Grades have been posted.

I finished reading and grading this morning, and I went ahead a posted the grades I felt you'd earned.  If you have any questions about your grade, please get in touch, and I'l be happy to provide further information.  Since the college is closed today due to the upcoming snow, it may take a few days for your grades to process.

Steve

Portfolios Are Due at 1:40 PM, Wednesday, 15 December.

Reminder:  Portfolios are due tomorrow at 1:40 PM, Wednesday, 15 December.  I will look for them on the blog address I have listed on the "General Assembly" tab, in emails from you to sbrandon@reynolds.edu, and/or turned in as physical/hard copy to 231 Massey.  

If there is a legitimate reason for the portfolio not being handed in, let me know immediately.  I will be turning grades in within 48 hours of 1:40 PM, Wednesday, 15 December.

Steve

Week Sixteen and Final Assignments Are Active.

On the map below, notice all which wasn't known about the new world in the first years of English settlement.  Those who created this map for the Virginia Company thought that just beyond the Virginia mountains the Pacific was to be found.  They thought they could row up the James, and, instead of petering out, there came a point where it widened into the Pacific.  This vision of the world was as real to them as the globe you know is to you.  In many ways, your own journey on Early American literature is like this map.  There's still a lot of fascinating land left to fill in.  

There is always more Early American literature than can be covered in a scant semester.  Just look at your two texts to see all we haven't read, and these excerpts are only a selections of all which could be read.  

There is a section books in most research libraries which do nothing else but list the books published in the three hundred years post contact in the Americas. I have taught entire upper and graduate level classes on captivity narratives and the Native American literature of the period.  I've also taken entire classes on Early American African American and Woman's literature.  We haven't read the plays, listened to more than a scattering of music, nor read the travel narratives or diaries produced during the period.  If you ever get a chance, take classes in these areas or in the literature surrounding the settlement of the West, Spanish and French contact and conquest, etc. et etc.  I promise you there will be less writing than you've experienced in this course, but this course is designated writing intensive, and--as you've found out--writing is a good way to learn in an online course.  Just look through your classmate's learning reflections and look at the times they were most engaged.

Most of what I wanted you to get out of our course was that the people you've studied are fascinating and just like you.  This and an appreciation for literature and the role it has played in people's lives, it can play in yours, and how it's changed society. Everyone is fascinating, and the decisions you make, the books you read, make history.  Literature and history are not made by professors.  We just clean it up and argue about what the real actors--like you--do.  We teach this cleaned up version, that is, until students--again, like you--are ready for the real truth, namely, that you are making history and reading the literature which will be studied tomorrow.  Our greatest tool is our humanity and our ability to see ourselves in others.  Learning history and literature is a journey, and yours has just begun.    

Visit Williamsburg.  Visit Jamestown.  Follow the John Smith Trail or the route of Lewis and Clark.  Read Lydia Child or Elias Boudinot.  Begin to fill in the gaps on the map.  As you have discovered this semester, your own voyage of discovery will repay you with a glimpse into an America you can only know through the exploration, but it will also allow you to discover the America you already life in; so, you'll be discovering yourself and why you and our society works the way it does.

One of the things I hope you have learned is just how rich and varied Early American literature and the time period is, and how your own lives and incidental writing can and will capture the imagination of future readers.  Individuals, like you and me, make literature and history.

However, the only real sections of lit we haven't read that I wanted you to know about is that surrounding non-English contact and conquest and the literature of Native America prior to contact and just after.  The reading for last week was that surrounding Virgina settlement. You can continue to read the selections from the Heath at your leisure, because they won't be required for this course.  Remember that you can also find this literature for free and online. 

Just in case you do have any questions about the portfolio, I have opened a Q&A discussion thread on the portfolio open, and--of course--I will be happy to answer any questions you might have about the reading, authors, and periods we've covered.

Instead, I want you to spend the final week of the course putting together the best portfolio you can.  Look to the discussion thread to answer any questions.  

As always, write with questions.

Steve

Week Fifteen Assignments are Active.

Jamestown and the James River Valley are celebrated as the first permanent English settlements in the new world.  What most don't know--outside of the Lost Colony (1585)--is the history of temporary English settlements prior to Jamestown.  When Squanto met the Pilgrims in Massachusetts, he spoke English and was asked for beer.  Powhatan knew of the failed Roanoke colony, and the English were not welcome in all the villages of the Powhatan Confederacy which they visited.  Why? Because the British had been fishing the Newfoundland coast for almost a century prior to settlement, and this fishing included coming to shore to establish temporary trading bases, camps to fill up water supplies, and to take Indian slaves.  The same was true in what would become the Middle and Southern Colonies.  Squanto had been taken captive as a slave, learned English (and a taste for beer) while fishing and living in England, and, finally, escaped on a return voyage.  Unfortunately, he came home to find his village and family gone, destroyed by diseases the English brought with them on the initial raid.  One reason Powhatan could build the confederacy was that most of the Indian nations, who had once lived along the Chesapeake Bay, were weakened by diseases introduced by Europeans; Powhatan took advantage of the aftermath and the power vacuum created.

The Spanish, French, and Dutch had been in contact and had set up more or less permanent settlements prior to Jamestown.  In fact, one of the reasons Jamestown was settled on an malaria infested, brackish watered, marshy island was to give it the ability to be defended, not so much from Indians, as from the Spanish, who the English feared would come to reclaim the land on which the English were squatting.  In fact, de Soto--a Spanish explorer--had explored the Southeast in 1540, eighty years prior to the settlement of Jamestown, and the Spanish had set up a failed colony decades prior to Jamestown in what is today the Hampton Roads area.  

