Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume Ii Part 35

[24] See his letter of October 23, 1869, in the Syracuse papers.

At no period of my life have I ever been more discouraged as regards the possibility of making right reason prevail among men.

As a refrain to every argument there seemed to go jeering and sneering through my brain Schiller's famous line:

"Against stupidity the G.o.ds themselves fight in vain."[25]

[25] "Mit der Dummheit kampfen Gotter selbst vergebens." Jungfrau von Orleans, Act III, scene 6.

There seemed no possibility even of SUSPENDING the judgment of the great majority who saw the statue. As a rule, they insisted on believing it a "petrified giant," and those who did not dwelt on its perfections as an ancient statue. They saw in it a whole catalogue of fine qualities; and one writer went into such extreme ecstatics that he suddenly realized the fact, and ended by saying, "but this is rather too high-flown, so I had better conclude." As a matter of fact, the work was wretchedly defective in proportion and features; in every characteristic of sculpture it showed itself the work simply of an inferior stone-carver.

Dr. Boynton, a local lecturer on scientific subjects, gave it the highest praise as a work of art, and attributed it to early Jesuit missionaries who had come into that region about two hundred years before. Another gentleman, who united the character of a deservedly beloved pastor and an inspiring popular lecturer on various scientific topics, developed this Boynton theory. He attributed the statue to "a trained sculptor . . . who had n.o.ble original powers; for none but such could have formed and wrought out the conception of that stately head, with its calm smile so full of mingled sweetness and strength." This writer then ventured the query, "Was it not, as Dr. Boynton suggests, some one from that French colony, . . . some one with a righteous soul sighing over the lost civilization of Europe, weary of swamp and forest and fort, who, finding this block by the side of the stream, solaced the weary days of exile with pouring out his thought upon the stone?"[26] Although the most eminent sculptor in the State had utterly refused to p.r.o.nounce the figure anything beyond a poor piece of carving, these strains of admiration and adoration continued.

[26] See the Syracuse daily papers as above.

There was evidently a "joy in believing" in the marvel, and this was increased by the peculiarly American superst.i.tion that the correctness of a belief is decided by the number of people who can be induced to adopt it--that truth is a matter of majorities.

The current of credulity seemed irresistible.

Shortly afterward the statue was raised from its grave taken to Syracuse and to various other cities, especially to the city of New York, and in each place exhibited as a show.

As already stated, there was but one thing in the figure, as I had seen it, which puzzled me, and that was the grooving of the under side, apparently by currents of water, which, as the statue appeared to be of our Onondaga gray limestone, would require very many years. But one day one of the cool-headed skeptics of the valley, an old schoolmate of mine, came to me, and with an air of great solemnity took from his pocket an object which he carefully unrolled from its wrappings, and said, "There is a piece of the giant. Careful guard has been kept from the first in order to prevent people touching it; but I have managed to get a piece of it, and here it is." I took it in my hand, and the matter was made clear in an instant. The stone was not our hard Onondaga gray limestone, but soft, easily marked with the finger-nail, and, on testing it with an acid, I found it, not hard carbonate of lime, but a soft, friable sulphate of lime--a form of gypsum, which must have been brought from some other part of the country.

A healthful skepticism now began to a.s.sert its rights. Professor Marsh of Yale appeared upon the scene. Fortunately, he was not only one of the most eminent of living paleontologists, but, unlike most who had given an opinion, he really knew something of sculpture, for he had been familiar with the best galleries of the Old World. He examined the statue and said, "It is of very recent origin, and a most decided humbug.... Very short exposure of the statue would suffice to obliterate all trace of tool-marks, and also to roughen the polished surfaces, but these are still quite perfect, and hence the giant must have been very recently buried.... I am surprised that any scientific observers should not have at once detected the unmistakable evidence against its antiquity."[27]

[27] See Professor Marsh's letter in the "Syracuse Daily Journal," November 30, 1869.

