A Presidential Ice Cream Order

According to this report, today as the third Sunday in July is National Ice Cream Day. Furthermore, in 1984 Ronald Reagan issued another order designating this whole month as National Ice Cream Month. And none of that should limit me: as a Bostonian, I consider every day to be Ice Cream Day. [Shout outs to Wally’s Wicked Good Ice Cream, Cabot’s, Lizzy’s, and J.P. Licks.]

Last week Lee Wright at The History List asked me about a statement that shows up in many feature articles this time of year that President George Washington spent a great deal on ice cream. Lee found statements of the current value of that purchase ranging from “over $5,000” to “about $100,000”—on ice cream in 1790. But what’s the historical basis of that claim?

I followed dribbles on the web back through Paul Dickson’s Great American Ice Cream Book (1973) to mid-century trade journals with titles like Confectionary and Ice Cream World and The Ice Cream Trade Journal. Several of those sources say the merchant who billed Washington for about $200 worth of ice cream was “Mr. Cove of Chatham Street.”

In fact, he was Joseph Corré, a native of France, reportedly a former cook for a British army officer who stayed in New York after the war. He ran nine notices in the New York Daily Advertiser in May-June 1790 thanking patrons for buying ice cream and ice from him. He sold out of his house at 55 Wall Street.

In May 1791 Corré opened a theater on State Street, presenting The Beaux’ Strategem and The Lying Valet. His Columbia Gardens and Mount Vernon Gardens businesses became notable values for plays and concerts in early New York, and he also appears in histories of the American circus.

According to this catalogue page, Mount Vernon owns Corré’s receipt for £51.6s.2d of ice cream and “mouls” (molds) delivered to Washington’s household from June to August 1790. I also saw mention in an antiques magazine of another Corré receipt for the President’s kitchen for earlier that spring, so he was a regular supplier. I don’t know when Corré’s ice cream receipt became public knowledge, but it looks like that happened about 150 years after he wrote it out.

Did George Washington eat that much ice cream? Not by himself. Rather, ice cream was part of how he and Martha entertained guests, officials, their wives, and members of the public at regular “levees,” or receptions. Abigail Adams described them in a letter to her older sister, Mary Cranch, on 27 July 1790:

mrs washington…has fix’d on every fryday 8 oclock. I attended upon the last, [with] mrs smith & charles. I found it quite a crowded Room. the form of Reception is this, the servants announce—& col [David] Humphries or mr [Tobias] Lear—receives every Lady at the door, & Hands her up to mrs washington to whom she makes a most Respectfull curtzey and then is seated without noticeing any of the rest of the company. the Pressident then comes up and speaks to the Lady, which he does with a grace dignity & ease, that leaves Royal George far behind him. the company are entertaind with Ice creems & Lemonade, and retire at their pleasure performing the same ceremony when they quit the Room.

Adams put a similar description, also including “Ice creams,” in her 6 Feb 1791 letter to Cotton Tufts.

(Those period quotations negate a statement in Benson J. Lossing’s Mary and Martha: “Ice-cream, the favorite delicacy of today, was then unknown.” But that book about the women in Washington’s life has long been recognized as hopeful myth. In fact, Mount Vernon has found records of the Washingtons buying ice cream equipment as early as 1784.)

The next question is how much £51.6s.2d. was worth in American dollars in 1790 and would be worth today? And that’s quite a complex question. In fact, examining how early American money worked is a very good way to realize that colonial life was by no means simple. There wasn’t enough specie (gold and silver coins) circulating in the economy, so most people paid off bills with paper notes whose values fluctuated depending on who had issued them, how far away the issuing institution or person was, and other factors. Most articles suggest the President’s ice cream purchase amounted to $200, which is probably a low approximation.

The next issue is how to calculate changes in currency between 1790 and today. The Measuring Worth website has been developed out of John J. McCusker’s monograph How Much Is That in Real Money? But there’s still a problem with equivalencies: because of technology, changing demands and supplies, the move away from coerced labor, and other factors, the real prices of different goods and services have changed at different rates. For example, unskilled labor is much more expensive these days while cloth is much cheaper. When I enter “£51” and “1790” into the Measuring Worth page for “Computing ‘Real Value’ Over Time With a Conversion Between U.K. Pounds and U.S. Dollars, 1774 to Present,” the result is:

When using the CPI/RPI, the (average) value in 2010 of £51 from 1790 is $6830.00. The range of values is from $0.00 to $9250.00. This answer is better if the subject is a consumer good or something else of interest to an individual.

Ice cream is of abiding interest to me, but I can’t say that fact makes narrowing a range between zero and $9,000 any easier. But I think we can eliminate the “about $100,000” figure cited above.

Because of modern refrigeration, ice cream is probably much cheaper relative to other foods than it was in Washington’s time. That means even if £51 in 1790 is on average about $6,800 today, I bet $6,800 today could buy even more ice cream than £51 bought for the Presidential mansion in 1790.

Gen. Gage at Salem Maritime Park, 20-21 July

I didn’t hear about this event until yesterday, and it looks like the schedule is still being worked out (with one possible factor the rolling but oh-so-welcome thunderstorms):

General Gage and His Troops Return to Salem

In May of 1774, General Thomas Gage, the newly-appointed Governor of Massachusetts, arrived in Boston with some controversial orders in his pocket: move the capital of Massachusetts to Salem, where calmer heads would hopefully prevail after several years of upheaval in Boston. He was wrong. During that summer, the Massachusetts legislature defied him, sent representatives to the first Continental Congress, and rejected his authority as Governor, setting in motion the events that culminated in the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

To commemorate that event, Salem Maritime, the National Park in Salem, and the Center for 18th Century Life at Minute Man N.H.P. are once again hosting a British Encampment at Salem Maritime on July 20-21, 2013. The National Park Service has invited some of the best re-enactors in Massachusetts to portray General Gage, his staff, his troops, and the legislators and civilians that he met in Massachusetts.

The events are due to run 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. It makes an interesting bookend with last weekend’s reenactment of Gen. George Washington’s arrival in Cambridge in 1775. While the two homes Washington used are still in place, the house where Gage lived is now in Washington, D.C.—but of course there are many other Revolutionary-era sites to enjoy in Salem.

The image above comes from the N.P.S.’s gallery of photographs from a similar event in 2011.

Henry Lloyd Worries about the Mail

The National Postal Museum has a webpage devoted to a 3 May 1775 letter from Henry Lloyd (1709-1795) to the New York merchants Oliver DeLancey and John Watts.

Lloyd was the eldest son in a mercantile family with roots in both Boston and Long Island, New York. He was a decided Loyalist. In March 1774 he tried to import tea into Boston, and a crowd destroyed it—part of the lesser-known second Boston Tea Party. By 1775 Lloyd was supplying the British military, which was the main topic of this letter.

