Haverford Journal - Haverford College
Haverford Journal - Haverford College
Haverford Journal - Haverford College
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The <strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>Journal</strong> Vol 1, Issue 1 - February 2005<br />
<strong>Haverford</strong><br />
<strong>Journal</strong><br />
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1<br />
FEBRUARY 2005<br />
Rethinking the “L Word”<br />
Dr. Kevin Mattson<br />
Arms and Love<br />
Robin Dean, ‘04<br />
Southward Ho<br />
Scott Simpson, ‘04<br />
The Course of a Particular<br />
Sandra Read-Brown, ‘04<br />
Percevalian Mediaevalism<br />
Erin Tremblay, ‘04<br />
Bayard Rustin<br />
Rachel Moston, ‘04
<strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>Journal</strong><br />
Volume I, Issue I<br />
February 2005<br />
P�������� �� ��� J������’�<br />
E�������� B����<br />
Barbara Breckinridge ‘06<br />
Chris Brown ’05<br />
Lauren Donaldson ’06<br />
Julie Kleinman ’04<br />
P���������<br />
Ben Koski ‘06<br />
Drew Konove ’04<br />
David Langlieb ’05<br />
Robert Schiff ’04<br />
A�������<br />
Phil Bean<br />
Associate Dean of the <strong>College</strong><br />
Greg Kannerstein<br />
Associate Dean of the <strong>College</strong><br />
<strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>Journal</strong> is published annually by the <strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>Journal</strong> Editorial Board at <strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>College</strong>,<br />
370 Lancaster Avenue, <strong>Haverford</strong>, PA 19041. The <strong>Journal</strong> was founded in the spring of 2004 by Robert Schiff in<br />
an effort to showcase some of <strong>Haverford</strong>’s best student work in the humanities and social sciences.<br />
Student work appearing in <strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>Journal</strong> is selected by the Editorial Board, which puts out a call<br />
for papers at the end of every spring semester. Entries are judged on the basis of academic merit, clarity of<br />
writing, persuasiveness, and other factors that contribute to the quality of a given work. All student papers<br />
submi�ed to the <strong>Journal</strong> are numbered and classified by a third party and then distributed to the Board, which<br />
judges the papers without knowing the names or class years of the papers’ authors.<br />
The introductory paper of <strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>Journal</strong> is typically a contribution of interest from an established<br />
academic, chosen at the discretion of the Editorial Board.<br />
© 2005 <strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>Journal</strong>
Dedication<br />
This inaugural volume of The <strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>Journal</strong> is dedicated to Dean Phil<br />
Bean.<br />
Educators of all stripes face an irreconcilable challenge. On the one hand,<br />
they strive to guide us students, providing the direction and support we<br />
need to learn. And on the other, our teachers must give us the space to<br />
make our own mistakes, so that whether we succeed or fail, we can call<br />
our work our own. Negotiating this tension is not just an intellectual<br />
project—it is a gi� born of sensitivity and selflessness.<br />
On a project such as this journal, the challenge is all the greater. The goal<br />
has not been just for those of us involved to learn, but to produce a volume<br />
that reflects the best scholarship <strong>Haverford</strong> students have to offer.<br />
Dean Bean walked this fine line and we all benefited in the process.<br />
Few <strong>Haverford</strong> students get the chance to know Dean Bean. We are very<br />
grateful that we got that chance. Dean Bean has treated us with generosity<br />
and respect and yet not hesitated to be critical when necessary. The<br />
shortcomings of this journal are certainly our own, but to the extent that<br />
it is a success, we are indebted to Dean Bean.<br />
- The Editorial Board
Inside This Issue<br />
Introduction<br />
Rethinking the “L Word” .............................................................. 6<br />
Towards a History of Postwar Liberalism in America<br />
Dr. Kevin Ma�son<br />
Student Papers<br />
Arms and Love ........................................................................................ 24<br />
Courtly and Male Homosocial Models of Behavior in<br />
Fourteenth Century France<br />
Robin Dean ’04<br />
Southward Ho .......................................................................................... 38<br />
Horace Greeley and J.A. Sanborn<br />
Sco� Simpson ‘04<br />
The Course of a Particular ................................................................... 62<br />
A Cry For Meaning<br />
Sandra Read-Brown ‘04<br />
Percevalian Mediaevalism .................................................................. 69<br />
In Jeane�e Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit<br />
Erin Tremblay ‘04<br />
Bayard Rustin ........................................................................................... 82<br />
On His Own Terms<br />
Rachel Moston ‘04<br />
Acknowledgments ................................................................................. 104
6<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
Rethinking the “L Word”<br />
Towards a History of Postwar Liberalism in America<br />
Dr. Kevin Mattson<br />
It is common to note that our understanding of the past colors our<br />
sense of the present. Such is the case with American liberalism today.<br />
The word has become a slur in contemporary political discussion – the<br />
“L Word” as it has been labeled. Right wing pundits especially love to<br />
kick this dead dog. Take Ann Coulter who has tried to recuperate the<br />
reputation of Senator Joe McCarthy by labeling Cold War liberals “Soviet<br />
lovers.” Her a�acks came on the heels of a long le�-wing assault on liberalism.<br />
As the New Le� pledged itself to “anti-anti-Communism” during<br />
the 1960s, it blamed liberals for hampering political discussion during<br />
the Cold War and leading the country into Vietnam. Today, liberal anticommunism<br />
would appear either “treasonous,” from the perspective of<br />
the right, or deeply destructive, from the le�.<br />
It is my contention that liberal anti-communism was neither of these<br />
things. As a worldview, it had a coherence and depth that contemporary<br />
political critics miss. Liberalism – contra the gloomy prognoses from<br />
the last presidential election – had “values” and even virtues spelled out<br />
in a sophisticated critique of both right and le� in this country. Reconstructing<br />
this can help us understand history be�er as well as think more<br />
clearly about our political future. It is my belief that the lack of a liberal<br />
alternative to conservative ascendancy has done a great deal of damage<br />
to political discourse and decision-making today. The way we remember<br />
the past informs the way we think about choices in the future. History<br />
can help us think be�er about our contemporary world.<br />
I will take us back to the years following World War II and into the<br />
1950s in order to assess liberal anti-communism. My focus in on liberal<br />
intellectuals – most visibly, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, the historian<br />
and political advisor Arthur Schlesinger, and the journalist James<br />
Wechsler – who helped defined liberal anti-communism in their actions
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 7<br />
and writings. By seeing how they thought about communism, liberalism,<br />
and American politics, I will reconstruct Cold War liberalism and<br />
assess its legacy.<br />
Anti-Communism as Political Theory: The Problem of Marxism<br />
To understand liberal anti-communism, we must delve first into the<br />
philosophy of communism itself. Before there was the Soviet Union,<br />
there was a western European communist movement. Before there was<br />
the philosophy of Stalinism there was Marxism. Though these sets of<br />
ideas and practices are separated by history, they are also linked. For<br />
thinkers like Niebuhr and Schlesinger, Marxism was an assessment of<br />
industrial capitalism and a political theory that set out how to create a<br />
more just society free of exploitation (today Marxism has gravitated towards<br />
the academy, especially cultural studies, draining it of its political<br />
ideas). Liberals believed Marxism sowed the ground for Stalinism; there<br />
was an intellectual and rational basis for their anti-communism. Unlike<br />
conservatives, though, these thinkers did not condemn communism as<br />
a moral evil. They believed there were “humane and liberal aspects of<br />
Marxism” and even some communists who resisted totalitarianism. Certain<br />
members of the Communist Party, Schlesinger was willing to admit,<br />
partook in “courageous activity against local injustice and exploitation.”<br />
But even with this sort of human exception to the rule, Schlesinger saw<br />
Marxism reaching dangerous political conclusions that needed to be<br />
combated intellectually. 1<br />
Karl Marx, writing during the 1840s and observing the impact of the<br />
British industrial revolution, believed he had se�led the big questions of<br />
political economy and history. He was a social theorist who worked in<br />
the grand tradition and summed up world history by seeing it through<br />
the lens of class conflict. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the<br />
history of class struggles,” the Communist Manifesto bellowed. It was not<br />
just class conflict but polarization that marked historical development – in<br />
Marx’s time the increasing size of the industrial proletariat (the working<br />
class) and the decreasing size but increasing power of the bourgeoisie<br />
(or capitalist class). The proletariat grew in numbers as it watched its<br />
social conditions worsen; at the same time, the bourgeoisie watched its<br />
wealth amass. Inevitably, the Dickens-like characteristics of 19th century<br />
capitalism nurtured a revolutionary situation in which the proletariat<br />
would find itself needing to overthrow the bourgeoisie and institute a
8<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
communist society. By making this diagnosis, Marx claimed to read not<br />
just history but the future. 2<br />
Looking around during the 1940s and 1950s, this “catastrophic”<br />
view of class conflict appeared inaccurate. Though there was a continued<br />
fear that America might dri� back into Depression a�er the war,<br />
the increasing reality was that the working class was doing well. Marx’s<br />
theory of “immiseration” did not apply, to put it bluntly, as more and<br />
more working class people moved to the suburbs and bought televisions.<br />
Schlesinger argued that capitalism “has reduced the size of the working<br />
class and deradicalized the worker.” Marxism, as the liberal journalist<br />
James Wechsler pointed out, “underestimated the resilience of American<br />
capitalism,” especially its ability to overcome class conflict. Indeed, the<br />
New Deal had already taught this lesson, as Arthur Schlesinger would<br />
point out over and over.<br />
This debunking of Marx’s theory of class polarization did not mean<br />
these liberals ignored class differences or the realities of class conflict.<br />
They knew American society was marred by socio-economic inequalities<br />
even in a time of abundance. Instead of eschewing the idea of class conflict,<br />
Schlesinger traced out an indigenous and distinctly American way of<br />
talking about social conflict that existed throughout history but that also<br />
believed in ameliorating it through reform, not revolution. For instance,<br />
Schlesinger explained, “The founders of the republic construed politics<br />
automatically in terms of classes. No more magisterial summation of<br />
the economic interpretation of politics exists than James Madison’s celebrated<br />
Tenth Federalist Paper.” Here Madison discussed social conflicts<br />
and their relation to the “unequal distribution of property.” During the<br />
Jacksonian period, many Americans, even the President, spoke about the<br />
struggle between the privileged few and the “common man” (as had the<br />
subject of Schlesinger’s first book, Orestes Brownson). The difference between<br />
talking about class this way and talking about class from a Marxist<br />
perspective was that the former believed in reforming the system to<br />
lessen (not eradicate) class differences. This view of class seemed a more<br />
realistic assessment of American affluence in the post-war years and a<br />
means to evade catastrophism and its concomitant faith in revolution. 3<br />
Marxism also prophesied too much. It denied contingency and predicted<br />
the future, a dangerous business as far as these intellectuals were<br />
concerned. Marx had studied the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel who<br />
believed in a “history of philosophy,” an elaborate mapping out of stages
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 9<br />
of development from the past to the present and future. Marx believed<br />
in stages of history following from one another – antiquity to feudalism,<br />
and then from the capitalist present to the communist future. The<br />
problem here was first the obvious: Marx’s predictions had been proven<br />
wrong due to the failed socialist revolutions in Western Europe (where<br />
Marx believed the communist revolution was destined to take place). But<br />
there was something beyond these empirical inaccuracies. There was the<br />
danger of believing too much in the “order and predictability in history,”<br />
as Wechsler put it. Contingency and unpredictability were be�er values<br />
than prediction based on iron laws of social development. Teleology<br />
abolished the power of human activity and this the liberal mindset found<br />
abhorrent, since it eradicated human freedom and self-determination<br />
(the sort that could happen within the bounds of social circumstances). 4<br />
Marxism’s prophesying was tied into its theory of politics. And here<br />
is where these intellectuals started to make connections between Karl<br />
Marx’s thinking during the 19th century in Western Europe and the realities<br />
of Soviet totalitarianism during the Cold War. Marx’s interpretation<br />
of representative government in Western Europe (and the United<br />
States) was far too cynical. Since he prioritized economic over political<br />
power, Marx saw the state merely as an instrument of economic interests.<br />
Schlesinger explained, “A century ago, Marx dismissed the limited state<br />
in a somewhat cavalier manner. ‘The executive of the modern state,’ he<br />
wrote in the Communist Manifesto, ‘is but a commi�ee for managing the<br />
common affairs of the bourgeoisie.’” This interpretation ignored the accomplishments<br />
of bourgeois democracy, including the element of freedom<br />
built into politics – especially the sort that occurred within a representative<br />
governmental system based on full suffrage – that could help<br />
transform the social system for the be�er. Government, as Schlesinger<br />
argued, has “become an object of genuine competition among classes; it<br />
is the means by which the non-business classes may protect themselves<br />
from the business community…” Or as Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out,<br />
the New Deal “invalidated the Marxist dogma of the inevitable subservience<br />
of political to economic power.” FDR, a member of America’s elite,<br />
had turned against his own class’s self-interest and implemented reform<br />
in order to save capitalism. Government might serve as a tool for the<br />
wealthy at times, but in a democracy, it could also become a tool for others.<br />
Thus, these thinkers believed history had proven wrong Marx’s cynical<br />
assessment of “bourgeois democracy.” 5
10<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
There’s an ironic twist on this point. While Marx was too cynical<br />
about government under 19th century capitalist conditions, he was too<br />
utopian about government within his conception of a communist future.<br />
Though Marx condemned what he called “utopian” socialism, his vision<br />
of a communist future was remarkably naive. He spoke of the state withering<br />
away a�er a communist revolution (as would Lenin later) and the<br />
creation of an egalitarian society free of class conflict – that is, an end to<br />
history. Niebuhr pounced on this blind side of Marx’s political philosophy.<br />
Though Marxism was a legitimate reaction against the “excessive<br />
individualism of the bourgeois classes,” he argued, “it is also in error<br />
when it assumes that a frictionless harmony between the individual and<br />
community can be established” in the future. Conflict – Niebuhr’s realism<br />
made clear – could never be eradicated from life. There would<br />
always be those trying to seize power, and not just economic power but<br />
political power (what was happening in the Soviet Union at the time<br />
he was writing). Once again, Marx’s utopian vision stemmed from his<br />
simplistic assessment of human society. “The social substance of life,”<br />
Niebuhr explained, “is richer and more various, and has greater depths<br />
than are envisaged in the Marxist dream of social harmony.” 6<br />
Marx’s utopianism grew from a black hole in his political theory. He<br />
never specified how exactly a violent revolution and dictatorship of the<br />
proletariat could transform themselves into a more peaceful society, allowing<br />
the state to wither away. That remained an open question. The<br />
problem was that a�er Marx died, certain political theorists started to<br />
answer it in frightening ways. Marx’s faith in a “dictatorship of the proletariat,”<br />
as Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out, led inevitably to a “monopoly<br />
of power.” All Lenin had to do was turn the “dictatorship of the proletariat”<br />
into a dictatorship of the party, and from here it was a small jump to<br />
Stalinist dictatorship. Schlesinger wrote, “Lenin’s policy of concentrating<br />
all authority and wisdom in the Party leadership and smashing all opposition<br />
thus made ‘Stalinism’ inevitable.” Additionally, Marx never had<br />
any appreciation of political “rights” (or civil liberties). For him, rights<br />
served only to justify the bourgeoisie’s privilege to property ownership,<br />
thus stymieing revolution. Marx had no appreciation of the inherent<br />
need for rights and their protection of citizens against the abuse of political<br />
power. The Marxist mindset therefore contained li�le that would<br />
protect against dictatorship. Niebuhr explained that “Communism has<br />
no understanding of the value of liberty.” In other words, it had no way
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 11<br />
of resisting the political system called “totalitarianism.” 7<br />
This term entered the American political lexicon during the 1940s,<br />
and liberal intellectuals helped put it there by pointing to the lack of any<br />
opposition to state power in Marxist theory. Totalitarianism essentially<br />
meant nothing standing between a centralized government and an isolated<br />
individual living in a mass society – that is, the consolidation of<br />
total power. There were no oppositional political parties or organizations<br />
(churches, independent labor unions, etc.) that could check the state’s<br />
power. Rather, the individual’s conscience was subsumed by the state<br />
and controlled via propaganda. These were the political features that the<br />
Soviet Union shared with the now defunct fascist state run by Hitler. The<br />
most important thinker on totalitarianism, the German émigré Hannah<br />
Arendt, conflated Soviet and German totalitarianism. Though Niebuhr<br />
and Schlesinger appreciated her insights into the operation of power,<br />
they also believed Nazism and Soviet totalitarianism differed. The former<br />
was absolutely cynical in its love of power. The second used “ruthless<br />
power” but hid “behind a screen of pretended ideal ends.” This is<br />
what made Soviet totalitarianism much more threatening. It could appeal<br />
to those searching for answers to problems of social injustice – especially<br />
the poor and downtrodden in the world – while fascism embraced<br />
power for the sake of power itself. 8<br />
If Communism portended so many bad practices on both an intellectual<br />
and political level, how could liberals prevent its spread? This<br />
question only increased in relevance as the historical realities of the Cold<br />
War grew apparent. In 1946 Churchill warned of an “iron curtain” falling<br />
on the world, and Americans found its Russian ally during World<br />
War II quickly becoming its enemy. The Soviet Union was expanding its<br />
power throughout Eastern Europe and was optimistic about the growing<br />
popularity of communists in Western European countries like France. It<br />
reinvigorated its international work by creating the Cominform (which<br />
took the place of the then defunct Comintern). And so liberals faced<br />
an international and domestic challenge that would define their work<br />
for years to come. But they also faced a more complex and puzzling<br />
question: How to prevent the growth of communist ideals without succumbing<br />
too much to the dark side of human nature? How to stand fast<br />
against communism without losing sight of liberal virtues? Could, in the<br />
evocative language of Reinhold Niebuhr, the “children of light” check the<br />
power of the “children of darkness”? He knew full well that the children
12<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
of light had darkness within themselves. He also knew that a “frantic<br />
anticommunism can become so similar in its temper of hatefulness to<br />
communism itself.” This was precisely what made the Cold War so challenging<br />
for liberals. 9<br />
The Ethics of Parsing<br />
Liberals recognized that the search for communists at home made<br />
sense – no ma�er what Ann Coulter might think. Liberals saw communists<br />
in their midst: Henry Wallace’s campaign in 1948 was li�ered with<br />
Communists (see the previous chapter); some high profile labor unions<br />
like the National Maritime Union, Longshoremen, and United Electrical,<br />
Radio and Machine Workers of America were infiltrated by communists.<br />
Schlesinger and Wechsler knew Communists operated through<br />
front groups, lying about themselves in order to try to gain influence<br />
within progressive organizations. Wechsler had had first hand experience<br />
with this sort of miserable experience. For instance, he had been a<br />
member of the American Student Union during the 1930s, and when he<br />
returned to examine it in 1949, all he saw were communists and “fellow<br />
travelers” (those who weren’t card carrying members but faithful to the<br />
party’s line). He realized just how “a disciplined minority may shape an<br />
organization’s policy” if it tried the way Communists did. In addition,<br />
he knew that the end goal of Communist organizing was to overthrow<br />
democratic institutions. Finally, Wechsler and Schlesinger believed that<br />
communists had infiltrated the federal government. They both believed<br />
Whi�aker Chambers’s charge that Alger Hiss had been a spy, and neither<br />
believed the Rosenbergs were anything but guilty. As Schlesinger<br />
explained, “There can be no serious question that an underground Communist<br />
apparatus a�empted during the late thirties and during the war<br />
to penetrate the United States Government.” No ma�er how strange<br />
ex-Communists like Elizabeth Bentley might seem, Schlesinger warned<br />
fellow liberals in 1947, there was a “hard substratum of truth” in the “stories”<br />
they told “before the federal grand jury.” The communist threat<br />
was a reality, especially between 1945 and 1949, those first, tension-ridden<br />
years of Cold War history. 10<br />
Even during this frightening time, the liberal was responsible to what<br />
I call an ethic of parsing. Care and precision needed to be taken when<br />
searching for communists. Schlesinger called for “poise, balance, judgment”<br />
when prosecuting enemies of democracy (though he disagreed
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 13<br />
with the anti-communist philosopher, Sidney Hook, on many other<br />
points, he put into practice what Hook had labeled the “ethics of controversy”).<br />
The key distinction to be drawn was between ideas and actions;<br />
the first posed no danger and needed to be countered via argument, the<br />
la�er, if they constituted espionage, should be crushed. “Ideas are not<br />
the enemy,” Wechsler wrote in 1947. He explained, “An awareness of the<br />
distinction between communism as an idea and the communist parties<br />
as ba�alions of Soviet espionage and sabotage is essential to any national<br />
wisdom.” Looking back on the late 1940s, Niebuhr believed liberals drew<br />
distinctions between ideas and opinions and the acts commi�ed by the<br />
Rosenbergs and Hiss, since “these trials involved not opinions but overt<br />
acts.” Arthur Schlesinger concurred, adding to this difference between<br />
ideas and acts the “clear distinction between the rights of an American<br />
citizen and the rights of a government employee in a security agency.”<br />
He also reminded Americans of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s earlier declaration<br />
of a “clear and present danger rule” when cracking down on freedom.<br />
There was a “clear and present danger” with communist spies in<br />
the State Department; there was not with citizens articulating communist<br />
ideas within the American public sphere of debate. In the sphere of debate,<br />
civil rights had to win out over fear, if an intellectual took “the traditional<br />
democratic methods of debate” seriously. A�er all, he explained,<br />
“In our detestation of Communism we must not… do irreparable harm<br />
to our American heritage of freedom.” The liberal had to parse ideas and<br />
action, sabotage and debate, partisans of political ideals and spies. 11<br />
This abstract ethic needed to be applied to the measures taken by<br />
the federal government in prosecuting communists. The first and most<br />
important act here was President Truman’s Executive Order in 1947 that<br />
created a Review Board to examine the loyalty of government employees<br />
(known, therefore, as the Loyalty Act). In principle, Cold War liberals<br />
agreed with the act. But principle is not the only way to assess government<br />
decisions. ADA eventually decided to support Truman’s Loyalty<br />
Program, even though concerns were expressed about “its procedures.”<br />
Wechsler worried about the “loose language in the loyalty order.” It had<br />
failed to take up the liberal ideal of parsing. This could be seen in pragmatic<br />
terms as liberals witnessed its misapplication a�er its passage. The<br />
New York Post reported as early as 1947 that the State Department was<br />
dangerously widening the concept of “loyalty” to include drunkenness<br />
and “sexual perversion.” Two years later, Wechsler reported how one
14<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
woman was being prosecuted by the Loyalty Program because she believed<br />
in interracial marriage. In the army, things were even worse. Here<br />
a civilian employee was “denied a hearing or even a statement of charges<br />
until a�er he is dismissed.” This was the furthest thing from the care and<br />
precision Schlesinger and Wechsler had counseled. It allowed the idea of<br />
loyalty – a defensible ideal within the se�ing of a democratic state – to be<br />
mixed up with conformity. 12<br />
This was not just an ethical mistake but a pragmatic one. These intellectuals<br />
moved back and forth from analyzing things in terms of values<br />
and then in terms of consequences. Schlesinger worried that if the<br />
Loyalty program continued to confuse loyalty with conformity, it might<br />
prevent talented employees from entering the State Department. In addition,<br />
as wiretapping became more of a reality, how could the administration<br />
pragmatically ensure that it didn’t get the wrong people and<br />
engender paranoia among citizens? Schlesinger also worried that loyalty<br />
programs might make martyrs out of the wrong people. As colleges<br />
started to administer their own loyalty oaths, conflicts started to emerge.<br />
Schlesinger was particularly concerned with one case at the University<br />
of Washington. Here the administration prosecuted six professors for<br />
having lied about their Communist Party membership. Three professors<br />
were fired, and the case drew national a�ention. Schlesinger believed<br />
that the accused professors were guilty of lying but that prosecuting<br />
them only gave them more credibility. The President of the University<br />
of Washington had “transformed these wretched nonentities into living<br />
evidences of the capitalist assault against freedom, now paraded through<br />
the Eastern campuses,” Schlesinger explained. The pragmatic results of<br />
prosecuting communists always had to be kept in mind, in addition to<br />
the ethical question of being careful and prudent. 13<br />
As with any good ethical and pragmatic judgment, this one grew out<br />
of historical knowledge. There were precedents here. There had been the<br />
“Red Scare” of 1919 in the immediate wake of the Russian Revolution.<br />
The A�orney General used his powers to investigate not just pro-Russian<br />
communists but just about any le�-wing activist during this time<br />
and had agreed to illegal deportations of foreigners. More recently, the<br />
Dies Commi�ee had formed in 1938 in order to investigate “subversive<br />
and un-American propaganda.” Headed by Congressman Martin Dies,<br />
a Texan who had come to oppose the New Deal, the Special House Commi�ee<br />
on Un-American Activities was supposed to examine all anti-
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 15<br />
American causes – be they from the le� or right. But as Wechsler noted,<br />
Dies let the right – including pro-Franco fascists in the U.S. – off the hook<br />
and only a�acked le�-wing and liberal causes (including the New Deal’s<br />
Federal Writers’ Project). Arthur Schlesinger argued that Dies used anti-<br />
Communism as a “pretext for a�acking liberals and New Dealers.” Dies<br />
had smeared his enemies and sought out publicity. Wechsler himself<br />
called Dies a forerunner to Joe McCarthy. Dies made clear, even before<br />
McCarthy waved his papers in Wheeling, that the American right could<br />
use anti-communism to pursue its own agenda, that is, a�acking liberalism<br />
as the evil twin of communism. 14<br />
A�er 1950, it became more important to be precise. By this time,<br />
Henry Wallace’s campaign had gone south with no chance of returning.<br />
Hiss had been prosecuted, and the Rosenbergs brought in. The New<br />
York Post described the Communist Party in 1949 as “a ba�ered band,<br />
hopelessly alien in allegiance, deprived of any authentic roots in the labor<br />
movement, cut off from the mainstream of American life.” By 1950,<br />
Schlesinger believed the scarier elements of the Communist threat had<br />
been pre�y much taken care of. Therefore, communism could be defeated<br />
through debate in the public sphere (plus counter-intelligence) – not<br />
public hearings on the part of elected officials or legislation. Nonetheless,<br />
there were still those who wanted more, and Schlesinger and Wechsler<br />
opposed them. Senator McCarran, a conservative Democrat from Nevada<br />
pushed through an Act that, in the words of one historian, “required all<br />
communist organizations and communist-front organizations to register<br />
with the a�orney general’s office, banned communists from working<br />
in defense plants, prohibited government employees from contributing<br />
money to any communist organization or from being a member of any<br />
organization conspiring to set up a totalitarian state in the United States,<br />
and gave the government the power to halt the immigration of subversive<br />
aliens and to deport those already in the country.” Building on this<br />
momentum, Hubert Humphrey, an ally to Schlesinger and Wechsler, proposed<br />
the Communist Control Act – an act that outlawed the Communist<br />
Party outright. Schlesinger and Wechsler opposed both McCarran and<br />
Humphrey. It was time for open discussion rather than legislation that<br />
threatened civil liberties and ignored the right to hold “loathsome ideas,”<br />
and Schlesinger and Wechsler were willing to jeopardize political connections<br />
(i.e., friendship with Humphrey) to make the point. 15<br />
At the same time that these acts were gelling, HUAC was turning
16<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
its a�ention away from the State Department and towards the worlds<br />
of education and Hollywood. On the question of teaching and communism,<br />
the ethic of parsing was even more clearly defined. Drawing on the<br />
ethic of prudence and pragmatism at the same time, Wechsler explained<br />
to a fellow journalist in 1952:<br />
I just don’t believe that the handful of Communists who may<br />
be teaching arithmetic and spelling present as much of a danger<br />
as that associated with the a�empt to rout them out. The<br />
truth is that too many teachers are timid and are rendered<br />
more so by these performances…. I still think the real Communist<br />
threat lies in espionage and sabotage – not in the realm<br />
of ideas…. If a handful of Communist teachers can produce<br />
a lot of communists there is something basically wrong with<br />
the other teachers and the educational system of which they<br />
are a part.<br />
Schlesinger agreed with this argument but got more specific, arguing<br />
that if communists were found to indoctrinate elementary school<br />
students, then there might be grounds for firing – not because of their<br />
beliefs but because they weren’t doing their jobs. Still, membership in the<br />
CP was not enough – ipso facto – to lead to the firing of a teacher. Here<br />
Schlesinger disagreed with Lionel Trilling and Sidney Hook (author of<br />
Heresy Yes, Conspiracy No), both members of the ACCF and prominent<br />
New York Intellectuals, who argued that communists should be fired<br />
from teaching positions across the board (though they wanted this done<br />
by schools themselves, not the government). Here Schlesinger developed<br />
a distinct liberal form of anti-communism in conflict with other versions.<br />
Schlesinger could imagine a communist teaching physics just fine, for<br />
example, and he reasoned from this point to make a larger one. It was<br />
be�er to err on the side of civil liberties and the ethic of open discussion<br />
than the fear of communist indoctrination in the American classroom.<br />
“The important thing,” Schlesinger argued, “is to preserve the right to<br />
free discussion. This right includes the right to hold loathsome ideas.”<br />
Let these be aired in the classroom and allow students to decide for themselves.<br />
Besides, he reasoned, “there are negligible numbers of Communists<br />
today on college faculties.” The real danger would be to create an<br />
invasive rule out of proportion to the problem. 16<br />
When it came to hunting down communists in the world of entertain-
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 17<br />
ment, Schlesinger and Wechsler were even more critical. The potential to<br />
smear was evident when they learned that “The Best Years of Our Lives,”<br />
a film that documented the difficulties of World War II veterans returning<br />
home and that won the Academy Award in 1946 for best picture, was<br />
accused of promoting communist sympathies (because it showed an<br />
American businessman treating a returning GI rudely on a plane). The<br />
fact that the famous actor and director, Charlie Chaplin, was not allowed<br />
to reenter the United States due to his communist sympathies seemed<br />
silly. Nor did it seem wise to have HUAC hunt down communist writers<br />
in Hollywood. Here Schlesinger explained a fundamental motivation<br />
behind the ethics of parsing – the need to resist becoming like the enemy.<br />
He wrote to Sol Stein of the ACCF that the group should do nothing on<br />
“the Communist Conspiracy in the Entertainment World,” again raising<br />
distinctions between his own outlook and that of prominent New York<br />
Intellectuals. The problem was not “serious enough to justify counter-action<br />
by grown people. The Communists themselves never looked sillier<br />
than when they were exposing Russian clowns or were detecting ‘bourgeois<br />
tendencies’ in Soviet circuses; and I should hate to see Americans<br />
imitating the Soviet Union in this respect.” If any pro-Communist film<br />
were actually made during the mid-1950s – and Schlesinger would have<br />
to chuckle at that possibility – allow it to be lambasted in public discussion<br />
and critical review, he seemed to suggest. In other words, anti-communism<br />
had to preserve liberal virtues of free and open debate and the<br />
right to privacy. 17<br />
Making America Great Abroad<br />
Liberals knew they had to look out to the world as well as into their<br />
own society. World War II had already made that clear, and Soviet expansion<br />
brought the lesson home a�er the war. Liberals embraced “containment”<br />
and “reconstruction” at the same time. They found themselves<br />
accepting the Truman Doctrine which called for military aid to<br />
countries ba�ling communist forces. Liberals supported this policy, but<br />
warily since it could over-extend the American military, support antidemocratic<br />
forces in the name of fighting anti-communists (which happened<br />
in the case of Greece, the first country to receive support under the<br />
doctrine), and suggest “unilateral American action.” More in tune with<br />
liberal sentiments was the Marshall Plan, the “reconstruction” side of the<br />
Cold War, which provided economic aid to western European countries
18<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
and thereby provided incentives for building back their economies while<br />
resisting communism. Schlesinger believed containment (the Truman<br />
Doctrine) and reconstruction (the Marshall Plan) could work in tandem.<br />
But of the two programs, clearly the Marshall Plan was more conducive<br />
to Americans opening up a dialogue with Cold War allies. Or at least it<br />
could if liberals pushed. 18<br />
The European political spectrum was much further le� than America’s,<br />
and this prompted liberal realists to search for a “Non-Communist<br />
Le�” (NCL) that deserved American support. Social democratic governments<br />
were the perfect candidates and wound up receiving U.S. foreign<br />
aid under the Marshall Plan. To a certain extent, the Marshall Plan gained<br />
support easily since some Americans remembered how depression after<br />
World War I helped spawn fascism. But other Americans, especially<br />
those organized around conservative organizations like National Associations<br />
of Manufacturers (NAM) and the Chamber of Commerce (CoC),<br />
protested giving aid to social democracies. A�er all, these organizations’<br />
leaders reasoned, the “American way of life” – equated with free markets<br />
and competitive individualism – needed to be championed overseas.<br />
Here again is where the realist disposition of liberals prompted an ethical<br />
self-scrutiny – where they believed an appreciation of Europe’s tragic<br />
destruction during the war offered the young idealist nation of America<br />
a lesson about hubris. Niebuhr, for instance, counseled that foreign aid<br />
could not become tied to “peculiar and parochial conceptions of democracy.”<br />
He argued that Americans had too strong a faith in “unrestricted<br />
liberty,” which came out in the debates around the Marshall Plan as well<br />
as the simultaneous dismantling of the Office of Price Administration<br />
(OPA). “We are always in danger,” he explained, “of making democracy<br />
odious in Europe by a too individualistic and libertarian interpretation of<br />
it.” The Marshall Plan, liberals argued, should teach Americans that the<br />
world was pluralist and cosmopolitan, not singular and provincial. 19<br />
The Marshall Plan taught America that it had to become a world<br />
leader without believing in global domination. It also taught liberals that<br />
they had to be aware of perceptions about America abroad. Key here<br />
was a growth of anti-Americanism in Europe (especially France) at this<br />
time, something that seemed a direct impediment to the Marshall Plan.<br />
There was an awareness on the part of American intellectuals that their<br />
country’s image abroad was being constructed more and more around<br />
images in the mass culture being exported to Europe. Hollywood and
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 19<br />
Coca-Cola were the two major exports to France, for instance, that gave<br />
off the appearance that America was superficial and sugary (literally<br />
and metaphorically). Niebuhr worried that Europeans’ “conception of<br />
us is drawn merely from our movies, which are, if I may say so, a tremendously<br />
fruitful source of confusion about the character of American<br />
life.” Movies and so� drinks were accompanied by the popularity of<br />
American literature from the 1920s – the writings of H.L. Mencken and<br />
Sinclair Lewis, both of whom portrayed Americans as an uncultivated,<br />
provincial, and small-minded people (an intellectual strain these liberals<br />
had rejected, as seen in the last chapter). This hatred of America was only<br />
confirmed by “the sometimes unfortunate conduct of American tourists,”<br />
as the ACCF admi�ed in planning a conference on “Anti-Americanism in<br />
Europe.” 20<br />
Indeed, the cultural Cold War had as much ambivalence about it as<br />
triumphalism. Or at least that is what these liberal intellectuals wanted<br />
– an ironic assessment of American power rather than Henry Luce’s celebration<br />
of the “American century.” This is something the le� has tended<br />
to ignore. Liberal intellectuals could take the criticisms they heard about<br />
their own culture abroad and turn them into an opportunity for national<br />
self-criticism. They also understood that America’s power in the world<br />
was due as much to contingency as to any inherent national greatness.<br />
America’s isolation, for instance, meant that it escaped the devastation of<br />
World War II; the natural wealth it possessed at the time that European<br />
countries had exhausted theirs also gave America an advantage in asserting<br />
its power on the world stage. “We are a paradise of plenty suspended<br />
in a hell of global insecurity,” Niebuhr explained. Therefore, John Kenneth<br />
Galbraith, a liberal economist and close friend of Schlesinger, followed<br />
Niebuhr’s assertions, argued that America’s foreign policy should<br />
be “humble and open-minded.” 21<br />
This humble disposition had to come into play as liberal intellectuals<br />
looked within America’s borders. Very o�en, historians looking back<br />
believe that intellectuals simply aligned themselves with the American<br />
way of life, having shedded their radicalism of the 1930s for the national<br />
celebration of the 1940s and 1950s. Partisan Review’s 1952 symposium<br />
“Our Country, Our Culture” is the standard text taken as evidence of this<br />
intellectual shi�. The editors of this once Marxist publication were now<br />
much more favorable towards America, and thus were selling out, some<br />
suggest, to the status quo. Only Irving Howe, Norman Mailer, and C.