Most also don't know just how ill prepared the early Jamestown Colony was for survival.  The colony was the product of the Virginia Company, a kind of early corporation, which wanted profits, and quick profits at that, from their investment.  They honestly thought that the James River would provide a short link to the Pacific Ocean, that they would find gold among the Indian population or--at the least--silver, and that there were profits to be had for easy taking.  Many of the initial settlers were sons of the nobility, who just weren't used to doing a hard day's labor.  Although they started in December, they made landfall in the Bay until the summer, so there wasn't much chance to clear land for farming, that is, if this is what they had been told to do.   Most saw the colony as an expedition rather than a settlement, and almost all didn't think they had come to settle.  They thought they were there to make a quick profit and to head home rich. Add in the little Ice Age, storms, the wreak of the ships coming with relief supplies, political infighting, malaria, camp diseases, bad drinking water, and a longer than expected crossing--added together all this mean they'd already eaten most the supplies which were to last them through the winter--and you have a disaster in the making.  

There are moments in American history and its literature which seem miraculous, where things happen in such a bizarre set of circumstances that one wonders about divine providence.  Early Jamestown had four such moments:

1) John Smith was part of the expedition.  Smith was a mercenary and professional explorer.  The expedition was getting ready to hang him for mutiny when they opened their orders--which were only to be opened once in the New World--and they found out that Smith had been named as one of the board which was to help run the colony.  Smith was saved.  In turn, Smith saved the colony more than once, mostly by exploring, trading, and raiding the local Indians for the food the colony wouldn't have had, and--finally--putting everyone to work almost at gunpoint, regardless of rank or status.  You can get a handle on Smith by thinking of him as a kind of self-made Captain Kirk with  bits of a con man thrown in.  Long before Pocahontas, Smith had already lived a life of wonder and narrow squeaks.  He was a survivor, and because of him Jamestown survived.  Most important, Smith managed to set up a shaky, working relationship with Powhatan, who needed allies--remember, he was setting up a new confederacy of Indian nations and a new political order in land once controlled by others--and English trade goods.

2) After the starving time, after the disease, killing cold, malaria, and lack of food had taken its toll, when the surviving colony was down to only a small percentage of those who started, and everyone had literally gotten on board the ships to head back home, after everyone was headed back, the relief expedition with supplies and new personal meet the survivors coming out of the James River on their way home.  

3) John Rolfe--Pocahontas's husband--buys, steals, or borrows Spanish tobacco seed.  In planting Spanish tobacco as an experiment in Virginia, he creates a staple for the colony's economy, saving it again from sure doom.  He also begins the Virginia plantation economy, which will put some on top, like William Byrd and other planters. [Note: one extra-credit field trip you might consider is a trip to Byrd’s plantation.  He’s the guy who donated the land for Richmond.]  However, Rolfe’s gift of tobacco creates a life of leisure and education for some at the expense of Indian and African slaves and English indentured servants. (The first American slaves were Native Americans, and African American slaves arrive in 1619.) Most important, Rolfe's discovery convinces another group of settlers to invest their lives (and capital) in coming to the new world; and, after the bad press of the original settlement--where more died than survived and no one got rich--the colony wouldn't have survived without this influx of cash and good press.
 
4) The English arrive just as Powhatan, the Indian leader of kind of loose confederacy, is working to fill up a political vacuum.  He needs allies to fight enemies and trade goods to insure his status as leader.  He, hence, helps the English survive through trade and outright gifts of food.  It is a shaky alliance, just look at Smith's writings and how leery both the Indians and the English were of one another, and the alliance will quickly break down; but, it goes on long enough for relief supplies to arrive.

Now you know.  The Virginia colony’s survival was as much chance, circumstance, and near miracle than careful planning and heroism.  Once again, literature played an important part in bringing about the right circumstances.  Ballads were written both for and against the colony.  Smith writes a history which is as much a sales pitch for colonizing America (and hiring Smith as a colony leader) as history.  The Virgina Company pays writers to put together ballads and pamphlets designed to convince the poor of England to come to the new world and fill a constant labor shortage.  

As with most of literature (and history and solutions to life’s problems), there were both intended and unintended affects to the literature.  After a precarious beginning and after the hard work of survival, the Virginia colonists who survived discovered cheap land, where they could work for themselves, not a noble, and being so far away from London, they got the odd idea that they could run their own affairs.  Read the history of the Virgina General Assembly; this rich history is one reason the class forum is named the General Assembly.  What began as the colony’s assembly to solve local problems ended up being one of the first semi-democratic legislatures, and it helped start the careers of folks like Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Madison, Washington, etc.  

This brings us full circle and back to where we started the semester, that is, with de Crevecours’s Letters from an American Farmer and trying to figure out what created and what is an American.  Here is the story as best as I can figure it out.  As people settled the land, the land--that is, having access to it, having separation from the mother country, and possessing a frontier--changed the people who survived.  They developed a taste for ownership.  They developed a taste for opportunity.  They developed a taste for hard work and the pay off which comes with hard work.  In the process, they became very protective of these opportunities and liberties. Eventually, they recognized that they had to get over their differences--particularly differences of religion--if they wanted to be strong enough to defend their liberties, and they developed a new way of solving problems, one based on reason, debate, and representative voting. The result was something which would come to be called an American.

As always, write with questions.

Steve

Week Fourteen Link Now Active.

The link to the Week Fourteen assignments are now active.  As promised, I kept the reading short and focused on reading about the first, 1621 Thanksgiving.  There are only two sources of the first Thanksgiving, and both are only a paragraph long.  I also included a Romantic short story on Thanksgiving by Fanny Fern, a famous woman author of the time.

Your main job this week is to produce a draft of your final portfolio's cover essay.  In the assignments, I included links to three examples of successful portfolio cover essays from last semester.  They should give you a good idea where you are headed, and you should notice that you can update your mid-term reflective essays with new work; so, you won't be writing from scratch.  Remember, you are producing a draft of the final essay.

