volume XV, 2005 - ALL.pdf - San Francisco State University

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ex post facto
Journal of the History Students at San Francisco State University
SPRING 2005 VOLUME XIV

epf
Ex Post Facto is published annually by the students of the Department
of History at San Francisco State University, and members of Kappa Phi
Chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honor society. All views
of fact or opinion are the sole responsibility of the authors and may not
reflect the views of the editorial staff.
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Ex Post Facto
c/o Department of History, San Francisco State University
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The Ex Post Facto editorial board wishes to thank the Instructionally
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funding. Ex Post Facto also thanks Christopher Waldrep, Vernon
Sanders, and Alicia Vosberg, who have all made the process much smoother
than it might have been. Thanks should also go to the professors who
encouraged students to write the high quality papers that are included in
this publication.
Ownership of papers is retained by authors and may be submitted
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Copyright © 2005, San Francisco State University.

MANAGING CO-EDITORS
Thomas Dorrance & Andrew Oetzel
Rhiannon Anderson
Sarah Barkin
Michael Caires
Jon Cole
Corry Dodson
Sam Dupont
Patricia Melinkoff
Joyce Mills
staff
EDITORIAL BOARD
LAYOUT
Kevin Bourque
FACULTY ADVISOR
Christopher Waldrep
Michael Mott
Kevin Mummey
Jeremy Pearson
Lindsey Peregoff
Rebecca Shaw
Maryan Soliman
Sarah Stern
Robert Taylor

graduate WORK undergraduate WORK
contents
p. 1. MICHAEL T. CAIRES
Friend to Slavery: Legal Protection of Slavery
by the California Supreme Court
p. 15. HEATHER COOPER
Radical Exclusion: Nazi Euthanasia, 1939-1945
p. 41. DANIEL ELASH
The Persistence of a Muslim Sicily
p. 53. SARAH BARKIN
Little Women & Evil-Looking Men:
Rebecca Buffum Spring & the Politics of Motherhood in Antebellum America
p. 71. MICHAEL MOTT
“From Bush-League Hamlet to Major-League Metropolis:”
Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and Proposition B
p. 95. MARYAN SOLIMAN
American Fourierism: Universalizing Reform
p. 109. LEAH THOMPSON
The Revitalization of Tactical Debate in the Convention of 1843
p. 123. RHIANNON ANDERSON
Chasing Sodomy During the Renaissance:
A Comparative Study of Venice and Florence
p. 139. SAM DUPONT
Kings and Christianity:
The Politics of Religious Conversion in Seventh-Century England
p. 153. BOOK REVIEWS & HISTORIOGRAPHY

Friend to Slavery
L E G A L P RO T E C T I O N O F S L AV E RY
B Y T H E C A L I F O R N I A S U P R E M E C O U RT
E
M I C H A E L T . Caires
undergraduate WINNER: SARAH RUTH PRIZE

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he end of war with Mexico increased the size of the United States
in the biggest acquisition of territory since the Louisiana Purchase. Yet,
this victory for Manifest Destiny threatened the delicate balance between
slave and free states in the Union. The new territory unleashed a fury
of sentiment and opinions on the future of slavery in the West. Senators
and representatives from the South threatened secession and northerners
refused to endorse slavery’s westward expansion. Newspapers across the
South and the North denounced each other and some called for violent
action. To avoid secession in this volatile atmosphere, Congress admitted
California as a free state based on the Compromise of 1850. With a series
of concessions between the two factions, including allowing a new stricter
fugitive slave law for the South, Congress hoped that the compromise
could answer the problems posed by slavery. 1
T
Yet, even with the Compromise of 1850, no combination of geography
or law could stop the spread of slavery. On June 15, 1852, the San
Francisco Herald, far from the shores of Virginia or South Carolina, advertised
the sale of a “negro slave” for $300 or $100 if the local abolitionists
would like to free the slave rather than attempt to steal him. 2 While this
article might seem common in a newspaper from any of the slave states at
the time, the California Constitutional Convention of 1849 unanimously
voted to ban slavery in the new constitution. 3 California’s very presence
in the Union was a result of a national compromise in which Congress
admitted California as a free state and wrote a new fugitive slave law to
protect pro-slavery interests. Western slavery created a serious divide in
Congress during the Wilmot Proviso in 1848. Many southerners saw the
West as open to slavery by right of popular sovereignty.
GIOVANNA PABLOMO
3

4
From the first days of the Gold Rush, white southerners brought
along their slaves to California to make their fortunes, and intended to
keep them as slaves as long as they resided in the state. 4 When California
entered the Union as a free state, many southerners brought their slaves
anyway, despite the antislavery constitution. After its passage, many
southerners who moved to California during the Gold Rush wanted
two Californias, a free North and a slave South. They felt that the political
dealings in Washington did not reflect their popular will. The “two
California plan” would maintain the sectional balance and would not violate
the spirit of the compromise back in Washington. 5
Early twentieth-century works on slavery in California focus on reasons
for the failure of slavery to take root by political means. These scholars
paint a picture of a patchwork of cases where judges used more principal
than law to either dismiss or remove accused slaves from the state.Yet, they
avoid explaining effectively the way the state allowed slavery to exist even in
limited ways, rather than as an inconstant policy enforced by local judges.
Other research portrays lawmakers actively using positive law to establish
slavery in California. 6 They argue that the question of slavery in California
remained well embedded in the national debate on slavery and protected by
the southern-born group of lawmakers and the California Supreme Court.
This paper will argue that the Supreme Court of California did much to
protect slavery in California by way of judicial opinions that allowed slave
owners to keep their slaves, despite the anti-slavery constitution.
By the time California joined the Union, a series of cases demonstrated
the importance of the courts in shaping the law of slavery in
America. Before 1850, a few cases drastically changed American law dealing
with slavery and the relationship between free states and slave states.
All of these laws and cases strongly affected the thinking of the California
Supreme Court. For example, the U.S. Constitution promised that “full
faith and credit shall be given in each State to public Acts, Records, and
Judicial Proceedings of every other State.” 7 This in effect meant that comity,
or the consideration for the laws and acts of other states, required
respect by the other states in the Union. 8 In practice, this meant if a man
owned slaves which the state of Virginia recognized as his property, that
fact demanded recognition in the other states of the Union, including
states where slavery did not exist. This idea would prove vital to many
judges across the nation who would protect slavery in the free states and
territories. Furthermore, this type of argument would find its way into the
opinions of the justices in California, making comity more important than
enforcing the anti-slavery clause in the California constitution.
In addition, the U.S. Constitution also provided for the return of
fugitive slaves who attempted to escape to free states. 9 A fugitive slave law
in 1793 depended on northern state judges and officials to enforce the law
and return the slaves back into bondage. 10 Combined with the cases that
MICHAEL T. CAIRES

went before them, these two ideas helped form the court’s thinking and
influence their decisions to give favoritism to the slave owner rather than
the people who argued for their freedom.
In the era after the Revolution, states like Pennsylvania and New
York that saw many southern officials and businessmen, often let these
men bring their slaves with them to stay for a short period. In this early
period, these states became models of how a free state could interact with
slave states. Even after the North began abolishing slavery, slave owners
still traveled through the North with their slaves. However, with a growing
anti-slavery movement during the 1830s, this changed and northern
judges slowly began to rescind the hospitality given to slave masters and
their property. This meant that free states began entitling freedom to any
slave who came to live in their state past a certain time period. 11 The
Massachusetts Supreme Court completely changed this tradition in 1836
with the case Commonwealth v. Aves. 12 The Court freed a slave girl named
Med, who traveled with her master Mrs. Slater to visit her father Thomas
Aves in Boston. 13 In his opinion, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw ruled that
comity did not apply here because such a construction would mean that
a slave master could bring a slave to a free state for as long as he pleased,
when it was clear that human property did not exist in Massachusetts. 14
This case radicalized the relations between states on the subject of slavery,
fully breaking the tradition of comity on slavery as it had existed. In the
years after Aves, many northern courts ruled that any slave brought voluntarily
into the state, became free.
These basic themes of fugitive slaves, traveling with slaves, and the
issues of comity among states are at the core of the thinking behind the
opinions and decisions of the California Supreme Court in the years preceding
the Civil War. Their opinions and logic demonstrate that they did
not agree or conform to opinions like Aves but acted in a manner that
showed their loyalty to slave-state citizens and their slave property. Many
states passed personal liberty laws that prevented state officials from helping
slave catchers under the fugitive slave law. In 1842, the U.S. Supreme
Court decided in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, that the federal government could
not force the states to help in the capture of fugitive slaves. This decision
effectively negated the law of 1793 and led to the Compromise of 1850
that used federal officials to enforce the law. All of these voices contributed
to the conception of slavery in California after 1850.
The first real source for a pro-slavery voice in the state came from the
legislature. The pro-slavery politicians in California proved too strong in
Sacramento during the early years of the state to allow for any meaningful
enforcement of the anti-slavery clause of their new constitution. 15 Led
by the southerner Henry A. Crabb, these Californians (mostly from the
South and living in Southern California) not only approved of the new
national slave law, but felt that it did not go far enough in its protection
Friend to Slavery
5

6
of the rights of slaveholders traveling to the state in the years before it
became a state. 16 On April 15, 1852, the state legislature passed a new law
entitled, “Respecting fugitives from labor and slaves brought into this state
prior to her admission into the Union.” 17 This law sounded like its national
counterpart except for the fourth section stating that any slave brought to
California voluntarily before it became a state, and who refused to leave,
became a fugitive slave. Moreover, this legislation provided for state officials
to help in their recapture until 1853 (later extended to 1855). 18 Like
the 1850 federal law, many greatly feared this provision might result in the
arbitrary carrying off of free blacks into slavery. 19
Less than six months after its passage, the Supreme Court of
California would consider the constitutionality of the law in the case In
re Perkins. Yet, pro-slavery men in the state could make their voices heard
in this forum too, and placed pro-slavery men on the bench. The 1849
California constitution, allowed the public to vote for state Supreme Court
justices (one chief justice and two associate judges) for a term of six years,
with the legislature picking the chief justice for a term of two years. 20 Yet,
only white males and former Mexican citizens received the right to vote,
and with the flood of southerners into the state, the pro-slave delegation
became strong in the California legislature. 21 At the time of the Perkins
case, two of the justices on the bench (including Chief Justice Hugh C.
Murray from Missouri) came from slave states and one came from New
York. 22 The backgrounds of the justices could have played a part in their
opinion and sentiments on slavery.
Yet, if the court was proslavery before Perkins, the facts of the case
gave the court the opportunity to indicate their position. Before California
became a state, C.S. Perkins of Mississippi brought his slaves Robert
Perkins, Carter Perkins, and Sandy Jones to mine for the gold that lured
so many Americans to the state. 23 In 1851, C.S. Perkins went back to
Mississippi, leaving his slaves in the care of Dr. John Hill. In early 1852,
according to the slaves, Hill told them that they were free men, and for
several months, they created a business for themselves and had no connections
with C.S. Perkins. 24 By April 1852, Perkins decided that he wanted
his slaves back and appointed Albert G. Perkins of Sacramento as his
agent to remove Robert, Carter, and Sandy from the state. 25 On May 31,
1852, A.G. Perkins and another man by the name of Harden Scoles arrested
the slaves and brought them before B.D. Fry, a Sacramento justice
of the peace. 26 In a hearing with no jury or substantial proof, Fry decided
that the three black men were fugitive slaves, and issued a certificate for
their immediate return back to Mississippi. 27 On June 11, 1852, the three
attempted to obtain a writ of habeas corpus before Judge Aldrich of the
Sixth District. Aldrich concurred that the three men were still slaves and
the property of C.S. Perkins. 28 With the approval of a justice of the peace
and a judge, A.G. Perkins and Scoles took the three men to San Francisco
for a steamer bound for Mississippi. At this point, the black communities
MICHAEL T. CAIRES

of Sacramento and San Francisco, with the help of white sympathizers,
had raised money for a legal defense. 29 They hired the firm of Brown,
Pratt, and Leary who in turn directly petitioned Justice Alex Wells of the
state Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, which Wells granted on June
14. 30 While it is unclear why the court decided to hear the case, perhaps
the court saw this as a chance to defend the new fugitive slave law and
settle the question of slavery in California.
To this point, Chief Justice Hugh C. Murray demonstrated that he
understood the many political concerns and pressures on the subject of
slavery in the state at that time. Murray saw that this case presented a
chance to end the uproar on the subject. He contended that it was not
the job of the court to determine if the three accused were slaves, as B.D.
Fry had the full power under the act to do this. Rather, the court could
only determine if the act of 1852 conformed to the constitution of the
state. Even that consideration had political reasons: “a desire to settle this
question may induce us to advise in its adjudication.” 31 This sentiment
carried with it the more important point that the court saw itself as the
ultimate arbiter of legal power in the state. While judicial review and the
court’s power of final say on the laws and interpretation of constitutional
questions is common today, this was not always so. Indeed, the court in
their opinion asserted their ultimate power to decide the status of slavery
in the state. 32 Rather than debates in the legislature or the outcries of the
public for or against slavery, the court asserted its position to decide this
question, fundamentally increasing its responsibility in strengthening the
slave owner’s position in the state.
Murray went on to say that the law of 1852 was constitutional
because, unlike in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, where the laws of Pennsylvania
clashed with those of the federal government, California’s law supplemented
and reinforced the fugitive slave law of 1850. 33 Indeed, Murray
followed the dissenting opinion of Chief Justice Taney, who said, “The
language used in the Constitution does not, in my judgment, justify the
construction given to it by the court. It contains no words prohibiting the
several states from passing laws to enforce this right.” 34 Murray was willing
to go further than capturing actual fugitive slaves; California’s location
prevented runaway slaves from reaching its borders. Rather, Murray was
showing the extent of the pro-slavery sentiment that this particular court
possessed. This kind of comity could only mean that respect for the right
of slave owners to bring slaves into California when it became a territory
decided the case.
In respect to the rights of slave owners to bring slaves into a territory,
Murray’s opinion also sounded like the upcoming Taney opinion
in the infamous Dred Scott case. 35 Murray argued that when Mexico
gave up California, it became a territory of the United States. Since the
Constitution recognized slavery as a type of property, no local laws could
Friend to Slavery
7

8
take that away. Murray said, “If the slave holder possessed any authority
to bring slaves here under the Constitution…that right could not be
abridged or controlled.” Justice Anderson agreed and wrote, “The institution
of slavery goes with the extent of the national territory wherever
that is.” 37 To both Murray and Anderson, slavery found protection in the
Constitution of the Union. Therefore, when Perkins brought his three
slaves to the state, this in no way freed them, and enslavement followed
them, meaning that the passage of an anti-slavery constitution could not
end this condition either.
While Murray cited other state and federal cases as the rationale for
this decision, the state had good political reasons for wanting to remove
any blacks they could. Murray argued that it was well within the police
powers of the state to exclude fugitive slaves from its boundaries. As he
stated, “I have no doubt that the section of the Act now under consideration,
was originated for the purpose of securing the rights of the master.”
38 This shows the main intention of the courts: to reinforce the rights
of slave masters at the cost of the black population in the state.
Controlling that population was another clear goal of the court.
The state of Oregon did not even allow blacks to migrate into the state. 39
California now meant to achieve the same effect through the court. In
Perkins, Murray quoted another jurist in reference to slaves who entered
the state as “festering sores upon the body politic.” Of course, Carter,
Robert, and Sandy making a living in the state were the “festering sores”
that Murray despised. By 1852, the black population in California was
about 2,392. 40 The debates during the constitutional convention of 1849
revealed the deep racist views of the delegates who contemplated banning
all free blacks. If Murray freed slaves like Carter, Robert, and Sandy, this
would set a dangerous precedent for that state and would only increase the
black population, because more blacks would see California as a friendly
state they could escape to. Therefore, in one move, the court could minimize
the black population in the state with the law of 1852, and show a
committed sense of comity that favored slave states. 41
In effect, the court approved of the law of 1852. The court said that
a master who brought slaves to California could leave those slaves in the
state, and use their labor until the law expired, which, after two renewals in
the legislature, lasted until 1855. 42 This meant a master who brought slaves
into California before 1850 could use his slaves for perhaps five to seven
years before he had to worry about removing them from the state, allowing
for a limited type of slavery in the state for that period. That all slaves
brought after 1850 became free was too much for Murray to concede.
In reference to slaves who entered free states, he argued that a “slave
does not become ipso facto free or that his status is changed; but the master’s
control ceases for some want of positive law.” 43 Justice Anderson also
concurred with this opinion, but he took this idea further than Murray
MICHAEL T. CAIRES

when he argued that the clause in the state constitution banning slavery
was not active until the legislature made laws that enforced it. He argued,
“If it is designed to confer it (freedom to slaves), then it must be by future
legislation.” 44 The Perkins case highlighted how much comity the state favored
for other slave states, suggesting that the state was more than willing
to help capture runaway slaves, return them, and give a more than generous
period for visitors and entrepreneurs to use slave labor rather than let
free blacks make a living in the state. While the law of 1852 did expire, the
question of slavery had not, and the court would again decide the law of
slavery in California in the case Ex Parte Archy. 45
In the wake of Perkins, it is hard to gauge public reaction. Because
of the nature of the law, many accused slaves received little due process,
and the records of their removal are nonexistent. Many of the newspapers
did not cover the removal of accused slaves, with only a few letters of
concerned people serving as the only proof of their removal. 46 What the
newspapers did report were the pleas of slave masters asking the public for
information to find their slaves. In 1854, O.R. Rozier from Arkansas asked
for public help in finding his runaway slave Stephen. He must have felt
that at this time both the public and the law supported his claim to take
Stephen back into slavery. 47 By 1854, pro-slavery men agitated for change
and ex-southerners argued for the division of the state, because southern
Californians demanded slavery. 48 In another fugitive slave case in 1855,
the lawyers for the runaway waited until the Fugitive Slave Law expired
to let the slave stand trial. 49 The judge declared the slave free. With the
expiration of the Fugitive Slave Law, slave owners needed another law
from the legislature or judicial decision that could help maintain their
slave property in California.
Into this situation came a case that allowed the court another chance
to protect slavery. Born in Pike County, Mississippi, Archy Lee was the slave
of Charles Stovall. 50 In 1857, Stovall took Archy on a trip to California
for Stovall’s health, and in October of that year, after a hard journey, they
entered Sacramento. 51 Stovall hired Archy out for close to a month, and
Stovall opened a school for two months in Sacramento. Months later,
Stovall decided to make a return trip home and sent Archy ahead with
an agent to catch a steamer bound for Mississippi. 52 Archy ran away and
Stovall petitioned a justice of the peace for his return. The police arrested
Archy and held him in jail, but would not return him. 53 After two failed
attempts in court to return Archy, Stovall petitioned the state Supreme
Court to hear his case. Justice Burnett, a southerner from Tennessee and
ex-governor of the state, started his opinion by trying to avoid the many
emotional and political outcries heard in public when he quoted another
judge saying the case “should be decided by the law as it is and not as it
ought to be.” 54 Yet, nothing in the Archy case would follow any kind of
law. Rather, it would follow a need by the court to support slavery and the
rights of slave owners.
Friend to Slavery
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10
In Burnett’s opinion, he argued based on the idea that a traveling
person had a constitutional right to bring slaves with them on a journey.
He argued this based on the recently decided Scott v. Sandford, which fell in
line with what Anderson and Murray said in Perkins. 55 This right to travel
did not depend on comity. Rather, it was a right vested in the Constitution.
The real question in the case depended on Stovall’s status as a traveler,
visitor, or resident. The key to defining this was the actions Stovall took
while he was in the state. Burnett said, “The traveler must pursue his
journey with no unnecessary delay.” 56 To him, it was clear that Stovall did
stay longer than he needed to, when he started his school and especially
when he hired Archy out. Stovall violated his status as a visitor because
he profited from his slave’s labor while in the state. 57 He quoted an Illinois
case that stated if a person profited from a slave’s labor in a free state while
visiting then “the slave was entitled to (his/her) freedom.” 58 Unlike traveling,
the laws having to do with visiting rested entirely on comity. Since the
law of 1852 did not apply, and the legislature did not make any laws on
the subject, “the courts are under the necessity of determining how far
the rule of comity must apply.” 59 Indeed, by Burnett’s own logic, Archy
must be free. Yet, it is here that Burnett and the Archy case took one of its
strangest turns.
Indeed, Burnett believed that comity was vital to the state and wanted
to welcome slave-owners to the state. Burnett said, “The citizens of the
free states can bring their confidential servants with them-why should not
the citizens of the slave States be allowed the same privilege?” 60 At this
point, Burnett stretched comity so far that a slave master might bring his
slave to that state and put him to work for a short time. Yet, he had to concede
that Stovall’s business in that state and his hiring out of Archy violated
the Constitution. Burnett disagreed with Justice Anderson in Perkins
and said that the anti-slavery clause in the Constitution did not need any
positive law, “when power is withheld, or certain state prohibited, the provision
must, from the very nature of the case, be conclusive.” 61 From all
these facts it would seem Archy would have been free, because Stovall
could not be a visitor or traveler. Yet, Burnett gave Stovall the benefit of
the doubt and ordered Archy back into his custody and back into slavery
based on Stovall’s health and the fact that Stovall perhaps believed that
Anderson’s opinion in Perkins might have meant that he could bring his
slave to the state. 62
In the end, Burnett decided that the state needed a “plain, practical,
and efficient rule; one that all can understand.” 63 Yet, after following a line
of thinking that led to the conclusion that Archy deserved his freedom,
Burnett decided to send him back to slavery. No one in the state could
understand this decision. One newspaper wrote, “It caps the climax of all
human absurdity and lowers the dignity of the Supreme Court.” 64 Even
Chief Justice Terry, a southerner from Mississippi who vigorously defended
slavery and would later fight for the Confederacy could not understand
MICHAEL T. CAIRES

Burnett’s logic, stating, “I concur in the judgment…while I do not entirely
agree with his conclusions from the facts of the case.” 65 Even so, pro-slavery
politicians in the legislature scrambled to pass a new fugitive slave law
to make extending the travel of people like Stovall legal. But this time,
they were not able to pass this law. 66 Slavery in California made no legal
sense in the face of a clear anti-slavery constitution. When Burnett gave
the benefit of the doubt to Stovall, it appeared as if any slave owner could
receive preference in California. The unclear nature of Burnett’s decision
shows how the court favored slave owners over freedom for slaves, even
when all legal reasoning pointed to freedom. Archy eventually did earn
his freedom, but the California Supreme Court had already inflicted too
much damage to conclude that it did not endorse slavery. 67
In California, a very clear anti-slavery clause and a declaration of
rights said, “All people are by nature free and independent.” Yet, this only
applied to the whites in the state. 68 While slavery began when southern
forty-niners brought their slaves to toil in the mines, the rulings of the
Supreme Court of California reinforced, strengthened, and protected
slavery in California when the legislature made no laws to help protect
the black population of the state. Perhaps the court felt pressured by the
need to extend gracious comity to the southern states, but a fear of a large
free black population and general racism also most likely entered into the
court’s reasoning. These cases reveal how politics entered the court and
affected rulings in California. The pro-slavery legislature that passed fugitive
slave laws also won enough support to elect pro-slavery judges. During
the Archy case, when pro-slavery politicians lost power, the judges still on
the bench stood out as an oddity. However, the court became a reminder
of the pro-slavery population still in the state. The opinions of the court
took the shield of comity to protect their rulings. Yet, it is clear, especially
in the Archy case, that the court favored the slave owner to a point that few
states would be willing to go. So far in distance from the other states and
the Union, and geographically removed from the raging battles of the
looming Civil War, the cases in California proved Lincoln right: a house
divided could not stand. Both slave laws and free laws could not exist together
in the same state forever. These decisions attempted to balance the
multiple concerns of its southern slave-holding population, while respecting
an anti-slavery constitution. This, however, could not go on forever.
The nation and California would have to choose a side, for it would have
to “become all one thing, or all the other.” 69
Friend to Slavery
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12
NOTES
1
Don E. Fehrenbacher, ed., The Impending Crisis: 1846-1861 (New York: Harper & Row
Publishers, 1976), 1-17 and 90-120. For a discussion of Webster and Clay in the slavery debate,
see Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 186-195.
2
San Francisco Herald, 15 June 1852.
3
J. Ross Browne, The Debates of the Convention of California on the Formation of the State
(Washington, D. C.: John T. Towers, 1850), 43-44.
4
Rudolph M. Lapp, Blacks in Gold Rush California (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1977), 12-49.
5
Paul Finkelman, “The Law of Slavery and Freedom in California 1848-1860,”
California Western Law Review 12 (1981): 442.
6
For the earlier school of thinking, see Clyde A. Duniway, “Slavery in California after
1848,” in Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1905, Vol. 1 (Washington, D.
C.: Washington Government Printing Office, 1906), 243; and Marion Reynolds, “Instances of
Negro Slavery” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1914). More recent work on Lapp includes Paul
Finkelman, “The Law of Slavery and Freedom in California 1848-1860,” California Western Law
Review 12 (1981): 437-464.
7
U. S. Constitution, Article 4 § 1.
8
Paul Finkelman, An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity (Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 4.
9
U. S. Constitution, Article 4 § 2.
10
“Fugitive State Law of 1793” in Christopher Waldrep and Lynne Curry, The
Constitution and the Nation: The Civil War and American Constitutionalism, 1830-1890 (New York:
Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2003), 43.
11
Finkelman, An Imperfect Union, 104.
12
Commonwealth v. Aves, 35 Mass. 193, 1836.
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid.
15
Lapp, 138
16
Lapp, 138-139.
17
In re Perkins, 2 Cal. 424, 1852.
18
Ibid.
19
Lapp, 140.
20
California Constitution, 1849, Article VI § 3.
21
California Constitution, 1849 Article II § 1, and Lapp, 140.
22
J. Edward Johnson, History of the Supreme Court Justices of California: 1850-1900, vol. 1
(San Francisco: Bender-Moss Company, 1963), 43-49.
23
Lapp, 143.
24
Robert Perkins, Carter Perkins and Sandy Jones, “Affadavit,” In re Perkins Case File,
Supreme and Appellate Court Collections (California State Archives, Sacramento), and Lapp,
142.
25
C. S. Perkins, “Power of Attorney, State of Mississippi,” In re Perkins Case File,
Supreme and Appellate Court Collections (California State Archives, Sacramento).
26
In re Perkins, 2 Cal. 424, 1852.
27
B. D. Fry, “Affidavit,” In re Perkins Case File, Supreme and Appellate Court Collections
(California State Archives, Sacramento).
28
Judge Lewis Aldrich, “Affidavit,” In re Perkins Case File, Supreme and Appellate Court
Collections (Calfornia State Archives, Sacramento).
29
The black population in both Sacramento and San Francisco Counties was extremely
small. In Sacramento, the black population made up 2.6% of the population and in San
Francisco they made up about 1.28%. California Legislature, Document no. 14 Governor’s Message
and Report of the Secretary of State on the Census of 1852, of the State of California, Senate 4th Session,
1852, 31, 41.
MICHAEL T. CAIRES

30
Brown Pratt and Leary, “Petition for a writ of Certiorari,” 1852, In re Perkins Case File,
Supreme and Appellate Court Collections (California State Archives, Sacramento).
31
In re Perkins, 2 Cal. 424, 1852.
32
Larry D. Kramer, The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
33
Ibid.
34
Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U. S. 539, 1842.
35
Scott v. Sandford, 19 Howard 393, 1857; Finkelman, “Slave Law in California,” 455-
456. Also see Donn E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and
Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 232-235. For a discussion of the thinking of
the Taney Court, Fehrenbacher also says that these issues were debated in many courtrooms
around the nation when the court took the case.
36
In re Perkins, 2 Cal. 424, 1852.
37 Ibid.
38
In re Perkins, 2 Cal. 424, 1852.
39
Oregon Constitution, Bill of Rights, Section 35.
40
California Legislature, Document no. 14 Governor’s Message and Report of the Secretary of State
on the Census of 1852, of the State of California, Senate 4th Session, 1852, 6.
41
J. Ross Browne, 137, and Finkelman, “Slave Law in California,” 455.
42
Finkelman, “Slave Law in California,” 452.
43
In re Perkins, 2 Cal. 424, 1852.
44
Ibid.
45
Ex Parte Archy, 9 Cal. 147.
46
Lapp, 147.
47
Alta California, 27 September 1854.
48
Alta California, 18 December 1854.
49
San Francisco Herald, 22 April 1855.
50
Sacramento Union, 2 April 1858.
51
Ex Parte Archy, 9 Cal. 147.
52
Ibid.
53
Ibid.
54
Ibid., and Johnson, 62-63.
55
In re Perkins, 2 Cal. 424, 1852, and Scott v. Sandford, 19 Howard 451, 1857.
56
Ex Parte Archy, 9 Cal. 147.
57
Ibid..
58
Ibid.
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid.
63
Ibid.
64
Sacramento Union, 18 February 1858.
65
Ex Parte Archy, 9 Cal. 147, and Johnson, 52-61.
66
Sacramento Union, 19 January 1858.
67
Sacramento Union, 15 April 1858.
68
California Constitution, Article 1 § 1.
69
Roy B. Pasler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 2 (New Brunswick, N. J.:
Rutgers University Press, 1953), 462.
Friend to Slavery
13

Radical Exclusion
N A Z I E U T H A N A S I A , 1 9 3 9 - 1 9 4 5
X
H E A T H E R Cooper

eex
post
efacto

“The rose that does not bloom will be pulled up and tossed in the fire,
and the gardener will chop down the tree that bears no fruit.”
— Walter Gross, 1933
he history of National Socialist rule in Germany is, in many ways, a
history of atrocities. Hitler and the men and women who supported him
sought to fashion a new ethnic identity based on self-sacrifice, unwavering
allegiance, and the radical exclusion of undesirable groups. In the process,
the Nazi machine systematically annihilated millions of individual lives
considered to be of no, or negative value to the Volk. While much attention
has been duly paid to the destruction of Jewish lives in the Holocaust,
new scholarship has emerged over the last two decades to shed light on
the concurrent program of Nazi euthanasia, which aimed at cleansing the
ethnic body politic from within. In the quest to create a strong and healthy
racial state, it was not only necessary to rid Germany of foreign elements
like Jews and Gypsies, but also to cleanse the Aryan ranks of the unfit
— those mentally or physically handicapped individuals whose existence
threatened the strength and health of the Volk as a whole. As Hitler wrote
in Mein Kampf, “A stronger race [must] drive out the weak” and replace
“the so-called humanity of individuals” with “the humanity of Nature
which destroys the weak to give his place to the strong.” 1 T
In a society that
demanded that the interests of the Volk be placed above the interests of
any individual, destroying those who could neither care for themselves nor
contribute to society became a kind of moral imperative — an act of
devotion for the greater good.
Feminine Witchcraft in Medieval Europe
17

18
The euthanasia program began in the fall of 1939 with a secret decree,
issued on Hitler’s personal stationary, which charged Dr. Karl Brandt
and Phillip Bouhler with recruiting doctors to grant “mercy death[s]” to
handicapped patients who were considered “incurable.” 2 Under the direction
of the administrative headquarters established at Tiergartenstrasse
4 (T4), approximately 5,000 children and 70,000 adults met their deaths
at the hands of physicians and nurses in German killing centers between
1940 and August 1941. 3 Thousands more died during the period of “wild
euthanasia” that followed Hitler’s 1941 halt order, which had put an end
to the gassing of institutionalized patients in special centers, but not to
the starvation diets and lethal injections that could be carried out on an
individual and less public basis in any institution. 4
Viewed within the limited context of other atrocities, like the concentration
camps and Einsatzgruppen sweeps, the euthanasia program
might only be seen as another example of a peculiarly Nazi disregard for
human life. But the devaluation of individual life was not peculiar to the
Nazi power of 1933-1945. It was, rather, an integral facet of a eugenics
and racial science movement, which predated the Nazis by decades, and
gained increasing influence among German psychiatrists and anthropologists
from 1900 on. Furthermore, the tendency to devalue individual
life and create a hierarchy of worth based on one’s ability to contribute
to society grew out of the visceral and intellectual response of many
Europeans to the devastating loss of life suffered in World War I. When
early advocates of euthanasia asked their readers how one could justify
the maintenance of “worthless” lives in institutions while the healthy
died en masse at the front, 5 they posed a question, which had already
crept into the subconscious of many Germans’ minds: Were individual
lives not of relative value in an age in which millions were sacrificed in
the name of a higher cause? When Hitler backdated the euthanasia order
signed on October 1, 1939 to the outbreak of the war in September,
he played on an association between war and sacrifice, which Germans
had accepted for years. 6
What was peculiar to the Nazis was the transformation of thought
into radical action. In the hands of the T4 administration, a pre-existing
inclination toward euthanasia and theoretical discussions of its merits
became a concrete program for the destruction of “life unworthy of life”
on a mass scale. 7 This transformation of theory into practice was made
possible by three principle factors: a government-sponsored bureaucracy
specifically devoted to euthanasia, which compartmentalized tasks and
created an environment of “free-floating responsibility;” 8 the training and
indoctrination of medical staff in the rhetoric of eugenics and racial science
prior to and during their participation in the euthanasia program;
and the natural tendency of the perpetrators to create mechanisms for
distancing themselves from the reality of unpleasant, or difficult tasks.
Through an examination of the above factors, this essay attempts to un-
HEATHER COOPER

derstand how it was possible to justify, commit, and deny responsibility for
the murder of almost 100,000 handicapped children and adults between
1939 and 1945.
Historical interest in racial science and euthanasia in Nazi Germany
has increased over the last two decades, as historians have sought to understand
the origins of Nazi violence and the Final Solution, the racial hierarchy
of the Third Reich, and the psychology of perpetrators in various
programs of radical exclusion. The work of Henry Friedlander, Michael
Burleigh, and Robert Jay Lifton has been particularly valuable in addressing
these topics. Friedlander’s The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia
to the Final Solution argues that euthanasia was one stage along a continuum
of exclusion, which first sought to exclude undesirables from future generations
and then to eradicate them from the present one through systematic
extermination. His work is primarily concerned with examining the
ways in which the T-4 administration and bureaucracy served as a model
for the Final Solution, which followed. Burleigh provides a different context
for the euthanasia program in his books, Ethics and Extermination and
Death and Deliverance, when he considers the ways in which eugenics, racial
science, and changes in psychiatry before 1933 created an environment
that made organized euthanasia possible under the Nazis. 9 Finally, Lifton’s
psychohistorical study in The Nazi Doctors introduces some valuable questions
about the psychological mechanisms employed by perpetrators in
the “medicalized killing” operations of the Third Reich. 10
Most of what we know of the Nazi euthanasia program is from the
testimony and documentation of the post-war trials, which have given a
face to the perpetrators and a shape to the T-4 administration that necessitated
their crimes. All the books mentioned above, and many others not
touched upon here, culled their evidence from similar sources and utilized
a common outline of perpetrators, victims, and administration in their examinations
of euthanasia. What separates them is the context in which that
basic outline has been placed and the questions which each author has
asked of those sources. The research presented in this essay is obviously
considerably more limited than that of Lifton, Burleigh, or Friedlander —
and, yet, it still works with the same basic outline of information relating
to perpetrators, victims, and the T-4 administration. I have attempted to
place the Nazi euthanasia program within the context of an earlier eugenics
and race hygiene movement, which frequently devalued individual life,
in order to establish that an environment conducive to euthanasia was already
forming in Germany prior to the Nazi rise to power. By examining
the T-4 administration and organization, indoctrination and training of
medical staff, and distancing mechanisms of perpetrators, I hope to offer
a tentative and partial answer to two questions central to the historiography
of this topic: How did the Nazis transform theoretical discussions of
the merits of euthanasia into a systematic program for the destruction of
“life unworthy of life?” And how was it possible for the men and women
Radical Exclusion: Nazi Euthanasia, 1939-1945
19

20
responsible for tens of thousands of deaths to deny their responsibility,
justify their actions, and separate themselves from the physical and moral
meaning of what they did?
PRELUDE TO EUTHANASIA:
Eugenics and Psychiatry before 1939
The first steps toward creating a hierarchy of the valued and valueless
in German society were taken in the name of eugenics. Inspired by
Darwin’s theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest, eugenicists
applied those same principles to man and began to see the successes
and failures of their society as biological matters of selection, counter-selection,
and hereditary fitness. At the same time, individuals were reduced
to “aggregates of ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ biological materials” whose value
was determined by their contribution to, or burden on society; such a contribution
was understood both in terms of hereditary traits and capacity
for production and labor. 11
Alfred Ploetz and William Schallmayer were two of the foremost
German eugenicists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Despite their early resistance to notions of scientific racism, the Nazis
would later credit their work with creating the biological foundations of
the Nazi racial state. 12 In 1895 Ploetz published the book, The Efficiency
of our Race and the Protection of the Weak, which argued that genetic health
ensured national efficiency and that welfare and modern medicine were
counter-selective forces that protected inferior genetic elements at the
nation’s expense. He coined the term “racial hygiene” to describe the process
of cleansing and strengthening the national body. 13 Schallmayer was
similarly concerned with collective health and efficiency and argued that
an individual’s primary function was to contribute to the regeneration
of society by producing healthy offspring. He seemed to foreshadow the
Nazi ideal of devotion and self-sacrifice when he wrote that the “law of
nature, the total subservience of the interest of the individual to that of
the species, must also hold true for human development.” 14 Yet neither
Ploetz nor Schallmayer advocated negative eugenics measures like forced
sterilization, or euthanasia. They were, rather, primarily concerned with a
positive eugenics that would encourage genetically compatible marriages
and increase the reproduction of healthy offspring. 15
Other scientists of this period perceived a dire threat to the health
of the nation, which could not be silenced by positive eugenics alone. In a
1904 book entitled The Riddle of Life, zoologist Ernst Haeckel specifically
advocated euthanasia of the handicapped when he wrote:
What profit does humanity derive from the thousands of
cripples who are born each year, from the deaf and dumb,
from cretins, from those with incurable hereditary defects etc.
HEATHER COOPER

who are kept alive artificially and then raised to adulthood?
… How much of this loss and suffering could be obviated, if
one finally decided to liberate the totally incurable from their
indescribable suffering with a dose of morphia. 16
Later advocates of euthanasia would couch their arguments in strikingly
similar terms, emphasizing both the burden on society represented by an
ever-growing population of “cretins” and the “indescribable suffering” that
made their eradication an act of mercy. In an influential treatise published in
1920, Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche considered the merits of euthanasia
for those incurable individuals whose lives were “not only completely worthless
but [were] of negative value.” 17 In language that turned the intended victims
of euthanasia into inhuman agents of degeneration and the would-be
perpetrators into victims and heroes, Binding and Hoche called on Germans
to consider the necessity of relieving themselves and the handicapped of the
burden of nonproductive lives. While they insisted that euthanasia should
only be permitted when the person involved viewed it as a “release,” this
standard was only applicable to individuals with a terminal disease, such as
cancer. 18 In contrast, the incurably insane were said to “have neither the will
to live nor to die” and, therefore, euthanasia could be carried out without
“clash[ing] with any will to live which would have to be broken.” 19
Binding and Hoche’s Permission for the Destruction of Worthless Life did
not meet with immediate approval in all psychiatric circles, but it certainly
provoked discussion. It was, in fact, a very topical subject just two years after
the end of the twentieth century’s most devastating war to date. Germany
suffered unprecedented military and civilian casualties in WWI and these
losses created an environment in which the worth of an individual life had
to be weighed against the hundreds of thousands who were already dying
and the millions who lived on because of their sacrifice. Germany’s psychiatric
institutions felt the ravages of war just as the general population
did. Accounting for normal peacetime mortality rates, Michael Burleigh
estimates that nearly 72,000 patients died in institutions 1914-1918 as a
result of hunger, disease, or neglect. 20 In his 1920 address to the German
Psychiatric Association, chairman Karl Bonhoeffer seemed to suggest that
Binding and Hoche’s call for “a higher morality” which would “cease …
implementing the demands of an exaggerated concept of humanity” was
already being answered: 21
It could almost seem as if we have witnessed a change in the
concept of humanity. I simply mean that we were forced by
the terrible exigencies of war … to get used to watching our
patients die of malnutrition in vast numbers, almost approving
of this, in the knowledge that perhaps the healthy could be
kept alive through these sacrifices. 22
Many of the psychiatrists who were faced with limited resources during
the war believed that they must acknowledge a hierarchy of human value
and be willing to take from the weak in order that the strong might survive.
After the war, the principle of relative worth continued to be applied.
Radical Exclusion: Nazi Euthanasia, 1939-1945
21

22
Armed with a new concept of individual worth, in the 1920s psychiatrists
equated one’s ability to contribute to society with one’s physical
and mental health. Following the example of Hermann Simon, an asylum
director at Gütersloch, occupational therapy became widespread in German
asylums and offered a means for classifying patients according to the
tasks they were capable of performing. 23 Burleigh estimates that by the
end of the 1920s, up to 80 percent of institutionalized patients were doing
some form of work, ranging from basic manual labor and weaving to gardening,
office work, and factory labor. 24 The full significance of productivity
as a measure of worth would be felt after 1939 when productive capacity
became one of the criteria for deciding which patients to include in the
euthanasia program. 25 In the meantime, occupational therapy provided a
free labor pool to institutions for their own maintenance and came close
to realizing racial hygienist Ignaz Kaup’s 1910 vision of a “work colony”
in which worthless lives could “repay the money spent on them.” 26 As state
expenditures on asylums fell, patient labor became critical to make up for
the food and staff shortages, which institutions faced.
But by insisting on productivity as a sign of health and worth, occupational
therapy created an environment in which those who were unable
to work, or to advance beyond the more basic skill sets, were considered
incurable and, therefore, inherently inferior. Such individuals were,
as Binding and Hoche suggested, “not only completely worthless but …
of negative value.” 27 Given the burden that their care placed on society
and the risk that their diseases posed to the nation’s gene pool, incurable
patients were increasingly labeled “degenerates” because of their alleged
role in the degeneration of the Volk. In what amounted to a wave of racial
hysteria, eugenicists feared that a declining birth rate among the healthy
and the uncontrolled reproduction of degenerates would eventually lead
to a society in which inferior elements outnumbered the genetically desirable.
28 The solution to this crisis not only involved government programs
to educate the public about racial hygiene, create genetically compatible
couples, and increase the reproduction of healthy offspring, but also a
compulsory sterilization program to prevent the hereditarily ill from reproducing
additional burdens.
The sterilization program, initiated in July 1933 under the Law for
the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, was responsible for
the sterilization of 200,000-400,000 people. 29 The sterilization program
cannot be adequately treated in this essay, but it is necessary to note certain
consistencies between its organization and that of the euthanasia program
that followed. The Sterilization Law named those diseases which were to
be considered hereditary, including congenital feeblemindedness, schizophrenia,
manic-depression, hereditary epilepsy, hereditary Huntington’s
chorea, hereditary blindness and deafness, severe hereditary physical deformity,
or severe alcoholism. 30 After being reported by health officials
and having their cases heard in Genetic Health Courts, individuals with
HEATHER COOPER

these conditions could be forcibly sterilized under the law. 31 A similar list
of hereditary and, therefore, “incurable” diseases was used to classify and
select patients for the euthanasia program. While euthanasia never operated
publicly in the way that sterilization did, it nonetheless relied on the
decision of medical experts similar to those in the health courts to decide
the fates of patients who were reported by local officials. Both programs
relied on the cooperation of government bureaucracy and medical professionals
in order to exclude the handicapped, first from future generations
and then from the existing one. 32
When one considers the atrocities that followed the outbreak of war
in 1939, one is confronted by events so sweeping and utterly destructive
that they seem to almost stand outside of time. Yet it would be wrong to
consider the horrors of the ghettos, extermination camps, and T-4 killing
centers without acknowledging the historical context which made them
possible. The Nazi euthanasia program was not a random development
driven by the whims of a madman. It was, rather, the final stage in a
decades-long movement toward the devaluation of individual life by the
scientific community. Understanding the development of the eugenics
movement in Germany and the significance of radical changes in psychiatry
prior to 1939 is necessary for any informed understanding of what
followed. Now one must ask, if euthanasia was the next point on a continuum
of radical exclusion, how did the Nazis make that leap possible?
ADMINISTRATING DEATH:
T-4 Operations
The creation of a government-sponsored administration specifically
responsible for euthanasia was a critical development in the process of
transforming theoretical discussions into a concrete program of radical
exclusion and annihilation for the handicapped. By compartmentalizing
tasks and creating an environment of “free-floating responsibility” 33 the T-
4 administration made it possible for men and women to participate in the
destruction of lives deemed “not worth living.” 34 In 1939, the administrative
headquarters for the euthanasia program were established in Berlin
at a seized Jewish property located at Tiergartenstrasse 4. Hitler’s secret
decree had granted authority for overseeing the program to Karl Brandt
and Philip Bouhler, both of whom would delegate various responsibilities
to lower authorities and functionaries once the T-4 organization was established.
The euthanasia program was primarily under the direction of
the Chancellory of the Führer (KdF), but its various tasks were often carried
out in coordination with the Reich Ministry of the Interior (RMdI).
As head of the KdF, Philip Bouhler placed the euthanasia program under
the direction of Victor Brack in Central Office II. Brack assigned
the children’s euthanasia program to Hans Hefelmann and Richard von
Radical Exclusion: Nazi Euthanasia, 1939-1945
23

