A REACTION

 

As this blog continues the story of the political culture in America and how it either promoted or discouraged a federated view among its people, the next chapter concerns a great reaction.  The First Great Awakening, beginning roughly in the late 1720s – with a definite presence in the 1730s – can mostly be seen as a reaction.  That reaction was to the Enlightenment.  But as was the case with most other movements in America of that time, its origins can be traced to Europe.

          As this posting will describe below, religious Protestants and some Catholics found the secular arguments of Enlightened thinkers as being either blasphemous to God or out and out mistaken.  In the United Kingdom, the reaction took on the name Evangelical Revival.  In America, the term American evangelicalism was used to denote a trans-denominational reaction constituting this Great Awakening.  And this thrust was aimed not at a group level of focus, but at the personal – individual – level.

          Commentary here is limited to the Awakening’s effects on the political culture of the colonists.  The messaging by such leaders of the movement as George Whitefield, John Wesley, and Jonathan Edwards centered on having believers look introspectively at their morality.  What they called for was a personal conviction and how each is dependent on salvation secured by Jesus’ sacrifice.  They rebelled directly to Enlightened thinking and its view of objectifying reality or what was believed to be reality. 

Instead, these Revivalists emphasized a conversion not based so much on intellectual acceptance, but on a “new birth” which one experiences in the heart.  This appealed to those who looked at the importance of having an emotional commitment.  This placed a heightened emphasis on the practice of revivals – open demonstrations of emotional commitments.  And by doing so, it appealed to common folks not privileged to have higher educational experiences.  So, for example, in England, evangelical Anglicans took on prominence within the Church of England.  There were contingencies within Methodism (influenced by the work of Whitefield and Wesley).  Denominations not so affect were Lutherans and initially Quakers.[1]

Another point of note in terms of the developments in England was certain retention of what this blog has described as basic Puritanical beliefs.  The evangelistic move, in effect, meant increased pastoral or spiritual guidance by church ministers.  This led to appointing or naming non ministers to take on these responsibilities.  It also meant an increased effort to seek out those shunted by the established Church of England, democratizing these religious concerns.  Part of the message was that Christianity was also meant for the “neglected.”

More specifically, Methodist congregations or societies arranged themselves around “classes.”  Those were meetings in which individual attendees were urged to confess their transgressions to others and, by doing so, the aim was to bolster each other.  In addition, meetings would conduct “love feasts” in which practitioners shared testimonies.  This had the effect among many to develop an associated identity – a federal aim.  Here, the Methodists proclaimed three beliefs:

1.    People are, by their nature, “dead in sin.”

2.    Only faith can “justify” them.

3.    The faithful exhibit, both inwardly and outwardly, holiness.[2]

This might remind the reader of Puritanical beliefs (TULIP) in that it is not good works that merit a heavenly reward, but in this case faith – in the case of Puritans it was being chosen by God.

          So, what did this movement find when it first hit the colonies?  The Great Awakening found a willing public but a diverse audience.  As this blog has already established, the New England colonies had adopted a Puritanical, congregational view.  The middle colonies, being more tolerant, had established a more diverse religious landscape populated by Quakers, Dutch Reformers, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Congregationalists, and Baptists.  They were all treated equally by law and conducted their services openly.  And in the Southern colonies, one found an official Anglican church, but also a good number of Baptists, Quakers, and Presbyterians.[3] 

But it has also been recorded that at that time a general low level of church membership was prevalent due to population growth – high immigration – and the effects of the Enlightenment.  Many, especially among the higher educated, turned to atheism, Deism, or Unitarianism, this last belief rejected the trinity (belief in the three-person God) and predestination.  This state of affairs, of course, stirred a reaction by those attending established churches.

