The Table of Mutual Respect

Like James Madison, the fourth President of the United States and father of the U.S. Constitution who had misgivings about Chief Executives making religious pronouncements of any kind, I could dispense with annual Thanksgiving Proclamation from the White House. But still I enjoy the holiday and forgive Obama and most of his predecessors for engaging in a little liturgical theater each November.

Glancing at George Washington's declaration of the first Thanksgiving, in 1789, provides an interesting window into the Founder's faith. He prominently offers gratitude for the "religious liberty with which we have been blessed." He also prays for the " practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science," suggesting no incompatibility between the two but implying that greater understanding of nature's laws might be the best window into the mind of of the creator.

Washington actually acknowledged "Almighty God" in this document, which was a rarity in his other proclamations. More often, he referred to the deity with the kinds of circumlocutions that dot the rest of this Thanksgiving announcement: "Beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be ... Great Lord and Ruler of Nations ... Providence." Interestingly, Washington nowhere, in any of his journals or correspondence, ever uses Christological forumulas to refer to the divinity, e.g. "Savior, Redeemer," etc. In his own way, and in the context of his time, he was searching for what we'd now call inclusive religious language that went beyond Christian sectarianism to unite Americans of all religious persuasions in a bond of fellowship, civic cooperation and goodwill.

It was not a bad dream. And in today's polarized religious climate--when Mitt Romney's Mormonism is again a campaign issue and Muslims are profiled as potential terrorists--the Founders remain a sensible model of how faith might yet become a force that unites rather than divides us from each other. I imagine even atheists might thank God--with a wink--for the First Amendment. So let's celebrate and give thanks:

For a world in which there are many faiths,

For a nation in which there is freedom of worship,

And a land where people of all creeds, colors and backgrounds can sit together

At the table of mutual care and respect.

Bound for Glory?

The question of how to get to heaven has been hotly contested over the centuries. Back in the 1500’s, Martin Luther broke from the Catholic Church and launched a Reformation, partly from due to his conviction that we are saved through grace—not through the sacraments of communion or confession or other observances that he considered “works.” The wars of religion engulfed Europe in a bloodbath to settle the issue. But new research suggests such fighting may be a thing of the past.

A recent report from Barna, a religious polling non-profit, suggests that more and more Americans are embracing Universalism, the doctrine that all people will be saved, regardless of what church they happen to attend. According to the data released last week, “One-quarter of born again Christians said that all people are eventually saved or accepted by God (25%) and that it doesn’t matter what religious faith you follow because they all teach the same lessons (26%)."

A report from the Pew Center in 2008, based on interviews with 35,000 respondents, was even more striking, suggesting that a strong majority, even among evangelicals, agreed that Christianity is not the only gateway to paradise, while 83% of those describing themselves as mainline Christians agreed that Jews, Hindus, Muslims and others might make it into heaven.

Universalism—the belief that all souls will eventually be restored to God—spans the ages. Among the Church Fathers, Origen (ca. 185-254 C.E.) held this position. Mega church pastor Rob Bell, who preaches to 10,000 worshipers weekly at his Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan, made headlines more recently for describing “hell” in purely earthly terms—consisting in the cruelty, abuse and neglect we visit on ourselves and our neighbors—rather than an abode of eternal punishment awaiting evil-doers.

Universalism has been part of the American scene since the country’s beginning. Benjamin Rush, an intimate of Jefferson and Adams and along with them a signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote that, “A belief in God’s universal love to all his creatures, and that he will finally restore all those of them that are miserable to happiness, is a polar truth. It leads to truths upon all subjects, more especially upon the subject of government,” establishing a principle of equality among humankind. George and Martha Washington were subscribers to the Gleaner—a magazine with Universalist leanings edited by Judith Sargent Murray, the wife of America’s most prominent Universalist clergyman of that day

Seemingly more and more people are beginning to agree that religion should be concerned with “getting heaven into people” rather than getting people into heaven. If that means less sectarian bickering and more cooperation among people of different faiths, Universalism can’t come too soon.

Biblical and Republican Rhetoric

This afternoon I delivered a benediction for the annual Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration of our local NAACP.   Thinking of what to say, I was reminded of how Martin managed to weave together the Republican and Biblical strands of our history, as in his 1963 “Dream” speech.

 This may be the sign of great public rhetoric in America.  Lincoln was a master at combining the two, and the Founding generation employed this technique skillfully, so that even Deists like Thomas Paine could invoke a divine blessing on the Revolution and its outcome, as in his pamphlet The Crisis:

I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war.

The Biblical vocabulary lifts the people’s struggle for freedom above the plane of a naked collision of self-interest, endowing their aspirations for independence with ultimate significance.  At the same time, the Republican strain, skeptical and plainspoken, demands that policy choices (war or no war, for instance) have some down-to-earth, secular justification.  “Thus sayeth the Lord” is not an argument likely to carry much weight in a pluralistic public square.

Well, with these ruminations in mind, here’s the brief blessing I gave at today’s event:

Grateful for the labors of those past, giants like Martin and Rosa,

Let us be thankful too for the work still to be done,

Grateful that we have an opportunity to serve, to make a difference,

To bring release to the captives and good news to the poor,

To proclaim liberty throughout the land and to build a more perfect union,

A union where every child will have an equal start in life,

A union that invests more in people than in weapons of war,

Where hate has no place

And the scales of justice do not discriminate,

Where those whose sweat and toil built this great land can share equitably in the abundance they helped create,

Where the dreams of the fathers become the children’s realities.

May God bless us in this task and bless the nation this was meant to be.

   

Washington's Pagan Providence

If George Washington’s religion could be reduced to a single word, that word would be “Providence.” He seldom used the term “God” in his public pronouncements, preferring other epithets for his divinity like the Beneficent Being, the Almighty, the Grand Architect of the Universe and All-Wise Disposer of Events. But when referring to the divine, his favorite term was “Providence.” It recurs again and again, in varied disguises. Sometimes Washington’s “Providence” seem to be a guiding presence in history, at times a personal protector against harm, at other times simply a synonym for Fate or Fortune.



But where did his usage originate? Surprisingly, the word “providence” occurs only once in the King James Bible (the translation that would have been most familiar to Washington from church services), and then not in a very flattering context. It appears in Chapter 24, Verse 2 of the Book of Acts, where a prosecutor named Tertullus praises the “providence” and wise administration of a Roman-appointed governor, who is presiding over the trial of the apostle Paul. Naturally, Washington owned a copy of the Bible, although probate records list his personal volume as an edition of Brown’s Bible, an illustrated study Bible produced by the Scottish divine John Brown in 1778 which included various marginal references comparing scripture passages and offering details of geography and other lore of the Holy Land. Surely this is an unlikely source to inspire Washington’s peculiar passion for a “providential”deity.


