The Year Without Summer (12 page)

Yet another theory linked disturbances in the atmosphere to a series of earthquakes
that struck the lower Mississippi River Valley in 1811–12. From the Ohio River to
the Mississippi, 1811 was known as “The Year of Wonders.” The sequence of exceptional
events began with spring floods in the Ohio Valley, followed by the appearance of
the Great Comet of 1811 (the brightest comet to cross the heavens in several centuries),
an unusually cold summer with occasional hailstorms, and an epidemic of fever that
swept across the frontier. In the fall, settlers were treated to the ominous sight
of a total eclipse of the sun, then vast flocks of pigeons in the sky, and finally
immense swarms of squirrels—tens of thousands, by one account—in a solid mass, heading
south, altogether unafraid of humans, many drowning when they tried to swim across
the Ohio River. (Squirrels are notoriously poor swimmers.) “The word had been given
to them to go forth,” wrote one elderly pioneer, “and they obeyed it.”

In retrospect, these “wonders” seemed portents to many Americans of the shock that
struck the region on December 16, 1811. An earthquake of magnitude 7.7, centered in
northeast Arkansas, shook the earth from Cairo, Illinois, to Memphis, Tennessee. Settlers
along this frontier—then the forward edge of American settlement—felt the ground rise
and fall, and heard “a very awful noise resembling loud but distant thunder, but more
hoarse and vibrating, which was followed in a few minutes by the complete saturation
of the atmosphere, with sulphurious vapor, causing total darkness.” Fissures opened
in the earth, throwing out sand and water, and swallowing up huge chunks of land.
“At the same time,” recalled an eyewitness, “the roaring and whistling produced by
the impetuosity of the air escaping from its confinement, seemed to increase the horrible
disorder of the trees which everywhere encountered each other, being blown up cracking
and splitting, and falling by thousands at a time.”

Initially the Mississippi River appeared to recede from its banks and flow backwards,
taking with it stands of cottonwood trees; then immense waves arose and capsized boats
on the river, or washed others ashore. Cliffs along the riverbank caved and collapsed
into the river; entire islands vanished. Log cabins crumbled as far away as St. Louis,
Cincinnati, and towns throughout Kentucky and Tennessee.

A series of aftershocks caused nearly as much destruction. A second major shock occurred
on January 23, 1812, then a third on February 7, completely destroying the town of
New Madrid, Missouri, the largest settlement on the Mississippi between St. Louis
and Natchez. In all of these shocks, clustered around M 8.0, “the earth was horribly
torn to pieces,” and the Mississippi littered with trees and the wrecks of ships.

Washington Irving claimed that this combination of earthquakes, pestilence, and extreme
weather events produced “a feverish excitement” in the minds of many Americans, “and
filled the imagination with dreams of horror and apprehensions of sinister and dreadful
events.” To millennialists, the sequence of natural disasters appeared a portent of
the apocalypse, and evangelistic preachers warned that the world would soon end.

Others of an ostensibly more scientific inclination argued that the earthquakes had
altered the American climate by disrupting the normal exchange of electricity between
earth and sky, thereby denying the Eastern United States the heat necessary to grow
crops. “It is perfectly understood in South America,” claimed one newspaper editor,
“that those natural convulsions [i.e., earthquakes] always produce effects on the
weather.” Several years earlier, two European writers working independently—Scottish
jurist and amateur climate scientist John MacLaurin (Lord Dreghorn) and French journalist
Simon-Nicholas Henri Linguet—had advanced a similar theory. MacLaurin claimed that
the weather in Scotland had turned colder since the famous Lisbon earthquake of 1755,
and Linguet confirmed that in both Champagne and Picardy, vintners had been unable
to grow the same grapes or make the same wine as they could before the earthquake.