At the time he wrote, Lloyd was besieged inside Boston with the British troops. He warned his New York colleagues that rebels might be opening their mail:

Your fav.r of 24th Ult.o [i.e., last month] came safe to hand Yesterday. Per Post & the Seal not broke, tho’ most of the Letters both publick & private were open’d before they got here & some of them stop’d, this Letter goes by a private Conveyance to Providence to be put into the Post Office there & hope it will reach you safe. . . .

Fresh provisions of all kinds are stop’d coming in here, & I don’t know how I shall be able to procure the Pork & Rice, Flour, & Pease I suppose may be had from Canada, some Butter I have procur’d here.

In 1776 Lloyd evacuated to Halifax with the royal authorities, and eventually the American governments confiscated his property in Massachusetts and New York. DeLancey and Watts remained in New York through the end of the war and then evacuated as well.

Henry’s younger brother James stayed in Boston after the siege. His neighbors knew he too was a Loyalist, but he was generally tolerated as a popular physician. James’s namesake son actually became a U.S. Senator.

(Photograph of the Lloyd brothers’ childhood home on Long Island courtesy of the Caumsett Foundation. The buildings are maintained by the Lloyd Harbor Historical Society.)

Dr. Benjamin Rush Goes to a Jewish Wedding

Back in April 2010, novelist and comics scripter Greg Rucka wrote:

Ok, so...anyone out there have information on Sephardic wedding customs in 1770s America?

Out of gratitude for Gotham Central, I sprang into action.

Finding websites and books stating that the only surviving description of a Jewish wedding in early America came from Dr. Benjamin Rush, I tweeted back that lead.

I didn’t follow that path myself until recently, but here at last is the doctor’s account for his wife of attending Rachel Phillips’s wedding to Michael Levy in Philadelphia in June 1787:

I accepted the invitation with great pleasure, for you know I love to be in the way of adding to my stock of ideas upon all subjects. At 1 o’clock the company, consisting of 30 or 40 men, assembled in Mr. [Jonas] Philips’ common parlor, which was accommodated with benches for the purpose. The ceremony began with prayers in the Hebrew language, which were chaunted by an old rabbi and in which he was followed by the whole company. As I did not understand a word except now and then an Amen or Hallelujah, my attention was directed to the haste with which they covered their heads with their hats as soon as the prayers began, and to the freedom with which some of them conversed with each other during the whole time of this part of their worship.

As soon as these prayers were ended, which took up about 20 minutes, a small piece of parchment was produced, written in Hebrew, which contained a deed of settlement and which the groom subscribed in the presence of four witnesses. In this deed he conveyed a part of his fortune to his bride, by which she was provided for after his death in case she survived him.

This ceremony was followed by the erection of a beautiful canopy composed of white and red silk in the middle of the floor. It was supported by four young men (by means of four poles), who put on white gloves for the purpose. As soon as this canopy was fixed, the bride, accompanied with her mother, sister, and a long train of female relations, came downstairs. Her face was covered with a veil which reached halfways down her body. She was handsome at all times, but the occasion and her dress rendered her in a peculiar manner a most lovely and affecting object. I gazed with delight upon her. Innocence, modesty, fear, respect, and devotion appeared all at once in her countenance.

She was led by her two bridesmaids under the canopy. Two young men led the bridegroom after her and placed him, not by her side, but directly opposite to her. The priest now began again to chaunt an Hebrew prayer, in which he was followed by part of the company. After this he gave to the groom and bride a glass full of wine, from which they each sipped about a teaspoonful. Another prayer followed this act, after which he took a ring and directed the groom to place it upon the finger of his bride in the same manner as is practised in the marriage service of the Church of England. This ceremony was followed by handing the wine to the father of the bride and then a second time to the bride and groom. The groom after sipping the wine took the glass in his hand and threw it upon a large pewter dish which was suddenly placed at his feet. Upon its breaking into a number of small pieces, there was a general shout of joy and a declaration that the ceremony was over. The groom now saluted his bride, and kisses and congratulations became general through the room.

I asked the meaning, after the ceremony was over, of the canopy and of the drinking of the wine and breaking of the glass. I was told by one of the company that in Europe they generally marry in the open air, and that the canopy was introduced to defend the bride and groom from the action of the sun and from rain. Their mutually partaking of the same glass of wine was intended to denote the mutuality of their goods, and the breaking of the glass at the conclusion of the business was designed to teach them the brittleness and uncertainty of human life and the certainty of death, and thereby to temper and moderate their present joys.

Mr. Phillips pressed me to stay and dine with the company, but business and [junior partner] Dr. [James] Hall’s departure, which was to take place in the afternoon, forbade it. I stayed, however, to eat some wedding cake and to drink a glass of wine with the guests. Upon going into one of the rooms upstairs to ask how Mrs. [Rebecca] Philips did, who had fainted downstairs under the pressure of the heat (for she was weak from a previous indisposition), I discovered the bride and groom supping a bowl of broth together. Mrs. Phillips apologized for them by telling me they had eaten nothing (agreeably to the custom prescribed by their religion) since the night before.

Upon my taking leave of the company, Mrs. Phillips put a large piece of cake into my pocket for you, which she begged I would present to you with her best compliments. She says you are an old New York acquaintance of hers.

The bride’s father was actually from Germany, thus perhaps not Sephardic. (He was fluent in Yiddish, and when British authorities intercepted his letters during the war, they reportedly concluded he had written in code.) But the mother of the bride was a Machado, and the groom’s family (from what little we know) were also Sephardic.

Eventually this couple’s descendants would own and restore Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

A Death at Deacon Tudor’s

Here’s a notable entry from the diary of John Tudor (1709-1795), a merchant and deacon of Boston’s Second (Old North) Meeting-House in the North End:

1772 March 16th

This Morning died my old faithfull Servant, a Negro Man, that Lived with me about 34 Years. But the last 10 Years of his life he was Useless, more espesaly the last 7 Years. We supposed him to be between 90 & 100 Years Old. He Kept’d his bed, but one Day & Died very easey.

It ’tis remarkable throw the goodness of God, tho’ we have had a larg Famaly of Children & servants for near 40 Years til of late, and never had till this Morning, but one person that Died under my Roof: my Sons & other Relations Died abroad. Bessed be God for a helthy Famely & all other Merceys.

£3 coffin.

“Servant” was colonial Boston’s euphemism for a slave. The deacon was clearly affected by his old slave’s death, but not enough to record the man’s name.

John Box: Not a Ropemaker?

The 1896 history of King’s Chapel states of one Revolutionary-era member of the congregation:

On the record of the death of Mr. John Box in the Church Books he is called ropemaker. This is a mistake. He owned much real estate, and belonging to it was a ropewalk. His niece was highly indignant at this statement of the record; said he never spun a rope in his life, but had a foreman who carried on the business.

