With the news that Nancy Reagan has referred to an astrologer when planning her husband's schedule, and reports of Californians evacuating Los Angeles on the strength of a prediction from a sixteenth-century physician and astrologer Michel de Notredame, the image of the U.S. as a scientific and technological nation has taking a bit of a battering lately. Sadly, such happenings cannot be dismissed as passing fancies. They are manifestations of a well-established "anti-science" tendency in the U.S. which, ultimately, could threaten the country's position as a technological power. . . . The manifest widespread desire to reject rationality and substitute a series of quasirandom beliefs in order to understand the universe does not augur well for a nation deeply concerned about its ability to compete with its industrial equals. To the degree that it reflects the thinking of a significant section of the public, this point of view encourages ignorance of and, indeed, contempt for science and for rational methods of approaching truth. . . . It is becoming clear that if the U.S. does not pick itself up soon and devote some effort to educating the young effectively, its hope of maintaining a semblance of leadership in the world may rest, paradoxically, with a new wave of technically interested and trained immigrants who do not suffer from the anti-science disease rampant in an apparently decaying society. -- Physicist Tony Feinberg, in "New Scientist," May 19, 1988
IMAM, an Arabic word, meaning "leader" or "guide" in the sense of a "pattern whose example is followed, whether for good or bad." Thus it is applied to the Koran, to a builder's level and plumb-line, to a road, to a school-boy's daily task, to a written record. It is used in several of these, senses in the Koran, but specifically several times of leaders and (ii. 118) of Abraham, "Lo, I make thee a pattern for mankind." _Imam_ thus became the name of the head of the Moslem community, whose leadership and patternhood, as in the case of Mahomet himself, is to be regarded as of the widest description. His duty is to be the lieutenant, the Caliph (q.v.) of the Prophet, to guard the faith and maintain the government of the state. Round the origin and basis of his office all controversies as to the Moslem state centre. The Sunnites hold that it is for men to appoint and that the basis is obedience to the general usage of the Moslem peoples from the earliest times. The necessity for leaders has always been recognized, and a leader has always been appointed. The basis is thus agreement in the technical sense (see MAHOMMEDAN LAW), not Koran nor tradition from Mahomet nor analogy. The Shi'ites in general hold that the appointment lies with God, through the Prophet or otherwise, and that He always has appointed. The Kharijites theoretically recognize no absolute need of an Imam; he is convenient and allowable. The Motazilites held that reason, not agreement, dictated the appointment. Another distinction between the Sunnites and the Shi'ites is that the Sunnites regard the Imam as liable to err, and to be obeyed even though he personally sins, provided he maintains the ordinances of Islam. Effective leadership is the essential point. But the Shi'ites believe that the divinely appointed Imam is also divinely illumined and preserved (_ma'sum_) from sin. The above is called the greater Imamate. The lesser Imamate is the leadership in the Friday prayers. This was originally performed by the Imam in the first sense, who not only led in prayers but delivered a sermon (_khutba_); but with the growth of the Moslem empire and the retirement of the caliph from public life, it was necessarily given over to a deputy--part of a gradual process of putting the Imamate or caliphate into commission. These deputy Imams are, in Turkey, ministers of the state, each in charge of his own parish; they issue passports, &c., and perform the rites of circumcision, marriage and burial. In Persia among Shi'ites their position is more purely spiritual, and they are independent of the state. A few of their leaders are called _Mujtahids_, i.e. capable of giving an independent opinion on questions of religion and canon law. A third use of the term Imam is as an honorary title. It is thus applied to leading theologians, e.g. to Abu Hanifa, ash-Shafi'i, Malik ibn Anas, Ahmad ibn Hanbal (these are called "the four Imams"), Ghazali. Entry: IMAM
DOUGLASS, FREDERICK (1817-1895), American orator and journalist, was born in Tuckahoe, Talbot county, Maryland, probably in February 1817. His mother was a negro slave of exceptional intelligence, and his father was a white man. Until nearly eight years of age, he was under the care of his grandmother; then he lived for a year on the plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd, of whose vast estate his master, Captain Aaron Anthony, was manager. After a year he was sent to Baltimore, where he lived in the family of Hugh Auld, whose brother, Thomas, had married the daughter of Captain Anthony; Mrs Auld treated him with marked kindness and without her husband's knowledge began teaching him to read. With money secretly earned by blacking boots he purchased his first book, the _Columbian Orator_; he soon learned to write "free passes" for runaway slaves. Upon the death of Captain Anthony in 1833, he was sent back to