That reaction took on the revivalist ideas described above.  Led by New England Puritans, Scots Irish Presbyterians, along with a belief in European Pietism, the faithful took on the messaging of revival and piety which was making their way across the Atlantic.  The result was an American version of evangelical Protestantism.  This placed an emphasis “on seasons of revival, or outpourings of the Holy Spirit, and on converted sinners experiencing God’s love personally.”[4] 

Some of these activities can be traced in New England to the 1710s.  But given the limited means of spreading the “good news,” such activities were limited in New England to local occurrences.  Interestingly, an earthquake and the ensuing “press” coverage led to the dissemination of these practices beyond local churches.  And with the “importation” of European developments, the Great Awakening took off in America.

For readers who might be interested in these developments, they might look up the work of a couple of early ministers.  They are Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen and William Tennent.  The first, ascribed by some as the “father” of America’s version of the Great Awakening, influenced the second who argued that one needed a definite personal conversion to a faith experience followed up by an “assurance of salvation” which was necessary to claim one’s Christianity. 

Through Tennent’s efforts, one finds the ideas of the Great Awakening making their way to the New Jersey/New York area[5] and one cannot deny how this would affect political ideals of Americans in general.  The next posting will continue in this vein.  To this point, though, one can but identify that these developments had no to little effect on how Americans felt about their federated values – if anything, they were strengthened but in a parochial way.

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[1] Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People – 2^nd ed. (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 1972).

[2] Alan Taylor, American Colonies:  The Settling of North America (New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 2001).

[3] Howard John Smith, The First Great Awakening:  Redefining Religion in British America, 1725-1775 (Madison, NJ:  Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015).

[4] Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening:  The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2007), xiv.

[5] Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People.

A GOOD PLACE FOR A BELL

To continue from the last posting, this entry looks at the development of Pennsylvania in mostly the 1700s.  But before the turn into the eighteenth century an event in the seventeenth century is going to have a good deal of an effect on the new one.  And that would be the conversion of William Penn to Quakerism.  That happened in 1663.  The effect would be that Penn used his land grant to establish Pennsylvania so as to, in part, provide refuge for his fellow Quakers.  And that would initiate the initial migration to this granted area in North America.

          But Quakers would soon be joined by emigrating Germans and Scot Irish people.  Despite that, Quaker beliefs had profound influence on Penn and his original ideas of governance.  First, Quakers were considered radical Puritans, but unlike other radicals, they, in their beliefs, democratized the dispensing of God’s grace.  They believed that each person shared in God’s grace in some varied way so that each person has a special or unique value or worth. 

Therefore, according to this resulting aura in each person, each is unique with the potential to make his/her own contribution.  The belief further sees each person as equal, and it projects a responsibility for each to look after all others.  This includes for one to do what is necessary, and within one’s power and ability, to protect others from harm.  In addition, Quakers emphasize that people rely on their inner conscious experiences – one’s conscience serves as a basis for a moral life.[1]  One can observe the effects of such a belief system on the actions of Penn and of his cohorts.

One aspect of this bias can be detected, and mentioned in the previous posting, about how Penn interacted with indigenous people.  Despite his land grant, he initiated and completed a series of agreements with the local tribe leaders to attain tracts of land.  Some of the details of these additions are involved, but one can judge Penn’s actions as above board in every case.

Another aspect of this bias was how it attracted its early “fellow travelers” – they have been described as the dredges of society.  It was from those ranks that the first immigrants were recruited.  And it is those who, once on this side of the Atlantic, started what was to become a very industrious and successful colony.  To be measured, though, Quakers never accounted for more than ten percent of the immigrants that would populate this land mass.  Eventually, the immigrant population became anglicized (including Penn’s son).[2]

          One uncommon result of the Quaker influence, uncommon as compared to Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia, was that religion’s anti formal education bias.  Unlike the other colonies, Pennsylvania delayed any establishment of an academy or higher educational facility.  To recall, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia each had one – Harvard, Yale, and William and Mary. 

