Candles Part 2 - Philology

If asked to "snuff the candle", would you trim the wick or extinguish the light? As noted previously, a substantial number of the candles made and consumed in the United States in 1860 had wicks that needed to be trimmed frequently in order to keep the light from dimming.

According to an 1860 American dictionary, "snuff" as a noun referred to (1) the burnt wick of a candle (that is, the partially consumed portion that needed to be trimmed) and (2) pulverized tobacco. As a verb it meant (1) to inhale, (2) to smell, (3) to scent and (4) "to crop the snuff, as of a candle". The same dictionary defined the verb "crop" to mean (1) to cut off, (2) to mow and (3) to reap. The various definitions suggest that in the usage of the time was to trim its wick for the purpose of improving the quality of the light, although if the definitions are stretched, they might include the concept of extinguishing the flame.

Several examples from English literature from prior centuries suggest to varying degrees that the usage was evolving in this direction. One such is found in the play The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth (1613) a collaboration between William Shakespeare and John Fletcher:

This candle burns not clear: 'tis I must snuff it; Then out it goes.

Another is in Jonathan Swift’s Directions to Servants (1745):

There are several Ways of putting out Candles, and you ought to be instructed in them all: you may run the Candle End against the Wainscot, which puts the Snuff out immediately: You may lay it on the Floor, and tread the Snuff out with your Foot: You may hold it upside down until it is choked with its own Grease; or cram it into the Socket of the Candlestick: You may whirl it round in your Hand till it goes out: When you go to Bed, after you have made Water, you may dip the Candle End into the Chamber Pot: You may spit on your Finger and Thumb, and pinch the Snuff until it goes out: The Cook may run the Candle's Nose into the Meal Tub or the Groom into a Vessel of Oats, or a Lock of Hay, or a Heap of Litter: The House-maid may put out her Candle by running it against a Looking-glass, which nothing cleans so well as Candle Snuff: But the quickest and best of all Methods, is to blow it out with your Breath, which leaves the Candle clear and readier to be lighted.

The least equivocal is in Daniel Dafoe’s The Political History of the Devil (1726):

The Fellow going to snuff one of the Candles, snuffs it out, at which his Master being in a Passion the Fellow lights it again immediately at the other Candle, and then being in a little hurry, going to snuff the other Candle snuffed that out too.

By the late twentieth century the definitions of "snuff" as a verb had expanded to include "extinguish" and "put an end to". Moreover, although the range of candles available today varies widely as to size, shape and scent, I cannot recall a single occasion on which I was aware of seeing a burning candle with a wick that needed to be trimmed. Nor can I recall hearing the word “snuff” used as a noun to refer to any part of a candle’s wick, which is not surprising because I have never seen a snuff.

Modern usage has evolved to take an archaic word, referring to an archaic practice related to candles, and extend its meaning to describe an activity to remains universal as to candles -- the need to put them out.

Candles Part 1 - Technology

In 1860 the sources of illumination were solid, liquid and gaseous.

The solid source of illumination was candles composed of tallow, stearin, spermaceti or wax. The 1860 census data does not provide sufficient information to determine how much of each was produced. Moreover, the census data lumped the majority of candle production with soap production without indicating how much to attribute to illumination and how much to cleansing. Tallow was made by melting (rendering) the fat of animals, principally that of cattle and sheep. The liquid that remained after any solids were strained off was tallow. Tallow candles that were not made with the best materials were liable to smell, gutter and smoke. Various chemical and mechanical processes further reduced tallow into a solid component and a liquid component. The solid, called stearin (or stearine or stearic acid), was formed into candles that burned brighter than tallow candles. Candles made of stearin were called "adamantine candles", the label under which they appeared in the census. As the name suggests, adamantine candles were harder than tallow candles. They also had a higher melting point than tallow.

Spermaceti, a solid like stearin, was a component of the oily matter found in cavities of the heads of certain types of whales. The spermaceti could be filtered out and encouraged to separate from the oil by the application of chemicals. Wax candles were made from beeswax, the residue that remained when honey was extracted from honeycomb. Candles made from spermaceti or wax burned bright like adamantine candles.
The wick of an adamantine candle was braided, and the braid caused the wick to bend toward the side of the flame near its bottom where the candle's flame was its hottest, and the end of the braided wick that pushed against it was consumed completely.

