Ohio History Journal

6                                                   OHIO HISTORY

hostile or indifferent world; while in politics a new breed of demagogic

spellbinder arose to captivate mass audiences by appealing to the darker

passions of the underdog.

The ultimate destiny of such a freewheeling society posed an absorbing

problem for contemporary theorists. Most, like Tocqueville, deplored the

excesses of an unbridled democracy and predicted a continuing trend toward

social disintegration and decline. It remained for a scholarly judge from

a small town in Ohio to discover in the principle of rugged individualism the

great balance wheel of American life. In a wide-ranging study of the national

ethos, first published in 1848, Frederick Grimke undertook to vindicate both

the theory and the operation of democratic institutions. His Considerations

upon the Nature and Tendency of Free Institutions remains a significant

contribution to American thought, as well as a unique expression of the

democratic faith of the Age of Jackson.

Grimke's reputation has long been eclipsed by the more spectacular attain-

ments of other members of his family. Born in Charleston, South Carolina

on September 1, 1791, he was the son of John Faucheraud Grimke, a

Revolutionary War hero and one of the distinguished jurists of the state. His

sisters, Sarah and Angelina, became prominent leaders of the antislavery

crusade, while an older brother Thomas received national acclaim for his

efforts in the cause of education and world peace. Frederick's public career

was far less impressive, partly because of his temperamental preference for the

study above the forum.

Following his graduation from Yale College at the age of nineteen, he

studied law in South Carolina where he practiced for several years before

emigrating to Ohio in 1818. There he soon settled down in Chillicothe as

President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, a post he held intermittently

for some sixteen years (1820-1836), until his election in 1836 to the Ohio

Supreme Court.

During all this period of intense professional activity Grimke cherished a

taste for broader intellectual pursuits, which gradually became an obsession

with him. As he explained to his close friend, the young Cincinnati lawyer

William Greene:

Sir Jas. McIntosh in his first lecture on the law of nations (the only

one I have ever seen) declares that the professional business which he

then had (1802) was not sufficient to occupy him thoroughly and to

keep his mind in full training, and that he had therefore resorted to a

course of lectures on an interesting branch of science. I may say the

same. If Sir James had not business enough in the city of London, it can

hardly be expected that a lawyer of ordinary ambition and mental vigor

should have sufficient in Chillicothe. There is this difference, however,

the course of lectures gained him a high and lucrative place in the East

Indies. Here one might perhaps write forever without its producing any

one effect good, bad, or indifferent, but especially the first.1

The trials of authorship notwithstanding, he contributed a number of

essays to such local periodicals as the Scioto Gazette (Chillicothe) and the

Ohio State Journal (Columbus). In these early productions he explored a

wide variety of subjects, from the nature of the American character to the

FREDERICK GRIMKE                                                 7

latest trends in constitutional law. One of the essays made a strong impression

throughout the state and served as a basis for all his later speculations. It

dealt with the relative merits of ancient and modern literature, or the role

of the past in the shaping of contemporary culture:

It is a subject on which it appears to me nothing effectual, nothing

worthy of the age of thought in which we live has been written. The mind

seems to have been fearful and timid in approaching it. And yet there

are few subjects within the compass of human reasoning, which are

philosophically and practically of greater interest and importance. For

without apprehending it correctly it is impossible for us to understand

the true history of the human mind; and at the same time the right

determination of the question it suggests must necessarily exercise over

education, and therefore over human happiness a decisive and a per-

manent influence.2

In this perennial quarrel between the "Ancients" and the "Moderns,"

Grimke proved himself decidedly a child of the nineteenth century. He found

little to admire in the classic writers of Greece and Rome. Their stock of

information was scanty; their philosophy superficial; their imagery trite and

uninspired; and their powers of reflection and synthesis much overrated.

Their alleged superiority to modern authors was a "delusion" fostered by

pedantic scholars with elitist pretensions and romantics who confused prim-

itivism with freshness and originality.

In fact, the modem world -- the bustling bourgeois world of the nineteenth

century -- was a fresher and more exciting place than antiquity could pos-

sibly have been. The "materials of thought" existed in greater abundance

than ever before; scientific discoveries, moral speculations, even the

heightened sensibilities of such poets as Scott and Byron had changed the

very aspect of Nature and added new dimensions to human understanding.

