Sealed with Blood: War, Sacrifice, and Memory in Revolutionary America (Early American Studies)

Sealed with Blood: War, Sacrifice, and Memory in Revolutionary America Sarah J. Purcell University of Pennsylvania Pre...

Author: Sarah J. Purcell

19 downloads 802 Views 3MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Sealed with Blood: War, Sacrifice, and Memory in Revolutionary America

Sarah J. Purcell

University of Pennsylvania Press

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

6640 Purcell / SEALED WITH BLOOD / sheet 1 of 288

Sealed with Blood


E A R LY A M E R I C A N S T U D I E S Daniel K. Richter and Kathleen M. Brown, Series Editors Exploring neglected aspects of our colonial, revolutionary, and early national history and culture, Early American Studies reinterprets familiar themes and events in fresh ways. Interdisciplinary in character, and with a special emphasis on the period from about  to , the series is published in partnership with the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.


Sealed with Blood War, Sacrifice, and Memory in Revolutionary America Sarah J. Purcell

PENN

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia


Copyright ©  Sarah J. Purcell All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 



















Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania -

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Purcell, Sarah J. Sealed with blood : war, sacrifice, and memory in Revolutionary America / Sarah J. Purcell. p. cm. — (Early American studies) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN --- (cloth) . United States—History—Revolution, –—Social aspects. . United States— History—Revolution, –—Monuments. . United States—History—Revolution, –—Influence. . Memory—Social aspects—United States—History—th century. . Memory—Social aspects—United States—History—th century. . National characteristics, American. . Nationalism—United States—History—th century. . Nationalism—United States—History—th century. . Political culture—United States—History—th century. . Political culture—United States—History—th century. I. Title. II. Series. E .P  .—dc 

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55


To Ed and Mary Purcell, with love

This page intentionally left blank


Contents

Introduction: Public Memory and the Revolutionary War 



‘‘Blood-Bought Fame’’: National Identity and Commemoration During the Revolutionary War, – 



‘‘Gratitude Shall Be Written on Our Hearts’’: The Nation and Military Gratitude, – 



‘‘Republican Emblems’’ and ‘‘Popular Devices’’: Heroes and Their Audiences in an Age of Party Conflict, – 



National Crisis and Destabilized Memory, –



The Return of Lafayette: Memory and the National Future, –  Afterword



Notes



Index



Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Acknowledgments







O memory! Thou midway world, ’Twixt earth and paradise, Where things decayed and loved ones lost In dreamy shadows rise, And, freed from all that’s earthly, vile, Seem hallowed, pure and bright, Like scenes in some enchanted isle All bathed in liquid light.

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

—Abraham Lincoln, ‘‘Memory’’


6640 Purcell / SEALED WITH BLOOD / sheet 11 of 288 Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Introduction: Public Memory and the Revolutionary War

Military memory, especially memory of the Revolutionary War, is really at the heart of American national identity. Between  and , public memories of the Revolutionary War contributed to the formation of American nationalism and helped to shape the character of an expanding political culture in the early republic. As has been true in many other countries, the shared memory of sacrifice and the hardship of war has helped to define American values for over two hundred years. Michael Kammen has reminded us that war plays ‘‘a fundamental role in stimulating, defining, justifying, periodizing, and eventually filtering American memories and traditions.’’ 1 Images of Revolutionary heroes and martyrs have frequently been used by politicians, writers, and a host of ordinary people to imagine and explain what they think America means. The violence of the Revolutionary War had an indelible effect on the politics of the American Revolution and on the men and women who saw their lives torn apart by the fighting. This book traces the effects of that violence, though it does not focus on the war itself. Instead, this work focuses specifically on commemorations of the military aspects of the American Revolution in order to elucidate how public memories of violent conflict shaped many early Americans’ lives. By commemorating the Revolutionary War in sermons, newspapers, monuments, parades, songs, and material culture, Americans created a set of stories that sought to give meaning to the real violence of war. That meaning was inextricably bound up with the process of nation building, as people created for themselves new ways of feeling American. Commemorations were designed to downplay the bloodshed and division of war in order to bring disparate Americans together around images of shared sacrifice. Military commemorations between  and  helped Americans to imagine what their nation was about, but memories did not remain static over that fifty-year period. Public memories of the Revolutionary War spread to




Introduction

ever widening socioeconomic groups, who adopted the language and style of commemorations to their own political uses—a process I refer to as the democratization of public memory. Even before the fighting ended, public memory of the war was focused on a fairly narrow group of martyrs and heroes around whom an American nation might unite in grateful praise. In the process, however, military commemoration also created a symbolic language of nationalism by stressing the importance of sacrifice for the common good, and as time progressed, this language began to be spoken by wider and wider groups of people who stressed that their own sacrifices were important to the nation. By  the original elite heroes were still remembered, but women, white men from the lower ranks of society, and African Americans were all drawing attention to other aspects of national military glory and to their own accomplishments. The democratization of memory did not mean that the nation was instantly transformed into a society that offered equality to all Americans, nor did military commemorations necessarily grant direct power, such as the right to vote or hold office, to these groups. But the language of commemoration did enable various people to draw attention to themselves on an important public and symbolic level, which was one early step toward broadening the nation’s political culture. The style and content of commemorations also changed in the process, as Americans used military memory to envision a more democratic nation fifty years after the war ended. Revolutionary War memories began as part of the culture of republicanism created during and after the Revolution. Republicanism has been one of the most studied and most durable concepts in early American history over the past thirty years, and as an analytical category it still has something to offer if used carefully.2 By creating a republican society to replace their allegiance to the English monarchy, Americans constructed representative government founded on cherished precedents set during Roman times and tested through the years by the English Revolution and other European governmental experiments. The American republic was defined by representative government based on the idea of popular sovereignty. The government, led by select, meritorious leaders, would seek to represent the will of the people. But republicanism went beyond just a form of government to encompass an entire set of values in American life. Self-sacrifice, military heroism, love of liberty, benevolence, fear of centralized power, and a reverence for the common good merged to form a republican ideology that helped to organize American thought and action. Warfare occupied a particular place in this republican ideology, and early commemorations of the Revolutionary War


Introduction



crystallized a vision of republican heroes who had set aside their self-interest to risk their lives for the common good, had proved their worth through merit, and were deserving of everlasting public praise. While military heroes like George Washington might also fit the ideological requirements necessary to become good representatives of the people as political leaders, the republican suspicion of power kept their military accomplishments separate from civil government, which was always to remain firmly in civilian control.3 This contradiction in republican ideology—the fascination with military heroes and the simultaneous suspicion of actual military power—helps to explain why memories of the Revolutionary War became so powerful in the early years of nationhood. By creating glorious, sanitized, and often sentimentalized images of the Revolutionary War, government officials and many Americans themselves fashioned ideological rallying points for a cohesive nation without having to resort to coercive military power to ensure that cohesiveness. By commemorating the Revolutionary War, Americans created a national mythology for themselves. They transformed the bloodshed, division, and violence of war into beautiful symbols of unity and national cohesion. Because the war had been such a cataclysmic event, military memories tended to highlight in the strongest possible terms the necessity of Americans’ bonding together. Even so, although many nationalistic commemorations appeared on the surface to offer a completely consensual idea of what the American community should be, in reality, nationalism and memory were both subjects of constant conflict and change. There was no single, correct memory of the war that defined what the nation was, although various groups and individuals tried to claim that there was. In order to stress unity, Americans continually struggled to create a national identity favorable to themselves and their interests, while simultaneously using memory to maintain the appearance of patriotic impartiality. Conservatives, members of the social elite, and governmental officials often used symbols of the Revolutionary War to create an image of the American nation that met their own ends and usually excluded women, African Americans, and poorer white men. But conservatives could not maintain exclusive control of military memory, and their glorification of sacrifice during the Revolutionary War created a role in the nation’s mythology for some of the very people they wished to exclude—especially for poorer veterans both black and white. Americans did not agree on exactly what memories of the Revolutionary War meant, but most of them did agree that memories were impor-




Introduction

tant to proper patriotism. The tension between this conflict and the desire for consensus created a particular vision of the American nation that unfolded between  and . Wartime commemorations created great, semiaristocratic heroes and held that they should be praised by a unified American people. The real ‘‘people’’ played their role in this drama of unity by celebrating heroes on holidays, approving of certain plays, buying particular literature, or subscribing to patriotic sermons. But as the people accepted the message that the glory of the country was bound up with wartime sacrifice, more humble individuals—most especially war veterans themselves— demanded their share of public gratitude. Public memory was able to shape national identity even as it was constantly changing in the hands of diverse Americans, all seeking to define their own version of patriotism. I purposefully employ the concept of public memory—as opposed to private memory, history, or simple commemoration—in this book.4 Michael Kammen’s  book, A Season of Youth, examined the image of the American Revolution in a variety of American cultural forms, but he restricted himself mainly to the period after , when the Revolution had passed from the subject of memory to the subject of imagination.5 My study looks at the ways that the Revolutionary War was portrayed in public culture by those who lived through it and the generation that followed them—two formative generations that have recently received attention from scholars.6 Public memory and private memory were often closely intertwined in the foundational period of American history. Alfred Young’s biography of Revolutionary George Robert Twelves Hewes shows how studying the private memory of members of those generations helps to uncover how ‘‘common people’’ understood the Revolution and lived its consequences. Young juxtaposes private memory with public memory of the Revolution, which often muted the participation of lower-class individuals, and he argues that only after ‘‘ordinary’’ citizens had begun to demand more power in society by the mid-s did tales of grassroots events such as the Boston Tea Party become important public symbols.7 My own work confirms this pattern but also traces its roots to the s and s, when claims by common veterans like Hewes that their own heroism mattered were first initiated. This book offers a national picture of the public memory of the Revolutionary War that should provide the wider context for the stories of individuals like Hewes. National memory and national history have much in common, but they are not the same. Serious efforts to write national histories of the Revolutionary War began in the s and continued through the start of the nineteenth century. Between  and , David Humphreys, David Ramsay,


Introduction



and William Gordon all wrote histories of the Revolutionary War that they maintained would provide an ‘‘objective’’ assessment of America’s national greatness that could be passed on in the future.8 William Gordon aspired to be ‘‘a faithful historian, on whom posterity may depend, when the interested productions of partisans are no longer regarded.’’ 9 David Ramsay assured readers of his controversial  History of the Revolution of South Carolina that he had ‘‘carefully watched the workings of his mind, lest passion, prejudice or a party-spirit . . . warp his judgement.’’ 10 Ramsay sought to write ‘‘impartially’’ because he maintained that ‘‘an historian should neither be a panegyrist nor satirist, but an impartial recorder of past event, for the information of after ages.’’ 11 While Mercy Otis Warren’s  history of the Revolution clearly betrayed her allegiance to the Democratic-Republican party, she sought to record the war as it really happened. But this kind of history writing was really a different project from the creation of collective public memory. The public memory of the Revolutionary War created by countless small-scale local commemorations, oddball newspaper articles, poems, memorials, funerals, sermons, portraits, and plays was all about passion, prejudice, panegyrics, and party spirit. Even when the creators of early commemorations made claims of impartiality, they often purposefully used the overblown language of conventional heroism to stress how Revolutionary War accomplishments were as impressive as those of the ancient Romans or the greatest British military heroes in a subjective bid to glorify the nation. Public memories of the war were not so much records of what happened as they were shared images of what past events were supposed to mean. This is not to say that there was ever any stable public memory of the war but rather that creating stable memories on which to base patriotism was a constant goal. Many different voices contributed to the public commemoration of the Revolutionary War, and even when government officials, conservatives, or elites like the Society of the Cincinnati sought to control public memory, they often faced opposition and conflict. One of the most interesting aspects of the development of the public memory of the Revolutionary War between  and  is how these conflicts developed and changed over time. Beginning during the period of political party conflict of the s and culminating after the War of , it became clear that public memories were highly controversial and contested as different people consciously employed images of the war to enhance their own social capital and political power. Even the seemingly most stable stock character of Revolutionary War memory, the great war hero, had been called




Introduction

into question by . But although these intentional uses of public memory and the very process of democratization that opened up public culture helped to destabilize memory itself, the Revolutionary military past continued to offer Americans a core around which to define their national pride until  and beyond. The public memory of the Revolutionary War created national identity by allowing early Americans to imagine a shared history of common sacrifice, at first by great war heroes and then increasingly by average people as well. The nineteenth-century French philosopher Ernest Renan stressed how important an understanding of this kind of mythic past was to understanding the history of nationalism. Although Renan’s imperialist outlook is certainly out of favor, his idea of what made a nation cohere still has much to offer. Wherever a people could not claim to share religion, blood, race, community interest, or geography as a basis for national identity, the past became incredibly important as the ‘‘rich heritage of memories’’ that would act to bond people together. In his seminal essay ‘‘What Is a Nation?’’ Renan wrote that ‘‘The nation, like the individual, is the fruit of a long past spent in toil, sacrifice, and devotion. . . . Thus we see that a nation is a great solid unit, formed by the realization of sacrifices in the past, as well as of those one is prepared to make in the future.’’ 12 Scholarship on the creation of national identity has increased tenfold in recent years, and many scholars still recognize some utility in Renan’s approach. Benedict Anderson’s tremendously influential work Imagined Communities stresses how public culture, including memories of a shared past, allowed people to create images of their ‘‘communion’’ as they imagined their connections with one another to form national allegiances. Memories of wartime successes and sacrifices made up some of what Linda Colley has referred to as the ‘‘mental furniture’’ necessary for eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury Britons to imagine what their nation meant. Eric Hobsbawm has shown that nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europeans were even willing to fabricate ceremonies and traditions based on a wholly mythic but nonetheless widely believed past in order to constitute their national identities. All these scholars define nationalism as an imaginative process and seek to uncover what cemented the bonds of fellow feeling between people.13 While continuing to view nationalism as an act of imagination, a recent group of early American historians has also drawn our attention to the practices that instilled and exhibited such sentiments. These scholars have begun to analyze how public culture, particularly public celebrations, helped give Americans a sense of national identity while at the same time clearly de-


Introduction



fining racial, gender, class, and political limits to membership in the American political community. Len Travers’s study on how celebrations of Independence Day aided ‘‘in the formation and communication of national identity and national consciousness in the early republic’’ considers how patriotic memories of the Declaration of Independence, and of the American Revolution generally, were expressed in the exuberant festive culture of Boston, Charleston, and Philadelphia.14 David Waldstreicher broadens that picture to demonstrate how the panoply of public celebrations in the early republic created nationalism out of the whole cloth of partisanship and division. Waldstreicher stresses that American nationalism was formed by a set of political practices, conflicts, and rites of citizenship enacted in the streets.15 Simon Newman’s work on festive culture and popular political culture in the s emphasizes how national identity was created in and around partisanship and boundaries of race, class, and gender.16 My work defines nationalism both as an imaginative process and as a political practice and shows how the two combined in manifestations of public memory. Commemorations of the Revolutionary War created abstract ideas of what the ideal American nation should be; at the same time, however, pondering the Revolutionary military past provided the basis for Americans to imagine that they had something in common across regions and sometimes across racial, class, and gender barriers, even as those barriers were simultaneously strengthened in other ways. Participating in commemoration, whether by reading a book, seeing a play, or turning out in the streets for a public celebration, also enabled people to put their ideas about the nation into practice and to enact some of the conflicts that belied the image of consensus that was often simultaneously propagated. Even more importantly, military memories played a unique role in the creation of American nationalism as an ideology, an identity, and a practice. No work has yet adequately explained how Revolutionary War bloodshed legitimized the American nation by providing a specific focus for Americans’ self-fashioning. That is what I will attempt to accomplish. In doing so, I hope to make a significant contribution to the ongoing historical debates over memory and nationalism by placing emphasis on the role of war in the creation of nationalism. Memories of the Revolutionary War were important, if for no other reason than that many early Americans said so over and over again. This book takes them at their word but also looks critically at how military commemorations show us particular aspects of the development of national identity. Charles Royster’s work in the s and s on the intellectual and




Introduction

cultural consequences of the Revolutionary War first laid the groundwork for this kind of look at public memory of the war, but few historians have followed up on Royster’s tantalizing hints that the memory of that war had a profound influence on American national identity.17 Eighteenth-century Americans had no doubts, however, about the significance of military memory to their patriotism and national identity. The playwright Jabez Peck laid out the issues when he asked in : Ought we ever to forget those arduous, those bloody struggles we endured in that dangerous contest?—a contest in which thousands of our dear friends yielded up their lives on the sanguine plains. And shall we, who are enjoying the blessings for which they fought ’till their last breath, forget to celebrate those transactions? Ought we not, on the other hand ever to bear them on our minds, and endeavour to impress on the minds of the rising generation, the inestimable value of the liberties they possess, and the dangerous struggles their predecessors endured to secure to them those invaluable blessings? 18

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Historians should take Peck’s words seriously because many of his contemporaries clearly did. Many scholars have addressed similar issues for other wars and other national cultures. European historians in recent years have devoted an increasing amount of attention to the ways in which public memories of the two world wars have rearranged modern national identities. George Mosse and Jay Winter both stress the indelible mark left on modern Europe by the immense sense of loss related to these wars.19 Other scholars have charted ways in which not only the world wars but also smaller conflicts ranging from colonial wars to the Gulf War have altered modern European self-perceptions.20 American historians have not entirely ignored the importance of military memory to the formation of national identity, but most of their efforts have focused on conflicts other than the Revolutionary War. Jill Lepore has shown how stories, commemorations, and visual representations of King Philip’s War shaped American memory and identity (both white and Indian) from the seventeenth into the twentieth century. Kurt Piehler’s survey of American war memory sheds some interesting light on the Revolutionary period, but its real strength lies in its assessment of the effects of the world wars on the creation of modern America. Interesting work is beginning to be done on the far-reaching consequences of Mexican War, Spanish-American War, and Vietnam War memory.21 Even more attention has been paid in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the public memory of the Civil War and its consequences


Introduction



for the American nation. Perhaps because the Civil War so explicitly tore apart the American nation, scholars have more thoroughly investigated how romanticized images of the war and efforts to reconcile its conflicts helped to bring the country back together and to confirm a new sense of national identity. At the same time, scholars, including David Blight, Nina Silber, and Amy J. Kinsel, have shown how certain uses of Civil War memory, especially racialized images, have continued to be divisive.22 Anyone who has paid attention to recent controversies over the flying of the Confederate flag at the statehouses of several southern states can grasp that the public memory of the Civil War is capable of causing fresh wounds. Public memory of the Revolutionary War, which insured the creation of the American nation in the first place, deserves as much attention. In fact, many memories of the Civil War, the world wars, and even Vietnam echoed Revolutionary War memory, and any understanding of how those later wars shaped American national identity is incomplete without understanding the Revolutionary precedent. I seek to offer a picture of how Americans first defined themselves with reference to fighting, mourning, sacrifice, and triumph—all themes that retained their currency in later decades and centuries. To be sure, remembering warfare was not the only way in which early Americans constituted themselves into a nation, nor was the process completed by . Reverence for other national symbols such as Plymouth Rock and the Declaration of Independence helped people imagine aspects of their national identity not related to sacrifice and bloodshed. The United States Constitution established the framework for national government and became a symbol, albeit a contested one, of loyalty and what Liah Greenfeld has called ‘‘a nation in the American sense.’’ Edward Countryman has shown how the ‘‘collisions’’ between whites, African Americans, and Indians contributed to a particular understanding of a unique ‘‘American character’’ up until the end of the nineteenth century, and other scholars have argued that westward expansion and the creation of Indian and Mexican ‘‘others’’ beyond American borders did as much to shape American self-perceptions.23 Most Americans also held on to regional, religious, and parochial identities even as they were developing allegiances to the American nation, and the vision of a single nation was not wholly accepted until after the Civil War. Alongside these other strands of American nationalism, public memory of the Revolutionary War held great power in public culture and profoundly influenced national politics. Revolutionary War memory could be a powerful social force. The following five chapters trace the nature of early Ameri-




Introduction

cans’ efforts to use that power and to properly commemorate the Revolutionary War. Commemorations of the Revolutionary War, as a military conflict, played a very specific role in the public culture of Revolutionary America. The war itself was only part of the larger political and ideological Revolution in America at the end of the eighteenth century, but without a successful conclusion to the war, none of the other changes would have been possible. I examine in this book the ways that Americans publicly remembered their war in order to work through their feelings about a whole host of political, ideological, and social issues. The links between the war and the larger Revolution mean that sometimes the two may seem to be conflated in the sources, but that is only because military memories often moved Americans to articulate their feelings about the nation in terms that were important for their conception of the broader Revolution as well. I focus here on expressly military commemorations—the celebration of war heroes, parades on battle anniversaries, celebrations of the signing of peace treaties, plays about the war, and many other forms of military memory—in order to show how pondering the sacrifice of war allowed Americans to express their larger hopes and aspirations for themselves and for their Revolutionary nation. In many ways, the questions that plagued Americans during the early republic about what kind of nation they lived in continue to plague us today. We still seek to understand if there are any essential beliefs that hold us together. Whether in a military reenactment in a local Fourth of July celebration or in more ominous circumstances such as the invocation of ‘‘freedom fighters’’ by the modern militia movement, we must recognize that the Revolutionary War has had a defining influence on the malleable concept of American patriotism. To understand how the Revolutionary War contributed to the earliest formation of national identity is to understand something crucial and long lasting about American political culture.


Chapter 

‘‘Blood-Bought Fame’’: National Identity and Commemoration During the Revolutionary War, –

To Die, or to be free? That is the question. —‘‘A Soliloquy on the Times,’’ (Baltimore) Maryland Journal, July , 

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

At the Battle of Bunker Hill on June , , Dr. Joseph Warren was shot in the face at close range and killed instantly. Although Warren was a well-known political orator, physician, and president of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts and was about to be commissioned as a major general in the Continental Army, he fought at Bunker Hill in the ranks alongside ordinary soldiers. His death was almost certainly messy: when his remains were collected ten months after the battle, they could be identified only by Paul Revere’s dental records.1 In its physical reality, Warren’s death was not unlike thousands of others that followed over the next eight years of war with Great Britain, but on a symbolic level his demise soon came to mean something much greater. The actual grim violence of Warren’s death was transformed and sentimentalized into a tool for mobilizing public support for the war. He became the first great celebrated martyr to the cause of American liberty, and nearly at once he was transformed from a local figure into a national hero. The commemoration of Joseph Warren, the heroic martyr, inspired patriotism during the war and stimulated the national imagination as an example of the glory that would accrue to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of American political principles. A wide variety of orators, authors, politicians, and average Americans quickly fastened on the heroic image of Joseph Warren after the Battle of




Chapter 

Bunker Hill as they sought to impose some meaning on the chaos of war around them. Instead of staring the realities of death and warfare in the face, Americans sometimes diverted their eyes to focus on a glorified version of violence that was at once more patriotic and more palatable. The instant memory of the glory of warfare, carried throughout the colonies by a burgeoning print culture, offered solace in the midst of real bloodshed and fear. Although it was obvious that not all Americans supported the patriot cause, martyrs like Joseph Warren allowed patriots to tell themselves stories to the contrary. An excellent example of how quickly and effectively Warren began to make his mark on public memory appeared in George’s Cambridge Almanack for . Daniel George, the almanac’s author, was a seventeen-yearold ‘‘crippled’’ boy whom the Boston preacher Samuel Williams had recommended to Salem publisher Ezekiel Russell as a prodigiously talented astronomer and writer. Russell published the first of a series of almanacs by George in  just as the Revolutionary War began. George’s Cambridge Almanack for  contained extensive accounts of the battles of Concord and Bunker Hill and listed the names of all those killed at the battles of Lexington and Concord. But the greatest tributes were reserved for Joseph Warren, ‘‘that honorable, renowned, and magnanimous hero’’ of Bunker Hill. The almanac’s second edition contained an acrostic on the martyr’s name and a ‘‘poem on the late General Warren’’ that typified the outpouring of personal and public grief that characterized heroic commemoration: We sore lament both one and all, In sackcloth let us mourn, Brave General Warren’s hapless fate, And weep upon his urn. My trembling hand, my aking heart, O! how it throbs this day! His loss is felt in ev’ry part of vast America.2

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Daniel George cited several reasons for including the patriotic military material in the almanac. He stressed the news value of his highly accurate battle accounts, and he told his readers that by purchasing the volume they were financially supporting him, a disabled boy. But beyond this, George maintained that almanac readers were also ‘‘perpetuating the heroic deeds of your brave and renowned Countrymen . . . keeping in everlasting remem-


National Identity and Commemoration



brance the names of those noble Martyrs to Liberty, who fell in action.’’ 3 George anticipated that Continental Army officers and soldiers would carry the almanac with them and refer to the battle descriptions for inspiration, and he dedicated a crude woodcut of Joseph Warren in the almanac’s second edition to the American army.4 George hoped that his work might even ‘‘enter the solitary dwellings of the poor and iliterate [sic]’’ to be read aloud.5 Why did Daniel George believe that it was so important to ‘‘perpetuate’’ the memory of Warren and the other ‘‘Martyrs to Liberty?’’ Why turn news coverage of the war into an obvious commemorative exercise? Why elevate Joseph Warren from the field at Bunker Hill and turn him into a figure that even the ‘‘poor and illiterate’’ should mourn and admire? The answers lie in the power of public memory and commemoration of the war to validate the politics of the Revolution and create American national identity. Daniel George assured his largely New England readers that just by purchasing his almanac and by keeping wartime sacrifices properly in mind, they gained admission to a larger community of Americans and linked their cause to the rest ‘‘of vast America,’’ where like-minded patriots would also remember Warren’s heroic death. In the process of turning the horror of death into a symbol worthy of lasting remembrance, Daniel George contributed to the creation of a new idea of what the American nation should be. Daniel George’s commemoration of Joseph Warren and the other, lesser martyrs of Bunker Hill and Lexington and Concord provides an excellent starting point for an analysis of the public memory of military conflict that developed during the Revolutionary War. The main focus of wartime commemoration was praise for great republican heroes like Warren, who were seen to have sacrificed themselves for the cause of liberty. Government officials, social elites, and average people like Daniel George also helped to define a vision of the perfect American nation, united by voluntary praise for the heroes and their deeds. Americans could witness and take part in many different forms of commemoration during the war years. In addition to reading almanacs like George’s, they could read other forms of commemoration in newspapers, broadsides, and books. Patriots, especially those living in or near towns like Lexington, Massachusetts; Bennington, Vermont; or Charleston, South Carolina, could attend celebrations, church services, parades, and picnics, all of which dramatized in public form the message of shared sacrifice for the newly created patriotic cause. This popular participation became the basis for the future postwar democratization of memory, although for the time being the democratic consequences of the actions of average citizens remained veiled.


The Late Magnanimous and Heroic Gen. Joseph Warren, engraving from George’s Cambridge Almanack, nd ed. (Salem: E. Russell, ). Courtesy American Antiquarian Society. The young almanac author, Daniel George, used this crude engraving of Joseph Warren to illustrate his account of the Battle of Bunker Hill, and he inscribed the image ‘‘to the American Army.’’ George hoped that enlisted men and civilians would carry his almanac with them and refer to the engraving and poem to keep Warren’s memory in mind and to derive inspiration from his example as the war continued. Images and laudatory poems like this one helped to make Joseph Warren one of the greatest martyred heroes of the Revolutionary War.





During the war, heroic officers were the objects of praise, but ‘‘the people’’ also became potentially important, not necessarily for their own heroic deeds but for their ability to offer proper patriotism and memory in return for the heroes’ sacrifices. My analysis does not follow all the events of the Revolutionary War but instead focuses on these important aspects of how an ideal nation was created by public memories of certain heroes and events. As a national experience, the war was bloody and divisive, but the war as it existed in public memory often served to draw patriotic Americans closer together.6 It is not possible to understand the entire Revolutionary War by focusing on the creation of specific military heroes and the meaning of selective public celebrations, but it is possible to grasp something of how Americans started to make sense of the war. Even as the events of the war were taking place, they began to be transformed through commemoration into a set of cultural symbols as public memories of the Revolutionary War began to fashion a sense of national identity where none had existed before. The image of the American nation created in public commemorations was selective, idealistic, and consensual. As writers, preachers, and participants in public celebrations created images of sanitized violence and sacrifice, the process of commemoration itself helped to define the new American nation as many Americans were filled with self-congratulation for keeping the memory of heroism sacred. In the midst of fierce fighting, public commemorations of bloodshed brought the past, present, and future together to form an image of a united American community. Commemorations often expressed Americans’ hopes—sometimes overreaching hopes—for their civic order. In order for wartime commemorations to create the image of a cohesive national community, the war had to assume its most glorious and heroic guise in the public mind. Public memories provided images of unity, but they also could become an arena for conflict when people disagreed about what that unity should mean. Cultural visions of civic and national unity sometimes covered over the contradictions inherent in wartime commemorations. Although in reality the war often tore communities apart, patriotic writers, artists, preachers, and orators could not accurately represent the dark side of the conflict. As a sentimentalized picture of violence helped to build the ideas of consensus around American heroism, layers of cultural convention masked the horror of war. And horrible it was. Approximately , American soldiers, sailors, and militiamen were killed in the war, and over , Loyalists remained opposed to the Revolution, , of whom were exiled. America was clearly




Chapter 

divided, but images of division held little place in the instant commemoration of the war.7 Over , American men took up arms and left their homes, and an estimated , women moved with them from camp to camp. Americans contested for their very survival against a well-trained and supplied British army that bettered them on almost every field of contest to the point that for Americans to continue the struggle seemed miraculous for much of the war. Militia troops, and often even the Continental Army, performed poorly. Communities were torn apart by local animosities, especially where the fighting was fiercest in the Hudson Valley and in the South.8 When the war began in , Americans were not sure that it would lead to independence, but within one year the war had transformed into a bitter fight for national survival, and as the war against Britain spread, Americans on both sides of the Revolution spilled their blood and fought for their very existence.9 Despite this considerable atmosphere of social upheaval, the drive for wartime consensus led to a heavy focus in public memory on harmonious commemorations of the northern war. It was much easier to commemorate Lexington and Concord or Bunker Hill, seemingly symbols of military enthusiasm and effectiveness, rather than dwelling upon the fighting in the midAtlantic or southern states that proved much more brutal, partisan, and divisive. When southern events were commemorated, as at Palmetto Day in South Carolina, the focus remained on the early war—before the British and Loyalists had made their full mark on the southern conflict. Commemorating local heroes and local events allowed people to imagine not only their special regional character, but also how their local struggles connected to the nation at large. In each of these locations, regional and national allegiances overlapped and fused into a partly shared, yet diverse, American national identity. Localized celebrations did not negate the idea of one American nation, they merely marked out special regional contributions to the national military effort. People composed their own poetry, songs, and dramas to contribute their views to the public memory of the war and to express their patriotic allegiances to their states and their nation. The balance between conflict and consensus, region and nation, was all part of creating a new image of America. During the war, Americans took the radical step of separating their government from the British monarchy, but they reassured themselves through public memory that social order could be maintained. The elite officers who led the American military forces, and most especially those who gave up their lives for the cause, were represented as men of high merit who, after leading their new country against a bitter enemy, would serve as an inspiration to a new kind of American leader cast firmly in





the republican political mold. The Revolutionary War was depicted as a measure of Americans’ civic humanist strength and worthiness to achieve their own liberty. In this cultural and ideological realm, then, the very war that was dividing the population became the ultimate test of American unity— whether Americans were capable of putting their personal, local, and parochial interests aside in order to form a nation. It is not surprising that public memories of the war helped to solidify an ideology of republican nationalism as military accomplishment came to serve as a test of civic virtue. Military service was certainly not the only way that Americans expressed their hopes for national greatness or future citizenship, but commemorations stressed that it was one of the most important.10 The veneration of past conflicts could also provide the ultimate comfort that if Americans fought virtuously and well, they would be valiantly revered in the future even if they were killed. While the fighting carried on, the promise that future generations would glorify their sacrifice offered hope to patriots facing a daunting military task. Any battle worthy of glorious remembrance would also seem far more worthy of Revolutionary support than those aspects of the war better left forgotten. Brutality between neighbors, fierce vendettas pursued against Native Americans, the vagaries of life in a military camp, and drastic inflation and food shortages were usually left unspoken, as public culture celebrated the noble and the heroic. If the Revolution would transform the future political world, then the war would provide the stuff of future legend. An anonymous ballad reprinted in the Pennsylvania Evening Gazette on  April  celebrated the power of history and memory to perpetuate the great nation created by military struggle: Make room, O ye kingdoms, in his’try renowned, Whose arms have in battle with glory been crowned. Make room; for America, another great nation, Arises to claim in your councils a station. Her sons fought for freedom, and, by their own bravery, Have rescued themselves from the shackles of slavery; America is free, and tho’ Britain abhorr’d it, Yet Fame a new volume prepares to record it.11

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Tales of American military ‘‘fame’’ set the tone for the glorification of the nation during the war and over the subsequent fifty years.




Chapter 

Martyrs and Heroes By focusing on a few central heroic martyrs like Joseph Warren, Americans looked beyond the immediate battlefield and created remarkable symbols of patriotism which they thought to be worthy of remembrance and commemoration. For many decades after the fighting was over, these heroes would stand as reminders of the glorious side of war. Heroes and martyrs showed the benefits of patriotic sacrifice. Early in the conflict, Americans comforted themselves and their families with assurances that they were duty bound to sacrifice themselves for higher political principles. Israel Shreve, for example, wrote to his wife Mary about his nervous expectations shortly after he had enlisted in New Jersey in June : ‘‘I soon shall Experience the feeling of Battle. . . . God only knows whose fate it will be to fall.’’ But Shreve reassured his wife, ‘‘I have a great Desire once, more to Return, But knowing I owe my service to my Country am Determined to Defend our Rights and privaleges so just, with all my [p]owers.’’ 12 Shreve did not want to die, but he was willing to risk his life for patriotic politics. Perhaps Shreve was just the kind of soldier for whom Daniel George had designed his portable account of Joseph Warren’s glorious martyrdom. Carrying the martyr’s image allowed fighting men to see Revolutionary values compressed into the form of an inspirational hero. There were many ugly ways to die in the Revolutionary War, all of them inglorious in their reality. Just one example will illustrate the brutality, a brutality to which Americans were not accustomed. The Battle of Bunker Hill in June , during which Warren himself was struck down, was the first full-scale battle of the war, and though it was less severe than much of the fighting later in the war, both the Americans who had fortified Breed’s Hill in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and the waves of British redcoats who streamed up the hill to displace them faced dire consequences. The American forces lost  men, and the British lost . Eight hundred twenty six British soldiers and  American militiamen were wounded in the battle. But these numbers can only begin to describe the horror of death among the smoke and intense heat on Breed’s Hill. As line after line of redcoats charged up the hill carrying heavy packs, they were picked off by musket and artillery fire that littered the hill with bodies and induced mass confusion. When Howe’s troops finally mounted the hill and stormed their opponents’ redoubt, they charged with bayonets and stabbed to death thirty Americans who were wielding their muskets as clubs. One British officer, who was well accustomed to battle, wrote several weeks later: ‘‘the shocking carnage that day never will be out





of my mind till the day of my death.’’ 13 Despite the pervasiveness of death on June , , only Joseph Warren was enshrined as a heroic martyr, and only a few men were also ushered into the national pantheon of heroes in the months that followed—though the suffering inflicted at Bunker Hill was repeated in battle after battle all over the country during the remainder of the war. Martyrs and heroes were not created by death itself, but rather by the search for meaning among the community of the living. Martyrdom was important because in order for death to become the ultimate patriotic duty Americans had to be reassured that their sacrifices would be remembered. The idea of martyrdom gave those Americans who held Bunker Hill in the face of the British onslaught something to fight for. Patriots like Israel and Mary Shreve had a particular stake in future remembrance because long-lasting memory would legitimize their revolutionary actions and attach lasting glory to their sacrifice. As William Wolcott assured the readers of a heroic poem he published in : Brave sons of war, You well deserve that character . . . Your virtue, high in my esteem, Will surely gain you lasting fame.14

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

If patriots wished to create a republic devoted to ideas of freedom and liberty, it would be essential for posterity to record their actions. The sacrifices of the present were tied to the prosperity and glory of the future, as at a  Fourth of July celebration in White Plains, New York, when the officers toasted: ‘‘To the immortal memory of Generals Warren, Montgomery, Mercer, Herkimer, Nash, Wooster, with all the renowned heroes who have fought, bled and died in defence of their country’s freedom. . . . the war being gloriously ended, may all the blessings that flow from liberty, peace, agriculture and commerce be the future portion of the United States of America.’’ 15 In a sense, the future memory of heroic sacrifice actually came to define patriotism itself as Americans exhibited an active concern from the beginning of the war with how they would be remembered.16 The content of early American nationalism was a reverence for sacrifice itself. Revolutionary warfare supposedly sanctified the land where blood was spilled and those who shed their blood for the cause of political liberty. Descriptions of blood soaking the American soil to consecrate it as holy ground filled printed materials and commemorations of all kinds.17 Israel Shreve,




Chapter 

for one, was listening to the ever present message that death might protect American rights and privileges, the contents of a new civil religion of politics.18 The idealized cultural picture of the war asked the public to live up to the image of sacrifice on the ‘‘Field of Blood, where so many of our friends wallowed in their gore.’’ 19 Public memory meant that the ‘‘wounds, that stream’d with blood’’ no longer belonged only to the men who fought but to the whole American people.20 Through the process of commemoration, mere public memory of the war was transformed into the ‘‘Blood-bought fame’’ that would become the new nation’s reputation.21 The Revolution also became a holy cause to avenge the death of those whose blood colored the American landscape. As Congregational minister Jacob Cushing roared during an early battlefield commemoration in Lexington, Massachusetts, Americans were called ‘‘To arms! To action, and the battle of the warrior! . . . to wipe away the blood wherewith this land has been stained.’’ 22 Wartime commemorations (ceremonies, eulogies, printed pamphlets, newspaper articles, orations, and other forms of public culture) provided the context through which political martyrs acquired their glory and power as national symbols. The clear message of most commemorations was that even death was a small price to pay for liberty and that the dead were worthy of special remembrance.23 At a  Bennington, Vermont, battlefield commemoration, Stephen Jacob said of those who had been killed two years before in a critical engagement between the New Hampshire militia and Burgoyne’s army: We mourn their fall, yet joy they once were here, To show their country what they held dear.24

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Poets, orators, and especially ministers depicted millions of Americans working together for ‘‘the cause, for which heroes have fought, patriots bled, prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors, and righteous men have died.’’ 25 Revolutionary political principles were irrevocably joined to the war through the memory of the heroes who were killed. Boston poet Barnabas Binney said of those who died in Revolutionary warfare: ‘‘With Blood they seal their Cause, [and] Die to save their Country’s Laws.’’ 26 Local preacher Noah Smith declared in a commemorative sermon on the battlefield of Bennington, Vermont: ‘‘In fighting, the death of some is necessary, even on the side of victory. . . . There is therefore no just cause of lamentation to those whose friends were slain, for by their deaths our country was saved.’’ 27 Public memory amounted to a form of eternal patriotic reward. Author Hugh Henry





Brackenridge wrote in a  eulogy to fallen soldiers, ‘‘It is the high reward of those who have risked their lives in a just and necessary war, that their names are sweet in the mouths of men, and every age shall know their actions.’’ 28 Commemorations that drew upon traditional European martyrological imagery transformed the heroic martyrs of the Revolutionary War into symbols of a new kind of national political commitment that their very deaths made possible. Noah Smith, for example, said that those who died in the pursuit of a noble cause ‘‘sealed it with their blood.’’ It was left to those yet living to observe the ‘‘Custom among the ancients to canonise those who fell in battle, and to send them immediately to the elysian fields. This was productive of good effects among their soldiers, as it made them believe that, to die in battle, was only to enter upon a more happy state.’’ 29 Americans adapted the ‘‘custom among the ancients’’ to their own purposes when they commemorated their own central icons of heroic sacrifice. Martyrs who were persecuted and killed for their religious commitment had comprised an important part of Christian religious culture since Roman times, and martyrs like Joan of Arc had also played an important symbolic role in early-modern European political movements. In the seventeenth century, Puritan migrants to America had brought with them an English revolutionary zeal for John Foxe’s Protestant martyrology. During the Seven Years’ War, James Wolfe, the brilliant British military strategist who was killed while fighting for Quebec, had become the great military heroic martyr on the American continent and a symbol of British victory over the French. The American Revolution now created a new kind of national martyr, one who sacrificed himself purely for the cause of liberty and sanctified the American nation with his death.30 Not all martyrs were created equal, however. Although the glorification of death was a general theme that helped to insure individual soldiers that their sacrifices could be meaningful, justifying the Revolutionary War in political terms meant that some martyrs had to rise above this general standard to stand as examples to the entire American community. To satisfy this end, Americans created for themselves a breed of Revolutionary heroic martyrs who became central icons of national sacrifice. In the tradition of General Wolfe, the most important Revolutionary martyrs were officers, wellborn men who were fit to serve as national examples (and sometimes simultaneously as symbols of local pride). While every soldier’s death might be important, it was really only the republican gentlemen, those generals whom the officers in White Plains toasted at their  Fourth of July dinner, who were qualified to stand as political examples to the entire national republican community. In a  eulogy, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, himself one of




Chapter 

the authors who most praised the glories of average soldiers during the war, provided a veritable litany of the ways that martyred officers would stand as inspirations to future generations: Posterity shall quote them for parallels, and for examples. When they mean to dress the hero with the fairest praises, they shall say he was gallant and distinguished in his early fall, as Warren; he was virtuous, and prudent, and intrepid, as Montgomery; he was young, and faithful, and generous, as Macpherson; he fell in the bold and resolute advance, like Haslet and like Mercer; he saw the honour which his valour had acquired, and fainted in the arms of victory, like Herkimer; having gallantly repulsed the foe, he fell covered with wounds, in his old age, like Wooster.31

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Deference was still important enough in the early social structure of republican America to insure that the majority of publicly celebrated martyrs, who had demonstrated their merit through dying for the cause, were wellborn and high in rank.32 The Revolutionary cult of martyrs created by wartime commemorations had at its core a uniquely American version of military heroism. The Revolutionary War created famous American heroes out of men like Joseph Warren and Richard Montgomery at a time when such heroes were vitally necessary.33 Conventionally, heroes had been strong men whose personal magnetism and strength ennobled the causes for which they fought. American heroes added a republican twist when they were represented as strong men of merit who volunteered to leave their comfortable circumstances to aid their country in the explicitly masculine pursuit of war.34 As the character of Israel Putnam stated in Philadelphia playwright John Leacock’s pamphlet drama The Fall of British Tyranny, ‘‘Posterity will stand amazed, and be astonish’d at the heroes of this new world, that the spirit of patriotism should blaze to such a height, and eclipse all others, should outbrave fatigue, danger, pain, peril, famine, and even death itself to serve their country.’’ 35 Heroes set the highest standard of behavior for republican soldiers. As one Yale College student wrote in a school exercise, idealized officers became ‘‘Heroic warriors . . . like to those whom ancient Rome named ‘Thunderbolts of War.’’ 36 Praise for these central heroic figures was intended to inspire men to enlist and carry on the fight, but it also came to define the nation of patriotic Americans brought together in their praise of a new breed of political gentlemen. John Leacock recognized the power of heroes to galvanize public action in his play The Fall of British Tyranny. The Goddess of Liberty bids those who hear her words during the war:





Hail! Patriots, hail! by me inspired be! . . . May martyr’d patriots whisper in your ear, To tread the paths of virtue without fear . . . Hail! my last hope, she cries, inspired by me, Wish, write, talk, fight and die—for .37

Leacock imagined a unified public response to the call to arms issued by the ‘‘martyr’d patriots’’ he represented. This idea remained remarkably stable throughout the war. In  in the first volume of his three-volume history of the war, James Murray contended that commemorations had turned the dead into ‘‘martyrs for the cause of liberty,’’ with power to spur others to action.38 Not all dead soldiers qualified to become martyrs, however, and many average men were entirely forgotten. Although the officer-heroes of the Revolutionary War were set apart from European military heroes by their lack of aristocratic pedigree, they nonetheless represented the top of American society, and this position also separated them from the majority of their men. Charles Patrick Niemeyer has recently reinforced the fact that most men who fought in the Revolutionary War were ‘‘young, landless, and unskilled.’’ 39 Many officers probably agreed with Charles Lee when he called his Virginia troops ‘‘riff-raff.’’ 40 A large number of enlisted men were foreign born and a significant minority were African Americans, especially toward the end of the war when filling the ranks became more difficult for both state militia and army leaders.41 During the war, these were not the men who saw their battlefield actions turned into images of heroic public culture; because they were not ‘‘heroic’’ in the conventional sense, it was unclear exactly how their contributions would be remembered by anyone other than their families and friends. Even when Hugh Henry Brackenridge praised the sacrifices of nonofficers in a public eulogy, he made them sound moneyed and well educated as he lauded fallen soldiers who were ‘‘the mechanics of the city, the merchants of the counting-house, the youths engaged in literary studies, and the husbandmen the peaceful cultivators of the soil.’’ 42 Average, poor enlisted men, and certainly African American enlisted men, did not qualify to become full-fledged public heroes. At the beginning of the war, very few African American writers or preachers could publish their ideas, and white commentators frequently ignored the very real contributions of black soldiers. If black men were depicted in news and commemoration of the war at all, it was usually to show how slaves had deserted their masters




Chapter 

to join the British. For example, the ‘‘Negro’’ characters appearing in John Leacock’s drama The Fall of British Tyranny, who are duped into joining Lord Dunmore’s British troops in Virginia only to be sold back into slavery, are almost the only African American figures who appear in wartime commemorative culture. These lampoonish figures, who utter pidgin threats like ‘‘me shoot him down dead,’’ are far from heroic and served mainly to scare the play’s white readers into believing that the British were inspiring dangerous slave insurrection.43 Most of the many African Americans who served bravely in the Continental Army and American militias were not even afforded such a comic representation.44 During the war, there was no public ‘‘heroic’’ vision of the very real contributions of these men to the military cause, and the individual memory of their acts would have to wait to become a part of the national story of patriotism. During the war, a less ‘‘messy’’ and decidedly more upper-class public vision of patriotism and consensus for the American cause created the imagined American community. This is not to say that Americans had achieved perfect unity during the Revolutionary War; quite the contrary. The daily reality of war was a brutal and often plebian experience, but those experiences went untold when Americans were looking for heroes. During the war, a well-defined group of white, male officers served as the central republican icons that dominated commemorative culture. One of the greatest of these icons was General Richard Montgomery, who became a central figure of military memory almost as soon as he was killed. The immediate efforts to commemorate him as a national martyr to the Revolutionary cause show how one man could be transformed into an American heroic icon and a symbol of national consensus. Wartime public memory of Richard Montgomery also demonstrates how Americans were beginning to define a new national style of popular political culture as they created, argued over, and reacted to public commemoration.45 Richard Montgomery was killed on December , , when he was hit in the head by grapeshot as he led part of an ill-fated American attack on Quebec. Montgomery, an Irishman and a former captain in the British army, had lived in America since only , when he had married Janet Livingston, a prominent New Yorker, but he adopted the American Revolutionary cause as his own and was commissioned one of the first brigadier generals in the Continental Army. By marrying into one of the richest and most prominent families in the colonies, Montgomery placed himself at the top of the social hierarchy, a fact that combined with his previous military rank to ensure he was given an important early command.





In September , Congress authorized an invasion of Canada, which it perceived as a vulnerable part of the British Empire. Two groups of militia volunteers set out through a harsh New York and New England winter, one under the command of Colonel Benedict Arnold and the other led by Major General Philip Schuyler, with Montgomery as his second in command. After Schuyler fell ill, Montgomery took command and led the men into Canada. Arnold’s troops were delayed on a long march through the ferocious winter weather, and Montgomery set up an ineffective siege outside Quebec before he was joined by Arnold late in the year. Montgomery was killed on New Year’s Eve  as he led his volunteer troops in an unsuccessful assault on the fortress. He became the quintessential model of a martyred republican hero as the first high-ranking officer of the Continental Army to be killed in action. Very soon after Montgomery’s death, the process of commemorating him as a martyr to ‘‘the glorious cause of liberty’’ began.46 An astonishing variety of people worked to keep his memory alive—albeit for very different reasons—in almanacs, songs, engravings, poetry, and public ceremonies. Upon learning of her husband’s death, Janet Livingston Montgomery put on the mourning clothes that she would wear for the rest of her long life, much of which was spent dispensing her family’s political patronage and working to preserve the public memory of the man she referred to as ‘‘my Soldier.’’ 47 The grand-scale public commemoration of Montgomery began when news of his death reached the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Members learned of Montgomery’s demise on January  and immediately began work to eulogize him to the American public. Congress was facing a host of problems: internal division over the increasingly pressing decision to declare independence, the fight to keep the lackluster Continental Army together after its initial enlistments expired, and a host of difficulties in financing the war.48 Perhaps these problems inspired Congress to try to make Montgomery the first government-sanctioned hero of the war. The failed attack on Quebec had dramatized the disorganization of American military forces, as well as the considerable weaknesses of militia troops, but Congress tried to turn a tale of military disaster into a source of glory and inspiration. The enlisted men who took part in the campaign later remembered the march mostly as a trip filled with suffering and cold that culminated in the tragedy of the failed assault on Quebec City and Montgomery’s death, but the commander’s being remembered as a martyr suppressed the memory of woe and created in its place a picture of heroism. The celebration of the martyr allowed the




Chapter 

divisive and painful reality of the Revolutionary War to become a symbol of national pride. On January , , only three weeks after the battle, Congress appointed a committee of distinguished members—William Livingston (Janet Livingston Montgomery’s cousin), Benjamin Franklin, and William Hooper —‘‘to consider of a proper method of paying a just tribute of gratitude to the memory of General Montgomery.’’ 49 While most wartime commemorations were much more casual, like the almanac poetry of Daniel George, the public commemoration of Richard Montgomery started out as a carefully controlled government project intent on creating the hero as a usable symbol of wished-for consensus. Montgomery would not be left to become a local hero; he took on national importance as congressmen acted to express the will of the ‘‘people’’ whom they represented by providing opportunities for public commemoration. Congress decided upon two fitting tributes for General Montgomery— in the tradition of public martyrs—both of which served didactic and political purposes. First, they ordered the Continental treasury to release the astronomically large sum of £ sterling to Benjamin Franklin so that he could procure ‘‘from Paris, or any other part of France’’ a stone monument to Montgomery with an appropriate inscription ‘‘sacred to his memory, and expressive of his amiable character and heroic atcheivements.’’ The congressional resolution noted that such a monument to Montgomery would be useful ‘‘for transmitting to future ages, as examples truly worthy of imitation, his patriotism, conduct, boldness of enterprize, insuperable perseverance, and contempt of danger and death.’’ 50 Congress recognized that a physical monument to Montgomery’s political, personal, and military virtues could be used as a tool to inspire Americans both present and future. As a form of public commemoration, monuments were meant to set aside space to remind the community of the principles that public martyrs stood for, so Congress was eager to memorialize Richard Montgomery in stone.51 Over the previous three hundred years, Europeans had adopted the Greek and Roman tradition of building funeral monuments to commemorate public heroes, and now the new American nation strove to mark its great man in a similar way, albeit on a smaller scale. Government officials hoped that Montgomery would stand as a permanent marker to the political cause in a nation that had never before had such a central symbol upon which to rely. Congress hoped the monument would bolster the political resolve of those who doubted the war and that its patriotic effects would last long into the future.


Engraving of the congressional monument to Richard Montgomery, Trinity Episcopal Church, New York City. Benson Lossing, Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution (New York: Harper & Bros., ). © – www.arttoday.com. Congress began to plan this monument to the martyr General Richard Montgomery almost as soon news of his death in Canada reached Philadelphia in . Benjamin Franklin arranged for the marble monument to be sculpted in France by Jean-Jacques Caffieri, and it was erected in Trinity Episcopal Church in New York City in . In , General Montgomery’s widow, Janet Livingston Montgomery, arranged to have his remains reinterred beneath the monument, and they were buried there with great ceremony and public celebration. The monument represents a traditional form of marble tribute for a fallen republican hero.




Chapter 

But obtaining a costly permanent monument was a long-term project, so Congress also sought a more immediate sign of public patriotism to make the martyr’s death meaningful. It turned to a public funeral to provide occasions for the kind of conventional ceremonial display that could firmly establish a martyr’s public reputation. British Americans were accustomed to public funerals, in both real and purely symbolic forms as on Pope’s Day, but Congress hoped that a ceremony for Montgomery would be a carefully controlled homage to the dead hero without the public licentiousness that sometimes crept into such ceremonies. Congress commissioned Dr. William Smith, the provost of the College of Philadelphia, to deliver a funeral oration for Montgomery on February , .52 Smith may have been an unwise choice; his reverence for Great Britain and his lukewarm support for the patriot cause had led to his investigation by the Philadelphia Council of Safety earlier in January. Still, the prospect of Smith’s speech generated considerable advance interest and was eagerly anticipated both by Congress and by the patriotic public.53 Dr. Smith planned a stately procession through the streets of Philadelphia and engaged a group of musicians to accompany his oration.54 Members of Congress anticipated that the ceremony would be reported in newspapers around the country, and they hoped it would inspire both military reverence for the dead hero and support for the war. The public funeral for Montgomery also became a public drama with important social dimensions. The entire Continental Congress adjourned to the German Calvinist church in Philadelphia on February  to attend the public funeral. Thousands of onlookers, whose presence reassured congressmen that the people of the nation supported the martyred hero, filled the streets. They witnessed a sober but impressive display as the memorial procession passed from the courthouse through the streets of Philadelphia and reached the church, where the city’s elites had already positioned themselves. As Smith’s orchestra played solemn music, the students and professors of the college filed into the church in full academic regalia, followed by a large number of Philadelphia’s clergy, the Continental Congress, the Pennsylvania Assembly, the Corporation of Philadelphia, the Committees of Safety and Inspection, several Pennsylvania Continental Army officers, and members of the battalions of the City Association. The procession was flanked by companies of light infantry and riflemen. One newspaper also related that ‘‘two galleries of the church were filled with the principal ladies of the city,’’ who observed the spectacle.55 Although assigned to different locations—outside





in the streets, in the procession, in the congregation, or observing from the galleries—representatives of many parts of the American community turned out, validating congressional hopes for a broad-based display of public grief. But even within the context of this highly coordinated ceremony, the creation of a usable national symbol around the figure of the dead general was not to be an uncontested process. The inevitable pressures involved in creating an immediately usable past during time of war quickly began to show. As Smith began his oration, it soon became clear that he felt conflict about how to approach his subject. He started his speech with a lengthy review of the ‘‘laudable custom’’ of venerating dead military heroes, referring to the funeral orations and monuments of the Greeks. He then noted how hard it was to compose a proper panegyric in the Greek mold during a civil war and said he feared that ‘‘no public character can be drawn alike acceptable to all,’’ but he tried to assure his audience that he had sought to balance an historian’s objectivity with praise of the dead hero’s true merit. Smith was right to worry about how to balance his task because it soon became clear that his idea of an objective appraisal of the martyrs was not what the audience was prepared to accept in a heroic funeral sermon. The classical conventions of funeral oration demanded that the martyr be praised in highly stylized language that stressed the perfection of the cause for which he died, but Smith violated the convention with his lukewarm praise for the dead. The creation of a new breed of American hero who could see his nation through a split from England required a true panegyric, a form of persuasive oratory that deliberately exaggerated the virtue of its subject to enhance the nobility of a political cause.56 But there was considerable conflict over what kind of rhetoric was appropriate, and Smith was unwilling to conform to convention. After giving a brief biography of Montgomery leading up to his decision to fight for the American cause, Smith emphasized that Montgomery’s loyalty to the king ‘‘remained firm and unshaken,’’ and he portrayed Montgomery as being worried about the extent to which the attack on Canada was defensive enough to be justified ‘‘in the sight of god and the World.’’ 57 While before the Declaration of Independence many Americans maintained their allegiance to the king, even as they supported the war, Smith overemphasized the point. To prove what a great commander Montgomery was, the true equal of Wolfe, Smith emphasized a bit too strenuously that Montgomery had led only ‘‘a few new-raised men, of different colonies, and perhaps different tempers; ill supplied with arms and ammunition; worse disciplined; unaccustomed to look cannon in the face; to make or to mount a breach.’’ 58 While




Chapter 

his assessment of American forces was accurate, Smith omitted the expected assurances of how well the ragtag Americans overcame such limitations to perform heroic service. When Smith proceeded at the end of his lengthy oration to recognize the other officers who had died with Montgomery at Quebec, he did a poor job of extending his panegyric praise to the lesser martyrs of the battle. In part, Smith’s hesitation was caused by Congress’s requirements for one national hero, instead of a list of lesser, regional figures of praise. Congress wanted most of the attention focused on Montgomery, but Smith also made a halfhearted effort to boost regional pride. He mentioned in passing that Pennsylvanians would want to remember Captain John Macpherson and said that Captain Jacob Cheesman of New York was ‘‘covered with honor and lamented by all who knew him.’’ But Smith’s efforts to praise lesser martyrs were hindered not only by their largely regional appeal. He recognized the limits of his own objective historical approach to the oration when he apologized to the audience that the others who fell in Canada ‘‘ought to be more fully commemorated on this occasion, if proper accounts of them could be collected.’’ 59 Smith was loath to talk about men about whom he knew very little. The audience, however, was less worried about the accuracy of any ‘‘proper account’’ than with the outright glorification of the dead. Overall, in his effort to remain objective in his commemoration of Montgomery and his military aides, William Smith came off as a less than enthusiastic patriot, and his oration fit poorly into the model heroic funeral Congress had envisioned. Smith had based some of his rhetoric about Montgomery’s loyalty to the crown on previous congressional petitions to the king, but he had gravely misjudged the political requirements of a commemorative ceremony in early . The image of Montgomery as a national martyr needed to be clear-cut and much more unapologetically patriotic in order to justify continued war and separation from Britain. Just as Congress was deciding to break from the crown entirely, there was no room in public culture for doubt. Ritual funeral ceremonies like those that had been staged in previous years in Boston for the victims of the Boston massacre, which were modeled on ceremonies created to canonize Roman republican heroes, had been public tests of American political allegiance since the s, and the war only raised the stakes for political funerals. One wartime historian wrote, for example, that the vitriolic speeches given at the funerals of those killed at Lexington and Concord ‘‘produced a great effect,’’ as sentiment in favor of the war ‘‘encreased like a violent flame, throughout the whole continent.’’ 60





Public reception of Smith’s speech was cool, at best. John Adams wrote to Abigail Adams that ‘‘The oration was an insolent performance. . . . the appointment of him to make the oration, was a great oversight, and mistake.’’ A routine motion in Congress to thank Dr. Smith and to publish his oration had to be withdrawn when strenuous opposition was expressed ‘‘from every part of the room.’’ In March, Congress quietly paid for the ceremony without mentioning or commending Smith.61 The controversy over Smith’s commemoration of Montgomery and his fellow soldiers did not end there. Since Congress would not publish the oration, Smith did so himself. At least six different editions of the Oration in Honor of General Montgomery were published in  in Philadelphia; Newport; Norwich, Connecticut; London; and Newcastle. Smith referred to the controversy caused by the oration in his introduction when he admitted that he had edited the text ‘‘upon the recommendation of some friends.’’ By the time Smith told his readers that he hoped to have ‘‘done justice to the memory of those brave men who are the chief subjects of the Oration,’’ he had been taught a public lesson in the costs of failing at this task.62 Smith’s conciliatory remarks did not end the opposition to his commemorative style because national honor and reputation were at stake in the funeral oration. Roger Enos, a lieutenant colonel who had commanded the first battalion under Benedict Arnold, decided that his reputation had been unfairly attacked in the speech. While it was true that Enos’s men had defected before reaching Quebec and that he had led them back to their homes in Maine without the consent of his commander, Enos was later acquitted of personal mutiny or wrongdoing by a military court of inquiry. He was dissatisfied with the way Smith portrayed the incident, and he began a national newspaper campaign against the preacher. Enos called Smith ‘‘one of the most dangerous writers, and perhaps the most consumate villain that walks on the face of God’s earth.’’ 63 Public reaction to Montgomery’s funeral had clearly stretched beyond what Congress originally intended. The efforts to canonize Richard Montgomery as an heroic martyr, and even the controversy caused by Smith’s oration, aptly represent the major themes and purposes of heroic military commemorations during the Revolutionary War. A larger process of using public memory to make sense out of war, politics, and society was at work, and this process had broader consequences. As a martyred hero, Richard Montgomery was supposed to become a permanent monument to the bravery of the American people and to represent their unified gratitude for the sacrifice of war. But nationalism, as represented in the public memory of Richard Montgomery, was not something




Chapter 

that could be entirely mandated or controlled by government, but was rather contained in a process of both remembering and forgetting, an ongoing negotiation over public culture. Patriots seemed to agree that commemorating Richard Montgomery was an important symbol of their unity, but whose version of memory was correct—that of the congressional committee, William Smith, Roger Enos, or the onlookers at Montgomery’s funeral? As the war progressed, Montgomery continued to be ‘‘perpetuated in the annals of America’’ as a ‘‘martyr to the cause of human nature and the liberties of mankind.’’ 64 The real events of the war intensified and shifted south, but public focus on Montgomery as a symbol remained important. As Congress worked to procure the marble monument to Montgomery’s memory, efforts to commemorate the hero continued outside the carefully controlled government elite as Americans memorialized him in newspapers, histories, prints, and pamphlets. Everyone from Thomas Paine to schoolboys to newspaper poets took up their pens in praise of the slain hero.65 Gouveneur Morris, who wrote the following stanza, was convinced that the memory of Montgomery would inspire long-lasting public dedication to his republican political values: Thy name, Montgomery, Still on each tongue shall be; Praise in each breath: Tho’ on the fatal plain Thou wert untimely slain, Thy virtue still shall gain Rescue from death.66

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Other commemorations like this one, both written and oral, used the language of heroic certitude that had eluded William Smith in his funeral oration and stressed national consensus just as much as Congress had. In his  oration at the annual civic celebration on Boston Massacre Day, Jonathan Williams Austin said that Montgomery seemed ‘‘to be raised up by Heaven, to show to what height Humanity may soar.’’ Montgomery, along with other military martyrs, was to teach the public what the Revolution stood for. Austin exhorted the people of Boston: ‘‘Let not the ashes of Warren, Montgomery, and the illustrious Roll of Heroes, who died for Freedom, reproach our inactivity and want of spirit, in not completing this grand Superstructure; the Pillars of which have been cemented with the richest blood in America.’’ 67 Austin’s words show how the success of the Revolution and the new American nation rested on how well people responded to the dead patriots who called their fellow Americans to action.