I have looked carefully at the final three weeks of class, and I've decided to limit the introduction of new material, allowing anyone who is willing to work at it to get caught up and successfully complete the portfolio for the course.  I will be introducing a few pieces of reading from the colonialization of Virginia, but the writing will all be focused on perfecting the portfolio and class discussion.

Steve

Week Thirteen

I have been out of town for much of this past week, speaking at a conference on program assessment.  I just learned from a student that the week thirteen link did not activate...so much for automation.

Consider this past week a well deserved rest and a chance to work on drafts of your final portfolio and the reflective cover letter for it.  Of course, my trust in automation will not result in my speeding up the syllabus.  If anything, I will be slowing it down to give you a chance to synthesize what you've learned this semester in a solid draft of your reflective essay. For this last, you'll be updating your mid-term reflective essay with material form the learning reflections since mid-term.  Essentially, this means you'll be updating the mid-term learning reflection with what you learned about the Enlightenment, the foundational documents of the new United States, and the literature you've read from the founders.

Tomorrow, when I'm back in the office once again.  I'll be updating the link for Week Fourteen in person, but it will only have you reading an actual account or two of the first Thanksgiving--both short--and working on a draft of the portfolio's reflective cover essay.  It is my aim to give you as real a break as possible before the final two and a half week push to finish off the semester.

Steve

Week Twelve Assignment, Discussion, and "The Big Picture" Posts Are Now Active

Religion and Revolution

Discussion of Religion in Early American Literature and Getting the Most of Your Study

Of all the subjects we will cover this semester, religion is the most difficult for students to enjoy and to which to relate.  However, religion and the literature surrounding religion played a powerful role in everyday life in both colonial America and the Early Republic.  Unfortunately, it's role is very different than that of religion in most lives today.

Because everyone already has their own religious beliefs, and they must assume--at least provisionally--that their religious beliefs are right, students read texts which differ from their own beliefs with suspicion. hostility, indifference, or--at best--wariness.  Often, students are more focused on proving the authors we read in this section wrong or avoiding the appearance of "judging" than accepting that the authors believed their own beliefs right and built successful lives on and around these differing beliefs.  

The fundamental rule for reading anyone--authors, friends, enemies, students, spouses, professors--is to read them with rhetorical charity, that is, to assume they have good reasons for believing as they do and that they may know more about the world we share than do we.  This provisional assumption is necessary to learning and interpretation, and it doesn't mean that others hold true beliefs about the world, only they they may hold beliefs for which they have good reasons, and their beliefs *may* be better than one's own.  After all, we know that there are those who hold stupid, dangerous beliefs, or a believer may be insane.  My point here is that you must approach this reading with an open mind, charity, and respect, especially when you find yourself in disagreement.  It is in disagreement where learning can begin to happen. 

Another reason students don't get the religious writing of early America is we sometimes have trouble with understanding the importance of religion in the early American time period.  One should not assume that religion did the same personal and cultural work then as it does today.  One function of religion has always been ideological, that is, religions work to maintain and strengthen particular social power structures, ways of doing things, and ways of seeing the world.  One means religion uses to do this work is by creating the illusion that present day communities and individuals are connected though liturgy, ritual, doctrine, and tradition with past believers.  This belief in a continuous tradition of belief, ritual, and practice allows individuals to feel a sense of belonging to a community which pre-dates and promises to post-date their own brief existence; and--this is the important part,  the traditions, practices and beliefs shared with the current set of believers creates community and group cohesion in individual lives and communities in the present.

Religion does much of this work through ritual, that is, certain repeated, structured practices which have been given meaning beyond the practices themselves.  Think here of the Christian communion or, for that matter, weekly religious services and religious calendars of repeating events.  Most of us know that rituals and liturgy change over time.  Most of us know, for instance, that December 25 was most likely not the actual birthday of a the man history knows as Jesus.  Most of us "know" that interpretations of scripture and other, "holy" writings change over time.  For instance, the books of the Christian Bible have changed over time and may differ across sects, cultures, communities, as well as time.  However, because part of the cultural work of religion is to give us a sense of stability and connection to a shared past, there's a world of difference between "knowing" and "believing" such changes matter.  

Indeed, in any given community of religion, most will argue that what changes are made to belief, liturgy, or practice are made to improve, purify, or regain connection to belief and practices of an idealized past.  Hence, change itself becomes part of the rhetoric and illusion of connection to a shared, idealized past.  For example, think of the Puritans as trying to purify the liturgy and rituals of the Church of England, which they saw as hopelessly mired in Catholic traditions.  By "purifying" the Church of English of what they saw as "Papist" idolatry, the Puritans and other "Non-Conforming" sects saw them selves as helping to re-establish a religion closer to that of the "original" Christian church. 

Another reason students have difficulty understanding the place and function of the religious belief of the Early American period is that almost all of us have been raised to consider religion a private matter.  However, throughout the period we're studying, religion was a very public matter.  Governments, including most early colonial governments, had state religions, religions which served an important function in helping to support and maintain the state and the existing power structure.  

The Church of England was a national, state religion with the King or Queen of English serving as its head and God's representative on Earth.  As you will see when you read some of the documents used to justify colonial conquest of Native America, one of the means the Spanish took possession the new world was that there was a clearly defined transfer of religious and temporal power from God, to Jesus, to St. Peter, to later Popes, to the King and Queen, to the Spanish Conquerors.  The Pope gave half the new world to Spain.  The state, Catholic church made claims to temporal authority possible, plausible, and gave internal legitimacy to state rule.  To defy or fail to conform to the dictates of a temporal power was often to fail to conform to the dictates of religion.  Hence, the King and Queen of Spain could take, exile, or kill Moors or Jews. Hence, Native peoples who defied the Spanish conquest or refused to accept Catholicism could legally be treated as citizens in revolt. Hence, Dissenters in England, like the Puritans, often became the focus of political radicalism and revolution, and might behead a king.  See, for instance, what Cromwell did to Charles II.  

