Landmarks of Liberty

Liberty and a Christmas Hymn

2011-12-13T09:06:00.000-05:00

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.”

(Psalm 121:1-2)

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

As we near the Christmas season, I thought it appropriate to reveal the history behind a hymn that has been very influential in critical moments of the history of liberty. From the origins of freedom of speech in England to the American Civil War, Charles Wesley’s hymn Jesus, Lover of My Soul graced the lips of many a distressed person. This hymn usually sung at Christmas is not well known in our present day, but during the Civil War, it was highly respected. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote that the first two lines were her father’s last breath, and Stowe’s brother, Rev. Henry Ward claimed, “I would rather have written that hymn of Wesley’s… than to have the fame of all the kings that ever sat on the earth. It is more glorious. It has more power in it… that hymn will go on singing until the last trump brings forth the angel band; and then, I think, it will mount up on some lip to the very presence of God.”1 Just like the Christmas truce of 1914, this hymn seems to bring the Christmas spirit of peace and giving everywhere it goes. The words are as follows:

Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is high.
Hide me, O my Savior, hide,
Till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide;
O receive my soul at last.

Other refuge have I none,
Hangs my helpless soul on thee;
Leave, ah! leave me not alone,
Still support and comfort me.
All my trust on thee is stayed,
All my help from thee I bring;
Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of thy wing.

Wilt Thou not regard my call?
Wilt Thou not accept my prayer?
Lo! I sink, I faint, I fall!
Lo! on Thee I cast my care.
Reach me out Thy gracious hand!
While I of Thy strength receive,
Hoping against hope I stand,
Dying, and behold I live.

Thou, O Christ, art all I want,
More than all in thee I find;
Raise the fallen, cheer the faint,
Heal the sick, and lead the blind.
Just and holy is thy name,
I am all unrighteousness;
False and full of sin I am;
Thou art full of truth and grace.

Plenteous grace with thee is found,
Grace to cover all my sin;
Let the healing streams abound,
Make and keep me pure within.
Thou of life the fountain art,
Freely let me take of thee;
Spring thou up within my heart;
Rise to all eternity.

Charles Wesley

The origins of the hymn are somewhat legendary, but I give most credence to the following account by Rev. Edwin M. Long in 1875. Long’s story matches the symbolism of the song:

Charles and John Wesley, and Richard Pilmore were holding one of their twilight meetings on the common, when the mob assailed them, and they were compelled to flee for their lives.

Being separated for a time, as they were being pelted with stones, they at length in their flight, succeeded in getting beyond a hedge row, where they prostrated themselves on the ground, and placed their hands on the back of their heads for protection from the stones which still came so near that they could feel the current of air made by the missiles as they went whizzing over them.

In the night shades that were gathering, they managed to hide from the fury of the rabble in a spring-house. Here they struck a light with a flint-stone, and after dusting their clothes, and washing, they refreshed themselves with the cooling water that came bubbling up in a spring, and rolling out in a silver streamlet.

Charles Wesley pulled out a lead pencil… and from the inspiration of these surroundings, composed the precious hymn:—
‘Jesus, lover of my soul.’

The flight had no doubt suggested the second line:—
‘Let me to Thy bosom fly.’

The waters gliding at his feet,—
‘While the nearer waters roll.’

The tempest and storm from which they had just found a hiding-place, the figure,—
‘While the tempest still is high;
Hide me, O my Saviour hide
Till the storm of life is past.’

As each was left alone to seek safety in flight,—
‘Leave, Oh, leave me not alone,
Still support and comfort me.’

Trying to cover their defenseless heads with their hands, the lines,—
‘Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of Thy wing.’

Having sunk to the ground, faint and weary, the third verse. As this is generally omitted, we give it entire:—
‘Wilt Thou not regard my call?
Wilt Thou not accept my prayer?
Lo! I sink, I faint, I fall!
Lo! on Thee I cast my care.
Reach me out Thy gracious hand!
While I of Thy strength receive,
Hoping against hope I stand,
Dying, and behold I live.’

Washing their wounds and bruises the thoughts of the last verse, which is the fifth in the original,—‘Let the healing streams abound, Make and keep me pure within.’

And lastly, the fountain of spring-water from which they drank, and obtained fresh life,
‘Thou of life the fountain art,
Freely let me take of Thee.
Spring Thou up within my heart
Rise to all eternity."

These interesting facts were given by Mr. Pilmore, who was an eye-witness, to an intimate friend, Mr. Hicks, who stated them to Rev. I. H. Torrence of Phila., from whom I received them.2

During the 18th Century, England had only just begun to gain the right to free speech, and indeed, Wesley authored the hymn before the global influence of the US Bill of Rights advocating free speech. Violence often clouded the beginning of every new idea, and with the rise of the Methodists, controversy soon met Wesley everywhere. Fleeing for his life for merely expressing his views, he penned this hymn as the out flowing of his heart. It is a hymn asking for the release of the tyrannies of this world, and its influence remained no less imperative to the 19th century mind.

Many stories of desperate victories and fruitful defeats overwhelm this hymn’s history. Two girls sung it while sinking beneath the waves on the deck of a steamship with no hope of escape. A mother was rescued clinging to her child and a bit of wreckage at sea while singing it.3 Being interrupted by death at the line ‘still support and comfort me’, an American drummer boy at the battle of Chickamauga found his last strength with the solace of this hymn.4 Long relates another story of a gentleman searching for religious stability:

As he paused a moment in his walk the sound of singing reached his ear; he opened the door and listened. It was the children's nurse just putting her young charge to bed. Clear and distinct came the tone to Frank's ear,—
‘Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is high.’

‘Ah!’ thought the listener, ‘that is just what I need. I would give the world to be able to sing that from my soul.’5

Perhaps the most poignant moment of this hymn in the history of liberty was one unbelievable Civil War story as told by Amos R. Wells in 1906.

In a company of old soldiers, from the Union and Confederate armies, a former Confederate was telling how he had been detailed one night to shoot a certain exposed sentry of the opposing army. He had crept near and was about to fire with deadly aim when the sentry began to sing, ‘Jesus, Lover of my soul.’ He came to the words,
‘Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of Thy wing.’

The hidden Confederate lowered his gun and stole away. ‘I can't kill that man,’ said he, ‘though he were ten times my enemy.’

In the company was an old Union soldier who asked quickly,

‘Was that in the Atlanta campaign of ‘64?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I was the Union sentry!’

And he went on to tell how, on that night, knowing the danger of his post, he had been greatly depressed, and, to keep up his courage, had begun to hum that hymn. By the time he had finished, he was entirely calm and fearless. Through the song God had spoken to two souls.6

While both soldiers would claim they were fighting for liberty, they agreed more than they disagreed, and though the war raged around them, the Confederate providentially withdrew his claim on the life of an enemy.

“Peace on earth, goodwill to men!”

NOTES:

1. Edwin M. Long, Illustrated History of Hymns and their Authors, (Philadelphia: Joseph F. Jaggers, 1876), 460.

2. Ibid, 440-441.

3. Ibid, 442, 445, 446.

4. Amos R. Wells, Twenty-four Memory Hymns and their stories, (Boston: United Society of Christian Endeavor, 1906), 44.

5. Long, Illustrated History, 456.

6. Wells, Twenty-four Memory Hymns, 44-45.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Long, Edwin M. Illustrated History of Hymns and their Authors. Philadelphia: Joseph F. Jaggers, 1876.
Wells, Amos R. Twenty-four Memory Hymns and their stories. Boston: United Society of Christian Endeavor, 1906.

Image sources (in order of article):
Sierra Nevada Albert Bierstadt circa 1871
Jwesleysitting
Miranda - The Tempest JWW
Camp Fire Winslow Homer

Pearl Harbor Day: Seventy Years of Remembering

2011-12-07T17:09:00.001-05:00

December seventh... 1941... the day of infamy. Now, seventy years later, let us honor those who lived through it by allowing them to speak for themselves. Here are some original clips:

The President's Address:

An interrupted radio program relating the news. Incidentally, the piece being played before the interruption is my favorite piece ever written for the piano, Frédéric Chopin's Nocturne in E Minor, Op72, No1:

A toll on civilians:

The US Navy's Account. To my Japanese and Japanese-American readers, I apologize for the derogatory terms. I am powerless to change history:

Japanese photography. As the Americans were busy saving lives, American photography of the event is rare, and this Japanese film presents a fuller picture (click the link here):

The explosion of the USS Arizona. The silent film speaks louder to me than anything else here, since one is left to imagine the dreadful noise (click the link here):

And today:

Some photos of American patriotism and sacrifice:

Felix Mendelssohn: Revival of Reformed Music in Germany

2011-11-04T15:22:00.001-04:00

File: CologneCathedralInSpire originally photographed by Randal J. from Wikipedia

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

In the eighteenth century, Frederick the Great of Prussia had all but replaced the old German Baroque style with the new enlightened Classical approach. Johann Sebastian Bach’s old church music of Lutheran Germany collected dust, while new methods of music were being explored. Much of Germany’s Protestant heritage of freedom was being replaced with Prussian martial Enlightenment, until Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn restored old Germany’s landmarks of liberty through music.

Born to a Jewish family on 3 February 1809, Mendelssohn was baptized into the Lutheran church on 21 March 1816 at the age of seven. The Lutheran understanding of the Christian faith would influence Mendelssohn all his life. His affluent and intellectual family also afforded him the life of a gentleman to pursue his talents. After studying piano under Ludwig Berger, violin with Wilhelm Henning, and music theory under Carl Friedrich Zelter, Mendelssohn began composing his first collection of works in 1820. While on a journey to Paris in 1825, he met the prestigious Luigi Cherubini and decided the future course of his career. Mendelssohn studied both the works of enlightened Classical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and old Baroque master Johann Sebastian Bach, but it was oddly Bach that caught Mendelssohn’s imagination. After matriculating from Berlin University in 1827, he conducted the first recreation of Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion at the Berlin Singakademie in 1829.

Felix Mendelssohn (Prang and Co., 1897). Performing Arts Reading Room, Library of Congress.

In 1829, Mendelssohn traveled through England and Scotland for more education. On 10 May 1829, he left for his grand tour of Italy, visiting on his way Munich, Germany; Vienna, Austria; and Florence, Rome, Pompeii, and Naples, Italy. His return journey in 1831 took him across Switzerland, and through Munich, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Liege, Paris, and even London. He finally returned to Berlin in 1832. That year, his great Reformation Symphony commemorated the roots of the modern Protestant world, introducing the tremendous Dresden Amen still used in hymnals today. Although Mendelssohn himself thought the Reformation Symphony too bulky, it recast Martin Luther’s theme of A Mighty Fortress is Our God into the glorious musical form of early nineteenth century Romanticism, and in a sense restored Germany’s lead in the great tradition of Protestant ecclesiastical music. Baroque counterpoint, fully perfected by Bach centuries earlier, also set the Reformation Symphony apart from the Romantic Classical forms of music of the nineteenth century.

In 1835, Mendelssohn preformed Bach's Concerto for Three Pianos and Orchestra in D Minor at the Gewandhaus concert hall. He earned his Honorary Doctorate from Leipzig University in 1836, finished composing his oratorio Saint Paul, and preformed Israel in Egypt. He traveled to Boston in 1837, and preformed Saint Paul for an American audience. To commemorate the four hundred year anniversary of the invention of the printing press, Mendelssohn premiered his Symphony #2 in B Flat Major, Lobgesang [Hymn of Praise], Opus 52 at St Thomas's Church in 1840. He also preformed an organ concert to raise funds for building a monument to his old Lutheran favorite Bach. In every sense, Mendelssohn was restoring the ancient landmarks of Reformed Germany.

Mendelssohn’s work was rewarded throughout the courts of Germany. On 31 March 1841, he was appointed as Kapellmeister for the Saxon Royal Court, called to fill the post of Friedrich Wilhelm IV’s court composer on July 1st wherever the monarch willed, and finally given the official title of Kapellmeister to the Prussian Royal Court on October 13th. Queen Victoria received him in 1842 on his seventh trip to England. In 1843, Mendelssohn became Director of Studies for the first musical conservatory in Germany, the newly opened Music Conservatoire at Leipzig. Later that year, he received the Freedom of the City of Leipzig Award, and unveiled his monument to the memory of Bach’s achievements. The year before he died, Mendelssohn premiered his Lauda Sion and his Elijah oratorio. When he died on 4 November 1847, not only Germany but the Christian Church lost a man who dedicated himself to restoring the Protestant heritage of Germany. His body was fittingly laid to rest in the Trinity Cemetery of Berlin.

Sources:
http://www.felixmendelssohn.com/
http://www.felixmendelssohn.com/felix_mendelssohn_bio_001.htm
http://www.felixmendelssohn.com/felix_mendelssohn_works_001.htm
http://www.mendelssohn-stiftung.de/r-biography.html
http://www.classicalarchives.com/work/17547.html#tvf=tracks&tv=about

A Dark Lord and His Ring of Power

2011-10-18T14:19:00.000-04:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

In stark contrast to many landmarks of liberty left behind by past civilizations, some cultural trappings belong on the ash heap of history. This Nazi ring is one of them. Adolf Hitler has long been likened to a dark lord, but it wasn’t until I saw this ring that I knew him to be a lord of rings.

As the photo shows, this ring would not fit the average adult. It was meant to seduce rather than decorate. Intentionally, the Nazis forged it for the delicate finger and soul of a gullible youth. It is a child’s ring.

My blood ran cold for a moment as I gazed at this speck of silver. I marveled with Boromir how strange that I should “suffer so much fear and doubt for so small a thing. So small a thing!” A black rider might say this “least of rings… is but a trifle” to all the horrors of the Nazi regime, but Hitler knew that if his empire were ever to last one thousand years, he needed in Gandalf’s words the young to “cover all the lands in a second darkness.” The loudest engines of war and torment could not sound tyranny with more discordant notes than this trifle. A whisper of evil sometimes chills the spine faster than the trumpet of pandemonium.

Deceived by apparent beauty and ceremony, the little bearer of this ring knew not that tyrants linked her childhood with the mass murderer of the Western world. Providentially, this sad time would only last twelve years instead of one thousand, thanks to the perseverance of the Allied efforts and the blessings of God. As Winston Churchill rightly said, “upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.” Churchill himself could not gain a panoramic view over the Mordor of Nazi Germany when he spoke these words, but seventy years later we may piece together wisps of the smoldering story. Sic Semper Tyrannis.

Beneath the Ivy

2011-08-15T08:59:00.000-04:00

Beneath the ivy stones molder away;

Light shineth out as the last golden ray.

For all is autumn now under the birch,

Lest snowy night ore’ take the cathedral church.

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

As my autumn semester begins, I will not have time to write any more on this blog. Perhaps I shall take it up again next summer, but in the meantime, I would like to leave my readers with a few themes from my work here. What is Landmarks of Liberty all about?

First, Landmarks of Liberty assumes a Providential view of history. As Patrick Henry once said, “there is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations…” Second, it is an attempt to render the Western world as a separate entity, advanced, civilized, and cultured, but now faded and withered. This is not to condone the historical methods of European overlords who wished to exert power through imperialism; only to notice the undeniable advances within just such civilizations. These we might call civilizational landmarks; the cultural, moral, and economic trappings of the largely Western Christian world. As de Tocqueville noted of America, civilization flourished underneath government within voluntary social institutions. The unique element here was the absence of social coercion, in other words, liberty. Hence, we might call our civilizational landmarks, landmarks of liberty.

Third, the “Time of Troubles” for Western civilization started in 1914, and the catastrophic signs of civilizational erosion first appeared during the First World War. In this war, the devastating effects of ideology, or the many ism’s of the modern world including progressivism, liberalism, imperialism, coerced globalism, etc., began to replace the cultural heritage of the Western world. Not only was the West literally torn apart for its wrongs, it became dehumanized and culturally depressed with itself. Might I relate how far the West has fallen? As John Milton once said of the fall of humanity in Eden, this is a “sad task, yet argument not less but more Heroic then the wrauth of stern Achilles on his Foe pursu’d…” (Paradise Lost, Book 9) We still reap, at least materially, the benefits of the old West, but like a summer gone, we feel the nipping chill of an approaching nihilistic winter. It is a quiet autumn on our Western front, and beneath the ivy we may still glimpse the moldering remnants of our older world.

Symphony of the week

To leave this blog with a fitting symphonic moment, I’ve chosen Sir Edward Elgar’s larghetto from his Second Symphony as my symphony of the week. It was used as the funeral march for Edward VII; the drawing of the curtain in the last age of Western glory before World War I. As Elgar would later say of his Third symphony, larghetto displays “stately sorrow… Naturally what follows brings hope.” Hope we would have, if only we would recast our ancient landmarks that ever soften between the tendrils of ivy and quake before the ever approaching gales of winter. “Remove not the ancient landmarks, which thy fathers have set.” Proverbs 22:28

I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew:
Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew…
O Lorien! The Winter comes, the bare and leafless Day;
The leaves are falling in the stream, the River flows away.¹

Notes/Sources:

1. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, (Houghton Mifflin Company: New York, 2003), 363.

Image of Cole Thomas The Present 1838 from Wikipedia

A Frothy Mug in the Houses of Liberty: Coffee Houses of the 17th and 18th Centuries

2011-08-11T10:48:00.001-04:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

Free speech in the coffee houses of Europe and America birthed the rise of gentility, republican government, and liberty during a time of, as Beatrix Potter said, “swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets – when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta…” Whether philosophical men between sips passionately debated the latest movements of the British Army in America, or some highwaymen sat brooding plots over steaming mugs, coffee was sure to find its way at the heart of most adventures. With the introduction of coffee into Europe in the 17th century and the subsequent rise of the coffee house as a public forum in the 17th and 18th centuries, some of the greatest political, social, and literary achievements of Great Britain and America started with a cup of coffee.

Origins
In his irreplaceably comprehensive volume All About Coffee, William Harrison Ukers records that Venetian traders first brought coffee to Europe in 1615, and eventually coffee made its way to Rome.¹ Legend has it that certain priests convinced Pope Clement VIII to ban coffee because they claimed it originated from Satan. When the Pope tasted it, he supposedly exclaimed “Why, this Satan’s drink is so delicious… We shall fool Satan by baptizing it, and making it a truly Christian beverage.”² Despite the superstition, coffee houses in Italy became a place where all sorts congregated, with the workers, physicians, lawyers, and merchants stopping in during the mornings and the nobility and gentry coming in the evenings. The first English coffee house was opened in Oxford in 1650 by a Jew from Lebanon, and coffee houses soon rose in popularity among the students. Within these early haunts, clubs sprang up, the first of which was a Jacobite Royalist society of students led by the apothecary Arthur Tilyard. Believing the deposed Stuart monarch Charles II to be the rightful king of Great Britain, this club was a prelude to the Royal Society. Soon, all over England, coffee houses similar to those in London became fashionable in the Provinces. Tobacco in England was first smoked in just such an establishment in Exeter, Devonshire, where also Sir Walter Raleigh often visited, known more commonly for the founding of his lost American colony. In America, Captain John Smith became the first American to bring the knowledge of coffee to the New World.³

Get News and Coffee Black or Brown in Merry London Town
During the Commonwealth in London, free speech was permitted, but soon after the restoration of King Charles II in 1660, coffee became a persecuted drink. Ironically, the discussions and Royalists clubs under the Commonwealth spread dissatisfaction with the status quo, and helped bring about a more responsive administration. The House of Commons in 1660 associated coffee with “other outlandish drinks,” and put a duty of four pence per gallon on it. By 1663, English coffee house proprietors were required to obtain licenses for their practices.⁴ Fearing that free intercourse would undermine his authority, King Charles II issued a proclamation that prohibited, “all manner of persons, that they or any of them do not presume… to keep any Public Coffee House, or to utter or sell by retail, in his, her or their house or houses… any Coffee, Chocolet, Sherbett or Tea, as they will answer the contrary at their utmost perils…”⁵ Public opinion was aroused so strongly against the act, that Charles revoked it not two weeks afterwards.⁶

Charles had good cause to fear coffee. A pamphleteer in 1665 reflected that coffee house society of the Commonwealth was diverse and sober. Club members created ballot boxes to vote on differing opinions, and the Coffee Club of the Rota led the way in debating and disseminating truly republican sentiments of representative government in England.⁷
The drink brought with it an etiquette of civility. For instance, several 17th century coffee houses displayed the following rules on their walls:

Enter, Sirs, freely, but first, if you pleas,
Peruse our civil orders, which are these…
Pre-eminence of place none here should mind,
But take the next fit seat that he can find:
Nor need any if finer persons come,
Rise up to assign to them his room;
To limit men’s expense, we think not fair,
But let him forfeit twelve-pence that shall swear…
Let mirth be innocent, and each man see
That all his jests without reflection be…⁸

Over time, these rules were not enforced, and through the 18th century coffee houses and taverns became less distinguishable. However, coffee houses of this period took on a more commercial use, with each trade choosing its own house and individual patrons defining the character of each house. Eventually, the nobility and gentry turned the coffee house into a plaything, and the social rules of civil equality deteriorated by the beginning of the 19th century.⁹

Before their demise, the coffee houses of London were the homes of Britain’s famous “wits,” or authors, poets, and literary critics. Among the most notable houses were St. James’s, Will’s, Garraway’s, Slaughter’s, White’s, Button’s, Tom’s, the Grecian, Don Saltero’s, and Lloyd’s. Members of Parliament and other Whig sympathizers met at St. James, and many political debates between Whigs and Tories took place there.¹⁰ John Dryden, the court poet, visited both Convent Garden and Will’s, and at the Grecian, Fleetwood Shephard related a very singular criticism that Dryden made of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, “This man… cuts us all out, and the ancients, too.”¹¹ Daniel Defoe visited many of the London coffee houses whenever money permitted him. Joseph Addison, Davenant, Carey, Steele, and Philips all met at Button’s, as did Pope for a time before leaving it. Another literary club met at Turk’s Head coffee house which included Dr. Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Boswell, Burke, Garrick, historian Gibbon, economist Adam Smith, and the famous painter Sir Joshua Reynolds. Some of Britain’s most influential thinkers of the 17th and18th centuries developed their ideas in the coffee houses of London.¹²

Oh, Plenty of Coffee there be for American Liberty
In America, coffee houses were taverns where coffee was also sold.¹³ To drink coffee was to resist tyranny. With the monopolizing of the American tea trade by the East India Company and the tea tax, the people of Boston drank coffee in place of tea, while Americans in New York, Pennsylvania, and the colonies of Charleston deemed coffee “king of the American breakfast table.”¹⁴ New England coffee houses were places of meeting for dissenters and republicans; those most interested in religious and political liberty during the 17th and 18th centuries. Then there was the King’s Head in Boston, where crown officers and richer citizens socialized. The Indian Queen in Boston became a favorite among just such persons.¹⁵ The Green Dragon, being situated contrary to popular opinion in Boston and not in the Shire of Middle Earth, was as Daniel Webster claimed “headquarters of the Revolution.”¹⁶ Paul Revere, James Otis, John Adams, and Warren all met in the Green Dragon to advance freedom in America. Otis’s brilliance as a champion for independence was abruptly hindered when his political enemies lured him into the British Coffee House and beat him so badly that he never fully recovered his mental abilities. Just outside the Bunch of Grapes in Boston, a Philadelphia delegate read the Declaration of Independence to an enthusiastic crowd below. When in Philadelphia, Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson all frequented the City Tavern, later renamed the Merchants Coffee House. Much of the planning behind the American War for Independence took place in coffee houses.¹⁷

Please Pass the Coffee Tray for Liberty Today
Coffee has been quite the drink among us interns this summer at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. As an American, a native of Michigan and its cold winters, and someone actively advancing liberty with the Mackinac Center, I’m proud to lift a mug of coffee to our heritage of freedom. Not only did the coffee house foster a code of gentility in old London, but it also provided a civil resort for the hatching of the greatest human endeavor of modern history, the founding the United States of America on the principles of liberty and equality under the law.

Notes

1. William Harrison Ukers, All About Coffee, (The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company: New York, 1922), 25-26.

2. Ibid, 26.

3. Ibid, 28, 41-42, 105.

4. Ibid, 54, 59, 72.

5. Ibid, 72-73.

6. Ibid, 73.

7. Ibid, 59.

8. Ibid, 60-61.

9. Ibid, 61-62, 75.

10. Ibid, 81.

11. Ibid, 574-575, 584.

12. Ibid, 79-81.

13. Ibid, 126.

14. Ibid, 106-107.

15. Ibid, 107, 109-110.

16. Ibid, 110.

17. Ibid, 110-111, 129-130.

Bibliography

Ukers, William Harrison. All About Coffee. The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company: New York, 1922.

Image Source

Image of Green Dragon Tavern1 from Wikipedia

Milton Friedman and Historical Landmarks

2011-07-27T16:06:00.001-04:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

Time flies, and with it the memory of the late economist Milton Friedman, who would have been 99 years old this year. However, we at the Mackinac Center and the Foundation for Educational Choice hope to revive Friedman’s legacy by hosting some lectures this Friday on his monetary policy. It is also the 105th anniversary of the American Civil War, an issue encompassing a context for economic analysis.

Friedman’s free-market principles are vital to comprehending monetary supply during the Civil War. An entire generation of brothers hammered their plowshares into swords. As Northern factories shaped rifles and Southern farmers smelt bullets, the strain on local economies was enormous. Like a plague of locusts, the “terrible swift sword” burned through the Virginian Shenandoah Valley and across Georgia, destroying Southern crops and vegetation. Along the Western front, raiders on both sides wreaked havoc on the civilian populace. In the words of a song, “not now for songs of a nation's wrongs, not the groans of starving labor; Let the rifle ring and the bullet sing to the clash of the flashing sabre!” The elephant in the room was big government, as usual. Both North and South inflated their money supplies, causing a rise in prices. Southern currency especially suffered a significant decrease in value due to the printing of excess Confederate money. As was apparent to Friedman, inflation is most often the fault of central banks, like those during the Civil War, that print more money than reflects actual market demand.

