Eye to Eye with Josiah Quincy, Jr.

Through 22 January, the Massachusetts Historical Society hosts an exhibit titled “Josiah Quincy: A Lost Hero of the Revolution.” This coincides with the publication of the final two volumes of Portrait of a Patriot: The Major Political and Legal Papers of Josiah Quincy Junior by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

The exhibit includes materials from what the website calls “the Society’s enormous archive of Quincy family papers, letters, diaries, drawings, artifacts, and paintings that document eight generations of this extraordinary family,” an unusual number of whom were named Josiah Quincy.

This one (1744-1775) was a young lawyer among the Boston Whigs. He defended Ebenezer Richardson on murder charges, and helped to defend Capt. Thomas Preston and his soldiers after the Boston Massacre, thus providing a clear exemplar of the modern dictum that all accused deserve a professional legal defense. Outside the courtroom, Quincy wrote strident newspaper essays, though at times he called for curbing public demonstrations.

Some authors credit Quincy with this statement, which appeared in his 1774 “Observations on the Boston Port-Bill”:

It is much easier to restrain liberty from running into licentiousness than power from swelling into tyranny and oppression.

However, he put quotation marks around that sentence, having taken it from a Parliamentary committee report in 1735.

The M.H.S. exhibit is open to the public on Monday through Saturday, 1 to 4 P.M.

Another Fake Founders Quotation

This time it’s James Madison. Google counts over 200,000 webpages attributing the following sentence to him:

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed—unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

Often that attribution comes with what looks like a citation: “The Federalist Papers #46 at 243-244.”

But here’s the full text of #46 of the Federalist Papers. It doesn’t contain those words. It contains some of them, in the following passage (emphases added):

Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.

Madison was writing in favor of the new U.S. Constitution during the ratification debate of 1788. He dismissed the fear that the stronger national government’s standing army could become a tool of tyranny by pointing to the militias of the “subordinate governments”—i.e., the states.

Madison contrasted that early American system to European societies, supposedly more susceptible to oppression. He assured readers that those nations lacked two things: arms and “the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves.” Madison was “not certain” that arms alone could cast off national tyranny, but felt “the greatest assurance” that the combination of arms and local republics could.

Madison didn’t address the possibility that state governments could be tyrannical, aided by their militias/armed populace. Or what would happen if the militia system he knew went away and the national government and standing army grew, but governments at all levels also grew more democratic—the situation we have now.

Who cobbled together different phrases from Madison’s essay to produce the false quotation? I’m not sure. Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association included it in his 1994 book Guns, Crime, and Freedom, with brackets around the word “have,” suggesting that he knew something had changed from the original. Google Books suggests that the quote appeared before that in the American Legion Magazine around 1989. But there are no examples of this Madison “quotation” earlier than that.

Google Books offers an easy modern way to check whether a quotation actually comes from the Federalist Papers, or any other book published in quantity before 1923 (as most of the famous Founders’ papers were). Search for the quotation with the “Full view” toggle on. That knocks out all the books still under copyright, including recent books that could just be echoing the same myth back and forth.

Closing the Washington Monument?

This is a curious proposal from Bruce Schneier, computer security and cryptography expert, published last month in the New York Daily News:

Securing the Washington Monument from terrorism has turned out to be a surprisingly difficult job. The concrete fence around the building protects it from attacking vehicles, but there’s no visually appealing way to house the airport-level security mechanisms the National Park Service has decided are a must for visitors. It is considering several options, but I think we should close the monument entirely. Let it stand, empty and inaccessible, as a monument to our fears.

An empty Washington Monument would serve as a constant reminder to those on Capitol Hill that they are afraid of the terrorists and what they could do. They’re afraid that by speaking honestly about the impossibility of attaining absolute security or the inevitability of terrorism—or that some American ideals are worth maintaining even in the face of adversity—they will be branded as “soft on terror.” And they’re afraid that Americans would vote them out of office if another attack occurred. Perhaps they’re right, but what has happened to leaders who aren’t afraid? What has happened to “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”?

An empty Washington Monument would symbolize our lawmakers’ inability to take that kind of stand—and their inability to truly lead.

Within the federal government, the Washington Monument has given its name to a particular budget tactic. According to legend, years ago Park Service managers would submit a budget to Congress with no money for opening the monument at the height of the tourist season. Those managers could therefore use their testimony to the budget committees to advocate for funds for less visible things (which may or may not have been necessary), knowing that Congress would add enough funds to keep the monument open or face public complaints.

Schneier seems to be trying a non-budgetary form of the “Washington Monument Ploy,” using public access to that site as a way to force the government and the nation (i.e., us) to consider what workable security means. Schneier is known within the computer-security field for formulating concepts like “security theater” and “failing well.”

Capt. Enys’s Canoe

Last month the Revlist brought news that the National Maritime Museum of Cornwall, England, is conserving an eighteenth-century birchbark canoe, perhaps the oldest in existence. The photograph above comes from the museum. Here‘s the Globe and Mail’s report with another, less buoyant view of the vessel.

This canoe appears to have been shipped back to the family estate in southern England by Lt. John Enys of the 29th Regiment of Foot. Born in 1757, Enys joined that regiment in 1775 in time to fight against the American invasion of Canada. He ranked as a lieutenant through the war. At the end, he was promoted to captain and stationed on the Niagara frontier. I suspect that was when he had the most time to think about acquiring a canoe.

The news stories touted this boat as a new discovery, but the canoe bobs up in a footnote of the 1976 edition of Enys’s journals about life in America. Family tradition said he had acquired it in Canada and had it transported to the Hudson. I’m not sure that makes geographic sense; wouldn’t he have sent it along the St. Lawrence? In any event, it’s in Cornwall now.

