Anderson on Rebellion 1776 in Cambridge, 1 Apr.

Laurie Halse Anderson’s latest novel about the American Revolution is set in Boston: Rebellion 1776.

Anderson has won awards for her Seeds of America Trilogy (Chains, Forge, and Ashes), as well as her earlier novel Fever 1793 and the picture book Independent Dames: What You Never Knew about the Woman and Girls of the American Revolution.

She’s even better known for her contemporary novel Speak, which is frequently challenged in public schools and libraries because it addresses the problem of rape. She’s one of the handful of American authors who have won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for children’s literature.

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Anderson described the scope of this new book:

My book covers the traumatic effects of the Siege of Boston, the growing political divide within families and communities, and the frightening smallpox epidemic, which threatened everything. One reason I continue to write about this era is because I think we could do a better job depicting the state of the colonies at the start of the Revolution in recognizing that independence was not a done deal.

As a protagonist Anderson created a thirteen-year-old girl named Elsbeth Culpepper, orphaned but taking advantage of the chaos and need for labor in Boston after the British evacuation to keep herself away from the Overseers of the Poor.

Anderson’s long conversation with Horn Book editor Roger Sutton goes deep into her research and storytelling processes:

First I had to understand what the cultural, financial, and sociological constraints were then on a thirteen-year-old kitchen maid. But then came the chaos of the siege, then the changing of the armies, and then it took a while for Boston's government to get up and running again. That chaos opened the door for me and my character to break some rules, some constraints. And then as society gets its act back together, the walls and rules come back up again.

I recommend that interview for anyone writing historical fiction.

Anderson will be speaking and signing books at a ticketed event for Porter Square Books on Tuesday, 1 April. That will happen at the Marran Theater in Cambridge. Admission is $25 (which includes a signed book) or $10 (which doesn’t).

New Book on Revere’s Ride Arriving

For the Sestercentennial, Macmillan is publishing The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America, by Kostya Kennedy.

The publisher’s description says:

In The Ride, Kostya Kennedy presents a dramatic new narrative of the events of April 18 and 19, 1775, informed by fresh primary and secondary source research into archives, family letters and diaries, contemporary accounts, and more. Kennedy reveals Revere’s ride to be more complex than it is usually portrayed—a loosely coordinated series of rides by numerous men, near-disaster, capture by British forces, and finally success. While Revere was central to the ride and its plotting, Kennedy reveals the other men (and, perhaps, a woman with information about the movement of British forces) who helped to set in motion the events that would lead to America’s independence.

Kennedy’s background is in sports writing, with books on Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, and Pete Rose.

Looking at how the industry advance notices of the book, I don’t see anything new mentioned. What those reviewers tout as news—that Revere made many rides besides the famous one, that there were many riders on that date besides Revere, and that Margaret Gage may have leaked news of the British march—were all in David Hackett Fischer’s book Paul Revere’s Ride, published in 1994. But the reviews praise Kennedy’s fast-paced and witty writing style.

Kennedy is doing a book tour in New England in the coming fortnight.

Monday, 24 March, 6 P.M.
Harvard Coop
Cambridge

Tuesday, 25 March, 7 P.M.
Papercuts Bookshop
Jamaica Plain
Reserve space here

Thursday, 27 March, 7 P.M.
RJ Julia
Madison, Connecticut
Reserve space here

Monday, 7 April, 6 P.M.
Griswold Memorial Library
Colrain

Abraham Fuller and “the exact records of the military stores”

Yesterday I quoted a description of the Rev. Jonathan Homer of Newton late in life, by the poet and doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Homer’s writings include a “Description and History of Newton, in the County of Middlesex,” published in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1798. And that article includes an anecdote related to the British army expedition to Concord 250 years ago next month.

In writing about the local politician Abraham Fuller (1720–1794), Homer said:

To him, as principal of a committee of the Provincial Congress at Concord, were committed the papers containing the exact records of the military stores in Massachusetts at the beginning of 1775. Upon the recess of the Congress, he first lodged these papers in a cabinet of the room which the committee occupied.

But thinking afterwards, that the British troops might attempt to seize Concord in the absence of the Congress, and that these papers, discovering the public deficiency in every article of military apparatus, might fall into their hands, he withdrew them, and brought them to his house at Newton.

