New Draft of Constitution? Well, Not New. And Not a Real Draft.

Last Tuesday the Philadelphia Inquirer reported about the rediscovery of a document in the holdings of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, said to be a lost “early draft” of the U.S. Constitution by James Wilson (shown at right, courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Law School). The researcher who made the find, and the claim of its importance, is Lorianne Updike Toler, a lawyer pursuing graduate studies at Oxford.

That article quoted one established constitutional scholar on the significance of the discovery: “John P. Kaminski, director of the Center for the Study of the American Constitution in the history department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.”

Kaminski is also one of the six directors of ConSource: The Constitutional Source Project, and chair of its Academic Advisory Board. Toler is a co-founder and former executive director of ConSource, which quickly used the news coverage in an appeal for funds.

However, the same Inquirer story also acknowledged: “The document - one of 21 million in the Historical Society's collection - was known to scholars…” On Friday the society showed on its blog how this document was transcribed and published in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, a widely used authority edited by Max Farrand, in 1911.

The H.S.P. contacted other historians who’ve worked on this subject, and their comments on that blog entry indicate that they were underwhelmed. Mark David Hall, author of The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 1742-1798:

I was disappointed to find that these documents had long been known to scholars. They were published in the same order suggested by Ms. Toler by Max Farrand in 1911. . . . It seems a stretch to call these notes a “draft” of the Constitution, and labeling them as such adds little to our knowledge of Wilson or the Constitutional Convention.

Richard R. Beeman, University of Pennsylvania, author of Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution:

Max Farrand, in his 1911 edition of The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, reprinted all of the documents discovered by Ms. Toler, and in exactly the order in which they appear in the manuscripts she discovered in the HSP archives. It is also the case that the location of those documents is not at all obvious, so Ms. Toler should be given credit for diligent searching and sleuthing. But the lion’s share of the credit truly does belong to Max Farrand, who long ago not only discovered the documents, but also recognized them for what they were—important contributions by Wilson to the Committee of Detail Report.

William B. Ewald, University of Pennsylvania Law School, author of “James Wilson and the Drafting of the Constitution” (PDF download):

The Wilson drafts are extremely well-known. They were first systematically studied at the end of the nineteenth century by Franklin Jameson, whose monograph appeared in 1902. Jameson did much of the work of piecing together the various drafts of the Constitution. His work was supplemented by Max Farrand, whose magisterial Records of the Constitutional Convention, published in 1911, carefully assembled all the known documents. . . . [This document] is to be found, properly catalogued, in the Wilson collection, exactly as Farrand reported a century ago.

Apparently Toler found a page that got separated from the rest of its original stack, bound with other Wilson papers, and finally acquired by the H.S.P. Following common archival procedures, the library staff did not undo that binding and refile the page with the rest. And the pre-computerized catalogue did not specify what each piece of that volume was, meaning that Toler had the thrill of spotting how it fit with other H.S.P. documents.

The Mormon Times picked up on the story from Philadelphia because Toler is a Provo native and graduate of Brigham Young University. It didn’t do her any favors by quoting her as saying:

“This makes James Wilson very much equal to Thomas Jefferson as a drafter of the Constitution,” she said. “It means to truly understand the Constitution, we need to study James Wilson a whole lot more.”

Jefferson was in Paris as the U.S. minister to France during the constitutional convention, and didn’t see a need for a stronger national government.

Toler’s own comment on the H.S.P. blog acknowledges that she is “currently alone in calling these two disparate pieces a ‘draft’” of the Constitution, rather than notes prepared for the Committee of Detail or even written during that committee’s discussions. But it’s not clear even that interpretation is significant. Historians have long credited Wilson with an important role at the Constitutional Convention, and the final document was truly a group effort—that’s why there was a convention, after all.

