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The Benjamin Franklin Lectures
of the
University of Pennsylvania
SEVENTH SERIES
T h e Benjamin Franklin Lectures
T H E ARTS IN RENEWAL
by Lewis Mumford, Peter Vierec\, William Schuman, fames
A. Michener, and Marc Connelly
Introduction by Sculley Bradley
T H E CULTURAL MIGRATION
by Franz L. Neumann, Henri Peyre, Erwin Panofsfy, Wolf-
gang Köhler, and Paul Tillich
Introduction by Rex W. Crawford
PHILADELPHIA
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
© 1962 BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY
OF PENNSYLVANIA
7358
7
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
9
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
10
PREFACE
Those who read these papers but did not hear them delivered
have missed a pleasure that we at the University of Pennsylvania
enjoyed. W e are grateful to the seven lecturers for their contribu-
tions.
This preface cannot be closed without acknowledging impor-
11
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
12
Contents
PREFACE 7
by Clarence Morris
EXEGESIS OF THE GOSPEL OF W O R K : SUCCESS AND SATIS-
FACTION IN RECENT AMERICAN CULTURE 17
by John M. Blum
T H E STRATEGY OF PEACEFUL COMPETITION 37
BY JOHN K. GALBRAITH
CULTURE AND MENTAL HEALTH 57
BY ALEXANDER H. LEIGHTON
T H E IMPACT OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES U P O N NATURAL
SELECTION 83
BY JONATHAN E. RHOADS
PROBLEMS FACING ARCHITECTURE 101
BY Ε ER Ο SAARINEN
T H E POUTICS OF THE N E W COLLECTIVISM 115
BY DAVID B. TRUMAN
RELIGIOUS ISSUES IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY CULTURE 143
BY DANIEL D. WILLIAMS
LITERARY POSSIBILITIES OF THE N E X T DECADE 171
by Richard W. B. Lewis
13
University Lecture Committee
Donald K. Angell
Thomas C. Cochran
Lee C. Eagleton
John M. Fogg, Jr.
Gary Goldschneider
Sarah Guertler
James Kilcoyne
Clarence Morris
G. Holmes Perkins
John J. Sayen
Donald T. Sheehan
Robert E. Spiller
Elizabeth K. Spilman
Mervin Verbit
S. Reid Warren, Jr.
Lee H. Weinstein
Charles Lee—Secretary
Roy F. Nichols—Chairman
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
Exegesis of the Gospel of Work:
Success and Satisfaction in
Recent American Culture
John M. Blum
M A R K HANNA, ACCORDING TO A STORY AS THOMAS BEER RELATED IT,
was one day reading in his suite at the Arlington Hotel. He was
lost in a book, somewhere in Egypt or Assyria, when a caller
entered the room. Looking up, Hanna said suddenly: "Isn't it
funny, Jackling, that money and machinery came into the world
at the same time?"
Perhaps Hanna had been reflecting that, since birth, neither
had ever been able to leave the other long alone. Expanding
through continuing interaction, they swelled the stock of goods.
The diversion of a fraction of the surplus put Hanna in his com-
fortable suite. Had Jackling asked, the senator would probably
have told him bluntly that anyone who labored hard enough
could earn a likely chance for a comparable apartment. Investiga-
tion of Egyptian history, he might have added, was just digres-
sion.
Yet in the fifty years since Hanna's contemplations, machinery
and money have inverted the priorities by which he lived. In the
culture of today's advanced technology, Americans are increas-
17
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
19
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
more than $100. More marvelous still, he received a letter from his
benefactor containing $100 for himself. "Continue to love and
help your mother," it read, "and when you are old enough to go
into a store I will receive you into mine." There was, Alger con-
cluded, great joy in the little cottage that evening.
