Some Things Never Change

Nathaniel Hawthorne, 19th Century American writer, in his masterful work, The Blithedale Romance, steals from an American period of revolutionary economic, societal, and political reform, mostly in the present grim face of the financial crisis experienced in the late 1830’s and early 1840’s, and the foreboding tensions of socio-political conflicts destined to lead our young nation to war. Here warns that vigorous reforms may bestow the United States with adverse results and unforeseen consequences to such lofty ideal goals put into practice hastily.

Firstly, in May of 1837, the young nation of immigrants, freedom, and opportunity discovered it faced a swarm of hardships to the likes it had not yet experienced and to which many doubted it ever would overcome. The American economy, actually, embarked on its severe downturn in 1836, following President Andrew Jackson’s eight years of hickory-like leadership. Jackson’s Vice President, Martin van Buren, came to the Oval Office with his primary concern being the struggling economy and its shaky financial institutions.

Economists and historians alike agree upon the identification of three root causes of the depression, as noted by Miller Center of Public Affairs (MCPA), that ensued the financial crisis: “First, English banks--responding to financial troubles at home--stopped pumping money into the American economy,” the importance of this reversal being these funds financed much of the economic growth during the preceding decades; “Second, U.S. banks, which had overextended credit to their clients, began to call in loans after British banks cut their money supply; Third, President Jackson’s ‘hard’ money policies… only exacerbated the credit crunch.”

On May 10th, with rapidly depleting hard currency reserves, a group of New York state banks began the refusal of converting paper money into precious metals. Throughout the nation many more banking institutions followed the same practice. Thusly, the financial crisis, Panic of 1837, commenced: “Loans dried up, and so did new purchases; businesses and civic projects collapsed…. Creditors refused to accept paper currency that seemed to be losing its value by the hour,” as stated by MCPA.

Secondly, with all these actions, unemployment rose and many started to question the fundamentals of the economic system that only seven years earlier gave them a booming economic expansion; nonetheless, the American economy accelerated its spiral downwards.

The days of the late 1830’s drew themselves longer, as a shadow in a never-ending evening, as the rumors propagated about the failure of capitalism and its greedy pawns dressed in business and banker clothes. Even, President van Buren blamed the greedy actions of domestic and foreign businesses and financial institutions for the gross overextension of credit by American banks. In the midst of these dire times, ideas on the community, civil rights, labor conflict, and general economics grew in the States and aboard, while mostly the germs of these ideas were imported from Europe by the American thinkers and artists.

However, the pensive Hawthorne dwelt on these ideas, especially, on community and transcendentalism, and apparently found some merit enough to join such an undertaking, as the Brook Farm, with, as he recorded, those “in their haste to begin the reformation of the world.” Yet, faint doubts must have stifled his thought of and passion for the community, for little was it that revealed the cracks and the ever-growing width and depth of them.

Thirdly, according to Hawthorne biographer, Arlin Turner, Hawthorne’s Blithedale narrator, Coverdale, embodies much of the author, “hold[ing] in common… most of his attitudes toward the current interests in, for example, philanthropy [socially moral activism]…”

Within this work of a prophetic and admonitory nature, it cannot be lost upon the reader the bluntness, in realizing and noting, that “real life never arranges itself exactly like a romance,” for this demonstrates maturity and wisdom. By having Coverdale disclosing this directly, following the said statement, and his inability in an early scene to extract fully the discussion from two individuals beneath the tree in which he sits unbeknownst, Hawthorne’s juxtaposition of these two details leads the reader to an understanding that this romance shares naught with others;--that here there may exist some real world applications, some knowledge of wisdom or some awareness of reality.

As with for such, Hawthorne clarifies his overarching moral theme to life in general, much less the romance, “People never do get just the good they seek.” So, boldly and succinctly structured, he adds, “If it come at all, it is something else, which they never dreamed of, and did not particularly want.” Never did more destructive horrors than one striving solely for the betterment of the good for the many. The whole of the romance testifies to this end.

Finally, for the modern reader and in the afterglow of a presidential election season of reform on the right and change on the left, Hawthorne boldly strolls through the middle of the two with pragmatic sense. He wrote in 1852 in the campaign biography of future President Franklin Pierce that reformers never obtain the goals for their desired achievements. A little more absolute than Hawthorne’s normal stances, yet as David Brooks, New York Times Columnist, points out, it was not until Teddy Roosevelt that Americans had presidents campaigning on change against change, instead of change against non-change. So, the absolutes of the terminology can be understood, if Pierce ran as the “not change” candidate.

Nevertheless, Hawthorne’s belief on these matters stated laconically by William E. Cain, professor at Wellesley College, “came from serious reflection on the range of reforms that crisscrossed the United States in the 1830's, 1840's, and 1850's. Hawthorne did not doubt that the nation could be made better, but he balked at the notion that everything could be made better quickly. He perceived reformers turning narrow-minded, hard-hearted, and intolerant, and thereby causing harm as they took away other persons’ liberty in the attempt to gain an immediate moral good.”

All that said, our America and man’s history welcome you, my President Obama.


Today is the official return of my Parthenon column, Parsons’ Pulpit. I have written a column for The Parthenon before and I calculate all together it would be two and half terms. This column came about an independent study I did on the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is obvious my economic interests. Quite a bit longer than planned, but quite a lot of information, as well. Hope the reader enjoys.