In an essay published in the
Daily National Intelligencer
, Dudley Leavitt, a New England teacher of mathematics and natural philosophy, attempted
to explain not only the snowstorms of June but the entire series of cool summers in
the Eastern United States in the years immediately preceding 1816. Leavitt attributed
the below-average temperatures to “the extensive forests in North America [which]
naturally have an effect to prevent the sunbeams from reaching the ground.” Not only
did the sun fail to heat the ground, but the process of evaporation of water from
leaves and plants exerted a cooling effect on the atmosphere, particularly during
periods of above-average precipitation. “On this principle,” Leavitt reasoned, “the
increased coldness of our summers for several years past may be, in a great part,
accounted for, since, as our summers lately have been … very wet, the consequent evaporation
has greatly contributed to cool the air, and of course the seasons have become colder.”
Leavitt predicted that a drier summer would thus increase the atmospheric heat, “unless
the fire of
Nature
is really
going out
, which there is no sufficient reason yet to believe is the case.”

While Leavitt blamed the frigid summers on precipitation and vegetation, the
Brattleboro Reporter
took precisely the opposite view, claiming that the destruction of virgin forests
by American and Canadian settlers created a cooler climate. Reversing earlier generations’
theory that widespread razing of woodlands created warmer temperatures, the
Reporter
proposed that chopping down forests simply allowed cold winds from Canada to swoop
down unhindered into New England. David Thomas concurred. “A few years ago, our fields
were sheltered by woods,” he observed, “and every farmer has observed the difference,
in spring, between vegetables growing in bleak [that is, colder] and in secluded situations.”
Thomas further speculated that repeated plowing of the soil in long-settled regions
was turning up “paler coloured subsoil,” which presumably retained heat less efficiently
than the black surface soil of virgin forests.

During his travels through Pennsylvania and Ohio, Thomas repeatedly heard local residents
offer their own unique explanation for the recent series of unusually cool summers.
They suggested that a solar eclipse in 1806 was responsible for the subnormal temperatures;
some claimed that the eclipse had administered some type of powerful shock to the
atmosphere, while others believed that “a pernicious vapour [had] escaped from the
shade of the moon.”

While many Americans sought explanations for the unusually cold weather in the physical
world, others looked to God, or at least Providence. In colonial times, Americans
(particularly New England Puritans) were prone to interpret meteorological events
in theological terms. Weather was a physical manifestation of the Divine Will in all
its majesty and capriciousness, and as one historian has noted, storms represented
“the very handwriting of God: whatever transpired in the heavens was a direct communication
from on high, with a special significance for them and them alone.”

American farmers prayed for the weather they needed to prosper; if it failed to appear,
they endeavored to reform to obtain it. Occasionally superstition overtook theology,
as when ministers sometimes rang church bells during lightning storms to ward off
evil demons. (No statistics exist on how many clerics were struck by lightning while
engaged in this task.) But for the most part, American colonists kept their eyes on
the heavens, and the popular belief in theological meteorology lingered long past
the Revolution, despite the influence of Enlightenment thought and particularly Newtonian
mechanics. Certainly many members of the revolutionary generation understood exactly
what Thomas Prince spoke of in his 1749 sermon, “The Natural and Moral Government
and Agency of God in Causing Droughts and Rains”: “When the Vapours rise and gather
in thick Clouds, and the Lightning flashes with irresistible Power; let us lift up
our believing Eyes and see God in them.”

On this matter, at least, Americans saw no conflict between science and faith. God
worked through natural means to carry out His will. Providentialism incorporated the
latest scientific knowledge and used it to explain how God worked in the world; a
recent study of Chesapeake society has made it clear that Americans’ belief in the
workings of natural laws “supplemented rather than replaced the idea that God sent
natural calamities as a warning.”

In diaries, journals, and private correspondence, early-nineteenth-century Americans,
regardless of region or socioeconomic status, demonstrated that they still believed
that God controlled all aspects of the natural world. Providence was the working of
God’s will in human affairs, and even religious skeptics accepted the presence of
a providential power, albeit in a lower case. It was one means by which they made
sense of the sometimes baffling world around them. As the editor of
Harper’s
suggested, Providence was “the most general, pervasive, ineradicable feeling in the
hearts of our countrymen.”

