38. ii) Let us have faith that right makes might

John G. Nicolay provides a comprehensive biography of the celebrated Illinois lawyer, rail-splitter, and chicken-fight judge, which can only be done full justice by being read in full. I would then direct the curious to peruse your local library for a copy of Gore Vidal's Lincoln (presumably to be shortly reprinted if Mr Spielberg gets round to directing Liam Neeson in a cinematic adaptation), and to download the electronic text of Alexander K. McClure's Lincoln's Yarns and Stories: a complete collection of the funny and witty anecdotes that made Lincoln famous as America's greatest story teller.

As is standard practice in EB9's biographical essays, Nicolay's piece closes with a portrait of its subject, and is one of the more compelling examples of its kind. There might be more argument in Lincoln's case than Washington's as to whether events may have reached a more or less satisfactory conclusion in his absence, but even his sternest critics must concede that he was a man of unique ability, and who faced the challenges of his duty with unparalleled energy and dedication. At the very least, if cornball humour combined with a deep and brooding melancholy is your thing, then Lincoln, of all great men of history, is surely the most deserving of a place as a guest at one of those hypothetical dinner parties of the ages. I think I would probably seat him next to Richard Madely.

"President Lincoln was of unusual stature, 6 feet 4 inches, and of spare but muscular build ; he had been in youth remarkably strong and skilful in the athletic games of the frontier, where, however, his popularity and recognized impartially oftener made him an umpire than a champion. He had regular and prepossessing features, dark complexion, broad high forehead, prominent cheek bones, grey deep-set eyes, and bushy black-hair, turning to grey at the time of his death. Abstemious in his habits, he possessed great physical endurance. He was almost as tender-hearted as a woman. "I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man’s bosom," he was able to say. His patience was inexhaustible. He had naturally a most cheerful and sunny temper, was highly social and sympathetic, loved pleasant conversation, wit, anecdote, and laughter. Beneath this, however, ran an undercurrent of sadness ; he was occasionally subject to hours of deep silence and introspection that approached a condition of trance. In manner he was simple, direct, void of the least affectation, and entirely free from awkwardness, oddity, or eccentricity. His mental qualities were—a quick analytic perception, strong logical power, a tenacious memory, a liberal estimate and tolerance of the opinions of others, ready intuition of human nature ; and perhaps his most valuable faculty was rare ability to divest himself of all feeling or passion in weighing motives of persons or problems of state. His speech and diction were plain, terse, forcible. Relating anecdotes with appreciative humour and fascinating dramatic skill, he used them freely and effectively in conversation and argument. He loved manliness, truth, and justice. He despised all trickery and selfish greed. In arguments at the bar he was so fair to his opponent that he frequently appeared to concede away his client’s case. He was ever ready to take blame on himself and bestow praise on others. "I claim not to have controlled events," he said, "but confess plainly that events have controlled me." The Declaration of Independence was his political chart and inspiration. He acknowledged a universal equality of human rights. "Certainly the negro is not our equal in colour," he said, "perhaps not in many other respects; still, in the right to put his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man white or black." He had unchanging faith in self-government. "The people," he said, "are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts, not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the constitution." Yielding and accommodating in non-essentials, he was inflexibly firm in a principle or position deliberately taken. "Let us have faith that right makes might," he said, "and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it." The emancipation proclamation once issued, he reiterated his purpose never to retract or modify it. "There have been men base enough," he said, "to propose to me to return to slavery our black warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee, and thus win the respect of the masters they fought. Should I do so, I should deserve to be damned in time and eternity. Come what will, I will keep my faith with friend and foe." Benevolence and forgiveness were the very basis of his character ; his world-wide humanity is aptly embodied in a phrase of his second inaugural : "With malice toward none, with charity for all." His nature was deeply religious, but the belonged to no denomination ; he had faith in the eternal justice and boundless mercy of Providence, and made the golden rule of Christ his practical creed. History must accord him a rare sagacity in guiding a great people through the perils of a mighty revolution, an admirable singleness of aim, a skilful discernment and courageous seizure of the golden moment to free his nation from the incubus of slavery, faithful adherence to law and conscientious moderation in the use of power, a shining personal example of honesty and purity, and finally the possession of that subtle and indefinable magnetism by which he subordinated and directed dangerously disturbed and perverted moral and political forces to the restoration of peace and constitutional authority to his country, and the gift of liberty to four millions of human beings. Architect of his own fortunes, rising with every opportunity, mastering every emergency, fulfilling every duty, he not only proved himself pre-eminently the man for the hour, but the signal benefactor of posterity. As statesman, ruler, and liberator civilization will hold his name in perpetual honour."

38. i) The largest hands ever seen on a man

The heart of Barleycorn Towers is set to glow with the unearthly radiance of the cathode-ray tube throughout Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, as the presidential contest in our former colonies is followed through all the baroque twists and turns of its final, decisive (barring lawyerly appeals to the Supreme Court) hours. What better way to join the frenzy of excitement than by taking a look at the ninth edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica's portraits of some of the more notable past occupants of the throne of democracy? And where better to begin than with the wooden-toothed and giant-handed father of the nation himself?

"WASHINGTON, GEORGE (1732-1799), the first president of the United States, was born in Westmoreland county, Virginia, February 22 (Old Style, Feb. 11), 1732. One lawless genealogist has traced his ancestry back to Odin. [...]

