“Demagogues never were nor will be Patriots”

The way the Federalists told it, the biggest danger to the new American republic would be some form of “anarchy” leading to a demagogue gaining power.

This was, they warned the voting public, more likely than some form of aristocracy or oligarchy leading to a tyrant gaining power.

That fear motivated George Washington to come out of retirement and chair the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, as he explained to Lafayette on 6 June 1787:

The pressure of the public voice was so loud, I could not resist the call to a convention of the States which is to determine whether we are to have a Government of respectability under which life—liberty, and property secured to us, or whether we are to submit to one which may be the result of chance or the moment, springing perhaps from anarch⟨ie⟩ Confusion, and dictated perhaps by some aspiring demagogue who will not consult the interest of his Country so much as his own ambitious views.

That convention produced a blueprint for government with a stronger national chief executive than anyone had envisioned before, albeit not as strong as it would become later. And of course the Federalists felt they were the best qualified to exercise those powers.

The fear of demagogues remained, now directed at any popular opposition to their policies. After negotiating a treaty with Britain that he knew would provoke complaints, John Jay wrote home to President Washington on 25 Feb 1795:

Demagogues will constantly flatter the Passions and Prejudices of the multitude; and will never cease to employ improper arts against those who will not be their Instruments. I have known many Demagogues, but I have never known one honest man among them. These are among the Evils which are incident to human Life, and none of them shall enduce me to decline or abandon Pursuits, in which I may concieve it to be my Duty to embark or persevere. All creatures will act according to their nature, and it would be absurd to expect that a man who is not upright will act like one that is.

Over a decade later, Jay was a retired jurist, diplomat, and New York governor, but he still expressed distaste for politicians who played to the public in an 18 Apr 1807 letter:

All Parties have their Demagogues, and Demagogues never were nor will be Patriots—Self Interest excites and directs all their Talents and Industry; and…by that Principle they regulate their conduct towards Men and Measures—nor is this all—They not only act improperly themselves, but they diligently strive to mislead the weak the Ignorant and the unwary—as to the corrupt they like to have it so—it makes a good market for them.

While I share these Federalists’ worry about demagogues, I think they directed that worry at the wrong targets, their view distorted by class prejudices and (try as they might) their own self-interests.

Firstly, the politicians the Federalists of the 1790s feared would be demagogues, such as Thomas Jefferson or even Matthew Lyon, didn’t threaten the republic, only Federalist domination of that republic.

Beyond that, history has shown that bigoted inertia was a bigger obstacle to liberty and economic growth than allowing the American government to be more responsive to the whole American people.

“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.

“Lifetime Tenure” When the Supreme Court Began

The U.S. senate is holding hearings on the nomination of a new Supreme Court justice. Some senators have come out against giving this nominee a “lifetime appointment” despite having previously approved her lifetime appointment as a federal judge at two levels.

Social-media discussions of this issue got me thinking of what a “lifetime appointment” meant when the U.S. Supreme Court first met.

Lifetime judicial appointments were common in the British and thus British-American legal systems. Although overall life expectancy was lower in the eighteenth century, that’s largely due to childhood mortality, so once a mature man was appointed to the bench he often served for many years.

(Colonial Rhode Island was an exception to that system of lifetime appointments. Under its eighteenth-century constitution, judges were elected for one-year terms, though they could be reelected. Which just shows how anomalous Rhode Island was.)

I decided to look at the Supreme Court justices appointed in the 1790s to see how long they stayed alive and stayed on the court.

• John Jay / 6 years on the court / 40 more years of life after appointment 
• John Rutledge / 1 one year on the court, then another stint of a few months four years later / 11 more years of life 
• William Cushing / 20 / 20 
• James Wilson / 9 / 9 
• John Blair / 5 / 10 
• James Iredell / 9 / 9 
• Thomas Johnson / 2 / 28 
• William Paterson / 13 / 13 
• Samuel Chase / 15 / 15 
• Oliver Ellsworth / 4 / 11 
• Bushrod Washington / 31 / 31 

Thus, from early on we see Supreme Court justices serving for a decade or more. Six of these eleven men sat on the bench until they died, with an average tenure of over fifteen years. Three more justices nominated by the Presidents active in the Founding—John Marshall, William Johnson, and Joseph Story—also served more than thirty years.

