Talk:Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania

Question

How could there be an argument for something being unconstitutional if the constitution wasn't created at this point?

In colonial times references to a constitution were referring to the British Constitution. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 15:13, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Removal of unrelated content

A great deal of content has been added to the article in recent days (diff: [1]). The new content does not deal with the Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, but rather seems to be a lengthy opinion by the user Ndickinson1 on Mel Bradford and John Dickinson. The material appears to be completely original content, as its statements on Dickinson are unsourced (Albion's Seed is only cited in support of some related ethnological statements which Ndickinson1 makes, but the main points of the new material about Dickinson are unsourced). Furthermore, the new content makes wild speculation on what Dickinson might have thought of modern authors:

"Moreover, the Delaware Valley polity that Dickinson represented was opposed to slavery and would have found Bradford's views of ignoring racial discrimination to be repugnant; Dickinson himself freed his slaves in a process of manumission from 1776-1786"

The article needs to focus on its subject - this specific set of letters that Dickinson wrote. The article, as it was, was only a stub, but now its dominated by the speculation of a Wikipedia editor on a subject only tangentially related to the letters. These are my reasons for removing the material. Please do not add it back in, as it is merely disruptive to the article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:51, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Removed undue weight

@Binksternet: These additions give undue weight to Dickinson's ownership of slaves. In my background reading on the Letters, not a single work has discussed this subject. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:14, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

The Hutchins book was written by a scholar and published by Dartmouth. It should not be shooed away.

Professor Dennis D. Moore also makes a slavery comparison between the letters of J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur and Dickinson.[2] Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer used its dedication to elicit a similarity to Dickinson's Letters, but it pushed farther in the direction of abolition of slavery.

In the Macmillan textbook Exploring American Histories, the student is asked on page 147 about Dickinson's comparisons of the Stamp Act to slavery: "What does Dickinson's complaint about colonists being treated as slaves suggest about the limits of his political vision?" The authors have placed shaded boxes at the bottom of certain sections asking the student to "Put it in context" as a thinking exercise, and this is part of that sequence.

Professor Alan Craig Houston wrote about Algernon Sidney and the Republican Heritage in England and America and described how comparisons to slavery were part of the language of colonial Americans who were rebelling against England. Houston writes on page 241, "The language of traps and snares, of corruption and slavery, lent itself to the search for hidden causes and magnified the significance of seemingly minor events. It was this language of conspiracy that gave John Dickinson's Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania such power..."

Professor Steven Sarson writes about Dickinson being a slaveholder in Barack Obama: American Historian. Sarson points out on page 214 that Dickinson "certainly advanced the cause of liberty" with his Letters and his government service, and by freeing his slaves, but he "was, nevertheless, a onetime planter and slaveholder..."

Professor Peter A. Dorsey wrote about slavery and Dickinson's Letters. Dorsey writes on page 16 of Common Bondage: Slavery as Metaphor in Revolutionary America, "Although Dickinson was far from the idealized pastoral farmer of his Letters, his self-portrait illustrates how freedom, for many Americans, was defined as personal independence, and personal independence required leisure and wealth, both of which were obtained by slave labor." Dorsey puts Dickinson into the American Whig style of justifying slavery as part of protecting their property rights. Dorsey says on page 102 that Dickinson introduces in his Letters a tension between his figurative language of being a humble farmer and the dire warnings against "the imminent enslavement of white colonists." Dorsey says that Dickinson "eases" the reader into the "controversial trope" by saying nothing about it in the first letter, then in Letter II he asks the "universally detested" question about colonists considering the Stamp Act to be tantamount to slavery. In Letter IV Dickinson puts slavery into the words of others such as Lord Camden and Charles Montesquieu. Dorsey says that Dickinson has built up momentum by the end of the Letters where he states outright that the colonists are slaves if they allow themselves to be taxed without representation. Dorsey again calls this Whig rhetoric (page 103).

Of course we know that ten years later Dickinson will free his slaves, but at the time of the Letters he has not arrived at that moral juncture. And even after giving the slaves their freedom, he continues to believe that only landed white male freeholders should vote. Binksternet (talk) 18:42, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

The only three sources above that talk about Dickinson's ownership of slaves are a question in a school textbook, which indirectly hints at the issue, the book about Obama, and Dorsey's book, which is specifically about slavery. The other sources discuss the rhetorical use of slavery by Whigs. In my edits to this article, I've worked from:

1. General histories of the American revolution.
2. Scholarly articles that focus on Dickinson's Letters.

The idea is to capture what those sources consider the major aspects of the Letters, not to try to find justification, after the fact, for adding some particular subject to the article. In contrast, it looks to me like you're trying to shoehorn Dickinson's ownership of slaves into this article. Barack Obama: American Historian is not the first source I'd think to look at if I were looking for general information about Dickinson's Letters. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:46, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

The idea is to give the reader a good summary of the literature. If you're limiting yourself with regard to literature, then you're not properly summarizing it.

The Hutchins and Dorsey books are definitive on the question. Slavery is discussed in connection with Letters, especially in Dorsey. The other sources are there to show that other authors touch upon the connection, to show that Dorsey and Hutchins are not outliers. Houston lends support.

I could just as easily accuse you of pointedly ignoring Dickinson's complex attitudes about slavery, which is why I even showed up. I saw you had recently created an article about a topic familar to me, and I checked to see whether it was covering the bases. Which it was not. Binksternet (talk) 19:58, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

You searched Google Books for the exact subject that you wanted to add: Dickinson and slavery. The sections you quoted from Houston, Sarson and Dorsey are all available as previews on Google Books. That's not summarizing the sources. That's searching for justification after-the-fact for material you already want to add.

You followed me here from White privilege, as you've admitted. Your first edit here was to add "slaveholder" to the lede sentence. Really, if you have a dispute with me at White privilege, keep it over there. Don't follow me around Wikipedia to make a point. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:16, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm disappointed that you decided to follow through on your threat to come here and insert material about slavery. I asked you before not to hound me. If you have a dispute with me at White privilege, comment there - don't distort this article in order to make a point about a dispute we had at another article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:51, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

You cannot stand in the way of modern scholarship. Stop removing important viewpoints published in the last 12 years by scholars in the field. Binksternet (talk) 20:54, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

You're not summarizing scholarship. You got angry at me at White privilege, looked through my contribution history, and came here to make a point. You did a Google Books search for Dickinson and slavery, and then synthesized a series of highly POV paragraphs. Almost none of the scholarship on the Letters discusses Dickinson's ownership of slaves, yet you're trying to add a second paragraph to the lede and a long section about Dickinson's ownership of slaves. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:00, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I see I have two stalkers here now. Surprise, surprise. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:01, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Thucydides411, if you are referring to me, please sit back down and mind your manners. I have no interest in you whatsoever, but I happened to see this edit go by--I think that my interest in this area and on this topic is well-known. "Surprise, surprise"--yuk. Drmies (talk) 21:12, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Murchison, a source added to the new section on slavery, makes no reference to Dickinson's ownership of slaves, or to the irony of the rhetoric of slavery in the Letters. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:28, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Dorset's book (at least the section on Dickinson's letters) also makes no reference to Dickinson's ownership of slaves. The passage is interested in the Whig use of the slavery metaphor, and in why Whigs/Patriots were not worried about the irony of the trope in general. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:17, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

This is a good example of unacceptable WP:SYNTH: During the time he was writing the Letters, Dickinson was a prominent slaveholder (though he would free them shortly afterward in 1777), and presents himself as a rational and reasonable farmer in the Letters, despite the tension between his own practice and the warning against the supposed enslavement of the white Americans. The source given is page 102 of Dorset's book. The relevant section of Dorset's book does not mention Dickinson's ownership of slaves, nor his freeing of his slaves in 1777. It does not discuss the tension between his ownership of slaves and the letters. Dorset's book is being synthesized with other information about Dickinson in order to make a much more direct argument about Dickinson that Dorset makes. Dorset is talking about Whig rhetoric in general - not Dickinson's personal ownership of slaves. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:22, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Slavery as rhetoric – keep section?

