Haverford Journal - Haverford College

The Haverford Journal Vol 1, Issue 1 - February 2005
Haverford
Journal
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1
FEBRUARY 2005
Rethinking the “L Word”
Dr. Kevin Mattson
Arms and Love
Robin Dean, ‘04
Southward Ho
Scott Simpson, ‘04
The Course of a Particular
Sandra Read-Brown, ‘04
Percevalian Mediaevalism
Erin Tremblay, ‘04
Bayard Rustin
Rachel Moston, ‘04

Haverford Journal
Volume I, Issue I
February 2005
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Barbara Breckinridge ‘06
Chris Brown ’05
Lauren Donaldson ’06
Julie Kleinman ’04
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Ben Koski ‘06
Drew Konove ’04
David Langlieb ’05
Robert Schiff ’04
A�������
Phil Bean
Associate Dean of the College
Greg Kannerstein
Associate Dean of the College
Haverford Journal is published annually by the Haverford Journal Editorial Board at Haverford College,
370 Lancaster Avenue, Haverford, PA 19041. The Journal was founded in the spring of 2004 by Robert Schiff in
an effort to showcase some of Haverford’s best student work in the humanities and social sciences.
Student work appearing in Haverford Journal is selected by the Editorial Board, which puts out a call
for papers at the end of every spring semester. Entries are judged on the basis of academic merit, clarity of
writing, persuasiveness, and other factors that contribute to the quality of a given work. All student papers
submi�ed to the Journal are numbered and classified by a third party and then distributed to the Board, which
judges the papers without knowing the names or class years of the papers’ authors.
The introductory paper of Haverford Journal is typically a contribution of interest from an established
academic, chosen at the discretion of the Editorial Board.
© 2005 Haverford Journal

Dedication
This inaugural volume of The Haverford Journal is dedicated to Dean Phil
Bean.
Educators of all stripes face an irreconcilable challenge. On the one hand,
they strive to guide us students, providing the direction and support we
need to learn. And on the other, our teachers must give us the space to
make our own mistakes, so that whether we succeed or fail, we can call
our work our own. Negotiating this tension is not just an intellectual
project—it is a gi� born of sensitivity and selflessness.
On a project such as this journal, the challenge is all the greater. The goal
has not been just for those of us involved to learn, but to produce a volume
that reflects the best scholarship Haverford students have to offer.
Dean Bean walked this fine line and we all benefited in the process.
Few Haverford students get the chance to know Dean Bean. We are very
grateful that we got that chance. Dean Bean has treated us with generosity
and respect and yet not hesitated to be critical when necessary. The
shortcomings of this journal are certainly our own, but to the extent that
it is a success, we are indebted to Dean Bean.
- The Editorial Board

Inside This Issue
Introduction
Rethinking the “L Word” .............................................................. 6
Towards a History of Postwar Liberalism in America
Dr. Kevin Ma�son
Student Papers
Arms and Love ........................................................................................ 24
Courtly and Male Homosocial Models of Behavior in
Fourteenth Century France
Robin Dean ’04
Southward Ho .......................................................................................... 38
Horace Greeley and J.A. Sanborn
Sco� Simpson ‘04
The Course of a Particular ................................................................... 62
A Cry For Meaning
Sandra Read-Brown ‘04
Percevalian Mediaevalism .................................................................. 69
In Jeane�e Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Erin Tremblay ‘04
Bayard Rustin ........................................................................................... 82
On His Own Terms
Rachel Moston ‘04
Acknowledgments ................................................................................. 104

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Rethinking the “L Word”
Towards a History of Postwar Liberalism in America
Dr. Kevin Mattson
It is common to note that our understanding of the past colors our
sense of the present. Such is the case with American liberalism today.
The word has become a slur in contemporary political discussion – the
“L Word” as it has been labeled. Right wing pundits especially love to
kick this dead dog. Take Ann Coulter who has tried to recuperate the
reputation of Senator Joe McCarthy by labeling Cold War liberals “Soviet
lovers.” Her a�acks came on the heels of a long le�-wing assault on liberalism.
As the New Le� pledged itself to “anti-anti-Communism” during
the 1960s, it blamed liberals for hampering political discussion during
the Cold War and leading the country into Vietnam. Today, liberal anticommunism
would appear either “treasonous,” from the perspective of
the right, or deeply destructive, from the le�.
It is my contention that liberal anti-communism was neither of these
things. As a worldview, it had a coherence and depth that contemporary
political critics miss. Liberalism – contra the gloomy prognoses from
the last presidential election – had “values” and even virtues spelled out
in a sophisticated critique of both right and le� in this country. Reconstructing
this can help us understand history be�er as well as think more
clearly about our political future. It is my belief that the lack of a liberal
alternative to conservative ascendancy has done a great deal of damage
to political discourse and decision-making today. The way we remember
the past informs the way we think about choices in the future. History
can help us think be�er about our contemporary world.
I will take us back to the years following World War II and into the
1950s in order to assess liberal anti-communism. My focus in on liberal
intellectuals – most visibly, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, the historian
and political advisor Arthur Schlesinger, and the journalist James
Wechsler – who helped defined liberal anti-communism in their actions

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and writings. By seeing how they thought about communism, liberalism,
and American politics, I will reconstruct Cold War liberalism and
assess its legacy.
Anti-Communism as Political Theory: The Problem of Marxism
To understand liberal anti-communism, we must delve first into the
philosophy of communism itself. Before there was the Soviet Union,
there was a western European communist movement. Before there was
the philosophy of Stalinism there was Marxism. Though these sets of
ideas and practices are separated by history, they are also linked. For
thinkers like Niebuhr and Schlesinger, Marxism was an assessment of
industrial capitalism and a political theory that set out how to create a
more just society free of exploitation (today Marxism has gravitated towards
the academy, especially cultural studies, draining it of its political
ideas). Liberals believed Marxism sowed the ground for Stalinism; there
was an intellectual and rational basis for their anti-communism. Unlike
conservatives, though, these thinkers did not condemn communism as
a moral evil. They believed there were “humane and liberal aspects of
Marxism” and even some communists who resisted totalitarianism. Certain
members of the Communist Party, Schlesinger was willing to admit,
partook in “courageous activity against local injustice and exploitation.”
But even with this sort of human exception to the rule, Schlesinger saw
Marxism reaching dangerous political conclusions that needed to be
combated intellectually. 1
Karl Marx, writing during the 1840s and observing the impact of the
British industrial revolution, believed he had se�led the big questions of
political economy and history. He was a social theorist who worked in
the grand tradition and summed up world history by seeing it through
the lens of class conflict. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the
history of class struggles,” the Communist Manifesto bellowed. It was not
just class conflict but polarization that marked historical development – in
Marx’s time the increasing size of the industrial proletariat (the working
class) and the decreasing size but increasing power of the bourgeoisie
(or capitalist class). The proletariat grew in numbers as it watched its
social conditions worsen; at the same time, the bourgeoisie watched its
wealth amass. Inevitably, the Dickens-like characteristics of 19th century
capitalism nurtured a revolutionary situation in which the proletariat
would find itself needing to overthrow the bourgeoisie and institute a

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communist society. By making this diagnosis, Marx claimed to read not
just history but the future. 2
Looking around during the 1940s and 1950s, this “catastrophic”
view of class conflict appeared inaccurate. Though there was a continued
fear that America might dri� back into Depression a�er the war,
the increasing reality was that the working class was doing well. Marx’s
theory of “immiseration” did not apply, to put it bluntly, as more and
more working class people moved to the suburbs and bought televisions.
Schlesinger argued that capitalism “has reduced the size of the working
class and deradicalized the worker.” Marxism, as the liberal journalist
James Wechsler pointed out, “underestimated the resilience of American
capitalism,” especially its ability to overcome class conflict. Indeed, the
New Deal had already taught this lesson, as Arthur Schlesinger would
point out over and over.
This debunking of Marx’s theory of class polarization did not mean
these liberals ignored class differences or the realities of class conflict.
They knew American society was marred by socio-economic inequalities
even in a time of abundance. Instead of eschewing the idea of class conflict,
Schlesinger traced out an indigenous and distinctly American way of
talking about social conflict that existed throughout history but that also
believed in ameliorating it through reform, not revolution. For instance,
Schlesinger explained, “The founders of the republic construed politics
automatically in terms of classes. No more magisterial summation of
the economic interpretation of politics exists than James Madison’s celebrated
Tenth Federalist Paper.” Here Madison discussed social conflicts
and their relation to the “unequal distribution of property.” During the
Jacksonian period, many Americans, even the President, spoke about the
struggle between the privileged few and the “common man” (as had the
subject of Schlesinger’s first book, Orestes Brownson). The difference between
talking about class this way and talking about class from a Marxist
perspective was that the former believed in reforming the system to
lessen (not eradicate) class differences. This view of class seemed a more
realistic assessment of American affluence in the post-war years and a
means to evade catastrophism and its concomitant faith in revolution. 3
Marxism also prophesied too much. It denied contingency and predicted
the future, a dangerous business as far as these intellectuals were
concerned. Marx had studied the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel who
believed in a “history of philosophy,” an elaborate mapping out of stages

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of development from the past to the present and future. Marx believed
in stages of history following from one another – antiquity to feudalism,
and then from the capitalist present to the communist future. The
problem here was first the obvious: Marx’s predictions had been proven
wrong due to the failed socialist revolutions in Western Europe (where
Marx believed the communist revolution was destined to take place). But
there was something beyond these empirical inaccuracies. There was the
danger of believing too much in the “order and predictability in history,”
as Wechsler put it. Contingency and unpredictability were be�er values
than prediction based on iron laws of social development. Teleology
abolished the power of human activity and this the liberal mindset found
abhorrent, since it eradicated human freedom and self-determination
(the sort that could happen within the bounds of social circumstances). 4
Marxism’s prophesying was tied into its theory of politics. And here
is where these intellectuals started to make connections between Karl
Marx’s thinking during the 19th century in Western Europe and the realities
of Soviet totalitarianism during the Cold War. Marx’s interpretation
of representative government in Western Europe (and the United
States) was far too cynical. Since he prioritized economic over political
power, Marx saw the state merely as an instrument of economic interests.
Schlesinger explained, “A century ago, Marx dismissed the limited state
in a somewhat cavalier manner. ‘The executive of the modern state,’ he
wrote in the Communist Manifesto, ‘is but a commi�ee for managing the
common affairs of the bourgeoisie.’” This interpretation ignored the accomplishments
of bourgeois democracy, including the element of freedom
built into politics – especially the sort that occurred within a representative
governmental system based on full suffrage – that could help
transform the social system for the be�er. Government, as Schlesinger
argued, has “become an object of genuine competition among classes; it
is the means by which the non-business classes may protect themselves
from the business community…” Or as Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out,
the New Deal “invalidated the Marxist dogma of the inevitable subservience
of political to economic power.” FDR, a member of America’s elite,
had turned against his own class’s self-interest and implemented reform
in order to save capitalism. Government might serve as a tool for the
wealthy at times, but in a democracy, it could also become a tool for others.
Thus, these thinkers believed history had proven wrong Marx’s cynical
assessment of “bourgeois democracy.” 5

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There’s an ironic twist on this point. While Marx was too cynical
about government under 19th century capitalist conditions, he was too
utopian about government within his conception of a communist future.
Though Marx condemned what he called “utopian” socialism, his vision
of a communist future was remarkably naive. He spoke of the state withering
away a�er a communist revolution (as would Lenin later) and the
creation of an egalitarian society free of class conflict – that is, an end to
history. Niebuhr pounced on this blind side of Marx’s political philosophy.
Though Marxism was a legitimate reaction against the “excessive
individualism of the bourgeois classes,” he argued, “it is also in error
when it assumes that a frictionless harmony between the individual and
community can be established” in the future. Conflict – Niebuhr’s realism
made clear – could never be eradicated from life. There would
always be those trying to seize power, and not just economic power but
political power (what was happening in the Soviet Union at the time
he was writing). Once again, Marx’s utopian vision stemmed from his
simplistic assessment of human society. “The social substance of life,”
Niebuhr explained, “is richer and more various, and has greater depths
than are envisaged in the Marxist dream of social harmony.” 6
Marx’s utopianism grew from a black hole in his political theory. He
never specified how exactly a violent revolution and dictatorship of the
proletariat could transform themselves into a more peaceful society, allowing
the state to wither away. That remained an open question. The
problem was that a�er Marx died, certain political theorists started to
answer it in frightening ways. Marx’s faith in a “dictatorship of the proletariat,”
as Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out, led inevitably to a “monopoly
of power.” All Lenin had to do was turn the “dictatorship of the proletariat”
into a dictatorship of the party, and from here it was a small jump to
Stalinist dictatorship. Schlesinger wrote, “Lenin’s policy of concentrating
all authority and wisdom in the Party leadership and smashing all opposition
thus made ‘Stalinism’ inevitable.” Additionally, Marx never had
any appreciation of political “rights” (or civil liberties). For him, rights
served only to justify the bourgeoisie’s privilege to property ownership,
thus stymieing revolution. Marx had no appreciation of the inherent
need for rights and their protection of citizens against the abuse of political
power. The Marxist mindset therefore contained li�le that would
protect against dictatorship. Niebuhr explained that “Communism has
no understanding of the value of liberty.” In other words, it had no way

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of resisting the political system called “totalitarianism.” 7
This term entered the American political lexicon during the 1940s,
and liberal intellectuals helped put it there by pointing to the lack of any
opposition to state power in Marxist theory. Totalitarianism essentially
meant nothing standing between a centralized government and an isolated
individual living in a mass society – that is, the consolidation of
total power. There were no oppositional political parties or organizations
(churches, independent labor unions, etc.) that could check the state’s
power. Rather, the individual’s conscience was subsumed by the state
and controlled via propaganda. These were the political features that the
Soviet Union shared with the now defunct fascist state run by Hitler. The
most important thinker on totalitarianism, the German émigré Hannah
Arendt, conflated Soviet and German totalitarianism. Though Niebuhr
and Schlesinger appreciated her insights into the operation of power,
they also believed Nazism and Soviet totalitarianism differed. The former
was absolutely cynical in its love of power. The second used “ruthless
power” but hid “behind a screen of pretended ideal ends.” This is
what made Soviet totalitarianism much more threatening. It could appeal
to those searching for answers to problems of social injustice – especially
the poor and downtrodden in the world – while fascism embraced
power for the sake of power itself. 8
If Communism portended so many bad practices on both an intellectual
and political level, how could liberals prevent its spread? This
question only increased in relevance as the historical realities of the Cold
War grew apparent. In 1946 Churchill warned of an “iron curtain” falling
on the world, and Americans found its Russian ally during World
War II quickly becoming its enemy. The Soviet Union was expanding its
power throughout Eastern Europe and was optimistic about the growing
popularity of communists in Western European countries like France. It
reinvigorated its international work by creating the Cominform (which
took the place of the then defunct Comintern). And so liberals faced
an international and domestic challenge that would define their work
for years to come. But they also faced a more complex and puzzling
question: How to prevent the growth of communist ideals without succumbing
too much to the dark side of human nature? How to stand fast
against communism without losing sight of liberal virtues? Could, in the
evocative language of Reinhold Niebuhr, the “children of light” check the
power of the “children of darkness”? He knew full well that the children

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of light had darkness within themselves. He also knew that a “frantic
anticommunism can become so similar in its temper of hatefulness to
communism itself.” This was precisely what made the Cold War so challenging
for liberals. 9
The Ethics of Parsing
Liberals recognized that the search for communists at home made
sense – no ma�er what Ann Coulter might think. Liberals saw communists
in their midst: Henry Wallace’s campaign in 1948 was li�ered with
Communists (see the previous chapter); some high profile labor unions
like the National Maritime Union, Longshoremen, and United Electrical,
Radio and Machine Workers of America were infiltrated by communists.
Schlesinger and Wechsler knew Communists operated through
front groups, lying about themselves in order to try to gain influence
within progressive organizations. Wechsler had had first hand experience
with this sort of miserable experience. For instance, he had been a
member of the American Student Union during the 1930s, and when he
returned to examine it in 1949, all he saw were communists and “fellow
travelers” (those who weren’t card carrying members but faithful to the
party’s line). He realized just how “a disciplined minority may shape an
organization’s policy” if it tried the way Communists did. In addition,
he knew that the end goal of Communist organizing was to overthrow
democratic institutions. Finally, Wechsler and Schlesinger believed that
communists had infiltrated the federal government. They both believed
Whi�aker Chambers’s charge that Alger Hiss had been a spy, and neither
believed the Rosenbergs were anything but guilty. As Schlesinger
explained, “There can be no serious question that an underground Communist
apparatus a�empted during the late thirties and during the war
to penetrate the United States Government.” No ma�er how strange
ex-Communists like Elizabeth Bentley might seem, Schlesinger warned
fellow liberals in 1947, there was a “hard substratum of truth” in the “stories”
they told “before the federal grand jury.” The communist threat
was a reality, especially between 1945 and 1949, those first, tension-ridden
years of Cold War history. 10
Even during this frightening time, the liberal was responsible to what
I call an ethic of parsing. Care and precision needed to be taken when
searching for communists. Schlesinger called for “poise, balance, judgment”
when prosecuting enemies of democracy (though he disagreed

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with the anti-communist philosopher, Sidney Hook, on many other
points, he put into practice what Hook had labeled the “ethics of controversy”).
The key distinction to be drawn was between ideas and actions;
the first posed no danger and needed to be countered via argument, the
la�er, if they constituted espionage, should be crushed. “Ideas are not
the enemy,” Wechsler wrote in 1947. He explained, “An awareness of the
distinction between communism as an idea and the communist parties
as ba�alions of Soviet espionage and sabotage is essential to any national
wisdom.” Looking back on the late 1940s, Niebuhr believed liberals drew
distinctions between ideas and opinions and the acts commi�ed by the
Rosenbergs and Hiss, since “these trials involved not opinions but overt
acts.” Arthur Schlesinger concurred, adding to this difference between
ideas and acts the “clear distinction between the rights of an American
citizen and the rights of a government employee in a security agency.”
He also reminded Americans of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s earlier declaration
of a “clear and present danger rule” when cracking down on freedom.
There was a “clear and present danger” with communist spies in
the State Department; there was not with citizens articulating communist
ideas within the American public sphere of debate. In the sphere of debate,
civil rights had to win out over fear, if an intellectual took “the traditional
democratic methods of debate” seriously. A�er all, he explained,
“In our detestation of Communism we must not… do irreparable harm
to our American heritage of freedom.” The liberal had to parse ideas and
action, sabotage and debate, partisans of political ideals and spies. 11
This abstract ethic needed to be applied to the measures taken by
the federal government in prosecuting communists. The first and most
important act here was President Truman’s Executive Order in 1947 that
created a Review Board to examine the loyalty of government employees
(known, therefore, as the Loyalty Act). In principle, Cold War liberals
agreed with the act. But principle is not the only way to assess government
decisions. ADA eventually decided to support Truman’s Loyalty
Program, even though concerns were expressed about “its procedures.”
Wechsler worried about the “loose language in the loyalty order.” It had
failed to take up the liberal ideal of parsing. This could be seen in pragmatic
terms as liberals witnessed its misapplication a�er its passage. The
New York Post reported as early as 1947 that the State Department was
dangerously widening the concept of “loyalty” to include drunkenness
and “sexual perversion.” Two years later, Wechsler reported how one

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woman was being prosecuted by the Loyalty Program because she believed
in interracial marriage. In the army, things were even worse. Here
a civilian employee was “denied a hearing or even a statement of charges
until a�er he is dismissed.” This was the furthest thing from the care and
precision Schlesinger and Wechsler had counseled. It allowed the idea of
loyalty – a defensible ideal within the se�ing of a democratic state – to be
mixed up with conformity. 12
This was not just an ethical mistake but a pragmatic one. These intellectuals
moved back and forth from analyzing things in terms of values
and then in terms of consequences. Schlesinger worried that if the
Loyalty program continued to confuse loyalty with conformity, it might
prevent talented employees from entering the State Department. In addition,
as wiretapping became more of a reality, how could the administration
pragmatically ensure that it didn’t get the wrong people and
engender paranoia among citizens? Schlesinger also worried that loyalty
programs might make martyrs out of the wrong people. As colleges
started to administer their own loyalty oaths, conflicts started to emerge.
Schlesinger was particularly concerned with one case at the University
of Washington. Here the administration prosecuted six professors for
having lied about their Communist Party membership. Three professors
were fired, and the case drew national a�ention. Schlesinger believed
that the accused professors were guilty of lying but that prosecuting
them only gave them more credibility. The President of the University
of Washington had “transformed these wretched nonentities into living
evidences of the capitalist assault against freedom, now paraded through
the Eastern campuses,” Schlesinger explained. The pragmatic results of
prosecuting communists always had to be kept in mind, in addition to
the ethical question of being careful and prudent. 13
As with any good ethical and pragmatic judgment, this one grew out
of historical knowledge. There were precedents here. There had been the
“Red Scare” of 1919 in the immediate wake of the Russian Revolution.
The A�orney General used his powers to investigate not just pro-Russian
communists but just about any le�-wing activist during this time
and had agreed to illegal deportations of foreigners. More recently, the
Dies Commi�ee had formed in 1938 in order to investigate “subversive
and un-American propaganda.” Headed by Congressman Martin Dies,
a Texan who had come to oppose the New Deal, the Special House Commi�ee
on Un-American Activities was supposed to examine all anti-

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American causes – be they from the le� or right. But as Wechsler noted,
Dies let the right – including pro-Franco fascists in the U.S. – off the hook
and only a�acked le�-wing and liberal causes (including the New Deal’s
Federal Writers’ Project). Arthur Schlesinger argued that Dies used anti-
Communism as a “pretext for a�acking liberals and New Dealers.” Dies
had smeared his enemies and sought out publicity. Wechsler himself
called Dies a forerunner to Joe McCarthy. Dies made clear, even before
McCarthy waved his papers in Wheeling, that the American right could
use anti-communism to pursue its own agenda, that is, a�acking liberalism
as the evil twin of communism. 14
A�er 1950, it became more important to be precise. By this time,
Henry Wallace’s campaign had gone south with no chance of returning.
Hiss had been prosecuted, and the Rosenbergs brought in. The New
York Post described the Communist Party in 1949 as “a ba�ered band,
hopelessly alien in allegiance, deprived of any authentic roots in the labor
movement, cut off from the mainstream of American life.” By 1950,
Schlesinger believed the scarier elements of the Communist threat had
been pre�y much taken care of. Therefore, communism could be defeated
through debate in the public sphere (plus counter-intelligence) – not
public hearings on the part of elected officials or legislation. Nonetheless,
there were still those who wanted more, and Schlesinger and Wechsler
opposed them. Senator McCarran, a conservative Democrat from Nevada
pushed through an Act that, in the words of one historian, “required all
communist organizations and communist-front organizations to register
with the a�orney general’s office, banned communists from working
in defense plants, prohibited government employees from contributing
money to any communist organization or from being a member of any
organization conspiring to set up a totalitarian state in the United States,
and gave the government the power to halt the immigration of subversive
aliens and to deport those already in the country.” Building on this
momentum, Hubert Humphrey, an ally to Schlesinger and Wechsler, proposed
the Communist Control Act – an act that outlawed the Communist
Party outright. Schlesinger and Wechsler opposed both McCarran and
Humphrey. It was time for open discussion rather than legislation that
threatened civil liberties and ignored the right to hold “loathsome ideas,”
and Schlesinger and Wechsler were willing to jeopardize political connections
(i.e., friendship with Humphrey) to make the point. 15
At the same time that these acts were gelling, HUAC was turning

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its a�ention away from the State Department and towards the worlds
of education and Hollywood. On the question of teaching and communism,
the ethic of parsing was even more clearly defined. Drawing on the
ethic of prudence and pragmatism at the same time, Wechsler explained
to a fellow journalist in 1952:
I just don’t believe that the handful of Communists who may
be teaching arithmetic and spelling present as much of a danger
as that associated with the a�empt to rout them out. The
truth is that too many teachers are timid and are rendered
more so by these performances…. I still think the real Communist
threat lies in espionage and sabotage – not in the realm
of ideas…. If a handful of Communist teachers can produce
a lot of communists there is something basically wrong with
the other teachers and the educational system of which they
are a part.
Schlesinger agreed with this argument but got more specific, arguing
that if communists were found to indoctrinate elementary school
students, then there might be grounds for firing – not because of their
beliefs but because they weren’t doing their jobs. Still, membership in the
CP was not enough – ipso facto – to lead to the firing of a teacher. Here
Schlesinger disagreed with Lionel Trilling and Sidney Hook (author of
Heresy Yes, Conspiracy No), both members of the ACCF and prominent
New York Intellectuals, who argued that communists should be fired
from teaching positions across the board (though they wanted this done
by schools themselves, not the government). Here Schlesinger developed
a distinct liberal form of anti-communism in conflict with other versions.
Schlesinger could imagine a communist teaching physics just fine, for
example, and he reasoned from this point to make a larger one. It was
be�er to err on the side of civil liberties and the ethic of open discussion
than the fear of communist indoctrination in the American classroom.
“The important thing,” Schlesinger argued, “is to preserve the right to
free discussion. This right includes the right to hold loathsome ideas.”
Let these be aired in the classroom and allow students to decide for themselves.
Besides, he reasoned, “there are negligible numbers of Communists
today on college faculties.” The real danger would be to create an
invasive rule out of proportion to the problem. 16
When it came to hunting down communists in the world of entertain-

