“It is a true saying of a Wit”

In 2014 and again in 2016, I noted that the Pennsylvania lieutenant governor Richard Penn was the first Revolutionary figure credited with this remark:

An evidence of this was the pleasantry ascribed to him, on occasion of a member of Congress, one day observing to his compatriots, that at all events “they must hang together:”

“If you do not, gentlemen,” said Mr. Penn, “I can tell you that you will be very apt to hang separately.”

More recently, the Professor Buzzkill podcast called my attention to a letter the Virginia delegate Carter Braxton wrote on 14 Apr 1776:

Upon reviewing the secret movements of Men and things I am convinced the Assertion of Independence is far off. If it was to be now asserted, the Continent would be torn in pieces by Intestine Wars and Convulsions. Previous to Independence all disputes must be healed and Harmony prevail. A grand Continental league must be formed and a superintending Power also. When these necessary Steps are taken and I see a Coalition formed sufficient to withstand the Power of Britain, or any other, then am I for an independent State and all its Consequences, as then I think they will produce Happiness to America. It is a true saying of a Wit—We must hang together or separately.

Less than three months later, Braxton voted for independence.

Did Braxton have a particular “Wit” in mind? Alas, he didn’t say.

TOMORROW: Flemish roots?

“The Revolution belongs to all Americans”

Johann Neem, author of Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts, Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America, and other historical studies, is a forthright critic of today’s political trumpery.

The New Republic just published Neem’s essay “Unfit to Lead: Trump Is the Enemy of the American Revolution.”

Here are some passages:

Today, as we approach the Declaration of Independence’s semiquincentennial, Donald Trump and his allies claim the Revolution for themselves. They have made fealty to the American Revolution part of their culture war against “woke” progressivism. The Revolution has become a pawn in Trump’s politics of retribution against the country’s supposed cultural enemies. Trump and his allies claim to be patriots while regularly violating the principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence and undermining the government established by our Constitution. . . .

For Trump, [Chief Justice John] Roberts, and their allies, the actual principles of the Revolution matter less than its capacity to signify tribal loyalty by distinguishing “real Americans” from domestic enemies. Trump conflates respect for the Revolution with loyalty to him. The gross spectacle of Trump hosting a military parade on his birthday—as do kings and dictators—and connecting it to the birth of the Continental Army illustrates all too well that he seeks to legitimize his own rule by wrapping himself in the Revolution.

To our Founders, there was a causal relationship between legislative consent and liberty. Today, we often think freedom is the ability to do what one wants. To our Founders, in contrast, freedom was a collective possession, not a private one. Freedom was only possible in a free state in which the people or their representatives actively made the rules that govern their shared life. . . .

Trump’s violations of the Constitution are too long to list here, but among them are illegally suspending laws and violating court orders. He has sought to dominate the other two branches of government by encouraging extralegal violence against legislators, judges, and their families. He has weaponized the Justice Department to go after his political enemies. He threatens the media, universities, and other civil society institutions that dare to question his edicts. Indeed, he seeks to destroy any person or institution that checks his will. . . .

Trump and his allies distort the past to convince their followers that respecting the American Revolution is somehow compatible with supporting a tyrant. They want to turn the Revolution into a symbol for tribal loyalty, but the Revolution belongs to all Americans. The United States was born from a revolt against lawless tyranny and arbitrary power. Today, future generations of Americans are counting on us to protect the republic. Like those who sacrificed so much to secure our freedom two and a half centuries ago, once again we Americans must pledge our sacred honor to uphold the legacy of the American Revolution from those who invoke it only to betray it.

The New Republic article on the web has links to show some of the events Neem refers to.

“Two hundred and forty-nine years later…”

Mother Jones just shared David Corn and Tim Murphy’s article “Here are the Declaration of Independence’s Grievances Against King George III. Many Apply to Trump.”

It begins:

When Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence in the weeks leading up July 4, 1776, he wanted to not only rely on just high-falutin enlightenment ideals to justify the case for separation from Great Britain. His aim was also to present a slam-dunk indictment of King George III—to prove that the royal was a “tyrant” and that he and Parliament had forfeited their right to rule the Americans by breaking their own laws and trampling on the rights of their people. This is why about half of the Declaration is a list of 27 specific grievances lodged against the King and his regime.

Two hundred and forty-nine years later, many of these grievances apply to the reign of Donald Trump. Here’s a look at how Trump stacks up against the Mad King.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

This grievance refers to the King refusing to approve laws passed by the colonies. Trump used his veto power a few times during his first presidency and has not had to do so this year. But he’s shown his disregard for Congress by simply ignoring existing laws. The Elon Musk-led DOGE attack on the government violated numerous laws—including those governing privacy and data. Trump paid no heed to the War Powers Resolution when he launched a military attack on Iran. He illegally impounded funds approved by Congress. He has misinterpreted the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to claim powers not afforded the president. Legal experts have said that Trump’s firing of inspectors general and commissioners of independent government commissions is illegal—though some of these cases are still being litigated in the courts. He has also issued an executive order to end birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the Constitution.

On the Mother Jones site, that last paragraph includes lots of links for reports on the violations. And it goes on, all the way down to “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us…”

This record is all the more remarkable for two reasons. First, several of the Congress’s complaints about George III referred to things the royal government did while it was openly waging war against the people of America for over a year. And secondly, Britain didn’t have a written Constitution to render the violations so clear.