For the first time society was becoming enlightened at every level, thanks to

the spread of literacy. The great men of the present age were springing

"from the lower walks of life" -- a theme on which Grimke would later rear

a vast superstructure of ideas. And what need had such leaders for the

abstruse learning of the traditional "gentleman"? Already the public mind

was accommodating itself to the realities of the situation: educational re-

formers with their insistence upon the modernization of the curriculum were

paving the way for the inevitable "total demolition" of the classical ideal

in education.

To substantiate the superior claims of modern culture, Grimke pointed

to such figures as Hume and Adam Smith, Cousin and Constant, Sismondi

and Niebuhr. Significantly, he failed to include a single American intellectual

in his list. The United States, in his view, had been too busy exploiting the

material resources of a continent to pay sufficient attention to the life of

the mind:

The thoughts of every one have been perpetually occupied with the

animating and ever shifting scene without, and the mind has been

rendered unwilling, and consequently unable, to give itself up to any

pursuit which demanded the intense concentration of its faculties. For

the same reason that you do not generally expect the greatest mental

exertion from those individuals who have been bred up in affluence, you

8                                                    OHIO HISTORY

are not to expect it in those countries, which have been distinguished

for rapid and sudden advancement in the career of wealth: at least,

you are not to look for it, until such countries begin to overflow with

a dense and redundant population. Then, men begin to jostle against

each other in running the race of life; and the prosperity of the country,

ceasing any longer to be exactly identical with that of the individuals

composing it, the finest understandings are exercised and racked for

the discovery of some new theatre of exertion.3

The "Essay on the Ancients and Moderns" was an optimistic bit of special

pleading which left many major questions unanswered. If the United States,

stronghold of middle-class mores, was lagging behind in intellectual attain-

ments, did this augur a comparable decline in the culture of other countries,

once their bourgeoisie obtained supremacy? Did the scramble for material

gain, so characteristic of a commercial society, spell the eventual collapse

of political as well as artistic integrity? With the publication of Alexis de

Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1835), such issues could no longer

be ignored, and Grimke began to ponder the full implications of his thesis.

In 1842 he resigned from the Ohio Supreme Court to write his own study

of American institutions. "Whether in place of the altar and the throne, we

are only creating an hundred headed monster under the name of popular

freedom may be regarded at least as a subject of legitimate inquiry," he

wrote to his friend Greene.⁴ The book took shape slowly as the judge

hammered out his ideas with meticulous care, resolved that his observations

should not parrot those of previous commentators. By August 1846 the

writing was finished; and two years later the Cincinnati firm of H. W. Derby

brought out the work in a sturdy volume of 544 pages. Its appearance on

booksellers' shelves almost coincided with the outbreak of revolution on

a massive scale in Europe, as country after country felt the shock of popular

insurrection.

A more auspicious moment for the reception of his theories could scarcely

be imagined, Grimke felt. "The minds of men are [every] where intensely

engaged in pondering upon the great problem of free institutions. I could

not well have fallen upon a more interesting period."5

The Considerations upon the Nature and Tendency of Free Institutions

was not a systematic treatise on government. It rather resembled a musical

composition, a loosely constructed theme with variations. Around a cluster

of basic concepts Grimke moved first in one direction, then in another,

exploring the endless paradoxes of American life.

He began by noting that the egalitarian structure of society in America

had developed naturally out of the nation's colonial experience. Early

settlers had encountered a virgin wilderness, ill defended by a sparse native

population. The conquest of the Indian proved to be easy; the taming of

nature much less so. From this dual struggle emerged lasting consequences.

The weakness of the Indian contributed to his rapid disappearance from

areas of colonial settlement, leaving the white man master of the field.

Problems of inequality arising from the presence of a large subject race

living side by side with its conquerors -- a phenomenon so familiar to

10                                                  OHIO HISTORY

every European state -- never troubled the American pioneer. Here the

"whole field of enterprise" lay open to the whites, who soon developed com-

mon traits of industry and self-reliance in their efforts to exploit the limit-

less expanses of vacant land.

