VOLUME XV SLICE I Italy to Jacobite Church (continued 11)

In 1813-1814, as major-general of militia, he commanded in the campaign against the Creek Indians in Georgia and Alabama, defeated them (at Talladega, on the 9th of November 1813, and at Tohopeka, on the 29th of March 1814), and thus first attracted public notice by his talents. In May 1814 he was commissioned as major-general in the regular army to serve against the British; in November he captured Pensacola, Florida, then owned by Spain, but used by the British as a base of operations; and on the 8th of January 1815 he inflicted a severe defeat on the enemy before New Orleans, the contestants being unaware that a treaty of peace had already been signed. During his stay in New Orleans he proclaimed martial law, and carried out his measures with unrelenting sternness, banishing from the town a judge who attempted resistance. When civil law was restored, Jackson was fined $1000 for contempt of court; in 1844 Congress ordered the fine with interest ($2700) to be repaid. In 1818 Jackson received the command against the Seminoles. His conduct in following them up into the Spanish territory of Florida, in seizing Pensacola, and in arresting and executing two British subjects, Alexander Arbuthnot and Robert Ambrister, gave rise to much hostile comment in the cabinet and in Congress; but the negotiations for the purchase of Florida put an end to the diplomatic difficulty. In 1821 Jackson was military governor of the territory of Florida, and there again he came into collision with the civil authority. From this, as from previous troubles, John Quincy Adams, then secretary of state, extricated him.

In July 1822 the general assembly of Tennessee nominated Jackson for president; and in 1823 he was elected to the United States Senate, from which he resigned in 1825. The rival candidates for the office of president in the campaign of 1824 were Jackson, John Quincy Adams, W. H. Crawford and Henry Clay. Jackson obtained the largest number of votes (99) in the electoral college (Adams receiving 84, Crawford 41 and Clay 37); but no one had an absolute majority, and it thus became the duty of the House of Representatives to choose one of the three candidates—Adams, Jackson and Crawford—who had received the greatest numbers of electoral votes. At the election by the house (February 9, 1825) Adams was chosen, receiving the votes of 13 states, while Jackson received the votes of 7 and Crawford the votes of 4. Jackson, however, was recognized by the abler politicians as the coming man. Martin Van Buren and others, going into opposition under his banner, waged from the first a relentless and factious war on the administration. Van Buren was the most adroit politician of his time; and Jackson was in the hands of very astute men, who advised and controlled him. He was easy to lead when his mind was in solution; and he gave his confidence freely where he had once placed it. He was not suspicious, but if he withdrew his confidence he was implacable. When his mind crystallized on a notion that had a personal significance to himself, that notion became a hard fact that filled his field of vision. When he was told that he had been cheated in the matter of the presidency,1 he was sure of it, although those who told him were by no means so.

There was great significance in the election of Jackson in 1828. A new generation was growing up under new economic and social conditions. They felt great confidence in themselves and great independence. They despised tradition and Old World ways and notions; and they accepted the Jeffersonian dogmas, not only as maxims, but as social forces—the causes of the material prosperity of the country. By this generation, therefore, Jackson was recognized as a man after their own heart. They liked him because he was vigorous, brusque, uncouth, relentless, straightforward and open. They made him president in 1828, and he fulfilled all their expectations. He had 178 votes in the electoral college against 83 given for Adams. Though the work of redistribution of offices began almost at his inauguration, it is yet an incorrect account of the matter to say that Jackson corrupted the civil service. His administration is rather the date at which a system of democracy, organized by the use of patronage, was introduced into the federal arena by Van Buren. It was at this time that the Democratic or Republican party divided, largely along personal lines, into Jacksonian Democrats and National Republicans, the latter led by such men as Henry Clay and J. Q. Adams. The administration itself had two factions in it from the first, the faction of Van Buren, the secretary of state in 1829-1831, and that of Calhoun, vice-president in 1829-1832. The refusal of the wives of the cabinet and of Mrs Calhoun to accord social recognition to Mrs J. H. Eaton brought about a rupture, and in April 1831 the whole cabinet was reorganized. Van Buren, a widower, sided with the president in this affair and grew in his favour. Jackson in the meantime had learned that Calhoun as secretary of war had wished to censure him for his actions during the Seminole war in Florida in 1818, and henceforth he regarded the South Carolina statesman as his enemy. The result was that Jackson transferred to Van Buren his support for succession in the presidency. The relations between Jackson and his cabinet were unlike those existing under his predecessors. Having a military point of view, he was inclined to look upon the cabinet members as inferior officers, and when in need of advice he usually consulted a group of personal friends, who came to be called the “Kitchen Cabinet.” The principal members of this clique were William B. Lewis (1784-1866), Amos Kendall and Duff Green, the last named being editor of the United States Telegraph, the organ of the administration.

In 1832 Jackson was re-elected by a large majority (219 electoral votes to 49) over Henry Clay, his chief opponent. The battle raged mainly around the re-charter of the Bank of the United States. It is probable that Jackson’s advisers in 1828 had told him, though erroneously, that the bank had worked against him, and then were not able to control him. The first message of his first presidency had contained a severe reflection on the bank; and in the very height of this second campaign (July 1832) he vetoed the re-charter, which had been passed in the session of 1831-1832. Jackson interpreted his re-election as an approval by the people of his war on the bank, and he pushed it with energy. In September 1833 he ordered the public deposits in the bank to be transferred to selected local banks, and entered upon the “experiment” whether these could not act as fiscal agents for the government, and whether the desire to get the deposits would not induce the local banks to adopt sound rules of currency. During the next session the Senate passed a resolution condemning his conduct. Jackson protested, and after a hard struggle, in which Jackson’s friends were led by Senator Thomas Hart Benton, the resolution was ordered to be expunged from the record, on the 16th of January 1837.

In 1832, when the state of South Carolina attempted to “nullify” the tariff laws, Jackson at once took steps to enforce the authority of the federal government, ordering two war vessels to Charleston and placing troops within convenient distance. He also issued a proclamation warning the people of South Carolina against the consequences of their conduct. In the troubles between Georgia and the Cherokee Indians, however, he took a different stand. Shortly after his first election Georgia passed an act extending over the Cherokee country the civil laws of the state. This was contrary to the rights of the Cherokees under a federal treaty, and the Supreme Court consequently declared the act void (1832). Jackson, however, having the frontiersman’s contempt for the Indian, refused to enforce the decision of the court (see Nullification; Georgia: History).

Jackson was very successful in collecting old claims against various European nations for spoliations inflicted under Napoleon’s continental system, especially the French spoliation claims, with reference to which he acted with aggressiveness and firmness. Aiming at a currency to consist largely of specie, he caused the payment of these claims to be received and imported in specie as far as possible; and in 1836 he ordered land-agents to receive for land nothing but specie. About the same time a law passed Congress for distributing among the states some $35,000,000 balance belonging to the United States, the public debt having all been paid. The eighty banks of deposit in which it was lying had regarded this sum almost as a permanent loan, and had inflated credit on the basis of it. The necessary calling in of their loans in order to meet the drafts in favour of the states, combining with the breach of the overstrained credit between America and Europe and the decline in the price of cotton, brought about a crash which prostrated the whole financial, industrial and commercial system of the country for six or seven years. The crash came just as Jackson was leaving office; the whole burden fell on his successor, Van Buren.

In the 18th century the influences at work in the American colonies developed democratic notions. In fact, the circumstances were those which create equality of wealth and condition, as far as civilized men ever can be equal. The War of Independence was attended by a grand outburst of political dogmatism of the democratic type. A class of men were produced who believed in very broad dogmas of popular power and rights. There were a few rich men, but they were almost ashamed to differ from their neighbours and, in some known cases, they affected democracy in order to win popularity. After the 19th century began the class of rich men rapidly increased. In the first years of the century a little clique at Philadelphia became alarmed at the increase of the “money power,” and at the growing perils to democracy. They attacked with some violence, but little skill, the first Bank of the United States, and they prevented its re-charter. The most permanent interest of the history of the United States is the picture it offers of a primitive democratic society transformed by prosperity and the acquisition of capital into a great republican commonwealth. The denunciations of the “money power” and the reiteration of democratic dogmas deserve earnest attention. They show the development of classes or parties in the old undifferentiated mass. Jackson came upon the political stage just when a wealthy class first existed. It was an industrial and commercial class greatly interested in the tariff, and deeply interested also in the then current forms of issue banking. The southern planters also were rich, but were agriculturists and remained philosophical Democrats. Jackson was a man of low birth, uneducated, prejudiced, and marked by strong personal feeling in all his beliefs and disbeliefs. He showed, in his military work and in his early political doings, great lack of discipline. The proposal to make him president won his assent and awakened his ambition. In anything which he undertook he always wanted to carry his point almost regardless of incidental effects on himself or others. He soon became completely engaged in the effort to be made president. The men nearest to him understood his character and played on it. It was suggested to him that the money power was against him. That meant that, to the educated or cultivated class of that day, he did not seem to be in the class from which a president should be chosen. He took the idea that the Bank of the United States was leading the money power against him, and that he was the champion of the masses of democracy and of the common people. The opposite party, led by Clay, Adams, Biddle, &c., had schemes for banks and tariffs, enterprises which were open to severe criticism. The political struggle was very intense and there were two good sides to it. Men like Thomas H. Benton, Edward Livingston, Amos Kendall, and the southern statesmen, found material for strong attacks on the Whigs. The great mass of voters felt the issue as Jackson’s managers stated it. That meant that the masses recognized Jackson as their champion. Therefore, Jackson’s personality and name became a power on the side opposed to banks, corporations and other forms of the new growing power of capital. That Jackson was a typical man of his generation is certain. He represents the spirit and temper of the free American of that day, and it was a part of his way of thinking and acting that he put his whole life and interest into the conflict. He accomplished two things of great importance in the history: he crushed excessive state-rights and established the contrary doctrine in fact and in the political orthodoxy of the democrats; he destroyed the great bank. The subsequent history of the bank left it without an apologist, and prejudiced the whole later judgment about it. The way in which Jackson accomplished these things was such that it cost the country ten years of the severest liquidation, and left conflicting traditions of public policy in the Democratic party. After he left Washington, Jackson fell into discord with his most intimate old friends, and turned his interest to the cause of slavery, which he thought to be attacked and in danger.

