1855-1890

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

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We think we live in a period of rapid change - and we do.  Thirty-five years ago (from Jan 2024), personal computers and cell phone usage were just beginning to spread.  The internet was not yet visible to the general public.  There was no texting, email was a specialized product not yet in widespread use, and smart phones were still two decades away.  But the pace of change over the past 35 years is not unique.  Consider - in 1855, a trip to California from the east coast would take six to ten months by wagon train or ship.  Getting a message across country took ten days using the Pony Express.  Fifteen years later, one could cross the country in six days on the newly constructed transcontinental railroad, while communication over the telegraph was same day.  In 1855, a considerable amount of the West had not yet been explored by non-natives.  By 1890, the western frontier was declared "closed" by the US Census Bureau.

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During the ten-year period 1876-1886, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, Thomas Edison an effective electric light bulb, and Karl Benz of Germany the automobile.  In sum, America was booming and expanding, with new technologies and a vastly expanded transportation network.  But not all, of course, was rosy.  The Civil War was fought.  Reconstruction was thwarted and Jim Crow took over the South.  Violent confrontations were taking place between companies and labor.  The northeastern and mid-Atlantic states were beginning to grapple with the impacts of 300 years of deforestation.  The last quarter of the 19th century saw three significant depressions - The Long Depression of 1873-1879 encompassed the longest contraction in America's recorded history.  The depression of 1882-1885 was the third longest, while that of 1893-1897 saw high unemployment and wage deflation.  Poverty and income inequality were ongoing scourges.

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The evolution of ideas was similarly paced.  Within a decade of the 1854 publication of Walden, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species (1859) and George Perkins Marsh published Man and Nature (1864).  The former is one of the most influential books of all time, the latter is deservingly described by Lewis Mumford [Link] as "the fountainhead of the conservation movement."  This period saw a growing understanding both that nature is a system, and that human behavior was messing with that system in damaging and even ruinous ways.  In 1866, German scientist Ernst Haeckel (not represented in the Collection) coined the term "ecology" - the science of understanding nature as a system rather than as a series of independent elements.  (The word "scientist" was coined only 33 years earlier).  As we've seen from prior chapters, the concepts underlying the science of ecology were being formulated for centuries before Haeckel's construct, but the continuing coalescence of that thought was critical to the development of the conservation ethos. 

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Interestingly, it could be argued that Henry George's [Link] Progress and Poverty (1879) was as influential over the half-century following its publication as any other book from this period.  The book was an expansion of an extended essay called Our Land and Land Policy (1871) [a first edition of Our Land and Land Policy, but not the Progress and Poverty, is in the Collection] and many commentators credit it with having launched the Progressive Movement.  George espoused a populist philosophy, decrying abuses by railroads, mining companies and land speculators.  The book's worldwide impact was profound and long-lasting.  More on George and his influence below, but parenthetically I was interested to read a recent NYT article (11/12/23) about a resurgence in interest in the ideas and policies of Georgism.

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Going back to the Overview chapter of this EC History section, I delineated some 26 major themes, in rough chronological order, which have defined the literary evolution of the EC Movement through the end of the 20th century.  Most of the books in the Collection published during the period from 1855-90 are generally consistent with the following themes:

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6.  The development, popularity and influence of the nature essay - Thoreau, Flagg, Burroughs, Muir, etc.

7.  The exploration and settlement of the western U.S. and the construction of the transcontinental railroads.

8.  Increasing recognition that exposure to natural settings improves physiological and psychological well-being.

9.  Recognition of negative impacts of deforestation, including on water sources and soil erosion.  Early efforts to understand and assess forestry-related issues.

10.  Early efforts at land protection - particularly Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Niagara Falls and the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York.

11.  The rise of the middle class and the popularization of vacation travel - particularly from cities to more natural environments such as the Catskill and Adirondack Mountain ranges in New York State.

12.  Widespread interest in birds and birding.

13.  The influence of (mostly wealthy) hunters and fishermen and women concerned about depletion of game and habitat.

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The foundations of appreciation for nature - for the aesthetic values and a beginning of an understanding of the psychological benefits - characterized the works outlined in the prior two chapters of this history, "Before Walden" and "Thoreau and Emerson."  While development of wider and deeper appreciation continued throughout the balance of the 19th century and indeed continues through the works of today, a culmination of sorts was reached with the publication of the massive two-volume work Picturesque America (1872-4 - Catalogued in Anthologies [CREATE LINK]) edited by William Cullen Bryant [Link] and Oliver Bell Bunce [Link] (the latter uncredited).

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Picturesque America is, to my way of thinking, one of the most physically beautiful works in the Collection - both the illustrations and the books themselves (and yes, I know I need to figure out how to incorporate photos onto the website).  The two-volume leatherbound set is massive and represented a major publishing undertaking for its time.  It was published in parts over a period of several years.  The work itself was a cultural landmark of the time and a detour to the Catalogue entry is worth the trip.

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Anyway, back to the business at hand.  The first two sections below focus on Darwin (with Wallace) and Marsh, respectively.  The remaining sections provide a broader survey of the period using, as always, the Collection as structural guide.

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DARWIN...AND WALLACE

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Five years after the publication of Walden, Charles Darwin [Link] published a wee tome entitled On the Origin of Species.  As opposed to Walden, the reception of Origin was enthusiastic - the initial 24 Nov 1859 print run of 1250 copies sold out immediately, and a second edition of 3000 copies, incorporating various corrections and some additions designed to allay religious objections, came out very quickly on 7 Jan 1860.  It is arguably the most important scientific book of all time, and it certainly is of the 19th century.  The copy in the Collection is a copy of that second edition.

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I would note parenthetically that this book actually does not fall into one of the thematic categories discussed above - it stands apart as the intellectual underpinning for all that came after.

