Chatting with Some Revolutionary Figures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gabrielson on 18th-Century Media Literacy in Newton, 16 Jan.

On Thursday, 16 January, Historic Newton and the Newton Free Library will present Michele Gabrielson speaking on “18th-Century Media Literacy and Bias.”

The event description says:

Media and information literacy are essential 21st-century skills in order to be an informed citizen. These are also skills that, when applied in a historical context, help us become better historians. In this discussion, we will analyze perspective, language and bias in 18th-century newspapers with a critical lens to learn how news was consumed in Colonial America.

Michele Gabrielson is a local history teacher and historic interpreter of the 18th century. The Massachusetts History Alliance gave her its 2024 Rising Star Award for Public History her programming titled “The Revolutionary Classroom,” and the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati just honored her with its 2025 Frederick Graham Award for Excellence in Teaching.

When she is not teaching in the classroom, Gabrielson offers talks, tours, and demonstrations at historic sites around Boston. She specializes in interpreting the stories of women printers, Loyalist refugees, and chocolate makers. Most recently, Gabrielson has started building a detailed first-person impression of playwright, poet, and historian Mercy Warren.

Gabrielson is a member of the Authenticity Standards Committee for Minute Man National Historic Park and the coordinator of Battle Road Guides for the annual reenactment of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside her at reenactments of the Boston Tea Party and Boston Massacre as well as last September’s “Powder Alarm” commemoration.

This free event is scheduled to start at 7:00 P.M. in the library’s Druker Auditorium.

A New Edition of The Power of Sympathy

As a self-proclaimed propagator of unabashed gossip from Revolutionary New England, I have to note the recent publication of a new edition of The Power of Sympathy.

William Hill Brown published this novel pseudonymously in 1789. Most readers quickly recognized that it was based on a recent sex scandal in the top echelon of Boston society: rising attorney Perez Morton had impregnated his wife Susan’s sister, Fanny Apthorp.

In 1787 that affair led to a baby and parental rejection. In 1788 came a challenge to a duel from a Royal Navy officer and months of newspaper innuendo. Finally, Fanny committed suicide. Brown’s novel presented her character sympathetically—but was the book another layer of scandal?

This edition has been assembled by Prof. Jennifer Harris at the University of Waterloo and Prof. Bryan Waterman at New York University. It includes not only Brown’s The Power of Sympathy but also his play Occurrences of the Times, exploring some of the same incident as farce, and another closet drama, Sans Souci, alias, Free and Easy, digging into the sensitive spots of upper-class Boston.

Appendices reprint Fanny Apthorp’s final letters, which circulated at the time, and her sister Sarah Wentworth Morton’s poems; newspaper coverage of the case; newspaper essays on the place of women in the new republic; and letters from Mercy Warren and Abigail Adams about proper behavior for young republican gentlemen.

(Early on, people speculated that Sarah Wentworth Morton herself had written The Power of Sympathy, and that Mercy Warren had written the San Souci play. Warren was exasperated by that suggestion, Morton probably humiliated. I find it significant that both women eventually discarded their early anonymity and published under their own names, establishing how they wanted to be remembered as writers.)

The publisher of this new edition, Broadview Press, is based in Ontario. The book appears to have been published in Canada last month, but is scheduled to officially appear in the U.S. of A. this summer.

Mercy Warren in History

Since I’ve been writing about the Warrens of Plymouth in 1775, it seems appropriate to mention that there’s a push to increase Mercy Warren’s visibility as the Sestercentennial proceeds.

Last month Nancy Rubin Stuart published this profile of Mercy Warren as “America’s First Female Historian” in the Saturday Evening Post.

Michele Gabrielson portrayed Warren in two episodes of the Calling History podcasts, which records first-person interpretations of historical figures.

And those folks and others launched a nonprofit organization called Celebrate Mercy Otis Warren, which can be found on Facebook.

One of that group’s goals is to have a bust of Warren installed in the Massachusetts State House, perhaps in the one empty spot in the senate chamber.

A bill promoting that plan has been moving through the legislature. As of today, the proposed language is:

The superintendent of state office buildings shall, subject to the approval of the State House Art Commission as to size and content, install and maintain in a conspicuous place of the Art Commission’s choosing in the State House, a memorial honoring Mercy Otis Warren, of Barnstable, Massachusetts, a leading author, playwright, satirist, and patriot in colonial Massachusetts, whose essays contributed to the creation of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, and whose book, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution became this country's first published history of the American Revolution. Said memorial shall be the gift of Cape Cod artist David Lewis who will bear all costs associated with the creation, transportation, and installation of the artwork.

Lewis has already created a full-size statue of Warren shown above. It towers in Barnstable, the town where she was born.

Now I realize part of the Massachusetts legislature’s job is to boost the state’s products, but there were histories of the American Revolution published before Warren’s in 1805. At the time people pointed to David Ramsay’s History of the American Revolution from 1789. Michael Hattem’s superb chronology of the historiography likewise pairs Ramsay and Warren.

(A year even before Ramsay came the Rev. William Gordon’s History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment, of the Independence of the United States of America. I suppose it doesn’t get counted as “this country’s first” because it was printed in Britain, and in some part written there. However, Gordon clearly composed a lot of material while living in Roxbury. Like Mercy Warren, he knew most of the local players.)

Of course, by coming later Warren’s book could cover the establishment of the federal government. Her final chapter describes the Shays’ Rebellion, the Constitutional Convention, and George Washington’s terms as President, with particular attention to the Jay Treaty. And then some remarks on John Adams that caused a deep rift between him and the Warrens.

I think that although Warren wrote history (just as she had earlier written poetry and closet dramas), her calling and strength were as an opinion writer. She didn’t disguise her feelings about Adams or the Federalist program overall. Writing in a Jeffersonian era, however, Warren was optimistic:

The wisdom and justice of the American governments, and the virtue of the inhabitants, may, if they are not deficient in the improvement of their own advantages, render the United States of America an enviable example to all the world of peace, liberty, righteousness, and truth.

