Emerson: we will speak our own minds

Delivered as an oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College on August 31, 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson's speech "The American Scholar" was hailed almost immediately as a turning point in American cultural history. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who witnessed Emerson's speech that day, called it the "intellectual" Declaration of Independence (others, incidentally, were not as impressed right away).

Emerson begins by noting the group is made of lovers of letters, who seldom have time to write. The "sluggard intellect" of the continent has been hampered, but he foresees that poetry and other intellectual pursuits will be revived and lead the country into a new age. Put into categories like "farmer," men lose the sense that they are men. In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. But, he says, "In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking."

The speech details the education of the scholar as in three parts: nature, books, and action. He also breaks down the duties he expects of the American scholar. Even if he is shunned from society and becomes stricken with poverty and solitude, Emerson insists his role is too important:

He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. He is one, who raises himself from private considerations, and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world's eye. He is the world's heart. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and the conclusions of history. Whatsoever oracles the human heart, in all emergencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered as its commentary on the world of actions, — these he shall receive and impart. And whatsoever new verdict Reason from her inviolable seat pronounces on the passing men and events of to-day, — this he shall hear and promulgate.

To be imaginative is a part of being intellectual, Emerson says, and he demands a new importance be granted to individuals as part of the larger whole. Further, he says that intellectualism in this country must stay true to America: "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe." The assumption is that the American mind is too tame, timid, or imitative. With the next generation of intellectuals before him, Emerson predicts, "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds."

Irving: useless and superficial

Upon hearing that his nephew Pierre Irving was about to visit Europe, Washington Irving wrote a letter urging him against the idea. Dated August 29, 1825, the elder Irving warned his nephew that "The knowledge to be gained by a mere ramble through Europe is of all things the most useless and superficial." Even if he anticipated it would polish his gentlemanly character, it still would be of no use to an American, who still "has to earn his mere bread by his talents and his industry."

Seeing this intention of traveling as mere idleness, Irving only offered this advice because, he wrote, of his high opinion of his nephew and his hope that the young man would set himself on something useful which might "strengthen his mind." By the time the letter reached New York, however, Pierre had already set sail for Europe.

Even if it had reached him, Pierre certainly would have considered his uncle a bit hypocritical. The letter was written from Paris, after all, and Washington Irving's own idleness and inability to "earn his mere bread by his talents and his industry" was infamous. By 1825, he had already given up on becoming a lawyer, and often relied on his brothers for financial bailouts (despite making some good business deals on his published works). He had been in Europe for ten continuous years already; it would be another seven before he returned to the United States.

Perhaps Irving saw more of himself in his nephew Pierre, and wanted to discourage him from a similar life of idleness, more focused on social advancements rather than intellectual ones. Eventually, Irving helped Pierre find steady work. After the elder Irving's death, Pierre became his first official biographer.

Ramifications, interlacements, entanglements

Henry Cuyler Bunner was involved with the editorship of the humor magazine Puck for parts of three decades. Among the many works he published in its pages was "The Two Churches of 'Quawket," released in the August 27, 1890 issue.

The story is set in a fictional New England town where the greatest public concern is the competing Congregational churches which "lived together in a spirit of perfect Christian unity, on Capulet and Montague terms." When the congregation grew too large for their original building, a new church was built on Main Street. Midway through construction, however, the congregants disagreed about the pipe organ. "It is quite unnecessary to detail how this quarrel over a handful of peas grew into a church war," Bunner wrote, "with ramifications and interlacements and entanglements and side-issues and under-currents and embroilments of all sorts and conditions." But, ultimately, the congregation split in two, leaving both churches but half full and struggling in debt.

Reverent Colton M. Pursly, however, plans to bring the churches back together with the building of a new parish house. He thinks to call for a sizable donation from the wealthy Joash Hitt, the oldest of the town's inhabitants. Hitt, however, asks the unusual favor that Rev. Pursly write and present his funeral oration while he is still alive to hear it. Pursly nervously agrees, hoping for the donation that would save the two churches. As Hitt listens to the oration, he gives an odd chuckle — "clk!" — which sounds a bit too much like a pistol. Pleased, Hitt implies that he will leave his fortune for the building of a parish house.