On the other hand, probate records also show that Washington’s library included a volume of Seneca’s Morals, which opens with a full essay titled “On Providence.” There the philosopher reflects that “Fate guides us, and it was settled at the first hour of birth what length of time remains for each. Cause is linked with cause, and all public and private issues are directed.” The good man will not resist what cannot be prevented, Seneca advises, finding consolation in the observation that “together with the universe we are swept along; whatever it is that has ordained us so to live, so to die, by the same necessity it binds also the gods. One unchangeable course bears along the affairs of men and gods alike,” a force that governs not only human affairs but also the “swift revolution of the heavens, being ruled by eternal law.” This sounds very much like the later Washington, who wrote to Sally Fairfax that “There is a Destiny, which has the Sovereign control of our Action, not to be resisted through the strongest efforts of Human Nature.”


Like Washington, who was a disinherited son and outsider in English colonial society, Seneca was a Spanish colonist living under Roman rule, a patriot who was tried and found guilty of conspiring against the tyrant Nero, a role model for young George. In the face of hardship and overwhelming odds, and in keeping with his Stoic outlook, Seneca counseled patience, inner fortitude and self-possession: life lessons that would guide the American throughout his own rise to greatness.


On the face of the evidence, Washington’s “Providence” owed less to Biblical or explicitly Christian sources than to Stoic philosophy. Indeed, Washington never employed Christological terms like “Savior” or “Redeemer” as names for the divine. His Providence was a noble but primarily pagan deity.

The Founders Meet Ground Zero

Storms of controversy surround the proposal to build an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero in New York, while precincts as far away as Murfreesboro, Tennessee and Sheboyan, Kansas, have experienced public opposition to mosques entering their neighborhoods. What would the Founders say?

In an article published shortly after the terror attacks of 2001, historian and head of the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, James Hutson, shed light on the situation. His remarks, so different from the heated rhetoric filling today's airwaves, deserve quotation:

"Readers may be surprised to learn that there may have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Muslims in the United States in 1776—imported as slaves from areas of Africa where Islam flourished. Although there is no evidence that the Founders were aware of the religious convictions of their bondsmen, it is clear that the Founding Fathers thought about the relationship of Islam to the new nation and were prepared to make a place for it in the republic.

In his seminal Letter on Toleration (1689), John Locke insisted that Muslims and all others who believed in God be tolerated in England. Campaigning for religious freedom in Virginia, Jefferson followed Locke, his idol, in demanding recognition of the religious rights of the "Mahamdan," the Jew and the "pagan." Supporting Jefferson was his old ally, Richard Henry Lee, who had made a motion in Congress on June 7, 1776, that the American colonies declare independence. "True freedom," Lee asserted, "embraces the Mahomitan and the Gentoo (Hindu) as well as the Christian religion."

In his autobiography, Jefferson recounted with satisfaction that in the struggle to pass his landmark Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), the Virginia legislature "rejected by a great majority" an effort to limit the bill's scope "in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan." George Washington suggested a way for Muslims to "obtain proper relief" from a proposed Virginia bill, laying taxes to support Christian worship. On another occasion, the first president declared that he would welcome "Mohometans" to Mount Vernon if they were "good workmen" (see page 96). Officials in Massachusetts were equally insistent that their influential Constitution of 1780 afforded "the most ample liberty of conscience … to Deists, Mahometans, Jews and Christians," a point that Chief Justice Theophilus Parsons resoundingly affirmed in 1810."

Hutson concludes: "The Founders of this nation explicitly included Islam in their vision of the future of the republic. Freedom of religion, as they conceived it, encompassed it. Adherents of the faith were, with some exceptions, regarded as men and women who would make law-abiding, productive citizens. Far from fearing Islam, the Founders would have incorporated it into the fabric of American life."

Would that our leaders today were equally wise and tolerant!

Killing and Kindness

When we checked our mutt Smokey into the veterinary hospital last week, we were asked whether we wanted a DNR, Do Not Resuscitate, order. I’d never really contemplated advance directives for dogs before. After learning more, we decided CPR would be okay. But with a twelve-and-a-half year old canine, we didn’t want more heroic measures. Every life has its limits.

The incident reminded me of a letter John Adams penned to his friend the physician Benjamin Rush, back in 1813. It’s written under the persona of Adams' horse, “Hobby.” Hobby says he’ll try to shake a little animation into his Master for a few more months, maybe years. But what can his owner realistically look forward to at the age of seventy-seven? “How many Pains and Aches, which I cannot shake away, has he to endure? How much low spirits?” The horse foresees the fate that awaits a doddering Adams, “withered, fading, wrinkled, tottering, trembling, stumbling, sighing, groaning, weeping.” The thought occurs to Hobby whether he shouldn’t just stumble, accidentally-on-purpose, as an act of Charity—presumably putting a quick end to the senile equestrian, just as we humans compassionately release our animal companions when they’ve outlived their natural span.

I’m not sure if Adam’s letter could be said to reflect his views on mercy killing. That’s a big topic, and medical technology has done too much to transform the way we die to make any exact extrapolation possible. But it does suggest that some things never change.

Whether considering horses, dogs or men, we’ll always struggle with the question of when to fight gallantly and when to throw in the towel.

For Smokey, I know the point is swift approaching when it will be time for a dose of kindness. And when my day finally comes, I hope I’ll have a horse like Hobby—or another ministering angel—to send me quietly on my way.

Confucius, Baseball and Apple Pie

Ask an American what faith they profess and you’ll find Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Moslems, and Hindus in abundance, with a liberal sprinkling of Bahai’s, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians. But hardly anyone will confess to being a Confucianist.

That’s odd, because Confucius is as American as Motherhood and Apple Pie. Our nation’s founders admired him greatly. Thomas Paine listed the Chinese sage in the same category as Jesus and Socrates and a manual for public devotion that he helped devise omitted any Biblical passages but included proverbs from Confucius and other Eastern poets. James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, had a portrait of Confucius hanging in his Virginia home.

But it was Benjamin Franklin who first introduced Confucius to the American colonies. In 1737, Franklin carried a series of papers “From the Morals of Confucius” in his weekly magazine The Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklin called the Chinese master’s philosophy “the gateway through which it is necessary to pass to arrive at the sublimest wisdom ….”