"[H]is diaries show comparatively little reading, a minutely methodical conduct of business, a wide acquaintance with the leading men of the country, but no strong indications of what is usually considered to be "greatness." As in the case of Lincoln, he was educated into greatness by the increasing weight of his responsibilities and the manner in which he met them. [...]

"It is not easy to see how Washington survived the year 1775 ; the colonial poverty, the exasperating annoyances, the selfishness or stupidity which cropped out again and again from the most patriotic of his coadjutors, were enough to have broken down most men. They completed his training. The change in this one winter is very evident. If he was not a great man when he went to Cambridge, he was a general and a statesman in the best sense when he the British out of Boston in March 1776. From that time until his death he was the foremost man of the continent. [...]

"When the Federal Convention met at Philadelphia in May 1787 to frame the present constitution he was present as a delegate from Virginia, though much against his will; and a unanimous vote at once made him its presiding officer. He took no part in the debates, however, beyond such suggestive hints as his proposal to amend a restriction of the standing army to 5000 men by forbidding any enemy to invade the United States with more than 3000. He approved the constitution which was decided upon, believing, as he said, "that it was the best constitution which could be obtained at that epoch, and that this or a dissolution awaits our choice, and is the only alternative." [...]

" All the accounts agree that Washington was of imposing presence. He measured just 6 feet when prepared for burial ; but his height in his prime, as given in his orders for clothes from London, was 3 inches more. La Fayette says that his hands were "the largest he ever saw on a man." Custis says that his complexion was "fair, but considerably florid," His weight was about 220 lb. The various and widely-differing portraits of him find exhaustive treatment in the seventh volume of Winsor’s Narrative and Critical History of the United States. The editor thinks that "the favourite profile has been unquestionably Houdon’s, with Stuart’s canvas for the full face, and probably Trumbull’s for the figure." Stuart’s face, however, gives the popular notion of Washington, though it has always been a subject of curious speculation to some minds how much of the calm and benign expression of the face was due to the shape of Washington’s false teeth. [...]

"Washington’s disorder was an aedematous affection of the wind-pipe, contracted by careless exposure during a ride in a snow-storm, and aggravated by neglect afterwards, and by such contemporary remedies as excessive bleeding, gargles of "molasses, vinegar, and butter" and "vinegar and sage tea," which "almost suffocated him," and a blister of cantharides on the throat. He died without theatrical adieus ; his last words were only business directions, affectionate remembrances to relatives, and repeated apologies to the physicians and attendants for the trouble he was giving them. Just before he died, says his secretary, Mr Lear, he felt own pulse ; his countenance changed ; the attending physicians placed his hands over the eyes of the dying man, "and he expired without a struggle or a sigh.""

This article, by Alex. Johnston, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy, Princeton College, N. J., is available in its entirety at www.1902encyclopedia.com

34. Thoroughly organized, drilled, and equipped for service.

The author of the article quoted in the previous three postings is one Professor McKendrick. Britannica prints his name as M’Kendrick in each instance. I am assuming that this is following either some printing convention or personal preference, for elsewhere in Britannica Scots names are printed with the full Mc or Mac, or are likewise apostrophized. Checking the list of contributors in the Index volume, in trying (without success) to fathom if there is a discernible rule when the apostrophe comes into play, I was delighted to find amongst the many academics of Scots descent one George Brinton McClellan (given as M’Clellan).

McClellan was a Union general during the American civil war, lionized in song , but rather notoriously remembered in history as a battle-shy popinjay. Before the war he had been a successful and highly-regarded railway engineer, surely as notable a field of achievement as could be made in peacetime 19th century affairs. At the outbreak of the war, as the major-general of Ohio’s volunteers he achieved striking successes, where the Union was elsewhere suffering humiliating defeats and the threat of Washington’s capture. The handsome young general was a popular choice when promoted to commander of the northern armies.

McClellan proved to have a prodigious talent for the organization and discipline of his forces, matched by an equally prodigious inclination to avoid engaging the Confederate forces in actual combat. McClellan’s unwillingness to commit his troops in battle and his repeated habit of massively overestimating the strength of opposing forces, were knowingly exploited by wily southern generals such as Jackson and Lee. His repeated procrastination is often considered to be one of the single most significant factors in the bloody protraction of the war. Lincoln, if my understanding (based pretty much entirely on Gore Vidal’s splendid biographical fiction) is halfway correct, had no faith at all in the abilities of his well-groomed commander, and was finally able to dismiss him after the carnage at Antietam (considered nonetheless by many at the time and since to be McClellan‘s greatest victory).

To be fair to McClellan, his faults, although apparently clear enough to Lincoln, are easily marked with the historical benefit of hindsight. Had McClellan not been in the position to assemble and instill with faith and confidence such a disciplined and united army, there may have been no victory for later generals to win.

McClellan’s contribution to Britannica is, perhaps disappointingly, not a biography of some military leader of the ancients nor a treatise on keeping buttons and boots polished, but rather the entry in volume 17 for NEW JERSEY, of which state McClellan served a term as governor from 1878 to 1881. The article follows the standard format for geographical entries, describing the physical features of the state, listing its natural resources, tabulating its industry, commerce and population, closing with a description of local government, institutions and history.

Whilst otherwise devoid of material for easy interpretation, other than to confirm a love for and pride in his adopted state, there is perhaps a personal flash in the very last words of the article, describing New Jersey’s military capacity :

“At the breaking out of the civil war of 1861the number of men in the State available for military duty was 98,806 ; and during that war New Jersey organized and maintained 37 regiments of infantry, 3 regiments of cavalry, and 5 batteries. The national guard of the State now consists of 48 companies of infantry and 2 Gatling gun companies, numbering 3220 officers and men, thoroughly organized, drilled, and equipped for service.”