When Hitt dies shortly after (a strange smile spread across his face for eternity), Pursly presents the pre-approved sermon at his funeral:

Mr. Pursly read with his face immovably set on the line of the clock in the middle of the choir-gallery railing. He did not dare to look down at the sardonic smile in the coffin below him... And as he repeated each complimentary, obsequious, flattering platitude, a hideous, hysterical fear grew stronger and stronger within him that suddenly he would be struck dumb by the "clk!" of that mirthless chuckle that had sounded so much like a pistol-shot. His voice was hardly audible in the benediction.

Shortly after, Purlsy is surprised to learn that the competing church has, in fact, inherited Hitt's wealth specifically to build a parish house.

Nye: where I first met my parents

Edgar Wilson Nye was born in Shirley, Maine on August 25, 1850, though he soon moved with his family to Wisconsin. His career began in the Wyoming territory (before it became a state), where he worked as a lawyer, postman, justice of the peace, and editor of his own local newspaper. Eventually, his journalism took on the air of humor writing under the pseudonym "Bill Nye" (a name he stole from a poem by Bret Harte, who shares his birth date). Nye's success drew him to New York. There, he published humor works like Baled Hay: A Drier Book Than Walt Whitman's 'Leaves o' Grass'. He also collaborated with James Whitcomb Riley on two books.

As an adult, he revisited his home town of Shirley, Maine, where he had lived for less than three years. In his typical humorous fashion, he wrote about visiting the home where he was born:

A man ought not to criticise his birthplace, I presume, and yet, if I were to do it all over again, I do not know whether I would select that particular spot or not. Sometimes I think I would not. And yet, what memories cluster about that old house! There was the place where I first met my parents. It was at that time that an acquaintance sprang up which has ripened in later years into mutual respect and esteem.

Nye describes observing the "bric-a-brac" in the yard of that home and helps himself to a small stone as a memento. He hopes his theft goes unnoticed: "There was another stone in the yard, so it may be weeks before any one finds out that I took one of them."

He notes that here, "amid the barren and inhospitable waste of rocks and cold," is a place a "great man" would never select to be born. He proudly notes that he has by his own efforts risen from such humble beginnings to a lofty rank as a great man (tongue in cheek, of course).

Still, my birthplace is all right as a birthplace. It was a good quiet place in which to be born. All the old neighbors said that Shirley was a very quiet place up to the time I was born there, and when I took my parents by the hand and gently led them away in the spring of '53, saying, 'Parents, this is no place for us,' it again became quiet.

It is the only birthplace that I have, however, and I hope that all the readers of this sketch will feel perfectly free to go there any time and visit it and carry their dinner as I did. Extravagant cordiality and overflowing hospitality have always kept my birthplace back.

Birth of Masters: reap life's jest

Though he later claimed it was 1869, Edgar Lee Masters was, in fact, born on August 23, 1868 in Garnett, Kansas. The majority of his childhood, however, was spent in Illinois, among scenes which would inspire his greatest success, Spoon River Anthology (1915). The book collected several poems about ghosts talking in a midwestern cemetery, originally published in a St. Louis magazine beginning in May 1914. It was rumored that the book sold over 80,000 copies in its first year alone. It was Masters's only success, however.

Masters had published several other books — both before and after Spoon River Anthology, some under the pseudonym Webster Ford or Dexter Wallace — but none were critically or commercially significant. His first book, A Book of Verses (1898), was published in Chicago compiled works mostly written while Masters was a college student. In fact, the author noted, the manuscript was completed by 1892, and it took years to get it published. The day the book was released, the publisher, Way and Williams, declared bankruptcy. This inaugural collection ended with "Farewell Muses":

HO! Muses nine,
If one be mine,
Should I then pine
      For all the rest?
Nay, under my vine,
I'll sip my wine,
And herd the swine—
      And forsake the quest.

For each man's breast
Hath a bard for guest
And ah! 'tis best
      The bard should die.
Who heeds his behest
Will reap life's jest,
And the thorn hath pressed,
      Where his heart would lie.

And ye who buy
Men's souls with a cry
To fame while ye fly
      The clasp they need;
It is vain to vie
With gods who deny,
And over you high
      The gods have heed.

They have decreed
Each word and deed—
You shall but feed
      The sacred flame,
And those you lead
With a syren reed
Will wish them freed
      From your evil claim.

No win a name
Is a worthy aim;
And how free from blame
      Are the laurel leaves.
But 'tis a game
Where the swift get fame
And the slow have shame
      And the weak heart grieves.