The braided wick in a candle distorted the shape of the flame slightly, pushing one edge closer to the side of the candle. The uneven heat from using a braided wick in a tallow candle, with its lower melting point, would melt away the side of the candle and cause it to gutter. Accordingly, a tallow candle was made with a twisted wick that stood up straight in the part of the flame that was less hot and so was not consumed completely. As the partially burned top of the wick grew longer, the candle's light dimmed, and thus a tallow candle needed to be trimmed from time to time to keep its light bright.

The fact that other types candles did not need to be trimmed made them far more convenient to use.

Candles have ceased to be a component of daily life in the United States, and their use has become largely ceremonial or decorative or reserved for power outages.

International Travel

One traveler in the mid-1850s observed that "many mercantile men cross the Atlantic twice annually on business and think nothing of it". For the first-time traveler, or for the emigrant who expected to settle permanently in a new country, the undertaking was more momentous. Many emigrants, to conserve their funds, chose passage in steerage of a sailing ship, a vast open space beneath the main deck. In the mid-1850s the emigrant paid from £4 to £5 for a journey that lasted around 2 months. He received "weekly a supply of provisions, including tea, sugar, rice, oatmeal, biscuit, flour, &c., and a certain allowance of salt meat, or junk, possessing the consistency of gutta-percha, and the flavour of brine itself". Complaints about short weights and false measures apparently were frequent. A second-class cabin passenger on a sailing ship shared a small cabin with 3 others for the cost of £7 and paid a similar amount for provisions to feed himself during the voyage. For a slightly larger sum, the passenger might have traveled first class on the same sailing vessel, with all provisions except alcohol provided, or might have secured a second class cabin on a steam vessel and saved 5 weeks of travel time.

Broadway Vistas

Visitors to the United States in the 1850s often visited New York City, and narratives of these travels often focused on Broadway:

"Were there any thing like uniformity in the design of its long lines of buildings, Broadway would be one of the three or four most magnificent streets in the world. Even without any general design – for each man builds exactly as he pleases – the street, in its details, surpasses any single street that England or the British Isles can show. From the Battery facing the sea, where Broadway has a very ignoble commencement, to Trinity Church, there is nothing remarkable about it; but from Trinity Church, of brown stone, with its elegant spire, to Grace Church, built entirely of white marble, a distance in a straight line of nearly three miles, and thence on to Union Square, and the statue of Washington, Broadway offers one grand succession of commercial palaces. Formerly – and perhaps when Sydney Smith wrote – the houses were for the most part of brick gayly colored, with here and there a house of brown stone or granite. But the brick is in gradual process of extirpation; and white marble – pure, glittering, brilliant, without speck or flaw – is rapidly taking its place. The St. Nicholas Hotel, one of the most sumptuous buildings in New York, is a palace of white marble, with upward of one hundred windows fronting Broadway. To the right, and to the left, and in front, are other palaces of the same material, pure as Parian – larger than the largest warehouse in St. Paul's Church-yard, and devoted to the same or similar purposes; some for the wholesale, but the great majority for the retail trade. 'Dry-goods' or linen-drapers' stores compete with each other in the use of this costly stone; and such has been, and is, the rage for it, that in a few years hence a house of any other material than marble, granite, or iron will be the exception to the rule in Broadway, and in the main thoroughfares leading from it to the east and the west. Most of these buildings, taken separately, are fine specimens of architecture, but the general effect is not striking, from the total absence of plan and method, already alluded to, and which seems to be inevitable in a country where every man is a portion of the government and of the sovereignty, and considers himself bound to consult nobody's taste but his own. But this peculiarity is not confined to America, or St. Paul's Church-yard would not be what it is, and the noble proportions of the Cathedral would not be marred as they are by the too close proximity of the hideous warehouses that have been gradually piled up around it – monuments alike of commercial pride and bad taste. Brown stone edifices rank next in size and number to the marble palaces; and a few of cast iron, with elegant Corinthian pillars, add to the variety of architecture in the Broadway. Conspicuous among the edifices that give its most imposing character to this busy and beautiful street are Stewart's dry-goods store, the iron palace of Messrs. Haughwout and Co., such hotels as the St. Nicholas, the Metropolitan, the Lafarge House, the St. Denis, the Clarendon, the New York, and the Astor House. The last-mentioned was some years ago the boast and pride of New York, and the wonder of strangers; but the city has outgrown its southern limits, and stretched itself far away into the north and northwest, and new hotels like the St. Nicholas and the Metropolitan have dwarfed the Astor House in size and eclipsed it in splendor. The St. Nicholas makes up from 500 to 700 beds, and the Metropolitan nearly as many. Both of these, as well as the others mentioned, represent the magnificent scale on which the New Yorkers do business, as well as the more than Parisian publicity with which families eat and drink and pass the day.

