Carl Schmitt, Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of any Political Theology, trans. Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2008 [1970])

This text is Schmitt’s sequel to Political Theology I and began as a response to Erik Peterson’s “Monotheism as a Political Problem: A Contribution to the History of Political Theology in the Roman Empire.” In his book Peterson sought to argue for the “annulment of any belief in God being politically relevant, or of any socially relevant theology at all” (35). Schmitt wants to reject closure. He divides his text into three chapters: The Myth of the Ultimate Theological Closure; The Legendary Document; and The Legendary Conclusion.

The Myth of the Ultimate Theological Closure

In this section Schmitt outlines Peterson’s thesis and the responses of three theologians who have more-or-less adopted it. He writes, Peterson claimed to bring “to an end any Christian political theology once and for all” (56). According to Schmitt, Peterson’s argument rests on a belief that theology is specifically a Christian activity and that it only occurs in the period between Christ’s death and the second coming.

The Legendary Document

An important part of Schmitt’s argument appears here as “The church of Christ is not of this world and its history, but it is in this world” (65). He also claims, “There are many political theologies because there are, on the one hand, many different religions, and, on the other, many different kinds and methods of doing politics” (66). He is especially critical of Peterson’s “placement beyond all politics, the absolute unassailability, unattainability and autonomy from the political, is denied the non-Christian, that is, the non-trinitarian, monotheism” (77). Peterson also claims that the political theology that exists within Christianity is a vestige of Judaism and paganism. “When a bishop [Eusebius] is introduced into the twentieth century as the prototype of political theology, there seems to exist a conceptual link between politics and heresy” (84).

The Legendary Conclusion

“Theology is not the same as religion or faith or numinous excitement. Theology wants to be a serious academic discipline and it will remain as (107) such, unless a completely different understanding of science is able to marginalise religion and its theology and to assimilate them into a scientific understanding of the world” (108). “A conflict is always a struggle between organisations and institutions in the sense of concrete orders. It is a struggle of institutions over stances” (114).

Postscript: On the Current Situation of the Problem: The Legitimacy of Modernity

Here he reiterates that the law and theology proceed from the same impulse. “This understanding of the state has achieved, to date, the greatest rational ‘progress’ of humanity in the definition of war as it appears in the theory of international law: namely the distinction between the enemy and the criminal, and therefore the only possible basis for the theory of the neutrality of (117) states in times of war between them” (118). “Thus de-theologisation implies de-politisation, the sense that the world has ceased being ‘politomorph’. Consequently, the distinction between friend and enemy is no longer valid as criterion of the political” (124). “One cannot get rid of the enmity between human beings by prohibiting wars between states in the traditional sense, by advocating a world revolution and by transforming world politics into world policing. Revolution, in contrast to reformation, reform, revision and evolution, is a hostile struggle. Friendship is almost impossible between the lord of a world in need of change, that is, a misconceived world… and the liberator, the creator of a transformed world. They are… by definition enemies” (125). The postscript concludes with the necessary process to create a “modern-scientific closure of any political theology:” “no theology as a subject of discussion” (128); a new human being who “is the unplanned, arbitrary product of the process–progress of himself;” the process-progress contains within it “the possibility of its own novelty–renewal;” “freedom of the human being is the highest value;” this “self-producing new human being… is not a new God;” and the distinction between friend and enemy is eliminated and the “old is not the enemy of the new” (129);

Appendix: ‘Peterson’s Conclusion and Concluding Footnote’

This is a reprint from Peterson’s essay.

“Sermon to the Princes;” “Special Exposure of False Faith;” and “Highly Provoked Defense” in Revelation and Revolution: Basic Writings of Thomas Müntzer, trans. and ed. by Michael G. Baylor (1993)

All of these texts are from 1524.

Sermon to the Princes

An exegesis of the second chapter of Daniel. It consists of four sections. The first three focus on the corrupt nature of the world and the Church. After the death of the disciples the Christian church “became and adulteress” (99). Also, “the whole world, from the beginning down to the present time, has been deceived by dreamers and interpreters of dreams” (103). In the fourth section he proclaims, “You should know that an elected person who wants to know which visions or dreams are from God and which are from nature or from the devil must be severed in his mind and heart, and also in his natural understanding, from all temporal reliance on the flesh” (106). “It is true–and I know it to be true–that the spirit of God now reveals to many elected pious people that a momentous, invincible, future reformation is very necessary and must be brought about… This text of Daniel is thus as clear as the bright sun, and the work of ending the fifth empire of the world is now in full swing.” The first empire was Babylon, the second was the Persians, the third was the Greeks, the fourth was the Roman and the fifth “is that which we have before our own eyes.” God is going to smash the old ecclesiastical order. The rulers are in danger of being seduced by it but the “poor laity and the peasants see it [the situation] much more clearly than you do” (109). God “will make your hands skillful in fighting against his enemies” (111). “Nothing on earth has a better form and mask than false goodness.” “He to whom is given all power in heaven and on earth [Christ] wants to lead the government” (114).

Special Exposure of False Faith

Muntzer begins by claiming that Luther is preaching false theology, even though they are both trying to interpret the Bible. He writes, “all knowledge contains within itself its diametrical opposite” (115). He suggests that the correction to this is “the common man, must become learned… so that you will be misled no longer. The same spirit of Christ will help you in this which will mock our learned ones to their destruction” (116).

Next he moves to an exegesis of the first chapter of Luke. He emphasis that people can read the Bible themselves, “With all their words and deeds our scribes make sure that the poor man cannot learn to read, because he is worried about his sustenance. And they shamelessly preach that the poor man should let himself be sheared and clipped by the tyrants” (119). The poor will know true scholars by the way they lead their lives.

In the second section he claims, “every person should observe most carefully, and then he will certainly find that the Christian faith is an impossible thing for a man of the flesh” and that faith is also impossible. “And all of us must have just this experience of impossibility in the beginning of faith. And we must hold to it that we carnal, earthly men shall become gods through the incarnation of Christ as man” (121). “Therefore, rulers are nothing but hangmen and corpse renders. This is their whole craft” (123).

In the third section he asserts, “the heart of a member of the elect is constantly moved to the source of his faith by the power of the Supreme Being” (126). And claims again that the learned have led the peasants astray. In the fourth he says that the people need “to wait for a new John the Baptist, for a preacher rich in grace who has experienced every aspect of the faith through his own lack of faith” (128). After this happens there will be a movement of the spirit that reprimands the people “on account of their disorderly desires” (130). The people need to turn away from their sins and towards God. “Otherwise preaching is a thief’s prattle and a war of words” (133). In the sixth he asserts that the coming of the true church is imminent, “In a short time, each will have to give an account of how he has come to the faith. The separation of the godless from the elect would indeed bring about a true Christian church” (134). In the seventh he emphasizes “Christ was a lowly person, of unimportant parents” (137). In the eighth he claims that the elect make room for God in their hearts.

Highly Provoke Defense

Here Muntzer attacks Luther at great length calling him “Doctor Liar” (143). He argues that he, Muntzer, is not preaching rebellion but, instead, preaching that the law be followed. “Behold, the basic source of usury, theft, and robbery is our lords and princes, who take all creatures for their private property” (144). In other words, Muntzer maintains that the rich are the real thieves while Luther claims that the poor are thieves whenever they don’t respect private property. After smearing Luther at great length he concludes, “The people will be free. And God alone will be lord over them” (154).