In fact, Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette stated on the man’s death:

Oct. 31, 1774. Died of a consumptive disorder, and on Thursday was decently interred, Mr. John Box, aged 75 years, who for upwards of 40 years was an eminent Ropemaker in this town. He was a Man of a fair unblemished character, strictly just in his dealings, a constant attender of Divine worship, Several years (in turn) a Warden of King’s Chapel and one of the Vestry, its assistant and promoter in rebuilding that Church. He was no medler in politicks, yet a well-wisher to the publick welfare; he loved Order, and condemned too great a stretch of power; much esteemed by his worthy Acquaintance, and by the publick in general. He was a tender, affectionate Husband and Parent.

Obviously Box’s family or friends supplied this death notice and didn’t object to the word “ropemaker.” The legal papers from his estate also used that term. What made his niece object sometime later?

I blame the Industrial Revolution. In the 1770s ropewalks were among the few American manufacturing enterprises with a large workforce. Shipyards were another proto-industrial business that had to employ lots of men on the same project. By contrast, most craftsmen worked in relatively small shops in which the boss directly supervised journeymen and apprentices and put his own hand to some advanced tasks.

With the Industrial Revolution, enterprises expanded, and a new profession and class of men developed: managers. These men ran businesses from behind desks. They dealt with customers, juggled supplies and inventories, and got large staffs to do the work. Paul Revere was the most famous Bostonian to make this jump, from working silver himself in the North End to supervising a copper-rolling mill in Canton in the early 1800s.

In eighteenth-century British and American society, men were legally identified by their profession or place in society. Legal documents referred to “Aaron Wood, yeoman [i.e., small farmer],” or “Benjamin Burdick, barber,” or “William Wemms, laborer.” These labels were crucial. One summons for John Hancock was squelched on the grounds that it didn’t refer to him as “John Hancock, gentleman.”

By the end of the century people were using the term “manufacturer” to refer to the men overseeing large enterprises, like Revere. John Box appears to have been an early example of that type: at Box and Austin’s ropewalk in the West End, he managed the money and sales and his partner Benjamin Austin ran the production process. But I don’t think society understood and accepted the term “manufacturer” yet. Thus, both Box and Austin were labeled as “ropemakers.”

And no one saw anything wrong with that in 1774. Ropemaking was an important business in a seafaring town. People knew it could lead to wealth. Another of Boston’s ropemakers, John Gray, was one of the richer citizens and brother of the provincial treasurer. He probably didn’t spin any more rope than John Box did. But there were so few men like them who “made” things without using their hands that the culture didn’t yet have a name for them.

Only after the Industrial Revolution reshaped the American economy and class system did it seem desirable to label ropewalk owners differently from the skilled workers they employed.

Louisa Catherine Adams Gossips about the Vassalls

I spent yesterday at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, originally the house of John Vassall. One part of the event was the “potluck” dinner that Gen. George Washington (portrayed by Bill Rose) offered to John Adams (portrayed by Tom Macy) in January 1776. Yesterday was considerably warmer.

That’s enough of a tie-in to share this helping of gossip from Adams’s daughter-in-law, Louisa Catherine Adams, about Vassall’s first cousins, the daughters of his uncle William Vassall, in London in the 1790s:

The Vassalls were the most singular family, consisting of three or four females I dont recollect which; very tall, gaunt, masculine women, entirely independent and wealthy—their manners were like their persons coarse and unpleasant. They were old Maids and even their large fortunes could not lure a husband—

Each of them had some peculiarity but Miss Margaret [1761-1819] was the most conspicuous—She had fourteen Dogs who already slept in her chamber, a number of them in her bed, and whenever she went out to dine she carried a paper bag to take the gizzards of the fowls which she always made a point to ask for of the Lady of the House, and the conversation almost always turned upon little exploits of these charming puppies for the pleasure and edification of the company which she did the honour to join— The Sisters echoed the cry and we had the felicity of hearing the hounds without the possibility of flying the chase.

Lady Holland was the Cousin of these Ladies, and has likewise given some strong evidence of brutish tastes—

That last cousin was Elizabeth Vassall, daughter of Richard Vassall. She was still in her mid-teens in 1786 when she married the thirty-eight-year-old baronet Sir Godfrey Webster. In 1794 the Websters were traveling in Naples when Elizabeth fell in love with Henry Fox, Baron Holland (1773-1840). Two years later, Elizabeth and Henry had a son. Sir Godfrey divorced her in exchange for keeping the Jamaican property she had inherited, but by 1800 he had gambled that away and shot himself.

Elizabeth and Henry wed two days after her divorce became official. Then Elizabeth’s uncle Florentius Vassall left her more Jamaican plantations. As Baroness Holland, Elizabeth was an important hostess in Georgian and Victorian England until her death in 1845. She gathered politicians and authors, introduced the dahlia to English gardens, and praised Napoleon, but was best known for both encouraging and dictating conversation at her dinner table. As for Baroness Holland’s “brutish tastes,” at least two of her portraits (including the one above) show her with dogs.

The gossipy passage above comes from the just-published volumes of Louisa Catherine Adams’s writings.

Boston’s 1767 Non-Importation Pledge List Comes to Light

This week John Overholt at Harvard’s Houghton Library announced that Karen Nipps and her cataloguing team had discovered six copies of an October 1767 broadside with the signatures of over 650 Bostonians pledging not to import a long list of goods from Britain to protest the new Townshend duties. The library’s blog offers images of three of those sheets and snatches of others.

Bostonians had already made a public stand against importing what they said were unnecessary luxury goods, particularly ostentatious mourning garb. This takes a further step, expanding the list of goods that people promised to boycott. The selectmen publicized the town’s vote (though exactly who received this letter announcing it is unclear).

After another year, the 1768 merchants’ agreement covered every type of import except for a few things deemed necessary for local industry. As Sam Forman describes, in 1769 the Boston Whigs also asked people not to buy goods from shopkeepers who did import.

The 1767 pledge sheets are thus an early look at who in Boston was willing to put their names to a protest against Parliament’s new taxes. The signatories include some future Loyalists, such as Adino Paddock, Hopestill Capen, and (I think) Thomas Flucker. Dr. John Jeffries was among the few who pledged not to buy imports for only one year.

It looks like the signatures might be organized loosely by neighborhood. For example, one sheet includes John Ruddock, John Tudor, and Paul Revere, all prominent in the North End, near the top. I can imagine men carrying each sheet around a ward, asking folks to add their names.

One of the most surprising details of these sheets is the number of women who signed. They often decided on purchases of household goods, of course, and sometimes owned or managed shops. Some of the visible sheets have no female signatories, others several in a row. In the 1769 non-consumption agreement, only 6 of 111 signatories were women; I wonder what proportion of these names are female.

Other mysteries:

• Why did William Dawes, Jr., sign two sheets? (I don’t think there were two William Dawes, Jrs.)
  
• Why is the name under John Machett’s crossed out?
  
• Why does housewright John Bell’s name appear to be stamped instead of written?
• Catharine Thompson signed with her mark—was she really active in commerce or politics?

There’s a lot more data to be gleaned out of this document and comparing it to other records. I understand that it’s being fully digitized for widespread viewing soon.