Relative to this addition from August 24, should the article contain a two-paragraph section about the rhetoric of slavery used by Dickinson and others, and a paragraph introducing it in the lead section? Binksternet (talk) 21:02, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Poll

• Yes, because the ideas about the rhetoric of slavery are presented by respected university scholars, published in recent books by university publishers. The material in these books is summarized sufficiently, and it is worked into the rest of the article in a fitting manner. It is a valid and valuable addition to the topic. Binksternet (talk) 21:02, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
• Sure, but Binksternet, the last two sentences of that second paragraph are problematic in a SYNTH-y sort of way: if the two sources don't put Dickinson in that context, that accusation has a lot of merit to it. The answer, it seems to me (if you are right, that the sources verify that it's a common trope), is to write up Slavery as a trope. Drmies (talk) 21:15, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
  • The various sources show various lists of people including Dickinson who have made slavery comparisons to inflame the white colonists against British rule. I was holding back from listing them all because it would wander too far off topic and clutter this one. But everyone I mentioned in the above diff is described along with Dickinson in the cited source. Binksternet (talk) 21:20, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
• No, Dickinson's ownership has nearly zero mention in the scholarly literature on Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania. Scholarly articles overwhelmingly focus on Dickinson's constitutional arguments, their influence on the course of the revolution, the stylistic qualities of the letters, and their placement in Whig rhetoric and publishing of the time. The most that slavery could be mentioned in this article would be as one sentence about the common Whig metaphor that taxation without representation is equivalent to slavery. However, a discussion of Dickinson's ownership of slaves is off-topic here, and a two-paragraph subsection about slavery and a second paragraph in the lede devoted to slavery is just gratuitous. The background to this dispute is that Binksternet and I had a disagreement at White privilege, and by Binksternet's own admission, they then went through my contribution history and saw that I had been working on this article. They immediately came here and added the word "slaveholder" to the lede, with the edit summary "slaver": [3]. They then conducted a Google Books search for Dickinson and slavery, and used the hits to synthesize a connection (not made by the sources themselves) between the Letters and Dickinson's ownership of slaves. In contrast, the way I have about finding sources for this article is by looking at reference works on the American Revolution (such as the Oxford US history volume on the revolution), and for journal articles specifically written about the Letters. These works do not connect the letters to Dickinson's ownership of slaves. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:17, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
  • "These works do not connect the letters to Dickinson's ownership of slaves." In fact, they do exactly that. You might want to look at the sources I cited before you dismiss them. Binksternet (talk) 21:24, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
    • Most of them do not. I've just read through Murchison's section on the letters, and it does not discuss this subject. For others reading this, you should consider the types of sources being presented here. Binksternet has specifically set out to find sources - from among the many that discuss the letters - that mention the word "slavery." The only way one comes up with "Barack Obama: American Historian" as a source to summarize Dickinson's letters is by typing something like "Dickinson slavery" into Google Books. This is not the way to gather a representative set of sources. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:34, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
      • I am not going to speculate about or comment on who finds what sources when. I just went through JSTOR, and added a note to the article: Crevecoeur already commented on it. See Hutchins, Zachary McLeod (2015). "The Slave Narrative and the Stamp Act, or Letters from Two American Farmers in Pennsylvania". Early American Literature. 50 (3): 645–80.. Drmies (talk) 21:54, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

How sources are chosen is very important, because WP:WEIGHT requires us to accurately reflect the literature. Using Google Books to find sources that specifically say what one wants to say is not "summarizing the literature." I'll also note that most of the sources Binksternet has found do not even draw a connection between Dickinson's ownership of slaves and the Letters - Binksternet has synthesized such a connection.

Crevecoeur did not comment on any connection between Dickinson's Letters and slavery. Crevecoeur commented (among other things) on slavery in South Carolina, and the name of his fictional letter-writer is inspired by Dickinson's character of "The Farmer." The essay that you referenced by Hutchins (who is also the author of one of the books that Binksternet found on Google Books) gives a novel interpretation of Crevecoeur's letters, which he argues are somehow an indirect commentary on Dickinson - but I don't think this is a mainstream interpretation of Crevecoeur's letters, and it's not explicitly in the letters. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:05, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

You keep accusing me of synthesis but in every case you are wrong. Each source I cited describes Dickinson's Letters and his rhetoric about slaves and slavery in the Letters. If they did not make the connection, I did not cite them. Binksternet (talk) 23:20, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

As I've pointed out above, Dorset and Murchison do not discuss Dickinson's ownership of slaves in connection with the Letters. Some of your sources discuss the trope of slavery, but you're almost entirely synthesizing the connection to Dickinson's personal ownership of slaves. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:27, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

• • This is pretty obvious. Drmies (talk) 21:25, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Thucydides411, you suggested that the sources were "cherry-picked". Well, how about this, and I will quote in full because it is rich:

    Even the most hasty reading of the pamphlets of the American Revolu- tion will yield the fact that the men who spearheaded the opposition to British imperial policies-men who enjoyed a great deal of freedom and autonomy, who were prosperous, well educated, and successful, who had the leisure to read, think, speak, and write persuasively, -who, in fact, did constitute the ruling class in America-described their condition as one of slavery, as comparable to that degraded status to which colonial Ameri- cans, by various legislative decrees, had reduced the vast majority of the sons and daughters of Africa who were in their power. The widely quoted syllogism of John Dickinson, Philadelphia's largest slaveowner for a number of years, is, without doubt, a compelling expression of this equation: "Those who are taxed without their own consent, expressed by themselves or their representatives, are slaves. We are taxed without our own consent, expressed by ourselves or our representatives. We are therefore- SLAVES."

    And in case anyone thinks OH ITS JUST MODERN PEOPLE WHO SEE THIS EVERYWHERE--well, it's colonial slaveholding America, so it is everywhere, and this long quote is from 1980. That is forty years ago. It did not take me long to find this on JSTOR; this is not cherry-picking, but leaving it out may be. Okoye, F. Nwabueze (1980). "Chattel Slavery as the Nightmare of the American Revolutionaries". The William and Mary Quarterly. 37 (1): 3–28.. Binksternet, there is enough material here for you to drop the last two, whose direct connection to Dickinson may be more tenuous. Drmies (talk) 22:05, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
    • Okay, so in the entire academic literature on JSTOR, you found one interpretive essay on Crevecoeur's letters (not even Crevecoeur's letters themselves, which do not make the connection) and one other essay that mention any connection between Dickinson's letters and his ownership of slaves. That's supposed to be enough to make half the lede about Dickinson's ownership of slaves, and and entire subsection of this relatively short article? -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:09, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
      • No, I found a ton more, and I am not done. You're supposed to be a student of history: show a better side. You've been working on this article since 2006, and you hadn't yet found these? And the best you can do is cast aspersions on a major essay in one of the foremost journals in the field, saying "it's too interpretative"--like you're on the editorial board of those who know everything better? You should read that Hutchins article: it might serve you well in your studies. It is a very well-developed essay that lays out in no uncertain terms precisely in which ways Crevecoeur leaned on and responded to Dickinson, and when you suggest it's far-fetched or whatever, you're actually indicating that you haven't read the article. So that you would just slap a bunch of POV tags on it, that's just sad. BTW if the lead is undue, work on it. There wasn't yet anything on it about Dickinson's literary persona or the rhetorical modeling of the text. Drmies (talk) 00:14, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

I started this article as a small stub in 2006, and I very recently developed it into a full-fledged article, based on a few general histories of the revolution (primarily the Oxford US history volume on the revolution) and journal articles specifically about the letters. I don't think I have to apologize for my editing here in any way.

