CONNECTOR

                                                 Harriet Beecher Stowe:  Uncle Tom's Cabin 

"I wrote what I did because as a woman, as a mother, I was oppressed and broken-hearted with the sorrows and injustice I saw, because as a Christian I felt the dishonor to Christianity - because as a lover of my country, I trembled at the coming day of wrath."    

          

                                                                                      Harriet Beecher Stowe



Uncle Tom's Cabin is one of the most influential novels ever written by an American.  The American imagination was primed for Stowe's novel in the 1850's.  Harriet Beecher Stowe created a text that would advocate on behalf of the oppressed and pave the way for a more egalitarian democracy.  She illustrated the evils of slavery with a moving, character-driven story, inspired by her own divine visions.  Uncle Tom's Cabin accelerated the rise of abolitionism in the North.  When Abraham Lincoln met her in 1862 he made the comment:  "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!"  Uncle Tom's Cabin was the single most influential book that fueled the Civil War [http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/hbs/].

Uncle Tom's Cabin contributed to the outbreak of war by personalizing the political and economic arguments about slavery.  Stowe's informal, conversational writing style inspired people in a way that political speeches, tracts and newspaper accounts could not.  Uncle Tom's Cabin helped many 19th century Americans determine what kind of country they wanted.  In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe has one goal:  to convince her northern audience that slavery was evil and could no longer be tolerated.  This was not an easy task in the 1850s.  Her novel hit the country like a bombshell.  Perhaps no other work of literature has influenced history as powerfully as Stowe's landmark antislavery novel.  It was largely responsible for alerting the reading public to the evils of slavery.  The novel's portrayal of the warmth and human dignity of Uncle Tom and his fellow slaves, made to suffer at the hands of their owners, put a face on the abstract notion of slavery and ignited unprecedented interest from the reading public [http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/hbs/].

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass provided insight into the anti-slavery movement and the abolitionist movement from 1820-1860.  These texts discuss slavery as a social and economic system in the nineteenth century.  No institution had greater influence on race relations than slavery.  We can't understand race in America today without understanding slavery.  Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe were two very different authors of classic works.  Douglass escaped bondage to become the most influential black abolitionist.  Stowe wrote the novel that was the most influential in American history.  As a former slave, Douglass knew this subject well and in his powerful autobiography, he brings out slavery's corrupting influence - its brutalization of both the owner and the owned [http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/utc/impact.shtml].

Stowe organized her material according to rhetorical principles much as Mary Rowlandson in A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.  Uncle Tom's Cabin contains incidents that embody the heroic spirit found in the captivity narratives.  Stowe's text does not depend on the land and the spirit of a Western hero.  The most visible character, Uncle Tom, does not fight, does not dominate anyone, and conveys his message through his refusal to act.  In Uncle Tom's Cabin, the active, courageous heroine, Eliza appears intermittently, but the story follows Uncle Tom.  Both texts deal with a Christian woman that thinks of those around her.  The title character is no "Uncle Tom" in the submissive sense the name has come to connote but rather a heroic, nonviolent resister who anticipates modern-day political dissidents [http://web.mit.edu/wgs/prize/sm01.html].

Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn after the Civil War, in part as a response to Stowe's pre-Civil War novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.  Twain supported many of Stowe's claims and motives and agreed with her anti-slavery comments.  In both texts the question lurking throughout:  How is it that we can be tolerating slavery? [http://marklerch.com/thoughts/literature/HuckFinn.html]     
     





Uncle Tom's Cabin is a valuable piece of writing worthy of literary consideration because it engages in serious, universal themes such as the meaning of life, which ends in death and involves meaningless suffering.  These themes are developed to a level of intelligence, sophistication, and complexity that does not provide easy answers.  Great literature expands the moral imagination.  Masterpiece literature also often provides a rich variety and depth of characterization.  The central issue in the novel is slavery, but Stowe views slavery as a manifestation of evil.  Through her characters, Stowe presents a series of possible responses to the moral issue of the existence of evil.  Each character in the book is fully developed from every class and from several regions.  The strength of Uncle Tom's Cabin is its ability to illustrate slavery's effect on families, and to help readers empathize with enslaved characters.  Stowe's characters freely debated the causes of slavery, the Fugitive Slave Law, the future of freed people, what an individual could do, and racism.  Writing in the 1950's, poet Langston Hughes called the book a "moral battle cry for freedom." [http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/utc/impact.shtml]

In the Civil Wars wake, Uncle Tom's Cabin influenced emancipation causes worldwide, during that century and the next.  It has spun off into traveling shows, silent films, advertising campaigns, cartoons, and merchandise ranging from figurines to card games.  The Southern backlash to it also spawned such works as The Clansman; its film version, The Birth of a Nation; and even Gone With the Wind [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom's_Cabin_(movie)].