While reading the essay “On Building a Social Movement” in Myles Horton, The Myles Horton Reader: Education for Social Change, ed. Dale Jacobs (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2003), I came across this insightful passage:

It’s been my experience that, to get started, you have to have unannounced meetings or you can’t have a meeting. What you’ve got to do is to find a man back there that’ll get a few people together at his house… and talk to one or two people, when there’s not anybody around. You have to build it up, in little house meetings. You don’t have a meeting; meetings are the worst way in the world, because that’s an open invitation to politicians to come in and take over. That’s their meat, that’s their game. Don’t play their game. You know, set up your own rules of the game. You know, when you were talking about one community wanting a school? Now what you’ve got to find is somebody needs to go in to a place like that, somebody that’s preferably a native, or known to these people, or somebody that’s related to them, even better; and go in and talk to somebody until they tell you the truth of the situation. And then, you win their confidence, and say, well, you get three or four other people together, and they’ll say, maybe these people are afraid to talk to a stranger, but I’ll see. You finally get through, and you meet two or three more people, and you build up very slowly, and these people are the people you want to reach. And then they begin, and if they’re doing something, and they ask for your help, you give help to them–then you’ve got it made. But you have to keep it kind of underground, not too open, and that’s for two reasons. One was the reason you gave where they come and take over. And the other is, these people aren’t going to talk if those people are around. So you’ve got to work with the people you’re dealing with.

Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997)

In this book Tanner argues for the utility of insights from anthropology in theological work. Her main argument is that, rather than accepting H. Richard Niebuhr’s classic formulation of Christ against culture, Christians must recognize that religious community and, by extension, theology are part of culture. To construct her argument, she offers a primarily social understanding of human nature, “Human beings construct the character of their own lives through group living” (4). After tracing the historical origin of the concept of culture through its role in manufacturing the hegemony of urban elites, she defines culture as “the primacy of social influences on the lives of individuals” (13). The book is divided into two parts, the first focuses on defining the concept of culture. The second on looking at how an understanding of culture can influence the study and construction of theology.

Culture, as she understands it, has nine basic aspects: 1. “culture is understood as a human universal” (25); 2. “The fact of ‘culture’ is common to all; the particular pattern of culture differs among all;” 3. “culture varies with social group” (26); 4. “a culture tends to be conceived as… [an] entire way of life;” 5. “because cultures are group-specific they are associated with social consensus;” 6. “culture is understood to constitute or construct human nature” (27); 7. “Cultures are conventions in the sense that they are human constructions;” 8. cultures are contingent and “a particular culture can never claim inevitability;” 9. “the notion of culture suggests social determinism: society decisively shapes the character of its members” (28). Perhaps her most important insight into culture is that it is “the meaning dimension of social life” (31). Additionally, she argues that it is now “less and less plausible to presume that cultures are self-contained and clearly bounded units, internally consistent and unified wholes of beliefs and values…” (38). Culture, is not, stable. Rather it is inherently unstable.

The key question of the second section is: “How might some fundamental theological topics appear differently, what new directions for their investigation might arise, were one to experiment in theology with a postmodern view of culture” (61)? She notes, “Saying that theology is a part of culture becomes a way of talking about theology in terms of what it means to be human” (64). Armed with this insight, she makes a distinction between everyday theology and academic theology. Both have “to do… with the meaning dimension of Christian practices, the theological aspect of all socially significant Christian action.” Everyday theology is “found embedded in such matters as the way the altar and pews are arranged” (70). Academic theology, in contrast, is a critical exercise that seeks to systematize and critique Christian practice and everyday theology.

When considering theological method she writes that it has “a twofold character. First, theologians show an artisanlike inventiveness in the way they work on a variety of materials that do not dictate of themselves what theologians should do with them. Second, theologians exhibit a tactical cleverness with respect to other interpretations and organizations of such materials that are already on the ground” (87). This means that “the issue of whose theological position is most compelling is decided by judgments of an aesthetic sort, ones like those used to determine, say, the best interpretations of a poem” (91). Further, “Faced with an incredibly disparate and complex set of materials, the theologian is always ultimately making meaning rather than finding it” (93).

The balance of the book is spent arguing for Tanner’s particular theological positions. Against people like John Millbank she rejects firm boundaries between Christian communities and the wider society. She rejects the use of “logico-deductive” arguments, claiming they are insufficient and inaccurate in constructive theological work (117). Her emphasis on everyday theology leads her to argue that “Christian identity, at this most basic level… is more a matter of form than substance” (124). Tradition is important in maintaining form across time. And that this tradition and form are a matter of discipleship, “One only comes to know the character of one’s own discipleship by listening to them… One remains the disciple of God, and not the disciple of God’s witnesses” (138).

Her concluding chapter’s argument is summarized in this sentence from its first paragraph: “My conclusions in the last chapter about Christian identity–that it is constituted most fundamentally by a community of argument concerning the meaning of true discipleship–suggested that Christian identity need not be jeopardized by ongoing disagreement about what Christians should say, feel, and do” (156).

My major criticism of Tanner is that she grossly underestimates the role of violence in maintaining theological consensus and establishing the boundaries of identity. While she amply engages with other theologians, references to Schleiermacher, Lindbeck, Millbank and Kaufman abound, she does not discuss particular religious communities, historical events or traditions. This makes her argument feel somewhat disassociated from the everyday theology that she sees as the subject of study of academic theologians. This disconnect undercuts her argument.

John Woolman, The Journal of John Woolman in The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman, ed. Philips Moulton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 21-192

In his journal John Woolman accounts for his growing belief that slavery is wrong, his transformation into an abolitionist and his efforts to convince Quakers in both America and England to stop practicing the slave trade. His concern with slavery is that it is a moral sin and he is working to end moral sins, be they slavery or wanton behavior (see, for instance, his discussion of his rebuke of the “sleights-of-hand” performer in 1763 (138)). The journal spans 1720 to 1772 and was revised and rewritten between 1770 and 1772.

The years 1720 to 1742 constitute his childhood and early adulthood and contain Augustine like accounts of how his understanding of human nature is rooted in his own early experiences. For instance, after killing a bird and her babies and then feeling guilty about his action he writes, “he whose tender mercies are over all his works hath placed a principle in the human mind which incites to exercise goodness toward every living creature” (25). As a Quaker he believes “true religion consisted in an inward life” and his journal can be seen as an attempt to practice that religion (28).

His conversion to abolition takes place when he participates in the sale of an African American slave he knows. Shortly afterwards he stops working as a merchant and becomes a tailor observing, “I saw that a humble man with the blessing of the Lord might live on a little, and that where the heart was set on greatness, success in business did not satisfy the craving, but that in common with an increase of wealth the desire of wealth increased” (35).

The majority of the journal consists of Woolman’s account of visiting various Quaker meetings and trying to convince them to stop participating in the slave trade. He recognizes that this is a difficult task, “Deep-rooted customs, though wrong, are not easily altered, but it is the duty of everyone to be firm in that which they certainly know is right for them” (50). At the core of his organizing methodology is the conviction that, “Conduct is more convincing than language” (60).

