Farewell

Chaff

Dear readers:

I would like to take this moment to thank all those of you at the Mackinac Center for giving me a two and a half year opportunity to author a corporate blog on the development of liberty in the Western world. As is apparent from a casual glance, Landmarks of Liberty has grown from an undergraduate and amateur approach to research to a graduate evaluation of primary source material. I now desire to continue growing in my profession of history on a less formally corporate and more personal forum. If nothing else, I hope that my broad range of subjects in the last few centuries of Western history on Landmarks of Liberty will serve as useful reference material for the Mackinac Center and like minded friends the world over. To the rest of my readers, I will be writing on Commonwealth Crossings so as to provide a more personal forum for historical research and discussion.

I wish you all a very fine and friendly farewell.

Your servant,

Wesley

FINIS

Accession Day of the Diamond Jubilee: February 6, 2012

Elizabeth and Philip - 1953

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

February sixth marked the sixtieth year anniversary of the death of King George VI and the inauguration of Queen Elizabeth II's first year, by God's grace, on the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland. Her reign has only been superseded in length by that of Queen Victoria. Like Victoria, Elizabeth has proved over sixty years that the pageantry of monarchy over a free people and the representative demands of government maintained by constitutional law may blend seamlessly. Now, in the sixtieth year of her reign, the queen intends to return to the Baroque pomp of the boating celebrations of the 17th century for a formal anniversary of her coronation in June. In the meantime, the queen's February celebrations have been reflective, if not as triumphant as the June celebrations will be. Below are some videos covering the events:

The report on Jubilee Eve

The recommitment of the Queen to her vow

A quiet church service and friendly reception

Giving of Thanks

The Jubilee Tree takes its place among the Great Trees of memory. Long may it grow and green may its leaves remain, unwithed by frost or the shifting happenings of man!

In anticipation for the formal reception of the Queen in June, the Royal boat is revealed.

The Coronation of Her Majesty, by God's grace, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain

June 1953

God save the Queen

Liberty and a Christmas Hymn

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.”

(Psalm 121:1-2)

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

As we near the Christmas season, I thought it appropriate to reveal the history behind a hymn that has been very influential in critical moments of the history of liberty. From the origins of freedom of speech in England to the American Civil War, Charles Wesley’s hymn Jesus, Lover of My Soul graced the lips of many a distressed person. This hymn usually sung at Christmas is not well known in our present day, but during the Civil War, it was highly respected. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote that the first two lines were her father’s last breath, and Stowe’s brother, Rev. Henry Ward claimed, “I would rather have written that hymn of Wesley’s… than to have the fame of all the kings that ever sat on the earth. It is more glorious. It has more power in it… that hymn will go on singing until the last trump brings forth the angel band; and then, I think, it will mount up on some lip to the very presence of God.”1 Just like the Christmas truce of 1914, this hymn seems to bring the Christmas spirit of peace and giving everywhere it goes. The words are as follows:

Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is high.
Hide me, O my Savior, hide,
Till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide;
O receive my soul at last. 

Other refuge have I none,
Hangs my helpless soul on thee;
Leave, ah! leave me not alone,
Still support and comfort me.
All my trust on thee is stayed,
All my help from thee I bring;
Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of thy wing. 

Wilt Thou not regard my call?
Wilt Thou not accept my prayer?
Lo! I sink, I faint, I fall!
Lo! on Thee I cast my care.
Reach me out Thy gracious hand!
While I of Thy strength receive,
Hoping against hope I stand,
Dying, and behold I live. 

Thou, O Christ, art all I want,
More than all in thee I find;
Raise the fallen, cheer the faint,
Heal the sick, and lead the blind.
Just and holy is thy name,
I am all unrighteousness;
False and full of sin I am;
Thou art full of truth and grace.

Plenteous grace with thee is found,
Grace to cover all my sin;
Let the healing streams abound,
Make and keep me pure within.
Thou of life the fountain art,
Freely let me take of thee;
Spring thou up within my heart;
Rise to all eternity.

