Deep Thought of the Day

If white women had been allowed to vote, George McClellan would have won the election of 1864. And not just because he's dreamy.

Consider the following:

• McClellan captured 45% of the popular vote.
• Lincoln carried Union soldiers by a 3:1 margin (at least).
• Therefore, male civilians were more likely to vote for McClellan than were soldiers.
• McClellan ran on a platform of immediate cessation of hostilities and negotiation with the South.
  
• By 1864, many women opposed the war and wanted their men home at any cost.
• Women, by definition civilians, would probably have voted like male civilians or, perhaps, even more pro-McClellan.

My conclusion: Lincoln probably could not have won if women had been allowed to vote in 1864.

Dr. Lazarus LeBaron

Today's name-of-the-day award goes to Doctor Lazarus LeBaron of Plymouth, MA (1698-1773).

Both "Lazarus" and "LeBaron" are pretty great names, and their flair is only heightened by alliteration. Add to that the fact that "Lazarus" is a terrific name for doctor and you've got a winner.

101 Ways, Part 62: Made His Exit

For a brief intro to the "101 Ways to Say 'Died'" series, click here.

Samuel Jones, Concord, MA (1806):

Men drop so fast, 'ere life's mid stage we tread

Few know so many friends alive as dead."

Young

This monumental stone is

Erected in memory of

Mr. SAMUEL JONES Jr

who made his exit Nov. 6

1806 aged 36 years.

His virtues were too many to be

enumerated here; but they gained him

the love of all who knew him and

are too deeply engraved on their mem

ories to be forgotten.

Early he departed this life; and has gone 

as we trust to the bosom of his 

Heavenly Father.

Commenter RJO provides this photo of a nearly identical gravestone from Fitchburg, MA, showing that the Dwight workshop, like many others, offered standard templates with minor variations in the details:

Morality and Atheism

Paul Bloom's essay on morality and atheism in today's issue of Slate should be of interest to all those (myself included) who identify as both atheists and as "moral" people. Though some of his conclusions seem sound and useful (atheists are less happy and less generous than religious people because they are excluded from communities), I had a lot of problems with his logic.

Most troublingly, Bloom treats "morality" as if it were a transparent and self-evident category. He summarizes several studies that code certain behaviors (giving change to homeless people on the street, giving blood) as "moral" and accepts these definititions uncritically. What makes giving change to the homeless an intrinsically moral act? I have a personal policy of not giving change to the homeless or cans to canned food drives — instead, I donate a sum of money to the Greater Boston Food Bank (donate here). It is tremendously more efficient to give cash to an organization that buys food in bulk and distributes resources to the areas of greatest need than it is to pass out quarters or donate food you bought at retail price. Am I then acting immorally when I fail to give change to the homeless? I would argue that I have made a good moral choice that actually involved some effort and reflection rather than relying on impulse.

Similarly, the studies Bloom cites do not distinguish between a "moral" action and the system of ethics behind that action. In one study, participants were given $10 that they could either keep or choose to share with a stranger. Half of the subjects were primed with a religiously-themed word search and ended up giving away more money than the control group. Bloom, in agreement with the researchers, interprets this study as evidence that "religious people are nicer because they believe that they are never alone." Other research cited by Bloom suggest that "people are more generous and less likely to cheat when others are around." I don't know what definition of "generous" he is using, but I would refer him to my favorite Bible story: Mark 12:38-44.

Since Bloom is a professor of psychologywho specializes in child development, he is no doubt familiar Kohlberg's stages of moral development. Last time I checked, doing the right thing because you know someone is watching (and, implicitly, threatening punishment for bad behavior) doesn't rank very high on that scale. Even if a religious person follows the instructions outlined in Matthew 6:1-6 and hides his/her good works from the world, he/she still believes that God is watching and will punish or reward accordingly. Is that really altruism? Within an atheistic system of morality, no one is watching you and any charity must spring from another source, such as self-interest (if I am kind to others, they will be kind to me) or a commitment to social justice.*

So what is morality? Are there particular actions that are moral and others that are not? If you perform the "moral" actions, do your intentions matter? Isn't it possible that more than one decision can be morally correct in any given situation?

I don't mean to argue that atheists are necessarily more moral than theists. But I am supremely annoyed whenever I see these questions posed in ways that specifically privilege a theistic definition of morality without bothering to interrogate the terms involved.

*P.S. I think a commitment to social justice is demanded by the type of atheism I embrace. I believe that there is no afterlife and thus, no justice in the afterlife, so we better demand justice on this earth. While many theistic worldviews (particularly Christianity) put a lot of value on the afterlife, I think that everyone just has this one, short, fragile existence, and that makes life so much more precious.

Update: Darn. P.Z. Myers responds to this essay as well and, as usual, much more eloquently than I. Also, like a good, morally upright person, he focuses on points of agreement with Bloom and moves the discussion in productive directions (How can atheists build community?) rather than bellyaching.