the plantation to serve Thomas Auld, who hired him out for a year to one Edward Covey, who had a wide reputation for disciplining slaves, but who did not break Frederick's spirit. Although a new master, William Freeland, who owned a large plantation near St Michael's, Md., treated him with much kindness, he attempted to escape in 1836, but his plans were suspected, and he was put in jail. From lack of evidence he was soon released, and was then sent to Hugh Auld in Baltimore, where he was apprenticed as a ship caulker. He learned his trade in one year, and in September 1838, masquerading as a sailor, he escaped by railway train from Baltimore to New York city. For the sake of greater safety he soon removed to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he changed his name from Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey to Frederick Douglass, "Douglass" being adopted at the suggestion of a friend who greatly admired Scott's _Lady of the Lake_. For three years he worked as a day labourer in New Bedford. An extempore speech made by him before an anti-slavery meeting at Nantucket, Mass., in August 1841 led to his being appointed one of the agents of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and in this capacity he delivered during the next four years numerous addresses against slavery, chiefly in the New England and middle states. To quiet the suspicion that he was an impostor, in 1845 he published the _Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave_. Fearing his recapture, his friends persuaded him to go to England, and from August 1845 to April 1847 he lectured in Ireland, Scotland and England, and did much to enlist the sympathy of the British public with the Abolitionists in America. Before his return a sum of £150 was raised by subscription to secure his legal manumission, thus relieving him from the fear of being returned to slavery in pursuance of the Fugitive Slave Law. From 1847 to 1860 he conducted an anti-slavery weekly journal, known as _The North Star_, and later as _Frederick Douglass's Paper_, at Rochester, New York, and, during this time, also was a frequent speaker at anti-slavery meetings. At first a follower of Garrison and a disunionist, he allied himself after 1851 with the more conservative political abolitionists, who, under the leadership of James G. Birney, adhered to the national Constitution and endeavoured to make slavery a dominant political issue. He disapproved of John Brown's attack upon Harper's Ferry in 1859, and declined to take any part in it. During the Civil War he was among the first to suggest the employment of negro troops by the United States government, and two of his sons served in the Union army. After the war he was for several years a popular public lecturer; in September 1866 he was a delegate to the national Loyalist convention at Philadelphia; and in 1869 he became the editor, at Washington, of a short-lived weekly paper, _The New National Era_, devoted to the interests of the negro race. In 1871 he was assistant secretary of the Santo Domingo commission, appointed by President Grant. He was marshal of the District of Columbia from 1877 to 1881, was recorder of deeds for the district from 1881 to 1886, and from 1889 to 1891 was the American minister resident and consul-general in the Republic of Haiti. He died in Anacostia Heights, District of Columbia, on the 20th of February 1895. He was widely known for his eloquence, and was one of the most effective orators whom the negro race has produced in America. Entry: DOUGLASS
From law, however, Lincoln was soon drawn irresistibly back into politics. The slavery question, in one form or another, had become the great overshadowing issue in national, and even in state politics; the abolition movement, begun in earnest by W. L. Garrison in 1831, had stirred the conscience of the North, and had had its influence even upon many who strongly deprecated its extreme radicalism; the Compromise of 1850 had failed to silence sectional controversy, and the Fugitive Slave Law, which was one of the compromise measures, had throughout the North been bitterly assailed and to a considerable extent had been nullified by state legislation; and finally in 1854 the slavery agitation was fomented by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and gave legislative sanction to the principle of "popular sovereignty"--the principle that the inhabitants of each Territory as well as of each state were to be left free to decide for themselves whether or not slavery was to be permitted therein. In enacting this measure Congress had been dominated largely by one man--Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois--then probably the most powerful figure in national politics. Lincoln had early put himself on record as opposed to slavery, but he was never technically an abolitionist; he allied himself rather with those who believed that slavery should be fought within the Constitution, that, though it could not be constitutionally interfered with in individual states, it should be excluded from territory over which the national government had jurisdiction. In this, as in other things, he was eminently clear-sighted and practical. Already he had shown his capacity as a forcible and able debater; aroused to new activity upon the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which