McClellan’s reputation for being more concerned with the parade ground than the battlefield, is not contradicted by the omission of any specific reference to the New Jersey troops being ready for action.

From McClellan‘s entry in the biographical section of volume 23‘s UNITED STATES article, we learn that he died “at Orange Mountain, N.J., Oct 29, 1885.” In his article, McClellan tells us that the post of governor is “elected by the people for a term of three years ; no one can serve in this capacity for two successive terms.” I cannot help but imagine the blue pen of an editor striking out “not even General George B. McClellan.” Death itself ruled out the possibility of a non-successive term.


Sources: EB9’s biography of McClellan is rather kind and brushes over the specifics of his defects. “The Life of Abraham Lincoln” by Henry Ketcham (1901) is widely available free of charge in numerous formats throughout Interwebshire, and has a useful chapter on the relations between the president and the general.

The current Britannica articles on George B. McClellan and the American Civil War are worth a look for a brief introduction to the modern historical perspective.

The photograph illustrating this piece comes from the Smithsonian Institution website, and shows a splendidly turned out McClellan and staff, posing for the camera, while (as one source has it) the distant sounds his fellow General Pope’s army being defeated at the second battle of Bull Run could be heard : Georgey playing his trademark hand of keeping his own forces safely unused in reserve. There are a wealth of fascinating photographs of the period, and of course much else besides, at the Smithsonian's main site.

A tip of the hat to the, well, encyclopaedic knowledge of the brains behind www.1902encyclopedia.com for bringing my attention to the matter of the apostrophization of Scots patronymics, and also for identifying the article penned by the great general.

ADDED RELEVANCY UPDATE (15.10.08): Somehow I managed to miss the news that Sarah Palin, one of the more interesting candidates to run as vice president, twice name dropped General McClellan in an interview the other week, apparently under the mistaken impression that he was leading American forces in Afghanistan.

24. Mysterizingness in the Limbo of Effete Heresies

"PHRENOLOGY. The name was given by Forster in 1815 to the empirical system of psychology formulated by Gall and developed by his followers, especially by Spurzheim and Combe. At first it was named "cranioscopy," "craniology," "physiognomy," or "zoonomy," but Forster's name was early adopted by Spurtzheim, and became that whereby the system is now known. The principles upon which it is based are four : (1) the brain is the organ of the mind ; (2) the mental powers of man can be analysed into a definite number of independent faculties ; (3) these faculties are innate, and each has its seat in a definite region of the brain ; (4) the size of each of these regions is the measure of the power of manifesting the faculty associated with it. While phrenology is thus, on the one hand, a system of mental philosophy, it has a second and more popular aspect as a method whereby the disposition and character of the individual may be ascertained. These two sides of the subject are distinct from each other, for, while it can only serve as a reliable guide for reading character on the assumption of its truth as a philosophic system, yet the possibility of its practical application does not necessarily follow from the establishment of the truth of its theoretic side."

The author of this essay, A. Macalister, M. D., Professor of Anatomy, University of Cambridge, is necessarily careful in his introduction of this subject. It is worth considering that while today we can easily dismiss Phrenology as an amusing, faith-based pseudo-science, in the 19th Century, however flawed the scientific method , the products of the subject were worth considering, in the absence of more rigorously achieved data.

Macalister gives us the history of the subject - from the work of early Greeks and Egyptians, through Albertus Magnus to Theodore Gall, and the heyday of Phrenology as a respected scientific philosophy in the early 19th Century.

"The popularity of phrenology has waned, and few of the phrenological societies now survive ; the cultivation of the system is confined to a few enthusiasts such as will be found attached to any cause, and some professional teachers who follow phrenology as a vocation. Like many similar systems, it has a much larger following in America than in Europe. Based, like many other artificial philosophies, on an admixture of assumption and truth, certain parts will survive and become incorporated into scientific psychology, while the rest will in due course come to be relegated to the limbo of effete heresies.

The faculties and their Localities.- The system of Gall was constructed by a method of pure empiricism, and his so-called organs were for the most part identified on slender grounds. Having selected the place of a faculty, he examined the heads of his friends and casts of persons with that peculiarity in common, and in them he sought for the distinctive feature of their characteristic trait. Some of his earlier studies were made among low associates, in jails, and in lunatic asylums, and some of the qualities located by him were such as tend to become perverted to crime. These he named after their excessive manifestations, mapping out organs of murder, theft, &c. ; but as this cast some discredit on the system the names were changed by Spurzheim, who claimed as his the moral and religious considerations associated with it."

Doctor Macalister proceeds admirably by cataloguing all thirty five propensities, sentiments and faculties of the system of Spurzheim and Combe. A selection follow :

Propensities
[...](3) Concentrativeness, below the obelion and over the lambda. This is a region of uncertain function, unnoticed by Gall, but described as Inhabitiveness by Spurzheim, because he found it large in cats and in a clergyman fond of his home. [...]
(4) Adhesiveness (Amitie), over the lateral convoluted area of the lambdoidal suture. This region was prominent in a lady introduced to Gall as a model of friendship, and is said by him to be the region where persons close to each other put their heads together.
(5) Combativeness (Instinct de la defense), above the asterion ; it was found by Gall by examining the heads of the most quarrelsome of his low companions whom he had beforehand stimulated by alcohol. It was verified by comparing this region with the same part of the head of a quarrelsome young lady."

