About the Irish

There was a glorious moment in this country when we embraced the notion of the melting pot and joined together to accomplish great things and reap great rewards. It was the Second World War and the subsequent GI bill. I was born white in 1954, and benefited from all that. I thought it was the normal American way of life.

These times are not the same. But when I read Wallace’s History, things today seem not all that unAmerican. In fact they seem downright familiar. Back then, even the best people were at one another’s throats.

Untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

On September 11, 1834, the trustees of Noyes Academy met for the first time in the new academy building. They issued a circular “To the American Public” that outlined the purpose of their new enterprise of educating Black students.

In this first paragraph, they establish that they are doing this not in violation of the law, or of the spirit of this new nation. But rather they are putting to deed what already existed in word. (Itals added)

Page 261

The undersigned Trustees of the Noyes Academy, in conformity with the wishes of a large majority of the donors of said Academy, and with the unanimous vote of the corporators, named in the act of the Legislature, have come to the resolution to admit to the privileges of this Institution, colored youth of good character on equal terms with whites of like character. In adopting this principle the Trustees deem that they are reducing to practice the spirit and letter of the Declaration of our National Independence, of the Constitution and laws of New Hampshire, and the Bills of Rights of all the States of this United Republic, except those which have made literature a crime, and prohibited the reading of the Bible under heavy penalties.

I added italics to that last bit about making literature a crime and prohibiting the reading of the bible. This sentence is a reference to the Virginia slave revolt of Nat Turner. In 1831 (only three years before this circular was written), Turner led an uprising of enslaved people that resulted in the death of 60 white men women and children.

Turner's uprising was a galvanizing event, striking fear into the white community. Turner, in addition to being an enslaved blacksmith was a preacher who spoke of divine visions. He had a following to whom he preached. When the flock that he had built became warriors, many Southern states prohibited teaching any Black person to read and write, most particularly read the bible. Turner’s literacy was seen as a means of organization and his biblical visions were the foundation of his rebellion. Enslavers sought to prevent any repeat performances. Slaves would not be taught to read and write and any Christianity they received would be at the hands of approved preachers. No independent bible reading allowed.

The prohibition against reading the bible horrified the religion-obsessed elite of New England. To deny Black people the word of God was to deny them the potential for morality itself. It was to forbid civilization. Early abolitionist press obsessed over the bible prohibition.

In the State of New Hampshire according to the law, character and not complexion, is the basis of every distinction, either of honor or infamy, reward or punishment. But what greater punishment can there be, what greater degradation, than to deprive the soul of its proper sustenance, the knowledge of divine and human things? Much better were it to kill the body than to doom the mind to ignorance and vice.

It is unhappily true, that heretofore the colored portion of our fellow citizens, even in the free States, while their toil and blood have contributed to establish, and their taxes equally with those of the whites, to maintain our free system of Education, have practically been excluded from the benefits of it.

This Institution, propose to restore, so far as it can, to this neglected and injured class the privileges of literary, moral and religious instruction. We propose to uncover a fountain of pure and healthful learning, holding towards all the language of the Book of Life: “Ho! EVERY ONE that thirsteth let him come and drink.”

We propose to afford colored youth a fair opportunity to show that they are capable, equally with the whites, of improving themselves in every scientific attainment, every social virtue, and every Christian ornament.

This concludes the first of three different arguments the trustees will make in their September 11 circular. The preceding was the argument relying on religion.

Untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

Next, the circular jumps into a new topic. This new argument is an argument relying on reason. The Noyes Trustees are proposing that people view the school as a way to test the hypothesis that Black people are educable and moral. If the haters are right, that Black people are sub-human, then their case will be proved, but if, as we all suspect, Black students flourish, then the argument can be settled.

I’m sure that went over as well in that day as it might in ours. The real problem for the opponents of the school wasn’t merely that the students were Black. That was at most an “ick” factor that could be addressed. The real problem was that they understood that the South would secede if the North violated their rules about Black people. There was no good counter-argument to that, so abolitionists focused on arguing from the stronger moral position that Black people were human.