"Enough for the present on the street architecture of Broadway. A few words on its physical and moral aspects are necessary to complete the picture. On each side of the street are rows of American elm, with here and there a willow or a mountain ash. At this date all the trees are leafless, except the willows, which still droop in green beauty, though somewhat shriveled in their leaves by the frosts of the last three nights. The roadway is excellently paved with granite, and the foot pavements are equally good. But let not the traveler be deceived into the idea that the part is a specimen of the whole. Broadway monopolizes nearly all the good pavement as well as cleanness of New York; and the streets that branch off from it on each side are uneven, dirty, and full of deep holes and ruts, through which carriage-driving is far from being agreeable. If there be any exception, it is in the Fifth Avenue – the Tyburnia or Belgravia of New York – where the richest people live in marble and stone palaces, not quite so large as the business palaces of Broadway, but sufficiently luxurious and imposing. The street swarms with omnibuses, somewhat smaller and more inconvenient than the omnibuses of London. Nearly the whole of them are painted white."

Literary Critics at Walden Pond

Henry D. Thoreau's Walden: or, Life in the Woods (published 1854) fared well with the critics. Walden is an account of how Mr. Thoreau built a cabin in a woods he did not own and lived in it simply and inexpensively for two and a half years, but it offers a sharp critique of the assumptions and conventions of American society. Putnam's Monthly Magazine observed,

"There is much excellent good sense delivered in a very comprehensive and by no means unpleasant style in Mr. Thoreau's book, let people think as they may of the wisdom or propriety of living after his fashion, denying oneself all the luxuries which the whole earth can afford, for the sake of leading a life of lawless vagabondage, and freedom from starched collars, there are but few readers who will fail to find profit and refreshment in his pages."

The Knickerbocker said that since the days when the dictator Sulla "so coolly massacred so many Roman citizens, there has not been a man who apparently has contemplated his fellow-men with a more cheerful, lofty, and philosophical scorn" than Mr. Thoreau. The Knickerbocker declared that Walden and the Auto-Biography of Barnum were the two most important books published in 1854, and it found resemblances between the authors:

"Both are good-natured, genial, pleasant men, One sneers at and ridicules the pursuits of his contemporaries with the same cheerfulness and good-will that the other cajoles and fleeces them. The rural philosopher measured the length, breadth, and depth of Walden Pond, with the same jovial contentment that the metropolitan show-man measured the length, breadth and depth of the public gullibility. ... And finally, both were humbugs – one a town and the other a rural humbug."

The Knickbocker concluded,

"Extravagant as [Walden] is in the notions it promulgates, we think it is nevertheless calculated to do a good deal of good, and we hope it will be widely read. Where it exerts a bad influence upon one person, Barnum's auto-biography will upon a hundred."

Graham's American Monthly Magazine said of Walden,

"Whatever may be thought or said of this curious volume, nobody can deny its claim to individuality of opinion, sentiment, and expression. Sometimes strikingly original, sometimes merely eccentric and odd. it is always racy and stimulating. ... Mr. Thoreau, it is well known, belongs to that class of transcendentalists who lay the greatest stress on the 'I,' and knows no limitation on the exercise of the rights of that important pronoun. The customs, manners, occupations, religions, of society, he 'goes out' from, and brings them before his own inward tribunal for judgment. He differs from all mankind with wonderful composure; and, without any of the fuss of the come-outers, goes beyond them in asserting the autocracy of the individual."

The Western Literacy Messenger said,

"We have had a huge deal of pleasure from the pages of Walden. There is music in the book. It is Yankee Doodle with new words and a variety of accompaniments. It is the hummings in prose of Genius in a Cottage of his own hands' making, as he looks out on Walden Pond, and into the woods and into his own heart and into the heart of the New England cent-fisher."