Doubtless Alger's readers felt the joy themselves, for the story
was a perfect metaphor of a national faith. Johnny was a dutiful
son of a fond mother who saw to his education. That showed
he had the right stuff in him. Johnny had worked and saved, not
in spite of adversity, but because of it- That was pluck, a folk-
word for character. Johnny had happened upon an accident
which made his main chance. That was luck, a folk-word for a
secular divinity. Johnny had won commercial opportunity, and
simple projection assured him of eventual success and social
position. Santayana, for many years a neighbor of aspirant
Johnnies, summed up their metaphysic well: "Irreligion, dis-
soluteness, and pessimism—supposed naturally to go together—
could never prosper; they were incompatible with efficiency. That
was the supreme test." That was the exegesis of chapter and
verse, James, i. 22, "Be ye doers."
Early in the twentieth century, however, the problem of suf-
ficient production no longer existed within the United States.
The nation's superb natural endowment had always contained
the promise of abundance. The massive movement of peoples
to the country and westward within it had provided a necessary
pool of labor and a market for goods. The advantages of a free
society and a vast, free market had encouraged the accumulation
and investment of capital. As enterprise flourished, American
business had completed the organization of conditions of plenty.
The consolidation of industry made possible the efficiencies of
integration and diversification, the acceleration of technology,
and the professionalization of management. The twentieth cen-
20
EXEGESIS OF THE GOSPEL OF WORK
tury was still young when Henry Ford and Frederick Taylor,
devoted disciples of the gospel of work, accomplished their prod-
igies of production, when during World War I the United
States supplied not only its own ordinary and emergency needs
but also the extraordinary demands of most of western Europe.
Certainly by 1915, probably years earlier, the nation had in hand
the resources and the techniques to furnish luxuries as well as
necessities for a far larger population than it contained.
By that time the cult of work, thrift and success had lost some
of its following. Labor was persuaded that the earth would spin
just as swifdy if the work day were nearer eight than ten hours.
The owners of the machines that helped to encourage that per-
suasion still resisted it, often with the argument that hard work
never hurt anybody, but some of them were also in their own
ways violating the cult. Vacations had become more common
and longer. More sons and daughters of wealth were deliberately
unemployed. With success, moreover, frugality frequently yielded
to ostentation.
Though conditions had changed, and the culture, too, the idea
of work survived the era of its basic relevance. Theodore Roose-
velt, by any measure a national hero in 1903, then told one audi-
ence that work was "absolutely necessary; . . . no man can be
said to live in the true sense of the word, if he does not work."
At times self-consciously a Jeremiah, he attacked most viciously
the idleness and folly of the rich. In a similar vein, Thorstein
Veblen chose the leisure class as the particular target for his
censures, reserving his fondest blessings for the "engineers," crea-
tively productive men whose fulfillment came from work.
Roosevelt and Veblen were members of a generation that
lived through the stage of mechanization which carried the
United States once and for all across the brink of industrial
abundance. The engineers, by the time Veblen arranged their
21
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
thrift, pluck and luck brought success which earned man status.
That progression was central to the creed which faced a shatter-
ing challenge during the 1920's when Americans were shown a
short-cut to esteem—a short-cut, moreover, that reckoned thrift a
vice. With the problem of production solved, industry's next
problem was sales, and its next solution, advertising, which had
to reach and stimulate the national market. In order to teach
Americans to buy more than they needed, though rarely as much
as their growing enterprises were producing, advertising had to
disseminate an abbreviated image of the good life. It sold esteem.
Of course it also sold many other good things. Advertisements
for soap sold cleanliness; for orange juice, health; for mouth
wash, romantic love. But most of all advertising sold success.
These clothes, that furniture, this correspondence course, those
houses, and especially these automobiles were made the appurte-
nances of success. Ownership brought success itself, ordinarily in
company with a beautiful woman, and ownership was simpli-
fied. One could buy today and pay tomorrow in regular, small
installments. No need to wait, no need to save, and the interest
rate, while hideous, was hidden.