Charles Wesley

The origins of the hymn are somewhat legendary, but I give most credence to the following account by Rev. Edwin M. Long in 1875. Long’s story matches the symbolism of the song:

Charles and John Wesley, and Richard Pilmore were holding one of their twilight meetings on the common, when the mob assailed them, and they were compelled to flee for their lives. 

Being separated for a time, as they were being pelted with stones, they at length in their flight, succeeded in getting beyond a hedge row, where they prostrated themselves on the ground, and placed their hands on the back of their heads for protection from the stones which still came so near that they could feel the current of air made by the missiles as they went whizzing over them. 

In the night shades that were gathering, they managed to hide from the fury of the rabble in a spring-house. Here they struck a light with a flint-stone, and after dusting their clothes, and washing, they refreshed themselves with the cooling water that came bubbling up in a spring, and rolling out in a silver streamlet.

Charles Wesley pulled out a lead pencil… and from the inspiration of these surroundings, composed the precious hymn:—
‘Jesus, lover of my soul.’ 

The flight had no doubt suggested the second line:—
‘Let me to Thy bosom fly.’ 

The waters gliding at his feet,—
‘While the nearer waters roll.’ 

The tempest and storm from which they had just found a hiding-place, the figure,—
‘While the tempest still is high;
Hide me, O my Saviour hide
Till the storm of life is past.’ 

As each was left alone to seek safety in flight,—
‘Leave, Oh, leave me not alone,
Still support and comfort me.’ 

Trying to cover their defenseless heads with their hands, the lines,—
‘Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of Thy wing.’ 

Having sunk to the ground, faint and weary, the third verse. As this is generally omitted, we give it entire:—
‘Wilt Thou not regard my call?
Wilt Thou not accept my prayer?
Lo! I sink, I faint, I fall!
Lo! on Thee I cast my care.
Reach me out Thy gracious hand!
While I of Thy strength receive,
Hoping against hope I stand,
Dying, and behold I live.’ 

Washing their wounds and bruises the thoughts of the last verse, which is the fifth in the original,— ‘Let the healing streams abound, Make and keep me pure within.’ 

And lastly, the fountain of spring-water from which they drank, and obtained fresh life,
‘Thou of life the fountain art,
Freely let me take of Thee.
Spring Thou up within my heart
Rise to all eternity." 

These interesting facts were given by Mr. Pilmore, who was an eye-witness, to an intimate friend, Mr. Hicks, who stated them to Rev. I. H. Torrence of Phila., from whom I received them.2

During the 18th Century, England had only just begun to gain the right to free speech, and indeed, Wesley authored the hymn before the global influence of the US Bill of Rights advocating free speech. Violence often clouded the beginning of every new idea, and with the rise of the Methodists, controversy soon met Wesley everywhere. Fleeing for his life for merely expressing his views, he penned this hymn as the out flowing of his heart. It is a hymn asking for the release of the tyrannies of this world, and its influence remained no less imperative to the 19th century mind.

Many stories of desperate victories and fruitful defeats overwhelm this hymn’s history. Two girls sung it while sinking beneath the waves on the deck of a steamship with no hope of escape. A mother was rescued clinging to her child and a bit of wreckage at sea while singing it.3 Being interrupted by death at the line ‘still support and comfort me’, an American drummer boy at the battle of Chickamauga found his last strength with the solace of this hymn.4 Long relates another story of a gentleman searching for religious stability:

As he paused a moment in his walk the sound of singing reached his ear; he opened the door and listened. It was the children's nurse just putting her young charge to bed. Clear and distinct came the tone to Frank's ear,—
‘Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is high.’ 

‘Ah!’ thought the listener, ‘that is just what I need. I would give the world to be able to sing that from my soul.’5

Perhaps the most poignant moment of this hymn in the history of liberty was one unbelievable Civil War story as told by Amos R. Wells in 1906.

