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Skepticism and American Faith
Skepticism and
American Faith
From the Revolution to the Civil War

C H R I S TO P H E R G R A S S O

1
 1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with
the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning
reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the
Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Grasso, Christopher, author.
Title: Skepticism and American faith : from the Revolution to the Civil War /
Christopher Grasso.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2017038186 (print) | LCCN 2017058966 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190494384 (Updf) | ISBN 9780190494391 (Epub) |
ISBN 9780190494377 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: United States—Church history—19th century. | United
States—Church history—18th century. | Skepticism—United States—19th
century. | Skepticism—United States—18th century. | United
States—Religion—19th century. | United States—Religion—18th century.
Classification: LCC BR525 (ebook) | LCC BR525 .G665 2018 (print) |
DDC 277.3/081—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017038186

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
For Karin
 CONTENTS

Note on Sources ix

Introduction 1

PART ONE REVOLUTIONS, 1775–1815

1. Deist Hero, Deist Monster: On Religious Common

Sense in the Wake of the American Revolution 25
2. Souls Rising: The Authority of the Inner Witness, and Its Limits 65

3. Instituting Skepticism: The Emergence of Organized Deism 97

4. Instituting Skepticism: Contention, Endurance, and Invisibility 118

PART T WO ENLIGHTENMENTS, 1790–1840

5. Skeptical Enlightenment: An American Education in

Jeffersonian Pennsylvania 159
6. Christian Enlightenment: Eastern Cities and the Great West 193
7. Christian Enlightenment: Faith into Practice in Marion, Missouri 227

8. Revelation and Reason: New Englanders in the Early Nineteenth

Century 250

PART THREE REFORMS, 1820–1850

9. Faith in Reform: Remaking Society, Body, and Soul 279

viii contents

10. Infidels, Protestants, and Catholics: Religion and

Reform in Boston 323
11. Converting Skeptics: Infidel and Protestant Economies 357

PART FOUR SACRED CAUSES, 1830–1865

12. Political Hermeneutics: Nullifying the Bible and Consolidating

Proslavery Christianity 397
13. Lived Experience and the Sacred Cause: Faith, Skepticism,
and Civil War 441

Epilogue: Death and Politics 480

Appendix: Grounds of Faith and Modes of Skepticism 493

Acknowledgments 507
Notes 511
References 593
Index 633
 NOTE ON SOURCES

I have preserved spelling, capitalization, and punctuation from the original sources.
In a very few instances, I have supplied clarifications within brackets. Full cita-
tions of the primary sources appear in the notes. Citations of secondary sources
are shortened in the notes, with full bibliographic information available in the
references list.

ix
Skepticism and American Faith
 Introduction

The sceptic and the christian, Robert Dale Owen and Origen Bacheler,
argued for ten months in the pages of the Free Enquirer, a freethought newspaper,
in 1831. Their discussion articulates many of the major issues marking the rela-
tionship of skepticism and faith from the era of the American Revolution to the
Civil War, when these two terms were used to organize a field of thought and
experience the way the poles of a magnet arrange metal shavings tossed onto a
piece of paper. “I was brought up by a kind and strictly religious mother, in the
very lap of orthodoxy,” the sceptic wrote. But the more he read and reflected,
the more convinced he became that nature was “silent regarding the doings, the
attributes, nay the existence of a God.” Turning away from the “ghostly dreams
and disquieting imaginations” of the churches, he felt freed from religious anxi-
ety. He stepped forward publicly as the sceptic to challenge religious dogmas
so that others might be freed, too. The christian countered: “It was once my
unhappy lot to be for a time a Sceptic.” But then he became convinced that the
Bible really was the Word of God, and that God’s Spirit was at work in his soul
and in the world. He thought it his duty to help others similarly free themselves
from the “snare” of skepticism.
Each man knew that beneath the intellectual debate they were conducting
about the existence of God, the nature of humanity, and the possibility of revela-
tion ran a current of personal psychological experience. But each knew, too, how
the concerns about religious skepticism and faith also flooded over and trans-
formed a much broader social, economic, and political landscape. Religion was
not just false, the sceptic argued, but dangerous. “It excites fears that are without
foundation; it consumes valuable time that can never be recalled, and valuable
talents that ought to be better employed; it draws money from the layman to sup-
port a deception; it teaches the elect to look upon their less favored fellow crea-
tures as heathen men and publicans, living in sin here and doomed to perdition
hereafter; it awakens harassing doubts, gloomy despondency and fitful melan-
choly; it turns our thoughts from the things of this world, where alone true knowl-
edge is to be found: worse than all, it chains us down to antiquated orthodoxy and