As the advertising profession has so often claimed, its tech-
niques exposed demands and did not create them. The exposure
necessarily associated available and marketable commodities with
more remote and sometimes impalpable aspirations. Powerful
aspirations, after all, long predated the layouts that translated
sex into antiperspirants, appetite into electric grills, and vigor
into breakfast cereals. So, too, and emphatically, with status. If
success had not already become an American fetish, advertising
could scarcely have invented it. The triumph of advertising de-
rived from divorcing esteem from sweat and denial.
Similarly advertising encouraged waste. Alfred Sloan under-
stood the situation exactly. Just as General Wood had realized
23
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
that the drift of population to the cities would give Sears, Roe-
buck a larger stake in retail stores than in mail-order catalogues,
so Sloan realized that mechanization permitted General Motors
to manufacture cars much faster than its customers could use
them up. As one executive put it, "The old factors of wear and
tear can no longer be depended upon to create a demand."
Neither could beauty or performance alone, but advertising
could hasten obsolescence, and though some company engineers
were unhappy, GJvi. made fashion the pavement of its road to
glory. As with automobiles, so with many consumer items, the
date and packaging determined the measure of esteem.
Yet here again advertising was rather more revealing than
revolutionary. Waste, as David Potter has pointed out, had al-
ways attended American experience in abundance. The nation
had condoned a profligate use of land and minerals and a reck-
less spoilage of timber, water, even air. Indeed a willingness to
waste may have been an indispensable part of the essential spirit
of bullish speculation that force-fed innovation and overbuilt
facilities in expectations of unending growth. These expectations
in turn supplied the means for their own ultimate satisfaction.
But if waste had long existed, and with importance, it had not
been counted a quality of success. Rascals were spendthrift, but
good men, wise and frugal, until advertising drew a beard on
savers and shaved clean the purchasers of fashion.
In attaching esteem to ownership, as it did, advertising sub-
stituted a static value for the kinetic attributes of the Alger story.
The fact of acquisition replaced the process of achievement. The
success image lost its motion. This was a portentous but possibly
essential change, for the professionalization of American life,
especially of American business, had increasingly separated the
Alger myth from reality.
Whatever the absolute values of work and thrift, they had be-
24
EXEGESIS OF THE GOSPEL OF WORK
25
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
was a culprit, goes often by the name of progress. There are still
no major problems of production. T h e national stock of resources
and skills can amply satisfy the foreseeable needs of a growing
population for consumer and producer goods and for national
defense. There are other problems, of course—problems of so-
cial goals and social organizations, problems of pace and alloca-
tion, problems of priorities for individuals, for neighborhoods,
and for the whole nation. Many of these defy easy solution, but
none can be solved primarily by more or harder work as Alger's
generation thought of work. Like higher real wages, greater
leisure has probably come to stay.
Indeed under contemporary conditions the old exhortations
are no longer convincing. Johnny wants to buy a Chevrolet, not a
sewing machine, and his mother, whose pension is now generous,
approves. She is also not so sure that hard work never hurt any-
body. That may have been true of picking cranberries and turn-
ing the grindstone, physical work out in the fresh air. Johnny
will do well to mow the lawn. But hard work at a desk or in a
laboratory or with a group of people, work involving primarily
intellectual or interpersonal skills and their application, can hurt
almost anyone who fails to find the time for rest and recreation.
Johnny's modern benefactor is doubdess at his office every year
more nearly sixteen hundred than thirty-six hundred hours, and
Johnny knows it. Johnny has still the right stuff in him. H e goes
to school, loves his mother, heeds the example of his elders, wants
to become a useful and prosperous lawyer or engineer, but he
considers Alger's Johnny (if he must consider him) "out, man,
way out." He has no compelling cause for thinking otherwise.
Entirely apart from its relation to success, work, of course, pro-
vided satisfaction for a fortunate few. They derived from it a
sense of identification and fulfillment, a sense of self and self-
expression. Such satisfaction, however, was elusive, even when
27
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
goods and leisure were less plentiful than they have become.
