Birds of the Same Fate by Yiyun Li

Teacher Gun started the fire and poured water over the leftover rice. He watched the yellow flame lick the bottom of the pot, the murmuring water inside soothingly hypnotic. A grain of sand is as complete as world, he said to the fire, his voice audible only to his own ears. The thought that someone sitting above the clouds could gaze into this small cocoon in which he and his wife were trapped in pain comforted him; their suffering to the eyes above could be as tiny and irrelevant as the piece of coal in his own eyes, a burning ember that would soon cool into a gray ball of ash.

The water boiled, and the lid of the pot let out sighs of white steam. Teacher Gu stirred the rice and sat down at the table. There was no sound from the bedroom, and he wondered if his wife had been falling into sleep; she had been escorted back by two policemen earlier, and they had made some harsh threats before taking off her handcuffs. He had worried that she would become hysterical, but she had kept herself still until the moment Nini arrived, the last person in the world who should be receiving his wife’s anger.

Teacher Gu’s hands probed around the table as if they belonged to a blind man. Over the years he had developed a habit of busying his hands with anything they could reach, a sign of some disturbing psychological problem perhaps, but Teacher Gu tried not to dwell on it. Apart from a bowl of leftover soup, the table was empty. Another broken ritual, Teacher Gu thought, gone with Nini and the folding of a paper from out of the calendar. It had started when Shan was fourteen, a young Red Guard ready to rip the world apart. He had folded the paper compulsively, his busy fingers saving him from the sorrow of watching his daughter transform before his own eyes into a coldhearted stranger. At breakfast on an early summer day when Shan had given a speech on how he should bow to the revolutionary youths instead of resisting with his silence, he made the paper frog jump and it landed in his wife’s unfinished porridge. Neither Mrs. Gu nor Teacher Gu removed the from, and he knew then that they would never laugh together as a family again,. On the same morning, when Shan’s revolutionary friends came over, she suggested that they go out and “kick the bottoms of some counterrevolutionaries.” So easily she had let these vulgar words slip out, this daughter whom he had taught to recite poetry from the Tang dynasty since she was very young. Later, someone came to his school with the news that besides booting people’s bottoms, Shan had also kicked the belly of a woman eight months pregnant. Teacher Gu hid himself in his office and wrote a long essay, a meditation on the failing of poetry as education in an unpoetic age. Upon finishing and rereading the essay, he tossed it into the fire and braced himself to face his wife, with who he shared the responsibility of bringing a murderer into the world.

How Shan had escaped the consequences of her action was beyond Teacher Gu’s understanding. His wife began to break down and weep often, first thing in the morning or sometimes in the middle of a savorless meal. What wrong had she done to deserve Shan? His wife asked him. This notion was superstitious nonsense, Teacher Gu wanted to remind his wife, but she was lost too, led astray by the belief that she herself was responsible for the crimes committed by their daughter. In his quiet disapproval she grew into an ordinary, witless woman, trying to find a reason for every calamity and failure, as if the world were explainable and life would have to make sense for one to continue living.

Teacher Gu shook his head. He was no better than she, he told himself. He was a man who had foolishly let himself be deceived by his own wishes. When he had first met his wife, she had just stopped belonging to her previous husband, as one of his five wives. She was the only one to leave the family of her own will when the newly established Communist government banned polygamy; the other wives had to be dragged away from the family by government officials.  She was the first one to enroll in Teacher Gu’s class for illiterate women – she was eighteen that year, her hair black and smooth as silk, her cheeks peach-colored, and her eyes two deep wells of sad water. She was born with an ill-favored face, people in town warned Teacher Gu when he decided to marry her. Look at her cheekbones, which are too high, her lips, which are not fill enough, people said. He shrugged off their comments. Ill-fortuned she was, losing her parents at twelve, sold to a husband by her uncle at fourteen, serving a man forty years her senior as half wife and half handmaiden, but Teacher Go did not want to listen to any of the talk. Husband and wife were birds of the same fate – so said the ancient poems. Wasn’t it why they had become husband and wife in the first place?

The day they got married, his first wife sent a telegram to him; keep each other alive with your own water, said the message. He hid the telegram, even though his new wife was not yet able to read all the characters in it. He never told her about the blessing, nor the fable behind those few words – two fish, husband and wife, were stranded in a puddle; they competed to swallow as much water as they could before the puddle vanished in the scorching sun so that they could keep each other alive in their long suffering before death by giving water to their loved one .  .  .