People, hence, took religious belief very, very seriously, seriously enough to kill, imprison,  torture, and go to war with one another.  The Spanish Inquisition began as the Spanish pushed the Moors out of the Iberian Peninsula around 1478, but the primary function of the Inquisition up until the Reformation was to ferret out heretics, closet Jews, and those who had adopted a host of dangerous ideas which ran counter to accepted state and church doctrine.  The Inquisition continued in one form or another up until 1834.  However, don't make the mistake of thinking that such treatment was limited to the Catholic Church, and its fight against heresy.   Lutherans fought Catholics and both the Catholics and the Lutherans fought  Calvinists--the forefathers of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Puritans, Dissenters, many Non-Conformists, and Baptists.  The Puritans saw Native American religious practice as devil worship, that is, if they didn't see Indians as descendants of the Lost Tribe of Israel; and, they were quick to establish Praying Towns, that is, communities of Christian, praying Indians.  The belief that Indians were part of the Biblical story, in the form of being descendants of a Lost Tribe of Israelis was the subject of a host of books, including one by Jefferson's Secretary of the Treasury; and, there was a host of "scientific" and "linguistic" theory spent proving the theory. 

Of course, religion had public and political functions.  It was a pretense as well as an object of contention, but these differences of opinion over how religion was to function within a government were taken much more seriously than they tend to be today.  States had religions.  For example, you might read and think about the implications of just one among thousands of incidents of religious violence during the Reformation (see, for instance, the Second Defenestration of Prague).  Today the Second Defenestration seems a laughable story; however, in 1618--eleven years after the settlement of Jamestown--it was a matter of propaganda, sermons, and one cause of the fighting of the 30 Years War--a series of religious wars which significantly reduced the population of an entire region of Europe.  States had religions; and, if the religion of the sate changed, then the state's relationship to its citizens changed.

My point is that what most of us today think of when they hear the word, "religion," has only a passing resemblance and shared meaning with what most considered religion to mean in the period between 1492 and 1867.  Today, religion is considered a matter of personal choice and conscious, and it may or may not be considered an important aspect of one's life; this would have been a very radical position throughout most  of the period we are studying.  We rarely make a public issue of religion; indeed, we tend to avoid public discussions of religion expect with those we regard as trustworthy. We tend to respect the right of the individual to make their own choice and, by and large, respect the choice once made, even if it is not our choice.  However, from the mid-1500s until 1815 French Huguenots fought, were persecuted, and killed and were killed on a daily basis for the "right of freedom of religious conscious." 

Today, religion *can* be a topic whose discussion is usually reserved for those who happen to share many of the same beliefs and/or a topic reserved for discussion among close friends and family.  In contrast, in Early America religion was a part of everyone's public persona, of public decision making, and of everyday life.  For instance, Jefferson was accused of being an Atheist in the 1801 presidential campaign; and, largely due to the charge, his election came down to a vote by Congress, and it took Congress over thirty votes to decide between Jefferson, Burr, and Adams.  Of course, Jefferson wasn't and Atheist, but this didn't keep many families, especially among the Congregationalist in New England, from hiding their Bibles when he was finally elected.  Why?  Because they were afraid he would use his power as president to outlaw religion and persecute those who practiced religion.  This is how state religions worked, and if a nation was Catholic or Lutheran quite often rested on the religious belief of the current ruler. 

Whether or not the charge of Jefferson's Atheism was justified, Jefferson, along with many of the founding fathers, was a Deist   As such, he put together a revised version of the New Testament, something which would have offended (and still does) many, but he rewrote the Bible because he believed that religious superstition had been introduced into what he considered the most significant moral handbook of all time.  He believed and argued in public that everyone should question their beliefs, debate religion with others, really listen to what the other person had to say, and discard any personal or received belief which didn't make sense under the light of reason and open discussion.  Re-writing the Bible and discarding some of it was consistent with the view that true beliefs conformed to how the world was known, through reason and science, to work.  Still, this was pretty radical, revolutionary thinking for many Americans, especially clergy, who thought religion and religious interpretation was the purview of specialists in the field; and, it was easy to see why Jefferson, Franklin, and Paine and other Deist might get labeled atheistic by more Conservative Christian sects.

Before beginning your reading this week, I suggest you review articles on the five most practiced American religions of the Colonial and Revolutionary eras, these being, Catholicism, Anglicanism, Calvinism, Deism, and the Society of Friends.  In these articles, look at their general overview, the basic tenets of belief, and their history between 1500 and 1850. 

About Religious Freedom:

While many colonist came to America to gain more freedom of religion, this "freedom" was interpreted as the freedom to practice a religion which was likely persecuted in their home countries.  For example, Puritans came to America to establish a colony who's state religion was based on Calvinist and Non-Conformist doctrine.  The Massachusetts Bay Colony had little tolerance for the odd Catholic or even some sects of other Calvinist.  There was Freedom of Religion, but it consisted of the freedom to practice Puritanism or leave.  Puritans wanted a church and state which was pure and as like that of their visions of the early Christian church as possible. Those who differed in their interpretation of doctrine, hence, were sometimes punished with exile or even being killed as heretics. Moreover, to quote from the Wikipedia article on Puritanism, "they believed that secular governors are accountable to God (not through the church, but alongside it) to protect and reward virtue, including "true religion", and to punish wrongdoers — a policy that is best described as non-interference rather than separation of church and state." 