Now that is what I call a scientific study : administering alcohol to low companions, measuring their heads, then measuring that of a quarrelsome young lady for confirmation.

"(6) Destructiveness (Instinct carnassier), above the ear meatus. This is the widest part of the skulls of carnivorous animals, and was found large in the head of a student so fond of torturing animals that he became a surgeon, also large in the head of an apothecary who became an executioner.
[...](8) Acquisitiveness (Sentiment de la propriete), on the upper edge of the front half of the squamous suture. This part of the head Gall noticed to be prominent in the pickpockets of his acquaintance.
(9) Constructiveness (Sens de mechanique), on the stephanion ; detected by its prominence on the heads of persons of mechanical genius. It was found large on the head of a milliner of uncommon taste and on a skull reputed to be that of Raphael. [...]

Lower Sentiments
(10) Self-esteem (Orgueil, Fierte), at and immediately over the obelion ; found by Gall in a beggar who excused his poverty on account of his pride. This was confirmed by the observation that proud persons held their heads backwards in the line of the organ. [...]

Superior Sentiments
[...](14) Veneration (Sentiment religieux), median at the bregma. Gall noted when visiting churches that those who prayed with the greatest fervour were prominent in this region, and it was also prominent in a pious brother."

I wonder if there's any possibility that Gall made up these observations, off the top of his head, as it were.

"(15) Conscientiousness, unknown to Gall ; recognized by Spurzheim usually from its deficiency, and placed between the last and the parietal eminence.
[...](18) Wonder, said to be large in vision-seers and many psychic researchers. A second similar organ, placed between this and the next is called Mysterizingness by Forster, and is said to preside over belief in ghosts and the supernatural.
(19) Ideality (Poesie), noted by Gallfrom its prominence in the busts of poets ; said to be the part touched by the hand when composing poetry.
(20) Wit (Esprit caustique), the frontal eminence, the organ of the sense of the ludicrous, prominent in Rabelais and Swift. [...]

Perceptive Faculties
(22) Individuality, over the frontal sinus in the middle line ; the capacity of recognizing external objects and forming ideas therefrom ; said to have been large in Michelangelo, and small in the Scots.
(23) Form (Memoire des personnes), capacity for recognizing faces ; gives a wide interval between the eyes ; found by Gall in a squinting girl with a good memory for faces. [...]
(28) Number, on the external angular process of the frontal bone, large in a calculating boy in Vienna.
(29) Order, internal to the last, first noted by Spurzheim in an orderly idiot. [...]

Reflective Faculties
(34) Comparison (Sagacite comparative), median, at the top of the bare region of the forehead, where a savant friend of Gall's, fond of analogies, had a promonent boss."

And finally

"(35) Causality (Esprit metaphysique), the eminence on each side of Comparison, noticed on the head of Fichte and on a bust of Kant ; the seat of the faculty of correlating causes and effects."

Which one cannot help but imagine to have been somewhat lacking on the bonces of Messrs Gall, Spurzheim, and company.

You can enjoy the rest of Doctor Macalisters slightly sarcastic presentation of this entertaining pseudo-science in the full PHRENOLOGY posting at the 1902 Encyclopedia website. The term 'mysterizingness' seems not to have achieved wider currency in the last few hundred years, returning only 22 hits at present from the Google. Accordingianists might see it as their duty to remedy this situation, perhaps by leaving snide comments on the web forums of modern-day phrenology enthusiasts. Eg : "Your propensity to mysterizingness will leave you stranded in the limbo of effete heresies."

The Phrenology article in the current edition of Britannica is clearly a summary based on Doctor Macalister's 9th Edition article, which strikes a pleasing note of continuity across 130 years.

18. (ii) The ideas involved with the word race

The opening remarks of Professor Keane's article leave little room for doubt concerning the tone we can expect to follow.

NEGRO (Spanish and Italian Negro, from Latin Niger, black) in anthropology designates the distinctly dark as opposed to the fair, yellow, and brown varieties of mankind.

There follow several paragraphs going into particular detail to define in exactly which part of Africa the 'true' negro may be found. Having settled on his region, Mr Keane gets straight to business.

...[T]he African aborigines present almost a greater uniformity of physical and moral type than any of the other great divisions of mankind.

A convenient finding to suit the sweeping generalisations that follow: they all look and act alike.

By the nearly unanimous consent of anthropologists this type occupies at the same time the lowest position in the evolutionary scale, thus affording the best material for comparitive study of the highest anthropoids and the human species.

One immediately pictures bearded anthropologists ensconced in the high-backed chairs of some pipe smoke filled Mayfair club, arguing over the merits of the yellow races as opposed to the brown. The wider cultural context ought to borne in mind here.

There are no corresponding articles in the Ninth edition for other races, but there is an article ANTHROPOLOGY where comparitive treatment is given. We ought not forget, reading these, that Anthropology was an extremely young discipline of learning, and founded on the startlingly bold and modern ideas put forward by Charles Darwin. The Origin of the Species was printed in 1859. Darwin's Descent of Man was printed in 1871, and is referenced, along with the work of other naturalists, in Volume 2's 1875 article on this new and controversial science. In ANTHROPOLOGY, Richard Garnet, LL. D., says that the classification of the 'Races of Mankind'

rests on grounds which are within limits not only obvious but definite. Whether from a popular or a scientific point of view, it would be admitted that a Negro, a Chinese and an Australian, belong to three such permanent varieties of men, all plainly distinguishable from one another and from any European. Moreover, such a division takes for granted the idea which is involved in the word race, that each of these varieties is due to special ancestry, each race thus representing an ancient breed or stock, however these breeds or stocks may have had their origin. The anthropological classification of mankind is thus zoological in its nature, like that of the variety of species of any other animal group, and the characters on which it is based are in great measure physical, though intellectual and traditional peculiarities, such as moral habit and language, furnish important aid.