As a historian, I have always found Friedman’s work to be historically pertinent. His view of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as an era of prosperity deserves more academic acceptance than it gets. I agree with Friedman’s impression that America during the Victorian era was a beacon to all those persecuted peoples throughout the earth who wished simply for the freedom to work hard for their existence. It was not a “gilded age” as historians want to paint it but a golden one. Friedman’s love for America’s heritage and his presumption of good will to all people, even his enemies, are his two qualities I admire most.

This Friday will be a day of both celebration and solemn reflection, as we remember Friedman’s legacy and the many thousands of lives lost during the Civil War. History often repeats itself in various forms. If we do not apply absolute principles to past events, we will be subject to repeating the same mistakes that history contains. We must remember those who are important in the history of our freedom, and reclaim our historical landmarks of liberty.

Image of CivilWarFifeandDrum from Wikipedia

A Tribute to the Second Battle of the Marne

2011-07-14T10:36:00.001-04:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

As we approach July 17th, the landmark date for the beginning of the Second Battle of the Marne, I thought it appropriate to wrap up the World War I theme. I’ve composed a poem, perhaps from the perspective of the French or British soldiers during the Allied counter offensive of the battle, in which the troops were expected to abandon their trenches and fight a less conventional war (Neiberg 40:10). American reinforcements are now numbering about twenty two to twenty three thousand soldiers a day, giving the French more leeway room for ambitious tactics (Ibid 59:36). My poem gets at the contradictions of the war and hints at future problems that proved all too true in our post world war era. It looks back to the 19th century Christian world for its inspiration of childhood, including the Victorian concept for an imaginative and chivalrous youth. Like Chesterton’s Ballad of the White Horse, it is an attack on Nihilism, although more pertinent to the 20th and 21st centuries. Below are some video tributes.

The Men at the Marne

Leave our trenches and coldly fight

To ascend the world of death and light?

And all because more men as we

Now come from a far country?

The cost of men to save more men;

Which is more costly? None now ken.

To war, from ditch to earth our height;

We fight our act; and act our fight;

The plan from those whose ends are met

Without a thought to cost or debt.

So sacrifice untallied be,

Until by war, from war, we’re free.

What lurked behind clouds of glory,

An endless war; who could foresee?

Only the wise, but they spoke not,

And with sorrow left to their lot

The foolish who’s counsel it was

Within a year to win the cause.

From death, more hard than earth their toil,

They sooner learned to hide in soil.

Now, weeping, wailing it seems,

Pours from the guns that slay the dreams,

Of a generation young but old

Between worlds modern and more bold.

More men, less care; more life, less life,

If ever we win to lose our strife.

But such a world that would arise,

Might wage new war within the skies.

Empire ends. What will next be;

Harder masters or liberty?

Time of troubles, wherein the right

Is just as wrong as wrong is trite;

Where law is law that law is not,

From naught is naught, and naught our lot?

For childhood once more we would

Stand as we stand for truth and good.

A video tribute to the Second Battle of the Marne

This was an earlier battle called Passchendaele, but it has some actual original footage worth watching.

Work Cited:
Neiberg, Michael S. The Second Battle of the Marne: The Turning Point of 1918. US Army War College. Carlisle Barracks, Carlisle, PA. 20 August 2008. Lecture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aey6nVhZpcU

Image of General gouraud french army world war i machinegun marne 1918 from Wikipedia

More Owen Poems (Audio)

2011-06-28T15:45:00.002-04:00

Here are some more Wilfred Owen poems on the deterioration of the glories of the Western world during World War I (sorry for the animation, a little digitally rough).

E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

1914 by Wilfred Owen

2011-06-27T16:52:00.002-04:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

I won't have time to post anything big since I'm preparing for an Intern University lecture. However, in keeping with the Russell Kirk theme, here's a little poetic description of the beginning of the "Time of Trouble": WWI. In this poem, Wilfred Owen points out the end of a Western progress (something I would term as the false ideology of progressivism), and ties this in with the history of Western politics. Although he perhaps over-glorifies Greece and Rome, the idea is that the Western World is losing its luster. This fact is incontrovertible, but not inevitable for the future. Let us restore that which has been lost.

1914 by Wilfred Owen

War broke: and now the Winter of the world

With perishing great darkness closes in.

The foul tornado, centered at Berlin,

Is over all the width of Europe whirled,

Rending the sails of progress. Rent or furled

Are all Art's ensigns. Verse wails. Now begin

Famines of thought and feeling. Love's wine's thin.

The grain of human Autumn rots, down-hurled.

For after Spring had bloomed in early Greece,

And Summer blazed her glory out with Rome,

An Autumn softly fell, a harvest home,

A slow grand age, and rich with all increase.

But now, for us, wild Winter, and the need

Of sowings for new Spring, and blood for seed.

Source:

Image of Royal Irish Rifles ration party Somme July 1916 from Wikipedia

Excellent D-Day Speeches

2011-06-08T16:16:00.000-04:00

Being a bagpiper myself, my eyes welled up with tears when Reagan made reference to Piper Bill Millin’s bravery on the beaches. Here are some pictures of him.

E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

Images of Landing on Queen Red Beach, Sword Area and Bill Millin from Wikipedia

The Politics of Prudence: A Review

2011-06-06T10:07:00.003-04:00

Valley Gardens, I., Herrogate, England
[Detail of image from Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division: LC-DIG-ppmsc-08423]

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

Prologue:
My friend Master Bringe has posted on his blog, “For Christ’s Kingdom,” a list of books he is reading and asked others to inform him of their reading lists. I have just finished Russell Kirk’s “The Politics of Prudence,” and found it to be in keeping with much of what I study and admire in Western culture. His book comprehensively defines modern American conservatism provides a history of conservative thought, and describes historic and contemporary challenges to conservative preservation of a Christian society. The following is a synopsis and review of Kirk’s last masterpiece published while he yet lived.

Kirk’s first two chapters, titled “The Errors of Ideology” and “Ten Conservative Principles,” contrast conservative thought with other political systems. In “The Errors of Ideology,” Kirk exhorts his readers to avoid ideological politics.1 Ideology, or utopian politics, falsely promises earthly paradise, but only delivers disaster.2 Kirk provides America’s faith in democracy as an example.3 The vices of ideology are threefold. First, ideology inverts religion by promising salvation in earthly revolution rather than by the Christian doctrine of grace in death.4 Second, ideology excludes the possibility of compromise of any kind, causing the ostracizing of “reactionaries,” civil wars and the destruction of useful institutions in society.5 Third, ideologues endlessly compete with each other for an imaginary loyalty to their cause.6 By contrast, the prudential conservative is allied to convention, and knows that his job is to preserve order and the “Permanent Things” that allow a society to exist.7 His virtues include “prudence, temperance, compromise, the traditions of civility, or cultural patrimony.”8 He looks ahead before making a decision and attempts only the possible.9

In, “Ten Conservative Principles,” Kirk describes contemporary conservative expressions of convictions, but because conservatives are not ideologues and somewhat culturally contextual, he allows for flexibility in the way conservatives frame their views.10 Present conservative principles include an acknowledgment of permanent moral order; a respect for convention, continuity and tradition; a belief in the advantages of the prescriptive wisdom of those who have gone on before; a virtue of prudence, or the act of often slow and deliberate change; an attentiveness towards social variety; a creed that human nature is flawed; a conviction that freedom and private property go hand in hand; an admiration for voluntary community and distaste for collectivism; a desire to restrain power and human passions; and finally, an understanding for both permanence and change in society.11 Redefining the political spectrum along conservative lines, Kirk references Eric Voegelin’s statement that political demarcations are not between totalitarians on one side and liberals on the other, but rather between those who only live for temporal order and those who admit a permanent moral order, enduring human nature, and duties to the spiritual order as well as the temporal order.12 Hence, conservatives do not offer a paradise for this earth, but are satisfied to politically work for only what is realistic while praying for the rest.13 Kirk’s first two chapters reveal to pilgrims seeking wisdom in politics the strait and narrow path of conservative prudence and the dangers of taking the ideological byways to cultural disaster.

In chapters three, four and five, Kirk lists 10 events momentous for the conservative cause, 10 conservative books and 10 recognizable conservatives. Historical landmarks of conservatism include the signing of the Constitution, Edmund Burke’s last exhortation before passing into eternity in 1797, John Randolph’s speech before the House of Representatives in 1824, the 1848 publication of Orestes Brownson’s essay “Socialism and the Church,” Disraeli’s speech at the Guildhall in 1867, a brief eastern and central European resistance to Marxism after WWI against the Mordor of Moscow, the defeat of Nazism in WWII, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s exile from Russia and his 1983 Templeton Address, John Paul II’s Papal election, and Ronald Reagan’s election.14 These 10 incidents stand in marked contrast to the 20th century’s “time of troubles” begun in 1914. Kirk hopes for a conservative stand in the 21st century.16 My sentiments are less certain, as the future of Western civilization under its present progressive course will bear grief rather than renewal. As J. R. R. Tolkien wrote, such predictive perception “is the sorrow of the wise.” 17

In listing 10 conservative books and individuals, Kirk realizes that conservatism is not limited to books or certain individuals, but rather acknowledges that such literature is an expression of true conservative thought and these heroes are only his personal choices.18 Kirk’s book list contains, Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” James Fenimore Cooper’s “The American Democrat,” Brownson’s “The American Republic,” James Fitzjames Stephen’s “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” W. H. Mallock’s “Is Life Worth Living?,” Irving Babbitt’s “Democracy and Leadership,” Donald Davidson’s “The Attack on Leviathan,” Wilhelm Roepke’s “The Social Crisis of Our Time,” and T. S. Eliot’s “Notes Towards the Definition of Culture.”19 Kirk points out that since serious readers generally exist within the conservative camp and liberals tend to use more progressive media, these books might consequently be more useful today than they ever were.20 Kirk’s conservative heroes are Marcus Cicero, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Samuel Johnson, Sir Walter Scott, John Randolph, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Theodore Roosevelt, Joseph Conrad, Richard Weaver and Freya Stark.21 Here, Kirk gives his personal list. Every conservative has his own list, yet Walter Scott is a choice that I heartily commend. Scott’s works not only invigorated the Western world with chivalry for a century, but also are especial favorites of mine. Outside of John Milton, I vote Walter Scott as the greatest author of the English language.

Kirk turns next to certain individuals, in addition to his previous list, who defended the roots of Western civilization. Chapter six describes the life and politics of T. S. Eliot. According to Kirk, Eliot opposed centralization in an era when his contemporaries like George Bernard Shaw turned to political ideology.22 For Eliot, the Western civilization could not long last without Christianity.23 Other preservers of western civilization in America were the southern conservatives and Donald Davidson. Surrounded with a changing America, Davidson became a champion for an agricultural economy over industrialization.24 Although he admitted it impossible to turn the clock back, he believed that many Futurists were committing an equally illogical fallacy for striving for a future divorced from the past.25 The 12 Southerners who wrote “I’ll Take My Stand” likewise criticize the worship of materialism and progress, and challenge readers to preserve the tranquility of the old South.26 Returning to Roepke in chapter eight, Kirk reveals Roepke as the primary restorer of Germany’s economy after WWII.27 Roepke believed in a “humane economy,” or an economy that matched the scale and nature of humans within that economy as opposed to an economy based solely on production.28 For a more aggressive hero, Kirk mentions Malcolm Muggeridge’s criticisms of liberalism. Muggeridge connects the ills of Moscow with liberal roots such as the Darwinian false gospel of instant and inescapable progress.29 Kirk’s readers may find a common thread through these defenders of conservatism; they all acknowledged that there must be unalterable truths worth preserving that render humanity constant as technology changes.

Chapters 10 through 13 analyze four forms of politics generally viewed as part of the Right: popular conservatism, libertarianism, neo-conservatism and cultural conservatism. Kirk identifies popular conservatism as an American preference for the difficulties of the present political system over the unforeseen problems of disruptive political change.30 Typical American conservatives, Kirk claims, hold to at least six inclinations: a religious view of man instead of secular, a dislike for centralization, loyalty to the Constitution, a resistance to political ideologies, belief in private property and respect for personal rights.31 Less popular are the libertarians, although since the tea party movement libertarians have taken on a larger following from the Right than ever before. Kirk asserts that ultimately libertarians are overly utilitarian.32 Once again, Kirk insists that instead of the political spectrum being between absolute totalitarianism and absolute libertarianism, the more important line is between those who respect moral order and those who only concern themselves with our “ephemeral existence.”33 Although harsh, Kirk does admit that some libertarians do respect moral order.34 After libertarianism, Kirk looks to neo and cultural conservatives. Kirk praises neo-conservatives for their hard line against communism in the 20th century, but criticizes their short term and idealistic thinking.35 By contrast, Kirk describes the cultural conservatives as understanding the history of American culture as it relates to Christianty.36 They believe that American culture was formed from a Hebraic, classical and Christian heritage, and wish to renew American mores in society.37 These four groups bring Kirk to a few contemporary issues and some application.

Kirk gives his readers some advice in his closing chapters, including guidance on foreign policy, warnings against centralization, methods for improving the education system and some suggestions on how to curtail the growth of proletariat citizens who through laziness waste the nation’s resources. In chapter 18, Kirk cautions against an overextended hope in the American system of politics, and argues that political systems must match the culture, beliefs and ancient laws of a people before they are suitable.38 Closer to home, Kirk advises in his last chapter to live lives that improve ourselves and neighborhoods.39 “The Politics of Prudence” is a magnum opus. Complete with personal application, readers walk away with an understanding of the significance of preserving the landmarks of our heritage. It is the first political analysis I’ve yet seen to address all areas of life.

Notes:

1. Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2004), 1.

2. Ibid, 5.

3. Ibid, 8.

4. Ibid, 5.

5. Ibid, 5-6.

6. Ibid, 6.

7. Ibid, 11, 14.

8. Ibid, 13.

9. Ibid, 9.

10. Ibid, 16-17.

11. Ibid, 17-24.

12. Ibid, 28-29.

13. Ibid, 29.

14. Ibid, 34-40.

15. Ibid, 42.

16. Ibid.

17. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lay of Leithian,
http://aandachtuit.nl/esgalduin/leithian4.html (accessed June 3, 2011),
Canto VI, Line 1272.

18. Kirk, Politics, 44, 63.

19. Ibid, 50-56.

20. Ibid, 60-61.

21. Ibid, 64-76.

22. Ibid, 84-85.

23. Ibid, 95.

24. Ibid, 99, 101.

25. Ibid, 105.

26. Ibid, 108.

27. Ibid, 114.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid, 131-132.

30. Ibid, 144-145.

31. Ibid, 147-148.

32. Ibid, 167.

33. Ibid, 166-167.

34. Ibid, 157.

35. Ibid, 178, 179, 183.

36. Ibid, 194-195.

37. Ibid, 192.

38. Ibid, 273-275.

39. Ibid, 287.

Bibliography

Kirk, Russell. The Politics of Prudence. Wilmington: ISI Books, 2004.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lay of Leithian.
http://aandachtuit.nl/esgalduin/leithian4.html (accessed June 3, 2011).

England under Edward VII

2011-05-06T17:01:00.001-04:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

As this week marks the anniversary of King Edward VII’s death on May 6, 1910, an opportunity presents itself to review James Anson Farrer’s book England under Edward VII, published in 1922. This book provides an outstanding factual account of the political treaties and intricate alliances that defined the positions of European powers in the Great War. Edward’s reign marked the sunset of the glories of patriotic aspirations in the Western World.

Farrer claims in his book that Edward VII began a policy of interference with the Continental Powers in contrast to Gladstone's Victorian policy of abstention from Continental politics (Farrer 187). This new projection of Great Britain set Europe along two opposing lines: the already existing Triple Alliance and the newly formed Triple Entente (218). Farrer relates an era when the minutest movements of monarchs had global consequences, and because court pageantry was the basis for creating alliances, the royal families of Europe with their foreign ministers could define the course of history almost singlehandedly. King Edward's repeated visits to the Continental monarchs cemented friendships that birthed the pledges of entire armies to the mutual assistance of the nations involved. The result was that Germany's attempts at maintaining the loyalty and expanding the influence of its Triple Alliance were foiled. Due to Edward's brilliant diplomacy, by 1910, Britain, France, Russia, Spain, and Belgium, had entered into friendly agreements with one another to the exclusion of German, and both Germany and Austria-Hungry were virtually encircled. Further, Italy's loyalty to its alliance with Germany seemed unstable. Edward had not only succeeded in disrupting Germany's treaty, but had created an alliance system of its own. Both England and Germany in their efforts to rally Europe to one side or the other claimed they were securing peace for Europe; and both got war in the end.

According to Farrer the real source of anti-English sentiment in Germany was from the Pan-German press, and not from Wilhelm II (45). Farrer references Wilhelm's statements for cordial respect of the intents of other European nations, and points out the disconnect between the motivations of the German and English presses verses the intentions of monarchs. Remember, Wilhelm was Edward's nephew, and cousin to Czar Nicolas II of Russia. These European monarchs were family, and all their international meetings reflected commonality of identity. Yet, the Times and other English papers recorded every move of Germany's as a threat. Wilhelm himself even sent a letter to Great Britain asking the government to restrain the falsehoods. Edward later assured Wilhelm that the view of the press was laughable. Yet, transportation and communication were such that the views of the English press could now fan public opinion into war.

Farrer relates how the systems of alliances were shifted during the Edwardian era to fit their pre-World War I arrangement. First, Germany's protests of England's continued attempts to suppress African resistance in the Boer War set England and Germany at odds (36-62). Then, Edward traveled to Italy which, much to Germany's suspicions, began the unraveling of Italian relations with Germany and Italian affinity for England. On the same trip, Edward visited Paris and began initiated the Dual Entente between France and Britain (66). Next, England excluded Germany in partitioning Morroco between Spain and France (90). Somehow everyone knew they were preparing for a "coming war" between Germany and England (178). Finally, Edward visited Czar Nicolas and guarantied a Triple Entente between England, France, and Russia, dashing any real chances Germany had for gaining a Russian alliance (217-218). The stage was now set for indefinite diplomatic imbalance between the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance, or a more probable war. However, Edward died before seeing the fruition of the new international arrangement.

Perhaps Farrer dismisses a real, historic threat of German aggression given the Franco-Prussian War that would justify Edward in his sudden involvement in the diplomacy of Continental Europe. However, Farrer relies on much primary source work to relate a history of the details of international treaty making during Edward's reign. These details suggest the conclusion that international politics in Edwardian Britain may be viewed in light of World War I rather than as a continuation of Victorian norms. Was Edwardian Britain the end of an earlier Victorian age, or the beginning of the modern international construct? I can do nothing more than to recommend my readers to read Farrer's book and decide for themselves.

Sources:
http://www.archive.org/details/englandunderedwa00farrrich
Image of Edward VII in coronation robes from Wikipedia

Prince William and Princess Katherine of Great Britain: The Royal Wedding

2011-04-29T10:16:00.010-04:00

This is a day not just for them but for all of Great Britain, and a moment of ecstasy in the Anglican pageantry of English constitutional monarchy.

God save the Queen,
E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

The Ceremony:

The entire unedited ceremony: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/royal-wedding-watch/post/the-complete-wedding-ceremony-of-prince-william-and-kate-middleton-video/2011/04/29/AFFQlMDF_blog.html

The bride's train and her entrance to Westminster: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13237486

The bridal march: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13237856

The vows: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13237441

The procession from Westminster to Buckingham:

The Royal kiss on the palace balcony:

The Royal Air Force Flyover
(Listen to the hum of those Spitfires)
http://abcnews.go.com/International/video/royal-wedding-prince-william-kate-middleton-british-air-13489546

Image from BBC News: Live Text

Christ Jesus Lay in Death's Strong Bands

2011-04-21T13:12:00.005-04:00

Here is a hymn for Good Friday and Easter. I have been blessed to be able to call the truths within my own, for only in Jesus do I find satisfaction. The greater satisfaction however, is that of God the Father in Jesus the Son's work and death on my behalf by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Blessings,
Wesley

CHRIST JESUS LAY IN DEATH’S STRONG BANDS

Here's the tune in its original German Baroque style

Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands,
For our offenses given;
But now at God’s right hand He stands,
And brings us life from Heaven.
Wherefore let us joyful be,
And sing to God right thankfully
Loud songs of Alleluia! Alleluia!

No son of man could conquer Death,
Such mischief sin had wrought us,
For innocence dwelt not on earth,
And therefore Death had brought us
Into thralldom from of old
And ever grew more strong and bold
And kept us in his bondage. Alleluia!

But Jesus Christ, God’s only Son,
To our low state descended,
The cause of Death He has undone,
His power forever ended,
Ruined all his right and claim
And left him nothing but the name,
His sting is lost forever. Alleluia!

It was a strange and dreadful strife
When life and death contended;
The victory remained with life;
The reign of death was ended.
Stripped of power, no more it reigns,
An empty form alone remains
Death’s sting is lost forever! Alleluia!

Here the true Paschal Lamb we see,
Whom God so freely gave us;
He died on the accursed tree—
So strong His love!—to save us.
See, His blood doth mark our door;
Faith points to it, Death passes over,
And Satan cannot harm us. Alleluia!

So let us keep the festival
Where to the Lord invites us;
Christ is Himself the joy of all,
The Sun that warms and lights us.
By His grace He doth impart
Eternal sunshine to the heart;
The night of sin is ended! Alleluia!

Then let us feast this Easter day
On the true Bread of Heaven;
The Word of grace hath purged away
The old and wicked leaven.
Christ alone our souls will feed;
He is our Meat and Drink indeed;
Faith lives upon no other! Alleluia!

From http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/c/j/l/cjlayind.htm

Titanic - 99 Years

2011-04-15T17:10:00.000-04:00

Here are some videos and first hand accounts. Perhaps I shall do a write up next year for centennial.

Titanic - Original Footage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHjDkQJ25zY

INTERVIEW WITH TITANIC SURVIVOR EDITH RUSSELL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm8savFqwgk&feature=related

Titanic Survivors: What They Saw (1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEyL6Mktn0k&feature=related

Titanic: A survivors tale part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbOqusgA_fc&feature=related

titanic ;part 2.wmv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSqTNcRCjkc&feature=related

titanic; part 3.wmv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0akUzKVKKs&feature=related

Eva Hart speaks about her memories of the Titanic . . survivor interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD5J43Z9AWI&feature=related

Image of Titanic_3 from Wikipedia

Royal Albert Hall

2011-03-29T13:09:00.003-04:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

Originally chartered to host music expositions and meetings for learned societies, the Royal Albert Hall in London was opened by Queen Victoria on March 29, 1871. With its glass dome, velarium awning, and seating for 8,000 Victorian visitors, the amphitheatre echoed with an almost celestially chime. It was said that the "amen" after the blessing during the opening ceremony reechoed for over a minute. The organ inside was the largest in the world after its construction by Henry Willis in the 1870s, having 7,940 pipes!

The Hall has a special place in the history of liberty. During World War II, Nazi bombers left it standing because it was an excellent point of reference for their pilots. Ironically, it can be seen today as a still standing memorial to the power of Britain's finest hour. Also, the Von Trapp family singers (the inspiration behind the 1965 musical The Sound of Music) preformed at the Hall on October 8, 1950, several years after successfully escaping from Austria during the Nazi invasion. Queen Victoria never knew about the conflicts of the 20th century, and would have never imagined the Hall's significance as a symbol for liberty and endurance in the modern world.

Sources:
Image of RAH Opening 1871 ILN from Wikipedia
Image of RAH Grand Opening by Queen Victoria 29 March 1871 The Graphic from Wikipedia
http://en.structurae.de/structures/data/index.cfm?ID=s0006901
http://www.architecture.com/LibraryDrawingsAndPhotographs/Albertopolis/TheStoryOf/RoyalAlbertHall/RoyalAlbertHall.aspx

"Tack-it-to-the-wall" Debate on Western Formal Attire

2011-03-18T11:11:00.001-04:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

Just for some humor, here's a "tack-it" debate I'm presently having on my cubical wall with an anonymous coworker (click the above image to see more closely). I'm still trying to figure out for myself who it is. First, some background. While discussing Western dress with a church friend, Stephanie MacGown, I briefly explained that in order to help avoid some of the problems maintaining a tie, waistcoats ought to be worn over them. She came up with the brilliant bumper sticker phrase, "Save the tie, wear a waistcoat." This line so caught my fancy, I put it up on my work cubical wall, using an image from this page of the Bookster's Tweed Jacket website.

However, a fellow coworker argued that I ought to call the waistcoat a "vest." Here is a transcript of his/her historical argument from the image above:

Wesley:

1. We won the American Revolution.

2. We won the War of 1812.

3. It's a vest not a waistcoat.

Here is my response (if you couldn't read it from the picture):

On the contrary, secondary sources written as late as 1991 and 2005 attest to the fact that the vest was still known as a waistcoat until it was no longer a necessary part of Western dress. Since the vest was no longer “necessary” in Western dress much after the Edwardians, these sources will suffice. The waistcoat to the left is Victorian or Edwardian by the way.