But all spent sheaves,
My Muse retrieves,
She fashions and weaves
      With wheatless straw.
Whilst ye were thieves
Of my days and eves—
So my bosom heaves
      For Themis—the law!

Miller: the whole desolate twelve days

He paid $65 for his second-class cabin on board the steamer Europa, which set out from New York towards Europe on August 21, 1870. It was well worth the money: during this trip Cincinnatus Hiner Miller solidified his image as the poet Joaquin Miller, the self-styled Western American that captivated British intellectuals like the Rossetti brothers.

He was armed not only with a pseudonym, but an entirely new persona (encouraged in part by San Francisco writer Ina Coolbrith, who equally re-branded herself). Dressing the part of a rough cowboy, both in manner and speech, Miller had also printed up a few business cards with his self-appointed nickname, "Joaquin Miller: Byron of the Rockies." In California, he had been a charming novelty, increasing his already ballooning self-esteem. His trip to New York, however, burst his bubble a bit: an attempt to use his European trip for financial gain as an overseas correspondent for the New York Tribune was a failure, as editor Horace Greeley had never heard of him and refused to see him.

Instead, Miller started his voyage in sadness. "I don't think I spoke a dozen words in the whole desolate twelve days," he admitted. Later, he would earn a reputation as an avid chatterbox and storyteller. Still, he intended to get himself noticed in England. Stopping at the grave of Lord Byron, his self-styled hero, he began loudly reciting an ode to the poet, attracting a crowd:

O master, here I bow before a shrine;
              Before the lordliest dust that every yet
Moved animate in human form divine.
              Lo! dust indeed to dust. The mould is set
              Above thee, and the ancient walls are wet,
And drip all day in dark and silent gloom;
              As if the cold gray stones could not forget
They great estate shrunk to this sombre room,
But learn to weep perpetual tears above thy tomb.

Sure enough, the American wearing cowboy boots (complete with spurs), often wielding a riding crop or a whip, with a massive cowboy hat atop his long unkempt locks of hair, received ample attention in England, fitting a certain expectation (or stereotype) among British fans.

*For much of this information, I am indebted to the cheeky biography Splendid Poseur: Joaquin Miller - American Poet (1953) by M. Marion Marberry.

Morris: Can I now forget her?

George Pope Morris had a long career as an editor, publisher, and poet/songwriter. His most famous was, without a doubt, "Woodman, Spare That Tree!" A sort of one-hit wonder, the song is still familiar in modern times as a plea for environmental preservation. Only slightly less well known in his day was another song, "Near the Lake." It was originally published as a four-stanza poem "Long Time Ago" in the New-York Mirror for August 19, 1837, before being edited to three stanzas:

Near the lake where droop'd the willow,
        Long time ago!
Where the rock threw back the billow,
        Brighter than snow;
Dwelt a maid, beloved and cherish'd,
        By high and low;
But with autumn's leaf she perished,
        Long time ago!

Rock and tree and flowing water,
        Long time ago!
Bee and bird and blossom taught her
        Love's spell to know!
While to my fond words she listened,
        Murmuring low,
Tenderly her dove-eyes glistened
        Long time ago!

Mingled were our hearts for ever!
        Long time ago!
Can I now forget her?—Never!
        No, lost one, no!
To her grave these tears are given,
        Ever to flow;
She's the star I miss'd from heaven,
        Long time ago!

*Further reading: Minor Knickerbockers: Representative Selections (1947), by Kendall B. Taft, which provided the confirmation of the date for this post.

In glided a little plain woman

"This is a lovely place," wrote Thomas Wentworth Higginson to his wife on August 17, 1870 from Amherst, Massachusetts. Earlier that day, he had met his "hitherto unseen correspondent," a somewhat reclusive woman named Emily Dickinson, who had invited him to her family's home.

 Eight years earlier, Higginson had written an article which encouraged new writers. Dickinson was inspired to contact him, including a few of her poems, and ask for his advice. "Mr Higginson," she wrote, "Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?" Higginson and Dickinson (who had already published some of her poems) became friends by correspondence for the next few years. It was not until that August day in 1870 that they met face to face; Higginson recorded that moment in his letter:

A step like a pattering child's in entry & in glided a little plain woman with two smooth bands of reddish hair & a face... with no good feature — in a very plain & exquisitely clean white pique & a blue worsted shawl. She came to me with two day lilies which she put in a sort of childlike way into my hand & said "These are my introduction" in a soft frightened breathless childlike voice — & added under her breath Forgive me if I am frightened; I never see strangers & hardly know what I say — but she talked soon & thenceforward continuously... sometimes stopping to ask me to talk instead of her — but readily recommencing.