he regarded as a gross breach of political faith, he now entered upon public discussion with an earnestness and force that by common consent gave him leadership in Illinois of the opposition, which in 1854 elected a majority of the legislature; and it gradually became clear that he was the only man who could be opposed in debate to the powerful and adroit Douglas. He was elected to the state House of Representatives, from which he immediately resigned to become a candidate for United States senator from Illinois, to succeed James Shields, a Democrat; but five opposition members, of Democratic antecedents, refused to vote for Lincoln (on the second ballot he received 47 votes--50 being necessary to elect) and he turned the votes which he controlled over to Lyman Trumbull, who was opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and thus secured the defeat of Joel Aldrich Matteson (1808-1883), who favoured this act and who on the eighth ballot had received 47 votes to 35 for Trumbull and 15 for Lincoln. The various anti-Nebraska elements came together, in Illinois as elsewhere, to form a new party at a time when the old parties were disintegrating; and in 1856 the Republican party was formally organized in the state. Lincoln before the state convention at Bloomington of "all opponents of anti-Nebraska legislation" (the first Republican state convention in Illinois) made on the 29th of May a notable address known as the "Lost Speech." The National Convention of the Republican Party in 1856 cast 110 votes for Lincoln as its vice-presidential candidate on the ticket with Fremont, and he was on the Republican electoral ticket of this year, and made effective campaign speeches in the interest of the new party. The campaign in the state resulted substantially in a drawn battle, the Democrats gaining a majority in the state for president, while the Republicans elected the governor and state officers. In 1858 the term of Douglas in the United States Senate was expiring, and he sought re-election. On the 16th of June 1858 by unanimous resolution of the Republican state convention Lincoln was declared "the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas," who was the choice of his own party to succeed himself. Lincoln, addressing the convention which nominated him, gave expression to the following bold prophecy:-- Entry: LINCOLN
The leading part which Gallatin had taken in the "Whisky Insurrection" in Western Pennsylvania had, without doubt, been an efficient cause in his rejection by the senate. He intended fully to restrain within legal bounds the opposition which the excise on domestic spirits had provoked, but he made the serious mistake of not allowing sufficiently for the character of the backwoods population. When legal resistance developed into insurrection, Gallatin did his best to retrieve his error and prevent open war. At Redstone Old Fort (Brownsville) on the 29th of August 1794, before the "Committee of Sixty" who were appointed to represent the disaffected people, he opposed with vigorous eloquence the use of force against the government, and refused to be intimidated by an excited band of riflemen who happened to be in the vicinity and represented the radical element. He effectively checked the excitement, and when a month later an overwhelming Federal force began moving upon the western counties, the insurrection collapsed without bloodshed. Of all the men who took part in the opposition to the excise, Gallatin alone came out with credit. He was at once elected to the national house of representatives, and took his seat in December 1795. There, by sheer force of ability and industry, he wrested from all competitors the leadership of the Republicans, and became the most dangerous opponent whom the Federalists had ever encountered in congress. Inflamed with a hatred of France just then rising to the dignity of a party principle, they found in Gallatin an enemy who was both by origin and opinion peculiarly obnoxious to them. They attacked him unsparingly, but in vain. His perfect command of temper, his moderation of speech and action, in a bitterly personal age, never failed, and were his most effective weapons; but he made his power felt in other ways. His clear mind and industrious habits drew him to questions of finance. He became the financier of his party, preached unceasingly his cardinal doctrines of simplicity and economy, and was an effective critic of the measures of government. Cool and temperate, Gallatin, when following his own theories, was usually in the right, although accused by his followers of trimming. Thus, in regard to the Jay treaty, he defended the constitutional right of the house to consider the treaty, but he did not urge rejection in this specific case. On the other hand, when following a purely party policy he generally erred. He resisted the navy, the mainspring of Washington's foreign policy; he opposed commercial treaties and diplomatic intercourse in a similar fashion. On these points he was grievously wrong, and on all he changed his views after a good deal of bitter experience. Entry: GALLATIN
