“A bar to the object of his petition”

On 25 Feb 1792, the U.S. House of Representatives recorded receiving:

A petition of Henry Howell Williams, praying compensation for injuries sustained in his property by the army of the United States, during the late war.

The House forwarded that and other petitions “to the Secretary of the Treasury, with instruction to examine the same, and report his opinion thereupon.”

Alexander Hamilton replied on 22 November with two reports, a long one on several petitions for such compensation and a short one on Williams’s particular request.

In general, Hamilton wrote, during and after the war the Congress had provided good procedures for handling such claims. Not perfect, but good enough that opening the door for special requests now would be “both difficult and dangerous.”

As to Williams’s case:

The Secretary begs leave to add, that it appears by the petitioner’s own shewing, that the State of Massachusetts has considered his case, and granted him a compensation: And that it further appears, from a document, which was produced by the petitioner, that the compensation allowed by the State was meant to be in full.

The State of Massachusetts having decided upon a matter respecting one of its own citizens, having made him a considerable compensation, for the loss which he sustained; that compensation having been made, as in full, and having been accepted by the petitioner, it would be, as far as the information of the Secretary goes, without precedent, in any similar case, to revise the compensation made, on the suggestion of its being inadequate; nor, considering the various incidents of the war, would comparative justice be promoted by doing it.

Though duly sensible of the respectability of the petitioner, and of the extent of the losses, which he originally sustained, the Secretary cannot but regard the considerations, which have been stated, as a bar to the object of his petition.

In sum, Williams was not going to get any money from the new federal government. And as far as I can tell, that was his last attempt at compensation from the Battle of Chelsea Creek seventeen years before.

TOMORROW: What happened to Henry Howell Williams?

“Whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government”

From the first “Publius” essay, written by Alexander Hamilton and published on 27 October 1787 in the Independent Journal of New York:

It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from ref[l]ection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.

If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis, at which we are arrived, may with propriety be regarded as the æra in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act, may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.. . . .

…a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

In 1788 most of those essays were collected as The Federalist: A Collection of Essays, with eight more appearing in the New York newspapers after that.

A French edition of 1792 named the authors behind “Publius” as Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.

In the late 1800s authors began to refer to the essays as “the Federalist papers,” and eventually they came to have the title most people use for them now: The Federalist Papers.

Fort Plain Museum’s 2024 Conference in the Mohawk Valley, 14–16 June

The Fort Plain Museum’s Revolutionary War Conference 250 in the Mohawk Valley will take place this year on 14–16 June in Johnstown, New York. Registration is open.

The scheduled speakers are:

• James Kirby Martin and guest host Mark Edward Lender having a fireside chat about the American Revolutionary War, its Sestercentennial, and their legacies as historians
• Nancy Bradeen Spannaus, “Alexander Hamilton’s War for American Economic Independence Through Two Documents” (supported by the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society)
• Gary Ecelbarger, “‘This Happy Opportunity’: George Washington and the Battle of Germantown”
• Shirley L. Green, “Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence”
• Mark Edward Lender, “‘Liberty or Death!’: Some Revolutionary Statistics and Existential Warfare”
• Shawn David McGhee, “No Longer Subjects of the British King: The Political Transformation of Royal Subjects to Republican Citizens, 1774-1776”
• James Kirby Martin, “The Marquis de Lafayette Visits the Mohawk Valley, Again and Again”
• Kristofer Ray, “The Cherokees, the Six Nations and Indian Diplomacy circa 1763-1776”
• Matthew E. Reardon, “The Traitor’s Homecoming: Benedict Arnold’s Raid on New London, September 4-13, 1781”
• John L. Smith, “The Unexpected Abigail Adams: A Woman ‘Not Apt to Be Intimidated’” (supported by the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation)
• Bruce M. Venter, “Albany and the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765”
• Glenn F. Williams, “No Other Motive Than the True Interest of This Country: Dunmore’s War 1774”
• Chris Leonard, Schenectady City Historian, “Storehouse Schenectady: Depot and Transportation Center for the Northern War”
• David Moyer, “Recent Archaeology Discoveries on the Site of Revolutionary War Fort Plain”

There will also be a bus tour of Revolutionary sites in the area with the theme of “1774: The Rising Tide.” In that year Schenectady saw a violent Liberty Pole riot while the British Indian agent Sir William Johnson passed away in July.

For more information, visit this page.

James Duncan’s Diary of the Yorktown Siege

Last month Sotheby’s sold the diary that Capt. James Duncan kept of the Yorktown campaign, as reported by the Washington Post.

The 23 pages dated 2–15 Oct 1781 are part of a 110-page notebook that Duncan later used as a commonplace book, copying in the music and lyrics of the “Duke of Gloustr March” and lines from such literature as John Trumbull’s M’Fingal and James Thomson’s Seasons.

The notebook was originally up for auction, but the bidding didn’t reach the set minimum. The next day, some institution or collector reached a deal with Sotheby’s and the owner to purchase the document for over $300,000.

Duncan was a Pennsylvanian, twenty-five years old, who had left Princeton College early in the war to join the Continental Army. Afterwards he became a court official in Adams County, Pennsylvania, which contains Gettysburg.

The Post article quotes a fair amount from Duncan’s description of the siege, including criticism of Col. Alexander Hamilton: “Although I esteem him…I must beg leave in this instance to think he wantonly exposed the lives of his men.”

Duncan finished his 15 October entry near the top of one page and then stopped writing. That leaves us without his account of Gen. Cornwallis’s surrender just four days later.

The article doesn’t report that this diary was transcribed and published as “A Yorktown Journal” in the Pennsylvania Archives, second series, volume 15, in 1890.

