Connecting 1761 with Today (well, with Wednesday)

So here’s my report on Wednesday’s panel discussion at the Bostonian Society about America’s long debate over lawful search and seizure. We started with a gossipy introduction to James Otis, Jr.’s argument against writs of assistance in 1761 (that would be me), examined the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and ended with electronic surveillance by the same U.S. government today.

The moderator was Vermont lawyer Frederick S. Lane, author of the new book American Privacy. I hadn’t met him before, but by the end of the event it was clear that we were connected in some curious ways:

• Fred and I are both descended from John and Elizabeth (Tilley) Howland of the Plymouth Colony.
• When my mom did some historic knitting for Plimoth Plantation, Fred’s mom was her contact as volunteer coordinator.
• The first citation in Fred’s book is a newspaper article co-written by my lab partner in high-school chemistry.

The second panelist was Prof. Joe McEttrick of Suffolk Law School, with whom I share a more reasonable past. A few years back, he organized a reenactment of the trial of the soldiers after the Boston Massacre. By email I contributed a bit to his script (about Pvt. James and Elizabeth Hartigan) and helped draft the printed program. Those were among the first things I ever wrote about Revolutionary Boston for public consumption.

I haven’t spotted any personal link to the third panelist, Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Freedom Foundation. But his description of the last decade’s fight over the limits of government surveillance showed some parallels with Boston’s legal dispute over writs of assistance.

That lawsuit arose in 1761 because, with the death of King George II the previous October, the Customs officials’ old writs were about to expire. That offered a once-in-a-king’s-lifetime chance for local merchants to argue that such writs had no basis in Massachusetts law.

Similarly, the Bush-Cheney administration’s electronic surveillance program known as “Stellar Wind” had to be renewed every 45 days. At one of those junctures in 2004, there was a showdown inside the Justice Department. Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales squared off in Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospital room. Many Justice Department officials threatened to resign. As a result, the program was modified, though only slightly, and in ways we don’t really know.

TOMORROW: Another common element of the privacy fights in the 1760s and those of today: government leaks.

Sea Captains Export Pope Night to Virginia

The diary of Nicholas Cresswell, published in a new edition this year, describes the spread of New England’s Pope Night tradition to the Potomac. This is Cresswell’s entry for 6 Nov 1775:

News that the Kings Ships had burned Falmouth in New Hampshire [actually modern Portland, Maine].

Some New England Masters [i.e., captains] of Vessels that lye here being the Anniversary of the Gunpowder plot, Had the Pope, Lord North, [Francis] Barnard, [Thomas] Hutchinson and the Devil, burned in Effigy, after Carting them through the town with Drums & Fifes.

Even six months after the war had begun, Patriots still saw their enemy as the politicians around George III rather than the king himself. Cresswell, a recent emigrant from England and a Loyalist, must nonetheless have found this celebration disquieting.

Ironically, while these New Englanders were bringing their Pope Night tradition to Virginia, a Virginian was doing his best to tamp down the same celebration in the Continental Army camps around Boston—for political reasons.

“With a Writ of Assistance”

In a footnote for his contribution to The Era of the American Revolution (1939), Oliver M. Dickerson quoted the American Commissioners of Customs appointing an officer for the port of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1772. The original document was filed with the Treasury Office in London.

To All People to Whom These Presents Shall Come

We the Commissioners for managing and causing to be Levied His Majesty’s Customs and other Duties in America Do hereby Depute and Impower George Roupell Esqr. to be Collector of the Customs at Charles Town South Carolina and to do and perform all things to the said Service or Office or Employment belonging. In virtue whereof He hath power to enter into any Ship Bottom, Boat or other Vessel and also in the daytime with a Writ of Assistance granted by his Majesty’s Superior or Supreme Court of Justice and taking with him a Constable, Head-borough or other Public Officer next inhabiting, to enter into any House, Shop, Cellar, Warehouse or other place whatsoever not only within the said Port but within any other Port or place within our Jurisdiction there to make diligent Search and in case of resistance to break open any Door, Trunk, Chest, Case, Pack, Truss or any other Parcel or package whatsoever for any Goods, Wares, or Merchandizes, prohibited to be exported out of or imported into the said Port, or whereof the Customs or other Duties have not been duly paid: And the same to Seize to His Majesty’s use and to put and secure the same in the Warehouse in the Port next to the Place of Seizure.