Racism lingers, human trafficking is growing, and with abortion, human lives are still radically subject to the will of another.  Slavery continues to exist even in today's society.  Slavery still exists in Mauritania, Africa with the horrible abuse of slaves by both black and white slave owners.  May we never find ourselves fighting on the wrong side of such basic issues of good and evil [http://www.ncregister.com/site/print_article/25909/] [http://blog.cleveland.com/opinion_impact/print.html?entry=/2010/04/taking_on_sex_slavery][http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/racism/010828.mauritania.html]

Uncle Tom's Cabin struck a nerve and found a permanent place in American culture.  Translated into more than sixty languages, it is known throughout the world.  After a century and a half, this classic anti-slavery novel remains an engaging and powerful work, read in college and high school courses dealing with literature, history, and issues of race and gender.  Stowe's words changed the world and she inspired us to believe in our own ability to effect positive change.  Uncle Tom's Cabin, with its compelling story, challenges us to confront America's complicated past and connect it to today's issues [http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/utc/impact.shtml].

Today it remains a best-seller, a masterpiece with relevance not just to its own period but also to the pressing moral issues of our time.

    

Was Henry David Thoreau the father of the anti-establishment movement?

"I am convinced that if all men were to live as simply as I, thieving and robbery would be unknown.  These take place in communities where some have more than is sufficient, while others have not enough."

                                                  Henry David Thoreau



Thoreau was not a systematic philosopher but advanced his thought by embedding his ideas in the context of descriptive narrative prose.  He is best known for Walden and Civil Disobedience, but wrote many other articles and essays.  Thoreau's Civil Disobedience influenced later nonviolent reformers, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thoreau/].

Thoreau studied a wide range of philosophical literature, from classical Greek and Roman authors to modern philosophers and the writings of his contemporaries.  He was one of the few Western writers to explore ancient Eastern thought.  He also gained insights from Taoism and other ancient Chinese traditions.  Thoreau developed his own unique philosophy, particularly through his "experimental" austere life in nature at Walden.  Thoreau limited his possessions to bare necessities.  He left behind the trappings of modern culture, such as cities, economic and social life, customs, traditions, and what people generally conceive as "needs."  Thoreau understood nature as a direct manifestation of deity and spirituality.  He tried to listen to the language of all things and to see God in nature.  Nature was for him a living cathedral where human spirituality was cultivated without separating the aesthetic and the sensual [http://www.walden.org/thoreau/]

During his Walden experiment, Thoreau reduced life to the bare essentials without the necessities of life.  He grew only as much food as he needed and worked enough to provide shelter.  He led his life apart from the influence of society.  He was arrested for not paying his poll tax in protest of the Mexican War.  He wrote Civil Disobedience after his night in jail.  Thoreau questioned who had primacy, the laws of a state or a man's conscience.  This was his stand against the effects of "The Establishment."  Thoreau felt society had undue influence on an individual achieving ones own self-reliance and true self [http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Henry_David_Thoreau].

In 1967, a study in Time Magazine on hippie philosophy credited the foundation of the hippie movement as far back as the counterculture of the Ancient Greeks.  Other notable inflences of the hippie movement were the religious and spiritual teachings of Henry David Thoreau, Buddha, St. Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, and J.R.R. Tolkien.  By 1965, hippies had become and established social group in the U.S. and the movement expanded as far as Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, and Brazil.  Hippie culture spread worldwide through music, literature, dramatic arts, fashion, and visual arts.  Hippies rejected established institutions, criticized middle class values, opposed nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War.  They embraced aspects of Eastern philosophy, championed sexual liberation, were often vegetarian and eco-friendly, promoted the use of psychedilic drugs which they believed expanded one's consciousness.  Hippies created communes as a means of avoiding societies influences.  Hippies opposed political and social orthodoxy and chose a gentle and nondoctrine ideology that favored peace, love and personal freedom which is expressed in The Beatles' song "All You Need is Love".  Hippies perceived the dominant culture as a corrupt, monolithic entity that exercised undue power over their lives, calling this culture "The Establishment."  Hippies were seekers of meaning and value and were described as a new religious movement [http://www.hippy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=9] [http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255-s01/boheme/hippies.htm].

The hippies were heirs to a long line of bohemians that included William Blake, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Hesse, and Oscar Wilde.  Hippies don't impose their beliefs on others but seek to change the world through reason and by living what they believe.  Once a hippie always a hippie.  In the same way, Thoreau developed his own unique philosophy through his "experimental" austere life in nature.  Thoreau's life and writings have continued to provoke generations of readers to contemplate their obligations to society, nature and themselves.  Walden has powerfully affected environmentalists, even today, for Thoreau's crucial environmental concerns regarding the natural habitat  [http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Henry_David_Thoreau].     

Was Edgar Allan Poe for or against Women's Rights in the 1800's?

Edgar Allan Poe born January 19, 1809, was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic.  He was considered part of the American Romantic Movement and best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre.  His mother was a prominent actress which was considered a disreputable career.  His father deserted the family when Edgar was 1 year old.  His mother died when he was 2 years old.  He was taken into the family of John and Frances Allan.  Edgar's brother and sister were sent to different foster parents.  He was renamed Edgar Allan but was never legally adopted.  Allan lost interest in supporting Poe financially and provided only minimal funds to Poe for studying at the University of Virginia in 1826.  Poe ran into debt and began to drink and gamble.  He had to leave the university before his first year was completed.  After a quarrel with Allan in 1827, Poe was ordered out of the house at the age of 18 years old.  Poe lived in poverty and moved in with his Aunt Maria Poe Clemm and her daughter, Virginia [http://www.eapoe.org/papers/psbbooks/pb19871c.htm].

