Year: 2007

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Notice of William B. Greene, The Blazing Star

September 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
“Notice of New Books,” The New Englander, XXXII, 1 (January, 1873), 183. MR. WILLIAM B. GREENE’S BLAZING STAR† seems to us to shine by a reflected light, and that light, whatever there is, is reflected from the Appendix on the Jewish Kabbala, if this be not darkness visible. We frankly confess to have been able to gather little or nothing from both except the excitement of our curiosity to learn somewhat more of this same Kabbala. But whatever these first portions of this volume have failed to furnish has been more than compensated by the tract on the Philosophy of […]
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Ezra Heywood and prison vaccinations

September 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
“An American Experience,” The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review, 1 (April, 1879), 12. AN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. MR. EZRA H. HEYWOOD, a fellow labourer with W. Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Francis Jackson, and Parker Pillsbury, for the abolition of slavery in the United States, has recently suffered imprisonment for the same cause as Mr. Truelove in England, but was liberated by President Hayes. He is turning his prison experiences to account in public lectures, showing how adverse to good are prison influences and regulations. ” I have no personal grievances to vent,” he says. ” I was in a liberal jail. […]
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B. W. Ball, The Revolution

August 19, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
B. W. Ball, “The Revolution,” The Radical Review, 720. THE REVOLUTION. There is no pause. Still blow resounds on blow,The order old making to shake and reelFrom base to pinnacle. To dust brought low,Crescent and Cross the shock of ruin feel.Shallow Reaction tries in vain to stemThe Revolution’s surge, which more and more,Drowning tiara, throne, and diadem.Spreads undulating wide from shore to shore.What though Priest, Kaiser, Sultan, King still sitSceptred and crowned above the encroaching flood?Belshazzar’s legend is above them writ,And they grow pale before Man’s altered mood.Voices of Revolution, trumpet-clear,Byron and Shelley, lo, your day is near! B. W. […]
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Edward Stanwood, Mr. Spooner’s Island Community

August 19, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Edward Stanwood, “Mr. Spooner’s Island Community,” The Radical Review, 578-581. MR. SPOONER’S ISLAND COMMUNITY. If one could only accept all of Mr. Lysander Spooner’s assumptions as true, his argument would be sound and his conclusions would follow. Unfortunately for him, his most material assumptions have no basis. Letus take his first case: one hundred men on a solitary island; each producing ten bushels of wheat, exactly enough for his own wants; each the possessor of coined money to the amount of what we call five dollars. It is true, wheat would have no price, though it would have a value. […]
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I. G. Blanchard, The Warfare

August 19, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
I. G. Blanchard, “The Warfare,” The Radical Review, 533. THE WARFARE. Along the battle’s flaming van We mark the tried and true, —Defenders of the cause of man, A chosen, peerless few.Born to their mission and inspired, Oh, should they fall, we feelNo spirit would like theirs be fired, No hand could wield their steel. Yet, one by one, they step aside, Or on the red field lie,And still their places are supplied, Still rings the battle-cry;Still o’er the hoary walls of Wrong Truth’s startling missiles fly,And still, with steady step and strong, Her hosts are marching by. And so […]
mutualism

Anarchy in Jamaica Plain, etc.

August 16, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
I had some contact with John Ruch, a writer for the Jamaica Plain Gazette, awhile back. He had seen a letter from William Batchelder Greene to Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler, posted here. I gave him a general rundown on Greene’s life, and what I knew about his time in Jamaica Plain. His article, “Anarchy in JP,” is now available, and thanks largely to Dan Clore has been getting quite a bit of attention in anarchist circles. John did a very nice job, particularly as there are very few very complete biographical sources on Greene. (You can see my own first […]
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Misc. notes

August 15, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Traffic on all my blogs has until recently been little more than a trickle, and recent excitements over the archives of Liberty, Lucifer, the Radical Review, and the Alarm has increased that to, well, a strong trickle. But the increase has been enough to inspire me to install some better counters and spend a little more time analyzing traffic. Someone at house.gov is reading Liberty. Lucifer the Light-Bearer is apparently not such a bad name in the 21st century, judging by the continuing interest in that archive. But about that archive. . . The editors of Lucifer were apparently consistently […]
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La Presse Anarchiste

August 15, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Before I had seriously begun my 2006 archiving push, John Zube mentioned the work of a French archivist, Vincent Dubuc, who had taken on a large-scale digitizing project. It was one of the encouragements to set a target and begin a regular scanning routine. Thanks to the attention that the Liberty archive has been getting (new thank-you‘s to Ken MacLeod and the Anarchism Community on LiveJournal for recent traffic), Vincent got in touch. His site, La Presse Anarchiste, is well worth some browsing time. Regular readers may be particularly interested in E. Armand’s papers, L’Ère nouvelle and L’Unique, but there […]
From the Archives

Elie Reclus, “Female Kinship and Maternal Filiation” (1877)

August 14, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Radical Review, August 1877, 205-223. FEMALE KINSHIP AND MATERNAL FILIATION. 1.—Das Mutterrech, eine Untersuchung über die Gjynoekokratie der altere Welt, nach ihrer religiösen und rechtlichen Natur. By I. I. Bachofen. Stuttgart. 1861. 2.—Studies in Ancient History, comprising a reprint of “Primitive Marriage.” An inquiry into the origin of the form of capture in marriage ceremonies. By G. T. M’Lennan. London. 1876. THE learned Mr. Bachofen had read, as we all have, the story of Orestes, who, having killed his mother Clytemnestra in order to revenge the murder of his father, was summoned to answer for his crime before the Areopagus […]
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Sidney H. Morse, The All-Loving

August 14, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Radical Review, 307 THE ALL-LOVING. Million-Folded are my likings, All the world my well-loved home;Would my kindred not regale me, To their world-fires I would roam. Pleasant ‘tis with love to tarry,— Pleasant to recount its store:Glooms and sorrows passing by me Leave my heart young as before. Listen, loved ones, o’er the planet! Think ye not I’m lost, if missingFrom your fire-lit hearths my greetings: All your loves my love is kissing. Warm and glowing goes my spirit Toward my million-fated kin.Oh! I keep their hearts enshrined In the deep my heart within. Sidney H. Morse.