From the 1850’s section (after the War of 1812, in other words) of Priscilla Harris’s 1991 commentary of Victorian dress entitled American Victorian Costume in Early Photographs, she writes, “Gentleman in satin waistcoat and cravat tied in a lose bow.1”

In Liza Picard’s 2005 book Victorian London: The Tale of a City 1840—1870, she claims, “The Victorian middle-class urban male wore a tall hat, a coat, waistcoat and trousers, with an overcoat in cold weather.2”

Finally, even the Edwardians make reference to “waistcoats” as is apparent from Pearl Binder’s The Peacock’s Tail, “The Teddy-boy dress derives originally from the Edwardian waistcoats and faintly Edwardian rig introduced during the Second World War.3”

By WWII, the “waistcoat” vest was only a superfluous item. Therefore, we must go back to the Edwardians for its “true” name.

1. Dalrymple, Priscilla Harris. American Victorian Costume in Early Photographs. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc). 17.

2. Picard, Liza. Victorian London: The Tale of a City 1840—1870. (New York: St. Martin’s Press). 165.

3. Binder, Pearl. The Peacock’s Tail. (Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers, Ltd). 382.

I'll post any future updates to the debate.

Day 18 of the Battle of Iwo Jima: March 9, 1945

2011-03-08T13:19:00.002-05:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

Tomorrow marks the 19th day of fighting on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, where US marines finally succeeded in dividing the Japanese forces in half. Read the excerpt below from here and watch the video:

"Finally, the breakthrough came on D+18 when a 28-man patrol led by Lt Paul Connally reached the northeast coast. The men stood and stared, hardly believing that they had finally split the Japanese into two. Connally filled his canteen with seawater and sent it to his CO, Colonel Withers who passed it onto General Erskine. The cost to get this far for the 3rd Marine Division had been enormous - over 3,500 casualties. That night, the first major firebombing raid by B29 Superfortresses from the Marianas took place over Tokyo. Around a quarter of Tokyo's buildings were destroyed, just over 1 million people were left homeless, over 83,000 people were killed and almost 41,000 wounded."

Ronald Reagan: 100 Years

2011-02-16T16:40:00.002-05:00

I know I'm a little late at this, but here's a tribute a man who deserves every bit of my recognition. I'll let Reagan speak for himself. The music is from my favorite movie, and fits the occasion more than any words I could ever say.

God bless these United States indivisible before God. God bless America,
Wesley

Daily updated pictures of the Northern English Countryside

2011-02-08T12:10:00.003-05:00

I've recently discovered the website of a retired English postman named Tony Richards who has made it his habit to photograph the county Cumbria Lake District on a daily basis and post his photos online. Here’s his website. The Lake District was home to famous children’s author Beatrix Potter. I've also provided a link on the right sidebar (scroll down). It’s a delightful way to start the day. Also watch the documentary above.

Disclaimer: Mr. Richards’s reference to mountains existing millions of years does not agree with my Biblical view of creation science. Nevertheless, his project is a noble and exciting one. Give him encouraging emails. He loves them.

Title photo entitled "a walk on the slopes of Loughrigg above High Close, clouds clearing from the Langdale Pikes" by Tony Richards

Edward VI: Defender of the Faith

2011-01-28T15:03:00.000-05:00

Oh where is youth to be found so wise?

See him there on his bed, he dies!

And death suddenly peals his doom,

Rather than life of earthy bloom.

On angelic wings, straining flown

His soul to call Christ's grace his own.

As England's crown and more than this,

Was his to leave for heavenly bliss.

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

In many ways the forgotten king of England, King Edward VI rolled back the tyranny of Henry VIII and was like a second King Arthur to England. Edward, with his round table of council advisors, managed to free economic activity, promote great geographical expeditions, and most importantly aid the Protestant Reformation in sweeping away the old superstitions of the Medieval world. He was the good king Josiah of his people as is evident in his last prayers, and he died at the age of fifteen, drawing the curtain on an age of freedom before the monstrous Roman Catholic persecutions of "bloody" Mary Tudor. Queen Elizabeth would pick up where Edward left off.

King Henry VIII died on January 28, 1547, and left a nation in shambles. He destroyed almost everything he set his hands to. He ruthlessly killed the dependents of the old royal family, tortured his own wife Anne Askew, signed treason laws that made words heard by one witness capital crimes, and called Parliaments who were not accountable to the people and passed Acts of Attainer that condemned many to death without trials (Markham 19, 25, 20). His finances were extravagant and poorly spent (21). Although he separated politically and religiously from the Pope, Henry made it almost legally impossible to hold Protestant beliefs (26). Such was the inheritance of Edward on that cold January morning. Would there ever be a spring warmer and more fragrant?

Crowned at the age of nine on February 20, 1547, some of Henry's old Council created a "protectorate," which encouraged some squabbling but more importantly relaxed restrictions on printing the Bible (54, 72). As the King grew, his presence could not be ignored, and the "protectorate" resumed its place as the King's Council (106). From 1550-1553, Edward proceeded with his Council to introduce good economic policy, pioneer exploration (of all importance in the fourteenth-century), and reform the Church of England.

King Henry VIII had reduced the gold and silver in English coins to 20 carats by 1545 from its original 23 carats (113). Prices rose. The Council stooped the processes and resumed legitimate coinage. Edward took great interest in the subject as is evidenced from one of his documents entitled "A discourse touching the reformation of coin" (114, 143).

Taking a profound interest in geography, Edward was blessed with some of the finest instruments and teachers available (152-156). Edward lent the Primrose, one of his own ships, for the risky Guinea voyage (157). This would be like the US President lending Air Force One to weather scientists who intended to fly it into a tornado. With the help of Henry Sydney, Edward planned an Arctic expedition to Cathay, the economic result of which was the establishment of trade relations with Russia (158). Edward's dreams for England were fully realized during Elizabeth's reign with the circumnavigation of Sir Francis Drake.

Liberty and order in the Church of England flourished during Edward's reign, which was sandwiched between two eras of persecution. Henry VIII's suppression of Protestantism was insupportable, and soon the English Reformation bloomed under the direction of Thomas Cranmer. From 1548-1552, Parliament ratified two versions of Cranmer's Prayer Book of King Edward (128-129). Given the fact the the government's intervention in the Church of England was a given, the fact that Cranmer was respected is astounding. In essence, the Church, not the state, was making its own decisions, and Edward was allowing this to happen. After Edward's death, Queen Mary forced Catholicism back into the Church, and killed those who opposed it, including even Cranmer himself (God bless the old martyr's earthly efforts, for they would not be in vain). The burnings and torturing were so extreme that many case studies are preserved in John Fox's Book of Martyrs. Mary's reign did not last long (thank God), and Queen Elizabeth restored much of Edward's efforts. Consequently, she takes most of the credit in history, but the real beginnings of the English Reformation were made possible through Edward's Protestantism.

Edward's early death is attributed to rapid "consumption" (193). He died at the age of fifteen on July 6, 1553, and had accomplished much for his country. Clements Robert Markham in his 1907 book King Edward VI: An Appreciation gives the King's last words:

Sir John Cheke, Sydney, Wroth, Throgmorton, and Barnaby were always with their dying master. They raised him up in their arms to make his breathing easier, and ministered to him continually. On July 6 Edward was sinking fast. He was raised up by one or other of his loving friends, and towards evening he gasped out his last prayer in broken sentences:

'Lord God, deliver me out of this miserable and wretched life.'

'Take me among thy chosen.'

'Howbeit not my will but thy will be done.'

'Lord, I commit my spirit to thee.'

'O Lord, thou knowest how happy it were for me to be with thee.'

'Yet for thy chosen's sake, send me life and health that I may truly serve thee.'

'O my God! bless thy people, and save thine inheritance.'

'O Lord God, save thy chosen people of England.'

'O my Lord God, defend this realm from papistry,'

'That I and my people may praise thy holy name'

'For Jesus Christ's sake.'

A little later the dying boy said something in so low a voice that it was not understood. Dr. Owen told him that he was heard to speak,' but what you said we know not.' The King smiled, and said that he was praying to God. After an interval of silence, he said 'I am faint. Lord, have mercy upon me, and take my spirit.' These were his last words. Towards nine in the evening the dearly loved King breathed his last, in the arms of one of these faithful friends—Henry Sydney, it is said" (193-195).

So ended the most Christian reign of England's greatest king; their forgotten, beloved King Edward VI. He lived his title "defender of the faith" as far as human frailty can permit. To my British readers, please read Markham's book (link below). Your history is being forgotten, and if you do not remember it, no one will.

King Edward VI: An Appreciation by Clements Robert Markham

Sources:

Image of Edward VI of England c. 1546 from Wikipedia

Markham, Clements Robert. King Edward VI: An Appreciation. London: Smith, Elder, & co., 1907. web. http://www.archive.org/details/kingedwardvi01markgoog

The Battle of Cowpens: American Warfare in Classical Form

2011-01-17T13:38:00.001-05:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

Tactically excellent in execution and classical in form, the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781 was the most brilliant American military accomplishment of the 18th century. To this day, it is the one battle in American history, that can be seen as technically perfect. American General Daniel Morgan not only discovered how to best use militia, but also effected the complete envelopment of the enemy. In addition to being a perfect battle in the tactical sense, Cowpens set the stage for ultimate American victory at Yorktown.

Military historians R. Ernest and Trevor N. Dupuy claimed the Battle of Cowpens "was probably the closest approach to tactical perfection ever seen on the American continent — a complete double envelopment, the dream of every professional soldier." A double envelope is also called a "purse string." Such an accomplishment is first recorded in Classical warfare. At the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC during the Second Punic War, Carthaginian General Hannibal surrounded the Roman army by allowing his front center line to bend and using his flanks to close in around his enemies. Sounds simple enough, but executing it requires not only the right setup formation (in Hannibal's case, a crescent shape), but also exact cooperation from the front line. As Hannibal had only 50,000 men to Roman Consuls Paulus and Varro's 80,000 men, Hannibal's victory was as momentous as its was perfect, and "Cannae" has since become a byword. Putting the Battle of Cowpens in its Classical context, military historian Robert Leckie believed "Cowpens was the American Cannae."

This American victory was none too soon. British General Lord Cornwallis had secured the port of Charleston and begun his invasion of North Carolina. After the British won the Battle of Camden on August 16, 1780, the Continental Congress put General Greene in charge of the southern American forces. With the help of new volunteers from across the Blue Ridge Mountains (called Overmountain men), the Americans won the Battle of King's Mountain, and Cornwallis canceled his invasion of North Carolina as a result. Greene next attempted something risky, splitting up his already inferior army so as to draw Cornwallis into battle. American General Morgan was given 600 men and began moving South while Greene remained in North Carolina. If Cornwallis attacked Greene, Morgan could attack the British fort Ninety-six, and if Cornwallis fell on Morgan, Greene could descend on Charleston. Cornwallis, not having to be cautious with his numbers, simply sent a detachment of 1,500 infantry and cavalry under Colonel "bloody" Tarleton to finish off Morgan.

Militia had always been unstable during the War and continually baffled the American high command. During the Battle of Camden, the militia just broke and fled in the face of a standard bayonet charge, causing the most disastrous results for American regulars who would have normally stood their ground. In fact, in 18th century warfare the entire tactical goal was to disrupt the opposing line with musket fire until a chink was found and charge with bayonets. In other words, if militia could not withstand a bayonet charge, what were they good for? It was General Morgan's pleasure to find out. By the time Tarleton caught up with Morgan about 1,100 militia had joined with Morgan. In preparation for the Battle of Cowpens, Morgan developed a totally original method for using militia; let them do what they want to do. Morgan asked his militia for two volleys, and then told them they could simply leave the field from the left flank at their discretion. Throughout the night, Morgan let his men rest while he meticulously told every commander the battle plan. When the British arrived on the scene at 7:00 am on January 17, 1781, every American commander knew the larger plan and every American soldier knew his part in it.

Situated between two woods on either side with a river behind, Morgan placed 120 sharpshooters up front and told them to specifically target commanders. Behind these were the unpredictable militia. Forming the third and last line, about 400 regulars took their stand. Finally, Colonel William Washington's 80 dragoons and about 40 more militia riders kept the rear, being prepared to defend the flanks. The British moved onto the field.

Tarleton rode in some of his cavalry only to be immediately forced back. The sharpshooters opened fire, then fell back to the militia who gave two or three volleys as planned. Breaking, most of the militia dispersed across the American left flank. Seeing what now appeared to be a typical American militia panic and retreat, Tarleton charged his cavalry full-steam ahead into the scattering militia. However, Washington's reserve cavalry easily repulsed Tarleton's premature dash on the militia. Four hundred American regulars stood unchallenged on the field of battle, and now seeing the reality of the situation, Tarleton ordered an infantry advance on the American regulars. While both regular lines opened on each other, General Morgan rode back to the militia and asked them for one more favor before they left completely. Would they be so pleased as to semicircle around the American regulars and reform along the American right flank? What an irresistible question! This was a chance to have some fun picking on the British left flank, while the American regulars were taking most of the damage. Most of the militia agreed to the deal.

As Morgan talked with the militia, Tarleton was getting tired of fooling around. He sent his 250 reserve division, the 71st Royal Fusilier Highlander Regiment of Foot, along with dragoon support onto the American left flank. Colonel Howard, responsible for the American regulars, gave the order to incline the left flank ever so slightly so as to meet the Highlanders. In the rage of battle, the order was confused and reinterpreted as retreat. When the American left flank began an orderly retreat, the entire American regular line followed suit. Morgan now returned to the regulars, just in time to see the unplanned retreat. Even this mistake was flawless! Because the Americans had given ground, the British filled up the gap. Providence had replicated the equivalent of Hannibal's flexed lines. Morgan reversed the retreat, and ordered a volley of his own while Washington's cavalry swung around and pushed off the British dragoons from the flank. The militia conveniently reformed on the left flank, Howard ordered a bayonet charge, Washington's cavalry rode in behind the British lines, and the double envelopment was now drawn tight. The British infantry surrendered, and Tarleton dashed back to his reserve cavalry for help. Seeing the battle was already lost, most of the reserve refused to fight. Tarleton eventually fled the battlefield after personally clashing with Washington, and in Morgan's own words, left about "10 commissioned officers and over 100 rank and file killed and 200 wounded, 29 commissioned officers and about 500 privates prisoners which fell into our hands with two pieces of artillery, two standards, 800 muskets, one travelling forge, thirty-five baggage wagons, seventy negroes and upwards of 100 dragoon horses, with all their musick" (page 8). With the blessing of God, Morgan achieved the most brilliant tactical success of the War.

The American victory at Cowpens provoked Cornwallis to give chase to General Greene. The Battle of Guilford Court House soon followed and eventually the astounding triumph at Yorktown. Double envelopment of a British army at Cowpens reminiscent of Hannibal led to the eventual downfall of British tyranny in the United States.

Sources:
Images (blended and cropped by E. Wesley Reynolds) DanielMorgan and HannibalTheCarthaginian from Wikipedia
http://web.archive.org/web/20070624212824/http://www.usachcs.army.mil/TACarchive/Acwin98i/Hourihan.htm
http://www.revolutionarywaranimated.com/the-southern-strategy
http://www.archive.org/stream/onehundredyearsa00myer#page/n3/mode/2up
http://www.archive.org/details/onehundredyearsa00myer

The War of 1812: Free Trade and the Legitimacy of the United States

2011-01-10T08:50:00.003-05:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

As Americans celebrate the 196th anniversary of the most decisive day during the Battle of New Orleans, the causes of war are becoming obscure and bear remembering. By 1812, the British had effectually denied the rights of trade, neutrality, and legitimate nationhood to the United States. Great Britain decided to search American trade vessels for goods sold to Napoleonic France and seize American shipmen to fight in the English war against France under the charge that they were really deserted Englishmen. The very survival of the United States rested on the principles of free trade, and upon these grounds, it would stand or fall.

Causes of the War of 1812

Because the War of 1812 is now shrouded in myth, a return to the original source material is necessary to understand America’s perspective in the early 19th century. President James Madison’s address to Congress explains decisively the British atrocities committed against American shipmen, the frontier, and the Federal Government. Madison reminded Congress that the British in seizing American shipmen on neutral American trade vessels without “the exercise of a belligerent right founded on the law of nations against an enemy” were acting on the “municipal prerogative” of British subjects and putting Americans under British jurisdiction. Britain, in applying their own domestic rules to the open sea, was violating America’s just claim as a legitimate nation to traverse the seas according to the law of nations. In so arguing, Madison assumes that free trade determines the international existence of a nation. Without free trade, a nation is being denied nationhood. Although strange to modern ears, Madison believed this atrocity jeopardized American political existence.

Then, Madison transitioned from general to particular evils. American shipmen being seized for British military service were not given a trial before a tribunal to prove that they were American according to laws of war, and were instead subjected to the whims of British commanders. These Americans were deprived of their country and all that they held dear, while being forced on board British naval ships to fight the wars of the very people who had abducted them. The repeated petitions of the American government were met with indifference. Madison further related how, under British orders, British ships swarmed the American coasts, ignoring American territorial jurisdiction and hindering American importation and exportation. The British would only repeal these orders if France repealed certain domestic and international decrees not exclusively relevant to the United States. Madison concluded from this that the loss of American commerce was not based upon the war rights of Britain, but upon British attempts at monopoly beneficial to its own commerce. In other words, the conflict was between British monopolization and American free trade of the seas.

Transitioning from the Atlantic to the American Western frontier, Madison added that the frontier atrocities of Native Americans against United States citizens were supported and supplied by British garrisons and tradesmen. Regarding the brutal nature of these attacks, he called the aggression “a warfare which is known to spare neither age nor sex and to be distinguished by features peculiarly shocking to humanity.”

Madison concluded, “We behold ... on the side of Great Britain, a state of war against the United States, and on the side of the United States a state of peace toward Great Britain.” Would America defend its liberty or allow Britain to usurp it?

President Madison’s war proposition was given over to the Foreign Relations committee headed by John C. Calhoun. Calhoun addressed the House of Representatives on June 3, 1812 with a request for war. Echoing the arguments and sentiments of Madison, Calhoun declared, “from this review of the multiplied wrongs of the British Government since the present war, it must be evident to the impartial world, that the contest which is now forced on the United States, is radically a contest for their sovereignty and independence.” Given the choice between recognizing an already-existing war or giving up independence, Congress declared war on the same day. Conceived in liberty, the War of 1812 proved America’s strength to preserve the liberties of free trade. Oliver Hazard Perry's victory on Lake Erie, William Henry Harrison’s triumph in the Midwest, Thomas Macdonough on Lake Champlain, the siege of Fort McHenry, and the all-conclusive Battle of New Orleans served to rid the United States of British tyranny that had so long hindered American settlement and free trade. It is fitting that the Star-Spangled Banner was composed during the War. The United States had matured into national adulthood.

The War of 1812

However, American victory was perhaps least expected during the majority of the war. Two American campaigns to invade British Canada failed during 1812 and 1813. Detroit even surrendered to Britain in August of 1812, before Perry managed to liberate it in the Battle of Lake Erie (Sep. 10, 1813). Fleeing from Detroit, the British encountered American General William Henry Harrison at the Battle of the Thames (Moraviantown) and lost on October 5, 1813. Chief Tecumseh died in the battle, and the frontier was now secured for the Americans. The East didn’t look so good.

Having just defeated Napoleon, the British in 1814 began concentrating their fleets and soldiers toward the United States in ever increasing numbers. They planned to strike New York, Lake Champlain, and the Hudson River in an attempt to split New England from Union. By winning the Battle of Bladensburg that August in the Chesapeake Bay, the British trooped on to Washington DC and burned the Capitol. President Madison fled, and complete destruction now faced the United States.

As the British marched on to Baltimore, they besieged Fort McHenry, but the fort withstood the siege. Seeing the American flag in the September morning breeze, Francis Scott Key wrote the hope-giving words of the Star-Spangled Banner. With 10,000 veterans from Montreal moving down to the United States, another victory was necessary. Such a victory came on September 11, 1814, when the American Captain Thomas Macdonough defeated the British in Plattsburg Bay on Lake Champlain. Not wishing the risk of severed communications, the British retreated back to Canada. Then, American General Andrew Jackson won the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815. The United States had achieved a stalemate with Britain. Although some claim that the Battle of New Orleans was fought after the conclusion of the War of 1812, the Treaty of Ghent required that both countries sign it, and the United States didn’t sign it until February. The United States had beaten back the British from their shores, and was now ready to begin a century of industry and entrepreneurship unequaled in the world.

Sources:
Image of USS Constitution vs Guerriere from Wikipedia
Image of Battle of New Orleans from Wikipedia
http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/historicspeeches/madison/warmessage.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=OjUPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA554&lpg=PA554&dq=In+recommending+it+to+their+early+deliberations+I+am+happy+in+the+assurance+that+the+decision+will+be+worthy+the+enlightened+and+patriotic+councils+of+a+virtuous,+a+free,+and+a+powerful+nation.&source=bl&ots=x-35ZIzIx2&sig=0CFbovKkmGmcseF3OIYlSWHOfAs&hl=en&ei=zhUnTaGyHaLunQekkrW4AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CDoQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=20&page=transcript
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/hh/29/hh29a.htm
http://www.gatewayno.com/history/war1812.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-10-08-congress-war.htm
http://93rdhighlanders.com/myths.html

Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained: Christianity, Liberty, and the Classics

2010-12-16T17:02:00.001-05:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

As this Christmas season approaches, there is no fitter time for a literary analysis of two of the greatest Christian epics of all time, John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Milton’s works became the only Protestant attempts to render Biblical history into Classical tragic and heroic structure (arguably the Ten Commandments was the first Biblical film epic). However, far from succumbing to Classical culture, Milton’s poems are actually criticisms of the pagan elements of Classical literature, and a restructuring of Classical dramatic form to match the redemptive themes of Christianity.

Milton’s introductory theme is hierarchy. God’s law reigns omnipotent, and paradise exists within those bounds. In the beginning, liberty, or the ability to realize one’s highest created purpose, only extends as far as obedience. This is what Protestants call the covenant of works, whereby the creation was originally created with free will. After the fall, paradise is lost, the liberty of free will is revoked, and sin and death corrupt the world. However, because God’s providence presides over the creation, God allows the fall to happen so that He might sacrifice Himself on man’s behalf. Hence the first glimpse of love in Paradise Lost is between God the Father and God the Son and eventually extended to man. God the Son willingly takes on the task of enduring the punishment of the law for His elect, those of mankind who will be saved:

Happy for Man, so coming; he her aid

Can never seek, once dead in sins, and lost;

Atonement for himself, or offering meet,

Indebted and undone, hath none to bring;

Behold me then: me for him, life for life

I offer: on me let thine anger fall;

Account me Man; I for his sake will leave

Thy bosom, and this glory next to thee

Freely put off, and for him lastly die

Well pleased; on me let Death wreak all his rage.

Under his gloomy power I shall not long

Lie vanquished. Thou hast given me to possess

Life in myself for ever; by thee I live;

Though now to Death I yield, and am his due,

All that of me can die, yet, that debt paid,

Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome grave

His prey, nor suffer my unspotted soul

For ever with corruption there to dwell;

But I shall rise victorious, and subdue

My vanquisher, spoiled of his vaunted spoil.

Death his death’s wound shall then receive, and stoop

Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarmed;

I through the ample air in triumph high

Shall lead Hell captive maugre Hell, and show

The powers of darkness bound. Thou, at the sight

Pleased, out of Heaven shalt look down and smile,

While, by thee raised, I ruin all my foes;

Death last, and with his carcase glut the grave;

Then, with the multitude of my redeemed,

Shall enter Heaven, long absent, and return,

Father, to see thy face, wherein no cloud

Of anger shall remain, but peace assured

And reconcilement: wrath shall be no more

Thenceforth, but in thy presence joy entire. 75-76

And so, to the epic theme of tragedy is given a new theme, redemption; but redemption within the context of grace. If in their state of blissful freedom, men and angels transgress, God is not obligated by covenant to save anyone in the story. He does so out of His own infinite free will. This is why the tragedy/comedy divide does not hold the story, and Milton inter-splices the Christian theme of redemption from God’s infinite love. Liberty without grace is transient and ultimately insupportable, leading to the tragic end of those ancient heroes of the old Classical myths, fall and misery. At this point however, some have reinterpreted Milton. Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost has been dolefully misunderstood ever since William Blake.

Satan is portrayed by Milton in all the gaudy pomp of the Classical style. Milton is almost boundless in his flamboyant descriptions. Pandemonium is build in the Doric style, demons assume the names of all the Greek, Roman, and Babylonian gods on earth, and Satan breaks forth from Hell with the fierceness of a Greek hero:

He ceased; and Satan stayed not to reply,

But, glad that now his sea should find a shore,

With fresh alacrity and force renewed

Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire,

Into the wild expanse, and through the shock

Of fighting elements, on all sides round

Environed, wins his way; harder beset

And more endangered than when Argo passed

Through Bosporus betwixt the justling rocks,

Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned

Charybdis, and by th’ other whirlpool steered. 64-65

Here William Blake, ignoring the Protestant context of Milton, says, “The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it.” Nothing could be further from Milton than to side with the Devil! In fact, Milton masterfully chooses his rhetoric to be most appropriate to both good and evil. Instead of deifying Satan, Milton is condemning the Classic gods. Obviously, Blake held a preconceived appreciation for the Classical heroes, just as Milton (and most Protestants during the 17th century) saw the paganism of the Classics as demonic. Milton takes pains to connect every legion in Hell with a supposed deity on earth to emphasize the deception and superstition of such beliefs. Milton spends his first two books in Paradise Lost making this important point. Sin and Death spring from Satan’s head, etc. Doric Pandemonium is far from an ethereal castle; it is the Parthenon positioned exactly where Milton believed it to belong, in Hell. Milton is relentless rather than “at liberty” with the Devil. When speaking of God and Christ, Milton tactfully switches rhetoric to the clarity, simplicity, and beauty of the New Testament:

Now had the Almighty Father from above,

From the pure empyrean where he sits

High thron’d above all highth, bent down his eye

His own works and their works at once to view:

About him all the Sanctities of Heaven

Stood thick as stars, and from his sight receiv’d

Beatitude past utterance; on his right

The radiant image of his glory sat

His only son; on earth he first beheld

Our two first parents, yet the only two

Of mankind in the happy garden plac’d… 69

Compare this with the description of Christ from Hebrews 1:3 as Milton would have known it in the King James English “Who being the brightness of his [God the Father’s] glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” This is certainly not very “fettered” language. God, being higher than any literary style of man, deserves His own rhetoric, the Bible, for description. Milton is humbly acquiescing to the hierarchy of God’s reign even in the manner in which he chooses his language and is pledging allegiance to God alone. There is a clear separation here between God and His creatures.

