SPAN: July 1962

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JULY

1962

The Oregon Trail

by Albert Bierstadt.

See page forty-six.

4

DEMOCRACY'S

by Charles

CHALLENGE

Frankel

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6 STILL A RALLYING CRY • 'Y \".

by Henry Steele Commager

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10 THE HERITAGE OF PIONEER SKILLS Photographs

14

by Burk Uzzle

SEVEN WHO

by Richard

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SET AMERICA'S DESTINY

B. Morris

18 MOMENTS OF AMERICAN HISTORY ON CANVAS 30 THE INDEPENDENT MAN D... ':..}\ ,~j..

by Oscar Cargill

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32 GNAW YOUR OWN BONE

by Henry David Thoreau

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34 LAWMAKERS OF NEBRASKA Photographs

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by Henri Cartier-Bresson

40 SEQUOYAH

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by Sohindar S. Rana

42 THE LAND-GRANT

COLLEGES

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by V. S. Nanda

46

ALBERT BIERSTADT Paintings by Bierstadt

EDITOR SENIOR STAFF EDITOR

Edward

ART EDITOR

Post

V. S. Nanda

RESEARCH Sohindar

William

Zehra

FEATURE EDITOR

EDITOR

Lokenath

S. Rana

PHOTO EDITOR

Bhattacharya

Avinash

H. Weathersby,

Director, United States Information

United

Service.

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DEMOCRACY'S CHALLENGE

AN ANALYSIS of democracy ends where it begins. The adherents of democracy stake their destinies on the inherent capacity of the individual to play his part in the system and to carry his share of the public responsibility. The viability of democracy does not depend on any fixed structure, public or private. It turns, finally, on the soundness of a fundamental commitment.

Democracy aims to provide a mobile society and a free political process that will give the individual the opportunity to participate in the affairs of his community and to bring to bear on those affairs the best that is in his mind and spirit.

Democracy is built on the belief that the purpose of a society is to emancipate the intelligence and protect the integrity of the individual men and women who compose it. Democracy relies on rationality as against irrationality. It is the application of mind and spirit to the serving of public ends and to the routing of ignorance,fear, and superstition. The whole conception of liberty for the individual and freedom of thought and conscience rests on the conviction that such freedom nurtures intelligence and that this in turn will carry men towards truth and away from error. It is this faith that democratic institutions fortify. No guarantee can ever be given that truth will triumph or that fallible human beings will win out over all obstacles. But the democratic system provides a means for putting intelligence and good will to work .â&#x20AC;˘

Interior of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, Washington, D.C.

Still a Rallying 'Cry

by Henry Steele Commager

THE AMERICAN

T

HE United States was born of rebellion and grew to greatness through revolution. No other nation, it is safe to say, has a revolutionary history that is so long or so comprehensive, and no other has a record that is so subversive.

Certainly the Declaration of Independence has some claim to be considered the most subversive document of modern history. For, consider how explosive are its principles, if they are to be taken seriously: all men are created equal; all have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the purpose of government is to secure these rights; men have a right to overthrow existing governments and to make new governments!

Americans did not invent these heady doctrines, but they did something far more dangerous; they invented the mechanisms which gave them life and meaning. In the words of John Adams they "realized the doctrines of the wisest writers." Thus, while philosophers had long asserted that men make government, it remained for the Americans to contrive that fundamental democratic institution whereby men can, in fact, create a government, the constitutional convention. Thus, while philosophers had long argued that all power was limited and that no government could exercise unlimited power, it remained for Americans to devise really effective legal limitations on government: written constitutions, checks and balances, dual federalism, judicial review-devices that for the first time in history really limited government.

But the Declaration was just a beginning of the revolution.

Thereafter the United States embarked upon a career that was deeply subversive of most of the things governments and rulers in the Old World believed in and stood for. Just think: no established church, no royalty, no hereditary nobility, no military establishment, no great vested interests, no colonies to exploit. And-to look at its positive features-self-government, limited government, religious freedom, popular education, and a classless society.

DECLARATION

OF INDEPENDENCE

The more we contemplate the American experience, the more we are impressed by its deeply revolutionary character. No wonder that when the perspicacious Alexis de Tocqueville went to the United States in the mid-1830's he could report, in effect, "I have seen the future, and it works!"-and return home to warn France, and all Europe, to prepare for an inevitable revolution along American lines. "The question here discussed," he saidand he was talking about equality in America-"is interesting not only to the United States, but to the whole world; it concerns not a nation, but all mankind." That was something that thoughtful Americans and Europeans realized from the beginning-that the experience of America concerned not just a nation but all mankind.

Americans were the first people to revolt against a mother country and set up on their own. This established a pattern, first for the nations of Latin America, and eventually for nations and peoples in the Old World and in ancient continents. The revolts against colonialism which have swept Asia and Africa in our own time have their historical antecedents or beginnings in American experience. If any people should sympathize with the impulse to "dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume ... separate and equal station," it is Americans, for in a very real sense they initiated and inspired it.

The United States was the first nation founded squarely on the right of revolution; on the "right to alter or abolish" government. That principle is to be found not only in the Declaration, but in the institution of the constitutional convention. What James Madison said shortly after the inauguration of the new government is true today: "If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every nation has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with

Waiting for dinner.

Kenny becomes a bucking horse and brother Lee a hard-riding cowboy.

On Sundays, Mr. Graves, a leader of the community and president of the school hoard, likes to sit next to the coffee urn in his ranch house and, with Mrs. Graves, greet and pass the time of day with friends and neighhours who call.

