home(grad)schooling

It looks like it's been a few years since I've mentioned the excellent Doing History series on the Ben Franklin's World history podcast, but the host Liz Covart is currently doing season 3: On Biography, and I am super excited!

It's exciting for me because what little information I can find online that is helpful to me as a self-trained historian is pretty much never about biography, which is probably what most of my work will be (biographies of people and also of communities). I have searched quite a bit online for specific How-To-Do-Biography information, advice, resources, etc, but have always come up empty handed. So I admit to doing so happy flailing when I looked at my History "channel" on my Stitcher (podcast) app and saw see that there was not only more Doing History episodes, but it was exactly what I most wanted to see! So, thank you Liz & the Omohundro Institute!

Oh, oh, oh. And! Not only does this series exist, which is great, but also the first episode (Episode 209: Considering Biography) even features one of my all-time favorite biographers, the amazing Professor of History & Law at Harvard, Annette Gordon-Reed. She wrote The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family which I listened to while driving across country last year and it just blew me away. The depth of the research, and the way she was able to return to Sally Hemmings the personhood and agency that has been denied to her in every other work I've read, and while still portraying Jefferson as a real human, without making excuses for him but also without turning him into a caricature villain (I certainly do consider all slave owners villains, but I find it very useful to learn about him in all his complexities and contradictions.)

The series isn't completed yet, but I'll come back and edit in the 4th episode next week. As of now the episodes are:

Episode 209: Considering Biography
Episode 210: Considering John Marshall, Part 1
Episode 211: Considering John Marshall, Part 2

I highly recommend checking them out! :)

I'm currently reading History of American Socialisms (1870), written by the leader of one of the utopian communities I research (John Humphrey Noyes, Oneida), and the book is built off of a lot of research that a man had done 10+ years prior, as he spent about a decade traveling American and visiting/making notes of various utopian communities.

He hadn't recorded the name or date of the paper, but he had, in his notes, a newspaper article on the development of the short-lived Yellow Springs community, and Noyes included it in this book. I haven't been able to track down the paper/date either, but I thought this might be of some interest to some of my friends back home in the Dayton, Ohio area, since Yellow Springs is nearby and a super cute little hippy village everyone loves to visit, so I'm just sharing the text here.

(Holy classism and elitism, batman! I feel like I need to put a content warning on this...)

The narrative here presented," says the unknown writer, " was prepared at the request of a minister who had looked in vain for any account of the Communities established by Robert Owen in this country. It is sim- ply what it pretends to be, reminiscences by one who, while a youth, resided with his parents as a member of the Community at Yellow Springs. For some years together since his manhood, he has been associated with several of the leading men of that experiment, and has through them been informed in relation to both its outer and inner history. The article may contain some errors, as of dates and other matters unimportant to a just view of the Community ; but the social picture will be correct. With the hope that it may convey a useful lesson, it is submitted to the reader.

Robert Owen, the projector of the Communities at Yellow Springs, Ohio, and New Harmony, Indiana, was the owner of extensive manufactories at New Lanark, Scotland. He was a man of considerable learning, much observation, and full of the love of his fellow men ; though a disbeliever in Christianity. His skep- tical views concerning the Bible were fully announced in the celebrated debate at Cincinnati between himself and Dr. Alexander Campbell. But whatever may have been his faith, he proved his philanthropy by a long life of beneficent works. At his manufactories in Scotland he established a system based on community of labor, which was crowned with the happiest effects. But it should be remembered that Owen himself was the owner of the works, and controlled all things by a single mind. The system, therefore, was only a beneficent scheme of government by a manufacturer, for the good of himself and his operatives.

Full of zeal for the improvement of society, Owen conceived that he had discovered the cause of most of its evils in the laws of meion et tuum ; and that a state of society where there is nothing mine or thine, would be a paradise begun. He brooded upon the idea of a Community of property, and connected it with schemes for the improvement of society, until he was ready to sacrifice his own property and devote his heart and his life to his fellow men upon this basis. Too discreet to inaugurate the new system among the poorer classes of his own country, whom he found perverted by prejudice and warped by the artificial forms of society there, he resolved to proceed to the United States, and among the comparatively unperverted people, liberal institutions and cheap lands of the West, to establish Communities, founded upon common property, social equality, and the equal value of every man's labor.

About the year 1824 Owen arrived in Cincinnati. He brought with him a history of his labors at New Lanark ; with glowing and not unjust accounts of the beneficent effects of his efforts there. He exhibited plans for his proposed Communities here ; with model farms, gardens, vineyards, play-grounds, orchards, and all the internal and external appliances of the social paradise. At Cincinnati he soon found many congenial spirits, among the first of whom was Daniel Roe, minister of the " New Jerusalem Church," a society of the followers of Swedenborg. This society was composed of a very superior class of people. They were intelligent, liberal, generous, cultivated men and women — many of them wealthy and highly educated. They were apparently the best possible material to organize and sustain a Community, such as Owen proposed. Mr Roe and many of his congregation became fascinated with Owen and his Communism ; and together with others in the city and elsewhere, soon organized a Community and furnished the means for purchasing an appropriate site for its location. In the meantime Owen proceeded to Harmony, and, with others, purchased that place, with all its buildings, vineyards, and lands, from Rapp, who emigrated to Pennsylvania and established his people at Economy. It will only be added of Owen, that after having seen the New Harmonians fairly established, he returned to Scotland.

