PRECIS #1: Nathan Barber
Santa Margarita Catholic HS
1st Period-John Braithwaite-Instructor
Were the Puritans Puritanical?
By Carl Degler, Stanford University
THESIS:
Carl Degler, in this provocative article, takes issue with the popular notion that the Puritans were people who had “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy” as advocated by Mencken, Macaulay, & Heffner who got it all wrong! They are not repressed sex misfits and bigots, but rather, keepers of the Victorian moral code with the highest levels of education anywhere in the colonies.
Degler Discounts the distortions of Puritans:
¨ Mencken, Macaulay, and Heffner distort rather than illuminate the essential character of Puritans.
¨ The word, “Puritan” has become encrusted with a good many barnacles that need to be stripped away. Often historians must declare what something is not, as well as, what it is! In the case of Puritanism—it is not synonymous with repression, fear, and sexual abstinence at all levels.
¨ This current usage of the adjective form of the term is misleading, incorrect, and unfair. Puritans cautioned against excess of merry-making. The Mather quote is appropriate: “Wine is of God… but the drunkard is from the Devil.”
¨ Among the Cotton clan, John Cotton saw little to object to in dancing between the sexes as long as it was not lascivious.
¨ In matters of dress the Massachusetts colony endeavored to wear “something modest” Puritan dress was the opposite of severe, long hair was acceptable among the upper-class. They detested that men and women of a mean condition should take upon themselves the garb of gentlemen.”
¨ If the Puritans are to be saved from the canard of severity of dress, it is also worth while to soften the charge that they were opposed to music and art!
¨ Well known American Puritans like Samuel Sewell and John Milton were sincere lovers of music. After all this was the age of Bach, Handel, Gluck and Monteverdi.
¨ The King Charles collection of art was dispersed, but Cromwell and others bought several pieces of it for themselves. Puritans, unlike Quakers, did not object to portrait painting.
¨ Modern scholars have professed to find in Puritanism, evidence of sexual repression and inhibition. It would be false to suggest that Puritans did not subscribe to the canon of simple chastity. It was equally erroneous to think that their sexual lives were crabbed or that sex was abhorrent to them. Court records of Massachusetts show that sexual issues dominated the concern and that the sexuality of the Puritans was wide-open and virile.
¨ Because as another divine said, “use of the Marriage Bed” is “founded in man’s nature.” It is difficult to reconcile the usual view of the stuffiness of Puritans with the literally hundreds of confessions to premarital sexual relations in the extant church records. These confessions were made by the saints, not the unregenerate.
¨ Strict moral surveillance by the authorities was a seventeen-century rather than a Puritan attitude.
¨ Relations between the sexes in Puritan society were often much more loving and tender than the mythmakers would have us believe.
¨ Anne Bradstreet wrote a number of poems devoted to her love for her husband in which the sentiments are distinctly romantic.
Puritan Characteristics:
¨ It would be a mistake…to try to make these serious dedicated men and women into rakes of the Renaissance. They were sober human folk. God sent you into the world not as “play-house” but as work-house. Perry Miller said, “only a man convinced of the inevitable and eternal character of evil could fight it so hard and so unceasingly.
¨ The Puritan, at his best, was a “moral athlete”. More than most men the Puritan strove with himself and his fellow men to attain the moral high ground. Puritans drove himself and his society to tremendous heights of achievement material and spiritual.
¨ To realize how different Puritans could be, one need only to contrast Roger Williams and John Cotton. But despite the range of differences they were all linked by at least on characteristic. That was their belief in themselves, in their morality and in their mission to the world!
¨ In his ceaseless striving for signs of salvation and knowledge…the Puritan placed great reliance upon his intellect.
¨ Always the mere emotion of religion was to be controlled by reason. Because of this, the university trained Puritan clergy prided themselves in the truth that “glory of God was intelligence.”
¨ Convinced of reason’s great worth, it was natural that the Puritan should also value education. Ignorance is the mother of heresy, poverty, and discrimination!
¨ Doubt as one may, Samuel Eliot Morison’s claims for the secular origins of Harvard, his evidence of the typically Renaissance secular education was available to all of New England.