Sotheby’s page on the document did report that fact and added: “Unfortunately, the editor, William Henry Egle, through silent emendation and ‘correction,’ introduced hundreds of discrepancies from the manuscript in spelling, capitalization, punctuation, contraction, paragraphing, and other matters.” But Egle didn’t remove significant historical information, or the auction house would have proudly noted that.

Learning about the “Oxford Army”

Here’s one more detail about the Locke family, whose retreat to Sherborn in December 1773 I’ve been discussing.

The youngest child was John Locke, born in 1765. He had a peripatetic life after the Revolution, not marrying and moving north to Maine and west to Northampton before his death at age thirty-four.

The family history, Book of the Lockes, also stated he “was a soldier in the Oxford army.”

What the heck was that? I wondered. Most of the references to the phrase that I found went back to the English Civil War, when the college city of Oxford was the military stronghold of the Royalists. But it turns out that Massachusetts hosted its own “Oxford army.”

In the late 1790s the U.S. of A. went through some friction with France, then governed by the Directory. Eventually this low-level conflict was called the “quasi-war.” At the time, however, some people wanted to get ready for real military action.

One product of this period was the U.S. Navy, recommissioned after the Confederation Congress had done away with this form of national military to save costs. The U.S.S. Constitution was one of the frigates launched in that push, and it’s still with us, along with the larger navy.

In May and July 1798 Congress authorized President John Adams to beef up the army as well. One measure increased the still-authorized U.S. Army by over 10,000 men, these new soldiers for a while called the Additional Army. But enough citizens were worried about the army becoming too large that the government needed to assure them with a different approach.

Thus, Congress founded a parallel force of 10,000 men, the Provisional Army of the United States. Later this was superseded by the Eventual Army of the United States, which could be as large as 30,000. This force was authorized to last only as long as the crisis with France—that was the provision or event that defined it.

As further reassurance to the populace, George Washington was brought out of retirement to be the nominal commander of all the U.S. armies. The regular army already had its command structure. But for the new Provisional Army, operational command fell to inspector general Alexander Hamilton. He brought in William North as his adjutant general.

It took a while for the Provisional/Eventual Army to commission officers, so those officers didn’t start recruiting men until May 1799. In the next several months, before Congress decided that peace with France was at hand, that force grew to a little more than 4,000 soldiers. That army had three sites for training: Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in the south and Plainfield, New Jersey, for the middle states.

And the third Provisional Army campsite, for troops hailing for the New England states, was in the Massachusetts town of Oxford.

“You can decipher most squiggles”

At the Washington Papers, research editor Kathryn Gehred recently wrote about the questions and challenges involved in transcribing people’s handwritten letters.

After all, our scribbles are often inconsistent and sometimes ambiguous, but we know what we mean to write.

Gehred’s first main example came from young George Washington’s notes on his voyage to Barbados.

In the center paragraph of the notebook, Washington wrote that the crew had “catched a Dolphin.” I wouldn’t want to correct his grammar here, as it shows the way Washington wrote, and likely spoke, when he was 19 years old.

Let’s look as well at the two times he spelled the word “dolphin.” The first time, Washington clearly wrote “Dolphin”; but in the second instance, it looks like he wrote “Dalpin.” There’s not a lot of difference between a script “o” and “a,” and Washington clearly spelled the word correctly once. Should I correct the spelling in the second instance?

I believe on this point editors would disagree on what to do. If this were the only time Washington used an “a” in place of an “o” for the word dolphin, I would correct it, figuring that the “o” looked like an “a” due to sloppy penmanship. However, since he repeatedly wrote “Dalpin” or “Dalphin” elsewhere in the journal, we chose to keep the letter as “a.” I believe showing that young Washington misspelled words, even words he had spelled correctly earlier in the paragraph, carries historical meaning.

I write the above to give readers who do not have a background in transcription a glimpse into some of the issues that transcribers face. In some cases, the handwriting is so bad that you really do need to rely on context for what the author meant to say, even if what you’re looking at on the page is pretty much just a squiggle. Eventually, if you become familiar enough with a person’s handwriting, you can decipher most squiggles.

But what do you do when a person is writing a name? It’s tough to figure out a name from a letter’s context. And you can’t always trust that the person writing the name knows how to correctly spell it—as anyone reading Alexander Hamilton’s and George Washington’s multiple attempts to spell “Kosciuszko” can tell you.

Indeed, Founders Online tells us that in August 1780 Washington and his military aides sent out letters referring to “Kosciusko” and “Kosciusco.” And that was just after Col. Thaddeus Kosciuszko sent headquarters a letter, demonstrating the spelling he obviously preferred.

That said, I can’t spell Kosciuszko myself. I just look it up and copy-and-paste when I need it.

(The image above is a sketch of a dolphin-shaped fountain ornament from eighteenth-century Britain, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

“I fear’d young HAMILTON’S unshaken soul“

As David Humphreys and his fellow Hartford Wits composed the early installments of their Anarchiad, states were deciding whether to send delegations to a constitutional convention in Philadelphia.

The stated purpose of that convention was to revise the Articles of Confederation, but many people hoped—or worried—that the gathering might make very deep revisions indeed.

The Hartford Wits supported big change. Their fellow citizens of Connecticut were not so sure. The middle installments of the Anarchiad spent a lot of lines attacking James Wadsworth, state comptroller and a strong opponent of a new national constitution.

In March 1787 Humphreys wrote to his former boss George Washington that Connecticut might not send a delegation to Philadelphia at all. But most other states had committed by then, so the poets saw reason for optimism.