Edgar Allan Poe never knew his natural mother and that important affection between mother and child.  Poe had a persistent need to be closely associated with some woman who could play the role of mother to him.  In looking at Poe's tempestuous life, it has been said that the women with whom he was on intimate terms, either by birth, "adoption," and marriage or by ties of friendship and love, was most unfortunate.  He was extremely chivalrous to women and normally polite and courteous to all. Probably due to his Southern breeding.  Women usually found him fascinating, but there were those that found it easy to take advantage of him [http://www.eapoe.org/papers/psbbooks/pb19871c.htm].

The relationships between Edgar Allan Poe and the many women in his life, were tenuous and disastrous, and provided inspiration for some of the finest darkly romantic poems and short stores of the early 19th century.  Poe's idealized views of everlasting love were clouded by the real life pain and trials that kept him from experiencing spiritual and romantic love.  His ideal, as told through his poems and stories, is not an attainable Eden, but rather an unattainable, nightmarish vision that echoed his real-life tagedies with calculated skill [http://www.helpfulresearch.com/edgar.html].

Poe's favorite topic was lost love, the most haunting and melancholic kind of love.  Poe saw love, politics, and death as three sides of the same coin.  None could exist without the others.  Like other men during his time, Edgar Allan Poe appears to have very sexist views in the early 19th century.  Poe's writings contain sexist views, although they are subliminal [http://www.helpfulresearch.com/edgar.html]
[http://www.blogger.com/goog_1897074963
kcollins/].

During the 1800's, America was still considered a new nation.  The United States was at war with Great Britain from 1812-1814.  The U.S. Army was persecuting Native American tribes which included the Creeks, Seminoles, Sioux, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, and the Apache.  Four policies ran the country during this time period:  Manifest Destiny, war, slavery and gender inequality.  White women climbed a little more on society's ladder, but they wanted more.  In 1839, Mississippi granted women the right to hold property, but they had to have their husbands' permission first.  In 1848, 300 women and men signed a "Declaration of Sentiments."  This was a plea to end gender discrimination in all phases of society.  Before, women's roles in American society were only inside the family home.  In 1869, the Wyoming territory passed the first women's suffrage law.  Territories and Northern states offered more for women than Southern states.  In 1889, Wyoming granted women the right to vote in all elections.  The rest of the country granted that right in 1920.  America in the 1800's was about war, slavery, corruption and Indian extermination.  Black women suffered through years of slavery, racism and discrimination.  White women took their concessions and moved slowly forward [http://www.helium.com/items/1165568-sojourner-truth-1869-1870-fraticide].

Women in the early 1800's were not supposed to be involved in politics.  Men felt that women were too emotional and they couldn't handle the extra stress.  Around the 1820's, women stood up and took part in politics.  They fought against slavery, abortions, women suffrage, and governmental issues.  They spoke out using the media and at public gatherings.  At first no one listened and were thought to be foolish.  They continued to speak until finally someone listened.  Women joined the American Society for the promotion of the Temperance in 1826 to wage a battle against alcohol.  They wanted to reduce the high consumption of alcohol in men, women, and children [http://www.angelfire.com/ca/HistoryGals/Linda.html].

Despite his unconventional ways in his writings, in his personal life Edgar Allan Poe held the most conventional early 19th century views about the subordinate place of women in a man's world.  Poe routinely mocked the successful, professional woman.  Poe considered female writers in America to be mediocre.  In his own poetry and fiction, Poe often depicted the suppression or annihilation of women who because of overpowering beauty, intellect, or wealth departed from the conventional and threatened man's superior position.  Poe and his avatars such as Dupin work to punish and silence womankind in the world that threatened a masculine society [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7008/is_2_20/ai_n28363536/].

                                             Virtual reading of Annabel Lee

Washington Irving: "Rip Van Winkle"....What was the story really saying?

Washington Irving was an American author of the early nineteenth century.  Irving was best known for his short stories, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle."  Both of these short stories appear in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon.  Irving was also a prolific writer of essays, biographies, and other literary forms.  He was one of the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe.  Irving is said to have mentored authors such as Nathanial Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe [classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/wirving/bl-wirving-rip.htm].

"Rip Van Winkle" was written overnight while Irving was staying with his sister and her husband in Birmingham, England.  This story was based on a German folktale, set in the Dutch culture of Pre-Revolutionary War in New York State.  Rip Van Winkle is a farmer who wanders into the Catskill Mountains.  Rip helps a dwarf carry a keg into the mountains and is rewarded with its contents.  He falls into a deep, enchanted sleep.  When Rip awakens 20 years later, the world has changed significantly.  He is an old man with a long, white beard.  He goes into town and finds everything has changed.  His nagging wife is dead and his children are grown [http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Washington_Irving] [http://kirjasto.sci.fi/wirving.htm] [http://www.bartleby.com/195/4.html].

