New England and the Bavarian Illuminati

by Vernon Stauffer

1. RAPID DISINTEGRATION OF PURITANISM AFTER THE REVOLUTION

Back of the War of Independence was the less absorbing but scarcely less harrowing contest of the French and Indian War. Thus for a period of fully thirty years the people of New England had been subjected to the rough and unsettling experiences of military life. This consideration, taken in connection with the fact that a growing declension from the standards of the Puritan fathers had been the occasion of increasing comment and concern from the middle of the seventeenth century on,[4] will make explicable the fact that the average citizen of New England emerged from the Revolutionary struggle with the edge of his conscience dulled. The secularizing spirit of the post-Revolutionary period, when questions of national organization and unity, of the rehabilitation of commerce and industry, and of international relations and policies were foremost in the thought of the day, left marks upon the human spirit over which stern and rigorous adherents to the old order wept copiously and long. For one thing, the lives of the men and women of New England were never again to be as barren of diversified interests as they had been in the past. The successful issue of the struggle for political independence had so enlarged the mind of the common man that he of necessity entertained considerations of private desire and of public policy which he formerly would have rejected entirely. The avenue of retreat to the ancient simplicity and seclusion was forever closed.

The soundness of this estimate of the rapid disintegration of Puritanism will be apparent if the changing attitude of the people on the subject of theatrical entertainments is considered.[5] As early as the year 1750 the General Court of Massachusetts had found it necessary to enact legislation to prevent stage-plays and other theatrical entertainments.[6] That Puritan standards dominated the situation at the time is evidenced both by the reasons advanced by the framers of the law for its enactment and by the stringent penalties attached to it. The justification of the measure was found in the economic waste, the discouraging effect upon industry and frugality, and the deleterious effect upon morality and religion which stage-plays were believed to exercise. The penalties imposed called for a fine of twenty pounds upon any owner of property who permitted his property to be used for such purposes, while a fine of five pounds was to be assessed upon any actor or spectator found in attendance upon or participating in any such exercises where more than twenty persons were assembled together.[7] How meekly the craving for pleasurable excitement bowed its head in submission, there is no evidence to show; but it is very clear that as the century drew toward its close the people of Massachusetts began to manifest a decidedly intractable spirit with respect to legislative control of their amusements and pleasures.

The days of the Revolution supplied thrills of their own, and the colonists gave themselves in devotion to their great task-at-arms, with little desire for the amenities of life. Accordingly, when the Continental Congress, on October 16, 1778, passed a resolution deprecating every species of public entertainment which would be likely to divert the minds of the people from the considerations of public defence and the safeguarding of their liberties,[8] there was nothing singular about the episode, and we may believe readily that the people of New England, fortified by their grim spirit of determination and their long tradition of self-denial, in no sense fell short of the general standard. But by the year 1790 the people living in and about Boston had come to a very different state of mind. In that year by petition to the General Court they sought to have the prohibitory act of 1750 revoked.[9] The incident has importance because it registers a determined effort to feed desires whose hunger-pains had grown insistent.

The history of this particular effort to remove legislative restrictions in the way of harmless amusements is illuminating. The petition referred to received scant consideration at the hands of the legislators of Massachusetts. The following year certain gentlemen of Boston, to the number of thirty-nine, presented a memorial to the selectmen of that city, requesting that a vote of the citizens be taken on the questions of permitting the erection and use of a building for theatrical entertainments, and the issuing of instructions to Boston’s representatives in the legislature calling for the repeal of the obnoxious law. Apparently the plebiscite was not taken; but the general question was debated in town meeting. A committee was appointed to prepare instructions. The committee reported favorably concerning the proposed instructions to Boston’s representatives in the legislature, and these representatives later undertook the task of bringing a majority of the members of the General Court to the more liberal point of view; not, however, with immediate success. Meanwhile, to the scandal of Governor John Hancock, and doubtless many another advocate of decency and order, theatrical entertainments, “under the Stile & Appellation of Moral Lectures,”[10] flourished openly in Boston.[11]