That said, while the first generation of U.S. politicians could conceive of Supreme Court justices serving for decades, the number of jurists who actually do so has gone up. As of today the historical average tenure on the court stands at sixteen years, but no justice has left the bench before that time since the late 1960s.

The other career model we see these days, a justice serving for decades and then retiring, was less common in the 1790s. Indeed, the three early justices who resigned citing reasons of health—John Blair, Thomas Johnson, and Oliver Ellsworth—did so after only a handful of years. The job was more physically demanding when Supreme Court justices still rode the circuit to hear federal cases rather than staying in the capital.

One path we haven’t seen for a long time was a justice resigning from the top bench because he preferred a different government role. John Jay left the court to be governor of New York, having already run for that offce in 1792 and gone overseas as President George Washington’s treaty negotiator in 1794.

Finally, there’s a storyline we really don’t want to see repeated. John Rutledge (shown above) resigned from the U.S. bench to become chief justice in the home state of South Carolina. Then President George Washington put him back on the Supreme Court as chief justice, only for the senate to decline to confirm him. Rutledge attempted suicide, withdrew from public life, and died five years later.

The Passing of Dr. Jenn Steenshorne

The Selected Papers of John Jay project at Columbia University just published its seventh and final printed volume, covering the years 1799 to 1829.

The project is also converting those volumes into a digital edition. A couple of years ago, the National Archives’ Founders Online website added those documents to its database, which symbolically elevates Jay to the top tier of Founders along with Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and Madison.

After all, Jay was a strong voice in the Continental Congress, U.S. minister to Spain, signer of the Treaty of Paris, Confederation secretary of foreign affairs, contributor to the “Federalist” essays, first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, negotiator of a crucial and controversial treaty with Great Britain, and governor of New York for six years.

The completion of The Selected Papers of John Jay was tinged with sadness this month as word spread that one long-time editor on the project, Jennifer Steenshorne, had died suddenly of Covid-19. On 28 December she tweeted, “Just took a home Covid test. Positive. I’ve had two shots, so not so bad aside from the exhaustion and cough.” However, the next day she added, “My Covid Cough makes me feel like I have been slammed in the ribs by baseball bats.” Three days later, she died.

Dr. Steenshorne was a warm presence among academic historians on Twitter, so her loss produced a real outpouring of sadness. I never met her, but I liked spotting the avatar of “Dr. JE Steenshorne, Harborer of Cats” (shown above). I knew her comments would be smart and kind. Scrolling back, I saw that my birthday gifts in 2020 included her reply to one of my silly tweets about British clerics’ overblown sleeves (not that she knew it was my birthday).

New York University colleague George Platt wrote:

Besides her many professional accomplishments, Jennifer was a supportive colleague and great friend to many of us, and was always ready with a precisely relevant fact from her encyclopedic knowledge of New York City. Her vast array of interests ranged from fashion and design (having worked for Perry Ellis), to music (having interned with Electra Records), to horse racing, and public health. She brewed stouts and porters. A fan of the Rolling Stones, she worked for jazz legends Max Roach and Dizzy Gillespie. . . . She also published on topics as diverse as cemetery removal in Manhattan, and James Bond films.

In 2018, Steenshorne became director and editor-in-chief of the Washington Papers. Colleagues at the University of Virginia Press lamented:

Beyond conferring about John Jay, George Washington, and the founding generation, we recall lively discussions about such wide-ranging figures as Ann Cary Randolph Morris, George Templeton Strong, and Joseph Urban—wonderful conversations that made evident the breadth of her knowledge and her interests, from the substantive role of women in the early republic to the rigors of the Civil War era to the design of Ziegfeld’s Follies. She will be missed.

Steenshorne’s husband, Brant M. Vogel, was a co-editor at the Jay Papers. He just announced that on Friday, 21 January, from 6:00 to 9:00 P.M. the Jazz Alternatives show on WKCR will play a tribute show to Dr. Jenn Steenshorne. Anyone can tune in at http://wkcr.org.

“The Child whom you used to lead out into the common”

In April 1785, seventeen-year-old John Quincy Adams had finished his first job, as secretary and translator for American minister Francis Dana in the court of Catherine the Great.

Young J. Q. Adams returned to France, where his family was living during another diplomatic mission. He prepared to sail home to Boston and enter Harvard College.