The 5 April installment of the Anarchiad depicted the villain Anarch lamenting his defeat, as in these lines:

Ardent and bold, the sinking land to save,
In council sapient as in action brave,
I fear’d young HAMILTON’S unshaken soul,
And saw his arm our wayward host control;
Yet, while the Senate with his accents rung,
Fire in his eye, and thunder on his tongue,
My band of mutes in dumb confusion throng,
Convinc’d of right, yet obstinate in wrong,
With stupid reverence lift the guided hand,
And yield an empire to thy wild command.

Allegorically this referred to New York’s choice to name a delegation, as Alexander Hamilton championed. The Hartford Wits thus lauded Hamilton’s political speeches in verse more than two centuries before Lin-Manuel Miranda.

On 12 May, Connecticut finally voted to send William Samuel Johnson, Oliver Ellsworth, and Erastus Wolcott to Philadelphia. Wolcott declined, citing fear of smallpox, so four days later the legislature chose Roger Sherman instead. Their mandate was “for the Sole and express Purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.”

The Hartford Wits saw that as a win, and the Anarchiad lines published on 24 May expressed Hesper’s hopes for a better future. But there were still dire warnings about what might happen if people didn’t support significant change:

Yet, what the hope? The dreams of Congress fade,
The federal UNION sinks in endless shade;
Each feeble call, that warns the realms around,
Seems the faint echo of a dying sound;
Each requisition wastes in fleeting air,
And not one State regards the powerless prayer.

Ye wanton States, by heaven’s best blessings curst,
Long on the lap of softening luxury nurst,
What fickle frenzy raves! what visions strange
Inspire your bosoms with the lust of change,
And flames the wish to fly from fancy’s ill,
And yield your freedom to a monarch’s will?

The Anarchiad’s last installment appeared in September 1787 as the Constitutional Convention was wrapping up. Because of the body’s secrecy, no one yet knew the scope of the changes it would recommend. Sherman and Ellsworth had proposed the critical “Connecticut Compromise,” and Hamilton maneuvered to make the final vote appear unanimous.

In November, the Connecticut government called a state convention to discuss whether to ratify the new and very different U.S Constitution. During that debate Amos Doolittle issued a year-end-review cartoon titled “The Looking Glass for 1787.” In one section it showed three Hartford Wits on a hill labeled “Parnassus” reading their “American Antiquities”—the supposed fragments of The Anarchiad. At least in Connecticut, they had been a prominent voice of the debate.

“The unanimous assent of 11 States and Colonel Hamilton’s”

The Statutes and Stories blog has a couple of new posts detailing an archival discovery related to the New York delegation to the Constitutional Convention.

The first article by University of Wisconsin professor John Kaminski, attorney Adam Levinson, and Sergio Villavicencio of the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society is a bit breathless for my taste, but the second steps back and raises a lot of thoughtful questions about how to interpret incomplete evidence.

The background of this story is that the state of New York sent three delegates to the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, aimed at revising the Articles of Confederation. One of those men was a leading proponent of having that meeting, Alexander Hamilton. You may have heard of him.

The other two were judge Robert Yates (1738-1801) and his former trainee, attorney John Lansing, Jr. (1754-1829?), both from Albany. The two men were related by marriage and also allied in politics. Like Gov. George Clinton, they opposed strengthening the national government. In sum, they went to Philadelphia to outvote Hamilton on the state’s delegation.

Around 30 June, after the convention had met for a little more than a month, Hamilton went home to New York City. He was getting to propose his ideas, but he couldn’t even get his own state to support them.

Yates and Lansing followed about 10 July. They could see that the convention was moving toward creating a constitution for a stronger federal government, and they didn’t want any part in that.

As the blog posts explain, on 20 August Hamilton told his fellow Federalist Rufus King:

I have written to my colleagues informing them, that if either of them would come down I would accompany him to Philadelphia. So much for the sake of propriety and public opinion.

No one has found Hamilton’s actual letter, so we don’t know how he phrased that offer. As the three authors ask, “Did Yates and Lansing understand Hamilton’s letter to mean that he would only go back to Philadelphia if one of them joined him?” The comment “So much for the sake of propriety and public opinion” suggests Hamilton wrote to the two men purely as a political move.

In any event, Hamilton did go back to participate in the closing sessions. He couldn’t vote on behalf of New York since that state had required all three of its delegates to be present for votes. But he was talking.

In early September the meeting approved a new draft Constitution for the U.S. of A., totally rebuilding the national government. On 17 September the chairman of what had become a Constitutional Convention, George Washington, wrote in his diary:

Met in Convention, when the Constitution received the unanimous assent of 11 States and Colonel Hamilton’s from New York.

Washington distinguished between the eleven states that had a quorum of delegates at the convention and the lone voice from New York piping up unofficially. (Rhode Island wasn’t there at all.) Everyone knew Hamilton didn’t represent his colleagues’ views. Nonetheless, New York didn’t oppose the new document.

Proponents of the new Constitution emphasized that seemingly unanimous vote of the states. Hamilton insisted that every delegate present should sign it. Gouverneur Morris came up with language to indicate the men were signing as witnesses to the state votes, not to endorse the new document personally. Even so, Elbridge Gerry, George Mason, and Edmund Randolph refused to sign.

The new archival discovery is an expense report from Robert Yates to the government of New York for his service as a delegate, including “May June & July 1787 59 Days at 32s pr Day.” At the bottom of that document is the entry:

To my Comming as far as New York in my Way to Philadelphia for the Same purpose where I heard that the Convention rose [i.e., adjourned] a Day after my arrival and my return home 12 Days at the Same rate

As Kaminski, Levinson, and Villavicencio point out, this record shows Yates was on his way to Philadelphia as the convention was completing its work. Had he arrived in early September, his voice would have canceled out Hamilton’s approval of the Constitution. He could have added to the chorus protesting the document and refusing to sign. He could even have sent for Lansing and turned New York’s vote to a no.