That foresight and judgment, for which he was ever distinguished, and which he displayed in the present instance, was extremely fortunate for the country. The cabinet was broken open by a British officer on the day of the entrance of the troops into Concord, April 19, 1775, and great disappointment expressed at missing its expected contents.

Had they fallen into their hands, it was his opinion, that the knowledge of the public deficiency might have encouraged the enemy, at this early period, to have made such a use of their military force, as could not have been resisted by the small stock of powder and other articles of war which the province then contained. He considered the impulse upon his mind to secure these papers, as one among many providential interpositions for the support of the American cause.

Fuller was indeed a member of a Massachusetts Provincial Congress committee appointed on 22 Mar 1775 “to receive the returns of the several officers of militia, of their numbers and equipments,” plus inventories of the towns’ “stock of ammunition.”

He wasn’t the senior member, named first and thus by tradition the chair. All the others—Timothy Danielson of Brimfield; Joseph Henshaw of Leicester, Spencer, and Paxton; James Prescott of Groton; and Michael Farley of Ipswich—were colonels in the Massachusetts militia while Fuller was still a major. But he lived the closest to Concord, so it makes sense he felt responsible for securing the committee’s sensitive records.

(I should note that at this time, the congress included both Abraham Fuller from Newton and Archelaus Fuller from Middleton, and that spring both men held the militia rank of major. Sometimes clerk Benjamin Lincoln remembered to identify which “Major Fuller” the congress meant, and sometimes not. In this case, the official record dovetails with Homer’s story.)

Another version of this anecdote appears in the family genealogy Records of Some of the Descendants of John Fuller, Newton, 1644–1698, published in 1869 by Samuel C. Clarke:

Judge Fuller was a very earnest patriot before the Revolution, and it is told that previous to the fight at Concord, fearing that the British might destroy the County Records at that place, he rode over from Newton the day before the fight, and carried away the most valuable of the papers in his saddlebags to his house in Newton.

Interestingly, in a footnote Clarke quoted Homer’s text, which says Fuller hid sensitive records for the whole province, making his action more important. Yet Clarke stuck to what seems to be the family’s idea that those were only “County Records.” In a way they were, since the militia regiments were organized at the county level.

Clarke’s version also said that Fuller wanted to prevent the British regulars from destroying those records rather then to prevent those soldiers from reading them. That seems more in keeping with the Patriot mindset in early April 1775. They thought they were preparing well for war, not woefully deficient, and feared the army might destroy their means of self-governance.

All that said, I’ve never come across evidence that the British troops in Concord were looking for Provincial Congress records. Gen. Thomas Gage didn’t gather any intelligence about where those documents were kept or put them on his list of what the regulars should look for. No British officers on the march described such a search.

I therefore think that everything Homer wrote about “a British officer” breaking into the cabinet because he “expected” to find records inside is probably imaginary.

Fuller took care to keep those papers away from the army, just as Paul Revere and John Lowell took care to move John Hancock’s trunk into the woods at Lexington, and just as Azor Orne, Elbridge Gerry, and Jeremiah Lee took care to hide from the troops passing by their tavern in west Cambridge. But that doesn’t mean those careful actions thwarted the British mission in any way. We like to think our actions have an effect on the world.

(The photo above, courtesy of Find a Grave, shows the Fuller family tomb in Newton’s east burying-ground. It’s about half a mile from my house.)

“The procession of the old clergymen who filled our pulpit”

Back in January I quoted Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes on one of the impressive clergymen who came to preach in his father’s pulpit in Cambridge while he was a boy.

Young Oliver was born in 1809 in the house that had belonged to the Harvard College steward Jonathan Hastings. In 1775 the Massachusetts committee of safety and Gen. Artemas Ward took it over as the first rebel headquarters of the war.

In The Poet at the Breakfast Table, Holmes described some ministers whose names I know because they wrote recollections about the Revolutionary period when they themselves were boys.

Holmes recalled the Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris (1768–1842) of Dorchester this way: “already in decadence as I remember him, with head slanting forward and downward as if looking for a place to rest in after his learned labors.”

The Rev. David Osgood (1747–1822) has made only one appearance in Boston 1775, guarding his privilege to perform all marriages in his town. Holmes recalled him as “the most venerable David Osgood, the majestic minister of Medford, with massive front and shaggy over-shadowing eyebrows.”