Holland Cotter summarizes the Confucian outlook in today’s New York Times as a pragmatic strategy of “you be nice to me and I’ll be nice to you,” getting along by going along. “He also believed that education, hard work and respect for the past were essential; that excessive anything — money, fun, religion — led to trouble; and that social harmony was best achieved when people interacted courteously, but basically minded their own business.”

Some doubt if Confucianism even qualifies as a religion, because it focuses mainly on ethics rather than on saving souls. Asked by a follower about life after death, Confucius supposedly replied, “Why worry about the next world when you haven’t yet learned how to live in this one?” For a founding generation of Americans tired of metaphysics, a practical religion that counseled public virtue and civic-mindedness while avoiding hair-splitting doctrine had a definite appeal.

As the father of a Korean son, I have come to appreciate Confucian culture more and more, as it helped to build civilizations that have endured for thousands of years—valuing decorum, promoting strong families, and instilling reverence for the highest standards of personal conduct.

So the next time I’m asked what religion I practice, I think I’ll answer “Confucian.” If it’s good enough for Ben Franklin, it’s good enough for me.

An Unchurched President?

Should our President go to church more often?

Candidate Obama held his first presidential debate in Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church. He worshiped regularly with his family at Chicago’s Trinity Church, until his fiery pastor Jeremiah Wright started sounding like an angry radical. But a recent news story on Boston.com headlines the President’s religion taking a private turn, reporting the family has attended church just four times in the year he’s held office.

The retreat from visible, public piety is drawing fire from some who voted for Obama on the basis of his Christian credentials. The Gallup Poll shows Americans becoming more tolerant in some respects, with larger numbers than in the past saying they might vote for a woman, an Hispanic, or a divorcee for President. But the majority still indicate they could not abide an atheist in the White House.

Apparently, voters want their Chief Executive to believe in God, or at least pretend to believe by warming a pew each week.

But one wonders whether the Founding Fathers would have ever been elected, had this standard been enforced. George Washington’s diaries, for example, indicate that in 1748, he spent 15 Sundays going to church, recording 49 days spent fox hunting, attending two balls, one play and receiving a reprimand from a Scotch Presbyterian acquaintance for spending too much time at the card table. In January the following year, he hunted on twelve days and went to church just once.

Shortly after being elected, President Washington was virtually “arrested” for not attending church, apparently detained by the local tithing man responsible for enforcing New England’s blue laws prohibiting travel on the Sabbath. Delayed and anxious to reach his destination in New York, he was intercepted on Sunday morning in the Connecticut village of Ashford and forced to halt. The President’s diary indicates that he used the interlude to rest his horses, but he found the tavern where he cooled his heels “not a good one” and the sermon of Mr. Pond, the parson of a nearby church, “very lame discourses.”

Some Presidents, like John Adams, attended church almost every Sunday of their lives. Others, like Jefferson and Madison, rarely bothered. But all of the nation’s first half dozen Presidents were enormously discreet about their personal spiritual lives. None would have engaged in the kind of “media spirituality” that voters seem to demand now.

Voters should judge their President on the basis of his economic policies, his ability to work with Congress to pass important legislation, and his strength in protecting America’s interests around the world. Obama’s church attendance (or lack thereof) is just not the public’s business.

A Whites Only Tea Party?

A photograph in this week’s Economist shows an actor dressed in a tri-cornered hat and colonial garb attending last week’s national Tea Party convention, surrounded by a sea of white faces.

Former Congressman Tom Tancredo, who led the roster of speakers, lamented the fact that citizens who couldn’t even speak English or spell the word “vote” sent a socialist to the White House.  Tancredo didn’t mention that President is black, yet his tirade against “multiculturalism” and his call for a return to the kind of literacy tests that disenfranchised African Americans in the Jim Crow South spoke for itself.

While the blogosphere ponders just how racist the Tea Party counter-revolution really is, historians agree that the original American Revolution was anything but. Every school child knows that Crispus Attucks, the first patriot to fall in the Boston Massacre, was a black man.  But most don’t know that  African Americans were present in nearly every major battle in the War for Independence. The Continental Army was probably the most racially integrated up until the 1950’s, when Harry Truman officially de-segregated the armed forces.

And while I am anything but a linguist, Americans in the colonial period spoke Dutch, German, French, Swedish, Spanish, a variety of African dialects and dozens of Native American languages as well as English.  In a document titled  “Colonial Irish Immigration to North America,” Jerry Kelly observes:

English spies and Tories reported back to their English masters that "Irish is as commonly spoken in the American ranks as English," which thereby puts English speakers at about 30% of the Continental Army once you count in the Gaelic-speaking Irish from every state; the German-speakers from Pennsylvania and Virginia; the Dutch from what had been New Holland (Long Island, northern New Jersey, the Hudson Valley, and the Mohawk Valley); the French of the frontier and Louisiana; the Finns and Swedes of what had been New Sweden (parts of Delaware and New Jersey), the Spanish of what had been Spanish Florida and Louisiana, and our Algonquin and Iroquois allies. Anybody who had a serious grudge against the English went into rebellion, and that was a lot of people. Anglo Saxons and their language were a minority. The Continental Army was multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and ready to welcome the likes of Lafayette, Von Steuben, Kosziusko, and others as valued officers even if (or because) they barely spoke English or didn't speak English at all. English was regarded as the language of the enemy - Tories and Regulars alike.

That may be stretching a point.  But Tea Party nativists who want the nation to “return” to its English-speaking, Euro-centric roots surely misunderstand the racial and linguistic diversity that the American experiment has welcomed since its very beginning.

That diversity, which extended hope to all races and manners of people—not a phony homogenous “Tea Party” of Sarah Palin look-alikes—constituted the real American Revolution.

How Christian Were The Founders?

An article in today's New York Times asks, "How Christian Were the Founders," reporting on efforts of the state Board of Education in Texas to re-cast the nation's as fundamentalist Christians.

One member of the Texas Board, Don McLeroy, is a dentist rather than an historian, but declaims that "The men who wrote the Constitution were Christians who knew the Bible. Our idea of individual rights comes from the Bible.."  McLeroy thinks the Earth is 6,000 years old, and thinks that the 47 millions textbooks his state purchases each year should reflect that Biblical "fact."

But facts are stubborns things--and history shows that America's founders and framers were not fundamentalists, by any stretch of the imagination. Ben Franklin re-wrote the Lord's Prayer. Jefferson edited his own version of scripture, eliminating the miracles. Washington was never a formal communicant in the Episcopal Church, and avoided attended services on Sundays when communion was served, probably because he didn't believe in the all the doctrines required of orthodox Christians. John and Abigal Adams were both Unitarians, who rejected notions like original sin and eternal damnation. The Constitution never mentions God, because the framers believed government was based on the consent of its citizens, not upon any divine mandate. 