"Life isn't meant to he easy," according to Norris Graves. "I never expected a hed of roses. I didn't get one." His extensive and modern machine shop to service his machinery is the result of years of saving and planning.

Norris Graves holds tenaciously to his heritage of strength of arm and spirit. With his family and neighhours he lives in the confidence of pioneer self-sufficiency and neighhourly cooperativeness. His is a man's life that will not allow the spirit and determination of America's pioneers and frontiersmen to disappear into the folklore of history .â&#x20AC;˘

Seven Who Set Strong men with strong opinions, the Founding Fathers achieved an enduring concept of unity.

ONCE again, as in the days of the Founding Fathers, the United States faces a stern test. That test, as President Kennedy forthrightly depicted it in his State of the Union message, will determine "whether a nation organized and governed such as ours can endure."

It is well then that in this hour both of national peril and of national opportunity we can take counsel with the men who made the nation. Incapable of self-delusion, the Founding Fathers found the crisis of their time to be equally grave, and yet they had confidence that America would surmount it and that a republic of free peoples would prosper and serve as an example to a world aching for liberty.

Seven Founders-George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jaydetermined the destinies of the new nation. In certain respects, their task was incomparably greater than ours today, for there was nobody before them to show them the way.

They thought of themselves, to use Jefferson's words, as "the Argonauts" who had lived in "the Heroic Age." Accordingly, they took special pains to preserve their papers as essential sources for posterity. Their writings assume more than dramatic or patriotic interest because of their conviction that the struggle in which they were involved was neither selfish nor parochial but, rather, as Washington reminded his fellow countrymen, that "with our fate will the destiny of unborn millions be involved."

Strong men with strong opinions, frank to the point of being refreshingly indiscreet, the Founding Seven were essentially congenial minds, and their agreements with each other were more consequential than their differences. Even though in most cases 14

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July 1962

the completion of the definitive editions of their writings is still years off, enough documentation already has been assembled to warrant drawing a new composite profile of the leadership which performed the heroic dual feats of winning American independence and founding a new nation.

However, before merging them into a common profile it is well to remember that their separate careers were extraordinary. Certainly no other seven American statesmen from any later period achieved so much in so concentrated a span of years.

Eldest of the seven, Benjamin Franklin, wrote the most dazzling success story in our history. The young printer's apprentice achieved greatness in a half-dozen different fields, as editor and publisher, scientist, inventor, philanthropist and statesman. Author of the Albany Plan of Union, which, had it been adopted, might have avoided the American Revolution, he fought the colonists' front-line battles in London, negotiated the treaty of alliance with France and the peace that ended the war, headed the state government of Pennsylvania, and exercised an important moderating influence at the Constitutional Convention.

On a military mission for his native Virginia the youthful George Washington took part in several engagements of the French and Indian War, then guarded his colony's frontier as head of its militia. Commanding the Continental Army for six long years of the American Revolution, he was the indispensable factor in the ultimate victory. Retiring to his beloved Mount Vernon, he returned to preside over the Constitutional Convention, and was the only man in history to be unanimously elected President. During his two terms the Constitution was tested and found workable; strong national policies were inaugurated,

and the traditions and powers of the Presidential office firmly fixed.

John Adams wrote the constitution of his home state of Massachusetts, negotiated, with Franklin and Jay, the peace with Britain and served as our first Vice President and our second President.

His political opponent and lifetime friend, Thomas Jefferson, achieved immortality through - his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, but equally notable were the legal and constitutional reforms he instituted in his native Virginia, his role as father of our territorial system, and his acquisition of the Louisiana Territory during his first term as President.

During the greater part of Jefferson's career he enjoyed the close collaboration of a fellow Virginian, James Madison. The active sponsor of Jefferson's measure for religious liberty in Virginia, Madison played the most influential single role in the drafting of the Constitution and in securing its ratification in Virginia, founded the first political party in American history, and, as Jefferson's Secretary of State and his successor in the Presidency, guided the nation through the troubled years of our second war with Great Britain.

Alexander Hamilton was a political prodigy with exceptional precocity, consuming energy and high ambition.

His revolutionary pamphlets, published when he was only 19, quickly brought him to the attention of the patriot leaders. Principal author of "The Federalist," he swung New York over from opposition to the Constitution to ratification almost singlehandedly. His collaboration with Washington, begun when he was the general's aide during the Revolution, was resumed when he entered the first Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury.

Š!

1961 by. New York Times Company.

The New York Times Magazine.

Seven Who Set America's Destiny

(Continued)

His bold fiscal programme and his broad interpretation of the Constitution stand as durable contributions.

John Jay commands an equally high rank among the Founding Fathers.

He served as president of the Continental Congress. He played the leading role in negotiating the treaty with Great Britain that ended the Revolution, and directed his country's foreign affairs throughout the Confederation period. As first Chief Justice, his strong nationalist opinions anticipated John Marshall. He ended his public career as a two-term governor of New York.

Jefferson and Jay, abandoned his career at the bar, with considerable financial sacrifice. Hamilton, too, gave up a brilliant law practice to enter Washington's Cabinet.

All seven combined ardent devotion to the cause of revolution with a profound respect for legality. John Adams asserted in the Continental Congress' Declaration of Rights that the demands of the colonies were in accordance with their charters, the British Constitution and the common law, and Jefferson appealed in the Declaration of Independence "to the tribunal of the world" for support of a

government, with Hamilton and the nationalists supporting the former and Jefferson and Madison upholding the latter position.

