Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
for whom he wrote a song in honor of the King’s birthday, which was
sung with much drinking of wine on June 4, 1776, the news of which
getting abroad stirred the Whig partisans to anger. Soon thereafter
matters grew too warm for Odell to remain longer neutral; he suffered
certain humiliating personal experiences and was driven to seek refuge
within the British lines. Thenceforth none was more ardent in the royal
cause. He busied himself with innumerable intrigues to undermine the
Whig strength, amongst others serving as a go-between in the unlucky
André-Arnold affair. He remained implacable to the end, and not until
the last Redcoat was withdrawn from the independent states, did he
leave off urging reprisals. When it was all over he withdrew sullenly
to Nova Scotia, was amply rewarded by his King, and sat down to nourish
to the end of a long life the most virulent hatred of all Whigs and
republicans. “Toryissimus,” Professor Tyler calls him, borrowing Sir
Walter’s word; and the term hits to a nicety the bitter arrogant nature
which so closely resembled in its essentials the “proud prelate Laud,”
from whom his ancestors had fled a hundred and fifty years before.
A vigorous man was Jonathan Odell, strong, capable, uncompromising,
possessing a clear intellect and a heart little touched by Christian
charity--a stern Hebraist who would sweep away with the besom of wrath
all the enemies of his God and his King. He felt no hesitation in
making out the list of the proscribed: the enemies of the King were
_ipso facto_ the enemies of God--rebels who were daily signing their
own death warrants in overt acts of treason. Watching the seditious
crew of “Congress men” seducing the colonials into unnatural rebellion
against the best of kings and fathers, he took it to be his Christian
duty to lay the rod of correction upon their shoulders. If they would
not be warned they must be hanged. Not content with active intrigue, he
pressed his pen into service, and during the year 1779 he wrote four
pieces which for bitterness of satire outdid Freneau at his frankest.
Freneau was bitter and brutal in all conscience, but he was never
nasty; there were infamies of personal insult that he would not stoop
to, vulgarities of innuendo that he was not guilty of. If he studied
the art of Churchill, he stopped short of Churchill’s grossness. But
Odell the priest was unhampered by scruple; the meanest gossip found
a place in his “acrid rhyme.” No Christian charity spread its mantle
over the shortcomings of his enemies, no Christian forgiveness found
lodgment in his unforgiving heart. He was a son of the Old Testament
and he girded up his righteousness with prayer.
Ask I too much? then grant me for a time
Some deleterious pow’rs of acrid rhyme:
Some ars’nic verse, to poison with the pen
These rats, who nestle in the Lion’s den![285]
The four satires which embody his holy wrath and which were little
calculated to spread sweetness and light in a world sorely in need of
them, are _The Word of Congress_, _The Congratulation_, _The Feu de
Joie_, and _The American Times_--all written, probably, in the last
months of the year 1779. Of these the first and the last are the most
suggestive in their denunciation. The spirit which prompted him to turn
to satire is given in the preface to the 1780 edition of _The American
Times_.
The masters of Reason have decided, that when doctrines and
practices have been fairly examined, and proved to be contrary to
Truth, and injurious to Society, then and not before may Ridicule
be lawfully employed in the Service of Virtue. This is exactly
the case of the grand American Rebellion; it has been weighed in
the balance, and found wanting: able writers have exposed its
principles, its conduct, and its final aim. Reason has done her
part, and therefore this is the legitimate moment for Satire.
Accordingly the following Piece is offered to the Public. What it
is found to want of Genius, the Author cannot supply; what it may
want of Correction, he hopes the candor of the Public will excuse
on account of the fugitive nature of the subject: next year the
publication would be too late; for in all probability there will
then be no Congress existing.
When we examine the work of Odell to discover the deeper springs of his
thought, we come upon naked class prejudice, undiluted Toryism. His
social philosophy is erected upon that unstable foundation; the actions
of men are judged solely by that light. Of any valid or reasoned
philosophy, social or political, he was as wanting as a child. Of any
real understanding of his fellow Americans who had espoused the Whig
cause, he was as lacking as General Clinton, whose “warfare,” Odell
asserted, “was the war of God.” The colonial grievances which other
Tories acknowledged to have some foundation, Odell casually ignored.
There was no cause in heaven or earth for colonial disloyalty, he
was convinced, except Whiggish perversity, and for such perversity
there must be due punishment--the rope. In his mind’s eye he sees the
“impious crew,” one after another silenced by the halter. There must be
no ill-judged mercy; the best of the rebels must swing with the worst,
for they are all sedition-mongers, all attainted traitors. From his
vast ignorance Odell derived an equally vast confidence in the ultimate
triumph of truth. There is a note of finality in his judgments that
amazes, an infallibility that amuses. The Reverend Jonathan frankly
acknowledges himself to be the boon companion of Reason, the favored
suitor of Truth--from them only has he taken instruction and in their
name he professes to speak. Whereas the Whigs are poor fellows who have
held commerce with neither.
