Contr’un

Contr'un

Edward Kellogg in “The Word”

November 4, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur
I was printing out a couple of issues of Ezra Heywood’s The Word, and ran across a listing of books available from the Heywoods’ Co-Operative Publishing Co. in 1873. William B. Greene’s then-newly-published The Blazing Star tops the list, followed by Mutual Banking. Then come two by Heywood: Yours and Mine and Uncivil Liberty. Josiah Warren’s True Civilization (the 1869 title; see Ronald Creagh’s great Warren bibliography for that convoluted publishing history), Lysander Spooner’s No Treason, and Joshua King Ingalls Land and Labor round out the list-along with one other, Edward Kellogg’s A New Monetary System. Kellogg’s work is an […]
Contr'un

“A Transcendentalist in Political Economy”

October 27, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur
Reading through William B. Greene’s various essays on New England Transcendentalism, perhaps the most puzzling question is: “Why does he care? What’s the Big Deal?” Greene clearly looked up to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and just as clearly tried to make that respect clear, even as he ripped into transcendentalism. He was not intellectually slavish in his admirations. By 1845, when he published the first of the works on transcendentalism, Greene had already made at least one attempt to rectify what he saw as errors in Orestes Brownson’s formulation of the “doctrine of life” and its consequences. Later, his use of […]
Contr'un

Edward Kellogg, 1790-1858

October 26, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur
Edward Kellogg’s Labor and Other Capital (1849) was one of the major sources, along with the works of Proudhon and William Beck’s Money and Banking (1839), from which William Batchelder Greene drew portions of his mutual bank theory. He differed from all of his sources in the measures he proposed, but, as was the case with his theological writings and the influence of Orestes Brownson, sometimes he appropriated large sections of the works he was reading, if only to turn them aside from their author’s trajectories. This was certainly the case with Kellogg, whose ideas about banking and interest were […]
Contr'un

Navigating the new library

October 22, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve been pretty quiet here for awhile, mostly because the William B. Greene research has taken on a life of its own, not just because A Special Answer to a Special Prayer threatens to be about twice as long as I expected, or because the editing and republication of Greene’s works is at a particularly demanding stage (expect all of the versions of the work on transcendentalism, as well as a new bibliographical essay soon), but also because–to my great surprise–word of the nature of the work has prompted some new and very practical kinds of collaboration. Mutualism seems to […]
Blazing Star Library

1842: William B. Greene at 22 (“First Principles”)

October 5, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] William Batchelder Greene’s first major work was an essay titled “First Principles,” which appeared in the transcendentalist periodical The Dial, in January 1842. Greene was, at the time, just starting his exploration of theology. His martial poem, “Song of Espousal,” had been written only two years before, while he was serving in Florida during the Second Seminole War. Still only 22, Greene was going through some rapid changes in his life. His religious conversion was little more than a year before, and his introduction into transcendentalist circles, in part through the […]
Contr'un

1853: William B. Greene at 34

October 4, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur
In 1853, William B. Greene had resigned from his position as pastor of a West Brookfield church, but had not yet settled himself in Paris, where he would stay until his return in 1861, at the outbreak of the Civil War. Greene was 34 years old, was married to “the belle of Boston,” and had two children, one of them only a couple of years old. He was financially comfortable, but politically unsettled by the recent passage of the Fugitive Slave Law (to which some attribute his resignation and emigration). He was on the tail end of one of the […]
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Homeland Security: now we see what we’re paying for

September 15, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] Perhaps the hardest thing to take about the botched federal response to Katrina is that it was largely perpetrated by the Department of Homeland Security. Since 9/11, we’ve been encouraged to believe that the erosion of privacy rights and civil liberties was part of a trade-off, and in return we would get greater security at home. Yet we see what appears to be a weakened FEMA and a national economy already strained by the “war on terror” abroad. We see no signs of an intelligent response to oil dependency, global warming or Gulf Coast wetlands degredation and land loss. […]
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“Taking Responsibility”

September 15, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur
These days, even Dubya may be guilty of a little strategic Bush-bashing, what with this strange admission of “responsibility” for delays in the Federal response to Katrina. And it is a strange admission: “And to the extent that the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong,” Mr. Bush said.” Erm. Yeah. Well, he at least took responsibility for the actions of the federal government “to the extent” that they screwed up. That’s not exactly saying, “Hey, I know some things didn’t go well–and people died […]
Contr'un

A New Two-Front War?

September 4, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] Now that Hurricane Katrina has probably killed thousands of Americans and threatened our oil supply, I suppose that we can expect the Bush administration to formally declare the War on Mother Nature. This unprecedented attack–for which there was, as in some other cases, some precedent and plenty of warning–should simplify things considerably for the administration. Assaults on the environment need no longer be justified. Right-thinking citizens will, in fact, demand that the government take action to subdue this newly-revealed enemy. There are precedents now, and we need to show that, once again, these colors don’t run–even when very, very […]
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Finding, and losing, Bessie Greene

September 2, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur
I spent my research time yesterday reading a regimental history of the 1st Mass. Heavy Artillery, and was pleased to be able to confirm that the wife and daughter of William B. Greene had visited his camp near the Long Bridge on the approaches to Washington, DC, during the Civil War. This daughter seems to have fallen out of many of the biographical sources. I first discovered a mention of her in a footnote to an essay on Orestes Brownson, in the Catholic World. Today, I was able to confirm her death, in the wreck of the Schiller off the […]