There is considerably more of interest in this article, which I may work my way back to at some future date. I would like at this stage to rest by drawing attention to the reasonable intent to make the study of man an equal project to the study of other animals, but also the peculiar fixed notion of "permanent varieties of men." Later in the article, the author raises the question as to whether the different races of man "can unite to produce fertile offspring." He informs us that for the most part scientific study has supported this hypothesis. The author then addresses the question as to whether these "permanent races" originated from common ancestors, or from separate species.

Scientific study at the time provided good grounds to believe that different races of man originated in different species. In modern times this theory has finally been reserved solely for cranks, thanks largely to the discovery of DNA and the subsequent study of our genetic ancestry. In the 19th Century, however, the weight of consensus generally leaned the other way, with the "polygenists", taking fairly reasonable proofs such as the relative youth of homo sapiens considered against what were seen as the distinctness in human variety. The "monogenists", on the other hand, were reliant on unquantifiable faith - the Biblical story of Adam and Eve.

To return to Professor Keane's study, he now elucidates by listing fourteen characteristics which distinguish the Negro race. In a spirit, one might generously suppose, of cold scientific detachment, Keane succeeds in giving the reader a written mirror of the most cartoonish of racial stereotypes.

[...] (8) exceedingly thick cranium, enabling the Negro to butt with the head and resist blows which would inevitably break any ordinary European's skull ; (9) correspondingly weak lower limbs, terminating in a broad flat foot with low instep, divergent and somewhat prehensile great toe, and heel projecting backwards ("lark heel")[...] (11) short, black hair, eccentrically elliptical or almost flat in section, and distinctly woolly, not merely frizzly, as Pritchard supposed on insufficient evidence [...]

Whoever Pritchard was, his reputation is done considerable good by this cattish swipe from Keane.

The professor's fourteenth observation needs yet further prefacing and caution. It is not unimaginable that some bigot or other would delight in these 19th century remarks, and much as I regret that, it cannot be avoided without losing the greater insight into the foundation of their bigotry that more balanced readers will hopefully gain. The core fallacies of this scientific study are exposed here, to my reading : if somebody else reads and choses to agree with the original author, I would suggest that they cherished such prejudices in the first place. The words are chilling, however, and make for uncomfortable reading. That these observations are supposedly the result of impartial scientific study, is difficult to credit; one assumes, however, that to the educated majority who read these words one hundred and thirty years ago (and for many years that followed), that is exactly how this was read.

(14) the cranial sutures, which close much earlier in the Negro than in other races. To this premature ossification of the skull, preventing all further development of the brain, many pathologists have attributed the inherent mental inferiority of the blacks, an inferiority which is even more marked than their physical differences. Nearly all observers admit that the Negro child is on the whole quite as intelligent as those of other human varieties, but that on arriving at puberty all further progress seems to be arrested. No one has more carefully studied this point than Filippo Manetta, who during a long residence on the plantations of the Southern States of America noted that "the Negro children were sharp, intelligent and full of vivacity, but on approaching the adult period a gradual change set in. The intellect seemed to become clouded, animation giving place to a sort of lethargy, briskness yielding to indolence. We must necessarily suppose that the development of the Negro and the White proceeds on different lines. [...]"

It is curious how a scientific observer could watch carefree young children develop into listless adults in the Southern U.S., and ascribe that change to closing cranial sutures, rather than living under the abject conditions of the lash and grinding labour on the cotton plantations. Had they never observed a degree of sullenness in the white mining races or mill-factorying races of the Northern States and of Europe? The descriptions we have of those peoples is hardly a picture of vivacity and contentment in adulthood.

That the Southern States in the middle if the 19th century might not be the best place for dispassionate study does not seem to have occurred to Professor Keane. In a footnote he gives us his evidence of the flawed moral character of blacks, by quoting substantially from a presumably unbiased source, notably, however, describing the findings of the Reverend Dr Tucker as casting "a lurid light" on the matter:

"I know of whole neighbourhoods," he tells us, "where there is not one single Negro couple, whether legally married or not, who are faithful to each other beyond a few weeks. [...] The most pious Negro that I know is confined in a penitentiary for an atrocious murder, and he persists in saying he can see no offence against God in his crime, though he acknowledges an offence against man."

It is from observations of this calibre that Keane is able to draw his conclusions for his final remarks.

It is more correct to say of the Negro that he is non-moral than immoral.[...] No full-blood Negro has ever been distinguished as a man of science, a poet, or an artist, and the fundamental equality claimed for him by ignorant philanthropists is belied by the whole history of the race throughout the historic period.

Speaking as an ignorant philanthropist, I might hope after reading this that, were Professor Keane able to reverse our process, and look out from the pages of Britannica and see the historic period from our perspective, he would find cause to rethink the merits of some of his presumptions and findings.

* * *

It might be of interest to Accoringianists to read what the current edition of Britannica has to say on the subject of Anthropology, in particular the evolution of that field of study. Well now, thanks to a very generous promotion allowing Webographers to link to articles (in full) from the pages of their blogs, I can offer you the opportunity to do just that.

