By William H. Benson
The Parallel Lives
Of The NOBLE AMERICAN RELIGIOUS THINKERS AND BELIEVERS:
Roger Williams VS. Cotton Mathers
NEW ARTICLES
Daniel Defoe
Years ago, in these pages, I confessed that I have read Daniel Defoe’s 1719 fictional tale, “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,” multiple times, as well as listened to the audio version.
Crusoe’s ability to build a life alone on a deserted island in the Caribbean that lasted for over two decades I find fascinating. Scholars label the book “the father of the English novel.”
With a little digging and research, I learned that Daniel Defoe’s own life was as fascinating.
The man was in and out of legal trouble, often for writing libelous political comments about others. He was in and out of financial trouble, for insuring ships that failed to return to England with the goods, or for running a business into the ground, out of cash, out of profits.
Bankruptcy courts, arrest warrants, harsh judges, the pillory, and time spent in a debtors’ prison was part of Daniel Defoe’s resume. Misfortune hounded him. Of himself, he wrote, “No man has tasted differing fortunes more, and thirteen times I have been rich and poor.”
He may have died when hiding out of sight from his creditors.
His marriage to Mary Tuffley though was stable, eight children and 47 years together.
In 1692, at the age of 32, Defoe declared himself bankrupt because of a debt of 17,000 English pounds. For ten years he struggled to pull himself out of this predicament.
Yet, Defoe was a prolific writer, 545 titles across a multitude of subjects over different genre: politics, religion, drama, pamphlets, tracts, travel, history, advice, satire, poetry, domesticity, science, technology, propaganda, war, and a host of others.
Indeed, “The Oxford Handbook on Daniel DeFoe” lists 36 chapters, each written by a different modern scholar on some aspect of Defoe’s works. The first is entitled, “Defoe’s Life and Times,” and the last is “Defoe on Screen.”
From 1704 until 1713, Defoe wrote and published a periodical, “A Review of the Affairs of France,” three times a week, reporting upon events during the War of the Spanish Succession. That meant he faced a deadline every couple of days, an unimaginable amount of stress.
In 1702, Defoe published a 29-page pamphlet, “The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; or Proposals for the Establishment of the Church” and fell into deep trouble.
In it, Defoe argued that the English monarch and Anglican church officials must exterminate the Dissenters, those Protestants who refused to conform to the Church of England.
He wrote, “If ever you will establish the best Christian Church in the world. If ever you will suppress the spirit of enthusiasm. If ever you will free the nation from this viperous brood. If you will leave your posterity free from faction and rebellion, this is the time.
“This is the time to pull up this heretical weed of sedition, that has so long disturbed the peace of our church, and poisoned the good corn.”
People read his words and felt outraged. Although no author’s name appeared in its pages, his enemies quickly identified Defoe and pressed charges against him for seditious libel.
He was arrested in May of 1703, and a judge found him guilty. Defoe was ordered to pay a stiff fine, to stand in the pillory three times, and to serve a lengthy jail sentence.
Most literary scholars are convinced that Defoe wrote this pamphlet as tongue-in-cheek, not to be taken literally, but as a hoax to show how absurd political and religious leaders can act and think. However, “the irony blew up in Defoe’s face.”
According to Daniel Defoe, September 30 was the day that Robinson Crusoe swam to shore from a sinking ship, once it stuck fast to a sand bar. The other ten men drowned. Each year on September 30, on a post, Robinson notched another mark, and thus kept a tentative calendar.
For me, the final days of September marks another birthday, another anniversary. I married for the first and only time two days after my birthday, a convenient way to remind me.
Stars
The one constellation I can identify without much effort is Ursa Major, “the greater or larger Bear,” or the Big Dipper, in the northern sky.
Last time in these pages, I talked about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s fruit trees, and that the wise men, who came from the east to Judea, came bearing expensive gifts, three minerals, and yet today we give three types of foods—fruits, nuts, and sweets—to our children on Christmas Day.
Fruits
In 1905, the USDA published a bulletin: Nomenclature of the Apple: A Catalog, that listed 17,000 names. After removing the duplicate names, it still listed 14,000 different varieties of the apple.
Between Captain John Smith in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, and the beginning of the 20th century,
A look at the amendments of the U.S. Constitution
On Sept. 25, 1789, James Madison submitted 12 amendments to the new Constitution. This is the story of what happened to those amendments.
Milton Hershey School, part II
Last time in these pages I began a review of a recent book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City. Its author, Andrea Elliott, focused on a middle school girl named Dasani, who grew up in a series of New York City housing projects, a step away from homelessness.
After Elliott published an expose in the New York Times on Dasani’s plight, the girl was awarded a scholarship to attend Milton Hershey’s middle school, in Hershey, Pennsylvania. She arrived at the private school in late January of 2015, as a 14-year-old African-American girl, lonely and scared.
Milton Hershey School
Earlier this month, a New York Times reporter named Andrea Elliott published a book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City.