24
Hegener of Office IIb, while he continued to oversee the general operations
of adult euthanasia himself. 35 From their central headquarters, these
men and the one hundred on-site staff members who supported them
orchestrated the reporting, selection, transport, murder, and death records
of patients chosen for euthanasia. 36 An examination of the process of
selecting, transporting, and killing patients in the children’s and adult euthanasia
programs will reveal the degree to which T-4 compartmentalized
tasks and established hierarchies of shifting responsibility.
The first stage in the euthanasia program was collecting information
about prospective victims and making judgments as to who was capable
of recovery and who was not. In 1939 RMdI issued a decree to state
governments requiring that midwives and doctors report the births of
newborns suspected of having idiocy, mongolism, microcephalie, severe
hydrocephalus, deformities, or paralysis. Doctors were also required to
report all children under the age of 3 with such conditions. 37 In July of
1941, a new order was issued requiring doctors, midwives, and medical
personnel to report all minors, up to the age of 17, who were known to
have crippling handicaps. Even teachers were called on to report students
in their charge who suffered from various hereditary ailments. Doctors
and midwives faced a fine, or month-long imprisonment for failure to report
appropriate cases to the authorities, 38 but received 2RM for each case
they did report. 39
It was Richard von Hegener’s responsibility to review the reports on
children as they came in and choose those cases in which he felt euthanasia
was necessary. Triplicate copies of the selected children’s reports were
made and distributed to the members of the Reich Committee for the
Scientific Processing of Serious Genetic Diseases, which was composed of
three doctors appointed by Karl Brandt. Once the committee discussed
the case and informed Brandt of their approval, his signature sealed the
fate of the child concerned. 40
The adult euthanasia program utilized a similar means of reporting
and selection. On September 21, 1939 Department IV of RMdI issued
a circular to state governments requiring them to report all clinics
and institutions in their jurisdiction in which “mentally ill, epileptics, and
the feeble minded are cared for on a long-term basis.” 41 Philip Bouhler,
Werner Heyde, and Friedrich Nietsche drafted questionnaires to send to
each of the reported institutions in order to collect information on their
patients. 42 These were forwarded to the institutions on October 9, 1939 43
under the auspices of the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration
of Severe Hereditary Ailments, the T-4 front organization responsible for
data collection. 44 Institutions were not informed of the purpose of the
forms and, early in the program, generally assumed that they were for
statistical purposes only. In most cases, they were given 2-3 weeks to complete
questionnaires on hundreds of patients. When T-4 was not satisfied
HEATHER COOPER

with the speed or accuracy with which institutions completed the forms,
it dispatched a team of experts to do the job themselves. Thus, in some
cases, patients were classified and reported by inexperienced medical personnel
totally unfamiliar with their history. 45 The staff of the Schönbrunn
asylum described a visitation from one of the T-4 teams as the “spreading
of a burial shroud over the asylum.” 46
The questionnaires were single-page forms with fill-in-the-blank
spaces to answer specific questions regarding the condition of each patient.
Most questionnaires required the following information: name and
address of asylum, patient name, birthplace, citizenship and race, diagnosis,
detailed statement of the nature of employment, length of time in asylum,
whether a criminal patient and what offenses if so, address of next
of kin, whether patient was regularly visited, whether patient has relatives,
address of legal guardian, and who was responsible for asylum costs. 47
Institutions were required to report all patients who could not perform
more than basic tasks and were suffering from schizophrenia, epilepsy, senility,
paralysis, feeble-mindedness, encephalitis, or Huntington’s chorea;
in addition, patients who had been continuously confined in institutions
for more than five years, or who had been confined as criminal lunatics
were also reported. 48 Thus the criteria for selection were largely based on
the categories of hereditary diseases established under the sterilization
program of 1933, along with an added emphasis on the patient’s productive
capacity, which was in keeping with the eugenics thought of the
last several decades. By 1941, productive capacity had become an even
more critical factor in selection, as T-4 decided to eliminate all patients
who could not work, “not only those who are mentally dead.” 49 Statistical
analyses of those who were eventually killed reveals that most of the
patients chosen from state hospitals were designated as schizophrenics,
while those from church-affiliated institutions were more often diagnosed
as feeble-minded, or epileptic. 50
Upon completion, the questionnaires were returned to Dr. Herbert
Linden at RMdI. Photostats were made and forwarded to four experts
chosen from among ten to fifteen doctors on an expert medical panel organized
by T-4. 51 These junior experts marked a corner of the form with a
red + sign to signal inclusion in the euthanasia program and a blue – sign
to designate exclusion. 52 Then Drs. Heyde or Nietsche, as chief experts,
reviewed the decisions of the junior experts, made a final judgment regarding
the patient, and informed Dr. Linden so that he might arrange for
the patient’s transfer to a killing center. 53 Junior experts received hundreds
of questionnaires at a time and were paid according to the speed with
which they processed them: 100RMs for 500 forms per month, 200RMs
for up to 2,000, 300 RMs for 3,500, and 400RMs for over 3,500. 54 Dr.
Hermann Pfanmüller, a junior expert and head of the children’s euthanasia
center at Eglfing-Haar, testified that he received at least 159 shipments
of 200-300 questionnaires each before August 1941. 55
Radical Exclusion: Nazi Euthanasia, 1939-1945
25

26
After patients were chosen for euthanasia, they had to be transferred
to facilities designed for that purpose. In the case of the children’s
program, parents were generally consulted and informed that
since all traditional therapies had failed, it was necessary to transfer
their child to a special center where more intensive therapies could
be tried. Parents were told that their children might be “healed” in
the new setting, but also ran the risk of death from complications
of the treatment. 56 Made to feel that no hope existed in the current
setting and a cure might be possible if the risk was taken, many
parents consented. In a twisted manipulation of the truth, doctors
interpreted parents’ permission for intensive therapy as consent for
the murder of their children. 57
Relatives were not consulted for the transfer of adult patients.
Another of T-4’s front organizations, the Charitable Foundation
for the Transport of Patients, Inc., contacted institutions with a list
of patients who were to be moved to an undisclosed location. Most
lists contained the names of 50-100 patients and institutions were
required to prepare their medical records and personal belongings
for the trip. 58 Patients were generally assigned a number at the time
of transfer so that they could be readily identified later; in one case,
numbers were written in ink on their wrists. 59 Patients were often sedated
before the trip in order to calm their fears about where they
were going and make them compliant for the staff who accompanied
them to the killing centers. 60 The surrendering institutions were told
not to inform relatives of the transfer or location of patients. 61 Shortly
after the patient’s death, which usually occurred within hours of arrival
at the killing center, his or her relatives received a notification
of transfer from the receiving institution, which informed them that
no visitation was possible at that time “for reasons connected with the
defence of the Reich.” 62 After waiting a period of 10 days or more,
a second notice was sent informing relatives of the patient’s sudden
death and subsequent cremation. 63
The final stage of the euthanasia program took place in the actual
killing centers and wards designed for the elimination of patients.
Children were generally transferred to special pediatric wards
within existing institutions, where they were observed for a few
months prior to being killed by slow starvation, or overdose. 64 The
method of killing for children was left somewhat to the preference of
the head physician at each center. Dr. Pfanmüller of Eglfing-Haar,
for instance, preferred the more “natural” method of starvation to
rid Germany of its “living burdens.” 65 Other doctors preferred using
progressively high doses of Luminal until a child “lapsed into continual
sleep” and died. 66 In some cases, the parents would be contacted
before the administration of the drug, informed that their child was
gravely ill, and given the opportunity to visit him or her before she
HEATHER COOPER

died. 67 In other cases, they simply received a condolence letter after
the fact, which listed a fictitious cause of death and asked them to
consider that their child’s death had been a release from “great and
incurable suffering.” 68
Adults who were transferred to killing centers during the first phase
of euthanasia went through a very different process than the children who
died in pediatric wards. Six killing centers were established in Germany
by 1941, although only four were in operation at any one time; they were
known by their locations at Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hartheim, Sonnenstein,
Bernburg, and Hadamar. Patients were generally taken to an
undressing room upon arrival and instructed to undress so that they could
be bathed and deloused prior to being shown to their beds. Their clothes
and belongings were put in a pile, labeled, and numbered so that personal
effects could either be returned to relatives after death, or confiscated by
the Charitable Foundation for Institutional Care. 69 The Charitable Foundation
was another of T-4’s front organizations, which was responsible for
collecting payments for the care of patients up to, and sometimes beyond,
the time of their death. In addition, it occasionally confiscated the more
valuable property of victims for its own use. 70 Patients had to open their
mouths so the staff could see whether they had any gold teeth and those
that did had a four-digit stamp pressed against their chests so the teeth
could be extracted after death.
Patients were then led into an examination room where a doctor
checked to make sure that their medical records were complete and considered
a reasonable cause of death to list on the death certificate for each
of the patients before them. At some sites, doctors marked patients at this
time who were considered of scientific interest so that their bodies could
be set aside for autopsy later. 72 Some patients were also given a small dose
of sedative at this time. 73 They were then led into a separate room where
they were photographed while naked in order to preserve their images for
anthropological research. 74
Following this, patients were led into the gas chamber, which was
disguised as a “shower room” complete with a tiled floor, tiled walls, and
a row of showerheads attached to the ceiling. 75 Anywhere from 20 to 150
patients might be gassed at one time. 76 It was the responsibility of the
physician-in-charge to turn the lever that released gas into the chamber
through an overhead pipe. The advocates of euthanasia considered carbon
monoxide poisoning a humane killing method because it supposedly
allowed the victim to “simply fall asleep under the gas and feel nothing
more.” 77 However, more objective witnesses remembered watching
through the peephole as men and women died, “semi-collapsed, others
with their mouths terribly wide open, their chests heaving.” 78 Patients
were generally unconscious in five minutes and dead in ten. After a few
hours of ventilation, their bodies were dragged from the chamber by stok-
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28
ers, who extracted gold teeth as needed, cremated two to eight bodies at
a time, and ground down the bones that did not burn with a mill. 79 Approximately
3kg of bonemeal was used to fill each urn to be sent to the
patient’s relatives. 80
Each killing center had its own Special Registry Office in which official
causes of deaths were chosen and recorded. 81 T-4 provided doctors
with a list of sixty-one possible causes of death, their corresponding symptoms,
and the merits and demerits of using it for patients of different
sexes, ages, and conditions. Pneumonia, for example, was listed as “an
ideal cause of death for our action” because the public regarded it as a
sudden and critical illness and it could occur at any age in both sexes. At
Hadamar, the Registry Office used a map and colored pins to plan the
timing of death notifications so that no single area would receive a large
batch of condolence letters at one time. Alternatively, they might send
the information for patients killed at Hadamar to another killing center
so that the death notices could be sent from there; in this way, public
suspicions regarding the nature of Hadamar could be kept at bay. 82 Once
all these details had been arranged, the condolence department in each
center prepared a relatively generic letter for the patient’s relatives notifying
them of his or her death, the fact that the body had already been
cremated, and instructing them as to how to collect the urn. 83
The program of “wild euthanasia,” which followed Hitler’s August
1941 halt order may be seen as distinct from the organized efforts of the
T-4 administration prior to that date. Wild euthanasia continued in the
spirit of T-4, but was based more on the initiative of individual institutions
and medical staff than on a formal program of selection issuing
from Berlin. In 1942, the directors of Bavarian asylums held a conference
at the Ministry of the Interior to discuss the need “for the asylums to do
something themselves” now that gas chambers were unavailable for the
murder of the handicapped. They decided on a method of starvation
using a “special diet” with no fat, meat, bread, or carbohydrates for those
patients who were incapable of work. 84 Many institutions in Germany
introduced a similar program of starvation, which gradually eliminated
patients. In other cases, patients were given medication orally, or by injection,
which caused them to lose consciousness and eventually die. 85 Despite
its less organized nature, the wild euthanasia program still managed
to compartmentalize tasks and shift responsibility. Different nurses within
the same killing ward had responsibility for different tasks, so that the
person who handed out drugs was not the person who administered them,
or the person who disposed of the bodies. 86 Nurses who gave injections
focused on the task before them rather than on its consequences, so that
giving sedatives to children became a matter of calming the “impaired”
and “restless” rather than an act of murder. 87 Furthermore, most nurses
felt that they were relieved of responsibility because they were simply following
the instructions of the doctors they were trained to serve. 88
HEATHER COOPER

It is unsettling to consider how few people were necessary to bring
about the deaths of nearly 100,000 individuals in the five years of euthanasia
operations. As already stated, approximately 100 staff worked at
T-4 headquarters in Berlin. 89 Approximately 60 physicians may have been
involved at some level of selection. Each killing center was manned by one
physician-in-charge and one or two assistant physicians. 90 In addition, killing
centers had a small staff to handle patient transportation, disposal of
bodies, administrative duties, and facility maintenance; Hadamar managed
all this with only 25 workers. 91
Friedlander describes the bureaucratic process of killing carried out
by this relatively small number of men and women as “assembly line mass
murder.” 92 The T-4 administration contributed to the process of mechanized
killing by placing individual perpetrators at one point on the assembly
line and assigning them specific, compartmentalized tasks. Different
departments at T-4 headquarters were responsible for the reporting, selection,
transport, and death notifications of patients. Doctors at institutions
completed questionnaires, junior experts who had neither visited the
institution nor met the patient marked the questionnaires and prepared
them for review by a senior expert. Different staff members greeted the
patients at different steps in the killing process — from the time of transport,
to the undressing room, to the examination room, to the gas chamber,
and finally to the crematoria. The death records for patients killed at
one institution might be completed and processed at another. Those who
autopsied the bodies were not necessarily those who had released the gas
into the chamber and killed them. As other researchers of the Nazi bureaucracy
have noted, the compartmentalization of tasks often created a
tendency in the perpetrators to see only the task before them and operate
with “moral blinders” as to the larger process at work. 93
The compartmentalization of tasks not only made it possible for perpetrators
to deny, or ignore the larger significance of their actions, but also
created an environment of “free-floating responsibility” in which no single
perpetrator felt responsible for the ultimate fate of patients because his or
her actions were only one part of a larger process. 94 On the one hand, this
is an example of the well-known protest of perpetrators that they were “just
following orders.” On the other hand, it was a very real process of disassociation,
which made it possible for individuals’ technical responsibility to
the administration to eclipse any moral responsibility to fellow human beings.
95 A focus on compartmentalized tasks and disassociation from moral
responsibility were two of the principle means by which perpetrators distanced
themselves from the full meaning and significance of their actions.
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30
MAKING BIOLOGICAL WARRIORS:
Staff Training and Indoctrination
One of the principle questions under consideration by historians of
Nazi euthanasia is how it was possible for doctors and nurses who had sworn
to protect life to willingly participate in a “medicalized killing” operation designed
to eradicate it. 96 While there can be no definitive answer to this question,
a partial explanation may be offered by considering the training and
indoctrination that doctors and nurses went through prior to and during
their participation in the euthanasia program. By teaching the principles of
eugenics and racial hygiene, instilling the values of individual sacrifice and
service to the Volk, and dehumanizing the handicapped, medical education
under the Nazis trained doctors and nurses to be “biological soldier[s]” who
cared for the health of the nation before that of the individual. 97
As already discussed, eugenics and racial hygiene gained growing
influence in German scientific circles from 1900 on. By the 1920s, these
studies were fundamental components of psychiatry, medicine, and anthropology.
By 1932, over forty courses in race hygiene were offered at German
universities. 98 By 1936, race hygiene was considered an obligatory course
for the medical profession in many universities and was incorporated into
the medical exams required of students prior to graduation and actual
practice. 99 Training continued after graduation in various formats. The
1935 Physicians’ Ordinance required that all physicians under the age of
sixty attend a three-week course on recent medical developments in racial
hygiene; by 1936, 5,000 doctors a year were receiving specialized training
in this field. 100 As one of the premier research centers for racial science and
eugenics, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology had trained over
1,000 doctors in “genetic and racial care” by 1934. 101 The Office of Racial
Politics, headed by Walter Gross, trained medical professors as well as political
educators in the importance of racial hygiene and offered dozens of
medical seminars each year in which young doctors received lectures on
“‘liberating’ the ethnic community from its ‘undesirable’ elements.” 102
Most of the physicians who came to be involved in the euthanasia
program were relatively young 103 and had either gone to medical school
during the 1930s heyday of eugenics education, or practiced medicine
during a time when the medical community embraced concepts of racial
hygiene, degeneracy, and “worthless” lives wholeheartedly. Much of the
medical profession was drawn to the Nazi party, which seemed to place
new importance on their particular knowledge and skills in its creation of
a biological and racial state. By 1942, approximately half of the doctors
in Germany had joined the Nazi party. 104 By 1940, 45 percent of all physicians
had joined the National Socialist Physicians’ League, which was devoted
to the promotion of racial hygiene, racial science, and eugenics. 105
HEATHER COOPER

As medical personnel, nurses were subject to similar efforts of indoctrination.
As early as 1933, nurses were being instructed that their primary
duty was to “secure and promote a genetically sound, valuable race” and
“not to expend an exaggerated effort on the care of genetically or racially
inferior people.” 106 Some psychiatrists suggested that nurses should be
given early experience with incurable patients so that they might understand
the seriousness of the burden represented by their lives and begin
to recognize the negative eugenics measures of the state as a virtue for the
greater good. 107 Furthermore, their roles as obedient servants to doctors
continued to be emphasized, with an added obligation of obedience to the
wishes of the Führer. 108
A fundamental component of the training and indoctrination of
doctors and nurses was the dehumanization of the handicapped. The Office
of Racial Policy made documentary films of the handicapped and
feeble-minded, which were seen by 20 million people a year, including
medical personnel. 109 These films painted an animalistic and degraded
picture of the handicapped with images of “a shaven-headed youth …
eating handfuls of grass” and footage of the handicapped juxtaposed with
that of criminals and the physically deformed. In the traditional language
of racial hygiene, these films referred to the handicapped as “‘beings’,
‘creatures’, ‘existences’, ‘idiots’, ‘life unworthy of life’, [and] ‘travesties of
human form and spirit.’” 110 Trained to see the handicapped as worthless,
bestial, and dangerous, many doctors and nurses were able to deny the
humanity and rights of those whose lives they took.
In some cases, the training and indoctrination of medical staff continued
during their participation in the euthanasia program. Alfons Klein,
supervisor of the Hadamar killing center, recalled that lectures were offered
at the killing center to explain the merits and necessity of the euthanasia
operation. 111 Another participant in the program recalled that in order
“to relieve [their] consciences,” medical staff was given frequent talks
on the economic significance of euthanasia. Such lectures demonstrated
the positive uses to which money could be put if it was not required for the
support of the incurable in institutions. Doctors and nurses were assured
that euthanasia was necessary for the well-being of the nation and that
“the method of elimination was the most humane imaginable.” 112
It seems unlikely that many doctors and nurses would have actively
participated in euthanasia without the training and education in racial
hygiene, which took place prior to and during their involvement in the
program. Medical education under the Nazis not only imbedded the
principles of eugenics and racial hygiene in its students, but created an
environment in which those principles were regarded as the only proper
standard. Doctors and nurses may have sworn an oath to protect life, but
for those who practiced medicine in the 1930s or later, that oath had become
virtually meaningless given the larger context of Nazi medicine.
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32
Other oaths were also sworn in allegiance to Hitler, or to the goals of the
euthanasia program itself, 113 and these oaths ultimately exercised more
influence on those who took them. In a 1933 lecture, Walter Gross had
called for “a revolutionary professional ethic that mandates medical care
for the Volk and not for the individual.” 114 In this context, destroying the
“gangrenous appendix” 115 of the national body became a new kind of
moral imperative that destroyed the Nazi doctor’s former obligations. In
an utter reversal of values, it was the refusal “to kill valueless life [that] was
considered immoral and evil.” 116
DISTANCING MECHANISMS
In addition to a medical training that prepared them for an environment
in which the lives of the handicapped were devalued, the perpetrators
of euthanasia were served by distancing mechanisms that allowed
them to deny, or ignore the full significance of their actions. Doctors,
nurses, and other T-4 staff separated themselves from the reality of killing
and saw their actions as distinct from, or insignificant in the larger context
of organized mass murder. This process of disassociation took a variety
of forms, including a focus on the compartmentalized nature of tasks, the
use of a language of falsehood and euphemisms, and the conviction that
euthanized patients were spared a more painful fate.
The T-4 administration and its division of labor and responsibility
was, in itself, a distancing mechanism for many of the men and women
who committed and facilitated murder. In post-war testimony, perpetrators
repeatedly seemed incapable of recognizing the connection between
their specific duties and the larger program of murder to which they contributed.
Irmgard Huber, the chief nurse at Hadamar, denied any responsibility
for the euthanization of tubercular Russians and Poles near
the end of the war. As she put it, “I did nothing to the Russians and the
Poles, and I do not feel any guilt. The transport was there already and it
had to be received. It was already standing in front of the door.” 117 In this
case, Huber’s moral responsibility seems to have been superceded by her
“technical responsibility” to the institution of Hadamar. 118 She felt an obligation
to fulfill her assigned task and emphasized that other forces, presumably
larger than herself, had already brought the Russians and Poles
to her door. Likewise, Edith Kloster, a nurse at one of the killing centers,
insisted that she could “find no connection at all between the required
transport of patients into the examination room and any killing that might
take place later.” 119 Pfanmüller, who personally oversaw the murder of
children at Eglfing-Haar and acted as a junior expert for patient selection,
denied responsibility for choosing patients for death — one of his specific
responsibilities — because his opinion was not the final decision in the
case. He insisted that that was done by a “higher echelon” of authority. 120
HEATHER COOPER

In a letter to his wife, Dr. Friedrich Mennecke described the task of selecting
thousands of patients for death at Buchenwald as “purely theoretical
work.” 121 After the war he said, “It was not my duty to shorten the lives
of the insane persons, it was my duty to act as a medical expert.” 122 In
all these cases, a focus on the compartmentalized nature of their tasks
allowed perpetrators to deny responsibility for the final product of the
euthanasia program. Whether they were unable to see, or simply refused
to admit the full significance of their actions is impossible to know.
The language of euphemisms and falsehood employed by the euthanasia
program may also have contributed to disassociation in perpetrators,
as it hid the darker reality of euthanasia beneath a façade of positive programs
and actions. Hence, “murder” became “special treatment,” “therapy,”
or “cleansing.” 123 “Disinfection” might stand in for “murder,” or for the
processing of bones into ash by the stokers who manned the crematoria. 124
The Reich Committee issued orders to kill as orders to “treat” even in secret
documents. 125 The insistence on calling the destruction of handicapped
life anything but that is evident in Dr. Ernst Lüdemann’s irritation when an
asylum director referred to patients who were to be “‘killed,’ as he insisted on
putting it” rather than those who were to be treated or cleansed. 126
One wonders whether the fact that T-4 departments operated under
a set of front organizations that existed in name only may also have
contributed to disassociation. Under this system, the Reich Cooperative
for State Hospitals and Nursing Homes, Charitable Foundation for Institutional
Care, Charitable Foundation for the Transport of Patients, Inc.,
Central Accounting Office for State Hospitals and Nursing Homes, and
Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Severe Hereditary Ailments
stood in for the offices responsible for registering victims, hiring
perpetrators, transporting patients to their deaths, collecting payment for
the care of patients already murdered, and orchestrating the euthanasia
campaign against children. 127 What’s more, the physicians who selected
patients for euthanasia and signed their death certificates used one or
more pseudonyms to disguise their identities on documents relating to the
program. Thus, Ernst Baumhard, the leading physician at Grafeneck and
Hadamar, became Dr. Jäger; Irmfried Erbel, a physician at Brandenburg
and Bernberg, became Dr. Schneider or Dr. Meyer, depending on which
institution he was at; and Klaus Endruweit, of the Sonnenstein killing
center, became Dr. Bader. 128 It seems likely that working in a setting in
which one’s tasks were carried out under a false identity for an organization
with a false name and purpose would have made it possible to distance
oneself from the moral responsibility for such tasks and the truth of
the organization’s goals.
Some perpetrators acknowledged that they were taking life, but
clung to the belief that euthanasia really was a “mercy death” for patients,
especially in wartime. Hannah Arendt suggests that the most powerful
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34
manipulation of language in the euthanasia program was Hitler’s original
order, which replaced “murder” with the phrase “to grant a mercy death.”
This transformation created an environment in which “the unforgivable
sin was not to kill people but to cause unnecessary pain.” 129 One euthanasia
doctor expressed astonishment at those who had reservations about
granting mercy deaths, but could stand by and watch their patients starve
as rations were cut in wartime:
They refuse to end the suffering of their patients by administering
drugs but they are happy to accept the fact that patients,
who are by then really famished and emaciated, will
one day take the road which could earlier have been made so
much easier for them by a little assistance. 130
Nurses and doctors might be disturbed by the actions they were asked to
carry out, but they saw it as a matter of “releas[ing] unfortunate creatures
from their suffering.” 131 This reasoning went back to some of the earliest
arguments for euthanasia, which had always emphasized the mindless
pain of those suffering from incurable diseases and made it the doctor’s
duty to “release” them. 132
CONCLUSION
In 1932, Julius Moses, a Jewish physician and politician, saw clearly
what the evolution of German medicine was leading to and the radical
transformation of ethics, which Nazism was making possible. One year
before Hitler’s fateful appointment as Chancellor, he issued a warning
to the medical community, which would soon include him in its radical
policy of exclusion:
Everything that was considered until now as the holiest obligations
of medicine — to care for the sick without paying attention
to their race, to deal in the same way with all diseases,
to help ill men everywhere and ease their pain — all this is
viewed by the National-Socialists as sheer sentimental stuff
which should be thrown away. The only matter of importance
in their eyes is leading a war of annihilation against the less
worthy (Minderwertige) — the incurable patients. … If this
line of thought will win the upper hand the German medical
profession will lose its ethical norms […], the physician will
act as a killer, the doctor will become a murderer. 133
Moses would eventually die in Theresienstadt, but not before his awful premonition
had been realized in the organized murder of nearly one hundred
thousand handicapped children and adults.
This paper has attempted to understand the transformation of what was
only an inclination toward euthanasia in 1932 into a concrete program for
the destruction of “worthless lives” after 1939. A partial explanation has been
offered by placing euthanasia in the context of an earlier eugenics and racial
hygiene movement and examining the role played by the T-4 bureaucracy,
training and indoctrination of medical staff, and the creation of distancing
HEATHER COOPER

mechanisms in that radical transformation. Yet somehow questions persist
about the meaning of the Nazi euthanasia program for our world. The Nazi
atrocities and subsequent investigations into the “banality of evil” have led
many to question what separates us from the men and women who orchestrated
death on a mass scale from 1939 to 1945. As Arendt famously wrote,
“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and
that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are,
terribly and terrifyingly normal.” 134
If it was possible to convince ordinary Germans to cooperate in an unprecedented
campaign of destruction against the helpless, how easily might
the ordinary citizens of other nations have been drawn into a similar enterprise?
Certainly Germany was not alone in its devaluation of individual life
and ostracism of the handicapped. The United States was a model of eugenics
in the first half of the twentieth century; 45,127 people were sterilized in
order to cleanse American society of the unfit between 1907 and 1945. 135
One of the first proposals of euthanasia came from the American scholar,
W. Duncan McKim in 1899, who suggested that euthanasia was a means
of “improving the human race” and providing a “sweet death” to the unfit.
136 In 1935, the French-American Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel wrote
that criminals and the handicapped should be “humanely and economically
disposed of in small euthanasia institutions supplied with proper gases.” 137
In 1935, British physicians formed the Voluntary Euthanasia Legalization
Society and submitted bills before the House of Lords for the legalization of
euthanasia for the terminally ill. Just one year before Hitler signed the decree
for euthanasia in Germany, W.G. Lennox spoke at Harvard regarding the
need for physicians to acknowledge “the privilege of death for the congenitally
mindless and for the incurable sick who wish to die.” 138
Clearly, the fear of racial degeneration and the advocacy of radical measures
were not unique to Germany. Yet perhaps it is Germany that must be
credited with making those fears and ideas taboo. It was not until the Nazis
took the radical step of transforming theoretical discussions of euthanasia’s
merits into an actual program of annihilation that other nations recognized
the terrible path they had been wandering for decades. Just as the Holocaust
seemed to make anti-Semitism unthinkable after 1945, the euthanasia program
made eugenics and its hierarchy of human worth into a symbol of the
perversion of truth and science for future generations.
From this distance, it seems almost impossible to imagine a world in
which the government and scientific community could cooperate in the destruction
of tens of thousands of lives. But that is to deny the world in which
T-4 administrators, doctors, and staff lived and worked. The Nazi racial state
created an environment in which the interests of the individual were subservient
to those of the Volk and radical sacrifices were demanded to ensure the
safety and health of the ethnic body politic. Within this context, the bureaucracy
of T-4, the indoctrination of medical staff, and the creation of psychological
distancing mechanisms allowed men and women to justify, commit,
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36
and deny responsibility for mass murder of the handicapped. The scientific
community in Germany did not heed Julius Moses’ 1932 warning, but the
terrible legacy of that failure continues to stand as a harrowing warning to the
generations that followed.
NOTES
1
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston & New York: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1971), 132.
2
Document 740, Hitler’s order for euthanasia, signed October 1939, dated September
1, 1939. In Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination. Ed. J. Noakes and G. Pridham. Vol 3
of Nazism 1919-1945: A Documentary Reader (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997), 1021.
[Hereafter Noakes].
3
Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution
(Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 61; 112..
4
Ibid., 151.
5
Document 716, Excerpt from Binding & Hoche’s 1920 book, Permission for the
Destruction of Worthless Life, its Extent and Form. In Noakes, 998.
6
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 67.
7
Ibid., 14.
8
Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University
Press, 1989), 163.
9
Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: ‘Euthanasia’ in Germany c. 1900-1945 (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Michael Burleigh, Ethics and Extermination: Reflections
on Nazi Genocide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
10
Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New
York: Basic Books, 1986), 15.
11
Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 32.
12
Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis (Cambridge & London:
Harvard University Press, 1988), 27-28.
13
Burleigh and Wipperman, The Racial State, 32.
14
Sheil Faith Weiss, Race Hygiene and National Efficiency: The Eugenics of Wilhelm Schallmayer
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 79.
15
Ibid., 86-87.
16
Burleigh and Wipperman, The Racial State, 30-32.
17
Document 716, Excerpt from Binding & Hoche’s 1920 book, Permission for the
Destruction of Worthless Life, its Extent and Form. In Noakes, 998.
18
Ibid.
19
Document 718, Excerpt from Binding & Hoche’s 1920 book, Permission for the
Destruction of Worthless Life, its Extent and Form. In Noakes, 999.
20
Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 11.
21
Document 719, Excerpt from Binding & Hoche’s 1920 book, Permission for the
Destruction of Worthless Life, its Extent and Form. In Noakes, 1001.
22
Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 11.
23
Ibid., 30-33.
24
Burleigh, Ethics and Extermination, 116; Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 32.
25
Document 730, Questionnaire for euthanasia program issued on October 9, 1939. In
Noakes, 1012.
26
Sheila Faith Weiss, “The Race Hygiene Movement in Germany,” Osiris 2, no. 3
(1987): 210-11.
27
Document 716, Excerpt from Binding & Hoche’s 1920 book, Permission for the
Destruction of Worthless Life, its Extent and Form. In Noakes, 998.
HEATHER COOPER

28 Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism,
1870-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 338-42.
29 Lifton, 27; Weiss, “The Racial Hygiene Movement in Germany,” 230; Friedlander,
The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 30. According to Lifton, 200,000-300,000 were sterilized; according
to Weiss, as many as 400,000; according to Friedlander, 375,000 or more.
30 Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 26.
31
Robert Proctor, “Nazi Doctors, Racial Medicine, and Human Experimentation,” in
The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation, eds. George J.
Annas and Michael A. Grodin (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 21.
32
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 26.
33
Bauman, 163.
34
Proctor, “Nazi Doctors, Racial Medicine, and Human Experimentation,” 24.
35
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 39-40.
36
Peter Delius and Horst Dilling, “The End of the Strecknitz Asylum at Lübeck — a
Contribution to the Social History of Psychiatry During National Socialism,” ed. Andreas Hill,
History of Psychiatry 6, no. 3 (1995): 269.
37
Document 724, Reich Interior Ministry circular issued to state governments, 1939. In
Noakes, 1006-7.
38
Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 188.
39
Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 99.
40
Götz Aly et. al., Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene, trans. Belinda
Cooper (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 189.
41
Noakes, 1011.
42
Affidavit of Victor Brack, Nuremberg Trials Transcript of the Proceedings, United
States of America v. Karl Brandt, et. al. In Medical Experiments on Jewish Inmates of Concentration
Camps, ed. John Mendelsohn. Vol. 9 of The Holocaust (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.,
1982), 4-5. [Hereafter Mendelsohn, Vol. 9]
43
Noakes, 1011.
44
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 44.
45
See, for example, Document 734, RMdI to Neuendettelsau Asylum, 2 September
1940 and Document 735, Dr. Rudolf Boeckh, Director of Neuendettelsau Asylum to Reich
Interior Ministry, Nov. 7, 1940. In Noakes, 1015-16.
46
Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 138.
47
Document 730, Reporting forms for patients, issued October 9, 1939. In Noakes, 1012.
48
Document 731, Instructions for reporting forms. In Noakes, 1013.
49
Document 737, March 10, 1941 meeting to set criteria for patient elimination. In
Noakes, 1017.
50
Weindling, 549.
51
Affidavit of Victor Brack, Nuremberg Trials Transcript of the Proceedings, United
States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al. In Mendelsohn. Vol. 9, 4-5.
52
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 83.
53
Affidavit of Victor Brack, Nuremberg Trials Transcript of the Proceedings, United
States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al. In Mendelsohn. Vol. 9, 9.
54
Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 129.
55
Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control
Council law no. 10, Nuremberg, October 1946-April 1949, Vol. 1: “Medical Case” (Washington,
DC: USGPO, 1949-1953), 800.
56
Testimony of Viktor Brack, Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal in
the matter of the USA against Karl Brandt. In Mendelsohn, Vol. 9, 124.
57
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 60.
58
Document 742, Letter informing institution of patients to be transferred. In
Noakes, 1022-23.
59
Document 743, Description of transfer fro Jestetten asylum. In Noakes, 1023-24.
60
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 94.
61
Ibid., 85.
62
Document 748, Letter to relatives informing of transfer. In Noakes, 1028.
Radical Exclusion: Nazi Euthanasia, 1939-1945
37

38
63
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 103-4.
64
Ibid., 57; Aly, 190-91.
65
Document 727, Description of visit to Egelfing-Haar asylum on Feb. 16, 1940. In
Noakes, 1008.
66
Lifton, 55.
67
Testimony of Viktor Brack, Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal in
the matter of the USA against Karl Brandt. In Mendelsohn, Vol. 9, 125.
68
Document 749, Letter to relatives informing of death. In Noakes, 1028.
69
Document 744, Account of a burner at Hartheim. In Noakes, 1026.
70
Aly, 176-77 and 182-83.
71
Description of a gassing given after war by a participant. In The Nazi Years: A
Documentary History, ed. Joachim Remak (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969), 138-39
72
Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 149.
73
Affidavit of Pauline Kneissler, Nuremberg Trials Transcript of the Proceedings,
United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et. al. In Mendelsohn, Vol. 9, 13.
74
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 95.
75
See Figure 6.4: Gas chamber of the Bernberg psychiatric hospital. In Burleigh and
Wippermann, The Racial State, 151.
76
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 96.
77
Document 746, Participant recollection. In Noakes, 1026.
78
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 97; Document 747, Employee witness to gassing.
In Noakes, 1027.
79
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 97.
80
Document 744, Account of a burner at Hartheim. In Noakes, 1026.
81
Lifton, 75.
82
Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 150.
83
Document 749, Letter to relatives informing of death. In Noakes, 1028.
84
Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 240.
85
Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 246; Bronwyn Rebekah McFarland-Icke, Nurses in Nazi
Germany: Moral Choice in History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 214.
86
McFarland-Icke, 238.
87
Lifton, 57.
88
McFarland-Icke, 227-28.
89
Delius and Dilling, 269.
90
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 300.
91
Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 147.
92
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 300.
93
Fred E. Katz, “Implemenation of the Holocaust: The Behavior of Nazi Officials,”
in The “Final Solution:” The Implementation of Mass Murder, Vol. 2, ed. Michael R. Marrus, Vol. 3
of The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of the European Jews (Westport & London:
Meckler, 1989), 355.
94
Bauman, 163.
95
Ibid., 101.
96
Lifton, 15.
97
Ibid., 30.
98
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 13.
99
Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 79-81.
100
Ibid., 82.
101
Ibid., 42.
102
Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, MA & London: The Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, 2003), 126.
103
Burleigh, Ethics and Extermination, 124; Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 216.
HEATHER COOPER

104
Robert N. Proctor, “Racial Hygiene: The Collaboration of Medicine and Nazism,”
in Medicine, Ethics, and the Third Reich: Historical and Contemporary Issues, ed. John J. Michalczyk
(Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1994), 36-40.
105
Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 65.
106
Susanne Hahn, “Nursing Issues during the Third Reich,” in Medicine, Ethics, and the
Third Reich: Historical and Contemporary Issues, ed. John J. Michalczyk (Kansas City, MO: Sheed &
Ward, 1994), 143-44.
107
McFarland-Icke, 131-32.
108
Burleigh, Ethics and Extermination, 124; 157-59.
109
Koonz, 125.
110
Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 192-94.
111
Testimony of Alfons Klein, Evidence for the Defense, in Trial of Alfons Klein, Adolf
Wahlmann, Heinrich Ruoff, Karl Willig, Adolf Merkle, Irmgard Huber, and Philipp Blum (The Hadamar
Trial), ed. Earl W. Kintner, Vol. IV of War Crimes Trials (London: William Hodge and Company,
Limited, 1949), 93. [hereafter Hadamar Trial]
112
Document 746, Participant recollection. In Noakes, 1027.
113
Testimony of Alfons Klein, Evidence for the Defense, in Hadamar Trial, 90.
114
Koonz, 112.
115
Lifton, 16.
116
James M. Glass, “Life Unworthy of Life:” Racial Phobia and Mass Murder in Hitler’s Germany
(New York: Basic Books, 1997), 156.
117
Testimony of Irmgard Huber, chief nurse at Hadamar. In Hadamar Trial, 119.
118
Bauman, 101.
119
McFarland-Icke, 238-39.
120
Testimony of Dr. Herman Pfanmueller, taken at Nuremberg, Germany, 1435-1630 5
September 1945. In Mendelsohn, Vol. 9, 28-30.
121
Mennecke to Wife, 26 November 1941, 7:50 pm. In Aly, 254.
122
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 80.
123
Glass, 61.
124
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 98.
125
Ibid., 57.
126
Aly, 33-34. Italics added by author.
127
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 73-74.
128
Table 5.2: The Euthanasia Killing Center Physicians and Their Pseudonyms, in
Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 103.
129
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York:
Penguin Books, 1977), 108-109.
130
Benno Müller-Hill, Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection of Jews, Gypsies, and
Others, Germany 1933-1945, trans. George R. Fraser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 64.
131
Burleigh, Ethics and Extermination, 122-23.
132
Document 716, Excerpt from Binding & Hoche’s 1920 book, Permission for the
Destruction of Worthless Life, its Extent and Form. In Noakes, 998.
133
Daniel Nadav, “Sterilization, ‘Euthanasia,’ and the Holocaust — The Brutal Chain,”
in Medicine, Ethics, and the Third Reich: Historical and Contemporary Issues, ed. John J. Michalczyk
(Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1994), 42.
134
Arendt, 276.
135
Koonz, 105.
136
Enzo Traverso, The Origins of Nazi Violence, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York: The New
Press, 2003), 122.
137
Proctor, “Nazi Doctors, Racial Medicine, and Human Experimentation,” 24.
138
Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 179-80.
Radical Exclusion: Nazi Euthanasia, 1939-1945
39

T H E P E R S I S T E N C E O F A
Muslim Sicily
P\
D A N I E L Elash

eex
post
efacto

Sxxicily has been a contested place for the whole of recorded human
history. Arguably, it continues to be a cultural battleground. This Mediterranean
island plays a critical role as a primary entry point into Europe for
countless immigrants from Africa and elsewhere, and its very existence in
the modern Italian nation causes recurrent debates on autonomy, development,
corruption and racism. The island has both celebrated and suffered
the consequences of millennia of conquest and domination, upheaval
and displacement. Such turbulence produced a unique Sicilian culture, in
which one may still find identifiable strands of Roman, Greek, Muslim,
and Germanic traditions beneath the contemporary Italian mass culture.
These varied cultural roots blended together in a fiercely indigenous expression
that can only roughly fit into a singular cultural category. Part
European and part North African, Sicily’s Catholicism retains Orthodox
features, and its people and places seem in some ways as remarkably Arab
as they are Italian.
Each successive conquest has in its turn suppressed previously-dominant
cultural features in Sicily. For example, when the French and Spanish
seized the Island from the Normans and Muslims, the new conquerors
squelched Muslim culture. Despite the displacement and painful readjustment
to a new orthodoxy, did the Muslims really disappear? Also referred
to as Moors, Saracens, Arabs and Africans, the Muslims of Sicily came
from many different places. However, they can be difficult to isolate from
each other, particularly because they shared a common culture: Islam.
In considering this multiethnic Muslim presence and influence in Sicily,
Islam offers the right blend of specificity and inclusivity. A brief review
of centuries of Sicilian history and a consideration of its contemporary
population and culture reveals abundant evidence for the persistence of a
Muslim Sicily to this day.
Conservation and the California Redwood Lumber Companies
43

44
Muslim Sicilians had forbearers called the Phoenicians — another
Semitic ethnic group originating in the eastern Mediterranean.
Archaeologists have dated Phoenician graves in western Sicily back to
the seventh century BCE. Thucydides maintained that they controlled
the whole island. 1 Early Greek colonists shared the island with Phoenicians
from Carthage who founded cities like Motya, Lilybaeum, and
Ziz (Palermo) that became important Islamic centers in later centuries.
2 The situation changed when the Romans arrived, expelling the
Carthaginians in the series of Punic Wars from 264 to 146 BCE. 3 Yet,
Greek endured as a dominant language and culture through the centuries
of Roman rule. 4 After the fall of Rome in 476 CE, Sicily became
the western frontier of the Byzantine Empire. 5 Muslim armies began
conquering the island in 827 CE, and while they took Palermo as their
capital almost immediately, 6 the entire Island was not under Muslim
rule until the year 902 CE. 7
Muslims plundered Sicily as early as 669 CE. 8 The rapid emergence
of an Islamic empire precipitated a series of crises for the Byzantines,
involving threats to Constantinople itself. 9 Thus, while Byzantium
did fight for its last western possession, Sicily had to fend for itself in
the end. Islamic conquest in Sicily took a century in part because of
the heterogeneous nature of its conquerors, the Aghlabids, in addition
to other troubles in North Africa. 10 Fierce resistance to Islamic rule in
regions of the island also delayed the final consolidation of Muslim rule
in Sicily, particularly in the culturally Greek northeast. 11 Islamicization
was much more thorough in western Sicily, corresponding to the old
Carthaginian sphere of influence. 12 Once established, Muslim administrators
imposed a tax, called the dhimma on non-Muslim monotheistic
communities in exchange for the right to exist. 13 A relatively tolerant act
by the standards of its time, 14 the tax was a common Islamic administrative
procedure. 15
Due to Muslim conquest, Sicily participated directly in the zenith of
Islamic culture that occurred during the Abbasid Caliphate and its immediate
aftermath at the same time that most of the rest of Europe was at a
nadir. Islam, for all of its political upheavals, provided a basis of unity and
stability that stretched from India to Spain, encouraging trade, travel and
academic discourse in its lingua franca, Arabic. Located within this eastwest
path, Sicily received many Muslim contributions in fields ranging
from literature to architecture, agriculture to political science. Muslims
brought the magazine, the cupola, and muslin, 16 as well as tuna fishing and
goats to the Mediterranean island. 17 Scholars suspect Islamic cultural influence
in the origins of dolce stil nuovo, a later Sicilian school of poetry and
the first in an Italian vernacular, as well as in the poetry of Dante. 18 Islam
reinforced pre-existing traditions of scientific inquiry and multicultural
tolerance and created new traditions. 19
DANIEL ELASH

Over time, Muslim political power in Sicily factionalized. The Normans,
responding to a request for military aid from one of the competing
factions, conquered the island in 1060. 20 However, the Norman victory
did not displace the Muslims. The Normans instead retained many Muslim
administrators throughout their nearly 200 year rule on the island. 21
The Normans reversed the dhimma, placing it on Muslim communities for
Christian ends — a situation that horrified Muslim visitors. 22 Norman rulers
at times appeared to be as much Muslim caliphs as Christian kings. 23
This “Christian Caliphate” again suggests an avant-garde multiculturalism,
captured in the awkwardness of the descriptive phrase “Norman-
Arab,” as well as the unease such a phenomenon caused in a Europe on
the verge of Crusades against the Muslim infidel. 24 The Papacy also had
geoterritorial concerns of being surrounded when Sicily was annexed to
the Holy Roman Empire. 25 The crisis came to a head during Frederick II’s
reign, when a series of Popes crushed the ruler and placed another in his
political office, despite his military victory in a Crusade. 26
The French arrived as Papal-sanctioned successors to the Normans
and quickly reduced Sicily to a vassalage of absentee landlords and tax
collectors, as it had been under Rome. 27 The resulting rebellion, called
the Sicilian Vespers, transferred political control of Sicily from the hated
French to the hands-off-Spanish. 28 Sicily nevertheless declined into a
backwater for the next several centuries. The island remained so mired
in poverty and ignorance that Garibaldi’s 19th-century Italian unification
movement came and went without meaningfully altering feudalistic
Sicilian social relations. In fact, even in more recent centuries, Sicily has
remained an officially autonomous region within Italy since World War
II, 29 reflecting an ambivalence that Sicily and Italy feel and sometimes still
express in their relations.
Islam had a profound historical impact on Sicily, for better and
worse. Both good and bad are now buried together underneath intervening
centuries’ worth of experiences. Comparable to archaeological ruins,
these experiences remain present in physical detail, yet without much narrative
integrity in the contemporary culture of Sicily.
People interpret these ruins in order to unearth evidence of Sicily’s
Muslim cultural past. A distinct and measurable Muslim genetic legacy
remains in Sicily, though such studies tend to focus on geographical origins.
It would be a mistake to infer too much specificity about culture from
geographical origins or vice versa as populations migrate naturally over
time. However, genetics can still be a strong indicator of relations between
populations. 30 Recently, geneticists produced several studies specific to Sicily.
One of these studies concludes that the modern Sicilian population is
genetically as closely related to Iran as it is to Northern Italy. 31 Another
noted that “Arab domination seems to have had a very strong genetic
impact” in Sicily, leaving measurable genetic proximities to populations in
The Persistence of a Muslim Sicily
45