About Hutchins' interpretation of Crevecoeur, it's a fringe view that I haven't seen anywhere else. I listed the first four JSTOR hits on the subject of Crevecoeur's letters in the "Crevecoeur" section below, and none of them characterize the letters as a commentary on Dickinson's opposition the Stamp Act and his ownership of slaves. I say that Hutchins' article is an "interpretive" essay because the claims he makes about Crevecoeur's letters have little basis in the text of the letters. In contrast, the four articles I linked below are much more directly based on the text of Crevecoeur's letters. The mainstream view of Crevecoeur's letters is that they are a highly idiosyncratic ethnography of the early United States, written for a European audience using a guide that was familiar to such an audience - "the Farmer" (yes, based on Dickinson's "Farmer"). The letters are not particularly concerned with the Revolution (only mentioned once directly in the letters), and they make no mention of the debates over Parliament's right to tax. The mainstream view does discuss Crevecoeur's discussion of slavery in South Carolina (the subject of one of the letters), but to not connect this to the Stamp Act or Dickinson. Wikipedia's policies on WP:WEIGHT and WP:FRINGE apply here. Not every article that ever gets printed in a decent journal merits inclusion. -Thucydides411 (talk) 10:16, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

• I would propose putting one or two sentences about the slavery trope in the paragraph beginning, The political philosophy underlying the Letters is often placed in the Whig tradition. That paragraph lists a few of the elements of Whiggism present in the letter, and the slavery trope would fit there. But an extended discussion of Dickinson's ownership of slaves is undue, and belongs at John Dickinson, not in this article. This article is about an influential political pamphlet that has essentially nothing to do with slavery (beyond the rhetorical use of the "slavery" as a metaphor for "tyranny"); this is not an article about Dickinson more generally or slavery. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:47, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

• Well, scholars have certainly noted the connection. Drmies (talk) 00:14, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

I have a proposal that might address Drmies and Binksternet's concerns. The text currently has the following paragraph:

The political philosophy underlying the Letters is often placed in the Whig tradition.[10]:3–45[4] The letters emphasize several important themes of Whig politics, including the threat that executive power poses to liberty, wariness of standing armies, the inevitability of increasing overreach should a precedent be set, and a belief in the existence of a conspiracy against liberty.[4]

As the slavery trope is a feature of Whig rhetoric, I would propose adding three sentences to the end of this paragraph, roughly containing the following:

1. Noting that the slavery trope is a feature of Whig rhetoric, and citing William Pitt the Elder's speech against the Stamp Act.
2. Noting Samuel Johnson's satire of the slavery trope.
3. Noting, as Dorset does, that the tension between the slavery trope and the existence of slavery in the colonies helped fuel the budding anti-slavery movement.

I think this is an appropriate amount of weight to give this subject. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:11, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Crevecoeur

@Drmies: Crevecoeur does not mention Dickinson in his letters. This addition says he does, but what's being cited is an interpretive essay by Hutchins about Crevecoeur's letters. Hutchins' claims are quite removed from the actual text of the letters (which do not make any obvious reference to Dickinson and slavery), and I do not think that his interpretation is the mainstream view of Crevecoeur's letters. To be clear, Crevecoeur never says anything like "An avaricious attorney and slave owner like Dickinson, Crèvecoeur suggests, supports oppressive systems far more unnatural and burdensome than imperial governance and the Stamp Act" in his letters. I don't even think Crevecoeur makes a connection between the avaricious attorney and slavery in his letters. I don't think he even mentions the Stamp Act. Again, these are rather indirect inferences being made by a modern author - Hutchins. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:27, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Hutchins is a reliable source all by himself. The opinion of Hutchins is valid. Binksternet (talk) 23:05, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Crevecoeur just flatly does not say the things that Hutchins is attributing to him. Crevecoeur doesn't discuss Dickinson, the Stamp Act, or make any connection between avaricious attorneys and slavery. It's just a bit absurd to say we should treat these claims as truth on the basis of one interpretive essay, out of the large body of literature on Dickinson's letters, when the statements are just obviously false (or to be most charitable, require a huge amount of connecting-the-dots, as Hutchins does in his essay). Crevecoeur never says anything remotely similar to "An avaricious attorney and slave owner like Dickinson [...] supports oppressive systems far more unnatural and burdensome than imperial governance and the Stamp Act" in his letters. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:12, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

I went to JSTOR, searched for "Letters from an American Farmer," and selected the first four journal articles that showed up:

1. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20875844
2. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25070813
3. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25056663
4. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25056566

Not one of them mentions Dickinson or the Stamp Act - perhaps because Crevecoeur doesn't either. My point here is that Hutchins' interpretation is not the mainstream interpretation of Crevecoeur's letters, and if you look in the text, the things he's attributing to Crevecoeur just aren't there. For example, he argues that use of the verb "to stamp" (as in "The laws, the indulgent laws, protect them as they arrive, stamping on them the symbol of adoption") is meant to be an oblique reference to the Stamp Act, that references to lawyers are supposed to be coded language for Dickinson, and that his criticism of slavery in South Carolina (note that Crevecoeur was not an abolitionist, and himself owned slaves, though he was disturbed by what he saw in SC) is therefore veiled criticism of Dickinson's opposition to the Stamp Act. This is an extremely tenuous argument, with almost no connection to the actual text of the letters, and it is not shared by other historians who have written about the letters. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:42, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't quite understand your aversion against modern authors, Thucydides. It's almost as if, well, you'd prefer to cherry-pick your older scholars. It is true that earlier scholars didn't always remark on Dickinson as a slaveholder, and thus didn't see much reason to comment on it in their readings of his works, and modern scholarship (as well as, of course, the Okoye article from 1980) is correcting that. As for "interpretive essay"--that is what scholarship does. It interprets. That's what it means to write secondary literature. And we, in an encyclopedia, report what those scholars say. I see you citing a whole bunch of scholarly articles that don't say what Hutchins says--well, that's how it works, and it doesn't mean that Hutchins is wrong. If you think he is, maybe you have missed your calling and should be publishing academic essays instead. Anyway, if you got a problem with citing that journal article, I suggest you take it up with either the Wikipedia community at large, or the editorial board of Early American Literature. Randykitty, you know a bit about journals. You think that journal is worth citing? Drmies (talk) 23:48, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Literary journals are not really my forte, but this one is in all the important databases, including the highly selective Arts and Humanities Citation Index, so there's no doubt that this is a very well respected publication with rigorous editorial procedures. --Randykitty (talk) 06:38, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

It's not a question of whether Early American Literature is a good journal. It's a question of whether Hutchins' interpretation is (a) mainstream/reflective of the overall scholarship (b) at all plausible. I gave the first four journal articles that show up on JSTOR (the earliest is from 1977, the most recent from 2008, which in the context of 238-year-old letters is not that old), none of which even mention the connection to Dickinson and the Stamp Act that Hutchins asserts exists. That suggests very strongly that Hutchins' views do not reflect the mainstream. As for (b), well, anyone can look at the letters and see if they can find any location where Crevecoeur writes anything that even remotely resembles, "An avaricious attorney and slave owner like Dickinson [...] supports oppressive systems far more unnatural and burdensome than imperial governance and the Stamp Act." It's simply not in the letters. Crevecoeur doesn't mention Dickinson or the Stamp Act, and barely discusses the revolution. Not everything that gets published is (a) correct or (b) mainstream. That's why policies like WP:WEIGHT and WP:FRINGE exist. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:11, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that is the question--and I'm sorry, but I have more faith in the author, the reviewer(s), and the editorial board of that journal than in an anonymous Wikipedia editor. McLeod is a professor at an American university, and has published a book with the U of Chicago P. His credentials are good enough. Drmies (talk) 01:53, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

I can't tell if you are trying to argue, Thucydides, that Crevecoeur wasn't ever thinking of Dickinson, because scholars certainly assert he was--and when that gets into the article, we can add Voltaire as well:

That book's [Crevecoeur's Letters'] dedication to the Abbe Raynal identifies the author of these letters as "an humble American planter" who lives in or near "Carlisle, in Pennsylvania" (37, 38), a detail that suggests this collection of letters will resemble Dickinsons 1768 Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania. While Crevecoeur is clearly evoking that collection, there is another, earlier book to consider as possibly being more fully the model Crevecoeur had in mind: Voltaire's 1733 Letters concerning the English Nation.

That's from this article: Moore, Dennis (2011). "Satire, Inoculation, and Crèvecoeur's Letters Concerning the English Nation: New Evidence from the Archives". Early American Literature. 46 (1): 157–64.. Drmies (talk) 02:14, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Nobody is suggesting that "the Farmer" of Crevecoeur's letters is not inspired by the character of "the Farmer" from Dickinson's letters. The enduring reputation of "the Farmer" is noted by many historians, including Kaestle (who wrote the most significant work on the publication history and reception of Dickinson's letters), whom I paraphrased in the "Reception" section: "the character of 'the farmer' attained a lasting reputation independent of Dickinson".

