Crescat Scientia: Journal of History, Volume III, 2005

              Volume III
Utah Valley State College
Journal of History
2005
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Crescat Scientia
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Mailed manuscripts should be sent to: Crescat Scientia c/o Dr.Keith Snedegar,
Utah Valley State College Department of History and Political Science, 800 West
University Parkway, Orem Utah 84058. Call (801) 863-8487, Fax (801) 863-7013.
Crescat Scientia is an annual publication of the UVSC Department of History
and Political Science. Issues are available for distribution during the Spring semes-ter
of each academic year.To obtain subscription information or to obtain back
copies of Crescat Scientia, please contact the History department.
© 2005 Utah Valley State College Department of History and Political Science.All
rights reserved.
General Guidelines for Submission
For students interested in submitting a manuscript for review and possible
publication, the following guidelines provide an overview of the requirements. For
more specific information, please contact the UVSC History Department or visit the
History Department’s web page.
To submit a manuscript, provide a complete version of the manuscript with
cover sheet. Please note that any desired alterations should be made prior to sub-mission.
Editors will check for spelling errors and layout problems, not for substan-tial
revision opportunities. Submissions should be written in accordance with the
Turabian style of citation.The cover sheet should have a running head, author’s
name, permanent street address, email address, and a phone number.The body of
your manuscript must have no markers which may identify the author (IE: name,
class, professor etc). Submit a hard copy as well as one copy of the paper on disk.
The disk version of your paper must be in Microsoft Word®. On a separate sheet of
paper, provide a brief biographical sketch of yourself including things such as the
degree you are working toward, previous degrees received, future plans (graduate
school,work), awards the paper has won, other areas of personal interest, etc.
Please deliver your paper, disk, and biographical information, sealed in a manil-la
envelope, to the History Department addressed to:“Editor-In-Chief, c/o History
Department RE:Academic Journal Submission”
Works submitted must be thematically concentrated in the discipline of histo-ry.
Length of submissions may be anywhere between five and fifty pages and must
not have been previously published.
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Crescat Scientia
UVSC Journal of History
Editor-in-Chief
Tiffany L. Knoell
Assistant Editors
Amber Frampton
Brittany A. Lassater
Eric Smith
Faculty Advisor
Dr.Keith Snedegar, History Department Chairman
Published annually for the Utah Valley State College Department of History
and Political Science
Office of the Editor-In-Chief
Utah Valley State College, Department of History and Political Science,
800 West University Parkway, MS 185, Orem, Utah 84057
Phone: (801) 863-8487. Fax: (801) 863-7013
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IV
Dear Reader,
For too long, professors have considered themselves the essential movers
of a college education. Undergraduates were viewed as the passive recipi-ents
of our civilizing mission, which was deemed effective insofar as it
resembled a colonization of the student mind. (Note the passive tense.)
But really the students are the active agents.They are the ones who invest
time and effort in the acquisition of knowledge. Especially in the humani-ties,
the professor’s chief job is not to get in the way of learning.
Bigger and better than ever, this third issue of the UVSC Journal of History
serves as a medium for student free agency. Here we find discovery and
error, independence and imitation—but no plagiarism, I hope! Of course
free agency means taking responsibility for proofreading and printing as
well as for the historical scholarship itself.
Join me in congratulating Tiffany Knoell, her editorial team, and the con-tributing
authors.Their work expresses the meaning of the collegiate
enterprise more eloquently than anything a mere professor could say.
May knowledge grow!
Keith Snedegar
Faculty Advisor
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Acknowledgments
This journal is the work of many hands, but it is those behind the
scenes who provide the encouragement and support necessary to see
such a task come to fruition.The faculty and staff have been instrumental
in soliciting the submissions required for the completion of this journal,
although there are a few who stepped above and beyond the effort
requested of them. Special thanks go to Dr. Kathren Brown, Laura Coffman-
Jones, and Dr.Keith Snedegar.Without their support, this journal would be
a much diminished publication.
Thanks also go to those students who stepped forward and submitted
their works.Although it is impossible to publish all submissions received,
those who make the effort are to be commended and encouraged to con-tinue
writing and supporting Crescat Scientia.
Thank you.
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Crescat Scientia
UVSC Journal of History
VOLUME 3 2005
CONTENTS
Editor’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Tiffany L. Knoell 1
The Perfect Famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Courtney Burns 3
Ethos and the Power of Music
in Ancient Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Amberly D. Page 17
A House Uniter or a House Divider?
A Historiographical Survey of the
1858 Illinois Senate Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Luke E. Peterson 29
Lincoln and the Suspension of
Habeas Corpus during the Civil War . . . . . . . . . . . . .Ted Memmott 41
Woman as Technology
in the Weimar Republic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Liberty P. Sproat 55
Impacts Associated with Rapid
Growth in Emery County, Utah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Kris Torp 77
Sharpening the Sword in Defense
of Islam:The Evolution of Jihad
from the Seventh Century to Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Lee Koelliker 97
The Hispanic Heritage of Southern Utah:
From Eighteenth Century Expansion to
Twentieth Century Livestock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Emily R.Wade 115
Utah Freemasonry’s Formal Exclusion
of Mormon Membership, 1925 . . . . . . . . . . .Nord Derek Anderson 131
Plato’s Theory of the Ideal State
and the U.S. Constitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Thomas Mesaros 153
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Staff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .163
Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .165
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Editor’s Note 1
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we
must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes
complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be
saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished
alone; therefore we must be saved by love.
– Reinhold Niebuhr1
I think a movie said it best: "You're going to find that many of the truths
we cling to depend greatly on our point of view."2 The essence of history is
perception.Whether you are the conqueror or the conquered, the revered
or the forgotten, your perception of events, past or present, drives your
reality. It is left to students of history to provide the dates and places upon
which historical events are hung; it is up to the reader to draw their own
conclusions.
This journal, as a student-driven publication, is an extraordinary creation.
Each individual who contributed, regardless of their role, has left on the
journal a unique imprint which will distinguish this edition from any
other. For those whose works were not selected for this journal: keep writ-ing.
Submit frequently. Do not allow a single rejection to stifle your cre-ative
spirit. For those whose works were selected: please accept my
warmest congratulations.You have taken your first step into a larger
world.3
Tiffany L. Knoell
Editor-In-Chief
1 Thomas Cahill,How the Irish Saved Civilization:The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic
Role from the fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe (New York: Doubleday, 1995), vii.
2 Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas,The Art of Return of the Jedi (New York: Ballantine,
1983), 56.
3 Carol Titelman, ed.,The Art of Star Wa rs (New York: Ballantine, 1979), 79.
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More than 150 years have passed since the Irish potato famine, run-ning
approximately from 1845-1852,1 caused more than one million deaths
and over one-and-a-half million emigrations.This lapse of time, though, has
not created a sense of forgetfulness or casualness about those years or
those who died.To the contrary, not only does the land itself bear the
markers of crude shelters dug into the sides of ditches and the "hungry
grass" which covers the thousands of buried dead, but the memory and
family histories of the Irish themselves persistently breeds "an intimacy
with suffering"2 which continues to affect the Irish and their relationship
to the British.3 According to Don Mullan, a former director of the Irish
advocacy group Action, "Deeply rooted in the Irish psyche is the memory
of the famine.When we look at pictures of people starving,we know we
are looking at ourselves just a few short generations ago."4 This intimacy
with the famine is not merely of grief and frustration over a failed crop.
Rather, it stems from a larger accounting of the famine which recognizes
the role played by the United Kingdom in the deaths of so many Irish. It
was not the failure of the potato crop that alone caused the Irish famine.
Beginning in 1845, the convergence of a susceptible plant, a pathogen,
environmental conditions, and social injustice combined to create a per-fect
famine.
Plant pathologists, when discussing the factors of plant disease, often
use a triangle to aid in describing the factors needed for an outbreak of
disease.5 This so-called disease triangle consists of a plant susceptible to a
THE PERFECT FAMINE
Courtney Burns
1 Douglas C. Daly, "The Leaf That Launched a Thousand Ships," Natural History 105, no. 1
(1996): 25.
2 Douglas C. Daly, "Famine's Ghost," Natural History 105, no. 1 (1996): 6.
3 Gail L. Schumann, "The Irish Potato Famine and the Birth of Plant Pathology," in Plant
Diseases:Their Biology and Social Impact. Internet.
<http://www.apsnet.org/online/feature/lateblit/chapter1/Top.htm; Internet>.
4 Daly, "Famine's Ghost," 6.
5 Schumann.
4 Crescat Scientia
pathogen, the introduction of that pathogen into the plant, and environ-mental
conditions favorable to that pathogen.6 In Ireland, these three fac-tors
would come together in the form of the potato,Phytophthora infes-tans,
and the damp Irish climate that has proved to be so favorable to
potato farming and yet so devastating in spreading disease.
The potato, a vegetable so freely associated with the island of Ireland,
did not originate in Ireland but rather in the highlands of South America,
particularly along the border of Peru and Bolivia.7 Discovered by the
Spanish Conquistadors who were searching for gold in the sixteenth cen-tury,
the potato was introduced into Europe around 1570.8 Acceptance of
the potato as a food source was slow in coming, though the poor of
Europe soon found advantages in an underground food source protected
from the trampling of the numerous invading armies of the time.9 It is
uncertain when the potato was first introduced into Ireland, but the cool
and wet conditions of Ireland, similar to conditions of the highlands of
South America10 that too often stunted grain production quickly propelled
the potato into premier food status.11
The potato, though, did not become the primary food source of many
in Ireland simply because it was suited to the climate. It was necessity that
caused the food culture of Ireland to become a "monoculture." Like many
of the peasants of Europe, the Irish were tenants paying rents to primarily
absentee landlords in Britain.12 In particular, three developments would
affect the system of rent of Ireland and would thereby require a change in
the crop production in order to meet rent requirements as well as meet
the food requirements for the survival of Irish families. First, penury laws,
which required that any improvements made on the land would result in
an increase in rent without necessarily providing an additional ability to
pay the increased rent.13 Second, a downturn in the economy in the early
nineteenth century would further increase pressure on the tenant's ability
to pay rent.14 And third, the allowance of subdivision of property among
one's children (as opposed to the English practice of primogeniture, which
gave inheritance rights only to the first-born) provided increased revenue
to the landlords while at the same time providing less land to individual
6 Ibid.
7 Schumann.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Daly, "The Leaf That Launched a Thousand Ships," 25-26.
12 Eileen Moore Quinn, "Entextualizing Famine, Reconstituting Self:Testimonial Narratives
From Ireland," Anthropological Quarterly 74, no. 2 (2001): 74.
13 Quinn.
14 Ibid.
The Perfect Famine 5
families.15 The decrease in available land can be most directly seen in rela-tionship
to the change in population in Ireland which, from 1800 to 1845,
grew from about 4.5 million to about 8 million.16
The bulk result of these developments required not only the use of
profit garnering grains, dairy, and animal products for the paying of rents,
but also the parallel development of a food crop that could be grown easi-ly
(easily because of the additional labor output required to grow an addi-tional
crop) on increasingly smaller patches of land.17 This need of an easi-ly
grown crop that could feed an entire family throughout the year would
be met in full by the potato which, in addition to providing substantial
nutritious value "including protein, carbohydrates, and many vitamins and
minerals, particularly vitamin C,"18 allowed the Irish to produce, on half the
land, the same amount of calories in potatoes as would have been pro-duced
in grains.19 By the beginning of the famine, potatoes would make up
about 60 percent of the Irish food culture with about 3.3 million Irish in
complete reliance on the potato as a food source.20 This would prove to be
a dangerous yet impressive feat for the potato, as an individual would con-sume
about one ton of potatoes a year with an adult consuming about
fourteen pounds of potatoes a day.21
Most potato growers, including those of Ireland, do not begin growing
potatoes from seeds, but rather follow the process called vegetative propa-gation
in which small pieces of potatoes are planted.22 The result of vegeta-tive
propagation is that the offspring plant is genetically identical to the
parent plant.23 If seeds, or sexual propagation, are used, each plant will
vary genetically in the same way children coming from the same two par-ents
genetically differ.24 Genetic uniformity, though, has great advantages
particularly in a food crop where uniformity in color and taste are impor-tant.
25 Additionally, the use of potato pieces is beneficial because the pota-to
pieces carry larger food reserves than seeds, allowing the shoots from
potato pieces to grow faster than seed shoots.26 Along with these advan-tages,
a genetically uniform potato crop carries with it a distinctly danger-ous
disadvantage: genetic uniformity makes the entire crop uniformly
15 Ibid.
16 Schumann.
17 Quinn, 74.
18 Schumann.
19 Ibid.
20 Daly, "The Leaf That Launched a Thousand Ships," 26.
21 Daly, "The Leaf That Launched a Thousand Ships," 26.
22 Schumann.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
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susceptible to pest and pathogens.27 In particular, the introduction of an
alien pathogen into the alien crop of potatoes in Ireland would begin the
spiraling downfall of the Irish people.
