George Marsh

Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste. Nature has provided against the absolute destruction of any of her elementary matter... But she has left it within the power of man irreparably to derange the combinations of inorganic matter and of organic life.

–George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature (1864, p.34)

George Perkins Marsh was born in Woodstock, Vermont on March 15, 1801. His father, Charles Marsh, a judge, brought his children up with strict, Christian ideals. He taught them not to regard God as a loving father but as a righteous judge. His mother, Susan, on the other hand, was sympathetic and warm. Marsh, a serious child, looked considerably older than he was. His older brother, Charles Jr., tutored him in Latin and Greek when he was five or six. Charles Jr. also instilled in him a lifelong passion for reading.

But reading frequently in poor light strained his eyes, and by the time he was seven or eight, he was nearly blind. For four years, he had to be read to by others and developed astounding powers of memorization. Forced to leave his darkened room, he attained a lasting love of nature (Lowenthal, 2000).

Marsh's formal schooling as a young boy was trifling and infrequent despite his keen desire to learn. His eyes remained weak, even after regaining sight, and his hearing was impaired. He was often too ill to attend school. Other times, the school was closed due to epidemic illnesses. In 1816, Marsh's father sent him to Phillip's Academy at Andover, Massachusetts, the country's first prep school. The curriculum was primarily Latin, Greek, religion, and morals. He was already well acquainted with each and stayed only a few months at Andover.

At only 15, Marsh began his college studies at the predetermined location of Dartmouth, like his grandfather, father, and brothers before him. He was three to five years younger than most of his classmates and had little in common with them, largely because he didn't care for sports or social events. He was a scholarly, shy student and had few intimate companions. Marsh graduated from college on August 20, 1820, at just 19 years of age (Lowenthal, 2000).

Two weeks after graduation, Marsh moved to Norwich, Vermont to work as a professor of Greek and Latin languages at the American Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy. The dismal gloom of the four-story brick barracks and lack of intelligence in his pupils did not appeal to Marsh. He spent much of his time in the library reading works in German and Scandinavian into the night. The routine further deteriorated Marsh's eyesight before the end of the school year, forcing him to quit and seek an ophthalmologist.

Marsh returned to Woodstock weak, thin, and discouraged. He prepared for the bar exams by listening to court cases and as others read to him. His eyesight gradually improved after extensive abstinence from reading. He was examined and admitted as an attorney of the Windsor County Court in September 1825 and relocated to Burlington, on the opposite side of Vermont––his home for most of the next 35 years (Lowenthal, 2000).

Marsh opened a law firm with Ben Bailey in autumn 1825. Soon after, he met and fell in love with Harriet Buell. They married in April 1828, and within a year, had a son, Charles Buell. But hardships quickly ensued. Marsh's legal partnership was successful from the outset, but Bailey suddenly died of measles in 1832. The same year, Marsh and his wife had a second child, George Ozias, but Harriet fell ill during the pregnancy and died the following summer. Their elder son, Charles, succumbed to scarlet fever 12 days after his mother passed away.

This quick succession of calamity devastated Marsh. He kept the law firm but took on few cases in the years to follow. He formed a new partnership with his sister’s husband Wyllys Lyman, but legal work increasingly repulsed him. He argued his final case in 1842 (Lowenthal, 2000). His primary reason for abandoning the practice of law: "legal effort seemed as apt to pervert as to promote justice" (Lowenthal, p. 35).

Several years before abandoning his legal practice, Marsh took a new wife in 1839. Caroline Crane shared his intellectual interests. He became increasingly involved in politics in the years to follow. From 1843 to 1849, he represented Vermont’s Whig party, precursor to today’s Republicans, in the House of Representatives. At the end of his term, President Taylor appointed him United States Minister Resident to Turkey where he remained for five years. In 1854, he returned to financial distress in Vermont due to failed investments. He spent the next few years in legal battles trying to recuperate some of his wealth. His situation finally improved in 1857 when he was appointed as the Vermont Railroad Commissioner, a lucrative position (Lowenthal, 2000).