Montgomery’s memory was often linked to Warren’s in this way because wartime commemorations of both Joseph Warren and Richard Montgomery sounded similar themes.68 Several voices—from the humble ‘‘crippled boy’’ Daniel George to the young Boston lawyer Perez Morton, who eulogized Warren in Boston in February —held up Warren’s death, just as Montgomery’s, as an example to other Americans who should be willing to give their lives to the nation for the cause of liberty.69 An anonymous newspaper writer was not far from correct when he predicted in  that Warren’s ‘‘name shall live and fill the world with wonder. . . . His praises shall be spoke for many an age to come.’’ 70 A commemorative committee of Congress appropriated  for a monument to Warren’s memory in .71 Heroic images of Warren the martyr appeared in poetry, almanacs, and broadsides that called Americans to support the Revolution. In , Hugh Henry Brackenridge, the Baltimore schoolmaster, rendered the most artistic and perhaps the most articulate image of Warren as a patriotic example in his first published play, The Battle of Bunkers-Hill.72 In the play Warren recites as he dies an eloquent speech that links his death to Roman and English republican martyrs and invokes the American public to keep supporting the cause he died for: ‘‘Weep not . . . But rejoyce—For now I go to mingle with the dead, Great Brutus, Hampden, Sidney and the rest, Of old or modern memory . . . fight on my countrymen be FREE, be FREE.’’ 73 The fact that it would have been impossible for Joseph Warren to deliver an impassioned farewell oration such as the one written by Brackenridge after his face had been demolished by a musket ball makes even clearer how conventional images of heroic martyrs that often bore little relationship to reality were used to define correct politics.74 Traditionally, the martyr’s final words were meant to define the nature of his sacrifice, and Brackenridge made it clear that Warren’s sacrifice cried out for Americans to emulate his example, to ‘‘fight on’’ for freedom: ‘‘ ’Tis ours, now tenfold, to avenge his death.’’ 75 Memories of Joseph Warren and his part in the epic Battle of Bunker Hill became symbols with the power to define and inspire political and military allegiance. The potential geographic spread of that allegiance and its power to reach beyond region were also demonstrated when, like Brackenridge, a Baltimore playwright celebrated a Boston martyr in a play published in Philadelphia. Montgomery and Warren were joined in the ranks of heroism by lesser ‘‘regional’’ martyrs like Hugh Mercer, Henry Laurens, and the Baron de Kalb. The ‘‘deeds of valor’’ of these men were supposed to stand as a permanent inspiration to the American people, just as were Warren’s and Montgomery’s.76


‘‘An Acrostic on the Late Major-General WARREN,’’ An Elegiac Poem, Composed on the Never-to-be-Forgotten Terrible and Bloody Battle Fought at an Intrenchment on Bunker Hill (Salem: E. Russell, ). Courtesy American Antiquarian Society. This memorial to the martyr Joseph Warren is edged in black and decorated with a skull and crossbones and a coffin bearing his initials. The acrostic on ‘‘Joseph Warren,’’ which praises his merits and accuses British generals and politicians of working for Satan, decorated the bottom of An Elegiac Poem, a cheap pamphlet celebrating the Battle of Bunker Hill. Salem publisher Ezekiel Russell designed the pamphlet to be a portable reminder of military heroism. The coffin was a traditional memorial symbol, but the acrostic reserves special praise for Warren, whose death entered him ‘‘in the rolls of fame.’’





Those who survived, like the ‘‘lad of  years’’ who eulogized Captain Judah Alden in the Massachusetts Spy, reminded one another in print why sacrifice was crucial to establish the republic.77 The heroic status of martyred icons was applied to living officers as well. Even officers who kept their lives, including John Stark, Nathaniel Greene, Horatio Gates, Ethan Allen, Israel Putnam, and George Washington, could achieve lasting stature as American heroes in the public memories of the war.78 Hugh Henry Brackenridge maintained that these men would be recorded in the annals of fame: ‘‘The angel of America shall write . . . the names of those who have fought at Lexington, at Bunker’s Hill, on the lakes of Canada, at Three Rivers, and before Quebec; the names of those who have fought at Danbury, at Fort Stanwix, Fort Montgomery, Fort Washington; at the German Flats, at Bennington, and on the heights . . . of Saratoga: The names of those who have fought at Trenton, at Princeton, at Ash-swamp. . . .’’ 79 While it wasn’t entirely clear what Americans were expected to do to keep the martyrs in everlasting remembrance, public commemorations did offer some clues about how people were supposed to respond to heroic sacrifice. Public memory became an expression of wished-for social consensus that demanded particular behavior. Patriotic men and women assumed particular roles in the national community constructed around the memory of republican heroes. Public participation in commemorations became even more important as the war stretched on and demoralization set in. By  and , national finances were dwindling, and the Continental Army was showing signs of unrest as pay and supplies grew scarcer. Divisive fighting between patriot and Loyalist forces, British gains in the upper South, and even the swearing of mass oaths of loyalty to the king in some areas, such as parts of South Carolina, that had previously exhibited strong American support all took their toll on public morale. States had to turn increasingly to conscription to fill their military recruitment quotas, as the virtuous zeal for military service among common men seemed to decline.80 Under these questionable circumstances, the memory of public heroism seemed more urgent than ever. Men were often exhorted to join the cause and offer themselves up in imitation of the military virtue of their great officers. Calls to enlist were laden with the language of heroic martyrdom. Jonathan Sewell Mitchell, for example, demonstrated the links between republicanism, memory, and attempts to get men to fight in his A New Epilogue to Cato. After comparing a litany of American heroes to the characters in Joseph Addison’s Cato, a favorite play among soldiers, Sewell ended his verse:




Chapter 

’Tis your bold task the generous strife to try, For your griev’d Country, nobly dare to die, And empty all your veins for ! . . . Rouse up, for shame! your Brethren slain in War, Or groaning now in ignominious bondage, Point at their wounds, and chains and cry aloud to !  impatient mourns His scanty legions, and demands your aid! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  complains that we are slow! And ’s Ghost stalks unreveng’d among us! 81

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

The martyred American heroes reached out to their fellow American men to join them in political commitment, and possibly even in death. Ironically, since the war almost ground to a halt several times because the Continental Army and the state militias faced constant problems with filling their ranks, true devotion to the cause for which the great martyrs died was defined by the general willingness among men to take up arms.82 Women, too, were told they should assume a special role in the commemoration of martyrs and heroes. Men who could enlist as part of the American military force comprised only one component of the nation that was supposed to hold the public memory of the war so dear. An American public defined more by collective memory than by actual military service also provided some opportunity for women to be connected to the ideal nation. White women assumed special status as the figurative keepers of heroic memory, even if they themselves could not fight on behalf of their country. In The Sentiments of an American Woman, Esther De Berdt Reed’s call for women to support the war that was published in newspapers all over the country in , she offered comfort to soldiers in the field who feared they would be forgotten by a populace unwilling to keep providing support for the war: ‘‘Forgotten! never; I can answer in the name of all my sex. Brave Americans, your disinterestedness, your courage, and your constancy will always be dear to America, as long as she shall preserve her virtue.’’ 83 Considered alongside Reed’s national efforts to raise money for the troops, this was a powerful reassurance. Even if the national hero was an unflinchingly masculine character, Reed showed that women would play a role in defining how America remembered him. American women like Reed not only directly helped the war effort, they actively participated in public commemorations of the war, which linked them, however peripherally, to the ideal nation.





Women also played a more symbolic part in the public memory of the military conflict. They appear in public culture as the mourning widows, mothers, sisters, and betrothed virgins whose tears would remain as examples to the nation of their heroes’ virtue.84 This role as keepers of public memory, albeit in sorrowful form, potentially conferred a political use on female sentiment. The memory of heroes, which was so key to national unity, reserved a special place for female action. A poem mourning the deaths at Lexington and Concord published by Philadelphian Anna Young in June  (ironically just months before she married Dr. William Smith) pointed up both the political usefulness of memory and women’s particularly mournful role: But you, ye brave defenders of our cause, The first in this dire contest call’d to bleed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Your memories, dear to every free-born mind, Shall need no monument your fame to raise, Forever in our grateful hearts enshrin’d, And blest by your united country’s praise. But O permit the muse with grief sincere, The widow’s heart-felt anguish to bemoan, To join the sisters, and the orphans tear.85

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

This cultural ideal of women expressing their ‘‘grief sincere’’ came alive in the actions of officers’ widows like Janet Montgomery and the thousands of common soldiers’ widows who were given to public mourning. Mourning women played essential roles in public memorial and funeral services, like the one following the battles of Lexington and Concord in which Major General William Moultrie reported on the ‘‘floods of tears’’ that demonstrated female grief.86 Historian David Humphreys reminded readers of one of his most widely read essays that during the war, ‘‘Loud and melancholy wailings for the dead, from widows of the common soldiers, were heard in every street, and struck on the heart of the passenger.’’ 87 The elite women who filled the balconies to attend Richard Montgomery’s funeral reinforced the idea that the entire American community had to gather to mourn the fallen hero. Public displays of tears expressed women’s personal feelings but also added fire to the patriot cause by preserving the memory of sacrifice. Beyond such mourning, women were expected to play a vital role in educating the republic about male heroism. One anonymous  pamphlet, An Eulogium on Major General Joseph Warren, styled women’s roles as keepers




Chapter 

of public military memory as a precursor of Republican Motherhood by suggesting that: Mothers shall lead their babes to Warren’s tomb! And there beneath the Cypress solemn gloom, Shall tell their list’ning offspring of his fame, And fire their souls with love to Warren’s name.88

Hugh Henry Brackenridge echoed similar sentiments in  when he told the widows of martyred heroes that ‘‘The praises of your country, and of the world shall console you. It is now yours to direct alone the education of your children: The sphere of honour is but enlarged to you, the path is laid open by which you may ascend to memory in future ages, and be ranked with Cornelia amongst the Romans.’’ 89 Women’s roles as educators of the rising generation served an expressly political purpose, as Brackenridge offered the Roman matron, Cornelia, as one possible model of female action in the public sphere.90 While women remained decidedly peripheral to the memory of male heroism, their roles as public grievers and educators offered at least the possibility that they too might ‘‘ascend to memory in future ages’’ as patriots in their own rights.

Ceremony and the Public

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Women’s roles as mourners and keepers of public memory were not purely symbolic. Ceremonies, celebrations, and civic festivals granted women and other average citizens who were not heroic material the chance to participate actively in the political culture of commemoration. The creation of officerheroes, and especially of national martyrs like Warren and Montgomery, did not entirely marginalize average Americans from public culture or exclude them from the practice of American nationalism even though the heterogeneous members of the public did not all agree about every aspect of the war. As the people who filled the streets of Philadelphia to witness the official funeral procession for Richard Montgomery demonstrated, the public sphere in which memories of the war were made politically meaningful did not just consist of literature or monuments. A variety of Americans also brought the process of commemoration into open space when they created idealized memories of the war in public rituals. These celebrations, especially battle anniversaries, allowed neighbors to





celebrate the particular glory of their local communities and military sites, but such occasions also offered the chance for these same people to imagine their relationships to others who carried on the fight in far away areas. Celebrations took place in towns and helped to reinforce civic pride, but they also helped people to connect that pride to a larger sense of national identity. A similar pattern had developed in the creation of martyrs. Individual tales of local sorrow became part of a larger narrative of national sacrifice. A sense of national community was fashioned on top of overlapping regional, religious, and political allegiances.91 Ceremonies, particularly those held on or near actual battlefields, provided opportunities for the public to take a more active role in creating images of the idealized nation even as they simultaneously dramatized some of the most important contests over military memory. Through the process of commemoration even the ‘‘fields of blood’’ where martyrs died became sanctified when Americans gathered to, as Boston poet Barnabas Binney put it, ‘‘mark the favour’d place’’ where wartime sacrifice occurred.92 Colonial Americans, particularly city dwellers, had created an active festive calendar for themselves full of Americanized British holidays such as the king’s birthday and Pope’s Day.93 These public celebrations had at first provided opportunities to confirm provincial identities, but they also served as rallying points for controversy during the imperial crisis when new antiBritish holidays like Boston Massacre Day began to gain popularity in some places. Once the war broke out, the anniversaries of battle victories (along with the Fourth of July) transformed the public calendar entirely.94 Military celebrations became among the most important popular political celebrations of Revolutionary values. When Americans came together during the war to celebrate a previous victory (especially as sprits flagged after the first few years of the war), they found a political outlet for public grief, and they rallied one another to carry on the fight.95 As one French observer in South Carolina said of the commemorations he attended, ‘‘these celebrations are usual and frequent with the Americans, probably because they need to maintain their spirits at a high degree of enthusiasm.’’ 96 We know who in Congress organized the funeral ceremony for Richard Montgomery, but it is often impossible to pinpoint exactly who planned these local battle anniversaries. But because the Revolution took place during the creation of a new and politicized American public sphere in which print culture helped to reinforce public action, it is possible to reconstruct what occurred at battle anniversary celebrations in more or less detail. The public festivities included various combinations of parades, feasts




Chapter 

(always featuring ritual toasting), public artworks, and fireworks, and they virtually always included a public sermon. Newspaper accounts, printed pamphlets, and published sermons provided opportunities for those who did not attend the ceremonies to absorb the patriotic messages, and they give us a glimpse of the ideological content of the festivities. We can also often tell from these sources something about who participated in these military patriotic rites: men and women, soldiers and civilians, young and old, elites and commoners alike. Many different Americans turned out to commemorate military events at public celebrations that prefigured the ways that popular political participation would continue to grow over the next forty years.97 Recently, historians have stressed how much celebrations themselves did to create community feeling and national identity, and this was especially true of military celebrations held during the war. Battle anniversaries and battlefield celebrations were not merely holidays, however, they were also a vitally important component of the public memory of the war. Since commemoration was already becoming an essential component of Revolutionary politics, celebrations provided the opportunity for civic demonstration of popular memory. Public gatherings, whether religious and somber or more celebratory and festive, provided the occasions for heroes and martyrs to be toasted and remembered and their deeds to be rehearsed. When communities gathered on or near battlefields to contemplate past events, they brought together time, space, and civic culture into a potentially potent political force. The annual battlefield commemorations at Lexington, Massachusetts, for example, fulfilled a national preoccupation with the ‘‘ever memorable’’ April , —the date of the battles of Lexington and Concord.98 Americans sensed from the beginning that Lexington and Concord, as the first battles of the war, offered a special opportunity to commemorate American greatness.99 The memory of Lexington and Concord loomed much larger than their actual military importance because of the relatively clean nature of the fighting and low number of American casualties on that day, combined with the sense of pride derived from the image of valiant minutemen standing up to British troops on Lexington Green and at Concord Bridge and then picking off British redcoats as they retreated down the Boston Road away from Concord. April the nineteenth was christened as a special day early on. When Isaiah Thomas escaped Boston with his printing press in April  and resumed printing his newspaper, the Massachusetts Spy, in Worcester at the beginning of May, he expressed a great sense of excitement. In the first Wor-





cester issue of the Spy, Thomas recounted for his readers his departure from Boston ‘‘on the memorable th of April, , which will be remembered in future as the Anniversary of the  of !’’ 100 New Englanders held no monopoly on predictions of future remembrance of April , however, and reverence for that day spread around the colonies. Peter Timothy, a South Carolina newspaper publisher who was also the secretary of the Charleston committee of correspondence, wrote that the ‘‘ever-memorable’’ struggles of  that began on April  would mark ‘‘a grand epoch in the History of Mankind. . . . An Epoch, that in all Probability will mark the Declension of the British Empire!’’ 101 Preachers often stressed the power of memories of Lexington and Concord to remind Americans of God’s favor toward them. Army chaplain David Avery preached in  that God had adopted the American cause at Lexington when ‘‘innocent blood cried to heaven from the ground!’’ 102 Avery’s fellow minister, Elisha Rich, hoped that ‘‘the good Hand of Providence towards the American Forces may be more particularly Noticed and kept in ,’’ as Americans went about prosecuting the war and preparing the way for their new godly kingdom on earth.103 Concern for future national history (and in some cases proper patriotic politics) focused on Lexington and Concord as the birthplace of the Revolutionary War. As Jonas Clarke, the local Congregational minister who had taken part at the Battle of Lexington, said in his commemorative sermon on the first anniversary of the battle, ‘‘And from the nineteenth of April, , we may venture to predict, will be dated, in future history,   or  of the  .’’ 104 Isaiah Thomas’s and Jonas Clarke’s predictions about how the battle anniversary would become impressed on the public mind as a seminal date in the history of the nation were fulfilled when the people of Lexington started to gather on April  for public ceremonies of remembrance. Lexington’s battlefield commemorations, which began quite spontaneously in , only one year after the battle itself, also demonstrated the simultaneous local and national civic commitment of those who attended. The ceremonies served to define the battle as a national event, even as they reinforced its local importance.105 Lexingtonians used the occasion to memorialize their special contribution to the Revolutionary War, but also to further their commitment to the conflict as it expanded across the country. The focus on the early war and the come-from-behind victory at Lexington and Concord also diverted attention away from more disastrous military efforts later in the war. The Lexington anniversary commemorations offer an interesting look at the ways public memory shaped an ideological understanding of Revolu-




Chapter 

tionary War events. No comprehensive newspaper accounts of the Lexington battlefield ceremonies from the s and s survive, so information on the civic rites derives mostly from the day’s sermons, which were published as pamphlets. We do not know exactly who planned the gatherings or exactly who showed up, though there are tantalizing clues contained in the sermons themselves. What we can say for certain is that both religion and nationalism were highly important to the people of Lexington. The ministers who were invited to deliver sermons envisioned a strongly unified local community that proved its dedication to a greater national community just by meeting to ponder the battle. They also constantly stressed that the new American nation, represented by the people’s gratitude for the sacrifices of April , , would remain sanctified by God as long as proper memory continued to be observed. This kind of consensual image of Revolutionary sacrifice was also safe because most of the fighting shifted south after . The first Lexington anniversary sermon was given by the Rev. Jonas Clarke, Lexington’s own Congregational minister who had himself witnessed the battle. Clarke’s sermon, The Fate of Blood-Thirsty Oppressors, and God’s Tender Care of His Distressed People, was printed in  appended with an extensive narrative of the battle. In the sermon, Clarke used the commemorative occasion to direct the listeners’ attention to their sins and to urge them to reflect upon God’s providence at work in the events of the war. Following his lengthy religious discourse, Clarke employed the language of political and religious martyrdom and assured his audience in fiery terms that the bloody battlefield at Lexington cried out to God and to them for vengeance. He spoke of the blood shed at Lexington by the ‘‘tender father’’ and the ‘‘beloved son’’ but exclaimed that ‘‘they bleed, they die, not in their own cause only; but in the cause of this whole people—in the cause of God, their country and posterity.—And they have not bled, they shall not bleed in vain.— Surely there is one that avengeth, and that will plead the cause of the injured and oppressed.’’ 106 It was clear that Clarke meant not only for God to avenge the deaths at Lexington, but also for good patriots to join the fight and mingle their blood with that of the dead heroes. Clarke’s religion and the local context of the commemorative ceremony allowed him to expand the discourse of heroism beyond the ‘‘great’’ martyrs of the war to emphasize the sacrifice of humbler, local men while he stressed that the past cried out for patriots to consider the military needs of the ‘‘whole people’’ of America. By the following year, the link between the memory of local events and a broader patriotic nationalism was beginning to be strengthened. In , Samuel Cook, minister of the Second Church in Cambridge, held up the Battle





of Lexington as an example both to those who were dealing with the war as it spread throughout the country and to those who would study it in future ages. Although Revolutionary fighting had spread its destructive power far beyond Massachusetts, Cook stood on the battle green and invoked his ‘‘brethren of the stock of New-England’’ to keep the ‘‘wormwood and gall deep in remembrance’’ and to exercise ‘‘compassion and continual prayers for distant towns and states, who have since largely drank of this bitter cup of trembling.’’ 107 The sermon’s message was that New Englanders should share their inspirational wounds with those who continued to suffer across the country, although the strongly Protestant tone of Cook’s message surely emphasized its New England character. Although we cannot accurately speculate on the size of attendance at these commemorative sermons, their regularity and success as printed pamphlets demonstrate that the orations clearly made their mark on the Lexington community. By , Jacob Cushing drew on what was becoming a commemorative tradition when he preached the annual Lexington anniversary sermon. Cushing noted that his audience had previously been inspired by hearing and reading the sermons of Clarke and Cooke and hoped that his words might similarly hearten them. Following the pattern of the Lexington sermons, Cushing praised those who had shed their blood at the ‘‘sacred temple’’ of Lexington’s battleground and hoped that their deaths and those of the ‘‘multitudes [who] have fallen since in our land’’ would be avenged.108 Cushing indicated that many troops were present in the audience, and he admonished them to ‘‘strive to excel in the art of war.’’ He stressed that the memory of the Battle of Lexington would particularly ‘‘excite [their] devotion’’ and allow them to perform better in the field.109 The people of Lexington were creating their own version of popular political culture that clearly linked the site of their own military memory to the perpetuation of martial virtue. As the years passed, residents expressed hopes that this commemorative inspiration could reach beyond the town’s borders as Lexington preachers drew the link between the ideal memory of the conflict in New England and the continued bloodletting in other regions even more clearly. Samuel Woodward, pastor of the church in Weston, contended in  that from the day of the battle, ‘‘a determination was formed, to stand by each other in opposing tyranny and slavery.’’ He implored the Lexington audience to remember that ‘‘your friends, altho’ murdered by the enemy—sleep quietly here, while others are lamenting the loss of their friends, equally dear to them, whose bones are scattered at the grave’s mouth, or have been inhumanly buried.’’ 110 Although the commemoration was clearly a local




Chapter 

central-Massachusetts project, military memory was designed ideologically to remind Lexingtonians of their larger patriotic commitment to those who suffered still. By the s, most Americans had grown weary of the war, but the Lexington sermons continued, even amplified, their commitment to martial memory. In , Isaac Morrill preached a fervent wish for ‘‘the calamities of war [to] cease,’’ even as he assured the audience that Lexington’s sacrifice would never be forgotten.111 In , Henry Cumings stressed that the commemoration, as well as the actual fighting, could stand as proof of patriotic commitment to the united nation. Cumings spoke especially to the assembled local militiamen and declared: ‘‘SIRS, The manner of your observing this day, in commemoration of the commencement of the present war, the scene whereof, was first opened in this place, does you honor, as it gives an evidence, at once, of your piety, and of your patriotism and firm attachment to the cause of your country.’’ 112 The anniversary celebrations of the Battle of Lexington show how memory and patriotism could make a potent combination. To the people of Lexington, Massachusetts, commemorating New England’s wounds ennobled their local community at the same time that it justified the rest of the war and connected them to the people who endured it. Public memories of Lexington and Concord reinforced civic and regional pride simultaneously with national identity. A very different regional sensibility and a more precise picture of the mixture of elite and popular participation emerged in other battlefield commemorations. The residents of Charleston, South Carolina, annually celebrated Palmetto Day, their local battle victory holiday, until the British took over the city late in the war, and while they showed their differences from the people of Massachusetts, they also celebrated some similar nationalist ideas. Palmetto Day demonstrated how celebrations could create a mixture of national and regional pride at the intersection of high and popular culture.113 Palmetto Day marked the anniversary of the victory over the British at the Battle of Sullivan’s Island in June , at which American forces under the command of South Carolinian William Moultrie and Virginian Charles Lee had repelled British naval forces and stalled major British incursions into the South. During their campaign to capture Charleston in , the British first had to assault a partially completed palmetto-log fort that had been hastily erected on Sullivan’s Island. The fort’s spongy-soft logs absorbed the impact of a huge British naval bombardment, and though the Americans ran short of ammunition several times, they managed to hold the fort until the British





gave up and sailed away. The celebrations of the victory at Charleston heaped special glory on the men of South Carolina, but they also connected those who participated directly to the purpose of the larger war effort. Palmetto Day celebrations were far more secular and frankly patriotic in tone than the celebrations in Lexington, Massachusetts—in part because of how and by whom they were planned. The commemorative activities were largely organized by the Palmetto Society, a group founded by patriot radicals who had been thrown together in a British prisoner-of-war camp early in the war.114 The Palmetto Society was formed in June  in Charleston to commemorate the ‘‘ever memorable’’ victory of June , . The society advertised in newspapers for weeks in advance of the festivities that all ‘‘Lovers of their Country’’ were welcome to pay three dollars to join the members who had ‘‘associated themselves together, principally for the Purpose of celebrating the Anniversary of that Day, with decent and chearful Festivity.’’ 115 The Society orchestrated elaborate, day-long celebrations in  and  whose splendor and enthusiasm rivaled Charleston’s famous Fourth of July revelries.116 While the three-dollar fee meant that membership in the Palmetto Society was a mark of some economic status, the celebrations planned by the society did not end up as narrowly controlled, elite affairs. The first celebration of Palmetto Day in  began early in the morning with the ringing of church bells and the firing of artillery, followed by sermons preached at St. Michael’s church and at Fort Moultrie. At noon the Charleston militia companies paraded near the harbor and fired a ‘‘Feu de Joye’’ as men-of-war, privateers, and foreign trading ships returned salutes. Beginning in the mid-afternoon, several large feasts were held at various locations around the city, each catering to a specific class of citizens of the town. Both men and women played appointed roles at the military banquets. The commissioned officers of the Second Regiment, the officer heroes of Sullivan’s Island, dined with their commander, Isaac Motte, while ‘‘the Ladies’’ provided for the non-commissioned officers and privates at Forts Moultrie and Johnson.117 A French guest observed in his journal that after a banquet at the State House held in the afternoon for the South Carolina Provincial Congress, those in attendance toasted the health of ‘‘all those loyal to the common cause, and also to the prosperity of Carolina and of all of the thirteen provinces, to their constant union and amity.’’ 118 A more complete mix of nation and region could not be found. The city’s elites dined well as they pondered the national meaning of South Carolina’s military glory at the public banquet that set the official tone for the day’s celebrations. The Palmetto Society sponsored a dinner for over




Chapter 

 guests at Mr. Valk’s Long Room, a popular site for large celebrations. At the conclusion of the meal, thirteen ceremonial toasts were drunk, ‘‘accompanied by several State Salutes ( Guns each) from two Brass Field Pieces.’’ 119 The toasts included tributes to the South Carolina heroes of June , including General William Moultrie, Sergeant William Jasper, and ‘‘the . . . Ten who fell in Defence of America’’ on that day.120 The salutes then linked the victory at Sullivan’s Island to the greater cause of liberty as the group toasted to the success of South Carolina and wished: ‘‘May American Troops, in the Day of Battle, remember the th of June.’’ The toasts concluded on a national note that bound regional sacrifices together as the group drank to General Washington, General Lee, ‘‘the immortal memory of the great General Montgomery,’’ and ‘‘the immortal Memory of Doctor Warren.’’ 121 Those not included in the formal banquet given by the Palmetto Society celebrated throughout the evening as well, and popular enthusiasm for the holiday was great. The militia volunteers and their ‘‘families and friends’’ dined in several taverns and picnicked ‘‘out in the open under the palmetto trees.’’ In a rare wartime public accolade for a soldier of humble rank, Sergeant William Jasper, who had scaled the fortifications during the Battle of Sullivan’s Island to save the state flag, sat among the revelers and accepted public praise as he was toasted along with the Congress, Moultrie, and others. A group of artillery volunteers gave thirteen cheers accompanied by cannon fire to the great approval of onlookers from ‘‘the streets, the balconies and the windows’’ in the center of town.122 The group of people gathered in the streets of Charleston was a heterogeneous one, and it probably included even some of the African Americans who helped to construct the palmetto fort that had withstood the British cannonball attack on Sullivan’s Island.123 While humble citizens of Charleston and African American slave laborers might never, at least during the war, be themselves the subjects of extensive toasting (or drama, or poems, or songs), they certainly connected themselves to the political meaning of the day just by their participation. The day’s celebrations concluded with a grand unity of ‘‘the people.’’ At nine o’clock the banqueters joined the public in front of Valk’s as persons of all social ranks joined together for a splendid display of fireworks that included ‘‘two noble Palmeto Trees prepared for the Occasion’’ bearing illumination.124 The political meaning of the military celebration was clear and heartfelt. Patriots voluntarily joined to celebrate their own victory and to solemnize their role in the larger Revolution. Palmetto Day dramatized how a pageant of regional pride could also confirm the vision of community consensus nec-





essary to the creation of national identity. The French visitor to Charleston pronounced the day’s festivities far superior to European patriotic pageants: ‘‘These popular military celebrations are far more real than those forced upon an indifferent population. Morever [sic], instead of wasting their patriotic fervour, these celebrations serve to further arouse the republican and antiroyalist spirit of the people, who vie with their leaders in expressing their love of liberty.’’ In a state plagued by division over the Revolution, the celebrations enshrined a local community linked to an emerging nation: ‘‘Thus, these celebrations serve as excellent political moves, making not only enthusiastic citizens of the people, but ardent partisans of the new system as well. Even the followers of the Royalists and many who are indifferent to the common cause, see the example set by the others at these affairs and are gradually educated around to their beliefs.’’ 125 Through their participation in the celebration, the people of Charleston made themselves into ‘‘enthusiastic citizens’’ indeed. The celebration of Palmetto Day in  followed along similar lines with military parades, several dinners, and patriotic toasts in abundance. Again one of the most important themes of the celebrations was preserving for political purposes the memory of the battle and those who had died in it. The banquet given at the State house was followed by ‘‘a brilliant assembly of ladies, who were presented with a ball in the evening.’’ The fireworks and the lights strewn about town after nightfall reportedly ‘‘surpassed all previous ones.’’ 126 The political context of the military holiday was vitally important to its function as a nationalist festival. That said, it is certainly interesting that the celebrations of Palmetto Day rivaled the Fourth of July in Charleston, a city famous as one of the first and most enthusiastic celebrators of Independence Day. In , Charleston held its first large celebration of the Fourth of July only six days after the first celebration of Palmetto Day. Newspaper reports make clear that the local ‘‘purely military’’ commemoration had set the tone for the day-long celebration of political independence.127 Charleston’s Fourth of July gala was reported on nationally in a way that makes the debt to Palmetto Day clear.128 In  the Charleston newspapers made far more of the Palmetto Day celebrations than they did of those on the Fourth of July, although that year’s Independence Day celebrations are remembered as the occasion for David Ramsay’s famous nationalist speech that established a tradition for many subsequent national Fourth of July orations. In Charleston, commemorating the Battle of Sullivan’s Island and commemorating America’s political independence went hand-in-hand. The nationalist




Chapter 

messages contained in the celebrations of Palmetto Day were amplified by the public patriotic images that followed on the Fourth of July, and then they were spread across the country in newspaper reports.129 Palmetto Day marks a fitting end to the consideration of how commemorations created national identity during the war. The people of Charleston celebrated the battle anniversary right up until the city was occupied in . They turned out into the streets annually to show their patriotic enthusiasm for military memory as they celebrated heroism, local bravery, and nationalism all at the same time. The real war disrupted this public festival, however, and Charlestonians were unable to resume celebrating until after the American victory at Yorktown. By then, a new set of postwar social and political concerns would provide the context for their pubic commemoration. During the Revolutionary War, the public memory of the martyrs, heroes, and great events of the war created the image of an ideal American nation that was linked together not so much by common experience as by its willingness to venerate these central symbols. While the national political cause was defined primarily through the central icons of martyrs, heroes, and battles, without an American public willing to perpetuate these memories properly, heroism and glorious military achievements meant nothing. The ideal heroes relied on the public to make their sacrifices meaningful, and the connections between people became defined by reference to a common cultural ideal. Commemorations elicited an audience response that enhanced patriotism itself. The wartime memory of martyrs and heroes like Richard Montgomery and Joseph Warren was supposed to serve to inspire others to continue the fight, thereby materially contributing to the success of the nation. Commemorations envisioned an audience that would define a new kind of American nation. It remained to be seen exactly what the relationship would be between the heroic icons of patriotism and those who made up the nation who remembered them. Americans would have to build, out of the wreckage of the actual war, a new society that could live up to their images of heroic sacrifice. Over the next fifty years, commemorations would allow Americans to work through many of the ideological issues raised by the American Revolution itself. Americans would continue to define themselves with reference to elite republican heroes and great events, but they would also have to deal with the democratic potential latent in their participation in commemorations.


Chapter 

‘‘Gratitude Shall Be Written on Our Hearts’’: The Nation and Military Gratitude, –

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

On October , , Lieutenant General Lord Cornwallis agreed to surrender his force to George Washington and seek the armistice that would end the Revolutionary War. Upon hearing the news in Philadelphia, New Jersey Congressman Elias Boudinot wrote to a family member that it would be ‘‘a day famous in the annals of American history . . . would to God that a deep sense of gratitude may follow this remarkable smile of Heaven at the critical era.’’ 1 Although a peace treaty was not concluded until more than two years later, American patriots believed that with Cornwallis’s capitulation they had won the war that would ensure the perpetuation of their nation. Within days, news of the victory spread, and Americans began to celebrate. Following long-standing religious and civic traditions of public celebration the victors sought to mark their success with particular forms of public commemoration. National and state governments declared official days of thanksgiving, and the thanksgiving day sermon, one of the most traditional rituals, was easily adapted into a declaration of national success. All over the nation, preachers took to their pulpits as Americans gathered to consider the terms of their victory, to demonstrate their public gratitude, and to consider their future as a nation separate from Britain.2 One of the most dynamic of the thanksgiving orators was Continental Army chaplain Israel Evans, a renowned preacher and patriot who had published several inspirational sermons during the war. Evans first delivered a thanksgiving sermon for the victory over Cornwallis before a brigade of New York troops in Virginia, and he repeated the performance on December , , in the Second Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia to mark that city’s




Chapter 

official day of thanks for the victory.3 While his sermon was similar in style to countless others that had been preached in colonial churches to celebrate a monarch’s birthday or a local election, this particular version reflected the fundamentally different purpose of the day: to commemorate the creation of a new nation and to define for those who heard or read it what that new nation might mean. Evoking fresh memories of the war to reinforce the image of a cohesive nation united by common gratitude for heroic military success, Evans thundered, ‘‘An army and a nation standing upon the foundation of a rational and pious hope of divine aid . . . should never despair of obtaining success.’’ 4 He wanted to persuade his audience that virtuous military victory combined with proper thanks to God would provide a strong foundation for the American nation. Evans consciously gave a dramatic performance as he sought to use all the power of elocution—vivid phrases, pauses, and litanies of great deeds— to commemorate the victory and to teach his audience an important lesson about their civic duty in its aftermath. As befitted any public speaker at the end of the eighteenth century, Evans felt that a well-delivered oration would prompt Americans to be good citizens as well as good soldiers: ‘‘Could my influence reach as far as my wishes are extended; could I appear before the inhabitants of the United States in all of the irresistible majesty of ancient elocution; could I wield the thunder of Demonsthenes . . . how should the nerves of opposition to our country be withered, and every American be fired into a patriot or a soldier.’’ 5 In order for the nation to come into being the war had to live on in the hearts and minds of its people, who would enact perpetual commemoration of a glorious past. Evans evoked the ‘‘seven dangerous and laborious campaigns’’ of the war by having his audiences imagine heroic military scenes along with him, and in doing so he encouraged his listeners to recount the tales of battle to their children ‘‘till the name of Britain and slavery shall make the blood thrill in their veins . . . until a martial spirit shall mingle with their blood, and glow in their faces.’’ Instead of praising military heroes with costly monuments and excessive ‘‘pomp,’’ Evans claimed that through such commemoration ‘‘Gratitude shall be written on our hearts’’ as the virtuous American people internalized national bravery and union.6 For Evans, then, it was a combination of memory and gratitude that would bind the new nation together. To end his sermon, he asserted that the very names of the soldiers who had fought in the war could act as symbols toward this end, as long as the public remembered them:


The Nation and Military Gratitude



Their names shall be familiar to us; they shall be sounded with pleasure. Old men shall remember them; they shall report them to their children. The grey headed soldier shall beguile the heavy hours of night with his animating history of those battles in which he fought. . . . Oh were it possible! I would with pleasure and gratitude repeat the name of every worthy officer and soldier of that army; they should stand side by side and hand in hand emblematic of our friendship and union! 7

Evans believed that Americans’ memory of the war and their gratitude for the sacrifice of patriots would form a nation united in ‘‘friendship and union.’’ As long as there were Americans who remembered the battles of the Revolutionary War and recited the names of the gallant men who fought in them, they could imagine themselves as part of a that nation. The ‘‘hearts’’ of the American people would overflow with gratitude, memory, and national allegiance. The idea that a united American nation could be fashioned around public gratitude for the sacrifices and successes of the Revolutionary War remained at the center of the process of national identity formation in America throughout the s. Public memory of the war in this period built on the tradition of hero worship and community ritual that had been established during the war, but the process of commemoration and remembrance also expanded in new and unexpected ways as more concrete visions of the nation took shape. During the Revolutionary War, public commemorations had offered the hope of civic consensus, even in the midst of real division and chaos. During the s, a vision of a nation united around gratitude and sacrifice began to take specific form as the process of commemoration expanded and became more sophisticated. Nevertheless, the creation of American nationalism was an incomplete and ongoing process. Just as some rifts in society and politics were exacerbated after the fighting ended, public memories of the war also became increasingly contested. Many Americans sought to understand their place in the new nation in terms of their experiences during the war, but many also disagreed about the social and political legacies of the Revolution, disagreements that broke out into open, public discourse now that the war was over. Instead of expressing any consensual view of the Revolution’s legacy, the various groups and individuals who were contending for power and position in society began to use memories of the military conflict to legitimize their own interests while simultaneously maintaining the appearance of disinterestedness.8 If Americans used their collective sacrifice during the war and their gratitude for military victory to fashion a sense of unity during the s, they




Chapter 

disagreed profoundly about how and on what terms different people should take part in the national community. Indeed, a host of specific questions threatened the cohesion of the nation: How could the military be included in a civilian polity? How should the Loyalists be reintegrated into society? How should soldiers be rewarded for their services? Was slavery acceptable in the new republic? What respective roles would men and women play in the nation? People espousing a wide array of beliefs, from staunch Federalism to antislavery to western regionalism, used public memories of the Revolutionary War as part of their own answers to such questions. They all claimed the legacy of the war as their own, and they all used memories of the war to define publicly how they should fit into the nation. An ever expanding collection of groups turned to public ceremony and print culture to enhance their own power and status and create a vision of American community. As a greater variety of people began to bend public memory of the war to their own purposes, the democratization of that memory began. Democratization of public memory was a slow process by which greater numbers of Americans from all along the socioeconomic spectrum added their voices to the chorus of commemoration that defined nationalism in the s and, in the process, envisioned a potential role for themselves in the nation. Public images of the traditional, republican heroes who had become immensely popular figures during the war still carried significant cultural weight throughout the period, and democratization did not mean that the poor and disenfranchised immediately replaced the great and powerful as figures of public praise and patriotism. But military memory after the war became less consensual even as people continued to bank on its unifying power. The process whereby new and different groups made memory (even some very traditional aspects of memory) meaningful to themselves enabled them to demand in open and public ways a firmer place in the new nation. Public gratitude for sacrifice during the war was the most powerful force in the democratization of military memory. In his sermon, Israel Evans had stated that ‘‘every worthy officer and soldier’’ deserved public gratitude, a dramatically different idea from that which had reigned during the war, when only the sacrifices of great officers were held up as examples of heroism.9 If ‘‘official’’ public memory after the war, as represented by governmentsponsored commemorations, failed to accommodate the heroism of common soldiers, some of these soldiers began to appropriate the language of gratitude to claim military glory, and hence a place in civil society, for themselves.





The Language of Gratitude The notion of military gratitude, which seemed ubiquitous in the s, at once stressed unity and paved the way for less recognized voices to be heard. Military gratitude was traditional and consensual, but by at least opening up the possibility that average, enlisted men might deserve some form of public recognition it simultaneously helped to begin the democratization of public culture. Gratitude for military sacrifice in public memory did not guarantee real equality, even for military men, but it did help to inaugurate a process whereby the disenfranchised might record their contributions as part of the national story and thus gain a stake in the emerging nationalism, which would be the first step toward acquiring a share of political power. Public military memory defined a national community that was supposed to be united by its voluntary gratitude for military sacrifice. Just like Congressman Elias Boudinot and the members of the Palmetto Society in Charleston, South Carolina, who continued their local commemorative efforts in the s, many others in American society seemed to be ‘‘struck with the Idea of Gratitude’’ for the military victory and for the sacrifice of war.10 The idea of gratitude built upon the commemorative tradition that had already been established during the war. This national feeling could define patriotism for the great body of the American people as had the public gratitude offered to heroic officers such as Joseph Warren and Richard Montgomery during the war. Using what John Adams would later refer to in a letter to Thomas Jefferson as ‘‘our good old English language of Gratitude,’’ many people articulated a set of political sentiments that were intended to bind the nation together around patriotic memories.11 Traditionally, military gratitude had implied hierarchy and inequality— it was the undefined masses who were expected to look up to Joseph Warren and Richard Montgomery for their heroic sacrifices. But after the war ended, the concept became malleable enough that a variety of Americans were able to use it to tie their interests to the patriotic memory of the Revolutionary War. Thus, while military gratitude continued to define an allegiance to the quasiaristocratic, republican heroes of the war, its meaning became increasingly contested as definitions of citizenship broadened. The idea of gratitude possessed a particular history that made it a valuable starting point for this new kind of political community. At least since Plato, philosophers had posited that gratitude could create obligations of citizenship strong enough to hold together a nation. Cicero had referred to grati-




Chapter 

tude as ‘‘the mother of all virtues’’ because of its power to render sacrifice meaningful. But mere feelings of thankfulness and eternal memory would not be enough, especially where military service was concerned, for gratitude implied that something was owed in return for Revolutionary War sacrifice. As Samuel Mather, the minister and writer who was Cotton Mather’s son and Thomas Hutchinson’s son-in-law, had written in his  Essay Concerning Gratitude, it was a virtue ‘‘which consists in a grateful sense of received Benefits, in a free Acknowledgement of them, in speaking well of the Donor, and in endeavouring to requite him.’’ 12 The sacrifices of American heroes during the Revolutionary War created a debt of gratitude that Americans would have to ‘‘requite’’ both by keeping their memory sacred and by living up to their patriotic example. Memory and patriotism thus became important because ingratitude would constitute a national crisis. Political philosophers considered republics, as a group, to be inherently ungrateful because they lacked the strict hierarchy and grandeur of monarchies. Without a king, to whom gratitude and praise were naturally owed, Americans would especially have to prove their worth as a republican nation by showing proper gratitude for a new kind of political order and by keeping military memory alive.13 Postwar gratitude, then, was intimately related to the wartime cult of heroism, but it demanded more from ‘‘the people,’’ who were supposed to venerate their elite heroes. Those who actively concerned themselves with nationalism stressed that showing proper gratitude to war heroes was necessary to enhance national glory. In this case, gratitude consisted of an expression of patriotism and allegiance to the nation; proper gratitude for military sacrifice paved the way for a virtuous national political culture. Thus ‘‘Civis’’ wrote in the New York Gazetteer in  that ‘‘no sensation of the soul . . . does more honor to human nature than Gratitude’’ and that in the spirit of gratitude all Americans should teach their children about Washington and other ‘‘illustrious characters . . . and urge them, by such examples, to transmit the enjoyment of freedom and independence to their posterity.’’ 14 The ‘‘rising glory’’ poet David Humphreys thought gratitude would make Americans worthy of their military heroes. He listed several respected generals in his  patriotic poem The Glory of America and then wished:

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Oh may we n’er to them ungrateful prove! But bless the impulse that their spirits rous’d, And bless the patriots who our cause espous’d.15





Many writers and editorialists echoed these sentiments, which had also been at the center of Israel Evans’s commemorative scheme: the sentiment of military gratitude would bring with it a kindred sentiment of patriotism. This vision of patriotism stressed that commemoration should be a purposeful process, but it was also clear that its expression could assume many different forms. While gratitude, according to Israel Evans, was a feeling that should be ‘‘written on the hearts’’ of all Americans, it was also a political idea that circulated through public culture. Artists and writers, along with government officials, sought to remind the public of their commemorative duties. The painter John Trumbull, for example, who began in  his series of paintings commemorating scenes from the Revolutionary War, concerned himself with how Americans ought best to express their gratitude to military men. For Trumbull, public displays of gratitude could become a means to spread the ideals of the Revolution. He wrote to Thomas Jefferson in  about his hopes for patronage of prints of his commemorative paintings of the war: ‘‘Monuments have been in repeated instances voted to her heroes; why then should I doubt a readiness in our country to encourage me in producing monuments, not of heroes only, but of those events on which their title to the gratitude of the nation is founded, and which by being multiplied and little expensive, may be diffused over the world, instead of being bounded to one narrow spot?’’ 16 Trumbull expressed artistic gratitude to American military men as a means of stressing the common bonds that the Revolution had created among far-flung members of the American nation. Trumbull’s invocation of monuments and inexpensive prints as useful commemorative devices, both of which might inspire a gratitude for great heroes and events of the war, raised a significant dilemma in the construction of a unified nation. Although almost everyone agreed that military gratitude was a good thing, they could not agree on how that gratitude should be demonstrated or who should receive the benefits of public praise. Defining the proper ways to repay the national debt of gratitude was not a smooth or consensual process—even as its goal was public unity. The s proved a difficult time for the smooth creation of consensus. As Americans sought to reconstruct their society out of the chaos of war and revolution, they had to find a way to deal with political, economic, and social challenges. All levels of government changed as Americans argued over how best to embody their Revolution in a political system.17 Disenfranchised groups and individuals—African Americans, women, the poor—many of whom had participated in new forms of public action and experienced some




Chapter 

The Death of Dr. Warren at the Battle of Bunkers-Hill, engraving after John Trumbull. © – www.arttoday.com. Trumbull painted this picture of the Battle of Bunker Hill in , and engravings of the image have appeared in popular editions ever since. Trumbull hoped to use the conventions of history painting to commemorate the Revolutionary War and to add luster to its heroes. The painting depicts the moment of Joseph Warren’s death, a traditional focus of glorification for public martyrs. Trumbull, who was an aide-de-camp in the Continental Army and was present at the battle, painted an African American soldier at the far right. On the far left is Israel Putnam, whom Trumbull depicted as raising his sword to try and rally the troops before the final American retreat.

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

measure of increased freedom during the war, sought to continue gaining ground. But at the same time, economic inequality increased. Economic depression combined with tremendous growth and changes in trade and commerce meant that many financiers and land speculators, such as Robert Morris and William Greenleaf, were able to capitalize on economic gains made during the war, while others suffered great personal hardship.18 Loyalists and military veterans had to be reintegrated into communities that did not always welcome them. Changing political contexts, combined with the fact that wartime commemorations had valorized mostly ‘‘great’’ republican heroes, meant that Americans sometimes had to face down contradictory ideas about how and to whom gratitude was owed. At the same time that the American political world was changing, public





culture was shifting and expanding as well. The end of the war produced an outpouring of creative energy in America, and many forms of civic and print culture focused on military memory.19 Civic rituals, like the celebrations of battle anniversaries that had begun during the war, grew in importance as a new American festive calendar took shape, full of new public holidays. Newspapers grew in unprecedented numbers and circulation during the s, and many newspapers also began to expand their coverage of the multitude of patriotic celebrations taking place all over the country.20 Beginning in the mid-s, Americans produced huge numbers of books, many of which addressed the Revolutionary War in some way.21 The cultural outpouring of the s meant that there were more places for Americans to express, experience, and read about the military gratitude and memory to which they were increasingly trying to lay claim.

Gratitude and Thanksgiving

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Official days of thanksgiving commemorating the end of the war, like the one at which Israel Evans spoke in , sought to promote unity by defining public gratitude for the creation of the new nation as a kind of carefully controlled government project. The end of the war provided opportunities for civic celebrations on a much wider scale and in more places than had been possible during wartime. Congress and state governments declared several official military days of thanksgiving, first in honor of the victory at Yorktown in October  and then even more elaborately to mark the peace treaty in December . Official days of thanksgiving had been a common way to mark important public occasions for hundreds of years, particularly in New England, and these celebrations owed much to the conventions of those who had come before.22 Thanksgiving days brought together the two most important American institutions of community authority, the government and the church, to invest an occasion with official meaning. It had not been unusual, especially during the war, for Congress to call upon American citizens to visit their churches for reminders of a hoped-for common spirit. But those who took part in the celebrations of the war’s end recognized that the stakes of proper public thanksgiving had been raised. Now it was even more important than ever that communities cement themselves together, so preachers marked these days of thanks as particularly special. Joseph Buckminster, the minister of the North Church in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, commented that he had ‘‘frequently met’’ his congregation ‘‘on days of anni-




Chapter 

versary Thanksgiving. . . . But! never have we seen an anniversary like this!’’ Buckminster maintained that it was the most important national thanksgiving ever: ‘‘Never have we been loaded with such a debt of gratitude—Never passed a year that gave birth to events so important to this country.’’ 23 Thomas Brockway, the  thanksgiving orator in Hartford, Connecticut, also noted that this day of thanks marked a new high on the national calendar: ‘‘This is the day we have often anticipated with peculiar delight, while struggling with the pains of an eight years bloody war. It is a day long to be remembered; the jubilee of our land: American annals shall preserve it sacred and unborn ages will read it with pleasure. It is such day as we never before saw.’’ 24 This day of thanks would outshine all others, because, as Buckminster put it, ‘‘this day hails confederate America, Sovereign and Independent among the nations of the earth.’’ 25 If religious and civil authorities had long hoped for signs of consensus, the language of gratitude seemed to offer the ultimate opportunity for such display at war’s end as real bloodshed gave way to pure memory of military exploits. Americans all over the country celebrated their nation and the war’s successful conclusion with appropriate public demonstrations of thanks: parades, fireworks, triumphal arches, and sermons. These thanksgiving ceremonies offer us the chance to begin to understand how the language of gratitude shaped popular political culture in the war’s immediate aftermath because they were carefully planned attempts to prescribe just how military gratitude should shape community reaction. But they also demonstrate the complex process of forming patriotic allegiances. In the thanksgiving sermons of , which honored Cornwallis’s surrender, preachers tried intentionally to evoke a grateful republican national community. Thanksgiving orators attempted to persuade their audiences, first in person and then in print, that because Americans had survived the war, they would be able to build strong governments and a unified society. These orators tried to emulate the eloquence of ancient Roman and Greek republican orators such as Demosthenes, who, as the historian of rhetoric Adam Pokay has argued, could ‘‘move the just passions of a civic assembly and implant a sense of community with his words.’’ 26 Official thanksgiving ceremonies enacted elaborate rituals of unity to exhibit public gratitude and to embody the very social cohesion that was, in reality, so questioned at the end of the military conflict. During a  public thanksgiving ceremony in Brookfield, Massachusetts, preacher Nathan Fiske told his audience that he wished to use ‘‘language and eloquence’’ to show just how the victory would bring Americans together. He asked his lis-





teners to ponder how the British surrender in Virginia would bring the whole nation ‘‘the most happy consequences’’ as it remained strong in their memories. The ‘‘Annals of Fame’’ would record ‘‘those liberties’’ that Americans had ‘‘purchased with the toil of their whole lives, with their treasure, with their blood.’’ 27 By  the oratorical purpose of the thanksgiving day sermons had expanded into larger-scale public ceremonies. The official thanksgiving ceremonies conducted across the nation in  in honor of the formal conclusion of the peace treaty attempted to sound a familiar note of unity—not surprisingly because their tone was carefully prescribed by Congress. On October , , it declared that December  would be ‘‘a day of public thanksgiving, that all the people may then assemble to celebrate with grateful hearts and united voices’’ the blessings God had granted during the war. The celebrations were intended to give Americans the chance to reflect on the war and to ask God ‘‘to give wisdom and unanimity to our public councils, to cement all our citizens in the bonds of affection, and to inspire them with an earnest regard for the national honor and interest.’’ 28 In doing so, Congress hoped that remembering the war as a celebration of the peace would bring Americans together, remind them of what they had in common, and begin to pay back the national debt of gratitude with patriotic commitment to the new American government. Although the war was over, its memory could help the larger Revolution continue. The project was taken up by officials in many states, towns, and cities, who reprinted the congressional proclamation and began to prepare their own local celebrations. Evidence survives of such grand celebrations in New York, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, and Maryland, all of which used memories of the war as symbols of national unity, even, as celebrations had during the war, they simultaneously built local and regional allegiances, as had been the case with wartime celebrations.29 The ideal of national unity through military gratitude was indeed to be constructed one town at a time in the midst of very real chaos. In New York, celebrations of the peace took place during the same weeks that the United States regained control of New York City (which had been occupied by the British since ) and that George Washington relinquished his military command. Washington, himself the greatest living symbol of military heroism, attended several celebrations when he was in town to bid farewell to his officers on his way to resign his commission and to resume civilian life in Virginia.30 A series of commemorative ceremonies held between November  and December  coincided with the British evacuation




Chapter 

of New York City, Washington’s visit to the city, and his farewell to Continental officers at Fraunces’s Tavern that completed the disbanding of the army. Such ceremonies used rituals of unity to dramatize the peaceful disbanding of the army and to build public support for civil republican government. The public rituals in honor of the peace, with Washington in attendance, became for New Yorkers the greatest possible expression of a new social order, one that was profoundly civilian yet proud of American military accomplishment. While these official celebrations were intended to help Americans reflect on the war, they also became intertwined with New Yorkers’ attempts to take control of the city. In the spring of , , Loyalists, many of them wealthy and prominent society figures, had fled the city, and the patriot New Yorkers left behind were ready to establish a new pecking order now that the British military had followed them.31 Governor George Clinton, who used his wartime record and support for agrarian antimerchant interests to continue a career in New York state politics that would eventually usher him into the vice presidency, entered New York City to signal a return to civil government. The last British forces evacuated Manhattan between November  and , as , American soldiers and a group of important army officers also entered the city along with General Washington. Prominent members of the Sons of Liberty, at least , civilian men and women, and a group of rowdy sailors eager to purge the city of British symbols accompanied the military parade.32 The arrival of Washington, who was being hailed as America’s Cincinnatus (the Roman hero who returned to civilian life after a successful military career) as he returned peacefully to civilian life, added considerable luster to the public occasion, so New Yorkers moved up their official celebrations to coincide with his visit. Just as Washington was proving his merit as a republican commander and political figure by voluntarily resigning, the people would be called upon to demonstrate theirs by voluntarily displaying military gratitude.33 Initial newspaper reports of the festivities focused on Washington and his proper political behavior—both his retirement and his correct observance of heroic memory. The Independent New York Gazette reported that the commander and his officers toasted American success at Fraunces’s Tavern on November  as they drank to ‘‘the memory of those Heroes, who have fallen for our Freedom,’’ and the newspaper pleaded, ‘‘May the Remembrance of THIS DAY be a Lesson to Princes.’’ Washington presented himself not only as a retiring hero but also as a member of the patriotic public when he proposed his own toast ‘‘with a heart full of love and gratitude’’ for the services of his officers.34 The city marked the official day of thanksgiving on December 





with a ‘‘splendid’’ display of fireworks, which George Washington admired along with many other spectators who were fixed ‘‘in mute attention (unless when they some times manifested their satisfaction by loud huzzahs, in honour of the Artist and occasion).’’ 35 Two days later, on December , Washington left his officers and proceeded to submit his resignation to Congress in Annapolis and to retire to civilian life. As New Yorkers took control of their city and celebrated the peace and as civilians took control of the republic, gratitude, thanksgiving, and memory were linked to the republican spectacle of the retiring commander. Celebrations around New York City continued after Washington left for Annapolis. As the civilians and sailors who had followed their general’s entry into the city had demonstrated, George Washington was not the only important element in the ritual of civil-military transition. The populace played its part in the rituals of consensus, just as the commemorative aspects of the celebration of the peace reminded New Yorkers that they were part of a larger nation and demonstrated the wishes of government officials to dramatize the transition back to civil society. The residents of Jamaica, Queens, celebrated the peace on December  with an American interpretation of a traditional European-style public celebration. They erected a large liberty pole, a ‘‘traditional symbol of joyful unanimity,’’ bearing thirteen stripes, and ‘‘the gentlemen then marched in a column of thirteen abreast, in procession, through the village.’’ 36 At the end of the evening’s celebratory dinner, the revelers toasted the memory of fallen heroes as well as the state of New York and the United States, and they expressed hope that ‘‘the thirteen stripes be respected in every quarter of the globe.’’ The ladies of Jamaica, whom the newspapers termed ‘‘patterns of virtue and lovers of liberty,’’ took full part in the day’s festivities, which concluded with a ball.37 The revival of the liberty pole, which had been used as a symbol of resistance to British rule before the long occupation of the city, was transformed into a reminder of unity among the thirteen states as well as a symbol of political gratitude for the fallen heroes. In language that would become increasingly familiar in reports of patriotic festivities, the newspaper drew attention to female participation to emphasize the full extent of community consensus. According to this way of thinking, the thanksgiving must be widespread if even women took the opportunity to display their virtuous community spirit. Celebrations in New York City continued on December , the national day of thanksgiving, when Israel Evans preached in St. George’s Chapel before a military and civilian audience. On this solemn and impressive occasion,




Chapter 

Evans reworked the theme of his  thanksgiving sermon and urged New Yorkers to become part of the national community united by gratitude. Evans made a direct connection between the memories of battle that were ‘‘printed upon your hearts’’ and the future unity and prosperity of America. Now that the war had ended and Americans had paid for freedom with their blood, ‘‘the spacious prospects of national happiness, crown themselves upon our imagination! The great Continent of America . . . is now free and independent!’’ Evans beseeched his audience that if the dead heroes of the Revolution could speak to them, ‘‘they would exhort you to be united as a band of brothers.’’ 38 Even after the war had ended, heroic martyrs packed a powerful symbolic punch, as Evans’s audience was reminded that their duty now extended beyond military service into the new postwar political world. Although New Yorkers dealt with some specific aspects of demobilization in their celebrations of the peace, the desire to become like a ‘‘band of brothers’’ extended beyond their city and their state. The emphasis on memory as a tool of national unity in Israel Evans’s sermon was echoed by other Thanksgiving orators who preached at official celebrations around the country. The transition to civilian society became linked to national prosperity— at least in the ideal presented from the pulpit. Americans were assured that even though the ‘‘common cause’’ of the war had ended, the nation would remain together. The commemorations themselves became a way to reinforce the common cause of union, as people in different regions could read about one another’s public festivals in newspapers.39 Thomas Brockway preached in Lebanon, Connecticut, that God’s hand was equally visible in American military victories as in ‘‘forming a union between such a number of clans or tribes so different in their habits and manners.’’ 40 Preachers commemorated the war as an event that brought about union, and they called upon the memory of the war to perpetuate that unity. Jonathan Trumbull, the minister of the church of North-Haven, Connecticut, said on the national day of thanks that his congregation should be grateful that ‘‘a spirit of union and resistance flew instantly, like a stream of electric fire, through the continent:— That the union increased and grew up into an happy establishment, in spite of all the art and opposition either of our open or secret enemies.’’ 41 Public days of thanksgiving and commemoration, then, seemed to present the perfect picture of a united American community (even including women on occasion) that would continue to express gratitude for military sacrifice. Whether gathered in church or around a liberty pole, many Americans seemed to hear official calls for consensus.