The novel argument that Hutchins is making - that I haven't seen made anywhere else, and which is based on an extremely tendentious reading of the source material - is that Crevecoeur's letters are a veiled commentary, using coded language, on Dickinson's ownership of slaves and his opposition to the Stamp Act. It's a pretty surprising argument, given that the letters never mention Dickinson, the Stamp Act or the debate over Parliamentary authority to tax, and barely even mention the Revolution. It's also extremely different from how the sources I've seen (see above) describe Crevecoeur's letters. -Thucydides411 (talk) 10:25, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

A source I was already using, Kaestle's in-depth (and highly cited) article about the publication history and reception of Dickinson's letters, discusses Crevecoeur, and the reputation of "the Farmer" more generally. Here's what Kaestle has to say:

Dickinson was the first professed farmer among American political writers. He was surely not the last. In response to the Farmer's Letters appeared 'Another Farmer,' 'Country Farmer,' and Joseph Galloway as 'Chester County Farmer.' Samuel Seabury later wrote as the 'Westchester Farmer,' and as 'Farmer A. W.' In the constitutional debate of the 1780s R. H. Lee wrote as the 'Federal Farmer.' Franklin, wearing his emblematic fur cap at the French court, and Crèvecoeur, writing as 'An American Farmer' that 'some few towns excepted, we are all tillers of the earth,' were among the more prominent to testify to American moral virtues. Most Americans either subscribed or gave lip-service to this image. It is interesting that both Livingston and Dickinson were lawyers, for farming and the law were symbolic opposites. In 1789 'A Farmer' in a Carolina newspaper accused his opponent of being a lawyer, concluding that 'if learning has a tendency to make the man so devilishly proud, discontended and quarrelsome, I thank God that I am not cursed with more than I have the common sense to manage.' In contrast with the 'proud, discontended' lawyer, a farmer's learning was kept pure by his close communion with God and nature. 'Consider a judicious Farmer,' said a newspaper moralist in 1768, 'all his conduct is upright, all his Aims are directed to the Purpose of Humanity.'
— Kaestle, Carl F. (1969). "The Public Reaction to John Dickinson's 'Farmer's Letters'". Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society; Worcester, Mass. 78: 323–359.

Kaestle's description of why Crevecoeur invoked "the Farmer" is very different from Hutchins. He doesn't describe it as a veiled attack on Dickinson, but rather as an invocation of the "moral virtue" represented by "the Farmer." Kaestle also addresses the common criticism of lawyers in such letters, but gives a very different explanation to Hutchins. Hutchins sees references to lawyers as a veiled attack on Dickinson, while Kaestle sees law as a "symbolic opposite" to farming that was invoked by writers of subsequent "farmer" letters inspired by Dickinson. -Thucydides411 (talk) 10:57, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

The problem here is that you seemed to be totally downplaying the connection to Crevecoeur so you could downplay the relevance of Hutchins' article. You cite Kaestle a thousand times (OK, twenty-six times), but he mentions Crevecoeur only once, and not even explicitly, and neither Kaestle nor your text (the last sentence of the article) clear what Hutchins argues in detail (and others confirm), that Crevecoeur explicitly used Dickinson both as a model and as a foil. Kaestle's is a fine article (highly cited? in this article, yes), but it's maybe a tad overused here, and it's from 1969, and it's from the proceedings of an antiquarian society (Sir Walter Scott will explain to you what that means), and so there are all kinds of reasons to also look elsewhere for other material. You're accusing Binksternet (I think?) of SYNTH, of picking out books that make the link between the argument and the slaveholding writer explicit--but Binksternet and I found enough sources to make the argument stick--but if you base that on the idea that your sources don't discuss that, and in your bibliography you rely on much older sources, you really don't have much ground to stand on, and the POV tag becomes silly. And let me add that before Binksternet came along, this article was languishing, and that your "preferred version" suffers from a paucity of modern sources. If you keep citing Kaestle and sources like that, if you don't go beyond a bit of formal analysis and a fontes article as if New Historicism never even happened, you should not be surprised to be challenged. Drmies (talk) 12:28, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

you seemed to be totally downplaying the connection to Crevecoeur: I didn't mention any of the other "farmer" letters, including the much better known and (to Dickinson) relevant Federal Farmer. One of the things I was thinking of adding was a short description of these letters: I've now done so (diff).

neither Kaestle nor your text (the last sentence of the article) clear what Hutchins argues in detail (and others confirm), that Crevecoeur explicitly used Dickinson both as a model and as a foil: Many historians note the use of "the farmer" by subsequent writers. I haven't been able to locate anyone other than Hutchins who argues that Crevecoeur's letters are secretly about Dickinson's ownership of slaves and the Stamp Act, and I regard this argument as WP:FRINGE.

highly cited? in this article, yes: Yes. 17 citations. Hutchins' article has two citations.

but it's maybe a tad overused here, and it's from 1969, and it's from the proceedings of an antiquarian society: Dickinson's letters are from 1767-68. It's not as if there's been some groundbreaking discovery since 1969 that completely changes our view of the letters. Kaestle's article is, by far, the most comprehensive account of the publication history and reception of Dickinson's letters that I have been able to locate.

And let me add that before Binksternet came along, this article was languishing: Are you crediting Binksternet for my additions to the article? Binksternet came here precisely because I was in the middle of improving the article. Binksternet got angry at me over at White privilege, decided to look at my contribution history, saw that I had been adding material here, and then decided to provoke me by adding the word "slaveholder" to the first sentence. Just to make sure I got the point, they used the edit summary "slaver": [4]. I continued to expand the article. The transformation from this to this is entirely my work. But apparently that's thanks to Binksternet.

Example text: The sources I added are from 2011, 2007, 1998, 1977, 1976, 1975, 1969 and 1956. That's a good range of dates.

but Binksternet and I found enough sources to make the argument stick: That's not how you're supposed to go about determining weight. Normally, you find sources about the subject and then determine weight. You and Binksternet have gone about this in the opposite direction: first determining what to add (discussion of Dickinson's owernship of slaves, in the lede if possible!), and then searching for sources that you can use to justify inclusion. Most of your sources simply discuss the slavery trope, without connecting it to Dickinson's ownership of slaves. They're just what come up when you search Google Books for phrases like "Dickinson slavery." That's how we got the noted work on Dickinson's letters, "Barack Obama: American Historian." That's the work I always turn to when I want to learn more about pamphlets in the revolutionary era. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:15, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

When I research a topic I look at all the literature including how the topic is treated by reliable sources when it is peripheral to their main thesis. I don't ignore the classic works on my target topic – of course – but I also do not ignore how it is addressed elsewhere. But if you refuse to employ Google searches to help you understand the breadth of a topic, then don't stand in the way of those who do. Searching Google netted me a dozen university scholars writing their analysis in a dozen university published books. Don't dismiss the methods I used to get good material. Binksternet (talk) 19:23, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Thucydides, I think you need to get with the times a little bit, and by that I mean you should maybe rely less on older sources, even if they deliver to you the uncritical content that you prefer. And I think you know this, since the sourcing that Binksternet and I have added (and posted here on the talk page) is solid. Drmies (talk) 22:24, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

But if you refuse to employ Google searches to help you understand the breadth of a topic: I did general background reading on the subject, which I used to write essentially the entirety of this article (except for the massively undue section about slavery). I don't regard typing "Dickinson slavery" into Google Books and pulling out bizarre sources like "Barack Obama: American Historian" as help. Dickinson and his letters are covered by countless works (any decent history of the revolution will mention them). Sifting through that literature to find the two or so sources that say what you want is not the way to find sources.