20<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
Wright Mills – all figures who would have an impact on the American<br />
New Le� – dissented from the chorus of celebration. But this overall<br />
characterization is false if it pays a�ention to the strain of thought discussed<br />
here. Two of our main characters participated in the symposium<br />
and did not speak triumphantly of America. Indeed, Niebuhr argued the<br />
exact opposite, that America was too full of “self congratulations about<br />
the vaunted virtues and achievements of the ‘American way of life.’”<br />
Certainly America had lessons to teach the world about the importance<br />
of democracy and freedom, but this was no excuse for “complacency.”<br />
“No intellectual life,” Niebuhr explained, “can be at ease with the massive<br />
spiritual, moral, and cultural crudities which seek to make themselves<br />
normative in a civilization.” Schlesinger, the other participant in<br />
the symposium, would concur, arguing against McCarthyism and the<br />
homogenization of mass culture stifling debate (there was very li�le that<br />
was celebratory about his contribution to the symposium). The situation<br />
of the Cold War prompted just as much self-anxiety on the parts of these<br />
intellectuals as it did an appreciation of their country’s promise. 22<br />
If anything, the Cold War placed a premium on America improving<br />
its cultural and political life in order to persuade the rest of the world that<br />
it deserved respect. “When we speak rather idolatrously of the ‘American<br />
way of life,’” Niebuhr warned, “our friends and critics profess not to<br />
be certain whether we are recommending certain standards of political<br />
freedom or extolling our living standards.” At the least, America would<br />
have to do something to improve the status of African-Americans within<br />
its own borders (the Soviet Union constantly reminded the world that<br />
blacks in the South were second-class citizens) and the threat of McCarthyism<br />
to political and cultural freedom. Additionally, liberal intellectuals<br />
had to wonder if America should be celebrated for its economic<br />
prosperity and mass culture. They believed there were be�er ideals than<br />
consumerism and wealth to be projected outward to the world. “Foreign<br />
policy,” Arthur Schlesinger argued, “must be the projection and expression<br />
of what we are like as a national community.” But this was not as<br />
easy a task as it might sound. It required internal self-scrutiny and debate<br />
about what ideals and values Americans should hold dear to their<br />
hearts. This was the project these Cold War liberals were demanding of<br />
their fellow citizens. 23<br />
To embrace be�er national ideals required work and effort. To make<br />
America “great” in the world required improving things at home, by ex-
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 21<br />
tending the welfare state of the New Deal, building “countervailing power”<br />
(Galbraith’s term) against large corporations that were quickly consolidating<br />
during this time, nurturing a “pluralistic” form of government<br />
where different voices were heard at the table of political discussion, providing<br />
civil rights to minority citizens, and developing a humble foreign<br />
policy. There needed to be a belief in shared sacrifice – the sort garnered<br />
during World War II – that would check Americans’ tendency towards<br />
self-interest. All of these beliefs stemmed from a faith that communism<br />
was a threat – but a threat that could not allow Americans to forget about<br />
their own foibles and injustices. We would do well to remember this.<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Arthur Schlesinger, The Vital Center, pp. 64, 132; “The U.S. Communist Party,” Life, July<br />
29, 1946, p. 87.<br />
2 Eugene Kamenka, ed., The Portable Karl Marx (New York: Viking Press, 1983), p. 203.<br />
3 Arthur Schlesinger, The Vital Center, p. 47; James Wechsler, “The Liberal’s Vote and 48,”<br />
Commentary, September 1947, p. 225; Schlesinger, Vital Center, p. 171; The Federalist Papers, ed.<br />
by Isaac Kramnick (New York: Penguin, 1987), p. 124; Arthur Schlesinger, The Age of Jackson<br />
(Boston: Li�le Brown, 1945), p. 90. William Graebner argues that Schlesinger gave up talking<br />
about class a�er 1945. This misinterpretation is due to the fact that Graebner sees Marxism as<br />
the only real way to talk about class: See his The Age of Doubt, p. 49.<br />
4 For the critique of Marx’s predictions, see Arthur Schlesinger, “The World We Want and<br />
How to Get It,” Speech at State <strong>College</strong>, Indiana, PA, March 12, 1964), in Schlesinger Papers,<br />
Box P-6. See also here, Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems (New York:<br />
Scribner, 1953), p. 39 and Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960), p. 394.<br />
5 Arthur Schlesinger, The Vital Center, pp. 152, 153; Reinhold Niebuhr, “Halfway to<br />
What?” p. 27. See too John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958; Boston: Houghton<br />
Mifflin, 1976), pp. 57-8, 61. For more on this see my “Revisiting The Vital Center,” in Dissent,<br />
Winter 2005, 64-68.<br />
6 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Will Civilization Survive?” Commentary, December 1945, p. 5; Reinhold<br />
Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York: Scribner, 1944),<br />
p. 59.<br />
7 Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, pp. 34, 36; Schlesinger, The<br />
Vital Center, p. 71; Reinhold Niebuhr, “New Allies, Old Issues,” The Nation, July 19, 1941, p. 51.<br />
For an excellent dissection of Marx’s weak understanding of rights, see Steven Lukes, Marxism<br />
and Morality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp. 61-70.<br />
8 Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, p. 38; Hannah Arendt, The<br />
Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland: Meridian, 1951), p. 317. See also Silone’s contribution to<br />
Richard Crossman, ed., The God that Failed (New York: Harper, 1949), p. 99.<br />
9 Reinhold Niebuhr, Irony of American History, p. 170; The Children of Light and the Children<br />
of Darkness, p. 41; See here John Lewis Gaddis, The Origins of the Cold War (New York: Columbia<br />
University Press, 1972); on the Cominforn, Giles Sco�-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical<br />
Culture: the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA, and Post-war American Hegemony (New York:<br />
Routledge, 2002), p. 86; and on the French Communist Party, see Walter LaFeber, America, Russia,<br />
and the Cold War (New York: Wiley, 1967), p. 42.<br />
10 James Wechsler, “Politics on Campus,” The Nation, December 30, 1949, p. 733; Arthur
22<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
Schlesinger, The Vital Center, p. 128. Schlesinger documents the communist infiltration of labor<br />
unions in his “The U.S. Communist Party,” Life, July 29, 1946, p. 90.<br />
11 Congress for Cultural Freedom Papers, University of Chicago, Box 7, Folder 10: These<br />
are comments Schlesinger made during the Milan Conference of 1955; “How to Rid the Government<br />
of Communists,” Harper’s, November 1947, p. 440; Reinhold Niebuhr, “Introduction,”<br />
to Benjamin Ginzberg, Rededication to Freedom (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), pp. viiviii;<br />
Arthur Schlesinger, “What is Loyalty?: A Difficult Question,” New York Times Magazine,<br />
November 2, 1947, p. 50; Arthur Schlesinger, “The Right to Loathsome Ideas,” Saturday Review<br />
of Literature, May 14, 1949, p. 17; Arthur Schlesinger, The Vital Center, p. 210. Sidney Hook’s<br />
writing on the “ethics of controversy” can be found in Sidney Hook on Pragmatism, Democracy,<br />
and Freedom: The Essential Essays, ed. Robert Talisse and Robert Tempio (Amherst: Prometheus<br />
Books, 2002).<br />
12 Steve Gillon, Politics and Vision, p. 72; see also ADA World, May 1950, p. 2; James<br />
Wechsler, “How to Rid the Government,” p. 442; The New York Post, October 7, 1947, p. 2;<br />
New York Post, March 3, 1949, p. 2; James Wechsler, “The Brass and Samuel Wahrha�ig,” New<br />
Republic, May 23, 1949, p. 17. A key complaint about Truman’s loyalty act was that it failed<br />
to distinguish between employees who posed a high internal security risk and other federal<br />
employees: See Alonzo Hamby, Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman (New York: Oxford<br />
University Press, 1995), p. 487.<br />
13 Arthur Schlesinger, “What is Loyalty?” p. 50; “The Right to Loathsome Ideas,” p. 18.<br />
On the University of Washington case, I rely upon Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism<br />
and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 100-104. For the fear<br />
of wiretapping, see the New York Post, January 13, 1950, p. 37 and Schlesinger’s comments in<br />
ADA World, January 1954, p. 3.<br />
14 Richard Fried, Nightmare in Red, p. 47; James Wechsler, “The Christian Front and Martin<br />
Dies,” The Nation, January 27, 1940, p. 89; Arthur Schlesinger, “Dangerous Nonsense,” p.<br />
7; James Wechsler, “Small Fry,” The Nation, October 3, 1942, pp. 326-8; James Wechsler, Age of<br />
Suspicion, p. 181. For more on the Federal Writers Project and Dies, see Jerre Mangione, The<br />
Dream and the Deal (Boston: Li�le Brown, 1972), Chapter 8.<br />
15 New York Post: p. 30; Arthur Schlesinger, Dangerous Nonsense,” The Progressive, September<br />
1953, p. 10; J. Ronald Oakley, God’s Country, p. 68; Schlesinger’s opposition to Communist<br />
Control Act can be seen in his le�er to Hubert Humphrey, September 14, 1954, Schlesinger<br />
Papers, Box P-16; Wechsler’s opposition to McCarran Bill: See The New York Post, September<br />
7, 1950, p. 33.<br />
16 Wechsler to Judith Crist at New York Herald Tribune, February 19, 1952; Schlesinger,<br />
“The Right to Loathsome Ideas,” p. 17; “Dangerous Nonsense,” p. 8. Because of this stance,<br />
Schlesinger refused to sign statements of the ACCF that favored the firing of communist<br />
teachers: see Arthur Schlesinger to Irving Kristol, February 22, 1953, ACCF Records, Box 8.<br />
Throughout this box, there is a great deal on ACCF statements regarding communism and<br />
teaching.<br />
17 Schlesinger to Sol Stein, February 15, 1954, ACCF Records, Box 4; On the “Best Years of<br />
Our Lives,” see Schlesinger, “What is Loyalty?” p. 7 and the New York Post, May 26, 1947, p. 4.<br />
For more on HUAC’s search for communists in Hollywood, see Caute, The Great Fear, p. 488.<br />
18 Cli�on Brock, Americans for Democratic Action (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press,<br />
1962), , p. 64; Schlesinger, Vital Center, pp. 223-4.<br />
19 Reinhold Niebuhr, “American Liberals and British Labor,” The Nation, June 8, 1946, p.<br />
684; Reinhold Niebuhr, “America’s Precarious Eminence,” Virginia Quarterly Review 23 (1947):<br />
p. 487; for Niebuhr’s criticism of dismantling of the OPA in terms of its international implications,<br />
see his “Europe, Russia, and America,” The Nation, September 14, 1946, p. 288-9; see also
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 23<br />
his “The Sickness of American Culture,” p. 270. See also John Kenneth Galbraith, “Challenges<br />
of a Changing World,” Foreign Policy Bulletin, December 15, 1958, p. 51 and “Europe’s Great<br />
Last Chance,” Harper’s, January 1949, p. 48.<br />
20 Reinhold Niebuhr to William Benton, Assistant Secretary of State, April 28, 1947,<br />
Niebuhr Archives, Box 2; Statement on “American Culture: Menace or Promise,” in ACCF Records,<br />
Box 9. On Coca-Cola’s infiltration into France, see Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French:<br />
The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley: University of California, 1993), p. 52; on 1920s anti-<br />
American literature’s impact on Europe, see Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans have<br />
Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since World War II (New York: Basic Books,<br />
1997), p. 20.<br />
21 Reinhold Niebuhr, “American Conservatism and World Crisis,” p. 385; John Kenneth<br />
Galbraith, “Democratic Foreign Policy and the Voter,” paper found in Galbraith Papers, Box<br />
98, dated January 20, 1958, p. 8; Niebuhr makes the argument about in “American Pride and<br />
Power,” American Scholar 17 (1948): p. 393 and “America’s Precarious Eminence,” p. 481. Henry<br />
Luce disagreed with Reinhold Niebuhr’s call for America to be more ambivalent about its<br />
power in the world in a le�er he wrote to him, dated January 8, 1949, Niebuhr Papers, Box 8.<br />
22 Reinhold Niebuhr in “Our Country, Our Culture,” Partisan Review 19 (1952): p. 302.<br />
For the standard view of “Our Country, Our Culture,” see for instance, Jackson Lears, “A Matter<br />
of Taste,” pp. 39-40. George Kennan was quite uncertain if America had the internal moral<br />
resources to fight the Cold War: See Waler Hixson, George F. Kennan: Cold War Iconoclast (New<br />
York: Columbia University Press, 1989), p. 240.<br />
23 Reinhold Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, p. 159; Arthur Schlesinger, “Where Does the Liberal<br />
Go From Here?” New York Times Magazine, August 4, 1957, p. 36. Two recent historical<br />
treatments of the Cold War point to the importance of civil rights: See Thomas Bostelmann,<br />
The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge: Harvard<br />
University Press, 2000) and Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights (Princeton: Princeton<br />
University Press, 2000).
24<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
Arms and Love<br />
Courtly and Male Homosocial Models of Behavior in<br />
Fourteenth Century France<br />
Robin Dean<br />
<strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>College</strong> Class of 2004<br />
Although courtly love ideals enjoyed great popularity in the literature<br />
and court aesthetic of fourteenth-century France and England during<br />
the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), the courtly model was by no<br />
means commonly or effectively followed in everyday life, even among<br />
the nobility. The Hundred Years War, fought for contested territories<br />
and primacy of lordship between the closely related lines of the French<br />
and English kings, stimulated military culture among all levels of society.<br />
Chivalry might have given the nobility of England and France “a sense of<br />
purpose and of justification for their existence and privileged state,” 1 but<br />
the unending nature of the war raised new economic considerations for<br />
the nobility, such as the need to pay ransoms and hire mercenary companies<br />
to bolster thin ranks (Allmand 46-47). Although chivalry remained<br />
a motivating ideal, as it long had been in European history, the literature<br />
of the day betrays a growing awareness of the importance of a male homosocial<br />
model of power for maintaining much-needed stability among<br />
those fighting in the war.<br />
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick develops her theory of male homosociality<br />
in her book Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. 2<br />
Although this paper does not deal specifically with homosocial desire, it<br />
does owe a debt to Sedgwick for the idea of the male homosocial model<br />
of power as one typified by “men promoting the interests of men” (Sedgwick<br />
4). In a male homosocial model, bonds between men are idealized<br />
and held inviolate, homosexuality is treated with violence and great repression,<br />
and women act primarily as conduits, placeholders, or symbols<br />
of power between men. The chivalric code, obsessed with deeds and
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 25<br />
devotion performed in the name of a lady, o�en obscures the fact that the<br />
women under it are largely powerless. Status in the ranks of men was the<br />
true prize for knights who competed against each other in the court and<br />
on the ba�lefield. Under the enduring martial climate of the fourteenth<br />
century, an increasing amount of literature was produced that reported,<br />
or even lauded, the stripping away of the chivalric veneer to reveal the<br />
new primacy placed on regulating the camaraderie and enmity between<br />
men.<br />
French historian Jean Froissart, writing for an audience of nobles,<br />
a�empts to include tales of courtly love in his Chronicles of the Hundred<br />
Years War. 3 He approves of the courtly ideal and takes delight in chronicling<br />
exceptional moments of chivalry on the part of both French and<br />
English nobles, but his proto-journalistic style also leads him to report<br />
many anecdotes of fighting men involved in the war who put li�le stock<br />
in chivalric ideals. These tales make the few instances of true chivalry in<br />
the Chronicles seem all the more remarkable in a world that values male<br />
homosocial bonds of loyalty over idealized heterosexual love. Froissart’s<br />
contemporary, the French poet Eustache Deschamps, is not only aware<br />
of how poorly chivalry fits with his times, but seems to revel in pointing<br />
out chivalry’s failings. He mocks the conventions of courtly love as a<br />
device in poetry, showing that it is unnecessary and even distasteful to<br />
place such idealism on this strange breed of heterosexual love when there<br />
are so many other poetic possibilities available. Both authors offer social<br />
commentary on the decline of courtly conventions in fourteenth-century<br />
French society, using the familiar language of courtly love itself to show<br />
how male homosocial bonds have a�ained primary importance in a time<br />
of war and financial decline.<br />
Froissart’s Chronicles and the Importance of Male Homosocial Loyalty<br />
Froissart’s project in his Chronicles of the Hundred Years War is as much<br />
to entertain and moralize as it is to record hard facts. He states in his<br />
prologue that he writes to memorialize “deeds of arms. . .so that brave<br />
men should be inspired thereby to follow such examples” (Froissart 37).<br />
He also wishes, however, for the nobles to whom he addresses his book<br />
to “take delight and pleasure in it, [so that he] may earn their regard”<br />
(Froissart 37). As a person associated with court culture, Froissart repeatedly<br />
shows that he is invested in ideas of courtliness that don’t seem to fit<br />
with the reality of freebooters and angry peasants during the Hundred
26<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
Years War. The court that pleases him most is that of the Count of Orthez,<br />
where the knights were always “talking of arms and love. Every subject<br />
of honor was discussed” (Froissart 266). This rote mention of arms and<br />
love references the traditional courtly ideals among knights, a tradition<br />
in which arms (proving one’s valor in combat) and love (devotion to a<br />
lady) are equally valued. Love had a place in noble minds and literature,<br />
the critic Saul N. Brody explains, because<br />
The literature of courtly love springs from the perception of<br />
man’s dual nature, of his conflicting impulses toward transcendent<br />
love and carnal love. The awareness in the courtly<br />
poets of this conflict prompted them to consider whether the<br />
courtly ideal could be operative in the impure world of sensual<br />
men and women. 4<br />
Froissart shows occasional interest in exploring the differing impulses<br />
of human love, but his tales also show that such extensive warfare<br />
has reshaped the court’s priorities. Even the most romantic of Froissart’s<br />
tales show how important bonds with other men are in a man’s life, and<br />
many stories show a stark pragmatism about heterosexual love that has<br />
very li�le concern for the transcendent. Froissart interviews men of various<br />
stations, showing that his determination is not just to record deeds<br />
of arms but rather all the deeds of men of arms, a sociological look at the<br />
concerns of the men involved in the war rather than just a list of ba�les<br />
and engagements. A courtly poet acting as chronicler, Froissart shows<br />
that impulses towards courtly love are continually disturbed by the realities<br />
of male homosocial interaction in the military culture of fourteenthcentury<br />
France.<br />
Likewise, it is important to note that Froissart’s Chronicles are in<br />
many parts more historical narrative than history, and that he has probably<br />
invented much of the dialogue (Brereton 24). The sort of speech he<br />
chooses to use for his nobles and the way in which he tells their stories<br />
reveals his admiration for them and a certain nostalgia for a time when<br />
chivalry was presumably more sustainable. Brody notes that during the<br />
age of Chaucer and Froissart, the nobility tried to hold on to traditional<br />
pa�erns of life, but these were hard to preserve, and they came to seem<br />
artificial and out of touch with reality. The feudal economy was being<br />
replaced by a money economy, and the political power of feudal nobility<br />
was giving way to central government (Brody 254).
