 2).

**In terms of sexual identity, we no longer seek even to mine the minutiae of nature. Instead we wish to transcend it entirely. We have accumulated such power over nature that we feel we can discard it at our leisure. Obviously there is a link here between our current sexual identities and our environmental issues. Here exists a possible link-up between social conservatives and environmentalists.

8th Grade Literature: Medieval Epic Poetry

Sep12 by Dave Mathwin

This week we started our next book, The Song of Roland. This work does not enjoy the fame of Beowulf, but I find it just as compelling. I believe W.S. Merwin’s translation in particular captures the stark energy the tale tries to express. The punches the story throws are quick, but dense, and intense as well.

Often literary critics tend to look down their noses at early artistic attempts of civilizations. Certainly, this holds true in some cases. American literature before Twain and Melville left much to be desired. Our country’s early literary efforts were clumsy as we sought for a voice. But sometimes the ‘unearned confidence’ of youth can lead to works of great confidence and vitality. Einstein, for example, never topped himself from when he came up with the theory of relativity at age 26. Lennon and McCartney may have done their best work in their mid-20’s with Rubber Soul and Revolver. Perhaps one might think of other examples (this post discusses this phenomena in regard to Egyptian and Roman art).

What The Song of Roland may lack in refinement it makes up for in energy. Yet, it still fits the criteria for an epic literary work (I use the word ‘epic’ here in a technical sense).

Epic literature celebrates the main values of the civilization from which it originates, yet also shows the limit of such values, or calls them into question. Courage, for example, ceases to be ‘courage’ when it morphs into stupidity. Loyalty is a great virtue, but not when it turns blind. In our case here, the medievals impress us with their courage and fealty, but the author (who is unknown) wants us to wonder how far things should be pressed. If your life consists of serving Charlemagne, should you continue to be courageous and loyal even if those actions might hurt the king in the long run? This is one example of The Song of Roland’s great literay merit–it has the maturity to question itself even as it celebrates its heroes.

Great epic heroes have a sense of tragedy about them, but they show their strength in living and choosing freely even when they feel that circumstances have conspired against them. I hope that the student’s will see this in the text. In an age where being a victim, feeling betrayed, etc. gives credence to a resigned and defeatist approach to life, the characters in The Song of Roland always feel that they have a choice to act freely, and always believe they can be victorious even if they lose.

Some believe that the story closely mirrors an actual historical event in Charlemagne’s reign, while others see signficant exaggeration and distortion of a minor incident. I don’t think this debate matters much. There is evidence in the text that the author did not not intend to record events per se, but to take his readers into the more important realm of exploring how both life and death can have meaning beyond what history might tell us.

I hope the students enjoy the story! Have a great weekend,

Dave

The Idea of an “Empire of Liberty”

Sep12 by Dave Mathwin

How we label things, or how we construct their meaning and place in history, obviously will say a lot about us.

The Constitution serves as a good example.

The Constitution has its flaws, its oversights, and some ungainliness about it. We understand that it’s obviously not perfect. But it surely has worked on some level, having lasted this long. Because it has worked (or at least we assume it has — more thoughts on this later), we think of it as a very “modern” and forward-looking document. This matches how we think of ourselves. We are a “progressive” people, the documents that define us must also have the same character.

But in his two books Empire of Liberty, and The Idea of America acclaimed historian Gordon Wood makes the point that the Constitution tried in fact to stem the rising tide of “liberty” and change unleashed by the “spirit of ’76.” The Constitution may not have been a completely “reactionary” document but it was a response to a quick erosion in society of what many elite revolutionaries like Adams and Madison held dear.

Through various quotes and citations, Wood lists the changes seen and feared by such men in the 1780’s . . .

