Michael G. Kammen’s Season of Youth

Last month brought news of the death of Michael G. Kammen, an American historian who taught for several decades at Cornell University.

Kammen’s first book was A Rope of Sand: The Colonial Agents, British Politics, and the American Revolution (1968), about the colonies’ lobbyists in London. He wrote other histories of early America, such as Colonial New York (1975) and People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1973.

However, the field that Kammen staked out for himself wasn’t so much what happened as how we Americans have liked to remember events happening. A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American Culture (1986) won the Francis Parkman and Henry Adams Prizes by discussing what we think of when we talk about the Constitution. Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (1991) treated our understanding of history as itself a historical construct, and spearheaded a school of books about how we consider and commemorate the past.

The Kammen book most meaningful to me, because of my interests, was A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination (1978), which isn’t always included among his major works. Among other topics that book considered the historical fiction set during the Revolution, and why the most popular books set in that period are about boys coming of age:

Almost to the point of numbing monotony,…imaginative writers have consistently perceived the American Revolution as a national rite de passage, and have relentlessly projected that vision to an ever-widening readership. . . .

In some instances…a divided family exemplifies the divided empire; but much more common is the intergenerational conflict between father and son within the colonies, or a young man and his prospective father-in-law.

Of course, American Patriots coined the metaphor of parent and child when discussing relations with Britain, among other ways of viewing the crisis. But later generations seized on it.

Kammen traced a pattern of American novels through school staples like Johnny Tremain (1943) and and My Brother Sam Is Dead (1974) and lesser examples like Thomas Forty (1947), April Morning (1961), and even Kenneth Roberts’s Loyalist novel Oliver Wiswell (1940). Further examples published since Kammen’s book include the two volumes of The Life and Astonishing Adventures of Octavian Nothing and the eventual three volumes of the Forge trilogy.

We might counter that most fiction for young readers is at some level about coming of age, and the adult supporting characters will almost always be less complex than the young main characters. But Esther Forbes actually labeled Johnny Tremain “A Novel for Old and Young,” suggesting she wasn’t just trying to write for fifth-graders. If her hero was a teenager, that’s because she felt Johnny’s story was a good vehicle for his society’s political awakening. And that book remains the twentieth-century novel of the Revolution that has struck the most chords for American readers.

The Junto Reviews the Books of Pauline Maier

Early this month The Junto devoted a week of their blog to reviewing the legacy of historian Pauline Maier, who died this summer. Their essays discuss both Pauline’s four major books (she also wrote valuable articles, reviews, and teaching texts) and where she fit into the late-1900s “ideology” school of historians of the Revolution. All the posts are worth reading, but here are some highlights.

Michael Blaakman on From Resistance to Revolution:

Maier demonstrated just how much a scholar can do by writing a history of both ideas and events, in ways that seem to me to have inspired many of the questions and methods that drove the subsequent generation of New New Political Historians. That ever-elusive sweet spot—where ideas and action, process and perception, meet—was the source of Maier’s powerful argument about why the revolutionaries opted for republican self-government after independence, and about how they learned its ins and outs through the work of colonial resistance.

Sara Georgini on The Old Revolutionaries:

Maier’s prosopography of five men and their “worlds,” accentuated by a thoughtful “interlude” on the rigors of political life in the colonies, marked a change in how historians used individual biographies to retell the Revolution to post-bicentennial Americans. First given as a series of lectures at New York University in 1976, the essays gather a fairly random matrix of people for a group shot of colonial life: Samuel Adams, Isaac Sears, Dr. Thomas Young, Richard Henry Lee, and Charles Carroll [plus] [New Hampshire Continental Congress delegate] Josiah and [wife] Mary Bartlett. . . . Wisely, Maier seized this opportunity to remind the reader that revolutionary thought did not happen outside of the colonists’ mundane or personal experience, but during and because of it.

Roy Rogers on American Scripture:

Maier makes several downright revolutionary moves in her interpretation of the Declaration and the movement toward American independence, more broadly. The most important, and most challenging to the common assumptions of historians and laypersons alike, is that there is nothing truly original about the Declaration. Maier sees the document “as a statement of political philosophy, [it] was…purposefully unexceptional in 1776.”

Ken Owen on Ratification:

The attention to detail, and especially the evident desire to treat each and every participant in the debates [over the Constitution] with respect for their views, is an approach that could easily tend to the arcane. Yet Maier writes with a verve and an evident passion for telling the story that can engage academic specialists with its attention to detail, yet also provide a gripping read for. It is easy to see that Maier had great fun researching, writing, and talking to others about this book…

Of these books I found From Resistance to Revolution most helpful for what interests me about pre-Revolutionary New England. The Old Revolutionaries might be the best for more casual reading since it focuses on individuals and each chapter can be taken on its own.

Undefil’d with Art

This poem appeared on the front page of the 16 Dec 1773 Boston News-Letter.

An ACROSTICK.

G overn’d by Wisdom, steadily he rules,
O ver the thinking Wise, and giddy Fools;
V irtuously dispos’d, of noble Mind;
E nvy itself must see, except it’s Blind.
R evil’d, publicly insulted, he,
N ever forgets to bless his Enemy;
O pen and frankly gives Advice to all.
U nbiased, to Rich, to Great, to Small,
R ightly determines when on him they call.

H ere view the Man, who to his Sovereign’s true:
U seful in Church, in State, a Patriot too;
T rue to his God; firm in Religion’s Cause;
C hristianity his Guide, with wholsome Laws;
H earty in Friendship; undefil’d with Art;
I ndustrious to inform the erring Heart.
N or let New-Albion’s Sons mistake the Man,
S ince he profoundest Rules of Art can Scan;
O n him shall lasting Peace and Honours rest,
N one’s happier than the Magistrate thus blest.

By then most people in Massachusetts didn’t share those sentiments about Thomas Hutchinson, their royally appointed governor. That evening, Bostonians would defy him by destroying a large shipment of tea. Meanwhile, Isaiah Thomas was selling an almanac that featured this picture of Hutchinson, engraved by Paul Revere.

Web Exhibit about the Raids on Fort William & Mary

At the same time that Rhode Island’s preparations for war included moving cannon from Newport to Providence, where they would be beyond reach of the Royal Navy, the New Hampshire militia was taking similar but more dramatic action.

This website from the University of New Hampshire library preserves an exhibit on the militia raids on Fort William and Mary in Portsmouth’s harbor on 14-15 Dec 1774. The exhibit is largely based on chemistry professor Charles Lathrop Parsons’s The Capture of Fort William and Mary, published in 1903. It provides a good overview of this lesser-known event.

There are still some glitches in the online exhibit. The link labeled “The Gunpowder at Bunker Hill” leads instead to a letter from the governor; I haven’t found a webpage on powder. The webpage titled “Gentleman in Boston writing to a Mr. Rivitigton of New York” actually refers to James Rivington, printer of the Loyalist New York Gazetteer. That letter, as transcribed in American Archives, clearly did not endorse what had gone on in Portsmouth starting the night of 14 December:

With difficulty a number of men were persuaded to convene, who proceeded to the Fort, which is situated at New-Castle, an Island about two miles from the Town, and being there joined by a number of the inhabitants of said New-Castle, amounted to near four hundred men; they invested the Fort, and being refused admittance by the Commander of it [John Cochran], who had only five men with him, and who discharged several guns at them, scaled the walls, and soon overpowered and pinioned the Commander; they then struck the King’s colours, with three cheers, broke open the Powder House, and carried off one hundred and three barrels of Powder, leaving only one behind.

