American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with R. Blakeslee Gilpin, part 4 of 5

Yeah, so as I was saying, just before we get the heart of each other, if you could just give the briefest nutshell kind of introduction to Calvin. I mean, Calvinism is a branch of Christianity that is obviously attributed to John Calvin, who is the originator of this religion. It's really, in the American context, is best personified by Jonathan Edwards, senior in junior, who are sort of the mouthpieces of Calvinism in the American context, who are, you know, they're establishing this eternally sinful human with a righteous and sort of remote God. God always has a plan for you. There's a predestiny for you, but he's not going to actually reveal that to you in a concrete way. So there's the sort of the eternal struggle that a Calvinist is going through. Really began with John Calvin, but in an American context, is this all the Jonathan Edwards' senior in junior, or really the kind of the most legendary religious thinkers in the United States,

are putting their stamp on what that means, which is this context of always trying for salvation, but never getting there. I wonder if there's a couple of questions that I would have. It would be, you know, you mentioned earlier that it disappeared later on, but it's a Protestant religion that is... Oh, yeah, yeah. Of that time, and the predestination, I guess, is a key to it, right? You're kind of searching for God. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that the thing that you want to understand about Calvinism fits into what's going on with American religion. I mean, you've got the first grade awakening, the second grade awakening. These are these moments in American history when there is just this... It is also kind of incomprehensible to a modern American, this religious flowering. And by that, I mean, that groups, that new religions, new sects of Christianity are just being created overnight. Hundreds, if not thousands, Quakers, Shakers, Calvinists.

You know, I mean, there's Baptists. You know, there's this every sect of Protestant Christianity that is sort of exploding and is being created. And these groups all have, you know, very different understandings and beliefs. The Calvinists, I would say, are one of the more hard-line in terms of their understanding of God and a human being's context in the sort of search for meaning. You know, I mean, it's very harsh. It's very...it's very grim. You're never going to get salvation. You're always going to be trying to figure out what God's plan for you is. What God's predetermined fate for you will be. Thank you. We can't actually say sects on PBS. I'll cut it out. So, Honda, Harriet Beecher. So we pick her up in 33. What was she like as a young woman, what did you get in a room with Harriet Beecher?

I always love this. I mean, it's kind of the idea of, you know, who would you want to party with from history? I'm not sure. I would choose any of these people. Harriet Beecher still. Most notably. But, I mean, I think the thing that we want to understand about Harriet Beecher still is that her abolitionism as it develops is an abolitionism of vision, whereas Brown's is one of reaction. You know, reaction to life circumstances. Harriet Beecher still is just a much more creative person. And this is something that's true from the earliest sort of accounts of her that we have mostly from her father, Lyman, who's this sort of prominent religious scholar and figure. And she grew up in Litchfield, Connecticut. And this is eight miles as the crow flies from where John Brown is born. This is sort of a place where these beliefs are at least sort of common. They're not necessarily going to be passionate beliefs, but they're going to be held by most people in that area. And Harriet Beecher still is a little girl.

You know, she's a very creative person. She's very bookish. And her father, you know, really praises her intelligence over and over again. Says, you know, this, if only was on Henry, who ends up, you know, becoming one of the most famous Americans of the 19th century. If only was on Henry, we're like, we're more like Harriet. You know, this would be, it would be, it would be great. Because Harriet, unfortunately, is a woman. And you know, what is she going to do as a woman? But I mean, there's sort of evidence there of how creative she's a seeker. You know, and not the same kind of seeker that John Brown is. She's a seeker of a more creative or spiritual truth that's not so grim. You know, Calvinism is not as serious as sort of a prominent in the Beecher household, as it is in this, as in the Brown household. It's much more of sort of a mild strain. It's informing everything, certainly. But it's not a miss sort of grave way that it takes over in the Brown House. We probably, that's not to compare her with Brown.

Because we've got our, well, we've got our five people. Right, right, right. And so we won't necessarily have heard of Brown too much. We've got our Beecher and so on. Which, I get the impression she was almost what we call depressive when she was young. The formal letter, she, she, she, she, she's maybe a typical teenager kind of thing. Right, I mean, I think, I think the thing is, this is probably true about the entire Stowe household, or the Beechers, but then later the Stowe's, is that there's this sort of depressive strain to their lives, which is strange. I mean, they're, you know, prominent, successful people among them. And even when they are, you know, enjoying these successes, there's that sense that things aren't entirely right. You could call it depression. I'm, I'm more inclined to think about it that she was really searching for something. And it had to do with her relationship with God. But it was more of a, she viewed that as a relationship.

