Sherry Chandler

Clark, Littell, Johnson

Here is Dr. Thomas Clark, writing in the introduction to the 1940s facsimile of Festoons of Fancy:

The surest sign that a frontier people has reached maturity, and can begin to feel assured of some aplomb is the appearance of a regional work of satire. Along the eastern seaboard such a period was signified by the works of Paine, Dickinson, Freneau, and Trumbull. These critics dealt with the whims and fancies of an established society. They had concrete institutions and established customs upon which they could make their observations.

By 1814, Kentuckians had achieved a security in which the people could relax from the tenseness of a long period of pioneering. After the turn of the nineteenth century there ceased to be a prevalent fear of Indians on one hand and landsharks on the other. Statehood had been achieved, and a stabilized government was aready in existence. It was then safe for an author, in a mood to do it, to hold the institutions of the state up to public ridicule in print. That year William Littell, with the assistance of the printer William Farquar of Louisville, brought from the press the FESTOONS OF FANCY. As Clark, Boone, Findley, Brown, Simon Kenton and the McAfee brothers pioneered in the land, the brilliant but eccentric Littell was pioneering in frontier literature. Before Littell, the writings of the American frontier had been as serious and sober as had been the struggle with the rugged environment and with the human enemies who attempted to turn back the march of the home-loving white man. No humorous writer had shown his face in the great land of the Trans-Alleghany frontier.

As I said yesterday, Dr. Clark doesn’t seem to have heard of the Drunken Poet of Danville, who was writing satiric verse far more scurrilous than Littell’s before Boone had moved on to Missouri, and in times that were very unsettled. From 1784-1792, Danville was the site of some very hard-fought Constitutional Conventions The lovely historical site that’s there now belies the political uproar.

I am interested Dr. Clark’s statements, not because he was wrong – neither history nor historians are static – but because it illustrates just how remarkable Thomas Johnson actually was.

A taste more Johnson. This little poem refers to one of the controversies fought out in ten Constitutional Conventions – who would get ownership of the land. But it also seems apropos in this time of dwindling veterans benefits:

Verses addressed to my brother soldiers

Our country gave us great applause,
And own’d our valour gain’d the cause.
To praise, false show of profit tack;
They grant us lands then take them back.
What could brave soldiers wish for more?
We now are independent sure!
Our cash and chattels being gone,
We’ve nothing to depend upon.

— Thomas Johnson, Jr. from The Kentucky Miscellany. A Facsimile of the Fourth Edition 1821 (University of Kentucky Libraries Occaional Papers Number 11)

Possibly related posts:

William Littell

Johnson on Brown and Wilkinson

New Releases from Wind

Kentucky’s Civil War

A Perfect Mid-March Day

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