1
2 Skepticism and American Faith

forbids the free discussion of those very subjects which it most concerns us to
discuss. If such a religion be a deception, its votaries are slaves.”
The christian answered that the fears that religion excited were necessary
to keep bad people in check. And religion had other crucial social benefits. “The
time, talents, and money devoted to the subject, are vastly overbalanced by the
good effects on society, to say nothing of futurity. Thus it is of immense advan-
tage to the world in a temporal point of view. It does not turn our thoughts from
social duties, but affords a most powerful incentive to vigilance therein. It does
not forbid the discussion of any subject, or hold us back from following truth,
lead where she may; but, on the contrary, it directs us to ‘prove all things, and
hold fast that which is good.’ ”
Time and money; power and persecution; freedom and obligation; blindness
and insight: the stakes for a society, for a people, were high.1

The Personal and the Political

His family and friends thought he was dying, so a local minister came to ask the
pale, sick young man questions about his faith. A divinity student, he gave ortho-
dox answers to the pastor’s questions about doctrine—orthodox for his mid-
eighteenth-century New England town, where something like Puritan piety still
passed for religious common sense. Even on what he thought might be his
deathbed, though, he could not reveal his secret: he had long been wandering in
what he would later call the “cloudy darksome valley” of religious skepticism.
His skeptical turn had not been prompted by a public debate or even by private
conversations with friends or acquaintances. He had internalized the dialogue of
skepticism and faith from his reading. As an intellectually voracious college stu-
dent and then a tutor he had read not just the standard Puritan divines but their
liberal and deist critics, as well as the new enlightened philosophy and science.
His studies had forced him to confront an awful, unspeakable idea: What if the
Bible was not the revealed word of God after all? What if Christianity, like other
religions, was merely “nothing but priestcraft and artificial error?”2
Ezra Stiles recovered from his illness, returned to his faith, and eventually
became a clergyman. But after the American Revolution he watched with grave
concern as other doubters came out of the closet and started to achieve posi-
tions of social prestige and political power. This development was especially
worrisome at a time when states were reframing the relationship between reli-
gion and government. Few critics of Christianity were as outspoken as Ethan
Allen, the Revolutionary War hero from Vermont who published Reason, the
Only Oracle of Man in 1785, a book that urged readers to discard the warped
theologies derived from ancient biblical fables. Yet Stiles saw dangerous trends
 Introduc tion 3

in voters who were indifferent to a candidate’s religious opinions and opposed to

the state patronizing Christianity. From his own experience and from his obser-
vation of the broader national scene, he understood that the relationship of reli-
gious skepticism and faith was at once an intellectual concern and a matter of
personal psychological struggle, a pressing social issue and a potentially explo-
sive political problem for the new American republic.
On the eve of the Civil War, the relationship of skepticism and faith was still
fraught—intellectually, psychologically, socially, and politically. A young teacher
in Alabama wanted to believe but doubted the claims of the Bible and the
Christian churches. She had read the new biblical criticism from Germany that
seemed to expose the scriptural accounts as myths, the Romantics who tried to
reenvision Christianity by reducing it to poetic truth, and the Transcendental
philosophers who turned to worship a divinity in man and nature. But more
fundamentally, she chafed at a Christian culture that cast women as particularly
sinful and powerless. Mag Barclay—the alter ego of author Alice Hayes Mellen
in the autobiographical novel The Female Skeptic (1859)—ultimately learns how
to vanquish doubt and pride through submissive love. The romance, though, is
also a parable about the Union during the sectional crisis. Mag the feisty
Northerner realizes that she must channel her reformist energy into conserva-
tive patriarchal and proslavery forms, submitting to the biblical authority of her
Southern husband and coming to terms with slavery as a necessary evil in God’s
plan for America.
As it was for Stiles, the triumph of faith in The Female Skeptic is the key to
private, social, and national happiness. Ethan Allen in the 1780s and John R.
Kelso, a Methodist minister in Missouri who renounced his faith in the 1850s
and fought Confederate guerrillas during the Civil War, argued instead that
Americans needed to use skeptical criticism to finally “break the bonds of super-
stition” in order to be free. These are just four voices in a cacophonous dialogue
whose polarized extremes mask the fact that the experience even of those who
stepped forward to debate was usually an oscillation between varieties of doubt-
ing and believing.3
For spiritual power and authority, Christians looked up to God through His
Word, they looked to fellow followers of Christ as they built Christian commu-
nities, and they looked within themselves for the work of the Holy Spirit. But
skepticism attacked the authenticity of the scriptures. It challenged the idea that
either the special love that Christians shared or the historical success of the
church attested to the truth of doctrine. It contested the notion that subjective
experience could evidence contact with things supernatural and divine. This was
the framework of experience, discussion, and debate for Stiles and Allen at the
birth of the Republic; it remained the basic framework as Mellen and Kelso
watched the Republic begin to unravel.
4 Skepticism and American Faith