Yet the founders were not secularists or opposed to organized religion. They simply believed that faith should be exercised in the private sphere rather than assert its authority through law or tax-funded initiatives. Unfortunately, today's evangelicals want their own brand of dogma to receive government recognition and support, eliminating the barrier separating church and state. This is a recipe for sectarian conflict. America is the most religiously diverse nation on earth, where Buddhists outnumber Presbyterians and Muslims may outnumber Jews. There is no creed or confession that can unite these various religious systems. Only a philosophy of mutual tolerance and forbearance will enable us all to live together as Americans, inhabitants of a land that--as the founders intended--welcomes people of all beliefs.

Love Birds: A Revolutionary Valentine

Were two  love birds ever better suited, almost destined for one another?  Their marriage would last fifty-four years and their names become inextricably linked.  But it wasn’t longevity that distinguished their pairing so much as the quality of their relationship.  Affection blended with respect.  They shared basic values: a preference for plain living and plain speaking with a distaste for ostentation, alike strongly opinionated, with political and religious views that were decidedly liberal. But they also shared more.  Lust, yes.  They were well-matched in that department, and a very un-Puritanical eroticism creeps into some of the epistles they exchanged.  But they had more than sex.  Abigail and John Adams also enjoyed a teasing playfulness in their communications as if the two of them were alternately team mates and rivals, but always in on a game together.

Although she was born a parson’s daughter with predictably prim parents, little Abigail acknowledged that she always had a "volatile and giddy" personality, which didn’t concern her was Grandmother Quincy who chiefly raised the lass, remarking that "wild colts make the best horses." The young attorney first noticed the Smith girl when she was just fourteen, describing her as a "wit" while wondering if that was a trait compatible with the feminine graces. Yet within a short time, that same high-spirited and flippant character proved irresistibly attractive, provoking the first exchanges in a lifelong correspondence, as when the suitor sent his heartthrob an invoice, payable in passion:

Oct. 4, 1762
Miss Adorable,

By the same Token that the Bearer hereof satt up with you last night I hereby order you to give him, as many Kisses, and as many Hours of your Company after 9 o’ Clock as he shall please to Demand and charge them to my Account .... John Adams

At first, they signed themselves Lysander and Diana, named for the goddess of the moon and a famous Spartan statesman. Later, Abigail would sign her letters "Portia," modeling herself on the wife of the Roman patriot Marcus Brutus, who slew an ambitious Caesar to save the republic. But from the beginning, they called each other by another dearer, name—Friend--that would endure through all their years together.

August 11, 1763
My Friend,

If I was sure your absence to day was occasioned, by what it generally is, either to wait upon Company, or promote some good work, I freely confess my Mind would be much more at ease than at present it is. Yet this uneasiness does not arise from any apprehension of Slight or neglect, but a fear least you are indisposed, for that you said should be your only hindrance.

Humanity obliges us to be affected with the distresses and Miserys of our fellow creatures. Friendship is a band yet stronger, which causes us to feel with greater tenderness the afflictions of our Friends.

And there is a tye more binding than Humanity and stronger than Friendship, which makes us anxious for the happiness and welfare of those to whom it binds us. It makes their Misfortunes, Sorrows and afflictions, our own. Unite these, and there is a threefold cord–by this cord I am not ashamed to own myself bound, nor do I [believe] that you are wholly free from it ...

Adieu may this find you in better health than I fear it will ... Accept this hasty Scrawl warm from the Heart of Your Sincere

Diana

Riding the Circuit Courts between Massachusetts and Maine, John thought it wise to undergo an experimental medical procedure, inoculating himself against small pox, and necessitating a period of isolation as he recovered in the sick ward.  The separation, for his sweetheart, was hard to bear.

Fryday Morning April 20

What does ti signify, why may not I visit you a Days as well as Nights?  I no sooner close my Eyes than some invisible Being … bears me to you.  I see you, but cannot make my self visible to you.  That tortures me, but it is still worse when I do not come for I am then haunted by half a dozen ugly Sprights.  One will catch me and leep into the Sea, an other will carry me up a precipice (like that which Edgar describes to Lear,) then toss me down, and were I not then light as the Gosemore I should shiver into atoms … I had rather have the small pox by inoculation half a dozen times, than be sprighted about as I am.

Three weeks shy of turning twenty, Abigail was finally released from her nighttime torments, marrying John in 1764 in a ceremony conducted  by her father at the pasonage in Weymouth.  Though technically wives were subject to their husbands, matrimony felt like a liberation, or at least a release from parental authority, for Abigail would write  her sister Mary, “I desire to be very thankful that I can do as I please now!!!”

The man she’d wed was ambitious for himself and his family, determined to make a mark upon the world.  Yet his legal practice and then election to the Continental Congress meant extended time away.  Never one to underestimate his own talents, he wrote his wife,

I shall arouse myself ere long I believe, and exert an Industry, a Frugality, a hard Labour, that will serve my family, if I cant serve my Country … I thank God I have a Head, an Heart and Hands which if once fully exerted altogether, will succeed in the World as well as those of the mean spirited, low minded, fawning obsequious scoundrels who have long hoped, that my Integrity would be an Obstacle in my Way, and enable them to out strip me in the Race.

I must intreat you, my dear Partner in all the Joys and Sorrows, Prosperity and Adversity of my Life, to take a Part with me in the Struggle.  I pray God for your Health—intreat you to rouse your whole Attention to the Family, the stock, the Farm, the Dairy.  Let ever Article of Expence which can possibly be spared be retrench’d.  

Abigail oversaw the farm and ran the household in John’s absence, superintending also the upbringing of the growing brood of Adams offspring, Nabby, John Quincy and Charles.  John admonished,

The Education of our Children is never out of my Mind.  Train them to Virtue, habituate them to industry, activity and Spirit.  Make them consider every Vice, as shamefull and unmanly: fire them with Ambition to the usefull … Fix their Ambition upon great and solid Objects, and their Contempt upon little, frivolous, and useless ones.  It is Time, my dear, for you to begin to teach them French.

When John elaborated in another letter, lamenting the woeful state of learning in the colonies, his wife was moved to speak up,

If you complain of the neglect of Education in sons, What shall I say with regard to daughters, who every day experience the want of it.  With regard to the Education of my own children, I find myself soon out of my debth, and destitute and deficient in every part …

I most sincerely wish that some more liberal plan might be laid and executed for the Benefit of the rising Generation, and that our new constitution may be distinguished for Learning and Virtue.  If we mean to have Heroes, Statesmen and Philosophers, we should have learned women.  The world perhaps would laugh at me, and accuse me of vanity.  But you I know have a mind too enlarged and liberal to disregard the Sentiment.