W o r k without dignity had little to recommend it except as a
means for survival. Furthermore, identification and fulfillment
escaped men from every stratum of society, including many who
rose relendessly from tier to tier.
Such men, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once suggested, wanted
either an instinct for recognizing their personal genius or an op-
portunity for giving it release. " A man is a beggar who only lives
to be useful," Emerson wrote, and beggars there had to be while
the economy commanded the bulk of human energy and the
culture condemned an unproductive use of time. Beggars there
still are in a routinized economy where fewer and fewer jobs
afford scope for self-expression. Consequendy, for most of the
laboring force, less work for more pay comes as an unmitigated
gain.
T h e apparent agencies for that gain, rather than the oppressive
jobs, naturally evoke the workers' loyalties. On that account the
labor union receives the grateful allegiance accorded to political
machines seventy years ago. Today's locals, like yesterday's pre-
cinct houses, are clubs, whose members are true to each other
and to their leaders, united against their opponents, hostile or
uncomprehending toward criticism. Today's union officials, like
yesterday's bosses, take care of their following and also of them-
selves, sometimes with scant regard for means, in rare but trou-
bling cases with small regard for law. When they are attacked,
whether jusdy or unjusdy, their constituents also feel embatded,
and consequently respond like partisan fans outraged by an un-
favorable call at second base, whatever the umpire's vision or wis-
dom. T h e rank and file of labor arc not dishonest, but they are
devoted, and they are apprehensive of change lest change reduce
their share in plenty, their share in the appurtenances of success.
They value the results their leaders get; they are less concerned
with process.
28
EXEGESIS OF THE GOSPEL OF WORK
29
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
with style, find lasting satisfactions of their own, need not in-
dulge the whims of salesmen of esteem. Those salesmen, their
clients, and the media they employ have displayed small sense
of obligation to propose a separation of fashion from esteem, or
of status from the image of success. Indeed probably the obliga-
tion is not theirs, for neither advertising nor its servants should
be expected to renounce the profits of a gospel preached so many
years. Alger, after all, did not let Johnny drown.
Style, in any event, is not susceptible to mass production. The
man who recognizes it, like the man who contrives it, does so
alone. It is akin to what Emerson meant by genius, the disciplined
expression of a creative instinct. Only exploration of the self
and of its world can disclose that kind of genius, that path to
style and to satisfaction. But such exploration, which demands
spare time, is not universally rewarding. For those who resist it,
leisure can be frightening at worst and at best drudgery, from
which one escape is pointless or compulsive work. Yet leisure,
far better than toil, can help uncover genius and give it vent, can
bring a man to design a style of his own.
Leisure, moreover, the most common coin of national plenty,
has often been in recent years the medium of inflating opportu-
nity. In spite of all the confusions imbedded in the culture to
which Madison Avenue adheres, there is impressive quantitative
evidence that Americans have seized their chance to spend their
wealth for time and tools to use it. There are, most obviously,
the power saws in the cellars and the dry flies on the lakes; there
are the gardens, the sailboats, the skis, the bedrolls from Albany
unfurled in Montana. For hundreds of the growing thousands
who can acquire them, these are more than diversions, more
than toys. They are instead the instruments of a process chosen
to engage a legitimate pride in skill or a poignant rapport with
nature. Those satisfactions are neither mean nor silly nor, in the
30
EXEGESIS OF THE GOSPEL OF WORK
tribulations of Americans arc not their own alone, but the shared
experience of mass society in this century. Compared to other
peoples. Americans have done well. Indeed, under conditions of
plenty, conspicuous emulation has proved to be an effective
agency for communicating gradually the advancing standards of
an intellectual elite.
A better agency of communication is education, through which
leisure has scored its largest triumphs. Half a century ago illiter-
acy thrived on child labor. Now both are substantially erased.