“The Inhabitants of Boston are on the move”

Among the items in the London newspapers that arrived in Marblehead in the first week of April 1775 was this:

Yesterday a messenger was sent to Falmouth, with dispatches for General [Thomas] Gage at Boston, to be forwarded by a packet boat detained there for that purpose.

It didn’t take long for the Massachusetts Patriots to figure out that if this report had gone into the newspapers, and those newspapers had traveled to New England, then those dispatches could have made it to New England, too. And in that case, the royal governor might already be preparing to act on them.

Decades later, Mercy Warren wrote of the royal authorities in Massachusetts: “from their deportment, there was the highest reason to expect they would extend their researches, and endeavour to seize and secure, as they termed them, the factious leaders of rebellion.”

I can’t actually find those italicized words in the writings of royal officials, and “deportment” is a lousy basis for such a conclusion. But the Patriots may have had a more solid basis for expecting arrests, possibly from sympathetic people in Britain.

On behalf of the imperial government, the Earl of Dartmouth had written to Gage: “the first & essential step to be taken towards re-establishing Government, would be to arrest and imprison the principal actors & abettors in the Provincial Congress.” That letter didn’t arrive in Massachusetts until 14 April, but it looks like Patriots anticipated it after those Marblehead arrivals.

Most of the rest of the letter from James Warren to his wife Mercy that I’ve been discussing is about that worry—that Gage’s government would start arresting resistance leaders. On 6 April, James wrote from Concord:

The Inhabitants of Boston begin to move. The Selectmen and Committee of Correspondence are to be with us, I mean our Committee, this day. The Snow Storm yesterday and Business prevented them then. From this Conference some vigorous resolutions may grow. . . .

I am with regards to all Friends and the greatest Expressions of Love and regard to you, your very affect. Husband, JAS. WARREN

Love to my Boys. I feel disposed to add to this long letter but neither time nor place will permit it.

Then on 7 April James went back to his letter with more information and a warning:

I am up this morning to add. Mr. [Isaac] Lothrop [another Plymouth delegate] is the bearer of this and can give you an Acct. of us.

The Inhabitants of Boston are on the move. [John] H[ancock] and [Samuel] A[dams] go no more into that Garrison, the female Connections of the first [Lydia Hancock and Dorothy Quincy] come out early this morning and measures are taken relative to those of the last [Elizabeth Adams, who didn’t make it out before the siege]. The moving of the Inhabitants of Boston if effected will be one grand Move. I hope one thing will follow another till America shall appear Grand to all the world.

I begin to think of the Trunks which may be ready against I come home, we perhaps may be forced to move: if we are let us strive to submit to the dispensations of Providence with Christian resignation and phylosophick Dignity.

God has given you great abilities; you have improved them in great Acquirements. You are possessd of eminent Virtues and distinguished Piety. For all these I esteem I love you in a degree that I can't express. They are all now to be called into action for the good of Mankind, for the good of your friends, for the promotion of Virtue and Patriotism. Don’t let the fluttering of your Heart interrupt your Health or disturb your repose. Believe me I am continually Anxious about you. Ride when the weather is good and don’t work or read too much at other times. I must bid you adieu. God Almighty bless you. No letter yet. What can it mean? Is she not well? She can't forget me or have any Objections to writing.

James Warren appears to have gone home to Plymouth a few days later and then immediately gone on to Rhode Island to try to convince that elected government to help prepare a New England army. He was in that colony when word came of shooting at Lexington.

“Concord, where a provincial magazine was kept”

Now we come to the part of James Warren’s 6 Apr 1775 letter to his wife Mercy that I like to quote in talks.

James was in Concord for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and he wrote frankly about military preparations:

All things wear a warlike appearance here. This Town is full of Cannon, ammunition, stores, etc., and the Army long for them and they want nothing but strength to Induce an attempt on them. The people are ready and determine to defend this Country Inch by Inch.

Earlier in the letter James alluded to news from London that the imperial government would insist on making Massachusetts obey Parliament’s laws. He told Mercy: “you well know my Sentiments of the Force of both Countrys.” That appears to refer to the strength of Britain and Massachusetts—or perhaps New England or even America. Whatever his “country” was, James expressed confidence that his side would be strong enough to prevail.

All that adds up to a very different picture from how later American historians liked to portray the Patriot cause: as poorly equipped and unprepared for war. For example, in publishing the records of the provincial congress, which are full of references to artillery and other weapons, William Lincoln wrote: “It is not improbable, that in the confusion occasioned by the sudden march of the British troops to Concord, the documents exhibiting the weakness of the province in martial stores, as well as the strength of its patriotism, were destroyed.” The provincials had to be the underdogs in the fight.

I’m not saying James Warren’s confidence was more realistic than those later assessments. He and his colleagues did overestimate their military preparations—how ready for use those cannon were, how much gunpowder was on hand, and so on. But knowing that Warren saw lots of weaponry around him and felt his faction’s force was the stronger helps us to understand his political decisions.

James’s remark about Concord being full of cannon also connects to a passage that Mercy Warren wrote decades later in his history of the Revolution:

When the gentlemen left congress for the purpose of combining and organizing an army in the eastern states, a short adjournment was made. Before they separated they selected a standing committee to reside at Concord, where a provincial magazine was kept, and vested them with power to summon congress to meet again at a moment’s warning, if any extraordinary emergence should arise.

The records of the provincial congress and its committee of safety (the same ones published by William Lincoln) do mention “the gentlemen [who] left congress for the purpose of combining and organizing an army in the eastern states.” The Massachusetts Patriots designated envoys to Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island—the last group including James Warren.

But those records don’t mention this “standing committee to reside at Concord.” I’d like to know who they were, what they did when the British column arrived. I’m keeping my eyes open for signs.

TOMORROW: Run away!