Jackson is the only president of whom it may be said that he went out of office far more popular than he was when he entered. When he went into office he had no political opinions, only some popular notions. He left his party strong, perfectly organized and enthusiastic on a platform of low expenditure, payment of the debt, no expenditure for public improvement or for glory or display in any form and low taxes. His name still remained a spell to conjure with, and the politicians sought to obtain the assistance of his approval for their schemes; but in general his last years were quiet and uneventful. He died at his residence, “The Hermitage,” near Nashville, Tennessee, on the 8th of June 1845.

Bibliography.—Of the early biographies, that by J. H. Eaton (Philadelphia, 1824) is a history of Jackson’s early military exploits, written for political purposes. Amos Kendall’s Life (New York, 1843) is incomplete, extending only to 1814. James Parton’s elaborate work (3 vols., New York, 1860) is still useful. Parton prepared a shorter biography for the “Great Commanders Series” (New York, 1893), which emphasizes Jackson’s military career. W. G. Sumner’s Andrew Jackson in the “American Statesmen Series” (Boston, 1882; revised, 1899) combines the leading facts of Jackson’s life with a history of his times. W. G. Brown wrote an appreciative sketch (Boston, 1900) for the “Riverside Biographical Series.” Of more recent works the most elaborate are the History of Andrew Jackson, by A. C. Buell (New York, 1904), marred by numerous errors, and the Life and Times of Andrew Jackson, by A. S. Colyar (Nashville, 1904). Charles H. Peck’s The Jacksonian Epoch (New York, 1899) is an account of national politics from 1815 to 1840, in which the antagonism of Jackson and Clay is emphasized.

(W. G. S.)

1 The charge was freely made then and afterwards (though, it is now believed, without justification) that Clay had supported Adams and by influencing his followers in the house had been instrumental in securing his election, as the result of a bargain by which Adams had agreed to pay him for his support by appointing him secretary of state.

JACKSON, CYRIL (1746-1819), dean of Christ Church, Oxford, was born in Yorkshire, and educated at Westminster and Oxford. In 1771 he was chosen to be sub-preceptor to the two eldest sons of George III., but in 1776 he was dismissed, probably through some household intrigues. He then took orders, and was appointed in 1779 to the preachership at Lincoln’s Inn and to a canonry at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1783 he was elected dean of Christ Church. His devotion to the college led him to decline the bishopric of Oxford in 1799 and the primacy of Ireland in 1800. He took a leading part in framing the statute which, in 1802, launched the system of public examinations at Oxford, but otherwise he was not prominent in university affairs. On his resignation in 1809 he settled at Felpham, in Sussex, where he remained till his death.

JACKSON, FREDERICK GEORGE (1860- ), British Arctic explorer, was educated at Denstone College and Edinburgh University. His first voyage in Arctic waters was on a whaling-cruise in 1886-1887, and in 1893 he made a sledge-journey of 3000 miles across the frozen tundra of Siberia lying between the Ob and the Pechora. His narrative of this journey was published under the title of The Great Frozen Land (1895). On his return, he was given the command of the Jackson-Harmsworth Arctic expedition (1894-1897), which had for its objective the general exploration of Franz Josef Land. In recognition of his services he received a knighthood of the first class of the Danish Royal Order of St Olaf in 1898, and was awarded the gold medal of the Paris Geographical Society in 1899. His account of the expedition was published under the title of A Thousand Days in the Arctic (1899). He served in South Africa during the Boer War, and obtained the rank of captain. His travels also include a journey across the Australian deserts.

JACKSON, HELEN MARIA (1831-1885), American poet and novelist, who wrote under the initials of “H. H.” (Helen Hunt), was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on the 18th of October 1831, the daughter of Nathan Welby Fiske (1798-1847), who was a professor in Amherst College. In October 1852 she married Lieutenant Edward Bissell Hunt (1822-1863), of the U.S. corps of engineers. In 1870 she published a little volume of meditative Verses, which was praised by Emerson in the preface to his Parnassus (1874). In 1875 she married William S. Jackson, a banker, of Colorado Springs. She became a prolific writer of prose and verse, including juvenile tales, books of travel, household hints and novels, of which the best is Ramona (1884), a defence of the Indian character. In 1883, as a special commissioner with Abbot Kinney (b. 1850), she investigated the condition and needs of the Mission Indians in California. A Century of Dishonor (1881) was an arraignment of the treatment of the Indians by the United States. She died on the 12th of August 1885 in San Francisco.

In addition to her publications referred to above, Mercy Philbrick’s Choice (1876), Hetty’s Strange History (1877), Zeph (1886), and Sonnets and Lyrics (1886) may be mentioned.

JACKSON, MASON (c. 1820-1903), British engraver, was born at Berwick-on-Tweed about 1820, and was trained as a wood engraver by his brother, John Jackson, the author of a history of this art. In the middle of the 19th century he made a considerable reputation by his engravings for the Art Union of London, and for Knight’s Shakespeare and other standard books; and in 1860 he was appointed art editor of the Illustrated London News, a post which he held for thirty years. He wrote a history of the rise and progress of illustrated journalism. He died in December 1903.

JACKSON, THOMAS (1579-1640), president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and dean of Peterborough, was born at Witton-le-Wear, Durham, and educated at Oxford. He became a probationer fellow of Corpus in 1606, and was soon afterwards elected vice-president. In 1623 he was presented to the living of St Nicholas, Newcastle, and about 1625 to the living of Winston, Durham. Five years later he was appointed president of Corpus, and in 1632 the king presented him to the living of Witney, Oxfordshire. He was made a prebendary of Winchester in 1635, and was dean of Peterborough in 1635-1639. Although originally a Calvinist, he became in later life an Arminian.

His chief work was a series of commentaries on the Apostles’ Creed, the first complete edition being entitled The Works of Thomas Jackson, D.D. (London, 1673). The commentaries were, however, originally published in 1613-1657, as twelve books with different titles, the first being The Eternal Truth of Scriptures (London, 1613).

JACKSON, THOMAS JONATHAN (1824-1863), known as “Stonewall Jackson,” American general, was born at Clarksburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), on the 21st of January 1824, and was descended from an Ulster family. At an early age he was left a penniless orphan, and his education was acquired in a small country school until he procured, mainly by his own energy, a nomination to the Military Academy. Lack of social graces and the deficiencies of his early education impeded him at first, but “in the end ‘Old Jack,’ as he was always called, with his desperate earnestness, his unflinching straightforwardness, and his high sense of honour, came to be regarded with something like affection.” Such qualities he displayed not less amongst the light-hearted cadets than afterwards at the head of troops in battle. After graduating he took part, as second lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Artillery, in the Mexican War. At Vera Cruz he won the rank of first lieutenant, and for gallant conduct at Contreras and Chapultepec respectively he was brevetted captain and major, a rank which he attained with less than one year’s service. During his stay in the city of Mexico his thoughts were seriously directed towards religion, and, eventually entering the Presbyterian communion, he ruled every subsequent action of his life by his faith. In 1851 he applied for and obtained a professorship at the Virginia military institute, Lexington; and here, except for a short visit to Europe, he remained for ten years, teaching natural science, the theory of gunnery and battalion drill. Though he was not a good teacher, his influence both on his pupils and on those few intimate friends for whom alone he relaxed the gravity of his manner was profound, and, little as he was known to the white inhabitants of Lexington, he was revered by the slaves, to whom he showed uniform kindness, and for whose moral instruction he worked unceasingly. As to the great question at issue in 1861, Major Jackson’s ruling motive was devotion to his state, and when Virginia seceded, on the 17th of April, and the Lexington cadets were ordered to Richmond, Jackson went thither in command of the corps. His intimate friend, Governor Letcher, appreciating his gifts, sent him as a colonel of infantry to Harper’s Ferry, where the first collision with the Union forces was hourly expected. In June he received the command of a brigade, and in July promotion to the rank of brigadier-general. He had well employed the short time at his disposal for training his men, and on the first field of Bull Run they won for themselves and their brigadier, by their rigid steadiness at the critical moment of the battle, the historic name of “Stonewall.”

After the battle of Bull Run Jackson spent some time in the further training of his brigade which, to his infinite regret, he was compelled to leave behind him when, in October, he was assigned as a major-general to command in the Shenandoah Valley. His army had to be formed out of local troops, and few modern weapons were available, but the Valley regiments retained the impress of Jackson’s training till the days of Cedar Creek. Discipline was not acquired at once, however, and the first ventures of the force were not very successful. At Kernstown, indeed, Jackson was tactically defeated by the Federals under Shields (March 23, 1862). But the Stonewall brigade had been sent to its old leader in November, and by the time that the famous Valley Campaign (see Shenandoah Valley Campaigns) began, the forces under Jackson’s command had acquired cohesion and power of manœuvre. On the 8th of May 1862 was fought the combat of McDowell, won by Jackson against the leading troops of Frémont’s command from West Virginia. Three weeks later the forces under Banks were being driven over the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry, and Jackson was master of the Valley. Every other plan of campaign in Virginia was at once subordinated to the scheme of “trapping Jackson.” But the Confederates, marching swiftly up the Valley, slipped between the converging columns of Frémont from the west and McDowell from the east, and concluded a most daring campaign by the victorious actions of Cross Keys and Port Republic (8th and 9th of June). While the forces of the North were still scattered, Jackson secretly left the Valley to take a decisive part in Lee’s campaign before Richmond. In the “Seven Days” Jackson was frequently at fault, but his driving energy bore no small part in securing the defeat of McClellan’s advance on Richmond. Here he passed for the first time under the direct orders of Robert Lee, and the rest of his career was spent in command of the II. corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. As Lee’s chief and most trusted subordinate he was throughout charged with the execution of the more delicate and difficult operations of his commander’s hazardous strategy. After his victory over Banks at Cedar Mountain, near Culpeper, Virginia, Jackson led the daring march round the flank of General Pope’s army, which against all theoretical rules ended in the great victory of second Bull Run. In the Maryland campaign Lieut.-General Jackson was again detached from the main army. Eleven thousand Federals, surrounded in Harper’s Ferry, were forced to surrender, and Jackson rejoined Lee just in time to oppose McClellan’s advance. At the Antietam his corps bore the brunt of the battle, which was one of the most stubborn of modern warfare. At Fredericksburg his wing of Lee’s line of battle was heavily engaged, and his last battle, before Chancellorsville, in the thickets of the Wilderness, was his greatest triumph. By one of his swift and secret flank marches he placed his corps on the flank of the enemy, and on the 2nd of May flung them against the Federal XI. corps, which was utterly routed. At the close of a day of victory he was reconnoitring the hostile positions when suddenly the Confederate outposts opened fire upon his staff, whom they mistook in the dark and tangled forest for Federal cavalry. Jackson fell wounded, and on the 10th of May he died at Guinea’s station. He was buried, according to his own wish, at Lexington, where a statue and a memorial hall commemorate his connexion with the place; and on the spot where he was mortally wounded stands a plain granite pillar. The first contribution towards the bronze statue at Richmond was made by the negro Baptist congregation for which Jackson had laboured so earnestly in his Lexington years. He was twice married, first to Eleanor (d. 1854), daughter of George Junkin, president of Washington College, Virginia, and secondly in 1857 to Mary Anna Morrison, daughter of a North Carolina clergyman.