A loosening of traditional relationships between men and women — parents had much less control over who their children married.
Riots and protests against professors at the few (and elite) colleges by many students demanding curriculum changes, attitude changes, and the like
A decided turn against the virtues of the ancient Romans and a great movement toward the ideas of tolerance and conviviality as the means to hold society together
Democratization of religion, which became much less authority driven and much more ‘touchy-feely.’
Extreme partisan politics on local levels, with stories of violent behavior in state legislatures rampant. The rise of the “party-spirit” in politics bewildered many.
Both “free love” and drugs going mainstream into the culture

Ok — the last is not true, but if one looks at the list, it looks quite familiar to us, making us think of the 1920’s or the 1960’s, or today. Maybe we must face the fact that this is what America was, is, and ever shall be. As Alfred North Whitehead once said, “The major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur.”

Wood asserts that while the Constitution succeeded in establishing a structure that put up some barriers to change, overall the idea of liberty and “the people” triumphed over the Constitution’s conservative aspirations. In the end, the idea liberty and the reality of the voice of the people ended up remaking the Constitution in its own image. The Anti-Federalists, those who opposed the Constitution’s ratification, lost the battle but won the war. The best the ideals of Washington and Adams can do now is fight rear-guard actions against the overwhelming power of the “people.”

Though initially shocking to our sensibilities, the idea of a reactionary Constitution helps make sense of much of American history down to the present day. It also partially explains why appeals to the vision of the founders, or the intent of the founders falls on deaf ears. For one, Madison and others probably believed that the factional “evils” they saw in state governments would not transfer to the national legislature. Perhaps Madison wanted a stronger national government because he thought that only the “better sort” would get elected to the national legislature and thereby elevate discourse. This “better sort” would not fall prey to party politics. He sought then, more power not so much to the national government but to the “better men.” However strong Madison’s hopes on this score, they quickly proved illusory. Madison and others like him either misinterpreted or remained ignorant of exactly what their revolution had wrought.**

At a deeper level, two other questions arise. Can the structures of organizations curtail underlying driving principles that form such organizations? I tend to side on this one with the Jurassic Park dictum, “Life finds a way.” The early “conservatives” could not call upon the spirit of self-determination in 1776 and then expect to put the toothpaste back in the tube once the Revolution had accomplished what they wanted it to. The population at large could rightly retort, “What about us?” Bowing to the “will of the people” became a necessity, and eventually, a foreordained, positive good. Even a Constitutional “literalist” or “minimalist” like Jefferson gladly dispensed with his principles with the Louisiana Purchase, among other instances. Like a nuclear blast, the concept of “liberty” leveled everything in its path. What mattered to most was not the past, but the future. The founders had done their part, but our vehement abhorrence to anything smacking of aristocracy made us quickly resistant to anything resembling the determining “tyranny of the past.” John Adams, among others, quickly tried to assert that, “Wait! That’s not what we meant!” Most responded with some form of “I don’t care!” Within a generation of the Constitution’s ratification, “egghead” professions like that of lawyer already were viewed as “elitist” by many, especially towards the frontier. The seeming radical nature of the “Jacksonian Revolution” actually had its roots laid years prior.

Wood deals with the slavery question related to these political questions, but I found his analysis of the relationship between Americans and Native Americans more intriguing. He writes,

Conceiving itself as a composite of different peoples, the British Empire could somehow accommodate the existence of Indians within its territory. But the new American Republic was different: it contained only citizens who were presumably equal with one another. Since the United States could scarcely imagine the Indians as citizens equal to all other American citizens, it had to regard Native Americans as members of foreign nations with which treaties had to be negotiated. Of course, most of the Indians themselves had no desire to become citizens of the American Republic.

While the 17th century colonists did fight with Indians, little doubt exists that American Independence proved a disaster for Native Americans. Problems began years before the war itself — one of the driving issues behind the Sugar Act and Stamp Act involved keeping colonists off Native American land. Wood’s reasoning fits with de Tocqueville’s thoughts on equality, and the problem persists today. We have yet to work out the tension between liberty and equality. When the “people” speak (however we measure this) we cannot tolerate deviation from the norm. The example of Bruce/Caitlin Jenner speaks to this. How many ESPN commentator’s could keep their jobs and declare that Jenner is tragically mistaken in his actions? To be fair, had ESPN existed 50 years ago, could anyone have then applauded his actions and kept his job?