The disease that would be the impetus of the Irish famine was first
spotted near Philadelphia during 1843, spreading to Western Europe by
1845, and was probably introduced by infected potatoes imported from
either North or South America.28 Its exact cause was unknown, although
many put forward their own ideas of possible causes.Among these causes
were "a poisonous miasma borne on the air, industrial pollution, volcanic
exhalations, gases from the recently introduced sulfur matches, electricity
in the atmosphere, the use of guano as a fertilizer, and an aerial taint origi-nating
from outer space."29 Unusually rainy weather30 as well as the theory
that the famine was, in fact, "a healthy lesson delivered by providence that
would prepare [the Irish] for the adoption of superior Anglo-Saxon values
and institutions"31 would be put forth as possibilities.A few scientists
would explain that the disease was caused by a fungus, but these voices
were quieted in favor of the more popular idea that it was the inability of
the potatoes to eliminate excess water that was causing them to rot.32 This
would be proven wrong much too late by science.The actual cause, which
would be discovered later,was a fungus-like pathogen called Phytophthora
infestans which causes the potato disease commonly known as late blight.
When Phytophthora infestans infests a susceptible plant it begins by
first attaching itself to the leaves or stem of the plant.33 From these small
infection sites, the pathogen infiltrates the cells and begins absorbing nutri-ents
from the plant.34Within three to five days of the initial infection, this
lack of nutrients will cause brown lesions to appear on the leaves and
stem as the plant begins to die.35 In less than three weeks the entire potato
plant can be reduced to a slimy mass.36 The potato plant would prove to be
particularly susceptible to Phytophthora infestans for two reasons. First,
the pathogen originated in the central highlands of Mexico where it
attacked plants of the same genus as the potato.37 The potato plant itself,
though, had never come in contact with the pathogen, meaning that it had
27 Ibid.
28 Daly, "The Leaf That Launched a Thousand Ships," 28.
29 Daly, "The Leaf That Launched a Thousand Ships," 30.
30 Schumann.
31 Michael De Nie, "The Famine, Irish Identity, and the British Press," Irish Studies Review 6,
no 1 (1998): 34.
32 Daly, "The Leaf that Launched a Thousand Ships," 30.
33 Schumann.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 Daly, "The Leaf that Launched a Thousand Ships," 27-28.
The Perfect Famine 7
no built-up or built-in resistance to the pathogen.38 Additionally, as already
stated, Irish farmers used the technique of vegetative propagation resulting
in genetically identically potato plants throughout the region.This meant
that if one plant proved to be susceptible to the pathogen all the plants
would be susceptible.39 These two factors, a susceptible plant and an intro-duced
pathogen,would mean the beginning of an epidemic in Ireland.
Not even the combination of an unprepared plant and deadly
pathogen could have caused a complete or island-wide epidemic.The third
side of the disease triangle, favorable environmental conditions,was
required not only for the survival of the pathogen Phytophthora infestans,
but also for its reproduction and spread throughout Ireland.
In order to take root,Phytophthora infestans requires the presence of
water on the surface of the plant's leaves or stem.40 Additionally, high tem-peratures
(over 68 degrees Fahrenheit) will slow the germination process
by fifty percent.41 Therefore, an initial infestation of this pathogen requires
a cool, damp environment.These conditions are also required for repro-duction
and spread of the pathogen.Without a moist and cool climate, the
pathogen Phytophthora infestans will dry out and die. 42 This moisture is
particularly important as the pathogen is primarily spread by air currents
which can speed the drying process.43 Furthermore, a wet climate allows
for the pathogen to be washed into the soil where it infects and destroys
the tubers themselves.44 Beginning in the summer of 1845, the weather in
Ireland turned cold and wet for weeks at a time,45 cooperating wholly with
the pathogen, completing the disease triangle and creating an epidemic of
serious magnitude, considering the extent to which the potato was
depended on in Ireland.
Prior to its arrival in Ireland, the pathogen Phytophthora infestans
infected crops along the northeastern coast of the United States and in
Europe before affecting the potato crops of Ireland.Yet one does not hear
of the great famine of New England or France or the Netherlands. Even
today, infestations of late blight continue to affect potato crops throughout
the world and yet go largely unnoticed. In the United States alone it is esti-mated
that combined efforts to fight and losses due to late blight alone
38 Ibid., 28.
39 Schumann.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Daly, "The Leaf that Launched a Thousand Ships," 29.
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cost about four hundred million dollars a year.46 The developing world,
which depends on the potato much in the same way that Ireland once
did,47 spends more than three hundred million dollars a year on the fungi-cide
used to protect potatoes against late blight.48 Despite these huge num-bers,
though, one rarely, if ever, hears or reads reports in popular newspa-pers
or news magazines about the costs and losses due to the late blight
disease. Despite the costs or losses, an epidemic caused by Phytophthora
infestans rarely affects the average person. Likewise, an epidemic that took
place one-hundred-and-fifty years ago did not alone cause a famine and the
deaths of over one million people.
Nevertheless, an epidemic that destroys a crop that so wholly makes
up the food culture, as the potato did in Ireland, has the possibility of
inflicting a famine of deadly proportions. But as has already been exam-ined,
the potato as monoculture became such out of necessity.This was
not necessity born out of laziness or the inability to plant other crops, for
other crops were indeed planted, but rather necessity because these other
crops were required by absentee landlords in payment for the use of the
land on which the Irish inhabited and farmed. In fact, a brief look at Irish
exports during the famine years shows that the Irish did, in reality, pro-duce
enough food to feed not only the entirety of the Irish population, but
a population twice its size.49 During the years of famine, the numbers of
livestock exported to Britain increased (except for pigs, although the
exportation of bacon and ham did increase).50 In 1845, the first famine
year, over 26 million bushels of corn were sent from Ireland to Britain.51
During "Black '47," the deadliest year of the famine, the Irish exported 33
percent more calves than they did the previous year.52 During the first nine
months of 1847, over eight hundred thousand gallons of butter were
exported to England.53 All this while thousands of Irish died from lack of
food or causes related to lack of food. It was not a lack of means to feed
the population or even the destruction of the primary food source that
caused the Irish famine.
46 Marcia Wood, "Wild Potato's Genes May Blunt Late Blight," Agricultural Research 52, no. 8
(2004): 11.
47 Douglas C. Daly, "The Blight Is Back" Natural History 105, no. 1 (1996): 31.
48 Daly, "Famine's Ghost," 6.
49 See "The Great Irish Famine" as approved by the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust
Education at the secondary level prepared by the Irish Famine Curriculum Committee, James
Mullin, Chairman: Moorestown, NJ (1998). Internet.
<http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS.irish/irish_pf.html>.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
The Perfect Famine 9
The actual cause of the uncommonly deadly Irish famine was a lack of
will on the part the British to do enough to save the population of Ireland
from starvation and disease.This lack of will was essentially two-fold. First,
the British had subjected the Irish to long-term discrimination and racial
stereotyping which culminated in persevering attitudes in the mid-1800s
of the Irish as a population not worth saving. Second, government policies
and politics prevented many of those who would have done more from
doing so as well as giving power to those who would do less or nothing at
all.
While many ideas on race revolve around difference in physical mani-festations,
by the 1840s race had long been defined by the British as
including "biological traits and characteristics."54 This inclusion of traits and
characteristics into the British understanding of race had long allowed the
Irish to be categorized as a race distinct from the British as demonstrated
in their so-called "negative" traits of religion, class, and race.55 The Statutes
of Kilkenny were enacted in 1366 in an attempt to maintain the distinct-ness
of the English race and culture in Ireland.56 Under the Statutes of
Kilkenny, marriage between Irish and English became a capital offense.57
This view of racial distinctness was further exacerbated when, in the
1530s, the king of England broke from the Catholic Church in Rome58
While the Irish remained Catholic, the English followed their King and
became Protestants. Religion would further define the distinctness
between English and Irish as English Protestants and Scottish Presbyterians
were brought into Ireland to settle and colonize the island.59
Penal laws introduced in the 1690s serve as further evidence of the
English attempts to repress the Irish.Among the dictates of the laws was
the barring of Catholics from receiving an education, entering a profes-sion,
voting, attending church services, and purchasing or leasing land.60 By
1829, the bulk of these laws would be abolished, but the effect of the laws
was to place the Irish in a position as not to be able to enjoy their new-found
rights.61 The right of voting, for example,was given to the Irish by
the Reform Act of 1832 but only if they were landholders of property
worth at least 10 pounds per year.62 The stipulation of landholding was a
54 De Nie, 27.
55 De Nie, 27.
56 See "The Great Irish Famine."
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid.
62 John A. Phillips and Charles Wetherell, "The Great Reform Act of 1832 and the Political
Modernization of England," American Historical Review 100, no. 2 (1995) 414.
10 Crescat Scientia
requirement outside of the means of the Irish population who had previ-ously
been forbidden of gaining an education, entering a profession, or
purchasing land.With few Irish in possession of sufficient education or
profession with which to purchase land and with no land already in the
hands of the Irish, the British had little to fear from giving them the right
to vote so long as this right was determined by land ownership. In fact,
after being given the so-called right to vote, only one man in twenty from
the entire population of Ireland, Protestant or Catholic,was allowed to
vote after the Reform Act of 1832.63 Therefore, despite being given the
right to vote, voting would initially be outside the means of the Irish popu-lation.
In 1845, on the eve of the beginning of the Irish famine, Frederick
Douglass, prominent spokesperson for the American anti-slavery move-ment,
arrived in Ireland and bore witness of the condition of the Irish.64
On arriving, he wrote to publisher William Lloyd Garrison that he had
believed reports on the Irish printed in American newspapers to have
been exaggerated, but that witnessing the "painful exhibitions of human
misery, which meet the eye of a stranger almost at every step" had con-vinced
him otherwise.65 As his trip progressed, Douglass began to feel ill at
ease in asking the Irish to address oppression in the United States when
the Irish had "so many wrongs to redress and so much suffering to relieve
at home."66 Additionally, Douglass compared the oppression of the Irish to
the oppression of the African American saying that all that was lacking by
the Irish was "a black skin and wooly hair, to complete their likeness to
the plantation Negro."67
As was previously mentioned, the British defined the Irish as a distinct
race as shown in their so-called negative traits of religion, class, and race.
This was a popularly held definition which, no doubt, played a role of sup-port
in the enacting of the above statutes and laws while at the same time
being reinforced by these same statutes and laws. By the 1840s these nega-tive
racial stereotypes would become so damning as to impede any feel-ings
of sympathy that should have called for mass aid to be sent to save
the dying Irish.The reports in the popular British press of the time indi-cate
how the Irish were viewed, particularly during the famine years. One
of the first proofs of the Irish being racially distinct and inferior from the
English was the Irish desire to be attached to the Roman Catholicism and
63 "Democracy, One Day," Economist 353, no 8151 (1999): 19.
64 Patricia Ferreira, "All But 'A Black Skin and Wooly Hair': Frederick Douglass's Witness of
the Irish Famine," American Studies International 37, no. 2 (1999): 69.
65 Ferreira, 77.
66 Ibid. 78.
67 Ibid. 79.
The Perfect Famine 11
the "foreign despot at its head."68 In September of 1848, a famine year, the
Quarterly Review published an article which stated that "all the civic and
political and even social evils of Ireland (except only what may be of
Celtic origin) may be traced to the condition and influence of the Roman
Catholic religion in that country."69
Another common theme of the time was that the Irish were racial dis-tinct
as shown in their natural laziness.The Quarterly Review reported
that "the root of all the misery of Ireland is the aboriginal idleness of the
people-that hatred of regular labour which has always characterized them
since history began."70 This belief that the Irish were naturally lazy would
be especially damning during years of the famine as the British had very
specific ideas on deserving and undeserving poor and what the treatment
of these groups should be.As shown in an article printed 5 December
1846, the Illustrated London News referred to the undeserving or unwill-ing
poor as those who were "desirous and eager to work, but cannot pro-cure
sufficient to enable them to supply even their moderate and neces-sary
wants."71 For these poor the London News proclaimed that the sup-porting
of these individuals "is cheerfully borne, and the whole mind of
the nation is so deeply impressed with the absolute necessity, the para-mount
justice, and the Christian charity of a wisely, and indeed liberally,
administered Poor Law."72
The deserving poor, as quoted in the London News,were those
"whose greatest dread is being set to work."73 On 24 January 1849, the
Times offered the following solution to the burden placed upon society by
these deserving poor: "We beg to suggest, a measure for starving out the
whole race, by cutting off their supplies."74 While this solution was not
aimed directly at the Irish, the Irish who were seen as naturally lazy were
certainly considered to be a part of this race of deserving poor to be
starved out of existence, as was indeed occurring at the time in Ireland.
In addition to the racial stereotypes that prevented a popular support
for Irish aid, the government of England proved to be a hindrance in pro-viding
relief to the Irish during the years of the Irish famine.When the
potato crop failed in 1845, the British government under the rule of Sir
Robert Peel acted to introduce relief measures and as a result no lives
were lost from 1845 to the fall of 1846.75 Unfortunately, even in the guise
68 De Nie, 29.
69 Ibid.
70 De Nie, 29.
71 Ibid., 30.
72 Ibid., 30-31.
73 Ibid., 31.
74 Ibid.
75 Christine Kinealy, "How Politics Fed the Famine," Natural History 105, no. 1 (1996): 33.
12 Crescat Scientia
of relief the British would continue to discriminate against and oppress
the Irish. One of the prime means of discrimination at the time was to use
hunger in order to win converts by demanding a renouncing of
Catholicism before relief could be secured.76 This practice, known at
"souperism",77 required changing one's own religion in order to receive
the soup being handed out by relief efforts, efforts largely controlled by
the Protestant churches.78 The act of renouncing one's religion at this time
coined the phrase "he took the soup", a phrase that continues to be an
insulting expression indicating a turncoat.79 Additionally, the surrendering
of property before becoming eligible for aid was widely enforced by the
British aid system.This practice greatly benefited English landlords wishing
to cash in on the advantages of the pasturage system.80
Even with the impressive result of no loss of life during the first year
of famine, historians are at odds with whether this was a result was due to
intentional intervention by Peel specifically on the behalf of the Irish, or
whether it was simply the luck of an easy Irish winter combined with
spillover benefits from measures meant to protect and benefit England.