Though he noted "I never was with anyone who drained my nerve power so much," Higginson noted he was glad he did not live near her. His wife joked, "Oh why do the insane cling to you?" Nevertheless, Higginson maintained his correspondence and even spoke at Dickinson's funeral years later. It was after her death that the controversy started. This short poem was dated to 1870, the year the two met:

Some Days retired from the rest
In soft distinction lie
The Day that a Companion came
Or was obliged to die

*Information from this post can be found in The Gardens of Emily Dickinson (2005) by Judith Farr and A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade (2009) by Christopher Benfey.

Field: sing Nature's song, untouched of art

Eugene Field had a fairly eclectic career as a poet, composing many humorous works as well as more serious verses. He worried, however, how poetry was bundled, packaged, and sold for mass consumption. His poem "In Praise of Truth and Simplicity in Song" is dated August 16, 1886 and specifically fears the natural calling for the poet will be superseded by the overwrought:

Oh, for the honest, blithesome times
    Of bosky Sherwood long ago,
When Allen trolled his amorous rhymes
    And Robin twanged his crafty bow;
When Little John and Friar Tuck
    Traversed the greenwood far and near,
Feasting on many a royal buck
    Washed down with brown October beer!

Beside their purling sylvan rills,
    What knew these yeomen bold and free
Of envious cares and grewsome ills
    That now, sweet friend, vex you and me?
Theirs but to roam the leafy glade,
    Beshrewing sheriffs, lords, and priests,
To loll supine beneath the shade,
    Regaling monarchs with their feasts.

The murrain seize these ribald times
    When there is such a lust for gold
That poets fashion all their rhymes,
    Like varlet tradesfolk, to be sold!
Not so did Allen when he troll'd
    His ballads in that merry glade;
Nay, in those courteous days of old
    The minstrel spurned the tricks of trade!

So, joyous friend, when you and I
    Sing to the world our chosen theme,
Let's do as do the birds that fly
    Careless o'er woodland, wold, and stream:
Sing Nature's song, untouched of art—
    Sing of the forest, brook, and plain;
And, hearing it, each human heart
    Will vibrate with the sweet refrain.

Freneau: the dangers of the sea

The Scotland-born John Paul Jones was given command of several ships, including his own Bon Homme Richard (named after Benjamin Franklin) as a privateer on August 14, 1779. One of the earliest poetic chroniclers of the young United States, Philip Freneau, wrote a poem about that day, "Captain Jones's Invitation" (later simplified as "The Invitation"):

Thou, who on some dark mountain's brow
Hast toil'd thy life away till now,
And often from that rugged steep
Beheld the vast extended deep,
Come from thy forest, and with me
Learn what it is to go to sea.

There endless plains the eye surveys
As far from land the vessel strays;
No longer hill nor dale is seen,
The realms of death intrude between,
But fear no ill; resolve, with me
To share the dangers of the sea.

But look not there for verdant fields—
Far different prospects Neptune yields;
Green seas shall only greet the eye,
Those seas encircled by the sky,
Immense and deep—come then with me
And view the wonders of the sea.

Yet sometimes groves and meadows gay
Delight the seamen on their way;
From the deep seas that round us swell
With rocks the surges to repel
Some verdant isle, by waves embrac'd,
Swells, to adorn the wat'ry waste.

Though now this vast expanse appear
With glassy surface, calm and clear;
Be not deceiv'd—'tis but a show,
For many a corpse is laid below—
Even Britain's lads—it cannot be—
They were the masters of the sea!

Now combating upon the brine,
Where ships in flaming squadrons join,
At every blast the brave expire
'Midst clouds of smoke, and streams of fire;
But scorn all fear; advance with me—
'Tis but the custom of the sea.

Now we the peaceful wave divide,
On broken surges now we ride,
Now every eye dissolves with woe
As on some lee-ward coast we go—
Half lost, half buried in the main
Hope scarcely beams on life again.

Above us storms distract the sky,
Beneath us depths unfathom'd lie,
Too near we see, a ghastly sight,
The realms of everlasting night,
A wat'ry tomb of ocean green
And only one frail plank between!