Instead, Yates got as far as New York City, learned the convention was done, and went back home. He and Lansing both argued against ratifying the proposed Constitution at New York’s state convention. Their side lost narrowly, 30 votes to 27.

The Statutes and Stories blog posts discuss other small revelations coming out of these expense records, as well as questions they don’t answer but other documents might. It’s a good example of how even mundane bureaucratic documents can reveal crucial facts.

The Road to Concord Leads to History Happy Hour, 7 Nov.

On Sunday, 7 November, I’ll be the guest on History Happy Hour, a weekly video conversation with Chris Anderson and Rick Beyer of Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours.

Folks around here remember Rick from his years in Lexington. He created the film “First Shot!: The Day the Revolution Began” and accompanying book and helped to establish the reenactment of the town’s 1773 tea-burning as an annual event. A few years back, I got to work with Rick and the Lexington Historical Society on the Buckman Tavern exhibit “#Alarmed!: 18th-Century Social Media.”

Since then Rick has moved to Chicago and published the book Rivals Unto Death about Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.

Cohost Chris Anderson is a former editor of WWII Magazine, now based in London. He’s published numerous books about World War 2 and, in healthy times, leads tours of the European Theater.

We’re going to discuss The Road to Concord:

a tale you likely have never heard about the lead-up to the famous battles of Lexington and Concord. Discover the secret story of the role played by four stolen cannons. Both Redcoats and Patriots alike had reason to keep this hot take under wraps, and both sides succeeded well enough that the full story has never appeared until now.

I’m sure Rick will be pleased to hear that since publishing the book I’ve learned more about how Lexington was involved in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s effort to build up an artillery force by hook or crook.

Anderson and Beyer have two more discussions on Revolutionary history scheduled this month:

• 14 November: Mike Duncan, author, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution
• 21 November: Andrew Roberts, author, The Last King of America, about George III

Folks can watch the conversations live on the History Happy Hour website and its Facebook page. We’re scheduled to start at 4:00 P.M. on Sunday, Boston time. Eventually the videos go up on YouTube as well.

“A respectable and well-known Officer”

For Thomas Seward, his military service in the Continental artillery, rising from lieutenant to brevet major over eight years, remained an important part of his identity after the war.

Seward was an original member of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati and served on its standing committee in the 1790s.

Like a lot of networked Continental Army officers, he eventually accepted a job in the federal government, becoming an officer of the United States Customs in Boston in 1796.

When Alexander Hamilton was vetting officers for the “Quasi-War” with France in 1798, Henry Knox apparently told him that Seward was “advanced in years & corpulent,” and would be best as a “Garrison Capt” rather than in the field, but there were “few better Officers.”

Thomas Seward’s namesake son, a merchant captain, married in 1799. The following year, the major’s wife, Sarah, died in March.

On 28 Nov 1800 the Massachusetts Mercury reported in its Deaths section:

Yesterday, Major Thomas Steward, aged 60. A respectable and well-known Officer in the revolutionary army of the United States. His funeral will be from his late dwelling at the bottom of Middle-street, near Winnisimet-Ferry, this afternoon, which his relations and friends are requested to attended, without further invitation.

[pointing hand] The Members of the Cincinnati are respectfully requested to attend the funeral.

The next day’s Jeffersonian Constitutional Telegraph repeated the sentence describing Seward as a “respectable and well-known Officer” and added a new line: “A firm and determined Republican.” The major had taken sides in the nation’s political divide.

Seward died without a will, so probate judge George R. Minot appointed his late wife’s sister Abigail Brett to work out the estate. The inventory she filed shows that Seward owned many artifacts of gentility: a silver watch, a Bible and seventeen other books, an angling rod, two canaries in a cage, a $35 desk, $100 worth of wearing apparel. The house contained twenty pictures of various sizes, including two of “Bounaparte & Lady”—reflecting early Republican admiration for France.

That inventory also confirms that Seward owned a pew in the Rev. John Murray’s Universalist meetinghouse. At some point he had moved from an orthodox Congregationalist meeting to this liberal new sect. Among other converts to Universalism was Col. Richard Gridley, the artillery officer Seward had served under back in 1775.

TOMORROW: Why we remember Thomas Seward.

“One idea shared by just about every author of the Constitution”

From David Frum’s essay “The Founders Were Wrong about Democracy” in The Atlantic Monthly:

If there was one idea shared by just about every author of the Constitution, it was the one articulated by James Madison at the convention on June 26, 1787.

The mass of the people would be susceptible to “fickleness and passion,” he warned. They would suffer from “want of information as to their true interest.” Those who must “labour under all the hardships of life” would “secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings.” Over time, as the population expanded and crowded into cities, the risk would only worsen that “the major interest might under sudden impulses be tempted to commit injustice on the minority.”

To protect property from the people—and ultimately, the people from themselves—the Framers would have to erect “a necessary fence” against “impetuous councils.” A Senate to counterbalance the House of Representatives, selected from a more elite few and serving for longer terms, would be one such fence. The indirect election of the president through an Electoral College would be another. A federal judiciary confirmed by the Senate and serving for life would provide one more. And so on through the constitutional design.

The system of government in the United States has evolved in many important ways since 1787. But the mistrust of unpropertied majorities—especially urban unpropertied majorities—persists. In no other comparably developed society is voting as difficult; in no peer society are votes weighted as unequally; in no peer society is there a legislative chamber where 41 percent of the lawmakers can routinely outvote 59 percent, as happens in the U.S. Senate. . . .