"The leading fact in the history of American civilization undoubtedly

consists in the very equal distribution of the landed property of the country,"

Grimke asserted.⁶ Any attempt to fasten feudal tenures upon a backwoods

wilderness was foredoomed to failure. Instead, the New World environment

tended to produce a single large class of farm owners, free of the tensions

which embittered European proprietor and renter groups. As embryonic

capitalists, the American farmers shared the interests and attitudes of urban

businessmen. Conflicts between city and country, which so often disturbed

the internal security of other states, seldom arose in such a pervasive

bourgeois atmosphere.

With the reinforcement of the pursuit of property as a foundation for

American institutions went a commitment to popular education and majority

rule. "Where education is widely diffused, the whole population is introduced

into active and useful life, at a much earlier period than could be the case,

if the means of instruction were limited, and difficult to be obtained."⁷ In

private affairs this accent on activity and youth meant increased competition

in the scramble for wealth; on the political level its effects were more far-

reaching.

Each new generation represented fresh insights into major political ques-

tions. So-called "revolutions" in public opinion, such as America had ex-

perienced in 1776, 1801, and 1829 invariably coincided with the rise of

younger groups within the population. The participation of these youngsters

in politics was essential if their views were to influence government policy

in an orderly way. By balancing youth against age in their political assem-

blies, the Americans secured a broader consensus on pending issues and

guarded against violent action from otherwise excluded pressure groups.

In practice, of course, the admission of vociferous minorities to political

power might seem more calculated to produce anarchy than compromise.

The insults and blows traded on the floor of Western legislatures during the

¹830's and 1840's certainly pointed in that direction. But these were personal

quarrels, not class conflicts, and they created no tensions among the general

public.

On the fundamentals of a capitalist system, all parties and their adherents

were in agreement. Politicians further operated within the limits set by

written constitutions, themselves a pledge of the uniformity of national

thought:

A written constitution, framed by representatives of the people, locks

up, and forever withdraws from the field of party strife, almost all those

questions which have been the fruitful source of discord among other

communities. For almost all the civil commotions which have occurred

in the European states, have been caused by a disagreement about ques-

tions which are no longer open to debate in America. The constitution,

with the approbation of men of all parties, has placed them beyond the

FREDERICK GRIMKE                                                11

reach of the government. The authority appertaining to the political

departments is also strictly limited; and thus, a large class of powers

which other governments have been in the habit of dealing with, without

any control, cannot be exercised at all. In the same way as religion is

withdrawn from the political world, and has given rise to religious tolera-

tion, the fundamentals of government are also withdrawn from all inter-

ference with by party; and all men agree to think and act alike with

regard to them.8

The propensity of the American public to "think and act alike" on major

issues could scarcely have come as a surprise to readers of Tocqueville or

Mrs. Trollope. But where these earlier critics (and their American counter-

parts) had voiced upper-class concern over the emerging mass-mind of the

nation, Grimke discovered countervailing tendencies at work to safeguard

the future of popular government.

Majorities in a republic, he pointed out, were inherently unstable. Repre-

senting no privileged interests apart from the community, they fluctuated in

accord with the popular will. Political parties acted as sounding boards for

new ideas and encouraged citizens to scrutinize each other as carefully as

they watched the operations of government. In less representative systems

lay the real danger of mass subservience and conformity, for "where the

population only feels the pressure of their government, they are apt to herd

together like miserable sheep."9

Still, the political activity of the masses was one thing; their capacity for

self-government, something else. Even with the aid of a public school system,

countless individuals seemed destined to go through life with the bare rudi-

ments of an education. The ignorant outnumbered the wise in every country

of the world; but only in America did mere numbers generate power. While

democratic theory demanded that all voters be well informed, democratic

practice placed the future of free institutions in the hands of those least

qualified to comprehend their operation. From this dilemma no escape seemed

possible without undermining the foundations of popular rule.

Grimke himself had no illusions about the virtues of a mass electorate.

"The great majority of persons I met," he confessed, "appeared to know

nothing beyond the narrow circle of their daily occupations." Like the Found-

ing Fathers, he believed that human nature was unchanging and every man

a potential troublemaker, whose selfish drives far outweighed his nobler

qualities. To prevent any small despotic clique from gaining the upper hand,

political power had to be diffused broadly among the population. But where

the old-line Federalists made property ownership the test of a "safe" citizen,

the Democratic ex-judge of the Jacksonian era advocated universal manhood

suffrage: "The lowest class have a stake in the comonwealth as well as

any other class; they are the most defenseless portion of the population; and

the sense of independence which the enjoyment of political rights inspires,

in innumerable instances, acts as a stimulus to the acquisition of property."10

The ballot box itself was an educational force of uncalculated importance in

shaping the manners of a democratic people. Through its unrestricted use

bourgeois values might be disseminated among the entire population. Prop-

12                                                    OHIO HISTORY

ertyless voters, given a chance to participate in politics, would soon feel the

attraction of a legal system designed to enable all comers to acquire property

on an equal basis. Spurred by envy and a desire for self-improvement, the

lower classes were more apt to become the defenders than the destroyers of

the democratic state.