One unsaid implication of Wood’s book is pride of place between the American and French Revolutions. Most see the American Revolution as giving birth to the French Revolution, with the French Revolution as the bastardization of all that went well in America, then withering on the vine as Napoleon took over. But we might instead see the French Revolution as the real victor, with its sense of the power and authority of the “people” in more or less full swing by the early 19th century in America. He who laughs last laughs loudest. Or perhaps both of these positions wrongly presume an essential difference between the two events. Maybe the American Revolution started to resemble the French Revolution because they had the same origins — fraternal if not identical twins. If we consider this option, then we may need to reevaluate America history as a whole — an exciting if not daunting task.

“A man’s worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.” — T.H. Huxley

Dave

*We should note that those at the the Constitutional Convention had different ideas, and others whom we might consider “founders” like Patrick Henry, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson were not at the Convention at all.

**Wood cites a variety of sources to demonstrate that the traditional understanding of the need for the Constitutional Convention being the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation are false. Many had perfect awareness of these weaknesses and their fix remained relatively simple. The real concerns of men like Madison and Washington lie rather in their observations of the petty bickering of state legislatures, and the fact any man Jack seemingly could get elected to state legislatures.

Mapping the Middle

Sep5 by Dave Mathwin

Some years ago I listened to an interview with a historian whose name I cannot remember, but she made a startling observation I had never before considered. We cherish the idea of voting in our secret booths. Many regard it as impolite to ask who one voted for. But this method, so cherished as a foundation of democratic practice, has a purely modern origin.* In ye olden days we voted in public, sometimes simply by standing on one side of a room, with those voting for the other guy on the other side, and then counting heads. In a republic, thinking went, one should live openly with their fellow man. The idea of ‘private’ political opinions would have seemed absurd and anti-democratic to Americans of the early-mid 1800’s.

I come back to this nugget often, for it reminds me that things we assume about the ‘absolute’ meaning of America, or democratic identity, may not be quite what we assume. Stories like this also should help us reflect on whether or not the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Gordon Wood needs no praise from me. I find his analysis consistently penetrating and illuminating. One reason for this . . . he seems to know how to appreciate the weirdness of American history and maintain tension between competing perspectives. For those who praise America’s unique role in the history of western civilization, he can say, “Yes, but . . . ,” and for those that decry our faults, he says the same. He draws us into an appreciation for the tensions and oddities of our national life. The best historians make the past seem at once strange and yet familiar. Wood accomplishes this with deep learning and a light touch. His book Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution serves as a great summary of some of his previous work.

Some surprising details emerge here. We know that the founders had many differences on a variety of issues, but I didn’t know that they had unity in their condemnation of . . . Rhode Island. They objected not to their religious oddities, inspired by the likes of Roger William’s and Anne Hutchinson, nor to their commercial turn–something Alexander Hamilton, at least, appreciated. No, they directed their universal ire towards Rhode Island’s use of paper money. “The cry for paper money,” John Adams commented, “is downright Wickedness and Dishonesty. Every Man must see that it is the worst engine of Knavery that ever was invented.”

Of course we can choose to smile benignly and call them curmudgeons, but Wood reminds us in a variety of other places the radical and progressive nature of the American Revolution. The fact that more or less everyone across the spectrum condemned Rhode Island should tell us something. All knew that paper money represented a loosening of the hierarchy, and a preference for debtors over creditors, Whether they consciously intuited it or not, paper money also meant a more fluid and democratic society than perhaps any of the founders desired.

In discussing the Constitutional Convention, Wood mentions a curious bifurcation in American society. Some progressives and libertarians call the Constitution basically the byproduct of a conspiracy. This groups sees America in the 1780’s as flourishing and in no need of significant alteration. As usual, Wood answers, “Yes, but” and adds nuance. Various state economies performed well in this decade, but the problem lay in the strong commercial push for markets and regulated trade. The government under the Articles of Confederation had no powers regarding trade. This desire for markets ran so deep that Wood suggests a significant portion of Americans would have allied with any foreign power that would ensure their products access to the sea. George Washington commented of such folk in 1784 that, “the slightest touch of a feather would turn them any way.” We needed some kind of stronger national government. But Wood agrees that had the American people actually known how strong a government some of the delegates to Philadelphia wanted during the summer of 1787, they might very well have shut down the process entirely.