In 1740, the Academy of Philadelphia was started, and that institution became first the College of Philadelphia and then the University of Pennsylvania.  Despite, or because of its later start, the institution took on an Enlightenment prone curriculum almost from its beginning.  Some of the famous names of Enlightened thinkers one can associate with the University of Pennsylvania include William and John Alison, John Ewing, Benjamin Rush, and, of course, Benjamin Franklin.[3]

And this short overview of the Pennsylvania colony should share some information as to the beginnings of Philadelphia and, by doing so, more information can be added as to Penn’s efforts in this settlement.  And one question the reader might ask, why did Charles II grant the initial lands that were to become Pennsylvania and Delaware to a Quaker.  Well, the grant was to satisfy a loan the king had with Penn’s father, Admiral Penn, mentioned earlier in this blog.  And part of the story includes a conflict with Maryland since the Penn grant overlaid with territory issued to Lord Baltimore and a resulting armed conflict, Cresap’s War, settled the dispute.

Shortly after that conflict, Penn organized a colonizing expedition.  Penn himself led this effort and upon landing (in New Castle, Delaware) set out to establish a peaceful change of government from Baltimore’s claims in which its people pledged allegiance to the new proprietor, Penn.  This led to the first structured government, previously described. 

Moving up the Delaware River, Penn, along with a group of fellow Quakers, then founded Philadelphia in order to secure religious freedom of the group.  Without going into the details, these developments had as a backdrop a complicated set of antagonism with local tribes.  These pitted settlers in Maryland against Susquehannocks and the settlement of nearby areas by other European immigrants, e.g., Dutch, Swedish, and English in what would become Delaware and New Jersey.

As for the general areas of what became Philadelphia, they drew the interest of European explorers all the way back to 1609 when Henry Hudson was actively seeking a Northwest Passage to the Far East.  Some years later the New Sweden Company engaged in fur trade activities.  This included the building of a fort.  A series of claims and establishment of business enterprises followed – including the establishment of New Sweden – but it had difficulties remaining viable.  But as far as establishing a permanent settlement, it was the Penn group that did so.

He, upon arriving at that area, found about fifty people – mostly subsistence farmers – making their livings there.  From the start, he foresaw a city as a safe zone for people of all faiths.  They would be able to practice their religions in freedom and be able to live peacefully together.  Penn personally appreciated this vision because he had experienced discrimination due to his Quakerism. 

He also was an early visionary who saw the Enlightened urban plan of a grid outlay that would mimic English rural towns rather than its crowded cities.  He also advocated spacious house plots which could have gardens and even orchards.  The first purchasers would be allotted plots along the river.  He planned for a commercial center, a state house, and some other key buildings.[4]

In this Philadelphia story, one does not see any diminution of federated values.  If anything, Penn encouraged those foundational elements that would enhance the institutional qualities that not only allowed it to influence how the various polities got started but encouraged people to think in terms of adopting federal values in how they saw governance should occur.  This included high degrees of tolerance for believers of other faiths and even accommodation of indigenous people. 

In short, the combination of Puritanical thinking and Enlightenment ideas and ideals, while contrary on many levels, did not contradict each other in this area of concern at least under the leadership of Penn.  Here is how the History Channel describes Pennsylvania’s origins:

 

Philadelphia, a city in Pennsylvania whose name means City of Brotherly Love, was originally settled by Native American tribes, particularly the Lenape hunter gathers, around 8000 B.C.

By the early 1600s, Dutch, English and Swedish merchants had established trading posts in the Delaware Valley area, and in 1681, Charles II of England granted a charter to William Penn for what would become the Pennsylvania colony.

Penn arrived in the new city of Philadelphia in 1682. A Quaker pacifist, Penn signed a peace treaty with Lenape chief Tamanend, establishing a tradition of tolerance and human rights.

But in 1684, the ship Isabella landed in Philadelphia carrying hundreds of enslaved Africans. Tensions over slavery, especially among local Quakers, resulted in the 1688 Germantown Petition Against Slavery, the first organized protest against slavery in the New World.