“We shall have many chearful rides together yet”

As I quoted yesterday, in his 6 Apr 1775 letter to his wife Mercy, James Warren started by telling her that the latest news from London made a political solution to Massachusetts’s conflict with the Crown less likely.

And that had kept the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in Concord from adjourning as he’d hoped.

Warren went on:

However my Spirits are by no means depressd, you well know my Sentiments of the Force of both Countrys, you know my opinion of the Justness of our Cause, you know my Confidence in a Righteous Providence. I seem to want nothing to keep up my Spirits and to Inspire me with a proper resolution to Act my part well in this difficult time but seeing you in Spirits, and knowing that they flow from the heart.

How shall I support myself if you suffer these Misfortunes to prey on your tender frame and Add to my difficulties an affliction too great to bear of itself. The Vertuous should be happy under all Circumstances. This state of things will last but a little while. I believe we shall have many chearful rides together yet.

We proposed last week a short adjournment and I had in a manner Engaged a Chamber here for my Beloved and pleased myself with the health and pleasure the Journey was to give her; but I believe it must be postponed till some Event takes place and changes the face of things.

There was deep affection between the Warrens, just as there was between their friends, John and Abigail Adams. At this time James was forty-eight years old, Mercy forty-six. They had five children, all boys; the youngest was George, who turned nine that year. Looks like James thought that was old enough for Mercy to come to Concord for some private time with him while the congress wasn’t in session.

At the end of his 6 April letter, James returned to that personal message for Mercy:

But to dismiss publick matters, let me ask how you do and how do my little Boys, especially my little Henry [second youngest, born in 1764], who was Complaining. I long to see you. I long to sit with you under our Vines etc and have none to make us afraid. Do you know that I have not heard from you since I left you, and that is a long while. It seems a month at least. I can't believe it less. I intend to fly Home I mean as soon as Prudence Duty and Honour will permitt.

The line about “Vines” was another Biblical allusion (Micah 4:4; also 1 Kings 4:25; Zechariah 3:10). The Warrens knew that phrase well enough that James could cut it off with an “etc.”

That verse was also a favorite of George Washington, another gentleman planter. And through him it got into the lyrics of Hamilton.

TOMORROW: Concord’s cannon.

James Warren: “News we have”

On 6 Apr 1775, James Warren was in Concord, representing Plymouth in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress.

He started writing home to his wife, Mercy, that day. That letter contains a passage I’ve quoted many times in my Road to Concord talks, but there’s a lot more going on, too.

So over the next few days I’ll analyze of Warren’s whole letter.

My Dear Mercy,—

Four days ago I had full Confidence that I should have had the pleasure of being with you this day, we were then near closeing the Session. Last Saturday we came near to an Adjournment, were almost equally divided on that question, the principle argument that seemd to preponderate, and turn in favour of sitting into this week was the prospect of News and News we have.

Last week things wore rather a favourable aspect, but alas how uncertain are our prospects. Sunday Evening brought us accounts of a Vessel at Marblehead from Falmouth, and the English Papers etc by her. I have no need to recite perticulars. you will have the whole in the Papers, and wont wonder at my forgoeing the pleasure of being with you. I dare say you would not desire to see me till I could tell you that I had done all in my power to secure and defend us and our Country.

We are no longer at a loss what is Intended us by our dear Mother. We have Ask’d for Bread and she gives us a Stone, and a serpent for a Fish.

That last line is an allusion to Matthew 7:9–11.

The British news that Warren alluded was printed in the Essex Journal of Newburyport before spreading to other papers. “Capts. Barker and Andrews” had sailed from England on 17 February, bringing the latest.

The Essex Journal reprinted a long report on debate in Parliament on 5 April and an even longer one on 12 April. Those two articles don’t agree in all the details, but they’re clear on the basic developments.

For years the Massachusetts Whigs had hoped that their pleas, protests, and persistence would prompt a change in British government policy. Instead, the Lords refused to hear the latest petitions from America.

The Earl of Chatham, formerly William Pitt and still America’s favorite, moved that Parliament repeal the Coercive Acts and remove troops from Boston. Other peers argued for “compelling the Americans to the immediate obedience of the legislature of the mother country.” Ultimately the House of Lords rejected all of Chatham’s proposals by margins like 77 to 18.

Furthermore, on 9 February both houses of Parliament had signed off on an address to the king that declared in part:

…we find that a part of your majesty’s subjects in the province of Massachusetts Bay have proceeded so far to resist the authority of the supreme legislature; that a rebellion at this time actually exists within the said province. . . .

we consider it as our indispensible duty, humbly to beseech your majesty that you will take the most effectual measures to enforce due obedience to the laws and authority of the supreme legislature; and we assure your majesty that it is our fixed resolution, at the hazard of our lives and properties, to stand by your majesty against all rebellious attempts…

The king’s official response was to promise “the most speedy and effectual measure for enforcing due obedience to the laws, and the authority of the supreme legislature.”

And that was just the official record. The London newspapers also threw in comments like “Lord N—h is determined that the Americans shall wear chains.”

TOMORROW: Keeping up spirits, keeping up defenses.

New Collection from the Journal of the American Revolution

Next month Westholme Publishing will issue The Journal of the American Revolution Annual Volume 2024, edited ably once again by Don N. Hagist.

This webpage about the book says it will contain two articles by me.

In fact, the book will have only one article from me. That’s because I combined my two web articles about the confounding Samuel Dyer into one complete study.

This volume offers many other articles about Revolutionary New England, including:

• Remember Baker: A Green Mountain Boy’s Controversial Death and Its Consequences by Mark R. Anderson
• John Hancock’s Politics and Personality in Ten Quotes by Brooke Barbier
• Mercy Otis Warren: Revolutionary Propagandist by Jonathan House
• Captain James Morris of the Connecticut Light Infantry by Chip Langston
• Smallpox Threatens an American Privateer at Sea by Christian McBurney
• John Adams and Nathanael Greene Debate the Role of the Military by Curtis F. Morgan, Jr.
• The Perfidious Benjamin Church and Paul Revere by Louis Arthur Norton
• The Highs and Lows of Ethan Allen’s Reputation as Reported by Revolutionary-Era Newspapers by Gene Procknow
• Captain Luke Day: A Forgotten Leader of “Shays’s Rebellion” by Scott M. Smith
• Engaging the Glasgow by Eric Sterner

(My apologies to the authors of any other relevant articles I missed.)

