“Conflicting Loyalties at the Moment of Decision”

Northland College Presents Lecture, August 2005

Madeline Island

By Dr. Karen I Halbersleben

I enjoy coming to Madeline for these talks every year and really look forward to the time we get to spend together. This is already my fourth annual visit with you. The first year, in just the second month of my Presidency, I was really quite nervous. Seems like so long ago! I didn’t have a whole lot to say, yet, in my new positions as President of Northland College; and so instead I reverted to what I know best--which is British history--and told a story about a neat woman of the antislavery movement that was in a book I had written in a different life in a different century. You seemed to respond so well to that story, that every year when I come back, I tell another story or two. Mostly about British history. You’ve been patient with that, and indeed even seemed to enjoy it. And I sure look forward to the opportunity to return to my intellectual roots as a historian for an hour or so every year. There’s just so much packed back there in my brain that I so rarely get a chance to use. So, let’s leave it like this: if, some year, you want me to do something more traditionally Presidential, with charts and graphs and stuff like that, let me know. Until then, I plan to keep us voyaging together through my trove of stories with deep thanks for your annually indulging my never-dying passion for history.

Those of you who have stuck with me through previous talks on Madeline Island know my formula by now. I tell a story or two, and then try to tease out some lessons that the stories suggest to me. My aim is first to leave you with a vivid mental image or two about something interesting that happened in the past; and, second, I try to sketch out some thought-provoking ways to help us reflect all that the past can teach us about our lives today and tomorrow. And, lastly, after I’ve weakened your defenses somewhat, I try to slip in a commercial message or two for Northland College.

To start us off today, I have a riddle. What do a bottle of Drambuie, a can of Campbell’s soup, and a Big Mac have in common? No: it’s not a funky new “Scottish diet” I can write up if you like my speech tonight and earn millions of dollars for Northland College.

The names of these of consumer products are replete with associations to those who know Scotland and her history well. Ah, Scotland: known by many Americans today primarily for kilts, bagpipes, and the Loch Ness monster. Most Americans might be generally aware that Scotland occupies the northern portion of the same island as England, and might possibly be able to point to it on a map. If you pressed them to name someone born in Scotland, after a LONG pause you might hear Sean Connery or “Braveheart,” (a.k.a. William Wallace) if they saw the Mel Gibson’s early exercise in blood and gore. They probably haven’t a clue why they sing “Auld Lang Syne” on New Year’s Eve, or who the heck Robbie Burns was. In case you were wondering, a good translation of the words "auld lang syne" is "times gone by." So when we sing this song, we are saying, "We'll drink a cup of kindness yet for times gone by."

But, it’s funny: even those who might not know the names Adam Smith, David Hume, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Alexander Graham Bell, or even Arthur Conan Doyle, light up with recognition when the name Bonnie Prince Charlie is mentioned. Might not be able to place him within 50 years of when he lived; but, by golly, they know the name! And, as a British historian teaching in the US, I’ll take what I can get.

So, let’s begin our journey tonight with a wee dram of Drambuie and tell a story of Bonnie Prince Charlie, or more particularly a young woman who crossed his path long ago named Flora MacDonald. Flora lived over 250 years ago on the Island of Skye, a island which I would estimate is about 4 times the size of Madeline Island, located just northwest off the mainland of Scotland. Today, ever-accumulating hordes of tourists consider Skye a romantic and picturesque place to buy sweaters and look at sheep. In the 18^th century, it was barren and brutal. For many long centuries, Scotland had been a desperately poor country where people had to scrabble to stay alive by fishing, raising livestock, and growing what crops could survive bad soil and a wet, harsh climate. Life was tough for Flora MacDonald and her family. But there were some advantages. She was raised surrounded by an extended family (or a clan as they called them) and in a community with a strong ethic of connection and caring for others. Everyone cared for and helped everyone else get along; it was what you did in small-scale, agrarian society to cushion the harshness in order to survive.

Flora was raised in a highly-charged political and religious atmosphere. About 40 years earlier, in 1707, the independent kingdom of Scotland lost their sovereignty to their neighbors in the south, the forever-despised English. Most of Flora’s neighbors on Skye hated the English, with their foreign laws and customs, and their Protestant God. Most of Flora’s neighbors were committed to doing whatever they could to throw the English back out of Scotland, to return a Scottish King and Parliament to Edinburgh, and to re-enshrine a Catholic God to their church altars.