Holmes’s longest profile limned the “attenuated but vivacious little Jonathan Homer of Newton, who was, to look upon, a kind of expurgated, reduced and Americanized copy of Voltaire, but very unlike him in wickedness or wit.”

Homer (1759–1843) was minister of the first congregation in Newton, where Homer Street preserves his name. Holmes went on:

The good-humored junior member of our family [Holmes himself?] always loved to make him happy by setting him chirruping about Miles Coverdale’s Version, and the Bishop’s Bible, and how he wrote to his friend Sir Isaac (Coffin) about something or other, and how Sir Isaac wrote back that he was very much pleased with the contents of his letter, and so on about Sir Isaac, ad libitum,—for the admiral was his old friend, and he was proud of him.

Homer and Coffin had been classmates at the South Latin School, one becoming an American clergyman and the other a British admiral. Coffin’s recollections of life in that school were invaluable to me in writing about its culture.

The kindly little old gentleman was a collector of Bibles, and made himself believe he thought he should publish a learned Commentary some day or other; but his friends looked for it only in the Greek Calends,—say on the 31st of April, when that should come round, if you would modernize the phrase.

In other words, that magnum opus’s day of publication would never arrive.

William Browne, John Glover, and a Farmhouse in Swampscott

Save the Glover is a campaign by several historic organizations in Swampscott and neighboring towns to preserve an eighteenth-century farmhouse.

The house was originally built in the third quarter of the 1700s by William Browne (1737–1802), a wealthy and respected lawyer. It was his country estate since he already owned a mansion in Salem, as well as part of a family seat in what’s now Danvers.

Browne was elected to the Massachusetts General Court in 1762. Though he joined the Customs service in 1762 as collector for the port of Salem, he favored local merchants enough to keep getting reelected—until he voted to rescind the Circular Letter of 1768.

After that, Browne was firmly on the side of the royal government. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson rewarded him with appointments: as colonel of the Essex County militia, as judge in the county court, and eventually as the last royal appointment to the Massachusetts superior court in 1774. That same year, the London government named him to the mandamus Council.

Refusing to resign from the Council made Browne unpopular locally. Dozens of militia officers refused to serve under him. He moved to Boston late in 1774, to Britain in 1776, and to Bermuda as royal governor in 1781. The state of Massachusetts confiscated Browne’s real estate, including that country house and land.

Gen. John Glover (1732–1797) of the Continental Army bought the property and moved in with his second wife in 1782. He lived there for the rest of his life, welcoming fellow veterans and serving in local offices.

In 1793 the Rev. William Bentley recorded how “the general received us with Great Hospitality” when a committee came through to settle the boundaries of Marblehead, Salem, and Lynn. Glover evidently felt he still lived in Marblehead, but surveyors determined that his house stood in a narrow splinter of Salem which later became part of Swampscott.

The property remained a farm through the nineteenth century. The photo above shows how it looked about 1910. In the twentieth century, the original house became the core of a larger inn and then restaurant, both named, in fine Colonial Revival fashion, for Gen. Glover. For the last thirty years or so, however, that complex has been abandoned.

Originally the Save the Glover campaign sought to preserve the house from being taken down for a new residential development (to be called Glover Residences, naturally). However, the developer has scrapped that project. Now weather and decay are the biggest dangers to the Glover house.

The Plain Language of the Alien Enemies Act

In 1798 the U.S. Congress, caught up in the possibility of war against France (then under the Directory government), passed a series of controversial laws.

The Naturalization Law made it harder for immigrants to become citizens of the U.S. of A. by increasing the number of years a person had to live in the country before applying. This was repealed in 1802.

The Act Concerning Aliens (distinguished as the Alien Friends Act) empowered the President to jail or deport any non-citizen who he determined was “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.” This expired after two years.

The Sedition Act criminalized combining to oppose government measures and criticizing the U.S. government, House, Senate, or President. The John Adams administration deployed this law against Jeffersonian politicians and printers. It expired in 1800.

The Alien and Sedition Acts were strongly opposed at the time. They led to Jeffersonian victories over Federalists. Since then, historians and legal scholars have almost universally treated these laws as a Bad Thing.

The fourth of those laws from 1798 remained on the books, however: the Act Respecting Alien Enemies. It didn’t have an expiration date. Instead, its language limits the circumstances under which a President can invoke it.