Significance - Part 2

With these qualifications in mind, let's look at the mentions of Mr. Lincoln made in American newspapers during the month immediately following his speech at the Cooper Institute. According to the database of digitized newspaper maintained online at the Library of Congress, during the period from February 28, 1860 through March 29, 1860, the phrase "Abraham Lincoln" appeared on 30 of 3001 pages published by 96 newspapers. (The numbers omit 95 pages published by two newspapers in Hawaii and one newspaper in Puerto Rico, which were not American territories at the time.) During the same period, 220 pages used the phrase "Mr. Seward" and 222 used the phrase "Mr. Douglas", the manner in which newspapers of the day referred to Senator William H. Seward and Senator Stephen A. Douglas.

These mentions of Mr. Lincoln included the following:

• 2 brief articles stating that Mr. Lincoln had spoken in New York City.
• 2 lengthy articles describing the event at the Cooper Institute – one focused on the remarks of William Cullen Bryant who introduced Mr. Lincoln, and the other focused on Mr. Lincoln's remarks.
• 2 reprints of an article from the New York Tribune that appeared before the speech and sketched Mr. Lincoln's biography.
• articles critical of Mr. Lincoln for accepting $200 for speaking at the Cooper Institute.
• 3 articles stating that some members of Congress had used their frank to send into the southern states thousands reprints of a speech given by Mr. Lincoln in 1859 stating that Senator Douglas was not a friend of the north.
• 2 lengthy articles discussing the candidates for the Republican nomination.
• 5 brief articles listing the possible candidates for the Republican nomination.
• 1 letter to the New York Tribune discussing politics in Ohio.
• 1 article critical of the Republicans as a sectional party.
• 1 lengthy article about Mr. Lincoln reprinted from the Chicago Press & Tribune.
• 2 lengthy articles printing verbatim a speech given by Senator Douglas in the Senate several weeks earlier concerning John Brown's invasion of Virginia.
• 7 brief advertisements in the pages of the New York Tribune offering for sale printed copies of Mr. Lincoln's remarks at the Cooper Institute.

All such databases have limitations. Only 96 newspapers were represented, yet the 1860 census stated that hundreds of publications of a "political" nature were then in print. The search of the database returned a false positive that had been misclassified as to date, and it failed to return the New York Tribune for the day after the speech, which carried the full text of Mr. Lincoln's remarks.

Notwithstanding the limitations of the source, the evidence indicates several conclusions. Mr. Lincoln's remarks at the Cooper Institute did not "go viral." Mr. Lincoln was not a national unknown before the speech, although there was a desire among the public (gauged by what editors chose to print) to know more about him. He had been working in Illinois to gain support to become the Republicans' presidential nominee, and he was included in the list of contenders. While Mr. Lincoln was not on a par with Senator Seward or Senator Douglas as a national celebrity, Senator Douglas and his congressional allies considered Mr. Lincoln a prominent spokesman for the Republicans and sought to use his words against him for political advantage. Senator Douglas no doubt regarded Mr. Lincoln as a more immediate political threat since they both resided in Illinois.

Abraham Lincoln won history's trifecta: he was elected as the sixteenth president of the United States, he led the nation to victory in the Civil War, and he brought about the end of slavery in America. For these reasons the details of his life and career are of great interest to us. If Mr. Lincoln had not become president, he would not have become the commander in chief or the Great Emancipator, and we should have far less interest in him today. In that case, his remarks at the Cooper Institute would be just another of the many eloquent statements of the era against slavery and the expansion of slavery into the territories.

There is no question that his speech at the Cooper Institute improved his chances of becoming the Republican Party's nominee by making a favorable impression on party insiders and influential members of the press in New York City. This was important because New York possessed a large electoral vote and was the home state of Senator Seward who was regarded as the leading contender for the Republican nomination. The speech expanded and enhanced the national reputation Mr. Lincoln already possessed. The evidence does not support the assertion that it made him a national celebrity.

In the case of true greatness like Mr. Lincoln's, the impulse to over-sell him is understandable.

Significance - Part 1

As a reader of history, I am annoyed by specious claims of originality, discovery or significance – think "lies, damned lies and statistics." Such claims sometimes denote simply innocent cases of over-selling the "merchandise." Sometimes they dress up the fact that the same old story is being retold the same old way. Sometimes they warn the reader that objectivity and context have been compromised to an extent that render the work untrustworthy. And sometimes they serve as the apologia that justify monographs. (I have a special place in my hard and critical heart for monographs. As in-depth studies of some limited aspect of a larger story, they inherently ignore the context that would demonstrate that their subject matter was a mere footnote to history, but – and it is an important "but" – they are repositories of much interesting and often useful information that histories of broader scope usually overlook or ignore.)