The state's rights position was formulated by Jefferson and Madison in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolves. but in their later careers as heads of state the two proved themselves better Hamiltonians than Jeffersonians.

In purchasing Louisiana, Jefferson had to adopt Hamilton's broad construction of the Constitution, and so did Madison in advocating the rechartering of Hamilton's bank, which he had so strenuously opposed at its

These Seven Founders constituted an intellectual and social elite, the most respectable and disinterested leadership any revolution ever attracted. They commanded both prestige and influence before the Revolution started.

Striking individualistsardent, opinionated, even obstinatethey were amazingly articulate, wrote extensively and were masters of phrasemaking.

The Seven Founders were completely dedicated to the public service.

Franklin retired from editing and publishing at the age of 42, and for the next 42 years devoted himself to public, scientific and philanthropic interests. Washington, who never had a chance to work for an extended stretch at his favourite occupation, plantation management, served as Commander-in-Chief during the Revolution without compensation.

John Adams took the advice given him to "pursue the study of the law, rather than the gain of it." When the Revolution broke out, he, along with

revolution justified by "the laws of nature and of nature's God." They fought hard, but they were forgiving to former foes, and sought to prevent vindictive legislatures from confiscating Tory property in violation of the Treaty of 1783.

All seven recognized that independence was but the first step towards building a nation. This new force, love of countrY'; superimposed upon -if not displacing-affectionate ties to one's own state, was epitomized

by Washington.

His first inaugural address speaks of "my country whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love." All sought the fruition of that nationalism in a Federal Government with substantial powers.

Save Jefferson, all participated in the framing or ratification of the Federal Constitution. They supported it, not as a perfect instrument, but as the best obtainable. Historians have traditionally regarded the great debates of the 1790's as polarizing the issues of centralized versus limited

inception, and in adopting a Hamiltonian protective tariff.

In 1832, when the South Carolina nullifiers adopted the principle of state interposition which Madison had advanced in his old Virginia Resolve, they elicited no encouragement from that senior statesman. In his political testament, "Advice to My Country," Madison expressed the wish "that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated."

As patriots and nationalists the Seven Founders were convinced that the new nation boasted a better set of values than obtained in the Old World, and as early as 1775, John Adams warned Americans to avoid alliances "which would entangle us." Years later, Jefferson was to repeat the injunction in almost identical phraseology in his first inaugural address.

When the American peace commissioners in Paris were instructed by Congress to take no step without the approval of France, Jay vigorously protested. Aware of Franco-Spanish

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July 1962

efforts to conclude a peace that would have confined the United States chiefly to lands east of the Appalachians, he deliberately ignored his Government's instructions.

"We have no rational dependence except on God and ourselves," he wrote Robert R. Livingston, the American Secretary of Foreign Affairs, in a letter defending his direct negotiations with Great Britain.

This general agreement among the Founding Fathers on the necessity for keeping politically and culturally aloof from Europe found expression in Washington's Farewell Address, which recognized the need for temporary alliances, but warned against permanent ones.

The Seven Founders were children of the Enlightenment. They eschewed dogma, operated empirically and recognized the need for compromise.

In moving the adoption of the Constitution, Franklin, apostle of the Age of Reason, expressed the wish that

every member of the Convention "who may still have objections to it, would with me on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make 'manifest' our 'unanimity,' put his name to this instrument."

The Founding Fathers were all voracious readers. "From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books," Franklin tells us in his "Autobiography."

Adams collected the best law library in New England. After Jefferson sold his personal library to the Government, he confessed: "I cannot live without books," and proceeded to acquire more.

All seven possessed some of the versatility and encyclopaedic range of

knowledge associated with the European Philosophers of that day. None could equal Franklin, whose volume on electricity was the most influential book to come out of America in the eighteenth century, but Jefferson was a notable architect, inventor and gadgeteer, and Washington combined proficiency in surveying, plantation management and business administration with talents as a general and statesman.

The Seven Founders were united in their enthusiasm over the prospects of expanding education and the frontiers of knowledge. "Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing," wrote Adams. Franklin founded a library, a college and a learned society. While the war was still on Jefferson proposed to the Virginia Assembly a broad plan for public education.

Long fascinated with the notion of a university dedicated to "the free range of the mind," he founded, with Madison's help,

the University of Virginia.

With Hamilton's collaboration, Washington proposed to Congress the establishment of a national university, and Jefferson and Madison reissued the summons, urging such an institution as a "temple of science."

Although three came from the South and four were Northerners, they were as one in their detestation of slavery. As early as 1779, Hamilton proposed organizing several battalions of Negroes, who would be given "their freedom with their muskets."

He argued that such a gesture would open the door to a general emancipation of the slaves. Jefferson sought to incorporate in the Virginia state constitution a provision for gradual emancipation. Had Congress adopted

his territorial report of 1784, slavery would have been forbidden in all the Western territory after 1800, not only in the Northwest as it was by the Ordinance of 1787.

Products of an age of scepticism, the Founding Seven were united in their devotion to the principle of separation of church and state and to the idea of religious toleration.

As Washington eloquently phrased it, "happily the government of the United States which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under should demean themits protection selves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."

Although deeply committed to the principle that governments derive their just powers "from the consent of the governed," the Founders did not keep their ears to the ground for every minor seismic disturbance. The people, they recognized, often lacked the background information for their

opinions. It was the statesman's duty, said Jefferson, to "reclaim them by enlightening them."