On 27 April, John Adams wrote a letter for his son to hand to their cousin Samuel:

The Child whom you used to lead out into the common to see with detestation the British Troops and with Pleasure the Boston Militia will have the Honour to deliver you this Letter. He has since seen the Troops of most Nations in Europe, without any Ambition I hope of becoming a military Man. He thinks of the Bar and Peace and civil Life, and I hope will follow and enjoy them with less Interruption than his Father could.

If you have in Boston a virtuous Clubb, such as We used to delight and improve ourselves in, they will inspire him with Such sentiments as a young American ought to entertain, and give him less occasion for lighter Company. I think it no small Proof of his Discretion, that he chooses to go to New England rather than old [i.e., to a British university]. You and I know that it will probably be more for his Honour and his Happiness in the result but young Gentlemen of Eighteen dont always See through the same Medium with old ones of fifty.

So I am going to London [as U.S. minister to the Court of St. James]. I suppose you will threaten me with being envyed again. I have more cause to be pitied, and al[though I will] not say with Dr Cutler that “I hate [to be] pitied” I dont know why I should dread Envy.—I shall be sufficiently vexed I expect. But as Congress are about to act with Dignity I dont much fear that I shall be able to do something worth going for. If I dont I shall come home, and envy nobody, nor be envied. if they send as good a Man to Spain as they have in [John] Jay for their foreign department and will have in [Thomas] Jefferson at Versailles I shall be able to correspond in perfect Confidence with all those public Characters that I shall have most need of Assistance from and shall fear nothing.

The editors of the Adams Papers report that in his letters John Adams twice quoted “old Dr. Cutler” saying that he hated to be pitied. They posit that was an allusion to the Rev. Dr. Timothy Cutler (1684-1765), longtime minister at Christ Church (Old North) in Boston. I haven’t found any other source for the remark, nor confirmation, but Cutler was a well-known figure in New England, recognized for being haughty, so it seems like a good guess.

TOMORROW: Helicopter parenting from the land of the balloon.

Panel on Washington in Roxbury, 24 Oct.

On 3 May 1797, Rufus King, then in London as the U.S. minister to Great Britain, wrote this in his diary:

Mr. [Benjamin] West called on me—we entered into politics after speaking of the Dinner at the Royal Academy and of the annual exhibition; Mr. West said things respecting Amer. had changed very much; that people who cd. not formerly find words of unkindness enough now talked in a different language; that the King had lately spoken in the most explicit manner of the wisdom of the American Gov. and of the abilities and great worth of the characters she produced and employed. He said the King had lately used very handsome expressions respecting Mr. [John] Jay and ——— and that he also spoke in a very pleasing manner of Mr. [Christopher] Gore.

But that in regard to Genl Washington, he told him since his resignation that in his opinion “that act closing and finishing what had gone before and viewed in connection with it, placed him in a light the most distinguished of any man living, and that he thought him the greatest character of the age.”

Two years later, on 28 Dec 1799, the British painter Joseph Farington called on West, and the older man began telling stories about British-American relations. According to Farington’s diary, West described this conversation with George III at some unspecified time toward the end of the war:

The King began to talk abt. America. He asked West what would Washington do were America to be declared independant. West said He believed He would retire to a private situation.—The King said if He did He would be the greatest man in the world.

West might have amalgamated his conversations with the king, but it’s clear that by the late 1790s George III firmly admired Washington for how he stepped away from positions of authority.

On the afternoon of Saturday, 24 October, the Shirley-Eustis House in Roxbury will host a panel discussion about Washington’s recurrent decision to give up power: “George Washington: The Ruler Who Would Not Be King.” The panelists include:

• Dr. Robert Allison, chair of the History Department at Suffolk University and author of numerous histories of the Revolution.
• Dory Codington, author of the Edge of Empire series of novels.
• Stephanie Davis, journalist and founder of Embedded Systems of Boston.

The event begins at 3:00 P.M. Refreshments will be served in the second hour. Admission is $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Register through Eventbrite.

“Ellis’s strategy of building his narrative around four exemplary men”

Back in July 2013 I discussed historian Joseph J. Ellis’s focus on, in his words, “the most prominent members of the political leadership during this formative phase” of the nation, as opposed to the larger mass of less wealthy, privileged, and successful Americans.