Only from a considerable distance, though, can Stiles’s experiences in the Yale
college library, the quasi-fictional Mag’s on an Alabama plantation, Allen’s in a
Vermont tavern, and Kelso’s at a revival campsite in backwoods Missouri be called
similar. The problem of skepticism and faith in the United States from the 1770s
to the 1860s needs to be seen not just as a contest of opposing ideas but as lived
experiences: lived religion, and lived irreligion, too. This book examines how in-
dividual people moved back and forth on the continuum of skepticism and faith,
as well as between engagement and indifference. It attends to what they said and
asks how their faithful or skeptical attitudes played out in the daily practices of
their complicated personal, social, and political lives in their specific communities.
To consider skepticism and faith on the ground and in the lives of eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century Americans goes beyond the confines of traditional in-
tellectual history.4 The struggles of skepticism and faith can be found even where
they are least expected: in the diaries of a Freewill Baptist preacher in Vermont
during the first years of the nineteenth century, for example, or hidden in plain
sight among the prolific publications of a health reformer in the 1840s. The ac-
cumulation of such stories—not just as religious biographies but as tiles in a
larger mosaic of American cultural politics—suggests that the skeptical habits
that converted believers struggled with lingered in the broader society as well.
By the time Abraham Lincoln had turned from his earlier skepticism to see
­himself as an instrument of Providence, and Christian soldiers in North and
South marched off to war, the triumph of American faith over deists, infidels,
and doubters might seem complete. But the nature of that faith, the manner of
its apparent triumph, and the character of the skepticism that had only been
temporarily quieted by the noise of war had all been shaped by the preceding
decades of dialogue.5
The tense dialogue of skepticism and faith did evolve, however much the
closet dramas of Ezra Stiles the eighteenth-century clergyman and Mag Barclay
the antebellum female skeptic might seem to share the same basic plot. In Mag’s
America, though a female skeptic was considered a “monster,” a violation of
feminine nature, skeptical arguments against traditional religious claims about
God, humanity, and revealed truth were considerably more common in the
masculine world than they were in Stiles’s day. The American faith that Mag
hoped would reunify North and South was necessarily much vaguer than the
Trinitarian Protestantism that Stiles had hoped would unite the country after
the Revolution. It was a faith stripped of nearly all doctrinal content save love
for a divine Father and a trust that fellow Christians could quietly, privately
work out their own ­salvation on their own terms. It was a faith that manifested
a sentimental reverence for biblical authority while at the same time trying to
keep scripturally grounded disputes from curdling social relations or poisoning
political debate. It was a faith, in other words, however emotionally satisfying in
 Introduc tion 5

private life, that as a public ideology seems to have been hollowed out by the
very skeptical critiques it claimed to have vanquished.6