A Brawling Back-Alley Bunch by Aaron Skirboll

Today criminal investigations rule the media. Once or twice a year, a trial transfixes the public, a new cause celebre born seemingly each new season. Spectators travel hours to courthouses, tickets to trial are distributed by lottery; and the term media circus, coined in the 1970s, comes into its own.

If it bleeds, it leads – so goes the old journalistic saw. Readers and viewers can’t tear their eyes away from true crime stories, and the grislier the details, the better. But when did it all begin, this mixing of criminal and celebrity? Searching for the origin of the phenomena took me back three centuries to the nascent years of the newspaper and across the Atlantic to London. In the middle stood Daniel Defoe, a wily old newspaperman and the aging author of Robinson Crusoe, who battled for the scoop amid the much and grime of the eighteenth century. His coverage of two men- Jonathan Wild, the chaser, and Jack Sheppard, the mark –enthralled a kingdom and birthed a genre.

An eighteenth century Al Ca[pone, Jonathan Wild was the first man to organize crime for profit and the first criminal whose name everyone in the city knew. A burglar and a prison breaker, Jack Sheppard had much in common with John Dillinger. In late 1724, a manhunt for him grabbed the city’s attention like no other story and drove newspaper sales skyward. Sheppard the housebreaker ran, thief-taker Wild chased him, and reporter Defoe wrote about both.*


With Sheppard on the loose, the story evolved in real time, but nothing about the case was clear-cut, nor was it easy to know for whom to root. The grandeur of the once-popular hunter was fading, and the criminal was incorrigible and eminently quotable. In the middle of it all, we have a man know today primarily as a novelist, his skills as a journalist mostly forgotten. His colorful tales about the pair teemed with details, but as with everything he wrote, his name was nowhere to be found, and in Sheppard’s case, Defoe wrote his account of the man’s deeds as if it were the thief’s autobiography, as he’d done with Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.

In 1724 and 1725, more than thirty unsigned pamphlets were published on Wild and Sheppard. Five of these tracts have been attributed to Defoe, and the British Library has catalogued them under his name. In the story ahead, I privileged only the two pamphlets that have with neat universal agreement on the attribution to Defoe” The True and Genuine Account of the Life and Actions of the Late Jonathan Wild and A  Narrative of All the Robberies, Escapes, etc.  of John Sheppard. A third, The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard, was probably a group effort in which Defoe had a hand, among others.

Enter the world of Defoe scholars with virgin eyes, I had no idea what awaited me. This is one brawling back-alley bunch of bibliophiles, many waging pissing matches to see who knows Daniel the best. One camp of scholars charges another with corpus swelling, while the latter assails the former for deflating the number so as to remove works of lesser quality. In Defoe’s day, it was more the  exception than the rule to put your name to pamphlets, so attribution makes for a thorny issue, and with over five hundred works credited to him, there’s no definitive universal agreement here. Nevertheless, the scholarly scrap proved entertaining. Among those who’ve studied the man, it’s a no holds-barred, back-and-forth assault complete with name calling. Academic insults fly to a fro: “simpletons or rascals,” “lack of brains,” “a disaster.” Charges of canon forgery and ‘power moves” have been made, and as one set of authors answered a particular onslaught, they decided it would “look craven if we did not give him one or two back – though a “Forum” may not really be a place for fist-fights.”

Even the ‘Law Firm’ , the collective name I have given to scholars P.N. Furbank and W.R. Owens – who seem to want something like DNA evidence before ascribing anything to Defoe, acknowledges that the pamphlets in questions could be Defoe’s. They just done have the evidence to prove the 300-year-old pamphlets are his. Scholar Pat Rogers, who has studied and written on Defoe and many of his contemporaries, told me that these attribution questions dog Defoe far more than any other writer of the time. No only did he write an incredibly large amount – signing practically none, or publishing under a pseudonym – but he did so on an equally dizzying array of topics.

I have sided with the majority regarding the tracts on Wild and Sheppard, as well as Defoe’s tenure at Applebee’s Original Weekly Journal. Dozens of men and women who have made a careful study of the man’s life and work have counted them his, which is good enough for me. Besides, instead of trying to prove that Defoe wrote these tracts on criminals, maybe it’s more fitting to leave it with a glint of doubt, as with all his writings. After all, he never signed Robinson Crusoe or Moll Flanders either, and Roxanna’s authorship didn’t fall to him until half a century after its publication. Three centuries have passed since the author’s death, and he remains shrouded in mystery, each year his life growing more so,. His major works of fiction were all written in the first person, as true stories, while his nonfiction works read like novels.