Read the Britannica Online ANTHROPOLOGY article here!

However, you will be failing to serve your best interests if you do not give your full attention to the original ANTHROPOLOGY article, which can be found at According to the Ninth's good friend 1902encyclopedia.com. Rule Britannica!

Read Richard Garnet's 1875 ANTHROPOLOGY article at 1902encyclopedia.com here!

12. (ii) Strenuous and spasmodic efforts after originality

Professor John Nichol has more good things to say on the subject of AMERICAN LITERATURE, and this still in the introduction to his essay.

Many of the artistic as well as the social peculiarities of the United States may doubtless be traced to their form of government. [...] When the hereditary privileges of rank have ceased to be recognised, the utility, if not the beauty, of knowledge becomes conspicuous. The intellectual world is spurred into activity : there is a race in which the prize is to the swift. Everyone tries to draw the eyes of others by innumerable imperfect efforts with a large insignificant sum total. Art is abundant and inferior : whitewashed wood and brick pass for marble, and rhythmical spasms for poetry. It is acknowledged that the prevailing defect of Aristocratic literature is formality ; they are apt to be precise and restricted. A Democratic literature runs the risk of lawlessness, inaccuracy and irreverence. [...] [America is] a country which is not only democratic but youthful without the modesty of youth [...], where the spirit of adventure is unrestrained by feelings of personal loyalty [...], where vehemence, vigour, and wit are common, good taste, profundity, and imagination rare ;-a country whose untamed material infects the people and diverts them from the task of civilisation to the desire of conquest.

It should by now be abundantly clear why American Literature deserves its own category separate from that of English Literature, indeed one would wonder how the two might ever have been confused. That the author of this piece is given so much space to expound on his observations on the character of the United States and her people before getting down to the specifics of considering actual American authors and their works, is one of the delights of the Ninth edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica. And whilst Professor Nichol's opinions might seem to be a little coloured by a degree of prejudice against the cultural products of the former colonies, these opinions are expressed with compelling and entertaining vigour - and just the right degree of supposed even-handedness to give his comments a final acerbic sting. Were we not to be treated to this introductory sharpening of the knives, it might be that the later judgements passed on the merits of Longfellow, Poe, Whitman and company be considered insufficiently impartial.

One might furthermore consider whether there is a degree of justice, for example, in the opinion that America's Constitution ends "sometimes in the sublime, sometimes in the ridiculous", in a week when the Supreme Court debate and rule that the triple-injection execution does not constitute "cruel and unusual punishment".

As for the faults of American Literature, Nichol has some final observations.

American literature is cramped on another side by the spirit of imitation. [...] [T]heir highest ambition, like that of all colonists, has hitherto been to receive a favourable verdict, not from the country of their birth, but from that of their ancestors. [...] The writers of the last thirty years have been making strenuous, sometimes spasmodic, efforts after originality, but they are still affected by transatlantic associations. [...] If the people of the United States had spoken a language of their own, it is probable they would have gained in originality ; as it is, they are only now beginning to sign their intellectual declaration of independence [...].

Ouch. As I have alluded, this is all from but the introduction to a long and entertaining essay, which can happily be read in full at www.1902encyclopedia.com. Professor Nichol's withering demolition of American humorous writing is worth particular attention, and may or may not be largely directed against Mark Twain, who is not named, but whose The Innocents Abroad is dismissed under "Books of Travel" as being in "bad taste". Poe receives rather more favourable treatment, and his work is pithily summed-up with the judgement that

In the regions of the strangely terrible, remotely fantastic, and ghastly, Edgar Allan Poe reigns supreme.

Hear, hear.

12. (i) Rushing into empty spaces

What is the problem with AMERICAN LITERATURE? This is a question which once troubled the finest minds in England, and which John Nichol, LL. D., F.R.S. (who ABBREVIATION informs us was a Doctor of Law and Fellow of the Royal Society), Professor of English Language at Glasgow University, has addressed with considerable vigour in Volume I of the 9th Edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Incidentally, a fairly large proportion of the essays I have looked at so far come from Volume I. This is in no way as a result of any intention to deal with subjects alphabetically, but sincerely a result of chance (although naturally, looking at any one subject is very likely to lead to the eyes wandering over other beguiling subjects on neighbouring pages). It has occurred to me, however, that Volume I being published at the beginning of 15 year schedule, there might have been more competition from the contributors to provide subjects sparkling with interest.

Back to Professor Nichols and his trans-atlantic musings. Our author, you will be pleased to learn, is well aware of the potential pitfalls that might beset critical enquiries into this subject.

The literature of the United States

[aha! Why wasn't this filed under US LITERATURE in Volume 23, published 13 years later in 1888?]

, while still half our own, is pervaded, to a degree not easily estimated, by a foreign element. The relationship between Englishmen and Americans, making them ignorant of their mutual ignorance, operates against the soundness of their judgment on each other's work. Community of speech, which ought to be a bond of union, is often a medium of offence ; for it dispenses with a study of the language, and in studying a language we learn something also of the habits and social histories which are reflected in, and serve to interpret, distinctly alien literatures. Facility of travel, making it easy to acquire first impressions, is a temptation to such hasty estimates as many of the most accomplished Americans have formed of England, and many of the most accomplished Englishmen have formed of America.

So, with caution, Prof Nichol examines what it is that forms the American character, and so her literature.