Directly at the heart of this debate is Peel's work to repeal the Corn Law,
laws which stipulated that large taxes be paid on crops imported into the
United Kingdom.81With the Corn Law in place, any crops brought into
Ireland to relieve the famine would be subject to these high taxes.82
Specifically drawn into the question of Peel's intent is a speech
given to the House of Commons on 16 February 1846 in which he
states:When you are again exhorting a suffering people to fortitude
under their privations, when you are telling them, 'These are the
chastenings of an all-wise and merciful Providence, sent for some
inscrutable but just and beneficent purpose - it may be to humble
our pride, or to punish our unfaithfulness, or to impress us with the
sense of our own nothingness and dependence on His mercy;'
when you are thus addressing your suffering fellow-subjects, and
encouraging them to bear without repining the dispensations of
Providence, may God grant that by your decision of this night, you
may have laid in store for yourself the consolation of reflecting that
such calamities are, in truth, the dispensations of Providence - that
they have not been caused, they have not been aggravated by laws
of man, restricting in the hour of scarcity the supply of food!83
Boyd Hilton, of Trinity College, Cambridge, offers an interpretation of this
speech and the selection quoted above which claims that Peel was directly
arguing for the ideology of free trade outside of the emotional claims of
76 Quinn, 74.
77 Ibid., 72.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid.
80 Ibid., 75.
81 See "The Great Irish Famine."
82 Ibid.
83 Boyd Hilton, "Peel, Potatoes, and Providence," Political Studies 49, no. 1 (2001): 106.
The Perfect Famine 13
sufferers of famine.84 Hilton makes his argument by examining the para-graphs
which precede the passage quoted above. In these paragraphs Peel
argues that Britain has such natural advantages as to dispel any fear that
free trade should cause and that exposure to free trade should be seen as
"healthful breezes of competition."85 As further proof that Peel was not
overly influenced by the Irish famine, Hilton points to passages in which
Peel calls for the repeal of the Corn Laws now during a time of "compara-tive
prosperity, yielding to no clamour, impelled by no fear"86 as proof that
the repeal of the laws was not meant to lessen Irish troubles, but to
strengthen English economy at a time when it could afford to take the
chances of free trade policies.87 Hilton also points to an earlier public
comment made by Peel as further proof that Peel had no great love or con-cern
for the Irish: "if there be any part of the United Kingdom which is to
suffer by the withdrawal of protection, I have always felt that part of the
United Kingdom to be Ireland."88 Arguments that follow this course make
claims that Peel was not interested in stunting the effects of the Irish
famine, and thereby infer that it would not have mattered which party had
held the power of government, the famine would have taken the same toll
on the Irish people.
Interpretations made by Iain McLean, of Nuffield College, Oxford, and
Camilla Bustani LLP claim that Peel was arguing for the repeal of the Corn
Law not specifically in favor of the ideology of free trade but more particu-larly
in favor of evangelical discourse that argues that man must not inter-fere
in God's plan.89 Peel's argument, according to his above statement, is
that the Corn Laws should be repealed because regulating the supply or
price of food is an interference with Providence, particularly during times
of famine.90 Furthermore, McLean and Bustani argue that the emotionality
of the claim was not merely directed at the salvation of those in the House
of Commons who he believed to be meddling in the plans of God, but was
specifically driven by concern for Ireland.91 McLean and Bustani point pri-marily
to the first half of the speech in which Peel provides details about
the Irish famine as proof that it was indeed the Irish famine that caused
him to call for the repeal of the Corn Laws.92 In the summer of 1846, Peel
was forced to resign due to the unpopularity of the repeal of the Corn
84 Hilton, 106.
85 Ibid., 107.
86 Ibid.
87 Hilton., 107-108.
88 Ibid., 109.
89 Iain McLean and Camilla Bustani, "Peel, Potatoes, and Providence," Political Studies 49,
no. 1 (2001): 110.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid., 111.
92 McLean and Bustani, 110.
14 Crescat Scientia
Laws within his own party.93 Before resigning as Prime Minister, Peel
stood before Parliament and offered the following condemnation and per-haps
strongest indicator of Peel's own inclinations concerning the Irish:
"Good God, are you to sit in cabinet and consider and calculate how much
diarrhea, and bloody flux, and dysentery a people can bear before it
becomes necessary for you to provide them with food?"94 If McLean and
Bustani are corrected in their interpretations, the removal of Peel from
power had the deadliest of impacts on the future of the Irish people.
Regardless of what might have been, the new government, with John
Russell as Prime Minister,would reduce critical relief efforts.Assistance had
previously been available in the form of moneys and food to public works,
which subjected the starving Irish to hard, often pointless95 labor paid for
through the taxation of Irish landlords and donations from private charities
with little financial contribution from the British government.96 The
bureaucracy set up by Russell's government to oversee this relief work
proved to be inefficient in creating jobs and in paying wages in a timely
manner.97 The result would be half a million dead from 1846-1847.98 In the
fall of 1847 the British government would declare the Irish famine to be
over and that no more financial assistance would be forthcoming from
Britain for Ireland.99 This declaration from the government was due in part
to a financial crisis in England that made taxation and "foreign" spending
unpopular.100 Also impacting Russell's action was an election result seen as
not entirely favorable to Russell which convinced him that he had "done
too much for Ireland, and [had] lost the elections for doing so."101
The popular economic theory of laissez-faire, or non-intervention,
would seal the fate of the Irish as far as the British government was con-cerned.
102 British Treasury Secretary in charge, Charles Edward Trevelyan,
was a particularly adamant proponent for the principle of laissez-faire
opposing any expenditure or increases in taxes.103 As a strong believer in
Malthus' theory that to aid the poor of the population would only increase
the population and thereby make matters worse,Trevelyan felt that the
famine in Ireland was "the direct stroke of an all-wise Providence" that
93 See "The Great Irish Famine."
94 Ibid.
95 Ibid.
96 Kinealy, 33.
97 Ibid.
98 Ibid.
99 Ibid., 34.
100 Ibid.
101 Kinealy, 34.
102 Quinn, 74.
103 See "The Great Irish Famine."
The Perfect Famine 15
would cure overpopulation in Ireland.104 In 1848, one year after the worst
year of the Irish famine, Queen Victoria would knight Trevelyan for his
services in Ireland.105
In 1850, still in the midst of the Irish famine, a British parliamentary
committee of enquiry looking into the famine to that point would declare
that "a neglect of public duty has occurred and has occasioned a state of
things disgraceful to a civilized age and country, for which some authority
ought to be held responsible, and would have long since been held respon-sible,
had these things occurred in any union in England."106 This neglect of
duty and responsibility lies with the British people in general and, more
specifically, its government.While the forces of nature combined in creat-ing
an epidemic of enormous consequence, the discrimination, racism, and
inaction by the British people and government turned an ecological disas-ter
into a human tragedy.When Frederick Douglass was in Ireland, he
observed that the oppression of the Irish Catholic was a terrible indict-ment
against the English that would require ages to overcome.107 Taking a
similar stance, novelist Edith Martin wrote that "the Famine yielded like the
ice of the northern seas, it ran like melted snow into the veins of Ireland
for many years afterwards."108 Indeed, more than one-hundred-and-fifty
years later, the British have still not accepted responsibility and the Irish
have not forgotten.
104 Ibid.
105 Ibid.
106 Kinealy, 35.
107 Ferreira, 75.
108 Kinealy, 35.
U T A H V A L L E Y S T A T E C O L L E G E
1 9 4 1
The power of music was legendary in Ancient Greece. Orpheus,
known as the mortal son of Apollo, sang and played the lyre to such per-fection
that "nothing could withstand the charm of his music".1 When his
beloved wife, Euridice, died of a poisonous snake bite, he is said to have
traveled deep into the Stygian realm seeking to free her soul. Upon hearing
Orpheus sing and play, ghosts wept and, for the first time, even the cheeks
of the Furies were wet with tears. Hades himself could not resist and
released Euridice.Although affected by the music, the god of the under-world
would not be influenced enough to let her go without a condition.
Orpheus was to lead Euridice back to the realm of the living without look-ing
at her until they both reached the surface. Orpheus resisted the urge to
look back at her until he reached the sunlight of the living world, but in
his happiness he assumed too quickly that they were safe.When he looked
back at his wife, Euridice was still within the shadow of the underworld
and she was swept away yet again.2 Although this story does not have a
happy ending, it demonstrates the mystical power the ancient Greeks asso-ciated
with music.
Aristotle identified three different uses for music: recreation, intellectu-al
development, and habituation which involved purification by repetitive
exposure.3 Music has always been a means of recreation and entertain-ment,
but the power of music was used for more than pleasure and an
effect upon the emotions.There are few aspects of life wherein the Greeks
did not use music to some degree. Music was of prime importance in all
religious practices, as well as social and working environments.4 It was also
used as a healing tool.5 It is no coincidence that Apollo was considered the
1 Thomas Bulfinch,Bulfinch's Mythology (New York, NY: Crown Publishers, 1948), 185.
2 Ibid., 186.
3 The Politics of Aristotle, trans. and ed. Peter L Phillips Simpson (Chapel Hill:The University
of North Carolina Press, 1997), 159.
4 John G. Landels,Music in Ancient Greece and Rome (London: Routledge, 1999), 1.
5 M.L.West. Ancient Greek Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 31-32.
ETHOS AND THE POWER OF MUSIC
IN ANCIENT GREECE
Amberly D. Page
18 Crescat Scientia
god of healing as well as the god of music.Apollo and his alleged son,
Orpheus, both were regarded as great physicians as well as musicians;6 not
so much a coincidence as an inevitable association in ancient Greek cul-ture.
According to ancient Greek belief, the true power of music lay in
habituation.7 Aristotle stated that music acts as a tool by which one may
learn virtues. Just as a gymnast repetitively lifts weights to tone and
strengthen muscle, a person exposed repeatedly to the same type of music
may, over time, acquire virtues according to the music's character.8 Certain
tones and vibrations were supposed to purge the body and purify the soul
by retuning and returning it to its natural order or harmony.
...music too, in so far as it uses audible sound,was bestowed upon
us for the sake of harmony.And harmony, which has motions akin to
the revolutions of the soul within us,was given by the Muses to him
who makes intelligent use of the Muses, not as an aid to irrational
pleasure..., but as an auxiliary to the inner revolution of the soul,
when it has lost its harmony, to assist in restoring it to order and
concord with itself.9
In order for the true healing powers of music to work, a patient must
be exposed consistently to the same sounds and vibrations for an extend-ed
period of time.The same concept was applied to the development of
virtues. By exposing oneself consistently to the same type of music, one
may develop certain virtues or character traits.
Aristotle explained in his discourse on politics that habituation is
caused by imitation.10 Most music is imitative of some virtue or quality or
even of a person, place, event, or idea.This can be seen in Beethoven's
Sixth Symphony, which is also known as the Pastoral Symphony. It is so
called because it brings to mind and is a musical imitation of the country
side, each movement portraying a different aspect.This is only one exam-ple
among many.Aristotle said,
There exist in rhythms and melodies likenesses, most closely
approximating to the realities, of anger and mildness, of courage and
moderation and their opposites, and of all other dispositions, as the
facts make clear; for our souls are altered when we hear such things.
Habituation in feeling pain and pleasure in likeness is close to being
affected in the same way by the realities themselves: for instance, if
someone enjoys the sight of and image of something because of its
appearance and for no other reason, he must also find pleasure in
the sight of the actual object whose image he is looking at.11
6 Bulfinch, 185.
7 Andrew Barker,Greek Musical Writings:Volume 1, the Musician and his Art (Cambridge,
Mass: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 173.
8 Ibid., 173.
9 Warren D.Anderson, Ethos and Education in Greek Music:The Evidence of Poetry and
Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1966), 68.
10 Barker,GMW, 175.
11 Ibid., 175.
Ethos and the Power of Music 19
This power of music to affect one's character is now called ethos.The
ancient Greeks respected it, but they also feared this power for the nega-tive
effects it could have. Plato stated, in a translation by Warren D.
Anderson that, "Music, the most celebrated of all forms of imitation (literal-ly,
"images"), is the most dangerous as well.A mistake in handling it may
cause untold harm, for one may become receptive to evil habits."12 In
Plato's Republic (397-401b), Socrates discusses with his companions,
Glaucon and Adeimantus, the nature of the best political structure.13 The
power of music to affect one's moral character (ethos) is discussed at
length.They finally concluded that music in their politically perfect city
must be regulated such that only music which would improve and elevate
the moral character of the citizens is practiced and performed.14
The idea of ethos was originally developed by Damon of Oa, a music
theorist of the fifth century BC.15 Damon is best known in Plato's Republic
as a great music theorist, but he is also remembered as a teacher and men-tor
to Perikles, an important Athenian statesman.16 While Damon's primary
pursuits were in music, he was also interested in politics and taught his
student accordingly.According to Wallace, professor of Classics at
Northwestern University, Damon was ostracized because he not only
advised Perikles, but he also proposed many of the statesman's measures.17
This protected the politician, but caused problems for Damon.Wallace
said, "The accusation that Damon proposed 'most' of Perikles' measures
echoes Athenian complaints against the practice of politicians using surro-gates."
