Month: January 2006

Contr'un

Calvin Blanchard: A Crisis Chapter on Government

January 26, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur
It’s been awhile since this has been up in the Labyrinth. Yesterday, when I was discussing Tom Paine with my Great Ideas students, I passed around a couple of 19th century editions of Paine’s work: the D. M Bennett collection of “major works” (edited by Calvin Blanchard) and an 1839 George Henry Evans edition of The Crisis with a list of Blanchard’s titles pasted inside the front. One of my students tracked down the current incarnation of The Truth Seeker. She wasn’t terribly impressed. So I figured it was time to get the Crisis Chapter back online so we can […]
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Oops! Wrong Brookfield? Mass. Historical backroads prove tricky

January 25, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur
Hehe. Thanks to some help from the very kind folks at the West Brookfield Historical Commission, it looks like we may have to revise one of the generally accepted “facts” about William B. Greene’s career. The West Brookfield firm of Merriam & Chapin printed a number of the pamphlets Greene wrote and published while he was a pastor in the area, but it looks like he was probably serving the First Congregational Church of Brookfield (identified in some contemporary accounts as South Brookfield), rather than the similarly named church in West Brookfield. With 20/20 hindsight, this looks obvious to me. […]
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“Song of Espousal” in the Moss Rose for 1847

January 23, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve been able to verify that William B. Greene’s first published work, the poem “Song of Espousal,” did in fact appear in the Moss Rose holiday gift annual for 1847. The annual is apparently a renamed reprint of the Atlantic Token for 1841, where the poem initially appeared. The poem is accompanied by an engraving: Most of the engravings in the annual appear to be stock cuts. This probably is as well, but I was immediately struck by the fact that it looks much like the descriptions of Greene in his youth. The R. Woodman credited may well be the […]
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The Fund: A Boston Land Bank of 1681

January 23, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur
An important episode in the story of the New England land banks is The Fund at Boston, in New England, apparently the earliest practical land bank experiment in the colonies. Much of what we know of it comes from a pamphlet with the delightfully cryptic title Several relating to the FUND, Printed for divers Reasons, as may appear (1681 or 1682). Because all that we have of the Severals is one unbound sheet, probably issued as a prospectus, I’ve simply posted the whole thing up on The Very Idea!.
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The Fund: A Boston Land Bank of 1681

January 22, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur
One sheet survives of this pamphlet, attributed to Rev. John Woodbridge. It describes an early mutual bank scheme known as The Fund at Boston in N. E. It is quite likely that this sheet was issued as a prospectus, and that the rest of the pamphlet was never published. The Severals is of particular interest because it confirms that path of between William Potter’s Key of Wealth (England, 1650) and the New England land bank experiments. Andrew Mcfarland Davis published an account of the Fund which we hope to have online sometime soon. Severals relating to the FUND Printed for […]
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The Incredible Shrinking. . .

January 19, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur
William B. GreeneAn observation, based on the collations I’ve been doing of Greene’s borrowings from sources such as William Beck and Edward Kellogg: The mutual bank writings of 1849 and 1850 are full of Greene’s personal ideas, personal analyses, pet projects, etc. In 1857 he cuts a tremendous amount of stuff out, adding some new material from Beck and a commentary on the colonial land bank. What remains is largely derived, or outright lifted, from a few sources. Greene’s personal stamp is much fainter here. The 1870 edition is a little leaner still. There are some new clarifying footnotes in […]
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The Very Idea!

January 19, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve set up a public mirror for the lecture-essays I’m posting to my Great Ideas class this semester. Returning to the part-time faculty gig has been good for my research. You haven’t really lived the life of an independent scholar until you’ve tried to do serious work with just a library courtesy card. So if you’re curious what has dragged me away from blogging for the last couple weeks, or are just interested in American intellectual history, check out The Very Idea! I like to think of it as a nice public place where my students can fight with my […]
The Very Idea

Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy

January 19, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur
John Cotton came to Massachusetts from Boston, England. He was a respected minister, although his teachings on the matter of justification and sanctification ran more towards the position that we’re calling “antinomian” than most of his fellow ministers. Anne Hutchinson, herself the daughter of a controversial minister, had been an admirer of Cotton, and sometimes a visitor to his church. She responded very strongly to the controversial elements in Cotton’s theology, being already inclined towards mysticism and at least open to some of the more controversial currents in English Christianity. Unhappy that her inspiration had gone to New England, she […]
The Very Idea

Justification and Sanctification

January 19, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur
We need to wrestle with some key concepts in puritan theology, in order to understand the crises which arise in Massachusetts Bay, and give rise to changes in colonial culture. The key question of Christian theology is, of course, “what must a man do to be saved?” The key question in the organization of a Christian society is, unsurprisingly, “how are the saints to be recognized?” The leadership of the community–ministers and secular officials, operating in a context without church-state separation–naturally have a large stake in maintaining discipline and conformity. Toleration in the Bay was frequently understood as “toleration of […]
The Very Idea

Puritan Freedom

January 19, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur
Freedom is, on this model, freedom to do good. And good is defined as actions in accordance with God’s will. Unfreedom comes from sin, or from subjection to Satan’s power. Our natures, though fallen, are still essentially oriented towards this variety of good. We are free to pursue our true natures only when we escape the influences of sin. Depending on the specific interpretation of some of the finer points of puritan theology, this form of freedom may amount to something very like a complete surrender. The varieties of puritanism which most emphasize the competely “free” nature of God’s grace–it’s […]