“It was one cause of the alienation between them”

Gov. Thomas Hutchinson wasn’t the only chronicler to say Samuel Adams and John Hancock fell out over the question of how adamantly to protest against Hutchinson convening the Massachusetts General Court in Cambridge.

In 1809, the Rev. John Eliot (1754–1813, shown here) published A Biographical Dictionary, Containing a Brief Account of the First Settlers, and Other Eminent Characters among the Magistrates, Ministers, Literary and Worthy Men, in New-England.

Eliot was a son and successor of the Rev. Andrew Eliot (1718–1778), minister at the New North Meeting-House during the Revolution. He had thus met all the leading politicians of pre-Revolutionary Boston before coming of age and had heard plenty of gossip about them.

In his book’s short biography of Samuel Adams, Eliot wrote:

During these [legislative] sessions at Cambridge, a difference of opinion arose, upon some secondary matters, between Adams and Hancock, which cooled their friendship, and was succeeded by an antipathy, that had an effect upon the minds of the people, many of whom took a warm interest in this personal animosity, though they agreed in political sentiments; and acted together in the great affairs which arrested the attention of all the whigs.

Eliot went into more detail in his profile of Hancock:

There was a collision of sentiment among the leading whigs about the removal of the court to Boston. Hutchinson offered this upon certain conditions, which the majority of members saw fit to comply with.

Adams was against the measure, and expressed his sentiments in opposition to his friend and colleague. Mr. Hancock was a man impatient of contradiction, and, upon some occasions, indulged a petulant humour. He could not bear the opposition of Mr. Adams on this question. It was one cause of the alienation between them.

That gentleman [Adams] was cool and determined, hard and unyielding, as well as bold in his argument. He sometimes was sarcastick in his replies; but upon the subject which then divided the house, he observed the utmost delicacy, and seemed to dread the consequence of this political difference.

These gentlemen had different views, though equally zealous in their opposition to the mother country. Or else one looked further than the other. . . . The division of these two leading characters made parties among the whigs, especially in the town of Boston.

The relationship of Hancock and Adams was still sensitive years after both men had died, Eliot told the Rev. William Bentley in 1810, in a letter published in the New England Historic and Genealogical Register.

Eliot listed his entries about Adams, Hancock, and Hutchinson among his “best drawn.” However, “Several Gentlemen in Boston, estimable for Talents & worth, tho’ federalists (which may lower them with you), say they would not have subscribed for the book had they seen what I have said of S.A. & John Hancock.”

Eliot was looking back through years in which Hancock and Adams were much further apart than they were in 1772, so that could have magnified the importance of this moment. Nonetheless, he offers more testimony that Hancock’s response to Adams’s disagreement was the first crack in their partnership.

COMING UP: Town finances.

Speeding Up “Slow-Motion Scholarship”?

I’ve been doing test drives on the Clements Library’s machine-made transcriptions of documents from the Thomas Gage Papers, seeing how useful those texts from Transkribus are.

Archiving documents already costs money, of course. Systematic scanning of those documents and making them available online costs more.

Producing accurate transcriptions for those documents requires even more labor, with a lot of expertise and patience thrown in. That might be the most expensive stage.

The U.S. government once deemed that work important enough to fund. We can look back at precedents like the Varick Transcripts of Gen. George Washington’s letters made in the 1780s, Peter Force’s American Archives in the ante-bellum period, and the major scholarly projects of the Progressive, New Deal, and Cold War eras.

Originally based on thick printed volumes, that effort has naturally spread to computers and computer networks. Founders Online is not only hosted by the National Archives, but its constituent projects received funding through the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (N.H.P.R.C.).

But that was all before the current administration set out to slash funding for historical projects that don’t feed its leader’s ego, both within the budget process and illegally outside of it. In June the Organization of American Historians issued a report titled “The Federal Assault on History: A Record of Executive Actions,” (P.D.F. download). It says:

Despite the impressive work done with the assistance of NHPRC grant awards, the program created by Congress often finds itself eliminated in presidential budget requests. FY 2026 and 2027 were no different, with the Trump Administration attempting to zero out the funding. As in prior years, Congress recognized the value that NHPRC brings to their districts and rebuked the effort, providing $5 million in grantmaking funds, though this represents a 50 percent cut to the program from FY2025.

Funding is only one of the challenges faced by NHPRC in 2025 and now in 2026. NHPRC is convened twice a year by the Archivist of the United States, its chair, to review grant proposals, recommend awards, and approve new calls for proposals. Without an Archivist of the United States duly confirmed by the Senate, the Commission has no chair to convene it and has not been able to meet since November 2024. This little-understood effect of the firing of the Archivist of the United States in February 2025 has blocked Congress’s intention to award millions of dollars in grant funding to archives and other historical institutions throughout the country.

That’s yet another part of our national government and polity that will need repair.

To be sure, there were limitations in that approach to transcribing archives. For example, there’s always been more funding available for the papers of elite American Founders than for other sorts. (Gen. Thomas Gage came from an elite class, too, but he was on the Wrong Side.)

Those monumental projects also took decades. Back in 1997 Lingua Franca magazine published an article by Jack Hitt titled “In the Franklin Factory: Slow-Motion Scholarship in an Age of Academic Obsolescence.” It concluded with a glimpse of the Benjamin Franklin Papers editors looking ahead to the end of their work after four decades. They’re still at it.

Given that environment, it’s easy to see the appeal of artificial-intelligence software as a way to ease, speed up, and democratize the transcription of handwritten documents. If, that is, the technology actually works.

TOMORROW: Alternative approaches.

“Unearthing Fort Rutledge” at Clemson, 25 Sept.

On Friday, 25 September, Clemson University will host a talk by Prof. Joshua Catalano titled “Unearthing Fort Rutledge.”

The event description says:

Tucked away on the edge of Clemson University’s campus are the remains of the Cherokee town of Esseneca and Fort Rutledge. Most people passing by the old monument near the site are unaware of the history.

On August 1, 1776, a small battle occurred at Esseneca between the South Carolina militia and British/Cherokee force. Following the skirmish, the militia destroyed the town and built Fort Rutledge. The fort played an important role in the American Revolution serving as a staging area for patriot expeditions. It also served as a mechanism of settler colonialism, further displacing the Cherokee from their home.

The British "destroyed" the fort in 1780, and nature buried what was left over the centuries. This history is little remembered. In 2021, Clemson faculty and students partnered with the National Park Service and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to unearth what was left of the fort. This research led to new and unexpected discoveries that are changing our understanding of the region’s history.

Dr. Joshua Catalano as an Associate Professor and Public History Coordinator in Clemson’s History department. In addition to the Fort Rutledge project, he is working on a study of the production, dissemination, and continual reinterpretation of the memory of the Gnadenhutten Massacre of 1782 and the burning of Col. William Crawford.

Clemson was founded in 1889 on a plantation once owned by John C. Calhoun, the Senator, Vice President, and advocate for chattel slavery. He had named that property Fort Hill because of memories of Fort Rutledge nearby, though for a long time the fortification’s exact location was lost.