The particular claim of significance I propose to address it the proposition that Abraham Lincoln's address to an audience at the Cooper Institute (known today as the Cooper Union) in New York City on February 27, 1860 brought him to national attention. I recently did a review of the number and character of newspaper mentions that Mr. Lincoln received during the several weeks immediately following his speech. The purpose, of course, was to see what they showed about the effect of the event on Mr. Lincoln's national prominence.

Before we delve into the media content, however, I will explore a couple of realities about politics and the media in 1860 and today in order to better understand the significance of that media content. In 1860, as today, politics was both a participatory sport and a major form of entertainment. I consider it likely that, both today as in 1860, the focus on the presidential election to be held four years hence begins as soon as the most recent election is over. This is not merely speculation about who the players might be but also, and more importantly, politicians taking preliminary steps and making overtures to put together the resources, allies and organization needed in the attempt to win their party's nomination.

We see this more clearly today than in 1860 because the rules of the political game of winning the nomination changed. In 1860 the political parties in the states held conventions to assess the local strength of individual candidates– both national figures and local "favorite sons" – and to select delegates to the national convention, and the delegates from the states met in the national convention to nominate the party's candidates for president and vice president. This left the process in the hands of the party insiders – although not necessarily under the control of the party leadership – and it excluded the general electorate altogether.

During the twentieth century various states instituted primary elections, but these generally were non-binding, and the ultimate nomination remained largely in the hands of the party insiders. This changed after the 1968 election – primaries and caucuses were made binding, and primaries and caucuses became more common. The cumulative effect was to diminish, but not eliminate, the importance of party insiders in determining the nominee and elevate the party electorate to primary importance.

I take it as an article of faith that, today and in the past, no one becomes the presidential nominee of a major political party by accident but rather as a result of hard work and preparation. The nomination of a "dark horse" candidate may come as a surprise to observers, but the winning candidate made his effort to achieve the nomination, as did all the other candidates, with the difference that the circumstances at the time favored the winner more than the others. All the hopefuls work hard, but chance can favor only one.

The upshot is that when, as in 1860, political insiders were of primary importance to winning the nomination, candidates courted the political insiders. Such communications were primarily private and thus received little inherent attention in the press except to the extent of gossip shared about who is "available" as a candidate and who is garnering support from the persons holding political power. Such communications, both privately and in the press, could be important in gathering influence and support beyond one's local power base. By contrast, when as today the party electorate is of primary importance, the candidates court the electorate, and a significant portion of the communications are conducted through the media – which means that the campaign coverage in the press for each presidential election extends to nearly four full years. Gaining the support of political insiders retains importance because their support can be important in reaching and persuading the electorate, but with the change in the rules of the game, the political insiders have ceased to be decision makers and have become more like gatekeepers.

Another important difference between 1860 and today is in the nature of the media. In 1860 print was mass media; newspapers generally served a local or statewide audience; editors determined what was news; and editors gathered news from local sources, from telegraphed reports and from other newspaper sent to them free through the mail. Calling the telegraph the "Victorian Internet" is a cute analogy of limited usefulness. The telegraph facilitated rapid communication of specific information only between individual senders and recipients – it did not enable individuals to broadcast information for general consumption; it did not enable individuals to extract information from a diversity of sources; and it did not permit an individual to address multitudes as though he was communicating with each person individually.

Such things are not only possible today but are employed by politicians and their courting of the electorate and employed by members of the electorate in seeking information about politics and other topics. Certain media outlets have a nationwide reach, and the local media outlets, both electronic and print, have interconnectivity sufficient to receive and communicate information almost immediately.

In 1860, when politicians went on the hustings their purpose was to address the voter directly in large numbers. Today when politician go on the hustings, they usually arrange events that provide television with favorable images for the evening news, although they know they can bypass the news media to some extent and reach the public through social media.