However, just as the war had actually caused many rifts in American society despite the supposed ‘‘common cause,’’ some evidence shows that even days of thanksgiving, the seemingly most consensual of celebrations, exposed cracks in the facade of unity. Indeed, consensus remained only an ideal. Even where unity was explicitly invoked, disorder might lurk close beneath the surface of public ceremony. The planners of the thanksgiving celebrations in Philadelphia, for example, had to work extremely hard to maintain the appearance of public consensus, especially one that fit their vision of genteel behavior. Philadelphia’s official thanksgiving celebration provides a good reminder that symbols were not always received as they had been intended. The national community was supposed to be spontaneous and voluntary, united by the sentiment of gratitude, but Philadelphia’s celebration of the peace showed how carefully arrangements had to be made to maintain such appearances. The government of Pennsylvania tried to use the Philadelphia thanksgiving celebrations to demonstrate how memory of the war could hold together a potentially divided society, but in trying to carefully prescribe public behavior they inadvertently highlighted the social conflict within the city and demonstrated their own weakness in dealing with that conflict. The day of thanks was celebrated in Philadelphia in the midst of a state-wide constitutional crisis that hinged on whether the radical egalitarian democracy of the war years would continue or whether elites in the state, led by conservative John Dickinson, would be able to reestablish control over their social inferiors. In November , just one month before the peace celebrations were set to take place, the Pennsylvania Council of Censors, the body with the power to modify the state constitution, met in Philadelphia and, in spite of severe divisions among politicians, its deliberations indicated that elite politicians would probably be able to recapture control of state government. By January , the Council had decided to revise the Pennsylvania constitution to do away with features such as the unicameral legislature and universal white male suffrage that had empowered common men in this state more than in any other.42 In this atmosphere of political tension and restriction, even the most seemingly trivial details of the official Day of Thanksgiving might introduce controversy and threaten to expose the reality of social division in the city. A committee of the Pennsylvania Assembly planned the celebration in Philadelphia, and its reports reveal a concern with keeping social strife out of the day’s festivities. The committee was resolved that no unauthorized or




Chapter 

uncontrollable events should take place: ‘‘As these Demonstrations of Joy are prescribed and regulated by the Directions and at the Expense of the State, it is expected, that no Person or Persons whatever will presume, in Defiance of the Authority of the Commonwealth, to require or to make any other Demonstrations of Joy upon the Occasion.’’ 43 Parading the symbols of unity became as much a test of the power of government to direct public behavior as it was a commemoration of the war. Joyful demonstrations were probably not the only kind the committee feared, for the tradition of public protest in Philadelphia meant that the public celebration might have provided the perfect opportunity for grassroots protest of the constitutional revisions. In the wake of wartime radicalism, conservatives were in no mood for crude displays of democratic mockery. It was state leaders who paid over £ for the celebration, and it was they who expected to control public behavior.44 As the centerpiece of their public celebration, the committee of arrangements commissioned noted American artist Charles Willson Peale to design a triumphal arch ‘‘embellished with illuminated Paintings and suitable Inscriptions,’’ to be erected in downtown Philadelphia.45 Peale had illuminated the windows of his house with patriotic images (including battle scenes and images of ‘‘   ’’) at the celebration of Cornwallis’s surrender in .46 Peale was very concerned with creating usable heroes for the American public (he was just beginning a large series of portraits depicting the great men of the Revolution), and he envisioned the arch as a symbol of classical republican triumph.47 The triumphal arch was a traditional monumental form based on Roman architecture designed to celebrate heroism and victory in a special public space.48 Peale’s arch owed much to Roman precedent, but it also celebrated a new kind of distinctively American republic. Like most of the triumphal arches the Romans had constructed, the Philadelphia arch was not designed to be permanent, but rather to sanctify public space during a distinct victory celebration.49 The artwork and ‘‘suitable inscriptions’’ written in Latin on the arch depicted classical images that reinforced the idea that the memory of the war should bring Americans together. To inspire military gratitude, one side of the top railing depicted ‘‘a Pyramidal Cenotaph to the Memory of those brave Men who have died for their Country in the late War . . . [inscribed] These received their Wounds for their Country.’’ The clearest image of military and national unity was on the south panel, which showed ‘‘Confederated America leaning upon a Soldier’’ next to the inscription ‘‘military fidelity.’’ 50 The entire arch was to be ‘‘illuminated by about twelve hundred





Reconstruction of Charles Willson Peale’s Triumphal Arch, –, drawing by Lester Hoadley Sellers. Courtesy American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. Peale designed this transparent triumphal arch to be the centerpiece of Philadelphia’s celebration of the end of the Revolutionary War in . The grand arch was to express public gratitude to the American military and its French allies for winning American freedom. The government of Pennsylvania wanted the arch to represent an orderly and genteel celebration of public unanimity at a time of political tensions. The original arch, which was not put on display until , was damaged in a fireworks accident.

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Lamps’’ and a monumental figure of ‘‘Peace,’’ who would ascend to the top of the arch through a hail of fireworks. Peale’s grandiose vision of ‘‘Peace’’ fit well with the genteel, upper-class celebration planned by the Pennsylvania Assembly. The planning committee specified that the arch should be erected in a fashionable part of town, and it provided precise instructions for pedestrian and carriage traffic so that wellbehaved Philadelphians could view the arch as many times as they wished in an orderly manner.51 The celebration of peace, particularly the elaborate




Chapter 

and expansive triumphal arch, was a chance for the Assembly to sanction a respectable politics of the street that rejected the public action, rule by committee, and unruliness of the prewar era. The potential for conflict around the arch was acknowledged in advance by the committee when it resolved that ‘‘Any boys or others, who disturb the Citizens by throwing Squibs or Crackers, or otherwise, will be immediately apprehended and sent to the Workhouse.’’ 52 While boys throwing fireworks might seem like a weak threat to national community, when considered in the context of the state constitutional crisis and class divisions, they represented an important disturbance to the image of civic unity that the committee was so carefully striving to construct. No matter how hard it tried to present the appearance of total unity on the official Day of Thanksgiving, the committee could not prescribe the audience reaction to its creation.53 By excluding ‘‘boys’’ and ‘‘others’’ from the ranks of ‘‘Citizens,’’ the Pennsylvania Assembly tried to include in the polity only those who exhibited orderly behavior during the festival of public memory. As it turned out, the committee was correct to be leery of fireworks: during the installation of the whole contraption, the arch exploded when the former bombardier whom Peale had hired to assist him improperly lit a fireworks fuse. Several people were killed, and Peale himself was severely wounded in the accident, but the arch itself remained whole. Several citizens ‘‘agreed to raise a sum by subscription to renew the exhibition’’ to show their ‘‘zeal and attachment to the glorious cause,’’ and Peale agreed to contribute his own funds to the recreation of the artwork.54 Congregational minister and historian Jeremy Belknap humorously suggested to his friend Ebenezer Hazard that the explosion of the arch might be regarded as a bad omen for the nation.55 By May , Peale had restored the arch to its full splendor, and he installed it in front of the State House, where it ‘‘afforded great satisfaction to many thousand spectators.’’ 56 The committee of arrangements finally achieved some semblance of public unity after months of delay as eager spectators beheld the Roman arch that contained a patriotic message about the end of the war.

Gratitude and Conflict

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

While the Philadelphia and New York celebrations of the peace aspired to demonstrate the ideal of public gratitude, reports of civic celebrations that were less carefully controlled by government officials showed the potential





for conflict even more clearly. In other public rituals across the nation, the host of problems that faced the nation at the end of the war became clear. At the Lexington, Massachusetts, battle anniversary ceremonies of  and , for example, orators tried to sound the theme of unity in peacetime, but their words thinly veiled concern over public conflict. Philips Payson, former army chaplain and the minister of the Congregational church in Chelsea, Massachusetts, delivered the annual commemorative sermon in Lexington in . Payson called on his audience to recall the battle with civic pride and a proper deference for the remarkable military power that caused ‘‘a nation [to] be born in a day,’’ and he praised the power of God ‘‘to cement this people in a band of union.’’ But he also displayed some unease over his audience’s acceptance of the price of union as he reassured them that high taxes were necessary and that ‘‘generations yet unborn shall rejoice in the happy purchases of our treasure and blood.’’ 57 If memories of bloodshed were to perpetuate the unity of the national community, proper gratitude would be required in the form of payment of national debt. Payson articulated a version of gratitude that would not entirely be ‘‘written on the hearts’’ of the people, but might also reach into their pocketbooks—a version that would become far more controversial, as we shall see. Zabdiel Adams addressed the conflicts prompted by the war’s end even more explicitly in his  commemorative sermon at Lexington. Adams, a former army chaplain and cousin of one of the peace treaty’s chief negotiators, John Adams, used his sermon on this solemn occasion to address ‘‘a most valuable political purpose’’ by giving his opinions of the division the war had caused in society. Within the stylistic conventions of the Lexington commemoration sermon, Adams chose to take up several of the new social questions raised by war’s end. He first praised the fact that Lexingtonians continued to commemorate the battle, and in the published version of the sermon he printed a footnote containing a history of the occasion. He offered the usual assurances that the heroism of Lexington and the wartime unity it inspired would not be forgotten ‘‘from generation to generation,’’ just as he promised that the dead would be remembered.58 For Zabdiel Adams, proper memory meant that the transgressions of the Loyalists and the British could never be forgotten by patriotic Americans, and he openly acknowledged the possibility that memory in this case might act as a social wedge to divide rather than unite postwar society. Adams argued that exiled Loyalists should never be reintegrated into society. He urged the Massachusetts legislature, which at the time was considering what to do with confiscated Loyalist property, not to return it: ‘‘Many of the Absentees




Chapter 

have conducted so ill, so offensively to the people of the United States, that it is, by no means reasonable, that they should ever be permitted to return to their former possessions, even though they should be willing to pay the bona fide price which was paid by the present possessors.’’ In keeping with what would become within a few years his strongly Federalist political viewpoint, Adams was far more lenient towards the British: ‘‘They certainly ought to be forgiven, and restored to our charity, as they have virtually acknowledged their faults.’’ Memory would always be important, as Adams told his audience that ‘‘it is certainly our duty to forgive, if not to forget. To forget indeed, I know is not our duty.’’ 59 Adams acknowledged the divisions in society and presented his own strong opinions about which rifts could easily be healed and which could not. The language of gratitude seemed to offer no balm to heal certain divisions in the American community, and memory might even make some kinds of divisions worse. In fact, Zabdiel Adams’s oration exposed a much larger problem for the ideal of a unified nation envisioned by commemorations. A debate began at the end of the war about whether and how to forgive the Loyalists while at the same time preserving the glorious memory of the war. Former patriots questioned whether proper gratitude for patriotic sacrifice left room for forgiveness, and surely Loyalists themselves could not be bound to the nation through the same images of sacrifice that fueled patriotism. While many Americans publicly expressed agreement with Zabdiel Adams’s harsh judgement, others, like Timothy Pickering and Alexander Hamilton, who argued that ‘‘We have already lost too large a number of valuable citizens,’’ recognized the dilemma that memories of the war presented for social cohesion and were more charitable.60 Although the memory of the Revolutionary War was supposed to provide a strong symbolic foundation for the new nation, it could also encourage animosity towards former Loyalists just as society was trying to reconstruct itself. The question remained: how could a cohesive national identity that was based on memories of the war ever include former Loyalists? As state legislatures increasingly fought crowd action against Loyalists and drafted laws redistributing confiscated property, the war over Loyalism and memory was increasingly fought in print.61 Many different forms of print culture, including newspapers, poetry, and literature, demonstrated the inherent problems with basing national identity on memories of the war that demonized Loyalists. This social division caused by the memory of the war was summed up by an anonymous Loyalist newspaper poet who had been attacked by the Anti-Britannic Society in Charleston, South Carolina, when he asked, ‘‘Who can brook a Rebel’s frown?—or bear his children’s stare /





When in the streets they point, and lisp, ‘A Tory’?’’ 62 Such public scorn might force Americans to realize that the carefully crafted vision of social unity put forth by governments during public rituals of thanksgiving merely covered over dissent. Popular fiction emphasized the ubiquity of these rifts in society. The epistolary novel Emma Corbett, written by Samuel Jackson Pratt in England during the war, is but one example of how a fantastic romance of lovers kept apart by differences in political allegiance used the gendered language of romance to dramatize the rifts in the American ‘‘family.’’ 63 Reprinted and read often in America as the war was coming to an end, Pratt’s novel tested whether love could conquer the memory of ‘‘incorrect’’ Loyalist politics as it took his readers from the ‘‘real’’ world of wartime violence to the postwar culture of sentiment and memory. In the novel, Emma Corbett, the virtuous daughter of American patriot Charles Corbett, offers her heart to Henry Hammond, a loyal British subject, only to be dismayed when her father insists that her promise of marriage is a betrayal to the memory of her martyred brother Edward, who has been killed in the war. Hammond, Emma’s young suitor, demonstrates the dilemma of social division when he asks Charles Corbett, ‘‘May we not consider a public contest in different points of view, and yet be friends?’’ 64 The negative answer to this question is reached after much drama: Hammond joins the king’s troops, Edward is discovered alive but then dies, Emma disguises herself as an Indian and sails off to find her lover. The end of the novel dramatizes the fact that a romance based on divided political loyalties is doomed: Hammond dies of a fever and Emma of a broken heart. Charles Corbett, the father who expressed hard-headed patriotism at the novel’s beginning, is left to exclaim: ‘‘I am childless. . . . behold what   has done for me.’’ 65 Tragic fiction illustrated that devotion to political ideology could serve to widen community rifts and do more harm than good. While it had clearly seemed in the father’s interest to hold his daughter to his patriotic standards, the tragic ending emphasized the high cost of keeping patriotism too sacred when Loyalism posed no actual danger. This seemingly ‘‘light’’ tragic romance clearly dramatized the dilemma facing the entire nation in the postwar years. The problem was how to remember Loyalists’ dishonor during the war while not tearing apart the vision of a unified society. Fiction did not really offer any concrete solutions, and even those who were convinced of the need to reintegrate Loyalists seemed wary of how memory could adapt. The reintegration of Loyalists into society required an extremely delicate balance of remembering and forgetting that was hard to




Chapter 

achieve in any deliberate way. Preachers and orators argued that some wartime events needed to be forgotten while others were remembered, but it was not easy to separate the Loyalists’ supposed calumny from the glory of the war. Creating a usable national memory based on gratitude for patriotism meant having to resolve some of these contradictions, despite the fact that public memory was already highly selective. Many confronted the dilemma head on and, in contrast to Zabdiel Adams, argued that the Loyalists must be forgiven and fully reintegrated into society even as the war should never be forgotten.66 They argued that a truly great nation should be able to remember the war in a way that justified forgiveness of the Loyalists within a national memory that glorified patriotic martyrs. Israel Evans himself said that if the dead heroes of the war could speak, ‘‘they would ardently pray you to forgive your and their enemies, rather than to indulge any ignoble passion of resentment or revenge, which any ways be injurious to the credit and reputation of the confederated States.’’ 67 Many authors and orators agreed with ‘‘An AEthiopian’’ when he exclaimed in a sermon on the British evacuation of Charleston, ‘‘It is noble to revenge, more noble to forgive.’’ 68 While the ‘‘AEthiopian’’ may have been most concerned with gaining ‘‘forgiveness’’ for African Americans who had joined the British to escape slavery, his message about the Loyalists may have struck some listeners as slightly ironic, given that most of the positive contributions of African American men to the patriot cause had already been forgotten by public culture. Among the Loyalists themselves, the question of whether this split over memory of the war could be resolved is also apparent. The problems with such reconciliation beg the question: Was there any Loyalist public memory of the war that provided an alternative interpretation of wartime events? The answer is: virtually none. Most Loyalists who were eager to reintegrate themselves into the American national community pursued their cases in court or kept to themselves.69 It should not be surprising that there were no large public festivals or celebrations of Loyalist memory because keeping quiet was essential to being reaccepted into American society. Even those few Loyalists who did try to publicize their memories and interpretations of the military conflict faced huge obstacles to getting their works into print. Virtually the only example of Loyalist public memory in print culture from the s is John McAlpine’s  Genuine Narratives of his military services to the crown, a memoir designed to help his claim for reparations from the British government. In this pamphlet, McAlpine, a  Scottish immigrant to New York, unabashedly recounts his own military exploits





and complains of ‘‘his repeated expulsions from different estates by American revolters.’’ McAlpine represents himself as the ultimate British patriot who has suffered for his political commitment at the hands of ‘‘rapacious, malicious, and invidious’’ American patriots, and his narrative clearly offers no vision of postwar reconciliation. In fact, McAlpine was utterly reviled by his Vermont community until the British government settled him in Shelburne, Nova Scotia.70 Other Loyalists who offered histories of the war that were even less glorifying of the patriot cause could not get their works published in the United States. Peter Oliver’s Origin & Progress of the American Rebellion, a thoroughly skeptical interpretation of the Revolution and the war informed by its author’s loyalism, was finished in  but found no publisher until the twentieth century.71 In , Anthony Walke, a Virginia minister, penned a ‘‘concise and impartial account’’ of the war, which consistently stressed how a few fanatic New Englanders had duped the public into a war despite the fact that ‘‘a large Majority of the People were . . . anxious for a Reconciliation.’’ He could not get his pamphlet published even though he publicly espoused optimism that America could go forward, newly united, with Heaven’s blessing.72 Silencing the Loyalists did not guarantee that a united nation could easily be created, for real social conflict would remain to test the idealized vision of a unified community of gratitude. The problem was that public memory offered no solution to how Loyalists ought to be treated. Veterans of the American military, even common soldiers who had been largely ignored by public memory during the war, seemed to fit into the public memory created by the discourse of gratitude much more clearly. If gratitude, in the emerging American nationalism, was owed to those who had offered to sacrifice themselves for the nation, then surely veterans should stand frontand-center in the American community created by that sense of gratitude. But while their position seemed more clear-cut than that of former Loyalists, veterans’ position in society often seemed tenuous at best. The discourse of gratitude implied that the social standing of veterans was more directly tied to the public memory of the war than was that of any other group, but as we have seen, wartime memories commemorated great officers. Military service per se did not necessarily raise average men in the eyes of their ‘‘betters,’’ and many elites worried, like historian and jurist George Richards Minot, that the ‘‘discipline and manners of the army had vitiated the taste, and relaxed the industry of the yeoman class.’’ 73 The real social and economic status of many veterans sorely tested the creation of the average fighting man as any kind of public hero.




Chapter 

At the same time, the cult of gratitude began to offer the dim possibility that the proper remembrance of common soldiers was crucial to a united nation. Indeed, as they began the process of writing themselves into the public memory of the war, some veterans tried to use the concept of gratitude to enhance their own power and status in the face of a critical public. Although these former fighting men often exposed the democratic potential inherent in military gratitude, veterans’ success beyond the symbolic level would be limited by their social position. Individuals seeking recognition for their military service started from a seemingly strong position because almost everyone who contributed to the public discourse about veterans seemed to agree that some measure of ‘‘gratitude and affection’’ was due to those who had fought in the Revolutionary War.74 Gratitude, therefore, assumed even greater social significance as Americans debated the best way of honoring the memory of Revolutionary soldiers, living and dead. Even though most soldiers were of considerably lower social status than the great heroes of the war, their honor still demanded public gratitude of some kind. As influential Massachusetts minister David Tappan put it in , ‘‘Let us welcome the suffering soldier to the bosom of a free and peaceful country, with tears of gratitude, and smiles of applause— let us gladly divide with him those sweets of independence and wealth, which his gallantry and wounds have secured to us.’’ 75 The latter portion of Tappan’s statement highlights the disagreement over just what gratitude ought to consist of. Was social praise and commemoration sufficient, or did an outpouring of national ‘‘wealth’’ have to accompany public thanks? Most veterans were not wealthy, wellborn officers, who comprised the most popular heroic icons, and therefore praise alone would not make life easier. For these men, the most effective show of gratitude was monetary compensation. Indeed, to many, the financial support of veterans and of dead soldiers’ widows and orphans seemed to be the true test of the greatness of the nation.76 Freedom would mean nothing if former soldiers and their relatives were left to starve by an ungrateful populace. In , one public orator stressed that there was no time to waste: ‘‘Reward your military for their eminent services done you in the field. . . . The wounded soldier, who has lost a leg or an arm, or both legs, in the defence of his country, calls loudly for your approbation, and immediate assistance. . . . Let not the deceased soldier’s widows and orphans want bread in any of your states.’’ 77 In his  thanksgiving sermon in New York, Israel Evans made an impassioned financial plea on behalf of all veterans that stressed the political





importance of monetary reward: ‘‘I pray that the citizens of America may be as famous for their justice and generosity, as their army are renowned for their patience, fortitude and valour; and I most ardently wish, that the interest of the citizen and the hero, may always be the same.’’ 78 Evans seemed to indicate that average soldiers might qualify as ‘‘heroes’’ to whom the actual debt of gratitude should be repaid. In , Israel Evans was still confident that America would ‘‘crown the toils of heroes and patriots, and reward them for teaching mankind’’ how to achieve liberty.79 As the s wore on, however, veterans and their supporters became increasingly cynical about their chances for adequate monetary compensation, as the patchwork of state pensions and military back-pay schemes failed to prevent many former soldiers from slipping further into poverty.80 Almost no one heeded minister Joseph Buckminster’s admonition to ‘‘Let the plighted faith of America to her sons and benefactors be sacredly observed, instead of murmuring and repining at the debt that is contracted.’’ 81 National, state, and personal debt soared along with calls for more paper money, and most governments were more concerned with paying off public creditors than with compensating individual veterans.82 Many former soldiers were forced to sell off land bounties and certificates of public credit to speculators for a fraction of their face value just to make ends meet. By the end of the s, the first war memoirs were published by men who, like former prisoner of war John Blatchford, sought public patronage for their memories of the war to supplement their incomes. Blatchford expected that duty and gratitude would prompt the public to buy his soldier’s tale to support him, ‘‘a poor man, with a wife and two children.’’ 83 In , author and poet Philip Freneau worried that ‘‘the maimed and unrewarded soldier’’ faced nothing but ingratitude from the American public and from men like the merchants and land speculators who ‘‘grew fat upon the miseries of the soldiery’’ during the war and now refused to compensate them.84 Although these calls to compensate veterans seem to show how public memory was slowly expanding to include less heroic figures, the democratization of military gratitude was far from a smooth process. Gratitude was traditionally a conservative cultural force and therefore difficult to put to new purposes, and men like Blatchford who tried to help themselves to gratitude faced resistance. Veterans who seemed too ready to place a monetary value on military gratitude might even risk public censure if they were too insistent or if they seemed to be threatening their social betters. Many social elites were not ready to include the poorest ‘‘ragtag’’ soldiers in their vision of the genteel




Chapter 

nation. The same postwar economic depression that caused many farm creditors to demand payment in hard currency helped to encourage impoverished veterans in western New England to press their financial grievances at the point of a gun, but they were met by fear rather than gratitude. In , Shays’s Rebellion, led largely by disgruntled and debt-ridden veterans like Daniel Shays, showed the dire consequences of individual debt, and some elites took the rebellion as a warning of what would occur if veterans’ grievances and the country’s financial difficulties were not addressed. Shays felt especially aggrieved by debt as a veteran; his personal financial troubles had forced him to sell a sword that had been presented to him during the war by the Marquis de Lafayette. When Shays and his troops marched on Springfield, Massachusetts, to try and capture the federal armory there, he wore his old Continental Army uniform jacket to announce his veteran status.85 While Shays obviously took pride in his wartime service and hoped it might add legitimacy to his cause, some elites viewed the rebellion as proof of the moral degradation of common soldiers.86 George Richards Minot, the Massachusetts judge who published the first ‘‘history’’ of Shays’s Rebellion, questioned the veterans’ interpretation of what was owed to them, and he certainly challenged their use of violence to gain redress. Although Shays had declared in a proclamation of January , , that his rebels were ‘‘unwilling to stain the land, which we in the late war purchased at so dear a rate, with the blood of our brethren and neighbours,’’ Minot claimed that they had done exactly that by taking up arms against the Massachusetts militia.87 Instead of acknowledging that military service meant that something was owed to the Shaysite Regulators, Minot instead used their postwar violence to question their allegiance to the Continental Army. For Minot, their improper postwar behavior proved that they must have been faithless soldiers, unworthy of public gratitude. Conflicts over gratitude owed to veterans demonstrated the complex and often contradictory way that humble individuals began to be incorporated into the national community through public memory of the Revolutionary War. If there was general agreement that gratitude was due to the ragtag former American fighting men, then it was not entirely clear what form their recompense should take. Elite reactions to Shays’s Rebellion stressed that there were definite limits to the power of poor men to mobilize the symbols of memory on their own behalf.





Politics and Gratitude Ironically, the actions of Shaysite veterans helped lead to the drafting of a new national constitution, which enhanced, among other powers, the power of the central government to do things such as solve the economic crisis and grant veterans’ pensions. The language of gratitude therefore became useful in national politics as veterans assumed a role in the public debate of the constitutional period. Advocates of the new federal constitution turned the language of gratitude around and used it to appeal to soldiers for political support. Even some Shaysite supporters, themselves no federalists, turned to the polls and ran for election in the years after their insurrection, demonstrating that the fight for recognition and repayment was beginning to move into the realm of formal politics.88 The federalist position held an obvious appeal for veterans who wished to see their government pay certificates and land bounties honored. It was only a stronger central government, the argument ran, that would repay the sacrifices of soldiers who were suffering from neglect. As ‘‘Harrington’’ wrote in the Vermont Gazette in : ‘‘Let . . . the soldier and citizen, who yielded her their services, come forward next, and contribute their aid to establish an effective foederal [sic] government. It is from the united power and resources of America, only, that they can expect permanent and substantial justice.’’ 89 This rather utilitarian appeal for political support was in reality intimately connected to military memory. If soldiers wanted national gratitude in the form of payment, they should support the political movement that would make that support constitutionally possible. By the late s, the ideological battle over memory was taking concrete form as more and more supporters of the Constitution appealed to veterans for support. In a  Fourth of July oration before the Connecticut Society of Cincinnati, poet and member David Humphreys promised that only a federal constitution could remedy the fact that ‘‘many a veteran was reduced to unmerited distress’’ because ‘‘the harvest of blessings, sown in fields fattened with the blood of heroes, hath mocked our expectations.’’ 90 Humphreys was unclear whether his ‘‘expectations’’ had been political or financial, but he was clear that the new Constitution could solve the monumental problems faced by ‘‘many a veteran.’’ One Baltimore federalist claimed in a Philadelphia newspaper that the Constitution must succeed ‘‘otherwise the friends of the Revolution will have laboured and bled in vain!’’ In surprisingly democratic terms, federalists called upon veterans to step forward in support of the Constitution and a strong, centralized national government in order to




Chapter 

continue to prove their heroism. Benjamin Rush called out to veterans for political participation: ‘‘Patriots of , , !—Heroes of , , , !—come forward!—your country  your services. . . . The revolution is not over!’’ 91 Federalists urged veterans to use their political affiliations to claim a place in the nation and to forsake the direct action of Daniel Shays and his associates. Whether they intended it or not, by appealing to former common soldiers as the ‘‘heroes’’ of the war, these federalists, who found their strongest support among social elites, not only recognized veterans as legitimate political actors, they assented to a broadened vision of ‘‘heroism’’ itself. The language of gratitude created a democratic appeal to veterans as special, virtuous representatives of ‘‘the people’’ to step forward and offer their political support. The political appeals by elite federalists to disenfranchised veterans were not the only indication that the language of gratitude had democratic implications that were only beginning to be revealed. If proper memory of the Revolutionary War demanded a commitment to gratitude for sacrifice, sometimes gratitude could change memory in turn. Free black former soldiers, for example, began to use the language of gratitude to argue for inclusion in the American nation. In particular, they sought to guarantee that their own military service, all but forgotten in wartime public culture, would be commemorated with real political consequences once the war was over. African American intellectuals expressed hopes, as the poet Phillis Wheatley put it, that ‘‘Liberty and Peace’’ would come hand in hand. The enslaved Virginia poet and preacher Jupiter Hammon noted the ties between liberty and military service in  when he expressed the hope that whites would contemplate ‘‘how much money has been spent and how many lives have been lost to defend their liberty!’’ and then turn their attention to freeing the black population. When a group of slaves in New Haven, Connecticut, petitioned the General Assembly for their freedom in , they used their service in ‘‘the grandest Battles that has Ben fought in this War’’ to bolster their claims for liberty.92 African American orators in the s particularly stressed that the national gratitude owed to black veterans should be repaid in the form of freedom, and in making their case, they used praise for veterans and memories of the war to argue for an end to slavery. A sermon printed in  by an anonymous ‘‘Black Whig’’ used all the classical rhetoric about the sacred memory of heroes’ blood shed during the war to bolster calls for an end to slavery at the conclusion of the war. The ‘‘Black Whig’’ addressed residents





of South Carolina ‘‘with all the affection of a fellow-citizen, though a descendent of Africa,’’ to demand that the ‘‘blood of the innocent’’ shed in the war required freedom.93 Emancipation received a powerful boost from the contention that black men’s blood was as important to the nation as the blood of aristocratic white heroes. In  another African American orator, who published anonymously as ‘‘an AEthiopian,’’ made explicit the connection between actual African American military service and claims for freedom. He added black men to the usual list of military heroes worthy of the nation’s gratitude: ‘‘The fair fields of Boston stand as eternal monuments . . . the blood of an Attucks and a Maverick can tell!’’ 94 The ‘‘AEthiopian’’ stressed that the best way for Americans as a nation to be ‘‘thankful’’ for soldiers’ setting them free was to ‘‘make our states independent states indeed, by gradually abolishing slavery, and making the AEthiopian race comfortable among us.’’ 95 For proper gratitude to be offered to black veterans in a way that would ennoble the nation, slavery had to be abolished. Even if they could not be granted the full rights of citizenship, African Americans desired some recognition from the national community united by military gratitude. That theirs was a powerful argument was apparent because most black veterans did receive their freedom after the war. The move towards gradual emancipation in the North during the s also showed how freedom based on gratitude for black veterans could spread to other African Americans. Although the cult of gratitude did not offer African Americans full membership in the national community, as the postwar solidification of the slave system in the South testified, it did offer one particularly powerful argument for freedom.96 White and black veterans received the message loud and clear that proper national gratitude entitled them to rewards, and an increasing number began to translate that message into political action. Gratitude was not a politically neutral concept, and in addition to calling for monetary compensation for wartime service, veterans put the notion to work for a number of more generalized causes. Veterans employed rhetoric that drew on memories of the war because they thought this language was likely to resonate with the public and bring them support. Another example of the role of military memory in veterans’ political rhetoric, and one that is very different from the calls for African American freedom, shows the range of this political appeal. Veterans in the West used the language of gratitude to their own political benefit as they settled land and sought support for various movements for western statehood in the postwar




Chapter 

years. The role of public memory in this context also hints at some of the more ominous consequences of basing national bonds on a history of shared violence. Many veterans moved westward (especially to the Old Southwest) after the war, encouraged by land speculators and state-established ‘‘military districts’’ offering cheap land.97 Most veterans’ families set out in search of economic opportunity in the West, but some of them were prompted to pull up stakes because of disillusionment with eastern society and politics. It was no coincidence that the veterans who joined Shays’s Regulators came from far western New England counties. These were the same sort of men who would soon engage in conflicts, both with the Native Americans who were unhappy to see them come and with eastern states who were unhappy to see them go. As veterans moved literally to the margins of American society, military rhetoric helped them to articulate a uniquely western political agenda. Veterans used military memories in several of these ‘‘frontier’’ territories as they fought to break away from eastern states to seek statehood.98 In these conflicts, westerners in Kentucky, Vermont, and the so-called state of Franklin invoked memories of the Revolutionary War as a particular form of patriotism that could lend power to their search for statehood while simultaneously reinforcing their public commitment to a united American nation. Western veterans took the language of gratitude to mean that they were entitled to political consideration. As western settlers tried to sever ties with the eastern states that controlled them, and even as they in some cases flirted with foreign governments to help them, they were able to call upon public memories of the war to try to ameliorate their conflicts with easterners and to express their ‘‘true’’ disinterested wishes just to be included in the United States and in the American nation. They maintained that public gratitude for their Revolutionary War contributions demanded their equal admittance to the American polity. These western veterans used the practices and languages of national memory to emphasize their loyalty during a political process that explicitly involved regional division—in this case the rhetoric of consensus and the reality of conflict went hand in hand. The combination of conflict and consensus was particularly potent in a western context in which sentimentalized memories of war combined with a culture of violence. Memories of Revolutionary War Indian-fighting—among them popular images of Daniel Boone’s defeat at the last battle of the Revolutionary War at Blue Licks, Kentucky—played a significant role in legitimizing aggression against the Shawnee and other native peoples throughout the s. To settlers in far western territories such as Kentucky, many of whom





lived barricaded in military stockades for much of the s and fought in an undeclared war against Indians, memories of previous heroism assumed particular significance.99 Even when dealing with easterners, westerners used memories of the Revolutionary War to make their political positions more publicly palatable, although those sentiments often thinly masked real hostility. Efforts to found the state of Franklin among the western counties of North Carolina illustrate how such verbal hostility could escalate into threats of violence against fellow veterans. Arthur Campbell and John Sevier, the leaders of Franklin’s bid for independence, had commanded frontier militia units during the war and had become local heroes at the Battle of King’s Mountain. In their uphill battle for independence from North Carolina, both sought to capitalize on their heroic reputations by depicting themselves as the leaders of a band of loyal, patriotic veterans who deserved repayment for their wartime service in the form of political independence. During a short period in , it seemed that the government of North Carolina was willing to grant their wish, but conservatives assumed control of the state legislature at the end of the year and rescinded the offer. Sevier was hard pressed to abandon his chance to become a governor and rich land speculator, so he spearheaded a continuing movement to keep Franklin’s statehood hopes alive.100 Memories of the Revolutionary War assumed a central role in the Franklinites’ rhetoric as they tried to explain why they, as westerners, ought to be able to shape their own political fates.101 They engaged in a campaign to convince North Carolinians and other fellow southerners that their statehood movement was legitimate because of wartime heroism. First, Sevier claimed, the veterans’ record of Revolutionary service confirmed their fidelity. Indeed, he pointed out in a  letter to Richard Caswell, North Carolina’s governor, that so many Franklinites had ‘‘fought and bled in behalf [of ] the parent state’’ that North Carolina ought never to be suspicious of their motives.102 Second, Sevier argued that proper military gratitude on the part of North Carolina’s legislature entitled the residents of the territory of Franklin to independence. For example, a  declaration by the Franklin Council used the language of patriotic bloodshed to seek support for its cause from the Georgia legislature, which had considerable influence on North Carolina conservatives. The Franklinites assured the people of Georgia in a spirit of unity that ‘‘we remember the bloody engagements, we have fought together against the common enemy, the friendly, timely and mutual supports afforded between the state of Georgia and the people of this country.’’ 103 Sevier was not above turning the people of Georgia and the people of North Carolina against


John Sevier, portrait by Charles Willson Peale, . Tennessee State Museum, Tennessee Historical Society Collection. Photography by June Dorman. John Sevier was a military commander in the Revolutionary War who gained public acclaim at the Battle of King’s Mountain. Peale painted this stately military portrait of him in  as part of his quest to document the heroes of the Revolution. Sevier tried to trade on the memory of his and his settlers’ dignity and accomplishments as Revolutionary War veterans when he led the efforts of the territory of Franklin to break away from North Carolina in the s. Although Franklin never gained its independence, Sevier’s military reputation served him well when he was elected the first governor of the new state of Tennessee in .





one another while simultaneously appealing to the unifying memory of the Revolutionary War. Continued resistance and the threat of military incursions by North Carolina officials led the Franklinites to amplify their rhetoric. By , Sevier and others seemed to imply that veterans might have to take up arms again, albeit with ‘‘excrutiating pain,’’ if their political requests were not honored.104 The Franklin Council threatened to use violence against easterners with whom ‘‘we have fought, bled and toiled together within the common cause of American Independence,’’ if it were the only way to guarantee independence.105 The Franklinites’ resistance to what they perceived as oppressive measures was all about memory as Sevier framed it to the North Carolina Assembly: ‘‘Has North Carolina forgot that for such acts America took up arms against the British nation?’’ 106 Although the memories of veterans’ shared sacrifice never bore political fruit after the territory was forcibly reintegrated into North Carolina in , Sevier demonstrated the rhetorical power of memory in a high-stakes political battle, and his use of military memory to couch thinly veiled threats against easterners showed that some veterans might be willing to explore the darker consequences of a military republic.107 Although military memory in many ways worked to hold Americans together in a united nation, it could also simultaneously legitimize divisiveness. Sevier and his fellow Franklinites were not alone in their use of memory and gratitude to demand western statehood. Kentuckians used memories of the Revolutionary War to bolster their claims with much greater success. During a  Independence Day celebration in Lexington, Kentucky, for example, the participants invoked memories of the war to support Kentucky’s three-year-old bid to become the fourteenth state and at the same time to signal their firm commitment to the national union. After parading around the town square, Lexingtonians toasted the national health of the Congress and George Washington, and they drank to ‘‘the memory of departed Heroes and Patriots’’ of the Revolutionary War. The festivities closed with a fourteenth toast to ‘‘The Commonwealth of Kentucky, the fourteenth luminary in the American Constellation, may she reflect upon the original States, the wisdom she has borrowed from them.’’ 108 In this case, the commemorative ceremony enabled Kentuckians to express their desire to be a part of the nation and to bolster their claim by invoking the memory of military heroes. Such declarations of unity, however, masked public controversy over the efforts of adventurer and Continental Army officer James Wilkinson to align Kentucky with the Spanish government in its conflict with Congress




Chapter 

over the Mississippi territory.109 Veterans, who fought with land speculators over their right to claim land in the Green River military district, were among the strongest proponents of Kentucky statehood, and they tied their wishes to their veteran status.110 In , one of the nine Kentucky conventions that sought to procure statehood bolstered its calls for independence by invoking ‘‘the remembrance of the blood which we mingled in the common cause.’’ 111 Using memories of shared sacrifice during war as well as the necessity for gratitude owed to soldiers, Kentuckians effectively argued for their inclusion in the American political community and won statehood in . The invocation of military memory in movements for statehood was not solely a southwestern phenomenon. Proponents of Vermont statehood similarly used public memories of the war and the concept of gratitude both to reinforce fidelity to the nation and to serve their own political cause. In Vermont, regional and national loyalties merged in military commemorations. Although Vermonters had engaged in a bitter struggle for independence from the state of New York and against the Congress since the s (local Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen had conspired to turn over the state to the British) and had even considered becoming part of Canada, they consistently expressed national pride as they strove to become the ‘‘fourteenth state.’’ 112 Vermonters argued that their contributions during the Revolutionary War, most notably at the Battle of Bennington, should entitle them to join the nation. No one was a more spirited Vermont patriot than Anthony Haswell, the publisher of the Vermont Gazette, who had served in the war and apprenticed with patriot printer Isaiah Thomas in Worcester, Massachusetts. In his newspapers and in the battlefield commemorations at Bennington that he organized during the s, Haswell consistently tied the fight for Vermont independence to the glorious memory of the war.113 His campaign to link Vermont statehood to the memory of the war began as soon as the war ended. He celebrated the peace in the Vermont Gazette in June  with an acrostic of ‘‘The State of Vermont.’’ 114 Later that month he reported on a celebration held by the men and women of Clarendon, Vermont, in honor of the peace. Clarendon’s citizens drank thirteen toasts to military heroes, to Congress, and to the unity of Vermont, and they added a fourteenth: ‘‘May the confederacy of Vermont with the United States, close the glorious struggle for liberty.’’ 115 Haswell had hit upon the themes—memory and unity—that would guide his commemorative activity over the next twenty years, although he often found himself in the middle of controversy and political division. Haswell organized Bennington battle commemorations during the





s, and he believed that Vermont politics were properly the concern of an occasion that was ‘‘designed to perpetuate the memory of an event in which almost every individual of the State (particularly this part of it) must feel himself concerned.’’ 116 The Bennington battle commemorations marked the  victory of the Vermont militia under John Stark in an action that had served as a strategic prelude to the highly significant battle at Saratoga, New York, in which an American army under Horatio Gates had forced British General John Burgoyne to surrender his entire army. Civic celebrations of the Bennington battle anniversary, which were similar to those held in Lexington, Massachusetts, and Charleston, South Carolina, had begun in , but were held only sporadically during the war. After the war ended, however, Haswell, a noted democrat, took over and expanded the celebrations into elaborate festivals of Vermont memory and politics. Typically, the citizens of Bennington gathered on August  to parade around the courthouse, listen to orations, enjoy fireworks, and sing songs to commemorate local heroes and national patriotism. Haswell himself also produced a startling variety of public performances, including poetry readings, songs, and even plays dramatizing the events of the battle. As we have seen, a constant theme in the celebrations throughout the nation in the s was that Americans must repay the debt of military gratitude by keeping memory sacred. In the case of Vermont, however, gratitude assumed a more tangible, political form. In , Haswell paid special tribute to the ‘‘soldiers’’ in the audience when he entreated the crowd: May lasting memory grateful tribute yield To those who shone in council on the field. Equal their worth—for every act atcheiv’d By conquering arms—the watchfull sage conceivd.117

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

While Haswell first hesitated to assign a value to the ‘‘grateful tribute’’ beyond ‘‘patriotic zeal,’’ he soon began to link gratitude to the concrete political goal of Vermont statehood. At the  commemoration, Haswell gave an oration and recited several verses that stressed Vermonters’ unity as part of an elaborate day-long celebration, and afterward he commented that ‘‘a more general display of joy, and universal harmony, than this day afforded, has never been exhibited in this State. . . . Joy appeared in every countenance, and even those who were unborn when the memorable victory was gained lisped forth praises in honor of those who gave them birth and their country freedom.’’ 118




Chapter 

In , Haswell’s commemorative poetry provided the link between the memory of the battle and Vermont’s place in the nation, as he intoned: From right to left the martial ranks, In warlike pomp array’d, Call loudly for their country’s thanks, And let those thanks be paid.119

Few doubts would have existed in Haswell’s audience that the grant of statehood was chief among the expressions of national ‘‘thanks’’ to the heroes of Vermont that Haswell had in mind. Haswell did not stress statehood to the exclusion of other forms of gratitude, however. Indeed, he stressed the unity of the entire American community, paying particular attention to the role of women in praising the virtuous heroes of Vermont in a way that highlighted women’s special role in the national community. Part of the national ‘‘thanks’’ he envisioned as being due to the soldiers of America would be paid by ‘‘Ye beautious fair who kindly deign to grace, / The days performance in this sacred place.’’ 120 Women’s presence at the commemorative festivals in Bennington raised a question of just how far the political capital of military gratitude could extend. Only a very few public voices dared to claim that women’s actions during the war entitled them to any public gratitude.121 Instead, women’s participation in commemorations of the war assumed added significance in the presence of constant declarations that women were uniquely suited to reward military heroes with feminine praise. Such declarations described female participation in terms similar to those used during the war. Rituals of feminized gratitude granted women a special public role, yet one that was carefully set aside from men’s. Anthony Haswell commented about the  Bennington battlefield commemoration that ‘‘The beauty, sprightliness and vivacity of the ladies on this occasion, was considered the greatest blessing of the day, and altho’ in times of perfect peace and harmony their presence inspired the souls of every soldier and patriot present, and fired their hearts with that martial zeal which would have been unconquerable had occasion called for its exertion in their defense.’’ 122 Women who commemorated the Revolutionary War, and there were many, stepped firmly into the public sphere and placed themselves at the center of political discourse.123 While women were not generally recognized as being as deserving of gratitude as veterans of military service, they did play an important part in demonstrating the nation’s gratitude to her military heroes.124 Israel Evans’s prediction in  that American women would ‘‘sing





of the glorious atchievements of our combined arms’’ came true as women were active participants in all the commemorative ceremonies at which veterans were honored.125 Women usually did not march in parades with men, but they did distribute refreshments, recite poetry, act in dramas, and sing songs during ceremonies.126 Anthony Haswell wrote special songs and dramatic roles for the women of Bennington to perform at the annual battle anniversary festival in that town, and he praised their frequent ‘‘assistance on the stage.’’ Women and men, like the ‘‘very respectable number of gentlemen and ladies’’ who assembled in Clarendon, Vermont, participated in all the celebrations of the peace discussed earlier in this chapter. When George Washington passed through Annapolis, Maryland, on his way to retire to Mount Vernon, the ‘‘persons of distinction’’ invited by Congress to attend the ball in his honor included ‘‘a very numerous and brilliant appearance of ladies.’’ Women regularly listened to sermons and orations, watched fireworks, and presided at banquets and balls that honored military heroes.127 These were all the activities that signified membership in the national community, united by memory of the Revolutionary War. Since the military gratitude allowed that praise of American military men was a matter of national greatness, when women honored veterans, they brought honor to the nation as well. As anonymous girl’s poem commemorating the declaration of peace declared: Let ’  weave a garland white Of purest Lillies with supreme delight; Throu’out the world may it be ever said, They plac’d this chaplet on their Heroes .128

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Gratitude created opportunity for women to act as agents of national ideology by lauding veterans and by preserving the memory of their heroic deeds. When women served a meal to the members of the Palmetto Society at their annual commemoration of the Battle of Sullivan’s Island in , the men returned a toast to them that stressed women’s power to bestow approval on military men: ‘‘May the Fair Sex prove kind and propitious to the brave.’’ 129 Although denied the right to vote and hold public office themselves, female participation in rituals of community and political unity again served to emphasize the supposed unanimity of public opinion. While they acted within prescribed gender roles when they educated all of society in the virtues of masculine heroes and rewarded them with love, women simultaneously




Chapter 

claimed some measure of public attention for themselves as members of the national community.

Gratitude and the Nation As this view of female participation shows, gratitude did not always have straightforward consequences for the ideal of national community. Gratitude itself was sometimes the source of conflict, holding some democratic potential, but still with restrictions. In addition, questions over what forms military gratitude should take and exactly who was due such gratitude were never resolved in the s. It was clear only that the stakes were high as the language of gratitude helped to define the limits of acceptable political ideology and public action in the new nation. The Society of the Cincinnati, an elite association of former officers of the Continental Army founded in , tested these limits of public military gratitude throughout the decade, and in the process was taught a hard lesson about the limits of public political acceptance. The role of memory in early fights over the Society reveals interesting patterns in the relationship between the social status of officers and images of heroism and gratitude. Historians have not traditionally interpreted the controversy over the Society of the Cincinnati as a conflict over memory, but to do so reveals how memory stood at the center of American political culture. The Society of the Cincinnati was self-consciously concerned with military gratitude and intended to put particular memories of the Revolutionary War to its own uses. When the Society was founded, the circular letter sent to each fledgling state chapter stated that one of the founders’ primary purposes was ‘‘to perpetuate . . . the remembrance of this great event [and] the mutual friendships which have been formed under the pressure of common danger, and in many instances cemented by the blood of the parties.’’ 130 The ways the Society chose to remember the Revolution were not neutral, however. The Society was also a political group, and membership in the honorary organization was to be passed from father to son. General Henry Knox and the other organizers of the Society thought that their formal association would provide stability for American government while at the same time enhancing the members’ personal prestige.131 At a time when officers and enlisted men alike were agitating for military back-pay and wondering how to reintegrate themselves into civil society, the Society sought to insure that





John Morley Greene’s membership diploma for the Society of the Cincinnati, designed by Pierre L’Enfant, . From the collection of the Society of the Cincinnati Library. The original certificate marking membership in the Society of the Cincinnati depicted something of the members’ views of the Revolutionary War and their role in perpetuating the memory of its officers. America is depicted by the male armored figure at the far left who, with the eagle, is triumphing over Britannia and the Lion, representing Great Britain. The Society’s eagle emblem, one of its controversial symbols that some critics accused of possessing aristocratic overtones, appears at the top of the certificate. On the right, an angel, possibly representing Fame, blows a trumpet above the seal of the Society.

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Americans and their new governments would not forget their valiant military officers and would show them proper gratitude. Not everyone saw selfless motives behind this desire to preserve the memory of the Revolutionary War in a hereditary honorific organization, and it was not easy for elites to establish absolute control over their own public memory. Aedanus Burke, a South Carolina judge and pamphleteer, linked the Society of the Cincinnati’s commemorative purpose to what he perceived as a dangerous plot to create ‘‘an hereditary peerage’’ in the new republic.132 Beginning in October , Burke, writing under the name of ‘‘Cassius,’’ published his Considerations on the Society or Order of Cincinnati in newspapers and in pamphlet form and soon sparked a national debate over the propri-




Chapter 

ety of the organization. At issue in the debate was not only what republican government meant but also the proper way to remember the Revolutionary War and to remain faithful to the Revolution. The politics of public memory ran throughout Burke’s condemnation of the Society of the Cincinnati, and the pamphlet claimed that the founders of the Society were merely masking their antirepublican, aristocratic designs with the seemingly innocent desire to commemorate the war. Burke contended that the former officers would be utterly unable to offer a disinterested and objective assessment of what the war had meant to American society. He asked, ‘‘Will not the historian more effectually transmit to posterity, the memory of the revolution, and the illustrious actions achieved in bringing it about?’’ 133 In Burke’s mind, the Society was a dangerous pressure group incapable of the objectivity that only historians could rightly possess. Aedanus Burke, himself a member of the South Carolina elite, did not wish to forget the Revolutionary War, but he questioned whether the Society of the Cincinnati should control public memory to its own ends. Burke himself commemorated the war as a member of the Palmetto Society, the group that met annually in Charleston to mark the Battle of Sullivan’s Island, but he thought that some types of commemoration were inappropriate.134 Burke’s pamphlet argued that by artificially and subjectively preserving the memory of their own heroism the officers of the Society of the Cincinnati would only threaten fragile republican government. Aedanus Burke identified the manipulation of memory and ‘‘posterity’’ as one of the major means the Society would use to bypass proper social and governmental forms of authority. In some ways, the elite officers of the Cincinnati were trying too hard to use memory to their own ends, as had John Sevier when he threatened to use violence toward North Carolina. The Cincinnatians sought to adhere to an ultraconservative version of republicanism that rewarded military virtue, but even that stance left them open to criticism. Burke claimed that the Romans, as true republican examples, had understood that in order to remove the threat to civil authority, military commanders had to retire without creating any honorary society. Burke maintained that in Rome ‘‘fame and eclat was thought an ample reward to console them,’’ but that these rewards were to be given freely by society and not controlled by the officers.135 If officers of the Continental Army created a distinctive society to commemorate their own martial deeds instead of relying on the natural gratitude and praise of the republican citizenry, ‘‘the remembrance of their glorious actions . . . I say, will raise the order to grandeur, antiquity, veneration and arbitrary power.’’ 136 By using memory to bolster an artificial aristocracy, the members of the





Society of the Cincinnati would therefore be perpetuating the very despotism they had fought to overthrow.137 Burke denied that the Society of the Cincinnati should be able to define gratitude that was supposed to arise from a voluntary national community. Although many lower-class veterans made initial efforts at shaping the discourse of gratitude to bolster their own rewards in the s, it seemed, ironically, that the real power and clout of the members of the Cincinnati made their own use of military memory far more threatening. By the spring of , Burke’s Considerations had been reprinted in newspapers and in pamphlet form all around the country, and it became the backbone of a public controversy over the propriety of the Society.138 Burke’s pamphlet was widely read, especially in New England where it became the focal point of a variety of anti-Cincinnati activities, including several popular conventions called to voice opposition to publicly financed backpay schemes. Burke’s contentions that the members of the Society of the Cincinnati used the memory of the Revolutionary War for their own social and political aims to buttress a supposed plot to institute an aristocracy was adopted by other critics who joined the public debate. A  letter that addressed the Connecticut members of the Society begged them to be satisfied with their naturally earned reputations and to ‘‘quit the matter and be content with the station and the honours you are entitled to in society.’’ 139 Critics of the Society echoed Aedanus Burke’s idea that the hereditary nature of the membership was dangerous because it would supersede the natural fame of the military officers to artificially ennoble their descendants.140 After the Boston Independent Chronicle reprinted Burke’s Considerations and solicited reader opinions about the Society, one reader responded that the Society would create a ‘‘complete and perpetual Personal distinction’’ (original italics) between Americans that would ruin republican government.141 These critics considered it wrong and politically dangerous for any organization to tamper with the future memory of the war in such a manner. Members explicitly defended the Society’s use of public memory, and they denied Burke’s interpretation of their use of military gratitude. George Washington, the original president of the national Society of the Cincinnati, did not understand the distinction that Burke and others made between the natural praise of the people for their military heroes and some more sinister, artificial quest by former officers for hereditary fame. He wrote a circular letter to the state branches of the Cincinnati in  to affirm that ‘‘the only objects of which we are desirous to preserve the remembrance, are of such a




Chapter 

nature, as cannot be displeasing to our countrymen, or unprofitable to posterity.’’ 142 Washington saw no problem with elite officers exerting influence over the molding of their own memory in the public mind. Others in the Society went further by stressing that to preserve the memory of the war was one of the Society’s most vital functions. An anonymous member who published a pamphlet in Annapolis in  countering Burke’s Considerations actually questioned whether the American people would naturally remember their military heroes. He claimed that even if historians did record some of their heroic deeds, the Society would serve a necessary function as keeper of the memory of the war because ‘‘it is certain that numbers, whose gallant actions have merited applause, would be wholly undistinguished and forgot, if their memories were not in some measure rescued from oblivion, by their enrollment in this society.’’ 143 The ‘‘Member’’ called Burke’s pamphlet yet another symptom of Americans’ ingratitude and argued that because American citizens were already beginning to forget the actions of great men, it was absurd to think that those who inherited their fathers’ military fame could ever seize power on that basis. By the time the Society of the Cincinnati held its first national convention in Philadelphia on May , , the controversy had become so severe that it was clear that changes in the organization were necessary. Delegates to the national meeting, which was led by George Washington, voted for measures that were calculated to reassure the American public that the Society had no intention of interfering with politics. After a good deal of discussion, the Society also voted to end the hereditary nature of its membership.144 The circular letter prepared by Connecticut poet and former Washington aide-decamp David Humphreys to explain the amendments to the Society showed that the members now conceded that their own actions to sustain their reputations ‘‘to the remotest ages’’ was ‘‘incompatible with the genius and spirit of the confederation.’’ With these words, the Society acknowledged that the controversy over whether it could properly transmit the memory of the Revolution to future generations had compromised its goal to promote the ‘‘general union of the States.’’ 145 The public controversy surrounding the Society of the Cincinnati aptly illustrated the problem that the public memory of the Revolutionary War posed to American society in the decade immediately following its end. Its founders originally wanted to help strengthen government and to promote union, while simultaneously preserving the memory of their own heroism, which they feared people might forget. But Aedanus Burke and others claimed that the very strategies the Cincinnati used to preserve memory,





especially hereditary membership, would actually destabilize government and society by creating an aristocracy. Burke, and those who supported him in the debate, argued that no one could hold a monopoly on the memory of the Revolutionary War. While the rhetoric used by the members of the Society sought to establish them as old-style autonomous republican heroes (and to pass this heroic status on to their sons), Burke’s rhetoric was more democratic and looked forward to a time when American society would be strengthened by those memories of the war that citizens freely chose to preserve.146 In Burke’s estimation, the voluntary gratitude of the American people would be freely bestowed and should not be artificially manipulated to the officers’ advantage. In this sense, military gratitude posed a paradox for the emerging national community of the United States. Gratitude for war heroes continued to be a consensus-building and stabilizing force, particularly in the festive culture that helped to define public patriotism in the aftermath of the war. Some middling veterans began to believe that gratitude was owed to them as well, though in the s they did not yet fully grasp the collective power of their position. And those veterans who did most actively seek to use the political or social capital provided by public gratitude—Shays’s rebels, violent westerners, or aristocratic former officers—risked destabilizing the republic in the process. Gratitude was at once a help and a hindrance to building a united nation. The ideal of military memory argued that just as Americans volunteered their gratitude and praise, they would volunteer to unite as part of a new kind of nation. The volunteerism inherent in this idea of the national community hinted at the democratic tendencies of the commemorative traditions established previously during the war, but the real democratic potential of public gratitude was only beginning to emerge. Between  and , America established itself as a republic, but it remained unclear just what the exact nature of American society would be or how stable military memory might remain. It was clear, however, that Americans were committed to remembering the Revolutionary War and that their memories would continue to help them imagine a path into the future. Military gratitude would remain at the heart of American patriotism, but divisions in American society and the democratization of memory would play themselves out in a very different political atmosphere during the s.