Medfield’s Peak House at 302

Every New England town has its own historic landmarks, and in Medfield, Massachusetts, one of the most recognized is the Peak House—a small three-story building with a very sharp roof.

A couple of years ago Richard DeSorgher wrote in the Medfield Patch about the disagreement over its date:

The sign, installed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1930 and located in front of the Main Street house, proclaims its construction date to be 1680; rebuilt after it was burned in the attack on Medfield during the King Philip War in 1676. [That information also appears, as of today, on Wikipedia.]

Their supporting evidence comes from state records showing owner Benjamin Clark receiving payment in relief of taxes in 1680, due to the hardships suffered with the burning of his home. With that, he was able to rebuild. This 17th-century date has the support of famed architectural historian Abbott Lowell Cummings, director of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA), who studied the house a number of years ago ... not so fast.

William Tilden, famed Medfield Town Historian and author of the History of Medfield says in his publication: “The house was burned out by the Indians in 1676, but rebuilt upon the same spot. What is called the Peak House is an addition subsequently made to Benjamin Clark’s second house, in or about 1762. After the decay of the old part, “the Peak House section” was moved about 100 yards forward towards Main Street to its present location.”

Eighty years is a lot of room for error when it comes to New World properties. I suspect that one of the reasons the Peak House was so hard to date is its curious architecture—it doesn’t really fit into any style. Tilden’s theory that it wasn’t actually built to stand on its own at first might explain that odd shape.

The Medfield Historical Society hired Dan Miles, a dendrochronologist from Oxford, and announced his findings:

Six of the Peak House’s main frame timbers were sampled and analyzed. All six timbers were found to have been felled in the winter of 1710/11 with three of the timbers being from the same tree. These test results lead us to believe that the current Peak House was built during the summer of 1711.

This date jibes nicely with the coming of age of Benjamin’s youngest son, Seth, who would have been about 24 years of age that summer. Most likely part of Benjamin’s plan to give his son his inheritance included building a separate structure for Seth in front of his own dwelling (today’s Peak House). Indeed, Benjamin did give his property to Seth upon his death in 1724.

Thus, we can feel confident the Peak House is just over 300 years old.

The Medfield Historical Society is hosting tours of its house every Sunday from 2:00 to 5:00 P.M. through 15 September. They promise, “Even in the heat of summer, the Peak House is really cool—literally!” That’s what a very high roof does for you, I guess.

Great Men and Ordinary Americans

In his New York Times review of Joseph J. Ellis’s Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence, Andrew Cayton of Miami University argued that the book is missing a very big part of what constituted a revolution:

It simply won’t do to talk about a revolutionary summer in which the only voices are those of prominent white men and the recollections of 15-year-old Joseph Plumb Martin, written decades later. Ellis includes a handful of paragraphs on women, enslaved Africans and working-class artisans. But they read like generic concessions to critics who have chastised him for celebrating already celebrated white men rather than the rest of North America’s diverse population. The point Ellis misses is that attention must be paid to the people outside Congress not from a desire to make history more inclusive but because their voices were loud and their choices important, not least in their impact on the actions of the men inside Congress.

Incorporating more people would fundamentally change Ellis’s story, making it messier and less predictable. The “conspicuous consensus” on independence that emerged in Congress occurred nowhere outside of New England. Nor, again, were the maneuvers of the British Army the only challenges confronting members of Congress. It seemed obvious to many Americans that a state of war had existed with Britain since shots were fired at Lexington on April 19, 1775. Everywhere ad hoc committees were creating new political institutions, agreeing with Thomas Paine in his best-selling “Common Sense” that monarchy, not George III, was the basic problem. Honest men could govern themselves better than “the Royal Brute of Britain” could; on the day Americans proclaimed a new charter of government in which “the law is king,” they should demolish a symbolic crown and scatter its pieces “among the people whose right it is.”

This stunning proposition horrified other Americans. Just as thousands were choosing independence because it promised revolution in favor of natural rights and self-government, so thousands were choosing the British Empire because they dreaded a democratic revolution that they feared would degenerate into anarchy and popular tyranny. Many believed the imperial tensions reflected inept administration rather than structural failure. Ellis writes that “most probably, a poll of the American population” in September 1776 “would have revealed a citizenry more politically divided and receptive” to Richard Howe’s peace terms “than the Continental Congress or its diplomatic representatives.” It is a point he fails to develop. [John] Adams spoke for a small percentage of the population. So did [John] Dickinson. . . .

In short, what made the summer of 1776 revolutionary was the range of options, the cacophony of voices, the increasing resort to violence, the growing sense that nothing was safe. Americans like to believe that their revolution as well as their independence was a moderate affair in which the founding fathers were in control of events rather than the other way around. Unfortunately, “Revolutionary Summer” reinforces that perception.

In a big sense, Ellis already responded to that sort of critique of his work twelve years earlier in his preface to Founding Brothers:

The apparently irresistible urge to capitalize and mythologize as “Founding Fathers” the most prominent members of the political leadership during this formative phase has some historical as well as psychological foundation, for in a very real sense we are, politically, if not genetically, still living their legacy. And the same principle also explains the parallel urge to demonize them, since any discussion of their achievement is also an implicit conversation about the distinctive character of American imperialism, both foreign and domestic.

A kind of electromagnetic field, therefore, surrounds this entire subject, manifesting itself as a golden haze or halo for the vast majority of contemporary Americans, or as a contaminated radioactive cloud for a smaller but quite vocal group of critics unhappy with what America has become or how we have gotten here. Within the scholarly community in recent years, the main tendency has been to take the latter side, or to sidestep the controversy by ignoring mainstream politics altogether. Much of the best work has taken the form of a concerted effort to recover the lost voices from the revolutionary generation—the daily life of Marsha Ballard as she raised a family and practiced midwifery on the Maine frontier; the experience of Venture Smith, a former slave who sustained his memories of Africa and published a memoir based on them in 1798. This trend is so pronounced that any budding historian who announces that he or she wishes to focus on the political history of the early republic and its most prominent practitioners is generally regarded as having inadvertently confessed a form of intellectual bankruptcy.

Though no longer a budding historian, my own efforts in recent years, including the pages that follow, constitute what I hope is a polite argument against the scholarly grain, based on a set of presumptions that are so disarmingly old-fashioned that they might begin to seem novel in the current climate. In my opinion, the central events and achievements of the revolutionary era and the early republic were political. These events and achievements are historically significant because they shaped the subsequent history of the United States, including our own time. The central players in the drama were not the marginal or peripheral figures, whose lives are more typical, but rather the political leaders at the center of the national story who wielded power. What's more, the shape and character of the political institutions were determined by a relatively small number of leaders who knew each other, who collaborated and collided with one another in patterns that replicated at the level of personality and ideology the principle of checks and balances imbedded structurally in the Constitution.