Reading the Constition, Almost, Sort of

Last week the new Republican leadership in the House of Representatives arranged for members to read the U.S. Constitution aloud during a legislative session. That had never been done, they said. It still hasn’t.

Of course, the Constitution provides the legal basis for Congress and the rest of the federal government, and has never been far from its deliberations. Members of Congress swear to protect it. The late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) was known for handing out copies from his pockets.

These days the text of the Constitution is easier to find than ever. I have copies in booklets, reference books, and computer files. There’s a standard text, and an annotated text from the Congressional Research Service, noting which clauses have been superseded by amendment. The Supreme Court’s interpretations of the document are more voluminous, of course, and ongoing.

But the House leadership didn’t like the standard historical text. Those men apparently wanted to avoid having members recorded reading clauses that protected slavery, like the “three-fifths” and fugitive clauses. Their choice produced objections from other House members who wanted that history recognized explicitly instead of implicitly by reading the whole document.

The Republican leadership also didn’t want members to read the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the sale of alcohol, though they did include the subsequent Twentieth-first Amendment, which makes no sense without the text it repeals. Passages on the Electoral College and the Vice President’s election, showing that the founders’ system never worked as intended, were also silently removed.

Nevertheless, as Bob Fuss at CBS News, Dahlia Lithwick at Slate, and Matthew J. Franck at National Review Online pointed out, the scrubbed text still included passages and details that have been superseded by later amendments.

The most embarrassing moment of this episode, however, came when Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) started reading, “or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress…” He began in the middle of a sentence, and what he read made no sense with what had come before. The reading had skipped a page. Fortenberry later told the Omaha World-Herald that he knew he was in the wrong place, but he read what was in front of him anyway.

And no one spoke up. If members of Congress in the chamber were following along in their own copies, or familiar enough with the Constitution to recognize the error, they said nothing. Not even, “Mr. Speaker, did we skip a page?” Maybe they thought that the missing text was one of the parts that had been edited out.

The organizer of the reading, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), later read the missing text into the Congressional Record, much as individual representatives have inserted the whole text in the past. But the full Constitution has still never been read aloud in a House session.

The Congressional Record will include the edited text that the House wanted to read, though I can’t find that text on the web. (There’s a C-SPAN transcript of the session.) Apparently this is another of the limits on the new leadership’s “openness.”

Most observers say this theatrical exercise was staged for the benefit of the Tea Party, adherents of which so revere the Constitution that some wish to change the legal meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, alter the Sixteenth Amendment, rescind the Seventeenth Amendment, add a nullification process, and overlook the prohibition on religious tests for office and religious establishment. Of course, the Tea Party also complains about wasteful government action, and they might question the value of an errant reading of the Constitution.

POSTSCRIPT: In its article on the House reading, New York Times reported this detail:

“I just read the First Amendment!” Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, said gleefully as she exited the floor.

“I wanted to be here, I think it’s important,” Ms. Giffords said. “Reflecting on the Constitution in a bipartisan way is a good way to start the year.”

As most people have no doubt heard, Rep. Giffords was shot at a public event in her district yesterday.

Twitter Feed, 27 Dec 2010-4 Jan 2011

• 20:22 Anyone know about Rhode Island divorce records, circa 1775? I'm wondering if Godfrey and Mary (Butler) Wenwood divorced around then. #
• 20:27 @seaheff Lovely photo portraits, but the beards, yeah. The "beardless boys" come off best. #
  [That comment’s about this link]
• 21:33 RT @RagLinen: Paper Conservation: Saving Historic Newspapers From Loss - ow.ly/3vUnk #
• 22:22 RT @RagLinen: #RevWar C-SPAN panel featuring authors T.H. Breen [American Insurgents] and Jack Rakove [Revolutionaries] ow.ly/3vXuP #
• 22:40 Edward Rothstein of NY TIMES really doesn't like President's House park in Philadelphia: nyti.ms/eHebY5 #
• 23:42 RT @RagLinen: 10 Colleges Offering Free History Courses Online - ow.ly/3wkdj // Including U Wash on #RevWar: bit.ly/fj8rby #
• 23:44 RT @history_book: The History of Suicide in England 1650-1850 - Pickering & Chatto. amzn.to/bhslmv #
• 23:45 RT @marianpl: Roots & Rambles: My Top 10 Favorite Blogs of 2010 #genealogy #history ow.ly/3wneA #
• 23:52 Another year older. I suppose I should pay some bills. #
• 16:22 Rep Michelle Bachmann: Reading Gore Vidal's historical novel BURR made me a Republican. bit.ly/epyviT #
• 16:24 Boston's 5th of November in 1769 (with pix from 1767): bit.ly/eCWFip #
• 16:37 RT @opheliacat: @history_geek The Apollo Belvedere - the "father" of 18th C. male portraiture www.nga.gov/press/exh/209/index.shtm #
• 16:38 RT @historytavern: "@timelines: Today in Amer Rev War #history, 1776: British burned Norfolk, #Virginia tlin.es/e1t3Cmhv5" #
• 23:28 Reviews of Maier's RATIFICATION from Rosemarie Zagarri: wapo.st/foOpI5 from Thomas Kidd: bit.ly/h70ZkL #
• 23:29 From @JBD1, review of UNLIKELY ALLIES, about #RevWar's French connection: bit.ly/gYwNnD Tale of transvestite spy seems tacked on. #
• 23:31 Of course, when I say "transvestite spy," lots of eyes prick up. Which is surely why Chevalier d'Eon is in the book. #
• 23:35 After query from Jesse Lemisch, started Facebook discussion on NYRoB review of WHITES OF THEIR EYES: on.fb.me/ho9qrD @WilliamHogeland #
• 00:01 RT @SecondVirginia: Author Thomas Fleming reacts to @steamthing's take on the 18th Century Tea Party Movement fb.me/HDK7lTpM #
• 00:07 @Aaron_Eyler In Boston, MASSACHUSETTS/COLUMBIAN CENTINEL (Fed) versus INDEPENDENT CHRONICLE (Dem) #
• 00:10 RT @2nerdyhistgirls: those carousing 18c sea captains (bit.ly/gkczDx) are currently carousing in NYC at the Met: bit.ly/eB0lAQ #
• 22:40 From Barbara Smith, author of FREEDOMS WE LOST, the major differences between the Tea Parties of 1773 and 2010: bit.ly/hNV5YJ #
• 22:59 @revwar Samuel Adams didn't attend Harvard Law School; didn't exist in 1700s. He got an M.A. Also, Henry Knox dropped out of Boston Latin. #
• 23:14 @WilliamHogeland It's an experiment. Thanks for being an early guinea pig! #
• 22:09 RT @mysticseaport: Watch a National Historic Landmark vessel be restored. Climb aboard Thurs-Sun from 10-4: tiny.cc/MORGAN #
• 22:10 From BOSTON GLOBE, Boston Public Library's historic Leventhal Map Collection taking over microfilm reader space: bit.ly/hIDoBg #
• 22:32 COLUMBUS DISPATCH book reviewer: "ask a Tea Party member how much private property to destroy to get points across." bit.ly/hNoMyl #
• 22:34 From Benjamin Church blog, John Hancock and John Adams team up to take down a Loyalist printer: bit.ly/hCkWWD #
• 22:43 RT @RagLinen: Should American Film Company make Midnight Riders movie? ow.ly/3ypR8 #RevWar // Error in synopsis's 1st sentence. #
• 23:21 RT @56Signers: Dr Benjamin Rush portrait & grave: bit.ly/9lgXea Same #Philly graveyard as B Franklin and 3 other signers. #sschat #