In all which Premises He is to proceed in such manner as the law directs.

Hereby praying and requiring all and every His Majesty’s Officers and Ministers and all others whom it may concern, to be aiding and assisting to Him in all things as becometh.

Given under our hands and Seal at the Custom House, Boston this seventh day of April in the Twelfth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King George the Third and in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy Two.

Signed, Wm. Burch Hen. Hulton Chas. Paxton

The writ of assistance was basically an open-ended search warrant, not tied to specific evidence or specific cases. And because of that generality, the Customs Commissioners actually had a hard time getting them issued by colonial courts outside of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Dickerson’s article is full of examples of how other colonies’ high courts managed not to issue such writs without coming right out and defying the Crown: they asked for more clarification, lost the paperwork, &c.

Tonight I’ll be discussing the history of this legal controversy as part of a panel at the Old State House in Boston on American search and seizure laws. No need for a special document to get in—this session is free and open to all.

“Carried Miss Suky Sheaffe to Hampton”

In early 1769 William Sheaffe, Deputy Collector of Customs for Boston, refused permission for his daughter Susannah and Capt. Ponsonby Molesworth to get married. After all, as I described yesterday, they had just met the previous October, and she was only fifteen.

But, according to Sheaffe family traditions recorded by Lorenzo Sabine, Susannah had had an ally:

Her governess, to whom she entrusted her grief, espoused her cause, and favored immediate union; and the result accordingly was, the flight of the three to Rhode Island, where the loving pair pronounced their nuptial vows.

Usually Boston couples eloped across the border to New Hampshire if they wanted to marry in secret, and indeed that’s where the merchant John Rowe said Ponsonby and Susannah went in his diary entry for 21 Apr 1769:

Capt. Molesworth of the 29th. carried Miss Suky Sheaffe to Hampton.

But Rowe may just have been guessing. The young printer John Boyle also noted this marriage in his “Journal of Occurrences in Boston” on 27 April, perhaps the day they returned to Boston.

Ponsonby and Susannah Molesworth had a child baptized at Trinity Church on 23 Feb 1770. They called this boy William Carr Molesworth, honoring the colonel in charge of the 29th Regiment (as well as, arguably, the Deputy Collector).

Ten days later, a corporal from Capt. Ponsonby’s company, William Wemys, and several other soldiers from the 29th were caught up in the shooting that became known as the Boston Massacre. To defuse tensions, army commanders moved the whole regiment to Castle William, and then to New Jersey, and eventually to Florida.

Capt. Molesworth went with them, but what about his young wife and child? A incomplete genealogy of the family says that Ponsonby and Susannah Molesworth had a child named Eliza about 1772—perhaps in Boston. But maybe the young wife traveled with her husband. In any event, Sabine concludes:

Molesworth sold his commission [and retired from the army] in 1776, and in December of that year was in England with his wife. Their married life proved uncommonly happy; and they lived to see their children’s children.

Which makes us think how relatively rare it was in that time to see one’s grandchildren grow to a significant age. Susannah died in 1834, Ponsonby sometime before that.

Back in Boston, William Sheaffe “died of a fit of the Palsey” in November 1771, in the words of artist Henry Pelham. He left his widow and several other children in poor straits.

COMING UP: What happened to the Sheaffes?

Capt. Molesworth Falls in Love

According to Sheaffe family tradition, which was apparently first published in the 1864 edition of Lorenzo Sabine’s American Loyalists, Capt. Ponsonby Molesworth spotted Susannah Sheaffe on the first day he arrived in Boston, 1 Oct 1768.

He was marching his company of the 29th Regiment off their transport ship and up Long Wharf. (See those little red figures in the print above?) She and her little sisters were watching from the balcony of their house. And he immediately fell in love.

That’s a lovely “How I Met Your Grandmother” story. And even in the spotty genealogical records of colonial Boston, we can find some more detail to fill it out.

Susannah’s father was William Sheaffe, born in 1705 in Charlestown. He became Deputy Collector of Customs for the port of Boston, a mid-level position which meant he usually ended up doing all the work for less pay. (Especially in the 1750s, when the Collector was Sir Harry Frankland, who was busy chasing barmaids.)