Some reviews of Ellis’s latest book, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789, fault that approach when it comes to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution.

In the New York Times Book Review, R. B. Bernstein wrote:

Ellis sees American nationhood as the creation of a few politicians working from above. But what of sentiments of ­national identity among the American people? ­Ellis rejects the idea that American ­nationalism existed before 1787, even reproving Abraham Lincoln for making that claim; his endnotes airily dismiss scholarship arguing otherwise. Nonetheless, currents of nationalism before 1787 helped make possible both the American victory in the Revolution and the Constitution’s adoption. . . .

Another large question concerns Ellis’s understanding of politics itself. The path to the Constitution was studded with pivotal choices, critical decision points and balking institutions. . . . These and other choices resulted from political decisions by the Confederation Congress, the state legislatures and the state ratifying conventions, all outside the control of Ellis’s four heroes [Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay].

Ellis dedicates “The Quartet” to his friend and colleague Pauline Maier, one of the finest historians of the American Revolution and the Constitution’s origins. He writes movingly of her in ways that bring her to life for all fortunate enough to have known her. And yet Maier’s work cuts against “The Quartet.” She focused on politics and political processes; her deft illumination of them produced a story more persuasive than that of “The Quartet.”

That book would be Maier’s Ratification. And Ellis’s skill is indeed bringing such big personalities to life.

The Economist, which doesn’t name its contributors, said something similar:

But in focusing on a few exceptional men, Mr Ellis also deprives his narrative of vital context. From the beginning it is an unequal contest, pitting the visionaries against the narrow-minded, the righteous few against the feckless many. None of their opponents—with the possible exception of Patrick Henry, who makes a cameo appearance near the end of the book engaging in oratorical fisticuffs with Madison over Virginia’s ratification of the constitution—rises to the stature of Mr Ellis’s heroes, or even their supporting cast. Their most doughty opponent, it turns out, is the amorphous “spirit of ’76”, which makes the book less a clash of titans than an exercise in shadow boxing.

Mr Ellis’s strategy of building his narrative around four exemplary men certainly makes for more compelling reading than delving into tax rolls or birth registers. Inevitably, though, it also carries its own subtle bias. Although he occasionally draws the reader’s attention to the moral limitations of the Founding Fathers, for instance calling their treatment of the native population one of the “less attractive features of the western story”, this is largely a triumphalist tale. Mr Ellis is not blind to the moral compromises made in Philadelphia in 1787, but he accepts rather too complacently the notion that the constitution that emerged represented the best possible agreement under the circumstances.

I haven’t read this book yet, but I’ve enjoyed some of Ellis’s previous books. I’ve found his analyses of personalities and conversations between two or three figures to be compelling. However, I’m not convinced that approach works as well in illuminating huge enterprises like nation-building.

Politics of the Doctors’ Riot

The New York doctors’ riot of 1788 arose from a popular emotional response to medical students’ grave-robbing and disrespectful treatment of corpses. But it also had a clear political component.

Those students tended to take bodies from the cemeteries for the poor and powerless, particularly the Negro burying-ground and the potters’ field, both outside the city limits. When African-Americans started guarding their large cemetery at night, some historians say, the grave-robbing switched to smaller private burying-grounds, again concentrating on those for the poor. But it wasn’t until white bodies began to disappear that the city’s laboring class rose up.

Most accounts say the attack on the Columbia medical school was led by a mason who had just lost his wife—both figuratively and literally. But none preserves that man’s name, nor the names of the five members of the mob who died. All our detailed accounts come from upper-class citizens who showed more sympathy for the cause of anatomical study than for the rioters’ passions. Their narratives may not be fully accurate, but they certainly show how the elite viewed “popular rage,” and they established the storyline for future chroniclers.

One political result of the riot was a New York law passed in 1789 providing for the corpses of executed convicts to be dissected. The practice remained distasteful to many people, however, especially those whose families were too poor to benefit from medical education or the treatments that proponents of dissection promised. In 1790 some medical students responded to that social pressure by forming what became the New York Dispensary to provide free medicines to the poor; it received a legal charter from the state in 1795.

