May, 1819 (Plus or Minus)

This month, we see some relief from financial pressures.  At age thirty, after years of living quietly and passing a $50 loans between himself, Uncle Sewall, and his father when necessary, Gallison finally had money enough to invest on his own account.  He was able to put $469 into government bonds, and another $100 into a savings account—a year’s salary not too long before.

Channing returned from delivering his famous Baltimore Sermon.  For another, less formal look at Unitarian theology, we can read an extended account of Gallison’s Wednesday discussion group, which engaged in analysis of the Crucifixion.    

April, 1819

More reports on churchgoing and his Tuesday night discussion group this month, as was already beginning to be more common. Less significant to the journal, but touching on a nationally important event, he notes that Channing was headed to Baltimore to assist in the ordination of Jared Sparks. The resulting “Baltimore Sermon” would become one of the touchstones of Unitarian theology.

March, 1819

Beginning and end of this month have some curt dismissals of the trivia of everyday socializing. The middle features an index, or list of topics as he makes the transition from Volume K to the new Volume L.

More substantially, we have accounts of two sermons by Channing, who discusses religion and morality in some detail. His view was that one cannot be useful without the other.

Finally, a bit more social contact with Josiah Quincy, who was to write [spoiler alert] one of Gallison’s obituaries at the end of 1820.

February, 1819

A charming false alarm, showing that Gallison’s appreciation of music had its limits:

“This evening I have passed in a manner most gratifying to myself.  I rec[eive]d this afternoon a ver[y] friendly invitation from Hon[orable] Mr Quincy to pass the ev[enin]g at his house with a few friends  –  When I arrived there I was surprized, & somewhat alarmed at the sound of a violin…”

Luckily, Mrs Quincy reassured him that there was no ball, but merely children’s dancing lessons to tolerate.

Along with another note about litigation his father was undertaking, we get several more comments on Channing’s sermons, which continue to assume a larger role in his journal.

December, 1818

December was a full month, some of which Gallison never got around to reporting until January. We have tales of holiday social life, several significant sermons, and a first visit to the Peace Society. Gallison had recently joined this Federalist organization, and was to give its annual address at the end of 1819.

In this later speech, he used his vision of church history to attack the extreme patriotism exhibited by Republicans during the War of 1812. Gallison’s fusion of Christianity, suspicion of classical ethics, and contempt toward the Jefferson/Madison segment of the United States polity suggests the beginning of a transition from orthodox Federalism toward Whiggery. Its core argument was foreshadowed by the sermon Channing delivered to President Monroe in July, 1817.

October, 1818

Here we have some lengthy reports of sermons, of interest to those looking at Unitarian theology.

Gallison also shares glimpses of two famous authors: Hannah Adams (1755-1831), the writer on religious topics who appeared at a dinner, and—indirectly, through Miss Adams’s opinion— Hannah More (1745-1833), the English poet, playwright, and moralist.  

In less cheerful news, Gallison reached his thirtieth birthday—still single.

September, 1818

Apart from a report of a mysterious sea-serpent, September’s entries are typical of Gallison’s later writing.  He had begun his journal in 1807 as a commonplace book.   Even after he began to add accounts of daily life, in Volume B, he continued to devote a substantial fraction of his entries to self-improvement.  Thoughts on religion came to displace readings in the classics, but served much the same purpose.

This month contains several reports of Sunday sermons– Channing’s, in particular.  If Gallison was a little too distracted to keep perfect notes on all of them, his candid disclosure of that makes its own contribution to his quest for personal growth.

August, 1818

[As a reminder, click on the colored links to reach the relevant Gallison journal excerpts or other external documents.]

August, 1818, brings a resumption of the Journals from the year before. Missing volumes I and J account for most of the gap from our last entries, but Gallison also notes that he had not had a book to write in for some time after Volume J was finished.  Increased professional and social success had still not translated to genuine financial comfort.

In this entry, we get a few brief glimpses of the ZipHorse (ZipChaise?) app that allowed a less-affluent urbanite like Gallison to make trips out of town before the arrival of the railroad and the automobile.

His intellectual life was active at this time.  In particular, the article on Bristed he mentions was a scathing 10,000-word review of the newly-published The Resources of the United States of America; or, A view of the agricultural, commercial, manufacturing, financial, political, literary, moral and religious capacity and character of the American people.  Published in Volume 7 of the North American Review, Gallison’s piece spends a lot of time correcting Bristed’s opinions of American law and government at the federal and state levels, and is worth study for that reason alone.

He had also been reading a fair amount for pleasure, especially Walter Scott.

The most important item this month for his own CV, and sense of well-being, was his receipt of an honorary master’s degree at Harvard.  The College had been putting feelers out for a few years about repairing relations with one of their outstanding and successful students, to make up for expelling him just before his graduation in 1807.  Among other things, they had discussed re-admitting him so that he might take his bachelor’s degree.  Continuing to respect the oath he made to his classmates, however, Gallison had consistently refused to accept re-entry until all others had also been forgiven.  The grant of the MA was a face-saving maneuver that made everyone happy, especially as it occurred just after he had helped organize his class’s reunion.