Various suspicious circ.u.mstances presently became known. It was found that Farmer Newell had just remitted to a man named Hull, at some place in the West, several thousand dollars, the result of admission fees to the booth containing the figure, and that nothing had come in return. Thinking men in the neighborhood reasoned that as Newell had never been in condition to owe any human being such an amount of money, and had received nothing in return for it, his correspondent had, not unlikely, something to do with the statue.

These suspicions were soon confirmed. The neighboring farmers, who, in their quiet way, kept their eyes open, noted a tall, lank individual who frequently visited the place and seemed to exercise complete control over Farmer Newell. Soon it was learned that this stranger was the man Hull,--Newell's brother-in-law,--the same to whom the latter had made the large remittance of admission money. One day, two or three farmers from a distance, visiting the place for the first time and seeing Hull, said, "Why, that is the man who brought the big box down the valley." On being asked what they meant, they said that, being one evening in a tavern on the valley turnpike some miles south of Cardiff, they had noticed under the tavern shed a wagon bearing an enormous box; and when they met Hull in the bar-room and asked about it, he said that it was some tobacco-cutting machinery which he was bringing to Syracuse. Other farmers, who had seen the box and talked with Hull at different places on the road between Binghamton and Cardiff, made similar statements. It was then ascertained that no such box had pa.s.sed the toll-gates between Cardiff and Syracuse, and proofs of the swindle began to mature.

But skepticism was not well received. Vested interests had accrued, a considerable number of people, most of them very good people, had taken stock in the new enterprise, and anything which discredited it was unwelcome to them.

It was not at all that these excellent people wished to countenance an imposture, but it had become so entwined with their beliefs and their interests that at last they came to abhor any doubts regarding it. A pamphlet, "The American Goliath," was now issued in behalf of the wonder. On its t.i.tle-page it claimed to give the "History of the Discovery, and the Opinions of Scientific Men thereon." The tone of the book was moderate, but its tendency was evident. Only letters and newspaper articles exciting curiosity or favoring the genuineness of the statue were admitted; adverse testimony, like that of Professor Marsh, was carefully excluded.

Before long the matter entered into a comical phase. Barnum, King of Showmen, attempted to purchase the "giant," but in vain. He then had a copy made so nearly resembling the original that no one, save, possibly, an expert, could distinguish between them.

This new statue was also exhibited as "the Cardiff Giant," and thenceforward the credit of the discovery waned.

The catastrophe now approached rapidly, and soon affidavits from men of high character in Iowa and Illinois established the fact that the figure was made at Fort Dodge, in Iowa, of a great block of gypsum there found; that this block was transported by land to the nearest railway station, Boone, which was about forty-five miles distant; that on the way the wagon conveying it broke down, and that as no other could be found strong enough to bear the whole weight, a portion of the block was cut off; that, thus diminished, it was taken to Chicago, where a German stone-carver gave it final shape; that, as it had been shortened, he was obliged to draw up the lower limbs, thus giving it a strikingly contracted and agonized appearance; that the under side of the figure was grooved and channeled in order that it should appear to be wasted by age; that it was then dotted or pitted over with minute pores by means of a leaden mallet faced with steel needles; that it was stained with some preparation which gave it an appearance of great age; that it was then shipped to a place near Binghamton, New York, and finally brought to Cardiff and there buried. It was further stated that Hull, in order to secure his brother-in-law, Farmer Newell, as his confederate in burying the statue, had sworn him to secrecy; and, in order that the family might testify that they had never heard or seen anything of the statue until it had been unearthed, he had sent them away on a little excursion covering the time when it was brought and buried. All these facts were established by affidavits from men of high character in Iowa and Illinois, by the sworn testimony of various Onondaga farmers and men of business, and, finally, by the admissions and even boasts of Hull himself.

Against this tide of truth the good people who had pinned their faith to the statue--those who had vested interests in it, and those who had rashly given solemn opinions in favor of it--struggled for a time desperately. A writer in the "Syracuse Journal" expressed a sort of regretful wonder and shame that "the public are asked to overthrow the sworn testimony of sustained witnesses corroborated by the highest scientific authority"--the only sworn witness being Farmer Newell, whose testimony was not at all conclusive, and the highest scientific authority being an eminent local dentist who, early in his life, had given popular chemical lectures, and who had now invested money in the enterprise.