Previous to this expresses had been sent out to alarm the country; accordingly, a large body of men marched the next day from Durham, headed by two Generals; Major [John] Sullivan, one of the worthy Delegates, who represented that Province in the Continental Congress, and the Parson of the Parish [John Adams], who having been long-accustomed to apply himself more to the cure of the bodies than the souls of his parishioners, had forgotten that the weapons of his warfare ought to be spiritual, and not carnal, and therefore marched down to supply himself with the latter, from the King’s Fort, and assisted in robbing him of his warlike stores.

After being drawn up on the parade, they chose a Committee, consisting of those persons who had been most active in the riot of the preceding day, with Major Sullivan and some others, to wait on the Governour [John Wentworth], and know of him whether any of the King’s Ships or Troops were expected. The Governour, after expressing to them his great concern for the consequences of taking the Powder from the Fort, of which they pretended to disapprove and to be ignorant of, assured them that he knew of neither Troops or Ships coming into the Province, and ordered the Major, as a Magistrate, to go and disperse the people.

When the Committee returned to the body, and reported what the Governour had told them, they voted that it was satisfactory, and that they would return home. But, by the eloquent harangue of their Demosthenes [i.e., Sullivan], they were first prevailed upon to vote that they took part with, and approved of, the measures of those who had taken the Powder.

Matters appeared then to subside, and it was thought every man had peaceably returned to his own home, instead of this Major Sullivan, with about seventy of his clients, concealed themselves till the evening, and then went to the Fort, and brought off in Gondolas all the small arms, with fifteen 4-pounders, and one 9-pounder, and a quantity of twelve and four and twenty pound shot, which they conveyed, to Durham, &c.

Two opposing military forces facing off against each other (albeit one comprising only six men). The royal troops firing muskets and cannon, and the colonial militia storming a fortification and capturing the men inside (albeit with no killed or wounded on either side). Territory, gunpowder, and ordnance changing hands. The end of royal government in New Hampshire as Wentworth sought shelter and then departed for Boston. One might even think that a war had begun.

The Rev. John Adams, minister at Durham from 1748 to 1778, suffered from what we’d now call bipolar disorder, according to the description of the Rev. John Eliot:

For he was in his best days, and when he was not exposed to peculiar trials of his ministry, very much the sport of his feelings. Sometimes he was so depressed as to seem like a being mingling with the dust, and suddenly would mount up to heaven with a bolder wing than any of his contemporaries.

Local tradition says that he allowed some of the gunpowder from Fort William and Mary to be hidden under his pulpit. It probably seemed like a good idea at that moment.

Rhode Island Prepares for War

Samuel Ward was one of Rhode Island’s delegates to the First Continental Congress in 1774. There he met John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, and other men pushing for a united opposition to the London government’s strictures on Massachusetts.

On 19 Oct 1774, the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for North America, sent a letter to all the colonial governors reporting that the privy council had barred the export of gunpowder and arms to the colonies. In most colonies the governors were royal appointees, and Ward appears to have assumed they’d keep this news to themselves. In Rhode Island and Connecticut, however, the governors were elected by the colonial legislature, and Gov. Joseph Wanton had shared the letter with his fellow politicians.

Ward and his Patriot colleagues saw the cut-off of gunpowder and arms as a clear attempt to limit the colonies’ ability to defend themselves. On 14 December he fired off warnings to Dickinson and to Lee from his home in Westerly. Here’s how his letter to Lee begins:

As it is of the greatest Importance that every Colony should have the earliest Notice of the hostile Intentions of Administration I have enclosed You Copies of Lord Dartmouths Letter & the Order received with it. Our Genl. Assembly immediately ordered Copies of them to be sent to Mr. [Thomas] Cushing to be communicated to the [Massachusetts] provincial Congress. They then ordered the Cannon at [Newport’s] Fort George (which was not tenable) to be sent to Providence where they will be safe and ready for Service, 200 bbls. of Powder, a proportionate quantity of Lead & Flints & several Pieces of brass Cannon for the Artillery Compy. were order’d to be purchased, a Major General (an officer never before chosen in the Colony) was appointed, several independent Companies of light Infantry Fusiliers, Hunters &c were formed, the Militia was order’d to be disciplined & the Commanding Officers empowered to march the Troops to the Assistance of any Sister Colony.

The Spirit & Ardor with which all this was done gave Me ineffable Pleasure and I heartily wish that the other Colonies may proceed in the same spirited Manner for I fear the last Appeal to Heaven must now be made & if We are unprepared We must be undone. The Idea of taking up Arms against Great Britain is shocking but if We must become Slaves or fly to Arms I shall not hesitate one Moment which to chuse for all the Horrors of civil War & even Death itself in every Shape is infinitely prefarable to Slavery which in one Word comprehends every Species of Distress Misery Infamy & Ruin.

Moving cannon to a more secure place, buying weaponry when the London government had just forbade that export, appointing a major general and forming new militia companies, invoking John Locke’s “Appeal to Heaven”—Ward’s Rhode Island was clearly preparing for war in December 1774.

Peering into “the Gulf”

On Thanksgiving I quoted Pvt. Joseph Plumb Martin’s description of his regiment’s holiday in December 1777. At the time those soldiers were passing through an area he called “the Gulf.” I decided to plumb that depth and find out more.

This area is currently know as Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania. A large part of the Continental Army camped there for a week starting on 13 Dec 1777 before they moved on to Valley Forge for the winter. So the Gulph Mills encampment got relegated to a footnote.

But the local civic association is happy to promote local history:

Records do not tell just where Washington’s headquarters were as some of his letters were dated “Headquarters Gulph Mill,” others “near the gulph” and one to the Board of War was dated “Headquarters Gulph Creek, 14th December, 1777.” It is thought the Headquarters were the Hughs home at the Walnut Grove Farm, now a part of the Gulph Mills golf course.

General Lafayette’s Headquarters was at the site where the Mary MacFarland Cutler home stood. The Mary Cutler home was torn down to build the Gulph Mills approach to the Expressway. Part of the landscaping of the home can be observed today.

One landmark that does survive is the “hanging rock.” After some proposals to run a highway over it, it’s now on the registry of historic places.

Sheilah Vance wrote a day-by-day series on the encampment, starting here. As a taste, here’s surgeon Albigence Waldo in his diary on 16 December:

Cold Rainy Day, Baggage ordered over the Gulph of our Division, which were to march at Ten, but the baggage was order’d back and for the first time since we have been here the Tents were pitch’d, to keep the men more comfortable.

Good morning Brother Soldier (says one to another) how are you? All wet I thank’e, hope you are so (says the other).