If the imagery of the ancient myths is a demonic perversion of the language of angels, then how do angels appear in Milton’s poetry? Below are three selections:

So spake the Eternal Father, and fulfilled

All justice: Nor delayed the winged Saint

After his charge received; but from among

Thousand celestial Ardours, where he stood

Veiled with his gorgeous wings, up springing light,

Flew through the midst of Heaven; the angelick quires,

On each hand parting, to his speed gave way

Through all the empyreal road; till, at the gate

Of Heaven arrived, the gate self-opened wide

On golden hinges turning, as by work

Divine the sovran Architect had framed.

From hence no cloud, or, to obstruct his sight,

Star interposed, however small he sees,

Not unconformed to other shining globes,

Earth, and the garden of God, with cedars crowned

Above all hills. As when by night the glass

Of Galileo, less assured, observes

Imagined lands and regions in the moon:

Or pilot, from amidst the Cyclades

Delos or Samos first appearing, kens

A cloudy spot. Down thither prone in flight

He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky

Sails between worlds and worlds, with steady wing

Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan

Winnows the buxom air; till, within soar

Of towering eagles, to all the fowls he seems

A phoenix, gazed by all as that sole bird… 137-138

Memorial, where the might of Gabriel fought,

And with fierce ensigns pierced the deep array

Of Moloch, furious king; who him defied,

And at his chariot-wheels to drag him bound

Threatened, nor from the Holy One of Heaven

Refrained his tongue blasphemous; but anon

Down cloven to the waist, with shattered arms

And uncouth pain fled bellowing. On each wing

Uriel, and Raphael, his vaunting foe,

Though huge, and in a rock of diamond armed,

Vanquished Adramelech, and Asmadai,

Two potent Thrones, that to be less than Gods

Disdained, but meaner thoughts learned in their flight,

Mangled with ghastly wounds through plate and mail.

Nor stood unmindful Abdiel to annoy

The atheist crew, but with redoubled blow

Ariel, and Arioch, and the violence

Of Ramiel scorched and blasted, overthrew. 173

He ceased; and the arch-angelick Power prepared

For swift descent; with him the cohort bright

Of watchful Cherubim: four faces each

Had, like a double Janus; all their shape

Spangled with eyes more numerous than those

Of Argus, and more wakeful than to drouse,

Charmed with Arcadian pipe, the pastoral reed

Of Hermes, or his opiate rod… 323-324

The Biblical and Classical imagery are mixed when discussing angels. Milton informs his readers that the clashes of Titans only hint at the true spiritual depth of angelic and demonic warfare. However, once again New Testament symbolism gains the victory. In the titanic battle between Michael and Satan in Paradise Lost, both sides cannot prevail, and the battle becomes a supernatural artillery stalemate. Christ rides in with His chariot and gains the victory in language similar to the opening of Ezekiel:

And the third sacred morn began to shine,

Dawning through Heaven. Forth rushed with whirlwind sound

The chariot of Paternal Deity,

Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel undrawn,

Itself instinct with Spirit, but convoyed

By four Cherubick shapes; four faces each

Had wonderous; as with stars, their bodies all

And wings were set with eyes; with eyes the wheels

Of beryl, and careering fires between;

Over their heads a crystal firmament,

Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure

Amber, and colours of the showery arch.

He, in celestial panoply all armed

Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought,

Ascended; at his right hand Victory 186-187

Christ is clearly above all created glory, and His reign and Word are respected as preeminent by Milton. In Paradise Regained, Milton depicts Satan tempting Christ with all the military, political, and intellectual pomp of the ancient classical empires. Christ’s response to the philosophies of Athens is firm:

But these are false, or little else but dreams,

Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm.

The first and wisest of them all professed

To know this only, that he nothing knew;

The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits;

A third sort doubted all things, though plain sense;

Others in virtue placed felicity…

Alas! what can they teach, and not mislead,

Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,

…With music or with poem, where so soon

As in our native language can I find

That solace? All our Law and Story strewed

With hymns, our Psalms with artful terms inscribed,

Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon

That pleased so well our victor's ear, declare

That rather Greece from us these arts derived--

Ill imitated while they loudest sing

The vices of their deities, and their own,

In fable, hymn, or song, so personating

Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.

Remove their swelling epithetes, thick-laid

As varnish on a harlot's cheek, the rest,

Thin-sown with aught of profit or delight,

Will far be found unworthy to compare

With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling,

Where God is praised aright and godlike men,

The Holiest of Holies and his Saint Book 4, page 42-44

The height of Satan’s temptation in Paradise Regained is the giving of the Classics and the vain kingdoms of the world to Christ, and Christ refuses. Thus in all His doings, Christ lives out God’s law in its purity to the fullest, and is able to regain paradise for man. His victory is far more certain than the faulty free will of Adam, and in Christ along is true paradise and liberty. Milton is the beginning of the Reformation in the arts, and a capstone in Western epic literature. This season is the perfect time to enjoy Milton’s Christ-centric literature.

Thy Father is the Eternal King who rules

All Heaven and Earth, Angels and sons of men.

A messenger from God foretold thy birth

Conceived in me a virgin; he foretold

Thou shouldst be great, and sit on David's throne,

And of thy kingdom there should be no end.

At thy nativity a glorious quire

Of Angels, in the fields of Bethlehem, sung

To shepherds, watching at their folds by night,

And told them the Messiah now was born,

Where they might see him; and to thee they came,

Directed to the manger where thou lay'st;

For in the inn was left no better room.

A Star, not seen before, in heaven appearing,

Guided the Wise Men thither from the East,

To honour thee with incense, myrrh, and gold;

By whose bright course led on they found the place,

Affirming it thy star, new-graven in heaven,

By which they knew thee King of Israel born. Book 1 page 8

Sources:
Image of Guido Reni 031 from Wikipedia
http://www.planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/free_ebooks/Paradise_Lost_NT.pdf
http://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/jspui/bitstream/1794/769/1/regained.pdf
http://www.archive.org/stream/marriageofheaven00blak/marriageofheaven00blak_djvu.txt
http://www.archive.org/details/paradise_lost_08083_librivox
http://www.archive.org/details/paradise_regained_0810_librivox

A Moment of Camelot

2010-11-22T16:14:00.011-05:00

Don't let it be forgot

That once there was a spot

For one brief shining moment that was known

As Camelot.

~From Camelot

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

The few years of the Kennedy Administration have been called a Camelot, but the term is more applicable to John F. Kennedy’s symbol of American liberty and determination in foreign policy rather than in his domestic or economic policies. In fact, his two years in office weren’t enough to either damage or benefit America’s economy. Instead, his hard line with communist USSR in the Cubin Missile Crisis and giving America inspiration in the space race was a last glimpse of prestige for the Office of the President before the Johnson and Nixon years. Kennedy’s presidency represented an optimism amidst a tumultuous time; a hope for the American president against communism. Truly tragic would have been the assassination of any American president in the early 60s, whether he ran the country well or ill; a sentiment not as easily shared today. Perhaps, the American sense of loyalty for the Office of the President was akin to the Biblical example of David, “I will not stretch out my hand against my lord, for he is the Lord’s anointed” (I Samuel 24:10). Kennedy was the "Lord's anointed" for a particular time in American history. In the context of a Christian America during the mid 20th Century, the assassination of Kennedy was the passing of a legendary Camelot before the shroud of the Vietnam War and American pessimism. Modern historians are naturally somewhat skeptical of allowing any element of legend to enter historical research. However, Jacqueline Kennedy offers the credible challenge that there is common ground between history and drama.

Legend is the child of bereavement; that glimpse of nightfall when a knight passes beyond the horizon of that which is no more. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote of one of his characters in Tales of a Wayside Inn:

In vellum bound, with gold bedight,
Great volumes garmented in white,
Recalling Florence, Pisa, Rome.
He loved the twilight that surrounds
The border-land of old romance;
Where glitter hauberk, helm, and lance,
And banner waves, and trumpet sounds,
And ladies ride with hawk on wrist,
And mighty warriors sweep along,
Magnified by the purple mist,
The dusk of centuries and of song.

In this context, legend is not necessarily untrue, although many legends are myths. It is an attempt to understand the significance of events that are final in their ends; a search for a legacy of what has passed. Medieval Camelot, as a once glamorous place long since sunk into the pages of history, exists only as a memorial. When legends become memorials, they are more likely to be applied and reapplied to future events of history, which resemble certain themes of the original legend. This begs the question, should the historian have an appreciation for an application of legend and significance in history? November 22, 1963 marks the death date of two individuals who believed legend was purposeful: C. S. Lewis and John F. Kennedy. Lewis wrote much on myth as a theologian, but Kennedy devoured history and legendary stories of King Author just for entertainment. This pastime of Kennedy’s was something Jacqueline Kennedy never really understood or appreciated until after Kennedy’s death. However, being confronted with bereavement herself over someone who was not only her husband but also a US President, she reminisced over his appreciation for heroic stories, one of which was Camelot. She asked the rhetorical question that many historians would be better to hear, “what’s the line between histrionics and drama?” As Jacqueline’s personal account of her husband’s death demonstrates, history must be cried or laughed at like drama; otherwise it loses its significance in the tragedies and blessings to human existence.

Jacqueline’s Camelot interview

Sources:
Title image composite by Jonathan VanDerhoof of Kennedys arrive at Dallas 11-22-63 and John william waterhouse tristan and isolde with the potion from Wikipedia
http://www.jfklancer.com/pdf/Camelot.pdf
http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCUY2OLZTz8
http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/camelot/camelotreprise.htm

Robert Louis Stevenson: 160 Years

2010-11-15T11:10:00.008-05:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

The below includes four short book reviews in honor of Robert Louis Stevenson's 160th birthday (born November 13, 1850). Stevenson was a master at Victorian children's verse and prose, and formed a canonic realm for other's to follow. Born and bread in the Scottish Lowlands, he later lived in France and America, before settling in the South Sea island of Upolu where his formed a strong attachment with the natives. These fantastical settings produced the dynamic yet timeless backdrops for his poems and adventure stories. For more biographical information see here and here.

A Child's Garden of Verses (1885):

Stevenson was frequently ill as a child and stayed indoors. Child's Garden is like a window into his young soul. His poems contain all the frolics, hopes, and dreams of childhood, with a nievety that is almost melancholy to the adult reader. To the child, it is an encuragement to keep living a chivalric imagination. For example, in his last poem To Any Reader, Stevenson writes:

As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is all on his play-business bent,
He does not hear; he will not look.
Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For, long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.

Stevenson was writing of himself as an adult, but also he was preserving the eternal virtues of childhood. In this world of freedom and idyll, children march out for battle with handkerchief flags, play by the seaside, admire the innocent beauty of the seasons, and enjoy stories. However, Stevenson tempers the freedom of children with good behavior and security. Good morals and homeliness transform Child's Garden into a typical Victorian work of not just Romanticism but also cultural and family stability. Stevenson discovered that a child, far from being carefree, needs that motherly security and comfort, that homely bedroom, to keep out the scary night. Stevenson's In Port is perfect in that respect:

Last to the chamber where I lie
My fearful footsteps patter nigh,
And come from out the cold and gloom
Into my warm and cheerful room.
There, safe arrived, we turn about
To keep the coming shadows out,
And close the happy door at last
On all the perils that we past.
Then, when mama goes by to bed,
She shall come in with tip-toe tread,
And see me lying warm and fast
And in the Land of Nod at last.

Stevenson is perhaps the last person we would expect to see such gentleness from, and yet he knew firsthand as an invalid child the need for companionship. In fact, this delicacy, need, and bittersweetness are rarely seen in children's literature, but are the very attributes which make Stevenson's poems so childlike, real, and exemplary. In Child's Garden, Stevenson sets forth an image of family life which is stable, Victorian middle class, and free.

Treasure Island (1883):

Now for a complete change! Little elegance can be found in Treasure Island, but only danger, blood, lust for gold, and opportunities to make right or wrong decisions. Bare of the typical Victorian heaviness of historical description, Stevenson builds the setting and plot with rapid sensations of perspective. This was a unique approach, as Sir Walter Scott and G. A. Henty would rather insert chapters of introduction and explanation before getting to a plot.

In Treasure Island, Jim Hawkins as the young and innocent son of an inn owner, finds himself in possession of a treasure map, and decides to pursue the quest. However, the entire crew of the old treasure secretly accompany Jim on the voyage to the island of treasure, capture the ship, and force Jim into their confidence. Despite all the adventure, Jim desires justice and mercy rather than violence and piracy. In fact, Jim carries with him a sense of nobility and reserve that is juvenile and true. In this respect, the pop cultural stereotype of pirate adventures is unfair to Stevenson's original intent. The often unremembered last words of the novel read (Jim is narrating):

The bar silver and the arms still lie, for all that I know,
where Flint buried them; and certainly they shall lie there for
me. Oxen and wain-ropes would not bring me back again to
that accursed island; and the worst dreams that ever I have are
when I hear the surf booming about its coasts or start upright
in bed with the sharp voice of Captain Flint still ringing in
my ears: “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!”

The adventures serve Jim by haunting his dreams, and he emphatically throws off all future opportunities to get the rest of the treasure. He would rather retain civility than get riches through incivility. Jim is the star of moral light in the novel. When faced with the opportunity to embrace freedom almost totally on an island, he would rather choose that freedom within a moral society. In this sense, Treasure Island is a Victorian novel; both Romantic and chivalric. In rhetoric, it is modern; almost akin to Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels.

Kidnapped (1886):

Stevenson's Kidnapped is like Scott's Waverley at light-speed, having much less introduction than Waverley, but more cultural setting than Treasure Island. Set in a Romanticized 18th century Scotland, the novel chronicles the adventures of David Balfour, who is kidnapped in an attempt to reclaim his newly inherited land, loaded on a ship headed to the Carolina's, shipwrecked in Scotland, blamed for the murder of a Campbell, and forced to hide with aJacobite outlaw named Alan Breck Stewart until he can get back to his estate. David, aCovenanter and a Whig, clashes with his gambling, drinking Highland rough, but in the end gains a friendship that only the struggle for survival could create. David and Alan part as fellow soldiers would. This connection, stronger than the Long John/Jim partnership in Treasure Island, usually serves the main character to remain true to his morals despite the broadening of his relationships. The challenge is to be in the world of adventure but not of it, and is topical of Victorian novels of the time. David is but a sojourner in the Scottish Highlands, and can walk away from his adventures with a sense of intrigue and unfamiliarity.

It is upon this unfamiliarity, or what C. S. Lewis would call a longing for "northernness," that the seemingly paradox of Scottish Romantic myth is formed. Although the Highlanders are contrarians and worldly, their geographic and cultural setting is almost ethereal. Highlanders are forced to traverse the wildernesses of Scotland like deer, and the beauty of such an adventure is almost like a crusade. In this sense, the Highlands prefigure a mystic land of paradise rather than worldliness. The protagonist is unfamiliar with the Highlands because it is filled with worldly characters and because it is oppositely filled with beauty and intrigue. In the first case, the protagonist has a desire to get back to his homeland, and in the second, he wishes to explore. This is why David has mixed feelings in the story. Regarding the intrigue for mystery and beauty, there is a scene in the book where Alan and a MacGregor have a bagpipe duel to settle their differences (see illustration above). David is enthralled. The geographic and cultural setting in Kidnapped is far more developed than in Treasure Island.

The Black Arrow (1888):

Evidently, some readers were not satisfied with the quaintness of Treasure Island, and The Black Arrow was Stevenson's attempt to create a more intellectually fulfilling novel. In his preface, he writes, "...in the eyes of readers who thought less than nothing of Treasure Island, The Black Arrow was supposed to mark a clear advance. Those who read volumes and those who read story papers belong to different worlds." In trying to penetrate the world of volumes with The Black Arrow, Stevenson slows down the plot, complicates the political setting, antiquates the duologue, and tells a chivalric romance between the two protagonists Richard (Dick) Shelton and Joanne Sedley.

Although Stevenson still retains his knack for adventure, The Black Arrow almost resembles a Scott or Henty novel in delivery. The story itself takes place during the War of the Roses. Dick, the protagonist, joins an outlaw band and welcomes the York dynastic cause in order to rescue Joanne from the clutches of Sir Daniel Brackley who intends to marry her off to Lord Shoreby. Being a far more complex character than Jim Hawkins or David Balfour, Dick often finds himself making flippant decisions about complex political and social issues in order to accomplish his narrow goals. Throughout the story he is bombarded with the ill effects of such a disrespect for the complexity of his surroundings, and repents for his many flaws. By the same token, he never gives up his narrow quest to save Joanne. The Black Arrow is a rich story that demands the attention of Stevenson's greatest criticizers. It is a clear departure from his simple adventure novels.

Stevenson was a man of diverse talents. Forming an critical opinion of him from Treasure Island or Kidnapped would be very narrow minded. His unique ballance between ever changing and enduring themes is due to his emphasis of liberty and constancy. There is almost certainly something for everyone in Stevenson's works.

Sources:

Image of Robert Louis StevensonJune 1885 from Wikipedia

Image in Child's Garden form Gutenberg

Image of Treasure Island-Scribner's-1911 from Wikipedia

Image in Robin struck into the slow measure of a pibroch from Google books

Image in The Black Arrow from Google books

http://fliiby.com/file/220231/obior6x8pe.html

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/rlsteven/blackar.pdf

http://www.planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/free_ebooks/Kidnapped_NT.pdf

http://ebooks.gutenberg.us/Coradella_Collegiate_Bookshelf_Collection/stevenson-treasureisland.pdf

http://www.heartoscotland.com/Categories/RobertLStevenson.htm

http://www.robert-louis-stevenson.org/

http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/stevensonbio.html

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Last Bard of Russia

2010-11-05T13:27:00.005-04:00

Sérénade mélancolique, Op. 26, for violin and orchestra (1875).

Oh sing to me beauties which in peril return!

In days dark their whisp’ring notes sweetly burn
A mournful air of perished golden days;
All gain hope who hear these emboldened lays.

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s compositions were the last petals of Russian classical music before the winter of Communism, and as such, his music affords an unassuming glimpse of Russian art just before its fall. The lavishness of Russian ballet is imperishably preserved in his Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty ballets, and his Romeo and Juliet Opera, to say nothing of the 1812 Overture, embody the Russian Romanticism of his day (although Tchaikovsky believed himself to be a realist). Unknowingly, Tchaikovsky was of the last great musicians of his country. His work would be as a burning coal of freedom during the dark days of Communism.

Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840 and died on November 6, 1893. During his life, his music was met both with initial criticism and later with highest praise. Separated from his family at the age of ten, Tchaikovsky was sent away to the School of Jurisprudence in Saint Petersburg, a separation that would become permanent with the passing of his mother when Tchaikovsky was only fourteen. Working with the Ministry of Justice from about 1859-1863, Tchaikovsky still found time to develop his passion for music and also take an extended trip to Western Europe. He entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1863 while teaching private lessons on the side, and in 1866 he began as a professor of harmony at Moscow’s conservatory. Being at first unable to satisfy either conservative musicians or those of a nationalistic frame of mind, it wasn’t until the performance of his First Symphony in 1868 at Moscow that the public viewed him favorably. He preferred to interject themes into his work rather than build a melodic transition from one theme to another. In 1870 Tchaikovsky released his first version of the “Romeo and Juliet” opera, and reconstructing material from his rather unpopular opera, “The Voyevoda,” he released “The Oprichnik” in 1874 at Saint Petersburg. In 1875, he composed his Third Symphony and “Swan Lake,” and after another trip to Western Europe, he wrote the “Rococo Variations” set in the 18th century. The setting for his “Eugene Onegin” (1879) was rural Russia, with many lavish ball scenes that idealized Russian drama. Tchaikovsky was preserving the artistic atmosphere of his homeland.

Then in 1880 began Tchaikovsky professional connection with the Russian royal family. That year, Czar Alexander II asked him to compose an accompaniment for the Czar’s 25th anniversary as Czar of Russia. Unfortunately, that arrangement was suddenly canceled, but later Alexander II asked Tchaikovsky to commemorate the opening of the nation’s primary Orthodox Christian church, Christ the Savior Cathedral. This church was built to honor Russia’s victory over Napoleon in 1812, and for the dedication ceremony Tchaikovsky composed his flamboyant 1812 Overture. Alexander III, who also loved Tchaikovsky’s music, soon succeeded Alexander II as Czar of Russia. Tchaikovsky received the high honor of composing Alexander III’s Coronation March, much like what Elgar would later do in Great Britain for King Edward and Queen Alexandra. For this, he was invited to the Palace of Facets, and later was given a diamond ring for his services. Although Alexander III was not the last Czar before the Communist takeover (his son, Nicolas II was), Tchaikovsky drew the curtain on the Russian imperial age. Tchaikovsky’s musical abilities far surpassed most in Russia, and Alexander III was certainly the last prestigious Czar of Russia, if not tyrannical and repressive to the people of Russia. The combination of Alexander III and Tchaikovsky was certainly the height of Russian pomp and circumstance, both musically and imperialistically. Next, Alexander advised Tchaikovsky in 1885 to write more Christian pieces, and Tchaikovsky accordingly composed many choral chants for the Orthodox Church. He was awarded a sum of 3,000 rubles per year for his efforts, enough to set him financially among the rich.

His final years saw perhaps his finest works, including the Sleeping Beauty (1890) and Nutcracker (1892) ballets, and the 1890 “Queen of Spades” (a highly emotional drama of Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great). Tchaikovsky’s own view of art was simple: “I think that I really am endowed with the ability to truthfully, honestly, and straightforwardly express through music those feelings, moods, and images which the text of a libretto or poem awakens in me. In this sense I am a realist and a deeply Russian person.” That Russian spark of art would have to last for just under 70 years of communism before the arts could lawfully be resumed in Russia. Still, to this day, Russia’s greatest composer is Tchaikovsky, who preserved for all time a specific time and culture that no longer exists.

Here is a list of some of Tchaikovsky’s accomplishments from PBS:

“Dramatic music

The Voyevoda (1869)
The Oprichnik (1874)
Vakula the Smith (1876)
Eugene Onegin (1879)
The Maid of Orleans (1881)
Mazeppa (1884)
The Sorceress (1887)
The Queen of Spades (1890)

Ballets:
Swan Lake (1877)
The Sleeping Beauty (1890)
The Nutcracker (1892)

incidental music

Orchestral music

Sym. no. 1, G, "Winter Daydreams" (1866, rev. 1874)
Sym. no. 2, C, "Little Russian" (1872, rev. 1880)
Sym. no. 3, D, "Polish" (1875)
Sym. no. 4, F (1878)
Sym. no. 5, E (1888)
Sym. no. 6, B, "Pathétique" (1893)
Manfred, sym. (1885)
Romeo and Juliet, fantasy ov. (1870, rev. 1880)
Francesca da Rimini, sym. fantasia (1876)
1812, ov. (1880)
Hamlet, fantasy ov. (1888)
Pf Conc. no. 1, B-flat (1875)
Pf Conc. no. 2, G (1880)
Pf Conc. no. 3, E-flat (1893)
Vn Conc., D (1878)
Variations on a Rococo Theme, vc, orch, A (1876)
Serenade, strs (1880)
over 20 other works

Chamber and keyboard music

3 str qts (1871, 1874, 1877)
Pf Trio, A (1882)
Souvenir de Florence, str sextet (1890)
12 other chamber works
Pf Sonata, G (1879)
over 100 other pf pieces

Vocal music

circa 30 choral works, incl. sacred pieces, secular cantatas
over 100 songs and duets”

Here are some free samples of Tchaikovsky’s music:
http://www.turgenevmusica.info/en/recordings.html#Romeo
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - romeo and juliet- overture-fantasy
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - 1812 overture

Sources:

http://www.turgenevmusica.info/en/tchaikovsky.html

http://www.turgenevmusica.info/en/recordings.html#Romeo

http://english.ruvr.ru/_print/277487.html

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/education/tchaikovsky.html

Daniel Boone and American Legend

2010-10-22T16:33:00.003-04:00

“Oh daddy, tell me of the days,

When Christian settlers found their ways,

Through woods and hills and Indians.

Tell me of the first Americans.

Of days of adventure and glory;

Please daddy, tell me a story!”

Then placing his son on his lap,

He flipped open to the book’s map,

And remembered that his daddy,

Read to him when he was a laddie.

“Time was, cabins from logs were hewn.

Yes, I’ll tell you the story of Daniel Boone.”

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

For generations, young boys have loved the American frontier; a symbol of determination and the highest American ideals. The Wild West has served as a field of context within the American imagination for all those ready to test their independence. If this imaginary world of youthful ambition is challenging, the reality of the American wilderness was far more so. Unlike the myths of the Classical world, American legends tie back to the real struggles and hardships of purpose driven men who made the Protestant work ethic famous. Men brave enough to traverse these wildernesses rapture our attention because of their unexpected feats. Daniel Boone is one of those legendary men. Even though plagued with hunger, Indian attacks and debt, he kept moving west.