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 27<br />
As the feudal economy waned in influence, male homosocial power<br />
became more entrenched among the middle and upper classes, growing<br />
out of a culture that already used marriages to solidify alliances and<br />
viewed women as interruptive and exceptional. Froissart’s narratives<br />
show noblemen struggling to balance their homosocial power relationships<br />
against their “out-of-touch” concept of the courtly rules governing<br />
heterosexual love. Men of lesser birth who were in the military also told<br />
Froissart tales of the problems the love of a woman created for them,<br />
showing more exasperation for the women’s interference in the male<br />
world of warfare than any sort of noble devotion.<br />
One of the courtliest tales in Froissart’s Chronicles, the “Trial by Combat<br />
(1386-7),” is told in Froissart’s narrative voice. As in many of the<br />
courtly tales, Froissart’s tone seems torn between lauding the a�empt to<br />
live up to courtly ideals in the present age and frankly reporting how<br />
much trouble courtly ideals cause between men. The “Trial by Combat”<br />
tale describes how two men in the employ of the Count d’Alençon duel<br />
because one, Jacques le Gris, allegedly raped the wife of the other, Sir<br />
Jean de Carrouges. Froissart’s tale begins with an idealistic insistence on<br />
romantic conventions to explain Jacques le Gris’ moral lapse in committing<br />
rape. He cites the vagaries of Dame Fortune (Froissart 309) and explains<br />
that the deed was commi�ed when, “through a strange, perverse<br />
temptation, the devil entered the body of Jacques le Gris” (Froissart 310)<br />
and caused him to rape the lady of Carrouges. Froissart also paints the<br />
lady as a paragon of virtue who is properly distressed about her honor<br />
a�er being violated (Froissart 309-310). By his diction and use of convention,<br />
Froissart seems to be se�ing the reader up for a classic tale of<br />
vengeance on behalf of a wronged lady.<br />
However, the courtly ideals of the tale soon break down when confronted<br />
with the realities of the politics of the day. The a�itude of the<br />
Count during the subsequent conflict between Jacques le Gris and Jean<br />
de Carrouges shows the importance of male homosocial bonds, under<br />
which women are valued chiefly for the part they play in perpetuating<br />
or disrupting male hierarchical interaction. The Count is not at all concerned<br />
about notions of a woman’s honor, and is merely annoyed that the<br />
Lady of Carrouges’ story is causing discontent in his ranks. Hence, he<br />
expects the ma�er to be dropped peacefully for the good of the homosocial<br />
network of his fighting force (Froissart 312). Sir Carrouges refuses,<br />
showing a courtly devotion to his honor and the word of his lady, and a
28<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
trial by combat ensues. The king of France’s interest in the combat, so<br />
great that he “sent word to Paris for the combat to be postponed until he<br />
could witness it” (Froissart 313) suggests that the nobility were drawn to<br />
courtliness even if the world around them was unable to support such<br />
ideals in common practice. The victory of Sir Jean de Carrouges, which<br />
vindicates his lady’s claim to innocence, makes the combat an even be�er<br />
courtly tale and allows Froissart to include it for the pleasure of the nobles.<br />
Still, the courtly dialogue invented by Froissart between the knight<br />
and his lady cannot overshadow the practicality of the irate Count and<br />
how surprised everyone is that someone should go so far just to uphold<br />
a woman’s word and sense of honor.<br />
Tales of male friendship are another example of courtly influences<br />
in Froissart’s Chronicles. Men tied together by a loyalty greater than the<br />
love for any woman are o�en found in courtly tales, so it is not as though<br />
the homosocial structure of male power could not exist in courtly models<br />
of behavior. However, as Froissart’s accounts show, men of his day<br />
are much more concerned about love for a woman disrupting homosocial<br />
bonds than the average courtly hero was. One chapter entitled “The<br />
Duke of Touraine in Trouble (1391)” tells how the Duke suffers when a<br />
male friend reveals to the Duchess of Touraine that the Duke is dallying<br />
with another woman. However, the chapter does not immediately start<br />
with a description of the affair, but with the words:<br />
The Duke of Touraine at that time so doted on Sir Pierre de<br />
Craon that he treated him as his most intimate companion,<br />
dressed him in clothes similar to his own, took him with him<br />
wherever he went, and told him all his secrets. (Froissart<br />
382)<br />
The relationship between Sir Pierre and the Duke is obviously of<br />
primary importance, even though it does not seem to bear on the Duke’s<br />
problems with women at first. This introduction sets a courtly tone for<br />
the tale, painting the relationship between the Duke and his inferior in<br />
romantically glowing terms and hyperbole. This is disrupted by the appearance<br />
of very uncourtly economic dimensions to the Duke’s affair,<br />
when Froissart mentions (with some shock) that the Duke “seems to<br />
have promised [his mistress] a thousand gold crowns if she would go to<br />
bed with him” (Froissart 382). Her refusal to accept this offer a�er being<br />
confronted by the Duchess happens early, and seems merely to be a side
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 29<br />
note in the tale.<br />
The main subject of the story is the treachery of the friend Sir Pierre<br />
de Craon, who for no apparent reason betrays the Duke to a woman.<br />
There is an unspoken assumption that everything would have been fine<br />
if Craon had kept men’s business with men, but since he chooses to tell<br />
the Duke’s wife the truth and disrupt his household, he must be somehow<br />
eliminated from the hierarchy of male power. The Duke of Touraine<br />
goes to the King, “complaining bi�erly of Sir Pierre de Craon’s behaviour,<br />
and saying: ‘Sire, I swear by my loyalty to you that, if it would not reflect<br />
on my honour a�er showing him such great favours, I would have him<br />
killed.’” (Froissart 384). The Duke seems more upset about Pierre proving<br />
untrustworthy than about his wife discovering the affair, and invokes<br />
his bond with the King to have Pierre punished. The King, grasping how<br />
disruptive someone like Pierre could be in a world where men are used<br />
to taking whatever pleasures they want, arranges with the Duke to have<br />
Pierre effectively exiled from the court. The Duke of Bri�any, with whom<br />
Sir Pierre finally finds refuge, also grasps the seriousness of Pierre’s offence.<br />
Seemingly unable to imagine Pierre voluntarily choosing a woman<br />
in whom he has no apparent sexual or romantic interest over a male comrade,<br />
Bri�any decides that the whole debacle must have been arranged<br />
by another man. Bri�any tells Sir Pierre, “Console yourself, cousin. All<br />
this has been brewed up against you by Clisson,” a political enemy of<br />
both Pierre and the Duke of Bri�any (Froissart 385). This statement ends<br />
the chapter and is both unresolved and surprising. The dialogue in this<br />
exchange was probably created by Froissart, indicative of real tensions<br />
but not an actual conversation he would have been privy to. Its insertion<br />
at the end of this complicated tale of male loyalty suggests that Froissart<br />
has a very shrewd concept of the primary importance of alliances<br />
between men, despite his desire to portray even male friendships in a<br />
courtly light.<br />
Similar examples of women interfering in the relationships between<br />
men in power crop up in the colorful tales Froissart records of the Bascot<br />
de Mauléon. The Bascot is a freebooter, a type of mercenary fighter<br />
known for augmenting his wages by plundering the countryside. There<br />
is no reason to think that Froissart would have invented this figure or his<br />
tales, for Froissart presents himself as very interested in capturing the<br />
man’s unique perspective (Froissart 281). The Bascot’s voice has a much<br />
different tenor than the quasi-courtly narration Froissart brings to tales
30<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
he collects and rewrites from less direct sources. One of the Bascot’s tales<br />
is of a noted captain and squire Louis Roubaut who becomes the enemy<br />
of his comrade Limosin when Limosin, whom Roubaut trusted implicitly<br />
to guard his mistress, ends up sleeping with the apparently willing<br />
woman (Froissart 291). Roubaut humiliates Limosin, who then goes to<br />
a baron to help secure his counter-vengeance, and captures his former<br />
friend in turn. Limosin berates his old friend a�er capturing him:<br />
“I would not have thought that for a woman, if she was willing<br />
and I was willing, you would have made me take what I<br />
did take. If you had done the same thing to me, I should never<br />
have minded, for two companions-in-arms, such as we were<br />
then, could surely, at a pinch, have overlooked a woman.”<br />
On hearing this the lords began to laugh, but Louis did not<br />
find it funny. (Froissart 293)<br />
Two things are striking in this tale of sexual betrayal. First, Limosin’s<br />
parting words to his captured friend about the relative unimportance of<br />
women expose the homosociality of the fighting men’s world. The first<br />
duty of men is not to a lady that they serve but to each other, because the<br />
bonds of arms are valued above those of love. Also, this example reminds<br />
us that the regular fighting men in the Hundred Years War had li�le reason<br />
to be concerned with the pure devotion found in typical courtly romances.<br />
Limosin doesn’t love the mistress, he just “got all he wanted<br />
from her” (291), a delicate phrasing that suggests their involvement was<br />
purely sexual. Satisfying carnal lusts is viewed as a necessity, but not<br />
something that should interfere with the more serious and important interactions<br />
between men. Status and camaraderie are the proper concerns<br />
of men in a martial, homosocial culture, not devotion to a woman.<br />
Stories such as the Bascot’s about Limosin are no doubt included<br />
by Froissart because they still resonate with a courtly tradition of male<br />
friendship, even though they do not a�ain its ideals. The Limosin story is<br />
a distortion of the courtly tale of Ami and Amile, legendary figures from<br />
an Old French chanson de geste. Although married, their wives pledge<br />
not to come between Ami and Amile, and the men even share beds with<br />
the others’ wives. 5 The critic M. J. Ailes notes that “When Amile shares a<br />
bed with Ami’s wife Lubias, Ami makes him promise not to have sexual<br />
relations with her—he would not have exacted such a promise if he had
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 31<br />
not expected his companion to feel tempted to do so” (Ailes 223). Although<br />
Ailes is reading this instance as proof against homoeroticism in<br />
homosocial relationships in medieval epics, it also shows that the ideal<br />
courtly homosocial bond is one of complete trust in honor where sexual<br />
property (women) are concerned. Courtly literature expects its heroes,<br />
like Ami and Amile, to resist all temptation in the name of friendship.<br />
Though the same moral seems operative in the world of Froissart’s Chronicles,<br />
men-at-arms like Limosin expect to be forgiven their lapses within<br />
the priorities of a male homosocial structure of power.<br />
The values of courtliness, constructed as they are around an idealization<br />
of heterosexual love, can no longer be trusted in the world created<br />
by the Hundred Years War. Froissart obviously admires chivalry, but he<br />
also has a keen sense of how many men fail to live up to its ideals. In his<br />
Chronicles, Froissart exposes the aristocracy’s failure to justify and validate<br />
unceasing warfare through the language and conventions of courtly<br />
love. The nobles in Froissart’s conflicts, such as the Duke of Touraine and<br />
Sir Jean de Carrogues, rely stubbornly on the ideals of courtly love to try<br />
to fix problems caused by a new and more vigorous code of homosocial<br />
loyalty. When courtliness works, as in Sir Jean’s case, it is truly a remarkable<br />
thing, but more o�en it only leads to political and personal conflict as<br />
it does for the Duke of Touraine and Sir Pierre. The Bascot de Mauléon’s<br />
tale takes a more practical view of how problems between men should<br />
be fixed from the perspective of a man distanced from courtly concerns.<br />
In an effective homosocial structure, men must not allow women to interfere<br />
with their loyalty or bonds to other men. If such bonds are broken,<br />
then a man’s only proper recourse is to other men in the hierarchy,<br />
trading on personal and political relationships. Absent are the romantic<br />
ideals of courtly devotion, and though Froissart regrets their absence, he<br />
takes care to report the ideals that are taking their place.<br />
Eustache Deschamps and the Emasculating Nature of Courtly Poetry<br />
Eustache Deschamps, a Frenchman whose life was roughly contemporary<br />
with Froissart’s, wrote on a wide variety of subjects and o�en for<br />
the court, although his preferred medium was poetry. An introduction to<br />
a volume of his translated poems notes “an argument can be made that<br />
Deschamps was an embryonic sociologist” 6 and the breadth of subjects<br />
in his poems—young girls in love, sleepless family men, and his own<br />
poet persona—certainly seem to suggest that he had an interest in all
32<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
areas of life. Some of his most interesting poems deal with the subject of<br />
poetry itself, especially the tradition of the courtly lyric. One of his most<br />
famous works is an allusive and falsely humble poem lauding Chaucer<br />
and asking him to read his poems, evidence that part of his ideal audience<br />
is other poets, clerks, and people familiar with the conventions of<br />
the courtly love lament. He would also surely be aware of his larger<br />
audience, whom Brody describes as a rising bourgeoisie that has begun<br />
to challenge the literary and monetary privileges of the old aristocracy.<br />
Brody says:<br />
With this change in the composition of the nobility. . .there<br />
naturally came a change in the audience for courtly poetry.<br />
The style of life described in the courtly lyrics and romances<br />
must have seemed archaic and even absurd to a part of this<br />
new audience, though to other parts of it the behavior in the<br />
literature may, in fact, have seemed exemplary. The courtly<br />
rituals were, a�er all, elegant and refined, and the ambition of<br />
new entrants into the nobility was to be as elegant and refined<br />
as the old aristocracy (Brody 255).<br />
Deschamps’ poetry o�en mocks the conventions of courtliness, perhaps<br />
his way of reminding those who are helping to change the landscape<br />
of his society so dramatically that keeping to old ideals is unrealistic.<br />
In “Que je soie vostre loyal ami” or “Let me be your loyal friend<br />
and lover” (Balade 447), Deschamps plays with the courtly idea of using<br />
women as muses, subverting the nobility of the tradition the poem seems<br />
to belong to. The poem concerns itself with male poets stealing the idea<br />
of beloved women from each other when composing poems, suggesting<br />
that muse-identification is all about male art and very li�le about love for<br />
a woman. The speaker declares himself a friend of Machaut, a recently<br />
deceased poet of some renown “who did [him] so much kindness” (Laurie<br />
et. al. 84, l. 5). The speaker asks Péronne, Machaut’s former lover and<br />
inspiration, to take pity on him and become his muse, saying:<br />
If you accept my wretched pleading<br />
you’ll give me life again, if only you would<br />
let me be your loyal friend and lover (Laurie et. al., ll.19-21).<br />
The language used here, as in the rest of the poem, relies heavily on
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 33<br />
the courtly conventions of lovesickness and the complete abasement of<br />
the courting male as he begs for an aloof woman’s pity. However, this<br />
poem is hardly a typical laud of a female love object. The first two verses<br />
of this three verse poem are really more about Machaut than Péronne,<br />
praising the poet for his poetic accomplishments, with the speaker only<br />
tangentially and ironically asking Péronne to allow him to be her lover<br />
at the end of each stanza. The speaker spends a bit of time on Péronne’s<br />
qualities in the third stanza, but the focus quickly switches back to what<br />
she can do for the speaker. Although the notes to this poem mention a<br />
real Péronne who corresponded with Machaut and inspired him to write<br />
a poem in her honor (Laurie et. al. 220, n. 13), Deschamps himself is not<br />
trying to woo this same real-life Péronne. Rather, the speaker mocks the<br />
conventions of courtly love, the ambiguous “ami,” implying all the tension<br />
between transcendent and carnal love that the genre typically encompasses.<br />
Brody argues that Chaucer in his Knight’s Tale, “legitimizes<br />
the courtly love ideal by transforming it into an ideal which serves something<br />
outside itself; he gives it a transcendent aim, a metaphysical cause<br />
which brings it to serve the world and God” (Brody 250). Although the<br />
same could be said for Deschamps’ poem, in that his speaker uses courtly<br />
love as a literary device to help him a�ain the greatness of a friend, the<br />
focus of this poem on the two men involved undermines that legitimacy.<br />
The ill-suited and even tasteless desire to acquire a dead friend’s woman<br />
reflects poorly on the courtly tradition.<br />
The problems associated with using Péronne and others like her as<br />
muses reappear in another of Deschamps’ poems, “Recevez moi: j’ai failli<br />
a Peronne” or “Accept me, since I missed out on Peronne” (Balade 493).<br />
The notes to this poem observe that it is probably “a joke at the expense<br />
of the whole of the French courtly tradition; certainly Deschamps, most<br />
of whose work lay outside that tradition, did not require the allegiance<br />
of a courtly lady to relieve him of authorial sterility” (Laurie et. al. 220,<br />
n. 14). This seems especially true when considering the disingenuously<br />
insulting title, which is also the repeating final line of each stanza, and the<br />
less-than-admirable examples of classical love Deschamps cites.<br />
Why does Deschamps find the courtly love tradition so distasteful?<br />
One possibility lies in the nature of the courtly lady herself, which Deschamps<br />
treats in another poem to be discussed later. The blandishments<br />
he offers the lady in the first stanza of Balade 493 seem like a random list<br />
of admirable traits, an ironic use of doggerel that he echoes later when
34<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
the speaker can offer only insipid, repetitive praise for his lady, such as<br />
“and your sweetness, sweet Gauteronne” (Laurie et. al. 87, l.13). Deschamps’<br />
main force of distaste seems to come from a belief that courtly<br />
ideals have caused poetry to stagnate and lose manly vitality. Not only<br />
does Deschamps’ speaker repudiate the fear in the courtly tradition that<br />
without a lady the poet will wither up and die, he also unfla�eringly<br />
compares a courtly poet’s situation to the enthrallment of Narcissus. The<br />
poem accuses the lady:<br />
and now, because of you, I’m at that crystal spring<br />
where Narcissus found no respite from his pain<br />
but died, and I shall suffer in like vein<br />
if I don’t have a word in pledge from you.<br />
(Laurie et. al. 85, ll.16-19)<br />
Courtly love is like Narcissus’s reflecting pool, a self-destructive fixation<br />
on ideals of love that prove harmful to the obsessed poet and his<br />
loyal male friends, as in the Péronne ballad. As in the world of Froissart,<br />
men who take their motivations and justifications from courtly ideals<br />
rather than an increasingly prevalent and unforgiving structure of male<br />
homosocial power are subject to censure and a�empted exile from power<br />
and success. Deschamps seeks to warn other poets that their courtly ballads<br />
are divorced from the central concerns of their time.<br />
Deschamps’ most overt criticism of courtly romance comes in his<br />
Rondeau 631, “Je ne vueil plus a vous, dame, muser” or “Lady, on you I<br />
will no longer muse.” The speaker bemoans the fact that a lady’s “tricks”<br />
(Laurie et. al. 101, l.3) have made the speaker into a “fool” (Laurie et. al.<br />
101, l.2). The only reason offered for this disillusionment appears in the<br />
middle lines, where the speaker says, “On hope for you, I’ve no more<br />
time to lose/ because you can convert a hawk to a hen” (Laurie et. al 101,<br />
ll. 4-5). The poet-speaker rejects the cerebral, hopeless pining of courtly<br />
love as a waste of time. He implies that his time would be be�er spent in<br />
more masculine pursuits than unrequited, idealized love when he states<br />
that women change men from hawks to hens. The original French says<br />
the lady changes the speaker from hawk to busart, a bird of prey that<br />
chases especially a�er chickens (hens) 7 and probably suggests something<br />
like the English busard, a word related to buzzard that was applied to a<br />
hawk deemed useless for falconry. 8 This transformation suggests a certain<br />
degree of emasculation in excessive devotion to a lady. The speaker
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 35<br />
implies that obsessing constantly over one’s ability to enact transcendent<br />
love decreases one’s strength and effectiveness as a man, or more specifically,<br />
as an original and relevant poet in a world that Deschamps does not<br />
believe is well served by courtly ideals.<br />
Although Froissart was a chronicler heavily invested in the courtliness<br />
of his patrons and Deschamps a poet with disdain for courtly traditions,<br />
both men managed to capture in their writing the decline of the<br />
courtly ideal in fourteenth-century France. Froissart’s tales reveal that<br />
although women still had the power to influence men who adhered to<br />
courtly traditions, such idealism created a great deal of trouble for nobles.<br />
Practical men were invested only in their interactions with each<br />
other, although those interactions also borrowed from a courtly and romantic<br />
tradition of male homosociality. But male homosocial power was<br />
becoming more closely-knit and militarized during the Hundred Years<br />
War, consolidating diverse feudal, courtly, and politically influenced allegiances<br />
that o�en entangled unwary men who maintained romantic<br />
notions of courtly society.<br />
As a poet, Deschamps perhaps tells us less about fourteenth-century<br />
French society than Froissart does with his anecdotes, but Deschamps is<br />
part of an important trend towards the mocking of courtly traditions by<br />
those who no longer had reason to believe in them. With a broadening<br />
of literacy and wealth into the bourgeoisie, authors and poets had new<br />
audiences wanting literature that upheld their own values and spoke to<br />
their concerns. Deschamps is one of the first poets to sense this need and<br />
a�empt to provide for it. His comic ballads o�en rely on a homosocial<br />
disdain for women who interrupt the balance of power between men, an<br />
emasculating interruption that is indicative of the weakness and indecision<br />
inherent in courtly literature.<br />
Stability was in short supply during the Hundred Years War, and the<br />
works of Froissart and Deschamps show that courtly ideals were becoming<br />
ineffective in fostering solidarity and morale among fighting men.<br />
Many women, Joan of Arc notable among them, proved that they could<br />
not be wholly excluded from the power and politics of the day. Still,<br />
the society of the Hundred Years War had li�le use for lauding the love<br />
of women when that idealized love might disrupt the male homosocial<br />
bond, a bond that was deemed of primary importance in keeping the<br />
men of France vigorous in mind and body and loyal to their emba�led<br />
country’s military structure.
36<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Christopher Allmand, The Hundred Years War: England and France at War c. 1300-1450,<br />
Cambridge University Press, 1988. p. 42.<br />
2 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire,<br />
Columbia University Press, 1985.<br />
3 Jean Froissart, Chronicles, Geoffrey Brereton, ed. and trans. NY, Penguin Putnam,<br />
1968. 4 Saul N. Brody, “The Comic Rejection of Courtly Love.” In Pursuit of Perfection: Courtly<br />
Love in Medieval Literature. Ed. Joan M. Ferrante and George D. Economou. Port Washington,<br />
NY: Kennikat Press, 1975. p. 221.<br />
5 M. J. Ailes, “The Medieval Male Couple and the Language of Homosociality,” Masculinity<br />
in Medieval Europe, ed. D. M. Hadley. NY: Longman, 1999. pg. 222.<br />
6 Ian S. Laurie and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, eds.; David Curzan and Jeffrey Fiskin,<br />
trans., Eustache Deschamps: Selected Poems. NY: Routledge. pg. 26.<br />
7 BUSART. s. m. Oiseau de proie, qui fait surtout la chasse aux poulets. Dictionnaire de<br />
l’Académie Française, Cinquième édition, 1798. 18 December 2003. .<br />
8 “buzzard, n.1,” Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. 2nd<br />
ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 18 December 2003.<br />
.<br />
Works Cited<br />
Ailes, M. J. “The Medieval Male Couple and the Language of Homosociality.” Masculinity<br />
in Medieval Europe. D. M. Hadley, ed. Women and Men in History Series. NY: Longman,<br />
1999.<br />
Allmand, Christopher. The Hundred Years War: England and France at War c. 1300-1450.<br />
NY: Cambridge University Press, 1988.<br />
Brody, Saul N. “The Comic Rejection of Courtly Love.” In Pursuit of Perfection: Courtly<br />
Love in Medieval Literature. Joan M. Ferrante and George D. Economou, eds. Port Washington,<br />
NY: Kennikat Press, 1975.<br />
Froissart, Jean. Chronicles. Geoffrey Brereton, ed. and trans. NY: Penguin Putnam,<br />
1968.<br />
Laurie, Ian S. and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, eds. David Curzan and Jeffrey Fiskin,<br />
trans. Eustache Deschamps: Selected Poems. NY: Routledge.<br />
Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon<br />
Press, 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 18 Dec. 2003. <br />
Olson, Marc, et. al. Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française, Cinquième édition, 1798. Accessed<br />
18 December 2003.
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 37<br />
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. NY:<br />
Columbia University Press, 1985.
38<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
Southward Ho<br />
Horace Greeley and J.A. Sanborn<br />
Scott Simpson<br />
<strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>College</strong> Class of 2004<br />
“Emigration is a natural law necessary for the perpetuation of<br />
human societies and political systems; obey it. The war has<br />
opened the door and has shown Northern enterprise a new<br />
Canaan. Southward Ho!” 1<br />
- Horace Greeley, 1865<br />
“If the yankee is disposed to go there [South] with his energy,<br />
industry, and especially his money and help develop their<br />
resources by cultivating the soil or mining or manufacturing<br />
and occupy an inferior position contentedly, I have no opinion<br />
of his touching anything outside those pursuits.” 2<br />
- J.A. Sanborn, 1869<br />
On May 21, 1869, in the small town of East Readfield, Maine, 55year-old<br />
J.A. Sanborn writes a le�er to his 69-year-old cousin, David Fifield.<br />
“I have nothing very wonderful to relate,” says a seemingly exhausted<br />
Sanborn of his Southern and Western tour in the spring of 1869,<br />
as the nation was undergoing its greatest transformation since the birth<br />
of the republic. Despite the opportunities available to him in the American<br />
South and West, Sanborn concludes that pursuing a new life on the<br />
land is not cost effective in the unstable South or worth braving the uncertainties<br />
of life on the Western prairie. In a dry and rushed manner, he<br />
goes on to explain the a�itude of Southerners he encountered towards<br />
Yankees, the pros and cons of owning and operating a farm away from<br />
Maine, the presence (or lack thereof) of the “Ku Klux,” his perception of<br />
Southern and Western life, and the lasting impact of the Civil War on the<br />
infrastructure of the South.