Hiding Doubt and Silencing Skepticism

Both the christian and the sceptic assumed that religious skepticism was far
more pervasive than the number of uncloseted, vocal “infidels” would suggest.
The sceptic attributed the silence of most skeptics to the power of Christian
persecution. Because a Christian majority shamed, shunned, and punished
doubters, the “progress of orthodoxy is ostentatiously announced; the progress
of heterodoxy is rapid but silent. A conversion to Christianity is trumpeted all
over Christendom; a conversion to scepticism is hardly whispered to one’s next
door neighbor.” The christian instead thought that so many skeptics kept their
doubts hidden because they lacked moral courage.7
Readers of the standard religious histories of the period, however, might
wonder if there was even much religious skepticism for Owen and Bacheler to be
arguing about. At about the same time that the sceptic and the christian
published their Discussion, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America
that Americans were skeptical about everything but religion. Many commenta-
tors in the years since have echoed Tocqueville. The United States, where
churches thrive, supernaturalism sells, and spirituality can trump other issues at
the ballot box, has long been considered the Western world’s exception to the
secularization and disenchantment that was commonly thought to attend
­modernity. Historical explanations during the Cold War looked to the nation’s
supposed Puritan heritage. Interpretations at the end of the twentieth century
focused instead on the decades after 1776. In the early Republic, according to
one prominent account, American Christianity was democratized, its surge of
religious revivals revealing a religious movement that absorbed and redirected
the radical, egalitarian, populist, individualistic energies of the Revolution. In
the early nineteenth century, according to another, as proselytizers vigorously
competed for adherents in a denominational free market, a higher proportion of
Americans formed closer associations with Christian institutions, ideas, and
practices than ever before. According to a third, Americans created a powerful
intellectual synthesis fusing republican political ideology, Common Sense moral
reasoning, and evangelical Protestantism. A rich and deep literature shows us
how the evangelicalism that emerged from what is mislabeled the “Second Great
Awakening” shaped the politics of the second party system; how activist
Protestantism fueled the great movements for social reform; how religious faith
and scriptural argument underpinned proslavery, antislavery, and every conceiv-
able moral argument; how Christian views of Providence and Creation dictated
6 Skepticism and American Faith

understandings of nature, history, and progress; and how pious sentimentalism

was the beating heart of family life. Christianity refined the genteel, rocked the
cradle of the middle class, and provided both comfort and a language of resistance
for the poor, the oppressed, and the enslaved.8
But in the early twenty-first century the tangle of American commitments to
democracy, capitalism, and religious faith emerging out of the first fourscore and
seven years of the nation’s existence deserves another look. If the United States
had long troubled the theoretical distinctions between the “religious” and the
“secular” that seemed to fit Western Europe, now these categories seem dubious
not just for America but in general, not just for the postmodern present but for
the past, too. Rather than categories helping to describe the development of
modern society, the “religious” and the “secular” are labels that risk distorting
the meaning of historical evidence. Paying more attention to what people in the
past actually said and the relationship between how they talked and how they
lived may reveal different conclusions about broader transformations—and
continuities—in American society and culture.9
Religious skepticism has been rendered nearly invisible by histories that
stress the era’s overbearing “evangelicalism,” or the “secularization” happening
behind people’s backs, or the assumption that skepticism was for intellectuals,
while ordinary people who stayed away from church were merely indifferent.
The standard historical accounts might give a nod to heterodox Enlightenment
ideas in the late eighteenth century that would soon be swept away by the evan-
gelical tsunami, and perhaps glance at a few fringe figures who continued to bob
for air in its wake. Some of the Founding Fathers—notably Benjamin Franklin
and Thomas Jefferson—were deists who believed in a Creator and in morals de-
rived from nature but not in the divinity of either the Bible or Jesus. While these
gentlemen tried to keep their heterodox views to themselves, small groups of
other deists, inspired by Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason (1794), organized a few
deistical societies and published newspapers in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. The socioeconomic transformations wrought by new mar-
kets and new modes of industrial production after 1815 launched a new genera-
tion of social and religious radicalism. From the mid-1820s to about 1840, some
social reformers identified themselves as religious skeptics and freethinkers—or
“free enquirers”—who doubted or denied most of Christianity’s claims about
God, man, and salvation. As with the deists, the free enquirers’ energies were
divided between criticizing traditional (supernatural) religion and trying to
offer an alternate vision. By the mid-nineteenth century, though, even that fringe
threat of organized freethought had faded.10
Christians called the skeptical deists, free inquirers, and doubting seekers
“infidels,” a pejorative term that some would proudly adopt. Certainly the efforts
of these small groups of infidels were dwarfed by the legions conducting
 Introduc tion 7