Chapter 

‘‘Republican Emblems’’ and ‘‘Popular Devices’’: Heroes and Their Audiences in an Age of Party Conflict, –

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

On November , , competing groups of New York City militia convened to celebrate Evacuation Day, a new holiday that commemorated the British evacuation of New York City on November , . The volunteer military men fired ceremonial salutes, paraded through the city’s streets, and met for dinner and ceremonial toasts in several taverns. The Federalist newspaper the Gazette of the United States reported that the day’s activities caused the militia and the public to recall scenes from the Revolutionary War ‘‘in strong remembrance set’’ as they were reminded of the end of British control of the city.1 This public festival of war memory might have seemed just the same as commemorative festivals in decades past, when the public came together to remember the Revolutionary War and to confirm their civic identity. But though New Yorkers had set political divisions aside during most of the rituals of thanksgiving in the s to celebrate as a more or less unified public, this time divisions were more readily apparent. Unlike the  thanksgiving celebrations for the peace treaty, for example, party politics partially divided Evacuation Day in . After the public parades and celebrations, the militia and cavalry members, who adhered to different political camps, dined at separate locations, divided by party. The evening’s ceremonial toasts also betrayed clear political allegiances. At Mr. Gauttier’s tavern, Capt. George Remsen’s New York Rangers ‘‘partook of an elegant dinner’’ and toasted appropriate Federalist objects of praise—‘‘George Washington,’’ ‘‘The Executive Power,’’ ‘‘Alexander Hamilton,’’ and ‘‘The Federal Army’’—as they commemorated the American war victory. At Hudson’s Hotel, in addition to more traditional commemorative salutes, the officers of several other companies toasted ‘‘the French Republic’’ and ‘‘Liberty and Humanity, may


Heroes and Their Audiences



they be the order of the day in all Governments.’’ Although these tributes to the French Republic were fairly mild, they certainly marked the participants as adherents of the Democratic-Republican camp.2 These companies of militia chose in their toasts not just to proclaim their allegiance to the American Revolution (what the day was designed to celebrate), but also to confirm their competing visions of American politics. New York City’s  Evacuation Day aptly symbolizes what happened to public memory of the Revolutionary War during the s. During that decade, Americans’ efforts to create national unity by commemorating the Revolutionary War changed along with the political context of their actions. Significantly, militia members on both sides of the political fence chose to celebrate the anniversary of the British evacuation, but they each did so with their own purposes in mind. Each side recognized the importance of coming together to celebrate memory that confirmed national identity, but when they adjourned for toasting, their political ideas diverged. Although the commemorative parades, tributes, and toasts were familiar in their forms, their meanings were shifting as real contests for political power were carried on in their midst. The s marked a turning point in the public memory of the war. The democratic rhetoric, which had become a latent theme in the language of commemoration and gratitude by the late s, assumed an added importance as popular democracy began to make its real presence known in politics and in culture. Even as republican symbols, particularly traditional images of heroism, continued to shape Americans’ views of the war and their views of the nation, the latent democracy that had been present in public memories of the war since the s began to emerge more fully. Popular commemorations that stressed individual agency appeared along with continued republican images of unity inspired by gratitude for great war heroes. Public memories of the war continued to solidify the ideal national community centered around the preservation of American freedom ‘‘so dearly bought, the price of so much blood,’’ but new voices were added to the mix of public culture that defined those memories.3 Partisanship and conflict did not mean, however, that Revolutionary War memory had lost its power to define a coherent national identity. Revolutionary War commemorations during the s illustrate how images of the war in newspapers, books, monuments, public ceremonies, and other forms of public culture continued to form a common basis of national imagination, even as political strife caused rifts in American society. The Revolutionary War provided symbols of national unity, even when vested with partisan




Chapter 

meaning, and memories of the Revolutionary War provided a language of nationalism that could be understood, no matter the partisan accent. Some elements of the military experience seemed in Americans’ minds to be essential to what the nation would be, even as they disagreed about the exact course that the nation should take. Revolutionary war commemorations continued to represent the ideal of national community, even as they sometimes dramatized the reality of national division. Since both of America’s first political parties, the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans, defined themselves during the s as uniquely able to chart a course for the American nation, it should not be surprising that they both used Revolutionary War memories to bolster their political fortunes. Political parties, however, did not necessarily manipulate public memories of the war in order to show their own national commitment or to disparage their enemies. Rather, when they wanted to articulate their own versions of nationalism to the American public, they each used war memories that were established symbols of American unity. At the same time, political battles between individuals and parties during the s changed the political context in which these national symbols were deployed. Over the course of the decade of the s, the democratization of public memory begun during the s continued alongside the formation of the political parties. Federalists, who came to power during Washington’s first presidency in , were particularly fond of traditional, republican images of Revolutionary War heroism, which suited their vision of an American social hierarchy based on merit. Democratic Republicans, led most notably by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, began to agitate more for the power of the individual men who made up ‘‘the people,’’ a political stance that energized a more liberal democratic rhetoric of memory.4 Perhaps inspired in part by Jeffersonian politics, people as diverse as humble war veterans and female writers began even more clearly to seek a solid place for themselves in the nation by using the language of military memory to speak in public. More than ever during the s, a whole variety of Americans, even some who were excluded from formal partisan politics, showed how their public memories of the Revolutionary War represented their own national aspirations. Revolutionary War memories became important symbols in the real power struggles of the s. American political culture during the decade became increasingly divided along partisan lines, but Revolutionary War memories were not always rigidly separated by party. New York’s militiamen paraded together for part of their Evacuation Day celebration before splitting into partisan groups. Each political party was in the process of forming its





own structure and ideology while trying both to react to public opinion and to influence it. Over the decade, the Federalists and Democratic Republicans grew further and further apart on a variety of issues ranging from economic policy to foreign policy—most especially on attitudes toward developments in France. The Democratic Republicans were invigorated by the initially widespread support of the French Revolution, which they viewed as glowing with ‘‘the flame first kindled . . . in Lexington and Concord.’’ 5 After , however, the Federalists and their supporters grew more leery of French Revolutionary violence, which only caused the Democratic Republicans to brand them as overly conservative and possibly monarchical. Neither side believed that loyal opposition was possible, so each party was motivated to represent itself as the true keeper of America’s republican democracy.6 Military memories provided a language of unity that each side tried to claim as its own. In the process, the democratization of public memory took on a new dimension. In addition to the growing voice that Revolutionary memory provided to ordinary Americans who produced commemorations, the audience of commemorations began to democratize as well. In the early s, the audience played the traditional role of ‘‘the people,’’ whose unified and voluntary praise was supposed to ennoble the heroes who were the object of their adoration. But the public was also increasingly expected to emulate the behavior of their heroes in specific ways by being good patriots, behaving morally, or even voting for partisan candidates. Audiences were not expected to emulate the humble individuals who began to tell their war stories by midcentury, however, but rather to take part in a more open-ended conversation about the meaning of the war and of the nation. Within this quickly changing political context, a mixed tradition of Revolutionary War memory thrived. Republican commemorations of the war continued, while at the same time more democratic elements appeared in some public memories. Shifts in taste and popular culture intersected with a variety of commemorative impulses. Heroic biography and epic poetry celebrating the great heroes of the war competed in the marketplace with personal memoirs that presented a very different, individualized ideal of Revolutionary War sacrifice. John Trumbull augmented his efforts to interpret the war through history paintings that were ‘‘high’’ art with a broad-based effort to sell cheap engravings of his works. The war was sentimentalized and idealized before audiences in the popular theater all over the country, but the first widespread negative assessments of military experience also found a literary audience. Republican and democratic memories, sometimes compet-




Chapter 

ing and sometimes complimentary, helped to shape the character of national experience.

The Republican Tradition Some styles of traditional republican commemoration took on new life during the early s, especially among Federalists and conservatives who sought to inspire particular forms of patriotic behavior under the guise of the emulation of heroes. American authors began to build a body of national heroic literature to offer a more formal education in republican values to the public. Several communities erected monuments to fallen heroes and dedicated public space to the unifying memory of the American officers who had conformed to the heroic ideal. Public festivals and celebrations in the early s, from Washington’s Birthday to the Fourth of July, contained republican images of the war that contributed to a heroic national vision. All of these public memories of the war stressed the nation’s debt to heroes. The figures of Warren, Montgomery, Washington, and their brave fellow officers continued to help Americans imagine themselves as a part of the national community. At the beginning of the s, the Revolutionary War was still commonly understood as a time when Americans had bonded, in the words of former army chaplain Oliver Hart, without regard to ‘‘locality, religion, personal interests, tempers and prejudices . . . in the common cause of their country.’’ 7 This view of the war remained intimately connected to the republican notion of heroism that had been a stock part of military memory since the s. The narrative of heroic nationalism maintained that Americans had rallied behind strong leaders to pursue their common cause, thereby proving that they were capable of collective action.8 Federalists, who coalesced after  as a party led by Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, were particularly drawn to the republican image of heroism because the praise of elite heroes suited their high political style. Heroic images tended to bolster the Federalist faith in strong executive leadership, especially because George Washington, himself the greatest living war hero, occupied the presidency. Adams suggested to Congress in  that Washington ought to be addressed as ‘‘His Highness the President of the United States of America, and Protector of their Liberties,’’ and though Washington rejected the title and professed to avoid what his critics called the ‘‘monarchical prettiness’’ of such trappings of office, he did retain a grand bearing and did hold levees and parties at which he and Martha received





visitors to what became known as their ‘‘republican court.’’ 9 The praise of Revolutionary War heroes and their emulation by the general public offered a nonmonarchical way for Federalists to express a political brand of patriotism while still enjoying the trappings of ceremony and some of the pomp of European society. George Washington’s own role in the republican cult of the hero, as interpreted by Federalist commemorations, is particularly important and tricky because of the quickly changing political context of his memory. George Washington the war hero was a fit subject of public praise and a well-regarded symbol of national unity. But George Washington the president became increasingly controversial as time passed and as Democratic Republicans grew increasingly critical of what they saw as his obvious Federalist sympathies. By first leading the Continental Army to victory and then emulating the Roman hero Cincinnatus by returning to civilian life, Washington had earned military gratitude, but his politics were less unanimously praised. Democratic Republicans were outraged at Washington’s  proclamation of neutrality in the British-French war, and thereafter the Democratic-Republican press branded his as the leader of an aristocratic governing faction bent on destroying America’s Revolutionary ally, France. Nevertheless, Washington’s Revolutionary War heroism remained a potent political symbol.10 Just as they benefited from the pomp of heroic celebration, Federalists made the best use of Washington’s heroism, but even Democratic Republicans did not wholly reject Washington as war hero in the early s. Celebrations of Washington’s Birthday, which began in Virginia in the late s and spread across the country over the next few years, often centered around images of Washington as the heroic warrior. Although the holiday bolstered Federalist causes and added a symbolic element of grandeur to the national executive, at first it was celebrated widely by people of different political persuasions who replaced their previous celebrations of the British monarch with praise for the president of the American republic.11 The public memory of Washington’s wartime heroism lent a nationalist element to what might have otherwise become a purely partisan holiday. Scholars have pointed out how Washington represented to the public the quintessential figure of Roman republicanism during the Federalist period, and his martial strength remained at the heart of public reception of him as a national symbol.12 Of course, Federalists were also able to turn the supposed impartiality of Washington’s status as a war hero to their advantage. For example, in  the leading national Federalist newspaper, the the Gazette of the United




Chapter 

States, printed a summary of Washington’s birthday celebrations to refute the idea that Democratic-Republican attempts to ‘‘lessen his popularity’’ had succeeded. Federalist celebrants and publishers also hoped to aid a smooth transition to John Adams’s presidency by bolstering Washington’s reputation. In Boston, several balls and theatrical entertainments were held in Washington’s honor, and the American Theater erected a fifteen-foot military equestrian statue of Washington, which the papers reported ‘‘was truly magnificent . . . accurately executed in the classic model.’’ The Gazette reported that revelers in Richmond, Virginia, toasted Washington as ‘‘the Hero, who for eight years, through situations in which the boldest might despair, conducted the armies of Liberty to Victory, Independence, and Peace.’’ The evening’s toasts were concluded with a drink to ‘‘the memory of those illustrious heroes who have bled in the cause of freedom.’’ 13 In this case, the Federalist celebrants tried to use Washington’s military accomplishments, which were the currency of national unity, to bolster support for his political achievements, which were far more controversial. The Federalists envisioned a society in which a great individual republican military hero could represent the collective political cause despite the party conflicts of the day. By , Democratic Republicans had ceded Washington’s Birthday to their political rivals, but that does not mean they rejected republican images of heroism outright. Democratic Republicans also envisioned military heroism as a nationalist theme worth celebrating, albeit in their own way. Some Democratic Republicans were willing to celebrate Washington as a war hero, the leader of the ‘‘patriots of seventy-five’’ even as they abhorred his politics and the monarchical trappings of his birthday holiday.14 Instead, many Democratic Republicans shaped their own heroic holiday. During the s, Democratic Republicans, particularly in large cities, claimed the Fourth of July as their partisan holiday, and adherents of the two parties increasingly celebrated Independence Day separately. But even after the Fourth of July began to be used as a partisan occasion by those who opposed the Federalists, celebrations stressed national unity by focusing on wartime heroism.15 Fourth of July celebrations consistently glorified military officers who had proven their merit to the nation during the Revolutionary War. A Boston ode for the Fourth of July, , pictured army officers as national saviors in Roman terms:

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Such was the god-like fire, Which did our breasts inspire, When great in arms—





Heroes like Jove in might, Rag’d in the bloody fight.16

Samuel Thacher asked, ‘‘Who  forget the heroes of our war?’’ in his oration at Concord, Massachusetts, five years later on the twentieth anniversary of independence.17 Both Federalist and Republican Fourth of July ceremonies venerated ‘‘the memory of those departed heroes, who have gloriously fallen in the cause of liberty.’’ 18 Certainly no one who attended a Fourth of July celebration in any town in America during the s could forget the heroism of Revolutionary officers ‘‘who have cemented liberty with their blood,’’ as community after community praised, toasted, and commemorated them.19 In , the (New York) Herald reported on a variety of Federalist and Democratic-Republican Fourth of July celebrations, which included toasts to ‘‘The memory of the late Generals Warren, Montgomery, Greene, Wooster, Mercer, Steuben, and our late respectable Brigadier-General Malcom,’’ to ‘‘The memories of departed heroes and patriots. May their country be just to their fame,’’ and to ‘‘Those heroes who fell gloriously in defence of our freedom—May the willows which overshadow their grave never fade for want of the grateful tears of the Sons of Columbia.’’ 20 No matter which political party sponsored the ceremonies, the touchstone national celebration reinforced the national vision of heroism and sacrifice. This is not to say that memories of the Revolutionary War created harmonious, uncontested nationalism in the midst of political conflict, but rather to point out that images of republican war heroes occupied common ground in increasingly separate political celebrations. Traditional heroism embodied the ideal of a united nation, even as partisan politics began to dramatize the reality of division. Both sides wanted to claim the mantle of harmonious nationalism for themselves, and the republican tradition of war memory helped them do so. The people who participated in a Washington’s Birthday or a Fourth of July celebration confirmed the image of themselves as a nationally unified people by contemplating great heroes, even as they fostered bitter disagreements with their neighbors. Holidays were not the only time that Americans focused on traditional war memories to help them through this complicated dance of nationalism and politics. During the early s, a growing body of national literature helped to expand the American heroic ideal and to provide concrete instruction in how to emulate republican men of achievement. A distinctly American literature seemed necessary to creating American culture, and Revolutionary War heroes comprised suitable subjects for nationalist writers.21 Heroic




Chapter 

biography was one of the first and most successful of America’s own native literary forms. Just as in public celebrations of George Washington, the focus on heroes took on a decidedly Federalist tone, though the overall message of heroic literature was one of impartial nationalism. Several prominent authors sought to perpetuate a heroic national vision during the early s by publishing biographical discourses on the fame of Revolutionary War heroes, in the mold of Plutarch’s Lives. Plutarch, a classical Greek historian whose works were extremely popular in Europe and America in the eighteenth century, wrote biographies that established a basis for republican government by defining his biographical subjects as examples of perfect, virtuous citizenship. Plutarchian biographies were not straight, objective histories of heroes’ lives, but rather meditations on character intended to inspire the public to emulate heroic virtue. This model of emulation connected heroic biography to the republican definition of national identity and national character in which the united national community would praise and emulate great war heroes. Unlike wartime commemorations that suggested in general terms that Americans should seek to emulate their heroes, Plutarchian biographies offered specific blueprints for heroic idealism. Like panegyric oratory, heroic biography glossed over the heroes’ flaws to create strong, perfect national icons.22 During the early s, several American authors offered up the lives of great war heroes for public consumption as they sought both to satisfy the public appetite for patriotic instruction and to make their marks on public culture. The politically ambiguous clergyman and popular biographer Mason Locke Weems thought the public thirsted for the lives of great military men. He wrote to publisher Mathew Carey in , ‘‘If you could get the life of Genl. Wayne, Green[e], Putnam, etc. Men whose courage and Abilities, whose patriotism and Exploits have won the love and admiration of the American people, printed in small volumes and with very interesting frontspieces [sic], you would, without doubt, sell an immense number of them.’’ 23 Heroic biography offered a chance for people to read about the daring ‘‘exploits’’ of the heroes they admired, living and dead. Weems longed to educate the public and to profit himself by personally selling as many copies as possible. His hugely popular Life of George Washington tried to avoid politics to create Washington as a usable national symbol. The book observed many conventions of classical heroic biography, even though it praised middle-class values and claimed to celebrate primarily the virtue of Washington’s ‘‘private life.’’ 24 Other authors wrote republican books with more overt political accents. The Federalist preacher, writer, and geographer Jedidiah Morse published





his True and Authentic History of His Excellency George Washington . . . also, of the Brave Generals Montgomery and Greene, and the Celebrated Marquis de La Fayette in  as a Plutarchian tribute to the Revolutionary generals with the hope that ‘‘posterity will be taught’’ by their examples. Morse portrayed George Washington as the ‘‘common father and benefactor’’ of American society. Morse followed the Plutarchian convention of comparing heroes to heighten their virtues when he praised the talents and personal sacrifice of domestic comfort displayed by Montgomery, Lafayette, and Greene.25 For Morse, the generals represented quintessential republican gentlemen who had freely chosen to fight for the common good, and he expected the public to respond with proper national attention. Heroic biography imagined an American community defined by epic acts of patriotism and bravery. Conservative Federalist educator and dictionary author Noah Webster addressed similar themes of Revolutionary War achievement in a collection of essays from his American Magazine in .26 Webster specifically designed his words to ‘‘aid the Principles of the Revolution, to Suppress Political Discord’’ and to encourage science and inquiry in an effort to define the nation through his own vision of republican culture.27 For Webster, suppressing ‘‘discord’’ meant steering the public away from the excesses of democracy he was convinced he saw around him. Webster claimed that Americans needed to be educated about their own countrymen’s great deeds because achieving peace had not accomplished national unity and because ‘‘private interest’’ threatened to overtake the forces of ‘‘public spirit, heroic virtue and love of country.’’ 28 Although democrats increasingly accepted the fact that ‘‘private interest’’ would naturally play a role in American politics, Webster held the traditional line that such interest was merely destructive to a republican form of government. Webster offered Charles Lee, the Revolutionary general who had been accused of misconduct and removed from command, as a villainous example of someone whose selfish actions during the Revolutionary War had set back the cause of the entire nation.29 To combat the forces of internal division, Webster celebrated military heroes Warren, Montgomery, Wooster, Pulaski, Greene, Lafayette, and Washington, whose praises ‘‘shall dwell on every American tongue’’ as long as ‘‘merit is esteemed, or virtue honored.’’ 30 Many of the heroic biographies used epic poetry in addition to hagiographic prose to highlight the theme of republican merit and amplify the model of heroic praise constructed for the public audience. Heroic biography traditionally contained poetry, and in this case, both worked to reinforce a republican national vision based around the accomplishments of the great men




Chapter 

of the Revolutionary War. As a companion piece to Jedidiah Morse’s heroic biography, Thomas Thornton published an ode for Washington’s Birthday in  that argued for Washington’s inclusion in a pantheon of military heroes as ‘‘Caesar and Philip’s . . . son.’’ The poem maintained that the power of military reputation to hold together the American nation made Washington even greater than many British military heroes: William’s high deeds a crown obtain’d A prince’s title Marlbro’ gained: But greater is  claim; Thirteen United people’s prayers, Their soldier’s hearts, their senate’s cares, Are offer’d all for .31

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Several similar odes portrayed Washington as a man ‘‘strong in himself ’’ to whom the nation owed its military and political existence.32 Poets pictured Washington in heroic biographies and in the pages of Federalist newspapers as the living embodiment of ‘‘all the bright virtues that adorn  , ,  or the .’’ 33 In the early s, before novels had become their preferred form of reading material, most Americans still primarily read didactic literature, and heroic biography and poetry entertained their audiences with the exploits of war even as the works’ authors hoped they would absorb a political message.34 Plutarchian-style works communicated clearly that their readers were supposed to try and live up to ‘‘all the bright virtues’’ embodied by George Washington and his fellow heroes and martyrs. Of course, it was no coincidence that strong Federalists penned the vast majority of heroic works in this mold because they pinned their continuing political hopes on Washington himself. Federalist authors defined a national ‘‘public’’ whose real political contribution came in the collective veneration of great men, not in individual acts of voting or protesting, activities with a decidedly more Democratic and democratic cast. The message of heroic veneration and emulation reached far beyond the pages of biography and poetry. Several communities constructed monuments to great Revolutionary War heroes in the s as physical signs of their public gratitude to military heroes and as permanent reminders of their virtues. These monuments, which required community organization and financial commitment, demonstrated that many communities had taken to heart the importance of heroic nationalism. Planners of monuments and memorials wanted to set aside specific public space to enshrine the values that the heroic





officers had embodied.35 Monuments served as powerful physical reminders of what the ‘‘best’’ American men had sacrificed for their country, and patriots hoped they would serve to further bind the nation together, just as the heroic actions of Revolutionary officers had. By focusing on officers’ sacrifices, monuments enshrined a particularly elite heroism that further bypassed humble veterans’ experiences in favor of teaching the public to emulate great men.36 During the early s, monuments patterned on classical models united the cult of heroism with the conscious effort to preserve the memory of the Revolutionary War in order to inspire patriotism. Proper monuments stood as physical proof of the heartfelt gratitude and continued virtue of the public and as heroic lessons for future generations of Americans who should also be willing to sacrifice for their nation. A  Gazette of the United States article in favor of a national monument to the Revolution put it best: ‘‘The proper reward of virtue is gratitude. The affectionate admiration of a whole people, is the only adequate return for the signal merit of the man in whom it is concentered. Taste and genius will chissel this sentiment in the rock, and make it indelible. Will not these means of augmenting the recompense of virtue contribute, in the most powerful manner, and in future times, to excite it?’’ 37 Monuments sought to mark the heroism of great individuals and thereby to enhance the virtue of the ‘‘whole people,’’ who would supposedly conform voluntarily to Roman standards of virtue. These monuments sought to provide a focal point for the praise of ‘‘the people’’ for their heroes—most especially their dead heroes. Revolutionary monuments grew out of the traditional celebration of American martyrs that had been an important part of republican political culture since the s. During the early s, many people visited the impressive marble monument to Montgomery that had been commissioned by Congress in the s and unveiled with great ceremony in  in St. Paul’s Chapel of the Trinity Episcopal Church in New York City.38 The Montgomery monument had been sculpted in Paris by Jean-Jacques Caffieri, who used a variety of classical monumental forms to immortalize the American martyr.39 The monument, constructed out of multicolored marble, consisted of a funeral urn and a broken Roman victory column flanked by symbols representing military achievement and peace. Behind the urn rose an obelisk, the traditional Egyptian symbol of heroic death, and the entire structure rested on a classical altar, a symbol of the martyr’s sacrifice.40 The public who came to view Montgomery’s monument, particularly Federalist observers, probably largely accepted the message of traditional re-




Chapter 

publicanism intended by Congress. Jedidiah Morse wrote in  that Montgomery’s monument was ‘‘of the most beautiful simplicity and inexpressible elegance, with emblematical devices, and [a] . . . truly classical inscription’’ written by Benjamin Franklin.41 New York poet Ann Eliza Schuyler Bleecker’s elegy for Montgomery, published in a posthumous collection of her works in , commented on the power of the monument to inspire those whom the hero left behind after death: His urn by a whole nation’s tears bedew’d, His mem’ry blest by all the great and good: O’er his pale cor[p]se the marble soon shall rise, And the tall column shoot into the skies; There long his praise by freemen shall be read, As softly o’er the hero’s dust they tread.42

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Bleecker’s poetry reinforced the message of national gratitude and unity expressed by the monument itself, as she envisioned the national community of ‘‘freemen’’ gathering to remember Montgomery. It was no coincidence that Bleecker’s poem likened Montgomery’s monument to a grave, though Janet Montgomery did not arrange for the reinterment of her husband’s remains at the site of the monument until .43 The obelisk, the column, and the urn were all funerary symbols associated with Montgomery as a public martyr, symbols of republican heroism in death. Dead heroes provided the best figures for public emulation, in some ways even better than George Washington, who was still alive and capable of being tarred by party politics. As other Revolutionary officers began to die off during the s, their graves were marked by memorials that created a new generation of heroes, who were likened to wartime martyrs and deemed worthy of emulation. Monuments on graves drew attention to the heroes’ bodies and marked their location as war relics. For example, African Americans in New York City often held their ‘‘Pinkster’’ holiday celebrations near a military cemetery that contained the graves of black soldiers as a sort of living monument to their memory.44 It was extremely rare for any hero to be memorialized in stone while still alive, but monuments comprised an important aspect of the celebration of dead military heroes in the Roman tradition.45 Sometimes monuments were built directly over the graves of their subjects, as was a marble slab dedicated to Major General Israel Putnam upon his death in . Israel Putnam, although in actuality a fairly incompetent general, was transformed into a public hero and symbol of American mili-





tary achievement in the s and s. His public reputation was established by commemorations that adhered to republican heroic convention, most notably the monument to his memory. In  the Rev. Albigence Waldo preached a eulogy at the dedication of the monument at Putnam’s grave in Brooklyn, Connecticut, in which he stressed how this ‘‘’ !’’ would always remind the community of Putnam, the ‘‘almost unparalleled lover of his country’’ who was ‘‘born a hero’’ to save America.46 The inscription on the monument, which was written by preacher and ‘‘Connecticut Wit’’ Timothy Dwight, defined exactly how onlookers were supposed to respond to the hero’s grave: ‘‘Sacred be this Monument to the Memory of Israel Putnam, Esquire. . . . Passenger, if thou art Soldier, drop a tear over the dust of a Hero, who ever attentive to the lives and happiness of his men, dared to lead where any dared to follow; if a Patriot, remember the distinguished and gallant services rendered thy Country, By the Patriot who sleeps Beneath this Mou[nd].’’ 47 In the case of Israel Putnam, the monument itself defined how the audience was expected to view the hero. The public apparently responded, and Putnam’s grave remained a popular site of pilgrimage well into the nineteenth century. Monuments also helped amplify the commemoration of heroic martyrs who had been in their graves since the beginning of the war and to extend the idea of emulation to traditional martyrs of the war. In  the King Solomon’s Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons erected the quintessential example of a monument that marked a hero’s grave on Bunker Hill in Charlestown, Massachusetts.48 To honor Joseph Warren, the martyred hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill and a former Masonic grand master, they built ‘‘a costly monument, in the form of a Tuscan pillar, eighteen feet high, placed upon a platform eight feet high and eight feet square, and surrounded by a gilt urn, bearing the initials and age of Warren.’’ 49 In December , citizens of Charlestown, the clergy, and the Masons met for the dedication of this classical republican monument. They heard an oration by John Soley, Jr., that reinforced the value of the monument to bolster heroic nationalism: ‘‘Nations in all ages have endeavored to perpetuate the brilliant actions of their heroes; thereby to inspire the living with a spirit of emulation, and to discharge the obligations they owe to those deeds of valor by which their rights are secured. We, citizens of Columbia, not content with having raised a monument of gratitude in our hearts, would present one to the eye of future generations.’’ 50 Soley linked the language of citizenship and nationality to the memorializing of Warren as a great hero. The voluntary gratitude of the American community was not enough for Soley and his Masonic brothers; they sought




Chapter 

The Tomb of Warren, Analectic Magazine  (March ): . Courtesy American Antiquarian Society. This monument to Joseph Warren, a wooden Tuscan pillar, was erected on Bunker Hill in  by the King Solomon’s Lodge of Freemasons. Warren continued to be a subject of public veneration and patriotic admiration, and the Masons erected the monument as a permanent symbol of his sacrifice. The monument became a destination for early New England tourists such as the ones depicted in this engraving.

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

to mark Warren’s republican sacrifice permanently in stone. And the inscription on the monument clearly stated what form of public reaction was expected as it seemed to speak in the voice of dead soldiers of Bunker Hill: ‘‘None but they who set a just value on the blessings of liberty are worthy to enjoy her. In vain we toiled; in vain we fought; we bled in vain; if you, our offspring, want valor to repel the assaults of her invaders.’’ 51 The Masons of Boston fulfilled their own roles as republican citizens by creating a longlasting focal point for public emulation of republican virtue. As the role of hero worship in partisan public celebrations, heroic literature, and public monuments illustrates, the upper-class, masculine vision of the republican hero continued to hold considerable sway early in the s.





Federalists capitalized on the veneration of heroes to build up their own political cause by trying to teach the public proper heroic emulation. But as a basis for Americans to imagine themselves connected to one another, the heroic model was also limited in certain ways. True heroes were both gentlemen and officers, but most of the American public was neither. Even as it defined a national community united around military heroes, the republican tradition of memory in public culture maintained a strict difference between the audience and the objects of their gratitude.52 The republican tradition of public memory did not validate the patriotic contribution of individual Americans below the level of the great heroes, but rather elevated the whole body of the American people at once.

The Democratic Tradition

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

American politics and culture began to undergo a dramatic process of democratization during the s, and by mid-decade, public memories of the war helped define the process as the latent democratic potential of Revolutionary War memory began to break into the open. As the two national political parties became increasingly divided over a series of domestic and international issues, they each mobilized popular support for their own views. The Democratic Republicans, particularly, looked to poorer white men for political support in a way that elites never had before. The two parties disagreed over everything from finance to the French Revolution. Alexander Hamilton pursued his vision of a centralized, commercial economy, while the Jeffersonians persistently glorified rural agrarianism. After , when the French Revolution took an increasingly violent turn, Federalists started to oppose the French, even as Democratic Republicans and their constituents continued to lavish praise on them, and welcomed the French minister Edmund Genet, who toured southern states to great public acclaim. When Washington cracked down and sent troops in  to put down the popular Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania and when he criticized the creation of Democratic-Republican societies that were drawing broad-based political support in that same year, he was branded as a dangerous aristocrat.53 John Jay was appointed minister to England later that same year, and when he entered negotiations over a commercial treaty, Democratic Republicans saw evidence of the pro-British Federalist conspiracy they had feared. While the Federalists retained their strength in the Northeast, Demo-




Chapter 

cratic Republicans began to gain supporters in the South and in cities, where grassroots organizers formed themselves into Democratic-Republican societies that were often even more radical than party leaders. This context of increasing party division created an opportunity for the democratization of public memory to take hold. Americans left outside the republican tradition, like some of the poor veterans who had been trying to gain public gratitude since the s, began to use memories of the Revolutionary War to assert themselves in a much more democratic style. In a development very different from the heroic tradition in the early s, many people began to propagate public war memories that looked beyond the great heroes to the more humble experience of war. A Baltimore man, for example, wrote to the Freeman’s Journal in  that ‘‘We accomplished the late Revolution without being Well Born (that is, we are descended only from plain laborious ancestors), we have sense enough to become legislators, merchants, farmers and manufacturers without being Well Born.’’ 54 Some individuals moved beyond the glorification of wellborn heroes as they tried to shape a more egalitarian military memory, and some even began using public culture to glorify themselves. Whereas the renewed emphasis on praise and emulation of heroes in the early s had helped to invigorate Federalist politics and especially Federalist style, newly democratized memories of the war helped to bolster the Democratic Republicans. Sometimes Democratic Republicans used memories of Revolutionary War patriotism as a club to strike against the Federalists’ pro-British and pro-business politics, as when Albert Gallatin wrote in  that ‘‘The spirit which animated our country to resist British tyranny and to declare independence is, alas, paralyzed by systems artfully contrived to render the mind pliant to the views of an insidious and ambitious administration. . . . Had America in the year  been what she is now . . . we should have hugged the fetters which Great Britain had then forged for us.’’ 55 In addition to using the rhetoric of military memory to target politicians in this blatant manner, some new images of the war also emphasized the agency and effectiveness of common soldiers. This tradition of democratic memory further enhanced Democratic-Republican status by bolstering that party’s idea that common white men should exercise their own political power without relying on elites to represent them. As an article in  in Woods’s Newark Gazette put it: ‘‘It must be the mechanics and farmers, or the poorer class of people (as they are generally called) that must support the freedom of America; the freedom which they and their fathers purchased with their blood—the nobility will never do it—they will be always striving





to get the reins of government in their own hands, and then they can ride the people at pleasure.’’ 56 Democratic memories praising such average men elevated the ideal of the citizen-soldier.57 Sarah Morton, the Boston gentlewoman whose poetry earned her the nickname ‘‘The American Sappho,’’ demonstrated how common men might join the wellborn in the pantheon of heroes when she dedicated her poem Beacon Hill to ‘‘the citizen soldiers, who fought, conquered, and retired, under the banner of Washington and Freedom.’’ Morton praised officers in heroic republican terms throughout her epic poem, but she also celebrated the common soldier, using Harringtonian imagery that stressed the virtue of volunteers: Nor were these bands what lordly Europe brings, The vagrant vassals, of her feudal kings, But the bold peasant whose untethered arm Defends his own hereditary farm, The shepherd-soldier, who indignant bears His country’s wrong, and all her glory shares.58

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

In Morton’s conception, humble ‘‘shepherd-soldiers’’ could share the ‘‘glory’’ of public memory with wellborn heroes. The African American Federalist preacher Lemuel Haynes similarly stressed the contributions of humble soldiers when he told the people of Rutland, Vermont, in a Fourth of July oration that ‘‘Our independence was purchased at a dear rate: more than an hundred thousand fell in the important struggle.—The sweet, the delicious draught, that this day cheers our spirits, is the price of blood.’’ 59 How much actual power democratic public memory might bestow upon individuals in return for their blood remained to be seen. For the time being, elites like Madison, Jefferson, and John Taylor of Caroline were firmly in charge of party politics, but a more democratic style encouraged humble folk to take pride in their own accomplishments. This valorization of the liberal individual eventually held consequences far beyond what any party leader might have intended, as the cultural power of Revolutionary War memories functioned in unexpected ways. As with the African Americans who argued in the s that military memory entitled them to freedom, it was clear that white men were not the only possible beneficiaries of the democratic cultural shift. Just how radical the change would be was yet to be negotiated between those who sought to lay claim to cultural attention and the Jeffersonians, who were trying to build power for themselves. The precarious nature of this negotiation is fully evident in a more skep-




Chapter 

tical view of Revolutionary War sacrifice that began to emerge in the s, especially as defined by female writers. Just as women such as Dolley Madison and Margaret Bayard Smith took a great hand in helping to organize formal American politics (and the Democratic Republicans’ rise to power), an important group of female intellectuals and writers helped to define the democratization of memory that provided a useful context for party organizing.60 Recognizing that great men had always been the subjects of military praise, these women began to question in print whether their own more humble, individual sacrifices during the war had been worth the price. Some, like writer Judith Sargent Murray, even began to question the worth of classical imagery; she wrote in her essay collection The Gleaner that ‘‘this fond predilection for, and preference of the ancients is, in reality, altogether unaccountable.’’ 61 For the first time, a widespread negative assessment of the war found a public voice, as more common Americans asserted that all had not been glorious during the war. Murray continued: Dreadful is the progress of war; it is retrograde to almost every virtue. . . . We must fix our eyes not on the hero returning with conquest, nor yet on the gallant officer dying on the bed of honour, the subject of picture and of song; but on the private soldier, forced into the service; exhausted by camp sickness and fatigue. . . . We must think of the uncounted tears of her who weeps alone, because of the only being who shared her sentiments is taken from her; no martial music sounds in unison with her feelings. . . . She does not shed her sorrows over his grave, for she has never learned whether he ever had one. If he had returned, his exertions would not have been remembered individually, for he only made a small imperceptible part of a human machine, called a regiment.62

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

As Murray’s dedication to women’s rights seemed to outstrip her strong Federalist politics, she outright rejected the veneration of heroes, and she directed attention to women, not as idealized mourners who were part of the unified nation hoping to glorify a noble martyr, but rather as lonely widows of anonymous dead husbands.63 A newspaper poet, ‘‘Cynthia,’’ echoed a similar theme in a work titled ‘‘On the Evils of War’’ published in the Kentucky Gazette in . Cynthia imagined it ‘‘strange, that man e’er should / Wage cruel war against his brother’’ as she refused to differentiate between heroes who ‘‘wreathes of laurel claim’’ for killing thousands and murderers who were condemned by society.64 These skeptical assessments of warfare certainly were at odds with the more widespread praise of masculine heroes so popular earlier in the decade. These Americans could not fit their personal experiences during and


Portrait of Mrs. John Stevens (Judith Sargent, Later Mrs. John Murray), –, by John Singleton Copley (–). Oil on canvas,  x  inches. Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Art Acquisition Endowment Fund, .. Photography courtesy of Terra Foundation for the Arts, Chicago. Judith Sargent Murray was a strong proponent of women’s rights who never shrank from taking a controversial position in her magazine, The Gleaner. Despite her Federalist politics, Murray criticized classical images of heroism and took a skeptical view of Revolutionary War memory.




Chapter 

after the war into the republican model put forward in the heroic vision of events, even when they thought that the American nation owed them something for their sacrifice. For this reason, postwar disenchantment assumed a more democratic guise in contrast to earlier commemorations. Disappointed memories of the Revolutionary War still envisioned a national community, but they pictured that community in decidedly less heroic terms; they posited a community united by grief—a grief that seemed far more personal than that expressed by the idealized public widows of the s. Although Murray and ‘‘Cynthia’’ also rejected the role of women as mourners in the idealized nation by writing their own versions of military memory, they nonetheless claimed new visibility and cultural power for themselves as female authors. Poet Ann Eliza Schuyler Bleecker provides the most remarkable example of a woman who was unable to fit her Revolutionary War sacrifice into the heroic mold, though she claimed a public voice by interpreting the war in print. Bleecker’s infant daughter, Abella, died when the family fled its home in New York during the war, and throughout the letters, essays, and poetry that she wrote both for herself and for the New York Magazine after the war, Bleecker took grief and loss as her constant themes.65 Her surviving daughter, Margaretta Faugares, published a collection of her mother’s writings in  that emphasized how ‘‘the remembrance’’ of Abella’s death ‘‘never failed to awaken all [Bleecker’s] sorrows.’’ 66 Although Bleecker was a strong patriot who believed that God had demanded that Americans ‘‘defend our Freedom with our blood,’’ she never hesitated to count the costs of the war.67 And the greatest cost was to her own family was the sacrifice of its youngest member. By keeping attention on herself as a mourner instead of focusing the reader’s gaze onto the heroes (Montgomery and Warren), whom she did praise in milder terms in several poems, Bleecker empowered herself as a poet and transformed the meaning of heroism.68 Bleecker’s mourning was completely unlike that of the political widow Janet Montgomery, who presided over political patronage and oversaw the construction of her husband’s official monument. Although Bleecker acknowledged the heroism of great men like Washington and Montgomery, she could not transform the death of her baby into a heroic act, even if she conceived it as a part of wartime sacrifice. Bleecker wrote her grief as a female experience into the national experience, but she could not assimilate her loss into the masculine heroic model. She created herself as a radically changed version of the traditional republican female mourner as she mourned her own baby as the ultimate individual sacrifice in contrast to the symbolic heroic sacrifice of a great officer. Bleecker provided a national vision of both individual agency and exclusion.



Democratic disappointment was not solely a female preserve, however. Even some who had actually fought in the war knew that they had no place in the pantheon of heroes and worried that they had been forgotten by the same nation that preserved officers’ memories. Although common veterans had received some credit during the s from a public that agreed they were owed some measure of gratitude, most veterans still had not received widespread recognition by the s. State pensions and land bounties were sporadically distributed, but no federal pension had yet been offered to all veterans of the war, and no humble soldier expected to see himself ever memorialized in a stone monument. Common soldiers, sailors, and militiamen did not fit the mold of heroic great men, but they still increasingly expressed a desire to be remembered by the nation. In part, they hoped to be remembered in order to be compensated for their service. But as the s wore on, a more democratic argument began to surface that gratitude owed these men a place in the American nation itself. Beginning in the early s, both Democratic-Republican and Federalist newspapers began to publish occasional pieces with the message that individual and humble soldiers ought to be accorded public respect for their service to the nation. Although it was clear they could not be considered well-bred republican heroes, more common soldiers began to seek a place for themselves in the public memory of the Revolutionary War and in the community of the nation itself. Stark images of poor and starving veterans (and their widows and orphans) bolstered calls to remember the common soldier and tied those calls to negative images of the war’s consequences. The City Gazette of Charleston, South Carolina, published in  a typically dismal view of the common veteran’s life in a poem entitled ‘‘The American Soldier, A Picture from the Life.’’ The poem presents a melancholy picture of a soldier deprived of monetary compensation for his service, who could not subsist solely on his own weak memories: Deep in a vale, a stranger now to arms, Too poor to shine in courts, too proud to beg, He, who once warr’d on ’ plains Sits musing o’er his fears, and wooden leg. Remembering still the toils of former days To other hands he sees his earnings paid They share the due reward—he feeds on praise, Lost in the abyss of want, misfortunes’s shades.

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55






Chapter 

The verse points out that the veteran is far removed from ‘‘the great man’s levee, and the proud man’s grin.’’ All the soldier is left with after he has sold the gun he used to win freedom for others is ‘‘, and a .’’ 69 The poem never actually mentions the name of the soldier, which emphasizes his lack of social status as a hero; heroes’ names must never be forgotten. The poem prompts the reader to wonder why Americans have shirked their national duty to the starving soldier and to insist that he be remembered, even if monetary gratitude was not forthcoming. Interestingly, early in the decade images of poor and starving soldiers could be put to good use by either political party. The Federalists used such images to call for more centralized financial power. A  essay in support of Alexander Hamilton’s plan to shore up national credit in the Gazette of the United States argued, ‘‘The price of the soldiers fatigue, limbs and life is yet unpaid to him. . . . What can the supreme legislature say to such men, or to their children when supplicating their remembrance?’’ 70 By the end of the decade, however, Democratic Republicans were more likely to use images of destitute veterans to call attention to the plight of the common man and the Federalists’ failure to help them. In a  almanac, Anthony Haswell, the Bennington printer who was a raging democrat, offered the following somewhat cynical set of couplets: In Times of War, to God we humbly pray To bless our arms; and grudge no Soldier a pay; When Dangers o’er, they are both alike requited, God is forgot, and the poor soldier slighted.71

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

These partisan voices both argued that there was a national responsibility to remember the men who risked their lives for the nation. Individual veterans were not heroes of Warren’s or Montgomery’s stature, yet they were worthy of remembrance and compensation. By mid-decade, these images of dispossessed common soldiers took on a directly democratic cast as increasing numbers of veterans published memoirs to remind the public of their own military deeds. Like the negative images of war created by women writers, veterans’ memoirs created a vision of the Revolutionary War that stressed the actions of individuals. Memoirs, in contrast to high republican forms of public memory, offered no specific instructions for emulation, and they did not always seek to turn their subjects into heroes. They did profess to tell simple, true stories about the war to a national audience, which should offer interest and gratitude in return.72 Despite the





great variety among their authors, memoirs as a group also tended to bolster the Democratic-Republican vision of liberal politics by placing before the public the lives of average people engaged in political action. The memoirs that first began to appear in significant numbers during the s comprised an important aspect of the great outpouring of print culture during the decade. As Americans began to increase their literacy levels, attend community reading groups, and subscribe to lending libraries in ever greater numbers, publishers found new types of authors who wanted to put the story of their own lives into print. American soldiers had previously published few memoirs—none of the colonial wars, including the Seven Years’ War, was so memorialized in print.73 Revolutionary War memoirs took many different forms, from the expensive two-volume leather-bound book edition of Major General William Heath’s memoir to the flimsy twelve-page pamphlet in which schoolmaster Levi Redfield recorded his wartime service.74 What all these memoirs held in common was a self-consciously subjective and individualistic view of the Revolutionary War that helped create a vision of America as a liberal democratic nation. Revolutionary War memoirs presented a view of the war that contrasted sharply, for example, with the heroic biographies of earlier in the decade. The ordinary men who fought in the Revolutionary War gained an attachment to the nation and a sense of personal and collective agency from their actions, and their published stories functioned to extend that agency as they made their individual voices heard in public culture.75 Memoirists helped to define national identity in the process. Although they did not expect to serve as national examples in the same manner as elite heroes, memoirists envisioned a national audience for their personal tales of patriotism and individual sacrifice for the cause of freedom. Memoirists drew attention not only to the national military cause but also to themselves as they presented their narratives to the national community. Ebenzer Fletcher, a soldier from Connecticut, tried to insure that the public would not forget him or his bravery when he wrote in his memoir, ‘‘I was a soldier . . . in the continental army, was dangerously wounded and taken prisoner, had made my escape from the enemy . . . after much fatigue and peril.’’ 76 Fletcher, and others like him, saw to it themselves that they would not be resigned to the anonymity of the ‘‘poor soldiers’’ depicted in newspaper poetry, and some tried to earn money with their narratives to gain their own rewards for service.77 Memoirists, even the officers among them, may have known that they were not symbolic models of republican heroism on the order of George




Chapter 

Washington or Joseph Warren, but they believed that their memories had something to contribute all the same. Military men offered their life stories as general lessons to the fledgling nation. As William Heath put it in the introduction to his memoir, ‘‘Although the following pages are not decorated with the flowers of Greece or Rome, and for their diction cannot claim the patronage of the learned, they contain a state of facts in detail, which may not be unpleasing to posterity.’’ 78 Even if they did not stand as Roman examples of good conduct for the entire nation, memoirists’ stories reproduced in cultural form the unifying experience of the Revolutionary War. The greater flexibility and subjectivity of the memoir form, as compared to heroic biography, allowed war memoirs to bring together national themes and the power of individual experience into a more broadly based democratic cultural ideal than that offered by the model of the strictly republican hero. The pamphlet memoir of Levi Redfield, a Connecticut music teacher, illustrates this pattern clearly. Redfield told his readers that he was driven to record his service in the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars because he thought his life was ending and he had ‘‘neither father or mother, sister or brother’’ to preserve his memory for posterity. Redfield told of the six separate times that he had enlisted with militia or army forces during the Revolutionary War as he responded to calls for troops that were ‘‘actuated by the same principles of liberty which inspired me with that enthusiastic ardour for the promotion of my country’s welfare.’’ 79 In Redfield’s memoir, a very humble, individual voice spoke the language of Revolutionary War patriotism and argued for democratic action and an attachment to liberty. His story would live on in print to inspire the future national community, even if he did not achieve conventional fame. One of the most unusual of the Revolutionary memoirs of the s shows how writers might preserve their reverence for elite heroes, while still offering their own life stories to an interested and democratic public. The memoir of Deborah Sampson, a Massachusetts woman who disguised herself as a man under the name ‘‘Robert Shurtleff ’’ in order to enlist and fight in the war, demonstrates the mixture of the republican and democratic memories that could create tension within a text. Sampson’s story illustrates that even the most unconventional soldier could stand out as a patriot who took pride in the individual accomplishments of humble individuals but still had reverence for traditional heroes. Herman Mann, a publisher in Dedham, Massachusetts, collaborated with Sampson to record her wartime experiences in  in The Female Review: or, Memoirs of an American Young Lady.80 The Female Review was a peculiar





book: part biography with heroic overtones, part memoir, and part didactic treatise on female education that betrayed Mann’s heavy editorial hand. Despite the fact that Sampson had to lie to keep her sex a secret while serving in the Continental Army, in the s she decided to work with Herman Mann to present her wartime experiences and patriotism to the public eye. Both Sampson and Mann thought of The Female Review as a way to define patriotic service and American allegiance. Sampson’s complicated, cross-dressing gender identity as well as her humble class caused some difficulties for her straightforward presentation as a patriotic character, but nevertheless Mann presented her accomplishments as a ‘‘purely American’’ story that had to be commemorated as a part of the public record of national liberation. According to Mann, Americans could only compete with the greatness of Europe on the world stage if they duly promoted the ‘‘chivalry and wonders’’ of the likes of Deborah Sampson.81 The text was governed by Mann’s attempts to balance themes of patriotism and gender by publicizing Sampson’s public ‘‘female heroism and virtue,’’ while still emphasizing that women should properly seek domestic education.82 Mann attempted to present Sampson simultaneously as a masculine and feminine character. While Mann assured his reader that Sampson performed her soldierly duties ‘‘with punctual exactness, fidelity and honor,’’ he continually emphasized that he sought not ‘‘to encourage the like paradigm of Female Enterprise’’ and that Sampson herself had only reluctantly allowed the publication of her tale.83 Even Mann’s description of Sampson’s body and physical appearance mixed the masculine and feminine, concluding that ‘‘her aspect is rather masculine and serene, than effeminate and sillily jocose.’’ 84 Although the text is very clear about Sampson’s bravery and accomplishments as a soldier, Mann thought his female audience would be alienated if the narrative were too ‘‘tinctured with the rougher, masculine virtues.’’ 85 Both Mann and Sampson seemed to fear that the public would assume any woman in Sampson’s position to have been sexually promiscuous, and they took great pains to assure the reader of her virtue and chastity, ‘‘which she had been taught to revere, even as dear as life itself.’’ 86 In the final analysis, Mann tried hard to convince his readers, and perhaps even himself, that Sampson’s exceptional service was not ‘‘the effect of indolence or sluttishness,’’ but rather that love of country might motivate ‘‘even a female’’ to take up arms.87 As a public commemoration of the Revolutionary War, The Female Review constructed Deborah Sampson as a character, in spite of her gender, who possessed many of the positive virtues of republican heroism. Sampson’s narrative revealed a debt to the memory of republican heroes, and the text even




Chapter 

refers to her as ‘‘our heroine’’ on a number of occasions.88 Mann cast the tale of Sampson’s enlistment as proof of the power of patriotism to compel even a woman born in ‘‘humble obscurity’’ to volunteer as a soldier ‘‘in defence of her cause; by which, she seemed resolved to rescue the rest of her brothers and sisters.’’ 89 Although ‘‘the field of war is a department peculiarly assigned to the hero . . . this uncommonly arrested the attention of a   of low birth and station.’’ 90 When Sampson heard tales of ‘‘those , who fell the first sacrifices in the  of their ,’’ she educated herself about British tyranny. Unable to stifle the ‘‘spirit of heroic patriotism’’ within herself, she exercised her individual choice to join the patriotic cause.91 The narrative confirmed the importance of conventional heroism, even as it complicated the very concept. In the final analysis, and in great part because of her gender, Deborah Sampson, as she was represented in her memoir, became an example of a good soldier who sought to act in the tradition of the great heroes of the war but could not be worthy of emulation herself. Although memory was further democratizing in the s, the process of heroic emulation still established limits on the power of individual action. Mann expressed reverence for republican heroes and tied their greatness to the willingness of a humble woman like Sampson to enlist. In Sampson’s case, the example of heroism had inspired her to prove her patriotism on the battlefield, but she herself could not be offered as a further patriotic inspiration. Much the same could be said of humble male veterans. Although the American community could bind together around images of manly aristocratic heroes, the examples of heroic officers offered few clues for how Americans should use their unity except, perhaps, to continue their reverence for the heroes themselves. Democratic memories began, however, to insist that ‘‘the people’’ of the American nation could play an even more active role in shaping the memory of the war, and thereby the American nation.