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 39<br />
Sanborn’s le�er offers a glimpse into one of the nation’s most turbulent<br />
and transformational periods: Reconstruction. 3 While the Civil<br />
War occurred due to the disintegration of an America torn apart by cultural,<br />
economic and political divides, Reconstruction was at the least an<br />
a�empt at reconciling the difference of two vastly and different cultures,<br />
and at most an a�empt to recreate a new South infused with Northern<br />
economic and social values. Sanborn, whose own livelihood could only<br />
be benefited by a modernized Southern economy, makes clear in his le�er<br />
that he falls in the la�er category.<br />
Behind Sanborn’s ma�er-of-fact style exists an expression of the reinvigorated<br />
post-Civil War entrepreneurial spirit that characterized many<br />
Northern businessmen. The story is familiar: Here is J.A. Sanborn, a Yankee<br />
factory owner and politician with some “excess greenbacks” 4 in his<br />
pockets heading south to speculate on land in order to both make money<br />
and bring the Northern values of “energy and industry” 5 to a war-torn<br />
region with a recently destroyed social order.<br />
And that is merely the surface. Reading between the lines, one also<br />
notices that Sanborn’s point of view (as a Northern elitist) provides an<br />
optic onto the everlasting cultural differences between North and South.<br />
While Sanborn himself may have been a typical Northern entrepreneur<br />
looking for the best way to invest his capital, the issues he raises in his<br />
le�er—de facto economic reconstruction in the South, the uses of the<br />
heralded Northern capitalist traits such as industry and energy, and the<br />
Yankee’s perception of the post-war South—reveal familiar historical impressions<br />
of the immediate post-Civil War era in America.<br />
The Letter<br />
Cousin David, 6 East Readfield 7 May 21st, 1869 8 .<br />
When I last saw you I promised to write you a�er my<br />
southern and Western tour was accomplished if I did not find<br />
time to do so while making it. I arrived at my home May 4<br />
but have not till now had a convenient opportunity to write<br />
you. 9 I have nothing very wonderful to relate. [I] did not to<br />
my knowledge see anything of that mysterious and desperate<br />
band the “Ku Klux” certainly did not encounter them in<br />
deadly strife, but was permi�ed to pass quietly along about<br />
my business and was civilly treated by all with whom I came<br />
in contact. Still I do not wish you to infer from what I have
40<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
said that I think there is an extra amount of love and goodwill<br />
on the part of rebels reconstructed or unreconstructed for the<br />
once hated yankees.<br />
I judge from what I saw and heard that they will not<br />
much object to relieving the yankees from any surplus greenbacks<br />
they may be anxious to be rid of but that there will be<br />
much cordial good feeling on the part of former or present<br />
rebels for the yankees during the present generation I very<br />
much doubt. If the yankee is disposed to go there with his<br />
energy, industry, and especially his money and help develop<br />
their resources by cultivating the soil or mining or manufacturing<br />
and occupy an inferior position contentedly, I have<br />
no opinion of his own touching anything outside those pursuits[.]<br />
I think he would be likely to be permi�ed to do so<br />
without molestation but that they are disposed to receive him<br />
cordially on terms of social equality I do not for a moment<br />
believe and I do not think our people will be very swi� to<br />
go there to occupy an inferior position when if the means of<br />
accumulating wealth are to be formed in greater abundance<br />
than in other sections of country which I am by no means certain<br />
is the case. I was disappointed as to the general appearance<br />
of the country about Knoxville. 10 The land is not as rich<br />
except the bo�om land as I expected to find, and the style of<br />
cultivation and the general appearance of things in the country<br />
is less thri�y 11 than I expected to find. Their buildings are<br />
poor, mean, dirty things with no sign of any taste or thri�s<br />
about them. Houses without windows, and if light is admitted<br />
it must be admi�ed through doors, crevices.<br />
The roads are poor, their li�le streams unbridged and<br />
the people poor and dirty and responsive to a person of taste<br />
and refinement.<br />
On foot I saw but li�le in the country so far as the people<br />
are concerned that would be pleasing to you. The country independent<br />
of what the miserable institution of slavery made<br />
it I think very well of. The climate I think excellent 12 , but on<br />
the whole I cannot say I want to live there. I do not think you<br />
would. Many seem to be of the opinion that emigration is<br />
about to pour in upon them in a torrent 13 , and that they are<br />
going to get about anything they are disposed to ask for their<br />
land.<br />
Their price for land out in the country is from $25 to $50<br />
per acre with building nearly worthless, certainly not as good<br />
as many of the hog pens in this county. If one is going south
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 41<br />
I think he will do be�er to stop in Virginia than to go to Tenn.<br />
They are not asking half as high for their land in Vir. 14 as in<br />
Tenn. 15 and it is be�er situated for reaching the Atlantic seaboard<br />
which I think an important consideration. Now about<br />
the west you will ask. Well on the whole, I like it be�er there.<br />
The land is richer and easier cultivation and the people are<br />
industrious and cordial I think. But there are serious drawbacks<br />
there, among the most important is the great distance<br />
from the Atlantic seaboard and the great expense of sending<br />
their staple crops to market.<br />
When I was in Geneseo 16 corn was worth but 35c wheat<br />
but 100c and to sell at those prices and raise them on land<br />
worth $50 or $60 per acre with building of small value does<br />
not it appears to present a fla�ering proposal for money making.<br />
Still a shrewd farmer with some means may undoubtedly<br />
do be�er than to sell at those prices by holding or pu�ing<br />
his corn into both. So far as ge�ing a living is concerned I<br />
have no doubt a man can do that much easier than in Maine,<br />
for a bushel of corn or wheat there is worth as much to eat as<br />
in Maine and the people seem to be very cordial and hospitable.<br />
Still on the whole I do not think I should enjoy living on<br />
the prairies of the West, it is so different from all I have been<br />
accustomed to. So to profit I doubt you can have many social<br />
privileges for the same amount you sold for in [?] that will<br />
afford more net profit than you made there.<br />
Gustauvas 17 I think made a very good selection and is in<br />
a good county and neighborhood and has a splendid piece of<br />
land, but I do not think the climate there what he needs and I<br />
doubt if he remains there next winter. On my return home I<br />
visited Vineland, N.J. 18 I have no more time to tell you what I<br />
think of that place. I sent you a paper giving some description<br />
of it. Gustauvas started for his western home last Monday.<br />
My wifes health 19 has been poor about all the time since you<br />
were here. Please give my regards to your wife. 20 I shall be<br />
pleased to hear from you at any time.<br />
Very Truly Yours,<br />
J.A. Sanborn 21<br />
America in 1869: The Worlds Sanborn Saw<br />
If the North and the South were two different nations culturally and<br />
economically before 1865, the Civil War and Reconstruction period that
42<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
followed only served to widen this divide. The only thing the two nations<br />
had in common, perhaps, was the devastating human losses in the<br />
bloodiest war in American history. The numbers that resulted from four<br />
years of fighting are staggering: 360,000 Union troops died and 275,000<br />
were wounded, while the Confederates lost 260,000 men with another<br />
190,000 wounded. 22 When those who managed to survive went home,<br />
however, the worlds of North and South could not have been more different.<br />
As John Hope Franklin writes in Reconstruction A�er the Civil War,<br />
“Traveling through the North, one could feel a new sense of satisfaction.<br />
Everywhere wartime industrialization had brought signs of growth.” 23 In<br />
the North, the Civil War is commonly viewed as a time of “unprecedented<br />
prosperity.” 24 Between 1865 and 1873, the nation’s level of industrial<br />
production increased 75%, and three million immigrants (most of whom<br />
se�led in the North or West) helped foster the growth of urban industrial<br />
centers. The construction of railroads intensified as an outgrowth of both<br />
the Northern war effort and the growing (and o�en scandalous) ties between<br />
corporations and the government, which reaped huge benefits for<br />
the former. 25<br />
The wartime economic policies of the national government—temporarily<br />
unimpeded by Southern agricultural interests—fostered a boom<br />
for Northern industry. These policies, which included the introduction<br />
of a national paper currency, the construction of the transcontinental railroad<br />
(completed in 1869) and the creation of a national banking system,<br />
not only served to strengthen the economic backbone of the Union war<br />
effort, but also carried with them a strong connotation of “nationalization.”<br />
In addition to amplifying the role of a federal government which<br />
had been deemed “impotent” on the eve of the Civil War, this “nationalization”<br />
established an economic and commercial link between North<br />
and West. 26 One can safely assume that Sanborn, as the owner of an oil<br />
cloth factory, benefited greatly from these policies in the 1860s.<br />
The South, on the other hand, was trying to emerge from the catastrophic<br />
economic situation brought on by the physical and social effects<br />
of the Civil War. The wealth of the South dropped 30% between 1860 and<br />
1870, while the amount of livestock lost was so severe that it was not until<br />
1910 that livestock reached their 1860 levels. 27 Aggravating the situation<br />
was the fact that money and credit were in short supply. Banking capital<br />
decreased from $61,000,000 in 1860 to $17,000,000 in 1870, while the vol-
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 43<br />
ume of the region’s currency decreased from $51,000,000 to $15,000,000<br />
in the same period. 28 And then there was the overwhelming problem of<br />
labor. Without slavery, the Southern plantations collapsed, leaving vast<br />
areas of uncultivated land.<br />
The multitudes who traveled to the South immediately following the<br />
Civil War described scenes of devastation, of “fields laid waste 29 , cities<br />
burned, bridges and roads destroyed.” 30 Whitlaw Reid, whose account<br />
of his Southern tour of 1865-1866 is one of the best known Northern writings<br />
on the post-war South, wrote of the region’s infrastructure: “Means<br />
of communication through the interior of the South are so thoroughly<br />
destroyed, and Southern society is so completely disorganized, that it<br />
is only in the cities that one can hope for any satisfactory view of the<br />
people.” 31 Sanborn’s description of Knoxville, Tennessee, as a city with<br />
“buildings that are poor, mean, dirty things with no sign of taste or thri�s<br />
about them” 32 is mild compared to that of Richmond, Atlanta and Columbia<br />
(South Carolina), which lay in ruins a�er the War. 33<br />
By 1869, the Congress’ progressive program for reconstructing the<br />
South was well underway. In 1865, President Andrew Johnson’s conservative<br />
vision for “restoration” of the South highlighted his desire to shi�<br />
the power in the South from the white aristocracy to the white yeoman<br />
class. He was not interested in giving freedmen any meaningful place in<br />
society. “White men alone,” said Johnson, “must rule the South.” 34 His<br />
views on race, combined with his policy to quickly readmit the Southern<br />
states into the Union once they had accepted the 13th amendment,<br />
made for a moderate plan that did not provide the necessary mechanisms<br />
to prevent the Southern states from reinstituting slavery in a different<br />
form.<br />
Johnson’s vision was challenged on the le� by the Radical Republicans,<br />
who firmly controlled Congress. Eric Foner, author of the central<br />
text on the history of Reconstruction, asserts that these Radical Republicans,<br />
many of whom lead the fight for abolition, possessed an ideology<br />
driven by “the utopian vision of a nation whose citizens enjoyed equality<br />
of civil and political rights secured by a powerful and beneficial national<br />
state.” 35 The Radical Republicans, like many of the Northern entrepreneurs<br />
flooding the South, understood that they were living in a moment<br />
where they could, as Thaddeus Stevens put it, “make a nation.” 36 The<br />
first major measure these men took came in the spring of 1867 with the<br />
passing of their first reconstruction legislation. The Reconstruction Act
44<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
of 1867, passed on March 2nd over Johnson’s veto, divided the former<br />
states of the Confederacy (except Tennessee) into five military districts<br />
and laid down the steps former rebel states would have to follow in order<br />
to be readmi�ed into the Union. These steps, which included writing<br />
state constitutions providing for universal manhood suffrage and the ratification<br />
of the 14th amendment, 37 were a far cry from Andrew Johnson’s<br />
“restoration” plan calling for li�le change in Southern society.<br />
By the spring of 1869, when Sanborn likely visited the South, the Radical<br />
Republican vision was fading in favor of a return to economic stability<br />
and politics as usual. The death in 1868 of the great orator and leader<br />
of the Radical Republicans, Thaddeus Stevens, proved to be a damaging<br />
blow to the party’s leadership and the radical vision for the South. In addition,<br />
the Radicals had to campaign on the platform of order and stability<br />
during the 1868 election for their survival, and their most important<br />
constituency—freedmen—was diminished by intimidation and violence<br />
by groups like the Ku Klux Klan. 38 This forced the Radical Republicans<br />
to adopt a conciliatory stance towards more moderate Republicans and<br />
Democrats, causing ri�s in the crippled Radical Republican coalition. The<br />
Republican platform for the 1868 campaign called for former rebels to be<br />
“received back into the communion of the loyal people,” 39 a so�er stance<br />
by the Republicans designed to expand their support beyond blacks and<br />
Unionists. Foner writes that in 1868 it was evident that the “Radical generation<br />
was passing, eclipsed by politicos who believed the ‘struggle over<br />
the Negro’ must give way to economic concerns.” 40<br />
In his le�er, Sanborn is quick to point out that he did not see “anything<br />
of that mysterious and desperate band the ‘Ku Klux,’” 42 perhaps in<br />
response to a concern of his cousin David Fifield. That Sanborn begins<br />
his le�er by mentioning the Ku Klux Klan underscores the impact that<br />
the terror organization had on Southern society by 1869. The Klan was<br />
originally formed in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a fraternal organization<br />
designed purely for amusement. By 1867-68, however, generals,<br />
politicians, and vigilantes took over the Klan and directed its activities<br />
towards restoring the antebellum Southern social order through violence<br />
and intimidation. 43 Foner describes the Klan as “a military force serving<br />
the interests of the Democratic Party, the planter class, and all those<br />
who desired the restoration of white supremacy.” 44 Klansmen, however,<br />
maintained that their actions were prompted by the “instinct of self-protection.”<br />
45 During the first four months of 1868, the Klan expanded to
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 45<br />
nearly every Southern state and had effectively launched a “systematic<br />
crime wave” 46 against those aiding the ideas behind the congressional<br />
reconstruction effort.<br />
It is not surprising, however, that Sanborn never came across the<br />
Klan during his Southern tour in the spring of 1869. A�er the escalation<br />
of Klan violence in 1868, the carpetbaggers and scalawags who controlled<br />
the Southern governments began to crack down on the group’s activities.<br />
Governor Brownlow of Tennessee, one of the staunchest advocates<br />
of Radical Reconstruction, pushed the “Ku Klux laws” through the state<br />
legislature, which outlawed the Klan in an a�empt to “preserve the public<br />
peace.” 47 On February 20, 1869, Brownlow declared martial law in<br />
nine Tennessee counties, thanks to the state government’s legislation. 48<br />
Other states followed Brownlow’s lead, and in the spring of 1869, the<br />
Klan’s Grand Wizard announced its dissolution. John Hope Franklin argues<br />
that the official disbanding of the Klan was a tactical move by the<br />
organization with the hope that governments would no longer hold the<br />
Klan responsible for Southern lawlessness and crime. 49 Despite the continuing<br />
violence in the South against blacks and those promoting Radical<br />
Reconstruction, the Klan’s activities did decrease in the spring of 1869.<br />
Out West, social and economic upheaval, although less dramatic, was<br />
also taking place. People continued to move West for economic opportunity,<br />
but a new breed of immigrants from the North—similar to those<br />
who went South right a�er the Civil War—had arrived. The 1870 census<br />
reveals that the American West contained 1,931,789 people 50 and that the<br />
population had grown by 100,000 between 1860 and 1870. Between 1865<br />
and 1870, a new class of individuals arrived largely comprised of Union<br />
army veterans, Republican carpetbaggers and those sympathetic to the<br />
Radical Republican effort. 51 Those seeking to work on the land found<br />
that demand for crops was high immediately following the War. Also,<br />
the lack of a transcontinental railroad 52 had not to brought the West into<br />
the “commercial complex that determines price structure,” which meant<br />
that price decline was not a problem as it was in the North. 53 While the<br />
immediate postwar West could still reap great benefits for those willing<br />
to live on the prairie, technology and a growing federal government were<br />
two factors in its emergence from isolation during the Gilded Age and<br />
therea�er.
46<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
J.A. Sanborn and Northern Energy<br />
J.A. Sanborn’s illustrious political and business careers reflect the<br />
types of distinctly “Northern” values—industry, energy, usefulness—that<br />
Yankee businessmen and politicians a�ributed to themselves throughout<br />
the 19th century, especially when comparing themselves to the “decadent”<br />
Southerners. Readfield 54 town records paint the picture of a hardworking<br />
man who was successful in many different disciplines. Born in<br />
1814, his father died when he was ten years old, and his mother raised<br />
him. He became a member of the Readfield Methodist Society at age 22,<br />
and entered public life by becoming postmaster of the town as a 30 year<br />
old. In 1844-6 he served as a selectman on the town council, by 1849<br />
had become an agent for the local school district, and in 1854 his ambitions<br />
took him to a larger arena as a member of the Maine State House<br />
of Representatives and Treasurer of the state in 1855. His political career<br />
peaked in the 1860s when he served as a State Senator in 1864 and a member<br />
of the Governor’s Council in 1867 and 1868. 55 Despite his impressive<br />
political career, much of his legacy in town history has been overshadowed<br />
by the fact that four Maine governors hailed from Readfield in the<br />
19th century. 56<br />
Sanborn’s abilities did not end in the political arena. He was most<br />
well known for his business pursuits, which helped usher in the development<br />
of Readfield’s “golden age” in the mid-19th century. On the envelope<br />
of Sanborn’s le�er is a return address to a “J.A. Sanborn and Co./<br />
Manufacturers and Dealers in/Floor, Stair and Carriage/OIL CLOTH.” 57<br />
This address was one outlet for the sale of oilcloth products that Sanborn<br />
manufactured in the factory he helped build in East Readfield in<br />
1845. 58 Henry D. Kingsbury, who in 1892 published a history of Kennebec<br />
County, writes that the oilcloth works became the “high water mark<br />
of Readfield prosperity,” 59 and existed during a time when East Readfield<br />
was a “thriving hamlet.” 60 Sanborn started the plant with a group<br />
of local men, who Mary Schultze Page, a Readfield historian, describes<br />
as possessing the qualities of “perseverance and indomitable resolution<br />
necessary to survive” and the “ingenuity and resourcefulness to become<br />
good businessmen as well.” 61 Sanborn bought out the group of owners<br />
in 1865 and was sole owner of the business until 1870 when he sold the<br />
entire plant to Charles M. Bailey. 62 During his tenure, Sanborn expanded<br />
the factory’s workforce to over 50 people, and opened stores in both<br />
Readfield Corner 63 and Boston. Since oilcloth was used frequently in the
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 47<br />
Civil War, there is li�le doubt that business boomed for Sanborn and his<br />
partners during the War (as was the case for much of Northern industry).<br />
When the factory burned down in 1877—the same year in which Sanborn<br />
died—Bailey rebuilt it in Winthrop and, as Kingsburg notes, “the bright<br />
prospects of a thriving hamlet…were extinguished.” 64<br />
It is quite clear that J.A. Sanborn was not a man fond of idleness;<br />
his self-history indicates the qualities of a character constantly in motion,<br />
moving from one pursuit to the next, always in search of power or<br />
money. Sanborn exemplified the qualities of industriousness and restlessness<br />
associated with the notion of “Northern energy.” The idea of<br />
Northern energy describes an industrial Northern society in contrast to<br />
the stereotypical laziness of Southern society, with a small ruling planter<br />
class that lives idly off the toil of slaves. Anne Norton, in an essay entitled<br />
“Paradigms in Conflict,” writes, “The North’s industrialization and<br />
the South’s enduring agrarianism present the dominant disparity in the<br />
political culture of the two sections.” 65 The North, which by the time of<br />
the Civil War looked completely different from the South due to substantial<br />
industrialization, was America’s bastion of capitalism and free<br />
market competition. The image of the Northern entrepreneur from this<br />
period—clever, industrious, hard working—was in stark contrast to that<br />
of the Southern plantation owner, who was o�en seen as indolent and<br />
lacking usefulness.<br />
Sidney Andrews, a Northerner who toured the South in 1865 as a<br />
correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the Boston Daily Advertiser 66 ,<br />
observed the lack of emphasis and low value that Southerners appeared<br />
to place on labor. Andrews reported: “If there is one thing more needed<br />
in the whole South…more needed here than loyalty, it is respect for labor<br />
as labor—not merely respect for it as a means of sustaining life; but<br />
respect for it as a branch of divine economy, respect for it as a means of<br />
human elevation.” 67 Here, Andrews is referring to the lack of a Southern<br />
work ethic and the necessity for the growth of one if the South is to<br />
survive economically without the institution of slavery. The notion of<br />
developing these Northern ideas in Southern society was an extremely<br />
ambitious, if not farfetched one. As Whitlaw Reid bluntly described the<br />
former rebels a�er conversing with dozens of them a�er the war, “They<br />
have no sort of conception of free labor.” 68<br />
Ben Franklin, an American icon whose autobiography was widely<br />
read through the nineteenth century, personified and popularized the idea
48<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
of Northern energy. Franklin, a capitalist through and through, placed a<br />
strong emphasis on usefulness and work ethic. In one of the more memorable<br />
passages in his autobiography, Franklin describes his “bold and<br />
Arduous project of Arriving at Moral perfection.” 69 While the very act of<br />
seeking moral perfection inherently requires an impressive amount of<br />
energy and discipline (although it is worth noting that despite his efforts,<br />
it is safe to say that Franklin did not actually achieve moral perfection),<br />
virtues number two through six of the thirteen virtues he lists to achieve<br />
moral perfection directly relate to his infatuation with hard work. Both<br />
Silence 70 and Order 71 reflect the “usefulness” aspect of Franklin’s work<br />
ethic; these virtues encourage him to make the best of his time in order to<br />
be as productive as possible. Resolution 72 , Frugality 73 and Industry 74 express<br />
Franklin’s desire to persevere and finish tasks, waste no resources<br />
or time that can take away from the fruits of labor, and to always focus on<br />
“useful” 75 tasks. It is these ideas that are commonly recognized as Yankee<br />
capitalistic characteristics—the notion of joining morality with labor<br />
and self-be�erment with industry. As Norton points out, the industrial<br />
development perpetuated by the capitalism driven by these ideals in the<br />
North were “merely a manifestation of the nation’s moral progress.” The<br />
marriage of the Northern capitalists’ ideas about work ethic and morality,<br />
which we can see manifested in Sanborn’s accomplishments, was the<br />
rallying point for those Northern entrepreneurs seeking to promote benevolence<br />
through enlightened self-interest.<br />
The concept of Northern energy in relation to reconstructing the<br />
South is apparent in the many published accounts by Northerners evaluating<br />
Southern culture. Many of these accounts actually reveal more<br />
about the Yankee’s vision of himself than they do about the culture<br />
and condition of the South. In these accounts, Franklin’s buzzwords of<br />
Northern capitalism—“useful,” “industrious,” “energy”—are repeatedly<br />
used to describe the types of values these Yankees believe can be infused<br />
into Southern society. For example, while passing through Washington<br />
D.C. at the beginning of his Southern tour, John Trowbridge is asked by a<br />
Southerner, “what do you Northerners, you Massachuse�s men particularly,<br />
expect to do now with the niggers?” Trowbridge flatly replies, “We<br />
intend to make useful and industrious citizens of them.” 76 A reporter<br />
for the New York Herald, who claimed to have found a cure for “Southern<br />
backwardness” wrote, “The prosperity of the South, of the planters and<br />
of the Negroes depend alike on the emigration of the Yankees and Yan-
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 49<br />
kee energy.” 77 This confidence or hubris—depending on one’s point of<br />
view—provided Northern entrepreneurs with the bravado and moral leverage<br />
to move into the South and a�empt to simultaneously gain wealth<br />
and fundamentally alter Southern culture.<br />
“Southward Ho!”<br />
J.A. Sanborn’s claim that his interest in investing in the South grew<br />
out of a desire to “help develop their resources” was a familiar one in<br />
the 1860s. The Yankee entrepreneurs who invaded the South during Reconstruction<br />
arrived in large numbers with varying objectives, ranging<br />
from the narrow goal of ge�ing rich quick to a larger purpose of helping<br />
to rebuild the South in the image of Northern culture and society. The<br />
financial success that the North enjoyed during the Civil War coupled<br />
with the Yankee air of superiority over Southern culture created the ideal<br />
circumstances for “carpetbag imperialism” 78 in the South. While historians<br />
tend to focus on the influx of Republican and Northern ideas into the<br />
South through the carpetbag/scalawag voice in reconstructed Southern<br />
governments, these ideas were also spread by the voices of Northern industry<br />
and capitalism.<br />
The peak of Northern emigration to the South occurred between 1865<br />
and 1866. Like J.A. Sanborn, most of the men entering the South to become<br />
planters did not have much farming experience. Records from the<br />
period indicate that most of these entrepreneurs were young men aged<br />
30-33 from professional or business backgrounds—in addition, most did<br />
not serve in the Union army. 79 These Northern businessmen made themselves<br />
quite visible upon their arrival in the South in 1865; one Boston<br />
man, a�er sailing to the former Confederacy a�er war’s end, reported<br />
that “nearly half the travelers in every boat are New Englanders.” 80 A<br />
rush for land reminiscent of the frenzies for resources in the West had<br />
reached full swing in the South.<br />
Michael J. Quill, author of Prelude to the Radicals, argues that despite<br />
the rhetoric of many Northerners flaunting their ideas about reconstructing<br />
the South, shortly a�er the war most were in it for the short road to<br />
wealth. “As the war came to a close,” argues Quill, “it is unlikely that<br />
many Northern businessmen had bothered to construct elaborate or<br />
detailed blueprints for the new South. Instead, they were much more<br />
concerned about the ways in which Southern wealth could benefit the<br />
Northern economy in its return to a peace footing.” 81 Lawrence Powell,
50<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
author of a book on the land rush in the South a�er the war entitled New<br />
Masters, also writes, “Almost every northerner who invested in…plantations<br />
in these years [1865-66] looked chiefly to the speculative aspects…<br />
The newcomers commonly calculated their profits in the tens, even hundreds,<br />
of thousands of dollars, with the conviction of men who knew that<br />
such a chance comes but once in a lifetime.” 82 Here we see the notion of<br />
Northern energy and capitalism playing itself out in the South—there<br />
seemed to be no more useful way of spending “excess greenbacks” than<br />
in speculation.<br />
Despite the overwhelming evidence that the newcomers were primarily<br />
interested in personal financial gain, this pursuit was o�en aided<br />
by ideological or humanitarian visions used to justify the blatantly<br />
capitalistic mission, especially in the years following the rush of 1865-66.<br />
Some Northern plantation owners leased their plantations to freedmen,<br />
in order to help them in the transition from slavery to freedom. Others<br />
offered working opportunities to freedmen to prove to Southern society<br />
that “the freed Negro under decent and just treatment can be worked<br />
to profit to employer and employee.” 83 In addition, the Yankee sometimes<br />
came south to improve agricultural techniques to maximize profits.<br />
Yankees o�en perceived Southern agriculture as “primitive,” and experimented<br />
with new farming technology to figure out ways to reduce labor<br />
and increase their financial success. 84<br />
If the Northern speculators all agreed on one thing, it was that they<br />
were “true pioneers of free labor, evangelists of a more excellent way…<br />
they felt sure that their contributions to the economic well-being of the<br />
South would improve the condition of every class and race in the former<br />
Confederacy.” 85 This, however, was more of a rationalization than a real<br />
motive. Although Sanborn’s republican beliefs are revealed when he refers<br />
to the institution of slavery as “miserable” and the Southerners as<br />
“rebels reconstructed or unreconstructed,” 86 his primary motive still is to<br />
find the place where the “means of accumulating wealth are to be formed<br />
in greater abundance.” Furthermore, if his foremost intention was to aid<br />
in the effort to reconstruct the South, he would not have also speculated<br />
in the West.<br />
Sanborn, despite his goals and rationalizations, did not fit the mold<br />
of the typical carpet-bagging speculator on several levels. He was 55<br />
when he took his trip down south; most speculators from that period<br />
were between the ages of 30 and 33. There are clues indicating, however,
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 51<br />
that perhaps Sanborn was actually taking the trip to find a place for his<br />
son to se�le as well as to advise David Fifield on the value of relocating<br />
elsewhere. These clues are evident both when Sanborn reveals that his<br />
son had se�led out West and in his tone towards Fifield. Sanborn tells<br />
Fifield, “On foot I saw but li�le in the country so far as the people are<br />
concerned that would be pleasing to you,” and comments that Fifield<br />
probably would not like the climate around Knoxville. 87<br />
One of the oddest things about Sanborn’s Southern tour, when put<br />
in historical context, was that he took it in 1869. The Northern invasion<br />
of businessmen and speculators was a phenomenon that was highly<br />
concentrated during the years 1865-1866. In 1867, many of those who<br />
headed South for their fortunes found their dreams dashed thanks to<br />
the crop failures of 1866-67. 88 Co�on planters suffered from the heavy<br />
spring rains and light summer rains which severely retarded plantation<br />
work. Wrote one Yankee co�on plantation owner from Port Royal, Mississippi,<br />
“It would seem that since the commencement of the rebellion,<br />
the elements, worms, & all the forces of nature had conspired against the<br />
intruders of the southern soil.” By 1867, the price of co�on had fallen to<br />
14 cents a pound and the cost of operating a plantation was double than<br />
what it had been in 1860. 89 This was the case for many crops in the South;<br />
by 1867 it was no longer “useful” for a Yankee to speculate in the South<br />
strictly for financial gains.<br />
Powell does point out, however, that “occasionally a man of means<br />
went south a�er 1867 in search of a co�on plantation.” 90 While Sanborn<br />
appeared to be a�er something more modest than a co�on plantation,<br />
circumstantial historical evidence indicates that he was probably driven<br />
more by his situation at home than a burning desire to head south. Sanborn’s<br />
son had recently married so the timing was ripe for Gustauvas<br />
and his new wife, Helen M. Thomas, to se�le somewhere outside of East<br />
Readfield. In addition, J.A. Sanborn had just finished his tenure on the<br />
governor’s council and was likely in the process of selling his oil cloth<br />
factory to William Bailey, a deal that he completed in 1870. 91 Although<br />
Northerners had ceased entering the South in hordes as in 1865-66, over<br />
two-thirds of Virginia’s land and one-quarter of South Carolina’s land<br />
remained uncultivated as late as 1869. 92 Although this was no longer the<br />
golden age of cheap Southern land, there were still plenty of opportunities<br />
for Sanborn to satisfy his agricultural interests. Unfortunately, he<br />
concludes that the social and financial start-up costs of living in the for-
52<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
mer Confederacy did not justify the potential long-term gains.<br />
The Yankee entrepreneurs’ interaction with former rebels formed an<br />
integral part of the carpetbaggers’ experience. Sanborn describes his interaction<br />
with the Southerners as civil but possessing an underlying tension:<br />
“…[I] was permi�ed to pass quietly along about my business and<br />
was civilly treated by all with whom I came in contact. Still I do not wish<br />
you to infer from what I have said that I think there is an extra amount of<br />
love and goodwill on the part of rebels reconstructed or unreconstructed<br />
for the once hated yankees.” 93 Postwar accounts of Yankee interaction<br />
with Southerners reveal a mixed bag of a�itudes towards the newcomers,<br />
o�en highlighted by the former rebels’ paradoxical desires for both<br />
economic assistance from the North and a preservation of their culture of<br />
defiance and self-rule. In his Southern tour in 1865-1866, Whitlaw Reid<br />
witnessed the la�er facet of this paradox. While in New Orleans, Reid<br />
spoke with a lawyer who was confident that the Northern planter movement<br />
to alter the South would fail. “When we get in,” the lawyer argued,<br />
“we’ll put an end to this impudent talk of you Yankees about regenerating<br />
the South by Northern immigration. We’ll require you to spend ten<br />
years in the state before you can vote! 94 …I have no love for the flag. It<br />
never protected me; it has robbed me and mine!” 95<br />
In addition, a general dislike for Yankee men and their culture—particularly<br />
the outgrowths of that “Northern energy”—contributed to the<br />
Southerners’ ill feeling towards the Northern newcomers. Many of the<br />
former rebels’ perceptions of their culture, filled with images of honor<br />
and gentlemanly conduct, were in direct contrast with how they viewed<br />
their Northern conquerors. There was quite a bit of resentment that these<br />
images would be replaced by “strange faces [Yankees], cold and heartless<br />
creatures; plo�ing and striving for the Almighty dollar.” 96 By 1869, when<br />
Sanborn arrived in the South, Radical Reconstruction had provoked an<br />
increase in Southern defiance which lead to widespread violence by<br />
many dedicated white Southerners. While the Radicals were able to turn<br />
the political tide in favor of assisting freedmen and instituting progressive<br />
reforms to alter the Southern social order, that old resentment of the<br />
Yankees lived on.<br />
In spite of this bi�erness, more pragmatic Southerners realized that<br />
their financial survival a�er the war could be achieved through the assistance<br />
of Northern enterprise. 97 Quills uses the example of a hotel<br />
clerk in Mississippi who was “very effusive” when welcoming specu-
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 53<br />
lation-minded guests: “Make yourselves perfectly at home, gents…Lots<br />
of new men coming into the country. That’s what we want; the Yankee<br />
capital, the Yankee enterprise is all we want.” 98 Powell argues that “One<br />
fact stands out very clearly: Southerners strained every nerve to encourage<br />
Yankee investments in the plantation economy.” 99 Solicitations for<br />
Northern investment were prominent in newspapers, while many Southern<br />
governments begrudgingly approved legislation that would facilitate<br />
Northern enterprise. 100 This was strictly business; this brand of Southern<br />
hospitality, as manifested by the Mississippi hotel owner, was purely<br />
economic. Sanborn’s words were true for the period—there was not any<br />
“extra amount of love” on the part of the former rebels. The Southern<br />
and Northern identities, at least when one got past the wallet, remained<br />
distinct and in conflict during Reconstruction.<br />
Conclusion<br />
J.A. Sanborn passed away in 1877, the same year a�ributed to the<br />
end of Reconstruction. Rutherford B. Hayes won the disputed election<br />
of 1876 by making a deal with Democrat Samuel Tilden. Known as the<br />
Compromise (or Bargain) of 1877, the agreement included the withdrawal<br />
of federal troops from the South, which effectively ended Reconstruction.<br />
Remarked one black Louisianan Henry Adams, “The whole<br />
South—every state in the South had got into the hands of the very men<br />
that held us as slaves.” 101<br />
Most Northerners seeking a life on the land in the South quickly<br />
found themselves returning home, and by 1877 it was quite clear that<br />
the old agrarian masters had regained control of the South. The New<br />
South movement, fiercely advocated by Atlanta Constitution editor Henry<br />
W. Grady, claimed that industry and manufacturing were the “true remedy”<br />
102 for Southern ills. Still, the industrialization that occurred in the<br />
South was not a large enough change 103 to remedy larger societal evils<br />
that haunted the region—segregation, sharecropping, poverty. Although<br />
the South looked different by 1900 compared to 1860, the influx of Northern<br />
ideas and money during Reconstruction did not affect the kind of<br />
social change that would unify a nation.<br />
J.A. Sanborn’s le�er to his cousin is best viewed as a collection of<br />
symbols of the challenges Southern Reconstruction. Sanborn himself<br />
is a model of the “Northern energy” paradigm. The Southern a�itudes<br />
towards Sanborn represent the deep divide between two diametrically
54<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
opposed cultures and worldviews, which would impede the ability of<br />
the South to reconstruct itself on its own terms. Conversely, Sanborn’s<br />
description of Knoxville and its people as “poor and dirty” can be viewed<br />
as a symbol of Northern arrogance, a condescending perception of Southerners<br />
which reveals the hubris of the conqueror and his imperialistic<br />
tendencies. Most importantly, his benevolent self-interest represented<br />
the rationalizations and realities that drove the Yankee carpetbagger.<br />
Appendix A<br />
Relevant Information about Readfield and East Readfield<br />
East Readfield, Maine, is a small town outside of Augusta, the state’s<br />
capital. As mentioned in footnote 32, East Readfield is a section of the<br />
township of Readfield. By 1892, Readfield was most well known for the<br />
number of high-level politicians and statesmen that were born and raised<br />
in the town (by 1892, four Maine governors 104 , a United States Senator<br />
and two members of presidential cabinets hailed from Readfield), Kennebec<br />
County historian Henry D. Kingsbury writes, “The air of Readfield<br />
seems to have been charged with a tonic, a�ractive to the tastes and conducive<br />
to the growth of lawyers and statesmen.” 105 It is in this tradition<br />
that Sanborn grew up, and he followed the footsteps of the more famous<br />
locally born politicians by becoming a State Senator and a member of<br />
the Governors’ Council (there are no records indicating that he ran for<br />
anything higher).<br />
Despite its reputation as both a thriving agricultural and vacation<br />
community, Readfield became a place for mills and factories to thrive in<br />
the 19th century. The town featured a grist mill, a cider factory, a tannery<br />
where famous leather was made, a potash factory and Sanborn’s oilcloth<br />
factory. 106 The Readfield depot, which was built in the 1840s, greatly benefited<br />
the town’s business and allowed the expansion of its factories (like<br />
Sanborn’s a�er 1860). 107<br />
The chief researcher and historian at the Readfield Historical Society,<br />
a quaint 18th century house (with no heating, telephones or computers)<br />
which holds most of the town records, calls East Readfield the “forgo�en<br />
village.” 108 While Readfield as a whole prospered into the 20th century,<br />
the Augusta Water Company bought much of the East Readfield’s land<br />
out shortly a�er Sanborn’s death. The company obtained most of the<br />
land around Carleton Pond and demolished the schoolhouse (the town’s<br />
community center) and almost all of the nearby houses. 109
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 55<br />
Appendix B<br />
Sanborn’s Letter: Written in 1867 or 1869?<br />
It is difficult to determine whether Sanborn wrote his le�er in 1867<br />
or 1869. Two key pieces of historical evidence indicate that the le�er<br />
was probably wri�en in 1869. First, official documents provided by the<br />
Readfield Town Clerk’s office show that J.A. Sanborn’s son, Gustauvas,<br />
was married in East Readfield in 1868. Sanborn writes later in the le�er<br />
that he thought Gustauvas “made a very good selection and is in a good<br />
county and neighborhood and has a splendid piece of land, but I do not<br />
think the climate there what he needs and I doubt if he remains there<br />
next winter.” 110 It seems unlikely that an unmarried man would go and<br />
se�le in the West; it seems more probable that Gustauvas chose to move<br />
away from East Readfield a�er he married Helen M. Thomas. In addition,<br />
town records also show that Gustauvas, like his father, became a<br />
member of the East Readfield Methodist Society in 1870. 111 This indicates<br />
that his father’s prediction [“I doubt if he remains there next winter”]<br />
was correct; Gustauvas did return home.<br />
Perhaps the most convincing clue to the le�er’s date is Sanborn’s<br />
reference to the “Ku Klux.” The Ku Klux Klan was only formed as a<br />
very small group in 1866, and it had just completed its transformation<br />
into a terror group aimed at blocking radical reconstruction efforts in<br />
1867. 112 A New York Times profile of unionist Tennessee Governor William<br />
Brownlow by a correspondent who had spent time in the state, makes no<br />
reference to the Klan 113 , which had hounded Brownlow and members of<br />
his administration for years during Reconstruction. The Klan had not received<br />
much a�ention until 1868, when its activities escalated during the<br />
election season. It is extremely unlikely that in May 1867 a Mainer like<br />
Sanborn would have heard of the Klan, let alone have gathered enough<br />
knowledge to characterize it as a “mysterious and desperate band.”<br />
Appendix C<br />
Conditions in Knoxville, Tennessee<br />
It is particularly interesting that Sanborn chose to describe the city<br />
of Knoxville to his cousin David given the city’s unique character in the<br />
context of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The climate and terrain in<br />
the area of Knoxville, which made large plantations inhospitable, were<br />
the central influence behind the city’s character. The town’s ruling class
56<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
in the antebellum period, which was comprised mostly of merchants and<br />
professional men, resembled more of a Northern urban social landscape<br />
than a Southern one. 114<br />
As a result of these factors, Knoxville became a Unionist stronghold<br />
during the Civil War and remained friendly towards Northerners during<br />
Reconstruction. 115 It is almost certain that Sanborn, as a Northerner, was<br />
welcomed warmly in Knoxville. In 1865, as Whitlaw Reid’s railcar approached<br />
Knoxville, a former Confederate soldier (mistaking Reid for a<br />
former rebel) whispered in his ear:<br />
This isn’t a good country for you and me. They’re all tories<br />
here. Every d----d scoundrel of them. I’ve been chased off<br />
from my home because I had been in the Confederate army.<br />
For three weeks I’ve dodged about in the woods, and now I’m<br />
a going to get out of this Yankee country. 116<br />
In addition to the post-Civil War Unionist sentiments, in 1869 Knoxville<br />
began a campaign to rebuild itself in the Northern industrial image—an<br />
idea akin to the “New South” movement that developed in the<br />
1880s. Advocates of this local movement, who started the Knoxville Industrial<br />
Association in 1869, were interested in quelling hostility towards<br />
Northern money and capital, and launched a propaganda campaign to<br />
achieve this end. 117<br />
The city of Knoxville experienced both damage and growth as a result<br />
of the Civil War. Sanborn’s description of Knoxville as a place with<br />
“buildings that are poor, mean, dirty things with no sign of any taste or<br />
thri�s about them,” was in line with the city’s condition a�er the war.<br />
Although a great deal of track was laid down during the war for the sake<br />
of moving Confederate men and supplies to the Virginia theatre, much<br />
of these lines was destroyed during the war. Whitlaw Reid claimed that<br />
it took 22 hours to make the 204-mile journey from Lynchburg to Knoxville,<br />
with constant stoppages due to destroyed track. 118 Despite “burnt<br />
houses and solitary chimneys over one whole corner of the city,” Reid<br />
asserts that the people in Knoxville live quite “comfortably.” 119 This was,<br />
of course, in comparison with the horror he saw in some of the harder<br />
hit Southern urban centers. Sanborn’s description of Knoxville as a town<br />
filled with buildings that are “poor, mean, dirty things” and people who<br />
are also “poor and dirty” 120 are perhaps also a commentary on his comfort<br />
zone—Knoxville was a far cry from his “thriving hamlet.”