“It means exactly what it says, it’s a declaration”

Back in early March, following reports that Donald Trump was demanding a Declaration of Independence to hang in the Oval Office, I wrote:

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.

Eventually Trump did get a printed Declaration behind a curtain in his heavily guarded workspace, an odd way for it to be “shared and put on display,” as a White House publicist had claimed.

This past week the television journalist Terry Moran visited the Oval Office and asked Trump what the Declaration meant to him. Trump confirmed my reading of his character by offering this ignorant blather:

Well, it means exactly what it says, it’s a declaration, it’s a declaration of unity and love and respect and it means a lot and it’s something very special to our country.

Trump couldn’t explain the meaning of the Declaration, its historical significance, or its relevance to today. His comments reveal his desperation to believe that a rare copy’s presence in his office shows the country feels “unity and love and respect” for him.

Last month the White House issued a proclamation on the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, as a Boston 1775 commenter alerted me. This document was obviously not written by Trump since it was focused on the historical event, coherent, and grammatical.

Much of that proclamation landed within the realm of common accuracy. In other words, it made the usual mistakes: that Paul Revere rode to Concord, that the “shot heard ’round the world” happened at Lexington, and so on. But a lot of other cursorily researched descriptions of the 19th of April make those same mistakes.

This White House document, however, made some mistakes all its own. It described the opening skirmish as “The British ambush at Lexington.” It said that at the North Bridge “the startled British opened fire, killing 49 Americans.” The correct number is 2. (The number 49 refers to the total number of provincial dead over the whole day.) Obviously the team drawing public salaries to prepare that proclamation for signature didn’t value fact-checking.

Incidents like these show how hollow the Trump administration’s claim to value American history really is. Behind the rhetorical trumpery, the White House is trying to defund our national parks, museums, libraries, universities, humanities research, public schools, and public television. The only forms of history its occupant shows any sign of valuing are statuary and birthday parades.

“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.

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

The earliest Presidential election I remember following in the news was during the Bicentennial year of 1976. I collaborated with classmates on an elaborate political cartoon about the Democratic primaries in the unforgiving medium of the mimeograph.

I think that was also the year I learned about the odd workings of the Electoral College. We calculated how a candidate could win the Presidency by winning just the eleven biggest states, as I recall.

(Since then I’ve seen more sophisticated analysis than my fifth-grade crew could muster, pointing out that the way to win the Electoral College with the fewest votes isn’t to win the eleven biggest and therefore underrepresented states but the forty smallest ones by narrow margins.)

At the time, most people saw the Electoral College as a curious relic. It was something political reporters brought up in the last weeks of the campaign as they ran out of fresh topics. Not since 1888 had the front-runner in the popular vote been kept out of the White House because of the Electoral College, and that guy came back and won four years later.

As Election Day approached in 2000, those stories about the anomaly of the Electoral College resurfaced as usual. One of my college roommates passed on pundit speculation about Al Gore losing the popular vote but winning the Electors. I replied that that wouldn’t be a good outcome since the winner of a democratic election should have a popular mandate.

As we all know, that election went the other way: George W. Bush lost the popular vote but won through the Electors (and the Supreme Court’s decision to stop Florida’s recounts). For the first time in more than a century, the Electoral College was more than a curiosity.

That’s why I’ve felt confident in opposing that form of election distortion—I knew that I had opposed it even when it would hypothetically benefit my preferred candidate. I wrote about the problems of the Electoral College on this blog in 2006, and then again in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2017, 2019 (twice), and 2020 (multiple times).

America’s founding generation left us the power to reform the original electoral system. They also left us their example of doing so, with the Twelfth Amendment. And they left us a mandate to do so in the Declaration of Independence, which says:

—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

For decades, clear majorities of the American population have supported the idea of getting rid of the Electoral College and deciding the Presidential election by popular vote, the way we fill every other elected office. The “consent of the governed” should not be determined by inertia or the stubbornness of a minority insisting on keeping an unfair advantage.

The Sloppiness of the “God Bless the USA Bible”

The “God Bless the USA Bible” has been in the news a lot, most recently because of the revelation that all the books have been printed in China.

This Bible includes the King James Version of the English text, thus omitting the deuterocanonical books that appear in the Septuagint and in Roman Catholic Bibles.

On the other hand, this volume includes some texts that aren’t in any Christian canon, as its website boasts:

• Handwritten chorus to “God Bless The USA” by Lee Greenwood
• The US Constitution
• The Bill of Rights
• The Declaration of Independence
• The Pledge of Allegiance

At least, that’s what the publisher claims.

In fact, the volume doesn’t offer the entire U.S. Constitution. That document includes the Bill of Rights and all the other ratified amendments, which have the same constitutional weight as the text composed in Philadelphia in 1787.

This Bible leaves out every amendment after the first ten. Some people have suggested some nefarious intent in omitting the amendments on ending slavery, equality under the law, income tax, Presidential term limits, and the like. But the omission is just due to ignorance and carelessness.

We can see the same sloppiness in how this Bible presents the signatures at the bottom of the Declaration of Independence, as shown in this screenshot from a review video by Tim Wildsmith.

The right-hand column has two sections headlined “New Hampshire,” and there’s no section headlined “New York.” Instead, “New York” appears toward the bottom of the second column in the same style as the signers’ names.

Part of the blame for that mistake belongs to the signers themselves. Some of them sorted themselves out by state, but the New Englanders mixed together on the right, and the Delaware delegation didn’t succeed in separating from Pennsylvania in the middle. There are no state labels on the famous signed copy. Mary Katherine Goddard’s print shop added those for a 1777 broadside, and they appear (in different form) on the National Archives transcript.