46
Egypt and Morocco. 32 A third study found that the populations of Sicily,
Calabria, and Greece are not only geographically clustered, but are also
demarcated from the other European populations examined. 33 The study
attributed these facts to “the impact of people of Mediterranean and
Middle Eastern ancestry on the island.” A fourth study contends that a
Near Eastern genetic contribution to Sicily “appears unquestionable.” 34
Language also provides evidence for the persistence of a Muslim Sicily.
Arabic enriched both the Sicilian dialect and modern Italian. One
may see this in Sicilian proverbs, 35 folk songs, 36 and the names of the
Island’s locales. 37 Italian grammarians acknowledge that the standard Italian
words for orange, lemon, artichoke, eggplant, spinach, sugar, and cotton all
derive from Arabic, which also indicates the origins of those crops. Italian
likewise borrowed its words for customs/duty, warehouse, manufacturing defect,
tariff, arsenal, wharf, and hemp rope, again implying contributions in maritime
trade. Arabic also gave Italian algebra, algorithm, cipher, zero, nadir, and
zenith, as well as chemistry terms like alchemy, elixir, camphor, talc, alkali, and
borax. Arabic supplied Italians with words for chess and checkmate, blue, porter,
and boy — everyday words implying the breadth and depth of linguistic
and cultural contributions. 38 Scholars of Arabic likewise concede that “the
Sicilian dialect of today reveals lexical remnants of the Siculo-Arabic in
a large inventory of Material Cultural terms.” 39 Linguistic impact is also
visible in Arabic surnames which persist in the Sicilian population. 40 Researchers
maintain there is a correlation between surname distribution
and gene distribution. 41
Various architectural treasures further illuminate a Muslim Sicily in
both their visual splendor and their highly public nature. Sicily’s regional
parliament resides in the famous Norman-Arab palace at Palermo. 42 The
building includes its own church, the Capella Palatina, which is similar
to other Muslim-designed structures of the era, such as the San Cataldo
church. 43 Inside the Capella Palatina, one finds Islamic cultural elements
woven into the architecture, including Arabic script on door handles and
ceiling decorations, Islamic architectural elements, and elaborate floors
that mimic Arab design motifs. The Capella Palatina once featured striking
examples of Arabic script as highly visible decoration, including the
name of the Norman king Roger II. The abundance of such evidence at
Palermo makes sense, given the city’s former status as the capital of Muslim
Sicily. As the contemporary capital of an autonomous Italian region,
it is perhaps more surprising that the very seat of government is located in
such a high-profile reminder of the island’s Muslim roots.
Other components of current Sicilian culture, and that of Italy more
generally, reaffirm Sicily’s Muslim heritage. One particularly dramatic and
colorful example is the tradition of “i pupi siciliani,” or Sicilian puppetry.
Largely drawn from the Chanson de Roland and other similarly epic poetic
traditions, the repertoire includes the battles between Christians and Mus-
DANIEL ELASH

lims for dominion. 44 The art form is important enough that UNESCO has
declared it a world heritage resource. 45 Francesca Corrao noted the simultaneous
existence in Sicilian, Turkish and Arab cultures, of a series of folk
tales regarding a sacred fool named Giufà/Nasreddin or Hoca/Guha.
According to her, the differences among versions of the tales say as much
about the related Arab and Sicilian cultures as their similarities. 46
Modern Italian schoolbooks tend to downplay Sicily’s relation to Islam.
For example, Garzanti’s Italian junior high history text offers a lone
statement on Muslim rule of Sicily, characterizing the territory as a base for
piracy. 47 The same Italian grammar text that lists the above-cited Arabicderived
Italian words, insists that “unlike the Germanic peoples, [the Arabs]
never fused with the conquered population.” 48
Tourist literature in English tends to showcase Muslim Sicily. Lonely
Planet offers seven paragraphs on Muslim and Norman-Arab rule, totaling
one of its 26 pages of text dedicated to Italian history. 49 At least three major
tourist guides feature Arab sights to see in Palermo. One guide, specific to Sicily,
emphasizes the point with no less than four color photos on the theme. 50
Yet, Sicily deems some tourists unwanted as many illegal immigrants
from Africa reach the island’s borders each year. Because of geographical
proximity, Sicily is the primary entry point for most Africans attempting
to enter the European Union without proper documentation. 51 This has
aggravated already existing tensions in Italy between the North and South,
as well as Italian relations with Europe. Italy’s old, unresolved question of
disparate economic development between the North and South lurks below
the surface of the debate, which has also been aggravated by racism. One
result is xenophobic political movements such as the Lega Nord, one party in
the coalition currently controlling the Italian government. 52 In this context,
it is little wonder that attitudes in the Italian South are ambivalent, at best,
to its own non-European roots, particularly its Muslim heritage. Nevertheless,
the artifacts from a Muslim Sicily remain popular tourist destinations.
Contemporary Muslim communities face difficult racial and xenophobic
attitudes in Italy. Arab.it, an online resource for Italian Muslims,
lists about 158 Islamic Centers and Associations in Italy, nine of those in
Sicily. 53 The current Muslim population in Italy is between 800,000 and
1 million 54 making Islam the country’s second largest religion. However,
there are no official government representatives to or other relations between
the Muslim communities and the Italian government, unlike many
other religious groups in the nation. Lega Nord further exacerbates this situation
through its official hostility to mosque-building in Italy. 55
The existence and persistence of a Muslim Sicily therefore appears
to be an inescapable conclusion. It is apparent through evidence such as
history, population, language, material culture, popular culture, and politics.
Islamic persistence in the face of all obstacles, however, has in turn
The Persistence of a Muslim Sicily
47

48
required painful changes that have somewhat obscured the direct connections.
Thus, we see Arab palaces and Crusader-hero puppet plays side-byside
in contemporary Palermo. Sicily is a land full of Muslim agricultural
gifts and architectural gems, of which it brags to its guests in the same
breath as it proclaims its monolithic Catholicism. If modern problems
like illegal immigration leave Sicilians relatively unmoved, perhaps it is because
the problem is both eternal and theirs alone. The island has always
been a transit point for masses of people headed somewhere else. Dominant
cultures come and go, each leaving behind a series of impressions
that refract like an Arabesque tile design down through the ages, playing
out in the faces, words, and material culture of the Sicilian people they
invariably leave behind. One gets this impression from the way in which
Sicily defends its honor against insults, insisting on its place at the Italian
and European tables while maintaining a sense of distance from both.
Indeed, Sicily insists upon its cultural difference. Beneath that insistence,
beats the heart of a permanently besieged people, quietly and stubbornly
continuing to be who they always have been, whatever the socio-political
order of the day might require. Given its location, Sicily will continue to
be contested for a long time to come, but through it all and come what
may, there will always be a Muslim Sicily, in spirit and in fact. All considered,
how could it be otherwise?
DANIEL ELASH

01
Gerhard Herm, The Phoenicians: The Purple Empire of the Ancient World, trans. Caroline
Hillier (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1975), 138.
02
Striking geoterritorial similarities between Phoenician and Muslim areas can be seen
by comparing the maps found in Herm, Phoenicians, 188 and Ira Lapidus, A History of Islamic
Societies, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 2002), 303.
03
The Punic Wars are extensively referenced in ancient sources. Two good ancient
sources include Polybius, Rise of the Roman Empire, trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert (London: Penguin
Books 1979) and Livy, Rome and the Meditteranean, Books XXXI-XLV of the History of Rome from its
Foundation, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 1976); see also Herm, Phoenicians,
for a narrative of those events, particularly pages 236-263.
04
M. I. Finley, A History of Sicily: Ancient Sicily to the Arab Conquest (New York: Viking
Press, 1968), 165, 178.
05
Byzantine general Belisarius reconquered Sicily from the Ostrogoths in 535 CE; see
Finley, Sicily, 180.
06
Jeremy Johns, Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily: The Royal Diwan (Cambridge,
2002) 24. Michele Amari, Storia dei musulmani di Sicilia, volume primo (Catania, 1933), 394-605,
extensively describes the step by step conquest.
07
George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State, rev. ed., trans. Joan Hussey (New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1969) 208, 257.
08
Finley, Sicily, 184. See also Aziz Ahmad, A History of Islamic Sicily (Edinburgh, 1975),
3-4. These raids included the capture of prisoners, according to Alex Metcalfe, Muslims and
Christians in Norman Sicily, Arabic Speakers and the End of Islam (London and New York, 2003), 10.
09
Ostrogorsky, Byzantine, 110-125, includes the history of an abortive attempt to move
the Byzantine capital to Syracuse.
10
Lapidus, Islamic Societies, 302-303; Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (New
York, 1991), 38.
11
Metcalfe, Muslims and Christians, 11-12.
12
Ahmad, History, 22.
13
The dhimma, a sort of capitation/tribute tax that allowed non-Muslim individuals
their land and other rights, and communities the right to a certan amount of collective selfrule;
also known as the jizya; comparable to the Ottoman millet system, though different in the
particulars of its implementation. Lapidus, Islamic Societies, 265; Johns, Norman Sicily, 23, 26-27;
Metcalfe, Muslims and Christians, 11, 34-37; Ahmad, History, 22; Hourani, Peoples, 35.
14
For examples, compare Byzantine disputes such as iconoclasm, Ostrogorsky, Byzantine,
160-165, 171-175. For monophysitism Ostrogorsky, Byzantine, 64, 78, 107-109. For the
rise of feudalism due to a lack of circulating currency or security, as well as a discussion of the
continuing effects of the barbarian invasions and western Roman collapse, no so much a sign
of intolerance as of the utter social atomization generally characterized as a “Dark Age” see
George Holmes, Oxford Illustrated History of Italy (Oxford, 1997), 34-36 Garzanti Editorie, Il libro
Garzanti della storia, volume primo (Milan, 1980), ch. 31..
15
Hourani, Peoples, 30. In fact, disputes over such taxes and their application to converts
to Islam played a large role in the overthrow of the Umayyad and rise of the Abbasid
Caliphates; Lapidus, Islamic Societies, 51-54..
16
Ahmad, History, 93.
17
Joseph F. Privitera, Beginner’s Sicilian (New York, 2001), 7-8.
18
Ahmad, History, 93-96..
19
See Ahmad, History, which discusses “Intellectual Activity During the Muslim Period.”
Of course such activity was far from unknown to the Greeks — although Byzantium
was moving away from that tradition.
20
Johns, Norman Sicily, 31-33. It’s particularly ironic that this was exactly how the Muslims
came to the island themselves. See also Ahmad, History, 6-7.
21
Ahmad, History, 59, 66-7; Metcalfe, Muslims and Christians, 41-4; Johns, Norman Sicily.
Johns argues that initial convenience was later reinforced by adoption of Fatimid Egyptian
administrative norms as generally the best available.
22
Ahmad, History, 68; Johns, Norman Sicily, 34-39; Metcalfe, Muslims and Christians, 34-36.
The Persistence of a Muslim Sicily
NOTES
49

50
23
Ahmad, History, 63-65; Johns, Norman Sicily. Johns argues for some of the social and
political uses of maintaining such an image aside from administrative function.
24
On a heterogeneous Norman-Arab Sicily, see Clifford Backman, The Worlds of Medieval
Europe (Oxford, 2003), 204-205. See Holmes, Italy, 50 on how this was as opportunistic
as idealistic. Backman speaks of the profusion of issues and their multifarious effects in the
tensions between church and state in Sicily during the reign of Frederick III, in The Decline and
Fall of Medieval Sicily (Cambridge, 1995), particularly 186-7.
25
Holmes, Italy, 52.
26
On Papal intrigue against Norman regime in Sicily, see Backman, Worlds, 270-1 and
293-6. Extensive detail on the terse summation of events presented here may be found in David
Abulafia, Frederick II, A Medieval Emperor (London, 1988), 340-407.
27
Steven Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers (Cambridge, 1958) 124-31.
28
Runciman, Vespers, 277-9.
29
Holmes, Italy, 202-5, for both the nineteenth and twentieth century situation in Sicily.
For an even more concise summation, see Privitera, Sicilian, 5-6.
30
John H. Relethford, Reflections of Our Past: How Human History Is Revealed in Our Genes
(Cambridge: Westview Press, 2003), 101-22, offers an excellent discussion of the science involved
in the genetic studies upon which the following four citations are based, and the use of
such data in considering probable relations between discrete populations.
31
Olga Rickards et. al., “Genetic Structure of the Population of Sicily,” American Journal
of Physical Anthropology 87 (1992): 395-406.
32
C. M. Calò et. al., “Genetic Analysis of a Sicilian Population Using 15 Short Tandem
Repeats,” Human Biology 75 (2003): 163-178.
33
P. Francalacci et. al., “Peopling of Three Mediterranean Islands (Corsica, Sardinia,
and Sicily) Inferred by Y-Chromosome Biallelic Variability,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology
121 (2003): 270-9.
34
G. Vona et. al., “Mitochondrial DNA Sequence Analysis in Sicily,” American Journal of
Human Biology 13 (2001): 576-89.
35
Cristaldi Communications, “The Sicilian Dialect and Language,” Sicilian Culture, 21
(March 2002), http://www.sicilianculture.com/dialect/index.htm; Internet; accessed 23 Oct
2004. See list of proverbs under the link “Famous Sicilian Proverbs.”
36
Alan Lomax, “Cialomi (Tuna Fishermen’s Chants),” Italian Treasury: Sicily, Rounder
Records, Rounder 11661-1808-2. Also, track three notes in the accompanying booklet, by Sergio
Bananzinga et. al.
37
William E. Granara, “Political Legitimacy and Jihad in Muslim Sicily 217/825-
445/1053” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1986), viii-ix..
38
All specific words from Maurizio Dardano and Pietro Trifone, Grammatica italiana,
terza edizione (Bologna, 1995), 643. While the cited text is in Italian, the vocabulary is presented
here in English for convenience.
39
Dionisius A. Agius, “Focus of Concern in Ibn Makki’s Tatqif Al-Lisan: The Case of
Gender in the Medieval Arabic of Sicily,” in The Arabist: Budapest Studies in Arabic: Proceedings of
the Colloquium on Arabic Grammar, Held in Budapest 1-7 September 1991, ed. Alexander Folor (Budapest:
Eötvös Loránd University Chair for Arabic Studies and Csoma De Körös Society Section
of Islamic Studies, 1991), 1.
40
Angela Pavesi et. al., “Brief Communication: Coexistence of Two Distinct Patters in
the Surname Structure of Sicily,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology120 (2003): 195..
41
A. A. Rodriguez-Larralde et. al., “Isonomy and the Genetic Structure of Sicily,” Journal
of Biosocial Science, 26 (1994): 10.
42
Robert Andrews and Jules Brown, The Rough Guide to Sicily, 5th ed. (London: Rough
Guides Ltd., 2002), 75.
43
William Tronzo, The Cultures of His Kingdom: Roger II and the Capella Palatina in Palermo
(Princeton, 1997) extensively discusses the Palazzo dei Normanni as a work of Arab architecture.
For locating San Cataldo as another example of Arab-Norman architecture, see the City
of Palermo website at http://www.comune.palermo.it/English/old_city.htm. Palermo also
discusses the relation of Arab architects and Norman building projects at http://www.comune.
palermo.it/English/crossroads.htm.
44
On the origins of Sicilian puppetry as an art form, and its situation in a contemporary
context, see: Rod Jenkins, “Refighting old religious wars in a miniature arena,” New York
Times, 8 December 2001 [website]; available from http://pupisiciliani.com/eng/links/nyt_sicilian_puppets.htm;
Internet; accessed 23 October 2004. On the puppet shows as expression of
ambivalence regarding Sicily’s simultaneous roots in opposing cultures, see the History section
of: Pasqualino Brothers, “History,” Sicilian Puppet Theatre of the Fratelli Pasqualino, 2002 [website];
available from http://www.pupisiciliani.com/eng/index.html; Internet; accessed 23 October
DANIEL ELASH

2004. On the centrality of “Moorish” characters to this art form, and its establishment elsewhere
in Sicily, see: Puppet House Theater, “History of the Sicilian Puppets,” The Puppet House
Theater, 2004 [website]; available from http://www.puppethouse.org/history.htm; Internet; accessed
23 October 2004..
45 UNESCO, “Opera dei Pupi, Sicilian Puppet Theatre,” Proclamation of Masterpieces of
the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, 18 May 2001 [website]; available from http://www.
unesco.org/bpi/intangible_heritage/italy.htm; Internet; accessed 23 October 2004.
46 Francesca M. Corrao, “The Infraction of the Religious Codes in the Mediterranean
Folk Literature, the Case of the Islamic Guha and the Sicilian Giufa,” in The Arabist: Budapest
Studies in Arabic: Proceedings of the Colloquium on Popular Customs and the Monotheistic Religions in the
Middle East and North Africa, Held in Budapest 19-25th September 1993, ed. Alexander Fodor (Budapest:
Eötvös Loránd University Chair for Arabic Studies and Csoma De Körös Society Section
of Islamic Studies, 1994), 283-293.
47 Garzanti, Storia, 14-16. The text does offer a sidebar, entirely dedicated to a Muslim
writer’s description of Palermo as a beautiful place.
48 Maurizio Dardano and Pietro Trifone, Grammatica italiana, terza editzione, 642. The
text goes on to credit the Arabs’ scientific vocabulary to their “Greek and Indo-Iranian cultural
patrimony;” compare this to its handling of Germans as a related set of peoples on page 641,
at times as “disciples of the Romans” and later as having a “highly developed culture.” Also
compare its citing on page 642 of such as the Crusades and monastic orders (among others) as
bases of Italian-French relations, all the more interesting as the Normans are given full credit
for their two centuries in the south in this context. The Greeks, however, are likewise minimized
on page 641, and words of obviously Greek origin are actually credited to French on page 644.
I would thus maintain that there is an obvious propaganda function involved an attempt to
distance Italy from the Mediterranean and draw it closer to Europe.
49 Damien Simonis et. al., Lonely Planet: Italy (Oakland, 2002), 27-9.
50 See also Andrews and Brown, Rough Guide, who give the Muslims three paragraphs
and the Normans ten, for over two of its fourteen pages of history text, 428-432. This would
seem proportionate; however, Penelope A. Carter et. al., Let’s Go Italy 2000 (New York, 2000),
10, merely mention the entire period in a subordinate clause.
51 This relationship is readily apparent in current new coverage, for example see Sopie
Arie, “A Two-Way Thing,” Guardian Unlimited Online, 12 Oct. 2004, http://www.guardian.
co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,,1325531,00.html; accessed 4 Dec. 2004..
52 For a good general summary of the very complicated, nuanced situation, see Frank
Viviano, “The Fall of Rome,” Mother Jones, Sept./Oct. 1993. Website. http://www.moterhjones.com/news/feature/1993/09/viviano.html;
accessed 4 Dec. 2004. The situation has
changed somewhat as the Lega Nord has come into power in the current coalition government
in Italy, toning down their rhetoric in the process. However, the subtext remains the same. For
a folkloric take on the problem, and the racism involved, see Dr. Joseph Sciorra’s “A History of
the Insulted World,” 1998-2004, a web page discussing the situation as told from the point of
view of Southern Italian rap music: http://www.italianrap.com/intro/south.html, accessed 4
Dec. 2004..
53 ARCO Service. “Centri ed associazioni islamici in Italia,” 1997-2004. http://www.
arab.it/almarkaz.html; accessed 4 Dec. 2004.
54 Sophie Arie, “Anti-Islamic books’ success fuel fears of racisim in Italy,” Guardian Unlimited
Online, 7 Aug. 2004. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1278177,00.
html; accessed 4 Dec. 2004. The 1 million figure is from Sophie Arie, “Italian MPs Plan Control
of New Mosques,” Guardian Unlimited Online, 25 March 2004. http://www.guardian.
co.uk/international/story/0,,1177462,00.html. As the Guardian’s correspondent in Rome, Ms.
Arie offers a reliable source of information on Italian current events in English.
55 Arie, “Italian MPs Plan Control of New Mosques.”
The Persistence of a Muslim Sicily
51

Little Women &
Evil-looking Men:
R E B E C C A B U F F U M S P R I N G A N D
T H E P O L I T I C S O F M O T H E R H O O D I N
A N T E B E L L U M A M E R I C A
O\
S A R A H Barkin
graduate WINNER: SARAH RUTH PRIZE

eex
post
efacto

n November 1859, roughly a month after John Brown’s unsuccessful
raid on Harpers Ferry, a woman walked through a crowd of “evil-looking”
men and made her way to the steps of the prison where John Brown
was incarcerated. Accompanied by her nineteen-year-old son, Rebecca
Buffum Spring waited in the guardroom for thirty minutes, braving the
“rough talk” of the men in the room and the suffocating heat of the stovewarmed
air before being allowed to visit “Old Man” Brown in his cell. 1
After visiting with the prisoner for some time, Spring and her son were
forced to leave on the order of Sheriff J.W. Campbell. He argued that the
crowd outside was growing dangerous and had threatened violent action
if she remained much longer. In her unpublished autobiography, written
late in her life, Spring described the scene she and her son encountered as
they left the prison:
The great, tall Sheriff, with a scowl on his face, impatiently
opened the door, and hurried out a little woman and a boy,
in the face of a furious mob of the worst looking men I ever
saw. We stood for a moment on the little platform, and looked
down over a sea of thousands of angry eyes, and saw clenched
hands raised, threateningly; and I did not feel afraid. As we
descended the steps they stood aside, giving us only just room
to pass, and soon we were safe in the hotel. 2
I
In the published account of her visit, Spring added this thought: “I,
who dare not pass a cow and who have such a terror of great dogs, was so
uplifted in spirit that I had lost all feeling of fear and walked through the
mob . . . without thinking of the mob at all. I believe I was safer because
I was not afraid. . . . It is good sometimes to get a glimpse of the power
within us.” 3 Much of this inner power derived from her upbringing: as
a Quaker and a passionate anti-slavery activist, Spring was used to confronting
opposition and had experience in standing up for her beliefs. 4
Thus, despite the harrowing experience and her precarious position as a
northern abolitionist woman surrounded by angry southern men, Spring
refused to leave the town and even managed to arrange a second visit before
she returned to her home, a communitarian settlement known as the
Raritan Bay Union in Eagleswood, New Jersey.
55

56
Like other Garrisonian abolitionists, Spring used gendered language
to link the personal with the political. 5 The power she claimed for herself
was strength of soul; by linking it to her uplifted religious spirit, she effectively
emphasized women’s roles as moral superiors. Similarly, like Moses
parting the Red Sea, she made her way through the crowd and arrived
safely at her destination. She was also careful to offset inner power with
descriptions of her outer powerlessness. Yet there is a subversive element
in her portrayal of herself as a “little woman” and her grown son as a
“boy.” She called southern manliness into question when she contrasted
the “great, tall” sheriff and the violent crowd against the image of her
helplessness. She implied that only brutes, or “great dogs” would threaten
violence against a woman and her son; in Spring’s mind these were not
true men but snarling animals.
Such examples of gendered imagery and language do more than illustrate
Spring’s character; they also provide the modern-day historian with an
intriguing glimpse into the gendered world of antebellum America. Previous
historians have attempted to categorize Spring as either a “subtle feminist”
or a conservative abolitionist. 6 But such characterizations are overly
simplistic and ignore the complex nature of Spring’s actions. In an era when
the “Cult of True Womanhood” defined women’s position as confined to
the domestic sphere, Spring’s physical and moral show of support for John
Brown both challenged and underscored traditional definitions of female
roles and illustrated the extent to which Spring recognized and manipulated
her position as a gendered being. Like other women in reform and
benevolent movements, she used her domestic role as wife and mother as
justification to step beyond the private sphere of the home. When Rebecca
Spring visited John Brown’s prison cell, she enacted a performance of gender
in which she used traditional notions of femininity and women’s duties
to justify what was, in essence, a radical political action.
Gender performance as a theoretical concept is not new, but it has
received increasing attention from historians in recent years. In the 1960s,
and more recently in the 1990s, social scientists like Erving Goffman,
Kath Weston, and others applied notions of performance and representation
to identity, race, and gender, thus calling into question categories that
once seemed absolute and natural. 7 Building upon this framework, as well
as the works of French philosophers like Simone de Beauvoir and Michel
Foucault, in 1990 Judith Butler, a critical theorist, published Gender Trouble
in which she argued that gender was neither clear-cut nor biologically
based, but was instead a social construction. Gender does not exist of its
own accord, so much as it is “done,” or performed, by people. Thus, gender
norms are defined by repeated reenactments that, taken as a whole,
are meant to delineate what it is to be feminine or masculine. It is possible
to perform one’s appropriate gender improperly, and such instances
of failure are duly punished, often violently, for transgressions of gender
threaten identity and social order.
SARAH BARKIN

Kathleen Brown is one of the first historians to place gender performance
in a historical context. In her groundbreaking work Good Wives,
Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia,
she discusses the ways in which eighteenth-century men and women
defined, redefined, and challenged gender norms. Brown persuasively
argues that gender discourse, however instable, served as the basis for colonial
Virginia’s developing social and political structure. The “anxious
patriarchs” defined their political status and identity in contrast to their
“seemingly natural” dependents: slaves and women. 9 In actuality this
social order was anything but natural and thus required repeated performances
to maintain the illusion that it was. Unfortunately for many
white men, their dependents did not always willingly follow the choreographed
steps they had been assigned. Slaves ran away or rebelled and
women refused to obey their fathers and husbands. As Brown convincingly
contends, these failed performances persistently threatened self-serving
definitions of white masculinity, thereby reinforcing Butler’s theory
that gender — and one might add race — is little more than “an identity
tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a
stylized repetition of acts.” 10
Other historians have developed this notion of exterior space to a
greater extent. Walter Johnson’s Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave
Market is particularly useful for its in-depth analysis of performance’s public
nature, both in its physical and philosophical sense. Presentations of
masculinity, femininity, and dependency only become meaningful if they
make sense to an audience. In examining the letters, narratives, advertisements,
and other declarations of self that were generated or influenced
by the antebellum slave market, Johnson succeeds in demonstrating that
white slaveowners as well as the slaves themselves drew from a “cultural
register of … roles” in an effort to make themselves make sense to others. 11
In the public arena of the marketplace as well as the narrower public of
correspondence, men and women defined their identities in reference to
others. Traders’ manipulations of the bodies of their human cargo, buyers’
public discussions on the finer points of purchase, and slaves’ attempts
to guide the terms of their sales in a manner that would benefit themselves
are all examples of self-performance, of people attempting to construct
their identities in a meaningful way for an audience.
Historians have long grappled with notions of public and private
spheres, particularly inasmuch as they refer to gendered arenas of influence.
For early practitioners of women’s history, the rhetoric of the
“sphere” served as a convenient method for discussing American women’s
historical roles. However, like the category of gender, the trope of separate
spheres is not as well defined or binary as early historians presented
it to be. 12 In 1966, Barbara Welter’s article on the “Cult of True Womanhood”
identified men and manhood with the public, women and “true”
womanhood with the private. 13 More recent works have moved beyond
Little Women and Evil-Looking Men
57

58
this explicit dualism, recognizing that the boundaries between public and
private are more often blurred than distinct. Bruce Dorsey’s ambitious
work, Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellum City, for example,
tackles the tenuous definitions of public versus private and masculinity
and femininity among reform-minded men and women of Philadelphia.
Like Johnson and Brown, Dorsey draws heavily from the philosopher Jürgen
Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, rooting antebellum gender
norms in the “uncertain gender milieu” of the eighteenth-century republican
rhetoric of civic virtue. 14 In Dorsey’s account, Habermas’s public
sphere was created “out of the private sphere of individual conscience,
before ‘public’ and ‘private’ came to mean a rigid dichotomy between the
political and economic realm of men and the domestic realm of women
in the nineteenth century.” 15 Like the spheres themselves, the definitions
of manhood and womanhood were not firmly delineated, and as a result
gender “entailed a measure of performance.” 16 The division between
public and private, manliness and femininity was not immutable, and it
was possible — although discouraged — for men and women to traverse
the boundary. Dorsey’s treatment of Quaker women’s access to the public
sphere is especially enlightening, noting as he does that many, particularly
single, Quaker women drew upon spiritual authority as well as “appropriating
discourses that employed feminine, rather than masculine, imagery
and language.” 17 As preachers and visionary prophetesses, these women
made their way into the public realm; they traveled on the streets and
entered the markets and prisons that were traditionally bastions of masculine
political power. 18
When Rebecca Spring wrote her memoir near the end of her long
life, she was, in effect, performing a final act of self. In the often-rambling
pages of “A Book of Remembrance” Spring writes more about the people
who moved in and out of her life than she does about herself. A significant
exception is the account of her visit to John Brown in 1859. Like
the men and women in Johnson’s Soul by Soul, Spring’s identity is revealed
through her observations and descriptions of others. Drawing upon her
correspondence and autobiography, and paying particular attention to the
John Brown episode, this study will examine the manner in which Spring
manipulated, challenged, and supported the gender norms of her time in
an effort to construct a meaningful identity for herself. At the same time,
understanding her construction of self also leads to a greater understanding
of the world she lived in and the cultural register of meaning available
to her audience(s).
Rebecca Spring was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1811, the
fourth daughter of devout Quakers. 19 Her father, Arnold Buffum, would
become the first President of the New England Anti-Slavery Society; he
heavily influenced the activist lives of all of his children, his daughters
especially. As Spring’s older sister Elizabeth Buffum Chace recalled, their
father had a “tender heart, and . . . unshrinking conscience,” and he em-
SARAH BARKIN

aced “without doubt or question, the principles of the Garrisonian antislavery
movement. . . . Thus was I born and baptized into the antislavery
spirit. Our family were [sic] all Abolitionists.” 20
Quakers also believed in educating both girls and boys, and Spring
attended the New England Friends Boarding School with her sisters
and, notably, a young woman who would become a radical abolitionist
and feminist: Abby Kelley. 21 With her sisters and other young women,
Spring participated in a literary society. As Elizabeth described it, the
group was “called ‘The Female Mutual Improvement Society,’” and the
members “agreed to meet one evening a week and read some useful
book, and contribute original compositions of our own.” 22 Often the
“useful” books centered around religious and political themes, encouraging
the society’s members to think, from an early age, beyond the
confines of the home.
Academically minded, Spring proved an apt recipient for her
father’s abiding interest in education. Arnold Buffum was particularly
intrigued by the European educational reforms aimed toward factory
children and he encouraged his daughters to teach in similar institutions.
Spring taught at a coeducational school for mill children in Uxbridge,
as well as the integrated and coeducational Philadelphia Colored
Infant School after her father’s business interests took the family
to Pennsylvania in 1834.
On October 26, 1836, Rebecca Buffum married Marcus Spring, a
wealthy philanthropist who shared her passion for social reform. Lillie
Buffum Chace Wyman, Spring’s niece, remembered Marcus as a “handsome,
lovable man, who had a decidedly artistic endowment.” 23 Their
marriage was a loving, companionate partnership, and although Spring
abandoned the simple dress of the Quakers in favor of the more expensive
clothing her husband’s wealth afforded, they also put their money
to good use by investing in a number of social, cultural, and political
projects. One of their more noteworthy ventures was their investment
in the North American Phalanx, a communitarian experiment based on
the socialist principles of French philosopher and mathematician Charles
Fourier. 24 Although they had never moved to the community, the Springs
ultimately withdrew their financial support and in 1853 they, along with
other Phalanx dissenters, formed their own settlement, The Raritan Bay
Union, on Marcus’s Eagleswood estate in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. 25 Reflecting
Spring’s interest in education, the centerpiece of the Union was
its coeducational school, which claimed the honor of abolitionist Theodore
Weld’s service as principal and Angelina Grimké Weld and her sister
Sarah’s presence as faculty members. Although the Union lasted only a
short time as a communitarian settlement, the school continued to function
for several years, and it drew students from a number of notable
families in New England. 26
Little Women and Evil-Looking Men
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60
Spring’s Quaker background instilled in her a strong belief in girls’
right to equal education, and in her memoir she credits her father with supporting
his daughters in their political pursuits as well: “[O]ur father was
so fond and proud of his daughters that he thought them worthy to be citizens
of the country they all loved.” 27 She was interested in women’s greater
political equality, and like other Garrisonian abolitionists, she often linked
women’s subjugation with the demeaning and tyrannical qualities of slavery:
“Slavery in our Land of Liberty, was as inconsistent as taxing women,
after declaring ‘Taxation without representation is tyranny.’” 28 Yet her support
for equal rights was not as public in nature as her support for abolition
and educational development, a fact her niece Lillie noted when she wrote,
“Mrs. Spring made at least one speech in favor of woman’s rights, but she
was never exactly a public worker in [woman’s] reform.” 29 Rather, Spring
emphasized women’s important roles as mothers, which she saw as endowing
them with certain obligations toward the rest of society. In this respect
she was like other women in the 19th century who used their positions as
women as justification for stepping into the public realm of reform.
An example of Spring’s integration of motherhood and reform can
be seen in the motion she and Abby Cox put forward at the first Anti-
Slavery Convention for American Women held in New York City in 1837.
The motion read:
RESOLVED, that there is not a class of women to whom the
anti-slavery cause makes so direct and powerful an appeal as
to mothers; and that they are solemnly urged by all the blessings
of their own and their children’s freedom, and by all the
contrasted bitterness of the slave-mother’s condition, to lift up
their hearts to God on behalf of the captive, as often as they
pour them out over their own children in a joy with which ‘no
stranger may intermeddle’; and that they are equally bound to
guard with jealous care the minds of their children from the
ruining influences of the spirit of pro-slavery and prejudice. 30
Spring’s position in regards to women was complex. Like other
Garrisonian abolitionists, she supported, albeit in a muted way, woman’s
rights, yet she also agreed with the notion that one of slavery’s worst sins
was the way in which it “stripped . . . slaves of their manhood and womanhood.”
31 Motherhood was an essential element of True Womanhood; in
separating slave mothers from their children, using them as “breeders,” or
forcing them to work during pregnancy at dangerous risk to the child they
carried, slaveowners — in the abolitionist view — proved themselves enemies
of moral social order. Furthermore, Spring’s support for this motion
indicates her belief that mothers were somehow more attuned to slave
women’s suffering and were therefore in a prime position to act. Indeed
they were obligated to educate their children in the evils of the slave system
and protect them from learning to be prejudiced.
Although Spring’s motion at the anti-slavery convention was unanimously
endorsed, her support and promotion of motherhood was not always
greeted by her friends and acquaintances with as much enthusiasm.
SARAH BARKIN

Her close friend, the Transcendentalist writer Margaret Fuller, teased her
about a letter Spring had written regarding Fuller’s little boy: “Your letter,
my dear Rebecca, was written in your noblest and most womanly spirit.
Thank you for your sympathy about my little boy.” She went on to say,
“Yet in answer to what you say, that it is still better to give the world this
living soul than a part of my life in a book; it is true; and yet of my book I
could know whether it would be of any worth or not, of my child I must
wait to see what his worth will be.” 32 While Fuller loved her son dearly, her
view of motherhood was not as ecstatic as Spring’s; it was tempered by a
wariness that was at odds with Spring’s “womanly spirit.” Unlike Spring,
Fuller did not see motherhood as trumping her career as a writer. If
anything, her written works provided her with a greater sense of security
than parenthood did.
It was partly in the name of motherhood that Spring made the journey
to John Brown’s prison cell in 1859. On hearing that her friend, the
abolitionist Lydia Maria Child, had written to Governor Wise for permission
to attend the prisoner, Spring resolved to accompany her. Although
her husband was initially reluctant to let her go, she responded by saying,
“We have talked against slavery all these years, now somebody has done
something. These men have risked their lives: I must go.” 33 Still averse to
the notion, Marcus returned to his job in the city, but he later sent her a
note stating he thought it was a pity Spring did not accompany Child on
her mission. As Spring recalled in her autobiography: “Taking this for
consent, before Mr. Spring returned home, my young son and I were on
our way South.” 34 Not everyone believed that Marcus’s consent was necessary.
Lillie Wyman wrote, “I am inclined to believe that she really acted
independently of him. I was told at the time that she did not have to consult
him because he chanced to be from home on that important day.” 35
Nevertheless, by including this consultation, real or otherwise, into her
narrative, Spring at least paid lip service to the gender mores of the time.
She may have felt that her visit would be more palatable to her intended
audience if they knew it was sanctioned by a male authority figure. 36
Spring’s son Eddie was nineteen years old when he accompanied his
mother to Virginia, but her emphasis on his presence is telling for a couple
of reasons. First, his company underscored her role as a mother, thus
reinforcing her maternal position and justifying her transgression into the
public sphere. Second, as a grown man, Eddie could effectively serve as a
male chaperone, both providing his mother with physical protection and
reassuring those who might be worried that despite appearances, she was
still under a man’s control.
On reaching Virginia, Spring discovered that Lydia Maria Child had
in fact not gained permission to visit, leaving the Springs to find their
own way. It was not an easy one. Violence was an ever-present threat, but
Spring persevered nonetheless. When asked why she had come, she re-
Little Women and Evil-Looking Men
61

62
called answering: “[W]hen men fight and hurt each other, women should
go and take care of them.” 37 This statement reveals much about her
worldview; for Spring, men were destructive, and it was a woman’s obligation
to nurse them back to health. Such reasoning reinforced nineteenthcentury
definitions of gender, even though she was ultimately performing
a subversive and political act. She did not travel to Virginia to minister to
just anyone, but rather she sought to care for an extremely controversial
political figure: a man who had attacked a United States armory in a raid
that had resulted in the deaths of several people. 38
Spring may have been conscious of her precarious position and thus
repeatedly highlighted the “feminine” aspects of her trip. For instance,
she brought leaves to decorate Brown’s cell, she brought him a fresh pillowcase,
sent bandages for his wounds, and, perhaps most revealing, she
brought along her worsted and began to knit while they spoke, for which
Brown “looked gratified.” 39 In recounting these actions, Spring may have
hoped to call attention to the stereotypically constructive “nature” of
women and deflect interest away from those actions that threatened the
status quo. Even when she asked Brown to relate his motives for the attack
she assured him — and the southerners surrounding the prison — that
she was merely a vessel to convey information: “‘I want to ask you one
question,’ said I, ‘not for myself, but for others.’” 40 As a woman, she had
no interest — indeed what interest could she have in such matters? — in
his answers, but as a messenger, it was a necessity that she ask.
Spring’s observations of Brown also provide insight into her views
on masculinity and violence. As a Quaker, she did not, at least outwardly,
condone his violent actions, and yet, neither did she rebuke him for them.
Rather, she sought to understand why he had undertaken such harsh measures.
After ascertaining that he did not attack the Ferry for personal revenge,
Spring avoided discussing his violent actions altogether. Instead,
she described John Brown with language filled with religious imagery. For
instance, on gaining entrance to the prison a second time, she depicted the
change in Brown’s appearance:
Captain Brown on our second visit, was sitting at a table writing.
He looked well, his hair, washed and brushed, was thrown
up from his forehead; it was soft and white and looked like
a halo about his head. His high white forehead had a glory
about it as he stood looking like an inspired old prophet. 41
In describing him in such a way, Spring implied that there was something
holy, even Biblical in his person. In her mind, the violence of his
mission had an element of Old Testament justice about it. There may
even have been a hint of millenarian hope in her depiction of him as
a prophet, as if his deeds foretold the Second Coming of Christ as well
as the end of slavery. 42 In a letter to Andrew Hunter, the prosecuting attorney
in the cases against several of Brown’s fellow conspirators, Spring
described the spiritual element of Brown’s mission:
SARAH BARKIN

When I entered the prison I expected to see a rough, hard
man, but I found instead the most beautiful Christian graces.
I had asked to be allowed to enter, hoping to bring some holy
light into the valley of the shadow of death, through which
Mr. Brown must shortly pass, -And, behold—the glory of
the Lord shone round about him—and my feeling of pity
changed to veneration. 43
Spring had expected her mission to be one of mercy; she thought
she would be bringing the light of religion to John Brown. In this passage,
however, she indicated that Brown not only did not need her pity, he
deserved her “veneration.” In subsuming her potentially volatile mission
of feminine mercy to the “greater” masculine power of Brown’s religious
strength of purpose, Spring reassured her audience that she knew her
place in the gender hierarchy, and indeed, she depicted that hierarchy as
handed down by God. Furthermore, when Spring imbued Brown with religious
authority she also argued that in his raid against the armory, Brown
merely acted on faith, serving as a martyr for a just cause: “For twenty
years he had believed that he had a divine call to free the slaves; he had
tried, and failed, and the slave power seemed stronger than ever; his little
band of earnest young men were scattered, dead, or in prison, himself
condemned to die on the scaffold, but his faith never left him.” 44
The tacit acceptance of Brown’s violent raid may have raised him to
the level of true manhood in her eyes, but such respect did not extend to
the “evil-looking” southern men surrounding the prison. Brown attacked
armed men at an arsenal in an effort to end what many believed, and
rightfully so, to be the unjust and tyrannical system of slavery. But the
southern men’s violence had no aura of holy calling or virtuous patriotism.
Rather, these men were unmanly in that they took joy in attacking
the defenseless. Not only did they treat slaves brutally, but their behavior
at the prison indicated that they would be willing to commit violent acts
against a “little woman” and a “boy.” They were only able to show their
strength when the odds were in their favor. 45 Spring was outraged when
she discovered that a group of southern men had shot and killed one
of the wounded raiders while he was being treated for his wounds. Her
indignation caused her to leap out of her chair and confront the group
discussing the event: “Who killed him? How cowardly to kill a wounded
man.” 46 In Spring’s eyes, such violence was not only unjustified, it was
a sign of unmanliness, of weakness. True men would not have killed a
wounded prisoner.
Although Spring avoided explicitly mentioning Brown’s violence in
contrast to her emphasis on southern brutality, it nevertheless held true for
her that destructiveness was an inherently male quality. Recall her answer
to the man who questioned her presence: “When men fight and hurt each
other, women should go take care of them.” 47 In Spring’s worldview, when
men sought to destroy life, women were obligated to nurture it, even if
they had to step into the public sphere to do so.
Little Women and Evil-Looking Men
63

64
Spring’s efforts were not limited to the leader of the Harpers Ferry
raid. As Lucretia Mott noted in a letter to her niece Anna Temple Brown,
“I have intended to write direct to Reba. Spring . . . She deserves credit
for remembg. [sic] all the poor prisoners, with such generous exertions.” 48
In particular, Aaron Dwight Stevens became one of the main recipients of
those “generous exertions.” In her correspondence with Stevens, Spring’s
emphasis on motherhood and women’s nurturance took a more extreme
form. She first met Stevens during her visit to John Brown. Aaron was a
young man — he was twenty-nine years old at the time of his execution
in March 1860 — and Spring’s empathy toward him was evident in every
account she provided of his character. In “A Book of Remembrance,”
she described Stevens as “an old crusader in spirit, and yet he was loving
and gentle as a child. He was only dangerous to wrong and oppression.” 49
She determined that the early loss of his mother “when he was quite a
child made him a wanderer in his early life.” 50 Without female influence,
Stevens — in Spring’s estimation — was driven to the overtly dangerous
and rootless life he had led and as a result he faced a similarly violent
death by execution. Throughout her memoir, she emphasized his gentleness,
pointing out his “love of God, of nature, and of good people,” and
his “manly” courage in the face of death. 51 Perhaps most important in
Spring’s mind was Stevens’s appreciation for “true” womanhood. In “A
Book of Remembrance” she reprinted one of his letters to her in which
he stated: “There is no greater joy on earth for me than to see a noble
woman, for in her I see more of God than in anything else.” 52 Once again
“woman” appeared as the spiritual superior, reinforcing nineteenth-century
notions of female morality.
Spring attempted to remedy Stevens’s motherless situation by standing
in as a surrogate in his time of need. She went so far as to address
one of her letters to him as “My dear little boy.” 53 For his part, Stevens
returned the sentiment, “And now my dear Mother, what shall I say? . .
. As you have been a mother, sister, and all to me in this hour of need,
say a few kind words to my father and sister.” He then closed the letter,
“Your son in the bonds of love, truth, friendship and righteousness.” 54 In
their communications with one another, Stevens and Spring enacted the
roles of kinship. Their performances were not only gendered, they were
subversive as well. Unlike gender, kinship was supposed to be immutable;
it was determined by “blood.” In demonstrating that kinship, too, could
be performed, the blurred boundaries of gender as a social construction
appeared even more tenuous in contrast. When Spring emphasized her
maternal nature by bringing her son Eddie with her to the prison, her actions
underscored her position as an actual mother. On the other hand, her
maternal performance with Stevens exposed the fragility of social family
and gender norms; she expanded the notion of motherhood to include
those not related by blood and subsequently used that expanded role to
intercede on Stevens’s behalf. 55
SARAH BARKIN

Though Spring failed to save Stevens from the scaffold, she carried
out one last act of defiance in support of the Harpers Ferry band.
Spring acknowledged the male, destructive power of the state to execute
Stevens for his participation in Brown’s transgression on southern masculinity,
but as his surrogate mother she arranged to reclaim his body
and have him buried at her husband’s Eagleswood estate in “the land of
the free.” Spring’s final endeavor essentially appropriated southern state
power and transformed it in a bold act of both kinship and gender performance.
56 In burying Stevens and Absalom Haslett — another conspirator
— in the North, Spring denied the southerners their complete
revenge; their hope that the executions of the Harpers Ferry crew would
restore their defamed masculinity and honor was only partially — one
might say impotently — satisfied. Moreover, in her mind this recalcitrant
act derived from her view of southern manhood as emasculated;
she believed them to be cowards who preyed violently on the weak, thus
they did not deserve her respect.
A close reading of Spring’s memoir and correspondence reveals the
extent to which gendered mores were understood, challenged, and manipulated
in antebellum America. The cultural register that Spring lived
with and used on a daily basis gave “A Book of Remembrance” its meaning
as a performance of self. Spring justified her radical political actions
with gendered rhetoric emphasizing motherhood, physical frailty (on her
part), and domestic duty. She understood the political implications of her
actions, as well as the threat such deeds might pose to the status quo. In
visiting and supporting John Brown, she definitively stated her alliance
with the anti-slavery political activists in a public arena. The prison was
public not only because it was accessible, but also because it served as
a symbolic representation of the state’s power and masculinity. Spring
recognized the larger political implications of Brown’s — and by implication
her — actions. As she wrote: “The truth is that the raid at Harper’s
ferry [sic] was the beginning of the Civil War, and the Proclamation of
Emancipation finished John Brown’s work.” 57 Thus she also understood
the need to make her part in such actions palatable to her audience.
Spring’s visit to Brown’s prison cell and her correspondence with and
burial of Aaron Stevens had a larger impact as well, perhaps not in an
earthly context but in a more unworldly sense. In a letter to Spring, Lydia
Maria Child remarked on the spiritual effects of Spring’s actions: “It must
always be a source of pleasant recollection to you that you have had the
ability and the will to do so much to console John Brown, and his unfortunate
family and companions. Such deeds become flowers in gardens of
the eternal world.” 58 Like Spring, Child reinforced the notion of woman
as nurturer, as a gardener of ethereal blossoms whose beauty, if not appreciated
in the immediate and secular sense, would come into their own
in the more enduring afterlife.
Little Women and Evil-Looking Men
65