American anti-majoritarians have always promised that minority privilege will deliver positive results: stability, sobriety, the security of the public debt, and tranquil and peaceful presidential elections. But again and again, those promises have proved the exact opposite of reality. In practice, the privileged minority has shown itself to be unstable and unsober. . . .

The architects of the Electoral College imagined that indirect election would ensure a careful and thoughtful decision “by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station [of the presidency], and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice,” as Alexander Hamilton wrote in “Federalist No. 68.” The mass of the people might be distracted by a lying, vulgar, criminal demagogue, but the select few of the Electoral College would be undeceived by such wiles. They would choose the candidate of dignity and worth over the candidate who crudely appealed to rancor and resentment.

Except, of course, that’s precisely the opposite of what happened in 2016, when the plurality of ordinary citizens made the sensible choice, and the anti-majoritarian Electoral College installed a flimflam man in the Oval Office.

Frum concludes that our republic should leave behind the self-serving prejudices of eighteenth-century gentlemen and resume the gradual democratization Americans enjoyed in the twentieth century. It’s not just a matter of fairness, he argues. It’s also necessary for stability and prosperity. 

“None of this justified minority rule”

Back in early November, The Atlantic Monthly published an essay by Claremont McKenna College professor George Thomas titled “‘America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy’ Is a Dangerous—And Wrong—Argument.”

Thomas wrote:

When founding thinkers such as James Madison spoke of democracy, they were usually referring to direct democracy, what Madison frequently labeled “pure” democracy. Madison made the distinction between a republic and a direct democracy exquisitely clear in “Federalist No. 14”: “In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.” Both a democracy and a republic were popular forms of government: Each drew its legitimacy from the people and depended on rule by the people. The crucial difference was that a republic relied on representation, while in a “pure” democracy, the people represented themselves.

At the time of the founding, a narrow vision of the people prevailed. Black people were largely excluded from the terms of citizenship, and slavery was a reality, even when frowned upon, that existed alongside an insistence on self-government. What this generation considered either a democracy or a republic is troublesome to us insofar as it largely granted only white men the full rights of citizens, albeit with some exceptions. America could not be considered a truly popular government until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which commanded equal citizenship for Black Americans. Yet this triumph was rooted in the founding generation’s insistence on what we would come to call democracy.

The history of democracy as grasped by the Founders, drawn largely from the ancient world, revealed that overbearing majorities could all too easily lend themselves to mob rule, dominating minorities and trampling individual rights. Democracy was also susceptible to demagogues—men of “factious tempers” and “sinister designs,” as Madison put it in “Federalist No. 10”—who relied on “vicious arts” to betray the interests of the people. Madison nevertheless sought to defend popular government—the rule of the many—rather than retreat to the rule of the few.

American constitutional design can best be understood as an effort to establish a sober form of democracy. It did so by embracing representation, the separation of powers, checks and balances, and the protection of individual rights—all concepts that were unknown in the ancient world where democracy had earned its poor reputation. . . .

while dependent on the people, the Constitution did not embrace simple majoritarian democracy. . . . But none of this justified minority rule, which was at odds with the “republican principle.” . . . The American experiment, as advanced by [Alexander] Hamilton and Madison, sought to redeem the cause of popular government against its checkered history. Given the success of the experiment by the standards of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, we would come to use the term democracy as a stand-in for representative democracy, as distinct from direct democracy.

Since 2000, some have claimed that forms of minority rule are justified because the American system is “republican,” not “democratic.” Those people never seem to be able to define the difference between those Latin- and Greek-based synonyms in a convincing way, and they always seem to come from the minority enjoying undemocratic power.

The most obvious, least defensible undemocratic aspect of the U.S. Constitution is the Electoral College. I’ve been writing against its problems on this blog since 2006. The institution never worked the way the Framers at the Constitutional Convention hoped, and it was the first part of the Constitution to be rewritten.

Without the Electoral College, Donald Trump would never have slipped into the Presidency. Without the Electoral College, his campaign last year would never have been competitive. Without the Electoral College, the Trump administration wouldn’t have dared to downplay the early Covid-19 pandemic in “blue states.” That constitutional mechanism’s unplanned opening for minority rule, for giving power to a candidate manifestly not the first choice of the American people, probably cost the U.S. of A. hundreds of thousands of shortened lives in the last year.

The Electoral College as a “Problem Half-Solved”

With another Presidential coming up, it’s time for a topic I’ve addressed on this site since 2006: how the Electoral College can interfere with the consent of the governed, and how claims for its benefits fall apart on examination.

This time I’m quoting from Jonathan Wilson’s essay “The Electoral Punt” at Contingent Magazine:

The truth is, the electoral college has never worked as intended by its creators. This is partly because they did not make clear what their intention was.

For several humid summer months in 1787, the Constitutional Convention could not agree on a good way to choose a president. James Madison’s notes show they debated the issue off and on from June to September, going in circles until, near the convention’s end, they came up with a way to leave the problem half-solved.

The Framers, all elite politicians gathered in response to the Shays Rebellion and other popular unrest, didn’t want to leave the choice of President completely in the hands of the voters. They also didn’t want to make the President wholly dependent on the national legislature. And people in control of state governments still wanted sway in the new national system. The result was a process that gave all three sources of political authority a potential role.

Writing later, Alexander Hamilton—who originally wanted the president to serve for life like an elected king—published a rationale for this. In number 68 of The Federalist, Hamilton claimed the framers had come up with a clever way to balance different principles.