Finally, and perhaps most relevant for Americans of the Space Age, the Founding Fathers had a profound faith in their nation's destiny, in its unique position as a symbol of freedom. They knew, with John Adams, that "freedom is a counter-balance for poverty, discord and war," or, as Washington phrased it in that inaugural address which ended one era and ushered in another: "The preservation of the sacred fire ofliberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.".

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THE CIVIL WAR was nearing its end when this painting was made of President Lincoln conferring aboard a Union ship with Generals Sherman, left, Grant, centre, and Admiral Porter.

EDUCATION FOR ALL citizens was an objective of the Founding Father The rural school was a landmark af the American countryside from the Republic's early years and a free public school system was begun in most States prior to the Civil War, being finally adopted by all.

SPLICING THE CABLE-1866

by Robert Dudley (19th Century)

AN ARMOURED copper wire 2,800 miles long made communications between America and Europe virtually instantaneous.

Despite failures in 1857, 1858, and 1865, the first successful trans-Atlantic cable was laid in 1866.

Rain was falling on July 13th when the cable ship Great Eastern, standing off Ireland, made the splice. Artist Robert Dudley was aboard the ship.

IN THE LAND

OF PROMISE:

CASTLE GARDEN-1884

CASTLE GARDEN was built around 1807 as the City of New York's West Battery. From 1855 to 1890 it served as an immigration depot through which passed nearly 8,000,000 newcomers to the United Stotes.

THE AUTOMOBILE introduced a new era American civilization at about the time the camera superseded the painter as the visual recorder of history.

of

The Independent No

special commotion attended the birth of Henry David Thoreau on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts. His father, who failed in business, later made lead pencils by hand, studying always "how to make a good article," and his mother ran a boarding house to supplement the family income, meagre at best. The name he was born to was French Huguenot, but there was also Scotch blood on his father's side and pure Yankee on his mother's.

Of his boyhood we know nothing save that his family once removed from the town to reside in Chelmsford and Boston, but returned to it, and that Thoreau prepared for Harvard College at Concord Academy. It would appear, however, that he had already formed a deep attachment for the fields and woods which lay for miles about Concord. "Though bodily I have been a member of Harvard University," he writes, "heart and soul I have been far away among the scenes of my boyhood ....

My spirit yearned for the sympathy of myoId and almost forgotten friend, Nature." Though the language is that of an adult, the emotion is that of a boy, and we must not forget that Thoreau was only sixteen when he entered Harvard. He was a tremendous student, but not in a conventional sense. He emerged a master of fluent Greek and Latin, erudite in the knowledge of English poetry, as a result of his own predilections in reading.

Devotion to books set him apart from his fellows, whom no very rigid discipline or faculty example drove to study. "The really diligent student in one of the hives of Cambridge college," he mournfully reflected later, "is as solitary as the dervish in the desert." That he was able to maintain himself at Harvard was due to family sacrifice, summer teaching, odd jobs at odd hours, and grants from a college fund established for needy students.

Thoreau on his graduation taught 30

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July 1962

for a few weeks in the fall of 1837 in the Concord grammar school but resigned when he was informed that he had to administer corporal punishment. In that same autumn he introduced himself to his fellow townsman Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had just come to fame through the publication of his little book Nature (1836) and through his address The American Scholar delivered at the end of August. As their acquaintance ripened, Thoreau apparently confessed to literary ambitions, for Emerson advised him to keep a journal. Thoreau took that advice and dated his first entry "Oct. 22, 1837." Early the next year he and his brother John joined forces and opened a private school in their home in Concord. Because the brothers were "modern" in their notions of education-they introduced recesses and genuine "field trips" and eliminated corporal punishmenttheir school prospered and had to be moved to the now vacant Academy building. Probably this working period with his brother was the happiest in his life, for the two young men were much devoted to each other.

The pair continued in close communion until they had to abandon their school because of John's poor health. Having no desire to continue the project alone and drawn to Emerson because of the latter's promised aid in his writing, Thoreau went to Emerson's house to live and to serve as "handy man" about the place-to keep the wood-box filled, to take care of the chickens and the garden.

Emerson, who still missed his dead brother Charles, wanted Thoreau for companionship and discipleship; he probably contrived the employment (though he would have had to have some lesser person for it) for selfjustification for Thoreau, who had his pride. The older man found the younger to possess a richly stored mind and congenial tastes. Thoreau's reading overlapped Emerson's at every point save one-Emerson had

gone further into Oriental literature; but newly stimulated, Thoreau soon out matched his mentor in this area.

On leaving Emerson's house, Thoreau went to the home of Emerson's brother, William, on Staten Island, in New York harbour, as tutor for the latter's children. He went armed, however, with letters of introduction from Emerson and Hawthorne to New York editors and publishers.

Dutifully he made his calls, but he had very little success in New York, getting only one review to do, which the editor published with reluctance. Declining a proposal from a friend that they work a passage across the Atlantic to see Europe together, Thoreau returned to Concord and on July 4, 1845, moved into a cabin that he had erected on some uncleared land belonging to Emerson on the shores of Walden Pond. Here he was to re'side until September 6, 1847, living off the vegetable patch he cleared and cultivated outside his door. Here friends came to discuss literature and philosophy with him, and here he seems to have completed the manuscript of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.