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 57<br />
Appendix D<br />
Geneseo<br />
In the le�er, Sanborn does not mention in which part of the American<br />
West Geneseo is located. There are currently three towns named<br />
Geneseo in the United States that are located West of the Mississippi (the<br />
fourth is located in New York). Of the three Geneseos in the Western half<br />
of the United States, through process of elimination one can conclude<br />
that Sanborn is referring to Geneseo, Illinois.<br />
Geneseo, North Dakota, was almost certainly not visited by Sanborn<br />
in 1869 because there is no evidence to suggest that a Geneseo existed<br />
there in 1869. The State Historical Society of North Dakota also indicates<br />
that while se�lement in the area began in earnest around 1861, “significant<br />
immigration” commenced only a�er the Northern Pacific Railway<br />
was built to the Missouri River in 1872 and 1873, and the great se�lement<br />
“boom” did not occur until the 1880s. 121<br />
Se�lement in the town of Geneseo, Kansas, did not begin until the<br />
homesteading movement of the 1870s, and even if Sanborn did manage<br />
to beat the wave a se�lers that would enter the state throughout that decade,<br />
Geneseo did not become a township until 1887. 122<br />
This leaves Geneseo, Illinois, which was first se�led in the early<br />
1800s and incorporated into the state of Illinois as a municipality in 1865.<br />
Given the town’s rural se�ing (it is located in the Western part of the<br />
state near Iowa), it is likely that farming was the main occupation for the<br />
town’s residents in the late 19th century. 123 This information shows that it<br />
is likely Sanborn visited Geneseo, Illinois.<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Horace Greeley, New York Tribune, April 20, 1865 as quoted in Michael J. Quill, Prelude<br />
to the Radicals (Washington, D.C: University Press of America, 1980) 114.<br />
2 J.A. Sanborn, East Readfield, to Cousin David Fifield [location unknown], 21 May 1869,<br />
transcript at Special Collections, Magill Library, <strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>College</strong>, <strong>Haverford</strong>, Pennsylvania.<br />
3 Although Reconstruction is o�en defined as the years 1865-1877, I will specifically be<br />
looking at the period 1865-1869.<br />
4 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.<br />
5 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.<br />
6 Sanborn’s cousin was David Fifield, who was born in 1800. Readfield town records<br />
could not provide the date of his death.<br />
7 East Readfield, Maine. For a brief sketch of the town’s history, see Appendix A.
58<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
8 There is some ambiguity over whether he wrote the le�er in 1867 or 1869. See Appendix<br />
B for a discussion of why it is likely (based on historical evidence) that the le�er was<br />
wri�en in 1869.<br />
9 On a light note, Sanborn’s propensity for procrastination (at least when it came to sending<br />
le�ers) also appeared in a prior le�er to Colonel George B. Barrow in 1864. Sanborn was<br />
writing Barrow in response to the Colonel’s request for a photograph of the Senatorial board<br />
that served prior to Sanborn’s 1864 term. Sanborn writes, “I have neglected day to day thus<br />
far to do so [send the photograph]…” (J.A. Sanborn, East Readfield, to Colonel George B.<br />
Barrow [location unknown], 27 Aug 1864, transcript at the Maine Historical Society, Portland,<br />
Maine).<br />
10 See Appendix C for Knoxville information.<br />
11 Thri�y, in this 19th century context, means “characterized by success or prosperity:<br />
thriving, prosperous, well-to-do, successful, flourishing, fortunate.” Based on the definition<br />
given by The Oxford English Dictionary, second ed, 1999.<br />
12 Based on weather records from the past 48 years, the average temperature in Knoxville,<br />
Tennessee is 59 degrees. Sanborn likely passed through the city sometime between December<br />
and March. The average temperatures for those months are as follows: December, 41 degrees;<br />
January, 38 degrees; February, 42 degrees; March, 50 degrees. Not surprisingly, the records for<br />
Kennebec County, Maine are substantially colder. The mean temperature there is 45 degrees.<br />
In comparison, the winter monthly temperatures are nearly half that of Knoxville: December,<br />
24; January, 19; February, 22; March, 51. Information gathered from www.weatherbase.com.<br />
13 They were wishful thinkers. The Radical Republican effort was severely waning by<br />
1870, and the impact of the 1873 recession proved to be the final straw in turning the North’s<br />
a�ention away from the humanitarian ideas of reconstructing the South and towards their<br />
own economic interests. Once the federal government’s role declined in reconstructing the<br />
South, the antebellum social structure returned (slavery became sharecropping) and the white<br />
Southern farmers regained control of much of the land.<br />
14 Virginia.<br />
15 Tennessee.<br />
16 Geneseo, Illinois. For an explanation on why this is likely, see appendix D.<br />
17 Gustauvas Sanborn, son of J.A. Sanborn.<br />
18 I could not find any evidence to suggest a reason why Sanborn mentioned his visit to<br />
Vineland, New Jersey.<br />
19 J.A. Sanborn’s wife was Lucy Ann B. Sanborn. Despite her “poor health” in 1869, she<br />
died at the age of 67 in 1888 [Readfield town records].<br />
20 David Fifield’s wife was Hannah Stevens [Readfield town records].<br />
21 His official name was Joseph Appleton Sanborn and he was commonly referred to as<br />
Joseph A. Sanborn [Readfield Town records].<br />
22 John Mack Faragher, et al., Out of Many: A History of the American People (Englewood<br />
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993) 512.<br />
23 John Hope Franklin, Reconstruction A�er the Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago<br />
Press, 1961, 1994) 1.<br />
24 Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction (New York: Harper & Row, 1994) 9.<br />
25 Foner 200.<br />
26 Foner 9-11.<br />
27 William M. Russell, “The Economic Impact of the American Civil War” (Ph.d. Dissertation,<br />
George Mason University, Spring 2001) 15.<br />
28 Lawrence N. Powell, New Masters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980) 37.<br />
29 Sanborn describes the land around Knoxville, Tennessee as “not as rich except the bot-
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 59<br />
tom land as I expected to find…” It is difficult to say, however, whether the land was damaged<br />
or neglected as a result of the War or if that was just the natural state of the land. The la�er is<br />
likely; see Appendix C.<br />
30 Franklin 2.<br />
31 Whitlaw Reid, A�er the War: A Tour of the Southern States, 1865-1866 (New York: Harper<br />
& Row Publishers, 1965, 1866) 10.<br />
32 Sanborn Le�er.<br />
33 Faragher et al. 512.<br />
34 Foner 84.<br />
35 Foner 105.<br />
36 Foner 105.<br />
37 Foner 122.<br />
38 Foner 146.<br />
39 The Republican Platform on Reconstruction, 1868 as quoted in Walter L. Fleming,<br />
Documentary History of Reconstruction (Cleveland, Ohio: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1906)<br />
480.<br />
40 Foner 147.<br />
41 Fleming 481.<br />
42 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.<br />
43 Allen W. Trelease, White Terror (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1971) 3-5.<br />
44 Foner 184.<br />
45 Franklin 153.<br />
46 Trelease, 27.<br />
47 Franklin 160.<br />
48 Kathleen R. Zebley, “Unconditional Unionist: Samuel Mayes Arnell and Reconstruction<br />
in Tennessee,” in Tennessee History, ed. Carroll Van West (Knoxville: University of Tennessee<br />
Press, 1998) 193. This was the same day that Brownlow resigned as governor to take a seat<br />
in the United States Senate.<br />
49 Franklin 161.<br />
50 U.S. Bureau of Census, Ninth Census of the United States: 1870, Population (Washington<br />
D.C., 1872) 328-335 as cited in Eugene H. Berwanger, Reconstruction and the West (Chicago,<br />
University of Illinois Press, 1981) 18.<br />
51 Eugene H. Berwanger, Reconstruction and the West (Chicago, University of Illinois<br />
Press, 1981) 18.<br />
52 It was actually just completed in 1869, but the economic transformation that it would<br />
engender took some years to occur.<br />
53 Berwanger 33.<br />
54 East Readfield was established in 1850 a�er the partitioning of Readfield. The current<br />
township of East Readfield contains four towns: East Readfield, Readfield Corner, Readfield<br />
Depot, and Kent’s Hill. [see h�p://www.rootsweb.com/~mecreadf/readfld.htm].<br />
55 East Readfield town records.<br />
56 Evelyn A. Po�er of Readfield, Maine, interview by author, November 20, 2002.<br />
57 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David (return address on envelope).<br />
58 Henry D. Kingsbury, History of Kennebec County (Maine: Maine State Library, 1892) 898,<br />
and Readfield Town Records. Another Readfield historian, Mary Schultze Page, asserts that<br />
the factory was started in 1847. Given her occasional historical inaccuracies (for example, she<br />
misspells “Sanborn”) and the evidence from the town records, it is more likely than not that<br />
the factory was built in 1845.<br />
59 Kingsbury 897.
60<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
60 Kingsbury 892.<br />
61 Mary Schultze Page, Reflections of Readfield (Farmington, Maine: The Knowlton & Mc-<br />
Cleary Co., 1975) 20.<br />
62 Kingsbury 898 and Readfield Town Records.<br />
63 Another section of Readfield.<br />
64 Kingsburg 898 and Page 20.<br />
65 Anne Norton, Alternative Americas: A Reading of Antebellum Political Culture (Chicago:<br />
University of Chicago Press, 1986) 251.<br />
66 Glenn M. Linden, Voices from the Reconstruction Years, 1865-1877 (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt<br />
& Brace <strong>College</strong> Publishers, 1999) 27.<br />
67 Sidney Andrews, The Chicago Tribune, November 25, 1865 as quoted in Lindell 1999,<br />
31.<br />
68 Whitlaw Reid, A�er the War: A Tour of the Southern States 1865-1866 (New York: Harper<br />
& Row Publishers, 1965, 1866) 343.<br />
69 Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, eds. J.A. Leo Lemay and P.M.<br />
Zall (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1986) 66.<br />
70 “Speak not but what may benefit others or your self. Avoid trifling conversation.”<br />
(Franklin 67)<br />
71 “Let all your Things have their Places. Let each Part of your Business have its Time.”<br />
(Franklin 67)<br />
72 “Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.” (Frank-<br />
lin 67)<br />
73 “Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.” (Franklin<br />
67)<br />
74 “Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.”<br />
(Franklin 67)<br />
75 Alexis de Tocqueville critiques Americans’ obsession with usefulness: “I see nothing<br />
around but people bent publicly on proving, by word and deed, that what is useful is never<br />
wrong. Is there no chance of finding some who will make the public understand that what is<br />
right may be useful?” See Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Harper &<br />
Row, 2000 ed.) 527.<br />
76 Trowbridge, J.T., The South, A Tour… (Hartford, Conn: L. Stebbins, 1866) 78.<br />
77 New York Herald, Aug. 28, 1865 as quoted in Powell 5.<br />
78 George Winston Smith, “Some Northern Wartime A�itudes Toward the Post-Civil War<br />
South,” The <strong>Journal</strong> of Southern History (Aug., 1944), 253.<br />
79 Powell 8. See Appendix for tables.<br />
80 Boston Daily Advertiser, Jan. 15, 1866 as quoted in Powell 1980, 7.<br />
81 Quill 111.<br />
82 Powell 18.<br />
83 Garth W. James to Henry James, Sr., Apr. 7, 1866, in possession of Prof. William<br />
Childers, University of Florida as quoted in Powell 1980, 29.<br />
84 Powell 30.<br />
85 Powell 31.<br />
86 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.<br />
87 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.<br />
88 Powell 150.<br />
89 Powell 146.<br />
90 Powell 151.<br />
91 East Readfield town records.
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 61<br />
92 George Ruble Woolfolk, The Co�on Regency (New York: Octagon Books, 1979) 101.<br />
93 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.<br />
94 It is worth noting that this type of sentiment was inspired by Johnson’s so� and<br />
doomed Reconstruction effort, which provided Southernors with the hope that they could<br />
restore their social order and continue to defy the federal government.<br />
95 Reid 412.<br />
96 Bammie to Ema, June 14, 1866, S.C. Bonner Papers, LSU as quoted in Powell 51.<br />
97 Also see Appendix C, third paragraph.<br />
98 Quoted in Quill 115.<br />
99 Powell 38.<br />
100 Quill 115.<br />
101 Foner 245.<br />
102 Henry W. Grady as quoted in Walter Licht, Industrializing America (Baltimore: Johns<br />
Hopkins University Press, 1995) 120.<br />
103 By 1900, the South contained 30% of the nation’s population but just 10% of its industrial<br />
output. See Grady 122.<br />
104 Jonathon G. Hunton, Dr. John Hubbard, Anson P. Morrill, Lot M. Morill. See h�p://<br />
www.rootsweb.com/~mecreadf/rdfldgov.htm.<br />
105 Kingsbury 890.<br />
106 Page 20.<br />
107 Page 27.<br />
108 Evelyn A. Po�er of Readfield, Maine, interview by author, 20 November 2002.<br />
109 Page 19.<br />
110 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.<br />
111 Readfield Town Records (applies to all family information in paragraph).<br />
112 Peter Smith, Unionism and Reconstruction in East Tennessee (Gloucester, Mass.: University<br />
of North Carolina Press, 1966) 58.<br />
113 New York Times, June 26, 1867.<br />
114 Michael J. McDonald and Bruce Wheeler, Knoxville, Tennessee: Continuity and Change in<br />
an Appalachian City (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983) 12.<br />
115 This may have been the result of Tennessee’s ability to put itself on a course of self-<br />
Reconstruction. Carpetbaggers did not play much of a role in Eastern Tennessee politics. Instead,<br />
local unionists (or “scalawags”) like Brownlow ran the government See Paul Bergeron,<br />
Stephen V. Ash, Jeanne�e Keith, Tennesseans and Their History (Knoxville: University of Tennessee<br />
Press, 1999) 158.<br />
116 Reid 350-51.<br />
117 McDonald and Wheeler 16.<br />
118 Reid 340.<br />
119 Reid 351.<br />
120 J.A. Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.<br />
121 See h�p://www.state.nd.us/hist//ndhist.htm.<br />
122 Jim Grey and Janet Ritcha, h�p://skyways.lib.ks.us/towns/Geneseo/history.html<br />
123 See city website, www.geneseo.org.
62<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
The Course of a Particular<br />
A Cry For Meaning<br />
Sandra Read-Brown<br />
<strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>College</strong> Class of 2004<br />
Today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind,<br />
Yet the nothingness of winter becomes a li�le less.<br />
It is still full of icy shades and shapen snow.<br />
The leaves cry…One holds off and merely hears the cry.<br />
It is a busy cry, concerning someone else.<br />
And though one says that one is part of everything,<br />
There is a conflict, there is a resistance involved;<br />
And being part is an exertion that declines:<br />
One feels the life of that which gives life as it is.<br />
The leaves cry. It is not a cry of divine a�ention,<br />
Nor the smoke-dri� of puffed-out heroes, nor human cry.<br />
It is the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves,<br />
In the absence of fantasia, without meaning more<br />
Than they are in the final finding of the ear, in the thing<br />
Itself, until, at last, the cry concerns no one at all.<br />
-Wallace Stevens’ “The Course of a Particular”<br />
From THE PALM AT THE END OF THE MIND by Wallace Stevens, edited by Holly Stevens, copyright © 1967, 1969, 1971<br />
by Holly Stevens.<br />
Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.<br />
A line from one of Wallace Stevens’ most well known poems, “The<br />
Auroras of Autumn,” reads: “There is no play./ Or, the persons act one<br />
merely by being here.” This existential rewriting of William Shakespeare’s<br />
famous declaration “all the world’s a stage, and we are but players in it”
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 63<br />
exemplifies literary critic Harold Bloom’s analysis of Stevens’ fulfillment<br />
of “the unique enterprise of a specifically American poetry.” 1 Whereas<br />
Shakespeare’s pithy statement suggests a world existing in and of itself<br />
in which human beings act according to a pre-wri�en script, Stevens’<br />
lines, according to Bloom, expose “the essential solipsism of our Native<br />
Strain.” One finds this isolationist theme manifested in many ways at<br />
the core of Stevens’ poetry: through themes, rhymes, images, etc. Stevens’<br />
manipulation of language is so skilled that, in the case of his poem<br />
“The Course of a Particular,” the very language itself encapsulates the<br />
unique sense of aloneness and isolation in American poetry. However,<br />
a careful analysis of the language in “Course” reveals the simultaneous<br />
existence of an almost contradictory tendency. Though the language is<br />
isolated and cold, the words that Stevens uses are self-consciously interdependent.<br />
Language naturally functions in relation to itself – words<br />
gain meaning through context – yet in Stevens’ poems all of the words are<br />
dependent upon the words around them for their meaning. One could<br />
even say that Stevens’ poetry deconstructs itself as it is developing, for as<br />
his poems unfold, the meaning of words modulates constantly, doubling<br />
back upon itself before rushing ahead anew. Thus as linguistic interdependence<br />
confronts an independently solipsistic mindset, we are forced<br />
to expand Bloom’s characterization: if Stevens’ poetry is uniquely American,<br />
there must be another essential component to our “native strain.”<br />
In order to access the point of tension between individualistic isolation<br />
and interdependence, it is necessary to engage in a careful analysis<br />
of the poem’s language and development. Stevens’ use of the present<br />
tense in “Course” calls immediate a�ention to the temporal status of the<br />
poem: “Today the leaves cry.” The “Today” that begins the poem signifies<br />
that the final meaning (or lack thereof) which the speaker hopes to<br />
reach has not yet been discovered. It is thus appropriate that the poem’s<br />
second line negates what we are offered in the first: “Yet the nothingness<br />
of winter becomes a li�le less. It is still full of icy shades and shapen<br />
snow” (2-3). “Yet” disrupts the descriptive action of the first line – the<br />
poem wants both to be and to become. In other words, “yet” expresses<br />
the tension in the poem between content, in-the-moment existence (being,<br />
what winter is), and a perpetual striving towards (becoming: what<br />
winter will - or is hoping to – be). The poem refuses to rest in the moment<br />
of winter that it has created, becoming instead “a li�le less.” Also in<br />
these lines, the speaker hints at a tension between absence and presence:
64<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
if winter is the ultimate season of “nothingness,” then what does it mean<br />
for this “nothingness” to become “a li�le less”? Paradoxically, this doubling<br />
of negation and loss generates a move towards presence. A “nothingness”<br />
decreasing (or lessening) even a “li�le” bit necessarily entails<br />
a movement towards something-ness, towards presence. Consequently,<br />
the “full”-ness of the third line is no longer replete with its proper meaning.<br />
In a reflection of the earlier paradox, the coldness of this line (the<br />
“icy shades and shapen snow”) dissolves the meaning of “full” into the<br />
lack and death of winter thereby opening a dark chasm of meaning. Thus<br />
from the moment of today to the slightly “less” winter, into the cold fullness,<br />
it is clear that Stevens never allows his poem to se�le into meaning.<br />
Such a technique ensures the validity of the poem as an encapsulated<br />
experience, one that the reader can experience alongside the speaker. At<br />
the end of the third line, we are still in the moment of the poem, “yet” it<br />
is so far from the moment in which we began.<br />
In sharp contrast to the interdependent relationship of the poet’s<br />
words, the experience portrayed in the poem is nuanced with a coldness<br />
that continually effects a distance, returning us to Bloom’s solipsistic<br />
characterization. Much of the diction resists any warm, visceral reaction,<br />
as if forbidding the reader to a�ach him or herself to one meaning or another.<br />
Clearly, the season evoked is cold and inhospitable, for it is “full of<br />
icy shades and shapen snow.” The reader is drawn into the world of the<br />
subject, “one” who “holds off and merely hears the cry.” This holding<br />
“off” distances the reader from the cry; and since the poem constitutes<br />
itself through this cry, the holding off also distances the reader from the<br />
poem. “One” (the reader? the speaker? someone else?) is not allowed to<br />
participate in the cry – we/he/she/it are relegated to the act of “merely”<br />
hearing. It is a cry “concerning someone else,” not “one.” Within these<br />
lines, an odd hierarchical ordering of the senses is evident as well. The<br />
speaker’s reductive “merely” peremptorily dismisses “one[’s]” a�empt<br />
to participate aurally in the cry of the leaves. This dismissal indicates<br />
that the speaker expects a deeper, more active level of participation from<br />
“one.” Here, then, exists yet another paradox: the poem’s diction insists<br />
upon distance, yet the flow of the language demands engagement.<br />
As its paradoxes intensify, the poem reaches its central and climactic<br />
stanza in which (both literally and figuratively) there is a “conflict” and<br />
a “resistance”: “And though one says that one is part of everything, /<br />
There is a conflict, there is a resistance involved” (7-8). This conflict can
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 65<br />
be read in part as a dispute with one of Stevens’ American predecessors,<br />
Walt Whitman, the famous American poet of totality and universality.<br />
Whereas the English romantics strove to demonstrate their oneness with<br />
nature, Whitman simply assumes such a stance: “To me all the converging<br />
objects of the universe perpetually flow, / All are wri�en to me, and I<br />
must get what the writing means.” 2 Argues Stevens, a speech act is not<br />
enough: “though one says that one is part of everything there is a conflict”<br />
(my italics). Too o�en, poets posit words as a substitution for action, believing<br />
that the simple act of saying is enough. The mastery and control<br />
that Stevens exudes through his diction forcefully refutes this Whitmanesque<br />
claim: “There is a conflict, there is a resistance,” he declares (my<br />
italics). Oddly enough, within this moment of conflict (which is merely<br />
representative of the agitative experience of the poem) there exists a calm<br />
and complete assertion: “One feels the life of that which gives life as it is”<br />
(9). The line does not seek anything or demand anything; it allows itself<br />
simply to be “as it is.” This act of giving and affirming life comes as a<br />
surprise against “icy shades and shapen snow.” There are no demands;<br />
it is simply a quiet observation.<br />
The poem’s middle stanza contains a plethora of words so lacking<br />
in qualification that the words’ meanings become empty and hollow.<br />
“There is a conflict, there is a resistance involved; / And being part is an<br />
exertion that declines: / One feels the life of that which gives life as it is”<br />
(7-9). “Conflict” and “resistance,” both words expressing assertive oppositions,<br />
are strengthened in their presumption by the declarative “there<br />
is” that precedes each. The almost violent sensation evoked by these<br />
words is modified in the following line by “exertion” which indicates<br />
an internal individual effort rather than an external struggle. However,<br />
the diction’s urgency is constantly truncated by Stevens’ refusal to satisfy<br />
the propositions within his language. The conflict and resistance are<br />
“involved,” but in what? “Part” would imply the existence of a whole,<br />
in which “being” can partake; yet no whole is presented. And the “exertion”<br />
“declines,” but to where, and into what? The only choice that we<br />
have as readers is to refer all of these words back to the “everything” that<br />
one would claim to be part of. Remaining true to his style, the referent<br />
that Stevens offers is the most ambiguous word of the poem. “Everything”<br />
is a generality too vague to be defined, and consequently mimics<br />
the “nothingness” of the first stanza.<br />
Stevens’ prolific use of pronouns further complicates the meaning of
66<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
the poem and enhances the play between nothing and everything. Pronouns<br />
serve to designate an already known object without naming it.<br />
However, Stevens’ use of pronouns does not restrict itself to such rules.<br />
Rather, he uses pronouns as though they were nouns with definitive<br />
meaning a�ached. “It is still full of icy shades…,” “It is a busy cry…,”<br />
“…that which gives life as it is…,” “It is not a cry of divine a�ention…,”<br />
“It is the cry of leaves…,” “…in the thing / Itself…” (1, 5, 9, 10, 12, 14-15;<br />
my italics). In every situation in which a pronoun is used, the pronoun<br />
has the ability to mean something different. However, “it” refers essentially<br />
to the same noun throughout the poem (the cry). Such layering<br />
of ambiguity upon certainty echoes the inability of the poem to decide<br />
whether it is one of being or becoming.<br />
Another means through which the speaker ensures distance between<br />
the reader and his poem is through the modulation of the meaning of the<br />
poem created by words with ambiguous literal meaning. A primary example<br />
of this is “cry,” first seen in the opening line of the poem: “Today<br />
the leaves cry” (1). A cry is a spontaneous expression of emotion; it can<br />
signify happiness, surprise, pain, grief, terror, sadness, etc. The intensity<br />
implied by the word “cry” is consistent throughout these emotions, suggesting<br />
the importance of the visceral nature of this reaction. Literally,<br />
of course, the “cry” of the leaves occurs because they are “hanging on<br />
branches swept by wind” -- it is the rustle of leaves against one another.<br />
Although this sound has been referred to as the “cry of the leaves” (my<br />
italics) for purposes of exploring the meaning of “cry,” such an analysis<br />
ignores the active construction of the phrase: “The leaves cry.” The leaves<br />
are performing a definitive action; they are not simply producing a sound<br />
under the agency of another. We might expect a reason for the leaves’ action<br />
to follow, yet the poem that springs from this line refuses the fulfilling<br />
act of justification, emptying out instead into an absence of reason.<br />
Furthermore, the versatile “cry” embodies the tension and indecision<br />
within the poem. Stevens’ poetry is self-conscious; he is highly<br />
aware of poetry as a constructive act. Against this very non-oral/aural<br />
genre, the “cry” stands out as if it were an actual u�erance. The cry is<br />
a verbal evocation of a liminal state between feeling and meaning. It<br />
indicates a sound that is inarticulate and a sense that is incoherent: the<br />
feeling behind the cry drives the noise towards meaning. Symbolic of an<br />
American poet’s struggle to create a place for himself in a new world, the<br />
meaning functions as a limit that the cry is forever approaching and is
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 67<br />
unable to reach.<br />
What, then, is the speaker’s obsession with the leaves and their cry?<br />
Appropriately, considering the poem’s general indecision, the significance<br />
of leaves’ “cry” develops within the space of what they are not and<br />
what they are lacking. “The leaves cry. It is not a cry of divine a�ention,<br />
/ Nor the smoke-dri� of puffed-out heroes, nor human cry. / It is<br />
the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves” (10-12). A�er several<br />
negations, the poet is finally able to say what the cry is: “It is the cry of<br />
leaves that do not transcend themselves.” Although this line is offered<br />
as a declarative, even this qualification is that which the leaves are not.<br />
“It is the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves.” The negating<br />
quality of this statement generates more questions than answers. Do the<br />
leaves cry because they do not transcend themselves? Are the leaves able<br />
to transcend themselves? Is this simply the cry that leaves which cannot<br />
transcend themselves are forced to make? And what would it mean<br />
for leaves to transcend themselves? Transcendence is the act of passing<br />
beyond or above, becoming independent of, exceeding. If the leaves<br />
were to reach a state of transcendence they would become independent<br />
of themselves and have no need for themselves. However, they do not,<br />
and probably cannot, transcend themselves; they, like the poem, and like<br />
America, need and seek meaning.<br />
Despite a need for meaning, the poem’s consistent generation of<br />
significance from within negation suggests a fear of, and a flight from,<br />
meaning. The final sentence is a layering of negative upon negative: “It<br />
is the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves, / In the absence of<br />
fantasia, without meaning more / Than they are in the final finding of<br />
the ear, in the thing / Itself, until, at last, the cry concerns no one at all”<br />
(12-15). “Do not,” “absence,” “without,” “no one,” – the speaker insists<br />
upon the leaves’ inability to be, to accept “life as it is.” However, the diction<br />
of lack in these final lines proves to be more full than it would have<br />
seemed. “Absence” implies that there once was presence – it is more than<br />
just “nothingness.” “Without meaning more” suggests that some level of<br />
meaning does exist. Finally, “no one” is not an exclusive negative. The<br />
space between “no” and “one” is of resounding importance; it does not<br />
negate presence entirely, merely the presence of a specific “one.” Rather<br />
than foreclosing existence, the poem’s ending allows the cry’s meaning to<br />
resonate for all.<br />
The cry is the space in which language and meaning meet. Its re-
68<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
ality and actuality cannot be denied, but the “meaning” that resonates<br />
from it exists in an ever-interpretive condition. By admi�ing its own<br />
limitations, however, the poem achieves a far greater meaning and significance.<br />
Meaning must always be subject to reinterpretation, for it is<br />
in this way that it remains true to life. Consequently, Stevens’ refusal to<br />
control the meaning of his poem directly exposes what Bloom refers to as<br />
“the essential solipsism of our native strain.” Much of the poem’s “fear of<br />
meaning” can be read as a refusal to depend upon other entities for significance.<br />
However, the solipsistic shell of the poem is, as has been seen,<br />
intrinsically connected to the cry, to the conflict at the poem’s center, a<br />
cry that has the potential concern “no one” and “no one” in the same moment.<br />
Within this cry, then, we find the nuance that necessarily expands<br />
Bloom’s characterization: as the cry perpetually defines and redefines itself<br />
in the liminal space of the poem, it demonstrates that “the course of<br />
a particular” poem, and of a particular life, is to exclude neither being or<br />
becoming, neither significance or solipsism, but rather to embrace both.<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Wallace Stevens, ed. And intro by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers,<br />
1985. 12.<br />
2 Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.” Leaves of Grass. Ed. Sculley Bradley and Harold W.<br />
Blodge�. New York: Norton and Company, 1973. p. 47, 404-405.
