HISTORY OF CONCORD:
THE SITE OF THE GLOBAL SPECIAL TOWN MEETING
“It is time we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave our education off when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities…”
The idea of a “village university” has grown with the community of Concord from its earliest beginnings. For the Native Indians of Musketaquid, the universe itself was the university. Through living and working closely with nature, the Original Peoples recognized laws that applied to their own lives, nurturing balance, continuity, and forces of renewal. The spirited “Praying Indians,” inspired by the good Reverend John Eliot, were to be the recipients of the first Bible published on these shores and in their language.
This transmitted wisdom assured not only the survival of the first Pilgrim settlement in America, but its expression in the Indian idea of confederation was to provide a foundation stone for our constitution and nation with its 3 Twin Principles.
As the land around Nashawtuc Hill was cleared and currents of the rivers diverted into the millponds, the “plantation” of Concord, America’s first non-native first inland community, was established in the year 1635.
The universe/university focused around the life of the church, and out of its pulpit and prayers was to come forth one of the earliest books written in New England. The author was Concord’s founding minister, Peter Bulkeley, Emerson’s forbear. The title of the book was ‘The Gospel Covenant’ or the ‘Covenant of Grace.’ Its theme of a pact between the Creator and his people described the abiding promise that formed the fabric of Puritan society and set a further cornerstone for the young nation.
With the growth of Concord, learning broadened beyond the brow of the church and purely religious matters to engage the life of a village and a set of issues and principles that had grown with the colonies. Freedom, Reason, Self-determination… in discussions around the hearth and family table, in tavern and Town House, the Puritan faith in a Higher Power was reformulated and enlarged into the rational categories of natural law and self-evident principles. The intellectual ferment that grew in the village was to prove vital for the task before the citizens of further forging a new nation and world.
On the 19th of April in 1775, the ferment, vision mustered Minutemen, “Sons of Liberty,” Lady Liberty itself, on the hillside, looking down over Concord’s Old North Bridge. The regiment of British Regulars, Red-Coats had arrived at that cross-road, intent upon keeping the past upon its throne.
As smoke arose from the village, Concord Minutemen, their ranks bolstered by the Acton and surrounding contingents, took a deep breath… and marched down against the mightiest nation on earth. A shot was fired “heard ‘round the world.” Concord became the crucible of the American Revolution.
At the conclusion of seven trying years, victory was granted the colonists, who turned to task of constituting the new nation. Intent upon that aim, the Massachusetts’ General Court sent to Concord and the surrounding towns a draft of the state constitution and directed Concord’s citizens to sign on the dotted line.
Many of the communities consented. Concord’s citizens said: “No. We have not fought against one central power in London to replace it with another here in Boston.” Concordians issued the clarion call for a Constitutional Convention, in order to establish a government of, by, for the people. The other towns hearkened, informed the General Court in Boston of their change in mind, and followed Concord’s lead.
Following the outbreak of the American Revolution, Harvard College, occupied by the Colonial Troops, had moved its campus to Concord. Upon the agri-cultural basis of the community, culture began to blossom. Students boarded in the homes of Concord citizens. Classes were held in the grammar school, town and meeting houses, and the village, in Thoreau’s words, took a further step in becoming the university, a “noble village of men” and women.
As the 19th century progressed, there was other news. A second shot was fired “heard ‘round the world” with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s seminal work, Nature:
“A man’s power to connect his thought with its proper symbol [expression],
and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is,
upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without loss.”
The Lyceum Movement found an early and articulate home in Concord, with Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, and their “sister” Margaret Fuller, America’s Joan of Arc, as principle speakers. The Lyceum Movement was to become one of the tributaries for the Concord School of Philosophy & Literature, which opened its doors in 1879 with Bronson Alcott as its “Dean.”
The “Concord School” brought together 3 major streams in American culture: the Neo-Platonists from Illinois, the Aristotelians from St. Louis, and the Transcendentalists of New England — along with their fluent tributaries. The presidents of Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the University of Wisconsin, along with leading theologians, scientists, educators, artists and scholars stepped up to the podium, altar at the Hillside Chapel. “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” proclaimed Julia Ward Howe. In the words of Harper’s Magazine:
“At the time when Germany itself is overpowered by the influence of Mill, Spencer, and Darwin,
and the genius of materialism is getting so strong a hold everywhere, it is noteworthy
to find that the Concord School reasserts with breadth and penetration the supremacy of mind.”
The Concord School of Philosophy & Literature was the fruition of the Transcendentalist impulse, which, in the words of Lewis Mumford, had established Concord as the cultural center of the world in its century. For nine summers, the “Concord School” offered to the thousands of participants, from near and far, a renewed vision of the dream upon which our country was founded.
Daniel Chester French, whose early teachers were among the “little women” themselves, began his celebrated career in Concord with the commission — thanks to Emerson himself — of the Minuteman Statue. In the latter years of his life, that career was to take Daniel Chester to the nation’s capitol with the commission of the Lincoln Memorial, the embodiment in Georgian marble of “The Great Emancipator.”
The young musician and organist, Thomas Whitney Surette played the organ at Emerson’s funeral from the loft of Concord’s First Parish Church and, thereby, took up the torch from the “Sage of Concord,” transforming what had been a literary and philosophical impulse into a musical impulse. Thomas Whitney grew into a composer and educator, who gathered the classical refrains of the past into a rich contemporary musical expression. In 1915, The Concord Summer School of Music opened its doors to become the forerunner of the Tanglewoods of the world. Over its 23 summers, those who crossed its threshold, took part in the sessions, went on out into the growing nation and transformed American musical education.
Throughout the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, the thread was woven further.