Most key members of the Convention sought to supersede state government power with the Federal government, but the theme that almost no one who helped start the American Revolution truly understood what they had unleashed runs throughout Wood’s work. This sometimes had good effects such as with the slavery question. Wood argues that we had a blindness about African-American slavery before the Revolution because we had a basic blindness towards white “slavery” as well. White “indentured servitude” was indeed not the same as “slavery” as we know it, but it was close, most particularly in the idea that owners could sell the labor contracts of their servants. Also,

“because labor was so valuable in America, colonists enacted numerous laws to control the movement of white servants and prevent runaways. There was nothing in England resembling the passes required for traveling servants. . . . No wonder newly arriving Britons were astonished to see how ruthlessly Americans treated their white servants. ‘Generally speaking,’ said William Eddis upon his introduction to Maryland society in 1769, ‘they groan beneath a burden worse than Egyptian bondage.'”

This started changing when the rhetoric of revolution started focusing on “slavery” to England, making “slavery” unacceptable to many for the first time–again–this was not the plan. Wood, a critic of the 1619 Project, wants to focus on the significant progress made by the revolutionary impulse to end slavery/servitude in most of the colonies, rather than its tragic persistence in some. Of course, slavery didn’t just persist in southern colonies, it actually dramatically expanded from 1775-1850. At least here, Wood cannot explain how the impulse that ended slavery in some places seemed to increase it in others. By the early 19th century, one could accurately describe America both as dramatically more and less free than England.

Perhaps because Wood possesses great knowledge and a great ability to parse the details, he cannot quite bring the unusual disparities of America into an explanatory whole. We have already touched on the freedom/slavery divide, but others exist too:

Some wanted much less central unity than England had, some wanted much more power for the federal government over states than King George ever had over colonies.
The equating of land with freedom, and the “ravenous” appetite for land among colonists that shocked European observers, despite land’s vast abundance.

If we see America in a spatial, symbolic/mythological way an explanation emerges.

Many look at medieval maps and wonder, “what in the world . . . ?

The Hereford “Mappa Mundi,” ca. 1250 (?)

At first glance, and at a second and third glance, the map gives very little physical information. At times the physical data it gives is not even accurate, such as the separation of England and Scotland on the map above. But if we see the map as a means of guiding us to understanding how to navigate the world, or a “map of meaning,” we see as the medievals (and other cultures before them) saw.**

This post has little to do with the map directly, so I will limit my comments to its application for America. If you magnify the map, you see that towards the edges, one meets strange creatures. Reality starts to blur, there exists at once a strange mixing and a strange separation of bodily form, yet also, if managed rightly, a chance for wisdom and new growth. This happens on the “fringe” of reality. Most every great story involves the hero leaving home and being remade, casting bread upon the waters that it might return–in short–heroes must successfully navigate the fringe.^

The key to managing the fringe first involves understanding its meaning. We can consider alcohol as one example of how the fringe works. Taverns and bars have always been a place to meet others and mix. This is not an arbitrary social convention. Alcohol serves to “loosen” us, which is why we should drink only in the evening, as our being naturally gets looser as we move towards sleep. This “loosening” facilitates mixing and mingling with others more easily. So, “Can I buy you a drink?” works better as a pick-up line than, “Can I buy you some carrots?”

But one must be careful. If we stay too long on the fringe–i.e., drink too much–our being splits. We may discover too late that we have “mixed” with someone we should have avoided. Notice too that those who get drunk tend to experience either an unnatural extremity of the fringe (they are over-social, thinking everything is funny, etc.) or they get surly and overly anti-social–i.e., they seek to return “home” from the fringe but return misshapen. They attempt to recalibrate their mixing but their “monstrous” form, acquired from too much transformative “mixing potion,” means they cannot “tighten” themselves with proper form and grace. The moral of the story–one should not stay too long on the fringe.