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In the opening paragraph of Janet Browne's outstanding two-volume biography of Darwin [Catalogue: References], she says of him that he "...was the most unspectacular person of all time, a man known to his contemporaries as a quiet, methodical worker, devoted to his family, hard to prise out of his house in the country, averse to ostentation, utterly conventional in his behavior, modest and unassuming about his results.  His personality did not seem to match the incisive brilliance other people saw in his writings."  Granted, he did travel for nearly five years (versus a planned two) on the Beagle, from 1831-1836, of which 18 months was actually under sail (and during which time he was generally seasick), with the balance spent exploring on land.  Notably, Darwin credited Humboldt's [Link] travels and writings with fueling his desire to travel.  As one commentator put it, without Humboldt there would have been no Darwin.  Darwin's accounts of his voyage brought him his initial fame, but it took another 23 years to formulate his theory of evolution and publish it in Origin.

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As conventional as Darwin was, he certainly did not lack ambition or competitiveness.  In 1856, Darwin's friend and correspondent Charles Lyell, the eminent geographer, read a paper by Alfred Russel Wallace [Link] in which Lyell saw the similarities with Darwin's evolving theories, and urged him to publish as soon as possible in order to establish credit.  Darwin was not initially concerned, but he nevertheless began writing a paper.  He struggled to synthesize his theory, and consequently expanded his plans to a "big book on species."  He continued his research, including corresponding with Wallace, who was working in Borneo at the time.  Darwin's book was only partly written when, in June 1858 he received a draft paper from Wallace describing natural selection.  Shocked that he had been "forestalled," Darwin sent it on that day to Lyell, as requested by Wallace.  Although Wallace had not sought publication, Darwin suggested he would send it to any journal that Wallace chose.  However, Darwin's family was suffering from severe health issues, including the scarlet fever that ultimately killed his infant son, so he asked his friends to take appropriate action.  With no way to consult Wallace, Lyell and botanist Joseph Hooker decided on a joint presentation of Darwin and Wallace's works at the Linnean Society, which occurred in mid-1858 [the reports were read aloud by Linnean Society Secretary J.J. Bennett - see the 1837 edition of Gilbert White's Selborne for more on Bennett and his brother].  There was little immediate reaction, and Darwin continued work on Origin - which was published some 17 months later.

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Darwin acknowledges at the outset of the Introduction to Origin the import of Wallace's work and its impetus on his own drive to publish.  He also takes pains to show he got there first:  "...I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up some short notes; these I enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the conclusions, which then seemed to me probable.... My work is now nearly finished; but as it will take me two or three more years to complete it...I have been urged to publish this Abstract.  I have more especially been induced to do this, as Mr. Wallace, who is now studying the...Malay archipelago, has arrived at almost exactly the same general conclusions that I have on the origin of species."

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Darwin's efforts worked - he is forevermore immortalized as the originator of the idea of evolution, while Wallace (though respected in his own right) is not much more than a long footnote.  My own impression is that Wallace was altogether too nice of a chap and lacked the same cutthroat ambition that might have led him to preempt Darwin - and he was ethical, recognizing that Darwin had indeed begun formulating and working on his theory long before Wallace himself did.  Wallace did publish a book of his essays on natural selection some years later which he prefaces by saying in part: 

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The present work will, I venture to think, prove, that I both saw at the time the value and scope of the law which I had discovered, and have since been able to apply it to some purpose in a few original lines of investigation.  But here my claims cease.  I have felt all my life, and I still feel, the most sincere satisfaction that Mr. Darwin had been at work long before me, and that it was not left for me to attempt to write The Origin of Species.  I have long since measured my own strength, and know well that it would be quite unequal to that task.  Far abler men than myself may confess, that they have not that untiring patience in accumulating, and that wonderful skill in using, large masses of facts of the most varied kind, - that wide and accurate physiological knowledge, - that acuteness in devising and skill in carrying out experiments, - and that admirable style of composition, at once clear, persuasive and judicial, - qualities, which in their harmonious combination mark out Mr. Darwin as the man, perhaps of all men now living, best fitted for the great work he has undertaken and accomplished.  My own more limited powers have, it is true, enabled me now and then to seize on some conspicuous group of unappropriated facts, and to search out some generalization which might bring them under the reign of known law; but they are not suited to that more scientific and more laborious process of elaborate induction, which in Mr. Darwin's hands has led to such brilliant results.  [Sources: wallaceonline]

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Wallace followed that up in 1889 with another book on natural selection generously entitled Darwinism [see Catalogue].

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Darwin grew up in a wealthy household headed by his father, a prominent doctor and financier, and his mother, the daughter of the founder of the Wedgewood pottery company.  Darwin's paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin [Link], was also a doctor and natural philosopher, who published Zoonomia (1794-6 - see Catalogue), an important work which in some ways anticipated his grandson's theories of evolution.  Darwin attended medical school at the University of Edinburgh but disliked the studies very much.  He then went to Cambridge with a view to becoming a parson, but continued to develop his interest in natural history, often at the expense of his formal studies.

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Following graduation, Darwin was recommended by his professor John Stevens Henslow to join the expedition of the Beagle (as a naturalist and "gentleman"), captained by Robert FitzRoy, to chart the coast of South America.  Part of his duties included providing intellectually stimulating companionship for FitzRoy (hence the "gentleman" bit).  Darwin got from his father grudging permission, and funding, to join the trip.  The voyage lasted nearly five years, during which Darwin spent the bulk of his time on land exploring, investigating and collecting specimens, while the Beagle surveyed the coasts.  The Beagle ultimately circumnavigated the globe, stopping in Australia and Cape Town, among other places (including, most famously, the Galapagos Islands). 