In a company of old soldiers, from the Union and Confederate armies, a former Confederate was telling how he had been detailed one night to shoot a certain exposed sentry of the opposing army. He had crept near and was about to fire with deadly aim when the sentry began to sing, ‘Jesus, Lover of my soul.’ He came to the words,
‘Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of Thy wing.’ 

The hidden Confederate lowered his gun and stole away. ‘I can't kill that man,’ said he, ‘though he were ten times my enemy.’ 

In the company was an old Union soldier who asked quickly, 

‘Was that in the Atlanta campaign of ‘64?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘Then I was the Union sentry!’ 

And he went on to tell how, on that night, knowing the danger of his post, he had been greatly depressed, and, to keep up his courage, had begun to hum that hymn. By the time he had finished, he was entirely calm and fearless. Through the song God had spoken to two souls.6

While both soldiers would claim they were fighting for liberty, they agreed more than they disagreed, and though the war raged around them, the Confederate providentially withdrew his claim on the life of an enemy.

“Peace on earth, goodwill to men!”


NOTES:

1. Edwin M. Long, Illustrated History of Hymns and their Authors, (Philadelphia: Joseph F. Jaggers, 1876), 460.

2. Ibid, 440-441.

3. Ibid, 442, 445, 446.

4. Amos R. Wells, Twenty-four Memory Hymns and their stories, (Boston: United Society of Christian Endeavor, 1906), 44.

5. Long, Illustrated History, 456.

6. Wells, Twenty-four Memory Hymns, 44-45.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Long, Edwin M. Illustrated History of Hymns and their Authors. Philadelphia: Joseph F. Jaggers, 1876.
Wells, Amos R. Twenty-four Memory Hymns and their stories. Boston: United Society of Christian Endeavor, 1906.

Image sources (in order of article):
Sierra Nevada Albert Bierstadt circa 1871
Jwesleysitting
Miranda - The Tempest JWW
Camp Fire Winslow Homer

Pearl Harbor Day: Seventy Years of Remembering

December seventh... 1941... the day of infamy. Now, seventy years later, let us honor those who lived through it by allowing them to speak for themselves. Here are some original clips:

The President's Address:



An interrupted radio program relating the news. Incidentally, the piece being played before the interruption is my favorite piece ever written for the piano, Frédéric Chopin's Nocturne in E Minor, Op72, No1:



A toll on civilians:



The US Navy's Account. To my Japanese and Japanese-American readers, I apologize for the derogatory terms. I am powerless to change history:



Japanese photography. As the Americans were busy saving lives, American photography of the event is rare, and this Japanese film presents a fuller picture (click the link here):

The explosion of the USS Arizona. The silent film speaks louder to me than anything else here, since one is left to imagine the dreadful noise (click the link here):

And today:




Some photos of American patriotism and sacrifice:

Felix Mendelssohn: Revival of Reformed Music in Germany

File: CologneCathedralInSpire originally photographed by Randal J. from Wikipedia

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

In the eighteenth century, Frederick the Great of Prussia had all but replaced the old German Baroque style with the new enlightened Classical approach. Johann Sebastian Bach’s old church music of Lutheran Germany collected dust, while new methods of music were being explored. Much of Germany’s Protestant heritage of freedom was being replaced with Prussian martial Enlightenment, until Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn restored old Germany’s landmarks of liberty through music.

Born to a Jewish family on 3 February 1809, Mendelssohn was baptized into the Lutheran church on 21 March 1816 at the age of seven. The Lutheran understanding of the Christian faith would influence Mendelssohn all his life. His affluent and intellectual family also afforded him the life of a gentleman to pursue his talents. After studying piano under Ludwig Berger, violin with Wilhelm Henning, and music theory under Carl Friedrich Zelter, Mendelssohn began composing his first collection of works in 1820. While on a journey to Paris in 1825, he met the prestigious Luigi Cherubini and decided the future course of his career. Mendelssohn studied both the works of enlightened Classical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and old Baroque master Johann Sebastian Bach, but it was oddly Bach that caught Mendelssohn’s imagination. After matriculating from Berlin University in 1827, he conducted the first recreation of Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion at the Berlin Singakademie in 1829.