Public Poetry to Remember the Revolution

Through the end of January, the Boston Public Library’s Rare Books Department is hosting an exhibit on “The Public Life of Poetry: Whitman, Dickinson, Longfellow, and Their Contemporaries.”

Mike Chasen of the Poetry and Popular Culture blog interviewed the exhibit’s main organizer, Prof. Nadia Nurhussein of the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Among other things, she discussed one of the poems commemorating the Revolution:

Another interesting scrapbook, elaborately bound and formally titled Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill 1775-1875, was compiled by Mellen Chamberlain, a 19th-century BPL librarian. As the title suggests, he was interested in collecting material related to Revolutionary War battles, including poetic treatments of these battles by Holmes, Whittier, and Emerson.

We are displaying a fair copy of [Ralph Waldo] Emerson’s “Concord Hymn,” accompanied by a letter by Chamberlain explaining how he came into possession of the manuscript. He writes that Mrs. Charles Porter, Emerson’s cousin, offered to “prevail upon Mr Emerson to transcribe his battle hymn into the volume” if Chamberlain would travel with her to Concord. Chamberlain also notes that Emerson, whose “health was considerably broken,” died soon after.

P&PC: What do you mean by occasional verse? Does “Concord Hymn” qualify?

NN: “Concord Hymn” does qualify as occasional verse: it was written and performed at the dedication of an obelisk erected to commemorate the battles at Lexington and Concord. The Mellen Chamberlain manuscript is in the scrapbook case, but the occasional verse case includes a print copy of the poem (donated to the library by the family of William Lloyd Garrison) that was circulated at the event apparently for the purpose of audience participation.

Indeed, the “Concord Hymn” was written to fit the psalm tune “The Old Hundred,” and meant to be sung in chorus. Almost everybody knew the tune already, but they needed the new words.

(Photo of people gathered at the Concord obelisk above courtesy of jshyun, via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.)

Meeting Hannah Adams at the Library

I just noticed that the Boston Athenaeum’s featured author for November and December was Hannah Adams (1755-1831). Noah Sheola’s essay says:

Afflicted by chronic ill health, Adams spent her childhood [in Medfield] reading the contents of her father’s ample library. Living on the brink of poverty, the Adamses took in boarders, from whom Hannah learned the rudiments of Greek and Latin. Before long she was doing her part to support the family by tutoring the young men of Medfield who aspired to the college education she could not obtain. Drawing on her expansive reading, Adams began work on an exhaustive survey of Christian denominations, with the aim of publishing a kind of dictionary that would eschew the judgmental tone which, in Adams’s view, marred similar works then in print.

Adams’s liberal religious views became an issue when she set out to prepare a history textbook for schools, and complained about competition from another author, who also happened to be the very orthodox Congregationalist minister at Charlestown.

Her subsequent work, A Summary History of New England (1799), became the basis for a bitter dispute with Jedidiah Morse [1761-1826], author of the hugely successful Universal Geography, when in 1805 Adams wished to publish an abridgment of her history for school use. Morse was preparing a similar work and Adams felt that he was impinging on a market to which she had staked claim. Morse, a Calvinist pastor, countered that he had every right to publish whatever he pleased and accused Adams’s Unitarian backers of instigating the affair to bruise his reputation in the context of an ongoing interdenominational spat. While arbiters eventually determined that Morse owed her nothing, the moral victory belonged to Adams, for the public largely resented the pastor’s perceived indifference to the welfare of an aged woman of modest means.