When we remember that the Roman lived under the sky of Italy, that the character of the modern Swiss is like that of the modern Dutch, we shall be on our guard against attributing too much to the influence of external nature. Another race than the Anglo-Saxon would doubtless have made another America ; but we cannot avoid the belief that the climate and soil of America have had something to do in moulding the Anglo-Saxon race, in making its features approximate to those of the Red Indian, and stamping it with a new character.

[...] In America [...] it is the extent of nature that is dwelt upon - the infinity of space, rather than the infinity of time, is opposed to the limited rather than to the transient existence of man. Nothing strikes a traveller in that country so much as this feature of magnitude. The rivers like rolling lakes, the lakes which are inland seas, the forests, the plains, Niagara itself, with its world of waters, owe their magnificence to their immensity ; and by a transference, not unnatural although fallacious, the Americans have generally modelled their ideas of art after the same standards of size. Their wars, their hotels, their language, are pitched on the huge scale of their distances.

Is this the American problem? The vulgar brashness of their enormous art, wars, hotels and language? Well, it is clearly a part of the problem.

Where Englishmen remember, Americans anticipate. In thought and action they are ever rushing into empty spaces. [...] [T]he tie which unites one generation with another being easily broken, the want of continuity in life breeds a want of continuity in ideas. The American mind delights in speculative and practical, social and political experiments [...]. The habit of instability, fostered by the rapid vicissitudes of their commercial life and the melting of one class into another, drifts away all landmarks but that of a temporary public opinion ; and where there is little time for verification and the study of details, men satisfy their curiosity with crude generalisations.

This is promising - mental recklessness, social mobility, and preferring crude generalisations over verification and the study of details (as opposed, for example, to John Nichol's considered and meticulous study - from which I am only providing the most American of sketches - born from the culture of this sceptered isle).

The great literary fault of America thus comes to be impatience.

Aha!

The majority of them have never learned that "raw haste is a half-sister to delay ;" that "works done least rapidly, art most cherishes." The makeshifts which were at first a necessity with the Northern settlers have grown into a custom. They adopt ten half measures instead of one whole one ; and, beginning bravely, like the grandiloquent preambles to their Constitution, end sometimes in the sublime, sometimes in the ridiculous.

NEXT: Professor Nichol continues his balanced inquiry, and we will learn what merit there is in the writing of these Americans. (Clue: very little merit indeed).

7. The quaint and crafty sayings of manifest idiots

Today we hear from the Joint Committee on Human Rights that people with learning disabilities often face abuse and neglect from the very people who are paid to provide them with care and assistance, owing to a culture based on outdated negative stereotypes.

Part of this culture is deeply embedded in language in everyday use. I remember the particular thrill of learning a new pejorative as a child - how from a sophisticated Mancunian friend I learned to replace 'wally' with 'spaz' or 'mong' and used it at every available opportunity, which is to say probably every other sentence. It wasn't too long before I was caught using the word by a parent or teacher and lectured on its meaning and the smallness of speaking and thinking in that way, but it certainly wasn't a habit entirely lost after leaving my teenage years.

Working in liberal Massachusetts in the beginning of the 21st century I learned about the American fondness for 'retard', examples of which are only too easily found out and about in Interwebshire. My job was supporting people with learning disabilities who lived and worked independently in their communities. The majority had been residents of Fernald, a notorious institution of which the stories and indeed very well-documented practices over the course of the 20th century make the pop-culture stereotype of the treatment of mental health familiar from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" seem like the epitome of enlightened care. Many of these practices carried on well into the 1980s and 90s, until residents, families and other concerned people sued the state to provide the assistance needed to fulfill their right to normal lives in the community.

A clue to the nature of the place comes from the name it carried until 1925: Fernald was known as the Massachusetts School for Idiotic Children. Although such a term was by 1925 was considered inappropriate, it is interesting to note that the state body which provides liberal Massachusetts with treatment, care and support for people with developmental disabilities is to this day the DMR - the Department of Mental Retardation.

I remember being inducted into my work in a leafy satellite town outside Boston, and being somberly instructed that the labels 'client' or 'service-user' were deemed unacceptable for use describing the people who we provided support for, the preferred term being 'individual'. This led to the use of such natural-sounding and empowering sentences as "We held a dance at the centre last week, which all the individuals really enjoyed." I later asked why the DMR hadn't changed it's name to something a little more modern and less negative-sounding - I was told that such a proposal had long since been sadly rejected on grounds of the undue expense that a change of name would entail - such as printing up new stationery, erecting new signage, etc.

The unnecessary expense argument was doubtless a thoroughly realistic one for what I learned of the mechanics of state expenditure in one of the richest and most progressive places on the planet. Every year, for example, the state would vote in a $1 an hour increase for the lowest paid workers in the care sector - and every year, after the Commonwealth's budget had been overspent or vanished into the Big Dig, the voted-for increase would, with great regret, be cut.

The School for Idiocy is also a reminder that although terms like spaz and retard might chafe as particularly obnoxious, 'idiot', 'moron', 'imbecile' and 'cretin' are all words which don't seem to require comment or apology when used in polite society or the Houses of Parliament either. They originate as specific terms for forms of developmental disability. The Ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica catalogues the terms carefully in Vol. 13's essay INSANITY (by J. Batty Tuke M.D., F.R.C.P.E), and Vol. 6's CRETINISM (by William Charles Smith LL.B, Advocate). The 11th Edition versions of these essays can be found at the Love To Know 1911 website here and here.