Given how much power elite men wielded in eighteenth-century society, it does make sense to look at their words and actions. And Cayton doesn’t argue that Revolutionary Summer should ignore the arguments of the politicians in Philadelphia. Rather, he reminds us that those men were influenced by the populace around them, sometimes in ways they didn’t recognize. It’s valuable to study the Revolution from both the top and the bottom.

And the fact that Ellis misspelled the name of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s subject Martha Ballard as “Marsha” undercut his implicit claim to have carefully considered other approaches.

Joseph J. Ellis’s Famous and Familiar Founders

Joseph J. Ellis has long focused on well-documented individuals in eighteenth-century America, which, given the structures of the time, mostly means white men with wealth and education. Not always famous men, though: his first book was about Samuel Johnson of Connecticut and King’s College, the sort of historical figure Wikipedia is made for, and the men profiled in After the Revolution are only slightly better known.

In 1993 Ellis wrote about a more famous individual, John Adams, but started with that President’s life after being President. The result, Passionate Sage, is probably his best book, bringing out new insights into Adams’s mind. It helped usher in new respect for Adams, though it took David McCullough’s more traditional biography to make him a television luminary.

Next Ellis wrote American Sphinx, about Thomas Jefferson—a more popular President to begin with. This book covered its subject’s entire national career, from the Second Continental Congress through retirement. The result was a more familiar study, but also a bestseller and winner of the National Book Award.

Since then, Ellis has focused closely not just on the Founders but mostly on well known parts of their lives, particularly their political activities. Founding Brothers and American Creation are in essence collective biographies, each a collection of essays about top politicians maneuvering among themselves. His Excellency covers President Washington, and First Family returns to John Adams—but this time as a more familiar study of his marriage and family.

In his review of First Family for The New Republic, Jack Rakove detected a formula in Ellis’s approach:

He likes to limit his books’ number of chapters (five to seven) and overall length. Each chapter has a clear theme, framed within neat chronological limits. Ellis is a natural storyteller, a conversational historian in the ease with which he addresses readers. He generally avoids the distractions and complications that other historians feel driven to work out. He projects a great deal of confidence in his own judgments, which smack of genuine scholarly insight.

Rakove’s review also suggested that Ellis had gotten sloppy with little facts that add up to a lot.

Ellis’s latest is Revolutionary Summer, about the period when the Congress voted for independence and Gen. Washington confronted the British military with nearly calamitous results. It comes in eight chapters plus a postscript. Andrew Cayton’s review of Ellis’s Revolutionary Summer in the New York Times Book Review begins: “If you know the musical ‘1776,’ you know the plot of Joseph J. Ellis’s breezy new book. It’s a stirring and conventional story.”

This approach has earned good reviews from authors with roots in journalism, such as David M. Shribman in the Boston Globe and David Holahan in the Christian Science Monitor. Those reviews basically retell the book’s narrative and argument about the importance of this period (which few would really argue with). But does Ellis’s focus on famous individuals mean he’s missed important parts of the story?

TOMORROW: Great men and ordinary people.

Gen. Washington Coming to Cambridge Discovery Days

This weekend, 13-14 July, the city of Cambridge is hosting its annual Discovery Days of historic walks, lectures, and building tours. For the first time this year, that event includes a Revolutionary encampment at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site and Longfellow Park on either side of Brattle Street.

On 15 July 1775, Gen. George Washington paid for cleaning, and presumably moved into, the mansion that the Loyalist John Vassall had left behind the previous September after the “Powder Alarm.” For the next nine months Washington lived there with Gen. Horatio Gates, his secretaries and aides, and after December his wife Martha and her son and daughter-in-law.

Why did the new commander-in-chief choose that home for his headquarters? Neither he nor his staff nor the Massachusetts Provincial Congress left any direct statements about his thinking. I looked at several theories that authors have suggested over the years. For instance, some suggested that the Vassall house was further away from British artillery batteries—but eighteenth-century guns couldn’t have reached central Cambridge.

In the end I concluded that Washington’s most likely motive was not to get away from the British but to get away from his own men. The house that Gen. Artemas Ward used as his headquarters (now gone) and the first house Washington used when he arrived at Cambridge were both right next to Harvard College, where hundreds of Continental soldiers were barracked. Washington liked hierarchy. He liked order. He had work to do. I think he thought putting more distance between headquarters and the enlisted men was a good thing.

Plus, in 1775 the Vassall estate—the most expensive in Cambridge, with barns, stables, fields, gardens, orchards, and land extending to the Charles River—might have reminded Washington of Mount Vernon.

A gentleman who portrays Gen. Washington will be part of Cambridge Discovery Days’ reenactment on Sunday, 14 July. (I understand that he recently sustained an injury, so the general might be even stiffer than usual.) There will be infantry drills, demonstrations of medical care, and other aspects of life in the American camp. This being the middle of a city, the soldiers won’t be firing their muskets—so consider this event as reenacting camp in August after the general discovered how little gunpowder his army had and ordered the troops not to fire their guns needlessly.

ADDENDUM: This afternoon I obtained a schedule for the day. Highlights include:

• 10:30 and 11:30 A.M., 1:30 and 3:30 P.M.: Drill demonstrations and training for young visitors (April 1775-April 1776).
  
• 11:00 A.M.: Gen. Washington and his aides arrive (July 1775).
  
• 12:00 noon: Gen. Washington inspects the troops and inquires into an officer’s behavior at Bunker Hill (July 1775).
  
• 12:30 P.M.: The general invites John Adams to a potluck dinner (January 1776).
  
• 1:00 P.M.: Col. Benedict Arnold arrives with a report and expenses from Ticonderoga (August 1775).
  
• 2:00 P.M.: Is there a spy ensconced in the American camp? (September 1775)
  
• 3:00 P.M.: Formal transfer of command from Gen. Artemas Ward (July 1775).

Laurie Halse Anderson Has Some Gossip to Share

Laurie Halse Anderson is a novelist best known for her contemporary young-adult book Speak, which was a National Book Award finalist, a Printz Award Honor Book, and winner of the Golden Kite Award. It’s an unflinching study of a rape victim in high school, which a few people object to.

Anderson has also won acclaim for her historical fiction for young readers, starting with Fever 1793, about life in the American capital during the yellow-fever epidemic. She’s completing a trilogy of novels about the fight for liberty, individual and national, in the Revolutionary War: Chains, Forge (another National Book Award finalist), and the upcoming Ashes. She’s also written a nonfiction picture book called Independent Dames: What You Never Knew About the Women and Girls of the American Revolution.

Acknowledging “a strange affinity for muskets and chamberpots,” Anderson wants more young people to discover the fascinating world of eighteenth-century America. So she recently launched a Tumblr site that explains itself this way: “The reason you hate American history is because the people look weird. Let me adjust your senses.” The site is full of portraits from the period and is called “Hotties of the American Revolution.” Pass the word.