Of Woolman’s several journeys two in particular worth mention are his visit to the Native Americans in 1763 and his trip to England, where he ultimately died, in 1772. In England he tried to convince the London Quaker meeting that slavery was wrong.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010 [1776])

Paine’s famous pamphlet on why the colonists should rebel against the English monarchy is broken six sections: Introduction; Of the Origin and Design of Government in General. With Concise Remarks on the English Constitution; Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession; Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs; Of the Present Ability of America, with Some Miscellaneous Reflections; Appendix, with an Address to the People Called Quakers. The major purpose of the pamphlet is to argue that the appropriate time to rebel against the monarchy is now. To make his argument Paine:

1. differentiates society from government;
2. traces the imagined origin of government to show that democratic and republican forms are more natural the monarchies [here he argues that the Bible does not endorse monarchies];
3. claims that “Mankind being originally equal in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance” (10);
4. that monarchy originated by force and that hereditary succession is stupid;
5. that therefore, the colonies have the right to rebel.

He believes that now is the time to rebel because separation from England will come sooner or later. Rather than wait for later when the colonies themselves might be divided now is the right moment to rebel since they are united.

He lays out a system of republican government and claims “that in America THE LAW IS KING” (36). He also argues that taking on a national debt is essential for winning national independence writing, “No nation ought to be without a debt” (39). He thinks the debt is necessary to build a navy.

A few choice quotes:

“Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason” (1).

“England, since the conquest, hath known some few good monarchs, but groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones; yet no man in his senses can say that their claim under William the Conquerer is a very honorable one. A French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original–It certainly hath no divinity in it” (16).

Pelagius, “Letter to Demetrias” and “On the Possibility of Not Sinning,” in B. R. Rees, The Letters of Pelagius and His Followers (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 1991)

Letter to Demetrias

This letter was written by Pelagius to Demetrias, a young Christian (age 14) who has decided to take a vow of virginity. It emphasizes human agency and rationality in moral decision making. At the outset Pelagius describes his method for doing ethics, “first to demonstrate the power and quality of human nature and to show what it is capable of achieving, and then to go on to encourage the mind of my listener to consider the idea of different kinds of virtues” (36). He claims, the “best incentive for the mind consists in teaching it that it is possible to do anything which one really wants to do.”

Human beings are understood be made by God “to be free to act and not under compulsion” (37). His understanding of human nature might be summarized, “Yet we do not defend the good of nature to such an extent that we claim that it cannot do evil, since we undoubtedly declare also that it is capable of good and evil; we merely try to protect it from an unjust charge, so that we may not seem to be forced to do evil through a fault in our nature, when, in fact, we do neither good nor evil without the exercise of our will and always have the freedom to do one of the two, being always able to do either” (43).

In instructing Demetrias in how to act, he reminds her “the divine scriptures… alone enable you to understand the complete will of God” (45). Then he draws a distinction between the things that people must do to be perfect and the things that they must do simply to obey God, “having set out to win the state of blessedness which attaches itself to a special intention, see to it that you keep the general commandment also” (46). As Demetrias proceeds she is to remember both that spiritual goods are better than material ones and that she should “try even now to be the kind of person you want to be when you reach the last day.” He then briefly returns to the subject of human nature by claiming that the “first five years [of life] are the best for moral training” (50). He also divides the moral law into the positive and the negative, “it is not enough for you to refrain from evil, if you refrain from good as well: the law of God is divided into two classes of orders, and, while it forbids evil, it also enjoins good, and it prohibits neglect of itself on either count” (52). He offers a wonderfully instructive metaphor: “Life is compared to a reward, so that those who are to be given the brightness of the sun in the future shine forth here with a like splendour of righteousness and light up the blindness of unbelievers with works of holiness” (54). Then he switches to general advice, “we have enough worthless people, people seeking to make a name for themselves by making others out to be worthless” (57); “Beware of flatterers as your enemies:… they corrupt shallow souls with feigned praise and inflict their agreeable wounds on over-credulous minds;” “Moderation is best in everything and due sense of proportion is praiseworthy in all circumstances; the body has to be controlled, not broken” (59); and “Within the space of an hour one’s conduct can undergo change, and fasting, abstinence, psalmody and keeping vigil demand a conscious act of will more than constant practice” (62).

He concludes by describing the source of sin as thoughts not action, “for every deed and every word, whichever it may be, is laid out for inspection in advance and its future is decided by thoughtful consideration” (65). This means that, “The mind must be renewed by fresh growth in virtue every day, and we must measure our journey through life not be what has been completed but by remains to be done” (67).

The major reason to do all of this is to prepare for the end of the world. When it comes those who have acted rightly “will have cause for rejoicing from heaven” (70).

On the Possibility of Not Sinning

This short letter defines sin as “failure to avoid things which are forbidden, and failure to do things that are commanded.”  God has clearly commanded humanity to be free from sin and since “God would have never commanded the impossible” the possibility of living without sin must be maintained (169). Furthermore, saying that it is impossible to live without sin provides an excuse for sinner, “under the plea that it is impossible not to sin, they are given a false sense of security in sinning.” Also, “The man who labours and strives to be without any sin will humbly and submissively express his regret for the error of his ways, when he realizes that he has done what he could have avoided if he had wanted to” (168).

This is the first of a few thematic timelines of American history I am preparing for my general exams. Two others that I plan to complete in the next week and a half are on citizenship and state building. This timeline ends in 1866. The Reconstruction era will be part of the citizenship timeline. I welcome any and all feedback and corrections that people may have to offer. This timeline is somewhat idosyncratic in that it reflects the concerns of my examiners, Lisa McGirr and John Stauffer. 

1502 — The first African slaves arrive in the Americas^[1]. Over the next four hundred years, according to Walter Johnson, “ten to eleven million people—fifty or sixty thousand a year in the peak decades between 1700 and 1850—were packed beneath slave ship decks and sent to the New World. Indeed, up to the year 1820, five times as many Africans travelled across the Atlantic as did Europeans.” These numbers do not include the dead.^[2]

1513 — The “sale of licenses for importing Negroes was a source of profit for the Spanish government.”^[3]

1518 — Bartolomé de Las Casas makes a “proposal to the Spanish Crown for the replacing Indian laborers with Negroes purchased in Iberia.”^[4]

1619 — The first African slaves arrive in Jamestown, Virginia.

1685 — The Code Noir is adopted in the French West Indies. It defines “Negroes… as chattels… to be baptized and instructed in the true faith” and excused from work on Sunday.^[5]

1688 — Aphra Behn publishes Oroonoko; or the History of the Royal Slave. It is an early instance of the myth of noble savage and portrays Africans as corrupted by the institution of slavery.

1709 — Slavery is legally established in Canada (then under French control).^[6]

1736 — Perfectionism leads the Quaker Benjamin Lay to try “to prove that antislavery was the crucial test of religious purity.”^[7] Earlier Quakers, William Edmundson in 1676 and a group in Germantown, Pennslyvania in 1688 for example, had protested against slavery to little effect.^[8]

1740 — The “courts in South Carolina held that color of an Indian, unlike that of a Negro, was not prima facie evidence of slavery.”^[9]

1754 — John Woolman publishes Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes, a text which has considerable influence on convincing Quakers to become antislavery.^[10]

1755 — Jean-Jacques Rousseau publishes Discours sur l’inégalité arguing, “Men were born fee and equal; the renunciation of liberty meant the renunciation of being a man.”^[11] Benjamin Franklin publishes Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind. It is among the first texts to argue that slave labor is more expensive, and thus inferior to, than free labor.^[12]

1756 — Slaves constitute 16% of the population of New York City^[13]. The Society of Friends takes “serious steps to induce owners to provide their slaves with religious instruction.”^[14]

1758 — The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends excludes slave traders from its business meetings.^[15]

1761 — The London Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends “announced that slave dealers merited disownment.”^[16]

1762 — The second part of John Woolman’s Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes is published.^[17]

1770 — Abbé Raynal publishes Histoire des deux Indes, which according to David Brion Davis, is “an example of the Enlightenment’s faith in reason and nature” that formed the first source of antislavery thought^[18].