Soon afterwards he entered political life. In the early days of the Republican party, when the shameful scenes of the Kansas struggle were exciting the whole country, and during the campaigns of 1857 and 1858, he became known as an effective speaker and ardent anti-slavery man. His reward for his services was election in 1859 to the Ohio Senate as the member from Portage and Summit counties. When the "cotton states" seceded, Garfield appeared as a warm supporter of vigorous measures. He was one of the six Ohio senators who voted against the proposed amendment to the Federal Constitution (Feb. 28th, 1861) forbidding any constitutional amendment which should give Congress the power to abolish or interfere with slavery in any state; he upheld the right of the government to coerce seceded states; defended the "Million War Bill" appropriating a million dollars for the state's military expenses; and when the call came for 75,000 troops, he moved that Ohio furnish 20,000 soldiers and three millions of dollars as her share. He had just been admitted to the bar, but on the outbreak of war he at once offered his services to the governor, and became lieutenant-colonel and then colonel of the 42nd Ohio Volunteers, recruited largely from among his former students. He served in Kentucky, was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general of volunteers early in 1862; took part in the second day's fighting at the battle of Shiloh, served as chief of staff under Rosecrans in the Army of the Cumberland in 1863, fought at Chickamauga, and was made a major-general of volunteers for gallantry in that battle. In 1862 he was elected a member of Congress from the Ashtabula district of Ohio, and, resigning his military commission, took his seat in the House of Representatives in December 1863. In Congress he joined the radical wing of the Republican party, advocated the confiscation of Confederate property, approved and defended the Wade-Davis manifesto denouncing the tameness of Lincoln, and was soon recognized as a hard worker and ready speaker. Capacity for work brought him places on important committees--he was chairman successively of the committee on military affairs, the committee on banking and currency, and the committee on appropriations,--and his ability as a speaker enabled him to achieve distinction on the floor of the House and to rise to leadership. Between 1863 and 1873 Garfield delivered speeches of importance on "The Constitutional Amendment to abolish Slavery," "The Freedman's Bureau," "The Reconstruction of the Rebel States," "The Public Debt and Specie Payments," "Reconstruction," "The Currency," "Taxation of United States Bonds," "Enforcing the 14th Amendment," "National Aid to Education," and "the Right to Originate Revenue Bills." The year 1874 was one of disaster to the Republican party. The greenback issue, the troubles growing out of reconstruction in the South, the Crédit Mobilier and the "Salary Grab," disgusted thousands of independent voters and sent a wave of Democracy over the country. Garfield himself was accused of corruption in connexion with the Crédit Mobilier scandal, but the charge was never proved. A Republican convention in his district demanded his resignation, and re-election seemed impossible; but he defended himself in two pamphlets, "Increase of Salaries" and "Review of the Transactions of the Crédit Mobilier Company," made a village-to-village canvass, and was victorious. In 1876 Garfield for the eighth time was chosen to represent his district; and afterwards as one of the two representatives of the Republicans in the House, he was a member of the Electoral Commission which decided the dispute regarding the presidential election of 1876. When, in 1877, James G. Blaine was made a senator from Maine, the leadership of the House of Representatives passed to Garfield, and he became the Republican candidate for speaker. But the Democrats had a majority in the House, and he was defeated. Hayes, the new president, having chosen John Sherman to be his secretary of the treasury, an effort was made to send Garfield to the United States Senate in Sherman's place. But the president needed his services in the House, and he was not elected to the Senate until 1880. Entry: GARFIELD
In 1851 Austria had apparently triumphed over all its [v.03 p.0017] difficulties. The revolutionary movements had been suppressed, the attempt of Prussia to assume the leadership in Germany defeated, the old Federal Diet of 1815 had been restored. Vienna again became the centre of a despotic government the objects of which were to Germanize the Magyars and Slavs, to check all agitation for a constitution, and to suppress all attempts to secure a free press. For some ten years the Austrian dominion groaned under one of the worst possible forms of autocratic government. The failure of the Habsburg emperor to perpetuate this despotic régime was due (1) to the Crimean War, (2) to the establishment of Italian unity, and (3) to the successful assertion by Prussia of its claim to the leadership in Germany. The disputes which resulted in the Crimean War revealed the fact that "gratitude" plays but a small part in international affairs. In the minds of Austrian statesmen the question of the free navigation of the Danube, which would have been imperilled by a Russian occupation of the Principalities, outweighed their sense of obligation to Russia, on which the emperor Nicholas had rashly relied. That Austria at first took no active part in the war was due, not to any sentimental