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

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

The scheduled speakers are:

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

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

For more information, visit this page.

“An innocent Baby may become the Victim of strife”

Little Betsy Bache wasn’t alone in waiting a long time for a toy to arrive from France, as related yesterday.

On 15 Apr 1785, Adrienne, the Marquise de Lafayette (shown here), wrote to her husband’s dear friend George Washington:

how happy should I be, to meet with mrs [Martha] Washington, to recall together, all the circumstances of the war, every period of our anguish, and of your glory, and to see our children playing together.

wishing for so happy a moment, anastasie and Georges beg Leave, to send to the two youngest, miss Custis a toilett and a doll that is two play things with which my daughter is more delighted since two months, she is in possession of that she hopes, that her remembrance being some time mingled, with their entertainements, she may obtain some part in their frienship, whose she is so desirous of.

for the eldest miss Custis, we have so exalted an idea, of her reason and gravity, that we have only dared send to her a neeting bag, because she may with it, keep mrs Washington company, because I hear that she Likes this kind of work.

we send master Georges also, an optick with different wiews; but we have been moved by a personal interest, making him this gift. I hope that Looking at it, he will become fond of travelling that his travels will conduct him, into france, and perhaps he may bring you and mrs Washington here.

In that year the eldest of Martha’s grandchildren, Elizabeth Parke Custis, turned nine years old. Martha turned eight, Eleanor six, and little George Washington Parke Custis four. The two eldest lived with their widowed mother while George and Martha Washington were raising the two youngest at Mount Vernon. To the marquise’s credit, she sent something for everyone.

Lafayette himself alerted Washington that those things were on their way, writing the next day: “By mr Ridout’s Vessel my children Have Sent to yours at Mount Venon a few trifles which are very indifferent But may Amuse them two or three days.”

Unfortunately, due to various postal mix-ups, those gifts didn’t arrive at Mount Vernon until May 1786, thirteen months later.

Also to be lamented, we don’t appear to have any letters or other accounts from Mount Vernon describing how the children received those playthings from France.

But there may be a little hint in what Washington learned from watching children in letters he wrote in December 1798. By then two of the Custis sisters had married; settled in Washington, D.C.; and had babies named after them:

• Martha Peter, born in January 1796.
• Eliza Law, born in January 1797.

Meanwhile, Washington was serving as President in Philadelphia. There he often met with Elizabeth Powel, and she promised to help him pick out gifts for his female relatives. On 4 December Washington wrote:

let me tresspass upon your goodness to procure the second edition of the present (on my acct) that you intend for Eliza Law. Without which, a contest (regardless of right—no unusual thing)—in which an innocent Baby may become the Victim of strife.

Three days later Washington told Powel: “Your letter to Mrs Law shall be safely delivered to her and I will endeavor to do the same by the Doll to Eliza.” The doll cost $2.50.

So it looks like Powel told Washington she was going to supply a doll for Eliza Law, and he asked her to buy another for him to give to someone else, who I’m guessing was her older cousin Martha. That way both little girls, and both mothers, would be content.

“The French in Newport,” 14–15 July

On 14–15 July, the Newport Historical Society will host this year’s edition of “The French in Newport,” a historical reenactment in the heart of the city.

The society’s website explains:

In July 1780, thousands of French troops landed in Newport beginning an occupation that lasted for nearly a year. The presence of this new ally represented a turning point in the American Revolution and the start of the Franco-American Alliance. While French troops played a vital role in American victory at Yorktown in 1781, Newport citizens were far from welcoming upon their arrival. . . .

The French in Newport Event will feature living historians portraying recognizable figures such as George and Martha Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette and the Marquis de Chastellux along with the head of the French army, comte de Rochambeau. Dozens of costumed living historians representing both civilians and French soldiers will discuss the challenges of establishing this new alliance. 

One highlight will be the Museum of the American Revolution’s First Oval Office Project, a hand-sewn replica of Gen. Washington’s sleeping tent, exhibited at Washington Square.

Justin Cherry of Half Crown Bakehouse, resident baker at Mount Vernon, will offer 18th-century baking demonstrations and discuss the food rations available in 1780 Newport.

The Middlesex County Volunteers Fifes & Drums will close the event with a concert.

Here’s the schedule as it stands now.

Friday, 14 July, 11:00 A.M.
Washington Square
Dr. Iris de Rode on the French Efforts to Charm Rhode Island

Friday, Noon
Washington Square
Rochambeau’s Proclamation

Friday, 1:00 P.M.
Washington Square
Dr. de Rode on Tea Traditions

Friday, 2:00 P.M.
Colony House
Dr. de Rode interviews the Marquis de Chastellux

Friday, 3:00 P.M.
Washington Square
Meet the Marquis de Lafayette

Saturday, 15 July, 11:00 A.M.
Colony House
Dr. de Rode interviews the Marquis de Chastellux

Saturday, Noon
Washington Square
The First Cruise of General Washington, a Rhode Island Privateer

Saturday, 1:00 P.M.
Washington Square
Dr. de Rode on Tea Traditions

Saturday, 2:00 P.M.
Colony House
Dr. Matthew Keagle on French Military Uniforms

Saturday, 3:30 P.M.
in front of the Colony House
Fife & Drum Concert by the Middlesex County Volunteers

One appealing feature of this event is that, because most of the events take place outdoors in public parks, they’re free. Now we just have to hope for good weather.