1771 — The Massachusetts legislature outlaws the importation of slaves.^[19]

1772 — Lord Mansfield decides in Somerset’s Case in England that slavery can only be established via positive law.^[20]

1774 — John Wesley publishes Thoughts upon Slavery arguing that “since the same causes always produce similar effects, ‘the dreadful consequence of slavery is the same amongst every people.’”^[21]

1776 — The Revolutionary War breaks out. Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations claiming “the relations between slave and master epitomized those artificial restraints that prevented self-interest from being harnessed to the general good.”^[22] John Woolman dies while on trip to Britain. Samuel Hopkins publishes A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans, proclaiming that  it is hypocritical for whites to fight for their liberty while keeping slaves. The oppression that the colonists face from the British, he argues, is God’s punishment for having slaves.

1780 — Pennsylvania’s Act for Emancipation is passed and, according to Robert Cover, serves as “a pro type for all the gradual emancipation statutes that followed… Everyone born after July 4, 1780, was to be born free. Persons already slaves before that date would owe service for life. The children of these servants for life would inherit an obligation for service for twenty-eight years.” Tom Paine writes the preamble to the Act.^[23] Massachusetts ratifies a constitution that declares “All men are born free and equal…”^[24] The 1840 census is the last one that reports slaves in Pennsylvania.^[25]

1781 — Quock Walker cases begin. Walker, a slave in Massachusetts, runs away and then sues his master for beating him when he is caught. As a result, either in 1781 or 1783, the state courts decide that the Massachusetts constitution forbids slavery under the “free and equal” clause.^[26]

1782 — Virginia passes a Manumission Act that allows for the private manumission of slaves. The Act is modified by the Removal Act of 1806 which requires “freed Negroes to leave the state within twelve months or upon reaching their majority.”^[27]

1787 — The Constitution is adopted by the original thirteen colonies. It includes several clauses that focus on slavery. Article I Section 2 states “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned… according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons… three fifths of all other Persons.” Article I Section 9 allows the prohibition of the slave trade after 1808. Article IV Section 2 includes the fugitive slave clause, “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” Some scholars interpret Article IV Section 4 which says that the federal government will protect “every State in this Union… against domestic Violence” as relating to an obligation to suppress slave rebellions.^[28] Between 1787 and 1810 170,000 slaves are imported into the country. Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance which prohibits slavery in federal territory north of the Ohio River.^[29]

1790 — More than 90 percent of enslaved people live in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, George and what will become Kentucky. Exports from the southern states account for almost a third of the country’s total exports.^[30]

1791 — Civil war breaks out in the French colony of St. Domingue (present day Haiti) and slaves in the North Providence revolt.^[31]

1792 — The Militia Act of 1792 restricts service in the army to “every free able-bodied white male citizen.”^[32]

1793 — Congress passes an Act to enforce the Fugitive Slave clause. It “provided for enforcement… by way of summary process before any federal judge or state magistrate.” Abolitionists would later claim that this meant escaped slaves were entitled to trial by jury.^[33] The cotton gin is invented, transforming the textile industry.

1799 — New York passes a gradual act of abolition.

1803 — With the Louisiana Purchase the United States acquires what will eventually become the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.^[34]

1804 — The Republic Haiti is formed making it the first independent black nation in the Americas.^[35]

1804 — New Jersey passes a gradual act of abolition.^[36]

1808 — Congress outlaws the international slave trade. Over the next fifty five years approximately one million African Americans are sold within the United States, primarily from the upper to the lower South.^[37]

1816 — The American Colonization Society is formed to promote the colonization of free African Americans to Africa.^[38] Eventually the society will repatriate more than 12,000 freed slaves in Africa.^[39] Richard Allen founds the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, the first independent African American denomination.^[40]

1819 — Congress passes legislation authorizing the President to send armed ships to Africa to suppress the illegal American slave trade.^[41]

1820 — The Missouri Compromise allows for the admission of Missouri as a slave state but prohibits slavery in unorganized territory north of 36º30’ latitude.^[42] Maine is admitted as a free state.^[43]

1821 — Missouri is admitted as a slave state.^[44]

1822 — In the case of La Jeune Eugenie, a slave ship flying the French flag, the Supreme Court, with Justice Joseph Story writing the majority opinion, rules “that only when the flag of the ship permits the trade under its domestic law, can the slaver claim any status other than pirate.”^[45] In South Carolina, Denmark Vesey’s planned slave rebellion is discovered.^[46]

1825 — In the case of The Antelope the Supreme Court overturns its decision in La Jeune Eugenie.^[47]

1827 — New York ends slavery.^[48]

1830 — David Walker publishes his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, an early, if not the earliest, black nationalist text. Walker’s appeal convinces William Lloyd Garrison to reject colonization.^[49]

1831 — William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing The Liberator on January 1. Inspired by a vision similar to Revelation, Nat Turner launches his rebellion in Southhampton County, Virginia on August 21. Nat and his supporters massacre every white that they encounter, approximately sixty people. They head for Jerusalem, the county seat, with the belief that if they can somehow reach there God will bring about an apocalyptic ending to slavery. The insurrection fails the day it is launched, Nat is captured on October 30 and executed on November 11.^[50]

1832 — The nullification crisis erupts between the federal government and South Carolina over the issue of states rights. The South Carolina legislature votes to hold the federal tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null, void and having no effect in the state (planters felt that tariffs benefitted Northern manufacturers but undermined the plantation economy by making it more difficult to sell goods in Europe). In response, President Jackson threatens to march federal troops into South Carolina to collect the tariffs. South Carolina threatens to secede. The administration agrees to reduce the tariff and the crisis is averted.^[51] The New England Anti-Slavery Society is formed by William Lloyd Garrison and 12 other members.

1833 — Slavery is abolished throughout the British empire.^[52] The American Anti-Slavery Society is formed with 62 delegates. Lydia Maria Child publishes An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans. In her book Child synthesizes the various arguments against slavery and advocates interracial marriage as a way to end racism.