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ment, Schlesinger and Wechsler were even more critical. The potential to
smear was evident when they learned that “The Best Years of Our Lives,”
a film that documented the difficulties of World War II veterans returning
home and that won the Academy Award in 1946 for best picture, was
accused of promoting communist sympathies (because it showed an
American businessman treating a returning GI rudely on a plane). The
fact that the famous actor and director, Charlie Chaplin, was not allowed
to reenter the United States due to his communist sympathies seemed
silly. Nor did it seem wise to have HUAC hunt down communist writers
in Hollywood. Here Schlesinger explained a fundamental motivation
behind the ethics of parsing – the need to resist becoming like the enemy.
He wrote to Sol Stein of the ACCF that the group should do nothing on
“the Communist Conspiracy in the Entertainment World,” again raising
distinctions between his own outlook and that of prominent New York
Intellectuals. The problem was not “serious enough to justify counter-action
by grown people. The Communists themselves never looked sillier
than when they were exposing Russian clowns or were detecting ‘bourgeois
tendencies’ in Soviet circuses; and I should hate to see Americans
imitating the Soviet Union in this respect.” If any pro-Communist film
were actually made during the mid-1950s – and Schlesinger would have
to chuckle at that possibility – allow it to be lambasted in public discussion
and critical review, he seemed to suggest. In other words, anti-communism
had to preserve liberal virtues of free and open debate and the
right to privacy. 17
Making America Great Abroad
Liberals knew they had to look out to the world as well as into their
own society. World War II had already made that clear, and Soviet expansion
brought the lesson home a�er the war. Liberals embraced “containment”
and “reconstruction” at the same time. They found themselves
accepting the Truman Doctrine which called for military aid to
countries ba�ling communist forces. Liberals supported this policy, but
warily since it could over-extend the American military, support antidemocratic
forces in the name of fighting anti-communists (which happened
in the case of Greece, the first country to receive support under the
doctrine), and suggest “unilateral American action.” More in tune with
liberal sentiments was the Marshall Plan, the “reconstruction” side of the
Cold War, which provided economic aid to western European countries

18
T�� H�������� J������
and thereby provided incentives for building back their economies while
resisting communism. Schlesinger believed containment (the Truman
Doctrine) and reconstruction (the Marshall Plan) could work in tandem.
But of the two programs, clearly the Marshall Plan was more conducive
to Americans opening up a dialogue with Cold War allies. Or at least it
could if liberals pushed. 18
The European political spectrum was much further le� than America’s,
and this prompted liberal realists to search for a “Non-Communist
Le�” (NCL) that deserved American support. Social democratic governments
were the perfect candidates and wound up receiving U.S. foreign
aid under the Marshall Plan. To a certain extent, the Marshall Plan gained
support easily since some Americans remembered how depression after
World War I helped spawn fascism. But other Americans, especially
those organized around conservative organizations like National Associations
of Manufacturers (NAM) and the Chamber of Commerce (CoC),
protested giving aid to social democracies. A�er all, these organizations’
leaders reasoned, the “American way of life” – equated with free markets
and competitive individualism – needed to be championed overseas.
Here again is where the realist disposition of liberals prompted an ethical
self-scrutiny – where they believed an appreciation of Europe’s tragic
destruction during the war offered the young idealist nation of America
a lesson about hubris. Niebuhr, for instance, counseled that foreign aid
could not become tied to “peculiar and parochial conceptions of democracy.”
He argued that Americans had too strong a faith in “unrestricted
liberty,” which came out in the debates around the Marshall Plan as well
as the simultaneous dismantling of the Office of Price Administration
(OPA). “We are always in danger,” he explained, “of making democracy
odious in Europe by a too individualistic and libertarian interpretation of
it.” The Marshall Plan, liberals argued, should teach Americans that the
world was pluralist and cosmopolitan, not singular and provincial. 19
The Marshall Plan taught America that it had to become a world
leader without believing in global domination. It also taught liberals that
they had to be aware of perceptions about America abroad. Key here
was a growth of anti-Americanism in Europe (especially France) at this
time, something that seemed a direct impediment to the Marshall Plan.
There was an awareness on the part of American intellectuals that their
country’s image abroad was being constructed more and more around
images in the mass culture being exported to Europe. Hollywood and

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 19
Coca-Cola were the two major exports to France, for instance, that gave
off the appearance that America was superficial and sugary (literally
and metaphorically). Niebuhr worried that Europeans’ “conception of
us is drawn merely from our movies, which are, if I may say so, a tremendously
fruitful source of confusion about the character of American
life.” Movies and so� drinks were accompanied by the popularity of
American literature from the 1920s – the writings of H.L. Mencken and
Sinclair Lewis, both of whom portrayed Americans as an uncultivated,
provincial, and small-minded people (an intellectual strain these liberals
had rejected, as seen in the last chapter). This hatred of America was only
confirmed by “the sometimes unfortunate conduct of American tourists,”
as the ACCF admi�ed in planning a conference on “Anti-Americanism in
Europe.” 20
Indeed, the cultural Cold War had as much ambivalence about it as
triumphalism. Or at least that is what these liberal intellectuals wanted
– an ironic assessment of American power rather than Henry Luce’s celebration
of the “American century.” This is something the le� has tended
to ignore. Liberal intellectuals could take the criticisms they heard about
their own culture abroad and turn them into an opportunity for national
self-criticism. They also understood that America’s power in the world
was due as much to contingency as to any inherent national greatness.
America’s isolation, for instance, meant that it escaped the devastation of
World War II; the natural wealth it possessed at the time that European
countries had exhausted theirs also gave America an advantage in asserting
its power on the world stage. “We are a paradise of plenty suspended
in a hell of global insecurity,” Niebuhr explained. Therefore, John Kenneth
Galbraith, a liberal economist and close friend of Schlesinger, followed
Niebuhr’s assertions, argued that America’s foreign policy should
be “humble and open-minded.” 21
This humble disposition had to come into play as liberal intellectuals
looked within America’s borders. Very o�en, historians looking back
believe that intellectuals simply aligned themselves with the American
way of life, having shedded their radicalism of the 1930s for the national
celebration of the 1940s and 1950s. Partisan Review’s 1952 symposium
“Our Country, Our Culture” is the standard text taken as evidence of this
intellectual shi�. The editors of this once Marxist publication were now
much more favorable towards America, and thus were selling out, some
suggest, to the status quo. Only Irving Howe, Norman Mailer, and C.

20
T�� H�������� J������
Wright Mills – all figures who would have an impact on the American
New Le� – dissented from the chorus of celebration. But this overall
characterization is false if it pays a�ention to the strain of thought discussed
here. Two of our main characters participated in the symposium
and did not speak triumphantly of America. Indeed, Niebuhr argued the
exact opposite, that America was too full of “self congratulations about
the vaunted virtues and achievements of the ‘American way of life.’”
Certainly America had lessons to teach the world about the importance
of democracy and freedom, but this was no excuse for “complacency.”
“No intellectual life,” Niebuhr explained, “can be at ease with the massive
spiritual, moral, and cultural crudities which seek to make themselves
normative in a civilization.” Schlesinger, the other participant in
the symposium, would concur, arguing against McCarthyism and the
homogenization of mass culture stifling debate (there was very li�le that
was celebratory about his contribution to the symposium). The situation
of the Cold War prompted just as much self-anxiety on the parts of these
intellectuals as it did an appreciation of their country’s promise. 22
If anything, the Cold War placed a premium on America improving
its cultural and political life in order to persuade the rest of the world that
it deserved respect. “When we speak rather idolatrously of the ‘American
way of life,’” Niebuhr warned, “our friends and critics profess not to
be certain whether we are recommending certain standards of political
freedom or extolling our living standards.” At the least, America would
have to do something to improve the status of African-Americans within
its own borders (the Soviet Union constantly reminded the world that
blacks in the South were second-class citizens) and the threat of McCarthyism
to political and cultural freedom. Additionally, liberal intellectuals
had to wonder if America should be celebrated for its economic
prosperity and mass culture. They believed there were be�er ideals than
consumerism and wealth to be projected outward to the world. “Foreign
policy,” Arthur Schlesinger argued, “must be the projection and expression
of what we are like as a national community.” But this was not as
easy a task as it might sound. It required internal self-scrutiny and debate
about what ideals and values Americans should hold dear to their
hearts. This was the project these Cold War liberals were demanding of
their fellow citizens. 23
To embrace be�er national ideals required work and effort. To make
America “great” in the world required improving things at home, by ex-

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 21
tending the welfare state of the New Deal, building “countervailing power”
(Galbraith’s term) against large corporations that were quickly consolidating
during this time, nurturing a “pluralistic” form of government
where different voices were heard at the table of political discussion, providing
civil rights to minority citizens, and developing a humble foreign
policy. There needed to be a belief in shared sacrifice – the sort garnered
during World War II – that would check Americans’ tendency towards
self-interest. All of these beliefs stemmed from a faith that communism
was a threat – but a threat that could not allow Americans to forget about
their own foibles and injustices. We would do well to remember this.
Endnotes
1 Arthur Schlesinger, The Vital Center, pp. 64, 132; “The U.S. Communist Party,” Life, July
29, 1946, p. 87.
2 Eugene Kamenka, ed., The Portable Karl Marx (New York: Viking Press, 1983), p. 203.
3 Arthur Schlesinger, The Vital Center, p. 47; James Wechsler, “The Liberal’s Vote and 48,”
Commentary, September 1947, p. 225; Schlesinger, Vital Center, p. 171; The Federalist Papers, ed.
by Isaac Kramnick (New York: Penguin, 1987), p. 124; Arthur Schlesinger, The Age of Jackson
(Boston: Li�le Brown, 1945), p. 90. William Graebner argues that Schlesinger gave up talking
about class a�er 1945. This misinterpretation is due to the fact that Graebner sees Marxism as
the only real way to talk about class: See his The Age of Doubt, p. 49.
4 For the critique of Marx’s predictions, see Arthur Schlesinger, “The World We Want and
How to Get It,” Speech at State College, Indiana, PA, March 12, 1964), in Schlesinger Papers,
Box P-6. See also here, Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems (New York:
Scribner, 1953), p. 39 and Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960), p. 394.
5 Arthur Schlesinger, The Vital Center, pp. 152, 153; Reinhold Niebuhr, “Halfway to
What?” p. 27. See too John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958; Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1976), pp. 57-8, 61. For more on this see my “Revisiting The Vital Center,” in Dissent,
Winter 2005, 64-68.
6 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Will Civilization Survive?” Commentary, December 1945, p. 5; Reinhold
Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York: Scribner, 1944),
p. 59.
7 Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, pp. 34, 36; Schlesinger, The
Vital Center, p. 71; Reinhold Niebuhr, “New Allies, Old Issues,” The Nation, July 19, 1941, p. 51.
For an excellent dissection of Marx’s weak understanding of rights, see Steven Lukes, Marxism
and Morality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp. 61-70.
8 Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, p. 38; Hannah Arendt, The
Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland: Meridian, 1951), p. 317. See also Silone’s contribution to
Richard Crossman, ed., The God that Failed (New York: Harper, 1949), p. 99.
9 Reinhold Niebuhr, Irony of American History, p. 170; The Children of Light and the Children
of Darkness, p. 41; See here John Lewis Gaddis, The Origins of the Cold War (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1972); on the Cominforn, Giles Sco�-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical
Culture: the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA, and Post-war American Hegemony (New York:
Routledge, 2002), p. 86; and on the French Communist Party, see Walter LaFeber, America, Russia,
and the Cold War (New York: Wiley, 1967), p. 42.
10 James Wechsler, “Politics on Campus,” The Nation, December 30, 1949, p. 733; Arthur

22
T�� H�������� J������
Schlesinger, The Vital Center, p. 128. Schlesinger documents the communist infiltration of labor
unions in his “The U.S. Communist Party,” Life, July 29, 1946, p. 90.
11 Congress for Cultural Freedom Papers, University of Chicago, Box 7, Folder 10: These
are comments Schlesinger made during the Milan Conference of 1955; “How to Rid the Government
of Communists,” Harper’s, November 1947, p. 440; Reinhold Niebuhr, “Introduction,”
to Benjamin Ginzberg, Rededication to Freedom (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), pp. viiviii;
Arthur Schlesinger, “What is Loyalty?: A Difficult Question,” New York Times Magazine,
November 2, 1947, p. 50; Arthur Schlesinger, “The Right to Loathsome Ideas,” Saturday Review
of Literature, May 14, 1949, p. 17; Arthur Schlesinger, The Vital Center, p. 210. Sidney Hook’s
writing on the “ethics of controversy” can be found in Sidney Hook on Pragmatism, Democracy,
and Freedom: The Essential Essays, ed. Robert Talisse and Robert Tempio (Amherst: Prometheus
Books, 2002).
12 Steve Gillon, Politics and Vision, p. 72; see also ADA World, May 1950, p. 2; James
Wechsler, “How to Rid the Government,” p. 442; The New York Post, October 7, 1947, p. 2;
New York Post, March 3, 1949, p. 2; James Wechsler, “The Brass and Samuel Wahrha�ig,” New
Republic, May 23, 1949, p. 17. A key complaint about Truman’s loyalty act was that it failed
to distinguish between employees who posed a high internal security risk and other federal
employees: See Alonzo Hamby, Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995), p. 487.
13 Arthur Schlesinger, “What is Loyalty?” p. 50; “The Right to Loathsome Ideas,” p. 18.
On the University of Washington case, I rely upon Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism
and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 100-104. For the fear
of wiretapping, see the New York Post, January 13, 1950, p. 37 and Schlesinger’s comments in
ADA World, January 1954, p. 3.
14 Richard Fried, Nightmare in Red, p. 47; James Wechsler, “The Christian Front and Martin
Dies,” The Nation, January 27, 1940, p. 89; Arthur Schlesinger, “Dangerous Nonsense,” p.
7; James Wechsler, “Small Fry,” The Nation, October 3, 1942, pp. 326-8; James Wechsler, Age of
Suspicion, p. 181. For more on the Federal Writers Project and Dies, see Jerre Mangione, The
Dream and the Deal (Boston: Li�le Brown, 1972), Chapter 8.
15 New York Post: p. 30; Arthur Schlesinger, Dangerous Nonsense,” The Progressive, September
1953, p. 10; J. Ronald Oakley, God’s Country, p. 68; Schlesinger’s opposition to Communist
Control Act can be seen in his le�er to Hubert Humphrey, September 14, 1954, Schlesinger
Papers, Box P-16; Wechsler’s opposition to McCarran Bill: See The New York Post, September
7, 1950, p. 33.
16 Wechsler to Judith Crist at New York Herald Tribune, February 19, 1952; Schlesinger,
“The Right to Loathsome Ideas,” p. 17; “Dangerous Nonsense,” p. 8. Because of this stance,
Schlesinger refused to sign statements of the ACCF that favored the firing of communist
teachers: see Arthur Schlesinger to Irving Kristol, February 22, 1953, ACCF Records, Box 8.
Throughout this box, there is a great deal on ACCF statements regarding communism and
teaching.
17 Schlesinger to Sol Stein, February 15, 1954, ACCF Records, Box 4; On the “Best Years of
Our Lives,” see Schlesinger, “What is Loyalty?” p. 7 and the New York Post, May 26, 1947, p. 4.
For more on HUAC’s search for communists in Hollywood, see Caute, The Great Fear, p. 488.
18 Cli�on Brock, Americans for Democratic Action (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press,
1962), , p. 64; Schlesinger, Vital Center, pp. 223-4.
19 Reinhold Niebuhr, “American Liberals and British Labor,” The Nation, June 8, 1946, p.
684; Reinhold Niebuhr, “America’s Precarious Eminence,” Virginia Quarterly Review 23 (1947):
p. 487; for Niebuhr’s criticism of dismantling of the OPA in terms of its international implications,
see his “Europe, Russia, and America,” The Nation, September 14, 1946, p. 288-9; see also

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 23
his “The Sickness of American Culture,” p. 270. See also John Kenneth Galbraith, “Challenges
of a Changing World,” Foreign Policy Bulletin, December 15, 1958, p. 51 and “Europe’s Great
Last Chance,” Harper’s, January 1949, p. 48.
20 Reinhold Niebuhr to William Benton, Assistant Secretary of State, April 28, 1947,
Niebuhr Archives, Box 2; Statement on “American Culture: Menace or Promise,” in ACCF Records,
Box 9. On Coca-Cola’s infiltration into France, see Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French:
The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley: University of California, 1993), p. 52; on 1920s anti-
American literature’s impact on Europe, see Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans have
Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since World War II (New York: Basic Books,
1997), p. 20.
21 Reinhold Niebuhr, “American Conservatism and World Crisis,” p. 385; John Kenneth
Galbraith, “Democratic Foreign Policy and the Voter,” paper found in Galbraith Papers, Box
98, dated January 20, 1958, p. 8; Niebuhr makes the argument about in “American Pride and
Power,” American Scholar 17 (1948): p. 393 and “America’s Precarious Eminence,” p. 481. Henry
Luce disagreed with Reinhold Niebuhr’s call for America to be more ambivalent about its
power in the world in a le�er he wrote to him, dated January 8, 1949, Niebuhr Papers, Box 8.
22 Reinhold Niebuhr in “Our Country, Our Culture,” Partisan Review 19 (1952): p. 302.
For the standard view of “Our Country, Our Culture,” see for instance, Jackson Lears, “A Matter
of Taste,” pp. 39-40. George Kennan was quite uncertain if America had the internal moral
resources to fight the Cold War: See Waler Hixson, George F. Kennan: Cold War Iconoclast (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1989), p. 240.
23 Reinhold Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, p. 159; Arthur Schlesinger, “Where Does the Liberal
Go From Here?” New York Times Magazine, August 4, 1957, p. 36. Two recent historical
treatments of the Cold War point to the importance of civil rights: See Thomas Bostelmann,
The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2000) and Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2000).

24
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Arms and Love
Courtly and Male Homosocial Models of Behavior in
Fourteenth Century France
Robin Dean
Haverford College Class of 2004
Although courtly love ideals enjoyed great popularity in the literature
and court aesthetic of fourteenth-century France and England during
the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), the courtly model was by no
means commonly or effectively followed in everyday life, even among
the nobility. The Hundred Years War, fought for contested territories
and primacy of lordship between the closely related lines of the French
and English kings, stimulated military culture among all levels of society.
Chivalry might have given the nobility of England and France “a sense of
purpose and of justification for their existence and privileged state,” 1 but
the unending nature of the war raised new economic considerations for
the nobility, such as the need to pay ransoms and hire mercenary companies
to bolster thin ranks (Allmand 46-47). Although chivalry remained
a motivating ideal, as it long had been in European history, the literature
of the day betrays a growing awareness of the importance of a male homosocial
model of power for maintaining much-needed stability among
those fighting in the war.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick develops her theory of male homosociality
in her book Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. 2
Although this paper does not deal specifically with homosocial desire, it
does owe a debt to Sedgwick for the idea of the male homosocial model
of power as one typified by “men promoting the interests of men” (Sedgwick
4). In a male homosocial model, bonds between men are idealized
and held inviolate, homosexuality is treated with violence and great repression,
and women act primarily as conduits, placeholders, or symbols
of power between men. The chivalric code, obsessed with deeds and

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 25
devotion performed in the name of a lady, o�en obscures the fact that the
women under it are largely powerless. Status in the ranks of men was the
true prize for knights who competed against each other in the court and
on the ba�lefield. Under the enduring martial climate of the fourteenth
century, an increasing amount of literature was produced that reported,
or even lauded, the stripping away of the chivalric veneer to reveal the
new primacy placed on regulating the camaraderie and enmity between
men.
French historian Jean Froissart, writing for an audience of nobles,
a�empts to include tales of courtly love in his Chronicles of the Hundred
Years War. 3 He approves of the courtly ideal and takes delight in chronicling
exceptional moments of chivalry on the part of both French and
English nobles, but his proto-journalistic style also leads him to report
many anecdotes of fighting men involved in the war who put li�le stock
in chivalric ideals. These tales make the few instances of true chivalry in
the Chronicles seem all the more remarkable in a world that values male
homosocial bonds of loyalty over idealized heterosexual love. Froissart’s
contemporary, the French poet Eustache Deschamps, is not only aware
of how poorly chivalry fits with his times, but seems to revel in pointing
out chivalry’s failings. He mocks the conventions of courtly love as a
device in poetry, showing that it is unnecessary and even distasteful to
place such idealism on this strange breed of heterosexual love when there
are so many other poetic possibilities available. Both authors offer social
commentary on the decline of courtly conventions in fourteenth-century
French society, using the familiar language of courtly love itself to show
how male homosocial bonds have a�ained primary importance in a time
of war and financial decline.
Froissart’s Chronicles and the Importance of Male Homosocial Loyalty
Froissart’s project in his Chronicles of the Hundred Years War is as much
to entertain and moralize as it is to record hard facts. He states in his
prologue that he writes to memorialize “deeds of arms. . .so that brave
men should be inspired thereby to follow such examples” (Froissart 37).
He also wishes, however, for the nobles to whom he addresses his book
to “take delight and pleasure in it, [so that he] may earn their regard”
(Froissart 37). As a person associated with court culture, Froissart repeatedly
shows that he is invested in ideas of courtliness that don’t seem to fit
with the reality of freebooters and angry peasants during the Hundred

26
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Years War. The court that pleases him most is that of the Count of Orthez,
where the knights were always “talking of arms and love. Every subject
of honor was discussed” (Froissart 266). This rote mention of arms and
love references the traditional courtly ideals among knights, a tradition
in which arms (proving one’s valor in combat) and love (devotion to a
lady) are equally valued. Love had a place in noble minds and literature,
the critic Saul N. Brody explains, because
The literature of courtly love springs from the perception of
man’s dual nature, of his conflicting impulses toward transcendent
love and carnal love. The awareness in the courtly
poets of this conflict prompted them to consider whether the
courtly ideal could be operative in the impure world of sensual
men and women. 4
Froissart shows occasional interest in exploring the differing impulses
of human love, but his tales also show that such extensive warfare
has reshaped the court’s priorities. Even the most romantic of Froissart’s
tales show how important bonds with other men are in a man’s life, and
many stories show a stark pragmatism about heterosexual love that has
very li�le concern for the transcendent. Froissart interviews men of various
stations, showing that his determination is not just to record deeds
of arms but rather all the deeds of men of arms, a sociological look at the
concerns of the men involved in the war rather than just a list of ba�les
and engagements. A courtly poet acting as chronicler, Froissart shows
that impulses towards courtly love are continually disturbed by the realities
of male homosocial interaction in the military culture of fourteenthcentury
France.
Likewise, it is important to note that Froissart’s Chronicles are in
many parts more historical narrative than history, and that he has probably
invented much of the dialogue (Brereton 24). The sort of speech he
chooses to use for his nobles and the way in which he tells their stories
reveals his admiration for them and a certain nostalgia for a time when
chivalry was presumably more sustainable. Brody notes that during the
age of Chaucer and Froissart, the nobility tried to hold on to traditional
pa�erns of life, but these were hard to preserve, and they came to seem
artificial and out of touch with reality. The feudal economy was being
replaced by a money economy, and the political power of feudal nobility
was giving way to central government (Brody 254).

