The Catholic Church
I am an America. I was born and reared in Hartford, in the State of Connecticut--anyway, just over the river, in the country. So I am a Yankee of the Yankees--and practical; ys, and nearly barren of sentiment, I suppose--or poetry, in other words. My father was a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor, and I was both, along at first. Then I went over to the great arms factory and learned my real trade; learned all there was to it; larned to make everything; guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, all sorts of labor-saving machinery. Why, I could make anything a body wanted--anything in the owrld, it didn't make any difference what; and if there wasn't any quick new -fanagled way to make a thing, I could invent one--and do it s easy as rolling off a log. I became head superintendent; had a couple of thousand men under me. (p. 8)
Wherefore, being a practical Conecticut man, I now shoved this whole problem out of my mind till its appointed day and hour should come, in order that I might turn all my attention to the circumstances of the present moment, and be alert and ready to make th most out of them that could be made. (p. 17)
At one time and another we had sent out topographical expeditions to survey and map the kingdom, but the priests had always interfered and raised trouble. So we had given the thing up, for the present; it would be poor wisdom to antagonize the Church.
And yet they were not slaves, not chatels. By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenths of the free population of the country were of just their class and degree: small "independent" farmers, artisans, etc.; which is to say, they were the nation, the acutal nation; they were about all of it that was useful, or worth saving, or realy respectworthy; and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation and leave bhind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, adcquainted mainly with the arts of wasting and dstroying, and of no use or value in any rationally constructed world. And yet, by ingenious contrivance, this gilded minority, instead of being in the tail of the procession where it belonged, was marching head up and banners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itslef to be the Nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long that they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and not only that, but to blieve it right and sas it should be. The priests had told their fathers and themselvs that this ironical state of things was ordained of God; and so, not reflecting upon how unlike God it would be to amuse himself with wsarcasms, and especially such poor transparent ones as this, they had dropped the matter there and become respectfully quiet. The talk of these meek people had a strange enough sound in a formerly American ear. (pp. 64-5)
The University of Virginia's Mark Twain in His Times site includes a Connecticut Yankee Homepage which offers promotional materials for the novel, illustrations and related material, contemporary reviews, and a variety of other resources. Draw upon these materials in order to explain Twain's treatment of one of the following topics in Connecticut Yankee: American mechanical ingenuity; the class-structured nature of English society; American businessmen; the church.
Mark Twain in Cyberspace provides an annotated list of Twain-related sites on the web.
Mark Twain at the Mining Co. offers a large and useful collection of resources, including archives of reviews and essays related to the debate over banning Huck Finn.
Twain has his hero introduce a great many nineteenth century inventions into King Arthur's England inConnecticut Yankee. See what you can find out (and figure out) about the way nineteenth century Americans felt about the significance of the mechanical. Write a brief summary of your findings (incorporating quotes into your summary), and then talk about whether Hank's attitude towards this invention expresses a similar or different point of view. In other words does the novel add to the nineteenth century American "conversation" on invention--what argument is it making or what question is it posing? Below you will find some of the ways you might begin to investigate your subject.
Use the searchable archive available at the Making of America web site at the University of Michigan to learn more about how nineteenth century Americans felt about one invention.
Read the comments about changing times offered in the closing chapter of the Autobiography of a Methodist Minister.
Think about the attitudes towards the significance of the mechanical expressed in one or more of the following speeches or sermons: William Ellery Channing's "Lectures on the Elevation of the Labouring Portion of the Community" (be sure to notice his reference to the passing of the "feudal" society); Tristam Burges' "The Spirit of Independence: An Oration Delivered Before the Providence Association of Mechanics and Manufacturers at their Annual Election, April 14, 1800; or this collection of poems celebrating "the Mechanic."
Find some biographical sketches of inventors in The Lives of Prominent Americans. What do those descriptions suggest about the role or importance of the inventor in nineteenth century America?
Browse through several volumes of The 19th Century Scientific American in order to learn something about the types of inventions being introduced in the 1800's and the attitude of Americans towards those changes.
One good way of delving into the subject of the mechanical spirit in nineteenth century America is to think about some of the expositions which were held in that period. Below you'll find some interesting sites which allow you to visit and think about some of the nineteenth century fairs. After you've toured some of these fair exhibits, you should give some thought to what the expositions tell us about nineteenth century America. Be sure that you don't become just another "visitor" to the fair: think in an analytical fashion about the significance of the American participation in--and response to--these expositions. What can this help us understand about the "national conversation" and "national identity" of that time?