@Drmies: I see no problem with the sources I've been using. They give a very good overview of the subject, and you haven't pointed out any actual problems with them. I chose sources that deal with the letters specifically, and broad histories of the revolution, and I tried to weight the different aspects of the article in proportion to their coverage in the sources. You and Binksternet have massively violated the principle of WP:WEIGHT in your new section on slavery (apparently as important as all the stylistic aspects of the letters (!), even though they're far less often commented on by general sources) and by inclusion of the slavery issue in the lede. -Thucydides411 (talk) 10:35, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

@Thucydides411:, the problem isn't so much with your sources (though too many of them are old}}, the problem is with you leaving out modern sources which say things you don't really want to include in the article. Drmies (talk) 12:36, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

I included plenty of modern sources. I'm not the one who went to Google Books to search for exactly the statement that I wanted to include, so your accusations about cherry-picking are misdirected. You should be complaining to Binksternet about cherry-picking, if that's your worry. Additionally, as I've pointed out with regards to synth and failed verification, much of the slavery section is not actually supported by the "modern sources" it nominally references. Dorsey in particular is being very seriously misrepresented. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:56, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Does Hutchins' dubious (read: factually incorrect) interpretation of Crevecoeur have to be repeated twice? Once is already too much. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:33, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

I made a long post at RSN that I'll just summarize here. This question of whether the Hutchins article is "reliable" or not is a red herring. Of course it is. What's much more important is whether the Hutchins article is relevant. That's far less clear. Hutchins himself is at pains to emphasize that his interpretation of Crevecoeur's letters as a commentary on Dickinson is new and represents something that, in his view, other scholars have overlooked. Dennis Moore, who has edited at least two collections of Crevecoeur's work (one as recently as 2013), and who is referenced favorably by Hutchins, does not appear to have published anything supporting this interpretation. This is entirely separate from the question of whether Dickinson's work in form and content inspired Crevecoeur; scholars appear to be in agreement that this was likely the case, though there is no direct evidence for it. Hutchins makes this argument again in one of the essays in Community without Consent: New Perspectives on the Stamp, which he also edited. There are two reviews available in JSTOR, one from The New England Quarterly and one from Early American Literature. The former is critical of the work in general, and says this about Hutchins' essay, which has direct bearing here:

The weakest entry in the collection is probably the one by Hutchins, which is emblematic of the overall problems with the book. Entitled “The Slave Narrative and the Stamp Act,” the essay is really about neither. Hutchins’s subject is John Dickinson’s letters (and Crevecoeur’s response) and, hence, it is about the Townshend Acts, not the Stamp Act. As far as “the slave narrative,” I am still guessing as to what Hutchins meant since he spent more time talking about animals and other things tangentially related to the main argument than he did about the imagery and rhetoric of slavery in the context of American protests.

The second takes no opinion on the merits but simply summarizes the contents of the work. The reviewer has this to say about Hutchins' essay:

Zachary McLeod Hutchins focuses on the epistolary form and examines how race and slavery registered in the political debates of the era. He studies how J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, in his Letters from an American Farmer (1782), criticized the Patriots’ equation of slavery with taxation, especially as John Dickinson had presented it in his Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1767). The epistolary exchange between Crevecoeur and Dickinson, Hutchins argues, became an argument over whose experiences constituted a slave narrative: the white colonists or the people whom they enslaved.

That's not much to go on. Hutchins primarily publishes on religious writing, and appears to have gone back to that (his most recent work is an edited collection of essays on Elizabeth Webb, a Quaker missionary). The original essay has two citations per Google Scholar. One, a discussion of Crevecoeur published in Early American Literature, cites Hutchins as an example of one of many ways of interpreting the letters. The other is a dissertation from 2017 concerning the early US Post Office. That's not necessarily a complete accounting, but I think if the question is this, whether Hutchins' interpretation of Crevecoeur and Dickinson has had any impact in the academic community, I think the answer would have to be no. Mackensen (talk) 02:36, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

@Mackensen: Thank you for looking through the literature, and for finding the reviews of Hutchins' works on Crevecoeur. About Crevecoeur's farmer being inspired by Dickinson's farmer: this is mentioned by several sources, and I included a sentence in the "Reception" section noting this connection between Dickinson and Crevecoeur. But as you say, that connection is not what's new about Hutchins' essay, and it is his argument that Crevecoeur's letters are a commentary on Dickinson's opposition to the Stamp Act that I find undue here.

More generally, I think the recent additions to this article put undue emphasis on Dickinson's use of the slavery metaphor, the criticism of that metaphor, and Dickinson's ownership of slaves. My basic criticism is that this is not representative of the literature on the Letters, and that it has been justified by specifically mining the literature (using Google Books searches) for works that mention Dickinson and slavery. I proposed a compromise above ([5]). So far, there's been no response. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:49, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

No response to your "compromise" proposal because it doesn't acknowledge the modern analysis. It's not an actual compromise. Binksternet (talk) 18:10, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Binksternet, when you say "modern analysis", do you just mean Hutchins, or Hutchins and others? Based on my own research of the publishing on Crevecoeur over the last few decades I'm inclined to agree with Thucydides411 that Hutchins is a real outlier and that it would be giving undue weight to incorporate his work. I would also note that it's inaccurate to write that Hutchins wrote a journal article and a book; the book is an edited collection of essays incorporating a form of his journal article. We're really talking about a single piece of scholarship. Mackensen (talk) 18:18, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I was responding to Thucydides411's statement saying that the literature has been mined "for works that mention Dickinson and slavery" with respect to the "compromise" proposal which removes such scholarship. I was not talking about Crevecoeur. Binksternet (talk) 18:21, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Understood. Turning back to Crevecoeur, and Hutchins, I think it's entirely proper for us as editors to evaluate the state of the scholarship on Dickinson and Crevecoeur and appropriately summarize it, assuming it should be included at all. My findings (as reported here and at the RSN discussion) were broadly these:

1. Hutchins is not a recognized expert on Crevecoeur or Dickinson (fine, he doesn't have to be).
2. Hutchins has not published on this question since 2015.
3. Hutchins explicitly claims that his is a new way of interpreting the letters, one not shared by other scholars.
4. Recognized experts on Crevecoeur, such as Moore, have explicitly not made the same connection with Dickinson that Hutchins did. This isn't a question of silence; Moore, for example, discusses how the form of Dickinson's' "letters" probably influenced Crevecoeur, and this view is endorsed by others.
5. Since the publication of the article and the similar essay in the book, no other scholarly publication (that I've found, and I don't claim to be omniscient) has built on or endorsed Hutchins' arguments with respect to Dickinson and Crevecoeur. To the extent that there's any scholarship, one reviewer, also an academic, was hostile to the totality of Hutchins' approach.

The discussion up until now has been framed as being about modern sources versus old sources. I don't think that's quite right. Modern sources tend to be preferred for two reasons: the discovery and incorporation of new information, and the application of new analytical techniques or frameworks. The former isn't in play here; there is no new information and Hutchins doesn't claim to have found any. As for the second, applying the tools of literary analysis isn't a new concept, although it's newly applied in this case. Using this technique, Hutchins has come to a conclusion not shared by other scholars. We're not talking about ancient history either; Moore's most recent edition of Crevecoeur's work was published in 2013. When a scholar makes a bold new interpretation you don't immediately assume it's correct and valid simply because it's new; you look for other scholars to test its claims and make their own judgments. That hasn't really happened here. Mackensen (talk) 18:51, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

@Binksternet: I proposed reducing the discussion of the slavery metaphor, not eliminating it. I think that a separate subsection with two paragraphs (as we have now) is too much weight. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:12, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Based on this discussion, I think it's clear that Hutchins' view of Crevecoeur's message (framing it as a response to Dickinson's argument about the Stamp Act) is not representative of the scholarly literature, and I think the two sentences referenced to Hutchins should be removed. Mention of Hutchins' interpretation might be appropriate at Letters from an American Farmer. Note that we still would have the following mention of Crevecoeur, in the "Reception" section:

The character of "the farmer" also had an enduring legacy, as a symbol of "American moral virtues."[4] Subsequent works such as the anti-Federalist pamphlet, the Federal Farmer, Crèvecœur's Letters from an American Farmer and Joseph Galloway's A Chester County Farmer were written in the voice of similar characters.[4]:337

The literature commonly links Crevecoeur's farmer to Dickinson's farmer, so this is not at all controversial. Again, I'd like to direct everyone to take a look at my compromise proposal in the "Discussion" section of the RfC above. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:41, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Mild tone

The lede now states, While the Letters start with relative mild rhetoric, he gradually increases the intensity and the text culminates in a dire warning against taxation without representation, comparing it to slavery. There are two problems here. First, it misstates the central constitutional argument made by Dickinson, which is about the revenue-regulation distinction, not "no taxation with representation." Secondly, most sources emphasize the mild tone of the letters (see the "Literary style" section), not simply the mild tone at the beginning. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:18, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

• Then rewrite it. Drmies (talk) 00:56, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

The increasing emotional tone rising to Letter number 9 is from Dorsey. Read Dorsey yourself. It's evident to any reader except Middlekauff that Dickinson warning his white peers of the danger of becoming slaves of the British is not actually mild language. Binksternet (talk) 01:36, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Middlekauff is familiar with the tone of colonial pamphlets, and what appears to be not mild to you is mild in comparison to other Whig literature. "Slavery" as a metaphor for "tyranny" was very common in Whig literature, and the use of that metaphor does not make the style of this pamphlet particularly extreme. You have to compare it to the Journal of Occurrences, fiery rhetoric by Whig leaders such as Richard Henry Lee, etc. This is not just Middlekauff's interpretation: I included this at the beginning of the "Style" section because I saw it repeated throughout the literature, including by Marambaud, Aldridge and Johannesen. Johannesen, for example, writes, "The particular pattern of emphasis that made Dickinson unique was the quality of confidence in moderation that made his formulations so attractive when the popular mood required reasonable explanation and assurance".