Adieu ever yours.  Breakfast waits.  Portia.

Conflict with Britain meant rationing, first as American colonists boycotted tea and other products they considered unfairly taxed, then tightening belts even further as trade dropped to a trickle.  But defiance of the home country also stirred a defiant  attitude among many women, as Abigail recorded to her husband,

It was rumoured that an eminent, wealthy, stingy Merchant (who is a Batchelor) had a Hogshead of Coffe in his Store which he refused to sell to the committee under 6 shillings per pound.  A number of Females some say a hundred, some say more assembled with a cart and trucks, marched down to the Ware House and demanded the keys, which he refused to deliver, upon which one of them seazd him by his Neck and tossd him into the cart.  Upon his finding no Quarter he deliverd the keys, when they tipd up the cart and dischargd him, then opend the Warehouse, Joisted out the Coffe themselves, put it into the trucks and drove off.
It was reported that he had a Spanking among them, but this I believe was not true.  A large concourse of Men stood amazd silent Spectators of the whole transaction.   Portia
John himself may have been amazed when he received a letter from his wife dated March 31, 1776, addressed to him in Philadelphia, where delegates were beginning to debate separation from the motherland.

I long to hear that you have declared an independency—and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.  Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.  Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.  If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.

That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend.
Abigail knew her complaint would be taken only half-seriously, and that’s how John responded, predicting that the new demand for equality and civil freedom would eventually lead to the inmates running the asylum.

As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh.  We have been told that our Struggle has loosened the bands of Government everywhere.  That Children and Apprentices were disobedient—that schools and Colledges were grown turbulent—that Indians slighted their Guardians and Negros grew insolent to their Masters.  But your Letter was the first Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and powerfull than all the rest were grown discontented.—This is rather too coarse a Compliment but you are so saucy, I wont blot it out.

Neither of the two were populists.  Both believed there existed a natural aristocracy of brains and talent.  But they were united in their opposition to slavery, not entirely free of the prejudices of the time, but surprisingly enlightened.  Abigail gave an involuntary shudder at a Shakespeare play as she watched the dark-skinned Othello lay hands upon fair Desdemona.  But when a schoolhouse in Braintree threatened to close if a black pupil were allowed to attend classes, she became a local champion of racial integration.  And in the same letter where she urged her husband to “remember the ladies,” Abigail reflected that Virginia must possess some virtues for producing a Washington, but she remained wary and suspicious of the slave-holding south: 
 
I have sometimes been ready to think that the passion for Liberty cannot be Eaquelly Strong in the Breasts of those who have been accustomed to deprive their fellow Creatures of theirs.  Of this I am certain that it is not founded upon that generous and Christian principal of doing to others as we would that others should do unto us.

Touching the subject of religion, her husband said that his own brand of Christianity consisted of following the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, complaining that the church had forgotten the simple moral teachings of its founder.

Where in the Gospel do we find a precept requiring ecclesiastical Synods?  Convocations?  Councils?  Decrees?  Creeds?  Confessions?  Oaths?  Subscriptions?  And whole cartloads of other trumpery we find religion encumbered with these days?  How has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?
John was reacting to the cold-blooded Calvinism on which he’d been reared.  But too much warmth from the pulpit could also be nerve-wracking.  In New York, where he was stationed during his tenure as Vice-President, he and Abigail struggled to find a church to their liking.  The Congregational preachers there clung to the old-fashioned doctrines of predestination and tried with “noise and vehemence to compensate for every other deficiency.”  Listening to their “foaming,” Abigail told a friend, was like “doing penance,” making her long to her “liberal good sense” from the pulpit: “true piety without enthusiasm, devotion with grimace, and religion upon a rational system.”

More to their liking were the sermons of Richard Price, a dissenting clergyman whose services the two attended while on appointment to Great Britain.  Although ordained a Presbyterian, Price’s doubts about the divinity of Jesus had turned him toward Unitarianism—like his friend Joseph Priestly, who succeeded him in the same pulpit.  A superb mathematician, Price shared the Adams’ scientific interests.  But when the reverend presided over the christening of their grandchild William, Abigail was so flustered that she had to take to her bed, causing her miss several of his lectures on “electricity, magnetism, hydrostatics” and other researches which she described as “going into a beautiful country … a country to which few females are permitted to visit or inspect.”

Dr. Price had been a strong supporter of the colonies in their revolt against England.  In Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, and the Means of Making It a Benefit to the World, published just after the war, Price argued that complete religious liberty ought to prevail in the new nation, along with a system of education that “teaches how to think, rather than what to think.”  He spoke admiringly of the Massachusetts Constitution that John had written, guaranteeing that “every denomination of Christians demeaning themselves peaceably and as good subjects of the Commonwealth” should have equal protection of the laws.  “This is liberal beyond all example,” Price declared,  “I should however have admired it more had it been more liberal and the words all men of all religions been substituted for every denomination of Christians.”

“I am happy to find myself perfectly agreed with you, that we should begin by setting the conscience free,” John wrote back.  It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship, and Abigail told their son John Quincy that traveling the few miles from London to Hackney each Sunday was well worth the effort, “to hear a man so liberal and so sensible and so good as he is.”

Their eldest son tended to be more traditional in his faith than either father or mother, but when the break occurred in New England that divided so many congregations down the middle, Abigail made her position  clear.  “I profess myself a Unitarian in Mr. Channings sense,” she told her son.  “The soil of N England will not cultivate nor cherish clerical bigotry or intolerance although, there is a struggle to introduce it.”  In a letter dated May 4, 1816, she staked out her non-trinitarian beliefs even more firmly, telling the junior Adams “There is not any reasoning which can convince me, contrary to my senses, that three is one, and one three,” adding in an aside to a friend that her husband considered their son an “Excellent politician, but no theologian.”

Yet Abigail’s letters mention religion only rarely.  Along with observations on politics, education, and culture, more mundane matters predominated.  As might be expected, the pair corresponded about money, household finance and investing, which Abigail mostly managed with a shrewd business sense that enabled the family to retire with a modest prosperity that stood in sharp contrast to former presidents like Jefferson and Madison who were bankrupt by the end.  From selling pins to buying depreciated Continental I.O.U.s to purchasing land in far off Vermont, Abigail always had some scheme for turning a profit.  And slowly the nest egg grew.

 A tranquil old age had been their lifelong dream.  Long before, during the war years of absence and  separation, a homesick husband had written from across the Atlantic, longing for the simple comforts  of hearth and native land.