Boone was born the son of Quaker parents on Nov. 2, (Gregorian Calendar) or Oct. 22, (Julian Calendar) 1734. (See here for an explanation of this dating discrepancy.) Growing up in Berks County, Pennsylvania, Daniel’s job was to take the cattle for grazing in the woods. There, the stunning beauty of God’s creation attracted his attention, not only aesthetically, but also scientifically. Through firsthand observation, he studied the habits of birds in their natural habitats. Applying his knowledge usefully, he successfully managed to hunt this game with a whittle spear. At 12,, Boone’s father gave him his first rifle, and by thirteen, Boone was bringing a steady supply of meat into the family home. His father encouraged the hunting and outdoor life, and didn’t bother to supply Boone with an education. However, Boone’s oldest brother’s wife tough him to read and write. Boone’s ability to sign his name would set him apart from the majority of frontier men. In 1750, Boone’s father sold the land in Pennsylvania, and moved to the Yadkin River valley in North Carolina. There, Indian attacks on the settlements were frequent, and Boone learned to defend his family at an early age in the county militia.

In 1755, Boone fought in the French and Indian War. While on his march under British Gen. Edward Branddock to attack the French Fort Duquesne, Boone became friends with John Finley, who had been to Kentucky and who told Boone all about the plentiful hunting ground. The army suffered great losses, but Boone escaped and returned the North Carolina with the dream to reach Kentucky. Upon coming home, like a knight returning to his lady, he began courting Rebecca Bryan, the daughter of his neighbor. Boone and Rebecca were married on Aug. 14, 1756, and started out in a cabin on Boone’s father’s farm. They enjoyed the blessing of having six sons and four daughters together. During these years, Boone spent much time away from home hunting deer in the Appalachian Mountains; the border to his dream world, Kentucky.

Finally in 1767, Finley told Boone that he was going to Kentucky, and along with four others, Finley and Boone set out on May 1. On June 7, they passed through the Cumberland Gap. For two years, Boone could be seen hunting in his buckskins, bullet pouch, powder horn, hunting knife and wide-brimmed hat of beaver felt. His adventure eventually took him to the Falls of the Ohio. The journey ended in an unexpected failure when the Shawnee tribe captured the entire hunting party and stole all their deerskins and provisions. Boone managed to heroically escape, and returned to the family home with nothing in March of 1771. In 1775, Boone was hired along with 30 other axmen to clear a trail to Kentucky (now called the Wilderness Trail) for a settlement on the newly purchased Cherokee land. The finishing touch to this expedition was Boonesborough, a fort constructed by Boone and his men. Boone eventually moved his family here. Much like Boone’s youth, the family was often molested by Indian attacks. On one occasion in 1776, the Shawnee and Cherokee captured Boone’s daughter Jemima with some of her friends while on a canoeing trip. With cunning strategy, Boone chivalrously led a rescue mission and saved them all from death or other barbaric cruelty. In 1778, the Shawnee eventually captured Boone, but being most fascinated with his hunting skills they adopted him. After four months, Boone escaped and returned home.

Due to debt, Boone was forced to sell his land in 1798. He moved west again with two of his daughters’ families, his son Daniel, and his wife on a six-foot poplar canoe to what is now Missouri in 1799. Boone’s son Nathan soon came along with other Kentuckians. Granted 850 acres by the Spanish in present day St. Charles County, Boone became a local syndic, which meant he settled disputes among settlers. Often, he would sit under the “Judgment Tree” on Nathan’s plot and make judicial decisions. Because of political transfer of land, Boone in 1804 lost his grant of land, but by this time he was old enough for his children to take care of him. His wife passed on in 1813, and living with his children, Boone died on Sept. 26, 1820. An unforgettable legacy, Daniel Boone goes down in history for his selfless homebuilding and settlement of the American West. Others would pick up where he left off.

P.S. Although probably biographically inaccurate, I’d highly recommend the 1956 film “Daniel Boone, The Trailblazer.” This movie successfully conveys the sense of Christian faith, hard work, and adventure of the American frontier.

Sources:
Image of Boone by Chappel from Wikipedia
http://shs.umsystem.edu/famousmissourians/explorers/dboone/dboone.shtml
http://www.americanwest.com/pages/boone.htm
http://danielboonefacts.com/

The Congress of Vienna: 1814-1815

2010-10-01T11:51:00.003-04:00

Emperor Napoleon I of France on his death bed (left) and Prince Klemes von Metternich (right) of Austria who organized the Congress of Vienna

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

In 1814, Europe sat in tatters from the recent ravages of Napoleon (“History of Europe”). Revolution and chaos stormed the continent, and the world watched as the victors met in council. The Quadruple Alliance of Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Austria had just stopped the French advance and brought back the Bourbon dynasty to France with Louis XVIII’s restoration (Spielvogel 590). In September Prince Klemes von Metternich of Austria called this alliance together to discuss how to return Europe to its old glory (ibid). Parts of the resulting Congress of Vienna were friendly to Biblical concepts of law and liberty, while others were not.

With the understanding that order must be restored to the map of Europe after the desolations of a tyrant at war, the Congress set forward the principle of legitimacy (ibid). Accordingly, the Congress would restore the old monarchs of Europe where the revolutions caused by French intervention had threatened their autonomous authority (ibid). However, the Congress also attempted to build a balance of power between the great empires of Europe (591). R. B. Mowat in his book The Great European Treaties of the Nineteenth Century explains the following articles of the 1814 treaty:

“Article I contained the usual peace and friendship stipulation. Article II declared that the limits of France (with certain modifications) should be the same as they existed on January 1, 1792. Article III particularized these limits as modified. Article IV dealt with the road connecting Geneva with other parts of Swiss territory. Article V stipulated for the free navigation of the Rhine. Article VI provided for an increase of territory for Holland, for the independence of the States of Germany and the Government of Switzerland and Italy. Article VII declared that Malta should belong in full sovereignty to His Britannic Majesty. Articles VIII to XI provided for the restoration of certain colonies to France, and the cession of others to Great Britain, &c. By Article XII Great Britain guaranteed most favored nation treatment in India to French subjects and commerce, and France undertook to erect no fortifications on her possessions on the continent of India. Article XIII replaced French fishery rights in Newfoundland on the footing of 1792. Article XV dealt with the disposal of the arsenals and ships of war, &c., found in the ports of the territories to be evacuated by France, and further declared Antwerp to be solely a commercial port.

Article XVI secured the non-molestation of individuals for action taken during the war, and Article XVII provided that inhabitants of ceded territories should be at liberty, if they thought fit, to retire to other countries within a period of six years. By Article XVIII the Allied Governments renounced all pecuniary claims on France against a similar renunciation by France. By Article XIX France undertook to liquidate all debts owing by her beyond her own territories, and Article XX provided for the execution by commissioners of the stipulations of the two preceding Articles. Articles XXI to XXXI had reference to debts, claims of individuals, Caisses d'Amortissement, pensions, abolition of the Droits d'Aubaine, restoration of documents belonging to ceded countries, &c.

Article XXXII ran as follows: ‘All the Powers engaged on either side in the present war shall, within the space of two months, send Plenipotentiaries to Vienna for the purpose of regulating, in General Congress, the arrangements which are to complete the provisions of the present Treaty.’

Article XXXIII contained the usual ratification clause (Oaks).”

The political effect of these articles expanded the empires of the Quadruple Alliance, and created a new balance of power. (To see the changes go to the map of Europe After the Congress of Vienna or see an animation here.) Europe Prussia was granted the Grand Duchy of Warshaw, a bit of Poland, much of the German state Saxony, Pomerania from Sweden, and most of the Rhineland (“History of Europe,” Spielvogel 590). Russia gained Finland, Bessarabia from the Ottomans, and became a trustee over most of Poland (ibid, Spielvogel 590-591). This new situation was particularly unfair for Poland, because although given its own legitimacy, Polish foreign policy and territorial domain was given to the Romanovs of Russia (Spielvogel 591). Austria redeemed Tyrol, and grabbed Lombardo-Venetia, and Dalmatia (“History of Europe,” Europe After). As such, the Austrian Hapsburgs dynasty won access to the Mediterranean Sea (“History of Europe”). Great Britain increased its colonial presence and maintained its shipping by gaining the Island of Heligoland west of Denmark, the Ionian Island west and north of Greece, and the Island of Malta south of Sicily (“History of Europe,” Europe After). Furthermore, Sweden gained Norway from Denmark, and Denmark got the Holstein and Lauenburg duchies (ibid). France’s territory resembled that of its 1792 domain. As buffer zones against French aggression, a united Netherlands was created and the Piedmont-Sardinia kingdom expanded to include Chambery, Nice, and Genoa (ibid). From an international standpoint, Europe had achieved balance.

International balance was not enough to establish European stability. New national superpowers that did not blend well with ethnic distinctions within their empires led to a rage of internal unrest and rebellion, fuelled by liberals and nationals. Eventually, European monarchs had to become aware of the problems when the revolutions of 1848 broke out (Spielvogel 605-608). With a 21st-Century vantage point, the principle of legitimacy and the new balance of power are obviously philosophical contradictions. If a monarch is legitimate in internationally realizing national realms, imposing a higher principle of international balance at the expense of old kingdom borders is a blatant denial of the Congress’s concept of legitimacy. This contradiction can be further explained by the lust for power of those who represented the monarchies of Europe. They only went along with old national legitimacy as long as it boosted the power of the monarchs. Balancing international lusts for gain became more important than the principle of legitimacy for the Congress. Because the Congress blended true ideals of government with lust for power, the results were mixed.

Sources and References:

Europe After the Congress of Vienna. 1912. Cambridge Modern History Atlas. Emerson Kent. Web. 29 Sep. 2010.

“History of Europe in the 19th century: Europe and the Congress of Vienna 1815-1848.” the-map-as-history.com. the-map-as-history.com, n.d. Web. 29 Sep. 2010. http://www.the-map-as-history.com/demos/tome01/index.php.

John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton, The History of Freedom and Other Essays, ed. John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence (London: Macmillan, 1907).
Accessed from http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/75 on 2010-09-30.

Oaks, Augustus; R. B. Mowat (1918). The Great European Treaties of the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press. http://clclibrary-org-works.angelfire.com/treaties.html.

Spielvogel, Jackson J. Western Civilization Volume II: Since 1500, Sixth Edition. Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006. Print

Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay, The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, vol. 2, (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860).
Accessed from http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/366 on 2010-09-30.

Images of Napoleon sur son lit de mort Horace Vernet 1826 and Prince Metternich by Lawrence from Wikipedia (tempered and blended by Wesley Reynolds)

Great Britain and the Gregorian Calendar: What is the Date?

2010-09-14T08:20:00.003-04:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

Much confusion in the writing of history arises from the fact that history spans a diverse array of dating methods. Because man’s knowledge is finite, his methods for discovering what is true are in constant flux. One of these changes has been the altering of the old Julian calendar to the present Gregorian calendar. Great Britain and her colonies did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until Sept. 14, 1752 (The 1752 Calendar Change). Accordingly, dating American and British history before 1752 is difficult, and merits a short discussion in any context that addresses the history of these nations.

Created in 45 B.C. by Julius Caesar, the Julian calendar was calculated to imitate the earth’s revolution around the sun, as opposed to the motions of the moon, or both the moon and the sun (ibid). Eventually, it was modified by the Christian world in an attempt to reconcile it with certain Christian festivals. March 25th was New Year’s Day; hence September was truly the seventh month, October was the eighth, November was the ninth, and December was the tenth (ibid). However, after a while, the Julian calendar was not accounting for leap years very well. It was a whole 10 days behind, adding a day for every 128 years, and throwing off the correct observances of Church seasons (ibid; History of Our Calendar). Finally, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII proclaimed the adoption throughout the Catholic world of a “New Style” calendar now bearing his name: the Gregorian calendar (The 1752 Calendar Change). This new calendar skipped all the days between Oct. 4, 1582 and Oct. 15, 1582, and added a new requirement to what determines a leap year: leap years must be divisible by both 100 and 400 (ibid; Gregorian Calendar). Portugal, Spain, France and Italy all adopted it (Gregorian Calendar).

However, much controversy surrounded the change. The commoners of Europe thought it a landlord plot to tick them out of rent payment for over a week (ibid). Protestants opposed it, denying the authority of the Pope, and asserted that the Pope just wanted to stop Christians from worshiping on the correct celebration days (History of Our Calendar). Particularly, Great Britain obstinately held to the “Old Style” Julian calendar the longest. The Protestant Germans finally gave in during 1700, and the empire of Great Britain capitulated in 1752 (Gregorian Calendar). From 1582 to 1752 a method known as double dating was prevalent in Britain and particularly New England (The 1752 Calendar Change; Time to Take Note). A double date might be expressed as Jan. 16, 1713/14, with 1713 being the old Julian year and 1714 being the new Gregorian year. Even more complicating is the fact that although Great Britain as a nation had not authorized the “New Style,” some citizens were already informally using it (The 1752 Calendar Change). This fact alone makes dating British history between 1582 and 1752 very sketchy. For converting a Gregorian date into the Julian date, see the below formula; where “INT(x)” represents the “Integer Part” (or the “Floor Function”), “Y” stands for the Gregorian Year, “M” is the number of the month, “D” is the day, and “UT” is the “universal time” (Gregorian Calendar).

“JD = 367Y – INT(7(Y + INT((M + 9)/12))/4) – INT(3(INT((Y + (M – 9)/7)/100) + 1)/4) + INT(275M/9) + D + 1721028.5 + UT/24” (ibid)

If the Gregorian date falls between or includes a year from 1901-2099, the formula may be abbreviated as:

“JD = 367Y – INT(7(Y + INT((M + 9)/12))/4)” (ibid).

In 1750, Parliament passed the Calendar (New Style) Act, setting forth a plan to finalize implementation of the Gregorian calendar by September of 1752 [The 1752 Calendar Change; Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 (c. 23)]. The plan included the following:

“31 December 1750 was followed by 1 January 1750
24 March 1750 was followed by 25 March 1751
31 December 1751 was followed by 1 January 1752
2 September 1752 was followed by 14 September 1752
31 December 1752 was followed by 1 January 1753” (Time to Take Note).

In short, the British Empire lost the days between September 2nd and September 14th. For all dates after Sept. 14, 1752, dating British history ought to be calculated in our present calendar style. If a date pertinent to British History falls between 1582 and 1752 and the calendar style is not included, historians should take it with a grain of salt.

Sources:

Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 (c. 23): http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.aspx?ActiveTextDocId=1516754

Definitions of Our Year: http://www.webexhibits.org/calendars/year-definitions.html

Gregorian Calendar: http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronomy/GregorianCalendar.html

History of Our Calendar: http://www.webexhibits.org/calendars/year-history.html

The 1752 Calendar Change: http://www.cslib.org/CalendarChange.htm

Time to Take Note: The 1752 Calendar Change: http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=3358

Image of Armillary sphere with astronomical clock from Wikipedia

The Miracle at Long Island: August 29-30, 1776

2010-08-30T14:28:00.002-04:00

“He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul” (New King James Bible, Psalm 23:2-3).

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

The Declaration of Independence had just been written, and now the young American nation first began fighting for its principles on Long Island, New York on August 27, 1776 (“Battle Pass”). Incidentally, the Battle of Long Island was the largest battle of the entire war, and although the British won the battle, the Americans survived, which was more than Britain could afford (ibid). When the battle ended, the Americans were stranded on the Island with little hope for escape from the British army. It was only a matter of time. Calling his council together, General George Washington proposed the only option; a perilous escape by small boats across the East River to Manhattan Island. The crossing of this American “Red Sea” became one the most miraculous events in the entire American War for Independence (Marshall 313-314).

When the British first arrived on Long Island, Generals William Howe, Charles Cornwallis, and Henry Clinton had 15,000 men under their command with Admiral Richard Howe’s fleet in support compared to American General John Sullivan’s 3,000 strong advance army, 5 scouts to the east, and (Lord) General William Stirling’s considerable force behind fortifications (“The Battle for New York”). From the 22nd to the 26th, Clinton, Cornwallis, and Howe moved their forces northeast to make for Sullivan’s unguarded left flank, while Grant and Von Heister kept up some fighting on Sullivan’s front (ibid). Stirling rushed from the defenses to hold off Grant. In the ensuing battle on the 27th, Sullivan and Stirling were completely taken by surprise when Howe moved behind their lines from the east, and most of their men were forced to eventually withdraw behind the fortifications (ibid). However, some Americans were cut off with Howe’s British force on one side and Von Heister on the other (ibid, “Thrilling Incidents”). Many trying to surrender were ruthlessly executed by the Hessians, who deemed it too late for surrender (“Battle Pass”). The horror of this drives home the point that foreign mercenaries are not too particular about the rules of war, and that George III’s hiring of the Hessians in 1776 was perhaps the greatest mark of betrayal he ever exhibited towards the Americans. He had divorced his beloved colonies by tyranny, and consequently, the Americans filed suit with sacrifice. American casualties (dead, captured, and wounded) numbered about 2,000 men and six canon, including the loss two generals, Sullivan and Stirling, who were captured (“Thrilling Incidents”). The British/Hessians only lost about 300-400 (ibid). On the 28th, they began digging siege lines toward the entrenched Americans. Trapped between the East River and a besieging British army, the Americans desperately needed a miracle and acted on the premise that a reasonable solution was impossible. George Washington, believing in miracles, would become their Moses, to lead them across the wonders of Providence.

After watching the defeat in anguish through his telescope, Washington came up with an audacious plan (Marshal 312-314). Because the rain on the 28th had saturated the arms and ammunition, the desperate state of the Americans became miserable (Whittemore 30). While decreasing the effectiveness of a final stand against the British the rain had providentially opened up a more adventurous scheme. The wind from the northeast that blew in the rain also kept Admiral Howe’s fleet from swooping up the East River and behind the American encampment (Marshal 313). The only way of escape lay across those waters, where even the British ships could not sail. Washington told his counselors that he wanted the entire army to cross the river on whatever small boats they could find (312-313). The East River was a mile long, the current was strong, and once the wind died down, these boats would be sitting ducks for the British navy (313). What other course had they? Eventually, the General had his way. Nine thousand Americans were to begin their wily flight on the night of the 29th (“Thrilling Incidents”).

The night air swayed the trees, and on its breeze, General Mifflin could hear the British hard at work with their picks, hammering away at the defenses (ibid). Mifflin’s duty was to keep his men in front of the British so as to hide the flight of his comrades (ibid). A mere 250 yards spanned between the two adversaries (ibid). The wind and rain snapped on. Eight o’clock, nine o’clock, ten o’clock; after two hours of waiting the army finally began crossing the river despite the rain (ibid). Thank God! John Glover’s Marbleheaders, the latest reinforcements, were superb boatmen, having rowed in small boats on Massachusetts Bay since their youth (Marshall 314). Without the blessing of the Marbleheaders and the 27th Massachusetts, the operation would have been impossible. For an hour the boats fought their way through the storm with men and arms, but then, oh joy! the wind hushed, and water stilled, and an awed silence filled the air that once wafted the chaos that had for three days blocked a British naval advance (Whittemore 32). “Peace, be still!” (Matthew 4:39) Eleven o’clock August 29th, 1776; the East River held its peace, as if spellbound, bridled, and pleasantly consented to the command of its Creator (ibid). A steady breeze from the southwest breathed into the little sails of the boats, and pushed them gently onto their destination. Again, the patriots dipped their oars into the freshly polished mirror of water, if not perhaps with a new tremble in their wrists and tears in their eyes that were independent of the strain from their earlier striving with the storm. Perhaps a soldier looked up and whispered the words of the 23rd Psalm; “He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul” (Psalm 23:2-3). We don’t know their mode of thanks, but the thankful feelings of those men on that night surpass description.

Suddenly, General Mifflin was greeted by Alexander Scammell with a message from Washington to pull his troops back to the boats (Whittemore 32-33). It must have been a mistake! The time was two o’clock in the morning, and the operation had only been three hours in the making (ibid). Reluctantly, he gave the order to make for the boats, and unveil the night’s journey to the eyesight of his enemies (33). After rendezvousing with the boats, Washington was just as surprised and dismayed by the order as Mifflin (ibid). Washington had feared another wind from the northeast, and had intended to signal other troops to hurry (32). The message had been misdelivered (32-33). Mifflin once again returned to his post as before (33). About a half hour had passed, in which miraculously the British had not looked across the lines to see the gap in the American lines (Marshall 315). Where was their sight on that moonlit night (ibid)?

Dawn was a peril darker than the night. The horizon moved from silver moon, to faded gray, to a fringed pink (ibid). If only Washington had three more hours! Yet, the river had one more Divine command. A think fog drifted up and over the shore, billowing into the American encampment and separating forever the Americans from their enemies. Col. Tallmadge reported,

“By ten o'clock the troops began to retire from the lines, so that no chasm was made; but as one regiment left their station or guard, the remaining troops moved to the right and left and filled up the vacancies, while Washington took his station at the ferry and superintended the embarkation. As the dawn approached, those of us who remained in the trenches became very anxious for our safety, at which time there were several regiments still on duty, and a dense fog began to rise and seemed to settle over both encampments; so dense was the atmosphere that a man could not be discerned six yards off. When the sun rose we had orders to leave the lines, but before we reached the ferry the regiment was orderd back again. Col. Chester faced about and returned to the lines, where the regiment tarried till the sun had risen, but the fog remained as dense as ever. Finally a second order came, and we joyfully bid those trenches a long adieu. When we reached Brooklyn ferry the boats had not yet returned from their last trip, but they soon appeared. I think I saw Gen. Washington on the ferry stairs when I stepped into one of the last boats. I left my horse at the ferry tied to a post. The troops having all safely reached New York, and the fog continuing thick as ever. I got leave to return with a crew of volunteers for my favorite horse. I had got off with him some distance into the river before the enemy appeared in Brooklyn. As soon as they reached the ferry we were saluted merrily from their musketry, and finally by their field pieces. When the enemy had taken possession of the heights opposite the city of New York, they commenced firing from the artillery, and the fleet pretty soon were in motion to take possession of those waters (Whittemore 34).”

Indeed, Washington was in greater danger than he could have imagined. In order to get even with the Americans for banishing her husband into New Jersey’s interior for being suspected as disloyal, a certain woman sent her slave to the British camp to sound the alert that the Americans were escaping in the night (33). However, the first regiment the slave came to was Hessian, who could not understand a word he said, believed him to be a spy, and promptly detained him until the morning; another miracle (ibid)! Finally, a British officer was given charge of the slave, and General Howe was notified (33-34). The British rushed to the shore, only to see, as Whittemore put it, “the heavily-laden rear boats of the retreating army disappear in the impenetrable fog which yet hung over the river” (34).

On the morning of the 29th, America was given proof of that phrase which Americans still use today, “May God bless America.” In his 1897 book The Heroes of the American Revolution and their Descendants: The Battle of Long Island, Henry Whittemore, quoted Lossing who claimed:

“Nobly had the fisherman-soldiers of Marblehead and Salem… labored at their muffled oars during the long hours of that perilous night; naught save a few heavy cannon was left behind ; none save a few lagging marauders were captured, and when the fog at last rolled away the American army was joyously moving towards the upper portions of Manhattan Island. That retreat, in all its circumstances, was truly wonderful. Surely, that fog was the shield of God's providence over those men engaged in a holy cause. If ' the stars in their courses fought against Sisera,' in the time of Deborah, the prophetess, these mists were the wings of the cherubim of mercy and hope over the Americans on that occasion.”

The “holy cause” of liberty for which Patrick Henry urged his colleagues on would not be assuaged. As Patrick Henry understood, liberty is more than just a social goal for Americans; it is an attribute of God, a global and universal out-flowing of the reign of Jesus Christ. The 29th of August, 1776 proved God’s blessing on a new America as “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

“And Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see again no more forever” (Exodus 14:13).

Sources:

“Battle Pass: Americans Held Back Hessians Until British Attacked From The Rear.” nyfreedom.com. nyfreedom.com, n.d. Web. 27 Aug. 2010. http://www.nyfreedom.com/BattlePass.htm.

Marshall, Peter, Manuel, David. The Light and the Glory. Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1977. Print.

New King James Bible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1994. Print.

“The Battle for New York: The Battle Animation.” historyanimated.com. historyanimated.com, n.d. Web. 27 Aug. 2010. http://www.historyanimated.com/revolutionarywaranimated/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52&Itemid=80.

Thrilling Incidents in American history Comprising the most Striking and Remarkable Events of the Revolution; The French War; The Tripolitian War; The Indian Wars; The Second War with Great Britain, and the Mexican War.: The Battle of Long Island.” Philadelphia: John E. Potter & Company. Web Conversion by Walter Bright. generalatomic.com. generalatomic.com, 29 Oct. 2005. Web. 27 Aug. 2010. http://www.generalatomic.com/AmericanHistory/battle_of_long_island.html.

Whittemore, Henry. The Heroes of the American Revolution and their Descendants: The Battle of Long Island. The Heroes of the Revolution Publishing Co., 1897. Print. books.google.com. books.google.com, n.d. Web. 27 Aug. 2010. http://books.google.com/books?id=tGA9AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+heroes+of+the+American+Revolution+and+their+descendants:+Battle+of+Long&hl=en&ei=5893TNKHGNfhnQf599GXCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Title image from http://dredwerkz.eu/Images/Pages/Terragen.htm

The 1745 Rebellion: Jacobites and Scotland

2010-08-18T16:29:00.009-04:00

A snapshot of the kirke at Glennfinnan, the village where Bonnie Prince Charlie planted his standard

A wind that awoke on the moorland came sighing,

Like the voice of the heroes who perished in vain:

"Not for Tearlach alone the red claymore was plying,

But to win back the old world that comes not again."