18 The priest Plutarch suggested that Damon used music as a screen
to camouflage his involvement with Perikles,19 but his ideas on music had
long-lasting effects. Damon studied and classified the different harmoniai.
These were the 'tunings' or scales made up of differently spaced intervals
which, when combined with certain rhythms and ranges, made up the
modes. He attributed a different behavior or psychological state to each
harmoniai, but it is unclear which effects he attributed to each harmoni-a
i.20 It is in the writings of Aristotle and Plato where we find the effects of
12 Anderson,“Ethos”, 74.
13 Plato: The Republic, trans.Tom Griffith, ed.G. R. F. Ferrari, Cambridge Texts in the History
of Political Thought, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 86-92.
14 Ibid.
15 Robert W.Wallace, "Damon of Oa:A Music Theorist Ostracized?" in Music and the Muses:
The Culture of 'Mousike' in the Classical Athenian City, ed. Penelope Murray and Peter
Wilson (Oxford, NY: Oxford, 2004), 251.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., 252.
18 Ibid., 253.
19 Ibid., 251.
20 Robert W.Wallace, E-mail correspondence with the author, February 14, 2005.
20 Crescat Scientia
harmoniai connected to habituation.Wallace explained that Damon prob-ably
did not promote his findings publicly.
Damon studied the behavioral and hence political implications of
music systematically, describing and naming different harmoniai,
rhythms, and metrical feet, and correlating these with conduct and
ethos.The earliest and best sources for Damon's philosophical activi-ty
give no sign that he promoted certain types of music for their
positive ethical consequences.21
While Damon may not have promoted them, politicians who recog-nized
the possible political value of ethos took an interest in his discover-ies.
He claimed that changes in musical styles are always accompanied by
radical changes in the laws of the state. Damon of Oa was ultimately ostra-cized
due to the political connections to his research of music.22
The way in which ethos is defined has changed over the centuries.The
word 'ethos' originally meant "accustomed place."23 It is known in modern
times as musical phenomena: a means for conveying ethical attitudes.24
One might define ethos as the moral nature, character, or guiding belief of
a person or group of people. However, the classicist Warren D.Andersen
defined ethos as "An ancient Greek musical term, describing a concept
important in the relationship between ancient Greek music and educa-tion".
25 He also indicates that while ethos is a conductor of virtues, it does
not have virtue in and of itself: "Ethos should be taken as an attribute not
merely of persons, but also of musical phenomena, which are then consid-ered
as vehicles for conveying ethical attitudes, not as having any kind of
moral nature in themselves."26 The definition has evolved, but this new defi-nition
is not so different from the old one. One of the methods by which
music is supposed to convey ethos is through mimesis, or by imitation.27
Socrates, in Plato's Timaeus, explained that
...so much of music as is adapted to the sound of the voice and to
the sense of hearing is granted to us for the sake of harmony; and
harmony, which has motions akin to the revolutions of our souls, is
not regarded by the intelligent votary of the Muses as given by them
with a view to irrational pleasure, which is deemed to be the pur-pose
of it in our day, but as meant to correct any discord which may
have arisen in the courses of the soul, and to be our ally in bringing
her into harmony and agreement with herself.28
21 Ibid., 267.
22 Ibid., 267.
23 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2001 ed., s.v. "Ethos", by Warren
Anderson and Thomas J. Mathieson, 403.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Andrew Ford, "Catharsis:The Power of Music in Aristotle's Politics," in Music and the
Muses:The Culture of 'Mousike' in the Classical Athenian City, ed. Penelope Murray and
Peter Wilson (Oxford, NY: Oxford, 2004), 320.
28 Plato,Timaeus,trans.Benjamin Jowett.Internet.<available from http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html>
Ethos and the Power of Music 21
In other words, the soul of a man might drop from its accustomed place
and fall into disorder. Music, by mimesis, is able to amend this disorder and
bring the soul once again to agreement with itself.
Some Hellenes believed that the human soul is in the condition of a
fallen god and that its true nature could only be achieved through purifica-tion.
29 Aristides Quintilianus, a fourth century theorist, expounded on this
idea and compared the harmonia of the human soul to the harmonia of
the universe. "Musical mimesis is especially powerful ... because it is not a
simple imitation of things but is rather an imitation of life itself, capable of
raising the soul once again to the harmonia of the universe."30 The soul is
naturally attracted to whatever is akin to one or another of its parts.
Because of this natural tendency, mimetic arts, particularly music, may
strongly affect the soul for either the positive or the negative.31 Prolonged
exposure to music mimetic of the good qualities in the soul will reinforce
and develop those qualities even to the point that the bad qualities inher-ent
to the soul depart. Unfortunately, the mimetic power of music serves
evil as well as good.32 Music mimetic of negative qualities will enhance the
evil resident in the individual out of balance, diminishing the good quali-ties
in the soul.This fear of the power of music is clearly exhibited by
Plato in a Socratic discussion with Glaucon. "So is this the reason, Glaucon,
why musical education is the most important, that rhythm and attunement
are what most penetrate the inner soul and grasp it most powerfully, bring-ing
good order, and make a person well-regulated if he is educated correct-ly
and the opposite if he is not?"33
Although ethos has been a topic of study for over a century, it remains
a troublesome subject, and may remain forever in the domain of philosoph-ical
dispute due to a dearth of evidence.The Greeks were among the first
to begin transcribing their music in a written from and were actually
scorned for it.34 Only approximately fifteen fragments of transcribed music
remain from that time and place.35 However there are now many notable
sources in which ethos was closely scrutinized and many different avenues
of study were touched upon. Some important sources available include
29 Thomas J. Mathieson, "Harmonia and Ethos in Ancient Greek Music," The Journal of
Musicology 3 (1984): 364-79, 267.
30 Ibid.
31 Thomas J. Mathieson, Apollo's Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the
Middle Ages (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 544.
32 Aristides Quintilianus on Music: In Three Books, trans. and ed.Thomas J. Mathieson
(New Haven:Yale Univeristy Press, 1983), 127.
33 West,Ancient Greek Music, 248.
34 Egert Polhmann and Martin West.Documents of Ancient Greek Music (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 2001), 1.
35 K. Marie Stolba,The Development of Western Music:A History (Boston, Mass: McGraw-
Hill, 1998), 8.
22 Crescat Scientia
Aristides Quintilianus's De Musica, Claudius Ptolemy's Harmonics, and the
writings of ancient philosophers like Aristotle and Plato.
Aristides Quintilianus was an important music theorist of ancient
Greece who authored his treatise on music sometime in the late third or
early fourth century A.D.36 Along with Aristoxenes37 and Claudius
Ptolemy,38 who were also influential music theorists, he provided a sys-tematized
and somewhat technical philosophical treatment of music.39 His
work was influenced extensively by Plato and Aristotle and is an important
reference for scholars interested in the music theory of Ancient Greece as
well as the educational application of ethos.According to Aristides
Quintilianus, "the harmonia of music may create a like harmonia in the
soul, and this in turn creates a particular ethos."40 It was believed that the
universe is a harmony expressible by numbers and that harmony in music,
also expressible by numbers and imitative of the harmony of the universe,
could return the soul to its natural state of perfection.41 Aristides
Quintilianus inherited a version of this idea from the Pythagoreans, follow-ers
of Pythagoras (c. 569-475 BC).
Aristides Quintilianus explained that the soul without the body is sim-ple
and free of gender orientation, but desiring a body of either the femi-nine
or the masculine form.42 Once the soul is clothed in its human body,
it must be identified with the masculine or the feminine. However, he
allows that some souls which desire for a certain gender are denied. "For
example, whenever souls do not gain by nature such a body, they remodel
it with their own changes and alter it into a thing similar to themselves."43
Music and the different components of music will imitate either a femi-nine,
masculine, or medial character.
36 Thomas J. Mathieson,“Aristides Quintilianus”,Grove Music Online ed. L Macy
Internet.<available from, http://www.grovemusic.com >, accessed 03/05/05.
37 Warren D.Anderson, Music and Musicians in Ancient Greece (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1994), 138.
38 Andrew Barker, Scientific Method in Ptolemy's Harmonics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 1.
39 Quintilianus, 1.
40 Mathieson,Harmonia, 268.
41 Giovanni Comotti, Music in Greek and Roman Culture, trans. Rosaria V. Munson
(Baltimore, MD:The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 27.
42 Quintilianus, 130.
43 Ibid.
Ethos and the Power of Music 23
For it is possible in the first place to see each nature singly in visible
things: dividing freshness and what naturally belongs to adornment-color
and figure-by femininity, and somberness and tending to
thought by masculinity; and again in audible things: according
smooth and gentle sounds to the feminine part and harsher sounds
to the opposite part.And ... it is necessary to declare in general con-cerning
all things that as many of the sensible things as entice to
pleasure and naturally happen to slowly soften the will, these we
must judge as in the feminine part; and as many as move the thought
and arouse activity, these we must afford to the masculine portion;
and, in truth, the things that do neither or both by mixture, these we
must declare to be medial.44
Naturally,music conveying a feminine ethos could be good or evil.Aristides
Quintilianus attributed soberness and tendency to thought to the mascu-line
aspect, but the Nurse of Euripides' play,Medea, also attributes rude-ness
to the masculine sex: "Wert thou to call the men of old time rude
uncultured boors thou wouldst not err...."45 Quintilianus attributed fresh-ness,
color, and figure to the feminine, but characteristics such as weakness
and foolishness could also be associated with the feminine aspect as
Euripides also shows in Medea: "I will do so; nor will I doubt thy word;
woman is a weak creature, ever given to tears,"46 and "...small is the class
amongst women-(one maybe shalt thou find 'mid many)-that is not inca-pable
of wisdom."47 In Thomas J. Mathiesen's "Harmonia and Ethos in
Ancient Greek Music," the author establishes a method based on the sys-tem
of Aristides Quintilianus by which one may distinguish a piece accord-ing
to gender attributes.The elements of rhythm, diction, and mode may
each convey a different ethos, but the music these elements combine to
create is always identifiable as masculine, feminine, or medial.
Plato and Aristotle both recognized the importance and the influence
of music on one's character and in a society. Plato, ever a communalist,
concerned himself with how music would affect the behavior of society
and what types of music should be allowed in an enlightened civilization.48
In many of his writings, Plato recognized the role mimesis played in the
forming of habits.49 Students were strongly encouraged to pursue an instru-ment
early in their education because of its habit-forming qualities and its
ability to instill a virtue of temperance. Plato said that music has decisive
importance for elementary education because rhythm and mode "sink
deep into the soul" and remain fixed there.50 Modern scientific research
44 Ibid., 131.
45 Euripides,Medea,Internet.<available from http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/medea.html>, accessed March 2,2005.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 Plato, 116-117.
49 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,“Ethos”, 405.
50 Anderson, Ethos, 179.
24 Crescat Scientia
confirms this theory. Even now, parents enroll their children in music les-sons,
and music programs are a regular part of high school curriculum for
these very reasons.The discipline required by music training instills strong
character traits, and it is proven that a youth involved in music training of
some kind is much more likely to be a better student and develop good
habits.51 Musical mimesis will aid in creating good or bad habits, or simply
influence one strongly for positive or negative depending on how strongly
the music imitates the desirable atttributes.
Since music is mimetic we must, Plato says, be particularly careful to
judge it not by pleasure, but by another criterion altogether.We
should, moreover, seek out such music as bears a likeness to the imi-tation
of the good talking rightness rather than pleasure to be our
standard, since the success of mimesis depends on its rightness.
Good music accordingly represents the soul of a good man under
external influences.52
Aristides Quintilianus further claimed that all of the parts of music - pitch,
scale, mode, rhythmic pattern - are like the order of the universe and,
through mimesis,music may make the order of the soul like the order of
the universe.53 This is reaching perfection, or attaining godhood.
By using harmonia in the aforesaid ways-either presenting a harmo-nia
to each soul by similarity or by contrariety-you will disclose the
inferior ethos lying hidden, heal it, and instill a better one.54
The Greek modes were an important element of the harmonics having
an effect on the soul.The modes consisted of different tunings for instru-ments
or musical scales with different proportions or intervals between
the tones.55 Some were thought to be too chromatic in their harmonia and
were avoided as one would avoid developing bad habits.56 Instruments
were eventually invented that could modulate or switch modes in the mid-dle
of a piece;57 this was also considered to be a source of bad harmonia
because it caused a shift from one ethos to another.58 Sources give
conflicting accounts of mode and it is impossible to say for certain how
many different modes there were at any given time, but Claudius Ptolemy
51 Leslie Bunt, "Music Therapy",Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy Internet. <Available from
http://www.grovemusic.com>, accessed 03/07/05.
52 Anderson, Ethos, 103.
53 Mathieson, Harmonia, 268.
54 Ibid., 368.
55 Landels, 88.
56 Eric Csapo, "The Politics of the New Music," in Music and the Muses:The Culture of
'Mousike' in the Classical Athenian City, ed. Penelope Murray and Peter Wilson (Oxford, NY:
Oxford, 2004), 236.