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 27
As the feudal economy waned in influence, male homosocial power
became more entrenched among the middle and upper classes, growing
out of a culture that already used marriages to solidify alliances and
viewed women as interruptive and exceptional. Froissart’s narratives
show noblemen struggling to balance their homosocial power relationships
against their “out-of-touch” concept of the courtly rules governing
heterosexual love. Men of lesser birth who were in the military also told
Froissart tales of the problems the love of a woman created for them,
showing more exasperation for the women’s interference in the male
world of warfare than any sort of noble devotion.
One of the courtliest tales in Froissart’s Chronicles, the “Trial by Combat
(1386-7),” is told in Froissart’s narrative voice. As in many of the
courtly tales, Froissart’s tone seems torn between lauding the a�empt to
live up to courtly ideals in the present age and frankly reporting how
much trouble courtly ideals cause between men. The “Trial by Combat”
tale describes how two men in the employ of the Count d’Alençon duel
because one, Jacques le Gris, allegedly raped the wife of the other, Sir
Jean de Carrouges. Froissart’s tale begins with an idealistic insistence on
romantic conventions to explain Jacques le Gris’ moral lapse in committing
rape. He cites the vagaries of Dame Fortune (Froissart 309) and explains
that the deed was commi�ed when, “through a strange, perverse
temptation, the devil entered the body of Jacques le Gris” (Froissart 310)
and caused him to rape the lady of Carrouges. Froissart also paints the
lady as a paragon of virtue who is properly distressed about her honor
a�er being violated (Froissart 309-310). By his diction and use of convention,
Froissart seems to be se�ing the reader up for a classic tale of
vengeance on behalf of a wronged lady.
However, the courtly ideals of the tale soon break down when confronted
with the realities of the politics of the day. The a�itude of the
Count during the subsequent conflict between Jacques le Gris and Jean
de Carrouges shows the importance of male homosocial bonds, under
which women are valued chiefly for the part they play in perpetuating
or disrupting male hierarchical interaction. The Count is not at all concerned
about notions of a woman’s honor, and is merely annoyed that the
Lady of Carrouges’ story is causing discontent in his ranks. Hence, he
expects the ma�er to be dropped peacefully for the good of the homosocial
network of his fighting force (Froissart 312). Sir Carrouges refuses,
showing a courtly devotion to his honor and the word of his lady, and a

28
T�� H�������� J������
trial by combat ensues. The king of France’s interest in the combat, so
great that he “sent word to Paris for the combat to be postponed until he
could witness it” (Froissart 313) suggests that the nobility were drawn to
courtliness even if the world around them was unable to support such
ideals in common practice. The victory of Sir Jean de Carrouges, which
vindicates his lady’s claim to innocence, makes the combat an even be�er
courtly tale and allows Froissart to include it for the pleasure of the nobles.
Still, the courtly dialogue invented by Froissart between the knight
and his lady cannot overshadow the practicality of the irate Count and
how surprised everyone is that someone should go so far just to uphold
a woman’s word and sense of honor.
Tales of male friendship are another example of courtly influences
in Froissart’s Chronicles. Men tied together by a loyalty greater than the
love for any woman are o�en found in courtly tales, so it is not as though
the homosocial structure of male power could not exist in courtly models
of behavior. However, as Froissart’s accounts show, men of his day
are much more concerned about love for a woman disrupting homosocial
bonds than the average courtly hero was. One chapter entitled “The
Duke of Touraine in Trouble (1391)” tells how the Duke suffers when a
male friend reveals to the Duchess of Touraine that the Duke is dallying
with another woman. However, the chapter does not immediately start
with a description of the affair, but with the words:
The Duke of Touraine at that time so doted on Sir Pierre de
Craon that he treated him as his most intimate companion,
dressed him in clothes similar to his own, took him with him
wherever he went, and told him all his secrets. (Froissart
382)
The relationship between Sir Pierre and the Duke is obviously of
primary importance, even though it does not seem to bear on the Duke’s
problems with women at first. This introduction sets a courtly tone for
the tale, painting the relationship between the Duke and his inferior in
romantically glowing terms and hyperbole. This is disrupted by the appearance
of very uncourtly economic dimensions to the Duke’s affair,
when Froissart mentions (with some shock) that the Duke “seems to
have promised [his mistress] a thousand gold crowns if she would go to
bed with him” (Froissart 382). Her refusal to accept this offer a�er being
confronted by the Duchess happens early, and seems merely to be a side

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 29
note in the tale.
The main subject of the story is the treachery of the friend Sir Pierre
de Craon, who for no apparent reason betrays the Duke to a woman.
There is an unspoken assumption that everything would have been fine
if Craon had kept men’s business with men, but since he chooses to tell
the Duke’s wife the truth and disrupt his household, he must be somehow
eliminated from the hierarchy of male power. The Duke of Touraine
goes to the King, “complaining bi�erly of Sir Pierre de Craon’s behaviour,
and saying: ‘Sire, I swear by my loyalty to you that, if it would not reflect
on my honour a�er showing him such great favours, I would have him
killed.’” (Froissart 384). The Duke seems more upset about Pierre proving
untrustworthy than about his wife discovering the affair, and invokes
his bond with the King to have Pierre punished. The King, grasping how
disruptive someone like Pierre could be in a world where men are used
to taking whatever pleasures they want, arranges with the Duke to have
Pierre effectively exiled from the court. The Duke of Bri�any, with whom
Sir Pierre finally finds refuge, also grasps the seriousness of Pierre’s offence.
Seemingly unable to imagine Pierre voluntarily choosing a woman
in whom he has no apparent sexual or romantic interest over a male comrade,
Bri�any decides that the whole debacle must have been arranged
by another man. Bri�any tells Sir Pierre, “Console yourself, cousin. All
this has been brewed up against you by Clisson,” a political enemy of
both Pierre and the Duke of Bri�any (Froissart 385). This statement ends
the chapter and is both unresolved and surprising. The dialogue in this
exchange was probably created by Froissart, indicative of real tensions
but not an actual conversation he would have been privy to. Its insertion
at the end of this complicated tale of male loyalty suggests that Froissart
has a very shrewd concept of the primary importance of alliances
between men, despite his desire to portray even male friendships in a
courtly light.
Similar examples of women interfering in the relationships between
men in power crop up in the colorful tales Froissart records of the Bascot
de Mauléon. The Bascot is a freebooter, a type of mercenary fighter
known for augmenting his wages by plundering the countryside. There
is no reason to think that Froissart would have invented this figure or his
tales, for Froissart presents himself as very interested in capturing the
man’s unique perspective (Froissart 281). The Bascot’s voice has a much
different tenor than the quasi-courtly narration Froissart brings to tales

30
T�� H�������� J������
he collects and rewrites from less direct sources. One of the Bascot’s tales
is of a noted captain and squire Louis Roubaut who becomes the enemy
of his comrade Limosin when Limosin, whom Roubaut trusted implicitly
to guard his mistress, ends up sleeping with the apparently willing
woman (Froissart 291). Roubaut humiliates Limosin, who then goes to
a baron to help secure his counter-vengeance, and captures his former
friend in turn. Limosin berates his old friend a�er capturing him:
“I would not have thought that for a woman, if she was willing
and I was willing, you would have made me take what I
did take. If you had done the same thing to me, I should never
have minded, for two companions-in-arms, such as we were
then, could surely, at a pinch, have overlooked a woman.”
On hearing this the lords began to laugh, but Louis did not
find it funny. (Froissart 293)
Two things are striking in this tale of sexual betrayal. First, Limosin’s
parting words to his captured friend about the relative unimportance of
women expose the homosociality of the fighting men’s world. The first
duty of men is not to a lady that they serve but to each other, because the
bonds of arms are valued above those of love. Also, this example reminds
us that the regular fighting men in the Hundred Years War had li�le reason
to be concerned with the pure devotion found in typical courtly romances.
Limosin doesn’t love the mistress, he just “got all he wanted
from her” (291), a delicate phrasing that suggests their involvement was
purely sexual. Satisfying carnal lusts is viewed as a necessity, but not
something that should interfere with the more serious and important interactions
between men. Status and camaraderie are the proper concerns
of men in a martial, homosocial culture, not devotion to a woman.
Stories such as the Bascot’s about Limosin are no doubt included
by Froissart because they still resonate with a courtly tradition of male
friendship, even though they do not a�ain its ideals. The Limosin story is
a distortion of the courtly tale of Ami and Amile, legendary figures from
an Old French chanson de geste. Although married, their wives pledge
not to come between Ami and Amile, and the men even share beds with
the others’ wives. 5 The critic M. J. Ailes notes that “When Amile shares a
bed with Ami’s wife Lubias, Ami makes him promise not to have sexual
relations with her—he would not have exacted such a promise if he had

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 31
not expected his companion to feel tempted to do so” (Ailes 223). Although
Ailes is reading this instance as proof against homoeroticism in
homosocial relationships in medieval epics, it also shows that the ideal
courtly homosocial bond is one of complete trust in honor where sexual
property (women) are concerned. Courtly literature expects its heroes,
like Ami and Amile, to resist all temptation in the name of friendship.
Though the same moral seems operative in the world of Froissart’s Chronicles,
men-at-arms like Limosin expect to be forgiven their lapses within
the priorities of a male homosocial structure of power.
The values of courtliness, constructed as they are around an idealization
of heterosexual love, can no longer be trusted in the world created
by the Hundred Years War. Froissart obviously admires chivalry, but he
also has a keen sense of how many men fail to live up to its ideals. In his
Chronicles, Froissart exposes the aristocracy’s failure to justify and validate
unceasing warfare through the language and conventions of courtly
love. The nobles in Froissart’s conflicts, such as the Duke of Touraine and
Sir Jean de Carrogues, rely stubbornly on the ideals of courtly love to try
to fix problems caused by a new and more vigorous code of homosocial
loyalty. When courtliness works, as in Sir Jean’s case, it is truly a remarkable
thing, but more o�en it only leads to political and personal conflict as
it does for the Duke of Touraine and Sir Pierre. The Bascot de Mauléon’s
tale takes a more practical view of how problems between men should
be fixed from the perspective of a man distanced from courtly concerns.
In an effective homosocial structure, men must not allow women to interfere
with their loyalty or bonds to other men. If such bonds are broken,
then a man’s only proper recourse is to other men in the hierarchy,
trading on personal and political relationships. Absent are the romantic
ideals of courtly devotion, and though Froissart regrets their absence, he
takes care to report the ideals that are taking their place.
Eustache Deschamps and the Emasculating Nature of Courtly Poetry
Eustache Deschamps, a Frenchman whose life was roughly contemporary
with Froissart’s, wrote on a wide variety of subjects and o�en for
the court, although his preferred medium was poetry. An introduction to
a volume of his translated poems notes “an argument can be made that
Deschamps was an embryonic sociologist” 6 and the breadth of subjects
in his poems—young girls in love, sleepless family men, and his own
poet persona—certainly seem to suggest that he had an interest in all

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areas of life. Some of his most interesting poems deal with the subject of
poetry itself, especially the tradition of the courtly lyric. One of his most
famous works is an allusive and falsely humble poem lauding Chaucer
and asking him to read his poems, evidence that part of his ideal audience
is other poets, clerks, and people familiar with the conventions of
the courtly love lament. He would also surely be aware of his larger
audience, whom Brody describes as a rising bourgeoisie that has begun
to challenge the literary and monetary privileges of the old aristocracy.
Brody says:
With this change in the composition of the nobility. . .there
naturally came a change in the audience for courtly poetry.
The style of life described in the courtly lyrics and romances
must have seemed archaic and even absurd to a part of this
new audience, though to other parts of it the behavior in the
literature may, in fact, have seemed exemplary. The courtly
rituals were, a�er all, elegant and refined, and the ambition of
new entrants into the nobility was to be as elegant and refined
as the old aristocracy (Brody 255).
Deschamps’ poetry o�en mocks the conventions of courtliness, perhaps
his way of reminding those who are helping to change the landscape
of his society so dramatically that keeping to old ideals is unrealistic.
In “Que je soie vostre loyal ami” or “Let me be your loyal friend
and lover” (Balade 447), Deschamps plays with the courtly idea of using
women as muses, subverting the nobility of the tradition the poem seems
to belong to. The poem concerns itself with male poets stealing the idea
of beloved women from each other when composing poems, suggesting
that muse-identification is all about male art and very li�le about love for
a woman. The speaker declares himself a friend of Machaut, a recently
deceased poet of some renown “who did [him] so much kindness” (Laurie
et. al. 84, l. 5). The speaker asks Péronne, Machaut’s former lover and
inspiration, to take pity on him and become his muse, saying:
If you accept my wretched pleading
you’ll give me life again, if only you would
let me be your loyal friend and lover (Laurie et. al., ll.19-21).
The language used here, as in the rest of the poem, relies heavily on

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 33
the courtly conventions of lovesickness and the complete abasement of
the courting male as he begs for an aloof woman’s pity. However, this
poem is hardly a typical laud of a female love object. The first two verses
of this three verse poem are really more about Machaut than Péronne,
praising the poet for his poetic accomplishments, with the speaker only
tangentially and ironically asking Péronne to allow him to be her lover
at the end of each stanza. The speaker spends a bit of time on Péronne’s
qualities in the third stanza, but the focus quickly switches back to what
she can do for the speaker. Although the notes to this poem mention a
real Péronne who corresponded with Machaut and inspired him to write
a poem in her honor (Laurie et. al. 220, n. 13), Deschamps himself is not
trying to woo this same real-life Péronne. Rather, the speaker mocks the
conventions of courtly love, the ambiguous “ami,” implying all the tension
between transcendent and carnal love that the genre typically encompasses.
Brody argues that Chaucer in his Knight’s Tale, “legitimizes
the courtly love ideal by transforming it into an ideal which serves something
outside itself; he gives it a transcendent aim, a metaphysical cause
which brings it to serve the world and God” (Brody 250). Although the
same could be said for Deschamps’ poem, in that his speaker uses courtly
love as a literary device to help him a�ain the greatness of a friend, the
focus of this poem on the two men involved undermines that legitimacy.
The ill-suited and even tasteless desire to acquire a dead friend’s woman
reflects poorly on the courtly tradition.
The problems associated with using Péronne and others like her as
muses reappear in another of Deschamps’ poems, “Recevez moi: j’ai failli
a Peronne” or “Accept me, since I missed out on Peronne” (Balade 493).
The notes to this poem observe that it is probably “a joke at the expense
of the whole of the French courtly tradition; certainly Deschamps, most
of whose work lay outside that tradition, did not require the allegiance
of a courtly lady to relieve him of authorial sterility” (Laurie et. al. 220,
n. 14). This seems especially true when considering the disingenuously
insulting title, which is also the repeating final line of each stanza, and the
less-than-admirable examples of classical love Deschamps cites.
Why does Deschamps find the courtly love tradition so distasteful?
One possibility lies in the nature of the courtly lady herself, which Deschamps
treats in another poem to be discussed later. The blandishments
he offers the lady in the first stanza of Balade 493 seem like a random list
of admirable traits, an ironic use of doggerel that he echoes later when

34
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the speaker can offer only insipid, repetitive praise for his lady, such as
“and your sweetness, sweet Gauteronne” (Laurie et. al. 87, l.13). Deschamps’
main force of distaste seems to come from a belief that courtly
ideals have caused poetry to stagnate and lose manly vitality. Not only
does Deschamps’ speaker repudiate the fear in the courtly tradition that
without a lady the poet will wither up and die, he also unfla�eringly
compares a courtly poet’s situation to the enthrallment of Narcissus. The
poem accuses the lady:
and now, because of you, I’m at that crystal spring
where Narcissus found no respite from his pain
but died, and I shall suffer in like vein
if I don’t have a word in pledge from you.
(Laurie et. al. 85, ll.16-19)
Courtly love is like Narcissus’s reflecting pool, a self-destructive fixation
on ideals of love that prove harmful to the obsessed poet and his
loyal male friends, as in the Péronne ballad. As in the world of Froissart,
men who take their motivations and justifications from courtly ideals
rather than an increasingly prevalent and unforgiving structure of male
homosocial power are subject to censure and a�empted exile from power
and success. Deschamps seeks to warn other poets that their courtly ballads
are divorced from the central concerns of their time.
Deschamps’ most overt criticism of courtly romance comes in his
Rondeau 631, “Je ne vueil plus a vous, dame, muser” or “Lady, on you I
will no longer muse.” The speaker bemoans the fact that a lady’s “tricks”
(Laurie et. al. 101, l.3) have made the speaker into a “fool” (Laurie et. al.
101, l.2). The only reason offered for this disillusionment appears in the
middle lines, where the speaker says, “On hope for you, I’ve no more
time to lose/ because you can convert a hawk to a hen” (Laurie et. al 101,
ll. 4-5). The poet-speaker rejects the cerebral, hopeless pining of courtly
love as a waste of time. He implies that his time would be be�er spent in
more masculine pursuits than unrequited, idealized love when he states
that women change men from hawks to hens. The original French says
the lady changes the speaker from hawk to busart, a bird of prey that
chases especially a�er chickens (hens) 7 and probably suggests something
like the English busard, a word related to buzzard that was applied to a
hawk deemed useless for falconry. 8 This transformation suggests a certain
degree of emasculation in excessive devotion to a lady. The speaker

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 35
implies that obsessing constantly over one’s ability to enact transcendent
love decreases one’s strength and effectiveness as a man, or more specifically,
as an original and relevant poet in a world that Deschamps does not
believe is well served by courtly ideals.
Although Froissart was a chronicler heavily invested in the courtliness
of his patrons and Deschamps a poet with disdain for courtly traditions,
both men managed to capture in their writing the decline of the
courtly ideal in fourteenth-century France. Froissart’s tales reveal that
although women still had the power to influence men who adhered to
courtly traditions, such idealism created a great deal of trouble for nobles.
Practical men were invested only in their interactions with each
other, although those interactions also borrowed from a courtly and romantic
tradition of male homosociality. But male homosocial power was
becoming more closely-knit and militarized during the Hundred Years
War, consolidating diverse feudal, courtly, and politically influenced allegiances
that o�en entangled unwary men who maintained romantic
notions of courtly society.
As a poet, Deschamps perhaps tells us less about fourteenth-century
French society than Froissart does with his anecdotes, but Deschamps is
part of an important trend towards the mocking of courtly traditions by
those who no longer had reason to believe in them. With a broadening
of literacy and wealth into the bourgeoisie, authors and poets had new
audiences wanting literature that upheld their own values and spoke to
their concerns. Deschamps is one of the first poets to sense this need and
a�empt to provide for it. His comic ballads o�en rely on a homosocial
disdain for women who interrupt the balance of power between men, an
emasculating interruption that is indicative of the weakness and indecision
inherent in courtly literature.
Stability was in short supply during the Hundred Years War, and the
works of Froissart and Deschamps show that courtly ideals were becoming
ineffective in fostering solidarity and morale among fighting men.
Many women, Joan of Arc notable among them, proved that they could
not be wholly excluded from the power and politics of the day. Still,
the society of the Hundred Years War had li�le use for lauding the love
of women when that idealized love might disrupt the male homosocial
bond, a bond that was deemed of primary importance in keeping the
men of France vigorous in mind and body and loyal to their emba�led
country’s military structure.

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Endnotes
1 Christopher Allmand, The Hundred Years War: England and France at War c. 1300-1450,
Cambridge University Press, 1988. p. 42.
2 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire,
Columbia University Press, 1985.
3 Jean Froissart, Chronicles, Geoffrey Brereton, ed. and trans. NY, Penguin Putnam,
1968. 4 Saul N. Brody, “The Comic Rejection of Courtly Love.” In Pursuit of Perfection: Courtly
Love in Medieval Literature. Ed. Joan M. Ferrante and George D. Economou. Port Washington,
NY: Kennikat Press, 1975. p. 221.
5 M. J. Ailes, “The Medieval Male Couple and the Language of Homosociality,” Masculinity
in Medieval Europe, ed. D. M. Hadley. NY: Longman, 1999. pg. 222.
6 Ian S. Laurie and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, eds.; David Curzan and Jeffrey Fiskin,
trans., Eustache Deschamps: Selected Poems. NY: Routledge. pg. 26.
7 BUSART. s. m. Oiseau de proie, qui fait surtout la chasse aux poulets. Dictionnaire de
l’Académie Française, Cinquième édition, 1798. 18 December 2003. .
8 “buzzard, n.1,” Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. 2nd
ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 18 December 2003.
.
Works Cited
Ailes, M. J. “The Medieval Male Couple and the Language of Homosociality.” Masculinity
in Medieval Europe. D. M. Hadley, ed. Women and Men in History Series. NY: Longman,
1999.
Allmand, Christopher. The Hundred Years War: England and France at War c. 1300-1450.
NY: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Brody, Saul N. “The Comic Rejection of Courtly Love.” In Pursuit of Perfection: Courtly
Love in Medieval Literature. Joan M. Ferrante and George D. Economou, eds. Port Washington,
NY: Kennikat Press, 1975.
Froissart, Jean. Chronicles. Geoffrey Brereton, ed. and trans. NY: Penguin Putnam,
1968.
Laurie, Ian S. and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, eds. David Curzan and Jeffrey Fiskin,
trans. Eustache Deschamps: Selected Poems. NY: Routledge.
Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 18 Dec. 2003.
Olson, Marc, et. al. Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française, Cinquième édition, 1798. Accessed
18 December 2003.

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Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. NY:
Columbia University Press, 1985.

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Southward Ho
Horace Greeley and J.A. Sanborn
Scott Simpson
Haverford College Class of 2004
“Emigration is a natural law necessary for the perpetuation of
human societies and political systems; obey it. The war has
opened the door and has shown Northern enterprise a new
Canaan. Southward Ho!” 1
- Horace Greeley, 1865
“If the yankee is disposed to go there [South] with his energy,
industry, and especially his money and help develop their
resources by cultivating the soil or mining or manufacturing
and occupy an inferior position contentedly, I have no opinion
of his touching anything outside those pursuits.” 2
- J.A. Sanborn, 1869
On May 21, 1869, in the small town of East Readfield, Maine, 55year-old
J.A. Sanborn writes a le�er to his 69-year-old cousin, David Fifield.
“I have nothing very wonderful to relate,” says a seemingly exhausted
Sanborn of his Southern and Western tour in the spring of 1869,
as the nation was undergoing its greatest transformation since the birth
of the republic. Despite the opportunities available to him in the American
South and West, Sanborn concludes that pursuing a new life on the
land is not cost effective in the unstable South or worth braving the uncertainties
of life on the Western prairie. In a dry and rushed manner, he
goes on to explain the a�itude of Southerners he encountered towards
Yankees, the pros and cons of owning and operating a farm away from
Maine, the presence (or lack thereof) of the “Ku Klux,” his perception of
Southern and Western life, and the lasting impact of the Civil War on the
infrastructure of the South.

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 39
Sanborn’s le�er offers a glimpse into one of the nation’s most turbulent
and transformational periods: Reconstruction. 3 While the Civil
War occurred due to the disintegration of an America torn apart by cultural,
economic and political divides, Reconstruction was at the least an
a�empt at reconciling the difference of two vastly and different cultures,
and at most an a�empt to recreate a new South infused with Northern
economic and social values. Sanborn, whose own livelihood could only
be benefited by a modernized Southern economy, makes clear in his le�er
that he falls in the la�er category.
Behind Sanborn’s ma�er-of-fact style exists an expression of the reinvigorated
post-Civil War entrepreneurial spirit that characterized many
Northern businessmen. The story is familiar: Here is J.A. Sanborn, a Yankee
factory owner and politician with some “excess greenbacks” 4 in his
pockets heading south to speculate on land in order to both make money
and bring the Northern values of “energy and industry” 5 to a war-torn
region with a recently destroyed social order.
And that is merely the surface. Reading between the lines, one also
notices that Sanborn’s point of view (as a Northern elitist) provides an
optic onto the everlasting cultural differences between North and South.
While Sanborn himself may have been a typical Northern entrepreneur
looking for the best way to invest his capital, the issues he raises in his
le�er—de facto economic reconstruction in the South, the uses of the
heralded Northern capitalist traits such as industry and energy, and the
Yankee’s perception of the post-war South—reveal familiar historical impressions
of the immediate post-Civil War era in America.
The Letter
Cousin David, 6 East Readfield 7 May 21st, 1869 8 .
When I last saw you I promised to write you a�er my
southern and Western tour was accomplished if I did not find
time to do so while making it. I arrived at my home May 4
but have not till now had a convenient opportunity to write
you. 9 I have nothing very wonderful to relate. [I] did not to
my knowledge see anything of that mysterious and desperate
band the “Ku Klux” certainly did not encounter them in
deadly strife, but was permi�ed to pass quietly along about
my business and was civilly treated by all with whom I came
in contact. Still I do not wish you to infer from what I have

40
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said that I think there is an extra amount of love and goodwill
on the part of rebels reconstructed or unreconstructed for the
once hated yankees.
I judge from what I saw and heard that they will not
much object to relieving the yankees from any surplus greenbacks
they may be anxious to be rid of but that there will be
much cordial good feeling on the part of former or present
rebels for the yankees during the present generation I very
much doubt. If the yankee is disposed to go there with his
energy, industry, and especially his money and help develop
their resources by cultivating the soil or mining or manufacturing
and occupy an inferior position contentedly, I have
no opinion of his own touching anything outside those pursuits[.]
I think he would be likely to be permi�ed to do so
without molestation but that they are disposed to receive him
cordially on terms of social equality I do not for a moment
believe and I do not think our people will be very swi� to
go there to occupy an inferior position when if the means of
accumulating wealth are to be formed in greater abundance
than in other sections of country which I am by no means certain
is the case. I was disappointed as to the general appearance
of the country about Knoxville. 10 The land is not as rich
except the bo�om land as I expected to find, and the style of
cultivation and the general appearance of things in the country
is less thri�y 11 than I expected to find. Their buildings are
poor, mean, dirty things with no sign of any taste or thri�s
about them. Houses without windows, and if light is admitted
it must be admi�ed through doors, crevices.
The roads are poor, their li�le streams unbridged and
the people poor and dirty and responsive to a person of taste
and refinement.
On foot I saw but li�le in the country so far as the people
are concerned that would be pleasing to you. The country independent
of what the miserable institution of slavery made
it I think very well of. The climate I think excellent 12 , but on
the whole I cannot say I want to live there. I do not think you
would. Many seem to be of the opinion that emigration is
about to pour in upon them in a torrent 13 , and that they are
going to get about anything they are disposed to ask for their
land.
Their price for land out in the country is from $25 to $50
per acre with building nearly worthless, certainly not as good
as many of the hog pens in this county. If one is going south

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 41
I think he will do be�er to stop in Virginia than to go to Tenn.
They are not asking half as high for their land in Vir. 14 as in
Tenn. 15 and it is be�er situated for reaching the Atlantic seaboard
which I think an important consideration. Now about
the west you will ask. Well on the whole, I like it be�er there.
The land is richer and easier cultivation and the people are
industrious and cordial I think. But there are serious drawbacks
there, among the most important is the great distance
from the Atlantic seaboard and the great expense of sending
their staple crops to market.
When I was in Geneseo 16 corn was worth but 35c wheat
but 100c and to sell at those prices and raise them on land
worth $50 or $60 per acre with building of small value does
not it appears to present a fla�ering proposal for money making.
Still a shrewd farmer with some means may undoubtedly
do be�er than to sell at those prices by holding or pu�ing
his corn into both. So far as ge�ing a living is concerned I
have no doubt a man can do that much easier than in Maine,
for a bushel of corn or wheat there is worth as much to eat as
in Maine and the people seem to be very cordial and hospitable.
Still on the whole I do not think I should enjoy living on
the prairies of the West, it is so different from all I have been
accustomed to. So to profit I doubt you can have many social
privileges for the same amount you sold for in [?] that will
afford more net profit than you made there.
Gustauvas 17 I think made a very good selection and is in
a good county and neighborhood and has a splendid piece of
land, but I do not think the climate there what he needs and I
doubt if he remains there next winter. On my return home I
visited Vineland, N.J. 18 I have no more time to tell you what I
think of that place. I sent you a paper giving some description
of it. Gustauvas started for his western home last Monday.
My wifes health 19 has been poor about all the time since you
were here. Please give my regards to your wife. 20 I shall be
pleased to hear from you at any time.
Very Truly Yours,
J.A. Sanborn 21
America in 1869: The Worlds Sanborn Saw
If the North and the South were two different nations culturally and
economically before 1865, the Civil War and Reconstruction period that