-A. Lang.

Softly fell the rain of heaven on the Highland loch,

Where the tears of the fallen once groaned the pibroch,

“Shall Glennfinnan’s standard perish cold forevermore;

And Scotland pass from all save who remember lore?”

Now only a lark sings the tune on Culloden

Of the pipes of Stuart and of his wistful tartan,

“Here rode the heir of Bruce, our champion brave and high,

His cause was Scotland’s cause; shall it live on or die?”

E. Wesley

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

What is it about Scotland that has stirred the imagination for centuries? Aside from spectacular geography, one word answers this question, “heritage.” The struggles of Scotland may be largely understood as an endeavor to preserve a culture and people that resonate with valiant and independent principles. In this sense, Scotland embodies the highest ideals of conservative thought; preserving the true, good, and beautiful. Although misplaced, the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 was certainly the last national moment of Scottish independent fervor, and marks the grave of Scottish autonomy and tradition. Any rebirths of Scottish culture since 1745 have been reenactments of earlier glory, such as the Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott craze of the 19th century and the Celtic music fad of our own day. With the last battle at Culloden, the English banned the kilts along with all Highland dress, destroyed the clan system, illegalized the carrying of all weapons in Scotland, and sealed the power of the English monarch over all Scottish subjects. The end of a civilization had come.

In 1320, the signers of the Scottish Declaration of Arbroath vowed, "for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule." Ever since that time, the Scots strove to maintain their autonomy. In 1603, King James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne, and became the "I" of England and Scotland. However, the Stuart kings proved too troublesome for the English and in 1688, William and Mary took the throne. In Scotland, many remained loyal to the old Stuart line, and began to think of the new British line of royalty as usurpers. Oddly enough, the English Parliament only gave William and Mary the English throne, and the Scottish question remained legally unanswered. However, English supremacy became clear on February 13, 1692, when King William ordered the Campbell clan to slaughter the MacIans at Glencoe because the MacIans had refused to claim allegiance to the new king. James VII of Scotland now tried to wrestle back his throne, but was repulsed at the Battle of the Boyne. Followers of King James became known as “Jacobites,” from the Latin for James. Parliament gave the throne to Queen Anne after William and Mary, which was yet another insult to Stuart inheritance. Although Anne was a Stuart, she was Protestant, and fit with what Parliament wanted from an English monarch. Under Anne, the Scottish and English parliaments were united forming the Union. With the advent of the German Hanovers in the early 18th century, the Jacobites began uprising in greater vigor. James VIII mustered the Highland clans to take back the throne in 1715, but failed when Dutch reinforcements came to George I’s aid. James VIII eventually retired from trying to wrench back the English crown, and lived in Rome as an exile. However, the Pope, Spain, and France all recognized the Stuart claim to the throne, and in 1745 the French volunteered an army and fleet to secure the British throne for the Stuarts. James VIII’s son Prince Charles agreed, but a storm destroyed most of the fleet and France withdrew the offer. Prince Charles was not dismayed and decided to make the trip himself, muster the clans, and bring Scotland to her highest glory.

After landing in the magnificence of his Highland home, Prince Charles on August 19, 1745 planted his standard at Glennfinnan. Thus, with only a prince, his escorts, and about fifty MacDonalds, the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion began. After the addition of 150 more MacDonalds, the sound of distant pipes was heard in the north, and about 1,000 Camerons soon threw in their lot with “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” In full Highland array, the Bonnie Prince rode through Scotland mustering his countrymen. This was the Scottish equivalent to the English myth of the return of King Arthur. Here was a direct descendent of Robert the Bruce, and the return of a future king. He is said to have even visited the ancient coronation place of Scone. On September 17, Prince Charlie secured Edinburgh, and on the 21st, his general Lord George Murray led his Highland men on to meet English General John Cope’s army. The ensuing battle of Prestonpans ended in about fifteen minutes after a Highland charge on the rear of the astonished and dismayed English army. Both armies displayed their unique glamour in the setup of the battle. Sir Walter Scott describes the armies:

When he had surmounted a small craggy eminence called St. Leonard’s Hill, the King’s Park, or the hollow between the mountain of Arthur’s Seat and the rising grounds on which the southern part of Edinburgh is now built, lay beneath him, and displayed a singular and animating prospect. It was occupied by the army of the Highlanders, now in the act of preparing for their march… The rocks, which formed the background of the scene, and the very sky itself, rang with the clang of the bagpipers, summoning forth, each with his appropriate pibroch, his chieftain and clan. The mountaineers, rousing themselves from their couch under the canopy of heaven with the hum and bustle of a confused and irregular multitude, like bees alarmed and arming in their hives, seemed to possess all the pliability of movement fitted to execute military manoeuvres. Their motions appeared spontaneous and confused, but the result was order and regularity; so that a general must have praised the conclusion, though a martinet might have ridiculed the method by which it was attained.

The sort of complicated medley created by the hasty arrangements of the various clans under their respective banners, for the purpose of getting into the order of march, was in itself a gay and lively spectacle. They had no tents to striket having generally, and by choice, slept upon the open field, although the autumn was now waning and the nights began to be frosty. For a little space, while they were getting into order, there was exhibited a changing, fluctuating, and confused appearance of waving tartans and floating plumes, and of banners…
When the Highlanders reached the heights above the plain described, they were immediately formed in array of battle along the brow of the hill. Almost at the same instant the van of the English appeared issuing from among the trees and enclosures of Seaton, with the purpose of occupying the level plain between the high ground and the sea; the space which divided the armies being only about half a mile in breadth. Waverley could plainly see the squadrons of dragoons issue, one after another, from the defiles, with their videttes in front, and form upon the plain, with their front opposed to that of the Prince’s army. They were followed by a train of field-pieces, which, when they reached the flank of the dragoons, were also brought into line and pointed against the heights. The march was continued by three or four regiments of infantry marching in open column, their fixed bayonets showing like successive hedges of steel, and their arms glancing like lightning, as, at a signal given, they also at once wheeled up, and were placed in direct opposition to the Highlanders. A second train of artillery, with another regiment of horse, closed the long march, and formed on the left flank of the infantry, the whole line facing southward…

Here, then, was a military spectacle of no ordinary interest or usual occurrence. The two armies, so different in aspect and discipline, yet each admirably trained in its own peculiar mode of war, upon whose conflict the temporary fate at least of Scotland appeared to depend, now faced each other like two gladiators in the arena, each meditating upon the mode of attacking their enemy.

After the stunning success of the Highland charge at Prestonpans, Prince Charlie was encouraged and invaded England with about 6,500 men (at Carlisle, it was discovered that desertions lowered their ranks to 4,500). On December 4th, the Jacobite army marched into Derby, 120 miles northwest of London. By this time, the English had mustered their armies, and 12,000 redcoats faced Prince Charlie on the road to London, with another army behind. Even though the Prince regretted it, the Prince’s advisors persuaded him to retreat back to Scotland. The Jacobite cause was closer to achieving its goal than even the Prince himself realized. In his book Culloden Moor and the Story of the Battle, Peter Anderson explained,

The invasion had been regarded at first with supineness by the English, as a piece of mere infatuation; and the leading Jacobites in England and Wales hung back, from distrust of the fortunes of so small a force. By this time, however, the nation and the government were thoroughly alarmed, and many well-wishers were on the very eve of joining the insurrection; while the French Ministry had made serious preparations for a large armament, and 10,000 troops were mustered, in order to a descent on the south of England. So it is probable that, had the Prince's eagerness to risk all the hazards of the die prevailed, his romantic enterprise might have achieved at least the temporary reinstatement of the Stuarts on the throne of Britain.

Fleeing through Carlisle, Dumfries, Nithsdale, Hamilton, and Glasgow, the Jacobites resettled at Falkirk. Here they won a resounding victory on January 17, 1746. However, the Duke of Cumberland had his revenge at the Battle of Culloden. Here, the Highlanders were routed and destroyed. The Duke of Cumberland had ordered to give no quarter to the Highlanders, and many of the wounded were ruthlessly slain. The casualties reveal the awful truth; 2,000 to 300.

After Culloden, the English had had enough of rebellion. Surviving Jacobites were hunted out and executed. One thousand Jacobites were sold into slavery to American plantation owners. One hundred more died on prison ships on the Thames River. Castles and homes were torched. Land was ceded to owners loyal to King George II. Clan allegiance to chiefs was dismantled, and the clan system ruined forever. Kilts, all Highland dress, bagpipes, and every weapon of any kind were banned throughout the Scottish Highlands. All hope for dismantling the Union, or reclaiming the Scottish thrown vanished. Scotland was no more.

The Jacobite cause was misplaced, and consequently fizzled out to devastating ends. Had Scotland fought only for her independence and not lauded the cause of their king above the cause of freedom, the Presbyterian Lowlanders might have agreed to fight in greater numbers than they did. With their help, Scotland might have succeeded in reclaiming its autonomy and history. As it was, Scotland suffered from the same division as Ireland, the Episcopal/Catholic Highlanders and certain subsets of Presbyterian Lowlanders refused to unite for their mutual freedom. As such, both became subsumed into Britain by force.

Sources:
Image of Kirche in Glenfinnan from Wikipedia
http://www.visitglenfinnan.co.uk/
http://www.glenfinnan.org.uk/
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/STUjacobite.htm
http://www.disbanded.co.uk/Jacobite_Rebellion.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/scottishhistory/union/features_union_jacobites.shtml
http://stiabhanmor.tripod.com/Culloden.html
http://www.queenofscots.co.uk/culloden/
http://www.queenofscots.co.uk/culloden/cullch1.html
http://www.queenofscots.co.uk/culloden/cull.html
http://www.rampantscotland.com/features/glencoe.htm
http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/glenfinnan/monument/index.html
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/scott/walter/waverley/complete.html

Beatrix Potter: Victorian through the Child’s Eyes

2010-07-30T16:03:00.010-04:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

Imaginative, lively, and brimming with ideas, children’s author Beatrix Potter reflected the longings, sorrows, and dreams of an entire age. She was raised in London, affording her a close, contemporary view of English politics, but she frequently holidayed in Scotland and the Lake District of Cumbria, giving her writings and illustrations that northern Scottish feel that was so fashionable during the Victorian years. Eventually, she moved to the Lake District, wrote her fairy tales, and raised sheep. Her search for order, stability, natural beauty, and Englishness represents a larger Victorian struggle to hang on to truth in a spinning world. Yet, she remained largely undecorated, shunning publicity, and admired the humble and quiet life. This is why her stories are so original and timeless. They speak of preservation, morality, and beauty. To understand Beatrix Potter is to discover Victorianism through the genre of fairy tale.

On July 28, 1866, Helen Beatrix Potter was born in South Kensington, London at 2 Bolton Gardens. Her parents Rupert and Helen Potter called her Beatrix or “B” so as to avoid confusing Beatrix with her mother. The Potter family was a higher-middle class family, having inherited Lancaster cotton fortunes. Being on the higher end of the Victorian middle class, Beatrix was low enough to understand the rising middle class, but high enough to live a life of ease and discovery. The most invigorating time of the Potter calendar was the summer holidays in Scotland and the Cumbrian Lake District. However back in London, Beatrix was left to the guardianship of a nursemaid, and her parents hardly nurtured her with much needed attention. Instead, Beatrix became withdrawn, lonely, and shy. Her secluded life allowed her to improve private hobbies such as drawing and listening to the Celtic fairy stories of her Scottish Highland nurse Miss McKenzie. These stories inspired her imagination, and she admitted in her dairy on November 17, 1896, “I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child” (Potter, “The Journal,” 435).

Her brother Bertram was the closest and only friend of her youth, and their relationship was complementary. Bertram, who later himself became an artist, encouraged Beatrix to pursue what he saw as her visual talents, and under the eye of her governess Miss Hammond, Beatrix experimented with art. She also enjoyed reading. Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly Novels, recounting the adventures of the Scottish Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, became enduring favorites. Beatrix and Bertram shared a love for natural history, and spent countless hours dissecting animals and enjoying the beauty of the outdoors. During the summer holidays Beatrix would draw animals, flowers, and fungi. Fungi stirred her imagination, “I think one of my pleasantest memories of Esthwaite is sitting on Oatmeal Crag on a Sunday afternoon, where there is a sort of table of rock with a dip, with the lane and fields and oak copse like in a trough below my feet, and all the little tiny fungus people singing and bobbing and dancing in the grass and under the leaves all down below, like the whistling that some people cannot hear of stray mice and bats, and I sitting up above and knowing something about them” (435). Indeed, her love for fungi eventually became a ten year scientific endeavor of meticulously painting images of fungi for botanic study.

Potter’s parents finally caught on to her talents, and hired Miss Cameron to hone Potter’s skills. Miss Cameron trained Potter for five years in perspective, freehand, model, and some water-color flower painting. In Potter’s opinion, taking twelve lessons in oil painting from Lady Eastlake stifled her artistry in water-color and her more individual experimentation. However, her father was a photographer for the famous Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir John Millais, who encouraged her to draw. The Pre-Raphaelite influence on Potter was invaluable, and one painting she spends time in her journals describing is Millais’s An Idyll of 1745, for which her father took background photographs to help Millais establish the scene.

From 1881-1897, Potter kept an encrypted journal to stop her mother from reading it. In it, she not only recounts her artistic aspirations, but also her keen suspicions of London politicians. Potter was by no means just a dreamy artist under the spell of Romanticism. Her artistry and life was guarded by the moral and stable foundations of Victorian Christian culture. As such, she looked at the world through an ethical lens, and viewed much of politics as an unsteadying of English life. On the negative, her humor, especially in her early years, was almost cynically sarcastic, and bordered on the petty. Prime Minister Gladstone in particular became an outlet for her unbalanced criticism. She disliked him because he rocked the boat, and lacked firmness when dealing with the Irish riots. Far from being just unrestrained and revolutionary, Gladstone’s reforms are largely considered some of the greatest in English political history. However, Potter gets at the heart of politics when she points out the dangers of any one man’s influence on the people of England. More than his actual policies, Potter’s difficulty with Gladstone was his sense of exulted status that became detrimental to the people. She wrote in her journal in 1885, “In future day people will not be able to realize how completely England has been under the thumb of that shifting, incapable old man. May it never again be so completely in any one man’s power for good or ill” (162)! Gladstone was certainly not “incapable,” but he was only popular because of his power to change things. This power Potter pointed out in 1884 is dangerous,

“It strikes me that that august body, and indeed the House of Commons itself, is regarded with very little respect by the country at large. Gladstone has got hold of power, and I suppose will stick to it till he dies, unless the opposition unite better. A certain class who owe everything to Mr. Gladstone, or who hope to get something from him, stick to him.

The commoners take that side because they hope from his promises to obtain more power. If you offer a thing, commonly considered pleasant and desirable, to any person, he will be likely to take it, though he might not have asked for it. Changes are to be treated with the greatest caution, and only granted when really desired and needed.

It is nonsense to say the country longs unconsciously for the Radical reforms that are turning up now. They are simply baits. I say nothing about their merits or de-merits, but simply that there is no feeling in the country like that which animated sober, quiet men at the time of the Reform Bill or repeal of the Corn Laws. Doubtless times have changed, but Englishmen are still Englishmen, and if they want a thing they will ask for it” (97).

Wow, this almost sounds like Edmond Burke! Imagine writing in 1884 that policy is bait to extend power. Change is a frightful thing which ought to be handled with absolute delicacy. Her love for a stable England is very similar to Burke’s understanding of liberty. She knew that politics was about compromise; “Radicals furious because old Gladstone is trying to make terms with the Tories. There is no doubt what has driven him into his senses, it is the Egyptian difficulty. He is going to get the Franchise Bill through as best he can, retire to the House of Lords, and leave the Tories to make the best of twenty millions deficit” (119). Although Potter’s ideas about individual policies may have been contradictory in some places, her love for order and skepticism for political change was constant. As such, she admired government that took a hard line against socialism and the Irish riots and explosions of the 1880s:

“A new and most wicked warfare has been attempted by the American Socialists. They sent some barrels to Germany full of potatoes infected by the Colorado beetle. It is feared some packages may have got in unnoticed.

They fear there is great risk of a terrible riot in Newry quarry. What on earth is come over our Government? They permit Parnell’s people to meet to denounce them and snub the loyal Orange men. It is a most serious business. If there is bloodshed tomorrow, and orangemen are arrested, the Conservatives will stand by them. The Grand Old Man [Gladstone] will of course do the opposite, will the Liberals follow him? Will things ever come to a head in this Irish question, which involves the Land question, socialism, law and order?

The times are as stirring as those which Lord Macaulay described in the Siege of Londonderry, as interesting events are going on in Ireland, but we have on mind clear and wide enough to take it in. In the same way there is as much strange and wild, though times and manners have changed. As wonderful a book as Rob Roy might be written if there was a Scott. There are plenty of odd originals, and dark intrigues, but there is no great colourist to paint them…

Rioting at Newry was not serious, for which merciful fact small thanks were due to Gladstone whose timid policy was justly derided by the Nationalists” (91).

Very much like Locke, Potter saw the English Government lax in its duty to protect order and private property (she mentioned land particularly). Her view of private land was explicate, “The government does nothing. Reports of riots in Leicester and Nottingham. Rioters at Birmingham are going to Chamberlain. I wish he would openly take the part of Hyndman and Co and be involved in their condemnation. He is with them in spirit. Land is as much personal property as plate or carriages” (182). However, she was well rounded enough to notice the flaws of the Conservatives,

“I don’t know what will come to this country soon, it is going at a tremendous speed. I think and hope that this extension of the Franchise may not be as bad as the Conservatives fear. No doubt if the labourers get power they will be greedy at first, but I think the sentiments of the lower-classes in the country are rather conservative on the whole, very loyal and tenacious of England’s honour. Still, landed property is not a particularly secure possession at present. It is middlemen who have pushed up, that are such mischievous radicals, like Chamberlain” (90).

Even though the Conservatives and Tories had faults, Potter respected their attention to order and disliked the demagogical method of the Radicals:

“The nominations begin today. I believe the Tories will get in. I hope so, though I am a Whig, anything is better that the Radicals. I think even if the Liberals win, it will be by so small a majority that the present Government will not be disturbed. Lord Salisbury is advancing in public opinion.
Mr. Gladstone has certainly made less impression in Midlothian than on the last occasion. There is a theory that he will retire in a few weeks, because he will be so mortified at having lost his hold on the people. It certainly does seem as if the Liberal tyranny was being shaken when one hears it said of one of the Manchester candidates, ‘so and so would have no chance if he was not a Tory” (161-162).

Potter’s personal ties with the Whigs did not interrupt her panoramic view of English politics. She grants Gladstone leeway only when he takes on a more humble disposition, “Gladstone: first great speech, showed great falling off in his power of voice, part was spoken in a conversational tone, and part was read” (199). However, Potter’s unabated scrutiny of the world and her wit that always pointed out the hypocritical in others took her pen boldly to even controversial topics of the day:

“I never have believed in those MacClarens and their radicalism, and young Mrs. MacClaren, I have always looked upon with the greatest contempt. She divided her time between women’s rights and the fashions. She is a most extravagant person, and yet they say it is a sin to be rich. Old Duncan MacClaren and Poachin are both completely self-made. The former a canny, exceedingly close old Scotchman came into Edinburgh from the Western Highlands as a shepherd boy, barefoot. His wife Priscilla, violent women’s rights, is sister to Mr. Bright, who has rather fallen off from them owing to the said women’s rights question, as also with the Cobden girls” (100).

Potter’s dislike for socialism, Irish violence, and political hypocrisy can be summed up with a statement from her journal in 1885. She was looking for stability on the eve of the modern world, “In the evening the state of things was this. The Borough elections were virtually over. As a matter of figures, the Parties were even, but morally the Conservatives had a great victory. Whatever may be the verdict of the Counties, the educated classes have declared firmly for sense and order” (164). Politics was by no means a fringe issue for Potter, it reflected a larger battle to conserve that which was good. The sense of personal insecurity in the face of civil unrest provoked her to unite her political views with the literary fascinations of her youth; “Cluny McPherson is just dead at the age of eighty. He is the grandson of the Chief who was out in the ’45 [the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion]. I should have thought it was longer ago, not that we have moved on so far in some things since then. I can’t help thinking that the state of society, as regards personal safety, has rather gone back lately” (125).

A woman with many facets, Potter’s cynical nature did not dim her sense of sympathy. If politics was a war to preserve, then life was the experience of preservation. Indeed, when she lost a father figure Mr. Gaskell she decried the sense of change and lamented the event as a symbol of her lost youth:

“Oh how plainly I see it again. He is sitting comfortably in the warm sunshine on the doorstep at Dalquise, in his grey coat and old felt hat. The newspaper lies on his knees, suddenly he looks up with his gentle smile. There are sounds of pounding footsteps. The blue-bottles whizz off the path. A little girl in a print frock and striped stockings bounds to his side and offers him a bunch of meadowsweet. He just says, ‘thank you, dear’, and puts his arm round her.

The bees hum round the flowers, the air is laden with the smell of roses, Sandy lies in his accustomed place against the doorstep. Now and then a party of swallows cross the lawn and over the house, screaming shrilly, and the deep low of the cattle comes answering one another across the valley, borne on the summer breeze which sweeps down through the woods from the heathery moors.

Shall I really never see him again? But he is gone with almost every other, home is gone for me, the little girl does not bound about now, and live in fairyland, and occasionally wonder in a curious, carefree manner, as of something not concerning her nature, what life means, and whether she shall ever feel sorrow. It is all gone, and he is resting quietly with our fathers. I have begun the dark journey of life. Will it go on as darkly as it has begun? Oh that I might go through life as blamelessly as he” (93-94)!

With Mr. Gaskell’s passing came the responsibility to honor him by living in his footsteps. Potter’s maturity at the age of eighteen is truly marvelous. Regarding the balance between adulthood and childhood she later wrote at the age of thirty, “retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense,… fear no longer the terror that flieth by night, yet… feel truly and understand a little, a very little, of the story of life” (435). She was destined to become a children’s author.

At the urging of her brother, Potter sent some of her drawings to the greeting card company Hildesheimer and Faulkner, which requested that she send more. Her old friend from Wray Church in the Cumbrian Lake District, Rev. Rawnsley also cheered her publishing on. While twenty seven, Potter began writing stories into letters with illustrations, and sent them to children of one of her old governesses when they were ill with scarlet fever. The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, and The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy Winkle were some of her letters. Eventually, Potter asked to borrow these letters back in order to make them into books. She sent them to Frederick Warne and Company, and Norman Warne helped her publish them. Norman began courting Potter in his own right, and the two became engaged in 1905 against the wishes of Potter’s parents. However, Norman died just a few months after the engagement.

Now was Potter’s time to retreat from a life of pain, excitement, and action. Finally finding a quiet life, she purchased Hill Top farm with her book money in her old fantastical summer holiday location of the Cumbrian Lake District near the village of Near Sawrey. Here, she began breeding sheep in the quiet of the English countryside. Consequently, this life provoked her sense of scenery, and she continued writing stories for Frederick Warne and Company, with scenic illustrations inspired by the magnificence of her humble country living. Her “little books” are about what she had earlier called “the story of life.” They speak of the preservation of what is good, and reflect timeless Victorian truths.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902):

Everyone knows this one. The main theme here is obedience to parents. It is particularly striking that Potter would write about obeying parents when she herself suffered from a lack of parental attention. Parental authority intrinsically necessitates the duty of respect and obedience. When one forgets one’s duty, ill comes of it.

The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (1903):

This story is about decorum and, like Peter Rabbit, respect for authority. Squirrel Nutkin’s unrestrained cheek and ill-mannered riddles in the face of the prestigious owl Old Brown with no motive other than to resist and break away from restraint only gets him into trouble. Nutkin ends up barely keeping his life and losing his tail, which he had always boasted in. With the absence of a happy ending, this story was probably meant to be startling to children. In fact, one of Potter’s young readers C.S. Lewis claimed Squirrel Nutkin had inspired him as a child. This inspiration would carry on into what is presently perhaps the most popular children’s series in the world, The Chronicles of Narnia.

The Tailor of Gloucester (1903):

Tailor tells the story of a poor tailor who falls ill with a fever while making a coat for the mayor of Gloucester’s Christmas wedding. Mice finish the coat for him, and the tailor is able to work with the mice to rise above his poverty. Perhaps Potter’s most fanciful opening for any of her stories is the opening of Tailor. I remember being entranced as a young child with these lines; “In a time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets – when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta – there lived a tailor in Gloucester” (Potter, “The Complete Tales” 39). It was as if a spell of silver rain laced my imagination. I’ll never forget the feeling of these words. Tailor was Potter’s personal favorite of all her writings. It is perhaps Potter’s only great fairy tale, and embodies all of what the Victorians would see as both fanciful and practical. In Tailor, Romanticism and Realism are complements, and mesh harmoniously. Here, Potter looks back in typical Romantic fashion to the 18th century as an inspiration for ethereal finery and chivalric manners. Potter’s perception of decorum takes on an elegance in Tailor that far surpasses Nutkin. However, like a Realist and similar to a Dickens novel, Potter’s main character is a poor Tailor who has only his wares to remind him of the unreached life of civility. He is selfless, knows nothing of self pity, and enjoys his humble life with a gentle and grateful spirit. Potter’s love for the quiet life shines through the tailor’s humility and endearing nature. Fancy and practicality meet in the celebration of Christmas. Dickens had inadvertently bridged the gap between Romanticism and Realism for Victorians with A Christmas Carol, which once again revived in England the fascination as well as the service of Christmas. Potter takes the Victorian concept of Christmas to a whole new level by embedding it in a fairy tale. Her lightness of theme springs ahead of the heaviness of rhetoric in Dickens. By conforming to the genres of her day, Potter transformed them to an unprecedented height of beauty and grace. She was imparting morality to children without a hint of being overbearing. The moral of service and duty to one another becomes precious when placed within a delicate fairy story. Tailor deserves a place among the greatest fairy tales of all time. It demonstrates Potter’s mastery for placing the truths of Victorianism into a tale.