As part of his duties, Marsh investigated fish habitat in Vermont and witnessed its deterioration. He blamed the decline on several human activities, such as overfishing and industrialization, but attributed the harshest effects to deforestation. He urged restocking the fish and more prudent use of resources in a report to the Senate, which found such measures impractical, though he was later credited for initiating salmon restoration with his pioneering study. He also opposed the destructive corporate interests of the poorly planned railroads rapidly devastating vast amounts of wilderness. The malignancy of private companies contributed to his growing disdain of capitalistic greed (Lowenthal, 2000). His biographer, David Lowenthal, observed, "[Marsh] saw private interests endangering public welfare… he opted, as a pragmatist, for public control rather than private reformation" (p.196).

Over the next few years, Marsh gave a series of lectures on the English language. In 1861, President Lincoln appointed him the first United States minister to the kingdom of Italy, and on April 27, at the age of 60, he and Caroline set sail. Italy afforded Marsh time and capacity for his environmental concerns. On several fruitful excursions to the Alps, he studied glaciers, moraines, and avalanches and witnessed Alpine erosion and the devastating contribution of grazing and deforestation in disastrously accelerating natural erosive processes. In 1862, he began work on Man and Nature, a pioneering study in ecology and conservation.

Before age six, Marsh had noted man's impacts on nature. He witnessed the reduction of Vermont's woodlands from three-quarters to nearly one-quarter of the state by the time he departed for Italy. Most people who inquired into man’s impact prior to Marsh had trusted the earth's bountifulness and generally viewed human impact on it as beneficial (Lowenthal, 2000). In Man and Nature, Marsh proposed an antithetical idea: "Man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discord" (Marsh, 1864, p. 36), a resounding idea today and important to wilderness designations.

The central focus of Man and Nature is forestry. Marsh valued trees as nature's most important and stabilizing agents and foresaw the necessity of forest husbandry:

We have now felled forest enough everywhere, in many districts far too much. Let us restore this one element of material life to its normal proportions, and devise means for maintaining the permanence of its relations to the fields, the meadows and the pastures, to the rain and the dews of heaven, to the springs and rivulets with which it waters down the earth. (1864, p. 328-9)

To Marsh, the side-effects of hastily advancing technology were to blame for the acceleration in human's destructive influence toward forests. He professed that only human action could repair the damage produced by human action. Nature does not heal itself from man’s destruction, says Man and Nature. Once raped of its natural, self-sustaining condition, it remains impoverished unless taken into human care (Lowenthal, 2000).

Marsh wrote quickly and completed the final draft in July 1863. But his English publisher, John Murray, rejected it. Too revolutionary. Until Charles Scribner, who published the book in May 1864. It soon sold over a thousand copies in a few months and had to be reprinted, despite a slow start. Highly praised by scholars and the public, Man and Nature was an international classic within a decade (Lowenthal, 2000). Wallace Stegner later proclaimed the book "the rudest kick in the face that American initiative, optimism and carelessness had yet received" (Lowenthal, p.303).

Marsh made Italy home for the remainder of his life. In 1876, he adopted a two-year-old Swedish orphan, Carlo Rände. Marsh adored the boy, and Rände's zest for life helped divert his attention from the pangs of aging. In July 1882, he travelled to the slopes of Apennines at Vallombrosa to summer with his young grandnieces and nephews. On July 23, breathing became difficult. By the time the doctor arrived, Marsh was dead.

Forestry students who honored the scholar whose work aroused so many to the importance of their vocation carried his body down the mountain two days later. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery in Rome, not far from the graves of Romantic poets John Keats and Percy Shelley. Marsh’s lifelong affinity for nature, especially mountains, made Vallombrosa an appropriate end to his long and distinguished life (Lowenthal, 2000). "Could he himself have selected the manner, time and place of his departure," Caroline wrote, "he would have desired nothing different" (Lowenthal, p.369).

References

Lowenthal, David. (2000). George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press 

Marsh, George Perkins. (1864). Man and Wilderness; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action. [Electronic Version]. New York: Charles Scribner.