After careful consultation and selection, it was decided by the Cincinnati Community to purchase a domain at Yellow Springs, about seventy-five miles north of the city, [now the site of Antioch College] as the most eligible place for their purpose. It was really one of the most delightful regions in the whole West, and well worthy the residence of a people who had resolved to make many sacrifices for what they honestly believed to be a great social and moral reformation.

The Community, as finally organized consisted of seventy-five or one hundred families ; and included professional men, teachers, merchants, mechanics, farmers, and a few common laborers. Its economy was nearly as follows :

The property was held in trust forever, in behalf of the members of the Community, by the original purchasers, and their chosen successors, to be designated from time to time by the voice of the Community. All additional property thereafter to be acquired, by labor, purchase, or otherwise, was to be added to the common stock, for the benefit of each and all. Schools were to be established, to teach all things useful (except religion). Opinion upon all subjects was free ; and the present good of the whole Community was the standard of morals. The Sabbath was a day of rest and recreation, to be improved by walks, rides, plays, and pleasing exercises ; and by public lectures. Dancing was instituted as a most valuable means of physical and social culture ; and the ten-pin alley and other sources of amusement were open to all.

But although Christianity was wholly ignored in the system, there was no free-loveism or other looseness of morals allowed. In short, this Community began its career under the most favorable auspices ; and if any men and women in the world could have succeeded, these should have done so. How they did succeed, and how they did not, will now be shown.

For the first few weeks, all entered into the new system with a will. Service was the order of the day. Men who seldom or never before labored with their hands, devoted themselves to agriculture and the mechanic arts, with a zeal which was at least commendable, though not always according to knowledge. Ministers of the gospel guided the plough ; called the swine to their corn, instead of sinners to repentance ; and let patience have her perfect work over an unruly yoke of oxen. Merchants exchanged the yard-stick for the rake or pitch-fork. All appeared to labor cheerfully for the common weal. Among the women there was even more apparent self-sacrifice. Ladies who had seldom seen the inside of their own kitchens, went into that of the common eating-house (formerly a hotel), and made themselves useful among pots and kettles : and refined young ladies, who had all their lives been waited upon, took their turns in waiting upon others at the table. And several times a week all parties who chose mingled in the social dance, in the great dining-hall.

But notwithstanding the apparent heartiness and cordiality of this auspicious opening, it was in the social atmosphere of the Community that the first cloud arose. Self-love was a spirit which would not be exorcised. It whispered to the lowly maidens, whose former position in society had cultivated the spirit of meekness — " You are as good as the formerly rich and fortunate ; insist upon your equality." It reminded the favorites of for- mer society of their lost superiority ; and in spite of all rules, tinctured their words and actions with the love of self Similar thoughts and feelings soon arose among the men ; and though not so soon exhibited, they were none the less deep and strong. It is unnecessary to descend to details : suffice it to say, that at the end of three months — three months ! — the leading minds in the Community were compelled to acknowledge to each other that the social life of the Community could not be bounded by a single circle. They therefore acquiesced, but reluctantly, in its division into many little circles. Still they hoped, and many of them no doubt believed, that though social equality was a failure, community of property was not. But whether the law of mine and thine is natural or incidental in human character, it soon began to develop its sway. The industrious, the skillful and the strong, saw the products of their labor enjoyed by the indolent, the unskilled, and the improvident ; and self-love rose against benevolence. A band of musicians insisted that their brassy harmony was as necessary to the common happiness as bread and meat ; and declined to enter the harvest field or the work-shop. A lecturer upon natural science insisted upon talking only, while others worked. Mechanics, whose day's labor brought two dollars into the common stock, in- sisted that they should, in justice, work only half as long as the agriculturist, whose day's work brought but one.

For a while, of course, these jealousies were only felt ; but they soon began to be spoken also. It was useless to remind all parties that the common labor of all ministered to the prosperity of the Community. Individual happiness was the law of nature, and it could not be obliterated ; and before a single year had passed, this law had scattered the members of that society, which had come together so earnestly and under such favorable circumstances, back into the selfish world from which they came.

The writer of this sketch has since heard the history of that eventful year reviewed with honesty and earnestness by the best men and most intelligent parties of that unfortunate social experiment. They admitted the favorable circumstances which surrounded its commencement ; the intelligence, devotion, and earnestness which were brought to the cause by its projectors ; and its final, total failure. And they rested ever after in the behef that man, though disposed to philanthropy, is essentially selfish ; and that a community of social equality and common property is impossible.