Felix Mendelssohn (Prang and Co., 1897). Performing Arts Reading Room, Library of Congress.

In 1829, Mendelssohn traveled through England and Scotland for more education. On 10 May 1829, he left for his grand tour of Italy, visiting on his way Munich, Germany; Vienna, Austria; and Florence, Rome, Pompeii, and Naples, Italy. His return journey in 1831 took him across Switzerland, and through Munich, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Liege, Paris, and even London. He finally returned to Berlin in 1832. That year, his great Reformation Symphony commemorated the roots of the modern Protestant world, introducing the tremendous Dresden Amen still used in hymnals today. Although Mendelssohn himself thought the Reformation Symphony too bulky, it recast Martin Luther’s theme of A Mighty Fortress is Our God into the glorious musical form of early nineteenth century Romanticism, and in a sense restored Germany’s lead in the great tradition of Protestant ecclesiastical music. Baroque counterpoint, fully perfected by Bach centuries earlier, also set the Reformation Symphony apart from the Romantic Classical forms of music of the nineteenth century.


In 1835, Mendelssohn preformed Bach's Concerto for Three Pianos and Orchestra in D Minor at the Gewandhaus concert hall. He earned his Honorary Doctorate from Leipzig University in 1836, finished composing his oratorio Saint Paul, and preformed Israel in Egypt. He traveled to Boston in 1837, and preformed Saint Paul for an American audience. To commemorate the four hundred year anniversary of the invention of the printing press, Mendelssohn premiered his Symphony #2 in B Flat Major, Lobgesang [Hymn of Praise], Opus 52 at St Thomas's Church in 1840. He also preformed an organ concert to raise funds for building a monument to his old Lutheran favorite Bach. In every sense, Mendelssohn was restoring the ancient landmarks of Reformed Germany.

Mendelssohn’s work was rewarded throughout the courts of Germany. On 31 March 1841, he was appointed as Kapellmeister for the Saxon Royal Court, called to fill the post of Friedrich Wilhelm IV’s court composer on July 1st wherever the monarch willed, and finally given the official title of Kapellmeister to the Prussian Royal Court on October 13th. Queen Victoria received him in 1842 on his seventh trip to England. In 1843, Mendelssohn became Director of Studies for the first musical conservatory in Germany, the newly opened Music Conservatoire at Leipzig. Later that year, he received the Freedom of the City of Leipzig Award, and unveiled his monument to the memory of Bach’s achievements. The year before he died, Mendelssohn premiered his Lauda Sion and his Elijah oratorio. When he died on 4 November 1847, not only Germany but the Christian Church lost a man who dedicated himself to restoring the Protestant heritage of Germany. His body was fittingly laid to rest in the Trinity Cemetery of Berlin.

Sources:
http://www.felixmendelssohn.com/
http://www.felixmendelssohn.com/felix_mendelssohn_bio_001.htm
http://www.felixmendelssohn.com/felix_mendelssohn_works_001.htm
http://www.mendelssohn-stiftung.de/r-biography.html
http://www.classicalarchives.com/work/17547.html#tvf=tracks&tv=about

A Dark Lord and His Ring of Power

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

In stark contrast to many landmarks of liberty left behind by past civilizations, some cultural trappings belong on the ash heap of history. This Nazi ring is one of them. Adolf Hitler has long been likened to a dark lord, but it wasn’t until I saw this ring that I knew him to be a lord of rings.

As the photo shows, this ring would not fit the average adult. It was meant to seduce rather than decorate. Intentionally, the Nazis forged it for the delicate finger and soul of a gullible youth. It is a child’s ring.

My blood ran cold for a moment as I gazed at this speck of silver. I marveled with Boromir how strange that I should “suffer so much fear and doubt for so small a thing. So small a thing!” A black rider might say this “least of rings… is but a trifle” to all the horrors of the Nazi regime, but Hitler knew that if his empire were ever to last one thousand years, he needed in Gandalf’s words the young to “cover all the lands in a second darkness.” The loudest engines of war and torment could not sound tyranny with more discordant notes than this trifle. A whisper of evil sometimes chills the spine faster than the trumpet of pandemonium.