The Alien Enemies Act empowers a President to act only

whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government

If “any foreign nation or government” is in a “declared war” with the U.S. of A. or has made a “predatory incursion,” then the federal government can jail and deport that country’s male citizens aged fourteen or older. The U.S. Constitution further vests the power to declare war in Congress, not the executive branch.

Last week the White House illegally invoked the Alien Enemies Act to justify deporting hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador even though there’s no declared war against Venezuela nor any invasion by Venezuela.

In place of the law’s actual conditions, the White House claimed that the Tren de Aragua criminal gang and Venezuela amount to something it calls “a hybrid criminal state.” (It didn’t address how in 2023 the Venezuelan government deployed 11,000 soldiers to break up a Tren de Aragua stronghold.) The White House also claims that illegal migration by individuals, in unspecified numbers, is the equivalent of a government-led invasion.

In some ways, the President is an expert on criminal states. He’s a convicted felon, facing additional federal and state charges, adjudicated as liable for sexual assault, and bound by multiple legal settlements for fraud. But that experience in crime doesn’t give this President the legal power to invoke a statute contrary to its provisions.

The executive branch then further demonstrated its lawlessness by ignoring a judicial order to stop flying people out of the country until the legal issues can be decided.

The Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela shows the danger of allowing a coup plotter—in this case, Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez after 1992—to take political office. Coup plotters by definition don’t respect elections and the rule of law. Venezuela is now only nominally republican, actually authoritarian (as is El Salvador). But Venezuela isn’t in declared war against or invading the U.S. of A., as the Alien Enemies Act stipulates. It’s not the only criminal state in this story.

“Phebe Oliphant (a Black woman)”

At the Eleven Names Project, Wayne William Tucker shared a long essay about the preferred names of the black woman who helped to raise Abigail Adams and was part of her household later in life.

As Abigail grew up and married, that woman was enslaved to her father, the Rev. William Smith, probably coming from the family of her mother, formerly Elizabeth Quincy. The Quincy and Smith families referred to her by her first name only: Phoebe.

After becoming free in 1783, Phoebe married a man whom Abigail referred to as “Mr. Abdee.” Seeking to treat her in the same way as white women, the Adams Papers editors therefore referred to her as Phoebe Abdee.

Following that lead, I’ve tagged her under the name Phoebe Abdee. So did Woody Holton in one of the few articles written about her.

Tucker has found a more complex story in local records, however, indicating that Phoebe did adopt her husbands’ surnames—but Abdee wasn’t one of them.

First, Tucker brings up the possibility that Phoebe married and had children while enslaved to the Smiths, based on mentions of other people in the accounts settling the minister’s estate in 1784. That’s just a possibility, though.

In 1777, the Rev. Mr. Smith read out an intention to marry for his “Phebe” and “Brester Sternzey of Boston.” There’s no confirmation this union went through. (Boston’s town records don’t mention this intention. They state that the Rev. Joseph Eckley married Bristol Stenser and Deborah Foster on 16 Dec 1784.)

In 1784, Phoebe married a man Abigail Adams identified as “Mr. Abdee whom you know.” His name appears in town records as Abdi and Abda, elsewhere as Abdy. Tucker connects this man to “Abde Deacon Savil’s negro man,” who had married a woman enslaved to a Braintree minister back in 1754. It appears that Abdee (however spelled) was his given name, and that after emancipation (if not before) he used Savil as his surname. This man died in the first week of 1798, according to Abigail’s sister Mary Cranch.

On 19 Sept 1799, Quincy vital records show a woman named Phebe Savil marrying William Olifant. A month later, John Adams mentioned that Phoebe had remarried. In 1800, Abigail referred to Phoebe’s husband as William for the first time.

Finally, on 7 Oct 1812, weeks after Abigail referred to Phoebe as “sick and dying,” the Quincy records state that “Phebe Oliphant (a Black woman”) died at age eighty-three.

As Tucker says, the coincidences of the dates strongly suggest that the Adamses were referring to Phebe Savil/Oliphant, the woman Abigail had known all her life, without using her surnames.

Thus, it appears that “Phoebe Abdee” went by:

• Phebe as an enslaved woman, not by choice—her choice of surname, if any, unknown.
• Phebe Savil from 1784 to 1799, after her husband Abdee.
• Phebe Oliphant from 1799 to 1812, after her husband William.

This is a nice piece of research, supported by clips of the documents themselves, which helps to fill out a life we’ve known only through the Adams family.