People can attend this lecture in person or online through this link.

Traces of a Last-Minute Fight over Thomas Jefferson’s Legacy

Yesterday I wrote about History by a Hair, Smithsonian anthropologist Richard Kurin’s new book on his effort to determine if there is a genetic match between Thomas Jefferson and descendants of Sally Hemings and Martha Jefferson.

That book is due to be published this week, but it ran into some jarring bumps in the last two months. Having worked in publishing, I presume Dr. Kurin and folks at Crown Publishing (part of Penguin Random House) worked feverishly to finalize its pages.

It appears that the book is Kurin’s personal narrative of working on the investigation over fifteen years. While collecting genetic samples, he met many descendants of the Jefferson–Wayles–Hemings family.

Among those people was Mary Brady-Atkins. She is, as described in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “a retired Michigan State University professor with a Ph.D. in psychology.” At ninety-eight, Dr. Brady-Atkins is the oldest living descendant of Madison Hemings. She gave Kurin a D.N.A. sample early in the project. He visited her in Pittsburgh over the ensuing years and asked to include her photo in the book.

The Chronicle article also reports that on 11 August Kurin spoke about his book to John H. Works, Jr., who claims descent from Thomas and Martha Jefferson. In 2000 Works co-founded the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society to raise questions about the growing evidence of the Jefferson-Hemings relationship. He is now that organization’s president, treasurer, and secretary.

Back in 2002, Works spoke of the value of genetics as he worked to exclude Hemings descendants from the Monticello Association, formed by descendants of Thomas Jefferson. The Raleigh News and Observer quoted him as saying, “For (Hemings descendants) to say, ‘I don’t need no DNA evidence,’ well, I’m sorry, but you do.” I see no sign that Works also insisted on D.N.A. evidence from people claiming descent from Martha Jefferson. (And he doesn’t appear to use the double negative normally.)

Works’s society has long argued that the President’s brother, Randolph Jefferson, or one of that man’s sons could have fathered the Hemings children—thus providing the Jefferson Y chromosome that Dr. Eugene Foster matched to a patrilineal descendant of Eston Hemings in 1998. In 2017, Works began gathering genetic samples for his own study. As of last November, he was petitioning to exhume the body of John Randolph Jefferson, one of those sons (and thus not one of his own ancestors).

In response to people like Works pointing fingers at Randolph Jefferson, Korin’s study collected samples from that man’s descendants as well. According to the New York Times, geneticists Richard (Ed) Green and Beth Shapiro of the University of California at Santa Cruz found that those people’s D.N.A. does not significantly match that in Thomas Jefferson’s hair, nor in samples from descendants of Martha Jefferson or Sally Hemings. In sum, the new study renders the argument that Randolph Jefferson or his sons fathered Sally Hemings‘s children not just historically unlikely but scientifically implausible.

In their 11 August conversation, Kurin told Works about his colleagues’ findings. He said their analysis had been reviewed by “Carlos D. Bustamante of the University of Oklahoma; Erich D. Jarvis of Rockefeller University; and Eric D. Green, chief medical officer of the DNA-sequencing giant Illumina and former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.”

Works asked when that study will be published. Kurin said it was being considered by a scientific journal. As is standard, the journal has found more peer reviewers unknown to the authors, and Kurin and his colleagues are not allowed to name the journal publicly while it goes through its process.

On 19 August, the Chronicle reports, Works “sounded the alarm” about Kurin’s book to the Monticello Association. Works took the position that it was premature for Crown to issue History by a Hair before the underlying scientific paper is published and assessed. (The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society chose a different route back in 2001, publishing its critique of the 1998 genetic study itself rather than submitting those arguments to a journal for outside peer review.)

Sometime before 2023, Works gave an interview to the documentary filmmaker Sanjay Rawal, though it’s unclear what that conversation was about. On a new Instagram reel, the filmmaker states that he became interested in the Jefferson-Hemings question only later, after meeting Mary Brady-Atkins. According to this article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, his film, now tentatively titled We Hold These Truths, came to focus on “the long friendship that Brady-Atkins formed with the Jefferson family, despite the ancestry being connected to enslavement.” Rawal appears to have connected Brady-Atkins and Works in 2023, per the Chronicle.

On 24 August, five days after Works’s “alarm,” Brady-Atkins withdrew her participation from Kurin’s D.N.A. study. The Chronicle says that Rawal helped Brady-Atkins to draft her email message, alongside her daughter and her friend and executor.

Brady-Atkins’s data was then removed from the genetic database and her samples destroyed. I presume that required a revision of the paper under review, though it reportedly didn’t produce a significant change in the findings. In addition, Kurin probably had to edit his book to remove her photograph and anecdotes in the last weeks before publication.

According to the Chronicle, Dr. Brady-Atkins withdrew because of the same objection that Works was expressing: “the book is being published…before its science has been vetted by a scientific journal’s peer-review process.” In addition, that article stated that Brady-Atkins felt “Kurin often treated her as more of a friend than as a research participant, while not always showing her the courtesy and clarity she felt was owed to her in either role—not giving her an advance copy of the book, for instance.”

The Chronicle also states of Brady-Atkins:

In her view, not enough attention has been paid to the possibility that another male Jefferson relative, such as his younger brother, was responsible. Based on what she knows about the founding father, she doesn’t think “a man of that integrity would get involved” with Hemings.

“What I’ve read about Jefferson and my knowledge of human behavior and my experience as a clinical psychologist, I just feel in my gut that this man did not sire these children,” she said.

As late as April 2024, Brady-Atkins identified herself publicly as “the oldest descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.” But she has come to the same position as the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society.

We probably have more historical evidence about who fathered Sally Hemings’s children than for any other Americans born in the same circumstances. Nonetheless, for more than thirty years some authors have demanded genetic evidence to resolve the question. As science advances, that D.N.A. evidence has become more detailed and specific to Jefferson himself. Will it ever be enough to satisfy everyone?

TOMORROW: Meanwhile, in Washington.

Two Vast and Trunkless Legs of Stone

Earlier this summer the National Park Service issued a series of reports about the triumphal arch proposed for Memorial Circle in Washington, D.C.

Those reports can be downloaded from this webpage.

One document, for instance, is a summary of the 100,936 public comments on this project (P.D.F. download; much smaller addendum).

The summary aggregates the points citizens have made, not counting how many people expressed particular ideas. Those points are overwhelmingly negative. (Some groups have filed suit to block the project.)