Where we pussyfoot about today with terms like developmental disability and mental illness, Dr Tuke can fairly confidently cover a great range of conditions with the term 'Insanity', consisting of "two great classes" : Congenital Insanity and Acquired Insanity. Those afflicted by the first class are idiots and cretins, the second are lunatics. Dr Tuke's consideration of the subject is rational and conscientiously avoids bias :

"In most treatises on the subject will be found discussed the bearing which civilization, nationality, occupation, education, &c., have, or are supposed to have, on the production of insanity. Such discussions are generally eminently unsatisfactory, founded as they are on common observation, broad generalization, and very imperfect statistics... Of much greater importance is the question of hereditary predisposition to nervous disease"

In both Batty Tuke's and Charles Smith's essays the employment of the terms idiot and cretin can hardly be expected to fail to raise either a smirk from the schoolboy or a tut from the enlightened humanist in me, such as when reading that Dr Ireland (esteemed author of On Idiocy and Imbecility) "subdivides idiots, for the purposes of education, into five grades" or learning that "There are cretins at Chiselborough in Somerset." The fact is, the authors make a clear and admirable effort to educate by describing a wide range of impairments as accurately as possible, speculating on their causes with a clear hope of medical practice being able to provide a remedy for or future avoidance of the conditions. In general the language used does, however, appear to be somewhat lacking in compassion, even where exhibiting broad-mindedness.

"Comparatively speaking, there are few idiots or imbeciles who are uniformly deprived of mental power ; some may be utterly sottish, living a mere vegetable existence, but everyone must at least have heard of the quaint and crafty sayings of manifest idiots indicating the presence of no mean power of applied observation. In institutions for the treatment of idiots and imbeciles, children are found not only able to read and write, but even capable of applying the simpler rules of arithmetic."

The same can even be claimed for many schools, universities and workplaces in Britain today.

As for the treatment of both idiocy and lunacy, Dr Tuke is pleased to report that the barbaric practices including cupping and leeching (see The Madness of King George) had towards the end of the 19th Century been almost entirely abandoned. "In asylums of the present day a shaved head is never seen. It was likewise the custom to administer large doses of sedatives. The system of treatment which now generally obtains is almost purely hygienic." Rest and nursing is what the finest minds of the 1880s believed held good, in an age that hadn't yet learnt to appreciate electro-shock therapy, benzodiazepines and Prozac.

"[T]he main question concerning treatment is, Where [is it] best to be obtained ? In the case of the poor there is no alternative, even in comparatively mild cases, but to send the patient to an asylum. In the case of the rich it resolves itself very much into a question of convenience, for, with plenty of money at command, the physician can convert any house into an asylum. But under ordinary circumstances, when the patient is violent, noisy, suicidal, homicidal, or offensive to society, it becomes necessary to seclude him, both for the purposes of cure and for the safety and comfort of the family. Except among the very affluent, treatment at home is for the most part unsatisfactory ; it is very generally tried, but breaks down under the constant strain to which the friends are subjected. In a well-ordered hospital for the insane there is every possible appliance for treatment, with trained nurses who are under constant supervision ; and it therefore affords the best chance for recovery."

2. The perverted ingenuity of man

A grimly sincere sounding American chap on the Today program the other morning was making a very forceful argument in support of the American legal system legislating for the use of torture. What if a terrorist in your custody has the information to prevent an imminent and devastating attack on the White House, the gravelly-voiced gentleman posited, should security forces not have the right to stick nails under the prisoner's fingernails?

"Torture" has its entry in Volume 23 of the 9th Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the essay is the work of one James Williams.

At the outset Mr Williams disappoints the salacious reader by declaring his interest to be the role of torture in legal processes ancient and modern, rather than providing a catalogue of "the innumerable modes of inflicting pain which have been from time to time devised by the perverted ingenuity of man [...]."

"The whole subject is now one of only historical interest as far as Europe is concerned."

A comprehensive history is given of the role of torture in Greek and Roman law, and how it has been applied in Europe throughout the centuries.

Of the United States there is little for Williams to say. "One instance of the peine forte et dure is known. It was inflicted in 1692 on Giles Cory of Salem, who refused to plead when arraigned for witchcraft." One recorded instance, an admirable record. Williams earlier explains that peine forte et dure was the only torture that had been legislated for in England, to be applied where a person refused to plead either guilty or not guilty. Boards would be placed across the prostrate form of the recalcitrant accused, and heavy weights added until they either were persuaded to enter a plea, or in agony expired. Giles Cory is probably most familiar to us today thanks to the gruesome scene in The Crucible, which powerfully portrays this pre-Constitutional equivalent of 'pleading the Fifth.'

Other than this instance it only remains for the 9th to round up by quoting the Constitution's prohibition on 'cruel and unusual punishment', before returning to the more fertile ground of the varied brutalities practised in continental Europe.

James Williams would doubtless provoke even more of a disdainful sneer from Mr Pins-under-the-nails than the average namby-pamby liberal Radio 4 listener of today. He provides a colourful-sounding list of tortures permitteded in 17th - 18th century Scottish Law including "...the rack, the pilniewinkis, the boot, the caschie-laws, the lang irnis, the narrow-bore..." and concludes somberly with the "worst of all, the waking, or artificial prevention of sleep." What, no water-boarding? Of course, Mr Williams was writing in simpler times, and so too unsophisticated to appreciate the distinction between torture and enhanced interrogation techniques.