Moby-Dick

The failure of Moby-Dick to become popular when published in 1851, and its subsequent resurrection in the 1920s, is an abiding mystery.  One school of literary criticism argues that the slaughters of World War I profoundly altered human consciousness and produce intellectual and artistic "modernity".  The timing works to explain the rediscovery of Moby-Dick, but the putative explanation begs the question why the Civil War, being comparably ghastly, more proximate in time and more immediate to the American reading public, did not produce anything similar.  Another problem with the "modernity" school of literary criticism is that some of the key emblems of emerging modernity – notably the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring" and the Armory Show of modern art in New York City – occurred before World War I.  The war was a cultural influence, but it was not a precipitating cause of "modernity".  Changes in the constituents of material culture suggests a more prosaic explanation of the mystery of Moby-Dick.  Whale oil, sperm oil and spermaceti candles were important sources of light when Moby-Dick was published, and because of the quality of the illumination they provided they commanded premium prices.  Accordingly, they were purchased principally by the middle and upper classes, the portion of the reading public that was likely to purchase an artistic novel like Moby-Dick.  The public purchased illuminating oils and candles and thus were removed from the brutal and dangerous business of harvesting and butchering whales and rendering their flesh into oil.  This aspect of whaling was not unknown – two books about whaling had been published, and Mr. Melville relied upon these in writing Moby-Dick, and other sources also spoke about this important industry.  Nonetheless, the benign products acquired in the market had a potentially disturbing history, and members of the reading public may well have decided that they did not to be reminded of this history each time they struck a match.  The production of illuminating oil from petroleum beginning in 1859 put the whaling industry on the road to extinction.  By the 1920s urban places had electric lights, rural places had kerosene, and whale oil, sperm oil and spermaceti candles were relics of the past.

Oysters

According to the 1860 census, eight states produced oysters. The census enumerated 426 firms that employed 2,165 hands and produced a catch worth $1.4 million. Connecticut possessed that largest portion of the industry (44.7 percent). Oysters were dredged by sailboats and rowboats. Dealers in New York paid between $3 and $12 per thousand common oysters. They were shipped fresh, canned and pickled. A description provided by a traveler to the United States in the mid-1850s testifies to the popularity and abundance of oysters:

"There is no place in the world where there are such fine oysters as in New York, and the sea-board cities of America; fine in flavor, and of a size unparalleled in the oyster beds of Whitstable, Ostend, or the once celebrated Rocher de Cancale. Nor has the gift of oysters been bestowed upon an ungrateful people. If one may judge from appearances, the delicacy is highly relished and esteemed by all classes, from the millionaire in the Fifth Avenue to the 'Boy' in the Bowery, and the German and Irish emigrants in their own peculiar quarters of the city, which (soit dit en passant) seem to monopolize all the filth to be found in Manhattan. In walking up Broadway by day or by night – but more especially by night – the stranger can not but remark the great number of 'Oyster Saloons,' 'Oyster and Coffee Saloons,' and 'Oyster and Lager Beer Saloons,' which solicit him at every turn to stop and taste. These saloons – many of them very handsomely fitted up – are, like the drinking saloons in Germany, situated in vaults or cellars, with steps from the street; but, unlike their German models, they occupy the underground stories of the most stately commercial palaces of that city. In these, as in the hotels, oysters as large as a lady's hand are to be had at all hours, either from the shell, as they are commonly eaten in England, or cooked in twenty, or, perhaps, in forty or a hundred different ways. Oysters pickled, stewed, baked, roasted, fried, and scolloped; oysters made into soups, patties, and puddings; oysters with condiments and without condiments; oysters for breakfast, dinner, and supper; oysters without stint or limit – fresh as the fresh air, and almost as abundant – are daily offered to the palates of the Manhattanese, and appreciated with all the gratitude which such a bounty of nature ought to inspire."

George Whitefield - Part 2

Although Rev. Whitefield stoked the fires of religion in Britain and America, his legacy was to undercut the authority of the established churches and to encourage religious diversity. When local Anglican authorities in the colonies opposed him, he defied their authority. While not deliberately encouraging the dissenters in their opposition to established authority, the ecumenical nature of his mission led him to preach in any pulpit offered and to speak wherever invited. The joy he extolled of personal religious experience conflicted with the grim inevitability of predetermination and contributed to the evolution of Christian theologies premised upon a loving God and the possibility of the sinner saved by repentance and faith, increasingly the message of dissenting sects.