It was during the progress of the debate in the legislature over the proposed repeal of the law against theatrical entertainments that John Gardiner, one of Boston’s representatives in that body, delivered himself of sentiments touching what he styled “the illiberal, unmanly, and despotic act” of 1750. His speech gave evidence of how fresh and independent the judgments of some minds had come to be. Addressing the presiding officer, Gardiner said:

Sir! I really and truly venerate; I would rather say, I sincerely and almost enthusiastically admire the many great and splendid virtues of our renowned puritan ancestors … ; but still, Sir, they were only men; and, like all other men, were fallible; liable to frailties, to prejudices, and to error. Some errors, and some unjust prejudices, they undoubtedly had. Would to God a veil was drawn over all their absurd prejudices which, like spots in the sun, tend in some small degree to bedarken and obscure the otherwise truly-resplendent glories of their character. One of these prejudices, in my opinion, was their inveterate opposition and abhorrent aversion to the theatre.[12]

That Gardiner was the spokesman of a very considerable number of citizens is demonstrated by the fact that on March 28, 1793, a bill drawn to take the place of the older legislation against theatrical amusements and granting specifically to the people of Boston the right to erect a theatre and to have “stage plays performed under certain regulations and restrictions,” was enacted by the legislature of Massachusetts.[13] It is very evident that public sentiment had veered round to a radically new and different view respecting the place and function of the theatre. So much so, indeed, that some who sought to shape the thought and determination of the times recommended the establishment of the theatre as the only possible way of drawing the desires and interests of the people away from grosser and more injurious excitements toward which, it was believed, an alarming growth of frivolity and lack of moral concern was rapidly sweeping the people of New England.[14]

This alleged declension of morals may be more vitally viewed from the standpoint of the subject of intemperance. Convivial habits were a fixed part of the New England character, and the sin of drunkenness was as old as the settlement of the country. The practice of brewing was numbered among the employments of the first settlers.[15] Rum was generally used by the people, and the commercial life of the colonies was inextricably woven with its importation and exportation.[16] Cider was the native New England beverage.[17] The importation of wine was large from the first.[18] A general tendency in the direction of increased habits of drinking was to be expected.[19]

The period of the Revolution made its own special contribution to the gravity of the case. The soldiers of the Continental armies received regular rations of liquor,[20] and at the expiration of the war carried back to their respective communities the habits of intemperance which in many cases their army life had strengthened. Rum was more and more coming to be regarded as one of the necessities of life;[21] and with the revival of industry and commerce after the war the business of distilling mounted rapidly to amazing proportions.[22]

A growing uneasiness over the social and economic consequences involved in the spread of alcoholism is apparent. Under the date of July 29, 1789, the Reverend Jeremy Belknap, minister of the church in Long Lane, Boston, is found writing thus to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Philadelphia’s celebrated physician and early apostle of temperance reform:

With respect to spirituous liquors I believe some good has been done, but much more remains to be done. The distilleries here are so ready a source of gain, that, till the auri sacra fames shall cease to be a ruling passion, I fear there will no end be put to them. The demand from abroad I am told increases, particularly from the north of Europe, & while the stills are kept going there will be a large home consumption. In an excursion of about 80 miles into the country a few weeks since, I met many loads of pot & pearl ashes coming down, & on my return the teams which I met were loaded with dry fish, hogsheads of salt, & barrels of rum. The thirst for spirits in the back country is so ardent, that in the fall & winter they will sell their wheat for this sort of pay, & then in the spring and summer following go 40 or 50 miles after bread. However, we do what we can by way of precept & example, & we do not intend to be discouraged.[23]

The correspondence which the Reverend Bulkley Olcott, minister of the church in Charlestown, New Hampshire, had with Belknap is of like import.[24] He had tried to obtain accurate statistical information from the Excise Master as to the quantity of spirituous liquors consumed in his county, and had not succeeded. However, it is a matter of his personal knowledge that many good estates have been squandered through drinking, and much time, labor, and health, and many lives destroyed in the same way. He recognizes that many concurring circumstances come to the aid of spirituous liquors in working fatal results; still the general abuse of drink is declared to be one of the heaviest and most threatening evils under which the country groans.