The Athenaeum became a circulating library in 1827, and two years later gave Adams free borrowing privileges. As a poor author she probably couldn’t afford a full membership, and as a woman she probably wasn’t offered it.

(Wikipedia being as it is, I see that about half of its entry on Jedidiah Morse is about his part in the Illuminati scare of 1798. More on that here if you’re interested.)

Massachusetts Historical Society Fellowships

It’s the season to apply for Massachusetts Historical Society fellowships. (That’s society founder Jeremy Belknap looking on encouragingly.) They come in many flavors, such as:

• Long-term (six to twelve months) for scholars, applications due 15 January.
• Short-term, due 1 March.
• For teachers, this year to folks interested in “topics related to African Americans and the end of slavery in Massachusetts and the United States.” Deadline in March.
• New England Regional Fellowship Consortium. Application deadline 1 February.

In separate news, this summer I’ll be working with folks at the society and the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site on a teacher’s workshop about the siege of Boston. That’s generously funded by the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati. Details to come later.

“Fabric Arts and Social Threads” at Old South

Old South Meeting House’s series of lunchtime lectures this month focuses on “Fabric Arts and Social Threads: Women’s Work before Industrialization.” Each session takes place on a Thursday from 12:15 to 1:00 P.M. Admission costs $6, and is free for members.

The events:

6 January
The Spinning Wheel
Join us for a modern demonstration of a remarkable colonial craft with Barbara Provest, longtime member of the Weavers Guild of Boston and the Boston Area Spinners and Dyers. Learn how spinning, dyeing and weaving evolved in colonial New England through the 1850s, then watch this skilled artisan in action as she demonstrates carding and spinning on the wheel, as well as tape loom weaving.

13 January
Embroidery-Not a “Trivial Accomplishment”
More than just beautiful examples of a domestic art, embroidered samplers were a crucial tool in the education of young women and their participation in the colonial economy. A common practice in Europe, the tradition of these schoolgirl exercises came to New England with its earliest European settlers. Museum of Fine Arts Curator Pamela Parmal shares outstanding examples from the museum's current exhibition to illuminate the connections between female education, the economy, and artistic expression in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

20 January
Betsy Ross and the Making of America
National folk hero Betsy Ross, often described as a simple seamstress who rose to fame by creating our most recognizable national symbol, has long captivated the American imagination. But behind the legend is the compelling true story of an accomplished colonial artisan, a furniture upholsterer woven into a thriving colonial economy. Marla Miller, Associate Professor and Director of the Public History Program at UMass Amherst, and author of Betsy Ross and the Making of America, stitches together the incredible story of this accomplished woman and explores why we as a nation cannot reconcile her true role in our historical imagination. Booksigning to follow.

27 January
Out of Whole Cloth: Quilting in the Pre-Industrial Era
In this illustrated lecture, award-wining textile historian Lynne Bassett shares the history of quilt making before 1793 and its parallels to the social history of Massachusetts. In the intricate designs and chosen fabrics, one can read clues about the family, local, economic, and political history of its maker. America’s earliest patchwork, silk quilts imported from England, wool whole-cloth quilts, and quilted petticoats will be featured.

The Hive Schedule for Early 2011

This upcoming weekend marks the opening of this season’s Hive Sessions and Workshops. These are workshops in tailoring and other crafts designed to improve the authenticity of people’s appearance at the Battle of Lexington and Concord and other reenactments in the spring. They are presented by the Ladies of Refined Taste & Friends, in partnership with Minute Man National Historical Park.

The sessions take place in Minute Man Park at various buildings: Noah Brooks Tavern, Samuel Brooks House, and the Lexington and Concord visitor centers. The advanced workshops take several hours, and involve fees, material costs, and advance registration. Lectures and clinics are free and open to park volunteers and members of the living history community, though there might be materials fees involved.

More detailed descriptions, fees, and registration instructions are on the Hive website, but here are the courses offered. Asterisks denote the advanced courses.

8-9 January
* Great Coat, with Henry Cooke
* Sacque Back Gown, with Hallie Larkin and Steph Smith

15 January
* Powder Horn 101, with Mike Burke

16 January
Cartridge & Ammo Boxes, with Roy Najecki and Joel Bohy
Potent Potables: Tea, Rum & Spirits, with Emily Murphy
Selecting 18th-Century Lace, with Sue Felshin
18th-Century Swatchbook, with Hallie Larkin
Kit Tune-up/New Reenactor Clinic
Making Your Breeches Fit
Sewing Bee
Leatherwork 101: Making a Hammerstall, with Roy Najecki

15 & 29 January
* Unlined Frock Coat, with Henry Cooke
* Open Front English Gown, with Hallie Larkin and Steph Smith

12-13 February
* Provincial Cartridge Box, with Roy Najecki and Joel Bohy
* Powder Horn Carving, with Mike Burke

13 February
Don’t Make a Spectacle of Yourself: 18th-Century Eye Wear, with Greg Theberge
Carrying Your Burdens: Baskets & Bags, with VivianLea Solek
Men’s Jewelry & Watches, with Bill Hettinger
Carve Your Love a Busk for Valentine’s Day, with Chris Anderson
Knitting a Monmouth Cap, with Colleen Humphreys
Hair Tricks for Women, with Hallie Larkin and Steph Smith
Horsehair Neckstock, with Roy Najecki

26 March
* Tailoring: The Advanced Course, with Henry Cooke

26 or 27 March
* Gun Tune-up, with Jim Casco

27 March
Foodways: “Rising to the Occasion,” with Sandie Tarbox
Spinning Myths, with Gina Gerhard
Raising Babies the 18th-Century Way, with Sharon Burnston
Cross-Stitch for Children: Marking Your Shift, with Colleen Humphreys and Deana Peterson
Making a Petticoat, with Sue Felshin
Making a Baby/Toddler Banyan, with Sharon Burnston
Intro to Spinning, with Gina Gerhard
Norfolk Drill

7 May
* Banyans, with Edward Maeder

The Legacy of Judith Sargent Murray

And speaking of Judith Sargent Murray, her modern editor Bonnie Hurd Smith will speak about that pioneering American feminist this month as part of the Old Town Hall Lectures in Salem.