First, Hamilton wrote, “the people of America” obviously should get a direct say in choosing the president. But asking all the citizens across the nation to debate together would result in “tumult and disorder,” so the actual decision was entrusted to smaller groups of people elected by the people in each state. If no clear winner emerged from that group’s deliberation, then the House of Representatives would make sure the final choice had nationwide public support.

Many Americans have since treated Hamilton’s claim as a description of how the electoral college was originally intended to work. Yet notice that the electoral college has never—not once—worked that way. Even in the first presidential elections, contrary to Hamilton’s description (and what some framers apparently hoped), citizens in many states were excluded from participating.

Note that there’s nothing in Hamilton’s argument about reserving extra power for some states or some portions of the population, as some modern apologists for the Electoral College claim the Framers had in mind.

In fact, the Framers’ own choices in the early republic show how thin those claims are. If, for instance, the Framers supposedly didn’t want to leave the Presidency in the hands of the largest states, why were all the Presidents elected in the first twenty years of the republic from Virginia and Massachusetts, the two largest states? (In the 1810 census, New York and Pennsylvania overtook them in population. By then, the Twelfth Amendment altered the Electoral College from its original design.)

Another modern claim is that the Framers wanted to give extra power to rural areas. But those men had no idea how the Industrial Revolution would change America. Rural areas overwhelmingly dominated their society. The most “urbanized” state, Rhode Island, had two “cities,” Newport and Providence, with less than 7,000 people apiece; more than 80% of the state population lived in farming communities.

The Facts about Alexander Hamilton and Slavery

The Schuyler Mansion historic site, a New York state park, just published a report by interpreter Jessie Serfilippi titled “‘As Odious and Immoral a Thing’: Alexander Hamilton’s Hidden History as an Enslaver” (P.D.F. download).

As Serfilippi notes at the beginning, Alexander Hamilton has long been described as an opponent of slavery. Lately authors have said that attitude was motivated by what he saw as a boy growing up in the Caribbean. This portrayal became a big part of American popular culture through Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical Hamilton.

The report shows that claim has old roots:

Starting with the first published biography of Hamilton, written by his son, John Church Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton has been almost exclusively portrayed as an abolitionist. In volume II of the biography he wrote about his father, John C. Hamilton writes “[Alexander Hamilton] never owned a slave, but on the contrary, having heard that a domestic whom he had hired was about to be sold by her master, he immediately purchased her freedom.” No evidence of such a sale has been found.

In fact, as Serfilippi documents in detail, Hamilton owned multiple “servants” in his New York mansion:

In 1804, it is possible there were four servants at The Grange. The first would be the woman Hamilton purchased for Eliza in 1781, the woman and boy, and the maid for Angelica [Church]. It is known that a man or boy named Dick died, meaning it is more likely that there were three enslaved servants in 1804. . . . Who they were may never be known, but the presence of “servants” on the inventory of Hamilton’s estate is proof enslaved servants were present at The Grange when Alexander Hamilton died in 1804.

The report notes that the 1810 U.S. Census found no one enslaved in the widow Eliza Hamilton’s household, so “slavery in the Hamilton family ended with Alexander Hamilton’s death.” Nonetheless, John Church Hamilton was eleven years old when his father died and surely recalled the household before that year. His 1840s biography made his father more politically palatable for the ante-bellum North.

Serfilippi also collects the evidence of Alexander Hamilton buying people for his family and friends. As an attorney, he sometimes argued for people’s freedom and may have done work for the Manumission Society, but in other cases he represented slaveholders. His public political writing on slavery issues appears to have tacked with his party’s course.

When we think about it, none of that should be a big surprise given Hamilton’s identification with his society’s elite, his anti-democratic conservatism, and his Schuyler in-laws’ slaveholding. But we’ve had the opposite message for over a century now. It’s good to see the hard evidence.

Online Schoolwork from the Gilder Lehrman Institute

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has announced a series of free online courses for elementary, middle, and high school students.

The institute has a teacher-training program and a big collection of documents, and these classes draw on both those resources. The website explains:

Master Teachers will present lessons anchored in primary source documents, many from the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s collection of more than 70,000 American history artifacts. The goal is to engage students and excite them about history so that they leave each lesson more knowledgeable about a new idea, theme, document, or pivotal moment in history.

The institute also has a close connection with the Broadway musical Hamilton and its educational outreach program. Which explains the heavy Hamilton theme in the course titles.

For instance, there’s “Spotlight on Hamilton’s World: Documents from the Founding Era.” It proposes to look each week at ”an important document from the Founding Era that has influenced our government, culture, and economy,” starting Tuesday, 6 October. The events in the spotlight are:

• “Who Tells Your Story? The Boston Massacre and Bostonians Paying the Excise Man”
• “The Shot Heard ’round the World: Lexington and Concord”
• “Washington Crosses the Delaware: The Battle of Trenton”
• “The World Turned Upside Down: Cornwallis’s Surrender”

Alexander Hamilton himself was involved in only one of those events, of course. Near as I can tell, he spent only a few days in Massachusetts in his lifetime.

The course “Spotlight on Hamilton’s World: People from the Founding Era,” starting Tuesday, 3 November, gets a little more into Hamilton’s world by looking at:

• Phillis Wheatley
• John and Abigail Adams
• Peter Kitteredge (presumably based on this document)
• Henry and Lucy Knox

Hamilton did know the Adamses and the Knoxes, and got along with at least one of them.

As you see, there’s a heavy Massachusetts tilt to these particular courses, Hamilton or not, so families that follow Boston 1775 might find them interesting.

Other free Gilder Lehrman courses this fall will cover woman suffrage, voting rights, and preparing for the A.P. United States History exam.

Knott on the Washington-Hamilton Relationship, 15 May

On Friday, 15 May, the Lexington Historical Society is hosting its annual Cronin Lecture—but this year the talk will be online.

The event announcement says:

Join Stephen Knott, co-author [with Tony Williams] of Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America, to hear the tumultuous story of the nation’s founding through the unlikely duo of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton.

Despite differences in temperament and ambition, Washington and Hamilton were able to form a partnership that brought America through the battlefields of the Revolution, the Constitutional Convention, and the early years of the republic. The Library of Law and Liberty writes that Knott is able to to explore the “volatile but ultimately durable alliance of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, showing that constitutional statesmanship is not some mythical creature.”

Knott is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the United States Naval War College in Newport. He formerly co-chaired the Presidential Oral History Program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

This event is scheduled to take place on the Zoom platform on Friday from 7:00 to 8:30 P.M. It is free, but one must register to access the feed. Refreshments will be served as long as you serve yourself refreshments. Thanks to the Lexington Historical Society for making this event available.

Knott’s book falls into the subsection of recent Founders’ biographies that look at two important people instead of one, or instead of several. The relationship between those politicians, such books argue, shaped their work and thus the republic.

If we were to plot the pairings of all those books as a network, Washington would be one of the biggest nodes, with almost everybody wanting to be close to him. In addition to Knott and Williams’s look at Washington and Hamilton, I can think of:

• David A. Clary, Adopted Son: Washington, Lafayette, and the Friendship that Saved the Revolution
• Thomas Fleming: The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation
• Gerard W. Gawalt, George Mason and George Washington: The Power of Principle
• Edward J. Larson, Franklin and Washington: The Founding Partnership
• Eric Leibiger, Founding Friendship: George Washington, James Madison, and the Creation of the American Republic
• Dave R. Palmer, George Washington and Benedict Arnold: A Tale of Two Patriots

Jefferson would have a lot of links, too, not all of them so friendly. In addition to Fleming’s book about Washington and Jefferson, there are:

• Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, Madison and Jefferson
• Tom Chaffin, Revolutionary Brothers: Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Friendship that Helped Forge Two Nations
• John Ferling, Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry that Forged a Nation
• Gerard W. Gawalt, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson: Creating the American Republic
• James F. Simon, What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States
• Gordon S. Wood, Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

Hamilton’s recent popularity is evident in the growing number of books about his relationships, though it’s telling that most of those are about rivalries rather than long partnerships. In addition to the two titles already mentioned, I found:

• Jay Cost, The Price of Greatness: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and the Creation of American Oligarchy
• Thomas Fleming, Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America

And now Madison has been paired up with three other Founders. Not to mention outliers:

• Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left

There may well be other two-Founder biographies I’ve missed, so leave comments. I’m not including dual biographies of married couples or blood relations, nor studies of trios and larger groups.

Joanne Freeman on “Hamilton: The Exhibition”

The Yale News recently interviewed Prof. Joanne Freeman about her work on Alexander Hamilton. The article explains:

For a long time Freeman, professor of history and of American studies, was the only person she knew of who had much of an interest in Hamilton. “I spent many decades lecturing about Hamilton and essentially saying, ‘I know you’ve never heard of this person but you should, because he actually played an important role in the founding of our country,’” says Freeman.

“Now, with everyone adoring Hamilton due to the play, I spend a lot of time saying: ‘You know, he’s not as great as you think he is. He was a flawed figure with problematic politics.’ In my work, I want to show Hamilton in all of his complexity.”

Of course, Freeman shares some of the blame, or credit, for Hamilton’s newfound heroic status. She was one of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s sources for the Hamilton musical. She’s a more formal advisor for “Hamilton: The Exhibition,” a multimedia display in Chicago that’s popped up in conjunction with the performances of the musical there.

The exhibit comes from the same team that created the show, and Freeman says one of their goals was to fill in some holes—and correct some historical misconceptions—that the play leaves its excited audiences with. In the interview, Freeman says:

One major lapse in the show concerns the institution of slavery. It isn’t discussed for more than a line or two in “Hamilton” — yet the United States and the early modern world were grounded on the institution of slavery, so that had to be in the foreground of the exhibition. When you enter the first room of the exhibition (after the introductory film), you see shackles; the institution of slavery is the first thing you confront. It was at the center of Hamilton’s world.

The exhibit adds a lot of context along those lines — concerning slavery and any number of other topics: the role of women, the contributions of non-elite folk, and more. There are also more specific corrections that are almost like Easter eggs in the exhibit, such as a plaque that explains that [Thomas] Jefferson didn’t win the election of 1800 “in a landslide,” as the play suggests, or another one that notes (in a more comical vein) that Martha Washington did not name her feral tomcat Hamilton.

(I discussed that feline myth back here.)

Some topics were difficult to figure out how to put into physical form. One of them was Hamilton’s financial plan, which – to be honest — doesn’t sound inherently interesting to most people. We spent quite a long time trying to figure out how to make it compelling to the average person walking through the exhibit.

At one point, I said: ‘Here’s the thing. The entire government was an experiment, no one knew if it was going to function, and certainly no one knew if Hamilton’s financial plan was going to work. His plan proposed some radical ideas that a lot of people disagreed with, so there was a lot of uncertainty.’

And then there was a pause – and then David Korins [set designer for “Hamilton” the play] said, “What if when you enter the financial plan section, the floor is uneven so people feel a bit thrown off?” A fascinating suggestion — something that never would have occurred to me in a thousand years; making a historical concept concrete through set design. . . .

The day that the exhibition opened to the public, I watched people walk through the part of the exhibit that deals with Hamilton’s financial plan and sure enough when people crossed over into that room they immediately paused, and looked down at the floor.