This episode does underscore the value of computerizing sources to make them widely available, as ConSource was founded to do—though it may be duplicating other, larger efforts. The H.S.P. can file the original paper document in only one place. However, digital copies of the pages, transcripts, and catalogue entries can be duplicated and linked in many ways, helping to ensure that scholars never lose the trail to all of Wilson’s surviving notes.

The Picture For Liberty Leaves

Timothy Decker’s illustrations in For Liberty are in striking black and white, with hatching and patterns to produce the illusion of grays. The effect is in some ways reminiscent of eighteenth-century engravings.

Decker chooses dramatic visual angles, such as an overhead view of King Street immediately after the Boston Massacre, probably inspired by Paul Revere’s hand-drawn scene of the scene.

One spread uses a background of radiating lines to isolate our attention on a soldier firing his gun, a technique I think comes from Japanese comics. This illustration may be why the publisher classifies the book as “graphic fiction.” But really it’s a traditional picture book.

I saw one anachronistic mustache on a townsman, but the book sidesteps other common visual errors, such as the pre-Revolution French flag.

That said, the For Liberty illustrations reflect the same pro-Crown bias as the text, as I discussed yesterday. One picture and caption portray a leather-aproned apprentice throwing a snowball right into Pvt. Edward Montgomery’s chest and knocking him down. The next shows a man in the crowd holding a stick spiked with nails; some waterfront toughs brought sticks to King Street, but those were pieces of firewood the men had picked up along the way, not prepared weapons.

In contrast, another picture shows the soldiers just standing around, not pointing their bayonets out at the crowd as witnesses agreed they did. There’s no mention that Montgomery responded to being knocked down by shouting “Fire!” to his comrades.

I saw other misstatements and omissions in the text, some bearing directly on the Massacre:

• The book dates the Seven Years’ War as “From 1753 until 1760.” The seven years of that war actually run from 1756 to 1763. Americans like to date its start from 1754, when George Washington led Virginia troops in a clash with the French at what he called Fort Necessity.
• “Called the Sons of Liberty, they ruled the city through boycotts and riots.” I don’t think Sons of Liberty was really an organized group in Boston; it was a label for any men opposed to Parliament’s new taxes. Regardless, this statement ignores how opponents of the new Crown taxes really controlled the town of Boston: through a big majority in town meetings.
• “A sentry saw Private White in distress and sought help...” Hugh White was the sentry outside the Customs House. The man who ran to the Main Guard for reinforcements was Thomas Greenwood, an employee in the Customs House.
• “A moment of silence descended over the street” after the first shot. Some witnesses recalled such a pause, but most testified to “a space of some seconds,” in the words of merchant Richard Palmes.
• “Turning, Captain [Thomas] Preston lost his footing. As he fell, he was struck by a club.” Actually Palmes, upset by the shooting, swung at Preston with his walking stick. And it wasn’t the captain who slipped, but Palmes, so his cane glanced against Preston’s arm.
• “After a few minutes of chaos,...” Preston “shoved their musket barrels skyward.” This lines and its position in the text implies Preston stopped the shooting. In fact, he testified to having knocked the barrels of his men’s guns up after the crowd had fallen back, the soldiers had reloaded, and a few men, led by watchman Benjamin Burdick, came forward to pick up the bodies.
• “The soldiers were taken into custody and thus protected from the angry citizens.” The soldiers were taken into custody because they were accused of murder. On the night of 5 March, townspeople were angry (three dead and eight wounded tends to produce anger), but after promises of legal action from Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson there was no attempt to attack the soldiers.
• “Lawyers were hired to prove that the soldiers provoked the riot.” Boston hired lawyers to prove that the soldiers had committed murder (or manslaughter) by shooting into a crowd of civilians without legal authority. That stationing soldiers in the midst of a town was bound to produce violence was a political argument that politicians made in print.
  
• “The Boston Massacre was the first in a series of conflicts between the Sons of Liberty and the agents of the king.” This leaves out the Stamp Act protests of 1765, the standoff outside Capt. Daniel Malcom’s warehouse in 1767, the Liberty riot in 1768, the Neck riot of 1769, and the tar-and-feathering of Customs employees in 1769. The Massacre wasn’t even the first fatal conflict—that was the riot that ended in Christopher Seider’s death on 22 Feb 1770.

The book’s last page says:

John Adams foresaw a troubled future.

The lawless mob and the presence of soldiers were signs of a defective system of government. He understood that no nation held dominion over liberty, the protection of one person from the actions of another. He knew that liberty was precious and required wise, vigilant, and reasonable citizens to protect it, even, at times, from the ignorance of one’s own countrymen.

The implication of this text is that Adams was troubled by the riots. He was far more troubled by the London government using its army to force laws on a colony that had never approved them. That’s why Adams went on to lead the argument for independence. He didn’t like mobs, but For Liberty’s language of needing “reasonable citizens” to oppose “the ignorance of one’s own countrymen” is a profoundly conservative misreading of Adams’s position at this time.

But that fits with the book’s profoundly conservative distortion of the Boston Massacre. As in any conflict, there were two sides to the fatal confrontation on King Street in 1770. For Liberty consistently shows only one.

The For Liberty Bias

For Liberty is an ironic title for Timothy Decker’s picture book about the Boston Massacre, published last year by Calkins Creek. It portrays that historic event almost entirely from the perspective of supporters of the royal government, who felt Bostonians were taking too much liberty.

This perspective begins on the front cover, drawn from behind a British soldier and thus making us share his view of the crowd. One youth yells a taunt while another is about to throw a snowball at close range. The single soldier holds his bayonet away from the boys, not defending himself. This picture makes a clear statement about who were aggressors and who was a victim.

The pattern extends to the historical figures that the book presents as individuals rather than part of a group. For Liberty doesn’t name any of the eleven men and boys killed or wounded by gunfire on 5 Mar 1770. One picture shows a black man being shot, clearly meant to be Crispus Attucks, but no text on that page identifies him.

The book doesn’t name Edward Garrick, the barber’s apprentice who got clubbed in the head by Pvt. Hugh White, beginning the spiral of violence on King Street. Instead, the text says, “At the Customs House, Private White found himself harassed by apprentices and street toughs,” as if people had spontaneously decided to bother an armed sentry.

In contrast, For Liberty supplies last names for Capt. Thomas Preston and all eight of the enlisted men tried for the shootings on 5 Mar 1770. It gives full names for two people, both gentlemen who supported those soldiers: defense attorney John Adams and magistrate James Murray. And the latter may not even have been there. (I’ll discuss that later.)

The book doesn’t name any of Adams’s colleagues on the defense team, nor either of the prosecuting attorneys, nor any of Boston’s political leaders (though it says they “planned” riots).

Decker’s text actually erases some people from the scene when it says: “The mob swelled. The reasonable men went home.” Up until the shots, several men at the Customs House were trying to speak to Capt. Preston or separate the soldiers and the crowd, including merchant Richard Palmes, young bookseller Henry Knox, and town watchman Benjamin Burdick. Decker’s line allows no possibility that anyone in the crowd was acting reasonably.

For Liberty doesn’t mention Christopher Seider, a boy shot dead eleven days before the Massacre by an unpopular Customs employee, and undoubtedly on Bostonians’ minds when they heard about White hitting Garrick. Instead, the book shows an effigy of an army officer hung on a rope (no such incident is documented) and says: “By March 5, 1770, it was dangerous to be a soldier in Boston.”

Soldiers in Boston suffered in street fights with locals, and didn’t receive equal justice from the local magistrates. Customs employees were tarred and feathered in 1769 and later in 1770. But of the six people killed in political clashes in Boston in that period, all were civilians who died “for liberty,” and none were soldiers.

TOMORROW: Details large and small in For Liberty.

“Rumford was decidedly attached to the cause”

While looking up something else, I came across this statement of how New England scholars viewed Benjamin Thompson in the 1800s. It appeared as a footnote to Dr. Jacob Bigelow’s inaugural address as Rumford Professor at Harvard, as published in the North-American Review in 1817:

Count Rumford was decidedly attached to the cause of American liberty, and earnestly sought for a commission in the service of Congress. He was present at the battle of Lexington, and afterwards remained sometime with the army at Cambridge.

His expectations of promotion were disappointed, in consequence of suspicions arising from his former intercourse with Governor [John] Wentworth of New Hampshire, and some others attached to the British cause. These suspicions it was impossible to overcome, although he demanded a court of inquiry, and was honourably acquitted of all intentions inimical to the cause of his country. After remaining some time in fruitless hope with the American army, and seeing the post of his ambition filled by a rival candidate, he retired in disgust, and embarked for England in January, 1776.

While at Cambridge, he exerted himself in preserving the library and philosophical apparatus, when the Colleges were occupied as barracks by the soldiery.

So we can see how shocking it was in the early 1900s when Allen French studied Gen. Thomas Gage’s intelligence files and realized that Thompson had been spying for the British throughout 1775—all that time he’d supposedly been traveling around the American lines trying to help.

Though you’d think the facts that Thompson had become secretary to the London official overseeing the war and then led a troop of dragoons on Long Island would have been a good clue about his attachments well before 1817.

“This Day is to be Executed at Worcester…”

At Early American Crime, Anthony Vaver just traced the short, unsuccessful criminal career of William Linsey, hanged in Worcester on 25 Oct 1770. Vaver wrote:

In September 1768, Linsey broke into the shop of Thomas Legatt of Leominster and took a great quantity of items, including fabrics, hats, gloves, cakes, biscuits, chocolate, razors, ink pots, two spelling books, two primers, and a Bible. This burglary turned out to be the second time Linsey targeted Legatt’s shop. . . .

The Superior Court ordered him to stand in the pillory, to be whipped twenty times, and to be branded—all of which were carried out on the same day. Amazingly, not long after his punishment Linsey went to live and work with Legatt for a month, where he was careful to behave himself before moving on to continue his crime spree.

Working for the man he’d robbed might have been someone’s plan for Linsey to pay back his victim and rehabilitate himself. If so, it didn’t work.

Near the bottom of this article is a clipping from the Boston News-Letter reporting Linsey’s scheduled execution. Even in death, the young man was totally overshadowed by two events in Boston:

• The militia observed the anniversary of George III’s accession by firing off their cannon, including the brass field-pieces later called the “Hancock” and “Adams.” Such annual ceremonies were a way for the townsmen to show off their patriotism and ability to defend themselves.
• Capt. Thomas Preston was on trial for murder, the first of three unusually long, closely-watched trials following the Boston Massacre.

Preston, unlike Linsey, was acquitted.

Myth, Memory, and What Really Happened at Bunker Hill

This essay comes to Boston 1775 from guest blogger Brad Cornelius, a freelance historical writer with an M.A. in European History living in Troy, New York. His latest project is writing corporate histories for established companies and institutions.

In the historical vernacular, to identify something as a myth is to label it as a misconception at best and an outright lie at worst. However, if we accept the broader definition of myth common to other social sciences, myths reveal as much information about the past as any solid historical fact.

In their simplest form, myths are stories that explain the origins of peoples or things. You don’t have to be Joseph Campbell to understand why such myths are useful to the societies that create them. In the half century that followed the battles of 1775, Americans were consciously creating a new nation. Recording the historical origins of this new nation also produced myths because both pursuits sought to define a new people, establish their core values, and chart an ideological course.

From the first shot fired at Lexington and Concord in 1775, the military actions of the Revolutionary War became infused with myth-like meaning that created difficult situations for later historians. A prime example of this process can be found in the events surrounding the battle of Bunker Hill that took place on June 17, 1775.

The traditional narrative of the battle is quite simple. Colonial forces occupied and fortified Breed’s Hill on a peninsula in Boston harbor. British forces took heavy casualties during their three assaults on the hill, dislodging the colonial forces only as the rebels ran low on ammunition and opted for a controlled retreat.

The first pitched battle of the Revolution became legendary due to the actions of high-profile individuals, the heavy casualties inflicted on the British, and the escape of all unwounded colonial forces. As the early decades of the nineteenth century passed, the men who fought on Breed’s Hill became the “greatest generation” of a young nation.

Fifty years after the battle, dignitaries like the Marquis de Lafayette and Daniel Webster gathered to lay the cornerstone for the monument that stands on the site today. Much like our generation, those behind the monument’s construction sensed the inevitable passing of the men behind important events. Just as collecting oral histories from World War II vets is popular today, the directors of the Bunker Hill Monument Association seized the opportunity to document the recollections of the battle’s surviving veterans who attended the 1825 ceremony.

As the reports began to accumulate, the directors became profoundly disturbed and perplexed by what they revealed. As part of the centennial celebration of the battle in 1875, the president of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, George Washington Warren, described how his predecessors reacted to the problem of myth and memory in The History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association During the First Century:

While the survivors of the Revolution were convened in Boston to attend the laying of the corner-stone of the Monument, their several depositions were taken of their reminiscences of the Battle. But the accounts they gave were confused and conflicting; so much so that no reliable information could be obtained from them.

At a meeting of the Directors, General [William] Sullivan stated to the Board “that he had possession of the papers containing the accounts given by the survivors of the Battle of the 17th June, 1775, and that he proposed to hold them subject to the inspection of the Directors exclusively.” His proposal was assented to, as the most expedient course to be adopted. Where they are now, nobody knows.

In the past two decades, advances in cognitive psychology and its related disciplines have taught us a great deal about memory formation and the workings of the brain. Historians now understand that where history is dependent on human memory, it is also subject to the shortcomings of the human mind. Lacking this perspective, the historians of the Bunker Hill Monument Association were perplexed by discrepancies in the veterans’ memories and chose to ignore the troublesome data – perhaps even destroy it.

The lost recollections would be a valuable source for any modern historian. We would arrive at some firm conclusions about the path of the battle through contemporaneous sources and analyze the veterans’ accounts in relation to those known facts, pinpointing useful information through a sort of triangulation. Careful analysis of the veterans’ words would allow us to describe the meaning memories of the battle carried within their society. The Bunker Hill Monument stands as a physical representation of that meaning, but the directors of the Monument Association were ill-equipped to deal with the quirks of memory and thus a wealth of sources was lost.

We would like to think that the most important events, those heavy with meaning for the United States, are immune to the uncertainty that accompanies myth creation. In reality, such events deserve our most critical attention. Where meaning is of the utmost importance, human memory often bends in its service, and it falls to the historian to explain both the events as they happened and the cultural meaning ultimately attached to them. Only through such a dual explanation can historians approximate the true nature of past events and honor their myth-like meaning in American culture.

For more information on war, meaning, and memory, Brad Cornelius recommends G. Kurt Piehler’s Remembering War the American Way (Washington: Smithsonian Books, 1995). Thanks, Brad!

William Fowler on the Newburgh Crisis, 3 Feb.

On Wednesday, 3 February, Prof. William Fowler speaks on “An American Crisis: The Newburgh Address” as part of the Friends of Minute Man’s lecture series. Bill is former editor of the New England Quarterly and president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and is working on a book about Gen. George Washington in the closing years of the Revolution.

The more I read about the “Conway cabal” and the “Newburgh conspiracy,” the more I think that Washington was either:

• really good at spotting conspiracies before they grew, or
• a little paranoid, at least in perceiving such conspiracies as bigger and more threatening than they were.