But then, that’s part of the attraction: The definitive biographies of two infamous criminals were written by a novelist. Picture an aging Defoe, near his life’s end, running around London between the gallows and Newgate Prison, where he met the inspiration for Moll Flanders, a writer mixing it up with thieves, murderers, and rogues of all inclination amid dirt, despair, and deprivation. That image stirred the London of the past back to life for me. Left with the choice of leaving Defoe out of the story – hemming and hawing over attribution bitchery – or moving forward with the majority, I chose the latter. Defoe and Mr. Applebee made the cut. When telling the stories of Wild and Sheppard, you have to include the best and most accurate tracts written by their contemporaries, and the British Library lists those under Defoe’s name.

It’s also worth underscoring that this book isn’t a biography of Defoe. My intentions are far less noble. My aim is merely to entertain. Defoe had a vast collection of interests –economics, politics, religion, and trade among them- and I’ve touched on little to none of it.**  Only his criminal writings and the aspects of life that related to crime in general – and specifically, the careers of Wild and Sheppard – concerned me. For a full treatment of the man, pick up the biographies by Paula Backscheider or Maximillian Novak.

I’m no scholar. Yet neither was Defoe. An unpolished outsider, he gained little respect from his peers. No one conferred on him the same prestige of Addison, Pope or Steel. He warned of grammatical errors, and likewise, I can guarantee that, absent and editor’s hand, you’d find the pages ahead marked with similar mistakes. I’m also thankful to Lyon’s Press for a point of upmost importance to this work: a firm deadline. After years of research, there’s always more. As Arthur Griffiths, a nineteenth century prison inspector an author who wrote on Sheppard, remarked in the preface to The Chronicles of Newgate: “Now at the termination of my labors .  .  . I found at length that I must be satisfied with what I had instead of seeking more.”

Defoe said it best in his final days, in Augusta Triumphans, his tract on civic improvements: “As I am quick to conceive, I am eager to have done, unwilling to overwork a subject; I had rather leave part to a conception of the readers, than to tire them or myself with protracting a theme, as if, like a chancery man or a hackney author, I wrote by the sheet for hire. So let us have done with this topic and proceed to another.”

*Since fencing stolen goods was a capital crime, Wild devised a system whereby he arranged to return stolen goods to their owners- for a fee, no questions asked-thus offering a measure of protection for the thieves though they received less for the stolen items than the would have through fences. He gradually extended his system to include every robber in London and a few other cities as well. He became the ‘supervising agent’ of most criminal activities in the city of London. But if a thief crossed Wild- sold his ill-gotten gains elsewhere for example- Wild would catch them and turn them over to authorities, often testifying against them court and collecting lucrative rewards, and was viewed as providing a useful public service in that regard. The reward for the thief was transportation or the gallows. Eventually the public and the thieves grew tired of this charade and Wild himself was hung.

** Defoe’s first book was The Storm, and account of the devastating winds and flooding that struck England in November 1703, called “the first substantial work of modern journalism’; his innovation being to collect the observations of others. “Journalism was then in its infancy, and there was nothing like systematic and objective reporting on contemporary event”’, according to John J. Miller writing in the Wall Street Journal

U.S. Grant's Memoirs

OFFICE U.S. MILITARY TELEGRAPH
WAR DEPARTMENT

WASHINGTON, D.C. August 3, 1864

Cypher. 6 PM.,

LT GENERAL GRANT

City Point, Va.


I have seen your dispatch in which you say, “I want Sheridan put in command of all the troops in the field, with instructions to put himself south of the enemy, and follow him to the death. Whatever the enemy goes, let our troops go also.” This, I think, is exactly right, as to how our forces should move. But please look over the dispatches you may have received from here, even since you made that order, and discover, if you can, that there is any idea in the head  of any one here, of “putting our army south of the enemy,” or of  “following him to the death” in any direction. I repeat to you it will neither be done nor attempted unless you watch it every day, and hour, and force it.

A. LINCOLN

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

It may not be out of place to again allude to President Lincoln and the Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, who were the great conspicuous figures in the executive branch OF government. There is no great difference of opinion now, in the public mind, as to the characteristics of the President. With Mr. Stanton the case is different. They were the very opposite of each other in almost every particular, except that each possessed great ability.  Mr. Lincoln gained influence over men by making them feel that it was a pleasure to serve him. He preferred yielding his own wish to gratify others, rather than to insist on having his own way. It distressed him to disappoint others. In matters of public duty, however, he had what he wished, but in the least offensive way...Mr  Stanton never  questioned his own authority to command, unless resistedunless resisted. He cared nothing for the feelings of others. In fact it seemed to be pleasanter to him to disappoint than to gratify. He felt no hesitation Stanton never questioned his own authority to command in assuming the functions of the executive, or in acting without advising with him. If his act was not sustained, he would change it –if he saw the matter would be followed up until he did so.