Freeman is also a cohost of the Backstory podcast and author most recently of The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War. The portrait of her above is by Justin Greenwood, from his and Jonathan Hennessey’s Alexander Hamilton: The Graphic History of an American Founding Father.

“I am My Dear Marquis with the truest affection…”

There was a lot of news coverage earlier this month about locating a letter from Alexander Hamilton to the Marquis de Lafayette that was stolen from the Massachusetts State Archives sometime around 1940.

Fortunately for the study of history, the archive had made a photostat of the document before it disappeared. The text of the letter was therefore available to be included in the printed edition of Hamilton’s papers and at Founders Online. That in turn led to a document dealer recognizing that the original had been stolen when it came back onto the market. Now the state is taking legal steps to get that document back.

Here’s the text of the 21 July 1780 dispatch:

My Dear Marquis

We have just received advice from New York through different channels that the enemy are making an embarkation with which they menace the French fleet and army. Fifty transports are said to have gone up the Sound to take in troops and proceed directly to Rhode Island.

The General is absent and may not return before evening. Though this may be only a demonstration yet as it may be serious, I think it best to forward it without waiting the Generals return.

We have different accounts from New York of an action in the West Indies in which the English lost several ships. I am inclined to credit them.

I am My Dear Marquis
with the truest affection
Yr. Most Obedt
A Hamilton
Aide De Camp

The letter highlights some of the relationships depicted—indeed exaggerated—in the Broadway musical Hamilton: the close friendship between these two young officers and young Hamilton’s willingness to act on Gen. George Washington’s behalf.

Another link to recent popular culture: The warning Hamilton sent on had come from the Culper Ring on Long Island, inspiration for the recent television series Turn: Washington’s Spies. The rumor about a Caribbean naval battle, which was false, had come through Maj. Benjamin Tallmadge, another character on that show.

The mystery I can’t figure out is why this letter was in the Massachusetts archives in the first place. It has nothing to do with Massachusetts.

Meeting George Washington’s Indispensable Men

Back when I was researching Gen. George Washington’s life and work in Cambridge for the National Park Service, one of the books I drew on heavily was Arthur S. Lefkowitz’s George Washington’s Indispensable Men.

This is a study of the commander’s military secretaries and aides de camp throughout the Revolutionary War. It starts with a useful definition of its subject because descendants and local histories seem to have named almost any officer who was ever in a council with Washington as an aide. Lefkowitz focused on the men whom Washington officially appointed in his daily orders. Then he added Caleb Gibbs of the headquarters guard and Martha Washington, both of whom can be identified as helping with the headquarters paperwork.

And that paperwork is a major theme of the book. Early on Washington learned that he didn’t need young men to dash messages around battlefields.  (See George Baylor.) Instead, he needed penmen to help keep up with a vast correspondence directing an army spread out over thirteen governments. Washington quickly came to prefer professional men: lawyers (e.g., Robert Hanson Harrison), experienced merchants (William Palfrey), and even doctors (James McHenry).

One result of that preference is that it’s a mistake to think of Washington’s most famous aide, Alexander Hamilton, as a typical staff officer. He was younger and less established than most of his colleagues. Each of those men gets a thorough biographical profile in this book as Lefkowitz moves through the war, discussing how the work at headquarters developed in response to changing needs.

And speaking of Hamilton, I got to meet Arthur Lefkowitz last year. I suggested that Hamilton’s new Broadway hotness might help the book. He took that message back to folks at the publisher, Stackpole, and I’m pleased to report that George Washington’s Indispensable Men is now coming out in paperback—with the new subtitle Alexander Hamilton, Tench Tilghman, and the Aides-De-Camp Who Helped Win American Independence. I recommend it for anyone wanting to know about how Gen. Washington learned to manage the war.

Hogeland and Newton on Hamilton in New York

On Thursday, 12 July, the author William Hogeland will speak at the Federal Hall Monument in New York City.

Hogeland’s topic will be “The Hamilton Scheme: Enemies and Allies in the Creation of an American Economy.” This midday talk is part of a series cohosted by the Museum of American Finance and the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society titled “CelebrateHAMILTON 2018,” but it may not be that celebratory.

Hogeland will speak on how Alexander Hamilton’s national financial plan worked, why the public remains generally unaware of the details, and why opponents such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Albert Gallatin couldn't fully dismantle it during sixteen years of Republican administration.

He promises to address these questions:

• What was the Hamilton scheme anyway?
• Why did Hamilton himself find the scheme so thrilling?
• What were the astonishing, even unsettling measures he was willing—eager!—to take in its service?
• Why don’t Americans know anything about how our founding economy worked?
• Who were the populists who opposed the scheme, and what did they do about it?

There will be time for discussion.

Hogeland is the author of an essay in Historians on Hamilton (Rutgers University Press, 2018), Founding Finance, The Whiskey Rebellion, and most recently Autumn of the Black Snake. His next book will be on Hamilton.

This talk will take place from 12:30 to 1:30 P.M. at Federal Hall National Monument, 26 Wall Street. It is free and open to the public (which Hamilton wasn’t always).

The very next afternoon—Friday, 13 July—Michael E. Newton, author of Alexander Hamilton: The Formative Years, will speak at the same venue on the topic “Son of a Whore?: The Extramarital Affair of Alexander Hamilton’s Mother.” Drawing on his finding of court records from St. Croix in old Gothic Danish script, Newton will discuss the real details of Rachel Faucett’s extramarital affair. Was her estranged husband’s characterization fair and accurate?

Newton’s Federal Hall talk is also part of the “CelebrateHAMILTON” series, and it’s more likely to laud the man himself. This talk is also free, with questions and reception to follow.