Re-Searching Shunk, conclusion for now…
September 17, 2014
In the art of war, the esprit des corps – the movement of muscles in unison together with chants, song and loud rhythmic yells – creates euphoric energy in battle. The British confident in their ability to defeat the unseasoned American militia selected Baltimore to be the next target. Prior to the battle, Francis Shunk (1788-1848) quoted the opening lines of “Farewell Song to the Banks of Ayr” (1786), Robert Burns’ farewell dirge to his native land, and wrote, “The dark clouds filled with thunder & rain hastened to verspread [sic] the fermentation. The gloom of approaching night adds terror to all surrounding objects… and here I wonder amidst the contention of elements forlorn and silent depressed and unhappy too well does the tumult of my heart accord with the violence that surrounds. After the battle, Shunk happily anticipated the celebration of victory with friends where he would play Green Grow the Rashes, O (1783) – with all his might on the violin. The British did not anticipate that a gutsy Senator named Samuel Smith would change tactics by instituting regular drills featuring marching songs.
Hence, the Battle for Baltimore as chronicled by Francis Scott Key in “The Star Spangled Banner” proved to be a turning point when British forces were repulsed at Fort McHenry, and the city of Baltimore was saved:
Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
A poor farm boy in a multicultural world. Be not deceived, my friends, the carefree days of youth amang the lasses, O, do not a wayfarer still. Mr. Chunk, as he was sometimes called, stayed close to home and hearth, becoming a governor of Pennsylvania who built public institutions of learning and was an early proponent of married women’s property rights.
Next we will explore Jane Austen in a new America…
Re-searching Shunk, continued
September 16, 2014
Issachar Bates (1758-1837) lamented the hypocrisy of elected leaders who in the name of God, raved about freedom yet allowed slavery to continue, and wicked priests who allowed denominational pride to get in the way of fighting for right. Bates walked several thousand miles through the Midwest preaching his concept of the Rights of Consciousness:
RIGHTS of conscience in these days,
Now demand our solemn praise;
Here we see what God has done
By his servant Washington,
Who with wisdom was endow’d
By and angel, through the cloud,
And led forth, in Wisdom’s plan
To secure the rights of man.
Fortuna introduces each nation to her own ethos. The British, outraged by American attacks upon Canadian forces in border towns deemed to be outside civilized laws of warfare issued orders to destroy and lay waste to vulnerable targets. Baltimore, Washington, and Philadelphia looked to be the most promising. The British capture of Washington, D.C. in the autumn of 1814 was the only occasion since the Revolutionary War when a foreign power captured and occupied the young nation’s capital. British forces, though inferior in numbers, in a spectacular ten-day campaign won victory over inexperienced and undisciplined American forces. Federal government leaders who made the most of Washington’s legacy after his death made the decision not to defend the Capital – his namesake. At dawn on August 24, the British marched via the Bladensburg Road towards Washington. American forces proved insufficient as Ross’s forces easily broke trough their positions before the British approached Washington. The British could find no American official to negotiate surrender of the city. Officers dined at the abandoned presidential mansion before ransacking and burning it.
Francis Rawn Shunk (1788-1848), a humble and benevolent fortune hunter saw the United States as a land abounding in inexhaustible resources. He began to study law with Thomas Elder in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and soon hired Francis to write practical documents before volunteering to serve at the Battle for Baltimore. Shunk scribbled this poem (excerpted from page 50 of his journal):
It sheds upon my soul a melancholy hue
Its short-lived influence shall my bosom fill
And teach the lesson of departing time
When fine delights fill my soul with
Thoughts serene on things above
Where time & chance & misery all shall yield
To heavenly peace & everlasting love.
This must fond inducements like pure zest
Yield up their joy to cruel unrelenting fate
Thus kink endearments mild celestial brand
That in its wove in covers of peace & live by love
So rudely torn fate’s rough iron hand
Is torn asunder by fate’s unrelenting hand.
And kindred spirits doomed – apart to rove.
The Weeping Willow
Shunk borrowed a copy of William Wirt’s The Old Bachelor to read on his off-duty hours. Still green to the ways of the world, he quipped: “The knowledge of men is an important acquisition yet it is not always a source of Satisfaction.” He scribed thoughts on the dichotomy of dependence: “Dependence is that relation which subsists between master and servant, and in which, the wile of the latter is absorbed in the former and is subject to his commands – without resistance – he is a mere machine.” Shunk concluded, “The degrees of this relation are various and extensive; its existence is almost universal, it is not confined to Slaves, properly speaking, that finds its way into all ranks and Conditions of life.”
Shunk felt that worldly knowledge of men causes regret and mortification that outweighs the virtues discovered. He leveraged his self-education to rise in rank. He, a poor schoolteacher, garnered surveying experience. Francis felt that if Americans did not confront the countries that bullied them, their newfound independence would have little meaning. However his view of the conflict evolved as he experienced the hardship of war. He wrote in his journal, “Did kings & conquerors in the hours of serious affliction weigh their glory and their fame against the wretchedness they have produced?”
Re-searching Shunk
September 15, 2014
I am transcribing an old journal from the Battle for Baltimore written by an young Francis R. Shunk. In 2001, a small manuscript containing the writing of Francis Rawn Shunk (1788-1848) was found along with various ephemera in the Marguerite Archer Collection housed in San Francisco State University’s J. Paul Leonard Library. This seventy-page manuscript contains Shunk’s observations from September 5 to November 3, 1814. And my work will likely follow that time frame two hundred years later. Born in the rural village of Trappe, in Montgomery County Pennsylvania, he was the son of a poor farmer and his wife. Shunk struggled to educate himself. His parents, although unable to spare his time contributed to farm work, provided him with a loving home. Shunk’s childhood and youth were mostly devoted to manual farm labor.
Shunk was kind, industrious, and devoted to self-improvement. He recognized the need to cultivate an advantageous patron in order to climb out of grinding poverty. He attended a common school in Trappe. When he was fifteen years old, Shunk was hired as an instructor at that common school. He worked as a teacher during the few months of the year that the school was in session, and the rest of the time he worked as a farm laborer. Books were rare. Francis read each book that his hands reached with deep interest, not lounging on a sofa or around a marble center-table brightly illumined with an astral lamp, but often in a chimney corner, by the light, which a wood-fire or its embers reflected. What he read he pondered until it became part of his mental being.
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