Though we may not see it easily now, for European settlers in the New World, America was “the fringe,” The glories, degradations, and strangeness of America have their explanation here. Europeans traveled out to the edge, and decided not to return but camp out for good. This has several implications:

I have already alluded to the “more free,” and “less free” polarity.
Those who wanted to try and implement extreme forms of religiosity might find a home here. The Puritans could implement their views, but the continual implementation of their ideas required close knit communities, which “the fringe” would naturally work against.
Those who wanted to basically try and transplant something of the society of the English gentry, like many of colonists in Virginia, could achieve this only through strenuous effort and hence, malformation. This could explain the large number of slaves in Virginia.
Washington’s desire that we eschew political parties had no chance of success whatsoever. The fringe brings out extremes and divides us.
It might additionally mean that the fringe would define America. Examples might be–American literature has its origins with Twain, who lived out west on the edge of civilization. Many of our folktales involve strange, misshapen people, or those who lived in continual movement (Daniel Boone, Jonny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, etc.). African Americans, who resided obviously on the social fringe, created some of the best and most noteworthy culture, especially in terms of music. Finally, when we got out as far we could physically go on the fringe (California), we made this “fringe of the fringe” America’s heart with the advent of Hollywood.

We can quickly see that some of this is good (who wouldn’t take American 20th century music over any and all European countries?), some bad, and some of it confusing. It is the fringe, however, that defines American life, and this means that we will experience extremes, and that the lines between “good” and “bad” will blur quickly, right before our eyes. This template also explains much of early American history and the heightened versions of good and bad we see.

Thomas Jefferson took great pride in helping Virginia, and in time, all of America, to develop the practice of religious tolerance and avoiding state sponsored religions. Wood suggests that Jefferson thought this meant that a democratic people could arrive at an “enlightened” understanding of religion that would abandon dogma. Madison thought differently, and knew better. We allowed for toleration only because we feared the monopoly that other religions might gain. Mutual collision, and not mutual understanding, made us “healthy.” Lacking a defined core, “collision” was our last, best option.

The American Revolution saw the European fringe break decisively from the core. Once free, new practices embedded in the ideas of revolution spread rapidly. Having lived on the fringe, Americans could navigate the changes rather easily. When a society with a more traditional core, such as France, tried something similar, it had a much more disruptive impact. When the ideas migrated into an even more traditional society like Russia toward the end of the 19th century, an oppressive tyranny reigned for 70 years, instead of the five we saw in France.

Americans love to spread their ideas, and always have. We believe that our beliefs and practices should transplant everywhere. Many of us look around us and surmise that significant change is coming for western civilization. I don’t think I will like many of the changes coming, but I take some comfort in knowing that America has a large bandwidth for adaptation. My concern lies in what happens when these new ideas migrate into more traditional societies. The impact there will be more traumatic (i.e., Russia and Ukraine?).

Ok, my concerns also lie with us. We need a middle to navigate the extremes, but alas, “middle ground” will always be elusive on the fringe.

Dave

*The historian was not entirely sure of why this switch happened, but speculated that it likely had something to do with Victorian ideas of propriety, and with the new involvement of women voting. In ye olden days, fisticuffs on Election Day with those on the other side were relatively normal occurrences. But with the new system, one didn’t know how the other voted, which made fighting much less likely.

**In this case, obviously the creators of the map knew that England and Scotland were geographically connected, but they remained culturally separate in their experience. The map then, reflects an understanding of their experience, not a mere physical representation.

^There is a great present in Scripture about the core, fringe, etc. if one knows how to look. Consider creation in 6 days, and leaving 1 untouched, leaving something on the edge of plowed fields, not weaving one’s garments to totality (i.e., leave the edge of your garments with a fringe), and so on. But just as Christ ministered first on Israel’s geographic fringe, He came to back “home” to Jerusalem.

8th Grade Literature: Iceberg Theory and the Hemingway Paradox

Sep5 by Dave Mathwin

Greetings all,

WIth this blog I hope to keep you updated on some aspects of our class. I will not convey everything about our week, but hope to give you insight into some of the main points of focus and discussion. I hope you find this helpful.