Washington Irving wrote this story from facts taken from history and from occurrences within the range of his own experience and observation.  Irving's writings appear to be written merely for amusement but his most comical pieces have a serious end in view.  "Rip Van Winkle" was popular and the most reprinted piece of the nineteenth century because it directly or indirectly chronicled his reaction to the failure of America to live up to the expectations of the Founding Fathers.  Irving's most compelling subject as a writer was the uneasiness and uncertainty of the American people as they awaited the fate of the nation in the early decades of the nineteenth century.  His vision of a time of simple harmony was an exaggerated sense of the disinterested benevolence of those who fought the struggle for America's independence (Rubin-Dorsky).

In "Rip Van Winkle," the image of the "house divided" was terrifying and signified the dissolution of the Union.  Rip's wife could be viewed as representing the North and Rip representing the South.  His wife was not pleased with Rip's disregard for their home.  She continually reprimanded and "nagged" him.  Rip looked on her with disregard and continued his life as he saw fit.  Rip Van Winkle is an overgrown version of a child seeking to gratify boyish impulses for a carefree life without the adult male responsibilities.  Dame Van Winkle also represents the shrill and incessant demands of the present.  Upon awakening from his 20 year sleep, Rip awakens with a great deal of trouble and anxiety.  Rip returns to his home, only to find that both the village and its inhabitants had undergone a metamorphosis.  Political events had transformed the world of "drowsy tranquility" into a growing commercialism that displaced what he had known.  The expanding village is a reflection of a growing America.  The "lost" generation of Americans symbolically could trace the source of this anxiety to the birth of the nation.  Two significant events were the ratification of the Constitution and the election of the president.  Rip reflects the nation's anxiety in Irving's text when he states that everything had changed and he couldn't tell his own name or who he was.  On one side of his 20 year sleep, lies the past, plotted, cultivated and safe; on the other awaits the future, uncharted, coarse, and terrifying.  In the time of the story, the colonies are on the verge of nationhood.  For Rip, the country had shifted overnight from a communal organization based on mutual dependence to a fragmented body of opposing self-interests.  The stranger's voice that called out Rip Van Winkle's name comes from the threatening glen to the west and not from the lush, woodland to the east (Rubin-Dorsky).

Like Rip, Irving may be an amusing, friendly person, but up until the time of his departure for England he performed no necessary function and had not secured a permanent place in his native community of New York.  In Irving's fantasy, Rip makes a success out of his own inadequacy.  He is ultimately recognized, welcomed and accepted by the town once it is understood that he wants nothing more than to be allowed to relate his adventure to all who will listen.  Rip is unaggressive and poses no threat to the business of post-Revolutionary America.  He becomes a favorite with "the rising generation" since he has a story to tell of the past.  Irving's desire for a setttled life is depicted into the fabric of the story.  The anxiety of estrangement is transformed into the ease of acceptance (Rubin-Dorsky).

Pre-revolutionary politics were confined to the reading of an antiquated newspaper and the leisurely discussion this activity engendered, while post-revolutionary politics involved the thunder of an election-day debate.  Contented farmers were giving way to aggressive businessmen (Rubin-Dorsky).  Irving was a politically influenced writer who consistently sought to be free from contention.  The nagging wife in some sense symbolizes the political world that was always prodding him to declare himself.  Additional political meaning that may be intended, was that the shrewish wife is the tyrant Britannia of the late colonial era.  Rip's daughter, Judith, who welcomes him back and takes him in, is the loving symbol of republican America, now at peace (Burstein).

Modern Americans know very little about the year 1819.  It was an especially turbulent year, and this must have conditioned reader's reactions to the first Sketch Book offering.  A nationwide financial panic occurred, though Irving could not have anticipated this when he wrote "Rip Van Winkle."  As a symbol of that historical moment, the story is a fair portrait of the country's adolescent charm, something that was being contested as banks across the country called in loans and caused ruin for many (Burstein).

Rip Van Winkle is a vulnerable, malleable, human.  He is the perfect protagonist in a fable designed to remind us that memory, both fragile and powerful, preserves what is good in the world.  This story has a timeless, imaginative existence of its own.  Storytelling itself is a timeless and eternal activity.  Irving hoped that the nation would expand its idea of "usefulness" and accept him, just as the village finally welcomed Rip as chronicler (Dorsky).

Burstein, A.  The Original Knickerbocker.  Basic Books, New York, 2007.

Rubin-Dorskey, J.  Adrift in the Old World.  The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL,  1988.

Are there similarities between Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr.?