Democratization and Popular Culture: The Audience as Nation

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

It was no coincidence that Herman Mann and Deborah Sampson seemed to speak so directly to their audience in Sampson’s memoirs. The consumers of Revolutionary War memory—the audience itself—was beginning to democratize by the late s. Readers of Sampson’s memoirs received more than just a sensationalist war story; they also read a complicated tale of heroism and individual patriotic commitment. Sampson and Mann were correct to





be worried about how their audience might accept such a story, not only because Sampson’s gender and politics were complicated, but also because the public showed an increasing willingness to help shape memories of the war and definitions of patriotism in general. A greater voice for the public that made up the nation was made possible by new kinds of war commemoration that targeted a wide, popular audience. New forms of popular culture went beyond invoking the public to emulate heroes and adopt good republican ideology and began playing to popular taste instead. The democratic audience still wanted a lesson in patriotic nationalism, but they also wanted to be entertained by new forms of culture. Depictions of the war in popular culture proliferated. Charles Smith’s formal ‘‘objective’’ military history, The American War, From –, found a counterpart in Jeremy Belknap’s pamphlet play The Foresters, a ‘‘popular and entertaining satirical history’’ of the war.92 Citizens of a variety of classes flocked to see the Native American artifacts from the Revolutionary War and items donated by military officers displayed by Charles Willson Peale in his Philadelphia Museum.93 The audience played a different role in democratized commemorations than it had in republican forms of culture produced since the war. Many forms of popular culture contributed to the democratic view of individual action and importance by empowering the audience to fill the role of ‘‘the people’’ who would build the American community by remembering the war. Democratic forms of public memory gestured towards a wide audience of people who helped to form the nation by their participation in public culture. While ‘‘the audience’’ and ‘‘the people’’ still remained fairly ill-defined entities, there are tantalizing hints not only that artists were increasingly influenced by potential audience response but that some audiences made their commemorative preferences directly known. Some authors and artists who were not particularly sympathetic democrats themselves recognized the huge potential audience for their patriotic productions and so began to popularize their works in a way that could energize a more democratic national ‘‘public.’’ These artists defined an American political culture that was characterized by a mixture of republicanism and democratization when they took their messages of old-style heroism to a newly recognized mass audience. John Trumbull, for example, asserted that unless everyone in America could properly remember the war, national glory would surely fade. In  he offered a series of prints based on his history paintings of the war, which were designed ‘‘to assist in preserving the memory of the illustrious events which have marked this period of our country’s glory,




Chapter 

as well as of the men who have been the most important actors in them.’’ 94 Trumbull offered the prints for the price of three guineas each, and he advertised that a full subscription list would both prove the worth of art that depicted national subjects and prevent him from returning to Europe.95 Even though the works of art themselves depicted conventional heroic republican scenes, Trumbull democratized his patriotic artworks when he offered them to a wider audience. He wrote of the power of art to bring national memory to even the most humble, illiterate American as well as to future ages, ‘‘Historians will do justice to an area so important; but to be read, the language in which they write, must be understood—the language of Painting is universal, and intelligible in all nations, and every age.’’ 96 Trumbull’s depictions of Revolutionary War martyrs—The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, and The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton—all of which were popularized in countless print editions in the s, mimicked the heroic convention of European paintings like Benjamin West’s The Death of Wolfe by depicting the very moments of the martyrs’ deaths in a particular artistic style.97 But in order to glorify American national history, Trumbull spread his conventional heroic pictures to audiences and consumers far beyond those who might see the original painting. As Trumbull wrote to John Eliot, ‘‘by having prints done . . . to bring them within the powers of our American purses,’’ the artist popularized the republican tradition of public memory, and in the process he envisioned a nation that encompassed both the reverence of heroes and popular participation.98 When the language of republican democracy was translated into widely available visual images, art assumed the power to reach a wider audience in the national community (as well as a greater power to profit the artist). A similar process took place in theater, a newly popular form of public entertainment in the s. Plays about the Revolutionary War were performed around the country, as restrictions against theater ended in many areas such as Boston that had previously prohibited public drama. Popular theater dramatized the public memory of the Revolutionary War during the s in a way that aptly demonstrated the intertwined nature of the republican and democratic styles of political culture. Revolutionary War dramas that were staged in the s also tell us much about how audiences shaped culture. Drama was still expected to teach its audience a lesson, in this case one of patriotism, but the theater increasingly was conceived of as a leisure activity as well as ‘‘a school of virtue.’’ 99 This dual purpose sometimes brought the audience into conflict with playwrights and theater owners, but not always





in expected ways—as conflicts over Revolutionary War plays show. Theatrical representations of the Revolutionary War in the late s illustrate how patriotism and nationalism were enacted as the public began to make itself felt in both politics and culture. The theater became a testing ground for the democratization of memory. Late eighteenth-century American theater audiences often chose a particular ideological point of view, as entertainment was caught up in nationalist or political debates. Theaters in the largest cities where more than one theater existed often designated themselves clearly as adherents of either the Federalist or Democratic-Republican parties. These party designations certainly influenced the interactions between dramas and their audiences, even though theatrical audiences were not completely segregated by party. Revolutionary War memory in popular culture was relatively uncontroversial early in the decade, when American army and militia forces fought protracted battles against the Miami and other Indians on the northwestern frontier. Alexander Hamilton, chief among Federalist military strategists, favored building up a strong army, but traditional republican sentiment against a standing army, even among John Adams and his more moderate wing of the Federalist party, meant that Hamilton’s wishes were not fulfilled. The army was dramatically scaled down after Little Turtle’s forces capitulated following the Battle of Fallen Timbers and were forced to sign the Treaty of Greenville in .100 Revolutionary memory became more controversial just a few years later, however, during the Quasi-War with France, a diplomatic conflict that almost turned into a full-scale war in . Democratic Republicans, in general, favored much smaller established military forces than did Federalists, and they preferred navies to armies. But Democratic-Republican reliance on naval power and their attachment to France created problems for the new Federalist president, John Adams, after the French Revolutionary government authorized her navy to begin capturing American privateers and traders in the fall of . Once Adams assumed office in , Hamilton pushed for war against France, even before French attempts to exact bribes from American ministers in the XYZ Affair were revealed the following year. For two years, between  and , American navy ships, which had increased in number dramatically since the mid-s, fought on the high seas against French vessels in an undeclared war that dissolved once and for all the Franco-American alliance forged during the Revolutionary War.101 During this undeclared war, when many Americans thought the French army might invade the United States at any moment, memories of past war-




Chapter 

time exploits seemed more urgent and provocative than ever. Politicians used memories of the war to support their views of the French. Democratic Republicans stressed the ties between France and the United States created during the Revolutionary War. Alexander Hamilton questioned the patriotism of Democratic Republicans, who decried the war against France, by comparing them to Loyalists during the Revolution. Hamilton also argued that the French had broken the Revolutionary War alliance and compromised the spirit of the American Revolution by executing their monarch, but many Americans were unwilling to see the Quasi-War in such stark terms.102 In theaters around the country, Americans, as part of the newly democratized audience, made known their own feelings about Revolutionary War memory and the Quasi-War. For example, New York audiences proved unwilling to accept a critical theatrical interpretation of the Revolutionary War offered in  by Federalist playwright William Dunlap. Dunlap, the best-known American playwright and theater manager of the late eighteenth century, produced and published his Revolutionary War play, André, in the city in March , just as France was rejecting American negotiators and it seemed that a new declaration of war might be right around the corner.103 Dunlap intended his play to present a ‘‘free poetical picture’’ of the Revolutionary War by casting Major John André as a tragic hero. André, the British spy who was executed by the Americans for conspiring with Benedict Arnold, had been revered as a romantic figure by some Americans during the war because even until death he had remained a consummate gentleman.104 Dunlap sought to present André’s execution by the American army as a tragedy that defiled the noble American cause because he believed that executing the traitor was beneath a true republic and that the memory of the black act betrayed the nation. This characterization of the British spy-master as a hero was certainly controversial and could be taken as quite pro-Federalist when viewed in light of the diplomatic events of . Even if Dunlap did not intend his play to be pro-British, presenting André as an aristocratic and gentlemanly figure of honor at a time when Federalists were clamoring for war against Revolutionary France held direct political connotations. In the printed preface to the play, Dunlap maintained that such a portrait of André was perfectly legitimate because although ‘‘the subject necessarily involves political questions . . . the Author presumes that he owes no apology to any one for having shewn himself an American.’’ 105 Dunlap’s audience in largely Democratic-Republican New York City proved unwilling to accept a thoroughly skeptical view of the true patriotism of the American military, and they particularly rejected Dunlap’s seemingly





pro-Federalist use of Revolutionary War memory. A scene in the original version of the play in which a character refused to wear a ‘‘black and white cockade, indicating the union with France’’ as a symbol of his disapproval of André’s execution was publicly rebuked with ‘‘a few hisses’’ in the theater and attacked in the press after the first evening’s performance.106 Not only did the audience disapprove of the traitor appearing to be more heroic than an American officer, but the cockade, a ribbon rosette usually worn on men’s hats and women’s dresses, was a highly charged political symbol during the Quasi-War. During the s, red, white, and blue cockades were worn by Democratic Republicans and radicals to demonstrate their continued sympathies with the French, while Federalists and conservatives sported the black cockades traditionally worn by Revolutionary War officers as badges of their party affiliation. During the diplomatic crises of , the black cockade also gained wide popularity as a symbol of general American patriotism.107 Scholars have disagreed about the exact political leanings of Dunlap’s play, but the black and white cockade appears to be the playwright’s attempt to fuse the Democratic-Republican and Federalist symbols in order to please both political camps. Instead, he pleased neither, and his audience members reacted almost violently.108 Dunlap recognized that his play had particularly offended ‘‘the veterans of the American army who were present on the first night,’’ and he worried that he would be unable to continue the play without revisions. Although he thought, ‘‘surely they must remember the diversity of opinion which agitated the minds of men at that time,’’ Dunlap had underestimated the public’s willingness to tolerate diversity in patriotic art during a time of renewed military conflict.109 The people, in the form of New York’s theater audience, were unwilling to accept the British spy as an heroic figure of the American war, let alone one worth memorializing on stage in the language reserved for national heroes.110 The ‘‘democratic’’ audience voted in favor of true republican heroism and rejected Dunlap’s attempts to have his party politics both ways. Other theater companies were unafraid to announce their Federalist leanings to their audiences. Theater shared much in common with public ritual in the s, and Revolutionary War dramas often contained spectacles and patriotic symbolism worthy of any public celebration. The appearance of images of the Revolutionary War on the stage emphasized the performative nature of memories of the war, especially those in public ritual, and they dramatized the mixture of republican and democratic imagery that had crept into even Federalist commemorations by the end of the decade. Many theatrical productions actually contained scenes of military memory that mim-




Chapter 

icked public festivals, and theaters often took part in public commemorations. In April , for example, Boston’s Federal Street Theater, a theater patronized by many fashionable citizens of the city, staged a pantomime of the ‘‘ of , or, His return to Mount Vernon,’’ complete with actresses portraying ‘‘America’’ and ‘‘Liberty’’ and with the ‘‘American Citizens, Women and Children’’ who welcomed Washington portrayed ‘‘by the rest of the company.’’ 111 Other theatrical entertainments were designed to coincide with public celebrations or to play an important part in the festivities.112 For example, theaters often linked their productions to public celebrations of Washington’s Birthday. The City Theater in Charleston, South Carolina, advertised that after their regular plays in February , they would present ‘‘A Song in Celebration of  and .’’ 113 The Federal Street Theater mounted a performance of John Burk’s play Bunker Hill as part of the Boston Federalists’ celebrations of the holiday in .114 Even as tensions were rising with France, Revolutionary War memory was not restricted to the Federalist cause. John Burk’s play aptly demonstrates the malleability of theater as a democratic art form and as an appropriate commemoration of the Revolutionary War. Burk, an Irish radical who had escaped to America to elude British police and was arrested in  under the Sedition Act for writing outspoken Democratic-Republican propaganda, intended his play to aid the Democratic-Republican cause, but he created a work that could be viewed in several different ways by its audience. Revolutionary War memory was so fundamentally patriotic that Federalists and Democratic Republicans could claim the same play as a symbol of their national commitment. Burk appealed to his audience with every patriotic trope he could think of. The play was so rich with patriotic images of military nationalism that it could bolster both republican and democratic political cultures and both political parties simultaneously. Although Bunker Hill; or the Death of General Warren; an Historic Tragedy, in Five Acts was performed by Boston Federalists in , it had premiered at Boston’s Republican Haymarket Theater in .115 In order to reinforce the assertion that ‘‘The spirit of old Rome’’ was inspiring Americans to usher in a ‘‘new era,’’ the play presented a familiarly heroic vision of the battle to its audiences in which the brave American troops were led by the sacrifice of the noble hero, Joseph Warren. Warren’s character defined in clear terms to the audience what a good patriot should be: ‘‘The patriot should o’er leap all obstacles / Which stand between him and his darling country.’’ The audience was invited to feel the fear of battle as cannons fired on stage while Warren delivered his farewell soliloquy. But the





thrill of battle was followed by the sting of death, and the play concluded with a ritualistic funeral procession for the fallen hero. Two ‘‘virgins’’ invoked the audience to keep the hero’s memory dear as they led the procession past a bier ‘‘decorated with republican emblems, and popular devices.’’ 116 Burk’s play ran to full houses in New York and Boston, and the Federalist newspaper the Columbian Centinel reported that ‘‘Four crowded houses have witnessed, by the loudest plaudits, to its excellence; and if given out four times more will still fill the house. Not to have seen the Bunker Hill tragedy will fix on the delinquent a want of taste, and a deficiency of patriotism.’’ 117 Both Federalist and Republican audiences responded to the messages in Burk’s play about how sacrifice bound Americans together. The patriotic message of Revolutionary War memory, a traditional hero accepted by the democratic, patriotic audience, could function even outside the restrictions of party. The mixture of democratic and republican themes in popular culture and the power of the audience were so potent that, by the end of the s, even monument building was affected. The construction of the battle monument in Lexington, Massachusetts, demonstrates how the republican and democratic traditions of Revolutionary War memory were beginning to blend into something new by decade’s end. During the s the citizens of Lexington decided to add a stone obelisk to the green where they yearly celebrated their own battle anniversary and the glory of the nation. The Lexington monument would honor martyrs of the Revolution, but rather than individual officer heroes, these martyrs were residents of the town. The monument would stand on the battle green, where so many commemorative ceremonies had previously taken place, as a permanent reminder not of aristocratic generals, but of the local men who died in the Battle of Lexington. The names of common militia members inscribed in stone would act as reminders of individual and community sacrifice on behalf of the nation. As Lexington’s selectmen planned the monument’s construction during the s, they realized that it would be of national significance, and Joseph Simonds petitioned the state of Massachusetts for funds to ensure the monument’s public access and protection. The Massachusetts legislature appropriated funds for the monument in  and .118 The monument’s planners chose an obelisk shape similar to the one included on Montgomery’s monument in New York for their stone marker, but they used the Egyptian symbol of heroism in the service of much humbler subjects than had ever been proposed by Congress. The monument was erected in , and its inscription listed the names of the ‘‘sons’’ of Lexington who had ‘‘sealed & defended’’ the cause of liberty with their lives. The inscription also drew attention to those




Chapter 

who had built the monument as it announced to onlookers: ‘‘This Monument is erected by the inhabitants of Lexington, Under the patronage & at the expense of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.’’ 119 The Lexington monument drew attention to the public that built it as a tribute to humble, local men and hinted at the future power of ‘‘the people’’ to define the national memory of the war.

The Death of Washington The people reacted with unprecedented public grief when George Washington died on December , , as the French crisis was drawing to a close.120 Just as the campaign that would catapult Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans into national power was beginning, the Federalists lost one of their most important, if controversial, political symbols. But it soon became clear that Washington’s heroic status would be both continued and transformed by his demise. Dying allowed him to transcend mere mortality and assume ultimate status as an eternal hero along with the celebrated martyrs of the Revolution. Death muted much of the political controversy that had swirled around Washington as president during the s and returned him to the realm of a pure war hero. His death also shows that party politics had not totally subsumed the consensual image of Revolutionary War memory and that the process of democratization of memory was ongoing, but not complete. As news of the former president’s death spread, Americans everywhere prepared to memorialize their hero. All over the country, from Natchez, Mississippi, to Bennington, Vermont, ritual funeral processions and public orations commemorated Washington as a triumphant hero.121 The Newport Mercury reported: ‘‘The universal Depression of the public Mind . . . continues unabated; and is demonstrated by the Anxiety every where displayed, to make an affectionate Acknowledgment of ‘the vast debt of Gratitude’ which is due to the Virtues, Talents, and ever memorable services, of the illustrious Deceased.’’ 122 Even those who could not attend a ceremony in person could participate vicariously in a wide variety of funeral rites: ‘‘The papers of the Union are graced with accounts of the manifestation of sorrow for the decease of that first of citizens, of Generals, and of statesmen, the beloved Washington.’’ 123 Men and women of all religions and political persuasions gathered publicly to mourn him in the most widespread national ritual since the war.124 The death and commemoration of George Washington marked the end





Sacred to the Memory of the Illustrious G. Washington, c. . © – www. arttoday.com. Traditional mourning pictures like this one in honor of George Washington accompanied the great public outpouring of grief upon Washington’s death in . In this engraving, the allegorical figure brings the weeping man and woman to the memorial for the fallen hero to stress that his memory must be preserved. Similar images were carried in funeral processions and reproduced in needlework by American women.

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

of a decade of political tumult and cultural proliferation. Washington’s death allowed the memory of his war-hero status to eclipse the political controversy of the s. Federalists and Republicans had not agreed on his political convictions or his performance as president, but at his death they could rally around his reputation as a military hero even more solidly than they had in his birthday celebrations or on the Fourth of July. It was largely Washington’s




Chapter 

military reputation that allowed Mason Weems to write of the solemn observance of his death: ‘‘in this all were federalists, all were republicans.’’ 125 Both the democratic and republican traditions of military memory were embodied in public as thousands of ordinary people turned out to celebrate their virtuous, departed champion and to remember him as a military hero. In doing so, they also reconfirmed their devotion to the united nation that Washington represented. One example out of the hundreds of separate public rituals enacted at Washington’s death will show how public memories of the Revolutionary War embodied the mixture of republicanism and democracy in American political culture at the end of the s. The funeral ceremony held for George Washington in Bennington, Vermont, on December , , illustrates how his death displayed the centrality of Revolutionary War memories to the way Americans imagined themselves in national political terms, almost in spite of party differences. Anthony Haswell used Washington’s funeral rite to celebrate civic and national unity, even though he had become a staunch Democratic Republican and was awaiting trial for sedition after having been arrested only two months before by local Federalists for attacking President Adams in print.126 During the s, Haswell had become an increasingly radical democrat who helped transform the Bennington battle commemorations that he coordinated into French-style popular political festivals.127 The Bennington ceremonies, which had taken place since the s, began the s as fairly conservative commemorations of the Revolutionary War’s ‘‘venerable fathers and heroes,’’ but as the decade wore on the celebrations assumed a more radical democratic style. The Bennington battle celebrations brought the community together to celebrate Vermont’s military accomplishments. After , Haswell and other Democratic Republicans in Bennington, began to use memories of the Revolutionary War to express their increasing support for the French Revolution.128 The  town parade, for example, mixed symbols of American military memory and French politics. It began with ‘‘the flag of the United States, the tri-coloured standard of France, and the cap of liberty, handsomely decorated, severally borne by three aged veterans of ’’ and included a ballad that decried Jay’s Treaty for violating the ‘‘Vox Populi.’’ 129 An operatic medley performed at the commemoration in  likened Napoleon Bonaparte to Washington and praised the power of democratic warfare and bloodshed to set the world free, and in  local militia companies erected a liberty pole (in the French model) in the center of town.130 By  the signs of radical French-style democracy were everywhere on August . That year





the ceremonial toasts praised the heroes of the Revolution as well as questioning the truth of the XYZ Affair and celebrating ‘‘the people of America, may he who rules in heaven protect them from the machinations of aristocracy and the wiles of monarchy.’’ 131 Anthony Haswell delivered an oration in  that contended it was precisely for democratic freedom that blood had been shed at the Battle of Bennington, so Americans must ‘‘watch our government with a careful . . . eye’’ and be ready to fight against tyranny again.132 It was this style of public celebration, combined with Haswell’s controversial editorial writing that got him in trouble with some of his more conservative neighbors, who viewed him as the perfect target of the Sedition Act. This controversy and the changing politics of public commemoration in Bennington formed the context for the town’s funeral for George Washington. Like most of the local processions in honor of Washington, Bennington’s ritual was organized quite spontaneously. The people of Bennington learned of Washington’s death on December , , and during the county court meeting on Christmas Day it was resolved ‘‘that some suitable public demonstration of their regard for the character of the deceased would doubtless be shewn by the community.’’ A committee of citizens, with Anthony Haswell acting as clerk, met the next evening at Mr. Nairn’s tavern to discuss arrangements for the local funeral rite. On December , Haswell published a handbill advertising the ceremony and distributed it ‘‘extensively.’’ 133 The funeral procession was set to form at the courthouse on the afternoon of December  with soldiers and militiamen in full uniform and the citizens of Bennington wearing ‘‘a crape or black ribbon round the left arm as a badge of mourning.’’ 134 Anthony Haswell stressed in the handbill advertising the occasion that all ranks of men were welcome to commemorate their national hero: ‘‘the farmer, the artisan, the manufacturer, the soldier, the statesman, and the philosopher, must join in bewailing this national calamity . . . as they embalm his memory with the tear of grateful recollection.’’ 135 On this occasion, expressing gratitude to the national hero bound all men (and some of the female spectators) together in the fulfillment of a national duty. On the afternoon of December , the men of the town congregated at the courthouse to form ‘‘the most solemn, and well ordered procession that ever was seen in Bennington.’’ They arranged themselves into groups (the militia and army officers, young lads and men, the freemasons, the governor and clergy) and marched to the meetinghouse to the accompaniment of a ‘‘solemn dirge.’’ At the meetinghouse, a larger audience that included many women listened to a funeral sermon by the town’s Congregational minister, the Reverend Swift, and to songs written by Anthony Haswell for the occa-


Announcement for Bennington battle anniversary celebration, the Vermont Gazette, August , . Courtesy American Antiquarian Society. This newspaper announcement of the annual battle anniversary celebration in Bennington, Vermont, was published by Anthony Haswell, the controversial printer and primary organizer of the celebrations throughout the decade. Haswell called on everyone in Bennington to put aside political differences and ‘‘mean and sinister motives’’ in order to come together to celebrate the memory of military heroism and ‘‘patriotic republicanism.’’ As the s progressed, Haswell turned the celebration into a French-style celebration of radical democracy.





sion. Haswell then delivered a funeral oration before the company adjourned to Nairn’s tavern for a ‘‘hastily prepared’’ repast.136 Haswell’s contributions to the day displayed a mixture of republican and democratic imagery that sought to reach beyond party to create Washington as an authentic hero of the people. The songs he composed contained elaborate Roman republican imagery in which both Roman gods (Minerva, Mars, Phoebus, Virtue, and Jove) and martyred Revolutionary War, heroes (Montgomery, Mercer, Warren, Wooster, and Laurens) welcomed Washington into heaven.137 As it had since the Revolutionary War the republican tradition of military memory firmly linked Revolutionary War generals to Roman heroes. Haswell designed his oration to serve double duty as a funeral commemoration for George Washington and as a Masonic celebration of the feast of St. John the Baptist, a patron saint of Christian Masonry.138 Haswell showed his colors as a radical democrat when he praised Masonry as an organization that allowed the expression of ‘‘the natural equality of men’’ in a manner befitting America.139 This trust in Masonry as a democratic institution may have been rather misplaced, however, given the fact that one of Haswell’s Masonic brothers, Jabez Fitch, had pursued the sedition indictment against him.140 Anthony Haswell’s oration revealed how tensions in politics and democratic style could be resolved, at least for one day, around memories of the Revolutionary War. He admitted that ‘‘our land is troubled’’ by political division but claimed that praise of Washington, not as a Federalist icon but as an archetypal Revolutionary War patriot, could act to heal national and local communities. Haswell prefaced his praise of Washington with a comment on Joseph Warren, another Revolutionary War martyr who was a traditional figure of Masonic pride.141 Like Joseph Warren, Washington the war hero would ‘‘never die. . . . His memory will be forever present and forever dear, to all good men, to all who love their country.’’ 142 For one afternoon, Anthony Haswell thought that all ‘‘the people’’ could came together, ‘‘Like brethren blended in a common cause; Cemented in strict union’’ without any division to ‘‘interdict the general glee.’’ 143 The very spectacle of the Democratic-Republican printer, who had been indicted for political sedition, declaring praise for the fallen Federalist hero proved that, to some degree, he was correct. It was fitting that the decade of the s would end with the death of George Washington. Washington had embodied both the continuing tradition of Revolutionary War hero-worship and the partisan division of that decade. Partisan contests would continue after the turn of the century, as would new tests of American strength in the international arena. Republican heroes




Chapter 

were still important, but they were beginning to die off. ‘‘The people’’ who comprised the national community began to make themselves heard in culture as in politics. Americans would have to decide which memories were useful and which weren’t as they faced new problems in the new century. The s stood as a turning point in the public memory of the Revolutionary War and for the formation of American national identity. The process of democratization in public culture had begun to show real effects as popular politics also took off. Average Americans had begun to feel comfortable sharing their own Revolutionary War stories as a way to connect themselves to the American nation. But just how far this process of democratization would go and who would be able to take best advantage of it remained to be seen.


Chapter 

National Crisis and Destabilized Memory, –

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

On July , , the citizens of Lexington, Kentucky, met in the center of town to observe the festive anniversary of their nation. A majority of Lexingtonians were inspired with ‘‘enthusiasm’’ over the recent declaration of war against Great Britain, which added considerably to the patriotic zeal of their annual celebration.1 As westerners, Kentuckians hoped that the new war would allow them to clear more land for settlement and to drive away Indian enemies, whom the British supported. This particular Fourth of July brought together Lexingtonians’ memories of the Revolution with their hopes for the present conflict, and their memories of the Revolutionary War helped shape their perceptions of the potential for the new war. The day’s festivities began in a familiar manner. A parade, which included army and militia officers and students from Transylvania University, was followed with an oration by Joseph C. Breckenridge, a ‘‘War Hawk’’ member of one of Lexington’s most prominent families. When the crowd retired to Maxwell’s Spring for its usual banquet, Lexingtonians toasted ‘‘the Heroes of our Revolution’’ and their current volunteers in the hopes that ‘‘the spirit of Montgomery will lead them to victory on the plains of Abraham,’’ thus invoking the memory of the Revolutionary martyr to bolster hopes for a new invasion of Canada that had just gotten under way.2 After the ritual toasting, the evening’s festivities took an unexpected turn that dramatized how the War of  shaped this Fourth of July celebration. The symbolic ritual of public memory turned more violent in tone when someone in the crowd began shouting epithets against John Pope, Kentucky’s senator who had opposed the recent declaration of war. The Kentucky Gazette reported that while ‘‘the great body of the people are content with the delivery of their opinions in conversations, toasts and resolutions, others with more ardour and unrestrained indignation h[e]ld him up to scorn.’’ The




Chapter 

citizens of Lexington, Kentucky, who were overwhelmingly Democratic Republican and overwhelmingly for the War of , tied their own wishes for the current situation to the glorious war that had come before, but they did so with a violent twist informed by the politics of their new war. Traditional Fourth of July ceremonies and peaceful toasting and speeches that called up memories of the Revolutionary War did not completely satisfy the patriotic zeal of some members of the community, and the ritualized military memory may have even helped push them into a more extreme show of political disaffection. After the peaceful celebration at Maxwell’s Spring concluded, Pope’s effigy was paraded through the streets of the town, shot at, and burned.3 The developments on July ,  in Lexington represent how the memory of the Revolutionary War destabilized and became more controversial during a new period of military conflict in the United States. Public memory of the Revolutionary War had created a fairly stable image of American national identity based on sacrifice and heroism over the previous thirty years, albeit an identity to which individuals did not possess equal access. Between  and , however, a new era of crisis in American politics, foreign policy, and social order changed the way that Revolutionary memory functioned. As many different individuals and groups continued to use military memory to validate their positions in society and their own patriotism, their intentional uses of symbols from the Revolutionary War began to expose the constructed nature of public memory itself. The militarism of public memory made it especially relevant to the new war, but the controversial nature of the War of  reflected back upon Revolutionary War memory. Greater democratic political participation and intentional uses of military symbolism meant that Americans had to confront conflicts over their memory and national identity. Commemorations of the Revolutionary War emerged from the s more contested and more controversial than ever. Most people still did not question that the Revolutionary War had virtually created the nation. For example, South Carolinian David Ramsay gave testament in his  History of the American Revolution to the military origins of the American nation. Ramsay argued that the Revolutionary War had helped to turn thirteen disorganized, separate colonies into one cohesive American nation as the blood of martyred Revolutionary War soldiers had ‘‘proved the firm cement of an extensive union.’’ 4 Ramsay described how the ‘‘common cause’’ of warfare had introduced Americans to one another and laid a foundation ‘‘for the establishment of a nation, out of discordant materials.5 Ramsay argued that out of the conflict of the Revolutionary War


National Crisis and Destabilized Memory



had come union and harmony, and his history was intended to perpetuate the process by preserving military memory. During the first two decades of the nineteenth century, memories of this idealized Revolutionary War were still expected to recreate the national community founded in the war itself, but the question arose whether the national feeling inspired by public memory was strong enough to paper over the growing differences in American society. Only through continual vigilance could memories of the Revolutionary War recreate, as the Rev. William Emerson called it in , ‘‘That continental patriotism, which, in a time of war, was able to bend individual interest to the common benefit.’’ 6 Americans’ ‘‘continental patriotism’’ was tested sorely between  and  by social and cultural change and by international crisis. During those years, Americans confronted the question of whether the national feeling they had built since the Revolutionary War would survive a new generation of military contest. The destabilization of Revolutionary War memory and the potential threat to the feeling of national identity were exacerbated by the fact that the United States faced very real tests of its strength and status in the world during the same period. Although tensions with France subsided for a time after Jefferson was elected president and the Quasi-War never turned into a full-blown military conflict, the nation faced a series of dramatic new crises. Between  and , the United States engaged in a series of naval battles with Tripoli and the other Barbary states in North Africa, which were interfering with American shipping and holding American sailors hostage. Great Britain and France threatened the fledgling national strength of the United States overseas, especially after Napoleon came to power in  and Britain increasingly turned to naval blockades to isolate France. Americans tried to play each side off against the other and to carry on commercial relations with both sides engaged in the Napoleonic wars, but neither power showed much respect for American sovereignty. The European wars interrupted American trade and wreaked diplomatic havoc, and they also exacerbated political rifts within the United States. The Democratic Republicans controlled national politics after Jefferson’s election in , but the Federalists remained powerful (especially in New England), and the two parties did not agree on how to respond to the international crises any more than they agreed on internal policy or styles of American political culture. In the years leading up to the War of , the Democratic Republicans (who slashed funding for the army) favored stringent commercial sanctions, particularly against the British, while the Federalists, who remained sympathetic to the British, favored negotiation.7 The American pub-




Chapter 

lic, and the two parties, remained split over how to respond to European belligerence, even when war seemed increasingly probable by . In a new era of violent conflict, Americans of different political persuasions turned to memories of the Revolutionary War experience for a guide to action. Traditional, republican commemorations and symbols retained much of their power to bolster American pride, but more democratic public memories also seemed directly relevant to the new era of international crisis. Just as the War of  tested the actual strength of the American nation, changing perceptions of the Revolutionary War tested the cultural ideal of nationhood. Although firmly rooted in images of a past considered stable by most people at the time, the discourse of military memory was actually quite malleable in the face of contemporary crisis. Memories of the Revolutionary War served both supporters and opponents of the War of , and Revolutionary War memories were used as weapons in political campaigns. Before and during the War of , democratic memories of the Revolutionary War flourished. But after the war, new forms of history and biography tried to shore up an objective vision of a stable past to provide terms for judging the present. Voice after voice stressed to the public that proper commemoration required continual vigilance, as the ‘‘real’’ memory of the war and even the idea of public gratitude no longer could be taken for granted. The democratization of war memory that had begun in the s and accelerated in the s began to have real-world consequences after the turn of the century as more people than ever were able to bring their personal memories of the Revolutionary War into the public sphere. Not only did more average war veterans tell their war stories publicly, but the definition of Revolutionary War heroism finally expanded to include some of them in the ranks of public figures who might be emulated by a grateful public. This multiplicity of voices reinforced the democratic memory of the Revolutionary War in the face of renewed military conflict. More people, particularly more lower-class white men, were able to relate their own Revolutionary War stories. Although officer heroes were still held up as the greatest exemplars of individual sacrifice, some common soldiers (helped by democratic politics) began to break the mold of Revolutionary War heroism. For the first time it began to be acknowledged by some that memory of the war might not be determined by public consensus but might actually change depending on who was doing the remembering. This did not mean giving up the ideal of objectivity, but rather that people were more willing to debate in public whose vision of the truth was the correct one. The voluntary memory of ‘‘the people’’ was not necessarily monolithic, nor could it





be taken for granted. For example, General William Moultrie wrote in  that he had been moved to publish a memoir ‘‘to hand down to posterity the particulars’’ of the Revolutionary War after he ‘‘read several authors on the subject, and found them very deficient.’’ 8 Public culture became the arena for a highly personalized battle over the remembrance of the war and the reputation of its heroes, especially because Americans were not willing to give up the ideal of a usable past. The War of  accustomed the American public to political disagreement, and even as public memory of the Revolutionary War still allowed people to express their patriotism and national commitment, the memories themselves began to seem less stable than ever before.

Democratic Memory and Growing Tension

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

As the American republic struggled to come into its own during the first decade of the nineteenth century, the cultural ideal of national unity was tested by the quick changes in American society. The atmosphere of crisis and the growing tension over new military and international conflicts added new urgency to the proper memory of Revolutionary War sacrifice. Americans looked to their past, in as many ways as possible, to help them get through new crises. Old-style heroic memories offered images of stability and national confidence, and individuals’ liberal democratic memories offered a new resolve in the face of increasing military tension. Memories of the Revolutionary War offered a potentially stable past to hold the nation together in the face of change. But memories of the war did not remain stable themselves. During the first ten years of the nineteenth century, public memories of the Revolutionary War changed in both form and content, and some forms of military memory began to be noticeably different from those that had come before. As tensions built toward the War of  and a new outbreak of violence seemed increasingly likely, Americans were more actively concerned with their nation’s reputation than ever before, and they looked to the glorious example of their Revolutionary War victory for direction as they made their way in the world. National honor founded on military memory provided a strong precedent for a new breed of militarism. Depending on the political, class, or regional interests of the people doing the commemorating, however, inspirational memories could take very different forms as Americans used the past as a guide. A newly vibrant domestic economy and the growth of internal markets added new energy to American society, as population growth and west-




Chapter 

ward migration continued and new towns were founded at an astounding rate. Allan Kulikoff comments of the period: ‘‘long-distance migration rapidly increased and population turnover in cities and on frontiers skyrocketed.’’ Americans were producing and consuming more, and commercial exports grew from . million in  to . million in .9 Americans struggled to build a national economy on a par with their growing cultural confidence. Americans achieved new levels of economic influence in the world, but they were plagued by international difficulties that exacerbated domestic political disputes. Domestic manufacturers sought buyers for their goods around the world, and Americans consumed four times more imported goods than they had in the s, but European disrespect for American sovereignty impeded international trade and threatened continued growth. Trade difficulties seemed to multiply as American merchants spread throughout the world. The British (and sometimes the French) encouraged the Barbary states to seize American goods, ships, and sailors until the end of the Tripolitan War in . The British themselves seized  American flag vessels between  and  alone.10 Internally, political parties became better organized and more entrenched than ever in American politics as Americans started to become more comfortable with the idea of legitimate political opposition. Regional tensions escalated as western and southern Democratic Republicans became increasingly alienated by Federalist New England. Jefferson and his political allies committed themselves to commercial sanctions as the ‘‘virtuous’’ alternative to war, but after  when the Embargo failed, hopes of peace began to crumble. The Federalists, many of whom made money from commerce, remained committed to peace and friendship with Britain throughout the period.11 In the midst of all this change and chaos, the collective memory of great heroes still helped to define national identity at the turn of the century. The continued veneration of individual officer-heroes ensured the survival of a republican vision of the war that tied the fate of the nation to the elite men who had sacrificed for their country. Even in a new political context in which the wealthy were not always automatically accepted as the natural leaders of society, images of the martyred officers of the Revolution were still expected to inspire emulation in ‘‘the virtuous American Youth’’ who pondered the heroic deeds of ‘‘a , a , a , and a .’’ 12 Traditional rhetoric concerning how the nation was held together by the memo-





ries of noble Revolutionary sacrifice still served its purpose on occasion— particularly on the Fourth of July. Memories of the Revolutionary War in Fourth of July celebrations show that consensual images of heroic praise still held considerable sway in public culture. Although Federalists and Democratic Republicans frequently celebrated Independence Day at separate, partisan occasions, especially in the major cities, public rituals continued to stress national unity and military memory. Both Federalist and Republican Fourth of July celebrations praised the great heroes of the Revolution, whose memory served to reemphasize a message of union on ‘‘the birth-day . . . of our .’’ 13 Some of the ‘‘Republican young men of Boston’’ formed an organization called the Washington Society in  to sponsor Democratic-Republican celebrations and to insure proper gratitude to ‘‘the heroes and statesmen of the Revolution,’’ whose ‘‘blood and . . . toil laid the foundation upon which the noble structure of our government is raised.’’ 14 Throughout the decade, their annual toasts and public odes feted ‘‘those heroes who fought and died in defence of our Independence,’’ ‘‘General Warren and all those who died martyrs in the cause of freedom,’’ ‘‘Our Fathers, who fell in their Country’s just cause,’’ and ‘‘The Heroes of the Revolution—May their offspring evince a respect for their memory.’’ 15 Across town, Federalists often stressed similar messages of heroic memory. For example, in an oration before the Charlestown, Massachusetts, Light Infantry Company on July , , Benjamin Gleason proclaimed that ‘‘the guardian Angel of our Union’’ would not allow Americans to forget war heroes: ‘‘While Memory holds her mental feat, may we never forget those, to whom we stand indebted for our  . . . and while Gratitude warms the human breast, may our hearts cherish the noble principles of Republican Virtue.’’ 16 Boston’s young Federalists and Democratic Republicans could not agree on much prior to the War of , but they shared a reverence for Revolutionary heroism and a hope that it would inspire continued patriotism. The Washington Society sent a laudatory message to the city’s Young Federalists in  that said, ‘‘Though different in political opinions, let us not stain the glory of our ancestors, but, like them, resolve not to part with our birthright.’’ 17 The Revolutionary precedent was important, whatever the partisan character of the celebration. As the country seemed constantly on the brink of war again, orators stressed that on the Fourth of July, Americans had to remember that ‘‘, , and !’’ and all the other ‘‘gallant spirits, who fell with glory in the heat of battle’’ were happy to die




Chapter 

to bring their compatriots together.18 Richard Mentor Johnson, a Kentucky politician and future vice president of the United States, invited the youth of Lexington, Kentucky, to ‘‘examine the bloody ensanguined plain! see the victor encircled with a crown of political martyrdom—retrospect this memorable era of patriotic sacrifice’’ in order to imagine their own future service to the nation.19 Many still envisioned a nation unified by voluntary gratitude for the officer-heroes of the Continental Army. During the first decade of the nineteenth century, Revolutionary War naval memory and naval heroes began to share the public spotlight with army heroes as they never had before. Public memories of Revolutionary naval conflicts had never occupied a very important or prominent place in public culture, even during the Quasi-War with France. A few sailors had published memoirs and some coastal towns like Charleston, South Carolina, included some praise of seafaring men in their celebrations of military victories, but by and large naval events were not commemorated. In the face of constant new crises on the high seas, however, commemorations of naval heroism seemed newly important, and public memory adapted. Although memory had changed over the previous decades as common individuals had been working to add their stories to the public memory of the war, the new public memory of naval contests marked the first time an entire category of war memory had been revived. The nation was being tested by naval conflicts, and the Revolutionary naval past resurfaced to offer new confidence. The sheer variety of naval difficulties facing the United States after the turn of the century was daunting. In  the Pasha of Tripoli declared war on the United States, and more than four hundred American sailors were taken captive before Stephen Decatur’s naval victory subdued hostilities with Tripoli and the other Barbary states. Neither the British nor the French exhibited much respect for American shipping, and both countries refused to observe Americans’ neutral trading rights during the Anglo-French Wars. Between  and , the British and French combined seized over  American ships. The British navy impressed an estimated , American seamen into service when press gangs, seeking to repatriate British sailors, instead kidnapped American citizens. The British navy also illegally enforced blockades and violated American territorial waters.20 Although Jefferson’s policy of favoring the navy over the army seemed vindicated by success in the Tripolitan war, Republicans failed to negotiate a peaceful solution to European interference on the high seas when Jefferson scuttled the Monroe-Pinckney treaty with Britain in . In this context of heightened tension at sea, suddenly images of the





Revolutionary naval contest gained new currency. International threats and the internal political divisions they spawned threatened to tear the country apart, but memories of the Revolutionary War seemed to offer a model of strength born of internal unity. Naval heroes, both great and humble, assumed new importance as examples of how to stand up against the British (and other belligerent powers) and how to protect the national reputation. The instant creation of naval heroes, however, did not mean that these men were regarded in the same light as the great army heroes, who had been popular since the war. Revolutionary naval memory was useful in a crisis, but it turned out to be quite different from other heroic war memories. The greatest republican naval hero was John Paul Jones. Jones had been a highly successful naval officer during the Revolutionary War; he had directly attacked the coast of Scotland and had captured the ship Serapis in one of the few naval defeats handed to the British. Although an important figure, he had never become as popular as army heroes like Montgomery, Washington, or Warren. Jones was awarded a gold medal by Congress in , but he had suffered several attacks upon his reputation after the Revolutionary War, especially for joining the French and Russian navies at the war’s end, and he died in France in , almost forgotten by the American public. Now some Americans tried to reclaim their greatest naval hero as a praiseworthy figure. Nathaniel Fanning, one of Jones’s aides during the Revolutionary War, argued in his memoir that Jones’s ‘‘conduct, bravery, and perseverance’’ in the Revolutionary War merited glory and that his bravery entitled ‘‘his name to be enrolled among the saviours of our country.’’ 21 Jones himself had established the basis for the public campaign to include him among the pantheon of American heroes. He had written a selfaggrandizing memoir in , which he presented to Louis XVI as part of his campaign for a commission in the French navy.22 This memoir, which detailed Jones’s exploits against the British, became a unique piece of pro-American propaganda during the new conflict with Britain. Peter K. Wagner published an English translation of Jones’s French memoir in Philadelphia in , and the translation was serialized in Niles Weekly Register at the beginning of the War of . Jones appears in the memoir as the quintessential gentleman officer who maintains control of his crew while besting the British at every turn. Jones reminded his readers that Congress had voted in  to thank him for ‘‘the zeal, the prudence and the intrepidity, with which I had sustained the honour of the American flag.’’ In the text, Jones tried to bolster his own heroic reputation by presenting an unflinching portrait of his talents and refined judgment. For example, when he related how his quick action delivering




Chapter 

captured supplies had ‘‘reanimated the courage of the army under general Washington’’ before the battle of Trenton, he took personal credit for the feat and boasted of his own tactical brilliance.23 Jones presented himself as consistently more interested in ‘‘honor’’ than financial gain, which was assumed to motivate most naval operatives (particularly privateers). John Paul Jones offered the closest thing to a naval heroic icon in the mold of Warren or Montgomery that Americans had available. But he differed from those earlier heroes in several respects that help to dramatize the difficulty of simply ‘‘unforgetting’’ the naval past. Jones’s memoir, which he wrote to promote himself to the French monarch, differentiated him from American heroes who were canonized by a willing public. His memoir was intended as propaganda, and he actively tried to rehabilitate his own reputation and to guarantee his own public memory, something that traditional American heroes never could have done (and something that the democratic public had been unwilling to accept, for example, from the Society of the Cincinnati). Ironically, Jones’s own efforts to rehabilitate himself made him less effective as an American heroic figure, who was strongest when the object of spontaneous public praise.24 Because of this contradiction and because of the urgency of the crisis over impressment, images of common sailors and prisoners of war who had been abused by the British during the Revolutionary War became even more effective at rousing American emotions against naval depredations. The democratization of public memory had advanced sufficiently by  to allow common men to become increasingly comfortable telling their own war stories. Sailors who had been prisoners of war or had been impressed during the Revolutionary War seemed to speak directly to contemporary problems when they related their past experiences. Although average navy veterans did not try to make themselves into grand republican heroes, democratic sincerity that stressed the power of individuals to resist naval depredations better served current needs than did carefully constructed republican propaganda. For example, Joshua Davis, an American seaman who had been forced into the British navy during the Revolutionary War, published a memoir of his experiences that showed how memories of the Revolutionary War could be made directly relevant to current British aggression. Davis included in his memoir satirical ‘‘advice to those of his countrymen, who should happen to be forced on board of any of the ships of his Britannic majesty’’ and tips on how to be whipped, hanged from the yard arm, and buried. When Davis was wounded in a battle against the French navy, his memoir presented an unflinching view of British cruelty toward impressed seamen as he described





the ‘‘saws and knives, cutting, hacking and mangling of hands, arms, legs, feet, &c. of those poor unfortunate men that were pressed and dragged into the service against their will.’’ Davis’s memoir of the Revolution offered no comfort to those readers who were ‘‘ever anxious to know the fate of [their] fathers, husbands, brothers, uncles, cousins, or sweethearts’’ who had been impressed.25 In a new atmosphere of crisis, the voice of the humble sailor cried out not just for personal gratitude but for renewed action against continued British cruelty. Images of American prisoners of war, particularly those who had been held onboard British prison ships during the Revolutionary War, prompted highly emotional expressions of bloody patriotism similar to those described by Davis. Prison ships, mostly anchored off the coast of New York, had held thousands of American soldiers and sailors during the Revolution in squalid, violent conditions, while officers were paroled or kept in refined comfort in private homes. The suffering of these humble men seemed to offer a more direct parallel to Barbary captives and impressed sailors (some of whom published their own captivity narratives) than did the daring exploits of John Paul Jones. Jonathan Russell, a recent Brown University graduate who would go on to become a commissioner of the Treaty of Ghent, proclaimed in a Providence, Rhode Island, Fourth of July oration in : ‘‘It was in the dungeons of our inhuman invaders; it was in their loathsome and pestiferous prisonships, that the wretchedness of our countrymen still makes the heart bleed.’’ 26 Memories of the sufferings of common men on the prison ships of the Revolution were designed to increase public indignation and resolve against the British. Poet Philip Freneau, who had been a British prisoner of war, wrote a horrifying poem in  depicting the British prison ship that had held him during the Revolution and warning Americans not to allow new British naval belligerence: O may I never feel the poignant pain, To live subjected to such fiends again! . . . O may I n’er re-view those dire abodes, Those piles for slaughter, floating on the floods! And you, that o’er the troubled ocean go, Strike not your standards to this cruel foe.27

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

In Freneau’s mind, the suffering of American Revolutionary prisoners of war implored society not to allow impressed seamen to share their fate, and he




Chapter 

begged American ships not to ‘‘strike’’ their ‘‘standards’’ in surrender. New national threats on the high seas continued to be conceived of in terms of old crises survived. Between  and , the Republicans waged a war of words against the French and British for impressing American sailors and for seizing ships. But strong words did not seem to be making things much better, and memories of the Revolutionary War seemed to demand stronger action.

Prison-Ship Martyrs and the Redefinition of Heroism

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Public memory itself also changed in the process. As the international naval conflicts (particularly over impressment) came to a head, Americans who had been held on British prison ships stood firmly at the center of a redefinition of heroism in the years before the War of . Martyred prisoners of war were elevated into the first full-fledged common Revolutionary War heroes worthy of national gratitude, and the very concept of heroic gratitude itself was altered as a result. Specific members of the American community, energized by their belief in popular democracy, demanded that thousands of common soldiers who had died for their country could represent national honor as well as, or even better than, any one dead officer ever had. The New York Tammany Society, a fraternal organization of middleclass artisans and workingmen who belonged to the most important chapter of a nationwide organization, spearheaded the elevation of the prison-ship martyrs. The Tammany men collected the discarded bones of prisoners of war and sought to build them a grand memorial. The extensive efforts of the New York Tammany Society to valorize the common prisoners of the Revolutionary War showed the effects of the previous democratization of memory and, in turn, continued the process as members of the Society used Revolutionary War memory both to help define proper national identity and to bolster their own place within it. When the Tammany Society tried to create humble revolutionary heroes, it also demonstrated the potential bond between the increasing democratic rhetoric of military memory and the actual power of democratic politics. The members of the Tammany Society, as strong supporters of Jeffersonian politics and as an increasingly active group in the Democratic-Republican party, purported to be concerned only about proper national gratitude for the humble heroes of the war as they engaged in their high-profile public project. But in the process of creating those heroes, they also helped consolidate their place in New York politics as a group to be reck-





oned with (which helped begin their rise to power as the Democratic stronghold of Tammany Hall).28 Public interest in the former prisoners of war first started to grow late in , when thousands of their bones were excavated at Wallabout Bay, the construction site of the new Brooklyn Navy Yard.29 During the Revolutionary War, the British had anchored a fleet of  prison ships (including the infamous ‘‘Old Jersey’’) in Wallabout Bay, which lay across from Manhattan near Long Island. Each prison ship had held hundreds of American naval prisoners at a time, and the squalor and inadequate food on board the ships had caused large numbers of deaths among the prisoners, whose bodies were frequently thrown overboard or buried in shallow beach graves.30 In  ‘‘several casks and boxes’’ of bones were collected by workmen at the naval site, who quickly brought the problem of the decaying remains into the open. Great public outcry accompanied the discovery of the remains of the humble ‘‘martyrs,’’ which had been cast off the prison ships after they died, and it became commonly accepted that on the ‘‘Old Jersey’’ prison ship alone ‘‘above ELEVEN THOUSAND of our brave country-men are said to have perished.’’ 31 The figure, while probably inflated, shows how the prison ships became symbols of British inhumanity toward common Americans. In November  the Tammany Society adopted the cause of the prisonship martyrs as an opportunity to preserve the ‘‘honour of their country’’ by promoting the memory of the Revolutionary War.32 Because of the heroic character of public monuments, no monument had ever been constructed to anonymous and humble soldiers or sailors, and only the Lexington, Massachusetts, battle monument had marked the sacrifices of men who were not officers. Nonetheless, the Tammany Society, which possessed a strong identity as a workingmen’s association, began plans almost immediately to memorialize these martyrs by reinterring and marking their remains with proper gratitude and respect. The Society claimed that Americans could not continue to ‘‘refuse our admiration to patriotism so pure and exalted’’ because ingratitude to ‘‘victims for the nation’’ would be destructive to the republic.33 The Tammany men also stressed the political utility of a monument to British victims in a time of rising international aggression. Their  Evacuation Day ceremonial toasts included the following one to ‘‘The Jersey Prison Ship, may the remembrance of the Cruelties inflicted on our brethren by the Hirelings of Britain, ever stimulate us to resist oppression, whether foreign or domestic.’’ 34 By taking up the cause of the anonymous and humble prison-ship martyrs, the Tammany Society tied its dedication to democratic politics and its identity as a group of workingmen to the preservation of national honor.




Chapter 

The Tammany Society proposed to memorialize a new kind of national martyr. In  it suggested to Congress a monument ‘‘to the memory of the brave and unfortunate men who perished on board the British prison ships,’’ but the idea immediately faced opposition because of its unconventional nature.35 Congressman Samuel Mitchell from New York referred the memorial proposal to a committee ‘‘concerning monuments to be erected to the memory of Generals Wooster, Herkimer, Davidson and Scriven.’’ Unfortunately, the committee was swamped with requests to memorialize other officers, and the Wallabout monument moved to the bottom of the list. Mitchell did not encourage the Tammany Society to expect quick action because ‘‘some are of the opinion that congress ought not to appropriate public money for such purposes. Others think that the art of Printing has superseded the use and intention of monuments.’’ 36 The Tammany Society would not be satisfied with publishing books or pamphlets to the memory of these humble heroes because its members believed the prisoners of war deserved the same treatment as national heroes like Richard Montgomery, whose marble monument stood in Manhattan. The Society was bitterly disappointed by Congress’s refusal because it believed that ‘‘the application . . . was purely national, and one which deeply interested the public sensibility.’’ 37 Its members were convinced that ‘‘a monument of American materials and workmanship’’ would constitute a more glorious and lasting tribute than any the ‘‘art of Printing’’ could offer. The Tammany Society did not succeed in convincing Congress that the burial of humble ‘‘martyrs’’ was a national interest on the order of memorializing officers of the Revolution, but members vowed to publicize the martyrs’ cause and to attempt the project themselves.38 The Society’s efforts to construct a monument to the humble heroes of the Revolution again reached public attention in the winter of . By this time, tensions with Great Britain had increased considerably, and Jefferson had instituted a national embargo against all British goods. The Tammany Society maintained that Americans would sacrifice their national ‘‘character’’ and ‘‘at once forfeit all claim to their distinguished pre-eminence’’ if they continued to ignore the prison-ship martyrs and indulge in the ‘‘worst of crimes—Ingratitude!’’ Especially now that Americans were facing new British aggressions and men might be ‘‘called upon to avenge our share of their fate,’’ the lack of memory would cause an ‘‘indelible stain upon our reputation’’ as a nation. The Tammany Society decided to use all its ‘‘national structure and organization’’ to raise funds and public support for the monument.39 In February , as the Embargo failed to control the British, the





Tammany Society sent out a circular letter that begged relatives of the prisoners and the public at large not to forget ‘‘their slaughtered countrymen’’ and to contribute money for the prisoners’ memorial.40 The Wallabout Committee also sent copies of the letter to national political leaders, including President Jefferson, hoping to gain approval for their plans ‘‘to inter the bones in such a manner and with such solemnities as they may think proper.’’ 41 The circular letter brought in responses from individuals, military companies, government bodies, and democratic organizations all over New York and the nation.42 In a time of national crisis, and as an increasing number of Democratic Republicans began to call for war, democratic organizations clamored to contribute. Enthusiastic support for the monument poured in from the Hatter’s Society, the Hibernian Provident Society, the Cooper’s Society, the Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New-York, the Royal Arch Masons, and the Republican Greens. These groups represented the Tammany Society’s traditional allies in New York public ceremonies and in DemocraticRepublican politics.43 In fact, so many democratic organizations supported the monument effort that William Coleman, editor of the Federalist Evening Post, contended that the monument proposal was merely an attempt to ‘‘further the political views of party.’’ While  was a crucial year in the Tammany Society’s connection to the Clintonite Republicans who were trying to mount a campaign against James Madison for president, they relied on the disinterested appearance of their commitment to Revolutionary memory and steadfastly maintained that they were ‘‘free from party motives’’ as they acted on behalf of the nation in the matter of the prison-ship martyrs. The New York City common council appointed a committee to help the Tammany with their arrangements, and DeWitt Clinton, then Republican mayor of New York City, got the state senate to appropriate , to help with the cost of the monument.44 Because of the great outpouring of public support, in April of  the Tammany Society was able to lay the cornerstone for the monument on a piece of land in Brooklyn donated by member John Jackson.45 Benjamin Fay, the Tammany orator on the occasion, proclaimed: ‘‘Too long, has America ungratefully neglected to pay the tribute due to the bravest martyrs in the cause of liberty. . . . The republic hath never yet paid them the tribute of gratitude.’’ To the men of Tammany, these new democratic martyrs should command the same national gratitude previously offered to officer-heroes. The Tammany Society was conscious that it offered a new kind of national praise to humble men, as its pamphlet’s description of the moment when the cornerstone of




Chapter 

the monument was laid made clear: ‘‘It was a moment big with patriotic, and exhalted, and enthusiastic feeling. It seemed that the recollections and sensibilities of America were concentered—and that the debt of gratitude to the memory of , of her brave but unfortunate defenders which it belonged to the nation to discharge, was about the be cancelled.’’ The Tammany Society hoped that the monument would call out not only for national gratitude but for renewed national action against the British. The British were again threatening Americans with prisonlike conditions at sea, and the monument would stand in New York harbor as a reminder of their destructive power. Benjamin Fay remarked that the ‘‘marble column’’ would ‘‘be at once a monument to American gratitude and of English barbarity.’’ 46 Instead of invoking only the memory of a great man like John Paul Jones or a martyr like Richard Montgomery to inspire Americans to resist the new wave of British aggression, the memorial offered a model of military heroism and sacrifice to which every man could aspire. The message came through loud and clear that ‘‘so long as the British shall exist as a nation!’’ Americans should no more let their guard down than they should forget ‘‘the conduct of the British relative to the ‘Old Jersey’ and the men who died there.’’ 47 At the end of the pamphlet describing the cornerstone ceremony as the repayment of the ‘‘debt of gratitude,’’ the Tammany Society expressed its commitment to Jefferson and to the idea of renewed American military action to preserve America’s ‘‘national honor.’’ 48 While it would take four more years before mainstream Democratic Republicans were ready to declare war, the Tammany Society effectively deployed memories of the Revolution to strengthen military resolve. The process continued on May , , when the Tammany Society led a massive ceremonial procession through Manhattan to reinter the remains of the dead at its monument in Brooklyn.49 The Society claimed that over , people of both sexes and all ages, classes, religions, and political persuasions turned out to represent ‘‘a nation rising up . . . wiping off the aspersion of ingratitude, and bending with a humble piety before the relics of heroes.’’ The parade, which stretched for blocks, displayed many symbols of national unity and Revolutionary War memory, including a flag flown on the day the British evacuated New York City in  and a float bearing men dressed as allegorical figures: ‘‘The Genius of America . . . Patriotism, Honour, Virtue, Patience, Fortitude, Merit, Courage, Perseverance and Science.’’ The bones of the martyrs, which had been cremated, were carried in thirteen coffins borne by ‘‘one hundred and four revolutionary characters’’ who were members of





the thirteen state chapters of the Tammany Society.50 The entire procession traveled on specially commissioned boats across the East River to Brooklyn to the site of the monument where it ‘‘assembled to wipe away . . . a stain from our country’s glory, and to do honour to the departed patriots, of the revolution.’’ 51 The novel nature of this tribute to national heroism was not lost on New York scientist Benjamin DeWitt, the appointed funeral orator who announced his Democratic-Republican party allegiances in his ‘‘plain dress with bucktail.’’ DeWitt was clearly aware that this monument on the ‘‘field of blood’’ marked the heroism of humble, anonymous men whose ‘‘names, and their individual sufferings are buried with them in oblivion.’’ In fact, DeWitt claimed, these men died because of their humble status since unlike officers, ‘‘few could ever gain their liberty by being exchanged’’ or paroled.52 The Tammany Society ended the ceremony by recognizing the unique nature of these honors to a new kind of hero: ‘‘A Society in mourning for a hero, is interesting to every one who beholds it: but a nation of freemen, bending in tears over the tomb of eleven thousand martyrs to the cause of liberty, is a sight never before exhibited, and presents a sublime theme of the historian and the poet. Happy, happy Columbia!’’ 53 For the first time ‘‘the public’’ was offering high-style republican praise for the most humble of democratic heroes. In the process of creating this new kind of national hero, the Tammany Society had offered a particular vision of the American nation as well. The Society redefined the ideal national community when it contended that only a more open and democratic society, ‘‘a nation of freemen,’’ could properly pay the ‘‘debt of gratitude’’ to a multitude of anonymous martyrs. This democratic language of memory directly shored up the Society’s democratic politics, as the ideology and practice of nationalism came together to emphasize its public service. The Tammany Society embodied the legacy of democratization in the s, as middle- and lower-class white men assumed both ceremonial and real power to define the nation through public memory. By tying their payment of gratitude to the concept of national honor, the DemocraticRepublican Tammany Society managed to turn resistance to the British into a political imperative while still maintaining at least some appearance of impartiality. According to the ideology advanced by the Tammany Society, allowing British aggression would violate the memory of America’s newest heroes and inflict double damage to American national honor.