- Web-Book Columbian Exposition Resource Links Page--This site will offer you a jumping-off point to a number of related sites.
- The World's Columbian Exposition:Idea,Experience,Aftermath--This site is the master's thesis of a graduate student in Americanliterature. In addition to offering information about the fair, the authoralso offers some useful analysis of reactions to the fair and theexposition's lasting effects on America.
- World's Fairs--This site is sponsored by the Fred Harvey Museum,which focuses primarilyon the art, history, and culture of the American West. While this siteprovides a particularly good source of information about the treatment of Native Americans and Western themes at the expositions.
- The World's Columbian Exposition--Look here for plenty of facts and figures about exhibits, visitors, and even prices.
- These Excerpts from Speeches and Editorials on the Crystal Palace Exposition will give you a chance to "eavesdrop" on some nineteenth century reactions to an important fair held in the middle of the century. If you "listen" closely, you will be able to gather a great deal of evidence about the changing state of our national identity, our relationship with the British, our attitudes toward the mechanical, and other important topics.
The Catholic ChurchTwain unleashes a tremendous attack against the Catholic church in Connecticut Yankee. See what you can find out about what kinds of attitudes nineteenth century Americans had towards Catholicism, why they held those attitudes, and how they expressed them.
If you want to get some sense of the kind of intense response which this issue provoked in nineteenth century America would be to read this newspaper report of an attack by Catholics on the Protestant Association as a reprisal for the burning of a convent in Charlestown, Massachussetts. Afterwards, see what else you can find out about the burning of the Ursuline convent.
This excerpt from the M. Kleg's Encyclopedia of Hate, Racism, and Ethnic Violence in American offers a brief history of anti-Catholic attitudes in this (and other) countries. It includes a short essay describing The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, as Exhibited in aNarrative of Her Sufferings, During a Residence of Five Years as a Novice, an inflammatory book which enjoyed a wide circulation in the nineteenth century.
You can search for related materials in the The Making of America Archive, The University of Michigan. The Michigan archive includes at least one Catholic publication and several journals representing other denominations; that may offer you an opportunity to compare/contrast a Catholic viewpoint with other perspectives Another collection of potentially useful resources on this matter is The Douglass Archives of Public Address.
Since so many of the Catholics in nineteenth century America were Irish immigrants, your research may uncover some strong links between anti-Catholic and anti-foreigner (or anti-Irish) sentiments. If you would like to pursue this thread of the topic further, here are some suggestions for your investigation:
- Look at some of the materials produced by groups opposed to immigration. Documents such as the1836 questionnaire produced by the Native American Mutual Protection Association in New York, and The Secret Oath of the American Protective Association (1893) are very revealing. Anti-Irish cartoons are also extremely powerful evidence of the attitudes towards immigration. Look, for example, at the Thomas Nast cartoon "St. Patrick's Day 1868: The Day We Celebrate," as the occasion for a "brutal attack on the police." Another cartoon shows impoverished Irish headed for American shores led by a boat named "The Dynamiter." Both of the cartoons named above are linked from a page entitled "Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in Nineteenth-Century America," which is part of the "Mary Ann Sadlier Archive."
(Note: If you want to pursue this topic further as the basis for your semester project, you may want to delve more deeply into the Sadlier Archive. It offers an on-line text of an out-of-print and little known novel describing "the story of an Irish domestic srvant who journeys to America to see the world and make her fortune during the era of the great famine." It also offers a wealth of related research materials.)
- Roman Catholics and Immigration in Nineteenth-Century America, composed by Julie Byrne of Duke University, was designed to provide high school teachers with an overview of the connections between nineteenth century immigration and religion; the discussion includes an analysis of the debate among historians on related issues. This page is part of a large site called "Divining America: Religion and the National Culture," sponsored by the National Humanities Center.
- This excerpt from Lawrence F. Kohl's The Irish Brigade and Its Campaigns describes the status of Irish immigrants in the U.S. in the years before the Civil War and how that affected their participation in the war.
Who or what is the target of Twain's attacks in this novel? To investigate this question, see our new course page: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: The Novel as Argument.
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