Some Notes on the City of Horn

 This is some links that have been sitting around for a long time.

The city of Horn was very important during the Protestant Reformation and Counter Reformation. There is a nice history of that city written by my former Church Law professor, Gustav Reingrabner, which one can purchase at the Rathaus or the local bookshop.

This Hungarian Website has a nice view of the city from the Austrian City Atlas. Of course, Horn is on the Schweickert map as well.

In this context, I also ran into this paper on avoiding or even working against the Black Plague in the Wachau of the 1680s.

Contextual Interpretation

I am trying to put together lists of examples that show why munging together large amounts of textual data can often run afoul of tricks and traps that do not assist in historical analysis, or perhaps other digital humanities as well.

• Shifts in the Meaning of Words 
• "mother-in-law" in Pride and Prejudice actually means the stepmother (Jack Goody, Production and Reproduction, p.53)
• "making love" means for a man to be talking with an unmarried woman in Victorian England (e.g. Ginger Susan Frost, Promises Broken: Courtship, Class, and Gender in Victorian England, 1995, p69) with the intent of espousing her

• Humorous/Insulting/Derogatory uses of Words
• "nunnery" in Hamlet means a brothel in Elizabethan slang
• "bitch" in rap music

These specific cases are instances of the discourse being not identified properly, e.g. in its mode or in its temporal delineation. But there are more detailed comments we can make about the discursive nature and the context of statements give a suitable example.

Some Mamluk Details and Natural History Details

Been researching history of the Mamluks for a collaboration with some people in the Digital Humanities at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Found some cool resources on the web:

• Reuven Amitai-Preiss' book on the Ilkhanid Mongols and the Mamluks
• An old German History of Islam

In communicating with my collaborators, I revisited the Timbersnake argument from my dissertation, and found some additional resources for that, including

• Mark Catesby's Natural History of  the Carolinas,Florida, the Bahamas etc etc with a cool depiction of a rattlesnake from volume 2, published in London in 1756.
• The travels of Linneus student Peter or Pehr Kalm of Sweden, who helped classify rattlesnakes for Linneus (as did Catesby's drawings)
• An analysis of his journal (including on rattlesnakes)
• His three volume travel journal is available here in German for the First Part. Indubitably other parts are on Archive.org as well. 

The Trust Discussions

In the late 1980s, Diego Gambetta invited a host of scholars to King's College, Cambridge, to discuss trust from the point of view of a plurality of disciplines.

Diego Gambetta (ed), Trust. Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations,  Cambridge (Basil Blackwell)1988.

Curiouser and Curiouser

When a friend of mine interviewed a pagan who wanted to know more about easter eggs, easter bunnies and easter foxes, this lead me to Georg Franck von Franckenau, a medical doctor and personal attendant to Christian V of Denmark, who wrote some 20+ Medical dissertations in the style of Latin Satires, published posthumously by his son in 1722, where Satire #19 is the first discussion of the easter egg and the easter bunny, with Latin and German quotes (p.396 in the book, p.413 in the PDF). The work of Franckenau, especially his analysis of the sexual and the erotic in these dissertations, is discussed in this paper, which places Franckenau squarely into the Baroque tradition of curiosity literature (p.88 Fn 14). The author makes a good case for the relationship between the extreme and marvelous and the Baconian inductive method on the other, which required these outliers to adjust the conceptual framework (p.96 Fn 55).

Among books that discuss the curiosity literature is Christoph Daxelmüller (1979), Barockdissertationen und Polyhistorismus. Die Curiositas der Ethnica und Magica im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. Würzburg, 117–186, which is available at the Vienna FB for European Ethnography.

History of Transportation before 1860

Early Trails

The Appalachian mountains separated the Ohio-Mississippi hinterland from the Atlantic seaboard, and overcoming this separation was the task of early trails (p.3). The efficient sea communication on the Atlantic shore had the curious effect of providing "a stretch of ocean ... over which goods could be transported at less expense than they could be carried overland for distances which to-day seem inconsiderable." (p.3) 

... the colonies throughout the colonial period were commercially closer to Europe than they were to one another. (p.3)

Trade routes into the interior were still necessary, however, as the "seaboard communities could not themselves produce the commodities required by this traffic".

Prior to the Revolution intercontinental commerce was inconsiderable, and intercolonial trade-routes, where they existed, were entirely inadequate. (p.4)

The coastal plain was well opened up by rivers, whose branches led into the valleys and gaps of the mountains.

A study of the spread of settlement up to 1775 shows that the immigrant population ran up the river valleys as far as the fall-line, and there generally stopped. (p.4)

After the Revolution, the twin patterns of the westward migration and the eastward flow of products made the question of how to traverse the Appalachian system "a dominant issue in national politics, involving the economic welfare and growth of every section of the country" (p.4)

The parallel ranges of the Appalachian, a system 300 miles wide and 1300 miles long, reached from the Green Mountains in Vermont, to the pine-hills of Alabama. The rivers could not be navigated up to the mountains, but the headwaters revealed good passes, though in the South these paths ended up being somewhat roundabout.

In  Pennsylvania the chief route to the Ohio followed the West Branch of the Susquehanna. Farther south was another route by the Juniata to a tributary of the Allegheny. (p.4)

Bibliographical Record
Balthasar Henry Meyer, History of Transportation in the United States before 1860, Washington (Carnegie Institute of Washington) 1917.

On the gift of speaking in tongues.

Middleton in his A free inquiry into the miraculous powers makes it clear that the gift of tongues, while most famous from the apostles' Pentecostal action, ceased almost immediately, as gifts became suspect for the establishing church, and then were en bloc rejected by the Protestant Reformation.

Middleton is willing to make this the decisive gift, the one that people need to show or shut up about.

Middleton then goes on (p.123) and sees the loss of moral superiority and spiritual quality when the Church becomes part of the Roman Empire, but that's of course the Protestant strategy of dating the split, when the true light was lost, providing the target to which the Reformation can aim back.

The problem with the "popish legends", as Middleton called St Augustin's narration of miracles (p.140), was that they were on the verge of crossing over into reliques on the one hand (Middleton mentions St Steven) and had all the odium of this quintessential anti-Protestant issue as well.

Of course, the sources, e.g. Chrysostomos, were just as disappointed in some sense that the miracles had ceased, and were blaming lack of faith as the reasons---thence the claim about St Paul's handkerchief (p.131).

In general the Protestant criticism was, specifically mentioning Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (who was notorious to English Protestants due to his involvement in the Oath of Allegiance debate of James I), that once Christianity had become state religion, the Church would no longer pray for but curse the princes that were in her way (p.157).

Thus, Middleton can write (p.162), in good Protestant stance (though he is paraphrasing the Church fathers' position at that point):

The History of Gospel, I hope may be true, though the History of the Church be fabulous.

The miracles are unhelpful because they take away from the the calm of the Christianity.

[The, RCK] ... sole tendency [of miracles, RCK] is to recommend, as a perfect pattern of the Christian life, the most extravagant enthusiasm and contemptible superstition, that any age or history perhaps has ever produced. (p.173)

The story of the tongues cut out by the Arian princes from the confessors who can then still speak is scientifically relativized by the description of two cases where people, who were born without tongue or lost it due to small-pox induced ulcers, were yet able to speak (p.184f).

Yet the humble testimony of this single Physician, grounded on real experiment, will overturn at once all his pompous list of dignified authorities, and convince every man of judgement, that this pretended miracle, like all other fictions, which have been imposed upon the world, under that character, owed it’s [sic!] whole credit to our ignorance of the powers of nature. (p.185)

Lavoisier and Sage on Potash Production

This is reading notes from the accessible potash document I described in this post.

Sage et al (p.1) note that potash smells acidic and like urine. It usually is dark brown in coloration (p.2), when it is in its coarse state. When fired in the reverberatory furnace, it turns slate blue or white and is now called potash (p.2). When potash is calcined well [i.e. turns into pearl ash, RCK], it becomes porous and light, like pumice (p.3).

The most common method for potash production is to burn wood (p.5) and put the ashes into a copper vessel, adding water and boiling the mixture. One lets the lye settle, decants it into a separate boiler, then lets the remaining water evaporate until the potash is dry.

In places of charcoal production, stovepipes can be used to gather up the humidity distilled out of the charring wood pile into basins, which are then evaporated using boilers (p.6). If the salts sticks too strongly to the pans, scissors and mallets are used to detach it (p.7).  All woods produce some salts, but some more than others. Older ashes produce more, provided they are kept wet, and the best come from hardwoods (p.7). In the summer, they use cold water; in the winter, they mix hot and cold water half-and-half. Water that is too hot spoils the process, as the grease cannot separate from the salts. Stagnant waters give twice the potassium than clear waters.

One places wooden troughs of oak or pine a finger and a half apart, with a false bottom, where one places a bed of straw, and masses the ashes on top of that, so that the water cannot drain too quickly (p.8). One replaces the straw every six weeks in winter, and in the summer only every two months. Once the liquid stops fuming, one has to stir it with a stick, let the fire go out and cut the salt out with sticks.

The best method is the Swedish method, where one cuts the wood into pieces and piles it up.