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 69<br />
Percevalian Mediaevalism<br />
In Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit<br />
“All characters…are seekers.” 1<br />
Erin Tremblay<br />
<strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>College</strong> Class of 2004<br />
Contemporary author Jeane�e Winterson’s novel Oranges Are Not the<br />
Only Fruit explores the coming-of-age and coming-out of a young girl<br />
adopted into an evangelical Pentecostal English household. To cra� her<br />
autobiographical novel, Winterson interweaves memoir, fantasy, fable,<br />
fairy tale, medieval romance, and an organizing biblical chapter schema.<br />
Such an array of fictional intertextualities working with(in) the overarching<br />
autobiographical model proves to be a complex and compelling approach<br />
to telling personal narrative. In this paper, we will focus on one<br />
particular narrative strategy and intertextuality which emerges explicitly<br />
four times toward the novel’s end when Winterson reworks the legend of<br />
Sir Perceval and his quest for the Holy Grail. 2 In Oranges, the Percevalian<br />
tale functions as a mythic identity or model for Jeane�e’s life—from her<br />
familial beginnings to her elected and exiled status to her quest toward<br />
sel�ood and authorship. We will draw not only from the medieval myth<br />
as presented by Winterson, but also as originally introduced by twel�hcentury<br />
romancier Chrétien de Troyes in Perceval ou le Roman du Graal.<br />
Consequently, this paper will differ from other studies which have examined<br />
Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur as the primarily Percevalian<br />
intertext in Oranges.<br />
Percevalian mediævalism serves as a means of exploring self, identity<br />
and personal psychology in Oranges, for Sir Perceval’s legendary life<br />
becomes in many respects a mirror for Jeane�e’s experiences and journey.<br />
The parallelism is established early, as the mythic chevalier and Jea-
70<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
ne�e share a strikingly similar ontological genesis. Both are molded by<br />
the influence of, on the one hand, a dominant mother figure and, on the<br />
other, an absent father. Chrétien alludes to the formative role of Perceval’s<br />
widow mother: “Lors le fils de la veuve se leva dans la Gaste Forêt<br />
solitaire” [“at daybreak there arose a boy/ who was a widowed lady’s<br />
child”] (Chrétien 34/5). 3 Raised in such social isolation, the impressionable<br />
Perceval imbibes his mother’s Catholic imaginary and her cosmology<br />
of a world filled with angels and devils. Having assimilated this<br />
worldview without understanding it, the boy mistakes “cinq chevaliers<br />
armés” [“five armed knights”] in the forest for devils, “les plus laides<br />
choses du monde” [“the vilest things on earth”], and then instead for<br />
angels and even God (35-36/6-7). In a world both perilous and merveilleux,<br />
Perceval’s mother seeks to protect her son in a safe and controlled<br />
physical and social space. Her exclamation upon hearing of this episode<br />
in the forest reveals her intentions and fears: “Beau fils, je croyais si bien<br />
vous tenir éloigné de la chevalerie que jamais vous n’en auriez entendu<br />
parler!” [“I had expected,/ sweet son, that you could be protected/ so perfectly<br />
from chivalry/ that you would never hear or see/ one thing about<br />
it”] (41/14).<br />
Like Perceval, Jeane�e is raised largely in cultural isolation. The<br />
girl’s mother a�empts to keep her safe from the reach of the “Enemies,”<br />
a list which includes “The Devil (in his many forms),” “Next Door,” “Sex<br />
(in its many forms),” “school” (also referred to as “a Breeding Ground”),<br />
and “Unnatural Passion” (Winterson 3, 37, 89). The dominating force of<br />
the mother’s character leaves no room for a (human) father, a man who<br />
is sometimes referred to impersonally as “her husband” (5). The marginalization<br />
of paternal influence and authority is humorously suggested in<br />
the novel’s incipit when Jeane�e explains her arrival in the family: “We<br />
had no Wise men because [my mother] didn’t believe there were any wise<br />
men...” (3). Jeane�e’s adoption further underscores the irrelevance of the<br />
father who, like the biblical Joseph, has no real blood familial claim to<br />
the child. “[A]n easy-going man,” Jeane�e’s father passively fades away<br />
from the central narrative plot (5). Hence, as with Perceval, the mother<br />
plays the formative role, imparting her view of a world fraught with<br />
heathens, devils, merveilles, and enchantements as real as those of the<br />
mediæval tale.<br />
In an implied extension of the Holy Family analogy, Jeane�e’s adoptive<br />
mother is paired with Mary. The girl explains: “She had a mysterious
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 71<br />
a�itude towards the bege�ing of children; it wasn’t that she couldn’t do<br />
it, more that she didn’t want to do it. She was very bi�er about the Virgin<br />
Mary ge�ing there first” (Winterson 3). The mother hence se�les for the<br />
adoption and molding of a model child. The description of Jeane�e’s<br />
personal creation, emphasized by its indented poetic form on the page of<br />
prose, is thus asexual and intellectual, echoing the Old Testament YHWH<br />
speaking creation into being or the Johannine Word-made-Flesh:<br />
Her flesh now, sprung from her head.<br />
Her vision.<br />
Not the jolt beneath the hip bone, but water and the word. (10)<br />
The biblical narrative schema used to make ontological sense of<br />
Jeane�e’s creation, reflected by the chapter title “Genesis,” positions the<br />
child in a christic light. She is capable of, and (pre)destined for, great<br />
things. Jeane�e’s mother, seeking to fashion “a missionary child, a servant<br />
of God,” impresses upon the girl the gravity of her vocation:<br />
We stood on the hill and my mother said, ‘This world is full of<br />
sin.’<br />
We stood on the hill and my mother said, ‘You can change the<br />
world.’ (10).<br />
This sense of destiny, internalized early on by Jeane�e, highlights<br />
a second major point of convergence with the mythic Perceval, that is,<br />
the status as elect. In Perceval ou le Roman du Graal, even the sheltering<br />
mother admits to her son’s predestination or quasi-divine mission: “Vous<br />
serez bientôt chevalier, s’il plaît à Dieu et je le crois” [“soon you will be a<br />
knight,/ God willing; I am sure I’m right”] (Chrétien 43/17). The pairing<br />
of Jeane�e with Perceval further suggests that election is not determined<br />
or limited by familial inheritance or by sexual and gender identity. For<br />
although she may not fully understand her status as adopted, female,<br />
and homosexual, the girl is aware of these identities early on and insists<br />
upon her uniqueness and privilege, saying, “I cannot recall a time when<br />
I did not know that I was special” (Winterson 3).<br />
Nonetheless, election does not simply imply personal glory or destined<br />
triumph, but rather risk, loss, loneliness, and exile, a third narrative<br />
parallel linking Perceval and Jeane�e. The trajectories followed by Perceval<br />
in both the mediæval romance and this contemporary novel reveal<br />
that both authors understand the implications of an elected status. The<br />
elect is drawn into an unknown world to explore not in hopes of glory,<br />
but for “his own sake, nothing more” (174). For Chrétien’s Perceval, exile,
72<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
however self-induced it may be, involves first cleavage with the mother.<br />
Perceval’s decision to disobey his mother’s advice upon encountering the<br />
five-armed knights, fighting rather than making the Sign of the Cross,<br />
foreshadows the mother-son separation (Chrétien 35). The next development<br />
in this progressive detachment is Perceval’s decision to leave home<br />
to join King Arthur’s knights. As Chrétien explains, his mother’s dissuasion<br />
is in vain: “La mère le retient comme elle peut…Mais plus de<br />
trois jours elle ne peut le faire demeurer” [“He stayed there only three<br />
more days,/ and a�erwards, although she pleaded, her tears and coaxing<br />
went unheeded”] (43/16-17). Perhaps the chasm is definitively marked<br />
by the symbolic passage in which Sir Gorneman de Gorhaut persuades<br />
Perceval to cast of “les habits que…fit [s]a mère” [“the garments [his]<br />
Mother sewed [him]”]. Shedding the maternal influence and protective<br />
cloak that enveloped him, Perceval chooses instead to dress himself in the<br />
garments offered by his new mentor (63/47).<br />
In Winterson’s reworking of the Perceval myth, based in part on Sir<br />
Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, the young knight “transfers” the<br />
maternal relationship to King Arthur (Cossle� 15, 20). His sense of loss<br />
and separation results from his decision to leave Arthur, the fellowship<br />
of knights, and the utopian Camelot community in which he enjoyed a<br />
respected position. Winterson expresses the sense of regret which accompanies<br />
Perceval’s departure: “[H]e dreams of Arthur’s court, where<br />
he was the darling, the favourite” (Winterson 135). Arthur, however,<br />
reciprocally experiences the sadness, for Perceval notes “the king’s sorrowing<br />
face” upon leaving (166). If Arthur replaces the mother figure<br />
for Winterson’s Perceval, this image of the king’s suffering calls to mind<br />
a comparable distress in Chrétien’s original version, in which the mother<br />
essentially dies of a broken heart caused by the loss of her son (Chrétien<br />
99, 157).<br />
Jeane�e’s narrative parallels this departure from the will of the overbearing<br />
mother and the ensuing acute loss, a development reflected by<br />
the second chapter title, “Exodus.” As critic and mediævalist Carla Ann<br />
Arnell explains, Jeane�e, like Perceval, “ventures out of the garden of<br />
maternal care and bibliculture”; this “la�er-day Eve” moves out of “a<br />
garden of innocence, where all things are named by the maternal keeper<br />
of the garden” (Arnell 51). Refusing to be the missionary her mother<br />
desires, Jeane�e breaks the mold cast for her to discover her own sense of<br />
mission and identity. Her understanding of her election as “called to be
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 73<br />
apart” differs from that of her mother and church and leads to ultimate<br />
separation (Winterson 43). Jeane�e’s defiance plays on the Edenic topos,<br />
since the so-called transgression causing the rupture with mother and<br />
church is her lesbian relationship with a young woman named Melanie.<br />
One particular exchange between the two characters stresses the symbolic<br />
significance of her first lover’s name:<br />
‘Melanie,’ I plucked up courage to ask at last, ‘why do you have such<br />
a funny name?’<br />
She blushed. ‘When I was born I looked like a melon.’ (83)<br />
The passage likens Jeane�e’s “sin” to the tasting of the forbidden<br />
Edenic apple which modern authors o�en transmogrify, for example,<br />
as the more sensual, lush, and fragrant « pêche mûre » [“ripe peach”]<br />
of Julien Gracq’s reworking of the Perceval legend in Au Château d’Argol<br />
(Gracq 75). Furthermore, the passage negates the mother’s insistence that<br />
oranges are “the only fruit,” a leitmotiv emphasized throughout the text<br />
and by the title and epigraph (Winterson 29).<br />
Jeane�e’s desire, which in her innocence she views as “pure,” provokes<br />
an unexpected interrogation in which she affirms her love before<br />
her evangelical pastor and congregation:<br />
‘I love her.’<br />
‘Then you do not love the Lord.’<br />
‘Yes, I love both of them.’<br />
‘You cannot.’ (105)<br />
The church’s condemnation, its a�empts to heal Jeane�e of her “unnatural<br />
passions and…mark of the demon,” and its ultimate rejection of<br />
the young woman mirror the reactions of Jeane�e’s mother, for like her<br />
adoptive family, “the church was [her] family, too” (105, 37). Just as Perceval<br />
parts from his mother, Arthur, and the community of the Round<br />
Table, so Jeane�e must part ways physically, emotionally, and spiritually<br />
with her mother and the church family. The narrator explains: “My<br />
mother wanted me to move out, and she had the backing of the pastor<br />
and most of the congregation, or so she said. I made her ill, made the<br />
house ill, brought evil into the church” (127). Although the correlation<br />
is not exact, the last part of this passage suggests again the image of Perceval<br />
who, in visiting the Fisher King but failing to ask the anticipated<br />
questions, prolongs the king’s illness and the kingdom’s decline.<br />
In a Village Voice interview, Winterson emphasized her interest in<br />
such characters moving in marginalized and liminal spaces: “‘I always
74<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
write about outsiders. All my characters are exiles, people on the margins…who<br />
are in fact interesting and special and have their own way of<br />
looking at the world” (Anshaw 17). This outsider status, which seems<br />
paradoxically both predetermined and willingly adopted, initiates Jeane�e<br />
and Perceval into a period of journey and errantry. In this respect,<br />
as stories of formative and spiritual development, Perceval and Oranges<br />
share in the tradition of the Bildungsroman.<br />
A common thread uniting the development of the Bildungs-heros<br />
is the exploration of personal identity, although literal and figurative<br />
ba�les such as that against the nefarious Other, e.g., “l’Orgueilleux de la<br />
Lande”[“the Proud Knight of the Moor”], who must be fought along the<br />
way (Chrétien 106/108). Along the path of discovery, Perceval explores<br />
his new role and identity. He learns the duties and proper comportment<br />
of a chevalier with respect to maidens such as the Demoiselle de la Tente<br />
or to his fellow members of Round Table. Furthermore, he discovers a<br />
new modus operandi not based on reckless force but instead on a certain<br />
sensitivity (toward, for example, Blanchefleur) as well as a capacity for<br />
silent contemplation (e.g. of the three drops of blood on the snow).<br />
Although the rather bleak and industrial landscape of Oranges does<br />
not depict the same evocative primæval geography as does Chrétien’s Perceval,<br />
Jeane�e no less represents a twentieth-century knight-errant whose<br />
metaphorical peregrinations can be construed as interior. Like Perceval,<br />
she must ‘do ba�le’ against the demons and doubts which plague her<br />
and which are symbolized by the “orange demon” that appears when<br />
her mother locks her in a dark room (Winterson 108). In the course of<br />
her development, the embedding of the mythic knight’s journey within<br />
the overarching narrative provides Jeane�e with a means of acting out<br />
her own emotional drama which closely matches that of Perceval: guilt<br />
and remorse, fear and uncertainty, and delight and discovery. The Percevalian<br />
tale also allows the narrator to explore the unnamable compelling<br />
force driving her onward. She writes: “Perceval could have turned<br />
back…[T]he woods were wild and forlorn, and he did not know where<br />
he was, or even what had driven him there” (166). Likewise, Jeane�e is<br />
“always thinking of going back” but realizes such a return is impossible<br />
if she does not want to “lose herself” like “Lot’s wife” (160). In this way,<br />
mythic tale provides a mirror and a vast network of images, symbols, and<br />
interpretive lenses with which Jeane�e can examine her life. In addition,<br />
as Arnell points out, the narrator “creat[es] a dream self who is linked to
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 75<br />
her spiritual psychology, but free from her autobiographical destiny and,<br />
therefore, potentially self-liberating” (Arnell 35). Percevalian legend<br />
thus provides not simply a parallel for Jeane�e’s life, but also the hope of<br />
another realizable life paradigm.<br />
Moreover, a narratological reading of Jeane�e and Perceval’s processes<br />
of self-discovery reveals that each character learns to become a<br />
subject and to create his/her own narration. The previously discussed<br />
detachment from the mother implies that the two protagonists step outside<br />
the constructed parental narration which dominated and determined<br />
their life trajectories. This development is perhaps clearer in the case of<br />
Oranges, which also presents itself as a Künstlerroman, or story about<br />
an artist’s formation (Benson Brown 215). In distancing herself from the<br />
voice and desires of her mother, Jeane�e moves into her real vocation as<br />
prophet:<br />
I could have been a priest instead of a prophet. The priest<br />
has a book with the words set out. Old words, known words,<br />
words of power…The prophet has no book. The prophet is<br />
a voice that cries in the wilderness, full of sounds that do not<br />
always set into meaning. The prophets cry out because they<br />
are troubled by demons. (Winterson 161)<br />
Before she can step into her authorial role, Jeane�e must discover her<br />
voice as speaking subject whose words cannot be pre-scribed because the<br />
prophet points to the future, to paths yet to be navigated.<br />
This process of finding one’s words is not so dissimilar from the maturation<br />
of Perceval, who is originally described as lacking sense and who<br />
progresses to the point where he is capable of guessing his own name<br />
(Chrétien 39). Chrétien writes: “Et lui, qui son nom ne savait, soudain le<br />
connut et lui dit que c’est PERCEVAL LE GALLOIS” [“Not knowing his<br />
real name at all,/ he guessed his name was Perceval/ of Wales and said<br />
so”] (99/98-99). Although it may seem a peculiar or incongruent detail,<br />
the act of naming has been since the days of Adam quite significant, for as<br />
Winterson explains, “Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process;<br />
it concerns essences, and it means power” (Winterson 170). Perceval,<br />
then, asserts power over his self. This act of inspired or prophetic divination<br />
is necessary because Perceval’s mother addressed him as “beau<br />
fils” (literally, “beautiful son”), thereby allowing him only to exist and be<br />
named in relation to her rather than as an autonomous being (e.g. Chré-
76<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
tien 45). The hermit in Chrétien’s romance later confirms Perceval’s capacity<br />
to understand the significance of the naming act when he confers<br />
upon the knight “une certaine prière [qui] contenait beaucoup des noms<br />
du Seigneur Dieu, parmi les plus puissants, et que nulle bouche humaine<br />
ne doit prononcer” [“Such potent forms of Our Lord’s name/ were in<br />
this prayer, so great and many,/ no one should u�er it”] (159/175). Thus,<br />
like Jeane�e, Perceval journeys toward an understanding of the power of<br />
naming, of words, and of prophetic self-authorship.<br />
Closely related to the creation of the subject and personal narration<br />
is the fact that both characters progressively learn how to “read,” to interpret<br />
signs and signification skillfully. Perceval must first learn the meaning<br />
and purpose of a chevalier to surpass his original ignorance: “Chevalier?<br />
Je ne connais personne ainsi nommé! Jamais je n’en ai vu” [“I haven’t<br />
met a knight before/...nor seen one”] (36/8). He also discovers the need<br />
to interpret the advice of his mother and Gorneman and to formulate<br />
important and necessary questions. Such questions would allow him to<br />
understand Blanchefleur be�er, to treat her with courtoisie and to restore<br />
health and prosperity to the Fisher King (70, 43, 47, 93, 120). In learning<br />
to interpret signs and to speak up appropriately and confidently, Perceval<br />
steps progressively into his new identity.<br />
Jeane�e follows a related trajectory. In order to understand—to better<br />
name—her identity as lesbian, she must first learn the meaning of<br />
homosexuality, from which her upbringing shielded her. Jeane�e’s world<br />
is fraught with “signs and wonders” to interpret, such as the gypsy who<br />
reads in her palm that she will never marry or the lesbian paper shop<br />
owners who ask Jeane�e “if [she’d] like to go to the seaside with them,”<br />
an invitation the mother promptly forbids (Winterson 17, 13). Critic Amy<br />
Benson-Brown comments that the la�er scene plays on the connection<br />
between sexuality and textuality explored by both Jeane�e persona and<br />
the authorial Winterson: “Significantly, Jeane�e’s first encounter with a<br />
potential lesbian community is at a ‘paper shop,’ later referred to as ‘the<br />
forbidden paper shop’ (Oranges 77). By some symbolic slippage, paper<br />
itself carries the connotation of forbidden fruit” (Benson Brown 215).<br />
Hence, like the legendary knight, Jeane�e must learn to read the world<br />
around. This linkage in Oranges between identity and textuality calls<br />
to mind the “oral textuality” of Perceval’s pre-paper world; when the<br />
chevalier conquers an enemy, he sends the vanquished back to Arthur’s<br />
court to recount the story. Furthermore, the unfinished nature of Chré-
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 77<br />
tien de Troyes’s textual Perceval legend catalyzed (and continues to inspire)<br />
myriad continuations, reinterpretations, and textual explorations<br />
of Perceval’s identity and story.<br />
Moreover, Jeane�e, much like Perceval, must learn to speak again.<br />
The protagonist learns to question her adoptive mother’s ontological and<br />
cosmological stories and absolute truths which teach that there is only<br />
one way to read and to taste life, a view made manifest by the mother’s<br />
insistence that “[o]ranges are the only fruit” (Winterson 29). When Jeane�e’s<br />
church cites Saint Paul and forbids her from the very preaching<br />
it once encouraged, the young woman is silenced and forced to find her<br />
voice again. She must realize that, as a woman, her threatening “success<br />
in the pulpit” is actually “the reason for [her] downfall” (134). In a proclamation<br />
before the congregation, her mother makes clear that sexual orientation<br />
and desire are a cover for the crux of the ma�er, that is, a woman<br />
overstepping gender roles and boundaries:<br />
My mother stood up and said…that women had specific circumstances<br />
for their ministry, that the Sunday School was one<br />
of them…but the message belonged to the men…She ended<br />
by saying that having taken on a man’s world in other ways I<br />
had flouted God’s law and tried to do it sexually. (133-134)<br />
Jeane�e’s trajectory—speaking, being silenced, and finding her voice<br />
again—calls to mind not only the development of Perceval, but also that<br />
of Chrétien’s heroines in Cligès and Erec et Enide. Hence, both Perceval<br />
and Oranges emerge as stories about writing, reading, and speaking one’s<br />
own personal narrative. Benson Brown explains Jeane�e’s personal,<br />
sexual and authorial development: “[T]hat subject, that identity, is not<br />
immediately readable, and the resulting difficulties of interpretation and<br />
representation fuel a…recurrent type of narrative in Oranges: the hermeneutical<br />
tale, or story about language and story making” (Benson Brown<br />
210-211).<br />
The themes of exile and errantry seem to suggest, however, that Perceval<br />
and Jeane�e are seeking something more than affirmation as autonomous<br />
subjects. For, as described by Winterson, Sir Perceval is “begged”<br />
not to leave Camelot by King Arthur who “knew this was no ordinary<br />
quest” (Winterson 128; my italics). Is there indeed a telos to this questing,<br />
an exploit to accomplish or an object to obtain? The case of Perceval<br />
implies that both the path (personal and spiritual development) and its
78<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
end (the Grail) are of importance. Although the Grail is described as a<br />
serving pla�er, “un graal…fait de l’or le plus pur” [“grail/...of purest,<br />
finest gold”] and of precious stones, its precise nature and significance<br />
are never revealed (Chrétien 92/89). The Grail comes to symbolize peace,<br />
healing and wisdom, as such human ideals will result from the questions<br />
Perceval must pose regarding the Grail. Winterson’s version of the<br />
myth further suggests the balance, peace and life-giving creativity that<br />
the Graal bestows upon its seekers; she writes: “[Perceval] would speak<br />
of the Grail, but not of his reason for seeking it. He had seen the vision<br />
of perfect heroism and, for a fleeting moment, the vision of perfect peace.<br />
He sought it again, to balance him. He was a warrior who longed to grow<br />
herbs” (Winterson 166). This striking image and apparent paradox of a<br />
warrior who longs to grow herbs calls to mind the biblical image of Judah<br />
and Jerusalem beating “swords into plowshares” and thus suggests the<br />
sacredness of the Grail and the ultimate peace it grants to its seekers. 4<br />
In Oranges, another ideal associated with the Grail is perfect and<br />
“pure” love (64, 105). In this vein, Arnell suggests that “Jeane�e’s own<br />
quest is a romance in the most literal sense, for it is the story of the love<br />
affair between Jeane�e and Katy,” with whom Jeane�e forms a couple<br />
at the story’s conclusion. She adds: “Yet their romance finds fulfillment<br />
in a quest end that is similar to the one Perceval envisions: creativity<br />
and healing” (Arnell 86). However, the reader is cautioned by another<br />
embedded narration—this time a fairy tale in which a prince seeks the<br />
perfect wife—not to equate perfection with “flawlessness,” but rather<br />
with “balance” and “harmony” (61, 64). A wise and fair woman warns<br />
the prince: “What you want does not exist…What does exist lies in the<br />
sphere of your own hands” (66). This tale thus overturns the concluding<br />
line of the sermon that the narrator hears and recounts just before introducing<br />
the fairy tale, that is, “Perfection…is flawlessness’” (60). Thus,<br />
an una�ainable or otherworldly object or state of being is not necessary,<br />
but rather a shi� of consciousness, as is needed by Perceval who sees the<br />
Grail before his very eyes without recognizing its splendor and significance<br />
(Chrétien 92-93).<br />
In a brief passage in which she returns to garden imagery, Winterson<br />
further fleshes out the significance of the Grail to include exploration of<br />
passion and sensuality as well as the realization of love. She writes: “All<br />
true quests end in this garden, where the split fruit pours forth blood<br />
and the halved fruit is a full bowl for travelers and pilgrims” (Winterson
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 79<br />
123). In a thoughtful analysis that considers this passage’s varied elements,<br />
Arnell writes:<br />
[T]he erotic symbolism herein intersects with traditional<br />
symbolism for both biblical and grail mythology…In a skillful<br />
inversion of the Eden story, the narrator suggests that it<br />
is eating of the fruit of this tree…of love rather than knowledge,<br />
that heals…Winterson seems to be connecting the fruit<br />
“bowl”…with the grail of medieval legend, which was seen<br />
as a “dish” or “cup.” (Arnell 87)<br />
Indeed, the bowl-grail coupling is significant, since from its inception<br />
in Chrétien de Troyes’s romance, the Grail has represented an object<br />
that carries or contains physical and spiritual nourishment. Perceval, Oranges,<br />
and the mediæval legend within the la�er story present diverse<br />
interpretations of the Grail to which questing tends. Nevertheless, such<br />
readings are related in their sensitivity toward human ideals such as<br />
peace, healing, harmony, and love.<br />
Although allusions are made to the ultimate physical and metaphorical<br />
Grail in both stories, both characters’ quests remain unresolved.<br />
Chrétien’s text ends unfinished, probably because of the author’s death,<br />
and Winterson’s denouement leaves the tension suspended between Jeane�e<br />
and her mother and church community. Likewise, the Percevalian<br />
quest as described by Winterson remains incomplete. In her article<br />
on Orange’s intertextualities, Tess Cossle� remarks: “Perceval’s final vision<br />
of the Grail is…le� out: we see him only in the process of questing.<br />
This…emphasizes the unclosed nature of Winterson’s ending” (Cossle�<br />
20). One could read such endings as unsatisfactory, as evidently did the<br />
many authors inspired to continue Chrétien’s romance. Such a tendency<br />
reflects a human desire for the quest to be finished, the deed accomplished,<br />
and the reward a�ained. However, Chrétien and Winterson’s<br />
compelling endings seem to communicate that the Grail is something<br />
to be discovered in the process and the journey, rather than an ultimate<br />
prize.<br />
In this paper, we have examined the myriad ways in which the mythic<br />
Perceval serves as a mirror and model for Jeane�e’s identity and story in<br />
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: her genesis, personal cosmology, election,<br />
exile, errantry, and development as subject, speaker, sign-reader, and<br />
quester. But what is the effect or the result of this mélange of personal
80<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
narrative and legend? Does Winterson’s use of Percevalian mediævalism<br />
call into question the definition, methods, and limits of the autobiographical<br />
genre? For by a creating a “collage” of personal narrative, legend,<br />
and other forms, Winterson “interrupt[s] the ‘straight’ or mainly chronological<br />
narrative” (Benson Brown 210). In deviating from the “straight,”<br />
the author dismisses the trodden and expected narrative path and heterocentric<br />
discourse, as well as and the fundamentalist “straight and narrow”<br />
road. She thereby rejects the idea of one single lens through which<br />
to understand and read the world, as well as the traditional privileging<br />
of history (“real,” “objective”) over story (“make-believe,” “subjective”).<br />
Rather, she suggests that the self and the world can be best represented<br />
and understood through mythology, imagination, and subjectivity. For<br />
as Jeane�e’s friend “Testifying Elsie” wisely observes: “[T]here’s more to<br />
this world than meets the eye” (Winterson 32). Or as Winterson herself<br />
notes in a subtle apology for her narrative style: “‘There’s no such thing<br />
as autobiography, there’s only art and lies” (cited in Arnell 40).<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Elisabeth Brewer and Beverly Taylor, The Return of King Arthur: British and American<br />
Arthurian Literature Since 1800, cited on page 31 of Arnell’s “Medieval Illuminations.”<br />
2 To avoid confusion, I will use “Winterson” to refer to the extra-diegetic author and<br />
“Jeane�e” for the diegetic narrator and character.<br />
3 All second page citations of Perceval refer to Ruth Harwood Cline’s translation.<br />
4 Isaiah 2:4, also Micah 4:3.<br />
Works Cited<br />
Anshaw, Carol. “Into the Mystic: Jeane�e Winterson’s Fable Manners.” Village Voice Literary<br />
Supplement 86 (June 1990): 16-17.<br />
Arnell, Carla Ann. “Medieval Illuminations: Pa�erns of Medievalism in the Fiction of<br />
Jeane�e Winterson, Iris Murdoch, and John Fowles.” Dissertation, Northwestern University,<br />
1999.<br />
Benson Brown, Amy. “Inverted Conversations: Reading the Bible and Writing the Lesbian<br />
Subject in Jeane�e Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.” Reclaiming the Sacred:<br />
The Bible in Gay and Lesbian Culture, Second Edition. Ed. Raymond-Jean Frontain. New York:<br />
Harrington Park Press, 2003.<br />
The Bible. Tran. NIV. [URL: www.biblegateway.org].<br />
Chrétien de Troyes. Perceval or, The Story of the Grail. Tran. Ruth Harwood Cline. New<br />
York: Pergamon Press, 1983<br />
—Perceval ou Le Roman du Graal. Paris: Gallimard, 1974.