Besides, a knowledge of political affairs, like other kinds of learning, was

partly intuitive. Did a munitions manufacturer have to understand the

philosophy of chemistry, or a laborer the nature of the mechanical power he

used, in order to do a competent job? Politics involved basic moral issues

which humble folk often perceived more clearly than the sophisticated. Even

by failing to understand the exaggerated importance which party leaders

attached to certain pet measures, the masses might help to "moderate the

ultra views of politicians of all parties."11

Grimke thus denied that any irrepressible conflict between numbers and

intelligence lay ahead for America. The lower classes, he maintained, were

more jealous of each other than of their intellectual superiors, to whose

opinions they generally deferred. While self-seeking demagogues might win

mass support for a time, in the end they became unwitting agents of public

improvement. Speaking the language of the people, they aroused popular

interest in political affairs, a condition which led to greater reflection and

inquiry among the masses. More enlightened politicians could then win a

hearing for their views, and the evils of demagoguery would be removed by

the same robust democracy which gave them birth.

A free electorate could be trusted to handle any problem, even the selec-

tion of judges. Having spent half a lifetime on the bench, Grimke entertained

no exalted opinion of judicial integrity, especially at the state level. "Some-

times on peeping into our courts, and seeing who preside there," he noted

privately in 1846, "I am reminded of the expression of Shakespeare, 'Handy

dandy, where is the judge, where is the thief.'"12

A judiciary independent of private control safeguarded the workings of

democratic institutions; but judges could not free themselves from the

surveillance of the community they served. Turning the customary conserva-

tive arguments upside down, Grimke charged that a system of indirect

appointment and life tenure for judges encouraged political play from the

bench and perpetuated in office a number of partisan hacks and time-servers.

Popular election for a term of years (ideally between five and ten) might

weaken narrow party loyalties among prospective candidates and make them

better representatives of the public will.

The usefulness of popular opinion as a stabilizing force in American life

extended far beyond politics to influence every corner of society. News-

papers disseminated the most radical views without hindrance, since they

were certain to be checked by the "voluntary censorship" of competing

organs; religious sects, denied government patronage, appealed to the public

for support, a policy which led to majority rule in church affairs and pre-

vented the growth of a priestly caste; professional groups were widely

dispersed through the population and enjoyed no special privileges or cen-

tralized organization to set them apart from the untrained majority.

FREDERICK GRIMKE                                                     13

Wherever one turned, the free interplay of selfish interests seemed to be

contributing to social harmony, in the approved style of Adam Smith. Only

if problems arose which defied consensus could such an admirably self-

regulating system break down. But two potential trouble spots already

loomed on the horizon -- the proletarian and the Negro slave.

Grimke paid little attention to the urban working class in the first edition

of his Considerations. He assumed that any prospective danger from that

quarter would be offset by the mobility of American society and the more

humane outlook imparted to the workingman through a common school

education. But the revolutions of 1848, which raised the specter of class

war throughout Europe, caused him to qualify his earlier optimism.

In a revised version of his work published in 1856 he pondered the possible

emergence of a rural as well as urban proletariat. Still pinning his hopes on

the continued prevalence of middle-class ideology at all social levels, he

nevertheless predicted that:

If the time ever arrives, when the danger to the institutions becomes

imminent, from the banding together of the lowest class, the right of

suffrage will be limited. The maxim of equality is a great regulative, but

not a constitutive principle, of society; a distinction of great importance

in the political world: when it ceases to perform the first function, it

ceases to be a principle in the construction of the government.13

There could be no clearer indication of his leitmotiv: American democracy

was a function of middle-class rule. To extend the egalitarian principle beyond

the limits set by bourgeois practice would be to destroy democracy. In the

name of "free institutions," then, one might as a last resort deny to disaffected

voting blocs -- such as the Communists -- the power to undermine the

proper goals of representative government.