That Jackson’s death, at a critical moment of the fortunes of the Confederacy, was an irreparable loss was disputed by no one. Lee said that he had lost his right arm, and, good soldiers as were the other generals, not one amongst them was comparable to Jackson, whose name was dreaded in the North like that of Lee himself. His military character was the enlargement of his personal character—“desperate earnestness, unflinching straightforwardness,” and absolute, almost fatalist, trust in the guidance of providence. At the head of his troops, who idolized him, he was a Cromwell, adding to the zeal of a fanatic and the energy of the born leader the special military skill and trained soldierly spirit which the English commander had to gain by experience. His Christianity was conspicuous, even amongst deeply religious men like Lee and Stuart, and penetrated every part of his character and conduct.

See lives by R. L. Dabney (New York, 1883), J. E. Cooke (New York, 1866), M. A. Jackson (General Jackson’s widow) (New York, 1892); and especially G. F. R. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson (London, 1898), and H. A. White, Stonewall Jackson (Philadelphia, 1909).

JACKSON, WILLIAM (1730-1803), English musician, was born at Exeter on the 29th of May 1730. His father, a grocer, bestowed a liberal education upon him, but, on account of the lad’s strong predilection for music, was induced to place him under the care of John Silvester, the organist of Exeter Cathedral, with whom he remained about two years. In 1748 he went to London, and studied under John Travers, organist of the king’s chapel. Returning to Exeter, he settled there as a teacher and composer, and in 1777 was appointed subchanter, organist, lay-vicar and master of the choristers of the cathedral. In 1755 he published his first work, Twelve Songs, which became at once highly popular. His next publication, Six Sonatas for the Harpsichord, was a failure. His third work, Six Elegies for three voices, preceded by an Invocation, with an Accompaniment, placed him among the first composers of his day. His fourth work was another set of Twelve Songs, now very scarce; and his fifth work was again a set of Twelve Songs, all of which are now forgotten. He next published Twelve Hymns, with some good remarks upon that style of composition, although his precepts were better than his practice. A set of Twelve Songs followed, containing some good compositions. Next came an Ode to Fancy, the words by Dr Warton. Twelve Canzonets for two voices formed his ninth work; and one of them—“Time has not thinned my Flowing Hair”—long held a place at public and private concerts. His tenth work was Eight Sonatas for the Harpsichord, some of which were novel and pleasing. He composed three dramatic pieces,—Lycidas (1767), The Lord of the Manor, to General Burgoyne’s words (1780), and The Metamorphoses, a comic opera produced at Drury Lane in 1783, which did not succeed. In the second of these dramatic works, two airs—“Encompassed in an Angel’s Form” and “When first this Humble Roof I knew”—were great favourites. His church music was published after his death by James Paddon (1820); most of it is poor, but “Jackson in F” was for many years popular. In 1782 he published Thirty Letters on Various Subjects, in which he severely attacked canons, and described William Bird’s Non nobis Domine as containing passages not to be endured. But his anger and contempt were most strongly expressed against catches of all kinds, which he denounced as barbarous. In 1791 he put forth a pamphlet, Observations on the Present State of Music in London, in which he found fault with everything and everybody. He published in 1798 The Four Ages, together with Essays on Various Subjects,—a work which gives a favourable idea of his character and of his literary acquirements. Jackson also cultivated a taste for landscape painting, and imitated, not unsuccessfully, the style of his friend Gainsborough. He died on the 5th of July 1803.

JACKSON, a city and the county-seat of Jackson county, Michigan, U.S.A., on both sides of the Grand River, 76 m. W. of Detroit. Pop. (1890), 20,798; (1900), 25,180, of whom 3843 were foreign-born (1004 German, 941 English Canadian); (1910 census) 31,433. It is served by the Michigan Central, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, the Grand Trunk and the Cincinnati Northern railways, and by inter-urban electric lines. It is the seat of the state prison (established 1839). Coal is mined in the vicinity; the city has a large trade with the surrounding agricultural district (whose distinctive product is beans); the Michigan Central railway has car and machine shops here; and the city has many manufacturing establishments. The total factory product in 1904 was valued at $8,348,125, an increase of 24.4% over that of 1900. The municipality owns and operates its water-works. The place was formerly a favourite camping ground of the Indians, and was settled by whites in 1829. In 1830 it was laid out as a town, selected for the county-seat, and named Jacksonburg in honour of Andrew Jackson; the present name was adopted in 1838. Jackson was incorporated as a village in 1843, and in 1857 was chartered as a city. It was at a convention held at Jackson on the 6th of July 1854 that the Republican party was first organized and so named by a representative state body.

JACKSON, a city and the county-seat of Hinds county, Mississippi, U.S.A., and the capital of the state, on the W. bank of the Pearl River, about 40 m. E. of Vicksburg and 185 m. N. of New Orleans, Louisiana. Pop. (1890), 5920; (1900), 7816, of whom 4447 were negroes. According to the Federal census taken in 1910 the population had increased to 21,262. Jackson is served by the Illinois Central, the Alabama & Vicksburg, the Gulf & Ship Island, New Orleans Great Northern, and the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railways, and during the winter by small freight and passenger steamboats on the Pearl River. In Jackson is the state library, with more than 80,000 volumes. The new state capitol was finished in 1903. The old state capitol, dating from 1839, is of considerable interest; in it were held the secession convention (1861), the “Black and Tan Convention” (1868), and the constitutional convention of 1890, and in it Jefferson Davis made his last speech (1884). Jackson is the seat of Millsaps College, chartered in 1890 and opened in 1892 (under the control of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South), and having, in 1907-1908, 12 instructors and 297 students; of Belhaven College (non-sectarian, 1894), for girls; and of Jackson College (founded in 1877 at Natchez by the American Baptist Home Mission Society; in 1883 removed to Jackson), for negroes, which had 356 students in 1907-1908. The city is a market for cotton and farm products, and has a number of manufactories. In 1821 the site was designated as the seat of the state government, and early in the following year the town, named in honour of Andrew Jackson, was laid out. The legislature first met here in December 1822. It was not until 1840 that it was chartered as a city. During the Civil War Jackson was in the theatre of active campaigning. On the 14th of May 1863 Johnston who then held the city, was attacked on both sides by Sherman and McPherson with two corps of Grant’s army, which, after a sharp engagement, drove the Confederates from the town. After the fall of Vicksburg Johnston concentrated his forces at Jackson, which had been evacuated by the Federal troops, and prepared to make a stand behind the intrenchments. On the 9th of July Sherman began an investment of the place, and during the succeeding week a sharp bombardment was carried on. In the night of the 16th Johnston, taking advantage of a lull in the firing, withdrew suddenly from the city. Sherman’s army entered on the 17th and remained five days, burning a considerable part of the city and ravaging the surrounding country.

JACKSON, a city and the county-seat of Madison county, Tennessee, U.S.A., situated on the Forked Deer river, about 85 m. N.E. of Memphis. Pop. (1890), 10,039; (1900), 14,511, of whom 6108 were negroes; (1910 census), 15,779. It is served by the Mobile & Ohio, the Nashville, Chattanooga & St Louis and the Illinois Central railways. The state supreme court holds its sessions here for the western district of Tennessee. The city is the seat of Union University (co-educational), chartered in 1875 as Southwestern Baptist University, and conducted under that name at Jackson until 1907, when the present name was adopted. In 1907-1908 the university had 17 instructors and 280 students. At Jackson, also, are St Mary’s Academy (Roman Catholic); the Memphis Conference Female Institute (Methodist Episcopal, South, 1843), and Lane College (for negroes), under the control of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. Jackson is an important cotton market, and is a shipping point for the farm products and fruits of the surrounding country. It has also numerous manufactures and railway shops. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $2,317,715. The municipality owns and operates the electric-lighting plant and the water-works. There is in the city an electro-chalybeate well with therapeutic properties. Jackson was settled about 1820, incorporated as a town in 1823, chartered as a city in 1854, and in 1907 received a new charter by which the sale of intoxicating liquors is forever prohibited. After General Grant’s advance into Tennessee in 1862 Jackson was fortified and became an important base of operations for the Federal army, Grant himself establishing his headquarters here in October.

JACKSONVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Duval county, Florida, U.S.A., in the N.E. part of the state, on the left bank of the St John’s River, 14 m. from the Atlantic Ocean as the crow flies and about 27 m. by water. Pop. (1890), 17,201; (1900), 28,429, of whom 16,236 were negroes and 1166 foreign-born; (1910 census) 57,699; the city being the largest in the state. It is served by the Southern, the Atlantic Coast Line, the Seaboard Air Line, the Georgia Southern & Florida and the Florida East Coast railways, and by several steamship lines.1 It is the largest railway centre in the state, and is popularly known as the Gate City of Florida. In appearance Jacksonville is very attractive. It has many handsome buildings, and its residential streets are shaded with live-oaks, water oaks and bitter-orange trees. Jacksonville is the seat of two schools for negroes, the Florida Baptist Academy and Cookman Institute (1872; Methodist Episcopal). Many winter visitors are annually attracted by the excellent climate, the mean temperature for the winter months being about 55° F. Among the places of interest in the vicinity is the large Florida ostrich farm. There are numerous municipal and other parks. The city owns and operates its electric-lighting plant and its water-works system. The capital invested in manufacturing increased from $1,857,844 in 1900 to $4,837,281 in 1905, or 160.4%, and the value of the factory product rose from $1,798,607 in 1900 to $5,340,264 in 1905, or 196.9%. Jacksonville is the most important distributing centre in Florida, and is a port of entry. In 1909 its foreign imports were valued at $513,439; its foreign exports at $2,507,373.

The site of Jacksonville was called Cow Ford (a version of the Indian name, Wacca Pilatka), from the excellent ford of the St John’s River, over which went the King’s Road, a highway built by the English from St Augustine to the Georgia line. The first settlement was made in 1816. In 1822 a town was laid out here and was named in honour of General Andrew Jackson; in 1833 Jacksonville was incorporated. During the Civil War the city was thrice occupied by Federal troops. In 1888 there was an epidemic of yellow fever. On the 3rd of May 1901 a fire destroyed nearly 150 blocks of buildings, constituting nearly the whole of the business part of the city, the total loss being more than $15,000,000; but within two years new buildings greater in number than those destroyed were constructed, and up to December 1909 about 9000 building permits had been granted.

1 Shoals in the river and sand rock at its mouth long prevented the development of an extensive water trade, but in 1896 the United States Government made an appropriation (supplemented in 1902, 1903 and 1904) for deepening, for a width of 300 ft., the channel connecting the city and the ocean to 24 ft., and on the bar 27 ft. (mean low water), and by 1909 the work had been completed; further dredging to a 24 ft. depth between the navigable channel and pierhead lines was authorized in 1907 and completed by 1910.

JACKSONVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Morgan county, Illinois, U.S.A., on Mauvaiseterre Creek, about 33 m. W. of Springfield. Pop. (1890), 12,935; (1900), 15,078, of whom 1497 were foreign-born; (1910 census), 15,326. It is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago & Alton, the Chicago, Peoria & St Louis and the Wabash railways. It is the seat of several educational and philanthropic institutions. Illinois College (Presbyterian), founded in 1829 through the efforts of the Rev. John Millot Ellis (1793-1855), a missionary of the American Home Missionary Society and of the so-called Yale Band (seven Yale graduates devoted to higher education in the Middle West), is one of the oldest colleges in the Central States of the United States. The Jacksonville Female Academy (1830) and the Illinois Conservatory of Music (1871) were absorbed in 1903 by Illinois College, which then became co-educational. The college embraces, besides the collegiate department, Whipple Academy (a preparatory department), the Illinois Conservatory of Music and a School of Art, and in 1908-1909 had 21 instructors and 173 students. The Rev. Edward Beecher was the first president of the college (from 1830 to 1844), and among its prominent graduates have been Richard Yates, jun., the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, Newton Bateman (1822-1897), superintendent of public instruction of Illinois from 1865 to 1875 and president of Knox College in 1875-1893, Bishop Theodore N. Morrison (b. 1850), Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Iowa after 1898, and William J. Bryan. The Illinois Woman’s College (Methodist Episcopal; chartered in 1847 as the Illinois Conference Female Academy) received its present name in 1899. The State Central Hospital for the Insane (opened in 1851), the State School for the deaf (established in 1839, opened in 1845, and the first charitable institution of the state) and the State School for the Blind (1849) are also in Jacksonville. Morgan Lake and Duncan Park are pleasure resorts. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $1,981,582, an increase of 17.7% since 1900. Jacksonville was laid out in 1825 as the county-seat of Morgan county, was named probably in honour of Andrew Jackson, and was incorporated as a town in 1840, chartered as a city in 1867, and re-chartered in 1887. The majority of the early settlers came from the southern and border states, principally from Missouri and Kentucky; but subsequently there was a large immigration of New England and Eastern people, and these elements were stronger in the population of Jacksonville than in any other city of southern Illinois. The city was a station of the “Underground Railroad.”

JACOB (Hebrew yă’ăqōb, derived, according to Gen. xxv. 26, xxvii. 36, from a root meaning “to seize the heel” or “supplant”), son of Isaac and Rebekah in the Biblical narrative, and the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jacob and his twin brother Esau are the eponyms of the Israelites and Edomites. It was said of them that they would be two nations, and that the elder would serve the younger. Esau was born first, but lost his superiority by relinquishing his birthright, and Jacob by an act of deceit gained the paternal blessing intended for Esau (Gen. xxvii., J and E).1 The popular view regarding Israel and Edom is expressed when the story makes Jacob a tent-dweller, and Esau a hunter, a man of the field. But whilst Esau married among the Canaanite “daughters of the land” (P in xxvi. 34; xxviii. 8 seq.), Jacob was sent, or (according to a variant tradition) fled from Beer-sheba, to take a wife from among his Syrian kinsfolk at Haran. On the way he received a revelation at Bethel (“house of God”) promising to him and to his descendants the whole extent of the land. The beautiful story of Jacob’s fortunes at Haran is among the best examples of Hebrew narrative: how he served seven years for Rachel, “and they seemed a few days for the love he had to her,” and was tricked by receiving the elder sister Leah, and how he served yet another seven years, and at last won his love. The patriarch’s increasing wealth caused him to incur the jealousy of his father-in-law, Laban, and he was forced to flee in secret with his family. They were overtaken at Gilead,2 whose name (interpreted “heap of witness”) is explained by the covenant into which Jacob and Laban entered (xxxi. 47 sqq.). Passing Mahanaim (“camps”), where he saw the camps of God, Jacob sent to Esau with friendly overtures. At the Jabbok he wrestled with a divine being and prevailed (cf. Hos. xii. 3 sqq.), hence he called the place Peniel or Penuel (“the face of God”), and received the new name Israel. He then effected an unexpected reconciliation with Esau, passed to Succoth, where he built “booths” for his cattle (hence its name), and reached Shechem. Here he purchased ground from the clan Hamor (cf. Judg. ix. 28), and erected an altar to “God (El) the God of Israel.” This was the scene of the rape of Dinah and of the attack of Simeon and Levi which led to their ruin (xxxiv.; see Dan, Levites, Simeon). Thence Jacob went down south to Bethel, where he received a divine revelation (P), similar to that recorded by the earlier narrator (J), and was called Israel (xxxv. 9-13, 15). Here Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died, on the way to Ephrath. Rachel died in giving birth to Benjamin (q.v.), and further south Reuben was guilty of a grave offence (cf. xlix. 4). According to P, Jacob came to Hebron, and it was at this juncture that Jacob and Esau separated (a second time) and the latter removed to Mount Seir (xxxvi. 6 sqq.; cf. the parallel in xiii. 5 sqq.). Compelled by circumstances, described with much fullness and vividness, Jacob ultimately migrated to Egypt, receiving on the way the promise that God would make of him a great nation, which should come again out of Egypt (see Joseph). After an interview with the Pharaoh (recorded only by P, xlvii. 5-11), he dwelt with his sons in the land of Goshen, and as his death drew near pronounced a formal benediction upon the two sons of Joseph (Manasseh and Ephraim), intentionally exalting the younger. Then he summoned all the “sons” to gather round his bed, and told them “what shall befall in the latter days” (xlix.). He died at the age of 147 (so P), and permission was given to carry his body to Canaan to be buried.

These narratives are full of much valuable evidence regarding marriage customs, pastoral life and duties, popular beliefs and traditions, and are evidently typical of what was currently retailed. Their historical value has been variously estimated. The name existed long before the traditional date of Jacob, and the Egyptian phonetic equivalent of Jacob-el (cf. Isra-el, Ishma-el) appears to be the name of a district of central Palestine (or possibly east of Jordon) about 1500 B.C. But the stories in their present form are very much later. The close relation between Jacob and Aramaeans confirms the view that some of the tribes of Israel were partly of Aramaean origin; his entrance into Palestine from beyond the Jordan is parallel to Joshua’s invasion at the head of the Israelites; and his previous journey from the south finds independent support in traditions of another distinct movement from this quarter. Consequently, it would appear that these extremely elevated and richly developed narratives of Jacob-Israel embody, among a number of other features, a recollection of two distinct traditions of migration which became fused among the Israelites. See further Genesis; Jews.

(S. A. C.)

1 For the symbols J, E, P, as regards the sources of the book of Genesis, see Genesis; Bible: Old Test. Criticism.

2 Since it is some 300 m. from Haran to Gilead it is probable that Laban’s home, only seven days’ journey distant, was nearer Gilead than the current tradition allows (Gen. xxxi. 22 sqq.).

JACOB, JOHN (1812-1858), Indian soldier and administrator, was born on the 11th of January 1812, educated at Addiscombe, and entered the Bombay artillery in 1828. He served in the first Afghan War under Sir John Keane, and afterwards led his regiment with distinction at the battles of Meeanee, Shahdadpur, and Umarkot; but it is as commandant of the Sind Horse and political superintendent of Upper Sind that he was chiefly famous. He was the pacificator of the Sind frontier, reducing the tribes to quietude as much by his commanding personality as by his ubiquitous military measures. In 1853 he foretold the Indian Mutiny, saying: “There is more danger to our Indian empire from the state of the Bengal army, from the feeling which there exists between the native and the European, and thence, spreads throughout the length and breadth of the land, than from all other causes combined. Let government look to this; it is a serious and most important truth”; but he was only rebuked by Lord Dalhousie for his pains. He was a friend of Sir Charles Napier and Sir James Outram, and resembled them in his outspoken criticisms and independence of authority. He died at the early age of 46 of brain fever, brought on by excessive heat and overwork. The town of Jacobabad, which has the reputation of being the hottest place in India, is named after him.

See A. I. Shand, General John Jacob (1900).