Flora MacDonald and her family, then, stood out a bit, because both her father and her fiancé were soldiers of the English crown and supported English rule of Scotland. And, they were Protestant to boot. We tend to think that American society today is unique in the extent to which political and religious issues are polarizing our population. But, anyone who reads history of just about any era in the West knows that its pages are replete with ideological and religious feuds that divided family members, pitted community members against each other, and all too often led to bloodshed. And here was a family that was on the completely wrong side of the great political and the religious divides of that time and that place. But living in a small community on a remote island—a situation which you many of you are intimately familiar with-- often means that what binds people together tends to matter far more than what divides them. Most folks there and then, like most of us today, just wanted to get on with life and to interact peacefully with the person they called neighbor.

Then, one night in the middle of the summer of 1746, history came knocking at her door and Flora had to make a choice. At her door stood a bedraggled, flea-bitten, filthy, half-starved stranger who was asking for her help. Now, it would be hard for most of us to open the door of our home to a dangerous looking and dirty stranger. What made this decision even more of a challenge for Flora was that she recognized this guy, and knew that he was a wanted criminal with a price of L30,000 on his head: an unbelievable fortune for Flora or the people in her town when the average annual income was closer to L15. For the man standing in her doorway was none other than “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” the last great hope of the Catholic Scots who longed to install him on their throne. Earlier that year, 1746, this same Charles Stuart had led an uprising of the Scottish Highlanders against the troops of the English King George II. The uprising, after some initial successes, culminated in miserable failure, largely as a result of a lethal combination of Charles’ own overreaching and his indecision. That spring, a ragtag highland army led by Charles had been bloodily crushed by the English army at a place called Culloden Moor. And, Prince Charles, none too bonny by that point, had been a fugitive ever since; staying one step ahead of the English who pursued him with the aim of throwing him in prison or even cutting off his head as a traitor.

In the five months months since the crushing defeat at Culloden Moor, Charles had fled north and west until he could flee no longer. He had run into a fairly considerable barrier called the Atlantic Ocean. On a remote island called Skye, with water all around him and his English pursuers at his heels, Charles needed someone to help hide him and find a ship that would take him back to safety in France. And, the door he knocked on that fateful night was Flora Macdonald’s. The Catholic Scottish rebel and Pretender to the English Throne waking up Protestant Flora, whose father and fiancé were both paid servants of the English crown. In other words, her enemy. What should Flora do? What would you do?

If she chose to open her door, she would be aiding and abetting an enemy of the crown she supported, and could bring retribution down not only on her own head but on that of her family and her village. Flora was faced with a decision that put all her most cherished loyalties into direct conflict: political and religious beliefs, loyalty to father and fiancé on one hand. On the other, the deeply held Scottish tradition of helping people whenever they were in need. In the Highlands of Scotland, you just don’t close the door in the face of someone—anyone--who has asked for your help.

History records that Flora did hesitate as she weighed her decision. Then, brave lass that she was, she made her choice. She opened the door, admitted the filthy young prince, and proceeded to plan for his escape. Here is where history meets Hollywood, though I don’t think any movie maker has yet filmed this dramatic story. Like Javert constantly on the heels of Jean Valjean, Charles’ chief pursuer, a Campbell of course, had arrived on Skye just behind him and was closing in. Disguise and a quick escape from the island was the Prince’s only hope. Accordingly, Flora prepared a disguise of women’s clothing for the big, rawboned prince who donned the garb to become the Irish Maid 'Betty Burke'. The gowns, the petticoats, the snood, cloak and white cap were a perfect fit: all was well except the big clumsy boots which could well give the game away. No woman’s shoes of the day could be found to cover a full-grown man’s feet.
June 20th 1746 was the day that the young Prince and Flora met. After a week of hiding, while Flora and her co-conspirators had arranged for transportation off the island and back to the European continent, they were ready to leave. When finally the boat pulled away from the shore of Skye, Miss Flora MacDonald and the strange looking 'Betty Burke' slipped away into the long summer dusk, crossing the Minch that separates Skye from the mainland.

And so this part of the story ends. Dressed as a woman, Bonnie Prince Charlie escaped the red coats under command of General Campbell and made it back to safety in France. Some folks say, or would like to think, that a romance had blossomed between young Flora and the Bonnie Prince during their week together. But whether or not love grew between the two, simply knowing that she did indeed put her life on the line for the fleeing Prince is romance enough for most. For our purposes tonight, let’s leave the Prince to his dissolute lifetime exile on the Continent and turn our attention back to Flora.