But the threat of communist subversion appeared pleasantly remote in

antebellum America. Of more pressing concern was the slavery issue and its

political repercussions. Like many another Southerner, Grimke felt that,

culturally, the Negro was racially inferior to the white man and could never

measure up to the responsibilities of middle-class democracy. The emanci-

pation of the slave would only insure the rise of a debased black electorate

to poison the very source of democratic institutions; for any hope of a mass

exodus to Liberia was a philanthropic pipe dream. Under these circumstances

slaveholders had little choice but to maintain the plantation system handed

down by their fathers, a way of life in which the hand of a benevolent pater-

nalism was everywhere apparent: "The institution of slavery, when it is

imposed upon the African race, may simply import, that inasmuch as the

period of infancy and youth is in their case protracted through the whole of

life, it may be eminently advantageous to them, if a guardianship is created

to watch over and take care of them."14

True, not all masters fulfilled these humanitarian obligations. But the well-

publicized brutalities of the slavocracy were inseparable from nineteenth-

century family life in general. Philanthropists never extended their inquiries

into the American home, where illusions of human goodness were likely to

shatter against the reality of a paternal tyrant.

14                                                   OHIO HISTORY

While Grimke believed that a majority of whites, North and South,

shared his racial outlook, he noted that slavery was becoming a more ex-

plosive political issue every year. Misguided fanaticism offered a partial

explanation for this phenomenon; but its roots lay in the opportunism of a

new class of politicians rising in the nonslaveholding states. "We cannot hide

our eyes to the fact," he wrote in 1850, "that the radical, the abolition party

in the free states, are in reality fighting their own fellow citizens, through the

men of the South."¹⁵ Six years later he spelled out this thesis even more

clearly, in regard to the rapidly growing Republican party.

The Republicans represented "an array of one class of society against

another." Their leaders were second-rate politicians who saw in the manifold

aspects of the slavery question a lever by which to dislodge more responsible

old-line statesmen. In Boston, for example, "new men" of the stamp of

Wendell Phillips, Josiah Quincy, and William Lloyd Garrison had long chafed

under the sway of a conservative elite led by Daniel Webster. Now, with the

death of Webster and other nationalist-minded politicians of the old school,

these parvenus were busily constructing their own party on narrow sectional

lines. Similar groups were at work throughout the North and West, heedless

of the effect which their local feuds might have on the future peace of the

entire Union.16

The extent of the danger depended, of course, upon the mechanics of

federal politics and here, as elsewhere in the American system, Grimke

thought he discerned a built-in safety valve. He compared the Union to a

private association in which each member, having freely joined, became bound

by the joint will of the group in carrying out the purposes of the club. No

individual could set up his own program against that of the majority any

more than a single state could veto a federal law. For, Taylor and Calhoun

notwithstanding, each state by its entrance into the Union alienated part of

its sovereignty to the whole body of states, which together created a central

government. This joint procedure placed federal power forever beyond the

control of the separate states and insured that in national affairs the will of

the majority would prevail. But just as in private life a disgruntled individual

might always resign from his club, so a state inveterately opposed to federal

policies enjoyed one ultimate recourse: the right of secession.

Properly understood, secession implied no aggressive assertion of state

power, but was an admission of weakness in the face of a prevailing national

consensus:

Instead of forcible resistance to the federal head, instead of unlawful

attempts to annul the laws of the Union, while the member is within it,

that member is at liberty quietly to depart, while others retain their

position in the confederacy. This is one of the most important attributes

of a federal government. Secession is the instrument happily substitued

in the place of open hostility to the laws. So that in the confederate

form of government, the law itself provides against those great emer-

gencies which in other countries are said to make laws for themselves.17

The secession argument appealed the more strongly to Grimke in that

he was convinced the nation would divide naturally into three or four inde-

FREDERICK GRIMKE                                                  15

pendent confederacies at some future date. Cultural ties would then super-

sede narrower political loyalties, with studies such as his helping to link the

several republics in a nexus of common institutions, manners, and ideas. "It

is the maintenance of one civilization, not the maintenance of one union,

which we are most deeply interested in," he declared, underscoring the

broader implications of his work.18

On its first appearance in 1848 the Considerations scored a modest success.

