"Squinting at Silliman": Scientific Periodicals in the Early American Republic, 1810-1833

"Squinting at Silliman": Scientific Periodicals in the Early American Republic, 1810-1833Author(s): Simon BaatzSource: Isis, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Jun., 1991), pp. 223-244Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/234820 .

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";Squinting at Silliman":

Scientific Periodicals in the Early American Republic, 1810-1833

By Simon Baatz*

DURING THE FIRST HALF of the nineteenth century the American scientific community, as a national community, was inchoate: the primary loy-

alty of most scientists was to local institutions. Three cities-Philadelphia, Bos- ton, and New York-dominated cultural, intellectual, political, and economic affairs in the early American republic; that dominance hindered the creation of a national community of scientists before the Civil War. This situation created obvious difficulties for anyone wishing to publish a national science journal, as Benjamin Silliman, professor of chemistry at Yale, discovered when he founded the American Journal of Science and Arts in 1818. Silliman's periodical, however, proved vital in creating and consolidating links between local scientific communities that were very often in competition (rather than cooperation) with each other. The American Journal, as a means of communication, brought cohe- sion and a unified sense of purpose to the urban centers of science.

Like most American scientific institutions of the period, the American Journal of Science led a precarious existence; its progress was uneven and by no means guaranteed. Silliman worked diligently to make the journal acceptable to the various local scientific communities whose support was necessary to its survival. By way of contrast, attempts by George William Featherstonhaugh (pronounced Fan-shaw), an emigr6 scientist from Britain, to establish a rival periodical never succeeded, for his inability to win the support of important constituencies blocked his ambition. Based successively in New York and Philadelphia, Feath- erstonhaugh could only capture the partial allegiance of the scientific clerisy. As a result, Silliman was able to ride out the challenge, and his American Journal of Science was subsequently the national publication for the scientific community in the United States.1

* School of English and American Studies, Arts Building, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QN, England.

I would like to thank Chandos Brown, Frances Coulborn Kohler, Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, Ruth Melville, and Arnold Thackray for their suggestions and comments.

I The most comprehensive account of early American science is John C. Greene, American Sci- ence in the Age of Jefferson (Ames: Iowa State Univ. Press, 1984). Greene's history of the early national period, while focused primarily on intellectual developments, contains many trenchant comments on the institutional structure of science. For two valuable analytical overviews see A. Hunter Dupree, "The National Pattern of American Learned Societies, 1769-1863," in The Pursuit of Knowl- edge in the Early American Republic: American Scientific and Learned Societies from Colonial Times to the Civil War, ed. Alexandra Oleson and Sanborn C. Brown (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 21-32; and Nathan Reingold, "Definitions and Speculations: The Professiona- lization of Science in America in the Nineteenth Century," ibid., pp. 33-69.

ISIS, 1991, 82: 223-244 223



224 SIMON BAATZ

THE TOPOGRAPHY OF SCIENCE IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

In 1815 the United States could claim only a handful of scientific societies, not a single scientific journal, beggarly resources for research, and, to cap it all, an attitude of complete indifference among the local population. Small wonder that in 1812 Robert Hare, later to become professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, advised Silliman to send an article on chemistry to Nicholson's Journal, a scientific magazine published in Britain, "as it may be neglected if it appears first on this side of the water."2 After the War of 1812 the interest in science among the literary public steadily increased, along with the number of savants who actively cultivated natural knowledge. But the growth of the scientific enterprise was never linear. Rather, science developed first in the urban centers, most notably Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. Because these foci were geographically far apart, the growth of science occurred within isolated and distinct contexts that were determined by idiosyncratic economic and political factors. The scientific community in the United States was by no means unified or even cohesive; it consisted of a series of local communities varying greatly in size and strength and often at odds with each other.3

Silliman's journal was among the first efforts to overcome the differences among the local centers of science. The American Journal of Science was an avowedly national publication; it went against the grain when it looked for support from communities that were focused on local institutions and local concerns. To understand the difficulties that besieged Silliman during the period- including a struggle in 1831 with George William Featherstonhaugh's Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science-it will be worth our while to look separately at the context for science in the three major cities.

Science in Philadelphia

With the establishment of the American Philosophical Society in 1743 by Benja- min Franklin, Philadelphia could claim a heritage of science that was unrivaled on the American scene. Not long after the founding of the APS, the University of Pennsylvania Medical School came into being and, as the first medical college in the American colonies, attracted considerable fame and attention. The tradition of science and medicine in Philadelphia was a crucial contribution to the city's subsequent rise to eminence as a center of culture and learning.4

Except for a brief eight-month period when it was occupied by British troops, Philadelphia had been the military center of the rebellion for the duration of the Revolutionary War; after the victory of the American forces Philadelphia's importance as the national center was granted official recognition when the city became the political capital of the United States. In 1800, however, the federal capital, together with its growing bureaucracy, moved to Washington City on the

2 Hare to Silliman, 5 Apr. 1812, Robert Hare Letters, Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania.

I Even at mid century science in America was still dominated by the three cities; see, e.g., Robert V. Bruce, The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846-1876 (New York: Knopf, 1987), pp. 32-42, 45-50.

4 The following description of the context for the development of science in Philadelphia is based on Simon Baatz, "Patronage, Science, and Ideology in an American City: Patrician Philadelphia, 1800-1860" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. Pennsylvania, 1986), pp. 1-41.



EARLY AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC PERIODICALS 225

Potomac; at the same time, the state capital of Pennsylvania moved from Phila- delphia to Lancaster.

This double blow to the city's political standing was followed by the decline of Philadelphia as a center of trade. The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 capped Philadelphia's fall from economic grace by linking New York City to the Great Lakes and the western markets. The Erie Canal was a superbly efficient means of transportation, enabling New York City to become the premiere entre- pot both for importers moving manufactured goods to the west and for farmers exporting agricultural produce east to New York City.

The rise of New York to leadership in commerce and trade went in tandem with Philadelphia's decline as a center of finance; the final blow to the city's banking system was delivered by Andrew Jackson in his election campaign against Nicholas Biddle's Bank of the United States. Jackson's victory in 1832 set the seal on the city's seemingly inexorable decline within the context of an expanding nation.

Paradoxically the dominance of Philadelphia as a cultural center during the first half of the nineteenth century was in part a consequence of the city's economic, political, and financial decline. As compensation, the Philadelphia patriciate-eager to maintain the city's reputation but seemingly powerless in the face of outside events and trends-patronized cultural endeavors. Science, as a valuable and respected dimension of learning, won a considerable share of the financial support for culture from the city's elite. During the 1820s Philadelphia was a city saturated with science. The American Philosophical Society, always a lively institution, was joined by the Academy of Natural Sciences, an equal in prestige, resources, and renown. Around the Castor and Pollux of Philadelphia science there circled an assortment of lesser societies: the Maclurian Lyceum, the Phrenological Society of Philadelphia, the Cabinet of Sciences, the Linnaean Society of Philadelphia, and many others. There were also the medical institutions, which not only diffused science on their own account but also attracted an audience, many hundreds strong, of medical students. The Pennsylvania Hospi- tal, the Philadelphia Almshouse, and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School were joined in the first half of the nineteenth century by two more medical institutions-Jefferson Medical College and Pennsylvania College-and a plethora of independent dissecting lyceums and anatomical schools.5

In sum, Philadelphia was the center, during the first half of the nineteenth century, of American science and medicine. Yet it never became a hegemonic capital of scientific culture; other urban centers also fostered science, to a degree contingent on local conditions.

Science in Boston

The structure of intellectual life in Boston was determined by the city's position as the principal port serving the colonies and the newly independent nation.

s The diversity of science in Philadelphia is discussed in John C. Greene, "The Development of Mineralogy in Philadelphia, 1780-1820," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1969, 113:283-295; Greene, American Science (cit. n. 1), pp. 37-59; and Ian Inkster, "Robert Goodacre's Astronomy Lectures (1823-25), and the Structure of Scientific Culture in Philadelphia," Annals of Science, 1978, 35:353-363. For a discussion of the city's medical culture see Simon Baatz, " 'A Very Diffused Disposition': Dissecting Schools in Philadelphia, 1823-1825," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1984, 108:203-215.



