[For my Patriots’ Day series this year, I highlighted examples of mythic patriotism from across American history. So I thought for my July 4th series I would AmericanStudy examples of the other, directly opposed category at the heart of Of Thee I Sing: critical patriotism. Leading up to a weekend post on the state of critical patriotism in 2024!]
On one
speech that offers two complementary models of critical patriotism.
Many of
the ways I’d make the case for William
Apess as an exemplary American critical patriot were summed up in this post. I don’t
think it’s the slightest bit hyperbolic to describe Apess as the 19th
century’s Martin Luther King Jr.—a fiery preacher of supreme oratorical and
rhetorical talents who dedicated his life to pursuing civil and human rights
for his people and for all his fellow citizens of the world, one whose life was
tragically cut short but who achieved a great deal in that time and has left a
lasting legacy down into our own. If Apess’ era had had the technology to
record and broadcast his speeches, or even to publish his writings in more
mass-market ways, I have no doubt that we’d listen to and read his voice and
words alongside those of King (and yesterday’s subject Frederick Douglass) and
our other most potent orators. And
however and wherever we encounter them, we consistently find in Apess’ works
models of bitingly critical yet still patriotic visions of our shared American
society, community, identity, and history.
In that
prior post I focused on Apess’ 1833 essay/sermon “An
Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man,” but I would argue that his critical
patriotism is best illustrated by his January
1836 speech “Eulogy on King Philip.” Delivered at Boston’s Odeon lecture and concert
hall, which had opened the year before and would go on to host
speeches and readings by such luminaries as William Ellery Channing, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, and Edgar Allan Poe, Apess’ stunning speech uses his own life
story and mixed-race heritage (as scholar Patricia Bizzell traces at length in
this excellent piece) to argue for his alternative vision of
American history, community, and identity. While much of the speech is as
righteously angry about both past injustices and present oppressions as was
“Looking-Glass,” the final lines, addressed overtly to his (likely entirely
non-native) audience, reflect the optimistic core of Apess’ critical
patriotism: “You and I have to rejoice that we have not to answer for our
fathers’ crimes; neither shall we do right to charge them one to another. We
can only regret it, and flee from it; and from henceforth, let peace and
righteousness be written upon our hearts and hands forever, is the wish of a
poor Indian.”
While
Apess thus ranges across a number of topics and themes in the course of his
speech, its central focus is indeed King
Philip (Metacomet), the 17th century Wampanoag chief
and distant ancestor of Apess’ mother who was and remains best known in
American collective memory for the 1670s
war that came to bear his name. Yet from the start of his speech,
Apess presents a stunning shift in those narratives, arguing that this supposed
enemy of the English should be collectively remembered instead as a
revolutionary hero: “so will every patriot, especially in this enlightened age,
respect the rude yet all accomplished son of the forest, that died a martyr to
his cause, though unsuccessful, yet as glorious as the American Revolution.”
Arguing for that vision of Philip, in the same 1830s
Boston that was cementing its collective narratives of the
Founding Fathers and the American Revolution, was as bold a rhetorical move as
Douglass’ July 4th speech. Yet if we can see the Massachusetts
Puritans and the Wampanoags as two founding American cultures (as I’ve argued
multiple times in this space and elsewhere), there’s
no reason why we can’t see Philip as a revolutionary, critical patriot, one
whose tragic end shouldn’t overshadow his work
toward a collective American community.
Next
critical patriot tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Other examples or forms of patriotism you’d highlight?
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