And that's the really, I don't, I don't think that many other folks, I mean, this is something that really developed in the 1830s and much more later on in the 1840s and 50s. It was spiritualism and things like that that still really understood this as a relationship that could be mediated through visions, through spiritualism. Things that are going to be very intangible to other people. I mean, it's going to, it's something basically entirely within yourself. But it's, it's, it's, it's something you talk about, you know, that I saw this deceased relative or, you know, I have a vision from God to do this. These are things that would, that seem crazy to us now. But I think we're very much a part of her life and totally acceptable. And I think that that, but those took on a really depressive strain because she was often struggling financially. She was trying to figure out, you know, what God intended for her. But it's much more of a thing where she can ask questions of God, which is not necessarily a strict Calvinist understanding of that relationship.

She viewed this much more as, you know, an open phone line that could be mediating through various visions rather than this sort of a closed door where you're always seeking God's plan without ever really knowing it. So, what was the, the fate of the future of Householdry? And what was it, was it telling you a bit about it fine? Well, so Lyman, Lyman Beacher was a, you know, prominent religious figure in the, in the Connecticut region. And he was, I mean, he was raised in a religious scholarly way in a, in a pretty strict Calvinist church, pretty strict Calvinist upbringing. But his understanding of that really kind of departed from this really harsh understanding of that. And he was much more, I think there was a much more prominent element of Puritanism in his understanding of religion. And what I mean by that is Puritanism as a reform as something that you can be working towards perfection.

And that that's an active process. He also was just a humorous guy and he was well read. So he didn't just read religious literature. He read, you know, poets and he read fiction. You know, he was sort of dabbling in other things and he had a sense of humor. I mean, we're supposed, it's kind of an, anathema for a Calvinist, you know, he kind of was moving away from that even in the 1830s. I mean, it's strange though, you know, he's actually the figure or one of the key figures that William Boy Garrison says, sites as the example. This is why we should be abandoning organized religion because Lyman Beacher wasn't, didn't really take a stand on anything other than drinking or gambling. You know, he didn't believe that slavery was right but he didn't think that we should do anything. It was pretty low on his list of things to do. And so, you know, this is, again, his understanding of God, his understanding of his relationship with God is much more, there's much more fluidity to it rather than this sort of very strict, you know, relationship where you're always trying to discern but never finding out. I think Lyman, believe you could actually discern that by always working towards perfecting yourself.

That's much more of a practical sort of daily belief that you can sort of move in the right direction. Yeah, well, I was going to say she seems like the most new testament of her. Oh, definitely. I mean, Harry Beacher's still, I mean, I don't know if this is because she's a woman. I mean, I certainly probably plays into it, but there are also events in her early life. I mean, there's, again, death is a huge part of her daily experience, you know, the intimacy of death, siblings dying and so forth. That she really gets this much more ethereal, peaceful, rather than a vengeful understanding of religion. And I think that that's real, that is completely new testament, not old testament. She's really understands Christ is a peaceful and benevolent figure who wants you to do right. That God has these things. I mean, if you do good, that good will come. That's really, that's moving very far away from Calvinism. You know, you're moving towards it. It's much more spiritual.

And it's a belief that can be mediated on a more consistent basis by sort of doing good acts and thinking good thoughts and all of those things, you know, contributing to the good of society. That's something that, I mean, that's Puritanism, but being applied to a religious context, I think Beacher's still, I mean, she's really on that page. It's not such a broadsword centric. No, I don't think so. She's not thinking about taking on the broadsword. So, what was this may not be in your wheelhouse, but do you ever sense what Cincinnati was like in the 1830s? Definitely. I mean, I think, well, Ohio generally is again, something we can't really conceive of now. It's a frontier, I mean, especially in the 1830s. I mean, people are moving there to, I mean, to move westward. We think about westward movement like the covered wagons, but Ohio is really, you know, you're getting out there on the American frontier in the 1820s and 1830s. I mean, Cincinnati of all the places in Ohio is pretty conservative. I mean, like most urban areas, you tend to get a landed sort of gentry going on.