The American Revolution as a Flop and a Model

Last week the Washington Post ran a provocative essay by the Ontario writer and retailer Paul Pirie arguing that the American Revolution was “a flop,” not achieving what the Declaration of Independence set out as its goals—or at least not achieving those goals as well as some other democratic nations today (not least of which is Canada).

Pirie noted that the U.S. of A., despite being founded with the ideals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” today:

• ranks 51st in the world in life expectancy at birth.
• has far more of its population in prison than any other large democracy.
• guarantees fewer benefits and protections for workers, and has a life-satisfaction measure behind Australia and, yes, Canada.

Pirie also points to the gridlock in Washington, a product of the U.S. Constitution’s design for the federal government. (Though I don’t think his example of an “austerity budget” right after a recession is the best example of how government should work, given classical economics. But some rational budget process would be nice.) And he doesn’t even mention the Electoral College.

I agree with Pirie that Americans have a tendency to overlook how many other nations have produced peaceful, prosperous democracies with rights for their citizens and good services for their children even though they aren’t American. Some have even done so while keeping vestiges of monarchy, which the American Revolution threw off. Some have chosen democracy under much harsher economic and geographic circumstances than the U.S.

Over the past century few of of those nations have followed our Constitution’s model. In particular, most have chosen parliamentary systems over our form of separated, overlapping, and often conflicting powers.

But in other important respects those nations have been inspired by the U.S. We Americans may be too wedded to provisions in a Constitution written over two hundred years ago by men who didn’t agree on its meaning then and couldn’t conceive of how we live today, but most nations since 1789 have seen the value of having a written national constitution. Finite terms for elected officeholders, judges empowered to overturn unconstitutional laws, and stated individual rights are other ideas the American republic worked out for the world.

Indeed, the very idea of a large republic of diverse interests was revolutionary. As scholars at the “American Revolution Reborn” conference discussed at length this spring, the American Revolution inspired many others in the following decades, including the French and Haitian revolutions of the late 1700s and the South American revolutions of the early 1800s. The example of the American republic spurred reformers in Britain, and even Canada.

Would, for example, Denmark or South Korea or Costa Rica or even Canada be as democratic as they are today if the U.S. of A. hadn’t been founded as it was in the late eighteenth century? It’s impossible to say one way or the other. History doesn’t allow for controlled experiments of that sort. But if the American Revolution had indeed “flopped,” as Pirie suggested, the world—and even Canada—might look very different today.

Through Colonial Women’s Eyes at Historic Deerfield

Historic Deerfield’s Summer Lecture Series for this year is titled “Through Her Eyes, In Her Words: The Lives and Writings of Three Colonial Women.” It will feature three authors describing the surviving writing of women from colonial New England, one lecture on each of the remaining Thursdays in this month.

11 July: “One Colonial Woman’s World: The Life and Writings of Mehetabel Chandler Coit,” presented by Michelle Marchetti Coughlin. I heard Coughlin speak at the New England Historical Genealogical Society in February. Her book One Colonial Woman’s World: The Life and Writings of Mehetabel Chandler Coit explores what seems to be Coit’s commonplace book, along with other documents. Coit was born in Roxbury in 1673 and moved to Connecticut, where she died in 1758.

18 July: “Writing Her Way to Salvation: the Role of the Pen in the Life of Elizabeth Porter Phelps,” presented by Elizabeth Pendergast Carlisle. Phelps kept a diary and letters over many years in Hadley, providing Carlisle with the material for her 2007 book, Earthbound and Heavenbent: Elizabeth Porter Phelps and Life at Forty Acres (1747-1817).

25 July: “Re-introducing Phillis Wheatley: A Genius in Bondage,” presented by Vincent Carretta. His recent biography of Wheatley is a fine feat of reconstructing a life both celebrated and shadowed.

Benedict Arnold Sings!

Benedict Arnold was born in January 1741 in Norwich, Connecticut, but there have been times the town wasn’t eager to publicize that fact. The Norwich Bulletin reports that the town will start commemorating that history with a new spirit this fall:

Arnold will be the subject of a new, original musical at the Spirit of Broadway Theater in just a few months. Rarely-seen artifacts from his homestead will be on display at the Leffingwell House Museum. And there’s even a planned Benedict Arnold walking tour built around his old stomping grounds. . . .

The musical, with a working title of “Benedict Arnold,” is being written by Jeffrey Lodin, William Squier and Richard Vetere. It’s set to run from Sept. 11 through Oct. 13, and will be a part of the theater’s schedule for at least the next three years, Bernardini said. It’s [sic] tagline is, “He pledged allegiance…but to who?” . . .

Arnold remains such a lightning rod that Bernardini said many faithful Spirit of Broadway donors have withdrawn funding for the enterprise. It cost about $30,000 to commission the work, and another $100,000 in production costs, he said.

The Spirit of Broadway Theater appears to be dedicated to creating new musicals of all sorts. Watch this webpage for more information about this revolutionary production.

The Declaration of Independence: The Deleted Scenes of Horror

This is a passage from Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence that the Continental Congress cut before issuing the document in its collective name. It’s part of the litany of horrible things the Declaration blames on George III:

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemispere, or to incure miserable death in their transportation hither. this piratical warfare, the opprobium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he had deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

Jefferson, a little miffed at being edited, made private copies of his draft for friends and posterity. (Those drafts differ slightly one from another, so some transcripts might read a little differently. Note Jefferson’s characteristic omission of capital letters at the start of sentences and possessive “it’s.”)

Sometimes people interpret this passage as a condemnation of slavery, but really it condemns the slave trade: the removal of people from Africa to the Americas. Some colonial legislatures, including Virginia and Massachusetts, had passed laws prohibiting the import of more Africans, and the Crown had vetoed them (i.e., “he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce”).

No North American colony had moved to end slavery itself, however. Jefferson, while complaining about the unnatural cruelty of slavery and blaming George III for somehow forcing slavery on him and other colonists, never campaigned to end slaveholding within America.

The Congress deleted this passage for two big reasons: many delegates supported the slave trade, and the complaint didn’t pass the laugh test. Already supporters of the royal government were pointing out how many American shouting for “liberty” were also slaveholders.

The only oblique reference to slavery to survive in the Declaration was the line “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us…”

Faces of the Continental Army

Visit Time magazine’s website for a “Lightbox” feature of thirteen daguerreotypes of veterans of the American Revolution, starting with Boston’s Peter Mackintosh.

These images come from the collection of Joe Bauman, whose books I described here. The article accompanying the images describes how he got into that research:

In 1976, Popular Photography featured the images of The Last Men of the Revolution [1864] in its issue commemorating the United States’ Bicentennial. One reader, a Utah-based journalist named Joe Bauman, was already an avid collector of antique photography when he came across the piece.

“I realized that if these fellows were still alive at the time when glass plate negatives were being made in the 1860s, surely there were plenty who were alive during the daguerreian era,” Bauman told TIME.