The taverns of the day on all public occasions,[25] and frequently in the ordinary course of their business, were filled with gambling, carousing, drinking crowds. The extent to which the great occasions of state were seized upon as opportunities for open and shameless drinking had become a scandal. The custom of granting a certain allowance of rum per day to laborers was honored in at least some sections of the country.[26] Accidental deaths due to drunkenness, and cases of suicide and insanity traceable to the same cause, were frequently reported.[27] All classes of society, young and old, rich and poor, men and women, fell victims to the great scourge. The colleges were not immune. At Yale, wine and liquors were kept in the rooms of many of the students and intemperance was one of the commonest of student faults.[28] Clergymen, though generally restraining themselves from gross indulgence, were accustomed to feel that the spirit of conviviality and the discussion of the affairs of church and state went hand in hand;[29] and now and then the bounds of propriety were overstepped.

Other unfavorable aspects of the situation may be found in the habits of card-playing and gambling which everywhere prevailed, and in the frequent allusions to instances of social vice and illegitimacy with which the pages of the diary of such a careful observer as the Reverend William Bentley were laden.[30]

The opinion that the social life of the period was desperately unsound was accepted without question by many a so-called interpreter of the times. The observations which President Timothy Dwight, of Yale, made in his Century Sermon[31] expressed the views of many minds. Dating “the first considerable change in the religious character of the people of this country” with the beginning of the French and Indian War,[32] he continued:

The officers and soldiers of the British armies, then employed in this country, although probably as little corrupted as those of most armies, were yet loose patterns of opinion and conduct, and were unhappily copied by considerable numbers of our own countrymen, united with them in military life. These, on their return, spread the infection through those around them. Looser habits of thinking began then to be adopted, and were followed, as they always are, by looser conduct. The American war increased these evils. Peace had not, at the commencement of this war, restored the purity of life which existed before the preceding war. To the depravation still remaining was added a long train of immoral doctrines and practices, which spread into every corner of the country. The profanation of the Sabbath, before unusual, profaneness of language, drunkenness, gambling, and lewdness were exceedingly increased; and, what is less commonly remarked, but is perhaps not less mischievous than any of them, a light, vain method of thinking concerning sacred things and a cold, contemptuous indifference toward every moral and religious subject.[33]

But this sweeping judgment of Yale’s president, together with the specific explanation of the situation which he offered, are to be checked up by other and less pessimistic considerations. That there was much pertaining to the customs and manners of the times to be deplored, is not to be denied. On the other hand, that society in New England, as the eighteenth century drew toward its close, was actually lapsing from soundness and virtue to the extent that its fundamental views and habits were being altered, is far from clear. Observers who spoke to the contrary listened chiefly to the murmurs of the shallows and were unresponsive to the deeps.

The fact is, new ideals and new forces were working upward in the common life of the age. The new sense of freedom which the War of Independence ushered in, the steadily growing prosperity of the people, the development of social intimacies as the population of the country increased, the intrusion and growing influence of foreign ideas and customs, the steadily diminishing domination of the clergy—these all tended to inaugurate a new order which clashed more or less violently with the old. The memories of the old Puritan régime were still sufficiently vivid to make every lapse from liberty into license appear ominous in the extreme.

A general relaxing of social customs expressed itself in manifold ways over all those areas where actual stagnation had not come to pass; but this loosening was by no means characterized by deep-seated coarseness or general immorality.[34] The people had begun to claim for themselves some relaxation, and hence to amuse and satisfy themselves in the light of their enlarged conceptions of the freedom and privileges of life. On the whole, their enjoyments and amusements were such as characterize a state of healthy-mindedness at a time of marked transition.