And there are of course lots of articles about the American Revolution in, you know, other places.

“Do what you can to forward Mr. Swift to me”

Contemporaneous sources about Samuel Swift’s last months are thin.

Swift turned sixty years old on 9 June 1775. His first wife, the former Eliphal Tyley or Tilley (1713–1757), had borne three daughters in the 1740s.

One of those daughters, Sarah, had gone to live with her husband Amos Putnam in Sutton. The other two, Ann and Eliphal, were still unmarried in 1770, but I can’t trace them further.

In October 1757 Swift had married for a second time, to Ann Foster (1729–1788). That couple had six children between 1758 and 1773, and those children were with their parents in Boston when the war began.

The Swifts were still in the besieged town two months later, during the Battle of Bunker Hill. Abigail Adams wrote to her husband on 25 June 1775:

As to Boston, there are many persons yet there who would be glad to get out if they could. Mr. [Thomas] Boylstone and Mr. [John] Gill the printer with his family are held upon the black list tis said. Tis certain they watch them so narrowly that they cannot escape, nor your Brother Swift and family.

Around that time, however, Ann Swift managed to get a pass for herself and her children from a British army officer named Handfield—probably Capt. William Handfield of the 94th Regiment, who was attached to the quartermaster’s department in June.

By the end of that month, Ann Swift and her family were in Springfield. She wrote in her diary, as printed in The Memoirs of Gen. Joseph Gardner Swift:

Here I am in the woods, Boston being so surrounded by armies that we could not enjoy our home: no school for the children, and the town forsaken by the ministers—the pillars of the land.

In the following weeks she wrote to that army officer for another favor:

Capt. Handfield, S[i]r,

Your kindness in undertaking to get a pass for me emboldens me to ask the like favor for my dear husband whom I hear is in a very weak state of health. The anxiety of my mind is great about him. A word from you would have more weight than all the arguments that he could make use of.

Could I come to him, this favor I would not ask. O, S[i]r I trust in your goodness that you will do what you can to forward Mr. Swift to me and in doing so you will greatly oblige
Your distressed friend,
ANN SWIFT.

Should be glad if he would bring out two trunks which there is clothing in that I want very much for myself and children.

Evidently the royal authorities didn’t provide a second pass. Samuel Swift remained inside Boston. Margaret Draper’s Boston News-Letter reported that he died on 30 August.

On 4 September, Mercy Warren reported to John Adams in a bald postscript: “Swift of Boston is Really Dead.”

Ann Swift put in her diary this note about that 30 August date:

Departed this life, in the 61st year of his age, my dear husband, Samuel Swift. He died in Boston, or in other words, murdered there. He was not allowed to come to see me and live with his wife and children in the country. There he gave up the ghost—his heart was broken; the cruel treatment he met with in being a friend to his country was more than he could bear, with six fatherless children (in the woods) and all my substance in Boston.

Thus began the family tradition of blaming Gen. Thomas Gage for Swift’s death—not through violence but by not letting him leave Boston when ill to rejoin his family.

Swift’s body was placed in a tomb belonging to his first wife’s family in the burying-ground beside King’s Chapel, shown above.

TOMORROW: The family legend.

“A man of weak capacity, and little political knowledge”

I hadn’t expected to write a week of postings about the Gaspee affair, even with its sestercentennial coming up next month. But I got intrigued.

One early discussion of the case I came across while looking for sources was in Mercy Warren’s 1805 History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution.

In a section on Rhode Island in 1775, Warren wrote:

It is the nature of man, when he despairs of legal reparation for injuries received, to seek satisfaction by avenging his own wrongs. Thus, some time before this period, a number of men in disguise, had riotously assembled, and set fire to a sloop of war in the harbour. When they had thus discovered their resentment by this illegal proceeding, they dispersed without farther violence.

For this imputed crime the whole colony had been deemed guilty, and interdicted as accessary. A court of inquiry was appointed by his majesty, vested with the power of seizing any person on suspicion, confining him on board a king’s ship, and sending him to England for trial. But some of the gentlemen named for this inquisitorial business, had not the temerity to execute it in the latitude designed; and after sitting a few days, examining a few persons, and threatening many, they adjourned to a distant day.

The extraordinary precedent of erecting such a court among them was not forgotten; but there was a considerable party in Newport, strongly attached to the royal cause. These, headed by their governor, Mr. Wanton, a man of weak capacity, and little political knowledge, endeavoured to impede all measures of opposition, and to prevent even a discussion on the propriety of raising a defensive army.

You’d never know it from the way Warren wrote of events, but Gov. Joseph Wanton had been the primary brake on the Gaspee “court of inquiry” that she decried. He helped to undercut witnesses found by the Royal Navy. He let the Earl of Dartmouth’s confidential instructions out. As chair of that royal commission, he had the most sway over how it dissolved without reaching any significant conclusions.

Two years later, when word of the Battle of Lexington and Concord arrived in Rhode Island, Gov. Wanton indeed refused to approve sending militia regiments north to face the king’s troops. So did deputy governor Darius Sessions, who back in 1772 had helped to alert Samuel Adams and other out-of-colony politicians about the threat of the Gaspee inquiry. For those men, hindering a royal commission was fine; taking up arms against the royal military went too far.

The Rhode Island assembly replaced both Wanton and Sessions by the fall. They never became outright Loyalists, simply retiring from politics. But for Mercy Warren, Wanton’s behavior in 1775 meant he deserved no credit for what he’d done in 1772–73.

