Intellectual History Commons^™

19th Century Writings On The Grand Tour, Emily E. Wilcox

Wonders of Nature and Artifice

Two collections of writings, found in the glass cabinet on the left wall of our Wonder Cabinet, contain the descriptions of two travelers’ times abroad during the Grand Tour. The first item is a travel journal written by Henry Louis Baugher, son of Pennsylvania (now Gettysburg) College’s second president, Henry Lewis Baugher. The journal was generously donated to Gettysburg College’s Special Collections and College Archives by Gary Hawbaker, class of 1966. Beneath the travel journal you’ll find a collection of letters written by Louisa Augusta Webb about the tales of her and her sisters’ travels. This compilation of letters is …

Crocodiles - The Singular Beast In The Renaissance Cabinet, Peter Zhang

Wonders of Nature and Artifice

Stuffed crocodiles often predominated many famous cabinets, hanging in the center of the ceiling. Crocodilians are the largest reptiles and the largest predator that spends time on land. They have existed for about 240 million years, and today there are 23 species of crocodilians in total, categorized in three families: 13 species of crocodiles, two species of alligators, and six species of caimans. Archaeologists found a “Supercroc” fossil as long as 40 feet (12 meters) and weighting 17,500 pounds in Niger. They believe that the crocodile lived alongside dinosaurs about 100 million years ago. [excerpt]

Wonders Of Nature And Artifice, Schmucker Art Gallery

Schmucker Art Catalogs

A stuffed blowfish, a meticulously-drawn insect, a ravishing lily, and a rhinoceros horn carved with scenes of plants and animals—these were among the wonders of nature and artifice, the marvels that fueled the Renaissance quest for knowledge. This exhibition explores the intellectual and aesthetic motivations of Renaissance naturalists and collectors, whose wonders of nature and artifice were displayed in elaborate gardens, illustrated books, and remarkable cabinets of curiosities. Collectors were driven by curiosity and a sense of wonder about what seemed to be an ever-expanding world. Students from Prof. Felicia Else’s upper-level art history course and Kay Etheridge’s First Year …

Helpers In A "Heathen" Land?: An Examination Of Missionary Perceptions Of The Cherokees, Andrew C. Nosti

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

This analysis examines writings left behind by missionaries living among the Cherokees in the early nineteenth century to tease out the missionary perceptions of their Indigenous neighbors. This approach includes a heavy emphasis on decoding the white lexicon employed to discuss Native Americans to elucidate the broader cultural/racial intellectualism of the time. The utilization of this approach deconstructs a conventional “friend or foe” binary viewpoint of the missionaries, conversely constructing a greater complexity within the interracial and intercultural dynamics of the Early Republic, thereby providing a more layered and broader understanding of early America and, by extension, America overall.

Maybe, Maybe Not: The Tao Of History, Kevin P. Lavery

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Many years ago, I read an old Chinese parable in one of my brother’s books. I haven’t been able to determine its precise origins, but it goes something like this:

One day, a farmer’s only horse broke loose and ran away from his stable. “What bad luck,” the farmer’s neighbors said to him. But the farmer merely replied, “Maybe, maybe not.”... [excerpt]

History Abroad: How Do Denmark And The U.S. Measure Up?, Louis T. Gentilucci

Student Publications

By viewing bias itself as a product of history, educators and scholars can understand it better in their own times. By studying the historical path of the United States and Denmark, scholars can see that the nature of history can have subtle but important impacts on common education. Even when educators are aware of potential bias, history itself warps its dissemination.

Book Review: Lincoln And His Books, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

“I have found no one to speak of Lincoln as a man of either capacity or patriotism,” smirked Confederate general Lafayette McLaws, as the Army of Northern Virginia prepared to march into Pennsylvania on June 28, 1863. His was not, unhappily, an opinion limited to Abraham Lincoln’s enemies-in-arms. Henry Clay Whitney admitted that, at best, Lincoln “had the appearance of a rough intelligent farmer.” Elihu Washburne agreed: meeting Lincoln on the railroad platform in Washington, D.C., on February 23, 1861, Washburne could not help thinking that Lincoln “looked more like a well-to-do farmer from one of the back towns of …