Deceived by apparent beauty and ceremony, the little bearer of this ring knew not that tyrants linked her childhood with the mass murderer of the Western world. Providentially, this sad time would only last twelve years instead of one thousand, thanks to the perseverance of the Allied efforts and the blessings of God. As Winston Churchill rightly said, “upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.” Churchill himself could not gain a panoramic view over the Mordor of Nazi Germany when he spoke these words, but seventy years later we may piece together wisps of the smoldering story. Sic Semper Tyrannis.

Beneath the Ivy

Beneath the ivy stones molder away;

Light shineth out as the last golden ray.

For all is autumn now under the birch,

Lest snowy night ore’ take the cathedral church.

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

As my autumn semester begins, I will not have time to write any more on this blog. Perhaps I shall take it up again next summer, but in the meantime, I would like to leave my readers with a few themes from my work here. What is Landmarks of Liberty all about?

First, Landmarks of Liberty assumes a Providential view of history. As Patrick Henry once said, “there is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations…” Second, it is an attempt to render the Western world as a separate entity, advanced, civilized, and cultured, but now faded and withered. This is not to condone the historical methods of European overlords who wished to exert power through imperialism; only to notice the undeniable advances within just such civilizations. These we might call civilizational landmarks; the cultural, moral, and economic trappings of the largely Western Christian world. As de Tocqueville noted of America, civilization flourished underneath government within voluntary social institutions. The unique element here was the absence of social coercion, in other words, liberty. Hence, we might call our civilizational landmarks, landmarks of liberty.

Third, the “Time of Troubles” for Western civilization started in 1914, and the catastrophic signs of civilizational erosion first appeared during the First World War. In this war, the devastating effects of ideology, or the many ism’s of the modern world including progressivism, liberalism, imperialism, coerced globalism, etc., began to replace the cultural heritage of the Western world. Not only was the West literally torn apart for its wrongs, it became dehumanized and culturally depressed with itself. Might I relate how far the West has fallen? As John Milton once said of the fall of humanity in Eden, this is a “sad task, yet argument not less but more Heroic then the wrauth of stern Achilles on his Foe pursu’d…” (Paradise Lost, Book 9) We still reap, at least materially, the benefits of the old West, but like a summer gone, we feel the nipping chill of an approaching nihilistic winter. It is a quiet autumn on our Western front, and beneath the ivy we may still glimpse the moldering remnants of our older world.

Symphony of the week

To leave this blog with a fitting symphonic moment, I’ve chosen Sir Edward Elgar’s larghetto from his Second Symphony as my symphony of the week. It was used as the funeral march for Edward VII; the drawing of the curtain in the last age of Western glory before World War I. As Elgar would later say of his Third symphony, larghetto displays “stately sorrow… Naturally what follows brings hope.” Hope we would have, if only we would recast our ancient landmarks that ever soften between the tendrils of ivy and quake before the ever approaching gales of winter. “Remove not the ancient landmarks, which thy fathers have set.” Proverbs 22:28

I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew:
Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew…
O Lorien! The Winter comes, the bare and leafless Day;
The leaves are falling in the stream, the River flows away.¹

Notes/Sources:

1. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, (Houghton Mifflin Company: New York, 2003), 363.

Image of Cole Thomas The Present 1838 from Wikipedia

A Frothy Mug in the Houses of Liberty: Coffee Houses of the 17th and 18th Centuries

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

Free speech in the coffee houses of Europe and America birthed the rise of gentility, republican government, and liberty during a time of, as Beatrix Potter said, “swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets – when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta…” Whether philosophical men between sips passionately debated the latest movements of the British Army in America, or some highwaymen sat brooding plots over steaming mugs, coffee was sure to find its way at the heart of most adventures. With the introduction of coffee into Europe in the 17th century and the subsequent rise of the coffee house as a public forum in the 17th and 18th centuries, some of the greatest political, social, and literary achievements of Great Britain and America started with a cup of coffee.