My dearest Friend

I am so sensible of the Difficulty of convey Letters safe, to you, that I am afraid to write, any Thing more than to tell you that after all the fatigues and Dangers of Voyage and Journey, I am here in Health ..

It would be futile to attempt Descriptions of this country especially of Paris and Versailles.  The public Buildings and Gardens, the Paintings, Sculpture, Architecture Musick, &c. of these Cities have already filled many Volumes …

All the Luxury I desire in this World is the Company of my dearest Friend and my Children, and such Friends as they delight in, which I have sanguine Hopes, I shall, after a few Years enjoy in Peace.—I am with inexpressible Affection Yours, yours,   John Adams 
 

His partner returned the sentiments:
 
June 8 1777

I generally endeavour to write you once a week, if my Letters do no reach you, tis oweing to the neglect of the post … I should greatly rejoice to see you.  I kow of no earthly blessing which would make me happier …

You express a longing after the enjoyments of your little Farm.  I do not wonder at it, that also wants the care and attention of its master—all that the mistress can do is see that it does not go to ruin.  .  She would take pleasure in improvements, and study them with assiduity if she was possessed with a sufficiency to accomplish them.  The season promises plenty at present and the English grass never looked better.

You inquire after the Asparagrass.  It performs very well this year and produces us a great plenty.  I long to send you a Barrell of cider, but find it impracticable, as no vessels can pass from this State to yours.

I do not feel very apprehensive of an attack upon Boston … I should make a miserable hand of running now.  Boston is not what it once was.  It has no Head, no Men of distinguished abilities, they behave like children.

I wonder how you get time to write so much.  I feel very thankfull to you for every line.  You will I know remember me often when I cannot write to you.

Good Night tis so dark that I cannot see to add more than that I am with the utmost tenderness Yours ever Yours.
Their last years were quiet.  Having survived war and hardship, having made do and gone without, having lost one child in the cradle and watched their son Charles go to ruin through drink and seen their grown daughter Nabby suffer a masectomy without anesthetic and prematurely die of cancer, having endured stretches of loneliness where ink on parchment was the only solace, Abigail and John grew closer than ever, content upon the acreage near their childhood homes that they called Peacefield.  Trials that might have shattered other marriages seemed only to strengthen their bond..  The equality, candor and compassion that marked their relationship were surely ingredients that helped keep their romance alive.  And in a lesson for our age, which has grown impatient with manners, they were unfailingly courteous to one another.

As much as John Adams became a founding father of our nation, Abigail became a founding mother, calling for women’s full legal rights and by her own dignity and composure proving they were entitled to nothing less.  And yet through her loyalty and gentleness as mate, she showed that political independence and relational interdependence must go hand in hand, reminding us that no charter of freedoms would be complete without the command to love.

Thanksgiving Then and Now

America has always been a land of diverse faiths. And in his Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789, George Washington particularly enjoined gratitude for “the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed.”

While nominally Episcopalian, he himself was never a formal communicant in that church, and his Proclamation avoided specifically Christian language. Indeed, Washington’s writings virtually never referred to the deity as Christ or Redeemer or Savior, and his Thanksgiving decree was typical in calling on God as “the beneficent author all good” and “the Lord and Ruler of Nations,” seeking in his own way to find an inclusive vocabulary that could unite rather than divide his fellow Americans.

Religion, Washington felt, should be force that brings people together across sectarian lines. So in a letter he wrote as President in 1790 to the Jewish Synagogue in Newport, he assured the sons of Abraham that all in the newly founded nation “possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.”

"It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens."

Americans may finally be embracing what Washington called “the enlarged and liberal policy” of respect for religious differences. According to a Pew Forum poll conducted last year that interviewed 2,905 adults, only 29% of respondents surveyed agreed with the statement, “My religion is the one, true faith leading to eternal life.” Solid majorities of Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants and Evangelicals all agreed that other paths–even non-Christian religions–may lead to salvation.

Thanks largely to the separation of church and state, which our Founders so wisely instituted, the United States today has become the most spiritually diverse nation on earth. Harvard’s Pluralism Project counts 1660 mosques currently operating in our country, 724 Hindu temples, 2228 Buddhist centers, and 252 Sikh temples. For over two hundred years, devotees of most of these traditions have been able to co-exist amicably with their Christian and Jewish neighbors. Friendship, rather than strife, has been the norm.

As we gather round our tables in the spirit of George Washington’s Proclamation, that truly is a reason to give thanks.

Faith in America

Readers of American Creation might be interested in the article "Faith in America" which appears in the November/December issue of the Saturday Evening Post. Jack Feerick, the author, interviewed me this fall to write the story. Check out
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2009/10/22/lifestyle/features/faith-america.html.

Old Time Religion and End Time Religion

The end of the world is coming—again.

Apocalyptic prophecies are a recurring phenomenon in Christian history and in America’s past. Puritan theologian Cotton Mather foresaw the end would come in 1696, then in 1736, and finally in 1716. In the next century, William Miller famously selected the date of October 22, 1844, for Christ’s Second Coming. Thousands of followers were left disappointed on hilltops, where they’d gathered to be closer to the heavenly dispensation, when the appointed day came and went with no grand finale.

Now 2012 is the pre-determined moment for the final curtain to fall. Hollywood, the Mayan calendar, and a cottage industry of New Age catastrophizers say so.

While doom sayers have deep roots in America soil, however, their prognostications are far removed from the vision of the country’s founders, who believed that history was just beginning, not coming to an end.

Tom Paine, for instance, called the American Revolution “the birthday of the world.” As the Constitutional Convention drew to a close in 1787, Ben Franklin was convinced that the image on the back of the moderator’s chair, depicting the sun upon the horizon, represented a dawning moment, not a dusk. Similarly, the Great Seal of the United States, designed by Charles Thomson, called for a Novus Ordo Seclorum or “New Order of the Ages.” The phrase, interestingly, came not from Biblical sources, but from the Roman poet Virgil:

Now comes the final era of the Sibyl’s song; The great order of the ages is born afresh. And now justice returns, honored rules return; now a new lineage is sent down from high heaven.

The motto captured the upbeat mood of that generation. How many would have thought independence worth fighting for, had they imagined a general cataclysm was imminent?

If films like “2012” and “The Day After Tomorrow” are any indication, the “world-is-coming-to-an-end” message will always draw a big audience. Global warming, AIDS, H1N1, shifting weather patterns and similar threats will be seized upon as evidence that all is lost. The task for our time will be to recapture the faith of the founders, not to abandon hope, but to take melting ice caps, nuclear proliferation, economic recession and all the rest as problems for human ingenuity to solve.