JACOB BEN ASHER (1280-1340), codifier of Jewish law, was born in Germany and died in Toledo. A son of Asher ben Yeḥiel (q.v.), Jacob helped to re-introduce the older elaborate method of legal casuistry which had been overthrown by Maimonides (q.v.). The Asheri family suffered great privations but remained faithful in their devotion to the Talmud. Jacob ben Asher is known as the Ba‘al ha-ṭurim (literally “Master of the Rows”) from his chief work, the four Ṭurim or Rows (the title is derived from the four Ṭurim or rows of jewels in the High Priest’s breastplate). In this work Jacob ben Asher codified Rabbinic law on ethics and ritual, and it remained a standard work of reference until it was edited with a commentary by Joseph Qaro, who afterwards simplified the code into the more popular Shulḥan Aruch. Jacob also wrote two commentaries on the Pentateuch.

See Graetz, History of the Jews (Eng. trans.), vol. iv. ch. iii.; Weiss, Dor dor we-dorashav, v. 118-123.

(I. A.)

JACOB OF EDESSA, who ranks with Barhebraeus as the most distinguished for scholarship among Syriac writers,1 was born at ’Ēn-dēbhā in the province of Antioch, probably about A.D. 640. From the trustworthy account of his life by Barhebraeus (Chron. Eccles. i. 289) we learn that he studied first at the famous monastery of Ken-neshrē (on the left bank of the Euphrates, opposite Jerābis) and afterwards at Alexandria, which had of course been for some time in the hands of the Moslems.2 On his return he was appointed bishop of Edessa by his friend Athanasius II. (of Balad), probably in 684,3 but held this office only for three or four years, as the clergy withstood his strict enforcement of the Church canons and he was not supported by Julian, the successor of Athanasius in the patriarchate. Accordingly, having in anger publicly burnt a copy of the canons in front of Julian’s residence, Jacob retired to the monastery of Kaisūm near Samosāta, and from there to the monastery of Eusebhōnā,4 where for eleven years he taught the Psalms and the reading of the Scriptures in Greek. But towards the close of this period he again encountered opposition, this time from monks “who hated the Greeks,” and so proceeded to the great convent of Tell ’Addā or Teleda (? modern Tellādi, N.W. of Aleppo), where he spent nine years in revising and emending the Peshitta version of the Old Testament by the help of the various Greek versions. He was finally recalled to the bishopric of Edessa in 708, but died four months later, on the 5th of June.

In doctrine Jacob was undoubtedly Monophysite.5 Of the very large number of his works, which are mostly in prose, not many have as yet been published, but much information may be gathered from Assemani’s Bibliotheca Orientalis and Wright’s Catalogue of Syriac MSS. in the British Museum. (1) Of the Syriac Old Testament Jacob produced what Wright calls “a curious eclectic or patchwork text,” of which five volumes survive in Europe (Wright’s Catalogue 38). It was “the last attempt at a revision of the Old Testament in the Monophysite Church.” Jacob was also the chief founder of the Syriac Massorah among the Monophysites, which produced such MSS. as the one (Vat. cliii.) described by Wiseman in Horae syriacae, part iii. (2) Jacob was the author both of commentaries and of scholia on the sacred books; of these specimens are given by Assemani and Wright. They were largely quoted by later commentators, who often refer to Jacob as “the interpreter of the Scriptures.” With the commentaries may be mentioned his Hexahemeron, or treatise on the six days of creation, MSS. of which exist at Leiden and at Lyons. It was his latest work, and being left incomplete was finished by his friend George the bishop of the Arabs. Among apocrypha, the History of the Rechabites composed by Zosimus was translated from Greek into Syriac by Jacob (Wright’s Catalogue 1128, and Nau in Revue sémitique vi. 263, vii. 54, 136). (3) Mention has been made above of Jacob’s zeal on behalf of ecclesiastical canons. In his letter to the priest Addai we possess a collection of canons from his pen, given in the form of answers to Addai’s questions. These were edited by Lagarde in Reliquiae juris eccl. syriace, pp. 117 sqq. and Lamy in Dissert. pp. 98 sqq. Additional canons were given in Wright’s Notulae syriacae. The whole have been translated and expounded by Kayser, Die Canones Jacobs von Edessa (Leipzig, 1886). (4) Jacob made many contributions to Syriac liturgy, both original and translated (Wright, Short Hist. p. 145 seq.). (5) To philosophical literature his chief original contribution was his Enchiridion, a tract on philosophical terms (Wright’s Catalogue 984). The translations of works of Aristotle which have been attributed to him are probably by other hands (Wright, Short Hist. p. 149; Duval, Littérature syriaque, pp. 255, 258). The treatise De causa omnium causarum, which was the work of a bishop of Edessa, was formerly attributed to Jacob; but the publication of the whole by Kayser6 has made it clear that the treatise is of much later date. (6) An important historical work by Jacob—a Chronicle in continuation of that of Eusebius—has unfortunately perished all except a few leaves. Of these a full account is given in Wright’s Catalogue 1062. (7) Jacob’s fame among his countrymen rests most of all on his labours as a grammarian. In his letter to George, bishop of Sĕrūgh, on Syriac orthography (published by Phillips in London 1869, and by Martin in Paris the same year) he sets forth the importance of fidelity by scribes in the copying of minutiae of spelling. In his grammar7 (of which only some fragments remain), while expressing his sense of the disadvantage under which Syriac labours through its alphabet containing only consonants, he declined to introduce a general system of vowel-signs, lest the change should contribute to the neglect and loss of the older books written without vowels. At the same time he invented, by adaptation of the Greek vowels, such a system of signs as might serve for purposes of grammatical exposition, and elaborated the rules by which certain consonants serve to indicate vowels. He also systematized and extended the use of diacritical points. It is still a moot question how far Jacob is to be regarded as the author of the five vowel-signs derived from Greek which soon after came into use among the Jacobites.8 In any case he made the most important contribution to Syriac grammar down to the time of Barhebraeus. (8) As a translator Jacob’s greatest achievement was his Syriac version of the Homiliae cathedrales of Severus, the monophysite patriarch of Antioch (512-518, 535-536). This important collection is now in part known to us by E. W. Brooks’s edition and translation of the 6th book of selected epistles of Severus, according to another Syriac version made by Athanasius of Nisibis in 669. (9) A large number of letters by Jacob to various correspondents have been found in various MSS. Besides those on the canon law to Addai, and on grammar to George of Sĕrūgh referred to above, there are others dealing with doctrine, liturgy, &c. A few are in verse.

Jacob impresses the modern reader mainly as an educator of his countrymen, and particularly of the clergy. His writings lack the fervid rhetoric and graceful style of such authors as Isaac of Antioch, Jacob of Sĕrūgh and Philoxenus of Mabbōg. But judged by the standard of his time he shows the qualities of a truly scientific theologian and scholar.

(N. M.)

1 “In the literature of his country Jacob holds much the same place as Jerome among the Latin fathers” (Wright, Short Hist. of Syr. Lit. p. 143).

2 Merx infers that the fact of Jacob’s going to Alexandria as a student tells against the view that the Arabs burned the great library (Hist. artis gramm. apud Syros, p. 35). On this question cf. Krehl in Alli del iv. congr. internaz. degli Orientalisti (Florence, 1880), pp. 433 sqq.

3 Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahrē says 677; but Athanasius was patriarch only 684-687.

4 According to Merx (op. cit. p. 43) this may be the celebrated convent of Eusebius near Apamea.

5 Assemani tried hard to prove him orthodox (B.O. i. 470 sqq.) but changed his opinion on reading his biography by Barhebraeus (ib. ii. 337). See especially Lamy, Dissert. de Syrorum fide, pp. 206 sqq.

6 Text at Leipzig 1889 (Das Buch der Erkenntniss der Wahrheit oder der Ursache aller Ursachen): translation (posthumously) at Strassburg 1893.

7 The surviving fragments were published by Wright (London, 1871) and by Merx, op. cit. p. 73 sqq. of Syriac text.

8 An affirmative answer is given by Wiseman (Horae syr. pp. 181-8) and Wright (Catalogue 1168; Fragm. of the Syriac Grammar of Jacob of Edessa, preface; Short Hist. p. 151 seq.). But Martin (in Jour. As. May-June 1869, pp. 456 sqq.), Duval (Grammaire syriaque, p. 71) and Merx (op. cit. p. 50) are of the opposite opinion. The date of the introduction of the seven Nestorian vowel-signs is also uncertain.

JACOB OF JÜTERBOGK (c. 1381-1465), monk and theologian. Benedict Stolzenhagen, known in religion as Jacob, was born at Jüterbogk in Brandenburg of poor peasant stock. He became a Cistercian at the monastery of Paradiz in Poland, and was sent by the abbot to the university of Cracow, where he became master in philosophy and doctor of theology. He returned to his monastery, of which he became abbot. In 1441, however, discontented with the absence of strict discipline in his community, he obtained the leave of the papal legate at the council of Basel to transfer himself to the Carthusians, entering the monastery of Salvatorberg near Erfurt, of which he became prior. He lectured on theology at the university of Erfurt, of which he was rector in 1455. He died on the 30th of April 1465.

Jacob’s main preoccupation was the reform of monastic life, the grave disorders of which he deplored, and to this end he wrote his Petitiones religiosorum pro reformatione sui status. Another work, De negligentia praelatorum, was directed against the neglect of their duties by the higher clergy, and he addressed a petition for the reform of the church (Advisamentum pro reformatione ecclesiae) to Pope Nicholas V. This having no effect, he issued the most outspoken of his works, De Septem ecclesiae statibus, in which he reviewed the work of the reforming councils of his time, and, without touching the question of doctrine, championed a drastic reform of life and practice of the church on the lines laid down at Constance and Basel.

His principal works are collected in Walch, Monimenta med. aev. i. and ii. (1757, 1771), and Engelbert Klüpfel, Vetus bibliotheca eccles. (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1780).