Penn’s colony thrived, and soon Philadelphia was the biggest shipbuilding center in the colonies. Among those attracted to the city was Benjamin Franklin, who in 1729, became the publisher of The Pennsylvania Gazette.

The Pennsylvania State House—later known as Independence Hall—held its first Assembly meeting there in 1735. State representatives ordered a large bell for the building in 1751 with a Biblical inscription: “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”[5]

 

Of course, Philadelphia would play a central role in the events leading up to the Revolution.

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[1] See “Quakers,” BBC (July 3, 2009), accessed May 12, 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/subdivisions/quakers_1.shtml#:~:text=of%20the%20Quakers-,Quakers%20believe%20that%20there%20is%20something%20of%20God%20in%20everybody,as%20the%20basis%20of%20morality.

[2] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part I – a transcript book – (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005). 

[3] Ibid.

[4] “History of Philadelphia,” Wikipedia (n.d.), accessed May 12, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Philadelphia#:~:text=The%20written%20history%20of%20Philadelphia,inhabited%20by%20the%20Lenape%20people.

[5] History.com Editors, “Philadelphia,” History Channel (March 8, 2019), accessed May 13, 2021, https://www.history.com/topics/us-states/philadelphia-pennsylvania .  

PENN PENS-IN INCLUSION

 

The next colonial tale this blog wishes to review is that of Pennsylvania, but as promised in the last posting, a short overview is helpful.  That would be a comparison between initial natural rights view and a federal view.  The reason for this insertion at this time is that the development of Pennsylvania took place mostly during the 1700s – it started its existence as a colony in 1681 when William Penn was issued the land grant by King Charles II.  And, the ensuing years, as this blog has already described, saw an increased influence of Enlightenment ideas.

          Along with those ideas, John Locke’s arguments were being considered by the American educated class.  Locke would pose serious questioning of prevailing either feudalistic notions, to the extent they existed in America, but also Puritanical rationales that promoted a more equitable social arrangement – as opposed to an Anglican/Roman vertical view that supports hierarchical church structures and power distributions.  Locke’s ideas, as he initially proposed them, promoted what would he called a “social contract” approach to the founding and development of polities.

          In formulative language, he described polities being initially created by free-standing individuals.  With complete freedom to act as each person wished, to formulate an authoritative entity for mutual benefits, each would surrender those rights – and only those rights – that allow for such an arrangement and retain all other rights.  This is a social contract.  And given the retention of each person’s bulk of rights – naturally endowed – this approach to government and politics can be called the natural rights approach or view.  These ideas were part of the array of Enlightenment ideas which also supported non-Lockean arguments.

Here is how Stanford Encyclopedia describes Lock’s contribution:

 

In the Two Treatises of Government, [Locke] defended the claim that men are by nature free and equal against claims that God had made all people naturally subject to a monarch. He argued that people have rights, such as the right to life, liberty, and property, that have a foundation independent of the laws of any particular society.  Locke used the claim that men are naturally free and equal as part of the justification for understanding legitimate political government as the result of a social contract where people in the state of nature conditionally transfer some of their rights to the government in order to better ensure the stable, comfortable enjoyment of their lives, liberty, and property.  Since governments exist by the consent of the people in order to protect the rights of the people and promote the public good, governments that fail to do so can be resisted and replaced with new governments.  Locke is thus also important for his defense of the right of revolution.  Locke also defends the principle of majority rule and the separation of legislative and executive powers. In the Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke denied that coercion should be used to bring people to (what the ruler believes is) the true religion and also denied that churches should have any coercive power over their members.  Locke elaborated on these themes in his later political writings, such as the Second Letter on Toleration and Third Letter on Toleration.[1]

 

What this blog has shared is that the ideas of Locke have been misinterpreted today – a philosophic point of contention – and have, therefore, helped lead the nation to the current polarized political landscape.  So, to help understand Pennsylvanian history and to help understand the current political debate, it is useful to review a set of distinctions between natural rights view and federal view.