66
As a “little woman” in a world of angry men, Spring carefully negotiated
her way through the “gray area” in which the gendered public and
private spheres overlapped, using and manipulating long-held notions of
femininity to disguise the public and political nature of her actions. In
doing so she exposed the fragile nature of socially constructed roles, sometimes
surprising herself with the audacity of her deeds. In the actions of
this one individual, modern historians are confronted with a compelling
example of the means by which women of the antebellum period transformed
the domestic into the political, the allegedly powerless into the
powerful. And Spring’s audience recognized the dangerous implications
— both physical and intellectual — of her actions. Writing in the early
years of the twentieth century, Lillie Buffum Chace Wyman remarked on
the bravery her aunt displayed in journeying to Brown’s prison cell: “It is
hard now to realize that it was a greatly heroic thing for a woman and a
boy to do . . . but great and heroic it was for Rebecca Buffum Spring and
her lad to go on that errand in the early November of 1859.” 59
SARAH BARKIN

Little Women and Evil-Looking Men
NOTES
1 Rebecca Buffum Spring, “A Book of Remembrance,” Rebecca Spring Papers,
M0541, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA: 120.
2 Ibid, 124.
3 Rebecca Buffum Spring, “A Visit to John Brown in 1859,” in Virtuous Lives: Four Quaker
Sisters Remember Family Life, Abolitionism, and Women’s Suffrage, ed. Lucille Salitan and Eve Lewis
Perera (New York: Continuum, 1994), 122-23.
4 In one case in particular, Spring found herself using her religious beliefs as a defense
for her anti-slavery stance. In “A Book of Remembrance” Spring described an altercation on a
steamboat outside of St. Louis, in which she identified herself as an abolitionist to a group of
southern slave owners. After taking refuge in her cabin, she managed to assuage their anger —
and violent intentions — by declaring that abolitionist sentiments were a necessary component
to her Quaker religious beliefs adding the astute observation that “People will tolerate a good
deal of diversity in religious belief.” See Spring, “A Book of Remembrance,” 15-17.
5 Kristin Hoganson, “Garrisonian Abolitionists and the Rhetoric of Gender, 1850-
1860,” American Quarterly 45, no. 4 (Dec. 1993): 558-95.
6 Marie Marmo Mullaney appears intent on proving that Spring was a feminist, no
matter how subtly she expressed it. While most of Mullaney’s arguments are most convincing
when she discusses the contrast between Spring’s conventional femininity and reform interests,
in the end she emphasizes the “feminist” element in Spring’s reform career. See Marie Marmo
Mullaney, “Feminism, Utopianism, and Domesticity: The Career of Rebecca Buffum Spring,
1811-1911,” New Jersey History 104, nos. 3-4 (1989): 1-21. Amy Swerdlow, on the other hand,
underscores Spring’s conservatism. Swerdlow points to a resolution Spring put forward at the
first Anti-Slavery Convention for American Women in 1837, which linked the abolitionist
movement to women’s “traditional” roles as mothers. Like Mullaney, Swerdlow seems intent on
pigeonholing Spring rather than admitting and analyzing her complexity. See Amy Swerdlow,
“Abolition’s Conservative Sisters: The Ladies’ New York City Anti-Slavery Societies, 1834-
1840,” in The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America, ed. Jean Fagan
Yellin and John C. Van Horne (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 31-44.
7 Erving Goffman defines “performance” as “all the activity of an individual which
occurs during a period marked by his continuous presence before a particular set of observers
and which has some influence on the observers.” See Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life (1959; New York: Doubleday, 1972), 22; Kath Weston discusses the ways in
which people — particularly gay men and lesbians — construct their identities in a world
determined to classify them in one category (man) or another (woman). According to Weston,
even identifying someone/oneself as gay or lesbian imposes “a ‘Western’ classification in which
sexual behaviors and desires are understood thoroughly to infuse a self.” See Kath Weston, Long,
Slow Burn: Sexuality and Social Science (New York: Routledge, 1998), 33; and Gender Me, Render Me:
Lesbians Talk Sex, Class, Color, Nations, Studmuffins (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
8 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 10th anniversary
ed. (1990; New York: Routledge, 1999). See especially chapter four in Part Three: “Bodily
Inscriptions, Performative Subversions,” 163-80.
9 Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and
Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 372. It is
ironic that the patriarchs were the true dependents, basing their identities on those who were
considered their social and racial inferiors.
10 Butler, Gender Trouble, 179. Butler’s emphasis.
11 Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1999), 13.
12 Linda Kerber, “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of
Woman’s History,” Journal of American History 75 (June 1988): 9-39. Kerber emphasizes the
need to move beyond the constraints of dualistic rhetoric in favor of a more complex and
reciprocal language of gendered interaction. Paula Baker notes that women’s arguments for
political participation in the antebellum years used their roles and concerns in the private realm
to justify their cross over into the public world of politics. See Paula Baker, “The Domestication
of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920,” American Historical Review 89
(June 1984): 620-47.
13 Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860,” American Quarterly18
(Summer 1966): 151-74.
67

68
14
Bruce Dorsey, Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellum City (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2002), 13.
15
Ibid.
16
Ibid., 15.
17
Ibid, 39.
18
Ibid, 40-41. According to Habermas’s definition of the public sphere, prisons were
public not only because they were accessible (mainly to men) but also because they were often
run by state governments and as such were representations, in a physical sense, of the state’s
political power. See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry
into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1989).
19
Unless otherwise stated, the biographical information is drawn from two of Marie
Marmo Mullaney’s essays on Rebecca Spring. See “Rebecca Buffum Spring, 1811-1911,” in
Past and Promise: Lives of New Jersey Women, ed. The Woman’s Project of New Jersey (Metuchen,
NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1990), 84-86; “Feminism, Utopianism, and Domesticity,” (see note 6).
20
Elizabeth Buffum Chace, “My Anti-Slavery Reminiscences,” in Virtuous Lives (see note
4), 95.
21
Dorothy Sterling, Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelley and the Politics of Antislavery (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1991), 83, 264.
22
Elizabeth Buffum Chace, “Reminiscences of Childhood,” in Virtuous Lives, 36.
23
Lillie Buffum Chace Wyman, American Chivalry (Boston: W. B. Clarke, 1913), 51.
24
George Kirchmann, “Unsettled Utopias: The North American Phalanx and The
Raritan Bay Union,” New Jersey History 97 (Spring 1979), 25-36.
25
There are a number of different accounts relating to the Springs’ involvement in
the Phalanx’s dissolution. A couple of historians point to Rebecca’s insistence on mandatory
religious meetings as one of the primary points of contention. Marie Mullaney argues that
Rebecca mistook the religious pluralism that dominated the Phalanx for irreligion. George
Kirchmann tends to place the blame more squarely on Marcus’s financial influence, but he also
argues that the Springs created “great bitterness and discomfort” when they lobbied for a fixed
liturgy at the Phalanx. See Mullaney,” Rebecca Buffum Spring,” 85; Kirchmann, “Unsettled
Utopias,” 32.
26
Jayme Sokolow, “Culture and Utopia: The Raritan Bay Union.” New Jersey History 94
(Summer-Autumn 1976): 89-100.
27
Spring, “Book of Remembrance,” 88.
28
Ibid., 106-107. It is interesting to note that this is the very excuse Abby Kelley used as
justification for not paying taxes on the farm she and her husband Stephen Foster jointly owned.
Unfortunately, the government did not agree and put their farm up for auction several times.
In 1880, Abby and her husband finally abandoned the protest and paid their tax bill, declaring
that Stephen’s health was too poor to continue. See Sterling, Ahead of Her Time, 367-73.
29
Wyman, American Chivalry, 59
30
Turning the World Upside Down: The Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women Held in New
York City, May 9-12, 1837, 1st ed. with an introduction by Dorothy Sterling (New York: Feminist
Press at the City University of New York, 1987), 17. Italics not mine.
31
Hoganson, “Garrisonian Rhetoric,” 575.
32
Margaret Fuller to Marcus and Rebecca Spring, 12 December 1849. In Robert
Hudspeth, ed., The Letters of Margaret Fuller, vol. 5 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983),
294-97.
33
Spring, “Book of Remembrance,” 109-10.
34
Ibid., 110.
35
Wyman, 59.
36
In emphasizing the fact that she obtained his permission through a letter rather than
in person, Rebecca accomplished two goals. She protected herself and her mission with a veil
of male approval, and she protected her husband from carrying too much of the blame should
her actions offend. Thus, Rebecca nominally respected the gender hierarchies of her time,
while she simultaneously subverted them.
37
Spring, 110-11.
38
The Harpers Ferry Armory and Arsenal was established by George Washington
in 1794. Thus it was a symbol of a new nation’s victory and might. In the minds of some
Southerners (and Northerners), John Brown’s assault against such an icon may have represented
an attack against the very core of American democracy. Brown’s attack on Harpers Ferry can
be read in multiple ways. On the one hand he hoped to arm slaves for rebellion against tyranny,
thus echoing revolutionary rhetoric of male virtue. On the other hand, he was defacing
SARAH BARKIN

Southern manhood, symbolically appropriating it not only for himself and his Northern cause,
but also for enslaved — and thus emasculated — black men. For Southerners such an act struck
at the very core of their being. For a more in-depth discussion of American Revolutionary
masculinity and the role it played in the intergenerational battle for male identify, see Dorsey,
Reforming Men and Women.
39
Spring, 120-21.
40
Ibid., 122.
41
Ibid., 125.
42
Robert Abzug discusses in fascinating detail the different cosmological explanations
that motivated antebellum reformers in his work Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the
Religious Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
43
Rebecca Buffum Spring to Andrew Hunter, 2 January 1860. Reprinted in Spring, “A
Book of Remembrance,” 137.
44
Ibid., 126. Such language also brings to mind Christ’s suffering before his crucifixion.
45
Kristin Hoganson provides an excellent analysis of Garrisonian rhetoric regarding
Southern honor and brutality. See Hoganson, “Garrisonian Rhetoric,” 582-583.
46
Spring, 112.
47
Spring, 110-11.
48
Lucretia Coffin Mott to Anna Temple Brown, 2 January, 1860. In Selected Letters of
Lucretia Coffin Mott, ed. Beverly Wilson Palmer (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 292.
49
Spring, “A Book of Remembrance,” 164-65. The biographical information is drawn
from “A Book of Remembrance,” 165-75.
50
Spring, 167.
51
Ibid., 166, 169.
52
Aaron Dwight Stevens to Rebecca Buffum Spring, 18 March 1860, Reprinted in
Spring, “A Book of Remembrance,” 162.
53
Rebecca Buffum Spring to Aaron D. Stevens, 13 February 1860. Rebecca Spring Papers,
M0541, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.
54
Aaron D. Stevens to Rebecca Buffum Spring, 13 March 1860. Reprinted in Spring,
“A Book of Remembrance,” 147.
55
In Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death, Judith Butler argues that Antigone’s
act of kinship — burying her brother in defiance of the King’s laws — serves as a “trespass on
the norms of kinship and gender that exposes the precarious character of those norms, their
sudden and disturbing transferability, and their capacity to be reiterated in contexts and in ways
that are not fully to be anticipated.” Rebecca’s performance of kinship can be read in a similar
fashion. See Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2000), 24.
56
Spring’s burial of Stevens and Absalom Haslett, another of the Harpers Ferry crew,
was remarkably similar to Antigone’s defiant burial of her brother. As Butler contends: “Antigone
comes, then, to act in ways that are called manly not only because she acts in defiance of the
law but also because she assumes the voice of the law in committing the act against the law. . . .
Her agency emerges precisely through her refusal to honor his [King Creone’s] command, and
yet the language of refusal assimilates the very terms of sovereignty that she refuses. . . . [S]he
asserts herself through appropriating the voice of the other, the one to whom she is opposed;
thus her autonomy is gained through the appropriation of the authoritative voice of the one
she resists. See Butler, Antigone’s Claim, 11.
57
Spring, 126.
58
Lydia Maria Child to Rebecca Buffum Spring, 19 March 1860, Rebecca Spring
Papers.
59
Wyman, American Chivalry, 60.
Little Women and Evil-Looking Men
69

from Bush-League Hamlet
TO M A J O R - L E AG U E M E T RO P O L I S :
L O S A N G E L E S , T H E D O D G E R S
A N D P R O P O S I T I O N B
S\
M I C H A E L Mott

72
eex
post
efacto

he post-World War II period brought unprecedented and unparalleled
urban growth to Southern California. As a result of a revitalized
economy and the expansion of a vast military-industrial complex, a population
boom stretched the geographic contours of the region, creating
a vast multi-centered metropolis encompassing Ventura County to the
north, San Bernardino to the east, and Orange County and San Diego
to the south. For the city and county of Los Angeles, as for other regions
of the Far West, this expansive decentralization was not necessarily a new
experience. As Robert Fogelson demonstrates, from its experience as a
Mexican pueblo through the ravages of the Great Depression, the history
of the Los Angeles region encompasses both the emergence of a “populous,
urbanized, and industrialized settlement” and the “rejection of the
metropolis in favor of its suburbs.” Nevertheless, the postwar transformation
solidified the dual processes of expansion and decentralization in
galactic proportions. 1
T
Accompanying this flow of people and economic growth westward
across the nation, the game of baseball was also experiencing an exceptional
geographic transformation. At the end of World War II, the westernmost
major league city was St. Louis, a territorial boundary in place
since the early 1890s. However, with the combination of a postwar boom
in spectator sports and the successes of such minor league teams as the
Pacific Coast League’s Los Angeles Angels, Oakland Oaks, San Francisco
Seals, and San Diego Padres, the west coast appeared certain to play a
significant role in any future reconsideration of the major league baseball
map. Moreover, the successful transitions of the Boston Braves to
Milwaukee in 1953 and the Philadelphia Athletics to Kansas City in1955
forced the organized baseball establishment to reconsider the pastime’s
limited geographic scope. 2
73

74
By 1958, both San Francisco and Los Angeles would play host to
the “national game” as well. However, unlike the comparably smooth
move of the Giants, Los Angeles’ procurement of Walter O’Malley’s
Brooklyn Dodgers initiated a complex interplay involving the city’s
citizenry and politicians in a hotly contested battle over a plot of land
called Chavez Ravine, home to a small but intimate community of
Mexican Americans. After almost a decade of political infighting to define
the proper use of this land, ranging from proposals for public housing
to anticommunist backlashes squashing such purposes, Los Angeles
Mayor Norris Poulson met with Dodger President Walter O’Malley in
1957 to offer a stadium site at the same time that O’Malley was failing
in his own attempts to negotiate a new ballpark with the city of
New York. On October 7, 1957, the city council approved a resolution
calling for the transfer of Chavez Ravine to O’Malley and his Dodger
organization. In an attempt to block this reassignment of more than
300 acres of public land, citizens, as well as local and regional businesspersons,
placed the issue on the ballot in the form of Proposition
B, a referendum to be held on June 3, 1958. Only after voter approval
of the measure and the resolution of subsequent logistical and legal
hurdles, would O’Malley and his Dodgers be able to build their new
home, Dodger Stadium. 3
The present examination attempts to place this “Battle for Chavez
Ravine” within the political, social, and economic context of postwar
Los Angeles. More specifically, by calling into question the contract
between Walter O’Malley’s Dodgers and the City of Los Angeles,
Proposition B reveals the contestation and anxiety over a fragmented
urban landscape. On one side, the proponents of the “Yes on Prop. B”
campaign sought to define a coherent centralized metropolis through
the integration of a disorderly cityscape. They believed the appropriation
of Chavez Ravine for a privately funded baseball stadium would
unify Los Angeles, politically, socially, and economically, allowing the
city to emerge as “major league” in relation to its eastern counterparts.
Refuting the “giveaway” of public property for an explicitly private
purpose, the opponents of the contract with O’Malley’s club advocated
a pattern of urban land use reinforcing the existing balance between
core and periphery. As such, they believed any use of Chavez Ravine,
whether for baseball or other municipal purposes, should lie within
public control for the benefit of both the outlying districts as much as
the downtown center. Thus, the referendum issue evokes many of the
concepts integral to the discipline of urban history, specifically the effects
of popular culture and politics on the struggle for spatial meaning.
More than a reflection of support for their local government’s attempts
at bringing baseball to Los Angeles, the debates by citizens, politicians,
and baseball executives provide a site from which one can examine a
dialogue of the city-building process.
MICHAEL MOTT

In the past thirty years, scholars have approached the “Battle for
Chavez Ravine” and the Dodger referendum issue from a variety of perspectives.
A number of writers have stressed the positive benefits and
negative repercussions associated with the westward move of Walter
O’Malley’s Dodgers. Lee Elihu Lowenfish’s “A Tale of Many Cities,”
examines the Dodger’s move to Los Angeles within a larger context of
the postwar expansion of major league baseball. In doing so, Lowenfish
identifies the effects of this franchise movement on the receiving communities.For
Lowenfish, O’Malley’s rationale behind westward expansion
“showed little intrinsic relationship to the needs or desires of the
would-be new home towns,” except if they constituted opportunities for
profit-making ventures. 4 The relocation of the Dodgers, therefore, involved
little more than the management of narrow self-interest of the
business elite against the greater public interest. Portraying Proposition B
as a “clash of the temporary interests of rich and poor,” he conceptualizes
the issue as a struggle between moneyed interests and community
loyalties. 5 Oftentimes allowing his biases to direct his historical analysis,
Lowenfish identifies these self-serving motivations as providing a negative
model for future franchise relocation.
At the opposite spectrum, Cary Henderson and Neil Sullivan argue
for the positive ramifications associated with the Dodger deal. In his
“Los Angeles and the Dodger War, 1957-1962,” Henderson explores how
baseball as big business served as a source of civic pride and personal
identification for the city. Like Lowenfish, Henderson essentially characterizes
both the referendum and the larger narrative by utilizing the same
dichotomy between business and community interests. Unlike Lowenfish,
however, Henderson finds distinct advantages in the Dodger deal for the
city of Los Angeles. Besides procuring “loyal fans, a fine ballpark, and
handsome profits,” notes the author, Los Angeles’ ultimate compensation
for relinquishing its public property for private purposes was the annual
local tax paid by the team. Despite political, legal, and moral upheaval, the
city “found a workable solution, one that was reasonable and justifiable.” 6
In much the same manner, Neil Sullivan’s The Dodgers Move West attempts
to dispel the common assumption that “the citizens and taxpayers
in Los Angeles were exploited by the ill-advised decisions of their elected
officials.” 7 As a result, Sullivan offers a dispassionate analysis of Walter
O’Malley and the political actors in both New York and Los Angeles.
Oftentimes failing to contextualize the Dodgers’ move within a proper
historical, political, and social backdrop, Sullivan utilizes the same dichotomy
as Henderson of mutually benefiting community and business
interests to show how the Dodger deal “demonstrates the significance of
a proper relationship between a community and its sports teams.” 8 With
a privately funded stadium with limited governmental assistance, Sullivan
notes, the city of Los Angeles was able to reap a plethora of financial benefits,
exemplifying “a model association of community and ballclub.” 9
Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and Proposition B
75

76
However, by focusing solely on the benefits and costs of baseball’s
move to Los Angeles and by oversimplifying the debate surrounding
Proposition B to an acrimonious conflict between the material interests
of business and political leaders, and local and community interests, these
analyses fail to problematize issues lying at the heart of urban historical
discourse. In effect, these authors leave a historiographical gap in assessing
the relationships between the Dodger’s relocation and questions of race
and ethnicity, the contested meanings over urban space and land usage,
and the city’s long tumultuous history with public housing. Partially filling
this void, Thomas Hines’ “Housing, Baseball, and Creeping Socialism”
places the Dodger move and the referendum issue within Los Angeles’ tenyear
struggle over public housing in Chavez Ravine. From the Los Angeles
Housing Authority’s purchase of the land under the National Housing
Act of 1949 and the anticommunist crusades against publicly subsidized
land use in the early 1950s, through O’Malley’s privatization of an area
once inhabited by a bustling Mexican-American community, the author
examines the Dodger’s relocation within a Cold War dialectic concerning
the proper use of city space. Characterizing Proposition B and O’Malley’s
victory as the “final apple pie American resolution,” Hines identifies the
referendum issue as the proper finale to “an era in American history in
which public housing was only one of the casualties.” 10
Focusing more explicitly on the Mexican-American experience of
Los Angeles, Ronald Lopez’s dissertation, “The Battle for Chavez Ravine:
Public Policy and Chicano Community Resistance in Post War Los
Angeles, 1945-1962,” explores the ways in which the story is “archetypal
of the Mexican-American experience of injustice, segregation, and dislocation.”
11 Viewing the sale of Chavez Ravine to O’Malley’s Dodgers within
a “narrative of resistance,” Lopez focuses on the destruction of Chavez
Ravine’s Chicano community, from initial attempts at establishing public
housing on the site through O’Malley’s development of the land. Inspired
by the concepts of “action research” or “advocacy research,” this analysis
equates the Dodger deal and Proposition B with a “symbolic black eye,”
a constant reminder of the city’s “past crimes and past promises” in light
of the virtual displacement and destruction of a community. 12 In the end,
notes Lopez, the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers has the markings of a
conspiracy, a tragic moral drama of a powerless minority community unable
to resist the overwhelming forces of both major league baseball and
the city’s elite power structure.
Also examining resistance to the development of Chavez Ravine,
Don Parson shifts his focus from the issue of race and ethnicity to the politics
of modernism in postwar Los Angeles. Exploring a “modern geography”
characterized by “visionary and large-scale developments,” Parson
depicts a struggle between “older, obsolete, or blighted urban areas” of
Los Angeles and politicians intent on creating a “rational and functional
built environment.” 13 As the author notes, “opponents to the moderniza-
MICHAEL MOTT

tion strategies of…Chavez Ravine were seen as obstructionists to the vision
of modern Los Angeles.” 14 With Proposition B’s victory symbolizing
the failure of channeling popular protest into a formal political structure,
community members opposing the development of Chavez Ravine occupied
the site and implemented a vigorous letter writing campaign in
an attempt to halt the forced eviction of the remaining residents of the
area. Feeling ostracized and excluded by a local political structure, states
Parson, “direct action became the means to combat modernism.” 15
Focusing on the issues of cultural diversity and “whiteness” in postwar
Los Angeles, Eric Avila examines the Dodger’s move to the city, as
well as cinematic representations of Los Angeles, the city’s freeway system,
and Disneyland, to “locate the attempt to resurrect an…ideal of Los
Angeles as a ‘white’ city.” 16 Because of the changing spatial and racial
dynamics of postwar Los Angeles, notes Avila, “the struggle to reinvent
Los Angeles in the image of a sanitized, homogenous ‘white’ city took
on a special imperative.” 17 Popular culture became a means of fulfilling
such a reinvention. In a city and an era in which ethnic diversity seemed
to threaten the hegemony of a “singular, core ‘American’ culture,” notes
Avila, O’Malley’s Dodgers served as an attempt to combat social dislocation
and cultural fragmentation by constructing a site for inclusion, a
spatial reorganization of “whiteness.” 18
This examination of O’Malley’s move to Los Angeles and, more specifically,
the referendum issue of Proposition B, will offer a more explicit
analysis of space in the postwar metropolis. At a time when urban expansion
stretched the geographic boundaries of the Los Angeles region to
unprecedented proportions, Proposition B became more than an issue of
whether the Dodgers should play in Chavez Ravine. On closer examination,
the referendum and the Dodger deal in general becomes a debate
over the function of popular culture in reconfiguring the spatial dimensions
of Los Angeles. For opponents of the city’s contract with the club
and the “giveaway” of public land for private enterprise, this struggle to
define the meaning of urban space hinged on their desire to maintain
and reinforce new patterns of postwar urban growth and expansion, and
resist the domination of their outlying districts by centralized downtown
concerns. While never arguing against baseball in Chavez Ravine, per
se, they sought a deal which would allow for a public use suitable for the
region as a whole, rather than a private purpose for the direct benefit of
the downtown district.
For large portions of the populace, however, Proposition B became
a means of arresting postwar “urban sprawl” through the centralized integration
of a disorderly metropolis, revealing a certain anxiety over a
new urban configuration defined more by decentralized horizontal expansion
than traditional conceptions of proper growth. In this sense, Dodger
Stadium resembles, what John Findlay terms, “a magic kingdom for base-
Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and Proposition B
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ball,” in other words, a miniature version of the ideal virgin city, an “antidote
to the apparent chaos of their…urban milieus.” 19 Faced with what
they considered to be an unmanageable pattern of growth, proponents of
the contract also viewed Dodger Stadium as a way of liberating the western
city from the constricting comparison to its eastern counterpart. As
Jules Tygiel notes, “the acquisition of a major league team marked a sense
of maturity, arrival, and acceptance, an acknowledgment of an elevated
status in a newly emergent American constellation.” 20
Lying less than five miles north of downtown Los Angeles, Chavez
Ravine and the battle over its “proper use” became, what the city’s Mayor
Norris Poulson considered, “one of the hottest issues in my last term as
Mayor…the hottest battle in California since the war with Mexico,” and
what one local newspaper publisher termed, “the biggest story in Los
Angeles since the [Mayor Frank] Shaw recall in the 1930s.” 21 What became
known as Walter O’Malley’s “Golden Gulch,” however, had a rich
history dating back to the city’s Spanish roots as a burgeoning pueblo. A
hilly, tree-filled plot of land shaped in the form of a guitar pick, Chavez
Ravine was originally part of a land grant from King Carlos III of Spain. 22
Arriving in the pueblo from New Mexico in the early 1830s, Julian Chavez,
a laborer and later city councilmember of the American town, laid claim
to the four hundred acre plot until his death in 1879. 23 Leading up to its
re-creation as a ballpark, Chavez Ravine served a multitude of purposes
for a variety of inhabitants. Photographer Don Normack documented
the ravine’s use as “a cattle ranch, a dairy farm, two brickyards, a Jewish
cemetery, [and] a Chinese cemetery.” 24
In the minds of public officials concerned with the contentious area’s
“proper use,” however, Chavez Ravine became more of an abstraction
of public policy than a site for human settlement. Reflecting a depiction
recounted in arguments for the area’s development, sportswriter Robert
Shaplen characterized the “rat, shack, and goat hill” as a “sprawling, unkempt
area that has been used principally for a police academy, an unofficial
city dump and, in its fewer choicer spots, a spooning grounds…” 25
After the red baiting of city public officials temporarily halted a three-year
attempt at developing the site for a series of public housing units in 1952,
newly-elected Mayor Poulson, running on an anti-housing platform,
negotiated a number of complicated compromises with public housing
advocates in early 1953. In effect, Poulson freed the entirety of Chavez
Ravine from the hands of the Los Angeles Housing Authority and the
federal government in exchange for an agreement to use the area for “appropriate
public purposes,” a tag that would haunt the Dodger proceedings
for almost a decade. Unconstrained from such legal chains, the City
of Los Angeles conveniently possessed a large plot of centrally located
land at the same time Dodger President O’Malley had a falling out with
the City of New York over his desire for a privately owned ballpark to
replace the dilapidated Ebbets Field. 26
MICHAEL MOTT

In September 1955, a year before Los Angeles officials even began
their courtship with Dodger President Walter O’Malley, Mayor Poulson,
articulated the parameters of a debate that would eventually drive the
arguments for and against Proposition B: “We’re…decentralized here
in Los Angeles. But we’ve got to support and strengthen the downtown
area. It’s my notion that no city can be a great city without a strong
central core.” 27 The availability of property miles from downtown Los
Angeles and its proximity to three freeways surely enticed O’Malley
into leaving his Brooklyn abode. As the prospects for a successful
resolution to his attempts at staying in or around Brooklyn dimmed,
O’Malley’s purchase of Wrigley Field and the Los Angeles Angels of the
Pacific Coast League in February 1957 sounded the death knell for the
Brooklyn Dodgers. After the New York Giants solidified their move to
San Francisco in August 1957, National League President Warren Giles
officially announced the shift of the Dodger franchise to Los Angeles on
October 8, providing the city with major-league baseball and provoking,
for Brooklynites, what one historian termed, “arguably the greatest
treachery by an American since Benedict Arnold.” 28
Leading up to this moment, O’Malley had, for months, conversed
with Los Angeles city officials over the possible site of a ballpark. Upon
introducing the prospect of Chavez Ravine, the Dodger President surprised
Mayor Poulson: “…he surprisingly knew all about the area…
Walter could visualize its possibilities. He said he liked its central location.
He has never cared for the outskirts…” 29 Although O’Malley
appeared set on the ravine as the future home of his Dodgers, the deal
was anything but certain. After a flurry of negotiations in mid-1957
with O’Malley, Poulson enlisted the services of L.A. business leader,
Harold McClellan, City Attorney Roger Arnebergh, and Chief City
Administrator Samuel Leask to hammer out an offer to the Dodgers
that would, as the mayor noted, “not get all of us run out of the city.” 30
After several weeks of rancorous debate within the city council, a tento-four
majority approved City Ordinance Number 110, 204 at midnight,
September 7, on live television. With the Dodger contract, the
city would give the team some 300 acres of Chavez Ravine, agreeing
to grade the area at a cost of $2,000,000 and build access roads at
an additional $2,740,000. In return, O’Malley’s Dodgers would turn
over $2,000,000 Wrigley Field, a 15-acre site, to the city and construct
a modern baseball stadium in the ravine to seat no less than 50,000
spectators. Moreover, O’Malley agreed to construct and maintain recreational
facilities within the area to be controlled by the city for twenty
years, after which time the team would gain ownership of the structures.
These sureties proved short-lived. According to Poulson, “Our
team turned up with ten votes. We cheered loudly. The battle, at last,
was won — or so we thought.” 31
Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and Proposition B
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On December 1, 1957, Walter Peterson, the Los Angeles city clerk,
announced that petitioners had collected enough valid signatures to place
the Chavez Ravine contract on the upcoming ballot to challenge the validity
of the agreement, initiating what sports columnist John Lardner
coined, “the biggest war for a ditch since the Suez trouble in ’56.” 32 Two
days after the council’s approval of the Dodger contract, a group of lawyers,
homeowners, and real estate agents, almost all of who resided in
the outlying districts of the city, formed the Citizens’ Committee to Save
Chavez Ravine. Unwilling to accept what committee chairman C.A.
Owen considered to be the exorbitant tax breaks of the downtown baseball
deal, the group decided at this time to collect enough signatures to
place the issue on the upcoming summer ballot. Employing both volunteer
and professional petition circulators at a salary of twenty cents per
signature and retaining the publicity efforts of community newspapers,
the committee’s month-long effort succeeded, despite what one sympathizer
considered, “a virtual black-out of any positive news about it in the
downtown press.” 33 Notwithstanding the lack of press in such newspapers
as the Los Angeles Times, a media outlet whose owner, the Chandler family,
had a financial stake in the success in the downtown project, the committee
transported over 85,000 signatures in mid-November to city hall in
an armored car to protect their work from potential threats by the pro-
O’Malley crowd. 34
The news met with equal parts disdain and surprise from public officials
and Walter O’Malley. “Los Angeles is probably America’s softest
touch for a guy clutching a petition,” noted Mayor Poulson, adding, “A
writer once observed that one putting his mind to it could gather enough
signatures in the city to outlaw orange juice.” 35 The Dodger President reacted
with shock at the placement of the Dodger contract on the upcoming
ballot, stating, “I never anticipated a referendum.” Still unaccustomed to
his new California environs, O’Malley noted, “I was completely unaware
of the thing they called a referendum…Very few places have it. They have
initiatives and referendums out here. Very peculiar. No boss…” 36
Regardless of such apprehension, the voters would determine the
fate of the contract on the June 3rd ballot the upcoming year. Despite
city councilman John Holland’s claim that the Dodgers might reap an
advantage from a “B is for Baseball” campaign, the council established
the baseball referendum measure as Proposition B. The voting guidelines
appeared clear-cut. A “yes” vote would approve the Dodger’s contract
with the city, while a “no” would negate the deal, allowing the city to
renegotiate with the club. The underlying issues, however, were not so
simple. Ultimately, the six-month period leading up to the vote magnified
competing visions of the postwar metropolis, dividing the city over the
“proper use” of Chavez Ravine and the meaning of urban space within
Los Angeles. 37
MICHAEL MOTT

Viewing the Dodgers as a possible cure for an ailing metropolis, the
stance of a Los Angeles reporter best exemplifies both the arguments in
support of the Chavez Ravine contract and Proposition B, and the essence
of the western city’s relationship to the East:
L.A. has no identity. We haven’t got a landmark. In New York,
it’s the skyline…Here every little township attaches itself to
L.A., but it worries over its own school problem and its own
sewer problem. We’re looking for the Dodgers to pull it all together.
Land of the freeways, sprawling Los Angeles has high
hopes that the Dodgers will pull it together. 38
As an outspoken leader of the “Yes on Prop. B” group, Mayor Poulson
offered a similar sense of urgency: “Psychologically, it was a great boost
for Los Angeles and the West. It was that of the ‘old East looking down
its nose at the young West.” Imagining the intangibles of “major-league”
status for his city, Poulson stressed, “We just were not big-leaguers in any
way. Then to think that we could become world champions overnight
made them sit up and listen.” 39
In order for the city to achieve “major-league” status, its citizens
would need to be persuaded of the efficacy of the Dodger contract.
As both sides of the referendum issue began to energize their efforts to
reach out to the public with their respective message, many proponents
of the contract pooled their forces into the creation of the “Taxpayers’
Committee for Yes on Prop. B.,” chaired by popular stage, film, and television
comedian, Joe E. Brown. Stressing the vast influx of tourism, commerce,
and industry that would accompany the Los Angeles Dodgers into
the city, Brown and the Taxpayers’ Committee acted as an umbrella organization
for a large variety of people and groups in support of the city’s
agreement with the ball club. With a published budget of over $140,000,
these highly organized political campaigners advertised their own Dodger
gospel through radio advertisements and roadside billboards. 40
Throughout the months leading up to the ballot measure, the
committee circulated vast amounts of literature throughout the city as
well. Not only was a baseball stadium a proper use of publicly-owned
land, noted one pamphlet, the development of Chavez Ravine would
provide over $300,000 of new tax revenues for the development of
other downtown projects. Moreover, the committee’s press emphasized
the importance of more incidental values. Attracting tourism to the
downtown, the Dodgers “will make Los Angeles more attractive as
an ‘all-year’ resort.” 41 Labeling Chavez Ravine a “civic liability and
largely a hilly wasteland,” Brown’s Taxpayers’ Committee celebrated
the site’s possibilities for becoming “one of the scenic and architectural
wonders of the West.” 42 Joining Disneyland as a significant addition
to the region’s cultural makeup, Dodger Stadium would also bring
“order and cohesion” to a city and a downtown district divided by
local interests. 43 As such, the tourist appeal of “the most modern, mag-
Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and Proposition B
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nificent major league stadium in the world” would shift much-deserved
attention to the central business district. 44 Asked if visitors and passersby
would come downtown to conduct business if the city refused
the Chavez Ravine contract, chairman Brown, during a luncheon
meeting, assuredly replied, “78% of them would not.” 45 Ultimately,
as one self-professed member of the Taxpayers’ Committee wrote to
the city council, anyone failing to recognize the importance of baseball
to downtown Los Angeles “belongs to some hick town and not to this
modern marvel, Los Angeles.” 46
As sports historian Steven Riess has noted, boosters and boosterism
have been hugely significant for the development and growth
of Los Angeles, “a town which has based its ability for survival on
self-promotion even before the days of the hype and glamour of
Hollywood.” 47 Endorsement of the Dodger contract continued this
trend in the city’s history. As Joe E. Brown’s Taxpayers’ Committee
placed the promotion of the Chavez Ravine contract on their shoulders,
several other booster groups began dotting the landscape as well.
Along with the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, Town Hall, the Property
Owners Tax Association of California, and the Los Angeles Realty
Board, a group comprising over 130 attorneys as well as a committee
of doctors worked for approval of Proposition B. Citing the benefits of
downtown baseball on additional tax revenue and business activity, the
Downtown Business Men’s Association gave their unanimous approval
of a contract that would start downtown Los Angeles “on a brilliant
new era of prosperity and unprecedented expansion.” 48 Employing
rhetoric common to the endorsement of a majority of these boosters,
the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce also urged a “yes” vote on
“B for Baseball” in order to transform the “unsightly wastelands” of
Chavez Ravine into a downtown attraction and a taxpaying asset. 49
Although it is difficult to determine the effectiveness of the boosters’
efforts, combined with the outspoken endorsements of the mayor, portions
of the city council, and the dominating coverage of the downtown
press, the proponents of Proposition B had an ample platform
through which to present their own dream of Los Angeles. This vision
constituted nothing less than the restoration of a downtown district
left barren by the ravages of economic dispersion. 50
With initial polls revealing that seventy percent of the city favored
the Chavez Ravine contract in early 1958, O’Malley and Mayor Poulson
announced their desire to detach themselves from the referendum fight.
Taking the position that the ball club should not interfere with such a community
issue, O’Malley refused to contribute to Joe E. Brown’s Taxpayers’
Committee. As the Dodger president expressed to Sports Illustrated,
“Baseball is a democratic game. I have to recognize what’s happening out
here as a democratic process,” adding, “We’ve got to keep baseball out of
politics and the damn politicians out of baseball.” 51
MICHAEL MOTT

However, with their opposition gathering steam and subsequent polls
disclosing an increasing aversion to the Chavez Ravine contract, Poulson
quickly departed from his neutral stance. Returning from an East Coast
business trip, the mayor spoke to reporters at City Hall, emphasizing
his concern with how the Chavez Ravine opposition was negating the
downtown district’s position in important financial and trade circles in
New York. As Poulson stated, eastern businessmen are “wondering if Los
Angeles is a bush league town or whether we’re major league in character.”
52 Opposition to Proposition B and the Chavez Ravine deal, he noted,
stemmed from the growing fragmentation of the city. As the mayor observed
during a subsequent hearing on the contract, “I am sorry to say
that it is obvious to anyone that a great deal of this is sectional opposition.”
“A few people from outlying communities,” continued Poulson,
“are apparently afraid that this is going to bring some business downtown
that they are not going to participate.” Admonishing what he considered
the self-interest of certain councilmembers, Poulson stated, “I have to represent
all of the city…I can’t afford to represent just one section…We
have to think of the city as a whole.” 53
Poulson later proceeded to employ more underhanded tactics in
May of 1958 with polls revealing even less support for the contract, especially
in the outlying San Fernando Valley district. Changing his strategy
of “using carefully reasoned arguments to justify the contract,” the mayor
employed a “scare campaign” to win the support of “low-income people
who didn’t belong to country clubs and social groups.” 54 In effect, he led
these constituents to believe the referendum was unalterably a yes-or-no
vote for baseball, purposefully confusing the central issue of Proposition
B for fear of “being drowned out by cries of ‘Save our land for the people!”
55 In another self-professed tactic to turn the issue on its head, Mayor
Poulson wrote National League President Warren Giles encouraging him
to convince the public that they were actually voting on baseball rather
than the Dodger’s contract with the city. The mayor’s efforts surfaced
when Giles’ words appeared in the Los Angeles Times, stating, “The June
3 referendum…will be an expression by the people of Los Angeles as to
whether they want major league baseball.” 56 If the city voted against the
Chavez Ravine, noted Giles, organized baseball would force the Dodgers
to look elsewhere for a home. 57
With equal partiality and less underhandedness, the Los Angeles Times
played an integral role in shaping the contours of the Proposition B debate
as well. If the tactics and efforts of citizen groups and the mayor
were ineffective in persuading the populace of the contract’s benefits,
perhaps the newspaper’s editorializing could prove more successful. With
a large amount of investment in downtown real estate concerns, the
Chandler family had a vested interest in bringing the Dodgers and the
subsequent flow of downtown business activity to Chavez Ravine. The
newspaper’s proclivity for pro-contract media coverage and paucity of
Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and Proposition B
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opposition coverage demonstrated a clear bias. Moreover, the Times’ editorial
pages defined the deal’s supporters’ concerns about the future of
postwar Los Angeles. Two months before the referendum battle began,
the Times addressed a distinct sense of anxiety about the social, political,
and geographic fragmentation facing the city. As a remedy to sprawl and
disorder, the Times editorialized, “The Dodgers might be expected to bind
the neighborhoods together with a sort of communal glue.” Baseball, the
newspaper added, would prove that “Los Angeles is not just the name of
a large group of neighborhoods without common aims, with nothing to
hold them together but the surrounding mountains.” 58
Reflecting similar themes as the referendum vote approached in
June, an op-ed piece entitled, “A Vote in Favor of Everybody,” asked
the public to transform a “half-centered wilderness in the very center
of the metropolitan area” into “a central meeting place for the whole
metropolitan area.” 59 Positing a less literal reading of the proposition,
the following question signifies the important meaning of space to the
referendum debate:
Do you, a citizen-voter, want Los Angeles to be a great city,
with common interests and the civic unity which gives a great
city character; or are you content to let it continue its degeneration
into a geographical bundle of self-centered sections each
fighting with the others for the lion’s share of the revenues and
improvements that belong to all? 60
As the statement demonstrates, these proponents attempted to equate a
“yes” vote with the idea “that Los Angeles shall be a city, not just an aggregation
of suburbs.” 61 This writer clearly expressed a belief that the
Dodgers could replace a fragmented landscape with a centrally located
cultural hub connecting a collection of communities.
Mimicking the mayor’s argument, the writer also characterized the
“fraudulent” and “spiteful” opposition as a self-interested group of outlying
interests set on channeling sectional resistance “to the general idea of
doing anything for the city as a whole.” 62 Their efforts represented little
more than an attempt to prevent the economic success of the city’s downtown
and the achievement of civic unity. Out of an obligation of civic
honor and as a duty to “restore the communion of citizens in Los Angeles
that has been dissolving so alarmingly,” declared the editorial, a “yes”
for Dodger baseball and the Chavez Ravine embodied the belief in “all
city-enterprise.” 63 In this sense, Proposition B no longer represented just a
vote of support for the Dodger contract. A “yes” for the Dodger contract
was a “yes” for the city and the downtown to reclaim its proper place
in a sea of satellite communities. Revealing the anxiety over an expanding,
decentralized metropolis, the writer incorporated a skewed historical
memory in calling for the same sense of community that had once tapped
the mountains of the Sierra Nevadas for water and built “a great harbor
in the shallow mud flats below San Pedro.” 64
MICHAEL MOTT

With less symbolic vigor, another Times editorial earlier in May
framed the proponents’ stance in similar terms. As the editorialist noted,
selfish city officials from West Los Angeles and the Pacific Palisades, areas
already receiving large public funds for police and sewer facilities, objected
to Proposition B because the public enterprise of baseball would
not benefit their parochial constituents. “God help the city,” the Times
writer added, “if that principle is always to be applied.” 65 In these terms,
the opponents’ argument “suggested nothing more than the fact that the
city has become fragmented.” 66 If opposition to any public enterprise is
to be continually based on such fragmentation, the editorialist concluded,
“the city and all its services may very well disintegrate.” 67 Therefore, the
development of Chavez Ravine would refocus civic energy on the downtown
district, with a centrally located stadium providing the cohesion to
create spatial order out of seeming chaos.
Reaction to this latter editorial surfaced rather quickly. In a letter
written to the Times staff, an attorney, Jim Bolger, struck out against
the newspaper, outlining the basic contours of the opposition’s argument
and its own reflections on space and growth within postwar Los
Angeles. Bolger saw the Dodger’s deal as part of a “frustrating campaign
to save the downtown district,” and the Times’ editorial was correct
in highlighting the city’s fragmentation: “Yer durn right it is and
the outlying communities and taxpayers are not one whit predisposed
to save the broken down metropolitan area.” 68 This “decentralization
bonfire” has continued unabated for years, noted Bolger. Reaching a
point of no return, “the congeries of ‘little cities’ inside metropolitan
Los Angeles are not interested in arresting its decline.” 69 Characterizing
the city’s downtown as a passé existence of an outdated geography,
Bolger added, “all the Times’ king’s horses and men can’t put the old
broken down Humpty-Dumpty together again.” 70 For a city whose
patterns of growth never resembled more traditional models of core
and periphery, any efforts at establishing subservience to a central business
district were both senseless and out of tune with current realities.
Unwilling to cast a glance downtown for any sense of identity, he offered
a “resounding ‘NO’ on Prop. B.” 72
Although the dominating presence of the downtown media often
smothered their efforts, opponents to Proposition B and the Chavez
Ravine contract were a hodge-podge conglomeration of disparate interests.
In his memoirs, Mayor Poulson offers a popular representation of
this group. Three entities, noted Poulson, seized upon the issue to further
and protect their own interests. In an effort to expand their circulation and
advertising, community newspapers in Los Angeles and Orange counties
attempted to fight their downtown nemesis by labeling the Dodger deal a
“give away.” At the same time, in reaction to Walter O’Malley’s advocacy
of pay television for broadcasting his club’s games, local television supported
the efforts of the opposition. Finally, Poulson identified San Diego
Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and Proposition B
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businessman, John A. Smith, as one of the primary individuals financing
their efforts. Smith, owner of the Pacific Coast League’s San Diego
Padres, faced the breaking up of the league if O’Malley experienced any
sort of success in Los Angeles. 72
While these groups most likely played a significant role in supporting
the opposition, this characterization of the opponents to Proposition
B vastly oversimplifies the issues for the tens of thousands challenging
the contract between the Dodgers and the city of Los Angeles, many of
whom attempted to resist the encroachment of their own communities by
the political and economic interests of the central district. As Tim Cohane
of Look magazine suggested, to understand their position, “it is necessary
to remember that Los Angeles has sprawled out so fast in all directions
that many residents of outlying districts…are impatient for streets, sidewalks,
sewers, refuse collection and even schools.” 73
Supported by city councilmen John Holland, Pat McGee, Karl
Rundberg, Earl Baker, and Ed Roybal, the opposition’s position centered
on a core set of issues. Many felt the contract was an illegal “giveaway” of
a huge tract of publicly owned land. As Roybal characterized the Dodger
deal, “The problem here is not a question of baseball, but rather one of
propriety and legality.” 74 Rallying against what they considered a subsidy
to big business, the opposition forces asserted that the city government
could not legally turn publicly owned land over to a private corporation
for the operation of private enterprise. Despite the tax benefits facing the
city, O’Malley’s club remained the primary beneficiary.
Although different groups within the coalition offered contrasting
suggestions for alternative stadium sites and financing, no one single
group desired to keep the Dodgers out of Los Angeles. The coalition
simply wanted the mayor and the city council to obey the “for public
purposes only” stipulation within the city’s title to the ravine. Framing
the question in similar terms, the Citizens’ Committee to Save Chavez
Ravine for the People stated, “The referendum asked for is NOT to stop
the Dodgers from coming to Los Angeles. We welcome the Dodgers!
But not the ‘deal.’ We ask only that the people of L.A. be allowed to
vote on a huge real estate transaction.” 75 If the Dodgers were to play
baseball in Chavez Ravine, argued a majority of the opposition, the
city should still retain possession of the site, allowing the citizens “to
preserve this invaluable community asset in public ownership for the
use of this and future generations.” 76
Buoyed by the grass-roots organizing of the Citizens’ Committee to
Save Chavez Ravine for the People, the opposition to Proposition B also
rallied around a reconsideration of a contract more attuned to and reflective
of the “community interest,” as opposed to the central concerns of
the downtown. The issue was paramount to any implementation of scarce
resources in Los Angeles: how can city officials dump public funds into a
MICHAEL MOTT

private downtown development while neglecting the exploding needs of
the suburbs? As councilman McGee stated during a May hearing on the
Dodger deal, “This city…can’t afford this program financially…There
isn’t one complete street in the San Fernando Valley…There are no sewers
out there.” 77 Despite concerns with an ever-expanding metropolitan
region, the city could not reverse the trends of growth by refusing the
needs of its outlying districts and granting concessions to O’Malley’s
downtown corporation. Not only would a centrally located stadium
take important business away from the outskirts, councilmen such as
McGee, along with the Citizens’ Committee, felt their districts needed
vital services more than the city needed big-league baseball. In a direct
response to charges of sectional self-interest, McGee characterized the
city’s contract with the Dodgers as lavishness, stating, “I believe it is the
fundamental obligation of government to provide the necessities before
you provide the luxuries.” 78
Responding also to proponents’ rhetoric of creating unity out of a
disorderly cityscape, opponents of Proposition B, particularly the Citizens’
Committee, espoused their own image of spatial accord within the existing
dynamic of core and periphery. As the city’s population grows and
as its boundaries continue to expand, “the value of the Chavez Ravine
tract,” noted one supporter “will become even greater.” “One of the great
lacks facing American cities in their efforts to bring order out of metropolitan
chaos,” the supporter added, unencumbered land stands as the
answer to such urban problems. The establishment of a municipally controlled
facility such as a zoo, rather than a privately owned ballpark, would
serve the needs of both downtown and the outlying districts in creating
a sense of unity across the metropolis. Once the ravine is sold to private
interests, an opponent added, this opportunity “will be forever lost to the
people.” 79 A large portion of the Citizens’ Committee’s rhetoric reflects
this association of a “proper public use” for Chavez Ravine with the harmony
of the community. Commenting on the scarcity of available land in
and around the city of Los Angeles suitable for communal purposes, they
asked, “Where are you going to put a major Convention Hall? An Opera
House or Civic Auditorium? A World Trade Center, just to mention a few
presently known needs.” 80 If Chavez Ravine was to fall into private hands,
many opponents believed the entire city would miss out on a golden opportunity
for fulfilling a desirable community need.
In their letters to both public officials and the press, the words of concerned
citizens opposing the Chavez Ravine contract also reveal similar
themes. One “plain, blunt Hearst newspaperman” wrote to the publisher
of the Los Angeles Examiner, charging the paper’s promotion of a downtown
ballpark with “setting off an unfortunate civil war” between the downtown
and suburbia. 81 In a letter written to County Supervisor Kenneth
Hahn, one of the architects of the Chavez Ravine contract, Wilma
Merrill wrote, “we are primarily against this deal because it is strictly a
Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and Proposition B
87