Here’s the event description:

Thursday, January 20, 2011
Forming a New Era in Female History: The Life & Legacy of Judith Sargent Murray
Illustrated lecture and book signing

Using excerpts from Murray’s letters, Smith traces the remarkable life of the 18th-century essayist from Gloucester, Massachusetts, who called for women’s full and equal participation in the new American nation.

Independent scholar Bonnie Hurd Smith is currently editing Murray’s letters for publication. Her many published works on Murray include I am Jealous for the Honor of Our Sex: A Brief Biography (2010), Mingling Souls Upon Paper: An Eighteenth-century Love Story (2008), and editions of Murray’s letters.

Those books are available through HistorySmiths.

“Now happily dawns the Year”

It’s a Boston 1775 tradition to quote a news carrier’s verse each New Year. These were printed flyers that newsboys carried around to their customers to solicit tips. So far I’ve quoted political ones, both Whig and Loyalist. This one is purely mercenary.

Job Weeden, Salem News-Boy,
Begs Leave to present the following Lines to the
GENTLEMEN and LADIES to whom he carries the
Essex Gazette.
Jan 1, 1772.

Now happily dawns the Year---Seventy-two.--
Accept my Regards--they’re chearful and true.
Pray grant me a Smile---a little Cash too.

No Heat nor no Cold my Course does retard:
Your Service is all I ever regard.
Shall I not meet with an ample Reward?

To please and amuse you---still I will go,
As patient as Job--blow high or blow low.
Tho’ drenched with Rain, or smother’d in Snow.

Your Goodness is great---my Boldness excuse,
’Tis not for Beggars to have what they chuse;
But pray remember, ’tis Job brings the News.

This verse is unusual for having a name attached to it; most speak generically of the boy or boys who carry the papers. Young Job also issued his own verse in 1769. Perhaps he was the only apprentice in that shop.

Cpl. Job Weeden was serving in Col. Thomas Crafts’s state artillery regiment in 1777.

Weeden co-published The Gentleman and Lady’s Town and Country Magazine, or, Repository of Instruction and Entertainment out of Boston in 1784. This was the first American periodical to have the words “lady’s” and “magazine” in the title together, targeting female readers. It printed the first essay by Judith Sargent Murray, under the pseudonym Constantia. For more on that magazine, see Women’s Periodicals in the United States: Consumer Magazines, by Kathleen L. Endres and Therese L. Lueck.

The 1796 Boston town directory lists Job Weeden as a printer with a house on Ship Street. However, the 1805 directory says he was on Ship Street running a “slop shop,” selling clothing and other supplies for sailors. The boy always did seem to be in publishing just for the money.

What Stays

Earlier this season, Historic New England reported:

We were surprised to find that one of the most popular museum objects [in our online collections] was not something of great monetary value, such as a work of art or a piece of furniture, but a humble eighteenth-century homespun corset.

Why? It turns out that a website, larsdatter.com, which lists material culture available on the web, posted a link to the corset [on its page about women’s stays and corsets]. This caused a flurry of hits as word spread—presumably among the electronic community of people who make authentic costumes for theater and re-enactors, and who prize rare survivals like this for the historical evidence they contain.

The collections database currently includes 34,000 images and more than 130,000 records.

Here’s another set of stays from colonial New England, this one made for a child and preserved at the Pocumtuck Valley Historical Association in Deerfield, Massachusetts.

Twitter Feed Returns, 13-26 Dec 2010

Loudtwitter is back! Thanks to all the programmers who’ve volunteered their knowledge and time to create that service. It allows me once more to post the Boston 1775 Twitter feed because it’s so much easier than writing an essay awesome.

(If any of the links below is a dead end, that’s because some extra characters snuck in during the transmission process. Try hitting the little hashtag at the end of that line and then clicking through the original link from the tweet page.)