 Both Douglass and King were transformed by education and reading.  They marveled at the beauty of the spoken and written word.  When Martin Luther King was a boy, he was a bit of a troublemaker.  His father gave him a copy of Frederick Douglass' autobiography and it changed his life.  Both of them have similar oratory styles.  They both had the amazing ability to move their audience to action [http://www.thekingcenter.org/upbringing-studies] [http://www.frederickdouglass.org/douglass_bio.html]

Neither Frederick Douglass nor Martin Luther King were extremists.  Both of them argued that African-Americans have a natural right to equality.  Douglass and King claimed that black people had been robbed of their equality by white Americans who refused to acknowledge their own hypocrisy by not affording people of color the liberties that were guaranteed them in the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.  In using America's stated ideals as the basis for their appeals for equality, Douglass and King sought to influence reasonable Americans, not hard core racists.  Both of them were recruited into their leadership roles as spokesmen for racial equality.  One hundred years after Douglass'
fight against slavery, segregation was the prevailing system. Segregation was not nearly as cruel as slavery, but still evil and of great hardship to racial equality.

Both Douglass and King became spokesman for their causes.  Douglass because of his ability to describe the inhumanity of slavery and King as a result of his involvement with the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott during the 1950's [http://www.thekingcenter.org/movement-intensifies]
[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1544.html]

Race relations between blacks and whites have always been a problematic and fiery issue throughout United States history.  Frederick Douglass was a self-taught black man who wrote about his experiences as a slave.  In his book, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself," he makes many insights into the injustices and cruelty of slavery.  In 1863, Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation and blacks were forever freed from slavery.  However, this did not put and end to racial  tension or to the black man's hope for equality in the twentieth century.  Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote a letter from jail justifying his "nonviolent" crusade to end segregation forever.  King's letter is thorough and his ideas and arguments are expressed efficiently with well-grounded rationale.  Douglass' writings are more difficult to understand because there is more substance under the surface.  Although they are separated by a century, Douglass and King parallel each other significantly.  King's rhetoric and system of analysis are a helpful lens through which to scrutinize and extract the important realizations found in Douglass' writings [http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/king.html]
[http://www.thekingcenter.org/beyond-civil-rights].

In the speech, "I Have a Dream" King creates visual images of the equality clause from the Declaration of Independence.  In the speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" Douglass contends that the Fourth of July is a reminder of centuries of gross injustices perpetrated by a nation that prides itself on its democratic ideals.  King abhorred the lack of equal opportunity that resulted in black america's lack of access to basic economic security.  King stated, "All segregation laws are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality."  Douglass declared, "I believe in agitation."  Douglass complained about the failure of white Americans to live up to American ideals of liberty [http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Frederick_Douglass]
[http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-bio.html].

Frederick Douglass

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Both Douglass and King changed their names.  Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Bailey.  Changed his name to Frederick Douglass when he was free from slavery.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was born Michael Luther King, Jr. and changed his name later in his teens.  Both of them began lecturing when they were in their 20's.  Douglass and King both wrote books and articles in addition to their exceptional speaking ability.  Frederick Douglass had President Lincoln to deal with regarding the plight of the slaves.  Martin Luther King, Jr. had President L. B. Johnson to contend with in the battle against segregation.  Both men had four living children.  It was obvious that Providence influenced both of their lives  [http://www.biography.com/print/profile/martin-luther-king-jr-9365086]
[http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Frederick_Douglass].

Reading Douglass' and King's speeches are able to move someone to action.  It would be amazing to hear Frederick Douglass' eloquent speeches. I can only imagine that James Earle Jones in the video below does Douglass justice.   Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking ability was effective enough to move thousands to action, regardless of color. 

Was Mary Rowlandson the true Puritan she was portrayed to be?

Mary Rowlandson was captured by the Indians from her home in Lancaster, Massachusetts, during King Philip's War of 1675.  She was held for 11 weeks and 5 days before being ransomed.  She wrote a narrative about her captivity and "restoration."  This narrative became one of the most representative documents by which white New Englanders remembered King Philip's War.  After being trapped in the wilderness as a prisoner of war, and surviving.  Mary Rowlandson saw herself as spiritually renewed and redeemed.  While many of the events of her account are probably true, her narrative is still somewhat mythical and shaped, both consciously and unconsciously, to fit her religious and cultural ideals (http://www.bookrags.com/printfriendly/?p=gale&u=rowlandson-mary-aaw-01). 

There appear to be two different perspectives in Rowlandson's narrative.  This could be a result of Rowlandson suffering from a mental disorder known as survivor syndrome.  She tries to reconcile her feeling of guilt over having survived the Indian attack on Lancaster and her captivity with her obligation to paint her experience in the hues of providential affliction.  Rowlandson recounts the events of her captivity in a vigorous and homely style, combining close observation with simple, direct expression.  When she pauses to consider the significance of a particular detail, her style becomes more elevated as she employs biblical quotations and metaphors to convey her meaning (http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/captive.htm).