57 Ibid., 212.
58 Barker,GMW, 132.
Ethos and the Power of Music 25
describes seven species of tonoi, or mode, in his treatise,Harmonics.59
These were named after the different places and people with whom they
originated.60 Three common modes included the Dorian, the Phrygian,
and the Lydian61. Each mode was based around a system of tetrachords
(four-note scales) in which the two outer tones were fixed an interval of a
fourth apart but the two inner tones were variable.62 Two types of modes
with which society is still familiar are the Major and Minor keys or scales.
We know major keys to be more bright and extroverted than their aloof
and often sorrowful counterpart, the minor keys.The reason for these dif-ferent
effects is the soul's natural resonance with harmony, or musical
ratios.
Indeed, our souls are thoroughly affected together with the actuali-ties
of the melody, recognizing as it were the kinship of the ratios of
its own constitution and modeled by the movements peculiar to the
specific character of the mele, so that sometimes they are led to
pleasures and relaxations and other times stimulated and awakened,
sometimes turned to rest and moderation and other times to mad-ness
and divine suffusion, and so on, when the melos itself modu-lates
and leads our souls to the dispositions established from the
similarity of the ratios.63
This excerpt from Ptolemy explains the therapeutic benefits of music and
may indicate the roots of music therapy in classic Greek culture.Aristides
Quintilianus also seemed to support the idea of music as therapy. He divid-ed
the soul into different parts, each associated with a different mood.64 A
mode was attached to each part of the soul and was supposed to be imita-tive
of that particular mood.The modes could then lead the soul back to
its correct condition by means of mimesis.65
The modes are most easily identifiable by the scalar pattern of the
tones, but there was no such thing as perfect pitch in ancient Greece.66
Relative pitch was the rule, but mode did not always refer only to the scale
pattern; it also indicated starting pitch.67 Higher pitches require more
tenseness in the voice or the strings of an instrument while lower pitches
are usually more relaxed. Classicist M.L.West said, "Certainly the modes
appear to have been marked in some cases by differences of
59 K. Marie Stolba,The Development of Western Music:A History. (Boston, Mass: McGraw-
Hill, 1998) 16.
60 Gioseffo Zarlino,On the Modes: Pa rt Four of Le Istitutioni Harmoniche, 1558. trans.
Vered Cohen. ed. Claude V. Palisca.( London, UK:Yale University Press, 1983) 2.
61 West, Ancient Greek Music, 179-181.
62 Comotti, 80.
63 Mathieson, Apollo's Lyre, 483.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid.
66 Anderson, Ethos, 17.
67 Ibid., 14.
26 Crescat Scientia
tessitura-differences in the degree to which high or low singing was
required."68 He continued, "The meaning of 'tense' and 'slack' in this con-text
is made plainer by Aristotle's remark that the tense harmoniai are not
easy for old men to sing; nature offers them the slack ones instead. Clearly
a 'tense' mode involved more high notes and was taxing for that reason."69
Often the modes were identified according to which instrument they were
played on or what kind of a rhythm was used. M.L.West further observed
that "no doubt there were other differential characteristics that do not
appear from the bare scales. Some types of rhythm were probably felt to
go with one mode rather than another."70 The differences between the
modes involving range, rhythm, and instruments are due to the origins of
each mode from a different group of people, some associated with differ-ent
cults. For instance, the kithara, a stringed instrument like a lyre,was
associated with Apollo, the god of wisdom.71 The aulos, an oboe-like wind
instrument,was associated with Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry.72 As
a result of these differences,music of a frenzied nature was played on the
aulos and music of a calm nature was played on the kithara.
There were some ancient Greek philosophers and teachers who
opposed the theory of ethos as it has been described.The Hibeh Papyri
were discovered in Egypt around 1905 provide some of the opposing evi-dence.
73 These writings were attributed to Hippias of Elis, a contemporary
of Socrates.74 Hippias scorned the idea that moral effects could be attrib-uted
to harmonies and would not accept the idea that music could express
the qualities of inanimate objects, particularly if the music used no words.75
"They realize that the chromatic will not produce cowardice, any more
than the enharmonic will produce bravery, in those who employ it,"76 the
papyrus reads, but Hippias also said, "Certain persons pretend to knowl-edge
outside their proper fields without realizing it."77 It would appear that
Plato's position on ethos was sharply under attack for his lack of personal
music experience, but there seems to be little evidence that Hippias exhib-ited
any real musical talent himself. In the Greco-Roman period,
68 West, Ancient Greek Music, 178.
69 Ibid., 179.
70 Ibid., 178.
71 Martha Maas: "Kithara",Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy Internet. <Available from
http://www.grovemusic.com>, accessed 03/07/05.
72 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2001 ed., s.v. "Greece" by Thomas J.
Mathieson, Dimitri Conomos, George Leotsakos, and Sotirios Chianis/Rudolph M. Brandl, 662.
73 Herbert M. Schueller.The Idea of Music:An Introduction to Musical Aesthetics in
Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Kalamazoo, MI:Western Michigan University, 1988), 28.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid., 28-29.
76 Barker,GMW, 184.
77 Anderson, Ethos, 148.
Ethos and the Power of Music 27
Philodemus was also an important critic in the field of ethos.78 He criti-cized
the theories of the Pythagorians who are known to have calculated
numbers and ratios and the relationship between music and the universe:
Even granting that the movement of the sun and moon and the dis-tance
between them have analogies with the movement (and spac-ing)
of musical sounds, and that the zodiac (is comparable) to the
system of division on the monochord, the fact of relationship is not
established, since many factors which bear upon determining the
nature of the analogy show the greatest conceivable difference.79
He also accuses early theorists of being insensible regarding musical theo-ry
and called them ignorant of celestial phenomena.80 He criticized the
idea of different parts of the soul and music's effect thereon:
These people divide up the parts of the soul in the most absurd way
in the world. For one thing, it is not "right" to look on the forms of...
melodic composition, which are in the realm of music, but music
conceived wholly with relation to its end. For another, the parts of
the soul are not arranged... as they claim; it is obvious foolishness to
say that one part is settled and ordered while another is restrained
and passionate.81
Ethos in music was and continues to be a subject for philosophical dis-pute.
There are few original or primary sources and a majority of what is
known has been pieced together from the words of ancient philosophers.
However, scientists and musicologists have returned to the study of the
effects of music. It is now a scientifically proven fact that music aids in
learning and healing therapy.82 This concept has its critics, but music is a
science as well as an art form which has thrived over the thousands of
years since the Hellenes introduced it to the world. It is not easy to under-stand
the nature of the power the ancient Greeks attributed to music, but
it is interesting to observe how similar some of their ideas about music are
to modern-day thought.The Greeks showed wisdom beyond their time in
the field of philosophy; their observations concerning music show wisdom
which continues to be, in many ways, beyond our own.
78 Ibid., 153.
79 Ibid., 155.
80 Ibid.
81 Ibid., 169.
82 Leslie Bunt, "Music Therapy",Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy Internet. <Available from
http://www.grovemusic.com>, accessed 03/07/05.
U T A H V A L L E Y S T A T E C O L L E G E
1 9 4 1
From the close of his life at Ford's Theatre to the present day, histori-ans
have wrestled with the question of how to judge Abraham Lincoln. For
the general populace, he has always remained "Honest Abe" and "the Great
Emancipator." A number of historians, however, have questioned the validi-ty
of this accepted image. For a number of reasons, the 1858 Illinois Senate
Election Campaign between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas has
consistently served as a focal point in the controversy over how Lincoln
ought to be judged.
The historian Phillip Paludan has noted that each of the major scholars
who have treated the Lincoln-Douglas 1858 campaigns have "all demon-strated
the ways in which Americans have turned to Lincoln over the years
to support their political positions or to anoint and exemplify their hopes
and dreams."1 Paludan further argues that this tends to produce a number
of "alternate Lincolns" according to the particular agenda that the individ-ual
historian is attempting to promote.2 This unique trademark of histori-ans
who have treated the issue of the Lincoln-Douglas 1858 Senate cam-paign
allows for a separation of these authors into three distinct schools of
thought.
Some have used the Illinois Senate campaign of 1858 in an attempt to
dispel the generally accepted image of Lincoln as "Honest Abe" and expose
the 'true Lincoln' for what he really was: a demagogue, an opportunist, a
racist, and the architect of an unnecessary war.
A handful of scholars who point to the moral basis of Lincoln's argu-ments
as made throughout the course of the debates have also utilized the
1858 campaign to defend the traditional image of "Honest Abe" as the "true
Lincoln" and to underscore his legal and moral brilliance. Led by historian
1 Phillip Shaw Paludan. "Emancipating the Republic: Lincoln and the Means and Ends of
Antislavery" In We Cannot Escape History, ed. James M. McPherson, (Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1995), 45.
2 Ibid.
A House Uniter or a House Divider?
A Historiographical Survey of the 1858 Illinois Senate Campaign
Luke E. Peterson
30 Crescat Scientia
Harry V. Jaffa, these scholars have also used Lincoln comments from the
1858 campaign in order to justify a new method of interpreting the U.S.
Constitution.
Finally, several recent historians have sought to answer the claims
raised by both Lincoln detractors and Lincoln defenders, without attempt-ing
to impose any given value judgment on Lincoln or Douglas.These
scholars have also sought to understand the importance of the event in its
own right, without seeking to advance a particular agenda.
The "Needless War" Heroes
Lincoln was immediately memorialized after his death with a number
of popular histories which lauded the President for his moral stature and
for leading the nation through its darkest crisis. John G. Nicolay and John
Hay, Lincoln's personal secretaries, wrote a popular biography of Lincoln
which was published originally in serial form in Century Magazine.The his-tory
comprised several volumes when finished and utilized a tremendous
wealth of documents, photographs, and first-hand accounts collected over
the course of many years. Others followed in their footsteps, including Ida
Tarbell, a prominent female journalist, who wrote a two-volume biography
that was published in serial form in McClure's magazine at the turn of the
century.Tarbell's work provided a more progressive look at Lincoln.
After World War I, the first school of Civil War revisionists began to
question the heretofore accepted image of Lincoln.These historians devel-oped
a view of the Civil War as an "avoidable conflict" or "needless war"
and, in order to explain this claim, they inevitably turned to Lincoln and
the 1858 Illinois Senate Campaign.
Authors such as Nathaniel Stephenson, Edward Channing, Max
Farrand, Philip Auchampaugh, and Robert R. Russel began to speculate in
the 1920s on choices that, perhaps, could have pre-empted the Civil War
and thus avoided what had been termed a senseless loss. Even Frederick
Jackson Turner began to speculate over the necessity of the war.As ques-tions
began to mount, this newly-emerging school began to turn its atten-tion
to the man who presided over "the needless war",Abraham Lincoln. It
is worth noting that this move in the revisionist school was led primarily
by Southerners who found their outlet in The Journal of Southern History.
The historian Avery Craven had labeled the Civil War "the work of
pious cranks and politicians" and certainly chief in both categories was
Lincoln himself.3 Craven contended that neither slavery nor sectional eco-nomic
and cultural differences were sufficient causes to make war
inevitable.With the same broad brush Craven painted the target for blame
3 Avery Craven "Coming of the War Between the States:An Interpretation." The Journal of
Southern History 2, no. 3 (August 1936): 305.
A House Uniter or a House Divider? 31
not on slavery, but on the moral inflexibility and self-centered aspirations
of a few. Craven, in his 1936 article, "Coming of the War Between the
States," painstakingly outlined the evolution of the abolitionist movement
as an artificial force representing the views of a vocal minority which
found its political vehicle to legitimization in the Republican Party.4
Craven finds the point of no return on the road to the Civil War in the
Senate campaign of 1858. He argues that the Republicans were on the
verge of accepting Douglas' popular sovereignty doctrine when Lincoln
"prevented himself and his party from being thrust aside by a desperate
appeal to old moral foundations." Craven criticizes Lincoln for his moral
inflexibility, as expressed in the "house-divided" speech, which he claims
removed the last chance for peaceful resolution.5 By Craven's judgment,
there was little difference in application between Douglas' "popular sover-eignty"
and Lincoln's containment and "eventual extinction" policy. His
condemnation of Lincoln springs from the fact that he rejected a system
which produced the same end that he sought, simply because it was "not
born of moral conviction."6
Adding to the notion of Lincoln as inflexible spoiler was George F.
Milton. Milton was an authority on the life of Stephen A. Douglas. He
viewed the "little giant" as the architect of a program which represented
the last hope for peace; popular sovereignty.7 Milton similarly condemns
the "house-divided" doctrine as one of the major causes of the Civil War,
though not the ultimate one. He charged Lincoln with having developed a
doctrine that was nothing more than a "rotten plank" destined to give way
to sectional warfare.8
James G. Randall, widely considered the leading Civil War historian of
the time,was also associated with the "needless war" revisionist school.
Randall was an exceptional scholar and not only utilized a wide variety of
primary and secondary sources in doing his research, but also thoroughly
scrutinized these sources to ascertain their validity.Through the 1930s
Randall demonstrated an increasing sympathy with revisionist history,
which culminated in a full embrace of the doctrine in 1940 in his article
The Blundering Generation. Here Randall examines the causes of the war
in terms of human emotion, proclaiming that the influence of such events
as "the Sumter maneuver, the election of Lincoln, abolitionism, slavery in
Kansas, cultural and economic differences..." can be considered the true
causes for war only if "...one omits the elements of emotional unreason
and overbold leadership."9
4 Ibid, 317.
5 Ibid, 319.
6 Ibid.
7 George Fort Milton "Stephen A. Douglas' Efforts for Peace." The Journal of Southern
History 1, no. 3 (August 1935): 261.