• 16:19 RT @56Signers: We filmed historical reenactment of #Yorktown Tea Party w/ Thos Nelson descendant. Nelson Vid: bit.ly/cyRQ4s #
• 16:53 @marianpl Jack Rakove's AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARIES is thorough on issues and politics, but not stirring. #
• 16:54 @marianpl Don Higginbotham's WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE is still good on the military side. #
• 16:55 @marianpl There are MANY aspects of the Revolution I'm still new to myself because I focus so tightly on one region and period. #
• 17:03 @marianpl Just checked out Stokesbury's SHORT HISTORY OF THE AM REV. 300+ pages! But it was a LONG war, w/lots of politics on either side. #
• 11:35 In this week in 1823, "Visit from St. Nick" published. In 1860, "Paul Revere's Ride." Now read the 1941 mashup: bit.ly/fchHKe #
• 12:27 RT @amhistorymuseum: Today in 1783: George Washington resigns as commander in chief. ow.ly/3tLRr His battle sword: ow.ly/3tLRs #
• 12:44 RT @AmerCreation: The "No Mr. Beck" Series nblo.gs/cb73o #
• 22:48 Pauline Maier on the historic roots of the 2nd Amendment and what happened to our well-regulated militia: nyti.ms/gp2dsL #
• 22:48 Kakutani in NY TIMES on Joseph Ellis on John and Abigail Adams: nyti.ms/hCQ2ZH #
• 22:50 Early review of John Fea's WAS AMERICA FOUNDED AS A CHRISTIAN NATION?: bit.ly/fxKs9k #
• 22:51 @JBD1 Wishing you smooth sailing on the digital seas! Will virtual libraries be as exciting as real ones? #
• 23:01 A true Iraqi martyr, a Sunni policeman who grabbed a suicide bomber as he attacked a Shiite procession: nyti.ms/h33pap #
• 12:20 RT @alexismadrigal: Edison Papers archive faces budget shortfall:is.gd/ja7TU // You'd think those would be electronic. #
• 11:44 RT @56Signers: He paid for the #RevWar and ended up in jail. The tragedy of Robert Morris, signer:n.pr/hkuDaW #ushist #
• 11:47 RT @gordonbelt: The great experiment in constitution-making: Jack Rakove reviews Pauline Maier's "Ratification" bit.ly/ihX7AV #
• 11:50 RT @gordonbelt: Partners in revolution: Pauline Maier reviews "Madison and Jefferson" wapo.st/ek0MNK #
• 11:52 RT @JBD1: On the MHS blog today, some of the "odder" curiosities in the collections - bit.ly/dRKGlz // James Otis relics! #
• 11:58 RT @executedtoday: 12-year-old Hannah Ocuish was hanged in #Connecticut #onthisday 20 Dec 1786 ow.ly/3iAdo #
• 12:26 Thomas B. Allen (TORIES) writes of #RevWar as a civil war in AMERICAN HERITAGE: bit.ly/eSlZXO #
• 12:54 From US Intellectual History blog, praise for Pauline Maier's RATIFICATION: bit.ly/fU0Fvv #
• 12:56 RT @history_book: Gov. Alexander Martin: North Carolina Revolutionary War Stateman - Charles D. Rodenbough. amzn.to/bjYQxS #
• 00:17 American Antiquarian Socy acquires letters from Joseph Dennie (1768-1812) while he was rusticated from Harvard: bit.ly/dFDHTB #
• 00:19 Godson's Brother (turning 10) will represent his school in the Townsend-Warner quiz on British history. Sample queries: bit.ly/hPK361 #
• 23:22 From @CitizenWald, the Tea Party as myth, as historical parallel, as controversy: bit.ly/eke1qS #
• 11:03 John Fea's review of Alan Houston's BENJAMIN FRANKLIN & THE POLITICS OF IMPROVEMENT: bit.ly/eSySg6 #
• 11:09 RT @executedtoday: 18 December 1789: The Canadian Burglars bit.ly/hMOOL4 #history #tdih #
• 11:10 RT @KevinLevin: Book Review - The Women Jefferson Loved - By Virginia Scharff - NYTimes.com ow.ly/3rfQ0 #
• 11:13 RT @KevinLevin: Salvador Dali's Civil War Memory shar.es/XelPl // THIS would have been on Richmond's Monument Avenue?!! #
• 11:14 RT @LeBlancLucieMC: Grand-Pré, Acadia Parish Registers 1707-1733 networkedblogs.com/bUpPA #
• 11:15 RT @marianpl: Symbolic Past: John Woodman, W. Newbury, MA - 1787. Age 83 #genealogy ow.ly/3r9ql #
• 11:15 RT @OldSaratogaHist: On this date in 1777, first National Thanksgiving was celebrated in honor of the American Victory at Saratoga #revwar #
• 11:23 RT @Taylor_Stoermer: This date in 1764, Virginia House of Burgesses opposes threat of stamp tax thru messages to king & Parliament. #
• 11:24 RT @history_geek: Stacy Schiff Shares Advice for Aspiring Biographers - ow.ly/3rhZE #
• 11:25 RT @historytavern: "@Presidentfacts: John Quincy Adams(6th) is the first president to have had a photograph taken. twitpic.com/6lvup" #
• 11:39 Stacy Schiff: "Nearly all documents of the French foreign ministry about American Revolution were composed to mislead." bit.ly/fUrHD3 #
• 11:54 RT @carinr: Long-s issues: problematic for lexical data, but potential for typographic research? j.mp/dW3YAb bit.ly/hhJja4 #
• 12:07 @HTClinic: "Department of Labor releases report listing good produced by child labor or forced labor." // Think you're missing an S. #
• 12:47 When Longfellow first saw "Paul Revere's Ride" in print 150 years ago today, he was dismayed to spot a BIG typo: bit.ly/ikdRBR #
• 21:12 Finding anti-slavery meaning in "Paul Revere' s Ride" - Jill Lepore in NY TIMES: nyti.ms/dRPQwB - at Boston1775: bit.ly/hMehQY #
• 12:12 RT @mooresclassroom: Benjamin Franklin's 200+ synonyms for "Drunk" bit.ly/ffXzRE My favorite: "His Flag is Out" (via @mental_floss) #
• 12:51 RT @NYPLMaps: Happy birthday Jane Austen! The author was born in Hampshire County, UK in 1775 map:... fb.me/CHBaFC5J #
• 12:53 RT @WilliamHogeland: "Declaration 1776" *bargain-priced* hardcover all ready for Xmas: tinyurl.com/2bqgjgy #history #books #RevWar #
• 13:26 RT @jondresner: Does having cup of tea on 237th #anniversary of original #TeaParty constitute a political statement? // Oops, already did. #
• 00:38 Massachusetts Historical Socy's online treasures linked to the 1773 Boston Tea Party: www.masshist.org/blog/443 #
• 00:42 Reply from @CapitalismNow, biographer of Samuel Adams, to @caleb_crain's take on Tea Party in NEW YORKER: bit.ly/ee9PRp #
• 15:08 Online chat about Revolutionary America with Caleb Crain going on NOW at NEW YORKER: nyr.kr/eifn8d #
• 15:10 NY TIMES's Edward Rothstein thinks "President's House" in Philadelphia raises too many unaddressed questions: nyti.ms/hP3gEF #
• 15:01 RT @tompin: George Washington died 211 years ago today. Missed the 19th century by a few weeks. bit.ly/eSO8iw #ushistory #
• 15:04 RT @history_book: Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution - by Michal Jan Rozbicki. amzn.to/dWFy4Z #
• 15:27 @PaulRevereHouse Revere's 1791 letter to Washington asking for excise job suggests they had met but were not well acquainted. #
• 15:33 RT @Readex: Undergraduate's Reflections on How Access to Newspapers Helped in researching Boston Tea Party reactions bit.ly/efLxhm #
• 15:37 RT @visitvf: Huzzah! Huzzah! The Continental Army marches into Valley Forge NHP THIS Sun. 6-8pm. bit.ly/fo1Tj3 #
• 15:57 RT @RagLinen: An unexpected consequence of the Boston Tea Party, 1773: ow.ly/3p9kJ #
• 15:57 RT @PHLVisitorCntr: The President's House is ready to be seen! fb.me/PTwFzrGr #
• 16:04 RT @NEHgov: NEH-supported scholar studies forgotten Founding Father John Dickinson, "Penman of the Revolution" bit.ly/e2qFhQ #
• 16:04 Tracing the term "dystopia" to the mid-1700s, long before J. S. Mill used it: bit.ly/dVFdTk #
• 16:26 @HistoricShed And of course it's always easier to get press for a NEW DISCOVERY. Even better if it UPENDS EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW! #
• 23:15 Review of GEORGE WASHINGTON'S SOCKS, #RevWar time-travel adventure for middle-grade readers from 1991: bit.ly/eMLGWp #
• 23:23 RT @larrycebula: Wanted: Founding Fathers northwesthistory.blogspot.com/2010/12/wanted-founding-fathers.html #
• 23:26 RT @marianpl: Symbolic Past: Joseph Bates, Bellingham, MA - 1793. #genealogy ow.ly/3piNZ #
• 23:28 When old soldier Samuel James deserted from the 52d Regiment of Foo—oh, wait, he's come back: bit.ly/gzObsI #
• 23:38 From @jlpowers, call for pieces for anthology on children and war: bit.ly/i7rWMP #