Whoever was tasked with preparing this Bible, either in the U.S. of A. or in China, apparently downloaded text with the state labels but then didn’t format it properly.

Another of the news stories about this Bible is how Oklahoma’s school superintendent solicited bids for Bibles with “only the King James Version” but also “copies of The United States Pledge of Allegiance, The U.S. Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Constitution, and The U.S. Bill of Rights” (P.D.F. download). After criticism that that was an obvious ploy to send $3 million in public funds to the publisher of the “God Bless the USA Bible,” the state government amended its specifications.

Of course, the “God Bless the USA Bible” would not have met those specs if Oklahoma had strictly applied them since it includes only part of the U.S. Constitution.

Not to mention that this state government appears to be favoring one form of religion over others, in violation of one part of the Constitution the volume actually does contain.

Studying the Military Side of the Declaration

The Center for the Study of Tennesseans and War and the University of Tennessee Department of History have announced a one-day symposium on “the military history of the Declaration of Independence” to be held at the university on 1 March 2025.

Here is the call for papers:

As the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence approaches, it is important to remember that this foundational document was written during a war. The Seven Years’ War, the Proclamation of 1763, settlers’ westward expansion, and Native American resistance shaped the contours of the Declaration specifically in this line item pertaining to George III’s tyranny: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.”

British naval impressment, an early modern cold war between Great Britain and France, nearby naval bases, and naval manning problems all influenced the writing of this additional reference to George III’s despotism: “He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.”

Hessian auxiliaries, British military occupation, naval bombardments, civilian casualties, “Quartering large bodies of armed troops,” and standing armies were all cited in the Declaration as evidence of “the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”

The Declaration was, in large part, a Congressional war measure. It was meant to convince potential allies overseas and fence-sitters at home that the British government had devolved into a tyranny.

The conference organizers want proposals to fill eight 20-minute sessions and plan to publish the proceedings in an edited collection. Chosen speakers have their registration fee waived, but the event cannot cover travel and accommodation costs.

Scholars are invited to submit a 200-word abstract and a c.v. by email by 1 Oct 2024 to Dr. Chris Magra, director of the Center for the Study of Tennesseans and War. (Here’s the full call as a Google Doc.)

“Revisiting the American Revolution” Lecture Series in Hingham

The Hingham Historical Society is hosting a series of seven lectures from September through April 2025 on the theme of “Revisiting the American Revolution.”

I’m honored to be one of those speakers, and a bit humbled to see the others in the lineup.

15 September
1774: The Long Year of Revolution
Mary Beth Norton

Norton is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History Emerita at Cornell University, where she taught from 1971 to 2018. She has written seven books about early American history, including Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800 and In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. She was a coauthor of A People and A Nation, one of the leading U.S. history textbooks. Her most recent work, the basis for this talk, won the 2021 George Washington Prize.

27 October
Making Thirteen Clocks Strike as One: Race, Fear, and the American Founding
Robert Parkinson

Parkinson is Professor of History at Binghamton University. He is the author of The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution, and most recently, Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier.

17 November
The Spies in Henry Barnes’s House
J.L. Bell

Bell is the author of The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War, a National Park Service report on Gen. George Washington in Cambridge, and numerous articles. He maintains the Boston 1775 website, offering daily postings of history, analysis, and unabashed gossip about the American Revolution in New England.

8 December
From Hingham to Yorktown: The Military Campaigns of General Benjamin Lincoln
Robert Allison

Allison is a professor of history at Suffolk University. His books include a biography of American naval hero Stephen Decatur, and short books on the history of Boston and the American Revolution, and an edition of The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Two of his classes, “Before 1776: Life in Colonial America,” and “The Age of Benjamin Franklin” are available from The Great Courses. As chair of Revolution 250, a consortium of organizations planning Revolutionary commemorations in Massachusetts, he hosts its weekly podcast, and he is president of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

26 January 2025
Hingham’s Revolutionary Canteens
Joel Bohy

Bohy is the director of Historic Arms & Militaria at Bruneau and Co. Auctioneers and a frequent appraiser of Arms & Militaria on the PBS series Antiques Roadshow. His is also an active member of several societies of collectors and historians, an instructor for Advanced Metal Detecting for the Archeologist, and an advisory board member of American Veterans Archaeological Recovery. Growing up in Concord, Massachusetts, helped lead to Bohy’s passion for historic arms & militaria, conflict archaeology, and artifacts like Hingham’s historic Revolutionary War canteens.

9 March
How to Radicalize a Moderate: John Hancock and the Outbreak of the Revolutionary War
Brooke Barbier

Barbier is a public historian with a Ph.D. in American History from Boston College. She is the author of King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father and Boston in the American Revolution: A Town Versus an Empire. Because she believes beer makes history even better, she founded Ye Olde Tavern Tours in 2013, a popular guided outing along Boston’s renowned Freedom Trail.

6 April
The Declaration of Independence: A Guide for Our Times
Danielle Allen

Allen is James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. She is a professor of political philosophy, ethics, and public policy. She is also a seasoned nonprofit leader, democracy advocate, tech ethicist, distinguished author, and mom. Her many books include the widely acclaimed Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, and she writes a column on constitutional democracy for the Washington Post.