          This review is organized by comparing the positions of these views in relation to a list of issues.  The issues are general conception amongst people, moral role of government, era of dominance in American history, and expectations of individuals.

 

·       General conception amongst people:  natural rights view sees that political order is equal to marketplace relationships (competing interests); federal view sees that political order is equal to a commonweal (undivided interests)

·       Moral role of government:  natural rights view is neutral to this issue, it provides protection for individual moral positions and its emphasis is on governmental procedures (e.g., due process rights); federal view provides structural prerequisites for self-rule by which local/communal moral positions vie in the consideration of proposed policy

·       Era of dominance:  natural rights view has been dominant in the last 70 plus years; federal view was dominant from the beginning of colonial existence to the late 19^th century with strong influence, if not dominance, through the New Deal and World War II period

·       Expectation of individual:  natural rights view expects people to be respectful of others’ rights and behavior from a self-interest point of view; federal view expects active participation in creating a common environment and caring attitudes of fellow citizens and for the whole community.

 

So, with these general distinctions, one can better understand Pennsylvania evolvement.

          Pennsylvania (or Penn’s Woods) was granted to Penn late in the 1600s.  Actually, the territory is named for Penn’s father, Admiral Sir William Penn.  The family retained ownership of the grant until the American Revolution at which time the family was expelled.  The grant would eventually lead to two colonies, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

          Original settlers were mostly Penn’s fellow Quakers.  That religion was originally a radical form of Puritanism.  In addition to British Quakers, the area attracted large numbers of Germans and Scot Irish people.  One can detect that German influence by the number of towns or areas in Pennsylvania holding German or German derived names.  Roughly 30 percent of current Pennsylvanians claim German ancestry.[2]  And while initial relations with indigenous people, the Lenape, were cordial, eventual war broke out between settlers and local tribes (especially as extensions of the French and Indian War hostilities).

          The first efforts to establish a government was an extension of the land grant.  William Penn was the appointed governor, although he did not live there, and a 72-member council and larger general assembly constituted the colonies governance.  This did not work, and subsequent “frames of government” were written and put into effect in 1683, 1696, and 1701.  The last instrument was known as the Charter of Privileges and served as an organizing document until the American Revolution.  The next frame was to be a constitution, i.e., a compact-al instrument.

          Admittedly, Penn’s initial and subsequent “constitutions” were not occurrences in which a people gathered to hammer out an organizing document to arrange for a structure of governance and spelling out the other functions of government.  But Penn can be judged as being highly influenced by federal principles.  Here is a short overview of his handiwork:

 

[Upon visiting America in 1699], he put forward a plan to make a federation of all English colonies in America.  There have been claims that he also fought slavery, but that seems unlikely, as he owned and even traded slaves himself.  However, he did promote good treatment for slaves, and other Pennsylvania Quakers were among the earliest fighters against slavery.[3]

 

One can readily read that he was biased toward inclusion and, given his Puritanical view, was biased against hierarchical structures.       

          But in all of this, one should not lose sight that Pennsylvania was a business arrangement and, unfortunately, Penn was not above racists attitudes prevalent during his time (and one can argue, still exist today).  But he had a demonstrable federal bent.  He attempted inclusive policies and even sided at times against his commercial interests.  And to put a finer point on this portrayal, this blog has clearly indicated that the federal views that existed at the time limited their inclusiveness to white, European peoples and has given that version of federalism the name parochial/traditional federalism.

          This blog will at this point stop this story and pick it up in the next posting with the political developments that characterize that colony’s experience in the years leading up to the Revolution and independence.  What one generally sees in that history is the story of an industrious people and the development of the colonies’ first prominent urban center, Philadelphia.