Other colonies, like Pennsylvania, which was dominated by Quakers, were more tolerant of religious diversity.  Indeed, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island enjoyed much the same reputation for liberalism we today assign to California.  Whether the colony was meant to be a haven for a specific Christian sect--Pennsylvania for Quakers, Maryland for Catholics, MA for Congregationalists, etc.--if they were English colonies, the "official, state religion" remained Anglicism.  Everyone, regardless of the religion they practiced, were taxed to support the state church, and it didn't matter if they attended the Church of England or abscribed to its beliefs.  [To get a handle on how such publicly supported religious taxation worked, see the the Parson's Trail, one of Patrick Henry's early victories for colonial rights.]  If they were Spanish colonies, the state religion was Catholicism.  If French, what the state religion was depended on the current state of the Reformation in France.  The upshot was that colonies usually were focused on one single religion but might, depending on a host of variables, allow another religion to practice.  For instance, up until the Revolution, the only non-Anglican church which was built in Williamsburg was a Presbyterian Church--a sect which, at the time, shared much in common with other Calvinist sects but was associated with the Scottish peoples.

Why is a discussion of Religion such a central topic of Early American literature?

As I said above, religion permeated almost every aspect of daily life in colonial America.  People went to sermons for fun.  Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest preachers of the Great Awakening, was a kind of rock star of his era.  Women swooned at his sermons, and men cried with tears.  Thousands converted or readopted religion thanks to the preachers of the Great Awakening.  In fact, you've read about one such public, outdoor sermon in Franklin's Autobiography.  It was the sermon he went to to figure out what the big deal was about.  After listening for a few minutes, he decides to donate the copper money in his pockets.  After a few more minutes, he decides to donate the silver.  Finally, he decides to donate everything he had on him, including the gold coins.  The sermon and the speaker, a contemporary of Franklin and Jonathan Edwards, called George Whitfield was that powerful. 

Sermons were also part of everyday life in America.  Sermons were preached when the militia got together.  They were preached before hangings and at funerals of public officials.  There were sermons on Sundays, Saturdays, and--sometimes--throughout the week.  People talked about the points raised.  They debated what was said, and it wasn't uncommon for someone to take down a sermon in shorthand or for a publisher to publish a particularly popular sermon. 

Sermons were not the only popular religious literature.  This week, you'll get a chance to look at the first book published in the British Americas, the New England Primer.  It was a book designed to help very young children learn to read, but it also acted as an introduction to Puritan doctrine.  Look, for instance, at the rhymes which go with the letters "T"--"Time cuts down all, both great and small"--or for "B"--"Thy life to mend, this Book [the Bible] attend."  We would consider this fairly heavy going for the 3-5 year old audience for whom it was intended, but it was also what they were taught so early and, hence, as much a part of their basic mental furniture as the basic shapes, colors, and farm animals are of your own.

In fact, the first book children were taught to read was the Bible, and the Bible was the most owned and printed book in the colonies.  Often, because paper and printing was so expensive, the Bible would be the only book in a home, but it was read repeatedly, and everyone knew and used Biblical stories to make sense of the world.  So, biblical references were a common way to couch ideas.  For instance, this week, you'll re-read Franklin's "The Way to Wealth."  As I said, Franklin was a contemporary of Jonathan Edwards, and the language he has his speaker, Father Abraham, use to preach to his flock about how to acquire and keep wealth is that of sermons and, in many respects, echoes the biblical cadences of works like the "New England Primer" and "The King Jame's Bible."

As you re-read Franklin, look back to his Autobiography, and look again in the first part at the early history of his family of "Dissenters." Pay particular attention to the story of his Grand-father having to hide the family Bible, less they be persecuted.  Also look again at Franklin's discussion of his own religious beliefs, and think again about what Franklin's scheme to obtain moral perfection says about his religious beliefs in the place of religion and the individual in becoming moral. 

Franklin and Edwards were contemporaries.  Near the same time Franklin and Jefferson are practicing Deism, Edward's is preaching and converting thousands in what today would be seen as a hell and brimstone sermon about the total depravity of humankind and the grace of God in saving any of us from hell.  Edwards does little more, in this particular sermon, than echo accepted Calvinist Doctrine. 

Finally, put Franklin, Edwards, and Jefferson in dialogue with Thomas Paine.  Paine is best known as the author of "Common Sense" and "The American Crisis," essays which united many of the population behind the Revolution.  Assuming we have time, I'll try to fit these essays into the reading schedule for the semester.  They are essential reading of the Revolutionary period, and the Revolution would not have succeeded without Paine's writing.  He continues to be a figure which you must read to understand the American revolution.  However, this week, you'll read the first chapter of his lesser known work, "The Age of Reason."  In it, Paine carefully constructs his own profession of faith and a carefully reasoned argument against all formal religions. 

To understand the role of religion in Early America, you must understand that each of these figures thought he had it right, AND they were able to co-exist within the same colonies and later, nation.  Paine wanted rational proof for religious belief, and he argued that religion was too important to get it wrong.  Jefferson wanted pure moral tenets supported, by reason, debate, and good works.  Edwards--perhaps the most representative of popular belief at the time--thought we are all totally deprived and the clearest proof of God's love is found in His (God was always male to the Puritans.) willingness to overlook the depravity of those he choose to save from the pits and pain of a hell we all so richly deserve. 

Here's the last point to get your head around:

The fact that the right to practice one's religion was built so predominately into our Constitution and is so intimately connected to the right to free speech has much less to do with those colonists who came here to practice their personal vision of religious truth and much more to do with getting a group of colonies, each with a particular religious focus and made up of a host of communities with their own religious focus to be able to exist within the same government framework.  By choosing to depict freedom of religion as an inherent, natural, inalienable right of the individual, our founders essentially took religion off the table as a subject of public debate.  This is one reason why most Americans today don't understand how to discuss religion, and religion has become, in most cases, a private rather than a public matter.  This is brilliant politics, and we have Jefferson, more than any other founder, to thank for this solution to a very difficult public problem. 