Origins
In his irreplaceably comprehensive volume All About Coffee, William Harrison Ukers records that Venetian traders first brought coffee to Europe in 1615, and eventually coffee made its way to Rome.¹ Legend has it that certain priests convinced Pope Clement VIII to ban coffee because they claimed it originated from Satan. When the Pope tasted it, he supposedly exclaimed “Why, this Satan’s drink is so delicious… We shall fool Satan by baptizing it, and making it a truly Christian beverage.”² Despite the superstition, coffee houses in Italy became a place where all sorts congregated, with the workers, physicians, lawyers, and merchants stopping in during the mornings and the nobility and gentry coming in the evenings. The first English coffee house was opened in Oxford in 1650 by a Jew from Lebanon, and coffee houses soon rose in popularity among the students. Within these early haunts, clubs sprang up, the first of which was a Jacobite Royalist society of students led by the apothecary Arthur Tilyard. Believing the deposed Stuart monarch Charles II to be the rightful king of Great Britain, this club was a prelude to the Royal Society. Soon, all over England, coffee houses similar to those in London became fashionable in the Provinces. Tobacco in England was first smoked in just such an establishment in Exeter, Devonshire, where also Sir Walter Raleigh often visited, known more commonly for the founding of his lost American colony. In America, Captain John Smith became the first American to bring the knowledge of coffee to the New World.³

Get News and Coffee Black or Brown in Merry London Town
During the Commonwealth in London, free speech was permitted, but soon after the restoration of King Charles II in 1660, coffee became a persecuted drink. Ironically, the discussions and Royalists clubs under the Commonwealth spread dissatisfaction with the status quo, and helped bring about a more responsive administration. The House of Commons in 1660 associated coffee with “other outlandish drinks,” and put a duty of four pence per gallon on it. By 1663, English coffee house proprietors were required to obtain licenses for their practices.⁴ Fearing that free intercourse would undermine his authority, King Charles II issued a proclamation that prohibited, “all manner of persons, that they or any of them do not presume… to keep any Public Coffee House, or to utter or sell by retail, in his, her or their house or houses… any Coffee, Chocolet, Sherbett or Tea, as they will answer the contrary at their utmost perils…”⁵ Public opinion was aroused so strongly against the act, that Charles revoked it not two weeks afterwards.⁶

Charles had good cause to fear coffee. A pamphleteer in 1665 reflected that coffee house society of the Commonwealth was diverse and sober. Club members created ballot boxes to vote on differing opinions, and the Coffee Club of the Rota led the way in debating and disseminating truly republican sentiments of representative government in England.⁷
The drink brought with it an etiquette of civility. For instance, several 17th century coffee houses displayed the following rules on their walls:

Enter, Sirs, freely, but first, if you pleas,
Peruse our civil orders, which are these…
Pre-eminence of place none here should mind,
But take the next fit seat that he can find:
Nor need any if finer persons come,
Rise up to assign to them his room;
To limit men’s expense, we think not fair,
But let him forfeit twelve-pence that shall swear…
Let mirth be innocent, and each man see
That all his jests without reflection be…⁸

Over time, these rules were not enforced, and through the 18th century coffee houses and taverns became less distinguishable. However, coffee houses of this period took on a more commercial use, with each trade choosing its own house and individual patrons defining the character of each house. Eventually, the nobility and gentry turned the coffee house into a plaything, and the social rules of civil equality deteriorated by the beginning of the 19th century.⁹