Sheaffe was also the Customs official who handled writs of assistance following the latterly famous court case that we discuss at the Old State House on Wednesday. Sheaffe tried to help search Daniel Malcom’s house in 1766, as described back here. He never seems to have become as unpopular as some of his colleagues, but it wasn’t an easy job.

On 1 Oct 1752, Sheaffe married Susannah Child at Trinity Church. He was in his later forties, twice widowed, and she was in her very early twenties. Seven months later, their first child was baptized at the same church; this little William didn’t survive to adulthood.

In the spring of 1754 Susannah Sheaffe was born, followed by the usual pattern of one child every one to three years until their mother reached menopause. Three died young, and eleven survived to adulthood. (The best recreation of their family tree, though still missing little William, appeared in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1971.)

Susannah was thus fourteen years old when Capt. Molesworth reportedly spotted her. The family lore says that she had just turned fifteen when the captain asked for her hand in marriage. William Sheaffe thought that was too young, and refused.

TOMORROW: The young couple find help from an unexpected source.

(Picture of the British army landing in 1768 above courtesy of the Boston Public Library’s Flickr collection. http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/ / CC BY 2.0)

Capt. Ponsonby Molesworth: officer, Freemason

Vast Public Indifference recently featured the name of Capt. Ponsonby Molesworth of His Majesty’s 29th Regiment of Foot. And that’s quite a name to feature.

Molesworth arrived in Boston in October 1768 and—according to family legend—promptly fell in love with a teenaged girl named Susannah Sheaffe. I thought I’d look for more details about him.

Fortunately, it’s easier to find information about someone named Ponsonby Molesworth than someone named, say, James Hall. Or, rather, it’s easier to determine that the information one finds applies to the right Ponsonby Molesworth.

Our Molesworth was baptized on 14 May 1744 at the church of Saint Peter and Saint Kevin in Dublin. He came from a political family that for generations represented Swords in the Irish House of Commons. Obviously, the baby was named to honor a fellow M.P. named John Ponsonby (shown here, courtesy of Wikipedia), who became speaker of that house. (Eventually the baby’s half-aunt Louise would marry the speaker’s son William, one of the most powerful Irish politicians of the late 1700s and the first Baron Ponsonby.)

Our Ponsonby Molesworth was the fifth of six sons, so he wasn’t going to inherit his father’s seat or money. That made the army a good career.

I first spotted Capt. Molesworth’s name on the rolls for the 29th Regiment because his company included Cpl. William Wemys (also spelled Wemms and Wymes), one of the men tried for the Boston Massacre. Wemms appears to have come into the regiment after April 1769. The captain’s administrative skills were haphazard enough that the rolls list Wemms as in prison starting in late 1769, but in fact he was jailed only from March to November 1770.

Capt. Molesworth’s name also appears in connection with Boston’s Freemasons. When the British troops arrived, the town’s two Masonic lodges were arguing over legitimacy. The St. John’s Lodge (Moderns) refused to recognize the St. Andrew’s Lodge (Ancients). On 30 Nov 1768 St. Andrew’s voted to consider petitioning the Grand Lodge of Scotland for permission to appoint a Grand Master of all Ancient Masons in America.

A St. Andrew’s committee met with the Ancient lodges in the 14th, 29th, and 64th regiments. Eventually, on 27 Dec 1769, the Grand Lodge of Ancient Masons was organized at a ceremony at the Green Dragon Tavern, owned by St. Andrew’s.

That gathering made Dr. Joseph Warren the Grand Master of all Ancient-Order Masons within a hundred miles of Boston. Among the many other officers chosen, Thomas Crafts became Grand Treasurer, Paul Revere Grand Deacon—and Capt. Ponsonby Molesworth Junior Grand Warden.

Thus, even after months of fights between Bostonians and British soldiers and officers, including one riot with Capt. Molesworthy in the middle, Masonic unity brought these men together.

TOMORROW: Capt. Ponsonby Molesworth falls in love.

War Department Papers that Got Out Before the Fire

This month I stumbled across the “Papers of the War Department, 1784-1800” website, a project of the Center for History and New Media. Here’s its raison d’être:

Fire destroyed the office of the War Department and all its files in 1800, and for decades historians believed that the collection, and the window it provided into the workings of the early federal government, was lost forever.