88
giveaway of our land and money.” Recognizing what she considered to be
the capitulation of public officials to the interests of downtown business
concerns, she added, “Forget about your newly acquired big business socalled
friends…Walk again among your people.” 82 Lucille Toll’s letter to
Kahn reveals a more conspiratorial tone, asking him, “Before the ‘Artful
Dodgers’ grab the whole county suppose you quit pitching spitballs and
put a clean one over home plate?” 83 The words of Ms. Merrill and Ms.
Toll reveal a certain distrust of their city officials’ appropriation of public
land in the name of the public good.
More significantly, these letters, alongside the entire campaign against
Proposition B, represent the contested use of space in their postwar city.
Accepting decentralization and dispersion as an inevitable, if not positive,
result of urban growth in Los Angeles, the opposition to Proposition B
largely focused on retaining what they considered a proper balance between
core and periphery. For many Angelenos on the fringe of the city
limits, the “giveaway” of centrally located public land for the benefit of a
private corporation was an example of the subjugation of their own interests
to an irrelevant downtown area. If the city was to help in developing
downtown Los Angeles, then the entire community should play a large
role in approving such plans for the future. The upcoming election on
June 3rd could be a medium for helping decide that future.
Leading up to the vote, the Dodgers’ slump on the field during the
opening months of the season did not seem to help the proponents of
Proposition B. Despite impressive attendance records, the Dodgers started
the 1958 season slow at their interim home, the Coliseum, an irregularly
shaped structure reflecting the city’s own spatial disorder. Their poor record
inspired the city council to pass a ten to zero vote of confidence on April 25.
Councilman Ernest E. Debs chose, as well, to blame the opposition forces
for the Dodger’s poor outings, stating, “We claim to welcome this ball club
here. Our kind of welcome has brought shame to a great city. Our kind
of welcome has undermined the morale of this team…” 84 In a less direct
manner, Dodger President O’Malley offered a similar explanation: “I think
after this election on June 3rd when all of this dies down, one way or the
other, I think they will come through and play to their capacity.” 85
Despite their poor play, record-breaking numbers of fans continued
to pour into the Coliseum to watch their home team, easing any fear of
flagging support for the Dodgers. Such popularity did not stop supporters
of Proposition B in making one last public plea, an appeal exemplifying
Los Angeles’ own unique style of Hollywood boosterism. Days before the
vote, on Sunday, June 1, Joe E. Brown’s Taxpayers’ Committee bought
more than five hours of television time on Times-affiliated station KTTV
for an enormously popular Dodgerthon. What Mayor Poulson considered
a turning-point in the referendum battle, the telethon included a
long list of entertainment personalities, such as Jerry Lewis, Laraine Day,
MICHAEL MOTT

Dean Martin, and George Burns, all plugging for major league baseball
as a solution to the city’s major urban problems. Deeming the Chavez
Ravine a “good deal” for both O’Malley and the city, actor Ronald
Reagan castigated the opposition’s argument as, “One of the most dishonest
documents I ever read in my life…Where is a baseball stadium
to go, in the suburbs, away from the freeways?” 86 Moving the broadcast
from the studio to the airport where thousands of supporters welcomed
the Dodgers from their recent road trip, the Dodgerthon reached an estimated
1,800,000 viewers. 87
Unwilling to forego this favorable press coverage, O’Malley stepped
out of the shadows to make his own final push for approval of the Dodger
contract. During a television forum the following day, the Dodger President
directed his concluding remarks to both his opponents in the studio and
the city-wide audience at home, stating, “”I’ve had enough of all this business.
I know the Dodger case will be tried by the fairest jury in the land
and I want to tell you all that I’m willing to abide by the decision…” 88 The
next day, on June 3, the people of Los Angeles cast their vote.
With only a quarter of the precincts reporting, the proponents of
Proposition B took the lead and never lost ground. With 351,683 yes
votes and 325,898 negative ballots, the final tally revealed a rather slim
25,785-vote majority for the Chavez Ravine contract. However, in expressing
his gratitude to the city, O’Malley noted, “I don’t regard the outcome
as close, but rather as a very significant margin…Few Presidents
get elected with a greater majority than the 52% indicated by the latest
count.” 89 For Mayor Poulson, the vote represented a “progressive step”
towards bridging the gaps of a divided community. 90 An examination of
voter response by council districts demonstrates the geographic split of
this division. Four out of the six districts voting against Proposition B were
in the San Fernando Valley, revealing the strength of sectional opposition
to the downtown attraction. Moreover, a significant portion of the
city’s more centrally located African-American and Mexican-American
neighborhoods cast their vote in support of Proposition B. Without heavy
support from an African-American community still rallying around an
organization that broke the color line with Jackie Robinson in 1947, historian
Charles Alexander has noted, perhaps O’Malley and his supporters
would never have achieved their triumph, especially considering the apparent
political clout of the city’s suburbs. 91
What one City Hall employee considered, “the courtship of a lunatic
ball club and a lunatic city,” the Dodger saga did not end with the victory
of Proposition B. 92 By November 1959, O’Malley and his Dodgers had to
overcome even more hurdles, including two taxpayers’ suits challenging
the legality of the contract and the forceful eviction of the Arechiga family
and others, the sole remnants of the once burgeoning Chavez Ravine
community. With the ravine physically and legally cleared, work on the
Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and Proposition B
89

90
new Dodger Stadium began in 1959, just weeks after the Dodgers’ 1959
World Series victory. What Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times described
as “the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon, and Westminster Abbey of baseball,”
Dodger Stadium opened on April 10, 1962 to much fanfare. 93 Designed
by a New York City-based architectural firm, the ballpark stood as a symbol
of California in a postwar age. With minimal obstruction to either
the view of the field or of the mountains rising behind the city, Dodger
Stadium employed tens of thousands of parking spaces to service a largely
mobile clientele, a testament to the city’s all-powerful automobile culture.
More importantly for the city coffers, the first privately funded ball park
since Yankee Stadium’s completion in 1923 served over two million fans
for five years in a row, providing the city of Los Angeles with tax revenue
of almost $10,000,000 in the first twelve years of its existence, a figure
that would consistently grow as the years passed. 94
With, what one columnist considered, “something akin to the intensity
of a revival meeting,” the Proposition B drama amounted to more than a
show of support for major league baseball in Los Angeles. 95 In the context
of a postwar atmosphere of explosive urban growth and decentralization,
Los Angeles played host to competing claims over the meaning of space in
the metropolis. As John Allswang has noted, the notion of a referendum
reflects “that rule by the people must extend beyond representation when
that representation does not, in fact, do the people’s bidding.” 96 In this
sense, opponents to the contract did not believe their mayor and other city
officials were conducting business in a manner appropriate to the existing
city structure. The campaign against Proposition B illustrated a pattern
of urban land use reflecting the existing balance between downtown and
the outlying districts. Rather than handing over centrally located land to
a private corporation capable of strengthening downtown interests to the
detriment of the periphery, opponents believed Chavez Ravine should remain
in public hands for the benefit of the community at large instead of
an ineffectual downtown district.
Anxious over the unbridled expansion of their metropolis, supporters
of the Chavez Ravine contract sought to arrest such growth by focusing the
city on what the Times considered, “one of those centers of attachment that
the metropolitan area of Los Angeles has needed so desperately.” 97 In this
way, the Dodgers could provide a form of communal glue to combat a process
of social dislocation wrought by geographical fragmentation. By reordering
a disorderly and atomistic landscape, supporters hoped to build, what
John Findlay has termed, a “legible city” easier to comprehend. 98 However,
looking at Los Angeles more than forty years later, their goals remain elusive.
Although they were successful in bringing the Los Angeles Dodgers to
downtown Los Angeles, their victory in bringing order to the city is highly
questionable. Despite one writer’s appraisal of Proposition B’s victory as a
“transformation of conflict into union,” Los Angeles continues to reflect a
landscape marked by rampant geographic and social diffusion. 99
MICHAEL MOTT

01
Allen Scott and Edward Soja, The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the
Twentieth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 8; Robert M. Fogelson, The
Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850-1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 2.
02
Lee Elihu Lowenfish, “A Tale of Many Cities: The Westward Expansion of Major
League Baseball in the 1950’s,” Journal of the West 71 (July 1978): 72-73.
03
Jules Tygiel, Past Time: Baseball as History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000),
179-183; Charles Alexander, Our Game: An American Baseball History (New York: Henry Holt
and Company, 1991), 242-243; Don Normark, Chavez Ravine, 1949: A Los Angeles Story (San
Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1999), 18-21.
04
Ibid., 80.
05
Lowenfish, 79.
06
Cary S. Henderson, “Los Angeles and the Dodger War, 1957-1962,” Southern
California Quarterly 62 (Fall 1980): 286.
07
Neil J. Sullivan, The Dodgers Move West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), ix.
08
Ibid., x.
09
Ibid.
10
Thomas S. Hines, “Housing, Baseball, and Creeping Socialism: The Battle of Chavez
Ravine, Los Angeles, 1949-1959,” Journal of Urban History 8 (February 1982): 141, 142.
11
Ronald William Lopez II, “The Battle for Chavez Ravine: Public Policy and Chicano
Community Resistance in Post War Los Angeles, 1945-1962” (Ph. D. diss., University of
California, Berkeley, 1999), 15.
12
Ibid., 25.
13
Don Parson, “‘This Modern Marvel’: Bunker Hill, Chavez Ravine, and the Politics
of Modernism in Los Angeles,” Southern California Quarterly 75 (Fall-Winter 1993): 333.
14
Ibid., 335.
15
Ibid.
16
Eric Raymond Avila, “Reinventing Los Angeles: Popular Culture in the Age of White
Flight, 1940-1965” (Ph. D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1997), 20.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid, 37, 171.
19
John M. Findlay, Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992), 5.
20
Tygiel, 167.
21
“The Genealogy and Life Story of Erna and Norris Poulson,” University of
California, Los Angeles, Special Collections (UCLASC), Norris Poulson Papers, Box 5, 197,
199; Oran W. Asa, “Chavez Ravine Deal...Biggest Story Since the ‘30s,” El Sereno Star, April 24,
1958, p. 1.
22
Normark, 12, 17.
23
“Chavez Ravine Fact Book,” UCLASC, Edward R. Roybal Papers, Box 6, 8.
24
Normark, 17.
25
Robert Shaplen, “O’Malley and the Angels,” Sports Illustrated, March 24, 1958, p. 67.
26
Hines, 138-140.
27
“Mayor Poulson,” Frontier, September 1955, p. 5.
28
Alexander, 239; Henderson, 265-266; Lowenfish, 79.
29
“The Genealogy and Life Story of Edna and Norris Poulson,” 200.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid, 204; “Chavez Ravine Fact Book,” 8; Henderson, 271-275; Tim Cohane, “The
West Coast Produces Baseball’s Strangest Story,” Look, August 19, 1958, pp. 54-55.
32
John Lardner, “The War for Chavez,” Newsweek, December 16, 1957, p. 78.
33
“Chavez Ravine Fact Book,” 9.
Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and Proposition B
NOTES
91

92
34
Sullivan, 138; “Chavez Ravine Fact Book,” 8-9; “40, 829 of Names Okd for Vote on
Ball Park,” Los Angeles Times (LAT), December 3, 1957, p.1; California Legislature, Assembly
Interim Committee on Governmental Efficiency and Economy, “Chavez Ravine Volume II,”
(Los Angeles, 1959), 82-88.
35
“The Genealogy and Life Story of Erna and Norris Poulson,” 204.
36
“O’Malley: He Liked the Fight,” LAT, August 10, 1979, sec. 1, p. 32.
37
“Ballot Title Delayed on Dodger Referendum,” LAT, April 9, 1958, sec. 1, p. 2;
“Dodger’s Referendum Given Title B on Ballot,” LAT, April 11, 1958, sec. 1, p. 2.
38
“Who Called that Bum a Smodger,” Sports Illustrated, March 24, 1958, p. 15.
39
“The Genealogy and Life Story of Erna and Norris Poulson,” 198.
40
“Joe E. Brown to Speak on L. A. Baseball,” LAT, April 3, 1958, sec. 3, p. 3; “Chavez
Ravine Fact Book,” 8.
41
“Town Hall: Municipal and County Government Section, Proposed Report on
Dodgers Referendum,” UCLASC, Edward Roybal Papers, Box 6, 11..
42
“Taxpayers’ Committee for Yes on B,” UCLASC, Edward Roybal Papers, Box
6; “Why Taxpayers Support City-Dodger Contract!,” UCLASC, Frederick Francis Houser
Papers, Box 163.
43
“Taxpayers’ Committee for Yes on B,” UCLASC, Edward Roybal Papers, Box 6.
44
Ibid.
45
“Dodgers Will Bring Visitors From Far Away, Joe E. Brown Declares,” LAT, April 4,
1958, sec. 3, p. 22.
46
Letter from Ernest Evans to Edward Roybal, UCLASC, Edward Roybal Papers, Box
6; “Town Hall: Municipal and County Government Section, Proposed Report on Dodgers
Referendum,” 1-14.
47
Steven A. Riess, “Power Without Authority: Los Angeles’ Elites and the Construction
of the Coliseum,” Journal of Sport History 8 (Spring 1981): 50.
48
“Downtown Group Urges ‘Yes’ Vote on Prop. B,” LAT, May 7, 1958, p. 20.
49
“Chamber Cites Benefits of Baseball Stadium,” LAT, May 23, 1958, sec. 1, p. 13.
50
“100 Lawyers to Work for Dodger Measure,” LAT, April 15, 1958, sec. 1, p. 4;
“Doctor Cites Tax Gain in Dodgers ‘Yes’ Vote,” LAT, April 30, 1958, sec. 1, p. 18; “Huge Tax
Gain Seen in Dodgers’ Use of Chavez,” LAT, May 6, 1958, sec. 1, p. 1.
51
Robert Shaplen, “O’Malley and the Angels,” Sports Illustrated, March 24, 1958, p. 62.
52
“City Standing Affected by Dodgers, Says Mayor,” LAT, April 8, 1958, sec. 3, p. 1;
Cohane, 56.
53
California Legislature, Assembly Interim Committee on Governmental Efficiency
and Economy, “Chavez Ravine Volume II,” (Los Angeles, 1959), 137-138.
54
“The Genealogy and Life Story of Erna and Norris Poulson,” 205.
55
Ibid.
56
“L. A. Faces Loss of Dodgers – Giles,” LAT, May 23, 1958, sec. 4, p. 1.
57
“Poll Shows Heavey Vote Favors ‘Yes’ on Prop. B,” LAT, May 8, 1958, p. 28; “The
Genealogy and Life Story of Erna and Norris Poulson,” 204-205.
58
“The Dodgers and This City,” LAT, October 2, 1957, sec. 2, p. 4.
59
“A Vote in Favor of Everybody,” LAT, June 1, 1958, sec. 2, p. 4.
60
Ibid.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid.
63
Ibid.
64
Ibid.
65
“Prop. B and a Clear Conscience,” LAT, May 18, 1958, sec. 2, p. 4.
66
Ibid.
67
Ibid.
68
Jim Bolger, “The Times Strikes Out,” UCLASC, Edward Roybal Papers, Box 6.
69
Ibid.
70
Ibid.
71
Ibid.
72
“The Genealogy and Life Story of Erna and Norris Poulson,” 203-4.
MICHAEL MOTT

73 Cohane, 55.
74 Edward Roybal, Local Reporter, June 1959, p. 3.
75 Citizens’ Committee to Save Chavez Ravine for the People Fact Sheet, UCLASC,
Edward Roybal Papers, Box 6.
76 “Town Hall: Municipal and County Government Section, Proposed Report on
Dodgers Referendum,” 13.
77 California Legislature, Assembly Interim Committee on Governmental Efficiency
and Economy, “Chavez Ravine Volume II,” (Los Angeles, 1959), 179.
78 Ibid; Cohane, 55.
79 “Town Hall: Municipal and County Government Section, Proposed Report on
Dodgers Referendum,” 5.
80 “Save Chavez Ravine for the Citizens of Los Angeles,” UCLASC, Edward Roybal
Papers, Box 6, 3.
81 Letter to Franklin S. Payne, UCLASC, Edward Roybal Papers, Box 6.
82 Letter from Wilma Merrill to Kenneth Hahn, UCLASC, Edward Roybal Papers,
Box 6.
83
Letter from Lucille Toll to Kenneth Hahn, UCLASC, Edward Roybal Papers, Box 6.
84
“Debs Blame Dodgers’ Slump on Uncertainty of Future in L. A.,” LAT, April 26,
1958, sec. 1, p. 1.
85
California Legislature, Assembly Interim Committee on Governmental Efficiency
and Economy, “Chavez Ravine Volume II” (Los Angeles, 1959), 40-41; Sullivan, 148.
86
“5-Hour Telethon Supports Prop. B,” LAT, June 2, 1958, sec. 1, p. 3.
87
Cohane, 58; “Dodgerthon Telecast Will Promote Team,” LAT, June 1, 1958, sec. 1, p.
1; “Five-hour Dodgerthon Slated on KTTV Today,” LAT, June 1, 1958, sec. 1, p. 2; “Notables
Back Prop. B on TV,” LAT, June 2, 1958, sec. 1, p. 1.
88
“Final Chavez Plea Made by O’Malley,” LAT, June 3, 1958, sec. 1, p. 1.
89
“O’Malley Thanks,” LAT, June 5, 1958, sec. 4, p. 2.
90
“Baseball Vote,” LAT, June 5, 1958, sec. 1, p. 2.
91
“Proposition B,” LAT, July 2, 1958, sec. 3, p. 26; Rodolfo F. Acuna, A Community Under
Siege: A Chronicle of Chicanos East of the Los Angeles River, 1945-1975 (Los Angeles: Chicano Studies
Research Center Publications, 1984), 71-72; Alexander, 242-43.
92
Cohane, 58.
93
Sullivan, 197.
94
Henderson, 281-284; Sullivan, 228; Letter from Lloyd A. Menveg to Norris Poulson,
May 14, 1975, UCLASC, Norris Poulson Papers, Box 5; “Los Angeles Votes to Give Chavez
Ravine Site to Dodgers for New Baseball Stadium,” Architectural Forum, July 1958, p. 13.
95
“Ravine Drama Presents Many Unique Questions,” El Sereno Star, April 24, 1958, p. 4.
96
John M. Allswang, The Initiative and Referendum in California, 1898-1998 (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2000), 4.
97
Tygiel, 185.
98
Findlay, 284.
99
“Closed Ranks,” Los Angeles Examiner, January 1962, UCLASC, Edward Roybal
Papers, Box 6.
Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and Proposition B
93

American Fourierism
U N I V E R S A L I Z I N G R E F O R M
T\
M A R Y A N Soliman

eex
post
efacto

etween the years 1840 and 1880, a movement of middle-class men
and women attempted to transform America into a cooperative society
modeled on the teachings of French social theorist Charles Fourier.
Best known for establishing communes called Phalanxes, the American
Fourierists, or Associationists, recognized the right to private property but
turned the bourgeois order on its head by proposing to distribute profits
equitably between capitalists and laborers. Associationists envisioned a society
in which work not only satisfied the material wants of humankind
but also enabled each person to reach his or her full creative potential.
To bring about the new social order, Associationists believed they had to
convince America of Association’s advantages. Associationists, therefore,
went to great lengths to clarify their views to the public. During their peak
in the 1840s, they published a weekly periodical, The Harbinger, which
served as the central vehicle for elaborating their views. 1
B
Although a rich documentary record preserves the writings of
Associationists, most scholars have telescoped their ideas. Arthur Bestor’s
ground-breaking Backwoods Utopias and Ronald G. Walters’s synthetic study
American Reformers 1815-1860 made much out of the fact that Associationists
did not oppose private property on principle and sought to unite all classes,
unlike later socialists who advocated that workers struggle against the
capitalist class and put an end to private property. 2 Bestor presented the
Associationists’ trans-class program as proof that secular movements in the
United States, such as Association, shared more in common with American
religious communitarianism than with European socialism. In a more explicit
way than Bestor, Walters treated the Associationists’ trans-class program
as a conservative position, one that placed American Fourierists to
the right of those pietistic societies that opposed private property. Bestor
and Walters ignored how Associationists understood themselves and the
significance they assigned to their trans-class program.
97

98
In his definitive study on American Fourierism, The Utopian Alternative:
Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America, historian Carl J. Guarneri urged
scholars to discuss Associationists on their own terms. 3 For one, a close
reading of The Harbinger reveals that Associationists did not defend the
way capitalists or private property functioned in their current society,
which indeed would have represented a conservative position, but rather
contemplated the potential role these forces could play in an egalitarian
system. Under the current system, profits lined the pockets of the
capitalists. However, in a new social order, industry would provide for
the needs of everyone, liberating humankind. Moreover, the nuances of
their trans-class program illustrate that they did not have a conservative
approach but one flexible enough to let them side firmly with the noncapitalist
classes on practical matters. Associationists recognized that,
because the current order privileged the capitalist class, reformers would
have to look to other classes for financial and intellectual support as well
as organize actively on the side of the most oppressed classes if they
wished to achieve an ultimate unity. An examination of The Harbinger
in its first year suggests that any characterization of the Associationists’
trans-class position should center on the broader context of Association’s
deep commitment to universalism and to changing the world, rather
than its ostensible conservatism.
The Harbinger adopted Charles Fourier’s theory of human progress.
Fourier divided human history into stages: human beings had lived
through Savagery, Patriarchate, and Barbarism, and currently occupied
a state called Civilization. Each stage had its own distinct social and economic
organization, which Associationists termed Collective Unity. In a
two-part article devoted to human history, Associationists explained, “The
Collective Unities of these Societies have not been, however, true unions,
offering a congenial sphere for the life of man, and the growth and exercise
of his moral and material powers — but mere aggregations of
families confusedly and incoherently brought together.” 4 Associationists
believed Collective Unity should facilitate the moral and material development
of each person. Only in a future society called Harmony would
human beings achieve true Collective Unity or universalism. However, in
bringing humankind one step closer to Harmony, each successive stage
represented progress.
Associationists viewed the development of industry as a prerequisite
to human progress and universalism. In the Savage or lowest
state, “industry, in its various branches of agriculture, manufactures,
[etc.], does not exist; consequently man’s physical wants, and his love
of material comfort and refinement, (without which no high intellectual
development is possible,) cannot be satisfied.” 5 In the following stage,
the Patriarchate, “industry — which is the ground-work of all human
progress — begins to be exercised.” 6 Associationists looked favorably
upon modern industry because they saw in it the potential to satisfy the
MARYAN SOLIMAN

material needs of the entire human race, which would lay the basis for
man to strive toward his creative goals. Their view on the necessity of
modern industry provides a clue as to why they embraced some form of
capitalism, an economic system which they saw as having ushered in the
greatest advances in industry.
While Associationists welcomed the industrial innovations introduced
under Barbarism and Civilization, they condemned these phases
for causing the greatest turmoil and disunity known to humankind. The
Associationists noted, “These two societies being the periods of the initiation
and apprenticeship of Humanity in Industry, are the most miserable
that can exist on the earth during the whole career of mankind.” 7 The
Harbinger reserved its most stinging criticism for Civilization, with its
isolated households and its separation of families, so favorable
to that spirit of individualism and selfishness which draws and
concentrates every thing within itself; its false system of commerce,
furnishing such admirable facilities for trick and fraud
and overreaching; its oppressive modes of industry which enable
those who have capital to take advantage of the laboring
masses, who have none, and to live and grow rich upon the
profits of their toil; its unnatural system of law, which affords
a few an opportunity of fattening upon the moral carrion or
discords of society; its political parties and feuds, where ‘to
the victors belongs the spoils;’ its different sects in religion, the
members of which strive to obtain even heaven isolatedly and
for themselves, leaving those of other sects to sink into perdition
in the world to come with the same indifference that they
leave them to sink into poverty and misery in this. 8
Associationists argued that in the various spheres of life — familial, economic,
governmental, and religious — Civilization organized society
along selfish lines rather than in the spirit of universalism. They viewed
the root of their society’s problems as Civilization, not capitalism.
According to Associationists, Civilization caused capitalism to function
in opposition to the principles of universalism. They complained,
“The present false and unorganized system of Industry is the fundamental
cause of the majority of evils which oppress the working-classes, who
compose three fourths of the population.” 9 Associationists found it particularly
egregious that Civilization marginalized those who produced
all the wealth in society: the laborers. The Harbinger stated, “By its unjust
division of profits, giving the fruit of labor to those who do not produce
it, it presents the monstrous anomaly of the increase of poverty among
the producing classes in proportion to the increases of national wealth.” 10
Under Civilization, the wealth of a few capitalists depended on the misery
of the entire working class. Associationists described the condition of
labor as “monotonous and ill-requited, and it overwhelms with excessive
toil those engaged in it, — debarring them from the advantages of mental
culture.” 11 Associationists argued that Civilization committed one of its
greatest crimes in denying intellectual enrichment to laborers.
American Fourierism
99

100
The Associationists’ dedication to universalism informed their general
approach to social reform. Instead of campaigning solely on behalf
of the most oppressed layer, the laboring class, Associationists sought to
represent all of society, including the capitalists. They wrote, “If we do
not address ourselves to working men exclusively . . . it is because we
know that this reform concerns the whole of humanity, not a part, or
a fraction. We advocate it on universal principles . . . The present organization
of labor is the curse of society; that no class of men can do
justice to their nature in the actual condition of industry.” 12 Because of
the severity of the oppression under Civilization, Associationists argued,
it negatively impacted even the most privileged layers of society. In this
sense, their trans-class program flowed more from a condemnation of the
current order than a conciliation of it. Associationists believed that, in a
well-organized society, capitalists would behave justly.
Facing criticism from all sides, Associationists worked hard to
clarify their position on capitalism to the public. On the one hand,
Associationists had to squash the rumor that they opposed private property.
The Associationists quoted leading Fourierist Parke Godwin who
said, “What man thus derives from his labor, may with peculiar propriety
be said to be his: it is that which, without him, would not have
existed . . . it is his property, his goods, his right to capital.” They directly
followed this quote with a clear statement of their position on private
property: “Here is certainly a refutation of the charge of agrarianism.
Association promises as much security and as complete identity of
Property, as does the present social organization.” 13 On the other hand,
Associationists had to convince social reformers of capitalism’s potential
equitability. Anticipating criticism, they stated, “Some may object
to giving capital any interest. But what is Capital? ... Capital is nothing
but Labor which has been accumulated and rendered permanent, so that
in fact all property is Labor.” 14 In this way, capital simply represented
labor in a different stage.
Fourierists promised that under Association, capitalism would not
conflict with universalism but rather guarantee it. For Associationists, the
only remedy rested “in producing a union between capital and labor,” in
which “the man who labors with the machine must share its profits, as well
as the man who owns it.” 15 Association would maintain the existence of
separate classes but moderate the profits of capitalists. As The Harbinger explained,
“In an Association, employment and compensation are provided
for all who labor, in the very basis of its organization.” 16 Detailing a plan
Associationists found favorable, the paper proclaimed, “A certain portion
of the product, — such as shall be found mathematically just — will be
awarded to those who hold the stock, — that is to those whose labor made
the improvements, and this will be the interest upon their capital.” 17 In
compensating people according to their efforts, capitalism — in their view
— would function in a fairer fashion than collectivized property forms. The
MARYAN SOLIMAN

kind of society they envisioned rested on the modern industry of capitalism
but differed greatly in the distribution of wealth. In a sense, the profitsharing
system they described resembled nothing close to capitalism.
Capitalism under Association would also advance universal goals
by improving the very condition of labor. In responding to a question
about their purpose, they stated, “Let us answer in a few words, — by
the systematic organization of labor, to make it more efficient, productive
and attractive; in this way, to provide for the abundant gratification
of all the intellectual, moral, and physical wants of every member of the
Association.” 18 When Association took hold, society would replace the
monotonous work characterizing Civilization with gratifying labor or
“Attractive Industry.” Capitalism’s technological innovations could potentially
save laborers time and energy which they could devote to their creative
pursuits. If organized in a more harmonious way, capitalism could
end the degradation of labor. Driven by a humanist goal to make life
more fulfilling for all human beings, Associationists set out to transform
their society.
Articles in The Harbinger reveal that Associationists rejected violent
revolution as a means for bringing about social change because it conflicted
with their universal outlook. The introductory notice to The Harbinger
described the Associationist motto as “the elevation of the whole human
race, in mind, morals and manners,” not by “violent outbreaks and revolutionary
agitations, but orderly and progressive reform.” 19 The Harbinger’s
endorsement of progressive reform over revolution indicates both the
Associationists’ rejection of any movement based solely on a single segment
of society and their belief in the universal acceptance of a program
representative of the entire population.
Associationists also believed that God had predestined the triumph of
universalism. In a typical statement from the Associationists, The Harbinger
expressed, “The universal Association of Humanity must some day take
place, for Humanity is a child of God, and as such, must fulfill the Laws
of its Author; and the will and the Law of God are Universal Unity, peace
and harmony, expressed eternally in universal Association.” 20 Their opposition
to violent revolution did not bespeak conservatism as much as
it underlined their total faith and confidence in their universal program.
This did not mean, however, that they left the task of establishing a new
society up to either fate or circumstance.
In an article written in opposition to well-known secular communitarian
Robert Owen, the Associationists explained their belief in human agency.
They wrote, “[Owen] believes all men wholly creatures of circumstance, and
therefore they of themselves can do nothing towards forming their own convictions,
feelings or characters, and are neither rewardable nor punishable.” 21
Associationists, on the other hand, believed “that some are eminently masters
of circumstances, the mass inferior to circumstances, but no one wholly
American Fourierism
101

102
unable to affect his own feelings, opinions, convictions, and character, for
better or worse.” 22 Associationists argued that in eliminating human accountability,
social reformers also erased the human ability to change society.
Rather than wait for history to take its course, Fourier and
Associationists sought to inspire people to reach Harmony sooner rather
than later. In trying to convert others to their cause, Associationists stated,
“Mankind are prepared, society is prepared, to enter upon the epoch of
social unity and harmony, — the true, natural, and organic social condition
of Humanity . . . Let us hasten the advent of this glorious epoch; let
us labor for the great social Reformation which is to usher it in.” 23 For
Associationists, people could enjoy the Harmonious order for a longer
period if the human race skipped the several stages between Civilization
and Harmony. This leap only required people to follow Fourier’s blueprint
for the establishment of model communities or Phalanxes. 24
When Associationists sought to transform this plan into reality, their
equal reliance on all classes disappeared. Associationists searched for
leaders for their movement. They wrote, “The times are more than ripe
for [Harmony], and it is the political ignorance and littleness, the selfishness
and apathy of the leaders of the world only, that prevent it. It wants
new leaders to do the glorious and sacred work. Let them arise and be
about it.” 25 The leaders whom Associationists had in mind came from the
middle class. The Harbinger ran an article explaining the difference in the
circumstances Fourier encountered in France and those that existed in
America. According to the Associationists, Fourier courted the capitalist
class to establish Phalanxes because he had no middle class of real wealth
and intelligence to address. They wrote:
The case is entirely different in our own country. It is not necessary
with us to court the favor of enormous capitalists, who,
with the rarest exceptions, are the last men to approve of novel
movements for the general good . . . We depend on the intelligence,
the sense of justice . . . the practical skill and energy,
and the material resources, which will be consecrated to this
cause, by the great middling classes of American society. 26
Associationists acknowledged that the great profits enjoyed by the top
capitalists made it less likely for them to part with the present order. In
choosing their leaders, Associationists seemed to choose Robert Owen’s
approach of highlighting circumstances over the Associationist belief that
individuals from all classes would readily accept Association.
Associationist work around labor reform illustrates the nuance of
Association’s universal program. While Associationists motivated the
“complete association of all interests and all classes,” in practice they supported
an organization representing only the working class. 27 They explained,
“That the tendency is downwards, to a state of abject vassalage
among the masses . . . is too apparent for denial, whatever may be the
outside show of a temporary prosperity [and] the venal representations of
MARYAN SOLIMAN

parties interested in the triumph of Capital over Labor.” Moreover, they
continued, “The Workingmen must help themselves, or we fear there are
none to help them.” 28 For Associationists, extreme conditions demanded
they set aside their method of organizing on behalf of all classes. The
capitalist class had its parties. Associationists drew the conclusion that if
they wanted to see the working class gain any kind of hearing, they would
have to help organize it. In this way, their universal outlook did not prevent
them from taking a side with the lower classes. In order to achieve
universal ends, Associationists conceded they had to forgo, at least temporarily,
certain universal means.
With similar logic, Associationists called on the government to intervene
on the side of the working class. Reporting on a Fourth of July
function, The Harbinger described an Associationist speaker to have shown
“that the negative basis of our Government, (which only steps in as an
arbiter between individuals, but holds itself aloof from the industrial operations
of the country,) should be changed to a positive basis, which would
secure all the blessings we now enjoy, from political liberty, and at the
same time, give to the laboring classes a guaranty of social independence
and comfort, which now they do not possess.” 29 Because Associationists
believed the working class occupied such lowly ground, government aid
to laborers would not compromise universalism, but rather would level
the playing field.
American Fourierism
103
However, according to Associationists, government in their era had
gone in the opposite direction of universalism, giving in to local and regional
ruling cliques. The Associationists wrote:
The views held upon [the questions of tariff and currency]
are but the reflected images of the conflicting interests which
divide society into contending factions. Politicians represent
merely local and partial interests, and hence they are but the
organs or the instruments to express opinions that coincide
with them. The questions will never be settled on a permanent
basis until the voice of united interests prevails in legislation. 30
Associationists prescribed universalism as the cure to the political issues of
their day, such as tariffs and currency.
Associationists especially condemned government for allowing the
continuation of slavery. They stated with regret, “[Texas Annexation] is
pressed to a speedy consummation with all the warmth of a slave-holding
rapacity . . . [and] we see no possibility of averting this shameless usurpation.
Viewed in some lights, we hold the act of Annexation to be a highhanded
crime, which stamps on the National Escutcheon an indelible
stigma and reproach.” 31 Associationists complained that government had
permitted a handful of slaveholders to turn America into an increasingly
exploitive society. In the Associationist schema, slavery signified an outmoded
remnant of older stages of human history. Discussing the eradication
of slavery, they wrote:

104
That means exist for attaining this end, we must believe, if
we have faith in God and his providence, for Slavery could
only exist upon earth (except during the period of the political
and social infancy of mankind, as exception in human destiny
and under the reign of inverse Providence) in virtue of a
high universal principle, having its origin in the plan of Divine
Government; and who will say that God rules the universe by
despotism and that the worlds are his slaves. 32
Their belief in a universal god helped Associationists continue in the fight
against slavery, despite their government’s efforts not only to delay the
abolition of slavery but to extend it to new territories.
Associationists directed their comments on slavery not to their government,
but to the abolitionist movement of their day — as part of an effort to
win their peers to universalism. As The Harbinger stated, “We believe that the
time has arrived or nearly so for the abolition movement to rise to its universality
and to direct its labors against universal servitude.” 33 Associationists
identified nine varieties of servitude: chattel slavery, serfdom, wage slavery,
domestic servitude, slavery of caste, sale of women, military conscription,
perpetual monastic vows, and indigence. They urged abolitionists to fight
against all forms of servitude, but demanded that the movement oppose
at least the two kinds of slavery most prevalent in America: chattel slavery
in the South and wage slavery in the North. As they stated, “Abolitionists
should also look carefully to the question of an Industrial Reform and the
Organization of Labor; for when they have freed the slaves and elevated
them to the condition of hired laborers, — the serfs of capital and want,
— they cannot leave them there, as they will be obliged to do, unless a better
system of Labor is established than that which now exists.” 34 In other
words, enslaved blacks would go from one form of slavery to another. As
Associationists argued, true emancipation would only come to pass if social
reformers eradicated both chattel and wage slavery.
Associationists paid particular attention to the question of women’s
oppression. The Associationists quoted Fourier’s axiom: “Social progress is in
proportion to the progress of woman towards liberty, and the decline of the social order
in proportion to the diminution of that liberty.” 35 According to Associationists,
under Civilization, women had advanced to a position of half-freedom.
Before marriage, law considered women equal to men, except in politics,
allowing them to own property and control their actions. Once married,
women descended “from free-women into slaves.” Detailing women’s
position under marriage, they wrote, “Many of them do not bear their
own names, but are called by the names of their legal masters; they are
in a state of perpetual minority, and cannot dispose of anything which
belongs to them, not even of the products of their own labor.” 36 As such,
Fourierists viewed women as one of the most oppressed laborers.
Moreover, Associationists argued, social reformers could not resolve
the condition of domestic servants without addressing the larger
issue of the family. Describing the condition of female servants, they
MARYAN SOLIMAN

American Fourierism
105
wrote, “The physical wants of the Servant are generally better supplied
than those of any other class of working women . . . But of the intellectual
and moral advantages of the Servant Girls we have nothing favorable
to say.” 37 The root of the problem, according to the Associationists,
rested in the fact that:
they are of the family, yet apart from it . . . therefore they
are left to live in ignorance and complete isolation from those
whose happiness and peace are so intimately interwoven with
theirs . . . This separation of interests among members of
the same family is the great curse of private life. Suspicion,
treachery, meanness, fraud, oppression, hatred, malice, and
revenge are its inevitable consequences; and under these
malign influences what wonder is it that servants grow to be
what they are generally and unhesitatingly denounced, even
in their very presence — pests and curses? 38
Without tackling the selfish organization of the family, Associationists believed
social reformers could have little hope in curing the severe ailments
of domestic servitude.
Associationist universalism in regards to the family meant unity and
cooperation within families and between families. In the face of harsh
charges regarding their position on the family, Associationists formulated
their criticism by first making clear that they sought to improve upon,
not destroy, the institution. For example, an article entitled “The Family
Sphere” quoted leading American Fourierist Albert Brisbane stating:
Neither does the practical experiment thus far show, what so
many have dreaded, a tendency to the loosening of family ties.
On the contrary, some, at least, of these Associationists think,
that husbands and wives become more relying, more courteous,
less arbitrary and selfish . . . And in regard to children, as
the Association takes somewhat the attitude of critic of their
faults, the parent becomes rather the confidant, and trustful
fosterer of their virtues, and fills the place to which instinct on
both sides prompts, of bosom friend. 39
Associationists struck a balance between criticizing the family and improving
upon it. Their criticisms had to do with the selfishness fostered by
the current structure; their solutions related to the great improvements in
familial relationships promised by a truly cooperative society.
Associationists’ equal treatment of men and women fell apart when
they broached the question of social and moral reform. Associationists
supported both criminal and temperance reforms, but in dealing with
these issues, they always directed social reformers to treat the root of the
problem. They wrote, “The cure of crime, however, will be found to need
first, the negative course of removing the bad influences which lead to
unmanliness; but second and chiefly, the positive course of securing opportunities
for upright action. We must drain off impurities breeding miasma.”
40 Associationists placed social problems in gendered terms, equating
vice with unmanliness. They openly held the position that woman’s
nature prevented her from happily engaging in carnal activity: “Women

106
are far more affectionate, far less animal, than men . . . No women except the
poor creatures whose profession is self abandonment, give themselves up
bodily, where the heart is unmoved . . . But men, by the thousands, like
beasts of prey, absolutely hunt for victims to gratify their merely brutal
instincts.” 41 Associationists, therefore, made great efforts to represent men
as beasts in order to distinguish them from women.
With this gender divide in place, Associationists found it only natural
to assign women the task of social regeneration. As they proclaimed, “In
every city and town let there be in some form or other, varying according
to the population and the degree of social intimacy prevailing, a SENATE
OF WOMEN, who shall practically enact and enforce laws of manners, and
declare who is, and who is not worthy of confidence.” 42 Associationists
may have exercised the same thought process in devising their position on
women as they did their stance on laborers. In this way, they would have
reasoned that, because women occupied such a severely low position in
society, special attention toward them did not violate universalism, but
rather worked to place women on a level playing field with men. However,
unlike with their position on workers, Associationists did not provide such
a rationale for their various stances on women. In fact, the articles in The
Harbinger indicated Associationists simply saw women as fundamentally
different from men on a social and physiological level.
This essay has focused more on the ideas than the practices of
Associationists. Associationists developed a number of Phalanxes and The
Harbinger reported on the progress of each one. The newspaper also gave
advice. For example, as one writer noted:
One successful attempt to embody the principles of Association,
would guarantee the complete triumph of the movement
in the United States . . . A rare combination of fortunate circumstances
must exist, before a new Association can be established,
with any rational hope of prosperity. Abundance
of capital, a favorable location, scientific knowledge, practical
skill are all indispensable; but still more indispensable, are
true-hearted men and women, deeply convinced of the sacredness,
the religiousness of the movement. 43
Associationists did not concern themselves solely with ideas and ideals; they
tried to transform their vision into a reality and they worried about how society
would arrive at Association. Scholars have done well to document life
on the Phalanxes. However, the historical studies on Association have tended
to inflate the Associationists’ pro-capitalist positions to the point of diminishing
the extent to which Fourierists sought to change their society. This
study, in the spirit of historian Carl Guarneri’s work, helps to correct that
distortion by returning to the words and thoughts of the Associationists.
Historians must consult the literature of the Associationists if they hope to
gain a clearer picture of these fascinating men and women.
MARYAN SOLIMAN

American Fourierism
107
01
The Harbinger spanned the years 1845 to 1849. The cover page of the first bound
volume reads: “The Harbinger, Devoted to Social and Political Progress. ‘All things, at the present
day, stand provided and prepared, and await the light.’ Vol I. Published by the Brook Farm
Phalanx. New-York: Burgess, Stringer, and Company. Boston: Redding and Company.” New
York became the headquarters for the publication in 1847, after a fire at Brook Farm on March
3, 1846 led to the termination of that phalanx.
02
See Arthur Eugene Bestor, Jr., Backwoods Utopias: The Sectarian and Owenite Phases of
Communitarian Socialism in America, 1663-1829 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1959) and Ronald G. Walters, American Reformers 1815-1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995).
03
See Carl J. Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).
04
“The Collective Unity, or the Organization of the Township,” The Harbinger, July
12, 1845.
05
Ibid.
06
Ibid.
07
“The Collective Unity, No. II,” The Harbinger, August 16, 1845.
08
“The Collective Unity, or the Organization of the Township,” The Harbinger, July
12, 1845.
09
“What Do the Workingmen Want?” The Harbinger, July 5, 1845.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid..
12
“The Working Men’s Movement,” The Harbinger, July 12, 1845.
13
“Fourierism,” The Harbinger, October 11, 1845.
14
“Reform Movements Originating Among the Producing Classes,” The Harbinger,
January 24, 1846.
15
“Influence of Machinery,” The Harbinger, June 14, 1845.
16
“Fourierism,” The Harbinger, October 11, 1845.
17
“Reform Movements Originating Among the Producing Classes,” The Harbinger, January
24, 1846.
18
“What Do You Propose?” The Harbinger, June 28, 1845.
19
“Introductory Notice,” The Harbinger, June 14, 1845.
20
“Association,” The Harbinger, January 10, 1846.
21
“Robert Owen at Hopedale,” Practical Christian, reproduced in The Harbinger, December
13, 1845.
22
Ibid.
23
“The Collective Unity, No. II,” The Harbinger, August 16, 1845.
24
Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative, 18.
25
“The Collective Unity, No. II,” The Harbinger, August 16, 1845.
26
“Association in this Country,” The Harbinger, February 28, 1846.
27
“Social Movements in Germany,” The Harbinger, July 19, 1845.
28
“The Workingmen’s Protective Union,” The Harbinger, December 13, 1845.
29
“The Fourth of July at Woburn,” The Harbinger, July 12, 1845.
30
“The President’s Message,” The Harbinger, December 13, 1845.
31
Ibid.
32
“The Question of Slavery,” The Harbinger, June 21, 1845.
33
Ibid.
34
“What Do the Workingmen Want?” The Harbinger, July 5, 1845.
35
“The Women of the Boston Anti-Slavery Fair,” The Harbinger, October 4, 1845.
36 Ibid.
NOTES