Chapter 

The Rhetoric of Memory and the Rush to War In addition to the Tammany monument to the democratic prison-ship heroes, other more democratic forms of culture, particularly memoirs, assumed new public prominence in the years before the War of . A handful of Revolutionary War soldiers had published memoirs previously, but beginning at the turn of the century, their numbers grew dramatically. Twelve separate authors had published war memoirs between  and , but  did so between  and .54 Individual stories and experiences had become part of the public memory of the war during the s and s, as a more democratic vision of the past started to make sense. As new crises loomed after , these tales of individual action offered new models of resistance to the American nation as a whole. These memoirs tried to bolster public resolve in a new way by offering all veterans as models of behavior who were worthy of public emulation, an idea that had previously been reserved for aristocratic heroes. By recording their personal war stories in print, men like chaplain John Gano, whose children convinced him to ‘‘write a history of his life’’ for public consumption, offered their wartime experiences as lessons to the nation.55 The idea that more lowly veterans’ accomplishments were worthy not just of generalized gratitude, but of national imitation showed how far the democratization of memory had progressed. Early nineteenth-century soldiers’ memoirs began a half-century tradition of bringing the experiences of average men and women to literary prominence.56 High-born heroes of the Revolution were the more traditional figures of patriotic inspiration, but Anthony Haswell, the editor of Captain Matthew Phelps’s memoir, told his readers that when ‘‘the adventurer [is] our neighbor . . . the incidents [are] more interesting.’’ 57 George Morison, who had participated in the  attack on Canada as a common soldier, pursued the same point in his manuscript memoir, which was published posthumously in . In his introduction, Morison argued that all veterans, particularly common soldiers, who were capable of writing ought to publish their stories because

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

the best consequence might flow from cheap publications of this kind. They would tend to diffuse more generally uniform sentiments of attachment to our common country, banish local prejudices, arrest the attention of heedless youth from their frivolity, introduce habits of reading among them, and inspire them with that noble ardour which prevailed among all ranks and conditions of those who combatted for our independence.58





Another memoirist, John Joseph Henry, believed that even the most lowly military men ‘‘may still possess the power to call forth the sympathy of minds of feeling.’’ 59 Deborah Sampson Gannett, who had previously avoided offering herself as worthy of emulation, went on a speaking tour in  to explain her memoirs to the skeptical public. She maintained her identity as one ‘‘unlettered in any scholastic school of erudition,’’ as she recounted how she ‘‘became an actor in that important drama’’ of the Revolutionary War.60 These humble veterans imagined a national community with a common point of view that would be inspired to action by the resolve of soldiers who were neighbors rather than social superiors. In the context of growing international and domestic political tension, inspiring patriotic resolve was not an academic matter. Memoirists preserved their own stories, but with a specific didactic purpose in mind. Because they had to be, these nineteenth-century memoirs were much more explicit about their intended effect than most forms of public memory expressed in the eighteenth century had been. There was a sense, even from the beginning of the decade, that Americans might soon be called again onto the field of battle to defend the legacy of freedom won in the Revolutionary War. In the face of impressment, commercial sanctions, and naval struggles with the Barbary states, France, and England it seemed more important than ever to remember the Revolutionary War and to take its lessons to heart. William Moultrie, one of the officer-heroes of the Battle of Sullivan’s Island, which had been celebrated for decades at Palmetto Day in Charleston, South Carolina, speculated that American youth ‘‘may perhaps be called to field some day or other,’’ and he hoped that the pages of his memoir would offer ‘‘some form or precedent, which may be useful to them in their military career.’’ 61 In these times of growing international tension, average soldiers might also offer their lives as useful precedents of military action. George Morison wrote that the personal stories of even the most humble of soldiers could offer ‘‘a light that might illume the minds and strengthen the courage of those whose turn it might be to defend their country at a future day.’’ 62 Memoirs functioned as the most direct form of ‘‘advice’’ that Revolutionary War soldiers and sailors could offer: a new, democratic form of inspiration that would breed patriotism based not on the unattainable ideal of aristocratic heroism, but rather on the examples of men who were humble, average members of American society. This new generation of war memoirs offered a liberal ideal of individual action in defense of the nation akin to the democratic heroism so celebrated by the Tammany Society. Common veterans had defended American national honor in the Revo-




Chapter 

lutionary War, and now specific political events seemed to call them to defend the nation in public culture. Nathaniel Fanning, a naval officer who had served under John Paul Jones, wrote that he was moved to publish his personal war story by the constant public tendency ‘‘to debase the American name, by branding it with the epithet of coward, paltroon, ‘not so brave as an Englishman,’ and the like.’’ 63 Even beyond the reputation of individual heroes, the heroism of the whole American nation seemed at risk. To preserve national honor, memoirists hoped that in their stories ‘‘the reader w[ould] find an example of well-directed courage and perseverance worthy of his imitation.’’ 64 In specific cases, these examples of courage came at just the right moment. During the first few years of the nineteenth century, a group of memoirs reawakened public interest in the Revolutionary War invasion of Quebec and allowed average men to tell heroic tales of Revolutionary War sacrifice just as some Americans were contemplating a new attack on Quebec. The Canadian example shows how the lessons of Revolutionary warfare seemed directly relevant to current difficulties and how Americans looked to veterans’ tales for inspiration as public memories seemed to be tailored for the conflicts of the early nineteenth century. As the main British outpost in North America, Canada received increasing attention after  from Americans who drew themselves into new conflicts with their previous colonial masters. The British maintained hostile outposts in the Northwest Territory that threatened flourishing American trade routes to Canada, and they offered safe harbor and comfort to Indians hostile to American expansionism. President Jefferson, who generally resisted calls for a new war against Britain, informed the governors of Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana to prepare for battle when he heard in  that the governor of Canada was meeting with Tenskwatawa, ‘‘the Prophet,’’ who was the spiritual leader of Tecumseh’s pan-Indian movement.65 After William Henry Harrison defeated Tecumseh’s forces at the Battle of Tippecanoe in , many of Tecumseh’s Indian allies sought protection in Canada and started to prepare their revenge. Pressures escalated as the War Hawks, a group of western and southern politicians who agitated for war against Britain in the years leading up to , began to imply that Americans could guarantee territorial and economic expansion and rid themselves of British influence by conquering Canada once and for all. As tensions along the Canadian border rose and it seemed as though a new American invasion of Canada might be imminent, a number of narratives of the Revolutionary Canadian campaign recommended themselves





as ‘‘interesting’’ to the public. Veterans worried, with some basis, that everything about the northern campaign other than the death of General Richard Montgomery had been ‘‘almost forgotten’’ by the public.66 The predominant public memory of the Revolutionary invasion of Canada had been of Richard Montgomery, the commander who was martyred outside Quebec, but this sacred image of heroic sacrifice seemed to offer little inspiration for a new, more successful invasion. If Americans were to prepare for war in Canada again, it was important for them to remember the bravery of average men as well as the death of the great hero. The memoirs of the  Canadian expedition published before the War of  highlighted the abilities of American individuals to endure hardship for the glory of the nation. Memoirists created themselves as characters who survived, in George Morison’s words, ‘‘the school of fortitude’’ and glorified their country with ‘‘their heroic labor, their love of glory, [and] their steady attachment for each other.’’ 67 Although the memoirs presented unflinching images of the hardships that had faced the soldiers in  on their winter march through New England and Canada, they emphasized how they ‘‘encountered these hardships and fatigues with great courage and perseverance from the zeal we felt in the cause.’’ 68 Memoirists took great pains to present themselves as independent actors who contributed much to the ‘‘defence of our sacred liberties.’’ 69 The Canadian memoirs created a sense of the democratic agency of the common individual. This liberal vision did not exclude republican praise for the heroism of Montgomery, the gentleman commander. Building upon the tradition of public memory established since , the common men of the Canadian expedition reserved special praise in their memoirs for the martyred hero.70 But along with Montgomery, these authors sought to share the limelight as the men whom he ‘‘inspired . . . with his own enthusiasm.’’ 71 George Morison wrote that ‘‘Gen. Montgomery was born to command. His easy and affable condescension to both officers and men, while it forbids an improper familiarity, creates love and esteem; and exhibits him the gentlemen and the soldier.’’ 72 John Joseph Henry agreed that Montgomery’s ‘‘air and manner, designated the real soldier.’’ Henry recognized the utility of national heroes: ‘‘In those turbulent times, men of gallantry, such as Montgomery, were imperiously necessitated, to keep up their own fame and the spirits of the people.’’ 73 But Henry also tempered his republican reverence for Montgomery with a dose of democratic attention for enlisted soldiers. When Henry compared the manner of burial provided for Montgomery with that afforded to his humble colleagues, he clearly stated that the common men were just as impor-




Chapter 

tant and as capable of inspiring emotion: ‘‘Though Montgomery was beloved, because of his manliness of soul, heroic bravery and suavity of manners . . . still my unhappy and lost brethren, though in humble station, with whom that dreadful wild was penetrated . . . forced melancholy sensations.’’ 74 Americans wanted a commander they could follow, but the possibility that national ‘‘sensibilities’’ might also be excited by the deaths of humble volunteers glorified the common man as well. The new war would require equal commitment and willing volunteers who would show deference to their commanders but also be strong in their own courage. Although the  march through New England to Canada was plagued with difficulties and Americans never successfully captured Quebec during the Revolutionary War, memoirists sought to assure Americans that ‘‘the march to Quebec . . . will forever remain a monument of American valor. It is unquestionably amongst the greatest military atchievements [sic] ever performed.’’ 75 American valor itself, along with the definition of military heroism, would soon be tested by war and political conflict. The Federalists, particularly those tied to commercial interests in New England, opposed increasing sanctions against Great Britain in the years immediately prior to . Southern and western Democratic Republicans, who needed to sell their agricultural products abroad and wanted leave to expand westward unmolested by European powers and the Indians they supported, took a stronger stance. After the Embargo was enacted in December , Federalist opposition hardened as the Democratic Republicans began to increase diplomatic pressure on the British and the French. Arguments about the best response to European aggression were not confined to Congress or to state legislatures, for the political battles had important consequences for all of public culture. Public life between  and  became even more politicized as commercial pressures turned to thoughts of war and as the nation faced another test of its very character. Democratic Republicans and Federalists alike agreed that Americans would have to unite as a nation behind the true memory of the Revolutionary War to meet the challenges that faced them, but they disagreed about what action true patriotism demanded. While the Federalists claimed that belligerence violated the very virtue that the Revolution was fought to uphold, Democratic Republicans (in the mold of the Tammany Society) argued that fighting might be necessary to maintain both virtue and independence. Proponents of each side of the political battle used particular rhetorical strategies to advance their cause, but in part because public memory of the Revolutionary War had





become increasingly democratized in the early years of the nineteenth century, the Democratic Republicans used military memory more extensively, effectively converting Revolutionary heroism into a direct endorsement for the War of . As seen in the Tammany Society’s burial service for American prisoners of war, carefully deployed memories of the Revolutionary War had the power to make resistance to the British seem like a national imperative. Democratic Republicans used memories of the Revolutionary War to pose British aggression as a challenge to national honor that should not go unanswered. Just as public individuals who could not ignore challenges to their reputation fought duels to preserve their honor in the early years of the nineteenth century, now Democratic Republicans argued that strong measures were necessary to uphold the national reputation and honor earned in the Revolutionary conflict.76 In this battle over memory and warfare, region was a crucial factor. Western and southern Democratic Republicans, who supported war most strongly in Congress, battled New England Federalists with strong regional appeals to the memory of the Revolutionary War. By using local commemorations to argue for strong resistance to Great Britain, these Democratic Republicans effectively maintained that their regional interests actually engaged the entire nation. Western and southern Democratic Republicans, like the inhabitants of Lexington, Kentucky, who had burned their senator in effigy, linked their local pride, based on memories of the Revolutionary War, to their growing commitment to a new national resolve against Great Britain. As they had since the s, regional commemorations heaped glory on the nation while including special praise for local achievement, but the new wartime context raised the stakes of patriotic symbolism. Local battlefield commemorations in Vermont and South Carolina illustrate how powerful the strategy could be as the memory of the Revolutionary War required strong, new action. Commemorations of the Battle of Bennington in Bennington, Vermont, had long occasioned expressions of Vermonters’ western identity, political allegiances, and national aspirations, so it was not surprising that in the years leading up the War of , Bennington Democratic Republicans used the occasion to frame the new test of national honor. Anthony Haswell, the Bennington publisher who had organized the celebrations for decades, had long used them as political occasions, but the war heightened partisanship even further. In the midst of the Republicans’ commercial war against Britain in August , John Leland, a Baptist minister from Massachusetts, delivered the oration at the battle anniversary celebration. Leland claimed that




Chapter 

the battle would be ‘‘eulogised by all real friends to the human family’’ as long as free nations opposed the ‘‘haughty claims of monarchs.’’ But the  commemoration was particularly important, said Leland, because ‘‘the tears of several thousands of impressed seamen, and the groans and blood of a number of murdered citizens of America’’ cried out for vengeance. Leland drummed up support for the Embargo as he assured his listeners that their perseverance in the Revolutionary War proved that they could survive the current commercial conflict: ‘‘Should the embargo last seven years, it could be borne much easier than the revolutionary war was.’’ 77 The act of commemoration itself was supposed to reaffirm individuals’ commitment to the Democratic-Republican national cause, and the battle anniversary became the occasion for political instruction. Leland told the women of Bennington to resume making homespun as they had during the previous war, a familiar request to Democratic-Republican audiences all over the country, and he entreated the men in the audience to vote for Madison and other Democratic-Republican candidates.78 Leland concluded his oration by calling for all Americans to bear the burden of the Embargo in the name of Revolutionary patriotism: ‘‘While I am speaking I hear you replying. Each heart says, ‘I will sacrifice a little, I will sacrifice much to preserve the inheritance, which cost our fathers and our [s]elves fifty thousand lives, one hundred and fifty millions of dollars, many towns, and much substance besides.’’ Leland maintained that Vermonters could face any test because ‘‘the roaring of the british cannon could not terrify Vermonters nor the smell of gunpowder choke green-mountain boys.’’ 79 Personal resolve in the face of national crisis, strengthened by memories of the bravery of local ‘‘boys,’’ defined a new level of political commitment. The western regional pride, embodied in the memory of the green mountain boys, symbolized a new determination to oppose the British. As Daniel Marsh asked the audience in his oration in , ‘‘Where is the spirit of seventy six, and seventy seven? . . . Where has the spirit fled?’’ 80 The Democratic Republicans of Charleston, South Carolina, were similarly committed to bolstering national resistance to the British with reference to their regional pride in the Revolutionary War. In June of , when the Palmetto Society met for its annual commemoration of the victory at Sullivan’s Island, the majority of the Democratic-Republican party was still committed to commercial resistance against the British, but tensions continued to rise and South Carolina’s thoughts began to turn to war. Palmetto Day seemed a natural occasion for Benjamin Markley, the appointed pub-





lic orator, to reflect on how memories of the Revolutionary War rendered Americans ‘‘zealous to guard and to preserve’’ the liberty they had fought so hard to win.81 At their annual ceremony held in the Circular Church in Charleston, the Palmetto Society wanted to acquaint the ‘‘rising generation’’ with the accomplishments of their fathers, whose bravery Markley equated to that ‘‘of the boasted heroes of antiquity.’’ 82 Markley maintained that the local battle anniversary was a day much esteemed by the entire nation, and one that would ‘‘ever diffuse lustre on the patriotism of this state.’’ Just as the victory at Sullivan’s Island supposedly inspired Americans to think of triumph in the Revolutionary War, the memory of the victory would now spur national resistance to the British. Markley praised the heroes of South Carolina—William Moultrie and William Jasper—and he touted the wartime patriotism of South Carolina’s women. In the context of another rising conflict, Markley thought that the memory of South Carolina’s military service became especially relevant as he assured his audience that ‘‘should the trumpet sound again, patriots would start from their sequestered bowers, and Carolina once more appear the mother of numerous heroes.’’ 83 If a defense of national honor should be required, regional pride was available to strengthen public commitment. When the Palmetto Society met at the Carolina Coffee-House on June , , ten days after Congress finally reluctantly voted for war, troops were mustering in Charleston to join Colonel John Rutledge’s South Carolina Militia. The Charleston Courier reported that ‘‘salutes were fired in honor of the day, and the bells rang a merry peal as usual.’’ 84 But things were far from usual. In the midst of a crisis, as Charlestonians were preparing to go to war again, Palmetto Day acquired new meaning and poignancy as they gathered to remember the trials and triumphs of the previous conflict. The centerpiece of the day’s celebration was an oration given by Joseph Johnson, a prominent Charleston physician and the son of William Johnson, one of the original founders of the Palmetto Society during the Revolutionary War. In his oration, Johnson directly related the act of commemoration to the new preparations for war with Britain as he sought to compare the events of the Revolution with ‘‘our present eventful moment.’’ Johnson maintained that the crisis of  was as bad as that in . He told the crowd: ‘‘Your independence is as much endangered, as at the memorable period we celebrate.’’ It was important to the present conflict, Johnson maintained, that Charlestonians had not diminished their public ‘‘gratitude’’ for the heroism of  because it would help them put aside party conflict and work together to ‘‘closely imitate the conduct of Washington’’ on the field of battle. Johnson




Chapter 

assured his audience that the ‘‘spirit of seventy-six’’ would aid them against their ‘‘mighty foe’’ and that ‘‘the more arduous the contest, the greater will be the honor acquired.’’ 85 Ultimately, the War of  became a test for all Democratic Republicans of whether the nation could live up to the memory of the Revolution and preserve this national honor. As Jesse Bledsoe, member of a prominent Kentucky political family, told a crowd in Lexington on July , : ‘‘We seem destined by our example to shew whether man is worthy of heaven’s best gift’’ of liberty. Bledsoe maintained that Americans would have to overcome internal dissent and come together to fight another war in the mold of the Revolution or else be content to have ‘‘a foreign despot once more stretch over us the iron sceptre of power.’’ 86 Success in this new war would determine whether Americans would even be capable of passing on the legacy of the Revolutionary War. As Congress declared war, Tennessee ‘‘War Hawk’’ Felix Grundy wrote to Andrew Jackson that ‘‘Our Fathers fought for and bequeathed liberty & Independence to us their children’’ and only firm resistance ‘‘will enable us to transmit to our children the rich inheritance unimpaired.’’ 87 As Americans prepared to face the British again, it was only natural for them to think back, as an anonymous newspaper poem put it, upon the time: When Britain’s myriads prest our peaceful shore, And drench’d the verdant fields with patriot gore; When first our country’s standard was unfurl’d, And proud defiance to the tyrant hurl’d.88

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

But the preservation of Revolutionary national honor was not a politically neutral matter, and memories of the Revolutionary War became an even stronger political tool during this new and different kind of war. In Charleston, Joseph Johnson had been overly optimistic that Americans would be able to set aside party conflicts once a new war began. The Federalists and Democratic Republicans continued to argue over the merits of fighting, even after Congress formally declared war on June , . Memories of the Revolutionary War became even more important to their clash, as Democratic Republicans argued that everyone should support the new war effort. On the other hand, most Federalists thought war would inevitably lead the nation away from true republicanism and into a false alliance with ‘‘Jacobin’’ France. Revolutionary War memory could clearly be seen as a political tool. Democratic Republicans drew a direct link between the virtuous Revolu-





tionary War and the War of . The National Advocate, a Republican newspaper in New York City, argued that ‘‘the remnant of those revolutionary heroes and sages, to whose virtue, wisdom and valour, we owe the invaluable inheritance of our freedom’’ would lead the way in this ‘‘second war of independence, and temper the fiery valour of our young defenders.’’ 89 According to this formulation, which was shared by numerous other Republican newspapers, it was the spirit of the heroes of the Revolution that ‘‘animate[d] the great body of the republican party.’’ 90 In , dramatist William Dunlap, having abandoned his staunch Federalism of previous decades, wrote a verse in celebration of Evacuation Day in New York City that praised those who had ushered the British out of the city during the Revolutionary War and told the men of  that ‘‘the blessings then purchased now depend upon you.’’ 91 David Ramsay similarly dedicated his  biography of George Washington to ‘‘the Youth of the United States, in the hope that, from the Example of their common father, they will learn to do and suffer whatever Their country’s Good May require at their hands.’’ 92 According to the Democratic-Republican viewpoint, the blood that was spilled in the Revolution argued for a defense of national honor in the War of . While Democratic Republicans thus depicted themselves as the inheritors of Revolutionary heroism and the commitment to liberty, they pictured Federalists who opposed the war in starkly opposite terms. Those who did not support the War of  were often branded publicly as ‘‘Tories’’ in a powerful reference to disloyalty during the Revolutionary War.93 Toryism was politically and socially unacceptable, and the label questioned the integrity and character of any individual to whom it was affixed. Anthony Haswell stated at a Bennington commemoration that it was the ‘‘Old tories . . . Restor’d, forgiv’n, enfranchis’d’’ who were now opposing the War of  and stirring internal division.94 In light of how difficult it had been to fit Loyalists into the memory of the war since the s, it was not surprising that ‘‘Toryism’’ was a powerful accusation. Nathaniel Whitaker, a Massachusetts minister, republished in  two sermons on ‘‘Toryism’’ that he had preached during the Revolutionary War because he desired that ‘‘the black unprincipled conduct of the Tories . . . should be deeply imprinted on the mind of every lover of Liberty, and handed down to our latest posterity; that generations yet unborn may know from what source have sprang those innumerable evils which now exist.’’ 95 Whitaker was sure that the War of  required a refreshed memory of the dangers of anti-American behavior. Federalists were not content to accept such strenuous opposition, and they were not willing entirely to cede the memory of the Revolutionary War




Chapter 

to the Democratic Republicans. Some Federalists (especially in the South) argued that they supported the War of , just as they had the Revolutionary War. For example, ‘‘A Virginia Federalist’’ responded in print in  to antiwar speeches by some of his fellow party members published in New York newspapers: ‘‘I feel myself as a federalist who fought the revolutionary battles of my country, imperiously called on to disavow the infamous principles, advocated in those speeches. . . . even I shall again be prepared whenever the occasion may require it, to render my beloved Country every service which may be in my power.’’ 96 Opponents of the War of  used the rhetoric of memory to support their position, much as the Democratic Republicans who opposed them did. These Federalists had to use memory in a different way, however. They argued that the War of  was not the proper heir to the Revolution, but rather a betrayal of the true principles of Revolutionary warfare. To these Federalists, America’s grievances were not severe enough to justify warfare, and the nation risked its reputation by engaging in an aggressive conflict. By the laws of Christian warfare, only a defensive action could be justified, as the Revolutionary War had been. To the Federalist opposition, American aggression in the War of  violated the example of the Revolutionary War and, as one Federalist congressman put it, ‘‘deluge[d] their country with blood’’ for no good reason.97 To these opponents, who still believed that traditional republican memories of the war were most valid, the War of  betrayed the memory of Joseph Warren and the other New England heroes ‘‘who fell with Warren on fam’d Bunker Hill.’’ 98 New England fast days, traditional public opportunities to pray and reflect upon military matters, became one particular focus of this negative use of Revolutionary memory. New England ministers, mostly Presbyterians and Congregationalists sympathetic to the Federalists, were among the most vociferous opponents of the War of , just as they had been among the most prominent promoters of the Revolutionary War.99 On public fast days, when ministers were supposed to pray for success in the war, they often used the traditional language of the jeremiad to oppose it instead. In an  sermon entitled The Present War Unexpected, Unnecessary, and Ruinous, John Lathrop said, ‘‘I must be excused, if I do not pray, that God would bless our armies on an expedition, to which I could not give my services with a good conscience.’’ 100 Some of the ministers directly used the Revolutionary War as an example of a war fought in ‘‘good conscience,’’ which the War of  violated. David Osgood, a Massachusetts Congregationalist who was among the most extreme antiwar ministers, preached in  that he could ‘‘never forget’’





Americans’ bitter sacrifice during the Revolutionary War.101 Osgood asked his audience: ‘‘In the motives for the present war, who can discern the least shade of resemblance to those for the former? And what christian, under the influence of christian principles, can dare pray for success? . . . We must have a clear and perfect conviction that the war is just and necessary.’’ 102 Federalist clergy exhibited clear concern that the War of  would only jeopardize the reputation and piety of the nation that had been so hard-won in the Revolution. The War of  turned out to be at best a narrow victory for the United States. Although Americans lost many battles early in the war and utterly failed on their Canadian expeditions, their naval tactics managed to postpone total disaster long enough for army and militia troops to regroup. Agricultural depression and political division continued throughout the war, and Federalists in New England almost threatened to secede from the nation entirely. Five New England states sent delegates, official and unofficial, to the Hartford Convention in December , but the convention merely criticized national war policy and proposed constitutional amendments that stopped well short of breaking up the union.103 The Treaty of Ghent guaranteed no substantial gains for the United States, though it did clear the British out of the Northwest Territory. Despite the partial military success in the naval war and the boost given national pride by Andrew Jackson’s daring win at New Orleans, constant calls for national unity at the end of the war in  fell on the ears of a troubled nation. The War of  left Americans with a mixed legacy of military memory.

Questioning the Classical Hero

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

The American nation survived the military and cultural tests of the War of , but American military memory emerged quite changed. The intentional uses of Revolutionary War memories by both the Democratic Republicans and Federalists leading up to and during the War of  ultimately betrayed the constructed nature of Revolutionary War memory itself. If both sides could claim all through the War of  that the precedent of the Revolutionary War validated their actions, then surely people could no longer even pretend that one unitary memory existed. The contested nature of Revolutionary War memory, and therefore the contested nature of national identity broke through into the open after the War of . At the center of the changes in war memory was the redefinition of hero-




Chapter 

ism that had taken place in prewar memoirs and in the Tammany Society’s reinterment of the prison-ship martyrs. It was no coincidence that following the War of  several of the most controversial officers of that war wound up in bitter conflicts about the nature of military heroism and the sanctity of Revolutionary War memory. Battles over the reputations of several prominent Revolutionary officers including James Wilkinson and Israel Putnam that occurred in the wake of the War of  illustrate just how destabilized Revolutionary War memory had become and just how great the change in national heroism was. The image of the strong, elite hero around whom a grateful American public would voluntarily gather to form a nation was still valid, but it could no longer be taken for granted. To many, the War of  seemed much less ‘‘heroic’’ than the Revolutionary War, a fact that accelerated the increasing shift in the meaning of heroism as it became even clearer that not only were some common men heroic, but also that not all officers were natural national heroes. The American public no longer automatically accepted elite officers as heroic figures as readily as it had during the Revolutionary War. When Richard Montgomery was killed in his failed attempt to conquer Quebec at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, he was not labeled a failure but rather canonized as a heroic martyr. By contrast, when Henry Dearborn botched his own attack on Quebec at the start of the War of , he was denounced as an incompetent, and one commentator called his loss a ‘‘miscarriage, without even [the] heroism of disaster.’’ 104 New England Federalist William Gaston wrote in a newspaper circular letter at the conclusion of the War of  that ‘‘American character’’ had barely survived the ‘‘wretched failures, of our councellors, and generals.’’ Gaston contended that it was only the valiant actions of America’s more humble seamen and the victories late in the war at Chippewa, Erie, and New Orleans that ‘‘preserved to us the rank which our revolutionary struggle had obtained for us, and of which the . . . imbecility of a few, had almost deprived us.’’ 105 Public memories of the Revolutionary War continued to be at the heart of how Americans defined themselves even in the wake of the War of , but it was not long before the changing meaning of heroism began to affect the ways Americans conceived of the Revolutionary War as well. Public memory itself threatened to come apart, as even elites with the most at stake began to argue over the nature of classical heroism. Several high-profile officers engaged in a public debate over the nature of military glory itself. James Wilkinson, the controversial general and former Spanish spy who had been removed from his command for incompetence in





, published a bitter memoir in  that was designed to vindicate his behavior in the War of  and his status as a hero. Wilkinson had exhibited marked resilience before. During the Revolution he rose through the ranks by stealing credit for others’ actions, and he avoided most of the blame for his treasonous post-Revolutionary plot with Aaron Burr in time to reenlist in the army for the War of . Much of Wilkinson’s rehabilitation in his memoir focused on his heroic deeds during the Revolutionary War, but he lamented that in the wake of the latest war military men were at the mercy of the ‘‘caprice of rulers’’ like Madison, whom he called ‘‘an enemy to the constitution.’’ 106 He bitterly regretted that Madison had deprived him of his ‘‘hard-earned military fortune’’ and jeopardized his public name.107 Wilkinson was not content merely to rehabilitate his own reputation; rather he questioned whether military glory itself was a proper basis for national reputation: ‘‘Military glory! fascinating sound! bewitching subject! but who profits by the acquisition? the nation! no, but those who live and feed on the nation. War, which subsists on the blood and treasure of the people, forms the aliment of this alluring dame, glory, and is utterly destructive of national happiness.’’ Wilkinson based his cynical view of military glory in part on the fact that the ‘‘character of our country’’ had deteriorated considerably since the time when ‘‘national courage’’ had been proven on the Revolutionary fields of battle. Although he questioned whether military glory was a fitting basis for national allegiance, Wilkinson simultaneously contended that ‘‘To preserve to confederated America the inestimable blessings, which have ceased to exist elsewhere, the citizens of the United States are bound by the most solemn obligations of gratitude . . . to their ancestors, from whom they received them, and of duty to their posterity, to whom they stand pledged to transmit them.’’ In this case, Wilkinson claimed that gratitude was owed to him for his long years of service.108 Instead of arguing for a republican or democratic concept of gratitude, Wilkinson devalued the entire concept. Wilkinson’s memoir turned the traditional rhetoric of the Revolutionary hero on its head, as he simultaneously argued that he was plagued by public ingratitude and that no ‘‘one man’’ could ever take credit for the glory ‘‘which belonged to the whole nation.’’ Wilkinson stated that he had been a ‘‘dupe during my whole life’’ to the idea of heroism and ‘‘military enthusiasm,’’ which would only lead to national downfall in the search for glory. Wilkinson acknowledged that union was ‘‘purchased by the best blood of the country,’’ but he doubted whether that blood could continue to hold the nation together for long.109 Even though Wilkinson was personally considered to be a rogue, his daring attacks on the concept of military glory echoed into public culture.




Chapter 

In some ways, Wilkinson was correct that ‘‘military enthusiasm’’ was not as stable as it once had been, but that did not prevent public men from resorting to memories of the Revolutionary War for images of union. After James Monroe was inaugurated as president in March , he toured military establishments across the northern part of America. Although Monroe sought to avoid excessive pomp and ceremony on his journey, he did allow particular public attention to be paid to his visits to Revolutionary War battlefields at Trenton (where Monroe himself had fought and been wounded) and Bunker Hill. Monroe and his Democratic-Republican advisers believed that public commemoration of the Revolutionary War would help to reinforce the very feelings of national union that had been imperiled during the War of .110 The New England leg of Monroe’s visit was designed to reach out to the Federalists who had threatened to alienate themselves from the nation altogether during the War of . His visit culminated with a July  trip to Bunker Hill, where Monroe commented that ‘‘The blood spilt here roused the whole American people, and united them in a common cause in defence of their rights—That union will never be broken.’’ 111 Federalists and Republicans in Boston acknowledged that Monroe’s visit had ‘‘allayed the storms of party’’ and helped restore New England’s regional reputation to a very great degree.112 Monroe’s pilgrimage to Bunker Hill functioned effectively as a symbol of national healing after the War of , and it refocused public attention on the power of the memory of Bunker Hill. But even that sacred battlefield was not immune to controversy or to the demands of changing images of heroism. American elites had broken ranks during the War of , and they could not easily use memory to heal their rifts. The conflicts over the Battle of Bunker Hill that erupted after Monroe’s visit illustrate just how deep was the change in ‘‘military character’’ predicted by the ignominious James Wilkinson.113 Although the memory of Bunker Hill’s greatest hero, Joseph Warren, remained inviolable and his monument on Bunker Hill increased in popularity as a tourist site, other, lesser heroes of the Battle of Bunker Hill became more vulnerable to criticism.114 The destabilized notion of Revolutionary War heroism and the public crisis over the worth of military glory culminated in a huge public controversy over the reputation of Revolutionary War hero Israel Putnam. In , Henry Dearborn, who had personally learned the lesson during the War of  that military heroes weren’t what they once were, accused Connecticut hero Israel Putnam of being a coward at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Although Putnam himself had been dead since , his son Daniel quickly came to his defense.





The remarkable display of New England elites attacking one another over heroic reputation confirmed that aristocratic values had not emerged from the previous years unscathed. Eventually the private battle between Dearborn and Putnam erupted into a widespread, public dispute over the meaning of heroism, the nature of objectivity, and the importance of Revolutionary War memory to the cohesion of the American nation. It is unclear exactly why Dearborn decided to take on Israel Putnam, but he was disillusioned with the concept of military heroism, and he may have felt the sting of public ingratitude much in the same way James Wilkinson had (though Dearborn himself served on the board at Wilkinson’s court-martial). Although Dearborn had served well as a junior officer in the Revolutionary War, his incompetence in the War of  had made a deeper impression on the public mind.115 James Madison had proposed Dearborn for secretary of war in , but the Senate rejected his nomination. Dearborn ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic-Republican candidate for governor of Massachusetts in  in a race that often pitted Dearborn’s ‘‘brave, intrepid’’ reputation during the Revolutionary War against the valor of his opponent, John Brooks, ‘‘the hero of Saratoga.’’ 116 Dearborn was so embittered by the race that he refused his party’s nomination for office in . Dearborn’s thoughts were still preoccupied with the nature of Revolutionary War valor, however. When the editor of the Port Folio magazine asked Dearborn, who had fought at Bunker Hill under Vermonter John Stark, to write a ‘‘correct account’’ of the battle to accompany the publication of a new map of the battlefield, Dearborn obliged. Dearborn’s article, which turned out to be no narrow cartographic treatise, was reprinted as a pamphlet in . In his narrative of the battle, Dearborn accused Israel Putnam of failing to reinforce the main body of troops and abandoning the field of battle. Dearborn devoted much of his narrative to musing about how the ‘‘reputation of a man may affect the minds of all classes of society,’’ as he compared Putnam unfavorably to Joseph Warren, whom he considered properly ‘‘immortalized as a patriot.’’ Dearborn confessed to being mystified at how Putnam’s ‘‘ephemeral and unaccountable popularity’’ at the beginning of the Revolutionary War seemed to insulate him against criticism.117 Dearborn claimed that he had no personal grudge against Putnam, but that the ‘‘duty I owe to posterity’’ compelled him to knock down Putnam’s undeserved reputation.118 Dearborn’s pamphlet was a remarkable document, a personal attack against a heroic figure of the Revolutionary War that questioned the very notion of heroic reputation, which had previously seemed inviolable.




Chapter 

‘‘General Putnam Vindicated,’’ Columbian Centinel, May , . Courtesy American Antiquarian Society. This notice in the Boston newspaper Columbian Centinel was part of the public battle over the reputation of the dead general Israel Putnam, which took place in Boston in . The notice recommends to the public the pamphlet by Daniel Putnam, Israel Putnam’s son, refuting the charges of cowardice against his father made by Henry Dearborn. The Columbian Centinel ran many other letters and articles in defense of Putnam and thereby publicized the battle over his reputation among Boston elites, which helped to destabilize the traditional public image of Revolutionary War heroism.

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

In May, Daniel Putnam published a pamphlet refuting Dearborn’s claims against his father.119 Putnam assured Dearborn that he had read his charges ‘‘with mingled emotions of indignation and contempt’’ as he wondered what ‘‘could tempt you at this distant period to disturb the ashes of the dead . . . to impose on the public such a miserable libel in the fair fame of a man who ‘exhausted his bodily strength, and expended the vigor of a youthful constitution in the service of his country’? What, above all things, could induce you to assail the character of General Putnam, in a point, most of all others, per-





haps, unassailable?’’ Daniel Putnam assured Dearborn that Israel Putnam was far more esteemed as a military commander in the Revolutionary War than Dearborn had been in the War of . Putnam maintained that by disturbing the grave of the hero of the Revolutionary War, Dearborn only proved himself to have character ‘‘beneath a Gentleman and an Officer.’’ Putnam published letters from several prominent figures, including John Trumbull, that vindicated Israel Putnam’s ‘‘honest share of fame’’ and questioned Dearborn’s motives for the attack.120 Daniel Putnam claimed that Dearborn’s attacks on Israel Putnam comprised nothing more than a flimsy attempt to boost his own reputation at the expense of a better man. The exchange between Dearborn and Putnam over the reputation of Israel Putnam caused an immediate public sensation in Boston, and other authors and the public began to take up sides. An article in the Columbian Centinel satirically suggested that all the towns in America named Putnam should change their ‘‘cowardly’’ titles to ‘‘Dearborn.’’ 121 John Adams wrote to Daniel Putnam and to the Boston newspapers to testify to ‘‘the honor of Putnam as a statesman as well as a warrior.’’ 122 Boston publisher Samuel Avery brought out a new edition of David Humphreys’s Essay on the Life of the Honourable Major General Israel Putnam that contained an appendix refuting Dearborn’s account of the Battle of Bunker Hill.123 Samuel Swett, the author of the appendix, sought to restore Putnam’s reputation by augmenting Humphery’s conventional heroic biography of Putnam with ‘‘objective’’ historical facts and ‘‘to light anew the lamp in his tomb, and spread through a wider sphere the unshorn splendor of his name.’’ 124 Swett combed various accounts of the battle for evidence to refute Dearborn’s version of events, and he placed his sources on file at the Boston Athenaeum so the public could check his accuracy for themselves.125 Swett maintained that the documentary evidence showed that Putnam performed well his duties as ‘‘general, engineer, and guide’’ and that he had backed up Prescott’s men with cannon fire.126 The Columbian Centinel followed Swett’s empirical lead and published a series of essays throughout the month of July that examined Dearborn’s evidence and argued that impartial history would uphold ‘‘the honor of  as an officer, a patriot, and a hero.’’ 127 Swett and the newspapers collected testimony from veterans of Bunker Hill, seeking to prove that Dearborn’s version of Putnam’s actions was patently false.128 Abner Allen, a farmer from Worcester county, swore out a deposition about Bunker Hill stating ‘‘that Genl Putnam did on that occasion all that a soldier & a brave man could do.’’ 129 The very fact that anyone would argue in public that such objective evidence was necessary to prove Israel Putnam’s heroism shows how




Chapter 

much the expectations of heroic memory had changed since the turn of the century. Dearborn did not go undefended in the conflict, however. David Lee Child, his political protégé, published an ‘‘Enquiry’’ into the case that claimed that objective truth actually argued against Putnam’s heroic reputation.130 Child claimed that, contrary to countless public contentions otherwise, Dearborn did not have any ‘‘dishonorable motive’’ in his attacks on Putnam, and Child hinted that Dearborn’s political opponents had promoted the public outcry against him. Child worried that the few newspaper columns that had defended Dearborn would be too ‘‘frail and fleeting’’ to survive the judgment of posterity. Attacking Samuel Swett’s own objectivity, Child contended that Swett had consulted sources hostile to Dearborn’s Democratic-Republican sympathies and had ‘‘perverted the evidence’’ in favor of Dearborn’s account. Child argued that Putnam’s defenders held no love for dead heroes who were less than aristocratic: ‘‘When have these very men . . . trod lightly upon the ashes of Thomas Paine, great and patriotic as he was?’’ In a subtle swipe at the Federalists, Child maintained that his own historical investigation proved Putnam’s disgrace and handed ‘‘down to posterity . . . the true account of the only military event of which New-England has much reason to be proud.’’ 131 Ultimately, Child rejected the very heroic mode of argumentation pursued by Dearborn’s opponents as he ridiculed the traditional style of hero-worship and commemoration. Child stated that Swett’s historical accuracy was marred by the ‘‘disgusting use of classical allusions, all of which are entirely out of place in a work of this kind, and many of which happen to be exceedingly ludicrous.’’ 132 Although Child was not willing to accept a subjective view of Revolutionary War memory, he rejected outright the conventional language of heroism employed by Swett. The controversy had much broader implications for the American nation than the narrow question of whether Israel Putnam had performed well at the Battle of Bunker Hill might at first suggest. The very fact that so many prominent figures argued in public over the merits of a Revolutionary War hero and whether ‘‘history’’ entitled him to the name of ‘‘hero,’’ shows how changed the very concept of national heroism was. The nation’s reputation had been narrowly preserved in the War of , but now it seemed that the reputation of national war heroes remained suspect. It stood to reason that the ideal American nation might be at risk of losing one of its strongest adhesives if republican heroes could be questioned. The controversy belied the notion of voluntary public unity and threatened to expose heroism as a mere cultural construction.





Daniel Webster, at the time a rising young statesman who had opposed the War of , recognized that the stakes in such a debate were high, indeed. He wrote an article in the Massachusetts elites’ journal of record, the North American Review, that summarized and reviewed the controversy. Webster openly acknowledged that ‘‘the matter of these charges, it must be confessed, is weighty and important’’ to the whole nation. He hoped that Israel Putnam’s defenders would be able to protect ‘‘the fame of the dead’’ because ‘‘The country itself owes a debt of gratitude to their characters and fame in sacred trust. He is bound to defend and protect this trust against all posthumous enemies.’’ 133 Webster believed that despite the changing ideas of heroism in American society, the nation still had to pay its debt of gratitude in order to survive. In his estimation, it was still up to the people of America voluntarily to protect the character and reputation of their national heroes: ‘‘The characters of its great men are the real treasures of the country. They are the regalia of the republic. What has it but these for its glory? What, but these, for the themes of its poets and orators? What, but these, for the examples of its emulous youth?—When possessions of this nature shall be little esteemed, it will evince a strange disregard to the highest subjects of national interest.’’ In Webster’s opinion, if Americans decided to question military reputation, they risked losing their national allegiance, especially because the men of the Revolution were beginning to die off.134 Daniel Webster made a direct connection between the reputation of individual Revolutionary War heroes and the process of national allegiance: ‘‘The public . . . has an interest in the reputation of its distinguished men, which, when it ceases to preserve or protect, it will cease to deserve distinguished services from any of its citizens.’’ 135 Later that year John Knapp agreed in an issue of the North American Review that the tendency to forget a country’s record of heroism was ‘‘an undoubted forerunner of national decline.’’ Knapp argued for a national heroic poetry to celebrate the men of the Revolution because ‘‘a country is undeniably the more endeared by the multitude of its tender and heroical tales and memoirs, fabulous as well as authentic.’’ 136 At the end of this controversy, it no longer seemed clear that all members of American society would naturally cling to tales of their heroes for patriotic inspiration. It fell to a group of conservatives like Webster and Knapp to emphasize the continued importance of venerating the great men of the Revolutionary War. In the eyes of men like this, the heroic service of American officers was devalued by personal attack and by the elevation of the common soldier in American culture. The very spectacle of Boston elites arguing in




Chapter 

public over the reputation of a revered war hero was a remarkable testimony to the changing nature of American heroism. Respect for the more ‘‘common heroes’’ of the Revolution bore financial fruit in the form of the  Revolutionary War pension act, the first grant of national military pensions in American history. More than , men filled courthouses all over the country to swear out affidavits attesting to their faithful service in the war. While pension applications were usually very straightforward narratives of private military experience, they brought average veterans new public visibility. Instead of focusing solely on officers, the pension act in many ways ‘‘made the Continental Army representative of the genius of the national character.’’ 137 John Resch has recently shown that the  pension act did not solve the issue of veterans’ compensation once and for all because many controversies erupted over its enforcement and over proposed changes in the law, but Congress at least evinced a willingness to repay the national debt of gratitude in monetary terms when it finally agreed to sponsor pensions.138 By  the Revolutionary War had not lost its significance for American culture or for American nationalism. While most Americans still seemed to believe that memories of the Revolutionary War remained central to what the American nation stood for, those memories were increasingly the subject of public argument. Many forms of Revolutionary War memory, such as memoirs and monuments, had grown more democratic than ever before. The worth of republican military glory had been publicly tarnished, and it remained to be seen whether such glory could still add luster to the nation. American culture had opened up to a significant enough degree to show disagreement about the past. Even as the Tammany Society argued that public praise and gratitude for humble anonymous military men was a natural national priority, some New England elites had a noisy public row over the worth of holding up quasi-aristocratic officers as similar figures worthy of commemoration. Neither the gratitude of Congress for dead prisoners of war nor the gratitude of the public for great officer-heroes could be taken for granted any longer, and it remained to be seen whether Americans would continue to form themselves into a community around memories of the war in a world that had changed so much. By  the implications of this destabilization of Revolutionary War memory were not yet clear. If the reputation of American heroes was allowed to suffer, did it follow that the national reputation would be damaged as well? Would the nation give up its heroes and still be able to bond together?


Chapter 

The Return of Lafayette: Memory and the National Future, –

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

When the Marquis de Lafayette arrived in Yorktown, Virginia, in  for the forty-third anniversary of the surrender of Cornwallis, he was met by the governor of Virginia and ‘‘an immense concourse of gratified spectators,’’ who welcomed him back to the scene of American military victory. Lafayette, the French aristocrat who had volunteered to fight in the American Revolution in  at the age of , returned to the United States to greet the American people and to receive monetary and land grants from Congress. In Virginia, as everywhere Lafayette went on his triumphal tour of all twentyfour states, one of the major themes of his visit was the crowd’s massive outpouring of gratitude for their returned hero. On October , , thousands of people convened on the battlefield at Yorktown to witness an impressive ceremony of military memory. The battlefield had not been restored since the end of the Revolutionary War, so the location seemed to mark an authentic ‘‘ruin’’ of the Revolutionary past where ‘‘the bombs’ havoc is still every where visible,’’ and the planning committee sought to recreate an ‘‘authentic’’ military atmosphere to celebrate Lafayette and the victory at Yorktown.1 Those who attended the celebration recreated the atmosphere of a military encampment—only Lafayette and his traveling companions were given comfortable accommodations, while most guests slept in tents. The celebrations on October  began with ‘‘a grand procession to the battlefield,’’ and then Lafayette was introduced to the crowd under the ‘‘Tent of Washington,’’ which had supposedly been preserved intact by locals for over forty years. Following the initial introductions, Lafayette greeted local militia troops under a triumphal arch ‘‘erected on the spot, where the first redoubt of the enemy was stormed, by the troops under the command of General  .’’ ‘‘An immense amphitheatre . . . filled principally with ladies’’ looked on as Lafayette was presented with a laurel wreath in honor




Chapter 

of his heroic status. Lafayette then embraced various veterans of the Battle of Yorktown and talked over their military days together, a scene that the newspapers reported ‘‘brought tears from many an eye, and sobs from many bosoms.’’ The Richmond Enquirer reported that one veteran ‘‘seized the General by the hand’’ and began to cry as he remembered the day of the battle. According to the paper, Lafayette responded sympathetically, ‘‘Yes, my brave soldier, I am happy to have lived, to meet you once more.’’ 2 During the evening,  guests dined on the battlefield and gathered on the embankment to watch fireworks. The next morning, before he left town, Lafayette ‘‘partook of a military breakfast, prepared by the Volunteers of Virginia under the Tent of Washington.’’ 3 Lafayette’s visit to Yorktown typified the outpouring of popular gratitude that accompanied his triumphal return to America in .4 During his visit, an increasingly remote military past seemed to come to life once again as the American nation renewed its commitment to the memory of the Revolutionary War. More than ever, the process of national celebration seemed simultaneously tied to localism and sectional pride. The people of Virginia celebrated the American nation by remembering the victory over Cornwallis, and they expressed their reverence for Lafayette as a hero of the Revolutionary War. At the same time, Virginians hastened to note how the memory of Yorktown especially ennobled their own state. While the newspapers stressed that Lafayette’s reception in Virginia was ‘‘indicative of the grateful and enthusiastic feeling which animates every bosom in the nation,’’ they also noted that Virginians owed Lafayette ‘‘the largest debt of gratitude’’ of any state. By paying back this debt of gratitude with a proper ceremony at Yorktown, the people of Virginia shared the spotlight with the returned general in a special way. Reports praised the ‘‘animated throng of from  to , persons’’ from all walks of life who greeted Lafayette almost as much as they praised the general himself. When summing up the scene at Yorktown, one newspaper claimed that ‘‘The enthusiasm of the troops and the citizens, which had thrown them[selves] in such numbers upon the plains of York, will be gratefully remembered by every Virginian who is proud of the ‘Old Dominion.’ Our greatest gratification is, that so many were gratified who had partaken of our hospitality.’’ 5 Gratitude, which had long defined the relationship between the heroes of the Revolution and the American ‘‘public’’ that gathered to remember them, now elevated the people almost as much as the heroes. Lafayette’s visit confirmed the change in the meaning of American heroism that had taken shape over the previous decades and exposed a new


The Return of Lafayette



hybrid definition in which the hero and the Americans who praised him were almost equally glorified. In the early s, most especially during Lafayette’s visit, public memory of the Revolutionary War fully expressed the effects of the democratization that had occurred over the previous decades since the war. Since the turn of the nineteenth century, common soldiers had been seen as more heroic than ever before, and the image of the classical, elite hero had been de-stabilized, particularly by the War of  and by sniping over military reputation among Boston’s upper class. The veneration of Lafayette, and of other former officers of the Revolution, showed that the classical hero had not lost all of his cultural power, and commemorations between  and  showed how old-style republican heroes and new-style democratic heroes might share the limelight. Public celebrations of Revolutionary War memory also showed the powerful influence and status of the democratic audience, which was supposed to stand in for the American nation itself and had been growing in influence since the late s. In the s, Americans were in a mood to contemplate and commemorate their national past even as they defined a new course for their national future. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Revolutionary War, it became apparent that the world of the nineteenth century had taken the place of a very different eighteenth-century American society. Between  and , a new generation assumed cultural and political power as the remaining men and women of the eighteenth century began to die off. During these years, there seemed to be a scramble to receive whatever remaining wisdom members of the Revolutionary generation might have to offer before they were gone. Revolutionary military veterans achieved a new venerated status that sought to insure them they would never be forgotten by the new generation taking their place. The members of the new generation that was coming to power had not personally experienced the Revolutionary War, but they were eager to associate themselves with its patriotic memory. Daniel Webster spoke for his entire generation at the laying of the Bunker Hill Monument cornerstone in  when he said, ‘‘We can win no laurels in a war for independence, earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. . . . But there remains to us a great duty of defence and preservation’’ of their memory.6 Public memory of the Revolutionary War in the early s defined a new commercialized, democratic American nation, but one that kept its eyes on the past for inspiration. Commemoration continued to allow a variety of




Chapter 

groups and individuals to express their national aspirations, even as some questions of who would hold the actual power in society seemed more contested than ever. Military memory in the s seemed to fulfill some of the democratic promise inherent in the rhetoric of gratitude that stretched back as far as the s. ‘‘The people’’ felt themselves more at home at Revolutionary War commemorations during the s, and public culture was more a precursor to a democratic Jacksonian society of participatory politics than a holdover from the republican eighteenth century. But the question remained: was participation in a democratic public culture of commemoration meaningful on its own, or did it just mask larger conflicts over the ‘‘real’’ power in society? Although public memory of the Revolutionary War still offered hope for a national vision, regional and class interests continued to shape public participation in commemorations of all kinds. During the s, public memories that had previously contributed simultaneously to regional and national identities began to show some of the strain that would break into open regional conflict in subsequent decades. American society had to confront other questions: for whom did the memory of the Revolutionary War remain and to what national purpose? The answers to these questions indicated a new kind of American commemoration that primarily celebrated democracy, but democracy built up around a core of conservative republican tradition.7 A public sense of generational shift helped to focus attention on the past and to finalize the change in public culture. As noted Harvard professor Edward Everett put it in , ‘‘It is the order of nature that the generation to achieve nobly, should be succeeded by the generation worthily to record and gratefully to commemorate.’’ 8 It was still vitally important for the ideal American nation that the Revolutionary War be commemorated, but by , the war began to become rather more the subject of national imagination than public memory as the generation that had experienced the war passed away.9 As Americans commemorated their national past during these years, they took stock of how far the country had come since the Revolution, and they decided what course they wanted to take into the future.

The Value of Commemoration

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Even as the Revolution was passing ever more into national memory, commemorations took on renewed importance as many Americans consciously continued to associate the cause of national unity with shared Revolution-





ary War sacrifice. The military past offered an idealized though sometimes contested vision of union, as it had since the s, and many Americans specifically articulated the role that memory had to play in creating national allegiance. For example, in  Vermonter David Perry wrote in his Recollections of an Old Soldier that as he took time to ‘‘reflect back to our Revolutionary War, and see how much blood and treasure were spent to gain our independence . . . I pray God that this bond of union may continue to grow firmer and stronger, till every American citizen will be of one heart and one mind.’’ Professor Edward Everett assured the audience of his famous  Phi Beta Kappa lecture at Harvard University (which became very popular as a printed pamphlet) that even as the nation expanded west there would be ‘‘as long as the name of America shall last, a father, that will . . . take his children on his knee and recount to them the events of the twentieth of December, the nineteenth of April, the seventeenth of June, and the Fourth of July.’’ Judge William Crafts of South Carolina agreed that the ‘‘joint contribution of valour and of virtue to the common cause of liberty’’ by all the men of America was ‘‘confined to no section of territory, but as if to rebuke sectional feelings and to excite a common pride, and to ensure a lasting union, exhibited in all of our confederated states.’’ 10 Revolutionary War commemorations showed that while the role that the American Revolution played in public culture had changed over fifty years, its importance had not. Memories of the Revolution still defined a unified nation, even as the nation itself was changing and as ‘‘sectional feelings’’ took on a new cast. Public figures still worried that the nation might dissolve if Americans became lazy about proper public commemoration. Even though public memory created unity, it could not be taken for granted. Vermonter Charles Doolittle advocated keeping the past alive as the new generation came to power for just this reason. In a short essay titled ‘‘Commemorative Festivals’’ that appeared in the Vermont Gazette in , he described how commemorations of the Revolutionary War would preserve the American nation as the generations shifted. Doolittle maintained that ‘‘National festal occasions, in their observance, link together successive generations of men, and enforce with captivating energy the wisdom and necessity of preserving moral examples set for us in the purest ages of the Republic.’’ He believed that commemorations essentially defined the American national character because ‘‘while celebrating the example, principles, relations and duties, which made us a nation of freemen, it inspires consoling hopes of perpetuating these elevated traits of nationality, which have placed us in the most enviable grade among the nations of the earth.’’ 11 It was both the events of the past, and the manner




Chapter 

in which they were remembered, that made America a great nation, so both generations had a role to play. It was unclear that a cohesive nation could continue without the memory of the Revolutionary War. Doolittle advised the public that even as they moved into the future, they must not forget the past because commemorations comprised a ‘‘moral cord’’ that linked ‘‘the American character, through a series of passing generations.’’ Americans would have to keep the graves of their Revolutionary War heroes sacred ‘‘if we desire this land to continue the asylum of oppressed humanity, and the birth and burial place of patriots.’’ 12 Doolittle shared with many other commentators in the early s this idea that Americans would have to work hard to deserve the reputation earned for them by their fathers who were now passing away. Showing proper respect to Revolutionary War memory and the emulation of heroes became ways to demonstrate that the new generation had learned the lesson of patriotism. American social structure and the economy were continuing to change substantively in the s, and rituals of commemoration were expected to remain a steady influence, even as public memory itself changed. The commercial development and the stratification of social classes, which had been well under way since the Revolution, seemed more advanced than ever. Following the War of , a ‘‘market revolution . . . mobilized collective resources through government to fuel growth in countless ways, not least by providing the essential legal, financial, and transport infrastructures.’’ 13 Economic and cultural development proceeded together, and the twenty-four States were connected in new ways in the s, as steamboats, newspapers, mail delivery, and the Erie Canal defined a new national space.14 More Americans than ever accepted commercialization and celebrated the rise of the ‘‘middling sort’’ to dominate American society, even as working-class identity-formation continued apace.15 Accompanying all these changes was a change in the nature of public culture. Social elites, especially in New England, tried to claim for themselves some Revolutionary War memories that had once been thought to be the natural interest of all of American society, but at the same time commemorations in popular culture and participation by the ‘‘lower sorts’’ expanded ever more rapidly. As a new class structure solidified, Americans still looked to the Revolutionary past for inspiration, even as they defined their national future in terms that seemed to indicate the ‘‘newness’’ of America’s situation. The years between  and  marked a period of particularly vigorous commemoration throughout the United States. Commemorative activities at many of the traditional sites of Revolutionary War memory intensi-





fied as the fiftieth anniversary of the war’s beginning approached. Professor Edward Everett summed up the prevailing public spirit in his  Phi Beta Kappa oration at Harvard: ‘‘With the present year will be completed the half century from that most important era in human history, the commencement of our revolutionary war. The jubilee of our national existence is at hand.’’ In order to celebrate that jubilee, Americans continued to celebrate ‘‘the great men to whom, under Providence, we owe our national existence and privileges.’’ 16 As Everett’s statement shows, veneration of the ‘‘great men’’ of the Revolution still comprised an important part of the discourse of Revolutionary War memory. But the image of the national hero had also been indelibly changed. The man who was arguably the greatest living hero of the Revolutionary War, the Marquis de Lafayette, was present in the audience for Everett’s oration. Everett saluted him as one who ‘‘yielded himself to the united voice of a people, and returned in his age, to the gratitude of the nation, to whom he devoted his youth.’’ 17 Military commemorations in this period culminated in the greatest national cultural event to date, the triumphal return of Lafayette, hero of the American and the French Revolutions. During his tour of all twenty-four states, the general took part in a thirteen-month celebration of the national past and a reenvisioning of the national future.18 America chose to deal with its past by celebrating Lafayette. As President Monroe’s invitation to the marquis said, ‘‘The whole nation . . . ardently desire to see you again among them . . . . the adopted country of your youth . . . has ever preserved the most grateful remembrance of your important services.’’ 19 Monroe’s invitation spoke the language of consensual praise for traditional Revolutionary heroes that had helped to define patriotism since the s. Lafayette’s visit and the ceremonial outpouring it spawned all over the country were fraught with images of military memory, both republican and democratic. One New York newspaper correspondent wrote that during Lafayette’s visit those who still personally remembered the events of the war found that ‘‘they had not quite forgotten to feel again as they felt in the Revolution.’’ 20 To the rising generation, his visit represented the chance to link their own futures to the glory of the Revolutionary past. Daniel Sargent tied into his family’s past when he wrote excitedly to his uncle, an elderly war pensioner, that he had the ‘‘honor & pleasure’’ to see the general during his journey.21 The visit caused excitement countrywide, and as Cincinnatian Sarah Graham wrote to a friend in Kentucky, ‘‘No person talks of any thing else.’’ 22 One New Yorker commented that when Lafayette appeared in the city’s streets for celebrations on July , , ‘‘The streets were literally




Chapter 

General Lafayette’s Visit (Erie Canal), lithograph, nd, Museum of the City of New York, Print Archives. General Lafayette’s enthusiastic reception by a crowd upon his visit to the Erie Canal in  was typical of the praise he received all over the country on his triumphal tour. In this lithograph, Lafayette is dressed in plain clothes and politely tips his hat to the gathering of people who are cheering him. The assembled militia company seems to have just fired a salute in his honor, as smoke billows over the scene. Although the crowd around Lafayette’s carriage appears to be composed only of men and boys, women are cheering the general from the windows of the surrounding houses, and on behalf of the whole community, someone has erected a sign reading, ‘‘Welcome Lafayette.’’

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

wedged with the mass of people.’’ 23 It seemed that everyone wanted to see ‘‘the Nation’s Guest’’ to express their gratitude for the Revolutionary hero. Although Lafayette represented in some respects the greatest remaining republican military hero of the Revolutionary War, he was also a symbol of the liberal democratic political commitment for which he had suffered during the French Revolution. Although an aristocrat, Lafayette had supported the French Revolution before he was jailed during the Terror, and Americans hailed him as a supporter of moderate democracy. Lafayette represented himself as the liberator of the Bastille, and Americans wholly swallowed the image of him as a sane egalitarian (however much the image was exaggerated by self-promotion). The mayor of New York City proclaimed upon Lafayette’s arrival that during the half century he had been away his ‘‘name has become dear to the friends, as inseparably connected with the cause of freedom, in





the old, as in the new world.’’ 24 The Washington Society in Boston toasted him on July , , as ‘‘The generous soldier of freedom in America and the hero of her forlorn hope in France.’’ 25 Although he was praised as an old-style republican military hero, Lafayette also seemed to represent the promise of democratic liberalism for a new age. Lafayette was a grand republican hero with a democratic twist, and his visit confirmed the new empowerment of ‘‘the people’’ in a commercialized American republic. Several themes in his tour emphasized how much Revolutionary War commemorations had changed since the Revolution, even as they continued to represent what the nation stood for. Lafayette was hailed by the gratitude of a unified public, a gratitude that empowered the people who bestowed it. The national community became the subject of its own praise. The outpouring of public gratitude became linked to a display of middleclass values, which were increasingly suspicious of the aristocratic style that Lafayette himself had once represented. Lafayette appeared during his visit not as the eighteenth-century aristocrat immortalized on canvas by Charles Willson Peale during the Revolutionary War, but as the democratic gentleman clad in plain style who was painted by the artist’s son, Rembrandt Peale, in the s.26 The Niles Register noted with pride in August  that even though the American people were ‘‘wild with joy’’ and enthusiasm, Lafayette preferred ‘‘to be treated like a , not as a titled knave or brainless dandy.’’ 27 Lafayette, as a public figure in America in  and , represented the American nation as defined by public memory of the Revolutionary War: a heroic republican tradition changed by time and democratic values. The ascendancy of democratic values did not mean that either the nation or Lafayette’s admirers were completely egalitarian, but several previously disenfranchised groups did take the opportunity of the general’s visit to assert themselves in public on occasions fraught with political meaning. Although Lafayette’s stops in many cities were carefully coordinated civic occasions, those who were left out of the official plans often pressed to be seen and heard by America’s hero. His visit provided clear opportunities for outsiders to express their own ties to Revolutionary War memory, and thereby to patriotism and the nation. One set of incidents in Concord, Massachusetts, shows that lower-class Americans not only wanted to use public memory to express themselves, but that they also wanted to be heard. When the general visited Concord in , college student Edward Jarvis noted that poorer mechanics and farmers and their ‘‘wives and daughters’’ who formed part of the enthusiastic crowd were extremely unhappy when only the ‘‘cultivated or more fashionable’’ men and




Chapter 

women of the town were allowed within rope barriers to meet the hero up close. They protested loudly and ‘‘talked of the aristocracy and their haughty treatment of the common people,’’ which was unacceptable because ‘‘some had fought with Lafayette in the battles of the revolution, and they were as grateful for his services. They loved his memory.’’ The local militia company, filled with the ‘‘common’’ men of the town who were denied equal access to its more formal artillery and infantry companies, refused to be marginalized from the afternoon’s military parade because they were eager to show that ‘‘these plain soldiers were warriors as well and as much as those who were uniformed.’’ While Concord’s elites may have wanted to keep Concord’s ‘‘rabble’’ quiet and under control by restricting their access to Lafayette, they instead ‘‘engendered a deeper feeling of jealousy and anger which was not easily subdued’’ and became a bone of contention in local class politics for at least the next ten years.28 Similar incidents were repeated in other parts of the country, where those who might have been excluded sought equal access to Lafayette and to the commemorative process. Maria Brown Duncan, a schoolgirl at the female academy in Lexington, Kentucky, assured Lafayette on his visit to her school in May  that ‘‘Although incapacitated from engaging in the active concerns of government, we are deeply impressed with the value of your services, and the intrinsick worth of your character.’’ Her classmate Mary McIntosh pronounced an oration to welcome Lafayette on behalf of ‘‘Kentucky’s band of  ,’’ and she pleaded that ‘‘If the reception given you here is not so splendid, as those you have met elsewhere, think not, Noble Warrior, think not, it is less sincere.’’ 29 The Connecticut Journal reported that Lafayette’s official breakfast with the New Haven Common Council in August  was interrupted when ‘‘the gentlemen at the table’’ were informed that the whole rest of the building was filled with ‘‘crowds of the fair sex, who sent a deputation to the Mayor to demand the honour of an admission to the levee of the General.’’ Over three hundred women and children were allowed to greet Lafayette at the breakfast’s conclusion.30 Americans who might have been marginalized because of their class or gender took the democratic message of Lafayette’s visit seriously and refused to be kept behind the ropes or out of the breakfast room. While these actions were not necessarily radical in and of themselves, they did evidence some level of empowerment in the act of expressing public gratitude, and they set a precedent for collective action that would serve less powerful groups well as the nineteenth century progressed.