L'art de fabriquer le salin et la potasse

I am still trying to figure out the relationship between

L'art de fabriquer le salin et la potasse ; suivi des Expériences sur les moyens de multiplier la fabrication de la potasse ([Reprod.]) / par le citoyen Pertuis, & par le citoyen B. G. Sage... (Bavarian library copy) and the Lavoisier article from 1779 with the same title (catalog entry). Earlier I confused the Lavoisier book with this article on just Salpeter production, which Lavoisier also wrote when a regisseur at the poudre commission.

At first I thought that Pertuis and Sage were regisseurs with Lavoisier, but that seems unlikely based on this essay. At the same time, the name and the structure look so similar, that one suspects it might be a reprint, cleansed for the Republic (as the labels citoyen make one suspect).

One thing is certain: Lavoisier was executed in 1794.

Prof Marco Beretta of the University of Bologna, in a private communication, pointed out [typos rectified, RCK], that L'art de fabriquer le salin et la potasse was

... originally published anonymously upon a report made by Tillet, Cadet, Sage and Lavoisier. The report was probably written and conducted by Lavoisier. In the second ed. the experiments by Pertuis were added and for [from?] the index it seems that a few experiments by Sage were also added to the original ones. Thus, although Sage and Pertuis claim to be the author of the whole work[, this] was misleading to say the least, [but] their additions, apparently not particularly significant, justified the appearance of their names on the frontispiece.

However, an analytical comparison of the two editions remains a desideratum.

The industrial history of the United States by Comen

In The industrial history of the United States from 1905, Katharine Coman reconstructs the start to the war of 1812 in the lack of guaranteed neutrality of American shipping and the impressment of sailors into the British Navy (p.172). America had found itself pushed into the second best spot in international shipping after the French navy had been worsted at Trafalgar and the European continental countries found themselves confined to their harbors with the Union Jack reigning at sea.

In 1806 the British were blockading the European coast "from Brest to the Elbe", and relying on the articles from 1793 to confiscate any goods going to France. Napoleon and the British Empire had claimed the right to claim any ships, cargo and crews that were assisting the other side (p.173). The protesting ports of Salem, Boston, New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia received no assistance from Virginia planter and president Jefferson, who was above all else interested in avoiding war. The Embargo Act therefore required all American ships to trade along the coast exclusively, with bonds at twice the value of the cargo to ensure compliance.

Though some people complied with the rules by selling the ships or simply not returning to harbor in the US (p.174), the impact for the economy was disastrous.

Prices of foreign commodities doubled ; prices of domestic goods fell below the cost of production. The $50,000,000 of capital invested in shipping brought in no revenue. Thirty thousand out of forty thousand American sailors were suddenly thrown out of employment. Farmers unable to dispose of their produce offered their lands for sale. Lumbermen and fishermen were reduced to beggary. The mercantile classes suffered no less. In New York the Embargo caused one hundred and twenty bankruptcies and threw twelve hundred unfortunates into the debtors' prison. (p.174)

In 1809, the US Government reversed course (p.175) with the nonintercourse with Great Britain, and now the US could pick up the neutral shipping.

The war tariff of July 1, 1812, doubled and trebled the duties on imported commodities. Imports and exports rapidly declined. Their combined value in 1814 was but $20,000,000, one seventh of the foreign trade of 1810. Our shipowners faced ruin. (p.175)

Anyone who owned a ship took out a privateering contract and made for the seas to capture British ships, with the full approval of the government.

Sixty-five vessels were commissioned as privateers in the first three weeks of the war, one hundred and fifty in the first two months. During the summer of 1812 one hundred prizes were taken, and but fifty vessels were lost to the enemy, only thirteen of these being privateers. During the three years of war the five hundred and fifteen privateers commissioned by the United States captured over thirteen hundred British vessels, most of them 'merchantmen carrying valuable cargoes. Congress allowed a rebate of one third the import duty on captured goods and offered twenty-five dollars for each prisoner taken. (p.176)

Though in the immediate aftermath, trade blossomed, by 1821, it had collapsed again, and the key reason---beyond the panic of 1819 and the tariff of 1816---was the reciprocity of free trade offered by the US to the rival shipping nations (p.177).

The real gainers from the reciprocity policy were not the shipowners but the farmers and planters, whose surplus products were sent to foreign markets at declining freight rates. (p.178)

Then Comen turns to the development of manufacturing.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, in spite of the encouragement, legislative and otherwise, that had been given to manufactures, the United States was still in the main an agricultural nation. We were producing more both of food products and raw materials than were consumed in the country, and we could not provide manufactured commodities sufficient to supply the home market. (p.180)

Shipping, farmers and consumers were happy to trade raw products for manufactured goods imported, only the manufacturers were unhappy (p.180). From the Embargo in 1808 to the end of the War in 1815, the manufacturing of cotton enjoyed a virtual monopoly within the US. This caused a boom in the cotton manufacturing that had previously only progressed gradually. The boom was amplified by the redirection of capital; shipping monies moved into manufacturing instead.

Slater's success at Pawtucket had demonstrated the possibilities of this new textile industry, and men trained under his eye went out to set up rival establishments. The mills at Slatersville, Rhode Island, Pomfret, Connecticut, and Union Village, New York, were direct offshoots from the "Old Mill." For the first ten years development was slow. (p.180)

[Slater had grown up in Belper, England, where he had apprenticed at a frame using the Arkwright spinning method for leveraging water power, invented in the 1760s. This knowledge he brought to Rhode Island, even though departure for weaving apprentices was supposed to be illegal, where he collaborated with American artisans like David Wilkinson to reconstruct an Arkwright like frame. RCK]

In 1807 there were fifteen cotton mills running 8000 spindles and producing 300,000 pounds of cotton yarn annually. In 1811 there were eighty-seven mills operating 80,000 spindles, producing 2,880,000 pounds of yarn per year and employing 4000 men, || women, and children. In 1815, 500,000 spindles gave employment to 76,000 persons, with a payroll of $15,000,000 per year. Rhode Island was the center of this flourishing industry. Within thirty miles of Providence were one hundred and thirty mills running 130,000 spindles and employing 26,000 operatives. (pp.180f)

However, the cotton was still weaved by hand on looms, until C. Lowell succeeded in 1814 in establishing the first power loom in the USA in Waltham, MA (p.181). The innovation spread, and the work had been simplified to the point that women and children could do it (70%-85% of the employees), which significantly lowered cost.

Establishing the woolen manufacturing required weaning oneself from the sheep imports from Spain, Portugal, Saxony, Russia, South America and Syria (p.182). Merino sheep seemed to be the solution and caught on first; they were able to handle the continental climate. Woll was fetching 75c in 1811 and $2-3 in 1813 (pp.182f). Rowland Hazard succeeded in putting together the first woolen factory, were carding, spinning and weaving was all accomplished by water power, in 1828 (p.183).

The US Iron manufacturing was favored because of the availability of anthracite or stone coal (p.183), which was brought to Philadelphia via the Delaware River as early as 1804 (p.183).

In 1805 there were five furnaces and six forges in Fayette County [in Pennsylvania, RCK]. Three rolling and slitting mills and a steel furnace were successfully established by 1811. The iron deposits of the river valleys to the north were being developed in the same period. Pittsburg was the natural center for this rising industry because of her unexcelled advantages in the way of water transportation. (p.183)

Getting a grip on Economic History on the Internet Archive

Ernest Ludlow Bogart did not only write a general Economic History of the United States (accessible here, here and here), but also a Financial History of the State of Ohio. Bogart also published readings in economic history (here and here).

Then there is Thurman William Van Metre, who also wrote an economic history (here, here, here and here). Or Edward Mead Earle, who wrote an Outline of Economic Development of the United States.

Sidney Reeve Armor also wrote a modern Economic History (scan 2).

Peter Termin worked on the Bank War of the 1830s. Katharine Comen wrote an economic history of the land beyond the Mississippi (Vol I, Vol 2) also here, here, here and here.

Then there are selections of readings on economic history for specific time periods.

• Benjamin Rand, Selections illustrating economic history since the Seven Year's War
• Guy Stevens Callender, Selections from an economic history of the United States 1765-1860 (scan 2, scan 3)
• Chauncey Mitchell Depew's Economic readings from 1795-1895 on commerce. (Volume I, Volume II)

An early theoretician of the economy in the US was Daniel Raymond, about whom  Charles Patrick Neill wrote a book.

A History of Domestic and Foreign Commerce by Emory Richard Johnson sounds good too, as does Hans Keiler's book on Shipping.

Then there is an Industrial History by Katharine Comen (as a school book). As well as a multi-volume Documentary History of American Industrial Society (vol 1, vol 2, vol 3, vol 4, vol 5, vol 6, vol 7, vol 8, vol 9, vol 10), edited by John Rogers Commons. Commons collaborated with Ulrich Bonnell Phillips on Plantation and Frontier Documents (1649-1863).
Lewis Austin wrote on the American Proletariat. Edith Abbott offers some insights on women's role in this story of industrialization. 

Marion Mills Miller wrote a multi volume history (over 14) that shows the connection between political and economic debate, entitled American debate; a history of political and economic controversy in the United States, with critical digests of leading debates (Volume 1: here and here; Volume 2: here and here), and who knows which volumes here and here. These it makes more sense to search for the one needed ....

Robert Marion La Follette also wrote a multi-volume history on the Making of the United States of America, only some volumes are available: vol 3 (industry and finance), vol 6 (mining and metallurgy), vol 7 (inventions), vol 10 (public welfare).