1834 — George Bancroft publishes History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent. According to David Brion Davis, it is an example of the kind of “popular democracy” that formed a third source of antislavery thought by suggesting that slavery was not part of the European vision for the Americas. Bancroft wrote, “Nothing came from Europe but a free people.”^[53]

1835 — Most Southern states bar abolitionist writings.^[54]

1836 — State laws over slavery begin to become conflict with each other. In Massachusetts, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw rules,  in Commonwealth v. Aves, “that the moment that the master carries his slave into a country where domestic slavery is not permitted, he becomes free.”^[55]

1837 — Congress adopts Gag Rule to prohibit antislavery petitions.^[56] Abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy is murdered in Alton, Illinois.^[57]

1839 — In the case of the Amistad, a group of enslaved Africans rose up in mutiny and seized control of slave ship. The Supreme Court, after hearing arguments from the antislavery John Quincy Adams, with Justice Story writing the opinion, decides that because the Africans were illegally enslaved they had a right to mutiny. The ship had a Spanish flag. Robert Cover summarizes Adams argument: “It is because there is no law, Spanish or American that authorizes the slavery, that the Negroes are entitled to fall back on natural law even to the extent of revolution.”^[58] Theodore Dwight Weld and Angelina Grimke compile American Slavery as It Is from southern newspaper clippings and first-hand accounts.^[59]

1840 — The Liberty Party, the first antislavery party, is founded. Many earlier antislavery activists thought that reform could not come through political parties. Salmon Chase’s career traces the development of political antislavery. He goes on to help start both the Free Soil Party and the Republican Party. According to Eric Foner, the party platform “included attacks on slavery for impoverishing the southern states, denying southern laborers the right to an education, and regarded and dishonoring laborers generally.” Liberty Party members argue that slavery is a state, not a national, institution.^[60] Auguste Comte publishes Cours de philosophy positive. According to David Brion Davis, it “rested on a rigidly prescribed series of ascending stages of history” of which slavery “became a useless vestige as society progressed.” Along with Henri Wallon, he provides an example of the “belief in the progress of Christian and scientific principles” that served the second source of antislavery thought.^[61]

1842 — The case of the Creole, an American slave ship on which there was a mutiny, comes before the Supreme Court. The slaves landed in British territory seeking freedom. The antislavery lawyer William Jay argued, “When slaves are shipped on the high seas, the protection afforded by the law the creates slavery ceases.” The case is settled through international arbitration. The slaves remain free but Britain is ordered to pay $100,000 in damages.^[62]

1844 — Wendell Phillips publishes The Constitution: A Proslavery Compact, the first of three works in which he argues, on behalf of the Garrisonian abolitionists, that the Constitution was “a compromise over slavery” with five proslavery provisions: the three-fifths clause; “the limitation on the power of Congress to prohibit the ‘migration or importation’ of slaves until 1808; the Fugitive Slave clause; the clause affording Congress the power to suppress insurrection; the clause insuring, upon application from a state, federal assistance in the suppression of domestic violence.” He further claims that judges cannot abrogate slavery simply because they view in conflict with natural law.^[63] Congress rescinds the Gag Rule.^[64]

1845 — New Jersey ratifies a new constitution with a “free and equal” clause. In two cases, State v. Post and State v. Van Buren, the State Supreme Court rules that the “free and equal” clause does not preclude slavery.^[65] Texas is admitted as a slave state.^[66]

1847 — Henri Wallon publishes Histoire de l’esclavage, which according to David Brion Davis, conceived of history as a kind of “historical progress resulting from the spread and influence of Christianity.” In Wallon’s view “slavery and the progress of Christianity were mutually exclusive.”^[67] Frederick Douglass begins publishing The North Star.^[68]

1848 — The Free Soil Party forms as a coalition of people in the Liberty Party who do not advocate immediate abolition, the Conscience (anti-slavery) Whigs and Barnburner (anti-slavery) Democrats. Their main belief is that the Constitution does not establish slavery in federal territory.^[69] Connecticut ends slavery.^[70]

1849 — Henry David Thoreau publishes “Civil Disobedience.”

1850 — The Fugitive Slave Act updates the 1793 Act. According to Cover, “It provided for the appointment of special federal commissioners who would hear the fugitive rendition proceedings and issue certificates of removal. The commissioner was to hear the slaveholder or his representative… the act explicitly excluded the alleged fugitive’s testimony from the proceeding.”^[71] The Fugitive Slave Act is part of the Compromise of 1850 which admits California as a free state and empowers the voters of the New Mexico and Utah territories to decide the question for themselves.^[72]

1851 — In the rendition of Thomas Sims Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice Lemuel Shaw, who is antislavery, denies Sims a writ of habus corpus. Sims is returned to the South.^[73] Herman Melville publishes Moby Dick.

1852 — Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the antebellum period’s bestseller, selling 300,000 copies. Stowe concludes her novel by warning that if the country doesn’t end slavery then God will bring “the day of vengeance” and do it.^[74] Frederick Douglass delivers his speech “The Meaning of the July Fourth for the Negro” in Rochester, New York on July 5.

1854 — Kansas-Nebraska Act, supported by Illinois Senator Stephen Douglass, is passed, repudiating the Compromise of 1820, it empowers settlers in Kansas and Nebraska to vote on slavery.^[75] In the Act’s wake state-wide Republican parties are formed by antislavery politicians who insist that “no further political compromise with slavery was possible.” Their principal demand is no extension of slavery outside of the existing slave states.^[76] Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner gives his “Freedom National; Slavery Sectional” speech in opposition to the Act.^[77] The rendition of Anthony Burns outrages Boston residents. In response, Henry David Thoreau writes “Slavery in Massachusetts.” That same year he publishes Walden.^[78]

1855 — The Radical Abolitionist party is formed by Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, James McCune Smith, John Brown and others in Syracuse, New York. According to John Stauffer, “the party’s platform specifically affirmed violence as a way to end slavery and oppression.”^[79]

1856, February — The national Republican Party is founded in Pittsburgh. It’s platform “linked slavery and polygamy as ‘twin relics of barbarism’ …endorsed Chase’s constitutional position that the federal government was bound to abolish slavery everywhere within its jurisdiction, and specifically denied the authority of either Congress or a territorial legislature to establish slavery in any territory.”^[80]

1856, May 19 and 20 — Charles Sumner delivers his speech “The Crime Against Kansas” likening Senator Butler from South Carolina and Stephen Douglas to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza and claiming they are in love with “the harlot Slavery” and likening proslavery settlers in Kansas to rapists.^[81]

1856, May 21 — Guerrilla fighting starts in “Bleeding Kansas” when proslavery invaders from Missouri attack the antislavery of Lawrence, Kansas.^[82]

1856, May 22 — South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks, Senator Butler’s nephew, brutally canes Sumner on the Senate floor, leaving him bloody and unconscious.^[83]

1856, May 24 — John Brown and his sons massacre five proslavery settlers in Pottawatomie, Kansas.^[84]

1856, November 4 — Republican presidential candidate John Frémont carries eleven northern states. Democrat James Buchanan wins the election by carrying all of the Southern slave states.^[85]

1857 — Dred Scott v. Sanford is decided by the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roger Taney. In the case Dred Scott claims that he had been rendered free when his master had transported him onto free soil. In the decision, Taney declares that no black person could be a citizen of the United States and that “because the Constitution ‘distinctly and expressed affirmed’ the right to property in slaves, slaveholders could bring them into the federal territories.” Scott did not become free when he was transported into the free territory of Minnesota. The Missouri Compromise, repealed by the Kansas Nebraska Act, was also judged to have been unconstitutional.^[86]

1859, October 16 — John Brown launches his raid on Harper’s Ferry with twenty-one men (sixteen white and five blacks) hoping that he can spark a slave revolt throughout Virginia. The raid fails. Robert E. Lee leads the marines who capture Brown and several of his conspirators. The raid was financed by Gerrit Smith and five other white abolitionists known as the “committee of six.” Brown tries to recruit Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman to participate.^[87]