A Week was finally published in an

edition of one thousand copies in 1849, after Henry had earned the money to pay the printing costs by reverting to the manufacture of lead pencils. There were only two reviews of the book and they were not helpful; the demand was almost nil and Thoreau had most of the edition returned to him. He alluded ironically to his failure by saying that he had a thousand boqks in his library, seven hundred of which he had written himself.

The Walden Pond experiment was the great adventure of Thoreau's career, but it encompassed other adventures, like his first visit to the Maine Woods and his arrest for refusing to pay his poll tax so long as it went to the support of the Mexican War and the extension of slavery.

Man "the poem of creation is uninterrupted ... "

Reflection on this last experience led to his essay "Civil Disobedience," which, like A Week, was also published in 1849, when it bore the title "Resistance to Civil Government."

This essay is possibly the most momentous ever penned by an American if its effect on mere numbers of mankind is any gauge. Embodying Thoreau's idea that a tyrannous government can best be withstood by the tactic of withholding one's taxes, it attracted the attention of Mohandas Gandhi while he was a student at Cambridge.

He translated it and issued it as a tract while he was still champion of the rights of Asians in South Africa. Returning to India in 1914, he employed its tactic five years later when he used it to resist the Rowlatt Act and thereafter enlisted hundreds of thousands of Indians to try it to combat successfully the abuses of English rule. Besides its spirited exposition of the tactic of pacific resistance the essay embodies Thoreau's theory that all government should be displaced by a kind of evolutionary individualism.

In 1847, Thoreau moved into the attic of his paternal home and that house was to be his residence for the remainder of his life. Here he attended his sister Helen and his father in their last illnesses and here the remainder of his writing was done.

He had completed the manuscript of Walden, it is said, before A Week was issued, but the failure of that book killed all immediate prospect of publishing another, and it was not until 1854 that it was issued. It found a little more favour than A Week had, but Henry David Thoreau was never to know success, though leading magazines were occasionally to publish him. He did, however, stir up his townsmen once more. When John Brown led his raid on Harper's Ferry and was taken prisoner, Thoreau, who had met him when he was soliciting funds, mounted the rostrum in Concord to plead his defence.

The Independent

Man

(Continued)

Inasmuch as most of the North, together with all of the South, looked upon Brown as a mad fanatic, Thoreau had courage publicly to defend him.

Before the outbreak of the Civil War Thoreau was in failing health; he was shot through with the germs of tuberculosis, which had destroyed his sister, but the gravity of his condition was not realized until after he had gone to Minnesota for "a change of air," then thought to be a remedy.

To the advance of death he offered only the pacific resistance of good spirits. The town constable, who had turned the key on him in 1846 but was ever his friend, averred he had never seen a man die with so much peace and pleasure. The end came on the morning of May 6, 1862. "All memorable events," he once wrote, "transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere."

Walden, the only book Thoreau published in the last eleven years of his life, is the strongest anti-materialistic book written by a man with a sensuous love of beauty. There is nothing ascetic about it; Thoreau forcefully disclaimed any renunciation of life.

Indeed, he went to Walden Pond, he tells us, because he "wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life ... to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms .... " More prosaically, he wished to determine what the minimum concerns of life were-what effort should go into securing food and drink, into procuring clothing and a habitation.

He astonished his Yankee neighbours by stating the minimum essentials in terms of dollars and cents; they could not believe that any life could be purchased for so little.

He wrote, "In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal and need fear no change nor accident."

But if argument is inappropriate he turns to the seductive language of poetry to make his vision of life attractive: "The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows; the poem of creation is uninterrupted, but few are the ears that hear it.

Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere."

Gnaw Your Own Bone

The following letter was writlen by Thoreau on March 27,1848, to Harrison Blake of Worcester, Massachusetts. It was his first letter in an extended correspondence.

The Nebraska Senate is the only unicameral legislature among the fifty United States.

LAWMAKERS

OF NEBRASKA

NOT all the important laws of the United States come out of the marble halls of the Capitol in Washington.

Everyone of the fifty States has its own legislature which enacts laws concerning school building, transportation, tax policies, and hundreds of other local-but vitalissues. The atmosphere at the State legislature is less inhibited, more spontaneous than at the national Capitol.

These qualities attracted the perceptive eyes of a distinguished French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, who journeyed to the Midwest prairie State of Nebraska to capture the informal vigour of its Senate-the nation's only unicameral State legislature-which meets for six

months every two years. During the session, the senators devote an enormous amount of energy to debates, hearings, political strategy meetings, and talks with their constituents, who come from all parts of the State to express their views-often in voluble exchanges, face-to-face with their representative.

These hard-working senators come from a variety of occupations and, when the session ends, they return to them. But in the Senate chambers, public duty comes before private livelihood.

The accents of political controversy are varied, but all-the ringing speech. the cautious statement, the raging Span

July 1962

35

LAWMAKERS

OF NEBRASKA

(Continued)

Author of the bill, Senator Norman Otto, addresses the legislature.

Two senators argue issues raised by the sales and income tax bill.

Veteran legislator Charles Tvrdik, who has served twenty-five years in the Senate, sums up points against the bill.

Two citizens who oppose the bill observe proceedings from the gallery.

argument, the logical discussionhave a part in it. Political give-andtake is the life blood of the democratic process and the Nebraska legislature's fight over a bill to set up a State income and sales tax was a typical example. Young senators from the farming and ranching part of the State favoured the change. City dwellers who would ..bear most of its burdens opposed it. After a fiery two-day debate, in which every kind of evidence was cited to persuade the other side to change its votes, the measure lost by three votes, nineteen to twenty-two.

