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Col. Greene defends Washington / Civil War incidents

April 10, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

Among the new items in the Libertarian Labyrinth is a short piece on military discipline in the 14th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the Civil War regiment William Batchelder Greene commanded during 1861-62. It consists of two reports of VIPs stopped by Greene or his officers among the forts on the Virginia side of the Potomac, where the 14th was stationed. Taken alone, it is an entertaining account. Taken in the context of other accounts of life around the Long Bridge (coming soon to the Layrinth), it looks like general officers didn’t take sentries very seriously, with results that were frequently as […]

Socialized Money at Current Observations

April 10, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

Don Bangert, of the Current Observations blog, informs me that he has finished the scanning of Socialized Money, which he started back in November. Here’s my original notice of the project. I have been curious to see the rest of the book since Don began reprinting it, and had just recently tracked down a copy through interlibrary loan. Don has, in the interest of finishing things, posted image scans of the remaining chapters. I’ll see if I can find some time to do the OCR work, and complete a full-text searchable version. This is probably more a curiousity than a […]

New Labyrinth / William B. Greene Timeline

April 10, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

As Kevin Carson recently mentioned (thanks!), I’ve been getting the Libertarian Labyrinth set up on a new, much improved site. If you want to check out some of the new material I’m working into the redesigned site, you can access it through the William Batchelder Greene pages, where you’ll find a couple of new features, including a “Timeline and Miscellany.” This is destined to be the chronological backbone of A Special Answer to a Special Prayer, my study of Greene, but it’s fun on its own as a collection of all the odds bits and pieces I’ve been assembling about […]

New London Society: Connecticut Land Bank, 1732

April 7, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

Awhile back, I noted Andrew McFarland Davis’ “A Connecticut Land Bank of the Eighteenth Century” as another important piece in the land bank puzzle. This particular project was chartered as the New London Society United for Trade and Commerce in 1732, and the original grant describes it as an organization for “the promoting and carrying on Trade and Commerce to Great Britain and his Majesties Islands and Plantations in America, and other of his Majesties Dominions, and for encouraging the Fishery, &c., as well for the common good of their own private interests. . .” (See digitized colonial records here: […]

Edward Kellogg, “Remarks Upon Usury” (1841)

April 6, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

Here is the text of Edward Kellogg’s Remarks Upon Usury and its Effects: A National Bank a Remedy (1841), originally published as by “Whitehook,” which is the earliest statement of his banking and currency ideas. The Knickerbocker for September 1841 briefly noted the publication as follows: The author writes in a style of great terseness and perspicuity, and is evidently a person of sound practical views; and if one half of what he states be true, Wall-street should be closed, with an investigating committee at once convened ‘in bank,’ to examine his charges, ‘with power to send for persons and […]

Symposium on Carson’s “Studies in Mutualist Political Economy”

April 5, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

The new of Journal of Libertarian Studies is out, and it’s a symposium on Kevin Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy. Congratulations, Kevin! It’s great to see your work being seriously engaged. See Kevin’s post for direct links to the review articles in pdf.

Edward Kellogg again (and a money-crank treasure trove)

April 4, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

The pieces of the puzzle are coming together, slowly but surely, in the case of the Edward Kellogg bibliography. After some microform-related comedy of errors, I have now had a chance to look at the 4-page Usury, the Evil and the Remedy (1843), which was the last of the major editions I had yet to see. And, yes, it appears that all of Kellogg’s writings ought to be considered drafts of the same argument, though they range from 4 pages to over 300 pages in length. With the William B. Greene collation work still in progress—and now ranging into the […]

Edward Carpenter: “Non-Governmental Society” and “Exfoliation”

April 3, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve been putting together pdf files of some of the texts I used to sell in pamphlet form, as I slowly but surely rearrange the new Libertarian Labyrinth site. Today, for your reading pleasure, the new additions are two essay by Edward Carpenter. “Non-Governmental Society” is a fine exposition of anarchism, though its author didn’t use the label. “Exfoliation” is an interesting period piece of evolutionary thought, for those who don’t mind a little Lamarck (or even Whitman) with their Darwin. Carpenter was a truly fine writer, and these are among my favorites from him. Enjoy!

Oscar C. McColloch, The Tribe of Ishmael (1888)

March 30, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

Fans of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Prairie or Ron Sakolsky and James Koehnline’s Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture will be familiar with the story of the Tribe of Ben Ishmael, a nomadic, mixed-race group that may have had Muslim origins and were eventually the target of a 1907 “eugenic” program of forced sterilization in Indiana. In 1923, Arthur H. Estabrook published an account of the family. The Eugenics Archive also has online a number of pictures of Ishmaelite homes and such. None of this material is uncontroversial. On the genealogy sites, members of the Ishmael family […]

What Mutualism Was – I: Prehistories

March 21, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] [This post seems to have been lost at some point, but there was a draft preserved in my Blogger account.] This is the first of a series of explorations of the mutualist tradition—or, perhaps more appropriately, traditions. The particular perspective they present is, I’m afraid, somewhat revisionist in a variety of ways. It is also a work in progress, so if anyone out there thinks they can set me straight, I would welcome the attempt. Anyway, to begin… As anyone who has explored the matter—or perhaps fought about it on the Wikipedia talk pages—knows, the […]