Odell is careful of his workmanship and organizes his materials with
an eye to climax. _The American Times_ is formally divided into three
parts. The poem opens with a summoning of the infernal crew of sedition
and the abuse of them severally, rising to a rhetorical conclusion in
an address to Washington; then the leering portrait of the mother of
all mischiefs. Democracy, is painted; finally comes a pure and lofty
strain which summons Reason to decide in the great cause. Taxation,
Independence, are haled before her august throne and there condemned,
and the whole concludes with a vision of Britannia’s guardian angel
bearing a two-edged sword and proclaiming:
At length the day of Vengeance is at hand:
The exterminating Angel takes his stand:
Hear the last summons, rebels, and relent:
Yet but a moment is there to repent.
Lo! the great Searcher ready at the door,
Who means decisively to purge the floor:
Yes, the wise Sifter now prepares the fan
To separate the meal from useless bran.
Down to the centre from his burning ire
Ye foes of goodness and of truth, retire:
And ye, who now lie humbled in the dust,
Shall raise your heads, ye loyal and ye just;
Th’ approving sentence of your Sovereign gain,
And shine refulgent as the starry train.
Then, when eternal justice is appeas’d;
When with due vengeance heav’n and earth are pleas’d;
America, from dire pollution clear’d,
Shall flourish yet again, belov’d, rever’d:
In duty’s lap her growing sons be nurs’d,
And her last days be happier than her first.[286]
Into this framework Odell has fitted a surprising number of personal
attacks. His ink blots out the good name of every Whig on whom it
drips. To the present generation it furnishes food for wonder to
see what a paltry appearance the fathers make in the verse of this
plain-speaking Tory. Jefferson, Paine, Morris, Adams, Washington, and
a host of others, are shallow creatures, in the judgment of Odell,
bereft of reason, void of honor, the very scum of the revolutionary
pot; whereas Clinton and Gage, Hutchinson and Galloway, are holy
instruments in the hand of God to cleanse the land of pollution. The
attack is rankly and grossly partisan, with no saving grace of humor or
humanity. The alpha and omega of Odell’s political faith was loyalty to
the crown, and the bankruptcy of such a creed in revolutionary America
is nowhere thrust into harsher relief than in the bitter verses of
this bitter heart. Empty Jonathan Odell of prejudice, class interest,
passion for the prerogative, with their corollary of praise for an
unmanly truckling to the King, and nothing remains, the empty sack
collapses. It was a hardship that he should have been driven out of his
native country upon the failure of the King’s cause, but what could
be done with a fellow who insisted that his empty sack was stuffed
with all the virtues? He was harshly intolerant in his Toryism, and he
encountered a victorious republican harshness.
2. Samuel Peters
It is amusing to turn from the implacable Odell to the mendacious
Peters, only to meet with another tale of abortive missionary zeal.
The Anglican clergy played a conspicuous part during the Revolutionary
troubles--a part that in many cases inspired small regard for the
establishment in the minds of a dissenting laity. Not in vain did
the church teach loyalty to authority, for while the British Empire
was breaking asunder, the Anglican ministers were visible pillars of
prerogative and with pen and voice lent effective aid to the royal
cause. Sometimes their ardor outran their intelligence, their devotion
betrayed their discretion; nevertheless their zeal contributed notably
to the number and quality of the Loyalist writings.
For some inconceivable reason Samuel Peters was seized with a desire
to plant the Anglican church in Congregational Connecticut--surely
the strangest of desires and the strangest of men to undertake such
a work. To uplift the banner of episcopacy in a commonwealth that
for over a hundred years had been militantly Separatist, that did
not want bishops and would not have them--here was missionary zeal
that a plain man understands with difficulty. To have made headway
at all there was need of apostolic fervor and an ingratiating tact;
and Samuel Peters possessed neither. He was a gentleman who preened
himself on his quality, exuding in speech and action a pride of caste
that led him to speak of the American farmers as peasants--the only
native Loyalist who thus aped the English. His abilities were far from
mean, but his better qualities were corroded by overweening conceit.
Possessed of all the arrogance of a lord and all the ostentation of a
brewer, he was scarcely the man to serve the Connecticut laity with
due Christian humility. He pointed out the truth authoritatively and
then took it as a personal affront if his hearers failed to agree with
him. And so, after explaining to the Congregationalists of Connecticut
the infallible truth of the Anglican way, and being ready to minister
to them according to that way, he fell into a pet when they refused to
turn churchmen. The more he argued the more he got himself disliked,
and when his tactless loyalism brought down the Sons of Liberty upon
him and he was driven to Boston--whence he sailed for England where he
survived for thirty-one years--he took a spirited revenge by writing
his _History of Connecticut_, a work that solaced the early years of
expatriation, and provided material for many an after argument.
It is an amazingly provocative book, over which the sons of Connecticut
have disputed acrimoniously for a hundred years without coming
to agreement. Fortunately those disputes are of far less concern
today than the political philosophy tucked away in the pages of the
_History_; the scandal is far less interesting than the shrewd comment
on the causes of the American Revolution. Samuel Peters was a high Tory
with the virtue of frankness, which defeat had made the more open. From