1859, October 30 to November 3 — Henry David Thoreau delivers “A Plea for Captain John Brown” in Concord, Boston, and Worcester, Massachusetts.^[88]

1859, December 2 — John Brown is executed. He remain unrepentant to the last.^[89]

1860, June 4 — Charles Sumner delivers “The Barbarism of Slavery,” his first speech in the Senate since his caning by Preston Brooks. In it he argues that slavery morally corrupts slave owners. Southern political leaders and many Northern moderates are outraged.^[90]

1860, November 6 — Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln wins the election with 40% of the popular vote. He doesn’t carry a single southern state.^[91]

1860, December 20 — South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the Union.^[92] Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas soon follow.^[93]

1861, January 29 — Kansas is admitted as a free state.^[94]

1861, late February — The Confederate States of America is organized with a provisional government. According to Stephanie McCurry, “The new Confederate Constitution left no doubt that slavery was the foundation of the new republic; it was a proslavery Constitution for a proslavery state.” Further, “the provisional government crafted a document that defined slaves explicitly as property, put slaves definitively outside the boundaries of the political community, prohibited the incorporation of any new state that did not sanction slavery, and put it beyond the power of the federal government to… interfere with the legality of slave property or rights of slave holders.”^[95]

1861, April 12 — South Carolina troops open fire on federal troops at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.^[96]

1861, April 17 — With federal troops moving into the South,Virginia secedes from the Union.^[97] Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee follow. The slave states of Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland stay in the Union.^[98]

1861, May 23 to 30 —Three slaves runaway to Fortress Monroe, seeking freedom across the Union line. General Benjamin Butler takes them in and puts them to work. President Lincoln approves Butler’s contraband policy on May 30. According to James Oakes this meant, “Union troops were not permitted to interfere with the ordinary operations of slavery in the rebellious states… But if a state declared itself in rebellion against the laws of the United States, and if any slaves in those states ‘come within your lines,’ Butler was to ‘refrain from surrendering’ such slaves to their ‘alleged masters.’ …Butler was to employ able-bodied slaves as he saw fit, keeping careful records and charging the expenses for the case of their families against the wages of the refugees.”^[99]

1861, August 6 to 8 — Congress passes the First Confiscation Act. Under the terms of this act, “The slaves of disloyal masters were emancipated.” The War Department implements the act two days later, emancipation begins. Essentially, “slave voluntarily entering Union lines from the Union were emancipated.”^[100] Shortly afterwards, some slaves in border states begin to flee their masters for army camps. Upon arrival in the camps the slaves would denounce their masters as secessionists and claim freedom.^[101] According to James Oakes, the Act “required either district or circuit courts to determine the guilt or innocence of any rebels whose property had been seized.”^[102]

1861, August 30 — General John Frémont issues a proclamation in Missouri declaring martial law, overturning civilian authority, confiscating the property of disloyal owners, and emancipating slaves of disloyal owners.^[103] President Lincoln partially overturns the proclamation. His objection is that it overturns civilian rule by not following the court process outlined in the First Confiscation Act.

1862, February to June — More than ten thousand former slaves on the North Carolina Sea Islands are emancipated via the First Confiscation Act.^[104] Tens of thousands more

1862, April 16 — President Lincoln signs a bill outlawing slavery in the District of Columbia.^[105]

1862, July 4 — Frederick Douglass delivers his speech “The Slaveholders’ Rebellion” in Himrods Corner, New York.

1862, July 17 — Congress passes the Second Confiscation Act. According to James Oakes, “The easiest way to understand the statute is to grasp the relative simplicity of its most important goal: it would free the slaves of all disloyal masters. This would extend emancipation far beyond the scope of the First Confiscation Act, which applied only to slaves actually used in the rebellion.”^[106]

1862, September 22 — President Lincoln issues a “Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.” According to James Oakes it states, that “Universal emancipation would commence in the parts of the South not occupied by the Union but still in rebellion on January 1, 1863.

1862, December 31 — President Lincoln signs a bill making the abolition of slavery a prerequisite for admission into the Union.^[107] This initially applies to West Virginia.

1863, January 1 —President Lincoln issues the “Emancipation Proclamation.” According to James Oakes, it differed from earlier documents on two points: invited slaves to come within Union lines with the promise of freedom; and it lifted the ban on black enlistment in the Union army.^[108]

1863, January 5 — Attorney General Edward Bates rules that “as far as citizenship was concerned, there was no distinction between blacks and whites.”^[109]

1863, March 3 — Congress passes a national draft law. The repeal of 1792 Militia Act by the Militia Act of 1862 makes blacks eligible for the draft. The Union army begins to draft black soldiers.^[110]

1865, April 9 — Robert Lee surrenders at Appomattox Court House. The Civil War is officially over.

1865, December 18 — The Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery, is certified. Its first section reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”^[111] Until then slavery had continued to exist in Kentucky and Delaware.^[112]

1866, February 10 — Texas is readmitted to the Union and slavery is outlawed everywhere in the nation.^[113]

---

[1] David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966), 8.

[2] Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 4.

[3] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 8.

[4] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 169.

[5] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 207.

[6] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 126.

[7] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 291.

[8] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 307-309.

[9] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 179.

[10] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 484.

[11] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 413.

[12] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 427.

[13] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 135.

[14] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 305.

[15] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 330.

[16] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 330.

[17] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 492.

[18] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 13.

[19] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 488.

[20] Robert Cover, Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975), 16-17.

[21] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 383.

[22] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 434.

[23] Cover, 62-63.

[24] Cover 44.

[25] Cover 160.

[26] Cover 43-50.

[27] Cover 67.

[28] Richard Beeman, The Penguin Guide to the United States; A Fully Annotated Declaration of Independence, U. S. Constitution and Amendments, and Selections from The Federalist Papers (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 22, 51, 53.

[29] Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origin of the Deep South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 18-19.

[30] Rothman 3-4.

[31] David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1975), 28.

[32] James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861—1865 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013), 360.

[33] Cover 162.

[34] Rothman 18.

[35] Rothman 21.

[36] Cover 55.

[37] Johnson 5.

[38] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 33.

[39] Paul Boyer, American History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 49.

[40] Peter Hinks, introduction in David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, ed. and introduction by Peter Hinks (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), xx.

[41] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 34.

[42] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 35.

[43] William Lloyd Garrison and the Fight against Slavery; Selections from the Liberator, ed. and introduction William Cain (Boston: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 187.

[44] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 35.

[45] Cover 101-105.

[46] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 35.

[47] Cover 101-105.

[48] Cover 160.

[49] Hinks n 122.

[50] The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents, ed. and introduction by Kenneth Greenberg (Boston: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 1-3.

[51] Harry Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990), 114-128 passim.

[52] Boyer 49.

[53] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 13; George Bancroft quote in Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 23.

[54] Cain 188.

[55] Lemuel Shaw quoted in Cover, 94.

[56] Cain 189.

[57] Boyer 50.

[58] Cover 111.

[59] Boyer 50.

[60] Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 60.

[61] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 20, 13.

[62] Cover 114.

[63] Cover 153.

[64] Cain 190.

[65] Cover, 55-61.

[66] Cain 190.

[67] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 18, 19.

[68] Cain 190.