JACOB OF SĔRŪGH, one of the best Syriac authors, named by one of his biographers “the flute of the Holy Spirit and the harp of the believing church,” was born in 451 at Kurtam, a village on the Euphrates to the west of Ḥarrān, and was probably educated at Edessa. At an early age he attracted the attention of his countrymen by his piety and his literary gifts, and entered on the composition of the long series of metrical homilies on religious themes which formed the great work of his life. Having been ordained to the priesthood, he became periodeutes or episcopal visitor of Ḥaurā, in Sĕrūgh, not far from his birthplace. His tenure of this office extended over a time of great trouble to the Christian population of Mesopotamia, due to the fierce war carried on by Kavadh II. of Persia within the Roman borders. When on the 10th of January 503 Amid was captured by the Persians after a three months’ siege and all its citizens put to the sword or carried captive, a panic seized the whole district, and the Christian inhabitants of many neighbouring cities planned to leave their homes and flee to the west of the Euphrates. They were recalled to a more courageous frame of mind by the letters of Jacob.1 In 519, at the age of 68, Jacob was made bishop of Baṭnān, another town in the district of Sĕrūgh, but only lived till November 521.

From the various extant accounts of Jacob’s life and from the number of his known works, we gather that his literary activity was unceasing. According to Barhebraeus (Chron. Eccles. i. 191) he employed 70 amanuenses and wrote in all 760 metrical homilies, besides expositions, letters and hymns of different sorts. Of his merits as a writer and poet we are now well able to judge from P. Bedjan’s excellent edition of selected metrical homilies, of which four volumes have already appeared (Paris 1905-1908), containing 146 pieces.2 They are written throughout in dodecasyllabic metre, and those published deal mainly with biblical themes, though there are also poems on such subjects as the deaths of Christian martyrs, the fall of the idols, the council of Nicaea, &c.3 Of Jacob’s prose works, which are not nearly so numerous, the most interesting are his letters, which throw light upon some of the events of his time and reveal his attachment to the Monophysite doctrine which was then struggling for supremacy in the Syrian churches, and particularly at Edessa, over the opposite teaching of Nestorius.4

(N. M.)

1 See the contemporary Chronicle called that of Joshua the Stylite, chap. 54.

2 Assemani (Bibl. Orient. i. 305-339) enumerates 231 which he had seen in MSS.

3 Some other historical poems M. Bedjan has not seen fit to publish, on account of their unreliable and legendary character (vol. i. p. ix. of preface).

4 A full list of the older editions of works by Jacob is given by Wright in Short History of Syriac Literature, pp. 68-72.

JACOBA, or Jacqueline (1401-1436), countess of Holland, was the only daughter and heiress of William, duke of Bavaria and count of Holland, Zeeland and Hainaut. She was married as a child to John, duke of Touraine, second son of Charles VI., king of France, who on the death of his elder brother Louis became dauphin. John of Touraine died in April 1417, and two months afterwards Jacoba lost her father. Acknowledged as sovereign in Holland and Zeeland, Jacoba was opposed by her uncle John of Bavaria, bishop of Liége. She had the support of the Hook faction in Holland. Meanwhile she had been married in 1418 by her uncle, John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, to her cousin John IV., duke of Brabant. By the mediation of John the Fearless, a treaty of partition was concluded in 1419 between Jacoba and John of Bavaria; but it was merely a truce, and the contest between uncle and niece soon began again and continued with varying success. In 1420 Jacoba fled to England; and there, declaring that her marriage with John of Brabant was illegal, she contracted a marriage with Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, in 1422. Two years later Jacoba, with Humphrey, invaded Holland, where she was now opposed by her former husband, John of Brabant, John of Bavaria having died of poison. In 1425 Humphrey deserted his wife, who found herself obliged to seek refuge with her cousin, Philip V., duke of Burgundy, to whom she had to submit, and she was imprisoned in the castle of Ghent. John of Brabant now mortgaged the two counties of Holland and Zeeland to Philip, who assumed their protectorate. Jacoba, however, escaped from prison in disguise, and for three years struggled gallantly to maintain herself in Holland against the united efforts of Philip of Burgundy and John of Brabant, and met at first with success. The death of the weak John of Brabant (April 1427) freed the countess from her quondam husband; but nevertheless the pope pronounced Jacoba’s marriage with Humphrey illegal, and Philip, putting out his full strength, broke down all opposition. By a treaty, made in July 1428, Jacoba was left nominally countess, but Philip was to administer the government of Holland, Zeeland and Hainaut, and was declared heir in case Jacoba should die without children. Two years later Philip mortgaged Holland and Zeeland to the Borselen family, of which Francis, lord of Borselen, was the head. Jacoba now made her last effort. In 1432 she secretly married Francis of Borselen, and endeavoured to foment a rising in Holland against the Burgundian rule. Philip invaded the country, however, and threw Borselen into prison. Only on condition that Jacoba abdicated her three countships in his favour would he allow her liberty and recognize her marriage with Borselen. She submitted in April 1432, retained her title of duchess in Bavaria, and lived on her husband’s estates in retirement. She died on the 9th of October 1436, leaving no children.

Bibliography.—F. von Löher, Jakobäa von Bayern und ihre Zeit (2 vols., Nördlingen, 1862-1869); W. J. F. Nuyens, Jacoba van Beieren en de eerste helft der XV. eeuw (Haarlem, 1873); A. von Overstraten, Jacoba van Beieren (Amsterdam, 1790).

(G. E.)

JACOBABAD, a town of British India, the administrative headquarters of the Upper Sind frontier district in Bombay; with a station on the Quetta branch of the North-Western railway, 37 m. from the junction at Ruk, on the main line. Pop. (1901), 10,787. It is famous as having consistently the highest temperature in India. During the month of June the thermometer ranges between 120° and 127° F. The town was founded on the site of the village of Khangarh in 1847 by General John Jacob, for many years commandant of the Sind Horse, who died here in 1858. It has cantonments for a cavalry regiment, with accommodation for caravans from Central Asia. It is watered by two canals. An annual horse show is held in January.

JACOBEAN STYLE, the name given to the second phase of the early Renaissance architecture in England, following the Elizabethan style. Although the term is generally employed of the style which prevailed in England during the first quarter of the 17th century, its peculiar decadent detail will be found nearly twenty years earlier at Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire, and in Oxford and Cambridge examples exist up to 1660, notwithstanding the introduction of the purer Italian style by Inigo Jones in 1619 at Whitehall. Already during Queen Elizabeth’s reign reproductions of the classic orders had found their way into English architecture, based frequently upon John Shute’s The First and Chief Grounds of Architecture, published in 1563, with two other editions in 1579 and 1584. In 1577, three years before the commencement of Wollaton Hall, a copybook of the orders was brought out in Antwerp by Jan Vredeman de Vries. Though nominally based on the description of the orders by Vitruvius, the author indulged freely not only in his rendering of them, but in suggestions of his own, showing how the orders might be employed in various buildings. Those suggestions were of a most decadent type, so that even the author deemed it advisable to publish a letter from a canon of the Church, stating that there was nothing in his architectural designs which was contrary to religion. It is to publications of this kind that Jacobean architecture owes the perversion of its forms and the introduction of strap work and pierced crestings, which appear for the first time at Wollaton (1580); at Bramshill, Hampshire (1607-1612), and in Holland House, Kensington (1624), it receives its fullest development.

(R. P. S.)

JACOBI, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH (1743-1819), German philosopher, was born at Düsseldorf on the 25th of January 1743. The second son of a wealthy sugar merchant near Düsseldorf, he was educated for a commercial career. Of a retiring, meditative disposition, Jacobi associated himself at Geneva mainly with the literary and scientific circle of which the most prominent member was Lesage. He studied closely the works of Charles Bonnet, and the political ideas of Rousseau and Voltaire. In 1763 he was called back to Düsseldorf, and in the following year he married and took over the management of his father’s business. After a short period he gave up his commercial career, and in 1770 became a member of the council for the duchies of Jülich and Berg, in which capacity he distinguished himself by his ability in financial affairs, and his zeal in social reform. Jacobi kept up his interest in literary and philosophic matters by an extensive correspondence, and his mansion at Pempelfort, near Düsseldorf, was the centre of a distinguished literary circle. With C. M. Wieland he helped to found a new literary journal. Der Teutsche Mercur, in which some of his earliest writings, mainly on practical or economic subjects, were published. Here too appeared in part the first of his philosophic works, Edward Allwills Briefsammlung (1776), a combination of romance and speculation. This was followed in 1779 by Woldemar, a philosophic novel, of very imperfect structure, but full of genial ideas, and giving the most complete picture of Jacobi’s method of philosophizing. In 1779 he visited Munich as member of the privy council, but after a short stay there differences with his colleagues and with the authorities of Bavaria drove him back to Pempelfort. A few unimportant tracts on questions of theoretical politics were followed in 1785 by the work which first brought Jacobi into prominence as a philosopher. A conversation which he had held with Lessing in 1780, in which Lessing avowed that he knew no philosophy, in the true sense of that word, save Spinozism, led him to a protracted study of Spinoza’s works. The Briefe über die Lehre Spinozas (1785; 2nd ed., much enlarged and with important Appendices, 1789) expressed sharply and clearly Jacobi’s strenuous objection to a dogmatic system in philosophy, and drew upon him the vigorous enmity of the Berlin clique, led by Moses Mendelssohn. Jacobi was ridiculed as endeavouring to re-introduce into philosophy the antiquated notion of unreasoning belief, was denounced as an enemy of reason, as a pietist, and as in all probability a Jesuit in disguise, and was especially attacked for his use of the ambiguous term “belief.” Jacobi’s next important work, David Hume über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus (1787), was an attempt to show not only that the term Glaube had been used by the most eminent writers to denote what he had employed it for in the Letters on Spinoza, but that the nature of the cognition of facts as opposed to the construction of inferences could not be otherwise expressed. In this writing, and especially in the Appendix, Jacobi came into contact with the critical philosophy, and subjected the Kantian view of knowledge to searching examination.