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[1] “Locke’s Political Philosophy,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2005/2020), accessed May 10, 2021, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/#:~:text=Locke%20used%20the%20claim%20that,better%20ensure%20the%20stable%2C%20comfortable .  What exactly Locke’s views mean is of great philosophic debate.  This blog, from time to time, has alluded to the fact that even Locke did not believe what has come to be seen his ideas to mean today.  This citation goes on to describe this point.  There are those who emphasize, even to the exclusion of other concerns, that Locke posed a position of natural rights.  This position argues everyone can do what he/she wishes as long as he/she does not interfere with the rights of others.  But there is another interpretation:  that is, once formulated under governance, individuals have certain duties and obligations under a principle of natural law.  Here, the door is opened to consider religious notions of what makes up natural law.  Be that as it may, the point is that a purely hedonistic view of rights would be averted if this latter view was adopted.

[2] See “Pennsylvania German Language,” Wikipedia (n.d.), accessed May 10, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_German_language .  Of note also has been the immigration of a good number of Dutch people.

[3] “Brief History of William Penn.” William Penn (n.d.), accessed June 8, 2020, https://www.ushistory.org/penn/bio.htm . 

VIRGINIA: A DIFFERENT BASIS, ONE SIMILAR RESULT

As one leaves the New England colonies, where the Puritan influence was so strong, and looks at the other colonies, say Virginia and Pennsylvania, one encounters some highly distinguishing social elements and some common ones as well.  What seems to prevail in all the colonies is a foundational understanding of governance and politics. 

That leads to a set the basic assumptions of how government should be set up and, therefore, reflects agreement about basic related values.  In addition, that similarity led to agreements about what government is and how it should function.  Generally, an overall description of this similarity can be characterized as federal thinking.

          A colony that predated settlement in New England is Virginia.  Thirteen years before the first settlement in Massachusetts was established in 1620, the Jamestown settlement of Virginia was established in 1607.  While there were three types of colonial arrangements – property colonies, charter colonies, royal colonies – given the inability to garner immediate profits, and in terms of the Crown, indifference, all the colonies devolved into being free standing entities establishing local governance.

          The initial businesses that set up the colonies, for the most part, were unsuccessful (the Virginia Company went bankrupt in 1622), but the role the colonies were to play in the prevailing mercantilist system was to provide natural resources to the mother country, England.  Given this overall aim, a lot of policy was accepted that might have been at least questioned otherwise.  That would include the introduction and furtherance of slavery.

          The first slaves were introduced in 1619 as they were brought to Jamestown.[1]  These unfortunates were to work on certain agricultural products – rice, sugar, tobacco, and eventually cotton.  These crops lend themselves to large land allotments and, given the geography of the area, the development of the plantation economy quickly came to be.

          Another difference between Virginia and New England was that Virginia was not settled by Puritans.  In that more southern area, Anglicans initially populated that colony.  This was offset a bit with a level of popularity for Puritanism among the first natural born generation of Virginians. 

Despite this variance, almost from the beginning, there was a similarity between the constituting documents written and enacted in New England and those that will guide the way in Virginia.  Donald Lutz reports on an initial Virginia document:

 

Under its initial charter, Virginia was run by a cumbersome double council.  A thirteen-member council in Virginia to carry out its will.  The system did not work, and the Virginia governor had to become a virtual dictator to maintain order.  The [Articles, Laws, and Orders, Divine, Politic, and Martial for the Colony of Virginia, 1610] was issued under martial law but still reflects the values that were generally accepted by the colonists.  It is equivalent to a code of law and may be fruitfully compared with the other codes of law [found among the colonies].  Religion plays an important role in this Virginia document, as it did in codes elsewhere, and the moral content looks similar to that of New England codes.  … The similarities with the Puritans may have been due to the predominance of “low church” members, who while remaining securely in the fold, shared many of the Puritan inclinations against pomp, status, and other vestiges of what was termed covert popery.[2]

 

This gave way to representative governance, defined by compact, shortly afterward.