A spark was kindled that traveled up the telegraph wires, which the young Harrison Dyar and his friends had strung up Monument Street. Voices were heard, exclamations of a wonder, a new era dawned, which would not to be recognized until over two decades later, when Morse’s financial backing made the telegraph — the arising electro-magnetic network — a household word. The experiment had begun in Concord, in a little workshop that broadened out into the community.
For Lemuel Shattuck and Edward Jarvis, two of America’s pioneering social scientists, the town of Concord became a laboratory in which the customs, habits and spirit of a people were studied, recorded, and given fuller artistic expression. Building on those fellow Concordians who had gone before, Gardner Murphy (1895-1979) pioneered the new field of Parapsychology, drawing the attention of William James and other prominent thinkers of the day.
As the 20th century proceeded, Concord’s heritage made it a major consideration as a Colonial site for what was to become Williamsburg and as a possible home for the United Nations. With respect to the former, Concord responded that it was a living community. With respect to the latter, Concord’s task was a related, but different, one, preeminently of and with-the-heart: Con-cord.
In the 60’s, Concordians, residing in its prison and community, worked together to establish the “Shared Leadership Program,” a national model that, amidst the riots and upheavals of the decade, contributed to the further fulfillment of the promise of the town: Concorde/Peace.
In the early 70’s, Concord’s Trinity Episcopal Church offered sanctuary for “The Place,” a national model for work with our troubled/blessed youth. A covenant/concord was established with the young and troubled generation.
As the technological age went on-line, three Concord citizens would be at the forefront, their contributions out-standing: Jay Forrester, Joseph Weizenbaum, and Hrand Saxenian, trustees and friends of The Center for American Studies at Concord.
From the 1970’s on, the thread that has distinguished Concord from other communities has become less distinct, pronounced. As the pace of modern life quickened, it drew many into its pursuits. As opposed to being the center for political and cultural affairs, that Concord was in earlier times, the community has increasingly become a modern suburb with an illustrious past and expectation for the future.
At the founding of the Center for American Studies in 1986, Bradford Morse, former Under-Secretary General of the United Nations and President of the Salzburg Seminars in American Studies, delivered a keynote address at the Concord School of Philosophy, “Hillside Chapel.”
In his address, Morse proposed that the Center take up the legacy of the town and contribute to the establishment of an institution in Concord that would attract scholars, statesmen, and citizens of the world. In the audience were Fulbright Scholars, leaders representing 21 nations, friends from around the country, and fellow citizens, Concordians. Together, in such a climate for freedom, Morse noted, they would study the ideals of liberty, democracy, and brotherhood upon which the nation, an ever new world, was founded — the fundament for our future.
Building upon these cornerstones, and on the work over the last nearly four decades, The Center for American Studies < www.concord-ium.us > has devoted itself to working with fellow citizens to found such an institution — an “uncommon school” that aspires to serve both the citizens of Concord, as well as fellow citizens near and far, young and older alike.
From The Concord Noble Award for Peace and The New World Drama: And Crown Thy Good with Sister- and Brotherhood to The Degree Offering in the Spiritual Sciences: An Enlightened Common Sense, its Men’s Liberation Work, and series Bridging the Growing Divide, The Center for American Studies has striven to introduce new civilization impulses in and for our time.
Central among those impulses is the introduction, in the spirit of applied American Studies, of Concordian Economics: The Integration of Economic Theory, Policy and Practice into an Economics of Common Sense. Dr. Carmine Gorga, former Fulbright Scholar, Scholar of Europe, and currently The Center for American Studies’ Scholar-in-Residence has played a central role in this work through: his revision of Keynes; his ground-breaking book The Economic Process: An Instantaneous Non-Newtonian Picture, the Concord Resolution, and Dr. Gorga’s treatises, including on the Modern Jubilee and The Global Interdependence Fund.
Each of these offerings bespeak the Center’s deeper underling commitment, in the Concord Spirit, to the healing of our modern intellect through the fulfillment of what we speak of as Rational-ism in what, we trust, humankind will come to speak of as Relational-ism.
Without a vision ~ human/humane ~ the people perish.
These words of the ancient prophet sum up the “calling” of Concord’s “Village University,” as they sum up what Concord has stood for over the centuries — at its best. The aim of The Center for American Studies at Concord, All-American Studies, is to contribute to forging, anew, a vision for our aspiring United States that renews the promise of the Sacred Seal of our Land:
E Pluribus Unum: Out of Many, One
That promise was quickened this Patriot’s Day, April 19th, 2020, Orthodox Easter Sunday with a Prayer/Affirmation Heard ‘Round the World. The affirmation/prayer was offered up at Minuteman National Park in Concord, looking down over the historic Old North Bridge.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare / To die, and leave their children free /
Bid time and nature gently spare / The shaft we raise to them and thee.
Drawing on the insights of our past, inspired by the undying hopes for our future, we look forward to working together with fellow citizens — Concordians near and far — to instill modern science, medicine, learning itself with a vision of healing and renewal that can inspire our town, nation, and modern world to forge, together, a future worth envisioning for our children, grandchildren, and for the generations to come:
ALL OUR RELATIONS.
That is the uncommon school we want. Instead of noblemen,
let us have noble villages of men” [and women]…
“If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and
throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.
~ Henry David Thoreau, “Reading” Chapter of Walden
~ ~ ~
“Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice
of the people? Is there any better, or equal, hope in the world?”
If We the People can awaken, as Americans, as citizens of our Global Community, from, and to, our dream, our True Dream — as given voice in the oft forgotten, forsaken verse of our national song:
America, America, may God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness and every gain divine.