The outbreak of the war with the French republic induced Jacobi in 1793 to leave his home near Düsseldorf, and for nearly ten years he resided in Holstein. While there he became intimately acquainted with Reinhold (in whose Beiträge, pt. iii., 1801, his important work Über das Unternehmen des Kriticismus, die Vernunft zu Verstande zu bringen was first published), and with Matthias Claudius, the editor of the Wandsbecker Bote. During the same period the excitement caused by the accusation of atheism brought against Fichte at Jena led to the publication of Jacobi’s Letter to Fichte (1799), in which he made more precise the relation of his own philosophic principles to theology. Soon after his return to Germany, Jacobi received a call to Munich in connexion with the new academy of sciences just founded there. The loss of a considerable portion of his fortune induced him to accept this offer; he settled in Munich in 1804, and in 1807 became president of the academy. In 1811 appeared his last philosophic work, directed against Schelling specially (Von den göttlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung), the first part of which, a review of the Wandsbecker Bote, had been written in 1798. A bitter reply from Schelling was left without answer by Jacobi, but gave rise to an animated controversy in which Fries and Baader took prominent part. In 1812 Jacobi retired from the office of president, and began to prepare a collected edition of his works. He died before this was completed, on the 10th of March 1819. The edition of his writings was continued by his friend F. Köppen, and was completed in 1825. The works fill six volumes, of which the fourth is in three parts. To the second is prefixed an introduction by Jacobi, which is at the same time an introduction to his philosophy. The fourth volume has also an important preface.

The philosophy of Jacobi is essentially unsystematic. A certain fundamental view which underlies all his thinking is brought to bear in succession upon those systematic doctrines which appear to stand most sharply in contradiction to it, and any positive philosophic results are given only occasionally. The leading idea of the whole is that of the complete separation between understanding and apprehension of real fact. For Jacobi understanding, or the logical faculty, is purely formal or elaborative, and its results never transcend the given material supplied to it. From the basis of immediate experience or perception thought proceeds by comparison and abstraction, establishing connexions among facts, but remaining in its nature mediate and finite. The principle of reason and consequent, the necessity of thinking each given fact of perception as conditioned, impels understanding towards an endless series of identical propositions, the records of successive comparisons and abstractions. The province of the understanding is therefore strictly the region of the conditioned; to it the world must present itself as a mechanism. If, then, there is objective truth at all, the existence of real facts must be made known to us otherwise than through the logical faculty of thought; and, as the regress from conclusion to premises must depend upon something not itself capable of logical grounding, mediate thought implies the consciousness of immediate truth. Philosophy therefore must resign the hopeless ideal of a systematic (i.e. intelligible) explanation of things, and must content itself with the examination of the facts of consciousness. It is a mere prejudice of philosophic thinkers, a prejudice which has descended from Aristotle, that mediate or demonstrated cognition is superior in cogency and value to the immediate perception of truths or facts.

As Jacobi starts with the doctrine that thought is partial and limited, applicable only to connect facts, but incapable of explaining their existence, it is evident that for him any demonstrative system of metaphysic which should attempt to subject all existence to the principle of logical ground must be repulsive. Now in modern philosophy the first and greatest demonstrative system of metaphysic is that of Spinoza, and it lay in the nature of things that upon Spinoza’s system Jacobi should first direct his criticism. A summary of the results of his examination is thus presented (Werke, i. 216-223): (1) Spinozism is atheism; (2) the Kabbalistic philosophy, in so far as it is philosophy, is nothing but undeveloped or confused Spinozism; (3) the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolff is not less fatalistic than that of Spinoza, and carries a resolute thinker to the very principles of Spinoza; (4) every demonstrative method ends in fatalism; (5) we can demonstrate only similarities (agreements, truths conditionally necessary), proceeding always in identical propositions; every proof presupposes something already proved, the principle of which is immediately given (Offenbarung, revelation, is the term here employed by Jacobi, as by many later writers, e.g. Lotze, to denote the peculiar character of an immediate, unproved truth); (6) the keystone (Element) of all human knowledge and activity is belief (Glaube). Of these propositions only the first and fourth require further notice. Jacobi, accepting the law of reason and consequent as the fundamental rule of demonstrative reasoning, and as the rule explicitly followed by Spinoza, points out that, if we proceed by applying this principle so as to recede from particular and qualified facts to the more general and abstract conditions, we land ourselves, not in the notion of an active, intelligent creator of the system of things, but in the notion of an all-comprehensive, indeterminate Nature, devoid of will or intelligence. Our unconditioned is either a pure abstraction, or else the impossible notion of a completed system of conditions. In either case the result is atheism, and this result is necessary if the demonstrative method, the method of understanding, is regarded as the only possible means of knowledge. Moreover, the same method inevitably lands in fatalism. For, if the action of the human will is to be made intelligible to understanding, it must be thought as a conditioned phenomenon, having its sufficient ground in preceding circumstances, and, in ultimate abstraction, as the outflow from nature which is the sum of conditions. But this is the fatalist conception, and any philosophy which accepts the law of reason and consequent as the essence of understanding is fatalistic. Thus for the scientific understanding there can be no God and no liberty. It is impossible that there should be a God, for if so he would of necessity be finite. But a finite God, a God that is known, is no God. It is impossible that there should be liberty, for if so the mechanical order of phenomena, by means of which they are comprehensible, would be disturbed, and we should have an unintelligible world, coupled with the requirement that it shall be understood. Cognition, then, in the strict sense, occupies the middle place between sense perception, which is belief in matters of sense, and reason, which is belief in supersensuous fact.

The best introduction to Jacobi’s philosophy is the preface to the second volume of the Works, and Appendix 7 to the Letters on Spinoza’s Theory. See also J. Kuhn, Jacobi und die Philosophie seiner Zeit (1834); F. Deycks, F. H. Jacobi im Verhältnis zu seinen Zeitgenossen (1848); H. Düntzer, Freundesbilder aus Goethes Leben (1853); E. Zirngiebl, F. H. Jacobis Leben, Dichten, und Denken, 1867; F. Harms, Über die Lehre von F. H. Jacobi (1876). Jacobi’s Auserlesener Briefwechsel has been edited by F. Roth in 2 vols. (1825-1827).

JACOBI, JOHANN GEORG (1740-1814), German poet, elder brother of the philosopher, F. H. Jacobi (1743-1819), was born at Düsseldorf on the 2nd of September 1740. He studied theology at Göttingen and jurisprudence at Helmstedt, and was appointed, in 1766, professor of philosophy in Halle. In this year he made the acquaintance of J. W. L. (“Vater”) Gleim, who, attracted by the young poet’s Poetische Versuche (1764), became his warm friend, and a lively literary correspondence ensued between Gleim in Halberstadt and Jacobi in Halle. In order to have Jacobi near him, Gleim succeeded in procuring for him a prebendal stall at the cathedral of Halberstadt in 1769, and here Jacobi issued a number of anacreontic lyrics and sonnets. He tired, however, of the lighter muse, and in 1774, to Gleim’s grief, left Halberstadt, and for two years (1774-1776) edited at Düsseldorf the Iris, a quarterly for women readers. Meanwhile, he wrote many charming lyrics, distinguished by exquisite taste and true poetical feeling. In 1784 he became professor of literature at the university of Freiburg im Breisgau, a post which he held until his death there on the 4th of January 1814. In addition to the earlier Iris, to which Goethe, his brother F. H. Jacobi, Gleim and other poets contributed, he published, from 1803-1813, another periodical, also called Iris, in which Klopstock, Herder, Jean Paul, Voss and the brothers Stollberg also collaborated.

Jacobi’s Sämmtliche Werke were published in 1774 (Halberstadt, 3 vols.). Other editions appeared at Zürich in 1807-1813 and 1825. See Ungedruckte Briefe von und an Johann Georg Jacobi (Strassburg, 1874); biographical notice by Daniel Jacoby in Allg. Deutsche Biographie; Longo, Laurence Sterne und Johann Georg Jacobi (Vienna, 1898); and Leben J. G. Jacobis, von einem seiner Freunde (1822).

JACOBI, KARL GUSTAV JACOB (1804-1851), German mathematician, was born at Potsdam, of Jewish parentage, on the 10th of December 1804. He studied at Berlin University, where he obtained the degree of doctor of philosophy in 1825, his thesis being an analytical discussion of the theory of fractions. In 1827 he became extraordinary and in 1829 ordinary professor of mathematics at Königsberg, and this chair he filled till 1842, when he visited Italy for a few months to recruit his health. On his return he removed to Berlin, where he lived as a royal pensioner till his death, which occurred on the 18th of February 1851.

His investigations in elliptic functions, the theory of which he established upon quite a new basis, and more particularly his development of the theta-function, as given in his great treatise Fundamenta nova theoriae functionum ellipticarum (Königsberg, 1829), and in later papers in Crelle’s Journal, constitute his grandest analytical discoveries. Second in importance only to these are his researches in differential equations, notably the theory of the last multiplier, which is fully treated in his Vorlesungen über Dynamik, edited by R. F. A. Clebsch (Berlin, 1866). It was in analytical development that Jacobi’s peculiar power mainly lay, and he made many important contributions of this kind to other departments of mathematics, as a glance at the long list of papers that were published by him in Crelle’s Journal and elsewhere from 1826 onwards will sufficiently indicate. He was one of the early founders of the theory of determinants; in particular, he invented the functional determinant formed of the n² differential coefficients of n given functions of n independent variables, which now bears his name (Jacobian), and which has played an important part in many analytical investigations (see Algebraic Forms). Valuable also are his papers on Abelian transcendents, and his investigations in the theory of numbers, in which latter department he mainly supplements the labours of K. F. Gauss. The planetary theory and other particular dynamical problems likewise occupied his attention from time to time. He left a vast store of manuscript, portions of which have been published at intervals in Crelle’s Journal. His other works include Commentatio de transformatione integralis duplicis indefiniti in formam simpliciorem (1832), Canon arithmeticus (1839), and Opuscula mathematica (1846-1857). His Gesammelte Werke (1881-1891) were published by the Berlin Academy.

See Lejeune-Dirichlet, “Gedächtnisrede auf Jacobi” in the Abhandlungen der Berliner Akademie (1852).