226 SIMON BAATZ

From around the middle of the seventeenth century, a tightly knit group of lead- ing mercantile families controlled Boston's economic structure for at least the next two centuries; this cohesive caste of merchant clans espoused a set of be- liefs and values that impressed an indelible stamp on the city's cultural life during the early decades of the nineteenth century. Overseas trade gave the leadership of Boston a profitable economic base that rewarded innovation in discovering and exploiting routes to new markets; in the aftermath of the Revolution, when the British navy enforced fresh limitations on American merchant ships, entrepreneurial skills were increasingly in demand. The long-term expansion of overseas trade was contingent on the transmission of social mores and entrepreneurial skills to future generations. The mercantile elite, which by 1780 had established dominance over banking and land speculation in addition to its control of overseas trade, was compelled to support local organizations that could instill in youth the necessary values.6

Few institutions were in a better position to fulfill this role than Harvard Col- lege. During the prerevolutionary period little distinguished Harvard from such other private colleges as Yale, Penn, Princeton, and Columbia. In the decades after the Revolution, however, Harvard was seen as the organized expression of the need to transmit leadership values to future generations of Boston Brahmins; as a consequence the college at Cambridge received financial support from the mercantile elite that soon raised it to a preeminence among American colleges.7

In the first half of the nineteenth century Harvard launched no less than eight fund drives-all of them successful-so that by mid century the total financial contribution to the college over five decades was approximately seven times greater than that for the whole of the previous century. Owing to such largesse, Harvard had in 1850 twenty-one endowed professorships and four professional schools; its library was three times the combined size of the libraries of Prince- ton, Penn, and Columbia; and its total assets were three times those of Yale. Horace Binney, a prominent Philadelphia lawyer and a Penn trustee, wrote to a Boston friend in 1821 of the support that Harvard obtained from the "munifi- cence of its patrons ... there is nothing like it in any other State" and glumly contrasted the situation at Penn with that at Harvard: "The revolution cost the University of Pennsa her best friends, by destroying the proprietary estate of the Penns, from whom, as it is, she derives an endowment of more than 50,000 dollars.... since the adoption of the Constitution, I am not aware that this University has recorded a single offering except a sum of 3000 drs."8

Harvard served a precise function for the Boston merchants; those institutions in the city that aimed solely to diffuse and promote natural knowledge, however, did not receive very generous support. The American Academy of Arts and Sci-

6 Frederic Cople Jaher, The Urban Establishment: Upper Strata in Boston, New York, Charleston, Chicago, and Los Angeles (Urbana: Univ. Illinois Press, 1982), pp. 15-20, 22-25. See also E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia: Two Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Class Authority and Leadership (New York: Free Press, 1979), pp. 207-245.

7 Peter Dobkin Hall, The Organization of American Culture, 1700-1900: Private Institutions, Elites, and the Origins of American Nationality (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1984), pp. 182-197; and Jaher, Urban Establishment (cit. n. 6), pp. 32-33.

8 Ronald Story, Harvard and the Boston Upper Class: The Forging of an Aristocracy, 1800-1870 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1985), pp. 24-28; Baltzell, Puritan Boston (cit. n. 6), pp. 252-255; and Binney to John Collins Warren, 15 Jan. 1821, John Collins Warren Papers, Massachu- setts Historical Society.




ences-founded in 1780 by John Adams as a riposte to Philadelphia's successful American Philosophical Society-was generally moribund throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1801 a small group of prominent physicians and lawyers, led by William Emerson and John Thornton Kirkland, established the Society for the Study of Natural Philosophy; only six years later, however, the society disintegrated. In 1814 members of the Harvard professoriat founded the Linnaean Society of New England, an organization that started with high hopes but, like its predecessors, soon collapsed for want of wider support. The reluc- tance of prosperous Bostonians to patronize science can be traced through the pitiful history of the city's scientific organizations; it was not until the Boston Society for Natural History came into existence in 1830 that a stable and lasting organization was founded.9

Science in New York

In contrast to both Philadelphia and Boston, where the local elites maintained a continuity of leadership from the Revolution to the early national period, the political and economic control of New York City passed out of the hands of the colonial aristocracy after the Revolution. By 1810 the hegemony of the Living- ston, Delancey, Beekman, Schuyler, and Van Cortlandt families was disintegrat- ing under pressure both from new, more aggressively entrepreneurial groups and from the rapid expansion and diversification of the city's economic base. Aristo- cratic control of the political structures in New York City and Albany evaporated in the early decades of the nineteenth century as the economic base of the patriciate-landholding-was whittled down by land speculation, rent wars, a reduced demand for agricultural produce, and the breakup of the confiscated es- tates of Tory Loyalists.10

The decline of the patroons coincided with the rise of new economic groups with interests linked to maritime commerce, banking, transportation, and manu- facturing. The enormous profitability of these activities and the development of New York as a port and financial center provided an open door for arriviste social groups-unrelated to the colonial landed aristocracy-that were aggressive enough to take advantage of the new opportunities. In commerce, for example, New York had by 1815 attained so complete a dominance over other eastern cities that a great deal of shipping owned even by Boston and Philadelphia merchants unloaded goods at New York Port. This dominance in trade led to a demographic expansion that in turn established New York as the largest urban market for manufactured goods and agricultural produce.1I

9 Walter Muir Whitehill, "Early Learned Societies in Boston and Vicinity," in Pursuit of Knowl- edge, ed. Oleson and Brown (cit. n. 1), pp. 151-173, on p. 151; Linda K. Kerber, "Science in the Early Republic: The Society for the Study of Natural Philosophy," William and Mary Quarterly, 1972, 29:263-280, on pp. 265-276; and Bruce Winchester Stone, "The Role of the Learned Societies in the Growth of Scientific Boston, 1780-1848" (Ph.D. diss., Boston Univ., 1974), pp. 191-192, 215. For the early years of the Boston Society of Natural History see Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, "The Nineteenth-Century Amateur Tradition: The Case of the Boston Society of Natural History," in Science and Its Public: The Changing Relationship, ed. Gerald Holton and William A. Blanpied (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 33) (Boston: D. Reidel, 1976), pp. 173-190, on pp. 178-182.

10 Jaher, Urban Establishment (cit. n. 6), pp. 159-160, 173-175. 1" Edward K. Spann, The New Metropolis: New York City, 1840-1857 (New York: Columbia

Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 1-22; and Jaher, Urban Establishment (cit. n. 6), pp. 175-178. For the classic



228 SIMON BAATZ

In the race by newly emergent economic groups to make a quick fortune, there was little inclination, time, or money for the patronage of cultural, literary, or scientific pursuits. The city possessed few organizations that could compare with Philadelphia's galaxy of institutions for the promotion of natural knowledge. Not until 1813 did the New York savants organize themselves; the New-York Liter- ary and Philosophical Society, founded that year in imitation of the American Philosophical Society, was, however, hopelessly ineffective for much of its brief life. David Hosack, who served the society as its president for a number of years, ascribed its feeble condition to the rage for money-making: "I two years since resigned my place as President of the Lity & Phill Society-Dr. Duer is now in that office-I did hope in my resignation a successor would have been found who would have given a new impulse to that Institution but I fear new york is destined to be what Napoleon called England a nation of shopkeepers-as I once said the Tontine coffee house is her university and the Insurance companies her colleges. 12

The Lyceum of Natural History, founded in 1817 by a small group of physicians and medical students at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, fared somewhat better, principally because the energy of the members was sufficient to attract a certain amount of financial support from the local patriciate. The Lyceum was prosperous enough to publish a periodical journal at intermittent intervals and even, in 1836, to purchase its own building at Broadway and Prince streets. Yet the Lyceum was not immune from the impecunious conditions af- fecting science in New York; in 1843, at a time of general economic depression, the members were unable to pay off a loan of ten thousand dollars, and the following year, after legal action was threatened, the Lyceum sold its building to pay off the debt.'3

Paradoxically, therefore, science in New York was a victim of the city's prosperity. The success of cultural pursuits is not a direct consequence of economic fortune; the relationship is more intricate. Culture is a resource that has value only in its utility for certain well-defined ends-it can find sponsors and patrons more readily if it fulfills certain needs within an economic context. In Philadel- phia the culture of science suited admirably the cause of civic boosterism; in New York, where the need and the desire to foster civic spirit were less evident, science and scientific institutions were less likely to attract patronage.