This highlights a general criticism I have of your recent additions to the article: you're searching out material that supports a certain set of views (e.g., tying the letters to Dickinson's ownership of slaves), and then highlighting those sources, often with a good amount of WP:SYNTH to massage them into an argument they don't make (many of the sources don't discuss a connection between the letters and Dickinson's ownership of slaves - they discuss the slavery = tyranny trope, or they discuss slavery elsewhere, and therefore popped up in your Google Books search). The goal here should be to summarize the literature, not to go looking for sources that could be used to promote a certain view. -Thucydides411 (talk) 10:48, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

You talk about "the goal" being to summarize the sources, which I agree with, but your actual practice is to blinder yourself to all but stale scholarship. I am, and now Drmies is, injecting some life into this topic by including more recent analysis. Don't hinder this effort. Binksternet (talk) 15:40, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Dorsey also characterizes Dickinson's tone as "moderate": "Dickinson's figurative language, at first glance, seems at odds with the rational approach he tries to develop: the text contains a tension between the farmer's moderate tone and his repeated warnings about the imminent enslavement of white colonists. Dickinson, however, eases his audience into accepting the controversial trope." Dorsey emphasizes how despite using a trope that might seem exaggerated or extreme, Dickinson maintains a moderate, rational tone: 1. "When he introduces [the slavery trope] in the second [letter], he refers to it indirectly"; 2. "When he uses the slavery metaphor in his own voice for the first time later in the letter, he softens it by deflecting his audiences away from the racial form of slavery practiced in Ameria"; 3. "By grounding the slavery metaphor on formal logic and the testimony of others, Dickinson thus advances the rationality of the patriots' popular figure of speech." Dorsey thus agrees with Middlekauff's view that the tone of the letters is mild or moderate. -Thucydides411 (talk) 10:54, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Take another look. Dorsey is saying the tone is mild at the start, and Dickinson draws the reader in with this moderation. Then Dickinson begins to work more emotional language into the series of letters. Binksternet (talk) 14:19, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Murchison also talks about how Dickinson's tone grows to become more volatile, with Dickinson using "astoundingly different pitches and velocities" and "firm chops of the rhetorical hatchet." Binksternet (talk) 14:55, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

I just quoted what Dorsey says about Dickinson's tone. He calls it "moderate," says that Dickinson "softens" the metaphor, and that Dickinson "advances the rationality" of the metaphor. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:49, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

You just cherry-picked the part you wanted to promote, ignoring the rest. The taxation=slavery trope is emotional, not rational. Take off the blinders. Binksternet (talk) 21:50, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Dickinson doesn't argue that taxation = slavery in the letters. Have you read them? I'm trying to characterize Dorsey's argument accurately, and I think that the sentence in the lede that's nominally sourced to Dorsey does not reflect what Dorsey says. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:27, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

In addition to Middlekauff and Dorsey, who both characterize Dickinson's tone as "mild" or "moderate," here is Owen Aldridge's description of Dickinson's tone: Because of the cautious legalism of much of his writing, moreover, Dickinson has frequently been compared to Burke, and it is easy to understand why the impression has been created that his thought is inimical to Paine's. Marambaud does note that Dickinson uses more "oratorical expression" in the later letters, but says that this oratory is carefully balanced: One of the most striking features in this concluding part is the change from the argumentative style, rather sober and restrained, of the preceding letters, to more oratorical expression, marked by an increase of carefully balanced phrases, and alliterations, and gradations. Marambaud concludes by describing the letters thus: The Letters may not be marked by the high sense of the dramatic with which Thomas Paine called the colonists to take up arms. They are the work of a cool, reflective lawyer, moderate in all things; but their polished, measured expression and their cultured manner make them something far greater than a mere pamphlet, however brilliant. The "moderate," "mild," "measured" expression of the letters is remarked upon often enough (and contrasted with other works of the time) that that's how the letters should be described here. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:35, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

References

When sources differ, we tell the reader both interpretations, with attribution. Observers who are not highlighting the rising emotional content of the later letters can be attributed, just like observers who are. Certainly we can give the context, too, that Aldridge is writing in 1976 while Marambaud is writing in 1977, and that Middlekauff's first edition was completed in 1982. All of these fine folk were writing before serious consideration was given by scholars to slavery as an element of the motivation and thinking of the founding fathers. Let's face forward here, not backward. Binksternet (talk) 19:46, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

And Dorsey, who wrote in 2009, also characterizes Dickinson's tone as "moderate." It's not as if scholars only discovered how to recognize tone after 1982 (or after 2009, for that matter). By the way, scholars in the 1970s and 1980s were very interested in the history of slavery in America. One of the things that has been most consistently emphasized in my background reading on Dickinson's Letters is its moderate tone and careful legal argumentation, which is often contrasted with much more emotional works like Paine's Common Sense. When a view is expressed so broadly throughout the literature, it does not need attribution. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:24, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Well, I can see that tone is difficult to recognize even today. Dorsey certainly describes on pages 25 and 26 an increasingly emotional tone as the Letters advance. Dorsey wrote that the slavery trope "stimulated the imaginations of white American Whigs as they extended the figure of speech into long passages that drew upon their knowledge of enslaved people and saw themselves in their place." Dorsey recognizes that Dickinson "brings his arguments to an emotional climax in letter nine" as he describes "a herd of despicable wretches." Dorsey says that Dickinson culminates with the "horrific context" of slavery, describing white colonists who have lost not only their freedom but also their will to resist. Dorsey says that this trope proves Dickinson knew that American-style chattel slavery was morally wrong. On page 102, Dorsey notes that Dickinson's own words of moderation, stating that he is "by no means fond of inflammatory measures", do not prevent him from using exagerrated and inflammatory rhetoric. Dorsey describes in detail how Dickinson "eases his audience" into the "controversial trope" of slavery, by starting out with a moderate tone but then, for instance in Letter VII, he "moves to a climax" by using the comparison to slavery. Binksternet (talk) 16:22, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Look, Dorsey directly states that the letters were written in a "moderate tone," so I don't know why we're even arguing here. Dorsey explains at length how Dickinson eases the reader into a metaphor that might otherwise seem extreme. I quoted from Dorsey's argument above. The "moderate"/"mild"/"measured"/"careful" tone of the letters is something that is generally emphasized by the sources, including Dorsey. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:28, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Wrong. Dorsey describes a change from mild and rational to emotionally charged. Binksternet (talk) 15:26, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

You're simply misreading Dorsey. Dorsey explicitly says that Dickinson advances the rationality of the patriots' popular figure of speech, not that he becomes irrational. He also describes how Dickinson softens the metaphor. The whole point of Dorsey's description in pp.101-102 is to explain how a rational and moderate narrator uses what might seem (to a 20th Century audience, I'd add) like an extreme metaphor. Dorsey lays out this purpose at the beginning of the passage: the text contains a tension between the farmer's moderate tone and his repeated warnings about the imminent enslavement of white colonists. The tone is moderate, the metaphor seems extreme, and Dorsey is trying to explain how these two things go together. I don't know how I can make this clearer. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:31, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

You are ignoring Dorsey pages 25–26. Dorsey says that "Dickinson brings his argument to an emotional climax in letter nine... While earlier in the Letters Dickinson had used the slavery metaphor in perfunctory ways, here he invites white colonists to understand the final consequences of British designs in the full, horrific context..." What part of horrific climax fits into a moderate tone all the way through? Even when Dorsey says "moderate", he talks about how "the text contains a tension between the farmer's moderate tone and his repeated warnings about the imminent enslavement of white colonists." If Dickinson were moderate throughout, there would be no tension. When "Dickinson eases his audience into accepting the controversial trope" he is doing so by starting out with mild, rational arguments to reel them in and gain their trust, increasing the emotional rhetoric later to get his point across. All of this is simple reading comprehension, both explicitly and implicitly described by Dorsey.