On a more political level is Charles Austin Beard's oeuvre, for example on the economic underpinnings of Jeffersonian Democracy. Gustavus Meyer has a multi-volume history on the Great American Fortunes (vol I (scan 2), vol 2 (scan 2), vol 3 (scan 2)).

Albert Bushnell Hart comments on the socio-economic forces in American History. Seymour Dunbar has his multi-volume history of the impact of Travel on all aspects of American History, including the socio-economic (Vol I, Vol II, Vol III, Vol IV). The US department of transportation issued a book on the history of American Highways.

Lydia Rebecca Blaich does a tri-nation comparative economic geography of the US (with Germany and England) (Scan 2, Scan 3, Scan 4).

Last but not least, the cool Graphic History of the United States by Louis Morton Hackrich.

How Campbell's Mother in Law had a run-in with the Indians

Richardson (1868), p.358 cites the kidnapping in 1789 of Mrs Brown by Indians from Doddbridges' Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars of the ... (pp.226ff) [in the 1912 edition]. Mrs Brown was the stepmother of Alexander Campbell's first wife, Margaret, whom Alexander first met in 1810. Thus, only some 20 years before Campbell lived in the Western part of Virginia, the place had still been wild frontier and a locale for bad interactions between the white newcomers and the indigenous population.

Richardson's Memoirs of Alexander Campbell (Part I)

Robert Richardson proposes (p.4f) to reconstruct Campbell's relationship with the Secession movement and other denominations not as a pre-description of the context, but at the moment of the contact with Campbell. For the Secession movement, Richardson made use of the biographies of Robert and James Alexander Haldane, as well as the Church history by John McKerrow's History of the Secession Church (Vol I, 1839; ...).

Alexander was born in Ireland (p.19),  his father Thomas of West-Scottish extraction (p.21), his mother of French Huguenot (p.21). Though Episcopalian in upbringing, Thomas felt the Scottish church lacking in vitality, and prefered the Secession Church as well as the Covenanters (p.22). Thomas was very worried about his salvation, asking his friends for comfort, until he had a conversion experience while walking alone in the fields which left him with a feeling of consecration to the divine plan (p.23). Thomas' father Archibald preferred the Church of England, wanting to "serve God according to act of Parliament" (p.24) and did not support his son entering the Secession Church (p.24); but through the patronage of his friend Mr John Kinley (p.25), Thomas was permitted to study at Edinburgh, where he studied divinity and medicine. Richardson comments,

… it being regarded proper for ministers to have, in additional to a knowledge of their particular profession, such an acquaintance with medicine as would enable them to render necessary aid to their poorer parishioners who might not have the services of a regular medical attendant. (p.25)

(For the lecture plan of divinity at the time, including examinations in Greek and Latin proficiency, plus a short biography of Dr Bruce, the divinity school headmaster, see (p.26).) After meeting his future wife, Thomas took a position at Rich-Hill, near Lough Neagh (p.30), and this is where Alexander spent his early childhood (p.31).

The waters of the lough [i.e. Lough Neagh, RCK] are celebrated for their power of petrifying wood and other organic substances placed in its waters or buried near its shores. (p.30 Fn *)

Boarding with a Mr Gillis to attend the elementary school in Market Hill, and staying with his uncles in Newry, where they were running an academy, Alexander was nevertheless mostly interested in sports and averse to confinement (p.31), making it difficult for his father to teach him. Attempts to add French to his schedule at age nine, for example, failed (p.31); and so he ended up working with the farm hands instead, which he enjoyed very much (p.32). It was only when fully grown, that Alexander developed his taste for reading and began studying with the determination to become one of the best scholars in the kingdom. Richardson praised Thomas' parenting wisdom for taking this route (p.33).  Alexander was a fast memorizer--60 lines of blank verse in 52 minutes--and became proficient in the poets and philosophy, esp. John Locke (p.33). Richardson stressed that this did not eliminate the love for the outdoors and physical activity, which expressed itself especially in fishing and hunting (p.34); cf. Footnote * for the anecdote on attempting to produce his own gun powder.

Following the instructions of the synod (p.35), Thomas read and sung and prayed twice a day with his family, and taught them catechism once a week, encouraged twice daily secret prayer, and an observance of the sabbath. The children would learn age appropriate amounts of Bible verses by heart and recite them at evening prayer (p.35). After attending church, the children were not only expected to remember the text, but also the discourse, down to the leading points of argument (p.36). Alexander himself noted that his mother was an especially outstanding specimen of the female sex (p.37) [apparently even surpassing Alexander's own wife, RCK], and that he owed it to his parents that he knew Ecclesiastes & Proverbs, as well as the Psalms (which he attributed to Solomon and David, respectively), by heart already as a child (p.37).

Alexander also observed his father's reverence for the Bible, noting as a child already that only the Bible and the concordance would be on his father's writing desk; all other books would remain on the shelves (p.39). Thomas Campbell was also a good example as a preacher (p.40). In the political turmoils of Ireland, between Orangemen and United Irishmen, Thomas Campbell steered clear of all of them (p.41), especially condemning secret associations (p.42), a stance that Alexander inherited (p.45). Thomas' handling of the situation brought him the offer of tutoring children of the nobility, but Thomas preferred the relative poverty of his ministerial position (p.43).

With the increasing family, Thomas Campbell was hard pressed to feed the mouths with his income as a minister (p.46) [see Footnote * for details on reimbursement funds for ministries in Ireland, RCK]. Thus Thomas opened an academy, with Alexander, then 17, as the assistant, to teach his own children and those of the parish, at the town of Rich-Hill, requisitioning a two-story house on the main square (p.47). The academy quickly attracted students (p.47). netting £200 per annum (p.48) while being regarded as a key contribution to the neighborhood. The father had already previously noted (p.47) "evidences of increasing seriousness" (p.47), which now that Alexander was teaching (p.48) found expression in being “much more thoughtful upon religious subjects” and in having “a deeper religious feeling” (p.48).

As his convictions deepened, he underwent much conflict of mind, and experienced great concerns in regard to his own salvation, so that he lost for a time his usual vivacity, and sought, in lonely walk in fields and by prayer in secluded spots, to obtain such evidences of Divine acceptance as his pious acquaintances were accustomed to consider requisite; …. (p.48)

Richardson then cites a longer statement by Alexander, admitting that it hailed from a later point in time ("he himself gave, many years afterward, the following account" (p.49).

“From the time that I could read the Scriptures, I became convinced that Jesus was the Son of God. I was also fully persuaded that I was a sinner, and must obtain pardon through the merits of Christ or be lost for ever. This caused me great distress of soul, and I had much exercise of mind under the awakenings of a guilty conscience. Finally, after many struggling, I was enabled to put my trust in the Saviour, and to feel my reliance on him as the only Saviour of sinners. From the moment I was able to feel this reliance on the Lord Jesus Christ, I obtained and enjoyed peace of mind. It never entered into my head to investigate the subject of baptism or the doctrines of the creed.” (p.49)

In preparation for the ministry, a choice that was at this point mainly his father's and not yet Alexander's own, Alexander studied ecclesiastical history and marveled at the divisions inside the faith (p.49).

While thus engaged [i.e. his studies of ecclesiastical history, RCK], he was filled with wonder at the strange fortunes of Christianity, and at the numerous divisions or parties in religious society. (p.49)

Richardson then enumerates the stances that Alexander developed with respect to the different religious parties available at the time in Northern Ireland.

He found the Catholics, numerous in his own country, for the most part an ignorant, priest-ridden, superstitious people, crushed, as it were, to the earth, as well by their own voluntary submission to an unrestricted spiritual despotism, as by the pressure of the social and political burdens resting on them, … (p.49) 

The young student, in contemplating the whole system of Romanism and its superstitions, its ceremonies, its spirit and its practical effects, conceived for it the utmost abhorrence—a feeling which remainder with him through life. (p.50) 

On the other hand, the lordly and aristocratic Episcopalians, who looked down upon the dissenters, and seemed, with some exceptions, to have but little piety, and to be fond of enjoying the pleasures, fashions and follies of the world, were, notwithstanding their Protestantism, scarcely less disliked as a religious party. (p.50) 

It was, however, when he came to consider the history of the Presbyterian Church, with its numerous divisions, in one of which he was himself a member, that he was enabled to form a clearer conception of the power and prevalence of that party spirit which it became afterward the labor of his life to oppose and overthrow. (p.50)

Richardson then reviews the Scottish history of the Reformation to put some of the stances into context (p.50f). With the "Claim of Right" of 1690, the Scottish Presbyterians managed to secure their stance and abolish all Prelacy, but with devastating moral effect.

When Presbyterianism had thus attained the supremacy it so long had sought, it began, in a short time, to furnish a fresh illustration of the fact that all established national religions, whether Greek or Mohammedan, Papal or Protestant, have in them the essence of Popery—the principle of absolutism. (p.51)

Richardsons then runs through the various schisms of the Scottish Presbyterians (pp.51-56), before concluding,

Schooled amidst such schisms in his own denomination, and harassed by the triviality of the differences by which they were maintained, it is natural to suppose that one of so catholic a spirit as Thomas Campbell conceived the greatest antipathy to party spirit in all its workings and manifestations, and that his son Alexander fully sympathized with him in these feelings. (p.56)

Richardson now turns to the American context, comparing the Puritans and the Methodists to buds in the animal kingdom, who remain connected to their parents long after they have begun separating---the parents here being the Church of England (p.59). Following the principle of "occasional hearing", Thomas Campbell sometimes on Sunday evening visited the local Independents (p.60). Richardson discusses how these various splinters related to each other and attempted to influence each other.

