How to have courage when standing against conventional wisdom
Courage, Mary . . . courage for our friends.
Dear Reader of The Dean’s List,
It was Mark Twain who sad “When you find yourself on the side of the majority, you should pause and reflect.”
I don’t believe Twain was telling us to live our lives as contrarians, objecting to everything the majority suggests just because it’s the majority.
Rather, Twain is telling us to be on guard against groupthink, a psychological phenomenon wherein people in groups lose their ability to think independently from the group about a particular thing.
They fail to critically evaluate alternatives, which can hinder creativity and effective problem-solving. Groupthink is a word picture of lemmings charging towards the cliff. This is what Twain is warning against.
Does it take an extra layer of courage ensconced in prudence to go against the conventional wisdom produced by this phenomenon? Perhaps.
If so, Dr. Lyman Hall had enough courage to spare for everyone in St. John’s Parish.
In Today’s post, we tell the courageous story of Dr. Lyman Hall who stood against the conventional wisdom of his day . . . a groupthink which had swept over Georgia, blinding its leaders to its destructive path; thereby allowing a notorious turncoat to infiltrate the Continental Congress.
Enjoy the history class!
~Dean Bowen
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How to have courage when standing against conventional wisdom
Lyman Hall was born into a Connecticut family of wealth, and given a classical education of the day. Yale, Harvard, Penn, Princeton - America’s oldest universities originally offered this kind of education which is the predominate antidote to group think.
Hall entered Yale as a sixteen year old, and after four years of classical studies, he went into medicine. After the death of his first wife, he remarried and moved his family to South Carolina, and from there into Georgia with forty other families from the New England area.
They founded the town of Sunbury, on the coast, and it didn’t take long for Hall to build a large medical practice.
Founding Principles
Hall and the other New Englanders brought with them the “cherished principles of the Pilgrim Fathers - principles that would not brook attempts to enslave, or even to destroy a single prerogative of the colonies,” as B. J. Lossing stated in his 1848 classic, Lives of the Signers.
The majority of settlers in Georgia arrived directly from Europe, and according to Lossing, the principles of freedom shared by the New Englanders were woven into the character of Georgians to a much lesser degree. For example, the transplanted residents of Sunbury abhorred slavery, whereas Georgians failed to see the moral reprehension of the practice.
Georgia was established on February 12, 1733 by General James Oglethorpe as a Charter Colony. However, in 1752, right about the time Hall and his fellow New Englanders were moving in, Georgia lost its Charter, becoming a Royal Colony under the direct control of the King.
The Colony was divided into eight Parishes. The district in which the New Englanders lived became known as St. John’s Parish.
When news of Britain’s mistreatment of Boston had reached the coastal towns of Georgia in 1774, Hall and other “kindred spirits” began to organize support for their New England brethren.
According to Dorothy Horton McGee, they called a meeting of opposition to the Royal Governor and to “consider the critical situation of the Colonies, due to these arbitrary acts punishing Boston and, also, to the current acts for raising a perpetual revenue, without the consent of the people or their representatives.”
They believed that the Intolerable Acts were “calculated to deprive the American subjects of their constitutional rights and liberties, as part of the British empire.”
They invited all Georgians to attend a meeting at “the Liberty Pole at Tondee’s tavern in savannah, in July 1774, to act on such constitutional measures as may then appear to be most eligible.”
At this meeting, the patriots created a correspondence committee which would allow for the quick transfer of information between themselves and the other colonies. In order to counteract their efforts, Royal Governor Wright dispatched messengers throughout the eight parishes seeking “signatures on a pledge of loyalty to the royal cause.”
January 1775, a provincial convention was called in Savannah for the purpose of adopting and joining the Continental Association as passed by the First Congress in Philadelphia a few months earlier.
However, Governor Wright’s efforts to bolster support through signed pledges had paid off. Many Georgians secretly buckled in fear at his power and authority, and the vote to send Georgia delegates to Philadelphia failed.
Georgia would remain on the outside looking in, cowering under the thumb of the Royal Governor.
Lossing described Hall’s reaction this way:
“He returned to his constituents with a heavy heart, and his report filled them with disgust at the pusillanimity of the other representative there.”
However, Hall was a man not easily frightened, nor swept up into the torrent of small-minded-thinking. Steeped in the courage of like measure as that of Joshua and Caleb, he presented another option to the people of St. John’s Parish.
It was an option not to be taken by the faint-hearted, and under his leadership, the people embraced it, risking their own lives and property due to Wright’s reprisals . . .