Appendix D (P.D.F. download) is a table of historic sites that could be adversely affected, directly or indirectly, by the arch. Those affected sites are:
1. Memorial Avenue Corridor Cultural Landscape
2. Arlington Memorial Bridge and Associated Features
3. Lady Bird Johnson Park Cultural Landscape
4. Arlington National Cemetery Historic District
5. Arlington House Historic District
6. Arlington House (Robert E. Lee Memorial)
7. Arlington House Cultural Landscape
8. Lyndon B. Johnson Memorial Grove
9. Mount Vernon Memorial Highway Historic District
10. Lincoln Memorial Cultural Landscape
11. Lincoln Memorial
12. National Mall Site and National Mall Historic District
13. The Mall Cultural Landscape
14. Washington Monument
15. Washington Monument and Grounds Historic District
16. Washington Monument and Grounds Cultural Landscape
17. Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway Historic District
18. East and West Potomac Park Historic District
19. L'Enfant Plan of the City of Washington, District of Columbia
20. Arlington Ridge Park
21. Pentagon
22. Fort Myer National Historic Landmark District
23. George Mason Memorial
24. Thomas Jefferson Memorial Cultural Landscape

On 28 August, the N.P.S. press office issued a new document titled “Triumphal Arch Assessment of Effect (Revised)”.

In this report, the adverse effects table is Appendix L, part of the main file. It adds to the sites expected to suffer adverse effects:
25. World War II Memorial
26. Thomas Jefferson Memorial
27. United States Capitol
28. Georgetown Historic District
29. Old Naval Observatory
30. Observatory Hill Historic District
31. Alban Towers Apartment Building
32. American Institute of Pharmacy Building
33. Halcyon House
34. Francis Scott Key Bridge
35. National Cathedral
36. National War College
37. Vigilant Firehouse
38. Bridge #5020
39. Mount Vernon Memorial Highway North Cultural Landscape Inventory
40. Old Warehouse Area and Ground Maintenance Complex
41. Frederick Douglass National Historic Site

Nonetheless, that latest report states:

Placing the Triumphal Arch within the George Washington Memorial Parkway is consistent with the park’s purpose as a scenic roadway honoring the nation’s first president and protecting the cultural and natural resources that frame the Potomac River corridor. The Arch’s role in celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States aligns with the Parkway’s long-standing function as a landscape dedicated to reflection on national ideals, unity, and sacrifice.

News media have reported this report as the N.P.S. “approving” of the construction, which technically it is, but only because the political appointees atop the Department of the Interior have insisted on rubber-stamping the President’s grandiose ideas.

Back in October 2025, when Donald Trump started waving around models of the arch, Time reported:

At the end of a press conference in the Oval Office Wednesday before the dinner, Trump was asked about the arch, of which a model sat on his desk. “Who is it for?” asked CBS reporter Ed O’Keefe. “Me. It’s going to be beautiful” replied President Trump.

Nothing about the Sestercentennial, “national ideals, unity, and sacrifice,” or “honoring the nation’s first president,” much less protecting cultural and natural resources.

“Me.”

“The last Words which ever passed between Mr. Dickinson and me”?

The discovery of John Dickinson’s 28 Oct 1775 letter to David Barclay, quoted yesterday, lets us assess his thoughts on John Adams’s private criticism of him in an intercepted letter earlier that year.

As Jane E. Calvert writes in the July 2026 William & Mary Quarterly, it should also make us reassess Adams’s recollection of how he came to make that criticism. We know that other passages from Adams’s nineteenth-century memoir contradict contemporaneous sources, or at least aren’t supported by them.

According to Adams writing in 1805, the two men fell out during the Continental Congress’s debate over the Olive Branch Petition in the spring or early summer of 1775:

I was opposed to it, of course; and made an Opposition to it, in as long a Speech as I commonly made, not having ever been remarkable for very long Harrangues, in Answer to all the Arguments which had been urged. . . .

At this moment I was called out to the State house Yard, very much to my regret, to some one who had business with me. I took my hat and went out of the Door of Congress Hall: Mr. Dickinson observed me and darted out after me. He broke out upon me in a most abrupt and extraordinary manner. In as violent a passion as he was capable of feeling, and with an Air, Countenance and Gestures as rough and haughty as if I had been a School Boy and he the Master, he vociferated out, “What is the Reason Mr. Adams, that you New Englandmen oppose our Measures of Reconciliation…[?]”

I answered him very coolly. “Mr. Dickenson, there are many Things that I can very chearfully sacrifice to Harmony and even to Unanimity: but I am not to be threatened into an express Adoption or Approbation of Measures which my Judgment reprobates. Congress must judge, and if they pronounce against me, I must submit, as if they determine against You, You ought to acquiesce.”—These were the last Words which ever passed between Mr. Dickinson and me in private.

If Adams had made a firm, direct speech against the Olive Branch Petition, and Dickinson had gotten so upset about it, why would Dickinson be surprised to read Adams criticizing him weeks later? Why did Dickinson write that before the intercepted letter the Adams cousins had always “behav’d to Me…with the…greatest Marks of friendly Respect,” expressing “the most silken softness of public pretensions”?

Of course, a big part of the problem was Adams’s rude language, calling Dickinson a “piddling Genius” whose measures made the Congress appear “silly.” That went beyond a collegial disagreement over policy. Dickinson recognized the two men “differed in Sentiments” but thought they were still friendly and recognized they were all trying to solve the same problem.

Dickinson’s surprise might have been the result of John Adams’s own actions up to that point. He probably didn’t speak out as strongly as he remembered decades later. Calvert points out how Adams signed the Olive Branch Petition in July. Of course, that’s consistent with his later statement “Congress must judge, and if they pronounce against me, I must submit.” 

At the same time, I see indications that Dickinson and Adams were talking past each other on “independence” and what that really meant.

TOMORROW: Cross-purposes.

“He passed without moving his Hat, or Head or Hand”

The part of the newly released documents from John Dickinson getting the most attention, including a news story in the New York Times, is his detailed proposal to reconcile the British government and the colonies at the Continental Congress before they reached a permanent breaking point.

But of course I’m drawn to the juicy interpersonal gossip. Dickinson wrote the second of those letters after John Adams’s nasty private comment about him had leaked. That letter reveals Dickinson’s feelings about that slight as well as his perspective on what led up to it.

The July 2026 issue of the William & Mary Quarterly contains an essay by Dr. Jane E. Calvert about this episode. She points out that historians have relied on Adams’s recounting of the event in his memoir, even while acknowledging those recollections can’t be confirmed and flatter Adams in consistent ways. (Calvert and Jonathan Gienapp’s article about the Dickinson documents offers an accessible précis of her essay.)

I wrote about Adams’s indiscreet remark back in 2014. In short, Adams gave the young lawyer Benjamin Hichborn two letters to carry home to Massachusetts. Hichborn let those papers fall into British hands. Gen. Thomas Gage had the texts published in Margaret Draper’s Boston News-Letter on 17 Aug 1775.

Adams’s 24 July letter to James Warren included these lines:

In Confidence,—I am determined to write freely to you this Time.—A certain great Fortune and piddling Genius whose Fame has been trumpeted so loudly, has given a silly Cast to our whole Doings…

Those lines made their way back to Philadelphia. No delegate to the Congress had more money and fame combined than Dickinson. (Benjamin Franklin was more famous but not as wealthy; a few men may have commanded bigger estates, but none had gained more respect as a political writer than Dickinson the “Farmer.”) So everyone knew who Adams was referring to.