But winds must cease, and storms decay,
Not always lasts the gloomy day,
Again the skies are warm and clear,
Again soft zephyrs fan the air,
Again we find the long lost shore,
The winds oppose our wish no more.

If thou hast courage to despise
The various changes of the skies,
To disregard the ocean's rage,
Unmov'd when hostile ships engage,
Come from thy forest, and with me
Learn what it is to go to sea.

Death of Jackson: How she loved us!

Helen Hunt Jackson turned to writing after the death of her first husband and their son. Many of her stories were published under pseudonyms (usually "H.H." or "Saxe Holm") but, by the end of her life, she had turned political. Her interest in the maltreatment of Native Americans culminated in a book, A Century of Dishonor (1881), a copy of which was sent to each sitting Congressman. It made little difference, and she was criticized for her negativity.

After moving to California, she re-shaped her thinking. Knowing that a serious book would get less attention, she decided that the best way to stir people's hearts was in the form of a novel. She published Ramona in 1884 with the hope that it "would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for the Negro." Unfortunately, though the book sold exceptionally well, its subject matter was overshadowed in the form of fiction.

On her deathbed, as she lay dying of stomach cancer, Jackson wrote a letter to President Grover Cleveland asking him to read A Century of Dishonor. In severe pain, she was administered morphine and her family knew she was "sinking to final rest." She died in San Francisco on August 12, 1885, and was buried in Colorado. At her simple funeral, her poem "Last Words" was read:

Dear hearts, whose love has been so sweet to know,
That I am looking backward as I go,
Am lingering while I haste, and in this rain
Of tears of joy am mingling tears of pain;
Do not adorn with costly shrub, or tree,
Or flower, the little grave which shelters me.
Let the wild wind-sown seeds grow up unharmed,
And back and forth all summer, unalarmed,
Let all the tiny, busy creatures creep;
Let the sweet grass its last year's tangles keep;
And when, remembering me, you come some day
And stand there, speak no praise, but only say,
"How she loved us! 'Twas that which made her dear!"
Those are the words that I shall joy to hear.

Birth of Cooper and the birthright of humanity

She was born on August 10, 1858 in Raleigh, North Carolina and named Anna Julia Haywood; the last name came from George Washington Haywood, who owned hundreds of enslaved people, and may have been Anna Julia's father. After Emancipation and the end of the Civil War, she went to school and shocked her teachers by her interest in math and science (subjects most often reserved for men at the time).

In fact, young Anna was a brilliant student and, by age 8, was already a teacher's assistant. She went on to earn an undergraduate degree from Oberlin College in 1884, a master's degree four years later and, eventually, two PhDs (in French and Philosophy). She taught at various schools, including Wilberforce University and Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Washington, DC. She was appointed principle for a time, until her disagreement with the local school board resulted in her demotion. She later became the president of a university which offered night courses specifically for working African Americans.

Throughout it all, Anna Julia Haywood Cooper (as she was known after her marriage) was an outspoken advocate in particular for black women to seek higher education. Her most famous book, A Voice from the South, criticized the role that African American characters played in literature. However, in her 105 years, she wrote several other books and essays, and offered several public speeches.

In her later life, she reflected, for example, on the importance of her home, which she built "like the proverbial beaver." She noted it must be "not merely a house to shelter the body, but a home to sustain and refresh the mind, a home where friends foregather for interchange of ideas and agreeable association of sympathetic spirits." Cooper's words are today published on American passports in the form of a quote: "The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class — it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity."

*I am indebted to the encyclopedic African-American Writers (part of the "A to Z of African Americans" series), compiled by Philip Bader and revised and republished in 2010.

Poe on stage: rather tedious

Edgar Allan Poe and his work have become a mainstay of popular culture; his writings and his life story have been the inspiration for countless films, TV episodes, radio broadcasts, stage performances, and music (with varying degrees of success). Among the earliest, however, was one he may have witnessed in his own lifetime.

"The Gold-Bug" was both the most popular of Poe's works as well as the most lucrative for the author himself. The story follows the seemingly insane William Legrand in a search for buried treasure left behind on a South Carolina island by the pirate Captain Kidd. In his quest for the lost pirate gold, he solves a series of riddles, the first of which was in the form of a golden-colored scarab beetle. The initial publication of this innovative story in June 1843 earned Poe an impressive $100 award. was widely reprinted after its initial publication. It is believed to be Poe's widest-circulated work during his lifetime.