Thanks to a decade-long effort to retrieve copies of the files scattered in archives across the country, the collection has been reconstituted and is offered here as a fully-searchable digital database.

This is akin to Boston’s recent political tempest-in-a-flash-drive over one of the mayor’s top aides deleting all his emails every night. Thousands of emails to and from him have now been found on other people’s computers and other servers. (So far, nothing untoward seems to have surfaced, but the state attorney general’s office is investigating him for erasing email after he’d been notified to save it.)

For the War Department files, we still don’t have papers that never left the building. But this effort has assembled papers the department sent to other government offices, to state governments, and to individuals. Fifty-five thousand documents in all.

The site offers capsule summaries and images of the documents, or, as its organizers say, “a free, online format with extensive and searchable metadata linked to digitized images of each document.” For example, here is Secretary of War Henry Knox’s report to Gouverneur Morris on the suppression of Shays’ Rebellion.

The descriptions and subject headings provide their own fun. The very first document that comes up in the listing of people by alphabetical order is accounting clerk John Abbot’s “formal statement regarding tthe [sic] confrontation between Capt. Vance and William Simmons, in which Vance accused Simmons of being a rascal.” This is one of thirteen documents in the collection tagged with the keyword “villainous insinuation.”

Pope Night Rolls In Again

It’s time for my yearly pointer to the “5th of November in Boston” online exhibit I assembled for the Bostonian Society. Not just because that calendar date is coming up, but because this colonial American celebration is also the foundation of a holiday that will arrive even sooner.

Outlandish costumes, bonfires, children going door to door begging for treats, even pumpkin lanterns—all those traditions have their roots in the raucous political celebration that New Englanders called “Pope Night.”

“A Knock at the Door” Panel, 4 Nov. at the Old State House

And speaking of writs of assistance, as I did yesterday, next Wednesday I’ll be on a public panel discussing how those fit into American legal history. Here’s the announcement of that event from the Bostonian Society:

A Knock at the Door: Three Centuries of Governmental Search and Seizure
Wednesday, November 4, 2009, 6:30 p.m., at the Old State House
Free and open to the public

The protection against unreasonable governmental search and seizure has long been considered a fundamental American right. This concept has its roots in patriot James Otis’s 1761 legal petition opposing the Writs of Assistance and general property searches, a case heard in Old State House.

Even though guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, this right has been challenged and debated many times throughout our history. Today we are confronted with new debates over wiretapping, immigration raids, and school drug searches.

Join our panelists, public historian J.L. Bell, legal scholars Frederick Lane and Joseph McEttrick, and Kurt Opsahl, in a discussion of the historical origins of this concept, as well as modern challenges to this long-cherished protection of our rights.

The “writ of assistance” that Customs Comptroller Benjamin Hallowell tried to use to search Capt. Daniel Malcom’s house was an open-ended authorization to search for smuggled goods. As the Massachusetts Superior Court under Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson (shown above) interpreted British law of the time, Hallowell didn’t have to appear before a judge and describe the specific evidence pointing to smuggled goods in Malcom’s house.

Instead, a Customs officer granted such a writ had all the authority he needed to demand assistance from a local magistrate, whom citizens were bound to obey. But, as the September 1766 stand-off outside Malcom’s house demonstrated, local justices of the peace could be reluctant to force the issue, or force open doors. And citizens were even less cooperative.

Stand-off at Captain Malcom’s

And speaking of Paul Revere, as I did yesterday, here’s his sworn testimony about what he saw outside Capt. Daniel Malcom’s house in Boston’s North End on 24 Sept 1766, in the form of a deposition copied and sent to London:

I Paul Rivere of lawfull age testifieth and Sayeth that as I the Subscriber on Wednesday 24th Septr last between 3 and 4 oClock post meridium was going to the north part of the Town I saw a number of men I believe above fifty standing near the Revd Mr. Mathews [sic—Samuel Mather’s] meeting house and in the lane leading to the North Grammar School

I went up to some of them and asked why they were standing there

they told me they understood the Custom House Officers were agoing to break open Capt. Malcom’s house to search for some casks of Wine that had been run,

I stopt some time I believe about an hour and asked where the Officers where [i.e., were]

they told me they were gone to get assistance from some Justices of the Peace, soon after Capt. Benjn Hallowell [Comptroller of the Customs in Boston] came (I thought he looked very angry)

a number of Gentlemen gathered round him, soon after Mr. [justice of the peace John] Tudor came and then Mr. Sheriff [Stephen] Greanleaf, I saw a number of People gather round him but I did not hear any of their discourse only Mr. Greanleaf asked them if they would assist him in the discharge of his Office

I think I heard Mr. Benjn. Goodin say he would assist him out of doors but would not go into Capt. Malcom’s house.