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Selections of Darwin's letters while traveling had been (without his knowledge) presented and published in England and were well received, as were his contributions to the publication of the account of the voyage written by FitzRoy and himself upon their return.  He then settled in as a "gentleman scientist" and published various works on geology and biology, while being admitted to various scientific societies.  

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In his autobiography, Darwin credits his reading of Thomas Malthus in 1838 with sparking his development of the theory of natural selection.  Malthus famously argued that population growth would ultimately overwhelm resources - an argument which became an important strand of EC Movement thinking in the mid-20th century and beyond.  Darwin noted that in fact non-human populations tended to remain relatively constant over time, due to the struggle for existence, and that this process would tend to favor those with attributes which helped them survive the war, as it were.  Thus, over time species would evolve and ultimately new species emerge.  Darwin was also unusual among naturalists of his day in that he collected a great deal of information from ordinary folk who he believed had information that could help him, including, importantly, farmers engaged in selective breeding programs to enhance desirable characteristics of plants and animals.

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As described above, it took him decades to ultimately write and publish Origin, but he got there.  

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As might be expected, Origin, though it never addressed human evolution directly, was controversial.  (Darwin did directly address human origins in The Descent of Man (1871) - not in the Collection).  However, Origin received a great deal of support from the scientific community and its theories obviously carried the day.

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In his personal life, Darwin was extremely conventional.  He married his cousin Emma Wedgewood, considered beautiful, charming, intelligent and quite religious (Unitarian).  Darwin was frequently ill (making his productivity even more impressive) and additionally suffered the death of three of his ten children.  Darwin was a doting father and these deaths, particularly that of Anne, who died aged 10, struck him very hard.  (Darwin feared his children's illnesses were a result of his own weaknesses as well as a result of a too-close genetic connection with his wife, a subject he studied avidly.)  He lived outside London, did not really travel much outside the UK after returning from the Beagle trip and lived, as biographer Browne's quote in the opening paragraph above points out, a quite conventional life.

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When he died in 1882 of heart disease, he expected to be buried in the local churchyard, but after much support was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey near Isaac Newton.

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While not an environmental, conservation or environmental conservation book in any way, the principals of evolution provide a critical underpinning - implicit and explicit - to the ideas and conclusions of literally all who came after him.  Hence his inclusion in the Collection.

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The copy of Origin in the Collection is a second edition - the first edition of 1250 copies was published on Nov 24, 1859, of which 500 went to a popular circulating library.  It sold out immediately.  First editions today sell for well into the six figures.  Given the demand, a second edition of 3000 copies, with numerous corrections but only a handful of substantive changes, was published Jan 7, 1860.

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​GEORGE PERKINS MARSH AND THE BIRTH OF FORESTRY

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In 1864, George Perkins Marsh [Link] (1801-1882) published Man and Nature. or Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (1864), the first book dedicated to the argument that human action was destroying the environment.  Within the context of the EC Movement, it was the most influential scientific book of its time after Origin.  

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Marsh was a remarkable man - he was, among other things, a linguist, a scholar renowned for his work in disparate fields, a diplomat who to this day (2023) remains the longest-serving American head diplomat at a single post ever, and a U.S. congressperson - but he would be but a footnote of history if he did not also write what Lewis Mumford [Link] in The Brown Decades (1931) called "the fountainhead of the conservation movement." (P. 78).  Man and Nature was not only revolutionary - it was also enormously influential globally.

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The idea that human action could negatively impact the planet was not entirely new, it had been the subject of debate for a century or more before Marsh's book was published.  As previously noted, Alexander von Humboldt posited that deforestation could impact climate, and other notables from David Hume to Charles Lyell to James Madison weighed in on the subject.  Marsh, however, was the first to write an entire book on the subject and systematically document the impacts.

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Marsh was a scholar of extraordinary breadth.  He:

 - read, wrote and spoke more than twenty languages, and was among the foremost linguists of his day

 - was the premier American expert on Iceland

 - was a renowned expert on the English language, especially etymology, upon which he lectured extensively

 - helped found the Smithsonian

 - was an expert in engraving, and his collection became the first acquisition of the newly formed Smithsonian Museum

 - was a student of military science

 - studied physics

 - helped design the Vermont statehouse

 - was instrumental in the first publication of the Oxford English Dictionary, acting as Coordinator of the American readers

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Mumford describes Marsh as "one of that group of capacious, perceptive minds who were the miracle of American scholarship before the Civil War." (p. 72)

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Marsh was also a lover of the outdoors and ultimately became an accomplished amateur naturalist.  But he was something of a failure as a businessman and as a lawyer.  At the time he was sent as a diplomat to a re-uniting Italy at the age of 60 he was broke - the appointment essentially saved him from bankruptcy.  He ended up serving as the head of the U.S. mission to Italy for 21 years, still the longest term of service in U.S. as chief of mission ever.  He died and is buried in Italy.

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Marsh had, if not a photographic memory, certainly an extraordinary one.  He also had exceedingly poor eyesight and was at various times nearly blind - he spent four years as a young boy unable to read a word, which he credited in part for his extraordinary ear for languages.  Marsh was a devoted husband - his wife Caroline was nearly an invalid but managed to accompany him on all of his travels.  By all accounts she was intellectually gifted as well.  

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Marsh was first and foremost a Vermonter, active in politics, including serving at various times as U.S. congressman for six years, state railroad commissioner, and as one of the commissioners charged with rebuilding the state capitol building, which had burned down. Marsh nurtured a life-long love of the outdoors, although he was first and foremost a scholar.  Interestingly, Marsh hated the cold - as he aged, he couldn't stand Vermont winters. 