¨ Schools were a necessity for families, communities, churches, and colonies.
¨ No other colony in the seventeenth-century imposed such a high educational standard upon simple people farming as the Puritans did.
¨ Unlike the Puritans, the Quakers exhibited little impulse toward popular education.
CONCLUSION;
¨ Though the line which runs from the early New England schools to the distinctly American system of free public education is not always progressively upward. The Puritan innovation of public support and control on a local level was the American prototype of a proper system of popular education!
¨ Puritans sought social and religious balance in life. Their cultural legacy was a high point in literature.
Bibliographic Citation:
Oates, Portait of America. Volume I, 6th edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, pp. 28-37 and the same reading can be found in Carl Degler’s book, Out of Our Past. Pp. 9-22.
Suggested corollary reading:
Alan Taylor, The American Colonies Penguin Books pp. 158-186
MICHAEL STROCK
Weber State University
American Civilization 1700
Prof. John Braithwaite
Assignment #2
“The Personal Side of Developing People”
By Jack Larkin
Taken From Portraits of America, Vol. I
THESIS OF THE ARTICLE:
Larkin takes a look at this young American Republic and their ways of life, particularly their personal practices such as what they wore, their likes and dislikes, what they did to occupy their free time (amusements), and even their sexual preferences and practices.
SALIENT POINTS OF READING INTEREST:
¨ It was very common for the people to wear dull and inexpensive clothing; to have facial hair, and to make physical gesture which did not depict their feeling.
¨ Blacks in their celebrations used bodily expressions that were strange to whites.
¨ Farmers walked awkwardly, slouching from side to side-these different gestures and conduct characterized average American people
¨ According to Larkin, each class and group of people were distinct in the way they carried themselves.
¨ The conditions in which the early American lived were quite repulsive, along with urine odors throughout the house and offices, the mixing of smells of dung, from horses and buffalo [in western areas] decorated the bars.
¨ Pigs cleaned the streets of food liter—and along with them came more infection and disease among those who took the swine for food. (poor classes)
¨ Privy habits differed in the areas of the country—the chamber pots [bed pans] were widely used.
¨ Bedding accommodations were dirty and infested with insects, lice, and mites, along with the same for children who were likewise infested.
¨ Means to improve sanitation and personal cleanliness were made through efforts such as washing once a day(almost), moving wash basins into bedchambers from the kitchen and later on, into personal water closets and bathtubs—the rich got cleaner—the poor got dirtier.
¨ Drinking [which was considered “healthy and fortifying”] was largely a part of society [generally among white males], thus, taverns played a significant role in their drinking as a means for socials and such, not for a lady to become drunk—this was shameful and hence, one sees the gender differences.
¨ Violence and fighting always accompanied men and their drinks. Not just on the frontier but in towns and cities as well.
¨ Thieves were publicly punished for their crimes which were looked upon as joyous and celebrated equality. These were almost holidays.
¨ Due to drunken accidents, campaigns began to promote temperance and respectability to civilize the “American man” and as a result, drinking along with its advocates declined in popularity in some areas.
¨ American Temperance Society was founded in 1826
¨ Religion had become a respectable exercise and many new American religions surfaced during the Age of Jackson
¨ Forms of public punishment changed—John Hancock wrote, “…mutilating or lacerating the body…” was an indignity to human nature, yet southerners continued the practice with custom.
¨ It was common action for men and women to become sexually acquainted before taking their vows of marriage, and in so doing; it was also common for the marriage to be accelerated due to early pregnancies. (Blacks were also involved with such customs), hence, this heightened sexuality aroused even the married to resort to prostitution and liaisons.
¨ Bundling (or the act of a single man and woman to lie together, fully clothed) was a widely accepted form in courtship.
¨ A greater emphasis on control (sexually) surfaced, and more focus was placed on personal establishment in the working world, before marriage or any possible altering or aspects (of sexual activity)—and consequently the common size of the family decreased. Apprehension of contraception and its use grew dramatically, thus after 1830, the birthrate declined. Alcott and Graham argued that these sexual relations be limited.