JACOBINS, THE, the most famous of the political clubs of the French Revolution. It had its origin in the Club Breton, which was established at Versailles shortly after the opening of the States General in 1789. It was at first composed exclusively of deputies from Brittany, but was soon joined by others from various parts of France, and counted among its early members Mirabeau, Sieyès, Barnave, Pétion, the Abbé Grégoire, Charles and Alexandre Lameth, Robespierre, the duc d’Aiguillon, and La Revellière-Lépeaux. At this time its meetings were secret and little is known of what took place at them. After the émeute of the 5th and 6th of October the club, still entirely composed of deputies, followed the National Assembly to Paris, where it rented the refectory of the monastery of the Jacobins in the Rue St Honoré, near the seat of the Assembly. The name “Jacobins,” given in France to the Dominicans, because their first house in Paris was in the Rue St Jacques, was first applied to the club in ridicule by its enemies. The title assumed by the club itself, after the promulgation of the constitution of 1791, was Société des amis de la constitution séants aux Jacobins à Paris, which was changed on the 21st of September 1792, after the fall of the monarchy, to Société des Jacobins, amis de la liberté et de l’égalité. It occupied successively the refectory, the library, and the chapel of the monastery.

Once transferred to Paris, the club underwent rapid modifications. The first step was its expansion by the admission as members or associates of others besides deputies; Arthur Young was so admitted on the 18th of January 1790. On the 8th of February the society was formally constituted on this broader basis by the adoption of the rules drawn up by Barnave, which were issued with the signature of the duc d’Aiguillon, the president. The objects of the club were defined as (1) to discuss in advance questions to be decided by the National Assembly; (2) to work for the establishment and strengthening of the constitution in accordance with the spirit of the preamble (i.e. of respect for legally constituted authority and the rights of man); (3) to correspond with other societies of the same kind which should be formed in the realm. At the same time the rules of order and forms of election were settled, and the constitution of the club determined. There were to be a president, elected every month, four secretaries, a treasurer, and committees elected to superintend elections and presentations, the correspondence, and the administration of the club. Any member who by word or action showed that his principles were contrary to the constitution and the rights of man was to be expelled, a rule which later on facilitated the “purification” of the society by the expulsion of its more moderate elements. By the 7th article the club decided to admit as associates similar societies in other parts of France and to maintain with them a regular correspondence.

This last provision was of far-reaching importance. By the 10th of August 1790 there were already one hundred and fifty-two affiliated clubs; the attempts at counter-revolution led to a great increase of their number in the spring of 1791, and by the close of the year the Jacobins had a network of branches all over France. It was this widespread yet highly centralized organization that gave to the Jacobin Club its formidable power.

At the outset the Jacobin Club was not distinguished by extreme political views. The somewhat high subscription confined its membership to men of substance, and to the last it was—so far as the central society in Paris was concerned—composed almost entirely of professional men, such as Robespierre, or well-to-do bourgeois, like Santerre. From the first, however, other elements were present. Besides Louis Philippe, duc de Chartres (afterwards king of the French), liberal aristocrats of the type of the duc d’Aiguillon, the prince de Broglie, or the vicomte de Noailles, and the bourgeois who formed the mass of the members, the club contained such figures as “Père” Michel Gérard, a peasant proprietor from Tuel-en-Montgermont, in Brittany, whose rough common sense was admired as the oracle of popular wisdom, and whose countryman’s waistcoat and plaited hair were later on to become the model for the Jacobin fashion.1 The provincial branches were from the first far more democratic, though in these too the leadership was usually in the hands of members of the educated or propertied classes. Up to the very eve of the republic, the club ostensibly supported the monarchy; it took no part in the petition of the 17th of July 1790 for the king’s dethronement; nor had it any official share even in the insurrections of the 20th of June and the 10th of August 1792; it only formally recognized the republic on the 21st of September. But the character and extent of the club’s influence cannot be gauged by its official acts alone, and long before it emerged as the principal focus of the Terror, its character had been profoundly changed by the secession of its more moderate elements, some to found the Club of 1789, some in 1791—among them Barnave, the Lameths, Duport and Bailly—to found the club of the Feuillants scoffed at by their former friends as the club monarchique. The main cause of this change was the admission of the public to the sittings of the club, which began on the 14th of October 1791. The result is described in a report of the Department of Paris on “the state of the empire,” presented on the 12th of June 1792, at the request of Roland, the minister of the interior, and signed by the duc de La Rochefoucauld, which ascribes to the Jacobins all the woes of the state. “There exists,” it runs, “in the midst of the capital committed to our care a public pulpit of defamation, where citizens of every age and both sexes are admitted day by day to listen to a criminal propaganda.... This establishment, situated in the former house of the Jacobins, calls itself a society; but it has less the aspect of a private society than that of a public spectacle: vast tribunes are thrown open for the audience; all the sittings are advertised to the public for fixed days and hours, and the speeches made are printed in a special journal and lavishly distributed.”2 In this society—the report continues—murder is counselled or applauded, all authorities are calumniated and all the organs of the law bespattered with abuse; as to its power, it exercises “by its influence, its affiliations and its correspondence a veritable ministerial authority, without title and without responsibility, while leaving to the legal and responsible authorities only the shadow of power” (Schmidt, Tableaux i. 78, &c.).

The constituency to which the club was henceforth responsible, and from which it derived its power, was in fact the peuple bête of Paris; the sans-culottes—decayed lackeys, cosmopolitan ne’er-do-wells, and starving workpeople—who crowded its tribunes. To this audience, and not primarily to the members of the club, the speeches of the orators were addressed and by its verdict they were judged. In the earlier stages of the Revolution the mob had been satisfied with the fine platitudes of the philosophes and the vague promise of a political millennium; but as the chaos in the body politic grew, and with it the appalling material misery, it began to clamour for the blood of the “traitors” in office by whose corrupt machinations the millennium was delayed, and only those orators were listened to who pandered to its suspicions. Hence the elimination of the moderate elements from the club; hence the ascendancy of Marat, and finally of Robespierre, the secret of whose power was that they really shared the suspicions of the populace, to which they gave a voice and which they did not shrink from translating into action. After the fall of the monarchy Robespierre was in effect the Jacobin Club; for to the tribunes he was the oracle of political wisdom, and by his standard all others were judged.3 With his fall the Jacobins too came to an end.

Not the least singular thing about the Jacobins is the very slender material basis on which their overwhelming power rested. France groaned under their tyranny, which was compared to that of the Inquisition, with its system of espionage and denunciations which no one was too illustrious or too humble to escape. Yet it was reckoned by competent observers that, at the height of the Terror, the Jacobins could not command a force of more than 3000 men in Paris. But the secret of their strength was that, in the midst of the general disorganization, they alone were organized. The police agent Dutard, in a report to the minister Garat (April 30, 1793), describing an episode in the Palais Égalité (Royal), adds: “Why did a dozen Jacobins strike terror into two or three hundred aristocrats? It is that the former have a rallying-point and that the latter have none.” When the jeunesse dorée did at last organize themselves, they had little difficulty in flogging the Jacobins out of the cafés into comparative silence. Long before this the Girondin government had been urged to meet organization by organization, force by force; and it is clear from the daily reports of the police agents that even a moderate display of energy would have saved the National Convention from the humiliation of being dominated by a club, and the French Revolution from the blot of the Terror. But though the Girondins were fully conscious of the evil, they were too timid, or too convinced of the ultimate triumph of their own persuasive eloquence, to act. In the session of the 30th of April 1793 a proposal was made to move the Convention to Versailles out of reach of the Jacobins, and Buzot declared that it was “impossible to remain in Paris” so long as “this abominable haunt” should exist; but the motion was not carried, and the Girondins remained to become the victims of the Jacobins.

Meanwhile other political clubs could only survive so long as they were content to be the shadows of the powerful organization of the Rue St Honoré. The Feuillants had been suppressed on the 18th of August 1792. The turn of the Cordeliers came so soon as its leaders showed signs of revolting against Jacobin supremacy, and no more startling proof of this ascendancy could be found than the ease with which Hébert and his fellows were condemned and the readiness with which the Cordeliers, after a feeble attempt at protest, acquiesced in the verdict. It is idle to speculate on what might have happened had this ascendancy been overthrown by the action of a strong government. No strong government existed, nor, in the actual conditions of the country, could exist on the lines laid down by the constitution. France was menaced by civil war within, and by a coalition of hostile powers without; the discipline of the Terror was perhaps necessary if she was to be welded into a united force capable of resisting this double peril; and the revolutionary leaders saw in the Jacobin organization the only instrument by which this discipline could be made effective. This is the apology usually put forward for the Jacobins by republican writers of later times; they were, it is said (and of some of them it is certainly true), no mere doctrinaires and visionary sectaries, but practical and far-seeing politicians, who realized that “desperate ills need desperate remedies,” and, by having the courage of their convictions, saved the gains of the Revolution for France.

The Jacobin Club was closed after the fall of Robespierre on the 9th of Thermidor of the year III., and some of its members were executed. An attempt was made to re-open the club, which was joined by many of the enemies of the Thermidorians, but on the 21st of Brumaire, year III. (Nov. 11, 1794), it was definitively closed. Its members and their sympathizers were scattered among the cafés, where a ruthless war of sticks and chairs was waged against them by the young “aristocrats” known as the jeunesse dorée. Nevertheless the “Jacobins” survived, in a somewhat subterranean fashion, emerging again in the club of the Panthéon, founded on the 25th of November 1795, and suppressed in the following February (see Babeuf; François Noel). The last attempt to reorganize them was the foundation of the Réunion d’amis de l’égalité et de la liberté, in July 1799, which had its headquarters in the Salle du Manège of the Tuileries, and was thus known as the Club du Manège. It was patronized by Barras, and some two hundred and fifty members of the two councils of the legislature were enrolled as members, including many notable ex-Jacobins. It published a newspaper called the Journal des Libres, proclaimed the apotheosis of Robespierre and Babeuf, and attacked the Directory as a royauté pentarchique. But public opinion was now preponderatingly moderate or royalist, and the club was violently attacked in the press and in the streets, the suspicions of the government were aroused; it had to change its meeting-place from the Tuileries to the church of the Jacobins (Temple of Peace) in the Rue du Bac, and in August it was suppressed, after barely a month’s existence. Its members revenged themselves on the Directory by supporting Napoleon Bonaparte.