It was generally supposed  that these two officials formed the complement of each other. The Secretary was required to prevent the President’s being imposed upon. The President was required in the more responsible place of seeing that injustice was not done to others. I do not know that this view of these two men is still entertained by the majority of people. It is not the correct view, however, in my estimation. Mr. Lincoln did not require a guardian to aid him in the fulfillment of a public trust.

Mr. Lincoln was not timid, and he was willing to trust his generals in making and executing their plans. The Secretary was very timid, and it was impossible for him to avoid interfering with the armies covering the capital when it was sought to defend it by offensive movement against the army guarding the Confederate capital. He could see our weakness, but he could not see that the enemy was in danger. The enemy would not have been in danger if Mr. Stanton had been in the field. These characteristics of the two officials were clearly shown shortly after Early came so near getting into the capital. . .


The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United States will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that “A state half slave and half free cannot exist.”  All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true.

Slavery was an institution that require unusual guarantees for is security wherever it existed; in a country like ours where the larger portion of it was free territory inhabited by and intelligent and well-to-do population, the people would naturaly have but little sympathy with demands upon them for its protection. Hence the people of the South were dependent upon keeping control of the general government to secure the perpetuation of their favorite institution. They were enabled to maintain this control long after the States where slavery existed has ceased to have the controlling power, through the assistance they received from odd men here and there throughout the Northern States. They saw their power waning, and this led them to encroach upon the prerogatives and independence of the Northern States by enacting laws as the Fugitive Slave Law. By this law every Northern man was obliged, when properly summoned, to turn out and help apprehend the runaway slave of a  Southern man. Northern marshals became slave-catchers, and Northern Courts had to contribute to the support and protection of the institution.

This was a degradation which the North would not permit any longer until they could get the power to expunge such laws from the state books. Prior to the time of these encroachments the great majority of the people of the North had no particular quarrel with slavery, so song as they were not forced to have it themselves. But they were not willing to play the role of police for the South in the protection of this particular institution.

In the early days of the country, before we had railroads, telegraphs and steamboats – in a word, rapid transit of any sort – the States were each almost a separate nationality. At that time the subject of slavery caused but little or no disturbance in the public mind. But the country grew, rapid transit was established, and trade and commerce between the States got to be so much greater than before, that the power of the National government became more felt and recognized and, therefore, had to be enlisted in the cause of this institution.


It is probably well that we had the war when we did. We are better off now than we would have been without it, and have made more rapid progress than we otherwise should have made. The civilized nations of Europe have been stimulated into unusual activity, so that commerce, trade, travel, and thorough acquaintance among people of different nationalities, has become common; whereas, before, it was but a few who had  ever had the privilege of going beyond the limits of their own country or who knew anything about other people. Then, too, our republican institutions were regarded as experiments up to the breaking out of the rebellion, and monarchical Europe generally believed that our republic was a rope of sand that would part the moment the slightest strain was brought upon it. Now it has shown itself capable of dealing with one of the greatest wars that was ever made, and our people have proven themselves to be the most formidable in war of any nationality.

But this war was a fearful lesson, and should teach us the necessity of avoiding wars  in the future.

Robinson's Farewell by Cotton Mather

[The church was Cotton Mather’s central concern. He devoted himself to its pastorate with fanatic zeal and terrifying energy, and tried to relate to it all his activities and interests. His conception of the duty of a minister was all-embracing. Not content with visiting the sick, helping the impoverished, chastising backsliders, and preaching spiritual values and the nature of piety, he felt he must regulate the conduct of his flock in every aspect of life. He strove to discover and teach new means of serving God and new ways of proving the boundless extent of divine power. Since, as Mather saw it, the entire universe and the whole history of mankind revealed his power, there was virtually no limit to the range of education he must provide. This meant constant writing of sermons, daily reading and memorizing of the Bible and its commentators, studying history and science, and feverish searching for effective means of instruction. And, of course, he tried day by day to assess his shortcomings and spent hours fasting and praying for divine forgiveness.]