Or maybe both. Regardless of whether there was danger of a military coup against Congress when the commander made his Newburgh Address, Washington did manage to keep the Continental Army out of direct involvement in political matters, and that was important.

Bill Fowler will speak at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Concord, 81 Elm Street, starting at 8:00 P.M., and all are welcome.

Upcoming Talks at Old South Meeting House

The Old South Meeting House has three upcoming midday presentations that look like fun introductions to life in Boston during the Revolution.

Thursday, 11 February:

Which famous American inventor was born on Milk Street and baptized at the Meeting House? Which congregation member died in poverty, despite her international fame? Who spent her youth being “finished” in Boston and attended services each Sunday with her extended family? Join the education staff of the Meeting House and learn more about some of its famous and not-so famous congregants. Discover what it was like to attend Puritan services, and hear about life in colonial Boston for some of the Meeting House members.

Thursday, 18 February:

An active Patriot from the start, Dr. Joseph Warren was a man who led others down the path to independence. Creating an elaborate intelligence network to gather information on British troops, Warren made crucial decisions that started the American Revolution. Listen to Mike Lepage as he brings Dr. Warren to life and meet the man who sent Paul Revere on his famous ride, fought in the first battles of the war, and organized the resistance to the greatest empire in the world.

Thursday, 11 March:

Between April 19, 1775 and March 17, 1775 Boston was under siege by local militia men, as British troops struggled to maintain power in the colony. Join the education staff of the Meeting House and learn about the final days of the American Revolution in Boston. Hear about how every day Bostonians struggled to survive and how Old South Meeting House suffered under the occupation of His Majesty’s 17th Regiment of Light Dragoons.

Each of these events will take place from 12:15 to 1:00 P.M. (attendees are welcome to bring brown-bag lunches). The cost is $5, or nothing for Old South members. The site’s schedule includes other events as well, including talks on other historical periods and musical concerts.

The North American Premiere of the Celebrity Actor

The latest issue of Common-Place includes Jason Shaffer’s article “Unveiling the American Actor”, about the rise of theatrical celebrities in late colonial and early republican America. Of course, Boston was late to that game because of the Puritan prohibitions against theater.

Shaffer notes that it took a while for the faces of celebrities from any field to become known:

As Wendy Wick Reaves of the National Portrait Gallery has pointed out, even Washington’s image took time to gain common currency: she documents an engraving of the British poet John Dryden from a 1773 New England almanac that is recycled as an image of Sam Adams in a children’s primer in 1777, then again as an image of Washington in another primer in 1799.

One of the first star actresses in America, Susanna Rowson (thumbnail portrait above, courtesy of Explore PA History), was also its bestselling novelist:

Better known as the author of popular sentimental novels such as Charlotte Temple, Rowson was raised partly in Massachusetts by her father, a British naval officer who was eventually seized by the Continentals, deported, and repatriated in a prisoner exchange. She returned to the United States along with her husband, moved more by economic need than artistic ambition.

While performing with Wignell’s company in Philadelphia in 1794, at which point Charlotte was already available from Philadelphia booksellers, Rowson wrote Slaves in Algiers, a heroic play about Americans held captive by Barbary pirates. The controversy that attended this production illustrates the inherent difficulty of reintroducing British actors to the American stage and the specific difficulties that faced women onstage in the early republic.

While Rowson’s overwhelming emphasis in the play is on the generically American ideal of “liberty,” one of her characters, an Algerian girl named Fetnah who has been sold by her father into the Dey of Algiers's harem, expresses the desire that women should be as free as men.

Meanwhile, Rowson delivered the play’s epilogue not in her starring role of Olivia, a captive of mixed English and American parentage, but as the author of the play. “Disguised” as herself, she comically turned the tables on eighteenth-century gender relations by informing the audience that “Women were born for universal sway, / Men to adore, be silent, and obey.”