It’s tempting to ask what effect the New York riots of mid-April 1788 had on the debate over ratifying the new U.S. Constitution. The Continental Congress had left Philadelphia in 1783 because of an uprising there. The Regulation movement in Massachusetts, which authorities dubbed Shays’ Rebellion, had prompted the Constitutional Convention. And just as states were debating the resulting plan for a new government, New York City was roiled with more unrest. Did the doctors’ riot make America’s political leaders fear that they had to act quickly or the U.S. of A. would crumble into anarchy?

I haven’t found evidence of that episode having a direct effect on the ratification debate. At one point authors speculated that John Jay’s injury during the riots had kept him from writing more of the “Publius” essays with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, but it appears that those essays (now known as The Federalist Papers) were finished weeks before the riot. By June, when New York’s ratifying convention began, Jay had recovered.

The New York legislature had already decided to hold that convention in Poughkeepsie, well away from the capital. The delegates chose Gov. George Clinton to chair that convention; he’d led the efforts to suppress the riot, but he remained an Anti-Federalist, opposed to a stronger national government.

In the end, the New York convention wasn’t that decisive anyhow. After their first week of meetings in June, the delegates got word that New Hampshire had become the ninth state to ratify the new document, meaning that under its own rules (Article VII), it would take effect. Then Virginia ratified as well. New York’s opponents therefore focused on demanding a Bill of Rights and other amendments, getting the most they could out of the situation. Clinton and others abstained from voting, and the proposal passed. So instead of being a significant event in U.S. constitutional history, the doctors’ riot is recalled as a curious social incident.

Fight at the New York City Jail

When we left off William Heth’s account of the New York doctors’ riot of April 1788, the anti-dissection crowd had started to attack the city jail, where some anatomy teachers and students had taken refuge. Heth wrote:

The militia were ordered out, small parties were sent to disperse them [the rioters], but they instantly disarmed those attachments, broke their guns to peices, arid made them scamper to save their lives.

The evening advanced apace, and the affair became very serious. The Governor [George Clinton, shown here], after trudging about all day, first with the mob in the morning, endeavouring to pacify and accommodate, and in the afternoon to assemble a body respectable enough to preserve the goal [i.e., jail] and to restore peace and good order, advanced about dusk with a number of the Citizens, but without any kind of order or without any other than a few side arms and canes, while the Adjutant-Gen’l of the militia [Nicholas Fish], about 300 yards in his rear, led up in very good order about 150 men, tho’ not more than half with firearms, among whom were many gentlemen of the city and strangers, volunteers.

This body were not long before the goal before the bricks and stones from the mob provoked several to fire, and perhaps their might, on the whole, have been 60 guns discharged, but this is mere guess. This body made their way into the goal where a party remained all night, but a sally of 60 or 70 were defeated. Three of the mob were killed on the spot, and one has since died of his wounds, and several were wounded. One of them was bayonetted on attempting to force into a window of the prison which he saw filled with armed men, a proof of the astonishing lengths to which popular rage will sometimes carry men.

Numbers on the Governor’s side, besides himself, are severely bruised. Baron Steuben rec’d a wound just above the corner of his left eye and nose, from which he lost a great deal of blood. Mr. [John] Jay got his Scull almost cracked, and are both now laid up. Gen’l [John] Armstrong has got a bruised leg, but is able to go out.

Yesterday the militia turned out again, and made a respectable appearance, and paraded about exceedingly, both Horse and Foot, but it must be observed that the enemy were not be heard of.

In truth numbers who were in the mob on Monday evening turned out yesterday to support government.

It looks like “Gen’l Armstrong” was John Armstrong, Jr. (1758-1843), adjutant general of Pennsylvania and central figure in the so-called “Newburgh Conspiracy.” He was in New York as a delegate to the Continental Congress, and would soon settle in that state.

According to a letter from John Jay’s wife Sarah to her mother, it took a while for doctors “to decide whether his brain was injur’d or not.” While they debated, the doctors bled him, of course. Jay recovered.

TOMORROW: Treating the baron’s injury.

“And extraordinary indeed it was!”

The Houghton Library at Harvard has devoted a blog posting to a notable item among its rare books: George Washington’s copy of A View of the Conduct of the Executive in the Foreign Affairs of the United States, published by James Monroe in 1797.

Monroe had been the U.S. of A.’s minister in Paris in the mid-1790s. Meanwhile, John Jay was in London negotiating a treaty that moved the country closer to Great Britain. Monroe disliked that policy, resigned, and wrote this book criticizing not only the treaty but “the Executive” who had brought it about—who was, of course, President Washington.