“All things are known to God, & all that He does is right & we learn that not even
a sparrow fallith [sic] to the ground without his notice, so I leave all in his hands,”
wrote a Southerner emigrating to the west. “The Wheel of Providence is constantly
moving,” agreed the wife of an Ohio farmer; “nothing impedes its progress.” Upon the
birth of a child, a Massachusetts father exulted that “The King Providence has granted
us a lovely daughter.” And a New York teenager took time to record in his diary that
“the Lord in his goodness has spared me 16 years and has given me health and strength.”

Whatever happened, happened because God willed it. On a national level, Americans
typically looked to the future with optimism and confidence, convinced that God had
chosen the United States to regenerate the world. “I always consider the settlement
of America with reverence and wonder,” acknowledged the eminently rational John Adams,
“as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of
the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”
Yet the average American also displayed a clear sense of resignation about temporary
setbacks or losses in the present and the immediate past. God’s inscrutable will worked
itself out in the natural world, in Americans’ personal lives, and they had no choice
but to accept whatever joys and tragedies came their way.

Americans saw God’s hand especially in unexpected events that affected an entire community,
such as hurricanes, epidemics, earthquakes (“peculiar Tokens” of God’s anger), and
famine. Destructive frosts and snowfalls in June came from God as well. One Vermont
newspaper could even cite scripture from the Old Testament to explain the recent cold
wave: “Perhaps we can assign no other cause than that the fiat of the GREAT FIRST
CAUSE,” the editors wrote, “and the wisest philosophers will be ready to exclaim with
Elihu, the friend of Jub, ‘By the breath of God frost is given, and the breadth of
the waters is restrained.’” Or as a Connecticut farmer confided to his diary, “Great
frost—we must learn to be humble.”

Learn to be humble, because the snow and the frost may have signified God’s displeasure.
Repent and reform, as Anglican minister Joseph Bend instructed his Baltimore congregation
when an epidemic of fever struck nearby Philadelphia in 1793: “By fasting, humiliation,
& prayer to stay the hand, which afflicteth your brethren, & to avert from yourselves
the calamity, under which they are mournfully groaning.” Perhaps Americans were growing
too materialistic, too obsessed with the manufactured goods that became more readily
available each year. As cities grew and civilization encroached upon the wilderness,
more Americans lost contact with nature. Notions of civic virtue, of self-sacrifice
for the good of the nation seemed to have become passé. Social extravagance, once
the preserve of the wealthy, was filtering down into the middle class, widening divisions
among citizens. Perhaps the virtuous, agrarian American republic was beginning to
resemble the decadent nations of Europe.

Religious revivals—particularly along the frontier—had commenced in the 1790s. Now,
in the spring and summer of 1816, they gathered strength and spread into more settled
areas, especially into western New York state. “The revivals in these years [1816–1817]
were more numerous, and of greater extent, than in former years,” wrote a nineteenth-century
historian of the region. Between 1812–1815, the Presbyterian churches in western New
York gained about five hundred new members per year; in 1816, that number rose to
more than a thousand; in 1817, to nearly two thousand. Congregations of various denominations
in Buffalo, Binghamton, Ithaca, Auburn, Onondaga, Geneva, and Palmyra experienced
substantial increases in membership. In the town of Norwich, where more than sixty
new members joined the Congregational Church, “all classes were subjects of the work;
the old, and the young; the rich, and the poor; the learned, and the ignorant; the
lawyer, the farmer, and the mechanic.” And the movement had barely begun.

*   *   *

P
ITTSBURGH,
Pennsylvania, marked the southern limit of the June snowstorms in the United States.
Western Pennsylvania received two to three inches of snow, though towns on the eastern
side of the Appalachians escaped with only flurries. Frost and ice accounted for most
of the damage to crops and commerce. In mid-June, a correspondent from Erie reported
that “the season has been dry and frosty for weeks together. It appears as if we should
have no crops in these parts—the corn has been all killed by the frost of the 9th,
and until very lately lake Erie was not navigable for the ice.”