“Spies Among Us” in Concord, 22 Mar.

On Saturday, 22 March, Minute Man National Historical Park and local partners will present a day of presentations and activities on the topic “‘Spies Among Us’: Intelligence Gathering by the British Army and Provincial Congress.”

This event will take place at the Wright Tavern in the center of Concord, a building that Massachusetts Provincial Congress committees and Lt. Col. Francis Smith both used at different times in April 1775.

National Park Service Rangers and volunteer living historians are preparing to welcome visitors to an open house from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M., when they can see the newly refurbished tavern interior and learn about life in Middlesex County as the spring of 1775 began.

According to the current schedule, at 11 A.M. and 2 P.M. former Ranger Thompson Dasher will speak on “‘For the Information of Gen. Gage’: The British Spy Mission to Concord.” This interactive program will put visitors in the position of Concord citizens in March 1775 when Capt. William Brown and Ens. Henry DeBerniere of the British army came to town in disguise, gathering intelligence about hidden weapons.

Plans for this event had to be changed last month when the White House fired one Minute Man Park interpretive ranger, among several hundred more “probationary” employees across the agency—mainly public servants who had been in their current jobs for less than a year. For a short time it appeared that “Spies Among Us” would even be canceled.

Congress just funded the federal government through the end of its fiscal year in September, providing a little more stability. However, the executive branch continues to hold back legally authorized funds and initiatives, acting like a developer stiffing contractors after they’ve finished their work. It continues to break contracts and policies. Therefore, I doubt we’ve seen the end of trouble for public servants doing the jobs they were hired to do.

Five weeks from now, on Saturday, 19 April, Minute Man Park will host the Battle Road Tactical Demonstration—the largest, most authentic Revolutionary War reenactment yet planned. That event depends on on the expertise, authority, and coordination of the Park Service. It would be a damn shame if it’s made more difficult by monarchical impulses out of Washington.

N.P.S. personnel have been told to assure the public all is well. Propublica reported, “If asked about limited offerings, one park’s rangers were instructed to say ‘we are not able to address park or program-level impacts at this time.’” So we can only hope for the best.

On a less galling note, the Wright Tavern is also the home base for the Pursuit of History weekend on “The Outbreak of War,” scheduled for 3–6 April. We’ve planned that event to include visits to historic sites both in Minute Man Park and outside, and we have contingency plans for different situations. I understand a couple of slots have opened up, so it’s still possible to join us in exploring the start of the Revolutionary War.

“1775: A Society on the Brink” Conference in Concord, 11–12 Apr.

On 10–11 April, the Concord Museum will host a conference, organized with the David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society and the Massachusetts Historical Society, on the topic “1775: A Society on the Brink of War and Revolution.”

The full schedule is available here.

The conference will start with a reception on Thursday evening, followed by a keynote discussion at 7 P.M.:

From Boycotts to Bullets: Was the Outbreak of the American Revolution Inevitable?

• Serena Zabin, Carleton College
• Robert A. Gross, University of Connecticut, Emeritus
• Katherine Grandjean, Wellesley College

On Friday, 11 April, the day will be devoted to five paper sessions, each seventy-five minutes long and featuring three papers by scholars ranging from graduate school to emeritus rank. A panel moderator will offer commentary and coordinate questions from the floor. One of those panels stands out for me—I’m sure you’ll see why.

9 A.M.: Faith and Ideas

10:30 A.M.: Communities in Crisis

• Donald Johnson, North Dakota State University, “From Observers to Generals: The Transformation of Local Committees at the Outset of the Revolutionary War”
• Sarah Pearlman Shapiro, Brown University, “Care Work Vulnerabilities and Sexual Assault in 1775 Boston”
• Kevin M. Sweeney, Amherst College, Emeritus, “The Guns of April: Kinds and Quantities of Firearms Kept and Borne in 1775”
• Comment: J. L. Bell, Boston1775.net

1:30 P.M.: The Coming of War

3:00 P.M.: Myth, Material, and Memory

4:15 P.M.: Concluding Remarks

The conference registration is only $20 and includes the Thursday evening reception and a boxed lunch on Friday. All attendees must register in advance. I hope to see some of you there!

Chatting with Some Revolutionary Figures

Here are a couple of first-person interpretations of Revolutionary figures to enjoy next week.