There is an historiography to the interpretation of Dickinson's tone in the Letters as mild, moderate or sober. We should be telling this story to the readers, not hiding it. The story is that Dickinson's Letters were praised as mild and moderate by 19th century historians, and by many of the 20th century, but by the 21st century, the tone was re-evaluated as describing a rising emotional path from the early letters to the later ones, carrying increasingly emotional cargo in a carefully crafted progression. Part of the appreciation of his tone comes from the fact that Dickinson was not shouting for separation from England, unlike many others of the time. Dickinson was instead amenable to reconciliation on reasonable terms, if England could be so convinced. The observers who were commenting on Dickinson's sober tone were ignoring the slavery trope. They were unwilling to grapple with it; the elephant in the room. Dorsey comes along and names the elephant in the 21st century, and is joined by other new scholars. Dorsey's 2003 paper in American Quarterly is now cited by 28 others, and his 2009 book Common Bondage is cited by another 28. Scholarship has now shifted, such that UCLA history professor Craig B. Yirush writes in 2015 that Dickinson in his Letters used "forceful advocacy" to counsel moderation by the colonists. (The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution, chapter 5.) So now moderation is describing the result for which Dickinson was aiming, rather than his actual words. Fresno professor Allen Cardin writes in 2014 that "In the years leading up to the Revolution, no word more frequently or emotionally expressed the frustration of the American colonists resisting British encroachment on their rights than the word 'slavery'. In the voluminous and vitriolic colonial literature of opposition and resistance, slavery was the constant theme and the ultimate political evil to be opposed at all costs... Pennsylvania slave master John Dickinson's logic was inescapable when he wrote in 1768, "Those who are taxed without their own consent... are slaves..." (Freedom’s Delay: America’s Struggle for Emancipation, 1776–1865, p. 7) Here we have Dickinson described as using vitriolic language, with Cardin continuing by pointing out the irony of Dickinson's anti-slavery rhetoric in colonial America so dependent on slavery. Binksternet (talk) 18:54, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

If Dickinson were moderate throughout, there would be no tension. You have it exactly wrong. If the tone were immoderate, there would be no tension: the immoderate tone would match the immoderate metaphor. From Dorsey's point of view, the tension comes from the fact that the tone is moderate but the metaphor is not.

We should be telling this story to the readers, not hiding it. The problem is that this is a story that you've made up, which isn't backed up by the actual historiography. First, you're just misreading Dorsey. Second, by no means did historians in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and early 2010s ignore slavery - slavery just is not a major aspect of Dickinson's Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania. The letters have nothing to do with slavery in America; they just make use of a metaphor that was common in Whig rhetoric of the time. That's why few historians have focused on slavery in the letters. It's a minor aspect of them.

Yirush writes in 2015 that Dickinson in his Letters used "forceful advocacy" to counsel moderation by the colonists. You're misconstruing Yirush. I read Yirush's article a while back, and was going to raise it here. Here's what Yirush says: Despite the forceful advocacy of John Dickinson, merchants in Philadelphia refused, which rendered the earlier nonimportation agreements of Boston and New York inopera­tive by the summer of 1768. Dickinson was a member of the Pennsylvania legislature and an influential political figure in Philadelphia. His political advocacy for non-importation was by no means limited to the Letters. Yirush does not say that this "forceful advocacy" was in the form of the Letters. I'll also note that forceful advocacy can be moderate in tone. If you go back and re-read Yirush's description of the Letters, two things will stand out:

1. The closest that Yirush gets to commenting on the tone of the letters is this: Although Dickinson coun­seled moderation, urging the colonists to restrict their protests to petitions and commer­cial boycotts, he was unyielding in his insistence that Townshend’s duties were unconsti­tutional because they violated the right of all Englishmen not to be taxed without con­sent.
2. Yirush makes no mention whatsoever of the slavery trope. Yet we have an entire subsection on the trope, and it's discussed in the lede.

In your quote from Cardin, that's a mighty long ellipsis between the statement about "vitriolic colonial literature" and the statement about Dickinson. Normally, one doesn't use an ellipsis to hide an entire paragraph.

In the overview works on the American Revolution (including the Oxford US History volume by Middlekauff, the Oxford Handbook chapter by Yirush, Gordon Wood's Creation of the American Republic and Edmund Morgan's The Birth of the Republic: 1763-89), there is no mention of the slavery trope. The articles that are specifically focused on the Letters from a literary and historical perspective (Gummere, Johannesen, Marambaud, Aldridge, Kaestle) also do not focus on the slavery trope. I think what you've shown is that if you search specifically for "Dickinson slavery" in Google Books, there are a number of books about the history of slavery in America that mention Revolutionary anti-slavery rhetoric, including Dickinson. But the metaphor is not mentioned in the overview works, and it's a minor aspect of the Letters. That's why I proposed a compromise in the RfC above, to discuss the trope in a few sentences, but not to refocus the article around the trope. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:44, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Nobody but you thinks your "compromise" suggestion worthwhile. It utterly fails to acknowledge the weight of modern scholarship. Binksternet (talk) 21:03, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

This section is about "tone", which is related to the slavery trope through Dorsey and subsequent observers. Dorsey describes a tension which results from the contrast between moderate words and immoderate words. The immoderate words are about the slavery trope. The climax is in the slavery trope, a horrific choice per Dorsey.

My ellipses did not change the meaning of Yirush. Yirush talks about Dickinson and the effect of the Letters starting in January 1768. When he says "forceful advocacy" we are in "summer" 1768, and we know from elsewhere that Dickinson has been recognized as the author since mid-May in the colonies and late June in England. The Letters are having their effect, without additional action from Dickinson, which is not discussed by Yirush. The connection made by Yirush is that Dickinson's Letters are the forceful advocacy, from January through the summer. Yirush is silent on your notion that Dickinson would be doing something else "forceful" that summer. Binksternet (talk) 22:32, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

You can't misuse sources in this way. You're reading things into them that they themselves do not state.

• Yirush first discusses the Letters, and says little about their tone (other than that Dickinson "counseled moderation" and "was unyielding"). Then, he discusses the non-importation movement in the various colonies, and talks about "the forceful advocacy of John Dickinson" for non-importation in Philadelphia. You're asserting that this is a statement about the tone of the Letters. This is dubious: Dickinson's advocacy for non-importation in Philadelphia went far beyond the Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania. In this passage, Yirush is working from Merrill Jensen's The Founding of a Nation, which Yirush cites a number of times. If you go read the chapter "Non-importation in the North," Jensen discusses Dickinson's advocacy for non-importation in Philadelphia, which included a public attack on the merchants, written in the guise of a "gentleman from Virginia." Yirush goes on in the same paragraph to mention Dickinson's campaigning, which eventually succeeded in 1769. You're asserting that Yirush is talking about the Letters, rather than Dickinson's campaigning in 1768 for non-importation. Even if you were correct (and I think you're wrong here), you can't assert that Yirush states something that Yirush doesn't clearly state.
• I didn't criticize your ellipsis in the case of Yirush. I criticized your ellipsis in the case of Cardin. You can't delete a long paragraph, squish the sentences on either side of it together, and claim to be accurately representing the text. This is another example of reading something into a text that isn't clearly stated in the text itself.