After all, who can argue with the language of the Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom?  In essence, Jefferson says, "If we are allowed to discuss religion together, the truth will soon become apparent."  Who didn't believe that it was their truth which would triumph?  And, equally important, once the principle of the separation of church and state was established, few could deny how much easier it was for communities of differing religions and individuals to co-exist with debate as a basis of interaction.  Debate is so much easier on the individual and the land that seeking to destroy one another in an all or nothing fight, all the name of right and love.  While it may still be true that those who differ on what are, essentially, religious grounds over public polity--think here of abortion or stem-cell research--might think about defenestration of those who oppose them, anyone who does kill on such grounds are now seen as aberrant by the majority of Americans.  Debate and discussion have triumphed over coercion and a religious tyranny which is sanctioned by the state.  Rather you see current public policy as right or wrong is no longer a matter over which you kill your neighbor and the state no longer has the right to burn you for your religious beliefs, that is, as long as they don't cause you to break certain civil laws.

As always, write with questions.

Week Eleven Assignment and Discussion Links Now Active

This week you'll be discussing one of the greatest achievements of the Enlightenment, that is, the creation of the second Constitution of the United States.  You'll also have the chance to get to know another influential writer and statesman of the Enlightenment, one who--like Jefferson, Washington, and Patrick Henry--happened to be from Virginia.   

You'll discover that the controversy and debate surrounding the constitution is never ending.  Indeed, the Constitution is designed so that such reasoned debate and controversity can happen and result in changes to the Constitution.  You'll also find out that the Constitution is just a document, and it had to be drafted, debated, and revised to become acceptable by most of the citizens of the new United States.  Don't get me wrong.  The Constitution is a very important documents.  We  use it to order the structure of our government, define and limit the powers of the government, and define how we interact act with the government.  This is why we call it, like Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, a foundational document  

This week you will read about the debates surrounding the Constitution's creation in 1787, and you will learn that folks like Madison, Hamilton, and Patrick Henry were just people, having to create arguments which explain why their take on the how to construct a government was better than others.  

You'll learn that the greatest fear of many, like Hamilton and Madison, was that the government would not be strong enough to prevent factions or parties from taking power away from the people, and you'll learn the crucial difference between direct democracy and a republic, that is, that our Constitution fosters a republic, where decisions are filtered through those who are elected to represent and spend time understanding the minutiae of issues and the law most individual citizens will not have the time or inclination to understand.  

Hopefully, you'll also learn that politicians are not bad people.  Most spend their lives trying to use the power given them by the people with wisdom, but they've got to make compromises to get others to support their positions.  They are, in the final analysis, just people, and like all of us this means they make mistakes and bring all their experience and baggage into their jobs.

Your blog prompt for the week (500-750 words) is to challenge or extend Madison's take on factions and their powers in his No. 10 Federalist Paper.  Factions are simply groups, like a political party, a special interest group, or other groups of citizens who band together to try and influence government. Feel free to use the wikipedia or spark note summaries Madison's argument as a means of getting a handle on the argument or aspects of it with which you want to agree or disagree.  Your job is discuss Madison's insights in light of the modern era.  Do each of his arguments hold?  Why or why not?  How might you change them?  

In the class forum discussion for the week, you will and discuss and debate the following question:  If you were a member of a new constitutional convention--like the one meeting in and prior to 1787 but meeting today--what specific changes would you suggest to the Constitution to make it better?  Why?  

Enjoy the exploration of the Constitution.  Every citizen should read it.  It's the document that our our leaders and armed forces swear and oath to protect and defend, but the truth of the matter is that every citizen needs to protect the Constitution and understand their rights and--equally important--the responsibilities which come with the rights.

As always, write with questions.  We're now five weeks from the end of the course.  Keep plugging.  

Steve 

Week Ten Assignments Link and Discussions Are Now Active

Just as we don't speak much about civic duty today, we don't talk a lot about virtue in today's culture.  Our loss of both concepts is unfortunate.  Developing a sense of civic duty and personal virtue were considered essential aspects of cultivating one's character during the Age of Enlightenment.  A well developed sense of the duty and responsibilities one has to society, the community, and the groups with whom you are a member assured that citizens helped their communities grow and prosper.  Just look at all the public work Franklin undertook as part of his civic duty, everything from establishing the first circulation library in Philadelphia, to starting a fire house, to developing a stove, to acting as an diplomat, to starting the abolitionist society...the list goes on longer than I have here, and I don't want to get away from my main point.  Those in the Age of Enlightenment saw "giving back" and "doing one's duty" as essential aspects of living the good life.  After all, if everyone doesn't invest their time, energy, and thought ("life, liberty, and sacred honor") in helping their communities and governments thrive, then as Franklin said in the "Speech to the Constitutional Convention," which you read last week, we get the despotic government we deserve.

However, an essential component to developing a sense of one's civic duty and responsibilities is developing one's own character and, hence, ability to serve.  Without taking the time to improve your self, then you aren't and can't be in a position to "give back."  This is there the concept of virtue comes in.  Virtue is the opposite of vice.  Virtue is a quality of character or ability which promotes your own well-being and that of others.  Being hard working is a good example of a virtue.  Western thought has traditionally put the most value on the so-called Cardinal Virtues--temperance, prudence, fortitude, and justice.  However, as Franklin's list in the Autobiography and Jefferson's list of moral virtues in his letter to Peter Carr demonstrate, people differ on the virtues they value.  For a more comprehensive list of virtues, visit the wikipedia article on virtues.

Where those of the Age of Enlightenment, like Franklin and Jefferson, differed from those who came before was in the belief that we all started off as "blank slates," and our moral character--defined by a combination of our sense of civic duty and personal virtues--was a product of our education.  They based this thinking on the work of the philosopher John Locke, especially his book, "Essay Concerning Human Understanding."  Locke's notion that we are in control of our own characters and can choose to build and exercise (or destroy) and aspect of our character thought education and the experiences we choose to repeat was revolutionary , and it has become the basis of modern education.  Aristotle said that one's character is built up from that which we repeated choose to do, but the Enlightenment took Aristotle one further, and they argued that we had no character before we began to experience and that God gave man reason so s/he can choose to cultivate the character of one's choice.  Self-help was born, and we're still trying to figure out the methods which work and which don't for acquiring virtue, avoiding vice, and--hence--living the good life.