Although militant in response to critics when young, Rev. Whitefield became less confrontational as he aged, but he remained the itinerant and was generally faithful to his original beliefs. He continued to travel to America and to preach to large crowds throughout the colonies, and he was on such a tour when he died in 1770 at Newburyport, Massachusetts. He had used the power of the press to spread the word of his mission, and the wide interest he attracted caused local newspapers to print the news of his travels and sermons. Thus, at a time in America when people's religious experience remained a matter of the local community and congregation, Rev. Whitefield's ministry provided an experience that tended to draw the members of the diverse colonial settlements into the awareness of a possible larger whole. Although Rev. Whitefield was a notable figure of his time, his career is only one thread in a large and diverse tapestry. Other events, occurring during the latter portion of his life – including the French and Indian War (the North American portion of the Seven Year's War (1756-1763)) and the collective action by the American colonies to oppose the imposition of the Stamp Tax (1765) – also reduced the insularity of the separate American colonies, which was among the influences that led eventually to the Revolution and American Independence.

People by their nature tend to favor and associate with those who resemble them in appearance, background and beliefs, and tolerance toward those who are different does not come easily. In the early years of the United States, however, the diversity of Protestant sects gave an incentive to all sects to prohibit any of them from using the power of government to promote itself. The prohibition against Congress making any law to establish a religion or to prevent the free exercise of any religion resides in the First Amendment to the Constitution. By the same token, those few states that had laws establishing a religion eventually repealed such laws.

This foothold of mutual toleration has grown over time – spreading from religious differences to other differences – although the growth has been slow and uneven. Writing in the late 1850s about the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision and related matters of race, the academic Francis Lieber noted that "sympathy" is "the first basis of justice" and that such sympathy was lacking between the races. The pattern of American history from the revolutionary era, through 1860 and to this point in time reflects a growth in the mutual sympathy that the diverse people of this country are willing to express, through the law and otherwise, to one another.

George Whitefield - Part 1

As someone who is drawn to study the past, I hold the somewhat heretical notion that attention to the present is more important than to fixate on the past. I do not mean to say that history is a mere amusement – knowledge of the past both can inform us why the present is like it is and can help us avoid repeating prior mistakes. My emphasis on the present is pragmatic: we can do something about the present and the future, but, except in science fiction, the past is fixed and immutable. (I am absolutist in believing that there exists a definitive factual sequence of events to be discovered and reported as history, and the facts are not varied by errors, interpretations and lies – but more on that another day.)

Viewing the past as predicate, in studying the past we need to know something of the more distant past. In 1860 the United States was largely a Protestant Christian nation but reflecting a wide diversity of belief and practice, with and attendant diversity in lifestyles, including disbelief and non-observance.

Prominent among the causes of this diversity was the fact that religious dissenters from the established or dominant churches in their home countries constituted a substantial portion of the European immigrants who came to the American colonies. Although they sought in the new world an escape from the ecclesiastic authoritarianism they experienced in the old, not surprisingly they tended to use their political control in their local communities to support their own religious views. The growing diversity of these colonial communities, however, made the enforcement of religious conformity all the more difficult.

Another prominent factor was the ministry of the Reverend Mr. George Whitefield. Born a commoner in Britain in 1714, Rev. Whitefield obtained an education at Oxford University and was ordained as an Anglican minister. Even before his ordination he began to attract attention as a charismatic evangelical orator and as a young man gained what would be described in today's world as rock-star status in the English speaking communities on both sides of the Atlantic. On occasion he spoke out-of doors to crowds that were said to exceed 20,000. This prominence made him a pivotal figure in great awakening of the 1740s, the spread of Christian religious enthusiasm that occurred in England and America. Whereas most ministers serve a community and a congregation, Rev. Whitefield remained an itinerant, traveling through Britain and making several Atlantic crossings to speak extensively throughout the American colonies.

Rev. Whitefield's views were at once controversial and conventional. He preached the necessity of the individual to experience a personal rebirth in Christ – he had experienced such a rebirth that he felt put him into communion with the Holy Spirit – although the Anglican Church frowned upon such teachings as promoting inappropriate religious "enthusiasms". On the other hand, Rev. Whitefield adhered to the Anglican doctrine of predestination – the Calvinist belief, common to most Protestant denominations at the time, that God alone determined who was to be saved and who was to be damned for eternity and that human action was powerless to alter the decision. One can appreciate some of the flavor of predestination in the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" delivered by Jonathan Edwards, an American contemporary and sometimes associate of Rev. Whitefield – the emphasis was on the depravity of mankind; God, being all powerful, was inscrutable, arbitrary and without mercy; and only chance determined whether the sinner fell as a result of his own folly or endured until God delivered the coup de grace.