Month: May 2012

Our last three entries for the spring, 1 Q&Aand 2 summaries

 Dorothy Thompson — (John Willson, Chronicles, April 2012)

This Syracuse-educated journalist was, by all accounts in the interwar years, the most influential woman inAmerica, save Eleanor Roosevelt?  She wrote posts from abroad and columns for the New York Herald Tribune, and she was the first reporter expelled from Nazi Germany (by Hitlerʼs direct order). In spite of her personal success, her 1939 essay “The Dilemma of the Liberal” lamented the empty prosperity and elusive happiness of the age in the absence of faith and communal roots.

 “He descended into Hell” — (Tabletalk daily lesson,April 30)

The phrase “He descended into hell” in the old Apostlesʼ Creed, despite much controversy over its meaning through the ages, almost surely asserts that Christ bore the full wrath of hell while on the cross, satisfying the demands of divine justice for His people.

The notion of some that Christʼs spirit went down to hell for a time after His death, either to more fully atone for sin or to preach to confined souls there, seems out of character with several biblical passages and teachings. (To mention here just one, Jesus, undergoing the pangs of crucifixion, told the repentant thief with whom He suffered that that very day they would meet in paradise).

Thus, Jesusʼ descent into hell is better understood after the manner of John Calvin (1509–1564). The French Reformer observed, “After explaining what Christ endured in the sight of man, the Creed appropriately adds the invisible and incomprehensible judgment which he endured before God, to teach us that not only was the body of Christ given up as the price of redemption, but that there was a greater and more excellent price—that he bore in his soul the tortures of a condemned and ruined man.”

 The Solemn Spectacle of the Choctaws — (America, Vol. 1, pp. 246-247)

“I saw them embark to cross the great river, and this solemn spectacle will never leave my memory.One heard neither tears nor complaints among this assembled crowd; they were silent. Their misfortunes were old, and they felt them to be irreparable.” 

The observer was French nobleman and political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), and the observation is recorded in his famous Democracy in America (1835). What Tocqueville saw was the departure of the Choctaws from Memphis, Tennessee, across the frozen Mississippi, late in the Year of Our Lord, 1831.

The Choctaws were one of several NativeAmerican tribes whose fate (banishment to the West on reservations) was sealed by Andrew Jacksonʼs Indian removal policy, a prescription popular with mostAmericans and passed by Congress, “The Indian Removal Act,” on May 30, 1830.

Click here for a printable copy…

Worldʼs Columbian Exposition — (Almanac, May 1)

A year late with its grand opening, this 1893 Chicago extravaganza commemorated the quadricentennial of the first voyage of Columbus to the New World? The mass exhibit venue, “the fairest fair of them all” says author George Grant, revolved around “an imposing courtyard of Babylonian proportions” with buildings, all white and of classical design, that created a resplendent, ethereal, New Jerusalem effect. The fairʼs sponsors sought to prove that Americaʼs cultural sophistication could rival Europeʼs.

 Black Hawk War — (America, Vol. 1, p. 242)

This war, named for the prominent chief of the Sac & Fox tribes, erupted on the Illinois frontier in the spring of 1832? The Sac & Fox, removed west of the Mississippi earlier but now starving and chased by hostile Sioux, returned to Illinois where they tangled with state militia (including Abraham Lincoln) and terrorized settlements. Eventually, the tribes were wiped out, their chief managing to escape, only to be dealt with later with mercy by the U.S. militaryʼs Jefferson Davis and President Jackson himself.

 Cherokees — (America, Vol. 1, pp. 242-243)

This Indian nation, residing mostly in Georgia, endured an horrific “Trail of Tears” in the 1830s,suffering forcible deportation by the U.S. to Indian Territory (todayʼs Oklahoma)? With U.S. Government and N.E. missionary support, the tribe acquired literacy, learned Christianity, authored a political constitution, and established its own legislature. Tragically, they fell victim to ambiguities of jurisdiction (between the legal authority of the U.S. and that of the States) and finally to a popular Jacksonian Indian removal policy.

 Declaration of Independence — (America, Vol. 1, p. 246)

“[The king]. . .has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” Thus wrote Thomas Jefferson in this beloved American political document? Jefferson, ordinarily gracious and generous in his attitude toward Native Americans, even to the point of defending their humanity before skeptical European philosophers, is here constrained to take a different tack.

For a printable copy, click here…

The Election of 1828 — (America, Vol. 1, pp. 224-225)

With this yearʼs presidential election the seeds of Americaʼs mass democracy, with its newfound concern for popular vote totals, were sown?  Jackson trounced incumbent John QuincyAdams in the worldʼs first political contest where over 1 million votes were cast (out of a total population of about 13 million). The mass campaign, however, seemed to bring out the worst in the campaigners; “the standards for decency and just plain truthfulness,” says William Bennett, “could hardly have been lower.”

John C. Calhoun — (America, Vol. 1, pp. 230-234)

This acclaimed South Carolinian (1782–1850) was educated in New England (at Yale) and began his U.S. political career as a “War Hawk” in the House?  In the 1820s, he served as vice president under both John QuincyAdams and Adamsʼs arch-rival Andrew Jackson. It was in the Senate, however, where he made his mark in a spirited defense of Southern interests (including slavery) as well as theoretical justification of state nullification and secession as remedies for unconstitutional federal acts.

“Tariff of Abominations” — (America, Vol. 1, pp. 234-240)

The South Carolinians assigned this derisive title to the high and onerous tax on manufactured imports passed by Congress in 1828? The controversial tax occasioned Calhounʼs written “Exposition and Protest” and a stirring debate in the Senate between Robert Hayne (SC) and Daniel Webster (MA) over the nature of the Union. As the Palmetto State took steps toward nullifying the repulsive law in its jurisdiction, Congress defused the crisis by a compromise measure that lowered the tax.

Daniel Webster — (America, Vol. 1, p. 235)

“I go for the Union as it is.It is, Sir, the peopleʼs Constitution, the peopleʼs government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.” So replied this New England statesman (1782–1852) on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1830 to the statesʼ rights arguments of Senator Robert Hayne and Vice President John C. Calhoun, both of South Carolina? His speech, a paean to the priority of a peopleʼs Union as opposed to a statesʼ Union, has inspired generations ofAmericans.

Force Bill — (America, Vol. 1, p. 239)

President Jackson, in an unyielding response to South Carolinaʼs 1832 Nullification Ordinance, pressed Congress to enact this 1833 military measure?  The measure gave Jackson the authority to send an army if necessary to make the South Carolinians comply with U.S. tariff laws (the object against which their ordinance was directed). As it turned out, the bill empowering Jackson and a related one, the Compromise Tariff of 1833, arrived on the commander-in-chiefʼs desk on the same day.

 Click here for a printable copy…