Book  I Antiquities  Chapter III

. . . . Some little controversies likewise have now and then arisen among them in the administration of their discipline; but synods then regularly called, have usually and presently put into joint all that was apprehended out. Their chief hazard and symptom of degeneracy, is in the verification of that old observation, religio peperit divitias, & filia devoravit matrem: religion brought forth prosperity, and the daughter destroyed the mother.  Though one would expect, that as they grew in their estates, they would grow in the payment of quit-rents unto God who gives them the power to get wealth, by more liberally supporting their ministers and ordinances among them; the most likely way to save them from the most miserable apostasy; the neglect whereof in some former years, began for a while to be punished with a sore famine of the Word; nevertheless, there is danger lest the enchantments of this world make them forget their errand in the wilderness: And some woeful villages in the skirts of the colony, beginning to live without the means of grace among them, are still more ominous intimations of the danger. May the God of New England preserve them from so great a death!

Going now to take my leave of this little Colony (Plymouth), that I may converse for a while with her younger sisters, which yet have outstripped her in growth exceedingly, and so will now draw all the streams of her affairs into their channels, I shall repeat the counsel which their faithful John Robinson gave the first planters of the colony, at their parting from him in Holland. Said he, [to this purpose.]

“Brethren, we are now quickly to part from one another; and whether I may ever live to see your faces on earth any more, the God of Heaven only knows. But whatever the Lord have appointed that or no, I charge you before God, and before his blessed angels, that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

If God reveal any thing to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it, as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry; for I an verily persuaded, I am very confident the Lord hath more truth yet to break forth out of his Holy Word. For my part, I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the reformed churches, who have come to a period  (full stop) in Religion; and will go at present no further than the instruments of their first reformation. The Lutherans can’t be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw: whatever part of his will our God good has imparted and revealed unto Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it. And the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God, who yet saw not all things.

This is a misery much to be lamented; for though they were burning and shining lights in their time, yet the penetrated not into the whole counsel of God; but were they now living, they would be as willing to embrace further light, as that which they first received. I beseech you to remember it; it is an article of your church-covenant, that you will be willing  to receive whatever truth shall be made known unto you from the written Word of God. Remember that, and every other article of your most sacred covenant. But I must herewithal exhort you to take heed what you receive as truth; examine it, consider it, compare it with the other scripture of truth, before you do receive it. For it is not possible the Christian world should come so lately out of such thick anti-christian darkness, and that perfection of knowledge should break forth at once. I must also advise you to abandon, avoid and shake off the name of Brownist*: it is a mere nick-name, and a brand for the making of religion, and the professors of Religion, odious unto the Christian world. Unto this end, I should be extremely glad, if some Godly minister would go with you, or come to you, before you can have my company. For there is no difference between the unconformable ministers of England and you, when they come to the practice of evangelical ordinances out of the kingdom. And I would wish you by all means to close with the Godly people of England; study union with them in all things, wherein you can have it without sin, rather than in the least measure to affect a division or separation from them.  Neither would I have you loath to take another pastor besides my self; in as much as a flock that has two shepherds is thus not endangered, but secured.”

So adding some other things of great consequence, he concluded most affectionately, commending his departing flock unto the grace of God, which now I also do the offspring of that holy flock.

*The Brownists were English Dissenters or early Separatists from the Church of England. They were named after Robert Browne, who was born at Tolethorpe Hall in Rutland, England, in the 1550s. A majority of the Separatists aboard the Mayflower in 1620 were Brownists, and indeed the Pilgrims were known for 200 years as the Brownist Emigration(Wikipedia).

An ecclesiastical reformer, he  first asserted the inalienable right of the church to effect necessary reforms without the authorization or permission of the civil magistrate.  A couple of his followers were hanged for distributing literature to that effect in 1583. Brown was induced to make a qualified submission to the established order in 1585 ( Britannica, 1911)

Frontier Atrocity by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

On 9 July 1809 in Holloway, Maine ( site of what was later to become Augusta) James Purrington, a recent settler in the community) slaughtered his wife and six of his children with an axe and fatally slashed his own throat with a razor. Midwife Martha Ballard was a near neighbor. In her diary she wrote:


My husband went and returned before sunrise when after taking a little food he and In went on to the house there to behold the most shocking scein that was Even seen in this part of the world. May an infinitely good God grant that we may all take a suitable notice of this horrid deed, learn wisdom therefrom.

Later, she described the funeral as


A sollom specttacle to behold. May we all learn a profitable lesson from this dreadful scein and may it please the God that rules to Sanctify this affliction to the surviving relatives . . .


 Martha’s  prayer no doubt echoed Mr. Taylor’s sermon – and hundreds of others she had heard in her seventy-one years- though it wasn’t the sermon but the pageantry of the occasion that impressed her most powerfully, the ritualistic arrangements of the bodies, the funeral march, and the hundreds of people crowded in nearby houses, in the streets, on the tops of buildings. There had not been an event like this in Augusta since the commemoration of George Washington’s death six years before.