All these talks will take place live beginning at 3:00 P.M. on a Saturday at the Hingham Heritage Museum, and also be streamed online. The society is now selling subscriptions to the entire series for prices ranging from $175 for someone who’s already a member to $675 for someone who wants to become a society Steward. The subscription price for non-members is $200, or about $29 apiece.

Preview of “The Promise of Liberty” in Charlestown

From now till Monday, coinciding with the battle anniversary, the Bunker Hill Museum is playing host to a pop-up exhibit of historic documents showing the expansion of American constitutional freedom, organized by Seth Kaller.

Pictured above are:

• 18 July 1776 New-England Chronicle printing of the Declaration of Independence.
• Newspaper printing of the proposed new U.S. Constitution, followed by George Washington’s letter to the Congress as convention chairman explaining the benefits of the new government framework.
• Newspaper reporting the first twelve proposed amendments to that constitution.
• Statement autographed by Frederick Douglass.
• Newspaper report on Abraham Lincoln’s speech in Independence Hall on his way to Washington, D.C., in 1861.
• Poster from 1913 showing the progress of woman suffrage.
• Prepared text of Martin Luther King’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial, to which he improvised the “Dream” passage.

The exhibit also includes a display dedicated to religious liberty and inclusion with a reproduction of President George Washington’s letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, a speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and more.

This is a prototype of a larger traveling exhibit (or series of exhibits) that Kaller envisions called The Promise of Liberty. Its website explains:

The Exhibit aims to inspire a sense of unity and pride that cuts across political divides, while encouraging gratitude for the liberties we have and igniting a collective determination to defend and expand upon the liberties promised 250 years ago.

The organization is now talking to potential sponsors, partners, and hosts in the Sestercentennial years. In the meantime, folks can get a preview in Charlestown this weekend. 

Elbridge Gerry and the Signing

On 3 August 1776, Elbridge Gerry sent a second letter to his Continental Congress colleagues Samuel and John Adams.

Gerry wrote this time from Watertown, still the home of the Massachusetts legislature. He had traveled through Boston, seeing both Adams wives.

Gerry and the Adamses were among the Congress’s most radical delegates, resenting men who hung back from independence. In this letter, for instance, Gerry wrote of “our old Friend Mr. L—— or any other suspected Characters.”

Generally, the Marblehead merchant was optimistic about “the true State of Things in the eastern Colonies,” as people called New England. He had ideas about moving troops around and getting Benjamin Lincoln, then still a Massachusetts militia commander, a Continental commission. But he was confident in the militia system, concluding, “We have eastward of Hudson’s River at least 100000 Men well armed, a Force sufficient to repulse the Enemy if they were forty thousand strong at New York and Canada.”

One significant detail about this letter isn’t its text but its date. It shows that Gerry was in Massachusetts on 2 August when, as the Congress’s official record states, the delegates then present signed the engrossed (handsomely handwritten) Declaration of Independence. Gerry must therefore have added his signature later in the year.

In this article for the Journal of the American Revolution I discussed a story told about Gerry’s signing:

I am credibly informed that the following anecdote occurred on the day of signing the declaration. Mr. [Benjamin] Harrison, a delegate from Virginia, is a large portly man—Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts is slender and spare. A little time after the solemn transaction of signing the instrument, Mr. Harrison said smilingly to Mr. Gerry, “When the hanging scene comes to be exhibited I shall have the advantage over you on account of my size. All will be over with me in a moment, but you will be kicking in the air half an hour after I am gone.”

This anecdote comes to us in somewhat different forms from two seemingly independent sources: Dr. Benjamin Rush and Dr. James Thacher, both probably writing decades later. John Adams read both men’s words and didn’t quibble with the tale. I therefore concluded that this story was more reliable than other legends of the signing.

At the same time I wrote: “Of course it is possible that Rush’s recollection was not accurate. For example, Harrison could have come up with the witticism days later instead of at the dramatic moment of signing.” Or weeks before, when the delegates voted for independence. As Ray Raphael wrote earlier this summer, delegates conglomerated their memories of the vote and the signing.

We can therefore say the anecdote about Harrison and Gerry couldn’t have happened on 2 Aug 1776 when most Congress delegates lined up to sign the Declaration. But Harrison might still have shared his gallows humor sometime that year.

“Pray Subscribe for me the Declaration of Independence”

Elbridge Gerry left Philadelphia on 16 July 1776, heading for home in Massachusetts with a pound of green tea.

His fellow Continental Congress delegate John Adams wrote that Gerry was “worn out of Health, by the Fatigues of this station.”

But Adams also wrote that he expected Gerry to enthusiastically inspect the Continental Army and fortifications while traveling through New York, and that’s just what Gerry did.

On Sunday, 21 July, while staying near the King’s Bridge that connected Manhattan to the mainland, Gerry sat down to write a long letter to Adams and his cousin, Samuel Adams.

Gerry wrote of the Continental officers:

they appear to be in high Spirits for Action and agree in Sentiments that the Men’s as firm and determined as they wish them to be, having in View since the Declaration of Independence an object that they are ready to contend for, an object that they will chearfully pursue at the Risque of Life and every valuable Enjoyment.

The area was well fortified, he judged, and the people of New Jersey and New York City enthusiastic about the Patriot cause.

He reported on Adm. Lord William Howe’s interactions with Gen. George Washington, which included rejecting a proposal for a prisoner swap of Philip Skene, Loyalist governor of Crown Point and Ticonderoga, for James Lovell, a Boston Patriot.