Invariance: A Tale Of Intellectual Migration, Steven Gimbel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The plotline of the standard story told about the development of intellectual history at the end of the 19th/turn of the 20th century follows the move from absolutism to perspectivalism. The narrative takes us, on the one hand, from the scientism of late Enlightenment writers like Voltaire, Mill, D’Alebert, and Comte and the historical determinism of Hegel, all of which were based upon a universal picture of rationality, to, on the other hand, the relativistic physics of Einstein, the perspectival art of Picasso, and the individualism of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard leading to the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger to and …

Edwards On The Will: A Century Of American Theological Debate, Allen C. Guelzo

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Jonathan Edwards towered over his contemporaries--a man over six feet tall and a figure of theological stature--but the reasons for his power have been a matter of dispute. Edwards on the Will offers a persuasive explanation. In 1753, after seven years of personal trials, which included dismissal from his Northampton church, Edwards submitted a treatise, Freedom of the Will, to Boston publishers. Its impact on Puritan society was profound. He had refused to be trapped either by a new Arminian scheme that seemed to make God impotent or by a Hobbesian natural determinism that made morality an illusion. He …

A. Lincoln, Philosopher: Lincoln’S Place In 19th-Century Intellectual History, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

The nineteenth century in Europe and America was an era of second thoughts. Those second thoughts were largely about the Enlightenment, which had been born in the mid-1600s as a scientific revolution and blossomed into the Age of Reason in the 1700s, when it seemed that no puzzle was beyond the grasp of scientific rationality. That blossom was snipped all too quickly by the French Revolution, which drowned rationality in human politics in a spray of Jacobin-terrorized blood, then by the revulsion of European art and music from the Enlightenment’s canons of balance and symmetry in favor of the Romantic …

To Waken Fond Memory: Moments In The History Of Gettysburg College, Anna Jane Moyer

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Between 1975 and 1989 Anna Jane Moyer produced a series of essays for the Gettysburg College alumni magazine capturing “moments” on campus and in the town of Gettysburg since 1832. Treating people, places, and notable events over the course of the College’s first 150 years, Moyer’s sketches reached an appreciative audience at the time. But with the Gettysburg College 175th anniversary approaching, it seemed appropriate to make her writing more readily available to alumni, friends of the College, students, and scholars.

The sketches now republished in To Waken Fond Memory remind readers that the culture of a liberal arts college …

Ms-066: The Papers Of George Saylor Warthen, Jason M. Kowell

All Finding Aids

This collection is the typed manuscript “A Study of the Rollaid” as well as the handwritten notes by Warthen. The majority of the collection is the manuscript, which consists of four chapters and an appendix. The notes are generally simple lists, mostly of other sources used by Warthen. These notes were for personal use and are for the most part check lists of other works or names.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories …

Freedom Of The Will, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

The exact nature of the human will is, like the nature of human consciousness, a question so subjective and so interior that no one is ever likely to arrive at a satisfactory judgment about how it functions or even what it is-which may be the best proof that philosophy is not a science, and the best evidence that those social sciences which try to measure, quantify, and control aspects of human consciousness are not sciences either. Still, there is no denying that we are aware of a power or an impulse within us which transJates thought into action, or at …

Ms-055: Papers Of The German Literary Society, Keith R. Swaney, Arthur Mccardle, Michael Ritterson

All Finding Aids

The Papers of the German Literary Society collection consists of manuscripts from the proceedings of the Society from the 1830s to the 1860s. However, there are also three manuscripts that were likely given to the Literary Society at some point during its existence.

The collection contains the constitution and minutes of the Literary Society from its first period of existence during the late-1830s. Researchers will also find the organization’s minute book, dated 1856 to 1860, as well as the 1867 version of the Society’s constitution. These manuscripts, along with the Society’s ledger book, allow one to understand the organization and …

The Presidency Of Charles E. Glassick, 1977-1989: An Appraisal, Michael J. Birkner

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

On August 1, 1977 Charles Glassick assumed his duties as president of Gettysburg College. With the 25th anniversary of that event approaching, it seemed appropriate to take stock of Glassick's accomplishments. This was an eventful presidency for Gettysburg, as the college began to identify itself less as a worthy, but modest, Lutheran institution of higher learning than as a national liberal arts college. The process of embracing a new identity was not always smooth, but under Glassick's leadership the college prospered. Gettysburg in 1989 remained committed as always to the liberal arts mission it had long espoused, but it did …