Using skills honed by a career of investigative reporting, Bauman sought out other portraits of Revolutionary War veterans. Given the breadth of the War, where most every man from age 15 to 45 was actively involved in one way or another, Bauman could cast a wide net, searching for daguerreotypes of men around the age of 80 or 90 at the time the images were taken.

The print issue of Time dated 8 July 2013 includes a smaller selection of these portraits.

Meanwhile, in New York Harbor

This is the anniversary of a major turning-point in the Revolutionary War. Not because in 1776 the Continental Congress was debating how to publicly declare independence from Britain, as it had voted to do the day before. Rather, on 3 July 1776 the British military returned to the thirteen colonies in force, raising the conflict to a new level.

When Gen. William Howe evacuated Boston in March 1776, all thirteen colonies that had delegates in Philadelphia became basically free of royal control. Patriot leaders knew that situation wouldn’t last, but they enjoyed de facto independence and moved toward formalizing that status.

That spring Gen. Henry Clinton and Comm. Sir Peter Parker commanded a force off the Carolina coasts. In June they tried to take Charleston, South Carolina, the fourth-largest port on the Atlantic coast. In the Battle of Sullivan’s Island on 28 June, American troops fought off that force, but it was relatively small: about 2,200 British soldiers and no more than a dozen ships.

However, the next day a larger British fleet arrived in New York harbor. Gen. Howe had already sailed there from Halifax with most of his 9,000 troops to follow. But on 29 June his older brother, Adm. Richard Howe, arrived from Britain with the largest expeditionary force the Crown had yet assembled: 21,000 soldiers (12,000 British and 9,000 German). Soon Clinton and Parker would join the Howes.

Eventually the British naval force at New York included 73 warships and 300 other ships for transporting soldiers and supplies. But even on the first day the admiral’s fleet was imposing. On 29 June Pvt. Daniel McCurtin of Maryland wrote in his diary:

This morning as I was up stairs in an outhouse I spied, as I peeped out the Bay, something resembling a Wood of pine trees trimed. I declare at my noticing this that I could not believe my eyes, but keeping my eyes fixed at the very spot, judge you of my surprise, when in about 10 minutes, the whole Bay was as full of shipping as ever it could be. I do declare that I thought all London was in afloat.

Just about 5 minutes before I see this sight I got my discharge.

McCurtin headed for home.

On 3 July, on the advice of Gen. James Robertson, the Howes began to land troops on Staten Island. The Continental troops on that island quickly retreated to New Jersey, taking a few prominent Patriot families with them. By the next day, the British had 9,000 soldiers on friendly territory in position to threaten New Jersey, the American positions on Long Island, and New York City itself. And more ships and men were still arriving.

“Battle Road” Workshop, 5-8 Aug

The Massachusetts Historical Society is offering this summer workshop for educators and the interested public.

Battle Road: Crisis, Choices, and Consequences
Monday, 5 August, to Thursday, 8 August

Using historical documents, landscapes, buildings and artifacts as investigative tools, participants will examine the concerns, conflicts, dilemmas, decisions, and dramatic confrontations of people along the road to revolution. Presented by the Massachusetts Historical Society and partnering organizations, the workshop takes place in locations throughout Boston, Lexington, Lincoln, and Concord. An outstanding group of historians, educators, and site interpreters will work with the group over the course of the four day workshop.

This workshop is funded in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati. The registration fee is $125, or $100 for teachers and M.H.S. members or fellows. Educators can earn P.D.P.’s and (for an additional fee) two graduate credits through Framingham State University.

Sites visited include the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, the Lexington Historical Society’s taverns, the Concord Museum, and the Old Manse. The final evening will feature living-history characters, colonial entertainment, and dessert in Minute Man National Historical Park.

Among the authors scheduled to address the group are William M. Fowler (Samuel Adams: Radical Puritan), Robert Gross (The Minutemen and Their World), Brian Donahue (The Great Meadow), and Mary Fuhrer (“The Worlds of Lexington and Concord Compared”).

See this page for more information and registration instructions.

“From Revolution to New Nation” Teachers’ Institute, 29 July-2 Aug

Here is the first of two weeklong workshops for teachers that I know are happening in and around Boston this summer.

From Revolution to New Nation: Exploring Boston’s Trails to Freedom, 1760–1860
Monday, 29 July, through Friday, 2 August 2013

Travel along Boston’s Freedom Trail and the Black Heritage Trail and meet some famous, and some not so famous, Bostonians whose contributions helped to bring the United States from British colonies to an independent country to a nation on the brink of Civil War.

Experience in-depth tours of the sites themselves, explore primary-source documents, examine replica artifacts, and listen to lectures by scholars in their fields. Learn exciting ways to make this time period come to life in elementary and middle school classrooms from museum educators and park interpreters.

I’ll give one of the lectures along the way, about the controversies before, during, and after the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Participants can earn 30 P.D.P.’s or two graduate credits through Framingham State University. The basic cost is $125; graduate credit involves more work and an additional fee. Participants must be able to walk up to 1.5 miles per day in hot weather, and some sites are not fully accessible. Space is limited to 25 participants with preference given to Boston Public School 3rd–8th grade teachers who haven’t attended a Boston People and Places teachers’ institute in the past.

Boston People and Places is a collaboration among historic sites along Boston’s Freedom Trail and Black Heritage Trail, Boston National Historical Park, and Boston African American National Historic Site. Its partner in this institute is the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, founded in 1892 to cultivate an interest in Colonial and American history by publishing, encouraging research, and facilitating active discussion of historical issues and events.

For more information, contact Emily Holmes at the Paul Revere House (617-523-2338) or institute coordinator Elisabeth Nevins. You can download the flyer for this institute from this page.

Another American Revolution Miniseries in the Works

This month Deadline reported on another upcoming television miniseries set during the American Revolution:

Production on The Book Of Negroes…will begin in the fall on the project written [by] Clement Virgo and [Lawrence] Hill. It will air stateside on BET and on CBC in Canada.

The story centers on Aminata Diallo, who is taken by slave traders from West Africa to South Carolina. It follows her through the American Revolution in New York, the isolated refuge of Nova Scotia and the jungles of Sierra Leone, before she ultimately secures her freedom in England in the early 1800s.

The Book of Negroes miniseries is based on Lawrence Hill’s novel of the same name, first published in Canada in 2007. It won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize the next year. If you’ve never heard of it, that might be because it was published in the U.S. of A. and elsewhere under the title Someone Knows My Name.

Hill’s original title referred to the list of free blacks evacuated with the British military from New York at the end of the war. That list is an important element in the book, and a valuable historical source for such studies as Cassandra Pybus’s Epic Journeys of Freedom.

In 2008 Hill wrote in the Guardian about why his American publisher had, probably after feedback from major retailers, asked to change the book’s title:

In my country, few people have complained to me about the title, and nobody continues to do so after I explain its historical origins. I think it’s partly because the word “Negro” resonates differently in Canada. If you use it in Toronto or Montreal, you are probably just indicating publicly that you are out of touch with how people speak these days. But if you use it in Brooklyn or Boston, you are asking to have your nose broken.