Dr. Benjamin Church Has a Blog

I’ve spent most of the last several days polishing a draft of a chapter about Gen. George Washington’s intelligence activities during the siege of Boston. (Sixty-four pages isn’t too long for a chapter, right? 205 footnotes simply means I’m being thorough, right? Anyway…)

That chore makes me delighted to know about this blog entirely devoted to Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr. Edward J. Witek has been researching Church for years, and is now sharing some of his findings.

For example, he’s handled a topic I’ve had on my to-do list: What’s the source of the one and only and completely unconvincing portrait of Church (shown here)? A bigger mystery, of course, is why people keep reprinting it. It’s not even good-looking.

Witek also lays out the evidence about Church’s reported mansion in Raynham—or was it Bridgewater? Here’s a bit of Church’s political poetry, composed for Paul Revere. And here’s the start of a series about Scottish printer John Mein, one of the Boston Whigs’ most effective opponents. There are growing pages about medical practice and Freemasonry in eighteenth-century Boston.

I suspect that Witek and I might not agree on all Churchly topics because there’s so much murkiness in what the doctor was up to: espionage, sex, propaganda, money, &c. That leaves extra room for interpretation. But now there’s a central clearing-house for the mysteries.

George Washington’s Teeth, Yet Again

There are only two more years to visit Mount Vernon and see the teeth that Boston native John Greenwood carved for George Washington out of hippopotamus bone!

The webpage says:

On loan from The New York Academy of Medicine, the denture was the first of several dentures that John Greenwood made for Washington and is dated 1789, the year that Washington took his oath of office in New York City. The denture is engraved with: Under jaw. This is Great Washington’s teeth by J. Greenwood. First one made by J. Greenwood, Year 1789.

Carved from hippopotamus ivory, the denture contains real human teeth fixed in the ivory by means of brass screws. The denture, which was anchored on the one remaining tooth in Washington’s mouth, has a hole which fit snugly around the tooth and probably contributed to the loosening and eventual loss of that tooth.

The Mount Vernon website notes that there is no extra cost to see these teeth.

Hannah Mather Crocker Book Still on the Way

Two years ago, I got word that Hannah Mather Crocker’s history of colonial New England was being readied for publication this year. Then I lost track of the project.

I just picked up the trail again through the blog for the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium’s blog, at which Prof. Eileen Hunt Botting reports:

The first edition of Hannah Mather Crocker’s Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston is slated to be published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society Press in April 2011. I worked on this edition while a NERFC fellow in 2009-10.

Crocker (1752-1829) was the daughter of Samuel Mather, the grand-daughter of Cotton Mather, and the great-granddaughter of Increase Mather, all famed Boston ministers. Crocker wrote the Reminiscences between 1822 and 1829, when she left the book unpublished at her death. The manuscript was acquired by the NEHGS in 1879.

Crocker’s history of Boston spans from the city’s founding by the Puritans in 1630 through the War of 1812. There are also scattered, eye-witness references to life in the city for the duration of Crocker’s life from the 1750s through the 1820s. The narrative is not chronological but rather thematically recounts the development of Boston via its topography, the genealogy of its inhabitants, and its politics.