The Topography of Science

The topography of science in the antebellum United States had decided implica- tions for anyone who contemplated launching a journal. One of the most fundamental concerns of science during the period was the search for patronage. At a

account of the triumph of New York over rival cities in the competition for trade see Robert Green- halgh Albion, The Rise of New York Port, 1815-1860 (New York: Scribners, 1939), esp. pp. 373-386.

12 Jaher, Urban Establishment (cit. n. 6), pp. 181-183, 192, 231-238; Hosack to Peter Stephen DuPonceau, 21 June 1834, David Hosack File, Case 6, Box 5, Simon Gratz Autograph Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The Tontine Coffee House, on the corner of Water and Wall streets, was the principal meeting place for the city's merchants and traders.

13 Simon Baatz, Knowledge, Culture, and Science in the Metropolis: The New York Academy of Sciences, 1817-1970 (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 584) (New York, 1990), pp. 19-21, 34-37, 43-47, 53-55.




time when the support for science from government and industry was minimal, it was imperative that savants locate and extract patronage-usually from private individuals-to support their scientific activities. The structure of disparate local- ized communities forced scientists to appeal to their local patrons in highly idiosyncratic terms. Since each community was internally heterogenous and because scientists in a community were competing with each other for limited resources, factional disputes between scientific cliques were endemic in the early decades of the nineteenth century.14

ARCHIBALD BRUCE AND THE AMERICAN MINERALOGICAL JOURNAL

The effect of this Balkanization of science determined the fate of the first purely scientific journal in North America: the American Mineralogical Journal. Archi- bald Bruce, a professor of materia medica and mineralogy at the College of Phy- sicians and Surgeons in New York, had the uncertain distinction of being its founder. Despite his enthusiasm and enterprise, the American Mineralogical Journal appeared only sporadically after the publication of the first part of the first volume in 1810. The second number appeared in July of the following year, some twelve months behind schedule, and although Bruce was confident enough to write to his close friend Benjamin Silliman that the journal had "greatly increased in circulation having within a very short time since received orders for its being sent to France Germany Eng. Scotland & Ireland," it soon became obvious that its distribution within the United States was small and erratic.15

Part of Bruce's problem was that the scientific community in his native city was weak and disorganized and thus unable to give significant support to the journal. By contrast with Boston and Philadelphia, New York possessed no ex- clusively scientific societies in 1810. The New-York Historical Society-one of the few flourishing cultural institutions in the city-did possess a cabinet of natural history specimens, and its vice president, De Witt Clinton, was an enthusiast of science who, as mayor of New York, was willing to exert his considerable political influence for the good of natural knowledge; nevertheless, the attention of the Historical Society, as one might expect, was focused elsewhere.'6

The sole base of support for the journal was thus Bruce's prominent position in the city's medical community. But shortly after the appearance of the American Mineralogical Journal his medical connections became instead a liability. In No- vember 1811 the physician Nicholas Romayne, together with a few close friends, established a new school, the Medical Institution of New-York, that was regarded as an unfriendly rival by the faculty at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Bruce, who resigned his position at Physicians and Surgeons to accept

14 For a detailed analysis of the importance of patronage in a local context see Simon Baatz, "Philadelphia Patronage: The Institutional Structure of Natural History in the New Republic, 1800-1833," Journal of the Early Republic, 1988, 8:111-138.

15 Bruce to Silliman, 25 July 1811, Folder 1, Box 18, Series II, Silliman Family Manuscripts, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University (hereafter Silliman Family MSS). A history of the journal can be found in John C. Greene, "Introduction," in The American Mineralogical Journal, ed. Archi- bald Bruce (1814; rpt., New York: Hafner, 1968), pp. vii-xvii.

16 R. W. G. Vail, Knickerbocker Birthday: A Sesqui-Centennial History of the New- York Historical Society, 1804-1954 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1954), pp. 52, 54; and Thomas Bender, New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City, from 1750 to the Beginnings of Our Own Time (New York: Knopf, 1987), pp. 65-67.



230 SIMON BAATZ

the chair of materia medica at the Medical Institution, was a central figure in the subsequent competition between the two schools. On account of the considerable bitterness between the faculty of the two colleges, support for Bruce's journal abruptly disappeared among those aligned with the College of Physicians and Surgeons. 17

Bruce was confident that the schism within the medical community would cause only a slight delay in the appearance of the American Mineralogical Jour- nal: "The whole Medical World here has been in a kind of fermentation . . . until some little subsidence has take place I do not think it would be advisable to launch the 4th & last n? of Vol 1.... I am therefore compelled to keep it back a few & I hope I may add a very few days." Although the fourth number of the journal did appear shortly afterward, Bruce's failing health and his increasing preoccupation with his medical duties prevented him from issuing any subsequent numbers. By 1815 Silliman was writing to Parker Cleaveland, professor of mineralogy at Bowdoin College, that "Bruce . . . promises another No of the Journal but I almost despair of seeing it."918

SILLIMAN AND THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND ARTS

A perception by Silliman and others that the demise of Bruce's journal was a blow to national self-esteem provided the stimulus for the organization of a successor. In 1817 Silliman confided to Parker Cleaveland that the American Miner- alogical Journal was "finally dead"; his wistful hope that it might be "possible to revive it" was eventually realized through his own unique position on the Ameri- can scientific scene.19

One characteristic of that position was Silliman's isolation in New Haven, a relatively weak center of science. Silliman was painfully aware of the town's limitations as a cultural center largely on account of his efforts to organize a national geological society. The American Geological Society, as the new institution was called, never received any support from the New Haven clerisy and because of the inconvenience of regular meetings for its supporters elsewhere, it never won a truly national or even regional membership. Silliman, therefore, was initially apprehensive that a science journal based in a backwater like New Haven might be ignored by potential readers in other cities: "Would men of Science in our great Cities be willing to contribute to a Journal in N. Haven?" Only after the death of Archibald Bruce in February 1818 did Silliman decide to push the scheme forward.20

Yet Silliman's isolation at Yale may have contributed to his subsequent success as editor of a new journal. The rivalry among the three principal centers of

17 John C. Dalton, History of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New York (New York, 1888), p. 30; and David D. Demarest, Rutgers (Queens's) College and Medical Degrees (New Brunswick, N.J., 1894), pp. 22-28. See also William Frederick Norwood, Medical Education in the United States before the Civil War (Philadelphia: Univ. Pennsylvania Press, 1944), pp. 127-129.

18 Bruce to Silliman, 16 Aug. 1813, Folder 1, Box 18, Silliman Family MSS; and Silliman to Cleaveland, 2 Aug. 1815, Parker Cleaveland Papers, Bowdoin College.

19 Silliman to Cleaveland, 14 Aug. 1817, Cleaveland Papers. 20 Ibid., 6 Oct. 1817. On the founding of the American Geological Society see Greene, American

Science (cit. n. 1), pp. 241-242. For an account of Silliman's indecision see Chandos Brown, Benja- min Silliman: A Life in the Young Republic (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1989), pp. 303-304.




Figure 1. Benjamin Silliman -~(1 779-1864). Educated at

Vale College and the University of Pennsylvania, Silliman taught chemistry at Vale from 1804 to 1853 and edited the American Journal of Science from 1818 to 1864. In 1840 Silliman was elected president of the Association of American Geologists; he was also a founding member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1863. This portrait shows Silliman lecturing, with West Rock in the background and _w > . ^ _ specimens from the Gibbs Mineral Cabinet in his hand and on the table. From an

Aj ~~~~~~oil painting (1824) by Samuel Finley Breese Morse. Courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery.

science, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York, meant that if a scientific journal with national aspirations were printed at any one of these sites, it would find only lukewarm support elsewhere, for fear that its hometown might gain too great a credit. Thus New Haven was a propitious spot precisely because its weakness as a scientific center would disarm local jealousies.