Over the next several weeks, I want you to experience self-help from the perspective of our founders and the Age of Enlightenment.  This week, I want you to begin by constructing a list of between ten and fifteen virtues which you believe would best promote your own well-being and that of society.  For each virtue, I want you--like Franklin--to write a precept or short, clear definition of what each virtue means to you.  You might get some help on this by looking at the list of virtues written by Franklin and following the links to the wikipedia articles on individual virtues found in the general wikipedia article.  You might also take a look a list called the "Habits of Mind."  Developed by Author Costa, these "Habits of Mind" can be thought of as the necessary virtues of those who want to become critical and creative thinkers.  Indeed, many of the learning outcomes for this course were developed out of Costa's Habits of Mind.

Once you have developed your "Short List of the Virtues Necessary for Well-Being and Living the Good Life," choose the one on which you need the most help to fully develop.  In your blog entry for this week, explain what it as about this virtue and your relationship to it which made it your choice on which to work.

In making your choice, remember: Enlightenment thinkers believed you could actively form your own character.  Religion might help in this quest, but it wasn't considered a necessity. For many in the Enlightenment, like Franklin, your could develop your own character by cultivating personal virtue, but only by focusing your faculties of attention, reason, and will on developing individual virtues. This was a fairly radical idea, though it had much in common with the classical Greek and Roman thought on which it was built.  It was very different from the Calvinist belief of the Puritans that your character was a function of God's will, not your own, and if you were a good person or not was a function of God having decided you were good or not.  According to Calvinist thought, if God didn't save you, you lived your life totally depraved, and society and authority in the form of the church and civil law had a responsibility to control our natural tendency toward sin and dissipation.

Figuring out Rational Methods to cultivate one's character was a very, very Enlightened way of thinking about the self.  It's one reason that diaries, journals, and autobiographies as genres developed and became so popular in the age of Enlightenment, that is, because it was at this point in our history that our own memories, insights and observations about the world, and our ability to create both personal and social progress came to be valued. This is where we came to believe in "Self-Help."  Indeed, just as our founders applied the belief that Social Contract based on self-evident facts, free minds, evidence, and reasoned debate could create a better society in which to live, they also believed that Reason and Rational, self-control of one's behavior and experiences could produce a better self.  Before moving on, note how different Enlightenment ideas about personal development is from Romantic ideas of a Self which is a produce of personal genius, sensibility, passion, and cultivated taste

The Big Picture. Assignment Links for Week Nine Is Active.

This week, we'll make a change to an earlier era of American Literature. You have been reading Romantic literature, and most of what you have read was written from about the 1830s-1860s.  As you've come to know, Romantic literature placed value on emotion, the individual, genius, the individual's sensibility or ability to feel for and with others, and the ability to act through these feelings to bring about positive change in one's own life and in society.  Like the Romantic, the Enlightenment thinker valued the individual, but Enlightenment authors valued the individual's ability to observe, reason, discuss, and debate. In many respects, Enlightenment authors were afraid of emotions and tended to associate high emotion with the religious passions which had led to the religious wars following the Reformation.  They were all about using reason and personal insight to bring about positive personal and social change.    

This week you'll get to know Thomas Jefferson. He is a good, solid example of the best of the Enlightenment.   Many of you grew up in Virginia or have been taught Jefferson all your lives.  As someone who has spent a life studying the man and his thought, let me assure you he is one of the few men whose politics is always on the money. He believes in three things: 1) the potential of humankind; 2) reason; and, 3) fighting to further one and two.

There are reasons Jefferson authored the documents you'll read and celebrate this week.  He only published a few books over the course of his lifetime, so most of his literature comes to us in the form of notes, Acts, Statues he helped to draft, through a few books, like Notes on the State of Virginia, and through a huge correspondence.  Most American Literature anthologies do a poor job of handling Jefferson, and our anthology is no exception, so this week your reading on Jefferson will be online and not from the text.

The best way to get to know Jefferson is through excerpts and small works. Read around in the Jefferson Blog, put together by Colonial Williamsburg, and through the quotations put together by the Monticello Foundation.  These quotes are sorted by topics.  Don't try to read them all.  Find a few topics in which you are interested, read the quotations and discussion, and then sit back and think.  Don't forget the sitting and reflecting part.  The theme for this week is reflection; as you read through Jefferson's first draft of the "Declaration of Independence" and compare it to subsequent drafts, like the one Franklin helped Jefferson author or those authorized by the constitutional convention, you'll see how reflection led to change.  The period of literature we are entering now--the Enlightenment--was all about personal reflection, sharing the results of the reflection with others, and creating change.  And this is the period of greatest change for America.  The Enlightenment is when the American Revolution happened, when our two constitutions were written, and when the West started the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions.  Personal reflection, discussion, almost always leads to positive change, as you will discover when you read the literature of the Revolution and Age of Enlightenment.

As you read Jefferson's "Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom," and pay particular attention to the bottom, where Jefferson points us to a foundation of his thought and that of the founders, namely, a belief that truth can be gotten at if free debate and reason are given free rein.  Think here of all you've learned as you've read the blogs of your peers, wrote yourself, and discussed in the General Assembly forum. We celebrate the Declaration as Jefferson's greatest contribution to the world, but I would suggest that the Statue is his greatest contribution.  It is not only an argument for letting go of centuries of bloodshed and prejudice over religion; it is the first public document to make reason and rational debate--Enlightenment cornerstones--the foundation of public policy and our social contract.  This is the true foundation of our democracy. In my opinion, Jefferson's "Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom" is one of the five most important moments in Western thought.  Unfortunately, it is written in long, parallel, Latinisque, grammar school--the first schools many attended in the colonial era were schools which taught Latin grammar and were, hence, called grammar schools--sentences.  It is not Jefferson's best writing in terms of style, but read the Statue carefully; it's a blueprint for how to solve any public dispute and arrive at truth. It is Jefferson at his best in terms of thinking.