[69] Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 87.

[70] Cover 160.

[71] Cover 175.

[72] Boyer 48.

[73] Cover 176-177.

[74] Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (New York: Bantam Class, 1980 [1852]), 446.

[75] Boyer 51.

[76] Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 127.

[77] Oakes 32.

[78] Elizabeth Hall Witherell, “Chronology” in Henry David Thoreau Collected Essays and Poems, ed. Elizabeth Hall Witherell (New York: The Library of America, 2001), 653.

[79] John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 8.

[80] Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 130.

[81] Charles Sumner, “The Crime Against Kansas” in The Works of Charles Sumner  Vol. 4 (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1872), 144.

[82] Boyer 52.

[83] Stauffer 20.

[84] Boyer 52.

[85] Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial; Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010), 82.

[86] Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial, 92.

[87] Stauffer 236-261 passim

[88] Witherell 655.

[89] Stauffer 260.

[90] Charles Sumner, “The Barbarism of Slavery” in The Works of Charles Sumner Vol. 5 (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1872), 1-174.

[91] Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial, 143.

[92] Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2010), 40.

[93] McCurry 53.

[94] Boyer 52.

[95] McCurry 78, 221.

[96] McCurry 68.

[97] McCurry 74.

[98] McCurry 53.

[99] Oakes 99-100.

[100] Oakes 138, 139.

[101] Oakes 169.

[102] Oakes 119.

[103] Oakes 157.

[104] Oakes 207.

[105] Oakes 274.

[106] Oakes 236.

[107] Oakes 299.

[108] Oakes 344.

[109] Oakes 358.

[110] Oakes 361.

[111] Beeman 75.

[112] Oakes 482.

[113] Oakes 488.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated Terence Irwin (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999)

Aristotle’s major ethical work is the primary source for the tradition of virtue ethics. It is notable, amongst other things, for his teleology, definition of virtue, doctrine of human nature and discussion on friendship.

Aristotle believes that, “Every craft and every line of inquiry, and likewise every action and decision, seems to seek some good” (1). The good he thinks that humans seek is what he calls happiness. He identifies three kinds of happiness: pleasure, honor and study. Aristotle is hierarchical in his thinking and he ranks all of his typologies. For him, study is the highest good. Likewise, political science is the highest science because it is about the happiness of many and not just one.

The good that is sought can also be understood as a function. And just as a horse has a function, so too with a human being “activity of the soul in accord with reason or requiring reason” (9). Philosophy can be understood as the craft to best realize this function. Goods can be divided into three types: external, of the soul and of the body.

A person can only be said to be truly happy at the end of life because reversals of fortune can reveal that what was thought to be happiness earlier was illusory. Happiness is defined as “a certain sort of activity of the soul in accord with complete virtue” and virtue is defined as “virtue of the soul, not of the body” (16). Aristotle divides the virtues into virtues of thought and virtues of character. Some of the virtues of thought are wisdom, comprehension, and prudence. Some of the virtues of character are generosity and temperance.

This is an act based ethics, ones becomes virtuous by doing things, by acquiring the habits of virtue, rather than believing things. Virtues, furthermore, are understood as the mean between two extremes. Generosity, for instance, is the mean between being a miser and being a spendthrift.

Justice in this system is what allows us to become virtuous. An unjust social system is one that cultivates unvirtuous behavior. Law is useful and just when it aims to cultivate virtuous behavior. One reason why political science is the highest science is that it tries to pass the correct laws that will cultivate the correct behavior in the citizens of a city.

Aristotle, incidentally, understands human beings as social creatures. We are people who live in communities, cities, and are parts of families. Seeking virtue is never an individual act.

Also, Aristotle believes that there are both voluntary and involuntary actions. Only adults, and possibly men, are capable of voluntary actions.

Throughout the book Aristotle makes reference to incontinent people as opposed to virtuous people. The incontinent are those who are “prone to be overcome by pleasures” which the lowest kind of happiness (109).

Two books (VIII and IX) of the ethics are concerned with friendship which “is most necessary for our life” and is what “hold cities together.” It is so important that most “legislators would seem to be more concerned about it than justice” (119). The good that friendship seeks is love and “friendship is said to be reciprocated goodwill.” Friendships has “three species, corresponding to three objects of love” (121). These are: utility, pleasure and character. The most enduring, and rarest, kind of friendship is that of character.

The book closes with a discussion of education and the disconnect between theory and practice. Aristotle attacks “the sophists who advertise that they teach politics but none of them practices it” while praising those who both teach and practice politics.

E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1966 [1963])

Thompson’s book, like the title suggests, chronicles the making of the English working class. In the Preface he lays out his methodology and argument. “Making, because it is a study in active process, which owes as much to agency as to conditioning.” “I do not see class as a ‘structure’, nor even as a ‘category’, but as something which in fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships… the notion of class entails the notion of historical relationship. …And class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs” (9). “Class-consciousness is the way in which these experiences are handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value-systems, ideas, and institutional forms… Consciousness of class arises in the same way in different times and places, but never in just the same way” (10). “Class is defined by men as they live their own history, and, in the end, this is its only definition” (11).

He also describes the aim and structure of the book, “This book can be seen as a biography of the English working class from its adolescence until its early manhood” (11). Part One of the book looks at “the continuing popular traditions in the 18th century which influenced the crucial Jacobin agitation of the 1790s.” Part Two traces the experiences of workers during the Industrial Revolution and attempts to “estimate… the character of the new industrial work discipline, and the bearing upon this of the Methodist Church.” Part Three picks “up the story of plebeian Radicalism… through Luddism to the heroic age at the close of the Napoleonic Wars.” The book concludes by look at the evolution of political theory and class consciousness in the 1820s and 1830s. Thompson admits to have a particular democratic communist agenda in writing his book, “Causes which were lost in England might, in Asia or Africa, yet be won” (13).

The work is broken into three parts. The first part “The Liberty Tree” covers chapters one to five, the second part “The Curse of Adam” covers chapters six to twelve, and the third part “The Working Class Presence” covers chapters thirteen through sixteen.

Part I: The Liberty Tree

In the first chapter, he defines a working-class organization as “There is the working man as Secretary. There is the low weekly subscription. There is the intermingling of economic and political themes… There is the function of the meeting, both as a social occasion and as a centre for political activity. There is the realistic attention to procedural formalities. Above all, there is the determination to propagate opinions and to organise the converted, embodied in the leading rule: ‘That the number of our Members be unlimited’” (21).

In the second chapter, he sees religious dissent as a space for preserving radical ideas by keeping them “in the imagery of sermons and tracts and in democratic forms of organization” (30). Additionally, “The tension between the kingdoms ‘without’ and ‘within’ implied a rejection of the ruling powers except at points where co-existence was inevitable” (31) or throughout “the Industrial Revolution we can see this tension…. in the Dissent of the poor, with chiliasm at one pole, and quietism at the other” (50). He summarizes this argument, “The intellectual history of Dissent is made up of collisions, schisms, mutations; and one feels often that the dormant seeds of political Radicalism lay within it, ready to germinate whenever planted in a beneficent and hopeful social context” (36). On a side note, in this section he also traces the origin of “a ‘calling’” to Puritan culture and argues that it was “particularly well adapted to the experience of prospering and industrious middle class or petty bourgeois groups” (37). He pays particular attention to Methodism throughout the book, arguing that it had both a conservative aspect and “was indirectly responsible for a growth in the self-confidence and capacity for organisation of working people” (42).