More surprisingly, it was the first of Poe's works adapted for the stage. On August 8, 1843, "The Gold-Bug" premiered at Philadelphia's American Theatre. Written by Silas Steele, the play was not as successful as the fictitious hero Legrand. A review in the local newspaper The Spirit of the Times by its editor John Du Solle noted: "Mr. Steele had a good house at his benefit on Tuesday night, and the performances were generally good. The Gold Bug, however, dragged, and was rather tedious. The frame work was well enough, but wanted filling up."

In truth, "The Gold-Bug" could not be easily replicated on stage. The most novel aspect of the story was its riddles, with which readers could play along, including the famous cryptogram in the form of a substitution cypher. To solve it, one might need a paper and pencil (as well as some thoughtful time) which, presumably, the American Theatre did not provide that day.

Vicksburg: the tempest raged and thundered

The Union army had been attempting to take Vicksburg, Mississippi, for some time. Bombardment of the Confederate stronghold lasted throughout June and July, before the Northerners temporarily abandoned their plans. Both sides knew the importance of Vicksburg; Abraham Lincoln himself called it "the key" to the Civil War. Southern poet Paul Hamilton Hayne turned the episode into a poem, "Bombardment of Vicksburg," dated August 6, 1862:

For sixty days, and longer,
  A storm of shell and shot
Rained round as in a flaming shower,

  But still we faltered not.
"If the noble city perish,"
  Our grand young leader said,
"Let the only walls the foe shall scale
  Be the ramparts of the dead!"

For sixty days, and longer,
  The eye of heaven waxed dim,
And e'en throughout God's holy morn,
  O'er Christian's prayer and hymn,
Arose a hissing tumult,
  As if the fiends of air
Strove to engulf the voice of faith
   In the shrieks of their despair.

There was wailing in the houses,
  There was trembling on the marts,
While the tempest raged and thundered,
  'Mid the silent thrill of hearts;
But the Lord, our shield, was with us,
  And ere a month had sped,
Our very women walked the streets
  With scarce one throb of dread.

And the little children gambolled—
  Their pure, bright faces raised,
Just for a wondering moment
  As the huge bombs whirled and blazed
Then turned with silvery laughter,
  To the sports which children love,
Thrice mailed in this instinctive thought,
  That the good God watched above.

Yet the hailing bolts fell faster,
  From scores of flame-clad ships,
And above us, denser, darker,
  Grew the conflict's wild eclipse—
Till a solid cloud closed o'er us,
  Like a type of gloom and ire,
Whence shot a thousand quivering tongues
  Of forked and vengeful fire.

But the unseen hand of angels,
  These death-shafts warned aside,
And the dove of Heavenly mercy
  Ruled o'er the battle tide;
In the houses ceased the wailing,
  And through the war-scarred marts,
The people strode with a step of hope,
  To the music in their hearts.

Paulding, the Talking Potato, and an impious race

In the early part of the 19th century, the English were particularly harsh critics of the United States. They wrote or spoke out against American customs, American social habits, and American literature. American author James Kirke Paulding was one of many who were disgusted by this criticism and, in response, he wrote a book called John Bull in America; or, The New Munchausen. In his preface, Paulding wrote that the book was a transcription of a manuscript left behind by a visitor to a hotel:

On the fifth day of August, 1824, a rather genteel looking stranger arrived at the Mansion Hotel in the city of Washington, where he inquired for a retired room, and expressed his intention of staying some time. He was dressed in a blue frock, striped vest, and gray pantaloons; was about five feet ten, as is supposed, and had a nose like a potato.

The visitor is, in fact, an English traveler, whose manuscript reveals his untrained observations of America. To him, Americans are "a bundling, gouging, drinking, spitting, impious race, without either morals, literature, religion, or refinement; and that the turbulent spirit of democracy was altogether incompatible with any state of society becoming a civilized nation." In Boston, for example, he makes a claim which any Bostonian would find rather curious:

Religion is, if possible, in a worse state than literature, manners, or morals. There is not a single church in Boston, nor any religious exercises on Sunday, except in a few school rooms, by the methodists and other fanatics. I am assured it is the custom all over New-England, as well as in the states of Newburyport and Pasquotank, to spend the Sabbath like every other day in the week, except that they put on clean clothes, a thing never thought of, even among the most fashionable ladies, except on that occasion.