42
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followed only served to widen this divide. The only thing the two nations
had in common, perhaps, was the devastating human losses in the
bloodiest war in American history. The numbers that resulted from four
years of fighting are staggering: 360,000 Union troops died and 275,000
were wounded, while the Confederates lost 260,000 men with another
190,000 wounded. 22 When those who managed to survive went home,
however, the worlds of North and South could not have been more different.
As John Hope Franklin writes in Reconstruction A�er the Civil War,
“Traveling through the North, one could feel a new sense of satisfaction.
Everywhere wartime industrialization had brought signs of growth.” 23 In
the North, the Civil War is commonly viewed as a time of “unprecedented
prosperity.” 24 Between 1865 and 1873, the nation’s level of industrial
production increased 75%, and three million immigrants (most of whom
se�led in the North or West) helped foster the growth of urban industrial
centers. The construction of railroads intensified as an outgrowth of both
the Northern war effort and the growing (and o�en scandalous) ties between
corporations and the government, which reaped huge benefits for
the former. 25
The wartime economic policies of the national government—temporarily
unimpeded by Southern agricultural interests—fostered a boom
for Northern industry. These policies, which included the introduction
of a national paper currency, the construction of the transcontinental railroad
(completed in 1869) and the creation of a national banking system,
not only served to strengthen the economic backbone of the Union war
effort, but also carried with them a strong connotation of “nationalization.”
In addition to amplifying the role of a federal government which
had been deemed “impotent” on the eve of the Civil War, this “nationalization”
established an economic and commercial link between North
and West. 26 One can safely assume that Sanborn, as the owner of an oil
cloth factory, benefited greatly from these policies in the 1860s.
The South, on the other hand, was trying to emerge from the catastrophic
economic situation brought on by the physical and social effects
of the Civil War. The wealth of the South dropped 30% between 1860 and
1870, while the amount of livestock lost was so severe that it was not until
1910 that livestock reached their 1860 levels. 27 Aggravating the situation
was the fact that money and credit were in short supply. Banking capital
decreased from $61,000,000 in 1860 to $17,000,000 in 1870, while the vol-

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 43
ume of the region’s currency decreased from $51,000,000 to $15,000,000
in the same period. 28 And then there was the overwhelming problem of
labor. Without slavery, the Southern plantations collapsed, leaving vast
areas of uncultivated land.
The multitudes who traveled to the South immediately following the
Civil War described scenes of devastation, of “fields laid waste 29 , cities
burned, bridges and roads destroyed.” 30 Whitlaw Reid, whose account
of his Southern tour of 1865-1866 is one of the best known Northern writings
on the post-war South, wrote of the region’s infrastructure: “Means
of communication through the interior of the South are so thoroughly
destroyed, and Southern society is so completely disorganized, that it
is only in the cities that one can hope for any satisfactory view of the
people.” 31 Sanborn’s description of Knoxville, Tennessee, as a city with
“buildings that are poor, mean, dirty things with no sign of taste or thri�s
about them” 32 is mild compared to that of Richmond, Atlanta and Columbia
(South Carolina), which lay in ruins a�er the War. 33
By 1869, the Congress’ progressive program for reconstructing the
South was well underway. In 1865, President Andrew Johnson’s conservative
vision for “restoration” of the South highlighted his desire to shi�
the power in the South from the white aristocracy to the white yeoman
class. He was not interested in giving freedmen any meaningful place in
society. “White men alone,” said Johnson, “must rule the South.” 34 His
views on race, combined with his policy to quickly readmit the Southern
states into the Union once they had accepted the 13th amendment,
made for a moderate plan that did not provide the necessary mechanisms
to prevent the Southern states from reinstituting slavery in a different
form.
Johnson’s vision was challenged on the le� by the Radical Republicans,
who firmly controlled Congress. Eric Foner, author of the central
text on the history of Reconstruction, asserts that these Radical Republicans,
many of whom lead the fight for abolition, possessed an ideology
driven by “the utopian vision of a nation whose citizens enjoyed equality
of civil and political rights secured by a powerful and beneficial national
state.” 35 The Radical Republicans, like many of the Northern entrepreneurs
flooding the South, understood that they were living in a moment
where they could, as Thaddeus Stevens put it, “make a nation.” 36 The
first major measure these men took came in the spring of 1867 with the
passing of their first reconstruction legislation. The Reconstruction Act

44
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of 1867, passed on March 2nd over Johnson’s veto, divided the former
states of the Confederacy (except Tennessee) into five military districts
and laid down the steps former rebel states would have to follow in order
to be readmi�ed into the Union. These steps, which included writing
state constitutions providing for universal manhood suffrage and the ratification
of the 14th amendment, 37 were a far cry from Andrew Johnson’s
“restoration” plan calling for li�le change in Southern society.
By the spring of 1869, when Sanborn likely visited the South, the Radical
Republican vision was fading in favor of a return to economic stability
and politics as usual. The death in 1868 of the great orator and leader
of the Radical Republicans, Thaddeus Stevens, proved to be a damaging
blow to the party’s leadership and the radical vision for the South. In addition,
the Radicals had to campaign on the platform of order and stability
during the 1868 election for their survival, and their most important
constituency—freedmen—was diminished by intimidation and violence
by groups like the Ku Klux Klan. 38 This forced the Radical Republicans
to adopt a conciliatory stance towards more moderate Republicans and
Democrats, causing ri�s in the crippled Radical Republican coalition. The
Republican platform for the 1868 campaign called for former rebels to be
“received back into the communion of the loyal people,” 39 a so�er stance
by the Republicans designed to expand their support beyond blacks and
Unionists. Foner writes that in 1868 it was evident that the “Radical generation
was passing, eclipsed by politicos who believed the ‘struggle over
the Negro’ must give way to economic concerns.” 40
In his le�er, Sanborn is quick to point out that he did not see “anything
of that mysterious and desperate band the ‘Ku Klux,’” 42 perhaps in
response to a concern of his cousin David Fifield. That Sanborn begins
his le�er by mentioning the Ku Klux Klan underscores the impact that
the terror organization had on Southern society by 1869. The Klan was
originally formed in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a fraternal organization
designed purely for amusement. By 1867-68, however, generals,
politicians, and vigilantes took over the Klan and directed its activities
towards restoring the antebellum Southern social order through violence
and intimidation. 43 Foner describes the Klan as “a military force serving
the interests of the Democratic Party, the planter class, and all those
who desired the restoration of white supremacy.” 44 Klansmen, however,
maintained that their actions were prompted by the “instinct of self-protection.”
45 During the first four months of 1868, the Klan expanded to

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 45
nearly every Southern state and had effectively launched a “systematic
crime wave” 46 against those aiding the ideas behind the congressional
reconstruction effort.
It is not surprising, however, that Sanborn never came across the
Klan during his Southern tour in the spring of 1869. A�er the escalation
of Klan violence in 1868, the carpetbaggers and scalawags who controlled
the Southern governments began to crack down on the group’s activities.
Governor Brownlow of Tennessee, one of the staunchest advocates
of Radical Reconstruction, pushed the “Ku Klux laws” through the state
legislature, which outlawed the Klan in an a�empt to “preserve the public
peace.” 47 On February 20, 1869, Brownlow declared martial law in
nine Tennessee counties, thanks to the state government’s legislation. 48
Other states followed Brownlow’s lead, and in the spring of 1869, the
Klan’s Grand Wizard announced its dissolution. John Hope Franklin argues
that the official disbanding of the Klan was a tactical move by the
organization with the hope that governments would no longer hold the
Klan responsible for Southern lawlessness and crime. 49 Despite the continuing
violence in the South against blacks and those promoting Radical
Reconstruction, the Klan’s activities did decrease in the spring of 1869.
Out West, social and economic upheaval, although less dramatic, was
also taking place. People continued to move West for economic opportunity,
but a new breed of immigrants from the North—similar to those
who went South right a�er the Civil War—had arrived. The 1870 census
reveals that the American West contained 1,931,789 people 50 and that the
population had grown by 100,000 between 1860 and 1870. Between 1865
and 1870, a new class of individuals arrived largely comprised of Union
army veterans, Republican carpetbaggers and those sympathetic to the
Radical Republican effort. 51 Those seeking to work on the land found
that demand for crops was high immediately following the War. Also,
the lack of a transcontinental railroad 52 had not to brought the West into
the “commercial complex that determines price structure,” which meant
that price decline was not a problem as it was in the North. 53 While the
immediate postwar West could still reap great benefits for those willing
to live on the prairie, technology and a growing federal government were
two factors in its emergence from isolation during the Gilded Age and
therea�er.

46
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J.A. Sanborn and Northern Energy
J.A. Sanborn’s illustrious political and business careers reflect the
types of distinctly “Northern” values—industry, energy, usefulness—that
Yankee businessmen and politicians a�ributed to themselves throughout
the 19th century, especially when comparing themselves to the “decadent”
Southerners. Readfield 54 town records paint the picture of a hardworking
man who was successful in many different disciplines. Born in
1814, his father died when he was ten years old, and his mother raised
him. He became a member of the Readfield Methodist Society at age 22,
and entered public life by becoming postmaster of the town as a 30 year
old. In 1844-6 he served as a selectman on the town council, by 1849
had become an agent for the local school district, and in 1854 his ambitions
took him to a larger arena as a member of the Maine State House
of Representatives and Treasurer of the state in 1855. His political career
peaked in the 1860s when he served as a State Senator in 1864 and a member
of the Governor’s Council in 1867 and 1868. 55 Despite his impressive
political career, much of his legacy in town history has been overshadowed
by the fact that four Maine governors hailed from Readfield in the
19th century. 56
Sanborn’s abilities did not end in the political arena. He was most
well known for his business pursuits, which helped usher in the development
of Readfield’s “golden age” in the mid-19th century. On the envelope
of Sanborn’s le�er is a return address to a “J.A. Sanborn and Co./
Manufacturers and Dealers in/Floor, Stair and Carriage/OIL CLOTH.” 57
This address was one outlet for the sale of oilcloth products that Sanborn
manufactured in the factory he helped build in East Readfield in
1845. 58 Henry D. Kingsbury, who in 1892 published a history of Kennebec
County, writes that the oilcloth works became the “high water mark
of Readfield prosperity,” 59 and existed during a time when East Readfield
was a “thriving hamlet.” 60 Sanborn started the plant with a group
of local men, who Mary Schultze Page, a Readfield historian, describes
as possessing the qualities of “perseverance and indomitable resolution
necessary to survive” and the “ingenuity and resourcefulness to become
good businessmen as well.” 61 Sanborn bought out the group of owners
in 1865 and was sole owner of the business until 1870 when he sold the
entire plant to Charles M. Bailey. 62 During his tenure, Sanborn expanded
the factory’s workforce to over 50 people, and opened stores in both
Readfield Corner 63 and Boston. Since oilcloth was used frequently in the

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 47
Civil War, there is li�le doubt that business boomed for Sanborn and his
partners during the War (as was the case for much of Northern industry).
When the factory burned down in 1877—the same year in which Sanborn
died—Bailey rebuilt it in Winthrop and, as Kingsburg notes, “the bright
prospects of a thriving hamlet…were extinguished.” 64
It is quite clear that J.A. Sanborn was not a man fond of idleness;
his self-history indicates the qualities of a character constantly in motion,
moving from one pursuit to the next, always in search of power or
money. Sanborn exemplified the qualities of industriousness and restlessness
associated with the notion of “Northern energy.” The idea of
Northern energy describes an industrial Northern society in contrast to
the stereotypical laziness of Southern society, with a small ruling planter
class that lives idly off the toil of slaves. Anne Norton, in an essay entitled
“Paradigms in Conflict,” writes, “The North’s industrialization and
the South’s enduring agrarianism present the dominant disparity in the
political culture of the two sections.” 65 The North, which by the time of
the Civil War looked completely different from the South due to substantial
industrialization, was America’s bastion of capitalism and free
market competition. The image of the Northern entrepreneur from this
period—clever, industrious, hard working—was in stark contrast to that
of the Southern plantation owner, who was o�en seen as indolent and
lacking usefulness.
Sidney Andrews, a Northerner who toured the South in 1865 as a
correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the Boston Daily Advertiser 66 ,
observed the lack of emphasis and low value that Southerners appeared
to place on labor. Andrews reported: “If there is one thing more needed
in the whole South…more needed here than loyalty, it is respect for labor
as labor—not merely respect for it as a means of sustaining life; but
respect for it as a branch of divine economy, respect for it as a means of
human elevation.” 67 Here, Andrews is referring to the lack of a Southern
work ethic and the necessity for the growth of one if the South is to
survive economically without the institution of slavery. The notion of
developing these Northern ideas in Southern society was an extremely
ambitious, if not farfetched one. As Whitlaw Reid bluntly described the
former rebels a�er conversing with dozens of them a�er the war, “They
have no sort of conception of free labor.” 68
Ben Franklin, an American icon whose autobiography was widely
read through the nineteenth century, personified and popularized the idea

48
T�� H�������� J������
of Northern energy. Franklin, a capitalist through and through, placed a
strong emphasis on usefulness and work ethic. In one of the more memorable
passages in his autobiography, Franklin describes his “bold and
Arduous project of Arriving at Moral perfection.” 69 While the very act of
seeking moral perfection inherently requires an impressive amount of
energy and discipline (although it is worth noting that despite his efforts,
it is safe to say that Franklin did not actually achieve moral perfection),
virtues number two through six of the thirteen virtues he lists to achieve
moral perfection directly relate to his infatuation with hard work. Both
Silence 70 and Order 71 reflect the “usefulness” aspect of Franklin’s work
ethic; these virtues encourage him to make the best of his time in order to
be as productive as possible. Resolution 72 , Frugality 73 and Industry 74 express
Franklin’s desire to persevere and finish tasks, waste no resources
or time that can take away from the fruits of labor, and to always focus on
“useful” 75 tasks. It is these ideas that are commonly recognized as Yankee
capitalistic characteristics—the notion of joining morality with labor
and self-be�erment with industry. As Norton points out, the industrial
development perpetuated by the capitalism driven by these ideals in the
North were “merely a manifestation of the nation’s moral progress.” The
marriage of the Northern capitalists’ ideas about work ethic and morality,
which we can see manifested in Sanborn’s accomplishments, was the
rallying point for those Northern entrepreneurs seeking to promote benevolence
through enlightened self-interest.
The concept of Northern energy in relation to reconstructing the
South is apparent in the many published accounts by Northerners evaluating
Southern culture. Many of these accounts actually reveal more
about the Yankee’s vision of himself than they do about the culture
and condition of the South. In these accounts, Franklin’s buzzwords of
Northern capitalism—“useful,” “industrious,” “energy”—are repeatedly
used to describe the types of values these Yankees believe can be infused
into Southern society. For example, while passing through Washington
D.C. at the beginning of his Southern tour, John Trowbridge is asked by a
Southerner, “what do you Northerners, you Massachuse�s men particularly,
expect to do now with the niggers?” Trowbridge flatly replies, “We
intend to make useful and industrious citizens of them.” 76 A reporter
for the New York Herald, who claimed to have found a cure for “Southern
backwardness” wrote, “The prosperity of the South, of the planters and
of the Negroes depend alike on the emigration of the Yankees and Yan-

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 49
kee energy.” 77 This confidence or hubris—depending on one’s point of
view—provided Northern entrepreneurs with the bravado and moral leverage
to move into the South and a�empt to simultaneously gain wealth
and fundamentally alter Southern culture.
“Southward Ho!”
J.A. Sanborn’s claim that his interest in investing in the South grew
out of a desire to “help develop their resources” was a familiar one in
the 1860s. The Yankee entrepreneurs who invaded the South during Reconstruction
arrived in large numbers with varying objectives, ranging
from the narrow goal of ge�ing rich quick to a larger purpose of helping
to rebuild the South in the image of Northern culture and society. The
financial success that the North enjoyed during the Civil War coupled
with the Yankee air of superiority over Southern culture created the ideal
circumstances for “carpetbag imperialism” 78 in the South. While historians
tend to focus on the influx of Republican and Northern ideas into the
South through the carpetbag/scalawag voice in reconstructed Southern
governments, these ideas were also spread by the voices of Northern industry
and capitalism.
The peak of Northern emigration to the South occurred between 1865
and 1866. Like J.A. Sanborn, most of the men entering the South to become
planters did not have much farming experience. Records from the
period indicate that most of these entrepreneurs were young men aged
30-33 from professional or business backgrounds—in addition, most did
not serve in the Union army. 79 These Northern businessmen made themselves
quite visible upon their arrival in the South in 1865; one Boston
man, a�er sailing to the former Confederacy a�er war’s end, reported
that “nearly half the travelers in every boat are New Englanders.” 80 A
rush for land reminiscent of the frenzies for resources in the West had
reached full swing in the South.
Michael J. Quill, author of Prelude to the Radicals, argues that despite
the rhetoric of many Northerners flaunting their ideas about reconstructing
the South, shortly a�er the war most were in it for the short road to
wealth. “As the war came to a close,” argues Quill, “it is unlikely that
many Northern businessmen had bothered to construct elaborate or
detailed blueprints for the new South. Instead, they were much more
concerned about the ways in which Southern wealth could benefit the
Northern economy in its return to a peace footing.” 81 Lawrence Powell,

50
T�� H�������� J������
author of a book on the land rush in the South a�er the war entitled New
Masters, also writes, “Almost every northerner who invested in…plantations
in these years [1865-66] looked chiefly to the speculative aspects…
The newcomers commonly calculated their profits in the tens, even hundreds,
of thousands of dollars, with the conviction of men who knew that
such a chance comes but once in a lifetime.” 82 Here we see the notion of
Northern energy and capitalism playing itself out in the South—there
seemed to be no more useful way of spending “excess greenbacks” than
in speculation.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that the newcomers were primarily
interested in personal financial gain, this pursuit was o�en aided
by ideological or humanitarian visions used to justify the blatantly
capitalistic mission, especially in the years following the rush of 1865-66.
Some Northern plantation owners leased their plantations to freedmen,
in order to help them in the transition from slavery to freedom. Others
offered working opportunities to freedmen to prove to Southern society
that “the freed Negro under decent and just treatment can be worked
to profit to employer and employee.” 83 In addition, the Yankee sometimes
came south to improve agricultural techniques to maximize profits.
Yankees o�en perceived Southern agriculture as “primitive,” and experimented
with new farming technology to figure out ways to reduce labor
and increase their financial success. 84
If the Northern speculators all agreed on one thing, it was that they
were “true pioneers of free labor, evangelists of a more excellent way…
they felt sure that their contributions to the economic well-being of the
South would improve the condition of every class and race in the former
Confederacy.” 85 This, however, was more of a rationalization than a real
motive. Although Sanborn’s republican beliefs are revealed when he refers
to the institution of slavery as “miserable” and the Southerners as
“rebels reconstructed or unreconstructed,” 86 his primary motive still is to
find the place where the “means of accumulating wealth are to be formed
in greater abundance.” Furthermore, if his foremost intention was to aid
in the effort to reconstruct the South, he would not have also speculated
in the West.
Sanborn, despite his goals and rationalizations, did not fit the mold
of the typical carpet-bagging speculator on several levels. He was 55
when he took his trip down south; most speculators from that period
were between the ages of 30 and 33. There are clues indicating, however,

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 51
that perhaps Sanborn was actually taking the trip to find a place for his
son to se�le as well as to advise David Fifield on the value of relocating
elsewhere. These clues are evident both when Sanborn reveals that his
son had se�led out West and in his tone towards Fifield. Sanborn tells
Fifield, “On foot I saw but li�le in the country so far as the people are
concerned that would be pleasing to you,” and comments that Fifield
probably would not like the climate around Knoxville. 87
One of the oddest things about Sanborn’s Southern tour, when put
in historical context, was that he took it in 1869. The Northern invasion
of businessmen and speculators was a phenomenon that was highly
concentrated during the years 1865-1866. In 1867, many of those who
headed South for their fortunes found their dreams dashed thanks to
the crop failures of 1866-67. 88 Co�on planters suffered from the heavy
spring rains and light summer rains which severely retarded plantation
work. Wrote one Yankee co�on plantation owner from Port Royal, Mississippi,
“It would seem that since the commencement of the rebellion,
the elements, worms, & all the forces of nature had conspired against the
intruders of the southern soil.” By 1867, the price of co�on had fallen to
14 cents a pound and the cost of operating a plantation was double than
what it had been in 1860. 89 This was the case for many crops in the South;
by 1867 it was no longer “useful” for a Yankee to speculate in the South
strictly for financial gains.
Powell does point out, however, that “occasionally a man of means
went south a�er 1867 in search of a co�on plantation.” 90 While Sanborn
appeared to be a�er something more modest than a co�on plantation,
circumstantial historical evidence indicates that he was probably driven
more by his situation at home than a burning desire to head south. Sanborn’s
son had recently married so the timing was ripe for Gustauvas
and his new wife, Helen M. Thomas, to se�le somewhere outside of East
Readfield. In addition, J.A. Sanborn had just finished his tenure on the
governor’s council and was likely in the process of selling his oil cloth
factory to William Bailey, a deal that he completed in 1870. 91 Although
Northerners had ceased entering the South in hordes as in 1865-66, over
two-thirds of Virginia’s land and one-quarter of South Carolina’s land
remained uncultivated as late as 1869. 92 Although this was no longer the
golden age of cheap Southern land, there were still plenty of opportunities
for Sanborn to satisfy his agricultural interests. Unfortunately, he
concludes that the social and financial start-up costs of living in the for-

52
T�� H�������� J������
mer Confederacy did not justify the potential long-term gains.
The Yankee entrepreneurs’ interaction with former rebels formed an
integral part of the carpetbaggers’ experience. Sanborn describes his interaction
with the Southerners as civil but possessing an underlying tension:
“…[I] was permi�ed to pass quietly along about my business and
was civilly treated by all with whom I came in contact. Still I do not wish
you to infer from what I have said that I think there is an extra amount of
love and goodwill on the part of rebels reconstructed or unreconstructed
for the once hated yankees.” 93 Postwar accounts of Yankee interaction
with Southerners reveal a mixed bag of a�itudes towards the newcomers,
o�en highlighted by the former rebels’ paradoxical desires for both
economic assistance from the North and a preservation of their culture of
defiance and self-rule. In his Southern tour in 1865-1866, Whitlaw Reid
witnessed the la�er facet of this paradox. While in New Orleans, Reid
spoke with a lawyer who was confident that the Northern planter movement
to alter the South would fail. “When we get in,” the lawyer argued,
“we’ll put an end to this impudent talk of you Yankees about regenerating
the South by Northern immigration. We’ll require you to spend ten
years in the state before you can vote! 94 …I have no love for the flag. It
never protected me; it has robbed me and mine!” 95
In addition, a general dislike for Yankee men and their culture—particularly
the outgrowths of that “Northern energy”—contributed to the
Southerners’ ill feeling towards the Northern newcomers. Many of the
former rebels’ perceptions of their culture, filled with images of honor
and gentlemanly conduct, were in direct contrast with how they viewed
their Northern conquerors. There was quite a bit of resentment that these
images would be replaced by “strange faces [Yankees], cold and heartless
creatures; plo�ing and striving for the Almighty dollar.” 96 By 1869, when
Sanborn arrived in the South, Radical Reconstruction had provoked an
increase in Southern defiance which lead to widespread violence by
many dedicated white Southerners. While the Radicals were able to turn
the political tide in favor of assisting freedmen and instituting progressive
reforms to alter the Southern social order, that old resentment of the
Yankees lived on.
In spite of this bi�erness, more pragmatic Southerners realized that
their financial survival a�er the war could be achieved through the assistance
of Northern enterprise. 97 Quills uses the example of a hotel
clerk in Mississippi who was “very effusive” when welcoming specu-

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 53
lation-minded guests: “Make yourselves perfectly at home, gents…Lots
of new men coming into the country. That’s what we want; the Yankee
capital, the Yankee enterprise is all we want.” 98 Powell argues that “One
fact stands out very clearly: Southerners strained every nerve to encourage
Yankee investments in the plantation economy.” 99 Solicitations for
Northern investment were prominent in newspapers, while many Southern
governments begrudgingly approved legislation that would facilitate
Northern enterprise. 100 This was strictly business; this brand of Southern
hospitality, as manifested by the Mississippi hotel owner, was purely
economic. Sanborn’s words were true for the period—there was not any
“extra amount of love” on the part of the former rebels. The Southern
and Northern identities, at least when one got past the wallet, remained
distinct and in conflict during Reconstruction.
Conclusion
J.A. Sanborn passed away in 1877, the same year a�ributed to the
end of Reconstruction. Rutherford B. Hayes won the disputed election
of 1876 by making a deal with Democrat Samuel Tilden. Known as the
Compromise (or Bargain) of 1877, the agreement included the withdrawal
of federal troops from the South, which effectively ended Reconstruction.
Remarked one black Louisianan Henry Adams, “The whole
South—every state in the South had got into the hands of the very men
that held us as slaves.” 101
Most Northerners seeking a life on the land in the South quickly
found themselves returning home, and by 1877 it was quite clear that
the old agrarian masters had regained control of the South. The New
South movement, fiercely advocated by Atlanta Constitution editor Henry
W. Grady, claimed that industry and manufacturing were the “true remedy”
102 for Southern ills. Still, the industrialization that occurred in the
South was not a large enough change 103 to remedy larger societal evils
that haunted the region—segregation, sharecropping, poverty. Although
the South looked different by 1900 compared to 1860, the influx of Northern
ideas and money during Reconstruction did not affect the kind of
social change that would unify a nation.
J.A. Sanborn’s le�er to his cousin is best viewed as a collection of
symbols of the challenges Southern Reconstruction. Sanborn himself
is a model of the “Northern energy” paradigm. The Southern a�itudes
towards Sanborn represent the deep divide between two diametrically