Roger Williams, for instance, the founder of the Baptists in America, held that it was wrong for professors of religion to hold worship with the unconverted, or to sit at the communion table with those who did not perfectly agree with them in religious sentiments. (p.61)

Though the Independents had been run out of England by religious persecution, they turned the tables and became repressive once they arrived in America.

It is a singular fact that these exiles [i.e. Plymouth Brethren, RCK] had no sooner obtained possession of power than they began to exercise the very same system of persecution of which they themselves had been victims. || They whipped, branded, banished or executed Quakers and others who refused to conform to their views, thus affording another proof that a state or national religion is necessarily Popish in its spirit, for at that time, in these Puritan colonies, the Church was essentially the State. (pp.62-63)

Thus, those with other opinions such as Roger Williams, had to go elsewhere; Williams established Rhode Island as his colony, founding the first Baptist church there. As Richardson notes:

In 1162 he [i.e. Roger Williams, RCK] obtained a second charter from Charles the Second, in which it was declared that “religion should be wholly and for ever free from all jurisdiction of the civil power”; so that to Roger Williams belongs the high honor of having founded the first political State in Christendom that embraced, in its constitutional provisions, the principle of universal toleration—a noble grant, the germ of civil liberty in the United States. (p.63 Fn *)

Thus, as Richardson points out (p.63 Fn *), when Locke published his celebrated Letters on Toleration in 1693, such toleration was already established law in Rhode Island.

Richardson then observes that the three categories of Christian denominations---the Episcopal (which includes Roman Catholicism, or the Romish, as Richardson calls them), the Presbyterian and the Congregational (which includes the Baptists)---differ in their view of authority of interpreting the scriptures (p.64). Only the Congregational allow the individual members to interpret the scriptures for themselves (p.65).

With the Independents, however, the right of every member to judge for himself as to the meaning of Scripture is the great distinguishing feature, and the basis not only of their congregational form of government, and their entire repudiation of the authority claimed by Presbyteries, Synods, Assemblies, Conventions or other church-courts, but also the reason of that tolerant spirit they so strikingly manifested when attained to political power in England. (p.65)

Already under the Protectorate of Cromwell, the Independents via their role in the Army were able to put their toleration into effect.

Opposed as well to Presbytery as to Prelacy and Popery, and regarding each congregation as independent and supreme in its jurisdiction, their [i.e. the Independents] views naturally made them republican in civil affairs, while their principle that every one should enjoy the right of private judgement in religion, released them from that spiritual despotism which all the other systems labored to establish. (p.66)

For, to take the Presbyterian system as an example, their idea of a complete church is not by any means that of a single congregation, but of a number of congregations, with Sessions, Presbyteries and Synods sufficient to constitute a General Assembly. (p.66)

And Richardson illustrates the submission of the individual member under that hierarchy by remind the reader of the way in which Andrew Melville addressed King James I, namely not as a king or a lord, but rather as a member subjugated under these ecclesiastical jurisdictions of "Christ's kingdom", as the Presbyterians referred to the kirk (p.67 Fn *). When faced with a raging chancellor and king, the same individual kept his cool.

Mr Andrew, never a whit dashed, said in plain terms that they were too bold, in a constitute Christian kirk, to pass by the pastors, prophets and doctors, and to take upon them to judge the doctrine and to control the ambassadors and messengers of a greater than was here. (p.68 Fn *, continued)

Richardson then relates that Alexander Campbell observed the power and conservative stance of the Presbyterians at first hand, by the way they rejected his father's proposal to celebrate the Lord's supper more often than twice a year (p.69).  While the discussions between the Independents and various other groups continued in Campbell's hometown, concerning issues such as whether to celebrate the washing of feet or the frequency of the celebration of the Last Supper (p.71), that collaborator of Wesley, Whitefield, preached the Gospel of Christ without getting into any distracting disputes, e.g. about church governance (p.72). When Mr Whitefield was granted access to the pulpits of several ministers of the Church of Scotland, a veritable revival broke out (p.72).

Great excitement and extraordinary manifestations of swoonings [sic!], convulsions and cataleptic seizures attended Mr. || Whitefield’s labors, especially at Cambuslang, near Glasgow, where at one time the assemblage was estimated to consist of at least thirty thousand persons. (pp.72-73) 

These singular cases had previously occurred under Mr Weasley’s preaching; and have several times since been noted, as in the revivals under the preachings of Jonathan Edwards in New England, and of James McGready, B.W. Stone and some other Presbyterian preachers in Kentucky, in 1801. (p.73)

By the turn of the century, though, the English north had become equally "Burnt Over" as New York State would 20 years afterwards.

The intense religious interest awakened in Great Britain and Ireland by Wesley, Whitefield and their coadjutors, had, toward the close of the century, given place to a great degree of indifference and worldly conformity. The diffusion of infidel principles from France, political commotions [i.e. French Revolution, RCK] and a variety of circumstances connected with the American and French wars, seem to have been chiefly instrumental in inducing a change which was deeply lamented by the pious and earnest men in the different religious communities. (p.73)

In collaboration with the Haldanes of Scotland, an Evangelical Society was organized, a “considerable missionary society” (p.73), with members of the Episcopal Church in England, and Thomas Campbell sympathized with them, joined and assisted the society. 

In this species of mission there was something very pleasing, and certainly the position of such laborers was highly favorable to a fair and effective presentation of the general truths of the gospel. (p.74) 

Thus Richardson raises the important point that the plurality of issues was just as unsettling as the call to repentance itself.  

It was, however, impossible to them, consistently with the nature of their mission and their views of religion, to recommend any very definite or particular course to anxious inquirers. (p.74) 

The nature of faith; how Christ could be put on by faith; how the sinner could obtain an assurance of justification, — these were questions of the highest practical importance, to which different parties gave conflicting answers, and which, with matters of ecclesiastical organization, constituted the burden of polemical discussions and the ground of party differences. (p.74) 

Richardson insists that the Evangelical Society was successful in their effort

... to break down the prejudices of religious society and to depreciate the value of those speculative theological dogmas and go || those sectarian distinctions by which pious believers were separated and alienated from each other. (pp.74-75) 

Having thus outlined the upbringing of Alexander Campbell, Richardson concludes:

The effect of the whole [of observing the described fights between the groups and denominations, RCK] was to increase his reverence for the Scriptures as the only infallible guide in religion, to weaken the force of educational prejudices, and to deepen his conviction that the existence of sects and parties was one of the greatest hindrances to the success of the gospel. (p.75)

Alexander Campbell during this time of his youth worked basically non-stop, going to bed late at night and rising at 4am to study his books. There was almost no hope of attending university (p.76), given the six siblings, and in addition to the teaching position at his father's academy, Alexander began to provide private tutoring to the daughters of the Honorable William Richardson, the lord of the manor, in whose garden Alexander's sisters like to take their evening walks (p.77).

A few years later, the strenuous duties of his office as minister and headmaster had so weakened the health of Thomas Campbell (p.78), that the doctor prescribed an extended sea voyage (p.79). Under Alexander's entreaties, this turned into a scouting trip for moving the family to the New World, as so many of their friends were then emigrating. Thus, in early April of 1807 Thomas Campbell travelled to the New World with "the ship Brutus, Captain Craig, master, bound for Philadelphia" (p.81). Richardson contextualizes this health remedy turned into emigration.

Bibliographic Record

Dr Robert Richardson, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, 2 volumes, Philadelphia (J.B. Lippincott & Co) (Volume I 1868, Volume II 1870).

The Abomination of Solomon and David in BoM

As I showed previously under the discussion of concubinage in the BoM, the BoM speaks of the abomination of concubinage with specific focus on Solomon and David. 

It is therefore important to realize that this cannot have meant polygamy in the general sense--Abraham and Jacob practiced that as well, and are not scorned for doing so. Abraham had one wife, Sarah, and two concubines, Hagar and Keturah (Adam Clarke's commentary to 1 Kings 11:3).

Rather, it must be in reference to the fact that Solomon was "tricked" into worshipping other gods than JHWH by his association with some of the other foreign princesses that he was married to (for diplomatic reasons, as we would argue today). 

The key passage is 1 Kings 11, which tells how Solomon loses the kingdom. Historically speaking, this is a necessity; as the United Monarchy of David and Solomon is an invention of the Dtr Historians in the time of Josiah's cultic reform (cf. Israel Finkelstein, The Forgotten Kingdom, 2013), the monarchy cannot persist past the life of Solomon, otherwise the reality of the separated states of Judah and Israel cannot be connected to. 

Whether this approach belongs to the revision under Ezra and Nehemiah, or is part of the Dtrn Historian, is unclear, but instituting a sin that involves the marriage of Solomon to foreign women is a masterful stroke of theological authorship. A quick look at the parallel passages --- Exodus 34:16; Deuteronomy 17:17; Ezra 10:44; Nehemiah 13; various passages in Proverbs, most of them concerned with adultery --- shows the focus on worship in the Pentateuch and the focus on flat-out marriage in Ezra and Nehemiah. 