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 81<br />
Cossle�, Tess. “Intertexuality in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: The Bible, Malory, and<br />
Jane Eyre.” ‘I’m telling you stories’: Jeane�e Winterson and the Politics of Reading. Ed.Helena<br />
Grice and Tim Woods. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998.<br />
Gracq, Julien. Au Château d’Argol. Paris : José Corti, 1938.<br />
Winterson, Jeane�e. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. New York: The Atlantic Monthly<br />
Press, 1985.
82<br />
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Bayard Rustin<br />
On His Own Terms<br />
Rachel Moston<br />
<strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>College</strong> Class of 2004<br />
Introduction<br />
On Wednesday, November 20, 2002, three hundred fi�y people gathered<br />
in the Stetson Middle School Auditorium in West Chester, Pennsylvania<br />
to discuss whether or not a new high school should be named in<br />
honor of Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), a West Chester native, peace activist,<br />
and civil rights strategist. The three and a half hour meeting began with<br />
the comments of an African American longtime resident of West Chester:<br />
“I grew up in this town. Back then I couldn’t swim in the YMCA pool<br />
or sit down at the movies. These were the things Bayard tried to get rid<br />
of. He was such a beautiful person. He didn’t only try to make things<br />
be�er in West Chester but he traveled the world doing wonderful things<br />
wherever he went.” 1 Another resident spoke two hours later: “Choosing<br />
a name for this school is about naming it a�er someone we want our children<br />
to be proud of. Rustin was gay . . . a disgrace to America. I heard<br />
one of you homosexuals in here mention something before about God.<br />
God didn’t invent Adam and Adam. He invented Adam and Eve. So<br />
don’t you people start using God as your pardoning material.” 2<br />
More than fi�een years a�er his death, Bayard Rustin still engendered<br />
a virtual split among the West Chester community. Se�ing friend<br />
against friend and neighbor against neighbor, he aroused the deepest and<br />
ugliest of human sentiments. How-in the same night-could Rustin be<br />
deemed both a “devil” and a “saint?” And, most importantly, how could<br />
a man who received such li�le public acclaim and acceptance throughout<br />
his lifetime single-handedly rock an entire community?<br />
According to Dorothy Steere, a twentieth century Quaker pacifist,<br />
“Bayard Rustin was a beautiful black figure—both inside and out.” 3 As a<br />
member of the Religious Society of Friends, he lived his life in harmony<br />
within the Quaker principles of peace, nonviolence, love and equality.
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 83<br />
His personal philosophy developed from pure and simple beliefs: “If<br />
I do not see other people as sacred, then I do not see them at all”; “The<br />
only way to reduce ugliness in the world is by reducing it in yourself”;<br />
“If you don’t have compassion for everyone, then you end up having<br />
compassion for none.” 4<br />
Throughout fi�y years of social activism, Rustin made inestimable<br />
contributions to both the radical pacifist and civil rights movements. As<br />
a spokesperson for the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the War Resisters<br />
League, Rustin captivated his audiences, challenged their thinking,<br />
charmed them with his semi-clipped British accent, and o�en persuaded<br />
them. 5 As an organizer, strategist, and pioneer in the use of Gandhian<br />
civil disobedience, he was one of the most influential black protest leaders<br />
in the twentieth century. 6 Through his work with A. Philip Randolph<br />
and Martin Luther King Jr., Rustin injected Gandhian nonviolence into<br />
the heart of the struggle for racial equality. 7 According to historian John<br />
D’Emilio, “To survey the landscape of social activism in post-World War<br />
II America is like writing a synopsis of [Rustin’s] biography.” 8<br />
However, Bayard Rustin remains today “one of history’s forgo�en<br />
men.” 9 With the exception of a handful of writings, Rustin has been strikingly<br />
absent from the histories of post-1945 social activism. 10 How could<br />
this be? Why has Rustin’s historical significance been so diluted and obscured?<br />
Why has a man of such moral strength been castigated, robbed<br />
of his well-deserved acclaim, and cheated out of his proper legacy? And<br />
fi�een years a�er his death, how could the prospect of his name on a<br />
building divide an entire community?<br />
Some years before he died, in the summer of 1987, Bayard Rustin<br />
mentioned to his dear friend, Sheldon Weeks, “I’ve belonged to every<br />
minority group possible-communist, socialist, radical pacifist, Quaker,<br />
black, homosexual.” 11 According to sociologist Anthony Monteiro, “At<br />
any point throughout American history this is a dangerous combination.”<br />
12 Rustin was a Communist during the McCarthy era; He was a gay<br />
man in a fiercely homophobic age, and he was an imprisoned conscientious<br />
objector during a time when men were expected to fight and die for<br />
their country. The controversy occasioned by Rustin’s associations did<br />
not die with him in 1987. Rather, Bayard Rustin - gay, black, Communist,<br />
and pacifist - still continues to challenge many contemporary societal<br />
norms and values. Thus, among the overwhelmingly white, conservative,<br />
Republican, and upper class community of West Chester, Rustin’s
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memory has been tarnished by racism, hatred, bigotry, and prejudice. In<br />
“Let’s Look to Bayard Rustin for Inspiration,” Moneteiro claimed:<br />
Rustin’s blackness and gayness pose serious challenges to<br />
the racial and sexual values of the American middle class<br />
then and now. Black masculinity in its heterosexual or homosexual<br />
expressions does not sit well with many people in<br />
the white middle class. Add to the mix an outspoken and<br />
assertive confidence, joined to a radical vision of remaking<br />
the world, and Rustin’s memory becomes a li�le too much for<br />
the small-minded. 13<br />
Accordingly, Bayard Rustin’s legacy must be viewed as a byproduct<br />
of his controversial identity. Throughout his career, it forced him out of<br />
the spotlight and behind the scenes of the civil rights movement. A�er<br />
his death, it besmirched his name and memory. This paper will discuss<br />
how Rustin’s controversial character conditioned the reaction of others to<br />
him, defined his identity, molded his career, and tainted his legacy. By<br />
outlining the years from Rustin’s birth in 1912 to the pinnacle of his civil<br />
rights career, the 1963 March on Washington, I hope to assess the devastating<br />
and overarching paradox embracing Rustin’s life—how a man<br />
who selflessly and tirelessly devoted over fi�y years to the nonviolent<br />
struggle for racial equality and social justice could be so marginalized,<br />
vilified, and misunderstood.<br />
Quaker Upbringing<br />
“On September 11th, if there were Quakers on board flight 93, what<br />
would they have done? Sit on their hands? Twiddle their thumbs? Let a<br />
plane land on the White House?”—West Chester Resident, 2002 14<br />
When Bayard Rustin wanted to empathize with troubled youth, he<br />
would sometimes claim he came from a fatherless home. 15 In 1912, his<br />
father, Archie Hopkins, disappeared a�er having a brief relationship<br />
with his mother, fi�een year old Florence Rustin. 16 Consequently, Bayard<br />
was raised by his grandparents, Julia and Janifer Rustin, along with eight<br />
aunts and uncles in West Chester, Pennsylvania. 17 Raised as a member<br />
of the Religious Society of Friends in the late nineteenth century, Julia<br />
worked hard to instill Quaker values of peace, love, and equality in her<br />
children and grandchildren. 18 Although the Rustin family formally be-
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 85<br />
longed to the local Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, all of the<br />
Rustin children were heavily influenced by Quaker principles and ideals.<br />
19<br />
These pure and simple Quaker values served as a strong moral foundation<br />
which later touched every aspect of Rustin’s life and career. In<br />
fact, not long before he died, Rustin wrote, “My activism did not spring<br />
from my being black. Rather, it is rooted fundamentally in my Quaker<br />
upbringing and the values imparted on me. Those values were based on<br />
the concept of a single human family and the belief that all members of<br />
that family are equal.” 20<br />
Although West Chester was not free from racism in the early twentieth<br />
century, discrimination was more benign than it was in other areas of<br />
the United States. Rustin did not experience overt bigotry while a�ending<br />
his integrated high school, West Chester Senior High. Well-liked and<br />
popular, he proved to be a gi�ed tenor, an active member of the French,<br />
science, and history clubs, a star runner and football player, and a valedictorian<br />
of his 1932 graduating class. 21 However, outside of school, he<br />
experienced the harsh brutalities of segregation. Rustin later recalled,<br />
“When I went to the movies with my white friends, I always had to sit<br />
over on the other side.” 22 Choosing to combat the societal ills that directly<br />
contrasted with his Quaker ideals, Rustin led a series of protests<br />
and strikes during his high school years. A former classmate, Oliver Patterson,<br />
remembered, “Bayard’s determination was frightening. But we<br />
looked up to him as our leader. He was the most progressive person of<br />
his age in West Chester. He had a strong inner spirit.” 23<br />
While a�ending Wilberforce University in Ohio from 1932 to 1933,<br />
Bayard Rustin discovered his homosexuality. 24 As he recalled at age<br />
seventy-five, the process of increasing awareness was without trauma,<br />
mostly because of his grandmother’s Quaker tolerance. 25 Throughout his<br />
life, Rustin never tried to conceal his homosexuality. His openness about<br />
his gay lifestyle sprang from a feeling that he was entitled to be whatever<br />
he was, even during a time in America where homosexuality was punishable<br />
by law. 26 Unfortunately, this aspect of Rustin’s identity rested at the<br />
heart of the conflict that ultimately enveloped his life.<br />
In the mid 1930s, Rustin searched for a political cause worthy of his<br />
a�ention. 27 In New York City, he found nothing more a�ractive than the<br />
activities of the Communist movement, “whose soapbox orators were<br />
making an aggressive pitch for black membership.” 28 The Party’s pro-
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T�� H�������� J������<br />
gressive stance on issues such as racial injustice initially a�racted Rustin<br />
to the movement. He formally joined the Young Communist League in<br />
1936, believing that the Communists “seemed to be the only people who<br />
had civil rights at heart.” 29 According to Rustin, “they were passionately<br />
involved and I was passionately involved so they were ready-made for<br />
me.” 30<br />
However, in June 1941, when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union,<br />
the Party abruptly shi�ed its focus from civil rights to the war against<br />
Hitler. 31 As a Quaker and pacifist, Rustin’s beliefs now directly conflicted<br />
with party policy. 32 Disillusioned, Rustin broke his ties with the Communist<br />
movement, “and emerged as one of its sterner critics for the rest<br />
of his life.” 33 Years later, others severely exploited and distorted Rustin’s<br />
brief dalliance with the Communist Party in order to discredit his work<br />
and defame his character.<br />
Upon his disillusionment with the Communist Party, Rustin shi�ed<br />
his focus to the predominantly white radical pacifist movement. In 1941,<br />
with the world embroiled in a Second World War, Bayard Rustin started<br />
work for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), the American branch of<br />
an international organization of Christian pacifists. 34 Led by A.J. Muste,<br />
FOR emphasized “total pacifism” as a means for combating war and<br />
“sowing the seeds of peace and love” throughout the world. 35 In September,<br />
1941, Rustin joined the FOR staff as the field secretary for youth and<br />
general affairs. 36 Ordered by Muste to “spread the message” of anti-war<br />
pacifism and to “stimulate the organization of local groups and cells,”<br />
Rustin criss-crossed the United States organizing new pacifists and making<br />
a persuasive case for the radical ideology. 37<br />
In opposition to World War II and racial oppression in America, Rustin<br />
and his fellow radical pacifists of FOR adopted nonviolent direct action<br />
(NVDA), the same tactic that was being utilized at the time in India by<br />
Gandhi and the Indian freedom movement against the British Empire. 38<br />
NVDA differed from pacifism in its roots and principles. While pacifism<br />
was simply a refusal to participate in evils such as war, the originators<br />
of NVDA sought “points of contact where the evil could be actively opposed<br />
and perhaps ended—all without violence and without destroying<br />
the opponent either physically or mentally.” 39 The model was Gandhi’s,<br />
but its adaptation to combat racism in American society was Rustin’s.<br />
In 1941, Rustin compiled a Lesson Plan on Non-Violent Direct Action.<br />
He began by acknowledging that struggle and conflict are present
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 87<br />
in all phases of life and nature. Traditionally, man has used violence to<br />
solve problems. However, he observed, “Non-violent action is not an attempt<br />
to do away with conflict, but a technique for peacefully solving it.<br />
The real choice is between violent and non-violent method.” 40 There are<br />
two fundamental principles upon which faith in non-violent direct action<br />
is based: “The belief that good will is the most powerful and constructive<br />
force at work in human relationships and the belief that progress depends<br />
on changes in man’s a�itude and environment at the same time.” 41<br />
Those who face conflicts with non-violent tactics have three aims: “The<br />
first is to achieve social, economic, or political rain; to so behave during<br />
the struggle as to gain the respect and sympathy of the exploiters; to<br />
gain, by moral integrity, the sympathy and support of third parties and<br />
observers.” 42<br />
According to Rustin, this nonviolent direct action could be employed<br />
whenever there is an area of social tension: “Race discrimination<br />
and prejudice, labor-capital disputes, denial of civil liberties, and suppression<br />
of academic freedom.” 43 In order to achieve necessary unity for<br />
a program of direct action, the basic behavior pa�ern must be as follows:<br />
“Have no fear, tell the truth, admit their guilt, behave creatively, raise the<br />
struggle from a physical to a moral plane.” 44 Lastly, Rustin illustrated the<br />
kinds of direct action that can be used: “They are non-violent strike, economic<br />
boyco�, picketing, non-payment of taxes, mass emigration, noncooperation,<br />
and civil disobedience.” 45<br />
Draft Dodger<br />
“I am against naming it a�er Bayard Rustin, as he was a traitor to<br />
the good old United States of America. If we all had felt this way, Hitler<br />
would have ruled the world.”—West Chester Resident, 2002 46<br />
Late in 1940, when Rustin appeared before a dra� board in Harlem,<br />
he was granted classification as a conscientious objector based on<br />
his membership in the Religious Society of Friends. 47 Under the Dra�<br />
Act of that year, those whom the Selective Service recognized as genuine<br />
conscientious objectors were given three options: enlisting as noncombatants<br />
in the military; performing tasks in civilian works camps; or, upon<br />
refusal of the first two choices, incarceration in federal penitentiaries. In<br />
a le�er wri�en to his Quaker monthly meeting, Rustin encouraged his<br />
fellow Friends to accept the conscientious objector status: “The truth is
88<br />
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that war is wrong. Friends generally have a ‘peace testimony’ which carries<br />
with it in our larger society certain recognition and rights. Civilian<br />
Public Service, Quaker Emergency Service, and other institutions are our<br />
only options given our long stands on war. We must non-violently deal<br />
with this conflict.” 48<br />
However, almost three years later on November 13, 1943, when Rustin<br />
was ordered by his dra� board to report for physical examination-a<br />
requirement for conscientious objectors about to be assigned for work<br />
in Civilian Public Service Camps-he refused to appear. Changing his<br />
course, he no longer wanted a privilege granted chiefly to religious conscientious<br />
objectors. He felt that if all conscientious objectors - religious<br />
and nonreligious - were not treated equally, he would rather suffer the<br />
penalty of federal imprisonment. 49 In his le�er to the dra� board Rustin<br />
wrote:<br />
For eight years I have believed war to be impractical and a<br />
denial of our Hebrew-Christian tradition. . . These principles<br />
as I see it are violated by participation in war. Believing this, I<br />
was compelled to resist war by registering as a Conscientious<br />
Objector in October, 1940. However, a year later, I became<br />
convinced that conscription as well as war is inconsistent<br />
with the teachings of Jesus. I must resist conscription also.<br />
. . Conscription is inconsistent with freedom of conscience.<br />
It denies brotherhood and separates black from white. Today<br />
I feel that God motivates me to use my whole being to<br />
combat by non-violent means. . . at the same time the State<br />
dictates that I shall do its will; which of these dictates can I<br />
follow—that of God or that of the State? Surely, I must obey<br />
the law of the State. But when the will of God and the will of<br />
the State conflict, I am compelled to follow the will of God. . .<br />
I am prepared for whatever may follow. 50<br />
On January 12, 1944, two months a�er his defiant reply to the dra�<br />
board, Rustin was arrested by a United States Marshal in New York. 51 At<br />
his trial, he was found guilty of violating the Selective Service Act and<br />
sentenced to three years in prison. Eleven days later he was dispatched<br />
to the federal penitentiary in Ashland, Kentucky. 52<br />
While at Ashland, Rustin detested the segregation that existed in<br />
the living and dining accommodations. Seeking to “resist this injustice<br />
nonviolently,” he organized a series of effective nonviolent protests and
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 89<br />
strikes. 53<br />
First he challenged the prison’s policy against interracial visiting. At<br />
Ashland, a locked gate barred blacks on the ground floor from visiting<br />
whites on the floor above. 54 A�er launching a series of protests with the<br />
authorities, he was allowed to fraternize with white conscientious objectors<br />
on the upper floor—but only on Sunday a�ernoons, when they usually<br />
listened to a radio concert by the New York Philharmonic. 55 Despite<br />
Rustin’s success, there were impending consequences he had not anticipated.<br />
A white segregationist on the upper floor, inmate Huddleston,<br />
was particularly enraged by Rustin’s efforts at integration in the prison.<br />
One Sunday morning Rustin wandered to the upstairs to listen to the<br />
radio concert:<br />
Huddleston went to the utility room and got a stick, the size,<br />
in diameter and length, of a mop handle, and came back to<br />
hit Bayard over the head. The boys in the room did not know<br />
what was going on till Huddleston hit Bayard with a mighty<br />
blow. . .They jumped and got between Huddleston and Bayard<br />
asked them to stop, which they did. Huddleston continued<br />
to beat him with the club. 56<br />
A�er the incident, one of the guards sent Rustin downstairs and<br />
closed the gate behind him. Thus, “It looked as though all anyone had<br />
to do was get a club and commit violence and the Administration would<br />
back him up.” 57 However, according to the Ashland Prison Newsle�er,<br />
days later, “Prison warden, E.G. Hagerman, literally apologized to Bayard<br />
for the way the Administration had treated him. He went on to<br />
say that he appreciated the nonviolent response . . . and that as a vote of<br />
confidence . . . he would leave the gate open.” 58 Rustin later described<br />
his pacifist response to Huddleston’s a�ack as “an example to all of the<br />
effectiveness of nonviolent resistance.” 59<br />
Another pointed example of Rustin’s nonviolent resistance occurred<br />
in May, 1944 when he a�empted to counteract segregation in the dining<br />
hall. In the Ashland Prison Newsle�er, inmate Charles Butcher wrote:<br />
As you know, we have segregation in our dining room. It is a<br />
two-fold sort of thing being both divided on the color one and<br />
on the basis of men in quarantine. Last night Bayard went to<br />
the white table. . . An officer asked him to leave. Bayard told<br />
the officer that he could not move voluntarily and asked that
90<br />
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he be allowed to either talk with someone in authority or take<br />
his tray of food to eat in his cell. The officer said he would<br />
have to move. Bayard said he would not move so the guard<br />
and two other officers tried to drag Bayard out of the dining<br />
room. Several of us got up at this point and said there was<br />
no need to use force on him. A�er they moved Bayard as far<br />
as the exit of the dining room, the officers decided they were<br />
wrong for using force. Days later the Administration closed<br />
the whole incident without punishment and assured us that<br />
they would avoid using force in such situations again. 60<br />
In response to these particular incidents, A.J. Muste wrote in a memo,<br />
“It seems to have been demonstrated that, where violence is met by nonviolence,<br />
positive results are obtained and the violence is effectively kept<br />
in check.” 61<br />
The Turning Point: Pasadena, California and the Aftermath<br />
“What will our district teach our students about Bayard Rustin? The<br />
whole truth? Or just the glorified truth? What will our students say<br />
to outsiders who ask ‘Who is Bayard Rustin?”—West Chester Resident,<br />
2002 62<br />
Until the beginning of the 1950’s, Rustin’s most controversial traits<br />
remained largely within his private life. Although one might think that<br />
the combination of being African American, homosexual, a dra� resister,<br />
a radical pacifist, and a Communist would lead to instant disaster, it was<br />
not until 1953 that Rustin’s controversial background became public.<br />
On January 21, 1953, while Rustin was traveling to promote projects<br />
FOR had been developing in Africa, he was arrested in Pasadena,<br />
California. 63 Discovered while having sex in a parked car with two other<br />
men, Rustin was convicted of violating California’s lewd-vagrancy law<br />
and sentenced to sixty days in a local jail. 64 Since Rustin’s lectures on<br />
the West Coast had to be canceled abruptly, word of his homosexuality<br />
quickly spread within pacifist circles. 65 From this moment on, Rustin’s<br />
life and career would never be the same. Rustin’s homosexuality incited<br />
massive conflict wherever he went. Controversy became a constant reality<br />
throughout his civil rights career.<br />
A.J. Muste was devastated by the news from California. He had long<br />
known about Rustin’s sexual preference but he had always advised Rus-
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 91<br />
tin to keep his private life private. Muste questioned whether Bayard<br />
could play a prominent role in the radical pacifist movement - grounded<br />
in Christian ethics - while leading “an ethically degrading life.” 66 As a<br />
devout Christian, Muste consequently concluded that Rustin’s “conduct<br />
in Pasadena had damaged, fatally, his political usefulness to the FOR.” 67<br />
Immediately a�er Pasadena, the FOR executive board discharged<br />
Rustin from the staff. According to David McReynolds, a member of<br />
FOR, “Rustin was a great loss. Not only was he the Fellowship’s most<br />
popular lecturer but he was also a genius at tactical ma�ers. Bayard was<br />
being groomed by FOR to become an American Gandhi. The position<br />
was cut out for him . . . but it was all destroyed by the incident in California.”<br />
68<br />
A�er leaving the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Rustin was le� desperate<br />
and jobless. 69 Fortunately, the War Resisters League had been<br />
looking admiringly at Rustin’s effective work for the Fellowship of Reconciliation.<br />
70 A majority of the WRL Advisory Council wanted Rustin<br />
as the new executive secretary because of his exemplary organizational<br />
and leadership skills. However, the proposal was met with controversy<br />
in light of the recent Pasadena incident. A series of le�ers wri�en among<br />
the members of the WRL Executive Commi�ee and Advisory Council illustrate<br />
the depths and dimensions of this conflict.<br />
On August 31, 1953, “Allan,” a member of the WRL Executive Commi�ee,<br />
wrote, “I am afraid that Bayard would embarrass the WRL by<br />
making passes at the young men and boys he would come in contact<br />
with—in the field or in the New York office.” 71 On September 1, 1953,<br />
Frances Witherspoon wrote to Roy Finch, Chairman of the WRL:<br />
My vote as a member of the Advisory Council, is ‘NO’ on the<br />
ma�er of making Bayard Rustin WRL Secretary. I do not feel<br />
that the recent regre�able episode is far enough in his past.<br />
. . to be able to guarantee that there will be no recurrence. .<br />
. We pacifists work under the heavy handicap of the public<br />
ignorance and prejudice, and I feel it wrong and unfair that<br />
we should be asked to take on greater liability. 72<br />
On September 8, 1953, Edward C.M. Richards wrote to Roy Finch:<br />
To my mind one of the needs of the League is STABILITY.<br />
Because of the strong position which we take on war and con-
92<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
scription, there is a natural tendency for us all to take on a<br />
vigorously critical a�itude toward the whole life about us. . .<br />
In hiring Bayard or anyone else, therefore, it seems to me that<br />
the Ex. Com. Should seriously consider factors which will<br />
STABILIZE the life of the man or woman we hire as Secretary.<br />
A young, unmarried fellow can do a grand job of some kinds<br />
of peace work, FOR A WHILE. But as Secretary of the League,<br />
it seems to me, we need to encourage the person taking the<br />
job to sober up and assume the responsibilities of living, or<br />
personal finance, of a home and family and children which<br />
are the common lot of most people. 73<br />
On October 1, 1953, an unknown member of the WRL Advisory<br />
Council wrote, “In speaking with Mr. Muste, he did not have sufficient<br />
confidence that Bayard had overcome the personality problems connected<br />
with his homosexuality and which have embarrassed the FOR in the<br />
past. I don’t feel that Bayard could now handle a WRL job without future<br />
embarrassment to the League.” 74<br />
These le�ers reflect the homophobia and bigotry prevalent in the<br />
1950’s, even among progressives. At any rate, it was the WRL that rescued<br />
Rustin from political oblivion. 75<br />
Although Rustin was ultimately saved by the WRL, he could not<br />
escape the controversy occasioned by his behavior in California. In the<br />
spring of 1954, the Pasadena incident came back to haunt him. The American<br />
Friends Service Commi�ee (AFSC) assigned Stephen Cary, a staff<br />
officer, to convene a working group of intellectuals to shape a pacifist<br />
stance toward the nuclear arms race and the threat of a Soviet-American<br />
confrontation. 76 Cary selected the most thoughtful group of pacifist intellectuals<br />
he could imagine, including Rustin. Unfortunately, according<br />
to Cary, “People at the AFSC urged me to write Bayard off the list. They<br />
were embarrassed by his homosexuality, which became public a�er the<br />
ma�er in California. But I resisted. I told them I didn’t give a damn what<br />
Bayard was. To me, Bayard was a marvelous human being.” 77<br />
That summer, Cary’s group assembled at <strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>College</strong> for a<br />
week-long conference which produced a seventy-page document, later<br />
published as Speak Truth to Power. 78 When Speak Truth to Power appeared<br />
as a booklet, Rustin was not listed among the coauthors, despite the fact<br />
that he was the driving force behind its creation. Cary remembered:<br />
Bayard reminded us of his arrest on the West Coast . . . and
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 93<br />
urged that his name not be included among the writers of the<br />
document. He said, ‘It will be a valuable publication, and my<br />
name on it right now will be hurtful to circulation.’ I said,<br />
‘Bayard, you know this thing could not have been wri�en<br />
without you.’ Before he le� <strong>Haverford</strong>, he sang two beautiful<br />
spirituals to us: ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen’ and<br />
‘There is a Balm in Gilead.’ The effect was overwhelming.<br />
And then he said, ‘Gentlemen, I’m at peace. It’s been a wonderful<br />
week. Just leave my name off.’ 79<br />
Rustin’s refusal to put his name on Speak Truth to Power reflected<br />
a noble selflessness which would resurface throughout the remaining<br />
years of his life—a constant sacrifice of personal glory and credit for the<br />
sake of the greater good.<br />
A Driving Force Behind the Scenes<br />
Before the Pasadena incident in 1953, Rustin had been a visible figure<br />
among pacifist circles and civil rights organizations. As field secretary<br />
for the Fellowship of Reconciliation and a nonviolent direct activist, he<br />
was constantly in the spotlight—leading others by example. However,<br />
Pasadena precipitated a devastating shi� in Rustin’s career. A�er Pasadena,<br />
he became a largely behind the scenes figure. Although partially<br />
a�ributable to his leadership style, “that fused Quaker and Gandhian influences<br />
into a seamless modesty that never drew a�ention to himself,”<br />
much of this was forced upon him by his controversial identity. 80 However,<br />