54
T�� H�������� J������
opposed cultures and worldviews, which would impede the ability of
the South to reconstruct itself on its own terms. Conversely, Sanborn’s
description of Knoxville and its people as “poor and dirty” can be viewed
as a symbol of Northern arrogance, a condescending perception of Southerners
which reveals the hubris of the conqueror and his imperialistic
tendencies. Most importantly, his benevolent self-interest represented
the rationalizations and realities that drove the Yankee carpetbagger.
Appendix A
Relevant Information about Readfield and East Readfield
East Readfield, Maine, is a small town outside of Augusta, the state’s
capital. As mentioned in footnote 32, East Readfield is a section of the
township of Readfield. By 1892, Readfield was most well known for the
number of high-level politicians and statesmen that were born and raised
in the town (by 1892, four Maine governors 104 , a United States Senator
and two members of presidential cabinets hailed from Readfield), Kennebec
County historian Henry D. Kingsbury writes, “The air of Readfield
seems to have been charged with a tonic, a�ractive to the tastes and conducive
to the growth of lawyers and statesmen.” 105 It is in this tradition
that Sanborn grew up, and he followed the footsteps of the more famous
locally born politicians by becoming a State Senator and a member of
the Governors’ Council (there are no records indicating that he ran for
anything higher).
Despite its reputation as both a thriving agricultural and vacation
community, Readfield became a place for mills and factories to thrive in
the 19th century. The town featured a grist mill, a cider factory, a tannery
where famous leather was made, a potash factory and Sanborn’s oilcloth
factory. 106 The Readfield depot, which was built in the 1840s, greatly benefited
the town’s business and allowed the expansion of its factories (like
Sanborn’s a�er 1860). 107
The chief researcher and historian at the Readfield Historical Society,
a quaint 18th century house (with no heating, telephones or computers)
which holds most of the town records, calls East Readfield the “forgo�en
village.” 108 While Readfield as a whole prospered into the 20th century,
the Augusta Water Company bought much of the East Readfield’s land
out shortly a�er Sanborn’s death. The company obtained most of the
land around Carleton Pond and demolished the schoolhouse (the town’s
community center) and almost all of the nearby houses. 109

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 55
Appendix B
Sanborn’s Letter: Written in 1867 or 1869?
It is difficult to determine whether Sanborn wrote his le�er in 1867
or 1869. Two key pieces of historical evidence indicate that the le�er
was probably wri�en in 1869. First, official documents provided by the
Readfield Town Clerk’s office show that J.A. Sanborn’s son, Gustauvas,
was married in East Readfield in 1868. Sanborn writes later in the le�er
that he thought Gustauvas “made a very good selection and is in a good
county and neighborhood and has a splendid piece of land, but I do not
think the climate there what he needs and I doubt if he remains there
next winter.” 110 It seems unlikely that an unmarried man would go and
se�le in the West; it seems more probable that Gustauvas chose to move
away from East Readfield a�er he married Helen M. Thomas. In addition,
town records also show that Gustauvas, like his father, became a
member of the East Readfield Methodist Society in 1870. 111 This indicates
that his father’s prediction [“I doubt if he remains there next winter”]
was correct; Gustauvas did return home.
Perhaps the most convincing clue to the le�er’s date is Sanborn’s
reference to the “Ku Klux.” The Ku Klux Klan was only formed as a
very small group in 1866, and it had just completed its transformation
into a terror group aimed at blocking radical reconstruction efforts in
1867. 112 A New York Times profile of unionist Tennessee Governor William
Brownlow by a correspondent who had spent time in the state, makes no
reference to the Klan 113 , which had hounded Brownlow and members of
his administration for years during Reconstruction. The Klan had not received
much a�ention until 1868, when its activities escalated during the
election season. It is extremely unlikely that in May 1867 a Mainer like
Sanborn would have heard of the Klan, let alone have gathered enough
knowledge to characterize it as a “mysterious and desperate band.”
Appendix C
Conditions in Knoxville, Tennessee
It is particularly interesting that Sanborn chose to describe the city
of Knoxville to his cousin David given the city’s unique character in the
context of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The climate and terrain in
the area of Knoxville, which made large plantations inhospitable, were
the central influence behind the city’s character. The town’s ruling class

56
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in the antebellum period, which was comprised mostly of merchants and
professional men, resembled more of a Northern urban social landscape
than a Southern one. 114
As a result of these factors, Knoxville became a Unionist stronghold
during the Civil War and remained friendly towards Northerners during
Reconstruction. 115 It is almost certain that Sanborn, as a Northerner, was
welcomed warmly in Knoxville. In 1865, as Whitlaw Reid’s railcar approached
Knoxville, a former Confederate soldier (mistaking Reid for a
former rebel) whispered in his ear:
This isn’t a good country for you and me. They’re all tories
here. Every d----d scoundrel of them. I’ve been chased off
from my home because I had been in the Confederate army.
For three weeks I’ve dodged about in the woods, and now I’m
a going to get out of this Yankee country. 116
In addition to the post-Civil War Unionist sentiments, in 1869 Knoxville
began a campaign to rebuild itself in the Northern industrial image—an
idea akin to the “New South” movement that developed in the
1880s. Advocates of this local movement, who started the Knoxville Industrial
Association in 1869, were interested in quelling hostility towards
Northern money and capital, and launched a propaganda campaign to
achieve this end. 117
The city of Knoxville experienced both damage and growth as a result
of the Civil War. Sanborn’s description of Knoxville as a place with
“buildings that are poor, mean, dirty things with no sign of any taste or
thri�s about them,” was in line with the city’s condition a�er the war.
Although a great deal of track was laid down during the war for the sake
of moving Confederate men and supplies to the Virginia theatre, much
of these lines was destroyed during the war. Whitlaw Reid claimed that
it took 22 hours to make the 204-mile journey from Lynchburg to Knoxville,
with constant stoppages due to destroyed track. 118 Despite “burnt
houses and solitary chimneys over one whole corner of the city,” Reid
asserts that the people in Knoxville live quite “comfortably.” 119 This was,
of course, in comparison with the horror he saw in some of the harder
hit Southern urban centers. Sanborn’s description of Knoxville as a town
filled with buildings that are “poor, mean, dirty things” and people who
are also “poor and dirty” 120 are perhaps also a commentary on his comfort
zone—Knoxville was a far cry from his “thriving hamlet.”

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 57
Appendix D
Geneseo
In the le�er, Sanborn does not mention in which part of the American
West Geneseo is located. There are currently three towns named
Geneseo in the United States that are located West of the Mississippi (the
fourth is located in New York). Of the three Geneseos in the Western half
of the United States, through process of elimination one can conclude
that Sanborn is referring to Geneseo, Illinois.
Geneseo, North Dakota, was almost certainly not visited by Sanborn
in 1869 because there is no evidence to suggest that a Geneseo existed
there in 1869. The State Historical Society of North Dakota also indicates
that while se�lement in the area began in earnest around 1861, “significant
immigration” commenced only a�er the Northern Pacific Railway
was built to the Missouri River in 1872 and 1873, and the great se�lement
“boom” did not occur until the 1880s. 121
Se�lement in the town of Geneseo, Kansas, did not begin until the
homesteading movement of the 1870s, and even if Sanborn did manage
to beat the wave a se�lers that would enter the state throughout that decade,
Geneseo did not become a township until 1887. 122
This leaves Geneseo, Illinois, which was first se�led in the early
1800s and incorporated into the state of Illinois as a municipality in 1865.
Given the town’s rural se�ing (it is located in the Western part of the
state near Iowa), it is likely that farming was the main occupation for the
town’s residents in the late 19th century. 123 This information shows that it
is likely Sanborn visited Geneseo, Illinois.
Endnotes
1 Horace Greeley, New York Tribune, April 20, 1865 as quoted in Michael J. Quill, Prelude
to the Radicals (Washington, D.C: University Press of America, 1980) 114.
2 J.A. Sanborn, East Readfield, to Cousin David Fifield [location unknown], 21 May 1869,
transcript at Special Collections, Magill Library, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania.
3 Although Reconstruction is o�en defined as the years 1865-1877, I will specifically be
looking at the period 1865-1869.
4 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.
5 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.
6 Sanborn’s cousin was David Fifield, who was born in 1800. Readfield town records
could not provide the date of his death.
7 East Readfield, Maine. For a brief sketch of the town’s history, see Appendix A.

58
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8 There is some ambiguity over whether he wrote the le�er in 1867 or 1869. See Appendix
B for a discussion of why it is likely (based on historical evidence) that the le�er was
wri�en in 1869.
9 On a light note, Sanborn’s propensity for procrastination (at least when it came to sending
le�ers) also appeared in a prior le�er to Colonel George B. Barrow in 1864. Sanborn was
writing Barrow in response to the Colonel’s request for a photograph of the Senatorial board
that served prior to Sanborn’s 1864 term. Sanborn writes, “I have neglected day to day thus
far to do so [send the photograph]…” (J.A. Sanborn, East Readfield, to Colonel George B.
Barrow [location unknown], 27 Aug 1864, transcript at the Maine Historical Society, Portland,
Maine).
10 See Appendix C for Knoxville information.
11 Thri�y, in this 19th century context, means “characterized by success or prosperity:
thriving, prosperous, well-to-do, successful, flourishing, fortunate.” Based on the definition
given by The Oxford English Dictionary, second ed, 1999.
12 Based on weather records from the past 48 years, the average temperature in Knoxville,
Tennessee is 59 degrees. Sanborn likely passed through the city sometime between December
and March. The average temperatures for those months are as follows: December, 41 degrees;
January, 38 degrees; February, 42 degrees; March, 50 degrees. Not surprisingly, the records for
Kennebec County, Maine are substantially colder. The mean temperature there is 45 degrees.
In comparison, the winter monthly temperatures are nearly half that of Knoxville: December,
24; January, 19; February, 22; March, 51. Information gathered from www.weatherbase.com.
13 They were wishful thinkers. The Radical Republican effort was severely waning by
1870, and the impact of the 1873 recession proved to be the final straw in turning the North’s
a�ention away from the humanitarian ideas of reconstructing the South and towards their
own economic interests. Once the federal government’s role declined in reconstructing the
South, the antebellum social structure returned (slavery became sharecropping) and the white
Southern farmers regained control of much of the land.
14 Virginia.
15 Tennessee.
16 Geneseo, Illinois. For an explanation on why this is likely, see appendix D.
17 Gustauvas Sanborn, son of J.A. Sanborn.
18 I could not find any evidence to suggest a reason why Sanborn mentioned his visit to
Vineland, New Jersey.
19 J.A. Sanborn’s wife was Lucy Ann B. Sanborn. Despite her “poor health” in 1869, she
died at the age of 67 in 1888 [Readfield town records].
20 David Fifield’s wife was Hannah Stevens [Readfield town records].
21 His official name was Joseph Appleton Sanborn and he was commonly referred to as
Joseph A. Sanborn [Readfield Town records].
22 John Mack Faragher, et al., Out of Many: A History of the American People (Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993) 512.
23 John Hope Franklin, Reconstruction A�er the Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1961, 1994) 1.
24 Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction (New York: Harper & Row, 1994) 9.
25 Foner 200.
26 Foner 9-11.
27 William M. Russell, “The Economic Impact of the American Civil War” (Ph.d. Dissertation,
George Mason University, Spring 2001) 15.
28 Lawrence N. Powell, New Masters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980) 37.
29 Sanborn describes the land around Knoxville, Tennessee as “not as rich except the bot-

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 59
tom land as I expected to find…” It is difficult to say, however, whether the land was damaged
or neglected as a result of the War or if that was just the natural state of the land. The la�er is
likely; see Appendix C.
30 Franklin 2.
31 Whitlaw Reid, A�er the War: A Tour of the Southern States, 1865-1866 (New York: Harper
& Row Publishers, 1965, 1866) 10.
32 Sanborn Le�er.
33 Faragher et al. 512.
34 Foner 84.
35 Foner 105.
36 Foner 105.
37 Foner 122.
38 Foner 146.
39 The Republican Platform on Reconstruction, 1868 as quoted in Walter L. Fleming,
Documentary History of Reconstruction (Cleveland, Ohio: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1906)
480.
40 Foner 147.
41 Fleming 481.
42 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.
43 Allen W. Trelease, White Terror (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1971) 3-5.
44 Foner 184.
45 Franklin 153.
46 Trelease, 27.
47 Franklin 160.
48 Kathleen R. Zebley, “Unconditional Unionist: Samuel Mayes Arnell and Reconstruction
in Tennessee,” in Tennessee History, ed. Carroll Van West (Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 1998) 193. This was the same day that Brownlow resigned as governor to take a seat
in the United States Senate.
49 Franklin 161.
50 U.S. Bureau of Census, Ninth Census of the United States: 1870, Population (Washington
D.C., 1872) 328-335 as cited in Eugene H. Berwanger, Reconstruction and the West (Chicago,
University of Illinois Press, 1981) 18.
51 Eugene H. Berwanger, Reconstruction and the West (Chicago, University of Illinois
Press, 1981) 18.
52 It was actually just completed in 1869, but the economic transformation that it would
engender took some years to occur.
53 Berwanger 33.
54 East Readfield was established in 1850 a�er the partitioning of Readfield. The current
township of East Readfield contains four towns: East Readfield, Readfield Corner, Readfield
Depot, and Kent’s Hill. [see h�p://www.rootsweb.com/~mecreadf/readfld.htm].
55 East Readfield town records.
56 Evelyn A. Po�er of Readfield, Maine, interview by author, November 20, 2002.
57 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David (return address on envelope).
58 Henry D. Kingsbury, History of Kennebec County (Maine: Maine State Library, 1892) 898,
and Readfield Town Records. Another Readfield historian, Mary Schultze Page, asserts that
the factory was started in 1847. Given her occasional historical inaccuracies (for example, she
misspells “Sanborn”) and the evidence from the town records, it is more likely than not that
the factory was built in 1845.
59 Kingsbury 897.

60
T�� H�������� J������
60 Kingsbury 892.
61 Mary Schultze Page, Reflections of Readfield (Farmington, Maine: The Knowlton & Mc-
Cleary Co., 1975) 20.
62 Kingsbury 898 and Readfield Town Records.
63 Another section of Readfield.
64 Kingsburg 898 and Page 20.
65 Anne Norton, Alternative Americas: A Reading of Antebellum Political Culture (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986) 251.
66 Glenn M. Linden, Voices from the Reconstruction Years, 1865-1877 (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt
& Brace College Publishers, 1999) 27.
67 Sidney Andrews, The Chicago Tribune, November 25, 1865 as quoted in Lindell 1999,
31.
68 Whitlaw Reid, A�er the War: A Tour of the Southern States 1865-1866 (New York: Harper
& Row Publishers, 1965, 1866) 343.
69 Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, eds. J.A. Leo Lemay and P.M.
Zall (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1986) 66.
70 “Speak not but what may benefit others or your self. Avoid trifling conversation.”
(Franklin 67)
71 “Let all your Things have their Places. Let each Part of your Business have its Time.”
(Franklin 67)
72 “Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.” (Frank-
lin 67)
73 “Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.” (Franklin
67)
74 “Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.”
(Franklin 67)
75 Alexis de Tocqueville critiques Americans’ obsession with usefulness: “I see nothing
around but people bent publicly on proving, by word and deed, that what is useful is never
wrong. Is there no chance of finding some who will make the public understand that what is
right may be useful?” See Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Harper &
Row, 2000 ed.) 527.
76 Trowbridge, J.T., The South, A Tour… (Hartford, Conn: L. Stebbins, 1866) 78.
77 New York Herald, Aug. 28, 1865 as quoted in Powell 5.
78 George Winston Smith, “Some Northern Wartime A�itudes Toward the Post-Civil War
South,” The Journal of Southern History (Aug., 1944), 253.
79 Powell 8. See Appendix for tables.
80 Boston Daily Advertiser, Jan. 15, 1866 as quoted in Powell 1980, 7.
81 Quill 111.
82 Powell 18.
83 Garth W. James to Henry James, Sr., Apr. 7, 1866, in possession of Prof. William
Childers, University of Florida as quoted in Powell 1980, 29.
84 Powell 30.
85 Powell 31.
86 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.
87 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.
88 Powell 150.
89 Powell 146.
90 Powell 151.
91 East Readfield town records.

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 61
92 George Ruble Woolfolk, The Co�on Regency (New York: Octagon Books, 1979) 101.
93 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.
94 It is worth noting that this type of sentiment was inspired by Johnson’s so� and
doomed Reconstruction effort, which provided Southernors with the hope that they could
restore their social order and continue to defy the federal government.
95 Reid 412.
96 Bammie to Ema, June 14, 1866, S.C. Bonner Papers, LSU as quoted in Powell 51.
97 Also see Appendix C, third paragraph.
98 Quoted in Quill 115.
99 Powell 38.
100 Quill 115.
101 Foner 245.
102 Henry W. Grady as quoted in Walter Licht, Industrializing America (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1995) 120.
103 By 1900, the South contained 30% of the nation’s population but just 10% of its industrial
output. See Grady 122.
104 Jonathon G. Hunton, Dr. John Hubbard, Anson P. Morrill, Lot M. Morill. See h�p://
www.rootsweb.com/~mecreadf/rdfldgov.htm.
105 Kingsbury 890.
106 Page 20.
107 Page 27.
108 Evelyn A. Po�er of Readfield, Maine, interview by author, 20 November 2002.
109 Page 19.
110 Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.
111 Readfield Town Records (applies to all family information in paragraph).
112 Peter Smith, Unionism and Reconstruction in East Tennessee (Gloucester, Mass.: University
of North Carolina Press, 1966) 58.
113 New York Times, June 26, 1867.
114 Michael J. McDonald and Bruce Wheeler, Knoxville, Tennessee: Continuity and Change in
an Appalachian City (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983) 12.
115 This may have been the result of Tennessee’s ability to put itself on a course of self-
Reconstruction. Carpetbaggers did not play much of a role in Eastern Tennessee politics. Instead,
local unionists (or “scalawags”) like Brownlow ran the government See Paul Bergeron,
Stephen V. Ash, Jeanne�e Keith, Tennesseans and Their History (Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 1999) 158.
116 Reid 350-51.
117 McDonald and Wheeler 16.
118 Reid 340.
119 Reid 351.
120 J.A. Sanborn, le�er to Cousin David.
121 See h�p://www.state.nd.us/hist//ndhist.htm.
122 Jim Grey and Janet Ritcha, h�p://skyways.lib.ks.us/towns/Geneseo/history.html
123 See city website, www.geneseo.org.

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The Course of a Particular
A Cry For Meaning
Sandra Read-Brown
Haverford College Class of 2004
Today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind,
Yet the nothingness of winter becomes a li�le less.
It is still full of icy shades and shapen snow.
The leaves cry…One holds off and merely hears the cry.
It is a busy cry, concerning someone else.
And though one says that one is part of everything,
There is a conflict, there is a resistance involved;
And being part is an exertion that declines:
One feels the life of that which gives life as it is.
The leaves cry. It is not a cry of divine a�ention,
Nor the smoke-dri� of puffed-out heroes, nor human cry.
It is the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves,
In the absence of fantasia, without meaning more
Than they are in the final finding of the ear, in the thing
Itself, until, at last, the cry concerns no one at all.
-Wallace Stevens’ “The Course of a Particular”
From THE PALM AT THE END OF THE MIND by Wallace Stevens, edited by Holly Stevens, copyright © 1967, 1969, 1971
by Holly Stevens.
Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
A line from one of Wallace Stevens’ most well known poems, “The
Auroras of Autumn,” reads: “There is no play./ Or, the persons act one
merely by being here.” This existential rewriting of William Shakespeare’s
famous declaration “all the world’s a stage, and we are but players in it”

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 63
exemplifies literary critic Harold Bloom’s analysis of Stevens’ fulfillment
of “the unique enterprise of a specifically American poetry.” 1 Whereas
Shakespeare’s pithy statement suggests a world existing in and of itself
in which human beings act according to a pre-wri�en script, Stevens’
lines, according to Bloom, expose “the essential solipsism of our Native
Strain.” One finds this isolationist theme manifested in many ways at
the core of Stevens’ poetry: through themes, rhymes, images, etc. Stevens’
manipulation of language is so skilled that, in the case of his poem
“The Course of a Particular,” the very language itself encapsulates the
unique sense of aloneness and isolation in American poetry. However,
a careful analysis of the language in “Course” reveals the simultaneous
existence of an almost contradictory tendency. Though the language is
isolated and cold, the words that Stevens uses are self-consciously interdependent.
Language naturally functions in relation to itself – words
gain meaning through context – yet in Stevens’ poems all of the words are
dependent upon the words around them for their meaning. One could
even say that Stevens’ poetry deconstructs itself as it is developing, for as
his poems unfold, the meaning of words modulates constantly, doubling
back upon itself before rushing ahead anew. Thus as linguistic interdependence
confronts an independently solipsistic mindset, we are forced
to expand Bloom’s characterization: if Stevens’ poetry is uniquely American,
there must be another essential component to our “native strain.”
In order to access the point of tension between individualistic isolation
and interdependence, it is necessary to engage in a careful analysis
of the poem’s language and development. Stevens’ use of the present
tense in “Course” calls immediate a�ention to the temporal status of the
poem: “Today the leaves cry.” The “Today” that begins the poem signifies
that the final meaning (or lack thereof) which the speaker hopes to
reach has not yet been discovered. It is thus appropriate that the poem’s
second line negates what we are offered in the first: “Yet the nothingness
of winter becomes a li�le less. It is still full of icy shades and shapen
snow” (2-3). “Yet” disrupts the descriptive action of the first line – the
poem wants both to be and to become. In other words, “yet” expresses
the tension in the poem between content, in-the-moment existence (being,
what winter is), and a perpetual striving towards (becoming: what
winter will - or is hoping to – be). The poem refuses to rest in the moment
of winter that it has created, becoming instead “a li�le less.” Also in
these lines, the speaker hints at a tension between absence and presence:

64
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if winter is the ultimate season of “nothingness,” then what does it mean
for this “nothingness” to become “a li�le less”? Paradoxically, this doubling
of negation and loss generates a move towards presence. A “nothingness”
decreasing (or lessening) even a “li�le” bit necessarily entails
a movement towards something-ness, towards presence. Consequently,
the “full”-ness of the third line is no longer replete with its proper meaning.
In a reflection of the earlier paradox, the coldness of this line (the
“icy shades and shapen snow”) dissolves the meaning of “full” into the
lack and death of winter thereby opening a dark chasm of meaning. Thus
from the moment of today to the slightly “less” winter, into the cold fullness,
it is clear that Stevens never allows his poem to se�le into meaning.
Such a technique ensures the validity of the poem as an encapsulated
experience, one that the reader can experience alongside the speaker. At
the end of the third line, we are still in the moment of the poem, “yet” it
is so far from the moment in which we began.
In sharp contrast to the interdependent relationship of the poet’s
words, the experience portrayed in the poem is nuanced with a coldness
that continually effects a distance, returning us to Bloom’s solipsistic
characterization. Much of the diction resists any warm, visceral reaction,
as if forbidding the reader to a�ach him or herself to one meaning or another.
Clearly, the season evoked is cold and inhospitable, for it is “full of
icy shades and shapen snow.” The reader is drawn into the world of the
subject, “one” who “holds off and merely hears the cry.” This holding
“off” distances the reader from the cry; and since the poem constitutes
itself through this cry, the holding off also distances the reader from the
poem. “One” (the reader? the speaker? someone else?) is not allowed to
participate in the cry – we/he/she/it are relegated to the act of “merely”
hearing. It is a cry “concerning someone else,” not “one.” Within these
lines, an odd hierarchical ordering of the senses is evident as well. The
speaker’s reductive “merely” peremptorily dismisses “one[’s]” a�empt
to participate aurally in the cry of the leaves. This dismissal indicates
that the speaker expects a deeper, more active level of participation from
“one.” Here, then, exists yet another paradox: the poem’s diction insists
upon distance, yet the flow of the language demands engagement.
As its paradoxes intensify, the poem reaches its central and climactic
stanza in which (both literally and figuratively) there is a “conflict” and
a “resistance”: “And though one says that one is part of everything, /
There is a conflict, there is a resistance involved” (7-8). This conflict can

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 65
be read in part as a dispute with one of Stevens’ American predecessors,
Walt Whitman, the famous American poet of totality and universality.
Whereas the English romantics strove to demonstrate their oneness with
nature, Whitman simply assumes such a stance: “To me all the converging
objects of the universe perpetually flow, / All are wri�en to me, and I
must get what the writing means.” 2 Argues Stevens, a speech act is not
enough: “though one says that one is part of everything there is a conflict”
(my italics). Too o�en, poets posit words as a substitution for action, believing
that the simple act of saying is enough. The mastery and control
that Stevens exudes through his diction forcefully refutes this Whitmanesque
claim: “There is a conflict, there is a resistance,” he declares (my
italics). Oddly enough, within this moment of conflict (which is merely
representative of the agitative experience of the poem) there exists a calm
and complete assertion: “One feels the life of that which gives life as it is”
(9). The line does not seek anything or demand anything; it allows itself
simply to be “as it is.” This act of giving and affirming life comes as a
surprise against “icy shades and shapen snow.” There are no demands;
it is simply a quiet observation.
The poem’s middle stanza contains a plethora of words so lacking
in qualification that the words’ meanings become empty and hollow.
“There is a conflict, there is a resistance involved; / And being part is an
exertion that declines: / One feels the life of that which gives life as it is”
(7-9). “Conflict” and “resistance,” both words expressing assertive oppositions,
are strengthened in their presumption by the declarative “there
is” that precedes each. The almost violent sensation evoked by these
words is modified in the following line by “exertion” which indicates
an internal individual effort rather than an external struggle. However,
the diction’s urgency is constantly truncated by Stevens’ refusal to satisfy
the propositions within his language. The conflict and resistance are
“involved,” but in what? “Part” would imply the existence of a whole,
in which “being” can partake; yet no whole is presented. And the “exertion”
“declines,” but to where, and into what? The only choice that we
have as readers is to refer all of these words back to the “everything” that
one would claim to be part of. Remaining true to his style, the referent
that Stevens offers is the most ambiguous word of the poem. “Everything”
is a generality too vague to be defined, and consequently mimics
the “nothingness” of the first stanza.
Stevens’ prolific use of pronouns further complicates the meaning of