Fort Ti American Revolution Seminar, 23–24 Sept.

Fort Ticonderoga has announced its 19th Annual Seminar on the American Revolution, to take place on the weekend of 23–24 September 2023. Unlike last year, this appears to be an in-person event only.

The seminar actually starts on the evening of Friday, 22 September, with a opening reception and Curator Matthew Keagle’s presentation of highlights from the Robert Nittolo Collection related to the War for American Independence.

The scheduled presentations on Saturday are:

• Justin B. Clement, “The Black Servants of Major-General Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette”
• Isabelle J. Courtney, “In the Wake of the British Retreat: Sir Guy Carleton’s Book of Negroes and the Enslaved Population of Rhode Island”
• Dr. Jen Janofsky and Wade P. Catts, “‘Naked and Torn by the Grapeshot’: Fort Mercer and the History, Archaeology, and Public Perceptions of a Mass Burial Space at Red Bank Battlefield Park
• Dr. Friederike Baer, “Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War”
• Dr. Armin Langer, “Alexander Zuntz in America: A Hessian Army Supplier Turned New York Jewish Community Leader and Businessman”
• Jack Weaver, “The Customs and Temper of Americans?: Germans and the Continental Coalition, 1775–1776”

And on Sunday morning:

• Dr. Timothy Leech, “Was There an Internal Patriot Coup in Massachusetts beginning April 20, 1775?”
• Dr. Stephen Brumwell, “Fighting Rebellion from America to Jamaica: The Experience of Alexander Lindsay, Lord Balcarres”
• Mark R. Anderson, “The Rise, Disgrace, and Recovery of Timothy Bedel”
• Don N. Hagist, “New Views of Fort Ticonderoga and Burgoyne’s Campaign”

In addition, for an additional cost on Friday there’s a bus tour of “Forts, Raids, Battles and Mayhem: The Schoharie Valley, 1775-1780,” led by Jeff O’Conner and Bruce Venter of America’s History L.L.C.

Basic registration is $150, but there are discounts for being a Fort Ti member, registering early, and registering online, so that if one checks all the boxes the cost goes down to $100. Registering early enough also signs one up for box lunches on both days and the informal group dinner on Saturday evening. Register starting here (but if you’re a Fort Ti member, sign into the website first).

“Statement of account of Gouverneur Morris”

From the American Philosophical Society, Melanie Miller shared an intriguing glimpse of her work editing the papers of Gouverneur Morris.

Morris succeeded Thomas Jefferson as the U.S. of A.’s minister to France in 1792, having been in that country since 1789. He therefore got to see the French Revolution.

What’s more, these documents show, Morris got involved.

Labeled simply as a “statement of account of Gouverneur Morris, July-September 1792,” the paper is a record of the money Morris agreed to receive from Louis XVI to raise a counter-revolutionary force when it became clear that the monarchy was in danger of violent overthrow. This was a remarkable episode—while he was U.S. minister, Morris conspired with some of Louis’s loyal counselors to try to save the monarchy and help the royal family escape. . . .

Another group of items that I was delighted to find relate to the much-admired Marquis de Lafayette, whom Morris knew during the American Revolution and saw again in France. The letters came from Morris’s close friend and business partner, James LeRay de Chaumont. They discuss LeRay’s efforts to obtain repayment of an enormous personal loan Morris made to Lafayette’s wife at her request, to cover their “debts of honor” after the Marquis—whose fall from leader of the Revolution to being considered a traitor had been swift, just as Morris had predicted— fled France and was imprisoned by the Austrians. Our research for Morris’s later diaries (1799-1816) originally led us to the tentative conclusion that Morris had never been repaid. These letters confirm it. His later financial difficulties were considerably exacerbated by this default.

It was acknowledged by her family and others that Morris saved Mme. de Lafayette from the guillotine during the Great Terror, and his diaries show that his efforts led to the Austrian emperor’s decision to release the Marquis in 1797. A letter from LeRay, who met with Mme. de Lafayette in Paris more than once after she and her husband returned to France and were restored to their estates, confirmed what I could only infer from Morris’s letters: that Madame de Lafayette (who had never forgiven Morris for speaking truth to her husband in the early days of the Revolution) seemed outraged that Morris had the nerve to request repayment…

Founders Online currently hosts the papers of seven prominent men involved in forming the American republic, with John Jay the most recent addition. Though as a Bostonian I should root for Samuel Adams to be added to that list, I can’t help but think that Gouverneur Morris’s papers would be so much more fun.

Spilling the Tea on an Artifact

The American Independence Museum in Exeter, New Hampshire, will open for the season on Wednesday, 4 May.

Its first “Tavern Talk” of the year will be one week later, on 11 May. Alan R. Hoffman will speak on “Lafayette and Human Rights” at 6:30 P.M.

While visiting the museum website, I was intrigued by this webpage on a reported sample of “Boston Tea Party Tea,” part of a series called “30 Stories for 30 Years.” About the vial shown above, it says:

This tea is believed to have originated from Patriot Thomas Melvill (1751-1832), who participated in the Boston Tea Party. . . . It is believed that this vial contains the tea saved from Melvill’s shoe and was passed through the generations until it was eventually acquired by William Lithgow Willey [1857–1949] and donated to the Society of the Cincinnati.