What’s most remarkable about this copy of the book is that Washington wrote notes in his copy criticizing the young diplomat back. As the library describes:

The tone of Washington’s response is obvious from Monroe’s very first sentence. Monroe writes “In the month of May, 1794, I was invited by the President of the United States, through the Secretary of State [Edmund Randolph], to accept the office of minister plenipotentiary to the French Republic.” Washington ripostes “After several attempts had failed to obtain a more eligible character.” . . .

Due to the fragility of the paper and the corrosive ink Washington used to write his notes, this volume is restricted from use. Fortunately, Washington’s notes were transcribed, in a late 19th century edition of his works that is freely accessible online.

Many of Washington’s comments take the form of questions, a polite way of disagreeing. Every so often he cites letters of particular dates. But sometimes he responds directly. “Such was my conduct upon the above occasion, and such the motives of it,” Monroe writes, and his old boss adds, “And extraordinary indeed it was!”

TOMORROW: More news of Washington’s books.

Visiting American Nations

Colin Woodard’s American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America reads like a cross between Joel Garreau’s The Nine Nations of North America (1981), and David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed (1989) and related books.

Like Garreau, Woodard divides all of the U.S. of A., Canada, and northern Mexico along cultural and economic lines rather than the borders of states and traditional regions. Like Fischer, Woodard sees the roots of these differences in the first European settlements of each area, and the values those settlers carried to new regions.

Thus in this model the Tidewater, settled by English aristocrats in the early 1600s, is significantly different from the larger Deep South, first settled by Englishmen from the Caribbean several decades later. Woodard laid out his basic ideas and how he developed them in a podcast conversation with Marshall Poe.

After The Nine Nations of North America, I’ve joked that I came out of two nations: Midwestern and Academic. Even though I’ve never been formally part of either tribe, they’ve largely defined my values.

Under Woodard’s model, however, there’s no single Midwest. He splits that part of the country into extensions of Yankeedom (settled by New Englanders), the Midlands (spread west from Philadelphia), and Greater Appalachia (folks from the Revolutionary-era backcountry). And the part of California where I was born is in El Norte, its culture shaped by Spanish settlers seeking autonomy from Mexico City.

One of the smallest nations geographically on Woodard’s map is New Netherland—basically the part of North America that the Dutch colonized before the English took over. However, since that area includes New York City, its population and influence are much bigger than its physical footprint.

American Nations presents the Revolution first as “A Common Struggle” that first pulled disparate, competing regions together and then as “Six Wars of Liberation” in six different regions. Yankeedom was basically independent after March 1776 while New Netherland was pulled back into the British Empire until 1783.

Woodard overstates his case at times. In his introduction he writes:

New Netherland also nurtured two Dutch innovations considered subversive by most other European states at the time: a profound tolerance for diversity and an unflinching commitment to the freedom of inquiry. Forced on other nations at the Constitutional Convention, these ideals have been passed down to us as the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights wasn’t a product of the Constitutional Convention; it was a pushback against the new federal government which that meeting proposed.

So let’s read Woodard’s statement to refer not to the convention itself but to the overall ratifying process. In a later chapter, Woodard writes of the Constitution:

New Netherlanders refused to vote on it at all until Congress agreed to add thirteen amendments modeled on the civil liberties enumerated in the Articles of Capitulation on the Reduction of New Netherland. . . . The vote in New York State was a cliffhanger, prompting New Netherlanders to threaten to secede and join the new union on their own if delegates from the Yankee interior counties did not ratify the new constitution.

Together these statements appear to present New Netherland as both standing firm against ratification and demanding it. This analysis also glosses over the many other sources for the Constitution’s first ten amendments, including the British Bill of Rights passed by Parliament in 1689. The Pennsylvania minority that had opposed ratification in 1788 proposed amendments guaranteeing individual rights. The Massachusetts convention reached compromise by proposing similar amendments, and other states followed that course.

In fact, by the time New York ratified the Constitution, nine other states had already done so, meaning that it had legal force. Of course, the nation needed to include New York as a large, central state. But I don’t see how New Netherland “forced” individual rights onto the rest of the U.S.