When I began touring with the novel in some of the major US cities, literary African-Americans kept approaching me and telling me it was a good thing indeed that the title had changed, because they would never have touched the book with its Canadian title.

I suspect that when the miniseries airs in the U.S., it will be called Someone Knows My Name.

Abigail Adams Birthplace Open House, 30 June

On Sunday, 30 June, the Abigail Adams Birthplace in Weymouth is reopening after a two-year restoration, the Quincy Patriot-Ledger reports. The 1685 house has been structurally reinforced, equipped with climate control to allow year-round programs, and spruced up with new clapboards.

I should note that this birthplace isn’t quite in the same place as it was in 1744, when baby Abigail Smith was born there, or 1764, when she married John Adams in the parlor. The house was moved to a new site by oxen in the early 1800s. After World War 2, it was sawed in half, moved back to its original neighborhood, and reassembled. The Boston Globe shares a photo of the latter move as well as the image above.

Three of Weymouth’s ministers lived in the house, with the Rev. William Smith being the second. But apparently it wasn’t officially the town parsonage—it appears to have been the property of the ministers themselves, and each family sold to the next. The building is now the property of the Abigail Adams Historical Society.

The newspapers disagree, but the society’s website says that after a members’ reception it will host a reopening ceremony for the public from 1:00 to 5:00 P.M. The house will then be open for visits this summer on 13 and 28 July and 10 and 25 August. Admission will be $5 for adults and teens, $1 for children under age twelve.

The Royal Irish Artillery at the Revere House, 29 June

On Saturday, 29 June, from 1:00 to 4:00 P.M., the Paul Revere House in the North End will host Fred Lawson, a founder of the Royal Irish Artillery reenacting group. He will show off sample artillery tools and discuss the use of those weapons in battle (though the chance of setting off cannon in downtown Boston is very small).

Revere was an artillerist, eventually commanding Massachusetts’s regiment during the 1779 expedition to Maine. He was never in the Royal Irish Artillery, of course. Instead, the site reports, “The Royal Artillery fought against Paul Revere at the Siege of Castine in Penobscot Bay.”

Histories of the Royal Irish Artillery, including David Dooks’s article on the reenacting unit’s site, say that most of the unit remained in Ireland throughout the war. Seventy men were drafted (i.e., transferred) into the Royal Artillery to accompany Gen. John Burgoyne’s thrust down from Canada in 1777. Those artillerists were captured after Saratoga.

William L. Calver’s 1922 article “The British Army Button in the American Revolution” reported that a Royal Irish Artillery button had been found in Somerville, where some of the prisoners of war from Burgoyne’s army were housed. Dooks quotes a letter saying the Irish artillerists, unlike many of their fellow captives, were to be exchanged by the end of the year. So were those men among the British forces in Maine?

Wikipedia says another Royal Irish Artillery button was found at Fort George in Castine, Maine. However, Calver wrote that such a button was found at the Fort George out on the Niagara River, so that might be a false lead.

Regardless, Lawson’s demonstration of artillery tools and tactics will be technically correct. Artillerists who don’t know their craft don’t last as long as his unit has.

And there are many more summer events at the Paul Revere House. Saturdays in July will feature music, including fife and drum, dulcimer, Benjamin Franklin’s glass harmonica, and colonial dance tunes. In August, experts will demonstrate weaving, tailoring, tinsmithing, penmanship, and other useful arts.

These events are free with admission to the museum: adults for $3.50, seniors and college students $3.00, children aged 5 to 17 $1.00. (Members and North End residents get admitted free.) For more information, check the house’s website.

(For the record, the Military Campaign dates the Royal Irish Artillery button shown above to after 1785.)

The Declaration of Independence and Big Capital

The folks at Seth Kaller, Inc., and the Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries sent a report on a big sale:

The rare first newspaper printing of the Declaration of Independence we auctioned yesterday brought $632,500—a record price for any historic newspaper. . . . The July 6, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post was only the second printing of the Declaration in any form. The copy sold yesterday is one of just four issues of the Post’s Declaration printing that have appeared at auction in the past 50 years.

The purchaser was David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group. Six years ago he bought an antique copy of the Magna Carta, then loaned it to the U.S. National Archives while funding a large display facility for the agency. He’s also made multimillion-dollar gifts to benefit Monticello and the Washington Monument.

In its booklet announcing this sale, with good photographs of the newspaper for sale and other 1776 printings of the Declaration, the firm noted the typographical differences between Benjamin Towne’s Post printing and the earlier official broadside issued for the Continental Congress by Pennsylvania Packet printer John Dunlap (shown above).

Both versions capitalize the beginning of sentences, proper names, and words such as “God,” “King,” “Prince,” etc., but excluding those, Dunlap capitalzes an additional 291 internal words (within sentences). However, Towne capitalizes only two internal words.

This observation led us to compare two June 1776 working drafts of the Declaration, one in Thomas Jefferson’s hand, and one copied from Jefferson’s draft by John Adams. The Adams copy follows the same pattern, with Adams capitalizing many words that Jefferson has in lower case.

The firm suggests that there might have been multiple manuscripts of the Declaration in July 1776, one used by Dunlap and one by Towne—one perhaps from Adams and one from Jefferson.

I think this analysis is missing an important factor. Almost all the words capitalized in Dunlap’s broadside but not in Towne’s newspaper are nouns. The rest are adjectives preceding important nouns. In eighteenth-century English it was still common, though old-fashioned, to capitalize all nouns and noun phrases (while capitalizing and italicizing proper nouns). Dunlap followed that rule of style for his Declaration broadside; Towne chose the more modern style for his newspaper reprint. The differences between the two printings could thus arise from each printer applying a systematic rule to the same text.

Was Dunlap guided by John Adams’s style? I doubt that since Dunlap also published Adams’s Thoughts on Government in 1776, and that pamphlet didn’t capitalize most nouns, as this careful transcript shows. (I also checked images of the pamphlet, but I can’t link to them.) Adams did capitalize many nouns, though irregularly, in the letters leading up to that pamphlet. Thus, I conclude:

• Dunlap didn’t conform to Adams’s capitalization when setting his manuscripts.
• Dunlap didn’t always capitalize all nouns, even in serious publications like Adams’s pamphlet.

Dunlap also didn’t capitalize most nouns in his newspaper, and neither did Towne.

On the other hand, when the Congress issued a broadside on 10 Dec 1776 (about “the Army that now threatens to take Poessession of this City”), Dunlap reached into the capital case again. So it appears that someone important at the Congress in 1776 liked Big Letters for its major announcements.

I haven’t done a systematic survey, but I did see that when the Congress issued its “Address to the Inhabitants of the United States” in May 1778, with Henry Laurens as presiding officer, Dunlap did not use the extra capitals. And John Hancock had gone home.