However, that’s followed by a “Contemporary Interpretation” that says:

A document found in the Society’s archives pertaining to Willey’s estate following his death states that the vial is “labeled in W.L.W’s printing,” suggesting that the vial may not be the same one labeled by Melvill’s wife. The label has been dated to the nineteenth century, creating further doubt. . . . To date, no documentation has been found to determine how and where Willey acquired this vial, and its origins remain a mystery.

What’s more, the Old State House Museum in Boston holds a vial of tea from the Melvill family that was described as early as 1821, pictured in 1884, and donated to that collection in 1900, as I tracked here. That vial is featured on the Old State House’s website.

The two artifacts do look similar, which might have made them easy to confuse. Or was one created in imitation of the other?

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

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

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

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

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

We’re going to discuss The Road to Concord:

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

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

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

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

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

Yanks Abroad

I don’t want to leave the topic of early Americans in Paris on a down note, so I’ll share this link to Michael K. Beauchamp’s review of A View from Abroad: The Story of John and Abigail Adams in Europe by Jeanne E. Abrams.

Beauchamp writes:

The book begins with John Adams’s initial journey to Europe to serve as part of the US diplomatic mission to France, where he served alongside Arthur Lee and Benjamin Franklin. Adams arrived after the Treaty of Amity and Commerce had been signed and ended up doing much of the grunt work of keeping accounts and records while mediating between Franklin and Lee, who were often at odds. While Adams appreciated aspects of French art and culture, he found himself horrified by the decadence of the aristocracy, the futility of court ceremony, the superstitious Catholicism of the lower orders, and the Deism of so many members of the French elite.

Well, maybe John was more impressed on his second long-term posting, in Holland.

Though a Protestant country and one in which Adams secured diplomatic victories, here, too, Adams criticized elements of Dutch society such as the absence of hospitality, the lack of public spirit, and an obsession with accumulating wealth. He also wrote of a growing American oligarchy, which he linked to his opponents in Congress.

Perhaps when Abigail Adams joined her husband she saw more to like.

Abigail’s arrival in 1784 resulted in an analysis of France that mirrored her husband’s judgments. Abigail proved highly critical of Americans like Anne Bingham, whom she believed had become too enamored of French culture, though Abigail praised French women like Adrienne de Lafayette due to her husband’s service to the United States, her knowledge of English, and her elegant but simple dress.

And then the family moved to London.

As in France, the Adamses proved critical of British society, with Abigail particularly shocked by the degree of poverty: “She insisted that the English elite were occupied with the pursuit of enjoyment and pleasure and that they suffered from depraved manners. Moreover, she was grateful that American society did not exhibit the extreme social divides she witnessed in England” (p. 167).

Ironically, John Adams’s political opponents in America would later point to his years in Europe and say he’d become too enamored of Old World societies and too aristocratic in his thinking. However much Adams distrusted popular politics, he consistently criticized European countries for being too dominated by aristocracy and feared America would produce a new aristocracy of wealth.

“Abrams does an excellent job of interweaving the official diplomatic duties of Adams and the personal family dynamics at play,” Beauchamp writes in his review. “Just as importantly, Abrams writes well and the text has a strong narrative, which should allow it to reach a more popular audience than most university press monographs.”

Upcoming Online Book Events

Here are some book discussions coming to a computer screen near you in the next couple of weeks.

Thursday, 26 August, 8:00 P.M.
History Camp
Kathleen DuVal, Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, will discuss her prize-winning book Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution, which looks at the history of the American Revolution through the eyes of slaves, American Indians, women, and British loyalists on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Free.

Tuesday, 31 August, 7:00 P.M.
Harvard Book Store
Mike Duncan, host of the groundbreaking podcast The History of Rome and author of The Storm Before the Storm will discuss his latest book, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution. He will be joined in conversation by Patrick Wyman, host of the Tides of History podcast. This is a ticketed event. A $35.25 ticket buys access to the event plus a signed hardcover copy of Hero of Two Worlds mailed afterwards.

Thursday, 9 September, 8:00 P.M.
History Camp
Jack Kelly, author and historian, on his new book, Valcour: The 1776 Campaign That Saved the Cause of Liberty, which covers the Revolutionary War battle on Lake Champlain, led by Philip Schuyler, Horatio Gates, and the heroic Benedict Arnold, that delayed British invasion until the following year. Free.

More to See at History Camp America 2021

Yesterday I shared the video preview of my presentation at History Camp America 2021, coming up on 10 July.

There are seven more video previews of sessions at this page, ranging from Fort Ticonderoga in the north to the Buffalo Soldier National Museum in ths south.

Here are more scheduled History Camp America sessions with some link to Revolutionary New England:

• Video tour of Fort Ticonderoga
• Video tour of Buckman Tavern in Lexington
• “Reimagining America: The Maps of Lewis and Clark” by Carolyn Gilman
• “The Amphibious Assault on Long Island August 1776” by Ross Schwalm
• “Saunkskwa, Sachem, Minister: native kinship and settler church kinship in 17th and 18th-century New England” by Lori Rogers-Stokes
• “‘Thrown into pits’: how were the bodies of the nineteen hanged Salem ‘witches’ really treated?” by Marilynne K. Roach
• “Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates” by Eric Jay Dolin
• “Inconvenient Founders: Thomas Young and the Forgotten Disrupters of the American Revolution” by Scott Nadler
• “Slaves in the Puritan Village: The Untold History of Colonial Sudbury” by Jane Sciacca
• “Surviving the Lash: Corporal Punishment and British Soldiers’ Careers” by Don Hagist
• “Saving John Quincy Adams From Alligators and Mole People” by Howard Dorre
• “Lafayette’s Farewell Tour and National Coherence – The Lafayette Trail” by Julien Icher
• “Boston’s Green Dragon Tavern: The Headquarters of the Revolution” by Andrew Cotten
• “The Fairbanks House of Dedham: The House, The Myth, The Legend” by Stuart Christie
• “First Amendment Origin Stories & James Madison Interview” by Jane Hampton Cook & Kyle Jenks
• “Historic Marblehead – A Walking Tour” by Judy Anderson
• “The Second Battle of Lexington & Concord: re-inventing the history of the opening engagements of the American Revolution” by Richard C. Wiggin
• “To Arms: How Adams, Revere, Mason, and Henry Helped to Unify their Respective Colonies” by Melissa Bryson