Gerry recommended removing Gen. Philip Schuyler from command of the Northern Department. Indeed, he suggested that Schuyler should be “sent to Boston, recalled to answer any Charges that may be brot against him.” With the collapse of the invasion of Canada, “The N England Colonies are warm for the Measure.”

After discussing how to reenlist and resupply the army, Gerry shared an idea for increasing business with the French:

Would it not be a good Measure to propose to the French Court to supply with Grain their Army in the West Indies and to impower them to employ suitable persons in the States for that purpose who shall be supplyed by Congress with Money and Ship it in their own Vessels; Whilst they are to make Returns by allowing Us a Factor in their Kingdom to purchase Arms or other military Stores to a certain Amount who is to be furnished by their Court with Money for that purpose. This would be a speedy Way of coming at Arms and Ammunition, and open a Channel for a Breach with Britain.

Finally, Gerry addressed two political matters. He asked for one of the confidential printed copies of the new draft Articles of Confederation, and he wrote:

Pray Subscribe for me the Declaration of Independence if the same is to be signed as proposed. I think We ought to have the privilege when necessarily absent of voting and signing by proxy.

After Gerry had left Philadelphia, the Congress formally approved creating the handsome handwritten Declaration that we know. If Gerry’s proposal had been adopted, some of those signatures would not have been the delegates’ actual signatures but signatures of their friends for them. Gerry was worried that after voting for independence he’d be left out.

TOMORROW: About Gerry’s signature.

“By words and actions, endeavoured to discourage the people”

On 4 Feb 1777, seven months after the Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, the Massachusetts General Court enacted “An Act for Preventing or Punishing Crimes that May Be Committeed against the Public Safety, Below the Degree of Treason and Misprision of Treason.”

In other words, the legislators outlawed some behavior that they knew couldn’t be prosecuted as treason but still saw as threatening the newly independent state.

The law read:

WHEREAS the Congress of the United Colonies of America, in order to preserve the inhabitants thereof from that ruin and misery to which they were destined by the avarice and cruelty of Great Britain, did, upon the fourth day of July, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-six, declare the said colonies to be free states, independent of all people and nations; and whereas, some evil-minded persons within this state, have, at divers times, by words and actions, endeavoured to discourage the people thereof from supporting said declaration, as also in their opposition to those acts and measures of the king and parliament of Great Britain, which induced the Congress to make such declaration,

Be it therefore enacted by the Council and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same,

That if any person shall make use of any expressions, in preaching or praying, or in public or private discourse or conversation, with an apparent design to discourage the people of this state, measures taken or any of them, from supporting said declaration, or that shall by by the king or words or actions, directly or indirectly, endeavour to support or justify the measures taken by the king and parliament of Great Britain against the American States, or shall dissuade the people of this state, or any of them, from supporting their opposition to s’d measures, or shall endeavour, by any ways or means, to prevent the Continental Army from being raised, or the Continental Navy from being manned, or, with an evident design to prevent the raising said army or manning said navy, shall dissuade or endeavour to prevent any person or persons from inlisting in the army or navy of the United States, or either of them, or shall use any means to hurt or distroy the credit of the public bills of the United States of America, or of this state; each person so offending, and being thereof convicted, shall pay a fine, to the use of the town or plantation where such offence is committed, not exceed’g fifty pounds, nor less than twenty shillings, at the discretion of the court before whome the conviction shall be, and shall recognize for his good behaviour, as such court shall order, and stand committed untill sentence be performed.

And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,

That any justice of the peace, upon complaint made to him of such offence, and finding presumptive evidence that the same is true, shall order such offender to find surities for his appearance at the next court of general sessions of the peace to be held in the county where such offence is committed, and, in default thereof, to commit such offender to the common goal; and all sheriffs, constables, grand jurors and tythingmen are directed and enjoined to make presentment and complaint of all such offences as shall come to their knowledge, respectively.

Obviously, this law limited people’s freedom to speak and even pray as they chose. But there was a war on, and wartime governments almost always restrict their own citizens’ liberties.

Four years later, on 5 Mar 1781 (a Massacre anniversary), the General Court deemed that “the Penalty in said Act is insufficient to deter from the Commission of said Crimes.” Even a £50 fine didn’t mean as much anymore, given the inflation of Continental and state currency.

The legislature therefore revised the earlier act this way:

That if any Person or Persons shall be convicted of any of the Crimes described in said Act, such Person or Persons so convicted, shall, at the Discretion of the Court before whom the Person or Persons may be convicted, pay a Fine not exceeding the Sum of Five Hundred Pounds, in Gold or Silver, at the Rates established by Law, or in Bills of Credit current within this Commonwealth equivalent thereto, nor less than Thirty Pounds, in Gold and Silver as aforesaid, or Bills of Credit equivalent thereto, to be applied as is provided in said Act, or be whipped at a public Whipping-Post, not exceeding Thirty-nine Stripes, nor less than Ten, or stand in the Pillory one Hour at least, or be confined on board some Ship of War belonging to this Commonwealth or the United States, not exceeding the Term of Three Years, nor less than One Year; there to do Duty as directed by the Commander of the Ship of War, or be confined within some Fort or Garrison, not exceeding the Term of Three Years, nor less than One Year; to be subject to the Commander of such Fort or Garrison:

And if any Person or Persons so convicted and confined, shall desert said Ship of War, Fort or Garrison, he or they so deserting, shall be tried before a Court-Martial; and upon Conviction, shall suffer the Pains and Penalties which Deserters from the Continental Army are, by the Rules and Regulations of said Army, liable to suffer.