Throughout most of the text, Rowlandson is cast as the Christian woman lost in the unknown wilderness among a savage people and unsure of her surroundings.  Rowlandson recounts multiple experiences of sitting in her captors' wigwams at different times during her captivity and completely forgetting where she is before jumping up and running outside.  At another point in the text, Rowlandson states, "My son being now about a mile from me....away I went; but quickly lost myself travelling over Hills and through Swamps, and could not find my way to him."  Although she is lost in the woods, she was able to find her way back to her master's wigwam.  Despite these incidences of being lost in the wilderness, Rowlandson seems to know her geographic location throughout the course of her captivity.  She knows of the time of day and place when she is in the Indian town called Wenimesset, Northward of Quabaug.  Other examples of this, Rowlandson is aware of an "English town thirty miles away," and being aware she was "two miles from the Connecticut river" during another "Remove".  Rowlandson also seems capable of keeping track of the days of the week.  At several points throughout the narrative, she makes note of her captors' activities on the Sabbath.  It would seem likely that a person held hostage in a completely alien environment for nearly three months would lose track of the days of the week.  Rowlandson did not appear to suffer from this.  Instead of being presented as a poor soul who has lost her way, these assertions of place and time cast her in a resourceful light by showing us a woman capable of orienting herself spatially and temporally (http://www.bookrags.com/printfriendly/?p=gale&u=rowlandson-mary-aaw-01).

Throughout the narrative there are evidences of God's providence for His chosen.  His chosen need only wait patiently and suffer nobly to receive deliverance.  Yet Rowlandson barters her services for food and money and actively navigates through her captors' society.  This is a woman that is self-reliant and capable of surviving hardships in her own right.  For instance, Mary makes a shirt for King Philip's son and is paid one shilling.  She makes a shirt for another Indian and harasses that Indian until he makes payment of a knife.  Mary is taking control of her life and her ability to survive (http://enh241.wetpaint.com/page/Mary+Rowlandson).

Rowlandson's tone is colored by hindsight.  She tells the story of her captivity having been freed and knowing how the story ends.  Though she is often filled with despair, her overall tone remains hopeful.  She presents her story as a lesson to others.  Because of Rowlandson's intimiate relationship with her Indian captors, her book is interesting for its treatment of cultural contact.  In the use of autobiography, typology, and the jeremiad, Rowlandson's book helps us to understand the Puritan mind (http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/canam/rowlands.htm) (http://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/rowlands.htm).

Mary Rowlandson remained a Puritan woman in her narrative.  Mary was a woman to be reckoned with before her captivity began.  She was a minister's wife but did not attend Sunday service regularly.  She admitted to smoking tobacco in excess and enjoying the pleasure of it.  During her captivity, she remained aware of her surroundings and the limits placed upon her by her captors.  Mary was able to survive because of her mental and physical strength.  Above all Mary Rowlandson was able to adapt through her own abilities and through the Grace of God.  She was a Puritan woman with a strong pioneering spirit. 

Thomas Paine blog

Was Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, the beginnings of what Scientology is today?

Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England on January 29, 1737.  His father was Quaker and his mother was Anglican.  In 1774, Paine met Benjamin Franklin in London.  Franklin helped Paine emigrate to Philadelphia.  His career turned to journalism and Paine became a revolutionary propagandist.  He published Common Sense in 1776.  He produced The Crisis (1776-1783), which helped inspire the American Revolutionary Army.  Paine later returned to Europe to purse other ventures instead of continuing to help the Revolutionary cause.  In 1791-1792, he wrote The Rights of Man in response to criticism of the French Revolution.  This work caused Paine to be labeled an outlaw in England for his anti-monarchist views.  To avoid being arrested, he fled to France to join the National Convention [http://www.ushistory.org/PAINE/].

In 1793, Paine was imprisoned in France for not endorsing the execution of Louis XVI.  It was during this imprisonment, he wrote and distributed the first part of what was to become his most famous work at the time, The Age of Reason.  A deist manifesto to the core, Paine acknowledged his debt to Newton and declared that nature was the only form of divine revelation [http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/paine.html].

While reading this excerpt from The Age of Reason, Paine's writings appear similar to the beliefs of present day Scientologists.

          It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human inventions; it is only the
          application of them that is human.  Every science has for its basis a system of principles
          as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed (646).

          In fine, it is the soul of science.  It is an eternal truth; it contains the mathematical
          demonstration of which man speaks, and the extent of its uses are unknown (647).

          It is the structure of the universe that has taught this knowledge to man.  That structure
          is an ever- existing exhibition of every principle upon which every part of mathematical
          science is founded.  The offspring of this science is mechanics; for mechanics is no other
          than the principles of science applied practically (647, 648).

          The Almighty lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the structure of the
          universe, has invited man to study and to imitation.  It is as if He had said......
          "I have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and I have rendered the starry heavens
          visible, to teach him science and the arts.  He can now provide for his own comfort, and
           learn from my munificence to all, to be kind to each other" (648).

          I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church,
          nor by any church that I know of.  My own mind is my own church.  All national
          institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other
          than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power
          and profit (643).

Scientology considers the belief in a Supreme Being as something personal and offers no specific dogma.  The nature of the Supreme Being is revealed personally through each individual as he/she becomes more conscious and spiritually aware.  All humans are immortal spiritual beings capable of realizing a nearly godlike state through Scientology practice.  The path to salvation, or enlightenment, includes achieving states of increasingly greater mental awareness.  The Church of Scientology considers itself a religion because of its focus on the soul and spiritual awareness.  L. Ron Hubbard was the founder of Scientology.  His personal research concluded that a human is made up of three parts:  the body, the mind, and the soul.  Each individual has the capacity to reach a higher plain through intense study of oneself through the use of the sciences [Scientology.org/What_Is_Scientology] [www.religioustolerance.org/scientol.htm].