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As a Vermonter born at the turn of the 19th century, he observed with alarm the rapid deforestation of the state over the first half of the 19th century and its impacts on soil and water quality and stability.  He began voicing these concerns as early as 1847, in a published address to the Agricultural Society of Rutland, Vermont.  As a diplomat in Italy, and before that for several years in the Ottoman Empire, Marsh traveled throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.  In these places of ancient civilizations, he noted the impacts of deforestation and long-term agricultural activity on the environment.  He argued that the decline and fall of many of the great civilizations of the past, such as ancient Greece and Rome, was due to their abuse of the natural environments upon which they were dependent.  He was struck by the contrast between the "newness" of America - its relatively intact environment - compared to the tiredness of most of the areas he traveled.  He backed up his arguments by reading ancient texts from everywhere he traveled and comparing the descriptions of the environments they contained with current conditions - something only an extraordinary linguist could do solo.

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Per David Lowenthal's excellent biography of Marsh, Man and Nature "launched a radical reversal of American environmental attitudes.... Every leading forester was inspired by the book and sought [Marsh's] advice." [p. 303].  The book was hugely influential worldwide, spurring conservation and reforestation measures from Europe to South Africa, Australia to India, and Japan to the Himalaya.  

In America, environmental historian William Cronon writes in his forward to Lowenthal's biography that it "takes a real act of historical imagination to understand just how profoundly Man and Nature reshaped American attitudes toward the environment in the decades after its publication.  At a time when the United States was moving at a breakneck speed to industrialize and develop the national economy by exploiting its wealth of natural resources to the fullest, Marsh's was a lonely voice cautioning against the risks of careless growth.... His message was a chilling one:  if Americans failed to learn from the frightening environmental examples of long-vanished civilizations, their young nation could all too easily suffer the same fate." [p. x]

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As noted above, Marsh's work led directly to the development of systematic, scientific forestry management practices in the U.S.  Several states began efforts to study the situation and promote tree planting.  The American Forestry Association was organized in 1875.  Franklin Hough's [Link] seminal Report on Forestry was published in 1878.  There is a blog piece on this site from December 2023 describing the development of federal intervention in forestry in America.  

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Man and Nature explicitly called for, and was highly influential in leading to, the creation of the Adirondack Reserve in New York State which, as discussed elsewhere, was a watershed event in American conservation history.  That act in turn led to the federal Forest Reserves Act in 1891, and on and on.  While Marsh is sometimes accused of being more of a "conservationist" in the mold of Gifford Pinchot than a Muir/Thoreauvian preservationist, Lowenthal thoroughly demolishes that argument in his biography.  [See Chapter 18].  Wrote Marsh of the Adirondacks:  "Some large and easily accessible region of American soil should remain, as far as possible, in its primitive condition, at once a museum for the instruction of the student, a garden for the recreation of the lover of nature, and an asylum where the indigenous tree, and humble plant that loves the shade, and fish and fowl and four-footed beast, may dwell and perpetuate their kind."

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Char Miller in his biography of Gifford Pinchot relates the significance of Pinchot's parents' 21st birthday gift to young Gifford in 1886, a copy of an early edition of Man & Nature.  Pinchot's path forward as one of the first professional American foresters was planned and preordained by his wealthy (and insufferably meddling) parents, who were, to their credit, quite advanced in their concerns about forest management.  "Marsh's profoundly important book on the devastation that humanity had already inflicted on the planet had deeply impressed itself upon the American imagination.... When James and Mary Pinchot gave Marsh's seminal text to Gifford as a guide for the next stage of his life, an offering set within their plans to repair this broken land, they expected their familial concerns to engender national consequences."  [Miller pp. 55-7]

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Concludes Lowenthal:  "Man and Nature became one of the nineteenth century's two seminal texts on the subject.... The other, more influential and more inflammatory, was Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published just five years earlier.  Both illuminated thitherto [?] unrealized linkages between human and other forms of life.  Together they put paid to traditional faith in a designed nature, and 'knocked the props out from under the ideal of a pre-established harmony between humankind and the natural world'." [p. 305 - the embedded quote is from Max Oelschlaeger's The Idea of Wilderness (1991)].

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Man and Nature is not as well remembered today as perhaps it should be.  Certainly, some of its conclusions have been proven incorrect in the fullness of time, but overall it has stood up extremely well and its influence felt to this day.  It is a book worth knowing about, by a man worth knowing about.  And the Collection contains two extraordinary copies.

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As mentioned above, the development of scientific forestry, spurred by Pinchot, Bernard Fernow, Charles Sprague Sargent and Franklin Hough (among others) is discussed in a separate blog entry posted December 2023.

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THE NATURE ESSAY

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The importance of the literary nature essay in the development of an environmental/ecological/conservationist mindset cannot be overstated.  Thoreau might be said to have started the form.  John Burroughs [Link] and John Muir [Link] were the most popular and influential practitioners of it, and both started their careers during this period.  Given their importance, each has a separate Chapter in this EC History section - those Chapters are integral to understanding the time period covered in this Chapter, and the next.

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The overwhelmingly popular nature essays, typically published first in magazines before being anthologized in book form, indirectly exposed vast swaths of the population to the natural world, encouraged people to experience and appreciate nature directly and, in some cases, directly advocated for preservation/conservation.  A meaningful percentage of the Collection are works by the most popular and influential literary naturalists of the period from the mid-19th century into the 20th, including Thoreau [Link], Higginson [Link], Flagg [Link], Brewster [Link], Torrey [Link], Sharp [Link], Seton-Thompson [Link], Packard [Link], Van Dyke [Link], Mills [Link] and others.  The form of course continues to thrive, further developed by such giants as Leopold [Link], Krutch [Link], Abbey [Link], Douglas [Link], Hoagland [Link] and etc.