If however we are mistaken in supposing, that they possess such capacity; if, as some assert, they are naturally and irremediably stupid, and incorrigibly vicious, then the experiment we propose will prove this fact; and will in any event furnish valuable data, upon which the excited patriotism and piety of the land may predicate suitable measures in time to come, or may relapse into undisturbed repose, and forever forbear to form designs upon this agitating subject.

There are in the midst of this republic, of slaves and men nominally free, a number much greater than the population of the six New England States, and about nine times greater than the entire people of the State of New Hampshire. This mighty mass of human beings, of intelligent spirits and active passions must remain here, for weal or for wo, until the Creator of all shall come to judge the world. They must not only remain here but they must in spite of all human efforts, go on to increase in a ratio, which inspires apprehension in those who are conscious of doing them continual wrong.

That was a strong paragraph. “This mighty mass of human beings,” is the free and enslaved Black population of America, and it exceeded the combined population of New England. The trustees point out that the number of Black people isn’t fixed. It can only increase and that means even more people who will hate you for a very good reason. The longer we wait to address this problem the worse it will get.

If, therefore, there really exists between them and the whites, that natural and invincible antipathy, which many allege as an argument against our plan, how important and necessary is it for the welfare of this whole country that some of their own color should be humanized, christianized and qualified to gain that access to their minds and that control over their evil propensities which upon the above proposition it is impossible for any white ever to acquire.

This argument is novel to me. It seems to propose that Black people are so alien that we would benefit from learning to speak their language, teaching them ours and build up enough trust with a few of them that whites could control this dangerous population. This is the third argument, the argument that educating at least a few Blacks will give whites greater control.

Untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

It all makes much more sense once you get to the paragraph that follows it. About the Irish.

It was commonplace in the 1800s to massively distrust the Irish. The Catholic church was not very welcome in New England except in so far as it managed to keep the Irish in line. The Noyes Trustees are here making their argument from a third approach. They are comparing Blacks to the hated Irish and proposing their scheme of education will give them the same leverage over this unwieldy population that the Catholic church has over the Irish.

It is a familiar remark, that it would be an incalculable injury to this country, if the restraint which the influence and instructions of the Catholic Clergy impose, were to be removed from the uneducated and depraved among the Irish emigrants. The total number of those emigrants does not exceed one fifth of the colored Americans!

If, on the other hand, the alleged antipathy does not exist, then one of the most common and formidable objections to the free and equal participation of all our youth in the means and opportunities of improvement, vanishes at once and forever.

The abolitionists were among the most bravely and fundamentally moral people I have ever encountered. And they had absolutely no problem trashing Catholics and Irish along the way. This is why I prefaced this blog post with thoughts about whether post-WWII America was the aberration rather than the norm. I'm not calling out the abolitionists for sharing the opinion commonplace in their day, but we can sometimes romanticize our heroes and think that no one alive today is as good as our ancestors. For all their goodness, they were of their own times, not ours.

We propose to do nothing for the colored man — but to leave him at liberty to do something for himself. It is not our wish to raise him out of his place nor into it — but to remove the unnatural pressure which now paralizes his faculties and fixes him to the earth. We wish to afford him an impartial trial of his ability to ascend the steeps of science and to tread the narrow way, which leadeth unto life.

We wish to see him start as fairly as others, unconfined by fetters, unincumbered with burdens and boyant with hope; and if he shall then fail, we shall at the worst have this consolation, that we have done our utmost to confer upon him those excellent endowments, which the wisdom of God and the solemn appeal of our fathers have taught us to regard as the appropriate distinction of immortal and infinitely improvable beings.

This next paragraph sent me scrambling for information. The trustees profess that they are not “jacobins, nor agrarians.” The jacobin part was clear, it’s not the first reference to the atrocities of the French Revolution made in Wallace’s History. The “agrarian” reference was harder to figure, it made no sense that the author was referring to Thomas Jefferson who is associated with “agrarian” politics.

I think this use of the term refers to a century of violent rebellions in Ireland over land ownership. In the 1820s, a particularly venomous iteration of these agrarian revolts, called the Rockites, took place. It is described in Wikipedia as “one of the most violent agrarian movements that Ireland has ever seen in its history. They would commit murder and use incendiary weapons in warfare.”