The essential point for Martha, however, was that God was in control, that he had the power to “sanctify” as well as to destroy.


For some of her contemporaries, the lessons were more complex. By 1806, religious dissent in the region had increased. New sects were growing surprisingly strong, making the old divisions among Congregationalists seem tame. In 1780, all the churches in Lincoln County, whatever the differences among them, had been Congregational; by 1800, in the by then two counties of Lincoln and Kennebec, sectarian churches – Separate Baptist, Free-will Baptist, Methodist, and Universalist – outnumbered orthodox congregations by almost three to one.

It was inevitable that the Purrington murders should feed into growing anxiety over religious dissent in the region. Congregationalists along the Kennebec continued to squabble among themselves while Methodists, Free-Will Baptists, Universalists and even Shakers took their members. Martha’s neighbors were among those affected. “There were 6 persons Baptised by imertion at Sidney,” she wrote on 4 August 1805. “Mrs. Andrus was one.” James Purrington, it was said, had dabbled in more than one heterodox creed.

In his broadside “Horrid Murders” Peter Edes, editor of the Kennebec Gazette had noted that the murderer was “warm believer in the fatal doctrine of universal salvation, “ but made no effort to exploit the fact. Within days, Edes had accumulated enough additional information to amplify this explanation into a twenty-page pamphlet giving a more detailed account of the murder, a sketch of the life of Captain Purrington, and “Remarks on the fatal tendency of erroneous principles, and Motives for receiving and obeying the pure and salutary precepts of the gospel: “Unbelief in the superintending providence of God, and human accountability, is a principle which opens the door to every vice.” Edes quoted “a respectable gentleman in Bowdoinham” who affirmed that


about twenty years ago he (Capt.P.) jopoined the (Calvinistic) Baptist Church in Bowdoinham, and continued in their fellowship several years; till he imbibed the sentiments of the Freewill Baptists; for which he was cut off from the church. He was not a Universalist till some years since. I have conversed with several of his former neighbors, who unanimously testify that he was a Fatalist”



If Edes’s account is correct, Purrington’s life recapitulated the religious history of the region. In towns like Bowdoinham, already split by Baptist and New Light revivals, the heterodox teachings of the Free-Will Baptists and Universalists found fertile soil. Both groups challenged the central Calvinist doctrine that God predestined some souls for salvation, others for damnation. The Free-Will Baptists believed sinners chose to accept or reject Christ’s atonement; the Universalists argued that all od’s children would be saved. The emphasis of both groups on “a benevolent God, human perfectibility, universal non-penal atonement, and free grace for all believers” allied them with liberal  Arminians in New England’s urban centers – Edes pamphlet associated Purrington’s universalism with the “fearless impiety of a Paine and the unrestrained licentiousness of a Godwin” – yet both groups were evangelicals rather than rationalists. They were powerful precisely because they grafted their optimistic doctrines onto the experiential, charismatic religion familiar from earlier revivals. In light of the Free-Will challenge, Bowdoinham’s Calvinist  Baptists described themselves as “ a fold in the midst of wolves, or a defenseless flock surrounded with . . prowling multitudes.”

Of the two groups, the Universalists appeared most threatening because they undermined the socially useful distinction between the saved and the damned. How could society survive once the doctrine of an eternal judgment was destroyed? In a sermon preached at Bowdoinham ten days after the murders, Timothy Merritt argued that the first and moving cause of Purrington’s murders was disbelief inn the Providence of God: “Though he died seized of a large estate, he was under apprehension that his family would come to want.” But second only to his lack of faith in God’s superintending care was his belief in the doctrine of universal salvation.


 You all know, that for some years past, he has professed to believe firmly that all mankind, immediately upon leaving the body, go to a state of the most perfect rest and enjoyment: and to my certain knowledge he denied the doctrine of a day of judgment and retribution. Of course it was no question with him whether his family were regenerate, or born again, or in other words, whether they were prepared for so sudden a remove from this world. It was, therefore, natural, and what anyone would do under the same circumstances, to endeavor to prevent the anticipated trouble in his family, and make them all forever happy. There is every reason to believe that this was his real motive.