Citizens are always present in the gallery to (allow debate on bills in which they are especially interested

an illiterate

farmer

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SEQUOYAH

by Sohindar

PERHAPS the only person in history to invent an entire system of reading and writing in a specific language was Sequoyah, an American Indian who gave the Cherokees an alphabet in the 1820's.

It is due to Sequoyah's invention that the Cherokees, now living in the southern state of North Carolina, are the only Red Indian tribe with a written language. They were the first among the aborigines of the New World to organize a politically independent state with a written constitution and a democratic system of voting.

At the time of their first contact with the white settlers, when the Spanish explorer De Soto penetrated their territory in the 16th century, the Cherokees already possessed a primitive civilization. Unlike the 40

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Indian tribes of the plains who lived in tepees, the Cherokees lived in low, flat houses constructed of pliable lengths of woven cane plastered with mud.

They had settled on the land in villages. They grew regular crops of corn, cane, beans and potatoes. They made pottery and some metal objects and were skilled basket weavers.

From the early settlers the Cherokees acquired the use of the wheel.

They quickly assimilated the craft of cloth weaving and improved methods offarming and home-building. Having organized a federation which spread over a territory comprising portions of the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama, the Cherokees negotiated with the United States Government as an independent nation. By the turn of the 19th century, the Cherokee

S. Rana

Indians had acquired a degree of aflluency unique among the Red Indian tribes.

Their prosperity was interrupted when white settlers began moving into the cultivated valleys of the Cherokees. Year after year, the white frontiersmen confiscated more and more land, pushing the Cherokees into small mountain settlements. The leaders of the Cherokee Nation became increasingly concerned.

Sequoyah, at that time, was an obscure farmer. He was deeply distressed by the threat to the well-being of his people.

Sequoyah was born in 1775 in the Indian village of Taskigi in Tennessee.

His mother was a Cherokee and his father, Nathaniel Gist, was a white man. In tbe same year Sequoyah was born, his father left the Cherokee

country and went to the northeast to join his friend General George Washington in the fight for independence. Gist never returned. In any case, Cherokee children belonged to their mothers' clans. So Sequoyah grew up among the Cherokees and he was proud to be a Red Indian. "I can talk like an Indian and live like an Indian," he would say. "I will be a Cherokee all my days."

Early in his boyhood this young Cherokee became lame because of an injury he received in a hunting accident, from which came his name Sequoyah, meaning The Lame One. Sequoyah was illiterate and understood no language except Cherokee.

But he was clever with his hands and somehow learned the craft of a silversmith. He was skilled in drawing and painting.

Most of Sequoyah's time was occupied with hand-craft, hunting and farming, but at the back of his mind was the problem faced by his people.

His quandary was how to check the settlers who were advancing into the Cherokee territory. He pondered the riddle of what made the white men so powerful, of how his people could learn the secret and become powerful enough to retain their lands and prosperity. The Cherokees by now had acquired fire-arms, but that was not the answer.

In his contact with the settlers, Sequoyah was fascinated by the way they sent messages across long distance by means of signs and symbols on sheets of paper, which Sequoyah called the' "talking leaves." And in printed books, Sequoyah was convinced, the white men stored a wealth of knowledge that made them strong.

Sequoyah was sure that if his people could also learn to read and write they could become strong and prosperous. In 1809, when he was in his thirties, Sequoyah set himself the task of devising a system for writing the Cherokee language. It started as a game in which Sequoyah drew designs and symbols for words to amuse his little daughter Ah-yoka. Soon the family game shaped into a serious business which occupied most of Sequoyah's time. With bits of charcoal on sheets of bark he drew hundreds of designs for as many words.

But there were thousands of words in the Cherokee language. Soon he realized that it would take him years and years to make drawings for them all. Moreover, already he was finding it difficult to remember the words for which his symbols had been created.

Sequoyah's self-imposed task was interrupted by the War of 1812, when he enlisted in the American Army under General Andrew Jackson to fight against the Creek Indians of

Florida who had been incited by the British. On the battlefield he felt terribly homesick. For the two years he was away from his family he had no word regarding the welfare of his wife and children, because no one from his hometown had come to the camp after he did. He was envious of the American soldiers who got news from home on sheets of paper and he grew more determined to complete the project he had left half-done.

After the war, Sequoyah resumed his work on a written language for the Cherokees. He tried to devise symbols for more and more words but it seemed more and more to be an insurmountable task. Moreover, his efforts to create a script for the Cherokee language met with the disapproval of his people. Even his wife was irked, because Sequoyah became so absorbed in his literary pursuit that he ignored his farm and left a great burden of work on his wife. One day, in frustration, she burnt all the pieces of bark on which Sequoyah had made his drawings.

Sequoyah took it calmly. All he said was: "Well, I will have to do it all over again."

The loss of his record of word symbols made Sequoyah think along new lines. One day it occurred to him that he should concentrate on devising symbols for sounds rather than -for words. Even if word-pictures were burnt, sound symbols could be remembered. From a more intensive study of his spoken language, he concluded that the Cherokees used a total of eighty-six syllables in their speech. Now all he needed was a sign for each of these syllables. He set out to invent them. Some he borrowed from the English alphabets in a spelling book he had found.

Though he did not know what these letters stood for in English, he borrowed them because it was convenient to use them for Cherokee phonetic symbols.