The same writer referred also with awe to "the men of sense, property, and character who own the giant and receive whatever revenue arises from its exhibition"; and the argument culminated in the oracular declaration that "the operations of water as testified and interpreted by science cannot create falsehood."[28]

[28] See letter of "X" in the "Syracuse Journal," republished in the Fort Dodge Pamphlet, pp. 15 and 16.

But all this pathetic eloquence was in vain. Hull, the inventor of the statue, having realized more money from it than he expected, and being sharp enough to see that its day was done, was evidently bursting with the desire to avert scorn from himself by bringing the laugh upon others, and especially upon certain clergymen, whom, as we shall see hereafter, he greatly disliked. He now acknowledged that the whole thing was a swindle, and gave details of the way in which he came to embark in it. He avowed that the idea was suggested to him by a discussion with a Methodist revivalist in Iowa; that, being himself a skeptic in religious matters, he had flung at his antagonist "those remarkable stories in the Bible about giants"; that, observing how readily the revivalist and those with him took up the cudgels for the giants, it then and there occurred to him that, since so many people found pleasure in believing such things, he would have a statue carved out of stone which he had found in Iowa and pa.s.s it off on them as a petrified giant. In a later conversation he said that one thing which decided him was that the stone had in it dark-colored bluish streaks which resembled in appearance the veins of the human body. The evolution of the whole affair thus became clear, simple, and natural.

Up to this time, Hull's remarkable cunning had never availed him much. He had made various petty inventions, but had realized very little from them; he had then made some combinations as regarded the internal-revenue laws referring to the manufacture and sale of tobacco, and these had only brought him into trouble with the courts; but now, when the boundless resources of human credulity were suddenly revealed to him by the revivalist, he determined to exploit them. This evolution of his ideas strikingly resembles that through which the mind of a worthless, shiftless, tricky creature in western New York--Joseph Smith--must have pa.s.sed forty years before, when he dug up "the golden plates" of the "Book of Mormon," and found plenty of excellent people who rejoiced in believing that the Rev. Mr. Spalding's biblical novel was a new revelation from the Almighty.

The whole matter was thus fully laid open, and it might have been reasonably expected that thenceforward no human being would insist that the stone figure was anything but a swindling hoax.

Not so. In the Divinity School of Yale College, about the middle of the century, was a solemn, quiet, semi-jocose, semi-melancholic resident graduate--Alexander McWhorter. I knew him well. He had embarked in various matters which had not turned out satisfactorily. Hot water, ecclesiastical and social, seemed his favorite element.[29] He was generally believed to secure most of his sleep during the day, and to do most of his work during the night; a favorite object of his study being Hebrew.

Various strange things had appeared from his pen, and, most curious of all, a little book ent.i.tled, "Yahveh Christ," in which he had endeavored to demonstrate that the doctrine of the Trinity was to be found entangled in the consonants out of which former scholars made the word "Jehovah," and more recent scholars "Yahveh"; that this word, in fact, proved the doctrine of the Trinity.[30]

[29] The main evidence of this is to be found in "Truth Stranger Than Fiction: A Narrative of Recent Transactions involving Inquiries in Regard to the Principles of Honor, Truth, and Justice, which Obtains in a Distinguished American University,"

by Catherine E. Beecher, New York, 1850.

[30] See "Yahveh Christ, or the Memorial Name," by A. McWhorter, Boston, 1857.

He now brought his intellect to bear upon "the Cardiff Giant,"

and soon produced an amazing theory, developing it at length in a careful article.[31]

[31] See McWhorter, "Tammuz and the Mound-builders," in the "Galaxy," July, 1872.

This theory was simply that the figure discovered at Cardiff was a Phenician idol; and Mr. McWhorter published, as the climax to all his proofs, the facsimile and translation of an inscription which he had discovered upon the figure--a "Phenician inscription," which he thought could leave no doubt in the mind of any person open to conviction.