As a good Calvinist, Merritt could not let his congregation rest there, however. Purrington’s sins were natural because they mirrored the fundamental errors of humankind. Gently, he led his listeners from comfort to discomfort, from calm reassurance in the face of evil to jolting reminders of their own culpability. The murders forced Purrington’s neighbors to recognize the depravity of human nature, the frailty of life, and the folly of trusting in any earthly thing, including their nearest and dearest relations. “We may bolt our doors at night against thieves and robbers, but bolts are no security to life;- the assassin is within.”


This is not said with a view to excite jealousies and fears between friends and connections; nor to destroy that subordinate confidence which husband and wife, parents and children, reasonably repose in each other; but merely to shew you your real circumstances, and bring you to put your highest trust in God alone, where it ought to be placed.

If given the opportunity to answer Merritt’s accusations, the Universalists surely would have argued that the doctrine of universal salvation nurtured righteousness rather than sin, that their teachings were no more to blame for Purrington’s murders than the Congregationalist doctrine for Henry McCausland’s slaughter of Abigail Warren thirteen years before [ God called him to save Maine for the Congregationalists- he was deemed insane]. Universalists would have distained Calvinist efforts to breed fear in the hearts of their listeners; surely a true knowledge of God’s love was a more powerful motive for good than an erroneous fear of God’s wrath.


Despite differences in emphasis, however, the arguments of both groups began at the same point – predestination – and ended with the same consolation – ultimate trust in God’s goodness.


The oral history of Universalism contains an account of a triumphant sermon preached by Father Barnes of Portland, Maine, when all the Congregationalist ministers in the region refused to officiate at the funeral of a suicide. The theme of Barnes’  sermon – “when all the designs of God inn apparent ills are seen through, and his benevolent purposes understood, all that is now dark will become light” - is ultimately indistinguishable from Merritt’s argument – “When we see that God has suffered these evils, we are to conclude that he has acted upon some wise and benevolent principle, worthy of himself.” God is all powerful and all good. We must submit to his judgments. It is thee theology which underlines the religious sentiments in Martha Ballard’s diary: “May an infinitely good God grant that we may all take sutable notis of this horrid, deed, learn wisdom therefrom.”

Indian Country by Neil Rolde

“ Half convinced, half constrained, the Indians go off to dwell in new wilderness, where the white men will not let him remain in peace for ten years. In this way, the Americans cheaply acquire whole provinces which the richest  sovereigns in Europe could not afford to buy.” – Alexis de Tocqueville


Lewis Cass, secretary of war under Jackson and Democratic candidate in 1848, stated the matter quite baldly. In order for the Indians not to become extinct, “it would be necessary that our frontiers cease to expand and the savages settle beyond them." – a situation he deemed unlikely.

The east-west frontier expanded right up to the Pacific, every child in America knows. That the Indians never did become extinct (  The death of the last ostensible survivor, a  Mrs. Elizabeth George Plouffe, on 6 June 1973 was a signal for that to happen to the Pequots), we also know as a truism. So what was done with them?


The road to the present in the philosophies and programs of the federal government has used in dealing with the “Indian problem” is littered with milestones – more like gravestones – of policies that didn’t work and took a heavy toll on those they were alleged to help – the Indians. Words like “allotment” and “termination” are now but dim memories, dredged up by historians of the zigzags of federal policy towards the tribes. Who remembers the Dawes Act, named for Massachusetts Senator Henry L. Dawes, who though he was doing the Indians a favor by teaching them the virtues of “selfishness” Carlisle College, if remembered at all, is done so for Jim Thorpe’s football prowess, not as part of a concerted effort to separate Indian children from their parents and drill into them, as if they were juvenile West Pointers, the white man’s superior culture.


John Collier’s name is all but forgotten today, except by sensitive Indians, for he was the BIA director under the New Deal, who strove valiantly to let the Indians be themselves and run their own affairs. Was the Indians Claims Commission, finally established by law in 1946, after many years of trying, really a big step forward in settling Indian land claims, or just an impediment, as it seemed to Tom Tureen in prosecuting the Maine Indians’ claim? Who could believe today that the hated ‘termination’ attempts, started in the Eisenhower administration, of stripping the tribes of their independent status and their link to the federal government would be finally halted by Richard Nixon?

Among the more polemic of current American Indian writers, it is fashionable to accuse white Americans of concerted, deliberate genocide vis-à-vis the native tribes. Certainly, there were those who acted upon the statement that ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian.”   In Maine we had our James Cargill who, when acquitted of murdering peaceable Indian men, women and children, cynically demanded scalp bounties for his victims. [ Passamaquoddy leader Joseph “Cozy” Nicholas  agreed  that “The Indian population inn the U.S. has increased quite a bit – especially since John Wayne died”).  But in defense the argument is offered that no announced, official intent existed, as in Nazi Germany, to wipe out an entire people, and that many “righteous Americans” were friends of the Indians, like Thomas L. McKenney or Helen Hunt Jackson, author of A Century of Dishonor, who blew the whistle on the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, or Warren K. Moorehead, the archaeologist who condemned the allotment frauds inn Oklahoma’s and issue A Plea for Justice, his 19124 book detailing his experiences as a conscientious member of the Board of Indian Commissioners.