The Commercialization of Memory Lower-class Americans were not the only ones who used Lafayette’s visit to increase their public visibility; some aspects of the celebration also showed a new middle-class influence. The American people turned out not only to demonstrate their gratitude to their hero, but also to demonstrate their power as consumers. Lafayette’s visit aptly illustrates the increased commercialization of Revolutionary War memory that was part of the development of a commercialized democratic America during the s. As Lafayette traveled around the country, millions of Americans turned out to take part in traditional ceremonies honoring him or just to catch a glimpse of the ‘‘greatest man in the world.’’ In addition to more traditional ceremonies, many commercial and popular amusements accompanied Lafayette’s visit to towns across the country. Americans could purchase tickets to balls, the theater, dance hall shows, and dinners all in honor of the returning military hero. If once commemorations featured only handmade banners and other ceremonial displays, now a new variety of manufactured goods were designed to commemorate the war and were offered for sale to middle-class Americans with money to spend.31 Celebrating Lafayette and the Revolutionary past became an occasion to celebrate American commercial development that would continue into the future. Taking part in public ceremony was no longer the only way to participate in Lafayette’s visit, Americans could now join in public ritual by purchasing a wide array of souvenirs.32 As Lafayette traveled in procession through the streets of many an American town, ‘‘the shops were tastefully decorated with every variety of fanciful arrangement’’ in honor of his visit.33 Americans could buy clothing, furniture, and even cleaning brushes that bore images of their Revolutionary hero. Printers created broadsides, sheet music, paper hats, decorative tickets, and handbills to mark Lafayette’s visit.34 American glass works produced whiskey flasks, bottles, and vases embossed with the heads of Lafayette and Washington, usually in tandem.35 Some of the most popular commemorative souvenirs of Lafayette’s visit included china plates, platters, and jugs, almost all of which were produced in England and exported to America in time for the general’s tour.36 Merchants sold a variety of more idiosyncratic items bearing the image of the general, including papier-mâché snuff boxes and a wide variety of domestically manufactured buttons. One Boston firm even advertised  pairs of kid leather boots ‘‘stamped with good likenesses of Generals Lafayette and Washington. The stamps are Water




Chapter 

Trade card, W. H. Morgan & Son, Philadelphia, c. s. © – www.arttoday. com. This trade card for the printmaker W. H. Morgan advertises the ‘‘national prints’’ and gilt frames available at his shop on Market Street in Philadelphia. Prints of Lafayette and George Washington, like the two depicted on the trade card, were popular in the s as a way for Americans to display both their patriotism and their good taste. Commercial goods and entertainment became increasingly popular as forms of public commemoration in the s.

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Proof and are superior to any now in this Market.’’ 37 These items demonstrate a new kind of patriotism that could unite a nation willing to spend its money on commemorative trinkets. Clearly, the old-style republican world of heroic biography and panegyric praise was passing away when Americans could demonstrate respect for Revolutionary War heroes by using items bearing their images to clean their houses or walk through mud. Some of the commemorative souvenirs were more explicity military than others, but all of them helped to make Lafayette’s return as a war hero into a participatory festival. While many of these souvenirs depicted images of Lafayette as he appeared in the s and were intended to commemorate his return visit to America, most bore some reminder of the Revolutionary War as well. Particularly notable in this respect were a variety of ribbons and handkerchiefs printed with words and images that invoked patriotic memories of the war and were intended to identify their wearers as patriots. The ribbons were worn by people of various classes as a sign of patriotic commit-





ment during Lafayette’s visit. The New York Commercial Advertiser reported that ‘‘even the poor lads who drove the carriages entered fully into the common feeling. . . . they wore silk ribbons fastened to the button holes of their waistcoats.’’ 38 Many of these ribbons were printed with pictures and inscriptions that conjured up images of Lafayette’s voluntary military service on America’s behalf. One ribbon meant to be worn as a badge during Lafayette’s visit to Albany, New York, depicted the general in full military uniform and detailed his heroism ‘‘in many battles—At Brandywine, when wounded, he refused to quit the field of battle. The American army being in want, this distinguished patriot supplied from his private purse to the amount of , dollars, at one time, for clothing.’’ 39 Another ribbon produced for the official reception in Baltimore and ‘‘Sold at J. Goulds Military Warehouse’’ pictured Lafayette’s bust rising above a scene of ‘‘Cornwallis Resigning his Sword at York Town.’’ 40 Participants in the democratic culture of commemoration were no longer mere spectators when they could mark themselves as participants in the new social and political order by displaying colorful bits of silk cloth. The individuals who purchased genteel goods such as china, brass buttons, or silk that were embossed with images of Lafayette signaled to the world that they were patriots and persons of taste, both important points of American pride.41 American women, who took part in all the public celebrations of Lafayette, claimed for themselves a measure of cultural power through their particular control over the ‘‘goods’’ of commemoration, though women’s contributions were often set apart by their gender. Many of the commemorative souvenirs, from cloth to cleaning brushes, were designed for use by women, and would have been purchased by them. At the genteel balls held in honor of General Lafayette in many large towns, women displayed fans, medallions, shawls, ribbons, and pins and even wore dresses bearing Lafayette’s image.42 The meeting of the women’s committee of the Lafayette Corps, which was planning the general’s visit to Cincinnati, Ohio, agreed easily on the order of celebration, the decorations, and an orator, but they spent three times longer debating the appropriate dress and headwear for the ladies who would greet him.43 Although the women of the Cincinnati committee obviously spent a lot of time and energy on the material goods of celebration that were under their control, some of them also felt that extensive arguments over hat styles only trivialized female participation in public life. Power over commemorative goods provided women a field of political action, but that action was often carefully set apart from more ‘‘important’’ male activities.




Chapter 

‘‘ ‘Lafayette’s March,’ Composed by Miss Caroline Clark,’’ . Photo courtesy The Newberry Library, Chicago. Caroline Clark composed this march for performance by the Boston Independent Cadets band for the first visit of the Marquis de Lafayette to Boston in . In addition, Clark sold the sheet music to the march as a souvenir of Lafayette’s visit. Her sheet music is a reminder that women took part in public celebrations of the great Revolutionary War hero and created many of the commercialized souvenirs that commemorated his triumphal tour.

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Women’s association with material culture was decidedly ‘‘feminine,’’ but that did not always limit their patriotism or their ability to participate in the festival of military memory. In addition to purchasing and exhibiting goods, women produced commemorative items as well. For example, ‘‘Miss Caroline Clark’’ published the sheet music to ‘‘Lafayette’s March,’’ which she composed for performance by the Boston Independent Cadets.44 Women also constructed many of the public artworks and decorations that greeted the general in public ceremonies all over the country.45 In Greenwich, Connecticut, Lafayette passed through ‘‘a rural arch . . . composed of pine branches and wild briar, and decorated with roses; it was said to be designed by the ladies, and it indeed bore evidence of the most delicate taste and fancy.’’ 46





The newspapers were filled with reports of the ‘‘taste as well as patriotism’’ of the women who designed such public displays.47 Philadelphia was filled with small triumphal arches as Lafayette entered the town, and the Franklin Gazette reported that ‘‘the decorations of all these arches were devised and arranged by the ladies, who are always prompt and cheerful in rendering a patriotic homage to the virtuous and the brave.’’ 48 During Lafayette’s visit, and in a large part through the use of commercial goods, women proved their ‘‘taste’’ and ‘‘patriotism’’ as a part of the democratic public. Allowing good taste to become a mark of political commitment, whether in a feminine, commercialized, or middle-class version, was further evidence of the democratization of memory. In , when government officials of Pennsylvania had tried to prescribe genteel behavior for those who wished to view the artistic triumphal arch constructed by Charles Willson Peale, they had sent a clear message that upper-class Philadelphians should have more direct and orderly access to public commemoration than the disorderly rabble. Now, everyone might be able to display a silk badge or purchase access to a similar kind of display, as gentility flattened out into a more middle-class sensibility, available on occasion to both the upper and lower classes. Commercialized commemorations drew attention to the great hero, Lafayette, but they also ennobled the craftsmen and women who created them and the consumers who bought them. The commercialization of public memory that was evident everywhere during Lafayette’s visit also appeared in other Revolutionary War commemorations. Commercialized commemorations often built upon traditional forms of public memory (engaging in elaborate praise of republican heroes), but they changed the meaning of public participation. For example, Palmetto Day in Charleston, South Carolina, increasingly became an occasion for popular amusements to celebrate the memory of the Revolutionary War. During the s, the location of the main celebration of the victory at the Battle of Sullivan’s Island shifted from the elite downtown churches to the Battery district on the harbor, the site of frequent popular entertainment. In  the celebration of June , ‘‘a day so glorious to the State of South Carolina,’’ included ‘‘a splendid  . . . with the addition of some brilliant Transparencies’’ and a band playing patriotic music. While Palmetto Day had often included fireworks and music, this time admission to the amusements cost twenty-five cents. According to an advertisement in the Charleston Courier in , the Battery district itself acquired ‘‘a classical interest’’ by its association with ‘‘the memory of the brave soldiers and their General, who fought the early battle of Liberty on Sullivan’s Island.’’ In that year, L. A. Motta ad-




Chapter 

vertised that he had specially employed a band ‘‘to revive the recollection of those achievements or acts of heroism, that measurably contributed to the great and happy result of National Independence!’’ 49 The public would be allowed to join in the celebration for a nominal fee. Palmetto Day still celebrated heroism, but the commercialized holiday focused on entertaining the patriotic ticket buyers as well. By  the character of the Palmetto Day commemoration had clearly changed from earlier days. The Charleston Courier took great pains to acknowledge that the annual commemorative commercial entertainment at the Battery upheld the spirit of the original celebrations planned by the Palmetto Society in the s, if not their entire contents. An editorial assured the people of Charleston that June  was still a sacred and memorable day: ‘‘If its recurrence be not, as formerly, accompanied by the panegyrics of rhetoric, and the illumination of fireworks and the cannon’s echo—if a more sedate and sober feeling of gratitude be characteristic of the times in which we live— still with honorable pride, and exulting reverence, we look back upon the honored deeds of our ancestors.’’ While Palmetto Day still fulfilled its commemorative purpose, its style had shifted from formal rhetoric to a more amusing form of public gratitude. Instead of a formal oration representing the glory of the heroes of South Carolina, or even a sober and sedate reflection as the newspaper called for, the people of Charleston were treated to a ‘‘Grand Pyrotechnic Illumination . . . consisting of five Mosaic Roses, and several flights of Rockets, made as a trial of skill by five of the most eminent Pyrotechnics [of this] city.’’ Admission to the fireworks show and band concert cost twelve cents.50 Gratitude had changed from a voluntary gift of a unified public for their aristocratic heroes into something that could be expressed by any member of the public for the price of admission. The memory of the Revolutionary War was commercialized right along with the rest of American society, and the republican nation would never be the same. Commercialized commemoration gave the American nation a sense of being ‘‘new’’ and looking to the future of the republic, even as it was grounded in the past. The democratic consumer and the ambiguities of a more complicated class system became a part of the national culture defined by public memory.





National Identity and Generational Change The palpable sense of ‘‘newness’’ in American society during the s explained why Americans were preoccupied with the passage of time. Public culture reflected the awareness among Americans that as time passed the ‘‘rising generation’’ would take on the mantle of public responsibility.51 One Georgia Fourth of July toast in  summed up the passage of time as participants drank to ‘‘The rising generation, may they ever be taught to admire and to practice the virtue, piety, and patriotism of those, who at the expense of so much blood, and such devotedness of character, purchased for us the privileges . . . which we now so richly enjoy!’’ 52 Society as a whole had to deal with the fact that in the words of preacher Thomas Gray, ‘‘one generation passeth away, and another cometh.’’ 53 Both Revolutionary War veterans and those who would replace them hoped that they would do so in the spirit of public sacrifice and patriotism established by the men of the eighteenth century even as they defined a new kind of society for the nineteenth century. Commemorations became rituals of generational change that intended to pass down a stable vision of national identity. For the men of the Revolution, this generational shift meant that the judgment of posterity was at hand, while the rising generation would at last have its full chance to live up to their Revolutionary examples. In this new order, the emulation of both great heroes and of humble men was equally important—there was no time to be wasted ignoring lesser veterans. Alexander Graydon, a veteran from Pennsylvania, mused in his  memoir that he could find only ‘‘a few who are yet alive’’ from his military company. He noted that the dead had ‘‘resigned their places to that posterity, for whose interests it was the fashion of seventy-six to be extremely concerned,’’ and he hoped that posterity in the form of public memory would not disappoint them.54 Veterans had occupied an important and ever changing relationship to the ideal nation in the public memory of the war, and now they stood at the heart of the generational shift even as their ranks dwindled. Throughout the s public memories of the common veteran continued to increase in importance and illustrated just how democratic Revolutionary commemorations had become. Individuals who once had remained nameless and insignificant by comparison to the great heroes of the war now gained public respect because of their age and experience. Public gratitude had come to those who had waited almost fifty years for their share of public adoration, and some veterans had the chance to enjoy a new status as living democratic heroes. The remainder of those who ‘‘fought and bled for Ameri-




Chapter 

can Independence’’ hoped, like Rhode Island memoirist Israel Potter to enjoy ‘‘a few of the blessings produced by American valour, in her memorable conflict with the mother country, in which he took a distinguished part.’’ 55 There grew up a cult of the ‘‘hoary-headed veteran’’ as towns vied to display their last remaining men of the Revolution as symbols of their link to the patriotic past. Aged veterans appeared as important characters in a new group of popular novels by American authors including Lydia Maria Child, Eliza Lanesford Foster Cushing, and James Fenimore Cooper.56 As subjects of American imagination, veterans would be able to outlive their physical presence and imprint themselves on the national mind. Veterans themselves often helped to create romanticized images of the Revolutionary War soldier grown old but still proud of his service to his country. Veterans allowed themselves in many cases to become living links to a Revolutionary past that was becoming increasingly remote. For example, veterans assumed new importance in the commemoration of the Battle of Bennington. In August , Darius Clark, Anthony Haswell’s son-in-law who had taken over the Vermont Gazette after Haswell’s death, advertised the annual celebration of the Battle of Bennington with the following proclamation: ‘‘This day, which by the bravery of the Green Mountain boys, saved this vicinity from pillage and slaughter, and gave new hopes to the cause of liberty, will be devoted to appropriate and honourable testimonials of the gratitude of all who appreciate the blessings we enjoy.’’ 57 Clark was a high proponent of individual liberty, and he reported on the ceremony in a manner that stressed the dignity of the individual veterans who played such an important role in the town’s public memory.58 At the head of the procession arranged for August , , would march ‘‘the survivors of Bennington battle, together with all those who participated in the toils of the revolution, who may attend . . . preceded by females to strew their path with flowers.’’ Following the order of celebration, Clark printed a request from ‘‘an aged and respectable citizen’’ of the county ‘‘that his brother soldiers who were in the battle, should assume the badge of that day—the ‘green bough’ ’’ of the Green Mountain Boys.59 Although the celebration of August  still expressed regional pride and democratic principles, the character of the celebration had been significantly altered, even since the s. Instead of glorifying John Stark and other heroes of the Revolution in high republican terms, the attention of the day was focused even more upon the veterans of the town of Bennington than it had been a decade earlier. The Bennington anniversary celebration was no longer defined by the radical democracy of a French Revolutionary festival as it had been during the s (nor did it allow for the





extensive female participation championed by Haswell). Rather, Bennington commemorations in the s celebrated a native democracy that was defined by the memories of local men and validated the liberal vision of individual action. The democratic cult of the veteran seemed especially prominent during Lafayette’s visit. The visit provided ample opportunity for ‘‘gray haired’’ veterans all over the country to rekindle their military pride, and everywhere Lafayette went in  and  he was greeted by veterans who flocked to see him. Although some papers lamented ‘‘how few’’ veterans remained, the New York Commercial Advertiser announced that when Lafayette arrived he would find ‘‘a remnant remaining, of the great and patriotic men of ’, to welcome him to the land of freedom.’’ 60 The constant public spectacle of old men embracing one another in a fit of patriotic memory also proved to be a cathartic experience for the new generation that was assuming power in American society. Newspaper coverage of the visit, which was constant and extensive, devoted much attention to reunions of old soldiers. These reunions endowed national memory with a masculine sentimental quality directly related to the genre of popular sentimental literature.61 The bond of ‘‘feeling’’ between veterans, which they passed on to the rising generation who watched their reunions, represented one possible avenue for the memory of the war to outlive them. The nation could be bonded together by the sensibilities inspired by such touching scenes. As soon as Lafayette arrived in New York in August , old soldiers rushed to greet him, and the tide barely subsided until he departed America in September . As veterans were introduced to the general, they usually shook hands and presented some token of their common memory. The Commercial Advertiser reported on one of the first meetings between Lafayette and his former comrades in arms in highly sentimental terms, which set the tone for reports of similar encounters during the remainder of the general’s visit. As Lafayette arrived on a steamboat from Staten Island with , people, the paper reported that ‘‘Decidedly the most interesting sight was the reception of the General by his old companions in arms: Colonel Marinus Willet, now in his eighty-fifth year, General Van Cortland, General Clarkson, and the other worthies.’’ 62 The Advertiser was amazed that Lafayette ‘‘knew and remembered them all. It was a re-union of a long separated family.’’ But the conversation seemed remarkable to the newspaper as much for the emotional response it provoked in the crowd: ‘‘No person who witnessed this interview, will ever forget it; many an honest tear was shed on the occasion. The young men retired at a little distance, while the venerable soldiers were indulging




Chapter 

recollections, and were embracing each other again and again; and the surrounding youth silently dropt the tear they could no longer restrain.’’ According to the Commercial Advertiser, even Lafayette was eventually overcome by the emotion of the occasion: ‘‘He manfully supported this truly trying situation for some time, when a revolutionary incident the friend, alluded to made the Marquis sigh; and his swelling heart was relieved when he burst in to tears. The sympathetic feeling extended to all present. . . . The scene was too affecting to be continued.’’ 63 This report rendered the attachment between veterans in highly romantic and sentimental terms. The literary convention of sentimentality transformed the manly experience of war into another form of emotion for the new age, and the new generation could react to the men of the past on its own terms. The real emotions of veterans acquired public meaning by being filtered through sentimental convention. Similar scenes were repeated time and again as Lafayette traveled around the nation; he seemed to reserve a special bond for any war veteran. The papers reported that Lafayette remembered the men who had fought with him fifty years before as they sought him out in cities and in the country.64 The New York American reported that while traveling through a rural area outside New Rochelle, ‘‘More than one old seventy-sixer, ‘Who fought and bled in freedom’s cause,’ came to visit their fellow soldier. . . . a warm clasp of the hand was all the utterance to feelings which were meet reward for a life spent in the cause of liberty.’’ 65 Even the most humble of veterans was seen as heroic in the light of passing time as the great general came forward to greet him. As the Philadelphia Daily Advertiser put it, ‘‘These are the men whose names would be carved in letters of iron and of brass.—A soldier of the American Revolution!—The glory of the title outshines the splendor of a monarch’s diadem.’’ 66 In Norwalk, Connecticut, crowds awaited Lafayette’s arrival, and ‘‘among those assembled were several revolutionary heroes, with bosoms beating high at the thought of shaking by the hand their old and beloved comrade.’’ 67 Shaking hands with the great hero seemed to empower the common veteran in the public mind as ‘‘Here and there was to be seen ‘an old soldier,’ who seemed to cling with a child-like affection, to the hand of their political father, each urging on the memory of the Hero, some anecdote of their mutual toils.’’ 68 In Nashville, Tennessee, the Masonic orator who greeted Lafayette said that even in the Southwest he could grasp ‘‘the trembling hand and support the tottering step of the once active and dauntless soldier, the fire of whose eye is not yet quite extinguished; the ardor of whose heroic soul is almost rekindled to a flame at the extancy of this happy meeting.’’ 69





Society renewed its attention toward these individual veterans by associating them with Lafayette, thus granting them power as national cultural symbols to an unprecedented degree. Lafayette expressly wanted to share public gratitude with his fellow veterans, both great and humble. When presented with a token of public thanks at the naval yard in Southwark, Pennsylvania, in October , he replied, ‘‘The extraordinary honors of which an American veteran is now the happy object, I consider as being shared in common with my surviving companions.’’ 70 The ‘‘shared’’ glory that Lafayette envisioned reflected democratic gratitude on common men like never before: the republican hero explicitly included them as figures of public praise. The true democratic potential in the public attention to war veterans coming to greet Lafayette was clear from the fact that even some African American veterans gained public recognition for their Revolutionary War service during Lafayette’s visit. African Americans, who had seen their wartime service largely erased from the public memory that defined national identity, took the opportunity of Lafayette’s visit to newly assert themselves in public culture. Lafayette was a leading international proponent of African recolonization, and he was well known as an outspoken advocate on behalf of blacks worldwide.71 African Americans turned out along with the rest of the American public to witness the return of their Revolutionary hero, despite the efforts of some southern newspaper editors to keep the embarrassing sight of slaves and other ‘‘colored persons’’ away from the general.72 In Charleston, South Carolina, one observer wrote that ‘‘The astonished Blacks flocked in numbers to get a glimpse of the giniral—whose fame had reached even their Ethiop ears.’’ 73 Among those African Americans who joined in the festive celebrations for Lafayette were several black veterans, whose meetings with the general finally allowed them to achieve some long overdue glory. For example, James Armistead Lafayette, who had served as a spy for Lafayette during  and had named himself after his commander, greeted the marquis on his visit to Richmond, Virginia.74 Although the Richmond newspapers did not report on the meeting in the same sentimental tones that they reserved for white veterans, the association between the black man and the hero constituted a powerful statement. In New Orleans, where Lafayette met with a delegation of African American men that included many veterans of the War of , Lafayette himself explicitly defined a vision of African American heroism, when he told the group, ‘‘I have often during the War of Independence seen African blood shed with honor in our ranks for the cause of the United States.’’ 75 He then




Chapter 

expressed his ‘‘gratitude’’ for the ‘‘valor’’ of African American veterans. In this one moment, Lafayette turned the rhetoric the American people used to praise him around and heaped glory on African American men. The meaning of gratitude had been sufficiently broadened to include even those who seemed most marginal to the American nation. Lafayette himself helped to control the meaning of his own visit, and remarkably he spread honor to one of the groups of veterans that had been most ignored in the public memory of the war. While military glory may not have immediately translated into formal political power for African American veterans, the mere possibility of black heroism was fraught with consequences for a national identity based largely on the veneration of great military men. Lafayette seemed to validate what many African Americans had long argued: if the nation owed black veterans gratitude, then respect and freedom should follow. An increasing number of Revolutionary War veterans, from all walks of life and all ranks of service, died in the early s, and the commemoration of their deaths provided further occasions for Americans to reflect on the passage of time and to renew their revolutionary commitment. As the writer Samuel Knapp put it in an  letter to Edward Everett, ‘‘The heroes of ’ are falling like the leaves of the season around us, and all of them will soon be gone.’’ 76 Everett himself noted in a public speech that ‘‘Lincoln, and Greene, and Knox, and Hamilton, are gone; the heroes of Saratoga and Yorktown have fallen, before the only foe they could not meet.’’ 77 Thomas Gray, minister of the Congregational church in Jamaica Plain, lamented that ‘‘most of the revolutionary patriots, who were once so useful to their country, after having served their generation faithfully, have, at length, fallen to sleep.’’ 78 The fleeting numbers of heroes of the Revolution was a constant theme of public commemoration in the early s. For example, a ‘‘party of ladies and gentlemen’’ met at Morgan’s Spring in Maryland on June , , to honor the commitment made in  by a military company to reconvene at their campsite fifty years later. Their agreement was fulfilled with proper ceremony and allowed those assembled to reflect on the progress of fifty years, but the newspaper lamented that ‘‘of the ninety-seven who composed the company five only are living, and of the five only two were present, the others being prevented by age and infirmity.’’ Those who had gathered to honor the veterans nonetheless agreed to meet again in twenty-five years, by which time they would surely only be able to remember those who had already passed on.79 The next time a group gathered at Morgan’s Spring, none of them would have seen the original encampment, and their commemoration would mean something different.





Society as a whole had to confront a number of questions raised by the death and aging of Revolutionary War heroes. Did the death of heroes mean the death of the Revolution itself ? How was their memory best to be carried on into the future? Was every dead veteran worthy of veneration? What would continue to hold the nation together now that most of its living war heroes were passing away? Revolutionary War veterans had always provided the backbone of Revolutionary War memory, and their passage posed the problem of how that memory would survive without them. As one common veteran mused in a Boston newspaper: Our brave and patriotic fellow citizens, whose lives were devoted to the service of their country during the war of the Revolution, and who were the great instruments in acquiring the blessings we now enjoy, are fast retiring to the silent tomb. In a few, very few years, the grave will be closed on the small number who now survive, and not a single individual will be left, to whose voice we may listen, in relating the events of that interesting epoch.80

Something had to be done to extend their influence beyond the grave, and to help translate revolutionary experience into national memory. The questions surrounding how the memory of the Revolution would survive the men who had fought were partially addressed in the public outpourings of grief that accompanied the funerals of prominent officers who died in the early s. Public funeral commemorations of the likes once reserved for George Washington were now recreated, albeit on a much smaller scale, in order to memorialize the lesser heroes of the Revolution. Public ceremonies were necessary to preserve the memory of the Revolution beyond the death of its heroes. One of the best examples of public funeral commemorations came in Boston, when William Eustis and John Brooks died just a few days apart in February .81 When Eustis, the former governor of Massachusetts who had served in the Revolutionary War as a surgeon, died in February , his passing was announced with pealing bells and the public firing of guns.82 The Columbian Centinel ran a call for the public to respect his memory under the headline ‘‘Another Revolutionary Worthy Departed.’’ 83 In order to maintain the integrity of the American nation, citizens would have to continue their gratitude as the last men of the Revolution passed away. As Daniel Sharp said in his funeral sermon for Eustis:

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

There is something in this event peculiarly affecting to us as citizens of the United States. Another patriot of the revolution is gone. . . . It is, a consideration peculiarly humiliating to the pride of man, that of the eminent statesmen and heroes of that




Chapter 

period, there are only a few left to tell us with their own lips, what great things God hath done for us in the days that are past. To the few who do survive, we would ever pay the homage of our filial reverence and gratitude.84

Although these men differed from the martyrs killed during the war, some of the public ‘‘filial reverence and gratitude’’ paid to them owed a debt to wartime traditions of mourning. While newspaper editors and public orators generally acknowledged that ‘‘inflated eulogy and exaggerated praise, neither do honor to the dead or good to the living,’’ eulogy continued to comprise an important part of public commemoration.85 If the ‘‘rising generation’’ was to learn the lessons of an older generation whom it barely knew, traditional eulogies for dead Revolutionary War veterans would have to be put to new uses. Edward Everett said that the new generation could ‘‘find no language of gratitude with which to do justice to’’ heroes like Brooks and Eustis, so that ‘‘the best gratitude, the best thanks, will be an imitation of their example.’’ 86 William Crafts maintained in his  Palmetto Day oration that ‘‘it is the privilege of man that he can look backward on generations past, and gather instruction for himself and posterity.’’ 87 This link between past, present, and future comprised one of the traditional purposes of public eulogy that would be profitably retained. As the anonymous newspaper biographer of seven-term Massachusetts governor John Brooks, a hero of Saratoga, put it: ‘‘the rising generation are in need of models and exemplars. . . . let them be stimulated to the love of virtue, of true patriotism, of moral dignity’’ by the lives of the passing generation. It was still up to the younger generation to express in eulogy ‘‘the gratitude which is cherished at the remembrance of patriotic deeds,’’ as one funeral sermon for William Eustis put it. Not only would the current American national community have to unite around the reputation of great men, the future generation would have to unite around the memory of a past they did not personally experience. William Crafts recognized that it was not merely to maintain the fame of the dead that such celebrations were necessary, but rather ‘‘it is for ourselves, that we erect monuments, and make triumphal celebrations of the benefactors of mankind.’’ 88

Monuments to the Past and to the Future

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

The generation of the s did, indeed, seem preoccupied with building monuments in order to enshrine the past and to guarantee its own place in





history. The generation that was losing its direct link to the Revolution felt increasing nostalgia for the past, and monument building offered the chance for the current generation to mark its own public gratitude. The monument projects of the s represented a mixture of old and new. Monuments to commemorate traditional republican heroes mixed with a democratic desire to commemorate common men’s sacrifices. The rising generation of leaders, especially in New England, mixed a desire to commemorate the past with a need to ennoble themselves and to ensure future patriotism. Monuments would stand as a testament to the revolutionary generation and to the generation that was replacing it. Prompted in part by Lafayette’s visit, monument projects proliferated around the country as regional and national identities overlapped in new combinations. Most of the new monuments were sepulchers, designed to commemorate particular dead heroes of the Revolution. Construction of the Baltimore monument to Washington, first proposed in , proceeded apace, although architect Robert Mills’ original military design was exchanged for a less martial statue of George Washington to top its triumphal column. In March, , Lafayette visited Camden, South Carolina, where he laid the cornerstone for a monument to Baron de Kalb, his former mentor and the hero of the Battle of Camden. The de Kalb monument, which was also designed by Robert Mills, was an ‘‘obelisk form, raised on a pedestal, all of white marble, and resting on a granite base composed of several expanding blocks.’’ 89 De Kalb’s remains were reinterred at the monument during a ‘‘peculiarly striking’’ ceremony. Later that month Lafayette also took part in cornerstone ceremonies in Savannah, Georgia, for monuments designed by William Strickland to honor Generals Nathanael Greene and Kasimir Pulaski.90 These monuments were all designed as fairly traditional tributes to individual dead heroes. Although most of the subjects who were memorialized and the forms monuments took remained conservatively republican in the s, the opening up of American culture was still visible in the largest-scale monument project of the decade. The founding of the Bunker Hill Monument Association and its efforts to prepare for the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill show how region, class, and nationalist ideology worked themselves out in public commemorations of the Revolutionary War during the s. The Bunker Hill Monument Association began as an elite effort to preserve the site of Bunker Hill as New England’s particular testament to national pride. But the Monument Association was unable over the years to control the terms on which the public would participate in commemo-




Chapter 

rations of Bunker Hill. The celebration sponsored by the Monument Association in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill reconfirmed that Americans would be able to continue into the future with the Revolutionary War as a national symbol available to everyone—even as they continued to disagree over how it should be used. Three of Boston’s most prominent citizens, Daniel Webster, William Tudor, and Edward Everett, entered the s with a new resolve to shore up their region’s pride by preserving a heroic vision of the Battle of Bunker Hill. All three men had renewed their interest in Bunker Hill during the public battle over the reputation of General Israel Putnam in  and . Tudor, editor of the North American Review, convinced Webster, who had just been elected to Congress from Massachusetts, and Everett, the twenty-eight-yearold chair of Greek literature at Harvard, that they must secure the rights to the land on Bunker Hill in order to erect a ‘‘national’’ monument to New England’s bravery. By  their ideas had coalesced into plans to enlist some of the most powerful social elites in New England to join them in the Bunker Hill Monument Association.91 The founders of the Bunker Hill Monument Association met in a Boston coffeehouse to establish their organization ‘‘for the purpose of deciding on and erecting such a monument as shall endure to future ages, and be a permanent memorial, consecrated by the gratitude of the present generation, to the memory of those statesmen and soldiers who led the way in the American Revolution.’’ 92 The charter members of the Association, some of whom had been involved in slow-starting plans to construct an equine statue of George Washington in Boston a decade earlier, ignored the many monuments that already existed elsewhere in the country (particularly the Washington Monument in Baltimore) and declared that no monument existed that properly captured the ‘‘national sentiment’’ of gratitude for the Revolutionary War.93 Region and nation both took on importance in the process of commemoration, and the relationship between the two seemed even more complicated than it had during the decades following the s. The Bunker Hill Monument Association recognized in its very first official document that the Bunker Hill monument was to be a matter of particular regional pride, but at the same time it maintained that New Englanders were uniquely qualified to represent the Revolutionary War memory of the entire nation: ‘‘It may be justly expected that the portion of the nation which so fearlessly, resolutely, and magnanimously took the lead in the struggle, should also set the first example of erecting a monument to its fame.’’ As the Bunker Hill Monument Association set about organizing its first drive for membership and





funds, it remained firmly committed to the ideal that ‘‘the citizens generally of the Eastern States would be eager to show their reverence for the principles and services of the civil and military heroes of New England,’’ even though they simultaneously conceived of their mission as the preservation of national pride.94 To properly glorify both New England and the nation, the Bunker Hill Monument was a grand project from its beginning. Instead of focusing just on Joseph Warren, the great hero of Bunker Hill, the Association envisioned a new kind of monument, colossal in size, that would honor all those who had been killed at Bunker Hill. Such a structure would require considerable space. The battlefield at Bunker Hill had remained as open space since the s, but now the Bunker Hill Monument Association worried that population increase would ‘‘soon cause it to be parcelled to and occupied with buildings’’ if they failed to sanctify the space much more formally.95 It would not be enough that the site of battle was preserved for visitors, the heroism of the men of New England would have to take monumental and ceremonial form to be properly preserved. As one Association report put it, ‘‘The spot itself on which this memorable action took place is extremely favorable for becoming the site of a monumental structure.’’ 96 As soon as the members of the Association began to take a formal interest in the battlefield in , Dr. John Collins Warren, the nephew of Bunker Hill martyr Dr. Joseph Warren, purchased the land surrounding the battlefield from the Russell family of Charlestown and held it in trust until the Association could be formally incorporated. Eventually, in order to gain legal right to the land surrounding the battlefield, the Association had to negotiate with the King Solomon Lodge of Masons, which had gained partial rights to the land when it had constructed its own monument to Joseph Warren in . The Association acquired fifteen acres of land for about , an acre.97 From the beginning, the Bunker Hill Monument Association represented the effort by established New England elites to claim the mantle of voluntary public nationalism for themselves by controlling the public commemoration of the Revolutionary War. The Bunker Hill Monument Association sought a charter from the State of Massachusetts and was formally incorporated on June , . The Association sent a circular letter to prominent men of ‘‘the Eastern states’’ seeking membership and voluntary subscriptions in July . The letter clearly marked the enterprise as a project emphasizing New England pride, stating that ‘‘As the struggle began with us, we should take the lead in . . . celebrating it.’’ 98 While members and donations would be accepted from all the states of New England, the Association organized a




Chapter 

special canvas of every town in Massachusetts to insure that the state would take the lead. Although the Association stressed that ‘‘the design must be effected by a universal contribution of small sums, rather than by a few subscriptions of great amount,’’ it maintained strict control of the monument’s plans and finances and recognized that ‘‘some of our wealthy and public-spirited men may subscribe liberally to the undertaking.’’ 99 Full membership in the Monument Association cost five dollars, but smaller donations were accepted and the donors’ names were duly recorded in a ceremonial book to be placed inside the finished monument. The Association sent letters to prominent people in all the states of New England and to New Englanders living in other regions and abroad to ask them to support the organization.100 Although some contributions were accepted from Virginia and South Carolina, the Association restricted its membership to native New Englanders. Despite its best efforts, the Bunker Hill Monument Association could not, however, completely govern a major site of Revolutionary War memory and create national identity in its own image. It became clear even from the beginning that the Association would not be able to control how the public perceived the monument it proposed to build, and some issues caused open conflict. Even some of the prominent men whom the Association invited to become charter members objected to the elitism of its enterprise. New Hampshire veteran Caleb Stark wrote to Edward Everett that he had ‘‘powerful national objections to the adoption of this project.’’ Stark claimed that most of the men who had fought at Bunker Hill had already died unappreciated and uncompensated by their national government. He could not accept that veterans had never been given ‘‘the rewards that were so solemnly promised in the hour of the most critical danger. . . . And now, sir, in room of giving them the bread that was solemnly promised, the debt is to be paid by a stone!!’’ Stark concluded that it would be more honorable ‘‘to obliterate every vestige of the Revolution’’ rather than to memorialize ‘‘the foul stain of ingratitude’’ of the American people.101 Stark maintained that the nation had failed many lower-class veterans, who still weren’t collecting regular pensions, and in his estimation, the republican monument could not make up for the democratic failure to provide. The Bunker Hill Monument Association, of course, viewed its project in very different terms. The members of the Association imagined themselves to be representing the entire national community, whose gratitude upheld the American nation. To them, the monument would be a lasting mark of





American gratitude for Revolutionary War sacrifice, as well as a monument to their own pride in their nation. One ceremonial toast in Watertown, Massachusetts, claimed that ‘‘The Bunker Hill Monument [shows] The gratitude of this generation to that which is past, and its claim to the gratitude of generations which are to come.’’ 102 One newspaper editorial argued that far from being a waste of money better spent on poor relief or charitable enterprises, the monument ‘‘serves like a beacon light to guide men to honor and fame. . . . He may talk of the poor; but let him recollect the ‘poor he has always with him,’ while he has not always an opportunity to testify his gratitude to the memory of , and the heroes of Bunker Hill.’’ This, then, would be New Englanders’ chance to show their gratitude; the paper continued, ‘‘Let every man give . . . according to his ability, and not grudgingly.’’ 103 When Lafayette promised on his first visit to Boston in  to return to Bunker Hill the following year to lay the cornerstone of the monument on the fiftieth anniversary of the battle, the Monument Association redoubled its fund-raising efforts. The Association sent a letter to the selectmen of every town in Massachusetts to be read on election day in  to ask everyone from ‘‘little children’’ to the most distinguished town residents to give money toward the initial goal of , needed to proceed with the cornerstone ceremony in June . In addition, the Association sought ‘‘various relics and histories’’ of the battle from private citizens that might be enclosed in the cornerstone itself.104 By reaching out for funds, the Bunker Hill Monument Association tried to create general public assent for its project, while maintaining strict elite control. As fund-raising proceeded, the Bunker Hill Monument Association also had to consider what the monument should look like and what it should symbolize to the American people. The matter of what form the monument should take was no simple question, and the debate, which was carried on in Boston newspapers and in the correspondence of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, showed clearly how differently people conceived of the nature of commemoration. Since theirs was to be a new kind of monument with a traditional, republican purpose, the Association considered the language of symbolic architecture carefully.105 The very fact that like the Lexington Battle Monument and the memorial to the Tammany prison-ship martyrs, the monument was designed to commemorate all the dead at once presented particular problems for the direct adoption of traditional forms. The directors of the Monument Association initially favored the shape of a triumphal column, like the Washington Monument in Baltimore and the recently com-




Chapter 

pleted Nelson’s Column in London, but they decided to consider other shapes when they advertised in January  for artists’ proposals.106 Robert Mills, architect of the Washington Monument in Baltimore, had written in the Analectic Magazine in  that arches, columns, and obelisks symbolized respectively triumph, victory, and death. Mills suggested that the choice of shape was an important one because ‘‘Where time or accident has often destroyed the records of written history, the imperishable monument of stone remains uninjured.’’ 107 The choice of shape seemed essential because the Association directors hoped the monument would long outlive them and because a specific political meaning was attributed to each shape. To advise them on the monument proposals, the directors of the Association appointed a ‘‘Board of Artists’’ that included Daniel Webster, Gilbert Stuart, Washington Allston, Loammi Baldwin, and George Ticknor. The board received fifty submissions by artists and architects eager to receive the commission, but several proposals stood out.108 Robert Mills submitted two plans: one for a column and one for a pyramidal base supporting a -foot high obelisk bearing extensive military decoration and inscribed with the words ‘‘To Warren and his brave associates.’’ Mills favored the obelisk because it was ‘‘peculiarly adapted to commemorate great transactions, from its lofty character, great strength, and furnishing a fine surface for inscriptions— There is a degree of lightness and beauty in it that affords a finer relief to the eye than can be obtained in the regular proportioned column.’’ 109 Other artists also submitted designs for obelisks, and public discussion continued over whether a column or an obelisk would better mark the spot of the battle. The fact that obelisks based upon Egyptian models were usually reserved for monuments that marked the graves of military heroes caused some to prefer the more triumphal columnar form. ‘‘P.B.P.’’ worried in the Columbian Centinel that the committee would choose a tower instead of the much more durable and heroic ‘‘solitary column of one piece of granite.’’ But the anonymous author also recognized that an obelisk might ‘‘excite emotion of love of country, or of sorrow, or of gratitude, over the relics of fallen heroes.’’ 110 He proposed that the most effective monument would unite the best features of column and of obelisk into a new and distinctly American form of tribute. Another anonymous newspaper commentator (possibly Horatio Greenough himself ) cautioned the directors of the Monument Association that ‘‘the American people will not be altogether pleased with their adopting a Monumental column’’ modeled after Trajan’s Column, ‘‘the memorial of the tyrannical age of the Roman Emperors.’’ Even a highly decorated column might be too easily ‘‘forgotten’’ by a public that





demanded a long-lasting commemoration, and anything that smacked of republican ‘‘tyranny’’ seemed an inappropriate inspiration.111 Horatio Greenough, then a student at Harvard University who would become one of America’s best-known sculptors, submitted the winning design for a -foot high obelisk. Greenough cut through the disagreement over the monument’s shape. As he later wrote in his memoirs: ‘‘The obelisk has to my eye a singular aptitude in its form and character to call attention to a spot memorable in history. It says but one word, but it speaks loud. If I understand its voice, it says, Here! It says no more.’’ 112 The Bunker Hill Monument removed from the obelisk form its close association with the death of individuals and transformed it into a generalized symbol of American glory. The board of directors eventually chose the obelisk design ‘‘as the most simple, appropriate, imposing, and as most congenial to republican institutions.’’ 113 The obelisk, first used by the Egyptians to mark heroes’ graves, now was transformed in the public mind into a particular form of American commemoration for all the heroes of Bunker Hill. Throughout  and into , the Association intensified its fundraising. The pattern of concentrating the main fund-raising efforts in Massachusetts continued, but the committee accepted donations from elsewhere in New England. Only a few days before he died in February , Governor William Eustis proposed that the State of Massachusetts should officially sponsor the monument ‘‘to consecrate the field in Massachusetts, on which, in the war, our heroes and statesmen sealed with their blood the principles they had sworn to maintain.’’ Eustis believed the monument ought to be ‘‘a common property’’ because all members of the community would be equally inspired by its patriotic heights.114 In response to his proposal, ‘‘P.’’ wrote into the Columbian Centinel that the very fact that the monument would be ‘‘common property’’ argued for the inclusion of the states of Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut as official sponsors. The letter continued, ‘‘This monument is to perpetuate a National event; the glory is not exclusively attached to Massachusetts—neither was the action the single prowess of sons of this State.’’ 115 Even when the glory of the monument was restricted to the states of New England, the question of how a ‘‘common’’ national commemoration could become the preserve of one particular state or region reared its head. Eventually, a lack of funds drove the Bunker Hill Monument Association to expand its original plans. The Massachusetts legislature never approved Eustis’s patronage plan, and it limited the state’s financial contribution to , in February .116 The Association was left to seek public subscrip-




Chapter 

tions for the bulk of its support, which threatened to weaken its control of the project. The Association advertised frequently in New England newspapers in an effort to spur donations. Unfortunately, money did not always pour in as quickly or as easily from the people of Massachusetts and the surrounding states as the Association had expected. By March , just three months before the planned celebration for the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Association had raised just under ,, which represented , less than it needed to proceed with the cornerstone ceremony.117 Despite the elite sponsorship of the Bunker Hill Monument, a wide variety of people did subscribe. Becoming a member of the Monument Association helped to demonstrate a patriotic brand of middle-class respectability and further demonstrated patriotic good taste. The sign of this respectability and patriotic taste was the ‘‘richly engraved certificate of admission, embellished with a vignette of the Battle of Bunker Hill’’ conferred on anyone who donated the five-dollar membership fee.118 The decorative certificates could be put on display in homes or offices, just like Lafayette souvenirs, as tangible signs of refinement and patriotic commitment. One Boston firm capitalized on the attraction of displaying patriotism in the parlor; they advertised in the Columbian Centinel under the headline ‘‘Bunker Hill Monument’’ that they had ‘‘Gilt Frames for Certificates, of various patterns, on hand, at very low prices.’’ 119 The Association recognized that middle-class Massachusetts residents would make up many of its most enthusiastic donors, though it sought to assure the selectmen of Massachusetts that ‘‘No sum will be too great; none too small.’’ 120 Edward Everett, writing as ‘‘Civis,’’ pleaded for large donations in the (Boston) Commercial Advertiser, but he simultaneously stressed the dignity of small contributions from ‘‘the industrious farmer . . . the frugal mechanic . . . the clerk, the school-master, the country clergyman, the young lawyer and doctor.’’ 121 The vast majority of the men and women who contributed money to the project gave only the five dollars necessary to receive the certificate that announced to the world their ‘‘having contributed to the execution of its patriotic designs.’’ 122 Revolutionary War memory had become a marker of social status mixed with regional pride, and the elites who sponsored the monument sought a partnership with the middle class of Massachusetts. It might have behooved the Association to raise funds outside of New England because it could not raise enough money within the region to erect the monument. Citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, expressed particular enthusiasm to be included on the rolls of the Bunker Hill Monument Association. ‘‘A gentleman’’ in Charleston wrote to the Columbian Centinel:





A very favourable feeling exists here, not confined to New Englanders, in relation to the Bunker Hill Monument. A considerable number of subscribers to the Fund will be obtained; and though of course, it will not be expected that a very large sum of money should be raised for so distant an object, yet I should not be surprized, if a hundred persons were to entitle themselves to the certificate of membership, by a subscription of  .123

In fact, South Carolinians did recognize Bunker Hill as a national and regional symbol of Revolutionary War glory, and jurist William Crafts noted in his  Palmetto Day oration that ‘‘the name of Bunker Hill . . . resounds with peculiar charms in the ears of Massachusetts.’’ But at the same time, Crafts proposed that all battlefields were of national importance, ‘‘all of them grew out of the same patriotic ardour, and none of them deserve to be forgotten.’’ 124 But the Association continued to maintain New England’s sole sponsorship of the monument. By May, with the cornerstone ceremony nearing by the day, the Bunker Hill Monument Association expanded its fund-raising efforts outside of Massachusetts. But the board of directors still refused to recruit general membership outside of New England: ‘‘With respect to our fellow citizens in other quarters of America, the Directors have received assurances that the children of New-England would be emulous of uniting with their brethren at home’’ in Massachusetts.125 The Directors were in need of money, and they heard from many who claimed ‘‘it as a right of all the sons of New-England, to join in the commemoration of an event of the deepest and most affecting interest, upon the spot, where the blood of almost every part of New-England was mingled.’’ The directors of the Association admitted that these men outside Massachusetts were ‘‘waiting only for the opportunity to unite in this effort to commemorate the exploits of our fathers.’’ The directors made a particular distinction between the national purpose of the monument and the special right of New Englanders to be in financial control: ‘‘While the Directors have regarded their undertaking as one, in which NewEnglanders alone could with propriety be solicited for pecuniary aid; they have considered the Association to be national in its object; [and] American in its spirit.’’ 126 Even though the monument was a ‘‘national’’ commemoration, the directors still strictly conceived of their project as one that specially enhanced the pride of New England. Despite all its efforts, the Bunker Hill Monument Association was not able to monopolize the memory of the Revolutionary War for one town, region, or class. In the months leading up to the cornerstone ceremony in June , the tensions over local pride and military memory as well as cracks in the facade of elite unity made themselves manifest, especially as the Bunker




Chapter 

Hill celebration began to vie with the anniversary of Lexington and Concord for public attention. On the occasion of Lafayette’s first visit to Massachusetts in , Lexington and Concord had competed for the right to claim themselves as the location of the first ‘‘battle’’ of the Revolution. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, the towns together sought to steal some of the limelight from Boston and Bunker Hill. Concord residents, led by their Congregational minister, Ezra Ripley, insisted that the Concord Bridge would serve as a better site of New England memory than Bunker Hill, and after a rancorous public conflict they convinced the Bunker Hill Monument Association to contribute  as seed money so that they could begin their own monument-building project.127 Edward Everett, who was serving as secretary of the Bunker Hill Monument Association and had been propelled into national politics by the success of his  Phi Beta Kappa oration, agreed to give a commemorative address in Concord on April , the fiftieth anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord.128 Daniel Webster, who had already agreed to give the official oration on Bunker Hill in June, jealously pressed Everett not to take part in Concord’s public ceremony for fear that ‘‘all the world’’ would say ‘‘in N. England we make too much of a good thing.’’ 129 The other directors of the Bunker Hill Monument Association worried that Concord’s ceremony would steal public attention from their commemoration and that it would appear that New Englanders were merely ‘‘fighting the war over again’’ fifty years later. The rising generation took commemoration seriously as its chance to share in revolutionary glory, and the great orators did not seem comfortable sharing the limelight. Webster even threatened to pull out of the Bunker Hill ceremony if Everett went ahead with his Concord speech.130 Everett did not heed Webster’s warning, however, because he thought that ‘‘the voice of patriotic and filial duty’’ compelled him to deliver the oration that would commemorate the beginning of the war and enhance the reputation of the nation, of New England, and of himself.131 These men would not prove themselves on the field of battle, but rather from the podium. The Concord celebration was reported on around the country and contained many images of national unity founded on Revolutionary War sacrifice, but it also stressed (in the same vein as the Bunker Hill Association) the specific glory of Massachusetts.132 One ‘‘old farmer’’ wrote to the papers that he would be sure his ‘‘sons, daughters, grandchildren, great grandchildren with their husbands and wives’’ all attended to call ‘‘past scenes and men who are gone, to remembrance,’’ and he asked others to do the same.133 The day





began at  a.m. with the laying of a cornerstone for the monument to ‘‘the souls of the ’’ of April . A ceremonial procession including ‘‘numerous worthies of the Revolution, and among them nearly sixty veterans who bore arms on the th April, ’—all distinguished by an appropriate badge’’ then moved to the Concord church, where Ezra Ripley’s prayers were followed by a series of patriotic hymns by the Rev. James Flint.134 Everett then delivered his oration, which stressed ‘‘the duty America owes . . . to the great and good men, who caused her to be a nation.’’ Everett invoked the memory of the common men killed at Concord and stressed that ‘‘their blood cries to us from the soil which we tread; it beats in our veins, it cries to us’’ to always commemorate the Revolution.135 In addition to calling the memory of Lexington and Concord a symbol of national unity, Everett took every opportunity to especially glorify New England, and particularly the towns of Lexington and Concord: ‘‘It is a proud anniversary for our neighborhood. We have cause for honest complacency, that when the distant citizen of our own republic, when the stranger from foreign lands, inquires for the spots where the noble blood of the revolution began to flow . . . he is guided through the villages of Middlesex, to the plains of Lexington and Concord. It is a commemoration of our soil, to which ages, as they pass, will add dignity and interest.’’ 136 Everett lived up to his reputation for moving oratory, and the Essex Register noted: ‘‘the oration might justly be termed a chef d’oeuvre of Mr. Everett’s oratorical skill.’’ 137 James Percival repeated Everett’s theme in an ‘‘Ode’’ that followed the oration. The message was both union and special glory for this particular spot where the men of the Revolution, ‘‘first stamped the seal of their union in .’’ 138 At the dinner for  that followed the day’s services, the toasts reinforced the glory of ‘‘Massachusetts.—On her soil was first planted the Tree of civil liberty, whose branches are spreading over the face of the earth.’’ 139 The directors of the Bunker Hill Monument Association had attempted for years to paint their own mission as a similarly special regional project, but the celebrations of the battle’s fiftieth anniversary took on truly national importance beyond their original intention. The Bunker Hill celebration drew together many of the most important commemorative themes of the s, as almost , people of ‘‘all classes of citizens’’ gathered in Boston to see Lafayette lay the cornerstone of a monument, a ‘‘huge pile to the memory of the brave,’’ that would represent their past and present national glory.140 Male and female visitors came from around the nation to attend ‘‘the most splendid celebration in New or Old England,’’ and newspapers all over the country




Chapter 

covered the story.141 The Bunker Hill Monument Association set up a special office to give information to ‘‘gentlemen from  ’’ who came to town for the ceremony.142 The ceremony itself became a truly national event. The State of Massachusetts paid for any man who had fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill to attend the ceremony, and one newspaper noted: ‘‘The occasion would have been far from insignificant, even if it had accomplished no other purpose than to bring these men together once more before they die.’’ 143 Significantly, almost none of the surviving veterans who were lauded so publicly were officers.144 On this grand public occasion, common soldiers seemed equally entitled to the kind of public gratitude that had once been reserved for Joseph Warren and his fellow officers. Another newspaper commentator wrote that ‘‘the glory of our dear country, ought to be duly appreciated by the rising generation’’ when they reflected on the ‘‘debt of gratitude’’ owed to these men who spilled their blood on Bunker Hill.145 Boston welcomed with open arms the veterans, many of whom were quite poor or lived in very remote rural areas. One visitor from Charleston, South Carolina, observed that the old veterans could hardly pass through the streets without being stopped to answer questions and receive praise from the crowd. Special amusements, including an evening at the New England Museum, were arranged for the veterans’ entertainment.146 Even fifty years after the war, the sight of impoverished veterans raised the question of what constituted proper gratitude. Benjamin Russell, the editor of the Columbian Centinel, who was also a member of the state senate and active in workingmen’s causes, lamented the fact that some of the veterans were terribly poor and in need of financial assistance in addition to ‘‘the gratitude of their country.’’ 147 But for one day, on the battle anniversary, the humble veterans of Bunker Hill joined Lafayette, the hero, as the full objects of national gratitude. The Bunker Hill commemoration insistently sounded this theme of democratic gratitude as huge crowds of people claimed for themselves the memory of the Revolution. The public reveled in the ceremonies and did not allow the elite monument association to control the meaning of the occasion. Several days of festivity surrounding the battle anniversary culminated in a massive procession on June  that stretched from Boston through Charlestown to the site of the monument. One observer noted that you could always tell where Lafayette was in the procession ‘‘by looking far ahead, and seeing the white handkerchiefs vibrate from all the doors and windows.’’ 148 The unprecedented scale and level of participation in this ritual of Revolutionary memory signaled just how important ‘‘the people’’ themselves had come to be. All classes of Boston took part in the ceremony, even though they did not





march in the formal procession. For example, Benjamin Russell announced that there would be no edition of the Columbian Centinel on the day of the parade because ‘‘the workmen are desirous to engage in or to witness the ceremonies.’’ 149 He described the scene: ‘‘All the streets, the houses to their roofs, and in some instances to chimney tops, and every situation on which footing could be obtained for a prospect of the procession, were filled with a condensed mass of well-dressed, cheerfull looking persons of all sexes and denominations.’’ 150 The people of Boston and their visitors obviously cared for the memory of the war as much as the elites who had established the monument itself, and the celebration would not have been as meaningful or effective without the participation of so many enthusiastic spectators. The formal procession included the members of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, national, state, and local government officials, military companies, clergy, representatives of various societies, the veterans of Bunker Hill, the masons who would lay the cornerstone of the monument, President John Quincy Adams, and Lafayette himself riding in a grand carriage.151 Only Lafayette and the aged veterans were allowed to ride in procession; even the president walked by the heroes’ sides. Ezra Green, who was in the crowd, wrote to his brother that ‘‘it was truly a moveing [sic] sight to see the remnant of that brave band who defended the heights of Charlestown  years ago, hobbling along, arm in arm, for the last time to view the consecrated spot where their valour had sealed it with their blood.’’ 152 At the site of the monument on Bunker Hill, thousands of men and women looked on as the cornerstone, which contained exemplary ‘‘relics’’ of the battle, was laid in place according to Masonic ritual. The crowd jostled to hear special prayers and music and Daniel Webster’s oration. After Webster delivered the official oration for the day, dinner for , guests was served on the battlefield, attended by lengthy toasts and ‘‘deafening bursts of applause’’ as the crowd celebrated the great ‘‘Anniversary day.’’ 153 Daniel Webster’s oration proved the final evidence that the Bunker Hill anniversary had become a nationalist symbol whose significance transcended New England, as gratitude for the generation of the American Revolution brought ‘‘high national honor, distinction, and power’’ to the current generation.154 Webster’s speech had been highly anticipated for months; he had already been labeled ‘‘the blazing star of the East’’ in honor of his talent for nationalist oratory.155 Webster’s oration confirmed that it was the gratitude of the crowd that made this a great nationalist occasion: ‘‘These thousands of human faces, glowing with sympathy and joy, and from the impulses of a common gratitude turned reverently to heaven in this spacious temple of the




Chapter 

firmament, proclaim that the day, the place, and the purpose of our assembling have made a deep impression on our hearts.’’ Although Webster acknowledged that the gratitude of the people comprised the most important aspect of public memory, he noted that the Bunker Hill Monument Association sought to build the monument ‘‘to keep alive similar sentiments, and to foster a constant regard for the principles of the Revolution. . . . We consecrate our work to the spirit of national independence.’’ Webster praised the veterans of the battle who were present just as he praised the dead martyrs of Bunker Hill. After he celebrated how far the American nation had grown in fifty years, Webster noted that America had become an example of freedom to the world. Webster acknowledged that the fiftieth anniversary of Bunker Hill represented the final shift to a new generation of the American national community as he resolved: ‘‘Let our object be,  ,   ,     .’’ 156 Webster’s oration, and the whole Bunker Hill ceremony, preserved the image of one nation united in memory of the Revolutionary War, at least for the time being. But Webster’s voice was not the only one heard in Boston on June , . Lafayette’s visit had recalled to mind the Revolutionary War, but it had also confirmed the transfer of power to a new generation. National identity, as an imaginative process, was ongoing and incomplete when he returned to France in . A whole variety of people (old veterans, African American veterans, women who organized celebrations, Boston elites, people who purchased souvenirs or who contributed to monument funds) had all helped to shape Revolutionary War memory, and they had all felt themselves a part of the nation to a greater or lesser degree. Much had changed since Daniel George published his first crude commemoration of the Battle of Bunker Hill in his  almanac. The Bunker Hill Monument cornerstone ceremony marked public memory of the battle on a much grander scale, but at the same time it reached beyond the great hero Joseph Warren, whom George had praised extensively, to elevate all the soldiers of Bunker Hill to heroic status. While George had recommended that even the ‘‘poor and illiterate’’ ought to keep Warren in mind, in  many of the veterans who received praise were themselves poor men, and many other men and women of little wealth turned out to cheer for them. What had not changed between  and  was the fact that many people used public memories of the Revolutionary War like this to define a vision of the American nation. Whether lavishing attention on well-born officer heroes or gathering to praise the contributions of humble veterans, many





Americans consistently imagined their connections to one another with reference to military memory. In the process, the American public also praised itself, and many of those left outside of the traditional politics of the age (poor men, women, and African Americans) found a way to gain public visibility and some measure of respect. The image of a nation of Americans united by gratitude for the sacrifices of the Revolutionary War was a ubiquitous and powerful force in the political culture of the early republic.