The best strategy for an outsider whose local community was too weak to sustain his scientific work was to appeal on the broadest possible basis to as many communities as possible. Silliman had connections with scientists in other cities that were to prove useful when he looked for support for his new journal. In preparation for his teaching career at Yale he had studied at the University of Pennsylvania, which then provided the best scientific education that an Ameri- can could obtain in his native country. He made good use of his stay in Philadel- phia, for in addition to attending the lectures of the professors at Penn, he took part in meetings of local scientific circles; as a consequence, he made many valuable friends among the intellectual community in the city. Indeed, Silliman, who went to the university principally to audit the lectures of James Woodhouse on chemistry, could write of his time at Penn as a period when he "enjoyed the highest degree of health and that elasticity of spirits and ardor of mind which, fed by a succession of objects interesting as well from their novelty as their intrinsic character, sends one bounding along his course."21

21 Leonard G. Wilson, "Benjamin Silliman: A Biographical Sketch," in Benjamin Silliman and His Circle: Studies on the Influence of Benjamin Silliman on Science in America, ed. Wilson (New York:



232 SIMON BAATZ

In subsequent years Silliman kept in close touch with the friends he had met in Philadelphia and at Penn; most of the acquaintances of his youth were to make their own reputations in science during the coming decades and were thus in a favorable position to assist the Yale professor. Most notable was Robert Hare, who-after attempting an abortive business venture to illuminate the streets of New York with gaslight and after spending a short time teaching at the College of William and Mary-obtained the chair of chemistry at the Penn Medical School. The chair at Penn, then worth an annual salary of ten thousand dollars, was one of the most prestigious and influential positions in the United States, and Hare became an especially valuable ally of Silliman.22

When Silliman decided to launch a new journal, he printed a prospectus and distributed it to his friends and supporters along the East Coast. John Griscom, a member of the New-York Literary and Philosophical Society, sent back encour- aging words from New York but politely declined Silliman's request for a scientific article for the first number of the new journal: "I wish I had time to under- take something in ye Shape of an Essay for the first no. but fear it will be out of my power." Jacob Bigelow, the Rumford Professor at Harvard College, asked Silliman to "consider me a subscriber to your journal to which I cordially wish success." Horace Hayden, who, together with some close friends in Baltimore, was "endeavouring to form an Association here for the promotion of Science," informed Silliman that he was "authorized to proffer you our cordial support." Zaccheus Collins, a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, sent his congratu- lations in typically pessimistic terms: "Your acceptable letter . . . covering the Prospectus of a Scientific Journal . . . came duly by the mail . .. [I am] confident that if it succeeds not to your wishes, the fault will not rest with the editor.... My mite perhaps may be thrown in, I dare not promise. Take me as a subscriber at least."23

Besides organizing support among his friends, Silliman worked hard to avoid alienating any one community: he was conscious that the American Journal would succeed only if it were perceived to be impartial with respect to both intellectual concerns and geographical boundaries. Just as he could not be seen to favor botany, say, over geology, or natural philosophy over ichthyology, so he could not seem to favor contributions from New England over those from, say, Pennsylvania, or he would lose a certain amount of sympathy and support.

In 1822, for example, when Edward Hitchcock, a prolific contributor to the American Journal, sent in forty pages of a botanical catalogue and promised an additional thirty-five pages on geology, Silliman had to warn his friend that, since

Science History Publications, 1979), p. 3; Alexis Caswell, "Benjamin Silliman, Sr., 1779-1863," Bio- graphical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 1877, 1:99-112, on pp. 102-104; and Silli- man to Myron Holley, 1 Sept. 1803, Myron Holley File, Miscellaneous Manuscripts, New-York Historical Society. For a detailed account of Silliman's studies at Penn see George P. Fisher, Life of Benjamin Silliman, M.D., LL.D., 2 vols. (New York, 1866), Vol. I, pp. 97-107.

22 Edgar Fahs Smith, The Life of Robert Hare: An American Chemist (1781-1858) (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1917), pp. 47, 54-56, 61-62. See also Hare to Reuben Haines, 15 July 1816, 29 Dec. 1816, Robert B. Haines III Papers, Quaker Collection, Haverford College.

23 Griscom to Silliman, 17 Feb. 1818, Folder 35, Box 19; Bigelow to Silliman, 2 Mar. 1818, Folder 18, Box 18; Hayden to Silliman, 3 Mar. 1818, Folder 37, Box 20; and Collins to Silliman, 31 Mar. 1818, Folder 20, Box 19, Silliman Family MSS.




he already had "about 30 pages, most of which is promised, for the next NO this with yours will make about 100 pages, that is, half the No I hardly think it would answer to go beyond this as the lovers of other branches might complain." A few months later Silliman wrote to Hitchcock that his article was to be further post- poned until the next volume of the journal. Silliman was anxious that the delay not be attributed either to his own tardiness or to a low estimation of Hitchcock's work, but as he wrote in January 1823, it was important that the American Jour- nal not be perceived as a publishing outlet for a relatively small locus of science: "You must not think . .. that I am disposed to procrastinate, but, I am obliged to pay some regard to local & sectional feelings, & the jealousy that there should be too much at one time, from one quarter."24

Since there was no preexisting distribution system for magazines and periodicals, editors, authors, and publishers of journals had to create their own net- works of subscription agents. Thus in 1818 Silliman was compelled, before the presses were set in motion, to contact at least one reliable agent in as many places as possible. Each agent would receive a commission for each subscription he obtained to the journal. Parker Cleaveland, to give one example, served Silli- man as a contact for the state of Maine. He not only distributed copies of the prospectus among the clerisy of Brunswick and the students and faculty at Bow- doin College but also secured the cooperation of subscription agents in other towns throughout the state. Soon after receiving several copies of Silliman's prospectus, Cleaveland wrote to Charles S. Davies, the editor of a local newspa- per in Portland, to inquire if there were an "agent in Portland-and, if not cause this Prospectus to be so made known, as shall best tend to obtain patronage for the Journal-It will not perhaps, be best merely to leave it at a Bookstore-but also to insert a brief notice in your paper." Such activity succeeded in widely publicizing Silliman's journal throughout the United States so that it sold in most places where science was cultivated. Much to his satisfaction, Silliman could report to Isaac Lea, a conchologist and publisher in Philadelphia, that the first number of the American Journal of Science and Arts had sold out its initial printing: "The Edition of No 1. is all gone except a very few copies-we printed 1000 & shall print 1500 of No 2 & shall soon reprint No. 1."25

EARLY THREATS TO THE AMERICAN JOURNAL

Silliman's early optimism was quickly replaced by the apprehension that many subscribers were failing to pay their bills; the diligent editor soon owed his printer twenty-five hundred dollars for the first four numbers. Twelve hundred subscribers had sent for their copies of the American Journal, but when it came to the reckoning, less than four hundred sent their remittances. In December 1819 the situation had become critical; in that month Silliman informed John Torrey, a member of the Lyceum of Natural History, that "the Journal . . . is temporarily suspended but is expected to issue again after possibly some

24 Silliman to Hitchcock, 27 Oct. 1822, 25 Jan. 1823, Folder 5, Box VI, Section I, Edward Hitch- cock Papers, Amherst College.

25 Cleaveland to Davies, 17 Mar. 1818, Parker Cleaveland Papers; Silliman to Lea, 6 Nov. 1818, Isaac Lea Correspondence, Academy of Natural Sciences. See also Silliman to Edward Hitchcock, 11 Dec. 1818, Folder 5, Box VI, Section I, Hitchcock Papers.