While I was there I did not see any officer go near Capt. Malcom’s house if they had they might have spoken to Capt. Malcom for as I passed by Capt. Malcom’s house going down the land to Mr. [justice of the peace Joseph?] Gardner I saw Capt. Malcom look through the Window

I am certain the people that were gathered there had not any intent to hinder the officers in the discharge of their duty but would have protected them all that lay in their power

I did not hear that the old North bell was to ring nor that Capt. Malcom had encouraged any person to come to his Assistance, and while I tarred there the people behaved with decency and good order.

Paul Rivere

So there were at least fifty men standing around watching the Customs officers closely, Revere recalled. But that was in no way an attempt to interfere with or intimidate those officers, or any local officials they summoned to help them under writs of assistance.

And as for rumors that the crowd would ring the Old North Meeting-house bell to summon an even bigger crowd, Revere and his fellow deponents insisted those were just rumors, or something only schoolboys were saying, or words that had been misunderstood, or...

Eventually, Justice Tudor told the Customs officers that evening was coming on, when their writ would expire, so they might as well go home. The boys who were watching for a riot had to content themselves with razzing Ebenezer Richardson, who they assumed had informed on Malcom and his tenant, “for the great Prize he’d got.”

This posting was prompted by Caitlin G. D. Hopkins’s tribute to Capt. Malcom, who died in 1769. While this stand-off outside his house cemented Malcom’s reputation as a fervent Son of Liberty, we can’t be sure sure that he would have broken with London in the end. He was an Anglican, and his brother John actually worked for the Customs service at another port.

Paul Revere “in want of iron”

The “Abolitionism in Black & White” symposium went very well, thank you. And while I was relying on posts prepared well in advance, the Salem News and Boston Globe reported on the discovery of a Paul Revere letter in the archives of Marblehead.

On 15 Nov 1787, Revere wrote to Jonathan Glover, who had been the Marblehead treasurer during the war and held other important offices:

When I was last at Marblehead, I took notice that there were a great many old cannon at different places, which appeared to me, to be good for nothing but the old iron; upon inquiry, I found that they mostly belonged to your town; I am informed that a person who had seen them, supposed that they belong to the State, he has petitioned the Governor [John Hancock] and Council to sell them to him.

As I am in want of iron, for the furnace which I have built in Boston, I should be glad to purchase them. . . . If you will be good enough, when your Town is to be call’d together, to git an Article inserted in the Warrant, for that purpose, you will oblige,

Sir your most humle. Servt.

Paul Revere. . . . .

Revere was starting to shift his business from a workshop creating luxury goods in silver and gold to a factory producing metal sheeting and other products. He was seeking a good deal on, in effect, army surplus goods—old cannons that Marblehead had mounted to protect its harbor during the war.

Revere asked Glover to put the sale of those cannon on the agenda (“Warrant”) for a town meeting. Meanwhile, he understood, someone else was angling for those cannons as well, working through the state government. Are there more documents on this story in the Marblehead town records, the Massachusetts Archives, or Revere’s surviving account books?

Truly Revolutionary Webcomics

You’ve probably noticed a dearth of newspaper comic strips with Revolutionary content. In fact, I can’t remember seeing any since around the time of the Bicentennial. Fortunately, the web provides a platform for dedicated sequential artists to reach niche audiences.

One of the most prominent is the romantic adventure The Dreamer, by Lora Innes. Here’s its introduction:

Beatrice “Bea” Whaley seems to have it all; the seventeen year old high school senior is beautiful, wealthy and the star performer of the drama club. And with her uncle’s connections to Broadway theater, the future looks bright ahead of her. Little does she know that her future might actually be brighter behind her.

Bea begins having vivid dreams about a brave and handsome soldier named Alan Warren—a member of an elite group known as Knowlton’s Rangers that served during the Revolutionary War. Prone to keeping her head in the clouds, Bea welcomes her nightly adventures in 1776; filled with danger and romance they give her much to muse about the next day. But it is not long before Beatrice questions whether her dreams are simply dreams or something more.