In the book, Andrea delves into the life of a family: Chanel, the mother; Supreme, her husband; and her seven children. In 2012, the family resided in a single room in the Auburn Family Residence, in Brooklyn, New York.
Andrea started her investigative reporting on the city’s poor and destitute by drifting around the Auburn’s front door. In October of 2012, she met Chanel, whose seven children would follow her out the building and down the sidewalk. The family soon let Andrea into their home, via the fire escape.
Tuskegee University
Tuskegee UniversityTuskegee University is a “private, historically black, land-grant university” in east central Alabama, with an endowment of $129 million, as of 2019. That same year 2,876 students were enrolled, and of those, 2,379 were black. Of the 560 degrees...
Older Posts
Smallpox
Called “the most dreadful scourge of the human species,” smallpox begins with fever, muscle pain, headache, and fatigue. Days later lesions will appear first inside the mouth and on the tongue, and later, lesions will attack the skin on forehead, face, trunk, and arms.
The Road to 9-11
During the 1990’s, the Clinton administration received sufficient warnings that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization, al-Qaeda, intended to continue to carry out attacks upon U. S. citizens and their property, by enlisting suicide bombers.
Afghanistan
The United States will depart Afghanistan on Aug. 31, after almost 20 years of nation-building, the most recent foreign power to surrender that harsh, cold, Himalayan terrain, “the graveyard of empires,” back to the Afghan people.
The British tried three times to tame the poor but fierce Afghan fighters. In the first Afghan War, 1839-1840,
Euclid’s Elements
The Greek mathematician Euclid, who wrote Elements of Geometry, “the most successful textbook of all time,” around 300 BCE, in Alexandria, in Egypt, in northern Africa. Lincoln though took to heart Euclid’s talent for making sense out of the bewildering. Euclid started with 35 definitions, a handful of postulates, a dozen or more axioms, a series of postulates, and argued for a set of theorems, all about triangles, lines, angles, squares, and circles.
Plagues
Rarely do men and women seem free, even for a moment, from the evils that have plagued human beings for millennium: war, poverty, famine, slavery, racism, diseases, pestilence, and natural disasters.
The U.S. armed forces first attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, and now, the twin wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are winding down after two decades, wars that have cut short many human lives and caused painful, debilitating injuries. On the horizon is a menacing conflict with China.
Iceland
In recent days a native Icelander named Egill Bjarnason published a book, “How Iceland Changed the World.” I wonder about that title’s bold claim, but nonetheless he writes well, is entertaining.
He begins with the Vikings, and then steps forward, chapter by chapter, until he finishes in the 21st century. Along the way, he brings in plenty of fascinating details about the island’s towns, people, weather, government, and the Northern Lights, an enjoyable and readable geography primer.
One of University of Northern Colorado’s 2020 Honored Alumni
William H. Benson
Local has provided scholarships for history students for 15 years
A Sterling resident is among five alumni selected to be recognized this year by the University of Northern Colorado. Bill Benson is one of college’s 2020 Honored Alumni.
Each year UNC honors alumni in recognition for their outstanding contributions to the college, their profession and their community. This year’s honorees were to be recognized at an awards ceremony on March 27, but due to the COVID-19 outbreak that event has been cancelled. Instead UNC will recognize the honorees in the fall during homecoming Oct. 10 and 11……
Newspaper Columns
The Duodecimal System
For centuries, the ancient Romans calculated sums with their clunky numerals: I, V, X, L, C, D, and M; or one, five, ten, 50, 100, 500, and 1,000. They knew nothing better.
The Thirteenth Amendment
On Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and by it, he declared that “all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are and henceforward shall be free.” Lincoln’s Proclamation freed some 3.1 million slaves within the Confederacy.
The Fourteenth Amendment
After Congress and enough states ratified the thirteenth amendment that terminated slavery, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. This law declared that “all people born in the United States are entitled to be citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude.” The Act equated birth to citizenship.
The New-York Packet and the Constitution
Jill Lepore, the Harvard historian, published her newest book a month ago, These Truths: A History of the United States. In a short introduction, she describes in detail the Oct. 30, 1787 edition of a semi-weekly newspaper, The New-York Packet.
Mr. Benson’s writings on the U.S. Constitution are a great addition to the South Platte Sentinel. Its inspiring to see the history of the highest laws of this country passed on to others.
– Richard Hogan
Mr. Benson, I cannot thank you enough for this scholarship. As a first-generation college student, the prospect of finding a way to afford college is a very daunting one. Thanks to your generous donation, my dream of attending UNC and continuing my success here is far more achievable
– Cedric Sage Nixon
Donec bibendum tortor non vestibulum dapibus. Cras id tempor risus. Curabitur eu dui pellentesque, pharetra purus viverra.
– Extra Times
FUTURE BOOKS
- Thomas Paine vs. George Whitefield
- Ralph Waldo Emerson vs. Joseph Smith
- William James vs. Mary Baker Eddy
- Mark Twain vs. Billy Graham
- Henry Louis Mencken vs. Jim Bakker