234 SIMON BAATZ

months.... I can however promise nothing absolutely except strenuous exertions to carry it on."26

Undoubtedly, Silliman's problems were, at least in part, a product of his overly generous nature and a cavalier disregard for the harsh economics of publishing. Yet his difficulties were also a consequence of the existence of the distinct scientific communities in Philadelphia and New York and, to a lesser extent, Boston.

The most immediate threat to a national journal came from locally sponsored publications that could drain off support. Unfortunately for Silliman, the most potent symbol of success for a scientific society was having its own periodical. Members of the Academy of Natural Sciences, for example, had made plans for a journal as early as 1814. In 1817, when the Academy benefited from the patronage of the philanthropist William Maclure, those plans came to fruition. The first number of the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences was ready for distribution by May 1817, and it was a lively success almost immediately, earning the Academy publicity both at home and abroad. The journal also proved of great benefit in a more tangible sense: European scientific societies took the opportu- nity to exchange their own publications for the Academy's journal.27

Neither the Lyceum of Natural History nor the Linnaean Society of New England ever quite managed to emulate the prosperity of the Academy, but the Lyceum, at least, eventually produced a periodical. From its first few months of existence it was eager to publish: by July 1817 the members had formed a committee of publication, which recommended the "establishment of a Journal ... whenever the accumulation of materials & funds shall render such a measure expedient." Despite considerable effort, however, the members of the Lyceum were not able to produce a journal until 1823; even then John Torrey complained, "We labour under great disadvantages for want of funds. If we had such a man as McClure to patronise us, the Academy of Philadelphia would not be before us many years[.] I send you a subscription paper for our Annals to circulate among such of your friends as you think would subscribe. We need some more subscribers to defray our expenses." The Linnaean Society was unable even to contemplate such a venture. Edward Everett, a prominent Bostonian who edited the literary magazine North American Review, attributed the failure of his native city to support a scientific journal to the weakness of Boston's intellectual community: "The scientific part of the community . . . is hardly numerous eno' to give ample patronage to such a work."28

Silliman's American Journal of Science was constrained by the efforts in Phila- delphia and New York to create similar publications, which led to inevitable competition for resources and patronage. In Boston, where there was no rival iournal, the feeble state of science made it unlikely that Silliman would find any

26 Silliman to John Torrey, 13 Aug. 1819, and 13 Dec. 1819, John Torrey Correspondence, New York Botanical Garden. On the finances of the journal see also Brown, Benjamin Silliman (cit. n. 20), pp. 307-308.

27 Charlotte M. Porter, "The Concussion of Revolution: Publications and Reform at the Early Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, 1812-1842," Journal of the History of Biology, 1979, 12:273-292, on p. 277; and Baatz, "Philadelphia Patronage" (cit. n. 14), p. 126.

28 Minutes of the Lyceum of Natural History, 14 July 1817, New York Academy of Sciences; Torrey to Lewis David von Schweinitz, 27 Feb. 1824, Lewis David von Schweinitz Collection, Acad- emy of Natural Sciences; Everett to Silliman, 23 Mar. 1821, Edward Everett File, Miscellaneous Manuscripts, New-York Historical Society.




appreciable amount of support there. In response to this unfortunate state of affairs Silliman valiantly attempted to overcome the divided loyalties of his Phila- delphia friends, for example, by portraying his effort as national and the Acad- emy journal as local. His appeal to Robert Hare not to desert the American Journal of Science was laced with quiet anxiety: "I consider the Journal of your Academy in the light of transactions of its own doing, & not as a general Journal ... I say therefore-publish your own productions in that form which will most promote your own views-but foster my arduous-may I not add my national undertaking-for it has no local bearing-with the same good will which I have ever shown to your interests and those of science at large."29

Principally on account of the success of the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences and the appearance, in 1823, of the Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History, Silliman's journal led a precarious existence during the 1820s. In 1823 he was so exhausted from years of relentless effort that he reluctantly decided to hire an assistant editor, even though he gloomily concluded that this step might put the journal into debt: "I doubt whether the receipts of the year will cover this additional expence."30

Despite the financial difficulties, however, Silliman's perseverance managed to sustain a journal that, by contrast to the periodicals from the Academy and the Lyceum, was both national in scope and avowedly catholic in intellectual range. For the nascent scientific community, moreover, the American Journal gradually increased in importance not solely because it published scientific articles but also because Silliman used the pages of his journal to announce such developments as the founding of scientific societies, changes in curricula in the colleges, reviews of new textbooks, notices of European discoveries, and the appearance of new periodicals. The function of the American Journal was primarily the dissemina- tion of scientific knowledge; under Silliman's editorship it also served as a bulle- tin board for the exchange of information.

The steadily growing importance of the American Journal of Science during the 1820s brought a new threat, as coteries of scientists elsewhere increasingly viewed the journal as a desirable possession. Thus at the end of 1824 Silliman learned that members of the faculty at Harvard were keen either to produce a rival publication or to spirit the American Journal away from Yale and secure it for Harvard. The details of the scheme remain obscure, yet Silliman thought that the critics of his journal at Cambridge were motivated more by self-interest than by a desire to advance truth: "It is certainly desirable that there should be no errors.... it is equally certain that those who make the communications and not the editor are responsible for them. I am not disappointed at suggestions of this nature from the quarter which you mention-I have long thought that there was a willingness there to supplant the 'American Journal,' and that the wedge which they are attempting to drive was entered for that purpose. "31

Harvard's intrigue came to nothing, but Silliman was beset, two years later, by

29 Silliman to Hare, 1 May 1819, Folder 37, Box 20, Silliman Family MSS. See also [Benjamin Silliman], "Preface," Amer. J. Sci., 1820, 2:181(i).

30 Silliman to Hitchcock, 4 Dec. 1823, Folder 5, Box VI, Section I, Hitchcock Papers. See also Hitchcock to Amos Eaton, 12 Aug. 1824, Edward Hitchcock File, Alphabetical Series, Gratz Collec- tion (cit. n. 12).

31 Silliman to Hitchcock, 27 Dec. 1824, Folder 5, Box VI, Section I, Hitchcock Papers. See also Hitchcock to Silliman, 13 Dec. 1824, Folder 4, Box VI, Section I, ibid.



236 SIMON BAATZ

a more serious crisis when the publisher of the American Journal moved to New York City and, as a result, declined to print the journal, claiming that it was only of marginal interest (and profit) to the firm. Silliman gloomily predicted that "in order to save it, I might take the thing on my shoulders business & all but I cannot carry it unless the patronage can be increased or the expences dimin- ished." There was a faint hope that an arrangement might be worked out with the Philadelphia publishers Mathew Carey and Isaac Lea, both of whom were well respected in Philadelphia scientific circles and who published Nathaniel Chap- man's Philadelphia Journal of the Medical Sciences. Robert Hare, who made inquiries for Silliman about the possibility of moving to Philadelphia, reported that he had had a talk with Lea, but "as a bookseller, he is indisposed to have any concern in periodical publications. Were it not for its associations, he would relinquish the medical journal, as it is not profitable." However, Hare informed his New Haven friend that another Philadelphia publisher, Eliakin Littell, had made an attractive offer that was financially significant but would involve a slight loss of control over editorial policy to a coterie in Philadelphia associated with the American Philosophical Society: "I should advise you to close with Mr. Lit- tels offer, provided he can obtain for the work the services of Dr Bache as your associate. With his assistance you could edit the work here as you would have far better attention paid to the printing, and proof reading than you have had, at New Haven."32

GEORGE WILLIAM FEATHERSTONHAUGH:

A NEW CHALLENGE TO SILLIMAN AND THE AMERICAN JOURNAL

Neither the Harvard threat nor the Philadelphia offer was potent enough to cause the American Journal to leave New Haven. A more sustained effort to overtake the American Journal of Science came at the end of the decade when George William Featherstonhaugh, then living in New York City, announced plans to establish a national scientific journal.