Before their demise, the coffee houses of London were the homes of Britain’s famous “wits,” or authors, poets, and literary critics. Among the most notable houses were St. James’s, Will’s, Garraway’s, Slaughter’s, White’s, Button’s, Tom’s, the Grecian, Don Saltero’s, and Lloyd’s. Members of Parliament and other Whig sympathizers met at St. James, and many political debates between Whigs and Tories took place there.¹⁰ John Dryden, the court poet, visited both Convent Garden and Will’s, and at the Grecian, Fleetwood Shephard related a very singular criticism that Dryden made of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, “This man… cuts us all out, and the ancients, too.”¹¹ Daniel Defoe visited many of the London coffee houses whenever money permitted him. Joseph Addison, Davenant, Carey, Steele, and Philips all met at Button’s, as did Pope for a time before leaving it. Another literary club met at Turk’s Head coffee house which included Dr. Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Boswell, Burke, Garrick, historian Gibbon, economist Adam Smith, and the famous painter Sir Joshua Reynolds. Some of Britain’s most influential thinkers of the 17th and18th centuries developed their ideas in the coffee houses of London.¹²

Oh, Plenty of Coffee there be for American Liberty
In America, coffee houses were taverns where coffee was also sold.¹³ To drink coffee was to resist tyranny. With the monopolizing of the American tea trade by the East India Company and the tea tax, the people of Boston drank coffee in place of tea, while Americans in New York, Pennsylvania, and the colonies of Charleston deemed coffee “king of the American breakfast table.”¹⁴ New England coffee houses were places of meeting for dissenters and republicans; those most interested in religious and political liberty during the 17th and 18th centuries. Then there was the King’s Head in Boston, where crown officers and richer citizens socialized. The Indian Queen in Boston became a favorite among just such persons.¹⁵ The Green Dragon, being situated contrary to popular opinion in Boston and not in the Shire of Middle Earth, was as Daniel Webster claimed “headquarters of the Revolution.”¹⁶ Paul Revere, James Otis, John Adams, and Warren all met in the Green Dragon to advance freedom in America. Otis’s brilliance as a champion for independence was abruptly hindered when his political enemies lured him into the British Coffee House and beat him so badly that he never fully recovered his mental abilities. Just outside the Bunch of Grapes in Boston, a Philadelphia delegate read the Declaration of Independence to an enthusiastic crowd below. When in Philadelphia, Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson all frequented the City Tavern, later renamed the Merchants Coffee House. Much of the planning behind the American War for Independence took place in coffee houses.¹⁷

Please Pass the Coffee Tray for Liberty Today
Coffee has been quite the drink among us interns this summer at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. As an American, a native of Michigan and its cold winters, and someone actively advancing liberty with the Mackinac Center, I’m proud to lift a mug of coffee to our heritage of freedom. Not only did the coffee house foster a code of gentility in old London, but it also provided a civil resort for the hatching of the greatest human endeavor of modern history, the founding the United States of America on the principles of liberty and equality under the law.

Notes

1. William Harrison Ukers, All About Coffee, (The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company: New York, 1922), 25-26.

2. Ibid, 26.

3. Ibid, 28, 41-42, 105.

4. Ibid, 54, 59, 72.

5. Ibid, 72-73.

6. Ibid, 73.

7. Ibid, 59.

8. Ibid, 60-61.

9. Ibid, 61-62, 75.

10. Ibid, 81.

11. Ibid, 574-575, 584.

12. Ibid, 79-81.

13. Ibid, 126.

14. Ibid, 106-107.

15. Ibid, 107, 109-110.

16. Ibid, 110.

17. Ibid, 110-111, 129-130.

Bibliography

Ukers, William Harrison. All About Coffee. The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company: New York, 1922.

Image Source

Image of Green Dragon Tavern1 from Wikipedia

Milton Friedman and Historical Landmarks

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

Time flies, and with it the memory of the late economist Milton Friedman, who would have been 99 years old this year. However, we at the Mackinac Center and the Foundation for Educational Choice hope to revive Friedman’s legacy by hosting some lectures this Friday on his monetary policy. It is also the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, an issue encompassing a context for economic analysis.