66
T�� H�������� J������
the poem and enhances the play between nothing and everything. Pronouns
serve to designate an already known object without naming it.
However, Stevens’ use of pronouns does not restrict itself to such rules.
Rather, he uses pronouns as though they were nouns with definitive
meaning a�ached. “It is still full of icy shades…,” “It is a busy cry…,”
“…that which gives life as it is…,” “It is not a cry of divine a�ention…,”
“It is the cry of leaves…,” “…in the thing / Itself…” (1, 5, 9, 10, 12, 14-15;
my italics). In every situation in which a pronoun is used, the pronoun
has the ability to mean something different. However, “it” refers essentially
to the same noun throughout the poem (the cry). Such layering
of ambiguity upon certainty echoes the inability of the poem to decide
whether it is one of being or becoming.
Another means through which the speaker ensures distance between
the reader and his poem is through the modulation of the meaning of the
poem created by words with ambiguous literal meaning. A primary example
of this is “cry,” first seen in the opening line of the poem: “Today
the leaves cry” (1). A cry is a spontaneous expression of emotion; it can
signify happiness, surprise, pain, grief, terror, sadness, etc. The intensity
implied by the word “cry” is consistent throughout these emotions, suggesting
the importance of the visceral nature of this reaction. Literally,
of course, the “cry” of the leaves occurs because they are “hanging on
branches swept by wind” -- it is the rustle of leaves against one another.
Although this sound has been referred to as the “cry of the leaves” (my
italics) for purposes of exploring the meaning of “cry,” such an analysis
ignores the active construction of the phrase: “The leaves cry.” The leaves
are performing a definitive action; they are not simply producing a sound
under the agency of another. We might expect a reason for the leaves’ action
to follow, yet the poem that springs from this line refuses the fulfilling
act of justification, emptying out instead into an absence of reason.
Furthermore, the versatile “cry” embodies the tension and indecision
within the poem. Stevens’ poetry is self-conscious; he is highly
aware of poetry as a constructive act. Against this very non-oral/aural
genre, the “cry” stands out as if it were an actual u�erance. The cry is
a verbal evocation of a liminal state between feeling and meaning. It
indicates a sound that is inarticulate and a sense that is incoherent: the
feeling behind the cry drives the noise towards meaning. Symbolic of an
American poet’s struggle to create a place for himself in a new world, the
meaning functions as a limit that the cry is forever approaching and is

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unable to reach.
What, then, is the speaker’s obsession with the leaves and their cry?
Appropriately, considering the poem’s general indecision, the significance
of leaves’ “cry” develops within the space of what they are not and
what they are lacking. “The leaves cry. It is not a cry of divine a�ention,
/ Nor the smoke-dri� of puffed-out heroes, nor human cry. / It is
the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves” (10-12). A�er several
negations, the poet is finally able to say what the cry is: “It is the cry of
leaves that do not transcend themselves.” Although this line is offered
as a declarative, even this qualification is that which the leaves are not.
“It is the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves.” The negating
quality of this statement generates more questions than answers. Do the
leaves cry because they do not transcend themselves? Are the leaves able
to transcend themselves? Is this simply the cry that leaves which cannot
transcend themselves are forced to make? And what would it mean
for leaves to transcend themselves? Transcendence is the act of passing
beyond or above, becoming independent of, exceeding. If the leaves
were to reach a state of transcendence they would become independent
of themselves and have no need for themselves. However, they do not,
and probably cannot, transcend themselves; they, like the poem, and like
America, need and seek meaning.
Despite a need for meaning, the poem’s consistent generation of
significance from within negation suggests a fear of, and a flight from,
meaning. The final sentence is a layering of negative upon negative: “It
is the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves, / In the absence of
fantasia, without meaning more / Than they are in the final finding of
the ear, in the thing / Itself, until, at last, the cry concerns no one at all”
(12-15). “Do not,” “absence,” “without,” “no one,” – the speaker insists
upon the leaves’ inability to be, to accept “life as it is.” However, the diction
of lack in these final lines proves to be more full than it would have
seemed. “Absence” implies that there once was presence – it is more than
just “nothingness.” “Without meaning more” suggests that some level of
meaning does exist. Finally, “no one” is not an exclusive negative. The
space between “no” and “one” is of resounding importance; it does not
negate presence entirely, merely the presence of a specific “one.” Rather
than foreclosing existence, the poem’s ending allows the cry’s meaning to
resonate for all.
The cry is the space in which language and meaning meet. Its re-

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ality and actuality cannot be denied, but the “meaning” that resonates
from it exists in an ever-interpretive condition. By admi�ing its own
limitations, however, the poem achieves a far greater meaning and significance.
Meaning must always be subject to reinterpretation, for it is
in this way that it remains true to life. Consequently, Stevens’ refusal to
control the meaning of his poem directly exposes what Bloom refers to as
“the essential solipsism of our native strain.” Much of the poem’s “fear of
meaning” can be read as a refusal to depend upon other entities for significance.
However, the solipsistic shell of the poem is, as has been seen,
intrinsically connected to the cry, to the conflict at the poem’s center, a
cry that has the potential concern “no one” and “no one” in the same moment.
Within this cry, then, we find the nuance that necessarily expands
Bloom’s characterization: as the cry perpetually defines and redefines itself
in the liminal space of the poem, it demonstrates that “the course of
a particular” poem, and of a particular life, is to exclude neither being or
becoming, neither significance or solipsism, but rather to embrace both.
Endnotes
1 Wallace Stevens, ed. And intro by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers,
1985. 12.
2 Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.” Leaves of Grass. Ed. Sculley Bradley and Harold W.
Blodge�. New York: Norton and Company, 1973. p. 47, 404-405.

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Percevalian Mediaevalism
In Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
“All characters…are seekers.” 1
Erin Tremblay
Haverford College Class of 2004
Contemporary author Jeane�e Winterson’s novel Oranges Are Not the
Only Fruit explores the coming-of-age and coming-out of a young girl
adopted into an evangelical Pentecostal English household. To cra� her
autobiographical novel, Winterson interweaves memoir, fantasy, fable,
fairy tale, medieval romance, and an organizing biblical chapter schema.
Such an array of fictional intertextualities working with(in) the overarching
autobiographical model proves to be a complex and compelling approach
to telling personal narrative. In this paper, we will focus on one
particular narrative strategy and intertextuality which emerges explicitly
four times toward the novel’s end when Winterson reworks the legend of
Sir Perceval and his quest for the Holy Grail. 2 In Oranges, the Percevalian
tale functions as a mythic identity or model for Jeane�e’s life—from her
familial beginnings to her elected and exiled status to her quest toward
sel�ood and authorship. We will draw not only from the medieval myth
as presented by Winterson, but also as originally introduced by twel�hcentury
romancier Chrétien de Troyes in Perceval ou le Roman du Graal.
Consequently, this paper will differ from other studies which have examined
Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur as the primarily Percevalian
intertext in Oranges.
Percevalian mediævalism serves as a means of exploring self, identity
and personal psychology in Oranges, for Sir Perceval’s legendary life
becomes in many respects a mirror for Jeane�e’s experiences and journey.
The parallelism is established early, as the mythic chevalier and Jea-

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ne�e share a strikingly similar ontological genesis. Both are molded by
the influence of, on the one hand, a dominant mother figure and, on the
other, an absent father. Chrétien alludes to the formative role of Perceval’s
widow mother: “Lors le fils de la veuve se leva dans la Gaste Forêt
solitaire” [“at daybreak there arose a boy/ who was a widowed lady’s
child”] (Chrétien 34/5). 3 Raised in such social isolation, the impressionable
Perceval imbibes his mother’s Catholic imaginary and her cosmology
of a world filled with angels and devils. Having assimilated this
worldview without understanding it, the boy mistakes “cinq chevaliers
armés” [“five armed knights”] in the forest for devils, “les plus laides
choses du monde” [“the vilest things on earth”], and then instead for
angels and even God (35-36/6-7). In a world both perilous and merveilleux,
Perceval’s mother seeks to protect her son in a safe and controlled
physical and social space. Her exclamation upon hearing of this episode
in the forest reveals her intentions and fears: “Beau fils, je croyais si bien
vous tenir éloigné de la chevalerie que jamais vous n’en auriez entendu
parler!” [“I had expected,/ sweet son, that you could be protected/ so perfectly
from chivalry/ that you would never hear or see/ one thing about
it”] (41/14).
Like Perceval, Jeane�e is raised largely in cultural isolation. The
girl’s mother a�empts to keep her safe from the reach of the “Enemies,”
a list which includes “The Devil (in his many forms),” “Next Door,” “Sex
(in its many forms),” “school” (also referred to as “a Breeding Ground”),
and “Unnatural Passion” (Winterson 3, 37, 89). The dominating force of
the mother’s character leaves no room for a (human) father, a man who
is sometimes referred to impersonally as “her husband” (5). The marginalization
of paternal influence and authority is humorously suggested in
the novel’s incipit when Jeane�e explains her arrival in the family: “We
had no Wise men because [my mother] didn’t believe there were any wise
men...” (3). Jeane�e’s adoption further underscores the irrelevance of the
father who, like the biblical Joseph, has no real blood familial claim to
the child. “[A]n easy-going man,” Jeane�e’s father passively fades away
from the central narrative plot (5). Hence, as with Perceval, the mother
plays the formative role, imparting her view of a world fraught with
heathens, devils, merveilles, and enchantements as real as those of the
mediæval tale.
In an implied extension of the Holy Family analogy, Jeane�e’s adoptive
mother is paired with Mary. The girl explains: “She had a mysterious

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a�itude towards the bege�ing of children; it wasn’t that she couldn’t do
it, more that she didn’t want to do it. She was very bi�er about the Virgin
Mary ge�ing there first” (Winterson 3). The mother hence se�les for the
adoption and molding of a model child. The description of Jeane�e’s
personal creation, emphasized by its indented poetic form on the page of
prose, is thus asexual and intellectual, echoing the Old Testament YHWH
speaking creation into being or the Johannine Word-made-Flesh:
Her flesh now, sprung from her head.
Her vision.
Not the jolt beneath the hip bone, but water and the word. (10)
The biblical narrative schema used to make ontological sense of
Jeane�e’s creation, reflected by the chapter title “Genesis,” positions the
child in a christic light. She is capable of, and (pre)destined for, great
things. Jeane�e’s mother, seeking to fashion “a missionary child, a servant
of God,” impresses upon the girl the gravity of her vocation:
We stood on the hill and my mother said, ‘This world is full of
sin.’
We stood on the hill and my mother said, ‘You can change the
world.’ (10).
This sense of destiny, internalized early on by Jeane�e, highlights
a second major point of convergence with the mythic Perceval, that is,
the status as elect. In Perceval ou le Roman du Graal, even the sheltering
mother admits to her son’s predestination or quasi-divine mission: “Vous
serez bientôt chevalier, s’il plaît à Dieu et je le crois” [“soon you will be a
knight,/ God willing; I am sure I’m right”] (Chrétien 43/17). The pairing
of Jeane�e with Perceval further suggests that election is not determined
or limited by familial inheritance or by sexual and gender identity. For
although she may not fully understand her status as adopted, female,
and homosexual, the girl is aware of these identities early on and insists
upon her uniqueness and privilege, saying, “I cannot recall a time when
I did not know that I was special” (Winterson 3).
Nonetheless, election does not simply imply personal glory or destined
triumph, but rather risk, loss, loneliness, and exile, a third narrative
parallel linking Perceval and Jeane�e. The trajectories followed by Perceval
in both the mediæval romance and this contemporary novel reveal
that both authors understand the implications of an elected status. The
elect is drawn into an unknown world to explore not in hopes of glory,
but for “his own sake, nothing more” (174). For Chrétien’s Perceval, exile,

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however self-induced it may be, involves first cleavage with the mother.
Perceval’s decision to disobey his mother’s advice upon encountering the
five-armed knights, fighting rather than making the Sign of the Cross,
foreshadows the mother-son separation (Chrétien 35). The next development
in this progressive detachment is Perceval’s decision to leave home
to join King Arthur’s knights. As Chrétien explains, his mother’s dissuasion
is in vain: “La mère le retient comme elle peut…Mais plus de
trois jours elle ne peut le faire demeurer” [“He stayed there only three
more days,/ and a�erwards, although she pleaded, her tears and coaxing
went unheeded”] (43/16-17). Perhaps the chasm is definitively marked
by the symbolic passage in which Sir Gorneman de Gorhaut persuades
Perceval to cast of “les habits que…fit [s]a mère” [“the garments [his]
Mother sewed [him]”]. Shedding the maternal influence and protective
cloak that enveloped him, Perceval chooses instead to dress himself in the
garments offered by his new mentor (63/47).
In Winterson’s reworking of the Perceval myth, based in part on Sir
Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, the young knight “transfers” the
maternal relationship to King Arthur (Cossle� 15, 20). His sense of loss
and separation results from his decision to leave Arthur, the fellowship
of knights, and the utopian Camelot community in which he enjoyed a
respected position. Winterson expresses the sense of regret which accompanies
Perceval’s departure: “[H]e dreams of Arthur’s court, where
he was the darling, the favourite” (Winterson 135). Arthur, however,
reciprocally experiences the sadness, for Perceval notes “the king’s sorrowing
face” upon leaving (166). If Arthur replaces the mother figure
for Winterson’s Perceval, this image of the king’s suffering calls to mind
a comparable distress in Chrétien’s original version, in which the mother
essentially dies of a broken heart caused by the loss of her son (Chrétien
99, 157).
Jeane�e’s narrative parallels this departure from the will of the overbearing
mother and the ensuing acute loss, a development reflected by
the second chapter title, “Exodus.” As critic and mediævalist Carla Ann
Arnell explains, Jeane�e, like Perceval, “ventures out of the garden of
maternal care and bibliculture”; this “la�er-day Eve” moves out of “a
garden of innocence, where all things are named by the maternal keeper
of the garden” (Arnell 51). Refusing to be the missionary her mother
desires, Jeane�e breaks the mold cast for her to discover her own sense of
mission and identity. Her understanding of her election as “called to be

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apart” differs from that of her mother and church and leads to ultimate
separation (Winterson 43). Jeane�e’s defiance plays on the Edenic topos,
since the so-called transgression causing the rupture with mother and
church is her lesbian relationship with a young woman named Melanie.
One particular exchange between the two characters stresses the symbolic
significance of her first lover’s name:
‘Melanie,’ I plucked up courage to ask at last, ‘why do you have such
a funny name?’
She blushed. ‘When I was born I looked like a melon.’ (83)
The passage likens Jeane�e’s “sin” to the tasting of the forbidden
Edenic apple which modern authors o�en transmogrify, for example,
as the more sensual, lush, and fragrant « pêche mûre » [“ripe peach”]
of Julien Gracq’s reworking of the Perceval legend in Au Château d’Argol
(Gracq 75). Furthermore, the passage negates the mother’s insistence that
oranges are “the only fruit,” a leitmotiv emphasized throughout the text
and by the title and epigraph (Winterson 29).
Jeane�e’s desire, which in her innocence she views as “pure,” provokes
an unexpected interrogation in which she affirms her love before
her evangelical pastor and congregation:
‘I love her.’
‘Then you do not love the Lord.’
‘Yes, I love both of them.’
‘You cannot.’ (105)
The church’s condemnation, its a�empts to heal Jeane�e of her “unnatural
passions and…mark of the demon,” and its ultimate rejection of
the young woman mirror the reactions of Jeane�e’s mother, for like her
adoptive family, “the church was [her] family, too” (105, 37). Just as Perceval
parts from his mother, Arthur, and the community of the Round
Table, so Jeane�e must part ways physically, emotionally, and spiritually
with her mother and the church family. The narrator explains: “My
mother wanted me to move out, and she had the backing of the pastor
and most of the congregation, or so she said. I made her ill, made the
house ill, brought evil into the church” (127). Although the correlation
is not exact, the last part of this passage suggests again the image of Perceval
who, in visiting the Fisher King but failing to ask the anticipated
questions, prolongs the king’s illness and the kingdom’s decline.
In a Village Voice interview, Winterson emphasized her interest in
such characters moving in marginalized and liminal spaces: “‘I always

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write about outsiders. All my characters are exiles, people on the margins…who
are in fact interesting and special and have their own way of
looking at the world” (Anshaw 17). This outsider status, which seems
paradoxically both predetermined and willingly adopted, initiates Jeane�e
and Perceval into a period of journey and errantry. In this respect,
as stories of formative and spiritual development, Perceval and Oranges
share in the tradition of the Bildungsroman.
A common thread uniting the development of the Bildungs-heros
is the exploration of personal identity, although literal and figurative
ba�les such as that against the nefarious Other, e.g., “l’Orgueilleux de la
Lande”[“the Proud Knight of the Moor”], who must be fought along the
way (Chrétien 106/108). Along the path of discovery, Perceval explores
his new role and identity. He learns the duties and proper comportment
of a chevalier with respect to maidens such as the Demoiselle de la Tente
or to his fellow members of Round Table. Furthermore, he discovers a
new modus operandi not based on reckless force but instead on a certain
sensitivity (toward, for example, Blanchefleur) as well as a capacity for
silent contemplation (e.g. of the three drops of blood on the snow).
Although the rather bleak and industrial landscape of Oranges does
not depict the same evocative primæval geography as does Chrétien’s Perceval,
Jeane�e no less represents a twentieth-century knight-errant whose
metaphorical peregrinations can be construed as interior. Like Perceval,
she must ‘do ba�le’ against the demons and doubts which plague her
and which are symbolized by the “orange demon” that appears when
her mother locks her in a dark room (Winterson 108). In the course of
her development, the embedding of the mythic knight’s journey within
the overarching narrative provides Jeane�e with a means of acting out
her own emotional drama which closely matches that of Perceval: guilt
and remorse, fear and uncertainty, and delight and discovery. The Percevalian
tale also allows the narrator to explore the unnamable compelling
force driving her onward. She writes: “Perceval could have turned
back…[T]he woods were wild and forlorn, and he did not know where
he was, or even what had driven him there” (166). Likewise, Jeane�e is
“always thinking of going back” but realizes such a return is impossible
if she does not want to “lose herself” like “Lot’s wife” (160). In this way,
mythic tale provides a mirror and a vast network of images, symbols, and
interpretive lenses with which Jeane�e can examine her life. In addition,
as Arnell points out, the narrator “creat[es] a dream self who is linked to

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her spiritual psychology, but free from her autobiographical destiny and,
therefore, potentially self-liberating” (Arnell 35). Percevalian legend
thus provides not simply a parallel for Jeane�e’s life, but also the hope of
another realizable life paradigm.
Moreover, a narratological reading of Jeane�e and Perceval’s processes
of self-discovery reveals that each character learns to become a
subject and to create his/her own narration. The previously discussed
detachment from the mother implies that the two protagonists step outside
the constructed parental narration which dominated and determined
their life trajectories. This development is perhaps clearer in the case of
Oranges, which also presents itself as a Künstlerroman, or story about
an artist’s formation (Benson Brown 215). In distancing herself from the
voice and desires of her mother, Jeane�e moves into her real vocation as
prophet:
I could have been a priest instead of a prophet. The priest
has a book with the words set out. Old words, known words,
words of power…The prophet has no book. The prophet is
a voice that cries in the wilderness, full of sounds that do not
always set into meaning. The prophets cry out because they
are troubled by demons. (Winterson 161)
Before she can step into her authorial role, Jeane�e must discover her
voice as speaking subject whose words cannot be pre-scribed because the
prophet points to the future, to paths yet to be navigated.
This process of finding one’s words is not so dissimilar from the maturation
of Perceval, who is originally described as lacking sense and who
progresses to the point where he is capable of guessing his own name
(Chrétien 39). Chrétien writes: “Et lui, qui son nom ne savait, soudain le
connut et lui dit que c’est PERCEVAL LE GALLOIS” [“Not knowing his
real name at all,/ he guessed his name was Perceval/ of Wales and said
so”] (99/98-99). Although it may seem a peculiar or incongruent detail,
the act of naming has been since the days of Adam quite significant, for as
Winterson explains, “Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process;
it concerns essences, and it means power” (Winterson 170). Perceval,
then, asserts power over his self. This act of inspired or prophetic divination
is necessary because Perceval’s mother addressed him as “beau
fils” (literally, “beautiful son”), thereby allowing him only to exist and be
named in relation to her rather than as an autonomous being (e.g. Chré-

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tien 45). The hermit in Chrétien’s romance later confirms Perceval’s capacity
to understand the significance of the naming act when he confers
upon the knight “une certaine prière [qui] contenait beaucoup des noms
du Seigneur Dieu, parmi les plus puissants, et que nulle bouche humaine
ne doit prononcer” [“Such potent forms of Our Lord’s name/ were in
this prayer, so great and many,/ no one should u�er it”] (159/175). Thus,
like Jeane�e, Perceval journeys toward an understanding of the power of
naming, of words, and of prophetic self-authorship.
Closely related to the creation of the subject and personal narration
is the fact that both characters progressively learn how to “read,” to interpret
signs and signification skillfully. Perceval must first learn the meaning
and purpose of a chevalier to surpass his original ignorance: “Chevalier?
Je ne connais personne ainsi nommé! Jamais je n’en ai vu” [“I haven’t
met a knight before/...nor seen one”] (36/8). He also discovers the need
to interpret the advice of his mother and Gorneman and to formulate
important and necessary questions. Such questions would allow him to
understand Blanchefleur be�er, to treat her with courtoisie and to restore
health and prosperity to the Fisher King (70, 43, 47, 93, 120). In learning
to interpret signs and to speak up appropriately and confidently, Perceval
steps progressively into his new identity.
Jeane�e follows a related trajectory. In order to understand—to better
name—her identity as lesbian, she must first learn the meaning of
homosexuality, from which her upbringing shielded her. Jeane�e’s world
is fraught with “signs and wonders” to interpret, such as the gypsy who
reads in her palm that she will never marry or the lesbian paper shop
owners who ask Jeane�e “if [she’d] like to go to the seaside with them,”
an invitation the mother promptly forbids (Winterson 17, 13). Critic Amy
Benson-Brown comments that the la�er scene plays on the connection
between sexuality and textuality explored by both Jeane�e persona and
the authorial Winterson: “Significantly, Jeane�e’s first encounter with a
potential lesbian community is at a ‘paper shop,’ later referred to as ‘the
forbidden paper shop’ (Oranges 77). By some symbolic slippage, paper
itself carries the connotation of forbidden fruit” (Benson Brown 215).
Hence, like the legendary knight, Jeane�e must learn to read the world
around. This linkage in Oranges between identity and textuality calls
to mind the “oral textuality” of Perceval’s pre-paper world; when the
chevalier conquers an enemy, he sends the vanquished back to Arthur’s
court to recount the story. Furthermore, the unfinished nature of Chré-

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tien de Troyes’s textual Perceval legend catalyzed (and continues to inspire)
myriad continuations, reinterpretations, and textual explorations
of Perceval’s identity and story.
Moreover, Jeane�e, much like Perceval, must learn to speak again.
The protagonist learns to question her adoptive mother’s ontological and
cosmological stories and absolute truths which teach that there is only
one way to read and to taste life, a view made manifest by the mother’s
insistence that “[o]ranges are the only fruit” (Winterson 29). When Jeane�e’s
church cites Saint Paul and forbids her from the very preaching
it once encouraged, the young woman is silenced and forced to find her
voice again. She must realize that, as a woman, her threatening “success
in the pulpit” is actually “the reason for [her] downfall” (134). In a proclamation
before the congregation, her mother makes clear that sexual orientation
and desire are a cover for the crux of the ma�er, that is, a woman
overstepping gender roles and boundaries:
My mother stood up and said…that women had specific circumstances
for their ministry, that the Sunday School was one
of them…but the message belonged to the men…She ended
by saying that having taken on a man’s world in other ways I
had flouted God’s law and tried to do it sexually. (133-134)
Jeane�e’s trajectory—speaking, being silenced, and finding her voice
again—calls to mind not only the development of Perceval, but also that
of Chrétien’s heroines in Cligès and Erec et Enide. Hence, both Perceval
and Oranges emerge as stories about writing, reading, and speaking one’s
own personal narrative. Benson Brown explains Jeane�e’s personal,
sexual and authorial development: “[T]hat subject, that identity, is not
immediately readable, and the resulting difficulties of interpretation and
representation fuel a…recurrent type of narrative in Oranges: the hermeneutical
tale, or story about language and story making” (Benson Brown
210-211).
The themes of exile and errantry seem to suggest, however, that Perceval
and Jeane�e are seeking something more than affirmation as autonomous
subjects. For, as described by Winterson, Sir Perceval is “begged”
not to leave Camelot by King Arthur who “knew this was no ordinary
quest” (Winterson 128; my italics). Is there indeed a telos to this questing,
an exploit to accomplish or an object to obtain? The case of Perceval
implies that both the path (personal and spiritual development) and its

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end (the Grail) are of importance. Although the Grail is described as a
serving pla�er, “un graal…fait de l’or le plus pur” [“grail/...of purest,
finest gold”] and of precious stones, its precise nature and significance
are never revealed (Chrétien 92/89). The Grail comes to symbolize peace,
healing and wisdom, as such human ideals will result from the questions
Perceval must pose regarding the Grail. Winterson’s version of the
myth further suggests the balance, peace and life-giving creativity that
the Graal bestows upon its seekers; she writes: “[Perceval] would speak
of the Grail, but not of his reason for seeking it. He had seen the vision
of perfect heroism and, for a fleeting moment, the vision of perfect peace.
He sought it again, to balance him. He was a warrior who longed to grow
herbs” (Winterson 166). This striking image and apparent paradox of a
warrior who longs to grow herbs calls to mind the biblical image of Judah
and Jerusalem beating “swords into plowshares” and thus suggests the
sacredness of the Grail and the ultimate peace it grants to its seekers. 4
In Oranges, another ideal associated with the Grail is perfect and
“pure” love (64, 105). In this vein, Arnell suggests that “Jeane�e’s own
quest is a romance in the most literal sense, for it is the story of the love
affair between Jeane�e and Katy,” with whom Jeane�e forms a couple
at the story’s conclusion. She adds: “Yet their romance finds fulfillment
in a quest end that is similar to the one Perceval envisions: creativity
and healing” (Arnell 86). However, the reader is cautioned by another
embedded narration—this time a fairy tale in which a prince seeks the
perfect wife—not to equate perfection with “flawlessness,” but rather
with “balance” and “harmony” (61, 64). A wise and fair woman warns
the prince: “What you want does not exist…What does exist lies in the
sphere of your own hands” (66). This tale thus overturns the concluding
line of the sermon that the narrator hears and recounts just before introducing
the fairy tale, that is, “Perfection…is flawlessness’” (60). Thus,
an una�ainable or otherworldly object or state of being is not necessary,
but rather a shi� of consciousness, as is needed by Perceval who sees the
Grail before his very eyes without recognizing its splendor and significance
(Chrétien 92-93).
In a brief passage in which she returns to garden imagery, Winterson
further fleshes out the significance of the Grail to include exploration of
passion and sensuality as well as the realization of love. She writes: “All
true quests end in this garden, where the split fruit pours forth blood
and the halved fruit is a full bowl for travelers and pilgrims” (Winterson