American children have the spare time to learn to read, though
the means they employ may sometimes be inefficient, and the
time to go at least through secondary school, though not all of
them elect to. Most of the marginally talented can find the time
and means for college, and more would do so were there avail-
able the necessary public funds and private motivations.
For all its shortcomings, the national performance in education
has set significant precedents during the past fifty years. The
elongation of schooling has depended upon a distribution of
general wealth in the form of leisure and facilities to individuals
of less than average means, including those in communities of less
than average standing. Those individuals who have labored at
that leisure have confirmed the promise inherent in the fading
cult of work. Their productive use of time has opened to them
opportunities for both kinds of success—for the careers that so-
ciety esteems and, more important though less honored, for the
satisfactions that trained minds achieve.
The gospel of work always made an allowance for education
as a factor in the success of esteem. "Learning," Franklin said,
"whether speculative or practical, is . . . the natural source of
wealth and honor." Alger's Johnny's mother insisted on her son's
completing school. Though it was the success of satisfaction that
meant more to Emerson, education, in school or out, was in his
32
EXEGESIS OF THE GOSPEL OF WORK
view the dowser for the genius for which he sought release. "Half
engaged in the soil, pawing to get free," he wrote a century ago,
"man needs all the music that can be brought to disengage him.
. . . If trade with its money; if Art with its portfolios; if Science
with her telegraphs through the deeps of space and time can set
his dull nerves throbbing . . . make way and sing." The kind of
education he endorsed pointed that way. It exposed, thus invit-
ing adventure, which then with experience made discipline the
haversack of discovery.
Without denying education that non-directive inspiration, Al-
fred North Whitehead demanded for it a sharper aim. "Culture
should be for action," he wrote; and formal liberal education, he
believed, taught men to act, for it whetted their perceptions and
instilled a sense of manner. It taught them style, in Whitehead's
phrase, "the last acquirement of the educated mind, . . . also the
most useful." "With style," he wrote, "you attain your end and
nothing but your end. With style the effect of your activity is
calculable."
Useful for men who take their satisfaction in their work, style
in Whitehead's sense is no less useful for those who must seek
like rewards in leisure. The very abundance of spare time invites
action disciplined by education, action no less fulfilling because it
is essentially private. "Style," Whitehead concluded, "is the ulti-
mate morality of the mind." With it, a new freedom of time
makes possible a new plenty, not of more goods and services, but
of creative experiences that set man's dull nerves throbbing, and
lift him beyond Emerson's depths of space and time.
In an age of leisure, the want of a liberal education, the ab-
sence of a morality of the mind, too frequently converts spare
time to anguish, especially because society persists in unthinking
incantation of the values of the cult of work. The resulting per-
plexities have disturbed particularly those at or near retirement.
33
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
34
EXEGESIS OF THE GOSPEL OF WORK
lost. But education has to help much more than it yet has.
It cannot wait for cultural quakes; it must precipitate them. It
cannot wait for languid and complacent office holders to offer
assistance for a function they do not begin to understand. It
must instruct them, and their constituents.
"It is shocking," Walter Lippmann wrote not long ago, "and
indeed something in the way of a disgrace, that this country,
which . . . is so rich, has not had the purpose or the will . . . or a
sufficiendy responsible sense of the future to provide an adequate
school system." It is also shocking, and equally a disgrace, that
educators have so often measured their crisis in bricks and
mortar and aspirant Ph-D.'s.
There is a greater urgency. There is need to demonstrate that
a system productive of wealth can also produce satisfying in-
dividuality. There is need to prove that men welcome freedom
from want because they value freedom to discover and to ex-
press themselves. Any rich society can, if it will, suffuse its
members with fashionable goods. Any can inflate its members'
traffic in purchasable esteem. Any can give them time to spare.
Leisure time is susceptible to massive use in contemplation and
creativity, but leisure time has yet to be directed to those ends
by a gospel of confidence, a gospel as powerful and pervasive as
the outmoded cult of work.