The first printed collection of The Dreamer has just come out from IDW Publishing. It’s 160 pages and covers the first part of the story arc titled “The Consequence of Nathan Hale.”

I hadn’t stumbled across The Paul Reveres, by Tina Pratt, until I read Desizn Tech praising its illustration. It takes a, well, less serious approach to the start of the war in Massachusetts:

Remember having to learn about the American Revolution in grade school?

You didn’t do your homework, did you?

You obviously missed the part of our nation’s history where all the battles were fought with electric guitars and awesome hair. It’s a good thing for you, however, someone did pay attention and is prepared to give you these golden tidbits of historically accurate tales.

This comic offers anime-influenced versions of Revere, Thomas and Margaret Gage, and even Johnny Tremain (“Saying Johnny is weird would be a total understatement”).

Finally, I’ve been meaning to mention The Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark, by Eric Burns. Alas, there have been no new installments since August 2006. [ADDENDUM: But see comments.] Hard to believe that there are no more unanswered questions about Gen. John Stark.

Freedom We May Expect From Politics Profound

Here’s a verse copied from the Essex Gazette for 25 Oct 1774. At the time, Gen. Thomas Gage and his troops had pulled out of Essex County into Boston, leaving this Salem-based newspaper more free than most Boston papers to criticize the royal government.

Salem was also the host of the first Massachusetts Provincial Congress, which the song seems to allude to in saying “The delegates have met”—though that could also mean the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

LIBERTY SONG.
Tune—Smile Britannia.

Ye sons of freedom, smile!
America unites;
And friends in Britain’s isle
Will vindicate our rights;
In spite of Ga—s hostile train,
We will our liberties maintain.

Boston, be not dismayed,
Tho’ tyrants now oppress;
Tho’ fleets and troops invade,
You soon will have redress:
The resolutions of the brave
Will injured Massachusetts save.

The delegates have met;
For wisdom all renowned;
Freedom we may expect
From politics profound.
Illustrious Congress, may each name
Be crowned with immortal fame!

Tho’ troops upon our ground
Have strong entrenchments made,
Tho’ ships the town surround,
With all their guns displayed,
’Twill not the free-born spirit tame,
Or force us to renounce our claim.

Our Charter-Rights we claim,
Granted in ancient times,
Since our Forefathers came
First to these western climes:
Nor will their sons degenerate,
They freedom love — oppression hate.

If Ga–e should strike the blow,
We must for Freedom fight,
Undaunted courage show,
While we defend our right;
In spite of the oppressive band
Maintain the freedom of the Land.

AmericanRevolution.org offers different lyrics to the same tune, referring to Lord North, George Washington, and Common Sense. Those words from two years later argue for a break with the king. Back in October 1774, however, no one was ready to go that far: Massachusetts wanted only “Our Charter-Rights” back.

New in the Massachusetts Historical Review

The 2009 issue of the Massachusetts Historical Review, published by the Massachusetts Historical Society (but not yet listed on the website), contains three hefty articles related to the Revolution and its local heritage. We can tell they uphold the highest standards of scholarship because all three titles include quotation marks.

First, J. Patrick Mullins examines the political fight between the Boston’s most outspoken minister of the early 1760s and the new royal governor in “‘A Kind of War, Tho’ Hitherto an Un-Bloody One’: Jonathan Mayhew, Francis Bernard and the Indian Affair.” Compared to the huge political battles that would follow, those disputes seem as petty and hard to understand as a public argument over, oh, the President telling schoolchildren to study hard. But already we can see the sides forming.

Next, Neil Longley York (he of the Johnny Tremain study) offers “Rival Truths, Political Accommodations, and the Boston ‘Massacre’.” Legal trials are usually seen as attempts to settle the truth, York says, but in 1770 each of the two political camps interpreted the trials that followed the Massacre in its own way, cementing differences instead of erasing them.

Finally, Stephen Kantrowitz has contributed “A Place for ‘Colored Patriots’: Crispus Attucks among the Abolitionists, 1842-1863.” How did the movement to end slavery and provide civil rights take inspiration from and use the memory of the one Massacre victim people can still name today?