In the third chapter Thompson lays out his famous argument about moral economy and describes his method: “If we are concerned with historical change we must attend to the articulate minorities. But these minorities arise from a less articulate majority whose consciousness may be described as being, at this time, ‘sub-political’… The inarticulate, by definition, leave few records of their thoughts. We catch glimpses in moments of crisis… and yet crisis is not a typical condition” (55). Further, “We may isolate two ways in which these ‘sub-political’ traditions affect the early working-class movement: the phenomena of riot and of the mob, and the popular notions of an Englishman’s ‘birthright’” (59). As he summarizes this, “Hence the final years of the 18th century saw a last desperate effort by the people to reimpose the older moral economy as against the economy of the free market” (67) and in “considering only this one form of ‘mob’ action we have come upon unsuspected complexities, for behind every such form of popular direct action some legitimising notion of right is to be found” (68).

In chapter four Thompson takes up the task of describing how the Englishman’s “birthright” of freedom formed a basis for the moral economy and working class resistance. He writes, “they felt themselves, in some obscure way, to be defending the ‘Constitution’ against alien elements who threatened their ‘birthright.’ …Patriotism, nationalism, even bigotry and repression, were all clothed in the rhetoric of liberty” (78). Mostly, this manifested as a desire to be left alone and understanding that the “profession of a soldier was held to be dishonourable” (81). However, Thompson also notes, “This defensive ideology nourished… far larger claims to positive rights” (83).

In chapter five Thompson tries to show how the traditions of the 18th century laid the way for the emergence of working class radicalism in the early 19th century. He summarizes the chapter thusly: “In the 1790s something like an ‘English Revolution’ took place, of profound importance in shaping the consciousness of the post-war working class. It is true that the revolutionary impulse was strangled in its infancy; and the first consequence was that of bitterness and despair. The counter-revolutionary panic of the ruling classes expressed itself in every part of social life; in attitudes of trade unionism, to the education of the people, to their sports and manners, to their publications and societies, and their political rights. And the reflex of despair among the common people can be seen, during the war years, in the inverted chiliasm of the Southcottians and the new Methodist revival” (177).

Part II: The Curse of Adam

Chapter six lays out a theoretical framework for the next few chapters that deal specifically with the impact of the Industrial Revolution on particular groups in society. He argues, “steam power and the cotton-mill = new working class” (191) and claims the “working class made itself as much as it was made.” He sees a working class and not classes because “first… the growth of class-consciousness: the consciousness of an identity of interests as between all these diverse groups of working people and as against the interests of other classes. And, second, in the growth of corresponding forms of political and industrial organizations” (194). At the heart of these differences in interests lie an exploitative relationship which “is depersonalised, in the sense that no lingering obligations of mutuality… are admitted” (203). Furthermore, the “process of industrialisation must, in any conceivable social context, entail suffering and the destruction of older and valued ways of life” (204). He writes, “People may consume more goods and become less happy or less free at the same time” (211).

Chapters seven, eight, and nine look at how the process of class formation impacted field labourers, artisans, and weavers. In all three cases he argues that the conflict between the groups and the emerging industrial class can be understood as a “conflict… between two cultural modes or ways of life” (305).

Chapter ten is dedicated to arguing that the above groups did not fare better under the Industrial Revolution, “In the fifty years of the Industrial Revolution the working-class share of the national product had almost certainly fallen relative to the share of the property-owning and professional classes” (318). He pays particular attention to child labor and argues against those who note that it took some time for the movement against it to arise after the advent of the Industrial Revolution by claiming, “We forget how long abuses can continue ‘unknown’ until they are articulated: how people can look at misery and not notice it, until misery itself rebels” (342). Setting up the next chapter he claims, “We shall return to the Methodists, and see why it was their peculiar mission to act as apologists of child labour” (348).

Chapter eleven focuses on the role of Methodism in forming, taming and disciplining  the working class. During this period he sees Methodism as making great gains among the working class and consolidating “a new bureaucracy of ministers” (351). He also claims, the “factory system demands a transformation of human nature” (362). Further, he lays out a variety reasons why Methodism accommodated child labor.

Chapter twelve looks at the impact of the Industrial Revolution on community, “In the industrial areas it can be seen in the extension of discipline of the factory or clock from working to leisure hours, from the working-day to the Sabbath, and in the assault upon… traditional holidays and fairs” (403). He summarizes the chapter “together with that of the loss of any felt cohesion in the community, save that which the working people, in antagonism to their labour and to their masters, built for themselves” (447).

Part Three: The Working-Class Presence

Chapter thirteen looks at how popular radicalism survived into the 19th century, the “laws outlawing corresponding societies and open political meetings had atomised the movement, so that the individualistic and quarrelsome behaviour of its leaders was a function of their situation as ‘voices’ rather than as organisers” (469).

Chapter fourteen traces this popular radicalism in “the Industrial Revolution, [and how] new institutions, new attitudes, new community-patterns, were emerging which were, consciously and unconsciously, designed to resist the intrusion of the magistrate, the employer, the parson or the spy” (487). Additionally, we “find some the sharpest conflicts involving men with special skills who attempted to attain to, or to hold to, a privileged position” (506). The major form of working-class organization that Thompson focuses on here in Luddism, “We have attempted to draw closer to the Luddite movement from three directions: the shadowy tradition of some political ‘underground’: the opacity of historical sources: and the vigorous traditions of illicit trade unionism” (521). For the Luddites, “What was at issue was the ‘freedom’ of the capitalist to destroy the customs of the trade, whether by new machinery, by the factory-system, or by unrestricted competition, beating-down wages” (549). He sees the Luddites looking forward to “a democratic community, in which industrial growth should be regulated according to ethical priorities” (552). He traces its demise to various factors. In the Midlands: where they were partially successful, the government deployed massive force against them, and it made their practices illegal. The Luddites also had the impact of bringing about greater unity amongst the ruling classes.

Chapter fifteen traces the development of political radicalism, as opposed to the workplace-based radicalism of the previous chapter. Thompson holds that it “was a generalized libertarian rhetoric, a running battle between the people and the unreformed House of Commons within which one issue after another was thrown to the fore” (604). He sees radicalism as having born “a direct relationship to the structure of each community” (611). He also treats the problem of leadership in this (these) movements: “the democratic movement looked to the aristocratic or gentlemanly leader;” “there was… [a] demagogic element;” there was no political organization to provide “self-discipline” (623); there was a tension between a resort to force and electoral reform. The “true heroes” of this movement were its local leadership, not its national leadership (631). Finally, he traces the influence of the Peterloo massacre on both the development of the working class and its enemies.

Chapter sixteen provides the conclusion and traces the emergence of class consciousness which occurred when “working men formed a picture of the organisation of society, out of their own experience and with the help of their hard-won and erratic experience, which was above all a political picture” (712). The development of a free press played an important role in this because “Persecution cannot easily stand up in the face of ridicule” (722). William Cobbett was crucial here. The Owenites mark the emergence of the first working-class movement and marks the end of older forms of revolt because they learned “to see capitalism, not as a collection of discrete events, but as a system” (806). Throughout this period there was also the emergence of middle class consciousness.