r­ eligious revivals, creating missions and moral reform societies, distributing

Bibles and Christian tracts, and building churches across the land. Just as cer-
tainly, though, the experiences and beliefs that these infidels embraced and that
many other people wrestled with have been overshadowed by the dominant nar-
ratives of the nation’s religious past. Even if few Americans publicly challenged
Christian truth claims, the reasons why and how the skeptical critique contin-
ued to haunt American Christianity need to be explained.11
More significantly, many observers in the early Republic looked beyond the
strident infidels to note the entanglement of skepticism and faith as a central
issue in American culture. In 1840, Orestes Brownson, sounding like the scep-
tic a decade earlier or Ezra Stiles in the 1780s, argued that “there is not much
open scepticism, not much avowed infidelity, but there is a vast amount” that
“[is] concealed” and “untold.” Other commentators came to similar conclusions.
One in the 1820s believed that “the number of decided infidels, is probably
much more limited than that of a sort of skeptic who are content to remain sus-
pended in doubt whether the Christian revelation is true or false,” but who for
the time being continued to respect Christianity as the custom of the country
and an amiable superstition. A decade later, the Christian Secretary prepared a
series of articles attacking skepticism and infidelity because the editors agreed
with that central point. A long essay in the Spirit of the Pilgrims focused not on
outspoken freethinkers or closeted skeptics but on the way that doubt could
hollow out Christianity from within. Newfangled ideas encouraged Christians
to doubt one traditional doctrine, qualify a second, and throw out a third, until
believers had “been gradually and unconsciously drawn away from their old
belief. . . . They begin with doubting; they next give up, and are finally in danger
of ending in the disbelief of almost everything but that they are themselves very
exemplary believers.” In the 1850s and early 1860s, commentators worried
about English translations popularizing German biblical criticism and philoso-
phy; they also began to be anxious that the skeptical habits of scientific inquiry
were “impinging on the religious beliefs of the Christian public.”12
Because of the entanglement of skepticism and faith, then, seasoning the nar-
rative of American religious history with the stories of a few vocal freethinkers is
not enough. Self-proclaimed deists, skeptics, and freethinkers were so threaten-
ing because they gave voice to the doubts Christians had about their own faith or
about the fidelity of the fellow in the next pew. Putting skepticism back into the
story of American religious history in this period involves attending to both the
“not much” skepticism that was open and avowed and the “vast amount” that
observers insisted was hidden and silenced. Certainly the specter of the dangerous
infidel threatening the religious foundations of society was conjured by paranoid
Christians and put to work by cynical politicians. Some did anxiously exagger­
ate the threat, such as the Calvinist apologists who blamed Universalists for
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 The Project Gutenberg eBook of Balloon
observation, and instructions on the subject of
work in the basket
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
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Title: Balloon observation, and instructions on the subject of work in

the basket

Author: United States. War Department. Division of Military

Aeronautics

Release date: October 23, 2023 [eBook #71934]

Language: English

Original publication: Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918

Credits: Aaron Adrignola and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BALLOON

OBSERVATION, AND INSTRUCTIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF
WORK IN THE BASKET ***
 Transcriber’s Note
Larger versions of most illustrations may be seen by right-
clicking them and selecting an option to view them separately,
or by double-tapping and/or stretching them.
BALLOON OBSERVATION
and INSTRUCTIONS
on the subject of

WORK IN THE BASKET

❦
Issued by the
Division of Military Aeronautics
U.S. Army
¶ A free translation of the French booklet
“Instructions au sujet du Travail en Nacelle,”
and an added discourse on Balloon
Observations

WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
AUGUST, 1918
 PART I.