There are other articles as well, plus reviews of such books as Abolitionists Remember, by Julie Roy Jeffrey. She’s speaking at the “Abolitionism in Black & White” symposium, where I am right now. The Review is available at the Massachusetts Historical Society and finer local libraries.

ADDENDUM: And now there’s a cover image, and a link for purchases!

Abigail Adams Can’t Help Smiling

Tonight at 7:00 at the C. Walsh Theatre on Beacon Hill, the Abolitionism in Black & White symposium will present a staged reading of Lydia R. Diamond’s new play, Harriet Jacobs. It dramatizes the life of the author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, who escaped from slavery and eventually settled in Cambridge.

After the reading, Diamond will discuss the history behind the play and the challenge of converting history into theater with Prof. David Blight of Yale and Dean Kenneth S. Greenberg of Suffolk. And it’s all completely free.

Since I’m busy helping to organize that and the following day’s panel discussions on the ante-bellum anti-slavery community in Boston and Cambridge, I have time to post only a short bite from the eighteenth century. But it’s a tasty one.

On this date in 1776, Abigail Adams added a little note to a letter to her husband John:

I cannot help smileing at your caution in never subscribeing [i.e., signing] a Letter, yet frank it upon the outside where you are obliged to write your name.

John was, after all, a thrifty Yankee.

Dining at Gore Place, 29 Oct.

Gore Place in Waltham was commissioned by Christopher Gore, Boston’s leading corporate attorney when corporations were just getting started, and his wife Rebecca. He served one term as governor and late in life became debilitated with arthritis, no longer able to work or easily travel to their home in Boston.

In 1825, the couple hired Robert Roberts (1780-1860) as a butler. Two years later, Christopher Gore died, and Roberts (perhaps needing new income) published The House Servant’s Directory, full of instructions on the tasks necessary for running a major house. That book can thus be our guide to how the Gores lived.

On Thursday, 29 October, at 6:30 P.M., Gore Place is hosting a lecture on food, which no doubt draws on Roberts’s book. The announcement of the talk says:

Noted foodways scholar Sandy Oliver offers a fun and informative talk on dining manners in the time of the Gores. Sandy began working in food history in 1971 when she founded the fireplace cooking program at Mystic Seaport Museum. She continues researching historic foodways and speaks before professional and public audiences at museums, historical and culinary organizations.

Sandy teaches historic recipe research and responds to media requests on historic food. When asked, she provides training programs in historic cooking for museum interpreters. She is the author of Saltwater Foodways and Food in Colonial and Federal America. She co-authored Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes with Kathleen Curtin of Plimoth Plantation.

A talk like this is bound to be appetizing, and Gore Place promises “period food and libations” at a reception afterwards. Tickets cost $18, or $15 for Gore Place members. For reservations, call 781-894-2798.

Even in Stereo, These Podcasts Sound Like They’re Coming from the Right

The Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs’s Teaching American History program offers free seminars for downloading. Its podcast page says:

The Teaching American History podcast will provide subscribers with a weekly seminar from a leading history scholar from our extensive audio archive. These seminars are designed to encourage teachers to seriously examine significant events in American history in light of the principles of the American founding, and also to encourage the use of primary source materials in the classroom.

Many of the offerings explore the Revolutionary period, and most others look back on that period from other crucial times in U.S. history, such as the Civil War and the Depression. The older recordings are available, for old times’ sake, in RealAudio format, too.

There are a couple of things to be aware of before you dive in. These recordings invite a big commitment of time. For example, Hadley Arkes’s seminar on “A Reconsideration of the Original Case Against the Bill of Rights” comes in two parts, meaning the two downloads comprise almost three hours of contrarianism.

And that stretch is surpassed by Jeremy Bailey’s “Thomas Jefferson and Executive Power” (3:07), Harry V. Jaffa’s “The Declaration in American History and World History” (3:14), and Gordon Lloyd’s four-part series on the “Constitutional Convention” (6:04). So any one of them offers more than a single commute’s worth of listening.

Secondly, these seminars reflect the thinking on part of the American political right. The Ashbrook Center was named after a Republican Representative from Ohio who ran against Richard Nixon in 1972 because he thought that President was too leftist. Its home is Ashland University, which describes itself as “associated with the Brethren Church, where Judeo-Christian values are the foundation of the educational and social environment.” Its collective blog is called “No Left Turns.”