¨ Social customs such as smoking, snuffing, and chewing began to lose favor amongst the honorable and respectable when at one time they were shared by all alike.
¨ To top off these changes with the young republic, the old English customs of bowing the head, tipping the hat, and other similar quirks, slowly diminished to the all too recognizable American “hand-shake” so simple yet so equal.
MY ASSESSMENT & CONCLUSION:
It’s very interesting to actually read of the characteristics and customs of the early Americans. I believe that as we are taught through our schooling, those who determine the curriculums choose not to portray our early parents as they really were. I had always thought of those before me as clean and chaste examples. I have even found myself repeating the words, “why couldn’t the people of today be more like those before us,” but in actuality we are not much different. Although in reading this essay, it is very comforting in noting how this young American Republic was willing to do better and change. They were eager to build their own morals from a foundation of lesser values and they were successful in do it. Not only did they change morally, but ethically too! Emphasis on prestige and position soon diminished under the idea that people really were created equally. The evident class distinctions grew unfamiliar even to their foreign associates. Yes, our forefathers and parents participated in many things that generally would cause some of us to frown upon their past, and yet, it is quite possible that the strong ethics and morals that so many identify with in this day and age were planted by the very same young republic that so indulged in those practices.
“Cowboys don’t bath, they just dust off!”
Richard Schoenfeld
Weber State University 1998-7 am T-Th
Professor John Braithwaite
“Why The Union Won”
by James MacPherson, Princeton University
THESIS: Years passed in turmoil. Thousands of Americans died. Major changes resulted in the country, industrial, political, emotional, socially and culturally. All of these issues from the war that would change history forever. The war went on and only one side could overcome the other and come out victorious. The Union Army emerged the winner. There are many assumptions why the Union Army overcame the Confederates; therefore leaves us the question, “Why did the Union win?”
I. The weeks after the assassination of Lincoln
A. Confederate armies were surrendering.
B. Confederate President flees toward: convicted falsely with connection to Lincoln’s assassination
C Steamboat Sultana sinks in the Mississippi
D Gangs, guerillas, and outlaws ravaged the region for years afterwards.
E 620,000 soldiers died. This does not included civilian deaths.
II. Why did the Confederate Army lose?
A, God was on the side heaviest battalions
1. North had superior man power of at least 3 to 1, the Union Army at least 2 to 1.
2. North had greater advantage economically and logistically.
3. However, if was possible for the South to overcome the disadvantages
B. Internal division which weakened the Confederacy.
1. Conflicts between governors, disaffection of non-slave holders from a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight, opposition habeus corpus, disloyalty from slaves, and growing doubts from slave holders.
2. “Weakness in morale” a “loss of the will to fight.”
3. However, the North experienced the same types of internal struggles
a. Opposition to conscription, taxation, suspension of habeas corpus, etc.
b. Whit as well as blacks grew disaffected with war to preserve slavery.
4. North had the institutionalization of obstruction in the Democratic Party in the North which compelled the Republicans to close the ranks in support of war policies and overcome opposition.
C. Quality of leadership. (Military and Civilian)
1. Northern leadership
a. Gradual development of superior northern leadership
b. Better strategic leadership in the West.
c. Remarkable war leadership by Lincoln
d. Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman and others
2. Southern Leadership
a. Early was the South enjoyed better leadership
b. Beauregard, Lee, Albert Sidney and Joseph E. Johnston, Stonewall Jackson.
c. South neglected the war in the West.
d. Bumbling leaders who performed miracles of organization and improvisation.
III. Four major turning points which sculpture the eventual outcome.
- Great counter-offensives by the Southern leaders in summer of 1862
- Assured a prolongation in the conflict.
- Created potential Confederate success.
- Defeat of Confederate invasions in Maryland and Kentucky and stalled European mediation. Fall of 1862.
- Perhaps prevented Democratic victory in the northern elections
- Set the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation.
- Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. Fall of 1863.
- Sherman’s capture of Atlanta, Philip Sheridan’s destruction of rebel army in the Shenandoah Valley. Summer of 1864.
- Defeat cause demoralization and loss of will.
- Victory pumps up morale and the will to win.
IV. Consequences of the war: