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Periodical: | Our Race |
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Summary: |
From Pat Deveney's database:
Our Race. This was a series rather than a journal proper, consisting in extended studies of a single issue: identifying the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel with the "Anglo-Saxons" (a term carefully hedged about to include the "better sort" of Irish descended from the Tuatha te Danaan and the Tribe of Dan) and illustrating their path in Biblical prophecy toward the imminent coming of the millennium. The series was the last hurrah of that sort of antiquarian history represented earlier in the century by Godfrey Higgins and the like, which sought to explain the concealed truths and patterns behind the labyrinthian maze of historical facts, usually by learned appeal to homophones and naive etymologies. This antiquarianism was an exacting and intricate endeavor and required a basis in classical languages and current scholarship that would make it impossible to practice now. Totten (1851-1908) was from an old Mayflower-descended family that had long served in the American armed forces. He was a graduate of West Point and served in the army as a lieutenant in the Apache campaigns and then accepted a position at Yale University as an instructor in military tactics (where he was one of the first to advocate war gaming). Totten first presented his ideas in the local newspapers and then tried in vain to find a publisher. Failing that, he started his own company and to publish his ideas to subscribers. Totten began the series with a Kiplingesque paean at century’s end to the success and power of the Anglo-Saxons and their colonies in their march across the world. They were "a gathered people; great, not numbered among the continental nations, of superior influence in all international councils, and with a commerce whose ports close not day or night, and a flag which, lifted as an ensign to the world, greets the sun from clime to clime around the globe, and possessed of a thousand other marks of greatness that to-day are Anglo-Saxon only." He then revealed the great secret embodied in the journal’s subtitle: the answer to the "Saxon Riddle." "It is a startling statement, and yet one founded upon ample evidence, that The Anglo-Saxon Race is the literal, lineal, and blood descendant of the Ten Tribes of Israel, whom Shalmaneser deported into Media circa 721 b .c ., and who thereafter, and hitherto, have been so completely lost!" This idea of "British or Anglo Israel" did not originate with Totten, and had originally been an element of the emerging medieval kingdoms’ efforts to distinguish themselves from lesser neighbors, but Totten in the 27 volumes of the journal gave the theory its most thorough airing and integrated it with a millennial expectation of the Coming Man, the Coming Crusade and Israel Redivivus as the Anglo-Saxons rose to world dominance and restored Israel to Jerusalem, explanations of Biblical and universal chronology and cycles, the meaning of Biblical measurements and those of the Great Pyramid (C. Piazzi Smith wrote the introduction to the first volume of the series), the symbolism of the Great Seal of the United States, prophecies of the Sceptre and Lion of Judah (the heraldic blazon of England) and the supremacy of Israel, etc. All of this was buttressed with vast tables and charts of dates, Biblical citations, and genealogies, learned discussions of a new system of gematria (assigning proper decimal values to Hebrew letters—though Totten, surprisingly, knew little Hebrew), and genealogies of the descent of the House of David through Tea Tephi, David’s daughter and ward of Jeremiah, as "Empire Took its Westward Way." Reviewers were not impressed with the success of Totten’s arguments but praised the diligence of his research and his style in presenting it. The series was reprinted (usually called Our Race Quarterly) by the publishing company in 1909-1917, after Totten’s death, and again in 1941 in conjunction with the publishers of Destiny. From 1893 until 1907 the series had as its companion Our Race News-Leaflets, which Totten published as a "Monthly Letter to such as are interested in the Signs of the Times." NYPL; Northwestern University; NYS Historical Society; Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley; Connecticut State Library; Yale University Library, etc.
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Issues: | Our Race S1 N1 Mar 1890 |
Our Race S1 N2 Sep 1890 | |
Our Race S1 N3 Mar 1891 | |
Our Race S1 N4 Oct 1891 | |
Our Race S2 N5 Jan 1892 | |
Our Race S2 N6 Feb 1892 | |
Our Race S2 N7 Mar 1892 | |
Our Race S2 N8 Dec 1892 | |
Our Race S3 N10 Sep 1893 | |
Our Race S3 N11 Mar 1894 | |
Our Race S3 N12 Apr 1894 | |
Our Race S3 N9 Jun 1893 | |
Our Race S4 N13 Sep 1894 | |
Our Race S4 N14 Dec 1894 | |
Our Race S4 N15 Jan 1895 | |
Our Race S4 N16 Jul 1896 | |
Our Race S5 N17 Oct 1896 | |
Our Race S5 N18 Jan 1897 | |
Our Race S5 N19 Apr 1897 | |
Our Race S5 N20 Oct 1897 |
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