by Paul R. Spitzzeri
On this Flag Day, which became a national day of commemoration by a proclamation of President Woodrow Wilson in 1916, we highlight a recent acquisition to the Museum’s artifact collection, the pamphlet “A Stainless Flag” by the Reverend Ervin S. Chapman (1838-1921), who has been mention in a few prior posts here relative to his untiring efforts to bring about the prohibition of alcoholic beverages, including during his years as founder and head of the State Anti-Saloon League and editor of its publication, The Searchlight.
Chapman was from northwest Ohio, being born and raised, notably, in the county of Defiance, and who spent his early adult years working on the family farm. In 1860, the year he married Adelia Haymaker, with whom he had five children, Chapman became active in securing the election of Abraham Lincoln as president, giving many speeches in his native state and then doing so again for the reelection campaign four years later. This likely led to a patronage position as a clerk for the House of Representatives from 1864-1869.
Following this, Chapman was ordained a minister with the United Brethren Church, though he transferred to the Presbyterian Church in the early Eighties. He earned a master’s degree at Westfield College, a United Brethren institution in east-central Illinois, and followed this with another Church-affiliated school, Lebanon Valley College (now Methodist connected) in Pennsylvania. Chapman then secured a law degree at Otterbein University, yet another United Brethren school that has become Methodist, in his home state (a local connection is the community of Otterbein in Rowland Heights, a few miles east of the Homestead.)
Chapman served in pastorates in Ohio and Wyoming before migrating to California, where, in 1898, he became the superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League and its newsletter editor. In 1905, he mounted a drive to pass an ordinance in Los Angeles banning saloons, as the post through one of the links above details, but it was badly defeated.
Undeterred, Chapman continued his crusade leading to the publication of “A Stainless Flag,” which is often accounted as published in 1906 because it is the text of a speech given at a clerical conference in the Angel City that June, then delivered some 30 times during a national tour and at the Anti-Saloon League national confab in late November. On the inside back wrapper, however, is a score of a tune inspired by his oration and called “Give Us A Stainless Flag” was copyrighted the following year and it is noted that the reprint was from a June 1907 publication.
In any case, Chapman began his essay with a connection between an ivy wine and the trafficking in alcohol because the latter “has become deeply rooted and has spread out overall all our social and civic system.” As such, he declared, literally preaching to the choir, that,
It is a parasite, feeding upon prosperity but never producing it, a vicious poison ivy, freighting the air with the malignant germs of moral and material pestilence, and producing the most undesirable earthly conditions and experiences. We all recognize its harmfulness, we deplore its existence and long and pray for its extermination.
The problem, however, is that local option bans, including at the state level, addressed the branches but not the roots and this was “efficient but not sufficient” and, gratifying as those efforts were, including his own half-century of devotion to the cause, the saloon banishment project was simply not enough as they “will continue to feast and fatten upon the nation’s heart’s blood.”
With all the good done in local work, including public education and the growth of the sentiment behind prohibition, Chapman continued, “there now must be more heroic treatment of this evil” so that “the axe will be be laid at the root of the tree by a decision of our National Supreme Court denying the right of civil government, either general or local, anywhere under the American flag, to authorize, consent o, or submit to the pestilence-breeding traffic in strong drink.”
The writer was convinced that this was inevitable, asserting that “correct court decisions are as certain and easily forecast as is the solution of a mathematical problem.” He maintained that “when conditions are favorable and the opportunity is properly presented,” it was incontrovertible that the United States Supreme Court would “render a decision that will place the liquor-selling process of drunkard-making under the ban instead of the protection of civil law.”
Chapman knew this because he began studying law in the 1850s, though it would be some forty years before he earned his degree and combined his legal cognition with his spiritual fervor in claiming that his view was “an all-dominating assurance, filling my soul with gladness[,] my heart with courage, and nerving my arm with strength for battle.” Additionally, he cited a “progress of human society and of civil government” and “civic reform” that embodied of two facts, deemed to be “stern, stubborn, inflexible.” The first was “The Imperative Obligation of Civil Government.”