Of course the passage in 1 Kings dates the whole section to the 7th century, because the countries mentioned --- Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites --- include peoples that had not reached statehood until the 7th century (cf. Finkelstein 2013). In the case of the Hittites, the Separation Hypothesis suggests that these are similarly named hill tribes, not the big Anatolian kingdom of the 1600-1200 BC and its successor states.

The insertion had been done somewhat artless in the sense that 18th century commentators wondered why Solomon had only fallen under the theological spell of "Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians", and "Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites", "Chemosh, the abomination of Moab", "Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon", but not under the spell of the wife associated with his most crucial ally, the Egyptian princess. Some commentators went so far as to assume that she might have converted to Judaism; cf. Adam Clarke's rebuttal of that notion in commentary for 1 King 11:1.

Commentators had rejected the assumption that it was lust on the number of the women involved---700 princesses, 300 concubines---and on the age of Solomon; rather that he was collecting trophy wives the way that he was collecting horses and chariots, gold and silver.

The claim of desiring other women is an allusion to David and Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah (2 Samuel 11-12), and the mother of Solomon. But even here only the first child died; the second became as mentioned Solomon, the beloved of the LORD.

19th Century Bible Commentaries

In an attempt to get an idea of how Joseph Smith Jr would have read the Bible, I started looking at Bible commentaries available online that either Joseph Smith Jr or the preachers that he encountered might have read. I choose 1827 as my somewhat arbitrary cut-off date, since that is the beginning of the Book of Mormon translation effort; Joseph Smith Jr received the plates in September of that year.

Whole Bible Commentaries

• Joseph Benson, an early Methodist minister and friend of John Wesley, wrote a Commentary on the OT & NT
• Adam Clarke (1760?-1832), a British Methodist theologian and supporter of Wesley, wrote a six-volume commentary.
• Thomas Coke (9 September 1747 - 2 May 1814) was the first Methodist Bishop and is known as the Father of Methodist Missions. He wrote a six-volume commentary (1801-1803).
• John Gill (November 23, 1697-October 14, 1771) was an English Baptist, a biblical scholar, and a staunch Calvinist. Between 1746 and 1763, he wrote An Exposition of the New Testament (3 vols., 1746-8), and an Exposition of the Old Testament (6 vols., 1748-63).
• Robert Hawker (1753-1827) was a Devonian vicar of the Anglican Church and the most prominent of the vicars of Charles Church, Plymouth, Devon. His grandson was Cornish poet Robert Stephen Hawker. He wrote a book of Biblical notes called Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary.
• George Leo Haydock (1774-1849), scion of an ancient English Catholic Recusant family, was a priest, pastor and Bible scholar. His edition of the Douay Bible with extended commentary, originally published in 1811, became the most popular English Catholic Bible of the 19th century on both sides of the Atlantic.
• Matthew Henry (18 Oct 1662 - 22 June 1714) was an English Presbyterian minister who wrote a renowned commentary on the whole Bible, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments (1708-10, known also as Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible), which went up to Acts and was completed by like-minded authors after his death in 1714. A more compact version, Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary on the Bible was published in 1706 already.
• Matthew Poole (1624 - 1679) was an English Nonconformist theologian. His English annotations on the Bible were republished until 1840.
• Charles Simeon (24 September 1759 – 13 November 1836), was an English evangelical clergyman, and founder of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews (now known as the Church's Ministry Among Jewish People or CMJ) in 1809. His major opus the Horae Homileticae was published in London starting in 1819, with many editions and reprints.
• John Trapp, (5 June 1601, Croome D'Abitot - 16 October 1669, Weston-on-Avon), was an English Anglican Bible commentator. His large five-volume commentary is still read today and is known for its pithy statements and quotable prose.
• John Wesley was a Church of England cleric and an Arminian theologian. Wesley is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, as founding the Methodist movement which began when he took to open-air preaching in a similar manner to George Whitefield. His Notes on the New Testament (1755) are enlightening.

New Testament

• Johann Albrecht Bengel (24 June 1687 – 2 November 1752) was a Lutheran pietist clergyman and Greek-language scholar known for his edition of the Greek New Testament. The other great work of Bengel, and that on which his reputation as an exegete is mainly based, is his Gnomon Novi Testamenti, or Exegetical Annotations on the New Testament, published in 1742.
• William Burkitt (25 July 1650 in Hitcham, Suffolk, England - 24 October 1703, Essex) was a biblical expositor and vicar in Dedham, Essex, England. Burkitt is known for his Bible commentary, Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament (Gospels published 1700, Acts to Revelation published 1703).

Contemporaries of Joseph Smith Jr

• Albert Barnes (1789-1870), from Rome, New York, graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1823, but did not begin publishing his Notes until the 1830s, AFAIK.
• Joseph Sutcliffe (+ 1854) wrote his commentary after retiring as a Wesleyan circuit preacher at age 74 in London; it was published around 1836.

Dennis & Geoffrey Wright on Joseph Smith Jr's education

Recognizing that the lack of formal education of Joseph Smith Jr is a common topos in Mormon discourse, the Wrights set out to show what formal education Joseph Smith Jr actually had and to contextualize it into the then-existing school system, practices and requirements (p.237).

In 1810 the family of the Prophet Joseph Smith lived in Royalton, Vermont. Here, in a school required by state law, Deacon Jonathan Rinney instructed the boy Joseph Smith Jr in his first lessons in reading and writing. (p.237)

In 1811 the Smiths moved to Lebanon, New Hampshire (p.237).

... Joseph's mother remembered that the children who were old enough attended a neighborhood school on Poverty Lane while their older brother Hyrum attended Moor's Charity School located on the Dartmouth College in nearby Hannover. (p.238)

After the Typhoid epidemic and its consequences, which kept Joseph from school with his sickness, he would have been able to attend school again until after his family had moved to Norwich, Vermont, in 1814 (p.238).

When considering this period in Joseph's life, it seems consistent to assume that his mother would have again encouraged him and his siblings to attend public school. (p.238) 

It was not until 1816 when the family moved to New York, so conceivably he could have attended for up to two years (p.238).

Education in New England

The public motivation for education, especially learning how to read and write, was religious. The 2nd Massachusetts Education Law of 1647 begins with the observation:

It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures. (p.240)

In this law, any township of 50 people or more had to hire a teacher to teach the children to read and write [[which was not strictly necessary for reading the scriptures, RCK]] (p.240). Once the population had crossed 100, a grammar school was required (p.240). With the rise of the towns and the concomitant focus on secularization, the intent became to facilitate "participation in the growing economy" (p.240). After the Revolutionary War, the intention of creating "an educated citizenry capable of self-government" became a new guiding principle (p.240). Unfortunately, during the post-War period, the public coffers were empty and little funding for public education was available. Thomas Jefferson (p.241) proposed a tax-based education system, and Noah Webster issued schoolbooks and dictionaries to assist in the effort of "forming a national character" (p.241).

By the beginning of the 19th century, seven states provided support for public education, including Massachusetts and New Hampshire (p.241). In 1795 Connecticut started to sell public lands to feed a school fund from which regulated schools and teachers could be provisioned (p.241), and example that inspired other states to look for similar funding models (p.241).

During this formative period, alternate school concepts were explored. One was the "moving school" (p.241). The Wrights explain:

The "moving school" system involved hiring an itinerant teacher who traveled throughout the district surrounding the town to provide instruction wherever children could gather together. Taxes || to fund this type of school were imposed on residents of the town as well as on those living in the outlying areas. As time passed, the moving schools of New England evolved into today's school district system. (pp.241-242)

The Wrights give the example of Hanover, New Hampshire.

Hanover, New Hampshire, organized its public education in typical New England fashion. Beginning in 1790 school districts were organized and funded by a public tax. Leaders were appointed to manage the districts and collect the relevant taxes. By 1805 a district system was widespread, and each town received the authority to purchase school buildings and conduct its own educational affairs. In 1808 each local school district selected an administrative committee of three individuals who were to inspect the schools in the district and ensure that they met expected standards. (p.242)

This situation was similar in Vermont, where Joseph Smith Jr spent more time to be educated than in New Hampshire (p.242). By 1764, the colony of Vermont had decided to re-dedicate the "lands originally granted for ``propagation of the gospel in foreign parts`` ... for the support of public schools" (p.242). In 1797, Vermont passed legislature requiring that each town have at least one school to teach reading, writing and arithmetic (p.243), with the hope that all children between the ages of 4 and 18 would be able to attend school (p.243).

Windsor County [[where Joseph Smith Jr was born, RCK]] was educationally well on its way; it had organized the first school district and the first grammar school in 1785, and had thirteen districts by 1798. In 1807, a grammar school in Norwich, close to where the Smiths would live 1814-1816, was legislated, as well as the first public academy in Royalton (p.243).

At the time the Smith family lived in Norwich, the neighborhood common schools, the Norwich grammar school, and the academy at Royalton would have all been in operation. (p.243)

The Wrights then attempt to compile some information of what the typical New England school and learning experience might have been like (p.244). School buildings were spartan buildings, constructed on agriculturally worthless land, but close to the geographical center of the neighborhood (p.244). Small at twenty square feet with a low ceiling, and small windows if any. Instead of tables, planks had been fixed to the walls, and the children would sit on back-less benches before them. The teacher had a table at one end of the room (p.244). The children sat segregated by gender (p.245). The floors were bare earth or puncheon, and the roofs of bark and the windows of paper (p.245). The cloak room did double duty as a time-out room for misbehaving students (p.246). The community chipped in with wood for the stove, making desks and benches, and taking care of the stables where the horses stood the children had taken to school (p.245).