Plus, there are a hefty selection of other sessions about history farther afield, before and after.

Again, registration costs $94.95, and for another $30 folks can receive a box of goodies from History Camp sponsors and participating historical sites. Registrants can watch videos and participate in scheduled live online discussions on 10 July, and will have access to the entire video library for a year.

The Myth of Frederick II’s Fan Letter to George Washington

On 20 May 1780, the Providence Gazette ran a paragraph headed “Extract of a Letter from an Officer in the American Army, dated May 4, 1780.”

The article read:

On Thursday we were mustered and inspected by the Baron Stuben. We had likewise the Honor of his Excellency’s Presence. The Appearance of the Troops, their Arms, Accoutrements, &c. drew the Applause of that great Man, who does Honor to the Name of Soldier. The Dignity of his Manners, the Elevation of his Sentiments, and the Nobility of his Soul, speak him the first of Characters.

Did I ever mention to you an Anecdote which respects him? For Fear I never did, I’ll relate it:—His Majesty of Prussia wishing to bestow some Mark of his Esteem on so exalted a Character, sent him his Picture; underneath were these Words: “FROM THE OLDEST GENERAL IN EUROPE, TO THE GREATEST GENERAL IN THE WORLD.”

“His Excellency” who was, of course, Gen. George Washington. This laudatory item was reprinted in several other American newspapers that year. Whether or not the letter was genuine, it could be useful propaganda.

While relating the story of King Frederick II sending Gen. Washington a picture, this anonymous officer didn’t claim to have seen the picture itself. He was just retelling “an Anecdote” that was going around.

As I discussed yesterday, scholars studying the papers of Frederick the Great haven’t found any letter mentioning Washington by name, much less sending him a picture and fan letter. No such image or correspondence survives in Washington’s papers, and he was careful about saving such documents. So, of course, was the Prussian court.

In sum, this is just as much of a myth as Frederick the Great’s praise for Washington’s maneuvers around Princeton, yesterday’s example. This story arose during the war, rather than decades later, which makes it seem more reliable, but it lacks the confirmation we should expect.

The officer’s anecdote resurfaced decades later in the Eastern Argus of Portland, Maine, on 20 June 1825, in a review of a French pamphlet about Lafayette (shown above). That item stated that when Lafayette met Frederick II at “Pottsdam” in “the Autumn of 1782,” the Prussian monarch invited the French marquis to his palace and listened to his stories about Washington. In admiration, the king sent Washington an unidentified “token of remembrance” with the “greatest General” inscription. (This item in the Eastern Argus was said to be a letter to the editor of the Albany Argus, but I couldn’t find an issue of the New York newspaper carrying it.)

Lafayette did indeed visit Potsdam, but in 1785, as he reported to Washington in a letter dated 6 Feb 1786. The marquis stated:

I went to Make my Bow to the King, and notwisdanding what I Had Heard of Him, could not Help Being struck By that dress and Appearance of an old, Broken, dirty Corporal, coverd all over with Spanish snuff, with His Head almost leaning on one shoulder, and fingers quite distorted By the Gout. But what surprised me much more is the fire and some times the softeness of the most Beautifull Eyes I ever saw, which give as charming an expression to His phisiognomy as He Can take a Rough and threatening one at the Head of His troops

Obviously, Lafayette hadn’t met Frederick II before this moment. The two men had no long conversation about Washington. And Frederick definitely didn’t send a token to Washington to arrive by May 1780, as the Providence Gazette letter had claimed.

The story bobbed up again in 1839 when newspapers published an article called “The Character of Washington,” the recreation of a speech delivered at a Daniel Webster dinner party in early 1838 by Sen. Asher Robbins (1761-1845) of Rhode Island. Robbins included the anecdote about Frederick II sending a picture “from the oldest General in Europe, to the greatest General in the world.” He might have read that story as a Yale student in 1780 or later. From the newspapers, the speech and thus the story were published the next year in the Rev. Charles W. Upham’s Life of Washington and Ebenezer Smith Thomas’s Reminiscences. Again, there was still no such picture.

TOMORROW: Frederick the Great’s supposed encomium in a new form.

News from France and “the language of patriotism”

Boston’s Civic Festival to honor the new republic of France on 24 Jan 1793 came at an unusual cultural and political moment.

The latest news from Europe relayed the events of late 1792. Bostonians knew about how the French assembly had deposed Louis XVI and proclaimed a republic. The French army was pushing back the combined forces of several European monarchies and keeping Britain at bay. It looked like the American model of political liberty and equality was spreading in the Old World.