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It's important to note that many of those listed above, particularly of the earlier vintage, cannot legitimately be described as explicitly environmentalist or even conservationist.  John Burrough's biographer Edward J. Renehan draws the distinction between those like John Muir, Winthrop Packard and John C. Van Dyke on the one hand, who frequently and explicitly advocated for wilderness protection, and John Burroughs, Dallas Lore Sharp and Bradford Torrey on the other, whose "wanted less a country that was a wilderness than...a country that was a garden."  The latter group were comfortable in the intersection between man and nature.  The former sought a sharper divide and "were the first environmental activists."  [See pages 252-253 of Renehan's John Burroughs:  An American Naturalist, the source of the quotes, for a longer discussion.]

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Interestingly, Renehan attributes a meaningful part of the difference between the two approaches to the differential in exposure and influence of Marsh's Man and Nature - the "activists" had demonstrably read and reflected on the book and were Marsh's "intellectual heirs."

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My purpose is not to judge relative merits.  All played a part in the evolution of EC thinking in the U.S. - with Burroughs, by virtue of his fame, prolific output, and broad exposure being among the most important.

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Digressions aside, in 1855, one year after publication of Walden, Henry Ward Beecher [Link] published Star Papers (1855), a series of articles, primarily about nature, that Beecher had written for the New York Independent, a Congregationalist paper which Beecher helped found.  Beecher was ahead of his time in his appreciation of nature and its beneficial impact on the human psyche. 

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Beecher was the best-known preacher of his day, a popular lecturer despite having grown up with a childhood stammer.  He was an ardent abolitionist - sending rifles to Kansas for the anti-slavery fighters there which became known as "Beecher's Bibles."  He was also outspoken in favor of women's suffrage.  Finally, he championed Darwin's theory of evolution, arguing it was not inconsistent with religious belief.  Refreshing to see such forward-thinking views from a Christian evangelical minister. 

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The underlying message of Star Papers was that: "Nature is a minister of happiness.  In the thickets of the forest man should feel truly at home.  Though we are impressed by the glory and grace of single trees, we must not overlook the beauty of the forest as a whole.  Sound knowledge and true love of nature form the basis of the book...."  (Huth, Bison 1990 edition, p. 96).  Huth concludes:  "It is enough to say that Beecher's widely read book was a step on the right way toward establishing sound relationships between man and nature."  

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Beecher was one of thirteen children of unusual ability.  His siblings included Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, as well as prominent educators Catharine Beecher and Thomas K. Beecher, as well as activists Charles Beecher and Isabella Beecher Hooker.  Beecher's father, a Presbyterian preacher from Boston, became known as "the father of more brains than any man in America."  (Beecher's mom died when he was three).

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Perhaps Beecher's most important idea was his conception and communication of the Christian god as one of love, not retribution.  In this his influence has been profound.  Seems rather obvious today, but it was not necessarily so in the mid-19th century.

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Wilson Flagg [Link] (1805-1884) is not so very well-remembered today, but he was quite popular in his day and played an important role in the development of the nature essay.  His writing can be bland - Thoreau said about him:  "Your Wilson Flagg seems a serious person, and it is encouraging to recognize a contemporary who recognizes nature so squarely…. But he is not alert enough.  He wants stirring up with a pole.  He should practice turning a series of somersets rapidly...."  (Quoted in Krutch's Thoreau (p. 281)). 

 

Flagg studied medicine but never practiced.  He then "for several years, devoted himself entirely to the political press.  Finding at last, that to keep along with his party, he must be prepared, on the arrival of every new era, to repudiate, if not to execrate the opinions and measures which he had formerly defended, he renounced all connection with politics..."  [From Krutch - preface].  He was also the leader of the drive to preserve the Middlesex Fells and Blue Ridge Reservations, very significant protected areas just outside Boston.

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Woods and By-Ways opens with a "Dedicatory Epistle" to friend Daniel Ricketson, Esq.​, to whom, interestingly enough, Thoreau was writing when he made the pejorative comments about Flagg cited above.  Flagg addresses these directly in the letter, saying in essence that he is a boring, reclusive fellow and not to be expected to generate the type of enthusiasm Thoreau seeks.  He also notes he is no scientist, but simply a very experienced observer.  Brooks, however, says of Flagg that "...he has a clear concept of the balance of nature, and what happens when man upsets it without being aware of what he is doing....  Flagg grasped the general principles of ecology....  Flagg was a serious nature writer whose popular publications, spread over some forty years, must have instructed and influenced thousands of readers."  [Brooks, pp. 64-5]

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Repeating a quote from my own Introduction to this website, Flagg in his note "To The Reader" following the letter to Ricketson in Woods and By-Ways writes: 

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I have written this volume not with any desire to stay the progress of those improvements which are necessary to the wants of an increasing population...[but] may the progress of the civilized arts be modified by a common intelligence, so as not to destroy the land whose population they sustain.  My object is to inspire my readers with a love of nature and simplicity of life, confident that the great fallacy of the present age is that of mistaking the increase of the national wealth for the advancement of civilization.  Our peril lies in the speed with which every work goes forward, rendering us liable, in our frantic efforts to grasp certain objects of immediate value, to leave ruin and desolation in our track which will render worthless all the desirable objects we have attained.

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I repeat the quote because that, to me, seems as good a summary of the underlying philosophy of the mainstream environmental conservation movement as I've ever read.

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Thomas Starr King [Link] was a Boston-based minister - a famed lecturer and orator best known for his efforts on behalf of the Union during the Civil War.  He also became an ally of Frederick Law Olmsted [Link] in Olmsted's efforts to protect the Yosemite Valley.  Before moving to California in 1860, Starr King published The White Hills (1859).  He wrote the book following years of long summer trips to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, trips he wrote about in a series of newspaper articles.  Writes his (somewhat sycophantic) biographer Charles W. Wendte:  "He had an exquisite appreciation of natural scenery and an extraordinary talent for describing it...."  [Wendte p. 62 - see Sources].  In the book, he discusses the various regions of the Whites, interspersing the text with poetry and passages from Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Shelley, Wordsworth and Byron, among others.  A fine cross-section of Romantic and Transcendental poets. 