8 Ibid, 270.
9 J.G.Randall "The Blundering Generation." The Mississippi Valley Historical Review,27,no.1.(June 1940):15.
32 Crescat Scientia
Randall takes a much more broad view of the underlying cause of the
war, attempting to discern the "mind of America" in the antebellum period
and expose the doctrines and prejudices which lead to the "needless
war".10 He prefers to place the blame on the American mindset rather than
on any one leader. Craven and Milton, on the other hand, placed the blame
for the war squarely on Lincoln's moral inflexibility in 1858. Randall also
tends to be an apologist for Lincoln, on whom he wrote an extensive biog-raphy.
He prefers to place blame on more polemic political figures in both
parties and points to the moderate nature of Lincoln's stand on slavery.11
The "needless war" school died off towards the beginning of the
1950's, but a revival of this movement seems to have recently re-appeared
on the scene.The new revisionist school, led by Thomas DiLorenzo and
Robert Johannsen, is focused less on the causes of an unnecessary war and
more on debunking its architect than their predecessors.
DiLorenzo, a self-professed Libertarian and economics professor spe-cializing
in economic history, is most concerned with revealing, as the title
of his book indicates,The Real Lincoln (2003). DiLorenzo takes earlier
revisionist doctrine espoused a step further by accusing Lincoln of con-spiring
to drag America into the war in order to further his goal of central-izing
government power to the benefit of northern industrial interests.12
But DiLorenzo does not stop there; he seeks to fully revamp the American
image of Abraham Lincoln on all fronts. In doing so, he frequently turns to
the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of the 1858 campaign to support his claims.
In supporting the claim of Lincoln's power centralizing agenda,
DiLorenzo describes the Lincoln-Douglas debates as more of a referendum
on the issue of state sovereignty versus federal primacy than one on the
morality of slavery.13 Johannsen utilizes the Lincoln-Douglas debates to
make precisely the same argument, citing Douglas himself: "Lincoln goes
for consolidation and uniformity in our government while I go for main-taining
the confederation of the sovereign states."14
DiLorenzo further utilizes the Lincoln-Douglas debates to argue that
the "Great Emancipator" was, in fact, a racist opposed to social and
political equality for African Americans.15 DiLorenzo claims that the
Lincoln's purported views of racial inferiority on the part of non-white
races is contradictory to the Declaration of Independence, which Lincoln
also cites to underline his opposition to the institution of slavery.
10 Ibid, 16.
11 James G.Randall,Lincoln, the President,Vol.I, (Urbana:University of Illinois Press,2000),75.
12 Thomas J DiLorenzo,"The Great Centralizer." Independent Review 3,Issue 2 (Fall 1998):243.
13 Thomas J DiLorenzo,The Real Lincoln (New York:Three Rivers Press, 2003), 56.
14 Robert Johannsen,Lincoln, the South, and Slavery:The Political Dimension (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1991), 92.
15 DiLorenzo,The Real Lincoln, 11.
A House Uniter or a House Divider? 33
DiLorenzo asserts that this apparent hypocrisy indicates that Lincoln was
not concerned with the morality of slavery and, instead, used the "slavery
as evil" argument only to further his power-centralizing agenda.16
DiLorenzo often takes on a polemic tone in his work, and in less for-mal
articles he often resorts to name calling with those who disagree with
his viewpoint.The second edition of The Real Lincoln even has an after-word
solely for the purpose of responding to criticisms of his work.
Lincoln's Defenders
Despite the "needless war" revisionist school, the vast majority of
Americans still view Lincoln as "Honest Abe." It is this popularity, com-bined
with Lincoln's propensity to make moral claims, which leads so
many historians to reinterpret Lincoln as the spokesman of their agenda.
For these defenders/renovators of Lincoln, the 1858 Senate campaign is an
essential focal point due to its emphasis on moral issues. It is during this
campaign that we are given the most complete illustration of Lincoln's
views on public policy, political and moral theory, and the Constitution.
These elements have become the bricks and mortar for constructing a
new defense of Lincoln and making him larger than life.
This paper will treat only the most prominent historian to come to
Lincoln's defense, noted political scientist and historian, Harry V. Jaffa. Jaffa'
work is so pivotal to those who have sought to defend Lincoln that this
school might well be called the 'Jaffa School.' Jaffa wrote the seminal work
on the Lincoln-Douglas debates,Crisis of the House Divided (1959), in
direct response to the "needless war" authors. In this book, Jaffa subjects
the debates to intense scrutiny, analyzing every aspect of their content in
order to respond to the claims of Craven, Milton, and Randall. Only a few
historians have seriously attempted to challenge Jaffa; these are, notably,
DiLorenzo and Johansen.
Jaffa's work is also a careful historiography of the Civil War revisionist
treatment of the 1858 Illinois Senate campaign. He focuses much attention
on analyzing the statements of these other historians paragraph by para-graph.
He bolsters his research with primary documents, some recently
made available at the time that the book was written.
16 Ibid, 12-13.
34 Crescat Scientia
Focusing on the moral substance of the debates, Jaffa gave careful
attention to Lincoln's interpretation of the constitution. Jaffa argued that
the U.S. Constitution must be understood in conjunction with the
Declaration of Independence and its espousal of unalienable universal
rights.17 Jaffa, in his in-depth analysis of Lincoln's constitutional interpreta-tion,
laid out an intricate method for using the Declaration of
Independence as the framework for interpreting and understanding the
Constitution. He was so successful in making this case that he is credited
as being one of the primary architects of a new school of constitutional
thought known as Liberal Originalism.18
In essence, he argued that the fundamental point of contention in the
debate is this question of how to best understand the Constitution, with
opposing proposals being offered by Lincoln and Douglas. Douglas, as the
advocate of popular sovereignty, made the case that the will of the majori-ty
is supreme in any matter not expressly forbidden by the Constitution.19
Lincoln, on the other hand,was the proponent of a system whereby 'popu-lar
will' cannot override the universal laws on which the nation was found-ed;
i.e. that all men are created equal.20
Jaffa thus roundly criticized and rebuked the "needless war" revision-ists
for their opposition to Lincoln's morally anchored platform. Jaffa states
that it was the viewpoint of Lincoln that to "...attempt to legitimize the
extension of slavery was impossible without denying the Negro's humanity
or without denying the moral right of humanity or both."21 According to
Jaffa, by taking a moral stand against popular sovereignty, Lincoln was not
removing the middle ground for compromise as the Civil War revisionists
had claimed, but was rather affirming the only context in which the gov-ernment
can properly operate.This stance was assumed presumably out of
a respect for universal precepts of equality and justice.22
Jaffa so strikingly and successfully utilized the Lincoln-Douglas debates
to innovate and create a new field of political and constitutional thought
that he now stands as a category unto himself among historians.Timothy
Sandefur, a legal scholar, has declared Jaffa's conclusions to be some of the
most fundamental underpinnings of the legal theory of Liberal
Originalism.23
17 Harry V. Jaffa Crisis of the House Divided:An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-
Douglas Debates (Chicago: Chicago Press 1959), 308.
18 Timothy Sandefur "Liberal Originalism:A Past for the Future" Harva rd Journal of Law
and Public Policy 27, (Spring 2004): 497.
19 Jaffa,House Divided, 310.
20 Ibid, 313-315.
21 Ibid, 313.
22 Ibid, 328-329.
23 Sandefur, Liberal Originalism, 497.
A House Uniter or a House Divider? 35
The 'Objective' Authors
The last field of historians that should be addressed consists of those
who approach the 1858 Illinois Senate Campaign with a claim of objectivi-ty.
These authors have studied a few distinct aspects of the debates, prima-rily
in response to the questions raised by Craven, Milton, Randall,
DiLorenzo, Jaffa, and others.The elements studied by these authors can be
broken down into two additional subcategories: issues of constitutionality
and legality, and issues of political impact and consequence.
Following the impressive claims of Jaffa, several authors have sought to
more thoroughly engage the issue of Lincoln's interpretation of the
Constitution. Jaffa set a standard that has been much explored since 1959.
Thomas J. Pressly wrote an impressive treatise in which he explored some
of the possible incongruities in Lincoln's 1858 appeals to the Declaration
of Independence, and his treatment of Southern secession as an act of trea-son.
While Lincoln had clearly affirmed his support for the claim of the uni-versal
equality of man as supported by the Declaration of Independence,
he has also, at differing times in his political career, both opposed and sup-ported
the "Right of Revolution" found in the same document.24 According
to Pressly, Lincoln finally rejected the South's "Right to Revolution" on the
basis that it had no reasonable claims of violations to their universal natu-ral
rights as necessitated by the Declaration of Independence.25
One author who added significantly to the constitutional inquiry
springing from Jaffa's analysis of the 1858 Senate Race was Gary J.
Jacohbson. Jacohbson set about comparing the concept of judicial review
espoused by Lincoln with that of the noted legal scholar John Hart Ely.
Jacohbson undertook this task with the express purpose "to suggest the
distance we have traveled in a century of jurisprudence."26 In making the
comparison between Ely and Lincoln, Jacohbson is able to clarify Lincoln's
view on judicial review and explain its origin. He argues that Lincoln had
never given thought to the question of judicial review until forced into it
by the Dred Scott decision.27 Jacohbson contended, therefore, that many of
Lincoln's arguments were experiments in coming to a full but gradual real-ization
of his own stand on the issue.
Lincoln, Jacohbson argued, held the view that the decisions of the
court might be held as final and effective, but not permanent.According to
Jacohbson, Lincoln considered the Constitution subject to interpretation,
particularly if the decision was in opposition to the natural rights granted
24 Thomas J. Pressly "Bullets and Ballots: Lincoln: and the 'Right of Revolution'" The
American Historical Review 67, no. 3 (April 1962): 649.
25 Ibid, 658-659.
26 Gary J. Jacohbson "Abraham Lincoln 'On this Question of Judicial Authority':The Theory of
Constitutional Aspiration." The Western Political Quarterly 36, no. 1 (March 1983): 52.
27 Ibid, 55.
36 Crescat Scientia
by the Declaration of Independence. If such was the case, the decision
must respected as final for the moment, but one could still hope and
maneuver towards a repeal of said court decision.28
Robert M. Spector wrote an article in 1971 that explored the differ-ences
between the constitutional interpretation of the infamous Chief
Justice Roger B.Taney with Lincoln's mode of constitutional interpretation.
Spector argued throughout the article that the two men actually had much
in common in their constitutional and political views, and that Taney him-self
abhorred slavery as an institution as much as Lincoln.29 Once again
using the "House-Divided" speech as a point of reference, Spector demon-strated
that the disagreement between Taney and Lincoln was not one over
the morality of slavery, but a question of the proper method of interpreting
the constitution. He argued that Taney was a strict constructionist going by
the letter of the law and what he perceived as the original intent of the
founding fathers while Lincoln used a looser construction to argue what
the intent of the founding fathers may have been and should have been.30
Finally, in issues of political impact and causality, few authors have
attempted to address whether the 1858 Illinois Senate Campaign truly pro-duced
some of the consequences claimed by the "needless war" revision-ists,
and whether Lincoln truly had revolutionized Republican thought.
One historian who has ventured into this area is Jean Baker. Baker
wrote an excellent article which explores the philosophical roots of, and
consequences of, the political arguments made by Lincoln and Douglas.
Baker noted that while the arguments offered by both sides certainly make
moral appeals, they are by their very nature partisan arguments.31 He con-tended
that Lincoln had a clearly defined argument that drew primarily
upon Jeffersonian concepts of individual liberties, which Lincoln had sim-ply
extended to African Americans.32 Douglas, on the other hand,was far
less clear as to the philosophical origins for his popular sovereignty.
Douglas' ideals were far more appealing to Republican notions of a cooler
democracy, where 'popular will' would reign, though an emphasis on order
through respect of law must be paramount.33 Baker argued that Douglas'
appeal to Republican principles was, by 1858, an outdated notion.The rise
of liberalism under Jackson had created an ever increasing trend toward
individual liberty as the paramount value of antebellum society.34
28 Ibid, 54-55.
29 Robert M. Spector "Lincoln and Taney:A Study in Constitutional Polarization." The
American Journal of Legal History 15, no. 3 (July 1971): 211-212.
30 Ibid, 213.
31 Jean Baker "From Belief into Culture: Republicanism in the Antebellum North." American
Quarterly 37, no. 4 (Autumn, 1985): 532.
32 Ibid, 533.
33 Ibid, 533-534.
34 Ibid, 535.
A House Uniter or a House Divider? 37
Don E. Fehrenbacher has contributed most substantially to the ques-tion
of the political impact of, and consequences stemming from, the 1858
Illinois Senate campaign. Fehrenbacher has written several articles on ante-bellum
issues, and is notable for his analysis of primary documents and
careful questioning of the validity of secondary sources.
Laying the foundation for Bakers' work which would come some
twenty years later, Fehrenbacher wrote "The origins and purpose of
Lincoln's 'House Divided' speech" an excellent article which does much to
explain the philosophical underpinnings of Lincoln's political position.