BALLOON OBSERVATION.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
In this pamphlet will be laid down the general principles and also
the limitations which govern observation from balloons. Balloon
observation includes more than actual artillery observation. (See
“Employment of Balloons.”)
The details of cooperation between balloons and artillery are
issued from time to time by the General Staff in the form of
pamphlets. Whatever the system ordered at the time, there are
certain principles which do not change.
In artillery observation it can not be emphasized too strongly that
success depends both on—
1. The efficiency of the balloon observers, including an intimate
knowledge of the ground within view.
2. An intimate knowledge by artillery commanders of the
possibilities and limitations of balloon observation.
The limitations of balloon observation are—
1. Distance from the target.
2. Height of observer.
3. Visibility.
 Distance from the target is inevitable, but can be lessened by
advanced positions and winch tracks. During active operation it has
sometimes been possible to approach balloons within 4,500 meters
(4,921 yards) of the line.
The low height of the balloon compared with an aeroplane is a
drawback, as it brings a question of dead ground and exaggerated
perspective.
Visibility is the determining factor of the balloon’s usefulness. In
very high winds, very misty or cloudy weather, observation is
impossible, and owing to its stationary nature the balloon can not, by
any special effort on the part of its observers, overcome unfavorable
conditions in the same way as is possible in the case of aeroplane
observation.
On the other hand, a balloon flying at a height of 1,500 meters
(1,640 yards) and 7,000 meters (7,651 yards) from the line, under
favorable weather conditions, combines in a marked degree many of
the advantages of air and ground observation.
In the first place, glasses can be used. Secondly, the balloon
observer can converse direct with the battery commander by
telephone. Apart, therefore, from ease and certainty in reporting
observations, the telephone system enables an elastic program of
work to be drawn up and admits of personal conversation between
the battery commander and the observer, often permitting mistakes
or misunderstandings to be cleared up during shoot instead of
afterwards.
Finally, owing to the continuous nature of his observation from
the same spot, the balloon observer is able to learn his country in the
greatest detail and can keep a close watch on suspected roads or
areas of country.

LIAISON BETWEEN BALLOONS AND

ARTILLERY
 The work of balloons is principally with the artillery, and close
liaison between these two branches is indispensable if the best
results are to be obtained. This close liaison should be promoted on
the following lines:
(a) Balloon companies should each, as far as possible, be
allotted specific artillery organizations. This facilitates telephone
communication, prevents duplication of liaison work, and leads to a
far more intimate and personal liaison than does any other method.
(b) Balloon observers must visit batteries frequently, and
sometimes be attached for short periods. Shoots should be
discussed, especially if unsuccessful. Observers should prepare and
take with them when visiting batteries a list of targets which are
clearly visible from the balloon and on which they can observe
effectively. Similarly, artillery commanders should let balloon
observers know of any further targets which they especially wish to
engage, as work previously prepared on the ground saves time and
gives better results.
(c) Artillery officers should visit the balloon and make ascents.
They will thus become acquainted with the extent of view from the
balloon and the ability and difficulties of the observers.

EMPLOYMENT OF BALLOONS.
In view of the above, the work most suitable for balloons is as
follows:

GENERAL SURVEYANCE OF ENEMY’S ACTIVITIES.

(a) Reporting modifications of enemy defensive organization;

detecting movements of convoys and trains. Their importance and
itineraries, locating infantry signals, and all other activities such as
revealed by fires, smokes, dust, trails, etc.
 (b) Spotting active hostile batteries and reporting hostile shelling.
Reporting hostile shelling is a duty for which balloons are especially
suitable, as they are favorably situated to observe both the flash of
the gun and the fall of the shell. From this information it is possible to
direct not only neutralizing fire on the hostile battery, but often also to
establish the caliber of the guns and the arc of fire of the battery.

RANGING AND ADJUSTING OF FIRE.

(a) Observing fire for destruction on all targets, counterbattery, or

bombardment.
(b) Reporting fleeting targets and observing fire on them.
(c) Observing for registration fire.
(d) Observing fire on the enemy’s communications.
(e) Cooperation with aeroplanes.
 PART II.

WORK IN THE BASKET.

[Translation of French document, “Instructions au sujet du Travail en Nacelle,” a
publication of French G. Q. G., 1918, by Lieut. Kellogg.]
The rapidity and precision of the work in the basket depend not
only on the natural gifts of the observer, but also very largely on his
methods of work.
The object of the following instructions is to tell the student
observers the general methods they should follow and to explain the
use of these methods.
The principal operations which they must be able to execute
rapidly are as follows:
1. Orientation and general reconnaissance of the terrain.
2. Spotting points on the ground seen on the map and points on
the map seen on the ground.
3. Observation of fire.
 Chapter 1.
ORIENTATION AND GENERAL
RECONNAISSANCE OF THE TERRAIN.

