Why the Second-Generation Loses Its Way:Isaac Botkin's Reflections on Boston's History - Part One

Hiya!

I'm about halfway through transcribing the free podcast titled "Why The Second Generation Drops The Ball" by Geoffrey, Isaac, Anna Sofia, Elizabeth, David and Benjamin Botkin. 

 The podcast was recorded sometime during the second week of July 2009 at what I am assuming is a Vision Forum conference based on the background noise of small children and crying infants.

Between July 1st-4th 2009, Vision Forum held a large celebration of John Calvin's 500th birthday that wrapped up the stars of the Reformation and the divine blessing of the USA into one big party. 

The Botkin Family spent at least those four days in Boston with Anna Sofia and Elizabeth getting to be historical reenactors of Jeanne D'Albret - queen regnant of Navarre who has solid Calvinist credentials - and Anne Boleyn - whose history is rewritten to make her the driving force behind the split between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church as well as a martyr.   I have a great deal of sympathy for all six wives of Henry VIII, but more impartial historians agree that Anne Boleyn's influence was mainly because of her potential to give Henry one or more healthy sons.  She was executed on trumped-up charges of adultery after she gave birth to one healthy daughter, one stillborn son and two miscarriages.  If her daughter Elizabeth had been a son who survived infancy, she would have been as safe and honored as Jane Seymour regardless of her Protestant credentials.

I digress.

Because the trip to Boston was so recent and the celebration was likely attended or at least known about by many of the people in the audience, the lecture given by the Botkin Family feels like a strange travelogue during the first section.  Geoffrey and Isaac in particular seem enamored on the Calvinist glories the Puritan period and disdainful of any changes by any following generations.

In Isaac's first topic, he bemoans the fact that modern Massachusetts laws do not require Bible verses in support unlike in the early days of the colony where two Bible verses were required for each law.   In the overarching theme for this post, a cursory read of history would show Isaac the issues with his simplistic reduction.   Yes, the Puritans used the Old Testament legal code to codify their laws - but the Old Testament had punishments were exceptionally harsh like capital punishment for adultery and dishonoring parents.  Rather than executing adulterers and obnoxious teenagers, the Puritans created a whole raft of lesser offenses with lesser punishments that people accused of adultery and dishonoring parents were tried under instead like "lasciviousness", "uncleanliness" or "disruptive behavior". 

Equally ironically, neither Geoffrey nor Isaac Botkin seem to have thought through how much protection the non-Biblically based ideas of freedom of religion, freedom of association and freedom of speech give them to ramble on about their personal take on history without having to worry about being tried for blasphemy, sedition, or treason.

As a high school and college student I had to give speeches and presentations on a regular basis.  I hate using note cards during a speech - but the second topic of Isaac Botkin shows what happens when a speaker has to wing a person's biography rather than writing out the details:

One of the heroes of Massachusetts was Reverend William Emerson. He was the chaplain of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and the chaplain of the Continental Army and I believe that he might have died on Concord Ridge; he definitely stood on Concord Ridge with the Minutemen and defended Massachusetts against the British. But his son was a Unitarian and his grandson was Ralph Waldo Emerson who invented...well, he didn't really invent but...he was a transcendentalist. He denied Jesus as God. He started a bunch of weird socalistic utopian communes around Massachusetts. He was a very strange fellow. We can also blame him for Thoreau.

There are so many inaccuracies in this paragraph that I can only assume Isaac got flustered and had to try and ad-lib his way through the three generations of the Emerson family. 

Let's look at the problems per person. 

Isaac's hero is Reverend William Emerson Sr who was the chaplain of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress - or at least I cannot find anything to refute that claim.  The senior Rev. Emerson was certainly a chaplain in the Continental Army - but saying that he was 'the' chaplain accidently ignores all the other chaplains in the Continental Army.   

This next bit is where the note card would have come in handy.  The Battle of Lexington and Concord happened on April 19, 1775.  The Continental Army was founded on June 14, 1775.  Since Rev. Emerson Sr. was a chaplain in the Continental Army, he could not have died on Concord Ridge. 

Actually, I question if Isaac did much research on the Battle of Lexington and Concord at all because Concord Ridge is where the militia and minutemen fell back to observe the movements of the British troops in and around Concord.  The fighting between the troops occurred down at the North Bridge followed by on the retreat of the British troops back to Lexington.  I can't find any reports of anyone dying on Concord Ridge and I can only find one problematic report of Rev. Emerson being present to support troops.  Having said that, Rev. Emerson was a vocal supporter of armed rebellion against Great Britain and his home was close to the North Bridge.  With those two facts, I believe it is likely that he was present during the Battle of Concord.  He may or may not have fought - but providing moral support along with information about anything he saw or heard about the British troops is important, too.