School attendance fluctuated with the farm work, bringing more attendance in the winter and less in the summer. Children as young as three could be sent along with their siblings. As the Wrights put it,

Such diversity in age and attendance required teachers to be patient and flexible and to possess innovative time management skills. (p.246)

School lasted from the early morning to the early afternoon.

The daily routine began with a reading of the New Testament followed by writing and arithmetic. While the older students read and studied from the Bible, the younger children would repeat and recite sentences from their primers or spelling books. (p.246)

The children had a short recess, the end of which was indicated by a handbell. Upon return to class was the opportunity to drink some water (p.246).

The afternoon began with reading and a "general spell" period. During this time the teacher read aloud words from the spelling book and the students spelled them vocally. The teacher also corrected and instructed students on improved use of grammar, spelling, articulation and pronunciation during this exercise. The school day ended with instruction in topics such as abbreviations, currencies, weights, || and measurements. (pp.246-247)

Before dismissing school, the teacher called role and reminded the boy whose turn it was to make the fire the following morning to do so. (p.247)

Teaching practices were focused on obedience.

Teachers demanded strict obedience and often resorted to corporal punishment to enforce order. Often schoolmasters spent a good deal of their time disciplining students. Whipping, striking the students' palms with a rule, and forcing them to hold books at arm's length for long periods of time were methods used to punish those who misbehaved. (p.247)

The teachers were instructed to "govern from a sense of right and justice when you can, and from a feeling of fear when you must" (p.247).

Instructors believed themselves to be proficient if their students were quiet and disciplined. (p.247)

The Wrights then enumerate the key reading methods of the nineteenth century:

1. alphabet memorization
2. letter recognition within words
3. recognition and sue of two-letter syllables
4. word memorization and spelling
5. reading from a primer
6. reading from the Bible
7. elocution and articulation in oral reading (p.247)

Primers and sybillaria supported these techniques (p.248). 

Separately the acquisition of penmanship was considered very important in the 1800s. After basic lines and copying "hooks and trammels" provided by the teacher, which also imparted basic quill handling techniques, the students progressed to full word and page reproduction (p.249). The pages contained morally uplifting messages, such as "Contentment is a virtue" or "Procrastination is a thief of time" (p.250), but the strong focus on the aesthetically pleasing composition meant that the children focused on the writing rather than the contents (p.250). 

The families had to provide the basic school supplies, including penknife, quills, paper, ink, a Bible and a ruler. Papers was unruled rough foolscap, and if that was too pricey, then birch bark was used (p.250). Often parents had to make the ink themselves, either with ink powder, or by boiling the bark of swamp-maple in a copper kettle, and adding copperas, which produced a weak and pallid ink. (p.259 Fn 62)

The text books were influenced in their contents by Puritan and Calvinist doctrine, discussing Christian ideals, the omniscience of God, the relation between God and man, the Golden Rule, and similar (p.250). The first book for many children was the so-called hornbook, a paddle-like wooden frame with a piece of parchment in it, on which were the alphabet, simple words and a few Bible verses were written (p.250). A cover of cow's horn protected the parchment, and a small handle simplified holding (p.250). Children tied the book to their belts (p.251). The New England Primer written by Benjamin Harris (p.251) had 104 pages and was bound in oak and leather, encompassing mostly biblical or morally uplifting passages. 

Its first lesson comprised the alphabet, vowels, consonants, double letters, italics and capitals, followed by a syllabarium of two-syllable to six-syllable words. (p.251)

The text included alphabet verses, couplets, moral lessons from the Bible, the Lord's Prayer and the Creed as well as the Ten Commandments (p.251).

The English Reader was written by Lindley Murray was a book published in 1799 that became popular in America as well (p.251). As many other books, Murray's book promoted a definite moral perspective (p.251).

The reader included a variety of literary passages as well as numerous prose passages designed to teach moral principles, such as "Virtuous youth gradually bring forward accomplished and || flourishing manhood." (p.252)

Noah Websters' American Spelling Book was the most popular among the spelling books of the time, including Caleb Bingham's Columbian Orator and Lyman Cobb's North American Reader (p.252). A wooden cover and a leather spine bound 158 pages into what was often called the "blue-black" speller (p.252).

The first portion of the book was dedicated to rules and instruction, and these were followed by the alphabet, syllables, and lists of words ordered according to their number of syllables. 74 of the book's 158 pages contained lists of original words and syllables. The latter part of the book contained moralistic advice, historical and geographical information, rules for correct spelling and reading, realistic stories, fables, poetry, and patriotic dialogues. (p.252)

Webster's speller was so successful that his family could live off the proceeds while he compiled his first dictionary (p.252).

In 1990, members of the Wilford C. Wood family donated three school books that might have belonged to Joseph Smith Jr to the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City (p.252). The three books consisted of the English Reader, the First Lines of Arithmetic, and an unknown volume published in Edinburgh, Scotland (p.252) containing sonnets and literature (p.253). The arithmetic book has "Joseph Smith's book January 31, 1818" written on it. The Church History Museum has not yet confirmed that these books belonged to the Prophet (p.253)

 

Bibliographical Record

Dennis A. and Geoffrey A. Wright, The New England Common School Experience of Joseph Smith Jr, 1810-16, in: Donald Q. Cannon, Arnold K. Garr, Bruce A Van Orden (ed), Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint Church History: The New England States, Provo UT (BYU) 2004, pp.237-261.

Milton Backman Jr on the New England Background to the Restoration

From his confessional background, Backman Jr asks about the institutional antecedents of the Restoration, as the LDS movement sees it (p.33). It is these antecedents or preconditions that make up the "New England Background" for the restoration of the title.

It is indubitably the case that many of early Mormons, leadership and members, hailed from the New England region; of the Kirtland branch "during the decade of the thirties" (p.33), 46 percent were born in New England, and 32 percent in New York (p.33), meaning that 78% of all Kirtland Saints had New England roots (p.34). Thus, inquiring into that background is a justified endeavor.

Backman Jr points out that even though many of the New England settlers came because of a lack of religious freedom, they were not necessarily willing to extend religious freedoms to the other settlers (p.34). The separation of church and state was a long and drawn-out battle in New England (p.34). Tolerance was effectively imposed on the Congregationalists with the English Toleration Act of 1689, which applied to all colonies, but could not exempt the non-congregationalists from paying dues to the Congregationalist Church (p.35). The Baptist leadership used the context of the American Revolution, when their political consent was required, to attack the ecclesiastical laws of New England (p.35). After a transitional period, where the tax was levied but the tax payers could identify the receiving church (with Congregationalist being the default), the support for public religion still waned slowly: Vermont in 1807, Connecticut in 1818, New Hampshire in 1819, Maine in 1820 (p.41 Fn 7), Massachusetts in 1833 (p.35).

Backman Jr cautions that these dates are not expressions of when the underlying sentiments changed.

Although there was a new birth of freedom in the early republic, liberty was young and intolerance was old, and the bigotry that Americans inherited form the past persisted. Too often historians who identify forces leading to persecution of the Mormons neglect to include in their discussions America's heritage of intolerance. Meanwhile, the spirit of Roger Williams, the example of William Penn's Holy Experiment, the crusading beliefs of Baptists, and the ideals of liberty expressed by men of the Enlightenment (such as Jefferson, Washington, Madison and Adams) combined, launching the dawn of a new era. (p.36)

This dawn of a new era was sensed by some as early as 1805; Backman Jr cites Isaac Backus, one of the New England champions for religious liberty [and the subject of Backman's UPenn dissertation from 1959, RCK], who wrote

We have cause to remember, with thankfulness, that God has established a civil government over us, which allows equal liberty to all; so that each one may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and hones- || ty. (pp.36-37)

Backman Jr summarizes how stifling the hold had been in New England of the Congregationalist denomination as late as 1750.

There were far more Congregational churches in New England than all other churches combined. In the mid-eighteenth century, there were 454 Congregational societies in New England (representing 79 percent of all churches, excluding the Friends whose numbers are unknown) in comparison to 58 Baptist, 44 Anglican, 19 Presbyterian and a few Quaker societies. There were no Roman Catholics, no Jewish congregation, and only 1 Lutheran congregation. (p.37)

The exception of course was Rhode Island (p.37), where the Baptists outnumbered the Congregational and Anglican societies, and the Quakers had several communities (p.38).

With the 1810s, this pattern was reversed, and alternate forms of religious thought could begin to circulate.

The new climate of liberty provided a fruitful field for a significant reorientation of Christian thinking. A second reformation was initiated by the Revolutionary generation. (p.37)

The first example were the Baptists, who grew from 6 churches in 1734, to 28 in 1750, to 285 in 1795 (p.38). Other religious communities were being organized at the same time (p.38).

During the American Revolution and its aftermath, Universalists organized in Gloucester, Massachusetts (1779); Unitarians in Boston (Kings Chapel) 1785; Jemima Wilkinson's Jerusalem community in Rhode Island (1780s); Freewill Baptists in New Hampshire (1880); and restorationists (who called themselves Christians or Eastern Christians) in Vermont (1802).

In the ensuring battle of words and ideas, some of the later tenants of the LDS Church were brought into currency in the American religious debates.