"These are the times that try men's souls."  This simple quotation from Thomas Paine's The Crisis not only described the beginning of the American Revolution, but also the life of Paine himself.  Throughout most of his life, his writings inspired passion, but also brought him great criticism.  But his radical views on religion would destroy his success [http://www.ushistory.org/PAINE/].

Franklin, W., Gura, P.F., Krupat, A. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol A.  W.W.  Norton & Company, Inc.  New York, NY, 2007.

Disclaimer:  The author of this blog is a Christian.  This blog is not intended as advertisement for Scientology
                   as a religion.

Jonathan Edwards was a great influence on the Great Awakening. Why was he voted out of the pulpit in Northampton?

Jonathan Edwards was a prominent leader of the east-coast revivals of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening.  The Great Awakening defined Christianity in the New World as distinctive from its European forms and allowed it to adapt to a democratic society.  Edwards was known as one of the greatest and most profound American evangelical theologians.  Edwards explicated the fundamentals of Reformed Calvinism according to reason and common sense, relying minimally on arguments from the Bible.  Edwards has been described as the first and greatest homegrown American philosopher [http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Jonathan_Edwards].

Edwards was raised in a theological environment.  His father was Timothy Edwards, a minister, and his grandfather was Rev. Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, Massachusetts.  Jonathan Edwards had been an eager seeker after salvation and was not fully satisfied with his own "conversion".  He took greater joy in the beauties of nature, and delighted in the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Solomon.  Edwards sought the soul of a true Christian, a holiness that was a sweet, serene, and calm nature.  Balancing these mystic joys and perceptions of Christian community was the stern tone of his Resolutions.  Edwards reflects the core Calvinist spirituality, that the more we appreciate the glory of God, the more we perceive the depravity and evil of the human rejection of Him [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/edwards/].

On February 5, 1727 he was ordained minister at Northampton, Massachusetts and assistant to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard.  Stoddard launched innovations in order to bring the people of the frontier to church, including opening communion to all who would come.  In this way, he utilized the Communion Table as a converting ordinance and not as a reward or sealing of salvation.  Stoddard departed from the traditional Puritan dry discourses to reach the emotions of his congregation.  As his successor, Edwards would develop this method of preaching and provide theological underpinnings for it in his work on the religious affections.  Edwards rejected his grandfather's opening of the Communion Table, an act that would undermine his position with the congregation decades later [http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Jonathan_Edwards].

Solomon Stoddard died in 1729, leaving Edwards the difficult task of the sole ministerial charge of one of the largest and wealthiest congregations in the colony.  In 1733, a religious revival began in Northampton and reached such intensity in the winter of 1734 and the following spring as to threaten the business of the town.  In six months, nearly 300 were admitted to the church.  The revival gave Edwards an opportunity for studying the process of conversion in all its phases and varieties.  This revival in Northampton was followed in 1739-1740 by the Great Awakening, distinctively under the leadership of Edwards (Tracy).

Edwards' ideas were compatible with scientific developments in his age.  He was fascinated by the discoveries of Isaac Newton and other scientists of his time.  While he was worried about the excessive faith in reason and materialism of some of his contemporaries, he saw the laws of science as derived from God.  For him there was no conflict between the spiritual and material worlds.  Edwards became very well known as a revivalist preacher who subscribed to an experiential interpretation of Reformed theology that emphasized the sovereignty of God, the depravity of humankind, the reality of hell, and the necessity of "New Birth" conversion.  The intellectual framework for revivalism he constructed in many of his works pioneered a new psychology and philosophy of affections, later invoked by William James in his classic Varieties of Religious Experience in 1902 [http://edwards.yale.edu/research/about-edwards/biography].

In 1748, a crisis developed in his relations with his congregation.  Edwards' preaching became unpopular.  For four years, no candidate was presented for admission to the church.  Edwards was not allowed to discuss his views in the pulpit.  Edwards was concerned with the "open admission" policies instituted by Stoddard that allowed many hypocrites and unbelievers into church membership.  Edwards insisted on a public profession of saving faith based on the candidate's religious experiences as a qualification not only for Holy Communion but also for church membership.  The ecclesiastical council voted that the pastoral relation be dissolved.  The church members, by a vote of more than 200 to 23, ratified the action of the council, and finally a town meeting voted that Edwards should not be allowed to occupy the Northampton pulpit.  His dismissal is seen as a turning point in colonial American history because it marked the clear and final rejection of the old "New England Way" constructed by the Purtitan settlers of New England.  There were social and political forces at work in the town as a reflection of larger economic, social and ideological forces then reshaping American culture.  Ironically, the colonial theologian who best anticipated the intellectual shape of modern America also was its first victim.  Edwards' struggle with these forces is recorded in the many manuscript sermons that were to follow [http://edwards.yale.edu/research/about-edwards/biography] [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/edwards/].