The Enemy have been at Chestnut Hill Opposite to us near our last encampment the other side Schuylkill, made some Ravages, kill’d two of our Horsemen, taken some prisoners. We have done the like by them…

After the army moved into Valley Forge on 19 December, Gulph Mills became an advanced position, occasionally commanded by Col. Aaron Burr.

Elisha Adams’s Admission

Last night author Nathaniel Philbrick and I talked about the Battle of Bunker Hill at Cambridge Forum. That was taped to make a radio show or podcast, and I’ll post the link when it’s ready.

In the meantime, here’s a record of something else happening that same day, 17 June 1775, from the Boston Public Library’s collection, made available through archive.org.

Whereas I having been Suspected to be unfriendly and inimical to the Just rights & Liberties of America & the Constitution of the Province, Being Sensible that by Some imprudent Conversation & Conduct I have Justly Caused Such Suspicions, & more Especially in my Selling a horse on the way from Acton to Charlston ferry, but a Day or 2 before the late Hostilities Commenced at Concord, & also by Conversation with Katherine wife of Jonathan Adams sd. Relating to the Negro Plan for killing woman Children &c, And being Sensable of my Imprudence therein Do freely Say, That with Regard to Selling sd. horse I Sincerely Declare that I had no thought nor intention any way, whatsoever to Assist & Enable the British forces then at Boston to march into the Country, Neither Did I think any thing but that the sd. horse was to have been Sent Directly to Deerfield. But as it is Strongly Suspected the sd. horse was made use of in the sd. Hostilities, I am Sorry I Sold sd. horse as I Did, And with Regard to my Conversation with mrs. Adams Relative to the Negro plan afore sd., Altho. I had no unfriendly intention, yet I Acknowledg the sd. Conversation & Answers then made to Mrs. Adams Justly Aggravated the Suspicions Afore sd., and that thereby I manifested an unfriendly inhumane Disposition, for which unadvised Conduct I ask the forgiveness of my Neighbours & acquaintances & of Neighbour Adams & wife in Particular.

Elisha Adams
June 17 1775

Recreating the background of this document is a bit uncertain since there were so many families named Adams in Medway, where it’s from. But it looks like Elisha Adams (1719-1781) had been a big man in town: deacon, town clerk, and often selectman. He was Medway’s representative in the Massachusetts General Court for several years in the 1760s, but Jeremiah Adams had won that seat and held it since 1769.

Elisha’s neighbor Jonathan Adams (1737-1814) was some sort of cousin a generation younger. He may have recently become a selectman, or that might be another member of the same family.

In any event, Elisha Adams seems to have been less enthusiastic about the uprising against the royal government than his neighbors, and to have spread alarmist rumors about a slave revolt. There were similar alarms at other times in 1774 and 1775 with very little evidence behind them—it was simply a common fear in a slaveholding society. Other folks in Medway in turn assumed the worst about how Adams had sold his horse.

On 8 June Elisha Adams had signed another document declaring that he felt Parliament’s new laws were unconstitutional and that he would support the Continental Congress’s plans to counteract them. But the town’s committee of correspondence and selectmen evidently wanted a more specific admission of fault, hence this document.

All the Adamses remained in Medway during the war. Elisha paid a higher-than-average amount to maintain soldiers, presumably substitutes for himself or family members. He died in Medway in 1781 and is buried there.

Dr. Joseph Warren’s Psalm Book?

Tonight I’ll be discussing the Battle of Bunker Hill with author Nathaniel Philbrick at Cambridge Forum, and the name of Dr. Joseph Warren is sure to come up. Relics of Dr. Warren have been one of the recurring themes of Boston 1775, and here’s yet another example.

In the 1852 edition of his book The Hundred Boston Orators (and perhaps in other editions), James S. Loring wrote:

A British soldier, on his return to London, exhibited a Psalm-book to Rev. Dr. Samuel Wilton, of that city, stating that he took the volume from the pocket of Gen. Warren, after the battle of Bunker Hill.

The clergyman, knowing that it would be a treasure to the Warren family, purchased the book of the soldier, and transmitted it to the Rev. Dr. William Gordon, of Roxbury, the historian, with a request that it might be given to the nearest relative of the general. It was, therefore, given to his youngest brother, Dr. John Warren, of Boston, March 15, 1778.

The title of the volume, which the editor has examined, is as follows: “The Boke of Psalmes, wherein are contained praires, meditations and thanksgivings to God, for his benefits toward his Church, translated faithfully according to the Hebrew. With brief and apt annotations in the margin. Printed at Geneva, by Rowland Hall. 1559.” It is less than the 32mo. size. On the inside cover of this book is inscribed,—“Taken at ye Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775, out of Dr. Warren’s pocket.” On the inside cover, at the end of the book, is written, “Thomas Knight,”—probably the regular who secured the book.

Warren’s signature was on a blank leaf, but it has been abstracted.

In other words, the page with the signature had been sliced out.

Benjamin Silliman described seeing this book in 1835. The Warren family wrote about it in a biography of Dr. John C. Warren and eventually donated the book to the Massachusetts Historical Society. Dr. Sam Forman’s recent biography of Joseph Warren describes the book and shows a photo of its title page and the notes about its provenance opposite.

The Rev. Samuel Wilton (his D.D. was an honorary one from Princeton) was indeed a friend and correspondent of the Rev. William Gordon of Roxbury. Wilton’s father was a church deacon in the East London parish of Wapping, and he became a dissenting minister in the South London parish of Tooting. He was still in his early thirties when he died in the spring of 1778, soon after sending that psalm book across the Atlantic.

Unfortunately, we have only the Warren family’s memory about the page signed with Joseph Warren’s name. That would be the crucial link in the chain of evidence connecting the book back to the doctor. Without it, we have to consider the possibility that a British army veteran might have taken advantage of a minister with some ties to New England and sold him an old psalm book and a story.

Little-Known Morale Poster from the Seven Years War

With apologies to Fort Ti, which has its own version on a T-shirt.

Reenactment of the Lexington Tea-Burning, 14 Dec.

As I’ve mentioned before, Old South Meeting House and the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum will host their annual reenactment of the Boston Tea Party on Monday, 16 December. That’s the 240th anniversary of the event. Tickets are still available.

Two days before then, on Saturday the 14th, the Lexington Historical Society will host its second annnual “Burning of the Tea” reenactment. That event actually occurred on 13 Dec 1773, and three days later the radical Massachusetts Spy reported:

We are positively informed that the patriotic inhabitants of Lexington, at a late meeting, unanimously resolved against the use of Bohea Tea of all sorts, Dutch or English importation; and to manifest the sincerity of their resolution, they bro’t together every ounce contained in the town, and committed it to one common bonfire.

That item went on to say that the people of Charlestown were considering the same action.

The next Monday newspapers, including the Boston Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, reprinted the first paragraph but not the second. I don’t know whether that means Charlestown didn’t proceed to destroying tea or whether its inhabitants’ action was lost in the excitement over the Tea Party. Because by then, of course, a much larger amount of tea had been sunk in Boston harbor.

Though the tea-burning in Lexington was thus overshadowed, it’s still significant as an early sign of rural support for Boston. The interests of farmers didn’t necessarily align with those of merchants, mariners, and craftsmen, but the voters of Lexington chose to support the people of the port. The Boston Gazette for 20 December printed the Lexington town meeting’s detailed resolves against the tea, adopted just before the burning, as the first item on its front page. (The Boston Post-Boy, which leaned toward the Crown, declined to run those resolves on account of space.)