 

Brooks writes:  "The White Hills ​is the most charming of guidebooks, full of information, bursting with enthusiasm.  The first of its kind, it established its young author as a leading authority on appreciation of wild nature."  (Brooks p. 39).  

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Starr King writes in a letter to a friend on one of his jaunts to the Whites that:  "On the way I read Thoreau's 'Walden' in advance copy.  The first half disappointed me as being poorer than 'Concord and Merrimac.'  But the latter half is wonderful...winding further into the awful vitalities of nature than any writing I have yet seen."  [From Wendte's 1921 bio, the Foreword of which and the story about traveling to the Whites with Beecher at pages 62-8 are entertaining.  Very parenthetically, Wendte, like Beecher and Starr King, was a liberal, suffragette-supporting minister.]

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It is worth remarking on the fact that even before Walden was published, Starr King both read and apparently liked Concord and Merrimac - not many people apparently did either.

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In 1860, Starr King moved to a church in San Francisco, from whence he visited Yosemite and was struck by its beauty.  He sermonized and wrote about Yosemite extensively, and ultimately teamed with Olmsted to campaign to have the valley protected as a reserve [see Olmsted's Yosemite...Report, 1865].  Starr King wrote a series of articles about Yosemite, similar to his White Mountains efforts, for the Boston Evening Transcript.  He ultimately hoped to turn them into a book, but his untimely death overtook.  Of the articles Brooks writes:  "His already established reputation as an authority on mountain scenery assured him of a wide audience in the East, and he gave his readers full measure...intoxicating in its superlatives, in its evocation of scenes scarcely imaginable to eastern eyes."  (p. 40).  His articles earning him letters of congratulations from Oliver Wendell Holmes [Link] and John Greenleaf Whittier [Link], per Brooks, and gave the Yosemite important exposure to Eastern audiences.

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During the Civil War, Starr King was a tireless advocate for the Union and was credited by Abraham Lincoln with preventing California from becoming a separate republic - he is sometimes referred to as "the orator who saved the nation."  He also organized the Pacific Branch of the US Sanitary Commission (the precursor of the Red Cross) and through his fiery oratory raised $1.5 million for it, 20% of the total raised nationwide.  

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When Starr King died at age 39 of diphtheria and pneumonia, over 20,000 people attended his San Francisco funeral.  In the early 20th century, he was voted one of California's two greatest heroes and funds were appropriated for a statue in the National Statuary Hall Collection of the US Capitol.  In 2006, however, the CA state legislature voted to replace Starr King's statue with that of Reagan.  The sponsor of the bill noted, correctly, that King was not a native of the state.  Of course, nor was Reagan.  Nor was Serra, the other honoree.  He is also, however, honored with namesake streets, schools, churches, parks, and a Mount Starr King in each of the White Mountains and Yosemite NP, as well as a giant sequoia in the Calaveras Grove.  Don't tell the California republican party!

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Thomas Wentworth Higginson [Link] was a Unitarian minister and, like Beecher and Starr King, was a notable exception to those authors who, while contributing to the development of environmental thought, harbored repellent views on certain social issues, typically racial equity.  Higginson was known for his ardent abolitionism before the Civil War and work on behalf of freed slaves after, as well as his work towards women's equality.  He was one of the "Secret Six" who supported John Brown, as well as being a Colonel in the Union Army who led the first all-Black regiment, and a founder of several prominent suffragette organizations.  He was close friends with Lucy Stone and a mentor of Emily Dickinson.   

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Higginson wrote many articles and books on an array of subjects.  Outdoor Papers is a series of essays primarily extolling the virtue of good health and exercise, including for women ("The Heath of our Girls" - p. 199).  The last six essays tie that health and inspiration directly to contact and communion with nature, especially ("My Out-Door Study" - p. 247).  He was friendly with and a supporter of Thoreau, who in turn praised Higginson's nature writing.  In response, Higginson said "He is the only critic I should regard as really formidable on such a subject."  [Quoted in Brooks, p. 66].

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HUNTERS AND FISHERFOLK

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In addition to the broader strokes of the nature essayists, this period saw a change in public perception towards outdoor recreation in general and hunting and fishing in particular.  Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell founded the Boone and Crockett Club in 1887 in order to advocate for habitat protection and fair chase hunting.  The club worked for the expansion and protection of Yellowstone NP, and the club and its members, who were at the pinnacle of social and political influence during the Progressive Era discussed in the next chapter, were responsible for the elimination of market hunting, creation of wildlife preserves and the National Forest and National Park Services, and other conservation efforts.  However, the period leading up to the formation of Boone and Crockett saw some important writings.  

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William Elliott's [Link] Carolina Sports by Land and Water (1846) and Henry William Herbert's [Link] Frank Forester's Field Sports (1849) are discussed in the preceding chapter.  Two titles which had a particularly strong influence on Roosevelt in particular and public perceptions around conservation generally were Robert B. Roosevelt's Game Fish of the Northern States of America, and British Provinces (1862), and Camp Life in Florida (1875), an anthology edited and published by Charles Hallock.

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Robert Barnwell Roosevelt [Link] was the brother of TR's father and was, per Douglas Brinkley in Wilderness Warrior, considered "the great U.S. conservationist during the years from the Civil War to the Spanish-American War." (WW p. 78).  Brinkley adds that "R.B.R., more than any other direct influence, turned Theodore Roosevelt into a conservationist as a teenager." (p. 80).  RBR, in turn, was turned into a tireless conservation advocate by Henry William Herbert.