This is the operation which the observer executes on his first

ascension in a new sector; this is how it should be conducted.
1. Rapidly look over the terrain around the ascensional point in
order to orient the map.
This is done by finding in some direction from the ascensional
point a line giving an easily identified direction (a road, an edge of
woods, etc.). Orient the map so as to make this line on the map
parallel to the line on the ground.
The map can also be oriented by means of the compass.
2. Locate the horizontal projection of the balloon.
The observer may know already the winch position, but the
balloon is carried off horizontally from the winch sometimes as much
as 400 or 500 meters (436 to 545 yards). Thus it is essential not to
confuse the winch position with the horizontal projection of the
balloon. If this is done, errors will be made in the operations which
we are going to discuss later, where we make use of this known
point.
It is pretty hard to materialize definitely the vertical line passing
through the basket. The effect of the wind and the movements of the
balloon make it impossible to use a plumb line. The observer has to
find his projection on the ground by leaning first from one side of the
basket and then from the other in order to diminish the chances of
error. An approximation of 25 or 50 meters is sufficiently accurate for
the general reconnaissance which it is necessary to make.
 3. Leaving the region beneath the balloon, acquaint yourself,
step by step, with the most prominent points in different directions—
masses of woods, villages, etc.
There are two methods—by the process of cheminement or
tracing landmarks and by the process of direct alignment.
The process of “cheminement” or tracing consists in following
outlines, such as roads, streams, or hedges, identifying as you go
along details of the terrain which these lines pass through or near.
On account of the deformations due to the effect of perspective and
to the unevenness of the ground, and particularly on account of the
deformation of angles, if it is a winding road, this method often leads
to errors; it should be employed only in certain cases defined below:
The process of “direct alignment” consists of studying the
terrain by following successive directions from the balloon position.
We call the “alignment” of a point the trace, on the terrain, of the
vertical plane passing through this point and through the eye of the
observer; in perspective vision, when the observer determines the
point in question, this alignment would appear to him a vertical line.
On the map it is nothing more than the straight line joining the point
under consideration to the vertical projection of the balloon.
The method of alignment, then, consists in first identifying the
most prominent points near the balloon and finding, by cheminement
or tracing, the lines running from these points. A point found
directly by cheminement should not be considered as definitely
determined until its alignment has been verified.
This first reconnaissance is not to study the terrain in all its
details, but only to fix in the memory a certain number of prominent
points scattered throughout the sector in order to facilitate later work.
These points should be very distinct, visible to the naked eye,
and of characteristic forms, so that there will be no danger of
confusing them with others—masses of woods, important villages,
etc. Roads with borders of trees, large paths for hauling supplies,
when taken together, are very valuable for quickly finding others.
 Chapter II.
SPOTTING OF POINTS.

Generalities.—In all spotting operations, whether working from

the map to the terrain or vice versa, the difficulty is due to the fact
that the situation of the point has to be found on a two-dimension
surface.
The best method of work will be, then, that which suppresses as
quickly as possible one of these dimensions and to conduct the
research on a straight line.
Any point can be placed on the terrain or on the map if you know
the following elements:
1. Its “direction” or alignment.
2. Its situation on this alignment—that is, its “range.”
In oblique vision, a digression in direction is always much more
apparent than a digression of the same size in range. Thus the
direction of a point can be identified with more facility and
precision than its range. For these reasons, the following methods
consider two distinct phases in all spotting operations:
1. Investigation of direction.
2. Investigation of range.
The investigation in direction always comes first, as it is
easier, and its result makes the investigation for range easier.
 LOCATING ON THE GROUND AN OBJECT
SEEN ON THE MAPS.
If it is a question of a very visible point (cross-roads, an isolated
house, a corner of woods, etc.), the spotting can be done almost
immediately, it was found in the general reconnaissance of the
terrain, which was discussed in chapter 1.
If, on the contrary, the point under consideration is difficult to find
(a piece of trench in a confused and cut-up region, a battery
emplacement, etc.), we must have recourse to a precise method.