Wednesday, 19 March, 7 to 8 P.M.
Affectionate Friends and Humble Servants: Martha Washington and Mercy Otis Warren in Conversation
Concord Museum

Set in the late 18th century, this forum presents a fictional dialogue featuring Martha Washington (portrayed by Sandy Spector), the First Lady, and Mercy Otis Warren (portrayed by Michele Gabrielson), a prominent playwright and activist. In a cozy parlor setting, they discuss their friendship, their respective roles during the revolutionary era, and the challenges they encountered.

Through a mix of dialogue and historical anecdotes, their conversation highlights their personal reflections and the broader political context, emphasizing the bond that contributed to their influence on the emerging nation.

Admission is $10, or free to museum members. This event will not be livestreamed. Click here to reserve seats.

Thursday, 20 March, 6 to 8 P.M.
Fireside Chat with Paul Revere
Wayside Inn, Sudbury

Join Paul Revere by the fireside at this historic tavern for a spirited review of the notoriously inaccurate Longfellow poem that immortalized his “Midnight Ride.” Heavy hors d’oeuvres included with the price of a ticket, and drinks will be available for purchase at the bar. For the last thirty minutes of this event, interpreter Michael Lepage will step out of character to answer questions about the work that goes into representing historical figures.

Tickets are $20 for members of the Wayside Inn Foundation or the Paul Revere House, $25 for nonmembers. Phone 978-443-1776×1 to reserve tickets at the member price. For general-admission tickets without the member discount, click here.

Upcoming Events from American Ancestors

American Ancestors (née the New England Historic Genealogical Society) is offering two free online presentations this week about the Revolution.

Thursday, 13 March, 3 to 4 P.M.
Friend or Foe: Researching Colonial Ancestors During the American Revolution
David Allen Lambert

Nearly 250 years ago, America declared its independence from the British Empire, changing the course of history. While many took up the cause and supported revolution, others remained loyal to the British government—turning friends into foes and pitting neighbor against neighbor. In this online lecture, Chief Genealogist Lambert will discuss how to research your colonial ancestors and determine if—and how—they may have served the cause of the American Revolution.

Sign up here.

Friday, 15 March, 4 to 5:15 P.M.
Eyewitness to Revolution
David Wood

This illustrated talk will focus on the stories told by objects in the Concord Museum collection about the lead-up to April 19, 1775, and the epochal day itself. In the aggregate, these stories contribute forcefully to an understanding that the Revolution, the great turn from a monarchy to a republic, was already over well before the day the Revolutionary War began.

Wood, Curator of the Concord Museum, has served at the Museum since 1985 and provides deep knowledge of the collection and Concord history. He has overseen the development of over 40 temporary exhibitions and galleries.

Sign up here.

Next month, American Ancestors has some more events on its schedule.

Wednesdays in April, 6 P.M.
Revolutionary War Research: Tracing Patriot and Loyalist Ancestors
Sheilagh Doerfler, David Allen Lambert, Melanie McComb

This is a more advanced online course in researching different types of genealogical records. The tuition is $125. For more information, look here.

Finally, after a multi-year renovation project, American Ancestors is reopening its headquarters with expanded space at 97 Newbury Street on Thursday, 24 April. Congratulations to all!

Sconyers on Boston’s Street Lamps, 18 Mar.

Old North Illuminated is living up to its name by hosting an online presentation by Jake Sconyers on the topic “They Burnt Tolerable Well: The Tea Party & Boston’s First Street Lamps” on Tuesday, 18 March.

The event description says:

In the 1770s, Boston was in a state of transformation and upheaval. While we mostly think of the American Revolution as the driver of this whirlwind of change, a technological revolution was happening at the same time. The introduction of street lamps in Boston had a profound effect on how people behaved at night.

The political revolution and the technological revolution were intertwined, with the effects of one impacting the other—including at pivotal moments like the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party.

Sconyers will touch on these “burning” questions:

• How did Boston’s very first street lamps survive a shipwreck and the Boston Tea Party?
• Why did Boston decide to buy English oil lamps for the streets but fuel them with American whale oil?
• Why did Boston vote to let its new street lamps sit dark after just a few months of illumination?
• How did the Boston Port Act affect the cost of street lighting?

Not to mention how the events of April 1775 might have been different if Boston’s main streets had been lit up at night.