Rowson awakened the wrath of the arch-conservative (and fellow immigrant) newspaper editor William Cobbett, who in a pamphlet painted her as an aspiring petticoat tyrant and ally of French radicals while also questioning the sincerity of her conversion to the cause of American patriotism since her emigration from Britain. The controversy was brief, and Rowson went on to enjoy a successful, if short, theatrical career before retiring in 1797 to focus on writing books and opening a school for young women in Boston.

Rowson located her academy in Medford, Newton, and Roxbury at different times. Her school’s curriculum included learning to embroider this map of Boston harbor, featured in a Bostonian Society online exhibit.

Boston 1775 Twitter Feed, 15-29 Jan 2010

• Ray Soller seeks root of myth that George Washington added "So help me God" to Presidential oath of office: bit.ly/af9qUt #
• Past Is Present looks at evidence of how Abigail Adams REALLY observed July 4: bit.ly/c8rZSx #
• Boston middle school students make videogame about Chelsea Creek skirmish early in American Revolution: bit.ly/cr1P4o #
• Salinger/Zinn mashup at Hilobrow – Holden's History of the US: "Boston seems to have been full of class anger…" bit.ly/dvsedc #
• Doubts about overly optimistic identifcation of sankofa symbol on 18th-c coffin in NY's African Burying Ground: bit.ly/aYEaAB #
• The plaque stolen from the site of the belfry on Lexington common in 1775 has been found: bit.ly/a5kOOX #
• RT @Jurretta: Latest vol. in Papers of Jefferson includes "wall of separation" letter—and that Mammoth Cheese: bit.ly/9DvtOe #
• @universalhub But Julianne Moore's accent is SUPPOSED to be awful. Beautiful woman + grating sound = comedy. #
• Luxury British baby walker from 1710: bit.ly/by3VZ7 #
• RT @bostonathenaeum: From Quincy's History of the Boston Athenæum.... bit.ly/bnnwgt #
• Who shot the Elisha Jones house in Concord, Mass? bit.ly/9Qeh19 #
• Boston Looking Backward links to online repositories of historic photos: bit.ly/bBHoMt #
• RT @TJMonticello: Another Jefferson letter discovered, this one at American Legion Post 24 in Old Town Alexandria: bit.ly/7bYAqj #
• Flash! RT @bostonhistory: National Archives bans photos by tourists in an effort to protect historic documents tinyurl.com/y87ug5u #
• RT @TJMonticello: "the more ignorant we become the less value we set on science, & the less inclination we shall have to seek it."—Jefferson #
• RT @dancohen: .@robotnik wonders which t-shirt designs could be hi story's answer to those "Science!" t-shirts: bit.ly/5LFpXX #
• RT @dancohen: Rather obvious way for Obama to regain momentum at State of the Union speech on Wed: unveil revolutionary tablet computer. #
• Percentages in first survey of voters after Massachusetts special Senate elections: bit.ly/67uZGU (PDF) #
• Studying Hannah Mather Crocker, early American feminist, and her unpublished history of Boston: bit.ly/7xSQQg #
• RT @TJMonticello: By way of our Jefferson Library, Top 10 Misconceptions abt Tho Jefferson. bit.ly/4zArFF Do you have your own fave? #
• Just watched 30 ROCK. Didn't hear a single misstatement about John Hancock that I needed to grumble about! #
• RT @odnb: Whig and wings: Life of the Day bit.ly/8XXWFH // Lived 1751–1833, and I'd never heard of her. #
• Prediction: The Roberts Supreme Court next recognizes corporations' 2nd Amendment rights. Coke-Pepsi rivalry really heats up. #
• A criminal gang in Philadelphia, 1750: bit.ly/5DNYbN #
• RT @universalhub: How Jamaica Plain got its name bit.ly/8EoLVt #
• RT @Classicbookmags: 'Inbound 4: A Comic Book History of Boston' is available now. bit.ly/7NCVRc #
• Enjoyed hearing Emily Murphy on privateering to Friends of MMNHP; even more enjoyed hearing her refer to Derbies of Salem by first names. #
• RT @history_book: Thomas Paine: A Collection of Unknown Writings - Palgrave Macmillan. bit.ly/6aq3Hg #
• @GardenKeeper Part of John Hancock's political success is that he avoided hard choices. Managed not to be governor during Shays crisis. #
• For an Election Day in Massachusetts, colonial election cake at Boston Looking Backward: bit.ly/6AJNGc #
• RT @history_book: Songs of Protest, Songs of Love: Popular Ballads in Eighteenth-Century Britain - by Robin Ganev j.mp/2AOH2 #
• RT @wceberly: 246 yrs today, Jan 19, 1764, Parliament expels John Wilkes for insulting G eorge III in newspaper bit.ly/8e1s3a #
• Discussion seminar on Boston in the 1850s to take place on Wednesday evenings, Feb. 24-Mar. 31: bit.ly/6zo9ut #ushistory #
• RT @amhistorymuseum: Today in 1706: Benjamin Franklin born. Podcast on his legacy, technology, and democracy: ow.ly/Xnz8 #
• RT @archives_gov: Jefferson's Secret Message to Congress: bit.ly/6O9ROT // SPOILER: need $$ for trip west. #
• RT @TheHistoryPress: First written reference to Isaac Newton's apple story [1752] goes online: bit.ly/8UWZGC #
• For very, very special fans of financier Robert Morris: bit.ly/5VlqiE #
• Foundation garments of the Georgian Empire // RT @lucyinglis: A peep up the skirts of Georgian London post.ly/J8Cb #
• Upcoming comic about escaped slaves in American Revolution with martial-arts powers: bit.ly/8xUIDN (Real war not exciting enough?) #