Edwards' views on the freedom of the will, virtue, God's purpose of creation and, most importantly, the religious affections, have garnered the attention of evangelical thinkers to this day.  The Great Awakening laid the spiritual foundation for the American revolution.  Edwards respected his congregation's right to self-governance, viewing their vote to oust him as "God in his providence, now calling me to part with you."  He justified the strong claim of God and religion upon the individual in a democratic society.  Edwards based his theology on personal spiritual experience, reason, observation and the common meaning of words, not scripture.  Edwards set the parameter for American religious thought then and today [http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Jonathan_Edwards].

Edwards' theology has a timeless appeal that makes it fascinating today as philosophy, but his importance to his own era lay in his ability to reach the hearts of his congregation.  The tragedy of Jonathan Edwards was that he was so clearly a product of the changing patterns of authority and community life in eighteenth-century New England.  He was more like a revolutionary than a Patriarch, but he thought of himself as a Patriarch.  Self-conscious as he was, introspective as he could be in moments of both triumph and failure, he could not reinvent himself.  His ideas were potentially far in advance of the time, but he kept all his best insights chained to the service of an antiquated social ideal that few other men shared by 1750.  But perhaps, like all good fathers, Edwards gave his "children" the inner resources to rebel when it came time for them to be men (Tracy).

Tracy, P.T.  Jonathan Edwards, Pastor.  Hill and Wang, New York, 1979.  (p. 194).

Was Anne Bradstreet a true Puritan? Was her manuscript really published without her knowledge?

Anne Bradstreet was the daughter of Thomas Dudley and Dorothy Yorke.  Anne lived in a time when the amount of education that a woman received was little to none.  She did not attend school but was privileged enough to receive her education from eight tutors and her father.  She was very inquisitive and satisfied her hunger for knowledge by reading some of the greatest authors ever known.  Anne was a Puritan woman of deep spiritual faith, but her highly intelligent and well-educated mind was capable of questioning and even of rebellion (Piercy, 17).  Because of her father's position as the steward of the Early of Lincoln's estate, she had unlimited access to the great llibrary of the manor.  In 1628 she married Simon Bradstreet, her father's assistant.

Her father and husband had joined a group of very successful men, whose goal was to protect Puritan values from people like the Bishop of Laud.  Their plan was to establish a Puritan society in the New World.  Bradstreet and her family immigrated to the New World in 1630.  She was not happy giving up all of the benefits of the Earl's manor.  After a difficult three months aboard ship, they arrived in the New World.  Bradstreet was overwhelmed by the sickness, lack of food, and primitive living conditions.  Bradstreet lived a hard life, but she was a strong woman.  This internal resolve is reflected in her writings [http://www.annebradstreet.com/anne_bradstreet_bio_002.htm].

 For the Puritan man or woman, writing was always just on the edge of idolatry.  Writing in the public arena, for women, was a far more scandalous undertaking than it was for their male counterparts.  In order to experss her views, Bradstreet presented her works in the modest manner of a godly woman who remains faithful to her duties (Engberg).

Bradstreet was bothered by the cultural bias against women that was common in her time.  Women were often considered intellectual inferiors.  Her writing was severely criticized because it was that of a woman.  When her first publication of The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America was released, her brother-in-law stressed she was a virtuous woman.  Bradstreet displays her anger toward this kind of criticism in her writing from "The Prologue":

          I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
          Who says my hand a needle better fits;
          A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong,
          For such despite they cast on female wits.
          If what i do prove well, it won't advance;
          They'll say it's stol'n, or else it was by chance.

Bradstreet wrote love poems about her passion for her husband.  These poems to her husband were bold departures from standard Puritan poetry (Watts).  In Bradstreet's Puritan culture, the love between husband and wife was supposed to be repressed, so as not to distract from devotion to God.  A good example is the poem, "To My Dear and Loving Husband":

          If ever two were one, then surely we.                                   

          If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;

          If ever wife was happy in a man,

          Compare with me ye women if you can.

Bradstreet's works also dealt with her religious experiences.  In these writings, she gives an insight of Puritan views of salvation and redemtion.  Bradstreet writes about how she feels that God has punished her through her illnesses and her domestic problems.  The Puritans believed that suffering was God's way of preparing the heart for accepting His Grace.  This idea plagued Bradstreet, and she wrote about how she struggled to do everything she could to give into His will.  She thought that God was hard on her because her soul was too in love with the world.

The publication of her first work gave her the confidence and experience to write freely in her own style.  Bradstreet began to express her own emotions in her writings.  In her later works, she proclaims that women are worth something.  In writing these later works, one would realize that Bradstreet had planned on having her poetry published from the beginning.  The use of emotion in her writings, is what changed Anne Bradstreet from a good writer into a great writer.  This is definitely not the "Puritan way" [http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/16071783/lit/bradstre.htm].

Percy, J.K.  Anne Bradstreet.  Twayne Publishers Inc., New York, 1965.

Watts, E.S.  The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945.  University of Texas Press, Austin and

   London, 1977.

Engberg, K.S.  The Right to Write.  University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland, 2010.