Lexington’s reenactment of the tea burning will take place at 3:00 P.M. at Munroe Tavern (shown above), 1332 Massachusetts Avenue. The Rev. Peter Meek will portray the Rev. Jonas Clarke. The Boy Scouts will build a bonfire, and the William Diamond Fife and Drum Corps will play music. All other children must be supervised.

If You Missed the RevWar Schmoozer…

Last month Journal of the American Revolution editor Todd Andrlik organized what he called a “RevWar Schmoozer” for anyone in Boston involved in Revolutionary history—researching, preserving, interpreting, reenacting, writing, teaching, guiding, whatever.

I wasn’t sure what to expect at that event, but I when I walked in and saw a fellow in a redcoat uniform (from the Freedom Trail Foundation) chatting with a gent in a modern U.S. Navy uniform (from the U.S.S. Constitution), I knew that Todd’s vision had panned out.

I found friendly faces from the National Park Service and many individual sites, from tour companies, from the publishing industry, not to mention from my home-town ice cream parlor. Later that evening, Gary Gregory from Edes & Gill noted the irony that it took a guy from Chicago to make that event happen in Boston.

Well, we locals have another opportunity to gather in Cambridge this Wednesday at 9:00 P.M. That evening Nathaniel Philbrick will be answering my questions about Bunker Hill and George Washington at Cambridge Forum—a free event starting at 7:00. After Nat finishes signing books, we’ll walk over to the Nubar restaurant in the Sheraton Commander Hotel for a reception in his honor hosted by the Friends of the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters with support from the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.

There will be some hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar. And as many Revolutionary-history folks as want to come and schmooze with each other. Even if you can’t make the Cambridge Forum conversation, stop by the reception to say hello to fellow professionals and enthusiasts.

(Above: A photo of some Boston history folks at the end of the “schmoozer” after most people had gone home. Todd’s the big fellow in the back. Note Ben Edwards in front holding a copy of the first Journal of the American Revolution collection.)

Environmental History Methods Panel, 10 Dec.

Starting in late 1769, there was a famine in Bengal which lasted deep into the next year. Those poor harvests, followed by shortfalls in the next two years, are blamed for ten million deaths. They also caused many people to migrate from the most affected areas, some of which turned back into tropical jungle.

The government of Bengal—which at that time was the British East India Company—had no control over the environment, of course. But many historians say the famine was exacerbated by its policies. As a profit-seeking corporation, it had pressed farmers to switch to non-food cash crops (opium, indigo), discouraged food “hoarding” for lean times, and kept raising and collecting the tax on land while harvests failed.

Even so, the East India Company remained in terrible financial straits in the early 1770s. For years gentlemen in London had been debating how to reform the company, and reports of the famine suggested that there would be no quick recovery to solve the problem. With many Members of Parliament owning stock, the East India Company was obviously too big to fail.

Lord North and his ministers came up with what they thought was a clever solution: the company could increase revenue by exporting its overstock of Chinese tea directly to North America. By cutting out middlemen, the company could increase its revenue even as it lowered the cost of tea to consumers. The tea tax, in place since 1767 and to be collected as soon as the tea was legally landed, would continue to finance the Customs service and salaries for royal governors and other appointees.

North Americans disagreed.

The connection between the Bengal Famine and the Boston Tea Party of 1773, along with other anti-tea protests in America, is a fairly obvious example of how the environment helps to drive what we usually consider economic and political history. Environmental historians are drawing out much more subtle effects with more sophisticated methods.

On Tuesday, 10 December, the Massachusetts Historical Society will host a panel discussion on “Telling Environmental History.” It will explore “different ways of presenting environmental history, including the use of G.I.S., the intersection of environmental history and planning history, incorporating visual materials, and environmental history as narrative.”

The participants will be:

• Brian Donahue, Brandeis University
• Karl Haglund, Department of Conservation and Recreation, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
• Megan Kate Nelson, Brown University
• Aaron Sachs, Cornell University
• Anthony N. Penna, Northeastern University (moderator)

This discussion is scheduled to start at 5:15 P.M. and run until 7:30, including discussion over a light buffet afterwards. It’s part of a series on Environmental History that the society hosts. Sessions are free and open to the public; email the M.H.S. if you want a seat.

Carp on Resolute Men and Mohawks at Old South, 12 Dec.

The January 1774 London Magazine shared this news from Boston:

The people finding all their efforts to preserve the property of the East-India company, and return it safely to London, frustrated by the tea consignees, the collector of the customs and the governor of the province, dissolved their meeting.—But, behold, what followed! A number of resolute men (dressed like Mohawks or Indians) determined to do all in their power to save their country from the ruin which their enemies had plotted, in less than four hours emptied every chest of tea on board the three ships commanded by the captains [James] Hall, [James] Bruce, and [Hezekiah] Coffin, amounting to 341 chests, into the sea! without the least damage done to the ships or any other property. The masters and owners are well pleased that their ships are thus cleared; and the people are almost universally congratulating each other on this happy event.

Eventually that “happy event” became known as the Boston Tea Party, of course. And, as the latter-day illustration above shows, the “Mohawk” disguises have been a crucial part of that story.

On Thursday, 12 December, Benjamin L. Carp, author of Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America, will give a lunchtime talk at Old South Meeting House on “Resolute Men (Dressed as Mohawks)”:

What does historic evidence tell us about these disguises, and what misconceptions linger? Learn why Boston Tea Party participants selected Native American, and specifically Mohawk, disguises, and what this aspect of the Boston Tea Party can tell us about the emerging identity of Anglo-Americans in eighteenth-century Boston.

Ben Carp’s lecture will begin at 12:15 P.M. Admission is free for Old South members, $6 for others. A book-signing will follow.

“Kidnapping the Enemy” in Newport, 12 Dec.

Next Thursday, 12 December, the Newport Historical Society will host author Christian McBurney’s first lecture about his new book Kidnapping the Enemy: The Special Operations to Capture General Charles Lee and Richard Prescott. The society describes the event this way:

On December 13, 1776, at an isolated New Jersey tavern, George Washington’s second-in-command, Major-General Charles Lee, was captured by a party of British dragoons. The American army needed a British captive who was the same rank as General Lee.

Rhode Island’s William Barton planned and executed the cross-bay capture of Major-General Richard Prescott at the Overing house in Middletown, where Prescott commanded the British garrison occupying Newport and the rest of Aquidneck Island. Barton’s raid was the outstanding special operation of the Revolutionary War and still ranks as one of the greatest in American military history. But did the pride he earned from this mission ruin thirteen years of his life?

McBurney is a graduate of Brown University and partner in a Washington, D.C., law firm. He is the author of other books on early Rhode Island history, including The Rhode Island Campaign: The First French and American Operation of the Revolutionary War and British Treatment of Prisoners During the Occupation of Newport, 1776–1779.