Featherstonhaugh's challenge to Silliman is instructive and deserves close examination, for it reveals-more clearly than any other episode in early nineteenth-century science-that an attempt to create an institution based on support from a single city no longer corresponded to the needs of American science. In 1830 science in America was already in transition to the forms appro- priate to a national community. During the 1830s preliminary advances were made toward creating a national scientific association; although these efforts failed, the Association of American Geologists was established in 1840. Feather- stonhaugh's two attempts at a new journal-first in New York in 1829 and then in Philadelphia two years later-instead relied in each case solely on local support. Several causes contributed to his subsequent failure; not the least was his perceived insensitivity toward scientists who had the temerity to disagree with him. His two defeats, however, were primarily a consequence of the inadequacy of his base of support. Featherstonhaugh could (and did) publish a journal, but so long as it claimed the adherence only of a local community it could not hope to rival

32 Silliman to Hitchcock, 30 Mar. 1826, Folder 5, Box VI, Section I, Hitchcock Papers; and Hare to Silliman, 4 Apr. 1826, Silliman Family MSS. See also Fisher, Life of Silliman (cit. n. 21), Vol. I, pp. 311-313.




Figure 2. George William Featherstonhaugh (1780-1866). Featherstonhaugh, born in London, moved to the United States in 1806. During his residence at Schenectady, New York, he served as secretary of the New York Board of Agriculture; after living in New York City and Philadelphia he was appointed by the federal government in 1834 to survey the Arkansas Territory. He later served the British government as a boundary commissioner in Canada and from 1864 until his death as the British consul at Le Havre. Courtesy of the

,, _

McKinney Library, Albany Institute of History and Art.

the American Journal, which by the end of the 1820s already possessed a national constituency.

Featherstonhaugh, who appreciated that he would require significant support for a new periodical, particularly if he were to rival Silliman, looked to local scientific circles for assistance. His successful lecture series given under the aegis of the Lyceum of Natural History and the numerous friendships he had won since his move to New York encouraged him in the spring of 1829 to believe that if he were to induce the Lyceum of Natural History to support the journal he proposed, he would be well on the way to success.33

Ironically, Featherstonhaugh and Silliman began their acquaintance on the friendliest of terms. Silliman knew of Featherstonhaugh's previous activities on behalf of the New-York Board of Agriculture. Silliman was also aware that Featherstonhaugh was very close to many of the most eminent British geologists, and so when he heard that Featherstonhaugh had developed an avocational interest in North American geology, the New Haven professor was intrigued and interested enough to begin a correspondence with him. Within a very short time Silliman was writing to Parker Cleaveland that he thought "Mr F . . . much im- proved . . . & [I] should now repose considerable confidence in his opinions." When Featherstonhaugh also announced that plans were afoot to transfer his extensive mineralogical collection to the Lyceum of Natural History and, moreover, that he was anxious to see "the Geology of the State of N York . .. clearly

33 The best source for details of Featherstonhaugh's life is Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley, George William Featherstonhaugh: The First U.S. Government Geologist (Tuscaloosa: Univ. Alabama Press, 1988).



238 SIMON BAATZ

made out," Silliman announced that he, for one, was distinctly impressed with this new recruit to the scientific cause: Featherstonhaugh's qualifications, he wrote in June 1828, were "unquestionable."34

Silliman's praise was not echoed by Amos Eaton, a lecturer on natural science at the Rensselaer School at Troy. Since Eaton was well known to Silliman and had published several articles in the American Journal, his opinion of Feather- stonhaugh could not be taken lightly: "No person in our circle here, places even a shadow of confidence in his veracity, in cases which depend for their support on his veracity only." Eaton ended his description of Featherstonhaugh's faults by giving Silliman a piece of prophetic advice: "I tell you all this, because you ought to know all such queer manoeuverings. Your Journal is to be his stepping stool next session."35

Featherstonhaugh's attack on Silliman began in April 1829, when he wrote a long letter to the Yale professor with the announcement of his new project. Ac- cording to Featherstonhaugh, enthusiasm for science in New York had reached such a pitch that the members of the Lyceum had decided to establish a scientific journal that aimed to be a national publication. Not only did the Lyceum propose to pay for contributions (an expense that Silliman was never able to afford), but it seemed, from Featherstonhaugh's account at least, that the New York journal might well become a vehicle for European scientists:

The inclination for natural Science is rapidly increasing, and is demonstrating itself in so many ways, that I imagine it is going to Exhibit itself in a short time in a Form which has been often talked of, and which the present strong feeling is very likely to embody at last. It is not easy to predict how the Experiment will succeed, but as there is a perfect unanimity in favour of the measure, there is of course disposition to overlook in some degree the risk which belongs to every Experiment: the pride also of New York is a good deal concerned in it. I must apprise you that I enter heartily into the views of the naturalists here in relation to the measure, in whatever form it may appear, I shall not only give it an efficient support, but enlist my Friends in Europe in its favour. The Project is the immediate Establishment of a Quarterly Jour- nal of Science devoted to Natural Science and the useful Arts, to be got up in the very best manner. American Geology of course will be taken hold of by the Horns. To ensure an Efficient support we propose to pay our Contributors liberally, for whatever we publish.36

Silliman, keenly aware that Featherstonhaugh's proposal was an immediate threat to the continued existence of the American Journal, soon pressed a coun- terattack. On 4 May 1829, only two days after receiving Featherstonhaugh's letter, he wrote to Joseph Delafield, president of the Lyceum of Natural History, with an extraordinarily generous offer. Silliman was willing to print in his journal all the scientific papers of the Lyceum provided they did not amount to more than two hundred pages a year, to supply the members of the Lyceum with "a number of extra copies of their papers . . . they paying only for the paper," and to produce these offprints "as often as may be desired & . . . immediately delivered . . . even in anticipation of the Journal of Science." Silliman's offer was an

34 Silliman to Cleaveland, 16 Jan. 1828, Cleaveland Papers; Featherstonhaugh to Silliman, 16 Mar. 1828, Folder 31, Box 19, Silliman Family MSS; and Silliman to Cleaveland, 7 June 1828, Folder 22, Box 19, ibid.

3S Eaton to Silliman, 28 July 1828, Williamsiana, Williams College. 36 Featherstonhaugh to Silliman, 29 Apr. 1829, Folder 47, Box 20, Silliman Family MSS.




obvious attempt to undercut the support there might be in New York for a rival publication to the American Journal of Science. In essence he was offering to take over the printing of the Lyceum's Annals largely at his own expense, since, as he wrote to Delafield, he would have no objection to an arrangement whereby "all papers derived from the Lyceum, shall be credited to that body, as by per- mission from its Annals which will appear as now without reference to New Haven or the Journal of Science."37

Yet Silliman must have known that this offer, if accepted, would entail a certain risk for the American Journal for the simple reason that it would break the rule of impartiality with respect to the various communities of science in the United States. Silliman's success with the American Journal had been predicated on its being a national publication; this had been its great advantage, for example, over the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences, which, while it con- tained some brilliant papers from such luminaries as Thomas Say, Charles Alex- andre Lesueur, and Richard Harlan, was a local publication generally containing contributions only from Philadelphia. If word leaked out, however, that he was willing to publish in the American Journal such a sizable number of papers from New York, Silliman took the risk that his periodical would then lose support from other centers of science.