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RBR was the black sheep of the patrician Roosevelt family due to his constant philandering (while married to TR's aunt, he fathered four children with an Irish immigrant, whom he married after being widowed).  Brinkley asserts that the notoriety around such shenanigans and the Roosevelt family's efforts to downplay his historical role has caused him to be underappreciated by environmental historians. 

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RBR was a "vaguely bohemian" bon vivant with myriad talents - over time he was editor of a reform newspaper which helped break the Tammany Hall/Tweed machine, a congressman for two years solely for the purpose of establishing federal fish hatcheries, commissioner of the Brooklyn Bridge, minister to the Netherlands and treasurer of the DNC, where he helped Grover Cleveland (who, as described elsewhere, was surprisingly important in terms of land conservation) to his second term.  RBR was also a prolific author, publishing satires, novels and a number of books on fish, fishing and birds.  During his last decades, he spent much of his work life promoting conservation, primarily wildlife management.

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Game Fish was a "sensational critical hit."  "Although R.B.R.'s main concern was recreational fishing, his book included chapters about how millions of Americans would become deprived of a great foodstuff if U.S. rivers and lakes were fished out.... Game Fish managed to have a profound influence, becoming the mid-nineteenth-century equivalent of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring" ( WW p. 84) - quite a comparison!  RBR also "spearheaded the preservationist agenda of the New York Sportsmen's Club.  In 1874, at R.B.R.'s urging, the club changed its name to the New York Association for the Protection of Game.  RBR was president for nearly 30 years, until his death.  "What distinguished R.B.R. from other members of NYAPG was that whereas they promoted preservation, he fought for 'restoration.'  In this regard R.B.R. was furthering the teachings of...Herbert." (WW p. 85).  RBR also headed the NY State Fish Commission for 20 years.  He also became among the country's foremost experts on frogs, eels and oysters.  He was a fierce and tireless early advocate for conservation.

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The last chapter of Game Fish, on camp life as RBR sees it, is priceless.  He begins by warning of the depredations of the black fly, comparing them to those of the rack, the thumb screw, being drawn and quartered, etc. and describing how to defeat them.  He goes into gear and other important matters, but saves the longest and best section for cooking - not surprising as he was a gourmet chef.  I was hungry just reading it.  He concludes by noting that:  "Cookery is no mean science, and a knowledge of it will prove interesting and advantageous not only in the wilderness, but so long as Irish cooks shall rule our kitchens and ruin our digestions...." (p. 303).

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RBR ranks high on the list of famed personages of yesteryear whom I'd love to have had a chance to meet.

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Charles Hallock [Link] was founder and publisher of Forest and Stream from 1873-80.  Notably, George Bird Grinnell was editor of the magazine from 1876 until 1911, so he was presumably hired by, and worked for, Hallock.  (The mag was merged into its main competitor, Field and Stream in 1930).  Hallock "was a hero to both Roosevelt and Grinnell and…[this book] had a huge impact on Roosevelt's eco-sensibility." (WW p. 360).  Hallock originated the code of uniform game laws and co-founded the first great American game preserve, at Blooming Grove, PA.  The first state law regulating hunting of birds for commerce, signed by Roosevelt as NYS governor, was called the Hallock Bird Protection Bill.

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EXPLORATION, SURVEY AND PROTECTION OF THE WEST - YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

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The post-Civil War period is when the American West in all its grandeur was fully explored, mapped, stolen from its original inhabitants, and settled.  There was a lot going on.  We'll move from California (William Brewer and Clarence King) and specifically Yosemite (Frederick Law Olmsted, Clarence King, etc.); to the Southwest (John Wesley Powell, Clarence King again, Clarence Dutton, G.K. Gilbert, W.H. Holmes, etc.); to Yellowstone (F.V. Hayden, W.H. Holmes, Thomas Moran, NP Langford, etc.); and to the Pacific Northwest (W.G. Steel with appearances from Dutton and Brewer).  This was, by and large, a fascinating, accomplished group of people.  All men.

 

I will not dwell on it, but on the topic of western expansion in particular, the treatment and fate of the Native Americans who originally inhabited those lands is always top of mind.  At the end of the day, the same people we lionize below for their influence on the EC Movement, whether due to their lyrical descriptions or prescient policy proposals or both, were often the same people whose work helped seal the fate of the First Peoples.  This should not be forgotten.

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With that as an ever-present backdrop, an interesting and unique characteristic of this time period is the large number of US Governmental Publications which possessed a degree of literary, artistic and historical merit, and achieved sufficient public penetration and popularity, to warrant inclusion in the Collection.  Reports from geological surveys and commissions by the likes of John Wesley Powell, Ferdinand V. Hayden, Clarence Dutton, Clarence King, William Brewer and Francis Law Olmsted were critical first steps towards the movement to protect unique landscapes.  Not all of their writing was for the government, but much was.  A similar movement in the East, focused on Niagara Falls and the Adirondack Mountains in New York State, is discussed separately below.

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Coming out of the Civil War years, there were still huge "white spaces" on the maps of the American West, which included some of the most spectacular landscapes the continental US has to offer - places like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon.  This period saw the "taming" of the mythic Old West - the transition from epic cattle drives to the fencing in of the range, the pacification and forced reservation of the last major tribes of nomadic Native Americans, and the declaration by the Census Bureau of the closing of the frontier in 1890. 