Admission to this event is $5 per person, or just $1 for Newport Historical Society members. It will take place in the Newport Colony House, Washington Square, starting at 5:30 P.M. To reserve a space, call 401-841-8770.

Discussing Leadership at Bunker Hill at Cambridge Forum, 11 Dec.

Next Wednesday, 11 December, Cambridge Forum will welcome Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution, for a discussion of “Bunker Hill and the Crisis of Leadership in Revolutionary America.”

I’ll be Nat’s interlocutor in this discussion. After his opening remarks, we’ll talk about the Patriot leaders at the start of the Revolutionary War—men like Dr. Joseph Warren, Artemas Ward, and a forty-three-year-old gentleman from Virginia named George Washington. There will be time for questions from the audience, and Nat will sign copies of his book for folks on your holiday list.

After the Battle of Bunker Hill, and in the historiography since, people fervently debated who was in charge of the American forces, who should have been in charge, and what that commander (or those commanders) should have done. The very history of that debate seems to indicate some significant vacuum or disagreement at the top.

Paradoxically, however, the Battle of Bunker Hill decided the siege of Boston. Though the provincial troops lost the ground they were defending and had to retreat off the Charlestown peninsula, they inflicted such casualties on their foe that British commanders began to advocate for withdrawing from Boston and putting down the American rebellion from a less hostile base. It was a delayed success.

So did flaws in American leadership during that battle, or during the spring of 1775, matter that much? Had political leaders in the preceding years instilled such fervency into the New England populace that it could fight two major battles against the king’s army without a firm and unified command? Did any of Gen. Washington’s plans and initiatives over the following eight months make a real difference? Or did they have delayed benefits as well, bearing fruit after the Boston campaign when the new Continental Army faced a stronger enemy in less supportive regions?

Come join the Cambridge Forum discussion at First Parish, 3 Church Street in Harvard Square, at 7:00 P.M. next Wednesday, 11 December. This event is co-sponsored by the Friends of the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters, the National Park Service (Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site and Boston National Historical Park), and the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.

More from Bruce Richardson on the History of Tea

Here’s more of my exchange with Bruce Richardson, Tea Master for the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum. He’s coming to Boston to speak about “Five Teas that Launched a Revolution” at the Old South Meeting House on Thursday, 5 December. That event will also be the debut of the new expanded edition of Jane Pettigrew and Bruce’s book A Social History of Tea, originally published by the National Trust of Britain.

Are there any common misconceptions about the tea involved in the Boston Tea Party?

The visitor’s center at Monticello says the tea was in brick form. That’s not true. The English, and hence the Americans, had no taste for brick tea. See this blog post for more about tea bricks.

Chocolate meant something very different in eighteenth-century cuisine from how we think of it today—it was a hot drink, not particularly sweet, and often for breakfast. Are there significant differences in the way people consumed tea between the 1770s and today? Did tea have a different symbolic or cultural connotation?

In the stylish homes of Boston and throughout provincial America, the ritual of taking tea reenacted and reinforced the growth of an Anglo-American culture. But it was a culture based on a global circulation of goods. Tea drinking, often dispensed from specially designed tables, gathered together goods from around the globe–tea and porcelain from China, sugar from the Caribbean, sweetmeats flavored with spices from Indonesia, all arrayed on a Turkish carpet and served by an African slave to gentlemen and ladies dressed in fabrics from India and China.

These Boston tea settings were similar to those found in the fine homes of London or Bath. The ensemble of objects might also have included Asian-modeled cane chairs and have been set off by Chinese-style wallpaper. Bostonians understood tea not as an exotic curiosity, but as one of the many global products that signaled their participation in a polite and worldly culture modeled after the lifestyles of their English cousins.

Some museums in Boston contain small bottles of tea said to have come from the Tea Party, gathered either from participants’ clothing or from the water. If you had access to those tea samples, would there be any way to tell if that tea was actually from 1773?

I would love to see those. I could probably tell whether it was machine- or hand-rolled which might negate its authenticity, but not confirm it.

And a bonus that’s a little out of period: What do you think of the theory that the Earl Grey mixture of tea and bergamot was an adulteration later gussied up with a noble name?

I don’t drink Earl Grey, but we tea-blenders all say it pays the mortgage. The most famous of all flavored teas was named after Charles, the 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) who was British Prime Minister from 1830 to 1834. The original recipe for this blend simply calls for black tea with the addition of oil of bergamot, squeezed from tiny lemons grown in the Mediterranean region. China black tea was first used as the base until English blenders began using India or Sri Lankan black teas as those gardens developed through the second half of the 1800s.

The stories about the origin of the blend are many and varied. Some say the recipe was given in thanks to a British diplomat when he saved the life of mandarin—or perhaps the mandarin’s son—while in China on a mission for the Prime Minister. Some say it was Earl Grey himself who was travelling in China and saved the mandarin. Neither story has ever been substantiated. You can read more in this blog posting.

Thanks to Bruce Richardson for sharing his knowledge of tea here, and at Old South and the Tea Party Ships!

Readers might be able to tell that the Boston 1775 staff doesn’t care much for Earl Grey tea. Here’s an article from World Wide Words discussing the mysterious origin of that term.

Tea Q. & A. with Bruce Richardson

On Thursday, 5 December, Bruce Richardson will speak at the Old South Meeting House on “Five Teas that Launched a Revolution”, the first of several events leading up to this year’s reenactment of the Boston Tea Party.

Bruce Richardson is Tea Master for the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, the other institution hosting the reenactment on 16 December. He’s also Contributing Editor for TeaTime magazine and author of several books, including A Social History of Tea. Bruce graciously answered a couple of questions for Boston 1775.

What do we know about the tea that was thrown into Boston harbor in December 1773 and March 1774?

All the East India Company tea aboard the ships docked in Boston Harbor on the evening of December 16, 1773, was produced in China, not India. Tea would not be cultivated in India or Sri Lanka until the nineteenth century. Benjamin Woods Labaree’s The Boston Tea Party says the three tea ships contained 240 chests of Bohea, 15 of Congou, 10 of Souchong (all black teas), 60 of Singlo, and 15 of Hyson (both green teas).

It may surprise you to know that green tea accounted for about 22% of the shipments’ total volume and 30% of the value. One-third of the tea exported from China in the eighteenth century was green tea, with spring-picked Hyson being one the favorites. The first tea plucked in the spring is always the finest, which the Chinese designated yu-tsien or “before the rains” tea.

Hyson [shown here, as sold through Bruce’s store, Elmwood Inn Fine Teas] was a favorite tea of both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson ordered it from his tea purveyor in Philadelphia and his apothecary in Williamsburg.

Singlo green tea was picked later in the season and the leaves were a bit larger. It tended to spoil sooner than other teas and was not widely known in the colonies. It was only included in the ill-fated shipment because the East India Company had quite a bit of stock that needed to be liquidated before it became undrinkable. They wanted to introduce the tea to the colonies in hope that American’s would develop a taste for it. A few chests were aboard all seven ships which left London bound for Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston in late summer 1773.

But the bulk of the tea that westerners consumed was common black tea known as Bohea (boo-hee), a corruption of the name for the Wuyi mountains, one of the oldest tea growing regions of China. The tea was so popular that the word “Bohea” became the slang term for tea.