The 2022 George Washington Prize Finalists

Last week the Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Mount Vernon announced the finalists of the 2022 George Washington Prize.

This prize was created to honor the “best works on the nation’s founding era, especially those that have the potential to advance broad public understanding of American history.” It comes with a significant cash award for the author.

In alphabetical order, this year’s five honored authors are:

• Max M. Edling, Perfecting the Union: National and State Authority in the U.S. Constitution
• Julie Flavell, The Howe Dynasty: The Untold Story of a Military Family and the Women Behind Britain’s Wars for America
• Jeffrey H. Hacker, Minds and Hearts: The Story of James Otis, Jr. and Mercy Otis Warren
• Bruce A. Ragsdale, Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery
• David O. Stewart, George Washington: The Political Rise of America’s Founding Father

As usual, the selection includes books about Washington himself but also books that examine the Revolutionary era more broadly.

Mount Vernon would be happy to sell copies of these five books.

“Poetry and the Constitution” panel, 8 Dec.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, 8 December, the National Constitution Center will host an online panel discussion about “Poetry and the Constitution.”

That may seem like an incongruous pairing of topics. As New York governor Mario often remarked, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” But here’s the event description:

How have poets and poetry—from John Milton to Mercy Otis Warren and Phillis Wheatley—influenced the Constitution and America’s core democratic principles?

Join Vincent Carretta, editor of the Penguin Classics editions of the Complete Writings of Phillis Wheatley and professor emeritus of English at the University of Maryland; Eileen M. Hunt, professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame; and Eric Slauter, associate professor and director of the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture at the University of Chicago, for a discussion exploring the ways poetry has intersected with the Constitution and constitutional ideas throughout American history.

Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.

Prof. Hunt tweeted that she plans to “talk about Mercy Otis Warren’s all-too-prescient critique of the potential tyranny of the Supreme Court in her 1788 ‘Observations on the New Constitution’.” That pamphlet was, of course, not poetry, but Warren did write verse on political topics, such as the 1778 ode I discussed back here.

Prof. Slauter is the author of The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution. It includes a detailed discussion of how American Revolutionaries responded to Alexander Pope’s 1733 couplet “For Forms of Government let Fools contest; / Whate’er is best administer’d is best.”

This discussion will start at noon and last for an hour. It is free for people registering here.

“I saw Columbia’s weeping Genius”

On 5 Oct 1778, Benjamin Edes printed a long poem on the front page of his Boston Gazette newspaper. It started:

“O TEMPORA! O MORES!”

BENEATH the lofty Pine, that shades the plain,
Where the blue Mount o’erlooks the Western Main,
I saw Columbia’s weeping Genius stand,
A black’ned Scroll hung waveing in her Hand,

The pensive Fair in broken Accents said,
Shall Freedom’s Cause, by Vice be thus betray’d;
Behold the Schedule that unfolds the Crimes
And Marks the Manners of their venal Times;
She sigh’d and wept, the Folly of the Age,
The selfish Passions and the mad’ning Rage,
For Pleasure’s soft debilitating Charms,
Running full Riot in cold Av’rice Arms.
Who grasps the Dregs of base oppressive gains,
While Luxury in high Profusion reigns.
Our Country bleeds—and bleeds at every Pore,
Yet Gold’s the Deity whom all adore,
Except a few, whose Probity of Soul
No Bribe could purchase, nor no Fears controul.
A chosen few, who dar’d to stem the Tide
Of British Vengeance in the Pomp of Pride,
When George’s Fleets with every Sail unfurl’d,
And by his Hand the reeking Dagger hurl’d,
The Furies guide, and Albia’s Offspring feel
The wounded Bosom, from the sharp’ned steel,
The purple Tide the Field and Village stain,
And the warm fluid rushes from each Vein,
Yet back recoils the Tyrant’s bloody Hilt,
And slaughter’d Millions mark the Monster’s Guilt,
But midst the Carnage the weak Monarch made,
Stern bending down his awful Grandsire’s shade,
Bespoke the Pupil of the Scottish Thane;
Why sully’d thus the Glories of my Reign?
The Western World oft for my House has bled,
And Brunswick’s Friends lie mingled with the Dead.

Years later, in 1790, Mercy Warren included a revision of that poem in her collection Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous, thus claiming it as her work. You can read the book’s text here.

The newspaper didn’t give that poem a title. In the book, it was called “The Genius of America weeping the absurd follies of the Day.” Curiously, it also carried the date of “October 10, 1778,” five days after it first saw print. Perhaps that was when Warren finished her revisions.

This poem is germane to the question of whether Warren also wrote the lines about Plymouth’s “prophetic egg” that Edes published in January 1777, as I discussed yesterday. The two sets of verses share some qualities:

• Debut on the front page of Edes’s Boston Gazette.
• Strongly supportive of the Patriot cause and critical of Loyalists.
• Reference to “the Genius of America,” also known as “Columbia’s weeping Genius.”

Do those similarities that mean they came from the same pen?

In fact, there’s a significant difference in how the two poems discuss that “Genius of America.” The prologue to the egg poem referred to “a Hermit resembling the Genius of America, who had resided in a certain Forest from the first Settlement of the Country.” That hermit was male.

In contrast, Warren’s 1778 lines leave no doubt that the Genius was female, and more a supernatural symbol than an inspired hermit. (The first version also described a female “Albia,” but that became “Albion” later. I don’t know if anyone’s done a close reading of the two publications.)

There are also stylistic differences between the poems, such as tetrameter versus pentameter, and a generally lower tone in the 1777 lines. That’s not to say Warren couldn’t have worked in a different mode in a quick response to the prophetic egg. But with no external evidence that Warren did write the egg verse, those differences make the hypothesis less likely.

“Plimouth has producd lately a Prophetical Egg”

Back in 2012 I wrote about the “prophetic egg” found in Plymouth at the end of 1776, forecasting victory for the Howes.