weakness, but to the refusal of Prussia to go along with her and to the fear of a Sardinian attack on her Italian provinces. But, on the withdrawal of the Russian forces from the Principalities, these were occupied by Austrian troops, and on the 2nd of December 1854, a treaty of alliance was signed at Vienna, between Great Britain, Austria and France, by which Austria undertook to occupy Moldavia and Walachia during the continuance of the war and "to defend the frontier of the said principalities against any return of the Russian forces." By Article III., in the event of war between Russia and Austria the alliance both offensive and defensive was to be made effective (Hertslet, No. 252). With the progressive disasters of the Russian arms, however, Austria grew bolder, and it was the ultimatum delivered by her to the emperor Alexander II. in December 1855, that forced Russia to come to terms (Treaty of Paris, March 30, 1856). Entry: A
In 1731 Edwards preached at Boston the "Public Lecture" afterwards published under the title _God Glorified in Man's Dependence_. This was his first public attack on Arminianism. The leading thought was God's absolute sovereignty in the work of redemption: that while it behoved God to create man holy, it was of His "good pleasure" and "mere and arbitrary grace" that any man was now made holy, and that God might deny this grace without any disparagement to any of His perfections. In 1733 a revival of religion began in Northampton, and reached such intensity in the winter of 1734 and the following spring as to threaten the business of the town. In six months nearly three hundred were admitted to the church. The revival gave Edwards an opportunity of studying the process of conversion in all its phases and varieties, and he recorded his observations with psychological minuteness and discrimination in _A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton_ (1737). A year later he published _Discourses on Various Important Subjects_, the five sermons which had proved most effective in the revival, and of these none, he tells us, was so immediately effective as that on the _Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners_, from the text, "That every mouth may be stopped." Another sermon, published in 1734, on the _Reality of Spiritual Light_ set forth what he regarded as the inner, moving principle of the revival, the doctrine of a "special" grace in the immediate and supernatural divine illumination of the soul. In the spring of 1735 the movement began to subside and a reaction set in. But the relapse was brief, and the Northampton revival, which had spread through the Connecticut valley and whose fame had reached England and Scotland, was followed in 1739-1740 by the Great Awakening, distinctively under the leadership of Edwards. The movement met with no sympathy from the orthodox leaders of the church. In 1741 Edwards published in its defence _The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God_, dealing particularly with the phenomena most criticized, the swoonings, outcries and convulsions. These "bodily effects," he insisted, were not "distinguishing marks" of the work of the Spirit of God; but so bitter was the feeling against the revival in the more strictly Puritan churches that in 1742 he was forced to write a second apology, _Thoughts on the Revival in New England_, his main argument being the great moral improvement of the country. In the same pamphlet he defends an appeal to the emotions, and advocates preaching terror when necessary, even to children, who in God's sight "are young vipers ... if not Christ's." He considers "bodily effects" incidentals to the real work of God, but his own mystic devotion and the experiences of his wife during the Awakening (which he gives in detail) make him think that the divine visitation usually overpowers the body, a view in support of which he quotes Scripture. In reply to Edwards, Charles Chauncy anonymously wrote _The Late Religious Commotions in New England Considered_ (1743), urging conduct as the sole test of conversion; and the general convention of Congregational ministers in the Province of Massachusetts Bay protested "against disorders in practice which have of late obtained in various parts of the land." In spite of Edwards's able pamphlet, the impression had become widespread that "bodily effects" were recognized by the promoters of the Great Awakening as the true tests of conversion. To offset this feeling Edwards[1] preached at Northampton during the years 1742 and 1743 a series of sermons published under the title of _Religious Affections_ (1746), a restatement in a more philosophical and general tone of his ideas as to "distinguishing marks." In 1747 he joined the movement started in Scotland called the "concert in prayer," and in the same year published _An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of Christ's Kingdom on Earth_. In 1749 he published a memoir of David Brainerd; the latter had lived in his family for several months, had been constantly attended by Edwards's daughter Jerusha, to whom he had been engaged to be married, and had died at Northampton on the 7th of October 1747; and he had been a case in point for the theories of conversion held by Edwards, who had made elaborate notes of Brainerd's conversations and confessions. Entry: EDWARDS