One London publication described Bohea as infusing a dark and dull brownish red color which, on standing, deposits a black sediment. The liquor is sometimes faint, frequently smoky, but always unpleasant. The superior form of Bohea is known as Congou. Seventy percent of the tea imported by the East India Company was Congou (kung-foo). It brewed a deep transparent red liquor with a strong and pleasant bitter flavor. The addition of milk surely added to the enjoyment of this beverage.

Souchong is a classic style black tea from the Wuyi Mountains of Fujian province. The original term souchong (xiaozhong) means “small leaf variety,” and refers to a family of tea cultivars that existed in this famous tea-growing region of Fujian since 1717. The souchong teas drunk by early colonists would have had a very slight smoky aroma which the tea leaves picked up during the drying process. Most of today’s souchong exports are intentionally smoked with smoldering pinewood and are called lapsang souchong. Twelve chests of Souchong weighing a total of 684 pounds were aboard the ships in Boston Harbor.

Certainly, all the teas tossed overboard would disappoint a modern tea drinker because they were way past their prime. The Boston teas were plucked in 1770 and 1771, transported by ship to London warehouses where they sat for a couple of years, and finally placed aboard ships bound for the colonies in October 1773.

Forget taxation! The colonists should have been more offended by the slight regard King George showed toward their good tastes.

You can check out Bruce Richardson’s tea blog for a little more information.

TOMORROW: A second cup.

Serena Zabin on Military Families in Boston, 3 Dec.

This is probably the Revolutionary-history event that I’ve been looking forward to most this season. On Tuesday, 3 December, the Boston Area Early American History Seminar, which meets at the Massachusetts Historical Society, will host a discussion of Serena Zabin’s paper on “Occupying Boston: An Intimate History of the Boston Massacre.”

Back early in my own research on the Massacre, I stumbled across the name of Pvt. James Hartigan in Boston’s published vital records. He married a woman named Elizabeth Henderson at Trinity Church on 2 Sept 1769. Five months later, Hartigan was one of the soldiers shooting into the mob on King Street. As the Legal Papers of John Adams had already noted, a Boston official went through the ritual of warning Elizabeth Hartigan out of town while her husband was in jail. (For more of their story, see this posting.)

Serena Zabin, who’s a professor at Carleton College, has been working along the same lines, but on a bigger scale. According to the seminar description:

As the records of some forty marriages of military men and more than a hundred baptisms of their children make clear, women constituted a fundamental component of the British army’s experience in Boston. This chapter from a larger study of the intimate occupation of Boston examines the personal, social, and political meanings of these new families.

I lucked out because the town records clearly label Hartigan as a private in the 29th Regiment. I don’t recall seeing so many other military men identified in the marriage and baptism data. I therefore guess that Prof. Zabin has been cross-referencing muster rolls and church records. And what other sources might she have found about the lives of these military families? Were soldiers marrying woman already attached to the army, newcomers to Boston, or local girls? What was it like to be one of the children traveling with the king’s army to this hostile town? The sources may not survive to answer those questions, but they comprise one of the few unexplored aspects of the Massacre.

This seminar will start at 5:15 P.M. at the M.H.S. at 1154 Boylston Street. Prof. Zabin’s paper will be available for reading beforehand. She’ll start the discussion with a few remarks, Prof. Lisa Wilson of Connecticut College will respond to the points raised in the paper, and then other participants may join in. Members of the public are welcome to attend; the society asks people to send a message if they’re coming so staffers know how many chairs and sandwiches to put out.

Does “Dude” Derive from “Doodle”?

In the Chronicle of Higher Education last month, Allan Metcalf reported that etymologists Barry Popik and Gerald Cohen had established that the word “dude” arose out of the Revolutionary-era figure of “Yankee Doodle.”

Popik and Cohen’s work appears in the latest issue of Comments on Etymology, edited and published by Cohen at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. That study, 129 pages long, contains many reprints of articles that document the sudden flowering of the word “dude” (also spelled “dood”) in early 1883. However, these three webpages reprint some of Popik and Cohen’s earlier articles on the word, showing that their work goes back twenty years.

The hypothesis is not altogether novel. In 1891 Henry Dudley Teetor published an essay about “Yankee Doodle” in the Magazine of Western History that said:

A “doodle” in the old English dictionaries, is defined to be “a sorry, trifling fellow,” perhaps the ancestor of the modern “dude,”…

(Teetor was cribbing from Benson J. Lossing’s Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, first published in 1850. I can’t find an old English dictionary with the definition Lossing quoted, but Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1823 edition, defines “doodle” as “A silly fellow, or noodle. . . . Also, a child’s penis.”)

But a “dude” in the late 1800s wasn’t just “a sorry, trifling fellow,” as Teetor suggested. He was a particular type of fellow, one who dressed too fashionably to be masculine. There are two citations from the late 1870s. A teen-aged Frederic Remington wrote to fellow artist in 1877 with whom he was swapping sketches, “Don’t send me any more women or any more dudes. Send me Indians, cowboys, villains, or toughs.” (That quotation was published as early as 1910, but I don’t know if any manuscript survives.) Ami Frank Mulford’s Fighting Indians in the 7th U.S. Cavalry (1879 edition shown here) refers to “dude soldiers, pets of dress parade officers.”

But the word exploded into the public eye in early 1883, as shown in Popik and Cohen’s many citations, such as this from the New-York Mirror of 24 February:

…a new and valuable addition has been made to the slang vocabulary. . . . We refer to the term “Dood.” For a correct definition of the expression the anxious inquirer has only to turn to the tight-trousered, brief-coated, eye-glassed, fancy-vested, sharp-toes shod, vapid youth who abounds in the Metropolis at present.

And the May 1883 issue of Clothier and Furnisher:

DEFINITION OF THE WORD DUDE

In answer to a correspondent, the editor of the New York Journal of Commerce says that it is impossible to give an “exact definition” of the word “dude” that shall express the various ideas in the minds of those who use it. It is not exactly slang, but has not rooted itself in the language and has not, therefore, a precise and accepted meaning. The word pronounced in two sylla­bles as if spelled “dood-y” has been in occasional use in some New England towns for more than a score of years. It was probably-born as a diminutive of dandy, and applied to the feeble personators of the real fop. . . . In the last year or two the name, now generally sounded to rhyme with rude, has been applied to one who, in addition to the characteristics we have described, makes a feeble attempt to imitate the manners of some effeminate young nobleman about whom he has read in a foreign novel, but turns out to be only an emasculated penny edition of the despica­ble character he is trying to copy.

Older terms for an overly fashionable young man included “fop,” “dandy,” and “macaroni”—the latter two appearing in the best-known lyrics of “Yankee Doodle.” If we read that verse literally, its subject tried to dress fashionably and failed, becoming only a “Doodle Dandy.”

Popik and Cohen suggest that around the Centennial, with its celebration of the Revolution, Americans tapped the memory of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” to create a term for modern dandies who also came off looking silly. The fact that “dude” could be spelled “dood” at first strengthens that case. However, in all the discussion of that hip new term from 1883, no one appears to have connected it explicitly to “Yankee Doodle.”