This traveler, whom Paulding nicknames "The Talking Potato" in his preface, is particularly infected by the anti-American ideas put forward in the Quarterly Review — a British publication which frequently criticized the young United States and its people. Infused with those preconceived notions, The Talking Potato never seems to change his mind about Americans, concluding on the book's final page that they remained "the arrogant, self-sufficient, bundling, gouging, guessing, drinking, dirking, spitting, chewing, pig-stealing, impious genius of democracy, as the Quarterly says." Interestingly enough, Paulding's satirical treatment of anti-American criticism in England added to a burgeoning anti-British sentiment in the United States.

Bret Harte: the worst poem anyone ever wrote

Which I wish to remark,
     And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
     And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,
     Which the same I would rise to explain.

The "plain language" from "truthful James" was lost on the general readership of Bret Harte and the Overland Monthly. Harte had published his poem, "Plain Language from Truthful James" in the September 1870 issue of that California-based journal. He meant it as a satire against the improper treatment of Chinese immigrants, using a character named Ah Sin. Instead, the poem was accepted as a justification for racism under its appropriated name "The Heathen Chinee." The poem takes place on August 3:

It was August the third,
     And quite soft was the skies;
Which it might be inferred
     That Ah Sin was likewise;
Yet he played it that day upon William
     And me in a way I despise.

Which we had a small game,
     And Ah Sin took a hand:
It was Euchre. The same
     He did not understand;
But he smiled as he sat by the table,
     With the smile that was childlike and bland.

This Chinese man claimed not to understand the game; in reality, he stuffed his sleeves full of aces "with intent to deceive." The narrator and his friend Bill Nye finally recognize the cheat when he plays the same card the narrator already held in his hand:

Then I looked up at Nye,
     And he gazed upon me;
And he rose with a sigh,
     And said, "Can this be?
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor," —
     And he went for that heathen Chinee.

In the scene that ensued
     I did not take a hand,
But the floor it was strewed
     Like the leaves on the strand
With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding,
     In the game "he did not understand."

The poem was so widely reprinted, it made Harte instantly popular. Several versions included illustrations mocking the "Heathen Chinee" and "the scene that ensued" (interpreted by some as a large-scale race riot). Later, however, the author himself looked upon the poem as "trash," and declared it "the worst poem I ever wrote, possibly the worst poem anyone ever wrote." The joke was not lost, however, on the up-and-coming writer named Edgar Wilson Nye, who used "Bill Nye" as his pseudonym as a tribute to Harte's poem.

Whitfield: song of the unfettered slave

From an early publication,
courtesy of The Classroom Electric

On August 1, 1834, Great Britain abolished slavery in the West Indies. The anniversary of that event made August 1 a day of celebration for African American abolitionists in the United States — one which was more meaningful than the Fourth of July. On August 1, 1849, an anti-slavery gathering in Buffalo, New York included a presentation by James Monroe Whitfield — a free born African American who was a barber by trade — who read his poem "Stanzas for the First of August":

From bright West Indies' sunny seas,
     Comes, borne upon the balmy breeze,
The joyous shout, the gladsome tone,
     Long in those bloody isles unknown;
Bearing across the heaving wave
The song of the unfettered slave.

No charging squadrons shook the ground,
     When freedom here her claims obtained;
No cannon, with tremendous sound,
     The noble patriot's cause maintained:
No furious battle-charger neighed,
No brother fell by brother's blade.

None of those desperate scenes of strife,
     Which mark the warrior's proud career,
The awful waste of human life,
     Have ever been enacted here;
But truth and justice spoke from heaven,
And slavery's galling chain was riven.

'Twas moral force which broke the chain,
     That bound eight hundred thousand men;
And when we see it snapped in twain,
     Shall we not join in praises then? —
And prayers unto Almighty God,
Who smote to earth the tyrant's rod?

And from those islands of the sea,
     The scenes of blood and crime and wrong,
The glorious anthem of the free,
     Now swells in mighty chorus strong;
Telling th' oppressed, where'er they roam,
Those islands now are freedom's home.

*Further reading: The Works of James Monroe Whitfield: 'America' and Other Writings by a Ninteenth-Century African American Poet, edited by Robert S. Levine and Ivy Wilson (2011).