To be sure, the news included a hint of French Revolutionaries turning on themselves. After trying and failing to preserve the king and constitutional monarchy, the Marquis de Lafayette (shown here) had fled to Austrian territory. He was under arrest, viewed by both French republicans and Austrian monarchists with suspicion.

The 26 January Columbian Centinel showed how Bostonians still admired Lafayette and were following his story. One of the toasts offered at the festival was “Justice to M. LAFAYETTE.” Did that mean justice from France or from Austria? Quite possibly both.

For the most part, however, the people of Boston saw plenty to celebrate. Though Louis XVI’s government did support the U.S. of A. in its fight for independence, Americans had grown up thinking of the French monarchy as an example of tyranny. Now the former king appeared to be in alliance with his fellow despots against his people, so it was easy to hail his downfall. Likewise, New Englanders with their Puritan heritage and established Calvinism felt little sympathy for the Catholic church in France. The decorations on Faneuil Hall included “a crown, sceptre, mitre, and chains” being broken under the feet of Liberty.

The festival toasts signaled high hopes for republicanism:

• “The Law—May it always breathe the spirit of liberty and speak the language of patriotism.”
• “Civic virtues to the military, and a military spirit to the citizens.”
• “May the light of philosophy irradiate the caverns of superstition and despotism, and reveal their horrors."
• “In all governments may Liberty be the check, and Equality the balance.”

There were similar but smaller celebrations in other Massachusetts towns.

New Englanders didn’t know that the French government had indicted Louis XVI for treason in December and beheaded him just three days before their festival. Once news of that execution arrived in late March, Americans’ support for the French republic began to fade. Splintering opinion about France was a big part of the development of two semi-organized political parties in the U.S. of A.

In the spring of 1793, some Americans founded what historians later called Democratic-Republican Societies, the basis of what became the Jeffersonian party. On 8 April, Edmond-Charles Genêt arrived in Charleston as the new French minister to America and set about commissioning privateers to attack British ships. President George Washington issued a controversial neutrality proclamation on 22 April.

Those developments changed how Bostonians responded to the French Revolution. In January, as I discussed, Benjamin Russell’s Columbian Centinel not only applauded the Civic Festival but referred to local dignitaries and the editor himself with the title “Citizen.” By June, however, that newspaper was firmly Federalist and using that honorific only for officials from France. In his book Parades and the Politics of the Street, Simon P. Newman wrote that by spring Federalist politicians were conspicuously absent from further celebrations of the French republic.

The Centinel continued to refer to “Liberty Square” instead of Dock Square for several months, but that term faded away. As for “Equality Lane,” the name appeared almost exclusively in advertising for John Bryant’s tavern (no longer called “Liberty Hall”). The last reference that I found came in the 23 Aug 1793 American Apollo, in an advertisement for young acrobats.

After that, “Equality Lane” reverted to being called “Exchange Lane” (no more “Royal”) or “Shrimpton’s Lane” after an early owner of the land. The new name had lasted such a short time that it was never official, never appeared in town directories or on maps. When historians have mentioned “Equality Lane,” it was always in the way William Cobbett used it, as evidence of Boston’s brief infatuation with the French Revolution.

But for a moment in early 1793, Bostonians were calling each other “Citizen” and honoring “Equality” over commercial “Exchange.”

The Origin of “Liberty Stump”

In 1796 the British-born, Philadelphia-based bookseller and publisher William Cobbett issued “A History of the American Jacobins, &c.” as an pseudonymous appendix to his edition of William Playfair’s The History of Jacobinism, Its Crimes, Cruelties and Perfidies.

Playfair (1759-1823) was the inventor of the bar graph, the pie chart, and other forms of presenting data that infuse our information culture. He was also a secret agent for the British government during its wars with Revolutionary France. At the same time Playfair wrote that book about Jacobinism, he was trying to collapse the French economy with counterfeit money. But I digress.

In that appendix on “American Jacobins,” Cobbett as “Peter Porcupine” claimed the French Revolution had inspired a fad for renaming places in America to reflect more radical, less royal values. He stated:

The rage for re-baptism, as the French call it, also spread very far. An alley at Boston, called Royal Exchange Alley, and the stump of a tree, in the same town, which had borne the name of Royal, were re-baptized with a vast deal of formality: the former was called Equality Lane, and the latter Liberty Stump.

Cobbett had arrived in the U.S. of A. in late 1792 and appears to have known Boston only through newspapers. He was mistaken about the origin of the phrase “Liberty Stump,” which Bostonians used for over a decade before the start of the French Revolution.

“Liberty Stump” was no more and no less than the remains of Liberty Tree, so dubbed by Boston Whig leaders in September 1765. Ten years later, in the summer of 1775, Loyalists and British soldiers chopped down that political landmark. That tree was a large and stately elm, but neither it nor its stump had ever been designated “Royal.”

The term “Liberty Stump” appeared in November 1776 in an advertisement in the Continental Journal. Locals must already have been referring to it by that phrase. Before the end of the war many other Bostonians used the same term in their ads, including the chemist Robert Hewes, the printers Ezekiel Russell and Nathaniel Coverly, the hostess Mary Freeman, and the maltster William Patten.

The last advertisement I found dropping the phrase “Liberty Stump” was in the Columbian Centinel in June 1803. Two years later the Boston Commercial Gazette received a letter signed “Liberty Stump,” but the editors declined to publish its contents as “too personal.”