On 16 September, Adams wrote in his diary:

Walking to the Statehouse this Morning, I met Mr. Dickinson, on Foot in Chesnut Street. We met, and passed near enough to touch Elbows. He passed without moving his Hat, or Head or Hand. I bowed and pulled off my Hat. He passed hautily by. The Cause of his Offence, is the Letter no doubt which Gage has printed in Drapers Paper.

That was a “cut direct.” It showed Dickinson was upset, but he was making that clear by not saying anything.

Forty years later, Adams insisted:

• He wrote his 24 July letter only after Dickinson had tried to browbeat him and other “New Englandmen” into not arguing against the Congress’s Olive Branch Petition, and
• He didn’t write that letter anyway. Or “not exactly.” The royal authorities had altered his words before publication.

Adams’s letter doesn’t survive, as far as anyone knows, so we can’t say for sure whether the newspaper text was edited. But we do know Adams expressed some similar sentiments in other private letters at the time. And he never specified which of the published words he hadn’t penned.

Thanks to the new documents, we now have John Dickinson’s view of the dispute, written in the year that it happened rather than decades later.

TOMORROW: The other side.

America250’s Christian Comics

When Boston 1775 last looked in on America250, the commemorative campaign of the Congressionally-established Semiquincentennial commission, the Trump White House was trying to replace it with its own Freedom250 campaign.

And, of course, its own merchandise for sale.

America250 continues to issue material, though. Among the products bearing its brand and sold through its website is a series of comic books about American history.

That line has included fifteen comics about 36 pages long, a collection of ten of those comics which cover the settlement and founding periods, and a graphic novel on the U.S. Constitution.

The America250 website doesn’t offer clear info on contents and credits, and not all the titles are available there anymore. Its publishing partner, Kingstone, offers all the titles, and at lower prices.

Journalist and historian Colin Woodard recently looked at those comics for Talking Points Memo and reported:

The comics — beautifully executed and bearing the America250 logo — were produced by Kingstone, a Christian publisher best known for its 2000-page, 10,000 panel graphic interpretation of the Bible. . . .

The series — drawn by a world-class Brazilian artist [Joe Bennett] who lost his gig with Marvel comics over antisemitic imagery in cartoons championing Jair Bolsonaro — devotes five volumes to the colonial era, its characters, themes and settings carefully curated to depict the eventual creation of the United States as an outgrowth of divine will and intervention. They all take place north of the Mason-Dixon line, with the action rarely leaving the confines of New England, the only part of colonial North America where Calvinists were the dominant political and cultural force. . . . More glaring is the omission of the origin stories of all of the colonies south of New England — home to most of colonial America’s inhabitants — which don’t fit so well into Kingstone’s narrative. . . .

Miracles abound in the story. Among those explicitly called out in the comics: a young George Washington surviving a rain of French bullets in a 1755 raid; Jefferson writing “all men are created equal” even though he was a slaveowner; the dense fog that fell to protect Washington’s army’s retreat across the East River during the Battle of Long Island; the reversal of fortune allowing Washington’s [sic] victory at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777; the early start to the 1781 hurricane season and the bad decisions made by British generals that facilitated the final British defeat at Yorktown; Franklin’s suggestion that delegates pray to find a compromise solution on legislative representation at the Constitutional Convention; and the Constitution itself, because of its alleged brilliance.

Woodard also detailed many ways the Constitution graphic novel promotes particular positions on today’s political issues, from a historically unfounded reading of the Fourteenth Amendment to opposition to gun regulations, reforming the Electoral College, and expanding the Supreme Court.

New Signage Installed at the President’s House During the Night

Since September 2025 I’ve been following the dispute over displays at the President’s House, part of Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia.

Reflecting its overall ideology, the Trump White House ordered the National Park Service to replace signs discussing how that site had been a site of enslavement when George and Martha Washington lived there in the 1790s.

Because the city of Philadelphia had participated in creating the exhibit, it claimed legal standing to sue for the signs to be restored. A district judge agreed. A higher judge stopped the restoration process. Over the last month the full circuit ruled that the federal government could control the site and remake the signage.

Yesterday WHYY reported: “Workers replaced the remaining exhibits overnight Tuesday.”

The new exhibit retains references to slavery and those enslaved by Washington while serving as president in Philadelphia, but it devotes significantly more space to the history of the executive mansion and the early presidency. A panel that had been titled “The Dirty Business of Slavery,” for example, has now been replaced by signage that reads, “Celebrating Independence Throughout the Years.”

It also softens Washington’s views on slavery compared to the previous display.

“In 1774, Washington helped draft the Fairfax Resolves at Mount Vernon,” one panel reads. “These condemned the slave trade as ‘wicked,’ ‘cruel,’ and ‘unnatural’ and called for putting ‘an entire Stop’ to it. Over time, he became increasingly committed to the gradual abolition of slavery.” . . .

on Wednesday, several armed members of the National Park Service Police were seen vigilantly watching over the site.

Park service officials stopped one activist, Dr. Sandra Shachar-Krasnoff of Philadelphia, after she briefly taped a piece of paper with “the excavation revealed a kitchen and a slave quarters below the president’s house site” to one of the walls.

She was fined $310.

The photo above, taken by Abraham Gutman for the Philadelphia Inquirer, shows a federal officer writing a citation for Dr. Shachar-Krasnoff. The Inquirer also reported that the N.P.S. installed security cameras at the outdoor site last week, ostensibly because the All-Star Game was about to be played in the city. So there’s no doubt the government will surveil the walls more tightly.

The park website displays eleven large new panels, but the Inquirer states there are also “more than a dozen smaller panels that detail governmental processes, the lives of various historical figures, and a panel dedicated to the escape of Ona Judge and Hercules [Posey], two people enslaved by Washington who fled to freedom.”

All told, says the Inquirer, “the new exhibits mostly offer a broad timeline of U.S. history that significantly strays from the original intent of the President’s House as outlined in the park’s foundation document in 2017: ‘It would explore the historic context of the site in the context of its ties to slavery and the lives of the enslaved who lived at the site.’”

There’s already an effort to have Philadelphia erect a historic marker about Hercules Posey outside of federal control, like one already up for Ona Judge.

“They unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught”

A few days after Timothy Pickering delivered an Independence Day oration in Salem in 1823, casting doubt on Thomas Jefferson’s importance in drafting the Declaration of Independence, Joseph E. Sprague (1782–1852) sent the text of that speech to Jefferson himself:

Supposing you might feel some little curiosity to see Col Pickering unwilling & ungrateful tribute to the illustrious Author of the Declaration of Independence I have taken the liberty to enclose it to you

Sprague was a postmaster and a Jeffersonian politician between terms in the Massachusetts House, so he had time to stir up trouble.