108
37
“Labor in New York: Its Circumstances, No. XX: Domestic Servitude,” Tribune, reproduced
in The Harbinger, December 13, 1845.
38
Ibid.
39
“The Family Sphere,” The Harbinger, July 12, 1845.
40
“Moral Reform,” The Harbinger, August 2, 1845.
41
Ibid.
42
Ibid.
43
“Association in the West: The Integral Phalanx,” The Harbinger, July 19, 1845.
MARYAN SOLIMAN

the Revitalization of
T A C T I C A L D E B A T E I N T H E
C O N V E N T I O N O F 1 8 4 3
F\
L E A H Thompson

eex
post
efacto

group of African American activists convened in 1830 to discuss
tactics for calming racial tensions, including the possibility of expatriation.
What began as a single-issue organization, evolved into a forum for multisubject
debate, and established a precedent for annual national meetings.
Twelve National Conventions for free people of color assembled between
1830 and the end of the Civil War. Howard H. Bell’s 1957 article,
“National Negro Conventions of the Middle 1840’s: Moral Suasion vs.
Political Action,” introduced the significance of the convention movement
to historians. Bell argued that the Conventions of the 1840s illustrated a
turn towards independent black voices, absent in the thirties, whose political
action and militant tactics began to compete with moral suasion as the
most expedient method of abolishing slavery. 1 A
Unfortunately historians
have overlooked Bell’s contribution, failing to incorporate the convention
movement in their synthetic works on abolition. This oversight reinforces
the prevailing assumption that militance in the abolition movement began
in the 1850s after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. Bell accurately
assessed the effects of the conventions of the 1840s, however, he failed
to account for the longstanding tradition of resistance in the free black
community. The convention movement of the 1840s does not represent a
turn towards militance in the abolition movement; rather the conventions
mark a return to a strong culture of resistance long alive in the black community
of the early republic.
111

112
In the 1970s, two major pieces of antebellum scholarship joined a
growing body of work on the complex reformers of the pre-Civil War era.
Unfortunately for readers, neither Ronald Walters’s American Reformers:
1815-1860 nor James Brewer Stewart’s Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and
American Slavery presented a full picture of the true scope of the movement
to end slavery. 2 Walters and Stewart, while offering detailed synthetic
works on abolition and reform in general, chose to focus on the role of
white reformers in abolition. Walters wholly overlooked the convention
movement in American Reformers, while Stewart’s Holy Warriors only briefly
mentions the convention movement’s significance in allowing blacks to
lead themselves at a time when discrimination within the overarching
movement ran rampant. The intellectual origins of militancy were limited
to Stewart’s brief recognition of the importance of Garnet’s call for insurrection.
By not fully incorporating Bell’s contribution into their syntheses,
Walters’s and Stewart’s books tell an incomplete tale in which the Fugitive
Slave Act appeared as the sole important precursor to more militant actions
in the 1850s. Both historians took greater interest in investigating
the motives, social status, and tactics of the white reformers who took on
the causes of those they considered less fortunate, rather than exploring
the struggle of blacks in the process of self-liberation. Only later would
historians more fully recognize the rich intellectual discourse occurring on
the topic of militancy.
The first step in this process was the rediscovery and revision of black
revolutionary, David Walker. Peter P. Hinks’s biography of David Walker,
To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave
Resistance excavated the much ignored intricacies of black political and
intellectual culture and illuminated the effects of this culture on David
Walker. Before Hinks’s addition to the historiography, Walker was often
referenced as the sole example of black militancy before the Fugitive Slave
Act of 1850. Hinks argued, however, that Walker, best known for his 1829,
Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, was one of many examples
of a tradition of militancy in early abolition and a product of a rich intellectual
and political culture of resistance.
Contrary to the works of Walters and Stewart, Hinks argued, “the
years 1800-1831 comprised the period of the most active and carefully
planned slave conspiring and rebelling in American history.” 3 Born a free
black in New Hanover County, North Carolina where blacks constituted
a majority of the population, this experience informed Walker’s life long
frustration with the subordination of enslaved blacks in situations where
they outnumbered whites. Despite his commitments to the Methodist community
in his area, economic conditions drove Walker toward Charleston
where he sought a livable wage and opportunity to “clarify the meaning
of his blackness and freedom in a world dominated by slavery.” 4 Hinks
examined how Denmark Vesey’s failed insurrection of 1822 played a role
in Walker’s life in “Vesey’s Charleston.” Hinks posed the likelihood that
LEAH THOMPSON

Walker experienced his first lessons in organizing during the four years
Vesey plotted his rebellion. Hinks showed Vesey’s influence on Walker,
examining their similar beliefs that God was the creator of equal rights.
Hinks wrote, “For both Walker and Vesey, evangelical notions not only
happened to correspond with a theory of natural rights but were in fact
integrally bound together, working always to exalt their ultimate source,
the Christian Deity. Republicanism was divinely ordained.” 5 While intellectual
history has traced the origins of many of Walker’s ideas to earlier
sources, his Appeal continues to be considered revolutionary for its time,
showing the conflict inherent in the alignment of slavery and republicanism
in American society. Peter P. Hinks found, “This was not a problem
that had escaped the attention of white thinkers and orators since the days
of the Revolution, but for an African American to come forward and ridicule
and accuse American pretensions was a bold and, possibly dangerous
action, even in the late 1820s.” 6 Through depicting the short life of David
Walker, Hinks has more fully elucidated a rich African American political
and intellectual culture that combined religion and militant ideas to
formulate a strong belief in republicanism ordained by God. This culture
far predated the 1850s where many historians have oriented the origins of
the abolitionist movement.
With a few notable exceptions, most abolition scholarship has portrayed
anti-slavery activity as truly awakening in 1831. This awakening
has traditionally been attributed to William Lloyd Garrison who in 1831
promised to “lift up the standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation,
within the sight of Bunker Hill and in the birth place of liberty,”
with the first publication of his newspaper, The Liberator. 7 A new trend
towards “immediatism” was associated with Garrison’s arrival at the forefront
of the movement. Garrison’s immediatism was characterized by his
devout religious belief in Christian perfection and the tactics of moral
suasion. Henry Mayer’s 1998 biography of Garrison, All on Fire: William
Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery has added greater contextualization
to Garrison’s life and influences. While most abolitionist texts delineated
a complete disconnect between the work of David Walker and the abolition
movement that Garrison inspired, Mayer and historian Donald M.
Jacobs, in the collection Courage and Conscience: Black and White Abolitionists
in Boston, have begun to show an intellectual and communal connection
between the two figures. Mayer argued that Garrison never fully discounted
David Walker’s ideas “that both appalled and fascinated Garrison.” 8
Moreover, Mayer described Garrison’s relationship with Walker’s ideas,
arguing, “Garrison paid close attention to the ambivalent emotions that
swirled through the Appeal and appreciated Walker’s ‘seasonable warnings’
that an uprising could be averted through white repentance and the abolition
of slavery.” 9 David Walker met an early death in 1830, and therefore
was absent from debates following the insurrection of Nat Turner. For
many moral suasionists, this insurrection embodied the words of David
Revitalization of Tactical Debate in the Convention of 1843
113

114
Walker, and therefore the Appeal’s moderate initial reception was quickly
sidelined by the emerging powers of the abolition movement. While never
condemning Walker, the reality of the insurrection was something the
pacifistic Garrison was unable to condone.
Donald M. Jacobs argued in his article “David Walker and William
Lloyd Garrison: Racial Cooperation and the Shaping of Boston
Abolition,” that while Garrison was a significant character in abolition,
he has been for too long “historically perceived as the leading figure of the
national abolition movement, creating and shaping it in his own image.”
Jacobs’s article showed how Garrison recognized Walker’s preeminence
in the black community of Boston; to garner support in that community,
Garrison had to seriously consider Walkers ideas, which “resulted in the
stance he began to adopt on colonization, racial intermarriage, black
unity, and even the question of the Appeal’s authorship, all in spite of
Walker’s support of blacks’ using any means necessary to gain their freedom.”
10 Jacobs’s pivotal article, showed how even Garrison was a part
of a large community of abolitionists, and a long tradition of resistance
— Garrison’s ideas were not his alone.
Finally, Richard S. Newman’s The Transformation of American Abolitionism:
Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic explored the active abolition movement
present in the early days of the republic. In a chapter titled, “An Appeal to
the Heart: The Black Protest Tradition and the Coming of Immediatism,”
Newman fully investigated the rich tradition of resistance and militancy
present in the black community long before the notion of moral suasion
came to the fore. He opened his chapter with the fiery argument,
William Lloyd Garrison uttered perhaps the most ironic words
in antebellum American history when he proclaimed in 1831,
“I will be heard.” For though the young Massachusetts printer
had only recently announced his fiery abolitionist strategy
of “Immediatism,” black activists had long demanded that
Americans end slavery.” 11
Often denied political rights such as the right to petition, black resistance
cultivated literary activism in the form of the protest pamphlet.
Newman argued literary tactics were a way in which African Americans
legitimated their “claims to universal freedom and equal citizenship.”
12 Richard Allen’s 1800 pamphlet eulogized the death of George
Washington and praised him for releasing his slaves, issuing the challenge:
“May a double portion of Washington’s [emancipatory] spirit rest
on the officers of the government of the United States and the whole of
the American people.” 13 Newman also quoted George Lawrence who
in 1813 asked Americans
‘if [they] are ignorant of their own Declaration,’ which proclaimed
all men naturally free. If not ‘ignorant of it,’ he challenged,
then ‘they must enforce’ the Declaration’s words (by
completely and speedily abolishing slavery), for ‘this government
is founded on principles of liberty and equality.’ 14
LEAH THOMPSON

Recent developments in historiography depict a culture of resistance
within the black community that utilized literary tactics and republican
and religious rhetoric to critique the existence of slavery. This rich community
and culture influenced both David Walker and William Lloyd
Garrison, who would present this long tradition of black immediacy to
white abolitionists in the 1830s.
Excluded from most white antislavery organizations in the early
republic, Newman showed how African American activists found original
methods for combating slavery specific to their experiences. While
Garrisonian abolitionists included black abolitionists to a greater extent in
the 1830s, the initial promise of the “immediatists” faded as progressive
change remained elusive. By the 1840s, many black abolitionists again
sought greater autonomy in a movement overwhelmingly dominated by
the discourse of moral suasion in the 1830s.
Contrary to early abolition historiography highlighting the predominance
of moral suasion tactics until the more militant responses to
the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a revival of intellectual debate over the
place of militance in the abolition movement resurfaced during the Negro
Convention of 1843. The roots of this important resurgence lay not solely in
the work of David Walker, but in a vibrant political and intellectual culture
of resistance dating back to the revolutionary era. A community of black
activists came of age during this era, powerfully critiquing slave power and
Northern whites with revolutionary and religious rhetoric. 1850 was not the
origin of militance in the abolition movement, but neither was the convention
movement of the 1840s as Howard Bell argued. Bell served to awaken
historians to the significance of the convention movement. However, this
movement does not signify the origins of black independent power and
militancy, but rather represents the reclamation of a powerful culture of
resistance long present in the history of free blacks in the United States.
Every year from 1830 to 1835 a National Negro Convention convened
in the United States, but Howard Bell wrote, “the national conventions
of the 1830’s were sometimes almost overrun by whites pleading a
particular cause or offering gratuitous advice on a multiplicity of subjects.”
15 Garrison’s brand of “moral suasion,” gave free black abolitionists
hope in the 1830s and early 40s, and the necessity of a separate convention
tapered off. However, by the early 40s, many free blacks rethought
the radical nature of the white “immediatists.” As Garrison aligned his
anti-slavery beliefs with pacifism and women’s rights, free blacks lamented
that the struggle to end slavery no longer stood as the highest priority of
Garrisonians. Many black activists sought freedom to act without the constraints
of a large white-dominated movement. The intellectual debate
of the 1840s reflected this reclamation of black agency within the abolitionist
movement and reawakened sentiments, like that of David Walker,
within the cause of abolition.
Revitalization of Tactical Debate in the Convention of 1843
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116
The call for the Convention of 1843 did not signal that black activists
abandoned the work of Garrison and his followers, but rather that African
Americans sought to create another organization capable of ensuring that
their separate voice be heard in addition to their voice as part of a coalition
with white activists. This represents an important difference between
abolition of the 1830s and antislavery in the early republic, where blacks
were almost never allowed to participate in the organizations of white
abolitionists and often considered colonization the answer to the problem
of slavery. The Conventions of the 1840s recognized the need for black
activists to serve as part of a larger organization with whites, as well as
ensure, through a separate entity, that issues important to their specific
needs were debated.
Representing the interests of over fifty black activists from seven
states, a call was signed to resume holding an annual National Negro
Convention in 1843. The Call for the Convention stated, “The history of
the present and the past establish the great truth that it is as much impossible
for any people to secure the enjoyment of their inalienable rights
without organization, as it is to reach an end without means.” 16 The recognition
of this need for black organization led the revival of the National
Negro Convention Movement, on hold since 1835. The signers of the Call
believed “since we have ceased to meet together in National Convention,
we have become ignorant of the moral and intellectual strength of our
people.” 17 The convention reinvigorated debate surrounding issues pertinent
to the black community, including education, a free black press, and
tactical methods for abolishing slavery. These issues embodied the overall
theme of the convention; however, the necessity of a separate organization
to ensure abolition remained paramount.
Opening remarks by Buffalo resident Samuel H. Davis set the tone
for the convention, reiterating the Call’s determination to reawaken the
cause of abolition through organization. Davis asked, “What shall we do,”
getting to the heart of the convention as a debate over means. Davis questioned
the effectiveness of petitioning and political parties. He accused
the Christian community of shielding within, “her pontifical robes…the
horrid monster, slavery, with her very bosom — within her most sacred
enclosures.” 18 Questioning the role of white activists in the antislavery
movement, Davis asked, “Shall we then look to the abolitionists, and wait
for them to give us our rights.” 19 The very existence of the convention
answered his question in the negative, as he defined the purpose of the
convention as allowing free black men to once again take on the task of
freeing their enslaved brothers. Davis appreciated the white abolitionists’
“exertions for the cause of truth and humanity,” however Davis argued,
“If we are not willing to rise up and assert our rightful claims, and plead
our own cause, we have no reason to look for success. We ourselves, must
be willing to contend for the rich boon of freedom and equal rights…It is
found only of them that seek.” 20 The exact avenues the free blacks would
LEAH THOMPSON

utilize, however, thematically framed the convention.One man in particular,
Henry Highland Garnet, called the slaves of the United States
to action, challenging the parameters of moral suasion and reviving an
overdue debate.
Representing Troy, New York, Henry Highland Garnet opened his
Address to the Slaves of the United States of America with a criticism of the
National Convention, serving traditionally as a meeting place to “sympathize
with each other and to weep over your [the slaves’] unhappy condition.”
21 Garnet’s call to action sought to change and radicalize the function
of the convention. Echoing Davis’s opening remarks, Garnet urged
the delegates to no longer be “contented in sitting still and mourning over
your sorrows, earnestly hoping that before this day, your sacred liberties
would have been restored.” 22 The Address followed this stylistic pattern
throughout, addressing the slaves all the while assuming black abolitionists
would serve as its main listeners.
Working within a long tradition of utilizing religious morality to critique
slavery, Garnet stated,
The voice of Freedom cried, ‘emancipated your Slaves.’ Humanity
supplicated with tears for the deliverance of the children
of Africa. Wisdom urged her solemn plea. The bleeding
captive plead his innocence, and pointed to Christianity who
stood weeping at the cross. Jehovah frowned upon the nefarious
institution, and thunderbolts, red with vengeance, struggled
to leap forth to blast the guilty wretches who maintained
it. But all was in vain. Slavery had stretched its dark wings of
death over the land. 23
This scathing criticism met with Garnet’s criticism of those who submitted
to slavery stating, “To such degradation it is sinful in the extreme for
you to make voluntary submission.” 4 The institution of slavery required
slaves to locate the highest power in their masters, denying slaves the right
to submit to the true highest authority of God. The Convention minutes
described how Garnet “reviewed the abominable system of slavery…its
deeds of darkness and of death-how it robbed parents of children, and
children of parents, husbands of wives; how it prostituted the daughters
of the slaves; how it murdered the colored man.” 25 After listing the evils
of slavery, Garnet stated the crux of his call to action, “Think how many
tears you have poured out upon the soil which you have cultivated with
unrequited toil, and enriched with your blood; and then go to your lordly
enslavers, and tell them plainly, that you are determined to be free.” 26
After asking their masters for freedom, if not obliged, Garnet called upon
the slaves to perform an act of civil disobedience, demanding freedom
through work stoppage.
While often described as calling for insurrection, Garnet actually
stated, “We do not advise you to attempt a revolution with the sword,
because it would be INEXPEDIENT.” 27 Rather, Garnet believed work
stoppage and subsequent submission to death, effectively responded
Revitalization of Tactical Debate in the Convention of 1843
117

118
to the continuance of slavery. Historian Lewis Perry assessed Garnet’s
rhetoric; “Its call to widespread insubordination, tempered by considerations
of expediency, envisioned something more like mass civil disobedience
than armed insurrection.” 28 Garnet’s evocation of revolutionary
rhetoric, however, led many to assume he had only slightly masked his
true call for insurrection.
The spirit of the Revolutionary War did not solely invigorate white
activists in the United States, and Garnet’s Address reflected the legacy of
revolution in African American slavery critiques. Invoking the rhetoric of
the Revolution to rally his cause, Garnet derived many lines of his speech
from the words of Patrick Henry, with Garnet restating, “In the name of
the merciful God and by all that life is worth, let no longer be a debatable
question, whether it is better to choose LIBERTY or DEATH.” 29 In his own
words, Garnet recalled that colonists once blamed slavery upon England,
and that they would rid themselves of it if they could.” 30 Time
came for revolt, however, and the colonists’ sincerity was tested.
After praising their “glorious document” Garnet asked if
their slaves were emancipated, “No; they rather added new
links to our chains. Were they ignorant of the principles of
Liberty? Certainly they were not. 31
These words call to memory the 1813 words of black activist George
Lawrence who asked if Americans understood their own Declaration.
The Revolutionary War was not the only instance of revolution active
in the historical memory of African Americans in the antebellum era.
Both the Haitian Revolution and failed slave insurrections recalled images
of black power and resistance. Garnet praised the actions of historical
black revolutionaries including Denmark Vesey and Joseph Cinque of
the Amistad in the Address. Predicting a change in public opinion towards
militant action, Garnet wrote of Nathaniel Turner, “his name has been
recorded on the list of infamy, but future generations will number him
among the noble and brave.” 32
The Convention of 1843 represented a return to debate, but it did
not signify a complete break from Garrison and the tactics of moral suasion.
The revolutionary call of Garnet was too militant for many delegates
in attendance. Frederick Douglass’s presence and influence represented
the continued power of Garrison’s brand of immediatism. The convention
minutes from 1843 described an audience moved to tears by Garnet’s
speech, but Frederick Douglass quickly responded in opposition to the
Address and a major debate ensued. Douglass believed a committee needed
to modify Garnet’s Address before the convention voted to ratify or reject
its sentiment. Douglass argued that the Address emphasized too much
physical force, stating he was, “for trying the moral means a little longer.” 33
While he concluded Garnet did not call for insurrection directly, Douglass
believed the Address could incite armed rebellion and he did not want to
give agency to such a violent uprising. After emerging from a committee
LEAH THOMPSON

containing both Garnet and Douglass, the Address contained much of its
original ideas, and those who originally opposed the Address decided not
enough had been altered. The committee presented a resolution and put
it to a vote,
Resolved, That each member of this Convention who is friendly
to the sentiments contained in this address, come forward and
sign it in the name of the ever living God, and that measures
be taken to print 1000 copies for circulation[.]
After much debate, the resolution to accept and distribute received one
more vote of nay than yea.
Reinvigorated debate over Garnet’s ideas and militance in general was
the legacy of the Convention of 1843. The hegemonic power the moral
suasionists held over the abolitionist discourse since 1831 was challenged,
and a more dynamic debate over tactics and the urgency of emancipation
continued through the convention movement and the abolition presses.
Garnet’s speech and those by militant activists before him, illustrated
the historical memory of revolution in their calls to action, however both
activists promoting greater militancy and the continuance of moral suasion
invoked a duty to God in their argument. Garnet believed it was
sinful to not resist enslavement. Moral suasionists utilized religious beliefs
to a different end. A month after the convention, The Liberator published
a critique of the convention. Written by white abolitionist Maria Weston
Chapman, the article represented the feelings of many moral suasionists
in the abolition movement. The author condemned Garnet’s address
hoping it was an utterance prompted by the “stimulus of political meetings,
for which men are afterward sorry,” rather than a morally defunct
profession of great deliberation. Chapman believed Garnet’s speech was
morally debasing and against the true power of God, declaring,
It is a matter of thankfulness whenever the spirit of freedom
and of good, — of love, forgiveness, and inagnanimity prevails,
even in a single heart, over evil; hatred, force, revenge,
and littleness. It did so, in a measure, at this Convention;
— the address to the slaves, of the Reverend H.H. Garnet,
expressing the idea that the time for insurrection had come,
having been rejected. 34
Chapman questioned the necessity of a separate convention, but wrote in
The Liberator that she was thankful Douglass had taken the time to attend,
keeping the bad counsel of Garnet from overpowering the convention.
Chapman wrote,
to the man of color, trust not the counsels that lead you to the
shedding of blood. That man knows nothing of nature, human
or Divine, — of character, — good or evil, who imagines that a
civil and servile war would ultimately promote freedom. 35
A turn towards insurrection or revolutionary ideas represented an evil call
for revenge to Chapman, a different end for the use of religious rhetoric.
Revitalization of Tactical Debate in the Convention of 1843
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120
Garnet’s Address criticized slaves for their patience, yet Garrison and
other “immediatists” reacted negatively to Garnet’s call to action. E.A.
Marsh reported for The Liberator on Garnet’s speech, describing it as affirming
“that abolitionists, who, by the bye, were very benevolent men,
had done about all that they could do; that non-resistance was ridiculous;
and not to be thought of, even for the present, by the slaves.” 36 After a
long description and misrepresentation of the Address, Marsh critiqued
Garnet who “seemed rather addressing a victorious army, than a gang
of crushed and imbruted slaves, despoiled of all rights and without the
means of successful resistance.” 37 The just nature and effectiveness of rebellion
were just two questions asked of Garnet’s militant call. However,
the ability of white abolitionists to passively await emancipation was the
main critique of moral suasion inherent in Garnet’s Address. The success
of the Convention of 1843 lay not in Garnet’s ability to sway abolitionists
away from moral suasion. Rather, the convention institutionalized an
organization for responding to concerns specific to the African American
community, and reinvigorated the tactical debate on abolition.
The National Convention of 1843 reopened abolition’s tactical
discourse, after an unsatisfying decade of black adherence to the tactics
of moral suasion. The results of this revitalized debate are observed in
the conventions of the later 1840s. During the Convention of 1847, the
term “moral suasion” was removed by vote from the convention’s report
on abolition, favoring the concept of political action. Furthermore, the
Cleveland National Convention of 1848 published Henry H. Garnet’s
controversial Address to the Slaves of the United States of America in a commemorative
book alongside David Walker’s Appeal. Juxtaposed to Garnet’s initial
mixed reception in 1843, this celebration of the works of Garnet and
Walker highlighted an intellectual transition within the black community,
illustrating a return to a rich tradition of resistance and tactical debate.
LEAH THOMPSON

Revitalization of Tactical Debate in the Convention of 1843
121
NOTES
01
Howard H. Bell, “National Negro Conventions of the Middle 1840’s: Moral Suasion
vs. Political Action, Journal of Negro History 42, no. 4 (October 1957): 260.
02
Ronald G. Walters, American Reformers: 1815-1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978)
and James Brewer Stewart, Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery (New York: Hill
and Wang, 1976).
03
Peter P. Hinks, To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum
Slave Resistance (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1997), xiv.
04
Ibid., 21.
05
Ibid., 30-31.
06
Ibid., 176.
07
Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York: St.
Martin’s Griffin, 1998), 110.
08
Ibid., 83.
09
Ibid., 84.
10
Donald M. Jacobs, “David Walker and Lloyd Garrison: Racial Cooperation and the
Shaping of Boston Abolition,” Courage and Conscience: Black and White Abolitionists in Boston, ed.
Donald M. Jacobs (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), 15.
11
Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the
Early Republic (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 86.
12
Ibid., 93.
13
Ibid., 90.
14
Ibid., 93.
15
Howard H. Bell, Minutes of the Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions 1830-1864
(New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969), ii.
16
Ibid., 3.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid., 6.
19
Ibid., 7.
20
Ibid.
21
William L. Katz, ed., Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles, David Walker. An Address to the Slaves
of the United States of America, Henry Highland Garnet (Salem: Ayer Company, Publishers, Inc.,
1969), 90.
22
Ibid., 90.
23
Ibid., 91.
24
Ibid., 92.
25
Bell, Minutes of the Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions 1830-1864, 13.
26
Katz, 94.
27
Ibid., 96.
28
Lewis Perry, “Black Abolitionists and the Origins of Civil Disobedience,” Moral
Problems in American Life: New Perspectives on Cultural History, eds. Karen Halttunen and Lewis
Perry (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998), 115.
29
Katz, 95.
30
Ibid., 91.
31
Ibid., 92.
32
Ibid., 96.
33
Bell, Minutes of the Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions 1830-1864, 13.
34
M. W. C., “The Buffalo Convention of Men of Color,” The Liberator, 22 September 1843.
35
Ibid.
36
E. A. Marsh, “The Colored Convention,” The Liberator, 8 September 1843.

122

123
Chasing Sodomy
D U R I N G T H E R E NA I S S A N C E :
A C O M P A R A T I V E S T U D Y
O F V E N I C E A N D F L O R E N C E
A\
R H I A N N O N Anderson

124
eex
post
efacto

…Those sins which are against nature, like those of men of
Sodom, are in all times and places to be detested and punished.
Even if all nations committed such sins, they should all
alike be held guilty by God’s law which did not make men so
that they should use each other thus. The friendship which
should be between God and us is violated when that nature
— whose author He is — is polluted by so perverted a lust. 1
ith these words, St. Augustine expressed the widespread fear held
against sodomy and the belief that it was a heinous crime capable of
calling down the wrath of God. Although this statement was made near
the end of the fourth century, negative attitudes about sodomy continued
throughout the middle ages. Despite the moral condemnation of
same sex eroticism by the church, lay authorities were ambivalent about
punishing the said “sin against nature” until the mid-thirteenth century. 2
During this period, European states first began to prescribe harsh laws
and punishments against sodomy. In 1259, for example, Bologna adopted
the death penalty for sodomy, while in 1277 the German King Rudolf
I of Habsburg sentenced a convicted sodomite to be burned alive. 3 W
By
the second half of the fourteenth century, many Italian communities had
adopted legislation that invoked capital punishment for those found guilty
of sodomy, making it the most serious of all sex crimes. However, it was
during the fifteenth century that the major Italian cities began to take
extraordinary measures in policing and punishing the sexual crime. The
quattrocento marked the beginning of the most extensive and methodical
repression of sodomy by major Italian city-states, demonstrating the deep
concern over this sexual vice.
125

126
Two leading Renaissance cities, Florence and Venice, were at the
forefront of anti-sodomy legislation in Northern Italy. In fact, both established
institutions devoted exclusively to controlling sodomy during
the early quattrocento. 4 Although these cities were equally alarmed about
sodomy, they implemented different approaches in its repression and
punishment. While the typical penalty in Venice was death by burning,
punishments in Florence ranged from corporal punishment to relatively
mild fines. 5 Venice maintained a stable and more severe form of punishment
whereas Florence fluctuated in its treatment of convicted sodomites.
The development of dissimilar methods and penalties by the anti-sodomy
councils of these two dominant Italian city-states during the quattrocento
reflected equally dissimilar attitudes toward the repression of sodomy.
Venice was determined to cleanse the Republic completely from the sin,
thus invoking severe punishments consistently, whereas Florence seemed
to realize the impossibility of fully repressing the sexual behavior, thus
seeking methods of regulating it rather than trying to eradicate the vice.
What makes a comparison between Venice and Florence so attractive
is that they were the two leading powers in Northern Italy during the
Renaissance. Both republics were major power centers and shared the distinction
of preserving their liberty and republican forms of government
longer than most of their Italian counterparts. Their central and burgeoning
commercial and trade activities linked them intimately with the world
market and contributed to their economic success and stability. In addition,
Florence and Venice were renowned cultural centers that essentially gave
birth to Europe’s golden age known as the Renaissance. 6 Consequently,
these quintessential Northern Italian republics left behind a long trail of
surviving evidence regarding their attitudes and actions taken against sodomy.
From literary sources to trial records, the pursuit of sodomy during
the quattrocento was well documented in Venice and Florence. Although
individual studies have been done on each republic, a comparative history
of sodomy in Florence and Venice has yet to surface. Guido Ruggiero has
dealt extensively on the subject of sodomy in Renaissance Venice, arguing
that Venice’s grave concern over the matter of sodomy resulted in the
frequent execution of sodomites. 7 Another scholar, Michael Rocke, has
traced the flexibility and leniency of punishment in the Florentine state,
despite the serious alarm. By comparing these two leading powers we shall
see that they both shared similar concerns regarding sodomy, yet their
regulations and punishments differed.
To begin with, it is important to define what was punished as sodomy
in Renaissance Florence and Venice. Sodomy had a theological definition
and was often referred to as the “unnatural vice.” 8 It was understood as
non-procreative sexual acts, mainly anal intercourse with men or women,
masturbation and even bestiality. Yet, the sexual crimes that were prosecuted
as sodomy in both Florence and Venice included all sexual relations
between male and male, and in some rare cases non-reproductive
RHIANNON ANDERSON

sexual practices committed between male and female. 9 Cases regarding
“unnatural acts” between men and women were widely accepted as a
practical means of contraception and almost all cases were absolved. 10
Ruggiero described the crime of sodomy between males and females as
“seldom punished; if prosecuted, seldom convicted; and if convicted, seldom
punished severely.” 11 In addition, same sex relations between females
went untried and unpunished all together. 12 Thus, the majority of sodomy
cases in Venice and Florence during the quattrocento and cinquecento dealt
specifically with same-sex eroticism between males.
Another component of the definition of sodomy in both Venice
and Florence was the distinction made between the active and the passive
partner. In most cases the passive partner was younger or an adolescent,
while the active was older or an adult. Authorities normally
punished the passive participant with only a light penalty or none at all,
while the active partner suffered dire consequences. According to tradition,
male children under the legal age of fourteen were not culpable
and thus not to be prosecuted for their crimes. In addition, since the
older partner usually took the dominant role, he was viewed as the aggressor
or the initiator of the crime. 13
The seriousness that was placed on the oft-referred to “abominable
vice” had its theological and religious implications. According
to Thomas Aquinas, sodomy was an “unnatural vice” because it was
against reason and “contrary to the natural order of the venereal act
as becoming to the human race.” 14 In other words, “copulation with an
undue sex,” such as male with male, was a sin against nature because
it threatened the natural intent of procreation, undermining society’s
most basic institutions of family and marriage. Furthermore, the sin
of sodomy was perceived as being so grave that it could invoke God’s
wrath, as it did for Sodom and Gomorrah. The enormity of this sin
was evidenced by the fate of these two cities: both were utterly leveled
to the ground and no living thing survived (Genesis 19-23). Thus, sodomy
was perceived as a sin against God and feared for its potential of
destroying the whole of society.
Both Florence and Venice had widespread reputations as centers
for deviant sexual behavior, particularly sodomy. 15 In Germany,
same sex erotic activity was often referred to as “Italian weddings,”
and those involved were called Venedische breute or “Venetian brides”
and Florentzische breutgam or “Florentine grooms.” 16 Not surprisingly,
legends circling Venice envisioned it as a tolerant island republic with
sexual liberties and loose morals. 17 In 1511, the Patriarch announced
that Venice was so full of sodomites that even the prostitutes were
upset about them. Courtesans complained that sodomy was popular to
such a degree that they were losing customers and consequently their
livelihood was threatened. 18 A Venetian diarist, Girolamo Priuli, re-
Chasing Sodomy During the Renaissance
127

128
corded: “…the unnatural vice called sodomy…was openly [practiced]
in Venice without shame; indeed, it had become so habitual that it was
more highly regarded than to with one’s own wife.” 19
Venice’s counterpart also carried the ill repute of being “another
Sodom.” In Dante’s Inferno, written around 1307, four out of the
seven sodomites were identified as Florentines. 20 During the 1420’s,
Bernardino of Siena devoted his efforts against the “abominable vice”
in a series of sermons throughout the city. The influential Franciscan
believed that sodomy was rampant throughout Tuscany, especially in
Florence where he considered it to be so common that it was virtually a
custom. Another contemporary observer described Florence as “excessively
corrupted [by sodomy].” 21
Despite their reputations, sodomy in Venice and Florence was not
as free and unrestrained as imagined. Both cities were religious and committed
to the traditional values of the church. Although the state did not
enact punishments for sodomy until the trecento, sodomy was punished
penitentially. Clergy used manuals of penance, which regulated penalties
to be imposed for various sins, to deal with vices. The church punished
sodomites with heavy penances or excommunication.For example,
a “male who [committed] fornication with a male” typically received
seven to fifteen years penance — less than or equal to the amount of time
for one who committed manslaughter. 22 By the late thirteenth and early
fourteenth centuries, secular legislation and punishment of sodomy had
arrived in Florence and Venice. In 1284, the statutes of the podestà had
made sodomy punishable by exile in Florence, and in 1326 the Venetians
had already begun prosecuting sodomites. 23
From the beginning of state-imposed anti-sodomy laws in Venice
and Florence, the two cities shared a similar desire for eradicating the
“unnatural vice” from their domains. Possibly brought forth by a time of
crisis and social turmoil, both cities moved to impose strict penalties for
sodomy. In 1348, the Black Death ravaged both Venice and Florence,
decimating the population of each place. Giovanni Boccacio, a Florentine
who witnessed the onslaught of the Black Death, documented the terror
and social upheaval in his Decameron. He wrote that many people believed
the plague “was a punishment signifying God’s righteous anger at [their]
iniquitous way of life.” 24 His statement echoed the same sentiments from
the scriptural stories of Sodom and Gomorrah that both church and secular
legislation made extensive use of. Laws that followed the devastation
of the plague stipulated harsher penalties for sodomy. For example, before
the plague, Florence had punished convicted sodomites with castration
or fines; in 1365, the penalty for sodomy was increased so that anyone
convicted of sodomy or aiding it could be put to death by burning. 25 In
another instance, the first surviving record of convicted sodomites burned
alive in Venice was dated from 1348. 26
RHIANNON ANDERSON

However, the stricter laws did not stem the sexually “deviant behavior”
in Venice or Florence, and the quattrocento marked a turning point in
their methods of repressing sodomy. Venice experienced a transition in
prosecution from the Signori di Notte to the Council of Ten. Up until 1407,
the Signori di Notte (Guardians of the Night Watch) were responsible for
dealing with cases of sodomy. The Signori di Notte was a judicial body made
up of six nobles, whose primary duty was to patrol the streets and to preserve
order at night. 27 Other responsibilities included arresting criminals
and investigating murder, robbery, and sodomy cases. Between the years
1348 and 1400, the Guardians of the Night had prosecuted sixteen individuals
for sodomy; their first case resulted in both convicted sodomites
being burned alive. 28 All the surviving records of the Signori di Notte reveal
that there were no cases in which nobles were involved; however, this did
not mean nobles were not participants in the sexual taboo. 29 In fact, the
involvement of a large number of nobles in a sodomy case of 1406 triggered
the move of prosecution from the Signori di Notte to the Council of
Ten in 1407. 30
The Signori di Notte’s reluctance to prosecute nobles combined with the
complexities of the case in 1406 led to the Council of Ten’s takeover of the
prosecution of the crime. In 1406, the Signori di Notte discovered a major
sodomy case that involved seventeen nobles and eighteen populares. The
hesitancy of the Signori di Notte to prosecute the nobles and their apparent
readiness to help certain nobles escape justice instigated the “murmuring”
of the city. 31 This “murmuring” of the popolani was an important force to
be reckoned with, yet the uncertainty of the Signori di Notte to move forth on
the case was based on the fact that it involved members of very important
families. Since the penalty imposed for sodomy was burning alive, it put the
members of the official body in an awkward position. The Signori di Notte
was in fact composed of the nobility, thus the conviction of nobles was
to move against their own kind which was politically dangerous. Thus, if
not handled with caution, the case could potentially disrupt the social and
political stability of Venice. If equal justice was given out for all involved,
the nobility could become divided; however it would not be acceptable to
burn non-nobles while allowing nobles to escape punishment.
Recognizing the complexities and heightened social tension, which
were viewed as harmful to Venice, the Council of Ten took over the case.
They stated: “It is necessary that everything be done to avoid angering
God against us and to preserve justice and our honor and to not diminish
the faith and devotion of our popolani who are murmuring because they see
popolani executed while nobles escape unpunished.” 32 The Council of Ten
was one of the most important councils of the Venetian Republic and was
composed of the doge and his councilors and other magistrates from the
most prestigious families of the city. 33 Their main responsibilities were policing
and punishing serious crimes against the state, such as treason, and
anything else that threatened the stability of Venice. They had unlimited
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130
power in arresting and executing any one who imposed a threat to the security
of the state. The authority of such an eminent council carried extra
weight and was therefore fit to handle the sodomy case of 1406 that had
social and political dangers attached to it.
Although the Council of Ten took over the delicate case in 1407,
it did not take complete jurisdiction over sodomy cases until 1418. The
case of 1407 only marked the beginning of the Ten’s involvement in sodomy
cases, but the majority of cases were still tried by the Signori di Notte.
However, the Signori di Notte was deemed ineffective and inefficient by the
Ten for its inability to eradicate sodomy from Venice. The Council of Ten
declared that “those eager to commit this abominable crime are not afraid
of committing it, rather they commit it lightly, not fearing the authority of
the Signori di Notte.” 34 Dissatisfied with the Signori di Notte’s handling of sodomy
cases, the Council of Ten took complete jurisdiction over the crime
in 1418. In addition to taking total authority over matters of sodomy, the
Ten also established a specialized anti-sodomy committee called the collegium
contra sodomites, or the collegio sodomiti. 35
The significance of the transition in the prosecution of sodomy from
the Signori di Notte to the Council of Ten was manifested in the fact that the
Ten took on a more aggressive role in pursuing the matter, resulting in an
increase of prosecutions among a broader range of classes. For example,
between the years 1401-1500, sixty-six nobles were prosecuted for sodomy
out of two hundred and sixty-six cases, demonstrating a dramatic rise relative
to the number of nobles prosecuted by the Signori di Notte — which was
zero. 36 The Council of Ten committed itself to eradicating sodomy from
Venice “so that not only would no one presume to its practice but no one
would even dare to mention it.” 37 With the establishment of an institution
specifically mandated for sodomy, the Council of Ten also passed legislation
to tighten control on the “unnatural vice.” For instance, in 1420, after
complaints of widespread acts of sodomy on Venetian ships, the Council
of Ten passed a ruling which declared that anyone caught committing
sodomy in a Venetian ship would be punished as if in Venice. 38 Previously,
when Venetian ships sailed outside of Venetian territory, they were also
considered outside the jurisdiction of Venetian law. The Council of Ten
further promised monetary rewards for those who turned in sodomites if
they were convicted.
After passing the regulation regarding Venetian ships in 1420, the
Council of Ten regularly adopted legislation which aided in the policing
and punishing of sodomy. In 1458, the Council of Ten passed another
law that increased public surveillance in an attempt to control sodomy. 39
The legislation stipulated that each year two nobles were elected in each
neighborhood to investigate and search for “signs” of sodomy in their locales.
In addition, “danger zones” were pronounced: places such as apothecary
shops, barber-surgeon shops, schools of music, gymnastics, fencing,
RHIANNON ANDERSON

and singing, were regarded as breeding grounds for the congregation of
sodomites. A ruling in 1477 imposed curfews on hours of operation and
ordered that schools were not allowed to have private teaching rooms.
Secluded public places were also considered “hot spots” during the night,
thus the Council of Ten required more street lamps to be kept lit after
nightfall. By 1467, the Council of Ten had become so aggressive in their
pursuit of sodomy that they passed a regulation that required medical
practitioners to report anyone treated for a “break in the rear parts caused
by a member.” 40
While Venetian authorities sought to eradicate the “vice of sodomy”
from the Republic, Florence pursued a more pragmatic approach in trying
to repress the “devious” sexual behavior. Traditionally, the surveillance
and punishment of sodomy in Florence fell under the jurisdiction
of the city’s three main magistrates until a specialized anti-sodomy institution
was established in 1432. These tribunals included the podestà, the
capitano del popolo, and the esecutore degli ordinamenti di giustizia, whose posts
were held by foreign rectors in an attempt to keep them from forming
alliances with the various factions that vied for control of the commune.
In Florence, the central figure of authority was the podestà whose main
duty was to administer justice. 41 In addition, the podestà and his court were
responsible for investigating sodomy, either by their own initiative or in response
to accusations. The statutes of the podestà of 1325 stipulated harsh
punishments for sodomy, such as castration, flogging, and large fines. 42 By
1365, those convicted of sodomy were subject to death by burning, at the
discretion of the podestà. Although the punishment for sodomy was severe,
the Florentine courts rarely prosecuted the sexual crime, unless there were
other crimes attached. For example, in documented cases of sodomy between
the years 1348-1432, fifty six people convicted for sodomy were also
found guilty of other crimes, such as child abuse, rape, violent attacks, kidnapping,
and theft. 43 For the most part, under the jurisdiction of the three
main tribunals, the sexual taboo committed alone went largely ignored.
At the beginning of the quattrocento, the Florentine government tried
to implement innovative reforms aimed at controlling sodomy. In 1403,
a proposal was passed that granted the Signoria authority to spend whatever
was necessary and to impose any legislation that would help in the
“removal and extirpation of this vice and sodomitical [sic] crime and
for its purging and punishment…from the territory of Florence.” 44 The
law further stipulated that all future officer holders in the Signoria were to
swear an oath “to pursue sodomites and to condemn and punish them.”
However, rather than pursuing sodomites, the Signoria created an institution,
the Officers of Decency, to police female prostitution instead. Once
again, those responsible for policing sodomy ignored it , causing a divide
within the regime. Advocates for harsher controls on sodomy voiced their
opinions in advisory meetings, yet the Florentine government was unwilling
to implement repressive measures. In fact, they did the opposite: in
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132
1415 the government adopted more lenient penalties with the belief that
such harsh punishments, such as death by burning, were an obstacle in the
path of effective control. The statutes of 1415 reduced the punishments
for a first time conviction of sodomy to a fine and forbade exile, mutilation,
or execution — only a second conviction could result in execution. 46
Consequently, the lack of prosecution and lenient penalties for
sodomy resulted in demands for reform throughout Florence from various
government officials, poets, and preachers. Recurring outbreaks of
plague in 1348, 1400, 1417, 1423-24, and 1430 contributed to the heightened
concern over sodomy. One official, Antonio di Niccolò complained,
“how abominable are [these acts] in the sight of God, and how [their
suppression] will redound to the honor and reputation of the Signoria and
the city.” He went on to criticize the Signoria’s handling over the “vice,”
stating that although “there exist laws [against sodomy], they are flawed
in their implementation.” 47
Poets, such as Stefano Finiguerri, and Domenico of Prata also expressed
their disapproval of sodomy in their work. However, the most aggressive
campaign against sodomy arrived in 1424, with the Franciscan
friar Bernardino of Siena. Between 1424 and 1425, Bernardino preached
a number of sermons on the “pestilential ruin” of sodomy. He used the traditional
arsenal of Sodom and Gomorrah and attributed disasters such as
wars, floods, famine, and plague to sodomy. Bernardino also attacked the
Florentine government for allowing sodomites to escape from punishment,
comparing them to other cities, such as Venice, which burned sodomites.
He complained: “They don’t pardon the gentleman or the important citizen
for sodomy, but banish irrevocably even the greatest citizens. Unlike
you Florentines, who before the wound had healed have already lifted the
criminal’s exile.” 48 Furthermore, Bernardino demanded that Florence follow
the same harsh methods of its neighbors or suffer the wrath of God.
Although the Franciscan’s crusade against sodomy drew people’s attention
to the lack of justice doled out for “cursed sodomites,” civic officials did not
implement any new measures to repress the vice immediately.
Agitation for reform during the early quattrocento eventually did result
in the development of a specialized anti-sodomy institution in 1432, the
Uffici di Notte or the Officers of the Night. On April 17, the Florentines
founded the special magistracy, declaring: “[The government] wishes to
root out of its city the abominable vice of sodomy, called in the holy scriptures
the most evil sin, and having decided that if what is written herein is
done, for the most part this will be accomplished.” 49 With these words, the
new institution set out to police sodomy and encouraged the community
to participate. In contrast to Venice, where anonymous accusations were
deemed unacceptable, the Officers of the Night encouraged secret accusations,
placing boxes called tamburi inside churches where people could
leave denunciations. 50 Rewards were offered for informers of convicted
RHIANNON ANDERSON

sodomites and their anonymity was guaranteed. The Officers of the Night
also adopted the use of spies, who were paid one-fourth of the total fine
received from convicted sodomites. With the creation of the specialized
anti-sodomy magistracy and the incentives offered for accusations, the policing
of sodomy was intensified.
Although the surveillance and repression of sodomy increased with
the establishment of the Uffici di Notte, the government reduced the penalties
for it. While the statutes of 1415 had replaced draconian punishments
with a fine of 1,000 lire for those condemned of sodomy, the law
of 1432 further reduced fines to fifty gold florins for the first conviction,
one-hundred gold florins for a second, and two-hundred gold florins
plus exclusion from holding office for two years for a third. Each time
an adult male was found guilty of committing the crime of sodomy, the
penalties steadily increased. For example, if one was convicted a fourth
time, he would be “fined 500 gold florins and perpetually excluded from
all offices,” if found guilty a fifth time would be “led through the customary
public squares to the place of justice and there to be burned so
that he dies.” 51 Another provision in the law of 1432 also allowed for
these penalties to be decreased even further. For instance, if an accused
sodomite confessed to the charge, his fines were reduced to one-half,
while one who confessed before charges were brought against him could
escape punishment altogether. 52
As a result of the imposition of more lenient penalties by the Uffici
di Notte, combined with incentives for denunciations, the number of
convictions for sodomy steadily rose and crossed across different social
classes. Everyone, regardless of status was subject to the punishments of
the Officers of the Night, from vagabonds to patricians. In fact, the first
person convicted by the Officers of the Night was Doffo di Nepo Spini,
a former Gonfalonier of Justice, which was one of the highest positions
in government. He was accused of sodomizing a fourteen year old and
when approached by the authorities, he confessed to committing the
crime. Because of his confession, his fine was reduced to twenty-five florins.
53 Between the years 1432 and 1440, over one hundred males were
convicted of having sexual relations with other men. 54
Although there was an increase in the number of prosecutions during
the early years of the Uffici di Notte, the magistracy quickly realized its
inability to repress sodomy. In 1436, the Officers of the Night suggested
that rather than trying to eradicate sodomy from Florence, a more effective
approach would be to regulate it. In a passage from a trial, a sense of
despair and pragmatism is revealed:
[The Officers of the Night] are watching with unceasing diligence
so that the horrible crime of sodomy might be rooted
out of the city and its territory, and they devote themselves to
nothing else. Yet after all their labors, words, threats, punishments
against many persons, they believe that, in effect, it is
Chasing Sodomy During the Renaissance
133