After that, the phrase disappears from the newspaper database I use until 1824, when Lafayette came through town and stopped to view the half-century-old stump, prompting patriotic nostalgia.

Thus, “Liberty Stump” was in no way an example of American “Jacobins” renaming sites to reflect their new politics. Instead, it was a way Revolutionary Bostonians held onto a homegrown political tradition.

Of course, Liberty Tree had been an example of American “Patriots” renaming sites to reflect their new politics. But Cobbett didn’t object to that example of “re-baptism”—only to examples coming from a political movement he disliked.

TOMORROW: What about “Equality Lane”?

Knott on the Washington-Hamilton Relationship, 15 May

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

The event announcement says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amos Lincoln during and after the War

I’ve been discussing the story of nineteen-year-old Amos Lincoln at the Boston Tea Party.

That wasn’t the end of Lincoln’s participation in the American Revolution. He was at the prime age for military service when the war began, and the lore about him says that his master, carpenter Thomas Crafts, Sr., “released him from his obligation as an apprentice, in consequence of his ardent desire to enter the army of his country.”

According to the Annals of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, Lincoln “was in the battle of Bunker-Hill, attached to General [John] Stark’s regiment.” That raises questions since Stark commanded men from New Hampshire. With family in Hingham, Lincoln would most likely have gone to the southern side of the siege lines and served under Gen. John Thomas. It’s possible the young man simply “attached” himself to the most convenient unit, or it’s possible later storytellers did the attaching for him.

The M.C.M.A. Annals also stated that Lincoln “was in the actions at Bennington [16 Aug 1777], Brandywine [11 Sept 1777], and Monmouth [28 June 1778].” That claim makes no sense, and not just because that would put him in two different armies during the same season.

We know from Massachusetts records that Amos Lincoln served mostly close to home. He joined the state artillery regiment commanded by his master’s son, Thomas Crafts, Jr. On 10 May 1776, Col. Crafts submitted a list of officers to the state government, and Amos Lincoln was made a captain-lieutenant. He was promoted to captain in January 1778 and remained at that rank as command of the regiment passed to Lt. Col. Paul Revere in 1779.

Boston tour guide Ben Edwards displays a return of a company of matrosses (artillery privates) that Capt. Lincoln filed with the state on 1 Jan 1781, while he was helping to guard Boston harbor. In lore this became that he was “at one time in charge of the castle,” and that he “commanded the company at Fort Independence which fired the salute at the first celebration of Independence Day in Boston, July 4, 1777.”

In 1873, T. C. Amory told this story about one of Capt. Lincoln’s campaigns:

while reconnoitring on one occasion with Lafayette, the latter suggested the importance of an earthwork at an advantageous point near by, and requested him to have it forthwith constructed. The work was already approaching completion when Colonel [John] Crane,—his immediate superior, who was also of the tea-party, and indeed seriously injured in the affair by the fall of a chest upon him,—rode by, and expressed his surprise and displeasure, inquiring by whose order he had acted. Lincoln replied that it was in obedience simply to the colonel’s master and his own, and soon made his peace by giving the colonel’s name to the fort.

This may refer to the abortive campaign against the British in Rhode Island in late 1778. Crane and Lafayette were there. But I don’t see any mention in Massachusetts records of Capt. Lincoln being assigned to that campaign.

The early profiles of Lincoln state that after the war he participated in putting down the Shays Rebellion. He worked as a master carpenter in the building of the new Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill. He was also a member of the St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons starting in 1777.

Amos Lincoln married Deborah Revere, daughter of his regimental commander, in January 1781. They had nine children, and Deborah died in January 1797. In May 1797, Amos married his sister-in-law Elizabeth Revere, and they had five more children, the first arriving at the end of December. Elizabeth died in April 1805, and in July Amos married the widow Martha Robb, and they had three more children.

Amos’s older brother Levi went into the law and was eventually U.S. Attorney General under Thomas Jefferson, lieutenant governor of Massachusetts under James Sullivan, and briefly acting governor. Levi’s sons Levi, Jr., and Enoch became governors of Massachusetts and Maine, respectively. One of Amos’s grandsons, Frederic W. Lincoln, was mayor of Boston for several years. Amos Lincoln’s obituary said he was “an undeviating disciple of Washington,” thus most likely a Federalist.

An Archive about Commemorating Bunker Hill

The Raab Collection is offering for sale an archive of documents collected by the Bunker-Hill Memorial Association as it built the monument in Charlestown and commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill.

The Raab Collection webpage says the collection was “assembled in the 1870s” and refers to “George Washington Warren’s binding.” Warren (1813-1883) wrote The History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association in 1877, having been a mayor of Charlestown.

Most of the documents appear to be about promoting and planning the Bunker Hill Monument, even including budget estimates. That stone tower was the project of the generation that came after the Revolutionaries, in many cases literally. The leading voice was William Tudor, Jr., son of the first Judge Advocate General of the Continental Army. The engineer was Loammi Baldwin, Jr., son of the officer who oversaw the northern edge of Boston harbor during the siege.

The association also organized the commemoration of 1825. The Marquis de Lafayette came to Boston to help lay the tower’s cornerstone. Daniel Webster delivered an oration, just as he would nearly two decades later when the stone obelisk was finally finished. Both men are represented in the archive. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison couldn’t come, but they sent letters included here.