Here Fehrenbacher argued that in order to fully understand the signifi-cance
of the "House Divided" speech, it was necessary to understand the
context in which it was given. Fehrenbacher noted that the speech was
given as an informal acceptance speech after the Illinois Republican party
had adopted a resolution endorsing Lincoln as their "first and only choice
for the United States Senate."35 Fehrenbacher explained that this unique
resolution was a reaction by the Illinois Republican Party to claims from
eastern Republicans that they should not stand in the way of Douglas' re-election.
His popular sovereignty policy had made Douglas very popular
among even some of the more abolitionist Republicans.36
According to Fehrenbacher this fact is significant for several reasons. It
meant that Lincoln was transformed into a nationally recognized leader of
the Republican Party virtually overnight.37 Such a strong resolution in favor
of a candidate opposing one of the most popular Senators in the nation
was an incredible boon to Lincoln. It is doubtful that Douglas would have
agreed to the Lincoln-Douglas debates had Lincoln not received such a
resounding endorsement. Lincoln wanted to debate Douglas throughout
the state, but Doulgas only reluctantly agreed to seven debates after this
Republican endorsement.38 It is essential to a complete understanding of
Lincoln's intended point in the "House Divided" speech.39
Fehrenbacher also examines a document which he claims was mistak-enly
attributed to May of 1858, as another key to understanding Lincoln's
intent.40 Lincoln, he argues, had long been planning this speech and had
begun his authorship in December of 1857, possibly in anticipation of
challenging Douglas in 1858.41 Lincoln, Fehrenbacher argues, used his more
eloquent introduction to establish his belief that the issue of slavery would
be decided in an absolute term; either the nation would become all slave
35 Don E. Fehrenbacher "The Origins and Purpose of Lincoln's 'House Divided' Speech." The
Mississippi Valley Historical Review 46, no. 4 (Mar. 1960): 615.
36 Ibid, 617.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid, 616.
39 Ibid, 619.
40 Ibid, 640.
41 Ibid, 638-639.
38 Crescat Scientia
or all free.42 The second section of the speech, he maintains, outlined
Lincoln's partisan conspiracy claim that Douglas, in creating room for slav-ery's
expansion,was actually an agent for pro-slavery factions working to
erode the moral high ground that prevented a universal adoption of slav-ery.
43 Fehrenbacher further asserts that this was an attempt by Lincoln to
demonstrate the folly of Republican support for Douglas, and to establish
himself as a moderate, though morally absolute, pioneer in the Republican
Party.44
In "Lincoln, Douglas, and the 'Freeport Question", Fehrenbacher
addressed the impact of the "Freeport question" on the 1860 election. In
this article, he challenged the traditionally held belief that Douglas's
answer to Mr. Lincoln's second question at the Freeport debate (which
focused on whether territories must enforce the Dred Scott decision and
allow slavery in their boundaries) lead to victory for Douglas in Illinois, but
cost him the presidency. It is argued that Douglas, by answering that any
territory may in effect ban slavery through "unfriendly legislation", cost
himself the support of Southern Democrats and thus the 1860 election.
Fehrenbacher instead argued strongly that the impact of Douglas' answer
was far less significant. He reasoned first that Douglas' answer cannot be
reasonably construed as a turning point in his Illinois victory, and therefore
the argument is a moot point for three main reasons.45 First, he noted that
with regard to the answer costing Douglas the election and splitting the
Democratic Party, the issue had already been much debated and the
Democratic Party was clearly on shaky ground for a few years prior. He fol-lowed
this argument with the contention that Douglas' response actually
received wide praise and approval by both northern and southern
Democrats.46 Fehrenbacher made the final point in saying that it was
Douglas' opposition to the Lecompton Constitution for Kansas, which was
a concrete issue that ultimately cost him the election and promoted the
split within the Democratic Party.47
Conclusion
The 1858 Illinois Senate Campaign has been the subject of continuous
revision and revisitation precisely because it was unlike any other Senate
campaign in American History. So much of the antebellum period culmi-nates
in this last great scene prior to the opening acts of the Civil War; the
42 Ibid, 623-624.
43 Ibid, 630.
44 Ibid, 642.
45 D. E. Fehrenbacher "Lincoln Douglas, and the Freeport Question" The American Historical
Review 66, no. 3 (April 1961): 605.
46 Ibid, 608-609.
47 Ibid, 610-611.
A House Uniter or a House Divider? 39
characters, questions, morals, plans, and politics that shaped an era were all
squeezed onto this tiny Illinois stage. Each of these elements demands con-tinual
re-examination so that they might be better understand as the rea-sons
and causes behind the war.
Despite the great division among the historians who have written
about the Lincoln-Douglas campaign, it is clear that there is a universal
acceptance of one important fact; that the 1858 Illinois campaign was far
more than a Senate race between two political giants.The moral content of
the candidates' debates also lends potent significance to the event. It is this
focus on morality that serves as both the divider and uniter of the scholars
who have treated the subject of the Lincoln-Douglas campaign.The Civil
War revisionists saw the 1858 campaign as the last great chance for peace
and then claim that peace was destroyed by Lincoln's unnecessary moraliz-ing.
The defenders of Lincoln saw in the 1858 campaign not only a defense
of Lincoln as a moral crusader, but also discovered an entirely new way of
understanding and interpreting the U.S. Constitution. Finally, the neutral
authors who have sought simply to answer the many questions raised by
detractors and supporters of Lincoln have done much to clear the issue of
distortions and misrepresentations.
Whatever the conclusion of the authors, it is likely that this momen-tous
event of the antebellum era will be visited again and again in order to
shape and color our understanding of these two men, their era, and the
principles that would govern the nation, for generations to come.
U T A H V A L L E Y S T A T E C O L L E G E
1 9 4 1
Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the
Civil War as a means of protecting the Union against spies and traitors.This
was a very controversial action at the time and even today there is some
debate as to whether or not the suspension was in violation of the
Constitution. Over the years, scholars have taken both sides of the issue.
The power to suspend habeas corpus is found in Article 1, Section 9, of
the Constitution, which deals with the powers of Congress. In spite of this,
some constitutional experts have argued in favor of the president having
the suspension power. The experts' arguments are not convincing in light
of research showing that the Framers of the Constitution purposely gave
the power to suspend habeas corpus to the legislative branch, not the
executive branch, of the government. Before Lincoln's time, there had been
cases favoring Congress as the proper branch of government to suspend
habeas corpus.This would suggest, therefore, that Lincoln's suspension did
violate the Constitution.
The phrase "habeas corpus" is Latin for "produce the body." In practi-cal
application, this meant that if a person were wrongfully imprisoned he
could ask that a writ of habeas corpus be issued on his behalf, and as a
result of this, he would be able to go before a judge.The judge would then
determine whether the imprisonment was just or whether the prisoner
should be set free on principle.The concept of Habeas Corpus, like the
concepts of due process and trial by jury, originated in the English Magna
Carta.1 In England, the Habeas Corpus Act went into effect in 1679.This
was the culmination of hundreds of years of struggle to expand the origi-nal
common law writ that first came about in the fourteenth century.2
In the early history of English habeas corpus, the royal courts used it
to win struggles for jurisdiction against the local courts.The writ had also
1 William F. Swindler,Magna Carta: Legend and Legacy (New York:The Bobbs-Merrill
Company, Inc., 1965), 148.
2 Ibid., 201.
Lincoln and the Suspension of Habeas
Corpus during the Civil War
Ted Memmott
42 Crescat Scientia
been used to combat competition within the Chancery courts and eventu-ally
the Prerogative courts. Later, Elizabeth I and the Stuart kings began the
imprisonment of political agitators without a hearing, and habeas corpus
began to be used to combat the action of imprisonment in the following
way:The unlawfully detained individual was to be produced, and then the
courts were to set him free pending the formal trial, unless the court itself
ordered his recommittal to prison.3 This application of habeas corpus, as a
safeguard of personal liberty, is what we are familiar with today.
It was important to many of the Framers at the Constitutional
Convention that the new government provided for the right of habeas cor-pus
so citizens could get a timely trial in the case of a questionable detain-ment.
The Framers were accustomed to having this right, as most of the
colonial charters allowed for it.4 On August 20, 1787, Charles Pinckney of
South Carolina proposed, "The priviledges and benefit of the writ of
habeas corpus shall be enjoyed in this government in the most expedi-tious
and ample manner."5 This statement is the way by which the
Constitution borrowed habeas corpus from the Magna Carta.The Framers
gave the power to suspend habeas corpus to the legislative branch of the
government, not to the executive branch; as shown by the ultimate place-ment
of the clause in Article 1 of the Constitution.
The Civil War began on April 12, 1861, with the Confederates firing on
Fort Sumter off the coast of South Carolina. Shortly after this, a pro-
Confederate Baltimore mob blocked the passage of Union troops to the
capital.This worried President Lincoln, so he asked his Attorney General,
Edward Bates, whether there was a way to bypass normal judicial proceed-ings
to counter the mob more swiftly. Bates, contrary to what Lincoln
wanted to hear, said that the judicial proceedings could not be bypassed
legally. Despite this, on April 27th, Lincoln issued an order authorizing the
commander of the Union Army, General Winfield Scott, and his officers to
suspend habeas corpus along the military line separating Washington,
D.C., and Philadelphia.6 Specifically, the letter sent to General Scott gave
the general and his officers the authority to suspend habeas corpus in the
interest of the public safety, at any point where resistance occurred.7
Initially, the authorization given to General Scott did not attract much
attention from those, in either the North or the South, who should have
had a stake in the crisis.This changed, however, with the arrest of John
3 Ibid., 202.
4 William F. Duker,A Constitutional History of Habeas Corpus (Westport,CT: Greenwood
Press, 1980), 115.
5 Eric M. Freedman,Habeas Corpus: Rethinking the Great Writ of Liberty (New York: New
York University Press, 2001), 12.
6 Daniel Farber,Lincoln's Constitution (Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, 2003), 158.
7 The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, eds. Roy P. Basler, Marion Dolores Pratt, and Lloyd
A. Dunlap,Vol. 4,The Abraham Lincoln Association: Springfield, Illinois (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1953), 347.
Lincoln and Habeas Corpus 43
Merryman.8 Merryman, who was the lieutenant of a secessionist drill com-pany,
was arrested for taking part in the destruction of a railroad bridge for
the purpose of inhibiting the Union army. Under orders from General
Scott, Captain Samuel Yoke, who was in charge of protecting the railroad,
arrested Merryman and had him imprisoned at Fort McHenry in Baltimore,
Maryland.To counter this, Chief Justice Roger Taney (who was on circuit as
a federal district judge, but acting as a Supreme Court Justice from cham-bers)
issued a writ of habeas corpus on May 26, 1861, directing General
George Cadwalader, the commandant of the fort, to release the prisoner to
stand before him [Justice Taney] in court.9
The next day, a military officer acting on behalf of the president,
returned the writ to the Chief Justice and refused to produce John
Merryman.10 After this turn of events,Taney ruled that the president had
acted outside of the law. He warned the president against contradicting the
oath he took to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Lincoln,
preoccupied with the seriousness of the impending war, ignored Chief
Justice Taney's ruling.11
Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, and Chief Justice Taney's reac-tion
to it, aroused much discussion. Perhaps surprisingly, Lincoln received
considerable criticism of his suspension of the writ from those within his
own Republican Party. In the December 1861 session of Congress,
Republican Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois introduced a resolution ask-ing
Secretary of State,William H. Seward, "whether in the loyal States of the
Union, any person or persons have been arrested and imprisoned and are
now held in confinement by orders of him or his Department; and, if so,
under what law said arrests have been made."12
In the Congressional debates that followed, Republicans mostly con-tended
amongst themselves over the issue. Some of the Democratic sena-tors
from the border states crossed party lines to speak out in support of
Senator Trumbull's resolution, but most of the Democrats from the North
were content, for the time being, to let the Republicans debate the embar-rassing
issue without interfering.They did not want to risk being labeled as
unpatriotic when the Republicans were handling their usual role for
them.13
In spite of the political infighting amongst the congressional
Republicans over the issue of Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus,
8 David H. Donald,Lincoln (London: Jonathan Cape Random House, 1995), 299.
9 Duker, 147.
10 Ex Pa rte Merryman, 17 Fed. Cas. 144, 1861.
11 Donald, 299.
12 Mark E. Neely, Jr.,The Fate of Liberty:Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1991), 189.
13 Ibid.
44 Crescat Scientia
eventually there emerged a written Republican defense of Lincoln's policy.
This defense came from Horace Binney, a prominent Philadelphia lawyer,
and it was entitled The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus under the
Constitution. Binney published it privately in Philadelphia a few days into
the new year of 1862.This provoked the Democrats to respond with pam-phlets
of their own that contested Binney's claims. Binney's defense of
Lincoln's policy caused the Democratic opposition to unite.14
One of the prominent Democrats who responded to Binney's pam-phlet
was Charles Heebner Gross. Binney had presented several arguments
for why he thought Lincoln's suspension was in accordance with the
Constitution. Ignoring the placement of the suspension clause in Article 1
of the Constitution, his first point was that "suspending a privilege" was an
executive act, and because of this it must be made by the president.
Binney's reasoning for this assertion is somewhat vague. He claimed that
the wording itself that was used ("suspending a privilege") indicated that
the power belonged to the executive branch. Charles Gross asserted in his
pamphlet that suspending a privilege was not necessarily an executive act.