 

In 1867, the US Congress authorized western expeditions in which surveys of geology and natural resources would be the primary objectives.  Clarence King [Link] later said that this marked "a turning point, when the science ceased to be dragged in the dust of rapid exploration and took a commanding position in the professional work of the country."  King and F. V. Hayden [Link], both already experienced surveyors despite their ages (25 and 38, respectively), were tapped to lead multi-year surveys - King of the 40th parallel, and Hayden of Nebraska.  Both surveys were successful, and both were extended, with Hayden sent to Wyoming and Colorado.  In 1869, John Wesley Powell began a privately sponsored journey in three small boats into the unknown canyons of the Southwest - the group made it down the Green River to the Colorado and through the Grand Canyon.  In 1870, Powell secured federal government support for a return trip.

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Let us back up a bit though.  Before the federal government went big into the survey business, some states were doing it on their own, including California.  In 1860, William H. Brewer [Link] was hired by Josiah D. Whitney [Link] to lead the field work of the first California Geological Survey - the survey took four years and covered countless miles.  It was not until 1930 that Brewer's journals from those expeditions were published.  Up and Down California in 1860-1864 is considered a classic work of science, exploration and nature appreciation.  Notes Lyon:  "His descriptions of pristine, near pristine, and already-besmirched California landscapes are always scientifically precise and often touched with enthusiasm." [p. 419].  The book, edited by Francis P. Farquhar [Link], is on the Zamorano 80 list of notable books about California.

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Brewer was primarily a botanist, albeit one with a broad knowledge of the other natural sciences including geology and chemistry.  After finishing the survey, he returned to his alma mater Yale, where for 39 years he served as Chair of Agriculture at the Sheffield Scientific School.  (Clarence King graduated from Sheffield in 1863 and immediately went to work for Brewer on the CA survey).

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Brewer was particularly interested in forestry.  Per a lengthy biographical note on Brewer for the National Acadamy of Sciences written by Russell H. Chittenden, the long-tenured director of Sheffield who also wrote the Preface for Up and Down California:

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From his earliest years Brewer had manifested great interest in forestry, an interest that had grown steadily with his increasing appreciation of the importance of forests to the national welfare.... Later, when public attention was being directed to the declining condition of the forests, he became an ardent advocate for a thorough investigation of the matter, and in 1896...he was one of the Commission appointed to investigate and formulate proper methods for the preservation of forest resources of the country.... Eventually, as a result of the recommendations submitted to the Government, the National Department of Forestry was established.... When in 1900 the Yale Forest School was established, Brewer took an active part in its organization, serving as a member of its governing board.... [pp. 311-2]  [https://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/brewer-william]  

 

Brewer's is a name which appears frequently in reading about the environmental history of this period.  Among other things, in 1896 he served on the important Forestry Commission chaired by Charles Sprague Sargent [Link] (see Sargant's 1884 report in Government Publications).  He was also one of the scientists who accompanied the Harriman Alaska Expedition [Link] in 1899 (see Anthologies).  Brewer was apparently not a table-pounder, but at the same time it is also clearly a man of considerable influence whose impressive work touched many of the people profiled throughout this section, including Muir, Pinchot, Fernow, Sargent, Clarence King and William Steel among others. 

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John Wesley Powell [Link] was a man of parts, notwithstanding the fact that he was missing one of them, having lost his arm during the Civil War.  Despite this, he led several successive expeditions of the first non-Native peoples down the Grand Canyon.  His reports about those expeditions, Exploration of the Colorado River... (1875) and Report on the Lands of the Arid Region... (1879) are classics that were very popular in their time.  The former has been ranked by National Geographic as number four on its list of the top 100 adventure books of all time.  The latter volume is "one of the most important ever written about the western lands" per the NPS.  The Library of Congress calls the latter volume "a pioneering work recognizing the West's unique environmental character, advocating irrigation and conservation efforts in it, and calling for the distribution of Western lands to settlers on a democratic and environmentally realistic basis." 

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Powell was an extraordinary man.  He was a scientist and ethnologist first and foremost.  His formal primary schooling ended at age 12, yet he became a college professor, head of the US Geological Survey for 13 years, and the first director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian.  He was a natural adventurer - while in his early 20s, on separate trips, he walked for four months across Wisconsin, rowed down the Mississippi River from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, rowed from Pittsburgh to St. Louis, rowed down the Illinois River, then up the Mississippi and the Des Moines Rivers to central Iowa, all while attending various colleges (but never earning a degree), teaching in a one-room schoolhouse, and becoming the Illinois State Natural History Society's curator of conchology.

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In 1860, believing a civil war was inevitable, he studied military science and engineering.  When the war started, as an ardent abolitionist he volunteered immediately, enlisting as a private and ultimately attaining the permanent rank of major.  He lost his arm at the elbow in the Battle of Shiloh in 1862 yet returned to the army a few months later and served until the end of the war.  While in the trenches during the siege of Vicksburg in May and June 1863, he collected fossils unearthed in the trenching, later depositing the collection with the Illinois State Museum.  At the end of the war he was a brevet lieutenant colonel.

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After the war, Powell accepted a professorship in geology at Illinois Wesleyan University while also lecturing at Illionois State University and curating the museum of the Illinois Natural History Society.  While teaching, he led several trips to the Rocky Mountains, becoming one of the first non-Natives to climb Long's Peak.

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In May 1869 Powell launched an expedition of ten men, all mountain men experienced in living off the land except for him and his brother, in four small boats of Powell's own design.  They were funded privately but were permitted by the government to requisition military stores.  They launched from Green River Station, WY, and descended the Green and Colorado Rivers over 1,000 miles, through the Grand Canyon.  Three of the men left the expedition only two days before it emerged on August 30 - those men were never seen again, believed killed by Native Americans.  Buoyed by the success of the expedition, Powell launched a second run in 1871, this time funded by the US Government.  These are the expeditions described in Exploration of the Colorado River..., which was published by the Smithsonian.  ​​​

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