          The general attitude of the English Crown to the developments in Virginia was to mostly ignore any problems.  This led to the company’s employees to organize themselves that led naturally to a federating model.  Naturally, one can attribute their already existing biases for representative governance due to England’s parliamentary tradition, but with the Crown being so far off and mostly indifferent, one can see federated bonding as a normal mode of advancing a structured polity.

          And this indifference would last for the greater part of the 1600s.  That is not to say certain actions by the Crown would have inconsequential effects.  It, for example, issued highly generous grants to its favored parties such as when it granted William Penn Pennsylvania in 1682, the Carolinas to the Carolina Properties in 1632, New York to the Duke of York in 1666, and so on.[3]  But as the colonies became viable and then lucrative – along with some uppity biases – the interest among British policy makers would change.

          And then there is the effect that growing Enlightened attitudes would have.  Here, there is a mixed bag.  On the one hand, the Enlightenment will undercut the authority of religious thinking (as previously explained in this blog), but on the other, it would also undermine aristocratic assumptions about people.  The whole notion that well off people are so advantaged due to some godly plan was seriously questioned. 

This led to republican leanings among Enlightened thinkers – among them one finds the “social contract” theorists.  It was a historical shift toward equality.  One imported set of ideas was those of John Locke.  While subsequent writers have attributed too much influence on this philosopher,[4] his promotion of a natural rights view and its introduction to America should be noted. 

To the extent that natural rights was considered and adopted, it presented a competing sense of what it meant to govern and engage in politics.  So, during the 1600s, Virginia was allowed to organize itself, initiate its basic economic arrangements, and proceed to establish a viable position within the mercantilist system that was one, global, and two, highly entrenched.  But before moving on to examine Pennsylvania’s development more closely, the next posting will give an overall comparison between the natural rights view and federal theory.

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[1] Slavery had already been present in America; the first slaves were probably introduced on this side of the Atlantic as far back as the early 1500s with Christopher Columbus transporting them to Hispaniola.  See “America’s History of Slavery Long before Jamestown,” The History Channel (n.d.), accessed May 6, 2021, https://www.history.com/news/american-slavery-before-jamestown-1619#:~:text=The%20arrival%20of%20the%20first,as%20early%20as%20the%201500s.

[2] Donald S. Lutz (ed.), Colonial Origins of the American Constitution:  A Documentary History (Indianapolis, IN:  Liberty Fund,1998), 314.

[3] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part I – a transcript book – (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005).

[4] See, for example, Garry Wills, Inventing America:  Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York, NY:  Vintage Books, 1978/2018).  

FROM CAMBRIDGE TO NEW HAVEN

 

Whereas this blog took a turn toward Yale College two posting ago, it left the reader with little information as to the developments at Harvard during the 1600s.  This posting hopefully will modestly fill in the gaps in that story.  The main reason for looking elsewhere relates to the quality of leadership experienced on the Cambridge campus.

          This period saw subpar administrations beginning with Harvard’s first president, Henry Dunstar, who became embroiled in the religious turmoil between the scholastics and the Separatists – the strong Puritanical believers who took on the moniker, Baptists.  He was eventually forced to resign and was followed by a succession of men that were not able to bring under control the rowdy student body.  They were Charles Chauncey, Leonard Hoar, Urian Oakes, and John Rogers – these men were either physicians or clergymen.

          Finally, in 1684, almost fifty years after its founding, Harvard hired its first effective president with the curious name, Increase Mather.[1]  At the time of his acceptance of the position he was already well known as the pastor of the Old North Church of Boston where he secured the highest reputation among the second-generation New Englanders.  From the get-go, Mather’s appointment had some political intrigue since his ascendency staved off direct control of the college by the English government.

          One thing Mather accomplished was to upgrade the faculty.  Two additions to that group would prove of particular consequence; that would be the hires of William Brattle and John Leverett.  Brattle strongly insisted on Cartesian logic to attack skepticism – the belief that nothing is knowable.  Leverett proved to be more independent of religious ideas and ideals and eventually assumed the presidency of Harvard in 1707.  His more distinguishing posture led to his support of a new church.