The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle (1905):

Tiggy-Winkle is my personal favorite of all Potter’s books. I admire its unadorned sense of beauty and friendship. Whereas, Tailor is ethereal in its delivery, Tiggy-Winkle is softer, more sublime, and closer to the mortal heart. It’s a story about a farm girl Lucie who is befriended by a washerwoman named Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle invites Lucie to tea, takes her along to deliver the clean laundry, and finally disappears into the hillside. Generosity and industriousness are the virtues of this story. Potter makes these points so gently that the reader also walks away with a sense of longing intrigue. Tiggy-Winkle certainly has a feel for the northern countryside.

The Tale of Pigling Bland (1913):

The story that romanticizes the English countryside more that any of Potter’s other stories is Pigling Bland. Pigling Bland, while going to market, only wishes that he “could have a little garden and grow potatoes” (291). He befriends a lady and escapes to the county line from Cumbria into Westmorland, where he can retire to a life of gardening. Defining English Victorian life for children, Potter created a myth of freedom and quietness in Pigling Bland. Potter defines freedom as escaping every force to coerce one into an unstable life and finding a place of peace. Whether inspired by Potter or not, Tolkien later situates this English virtue of quietness into his Hobbiton. Pigling Bland is not only Potter’s life story, but also the story of English rural life as a whole.

Certainly Potter was imparting wisdom in her novels, but she was doing so with the bloom of her rosy pen. She proved that Romantic ideals could and should work alongside stable ethics. Her stories aren’t just entertainment, they embody what she wrote in her journal in 1896; “retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense,… fear no longer the terror that flieth by night, yet… feel truly and understand a little, a very little, of the story of life” (Potter, “The Journal” 435). This statement can essentially sum up Victorianism.

Living, writing, and raising sheep in her retreat, Potter shunned publicity and in 1912 married a local solicitor, William Heelis, who shared her love for the country. In 1909 she bought another farm named Castle Farm. By the time of her death on December 22, 1943, she had acquired four thousand acres. Tragically, she gave all of it to the National Trust when she passed on. This last move was somewhat contradictory to her ideas, given her thoughts on private property; “Land is as much personal property as plate or carriages” (182). Perhaps her fear for the devastation of the English countryside in the context of “progress” took her to a hypocritical extreme. However, her works still stand as a light into the Victorian era for generations of readers.

Sources:
Potter, Beatrix. The Journal of Beatrix Potter 1881-1897. Trans. Leslie Linder. New York: Viking Penguin Inc., Frederick Warne & Co., 1989. Print.
Potter, Beatrix. The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter. New York: Viking Penguin Inc., Frederick Warne & Co., 1989. Print.
http://www.visitcumbria.com/bpotter.htm
http://www.visitcumbria.com/lakes.htm
http://www.visitcumbria.com/amb/hilltop.htm
http://www.visitcumbria.com/amb/sawrey.htm
http://www.visitcumbria.com/amb/esthwait.htm
http://www.library.pitt.edu/libraries/is/enroom/illustrators/potter.htm#bibliography
http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/prints_books/features/potter/index.html
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/online/exhibitions/childhood/idyll.asp
http://www.mackinac.org/6881
Image of Beatrix Potter1 from Wikipedia
Image of Tale of peter rabbit 12 from Wikipedia
Image of Squirrel Nutkin Mr Brown from Wikipedia
Image of Tailor of gloucester mice from Wikipedia
Image of Mrs Tiggy Winkle and Lucie from Wikipedia
Image of Pigling Bland pg 31 from Wikipedia

The Franco-Prussian War and the Rise of Germany: Continental European Politics of the 19th Century

2010-07-20T15:30:00.003-04:00

“Rumour grew of a shadow in the East, whispers of a nameless fear…” Galadriel

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

Otto von Bismarck stood on a smooth surface that could be distinguished as a mosaic floor of wood inlay only when fewer nobles filled the enormous room. Chandeliers of crystal glass hung above him, and veins of gold wound down the marble walls. A curtain of unrestrained brilliance fell from the arches in front of him only to be hurled back by the refulgent imitations of the mirrors on the opposite wall. Here was the Hall of Mirrors; a canopy of luster within a palace of light. Bismarck faced a carpeted dais, upon which William I perched underneath a flutter of flags. An echo rang out into the hall and washed over the heads of the German nobility, “Long live His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor William!” (Spielvogel 621). In reply, a cheer surged up to the pedestal, like an ocean wave that outruns its predecessor. This was the moment Bismarck had been so carefully arranging since before the Franco-Prussian war. Victory in France could mean only one thing; the ascendency of a new unified Germany. With France in tatters after the Prussian victory, France later turned to Russia for support in hopes of revenge against Germany, and a new system of treaties was formed that would culminate in the western front of 1914. The ascendency of Germany destroyed the imperial and colonial balance of the 19th century European empires, ending foreign colonialism, and ushered in the modern era, yet not without the demise of Victorian cultural order and the horrors of two worldwide wars.

After the Napoleonic Wars, the Quadruple Alliance (Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Great Britain) called the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to restructure Europe so as to maintain an international balance of power. They restored the old dynasties to the thrones of Europe, and created a binational barrier (Prussia and Austria) in the middle of Europe in order to stop French or Russian expansion. In 1848 and 1849, Europe once again exploded in revolutions similar to the French Revolution, only more on the basis of nationalist sympathy (19th century nationalism held that every ethnic group had a right to its own government). Berlin, Paris, Prague, Vienna, Buda, Venice, Florence, and Rome were among the cities that revolted. These rebellions were subsequently put down, and certain leaders like Bismarck later learned to use nationalistic fervor to achieve the goals of the nation-state. Meanwhile, France dissolved its Republic, and Napoleon III become emperor of France in 1852. Continental European war returned, this time in Crimea, when Russia angered France with a petition to the Ottoman Empire to be given the privilege of protecting Christian landmarks in Palestine, which had always been a French duty. After the Ottoman Empire refused the Russian request, the Russians attacked Moldavia and Walachia. If Russia were allowed these, British trade and supremacy of the eastern Mediterranean Sea would be threatened. Consequently, Britain and France struck Russia’s underside, the Crimean peninsula. Alexander II sued for peace soon after the fall of Sevastopol. Because Britain found the war to be costly compared with the benefits, it decided to largely step out of Continental European affairs. The balancing act of power was now left to the Continental powers alone.

Internal affairs in Germany would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. During much of the 19th century, Germany was a vast domain of autonomous province nations with no strong political unification. The man who would later unite these nations into one Germany was Bismarck. Enjoying the life of a Prussian aristocrat, Bismarck studied much German history, earned a law degree, worked for the German bureaucracy, became a Prussian diplomat in 1847, and was finally appointed as Prussian Prime Minister in 1862 by William I. That same year, Bismarck submitted to parliament an army appropriations bill that would double the Prussian army’s size, as well as enact compulsory service during three years for all Prussian young men. Parliament rejected it, but Bismarck raised the army in spite of parliament’s decision. Thus Bismarck began a habit of ignoring parliament that would last him his entire career. Bismarck then turned to foreign policy. Prussia seized the Schleswig and Holstein duchies through the Danish (1864) and Austro-Prussian (1866) wars. After the Austro-Prussian War, the northern German states became organized as the North German Confederation under Prussian control, and the Catholic southern independent states each signed treaties to join with Prussia in wartime. Now, all that was needed was war.

War presented itself when Isabella II of Spain was deposed and the Spanish offered the throne to one of Prussian king William I’s relatives, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. If Spain was allowed Prince Leopold, France would be surrounded by Prussian dynasties. Preventatively, France convinced William I to withdraw Prince Leopold. Bismarck regretted this decision, and soon exploited the French diplomatic audacity. The French not only lobbied for Prince Leopold’s withdrawal, but also demanded that William I apologize to the French and promise never again to allow his Hohenzollern relatives to become candidates. William I forwarded a calm refusal telegram to Bismarck before sending it on to the French, but Bismarck changed it to be very offensive and sent it to France. Here’s the difference between the two letters:

William I’s letter:
“M. Benedetti intercepted me on the Promenade in order to demand of me most insistently that I should authorize him to telegraph immediately to Paris that I shall obligate myself for all future time never again to give my approval to the candidacy of the Hohenzollerns should it be renewed. I refused to agree to this, the last time somewhat severely, informing him that one dare not and cannot assume such obligations a tout jamais [forever]. Naturally, I informed him that I had received no news as yet, and since he had been informed earlier than I by way of Paris and Madrid, he could easily understand why my government was once again out of the matter” (630).

Bismarck’s Edits:
“After the reports of the renunciation by the hereditary Prince of Hohenzollern had been officially transmitted by the Royal government of Spain to the Imperial Government of France, the French Ambassador presented to His Majesty the King at Ems the demand to authorize him to telegraph to Paris that His Majesty the King would obligate himself for all future time never again to give his approval to the candidacy of the Hohenzollerns should it be renewed.
His Majesty the King thereupon refused to receive the French envoy again and informed him through an adjutant that His Majesty had nothing further to say to the Ambassador” (ibid).

As Bismarck hoped, the French were incensed by the telegram and declared war with Germany on July 15, 1870. Thus, by July 19th, the French would begin the war which Prussia had been waiting for. From a military standpoint, the first part of the war lasted only about six or seven weeks, but the French still continued to resist even after the capture of Napoleon III, until May 10, 1871. The French were doomed from the start. They did not mobilize as quickly and effectively as the Prussians, were outmatched by Prussian Krupp artillery, and hardly won an important battle in the war. Here’s a link to a rather lengthy synopsis of the war. However, I’ll summarize a little shorter below:

Saarbrücken:
The French first planned to cross the border of France and move toward the Rhineland. Interestingly enough, the Prussians also planned to allow the French to cross the border and contain them there. Accordingly, the French II Corps under General Frossard and III Corps under Marshal Bazaine drove the Prussian 16 Infantry Division’s 40th Regiment back to Saarbrücken. However, Frossard found that Saarbrücken was a logistical dead-end, and that he was overextended compared with Moltke’s three armies in the area. Frossard soon withdrew back to Spicheren and Forbach.

Battle of Wissembourg (August 4, 1870):
French General Douay’s I Corps was attacked by the larger and less organized German 3rd Army. Douay’s Corps was overwhelmed and forced to retreat to Riedseltz, while Douay himself was slain during the battle. Failly’s V Corps and MacMahon’s I Corps did not even make the effort to reinforce the French I Corps.

Battle of Spicheren (August 6, 1870):
German General Karl Von Steinmetz’s I Army struck Frossard’s French 2nd Corps, followed by a combined assault by German II Army reinforcements. Once again, the French failed to send reinforcements. This Prussian one-two punch drove Frossard back into Metz.

Battle of Woerth (August 6, 1870):
140,000 Germans faced 35,000 French near Woerth, where the French were forced to retreat back toward the Vosges Mountains. German artillery rained havoc on the outnumbered French army. Failley, being ordered to relieve the French at Woerth with an entire corps, only sent one division which provided a cover for retreat instead of a hope for winning the battle. This battle has been termed the “cradle of Germany,” because it was the first major battle in a war that would unify Germany.

Battle of Mars-La-Tour or Rezonville (August 16, 1870):
Finding themselves bottled up in Metz, the French decided to head for Chalons, but 30,000 from the German III Corps discovered them on Mars-la-Tour’s east side. The outnumbered Prussians managed to not only rout the French, but also to trap them inside Metz. Desperately trying to avoid defeat, the French cavalry led a large counter-attack against the Prussian III Corps in what became the last large-scale cavalry clash in Western Europe. Although the cavalry decreased the III Corps by half its men, it was not enough. A final opportunity for French victory opened up when the French advanced guard moved to break through the key Prussian defensive position. However, two Prussian corps struck the French assault by mistake, thinking it was a retreat. In a valiant skirmish, these Prussians held off the weight of the entire French Army for the duration of the day, and the battle was won.

Battle of Gravelotte (August 18, 1870):
In this titanic battle, 188,332 Germans beat 113,000 French, with 20,000 German casualties mostly due to Chassepot rifles and mitrailleuses and 7,800 French casualties largely because of German Krupp artillery. In this attempt to break through the Prussians to Verdun, the French dug in and blasted away at the German advance with their Chassepots and mitrailleuse. However, the German breach-loading steel Krupp proved stronger. The French retreated to Metz.

Siege of Metz (September 3 – October 23, 1870):
From the First and Second Armies, 150,000 Prussians besieged Marshal Bazaine’s French Army of the Rhine. After over a month and a half, Bazaine surrendered the entire French force of 180,000 soldiers in addition to 6,000 officers. The Prussians were now allowed the opportunity to surround Paris.

Battle of Sedan (September 1, 1870):
Meanwhile, French Emperor Napoleon III and Marshal MacMahon raised the French Army of Chalons for the purpose of rescuing Bazaine at Metz. However, they decided to sidestep north to Sedan and then descend south to Metz. Prussian Marshal Moltke wisely saw this sidestep as an opportunity to waylay the French army, and led three corps northwest. At Beaumont the Prussians managed to push the French back to Sedan on August 30. On the following day, the Prussians surrounded Sedan and roared their artillery into the town. The French again and again tried to punch through, including three cavalry charges, but to no avail. At last, Napoleon III called everything off by nightfall. Representing the Emperor, Wimpffen left to discuss terms of surrender. The French hope was that their army could leave with their weapons on the pledge to never fight Prussia. Bismarck and Moltke found this to be utterly unacceptable, and Wimpffen was eventually granted time to confer with his associates. Napoleon III next resolved to personally meet with William I, but Bismarck would not let Napoleon III through. During negotiations between Bismarck and Napoleon III, Wimpffen went ahead and signed the Prussian terms of surrender, whereby the French surrendered as prisoners of war, giving up all weapons, and officers pledging not to fight Prussia were allowed to escape. Per these terms, the French actually handed over to the Prussians 81,000 soldiers (plus 21,000 captured during the battle) and 419 guns. Napoleon III was then allowed to speak with William I. After he left, the French Republic took over governmental affairs, and Napoleon III died as an exile in 1873 in London.

A New French Republic:
General Trochu, Leon Gambetta, and Jules Favre staged a successful and bloodless coup in Paris after hearing that Napoleon III was captured, and formed a new French Republic on September 4th. Bismarck had hoped that an armistice would follow Napoleon III’s apprehension because he feared the entrance of other powers into the war, but the Republic was not to be bargained with. Prussia insisted that the French province Alsace be granted to Prussia. In an invigorated determination not to cede any territory in France, the new French Republic renewed the war declaration. Because most of what was left of French resistance resided around Paris, the Prussians began a siege of Paris. The Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, who had originally sided with Prussia, believed that the request for Alsace was too much, and he offered his services to the French Republic. He was given command of the Army of the Vosges, and accompanied by the francs-tireurs guerrillas, conduced a guerrilla war. His accomplishments include destroying the bridge at Fontenoy-sur-Moselle, defeating the Prussians at Chatillon, and delaying a Prussian advance from Dijon until February 1871. The war was to continue until France expended nearly everything.

Battle of Coulmiers (November 9, 1870):
Gambetta’s new French Army of the Loire surprised Ludwig Freiherr von und zu der Tann’s Barvarian army at Coulmiers on Orleans’s western side. Raining shells down into the camp sent the Germans into a panicked retreat during a French bayonet charge. This was one of France’s few victories.

Loire Campaign:
Rallying the French countryside to himself, Gambetta’s army had numbered about 500,000 troops when first raised. The lower classes began seeing the war as not only high class business. The Prussians would not have had the power to fight a war throughout the countryside had it not been that Metz conveniently surrendered in October, and 100,000 German troops were freed to pursue Gambetta. Gambetta divided his army into two divisions, but one group was soon defeated at La Mans in January and another French army at Amiens, Bapaume, and St. Quentin. St. Quentin was particularly devastating, and scattered the northern army.

Eastern campaign:
Fragments from the Loire army rejoined as the Army of the East for one last push to win the war in the provinces. Bourkaki led this force north on to Belfort, besieged by the Prussians. However, Bourkaki was not strong enough to break though the Germans, and was driven into the mountains near Pontarlier and the Swiss border. Desperate to escape the Prussians, Bourkaki made the mistake of crossing into neutral Switzerland. The Swiss promptly disarmed and imprisoned them. Now, it takes skill to lose to someone who’s neutral! With this defeat, the provincial war was lost.

Siege of Paris (September 19, 1870 – January 28, 1871):
The Prussian siege of Paris ended in the downfall of the French nation and the ascendency of Germany. The French created a communications network with hot air balloons in order to continue the provincial war. However, food became scarce very quickly, and the Parisians ate rats and animals from the zoo. At thirty-three feet high, the walls surrounding Paris kept out the Prussians, but all efforts to break through the siege failed, including the Battle of Villiers (November 29 – December 3, 1870) and the Battle of Busenval (January 19, 1871). By late January, both the French government and Bismarck were ready to discontinue the war. The Prussian victory was complete: Paris surrendered its forts on January 30th, and agreed to cede Lorraine and Alsace along with 5,000,000,000 francs. Twelve days before the surrender, William I not only anticipated his victory over France but also cemented his reign over all of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. If the Prussians were prepared to conquer an entire nation in order to unify themselves, what was next to be expected from a people who were now realizing Fredrick the Great’s Prussian militaristic dream?

After the Prussians withdrew, civil war followed in France. No one had witnessed such military audacity in Continental Europe since the Napoleonic Wars. Paris lay in ruin, and all of France had been turned upside-down. The French would never allow this to happen again, and their resolve was reflected both diplomatically and militarily. They amassed a grand army, strengthened their forts, and allied themselves with Germany’s neighbors Russia and Italy. This alliance was called the Triple Entente. Germany was no less ambitious about a buildup, and formed an alliance with Austria-Hungry. For about thirty-five years, these vast, ambitious, and unbalanced alliances faced one another in peacetime. By now, the Prussian military was unequalled in the Continent, and head of German general staff, Alfred von Schlieffen, designed a plan in which France would fall in 40 days if war came. The plan included marching through Belgium. Germany had even calculated the number of railroad ties necessary for the French invasion. This was by no means a “just in case” plan; it was a mathematical design for the destruction of France. Both France and Germany waited for the other to strike first. The situation would only be resolved in two world wars, which destroyed the 19th century European structure and formed the modern world.

Sources:
Image Reichsgründung1871-AW from Wikipedia
http://francoprussianwar.com/
http://francoprussianwar.com/war.htm
http://www.cwfsg.org/Sherman%20on%20Tactics.pdf
http://coco.raceme.org/films/lordoftherings/fellowship/quotes/intro.php
Potter, William. Providential Battles. Vision Forum Ministries, 2008. CD.
Spielvogel, Jackson J. Western Civilization Volume II: Since 1500 Sixth Edition. Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006. Print.

Forming a New Nation: Provocations, Concepts, and Accomplishments of Liberty During the Founding

2010-07-08T10:54:00.014-04:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

Now this was a real honor. The above video is a lecture I gave for the Mackinac Center’s Intern University program under the direction of Fiscal Policy Analyst James Hohman. I attempt to delve into the ideas, traditions, and hopes of the generation that founded the United States of America. The story is a battle between tyranny and liberty, with all the arts of betrayal and power on one side, and the fervent prayers of a new world on the other.

Here is sung the sighing of dreams,
Whether a song of death or of life,
Who could say ere freedom’s flag streams,
The sacred standard will follow strife.

P.S. As one minor point of correction, the First Great Awakening was from about the 1730s-1740s instead of the 1740s-1750s.

Grace in the Coliseum of Rome

2010-07-07T15:01:00.007-04:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.”

Within the weak and contrite walls,
The sound of faith has rung,
Tyrants once owned what Christ now calls;
Hear hymns where martyrs sung!

The hush of soft and tranquil notes,
Absolve the dying lays,
And now bagpipes forgive the gloats
Of Hadrian’s stone maze.

“Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.”

The lions roared, the Christians fell,
Under the Emperor’s sneer,
But now all’s stopped, and none can tell,
That blood was shed so dear.

Italian poets now do sing,
Of Him who died for them,
For they who died within the ring,
Bore true His peaceful gem.

“When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun.”

Those days of murder now have passed;
In brakes the glorious day!
Freedom trumpets Jesus’ blast;
A brighter morn’ than May.

Here peace reigns still in liberty,
Fair, until the gray-
Silver horns ring eternity,
And grace shall lead the way.

The Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps: 50 Years (1960-2010)

2010-06-30T15:55:00.007-04:00

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

As a former member of a local fife and drum corps here in Midland, Michigan, I have had the honor of performing at events alongside the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps; the official musical escort to the President of the United States. Fifing and drumming across America is more than just military music, it is a display of the values of early America set to music. I will always remember Mark Logsdon, drum major for the 1st Michigan Colonial Fife and Drum Corps, instructing us to play as though our survival depended on it. When I play, I attempt to breath into my fife the passions, hopes, and dreams of Americans who were willing to die in the American War for Independence. My instrument is a declaration of war on tyranny, and a herald of liberty. Fifers and drummers all over the country look to the Old Guard and Middlesex County Volunteers as the premier musical fife and drum corps in the world, even as Colonial Williamsburg Fife and Drum Corps has distinguished itself for historical pageantry. Formed in 1960, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Old Guard, and with it, a new movement across the country to revive the military music of early America, of which I have been so fortunate to play a part. Watch this 11 and a half minute documentary and learn how a rag-tag idea turned into the official escort to the president of the United States, or alternatively go here for additional free music and video.

Sources:
Image of Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps from Wikipedia
http://www.army.mil/fifeanddrum/about.html
http://www.army.mil/fifeanddrum/50th.html
http://www.army.mil/fifeanddrum/video_history.html
http://www.army.mil/fifeanddrum/audio_video.html
http://1stmichigan.com/
http://www.mcvfifesanddrums.org/
http://www.history.org/history/fife&drum/about.cfm

The Battle of Springfield: June 23, 1780

2010-06-23T13:11:00.005-04:00

Huzzah to our old forgotten victory!
At the rivers of Springfield, New Jersey,
Seventeen eighty, on June twenty three,
No King’s grenadier could beat Green or Lee.

In answer to their ranked, ordered folly,
We gave them musket and rifle volley;
And when lack of wadding silenced our noise,
Our minister then said, “Give them Watts, boys!”

There we fought with Presbyterian hymns,
Wadded up in our rifle barrel rims.
And with God turned back every foreign horde
Who in grenadier hero made their lord.

Those murderers, even in their retreat,
Pillaged and burned our town from every street,
Our children would be safe from future raids,
Only if through this we turned England’s blades.

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

Known as the "forgotten victory," the Battle of Springfield demonstrated the American spirit and English animosity more than perhaps any other battle in the American War for Independence. Here, American militia and Continental infantry, some with wadding from Presbyterian hymnals, turned back a British-Hessian army of more than twice their strength. Their British opponents were those who hired foreign mercenaries to betray their own countrymen, because not enough men in England were willing to do so. This was the last major battle in the north, and a climax in the enduring tale of American liberty.

The year was 1780, and in the midst of Benedict Arnold's betrayal, British General Clinton ventured south to the Carolinas. During Clinton's absence, Hessian Lieutenant General Baron Wilhelm von Knyphausen decided to risk a march through New Jersey. After the humiliating defeat of the Battle of Connecticut Farms at Hobart Gap, Knyphausen was forced to withdraw, while Washington planed a night attack. Clinton rushed back with reinforcements from the Carolinas, and was furious to find out that Knyphausen had started without him. Clinton found out the hard way how mercenary leadership functions in the context of conflict. The Hessian Knyphausen was a mercenary, fighting for money, not his own empire. He was fighting a war that was not his own, and had little to lose in an adventure. Washington, believing that Clinton would make for West Point next, marched on ahead to West Point, leaving only about 1,500 regulars and 500 militia at Morristown to defend New Jersey under the charge of General Nathanial Greene. Because Clinton expected that Arnold would soon turn over to British command the fort at West Point, he instead ordered on June 23rd that Knyphausen once more approach Hobart Gap, while Clinton himself moved up the Hudson to stop Washington from rescuing Green.

Knyphausen began mobilizing his overwhelming force of 5,000. Meanwhile, Greene, being ridiculously outnumbered, began taking up positions along strong geographic locations. He placed divisions of men along the rivers surrounding Springfield, particularly on the bridges across the Rahway River. The planks of the Galloping Hill Road bridged were removed nearer the town, and to the north, the Vauxhall Road bridges were destroyed. Under the command of Colonel Elias Dayton, the 3rd New Jersey with extra militia formed up on the Galloping Hill Road near Connecticut Farms. Behind the 3rd New Jersey, the 2nd Rhode Island, commanded by Colonel Israel Angell, held the first bridge. The 2nd New Jersey under Colonel Israel Schreve defended the second bridge. Behind this bridge, General Greene himself supervised another line on the heights outside of Springfield composed of the New Jersey militia under Major General Philemon Dickinson. North of the town, Major Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee formed a second set of lines along the bridges of the Vauxhall Road, with the 1st New Jersey under Colonel Mathias Ogden as support. Stationed at Bryant's Tavern, a final force including two New England regiments under Brigadier General John Stark and what remained of the New Jersey Brigade under Brigadier General William Maxwell was set up to reinforce both lines. Meanwhile, Knyphausen's British-Hessian army set out from Staten Island and moved through Elizabethtown with a force including the Musketeer Regiment von Bose, Jäger Corps the Musketeer Regiment von Donop, Cheshire Regiment, Brigade of Guards, 43rd Regiment of Foot, 17th Lancers, Royal Regiment of Artillery, 1st American Regiment (the Queen's Rangers), and the Scottish Black Watch.