By joining his symbols he learned to write syllables into words and words into sentences. By 1821, what was started as a family game had become a real system of writing. Thus was created a comprehensive syllabary for the Cherokee language.

A new problem now faced Sequoyah. Aware of the significance of his invention, he wanted all of his people to possess and to use this important device. But, he must persuade them of its feasibility.

Sequoyah taught his alphabet to six-year-old Ah-yoka, who quickly became proficient in reading and writing the eighty-six symbols. Confident of success and accompanied by his daughter, Sequoyah took his syllabary to the Cherokee capital at New Echota.

Through a friend he arranged for a demonstration before the Tribal Council of Chiefs. On the appointed day Sequoyah and Ah-yoka appeared before the Council. Sequoyah waited outside the room while one of the chiefs dictated a message to Ah-yoka.

In the big room, packed with the leaders of her nation, little Ah-yoka very carefully took down the message in the symbols her father had taught her. Sequoyah was summoned to decipher the message his daughter had written down. Sequoyah began to read, not trying to understand the words, but pronouncing only the sounds for the signs before him. With rapt attention the Council members listened to each word Sequoyah read from the symbols. After he had finished reading the message, there was silence in the room, and then a great burst of applause for Sequoyah.

All the members of the Council began immediately studying the Cherokee alphabet. One of the first laws the Council enacted in Sequoyah's syllabary was the one which provided that each Cherokee child should be taught their written language. At the request of the Council, Sequoyah stayed on in the Cherokee capital to train teachers and help others put the syllabary to use.

By 1824 the Cherokees had a newspaper, The Cherokee Phoenix. Other publications in their own language soon followed. On July 4, 1827 the Cherokees adopted a written constitution patterned after the constitution of the neighbouring Republic of the United States. The new Cherokee republic had a chief, a vice chief, a supreme court and a legislature composed of two branches.

Though Sequoyah was not a member of the national council, he became one of the advisers to the nation and in that capacity he was sent to Washington as envoy of the Western Cherokees to negotiate territorial disputes. There, in the language he had created, he signed treaties setting the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation.

Sequoyah spent the last years of his life in trying to reunite the Cherokees in other parts of the continent with their home tribe. He died in Mexico, while searching for a band of his tribesmen who had migrated westward prior to the Revolutionary War. To perpetuate the memory of this great genius numerous towns, rivers and mountains in the United States have been named after Sequoyah. The most majestic species of trees has been named the Sequoia in his honour.

He has been called the "modern Moses" and the "American Cadmus" and a statue of Sequoyah is displayed in the Statuary Hall of the National Capitol in Washington .â&#x20AC;˘ span

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order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life." The grant of federal land to the states was apportioned on the basis of 30,000 acres for each member elected to Congress from a state. The moneys derived by the states from the sale of the land were to constitute a perpetual fund, the capital of which was to remain "forever undiminished" and the interest used for the continuing support of the institutions. It was specified that the purpose of the fund was support and maintenance of operations and precluded its use for buildings.

The most important feature of the act, which some are inclined to regard as its sole justification, was of course the provision of financial assistance

to the states for education. Public lands were at the time almost the only resource available to the U.S. Government for such a programme. The sponsor and supporters of the measure desired that, before this valuable resource was dissipated through lack of any well-organized plan for its investment, it should be put to profitable use in the public interest. The total area of land allotted under the Morrill Act was 17,430,000 acres, and the states today realize an income of about $2,500,000 from the original grants. A second act, passed in 1890, provided for an additional endowment, derived from sales of public lands, of 815,000 per year for each state or territory, to be increased to $25,000 over a period of ten years.

Although the income accruing from this source represents only a small

proportion of the total income of Land-Grant institutions, its significance in the years following the enactment of the act cannot be overemphasized. Without the land-grants, the other provisions of the act would have been meaningless and the establishment of the many new colleges would have been impossible.

Apart, however, from its financial implications, the Morrill Act had a vital bearing on the whole direction and progress of higher education in the United States, as well as the national economy. Enacted at a time when the nation was entering a period of unprecedented industrial and technological development, it helped to fit education to the changing social and economic pattern. It implemented a fundamental principle of democracy by creating equality of opportunity in

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LAND-GRANT COLLEGES

(Continued)

Agricultural research is a primary function of Land-Grant colleges.

education. It recognized for the first time the place of science in relation to everyday work and aimed at ensuring that education should cover the needs of the community. While retaining the study of humanities in the traditional university curriculum, it broadened the scope of higher education to include agriculture and engineering.

IN

THE initial stages Land-Grant institutions had many obstacles to surmount. Iowa was the first state to accept the conditions of the Morrill Act in 1862, followed in the same year

by Vermont and Connecticut, and by the end of 1870 thirty-seven states had agreed to fall into line. In almost every state, however, there arose controversy over the use of the funds made available by the legislation.

There were conflicting demands from the existing private colleges, state universities or colleges willing to modify their curricula to conform to the act, and those who argued that the money should be used for founding new institutions only. Furthermore, there was opposition both from the classicists who resented the idea of higher education for the farmer and the mechanic, and from the farmers who had. been led to believe that the new colleges would be devoted solely to agriculture. Additional serious handicaps in the beginning were an almost complete lack of textbooks or other material for the new courses and an acute shortage of qualified teachers often leading to the employment of one man to teach widely different subjects. Illustrative of the latter is the case of the Florida State College of Agriculture which in the 1860's listed a professorship of "Agriculture, Horticulture and Greek."