Our summer reading was Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, his most famous and best beloved story. The plot is simple, perhaps almost aburdly simple. A poor, elderly fisherman named Santiago journeys out on his skiff. He hooks and fights a huge marlin for three days. He eventually lands the fish, but then has the problem of getting it back to shore intact. As he rows back to shore, sharks come and eat the fish, leaving him with nothing but its skeleton when he lands. But Santiago remains content. He is a fisherman and has done what a fisherman should do. He knows who he is.

Hemingway’s story has several important themes, such as man vs. nature, and the essence of human life, dignity, and identity. But at the heart of the story is a paradox, rooted both in Hemingway’s style of writing, and in his development (or lack thereof) of his main character, Santiago.

First, his style of writing . . .

Many credit Hemingway, along with Mark Twain, of pioneering a distinctively American style of writing. He uses simple sentences and simple words, at times writing in a somewhat offhand, stream of consciousness. He rarely if ever introduces large metaphysical or theological questions. What you see is what you get. In this way, Hemingway’s writing mimics the plain, open approach of the common man. Many famous commentators, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, see Americans as primarily doers, not thinkers. Hemingway doesn’t argue, but rather leans into this conception of American identity.

Hemingway may not have invented his particular style, but he pioneered a concept of writing called Iceberg Theory. His approach allows the reader only to see the surface of the characters–what one can observe in “real life.” Most authors give the reader insight into the character’s thoughts and inner life. Hemingway rarely grants this insight. For the most part, the reader gets to observe the characters but is limited to seeing their actions and words. In this way, Hemingway presents his readers with something more realistic. In real life when we observe others we would not have omniscent access to their thoughts and motivations. Hemingway writes in the same. Of course his characters have deep seated motivations just like any person, but they remain below the surface. We have to guess as to what lies beneath.

Herein lies the paradox of Heminway’s style, which is both transparent and opaque all at once.

On the one hand,

Hemingway’s writing reflects everyday reality that all experience all the time. His writing is “common” and “relatable” in this sense.
His plots and his characters are open books, making them, in a certain sense at least, easily understandable to anyone.

On the other hand,

While we can easily discern the plot of the story, without access to the character’s inner life we have no easy way to determine why anything happens. This is no coincidence, as Hemingway seemed much more interested in the “what” than the “why.” “Why” questions are burdensome and hinder one from living fully.
This in turn, means that an author lauded for his humble and transparent prose can write stories that confuse his readers. Many of the students, for example, perfectly understood the plot but had “no idea what happened.” With this comment, they meant that they had no idea what the story meant, or how they might apply it to their lives.

We can push further, and see how Hemingway mirrors the paradox of American individualism and society as a whole. Many foreign visitors to America are surprised by the frank openness of most Americans they encounter. Frew other countries are as immediately transparent with those outside of their community as are Americans. But Americans are also much less communal than people in most other countries. Our suburbs, technology, and habits isolate us from one another. Both of these observations can be true at once.

The character of Santiago perfectly melds with Hemingway’s style of writing. Santiago constantly reminds himself throughout the story to stop thinking, and focus on the moment in front of him. He is a beloved figure in his village. But at the same time, he lives alone, with no family and no direct connections to the village around him. He has one friend, but in keeping with the “Hemingway paradox,” this friend is a much younger boy. The boy loves Santiago, but of course, cannot really relate to him or connect with him.

This coming Monday, the students will discuss some aspects of this paradox in our first formal discussion.

Thanks so much and have a great weekend,

Dave

A Stick in the Mud

A Classical-Christian History Teacher Seeks Help

Author Archives: Dave Mathwin

A Culture of Victory, a Culture of Collapse

8th Grade Literature: Mobilis in Mobili

“The Civil War as a Theological Crisis”

8th Grade Literature: Jiro Dreams of Sushi

10th/11th Grade: Who Owns the Past?

The Frontier Garden City

8th Grade Literature: Introduction to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

8th Grade Literature: The Joy of Battle

Old Virginia

8th Grade Literature: The Dog of God

The Internet of Things

8th Grade Literature: Medieval Epic Poetry

The Idea of an “Empire of Liberty”

Mapping the Middle

8th Grade Literature: Iceberg Theory and the Hemingway Paradox