In the main, the condition of the people was deplorable for what they lacked in the way of incitements to pleasurable and helpful social and cultural employments rather than because of what they possessed.[35] When it is recalled how considerable was the dearth of material for mental occupation; how undeveloped, for example, were music and painting;[36] how the newspapers and magazines of the day supplied little or nothing of a constructive or inspiring character; how science was almost totally undeveloped,[37] libraries few in number and destitute of stimulating material, the colleges for the most part mooning the years away over insipid and useless abstractions and dogmatic formulations, the wonder is that the rebound against Puritanism, in this period of intense political excitement and the growing secularization of thought, was not tenfold more violent and subversive than it was.[38]

The impression communicated by this view is heightened when it is recalled that the struggle for political independence not only had affected profoundly the status of the people of New England with respect to both their internal and their external relations; it had also made substantial and significant modifications in the very constitution of society itself. When the reorganization of affairs after the Revolutionary struggle was over, it became increasingly apparent that the control of the forces and institutions of society in New England was in the hands of new leaders and arbiters. The aristocracy of unquestioned conservatism which had all society under its thumb before the Revolution, had been swept away generally in the flood of that epochal event. Up from the small towns and villages of the country to the great centers, to Boston particularly, came a small army, made up largely of squires and gentry,[39] to establish a new but less secure sovereignty, to assume control of the social and political forces of the day, and, more or less unaware of the precise significance of the turn of events, to measure its strength against those new forces of democracy which in New England, as no place else in the nation, were to find themselves compelled to fight a long and stubborn battle to secure their emancipation.

Assuming without question the direction of affairs, this new aristocracy, after the fashion of the old leaders who were gone, addressed itself to the task of social, political, and religious control.[40] Manifestly the situation was big with possibilities with respect to the effect to be produced upon the thought and habits of the people. There they dwelt in their spacious houses,[41] these modern aristocrats and autocrats of fashion and custom, by no means rolling in luxury and idleness, yet claiming and enjoying a degree of relaxation and social pleasure vastly more lavish than that accorded to their plebeian neighbors, occupying themselves with their parties, their weddings and dances,[42] their refinements of dress[43] and behavior, but with little or no disposition to abandon themselves to scandalous conduct.

The constant challenge of the political necessities of the times, it may be urged, was altogether too compelling to admit of any such looseness. Still, one cannot scan the newspapers of the period, or read the story of the social commerce of the times as it pieces itself together out of the private records and correspondence of the day, or listen even to the pulpit’s copious flood of denunciations,[44] without a feeling of mingled admiration and astonishment that in an age everywhere characterized by upheaval and ferment there was really as little of shameless and wanton conduct in New England as the records of the period reveal. It cannot but be viewed as a notable tribute to the essential soundness and nobility of that type of moral and religious culture which Puritanism had supplied from the first that the New England character should be able to pass through a period of profound social readjustment, of the discarding of old value judgments and the adoption of new, such as came near the close of the eighteenth century, and this without serious loss of moral power and prestige. Manifestly, whatever hollowness and insincerity Puritanism may have developed in other lands and times, it did not so cramp and fetter the human spirit in New England as to render it incapable of self-guidance when the old restraints and limitations were no more.[45]

Now that its controlling spirit of gravity and provincialism was being replaced by a general temper of comparative light-heartedness and open-mindedness, of unaffected enjoyment of the good things of life, of the acceptance of standards far more natural than those of the earlier day, the transition was accomplished with a relative absence of accompanying instances of moral lapse and disaster nothing less than remarkable. A considerable amount of the boisterousness and heat of the day over which clerical Jeremiahs and others of like conservative leanings ceased not to pour out their complaints,[46] is explicable on the ground of the growing habit of the mass of the people to exercise the rights of citizenship through direct participation in the affairs of the day. For far more significant than any evidence of moral blindness and perversity on the part of the people in general is the fact that a great, crowding, hungry democracy was knocking at the gates of the old aristocratic régime and insistently urging the consideration of its rights.