The state had grown more harsh, now threatening these less-than-treasonous offenders not just with fines but corporal punishment, confinement, forced military labor, and, if people sought to escape the last fate, possible execution.

“America shall suffer Calamities still more wasting”

On 3 July 1776, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail from Philadelphia.

That letter is most often quoted for John’s prediction that the country would celebrate the anniversary of the preceding day, when the Continental Congress voted for independence.

While predicting the type of celebration, John Adams was wrong about the date, not foreseeing that the date placed on top of the public Declaration the Congress was still working on would determine what anniversary Americans thought was significant.

In fact, as I’ve already noted, by 4 July 1777 the Congress and Adams were publicly celebrating the Fourth.

The conclusion of John Adams’s letter doesn’t get quoted so often. It looked both backward and forward, and its predictions were pretty dire:

When I look back to the Year 1761, and recollect the Argument concerning Writs of Assistance, in the Superiour Court, which I have hitherto considered as the Commencement of the Controversy, between Great Britain and America, and run through the whole Period from that Time to this, and recollect the series of political Events, the Chain of Causes and Effects, I am surprized at the Suddenness, as well as Greatness of this Revolution.

Britain has been fill’d with Folly, and America with Wisdom, at least this is my judgment.—Time must determine. It is the Will of Heaven, that the two Countries should be sundered forever.

It may be the Will of Heaven that America shall suffer Calamities still more wasting and Distresses yet more dreadfull. If this is to be the Case, it will have this good Effect, at least: it will inspire Us with many Virtues, which We have not, and correct many Errors, Follies, and Vices, which threaten to disturb, dishonour, and destroy Us.—The Furnace of Affliction produces Refinement, in States as well as Individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming, in every Part, will require a Purification from our Vices, and an Augmentation of our Virtues or they will be no Blessings.

The People will have unbounded Power. And the People are extreamly addicted to Corruption and Venality, as well as the Great. But I must submit all my Hopes and Fears, to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable [as] the Faith may be, I firmly believe.

In the copy of this letter he kept for himself, Adams also included the sentence “I am not without Apprehensions from this Quarter” in the last paragraph after the word “Great.”

Even as Adams was achieving his goal of a united independence, Adams’s deep-seated pessimism and mistrust was surfacing. And since royal officials like Thomas Hutchinson no longer held authority, he directed those feelings at the new American people as a whole.

Constituting Comics

Constitution Illustrated by R. Sikoryak is a unique edition of the document that frames the government of the U.S. of A.

Each clause of that Constitution is, as the title says, illustrated. And in color yet.

The School Library Journal’s Good Comics for Kids website said:

This book is educational in more ways than one. Beyond the legal chronicle, each page is drawn to resemble a different comic strip or character. Sikoryak is an amazing mimic of art styles, so everyone from the Peanuts gang to the cast of G.I. Joe appears herein. An index lists his influences, crediting the original artists, listing the characters, and stating roughly when they originally appeared. This is a pocket-sized history of popular comics.

Sikoryak did an amazing job choosing the comics to emulate. Diverse characters drawn in the style of Raina Telgemeier stand in for “we the people”. Dennis the Menace appears on the page about age limits, Uncle Scrooge for taxes, Sgt. Rock for raising an army, and Beetle Bailey for the militia. Calvin and Hobbes view a field of arguing snowmen while, of course, Wonder Woman explains women’s suffrage.

Sikoryak is now working on a similar edition of the Declaration of Independence, and a mini black-and-white sampler (what the comics industry might once have called an “ashcan comic”) is available for sale.

The complete Declaration Illustrated volume is scheduled for publication in 2024. With some irony, the publisher of both volumes is Drawn & Quarterly, based in Canada.

“Rebellion or Revolution?” from the U.K. National Archives, 3 Mar.

On the morning of Friday, 3 March, the National Archives of Great Britain will host an online discussion on the topic “Rebellion or Revolution?: Understanding the American Revolutionary War.”

This event is connected to the institution’s current exhibit “Treason: People, Power & Plot,” looking at documents and artifacts related to treason cases throughout British history.

The American Revolution presents a challenging case, given that modern British culture regards the U.S. of A. as generally a Good Thing, even if we do take things too far sometimes, and feels parental pride in the American republic. Nonetheless, there were a lot of laws broken.

The event description asks:

How do we define loyalty? Rebellion? Resistance?

And how were these concepts understood in the context of the American Revolutionary War?

Join 18th-century record specialists, Philippa Hellawell at The National Archives and Corinne Porter of the USA’s National Archive & Record Administration (NARA), for a unique collaboration discussing devotion and duplicity during the American Revolutionary War.

This talk uses highlights from both collections to help us understand both British and American perspectives, including the British reaction to the Boston Tea Party, George III’s Proclamation of Rebellion following Congress’ initial petition for independence, and the subsequent American Declaration of Independence accusing the British King of being the traitor.

A traitor to the natural rights of men and the constitutional rights of Britons, that is. Or was the royal government’s betrayal far outweighed by the Americans’ rebellion and secession?

I like the idea of sitting in on a discussion from the U.K. National Archives, where I’ve had some of my happiest archive moments finding documents that connect to stories I’d started researching in American libraries.

Still, there’s the time difference to bear in mind. This event is scheduled for 14:00 G.M.T., which I believe is 9:00 A.M. Boston time.