It can be. It can be if educators transfigure the gospel of work
by elucidating the best meaning of success. In so doing they
will propound a gospel of leisure for men to believe and to
follow. Its chapters lie deep and sure within the culture. They
have been for decades the core of the content and of the purpose
of liberal education, of the arts and sciences and newer social
sciences which society can now ill afford to deny to any boy or
girl.
The message of these arts and sciences, taught with the convic-
35
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
tion and the vigor, the duration and universality that once at-
tended instruction in the cult of work, opens for exploration the
boundless life of the mind. That is the cradle to Emerson's
genius, by which each individual first finds and then differ-
entiates himself. That is the crucible of Whitehead's style, which
directs the actions of each differentiated man. Only such men are
finally successful, for only they are satisfied. Only such men, in
the last analysis, are free. They will not long remain so if they
suffer the contemporary Algers their wasteful affluence. They
have instead to teach the new, the now inclusive leisure class
to work to find the private satisfactions so abundant in their
plenitude of time.
36
The Strategy of Peaceful Competition
John K. Galbraith
37
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
39
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
40
THE STRATEGY OF PEACEFUL COMPETITION
41
TRENDS IN MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY
42
THE STRATEGY OF PEACEFUL COMPETITION
45
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Whoever ventures an exposure of the fashionable vices of
influential circles—whoever assails the citadels and strongholds of
crime and corruption, must not expect to elude numerous and deep-
laid conspiracies for the sacrifice of life, which, if he escape falling a
victim, he will be more than fortunate. Even so far, the author has
bitterly experienced all this. The marvel is that he is yet alive and
determined to continue in stronger terms than before exhibited—
relying on invincible truth and the better portions of society to bear
him up through the ordeal which he has to encounter. Although he
has suffered much, and has had many “hair-breadth escapes” from
the plots and snares laid for his destruction.
The subsequent part of the Appendix will inform the reader of
several infernal concoctions for assassination when attempts at
intimidation failed. The first of these will embrace particulars in the
period betwixt the publication and the author’s arrest, and the other
about three years after the trial had terminated. The period betwixt
publication and arrest cannot be devoid of interest to the reader—it
is a prelude to the important trial which followed. The incidents
involved during the time here referred to have ponderous bearings,
in a circumstantial point of view, toward establishing the substantial
correctness of Copeland’s confessions, although intended to
invalidate them and make a nullity of the whole.
During imprisonment Copeland seemed to fully comprehend the
profound plans and commanding power of one by the name of
Shoemake. This is the man who played so conspicuous a part
before and on trial in combination with the three prosecuting parties
of Mobile. The arch-enemy of all mankind cannot surpass him in
perfidious deception.
“With smooth dissimulation well skilled to grace,
A devil’s purpose with an angel’s face.”
He who it was who first addressed a letter of almost matchless
duplicity to the author, while residing in Perry county, under a forged
or fictitious signature. He who it was who next visited the author in
person, first to try the arts of persuasion, and then the designing
influences of intimidation, but in either case without the desired
effect. After this, he it was who entered into compact with the
prosecuting three, of Mobile, bore the requisition from the Governor
of Alabama to the Governor of Mississippi for the rendition of the
author, and, in the circumstances connected with the arrest, acted in
such a mysterious and suspicious manner as could leave no doubt
that he contemplated the life of the author under a plausible pretext
of resistance to lawful authority. But this object was signally
defeated. A considerable number of good citizens quickly collected
together, well armed for protection, and volunteered to accompany
the author under arrest to Mobile, which they accordingly did, and
effectually secured his safety.
The trial followed next. By careful attention to the circumstances
connected with it much information may be gathered, showing the
force of political considerations, and how hard the task for truth and
justice, in the first efforts, to gain a triumph over a combination of
wealth and intellect leagued together for bad purposes. For instance,
the presiding Judge, McKinstry, could have had no personal
prejudice or enmity against the author, and in his heart might have
rejoiced over the dissolution of the clan, but his palpably
reprehensible conduct on trial furnishes convincing evidence that he
was influenced by other considerations than those of law and justice.