1. RESEARCH IN DIRECTION.

Join on the map the projection of the balloon and the center of
the objective. Identify this direction on the terrain by finding on the
alignment a prominent point. This line can be drawn in the basket. It
is a good thing to draw the alignment on a vertical photograph
of the objective also, in order to have a greater number of
reference points than the map could give.

2. INVESTIGATION OF RANGE.

Identify on the map (or photo) two points, one situated over and
one short of the objective. Narrow down this bracket step by step
until the object is recognized.
As this investigation of the range is the more difficult, observers
must be warned against certain methods which are to be absolutely
avoided—
1. Never identify the range of a point by comparing it with
that of a near-by point situated on a different alignment.
If these two points are not at exactly the same height, the
deformations due to oblique vision can falsify their apparent relative
range. The point farthest away can even seem nearer, and the
nearest point farther away.
 Fig. 1 Fig. 2

Example (fig. 1).—Suppose there are two trees, A and B, A

being nearer the balloon and higher than B. It can happen that, in
oblique vision (fig. 2), B having its image B´ and A its image A´, the
depression of the image B´ is more than that of A´. In this case, the
observer will be tempted to believe that the tree B is nearer him than
the tree A.
2. All oblique alignment in investigating the range must be
absolutely avoided.
Oblique alignment means a line connecting two points on the
map and not passing through the horizontal projection of the balloon.
You might be tempted to use an alignment to find the range of an
objective after having determined the direction. The process would
consist in finding on the map two points so placed that the straight
line between them passes through the objective, visualizing this line
on the terrain, and placing the objective at the intersection of this
visualized line and the direct alignment. This result, which would be
accurate if the ground were absolutely flat, is made erroneous by the
unevenness of the terrain. On account of this, the oblique alignment
does not pass, in oblique vision, through the same points as its
horizontal projection on the map.

Fig. 3

Example (fig. 3).—On the map C is the objective, A and B two

points so situated that the line AB passes through C, and EF the
direct alignment, or the line balloon objective. The line AB coincided
on the terrain, with the trace of the vertical plane passing through A
and B. In oblique vision (fig. 4) it is different. The line A′C′B′ is a
curve which follows the irregularities of the ground, and the point C′
is not on the oblique alignment A′B′.
 Fig. 4

LOCATING ON THE MAP AN OBJECT SEEN

ON THE GROUND.
1. Determine first on the map the approximate region where the
objective is seen.
A result which you can obtain very quickly, thanks to the points
which you had found in your first reconnaissance of the terrain.
2. Investigation of direction.
This operation consists in determining the alignment of the
objective. As this alignment is a straight line, you only have to know
two points. One of them could be the horizontal projection of the
balloon; but you must realize that this position is always changing a
little, and it is hard to determine it with absolute precision. It is better
to carry on the operation independent of this position, which means
applying the following method:
Choose on the alignment of the center of the objective two
points, one over and one short, and easily identifiable on the
map. Draw with a pencil in the region of the objective the
alignment thus obtained. These points should be, as far as
possible, precise details of the terrain, such as a corner of woods, an
angle of a house, a place where roads or trenches cross, an isolated
tree, etc. When the alignment of the objective does not pass through
any such points, the difficulty can be overcome by determining in
what proportions it cuts a known element, such as an edge of woods
or a hedge, provided this element is plainly perpendicular to the
direction of observation.
This direction can be approximated to the extent of the thickness
of the pencil mark. On its accuracy the final result depends. The
difficulty lies in materializing the alignment—that is, the vertical line
through the center of the objective—in order to lessen the chances
for mistakes. Student observers should have frequent practice in this
exercise.
When the point to be found is near the edge of the map it is
sometimes necessary to take both reference points between the
balloon and the objective; this should be avoided as much as
possible, because it is apt to be less exact than when the objective is
bracketed by its reference points.
Thus (fig. 5), two reference points A and B determine the
alignment AB, O, the objective, is situated at some point between A
and B. An error AA′ in the spotting of one of these points leads to a
smaller error in the position of the objective OO′—that is, smaller
than AA′.