The narrative orients itself around several key political events to which it periodically returns: the Puritan founding, the crafting of the colonial and provincial charters of Massachusetts, the American Revolution, the post-revolutionary rebirth of the city, and the War of 1812. Her non-chronological treatment of the city’s history allows Crocker to draw connections between events and people across time and space.

The narrative climax of Crocker’s history is the American Revolution, in which Crocker weaves her eye-witness testimony into a reflective work of synthetic history that draws from primary, secondary, and oral sources.

Still looking forward to this volume! If we can follow Mark Twain’s “autobiography,” surely we can follow how Crocker weaves strands of New England history.

“O Silent night shows war ace danger!”

This is a semi-famous sonnet by David Shulman titled “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” Can you see what’s notable about it?

A hard, howling, tossing water scene.
Strong tide was washing hero clean.
“How cold!” Weather stings as in anger.
O Silent night shows war ace danger!
The cold waters swashing on in rage.
Redcoats warn slow his hint engage.
When star general’s action wish’d “Go!”
He saw his ragged continentals row.
Ah, he stands—sailor crew went going.
And so this general watches rowing.
He hastens—winter again grows cold.
A wet crew gain Hessian stronghold.
George can’t lose war with ’s hands in;
He’s astern—so go alight, crew, and win!

Every line—that’s every line—is an anagram of the phrase “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” Yet Shulman still managed to produce couplets and a semblance of sense, though I must admit that metre fell overboard.

“He Would Much Rather Sit on Christmas-Day...”

On Monday, 19 Dec 1774, the British Parliament debated “raising the Supply granted to his Majesty”—i.e., enacting taxes, in this case a land tax. The country’s landowners were, understandably, against raising this charge, so the House of Commons agreed to Lord North’s proposal to keep it at “three Shillings in the Pound.”

Then a member named David Hartley (1732-1813) rose to speak. Representing Kingston upon Hull, he was one of the radical Whigs opposed to the government’s American policy, meaning the Boston Port Bill, Massachusetts Government Act, and duties enacted since 1767. He insisted that Parliament had to deal with the crisis in the Massachusetts Bay colony, where nearly all the army troops on the continent were holed up in Boston.

This description of Hartley’s speech comes from a record of Parliamentary activity published in 1775 (which leaned toward the Whigs):

Mr. Hartley rose, and in a mild, sensible speech, enlarged upon the very extraordinary conduct of Administration concerning American affairs.

He said the accounts from that country were truly alarming; that the Resolutions of the Continental Congress evidently proved that the people were determined not to submit to the late Acts passed in relation to America, nor to any other of a like complexion; that the Troops now stationed at Boston, and the inhabitants of that Town, had no means of procuring subsistence but by Sea, or from the country; that either method was now equally difficult, as the Harbour would be frozen up, and the land carriage, even if subsistence was to be had, rendered impracticable, as the country would be covered with snow; and that, under such circumstances, the situation of the Troops would be no less deplorable than that of the miserable inhabitants.

He continued to say, that he was not well versed in sieges; but if he understood right, he took it that the Town of Boston was surrounded by General [Thomas] Gage with lines of circumvallation, and that such being the very critical state of things, respecting both the situation, the temper, and disposition of the military and the natives, he submitted it to the gentlemen on the other side how they could reconcile it to the duty they owed to the Nation in their publick, or to their constituents in their private capacity, to agree to a long adjournment, while things remained in so dangerous and alarming a state, without taking any one step to avert the numerous and fatal mischiefs which they portended.

For his part, he affirmed solemnly, he would much rather sit on Christmas-day, and continue to do so, de die in diem [from day to day], than go to the country [i.e., adjourn] in so critical a season, without at least agreeing to some measures, though they should extend no further than prevention.

According to Nathaniel Wraxall, who entered Parliament in 1780, Hartley was by no means a stirring orator:

The Rockingham Party had not among them a more zealous adherent; but in Parliament, the intolerable length, when increased by the dullness of his Speeches, rendered him an absolute nuisance, even to his own friends. His rising always operated like a dinner bell.

One day, that he had thus wearied out the patience of his audience; having nearly cleared a very full House, which was reduced from three hundred, to about eighty persons, half asleep; just at a time when he was expected to close, he unexpectedly moved that the Riot Act should be read, as a document necessary to elucidate, or to prove, some of his foregoing assertions.

[Edmund] Burke, who sat close by him, and who wishing to speak to the Question under discussion, had been bursting with impatience for more than an hour and a half; finding himself so cruelly disappointed, bounced up, exclaiming, “The Riot Act! my dear friend, the Riot Act! to what purpose! don’t you see that the mob is already completely dispersed?”

The sarcastic wit of this remark, in the state of the House, which presented only empty Benches; encreased by the manner and tone of despair, in which Burke uttered it; convulsed every person present except Hartley, who never changed countenance, and insisted on the Riot Act being read by one of the Clerks.

Be that as it may, I found that Hartley’s argument had a certain resonance this month, when American legislators also argued about whether to stay in session, not on Christmas but in the days after Christmas. And ended up finishing before the holiday after all.

Back in 1774, the House of Commons “adjourned for Christmas recess” on Friday, 23 December, after the king approved the renewed act “granting to his majesty certain duties upon malt, mum, cyder and perry” as before. The land tax was completed in February. Lord North and his ministers maintained their American policy, and war began in April.

During the war, North’s government had to raise the land tax, which cost it support. After years of fighting and the defeat at Yorktown, a new ministry in London changed policy and started to negotiate a withdrawal from those thirteen colonies. That government appointed David Hartley to represent Britain at the signing of the Treaty of Paris.