          As Allen Guelzo describes it,

 

Leverett would … talk more about virtue than about redemption, more about reasonableness rather than mystery, and he put his entire support behind the organization of a new church in Boston, the Brattle Street Church, whose Manifesto of 1699 proclaimed the church Congregational, not by reason of Scripture, but by the Light of Nature.[2]

 

Eventually, a rift developed between Increase Mather and Leverett, as Mather attempted to block the ascendancy of Leverett to the presidency, but it proved too late.  This antagonism stemmed from the belief Leverett was drifting too far away from Calvinistic beliefs.  And this discordance would be picked up by Mather’s son, Cotton Mather. 

This drift, ironically, led like-minded advocates, headed by Cotton, to look to Connecticut to start a new college.  That would be New Haven, and this younger Mather convinced Elihu Yale to provide the bulk of the funds.  The irony continues, since it would be Yale College, through the work of its post-graduate tutor, Samuel Johnson, that would in time take the lead in promoting Enlightenment ideals and furthering the use of reason and the objectification of study that would lead the scholarship of that day.[3]

While surely other writers have commented on this next concern, what follows are the ideas of this blogger.  And that has to do with a source of contention between Enlightenment thinking and Puritanism.  Earlier, this blog introduced the acronym, TULIP.  The letters stand for the various beliefs Puritans claim.   The “U” stands for unconditional election which means one does not get to heaven through good works, but through being selected by God to be so rewarded.  This smacked as antithetical to Enlightenment ideas.

The Enlightenment not only rejected the notion that a person knows such a thing, but that belief undermined human capacities to reason.  Why a person is “saved” or not, must depend on more than the whimsical biases of some almighty power.  If that contention were true, it would need to be discovered as a tangible reality to be believed and since such a belief can have such far-reaching effects, it is of no small matter.  This writer believes that such disconnect underscored the ongoing discord between Enlightenment thinkers and the Puritans.

And another point, this writer wishes to highlight, that with objectified thinking having a Cartesian starting point of total ignorance, epistemological thinkers, since the days of the 1700s, have delved into what are the implications of Enlightenment thinking.  One such scholar was Eugene Meehan in the mid-twentieth century.  He provides the following list of criteria by which one can evaluate or ask questions of any theory, but given its thrust, they seem most applicable to scientifically derived theories. The list is:

 

•      Comprehension: Does a construct explain as many phenomena related to the area of concern as possible?

•      Power: Does a construct control the explanatory effort by being valid and complete in its component parts and in the relationships among those parts?

•      Precision: Does a construct specifically and precisely treat its concepts, making them clear in their use?

•      Consistency or Reliability: Does a construct explain its components and their relationships the same way time after time?

•      Isomorphism: Does a construct contain a one-to-one correspondence with that portion of reality it is trying to explain?

•      Compatibility: Does a construct align with other responsible explanations of the same phenomena?

•      Predictability: Does a construct predict conditions associated with the phenomena in question?

•      Control: Does a construct imply ways to control the phenomena in question?[4]

 

This is offered so that the reader can get a sense of what Enlightenment thinking has led to. 

 That is a highly disciplined way to look at, to measure, and to model what some aspect of reality is.  Of course, such knowledge, as it is accumulated, leads to application of it and the advent of engineering.  But a question to ask in terms of this blog’s story:  was this influence limited to the New England colonies?  The next posting will look at Virginia and Pennsylvania.

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[1] Apparently, the name Increase was popular among Puritans during the time in question.

[2] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part I – a transcript book – (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005), 40.

[3] See posting, “A Yale Turn,” of this blog.  It was published April 27, 2021.

[4] While this blogger cannot find from which of Meehan’s works this originates, the reader is directed to work of this now deceased academic.  That is Eugene J. Meehan, Contemporary Political Thought:  A Critical Study (Homewood, IL:  Dorsey Press, 1967).