instead of withdrawing from the movement in anger or resentment,<br />
Rustin, again for the sake of the greater good, selflessly accepted his role.<br />
As an expert tactician in nonviolent direct action, a brilliant organizer,<br />
and an advisor to Martin Luther King Jr., Rustin became a driving force<br />
behind the scenes of the civil rights movement. He began his fight for<br />
civil rights in Montgomery, Alabama.<br />
In response to the arrest of Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Improvement<br />
Association, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, launched its famous<br />
boyco� of all city buses in December 1955. The energy that sustained<br />
the boyco� was King’s adoption of nonviolent direct action. 81 However,<br />
King, then twenty-six, had li�le experience with its application.<br />
In February 1956, Bayard Rustin was asked to go to Montgomery,<br />
Alabama to assist in the boyco�. Despite King’s academic exposure to<br />
Gandhi’s philosophy, he had much less experience with non-violent pro-
94<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
test than Rustin had at that point in time. 82 In many ways, Rustin was the<br />
ideal emissary—“The leading African American Gandhian in the nation,<br />
whose career testified to his commitment.” 83<br />
Rustin’s efforts, however, proved problematic. His controversial<br />
background was not widely accepted among the black civil rights leaders<br />
in Montgomery.<br />
In a cloak-and-dagger scenario whose details remain obscure, pacifists<br />
and civil rights leaders in Montgomery met, telephoned, and dispatched<br />
le�ers with dizzying speed. Rustin, they argued, was a danger<br />
to the movement. It was not only, or even primarily, that he was a New<br />
Yorker who had once been associated with the Communist Party. Rather,<br />
his arrest in Pasadena, still a vivid memory, would compromise his effectiveness<br />
and subject the Montgomery movement to serious peril. They<br />
were adamant that Rustin should return home. 84<br />
According to John D’Emilio, “It is a tribute to Rustin’s personal<br />
charm, charisma, and skill as a strategist that he survived these machinations<br />
and emerged as King’s closest advisor.” 85<br />
Ostensibly, Rustin was not the ideal figure to lead the struggle for<br />
civil rights. It was not that he lacked the skills or the ability—he was<br />
just too controversial. In contradistinction, Reverend King proved to be<br />
the perfect icon. He possessed the intelligence, charisma, and eloquence<br />
necessary to lead the movement. According to Rustin, “King had been<br />
chosen. A divine hand had been laid upon him.” 86 Consequently, as<br />
King’s closest advisor, Rustin made his contributions to the civil rights<br />
movement through Dr. King.<br />
King was not in any sense a commi�ed Gandhian when Rustin arrived.<br />
There were guns in his home, and the men who were guarding his<br />
house were armed. Rustin felt these were out of place in the home of a<br />
Gandhian leader. 87 Rustin remembered, “It seemed to me, that King had<br />
read about Gandhi, and that his reading had tilled the ground, creating<br />
a readiness for his gradual deepening in the philosophy of nonviolence.<br />
But he still did not fully understand.” 88<br />
Rustin spent the rest of the 1950s, on leave from the WRL, advising<br />
King about Gandhian techniques. 89 Throughout this period, King rarely<br />
made a decision of any consequence without first consulting Rustin. 90<br />
Rustin devised a plan for King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference<br />
(SCLC) to develop a nonviolent civil rights movement throughout<br />
the South. 91 Rustin organized a Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington in May
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 95<br />
of 1957 at which King gave his first speech to a national audience. 92 Additionally,<br />
in 1958 and 1959, he drew the plans for two youth marches for<br />
school integration. These demonstrations gave King and the civil rights<br />
movement a national platform and forced the Eisenhower administration<br />
to meet with civil rights leaders. 93 From behind the stage curtain, Rustin<br />
shaped and molded the course of the civil rights movement.<br />
In the winter of 1960, the eruption of Southern sit-ins, inspired by<br />
Rustin and King’s Gandhian techniques, promised to change the whole<br />
political equation. 94 Nonviolent direct action was now the cu�ing edge<br />
tactic of the black freedom struggle. Rustin’s reputation as an experienced<br />
and commi�ed Gandhian should have made him a preeminent<br />
figure in this emerging mass movement. However, his influence with<br />
King, and in the civil rights movement, was compromised when Adam<br />
Clayton Powell, a Democratic Congressman representing Harlem, successfully<br />
“manipulated Rustin’s Achilles Heal—his homosexuality—to<br />
keep him out of the loop of those strategizing and organizing the civil<br />
rights struggle.” 95<br />
Early in July, Dr. King received a startling message from a source<br />
close to Powell: unless King fired Rustin and canceled a proposed demonstration<br />
at the Democratic National Convention, Powell would announce<br />
publicly that King and Rustin were involved in a sexual relationship.<br />
Through Powell’s outrageous charge was without substance, King<br />
felt it was still potentially damaging. A few days later, King informed<br />
Rustin that it would be advisable for him to sever all connections with<br />
the civil rights movement and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.<br />
96 Although this was a crushing blow to Rustin, he quietly resigned.<br />
At the time he explained to the New York Courier:<br />
I cannot permit a situation to endure in which my relationship<br />
to Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference<br />
is used to confuse and becloud the basic issues confronting<br />
the Negro people today. I cannot permit a situation to<br />
endure in which the best elements of the Negro leadership are<br />
a�acked as a result of my relationship to them...Those who<br />
have worked with me during my twenty years in the movement<br />
know that I have never sought high position or special<br />
privilege, but have always made myself available to the call<br />
of the leadership. Congressman Powell has suggested that I<br />
am an obstacle to his giving full, enthusiastic support to Dr.<br />
King. I want now to remove that obstacle. I have resigned as
96<br />
Dr. King’s special assistant. 97<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
Rustin had just fought his way back from pariah status and had graciously<br />
accepted a role out of the spotlight. He had molded and nurtured<br />
King’s career as the “invisible guiding hand” behind many civil rights<br />
initiatives. 98 But yet again, he found himself marginalized.<br />
Back in the Circle<br />
A�er the controversy with Powell, Rustin returned to his peace<br />
work. Early in 1963, he and A. Philip Randolph, an old friend and fellow<br />
civil rights activist, discussed the possibility of a mass march on Washington<br />
for jobs and freedom. 99 Eventually, King lined up behind it, and<br />
moderate organizations supported the march as well. 100<br />
A. Philip Randolph declared Bayard Rustin the chief director of the<br />
march. Not surprisingly, Roy Wilkins, chairman of the NAACP, tried to<br />
veto Rustin’s role as director because of the Pasadena arrest. According<br />
to James Haskins, “Randolph finessed the move by accepting the role<br />
of director on the condition that he choose his own assistants.” 101 He<br />
promptly named Rustin the deputy director of the march and turned<br />
over the organizing to him.<br />
Unfortunately, Rustin would by no means be granted this title without<br />
controversy. For years, J. Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of Investigation<br />
had kept a close eye on the civil rights movement, secretly<br />
feeding damaging information to key segregationists. 102 Now the FBI<br />
worked overtime, scrutinizing the Washington march as they looked for<br />
“subversive connections.” 103 Most of Bayard Rustin’s FBI files were from<br />
1963—perhaps indicative of the efforts taken to prevent the March on<br />
Washington. Rustin’s affiliation with the Communist Party was mentioned<br />
in every single one of his files. In the file from October 4, 1963,<br />
it was noted that “Rustin a�ended the 16th National Convention of the<br />
Communist Party, USA in 1957 as one of the eight ‘so called’ noncommunist<br />
observers.” 104<br />
Upon receiving this information, Senator Strom Thurmond of South<br />
Carolina, a staunch segregationist, criticized Rustin’s past Communist affiliation.<br />
105 However, “most of it was old news and generated li�le interest,<br />
though it did spark worry in civil rights circles.” 106 On August 13,<br />
Thurmond a�acked again, this time targeting Rustin, who by then had<br />
been dubbed “Mr. March-on-Washington” by the press. 107 Thurmond re-
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 97<br />
iterated Rustin’s Communist ties and his conviction on “sex perversion”<br />
charges in Pasadena. According to John D’Emilio:<br />
By this time one might think that Rustin was inoculated<br />
against feeling on this issue. Yet Thurmond’s charge represented<br />
something new. In 1953, pacifists had been made privy<br />
to Rustin’s arrest, but the event was a throwaway item in local<br />
papers. In 1960, the conflict with Powell rippled through the<br />
nation’s press, but the substance remained unnamed. Now<br />
the labeling process was clear and ubiquitous. Rustin was<br />
named a pervert before an audience of tens of millions. 108<br />
However, the outcome of the latest controversy was remarkable:<br />
“Because the accusation was so public, because it was leveled by a segregationalist,<br />
and because it came just two weeks before an event on which<br />
the movement was banking so much, civil rights leaders had to rally to<br />
Rustin’s defense.” 109 Addressing a press conference, Randolph stated, “I<br />
am sure that I speak for the combined Negro leadership in voicing my<br />
complete confidence in Bayard Rustin’s character, integrity, and extraordinary<br />
ability.” 110<br />
The March on Washington on August 28, 1963, was the crowning<br />
achievement of Bayard Rustin’s career. With only two months to organize<br />
the march, Rustin proved to the world that he was a first class organizer,<br />
strategist, and tactician.<br />
Rustin spent countless hours arranging police security and imported<br />
a supplementary force of four thousand volunteer marshals from New<br />
York. He recognized that the psychology of peace was fragile and that<br />
there was no telling what might happen if a�ackers burned one of the<br />
two thousand buses headed toward Washington. It was Rustin’s obsession<br />
to make sure that no flaw in the arrangements permi�ed discomfort<br />
to flare up into violence. He drove his core staff of two hundred volunteers<br />
to pepper the Mall with several hundred portable toilets, twentyone<br />
temporary drinking fountains, twenty-four first-aid stations, and<br />
even a check-cashing facility. Over the vast march area, Rustin had signs<br />
posted high enough to be read by someone jammed in a crowd. ‘If you<br />
want to organize anything,’ he said, ‘assume that everybody is absolutely<br />
stupid. And assume yourself that you’re stupid.’ He was determined to<br />
move the masses of people into Washington a�er dawn and out again<br />
before dusk. 111
98<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
The march was hugely successful. More than 250,000 people—blacks,<br />
whites, men, women, Jews, Gentiles, Muslims unionists, children, and elders—gathered<br />
at the Nation’s Capital to demand civil rights legislation<br />
and to listen to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. 112 The<br />
success of the march surpassed the organizers’ most ambitious hopes.<br />
For Rustin, the march exemplified successful mass nonviolent protest:<br />
“In the course of two months the Kennedy’s had shi�ed from hostility<br />
to endorsement. Members of Congress, who had initially rejected invitations<br />
to participate, ended by clamoring for a place on the platform.<br />
All the major civil rights organizations, including the most conservative,<br />
united a front and thus explicitly had lined up behind mass action.” 113<br />
A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin had envisioned the March<br />
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom as a climax of the direct-action<br />
civil rights movement. Later events proved their accuracy. Never again<br />
would so many people be of such like mind and so determined to demonstrate<br />
peacefully. Rustin had given them this opportunity. So important<br />
was his role, that Life magazine featured him and A. Philip Randolph on<br />
the cover of its September 6 issue. Before he died, Rustin declared, “The<br />
March on Washington was one of my most beautiful periods of work in<br />
my life.” 114<br />
Conclusions<br />
It is fi�ing to end this discussion of Bayard Rustin’s life with the 1963<br />
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom because it best demonstrates<br />
his skill, intellect, and dedication. Here was a man of great integrity,<br />
commitment, passion, courage, and honor. He viewed all people as human<br />
beings—as soul mates. His actions were fueled by his “love of life,<br />
his compassion, and his ability to empathize with the suffering of every<br />
human being.” 115<br />
He could not stay away from any place where people were brutalized<br />
and victimized, where democracy’s promise of civil and human<br />
rights was denied or distorted. 116 According to the late Albert Shanker,<br />
former President of the American Federation of Teachers, “Because he<br />
had courage and integrity he abhorred racism wherever he found it, he<br />
fought for the right of a white man to be principal of a Harlem school<br />
and for the rights of black and white teachers to due process in New York<br />
City, just as he had fought for the end of Jim Crow in the South.” 117 He<br />
inspired awe among all those who knew him and led a lifelong struggle
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 99<br />
to create a world of justice, peace, and harmony. 118<br />
Unfortunately, although Bayard Rustin was a man of pure, simple,<br />
and solid morals, he was never fully recognized as such. As an openly<br />
gay man, Rustin was deemed a “sexual pervert.” As a former member<br />
of the Communist Party, he was considered a traitor to democracy. As<br />
an imprisoned conscientious objector during World War II, Rustin was<br />
viewed as a disgrace to the United States. To mainstream America, it<br />
did not ma�er that Rustin joined the Communist party to fight for civil<br />
rights. It did not ma�er that he was imprisoned as a radical pacifist during<br />
World War II because he believed conscription of any kind was a<br />
violation of human rights.<br />
Throughout his life, Rustin set his own standards and created his<br />
own rules. He defined himself and would not let others do so. 119 As<br />
recently as two years ago, the community of West Chester, Pennsylvania<br />
was forced to deal with Bayard Rustin on his own terms, and many<br />
had to recognize their own fears and vulnerabilities concerning race and<br />
sexuality. 120 Rustin believed in democracy. He knew America could be<br />
great—but only if she confronted her demons. 121 So, just as he wished<br />
to change his world for the be�er, his memory ultimately impelled the<br />
West Chester community to acknowledge his greatness. 122 In early January,<br />
2003, a�er an acrimonious ba�le in the community, the West Chester<br />
District Area school board decided to name the new high school Bayard<br />
T. Rustin Memorial High. The building is currently under construction<br />
and will be ready for opening in the fall of 2006.<br />
Endnotes<br />
1 Speaker at West Chester Public Meeting, West Chester, Pennsylvania, 20 November<br />
2002. 2 Speaker at West Chester Public Meeting, West Chester, Pennsylvania, 20 November<br />
2002.<br />
3 Dorothy Steere, [Cover le�er for postcard from Bayard Rustin to Douglas Steere], 38,<br />
Special Collections, Magill Library, <strong>Haverford</strong> <strong>College</strong>, <strong>Haverford</strong>, Pennsylvania.<br />
4 Speaker at West Chester Public Meeting, West Chester, Pennsylvania, 20 November<br />
2002.<br />
5 Leonard S. Kenworthy, “Bayard Rustin Crusader for Racial and Social Justice,” in Living<br />
in the Light: Some Quaker Pioneers of the 20th Century, 193.<br />
6 August Meier, Bayard Rustin Papers (Bethesda, Maryland: University Publications of<br />
America, 1988),2.<br />
7 John D’Emilio, “Homophobia and the Trajectory of Postwar American Radicatlism,”<br />
in Modern American Queer History, ed. Allida M. Black (Phildadelphia: Temple University<br />
Press, 2001),80.<br />
8 Ibid.
100<br />
T�� H�������� J������<br />
9 Ibid.<br />
10 Ibid.<br />
11 Sheldon Weeks, “Bayard Rustin-Radical Pacifist Quaker,” Friends <strong>Journal</strong> 38 (November<br />
1998): 28.<br />
12 Anthony Monteiro, “Let’s Look to Bayard Rustin for Inspiration,” The Philadelphia Inquirer,<br />
November 15, 2002.<br />
13 Anthony Monetiro, “Let’s Look to Bayard Rustin for Inspiration,” The Philadelphia Inquirer,<br />
November 15, 2002.<br />
14 Speaker at West Chester Public Meeting, West Chester, Pennsylvania, 20 November<br />
2002.<br />
15 Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement (New Jersey: Rutgers University<br />
Press, 2000), 1.<br />
16 Ibid.<br />
17 Ibid.<br />
18 Ibid.<br />
19 James Haskins, Bayard Rustin: Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movement (New York:<br />
Hyperion Books for Children, 1997), 4.<br />
20 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen (New York: Harper Collins Publishers,<br />
1997), 16.<br />
21 Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement, 16.<br />
22 James Haskins, Bayard Rustin: Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movement, 24.<br />
23 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 24.<br />
24 Wilberforce, where Rustin registered on September 14, 1932, is among the oldest black<br />
colleges in the United States. Founded by white Methodists in 1856, it was named a�er William<br />
Wilberforce, the prominent English abolitionist and parliamentarian. Jervis Anderson,<br />
Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 32.<br />
25 Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement, 9.<br />
26 Jervis Anderson, Troubles I’ve Seen, 35.<br />
27 Prior to this, Rustin had been asked to leave both Wilberforce University and Cheyney<br />
State Teachers <strong>College</strong> due to “naughty misbehavior.” Rustin later accounted for “making<br />
a mistake” during those years “out of youthful carelessness.” It has been speculated that<br />
Rustin’s homosexuality was the driving force behind his discharge. James Haskins, Bayard<br />
Rustin: Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movement, 25.<br />
28 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 45.<br />
29 Ibid.<br />
30 Ibid.<br />
31 In early 1941, the Communist Party had assigned Rustin to organize and lead a campaign<br />
against segregation in the military. However, he was ordered to disband this campaign<br />
when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Hitler’s invasion now required a Soviet-American solidarity<br />
against Germany. A continuation of the flight for desegregation in the military would<br />
disrupt the American “military machine” and hurt the prospects for an effective Soviet-American<br />
alliance. Thus, defending the Soviet Union against Hitler became more important than<br />
the fight for civil rights. Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement, 26.<br />
32 Evan Wolfson, “Bayard Rustin,” in Invisible Giants: Fi�y Americans that Shaped the Nation<br />
but Missed the History Books, ed. Marc C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press,<br />
2002), 240.<br />
33 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 56.<br />
34 FOR was born directly a�er the outbreak of World War I. Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin<br />
and the Civil Rights Movement, 32.
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 101<br />
35 A.J. Muste (1855-1967), born Abraham Johannes Muste in the province of Zeeland,<br />
the Netherlands, came to the United States in 1891 when the Muste family se�led in Grand<br />
Rapids, Michigan. In 1940, his views of total pacifism and absolute non-violence elevated him<br />
to executive director of FOR. In the following years of his career, he was to become its most<br />
renowned leader. AJ Muste: Papers 1920-1967, (Swarthmore <strong>College</strong> Peace Collections Website,<br />
accessed 20 October 2002.); available from h�p://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/peace/<br />
DG026-050/dg050muste.htm: Internet.<br />
36 His base salary was fi�een dollars a week—raised a year later to $18.75. Jervis Anderson,<br />
Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 72.<br />
37 Jervis Anderson, Troubles I’ve Seen, 51.<br />
38 By 1942, most leading activists in the Fellowship of Reconciliation were also disciples<br />
of Mahatma Gandhi. Almost all of them had been drawn to Gandhian philosophy and methodology<br />
by their readings of such influential texts as Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience;<br />
Gandhi’s autobiography; My Gandhi, by John Haynes Homes; and War Without Violence, by<br />
Krishnalal Shridharani. Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 62.<br />
39 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 51.<br />
40 Bayard Rustin, “Lesson Plan on Non-Violent Action,” 1941, FOR Files, Box 51, Swarthmore<br />
<strong>College</strong> Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong>, Pennsylvania.<br />
41 Ibid.<br />
42 Ibid.<br />
43 Ibid.<br />
44 Ibid.<br />
45 Ibid.<br />
46 Speaker at West Chester Public Meeting, West Chester, Pennsylvania, 20 November<br />
2002.<br />
47 Rustin had formally joined the Religious Society of Friends in 1936. Daniel Levine,<br />
Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement, 15.<br />
48 Bayard Rustin, to Friend, 15 August 1942, FOR Files, Box 51, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong><br />
Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong>, Pennsylvania.<br />
49 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 60.<br />
50 Bayard Rustin, to Gentlemen of the Dra� Board of New York, 16 November 1943, FOR<br />
Files, Box 51, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong> Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong>,<br />
Pennsylvania.<br />
51 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 90.<br />
52Ashland was one of a handful of prisons that the government used to house conscientious<br />
objectors during World War II. James Haskins, Bayard Rustin: Behind the Scenes of the<br />
Civil Rights Movement, 29.<br />
53 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 92.<br />
54 Ibid.<br />
55 Ibid., 107.<br />
56 Ibid.<br />
57 Tom Ritchie, “Bayard Rustin,” Prison Newsle�er, July 1944, FOR Files, Box 52, Swarthmore<br />
<strong>College</strong> Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong>, Pennsylvania.<br />
58 Ibid.<br />
59 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 108.<br />
60 Charles Butcher, Prison Newsle�er, July 1944, FOR Files, Box 52, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong><br />
Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong>, Pennsylvania.<br />
61 A.J. Muste, “Memo on Visit to Ashland, Kentucky, Federal Correctional Institution,”<br />
27 July 1944, Bayard Rustin Files, Box 1, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong> Peace Collections, McCabe Li-
102<br />
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brary, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong>, Pennsylvania.<br />
62 Speaker at West Chester Public Meeting, West Chester, Pennsylvania, 20 November<br />
2002.<br />
63 John D’Emilio, “Homophobia and the Trajectory of Postwar American Radicalism,” in<br />
Modern American Queer History, ed. Allida M. Black, 83.<br />
64 Ibid.<br />
65 Ibid.<br />
66 Ibid., 85.<br />
67 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 154.<br />
68 Ibid., 165.<br />
69 Trying to find Bayard work a�er his release from FOR, Dr. Ascher, Rustin’s psychiatrist<br />
a�er the Pasadena incident, first contacted the Religious Society of Friends. However,<br />
he found them to be completely unsympathetic. When the subject was first mentioned, they<br />
were excited about having a person like Bayard work for them. But as soon as they found out<br />
that he was homosexual, they backed off. “People who preached love and humane tolerance<br />
were completely intolerant when it came to sexuality.” Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin and the<br />
Civil Rights Movement, 74.<br />
70 The War Resisters League (WRL), officially founded in 1923, stood for the proposition<br />
that “war is a crime against humanity.” Members of the WRL pledge “not to support any kind<br />
of war, international or civil, and to strive non-violently for the removal of all causes of war.”<br />
War Resisters League (Swarthmore <strong>College</strong> Peace Collections Website, accessed 27 November<br />
2002); available from h�p://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/DG026-050/DG040WRL.<br />
html: Internet.<br />
71 Allan, to Jim, 31 August 1953, WRL Files, Box 12, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong> Peace Collections,<br />
McCabe Library, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong>, Pennsylvania.<br />
72 Frances Witherspoon, to Roy Finch, 7 September 1953, WRL Files, Box 12, Swarthmore<br />
<strong>College</strong> Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong>, Pennsylvania.<br />
73 Edwards C.M. Richards, to Roy Finch, 8 September 1953, WRL Files, Box 12, Swarthmore<br />
<strong>College</strong> Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong>, Pennsylvania.<br />
74 To Executive Commi�ee and Advisory Council Members, 1 October 1953, WRL Files,<br />
Box 12, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong> Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore <strong>College</strong>, Pennsylvania.<br />
75 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 173.<br />
76 Ibid.<br />
77 Ibid.<br />
78 Ibid.<br />
79 Ibid., 175.<br />
80 John D’Emilio, “Homophobia and the Trajectory of the Postwar American Radicalism,”<br />
in Modern American Queer History, ed. Allida M. Black, 86.<br />
81 This was the same nonviolent direct action that had been used in the early 1940s by<br />
Rustin and other radical pacifists. Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 98.<br />
82 Ibid., 186.<br />
83 John D’Emilio, “Homophobia and the Trajectory of Postwar American Radicalism,” in<br />
Modern American Queer History, ed. Alldia M. Black, 86.<br />
84 Ibid.<br />
85 Ibid.<br />
86 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 189.<br />
87 John D’Emilio, “Bayard Rustin, Civil Rights Strategist,” The Harvard Gay and Lesbian<br />
Review (Summer 1999), 1.
F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 103<br />
88 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 189.<br />
89 “Bayard Rustin: Civil Rights Leader” (Website, accessed 28 October 2002); available<br />
from h�p://www.wuite.101.com/article/cfm/quakerism/13859: Internet.<br />
90 Rustin was King’s senior by 17 years. Ibid.<br />
91 The Baptist ministers of the SCLC did not want Rustin as director of the organization;<br />
instead, he became a “special assistant” working in New York. The Baptists did not want a<br />
homosexual running an organization rooted in Christian principles. John D’Emilio, “Bayard<br />
Rustin, Civil Rights Strategist,” The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, 1.<br />
92 Ibid.<br />
93 Ibid., 2.<br />
94 Ibid., 4.<br />
95 Ibid., 5.<br />
96 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 230.<br />
97 Ibid.<br />
98 Ibid.<br />
99 Asa Philip Randolph, born in Florida in 1889, was president of the Brotherhood of<br />
Sleeping Car Porters, the first African American trade union in the U.S.. Twenty-three years<br />
older than Rustin, he was a veteran of civil rights and labor causes and one of the most respected<br />
African American figures in his time. James Haskins, Bayard Rustin: Behind the Scenes<br />
of the Civil Rights Movement, 87.<br />
100 Ibid.<br />
101 Ibid., 90.<br />
102 Kenneth O’Reilly, Black Americans: The FBI Files (New York: Carrol & Graf Publishers,<br />
Inc., 1994), 388.<br />
103 John D’Emilio, “Homophobia and the Trajectory of Postwar American Radicalism,” in<br />
Modern American Queer History, ed. Allida M. Black, 90.<br />
104 Kenneth O’Reilly, Black Americans: The FBI Files, 389.<br />
105 Ibid., 382.<br />
106 John D’Emilio, “Homophobia and the Trajectory of Postwar American Radicalism,” in<br />
Modern American Queer History, ed. Allida M. Black, 82.<br />
107 Ibid.<br />
108 Ibid., 90.<br />
109 Ibid.<br />
110 Ibid.<br />
111 Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 (New York: Simon<br />
and Schuster Publishing, 1988), 873.<br />
112 Ibid.<br />
113 John D’Emilio, “Homophobia and the Trajectory of Postwar American Radicalism,” in<br />
Modern American Queer History, ed. Allida M. Black, 90.<br />
114 Ibid.<br />
115 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 5.<br />
116 Albert Shanker, “Where We Stand,” The New York Times, August 30, 1987.<br />
117 Ibid.<br />
118 Ibid.<br />
119 Anthony Monteiro, “Let’s Look to Bayard Rustin for Inspiration,” The Philadelphia<br />
Inquirer, November 15, 2002.<br />
120 Ibid.<br />
121 Ibid.<br />
122 Ibid.
104<br />
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The Editorial Board owes special thanks to...<br />
Acknowledgments<br />
<strong>Haverford</strong>’s student body, which submi�ed nearly a hundred papers of<br />
extraordinary quality and made our pilot issue blissfully difficult to assemble.<br />
<strong>Haverford</strong> faculty members who encouraged their students to submit papers<br />
and prove their intellectual vitality.<br />
Greg Kannerstein for abandoning family, friends, and anything else he<br />
thought this life might have to offer him in order to find time to edit<br />
papers.<br />
Tom Tri�on and Joe Tolliver for their initial encouragement and continued<br />
support.<br />
Students Council for pu�ing up seed money.<br />
Julie Kleinman and Drew Konove for refusing to go gently into the good<br />
night that is life a�er <strong>Haverford</strong>.<br />
Rob Schiff for daring to dream.