What’s more, two of the three Federalist Papers authors who argued to approve the Constitution as originally written were from New York. Woodard makes a point of calling Alexander Hamilton “Barbados-born,” suggesting he brought foreign values to New Netherland rather than fitting right in. And the book doesn’t even mention John Jay, whose mother was from an old Dutch family.

Though I think that at times like those American Nations’s thesis is stretched too far, it definitely provokes new thinking about North America and its past.

Samuel Adams's "Masterly Stroke of Policy"

Earlier this week Mitt Romney, former governor and then critic of Massachusetts, gave a speech about religion and politics that concluded with this Revolutionary anecdote:

Recall the early days of the first Continental Congress in Philadelphia, during the fall of 1774. With Boston occupied by British troops, there were rumors of imminent hostilities and fears of an impending war. In this time of peril, someone suggested that they pray. But there were objections. “They were too divided in religious sentiment,” what with Episcopalians and Quakers, Anabaptists and Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Catholics.

Then Sam Adams rose, and said he would hear a prayer from anyone of piety and good character, as long as they were a patriot.

Romney and his speechwriters no doubt based their description of that event on John Adams’s letter home to Abigail, dated 16 Sept 1774, or other writers’ retellings of it:

When the Congress first met, Mr. [Thomas] Cushing made a Motion, that it should be opened with Prayer. It was opposed by Mr. [John] Jay of N. York and Mr. [Edward] Rutledge of South Carolina, because we were so divided in religious Sentiments, some Episcopalians, some Quakers, some Anabaptists, some Presbyterians and some Congregationalists, so that We could not join in the same Act of Worship.

Mr. S[amuel]. Adams arose and said he was no Bigot, and could hear a Prayer from a Gentleman of Piety and Virtue, who was at the same Time a Friend to his Country. He was a Stranger in Phyladelphia, but had heard that Mr. [Jacob] Duche (Dushay they pronounce it) deserved that Character, and therefore he moved that Mr. Duche, an episcopal Clergyman, might be desired, to read Prayers to the Congress, tomorrow Morning.

The Motion was seconded and passed in the Affirmative. Mr. [Peyton] Randolph our President, waited on Mr. Duche, and received for Answer that if his Health would permit, he certainly would. Accordingly next Morning he appeared with his Clerk and in his Pontificallibus, and read several Prayers, in the established Form; and then read the Collect for the seventh day of September, which was the Thirty fifth Psalm.

You must remember this was the next Morning after we heard the horrible Rumour, of the Cannonade of Boston.—I never saw a greater Effect upon an Audience. It seemed as if Heaven had ordained that Psalm to be read on that Morning.

After this Mr. Duche, unexpected to every Body struck out into an extemporary Prayer, which filled the Bosom of every Man present. I must confess I never heard a better Prayer or one, so well pronounced. Episcopalian as he is, Dr. [Samuel] Cooper himself never prayed with such fervour, such Ardor, such Earnestness and Pathos, and in Language so elegant and sublime—for America, for the Congress, for The Province of Massachusetts Bay, and especially the Town of Boston. It has had an excellent Effect upon every Body here.

I must beg you to read that Psalm. If there was any Faith in the sortes Virgilianae, or sortes Homericae, or especially the Sortes biblicae, it would be thought providential.

It will amuse your Friends to read this Letter and the 35th. Psalm to them. Read it to your Father and Mr. Wibirt.—I wonder what our Braintree Churchmen would think of this?—Mr. Duche is one of the most ingenious Men, and best Characters, and greatest orators in the Episcopal order, upon this Continent—Yet a Zealous Friend of Liberty and his Country.

But that wasn’t the first time John Adams had written about this moment. His first allusion to it appeared in his diary on 10 September:

Mr. Reed [George Read of Delaware?] returned with Mr. [Samuel] Adams and me to our Lodgings, and a very social, agreable and communicative Evening We had.

He says We never were guilty of a more Masterly Stroke of Policy, than in moving that Mr. Duche might read Prayers, it has had a very good Effect, &c. He says the Sentiments of People here, are growing more and more favourable every day.

The phrase “Masterly Stroke of Policy” reveals that the cousins’ agreeable colleague saw Samuel’s proposal as a political act. Why? And what was the background of this moment?