“Do not anticipate trouble,” advised the wise Mister Franklin, “or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.” The alternative is to let worst case scenarios become self-fulfilling predictions.

Epitome of Worthlessness

Hi and thanks for your spirited critiques.


Thomas Paine was deeply involved with Illuminism--a branch of masonry--during his stay in France. This information is available in any standard biography. Was Hamilton a mason? I'll do some more research. In some cases, it's actually difficult to know for certain, since this was a quasi-secret society.

As to the Trinity, a marked change took place with the Masonic Constitution that Desaguliers authored. While the manuals of the older masonic craft guilds all made some reference to the Trinity, Desagulier's Constitution was silent on this point and never mentioned Christ. This does not imply that masons from that point forward were all non-Trinitarian, but that belief in a Trinity ceased to be a requirement for participation in the brotherhood. In its paragraph on "God and Religion," the Constitution enjoined newly minted masons to overcome theological differences to join in common moral endeavour: "But though in ancient times Masons were charg'd in every Country to be of the Religion of that Country of nation, whatever it was, yet 'tis now thought more expedient only to oblige them to that Religion in which all Men agree, leaving their particular Opinions to themselves, that is to be good Men and true, or Men of Honour and Honesty, by whatever Denomination or Persuasion they may be distinguished." The emphasis was on moral conduct and character rather than theological correctness. Since Desaguliers wrote this passage, I feel confident it reflects his own spiritual orientation.


My sources on freemasonry include Bernard Fay's "Revolution and Freemasonry 1680-1800" (Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1935), and Margaret Jacob, "The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans" (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1981.

I stand by the overall accuracy of my description of freemasonry, its principles and adherents.

Freemasons: Fact & Fiction

Freemasons are the buzz, thanks to novelist Dan Brown, whose book The Last Symbol promises to blur fact and fiction regarding America’s Founding Fathers the way The Da Vinci Code did with the historical Jesus. But the truth remains more interesting than the creations of Hollywood or the publishing industry.

Conspiracy theories trace the Freemasons' origins back to the builders of ancient Egypt, to Solomon and his Temple and other secret orders shrouded in the obscurity of time. But the real story is that the masonic order was an outgrowth of the European Enlightenment.

Freemasonry as the Founders knew it was part philosophical society, part social improvement club, part mystic brotherhood. It had its beginnings in 1717 with the organization of the Grand Lodge in London. Earlier Masonic lodges were composed mostly of stone workers, remnants of the craft guilds that build the medieval cathedrals. But with the opening of the 18th century, these guilds were on the wane. The Grand Lodge revived Masonry by drawing in an entirely new breed–called “speculative” masons–whose interests were mainly scientific and intellectual. Like their predecessors, these newcomers evinced an enthusiasm for architecture and engineering. Not content to carve in stone, however, “speculative” Masons hoped to lay the foundations for a whole new society.

John Desaguliers, whose Huguenot family brought him to England shortly after his birth in 1683, was among the principal founders of the lodge where these ideas germinated. As chair of Experimental Philosophy at Oxford, he was an intimate of Isaac Newton and became Curator and Demonstrator for the Royal Society. His great gift was as a popularizer. He was able to lecture freely on gravity, optics, geometry and mechanics and, with the aid of ingenious working models, bring the concepts of elementary physics within the reach of non-scholars.

An ordained deacon in the Church of England, he became the proponent for a faith whose God owed more to the harmonies of physics than to the traditional Christian scriptures. For deity should be demonstrable, Desaguliers argued, like the laws of science, which his own work had proven to be within the grasp of even average minds. So theology should look to the natural world rather than to revelation for inspiration–to the vast Creation and the orderly working of its laws. For just as Newton’s laws seemed incontrovertible and beyond dispute, a purely natural religion might avoid the disputations that had so vexed human history. Persecutions of the kind that drove his own family from France would become a thing of the past if only people would reorient their faith, away from doctrinal differences and variant readings of the Bible, toward what to Desaguliers seemed beyond question–the existence of God (whom he called the Great Architect and Organizer of the World) and the unity of humankind.

This was religion shorn of supernaturalism, devoid of the Trinity, simplified to an affirmation of the Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of man. And it was this simple faith that appealed to many of America’s founding generation. Early America masons included figures like John Hancock and Paul Revere, Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall, Ethan Allen, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington–who laid the cornerstone of the nation’s capitol building with a Masonic trowel. With lodges around the world, from Russia to France to Britain, Masonry was poised to become a unifying, international force for the uplift of society, they believed.

There is no Harvard Department of Symbology to “decode” the hints and clues of the fiction writer’s brain. But ultimately none is needed. Symbols like the pyramid, the compass and all-seeing eye which capture Dan Brown’s imagination were far less important to America’s Founders than the moral substance of Masonry–promoting general education and public virtue rather than dividing people along narrowly sectarian lines.

Where the People Rule

September 17 is designated as national Constitution Day, when citizens old and young are encouraged to study our nation’s founding charter. Most know the famous preamble:


"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."


What a wonderful opening phrase, “We the People.” Conventional wisdom in that day held that government was established from the top down. Some men were born to rule, others to obey. That was known as the divine right of kings. But in the newly established United States, government was not mandated by heaven. Legitimacy flowed from the bottom up, from the consent of the governed.


That’s why the Constitution doesn’t mention a deity anywhere in the text. The framers in Philadelphia weren’t clergymen but lawyers by and large. Thirty-four of the fifty-five present were either attorneys or judges. They were more comfortable with the language of contracts than with theological discussion. And government, they believed, was based on a social contract–a voluntary association of individuals joining together by mutual consent. Legislation didn’t spring from a holy book, therefore, but from the People instituting their own laws. So John Adams asserted that the framers “never had interviews with the gods or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven,” calling ours instead “the first example of government erected on the simple principles of nature.”


The Constitution they drafted was criticized at state ratifying conventions for leaving out the Almighty. The only place where faith is mentioned, in fact, is in Article Six, where it is specified there should be no religious tests for public office. Some tried to modify this language–to insert a provision that only candidates sufficiently orthodox could stand for election. That was the practice still in effect in Britain, for example, where only Anglicans were entitled to the full privileges of voting, serving in Parliament, or attending state universities at Cambridge and Oxford. The King was head of the Church, as well as head of State. But America took another path.


So on Constitution Day, those of all faiths—Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and atheists–can celebrate the genius of our founding document, where all are equal citizens, regardless of their personal beliefs, and where “We the People” rule.

A Right to Die?