That the whole thing had been confessed a swindle by all who took part in it, with full details as to its origin and development, seemed to him not worthy of the slightest mention. Regardless of all the facts in the case, he showed a pathetic devotion to his theory, and allowed his imagination the fullest play. He found, first of all, an inscription of thirteen letters, "introduced by a large cross or star--the a.s.syrian index of the Deity." Before the last word of the inscription he found carved "a flower which he regarded as consecrated to the particular deity Tammuz, and at both ends of the inscription a serpent monogram and symbol of Baal."

This inscription he a.s.sumed as an evident fact, though no other human being had ever been able to see it. Even Professor White, M.D., of the Yale Medical School, with the best intentions in the world, was unable to find it. Dr. White was certainly not inclined to superficiality or skepticism. With "achromatic gla.s.ses which magnified forty-five diameters" he examined the "pinholes" which covered the figure, and declared that "the beautiful finish of every pore or pinhole appeared to me strongly opposed to the idea that the statue was of modern workmanship."

He also thought he saw the markings which Mr. McWhorter conjectured might be an inscription, and said in a letter, "though I saw no recent tool-marks, I saw evidences of design in the form and arrangement of the markings, which suggested the idea of an inscription." And, finally, having made these concessions, he ends his long letter with the very guarded statement that, "though not fully DECIDED, I INCLINE TO THE OPINION that the Onondaga statue is of ancient origin."[32]

[32] The italics are as in the original.

But this mild statement did not daunt Mr. McWhorter. Having calmly p.r.o.nounced Dr. White "in error," he proceeded with sublime disregard of every other human being. He found that the statue "belongs to the winged or 'cherubim' type"; that "down the left side of the figure are seen the outlines of folded wings--even the separate feathers being clearly distinguishable"; that "the left side of the head is inexpressibly n.o.ble and majestic," and "conforms remarkably to the type of the head of the mound-builders"; that "the left arm terminates in what appears to be a huge extended lion's paw"; that "the dual idea expressed in the head is carried out in the figure"; that "in the wonderfully artistic mouth of the divine side we find a suggestion of that of the Greek Apollo." Mr. McWhorter also found other things that no other human being was ever able to discern, and among them "a crescent-shaped wound upon the left side," "traces of ancient coloring" in all parts of the statue, and evidences that the minute pores were made by "borers." He lays great stress on an "ancient medal" found in Onondaga, which he thinks belongs "to the era of the mound-builders," and on which he finds a "circle inclosing an equilateral cross, both cross and circle, like the wheel of Ezekiel, being full of small circles or eyes." As a matter of fact, this "ancient medal" was an English penny, which a street gamin of Syracuse said that he had found near the statue, and the "equilateral cross" was simply the usual cross of St. George. Mr. McWhorter thinks the circle inclosing the cross denotes the "world soul," and in a dissertation of about twenty pages he discourses upon "Baal," "Tammuz," "King Hiram of Tyre,"

the "ships of Tarshish," the "Eluli," and "Atlas," with plentiful arguments drawn from a mult.i.tude of authorities, and among them Sanchoniathon, Ezekiel, Plato, Dr. Dollinger, Isaiah, Melanchthon, Lenormant, Humboldt, Sir John Lubbock, and Don Domingo Juarros,--finally satisfying himself that the statue was "brought over by a colony of Phenicians," possibly several hundred years before Christ.[33]

[33] See the "Galaxy" article, as above, pa.s.sim.

With the modesty of a true scholar he says, "Whether the final battle at Onondaga . . . occurred before or after this event we cannot tell"; but, resuming confidence, he says, "we only know that at some distant period the great statue, brought in a 'ship of Tarshish' across the sea of Atl, was lightly covered with twigs and flowers and these with gravel." The deliberations of the Pickwick Club over "Bill Stubbs, His Mark" pale before this; and d.i.c.kens in his most expansive moods never conceived anything more funny than the long, solemn discussion between the erratic Hebrew scholar and the eminent medical professor at New Haven over the "pores" of the statue, which one of them thought "the work of minute animals," which the other thought "elaborate Phenician workmanship," which both thought exquisite, and which the maker of the statue had already confessed that he had made by rudely striking the statue with a mallet faced with needles.