The volume includes some first-person accounts of the battle, such as a short statement by Robert Steele about his experience as a provincial drummer:

I Robert Steele of Dedham in the County of Norfolk… Listed 17 days before Bunker Hill fight in Col [Ephraim] Doolittle’s Regiment. After Major Mores [Willard Moore] was wounded, I was ordered down the hill to get some run [rum] to dress his wounds with Benjamin Blood. When we got to the shop the man was down cellar to keep out of the way of the shots which were fired from the gun boats that lay in the river. He asked who was there we told him our errand he then said take whatever you want. We delivered some rum and ran back as soon a possible but before we had time to reach spot they were retreating.

I quoted a longer telling from Steele back here. Note that that letter rendered his companion’s name as Benjamin Ballard, not Benjamin Blood; Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors agrees with the former. The picture of Steele’s letter in the archive show he was also asking for money since he’d lost his pension for not being poor enough.

I’d be pleasantly surprised if there are detailed new accounts from veterans in this collection. Warren’s history and the Raab Collection would no doubt highlight those. Rather, it’s about the effort to memorialize the event.

At least one collection of such accounts did come out the semicentennial event as historians swarmed over the old soldiers who attended. I’ll discuss what happened to that archive in this year’s run of postings on the history and memory of Bunker Hill.

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

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

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

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

My Dear Marquis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Assessing “Bradshaw’s Supposititious Epitaph”

As I quoted yesterday, around 1828 Nicholas Philip Trist, husband of one of Thomas Jefferson’s granddaughters, found an old chest in the former President’s attic.

In an appendix to his three-volume biography of Jefferson, Henry S. Randall quoted Trist’s description of taking a manuscript from that chest:

The epitaph on [John] Bradshaw, written on a narrow slip of thin paper, was a fine specimen. This has gone to France, through Gen. La Fayette, for M. De Lyon, a young friend of his who accompanied him on his triumphal visit to our country, and was with him at Monticello. De Lyon (who afterwards did his part in the “three days”) having expressed an earnest desire to possess a piece of Mr. J.’s MS., I had promised to make his wish known at some suitable moment. But, having postponed doing so until too late, and being struck with the appropriateness of this epitaph as a present for a pupil of La Fayette (and, through him, to the mind of “Young France”), I asked and obtained Mr. [Thomas Jefferson] Randolph’s consent to its receiving that destination.

’Tis evident, that the motto which we find on one of Mr. J.’s seals was taken from this epitaph, which, as we see from the note appended thereto, was supposed to be one of Dr. [Benjamin] Franklin’s spirit-stirring inspirations.

Because a note on the same paper in Jefferson’s handwriting stated:

From many circumstances, there is reason to believe there does not exist any such inscription as the above [in Jamaica], and that it was written by Dr. Franklin, in whose hands it was first seen.

Randall therefore titled his appendix “Bradshaw’s Supposititious Epitaph.”

(Speaking of suppositions, I can’t find any companion of Lafayette named “De Lyon.” Eyewitness accounts of the marquis’s trip to Monticello mention his son George Washington de Lafayette and his secretary, Auguste Levasseur. The latter was wounded during France’s 1830 revolution, sometimes called “the three glorious days,” so probably Trist just remembered that man’s name wrong.)

In the paper trail for “Bradshaw’s Epitaph,” most or all of the original documents have disappeared. We don’t have Jefferson’s copy of the epitaph, including the note at the bottom which Trist believed Jefferson had written himself. We have only Trist’s memo about the document. But let’s assume he produced an accurate transcription.

According to Trist, he found Jefferson’s copy of “Bradshaw’s Epitaph” in a box of papers from the late 1770s that had been stowed away and forgotten. Jefferson never added the letters in that box to his carefully filed correspondence. Thus, there’s no indication that he ever opened the box after 1777, the date of the last letter inside. So Jefferson must have expressed his suspicion that Franklin wrote “Bradshaw’s Epitaph” around that time.

But we know that Jefferson repeated the statement “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God” later in life. He had it engraved on an official Virginia medal in 1780. He used it as a motto on his personal seal after 1790. In 1823 he referred to the line in writing as “the motto of one, I believe, of the regicides of Charles I”—not as a stirring remark that Franklin came up with early in the Revolutionary War.

One possible explanation is that Jefferson concluded that Franklin had indeed made up the story of Bradshaw’s monument and composed the epitaph, but decided that he liked its last line so much that he’d ignore that hoaxing.

Jefferson is famous for having compartmentalized parts of his life and his thinking. Nevertheless, I don’t think he of all people would have been comfortable presenting that motto as historical when he knew it wasn’t. Adopting a stirring anti-tyrannical saying because it sounds good is one thing; telling a correspondent that it was a regicide’s motto is another. Why not just credit wise Dr. Franklin with composing the motto?

I therefore think Jefferson changed his mind about the epitaph between when he wrote about his doubt in the late 1770s and later. Maybe he talked to other Patriots and found they didn’t share his skepticism. Maybe he gained new information, perhaps in speaking with Franklin himself. He may not have been correct, but whatever happened, Jefferson’s early suspicions about the epitaph were washed away—until Henry S. Randall published that long-hidden note in 1858.

TOMORROW: More reasons to doubt.

“Monumental Narratives” Symposium at Wellesley, 10 Mar.

On Saturday, 10 March, Wellesley College will host this year’s Wellesley-Deerfield symposium, “Monumental Narratives: Revisiting New England’s Public Memorials.”