Was there indeed an intermediary form pronounced “dood-y”? To add to the discussion, I cite Robert D. Petty’s “Censor” oration printed in the Nassau Herald, Princeton’s yearbook, for 1883:

Our last story is about “that sort of an animal,” as General says, “which they call a dudee.” Robertus, let your aesthetic countenance smile upon the audience. . . .

Robertus began his career of dudee young. It is said at the age of seven he set a house on fire to burn out some rats, because it was so “clevah, you know.” Early, also, he showed the dudeean characteristic of being susceptible to the charms of the fair sex. In Fresh year he went to Rocky Hill, as member of that Fresh Glee Club which passed off for Soph. Our dudee at once became smitten by a rustic maid—not an “onion-eater,” but one of those, as the poet says, ”who waste their sweetness on the desert air.” Bob insisted in monopolizing the “desert sweetness” for the dance. Landy Green, a Southern fire-eater, protested, and they tossed for the “desert sweetness.” Bob lost and claimed a foul, whereupon Landy, with true Southern “chivalry,” kicked our aesthetic friend under the table, and lead the dance with the aforesaid “desert sweetness.” . . .

At first we thought it would be a suitable memento if the class would buy up your debts, such as bets, etc., and present you with the receipts. How could you have the heart to defraud that verdant son of “My Maryland,” Frank Woods, out of so many creams and oysters? But since the purchase of these receipts would bankrupt the class, and as they would be of no use to an aesthetic young man, we have procured more suitable presents. . . . We will not present you with gloves, for you bought a pair the other day, when you asked the bewildered clerk for a pair of “six and a hawf” gloves, and, after a severe struggle, managed to get on a pair of “eight and a hawf.” This is an improved eye-glass, especially for a dudee. If you had possessed this, that little prep. school charmer of Glendale, O., would not have said “nary wilt,” when on your knees you asked, “fairest maiden, wilt thou?” But here is a little present, which will ever protect you from the “vulgah.”

Our final admonition is, Robertus, if you do not wish to die young, as G. Bruce and other great men, cast off thy susceptible heart, even if you have to buy a bottle of “beah,” and make a night of it with the “fellahs.”

This roasting appears to be directed at Robert F. Shanklin of Evansville, Indiana, who was leader of the glee club and whose class prophecy appeared next in the publication. According to a chart later in the book, Shanklin was a willowy chap: 6'2" and 170 pounds. His supposed speech patterns, concern with dress, eye-glasses, and “aesthetic” delicacy (mixed with skirt-chasing) all match the stereotype of the “dude” discussed at such length in the New York press that year.

Since 1883, of course, the term “dude” lost most of its connotations of foppishness and became an all-around term for young men, with no pejorative sense. Perhaps Yankee Doodle got the last laugh after all.

“Such a boring account of such an epic war”

As long as I’m quoting Sgt. Joseph Plumb Martin’s memoir of fighting in the Revolution, I can’t resist passing on this assessment of the book from April on Goodreads:

The author said in the beginning of the book that this was his story and it was not remarkable, I very much agree with him. I had to read this book for history class but nevertheless I was excited to hear about a real account of the revolutionary war. Throughout the book it was a constant repetition of procuring piece of salt pork, stopping to rest, marching. I expected some action, but was thoroughly disappointed. One has to wonder why he even bothered writing down such a boring account of such an epic war.

Lest we think that April missed the point of the book, in this essay at Common-place William Huntting Howell argues that she identified Martin’s point exactly. The veteran, he argues, was writing an “anti-narrative” to counter the heroic depictions of the war. Of course, Howell uses many more words and goes into much more detail to make that point, viz.:

Martin’s prior descriptions of military engagement pale in comparison with his descriptions of the beef, its preparation, and its consumption; measured in terms of detail, the emotional (and extra-narrative) weight of the dinner far exceeds the emotional (and narrative) weight of the fighting. Only as an afterthought does he add the following: “We had eight or ten of our regiment killed in the action, and a number wounded, but none of them belonged to our company.”

Moments like this one proliferate: whenever the text threatens to fall neatly into a standard military story, Martin’s appetite drags it back out.

The main point of Howell’s provocative essay seems to be that Martin didn’t expect his memoir to be the first and only history of the Revolutionary War that people would read. But it might have to be the second.

“Upon a Leg of Nothing and No Turnips”

In the fall of 1777, Gen. William Howe defeated Gen. George Washington’s army at Brandywine, Paoli, and Germantown and took Philadelphia, the young republic’s capital. But up north another American army captured Gen. John Burgoyne after Saratoga. From its new headquarters in York, Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress put the best face on things by declaring 18 December to be a day of “Solemn Thanksgiving and Praise.”

One of the soldiers in Washington’s army, Pvt. Joseph Plumb Martin, later wrote of that holiday:

While we lay here [in “the Gulf”] there was a Continental thanksgiving ordered by Congress; and as the army had all the cause in the world to be particularly thankful, if not for being well off, at least that it was no worse, we were ordered to participate in it. We had nothing to eat for two or three days previous, except what the trees of the fields and forests afforded us. But we must now have what Congress said—a sumptuous thanksgiving to close the year of high living we had now nearly seen brought to a close. Well—to add something extraordinary to our present stock of provisions—our country, ever mindful of its suffering army, opened her sympathizing heart so wide, upon this occasion, as to give us something to make the world stare. And what do you think it was, reader?—Guess.—You cannot guess, be you as much of a Yankee as you will. I will tell you: it gave each and every man half a gill of rice, and a table spoon full of vinegar!!

After we had made sure of this extraordinary superabundant donation, we were ordered out to attend a meeting and hear a sermon delivered upon the occasion. We accordingly went, for we could not help it. I heard a sermon, a “thanksgiving sermon,” what sort of one I do not know now, nor did I at the time I heard it. I had something else to think upon; my belly put me in remembrance of the fine thanksgiving dinner I was to partake of when I could get it.—I remember the text, like an attentive lad at church, I can still remember that; it was this: “And the soldiers said unto him, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, nor accuse any one falsely.”

The preacher ought to have added the remainder of the sentence [from Luke 3:14] to have made it complete: “And be content with your wages.” But that would not do, it would be too apropos; however, he heard it as soon as the service was over, it was shouted from a hundred tongues.

Well—we had got through the services of the day and had nothing to do but to return in good order to our tents and fare as we could. As we returned to our camp, we passed by our Commissary’s quarters; all his stores, consisting of a barrel about two thirds full of hocks of fresh beef, stood directly in our way, but there was a sentinel guarding even that; however, one of my messmates purloined a piece of it, four or five pounds perhaps. I was exceeding glad to see him take it; I thought it might help to eke out our thanksgiving supper; but, alas! how soon my expectations were blasted! The sentinel saw him have it as soon as I did and obliged him to return it to the barrel again. So I had nothing else to do but to go home and make out my supper as usual, upon a leg of nothing and no turnips.

In his diary Lt. Ebenezer Wild recorded hearing no sermon, since his regiment had no chaplain, and a marginally better meal:

we had but a poor thanksgiving,—nothing but fresh beef & flour to eat, without any salt, & but very scant of that.