• "The traditional view that God was three persons of one essence was replaced by Unitarians, Eastern Christians, and some Universalists with a belief that the Father and Son were two separate and distinct entities." (p.38)
• "Unitarians joined Quakers in proclaiming a belief in the Bible insofar as it was translated correctly." (p.38)
• "Unitarians, liberal Congregationalists, Eastern Christians, Freewill Baptists, and other groups replaced the traditional Calvinistic doctrine of total depravity with a belief that individuals will be punished for their own sins and not for Adam's transgression." (p.38)
• "Unitarians, Universalists, Free Baptists, and restorationists joined the newly organized Methodist church in proclaiming that man played a role in the salvation experience and that man could fall from grace." (p.38)
• "... Baptists and Eastern Christians were popularizing the doctrine of believers baptism by immersion and the Lord's Supper as a memorial ...." (p.38)
• "... restorationists added ... the need to return to the primitive purity of ancient Christianity." (p.38) [[But this is precisely not an innovation, given the interests of the Puritans to do just that; cf. Christianson, p.16; RCK]]
• "... Universalists taught that after death men went into either a state of happiness or a state of misery. ... All in the spirit world would eventually be converted and lifted up into a heavenly paradise." (p.39) Backman Jr points out that Joseph Smith had a host of Universalist ancestors, including his own father Joseph Sr, grandfather Asael and uncle Jesse Smith (p.39)

Not surprisingly, the 1800s brought a new time of religious awakening. Backmen Jr attributes some of the readiness for this stance to the disorienting effect of the frontier and the rising towns (p.39).

As settlers penetrated the frontier, many lost the identity with institutional religion; and as people were influenced by materialistic and pluralistic ideas popularized in rising towns, many lost zeal for traditional Christian orthodoxy. (p.39)

Backman Jr contends that in this setting, the question of which religion to join was a common one, possibly something unique.

But in this land of liberty and pluralism something occurred that was unparalleled in the history of mankind. In unprecedented numbers Americans joined churches of their choice. The population of this country in pre-Civil War years almost doubled every twenty years, but church membership increased at a faster pace; and this increase occurred during a period of unparalleled western expansion. The approximate 8 percent church membership in 1800 increased to 11 percent in 1820, 130 percent in 1830, and 23 percent in 1860. (p.40)

[[Backman is citing his own book American Religions and the Rise of Mormonism, Salt Lake City (Desert) 1970, here pp.283-92, 308. RCK]]

Bibliographical Record

Milton V. Backman, Jr, The New England Background to the Restoration, in: Donald Q. Cannon (ed), Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint Church History: New England, Provo UT (BYU), 1988, pp.33-41.

James Christianson on Puritanism and Mormonism

Puritan Mission

Christianson begins his description by capturing the self-ascribed mission of the Puritans.

Immersed in both the excesses and successes of what they saw as a faltering Reformation, Puritans were convinced that God would not permit their age to miss its destiny. In their view the elect of God, the saints of the latter days, were entering a new land Canaan "where the world might see a specimen of what shall be over all the earth in the Glorious Times which are Expected." All the perceived shortcomings of the Reformation in the Old World would be remedied in the uncontaminated environment of New England. (p.15)

This inflated sense of destiny so unabashedly proclaimed by seventeenth century Puritans reflects the conviction that it was their divine mission to fine-tune and perfect the Reformation, bringing it to its ultimate conclusion. As a matter of strategy, God reserved New England as the final battleground out of which Zion, the city of God, would emerge. ... For the first time since the advent of the Savior, God was establishing his covenant with a people who would "worship him in all his holy ordinances" (p.15).

Christianson gives a list of direct quotes from leading Puritans to undergird that claim, all taken from Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, Boston (Beacon Press) 1961, pp.469-470.

[Peter Bulkeley wrote:] "We the people of New England ... are as a city set upon a hill, in the open view of all the earth, the eyes of the world are upon us, because we profess ourselves to be a people in Covenant with God. Our function is to || walk so that all nations will say, 'Only this people is a wise, and holy and blessed people.' The Lord has purposefully kept us few, weak and poor, so that we may excel in grace and holiness alone." (pp.15-16)

With this mind frame, divines such as John Cotton could label the Puritan commonwealth as the New Heaven and the New Earth (p.16), and divines such as Thomas Hooker saw the Day of Judgement at hand because New England was the final statement necessary:

[Thomas Hooker wrote:] "Truth had made the last disclosure conceivable within the frame of time [in the erection of the New England way, RCK]. ... Any further discovery would surpass the possibilities of earth and commence the reign of eternity." (p.16) 

Puritan Colonization

Between 1628 and 1640, 42% of the 50K English citizens to come to the New World were Puritans (p.16). They came to evade the persecution under James I, who thought their 39 Calvinistic articles to reform the Church of England were reactionary and the Puritans in general anti-monarchical (p.16). But they came with the plan to return some day and finish the reformation of the Church of England, "bearing the kingdom on their shoulders, welcomed by those who would recognize and wish to accept the work that God had wrought" (p.16), as Christianson put it.

Theirs was the best organized and best executed effort to colonize the Americas (p.16). They came "as their own masters, paid their own way, and took up land as free men." (p.17) 

[...] their purpose was to "restore the primitive, apostolic church pure and unspotted by human accretions or inventions." Along with Massachusetts Bay, Puritans colonized Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Haven as centers for the expression of God's will. (p.17)

An avant guard of 200 had arrived in 1629 to prepare for the larger groups that followed (p.17). The first winter of 1630 was still hard, but the Puritans neither looked for gold nor a fight with the Indians, rather trading and coexisting with them in relative peace (p.17).

Puritan Personality

Christianson finds the Puritan reverence for intellectual capacity noteworthy.

The Puritans also stood apart from all other colonists in their respect for learning and their emphasis on the intellectual training of the young. (p.17)

As one of them recorded in 1643, "After God had carried us safe to New England and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the || civil government, one of the things we looked for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to our posterity." (pp.17-18) [taken from John Higham, The Reconstruction of American History,  New York 1962. RCK]

Not solely a a philosophy of faith, Puritanism included a basic tenet that man was to exercise his natural powers, his logic, and his reasoning, in order to understand the Bible, the physical universe and human relationships. By using his mind, he [i.e. man] was doing the will of God. (p.18)

Puritanism taught that man could not be saved in ignorance, and since only spiritual regeneration could put one on the right path in life, the individual was responsible to forge ahead on a perpetual course of self-cultivation. (p.18)

Christianson cites John Higham (1962) on the important influence that Puritanism had on American culture, who not only pointed out the early onset and the duration---almost 100 years---of their influence, but the persistence of their influence through their traditions and institutions (p.18).

Until far into the nineteenth century American Literature was mostly New England Literature written by Puritans and their descendants; American colleges were mostly New England colleges founded by Puritans or their descendants, ... [including, RCK] Harvard, the oldest and most Puritan of all .... Until quite recently, New England dominated American culture and New England was wholly Puritan in origin. (p.18) [= Highham (1962), pp.26-27]

This reverence for the intellectual found expression in the way the organized the frontier life.

Given the rigors of frontier life which allowed the individual little leisure time, they made a choice, and that choice was education. A formal education system, preceding comparable programs in other colonies by a century, together with the vigorous printing of sermons, poetry and history created the intellectually-charged climate of Puritan society. (p.18)

Analog to the way the Mormons feel misunderstood, Christianson worries that modern interpreters have misunderstood the Puritans as "prying busybodies incapable of enjoying life's simplest pleasures" (p.19).

Though it was generally accepted that the colony should be led by those who stood highest in the sight of God--at least 90 percent of the people where in sympathy with this idea--some characterize the rule of Puritan divines as despotic. (p.19) 

Politically, the Puritans were far right in their support of the connection between church and state (p.20).

They felt the state should protect the || church, and the church must in turn support the state. (pp.20-21)

Puritans were also strong constitutionalists, clinging to the Protestant doctrine that "the conscience of the individual is the ultimate judge of right". Thus, "man must refuse to obey a law, however legitimately promulgated, which violates his own sense of right." (p.21)

Christianson points out that this attitude fired both the Nonconformism of a Ralph Waldo Emerson as well as the Mormons in their acceptance of plural marriage (p.21).

Puritan Covenants

Christianson returns to the "city on the hill" imagery in the Puritan self-interpretation (p.21).

The sense that this was a peculiar society, designated by Deity to erect a community more perfect than any that men of the Old World had known, and that it was America's foreordained mission to be an example to all other nations is the substance of America's Puritan heritage. (p.21)

And Christianson sketches the core belief succinctly.

The heart of the Puritan hope for America as a promised land, a place of destiny, was embodied in their concept of covenant, and in their attempt to cement the individual to God, the church to God, and society or state to God. (p.21)

Christianson sketches the role of the covenant thinking in Puritan thought, even as a response to predestination, and the identifications of the salvation process that entailed (p.22).