Reverend William Emerson Sr. died on October 20th, 1776 of camp fever or dysentery contracted while serving as the chaplain of Fort Ticonderoga.    He was 33 years old.  He left behind his wife, four daughters and one son.   This son Reverend William Emerson Jr went to Harvard and was ordained as a Congregational minister in 1792.  In 1799, he became the minister of the First Church of Boston which transitioned to a Unitarian church by the mid-1800s.  I'm sure the Botkin could have hammered Rev. Emerson Jr.'s betrayal of his father's faith harder - but the younger Rev. Emerson was seven when his father died.  That's awfully young to be fully grown in a religious tradition.

Slightly off-topic - but at this point I realized there was a subtle irony in Botkin's decisions about when rebellion was good and when it was bad.  Calvinists who rebelled against the Catholic Church were good - in spite of the fact that they often were rejecting the faith of their parents.  Unitarians who split off from the Calvinist tradition, on the other hand, deserve scathing scorn and blame for the collapse of Western society - because they were rejecting the faith of their parents...or grandparents.... or in one case in the next post..... the faith of his great granduncle.   I guess once someone in your family has become a strict Calvinist no one is allowed to leave.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was Reverend William Emerson Jr.'s son.  Ralph Waldo Emerson lost his father when he was seven which makes Isaac Botkin's harping on his rejection of his male ancestor's religion feel both trite and cruel since the men in this line have lost their fathers' terribly young. 

It's pretty uncontroversial to describe Ralph Waldo Emerson as a leader in the Transcendentalist movement.  This Emerson caught understandable flack by denying the divinity of Jesus at the graduation address of Harvard Divinity School - but he's hardly the only person in the US who was moving toward the unitarian belief in Jesus as a great man rather than God incarnate. 

Blaming Emerson for any of the utopian communal living groups that started during the Second Great Awaking feels unfair.  The only communal living group he was involved with was the ill-fated Fruitlands commune started by Bronson Alcott, the father of Louisa May Alcott - and his most important role was purchasing a farm once Fruitlands collapsed to house the Alcotts.   Emerson was worried that Fruitlands was doomed to failure - and I can see his point.  They were espousing a vegan diet that also forbid root vegetables because potatoes, carrots and beets grew downward instead of upward and were banned for spiritual reasons.  Needless to say, food shortages were a major cause of Fruitlands' collapse.  Outside of Fruitlands, all sorts of people were starting utopian communal living groups in New England and Europe.  It was kind of a faddish thing to do - and we really can't blame Emerson for those.

Strangely enough, I'd probably agree with Isaac Botkin that Ralph Waldo Emerson was weird if I had met Emerson in real life.  This is as much a reflection on the fact that I tend to be highly pragmatic and find romantic ideals - including Transcendentalism - to be extremely weird.   Having said that, I'm sure Emerson would have plenty to say about my materialistic and low-brow tendencies as well :-)

Finally, blaming Emerson for Thoreau feels misplaced.  The main people to blame for the existence of Thoreau are his parents John Thoreau and his wife Cynthia Dunbar.  Thoreau's disdain for authority would have been welcomed by his maternal grandfather who lead a student rebellion at Harvard in 1766 - but the Botkin's ignore that little factoid of descendents honoring their ancestors..  Emerson certainly provided support for Thoreau - but based on the sheer number of Transcendentalists running around in New England and Europe at the time - I feel safe asserting that Thoreau would have ended up in the same circles eventually.

After this 30-second taste of the 45-minute podcast, I suspect you better understand why these podcasts take me forever to transcribe.  I get dragged down rabbit holes like 'Wait, which William Emerson is Isaac talking about?" or "Did he just blame Emerson for Thoreau? So weird..." or "Where is Concord Ridge compared to the North Bridge?".  The next thing I know, I have 10 tabs open on my computer and have spent way too much time researching the history of the U.S. Army......and it's midnight.

Next up in this series: Edward Everett Hale's alleged betrayal of his great-uncle Nathan Hale.  Did you know Nathan Hale was a great Calvinist martyr?  I sure didn't - and I'm not sure that Nathan Hale did either.....