-Thucydides411 (talk) 08:37, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Image

Gwillhickers, you uploaded File:John Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.jpg. I'm wondering if we can't find a facsimile of one of the many editions of the book. And that frontispiece, that's probably a facsimile, is it not? The introduction says it's basically a reprint of the Boston edition by Mein and Fleming (there's no full publication history in our article, BTW, and I'm sure that's a complicated thing), from 1768, and it adds, "The binding is also a reproduction of that of the original". Now, I guess that includes the frontispiece; if you (and others) agree, we can at least add that to the caption: I see an encyclopedic value in that. BTW I added "frontispiece" to the caption, since, well, that's correct: the image isn't just the title page. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 23:53, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

SYNTH / failed verification in slavery section

I'm going to list a few passages that are SYNTH or failed verification in the slavery section here:

1. Fails verification: Dickinson mentions slavery in a general sense a few times early in the Letters, without directly referring to American chattel slavery--until Letter VII, at the end of which he completes the previous indirect mentions: Americans who are taxed without consent are merely slaves (references: Dorsey and Murchison). Neither Dorsey nor Murchison say that Dickinson references American chattel slavery. In fact, Dorsey points out that Dickinson goes to pains to reference slavery more generally. From Dorsey: "When he uses the slavery metaphor in his own voice for the first time later in the letter, he softens it by deflecting his audiences away from the racial form of slavery practiced in America. [...] As did other Whigs, he situates slavery in a broad international context." (Dorsey, p.102). Murchison doesn't mention chattel slavery.
2. SYNTH: During the time he was writing the Letters, Dickinson was a prominent slaveholder (though he would free them shortly afterward in 1777), and presents himself as a rational and reasonable farmer in the Letters, despite the tension between his own practice and the warning against the supposed enslavement of the white Americans. (reference: Dorsey). This entire argument - about Dickinson as a slaveholder, freeing his slaves in 1777, the tension between his own practice and warnings about slavery - is not found in Dorsey (at least not in the referenced page and the surrounding section). It appears to be a long exercise in SYNTH. Dorsey makes a much more general argument: that Whigs did not shy away from the slavery trope, despite the existence of slavery in America. Dorsey does not specifically discuss Dickinson's ownership of slaves or his later freeing of his slaves. Dorsey also discusses how Whig rhetoric about slavery fueled anti-slavery and abolitionist sentiment in the colonies.

-Thucydides411 (talk) 11:09, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

I usually respond to questions such as this with detailed replies, countering points specifically or in general, as appropriate. But here you are apparently engaging in disruption to prove a point. I will not assist you with this effort. Binksternet (talk) 15:04, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm not trying to prove a point. I'm simply pointing out that the above sentences fail verification or are synthesis. Do you disagree? If not, these sentences are unacceptable. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:51, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Try this exercise: imagine you are telling the reader about Dickinson and how he used the trope of slavery=tyranny. Would you fail to tell the reader that he freed his slaves a few years later? Should not the reader know this essential fact? Or should the reader be left thinking Dickinson forever persisted in his ownership of slaves? Binksternet (talk) 17:04, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Dorsey and Murchison both discuss Dickinson's use of the trope without mentioning that he owned slaves, nor that he later freed them. You cited Dorsey at the end of the sentence (#2 above), but you're not actually summarizing what he wrote. But forgetting Dorsey for a moment: no, we don't have to discuss Dickinson's ownership of slaves at all. The slavery trope is already a minor part of this subject, and the article now gives undue weight to the slavery trope. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:35, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

I disagree, but cannot expound in any length of that right now: I'm about to teach class--on Early American Literature. Thucydides, I need you to give me (us) some credit, because we actually know a thing or two. And many of these guys (not Dickinson) are on my syllabus. Drmies (talk) 17:38, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

If we're getting into a discussion about credit here, then maybe you should give me just a bit of credit for writing the entire article, outside of the undue slavery trope section. But I don't care about credit. I'm asking about the above sentences, and I've proposed a compromise above (in the "Discussion" section of the RfC). -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:53, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

You are disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, a tendentious behavior described at WP:POINT. You are pooping on the article[6][7][8][9] because you don't like the direction it is taking. The way this plays out is that your tendentious tags will eventually be removed with the new, modern analysis still in place. You can work toward that end or you can fight against it – your choice. But the outcome is certain: modern scholarship on the topic will stay in the article. Binksternet (talk) 19:24, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Above, I've pointed out two sentences where the sources do not support the content. Rather than continuing to personally attack me, please respond to the problems I've pointed out. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:33, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

The second part of the first sentence can be rewritten to take out the "until" part, which suggests the connection. I assume Murchison is in there to verify the "taxation is slavery" bit, but it needs a page number. The second bit, about the "tension", that's verified on Dorsey p. 103, so the citation needs a tweak. Drmies (talk) 20:29, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Dorsey's statement on p.103 is about tension between Whig rhetoric in general about slavery and the existence of slavery. He does not mention Dickinson's ownership of slaves in his passage on Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania. He mentions it much later in the book, on p.189, as you've said. Taking two different arguments, from pp.101-103, where Dorsey discusses the Letters, and then from p.189, where he discusses hypocrisy of several revolutionary figures (including Dickinson), and weaving them together is synthesis.

A discussion of Dickinson's ownership of slaves is fully warranted at John Dickinson, but this page is about a series of letters written by Dickinson. Different aspects of the letters should be given weight according to their weight in the broad literature. If Dorsey spends 3 pages on the letters without discussing Dickinson's ownership of slaves, then that's an indication of how much weight should be given to the issue here. And keep in mind that you and Binksternet selected Dorsey precisely because he mentions slavery - not because his work is representative of the general literature on the Letters. The more general literature is much less focused on the slavery trope than the sources you've selected, but you're already over-weighting the issue and engaging in synthesis, even going by your narrow selection of sources. -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:49, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

You get at your "the more general literature" by leaving out the literature you don't like; that's obvious. And this is the same kind of thing: there is nothing dubious here; what you are trying to say is you don't believe that this scholar should be cited, cause you know better. It's hard to tell what came first, your arrogance or your POV. Drmies (talk) 12:52, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Please abide by WP:NPA. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:24, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Revert

@Binksternet: Please explain your revert here. You say that I got rid of "stuff [I] don't like," but I actually retained most of the substance of the discussion of the slavery metaphor. Can you explain what, exactly, you object to in my rewrite? -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:50, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Why should I explain to you the 3,900 kilobytes that you deleted? You were the one who deleted them. You knew exactly what you were deleting. How about if you make a case for your deletion? Of course, you would want to include how Dickinson was the largest slaveholder in Philadelphia. And the relevant quote from Crèvecœur. Binksternet (talk) 23:59, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

My condensed text covers most of the substance of the much longer section I replaced. One of the problems of the longer version is that it is undue (the other is that it's poorly written and unfocused). I didn't get rid of stuff I didn't like. I actually wrote a concise and well-sourced paragraph that contains most of the material you wanted added.

And the relevant quote from Crèvecœur. There was no quote from Crevecoeur. There were two sentences discussing Hutchins' interpretation of Crevecoeur. That's been discussed at length above, and it's clear that Hutchins' views on this subject are not mainstream.

Of course, you would want to include how Dickinson was the largest slaveholder in Philadelphia. I think that's undue in this article, since it's discussed by almost none of the literature on the Letters.

At some point, you should compromise with me. I actually went through the effort to properly source and carefully write a paragraph containing almost all the slavery-related topics you wanted to touch on. I haven't seen you budge one inch in your position yet. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:09, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

@Binksternet: For reference, here is my condensed discussion of the slavery metaphor:

Dickinson made use of the common Whig metaphor of "slavery," which to mid-18th Century Americans symbolized a condition of subjection to "the arbitrary will and pleasure of another." The Letters cited speeches given in Parliament by Whig politicians William Pitt and Charles Pratt in opposition to the Stamp Act and the Declaratory Act, respectively, describing taxation without representation as slavery. Building on Pitt and Pratt, Letter VII concluded, "We are taxed without our own consent given by ourselves, or our representatives. We are therefore—I speak it with grief—I speak it with indignation—we are slaves." Such comparisons led the English Tory writer Samuel Johnson to ask in his 1775 pamphlet, Taxation no Tyranny, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" The contradiction between the use of the slavery metaphor in Whig rhetoric and the existence of chattel slavery in America eventually contributed to the latter coming under increasing challenge during and after the revolution.

This covers most of the substance of the longer version, but much more concisely. I think this condensed version respects WP:DUE, which the much longer version does not. Can you give any suggestions about how to improve this concise discussion of the slavery metaphor? -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:36, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

@Binksternet: Please suggest any changes to the above text that you think would improve it. I'm trying to cover the major aspects of the slavery trope, while respecting WP:DUE. -Thucydides411 (talk) 09:04, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

References