The event description says:

As southern Civil War memorials have become a flashpoint for politics and protest, New England's public monuments are also due for critical examination. The Wellesley-Deerfield symposium will explore the public commemorations of people, places, and events in New England’s past. Illustrated presentations by scholars from across the country will examine how these public acts of memory tell a particular story of New England and how, whether explicitly or implicitly, they conceal, devalue, or erase other histories. Ultimately, presenters will ask: how can we recast these monumental narratives without simultaneously sweeping aside uncomfortable histories of colonialism and discrimination?

The full schedule of panels can be downloaded here (P.D.F. link). Among the presentations that touch on the Revolutionary era are:

• Suzanne Flynt, Independent Scholar, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield, and Alice Nash, Associate Professor of History, U. Mass. Amherst: “Covering Up History in Deerfield”
• Kevin Murphy, Professor and Chair of Art History, Vanderbilt University: “Memorializing the Revolution Fifty Years Later: The Contribution of Gen. Lafayette”
• Nancy Siegel, Professor of Art History, Towson University: “The Burning Obelisk: Paul Revere’s Memory of the Stamp Act Monument”
• Christine DeLucia, Assistant Professor of History, Mount Holyoke College: “Remembering, Rewriting, and Resisting in the Native Northeast: New Approaches to Indigenous Placemaking, Countermemorials, and Histories of Violence”
• Siobhan M. Hart, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Skidmore College: “Remembering Indians, Forgetting Whiteness”
• Kate Melchior, Student Program Coordinator, Massachusetts Historical Society: “Stumbling over Slavery: How a Holocaust Memorial Tradition Is Now Telling the Stories of Enslaved New England Residents”

This event is scheduled to run from 9:00 A.M. to about 4:00 P.M. in Collins Cinema. It is free and open to the public, but the organizers ask that all attendees register in advance through this page.

The Original “Cradle of Liberty”

In an attempt to make the Super Bowl more appealing to the general public, the presidents of the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston and the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia have laid a wager on the outcome.

If the Patriots lose, M.H.S. president Catherine Allgor has promised to go to Philadelphia and give a talk about how that city is the true “cradle of liberty.” If the Eagles lose, M.O.A.R. president Michael C. Quinn will come to Boston and explain how it really deserves that sobriquet.

Football aside, which city has been labeled the “cradle of liberty” the longest is a historical question. When was the phrase coined and applied to either city or a site within either city? As far as Google Books cares, the signs point decisively toward Boston.

In their 1837 annual report, the Board of Managers of the New-England Anti-Slavery Society applied the label to a building:

Prior to the observance of the 22d, it was deemed important by the friends of free discussion and the liberty of the press, that, if practicable, a spontaneous public meeting of the citizens of Boston should be held, without distinction of sect or party, and without any reference to the merits of the anti-slavery controversy, to express their alarm and horror in view of the prostration of civil liberty, and the murder of a christian minister for daring to maintain his inalienable and constitutional rights. Such an example, it was thought, would produce a salutary effect upon public sentiment abroad, and, if set in a right spirit, would serve, in some degree, to atone for the disgraceful proslavery riot that occurred in Boston, October 21st, 1835. Faneuil Hall, “the old Cradle of Liberty,” was deemed the most suitable building in which to hold the meeting.

The phrase “the old cradle of liberty” appears in several publications from the 1840s, referring to either Boston in general or Fanueil Hall in particular. The word “old” and the quotation marks suggest that it had become a bit cliché even then.

So let’s go further back. Lafayette, visiting Boston in 1824, was feted at the Exchange Coffee House. He offered this toast:

The City of Boston, the cradle of liberty.—May Faneuil Hall ever stand a monument to teach the world, that resistance to oppression is a duty, and will, under true republican institutions, become a blessing.

And back further. Rep. Josiah Quincy, speaking in Congress in November 1808 against President Thomas Jefferson’s embargo, provided this unfortunately extended metaphor:

But, it has been asked, in debate, “will not Massachusetts, the cradle of liberty, submit to such privations?” An embargo liberty was never cradled in Massachusetts. Our liberty was not so much a mountain as a sea nymph. She was free as air. She could swim, or she could run. The ocean was her cradle. Our fathers met her as she came, like the goddess of beauty, from the waves. They caught her as she was sporting on the beach. They courted her while she was spreading her nets upon the rocks. But an embargo liberty—a hand-cuffed liberty—a liberty in fetters, a liberty traversing between the four sides of a prison and beating her head against the walls, is none of our offspring. We abjure the monster. Its parentage is all inland.

So that seems to clinch it: two figures who actually lived through the American Revolution—one as a young general and the other as a little boy, son of a dead Patriot—said that either “Boston” and “Massachusetts” was the cradle of liberty. I didn’t find the phrase applied to Philadelphia in that period at all.

But not so fast! Jacques Necker (1732-1804, shown above) was a Swiss banker who became finance minister of France during the American War for Independence and then again in 1789-90. In 1792 his book An Essay on the True Principles of Executive Power in Great States was translated and published in London. In it he exhorted the English nation to maintain its support for constitutionalism:

You, who are the ardent propagators of novelties not yet proved, respect this cradle of liberty; respect the country in which freedom took birth, the country destined perhaps to remain its sole asylum, if ever your own exaggerations should drive it from among you. And you, generous nation, you, our first instructors in the knowledge and love of liberty, continue long to preserve the good of which you are in possession.

So the earliest use of the phrase “cradle of liberty” that I found applied it to…England.