The Ashbrook Center’s Board of Advisors includes the editors of both the Weekly Standard and National Review, and a token female. The podcasts do a little better on gender inclusion, with two female scholars to be heard—out of more than twenty.

On the other hand, the center has the sense to host a lecture on the political symbolism of Captain America.

Elizabeth F. Ellet as Historian and Busybody

Elizabeth F. Ellet holds a significant place in American historiography for writing The Women of the American Revolution in 1848-50. No previous author had bothered to study the first generation of American women, even the best known.

Furthermore, Ellet was a good historian, given the standards of the time and the obstacles she faced as a woman. She sought out descendants and documents. She wrote about both the wives of prominent men and women who gained prominence in their own right. Historians continue to rely on her work, though recognizing it as a secondary source shaped by the values of its time.

I hadn’t known the darker side of Ellet’s career until I came across her name on Rob Velella’s Poe-a-Day Calendar. She inserted herself into two nasty feuds and scandals in America’s nineteenth-century literary world—which didn’t lack for feuds and scandals. While Ellet never let her own reputation for purity droop, her reputation for honesty and beneficence suffered. According to Rob, bitter people blamed her machinations for hastening both Virginia Poe’s death in 1847 and Rufus Wilmot Griswold’s in 1857.

Wikipedia offers a clearer picture of the scandal involving letters to Edgar A. Poe. Rob offers details of the Griswold’s divorce. Griswold has previously shown up on Boston 1775 as the first author to claim that George Washington said, “So help me God,” after taking the oath of office, though without citing any credible source.

Next week, at 6:00 in the evening on 29 and 30 October, Rob Velella will lead “Voices of the Night” tours of Longfellow House, which was once Gen. Washington’s headquarters in Cambridge. These tours will focus on how the house’s décor and stories reflect Victorian ideas about death and mourning. Phone the house to reserve a spot.

“Is it an American work of art?”

Yesterday the Boston Globe’s “Brainiac” column alerted me to an article in ARTnews about a new acquisition of the New Britain Museum of American Art: a painting of George Washington on glass, from the first decade after his death and from the far side of the Northern Hemisphere.

In 1796, Martha Washington had commissioned Gilbert Stuart to paint portraits of herself and her husband, one of three times the outgoing President posed for the even more outgoing artist. Rather than finish and deliver that painting, however, Stuart kept it until his death so he and his daughter could make versions for other customers.

Furthermore, according to ARTnews:

collectors of his portraits had to sign an agreement stating that only he had the right to reproduce the image. . . .

One of Stuart’s clients was John E. Swords, a Philadelphia ship captain involved in the China trade. Swords broke his promise that he would not have the image copied. He reportedly arranged to have Stuart’s painting of Washington known as the Athenaeum portrait reproduced on glass in China in an edition of about 100.

Chinese porcelain artists were already practiced in reproducing scenes and portraits for customers in Europe.

Some of the Chinese portraits of Washington came back to the U.S. of A.—because, really, where else would the biggest demand be? Stuart sued Swords in 1802. (That same year, Martha Washington died, feeling “extremely ill used” by the artist, according to a quote attributed to a family friend that I haven’t been able to confirm.)

The court told Swords to stop, but enough examples of Washington on glass made it to America that two are now in the collection of Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum.

The artifacts fit right into the P.E.M.’s focus on the China Trade, but the portrait in the New Britain Museum raises more interesting questions, according to director Douglas Hyland: “As soon as it went on display, it became the subject of a great debate: Should it be at an American art museum? Is it an American work of art?”

News from the Virginia Gazette (no, the other one)

Folks at Colonial Williamsburg (where this photograph of a journeyman printer comes from) have assembled a newspaper item for each day of the year from the three rival versions of the Virginia Gazette published in the 1770s. The “Learn More” links at the lower right of the page lead to more useful resources on newspapers and printers.

Unlike some “on this date” sites, you don’t need to wait for a particular day to come around; you can look up any date in the year. For example, on my birthday in 1773 Purdie and Dixon’s Gazette featured an editorial from London that lamented:

Profligacy is the Characteristick of this wretched Age.

But I want people to be profligate on that day!

Thanks to Taylor Stoermer at Transatlantic History for the link, via Twitter.