Pay-what-you-can tickets are available through this page. As of this evening, the British pound is worth $1.20.

Button Gwinnett as a MacGuffin

Carolyn Wells wrote more than eighty books during her career as one of the most popular American mystery novelists of the first half of the 1900s (as well as another eighty books in other genres).

In Murder in the Bookshop (1936), Wells’s MacGuffin is a small book signed by Button Gwinnett, delegate to the Second Continental Congress from Georgia.

Gwinnett was one of the fifty-six men who signed the Declaration of Independence. He died less than a year later, on 19 May 1777, leaving behind a much sparser paper trail than his colleagues who didn’t engage in dueling.

In the nineteenth century, there was a craze for collecting historical autographs, which resulted in the mutilation of lots of letters and forms. Wealthy Americans competed to own a signature from each Declaration signer. Gwinnett was the rarest. As of 2016, only fifty-one examples of his signature were known to survive, with only ten of those in private hands.

It would thus make sense for a book signed by Gwinnett to be worth a lot of money, possibly even worth killing for. A character in Murder in the Bookshop describes the object of desire this way:

“It’s a small book, a pamphlet, but in fine condition. It is entitled Taxation Laws of Great Britain and U.S.A. Gwinnett was a student of Government and Politics and this was his book. He had not only autographed it on the fly-leaf but had signed it two other times and, moreover, had made annotations in his own hand on various pages. So you can grasp the importance of the book. Such finds do occur, but very seldom.”

My eyes perked up at that description, but not because I imagined the book as valuable. I knew that there were no ‘taxation laws of the U.S. of A.’ by the time Gwinnett died in 1777 or for many years afterward. The U.S. government didn’t become a legal entity until the adoption of the Articles of Confederation in 1781, and didn’t gain the power to levy taxes until after the new Constitution in 1789.

Thus, there couldn’t have been a copy of Taxation Laws of Great Britain and U.S.A. printed in time for Gwinnett to sign it. Was that a clue? Perhaps the detective would reveal this book was a fraud, and the finger of suspicion would swing toward the book dealer.

But as I read a little further, it became clear that all the characters in Murder in the Bookshop behave absurdly. No one comes across as a genuine, logical person.

Wells knew the world of book-collecting well—she amassed a top-notch collection of Walt Whitman material. She wanted to set a story in that milieu. But by this point in her writing career, she was putting out four mysteries a year, and it seems that she expected readers to value the right twists (secret lovers! second murder! kidnapping! masked genius!) more than logic.

Elizabeth Freeman and the Talk of Liberty

In 1781 Elizabeth Freeman initiated a freedom suit, suing to be released from bondage to John and Hannah Ashley.

(Though John was Freeman’s legal owner, she spoke fondly of him in later years. She described Hannah, on the other hand, as tyrannical, violent, and cold-hearted to others.)

As I quoted on Tuesday, in 1838 Harriet Martineau wrote that Elizabeth Freeman filed her suit after hearing people discuss the Massachusetts constitution of 1780.

In 1853 Catharine Maria Sedgwick wrote that Freeman took action after hearing the Declaration of Independence. Sedgwick also said this happened “soon after the close of the revolutionary war,” which doesn’t match the timing of the lawsuit.

Our most recent tradition says that Freeman heard John Ashley, Theodore Sedgewick, and other Sheffield men discussing natural rights in January 1773 as they formulated resolutions for the town meeting to adopt.

So which statement of natural liberty prompted Elizabeth Freeman to act?

I think all of them did. Or to put it differently, over the years she heard many conversations in which men like Sedgewick and Ashley proclaimed their belief in liberty for all people. She may have figured out that the Massachusetts constitution had more legal weight than a town resolution and the Congress’s Declaration. But I doubt she would have gambled based on overhearing one discussion.

As many contemporaries described, and the printed record bears out, there was a lot of talk about liberty and injustice in those years. Ebenezer Fox was a farmboy in Roxbury in 1775, and in his memoir he described how he and other working boys saw parallels between the colonies’ complaints and their own:

Almost all the conversation that came to my ears related to the injustice of England and the tyranny of government. It is perfectly natural that the spirit of insubordination, that prevailed, should spread among the younger members of the community; that they, who were continually hearing complaints, should themselves become complainants. I, and other boys situated similarly to myself, thought we had wrongs to be redressed; rights to be maintained; and, as no one appeared disposed to act the part of a redresser, it was our duty and our privilege to assert our own rights. We made a direct application of the doctrines we daily heard, in relation to the oppression of the mother country, to our own circumstances; and through that we were more opposed than our fathers were.

I thought that I was doing myself great injustice by remaining in bondage, when I ought to go free; and that the time was come, when I should liberate myself from the thraldom of others, and set up a government of my own; or, in other words, do what was right in the sight of my own eyes.

Fox grabbed freedom by running away to Rhode Island. Freeman sought legal help from Sedgewick—a process that took longer but was more permanent and had far-reaching consequences.

One detail of Freeman’s story appears in both Martineau’s and Sedgwick’s accounts: she felt she had to argue for her very humanity.

• Martineau: “She replied that the ‘Bill o’ Rights’ said that all were born free and equal, and that as she was not a dumb beast, she was certainly one of the nation.”
• Sedgwick (published version): “‘I am not a dumb critter; won’t the law give me my freedom?’”

The Sheffield town meeting, and even Ebenezer Fox and his chums, didn’t have to start there.