The minister averred that “the most sacred, imperative and unyielding obligation known to this earth” was that government was “not free to act as it may choose unless it chooses to act right” and this was based on what he called “the divine origin of civil government” and which was derived from Christian Scripture that “the powers that be are ordained of God.” Chapman added, however, that this was “re-affirmed by all reputable authority on civil jurisprudence from the dawn of civilization to the present hour.”
How is it known that there was this spiritual sacred obligation? Chapman cited the phrase: “the punishment of evil doers and the praise of them that do well” as well as that civil government is “the minister of God” as “an avenger executing wrath upon him that doeth evil.” This claim that government officials were “God’s ministers,” as determined by the resort to the Christian Bible, is striking, but one echoed through much of our 250-year history, including now by some, and brings up notable questions regarding the distinction made by the founders between church and state.
The use of the word “evil” was also key to Chapman’s arguments as he asserted that “civil government has not the slightest liberty of choice as to its attitude toward good and evil.” He seemed to assume that these were strictly definable qualities from which legislation could unerringly be determined based on “encouragement and helpfulness.” There was some hedging, however, in the remark that the government “may not always be clear and correct in its decisions as to what is and what is not wrong, or harmful,” but, having so decided, it was a mandate that it must “prohibit that act, pursuit or institution.”
If the basis for his position was that these ministers of God had no choice, even if not always clear or correct, it is also worth pointing out Chapman’s view that “all reputable authorities on law and civil jurisprudence affirms and re-affirms these inspired declarations” from Christian Scripture. These authorities include Roman (and pagan) “ancient authority,” the code of Justinian, though nothing was cited by Chapman regarding divine inspiration, and the British legal figure, William Blackstone, who was quoted regarding “Supreme power,” though, while Chapman interpreted “supreme” as divine, Blackstone elsewhere cited “the Creator” or “Maker.”
As we mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it is worth noting Chapman’s consideration of “Our Immortal Sires.” Yet, as he lionized the “great men, [who] with bare and bleeding feet . . . had marched o’er fields of poison battle, where the earthquake and the fire led the charge, and had thus wrested from reluctant destiny the right to establish on this continent a free and independent nation,” he offers that the “perfect union,” “domestic tranquility,” “general welfare,” and so on were “all in perfect accord with the teachings of Scripture.” This is a distinction to highlight, but Chapman goes on to comment that civil government is “a divine institution” and “not a humanly-constructed piece of machinery, to be operated as the caprice of man may dictate.”
Chapman also declared that the Constitution, Bill of Rights and court decisions mandate that the “three main pillars of the state” are “morality, religion and education” and asserts, with emphasis, that “WHATEVER INTERFERES WITH THESE IS CONDEMNED AND MUST BE FORBIDDEN AND PROHIBITED BY CIVIL GOVERNMENT.” Moreover, he insists that there “is not the slightest disagreement among recognized authorities in all the civilized nations of earth and in all ages of civilization.” The obvious question is from where Chapman derives these categorical statements, who were the “recognized authorities,” and what constituted “civilized nations.”
Again, he asserts that civil government had to maintain right and legislate against wrong because “that is the purpose for which God called it into being” and “the civilized nations of the earth, without one exception” accepted this totally. Yet, these were not the most important part of Chapman’s argument; instead, it was his concept of “The Divine Mandate.” Note how he expressed this idea:
There was a period when Gold ruled immediately [directly] in the earthly affairs of men, when from time to time He gave, in individual cases, specific directions for the guidance of human conduct [such as the issuance of the Ten Commandments]. But when conditions required a change, civil government was instituted as God’s agency to take His place in safeguarding the interests of His creatures and in promoting their welfare.
What those conditions were went unelucidated, while the writer insisted that, even with civil government being created, this did not mean “any withdrawal or relinquishment of divine authority” nor the abrogation of “God’s immutable law of right.” Chapman also employed the comparison of the hiring of a governess to care for children under the authority and direction of parents, with the role of civil government officials as God’s agents in implementing “his inflexible law.”