I quoted a couple of men with Plymouth roots, Dr. James Thacher and Elkanah Watson, recounting the story, plus a poem published in January 1777 which appeared to be the only comment about it.

Boston 1775 reader JPC just asked if the author of that poem might be Mercy Warren, as Alice Brown stated in her 1896 biography:

When an egg was found in Plymouth, bearing the legend, “Howe will conquer,” it was Mrs. Warren who at once sat down—possibly in an interval of needlework or brewing—and wrote a counterblast in her customary satirical vein, reducing egg and prophecy to naught.

Brown cited no evidence for that statement, so it’s possible that she merely assumed any Patriot poetry linked to Plymouth must have come from Mercy Otis Warren.

I looked into the question and, while I found no conclusive evidence, found more contemporaneous references to the egg and a provocative link.

On 14 Jan 1777, Hannah Winthrop, wife of Harvard College professor John Winthrop, wrote to her friend Warren:

I hear Plimouth has producd lately a Prophetical Egg that bodes no good to America for the year 77, but as it is said to be laid by a Tory hen I interpret it to be what is wishd, rather than what will happen. The inscription on it is said to be. Howe will Conquer America. but I believe the Prophesy will prove as Brittle as the Tablet on which it is engravd.

Thanks to the Massachusetts Historical Society, that letter can be viewed here. It shows that Mercy Warren was informed about the egg, and more importantly—since she’d surely already heard that news by word of mouth in Plymouth—that she knew people in the Boston area were discussing it.

Back in 2012, I wrote that I’d found only one newspaper commenting on the egg, the 28 January issue of The Freeman’s Journal, or New-Hampshire Gazette.

I can now report that Portsmouth newspaper reprinted almost exactly a letter and poem that Benjamin Edes had published on the front page of the Boston Gazette one week earlier, on 20 January. That appearance makes it more likely the author of that poem was based in Massachusetts instead of New Hampshire.

Furthermore, Edes had been the first to print Mercy Warren’s closet dramas The Defeat and The Group and her poem “The Squabble of the Sea Nymphs.”

Of course, Warren had supplied some of her work to other printers, such as Isaiah Thomas, and had seen some published without her approval. On his side, Edes published many other poets. So while their previous connection makes it possible Warren sent the egg poem to Edes for publication, it’s not conclusive.

To both JPC and myself, the poem about Plymouth’s prophetic egg doesn’t fit well into Warren’s usual style. But there is one phrase to examine more closely.

TOMORROW: “The Genius of America.”

Who Wrote Isaac Freeman’s Petition?

Yesterday I presented a petition sent to the Massachusetts General Court in late 1780 and printed in Massachusetts newspapers the following January.

The petitioner, Isaac Freeman, presented himself as a “poor negro” and an ultra-patriotic citizen of Massachusetts. He said he was a veteran of the Battle of Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill, where he had lost considerable property.

Freeman also told the legislature, “I…remain a faithful soldier to this hour,” but he didn’t describe any further military service. The document never stated what company or regiment Freeman served in, nor what town he lived in. Such information would surely have helped his petition.

There are several entries for men named Isaac Freeman in Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, but none of those men is described as black, and none has a record of service covering the Battle of Bunker Hill. George Quintal’s thoroughly researched report for the National Park Service on men of African and Native ancestry in the New England army during the Battle of Bunker Hill likewise has no entry to Isaac Freeman.

Despite that lack of confirming information, on 16 November the legislature

Resolved, That there be paid out of the public treasury of this Commonwealth, the sum of five pounds of the bills of the new emission, in full for his losses set forth in said petition.

With inflation ruining the value of the currency, that wasn’t a big grant. But it was something. The legislators could have given Freeman leave to withdraw his petition, which was the polite legal way to say no, and they didn’t.

I half think the General Court gave Freeman £5 for the petition’s literary qualities. In ornate, powerful language it reviled both the British enemy and provincial cowards at Bunker Hill. It praised the new Massachusetts state constitution. There was even a bit of poetry thrown in.

In the Suffolk County probate records I found documents that might shed more light on Freeman. A 1782 file for “Isaac Freeman Free Negro,” also identified as a “Labourer,” starts with the will he signed his mark to on 24 January. Well inscribed and full of legal language, the will says first, “My Body I commit to the Dust with decent Burial.” It goes on:

In Consideration of the Care and Kindness I have received from Mr. Dimond Morton of Boston, both in time of my Sickness, & at all other times, I give devise and bequeath to the said Dimond Morton all my Estate real personal or mixt, whether in possession Action or Reversion, wheresoever the same may be found, to hold to him the said Morton his Heirs and Assigns forever.—

The will also appointed Dimond Morton as executor. In other words, I suspect, Morton could keep anything he found of Freeman’s as long as he made sure the man received a “decent Burial.”

Morton ran a well established inn in Boston, the Sign of the Black and White Horse. His father had been an innkeeper as well, moving into town from Plymouth. In 1770 Morton witnessed the Boston Massacre. Having joined the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in 1765, he served as a captain in Col. Henry Knox’s artillery regiment for the year 1776. Later in the war he invested in privateers and mercantile ventures.

The connection between Freeman and Morton also offers an explanation for how a man who couldn’t sign his name was able to submit a long legal petition that verged on literature. The innkeeper’s younger brother was Perez Morton (shown above), a rising lawyer. In fact, Perez was surety for the bond Dimond had to submit to the probate court in settling the Freeman estate. And Perez had literary interests even before he married the poet Sarah Wentworth Apthorp.

While studying for his master’s degree at Harvard, Perez Morton composed some of the verses in William Billings’s New England Psalm-Singer. His funeral oration for Dr. Joseph Warren included three bursts of poetry; one was borrowed from Mercy Warren, and the other two I can’t identify, offering the possibility that they were his own compositions.

I theorize that Perez Morton composed the petition for Isaac Freeman, indulging himself in florid prose and throwing in a couplet he adapted from John Pomfret. The brothers used their connections to push the small grant for Freeman through the legislature. And one or the other probably slipped the composition to the Boston Gazette as well. Freeman gained some recognition and a little bit of cash, but some of that probably went to Dimond Morton for medical expenses or when he died less than two years later.