I mean, any American urban setting, whether that's Boston or Manhattan or Cincinnati. So, you've got a pretty conservative element, you know, in the city's font, the city's founding fathers and this sort of male political elite in Cincinnati is pretty conservative. But you've got this constant influx of people like the Beachers, who are coming west to, I mean, in Lyman's case to sort of take over the presidency of the Wayne Theological Seminary. This is going to be, that's an influx of radicalism, at least compared to the people who are already in Cincinnati. So, that's really going to change the flavor of what's going on and you start getting the arrival of these sort of abolitionist elements or just free thinking people. People who are going to be, I mean, in Lyman's case, you know, always campaigning against avoiding church on Sundays or gambling or drinking. You know, those are campaigns against the status quo because those are all acceptable for people who are like old line political elite. That's going to sort of mix things up in Cincinnati and I think that's really the scene when Harriet arrives that she sort of falls into is a mixture of those elements.

You know, a new generation coming along that's mostly Eastern transplants that are going to sort of change things up. I mean, he says, kind of, this is where the battle for America's hold is going to be. It's a battle with Catholics. Yeah, I mean, that hook. Yeah, Lyman Beecher's whole thing about, I mean, he is anti-Catholic to the core. I mean, this is like a real fight for him. And I mean, this is something, again, that modern Americans I don't think have much sort of handle on is how anti-Catholic just nearly everybody who wasn't Catholic was. You know, these are the target of people's eye or Catholics for some reason. You know, this is what Protestants feel like they need to do something about. And so Lyman definitely, you know, the moves that people make are seem inscrutable to us. It's like, oh, I left a job in Boston and I went to, you know, some backwater in Ohio. I mean, that's essentially what some of these people are doing in Theodore Well.

Most families are going to do this, you know, when he comes out, these people are just moving to this place. Why would you go to Cincinnati when you could be in Boston or New York or some place where you're going to be sort of among your kind? It's because they see it as the place to fight. And they love, they love investing their lives with this drama, with a kind of biblical meaning, or just, you know, a Christ-like struggle. You know, this is the place where the battle for America's soul is going to be fought. Well, that's a great thing to be participating in. We want to make ourselves at to be participating in that process. The patriotism and faith are so intertwined. I mean, they remain so, I guess. I mean, I guess it just speaks to what we're talking about earlier. Definitely. Well, you can't, I mean, this is the thing. You cannot separate what is going on. You stop somebody, you stop a settler in 1830, and you say, where are you going? He says Ohio, and you say, why are you going? That answer is not, we think, oh, it's going to be religion, it's going to be economic opportunity, politics.

These things are, they are so intertwined, they're inextricable. So basically, you're going out because it is part of your Christian mission. Okay, so we've got a religious element. But part of that Christian mission is this mission to pursue the vision of the American experiment, the vision of the American Republic. What that vision requires you to do is to spread this belief, and particularly for white northerners, okay? That is a belief in free soil, okay? That is a belief in the opportunity for free white, the keyword is white here, free white laborers to basically have free reign over the land, okay? And then they want to make money. I mean, they're like America, that's been true in America since the beginning. So you've got these three things, but you can't separate them. You can't sort of take one out. They're all sort of boosting the other ones onward. I mean, they're all feeding into the same desire to go west, to go west, and to make the west into this vision of the perfect American Republic. I mean, that's such powerful stuff.

Great, great. Now, in 1833, Harry went to Kentucky just for a brief trip. How was she affected by it? I mean, Harry's trip to Kentucky is a really interesting moment. Obviously, it informs so much of the work she's later going to do. And it's the same kind of thing that happens to countless New Englanders who actually are finally exposed to slavery, and that she's actually seeing this thing, this abstract thing that exists in her moral mind, okay? Her Christian mind, before this, as an abstraction, slavery is wrong. I mean, you can't read the Bible and not see that these things are true. But when you're actually confronted with the realities of that, some of those realities are really trivial. I mean, some of the things she sees in Kentucky are slaves joking around. I mean, sort of petty forms of resistance, you know? And other things are more plaguing, whether it's a slave being beaten or sort of these sort of tabloes of slavery that she takes away from this process. But what she sees there is a human thing. It is that she sees these people, I mean, they're human beings.

I'm not saying this is entirely in a racially egalitarian sort of way, but she sees them as human beings being part of the system that she knows is wrong. And that, the intimacy of that just really is brought home to her in a way that, you know, reading about it is never going to do. She's confronted with it in such an intimate way. And I think that never relieves her. I mean, that's certainly what comes as sort of just rolling back with the compromise of 1850 is that understanding. That intimacy is this urgency to communicate the intimacy, the human element of slavery to readers. I mean, that's what's going to happen because of her trip to Kentucky. Great. Thank you. How did she feel about the slavery at the moment? I mean, I think she borrowed her, it really borrowed a lot of slavery or belief in slavery from her father. I mean, as any child is going to do a lot of her sort of early information about slavery, about abolitionism is going to be borrowed from Lyman is. And Lyman is not a real, you know, he's not really firmly dedicated to anti-slavery. He says it's wrong, but there are much greater priorities like purging the country of Catholics.