Western reviewers generally praised it; those in the East tended to be cool.

While Grimke had never expected to attract a wide popular audience, he

expressed disappointment at what he considered the provincialism of East

Coast critics. "I verily believe if the work had appeared as from the pen of

Webster or Calhoun, it would have had an unlimited circulation," he com-

plained. "Its being written in a small town, in the heart of a western State,

sheds a damper over the minds of the dull; and they are Legion, and an

author has no more chance of justice, than an angel would have in Pande-

monium."19

Francis Lieber, the noted political scientist and educator, however,

regarded the book with unqualified admiration. It was adopted by the

University of Virginia as the standard text in political philosophy courses;

and as late as 1854 Grimke reported "constantly receiving testimonials" from

readers, some of whom found the Considerations superior even to Tocque-

ville's classic study of American democracy.20 Encouraged by these marks

of favor and by the gradual disappearance of the 1100 copies already printed,

the judge brought out a "corrected and enlarged" edition of his work in 1856,

though by that time the state of popular opinion in most parts of the country

scarcely justified his reiterated faith in the moderation of middle-class

Americans.

Perhaps this outward display of confidence in the future was a case of

whistling in the dark where the public was concerned, for in private Grimke

was deeply alarmed over the growing violence of the national temper. "I

think our country is now passing through a more trying and critical period

than has occurred since the foundation of the government," he informed

Greene in September 1856:

The Union may be dissevered, and if it is, feuds and animosities will

as certainly grow up in the parts dismembered. They may disclose

themselves very gradually at first, but in the end they will be equally

violent. An extensive country is favorable to reflexion, and is one of the

cures for those intestine animosities, which will always exist, but

which burn more fiercely the narrower the bounds within which they

are confined. Let us keep together, until nature points to a separa-

tion.²¹

Sadly he watched as the political crisis worsened and as one projected

compromise after another failed to satisfy the emotional demands of a hope-

lessly divided population. Secession, when at last it came, left him in a state

of shock from which he sought relief through abandoning for a time all serious

interest in political affairs. But he could not remain indifferent to the con-

stitutional problems raised by a civil war, and soon found better therapy in

writing a series of "reflections" on current events for the Chillicothe papers.

16                                                  OHIO HISTORY

In these essays Grimke continued to plead for the principle of peaceful

secession and denounced the wholesale violations of civil liberties which, he

claimed, characterized the Lincoln administration's treatment of suspected

civilian traitors. He clung to the hope that civilized values would yet reassert

themselves, that somehow the essential oneness of the American people

would penetrate even the battlefields. One of his last letters, written at

Chillicothe in March 1862, described his dream of an impending reconcilia-

tion between the warring confederacies:

The horizon seems to be clearing off now, and the clouds which

looked so dark and threatening are gradually giving way to a brighter

day. The peaceful and tranquil termination of our troubles is an event on

which my attention has been rivetted from the beginning. It will be the

crowning glory of free institutions.²²

Eleven months later Grimke was dead in his bachelor quarters at the old

Madeira Hotel. While the "Brothers' War" pursued its relentless course in

defiance of his theories, he added a last footnote to his work from beyond the

grave. By the terms of his will one copy of the Considerations was forwarded

to the Federal government at Washington, while another was shipped to the

Confederate authorities in Richmond. It was an appropriate gesture from

one who had never learned to distinguish one white American from another.

The passing of Grimke and his generation marked the end of a political

tradition in America. Four years of bloody fighting helped to centralize power

more firmly in Washington and destroyed forever the idea that the Union

was a voluntary association of states. But the triumph of Northern arms

meant the strengthening of middle-class mores as well, and in this context

the judge's observations retain a perennial freshness.

As an apologist for bourgeois civilization, he saw the positive contribution

which a high standard of living could make to the development of the popular

mind. As an exponent of bourgeois liberalism, he accepted political experi-

mentation by the masses with a wry tolerance comparable to that of Holmes

and later judicial pragmatists. And as a philospoher of free institutions, he

looked forward to a day when public opinion would regulate the world

community as it did the American republic. In that vision of "one great

commonwealth" of representative states, Frederick Grimke read the final

justification of middle-class democracy.

THE AUTHOR: Maxwell Bloomfield is

Assistant Professor of History at The

Catholic University of America.