The right to die is again in the news. This coming Wednesday, the Montana Supreme Court will consider the case of Robert Baxter, who, afflicted with incurable lymphocytic leukemia, claimed that a doctor’s refusal to help him die abrogated his rights under the state’s constitution.



But what about the federal constitution, or the Declaration of Independence? Do rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” imply an individual’s power to exit life on his own terms, and in her own time? What did the Founders think about assisted suicide, or ending one’s own life in the face of incurable illness?



Our nation’s founding generation often drew their ethics from classical rather than Christian sources. Many especially admired the Roman philosopher Lucius Seneca. So John Adams admonished himself in his diary to “Study Seneca, Cicero, and all other good moral Writers.” A listing of Washington’s library from his Mount Vernon estate shows a copy of Seneca’s Morals, published in London in 1746, among the collection.



In those moral essays, Seneca advised that “mere living is not a good, but living well.” A wise man ought to be prepared to end his own existence whenever it grew unduly burdensome. “He always reflects concerning the quality, and not the quantity, of his life. As soon as there are many events in his life that give him trouble and disturb his peace of mind, he sets himself free.”



Some goods were superior to survival, Seneca held, and some evils worse than death. He tells the story of a young Spartan taken into captivity. When ordered by his master to perform an undignified act—fetching a chamber pot—the boy cried “I will not be a slave!” and dashed his own brains against the wall. The illustration was likely to appeal to patriots ready to lay down lives on the altar of freedom. “Life, if courage to die is lacking, is slavery,” according to the Stoic teacher.



Clearly, though, bashing your own brains out was an unpleasant way to exit. Seneca preferred less painful means. He tells another story of a contemporary philosopher, Tullius Marcellinius who “fell ill of a disease which was by no means hopeless; but it was protracted and troublesome, and it demanded much attention; hence he began to think about dying.”. After distributing his meager belongings to his circle of friends, Marcellinius then stopped eating. “For three days he fasted and had a tent put up in his very bedroom. Then a tub was brought in; he lay in it for a long time, and, as the hot water was continually poured over him, he gradually passed away, not without a feeling of pleasure, as he himself remarked.”



That was the sort of gentle finale Thomas Jefferson probably had in mind when he wrote to Dr. Samuel Brown in 1813 about a lethal concoction of the herb Datura Stromonium, or jimson weed, which he praised as bringing on death “as quietly as sleep,” without the least distress. “It seems far preferable to the Venesection of the Romans, the Hemlock of the Greeks, and the Opium of the Turks. I have never been able to learn what the preparation is, other than a strong concentration of its lethiferous principle. Could such a medicament be restrained to self-administration, it ought not to be kept secret. There are ills in life as desperate as intolerable, to which it would be the rational relief, e.g., the inveterate cancer.”



Jefferson had already reached the Biblically allotted three-score and ten at that point. Strategies for the end game were beginning to occupy his thoughts. That same year, at the age of seventy-seven, John Adams wrote to the physician Benjamin Rush, in a letter penned under the persona of his horse “Hobby.” Wouldn’t it be a kindness to the old man to simply stumble one day, “Hobby” wondered, and end a tottering life like Adams’ quickly?



Nine years later, at an even more advanced age, Jefferson wrote to his friend in Braintree, “When all our faculties have left, or are leaving us, one by one, sight, hearing, memory, every avenue of pleasing sensation is closed, and athumy, debility and malaise left in their places, when the friends of our youth are all gone, and a generation is risen around us whom we know not, is death an evil?



One suspects they both endorsed Seneca’s answer: “The wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as be can.”

Patent Nonsense

One of Thomas Jefferson’s lesser known contributions to the republic was as first chief of the U.S. Patent Office.

Known for his own ingenious inventions—like a revolving bookcase and a duplicator he called the “polygraph” that was the eighteenth century version of a Xerox machine--in 1790 he was tasked with creating a system that would encourage the development of useful contraptions.

For Jefferson, the emphasis was on “useful.” He was less interested in protecting an abstract right to “intellectual property” than in fostering a climate where good ideas could flourish. Public utility trumped private gain.

In a letter he wrote in 1813 to Isaac McPherson, Jefferson ruminated that “It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But … If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea.”

Ideas were essentially free, self-propagating, and could not be restrained once brought to birth.

So Jefferson’s own inventions, like an improved plow mathematically designed to offer least resistance in breaking through the soil, were never patented. He was less motivated by hope for riches than by desire to benefit humanity.

Today most patents runs twenty years, roughly a generation, while copyrights can last a hundred years or longer (the author’s lifetime plus fifty years). Many would say that’s too long to keep cheap generic drugs off the market, or to give an author or musician a monopoly on their creations.

Thomas Jefferson would agree. Patent laws should create enough profit incentive to spur inventors. But when they impoverish the many to enrich the few, that’s just patent nonsense.

Journeys to Space: Ben Franklin to Neil Armstrong

Benjamin Franklin was a man ahead of his time. On the fiftieth anniversary of the moon walk, he might have asked, “What took you so long?”



In a letter to Jane Mecom dated 1786, he mentions an Italian Poet who gives an account of a voyage to the moon, “telling us that all things lost on Earth are treasured there.” Franklin quips that, if so, the Moon must hold a great storehouse of Good Advice.



The Italian author Franklin’s referencing is probably Cyrano de Bergerac, a freethinking philosopher who penned The Other World: The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon in 1657. In this story, the traveler’s first attempt at space travel involves tying various glass globes filled with dew to his torso; when morning comes and the dew rises, he begins to ascend toward the sun, but then begins to break the globes when his ascent becomes too fast and plummets back to terra firma. Eventually successful in reaching his destination, he discovers a world where the inhabitants live in cities built on wheels, equipped with giant sails and mechanical bellows to self-propel across the landscape. The rest of the account is equally fanciful.



Franklin records quite a different encounter with moon men in a fragment posted to the American Philosophical Society in 1768, where he details the experiences of one William Henry who lived as a captive among the Seneca Indians. On hearing that Europeans believe there is but a single God, the native chieftain objects: “You say there is but one great good Manitta. You know of no more. If there were but one, how unhappy must he be, without friends, without companions, and without that equality in conversation, by which pleasure is mutually given and received! I tell you there are more than a hundred of them; they live in the sun and in the moon; they love one another as brethren; they visit and converse with each other; and they sometimes visit, though they do not often converse with us.” As an avowed polytheist, Franklin was probably not shocked by the idea.



The idea of space travel—and of encountering the inhabitants of other spheres--has stretched the imagination throughout time. From Ben Franklin to Neil Armstrong, Americans will continue to explore the universe, in dream and reality.