Ten Hills Farm Book Launch, 3 Feb.

C. S. Manegold’s Ten Hills Farm: The Forgotten History of Slavery in the North uses the history of a 600-acre grant of land in modern Medford and Somerville to trace the development of slavery in Massachusetts, from Native American war captives and early African prisoners to the enslaved servants of Isaac Royall, last colonial owner of one part of the farm.

Longfellow National Historic Site and the Friends of the Longfellow House are hosting a book launch for Ten Hills Farm on Wednesday, 3 February, at 6:30 P.M. in the Sherrill Library on the Lesley University/Episcopal Divinity School campus in Cambridge. Manegold will speak and sign books. The event is free; to reserve a space, call 617-876-4491.

Here’s an article about the book from the Somerville Journal. In an opinion essay for the Boston Globe, Manegold wrote:

In the several times I have presented these unpleasant truths in talks at major universities, I have inquired afterwards—who knew this history of slavery in the North? Usually only about three hands go up of 30. And most of these people are professors. Among non-professors the void is even deeper. Students, stumbling on this news, tend to ask with some aggression: “Why didn’t they teach us this?’’

To which I think the answer is: because you weren’t paying attention. I heartily doubt that history textbooks on any level leave out the fact that slavery existed in all thirteen original U.S. states before and during the Revolutionary War, or that slavery endured in some northern and/or Union states well into the nineteenth century, or that some people in the antebellum north benefited economically from slavery and supported its continued existence.

What we’re missing is a mental picture of how slavery functioned in northern households, farms, and ports. Movies and histories have given us a crisp and familiar picture of large cotton plantations in the antebellum south (a picture that in turn leaves out a significant amount of the experience of slavery in the antebellum south, but that’s another story). Because we don’t have details about enslavement in the north firmly in our minds, we don’t feel ready for the quiz.

And that’s the benefit of books like Ten Hills Farm, using specific details to make that history more vivid, emotionally rich, and memorable. And I fully understand the need to market a history book as revealing a completely untold or forgotten story.

But when the book’s website asks, “Who, in this century, knows that slavery persisted in Massachusetts longer than it did in Georgia?” I can’t help noting that Boston 1775 pointed that out in 2006.