TOMORROW: The biggest mystery of Isaac Freeman.

Craig Bruce Smith on American Honor, 3-5 Oct.

This week Craig Bruce Smith will speak at multiple sites around Boston about his new book, American Honor: The Creation of the Nation's Ideals During the Revolutionary Era.

The publisher’s description the book says:

The American Revolution was not only a revolution for liberty and freedom. It was also a revolution of ethics, reshaping what colonial Americans understood as “honor” and “virtue.” As Craig Bruce Smith demonstrates, these concepts were crucial aspects of Revolutionary Americans’ ideological break from Europe and shared by all ranks of society. Focusing his study primarily on prominent Americans who came of age before and during the Revolution—notably John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington—Smith shows how a colonial ethical transformation caused and became inseparable from the American Revolution, creating an ethical ideology that still remains.

By also interweaving individuals and groups that have historically been excluded from the discussion of honor—such as female thinkers, women patriots, slaves, and free African Americans—Smith makes a broad and significant argument about how the Revolutionary era witnessed a fundamental shift in ethical ideas. 

Smith earned his doctorate at Brandeis and is now a professor at William Woods University in Missouri.

His talks in the region will start with what looks like a basic book talk and then branch into more specialized presentations.

3 October, 6:00 P.M. (reception starts at 5:30)
“American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era”
Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston
$10 admission; free to members, fellows, and E.B.T. cardholders; register here.

4 October, 1:00 P.M.
“Honor and Ethics: The Foundation of George Washington’s Leadership”
Brandeis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, 60 Turner Street, Waltham
Open to Brandeis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute members.

Smith’s next project focuses on Washington.

4 October, 7:00 P.M.
“Riots, Boycotts, and Resistance: Honor, Boston, and the Coming of the American Revolution”
Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, Boston
$10 admission; more information here.

By far the most generally accepted method of resistance was through non-violent boycotts of British goods; these boycotts united American men and women in a common cause. However, more extreme elements in society, largely led by the Boston-based Sons of Liberty, exacerbated this movement by using violence against Crown officials and sympathizers to seek retribution. These dual visions of reclaiming honor became a point of contention among the American founders, from Samuel Adams to John Adams, and marked a considerable ideological and ethical struggle for the budding Revolutionary movement.

5 October, 7:00 P.M.
“‘Open Violation of Honor’: Concord, Lexington, and the Ethics of the Revolutionary War”
Wright Tavern, Concord Museum
Free but registration required here.

Smith will explore how the eruption of gunfire during the Battles of Lexington and Concord affirmed to the American patriots (in the words of Mercy Otis Warren) that the United Kingdom was “lost to that honour and compassionate dignity which had long been the boast of Britons.” To Americans, Concord’s “shot heard ‘round the world” and the resulting war were moral responses to Britain’s “open violation of honor.” In just over a year, the echoes of April 19, 1775 culminated in the Declaration of Independence and its pledge of “sacred honor.”

Books will no doubt be available at each event.

Symposium on Washington and Women at Mount Vernon, 2-3 Nov.

Last year I had the honor of speaking at the George Washington Symposium at Mount Vernon, organized by the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington.

This year’s symposium, to take place on 2-3 November, has the theme “‘A Sensible Woman Can Never be Happy with a Fool’: The Women of George Washington’s World.”

The event description:

“When the fire is beginning to kindle, and your heart growing warm, propound these questions to it… Is he a man of good character? A man of sense? for be assured a sensible woman can never be happy with a fool.”

Thus wrote George Washington in a heartfelt 1796 letter to his step-granddaughter Eleanor (Nelly) Parke Custis on the subjects of love and marriage. Although the Father of Our Country was a leader among leaders in a male-dominated world, we know that he enjoyed a number of complex and meaningful relationships with women from all stations of the socially-stratified eighteenth century. Join leading historians and academics for an enlightening look at a wide variety of women from the General’s personal orbit, including his often misunderstood mother, an admiring poet, social confidants, a traitor to the Revolution, and a defiant runaway slave. We will also examine the memory of Washington through the legacies of his adoring step-granddaughters and the Southern Matron who led the charge in the 1850s to rescue his home and final resting place.

The lineup of presentations is:

• “Mary Ball Washington: Tales of Motherhood,” Martha Saxton
• “A Rare Commitment: The Friendship of George Washington and Elizabeth Willing Powel,” George W. Boudreau
• Roundtable on “Women” and “Mothers” across Eighteenth-Century America, moderated by Karin Wulf of the Omohundro Institute 
• “True Republicans: The Relationship between George Washington and Mercy Otis Warren,” Rosemarie Zagarri
• “George Washington and Phillis Wheatley: The Indispensable Man and the Poet Laureate of the Founding Era,” James G. Basker
• “‘The tender Heart of the Chief could not support the Scene’: General Washington, Margaret Arnold, and the Treason at West Point,” Charlene Boyer Lewis
• “‘She should rather suffer death than return to Slavery’: The Escape of Oney Judge,” Mary V. Thompson
• “Daughters of the Pater Patriae: The Custis Step-Granddaughters’ Relationships with George Washington,” Cassandra Good
• “Coming to the Rescue with Ann Pamela Cunningham,” Ann Bay Goddin

These symposiums are designed to bring the latest findings and analyses of historians to the community of Mount Vernon and its supporters. Attendees fill a large auditorium, reflecting the interest in all things Washington.

Reviewing John Adams’s Political Ideas

Today’s leg of my trip takes me from Philadelphia to the Washington, D.C., area—a move the federal government made in John Adams’s administration.

Here are extracts from Tom Cutterham’s review for the American Journal of Legal History of two books published last year about Adams’s political thinking: John Adams’ Republic: The One, the Few, and the Many by Richard Alan Ryerson, and John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy by Luke Mayville.