She had made the decision to open the door, knowing she would have to live with her consequences of her decision for the rest of her life. And, yes, shortly after the Pretender’s escape, Flora was arrested and sent to trial in London. She served several years in jail, including a stint in the Tower of London, before returning to Scotland. She then emigrated to the United States in the great wave of Scottish immigration of the later-18^th century that could very well be represented in some of your family trees. In an interesting footnote, she and her husband landed smack dab in the middle of another moment of high political fervor known on this side of the pond as the Revolutionary War, and over there as the “War of American Insurrection.” Interestingly enough, she and her husband ended up siding with English Royalists during that war despite the very strong rebel convictions of her American neighbors. Here was a woman who truly knew where her loyalties lie and had the courage of her convictions!

When after the American Revolution she returned to Scotland to live out her years—actually forced out of North Carolina because she would not sign the required American Oath of Allegiance after the war-- she was treated as a hero throughout her homeland for her role in helping the Stuart prince escape. Indeed, when she finally died on Skye in 1790, thousands paid homage to her in a procession that was over a mile long: an unprecedented tribute for a woman at that time. The shroud she was buried in was a sheet in which Prince Charlie had slept during their fateful week together. And, today, when you visit the Isle of Skye, you can visit both the Flora Macdonald cottage and her gravesite, lovingly preserved these last 200 years. Folks continue to honor the courage and the values she showed by simply opening a door. Even the great Englishman of his age, Doctor Johnson, wrote in her praise: "Her name will be mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour."

What does any of this have to do with Drambuie? What does this icky-sweet after dinner liqueur have to do with the tale of Flora MacDonald and Bonnie Prince Charlie. Well, nothing actually, to a historian. But, to the marketing executive, this is a story that needs to be exploited in the American market. Read from label.

More to the point, what light does this story shed on our theme tonight: conflicting loyalties at the moment of decision? Let’s start with the simple lesson that this story makes so real to us: loyalty is a complex phenomenon that operates on many levels. In Flora’s case, she had to weigh loyalty to her government, loyalty to her community, loyalty to her God, loyalty to her family all in a moment. Which loyalty as you stand at the door forced to make a decision is most important? What happens when loyalty to one comes in conflict with the dictates of loyalty to another? This theme—very much apparent in today’s America-- reemerges in my second story tonight. Let’s move there next, and then come back to tease out some larger possible lessons.

So now we turn to the soup and the sandwich: Campbells and MacDonalds Anyone who knows much Scottish history recoils at the name of Campbell. “…there never was trouble brewing in Scotland,” Charles II had once said, “but that a…Campbell was at the bottom of it.” You’ll recall that it was a Campbell who was hot on the heels of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and a MacDonald who came to his aid. The bad blood and enmity between clan MacDonald and clan Campbell—sort of like the Red Sox and the Yankees of their day--has been a feature of Scottish history for centuries, finding its tragic culmination in the massacre of Glencoe: a much unhappier story of what can happen when you open the door to a stranger.

This story takes place about 50 years before the tale of Flora MacDonald. We find ourselves in the years immediately following England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which the Scottish, Catholic, Stuart King James II had been chased from the throne in a bloodless coup d’état in favor of the very Protestant William of Orange and his Stuart wife Mary. William and Mary. Early in his reign, King William was eager to pacify all the troublesome Catholic regions in his dominion, most notably in the Catholic strongholds Ireland and in the highlands of Scotland. In Ireland, William fought fierce and bloody battles at places like the Boyne, implanting a legacy of hatred that continues to drip blood across the pages of Irish history today. (Though maybe this summer’s news about the IRA disarming might be signaling the end of over 300 years of violence that stems from William’s bloody repression.) In Scotland, the new King’s methods were more subtle: there he decided to clothe his iron fist in more of a velvet glove. William decreed that all the Highland clan chiefs must sign an oath of allegiance to the new regime. Failure to do so would cause the forfeiture of their estates to the crown. And because land was fortune, forfeiture would mean the dissolution of the clan itself.

With little real choice left to them, all the highland chieftains except two signed the required oath of allegiance to the Protestant William of Orange. One of the two refuseniks was allowed to sign late, at the cost of a hefty fine. But William decided to make an example of the other: an elderly chieftain of a minor but notoriously turbulent set of the clan MacDonald, MacIan MacDonald, whose ancestral home of Glencoe was located in a rugged mountain pass alongside the desolate Loch Leven. MacDonald’s refusal to sign the oath of allegiance to the new government gave King William the opportunity for which he was looking.

