PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN: MARIE-JOSEPH-PAUL-YVES-ROCH-GILBERT DU MOTIER, MARQUIS DE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE LAFAYETTE “NARRATIVE HISTORY” IS FABULATION, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1757 September 6, Tuesday: Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, who would grow up to assume the title of Marquis de Lafayette, was born in Chavaniac, France. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO THIS CHILD The People of Walden “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1774 The well-endowed young Marquis de Lafayette got married with the well-endowed young daughter of the Duc d’Ayen. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1776 May: A call for American independence from Britain, the Virginia Declaration of Rights was drafted by George Mason (1725-1792) and amended by Thomas Ludwell Lee (circa 1730-1778) and by the Virginia Convention. Mason wrote “That all men are born equally free and independant [sic], and have certain inherent natural right, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; among which are the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the Means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursueing [sic] and obtaining Happiness and Safety.” Thomas Jefferson would draw from this document when a month later he worked over an early draft of the Declaration of Independence. In 1789 it would be accessed not only by James Madison in drawing up the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution but also by the Marquis de Lafayette in drafting the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. But that was in Virginia and applied to people who were safely pro-war. For people who were anti-war there weren’t all that many rights available in America: Pennsylvania Quakers … experienced significant harassment for their pacifism and neutrality. Their numbers were already greatly reduced by the disciplinary renaissance of the 1750s, and they faced a real schism from “Free Quakers,” who both supported the Revolution and rejected pacifism. As a result “orthodox” Friends found themselves hunted down in a colony they had founded and long governed. In May 1776 a stone-throwing mob forced Philadelphia Friends to observe a fast day that the Continental Congress had proclaimed. A Berks County mob shackled and jailed Moses Roberts, a Quaker minister, until he posted a $10,000 bond guaranteeing his “good” behavior. Philadelphia patriots also exiled seventeen Friends to Virginia in 1776 for nearly two years so they would not interfere with revolutionary activities. Patriots celebrating the surrender of Cornwallis in October 1782 ransacked Quaker homes that had not displayed victory candles. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN Clearly, there were in Rhode Island a few Quaker men who were attempting to avoid persecution by the usual coterie of Those-Who-Aren’t-With-Us-Are-Against-Us “patriots.” For, at the men’s meeting for business of the Religious Society of Friends at Smithfield, “Two of the Committee to labour with Stephen & Jeptha Wilkinson for attending Training etc. report that they have labored with them and they appear to have frequented Trainings for Military service and endeavour to justify the same, and seldom attended friends meetings, and gave but very little satisfaction for their said conduct. Therefore this Meeting puts them from under their care, until they shall condemn said conduct to the Satisfaction of friends, which we desire they may be enabled to do — Jona Arnold is desired to inform them of their denial, Right of appeal and report to next monthly Mtg. to which time the drawing of a Testimony of their deniels [sic], in order to be published, is referred. — L. Lapham, Clerk.” QUAKER DISOWNMENT June 12, Wednesday: The Virginia Convention adopted the Declaration of Rights as drafted by George Mason (1725-1792) and amended by Thomas Ludwell Lee (circa 1730-1778) and other delegates. READ THE FULL TEXT Mason had written “That all men are born equally free and independant [sic], and have certain inherent natural rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; among which are the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the Means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursueing [sic] and obtaining Happiness and Safety.” Thomas Jefferson would draw from Mason’s draft while working over an early draft of the Declaration of Independence. In 1789 it would be accessed not only by James Madison in drawing up the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution but also by the Marquis de Lafayette in drafting the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. The president of Harvard College directed an open letter to the citizens of the town of Concord as his institution began its temporary relocation to interior safety and turned its campus in Cambridge over to temporary use by General George Washington’s revolutionary soldiers. Concord, June 12, 1776. At a meeting of the President, Professors, and Tutors of Harvard College, voted, that the following address of thanks be presented by the president to the Selectmen, the gentlemen of the Committee, and other gentlemen and inhabitants of the town of Concord, who have favored the college with their encouragement and assistance, in its removal to this town, by providing accommodations. Gentlemen, — The assistance you have afforded us in obtaining accommodations for this society here [Concord], when Cambridge was filled with the glorious army of freemen, which was assembled to hazard their lives in their country’s cause, and our removal from thence became necessary, demands our grateful acknowledgments. We have observed with pleasure the many tokens of your friendship