The day after sending his letter to Delafield, Silliman sat down at his desk to answer Featherstonhaugh's letter of 29 April. Silliman took especial care to point out that the creation of a second journal would be inimical to the best interests of American science. Whereas Featherstonhaugh had cloaked his personal interest with a putative concern for the New York community, Silliman went one better by representing his own viewpoint as determined by a concern for the national community:

Another Journal of Science cannot be established except at the expense of the Ameri- can Journal. This you will say is not your design; grant it: but, if you are successful, it will certainly be the result. Your agents will go, not only in New York but every where else, to the very men, who are now the patrons of the American Journal, and they will either abandon me, or deny you, for very few will take the two Journals; this country will not support two such works.... One Journal vigorously & honorably supported, is certainly better than two famished & languishing works.38

His apprehension served to spur Silliman into action; not long after his letter to Delafield, he began to rally his friends in other cities to proclaim their support for the American Journal. To Isaac Lea, Silliman wrote at the end of May that he looked for his allies in Philadelphia to exert themselves to help defeat Feather- stonhaugh; in addition he announced that he was willing to offer the subscription agents in that city an inducement to raise more income:

At this moment being heavily pressed by the . .. perplexity occasioned by the New York attempt to supplant the American Journal I have scarcely power or thought for any thing else ... I am very anxious that my friends & the friends of the Journal in Phila should understand the history of the affair. I cannot stand unless I am supported & it is not pretended that the New York effort is prompted by any thing else than

37 Silliman to Delafield, 4 May 1829, Folder 47, Box 20, ibid. 38 Silliman to Featherstonhaugh, 5 May 1829, ibid.



240 SIMON BAATZ

local or city pride.... I will pay a dollar for every new subscriber & more if necessary. I should be very glad if Phila could supply the falling off that will take place in N York if their new Journal goes on.39

Robert Hare responded quickly to an appeal from his friend. Hare was generally too aloof to be closely involved with the various intrigues that were con- stantly agitating the scientific world, whether in Philadelphia or elsewhere. As he made clear to Reuben Haines, the secretary of the Academy of Natural Sciences, he was reluctant to get dragged into any of the numerous factional disputes: "So far, as a disposition, generously to promote the cause of Science, may operate, I trust I shall never be found wanting; but . . . I am not a Society-going man." Hare was willing to intervene on behalf of Silliman, however, not because he cared whether or not New York City would be able to boast a scientific journal but because he genuinely appreciated Silliman's hard work and sacrifice, which had turned the American Journal of Science into such a commendable publication. Accordingly, Hare wrote to Featherstonhaugh that his project of a journal as an expression of civic pride failed to take into account the need for Americans to have a national journal; surely, Hare argued, local pride should take second place behind national pride: "Silliman is the first editor who has been successful in supporting in the United States, a journal mainly devoted to original communications in the sciences. It seems to me that . . . it would be better if our national pride were to induce us to aid him in perfecting his journal, than if our City pride or any other local feeling were to originate an injurious & mutually embarrassing competition with him in the field of his exertions."40

For Featherstonhaugh, who was not an American citizen and who, moreover, secretly regarded American scholars as parvenus, an argument for the cultivation of national spirit could produce only a profound ennui. Hare, like many others, was too generous in using such an argument. Featherstonhaugh's claim of civic pride was a triple pretense: a fig leaf for his own ambition, a bait on which to catch the New York savants, and a convenient answer to those who accused him of destroying the American Journal.

In fact, while Featherstonhaugh kept up his game with Silliman-at the end of May he was offering to buy the American Journal through a "friendly transfer.... If you deem it proper to put a price upon the transfer, & accom- pany it with the required information I will give you an immediate & ultimate answer.... Your early decision would be agreeable to me"-the ground was being slowly cut from underneath his feet by the dawning perception of the Ly- ceum naturalists and Silliman that his claim of unanimous support from the New York scientific community was scarcely an accurate representation of the true situation.4'

After receiving Silliman's offer to publish the Lyceum papers in the American Journal, Joseph Delafield had referred the matter to the Lyceum's Committee of Publication, which, after deliberating for a few weeks, declined the proposition.

39 Silliman to Lea, 28 May 1829, Lea Correspondence (cit. n. 25). In addition to private appeals, Silliman publicly campaigned for a subscription drive through notices in other scientific periodicals: see, e.g., "The American Journal of Science and Arts," Journal of the Franklin Institute, 2nd ser., 1829, 4:144.

40 Hare to Haines, 23 Nov. 1824, Haines Papers (cit. n. 22); and Hare to Featherstonhaugh, 24 May 1829, Folder 47, Box 20, Silliman Family MSS.

41 Featherstonhaugh to Silliman, [May 1829], Folder 47, Box 20, Silliman Family MSS.




This decision was made not because the Lyceum planned to fall in with Feather- stonhaugh's scheme but simply because it intended to continue publishing the Annals as before. True, the Annals were to be delayed for a few months, but only to allow the members of the Lyceum time to "recruit our finances. The cost of the Annals has somewhat exceeded the receipts in money derived from them.... There is sufficient matter now with the committee for a few numbers, but I do not think we will hasten the publication. With these facts you will per- ceive we have no urgent cause to change our mode of publication."42

After he had received Delafield's reply, Silliman realized that Featherston- haugh's threat relied more on pretense than on actual support. Indeed, Feather- stonhaugh was contradicted on two counts: not only did the Lyceum intend to continue publishing the Annals but, in addition, Delafield claimed that poverty had compelled the Lyceum to postpone publication. How, Silliman reasoned, could Featherstonhaugh seriously claim that the New York group was ready to publish a rival to the American Journal when they had no money even to publish the Annals? Confirmation of the Lyceum's position reached New Haven from other sources in June, and by the following month it was apparent to Silliman that the plan for a rival journal was dead in the water. James Renwick, professor of natural philosophy at Columbia College, wrote to him on Independence Day that since nothing had been heard on the subject for some time, it was uncertain "whether they have abandoned the scheme or not." Inside the Lyceum the rumors and gossip gradually died away; the whole matter was soon quietly for- gotten.43

FEATHERSTONHAUGH'S MOVE TO PHILADELPHIA

It is not clear how persistent Featherstonhaugh intended to be with regard to his journal or if he realized that the New York group-now conscious of the extent of his scheming-had adopted a policy of polite ostracism of an individual who had put their good standing vis-a-vis Silliman in jeopardy. In any case, few people could have failed to find some sympathy for Featherstonhaugh when they heard of the catastrophe that struck his life in the summer of 1829: a fire com- pletely destroyed his country mansion, and his library, personal papers, and pos- sessions were reduced to ashes. This disaster caused the (temporary) abandon- ment of plans for a journal, and Featherstonhaugh, perceiving that even a residual sympathy for his most recent loss did not obscure the coolness toward him on the part of some of the city's most prominent intellectuals, decided in 1830 to leave New York City to take up residence in Philadelphia.44

Shortly before Featherstonhaugh decided to move, a fractious dispute had er- upted inside the Academy of Natural Sciences. Richard Harlan, a physician who played a prominent role in the affairs of the Academy, had broken off relations with George Ord, the vice president of the Academy, over the latter's antago-

42 Delafield to Silliman, 26 May 1829, Folder 25, Box 19, ibid. 43 Renwick to Silliman, 4 July 1829, Folder 58, Box 21, ibid. For detailed accounts of the reactions

of prominent Lyceum members on the subject of the journal see Amos Eaton to Silliman, 11 June 1829, Williamsiana, Williams College; and Eaton to Silliman, 12 June 1829, Amos Eaton File, Alpha- betical Series, Gratz Collection (cit. n. 12).

44 Berkeley and Berkeley, George William Featherstonhaugh (cit. n. 33), p. 80; and Featherston- haugh to William Buckland, 27 June 1829, William Buckland Correspondence, Royal Society of London.