Though they would never completely let go of it, Puritan theologians distanced themselves from the doctrine of predestination by developing a series or network of covenants. (p.22)

By 1700 ministers spoke regularly of the Covenant of Grace, which embraced an invisible contract between the individual and God; of the Covenant of Baptism, wherein offspring of the saints were bound to the church since it was assumed that, having been born under the Covenant of Grace, they too were the elect; of the Chruch Covenant; the social Covenant; even a National Covenant. (p.22)

In effect, all that they were or would ever become was laid on the alter with a covenant and promise. In return they had God declaring, "This is the covenant that I will make on my part, I will be thy God .... You shall have all things in me that your heart desires: the covenant again that I require on your part is, that you may be perfect in me, so that though a man be subject to infirmities, yet if he have a single heart, an upright heart, the Lord accept it." As this statement implies, perfection was a matter of direction rather than position. Puritans emphasized not what a man was, but what he was in the process of becoming. (p.22) [quoting Miller, New England Mind, p.377, RCK]

Christianson then paraphrases Miller's exposition [pp.376-377, RCK].

Christ, as exemplified in the Atonement, assumed the Covenant of Works initially given to Adam. Man, made bankrupt by the Fall, is approached by the Lord who guarantees him relief, providing him a way to make good his just debts. Man in turn, demonstrates his recognition of and gratitude for this by developing faith in, believing on, and obeying the Lord. He who does these things binds God by the Covenant of Grace to sanctify and glorify him. (p.22)

Since Abraham had bound himself first under the Covenant of Grace (Genesis 17), the Puritans were children of Abraham, the "Great Pattern Believer" (p.22).

The origin of the covenant, its historical development, and its culmination were the meanings of history, a thread which bound together the story of mankind. God never does anything for his people unless "he doth it by || virtue of, and according to his covenant." (pp.22-23)

God had effectively tamed Himself by entering into the covenant, and given up of His liberties (p.23).

The essential point of the covenant was that it mad possible a voluntary relationship between God and man even though man's will was "impotent" and God's grace "irresistible". The grace-induced faith of the individual not only regenerated his faculties, but also enabled man's reason and will to assert themselves, thereby giving free, rational consent to the contract. (p.23)

The notion of the covenants was flexible over time, "diverse, according to the ages" (p.23).

Allowed to grow with time, covenants were first dispensed through conscience, then through prophets and ceremonies, and finally through Christ, through the preaching of the word, and through sacraments. (p.23)

Sincere faith and repentance could keep the covenant from breaking even in the face of the impurities that mortal man exhibited (p.23). Indeed, it was counter-productive and one of the Devil's wiles to let the individual be overcome by "poring upon our misdeeds" (p.23). The most important thing was not to cease striving (p.24).

Salvation and damnation were entirely matters of will. Hence men were saved for trying, not for succeeding; where the unregenerate were damned, not because they failed, but because they did not try. (p.24)

Under these terms, Puritans believed that "no man was exempted, no man debarred, no man hindered to take grace" (p.24).

But almost more important was the physical signals of salvation in the individual's life.

On the other hand, those who, upon critical examination of themselves, saw that they were abiding the terms of the covenant both as the fruits were manifest in their lives and as they saw a change wrought in their hearts, would know their election was sure. This change was variously attested to by signs, inner light and dreams, or the bearing of testimony. (p.24)

[[And it is "the fruits ... manifest in their lives" that powers the Protestant spirit of Capitalism, not necessarily the double predestination, as Max Weber had assumed. RCK]]

The problem of imposing governance on such an individualistic set of people was not without its own trickery.

... Puritan leaders viewed as one the social and religious destiny of the latter-day children of Israel they were called to shepherd. (p.24)

[[They had learned from Thomas Hobbes, if no one else, that man was a wolf to his fellow men. RCK]]

Government was necessary; otherwise "there would be no living together for mankind" and the world would become "a den of thieves and robbers." The dilemma they faced was how to impose leadership and laws on people whose natural tendency was to oppose and disregard both As with the individual, so with society or the state, the answer lay in establishing a further covenant. (p.24)

Theologically, the interpretation was that the lordship of Christ over the soul engendered a love for all of mankind as well, which provided the hook for community appreciation (p.25).

Being thus united [in the fullness of God's spirit, RCK], they combined their wills to form a community, a city of Zion, wherein men walked in righteousness and prepared for the day of judgement. (p.25)

Thus was justified the state as an instrument of God's authority and goodness (p.25).

Men consented to covenants both spiritual and political whereby they agreed to behave "with a dutiful subjection to the eternal laws of God as expounded by those upon whom God had bestowed administrative authority." (p.25) 

[Puritan leaders instructed:] Look as in a Common-wealth or Kingdom, none hath the benefit of the Law, but those that subject themselves to the Law: none have the protection of authority, but those that obey it .... If wee will have God to be our God to pardon us, and to blesse us, we must have him a God over us to govern us after his own will. (p.25) [= Miller, New England Mind, p.427 RCK] 

This blessing was conceptualized in economic terms and advantages.

Marke the agreement between us and the Lord: He propounds the law, and saith, that if we will keepe the law, he will bless us abundantly in || all things, house and land .... Then the people they agree and say, 'Content, Lord, whatever thou sayest we will doe.' (pp.25-26)

Puritan Ethic 

James Christianson correctly points out that the economic projects of the blessing, this need to be validated temporally in one's status of election through blessings, became both a guiding principe and a problem.

Out of the need, even the demand, for assurance as to when and if a man was of the elect, an emphasis, which in time grew into a monster, was placed on the temporal rewards of righteous living. (p.26)

It was this doctrine of the Calling [as a farmer or a merchant or a minister, RCK] that led many of the rising merchant and capitalism class of the seventeenth century to embrace Puritanism. They viewed their success as a sign of regeneracy. Salvation could be achieved through actions of a disciplined, industrious, frugal, sober nature. (p.26)

As Higham (1962), p.40, pointed out, the Puritan ethic had some clear expressions.

Business as a calling, the moral significance of profits and thrift, the moral dignity of work, the distrust of aristocratic leisure and dilettantism,  the suspicion that the poor are shiftless and hence ungodly, .... (p.26)

Christianson rightly insists that this attitude was one of the prime legacies of Puritanism to the American experiment.

This ethic, and expression of dynamic individualism nourished by abundant resources in the New World, came into conflict with the Social Covenant which emphasized subjection to God, and as a result, class distinctions and the ethic won out. (p.26) 

As the quality of living increased, two generations later found the communities lax in the eyes of their ministers (p.27).

 Within forty years, easy living, few hardships, and the absence of religious commitment so altered the temper of Puritan communities that hardly a sermon was given that did not sound a note of alarm. (p.27)

With time, there were calls for the celebration of Christmas; fortune-telling became a viable business again; and eventually a brothel opened in Boston (p.27) [= Miller, New England Mind, p.472]. The connection between economic success and religious purity was clear to the clergy.

Since it was God's doing that New Englanders were blessed with wealth beyond their needs, since he liberally provided for them in order to encourage orthodoxy, the clergy faced a serious dilemma. History and now their own experience taught that commitment and orthodoxy were near-certain casualties of sustained economic success. (p.27)

Thus, there was as if a vicious pattern existed in the world that played out in New England as well.

A nation reforms with the aid of divine grace; God rewards its efforts with material prosperity; the reformed are then seduced by their security, and in three generations the nation is back where it started. (p.27) [= Miller, New England Mind, pp.474-475, RCK]

Puritan Demise

Puritanism foundered, in Christianson's reconstruction, externally on its economic success, which allowed eliminating God from the justification loop, and internally on the resistance of the Anglican Church to the Puritans' reform efforts (p.28).

God rewarded the New Englanders with riches for their holiness. Their land and livestock were both sufficiently fruitful and the ocean yielded up an abundance of cod, providing an economic boon to the colonial economy. (p.28)

As secular inducements became paramount, God was forgotten, and men consecrated their labors to the pursuit of wealth. (p.28) 

A major reason for the decline of the emotional appear within the movement was the refusal of the mother church in England to come to terms an purify itself. (p.28) 

Puritanism was not up to the task of converting those outside its group to the faith (p.28) and shriveled up.

Puritanism relied on the inbred strength of those covenant generations produced by the 20,000 pioneers who journeyed to New England in the first decade of settlement. (p.29)

Like the Latin language of earlier centuries, once Puritanism no longer served a useful purpose, it was discarded as a living element in a society which formerly fostered it. (p.29)

Puritanism and Mormonism

Christianson now takes a confessional view in assessing the relationship between Puritanism and Mormonism (p.29).

There was far too much that was right in Puritanism for its development to have been mere historical coincidence. (p.29)

Thus, Christianson places Puritanism into the salvation narrative that climaxes in the rise of the LDS movement.

Could they have observed the century that followed the demise of the kingdom they initiated, the Puritan fathers would not have been disappointed with the fruits of their efforts. In addition to much that is American, democratic and constitutional in our heritage, we acknowledge the role they played in conditioning nineteenth-century Americans, especially those with New England roots, in what might be called the Kingdom concept. As the Puritans sought God's Kingdom, so did later generations await its coming. A nation of seekers || emerged from the Puritan quest for the original Church of Christ. (pp.29-30)

From his confessional vantage point, Christianson can treat the Puritans as the water that prepared the soil for the true harvest (p.30).

The Latter-day Saint movement went on to become the kingdom of God on earth, but Puritan ideas, Puritan covenants, Puritan commitment paved the way. Both set out to serve God, and both did. Both are authentic; each fulfilled its purpose. They are as alike and as different as the terms Reformation and Restoration. (p.30)

Bibliographical Record

James Christianson, Puritanism and Mormonism: Parallel Paths, Parting of Ways, in: Donald Q. Cannon (ed), Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint Church History: New England, Provo UT (BYU), 1988, pp.15-32.