First of all, it was almost certainly a setup. Thomas Cushing and Samuel Adams went way back. Cushing had been Adams’s boss in his early, unrewarding attempt at a mercantile career. In the Massachusetts General Court, Cushing was Speaker and Adams was Clerk. Adams must have known that Cushing would propose opening the congress with a prayer, and had probably prepared what he was going to say in response.

The Massachusetts delegates had arrived in Philadelphia with a reputation of being Congregationalist zealots who oppressed minority religions in their region, including the Quaker, Anglican, and Baptist faiths. Some people feared the New England Congregationalists might push the rest of the American colonies into civil war, like the English Puritans of the 1640s. Adams seized (or created) this chance to show that “he was no Bigot” precisely because a lot of the men around him suspected he was a bigot.

And in some ways Samuel Adams definitely was. He was suspicious of the Anglican Church and downright hostile to Catholicism. But on the latter point, so was the rest of Congress. Romney was wrong to claim that the First Continental Congress included “Catholics”; there were no Catholic delegates in the room. It was a bunch of Protestant men congratulating themselves on being so open-minded as to listen to a Protestant prayer.

On 14 Oct 1774, that same Congress issued a Declaration and Resolves listing this among Parliament’s “infringements and violations of the rights of the colonists”:

establishing the Roman Catholic religion, in the province of Quebec, abolishing the equitable system of English laws, and erecting a tyranny there, to the great danger (from so total a dissimilarity of religion, law and government) of the neighboring British colonies, by the assistance of whose blood and treasure the said country was conquered from France.

The First Continental Congress’s attitude toward religious diversity was clearly limited. They believed that making Catholicism the established church in a separate province populated mainly by Catholics somehow endangered them and infringed on their rights.

Some more ironies of this situation:

• The same John Jay who spoke against starting the Congress with a prayer also called the U.S. of A. a “Christian nation” in an 1816 letter, and is therefore often cited by people who wish to enforce that belief.
• The “the horrible Rumour, of the Cannonade of Boston,” that made Duche’s prayers so resonant turned out to be completely false. (This was the same rumor that prompted the Powder Alarm.)
• Adams’s letter shows that he knew his Congregationalist friends and family back in Massachusetts would be surprised that an Anglican like Duche could ardently support the Patriot cause. He urged Abigail to share his praise for the minister with her father, the Rev. William Smith, and the north Braintree minister, the Rev. Anthony Wibird. When he wrote, “I wonder what our Braintree Churchmen would think of this?” Adams alluded to his Anglican neighbors, who mostly leaned toward the Crown. In sum, Adams’s letter says as much about division and suspicion along religious/political lines as it does about unity and tolerance in the early nation.
• A month after Adams’s letter, on 14 October, the Massachusetts delegates were surprised to find themselves in a tense meeting with local Quakers and two New England Baptists about “certain Laws of that Province [Massachusetts], restrictive of the Liberty of Conscience.” Anglicans might have become less suspicious of Massachusetts after Samuel Adams’s masterstroke, but people from minority faiths back in New England still knew that the government favored one church over all others.
  

And a final irony appears in John Adams’s last mention of Duche to Abigail, in a letter dated 25 Oct 1777. At the time, the British military under Gen. William Howe had taken Philadelphia, driving the Congress to York. John wrote:

This Town is a small one, not larger than Plymouth. — There are in it, two German Churches, the one Lutheran, the other Calvinistical. The Congregations are pretty numerous, and their Attendance upon public Worship is decent. It is remarkable that the Germans, wherever they are found, are carefull to maintain the public Worship, which is more than can be said of the other Denominations of Christians, this Way. There is one Church here erected by the joint Contributions of Episcopalians and Presbyterians, but the Minister, who is a Missionary, is confined for Toryism, so that they have had for a long Time no publick Worship

Congress have appointed two Chaplains, Mr. [William] White and Mr. [George] Duffield, the former of whom an Episcopalian is arrived and opens Congress with Prayers every Day. The latter is expected every Hour.

Mr. Duche I am sorry to inform you has turned out an Apostate and a Traytor. Poor Man! I pitty his Weakness, and detest his Wickedness.

The Rev. Mr. Duche (shown above, courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania) had asked Gen. George Washington to stop resisting the British military. When that letter became public, Duche fled to Britain, was convicted of treason against Pennsylvania, and had all his American property confiscated.