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A Calvin Blanchard Miscellany

December 7, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] Bits and pieces, in preparation for a web-page update: Biographical sketch of Calvin Blanchard’s brother, Rufus Blanchard (1821-1904) [An entertaining snippet] Should Blanchard† publish First Principles—and it is far from impossible (I prevented him from publishing Social Statics)—it would not only ruin the whole subscription project, but, by mingling your name with the gang of obscene, prurient, and scoffing authors whom he patronizes and advertises, would make it embarrassing for others. † Calvin Blanchard, a disreputable publisher who kept a shop on Nassau Street, where you could buy any kind of […]

Stephen Pearl Andrews, 1877 “Address”

December 5, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’m just about done, for now at least, with combing the page of The Index. There is plenty more work to be done. For instance, someone should collect the material by Henry Appleton and Edwin C. Walker, particularly in the volumes for 1877 and 1878, and someone could easily make a good study of the responses to the Heywood trial and the issue of “obscenity” generally. I haven’t come close to exhausting what’s in those pages, but what I’ve extracted is still a “pretty good haul.” Here, once again, are the previous entries on The Index: Benjamin Tucker enters the […]

As 2006 draws to a close

December 4, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

Looking back at my goals for the 2006 scanning project, I can quite happily say that I have exceeded the 3000 original pages which I had hoped to add to the archive—and that I have to say that it’s a rather different 3000 pages than I projected. We’ll see how this last month goes, but it looks like the total will be closer to 5000 pages. I anticipate coming at least very close to finishing the William B. Greene works, and some of those connected works, like Beck’s Money and Banking and some additional work by Kellogg, without which the […]

Francis Tandy on strikes, boycotts and invasion

December 4, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

STRIKES, TRUSTS, BOYCOTTS, AND BLACK-LISTS. Francis D. Tandy The Arena (February 1900) IN a state of slavery it is impossible for a man to change his occupation. The very existence of such a state of society depends upon the denial of the right of the workman to leave his master. In proportion as this right is denied, the laborer is still a slave. Even under the present wage-system, this right is hedged about with restrictions, and when exercised is often found to be but stepping out of the frying-pan into the fire. Certain economic conditions make the lot of workmen […]

Lewis Masquerier, amateur astrophysicist?

December 4, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

Lewis Masquerier is one of my favorite figures among the older generations of American reformers. This early essay, from The American Repertory of Arts, Sciences, and Manufactures, June, 1841, is really an exemplary piece for displaying his wide-ranging curiosity and the fearlessness (bordering at times on foolhardiness) of his speculations. What it lacks in scientific acumen, it more than makes up in character.New Theory; suggesting the Rotary Motion of the Earth as the Cause of its Curvilinear Direction in its Orbit, and also of the Tides.by Lewis Masquerier. It is said in treatises upon gunnery, that if a rotary motion […]

Milo Hastings, housing reformer

December 4, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] In 1920, a book appeared with the title The Joke About Housing. It was a work of housing reform, including some fairly radical elements. Appended to it were a number of appendixes, including “A Solution of the Housing Problem in the United States,” a prize-winning essay by Milo Milton Hastings. Hastings was a prolific writer of science fiction, works on poultry farming, nutrition, and urban reform. He was a promoter of Edgar Chambless’ linear city, Roadtown. Hastings and Chambless are important figures from the “grand domestic revolution” of the early 20th century. I’ve done a little work to update […]

Greene and the “galvanized yankees,” II

December 4, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

from Thomas L. Livermore, Days and Events (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1920). [327] Captain H. G. O. Weymouth, lately a captain in the 19th Massachusetts Volunteers, was sent up by General Butler, who now assumed command of our district in his “Department of Virginia and North Carolina,” to join this regiment which I was forming. He came on a promise of higher rank than he formerly held, I think, but was to take a company at first. Captain Weymouth had lost one leg at Fredericksburg, and of course could not do duty as a company officer, which […]

William B. Greene to Gen. B. F. Butler, March 1864

November 28, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] William Batchelder Greene served either three or four periods of military service. In his youth, he was a 2nd Lt. in the 7th US Infantry, and served under Gen. Bonneville in the Second Seminole War. When the American Civil War began, he returned from France to take command of the 14th Mass. Volunteer Infantry, later the 1st Mass. Heavy Artillery. He served through late 1862, at which point he resigned his commission. His 14-page resignation letter is an interesting document (and one which I hope to have available online soon), as his resignation came in […]

Paul Brown, The Radical, I (1834)

November 28, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

When I added Paul Brown’s Twelve Months in New Harmony to the Labyrinth, I promised to follow up with some of Brown’s other work. Here’s a start, the first in a series of thirty-two essays that he wrote under the title The Radical and Advocate of Equality and published in 1834. Subtitled “a series of expostulatory animadversions on the present state of practical politics and morals, with a view to an access of improvement,” the essays cover everything from class theory to education, and include Brown’s opinions on such topics as fashion and plagiarism. It is clear that Brown had […]

Great Movements in Limestone

November 27, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

It’s really too nice a title to tamper with, even if it doesn’t really give a sense of what the piece is about. This is an account from The Present, probably edited by William Henry Channing, of Andreas Bernardus Smolnikar’s “Peace Union,” from the hand of its originator and prophet. Smolnikar, who was also known as “Andrew Bernard” while in America, was a Catholic heretic who came to think of himself as the prophet of a religion of humanity. He had connections to Owenite socialism and, as this account shows, he was one of the more enthusiastic proponents of J. […]