John Adams’ reputation as a reactionary proponent of American aristocracy emerged from the bitter political disputes of the 1790s, when the norms and structures of the new republic were still being shaped. Thomas Jefferson first promoted the hypothesis that Adams had been swayed from the path of revolutionary republicanism by his time as ambassador in the courts of Europe. Mercy Otis Warren repeated the claim in her anti-Federalist history of the revolution. Most historians since, at least those who have not specialised in Adams’ thought, broadly accepted the Jeffersonian narrative. But it was false. John Adams never was a friend of aristocracy. In fact, he was its most vigilant and perceptive critic. . . .

Whether it was best described as aristocracy or oligarchy, Ryerson and Mayville agree that the primary quality of this dangerous grouping was its money. The revolution, and especially the exigencies of the war, had helped create “a new, enlarged, aggressive aristocracy of wealth,” transforming Boston and other cities in the new republic (Ryerson, p. 243). Yet Adams could be slippery with his definition. As Ryerson emphasises, aristocracy implied a quality rather than a quantity—a distinction which fits Adams’ approach. What mattered was not the precise membership of the category, but the processes that created it. Mayville, following C. Wright Mills, pins Adams as a theorist of the “power elite.” We might simply call it the ruling class. . . .

While Ryerson’s account embeds Adams’ political thought deep in the context of his own life and writings, it does not pay much attention to other thinkers. Mayville’s book, while much shorter, gives us a better sense of the authors with whom Adams was in conversation, including contemporaries like Jefferson, James Madison, and John Taylor of Caroline, as well as European authorities like Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and Jean-Louis de Lolme. Of course, what all these men shared—most of the time, anyway—was a disdain for the political abilities and virtue of ordinary citizens. Both Mayville and Ryerson are clear that Adams was no democrat. His theorising was bent on the task of taming natural aristocracy without handing control to the licentious mob.

In 1774 it was the masses, not the aristocrats, who overthrew imperial rule in Massachusetts. “Real authority now derived from the people, exercised directly in their town meetings and militia companies” (Ryerson, p. 156). Their government had neither executive nor judicial branches, and Adams was “deeply impressed, indeed astonished,” at their “good order” (p. 161). If his theory of aristocracy foresaw that men of wealth and influence would never allow such conditions to persist, there was a certain perverse ingenuity to the way Adams and men like him—politicians, thinkers, natural aristocrats—helped bring his prediction to pass.

So Adams might have been more of a critic of the aristocracy on paper than in practice.

James Otis, Jr., and Slavery Revisited

Back in 2006, this blog’s first year, I wrote a couple of essays describing James Otis, Jr., as a slaveholder.

For those postings I relied on and quoted a passage from John J. Waters’s The Otis Family in Provincial and Revolutionary Massachusetts (1968):

Inconsistencies certainly marked most of James’s actions. He rejected both slavery and the belief in Negro inferiority, arguing [in Rights of the British Colonies] that as the “law of nature” made all men free it must be applied equally to “white or black.” Yet he never freed his own colored “boy.”

Waters didn’t provide a citation for that statement. However, his book was and remains the best study of Otis and his relatives, getting beyond the hagiographies of the nineteenth century. And anyone looking at Revolutionary America finds a lot of men who wrote about the blessings of liberty, the evils of the slave trade, and even the problems and immorality of slavery itself without actually detaching themselves from the slavery system.

Recently David Hurwitz asked about the evidence behind Waters’s statement because he’s looking into whether James’s sister Mercy and her husband, James Warren of Plymouth, owned slaves. So I went back to primary sources to see what evidence I could find on the question.

To begin with, it’s clear that James and Mercy’s father, James Otis, Sr., of Barnstable, did own slaves. The vital records of that town list the marriages of “Amaritta and Primus, servants to Col. Otis,” in 1748 and “London, servant to James Otis Esqr and Bathsheba Towardy, an Indian,” in 1760. What’s more, the elder James Otis had a number of Mashpee people indentured to him, as cited in detail by Waters; while legally that was a different situation, in practice it was a lot like slavery.

But what about James Otis, Jr., who left Barnstable to become a leading attorney in Boston? Some of the province’s 1771 tax records survive, and in the years since my original postings they’ve been digitized at Harvard. The entry for James Otis, Esq., of Boston doesn’t list any “Servants for Life” as taxable property. That was Massachusetts’s legal euphemism for slaves. (Likewise, James Warren’s 1771 tax valuation doesn’t list any “Servants for Life.”)

Another place to look for evidence of slaveholding is in people’s wills or estate inventories. David found Otis’s will transcribed in this book. That document is dated 31 Mar 1783, just a few weeks before Judge William Cushing began to declare in court that the new Massachusetts constitution had made slavery illegal. Therefore, if Otis did own slaves in March, he would still have considered them his legal property and could have bequeathed them to heirs. He didn’t.

However, the fact that Otis didn’t mention slaves in his will doesn’t mean he didn’t own any. He didn’t have to list all of his property. Otis devoted most of his will to criticizing his daughter Elizabeth for marrying a British army officer, Leonard Brown, bequeathing her only five shillings. (Here’s more about that couple.) Otis left almost his whole estate to his wife Ruth and daughter Mary, also making them his executrices in charge of dividing it as they chose. They could have dealt with any slaves in the estate without filing an inventory with the probate court—especially since Cushing would soon rule slavery null and void anyway.

This evidence still doesn’t prove that James Otis, Jr., never owned slaves. He could have done so as a young man, before 1771. He could even have inherited slaves from his father, who died in 1778. But historians don’t have the burden of proving a negative, given the gaps in the historic record. Rather, our responsibility is to assemble evidence for the statements we make.

And in this case, based on all I’ve seen, I now revise my 2006 remark. James Otis, Jr., and his siblings grew up in a slaveholding family, but I’ve seen no evidence that as an adult he owned slaves, and in 1771 he definitely didn’t.