By the turn of the century, however, most of the initial difficulties had been satisfactorily resolved and the Land-Grant colleges had registered notable gains all round. The number of institutions had increased to fiftyseven, with a total enrolment of 14,000 students taught by more than 1,300 teachers. The curriculum was expanded to conform to the widening concepts of education and the functions of the colleges. It was appreciated that the farmer's son had the right to be trained not only for farming but for any vocation-"physician, teacher or lawyer, merchant or

"for. those at the bottom who want to climb up" mechanic, preacher or president" -for which his talent or aptitude might fit him. In agriculture too the growing need for specialization led to an increase in the number of courses offered, and in many colleges separate chairs were established for horticulture, botany, entomology, agricultural chemistry, dairy chemistry, agricultural physics, bacteriology, mycology, dairy husbandry and animal husbandry. Curricula in the mechanical arts developed simultaneously, with similar divisions of specialization in engineering courses.

The importance of applying agricultural theory to farming practices and carrying out experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of new methods was realized at an early stage in the development of Land-yrant institutions. The Hatch Act-of 1887provided for agricultural experiment stations in each college with the object of "acquiring and diffusing among the people of the United States useful and practical information on subjects connected with agriculture, and promoting scientific investigation and experiment respecting the principles and applications of agricultural science." Under the stimulus of this legislation and the additional federal aid given to the states, the number of experiment stations increased rapidly and their¡ activities expanded. As the act gave the United States Commissioner of Agriculture-later the Secretary of Agriculture-authority to guide and supervise the programme, the federal government entered into a direct co-operative relationship with the colleges.

Through the years, the collaboration between the Department of Agriculture and the experiment stations proved fruitful in many ways.

The Association of Land-Grant Colleges (originally named Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations) which was established in 1887 urged that a separate central office should be created to co-ordinate the work of the experiment stations and compile and distribute the information collected from various stations. This suggestion was translated into practice in the following year when legislation was enacted to pflwide financial support for the Office of Experiment Stations within the Department of Agriculture. From 1894the Office undertook a thorough annual review of the work of each station, and the stations themselves forged ahead in several directions.

New scientific techniques were evolved for the diagnosis of plant and animal diseases and for the manufacture of vaccines and serums. Laboratory services were developed. With organized research becoming an essential activity of the colleges and its results directly benefiting the farm, the attitude of farmers towards Land-Grant colleges changed from scepticism to whole-hearted endorsement.

T HE FIRST extension services were established in 1891and became rapidly popular. States made special appropriations for extension programmes which soon covered local experiments with various crops, demonstrations on the farm, teachers' visits to schools, lectures at teachers' institutes, distribution of leaflets and correspondence courses. The demand from farms for regular visits by an expert adviser led to the employment of county agents who rapidly multiplied in numbers. In time their duties became amazingly varied and covered not only oral advice and demonstrations but assistance to farmers in solving marketing problems and in general raising the social, economic and educational standards of the rural populati0n.

Distinguished from the agricultural extension programme was another type of extension work which came to be known as University Extension or General Extension. University Extension, with its emphasis on liberal knowledge and culture, was not concerned with solving any special problems, but rather with carrying advanced education to the people. Its methods were similar to those of Agricultural Extension and the two movements grew up together.

During this century Land-Grant universities and colleges have steadily built up a record of all-round effectiveness in fulfilling their threefold purpose ofliberal arts education, technical research, and service to the community. The period has been one of continued expansion and maturity during which the institutions have developed far beyond their original preoccupation with agriculture and mechanical arts to a comprehensive role embracing all functions of the modern university. Through two World Wars and through the agricultural and industrial depression of the 1930's, they helped the nation weather its crises by stimulating pro-

duction or encouraging conservation.

Today there are sixty-eight LandGrant institutions in the United States spread over all fifty states and Puerto Rico and ranging in size from a student body of under 1,000 to large campuses with over 45,000 students. With a total enrolment of a million students, or one-fifth of all U.S. college students, they are the major element in American higher education. They award about 55 per cent of all degrees at the highest or doctoral level including 100 per cent in agriculture, 60 per cent in physical sciences and 42 per cent in social sciences, foreign languages and literature and the fine and applied arts.

Their faculties and graduates have a unique record of achievement.

Among America's Nobel prize-winners twenty-six received their degrees from Land-Grant universities, as did nearly half the members of the National Academy of Sciences. One-third of all American college teachers are products of Land-Grant institutions.

Active encouragement of research, and the facilities provided for it, have yielded rich dividends. Streptomycin was discovered at a Land-Grant university, and another was responsible for finding and developing dicoumarol, the chemical substance that prevents clotting of the blood. Their basic research on fatigue of metals has saved the railways millions of dollars.

Land-Grant institutions also developed the first cyclotron and carried out pioneering research in television and the transistor. Their laboratory work has led to the perfection of many new crops such as hybrid corn and the soybean, and laid the beginnings of many new thriving industries.

In recent years Land-Grant colleges and universities have extended their activities beyond the national borders and have become an important recruiting ground for technicians and experts to carry out technical and educational projects in other countries.

In India they now have links with ten institutions covering different fields of education including the U.P. Agricultural University at Phoolbagh, near Nainital, which is modelled on the Land-Grant college pattern and was established in 1960 under an IndianAmerican U.S. Technical Cooperation Mission Agreement. India's Third Five-Year Plan provides for the establishment of several new agricultural universities which will be staffed partly by speqialists drawn from U.S. Land-Grant universities .â&#x20AC;˘