Reviews for Biography of Rev. Hosea Ballou

The average rating for Biography of Rev. Hosea Ballou based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-06-13 00:00:00 Matthew Sardo When a married man's biography is written by his wife, there's a unique touch to it. This one's got it! A good read

Review # 2 was written on 2020-08-20 00:00:00 Matteo Speziale Carl Lotus Becker’s classic study of the Declaration of Independence does a great job putting that fundamental document in its proper political context and building a foundation for other scholarship to flourish upon. Eschewing much of the history of the American Revolution itself as well as the growing tension between the British empire and its colonies in the years preceding, Becker, instead, spends the bulk of his time tracing the lineage of political ideas surrounding the Declaration. He begins with those that lent themselves to Thomas Jefferson’s mind and writing and the assumptions of his elite compatriots, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. The biggest influence on the American signers was John Locke who rejected the scholastic view of intuitive moral values born deeply within the individual and believed that “since reason is the only sure guide which God has given to men, reason is the only foundation of just government.” And what follows from that reason is “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Becker ends with the criticisms that arose in the nineteenth century, largely as a way to justify the enslavement of Africans. At the heart of the political change was a dispute over “nature.” To the eighteenth century thinkers, nature was a pre-society that existed before civilization corrupted mankind. To nineteenth century thinkers, it was the positions various citizens ended up in. The Vicomte de Bonald summarized the issue well: “The true nature of a thing is not found in its origin but in its end.” So, to these later philosophers, all men weren’t created equal, and society was the filter through which their greatness or inferiority could be found. The middle chapters deal with the text of the Declaration, and they are far less engaging. Becker spends too much time speculating about exactly when and how certain drafts of the Declaration changed throughout the month of June 1776 and far too much time fawning over Jefferson’s “peculiar felicity of expression.” His efforts would have been much better spent providing an analysis of the form, rhetoric, or substance of the document. Pauline Maier has also charged Becker with downplaying the examples included in the long list of grievances against King George as not so much being about the specific complaints detailed, but more so about the subtle suggestion that the American colonies were only voluntarily submitting to the British empire. This may have been true, but it seems to me the grievances were also meant to excite and unify an otherwise disparate collection of colonies. Finally, it may not be central to his arguments, but underlying Becker’s understanding of political changes is the notion that people don’t arrive at their beliefs through logic or any rational process. Rather, they wait for arguments to arise that conform to the views they already have. It’s obvious that we see this with the defenders of slavery, but Becker makes it clear that we, too, see this with the revolutionary American colonists and their continually shifting reasons to refuse cooperation with Britain. British laws and taxes that began acceptably eventually became tyrannical, which, ultimately, speaks less of British overreach and more of American audacity.