In the winter of 1692, a company of Campbell troops, Protestant Scots who were loyal to the English King, headed by their Captain Robert Campbell, were sent to Glencoe and billeted in the cottages of the MacDonalds. The MacDonalds of Glencoe opened their doors and received their Campbell guests hospitably, as was the Highland custom. Robert Campbell spent a couple weeks drinking and playing cards with MacIan MacDonald and his sons, while his soldiers fraternized with the clansmen. Then, on February 12, 1692 Robert Campbell received from his military superior the following written command:

You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebels, the McDonalds of Glencoe, and put all to the sword under seventy. You are to have a special care that the old fox and his sons do upon no account escape your hands. You are to secure all the avenues that no man escape…This is by the King's special command, for the good and safety of the country that these miscreants be cut off root and branch.

Later that evening Captain Campbell and two of his officers accepted an invitation to dine with MacIan. Meanwhile a force of 400 Government troops moved to block the northern approach to the glen and another 400 closed off the south. At 5 in the morning of February 13, the troops started to carry out their instructions. Parties of soldiers went from cottage to cottage, slaughtering the sleeping MacDonalds and setting light to their houses. MacIan himself was shot in the back by one of his guests from the night before while he tried to get out of bed. Campbell soldiers stripped his wife, gnawed the rings from her fingers with their teeth, and threw her naked out into the snow. She died of the abuse the next day. Throughout the glen, men and boys were dragged from their beds and murdered. The soldiers torched the houses as they went. Fleeing from their burning homes, women of all ages, some almost in a state of nudity, the old and the frail, mothers carrying infants and with helpless children clinging to them, were to be seen wending their way into the mountains into a piercing snow storm. One by one, many were overcome by fatigue and exposure and, before any shelter could be reached, perished miserably in the snow. Of the 150 MacDonalds of Glencoe who went to bed that February night, 38 were slaughtered outright and as many again died of starvation and exposure. Their houses were burned; their cattle driven into the hills.

William of Orange hoped to strike a blow for the “good and safety of the country.” Instead, he reaped a whirlwind of revulsion and controversy. According to Scottish custom one does not raise a hand against the one who has cared for you. If you have a grievance with your host, you leave and then came back to fight with honor. In a familiar defense of the indefensible, the King explained that he had signed the execution order among a mass of other papers, without knowing its contents. But, despite the outcry, nothing was ever done to punish anyone involved in the incident. The massacre did, however, make both the perpetrators and the victims forever famous. Even today, after 300 years, in some parts of Scotland it is not wise to admit you might have Campbell blood, especially if you’re visiting the monument to the fallen MacDonalds situated in Glencoe Village. The stark and barren vale of Glencoe has changed so little over the centuries, that it’s not hard for today’s visitor to imagine that dread February night so many years ago, or to feel indignation flame as one looks over to the island in Loch Leven on which MacIain MacDonald, James of the Glen, is buried.

Flora MacDonald; Robert Campbell; Bonnie Prince Charlie, MacIan MacDonald. Great stories about interesting people that I was never taught, even though I spent many, many years studying British History. If they appear in any standard history book at all, the stories merit a small part of a paragraph in a larger treatment of how various English monarchs attempted to consolidate their power against various challenges. No: I learned these stories during the summers I spent traveling and living in Scotland. It is the Highland Scots themselves who remember, not the English; and history books are, after all, written by the victors. It is the Scots who build the monuments and who write the poems. It is the Scots who sing the songs over a pint of ale or a wee dram of whiskey in their pubs, exalting the memories and keeping alive, in their minds at least, the lost cause of Scottish sovereignty. It is the Scots who, for hundreds of years, have kept alive the heroism of Flora and continue to damn for eternity the unspeakable inhumanity of clan Campbell. Though an American can sit comfortably in the pub while the songs of the past start being sung, an English visitor to a Highland pub does well to move on when the singint begins.

Besides the great songs, what accounts for the enduring power of these stories after 250 and more years? They are hardly unique in the annals of history. There are plenty of other stories that teach of even greater feats of personal heroism, or provide even more appalling examples of our astounding capacity for inhumanity and cruelty to one another. But these two stories endure with rare potency. I think it is because each of us can see ourselves inside of these stories at the crucial point of decision; the great debates of the age showed up at these people’s doorsteps in ways that seem eerily relevant to us in the modern age.

Think about it for a second. You are Flora, opening your door and coming face-to-face with a complex tangle of loyalties to God and country, self and community, which need to be resolved in a moment. You are faced with an avowed enemy of your government, and a heretic whose religion has been outlawed by your country. Or, to use the today’s lexicon, you’re face to face with a “thug and assassin.” Where is your ultimate loyalty? What decision do you make?

