Category: Today

On October 22, 1964, philosopher and novelist Jean-​Paul Sartre (1905 — 1980) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but turned down the honor — establishing a precedent that should have been followed by numerous Peace Prize winners, including Barack Obama and the European Union.

Sartre rejected the award on account of having rejected previous honors. In this he was not dissimilar from philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903) who refused many doctorates late in life, on the grounds that such awards did an old man no good, and perhaps because he was a cantankerous old coot — a judgment that surely applied also to the later French philosopher.

Sartre is best known for his novel Nausea (1938), his play No Exit (1944) and his treatise, Being and Nothingness (1943). One of his main themes was freedom, a concept better explored at the fundamental level of the individual human being than politically, since he become a “Marxist” of sorts … the precise nature of which he elaborated in the Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960). He failed to complete his tetralogy of novels, Roads to Freedom, never finishing the final volume.

On October 21, 1921, President Warren G. Harding delivered the first speech by a sitting U.S. President against lynching in the deep South.

On October 20, 1803, the United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase.

Exactly 15 years later, the Convention of 1818 signed between the United States and the United Kingdom which, among other things, settled the Canada-​United States border on the 49th parallel for much of its length.

On October 19, 1781, representatives of British commander Lord Cornwallis handed over Cornwallis’s sword and formally surrendered to George Washington and the comte de Rochambeau, at Yorktown, Virginia. The Revolutionary War (or War for Independence, or Colonial Rebellion, or whatever you wish to call it) was over except for the paperwork.

On October 18, 1775, African-​American poet Phillis Wheatley was freed from slavery, upon the death of her master. Widely appreciated in her day, she was the first African-​American to publish a book.

“The date was October 17, 1909 — the fiftieth anniversary of John Brown’ famous (some say infamous) raid of the federal armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, which ended with the deaths of most of Brown’s small band of men and led to the execution of Brown, making him the most celebrated martyr to the cause of abolition.” So begins The Secret Six: The True Tale of the Men Who Conspired with John Brown (1995), by Edward J. Renehan, Jr. 

As the author goes on to explain, it was a big occasion, with many ceremonies, including an inconspicuous one “not far from the site of the engine house where John Brown’s enterprise ended in defeat, a small group of aging abolitionists held a quiet prayer meeting — anxious not to be taken much notice of.” But in Concord, Massachusetts, the “most poignant exercise in memory” took place: “the surviving remnants of the Secret Six, that small, enigmatic cabal of northern aristocrats who financed John Brown’s strange adventure.”

Those attending this meeting were two conspirators, Thomas Wentworth Higginson (December 22, 1823 – May 9, 1911) and Franklin Sanborn (December 15, 1831 – February 24, 1917), as well as Julia Ward Howe (May 27, 1819 – October 17, 1910), widow of a third conspirator, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe (November 10, 1801 – January 9, 1876). Not present, because long dead, were Reverend Theodore Parker (August 24, 1810 – May 10, 1860), Gerrit Smith (March 6, 1797 – December 28, 1874), and George Luther Stearns (January 8, 1809 – April 9, 1867). 

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Print out a commemorative poster:

• John Brown, American Hero: 8.5” x 11”
• John Brown, American Hero: 11” x 17”