Even Henry L. Dawes expressed no intent to harm the Indians; he simply believed selfishness was the root of advanced civilization and couldn’t understand why Indians were not motivated to possess and achieve more than their neighbors. His belief in the civilizing power of private property was absolute and, to him, to be civilized was to “wear civilized clothes, cultivate the ground, live in houses, ride in Studebaker wagons, send children to school, drink whiskey, and own property.” On the latter score, his “allotment” scheme was guaranteed to do exactly that. The Indian Country West of the Mississippi given to the displaced “civilized tribes” like the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, etc. was to be broken up into individual allotments, so that each Indian would have his or her own homestead. The “surplus” tribal land not needed for this purpose was to be sold to the U.S. government and redistributed to non-Indians.


Senator Henry Teller of Colorado saw Dawes’s bill in a different light. Its real aim, he argued in debate, was “to get at the Indians’ land and open it up for resettlement.” In February 1887 the Dawes Act became law, was not repealed until after the Meriam Report of 1928, and caused Oklahoma Indians, alone, by 1934 to lose almost three-quarters of their land – a reduction from 138 million acres to 47 million acres. Land theft, yes, but genocide?


The use of such emotional language was concurrent with the rise of Indian activism that emerged inn the 1960s as long-simmering Indian grievances began to come to a boil. In the interim a period of passivity had seemingly set in among the tribes, compounded by a steady loss of population and dependency on others once their traditional modes of living were no longer possible.


Maine, itself, was something of a backwater, and the condition of its tribes and bands in the latter half of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century was close to invisible – a mere curiosity, if noted at all.

Lives of quiet desperation – to use Thoreau’s expression- were being lived among the Penobscots, Passamaquoddy, Maliseets, and Micmacs, and the rest of the state and the world barely noticed.

[The invocation of the Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790- by which no agreement with the Indians could be made without an Act of Congress, which was ignored by Massachusetts and subsequently by the State of Maine from the beginning- in the Land Claims Suit- settled in 1980- changed things but did not solve all the tribes’ problems, e.g. their fight for the environment and the right to open a casino. ]

 The book profiles  Maine Indians, their history  and their leaders in great detail.  He has traveled broadly in the "Fourth World" of indigenous peoples world-wide and has great Bibliography.

Reply to Chomsky by Chris Knight

Letters, LRB 13 July 2017

Much as I  admire Noam Chomsky’s politics, I have to take him to task for trying to dragoon sympathizers like myself into accepting his linguistics as ‘science’ ( Letters, 15 June). I can’t accept that the biological capacity underlying language didn’t gradually evolve, that it had no precursors but instead sprang up, perfectly formed, via a single mutation, or that it wasn’t designed for communication but remained inactive in speechless individuals for millennia following its installation. These notions are so asocial, apolitical and devoid of practical application that I can only assume Chomsky favored them to keep his conscience clear: he needed them to ensure that his militarily funded linguistics couldn’t possibly have any military use.

That is the argument of my book: not that Chomsky colluded with his military sponsors but that, given his situation at MIT, he had to move mountains to avoid collusion. In his letter, Chomsky claims that I sidestep his central role in resisting the US war effort in Vietnam. In fact his courageous resistance to the US war machine is my central theme. Had these not been his politics, he wouldn’t have needed to make his work under military funding so utterly useless.

Chomsky says that if my argument were true, it would have been logical for him to have switched between one approach to language and another as military funding waxed and waned. But  his entire intellectual milieu was shaped by military preoccupations, the dream of accurate machine translation among them. Chomsky’s concept of language as military funding waxed and waned. But his entire intellectual milieu was shaped by military preoccupations, the dream of accurate machine translation among them. Chomsky’s concept of language as a stand-alone digital ‘device’ was a product of its time. No one expects an academic who has committed his career to a particular paradigm to discard it just because the funding stops.

I accept that Einstein’s theory of relativity would have been just as scientifically credible whether funded by the church, the military or no one at all,. But when something doesn’t work as science, makes no sense, has no practical application and essentially no connection to the rest of science? Then we have to seek a different explanation for its prevalence.

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