Near the end of the month Jefferson shared his version of the drafting story with his good friend and ally James Madison:

You have doubtless seen Timothy Pickering’s 4th of July Observations on the Declaration of Independance. if his principles and prejudices personal and political, gave us no reason to doubt whether he had truly quoted the information he alledges to have recieved from Mr [John] Adams, I should then say that, in some of the particulars, mr Adams’s memory has led him into unquestionable error. at the age of 88. and 47. years after the transactions of Independance, this is not wonderful.

nor should I, at the age of 80, on the small advantage of that difference only, venture to oppose my memory to his, were it not supported by written notes, taken by myself at the moment and on the spot.

he says ‘the Committee (of 5. to wit, Dr [Benjamin] Franklin, [Roger] Sherman, [Robert R.] Livingston and ourselves) met, discussed the subject, and then appointed him and myself to make the draught; that we, as a subcommittee, met, & after the urgencies of each on the other, I consented to undertake the task; that the draught being made, we, the subcommittee, met, & conned the paper over, and he does not remember that he made or suggested a single alteration.’ now these details are quite incorrect.

the Committee of 5. met, no such thing as a subcommittee was proposed, but they unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught.

I consented; I drew it; but before I reported it to the committee, I communicated it separately to Dr Franklin and mr Adams requesting their corrections; because they were the two members of whose judgments and amendments I wished most to have the benefit before presenting it to the Committee; and you have seen the original paper now in my hands, with the corrections of Doctor Franklin and mr Adams interlined in their own hand writings   

their alterations were two or three only, and merely verbal. I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the Committee, and from them, unaltered to Congress. this personal communication and consultation with mr Adams he has misremembered into the actings of a sub-committee.

Jefferson didn’t write to Madison because he thought his friend might need convincing about this story. Rather, he was writing for posterity, putting his version of history on paper for us.

Though Pickering quoted John Adams’s letter, Jefferson took pains to excuse Adams of any fault but poor memory. By this time the two men had been corresponding amicably for over a decade. Indeed, Jefferson praised Adams in his letter:

had mr Adams been so restrained, Congress would have lost the benefit of his bold and impressive advocations of the rights of revolution. for no man’s confident & fervid addresses, more than mr Adams’s, encoraged and supported us thro’ the difficulties surrounding us, which, like the ceaseless action of gravity, weighed on us by night and by day. . . . he supported the declaration with zeal & ability, fighting fearlessly for every word of it.

Jefferson was less respectful of the arch-Federalist Pickering, though:

Timothy thinks the instrument the better for having a fourth of it expunged. he would have thought it still better had the other three fourths gone out also, all but the single sentiment (the only one he approves) which recommends friendship to his dear England, whenever she is willing to be at peace with us.

TOMORROW: Doctor’s advice.

“Jefferson proposed to me to make the draught”

At last we come to John Adams’s dramatic description of how he—and he alone—convinced Thomas Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence, in his August 1822 letter to Timothy Pickering.

You enquire why so young a man as Jefferson was placed at the head of the Committee for preparing a declaration of Independence? I answer, it was the Frankfort advice, to place Virginia at the head of everything.

Mr: Richard Henry Lee, might be gone to Virginia, to his sick family, for aught I know, but that was not the reason of Mr: Jefferson’s appointment. There were three Committees appointed at the same time. One for the declaration of Independence; another for preparing Articles of Confederation; and another for preparing a Treaty to be proposed to France. Mr Lee was chosen for the Committee of confederation, and it was not thought convenient that the same person should be upon both.

In fact, Lee wasn’t named to any of those three committees. Roger Sherman and Robert R. Livingston were placed on the Declaration committee on 11 June and the Articles committee on 12 June.

Mr Jefferson came into Congress in June 1775. and brought with him a reputation for literature, science, and a happy talent at composition. Writings of his were handed about remarkable for the peculiar felicity of expression. Though a silent member in Congress, he was so prompt, frank, explicit and decisive upon Committees, not even Saml Adams was more so, that he soon seized upon my heart, and upon this occasion I gave him my vote and did all in my power to procure the votes of others. I think he had one more vote than any other, and that placed him at the head of the Committee. I had the next highest number and that placed me the second.

The Committee met, discussed the subject, and then appointed Mr: Jefferson & me to make the draught; I suppose, because we were the two highest on the list.

The Sub-Committee met; Jefferson proposed to me to make the draught.

I said I will not; You shall do it.

Oh No!

Why will you not?

You ought to do it.

I will not.

Why?

Reasons enough.

What can be your reasons?

Reason 1st. You are a Virginian, and Virginia ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason 2d. I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular; You are very much otherwise. Reason 3d: You can write ten times better than I can.

“Well,” said Jefferson, “if you are decided I will do as well as I can.”

Very well, when you have drawn it up we will have a meeting.

A meeting we accordingly had and conn’d the paper over. I was delighted with its high tone, and the flights of Oratory with which it abounded, especially that concerning Negro Slavery, which though I knew his Southern Bretheren would never suffer to pass in Congress, I certainly never would oppose.

There were other expressions, which I would not have inserted if I had drawn it up; particularly that which called the King a Tyrant. I thought this too personal, for I never believed George to be a tyrant in disposition and in nature; I always believed him to be deceived by his Courtiers on both sides the Atlantic, and in his Official capacity only, Cruel.

I thought the expression too passionate and too much like scolding for so grave and solemn a document; but as [Benjamin] Franklin and Sherman were to inspect it afterwards, I thought it would not become me to strike it out. I consented to report it and do not now remember that I made or suggested a single alteration.

We reported it to the Committee of Five. It was read and I do not remember that Franklin or Sherman criticized any thing. We were all in haste; Congress was impatient and the Instrument was reported, as I believe in Jefferson’s hand writing as he first drew it.

Adams made a copy of Jefferson’s draft before it was complete, and Jefferson kept another draft with marks on it. The latter shows that Franklin did make substantive contributions.

On Independence Day in 1823, Pickering quoted liberally from Adams’s letter in an oration, which he then published.

TOMORROW: What did Jefferson think of that?

“Some among us urge strongly for Independency”

In August 1822, Timothy Pickering invited John Adams to do something the retired President really liked doing: explaining how he was close to the center of the most important decisions of the American Revolution.

Just four days after Pickering sent his letter from Salem, Adams responded with a long account of how the Continental Congress came to declare independence 250 years ago.

He started with a vivid word picture of the Massachusetts delegation to the First Continental Congress being “met at Frankfort [Frankford] by Dr [Benjamin] Rush, Mr [Thomas] Mifflin, Mr [John] Bayard and several others of the most active Sons of Liberty, in Philadelphia.”

That meeting was on 29 Aug 1774, according to Adams’s diary. At that time he wrote:

A Number of Carriages and Gentlemen came out of Phyladelphia to meet us. Mr. Thomas Mifflin, Mr. [Thomas] McKean of the Lower Counties [Delaware], one of their Delegates, Mr. [Edward or John] Rutledge of Carolina, and a Number of Gentlemen from Philadelphia. Mr. [Nathaniel] Folsom and Mr. [John] Sullivan, the N. Hampshire Delegates. We were introduced to all these Gentlemen and most cordially wellcomed to Philadelphia.

We also have Dr. Rush’s recollection in his memoir:

I went as far as Frankford to meet the delegates from Massachusetts, and rode back into town in the same carriage with John Adams, and two of his colleagues. This gentleman’s dress and manners were at that time plain, and his conversation cold and reserved. He asked me many questions relative to the state of public opinion upon politicks, and the characters of the most active citizens on both sides of the controversy.

Rush evidently warned Adams and Robert Treat Paine “against two Gentlemen particularly,” one being the Rev. William Smith of the University of Pennsylvania and the other not. (Adams’s diary preserved only one name.)

In his letter almost fifty years later, Adams stated that the Philadelphia radicals had come out for that meeting to warn the Massachusetts men that people viewed them as “four desperate adventurers.” The locals advised the newcomers to:

• let Virginians and other southerners take the lead on radical measures. 
• “not utter the word Independence, nor give the least hint or insinuation of the idea, neither in Congress or any private conversation.” 

Yet Adams recorded no hint of that warning in 1774. And the presence of a South Carolina delegate in the party would surely have inhibited discussion of how to lead along the south.

Adams’s 1822 letter then skipped ahead to the spring of 1776 as if the same situation still prevailed. Of course, a lot had happened during those eighteen months. By 1776 the Second Continental Congress delegates were discussing independence openly, though they insisted they weren’t pushing for it—rather, the Crown was pushing them toward it.

On 9 Jan 1776, for example, Richard Smith of New Jersey wrote in his diary: “Several Members said that if a Foreign Force shall be sent here, they are willing to declare the Colonies in a State of Independent Sovereignity.”

Robert Morris told a colleague on 15 February:

America has long been charged by her Enemys in England with aiming at Independency. The charge was unjust, but we now plainly see, that the burning of Towns, seizing our Ships, with numerous acts of wanton barbarity & Cruelty perpetrated by the British Forces has prepared Men’s minds for an Independency, that were shock’d at the idea a few weeks ago. This you may depend on, and should this Campaign open with furious Acts of Parliament, you may bid adieu to the American Colonies. They will then assuredly declare for Independency…

Joseph Hewes of North Carolina wrote home on 20 March:

some among us urge strongly for Independency and eternal separation, others wish to wait a little longer and to have the opinion of their Constituents on that subject, you must give us the sentiment of your province when your Convention meets.

Carter Braxton of Virginia reported on 14 April:

Independency & total Seperation from Great Britain are the interesting Subjects of all ranks of Men & often agitate our Body.

Notably, Morris and Braxton both opposed independence that spring. But they weren’t averse to discussing it.

Nonetheless, the next part of Adams’s letter was an almost necessary part of his post-Presidency memories: everyone disliking him because of his far-sighted and courageous stances.

It soon became rumoured about the City that John Adams was for Independence; the Quakers & Proprietary Gentlemen, took the alarm; represented me as the worst of men, the true-blue Sons of Liberty pitied me; all put me under a kind of Coventry. I was avoided like a man infected with the Leprosy. I walked the streets of Philadelphia in solitude, born down by the weight of care and unpopularity. But every ship for the ensuing year, brought us fresh proof of the truth of my prophesies and one after another became convinced of the necessity of Independence. I did not sink under my discouragements; I had before experienced enough of the Wantonness of popularity in the trial of Preston and the Soldiers, in Boston.

I’ve previously noted how there’s actually no contemporaneous evidence of Bostonians shunning Adams in the early 1770s because he represented Capt. Thomas Preston and the soldiers after the Massacre. 

Likewise, documents from 1775 and early 1776 show that Adams’s fellow Congress delegates continued to put him on many committees and to dine with him. No doubt it was awkward when the royal authorities intercepted and published letters in which he criticized colleagues like John Dickinson, but really Adams brought that on himself.

TOMORROW: Drafting the Declaration at last.

New Boston Museum Exhibits to Visit During the Sestercentennial

Two venerable Boston museums are unveiling big reworked exhibit spaces for the Sestercentennial.

At Revolutionary Spaces’ Old South Meeting House, “Ruckus!” opens formally on 2 July. This is a 25-minute “immersive” show that

drops you right into the heart of the debate and defiance that once filled this iconic space, where ordinary people set extraordinary change in motion.

From the floorboards to the balconies, you will be surrounded by dynamic sound, lighting, and projected animations of fiery revolutionaries, determined citizens, and some unlikely troublemakers whose courage shook these walls.

Revolutionary Spaces encourages people to buy tickets in advance since space at each showing is limited. Arrive around the top of the hour, and the show begins at fifteen minutes past. Tickets include admission to all of Old South’s exhibits and the Old State House.

“Ruckus!” includes loud noises and dynamic lighting to reflect the intensity of the story it tells. It therefore might not be comfortable all visitors. Revolutionary Spaces also offers “Sensory-Friendly Mornings” at the Old State House each month.

The Museum of Fine Arts has reopened its “Art of the Americas: 1700–1800” galleries with a new, hemispheric approach. Thomas Sully’s massive painting of Washington crossing the Delaware stayed where it is, but lots of other iconic artworks are arranged in a new way.

The museum says:

The MFA’s reimagined galleries of 18th-century Art of the Americas bring together works from across North, Central, and South America, and the Caribbean—including works by Native American and Indigenous makers. Together, the eight spaces in this suite, organized by theme, explore how artists have contributed to, or in some cases resisted, ideas of nationhood and identity. Visitors can immerse themselves in expansive versions of familiar stories, discovering the interconnectedness of the Americas and its history, institutions, and people.

The galleries have the themes of “Power and Resistance,” “History and Mythmaking,” “Asian Styles in the Americas,” “Boston’s World,” “Something’s Brewing” (not revolutions but caffeinated beverages), “Communities of Makers,” “Families at Home,” and “Copley’s Ambition.”

“To rewrite the Nation’s history with a white-out pen”

I’ve reported on how the White House mandated changes to signs interpreting the American Revolution and its legacy at Independence National Historical Park.

This month brought reports that the administration was trying to do the same at the National Parks of Boston.

Groups advocating for the parks, for history, and for science sued to reverse such changes across the system. Last week U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley, based here in Massachusetts, ruled that that lawsuit has a high chance of winning and ordered the National Park Service to restore the interpretive material to how it looked before.

You can download the 63-page ruling. Here are excerpts.

Often referred to as “America’s largest classroom,” National Parks serve in that spirit by telling the stories both of those who write history and those who go unheard. The beauty of history is the unvarnished storytelling of a time gone by and the delivery of undeniable truths. The Government’s stewardship of these park sites thus carries a responsibility to present history in full rather than in favored fragments.

Unfortunately, the Government has disregarded these principles. Under the guise of promoting American dignity, this Administration seeks to share a limited history by ordering the removal of all signs, displays, and interpretive exhibits at National Parks that do not align with its preferred narrative, thereby telling half-truths. . . .

Not only does this undermine the integrity of the National Parks; it sets a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization. The National Park Service Organic Act, the National Park Service Centennial Act, and the National Parks Omnibus Management Act, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act do not authorize such arbitrary and capricious action. . . .