The effect that scientific investigation had in preceding centuries is reflected in his remark that “in all the universe His laws are constantly in force” because those of us on Earth are “awed into reverent silence by the spectacle there presented by the countless worlds which yield ceaseless obedience to this supreme divine mandate.” How Chapman could know this is an obvious question, or his comment that God’s laws “are impelled onward by the law of centrifugal force, and held firmly and unyieldingly to their orbits by the law of centripetal force,” while racing through space “with inconceivable velocity” along “their appointed paths, always on time and never in collision.”
Chapman also cited Blackstone with regard to the idea that God, or the Creator, “laid down certain immutable laws of human nature whereby that free will in some degree regulated and restrained” with respect to good and evil as well as “public morality.” He asked “when we say of government or law that it is good, or bad, what do we mean?” and replied, “we mean that there is a standard of right and wrong, higher and more sacredly binding than any written law, and that all human governments and laws, and all human institutions and acts must be judged by that supreme and unwritten [a key word, to be sure] mandate.
Reviewing commentary by justices of the Supreme Court in a 1951 case (see footnotes 2/10 and 2/11) with respect to “moral turpitude” is interesting to see a “modern times” view, especially as Chapman cited the Court in a 1798 case regarding legislative authority with the quote of “they may command what is right and prohibit what is wrong but they cannot change innocence into guilt.”
Another striking assertion by the author was that “Legislators are Only Copyists” and that, when it came to “all great moral questions” it was a truism that “A LEGISLATOR IS NO MORE A LAW-MAKER THAN AN ASTRONOMER IS A PLANET-MAKER.” In other words, as the latter discovered and made known “what God has placed there,” the job of legislators was “to ascertain by diligent research what are the requirements of the immutable law of good and evil, and enact them into statutes for human government.”
With these defined limits on legislative authority to embrace only what was “in harmony with immutable law,” Chapman declared, apparently with a reference to the categorical imperative of philosopher Immanuel Kant, that “a legislator is imperatively prohibited from enacting into human statutes anything not in harmony with the eternal law of right.” Blackstone was twice cited with regard to these supposed limits, while brief quotes from the Supreme Court were offered with respect to legislative authority on the social compact, limits on rights conferred to a beer company, constraints on statutory enactments on public health and morals.
How these specifically adhered to the prohibition of alcohol was only explained through three words “no legislature can,” but this oblique and vague reference was massaged by Chapman’s assertion, “how strong, how clear, how emphatic is this declaration” with a “manifest authority and unquestioning assurance.” Just on that general remark came the insistence that “it is the authoritative declaration of the Supreme Court of the nation, and all recognized authority takes the same position.”
Blackstone’s quote of “the Creator Himself in all His dispensations conforms” is aligned with “writings of the most distinguished authors and from court decisions” so that it is asserted that “unequivocal language [defines] the duty of the legislator simply to transcribe into human enactments the eternal and immutable law of good and evil.” The British legal scholar was quoted concerning “natural rights” which “need not the aid of human laws” and that this applied to crimes and misdemeanors “forbidden by the superior laws” including murder, perjury of theft, the moral turpitude of which was not enhanced by statutes passed by “the inferior legislature.”
For Chapman, this meant that a Blackstone’s use of “inferior legislature” was “designed to emphasize its subordination to to the supreme Law Giver” and that legislative bodies can enforce and penalize but “cannot add to [the] validity or to [the] binding force” of these “eternal laws.” Blackstone’s statement that the “immutable law of right . . . is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times” was such that no human laws could be valid if contradicting this concept.
These legislative limits were clear, it was remarked, by the idea that “in all the history of civilization the supremacy of the eternal law of right in the administration of civil government has been universally recognized,” even if there were times when “the law was not clearly understood.” Consequently, Chapman restated,
As has been shown, the legislature has no right or authority to enact any statute which conflicts with the eternal law of right, but if, by any process or for any cause, such a statute should be enacted, the remedy is not in popular rebellion, or nullification, but in THE JUDICIARY whose duty it is, not only to interpret legislative enactments as applied to earthly affairs a to pass upon their constitutionality, but also to declare constitutions, as well as statutes, valid or void according to the demands of the eternal unwritten [there is that word again] law of right.
With this, we’ll pause here and return with part two as Chapman turns to his evocation of judicial power and responsibility. Join us for that soon.