Tuesday, 21th October (Term 1, week 4) 5pm,
S0.20
Dr Jenny Barrett (Edge Hill University):
‘The Man Who Knows War: American Civil War
Westerns and Masculinity at the Frontier’
The king has “waged cruel war against human
nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights
of life & liberty in the persons of a distant
people who never offended him, captivating
& carrying them into slavery in another
hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in
their transportation thither […] determined
to keep open a market where MEN should be
bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative
for suppressing every legislative attempt to
prohibit or to restrain this execrable
commerce”
“With the morals of the people, their
industry also is destroyed. For in a warm
climate, no man will labour for himself who
can make another labour for him. This is
so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a
very small proportion indeed are even
seen to labour. Indeed, I tremble for my
country when I reflect that God is just: that
his justice cannot sleep fore ever: that
considering numbers, nature and natural
means only, a revolution of the wheel of
fortune, an exchange of situation, is
among possible events: that it may
become
probably
by
supernatural
inference”
We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness.--That to
secure these rights, Governments
are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed […]
Monticello, Jefferson’s plantation
“Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God
is just: that his justice cannot sleep fore ever: that
considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a
revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of
situation, is among possible events: that it may become
probably by supernatural inference”
“I am not now writing a treatise, but simply
prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by
observations very much at random”
h
“The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe.” (198)
Observations should not be limited to the game, but rather he must
look at “things external to the game. He examines his partner, his
opponent, he looks at the cards, he analyzes everyone’s behavior
through a couple of rounds and then, he is able to read the situation
and make his move” (198)
Manual of Human Anatomy
Dr. Knox, London, 1843
(Murders in the Rue Morgue, 1841)
“I wish to impress upon your understanding the very extraordinary –
the almost praeternatural character of that agility which could have
accomplished it” (218)
“the peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and that startling absence
of motive in a murder so singularly atrocious as this – let us glance
at the butchery itself. Here is a woman strangled to death by manual
strength, and thrust up a chimney head downward […] In the
manner of thrusting the corpse up the chimney, you will admit that
there was something excessible outré – something altogether
irreconcilable with our common notions of human action, even
when we suppose the actors the most depraved of men” (219)
“‘Dupin!’ I said, completely unnerved; ‘this hair is most unusualthis is no human hair […] This,’ I said, ‘is the mark of no human
hand’” (221)
*
“It was a minute anatomical and generally descriptive account of
the large fulvous Ourang-Outang of the East Indian Islands. The
gigantic stature, the prodigious strength and activity, the wild
ferocity, and the imitative propensities of these mammalia are
sufficiently well known to all” (221)
“if we are not ready to receive and assimilate the new material which will be brought to
mingle with our pure Anglo-Saxon stream, we should call a halt in our expansion policy”
“We may make laws, but laws are but straws in the hands of Omnipotence [….] And no
man may combat fate. Given a man, propinquity, opportunity, fascinating femininity, and
there you are. Black, white, green, yellow – nothing will prevent intermarriage. Position,
wealth, family, friends – all sink into significance before the God-implanted instinct that
made Adam awakening from a deep sleep and finding the woman beside him, accept Eve
as bone of his bone; he cared not nor questioned whence she came. So it is with the sons
of Adam ever since, through the law of heredity which makes us all one common family.
And so it will be with us in our reformation of this old Republic” (882)
“I am an East Indian, but my name does not matter, Cameron is as good as any.
There is many a soul crying in heaven and hell for vengeance on Jonathan
Gordon. Gold was his idol; and many a good man walked the plank, and many a
gallant ship was stripped of her treasure to satisfy his lust for gold. His blackest
crime was the murder of my father, who was his friend, and had sailed with him
for many a year as mate. One night these two went ashore together to bury their
treasure. My father never returned from that expedition. His body was afterward
found with a bullet through the heart on the shore where the vessel stopped that
night. It was the custom then among pirates for the captain to kill the men who
helped bury their treasure. Captain Gordon was no better than a pirate” (890)