Priestley in America, 1794-1804

by Edgar Fahs Smith

about his activities during the decade (1794-1804) he lived in America. Isn't it fair to declare that the great majority of chemical students think of Priestley as working only in England, his native land, and never give thought to his efforts during the last ten years of his life? It has been said that he probably inspired and incited the young chemists of this country to renewed endeavor in their science upon his advent here. There is no question that he influenced James Woodhouse and his particular confreres most profoundly, as he did a younger generation, represented by Robert Hare. Priestley again set in rapid motion chemical research in the young Republic.[1] He must therefore have done something himself. What was it? Is it worth while to learn the character of this work? Modern tendencies are antagonistic to the past. Many persons care nothing for history. It is a closed book. They do not wish it to be opened, and yet the present is built upon the early work. In reviewing the development of chemistry in this country everything, from the first happening here, should be laid upon the table for study and reflection. Thus believing, it will not be out of place to seek some light upon the occupation of the discoverer of oxygen after he came to live among us—with our fathers.

Noble-hearted, sympathetic Thomas E. Thorpe wrote:

If, too, as you draw up to the fire 'betwixt the gloaming and the mirk' of these dull, cold November days, and note the little blue flame playing round the red-hot coals, think kindly of Priestley, for he first told us of the nature of that flame when in the exile to which our forefathers drove him.

Right there, "the nature of the flame," is one thing Priestley did explain in America. He discovered carbon monoxide—not in England, but in "exile."[2] It may not be an epoch-making observation. There are not many such and those who make them are not legion in number. It was an interesting fact, with a very definite value, which has persisted through many succeeding decades and is so matter-of-fact that rarely does one arise to ask who first discovered this simple oxide of carbon.

Priestley was a man of strong human sympathies. He loved to mingle with men and exchange thoughts. Furthermore, Priestley was a minister—a preacher. He was ordained while at Warrington, and gloried in the fact that he was a

Dissenting Minister. It was not his devotion to science which sent him "into exile." His advanced thought along political and religious lines, his unequivocal utterances on such subjects,—proved to be the rock upon which he shipwrecked. It has been said—

By some strange irony of fate this man, who was by nature one of the most peaceable and peace-loving of men, singularly calm and dispassionate, not prone to disputation or given to wrangling, acquired the reputation of being perhaps the most cantankerous man of his time....

There is a wide-spread impression that Priestley was a chemist. This is the answer which invariably comes from the lips of students upon being interrogated concerning him. The truth is that Priestley's attention was only turned to chemistry when in the thirties by Matthew Turner, who lectured on this subject in the Warrington Academy in which Priestley labored as a teacher. So he was rather advanced in life before the science he enriched was revealed to him in the experimental way. Let it again be declared, he was a teacher. His thoughts were mostly those of a teacher. Education occupied him. He wrote upon it.

The old Warrington Academy was a "hot-bed of liberal dissent," and there were few subjects upon which he did not publicly declare himself as a dissenter.