Jake Sconyers is the host of the HUB History podcast, formerly cohosted by Nikki Stewart, executive director of Old North. The podcast has discussed these lamps, but I don’t recall it addressing all these details.

Register for this online event with a donation of any amount to Old North Illuminated through this webpage.

“Having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny”

Last week Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer reported in The Atlantic Monthly about one of the current President’s many desires.

Trump jokingly declared himself a sovereign last month, while his advisers distributed AI-generated photos of him wearing a crown and an ermine robe to celebrate his order to end congestion pricing in New York City. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” he’d decreed a few days earlier, using a phrase sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, the emperor of the French.

But the president has also asked advisers in recent days about moving the Declaration of Independence into the Oval Office, according to people familiar with the conversations who requested anonymity to describe the planning.

Trump’s request alarmed some of his aides, who immediately recognized both the implausibility and the expense of moving the original document. Displayed in the rotunda at the National Archives Building, in Washington, D.C., it is perhaps the most treasured historical document in the U.S. government’s possession. The original is behind heavy glass in an oxygen-free, argon-filled case that can retract into the wall at night for security. Because of light damage to the faded animal-skin parchment, the room is kept dimly lit; restrictions have been placed on how often the doors can even be opened.

But to the relief of aides, subsequent discussions appear to have focused on the possibility of moving one of the historical copies of the document, not the original. “President Trump strongly believes that significant and historic documents that celebrate American history should be shared and put on display,” White House communications director Steven Cheung told us in an email.

The handwritten Declaration is already “shared and put on display.” It’s kept in a sort of national shrine, one of the most protected documents in the world, in order to allow all Americans to view it and to preserve it for future generations as well. Removing the Declaration to a place that only a hand-picked, privileged few people can enter would be the opposite of sharing and displaying it.

Much the same goes for any of the rare early printed copies of the Declaration in museums or archives. Donald Trump doesn’t want the Declaration in his office to honor that text or its values. He wants a rare, beloved national asset brought to him to glorify himself.

“Choosing a Commander” at the Longfellow–Washington Site, 13 Mar.

On Thursday, 13 March, I’ll speak at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site on “Choosing a Commander: Myths & Realities Behind the Continental Congress’s Decision to Make George Washington the General.”

Two hundred fifty years ago this spring, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress invited the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to take over the direction (and funding) of the army besieging Boston. A big part of that direction was choosing who would command those troops.

Decades later, John Adams left detailed accounts of those discussions. He described himself as the man who advocated for George Washington of Virginia when no one else would.

According to letters Adams wrote in 1815 (and possibly in 1816 but never sent), most Congress delegates preferred either leaving the army in the hands of Gen. Artemas Ward of Massachusetts or hiring former British army lieutenant colonel Charles Lee.

Adams stated:

The Nominations were made, Ward I believe by Mr [Thomas] Cushing, Lee by Mr [Thomas] Mifflin, and Washington by Mr [Thomas] Johnson of Maryland. The opposition to a change was not So warm, as it had been before, but Still each Candidate had his Advocates.

Nevertheless all agreed in the great importance of Unanimity. This point was urged from all quarters of the House with great force of Reason and Eloquence and Pathos that never has been exceeded in the Counsells of this Nation. It was unanimously agreed to postpone in Election to a future day in hopes that Gentlemen by a deliberate Consideration, laying aside all private feelings, local Attachments, and partial motives, might agree in one, and unanimously determine to Support him with all their Influence. The Choice was accordingly postponed.

By this time all the Friends of Ward, among whom there was not one more Sincere than John Adams who had known him at School within two doors of his Fathers house, and who had known him in Worcester in his riper Years, were fully convinced that Washington Should be preferred to Lee; and they had reason to fear that Delegates from the Southern and Middle States would vote for Lee rather than for any New Englandman. And all the Sober Members would have preferred Either Ward or Washington to Lee.

When the day of Election arrived, after some Observations on the necessity of Concord, Harmony and unanimity in the present portentous moment, Congress proceeded to the Choice and the Suffrages were all found to be for George Washington.

In this talk I’ll explore how much the contemporaneous record from 1775, including Adams’s own private letters, supports this recollection.

This event is scheduled to start at 6:00 P.M., and will include questions and answers afterward. It is free, but seating in the Longfellow carriage house is limited. There’s an option to watch the livestream, and a recording will be put on the site’s YouTube channel when ready.