In his own words, "It may be either an executive or a legislative act.The
words themselves determine nothing, one way or the other, on this
point."15
Another of Binney's arguments was that Gouverneur Morris of
Pennsylvania, one of the most influential Framers of the Constitution had,
in his written motion proposing the suspension clause of the Constitution,
crossed out the word "legislature" on the 28th of August 1789. Binney
claimed this meant that the power was intended to be given to the execu-tive.
According to Gross, this was not the case. Gross stated that the word
"legislature" had been previously omitted by Pinckney in his proposal
because he did not think there would be any doubt as to which branch of
the government should exercise the power. Gross then argued that, in
Pinckney's next motion on August 20th, he reinserted the word "legisla-ture"
to avoid all "shadows of doubt." Gross went on to reason that when
Gouverneur Morris omitted the word in his motion eight days later, it was
because he thought the issue had been made sufficiently clear by that
juncture.16
On July 4th, Lincoln attempted to justify his actions in the suspending
of habeas corpus. In a special message to Congress, he made an argument
for necessity by asking, "Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the
14 Ibid.
15 Charles Heebner Gross,A Reply to Horace Binney's Pamphlet on Habeas Corpus
(Woodbridge,CT: Research Publications, 1990. Originally printed in Philadelphia, 1962), micro-fiche,
5-6.
16 Ibid., 21.
Lincoln and Habeas Corpus 45
government itself go to pieces lest that one go violated? Even in such a
case,would not the official oath be broken if the government should be
overthrown, when it was believed that disregarding the single law would
tend to preserve it."17 Lincoln seemed to admit that he was violating the
Constitution, but that it was necessary for the preservation of the Union. In
the same speech, he stated, "But the Constitution itself is silent as to which
or who is to exercise the power [of suspension]."18 This quotation contra-dicted
the first one, in that the first one admitted that a law had been bro-ken
for the sake of the Union, and the second quotation claimed that no
law had been broken.
The Constitution is not silent on the issue of who has the power to
suspend habeas corpus. In Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2, the Constitution
reads, "The priviledge of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspend-ed,
unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may
require it." The part of the Constitution that is quoted did not specifically
say that the power was given to Congress, but it is well known that Article
1 of the Constitution is related to the powers of the legislative branch of
the government; it is Article 2 that relates to the powers of the executive
branch.
Congress eventually settled the controversy by enacting a statute on
March 3, 1863, that gave President Lincoln the authority to suspend the
writ of habeas corpus throughout the country whenever he felt that the
public safety required it.19 Under the authority of the statute, a military offi-cer
could respond to a writ of habeas corpus by simply stating that the
person was detained on the authority of the president.The wording of this
part of the statute was purposely vague about whether Congress was
allowing the president to use its power, or whether it was his rightful
power to avoid additional controversy.20
There is no evidence to suggest that Congress was conceding that the
Constitution gave the suspension power to the president. In the opening
sentence of the statute, the authority to suspend habeas corpus is given to
the president, and the careful wording used was, "during the present rebel-lion."
The sentence indicated that Congress delegated the power to the
president temporarily, without making a large issue out of it.21
In attempting to interpret the Constitution, it is helpful to consider it
from the point of view of the Framers as they were the ones responsible
for the content and wording of the document.When we look at the
17 Speeches of Abraham Lincoln: Including Inaugurals and Proclamations, ed.G. Mercer
Adam (New York:A.L. Burt Company, 1906), 328.
18 Ibid., 329.
19 Congress, 37th Cong., 3rd sess., 1863.
20 Farber, 159.
21 Congress, 37th.
46 Crescat Scientia
Constitution in the context of the time and place that it was written, it
helps us to have the perspective needed to understand their intent.
Charles Pinckney of South Carolina was perhaps the most outspoken
advocate of habeas corpus at the Constitutional Convention. On August
20, 1787, he gave his opinion at the Convention of which government
branch should have the suspension power. Part of his motion on that day
was as follows, "The writ of habeas corpus shall be enjoyed in this govern-ment
in the most expeditious and ample manner: and shall not be suspend-ed
by the legislature except upon the most urgent and pressing occasions,
and for a limited time not exceeding [blank] months."22 He seemed very
matter-of-fact about the legislature being the proper branch of government
having the power to suspend habeas corpus; and by implication seemed
to suggest that the branch of government vested with suspension power
was not an issue. Pinckney's motion was sent to the Committee of Detail
without debate.
Others gave their opinions on the subject at the Convention. John
Rutledge of Virginia opposed allowing the suspension at all; he did not
think a suspension would ever be necessary at the same time through all
the states. (From Rutledge's quote it seems that he may have thought a
state should be able to suspend habeas corpus within its borders, but
there is no record of him having said as much). James Wilson of
Pennsylvania doubted that the suspension would be necessary in the exec-utive
or the legislative branch, because of a judge's ability to keep the
accused in prison by denying bail.23
Although opinions in the preliminary discussions varied, the consen-sus
was that the suspension should not be allowed or, if allowed, should be
given to the legislature. None of the delegates that were present suggested
that the executive branch should possess the power, and Wilson's sugges-tion
that the power to suspend was unnecessary because of the role of
judges,was an aberration.24
The Committee on Style at the Convention placed the clause regarding
the suspension of habeas corpus in Article 1, which exclusively deals with
the powers of Congress. Later, when the subject of the suspension power
came up in the state ratification debates, those present seemed to accept
that Congress should possess this important power.25 In the state conven-tions
of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts,Virginia, Rhode Island, New York, and
North Carolina, there was much discussion over habeas corpus, but it was
not over which branch of government should possess the power. Rather,
22 Freedman, 12.
23 Duker, 128-129.
24 Ibid., 129.
25 Farber, 161.
Lincoln and Habeas Corpus 47
the discussion was over the possibility of the suspension clause being in
violation of states' rights. Some of the delegates, including Patrick Henry,
were worried about the federal government having the right to suspend
habeas corpus but, ultimately, the suspension clause had enough support
to become part of the Constitution.26
Many years after the Convention, Chief Justice Roger Taney gave his
opinion regarding what the intent of the Framers had been concerning the
branch of government that should have the power to suspend habeas cor-pus.
In his opinion in Ex Pa rte Merryman (May 1861), Chief Justice Taney
stated, "If the president of the United States may suspend the writ, then the
constitution of the United States has conferred upon him more regal and
absolute power over the liberty of the citizen, than the people of England
have thought it safe to entrust to the crown; a power which the queen of
England cannot exercise at this day."27
Although Lincoln's actions in suspending habeas corpus were uncom-mon,
they were not unprecedented. One similar instance occurred in
1777, when the Continental Congress recommended that disloyal persons
in Pennsylvania and Delaware be arrested. In accordance with the recom-mendation
of the Continental Congress, the Pennsylvania legislature passed
a statute approving the measure and indemnifying the state executive.
Meanwhile, the prisoners obtained a writ of habeas corpus from a
Pennsylvania court (the exact court was not named in the secondary
source), which the state executive ignored.28 Although this example came
before the creation of the Constitution, it still has value as a precedent in
the argument over which branch of the government should be able to sus-pend
habeas corpus.
Unlike Lincoln,Thomas Jefferson refused to suspend habeas corpus
when he had the opportunity during the Aaron Burr conspiracy of 1806-
1807. Instead, he deferred to Congress.29 Apparently, Lincoln did not see
Jefferson as establishing irrevocable precedent on the topic.
In 1805, toward the end of his vice-presidency, Burr began to plan a
vast conspiracy that would make him the president of his own country. He
planned to remove the western states from the American union, and com-bine
them with Mexico to form his own empire.30
The grand schemes that Burr planned never had a realistic chance.
Fewer than five hundred men supported his plans.To get their support he
26 Duker, 133-134.
27 Ex Pa rte Merryman.
28 Farber, 160.
29 George M. Dennison, "Martial Law:The Development of a Theory of Emergency Powers,
1776-1861." The American Journal of Legal History 18 (Jan. 1974): 56.
30 Milton Lomask,Aaron Burr:The Conspiracy and Years of Exile, 1805-1836 (New York:
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1982), 4.
48 Crescat Scientia
lied to those very young men, saying that he was leading them in an attack
against Mexico and that the plan was a secret mission sponsored by
President Jefferson's government. In December of 1806 (over several days'
time), troops from several states systematically crushed most of Burr's
expedition. On January 17, 1807, Burr turned himself over to the state
authorities of Mississippi.31
Before Burr and his followers had been defeated, the federal govern-ment
did not know what to expect from the uprising. President Jefferson,
not wanting to underestimate Burr and his followers, proclaimed that "a
treasonable conspiracy threatened the Union." Jefferson ordered General
James Wilkinson in New Orleans, to do what was necessary should the city
be threatened.Wilkinson thought that he might need more power to pro-tect
the city, so he urged President Jefferson to suspend the writ of habeas
corpus. Jefferson refused to suspend habeas corpus for the reason that
only a legislature could possess that power.32 Apparently, Jefferson accept-ed
that the power could only be exercised by a legislature, such as
Congress, and he never even considered attempting it himself.
There is another related incident that involved Andrew Jackson before
he was president, when he was the commanding general (and thereby a
representative of the executive branch of the federal government) at New
Orleans during the War of 1812. On February 28, 1815, Jackson ordered all
who were of French nationality to evacuate New Orleans and go to Baton
Rouge; he did not want anyone in the city who would not help defend it.
Three days later, a man named Louis Louaillier who was a member of the
House of Representatives of Louisiana, wrote an article for the Louisiana
Courier criticizing the Jackson order, and suggesting that he should
reverse it. Jackson had Louaillier arrested two days after the article was
published.33
Judge Dominick A. Hall of the United States District Court for the state
of Louisiana, heard about what Jackson had done and issued a writ of
habeas corpus on behalf of the prisoner.34 When Jackson heard this, he
immediately suspended the writ. Next, he sent an officer to have the judge
arrested and to obtain the original writ of habeas corpus. In the meantime,
Jackson convened a court-martial to try Louaillier.The court-martial acquit-ted
the prisoner of all the charges.
31 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, eds.Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert E. Bergh,Vol. 11, The
Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association (Washington D.C., 1904), 128.
32 Dennison, 57.
33 Life of Andrew Jackson,Vol.2,ed.James Parton (New York:Houghton,Mifflin and Co.,1860),312.
34 Arrest and Trial of E.L. Louallier.(Woodbridge,CT: Research Publications, 1983. Originally
printed in 1843), microfiche, 2.
Lincoln and Habeas Corpus 49
Jackson disagreed with the ruling of the court-martial and defended
his actions, stating that under martial law every man in the designated area
was in essence a soldier, and Louaillier was certainly guilty by this reason-ing,
as a soldier would be granted less leniency in a case of this sort than
an ordinary citizen.35 Next, the United States District Court ordered
Jackson to prove why he should not be held in contempt of court for
"wresting an original document from the court" (the writ of habeas cor-pus
in the Louaillier case), for disobeying the writ of habeas corpus, and
for putting the judge in prison. Jackson refused to answer the court.36
The judge fined Jackson $1000, and he paid it out of his own pocket.
The value of this precedent certainly did not support the executive, in this
case, Jackson, as having the right to suspend habeas corpus. Not only did
the court disapprove of Jackson's actions in suspending habeas corpus,
and his other illegal actions, but they fined him a very large sum of
money.37 The records are not clear on the point, but it is possible that
Jackson himself did not think he was justified in his actions because he
paid the fine without incident. Jackson had never been one to back down
from a fight if he thought he was justified in his actions, and he did back
down in response to the fine.
There were several occasions when habeas corpus was suspended by
the legislature as it was intended to be; such as the case of Shays'
Rebellion, an uprising led by Daniel Shays in 1787.The Massachusetts
General Court initiated this rebellion by raising poll and land taxes in an
effort to pay off the large debt of the state.These taxes were hardest on
farmers and the urban poor, who then petitioned the State Legislature for
relief from these taxes that they could not afford to pay.When the legisla-ture
did nothing to help them, several western counties rebelled against
the state.38
Armed mobs roamed the countryside, closing the courts and prevent-ing
the foreclosing of farms. Daniel Shays raised a small "army" and
marched, albeit unsuccessfully, on an arsenal at Springfield.The state militia
crushed this revolt relatively quickly.39 In the midst of this crisis, however,
the state legislature suspended habeas corpus rather than the state gover-nor.
40 Although this example is on the state level, it is an example that a
legislature suspending habeas corpus was the normal course of action.
35 Ibid., 12.
36 William G. Sumner,Andrew Jackson as a Public Man:What he was, what chances he had,
and what he did with them (New York: Haskell House Publishers Ltd., 1968), 46.
37 Farber, 160.
38 Paul Finkelman and Melvin I. Urofsky,A March of Liberty:A Constitutional History of the
United States,Vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 89.
39 Ibid.
40 Farber, 160.
50 Crescat Scientia
Dorr's Rebellion was an uprising in Rhode Island, where a state legisla-ture
again suspended habeas corpus. In 1776, all of the new states except
Rhode Island and Connecticut adopted a constitution with a democratic
government. For many years, Rhode Island kept its original government
that had derived from the royal charter of 1663 and by the 1840s the writ-ten
government badly needed revision.Among its many defects were the
problems that it only allowed for narrow suffrage and it did not provide
for equal representation in the legislature.41
In October 1841, many who were frustrated at the inadequacies of the
old constitution held a convention to c