to the college; and particularly to thank you for the use of your public buildings. We hope the scholars while here [Concord] have not dishonored themselves and the society by any HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN incivilities or indecencies of behaviour, or that you will readily forgive any errors which may be attributed to the inadvertence of youth. May God reward you with all his blessings, grant us a quiet re- settlement in our ancient seat to which we are now returning, preserve America from slavery, and establish and continue religion, learning, peace, and the happiest government in these American colonies to the end of the world. SAMUEL LANGDON, President Per Order. Karl Marx would express, in his THE CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE, 1848-1850, the sentiment that “The origin of states gets lost in a myth, in which one may believe, but which one may not discuss.” On the 1st page of 1 Theodore W. Allen’s introduction to his 1st volume, this independent scholar asks our “indulgence for only one assumption, namely, that while some people may desire to be masters, all persons are born equally unwilling and unsuited to be slaves.” I find that remark remarkable indeed! When in our Declaration of Independence we said to ourselves “All men are created equal,” we were of course writing as lawyers and in a lawyerly manner. We were purposing to level others, such as those overweening overbred British aristocrats, down to our own lay level, but meanwhile it was no part of our purpose to level others, such as our wives and slaves, up to our own exalted situation —we were doing this to benefit ourselves at the expense of others, and not doing this for the benefit of others. What we meant back there in Philadelphia several centuries ago, by such a trope as “All men are created equal,” was “We want, 1st, to sound almost as if we were saying that while some people may desire to be masters, all persons are born equally unwilling and unsuited to be slaves, and we want, 2dly, to sound as if we were struggling to express something like that without actually declaring anything like that — because it is essential that in this new nation of ours (based as it is upon human enslavement) we avoid any such issue. Our equality here is to be founded upon the inequality of others, and this grand-sounding trope ‘All men are created equal’ is being provided so that it can function as our cover story, enabling such viciousness to proceed unhindered.” As Edmund Burke expressed on February 16, 1788 during the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings for maladministration of the British rule in India, “There is a sacred veil to be drawn over the 1. Allen, Theodore W. THE INVENTION OF THE WHITE RACE, VOLUME ONE: RACIAL OPPRESSION AND SOCIAL CONTROL. London: Verso, 1994 HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN beginnings of all government.” The African Association was founded in England to explore the interior of Africa. In the usage of the trope “peculiar institution” that is today ordinary or usual, this trope is deployed of course in oblique reference to the unmentionable crime of human chattel bondage. It is nowadays used in implicit criticism of enslavement. Not so originally! In its initial usages, to refer to slavery as “peculiar” was not to attack it but proclaim it to be defensible. “Peculiar,” in this archaic usage, indicated merely that the legitimacy of the system was based not upon any endorsement by a higher or more remote legal authority, but based instead upon the “peculiar conditions and history” of a particular district of the country and a particular society and a particular historically engendered set of customs and procedures and conventions. This trope went hand in hand with the Doctrine of States Rights, and went hand in hand with the persistence of the English common law. What Allen, however, refers to by use of this trope “peculiar institution” is, instead, the invention of the so-called “white race” which has here been used to legitimate our local version of thus unmentionable crime, our local version of a solution to the problem of social control. It is for him this biologistic cover story, itself, which constitutes the quintessential “Peculiar Institution” we have been forced to construct. “Only by understanding what was peculiar about the Peculiar Institution can one know what is exceptionable about American Exceptionalism” (Volume I, page 1). In this he acknowledges that he is following a seed that had been planted by W.E.B. Du Bois in his BLACK RECONSTRUCTION. Allen’s 1st volume is made up of an elaborate parallelization of the Irish and Scottish experience under English colonialism, and the American antebellum experience: Every aspect of the Ulster Plantation policy aimed at destroying the tribal leadership and dispersing the tribe is matched by typical examples from Anglo-American colonial and United States policy toward the indigenous population, the “American Indians” — a policy we clearly recognize as racial oppression of “the red man.” I have been looking into an Irish mirror for insights into the nature of racial oppression and its implication for ruling-class social control in the United States. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1777 June 15, Sunday: Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette and Baron Johann de Kalb arrived in Charleston, South Carolina. They had acted on the basis of a promise that they would be assigned the rank of Major General in the Revolutionary Army of the United States. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN July: The Marquis de Lafayette arrived in Philadelphia. Concord sent 29 of its citizen soldiers to Rhode Island at an expense of £290 each plus an enlistment bounty of £10.