Shortly afterward Martin, Wild, and their regiments entered Valley Forge to spend the winter.

Cannon Taken and Retaken at Saratoga

Earlier this month the New York Times reported on an artillery piece associated with the Saratoga battlefield:

The cannon is one of only three known remaining “six-pounders” — artillery that fired six-pound cannon balls — used by the British general John Burgoyne’s army. It was surrendered to the American colonists after the Battles of Saratoga in 1777.

Despite its weight and historical significance, the cannon somehow disappeared around 1961. No one seems to know for certain whether it was stolen, misappropriated or simply forgotten. In any event, it was gone, and life went on. . . .

And then, a conversation overheard by chance four years ago led to its eventual return.

Joseph Craig, a ranger at the park, heard a tourist from Alabama compare the borrowed cannon to one he had recently seen in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Mr. Craig grew curious, and an investigation began.

National Park Service law enforcement officials in Atlanta were dispatched to Alabama. They found the cannon in question at the Westervelt-Warner Museum of American Art in Tuscaloosa, now called the Tuscaloosa Museum of Art.

That’s when a new battle began.

The rest of the article details the findings of N.P.S. curator Christine Valosin, tracing the cannon from its manufacture in 1756 through display at various New York sites in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The gap between 1961 and four years ago is still foggy, but the gun’s present location is solid.

American Revolution Conference in Williamsburg, 21-23 March

Next March, America’s History, L.L.C., is hosting its third annual American Revolution conference in Williamsburg, Virginia. From the evening of Friday, 21 March, through the morning of Sunday, 23 March, the Colonial Williamsburg Woodlands Hotel will be the site of presentations like these:

• Edward G. Lengel, editor of the George Washington Papers: “Philadelphia is the Object in View”: George Washington at the Battle of Brandywine, 1777
• James Kirby Martin: Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians’ Contribution to the American Revolution
• Andrew O’Shaughnessy: First in War or First in Peace: Sir William Howe as Commander-in-Chief
• Glenn Williams: Revenge and Reprisals: Irregular Warfare and the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign against the Iroquois
• Todd Andrlik: Reporting the Revolutionary War: Colonial Newspapers as a Historical Record
• Don Hagist: Sixty Men at Yorktown: A British Light Infantry Company
• David Mattern: Major General Benjamin Lincoln and the American Revolution
• James L. Nelson: The Best General on Either Side: Benedict Arnold’s Naval Operations on Lake Champlain and the Chesapeake Bay

Two panel discussions will address the questions “Could the British Have Won the American Revolution? Where and How?” and “What Revolutionary War Personality Would You Like to Have Dinner with and Why?”

Speaking of which, dinner is not included in the $225 conference registration fee, but lunch on Saturday is, and a breakfast buffet is included in the conference’s hotel room rate of $86 per night. For more information, including how to register, visit the conference webpage.

On the landscape between history academics and history buffs that I mapped out earlier in the year, this event is definitely designed for buffs. Almost all the presentations are about military topics, with an emphasis on leaders, as opposed to, say, sociological change. But the quality of the research and analysis on those topics promises to be top-notch.

Do You Want to Play on the Dublin Seminar Team in 2014?

Next year’s Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife will have the theme “Let the Games Begin: Sports and Recreation in New England,” and organizers are now seeking proposals for papers and presentations about sports and games of all kinds.

Here’s the 2014 Dublin Seminar’s call for papers:

The Seminar is now accepting proposals for papers and demonstrations on the history of sports, games, and recreations practiced in New England from 1620 to 1930. The organizers hope to attract a broad spectrum of topics that includes hunting and fishing, hiking, and mountain climbing; marathons and races, dance contests, and competitive sailing; the rise of organized sports like hockey, lacrosse, softball, baseball, golf, football, basketball, and bowling; and the evolution of semiprofessional and professional leagues within each sport.

The conference encourages papers on early college sports such as sculling, swimming, diving, tennis, and skiing; displays of strength and skill such as boxing, wrestling, marksmanship, horsemanship, horseracing, and dog sledding; youth events such as soapbox derbies; and bicycle and motorized racing competitions as well as aerial events. The conference also hopes to receive submissions on activities involving animal competitions in betting games such as cockfighting, bull- and bear-baiting, hawking, and pigeon races, as well as outmoded and English games like wicket, cricket, cats, and fives, and indoor or board games such as cards, backgammon, chess, checkers, cribbage, and mah-jongg. Finally the conference will also consider sports record keeping and statistics, the language of sports, and the evolution of sports apparel.

The Seminar seeks papers that present a clear argument and are analytic rather than descriptive and frame the subject within the established context of sports and recreation history and the New England environment. These include origins (for example, European, Native American, African American, or Asian); the effect of time and technology; the participation of men, women, and children of all ages; shifts in human physiology; the increase of immigration and industrialization; and the growth of audiences.

The Seminar encourages papers that reflect original research, especially those based on primary or underused resources like letters and diaries, vital records, federal and state censuses, naturalization records, newspapers, portraits, prints and photographs, business and banking records, material culture, oral histories, and autobiographies.

Organizers aim to select about seventeen lectures or presentations of twenty minutes apiece. To submit a proposal, send a one-page prospectus citing sources and a one-page vita or biography (as attachments) to seminar director Peter Benes by 15 Feb 2014. For certainty, please print and fill out and form at right and mail it with a paper copy of your prospectus and vita to:

Peter Benes, Director
The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife
Historic Deerfield, Inc.
P.O. Box 321
Deerfield, MA 01342

In 2015 the Dublin Seminar will explore the topic of “Living with Disabilities in New England’s Past.”

“So Sudden an Alteration” Conference’s Call for Papers

Earlier this year I shared news of the “American Revolution Reborn” conference in Philadelphia, an attempt to reinvigorate the study of the Revolution in advance of its Sestercentennial.

On 2-4 9-11 Apr 2015, the Massachusetts Historical Society will host another conference in the same series, organized with Boston University, the David Library of the American Revolution, and Williams College. The theme will be “‘So Sudden an Alteration’: The Causes, Course, and Consequences of the American Revolution,” and here’s the call for papers:

This conference aims to break out of the well-worn grooves of historical inquiry that have defined the study of the Revolution for the past fifty years. The program is designed to promote two types of conversations, shaped by: 1) traditional questions of origins and consequences addressed from new perspectives; and 2) questions of intersection—how the Revolution either affected or redirected longer-term patterns of change. We hope that the conference will bring into focus key themes that will inspire future scholarship.

In particular, the organizers are seeking papers that address issues of politics and ideology, the impact of military developments and military actions on society, and the course of Revolution in New England. Scholarship need not focus on Massachusetts or New England and may address the impact of the Revolution on the broader Atlantic world. The conference organizers seek papers that speak to these themes and questions in an innovative way and may reserve some slots for invited scholars.

Aside from the keynote speaker, presenters will not deliver their papers aloud; the papers under discussion will be available at the Society’s website to registered attendees approximately one month before the program. Submissions should include a one-page description of up to 500 words and a short c.v. with current contact information.

The deadline for proposals is 21 Feb 2014. Send proposals to Conrad Edick Wright, Director of Research, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215.