The town of Sheffield has just recognized Elizabeth Freeman’s move toward freedom by unveiling a bronze statue of her, shown above, along with a college scholarship in her name. I understand the statue, by artist Brian Hanlon, stands on land owned by the church where the town meetings of 1773 occurred, bringing the conversation about natural liberties full circle.

The Memory of “Mumbett”

In 1853 Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789–1867, shown here), one of America’s most popular novelists, published an article in Bentley’s Miscellany titled “Slavery in New England.”

The Massachusetts Historical Society holds Sedgwick’s manuscript of that article, titled “Mumbett,” and has made it available in digital form.

Describing Elizabeth “Mumbet” Freeman (d. 1829), the black woman who helped to raise her, Sedgwick wrote:

It was soon after the close of the revolutionary war that she chanced, at the village “meeting-house” in Sheffield, to hear the declaration of Independence read. She went the next day to the Office of Mr Theodore Sedgwick then in the beginning of his honorable political & legal career.

“Sir” said she “I heard that paper read yesterday that says ‘all men are born equal &, that every man has a right to freedom’ — I am not a dumb Critter, wont the law give me my freedom’?

I can imagine her upright form as she stood dilating with her fresh hope based on the declaration of her intrinsic inalienable right.

At another point in the manuscript, Sedgwick wrote and crossed out these words:

The reader will be prepared for the intelligence & decision which led Mumbet on the very day after hearing the declaration of Independence read in Church to apply to Theodore Sedgwick then at the beginning of his honorable legal & political career to institute a suit for her freedom

The documentary record shows that Theodore Sedgwick, the novelist’s father, took the case of this woman, then called only Elizabeth, though the Hampshire County court in 1781. She won her freedom, took the surname Freeman, and went to work for the Sedgwick family.

That lawsuit produced one of the precedents that led the Massachusetts Superior Court to rule slavery unenforceable in the state in 1783.

Catharine Sedgwick wrote of the Declaration of Independence setting off those events. The Declaration was of course more resonant with a national audience in 1853. And that might well have been what she remembered from hearing the story as a girl.

Authors have discussed two other documents as triggering or contributing to Elizabeth Freeman’s suit. Citing conversations with the Sedgwicks, the British author Harriet Martineau tied Freeman’s request for freedom to having “heard gentlemen talking over the Bill of Rights and the new constitution of Massachusetts” in her Retrospect of Western Travel (1838).

The first article of the Massachusetts state constitution of 1780 says:

All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.

That fits with the date of Freeman’s lawsuit, and, unlike the other documents spelling out ideals, the state constitution had legal force.

The other document latterly linked to Elizabeth Freeman’s suit for freedom is the Sheffield resolutions of January 1773, as I quoted yesterday.

Freeman’s enslavers were Hannah and John Ashley, and their house was supposedly where a town committee met to discuss Theodore Sedgwick’s draft of those resolutions. Had Elizabeth overheard? 

TOMORROW: Evidence and tradition.

“Independence Booth was Born”

The New England troops that enlisted in their colonies’ armies in the spring of 1775, and then became the Continental Army in June, agreed to serve until the end of the year.

Some Connecticut troops in fact believed the end of their stint was in mid-December and tried to leave camp then, prompting a confrontation between those men and regiments from other colonies obeying the commands of Gen. George Washington to keep everyone in camp. (I discussed that episode back here.)

Washington also wrote to the New England governors asking them to order some militia regiments to the Boston siege lines to maintain numbers until new Continental recruits and re-enlistees started to arrive in mid-winter. Connecticut governor Jonathan Trumbull activated Col. Erastus Wolcott and his regiment from December to February.

French and Indian War veteran Joseph Booth of Enfield was a junior officer in Wolcott’s regiment. A few weeks before Booth set out for Massachusetts, he and his wife, Mary, conceived their eighth child. Around the time Booth returned home, Mary’s pregnancy began to show. The baby, a little girl, arrived in July.

By then Booth was commissioned in another state regiment, under Col. Comfort Sage, to serve in the expected New York campaign. I like to think that Joseph Booth’s fellow militia officers arranged for him to stay in Enfield until the baby came. But it’s also possible that Mary Booth was home with only her other children (the oldest still only twelve), relatives, and neighbors.

In the little notebook Joseph Booth kept for his occasional diary, accounts, and memoranda, he recorded the arrival of his new daughter this way:

Independence Booth was Born Sunday July 14th: about 4 oclok in the Morning and in the year 1776 which was 10 Days after the united Colonies were Declard. to be Independent Stats by the Continantel Congress

The timeline of events works out this way.

• 4 July 1776: The Second Continental Congress declared independence.
• 12 July: Declaration of Independence published in New London’s Connecticut Gazette.
• 14 July: The Booths’ baby girl was born.
• 15 July: Declaration of Independence published in Hartford’s Connecticut Courant.
• 21 July: The baby was baptized Independence.
• 29 July: That christening was reported in the Connecticut Courant.

The Booth family genealogies I cited yesterday give different dates for Independence Booth’s birth, and neither matches what her father wrote in his notebook. J. H. Booth said she was born on 17 July. Charles Edwin Booth gave the date of 4 July, based on Enfield records, while acknowledging what her father wrote.

Basically, it appears that Independence Booth, her family, and her neighbors eventually decided to believe she was born on Independence Day. Even though news of the Declaration wouldn’t have reached central Connecticut by 4 July, that’s the date that appears on her gravestone.

TOMORROW: Independence Booth grows up.