Friedman’s free-market principles are vital to comprehending monetary supply during the Civil War. An entire generation of brothers hammered their plowshares into swords. As Northern factories shaped rifles and Southern farmers smelt bullets, the strain on local economies was enormous. Like a plague of locusts, the “terrible swift sword” burned through the Virginian Shenandoah Valley and across Georgia, destroying Southern crops and vegetation. Along the Western front, raiders on both sides wreaked havoc on the civilian populace. In the words of a song, “not now for songs of a nation's wrongs, not the groans of starving labor; Let the rifle ring and the bullet sing to the clash of the flashing sabre!” The elephant in the room was big government, as usual. Both North and South inflated their money supplies, causing a rise in prices. Southern currency especially suffered a significant decrease in value due to the printing of excess Confederate money. As was apparent to Friedman, inflation is most often the fault of central banks, like those during the Civil War, that print more money than reflects actual market demand.

As a historian, I have always found Friedman’s work to be historically pertinent. His view of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as an era of prosperity deserves more academic acceptance than it gets. I agree with Friedman’s impression that America during the Victorian era was a beacon to all those persecuted peoples throughout the earth who wished simply for the freedom to work hard for their existence. It was not a “gilded age” as historians want to paint it but a golden one. Friedman’s love for America’s heritage and his presumption of good will to all people, even his enemies, are his two qualities I admire most.

This Friday will be a day of both celebration and solemn reflection, as we remember Friedman’s legacy and the many thousands of lives lost during the Civil War. History often repeats itself in various forms. If we do not apply absolute principles to past events, we will be subject to repeating the same mistakes that history contains. We must remember those who are important in the history of our freedom, and reclaim our historical landmarks of liberty.

Image of CivilWarFifeandDrum from Wikipedia

A Tribute to the Second Battle of the Marne

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

As we approach July 17th, the landmark date for the beginning of the Second Battle of the Marne, I thought it appropriate to wrap up the World War I theme. I’ve composed a poem, perhaps from the perspective of the French or British soldiers during the Allied counter offensive of the battle, in which the troops were expected to abandon their trenches and fight a less conventional war (Neiberg 40:10). American reinforcements are now numbering about twenty two to twenty three thousand soldiers a day, giving the French more leeway room for ambitious tactics (Ibid 59:36). My poem gets at the contradictions of the war and hints at future problems that proved all too true in our post world war era. It looks back to the 19th century Christian world for its inspiration of childhood, including the Victorian concept for an imaginative and chivalrous youth. Like Chesterton’s Ballad of the White Horse, it is an attack on Nihilism, although more pertinent to the 20th and 21st centuries. Below are some video tributes.

The Men at the Marne

Leave our trenches and coldly fight

To ascend the world of death and light?

And all because more men as we

Now come from a far country?

The cost of men to save more men;

Which is more costly? None now ken.

To war, from ditch to earth our height;

We fight our act; and act our fight;

The plan from those whose ends are met

Without a thought to cost or debt.

So sacrifice untallied be,

Until by war, from war, we’re free.

What lurked behind clouds of glory,

An endless war; who could foresee?

Only the wise, but they spoke not,

And with sorrow left to their lot

The foolish who’s counsel it was

Within a year to win the cause.

From death, more hard than earth their toil,

They sooner learned to hide in soil.

Now, weeping, wailing it seems,

Pours from the guns that slay the dreams,

Of a generation young but old

Between worlds modern and more bold.

More men, less care; more life, less life,

If ever we win to lose our strife.

But such a world that would arise,

Might wage new war within the skies.

Empire ends. What will next be;

Harder masters or liberty?

Time of troubles, wherein the right

Is just as wrong as wrong is trite;

Where law is law that law is not,

From naught is naught, and naught our lot?

For childhood once more we would

Stand as we stand for truth and good.

A video tribute to the Second Battle of the Marne


This was an earlier battle called Passchendaele, but it has some actual original footage worth watching.



Work Cited:
Neiberg, Michael S. The Second Battle of the Marne: The Turning Point of 1918. US Army War College. Carlisle Barracks, Carlisle, PA. 20 August 2008. Lecture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aey6nVhZpcU

Image of General gouraud french army world war i machinegun marne 1918 from Wikipedia