134
nearly impossible for any good to come about, so corrupt and
stained is the city. Nonetheless, they prudently reason that if
despite every sort of punishment these men are still not restrained,
at least some might control themselves, and perhaps
those defiled by such ignominy will not do so openly…although
their crimes may not be completely prevented, they
may in part be constrained. 55
The Officers of the Night felt that it was impossible to completely rid
Florence from the vice of sodomy regardless of the type of penalties doled
out. Severe punishments of the past did not hinder “unnatural” sexual
behavior between men, nor did the innovative “benevolent” measures
adopted in the early quattrocento. In 1459, another piece of legislation reduced
the fines for sodomy once again: ten florins for first time offenders,
twenty-five florins for a second, and fifty florins for a third offense. 56 The
dramatic decrease in fines resulted in a notably increase in prosecutions of
sodomites, reaching an all time high between the years 1472-1473, where
161 men where convicted of sodomy. 57
Overall, both Venice and Florence experienced an increase of prosecutions
with the development of special anti-sodomy institutions during
the mid-quattrocento. Although they both voiced similar concerns over
the “abominable vice,” they adopted different measures in policing and
punishing convicted sodomites. Venice remained determined to free the
Republic from the “terrible crime” of sodomy, whereas Florence was
pragmatic in its approach, finally coming to the conclusion that it was
impossible to root out the “evil sin.” While the policing of sodomy continued
throughout the cinquecento, it had become apparent to both Venice and
Florence that sexual behavior was something that could not be controlled.
In 1502, the magistracy of the Uffici di Notte was abolished on the grounds
that having a specialized sodomy institution insinuated the unfavorable
reputation of being another Sodom.
Venice, in turn, would soon come to realize that its plan to eradicate
sodomy so completely that “no one would even dare mention it” was
doomed to fail. In the late 1520’s Pietro Aretino had arrived in Venice
after his expulsion from Rome for his erotic and explicit poems he had
written to go along with Giulio Romano’s infamous engravings of sexual
positions. One of these poems, in fact, was about sodomy between a male
and female. 58 Once in Venice, he completed his comedy, “Il Marescalco,”
or “The Master of the Horse,” whose hero, Marescalco, was an openly
practicing sodomite. 59 By the mid-sixteenth century, the punishment for
sodomy in Venice had been reduced from death by burning to time served
on the galleys or a prison sentence.
Furthermore, the quattrocento had marked the beginning of an era of
exhaustive repression of sodomy in both Venice and Florence, a repression
that would last up until the mid-cinquecento. Unlike other Italian citystates,
they both created specialized institutions which dealt solely with the
issue of sodomy. These anti-sodomy establishments reflected the official
RHIANNON ANDERSON

view of unacceptable sexuality in both republics, while offering insight
to society’s perception of “normal” sexual activities. However, the specialized
institutions failed to stem the “sexual crime.” Although the number
of convictions rose with the establishment of the anti-sodomy magistracies,
sodomy itself was likely unaffected. In fact, the harder Venice
and Florence sought to repress sodomy, the more cases they uncovered.
Rather than putting a stop to same sex eroticism between males, they just
discovered more of it going on throughout the city. In trying to control
sexual behavior, both Venice and Florence became disappointed with the
outcome and both eventually adopted policies of toleration.
01 St. Augustine, Confessions, book III, ch. 8.
02 For more on the hostility and the adoption of harsh laws imposed by the state on sodomy,
see James Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, 269-332. Also see Michael
Goodrich, “Sodomy in Medieval Secular Law,” Journal of Homosexuality, 1 (1976), 295-302.
03 On the legislation of Bologna, see Blanshei, “Criminal Law and Politics in Medieval
Bologna,” Criminal Justice History: An International Journal, 2 (1981), 13. For a list of sodomy trials
and convictions in early modern Germany and Switzerland, see Puff, Helmut, Sodomy in
Reformation Germany and Switzerland: 1400-1600 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003),
17, 183.
04 In 1418, Venice created a special standing committee called the Collegio Sodomiti.
For more on the creation of this committee, see Patricia H. Labalme, “Sodomy and Venetian
Justice in the Renaissance,” Revue d’histoire du droit, 52 (1985): 217-254. In 1432, Florence established
the special magistracy called the Ufficiali di Notte. “Establishment of a Magistracy to
Extirpate Sodomy, 1432,” in The Society of Renaissance Florence: a Documentary Study, ed. Gene
Brucker (New York: Harper & Row, 1971). For more on the Florentine committee, see Michael
J. Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996), 45-84.
05 On the regulation and punishment of sodomy in Venice see Guido Ruggiero,
Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (Oxford University Press, 1985),
109-145. For regulation and punishment of sodomy in Florence, see Rocke, Forbidden Friendships,
45-84, 195-226.
06 For more on the history of both republics, see Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination:
City-States in Renaissance Italy (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1988). For a more
concise history on Venice, see Lane, Frederic C., Venice: a Maritime Republic (Baltimore: John
Hopkins University Press, 1973). For more on Florence, see Gene Brucker, Florence: the Golden
Age, 1138-1737 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
07 Ruggiero, The Boundaries.
08 In Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologia, Aquinas described what he considered to be
the “vice of sodomy.” See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia, 2a2ae 154, 11.
09 Although what was punished as sodomy falls under the modern term of homosexual
acts between males, I will use the word “sodomy” or “sodomite” throughout the essay because
that was the terminology used in Florentine and Venetian documents. According to
Jeffrey Weeks, the term “homosexuality” was created in 1869 and notions of sexual identity did
not exist until the late nineteenth century. Weeks, Jeffrey, “Movements of Affirmation: Sexual
Meaning and Homosexual Identities,” Radical History Review, 20 (1979): 164.
10 Ruggiero, Boundaries, 119. Rocke, Forbidden Friendships, 46.
11 Ruggiero, Boundaries, 119. Judith C. Brown, “Lesbian Sexuality in Medieval and
Early Modern Europe,” in Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin
Duberman, et al., (New York: New American Library, 1989), 67-75.
12 According to Labalme and Ruggiero, no records of punishment or trials regarding
same sex relations between females have been found. Labalme, 220. Ruggiero, Boundaries, 190.
However, sexual relationships between women did in fact exist. See Judith C. Brown, Immodest
Acts: the Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
Chasing Sodomy During the Renaissance
135
NOTES

136
13
For a discussion regarding how age played out in the prosecution of sodomy in
Florence, see Rocke’s Forbidden Friendships, 87-111. For more on Venice, see Ruggiero’s Boundaries,
121-124. For the remainder of the paper, I will only be looking at the active adult males convicted
of sodomy and not of passive adolescents. Except for a few rare cases, the passive partner
or adolescent did not receive the same harsh punishments as the adult partner.
14
Aquinas, Summa Theologia, 2a2ae. 154, 11.
15
Although Venice and Florence had reputations for widespread sodomy, this does not
mean that sodomy was non-existent in other European states. In fact, there is much evidence of
sodomy everywhere in addition to records of other states trying to eradicate it. See Puff, Sodomy.
16
During the reformations, reformers such as Martin Luther used these terms when
describing sodomitical relations between men. See Puff, Sodomy, 137, 246n. 86.
17
For more regarding the myth of Venice, see James Grubb, “When Myths Lose Power:
Four Decades of Venetian Historiography,” Journal of Modern History, 58 (1986): 43-94. Also Edward
Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981), 13-61.
18
Sanudo, Diarii, 12:84, 1511: “e questa terra è piena di pechati, primo di sodomia, che si fa per
tutto senza rispeto, e le meretrici li ha mandato a dir che non poleno viver, niun va di lhoro, tanto è la sodomie; a
fino vechij si fanno lavorar,” quoted in Labalme, 248.
19
Priuli, Girolamo, “Homosexual Practices Unpunished, 1509,” in David Chambers
and Brian Pullan, eds., Venice: a Documentary History 1450-1630, (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2001), 124-5.
20
Dante, Inferno, Cantos XV, XVI.
21
“Civic Opinion, 1415,” in Brucker, The Society of Renaissance Florence, 201.
22
“The Penitential of Theodore, 668-690,” in Medieval Handbooks of Penance: a Translation
of the Principal libri poenitentiales and Selections from Related Documents, edited by Helena M. Gamer
and John T. McNeill, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 185, 187.
23
Rocke, Forbidden Friendships, 21. Ruggiero, Boundaries, 128. These are dates of the earliest
surviving records regarding sodomy in both cities. It is hard to know the exact date of the
first piece of anti-sodomy legislation, yet these dates are in accordance with other anti-sodomy
laws and punishments in neighboring cities, such as Bologna, Switzerland, Germany.
24
Giovanni Boccacio, The Decameron, trans. G. H. McWilliam (Penguin Books: England), 5.
25
A.S.F., Provvisioni, Registri,” 52, 128rv (April 3, 1365), in Michael J. Rocke,
Male Homosexuality and its Regulation in Late Medieval Florence (State University of New York at
Binghampton, Ph. D. dissertation, 1990), 568-572.
26
A.S.V., Signori di Notte, Processi, Reg. 6, f.4v-5v (1348), case quoted in Ruggiero,
Boundaries, 110-111, 188.
27
For a discussion on the Signori di Notte’s responsibilities see Guido Ruggiero, Violence
in Early Renaissance Venice (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1980), 26-33.
28
These figures come from a chart in Ruggiero’s Boundaries, which is based on the records
of the Signori di Notte, 128. The first case in the surviving records of the Signori di Notte
was in 1348, in which both of the convicted sodomites were burned alive; however because it
is the first surviving record, does not necessarily indicate if these were the first victims of harsh
sodomy punishment. For more on the case, see Ruggiero, Boundaries, 110-111, 116..
29
Ruggiero’s chart, “Sodomy Prosecutions in Venice, 1326-1500,” indicates that records
from 1326-1425 are incomplete. Ruggiero, Boundaries, 128.
30
Both Ruggiero and Labalme go into detail about the case of 1406-7. Ruggiero,
Boundaries, 127-134. Labalme, 222-225.
31
The “murmuring” of the people in Venice was a force in which the government
was constantly forced to reckon with. For more on the power of the people’s voice, see Finlay,
Robert, Politics in Renaissance Florence (New Brunswick, 1980), 44-108.
32
A.S.V., Dieci, Miste, Reg. 8, f.134v-135v (1406), quoted in Ruggiero, Boundaries, 128-
9, 194.
33
Sanudo, “A Very Severe Magistracy,” in Chambers & Pullan, 54-57. For more discussion
on the Council of Ten, see Ruggiero, Violence, 6-17, 33-39.
34
A.S.V., Dieci, Miste, Reg. 9, f. 183v-184 (May 11, 1418), quoted in Labalme, 224.
35
A.S.V., Dieci, Miste, Reg. 9, f. 183v-184.
36
Figures from Ruggiero’s chart, “Sodomy Prosecutions in Venice, 1326-1500,” in
Boundaries, 128.
37
A.S.V., Diecci, Miste, Reg. 9, f. 179, April 6, 1418, quoted in Labalme, 224.
38
A.S.V., Diecci, Miste, Reg. 10, f. 29v (1420), in Ruggiero, Boundaries, 134-5, 195.
39
A.S.V., Diecci, Miste, Reg. 15, f. 170r (1458), in Ruggiero, Boundaries, 109, 135, 188.
RHIANNON ANDERSON

40
A.S.V., Diecci, Miste, Reg. 17, f. 81v (1467), in Ruggiero, Boundaries, 117-18, 191.
41
For more discussion on the podestà, see Martines, Lauro, Power and Imagination: City-
States in Renaissance Italy (John Hopkins University Press, 1988), 41-44, 54-56, 94.
42
A.S.F., Statut di Podestà, 1325, discussed in Rocke, Forbidden Friendships, 21-22.
43
According to the statistics given in Rocke’s Forbidden Friendships, 23.
44
A.S.F., Provvisioni, Registri 92, 9r-10r (April 24, 1403), quoted in Rocke’s Male
Homosexuality, 60. The Signoria was a nine-member executive body in Florence.
45
A.S.F., Provvisioni 92, 9r-10r (April 24, 1403), quoted in Rocke’s Forbidden Friendships, 31.
46
A.S.F., Statuti 23, 86v; cf. Statuta (1415), 1:321, from Rocke’s Forbidden Friendships, 32.
47
A.S.F., Consulte e Pratiche, 43, fol. 76v, in Brucker’s Society, 201.
48
Bernardino of Siena, (Florence 1424), quoted in Rocke’s Male Homosexuality, 93.
49
A.S.F., Provvisioni, Registri 123, 31v-36v (April 17, 1432), in Rocke’s Male Homosexuality,
589.
50
In 1275, the Major Council passed a law in Venice stipulating that anonymous letters
were not allowed to be used and should be burned. However, many argued that the refusal of
reading anonymous letters was not in Venice’s best interests. Therefore, in 1387, anonymous
accusations could be used, but only after intense screening. For more discussion on anonymous
accusations in Venice, see Ruggiero, Violence, 35. For the Florentine acceptance of secret accusations
by the Officials of the Night, see A.S.F. Provvisioni, 123, fols. 31v-35r (1432), in Brucker’s
Society, 203-204.
51
A.S.F., Provvisioni, 123, fols. 31v-35r (1432), in Brucker’s Society, 203-204. Also see
Rocke’s Male Homosexuality, 113 for the value of a florin. According to Rocke, about four lire
were equivalent to one gold florin in 1432, and around fifty florins was the average salary of a
skilled laborer.
52
A.S.F., Provvisioni, Registri 123, 35r. (April 17, 1432), in Rocke’s Male Homosexuality, 606-12.
53
For more on the case of Doffo di Nepo Spini, see Rocke’s Forbidden Friendships, 56-58.
54
Figure from Rocke’s Forbidden Friendships, 57.
55
Guidice 79 (2), 44rv (Jan. 13, 1435-6), in Rocke’s Male Homosexuality, 138.
56
A.S.F., Provvisioni, Registri 150, 119v-120v (October 23, 1459), in Rocke’s Male
Homosexuality, 646-650.
57
This figure comes from a chart regarding the number of convictions for sodomy by
the Officers of the Night, 1432-1502, found in Rocke’s Forbidden Friendships, 199.
58
Aretino, Pietro, “Sonnet 10,” in Lawner Lynn ed. and trans., I Modi: The Sixteen
Pleasures; An Erotic Album of the Italian Renaissance (Illinois: Northwestern University Press), 78-79.
59
Aretino, Pietro, “Il Marescalo,” in Five Comedies from the Italian Renaissance, ed. Laura
Giannetti and Guido Ruggiero, 117-204 (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 2003).
Chasing Sodomy During the Renaissance
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Kings & Christianity
T H E P O L I T I C S O F
R E L I G I O U S C O N V E R S I O N
IN SEVENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND
C\
S A M Dupont

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om the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britain in 410 A.D.
until the later half of the 6th century, waves of pagan Angles, Saxons, and
Jutes invaded Britain. The monk Gildas, writing around 540, described the
invasions in gruesome detail, “All the major towns were laid low. Church
leaders, priests, and people alike … with a purple crust of congealed blood,
looked as though they had been mixed up in some dreadful wine press.” 1
The native Romano-British population was destroyed, pushed west, or
assimilated into Anglo-Saxon society. Christianity disappeared from lowland
Britain. 2 About 596 A.D., the monk Augustine was sent to Kent by
Pope Gregory I to convert the heathens. Augustine soon persuaded king
Æthelbert to accept the new faith. 3 F
Other Anglo-Saxon kings followed and
by the end of the seventh century, all of Anglo-Saxon England had accepted
Roman Christianity. This paper examines the process of the conversion
of the Anglo-Saxons to Roman Christianity from the arrival of Augustine
at Kent in 596 through the Synod of Whitby in 664 and argues that the
ultimate success of the English conversion to Roman Christianity was due
primarily to the political benefits it offered the Anglo-Saxon kings. It shows
that the conversion of kings was the decisive factor in the conversion of
whole peoples, that kings did not convert for spiritual reasons, and that
they did so for a variety of political reasons.
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142
The king played a pivotal role in mass conversions. The Germanic
king was more than mere war leader. He was a sacred ruler whose combined
religious and political functions were considered indissoluble. 4 The
king was nothing less than the conduit that connected his people and the
gods. His ties to the gods were based on his nobilitas — his descent from
the god Woden — while his ties to his people and the loyalty derived
from them came primarily from his virtu — his wealth, his success in war,
and the material benefits and protection he gave his people. 5 The epic
poem Beowulf provides an excellent example of the cultural basis of these
lordship ties. Though told in a heroic setting, it nonetheless portrayed on
a grand stage what people felt to be reality. 6 “Beow’s name was known
through the north,” relates the storyteller, “… giving freely … so that afterwards
… when fighting starts [sic] steadfast companions will [sic] stand
beside him and hold the line.” 7 It was the king’s responsibility to procure
divine favor by sacrificing for victory, peace, and good harvests, and
his failure to do so offered sufficient justification for his people to replace
him. 8 By maintaining his virtu, he thus ensured his people’s loyalty. It is in
this context that the conversions of entire peoples — such as when “ten
thousand of the king’s subjects were baptized” with King Æthelberht of
Kent or when “King Edwin [of Northumbria], [converted] with all the
nobles … and a vast number of the common people” — must be placed. 9
Similarly, when Christian kings apostatized (or when they were succeeded
by pagan kings), their people apostatized too. This occurred in 616, when
Sæberht, king of the East Saxons, died and was succeeded by his three
heathen sons. It also occurred when Sigehere, a later East Saxon king,
apostatized “together with his part of the nation,” after the great plague
of 664. 10 Still more evidence of the king’s decisive role in religious matters
can be found in the dearth of Anglo-Saxon martyrs in the seventh
century, which can be attributed to the royal protection of missionaries as
well as popular acceptance of royal authority. 11 Thus, in religious matters,
the people followed the king’s example.
Having determined that the king’s role was of critical importance in
the conversion of the mass population, the next issue at hand is the question
of whether kings converted to gain spiritual or political benefits. 12
The English monks who provide our primary sources for royal conversions
assert that spiritual factors were paramount. For example, the monk
Bede claims that King Æthelberht converted because he was “attracted
by the pure life of the saints.” 13 The anonymous monk who wrote the Life
of Gregory the Great recounts that King Edwin’s conversion was revealed to
him beforehand in a vision from God Himself. 14 In the Life of St. Wilfrid,
Eddius Stephanus relates that spiritual considerations moved Oswy, king
of Northumbria, to accept Roman rather than Irish Christianity. “Tell
me,” commanded the great king to the synod attendees at Whitby, “which
is greater in the kingdom of Heaven, [the Celtic monk] Columba or the
apostle Peter?” 15 There is good reason, however, to doubt all of these ac-
SAM DUPONT

counts. A brief study of Germanic pagan religious practices suggests that
Anglo-Saxon kings, at least during the first two or three generations after
Augustine’s mission, lacked a sufficient understanding of the Christian
worldview to undergo true conversion, defined by the recognition that
personal Christian salvation is the ultimate objective in life and which is
“characterized by profound personal changes in values, beliefs, identity,
and behavior.” In fact, they underwent only adhesion, “the mere public
compliance with ritual and legislation without much faith.” 16
If the attainment of personal salvation composes the essence of true
spiritual Christian conversion, then it makes sense to begin its analysis by
examining pre-existing pagan beliefs in an afterlife. Bede asserted that
the heathen priests of King Edwin were uncertain of the existence of life
after death. “In this life man appears but for a moment,” states one high
priest named Coifi, “what follows … we know not at all.” 17 However, Bede
was writing from a Christian point of view, and his intent in the Historia
Ecclesiastica was to promote Christianity and the salvation it offered. His
story is primarily a didactic tool. 18 On the contrary, Anglo-Saxon religion
asserted that warriors who died in battle joined the gods in Valhalla,
where they feasted while awaiting Ragnarok, the final war against the
giants that signaled the end of the world. 19 The existence of weapons,
money, furnishings, and other goods in pagan gravesites verifies the belief
in an Anglo-Saxon afterlife. 20
The Christian worldview was so foreign to seventh-century Anglo-
Saxon pagans that they were slow to comprehend the differences in their
respective conceptions of the afterlife. Whereas the Anglo-Saxon worldview
was marked by loyalty to lord and kin, glory in battle, the “ringgiving”
of a lord to his retainers, and the communal nature of legal
obligation, the Christian worldview advocated loyalty to God and His
laws, and the practicing of humility and charity to the poor. Added to
the problems of translating between worldviews was the more mundane
one of translating between the Anglo-Saxon and Latin languages. A case
in point occurred when English clerics of Ælfred the Great translated
the Historia Ecclesiastica into English in the late ninth century. In doing so,
they translated fides (‘faith’) as geleafa (‘permission’ or ‘license’). 21 Due to
these factors, Anglo-Saxon kings had an especially difficult time coming
to terms with Christian concepts of individual sin, guilt, and the means to
facilitate access to Heaven. 22 For example, the Northumbrian king Oswy,
a lifelong Christian, caused the murder of another Christian king, Oswine
of Deira, in order to solidify his power. 23 Seemingly, he felt neither guilt
nor risk to his soul from this entirely ruthless political act. From the context
of his pagan worldview, failure to be virtuous in the Christian sense
had no impact upon entering the afterlife. It is thus fair to say that seventh
century Anglo-Saxon kings, lacking the cultural tools to truly understand
Christian dogma or its consequences, were, in general, unable to experience
true spiritual conversion in the Christian sense.
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Conversely, the polytheistic nature of pagan religion made the
addition of a new god into its pantheon a trivial matter, as witnessed
by the ready willingness of “ten thousand” Kentings to accept baptism
with Æthelberht on Christmas day in 597. 24 Even more telling are the
many apostasies of kings and people alike in the seventh century, including
those of the previously mentioned East Saxons after the death
of King Sæberht following the plague of 664 as well as that of the
Northumbrians following King Edwin’s death in battle. 25 The act of
baptism did not necessarily equate to the complete understanding and
acceptance of all — or even any — of the precepts of the Christian
Church. The Christian god was simply another god from whom benefits
might be received. Rædwald, king of the East Anglians, was so ambivalent
towards Christian monotheism that even after his baptism, he “in
the same temple … had one altar for the Christian sacrifice and another
small altar on which to offer victims to devils.” 26
Pope Gregory was well aware of the difficulties inherent in gaining
true converts in Anglo-Saxon England. He therefore set Augustine’s mission
on a strategy of quick adhesion, followed by slow but true conversion,
as shown in a letter to Abbot Mellitus:
I have decided that the idol temples should by no means be
destroyed, but only the idols in them. When these people see
that their shrines are not destroyed they will … be more ready
to come to the places they are familiar with, but now … worshipping
the true God. Do not let them sacrifice animals to
the devil, but let them slaughter animals for their own food to
the praise of God. 27
Via this plan, pagan feasts were transformed into Christian ones.
Certain pagan spring ceremonies of the field, for example, ultimately became
Easter, Rogationtide, and Whitsunday. 28 The process of true conversion
took so long that paganism was not outlawed in Kent until 640, and
in the last Kentish law code of the seventh century, pagan practices were
still common enough that the king found it appropriate to forbid men to
make offerings to devils. 29
The result, then, of the acceptance of baptism by kings who had
been raised in an Anglo-Saxon pagan culture was that they were generally
willing to superficially convert, but were extremely slow to convert in
a true spiritual sense. Yet they did convert — meaning only that they accepted
baptism and offered some support to Christian missionaries. Since
they generally did not convert for any perceived spiritual benefit, it is left
to determine what kind of benefits they did seek.
In fact kings converted for a number of reasons, all designed to increase
their temporal power. These can be separated into two general
categories. The first of these were the very real benefits kings expected
from God in exchange for their own devotion. A sense of this expectation
is conveyed in the words of Coifi, a pagan high priest of King Edwin,
SAM DUPONT

“None has devoted himself more earnestly than I have to the worship of
our gods, but nevertheless there are many who … are more successful in
their undertakings. If the gods had any power they would have helped me
more readily.” 30 This concept of reciprocity was especially important for a
king, due to his role as intermediary between the gods and his people. In
return for the aid of God, kings offered promises of conversion, of giving
a daughter to a religious institution, or of founding churches or monasteries.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle provides one example:
Then the king [Edwin] promised Paulinus to give his daughter
[Eanfled] to God, if he by his prayers would obtain from
God that he might overthrow his enemy who had sent the
assassin there. And he went into Wessex with levies and slew
five kings there and killed a great number of the people. ...
And within a twelve-month the king was baptized at Easter
with all his nobility. 31
Thirty years later, another Northumbrian king made a similar promise:
[Oswy] vowed that if he gained the victory [over Penda] he
would dedicate his daughter to the Lord as a holy virgin and
give twelve small estates to build monasteries. 32
Offering a daughter to God should not be viewed only as the Christian adaptation
of pagan sacrifice, but also as the fulfillment of a marriage alliance
between the king and God, thus carrying explicit political overtones. 33
Early convert kings such as Æthelberht looked across the English
Channel for models of successful relationships between kings and
God. There, the Merovingian royal dynasty had become the dominant
rulers in Christendom. The Christian god had apparently served
them well. 34 In England, several kings won decisive victories that could
be attributed to the aid of God and which established them as overkings.
35 Edwin’s victory over the West Saxons in 626 established him as
the hegemonic English power of his day. 36 The same occurred when
his successor, Oswald and his army, “small in numbers but strengthened
by their faith in Christ,” defeated the British king Cædwalla,
who had been ravaging the Northumbrian countryside. 37 Similarly,
Oswald’s Christian successor Oswy established his overkingship after
an unlikely victory over the pagan king Penda in 655. 38 The Church
was quick to remind kings of their own obligations to God after such
victories. For example, Bishop Paulinus’ letter reminded Edwin, who
had defeated his pagan predecessor Aethelfrith: “First you have escaped
with God’s help from the hands of the foes you feared; secondly
you have acquired by his gift the kingdom you desired; now,
in the third place, remember your own promise [to convert].” 39 Pope
Honorius’ letter to Edwin was more ominous: “You know that you
are a king, only on condition that you have faith in your King and
Creator.” 40 However, the Christian god did not always bring victory
in battle. King Penda, the pagan king of Mercia, killed a number of
Christian kings in battle in the mid seventh century. Sometimes the
Christian god also failed to bring happiness and health to a king’s
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146
people. The plague of 664 was one such failure and compelled King
Sigehere to apostatize. 41 Thus the aid of the Christian god provides
one, but not necessarily the most potent, political reason to convert.
The second category of reasons for a king to convert was of a
more earthly sort. These benefits accrued via interactions between
kings, overkings, the nobility, and the Church. One such benefit was
the forming of official ties with the “great chief of the new religion
in far-off Rome” and the prestige that came with it. 42 Such ties meant
that the converted king entered into “the family of Catholic kings of
whom the Emperor was the father.” 43 There was no greater diplomatic
recognition a Western European king could acquire in the seventh century.
Additionally, prestige formed a major component in the virtu of
any Anglo-Saxon king. The Church thus possessed a valuable tool with
which to persuade kings to convert. A letter from Pope Gregory to the
newly converted Æthelberht in 601 was delivered in glorifying metaphorical
language:
It was thus that Constantine, the most religious emperor, converted
the Roman State from the false worship of idols and
subjected it and himself to Almighty God, together with the
nations under his rule. So it came about that he transcended
in renown the reputation of former princes and surpassed his
predecessors as much in fame as he did in good works. 44
Pope Vitalian used similarly exalting language in a letter to King Oswy, after
the latter chose Roman Christianity, rather than its Irish counterpart,
to be the recognized and practiced Christian rite in Northumbria:
To the most excellent lord, our son Oswy, king of the Saxons,
Bishop Vitalian, servant of the servants of God. We have received
your Highness’ welcome letter. As we read it we recognized
your most sincere devotion and fervent desire for the life
everlasting. We know that, by God’s protecting hand, you have
been converted to the true and apostolic faith. 45
Note that Vitalian refers to Oswy not as king of the Northumbrians but as
king of the Saxons. He is thus recognizing Oswy’s claim to the overkingship
of England, a valuable benefit indeed. 46
As important as prestige and recognition were, the Church nonetheless
had even more to offer. After Æthelberht’s conversion in 597,
Gregory sent him “sacred vessels, altar cloths and church ornaments,
vestments for priests and clerks, relics of the holy apostles and martyrs,
and very many manuscripts.” 47 These gifts brought further prestige,
material wealth, and something new to Anglo-Saxon England literacy.
48 The Latin that the early missionaries brought to England allowed
kings to create their own law codes, such as the one established by
Æthelberht “in the Roman manner.” These codes aided kings in the
centralization of authority over their subjects. 49 Literacy also helped
kings to create more efficient bureaucracies and to conduct more effective
diplomacy.
SAM DUPONT

Christianity also offered kings new ceremonial methods to centralize
their power within their kingdoms. Mass baptisms, such as those accompanying
the conversions of Æthelberht and Edwin, were one way to
accomplish this. The founding of a church or the chairing of a synod,
such as the one chaired by Oswy at Whitby in 664, were two other ways.
All of them offered kings the opportunity to emphasize their own status. 50
The hierarchical nature of Church organization, with the king at the top,
followed by bishops, clergy, and the laity, also offered a route to centralized
royal authority. The decentralized nature of pagan religious institutions
offered no such benefit. 51
Yet another form of political benefit that conversion offered kings
manifested itself out of the courses of fortune and human agency that
occur within the world of royal diplomacy; for example, a shift in power
between two neighboring kingdoms, the potential disloyalty of a king’s
nobility, or the grabbing of power by a king’s ambitious son. Such events
were common in the seventh century, each of them shifted the existing political
power structure, thus threatening certain kings while aiding others,
and they all compelled a political response. Conversion, or the postponement
of it, often offered the surest means to minimize or eliminate these
threats. The timing of a king’s conversion was often as important as the
conversion itself.
The first conversion in England took place in Kent on Christmas
597, when King Æthelberht (r. 580s– 616) accepted baptism. 52 According
to Bede, “Æthelberht … was a very powerful monarch.” 53 Indeed, the
kings of Wessex, East Anglia, and the Hwicce all acknowledged his overkingship.
The twin pillars of his imperium were two dynastic alliances, the
first with his nephew Sæberht, king of the East Saxons. 54 The second was
with Frankish Neustria across the English Channel, via his marriage to
the already converted Frankish princess Bertha. She was accompanied to
Kent by a bishop named Luidhard, who was likely meant to act as the
force behind a Neustrian mission there. 55 Neustria, which had long been
ruled by the capable king Chilperic, was now waning in power. At the
same time, the power of Austrasia, Neustria’s eastern neighbor and chief
rival, was waxing. This shift in power between the two Frankish neighbors
effectively diminished Æthelberht’s capacity to acquire luxury goods
from the continent, crucial items that an overking needed to attract the
best warriors. 56 It also meant that newly dominant Austrasia might cause
trouble for Kent, upon which the former had almost certainly been making
hegemonic claims since the mid sixth century. 57 Bishop Luidhard’s
death in 595 effectively meant the end of the Neustrian mission and offered
an opportunity to Pope Gregory to launch a Roman mission to
Kent and to the Austrasian court to co-opt a Neustrian ally. 58 Numerous
letters from Pope Gregory to the Austrasian court during this time suggest
strong cooperation between the two powers in preparing Augustine’s
mission. 59 His arrival in Kent in 597 offered Æthelberht an opportunity
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148
to cut his ties to weak Neustria, to establish a benevolent relationship
with Austrasia, and to create new ties to Rome. 60 His fear of political
dependence on Neustria made him willing to accept Roman Christianity
in 597, but not Frankish Christianity under bishop Luidhard earlier. 61
Æthelberht’s conversion strengthened his authority, and his imperium lasted
until his death in 616.
The baptism of Edwin of Northumbria (r. 616-33) provides another
example of how conversions took place within a political context. Edwin
became king of Northumbria when he, with the help of the overking
Rædwald of East Anglia, defeated and killed King Æthelfrith at the river
Idle in 616 and usurped his throne, causing Æthelfrith’s son Eanfrith to
flee into exile. 62 Edwin’s hold on power was initially tenuous, owing to
the possibility of an attack by Eanfrith, and to the potential disloyalty of
the Northumbrian nobility, who had previously benefited from the patronage
of Æthelfrith. 63 On the other hand, Edwin was protected by his
alliance with Rædwald, but the latter died in 624/5, and his weaker son
could not provide the same protection as his father. This placed Edwin
in a very precarious situation. To secure his position from both internal
and external threats, Edwin needed a strong ally. He found one in the
recently converted Eadbald of Kent (son of Æthelberht). In 625, their alliance
was sealed by Edwin’s marriage to Æthelburh, a Christian Kentish
princess. Eadbald, bishop Paulinus (who had accompanied Æthelburh to
York), and Pope Boniface V all called for Edwin to convert. 64 He had
reason to accept the friendship of Rome and seemingly little reason to
refuse, but he nonetheless hesitated. Even the promise he made to God
before his victory over Cwichhelm of Wessex in 625 failed to convince
him to be baptized. The cause of Edwin’s reluctance may be owed to the
Northumbrian nobility, whose loyalty was still not assured. In 628, Bede
reports that Edwin called a council among his “chief men and … councilors”
to see if they would accept conversion. 65 Their acceptance allowed
Edwin to convert with the knowledge that his political power was secure.
He ruled as an overking until 633, when he was killed in battle by the
Mercian king Penda at Hatfield Chase. 66
The Council of Whitby in 664 provides a unique example of the
way conversions were determined by political factors, in that it was not
a conversion from paganism. In this council King Oswy of Northumbria
(641-70) had to decide on the accepted Christian rite within his kingdom,
either the Irish one he had grown up with or the Roman rite that his
wife Eanflæd practiced. According to Bede, both rites, which had different
methods for computing the date of Easter, were tolerated in Oswy’s court
so long as the holy bishop Aidan, who was a strong advocate of the Irish
rite, lived. After his death, the growing religious tension erupted, causing
Oswy and his son Alhfrith, who ruled the subkingdom of Deira for
his father, to call a church council to settle the debate. 67 However, Bede’s
account in this matter rests on fallacious logic, for Aidan died at least thir-
SAM DUPONT

teen years before the council. 68 Further, in the intervening years, Irish and
Roman dates for Easter differed less often than they normally did, and
possibly not at all in 665. 69 Thus the Council of Whitby could not have
been called due to religious tension.
On the contrary, Alhfrith’s rivalry with his father Oswy was the primary
cause. Alhfrith, who had accepted Roman Christianity years before,
had been the likely heir to the throne during the 650s. But by 664, his
position as heir apparent was deteriorating in favor of his half-brother
Ecgfrith, who was by then nineteen years old. The reasons this occurred
were twofold. First, Ecgfrith was the son of the ruling queen and second,
Ecgfrith was married to a princess of East Anglia, a Northumbrian ally,
while Alhfrith was brother-in-law to Wulfhere of Mercia, Oswy’s powerful
enemy. 70 By calling the council, Alhfrith purposely put his father in a
difficult position. If the latter chose Irish Christianity, he would alienate
his Roman Christian allies in Kent and Wessex at a time when he needed
their aid against Wulfhere. If he chose Roman Christianity he would have
to replace his Ionan bishop Colman with a Roman replacement who was
likely to favor Alhfrith and his kingly aspirations. 71 A further factor was
the recent death of the archbishop of Canterbury. As an overking who
was under intense pressure from Wulfhere and Alhfrith, Oswy needed to
solidify his authority by asserting his right to name the new English primate.
At the same time, he also had to be sure the Pope would recognize
his choice, and to be assured of that, he needed to accept the Roman rite.
He decided in favor of Rome. In doing so, he gained papal recognition of
his overkingship and of his choice for archbishop, solidified the support of
Kent and Wessex, and undermined Alhfrith’s position as the defender of
the Roman rite. 72 He gained all this in exchange for his bishop Colman.
Shortly after 664, in a last ditch attempt at the throne, Alhfrith rebelled. 73
The fact that Bede says nothing further about him suggests he met an ignominious
defeat. Oswy, meanwhile, ruled until his natural death in 670.
By the reign of Ælfred the Great (r. 871-99), Roman Christianity,
in all its religious and cultural dimensions, had imbedded itself within
English society. From the peasantry, to the nobility, to the king himself, true
Christian spiritual devotion was everywhere. While many old Germanic
cultural elements remained from two and a half centuries earlier, including
some semblance here and there of the old pagan religion, Christianity
had nonetheless become the dominant religious culture. The transition
from paganism to true spiritual Christianity in England took time. In the
years after Augustine arrived in Kent, Christianity was an almost wholly
new and misunderstood religion. The worldview it promoted had little in
common with its Germanic counterpart. The forces of Christianity, especially
the Papacy, knew this and formed their conversion strategy around
Germanic elements that were familiar to the Anglo-Saxons. Knowing that
the preaching of Christian salvation alone would be largely ineffective,
they used every political means at their disposal to convince kings, and
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150
thereby the people, to merely accept baptism. For many years, Christian
religious practices remained covered in a pagan veneer. But the strategy
worked. In exchange for perceived material aid from the Christian god,
in exchange for gifts such as literacy from the Roman Church and its
Catholic kings, and in exchange for benevolence, recognition, and prestige,
the Anglo-Saxon kings all ultimately converted. A Christian England
was born.
NOTES
01
Gildas, De Excidio Britonum, trans. and ed. by Michael Winterbottom (London &
Chichester: Phillimore & Co Ltd., 1978), 24.
02
Henry Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England (University Park:
The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 32; D. J. V. Fischer, The Anglo-Saxon Age (New
York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1973), 49.
03
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, ed. by Judith McClure and Roger Collins
(Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), I.23; G.N. Garmonsway (trans.), The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Ā manuscript, year 595 (London: J.M. Dent Ltd, 1972), p. 20. The Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle was originally compiled sometime between 855 and 891 A.D. from as many as
eight older sources, three of which contain information from the 7th century or earlier. These
include (i) a chronological summary appended by Bede to his Ecclesiastical History in the 730s
which contains historical information from Rome, Constantinople, and England up to Bede’s
own time, (ii) lists of Northumbrian and Mercian kings along with their respective genealogies,
and (iii) a series of West Saxon annals written in Latin that cover a time span from the
Anglo-Saxon invasion period to the middle of the eighth century, some of which were based on
oral tradition (especially for periods before the arrival of Christianity and literacy), and which
provide genealogies for every West Saxon king down to Ine (688). Much of the information
contained in (i) Bede’s Chronicle can be verified by other Roman sources that were brought to
England by Benedict Biscop and others. They offer evidence that Bede made an honest effort
to record events accurately, albeit from a Christian point of view. The antiquity of (iii) the West
Saxon annals is indicated by archaic linguistic usages that were no longer used in the 9th century.
The fact that they were originally written in the 7th century and therefore contemporary
with events described, suggests that they too were reasonably accurate. A further method by
which the chronological precision of the Chronicle can be judged is by calculating the actual
dates of recorded solar and lunar eclipses. On this count, too, the Chronicle holds up well to
scrutiny. The Chronicles do sometimes record an event as occurring either a year earlier or later
than it actually did. This is due to the fact that different chroniclers used different days to mark
the beginning of a new year. These included 25 March (the Feast of the Annunciation, both
preceding and following our 1 January), 1 September (Greek Indiction day) or 24 September
(Caesarian Indiction day), and 25 December. This caveat notwithstanding, the Anglo-Saxon
chronicles should be judged to provide a relatively convincing record of the chronology of 7th
century England. Wherever possible, however, citations of this work have been verified by Bede
or other sources. See G.N. Garmonsway (ed. and trans.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. xxiv-xlii.
04
William A. Chaney, The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1970), 11.
05
Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity, 18.
06
Fischer, The Anglo-Saxon Age, 65.
07
Seamus Heaney (trans.), Beowulf (New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company,
2000), ll. 19-25.
08
N. J. Higham, The Convert Kings: Power and Religious Affiliation in Early Anglo-Saxon England
(Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press, 1997), 39-40; Chaney, Cult of Kingship, 12.
09
Pope Gregory the Great, Epistles, viii, 29, cited in Chaney, Cult of Kingship, 158; Bede,
Historia Ecclesiastica, II.14.
10
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, II.5, III.30.
11
Higham, The Convert Kings, p. 29.
12
For purposes of this paper, a political benefit is defined as one that specifically enhances
the military, economic, or diplomatic power of kings. A spiritual benefit is defined as the
attainment of personal salvation or the salvation of mass peoples after death.
SAM DUPONT

13
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, I.26.
14
Bertram Colgrave (trans.), The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great (Lawrence: The
University of Kansas Press, 1968), ch. 16.
15
Eddius Stephanus, Vita Sancti Wilfridi, trans. J. F. Webb in The Age of Bede (London:
Penguin Books, 1998), ch. 10.
16
Higham, The Convert Kings, 14.
17
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, II.13.
18
It is true that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was itself partially based on Bede’s own writing,
but it was based on several others as well. As J. M. Wallace-Hadrill has pointed out, “[Bede]
was phenomenally ‘factual’ for a man who lived in a world of invention that could perpetrate
straight-forward forgery with the best of intentions.” He had access to an unusual number of
texts from the monastic libraries of Wearmouth and Jarrow. These included numerous tomes
brought to England from Rome by Benedict Biscop in the previous generation, but also included
more recently arrived texts such as the Liber Pontificalis to record events up to 716. But
since Christianity and literacy went hand in hand, paganism was relatively unfamiliar to Bede
and thus far less well described. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that Bede was
not writing a general history of England, but an ecclesiastical one. He wrote with the intent
of showing evidence of God’s providence at work as well as to promote unity of discipline
and doctrine within the Church. Therefore, one should always keep in mind several of Bede’s
personal biases that become evident when reading the Historia. First, he wrote from a devoutly
Christian and catholic point of view. He tends to skim over or even leave out events of a purely
pagan nature. For example, he makes no mention of King Ceorl of Mercia, a contemporary
of Æthelberht and a ruler with nearly as much power. Likewise, Bede uses stories of pagans,
such as the pagan high priest of Edwin called Coifi, to display the superiority of Christianity
over paganism. Furthermore, being a Northumbrian, he tends to emphasize his homeland
over other locales and is careful to gloss over the rivalry between its two royal dynasties, the
Bernician and the Deiran. One should feel reasonably comfortable accepting the accuracy of
the majority of the Historia, but ought to be skeptical when Bede describes elements of paganism
with which he was not very familiar and which he might have distrusted.
19
Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity, 25.
20
Ibid., 23.
21
Higham, The Convert Kings, 17.
22
Ibid., 34-35.
23
Colgrave, Life of Gregory the Great, 7; Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, III.14; the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, Ā manuscript, year 651, 28.
24
Chaney, Cult of Kingship, 158.
25
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, III.1, III.30.
26
Ibid., II.15.
27
Ibid., I.30.
28
Chaney, Cult of Kingship, 57.
29
Ibid., 43.
30
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, II.13.
31
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, E manuscript, year 626, 25; Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, II.9.
32
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, III.24.
33
Higham, The Convert Kings, 36.
34
Ian Wood, “The Mission of Augustine of Canterbury to the English,” Speculum, Vol.
69, no. 1 (Jan. 1994): 11, Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity, 63.
35
Bede named seven imperium-wielding kings who ruled over all the English provinces
south of the river Humber; see Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, II.5. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
called them bretwaldas; see the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Ā manuscript, year 827 with citation, p.
60. However, Steven Fanning has soundly argued that the bretwalda, as an official office or
title, never existed; see Steven Fanning, “Bede, Imperium, and the Bretwaldas,” Speculum, Vol.
66, No. 1 (Jan., 1991): 24. Further, N. J. Higham has shown that several of the bretwaldas did
not, in fact, rule over all provinces south of the Humber (notably Æthelberht) and that several
kings not named by Bede exerted imperium-like rule themselves (Æthelfrith of Northumbria
and Ceorl of Mercia stand out); see N. J. Higham, An English Empire (Manchester & New York:
Manchester University Press, 1995), 48, 51, 56. In order to avoid the confusion surrounding
such terminology, I’ve chosen to use the term ‘overking’ throughout to denote any king who
exerted his rule over other English peoples.
36
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, II.9.
37 Ibid., III.1.
Kings and Christianity
151