Ms-038: Pen And Sword Society Papers, Christine M. Ameduri

All Finding Aids

The purpose of the Pen and Sword Society was, and is today, to honor those, who by their energy and successful efforts in furthering the prestige of the College in the past, show that they are willing and capable of exerting themselves in a special manner in the interest and welfare of the Alma Mater in the future. The collection consists of the official records of the Society between 1904 and 1943.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each …

Ms-036: Radical Pamphlets, 1965 – 1975, Christine M. Ameduri

All Finding Aids

This collection is divided into two sections. Radical Pamphlets, consists of pamphlets on broad topics such as labor, communism, ecology, poverty, racism and women’s rights. The second series is the Peace Movement and consists of pamphlets, papers, newspaper clippings and correspondence dealing with the Vietnam Conflict and Peace Movement in the United States compiled by David Mozes, a friend of Scott, Nancy and Jim Scott, and Michael J. Hobor, Class of 1969.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each …

Ms-018: Robert W. Koons Collection, Christine M. Ameduri

All Finding Aids

Robert W. Koons graduated from Gettysburg College in 1943 with an A.B. in English, earned a B.D. from Gettysburg Lutheran Theological Seminary in 1946 and a D.D. from Susquehanna University in 1958. While a student at Gettysburg College he served at various times as President of the Student Christian Association, Literary Editor of the Mercury, Corresponding Secretary of the Pre-Ministerial Association and Treasurer of Delta Phi Alpha and was a member of various other campus organizations. He received Highest Class Honors in his Freshman and Junior years and Class Honors in his sophomore year.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding …

Ms-013: Karl Friedrich May Collection, Christine M. Ameduri

All Finding Aids

Considered to be the most successful German author of all time with more than 100 million copies of his 70 plus adventure novels translated in over 30 different languages and sold world-wide.

This collection does not include any manuscripts or personal papers of May and is thought to have been separated previously from the Major General Charles Willoughby Collection (MS - 024.) The 2-volume typescript English translation of May's In the Desert was most likely done by Willoughby.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include …

Ms-023: Papers Of Samuel Simon Schmucker And The Schmucker Family, Jaclyn Campbell

All Finding Aids

The Samuel Simon Schmucker collection is arranged into four series: I. Correspondence of Samuel Simon Schmucker (S.S.), II. Other Schmucker Correspondence, III. Publications and Papers, and IV. Sermons. Series I is primarily comprised of correspondence written by Schmucker. Series II is composed of correspondence written by other Schmucker family members. Series III includes diaries written by Schmucker, a Schmucker family genealogy, lecture notes by Schmucker, a certificate of reimbursement for damage to Gettysburg College during the Civil War, clippings, and an article about Schmucker. Series IV contains the original sermons written by Schmucker.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids …

Ms-010: The Papers Of The Linnaean Association, Melodie A. Foster

All Finding Aids

The Linnaean Association collection is varied in its makeup. Series I consists largely of the published versions of addresses given by association-sponsored speakers between 1844 and 1861. Series II contains a number of copies of the four volumes of the faculty publication The Literary Record and Journal of the Linnaean Association of Pennsylvania College, both bound and unbound. Volume III is in scarcest supply, and many editions are incomplete. Series III contains items from the Library of the Linnaean Association: scientific journals from the 1830s and 1840s and a bound collection of catalogues and scientific articles from various sources.

The …

Ms-006: Papers Of The Philomathaean And Phrenakosmian Societies, Melodie A. Foster, Christine M. Ameduri

All Finding Aids

The bulk of the collection consists of the official record books of the two societies and their libraries. Constitutions, minute books, account books and library circulation records cover the period 1831-1924 (with gaps). There are several library catalogues, arranged both alphabetically and numerically. Also included are correspondence spanning the societies’ years of existence in the form of letters received and copies of letters sent, and evidence of society activities including event programs, debating topics, and copies of essays, poems and addresses delivered before the societies.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide …

Ms-005: The Papers Of Charles H. Huber, Class Of 1892, Christine M. Ameduri

All Finding Aids

Charles H. Huber was born June 7, 1871 in Nebraska City, NE, the son of Eli Huber (Class of 1855 and the first professor of English Bible at Gettysburg College), and Mary E. Deibert Huber. Upon graduating from Gettysburg College in 1892, Charles was hired as a tutor at Gettysburg Academy, appointed vice-principal in 1893 and headmaster in 1896. He earned his A.M. from Gettysburg College and Litt.D. from Gettysburg Theological Seminary both in 1895. After the Gettysburg Academy closed in 1935, he was appointed Director of Gettysburg College's Women's Division, and held that position until his retirement in 1941. …