To this fact Dr. Bevell, one of the impaneled jurymen on the case,
had his eye turned in the references to the Judge’s conduct and
political considerations, which references will be found in his letter
published in another part of the work.
On the days of trial the notorious character of this said Shoemake
was made public and manifest. He was the principal witness relied
on in the prosecution. Another, equally infamous, as demonstrated
by the most satisfactory of testimony, by the name of Bentonville
Taylor, was brought from afar in rags and poverty, and sent back in
costly attire with money in profusion. Does the impartial judgment
require anything more to produce conviction of the shameful features
of the prosecution? If so, he will find much more before he gets
through the particulars of the trial. Added to this, the almost universal
outburst of sympathy in behalf of the author, with letters of
condolence from distant parts, all of which will be found in the proper
places of the work.
Under circumstances so adverse it is not to be expected that
Copeland, in his confession, could give more than a small fractional
part of the transactions of the whole clan. Since then a number and
variety of interesting matters have been collected from the most
authentic of sources, and will be found in the appropriate place of
this pamphlet.
The subject of crime opens an almost inexhaustible expanse for
expatiation. An elaborate treatise on its causes and remedies is too
prolix for a work of this nature—only a few passing observations on
this theme will be found interspersed, which are relevant and have a
direct bearing on the main topics discussed.
And now, in closing this introductory part, the author wishes the
public to understand that he has no personal animosity against those
who so wrongfully deprived him of his liberty, ruined him with
expenses, and encompassed his life in so many intricate ways. He
has not indulged in any revengeful passions, but has endeavored to
strictly confine himself to the unprejudiced and impartial province of
the historian and biographer—according merit where due, and with
propriety denouncing crimes, corruptions and unhealthy conspiracies
whenever they come in the way. And, if in so doing, he is to endure a
repetition of persecutions and prosecutions, with fresh dangers
added, he will try to bear them with all the fortitude he can command,
with the hope that the peaceably and honestly disposed parts of the
community will rally for the pulling down the edifices of vice, and for
establishing a better, a purer and a healthier condition of society.
PREFACE.
The number of years during which the Copeland and Wages Gang
of Land Pirates pursued a successful career of robbery, incendiarism
and murder in the United States; their final dismemberment, disgrace
and violent end at the hand of retributive justice; and the stern moral
lesson taught by their history and fate, have induced the
undersigned to publish the confession of one of the leaders of the
gang, as made by himself, in anticipation of his death at the hands of
the hangman. Its accuracy may be relied on; and indeed it is hardly
possible to doubt the truth of its statements, so minutely,
consecutively and clearly are they related, and so consonant are
they with the various localities and the characters of the men.
This confession was given to me, principally by the aid of copious
memoranda which Copeland had kept for years in his diary, and
which materially refreshed his memory.
James Copeland, the subject of this memoir, was born near
Pascagoula river, in Jackson county, Miss., on the 18th day of
January, 1823. He was the son of Isham Copeland and Rebecca
Copeland, his wife—formerly Rebecca Wells. The parents had
resided for many years near Pascagoula river.
Isham Copeland was a farmer in easy circumstances, with a good
farm, several negroes, plenty of horses and mules and other live
stock; and, in fact, he might be said to have everything about him
that a family in moderate circumstances could require to enable him
to live comfortably. He was the father of several sons; but, alas! this,
which is by most men deemed a blessing, proved to him a curse;
and after encountering many trials in youth and manhood, just when
he thought to enjoy the peace and repose of old age, his son’s
misconduct drew on him many severe reverses of fortune, and finally
drove him to the grave broken hearted.
J. R. S. PITTS.
LIFE AND CAREER
OF
JAMES COPELAND,
THE SOUTHERN LAND PIRATE, AND HIS INTIMATE ASSOCIATES,