Last but not least, listen to or read the *draft* of the Declaration of Independence and compare it to the Declaration passed by the Second Continental Congress.  Find the links to pursue this exercise below. It will give you some insight into Jefferson's and the nations's complicated relationship to slavery and how he and Franklin, who helped him polish the draft, differed from the other founders.  If Jefferson's owning slaves bothers you, you might also want to look at the latest research on Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings.  Figuring out that great people can do wrong things, still be great people, and still be admired and used for inspiration is one of the final steps in reaching full adulthood.

The main point in your reading this week is to realize that few of the founders--Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison especially--thought the nation they helped to create was perfect, nor did they think the Constitution set in stone.  They thought of the nation and democracy as a process of experimentation, national reflection, debate, and change.  They attempted to create a dynamic equilibrium between social stability and change, one with change built around an educated public and reasoned debate--and occasionally revolution and, as a last resort, violence--and stability disturbed by frequent elections and the ability to throw out those gaining too much authority and power.  Even with its safeguards built in, Jefferson never trusted the Constitution and the powers it gave to legislators, the executive, and the bureaucracy; Jefferson worked to limit power giving to those who are entrusted with administrating the government with the introduction of the Bill of Rights.  As you read in Franklin's Speech, Franklin thought we would have long since replaced our government with something else, either because society had deteriorated to the point where we needed and would accept a tyrant or because reason and further insight would have revealed a much less cumbersome means of government which still allowed personal liberty to be maximized.  

This week is also about reflection and personal observation.  You'll be writing an essay/blog post in which you bring together and explain what you have learned, to yourself, to me, and to your committee.  This is an exercise which smacks of Enlightenment thinking.  You reflect on your own personal growth, and--in the process of sharing your observations--you help me learn about what you are learning (or not), and you help the group learn about others and their selves.


Steve

Week Eight Assignment Description Link Not Active & The Big Picture

The assignments link for week eight is now active.

Discussion of the week's reading and writing:

Each piece of the reading you have done over the past two weeks offers one response to the major issue of the Early American Republic--the Slavery Problem. The Slavery Problem was the single most difficult problem addressed by the emerging nation. The responses you'll now read extend from civil disobedience, to writing editorials, to writing slave narratives that sought to inform others about the realities of slavery, to an attempt to lead a slave revolt, to an attempt to ferment an armed slave rebellion, to passive resistance, to attempts to find political solutions, to attempts to create  powerful symbols to fight for, and, finally, the last resort, to fighting a civil war.  

In and of it self, each text offers insight into Antebellum America, how Romantics attempted to create art which responded to political problems, various aspects of Abolitionist Literature, and a "how to" case study on the process of American political change.  As you will learn, slavery could not co-exist with American political ideals.  Leaders as early as Jefferson and Franklin recognized how fundamentally incompatible some social beliefs and practices are with our belief in natural, inalienable rights and maximized liberty within a system of just, equally applied law.  

How to expel social practices which were incompatible with the new democracy and maintain the right of the individual to believe as they will has have been a constant problem for America, and as you have and will see, literature has played a fundamental role in forming our solution to such problems. Franklin and Jefferson tried in their draft of the "Declaration of Independence" to attack slavery as a product of outdated European tyranny, but slavery was a battle Jefferson, Franklin, et al chose not to fight.  In the process, they probably--we can never be sure--preserved the new, vulnerable nation long enough, helping to embed the notion of liberty and freedom in the world views of both sides, for the nation to survive the inevitable Civil War, come back together, and retain a shared ideology of freedom.  

The reading over the next weeks addresses one of the fundamental themes of this course or, for that matter, any American Literature course:  "What are the most productive, useful, correct relationships between the individual and a democratic society?"  Embedded in this question are a host of related questions:

1. What allegiance, if any, does the American citizen own the current American government?
2. Is there a difference between civil, moral, and natural law, and what is the citizen to do when she finds herself with different views than those of her community, society, and the government?
3. Is civil disobedience the correct answer? Is it a requirement for our government to work and, hence, a civil duty?
4. What are the best tactics to form group, like minded action?
5. Are there situations in which violence is the right answer?  John Brown arrived at this answer.  He took over a national armory and attempted to arm slaves for a slave revolt.  He was killed as an example, but--as Thoreau's essay and the songs "John Brown's Body" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" show, Brown also became a martyr and powerful symbol for the North and for "correct" national behavior in the face of evil.
6. Are there differences between Brown's solution and that of the North?  Listen to the "Battle Song of the Republic" and "John Brown's Body," both the North and the South saw themselves as acting morally and in ways consistent with their belief in God.  In fact, both Brown and the North invoked the belief that God would stand by them and lead them to victory.  Look at Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" and the "Second Inaugural Address." As Mark Twain pointed out, both the North and the South shared and fostered this view.
7. Which is more important--a state's right to sovereignty or an individuals' right to liberty?  
8. Who gets to decide which liberties are worth fighting, killing, and dying for? How do we make these decisions as a society?
9. What beliefs and attitudes have helped you and others decide these questions?

Answering these questions was, is, and should not be easy.  It is now a cliche to say the Civil War divided brother and brother, but one reason brother could end up fighting and killing brother is that answering these questions comes down to individual beliefs about liberty, right, and honor.  There are times when our individual beliefs will and do put us into conflict with others  Issues like state's rights and slavery have to be resolved, and there are times when spoken discourse fails and the discourse of violence--either implied or actual--begins.

As always, contact me with questions and concerns.