National Parks were established to serve the public, yet the Order does not point to any evidence regarding the public’s reaction to signage at National Parks—let alone evidence that the public reacts negatively to representing diverse viewpoints and marginalized voices, or that existing interpretive materials are disfavored. Instead, tens of thousands of public comments submitted through QR codes at park sites have criticized Defendants’ actions, demonstrating that these materials instead promote the public’s ability to form stronger connections with park resources. . . .

A unilateral, unreasoned, and lawless Executive Order of a President cannot be the sole justification for an agency’s actions, lest the country be prepared to entrust its future to the whims of a single individual. . . .

According to Plaintiffs, the Secretary’s Order violates Defendants’ duty [under the Centennial Act of 2016] to implement a program of the “highest quality education and interpretation,” because such a program must include the topics now disfavored by the Order. Defendants contend that the phrase “highest quality education and interpretation” is ambiguous and, therefore, left to agency discretion. The Court agrees with Plaintiffs.

First, the Centennial Act unambiguously requires the NPS to incorporate diverse viewpoints into its interpretation and education program. Section 100802 mandates that the program be “of the highest quality.” Congress then provided clear instructions for what qualifies as “highest quality.” Section 100803 of the Act explains that the Secretary may undertake a program of regular evaluation “to ensure that [interpretation and education programs]…reflect different cultural backgrounds, ages, education, gender, abilities, ethnicity, and needs.” . . .

By its terms, the Order erases the history of countless people; alienates communities from public spaces; limits the availability of scientific information relevant to ensuring the long-term preservation of the parks themselves; and impairs the mission of the NPS to preserve the parks “for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.” The Executive Order, in fact, tarnishes the legacy of this great Nation by attempting to remove these items in time for, and in honor of, the 250th anniversary of our Nation’s creation. The gravamen of these public interests cannot be overstated. . . .

Plaintiffs have demonstrated a likelihood that Defendants’ efforts, ostensibly taken in the name of restoring dignity, instead seek to rewrite the Nation’s history with a white-out pen. History cannot be faithfully told while excluding the experiences of communities whose contributions, struggles, and achievements form an important part of our Nation’s story. Indeed, at a time of facts and alternative facts, the only thing we must be able to rely on as undeniable truth is history. And telling the full truths of our shared story helps our Nation heal from past wrongs, rather than prolonging us.

Because Defendants deemed it important to strip the parks of these undeniable truths in anticipation of the 250th Anniversary of our great Nation, it is equally important that our shared history be honestly told and fully restored by the 250th Anniversary to properly honor the remarkable achievements of the United States.

I expect the executive branch, increasingly staffed by the President’s criminal-defense lawyers, will appeal this ruling. By invoking the Sestercentennial, however, the White House and Secretary of the Interior empowered Judge Kelley to impose a 4 July deadline for restoring the interpretive signs. 

Did Sybil Ludington’s Ride Really Happen?

Last month I talked with Ryan Chatelain of Spectrum News about the tale of Sybil Ludington.

His story, headlined “Sybil Ludington is called the ‘female Paul Revere.’ But did her ride really happen?” is a good primer on the historical debate.

On the one hand, Vincent Dacquino has succeeded in pushing back the documented mentions of Sybil Ludington’s ride, as shown in the most recent edition of his book Patriot Hero of the Hudson Valley:

Through his research, Dacquino uncovered that the earliest evidence of her ride actually came in 1854, when Charles Ludington — Henry’s grandson and Sybil’s nephew — argued in a letter to a group of Masons planning a statue for Gen. David Wooster, who was killed in the Battle of Ridgefield, that Henry and Sybil Ludington should also be included in their tribute.

On the other hand, as I state in the article, we still lack contemporaneous evidence about the Ludingtons’ effect on the Battle of Ridgefield or anything else to support the family lore. Knowing that Charles Ludington believed the story seventy years later isn’t proof that it actually happened.

On such lore, Chatelain quotes me on my theory of “grandmothers’ tales”:

“Women, sometimes men, involved in raising children would tell stories of the family’s involvement in historical events, presenting those stories simply as educational, as inspirational, as entertaining, not expecting them to be put into the public realm,” Bell said. “…But the children who are hearing those stories grow up — and because these are the earliest stories they’ve heard, because they have to do with their family, because they hear them maybe many times — they really stick with them. And so as they become older, they want these stories, which they believe to be gospel truth, out for everyone to hear.”

The legend of Sybil Ludington’s ride is one of many that fit that model. We know that in other ways the Ludington family lore exaggerates how central their ancestors were to events—just as most family traditions and many personal memoirs do. All the more reason to look for solid evidence.

As I said to Chatelain, the Sybil Ludington story may have some basis in fact. But we have to acknowledge how that account was massaged and enlarged over the years. In the early 1900s an author published a conjectural map of her ride, based on what he acknowledged was supposition. That’s became the basis of more maps, measurements, and highway markers, as well as the repeated claim that Sybil rode farther than Revere—without any additional evidence being offered.

Remembering the Battle of Bunker Hill This Week

Next week brings the 251st anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Charlestown Historical Society and partner organizations have planned several events to commemorate it.

On Saturday, 13 June, there will be an Author & Historian Symposium in the lodge beside the Bunker Hill Monument. Among the scheduled speakers from 10 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. are:

• Timothy Reardon on the Brothers of the Battle of Bunker Hill descendants group 
• James Philbrick on his ancestor, David Howe
• Joni and Christine Parker on their ancestor, Benjamin Parker
• Christian Di Spigna on Dr. Joseph Warren
• J. L. Bell on the “whites of their eyes” quotation
• Joe Bagley on archeology in Charlestown, including the dig completed the day before
• Julie Hall on how public relations shaped the American Revolution

Throughout the day family artifacts, letters, journals, ephemera, and other historic items will be on display for visitors. A musket demonstration by the National Park Service is scheduled for 4:30.

Charlestown’s annual Bunker Hill Day Parade will be on Sunday, 14 June, from 12:30 to 4:30 P.M. I understand through other sources that there will also be a sidewalk demonstration against White House censorship of signs quoting later generations on the monument inside the lodge, as discussed here.

On Tuesday, 16 June, the society, the city of Boston, and GBH will cohost a community viewing of the Bunker Hill portion of Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt’s documentary series The American Revolution. Some of the historians, archeologists, and descendants from Saturday will be on hand, as well as Donald R. Ryan, biographer of William Prescott. That discussion will take place from 6 to 8 P.M. in the street-level meeting room of the Bunker Hill Museum.

On Wednesday, 17 June, the Bunker Hill Monument Association will have its annual meeting at 11 A.M. in the museum. Prof. Robert Allison from Suffolk University will speak on “The Importance of the Left Flank and the Rail Fence.” This event is open to B.H.M.A. members and invited guests only.

Finally, from 3:30 to 5 P.M. that Wednesday, the annual Remembrance Ceremony on the monument grounds will be open to the public.

“Paul Revere and Plan B” in Medford, 11 June

On Thursday, 11 June, I’ll speak to the Medford Historical Society on the topic of “Paul Revere and Plan B: Planning and Improvisation in the Lexington Alarm.”