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123). In a thoughtful analysis that considers this passage’s varied elements,
Arnell writes:
[T]he erotic symbolism herein intersects with traditional
symbolism for both biblical and grail mythology…In a skillful
inversion of the Eden story, the narrator suggests that it
is eating of the fruit of this tree…of love rather than knowledge,
that heals…Winterson seems to be connecting the fruit
“bowl”…with the grail of medieval legend, which was seen
as a “dish” or “cup.” (Arnell 87)
Indeed, the bowl-grail coupling is significant, since from its inception
in Chrétien de Troyes’s romance, the Grail has represented an object
that carries or contains physical and spiritual nourishment. Perceval, Oranges,
and the mediæval legend within the la�er story present diverse
interpretations of the Grail to which questing tends. Nevertheless, such
readings are related in their sensitivity toward human ideals such as
peace, healing, harmony, and love.
Although allusions are made to the ultimate physical and metaphorical
Grail in both stories, both characters’ quests remain unresolved.
Chrétien’s text ends unfinished, probably because of the author’s death,
and Winterson’s denouement leaves the tension suspended between Jeane�e
and her mother and church community. Likewise, the Percevalian
quest as described by Winterson remains incomplete. In her article
on Orange’s intertextualities, Tess Cossle� remarks: “Perceval’s final vision
of the Grail is…le� out: we see him only in the process of questing.
This…emphasizes the unclosed nature of Winterson’s ending” (Cossle�
20). One could read such endings as unsatisfactory, as evidently did the
many authors inspired to continue Chrétien’s romance. Such a tendency
reflects a human desire for the quest to be finished, the deed accomplished,
and the reward a�ained. However, Chrétien and Winterson’s
compelling endings seem to communicate that the Grail is something
to be discovered in the process and the journey, rather than an ultimate
prize.
In this paper, we have examined the myriad ways in which the mythic
Perceval serves as a mirror and model for Jeane�e’s identity and story in
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: her genesis, personal cosmology, election,
exile, errantry, and development as subject, speaker, sign-reader, and
quester. But what is the effect or the result of this mélange of personal

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narrative and legend? Does Winterson’s use of Percevalian mediævalism
call into question the definition, methods, and limits of the autobiographical
genre? For by a creating a “collage” of personal narrative, legend,
and other forms, Winterson “interrupt[s] the ‘straight’ or mainly chronological
narrative” (Benson Brown 210). In deviating from the “straight,”
the author dismisses the trodden and expected narrative path and heterocentric
discourse, as well as and the fundamentalist “straight and narrow”
road. She thereby rejects the idea of one single lens through which
to understand and read the world, as well as the traditional privileging
of history (“real,” “objective”) over story (“make-believe,” “subjective”).
Rather, she suggests that the self and the world can be best represented
and understood through mythology, imagination, and subjectivity. For
as Jeane�e’s friend “Testifying Elsie” wisely observes: “[T]here’s more to
this world than meets the eye” (Winterson 32). Or as Winterson herself
notes in a subtle apology for her narrative style: “‘There’s no such thing
as autobiography, there’s only art and lies” (cited in Arnell 40).
Endnotes
1 Elisabeth Brewer and Beverly Taylor, The Return of King Arthur: British and American
Arthurian Literature Since 1800, cited on page 31 of Arnell’s “Medieval Illuminations.”
2 To avoid confusion, I will use “Winterson” to refer to the extra-diegetic author and
“Jeane�e” for the diegetic narrator and character.
3 All second page citations of Perceval refer to Ruth Harwood Cline’s translation.
4 Isaiah 2:4, also Micah 4:3.
Works Cited
Anshaw, Carol. “Into the Mystic: Jeane�e Winterson’s Fable Manners.” Village Voice Literary
Supplement 86 (June 1990): 16-17.
Arnell, Carla Ann. “Medieval Illuminations: Pa�erns of Medievalism in the Fiction of
Jeane�e Winterson, Iris Murdoch, and John Fowles.” Dissertation, Northwestern University,
1999.
Benson Brown, Amy. “Inverted Conversations: Reading the Bible and Writing the Lesbian
Subject in Jeane�e Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.” Reclaiming the Sacred:
The Bible in Gay and Lesbian Culture, Second Edition. Ed. Raymond-Jean Frontain. New York:
Harrington Park Press, 2003.
The Bible. Tran. NIV. [URL: www.biblegateway.org].
Chrétien de Troyes. Perceval or, The Story of the Grail. Tran. Ruth Harwood Cline. New
York: Pergamon Press, 1983
—Perceval ou Le Roman du Graal. Paris: Gallimard, 1974.

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 81
Cossle�, Tess. “Intertexuality in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: The Bible, Malory, and
Jane Eyre.” ‘I’m telling you stories’: Jeane�e Winterson and the Politics of Reading. Ed.Helena
Grice and Tim Woods. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998.
Gracq, Julien. Au Château d’Argol. Paris : José Corti, 1938.
Winterson, Jeane�e. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. New York: The Atlantic Monthly
Press, 1985.

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Bayard Rustin
On His Own Terms
Rachel Moston
Haverford College Class of 2004
Introduction
On Wednesday, November 20, 2002, three hundred fi�y people gathered
in the Stetson Middle School Auditorium in West Chester, Pennsylvania
to discuss whether or not a new high school should be named in
honor of Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), a West Chester native, peace activist,
and civil rights strategist. The three and a half hour meeting began with
the comments of an African American longtime resident of West Chester:
“I grew up in this town. Back then I couldn’t swim in the YMCA pool
or sit down at the movies. These were the things Bayard tried to get rid
of. He was such a beautiful person. He didn’t only try to make things
be�er in West Chester but he traveled the world doing wonderful things
wherever he went.” 1 Another resident spoke two hours later: “Choosing
a name for this school is about naming it a�er someone we want our children
to be proud of. Rustin was gay . . . a disgrace to America. I heard
one of you homosexuals in here mention something before about God.
God didn’t invent Adam and Adam. He invented Adam and Eve. So
don’t you people start using God as your pardoning material.” 2
More than fi�een years a�er his death, Bayard Rustin still engendered
a virtual split among the West Chester community. Se�ing friend
against friend and neighbor against neighbor, he aroused the deepest and
ugliest of human sentiments. How-in the same night-could Rustin be
deemed both a “devil” and a “saint?” And, most importantly, how could
a man who received such li�le public acclaim and acceptance throughout
his lifetime single-handedly rock an entire community?
According to Dorothy Steere, a twentieth century Quaker pacifist,
“Bayard Rustin was a beautiful black figure—both inside and out.” 3 As a
member of the Religious Society of Friends, he lived his life in harmony
within the Quaker principles of peace, nonviolence, love and equality.

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His personal philosophy developed from pure and simple beliefs: “If
I do not see other people as sacred, then I do not see them at all”; “The
only way to reduce ugliness in the world is by reducing it in yourself”;
“If you don’t have compassion for everyone, then you end up having
compassion for none.” 4
Throughout fi�y years of social activism, Rustin made inestimable
contributions to both the radical pacifist and civil rights movements. As
a spokesperson for the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the War Resisters
League, Rustin captivated his audiences, challenged their thinking,
charmed them with his semi-clipped British accent, and o�en persuaded
them. 5 As an organizer, strategist, and pioneer in the use of Gandhian
civil disobedience, he was one of the most influential black protest leaders
in the twentieth century. 6 Through his work with A. Philip Randolph
and Martin Luther King Jr., Rustin injected Gandhian nonviolence into
the heart of the struggle for racial equality. 7 According to historian John
D’Emilio, “To survey the landscape of social activism in post-World War
II America is like writing a synopsis of [Rustin’s] biography.” 8
However, Bayard Rustin remains today “one of history’s forgo�en
men.” 9 With the exception of a handful of writings, Rustin has been strikingly
absent from the histories of post-1945 social activism. 10 How could
this be? Why has Rustin’s historical significance been so diluted and obscured?
Why has a man of such moral strength been castigated, robbed
of his well-deserved acclaim, and cheated out of his proper legacy? And
fi�een years a�er his death, how could the prospect of his name on a
building divide an entire community?
Some years before he died, in the summer of 1987, Bayard Rustin
mentioned to his dear friend, Sheldon Weeks, “I’ve belonged to every
minority group possible-communist, socialist, radical pacifist, Quaker,
black, homosexual.” 11 According to sociologist Anthony Monteiro, “At
any point throughout American history this is a dangerous combination.”
12 Rustin was a Communist during the McCarthy era; He was a gay
man in a fiercely homophobic age, and he was an imprisoned conscientious
objector during a time when men were expected to fight and die for
their country. The controversy occasioned by Rustin’s associations did
not die with him in 1987. Rather, Bayard Rustin - gay, black, Communist,
and pacifist - still continues to challenge many contemporary societal
norms and values. Thus, among the overwhelmingly white, conservative,
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
“Let’s Look to Bayard Rustin for Inspiration,” Moneteiro claimed:
Rustin’s blackness and gayness pose serious challenges to
the racial and sexual values of the American middle class
then and now. Black masculinity in its heterosexual or homosexual
expressions does not sit well with many people in
the white middle class. Add to the mix an outspoken and
assertive confidence, joined to a radical vision of remaking
the world, and Rustin’s memory becomes a li�le too much for
the small-minded. 13
Accordingly, Bayard Rustin’s legacy must be viewed as a byproduct
of his controversial identity. Throughout his career, it forced him out of
the spotlight and behind the scenes of the civil rights movement. A�er
his death, it besmirched his name and memory. This paper will discuss
how Rustin’s controversial character conditioned the reaction of others to
him, defined his identity, molded his career, and tainted his legacy. By
outlining the years from Rustin’s birth in 1912 to the pinnacle of his civil
rights career, the 1963 March on Washington, I hope to assess the devastating
and overarching paradox embracing Rustin’s life—how a man
who selflessly and tirelessly devoted over fi�y years to the nonviolent
struggle for racial equality and social justice could be so marginalized,
vilified, and misunderstood.
Quaker Upbringing
“On September 11th, if there were Quakers on board flight 93, what
would they have done? Sit on their hands? Twiddle their thumbs? Let a
plane land on the White House?”—West Chester Resident, 2002 14
When Bayard Rustin wanted to empathize with troubled youth, he
would sometimes claim he came from a fatherless home. 15 In 1912, his
father, Archie Hopkins, disappeared a�er having a brief relationship
with his mother, fi�een year old Florence Rustin. 16 Consequently, Bayard
was raised by his grandparents, Julia and Janifer Rustin, along with eight
aunts and uncles in West Chester, Pennsylvania. 17 Raised as a member
of the Religious Society of Friends in the late nineteenth century, Julia
worked hard to instill Quaker values of peace, love, and equality in her
children and grandchildren. 18 Although the Rustin family formally be-

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longed to the local Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, all of the
Rustin children were heavily influenced by Quaker principles and ideals.
19
These pure and simple Quaker values served as a strong moral foundation
which later touched every aspect of Rustin’s life and career. In
fact, not long before he died, Rustin wrote, “My activism did not spring
from my being black. Rather, it is rooted fundamentally in my Quaker
upbringing and the values imparted on me. Those values were based on
the concept of a single human family and the belief that all members of
that family are equal.” 20
Although West Chester was not free from racism in the early twentieth
century, discrimination was more benign than it was in other areas of
the United States. Rustin did not experience overt bigotry while a�ending
his integrated high school, West Chester Senior High. Well-liked and
popular, he proved to be a gi�ed tenor, an active member of the French,
science, and history clubs, a star runner and football player, and a valedictorian
of his 1932 graduating class. 21 However, outside of school, he
experienced the harsh brutalities of segregation. Rustin later recalled,
“When I went to the movies with my white friends, I always had to sit
over on the other side.” 22 Choosing to combat the societal ills that directly
contrasted with his Quaker ideals, Rustin led a series of protests
and strikes during his high school years. A former classmate, Oliver Patterson,
remembered, “Bayard’s determination was frightening. But we
looked up to him as our leader. He was the most progressive person of
his age in West Chester. He had a strong inner spirit.” 23
While a�ending Wilberforce University in Ohio from 1932 to 1933,
Bayard Rustin discovered his homosexuality. 24 As he recalled at age
seventy-five, the process of increasing awareness was without trauma,
mostly because of his grandmother’s Quaker tolerance. 25 Throughout his
life, Rustin never tried to conceal his homosexuality. His openness about
his gay lifestyle sprang from a feeling that he was entitled to be whatever
he was, even during a time in America where homosexuality was punishable
by law. 26 Unfortunately, this aspect of Rustin’s identity rested at the
heart of the conflict that ultimately enveloped his life.
In the mid 1930s, Rustin searched for a political cause worthy of his
a�ention. 27 In New York City, he found nothing more a�ractive than the
activities of the Communist movement, “whose soapbox orators were
making an aggressive pitch for black membership.” 28 The Party’s pro-

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gressive stance on issues such as racial injustice initially a�racted Rustin
to the movement. He formally joined the Young Communist League in
1936, believing that the Communists “seemed to be the only people who
had civil rights at heart.” 29 According to Rustin, “they were passionately
involved and I was passionately involved so they were ready-made for
me.” 30
However, in June 1941, when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union,
the Party abruptly shi�ed its focus from civil rights to the war against
Hitler. 31 As a Quaker and pacifist, Rustin’s beliefs now directly conflicted
with party policy. 32 Disillusioned, Rustin broke his ties with the Communist
movement, “and emerged as one of its sterner critics for the rest
of his life.” 33 Years later, others severely exploited and distorted Rustin’s
brief dalliance with the Communist Party in order to discredit his work
and defame his character.
Upon his disillusionment with the Communist Party, Rustin shi�ed
his focus to the predominantly white radical pacifist movement. In 1941,
with the world embroiled in a Second World War, Bayard Rustin started
work for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), the American branch of
an international organization of Christian pacifists. 34 Led by A.J. Muste,
FOR emphasized “total pacifism” as a means for combating war and
“sowing the seeds of peace and love” throughout the world. 35 In September,
1941, Rustin joined the FOR staff as the field secretary for youth and
general affairs. 36 Ordered by Muste to “spread the message” of anti-war
pacifism and to “stimulate the organization of local groups and cells,”
Rustin criss-crossed the United States organizing new pacifists and making
a persuasive case for the radical ideology. 37
In opposition to World War II and racial oppression in America, Rustin
and his fellow radical pacifists of FOR adopted nonviolent direct action
(NVDA), the same tactic that was being utilized at the time in India by
Gandhi and the Indian freedom movement against the British Empire. 38
NVDA differed from pacifism in its roots and principles. While pacifism
was simply a refusal to participate in evils such as war, the originators
of NVDA sought “points of contact where the evil could be actively opposed
and perhaps ended—all without violence and without destroying
the opponent either physically or mentally.” 39 The model was Gandhi’s,
but its adaptation to combat racism in American society was Rustin’s.
In 1941, Rustin compiled a Lesson Plan on Non-Violent Direct Action.
He began by acknowledging that struggle and conflict are present

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in all phases of life and nature. Traditionally, man has used violence to
solve problems. However, he observed, “Non-violent action is not an attempt
to do away with conflict, but a technique for peacefully solving it.
The real choice is between violent and non-violent method.” 40 There are
two fundamental principles upon which faith in non-violent direct action
is based: “The belief that good will is the most powerful and constructive
force at work in human relationships and the belief that progress depends
on changes in man’s a�itude and environment at the same time.” 41
Those who face conflicts with non-violent tactics have three aims: “The
first is to achieve social, economic, or political rain; to so behave during
the struggle as to gain the respect and sympathy of the exploiters; to
gain, by moral integrity, the sympathy and support of third parties and
observers.” 42
According to Rustin, this nonviolent direct action could be employed
whenever there is an area of social tension: “Race discrimination
and prejudice, labor-capital disputes, denial of civil liberties, and suppression
of academic freedom.” 43 In order to achieve necessary unity for
a program of direct action, the basic behavior pa�ern must be as follows:
“Have no fear, tell the truth, admit their guilt, behave creatively, raise the
struggle from a physical to a moral plane.” 44 Lastly, Rustin illustrated the
kinds of direct action that can be used: “They are non-violent strike, economic
boyco�, picketing, non-payment of taxes, mass emigration, noncooperation,
and civil disobedience.” 45
Draft Dodger
“I am against naming it a�er Bayard Rustin, as he was a traitor to
the good old United States of America. If we all had felt this way, Hitler
would have ruled the world.”—West Chester Resident, 2002 46
Late in 1940, when Rustin appeared before a dra� board in Harlem,
he was granted classification as a conscientious objector based on
his membership in the Religious Society of Friends. 47 Under the Dra�
Act of that year, those whom the Selective Service recognized as genuine
conscientious objectors were given three options: enlisting as noncombatants
in the military; performing tasks in civilian works camps; or, upon
refusal of the first two choices, incarceration in federal penitentiaries. In
a le�er wri�en to his Quaker monthly meeting, Rustin encouraged his
fellow Friends to accept the conscientious objector status: “The truth is

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that war is wrong. Friends generally have a ‘peace testimony’ which carries
with it in our larger society certain recognition and rights. Civilian
Public Service, Quaker Emergency Service, and other institutions are our
only options given our long stands on war. We must non-violently deal
with this conflict.” 48
However, almost three years later on November 13, 1943, when Rustin
was ordered by his dra� board to report for physical examination-a
requirement for conscientious objectors about to be assigned for work
in Civilian Public Service Camps-he refused to appear. Changing his
course, he no longer wanted a privilege granted chiefly to religious conscientious
objectors. He felt that if all conscientious objectors - religious
and nonreligious - were not treated equally, he would rather suffer the
penalty of federal imprisonment. 49 In his le�er to the dra� board Rustin
wrote:
For eight years I have believed war to be impractical and a
denial of our Hebrew-Christian tradition. . . These principles
as I see it are violated by participation in war. Believing this, I
was compelled to resist war by registering as a Conscientious
Objector in October, 1940. However, a year later, I became
convinced that conscription as well as war is inconsistent
with the teachings of Jesus. I must resist conscription also.
. . Conscription is inconsistent with freedom of conscience.
It denies brotherhood and separates black from white. Today
I feel that God motivates me to use my whole being to
combat by non-violent means. . . at the same time the State
dictates that I shall do its will; which of these dictates can I
follow—that of God or that of the State? Surely, I must obey
the law of the State. But when the will of God and the will of
the State conflict, I am compelled to follow the will of God. . .
I am prepared for whatever may follow. 50
On January 12, 1944, two months a�er his defiant reply to the dra�
board, Rustin was arrested by a United States Marshal in New York. 51 At
his trial, he was found guilty of violating the Selective Service Act and
sentenced to three years in prison. Eleven days later he was dispatched
to the federal penitentiary in Ashland, Kentucky. 52
While at Ashland, Rustin detested the segregation that existed in
the living and dining accommodations. Seeking to “resist this injustice
nonviolently,” he organized a series of effective nonviolent protests and

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strikes. 53
First he challenged the prison’s policy against interracial visiting. At
Ashland, a locked gate barred blacks on the ground floor from visiting
whites on the floor above. 54 A�er launching a series of protests with the
authorities, he was allowed to fraternize with white conscientious objectors
on the upper floor—but only on Sunday a�ernoons, when they usually
listened to a radio concert by the New York Philharmonic. 55 Despite
Rustin’s success, there were impending consequences he had not anticipated.
A white segregationist on the upper floor, inmate Huddleston,
was particularly enraged by Rustin’s efforts at integration in the prison.
One Sunday morning Rustin wandered to the upstairs to listen to the
radio concert:
Huddleston went to the utility room and got a stick, the size,
in diameter and length, of a mop handle, and came back to
hit Bayard over the head. The boys in the room did not know
what was going on till Huddleston hit Bayard with a mighty
blow. . .They jumped and got between Huddleston and Bayard
asked them to stop, which they did. Huddleston continued
to beat him with the club. 56
A�er the incident, one of the guards sent Rustin downstairs and
closed the gate behind him. Thus, “It looked as though all anyone had
to do was get a club and commit violence and the Administration would
back him up.” 57 However, according to the Ashland Prison Newsle�er,
days later, “Prison warden, E.G. Hagerman, literally apologized to Bayard
for the way the Administration had treated him. He went on to
say that he appreciated the nonviolent response . . . and that as a vote of
confidence . . . he would leave the gate open.” 58 Rustin later described
his pacifist response to Huddleston’s a�ack as “an example to all of the
effectiveness of nonviolent resistance.” 59
Another pointed example of Rustin’s nonviolent resistance occurred
in May, 1944 when he a�empted to counteract segregation in the dining
hall. In the Ashland Prison Newsle�er, inmate Charles Butcher wrote:
As you know, we have segregation in our dining room. It is a
two-fold sort of thing being both divided on the color one and
on the basis of men in quarantine. Last night Bayard went to
the white table. . . An officer asked him to leave. Bayard told
the officer that he could not move voluntarily and asked that

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he be allowed to either talk with someone in authority or take
his tray of food to eat in his cell. The officer said he would
have to move. Bayard said he would not move so the guard
and two other officers tried to drag Bayard out of the dining
room. Several of us got up at this point and said there was
no need to use force on him. A�er they moved Bayard as far
as the exit of the dining room, the officers decided they were
wrong for using force. Days later the Administration closed
the whole incident without punishment and assured us that
they would avoid using force in such situations again. 60
In response to these particular incidents, A.J. Muste wrote in a memo,
“It seems to have been demonstrated that, where violence is met by nonviolence,
positive results are obtained and the violence is effectively kept
in check.” 61
The Turning Point: Pasadena, California and the Aftermath
“What will our district teach our students about Bayard Rustin? The
whole truth? Or just the glorified truth? What will our students say
to outsiders who ask ‘Who is Bayard Rustin?”—West Chester Resident,
2002 62
Until the beginning of the 1950’s, Rustin’s most controversial traits
remained largely within his private life. Although one might think that
the combination of being African American, homosexual, a dra� resister,
a radical pacifist, and a Communist would lead to instant disaster, it was
not until 1953 that Rustin’s controversial background became public.
On January 21, 1953, while Rustin was traveling to promote projects
FOR had been developing in Africa, he was arrested in Pasadena,
California. 63 Discovered while having sex in a parked car with two other
men, Rustin was convicted of violating California’s lewd-vagrancy law
and sentenced to sixty days in a local jail. 64 Since Rustin’s lectures on
the West Coast had to be canceled abruptly, word of his homosexuality
quickly spread within pacifist circles. 65 From this moment on, Rustin’s
life and career would never be the same. Rustin’s homosexuality incited
massive conflict wherever he went. Controversy became a constant reality
throughout his civil rights career.
A.J. Muste was devastated by the news from California. He had long
known about Rustin’s sexual preference but he had always advised Rus-

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 91
tin to keep his private life private. Muste questioned whether Bayard
could play a prominent role in the radical pacifist movement - grounded
in Christian ethics - while leading “an ethically degrading life.” 66 As a
devout Christian, Muste consequently concluded that Rustin’s “conduct
in Pasadena had damaged, fatally, his political usefulness to the FOR.” 67
Immediately a�er Pasadena, the FOR executive board discharged
Rustin from the staff. According to David McReynolds, a member of
FOR, “Rustin was a great loss. Not only was he the Fellowship’s most
popular lecturer but he was also a genius at tactical ma�ers. Bayard was
being groomed by FOR to become an American Gandhi. The position
was cut out for him . . . but it was all destroyed by the incident in California.”
68
A�er leaving the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Rustin was le� desperate
and jobless. 69 Fortunately, the War Resisters League had been
looking admiringly at Rustin’s effective work for the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
70 A majority of the WRL Advisory Council wanted Rustin
as the new executive secretary because of his exemplary organizational
and leadership skills. However, the proposal was met with controversy
in light of the recent Pasadena incident. A series of le�ers wri�en among
the members of the WRL Executive Commi�ee and Advisory Council illustrate
the depths and dimensions of this conflict.
On August 31, 1953, “Allan,” a member of the WRL Executive Commi�ee,
wrote, “I am afraid that Bayard would embarrass the WRL by
making passes at the young men and boys he would come in contact
with—in the field or in the New York office.” 71 On September 1, 1953,
Frances Witherspoon wrote to Roy Finch, Chairman of the WRL:
My vote as a member of the Advisory Council, is ‘NO’ on the
ma�er of making Bayard Rustin WRL Secretary. I do not feel
that the recent regre�able episode is far enough in his past.
. . to be able to guarantee that there will be no recurrence. .
. We pacifists work under the heavy handicap of the public
ignorance and prejudice, and I feel it wrong and unfair that
we should be asked to take on greater liability. 72
On September 8, 1953, Edward C.M. Richards wrote to Roy Finch:
To my mind one of the needs of the League is STABILITY.
Because of the strong position which we take on war and con-