So I mean, what he's going to do is sort of, I think he encourages a sort of garisonian abolitionism in his daughter. I mean, that's sort of the elements that she's taking away are pretty mild, a protest form of abolitionism of anti-slavery. That's really what she starts out with. It's not until she's confronted, and this is going to happen, you know, more intensely over the years. It's going to start with this trip to Kentucky where she's sort of confronted with this human element of slavery. But that's going to really continue with her black servants. That's really going to be that intimate place where she, I mean, I really, it's hard for us to understand as modern Americans that she is not thinking of these people as her equals. But she's thinking of them as human beings, and that alone is radical. And that's really something that's going to be a process that's going to sort of keep trickling along for the next two decades and going to sort of inform her understanding of slavery more and more and more. I mean, it's an interesting point that her so much of her view of slavery, because Kentucky is the only time she goes down to philanthropy.

Yep. It is, in fact, through her servants. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's a little bit, I mean, for Harriet, there's a little bit of her, you know, her source material is sort of like writing about something you can pull, you really know nothing about. I mean, if you read Uncle Tom's cabin today, you can see a lot of that. There's not, you know, she, she did as much reading as she possibly could. She really kind of checked. She verified her, her book against slave narratives like Frederick Douglass and other other sort of books that were coming out from former slaves. She really tried to sort of mesh those things together, but the human element is based on the sort of these tabloes. I almost think of them as being like she went to Kentucky and she came away with a diorama where slaves were just sort of these figures that she could move around. The human beings, those characters from Uncle Tom's cabin are her servants. And that's a really curious and weird kind of thing. And I mean, I think it's why Southerners read this book. I mean, the ones who are more moderate and they say, well, these people don't seem like they're slaves at all. But that Northerners read it and they say, these must be slaves because they have no interaction with us whatsoever.

So these characters seem very real to them. Whereas they're kind of this compendium or this hodgepodge of kind of weird source material. It's all kind of cobbled together. But as long as it rings true, I think that's what she understands. She knows that that's what matters. And in the end, that is what matters. She also, I mean, you say that she kind of inherited her father's general anti-slavery feeling. She also inherited this very moderate tendencies that she didn't approve of abolitionist whole. I mean, I think Harriet's reaction, particularly to Theodore Weld, is pretty good evidence of that. He's this kind of radical figure who shows up at the Lane Seminary to, you know, because Lyman Beecher is there. So, you know, she's part of this kind of important family. And I mean, it becomes much more important as the years go on when her brother becomes this just enormously influential preacher. I mean, he really takes over the America's religious imagination. He's sort of the Jonathan Edwards of the mid-19th century.

But, you know, when Weld comes out and the trustees of Lane try to sort of shut down any discussion of slavery. Because all this guy wants to do is talk about slavery. I mean, he's a young buck. I mean, he comes out. And that's where the action is. If you're sort of involved in American reform in the 1830s, slavery and debating slavery is where you want to be. And when Lane, the trustees say, you can't, I mean, there's like a gag rule on campus about slavery. You know, he famously starts this 18-day debate with the student body, with emancipation versus slavery. We can probably, you know, have a pretty good guess about where that turns out. The students endorse emancipation. But Weld isn't happy just with that. He and, you know, 40 other students quit the Lane Theological Seminary and go off to nearby Oberlin. You know, and they're going to really turn Oberlin into this hotbed of American radical thought, particularly of American abolitionism. And, you know, Harriet's reaction to Weld is very interesting because he's an intimate of their family. But Harriet says this guy is just too extreme.

Basically, he wants to take a controversial subject and render it in the most controversial way possible. Like, she's saying that that doesn't make sense. And there's so much there. I mean, that's Uncle Tom's cap to me. That's really where Uncle Tom's cap and his born is in that moment when she says, this is not a good strategy. This is basically like, you're preaching to the converted when you talk about slavery being horrible, horrible, horrible in the most horrible way. That's not going to convert people who are who are who are an unconverted who don't believe you have to come up with some way of bringing them in in an intimate way. That's all theodore Weld. I mean, she's got her sort of anti-example of what to do. And she's going to take that and run with it. Great. Tell me about the unrest in Cincinnati in the summer of 1836. What triggered it most dramatically?