242 SIMON BAATZ

nism to the naturalist John James Audubon. The protagonists in the quarrel each won adherents, and the controversy over Audubon spread to include members of the American Philosophical Society.45

Featherstonhaugh, who always reveled in Byzantine intrigue, was eager to plunge into the fray and, by gaining Harlan's friendship (and thus Audubon's respect), calculated to win a base of support for himself in a second attempt to establish a journal. He also hoped to take advantage of a certain antipathy among patrician Philadelphians to the American Journal. True, Silliman-largely on account of his friendships with Robert Hare and Zaccheus Collins-was able to count on the support of both the medical faculty and the board of trustees at Penn; many outside the Penn coterie, however, were intensely jealous that New Haven was able to put Philadelphia in the shade, at least on the point of a scientific periodical.46

Featherstonhaugh moved to Philadelphia in the early part of 1831. Almost immediately, he put out a prospectus announcing a new publication, the Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science. Never one to hide his light under a bushel, he modestly predicted that his new periodical, "without any previous promise of patronage . . . will seek to win its way to favour, by the industry, accuracy, and fair dealing of its editor, and by the enlightened philo- sophic spirit, unacquainted with pedantry, of the minds that will preside over it." In Philadelphia various friends of Benjamin Silliman held their breath in anticipation: they knew Featherstonhaugh by repute and wondered if he could succeed. Other groups in the city, knowing nothing of previous schemes and being generally in favor of any attempt to promote science, were enthusiastic. A representa- tive of the Franklin Institute, for example, lauded the proposed Monthly Ameri- can Journal as "likely to promote the knowledge of a very interesting department of Science. "47

As it happened, Featherstonhaugh's publication died in infancy. In his brief residence in the city he had argued with Isaac Hays, a paleontologist and medical man who edited the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, over the signifi- cance of tusks in the jaw of the mastodon. His propensity to turn a disagreement into a violent quarrel was aptly demonstrated when the first number of the Monthly American Journal came off the press in July 1831. Featherstonhaugh, perhaps giddy with anticipated success, used his journal to pour forth a stream of insults and abuse upon the head of the unfortunate Hays. For the Philadelphia patricians this attack was sufficient reason to reject him at once-it was, for polite Philadelphia at least, unthinkable to describe anyone in public (as Feather- stonhaugh did Hays) as "an intriguing, pharasaical individual ... a mendacious little individual . . . [and] a parasite who lives by dishonouring the labours of others. "48

45 For an account of Audubon's reception in Philadelphia see Alexander B. Adams, John James Audubon: A Biography (2nd ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1976), pp. 261-266.

46 For a scathing attack by a prominent Philadelphia savant on the American Journal of Science see George Ord to John Vaughan, 27 Aug. 1829, Archives, American Philosophical Society.

47 [George William Featherstonhaugh], "Prospectus," Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science, 1831, 1:2; and "The Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science," J. Frank. Inst., 2nd ser., 1831, 8:143-144, on p. 143.

48 Patsy Gerstner, "The 'Philadelphia School' of Paleontology, 1820-1845" (Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve Univ., 1967), pp. 137-151; and [George William Featherstonhaugh], "To Readers and Correspondents," Month. Amer. J. Geol. Nat. Sci., 1831, 1:96.




Featherstonhaugh's insults made his journal the immediate object of condem- nation from every quarter. The reviewer for the Journal of the Franklin Institute, who had previously lauded Featherstonhaugh as an able promoter of science, now pronounced that "the editor has . .. given proof of a total absence of those dispositions and habits without which a person is altogether unfit to become one of the sentinels of science." Samuel George Morton, a leader of the Academy of Natural Sciences, believed that "Mr F . . . has most effectually defeated his own projects-at least as regards this city. His paper is a vehicle of abuse which every good man should avoid . . . he is more than ever vituperative against Dr Hays, giving every species of Brutal provocation.... This, however, is inter nos; for I should very much regret being in any way brought into collision with this per- sonage."49

When Featherstonhaugh followed his insults of Hays with the proclamation that Amos Eaton's work was a "mass of trashy ignorance" and that Benjamin Silliman was a dishonest accomplice of Eaton, even William Maclure, who generally remained above the various disputes within the American scientific community, was sufficiently moved to write that "Mr Featherstonhaugh . .. is unjust as well as imprudent in treating the naturalists of the united states so caviliarly." Maclure had proved to be a generous patron of American science; he predicted ominously that were Featherstonhaugh to continue his "severe and unjust criti- cism on Eaton and squinting at Silliman" he would find no supporters for the Monthly American Journal: "If he follows the same course with his magazine he must entirely depend on Europe for customers but this is his business not mine. "50

For Benjamin Silliman, the publication of the new journal had a quite unex- pected effect. As a consequence of Featherstonhaugh's provocative insults, those who had previously remained neutral or only dimly aware of the earlier attempt to supplant the American Journal now rallied to Silliman's banner and became firm supporters of the American Journal. John Kearsley Mitchell, a Phil- adelphia physician and a member of the American Philosophical Society, dedi- cated his 1831 edition of Michael Faraday's Chemical Manipulation to Silliman, explaining that he took this action because "of the very extended & salutary influence which you have in lectures journal &c exercised in the advancement of American chemistry & 2y because you have been lately, for these very services, made the subject of unprovoked & unmerited calumny. -I deem this public expression of my opinion . . . as manifesting my abhorrence of a course on the part of your adversaries, antinational, antiscientific malicious, & unjust.")51

By the summer of 1832 Featherstonhaugh's journal was sinking fast. His only asset-his connection with the British scientific community-was not sufficient to keep the journal afloat. Without any support from local scientists, the Monthly American Journal was unable to sustain itself. William Buckland remained a committed supporter; in 1831 he sent Featherstonhaugh an account of the founding meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at York.

49 "Monthly American Journal" (cit. n. 47), p. 143; and Morton to Silliman, 13 Aug. 1831, Silliman Collection, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University.

50 [George William Featherstonhaugh], "Remarks," Month. Amer. J. Geol. Nat. Sci., 1831, 1:91; and Maclure to Reuben Haines, 7 Sept. 1831, and 8 Oct. 1831, Haines Papers (cit. n. 22).

51 Mitchell to Silliman, 7 Nov. 1831, John K. Mitchell File, Case 7, Box 31, Gratz Collection (cit. n. 12).



244 SIMON BAATZ

Featherstonhaugh anticipated receiving an "interesting account of your meeting at Oxford-at any rate send me all the requisite materials to work up for one. A paper from your Pen my dear friend! A Paper from your Pen! Do me as much good as you can I pray you." Unfortunately, the Monthly American Journal did not survive long enough to publish Buckland's report.52

Featherstonhaugh put the blame for his failure on the "rascally publishers [who] broke with my money in their hands ... I lost upwards of two thousand Dollars by it," but even by his own account, there were more fundamental rea- sons for the collapse of the Monthly American Journal: "When I came to live in Philadelphia, knowing the general quiet habits and taste of its opulent inhabi- tants, I did not anticipate the indifference they manifest in the Support of institutions that would reflect honour on their City.... Politics and accumulation of money are the besetting sins, and keep this republican people from cherishing that love of nature, which would in time make them both innocent and intelli- gent. "53

The collapse of Featherstonhaugh's plans in 1832 did not in the least dampen his ambition. Less than two years later he had secured for himself an official position as United States Geologist with the mandate to survey the Arkansas Territory in order to obtain "accurate information of the Mineral and Metallic Resources." His success in his new position enabled him to convert his Ameri- can coin into British currency; always careful to advertise his talents to influential people, Featherstonhaugh soon attained the highest pinnacle of scientific success: on 2 April 1835 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.54

CONCLUSION

The struggle over the American Journal of Science serves admirably to illustrate the transformation of American science in the first half of the nineteenth century. The social structure of science in 1818-a series of distinct local communities each developing at its own pace-was, during the next three decades, trans- formed by the gradual construction of a national community, a process that cul- minated in the establishment of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1848. Silliman's contribution to this process during the early 1820s in linking together the various scientific groups and individuals provided him with the base of support necessary to beat back Featherstonhaugh's challenge. In this sense, therefore, the American Journal of Science succeeded despite the structure of American science; as the journal gradually picked up support it began slowly to transform that structure until a new structure-one that gave more ready support to the journal-came into being.

52 Featherstonhaugh to Buckland, 15 May 1832, Miscellaneous Manuscripts, Royal Society of London.

53 Featherstonhaugh to William Maclure, 20 Sept. 1833, Manuscript Collection, New Harmony Workingmen's Institute, New Harmony, Indiana. Featherstonhaugh also complained that Silliman had been actively working to suppress the Monthly American Journal: "[It] has not been permitted to have a single subscriber in New Haven, the pretended seat of an American Geological Society." See George P. Merrill, The First One Hundred Years of American Geology (1924; rpt., New York: Hafner, 1964), p. 136.

54 Berkeley and Berkeley, George William Featherstonhaugh (cit. n. 33), pp. 114, 151.



Documents

"Squinting at Silliman": Scientific Periodicals in the Early American Republic, 1810-1833