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scription, there is a natural tendency for us all to take on a
vigorously critical a�itude toward the whole life about us. . .
In hiring Bayard or anyone else, therefore, it seems to me that
the Ex. Com. Should seriously consider factors which will
STABILIZE the life of the man or woman we hire as Secretary.
A young, unmarried fellow can do a grand job of some kinds
of peace work, FOR A WHILE. But as Secretary of the League,
it seems to me, we need to encourage the person taking the
job to sober up and assume the responsibilities of living, or
personal finance, of a home and family and children which
are the common lot of most people. 73
On October 1, 1953, an unknown member of the WRL Advisory
Council wrote, “In speaking with Mr. Muste, he did not have sufficient
confidence that Bayard had overcome the personality problems connected
with his homosexuality and which have embarrassed the FOR in the
past. I don’t feel that Bayard could now handle a WRL job without future
embarrassment to the League.” 74
These le�ers reflect the homophobia and bigotry prevalent in the
1950’s, even among progressives. At any rate, it was the WRL that rescued
Rustin from political oblivion. 75
Although Rustin was ultimately saved by the WRL, he could not
escape the controversy occasioned by his behavior in California. In the
spring of 1954, the Pasadena incident came back to haunt him. The American
Friends Service Commi�ee (AFSC) assigned Stephen Cary, a staff
officer, to convene a working group of intellectuals to shape a pacifist
stance toward the nuclear arms race and the threat of a Soviet-American
confrontation. 76 Cary selected the most thoughtful group of pacifist intellectuals
he could imagine, including Rustin. Unfortunately, according
to Cary, “People at the AFSC urged me to write Bayard off the list. They
were embarrassed by his homosexuality, which became public a�er the
ma�er in California. But I resisted. I told them I didn’t give a damn what
Bayard was. To me, Bayard was a marvelous human being.” 77
That summer, Cary’s group assembled at Haverford College for a
week-long conference which produced a seventy-page document, later
published as Speak Truth to Power. 78 When Speak Truth to Power appeared
as a booklet, Rustin was not listed among the coauthors, despite the fact
that he was the driving force behind its creation. Cary remembered:
Bayard reminded us of his arrest on the West Coast . . . and

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 93
urged that his name not be included among the writers of the
document. He said, ‘It will be a valuable publication, and my
name on it right now will be hurtful to circulation.’ I said,
‘Bayard, you know this thing could not have been wri�en
without you.’ Before he le� Haverford, he sang two beautiful
spirituals to us: ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen’ and
‘There is a Balm in Gilead.’ The effect was overwhelming.
And then he said, ‘Gentlemen, I’m at peace. It’s been a wonderful
week. Just leave my name off.’ 79
Rustin’s refusal to put his name on Speak Truth to Power reflected
a noble selflessness which would resurface throughout the remaining
years of his life—a constant sacrifice of personal glory and credit for the
sake of the greater good.
A Driving Force Behind the Scenes
Before the Pasadena incident in 1953, Rustin had been a visible figure
among pacifist circles and civil rights organizations. As field secretary
for the Fellowship of Reconciliation and a nonviolent direct activist, he
was constantly in the spotlight—leading others by example. However,
Pasadena precipitated a devastating shi� in Rustin’s career. A�er Pasadena,
he became a largely behind the scenes figure. Although partially
a�ributable to his leadership style, “that fused Quaker and Gandhian influences
into a seamless modesty that never drew a�ention to himself,”
much of this was forced upon him by his controversial identity. 80 However,
instead of withdrawing from the movement in anger or resentment,
Rustin, again for the sake of the greater good, selflessly accepted his role.
As an expert tactician in nonviolent direct action, a brilliant organizer,
and an advisor to Martin Luther King Jr., Rustin became a driving force
behind the scenes of the civil rights movement. He began his fight for
civil rights in Montgomery, Alabama.
In response to the arrest of Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Improvement
Association, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, launched its famous
boyco� of all city buses in December 1955. The energy that sustained
the boyco� was King’s adoption of nonviolent direct action. 81 However,
King, then twenty-six, had li�le experience with its application.
In February 1956, Bayard Rustin was asked to go to Montgomery,
Alabama to assist in the boyco�. Despite King’s academic exposure to
Gandhi’s philosophy, he had much less experience with non-violent pro-

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test than Rustin had at that point in time. 82 In many ways, Rustin was the
ideal emissary—“The leading African American Gandhian in the nation,
whose career testified to his commitment.” 83
Rustin’s efforts, however, proved problematic. His controversial
background was not widely accepted among the black civil rights leaders
in Montgomery.
In a cloak-and-dagger scenario whose details remain obscure, pacifists
and civil rights leaders in Montgomery met, telephoned, and dispatched
le�ers with dizzying speed. Rustin, they argued, was a danger
to the movement. It was not only, or even primarily, that he was a New
Yorker who had once been associated with the Communist Party. Rather,
his arrest in Pasadena, still a vivid memory, would compromise his effectiveness
and subject the Montgomery movement to serious peril. They
were adamant that Rustin should return home. 84
According to John D’Emilio, “It is a tribute to Rustin’s personal
charm, charisma, and skill as a strategist that he survived these machinations
and emerged as King’s closest advisor.” 85
Ostensibly, Rustin was not the ideal figure to lead the struggle for
civil rights. It was not that he lacked the skills or the ability—he was
just too controversial. In contradistinction, Reverend King proved to be
the perfect icon. He possessed the intelligence, charisma, and eloquence
necessary to lead the movement. According to Rustin, “King had been
chosen. A divine hand had been laid upon him.” 86 Consequently, as
King’s closest advisor, Rustin made his contributions to the civil rights
movement through Dr. King.
King was not in any sense a commi�ed Gandhian when Rustin arrived.
There were guns in his home, and the men who were guarding his
house were armed. Rustin felt these were out of place in the home of a
Gandhian leader. 87 Rustin remembered, “It seemed to me, that King had
read about Gandhi, and that his reading had tilled the ground, creating
a readiness for his gradual deepening in the philosophy of nonviolence.
But he still did not fully understand.” 88
Rustin spent the rest of the 1950s, on leave from the WRL, advising
King about Gandhian techniques. 89 Throughout this period, King rarely
made a decision of any consequence without first consulting Rustin. 90
Rustin devised a plan for King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) to develop a nonviolent civil rights movement throughout
the South. 91 Rustin organized a Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington in May

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 95
of 1957 at which King gave his first speech to a national audience. 92 Additionally,
in 1958 and 1959, he drew the plans for two youth marches for
school integration. These demonstrations gave King and the civil rights
movement a national platform and forced the Eisenhower administration
to meet with civil rights leaders. 93 From behind the stage curtain, Rustin
shaped and molded the course of the civil rights movement.
In the winter of 1960, the eruption of Southern sit-ins, inspired by
Rustin and King’s Gandhian techniques, promised to change the whole
political equation. 94 Nonviolent direct action was now the cu�ing edge
tactic of the black freedom struggle. Rustin’s reputation as an experienced
and commi�ed Gandhian should have made him a preeminent
figure in this emerging mass movement. However, his influence with
King, and in the civil rights movement, was compromised when Adam
Clayton Powell, a Democratic Congressman representing Harlem, successfully
“manipulated Rustin’s Achilles Heal—his homosexuality—to
keep him out of the loop of those strategizing and organizing the civil
rights struggle.” 95
Early in July, Dr. King received a startling message from a source
close to Powell: unless King fired Rustin and canceled a proposed demonstration
at the Democratic National Convention, Powell would announce
publicly that King and Rustin were involved in a sexual relationship.
Through Powell’s outrageous charge was without substance, King
felt it was still potentially damaging. A few days later, King informed
Rustin that it would be advisable for him to sever all connections with
the civil rights movement and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
96 Although this was a crushing blow to Rustin, he quietly resigned.
At the time he explained to the New York Courier:
I cannot permit a situation to endure in which my relationship
to Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
is used to confuse and becloud the basic issues confronting
the Negro people today. I cannot permit a situation to
endure in which the best elements of the Negro leadership are
a�acked as a result of my relationship to them...Those who
have worked with me during my twenty years in the movement
know that I have never sought high position or special
privilege, but have always made myself available to the call
of the leadership. Congressman Powell has suggested that I
am an obstacle to his giving full, enthusiastic support to Dr.
King. I want now to remove that obstacle. I have resigned as

96
Dr. King’s special assistant. 97
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Rustin had just fought his way back from pariah status and had graciously
accepted a role out of the spotlight. He had molded and nurtured
King’s career as the “invisible guiding hand” behind many civil rights
initiatives. 98 But yet again, he found himself marginalized.
Back in the Circle
A�er the controversy with Powell, Rustin returned to his peace
work. Early in 1963, he and A. Philip Randolph, an old friend and fellow
civil rights activist, discussed the possibility of a mass march on Washington
for jobs and freedom. 99 Eventually, King lined up behind it, and
moderate organizations supported the march as well. 100
A. Philip Randolph declared Bayard Rustin the chief director of the
march. Not surprisingly, Roy Wilkins, chairman of the NAACP, tried to
veto Rustin’s role as director because of the Pasadena arrest. According
to James Haskins, “Randolph finessed the move by accepting the role
of director on the condition that he choose his own assistants.” 101 He
promptly named Rustin the deputy director of the march and turned
over the organizing to him.
Unfortunately, Rustin would by no means be granted this title without
controversy. For years, J. Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
had kept a close eye on the civil rights movement, secretly
feeding damaging information to key segregationists. 102 Now the FBI
worked overtime, scrutinizing the Washington march as they looked for
“subversive connections.” 103 Most of Bayard Rustin’s FBI files were from
1963—perhaps indicative of the efforts taken to prevent the March on
Washington. Rustin’s affiliation with the Communist Party was mentioned
in every single one of his files. In the file from October 4, 1963,
it was noted that “Rustin a�ended the 16th National Convention of the
Communist Party, USA in 1957 as one of the eight ‘so called’ noncommunist
observers.” 104
Upon receiving this information, Senator Strom Thurmond of South
Carolina, a staunch segregationist, criticized Rustin’s past Communist affiliation.
105 However, “most of it was old news and generated li�le interest,
though it did spark worry in civil rights circles.” 106 On August 13,
Thurmond a�acked again, this time targeting Rustin, who by then had
been dubbed “Mr. March-on-Washington” by the press. 107 Thurmond re-

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 97
iterated Rustin’s Communist ties and his conviction on “sex perversion”
charges in Pasadena. According to John D’Emilio:
By this time one might think that Rustin was inoculated
against feeling on this issue. Yet Thurmond’s charge represented
something new. In 1953, pacifists had been made privy
to Rustin’s arrest, but the event was a throwaway item in local
papers. In 1960, the conflict with Powell rippled through the
nation’s press, but the substance remained unnamed. Now
the labeling process was clear and ubiquitous. Rustin was
named a pervert before an audience of tens of millions. 108
However, the outcome of the latest controversy was remarkable:
“Because the accusation was so public, because it was leveled by a segregationalist,
and because it came just two weeks before an event on which
the movement was banking so much, civil rights leaders had to rally to
Rustin’s defense.” 109 Addressing a press conference, Randolph stated, “I
am sure that I speak for the combined Negro leadership in voicing my
complete confidence in Bayard Rustin’s character, integrity, and extraordinary
ability.” 110
The March on Washington on August 28, 1963, was the crowning
achievement of Bayard Rustin’s career. With only two months to organize
the march, Rustin proved to the world that he was a first class organizer,
strategist, and tactician.
Rustin spent countless hours arranging police security and imported
a supplementary force of four thousand volunteer marshals from New
York. He recognized that the psychology of peace was fragile and that
there was no telling what might happen if a�ackers burned one of the
two thousand buses headed toward Washington. It was Rustin’s obsession
to make sure that no flaw in the arrangements permi�ed discomfort
to flare up into violence. He drove his core staff of two hundred volunteers
to pepper the Mall with several hundred portable toilets, twentyone
temporary drinking fountains, twenty-four first-aid stations, and
even a check-cashing facility. Over the vast march area, Rustin had signs
posted high enough to be read by someone jammed in a crowd. ‘If you
want to organize anything,’ he said, ‘assume that everybody is absolutely
stupid. And assume yourself that you’re stupid.’ He was determined to
move the masses of people into Washington a�er dawn and out again
before dusk. 111

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The march was hugely successful. More than 250,000 people—blacks,
whites, men, women, Jews, Gentiles, Muslims unionists, children, and elders—gathered
at the Nation’s Capital to demand civil rights legislation
and to listen to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. 112 The
success of the march surpassed the organizers’ most ambitious hopes.
For Rustin, the march exemplified successful mass nonviolent protest:
“In the course of two months the Kennedy’s had shi�ed from hostility
to endorsement. Members of Congress, who had initially rejected invitations
to participate, ended by clamoring for a place on the platform.
All the major civil rights organizations, including the most conservative,
united a front and thus explicitly had lined up behind mass action.” 113
A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin had envisioned the March
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom as a climax of the direct-action
civil rights movement. Later events proved their accuracy. Never again
would so many people be of such like mind and so determined to demonstrate
peacefully. Rustin had given them this opportunity. So important
was his role, that Life magazine featured him and A. Philip Randolph on
the cover of its September 6 issue. Before he died, Rustin declared, “The
March on Washington was one of my most beautiful periods of work in
my life.” 114
Conclusions
It is fi�ing to end this discussion of Bayard Rustin’s life with the 1963
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom because it best demonstrates
his skill, intellect, and dedication. Here was a man of great integrity,
commitment, passion, courage, and honor. He viewed all people as human
beings—as soul mates. His actions were fueled by his “love of life,
his compassion, and his ability to empathize with the suffering of every
human being.” 115
He could not stay away from any place where people were brutalized
and victimized, where democracy’s promise of civil and human
rights was denied or distorted. 116 According to the late Albert Shanker,
former President of the American Federation of Teachers, “Because he
had courage and integrity he abhorred racism wherever he found it, he
fought for the right of a white man to be principal of a Harlem school
and for the rights of black and white teachers to due process in New York
City, just as he had fought for the end of Jim Crow in the South.” 117 He
inspired awe among all those who knew him and led a lifelong struggle

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 99
to create a world of justice, peace, and harmony. 118
Unfortunately, although Bayard Rustin was a man of pure, simple,
and solid morals, he was never fully recognized as such. As an openly
gay man, Rustin was deemed a “sexual pervert.” As a former member
of the Communist Party, he was considered a traitor to democracy. As
an imprisoned conscientious objector during World War II, Rustin was
viewed as a disgrace to the United States. To mainstream America, it
did not ma�er that Rustin joined the Communist party to fight for civil
rights. It did not ma�er that he was imprisoned as a radical pacifist during
World War II because he believed conscription of any kind was a
violation of human rights.
Throughout his life, Rustin set his own standards and created his
own rules. He defined himself and would not let others do so. 119 As
recently as two years ago, the community of West Chester, Pennsylvania
was forced to deal with Bayard Rustin on his own terms, and many
had to recognize their own fears and vulnerabilities concerning race and
sexuality. 120 Rustin believed in democracy. He knew America could be
great—but only if she confronted her demons. 121 So, just as he wished
to change his world for the be�er, his memory ultimately impelled the
West Chester community to acknowledge his greatness. 122 In early January,
2003, a�er an acrimonious ba�le in the community, the West Chester
District Area school board decided to name the new high school Bayard
T. Rustin Memorial High. The building is currently under construction
and will be ready for opening in the fall of 2006.
Endnotes
1 Speaker at West Chester Public Meeting, West Chester, Pennsylvania, 20 November
2002. 2 Speaker at West Chester Public Meeting, West Chester, Pennsylvania, 20 November
2002.
3 Dorothy Steere, [Cover le�er for postcard from Bayard Rustin to Douglas Steere], 38,
Special Collections, Magill Library, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania.
4 Speaker at West Chester Public Meeting, West Chester, Pennsylvania, 20 November
2002.
5 Leonard S. Kenworthy, “Bayard Rustin Crusader for Racial and Social Justice,” in Living
in the Light: Some Quaker Pioneers of the 20th Century, 193.
6 August Meier, Bayard Rustin Papers (Bethesda, Maryland: University Publications of
America, 1988),2.
7 John D’Emilio, “Homophobia and the Trajectory of Postwar American Radicatlism,”
in Modern American Queer History, ed. Allida M. Black (Phildadelphia: Temple University
Press, 2001),80.
8 Ibid.

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9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Sheldon Weeks, “Bayard Rustin-Radical Pacifist Quaker,” Friends Journal 38 (November
1998): 28.
12 Anthony Monteiro, “Let’s Look to Bayard Rustin for Inspiration,” The Philadelphia Inquirer,
November 15, 2002.
13 Anthony Monetiro, “Let’s Look to Bayard Rustin for Inspiration,” The Philadelphia Inquirer,
November 15, 2002.
14 Speaker at West Chester Public Meeting, West Chester, Pennsylvania, 20 November
2002.
15 Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement (New Jersey: Rutgers University
Press, 2000), 1.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 James Haskins, Bayard Rustin: Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movement (New York:
Hyperion Books for Children, 1997), 4.
20 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen (New York: Harper Collins Publishers,
1997), 16.
21 Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement, 16.
22 James Haskins, Bayard Rustin: Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movement, 24.
23 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 24.
24 Wilberforce, where Rustin registered on September 14, 1932, is among the oldest black
colleges in the United States. Founded by white Methodists in 1856, it was named a�er William
Wilberforce, the prominent English abolitionist and parliamentarian. Jervis Anderson,
Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 32.
25 Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement, 9.
26 Jervis Anderson, Troubles I’ve Seen, 35.
27 Prior to this, Rustin had been asked to leave both Wilberforce University and Cheyney
State Teachers College due to “naughty misbehavior.” Rustin later accounted for “making
a mistake” during those years “out of youthful carelessness.” It has been speculated that
Rustin’s homosexuality was the driving force behind his discharge. James Haskins, Bayard
Rustin: Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movement, 25.
28 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 45.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 In early 1941, the Communist Party had assigned Rustin to organize and lead a campaign
against segregation in the military. However, he was ordered to disband this campaign
when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Hitler’s invasion now required a Soviet-American solidarity
against Germany. A continuation of the flight for desegregation in the military would
disrupt the American “military machine” and hurt the prospects for an effective Soviet-American
alliance. Thus, defending the Soviet Union against Hitler became more important than
the fight for civil rights. Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement, 26.
32 Evan Wolfson, “Bayard Rustin,” in Invisible Giants: Fi�y Americans that Shaped the Nation
but Missed the History Books, ed. Marc C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press,
2002), 240.
33 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 56.
34 FOR was born directly a�er the outbreak of World War I. Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin
and the Civil Rights Movement, 32.

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35 A.J. Muste (1855-1967), born Abraham Johannes Muste in the province of Zeeland,
the Netherlands, came to the United States in 1891 when the Muste family se�led in Grand
Rapids, Michigan. In 1940, his views of total pacifism and absolute non-violence elevated him
to executive director of FOR. In the following years of his career, he was to become its most
renowned leader. AJ Muste: Papers 1920-1967, (Swarthmore College Peace Collections Website,
accessed 20 October 2002.); available from h�p://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/peace/
DG026-050/dg050muste.htm: Internet.
36 His base salary was fi�een dollars a week—raised a year later to $18.75. Jervis Anderson,
Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 72.
37 Jervis Anderson, Troubles I’ve Seen, 51.
38 By 1942, most leading activists in the Fellowship of Reconciliation were also disciples
of Mahatma Gandhi. Almost all of them had been drawn to Gandhian philosophy and methodology
by their readings of such influential texts as Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience;
Gandhi’s autobiography; My Gandhi, by John Haynes Homes; and War Without Violence, by
Krishnalal Shridharani. Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 62.
39 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 51.
40 Bayard Rustin, “Lesson Plan on Non-Violent Action,” 1941, FOR Files, Box 51, Swarthmore
College Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Speaker at West Chester Public Meeting, West Chester, Pennsylvania, 20 November
2002.
47 Rustin had formally joined the Religious Society of Friends in 1936. Daniel Levine,
Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement, 15.
48 Bayard Rustin, to Friend, 15 August 1942, FOR Files, Box 51, Swarthmore College
Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.
49 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 60.
50 Bayard Rustin, to Gentlemen of the Dra� Board of New York, 16 November 1943, FOR
Files, Box 51, Swarthmore College Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore College,
Pennsylvania.
51 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 90.
52Ashland was one of a handful of prisons that the government used to house conscientious
objectors during World War II. James Haskins, Bayard Rustin: Behind the Scenes of the
Civil Rights Movement, 29.
53 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 92.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid., 107.
56 Ibid.
57 Tom Ritchie, “Bayard Rustin,” Prison Newsle�er, July 1944, FOR Files, Box 52, Swarthmore
College Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.
58 Ibid.
59 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 108.
60 Charles Butcher, Prison Newsle�er, July 1944, FOR Files, Box 52, Swarthmore College
Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.
61 A.J. Muste, “Memo on Visit to Ashland, Kentucky, Federal Correctional Institution,”
27 July 1944, Bayard Rustin Files, Box 1, Swarthmore College Peace Collections, McCabe Li-

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brary, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.
62 Speaker at West Chester Public Meeting, West Chester, Pennsylvania, 20 November
2002.
63 John D’Emilio, “Homophobia and the Trajectory of Postwar American Radicalism,” in
Modern American Queer History, ed. Allida M. Black, 83.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid., 85.
67 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 154.
68 Ibid., 165.
69 Trying to find Bayard work a�er his release from FOR, Dr. Ascher, Rustin’s psychiatrist
a�er the Pasadena incident, first contacted the Religious Society of Friends. However,
he found them to be completely unsympathetic. When the subject was first mentioned, they
were excited about having a person like Bayard work for them. But as soon as they found out
that he was homosexual, they backed off. “People who preached love and humane tolerance
were completely intolerant when it came to sexuality.” Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin and the
Civil Rights Movement, 74.
70 The War Resisters League (WRL), officially founded in 1923, stood for the proposition
that “war is a crime against humanity.” Members of the WRL pledge “not to support any kind
of war, international or civil, and to strive non-violently for the removal of all causes of war.”
War Resisters League (Swarthmore College Peace Collections Website, accessed 27 November
2002); available from h�p://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/DG026-050/DG040WRL.
html: Internet.
71 Allan, to Jim, 31 August 1953, WRL Files, Box 12, Swarthmore College Peace Collections,
McCabe Library, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.
72 Frances Witherspoon, to Roy Finch, 7 September 1953, WRL Files, Box 12, Swarthmore
College Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.
73 Edwards C.M. Richards, to Roy Finch, 8 September 1953, WRL Files, Box 12, Swarthmore
College Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.
74 To Executive Commi�ee and Advisory Council Members, 1 October 1953, WRL Files,
Box 12, Swarthmore College Peace Collections, McCabe Library, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.
75 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 173.
76 Ibid.
77 Ibid.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid., 175.
80 John D’Emilio, “Homophobia and the Trajectory of the Postwar American Radicalism,”
in Modern American Queer History, ed. Allida M. Black, 86.
81 This was the same nonviolent direct action that had been used in the early 1940s by
Rustin and other radical pacifists. Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 98.
82 Ibid., 186.
83 John D’Emilio, “Homophobia and the Trajectory of Postwar American Radicalism,” in
Modern American Queer History, ed. Alldia M. Black, 86.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid.
86 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 189.
87 John D’Emilio, “Bayard Rustin, Civil Rights Strategist,” The Harvard Gay and Lesbian
Review (Summer 1999), 1.

F������� 2005 - V�� 1., I���� 1 103
88 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 189.
89 “Bayard Rustin: Civil Rights Leader” (Website, accessed 28 October 2002); available
from h�p://www.wuite.101.com/article/cfm/quakerism/13859: Internet.
90 Rustin was King’s senior by 17 years. Ibid.
91 The Baptist ministers of the SCLC did not want Rustin as director of the organization;
instead, he became a “special assistant” working in New York. The Baptists did not want a
homosexual running an organization rooted in Christian principles. John D’Emilio, “Bayard
Rustin, Civil Rights Strategist,” The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, 1.
92 Ibid.
93 Ibid., 2.
94 Ibid., 4.
95 Ibid., 5.
96 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 230.
97 Ibid.
98 Ibid.
99 Asa Philip Randolph, born in Florida in 1889, was president of the Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters, the first African American trade union in the U.S.. Twenty-three years
older than Rustin, he was a veteran of civil rights and labor causes and one of the most respected
African American figures in his time. James Haskins, Bayard Rustin: Behind the Scenes
of the Civil Rights Movement, 87.
100 Ibid.
101 Ibid., 90.
102 Kenneth O’Reilly, Black Americans: The FBI Files (New York: Carrol & Graf Publishers,
Inc., 1994), 388.
103 John D’Emilio, “Homophobia and the Trajectory of Postwar American Radicalism,” in
Modern American Queer History, ed. Allida M. Black, 90.
104 Kenneth O’Reilly, Black Americans: The FBI Files, 389.
105 Ibid., 382.
106 John D’Emilio, “Homophobia and the Trajectory of Postwar American Radicalism,” in
Modern American Queer History, ed. Allida M. Black, 82.
107 Ibid.
108 Ibid., 90.
109 Ibid.
110 Ibid.
111 Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 (New York: Simon
and Schuster Publishing, 1988), 873.
112 Ibid.
113 John D’Emilio, “Homophobia and the Trajectory of Postwar American Radicalism,” in
Modern American Queer History, ed. Allida M. Black, 90.
114 Ibid.
115 Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, 5.
116 Albert Shanker, “Where We Stand,” The New York Times, August 30, 1987.
117 Ibid.
118 Ibid.
119 Anthony Monteiro, “Let’s Look to Bayard Rustin for Inspiration,” The Philadelphia
Inquirer, November 15, 2002.
120 Ibid.
121 Ibid.
122 Ibid.

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The Editorial Board owes special thanks to...
Acknowledgments
Haverford’s student body, which submi�ed nearly a hundred papers of
extraordinary quality and made our pilot issue blissfully difficult to assemble.
Haverford faculty members who encouraged their students to submit papers
and prove their intellectual vitality.
Greg Kannerstein for abandoning family, friends, and anything else he
thought this life might have to offer him in order to find time to edit
papers.
Tom Tri�on and Joe Tolliver for their initial encouragement and continued
support.
Students Council for pu�ing up seed money.
Julie Kleinman and Drew Konove for refusing to go gently into the good
night that is life a�er Haverford.
Rob Schiff for daring to dream.