Our event description says:

After the Battle of Lexington & Concord on April 19, 1775, Massachusetts resistance leaders portrayed the uprising as a mostly spontaneous response to the army’s incursion into a peaceful countryside. Decades later, Henry W. Longfellow presented “Paul Revere’s Ride” as nearly a one-man show.

In truth, the Massachusetts Patriots had prepared for months to resist the Crown military. Revere was part of a network of organizers, informants, and alarm riders. At the same time, Revere and his colleagues succeeded by being able to respond to contingencies by changing their plans.

Drawing on new research, this talk will shed light on one of independent America’s oldest stories—and how the day could have turned out differently.

I developed an earlier, short version of this talk for the 19th of April several years ago, and now I’m backloading it with more about Revere’s pre-war propaganda and espionage work.

The society will meet at the Charlotte and William Bloomberg Medford Public Library starting at 7 P.M. This event is free and open to the public.

(The photograph above, which comes courtesy of Digital Commonwealth, shows the reenactment of Paul Revere’s stop at the Isaac Hall House in Medford sometime in the mid-1900s.)

“Washington and slavery have always been particularly instructive”

At Commonplace, Karin Wulf of the John Carter Brown Library interviewed John Garrison Marks about his new book, Thy Will Be Done: George Washington’s Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory.

Wulf started with an introduction reiterating that talking about the Washingtons’ slaveholding is far from new in American culture:

As anyone reading this will likely know, and as John Marks notes below, a remarkable volume of important research detailing George Washington’s (and Martha Dandridge Custis Washington’s, and their family’s) investment in slavery has been published over the last two decades. In conjunction with critical work on other “founders,” namely Thomas Jefferson, this work has helped usher in a shift in public perspective that has been greeted with angst by those who either didn’t know or don’t want to know about the foundational role of slavery at the founding, but also by relief among the many who did and do.

This book is different. It takes up the question of how this very specific issue about the first president—his role as an enslaver—was debated over centuries. In other words, this was not a phenomenon that leapt upon a settled historical narrative unbidden from the culture wars or the specific spate of racial violence that called forth the Black Lives Matter movement. For me, there was another dimension.

As soon as I heard about John’s project some time ago, I was intrigued in part because at one point I checked out a number of copies of Washington’s will printed in the 19th and 20th centuries. Why, I wondered, were so many people keen to have to hand a copy of what Washington willed? In part it has to do with the vexed issue of manumission. John shows, in this book that helps us to see historical memory in motion, Washington and slavery have always been particularly instructive.

In the interview, Marks noted three ways Americans have discussed George Washington’s connection to slavery. Some complain about exploitation and hypocrisy, some insist on reverence for the other things he did, and some argue we should focus on how he moved away from slavery over his lifetime. “What was really fascinating in researching the book was how early and consistently all three of these perspectives appeared in the record,” Marks added, finding examples of each approach in the period of his death.

A New Fight at Bunker Hill

With the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill coming up on 17 June, the central office of the National Park Service has ordered Boston National Historical Park to remove much of a display of quotations of Americans commenting on the battle in the context of their times.

This incident began with the Trump administration ordering parks to post Q.R. codes to collect feedback from visitors in a new channel. This was clearly an attempt to trawl for political objections, but I heard that most of the comments were positive.

As reported by the Washington Post, “A visitor at the [Bunker Hill] site complained to park staff about a quote related to women’s suffrage as being ‘woke’ feminist ideology, the people familiar said, and the visitor later sent an email complaint.”

There appear to be two quotations on display that address the situation of American women in the late 1800s:

“The battle is celebrated for the justice of the cause, which, because it was just, was triumphant. The woman sufferance battle is like that of Bunker Hill—not won today, but sure to be later. Meantime, Bunker Hill Monument is our monument.”
—Lucy Stone, The Woman’s Journal, 22 June 1889

“Once, as we were passing by in the train, we saw the lofty shaft on Bunker Hill outlined against the sunset glow. [Lucy Stone] spoke eloquently of all it commemorates, and said in substance: ‘We are still battling for the principle it stands for. My spirit kindles whenever I see that monument. It is our monument.‘”
—Florence M. Adkinson, The Woman’s Journal, 1893

Stone’s claim on the monument probably derived from how women had been crucial to raising the funds to complete it in the early 1800s.

One might think that American women having the right to vote is no longer the sort of “corrosive ideology” that Trump’s appointees claim to oppose in federal historic sites and museums. They could read the U.S. Constitution and find it’s been part of our electoral system for over a century now.

Nevertheless, that visitor’s complaint cued “a wider review of material at the site.” N.P.S. officials in Washington ordered the removal of three quotations—though, ironically, not any about women.

The quotations in jeopardy are likewise all over fifty years old:

“As we drew near to Boston, there stood Bunker Hill Monument, towering up towards the heavens, as if in silent, bitter mockery of the millions of slaves guarded by the professed lovers of Liberty, who reared its lofty column.”
—G. F. Stebbins to William Lloyd Garrison, published in The Liberator, 22 May 1846

“Now that a public orator has declared that foreign-born men have no association with the men of the Revolution, it is our duty to show that in love of freedom and loyalty to the republic, the citizens of foreign birth take no second place…”
—“To Our Irish Societies,” The Pilot (published by Boston’s Roman Catholic archdiocese), 8 May 1875

“We find, upon reflection, that our duty to our country has not ended... We as Vietnam Veterans, strongly feel that the United States should cease to build memorials to death and begin to glorify life.”
—Arthur Johnson and Bestor Cram, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, published in the Boston Globe, 23 May 1971

Again, it’s hard to see what’s “corrosive” about supporting emancipation, immigrants showing loyalty to their new country, and life itself. But this is an administration now focused on observing the President’s birthday with gladiatorial games next to the ruins of the East Wing. They think in strange ways.

Cutting Remarks

Here’s another data point on the phrase “Tarleton’s quarter(s)” in the early American republic.

This item that appeared in the Centinel of Freedom newspaper, published in Newark, New Jersey, on 4 Dec 1798.

Original and True.

AFTER the battle of Cowpens, in which [Banastre] Tarleton’s dragoons were so roughly handled by the Americans, he drew up his men, and riding in front of the line, communicated to them strict order to give no quarter thereafter.

A short time after, in an action where the American militia threw down their arms and begged for their lives, one of them answered, “aye, aye! we’ll give you quarter; but as we are in something of a hurry, we’ll only halve you now, and quarter you as we come back:” and so hewed them down with their sabres.

“This naivete passed from mouth to mouth, and excited laughter in the midst of carnage! Were these men or fiends?”

This anecdote reflected the American memory of Tarleton and his men as monsters. There’s no evidence from the British side that the lieutenant colonel gave such an order, nor any evidence from wartime for this remark by one dragoon.

Notably, this tale was set after the Battle of Cowpens in January 1781. David Ramsay’s history, quoted yesterday, stated that the phrase “Tarleton’s quarters” arose after the Battle of Waxhaws more than six months earlier.

This article used an older sense of “naïveté,” meaning not the quality of being naïve but an action or remark arising from that quality. Not that I picture those dragoons as naïve.