101 Ways, Part 61: Fell on Sleep and Was Laid Unto His Fathers

For a brief intro to the "101 Ways to Say 'Died'" series, click here.

Most of the Bible verses I've seen on 18th-century gravestones are from the Old Testament. Benjamin Goodwin's epitaph (Charlestown, MA, 1822) quotes the book of Acts 13:36, perhaps due to the influence of evangelical revivals in the early 19th century that placed more emphasis on the New Testament. Goodwin's epitaph also quotes Psalms 37:37, making it one of the most Bible-reliant epitaphs in the Phipps Street Cemetery. It also uses quotation marks, which is unusual:

Mr. BENJAMIN GOODWIN

"after he had served his own gen

eration, by the will of God, fell on

sleep, and was laid unto his fathers"

March 3, 1822,

AEt. 77

"Mark the perfect man, and behold

the upright for the end of that man

is peace."

101 Ways, Part 60: Resigned His Soul to God

For a brief intro to the "101 Ways to Say 'Died'" series, click here.

I am currently working on a project on the Pompe Stevens stones in Newport, which has gotten me thinking about African-American burials in New England. There is a fairly large African-American section in Providence's North Burial Ground. One extant gravestone is dedicated to "Yarrow an African."

Unfortunately, I do not have a good picture of this stone. It is underneath the giant copper beech tree near the Stephen Hopkins monument and I haven't yet figured out how to light it. Pete got me a new external flash for my birthday, so I'll try that out next time I'm in Providence.

The text of Yarrow's epitaph reads,

Here Lies
the Body of YARROW
an African who after a
Life of strict Integrity
Resigned his Soul to
GOD April 7, 1786 aged
Aged [sic] about 60 Years

There is a verse at the end, but my pics are so awful I cannot read it. I'll update this post when I have more information.


Update!
Here is a picture of Yarrow's stone, courtesy of Robert Emlen at Brown University. The entire epitaph is clearly legible:

Thanks, Prof. Emlen!

Happy Birthday, Ben!

My brother is 23 today.

Here he is on the day he came home from the birth center. I'm pretty sure I got more than my fair share of that cake.

There is an oft-told story in our family: When Ben was born, I was staying with Ellie, a family friend. She had promised to bring me to McDonalds for dinner — a rare treat. When my dad called to say that I had a baby brother, Ellie told me the good news, to which I replied, "I don't want a baby brother, I want a hamburger!"

As you can see in the picture at the top of the page, Ben was never a small baby. I was somewhat small for my age and up until I hit age 10, people routinely mistook us for twins. It used to annoy me, but now that I see pictures like this one, I can forgive the mistake:

Now, Ben works for a group that runs voter registration drives (no, not ACORN), so today we'll find out if they did a good job. I don't think he was born on a Tuesday, but perhaps he was destined for voter turnout work.

So, happy birthday, Ben. Use that birthday wish to give us a good result tonight.

Candles and Mysteries

In the Boston area, most mid-18thc stones share basic design elements. There will be a death's head or sould effigy on the tympanum, accompanied by floral or other organic-y borders and a roundish finial design.

Things are different in Rhode Island.

There's a much wider variation, especially in tympanum designs. While most soul effigies and death's heads in Boston are variations of a carver's signature design, lots of stones in Rhode Island have images that are either unique to indivdual stones or very rare.

One such stone is the Thomas Westcot stone (1745) in Providence:

Both the shape and the central image are distinctive. At first, I thought it was a bed, but now I think it is a table with a candle and candle snuffer.

Anyone have a better reading?

The Kathrin Hawkings stone (1749) has a similar, but not identical design.

I suppose that could be a candle, but what is the circle? A mirror, perhaps? Why the forked handle/foot? Is it just another type of candle snuffer?

I'm stumped.

Saturday in Portland

I just got back from a Great Big Sea concert in Portland, ME, where we had a memorable election-related moment.

Before the show, a few women broke out their Newfoundland flags and waved them around to general applause. Then, more Newfoundland flags appeared all around the auditorium — at least half a dozen in all. Everyone clapped and cheered.

As the applause died down, someone produced an Obama/Biden yard sign (he carries it around with him?) and unfurled it to even greater applause. There were a couple of boos here and there, but the cheers and whistles easily overwhelmed them. And this was not a particularly young audience.

I guess it's true: Maine is blue.

Happy Halloween!

I find this 1,000x scarier than any gravestone.
"It's a wonderful night for eyebrows . . ."

Charles Bardin

One of the most famous gravestones in New England is the stone carved by John Bull for Charles Bardin (1773). I'm always reluctant to call something the "only" example of a motif, but it's the only stone I've ever seen that has a literal depiction of God as the tympanum design. The cherubim on the finials are also particularly lovely — they have that slightly abstract quality that separates quality English painting of the 18th century from the rigid specificity of the American provincial style. Luti says John Stevens I may have been the greatest of the 18th c New England carvers, but John Bull was undoubtedly an artist of considerable merit.