152
38
Ibid; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, E manuscript, year 654, 29..
39
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, II.12.
40
Ibid., II.17.
41
Ibid., III.30.
42
Chaney, Cult of Kingship, 169-70.
43
J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, Early Germanic Kingship in England and on the Continent (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1971), 32.
44
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, I.32.
45
Ibid., III.29. Emphasis mine.
46
Richard Abels, “The Council of Whitby: A Study in Early Anglo-Saxon Politics,” The
Journal of British Studies, Vol. 23, no. 1 (Autumn, 1983): 15.
47
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, I.29.
48
The almost total dearth of texts from pre-Augustine England offers ample evidence
of the absence of literacy up until that time.
49
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, II.5.
50
Higham, The Convert Kings, 41.
51
Fischer, The Anglo-Saxon Age, 63.
52
Higham, The Convert Kings, 58.
53
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, I.25.
54
Ibid., II.3; Higham, An English Empire, 193.
55
Higham, The Convert Kings, 73, 88. The fact that a bishop, rather than a priest, traveled
with Bertha as her confessor suggests that her companion was more than a mere confessor.
56
Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity, 18-19.
57
Abels, “The Council of Whitby,” 8.
58
Higham, The Convert Kings, 75; Abels, “The Council of Whitby,” 9. Evidence suggests,
but fails to prove, Luidhard’s death in 596.
59
Ibid., 72.
60
Ibid., 86.
61
Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity, 63.
62
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, E manuscript, year 617, 24.
63
Higham, An English Empire, 199.
64
Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity, 66.
65
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, II.13.
66
Ibid., II.20; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, E manuscript, year 633, 25.
67
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, III.25.
68
Ibid., III.14; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Ā manuscript, year 651, 28.
69
The system of epacts used to determine the Irish Easter cycle is still a matter of conjecture.
B. MacCarthy has reconstructed an Easter cycle based on the Supputatio Romana epacts,
in which Easter of 664 would have occurred a week earlier than the Roman Easter, a situation
that would have occurred in fourteen of the twenty-two years in which Oswy and Eanflæd had
been married. D. J. O’Connell has argued that the Alexandrian epacts would have been used by
the end of the sixth century. Using this system, the two dates of Easter would have occurred on
the same date in nineteen of the twenty-two year previous to Whitby, including 665. See Abels,
“The Council of Whitby,” 4.
70
Abels, “The Council of Whitby,” 7.
71
Ibid., 10.
72
Ibid., 20.
73
Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, III.25.
SAM DUPONT

Reviews and
H I S T O R I O G R A P H Y
T\
Robert O. Paxton’s
The Anatomy of Fascism
reviewed by Ramajana Hidi Demirovi
History Becomes a Social Science:
O\
New Perspectives in History
by Peter S. Gray

eex
post
efacto

Robert O. Paxton’s
The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004)
RAMAJANA HIDI DEMIROVI
The collapse of democracy and the
abandonment of liberalism was the
major theme for American historians
of modern Europe after World War
Two. In the decades that followed,
many historians sought to develop the
typology of totalitarianism as a category
for historical understanding. 1 Carl J.
Friedrich’s and Zbigniew Brzezinski’s
attempt to devise a six point criteria
which could be applied equally to
Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia was
followed with other, less taxonomical
approaches. Hannah Arendt approached
the study of totalitarianism
from a standpoint of a political philosopher,
producing work that continues
to influence researchers across different
fields. The study of totalitarianism
further transformed into the study of
fascism. However, as these transformations
took place, two constants become
apparent. Historians and other social
scientists have begun to use the epithet
fascist in many ways that do not conform
to any guidelines. Secondly, the
focus on ideology and leaders remains
present in many works.
Aware of these two components,
Robert O. Paxton in his study The
Anatomy of Fascism attempts to transform
the debate on fascism. As the
author claims, his objective is to pro-
vide a fresh look at fascism rescuing
the concept for meaningful use and
accounting more for its attractiveness,
its complex historical path, and its ultimate
horror. 2 The purpose of the book
thus has two main components. The
first deals directly with the definition of
a fascist movement and the use of that
definition. Paxton redefines fascism as
a form of political behavior marked
by obsessive preoccupation with community
decline, humiliation, or victimhood
and by compensatory cults of
unity, energy, and purity. Further, this
behavior takes place in a mass-based
party of committed nationalist militants,
working in uneasy but effective
collaboration with traditional elites,
abandoning democratic liberties and
pursuing, with redemptive violence
and without ethical or legal restraints,
goals of internal cleansing and external
expansion. 3 Second, Paxton examines
the role of individuals, or ordinary
men and women in the formation and
consolidation of fascist regimes, by exploring,
“… the interaction between
Leader and Nation, and between Party
and civil society.” 4 The author looks
at, as he calls them, fascist “actions”
instead of an ideology in order to
explain and redefine the meaning of
155

156
the term fascist, since as the author
believes “…what fascists did tells us at
least as much as what they said.”
The Anatomy of Fascism is divided into
eight chapters. Paxton gives his arguments
for writing the book, his thesis and
a layout of the book in the introduction.
The author spends the first five chapters
examining the creation of various
fascist movements, their rooting in the
political system, their seizure of power,
the exercise of power, and its long duration,
during which, Paxton claims, a fascist
regime chooses either radicalization
or entropy. Thus, Paxton separates five
stages in order to compare several fascist
movements and regimes at equivalent
degrees of development.In turn, as the
author claims, these five stages help the
reader to see that fascism was a succession
of processes and choices. In chapter
seven, Paxton turns to cases that have
appeared and have been branded as
fascist movements in Eastern Europe in
the recent times. While Paxton spends
little time describing and analyzing a
large number of cases, his conclusion
supports his idea that the epithet fascist
given to some of these regimes in fact
has little grounding in what he regards
to be the fascist movement. In the last
few pages of the book, the author offers
a Bibliographical essay in which he presents
and briefly describes various works
on totalitarianism and fascism that
have appeared since the end of World
War Two. The Bibliographical essay is
divided into nine categories of books
based on their theme and purpose.
Thus, the reader can find extensive lists
of works whose primary concern is the
interpretation of fascism or the lives of
its main leaders. Paxton uses many of
the works listed in the Bibliographical
essay in his own study. These secondary
sources are further supplemented with
a long list of primary sources which
Paxton collected throughout his career,
while researching and writing on Italian
and German fascist regimes as well as
in his previous work involving the Vichy
regime. However, he has also obtained
and used archival documents that deal
with some lesser known fascist movements
that appeared in Europe before
World War Two.
BOOK REVIEWS
Paxton examines various political
movements, parties and their
leaders that he describes as fascist.
Furthermore, Paxton examines various
types of regimes in order to distinguish
between these regimes and fascist
regimes that appeared in the period
between two world wars. Therefore,
his work can be regarded as the work
of a political historian attempting to
disentangle the story of the fascist
movement’s creation, while focusing
more on participants’ “actions” rather
than ideologies.
Paxton’s work certainly adds to the
study of fascist regimes which in itself
has a long tradition. While not quite
focusing on the role of the individual
in various fascist movements as promised
in the introduction, Paxton does
set standards that can be used for the
purpose of determining whether any
movement that shows signs of fascism
is in fact a fascist movement. Moreover,
the study itself is a comparative study
of different fascist movements that
appeared in the interwar period
throughout Europe. Thus, the author
does not attempt to give us an essence
of fascism. Rather, Paxton compares
fascist movements in order to derive
common characteristics. The fascist
movements’ characteristics which
the author derives are the result of
historical research and analysis at its
best. Furthermore, Paxton’s standards
will certainly help in clarifying many
misconceptions present in the study
of fascist movements and the use of
the term fascist. Whether or not these
standards will hold depends upon
further research, sparked by Robert
Paxton’s research and his findings.
NOTES
1
Volker Berghahn and Charles Maier,
“Modern Europe in American Historical Writing,”
in Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the
Past, ed. Anthony Molho and Gordon S. Wood
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 403.
2
Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 8-9.
3
Ibid., 218.
4
Ibid., 9.
5
Ibid., 10.

History Becomes a Social Science:
New Perspectives in History
PETER S. GRAY
In an essay in the American Historical
Review in 1948, Thomas Cochran argued
that the previous “fifty years of
rapid growth in the social sciences
have had surprisingly little effect on
the general content and synthesis
of American History.” 1 While referring
specifically to American history,
Cochran noted that this applied to
American historians of Europe as well
(historians of the rest of the world did
not merit a mention). By contrast, the
following fifty years of American historiography
have seen a revolution in
the use of the social sciences. One can
even say that by the beginning of the
twenty-first century, history was at last
becoming a social science. Historians,
in integrating the social sciences into
their analyses, have not adopted a
single social science theory or relied
on a single social science discipline.
Instead, there has been an eclectic
use of varying theories and concepts
adapted from the other social sciences.
This has led to a variety of approaches
from quantitative economic works to
meaning-oriented cultural anthropological
works. Whatever the disciplinary
source of a particular historical
work’s theoretical or conceptual basis,
historians have refashioned what
history is, moving from narratives of
political events to the socio-cultural
processes underlying these events.
By turning to the social sciences for
theoretical inspiration, historians have
also opened up new fields of historical
investigation. While the creation of
the new histories of gender and race
was certainly inspired by changes in
modern society and politics, the very
conceptualization of such fields would
have been impossible without the social
sciences. Further, the absorption
of social science thinking into history
has led to historians formulating problems
on a world scale as economic,
social, and cultural processes are seen
as transcending political boundaries.
This has led to the new field of world
history. In what follows, several recent
historical works that are representative
of this integration of the social
sciences into historical writing will be
discussed in the context of this shift in
historical knowledge.
The modern social sciences were
essentially a creation of the late nineteenth
century, when the separate
disciplines of the social sciences were
created, though they have their origins
in the Enlightenment. The way
of doing history that was formulated
at that time was different than what
157

158
constitutes history today, and it is this
kind of history that Peter Burke calls
the “Rankean” or “old” history. While
it would be unfair to say that historians
in the nineteenth century were
unaware of social theory, professional
history writing at the time — the ‘old’
history — was primarily about politics
and thus concerned with the nationstate
and relations between nationstates.
The histories of nation-states
were mainly written as narratives of
events and primarily concerned with
individuals in the elite. Events were
explained in terms of those important
individuals formulating intentions and
acting on them. These histories were
based on analyses of written documents,
usually official documents produced
by the governments being studied
and preserved in their archives.
Historians writing the “old” history
put a high premium on absolute objectivity
— that the results of their investigations
did not have bias as they
were disinterested investigations based
on documentary evidence. Finally, history
was created as its own discipline,
separate from the other social sciences,
with its own object of study and methods.
It did not borrow from the other
social sciences. 2
Before World War II, there were
challenges to this “old” history by
professionals (for example, the members
of the Annales school, starting
in the 1920s) and non-professionals
(for example, Marxists) but it was not
until after World War II that the writing
of history really began to take on
the social sciences. Almost everything
in history writing changed. First, the
object of historical study was broadened
to include virtually any human
activity. If it was human or related to
humanity, it had a past and thus could
be studied historically (as long as there
was surviving evidence). The most
important new object of study was
society. Instead of studying important
individuals, historians began studying
social collectivities, especially the lives
of common people — what is now
commonly called “history from below.”
This led to a focus on analyzing
economic, social, and cultural struc-
BOOK REVIEWS
tures rather than narrating events, as
well as to explanation by structural
causes rather than individual intention.
This shift also called for new
forms of evidence, and not just written
evidence outside of the archives:
oral testimony, visual representations,
statistical data, etc. Historians became
more concerned with the subjective
aspect of history writing and, while
not giving up on objectivity (with a
few contentious exceptions), began to
account for the historian’s subjectivity
in historical writing. Finally, all this
meant that history became an interdisciplinary
project, as it borrowed theories
and methods from the other social
sciences and even the humanities. 3
This transition from the “old” history
to the “new” history took place
primarily after the Second World
War. Before that, there were attempts
to make history social scientific, especially
in France. The Annales school,
founded around a journal in 1929,
was created by French historians who
sought to turn history towards the
study of society by integrating theories
and methods from economics, sociology,
and demography. Later, they
added a quasi-anthropology through
their theory of mentalités. However,
the work of the Annales school was
not widely disseminated outside of
France at first and it was not until the
late 1960s that their approach had
any impact on American historians.
Fernand Braudel’s major work on the
Mediterranean, originally published in
France in 1949, was not translated into
English until 1972. In fact, there was
some hostility to the Annales approach,
especially in Britain, and in the United
States it has been usually only used
by historians writing on non-United
States topics like Europe.
This is not because American historians
have been hostile to integrating
the social sciences into their work.
In 1948, in the article referred at
the beginning of this essay, Thomas
Cochran lamented the absence of social
scientific theories, methods, and
results in American historical works.
He called for a new synthesis, one that
brought the social sciences to bear on

subject matters where their use was
appropriate. Cochran argued that the
“old” history was inadequate in dealing
with the types of problems found
in modern societies, by which he
meant industrial societies. He argued
that the traditional emphasis on narratives
of presidential acts — what
he called the “Presidential Synthesis”
— was unable to account for changes
in society. The “old” history relied on
narrative which was “often valid when
applied to the actions of a single individual
but [is not] usually suited to
the analysis of mass phenomena.” 4
Instead, social phenomena were more
effectively explained in terms of structures.
Cochran argued that “while the
historical analysis itself must...be concerned
with concrete physical, political,
or social changes or events, these
should be assigned place and importance
on the basis of their estimated
relation to underlying social forces.” 5
This strategy of moving from the intentions
of individual actors to causal
structures was an important development
in historiography. Though it has
its problems, as will be seen, it represents
a fundamental break with the
“old” history.
Integrating the social sciences into
history required the formulation of a
new epistemology, one that took into
account traditional historical concerns
and developments in philosophy and
the social sciences. Michael Shermer
and Alex Grobman’s Denying History
provides a schematic outline of this
development. Their purpose is to refute
the Holocaust Deniers by showing
that the Deniers, who claim to be doing
legitimate historical work, are not
really doing history at all but rather
are motivated by ideology. To do this,
Shermer and Grobman discuss what
they consider history actually to be
and outline three stages of epistemological
development in historiography:
historical objectivism, historical
relativism, and historical science. In
the nineteenth century, historians adhered
to an objectivist epistemological
paradigm which held that historical
events happened independently of
documentary evidence for them and
interpretations of them and that these
events were recorded in the documentary
record in an accurate and unbiased
way. Further, the historian was
an objective, disinterested investigator
of these documents and the product
of the investigation was an objective
account of what happened. Shermer
and Grobman point out that this epistemological
paradigm did not allow
for the historian’s subjectivity and thus
for bias and interest. Around the turn
of the twentieth century, a new epistemological
paradigm arose in historiography
based on the popular relativistic
philosophies of the day. This paradigm,
historical relativism, holds that
history is a subjective creation which
historians make out of the evidence
available to them: “History exists in
the minds of historians.” 6 In this view,
what really happened in the past is
ultimately inaccessible. The problem
with this epistemology is that historians,
in order to do history (and not
fiction), have to assume at some point
that they can know something about
the past. It follows that neither of these
paradigms turned out to be satisfactory,
as historical objectivism rules out
the subjectivity of historians and historical
relativism rules out any certain
knowledge about the past. In the last
few decades, historians have developed
a newer epistemological paradigm out
of the American pragmatic movement
in philosophy which Shermer and
Grobman call historical science (others
call it “pragmatic hermeneutics”).
This epistemological paradigm holds
that history is both subjective and objective;
history exists inside and outside
the historian’s mind. Historians both
discover elements of a really extant
past and describe that past through
their subjectivity. Historians do have
biases but these can be ameliorated
by various methods and, more importantly,
by the convergence of evidence
in the documentary record. In this
new paradigm, the past has its own
existence upon which historians work
based upon the available evidence and
their own subjectivity. Historical accounts
are always subject to revision
as new evidence is discovered or new
AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
159

160
and better interpretations of existing
evidence are offered. While Shermer
and Grobman’s historical science is
the dominant view among historians
today, it has had its challengers, most
recently among poststructuralist postmodernists
who advocate a return to a
kind of historical relativism.
Shermer and Grobman do not take
this subject far enough.Alan Megill
expands on their notion of “historical
science” (Megill does not call it that)
and argues that the writing of history
embodies four interrelated aspects —
explanation, description or “recounting,”
interpretation, and justification. 7
Social scientists and historians using
the social sciences previously have favored
explanation over description,
interpretation and justification.They
have been concerned with explaining
surface events by underlying causes.
This is essentially what Cochran calls
for in his article when he argues for
placing events within the context of
underlying social forces. In its most extreme
form these explanations take the
form of a covering-law model where
universal laws are hypothesized and
conclusions are deduced from these
laws. Historians have rarely followed
this rigid form, correctly recognizing
that history does not normally
conform to this type of explanation.
Instead, Megill argues that an historical
investigation begins with what he
calls “recounting” — a kind of descriptive
narrative — upon which explanations
arise. Both recounting and
explanation presuppose interpretation
and justification. Megill discusses two
types of interpretation. The first, or
pre-Heideggarian, characteristic of
historical objectivism, holds that texts
are interpreted by an objective observer
relating the part to the whole
and the whole to the part. The second,
or post-Heideggarian, holds that the
interpretation of texts occurs not only
within the text but between the text
and the perspective of the interpreter.
Here, the perspective in the text and
the perspective of the interpreter meet
— there is a “fusion of horizons,” to
use Gadamer’s term. While Megill follows
Heidegger, he does not argue that
BOOK REVIEWS
all interpretations are of equal validity,
a conclusion draw by some vulgar followers
of Heidegger. Interpretations
must be justified in that evidence of
various kinds has to be provided by the
interpreter in support of the interpretation
offered.
Megill’s article shows some influence
from a recent development in
historiography — poststructuralist
postmodernism. The adoption of
this view by certain historians in the
last three decades was perhaps a reaction
to the increasing use of the
social sciences in history since 1945.
This view has its origins in the writings
of Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin
Heidegger, both of whom were profoundly
influential on Michel Foucault
and Jacques Derrida, the “gurus” of
the poststructuralist postmodernist
historians. The Nietzsche connection
is important here because it links these
recent developments with one of the
figures who was indirectly responsible
for the development of what Shermer
and Grobman call historical relativism
around the turn of the twentieth
century. These relativistic Nietzschean
views returned with a vengeance in
the 1960s, particularly in France, and
in the next two decades became influential
in American universities as the
left turned away from Marxism.
There are two important elements
to this approach. The first is the assumption
that, ultimately, the only
thing real is language and language
thus constitutes consciousness. In a
strategy similar to Hegel’s dismissal of
Kant’s “thing-in-itself,” poststructuralist
postmodernists argued that since
everything we know is known through
language it is impossible to know anything
outside of language (and even
if there is anything outside language).
Thus, everything we take for granted
as real is actually an effect of language
and the ultimate ontological status of
anything non-linguistic is unknowable.
Sometimes poststructuralist postmodernists
seem to assume that there is
something beyond language as when
Foucault talks about the body and
seems to be indicating that it really has

a corporeal existence. Unfortunately,
among his followers, such as sense is
often lost and even denied and thus
everything becomes language.
A consequence of this view is that
some poststructuralist postmodernist
historians have abandoned the social
sciences for techniques derived from
literary studies. Thus, primary sources
are seen not so much as repositories of
evidence about what may have been in
the text but rather as texts to be analyzed
in literary terms. In doing this,
the interpreter leaves behind the manifest
content of the text in favor of “interpretation,”
of discerning multiple
interpretations of the text that have
equal value but no necessary relation
to the past. For example, the Magna
Charta could be read the way a literary
scholar might read Joseph Conrad’s
The Secret Sharer. In some readings of
Conrad’s novella, the “secret sharer”
is a figment of the narrator’s imagination;
in other readings, the “secret
sharer” is real. Both are equally valid
interpretations of the novella in terms
of literary theory. For historians, such
divergent readings of the Magna Charta
would be incoherent.
The epistemological assumption
about language of the poststructuralist
postmodernists leads to one important
conclusion. Since all there is
is language, there can be no truth (at
least as it is commonly understood)
and that there are only truth claims or
“effects.” In other words, someone can
make a claim about something being
true but in reality there is nothing outside
of language to validate the truth
of that statement. Foucault spoke of
various and differing truth regimes and
the transition from one to another (or
what he calls the “rupture”), but when
challenged about what that meant for
the truth status of his own position,
he failed to give an adequate answer.
In these truth regimes, what makes a
statement “true” is the ability of the
individual or individuals to get others
to accept it as true either by consent or
coercion. Even within language itself,
there can be no guarantee of truth.
The point of Derrida’s deconstructive
strategy is to show the radical instability
of texts, i.e., that texts, when carefully
analyzed, always contradict themselves
and always reveal meanings that were
unintended by the author. In fact, these
thinkers question the very existence of
an author of a text. Instead, they argue
that there are only discourses which
speak through a subject.
These ideas filtered into historical
writing starting in the 1970s and
until the mid-1990s they were considered
by some to be the cutting edge
in historical technique, though this
was hardly accepted by all historians.
Their influence has ebbed since the
mid-1990s but they have left a positive
trace despite the many real inherent
problems in these views. Historians
are now more aware and more concerned
with language and its multiple
connotations. Historians no longer
take it for granted that language is essentially
transparent to its object (to be
fair, not all historians used to do this,
but many seemed to operate under
this assumption). Another legacy of
poststructuralist postmodernism is the
adoption of the idea of discourse. This
term has many definitions and is often
used as if everyone knows what exactly
it means. The way current historians
use it seems to be that a discourse is
an institutionally, socially, or culturally
produced set of categories, definition,
statements, and theories about some
aspect of reality. In any given society,
there are multiple discourses which
often contradict each other but when
taken together constitute what that
society considers to be reality. These
discourses are internalized by individuals
of society as they grow up in
that society and they powerfully shape
the way people see their world. What
separates the current historian’s use
of the term discourse from the poststructuralist
postmodernist’s is that
the current historian does not reduce
reality to these discourses but rather
sees them as produced by an actually
existing non-linguistic reality (even if
knowledge of that reality presupposes
language). It is also important to note
that the current usage of the term discourse
by historians has shifted from a
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162
term of literary analysis to essentially
a term of social analysis. Discourse,
like language, is social, and to talk of
discourses is to talk about a social phenomenon.
Shorn of its more literary
connotations, discourse is a useful term
for social analysis. Indeed, it seems to
have replaced ideology as the preferred
term for internalized social and
cultural beliefs (this is primarily due to
a general turn away from Marxism in
the last two decades).
Several recent historical works illustrate
this integration of the social
sciences into the writing of history.
In fact, the integration of the social
sciences has now reached probably
the last holdout of the “old” history
— diplomatic history. Diplomatic
history is “old” history par excellance.
Concerned with the relations between
states, it relies mainly on the intentions
and actions of elite individuals for its
narratives. While nations, societies,
and economies exist in diplomatic narratives,
they are mainly assumptions
and are never really analyzed. For
example, in nineteenth-century diplomatic
history, the fact that Germany’s
rise as an industrial power led to its
becoming a force to be reckoned with
in the international arena is taken for
granted. Diplomatic historians never
go much beyond the mere statement
of the fact. All the economic, social,
and cultural developments that other
historians analyze in depth are merely
assumed by the diplomatic historian
as if everyone knew what terms like
the nation-state, nationalism, industrialization,
and so on meant. In fact,
historians are constantly debating the
meaning of these terms and how these
aspects of social reality work themselves
out in history.
Michael Connelly’s A Diplomatic
Revolution 8 has two aims: first, to look
at the Algerian revolution from an international
prospective and second, to
reconceptualize traditional diplomatic
history by integrating into it the social
sciences. While the work argues that
the Algerian revolution was won in the
diplomatic sphere, it puts this diplomacy
in a social scientific context heavily
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influenced by the Annales school. The
Annales school arose in France in the
1920’s and the Annalistes specifically
wanted to make history more social
scientific by integrating the most recent
developments in economics,
sociology, demography, and anthropology.
The Annales school tended to
downplay political events, arguing that
long-term economic and social structures
and conjunctures (trends) were
more important causally than political
events. In fact politics was determined
by these economic and social structures
and conjunctions. Even though
Cochran shows no knowledge of the
Annales school, he was essentially making
the same general argument that
they did. While later the Annalistes became
associated with attempting total
history (not to be confused with world
history) as in the works of Fernand
Braudel, many Annalistes worked on
smaller subjects and Connelly’s book
is an example of this. Connelly argues
that long-term demographic trends in
Algeria combined with the failure of
French attempts modernized Algerian
economy and society (attempts which
were mainly aimed at the French
colonists there rather then the indigenous
population) ultimately led to a
situation where many Algerians saw
a revolt for independence as the only
solution to their situation.
Even Connelly’s diplomatic history
has a warrant from the Annales school.
Nineteenth-century history writing
was overwhelmingly national in orientation,
but Braudel, in his work on
the Mediterranean, encouraged a regional
(and in later writings, a global)
approach. While nations certainly had
their importance (at least within a
world view that took them seriously),
economic and social structures and
conjunctures were not limited by arbitrary
national boarders. Connelly
situates the Algerian revolution internationally
because while ostensibly
an internal problem for the French,
the revolt had international ramifications
during the Cold War, especially
because of the concerns of the United
States over military bases in the region
to counter a perceived Soviet threat.

Additionally, the Algerian revolutionaries
realized early on that the international
struggle was decisive — in order
to gain independence, the Algerians
had to drive a wedge between France
and the United States over the Algeria.
For the United States, the stakes were
geostrategic but also related to the
long-term structures and conjunctures
on a world scale. The Algerian revolution
was one of several struggles for independence
at the time that all reflected
the end of the social and economic
structures created by the European
Imperial powers in the previous four
centuries. A new world social and economic
system was coming into being
and the United States was desperate to
control its creation and ultimate form.
Not all histories that utilize the
social sciences are as ambitious as
Connelly’s and instead of attempting
an Annales school total history,
they restrict themselves to adopting
specific theories that seem to fit the
subject being studied. One such book
is William Harris’s Restraining Rage. 9
This book focuses on the discourse of
anger control in the ancient Greco-
Roman world. It is a work of classics
and so the hallmarks of the classics
approach to writing history are everywhere.
This approach is rooted in the
“old” history discussed above in that
it emphasizes textual analysis. A great
deal of Restraining Rage is devoted to
analyzing the meanings of the Greco-
Roman words relating to anger and
to explicating the Greco-Roman texts
on anger and anger control. Even so,
Harris wants to explain why a discourse
of anger control developed
in the Greco-Roman world and here
he relies on a sociological theory of
Norbert Elias. Elias argued that the
development of civilized society or
civil society in the West starting at
the end of the Middle Ages occurred
due to a rise in emotional self-control.
Individuals restrained their aggression
not only out of self-interest but
also because individuals internalized
doctrines of restraint propagated by
educated elites. Harris argues that
this process can be seen at work in the
ancient Greco-Roman world in the
163
discourse of anger control and thus
transposes Elias’s theory to the results
of his discussion of the Greco-Roman
discourse of anger control. Harris’s
theoretical strategy is different than
that of Connelly (and the Annales
school). He takes one specific theory
designed to explain a specific development
in one time and place and
then transposes it to another time and
place. This is an eclectic strategy that
is common in modern historical writing.
Historians usually do not have the
time to master even one of the other
social science disciplines (let alone all
of them) and so they often fish around
for theories and concepts which seem
useful for what they are investigating.
Other social sciences come into
play in Harris’s work, notably psychology
and anthropology. When Harris
discusses anger, he does not define it as
much as offer various understandings
of it from the Greco-Roman world
and, for comparative purposes, modern
psychological theories. This is essentially
an anthropological approach
in that anger control is seen as the
different rules that different cultures
construct regarding the appropriate
and inappropriate expression of anger.
There is no “essence” to anger here,
except perhaps that something like it is
found in all cultures, but only cultural
beliefs and roles.
Anthropology is a seemingly endless
source of ideas for historians.
James Brooks’s Captives and Cousins 10
brings together anthropology with
another new type of history writing
derived from the social sciences,
Microhistory. Indeed, Microhistory is
heavily influenced by anthropology. It
seeks to reduce the scale of historical
investigation while not losing sight of
the interconnections between the local
and the global. As Giovanni Levi
writes, Microhistory “is essentially
based on the reduction of the scale
of observation, [it is] a microscopic
analysis and an intensive study of the
documentary materials.” 11 This makes
Microhistory similar to an anthropologist’s
intensive study of a small community
except instead of living in that
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164
community for an extended period
of time and intensely observing how
that community operates, the historian
intensively studies the surviving
documentary evidence. Microhistories
tend to be influenced by the ideas
of Clifford Geertz and his notion of
“thick description.” In this approach,
the observer does not try to impose a
law-like theory on his observations (as
in Megill’s understanding of explanation)
but rather tries to fit signifying
signs into an intelligible structure.
Here, the historian is concerned with
meaning. This approach is related to
poststructuralist postmodernism but
Microhistorians never leave the basics
of historical method for literary analysis.
The concern here is like that of
most anthropologists, i.e. with cultural
meanings rooted in economic and social
structures.
Brooks takes as his subject the interactions
of the different cultures in
the Southwest borderlands of North
America and the distinctive system
of slavery and kinship that developed
there. In a nod to “thick description,”
Brooks begins his book with a description
of a ritual common in the
Southwest borderlands that combines
a Christmas ritual with symbolic bridestealing.
This leads to a discussion of
the slave system in the region. This
slave system grew out of the exercise
of power between Native American
and Euramerican inhabitants there.
To protect and preserve their power
within their families and communities
men from these cultures negotiated interdependency
and maintained power
by acknowledging the exchangeability
of their women and children. It is
commonplace in the anthropological
literature (so much so that Brooks does
not feel obligated to cite a particular
theoretical tradition in anthropology
in support of it) that cultures establish
links with each other through the exchange
of women either willingly or
by force. In the Southwestern borderlands,
the method was force and the
captured women and children were
enslaved. At the same time that they
were enslaved, these women and children
were integrated into the captur-
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ing culture, primarily through intermarriage.
The new members of the
community brought their original culture
with them and over time elements
of these cultures were integrated into
the capturing culture.
Anthropology is not the only way to
approach culture. European Marxists
have developed analyses of culture out
of Marx’s works as well as traditional
European Kulturkitik. The work of cultural
Marxists builds off of Marx’s
incomplete oeuvre as Marx made
only passing comments about culture.
Instead, Marx was concerned with the
structure of capitalist society, particularly
its economy. Marx argued that
societies were structured by classes
and marked by class struggle. In the
most abstract sense, societies consist
of the direct producers of the society’s
wealth (whether in agricultural or industrial
societies) and a class who appropriates
the results of the labor of
the direct producers. 12 Each society
has its own structure which has its own
specific historical development. Marx
argued that the specific way a society
structures this basic relationship conditions
almost everything else in that
society. This is not an economic determinism.
What he was talking about
were social relationships that structure
how people provide for their needs and
how these fundamental relationships
are refracted throughout the society.
Cultural Marxists of the twentieth
century have been less concerned with
the structure of modern capitalist societies
— there are (or were) plenty of
Marxists working on that — and have
been more concerned with how the
above basic abstract idea works itself
out in other areas of human life, especially
culture. Many of the aspects of
these theories are esoteric and arcane
but historians working in this tradition
have put some of it to good use. An
example of this is Timothy Burke’s
Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women. 13 Burke
analyzes the development of a commodity
culture in modern Zimbabwe
beginning in the late nineteenth century.
The central theory here is Marx’s
notion of commodity fetishism as de-

veloped in the twentieth century by
cultural Marxists out of a chapter in
Marx’s Capital. 14 In a capitalist society
or a society impacted by capitalism,
commodities assume an independent
life from their production and use and
relations between things accompany,
control, or displace the actual state of
relations between people. In a capitalist
society or one under capitalist domination,
the relation that is displaced in
individuals’ consciousness is the class
relation. Commodity fetishism is more
than the meanings invested in goods, it
is also the accumulated power of commodities
to actually constitute, organize,
to contain within themselves the
forms of consciousness through which
capitalism manufactures its subjects.
In this process, the properties ascribed
to commodities become “natural”
properties with no history. In effect,
capitalism becomes the natural state
of affairs — while things were different
back then, in effect they were always
the same. Burke borrows Gramsci’s
understanding of “common sense”
to exemplify this point. For Gramsci,
“common sense” is a manufactured
artifact consisting of dicta lodged in
the public memory of a given society
that everyone “knows” to be true,
dicta that act to reproduce relations of
domination as “natural” occurrences,
thus serving the interests of the ruling
class. This does not happen without
resistance and these meanings are negotiated,
though one side in the negotiations
has a preponderance of power
in the definition of “common sense.”
Another new perspective in history
is that of gender. Gender as an object
of study has grown out of women’s
history. Women’s history itself is a recent
creation, coming out of the long
struggle for women’s emancipation but
not really becoming a part of the historical
profession until the 1960s with
the arrival of the “Second Wave” of
feminism. At that time, women historians
put women’s history on the agenda
in the historical profession. This led to
numerous debates over professionalism
and politics, and history and ideology,
all of which were more than tainted by
the male historians’ desire to control
the writing of women’s history, though
there were some principles at stake. By
the 1990s, women’s history had become
gender history. This was because
practitioners of women’s history realized
that in order to integrate women
into history they needed to reconceptualize
sexual “difference and how its
construction defined relations between
individuals and groups.” 15 Women
were not strictly separable from men
in analysis as both existed (and exist)
in relation to each other. Thus, gender
as a social category arose to capture
the social and cultural relationships
between men and women. Joan Scott
has offered a definition of gender as
a category: “gender is a constitutive
element of social relationships based
on perceived differences between the
sexes, and gender is a primary way of
signifying relationships of power.” 16
As such gender involves four interrelated
elements: (1) culturally available
symbols that evoke multiple (and often
contradictory) representations, (2) normative
concepts that set forth interpretations
of the meanings of symbols or
that attempt to limit and contain their
metaphoric possibilities, (3) economic
and political aspects beyond kinship,
and (4) subjective identity. 17
Mary Renda’s Taking Haiti 18 is an
example of this new gender history.
It is not a work of women’s history
but rather about the construction of a
particular kind of masculinity. Renda
argues that the American occupation
of Haiti contributed to the creation of
a new masculine imperial culture in
the United States in the early twentieth
century. The American occupation
of Haiti called forth a new discourse
based on paternalism which contributed
to a new masculine imperial culture
in the United States. Paternalism was
“an assertion of authority, superiority,
and control expressed in the metaphor
of a father’s relationship with his children.”
19 This discourse was internalized
by many Americans, not only the
United States Marines who occupied
Haiti but also in the United States as
it filtered into popular culture through
works of literature and travel writings
(some of these writings were meant to
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166
subvert the discourse, e.g. the writings
of Zora Neale Hurston). Its function
was to justify and facilitate the occupation
of Haiti and, more broadly,
any less-developed country which the
United States’ government chose to
occupy. Paternalism itself is a specifically
gendered concept in that it is the
masculine father that is in control.
The Haitians were an “inferior” children
who needed the authority of the
United States as a “father” in order to
have any chance of becoming a developed
nation — an “adult.”
In Taking Haiti, race also plays a
role as Renda never forgets that the
Haitians were seen as a different and
“inferior” race by the Americans. Race
is another category which transcends
any particular social science discipline
and is a central new perspective in
historiography. Like gender, recent
attention in race is a result of political
events — Nazi racial ideology and
its corollary the Holocaust, the Civil
Rights movement in the United States,
and the national liberation movements
that occurred throughout the world after
1945. While now biologists usually
agree that race as a biological concept
has no reality, historically it has been a
powerful concept that has been used
to explain many things but usually
why one “race” should be subordinate
to another. As such, race is a discourse
— a powerful one — a set of beliefs
about how to classify human beings
and to rank-order them in their level
of “civilization” or “development” by
their apparent physical characteristics.
Ada Ferrer’s Insurgent Cuba 20 analyzes
the discourse of race in Cuba
during the Cuban revolution from
1868-1896. Ferrer’s main concern
is with how both sides in the conflict
attempted to shape the discourse of
race to achieve their goals. The rebels
developed a conception of a raceless
nationality in opposition to the racebased
discourse of the Spanish regime.
Their goal in doing this was to
overcome differences among Cubans
in order to bring them together and
overthrow Spanish colonial rule and
establish an independent Cuba. Ferrer
argues that this new discourse was
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crucial to the ultimate success of the
revolution. This new conception of
a raceless nation was revolutionary
in its own right. For European and
Americans in the nineteenth century,
as well as for many who lived under
their rule, race and racial hierarchies
were a fact of nature supported by the
best science. One thinks of Gramsci’s
notion of “common sense” here. For
the Cuban revolutionaries to claim
that there were no races in Cuba but
only Cubans was to attack directly a
central pillar of Spanish rule there.
For the Spanish rulers, race was linked
to nationality and they believed that
only certain races were equipped to
rule themselves. Since most Cubans
were black Africans, there could be no
Cuban nation because black Africans
were incapable of self-rule. Thus,
Cuba had to remain a Spanish colony
not because Spain needed Cuba for
economic or political reasons but because
the Spanish thought that it was
best for the Cubans. Unfortunately,
as Ferrer points out, the discourse of
race proved to be very strong among
the revolutionaries who had formulated
the discourse of a raceless nation.
Some black Cubans in the rebel movement
towards the end of the rebellion
used the discourse of a raceless nation
against their fellow insurgents and accused
them of being, in effect, racists
who discriminated against Cuban revolutionaries
of African ancestry. This
shows the power and persistence of
discourses even among those who are
consciously trying to overcome them.
The books dealt with so far here
have had modest goals. They generally
take a small subject and try
to analyze it thoroughly. Only A
Diplomatic Revolution had a truly ambitious
goal but even there the author
stepped back from his ambitious integrative
goals and ultimately came up
with a more human sized book. The
final book discussed here stands out
for its theoretical ambition as well as
its scope as it is a work of world history.
When history became a discipline
in the late nineteenth century,
the European powers ruled most of
the world through various formal and

informal means. Europeans wrote histories
of the countries they controlled,
not all of which were designed to support
that rule (though some were), but
these historians never really thought
about the overarching processes at
work around the globe. This is a little
surprising given that there was an imperial
system and a world market by
the end of the century, but it is less
surprising when it is remembered
that historians at the time did not really
think in terms of social processes.
Instead, they thought in terms of narratives
of political events, nations, and
international relations. After 1945, as
historians turned towards the social
sciences historians began thinking in
terms of macro-processes involving
the whole world. Economics, sociology,
and even culture led historians to
think not only beyond politics but also
beyond national borders to socio-cultural
processes transcending nationstates.
It can be said that Marxists had
a role in this in that their discussions
of imperialism always saw imperialism
as a worldwide system (whatever the
merits of their specific theses).
Mike Davis’s Late Victorian Holocausts
21 exemplifies this new world history
because it treats its subject in a
world scale by analyzing an aspect of
the world imperial system of the late
nineteenth century. Further, it integrates
the social sciences with history
from a Marxist point of view while also
seeking to integrate the natural sciences,
specifically climatology, within its
narrative. Davis argues that the severe
droughts that occurred in various parts
of the globe in the late nineteenth century
— India, China, and Brazil are
the main examples — were the result
not only of natural factors but also of
social and historical factors. One element
was the El Niño phenomenon
which, while unknown at the time, has
subsequently been discovered and analyzed
(though it is not yet completely
understood). In itself, the El Niño phenomenon
had probably caused some
hardship in the centuries before the
late nineteenth century but the societies
affected by it had developed methods
with which to cope. What was dif-
ferent in the late nineteenth century
was that these societies were under the
control, either formally or informally,
of the European imperial powers and
had recently been integrated into the
new world capitalist economy which
was, naturally, controlled by Europe.
At its crudest level, this meant that food
surpluses which previously would have
been distributed by the central governments
of these countries within these
countries to alleviate famine were instead
sold on the world market where
they went to those who would pay the
most for them.Thus, countries suffering
extreme famine in some regions
exported surpluses from other regions
to Europe because Europeans offered
the highest price for those commodities.
This was justified in terms of an
ideology of free markets and free trade
which was seen by the Europeans as
the “natural” way the world worked
and would ultimately benefit all involved
(Gramsci’s “common sense”
again?). They maintained this position
(their heirs still maintain this position)
despite all evidence to the contrary. In
the course of roughly 30-40 years of
on-again, off-again famine, millions
died in these countries.
The most important conclusion that
Davis draws from this is that what we
have come to call the Third World was
essentially created at this time. Famine
not only meant a massive loss of life
but also a massive loss of productive
capital as peasants consumed the livestock
they normally would have used
productively in order to survive the
famine. Peasants also sold land they
owned or gave up their leases on lands
they tilled in order to gain some means
by which to buy food and survive. All
of these taken together represented
a massive dispossession of peasant
wealth. Those who survived had much
less than they had before and found
that wealth was now even more heavily
concentrated in fewer hands. While
Davis does not draw the parallel, it is
strikingly similar (in effect if not cause)
to the dispossession of the peasantry
in Europe in the early modern era.
Unlike Europe, however, the countries
Davis discusses had been integrated
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168
into a world economy designed to
favor Europe (and later the United
States) and thus could not follow the
European development path (let alone
the path the United States followed).
In Davis’s view, the famine of the late
nineteenth century created the structural
imbalance in the world economy
that we have today. The world outside
of Europe was not always poor and
underdeveloped; it was made that way
by European imperial domination.
In the Cochran article referred to
previously, he argued that traditional
narrative and social scientific explanation
were essentially incompatible.
Several decades later, Bernard Bailyn
argued that the integration of the social
sciences into history had created
several narrative challenges for historians.
He argued that:
there are...at least three general
trends in motion, three lines
of development generated by
the force of scholarship itself,
which in varying ways will enrich,
but also complicate, any
comprehensive narratives that
are written: the fusion of latent
and manifest events, the depiction
of large-scale spheres and
systems organized as peripheries
and cores, and the description
of internal states of mind
and their relation to external
circumstances and events. 22
Unlike Cochran, who seemed to call
for the abandonment of narrative,
Bailyn sees the new social scientific
history as a challenge for historians.
While not an explicit response to
Bailyn’s article, Paul Cohen’s History
in Three Keys 23 deals with the narrative
problems laid out by Bailyn. Cohen’s
purpose is to discuss the writing of history
itself through the example of the
Boxer rebellion in China in 1900. He
argues that there are at least three ways
an historian can write the history of an
event: as a narrative of events, as the
lived experience of the participants in
that event, and as the past constructed
by what he terms mythologizers. The
major portion of the book is taken
up by looking at the Boxer Rebellion
through each of these approaches.
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Cohen’s first approach, the narrative
of events, is the usual strategy taken by
historians. Here, the historian tells the
story of what happened by explaining
its causes and putting it within a broad
context. What troubles Cohen is that
this is a construction of the historian
who knows how the event came about,
how it developed, and how it ended
because it has already occurred in the
past. Further, the historian has a broad
sense of the context within which the
event took place. This gives the historian
a different perspective on the event
from those who actually participated
in it. They did not know all that went
into the initiation of the event, what
caused it to develop as it did, and they
had no idea of its outcome. Neither
were they usually conscious of the
wider context.
None of this is meant to deny the
value of the historian’s account as
there is more to an event than what
the participants are conscious of.
Nevertheless, the historian’s account
downplays the lived experience of
the participants. This leads Cohen to
propose that historians need histories
of people’s lived experiences of events
which takes into account their limited
knowledge of what was happening and
the undecidedness of the outcome. In
Cohen’s own account of the lived experience
of the Boxer Rebellion, he
relies heavily on anthropology, showing
that even in a book about narrative
strategies, the social sciences are still
central to the historian’s work.
For Cohen, there is a third type
of narrative that historians can write.
This is the narrative of the narratives
of the event as written by later writers
(historians are not included in this category).
While these writers often believe
that what they write is true, as do their
readers, they process the event through
a predetermined agenda influenced by
their current circumstances designed
to score political points. Cohen calls
this kind of writing mythology and its
writers mythologizers. What Cohen
argues is that the historian can write
an account of these mythologies by
recounting how and why they develop.

What is important is that these mythological
accounts can be very powerful
and persuasive in the societies in which
they are formulated. This alone makes
them worthy of study.
At the beginning of this essay it
was suggested that history in the early
twentieth century was finally becoming
a social science. The brief survey of
eight recent works of history that followed
more than show this to be an accurate
statement. The books addressed
a wide variety of topics covering the
globe and while they focused more on
the last few centuries, the ancient world
was not excluded. They are eclectic in
the social scientific theories and methods
that they use, which was pointed
out as one of the characteristics of the
new history at the beginning. What is
clear is that history can no longer be
written without the social sciences.
While still a discipline unto itself, history
is at the same time inseparable
from the other social sciences.
NOTES
1
Thomas Cochran, “The ‘Presidential Synthesis’
in American History,” American Historical
Review 53:4 (July 1948), 748.
2
Peter Burke, “Overture. The New History:
Its Past and Future” in Peter Burke (ed.), New
Perspectives on Historical Writing, 2nd ed. (University
Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press,
2001), 2-6.
3
Ibid.
4
Cochran, 751.
5
Ibid., 788.
6 .
Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying
History (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2000), 20.
7
Alan Megill, “Recounting the Past: ‘Description,’
Explanation, and Narrative in Historiography,”
American Historical Review 94:3 (June 1989),
627-53.
8
Michael Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
9
William V. Harris, Restraining Rage (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2001).
10
James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
11
Giovanni Levi, “On Microhistory” in Peter
Burke (ed.), loc. cit., 99.
12
Karl Marx, Capital vol. I, trans. Ben Fowkes
(New York: Penguin Books, 1976).
13
Timothy Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1996).
169
14
Marx, 163-77.
15
Joan Scott, “Women’s History” in Peter
Burke (ed.), loc. cit., 56.
16
Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of
Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 914:5
(December 1986), 1067.
17
Ibid., 1067-68.
18
Mary A. Renda, Taking Haiti (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
19
Ibid., 15.
20
Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
21
Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts (New
York: Verso, 2001).
22 .
Bernard Bailyn, “The Challenges of
Modern Historiography,” American Historical Review
87:1 (February 1982), 22.
23
Paul A. Cohen, History in Three Keys (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
AND HISTORIOGRAPHY