Or, look at the other story at the same point of decision. You are Captain Campbell, reading the command from your superiors asking you to commit an outrage against a village of sleeping peasants who have welcomed you into their homes. Your enemies are not nameless, faceless abstractions who you can eliminate by pushing a button and dropping a bomb, but people who have fed you and sheltered you and welcomed you and trusted you.

Where does your greatest loyalty lie? Can an “enemy” so violate those loyalties that any treatment of him or her is justified? I will leave you to ponder that question with the shadow of Abu Ghraib looming, persistently, in the wings. Because, even today, I think most Americans would say Flora made the right decision and Robert Campbell the wrong one, even though he was the one who unquestioningly did what his country wanted him to, striking a death blow on behalf of his God and his King. We are rarely consistent in how we define our heroes and our villains.

I’ve used a variation of the Flora MacDonald story recently when I was the graduation speaker for Bayfield High School. My goal with that speech was to remind the kids that even decisions that seem small or insignificant at the time—really just the decision to open a door to a stranger—can change their lives forever. I urged them to be very clear about their values so that, when tested, they will make a decision that they will feel proud of and that their descendants will honor. Maybe I’d have done better to use the story of Robert Campbell who, of course, only did what he was ordered to do. And, his Campbell descendants carry the infamy that grew out of his choice to this day. I wish the lessons of the massacre of Glencoe were more unique in our history than they are. But, I know I could fill an entire undergraduate course entitled “But I was only following orders,” and move through the students through the classic defense of the indefensible made by Robert Campbell, Adolph Eichmann, William Calley, Lynndie England and on and on.

For better or for worse, at their core, these stories remind us of the momentous stakes at play when our basic loyalties are put in tension with one another. What, exactly, is at the core of your own value system? Are there reasons that you would be willing to offer refuge to a flea-bitten stranger who your government has decreed any enemy? What would go through your mind as you digested your host’s dinner, holding in your hand your government’s order that would lead to his and his family’s treacherous death at your very hand? Like all good fairy tales, these stories present the ethical world in microcosm. But, unlike fairy tales, there are no easy morals to draw from these stories.

Beyond the questions of individual choice and conflicting loyalties that these stories bring to life so vividly, I think they’ve endured because they are wildly romantic in the traditional sense of the word romance. Human emotions writ large; human conflict played out in individual lives. Huge stakes. Heroes and villains. These stories stir the blood and remind us that each of us has the potential for nobility or for cowardice buried somewhere deep within.

Finally, I think these two tales play particularly well with Americans. We, after all, once considered the English to be our own enemy, our oppressors. And, We’ve always loved an underdog. Americans also resonate to the enduring romance of the “Lost Cause,” as anyone who has traveled in our Confederate South can attest. And, even those of us without an iota of Scottish blood in our veins are surrounded by the Scottish legacy to both the Western World and to the United States. We are a country rooted in enduring contributions of Scotland to our history, our culture, and our values. Their heroes, very naturally, have become our heroes; their villains, our villains. And, we sure can’t go far in this country without seeing names like Campbell and MacDonald.

I’ll end my prepared remarks tonight with the threatened commercial message for Northland College. The title of my talk tonight as it evolved is “Conflicting Loyalties at the Moment of Decision.” Northland College is engaged in a steady and inexorable crusade to realign human loyalties so that we don’t have to choose between country, God, community, and planet. We believe that if being loyal to one’s God means closing the door in the face of a fellow human being in need, our loyalties are misaligned. We believe that if being loyal to one’s government means causing the slaughter of innocents who trusted us, our loyalties are misaligned. Through the transforming education that we offer, Northland seeks to realign the loyalties of our society and our world so that by serving our governments and our God, we can serve each other and the planet.

Our defining emphasis on the environmental liberal arts translates into an educational experience that trains citizen-leaders who understand that individual loyalties need to start with a humble recognition of our obligations to each other and to the planet we steward. Through a variety of experience-based educational settings, our students are trained to question critically the reasons that values seem to be in conflict on so many issues, and to find mediating values when possible that allows us to forge lasting solutions to complex problems. We are working to move people to a new understanding of loyalties in which doors are not closed nor people killed in the name of God, or country. We are working to create a sense of loyalty to the generations who will inherit from us what we choose to leave them of this planet.

After making this journey to the past with me tonight, I hope that the next time you settle down to a dram of Drambuie, a bowl of Campbell’s soup, or, God forbid, a Big Mac you’ll have a wee smile on your face. That you’ll think of Flora answering the door, or Campbell in the Glen. And that, always, you’ll think of Northland College working to realign our loyalties so that, at the moment of decision, loyalties Creator, country, community, and planet can come together in ways that the generations who follow us will sing about, not in tragedy, but in celebration.