The Return Of The Will: Jonathan Edwards And The Possibilities Of Free Will, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

If certain national cultures seem to own certain great problems of the mind, then freedom of the will seems to be the American problem. This is not just because of the sheet stupifying bulk of what Americans have written on this problem over the past 300 years, from Benjamin Franklin to Daniel Dennett, from Quaker prophetesses in Vermont to prairie lawyers in Illinois. In the most fundamental sense, freedom of the will has been an American possession because it forms a cognate philosophical discourse to that most fundamental of all American ideas, that if political and civil liberty. To speak …

Abraham Lincoln And The Doctrine Of Necessity, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Abraham Lincoln was a fatalist. That, at least, was what he told many people over the course of his life. "I have all my life been a fatalist," Lincoln informed his Illinois congressional ally, Isaac Arnold. "Mr. Lincoln was a fatalist," remembered Henry Clay Whitney, one of his Springfield law clerks, "he believed ... that the universe is governed by one uniform, unbroken, primordial law." His Springfield law partner William Henry Herndon, likewise, affirmed that Lincoln "believed in predestination, foreordination, that all things were fixed, doomed one way or the other, from which there was no appeal." Even Mary Todd …

Oberlin Perfectionism And Its Edwardsean Origins, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

An impression has very generally prevailed," wrote James Harris Fairchild toward the end of his twenty-three-year presidency of Oberlin College, "that the theological views unleashed at Oberlin College by the late Rev. Charles Grandison Finney & his Associates involves a considerable departure from the accepted orthodox faith." It was an impression that Fairchild believed to be inaccurate, and he would probably be horrified to discover a century later that the prevailing impression the "Oberlin Theology" has made on historians of the nineteenth-century United States continues to be one in which Oberlin stands for almost all the progressive and enthusiastic unorthodoxies …

Calvinist Metaphysics To Republican Theory: Jonathan Edwards And James Dana On Freedom Of The Will, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

The Reverend Mr. James Dana, the pastor of the First Church in Wallingford, Connecticut, had never before attempted to pick a quarrel with his old friend and ally, Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale College. But in the winter of 1782 what was happening at Yale passed all the bounds of propriety and friendship. "I have understood that Mr. Edwards's book on fatality was laid aside some years since at your university," Dana wrote (not stopping to add what he surely must have thought, and good riddance too); but now, "it gave me pain to hear lately" that the …

Gettysburg College And The Lutheran Connection: An Open-Ended Story Of A Proud Relationship, Harold A. Dunkelberger

College History Publications

"The oldest Lutheran College in America" is a mark of distinction credited to Gettysburg. Just what Lutheran has meant to this institution throughout its century and a half is the subject of this historical essay. This is an open-ended story because the Lutheran connection of Gettysburg College is a live relationship today and gives promise of being a mutually supportive association in the future.

Gettysburg represents not only a high water mark in the history of this nation, but also a place of landmark developments for Lutheranism in America. The College and the Seminary were center stage for these developments, …

10. The Political Thought Of Machiavelli, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section V: The Rise of Capitalism and the National State to 1500

The national state in Western Europe was a new institution, without precedent in the European World. Its rise and almost immediate conflict with the Church challenged political theorists to reexamine the assumptions of a universal church in a universal empire upon which the theory of the two swords was based. These assumptions were so generally accepted that they were not easily abandoned. In the fourteenth century Marsiglia of Padua, for all his disinterest in the two swords, had arrived at his conclusions without denying either the existence of a universal church or the validity of the traditional morality. Other writers …

1. The Goliard Poets, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section IV: The Medieval Ferment

One aspect of medieval variety was a love of this world and of nature. This naturalism had many bases in addition to the fact that man has always found nature unavoidable. It was due also, in part, to the pronounced emphasis on the other world, and arose as an understandable reaction to the prevailing concern for things spiritual. It was also due in part to the fact that, according to Christian teachings, this world of nature was in and of itself good because it had been created by a good God. Therefore it was not to be despised. Naturalism was …