American to American, the battle ironically opened with the Loyalist Queen's Rangers striking Daton's 3rd New Jersey and militia. Daton held out initially until the Ranger's finally outflanked him and forced him to mesh with Angell's men across the bridge. Knyphausen then sent more divisions to the north in order to flank Angell, and created a simultaneous front and flank attack at the fire of his signal gun. This attack failed twice due to impregnable American defenses backed with a rear cannon. Eventually, Knyphausen's men fanned out and crossed the few feet deep river. Angell held out for a total of five assaults before finally falling back and joining Schreve at the second bridge. Knyphausen once again brilliantly fanned out and crossed the second river, as well as bringing the 20 artillery pieces to bear and forcing the 38th regiment past the right flank of the Americans. However, the progress of this brilliant move was suddenly slowed when gunfire erupted from a stone house nearby and militia counterattacked. The sheer force of British-Hessian strength finally forced the Americans to the heights and Greene's headquarters. During one of these encounters, Dayton's men were driven back to a Presbyterian church and began to run out of gun wadding. The regiment Chaplain, Reverend James Caldwell, promptly entered the church and garbed the all familiar Issac Watts Hymnals; hymns that were sung by Americans everywhere. Passing out the inspiring lyrics, he charged his regiment, "Give them Watts, boys!" Initially, Lee's men on the north were faced with the same sort of pressing defeats, being forced to leave the bridges after fierce fighting. However, Greene sent Stark's two reserve regiments north to Lee's relief on the Short Hills. This brought the British assault on the north side to a standstill. Rather than attack the heights, the British retreated back to Knyphausen, burned and looted the entire town of Springfield, and left the field for New York. This battle was the last major encounter in the north, and gave General Greene defensive experience for his vital battles in the south that were to come.

Although overshadowed by later southern battles like Yorktown, the Battle of Springfield was crucial in shaping the war in the north, and is important for symbolic reasons if for nothing else. It is perhaps the most symbolic battle in the entire American War for Independence. King George III referred to the War as a "Presbyterian Rebellion." Nowhere is George III's claim more symbolically validated than at Springfield. Another fact to note, is that because the War was so controversial in England, George III couldn't find enough British recruits, and therefore used public money to hire a Hessian mercenary army to betray and destroy his own countrymen in American, in spite of the fact that many Englishmen were virtuous enough not to fight. At Springfield, not only were Hessians involved in the fighting, the battle was directed by Knyphausen, a Hessian. Defeating Knyphausen was an American triumph over the King's trademark of betrayal and tyranny. The British further degraded their cause and revealed their spite by cruelly burning the entire town of Springfield rather than retreat as gentlemen. "Give them Watts, boys" is rightfully the motto of this battle, and represents the victory of Christian America over betrayal and injustice.

Sources:
Image of the Battle of Springfield NJ 1780 from Wikipedia
http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/americanrevolution/p/springfield.htm
http://www.myrevolutionarywar.com/battles/800623.htm
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~njdar/churchandcannon/chapter.html
http://www.revolutionarywarnewjersey.com/new_jersey_revolutionary_war_sites/towns/springfield_nj_revolutionary_war_sites.htm
http://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations/AAI3172505/

The Magna Carta: Signed June 15, 1215

2010-06-16T10:03:00.008-04:00

"Our king a mock, a coward he
Did fail our land across the sea!
His sword was blunt, his armor weak,
From lack of use with rust did creak.

"And after this expensive venture,
He earned the Roman Pope’s censure,
Till we like Joseph have been sold,
As slaves, by a friend and brother cold.

"What is liberty but from this,
To have a sure deliverance?
At our feet shall tyrants assent,
To spurn not oaths of service lent!"

Thus spoke Sir Robert Fitz-Walter,
A cry for freedom without falter,
Which past nobility rang forth,
Telling mankind liberty's worth.

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

June 15, 1215 went down in history as a cornerstone to the development of freedom in the Western world. Although the Magna Carta didn’t apply to all men and women when first crafted, it implemented the concept of fundamental human rights into political reality. In the West, it was arguably the first step towards forming a society with explicit rights for humanity, and limitations on how a ruler can rule over his subjects. Strife, war, and taxes were preludes to such a vital document.

In 1204, King John of England was forced to concede the loss of his French provinces. However, he was determined to regain popularity among the English nobles by continuing renewed military campaigns with France. This necessitated a rise in English taxes to support the foreign wars, which only led to more dissatisfaction among the nobility. Meanwhile, John also disagreed with Pope Innocent III over the Canterbury archbishopric election. The Pope threatened to depose John in 1212, but stopped when John (as a necessary compromise) offered England as a fief to the Church. John, in attempting to save his own power, now became a puppet.

The nobility, now completely enraged at John’s most resent political blunder, began to form a confederacy. Ironically, Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury revealed a copy of Henry I’s charter of freedoms in a meeting of nobility in London. The nobles swore to renew the observance of this charter. Soon, the confederacy spread throughout England and comprised the vast majority of the all the nobility. A much larger meeting was called at St. Edmundsbury by Langton, and the results were the same. It was agreed that after Christmas, they would trek to London for a “petition.” In the meantime, they armed themselves.

At the festival of Easter, when the nobles expected to hear the King’s reply to their petition, 2,000 knights in majestic array (and countless others of inferior rank) formed at Brackley, 15 miles from Oxford. The King, in an angry rant, refused to limit his power. Not a good idea! The confederacy then chose Robert Fitz-Walter as their general. They besieged Northampton castle (though unsuccessfully), marched through the gates of Bedford castle, and rode on to London. Upon reaching London, the nobles issued compulsory orders to other loyal barons to join the fight. The confederacy trashed the King’s palaces and parks, and “loyalists” flocked to their ranks all the more as an opportunity to make their secret hopes of freedom a reality. King John, having only 7 knights left, finally capitulated. In Runnymede, on June 15th 1215, John signed the “Great Charter” into law.

The Magna Carta’s influence is extraordinary. It laid the foundation for local elections in England (originally, only for the nobility). When England began to institute the “election” into society as a legitimate means of governance, it simultaneously spelled doom on its class system. Noble councils became parliaments, and rights to lords became rights to mankind. America would then take these seeds and plant them in a new world.

Note: This post is a modified version of an earlier post I wrote for Trying Liberty.

Also note: The poetic speech of Sir Robert Fitz-Walter was completely of my own invention, and is not real history. Although Sir Robert Fitz-Walter was chosen as a ringleader, I don't know his actual words. In my poem, I'm trying to get at the spirit of the Magna Carta from the nobles' perspective.

Sources:
Image of Joao sem terra assina carta Magna from Wikipedia
http://www.historyoflaw.info/magna-carta-history-a.d.-1215.html

The Battle of Glenshiel: June 10, 1719

2010-06-11T08:29:00.004-04:00

Noise lashed the deeps, seas quaked and raged,
The wrath of God would not be assuaged,
The Spaniard fleet was helpless caged
In the storm Providence waged.

From cleft to cleft and rise to rise,
All about the river dell lies,
The highland band in kilted guise.
The pibrochs blare, the chieftain cries.

The knights of James for battle array,
While James himself is still away,
That reiver Rob Roy and Lord Murray,
Broadsword to broadsword pledged to stay.

Ore’ one thousand of highland name,
Ore’ two hundred Spaniards with the same,
“Swords out!” muskets begin to flame,
For Hanoverians now came.

Beneath the slopes of Glenshiel
Murry’s clans swiftly fled the dell
Great must have been Roy’s anguished yell
When Seaforth wounded too soon fell.

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

In 1320, the signers of the Scottish Declaration of Arbroath vowed, "for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule." Ever since that time, the Scots strove to maintain their autonomy. In 1603, King James VI of Scotland became the "I" of England and Scotland. However, the Stuart kings proved too troublesome for the English, and in 1688, William and Mary took the throne. In Scotland, many remained loyal to the old Stuart line, and began to think of the new British line of royalty as usurpers. With the advent of the Hanovers in the early 18th century, the Jacobites began uprising in greater vigor. After the failure of the 1715 uprising, Swedish minister Georg Heinrich, Freiherr von Schiltz Gortz, arranged an alliance between Spain and the Jacobites such that Spain would supply an invasion army. Much like in 1588 when Spain had targeted the Protestant English with its Armada, Spanish success could have very well put an end to the right of Protestant religious freedom in England.

Spain should have learned from its earlier try back in 1588. On March 9, 1719, the 29 ship fleet, along with 5,000 men and 30,000 muskets scattered in a raging storm. However, 250 Spaniards accompanying the Earl of Marischal did arrive in Scotland ready to strike. Marischal's brother James Keith told Marischal the news that the Spanish fleet attacking England had been scattered. At Stornoway, the highland chiefs held council, and because Marischal had promised he would relinquish his command when someone of superior rank was found, Marischal reluctantly gave command of the army over to William Murray, the Earl of Tullibardine. The plan became to sail to the mainland and take the castle of Inverness, where there was only a small garrison numbering 300 soldiers. However, after landing at Loch Alsh, mustering the clans wasn't so easy, and most would not commit unless a Spanish fleet arrived. Tullibardine set up an invasion base at Eilean Donan Castle, and wasted more time arguing. Ormonde, commanding the scattered fleet, sent back word to Tullibardine that the invasion had been canceled and that the only way to continue was to muster the clans while he tried his best to send some arms. Accordingly, the Jacobites moved to the Crow of Kintail, leaving only 48 Spaniards to guard the gunpowder. By this time the Hanover English military was on the move. While the chiefs were away, three English warships swooped in and shelled the castle, forcing the Spanish to surrender. Furthermore, Inverness was reinforced with a force under Maj. Gen. Joseph Wightman. Finally, some more Highland clans joined Tullibardine's ranks; 150 Camerons from Lockaber, 400 to 500 highlanders under William McKenzie, fifth Earl of Seaforth, some men from Perthshire under Lord George Murray, and 1,000 more including Mackinnons, Mackenzies, and MacGregors. Of course, the outlaw Rob Roy came with his clan, the MacGregors. The Chisholm clan brought the news that General Wightman had already departed on June 5th from Inverness to challenge the clans with a force of 850 infantry, 120 dragoons, 200 grenadiers, 130 Whig clansmen, and 6 coehorn mortars of bronze.

Tullibardine chose his ground carefully, and decided to face these Hanoverians at Glenshiel (see above photo). David Sharp in an article published for Military History magazine describes the location:

The valley had a drover's road that crossed the Shiel River by a stone bridge. At that point the shoulder of a hill jutted into the valley, causing it to narrow into a gorge, the steep sides of which were covered by heather, bracken and birches. The road entered the valley from the flat area above the pass on a shelf on the north side between the river and the hill. The Jacobites sought to strengthen the center of their proposed line by throwing up a series of entrenchments on the contours of the hill to the north of the Shiel. They also erected a barrier across the drover's road that ran the length of the glen between the river and the entrenched hill. They held a strong position protected on the right by a rivulet and on the left by a ravine. The land in front of the entrenchments was steep and rugged.

Here, about 1,600 Jacobites took their positions across the valley floor. Fourteen-year-old Lord Murray held the right flank south of the river on high ground. To Murray's left, were some from the Spanish Regimento numero 3 La Corona marine unit under Don Nicolas Bolano. After the Spanish, from right to left, was Locheil's men, Rob Roy's MacGregors, Sir John Mackenzie of Coul and his Mackenzies, the Campbells from Ormdale and GlenDarul, clan Mackintosh, and finally Seaforth on a steep side with his men on the left flank. In the afternoon of June 10th, the Hanoverians under Wightman set up their army. The MacKays took up the left flank facing Murray, and a strong right wing set up on the north side of the river under Lt. Col. Jasper Clayton, comprising John, second Duke of Montagu's Grenadier Regiment, the 11th and 15th battalions of foot, and a Dutch troop regiment. One hundred and fifty dismounted dragoons supported the right wing flank on the road and river. A left wing with Clayton's own regiment, 80 Culcairn's clansmen under Captain George Munro, and the six mortars held the south side of the river. After some preliminary skirmishes, full fledged battle began between 5:00 and 6:00 pm. Young Murray beat back the first attack on the Jacobite right flank from 4 platoons of Clayton's regiment and some of Munro's clansmen. However, after regrouping, the Hanoverians drove Murry back to the protective high banks of the burn. From here, Murry could have counter-attacked by swooping down if only reinforcements were available. Now that Wightman had driven back the Jacobite right flank, he focused on the Jacobite left. As such, Montagu shook Seaforth's flank until Seaforth requested reinforcements. Rob Roy rushed toward Seaforth, only to find that the line had disintegrated, and Seaforth was removed being wounded in the arm. Now it was for the center! Wightman roared the mortars at the La Corona regiment, while the valiant Spaniards stood their ground despite the heather around them caught fire. Eventually the highlander Jacobites fled into the highlands, and the Spanish regiment chose to surrender to the English rather than hide up in the highlands. The Hanoverians suffered 21 dead, 121 wounded, while the Jacobites probably lost only slightly more (maybe about 40 dead and 120 wounded). Rob Roy MacGregor lurked in the hills of Glen Shira, and afterward returned to his home at Balquidder (actually, my ancestor clan, the MacLaurins, also spelled MacLaren, owned Balquidder first, before the MacGregors pillaged us out). Thus ended the Jacobite "little rising."

A few political observations of these events are in order. Scotland's only claim to the English throne was through Stuart family inheritance, and when the English decided to switch royal lines, Scotland had a hereditary right to be excluded from the domain of the new English king, being that the terms of inheritance had been violated. However, instead of fighting for their independence like Wallace and Bruce had done, the Jacobites voluntarily allied themselves with England's worst enemies, planed large-scale foreign invasions of England, and attempted to reclaim the entire British throne with a Stuart Catholic king. Catholic kings in England by this time had become socially impossible in the long run. Hence, these uprisings quickly degenerated into a zero-sum games. If England won, Scotland would have to submit, if Scotland won, England would have to submit. Providentially, all of the large-scale Catholic military invasions of England failed. The Scots would have probably found more support for their own cause if they had fought for pure independence instead of a royal line. For one thing, the Lowlands possibly would have joined the cause. However, the Western world would have to wait until the end of the 18th century, before a successful war for independence was won; this time, without a king or single figurehead other than God.

Sources:
Image of Glenshiel from Wikipedia
http://www.constitution.org/scot/arbroath.pdf
http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-glenshiel.htm
http://www.clan-cameron.org/battles/1719.html
http://www.clan-macrae.org.uk/scotland/history.cfm?ID=94
http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/kingbio.htm

Sir Edward Elgar: The Last Bard of Great Britain

2010-06-02T11:28:00.007-04:00

See that thy navies speed, to the sound of the battle-song;
Then, when the winds are up, and the shuddering bulwarks reel,
Smite, the mountainous wave, and scatter the flying foam,
Big with the battle-thunder that echoeth load, loud and long;

A. C. Benson in Elgar's Coronation Ode Op 44, Britain, ask of thyself

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

Although the light of his musical genius has faded with the passing of time and fancy, Sir Edward Elgar resurrected English Classical music from a long slumber to a climax of patriotic fervor by setting to music the strongest British sentiments that ever beat in an Edwardian Englishman's heart. With the performance of Elgar's Coronation Ode at the coronation of King Edward VII himself, Elgar reached at the very heart of the splendor and moral code of the English court and all that had been "Victorian" and would become "Edwardian." However, even with the utterance of Elgar's invocation at the 1902 coronation, "Lord of Life, we pray, Crown the King with Life!," the British Empire stood upon the brink of its greatest and final collapse in the 20th century, and these golden days would soon turn to blood. Elgar became the last bard of Great Britain.

Elgar was born on June 2, 1857 in Worcester, and grew up playing the violin and organ without any official musical training. He composed the Wand of Youth for a family play at twelve years old, and continued music as an assistant organist for St. George's Church in Worcester and as a bandmaster. Against the will of Alice's parents, Elgar married a former pupil of his, Caroline Alice Roberts in 1889. Alice became his most constant companion and helpmeet, encouraging Elgar on every new stride. Biographer Jerrold Northrop Moore in his Edward Elgar: A Creative Life wrote; "Without the marriage to Alice and without her encouragement, he might himself have remained one of the 'hundreds of villain churls' whose ploughings of earth never adorn the pages of history." Elgar himself wrote to Dr. Buck regarding his new wife, "And now (after all our talks about the mystery of living), I must tell you how happy I am in my new life & what a dear, loving companion I have & how sweet everything seems & how understandable existence seems to have grown..." His career was now ready to begin.

Romanticism had its hold on Elgar as well as England in the late 1880s and 90s. He began to explore the themes of Medieval chivalry in The Black Knight (1889-92) and Froissart (1890). Visiting his old church in April 1890 filled him with a sense of youthful heroism that led into Froissart. He chose Froissart because he remembered a dialogue between a Royalist commander and a youthful hero in Sir Walter Scott's Old Mortality,

Did you ever read Froissart?... His chapters inspire me with more enthusiasm than even poetry itself. And the noble canon, with what true chivalrous feeling he confines his beautiful expressions of sorrow to the death of the gallant and high-bred knight, of whom it was a pity to see the fall, such was his loyalty to his king, pure faith to his religion, hardihood towards his enemy, and fidelity to his lady-love! -- Ah, and benedictine! how he will mourn over the fall of such a pearl of knighthood, be it on the side he happens to favour, or on the other. But, truly, for sweeping from the face of the earth some few hundreds of villain churls, who are born but to plough it, the high-born and inquisitive historian has marvellous little sympathy.

In Scott's quote, we see Elgar's personal life begin to reflect Victorianism. Whereas many Romantics of the early 19th century left Romanticism unrestrained, Victorians bridled Romanticism with truth, loyalty, and Christian ethics. One need look no further than Kipling's Birkenhead Drill from the heroism that Victorians held dear ever since the wreck of the H.M.S. Birkenhead in 1853. Scott led the way for many Victorians by putting morals first, which explains the popularity of his novels in the late 19th century and the Queen Victoria's craze over Scotland. Youth was thought to be naively faithful, similar to Mathew 18:3 "unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven" (NKJV). However, as G. A. Henty's and Martha Finley's very popular historical fiction novels prove, Victorians also respected history as a tool to instruct those living in the present and mold as much as inspire the young. Elgar was perhaps inadvertently following Henty's and Scott's steps by using historical fiction in art. Carrying with him his almost melancholy longing for his childhood, Elgar musically expressed this common Victorian sentiment in Enigma Variations (1889). In Enigma, Elgar hinted at a well known tune but never exposed it as audibly recognizable. He also used different parts of the Enigma to reminisce about his friends in his life. All attempts at exposing Elgar's theme in Enigma have so far failed, and this piece still remains a mystery. What is plain is that it embodies a feeling of melancholy remembrance unique to Victorianism.

Although Elgar went on to compose such masterpieces Sea Pictures (1900), The Dream of Gerontius (1900), and later the Cockaigne (In London Town) Overture (1901), his four Pomp and Circumstance marches (beginning in 1901) and the Coronation Ode (1902) defined him as the quintessential English composer of his time. After the Coronation, he set to music his Catholic Christian faith in The Apostles (1903) and The Kingdom (1901-06). Being knighted in 1904 by Edward VII, Elgar composed his flourishing Symphony No. 1 (1908), which, before preforming it Hans Richter proclaimed, "Gentlemen, let us now rehearse the greatest symphony of modern times, written by the greatest modern composer - and not only in this country." In 1911 he composed the Violin Concerto, the Symphony No. 2 in 1912, the Music Makers in 1913, and the Falstaff in 1914. The Coronation Ode in five marches and six movements was his brightest star as an English musician, as it embodied the high ideals of Victorianism and the aspirations of Great Britain at the advent of Edward's reign. The first march begins a prayer for God's blessing on the King, and by extension the nation, with lyrics written by A. C. Benson:

Listen to a preview here.

Read lyrics for: I - "Crown the King" - Introduction Soloists and Chorus

What is interesting to note is that true leadership is defined as very specific Christian virtues that are startling to the modern reader. For instance, peace is exemplified as "long suffering," mimicking the rhetoric of the King James Bible in Ephesians 4:2 and 2 Timothy 3:10. The virtues themselves draw on Christianity and classical Western ideas; life, might, peace, love, faith, and salvation. "Crown the King" epitomizes the English Christian tradition of "saving" the king. Going back to the Enigma, Elgar transitions the theme into a fresher majesty. Employing descending steps and sudden drops gives a sense of "recessional." The second movement details the Queen Alexandra's history and destiny:

Preview here.

Read lyrics for: (a) "The Queen" (b) "Daughter of ancient Kings"

Delicately gorgeous, one can almost here the queen's steps across the palace in the melody. The sustained notes combined with the hushed chorus make these verses sparkle like the royal wind in verse four. Once again "guileless faith" is of vital importance in the Victorian mind. Truth was what the previous Queen Victoria exemplified, and Alexandra is exhorted to follow in her footsteps. Purity is a unique virtue to this verse as is the feminine "sparkling." The third movement drastically shifts gears to a marshal military tone:

Preview here.

Read lyrics for: III "Britain, ask of thyself" - Solo Bass and Chorus (Tenor and Bass)

The preservation of the Empire is of first concern to Elgar as far as practical application. Here is where all Englishmen are charged to live out the Romanticized chivalrous virtues and make them real in history. This is a clash between good and evil. It is applicable, stark, dramatic, and marshal. It represents the world wide British Empire at a time when the sun never set on it. In other words, if England will not be brave, who will? The horns blare, the drums crash, the soloist bellows, and the chorus yells. The strength and stability of Victorian valiance is forever captured in this march. It is the last march of the age. In typical Victorian sentiment, the fourth movement falls back on youth for personal reflection to balance the call of war:

Preview here.

Read lyrics for: (a) "Hark, upon the hallowed air" (b) "Only let the heart be pure"

Like the Enigma, reminiscing over one's youth as a nation is what adds bitter sweetness to the Coronation. However, true to Victorianism, the last verse states that truth and wisdom must guide youth; "So shall Wisdom, one with Truth, Keep undimm'd the fires of youth, Strong to conquer, strong to bless, Britain, Heaven hath made thee great!" It is in fact the courage that one finds from the personal past (youth) that inspires the bravery that must in turn curb youth out of its wildness. Purity is the guard. Elgar uses a melodramatic male soloist to represent this youth, and a slower pace to create remembrance. The fifth movement moves from remembrance to peace.

Preview here.

Read lyrics for: V "Peace, gentle peace" - Soli (S.A.T.B.) and Chorus unaccompanied

Just like in a church, an unaccompanied chorus rains down blessings upon the nation. It resembles the same hushed tone of the second movement. This is a tranquil blessing wreathed in quietness. The next movement employed the grandest accomplishment yet, a tune Elgar himself said "will knock 'em flat."

Listen here.

Read lyrics for: VI - "Land of hope and glory" - Finale (Contralto Solo and Tutti)

Set to the tune of Pomp and Circumstance, the finale clearly links the monarch with the survival of the moral striving of the nation in the tradition of English liberty. Again, truth takes its preeminence in Victorian virtue, followed by "Right" and "Freedom." This is what the West stood for; this is what the Empire was. The hope and glory of all British across the world was balanced in this ceremony. Seen in this light, pomp and circumstance wasn't just for show, or the blessing of the King and Empire needless flattery. It was an exhortation, a rebuke if needs be, a challenge to live rightly; it was a dedication to all that was British. It was in faith and freedom that they crowned their king: "Strong in Faith and Freedom, we have crowned our King!"

Elgar all too soon found out what a definitive finale this was as Great Britain entered WWI and the Empire declined to rise no more, save for its brief "finest hour." In 1919 after witnessing five long years of death, Elgar's patriotism turned to gloom and lamentation in the Cello Concerto, as he was overwhelmed by the grief and totality of destruction. He could only weep for his country now. In 1920, his wife Alice died, ending his source of encouragement and inspiration to continue composing. He only rose again for a brief time from 1928 to 1934, during which time he left two major works unfinished. Elgar died on February 23, 1934 from a malignant tumor. With his passing ended an age and the song of a kingdom. Although he had boosted England's long awaited lead in music, his Pomp and Circumstance had no reality to shine in the modern and post-modern eras. In this sense, Sir Edward Elgar is the last bard of Great Britain.

Sources:
Image of Edward Elgar from Wikipedia
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=WRULnIDJRH8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Edward+Elgar:+A+Creative+Life+By+Jerrold+Northrop+Moore&source=bl&ots=1DbFDtmNyL&sig=DOLnRhvINwlBUphwR63_xm-9Ahk&hl=en&ei=c0oDTJCYK5ey0gTm_ZT3Ag&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://library.thinkquest.org/22673/elgar.html
http://www.clainesfriends.org.uk/elgar.html
http://www.elgarfoundation.org/elgar_fr.htm
http://www.classicalarchives.com/work/203993.html
http://www.sterlingtimes.org/memorable_images15.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugieMcWPgOk
http://www.musicweb-international.com/programme_notes/elgar_froissov.htm
Lyrics for Coronation Ode from Wikipedia