 

 

PSA

To anyone who may be reading this blog: please disregard all my musings on Newport written before this date. I just got a copy of Vincent Luti's Mallet and Chisel: The Gravestone Carvers of Newport, Rhode Island in the 18th Century and it is so exhaustive and well researched that I'm sure I can't say anything intelligent about Newport without reading it first.

The great thing about blogging is that it allows me to look back on the various stages of a project. In that spirit, I will not go back and expunge all my uninformed speculations about the Newport cemeteries. Just consider this official notice that I won't stand by anything I've said on the subject in the past few weeks until I've had a chance to read Luti and see how my guesses measure up.

McFail

I've gotten into reading FAIL Blog recently.
It has given me a new vocabulary to deal with things like this.

Combine! Ye Sons of Freedom

A poem from the commonplace book of John Stevens, gravestone carver:

The nation free, dispotic rule that craves,

And gives up Liberty to sink to slaves,

When cruel Kings and harde decrees oppress,

In vain shall mourn, and hope in vain redress.

Combine! ye sons of freedom, ah, combine!

The people are invincile who join:

Factions and feuds will overturn the state,

Which union renders flourishing and gereate.

Treat not a foreigner with pride barb'rous pride,

Mock not his accent, or his garb deride:

For peace at home that people ne'er shall find,

Who wage a war all with all mankind.

I spent some time with a reproduction of this commonplace book at Houghton Library yesterday. It contains notes and accounts from the first two John Stevens showing how much they charged for gravestones and other work (building chimneys, laying hearths, whitewashing walls, reinforcing wells, etc.). These entries end sometime in the 1730s. In the 1760s, the third John Stevens used the book as his own, copying poetry and lists of the books he read into every unusued inch of paper. He also sketched some truly beautiful border designs into the margins, one of which I have never seen on an actual gravestone. This poem appears on a page marked "1728," but I suspect it was actually recorded in the late 1760s.

I was looking for some trace of Zingo Stevens, but he seems to have entered the picture after the systematic entries ended. There may be another book at the Newport historical society containing John Stevens III's accounts - at least, I hope so. If this book is all I have to go on, I would conclude that John III was a free spirit with little concern for the business end of things.

Zingo is absent, but there are two men who I think are slaves mentioned: Phillip Stevens and "Sypeo." Since John II records how often he worked alongside these two men and how much they were paid, it will be good evidence for how members of a shop may have worked together on projects.

Amazing

Amanda Jones, the 109-year-old daughter of a former slave, votes for Barack Obama.

I spend a fair amount of my time reading, thinking, and writing about slavery, but I will admit, it sometimes seems a remote topic. I know it isn't — "slavery" did not necessarily end in 1865 and no matter what the pundits say, we are by no means a "post-racial" nation. My privilege allows me to think of slavery in a vague "back in the day" sort of way, and I am grateful to be jolted out of that complacency by stories like this one. And this one, and this one, though they don't give me the warm fuzzies.

Harbottle Grimston

Name o' the day:

Harbottle Grimston

Make that Sir Harbottle Grimston. Grimston was a member of parliament and a critic of Archbishop Laud and his policies.

My discovery of Harbottle Grimston has led me to rethink my position on Grimstone Bowde — it's possible that a Puritan New Englander would honor an anti-Laud MP by naming a som after him.

Hat tip to Conrad Russell, whose tome, The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637-1642, has been haunting me all week.

Caitlin the Blogger

Jon Stewart made a joke about historical naming patterns!



The McCain campaign's official sign generator lets you fill in the blanks in the phrase, "I am _____ the ______."

Imagine the possibilities.

Dropped "D"s and "T"s

When people poke fun at the Boston/Rhode Island family of accents, the "conservation of rs" problem gets a lot of attention (cah vs. car: non-rhoticity and idear vs. idea: intrusive R). Undoubtedly, this is one of the most easily recognizable linguistic quirks of the region.

A subtler characteristic of southern New England speech is the routine dropping of ds and ts. I have no idea what this is called, but it seems that speakers of other American accents have a similar habit. Dropping ts and ds is much more common than full-blown non-rhoticity.

Why do I care? Gravestones, of course:

Hugh Ellis, Newport, RI (1723)

"Granson"

Samuel Winsor, Providence, RI (1758)

"Baptis"

also, potentially, "Winsor"

I don't know how other people pronounce this, but I would pronounce "Windsor" as "Winzzer," as in "South Winzzer, Connecticut." Was he Samuel "Windsor" or "Winsor"? This book says "Windsor."

Susannah Lane, Billerica, MA (1713)

"Augus"

These may be coincidences, but I'll be on the lookout for more d/t irregularities from now on.