I mean, so basically, I mean, the setup in Cincinnati in the 1830s is you've got these very conservative city fathers. And I think a pretty, pretty conservative white citizen are generally speaking. And then you've got these sort of influx of radicals. I mean, it's weird to point them today. But radicals, you know, people who are free thinking, they're dedicated to reform and whatever we're talking about. And one of the people that shows up in Cincinnati is this guy, James Bernie, who is a former slaveholder who has seen the light. He is freed his own slaves. And then he's begun this newspaper or the philanthropist. And as soon as this shows up in Cincinnati, it is just, you know, it is a disaster. It's chaos because he's printing these sort of radical tirades against slavery about slavery needing to end. And the thing that we need to understand about Ohio also is the proximity to the south. Okay, so this is so different from any other place. You know, abolitionists in Boston, they don't have to deal with someone on their state border having slaves.

We're talking about a real intimate situation here. And I mean, the toekville famously describes this, you know, going down the Ohio river and on one side of the river. It's industry, it's capitalism. That's the north. And on the other side is sloth and depravity. And that's slavery. I mean, it's defined by slavery. That river is what's, you know, Cincinnati. And then we've got Kentucky. You know, we're talking about great geographic proximity. And Bernie is, you know, he's kind of captures all of that intimacy and hostility when he starts publishing this newspaper. And the philanthropist, you know, it starts, it starts one, basically the city father say, this is a radical mouthpiece. And it needs to be shut down. And when they do that, sort of the, you know, people react by throwing the presses on the river. I mean, that's the feeling of destroying the printing presses. What do these guys do? They just get another printing press. And when they do that, this mob of 4,000 people shows up.

And they not only destroy the press, but they want to tar and feather, probably kill Bernie and his business partner. They don't happen to be there. So that's, that's good, good luck for them. But what happens is this mob of 4,000 people end up basically turning this into a race riot in the city of Cincinnati. I mean, this is a pretty horrific event for, I mean, what few African American citizens there are in Cincinnati at the time. And this is all about how close. I mean, you can imagine these are the fortunes of, you know, most of the north, we're not just talking about in Cincinnati and Manhattan and Boston. Are tied to slavery, they're being built on cotton, they're being built on on slave labor in various ways, shapes, and forms. And in Cincinnati, you can imagine the banks, everything is so intimately connected to what's going on in Kentucky. This mob is, is, is voicing that, is saying, we don't want elements like this. We don't want elements like the philanthropist existing in Cincinnati. We're going to destroy these things. And what do they do after they, they, oh, well, we're going to go after black people because we can't find that people actually print this newspaper.

We're going to go after some sort of, this is going to happen again and again in the antebellum era. We're going to go after the ostensible people, these, these people are trying to save. That's, it's pretty dangerous stuff. So, how did this race right? They, they, what exactly? Burning houses, you know, beating people. Oh, yes, sorry. So the riot, this sort of erupts because of the philanthropist. The targets end up being, you know, free blacks living in this city of Cincinnati. And that's going to be, you know, they're going to burn their houses. They're going to, they're going to be beatings as part of this mob just sort of rolling through the African-American community in Cincinnati. It's going to be disastrous. I mean, this is going to be another signal to, even moderates like, line of picture and his daughter, that this is a, this is a hostile situation. And that some solution needs to become up, because just the basic physical safety of African-Americans is in jeopardy in Cincinnati. And, sorry, we should change that from what we see upon that. Just very, very quickly.

I just want to clarify it because there was another riot in 1831, right? Mm-hmm. And if you could just say there's always one about it. Okay. Yeah. I mean, the riot that erupts because of the philanthropist is just one of many in Cincinnati. I mean, this is going to be, this is going to be a whole mark of this conservative city that these race riots, I mean, things that basically resemble race riots by the end are going to be erupting in Cincinnati. They're going to be a problem for Cincinnati for the next 100 years, actually, because this is such a, you know, lynchings that are going to take place in Cincinnati. This is going to be a, like, hotbed of the Ku Klux Klan that, that happens. It's has its roots in this conservatism that's in Cincinnati in the 1830s. I mean, this, and the proximity to Kentucky. I mean, these people are, they're invested in each other society in a way that Boston is not invested in Savannah. Thank you. Let's just, let's see what it takes.