In 1834, this would be fresh in the minds of our authors.

We profess to be republicans, not jacobins, nor agrarians; we think with a great and liberal Englishman [Emund Burke], that political equality means “not a right to an equal part, but an equal right to a part,” not a right to take from others, but an equal right with others to make for ourselves.

We profess to be Christians and we look with humble reliance for the blessing of Him, with whom “there is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian nor Scythian bond nor free, but Christ is all in all.” This declaration is intended to be preliminary to a detailed plan for the instruction and government of the Academy, which with the terms of tuition, the qualifications for admission, the time of commencement, and the name of the instructor, will form the subject of a future and early communication to our fellow citizens.

George Kimball, Canaan, N. H.

Nathaniel Currier, do,

Timothy Tilton, do,

John H. Harris, do,

David L. Child, Boston, Mass.,

Samuel E. Sewall, do,

William C. Munroe, Portland, Me.,

N. P. Rogers, Plymouth, N. H.,

George Kent, Concord, N. H.,

Samuel H. Cox, New York City,

Trustees.

Each week, I deliver two printed copies of this blog. One to Gary Hamel, my partner in this enterprise, and the other is to Canaan Town Historian Donna Zani Dunkerton, my mentor. She is the original Noyes Academy scholar. She expressed to me recently that this blog is really more my opinions than it is history, I thought I might take a moment to explain why she’s right.

I read Wallace’s book at her urging and if there was something in the book I didn’t understand, it was Donna’s phone I rang. Wallace’s book is the foundation on which is built our knowledge of Canaan’s early years. It is an endless trove of genealogy.

What captured me is that in addition to all that, it is the meditation, at the end of life, of a man who had a big life that took him from Canaan to the whirlwind of his times and then back to Canaan. The Canaan he returned to much changed from the Canaan of his childhood memories, and that is the period he seems most interested in. Although Wallace lived until 1893, his interest in detailing the history of Canaan seems to wither after he details the doings and aftermath of Noyes Academy.

He saw something universal in the stories he was telling. I see the same thing. But to read the story Wallace is telling, you have to see the world through the eyes of the people he was writing for. Wallace doesn’t provide us with a lot of context. He didn’t imagine a reader nearly two hundred years in the future. In the beginning of this post, I refer to WWII. I bet everyone knew what I was talking about and I bet in 200 years, only people very familiar with history will understand what those four letters mean either literally or evocatively.

I don’t think I can really know what people in 1834 were thinking. I barely know what people are thinking today. But I can do lot of reading and make some educated guesses that cast some light on what happened so many years ago.

So, yes. This is all my opinion. My only hope is that you find it entertaining or informative enough to put up with me each week.

Untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

And now, I shut up for a moment and let Gary write:

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Artist’s Statement

Gary Hamel lives on the same piece of land where he grew up, on the north side of Tuttle Hill in the tiny town of orange, NH. His ancestry in New England dates back to 1621, when his 9x great grandfather, Clement Briggs, sailed into Plymouth Harbor on “The Fortune.” In the late 1770’s, two of Clements great, great grandsons, Benjamin and Nathaniel, settled on the south side of Tuttle Hill when the town was still called Cardigan. This piece of genealogy Hamel has cobbled together only in recent years. As he wanders the old roads, meadows and forests of his hometown, he thinks about these people and feels the connection to the past and this land very deeply.

Now in his mid sixties, this is the subject Hamel has chosen to depict in his current work, as he asks the question, “What does it mean to be a New Englander?”

Hamel has been an exhibiting artist since 1980, his work is in public and private collections throughout the world. In 2008, he was honored by being listed in Who’s Who in American Art.

In 2007/08, he was ranked Canaan Citizen of the Year. His studio is in Canaan village.

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Me again

Gary's paintings this week are a continuation of his series where he removes all signifiers from an old photo and leaves the viewer only the physical form of the subject to consider. Except this time, he didn't. As I went to photograph his images for this post, I kept getting these random lines showing up. I was going to try and fix them when I realized that Gary had embedded images into his images. Most distinct to me in the first three, and completely charming in all. To get a better look, you can click on any image to see it in a larger format. Hunt for what seem to be random lines.