Afterword

In the s, Daniel Webster’s generation could hold on to the memory of the Revolution to chart a course for the future, but that future turned out to be much more contentious than they could have predicted. Webster’s prediction that the memory of battles like Bunker Hill would be sufficient to hold the ‘‘whole country’’ together turned out to be overly optimistic. As sectional issues and conflicts over race and slavery grew more and more heated during the following decades, public memory of the Revolutionary War continued to enhance Americans’ sense of national identity, but it increasingly seemed like an identity without the power to cover over real divisions in American society. Even though memory itself had always been contested, public debates became increasingly fractious as the nation came apart. Some of the conflicts and internal contradictions in the image of the ideal nation created by public memory of the Revolutionary War began to break into the open. Public memory had often simultaneously enhanced both regional and national identities, particularly in places with notable battleanniversary celebrations like Charleston, South Carolina; Bennington, Vermont; and Lexington, Massachusetts. But as issues like slavery and western expansion became increasingly contentious, region and nation were more frequently at odds, and unlike the westerners who used public memory to stress their loyalty during separatist statehood movements in the s, Americans in the s, s, and s were increasingly less able to ignore the violence of their own rhetoric.1 As even the appearance of consensus began to disappear, people used military memory in radical ways that drew upon the Revolutionary generation’s traditions but seemed to inject some of the real threat and violence of military rhetoric back into the picture. For example, when Henry Highland Garnet, an African American Presbyterian minister, addressed a national convention of ‘‘colored men’’ in Buffalo, New York, in , he used the language of Revolutionary War heroism to argue for militant resistance to slavery. He began by pointing out the hypocrisy of slave owners who were Revolutionaries: ‘‘Did they emancipate the slaves? No; they rather added new


Afterword



links to our chains. Were they ignorant of the principles of Liberty? Certainly they were not. The sentiments of their revolutionary orators fell in burning eloquence upon their hearts, and with one voice they cried,   . O, what a sentence was that!’’ Garnet denied that anyone who held slaves was properly an heir to Revolutionary liberty.2 Instead, Garnet argued that slaves who tried to take freedom for themselves were the real inheritors of Revolutionary heroism, and he praised Denmark Vesey’s  plot to overthrow slavery in South Carolina. He said that in the uprising, ‘‘Many a brave hero fell, but History, faithful to her high trust, will transcribe his name on the same monument with Moses, Hampden, Tell, Bruce, and Wallace, Touissant L’Overteur, Lafayette and Washington.’’ Garnet then rehearsed the heroic deeds of Nat Turner, Joseph Cinque, and Madison Washington and praised all slaves who were willing to strike out for their own freedom. Garnet used Revolutionary rhetoric in a radical new context when he said, ‘‘Those who have fallen in freedom’s conflict, their memories will be cherished by the true hearted, and the God-fearing, in all future generations; those who are living, their names are surrounded by a halo of glory. . . .   ,     .’’ 3 This last rumination on how the memory of heroes demanded political action might have been taken verbatim from a hundred earlier orations praising Revolutionary veterans—but when applied to African American slaves who engaged in armed insurrection against their masters it acquired a whole new meaning. Garnet established himself in a long tradition of African Americans who used the memory of the Revolutionary War to call for freedom, but he did not base his call on the traditional image of black men shedding their blood while serving in the Continental Army or state militias. Instead, Garnet related rebellious slaves, even those like Nat Turner, who were most frightening to the southern white population, to the greatest officer-heroes of the Revolutionary War—Washington and Lafayette. With this powerful image, Garnet heaped the highest of praise and glory on rebellious slaves, a strong image for African American liberation, and one that many white Americans would have considered almost sacrilegious. Revolutionary memory also began to be used in radically conservative ways that directly opposed Garnet’s antislavery stance. For example, the celebration of Palmetto Day, Charleston’s patriotic battle anniversary that had once stressed themes of both regional and national pride, was quickly becoming an occasion for the celebration of southern nationalism and the defense of slavery.4 In , just seven years after Garnet’s speech in Buffalo, William E. Martin took the podium in Charleston to deliver the annual ad-




Afterword

dress celebrating the victory of South Carolina’s troops at the Battle of Sullivan’s Island. Martin praised the battle as ‘‘the struggle of freemen for the triumph of constitutional liberty,’’ which sounded on its face remarkably similar to Garnet’s call to resistance.5 But Martin’s message was dramatically the opposite. As he reviewed the growing rift between North and South, he acknowledged that ‘‘the existence of slavery’’ linked the states of the South together ‘‘as perhaps no separate people have ever yet been.’’ Since the North was seeking to interfere with what Martin considered the vital southern economic institution, he urged preparation for armed conflict. On the anniversary of South Carolina’s resistance to the British, he called on memory of the Revolutionary War and ‘‘the first blood spilt at Lexington’’ to inspire southerners with a new, warlike resolve against the North. He said, ‘‘It would be the height of folly in a people, whose liberties are already so fiercely menaced, not to be prepared for . . . that struggle (moral or physical, as it may prove), which is surely before us.’’ 6 Martin used the memory of the Revolutionary War to call for violent resistance in defense of slavery in strikingly similar terms to Garnet’s call for violent resistance against slavery. Ironically, both Garnet and Martin were still using public memory of the Revolutionary War to define their own versions of the ideal American nation. Their ideals were just the complete opposite of one another. For Garnet, the sacrifice of the Revolutionary War and of American slaves in that conflict demanded liberation and freedom for African Americans held in bondage. For Martin, the Revolutionary War provided a model of military resistance to overwhelming government power that sought to threaten local rights, in this case the right to keep men and women in bondage. Eventually, these two visions of what America should be would come to blows. For two generations, public memories of the Revolutionary War had allowed Americans to argue over the meaning of sacrifice and over the patriotic definition of the American community. By  it seemed that while Revolutionary memory had not lost its power, the real unity of the national community was more threatened than ever. Even into the Civil War, the stakes were high as people on all sides of the conflict maintained that the memory of the Revolution validated their own positions.7 The Civil War created fresh bloodshed, and new martyrs and heroes, whose meaning would be even more contested as they added their own memories to the story of American national identity. The legacy of early republican Revolutionary War memory was both the republican image of sacrifice and the democratic argument over its meaning—an argument that would go on and on.


Notes

Abbreviations Sources frequently cited in the notes have been identified by the following abbreviations: AAS American Antiquarian Society BPL Boston Public Library CL Clements Library, University of Michigan EAL Early American Literature FHS Filson Historical Society JER Journal of the Early Republic MHS Massachusetts Historical Society NYPL New York Public Library WMQ William and Mary Quarterly

Introduction

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

. Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ), ; Edward Tabor Linenthal, Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields, nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ); Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, vol.  (New York: Columbia University Press, ). . Daniel T. Rodgers, ‘‘Republicanism: The Career of a Concept,’’ WMQ  (): –; Joyce Appleby, Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ); Milton M. Klein, Richard D. Brown, and John B. Hench, eds., The Republican Synthesis Revisited: Essays in Honor of George Athan Billias (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ); Paul A. Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution, rev. ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ). . Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, – (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ). . In recent years, studies of public memory, which expand upon the concept established in the s by sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, have helped to explain the history of nationalism in a number of different ways. See Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, trans. Francis J. Ditter, Jr., and Vida Yazdi Ditter (Reprint, New York: Harper Colophon Books, ); Malcom Chase and Christopher Shaw,




Notes to Pages –

The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia (New York: Manchester University Press, ); James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory: New Perspectives on the Past (London: Blackwell, ); Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millenium (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ); Amy G. Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ); Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ); Genvieve Fabre and Robert O’Malley, eds., History and Memory in African American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, ); Mitchell A. Kachun, ‘‘The Faith That the Dark Past Has Taught Us: African-American Commemorations in the North and West and the Construction of a Usable Past, –’’ (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, ); Philip West, Steven I. Levine, and Jackie Hiltz, eds., America’s Wars in Asia: A Cultural Approach to History and Memory (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, ); George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ); James W. Pennebaker, Dario Paez, and Bernard Rimé, eds., Collective Memory of Political Events: Social Psychological Perspectives (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, ); Richard Morris, Sinners, Lovers, and Heroes: An Essay on Memorializing in Three American Cultures (Albany: State University of New York Press, ); Iwona Irwin-Zarecka, Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, ); Arthur G. Neal, National Trauma & Collective Memory: Major Events in the American Century (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, ); Roy Rosenzwieg and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (New York: Columbia University Press, ). . Michael Kammen, A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ); Michael Kammen, ‘‘Some Patterns and Meanings of Memory Distortion in American History,’’ in Time Passages: Historical Perspectives on American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, ), –; Norman M. Klein, The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory (New York: Verso, ). . Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, ); Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ). . Alfred F. Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, ). . Lester Cohen, The Revolutionary Histories: Contemporary Narratives of the American Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ). . William Gordon, Proposals for Printing by Subscription . . . The History of the Rise, Progress and Conclusion of the American Revolution (Roxbury, Mass.: n.p., ). . David Ramsay, The History of the Revolution of the State of South-Carolina, From a British Province to an Independent State (Trenton, N.J.: Isaac Collins, ), ix. . Ibid; David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (Philadelphia: R. Aitken & Son, ). Of course, these historians were not actually successful at creating ‘‘objective’’ histories of the Revolution, and Ramsay in particular adopted


Notes to Pages –



large sections wholesale from Dodsley’s Annual Register and other sources; William R. Smith, History as Argument: Three Patriot Historians of the American Revolution (Paris: Mouton, ), , –. . Ernest Renan, ‘‘What Is a Nation?’’ in The Nationalism Reader, ed. Omar Dahbour and Micheline R. Ishay (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, ), . . Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, ), ; Linda Colley, Britons: –  (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, ), ; Eric Hobsbawm, ‘‘The Invention of Tradition,’’ in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (New York: Cambridge University Press, ). . Len Travers, Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, ), . . David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, – (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ). . Simon Newman, Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ). . Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, – (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Charles Royster, ‘‘Founding a Nation in Blood: Military Conflict and American Nationality,’’ in Arms and Independence: The Military Character of the American Revolution, ed. Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ), –. See also Edmund S. Morgan, ‘‘Conflict and Consensus in the American Revolution,’’ in Essays on the American Revolution, ed. Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Huston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), –. . Jabez Peck, Columbia and Britannia: A Dramatic Piece (New London, Conn.: T. Green, ), . . George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, ); Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (New York: Cambridge University Press, ). . Martin Evans and Ken Lunn, eds., War and Memory in the Twentieth Century (New York: Berg, ). . Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ); G. Kurt Piehler, Remembering War the American Way (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, ); Robert W. Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, ); Kristin Ann Hass, Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Berkeley: University of California Press, ); Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York: New York University Press, ). . David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, ); Nina Silber, The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, – (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Amy J. Kinsel, ‘‘From Turning Point to Peace Memorial,’’




Notes to Pages –

in The Gettysburg Nobody Knows, ed. Gabor S. Boritt (New York: Oxford University Press, ), –; Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York: Pantheon Books, ). . John Seelye, Memory’s Nation: The Place of Plymouth Rock (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ); Travers, Celebrating the Fourth; Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ), ; Edward Countryman, Americans: A Collision of Histories (New York: Hill and Wang, ) .

Chapter 

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

. See John Cary, Joseph Warren: Physician, Politician, Patriot (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ), –; L. Edward Purcell, Who Was Who in the American Revolution (New York: Facts on File, ), –. . Daniel George, George’s Cambridge Almanack . . . to Which Is Annexed, by Particular Desire and for the Use of the Gentlemen Officers and Soldiers in the American Army, Narratives of the Concord and Bunker Fights, (Salem, Mass.: E. Russell, ), ii. George continued his series of almanacs until . See Clarence S. Brigham, An Account of American Almanacs and Their Value for Historical Study (Worcester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, ), . . George, George’s Cambridge Almanack, st ed., ii. . Daniel George, George’s Cambridge Almanack . . . , nd ed. (Salem, Mass.: E. Russell, ); An Elegiac Poem, Composed on the Never-to-be-Forgotten Terrible and Bloody Battle Fight at an Intrenchment on Bunker-Hill (Salem, Mass.: E. Russell, ). For another portable account of Lexington and Concord, see Samuel Stearns, The North-American’s Almanack, and Gentleman’s and Lady’s Diary, for the Year of Our Lord Christ  (Worcester, Mass.: Isaiah Thomas, ). . George, George’s Cambridge Almanack st ed., iii. . Edmund S. Morgan, ‘‘Conflict and Consensus in the American Revolution,’’ in Essays on the American Revolution, ed. Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Huston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), –. . John Shy, ‘‘The Legacy of the American Revolutionary War,’’ in A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence, rev. ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, ), . . John R. Alden, The South in the Revolution, – (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, ); W. Robert Higgins, ed., The Revolutionary War in the South: Power, Conflict, and Leadership (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, ); Jeffrey J. Crow, ed., The Southern Experience in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Joy Day Buel and Richard Buel, Jr., The Way of Duty: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America (New York: W. W. Norton, ). . Don Higginbotham, The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice, – (Boston: Northeastern University Press, ). . Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and


Notes to Pages –



American Character, – (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Charles Patrick Neimeyer, America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army (New York: New York University Press, ); John Resch, Suffering Soldiers: Revolutionary War Veterans, Moral Sentiment, and Political Culture in the Early Republic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, ); Holly Mayer, Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community During the American Revolution (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, ). . ‘‘A Song to the Tune of Pepperell and Pumpkinshires People,’’ Pennsylvania Evening Post, June , . . Israel Shreve to Mary Shreve, June , , Shreve Family Papers, FHS. For a discussion of attitudes toward death early in the war, see Royster, A Revolutionary People at War, –; and Mayer, Belonging to the Army, –. See also James J. Farrell, Inventing the American Way of Death, – (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, ), . . Jeremy Black, War for America: The Fight for Independence, – (New York: St. Martin’s Press, ), ; Higginbotham, War of American Independence, . . William Wolcott, Grateful Reflections on the Divine Goodness Vouchsaf ’d to the American Arms (Hartford, Conn.: Hudson & Goodwin, ), ; Royster, A Revolutionary People at War, –. . ‘‘From the Connecticut Courant,’’ Royal Gazette, July , . . John Bodnar, ‘‘The Attractions of Patriotism,’’ in Bonds of Affection: Americans Define Their Patriotism, ed. John Bodnar (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), –; Cynthia M. Koch, ‘‘Teaching Patriotism: Private Virtue for the Public Good in the Early Republic,’’ Bonds of Affection, –. On the role of death and martyrdom in patriotism, see Eyal J. Naveh, Crown of Thorns: Political Martyrdom in America from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: New York University Press, ), ; Edward W. Clark, ‘‘The Bigham Carvers of the Carolina Piedmont: Stone Images of an Emerging Sense of American Identity,’’ in Cemeteries and Grave Markers: Voices of an American Culture, ed. Richard E. Meyer (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, ), –. . Israel Evans, An Oration, Delivered at Hackinsack . . . At the Interment of the Honorable Brigadier Enoch Poor (Newburyport, Mass.: John Mycall, ), ; John Leacock, The Fall of British Tyranny, Or, American Liberty Triumphant, nd ed. (Boston: John Gill and Powars and Willis, ), ; Barnabas Binney, Lines Sacred to the Memory of the Late Major-General Joseph Warren, Who Fell in the Battle at Charlestown (Providence, R.I.: John Carter, ), ; Elegiac Poem; Rich, Poem on the Bloody Engagement; Dialogue, , ; Hugh Henry Brackenridge, The Battle of Bunkers-Hill; A Dramatic Piece, of Five Acts in Heroic Measure (Philadelphia: Robert Bell, ), , , , ; Wheeler Case, Poems on Several Occurrences in the Present Grand Struggle for American Liberty, th ed. (Chatham, N.J.: Shepard Kollock, ), , ; An Eulogium on Major General Joseph Warren (Boston: John Boyle, ), , ; Nathaniel Niles, The American Hero: A Sapphick Ode (Cheshire, Conn.: William Law, ), ; Massachusetts Spy, April , ; Pennsylvania Post, July , . . On the meaning of death during the Civil War, see Gary Laderman, The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, – (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press), –.




Notes to Pages –

. Samuel Woodward, The Help of the Lord, in Signal Deliverances and Special Salvations, to Be Acknowledged and Remembered . . . (Boston: John Gill, ), . . Wolcott, Grateful Reflections, . . Stephen Jacob, A Poetical Essay, Delivered at Bennington . . . (Hartford, Conn.: Watson and Goodwin, ). . Jacob Cushing, Divine Judgements Upon Tyrants: and Compassion to the Oppressed (Boston: Powars and Willis, ), . . Wolcott, Grateful Reflections, , ; Leacock, Fall, . . Jacob, Poetical Essay, . . Abraham Keteltas, God Arising and Pleading His People’s Cause (Newburyport, Mass.: John Mycall, ), . . Binney, Lines, . . Smith, Speech, . . Hugh Henry Brackenridge, An Eulogium of the Brave Men Who Have Fallen in the Contest with Great-Britain (Philadelphia: F. Bailey, ), ; Philip Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution, – (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), ; New York Journal, March , . . Smith, Speech, . . David Seely, The Noble Death: Graeco-Roman Martyrology and Paul’s Concept of Salvation (Worcester, Mass.: Sheffield Academic Press, ); John R. Knott, Discourses of Martyrdom in English Literature, – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ); Ann Uhry Abrams, ‘‘The Apotheosis of General Wolfe,’’ in The Valiant Hero: Benjamin West and Grand-Style History Painting (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, ), –. For a comparative perspective, see Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), –. . Brackenridge, Eulogium, ; Michael T. Gilmore, ‘‘Eulogy as Symbolic Biography: The Iconography of Revolutionary Leadership, –,’’ in Studies in Biography, ed. Daniel Aaron, Harvard English Studies, no.  (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ), –. . On ‘‘deference,’’ see Wood, Radicalism, –, –; Gary Kornblith and John M. Murrin, ‘‘The Making and Unmaking of an American Ruling Class,’’ in Beyond the American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism, ed. Alfred F. Young (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, ), –. . Before the war, only Benjamin Franklin was really a ‘‘famous’’ American in the same sense, Nian-Sheng Huang, Benjamin Franklin in American Thought and Culture, – (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, ); Shy, ‘‘Legacy,’’ ; Douglass Adair, Fame and the Founding Fathers, ed. Trevor Colburn (New York: W. W. Norton, ); Edward Linenthal, Changing Images of the Warrior Hero in America (New York: Edwin Mellen, ); Dixon Wechter, The Hero in America: A Chronicle of Hero-Worship (Reprint, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, ). . Ruth Bloch, ‘‘The Gendered Meanings of Virtue in Revolutionary America,’’ Signs  (): –; Linda K. Kerber, ‘‘ ‘History Can Do It No Justice’: Women and the Reinterpretation of the American Revolution,’’ in Women in the Age of the American Revolution, ed. Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville: Uni-


Notes to Pages –



versity Press of Virginia, ), –; Mark E. Kann, A Republic of Men: The American Founders, Gendered Language, and Patriarchal Politics (New York: New York University Press, ), –, . . Leacock, Fall of British Tyranny, . . ‘‘Dialogue, on the Success of Our Arms, and the Rising Glory of America,’’ in Two Dialogues, On Different Subjects: Being Exercises, Delivered on a Quarter-Day, In the Chapel of Yale-College, New-Haven, March ,  (Hartford, Conn.: E. Watson, ), . . Leacock, Fall of British Tyranny, vi; Leacock intended the play to inspire the public. See Francis James Dallett, Jr., ‘‘John Leacock and the Fall of British Tyranny,’’ Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography  (): –; Karla Mulford, ed., ‘‘Introduction,’’ John Leacock’s The First Book of the American Chronicles of the Times, – (Newark, N.J.: University of Delaware Press, ), ; Jeffrey Richards, Theater Enough: American Culture and the Metaphor of the World Stage, – (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, ), –; Jared Brown, The Theatre in America During the Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, ). . James Murray, An Impartial History of the War in America, (Boston: Robert Hodge, ), :. . This quotation refers to enlisted men from Concord, Massachusetts, but Neimeyer finds a similar pattern across state and region, Neimeyer, America Goes to War, . . Charles Lee quoted in Neimeyer, America Goes to War, ; See Mayer, Belonging to the Army, . . Higginbotham, The War of American Independence, –; Neimeyer, ‘‘Changing One Master for Another: Black Soldiers in the Continental Army,’’ in America Goes to War, –; Sidney Kaplan and Emma Nogrady Kaplan, The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution, rev. ed. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, ). . Brackenridge, Eulogium, . . Leacock, Fall of British Tyranny, ; Sylvia R. Frey, Like Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ). . The only African American who approached anything like ‘‘heroic’’ status during the war was Crispus Attucks, who was killed in the Boston Massacre of . But even his memory was muted until later in the nineteenth century; Kaplan and Kaplan, Black Presence, –. Phillis Wheatley made several veiled references to black heroism in poems published during the Revolutionary War, even though she too reserved the most direct praise for great white heroes; see David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, – (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), . . For the best definition of just such a popular political culture, see Simon Newman, Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ). . Worthington Chauncy Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, –




Notes to Pages –

 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office for the Library of Congress, ), :; Hal T. Shelton, General Richard Montgomery and the American Revolution: From Redcoat to Rebel (New York: New York University Press, ), . . Janet Livingston Montgomery to Mercy Otis Warren, quoted in Katherine M. Babbit, Janet Montgomery: Hudson River Squire (Monroe, N.Y.: Library Research Associates, ), ; Royster, Revolutionary People at War, –; Cynthia Kierner, ‘‘Patrician Womanhood in the Early Republic: The ‘Reminiscences’ of Janet Livingston Montgomery,’’ New York History  (): . . Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ); Edmund Cody Burnett, The Continental Congress (New York: W. W. Norton, ), –. . Ford, Journals, :; Shelton, General Richard Montgomery, –; Purcell, Who Was Who, –. See Murray, Impartial History, :, ; Kenneth Silverman, A Cultural History of the American Revolution: Painting, Music, Literature, and the Theatre in the Colonies and the United States from the Treaty of Paris to the Inauguration of George Washington, – (New York: Columbia University Press, ), –. . Ford, Journals, :; Shelton, General Richard Montgomery, –. . Benjamin Franklin sent Congress an engraving of the proposed monument in ; Gaillard Hunt, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, – (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office for the Library of Congress, ), :; Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in NineteenthCentury America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ); James M. Mayo, War Memorials as Political Landscape: The American Experience and Beyond (New York: Praeger, ), –; Reinhart Koselleck and Michael Jeismann, eds., Der Politische Totenkult: Kriegerdenkmäler in der Moderne (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, ); Alan Borg, War Memorials: From Antiquity to the Present (London: Leo Cooper, ), –; Catharine Moriarty, ‘‘Private Grief and Public Remembrance: British First World War Memorials,’’ War and Memory in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, ); Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, vol.  (New York: Columbia University Press, ). . Ford, Journals, :, . . (Baltimore) Maryland Journal, February , ; Albert Frank Gegenheimer, William Smith, Educator and Churchman (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, ), . William Smith also encountered public difficulty when he eulogized Benjamin Franklin in the s; Huang, Benjamin Franklin, –. . Thomas Firth Jones, A Pair of Lawn Sleeves: A Biography of William Smith (New York: Chilton, ), . . (Baltimore) Maryland Journal, February , ; Ford, Journals, :; Josiah Bartlett to Mary Bartlett, February , , in The Papers of Josiah Bartlett, ed. Frank C. Mevers (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, ), ; Shelton, General Richard Montgomery, ; Jones, Pair of Lawn Sleeves, . . William Smith, An Oration in Memory of General Montgomery, and of the Officers and Soldiers Who Fell With Him, December ,  (Philadelphia: Dunlap, ), , , –, , , –. See Jon Thomas Rowland, Faint Praise and Civil Leer: The ‘‘Decline’’ of Eighteenth-Century Panegyric (Newark: University of Delaware Press, ), –.


Notes to Pages –



. Smith, Oration, –, , . . Ibid., . . Ibid., , ; James Kirby Martin, Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered (New York: New York University Press, ), . . Hiller B. Zobel, The Boston Massacre (New York: W. W. Norton, ), ; Alfred F. Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party (Boston: Beacon Press, ); Murray, Impartial History, ; Anne Fairfax Withington, ‘‘Funerals and Politics,’’ in Toward a More Perfect Union: Virtue and the Formation of American Republics (New York: Oxford University Press, ), –, ; J. M. C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ). . John Adams to Abigail Adams, April , , in Adams Family Correspondence, ed. Lyman Butterfield (Cambridge: Belknap Press, ), :, ; Ford, Journals, : and :. See Shelton, General Richard Montgomery, ; Jones, Pair, . Instant rejection of the oration was not universal; the Maryland Journal printed a report from Philadelphia that called the oration ‘‘animated and pathetic’’ on February . . Ford, Journals, vol. , ‘‘Bibliographic Notes,’’ –; Charles Evans, American Bibliography, (New York: Peter Smith, ), :; Smith, Oration, i; John Adams to Abigail Adams, Adams Family Correspondence, . . Martin, Benedict Arnold, –; Roger Enos, ‘‘To the Impartial Public,’’ (Annapolis) Maryland Gazette, June , . This article is a reprint from the Connecticut Gazette; Purcell, Who Was Who, . . David Sherman Rowland, Historical Remarks: With Moral Reflections: A Sermon Preached at Providence, June ,  . . . (Providence, R.I.: John Carter, ), ; Murray, Impartial History, . . For examples, see Royster, Revolutionary People at War, . . ‘‘God Save America . . .’’ attr. to Gouveneur Morris, n.d., Vaughn Miscellaneous Papers, MHS. . Jonathan Williams Austin, An Oration Delivered March th, , at the Request of the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston to Commemorate the Bloody Tragedy of the Fifth of March, , quoted in Shelton, General Richard Montgomery, . . Elegiac Poem, ; ‘‘Dialogue,’’ ; An Eulogium on Major General Joseph Warren; John Cary, Joseph Warren; Physician, Politician, Patriot (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ), . James Murray wrote in his  history of the war: ‘‘The person among the Americans that was most lamented, who was slain in this action, was major-general Warren, who commanded in this battle’’; Impartial History, :; An Elegy, Occasion’d by the Death of Major-General Joseph Warren . . . on the Memorable th Day of June,  (Watertown, Mass.: Benjamin Edes, ). . Cary, Warren, ; Pennsylvania Evening Post, April , . In his funeral oration for Warren’s burial, Perez Morton assured the dead patriot that ‘‘thy memory has been embalmed in the affections of thy grateful countrymen, who, in their breasts, have raised eternal monuments to thy bravery!’’ quoted in George Washington Warren, The History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association During the First Century of The United States of America (Boston: James R. Goodson, ), . . Massachusetts Spy, July , . . Gazette of the State of South Carolina, May , . At the same time, they




Notes to Pages –

set aside money for a monument to Baron de Kalb and agreed to educate the sons of both men, Ford, Journals, (), :, –, . For a twentieth-century perspective on this kind of action, see Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change (New York: Columbia University Press, ). . Brackenridge, Battle of Bunkers-Hill; William Green, ‘‘New Publications in Modern Literature, to be Sold, by William Green,’’ Maryland Journal, May , ; Daniel Marder, Hugh Henry Brackenridge (New York: Twayne, ), , . . Brackenridge, Bunkers-Hill, . . Nevertheless, many people claimed to have heard Warren do so. See Marder, Brackenridge, –. Some portrayals of Warren’s death are bloodier than others; in An Eulogium on Major General Joseph Warren, Warren ‘‘Spouts the black gore!’’ . . Brackenridge, Bunkers-Hill, . . Pennsylvania Evening Post, November , . . ‘‘A Lad of  Years,’’ ‘‘An Elegy on the Death of Capt.  ,’’ Massachusetts Spy, July , ; ‘‘In Justice to the Memory of Capt. Adam Wallace . . .’’ Maryland Journal, July , . . An Eulogium on General Washington Being Appointed Commander in Chief of the Foederal Army in America (Philadelphia: n.p., ), ; Jonathan Mitchell Sewall, A New Epilogue to Cato, Spoken at a Late Performance of that Tragedy (New Hampshire: Daniel Fowle, ), . . Brackenridge, Eulogium, . . Royster, A Revolutionary People, –. . Sewell, New Epilogue; Silverman, Cultural, –; Brown, Theatre, . The ghost of Joseph Warren also appears at the end of Hugh Henry Brackenridge’s play The Battle of Bunkers-Hill and cries out for vengeance, . James Rivington used similar rhetoric when he called upon Loyalists to enlist with British forces: ‘‘To the Citizens in and about New York . . .’’; New York Loyal Gazette, November , . . See Shy, ‘‘American Society,’’ –. . Esther De Berdt Reed, ‘‘The Sentiments of an American Woman,’’ Supplement to the Maryland Journal, June , ; Massachusetts Spy, July , . See Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, – (Boston: Scott, Foresman, ), –. . Brackenridge, Eulogium, ; Leacock, Fall of British Tyranny, –; Jacob, Poetical Essay, . . Anna Young, ‘‘An Elegy to the Memory of the American Volunteers Who Fell in the Engagement Between the Massachusetts-Bay Militia, and the British Troops. April , ,’’ Pennsylvania Magazine  (June ): –, reprinted in American Women Writers to , ed. Sharon M. Harris (New York: Oxford University Press, ), . . William Moultrie, Memoirs of the American Revolution . . . (New York: D. Longworth, ), :. . David Humphreys, An Essay on the Life of the Honourable Major General Israel Putnam (Boston: Samuel Avery, ), . . Brackenridge, Eulogium, . . Ibid., .


Notes to Pages –



. I place women’s ‘‘public’’ political participation much earlier than does Mary Ryan; Mary Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, – (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, ). . Nora, Realms of Memory. Commemorations of ‘‘frontier’’ engagements, for example, usually took printed form because no civic identity was at stake. See, for example, John Dodge, A Narrative of the Capture and Treatment of John Dodge, By the English at Detroit (Philadelphia: T. Bradford, ); David R. Starbuck, The Great Warpath: British Military Sites from Albany to Crown Point (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, ). . Wolcott, Grateful Reflections, ; Binney, Lines Sacred to the Memory, ; Waldstreicher, Perpetual Fetes, –, –. For an interesting look at how regionalism and nationalism can coexist, see Alon Confino, The Nation as Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, – (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ). . Newman, Parades and Politics of the Street, –. . David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (Berkeley: University of California Press, ); Travers, ‘‘Excellent Political Moves,’’ in Celebrating the Fourth, –; David Waldstreicher, ‘‘The Revolutionary Politics of Celebration,’’ in Waldstreicher, Perpetual Fetes, –. . Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution, xiii; Arthur M. Schlesinger, ‘‘A Note on Songs as Patriot Propaganda, –,’’ WMQ  (): –; Gordon S. Wood, ‘‘Rhetoric and Reality in the American Revolution,’’ In Search of Early America: The William and Mary Quarterly, – (Richmond, Va.: William Byrd Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, ), , . . ‘‘A Frenchman Visits Charleston in ,’’ trans. Elmer Douglas Johnson, South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine  (): . The description is taken from a report on festivities in South Carolina found in a censor’s office file in France that was first translated into English in . Excerpts appear as ‘‘Palmetto Day Celebration in Charleston, June , ,’’ in South Carolina: A Documentary Profile of the Palmetto State, ed. Elver D. Johnson and Kathleen Lewis Sloan (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, ), –. . Simon Newman traces the importance of developments like this, especially in his ‘‘Introduction: The Significance of Popular Political Culture,’’ in Parades and The Politics of the Street, –. . George, George’s Cambridge Almanack, st ed., iv; Brackenridge, BunkersHill, , , ; Elisha Rich, A Poem on the Bloody Engagement That Was Fought on Bunker’s Hill in Charlestown New-England (Chelmsford, Mass.: Nathaniel Coverly, ); Elegiac Poem, ; Nathan Strong, The Agency and Providence of God Acknowledged, in the Preservation of the American States (Hartford, Conn.: Hudson and Goodwin, ), ; Henry Cumings, A Sermon Preached at Lexington, on the th of April,  (Boston: Benjamin Edes & Sons, ), ; Francis G. Wallet, Massachusetts Newspapers and the Revolutionary Crisis, – (Boston: Massachusetts Bicentennial Commission Pub., ); Edward Tabor Linenthal, Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ), –; John McWilliams,




Notes to Pages –

‘‘Lexington, Concord, and the ‘Hinge of the Future,’ ’’ American Literary History  (): –. . There was subsequently (and still is to some extent) controversy over whether Lexington or Concord should properly be referred to as the first real battle of the war. Most of this argument has been caught up in local civic loyalties, and most Americans during the war tended to view these encounters as part of the same big battle. . Isaiah Thomas, Massachusetts Spy, May , . . Peter Timothy, ‘‘A Circular Letter [No. ] to the Committees in the Several Districts and Parishes of South-Carolina,’’ Supplement to the South Carolina Gazette, no.  ([June ] ); Clarence Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, – (Worcester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, ), . . David Avery, A Sermon, Preached at Greenwich, Connecticut on the th of December  (Norwich, Conn.: Green & Spooner, ), . . Elisha Rich, Poetical Remarks upon the Fight at the Boston Light-House (Chelmsford, Mass.: Nathaniel Coverly, ). . Jonas Clarke, The Fate of Blood-Thirsty Oppressors, and God’s Tender Care of His Distressed People (Boston: Powars and Willis, ), –; Bernard Bailyn, ‘‘Slavery,’’ in The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, ), –. . McWilliams, ‘‘Lexington, Concord,’’ –; Doris L. Pullen and Donald B. Cobb, The Celebration of April the Nineteenth From  to  in Lexington, Massachusetts (Lexington, Mass.: Town Celebration Committee, ); The celebration of ‘‘Patriots’ Day’’ as an official Massachusetts state holiday began in ; see George J. Varney, The Story of Patriot’s Day (Boston: Lee and Shepard, ). . Clarke, Fate of Blood-Thirsty Oppressors, , –, , . . Samuel Cooke, The Violent Destroyed: And Oppressed Delivered (Boston: Draper and Phillips, ), , , , . . Cushing, Divine Judgements, . . Ibid., , . . Woodward, Help of the Lord, , . . Isaac Morrill, Faith in Divine Providence, The Great Support of God’s People in Perilous Times . . . (Boston: John Gill, ), , . . Cummings, Sermon, . . Len Travers’s paper ‘‘Palmetto Day and the Paradox of ‘Nationalist’ Festivals,’’ delivered April , , at the Philadelphia Center’s Festive Culture and Public Ritual in Early America, has been helpful to me, despite our different emphases. The South Carolina Historical Society has revived celebrations of the holiday, now called Carolina Day. They have erected a website that contains a chronology of the celebrations in honor of the anniversary of the Battle of Sullivan’s Island, ‘‘Landmark Carolina Days of the Past,’’ . . Richard Walsh, Charleston’s Sons of Liberty: A Study of the Artisans, –  (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, ), ; Joseph Johnson, Traditions and Reminiscences Chiefly of the American Revolution in the South (Charleston, S.C.: Walker & James, ), , , .


Notes to Pages –



. Gazette of the State of South Carolina, May , June , June , ; South Carolina and American General Gazette, June , . . See A. V. Huff, Jr. ‘‘The Eagle and the Vulture: Changing Attitudes Toward Nationalism in Fourth of July Orations Delivered in Charleston, –,’’ South Atlantic Quarterly  (): –; Fletcher M. Green, ‘‘Listen to the Eagle Scream: One Hundred Years of the Fourth of July in North Carolina (–),’’ North Carolina Historical Review  (): –, –. . Gazette of the State of South Carolina, June , ; ‘‘Frenchman Visits,’’ South Carolina and American General Gazette, July , ; –. . ‘‘Frenchman Visits,’’ South Carolina and American General Gazette, . . Gazette of the State of South Carolina, June , . Fourth of July dinners were also held at Valk’s Long Room. See Huff, ‘‘Eagle,’’ . . Gazette of the State of South Carolina, June , ; South Carolina and American General Gazette, July , . . South Carolina and American General Gazette, July , . . South Carolina and American General Gazette, July , , including ‘‘Frenchman Visits,’’ . . William Heath, Memoirs of Major-General Heath: Containing Anecdotes, Details of Skirmishes, Battles, and Other Military Events During the American War (Boston: I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews, ). . Gazette of the State of South Carolina, June , . . ‘‘Frenchman Visits,’’ South Carolina and American General Gazette, . . Gazette of the State of South Carolina, July , . . ‘‘Frenchman Visits,’’ South Carolina and American General Gazette, . . Diana K. Applebaum, The Glorious Fourth: An American Holiday, An American History (New York: Facts on File, ), –; (Boston) Continental Journal and Weekly Advertiser, July , ; Pennsylvania Evening Post, July , . . Huff, ‘‘Eagle and the Vulture,’’ –; Green, ‘‘Listen to the Eagle Scream,’’ –; Gazette of the State of South Carolina, July , , July , ; (Boston) Continental Journal and Weekly Advertiser, July , ; Davidson, Propaganda, ; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth, .

Chapter 

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

. Elias Boudinot quoted in The World Almanac of the American Revolution, ed. L. Edward Purcell and David F. Burg (New York: World Almanac, ), . . Charles Smith, The American War, From  to  (New York: C. Smith, ), . . Israel Evans, A Discourse Delivered Near York in Virginia, On the Memorable Occasion of the Surrender of the British Army to the Allied Forces of America and France (Philadelphia: Francis Bailey, ), ; John Calvin Thorne, ‘‘A Monograph on the Rev. Israel Evans, A.M., Chaplain in the American Army During the Entire Revolutionary War, –,’’ Magazine of History With Notes and Queries, extra number  (): –. . Evans, Discourse Delivered Near York, . See also Josiah Meigs, An Oration Pro-




Notes to Pages –

nounced Before a Public Assembly in New-Haven, On the th Day of November , At the Celebration of the Glorious Victory Over Lieutenant-General Earl Cornwallis (New Haven, Conn.: Thomas and Samuel Green, ). . Evans, Discourse Delivered Near York, ; Adam Pokay, The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of Hume (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ), , –; Michael G. Moran, ed., Eighteenth-Century British and American Rhetorics and Rhetoricians: Critical Studies and Sources (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, ), –; Sandra M. Gustafson, Eloquence Is Power: Oratory and Performance in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), –. . Evans, Discourse Delivered Near York, , . . Ibid., –; David Humphreys also called for the names of the ‘‘noble vet’rans’’ to be commemorated for all eternity, The Glory of America: Or, Peace Triumphant Over War (Philadelphia: E. Oswald and D. Humphreys, ), ; David Osgood, Reflections on the Goodness of God in Supporting the People of the United States Through the Late War. . . . A Sermon Preached on . . . December ,  (Boston: T. and J. Fleet, ), ; Benjamin Trumbull, God Is to Be Praised for the Glory of His Majesty, and for His Mighty Works, A Sermon Delivered at North-Haven, December ,  (New Haven, Conn.: Thomas and Samuel Green, ), ; Robert Davidson, An Oration on the Independence of the United States of America, Delivered on the th of July,  (Carlisle, Pa.: Kline and Reynolds, ), , . The members of the Palmetto Society in Charleston pledged themselves in  to remember the names of brave troops, Charleston Morning Gazette, June , . . Gordon S. Wood, ‘‘Interests and Disinterestedness in the Making of the Constitution,’’ in Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity, ed. Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward C. Carter II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), –. . Evans, Discourse Delivered Near York, . . South Carolina Weekly, July , . . John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February , , in The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Capon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), :. On the long-lasting nature of gratitude as an American political and military concept, see Louis A. Pérez, Jr., ‘‘Incurring a Debt of Gratitude:  and the Moral Sources of United States Hegemony in Cuba,’’ American Historical Review  (): –. . See Terrance McConnell, Gratitude (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, ), , –; Joseph Anthony Amato II, Guilt and Gratitude: A Study of the Origins of Contemporary Conscience (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, ), , – ; Samuel Mather, An Essay Concerning Gratitude (Boston: T. Hancock, ), . . Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf: ), . . ‘‘Civis,’’ New York Gazetteer, February , , reprinted in (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, March , . . Humphreys, Glory of America, ; Edward M. Cifelli, David Humphreys (Boston: Twayne, ), –. . John Trumbull to Thomas Jefferson, June , reprinted in John Trumbull,


Notes to Pages –



Autobiography, Reminiscences and Letters of John Trumbull from  to  (New York: Wiley and Putnam, ), . Of course, Trumbull also wanted the cheap prints to earn him money, as he wrote to John Eliot, ‘‘I am now . . . employed—writing, in my language, the History of our Country. The Battle at Bunker’s Hill is the first subject which I have taken & is almost finished. . . . I hope in this way to reconcile the pleasures of Historical painting with profit’’; John Trumbull to John Eliot, March , , Andrews-Eliot Papers, MHS. . See Merrill Jensen, The New Nation: A History of the United States During the Confederation, – (Boston: Northeastern University Press, ). . See Elizabeth M. Nuxoll and Mary A. Y. Gallagher, introduction to The Papers of Robert Morris –, vol. , May –December , , ed. Elizabeth M. Nuxoll and Mary A. Y. Gallagher (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, ), xxxi–xlvi. . Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, – (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), –; Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, – (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ), ; Joseph J. Ellis, After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture (New York: W. W. Norton, ), ; Kenneth Silverman, A Cultural History of the American Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, ), xv, –. . Richard D. Brown, Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, – (New York: Oxford University Press, ); David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, –  (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), –. . Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (New York: Oxford University Press, ), , –. . Wesley Frank Craven, The Legend of the Founding Fathers (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ), ; W. DeLoss Love, The Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ); Waldstreicher, Perpetual Fetes, – ; Jane M. Hatch, ‘‘Thanksgiving Day,’’ in The American Book of Days, rd ed. (New York: H. W. Wilson, ), –. . Joseph Buckminster, A Discourse Delivered in the First Church of Christ at Portsmouth, on Thursday December , : Being the Day Recommended by the Honorable Congress for a General Thanksgiving Throughout the United States of America . . . (New Hampshire: Robert Gerrish, ), . . Thomas Brockway, America Saved: or, Divine Glory Displayed, in the Late War with Great-Britain (Hartford, Conn.: Hudson and Goodwin, ), ; Trumbull, God Is to Be Praised, ; Osgood, Reflections, . . Buckminster, Discourse Delivered, . . Pokay, Fate of Eloquence, ; Jay Fliegelman, Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural Language, and the Culture of Performance (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, ), –. . Nathan Fiske, An Oration Delivered at Brookfield, Nov. , , In Celebration of the Capture of Lord Cornwallis and His Whole Army . . . (Boston: Thomas and John Fleet, ), , , . . ‘‘By the United States in Congress Assembled, A Proclamation,’’ Journals of




Notes to Pages –

the Continental Congress, Gaillard Hunt, ed., vol.  (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, ), :; ‘‘By the United States in Congress Assembled: A Proclamation’’ (New London, Conn.: Timothy Green, ). . (New York) Independent Journal, November , ; Independent New York Gazette, November  and , ; (New York) Independent Gazette, December , ; Israel Evans, A Discourse, Delivered in New-York: Before a Brigade of Continental Troops . . . th December,  (New York: John Holt, ); John Dickinson, By the President and the Supreme Executive Council of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, A Proclamation (Philadelphia: Bailey, ); Pennsylvania General Assembly, In Assembly, Tuesday, December nd,  . . . the Report of the Committee . . . Relative to the Preparations to Be Made for Demonstrations of Joy (Philadelphia: Thomas Bradford, ); (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, June , ; John Hancock, A Proclamation for a Day of Thanksgiving . . . Thursday the Eleventh Day of December Next (Boston: Adams and Nourse, ); David Osgood, Reflections; Benjamin Trumbull, God Is to Be Praised; (Annapolis) Maryland Gazette, November , . See also Myron F. Wehtje, ‘‘Boston’s Celebrations of Peace in  and ,’’ Historical Journal of Massachusetts  (): –; Cynthia A. Kierner, ‘‘Genteel Balls and Republican Parades: Gender and Early Southern Civic Rituals, –,’’ Virginia Magazine of History and Biography  (): . . Garry Wills, Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, ); Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol (New York: Free Press, ), –. . Joseph S. Tiedemann, ‘‘Patriots, Loyalists, and Conflict Resolution in New York, –,’’ in Loyalists and Community in North America, ed. Robert M. Calhoon, Timothy M. Barnes, and George A. Rawlyk (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, ), –. . Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to  (New York: Oxford University Press, ), –. . Independent Journal, November , . . Independent New York Gazette, November , ; World Almanac, . . Independent New York Gazette, December , . . Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ), ; (New York) Independent Gazette, December , . . (New York) Independent Gazette, December , . . Evans, Discourse, Delivered in New-York, , , . . See, for example, the report on New York’s celebrations in the Maryland Gazette, November , . . Brockway, America Saved, . . Trumbull, God Is to Be Praised, ; David Tappan, A Discourse Delivered at the Third Parish in Newbury, on the First of May, , Occasioned by the Ratification of the Treaty of Peace (Salem, Mass.: Samuel Hall, ), . . Harry Marlin Tinkcom, The Republicans and Federalists in Pennsylvania, – (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, ), –. . Pennsylvania General Assembly, In Assembly.


Notes to Pages –



. Minutes of the First Session of the Eighth General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: n.p., ), . . Ibid.; New Perspectives on Charles Willson Peale: A th Anniversary Celebration, ed. Lillian B. Miller and David C. Ward (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Published for the Smithsonian Institution by Pittsburgh University Press, ), . See Charles Coleman Sellars, Charles Willson Peale with Patron and Populace: A Supplement to Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale with a Survey of His Work in Other Genres, vol. , pt.  (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, ). . ‘‘Celebration of the Surrender of Cornwallis,’’ Pennsylvania Packet, November , , quoted in The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family, ed. Lillian B. Miller (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, ), :; Charles Coleman Sellers, Charles Willson Peale (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, ), –. . Peale Papers, –. . Uwe Westfehling, ‘‘Triumph, Triumphbogen, and Ehrenpforte vor dem . Jahrhundert,’’ in Triumphbogen im . und . Jahrhundert (Munich: Prestel, ), – ; Ernst Künzel, Der römische Triumph: Siegesfeiern im antiken Rom (Munich: C. H. Beck, ); Alan Borg, War Memorials: From Antiquity to the Present (London: Leo Cooper, ), –. . Donald Martin Reynolds, Monuments and Masterpieces: Histories and Views of Public Sculpture in New York City (New York: Macmillan, ), . . Pennsylvania General Assembly, In Assembly. The arch also showed an image of ‘‘Cincinnatus returning to his plow. . . . The countenance of Cincinnatus is a striking Resemblance of General Washington.’’ The resemblance was not coincidental because Washington sat for the portrait when he was in Philadelphia on December ; Sellars, Charles Willson Peale, . . Pennsylvania General Assembly, In Assembly. . Ibid. . War memorials often create a problem for the official control of public space, especially because they frequently take on an almost sacred importance. See James M. Mayo, War Memorials as Political Landscape: The American Experience and Beyond (New York: Praeger, ), ; Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ); Kristin Ann Hass, Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). . Pennsylvania Journal, January , , quoted in Peale Papers, ; Sellars, Charles Willson Peale, . . Jeremy Belknap to Ebenzer Hazard, January , , quoted in Peale Papers, . . Peale Papers, . . Phillips Payson, A Memorial of the Lexington Battle, and Some of the Signal Interpositions of Providence in the American Revolution . . . (Boston: Benjamin Edes & Sons, ), , , , . . Zabdiel Adams, The Evil Designs of Men Made Subservient by God to the Public Good: Particularly Illustrated in the Rise, Progress, and Conclusion of the American War . . . (Boston: B. Edes & Sons, ), , , , –.




Notes to Pages –

. Ibid., , , . . Alexander Hamilton quoted in Jensen, New Nation, . . Calhoon, Barnes, and Rawlyk, Loyalists and Community; Robert Stansbury Lambert, South Carolina Loyalists in the American Revolution (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, ), –. . Gazette of the State of South Carolina, January , , quoted in Richard Walsh, Charleston’s Sons of Liberty: A Study of the Artisan, – (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, ), ; Lambert, South Carolina Loyalists, ; Wood, Creation, . . Pratt’s novel had appeared in at least six editions by ; Samuel Jackson Pratt, Emma Corbett: Exhibiting Henry and Emma, the Faithful Modern Lovers; As Delineated by Themselves, in Their Original Letters (Philadelphia: Robert Bell, ). Another example of the genre is The Returned Captive, A Poem, Founded on Fact (Hudson, N.Y.: Ashbel Stoddard, ). . Pratt, Emma Corbett, :.  Ibid., :. . As ‘‘A Whig’’ wrote in the Pennsylvania Packet: ‘‘I sincerely wish the distinctions taken in the war, were obliterated and forgot.’’ ‘‘From the Pennsylvania Packet,’’ Columbian Herald, November , ; Benjamin Rush, ‘‘To the People of the United States,’’ American Recorder, June , . . Evans, Discourse, Delivered in New-York, . . ‘‘An AEthiopian,’’ A Sermon on the Evacuation of Charlestown (Philadelphia: Will Woodhouse, ), . . See Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, – (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ). . John McAlpine, Genuine Narratives, and Concise Memoirs of Some of the Most Interesting Exploits, and Singular Adventures, of J. McAlpine, a Native Highlander (United States, ), , , ; Brian Burns, ‘‘Mad Jack M’Alpine, A Soldier of the King,’’ Vermont History : (), . . Douglass Adair and John A. Schutz, eds., Peter Oliver’s Origin & Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, ); Lester H. Cohen, The Revolutionary Histories: Contemporary Narratives of the American Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ), ; Lawrence H. Leder, ed., The Colonial Legacy: Loyalist Historians, vol.  (New York: Harper & Row Torchbook Library Edition, ). . Anthony Walke, ‘‘Remarkable Occurrences during the unhappy American War, and a concise and impartial Account of the Causes of its Origin and Progress,’’ , Anthony Walke Manuscript, FHS. . George Richards Minot, The History of the Insurrections, In Massachusetts . . . (Worcester, Mass.: Isaiah Thomas, ), . . (New York) Independent Journal, December , . . Tappan, Discourse Delivered, . In , Tappan was named Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard University; Nathan O. Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, ), . . Trumbull, God Is to Be Praised, ; Maryland Gazette, June , .


Notes to Pages –



. Trumbull, God Is to Be Praised, . . Evans, Discourse Delivered at New-York, . . Ibid., , . Interestingly, at the same time Evans himself was petitioning the New Hampshire legislature to increase his military back-pay; Thorne, ‘‘Israel Evans,’’ –. . John Resch, Suffering Soldiers: Revolutionary War Veterans, Moral Sentiment, and Political Culture in the Early Republic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, ). . Buckminster, Discourse Delivered, . . On debt, see Gordan S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ), –. . John Blatchford, Narrative of the Life and Captivity of John Blatchford . . . Prisoner of War in the Late American Revolution (New London, Conn.: T. Green, ), . . Philip Freneau, ‘‘The Picture Gallery,’’ in The Miscellaneous Works of Mr. Philip Freneau (Philadelphia: Francis Bailey, ), , ; Mary Weatherspoon Bowden, Philip Freneau (Boston: Twayne, ), . . Dave R. Palmer, : America, Its Army, and the Birth of the Nation (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, ), , . . Minot, History, –, ; Robert A. Gross, ‘‘The Uninvited Guest: Daniel Shays and the Constitution,’’ in In Debt to Shays: The Bicentennial of an Agrarian Rebellion, ed. Robert A. Gross (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ), ; Clark, Roots, –; William Pencak, ‘‘ ‘The Fine Theoretic Government of Massachusetts is Prostrated to the Earth’: The Response to Shays’s Rebellion Reconsidered,’’ in In Debt to Shays, ed. Gross, –; David P. Szatmary, Shays’ Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, ), –. . Daniel Shays’s proclamation to Benjamin Lincoln, January , , reprinted in Minot, History, . . Wood, Creation, –, ; Richard D. Brown, ‘‘Shays’s Rebellion and the Ratification of the Federal Constitution in Massachusetts,’’ in Beyond Confederation, ed. Beeman, Botein, and Carter, –. . Harrington, ‘‘To the Freemen of the United States . . .’’ (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, July , ; Centinel, ‘‘From the Maryland Journal,’’ (Lexington) Kentucky Gazette, June , . . David Humphreys, An Oration on the Political Situation of the United States of America, in the Year . Pronounced before the State Society of the Cincinnati of Connecticut . . . in Celebration of the Thirteenth Anniversary of Independence, in Essay on the Life of the Late and Honorable Major General Israel Putnam (Catskill, N.Y.: T. and M. Crosswell, ), , . . Independent Gazeteer, July , , quoted in John K. Alexander, The Selling of the Constitutional Convention (Madison, Wisc.: Madison House, ), ; American Recorder and Charlestown (Massachusetts) Advertiser, June , ; ‘‘Just Published, And Now Selling . . . ,’’ Connecticut Courant, January , ; Sidney Kaplan, ‘‘Veteran Officers and Politics in Massachusetts, –,’’ WMQ  (): . . Phillis [Wheatley] Peters, ‘‘Liberty and Peace, a Poem’’ (Boston: Warden and Russell, ), reprinted in The Poems of Phillis Wheatley, rev. ed., ed. Julian D.




Notes to Pages –

Mason, Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), –; Jupiter Hammon quoted in The Negro in the American Revolution, Benjamin Quarles (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), . Petition quoted in Vincent J. Rosavich, ‘‘Three Petitions by Connecticut Negroes for the Abolition of Slavery in Connecticut,’’ Connecticut Review  (): . . Although the sermon was printed in Philadelphia and was intended to educate ‘‘the Americans in general,’’ it was dedicated ‘‘to the Citizens of South-Carolina in Particular’’; ‘‘A Black,’’ A Sermon, On the Present Situation of the Affairs of America and Great-Britain (T. Bradford and P. Hall: Philadelphia, ), , . . ‘‘AEthiopian,’’ Sermon, . . Ibid., . . Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York: Hill and Wang, ), –; Sidney Kaplan and Emma Nogrady Kaplan, The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution, rev. ed. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, ), –; Benjamin Quarles, ‘‘Heirs of the Same Promise,’’ in The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: – (New York: Hill and Wang, ), –; Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), –. . Joan Wells Coward, Kentucky in the New Republic: The Process of Constitution Making (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, ), –; Chester Raymond Young, ed., Westward into Kentucky: The Narrative of Daniel Traube (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, ). . See Jensen, ‘‘The States and Their Neighbors,’’ in New Nation, –. . Elizabeth Perkins, Border Life: Experience and Memory in the Revolutionary Ohio Valley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), ; Dale Van Every, Ark of Empire: The American Frontier, –, reprint ed. (New York: Arno, ), –; Gregory T. Knouff, ‘‘Soldiers and Violence on the Pennsylvania Frontier,’’ in Beyond Philadelphia: The American Revolution in the Pennsylvania Hinterland, ed. John B. Frantz and William Pencak (University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, ), –. . Van Every, Ark of Empire, –. . Jensen, New Nation, ; L. Edward Purcell, Who Was Who in the American Revolution (New York: Facts on File, ), , ; Carl S. Driver, John Sevier: Pioneer of the Old Southwest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ). . John Sevier to Richard Caswell, October , , in Sevier Family History with the Collected Letters of Gen. John Sevier, First Governor of Tennessee, ed. Cora Bales Sevier and Nancy S. Madden (n.p., n.d.), FHS Library, . . John Sevier, ‘‘Franklin State, in Council, June , ,’’ (Lexington) Kentucky Gazette, October , . Sevier used very similar language in a letter to Georgia’s governor the day before; John Sevier to George Mathews, June , , in Sevier Family History, . . Sevier, ‘‘Franklin State.’’ . Sevier, ‘‘Franklin State.’’ . John Sevier to Both Houses of the General Assembly of North Carolina, October , , in Sevier Family History, .


Notes to Pages –



. Franklin’s bid for statehood disintegrated into infighting between its inhabitants and Governor John Sevier, who was backed by eastern land speculators; Jensen, New Nation, –. . (Lexington) Kentucky Gazette, July , . . Coward, Kentucky, ; Lowell H. Harrison, Kentucky’s Road to Statehood (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, ), –. . Coward, Kentucky, . . Thomas Todd, ‘‘The Proceedings of the Convention . . .’’ Kentucky Gazette, February , ; Robert McNutt McElroy, Kentucky in the Nation’s History (New York: Moffat and Yard, ), –. . See Robert E. Shalhope, ‘‘Independence,’’ in Bennington and the Green Mountain Boys: The Emergence of Liberal Democracy in Vermont, – (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, ), –; Edward Countryman, A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, – (New York: W. W. Norton, ), –; Alan Taylor, William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ); Michael Bellesiles, Ethan Allen and the Struggle for Independence on the Early American Frontier (Charlotte: University Press of Virginia, ). . John Spargo, Anthony Haswell: Printer, Patriot, Balladeer (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle, ). . (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, June , . . Ibid., June , . . Ibid., August , . . Quotation from one of several poetic fragments at the end of Haswell’s manuscript for the play The Battle of Bennington, which was performed at the  commemoration; Haswell Family Manuscripts, AAS. See also Anthony Haswell, ‘‘Proposals for Printing by Subscription, the Battle of Bennington, A Tragedy as It Was Acted at Bennington, on Monday the th of August, , the Anniversary of the Battle,’’ (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, August , August , September , September , October , . . (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, August , ; Vermont Gazette, August , . . Anthony Haswell, Moral Songs Composed to Be Sung August the th, , At the Celebration of the Eleventh Anniversary of the Battle of Bennington (Bennington, Vt.: Haswell and Russell, ). . Haswell Family Manuscripts. . Rosemarie Zagarri, ‘‘Gender and the First Party System,’’ in Federalists Reconsidered, ed. Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara Oberg (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ), . . (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, August , ; Anna Seward, Monody on Major Andre (Philadelphia: Enoch Story, ), . . Historians are beginning to alter the view that women in the Early Republic were restricted mainly to the private sphere as they recognize greater political and social significance of women’s public actions; Jan Lewis, ‘‘ ‘Of Every Age Sex & Condition’: The Representation of Women in the Constitution,’’ JER  (): –; Jeanne R. Boydston, ‘‘The Woman Who Wasn’t There: Women’s Market Labor and




Notes to Pages –

the Transition to Capitalism in the United States,’’ JER  (): –; Susan Branson, ‘‘Women and the Family Economy in the Early Republic: The Case of Elizabeth Meredith,’’ JER  (), –; Simon Newman, Parades and Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ); Cynthia Kierner, Beyond the Household: Women’s Place in the Early South, – (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ); Rosemarie Zagarri, ‘‘The Rights of Man and Woman in Post-Revolutionary America,’’ WMQ  (), –. . Robert Davidson, Oration, ; ‘‘A Black,’’ Sermon, ; Evans, Discourse, Delivered Near York, . . Evans, Discourse, Delivered Near York; Len Travers, ‘‘Hurrah for the Fourth: Patriotism, Politics, and Independence Day in Federalist Boston, –,’’ Essex Institute Historical Collections  (): ; Waldstreicher, Perpetual Fetes. . Columbian Herald, July , ; Jabez Peck, Columbia or Britannia: A Dramatic Piece (New London: T. Green, ); Vermont Gazette, August , ; Anthony Haswell, Moral Songs. William Gordon specifically sought the patronage of ‘‘gentlemen and ladies’’ for his proposed history of the Revolution; Proposals for Printing by Subscription . . . The History of the Rise, Progress and Conclusion of the American Revolution (Roxbury: n.p., ). . (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, August , ; June , , August , ; Maryland Gazette, December , , and March , . . A Poem, Spoken Extempore, by a Young Lady, On Hearing the Guns Firing and Bells Chiming on Account of the Great and Glorious Acquisition of Their Excellencies Gen. Washington and the C. de Grasse, by the Surrender of York-town (Boston: E. Russell, ). . South Carolina Weekly, July , . . (Annapolis) Maryland Gazette, November , . . Henry Knox to George Washington, February , ; Henry Knox to Nathanael Greene, February , , Henry Knox Papers, MHS. . Aedanus Burke, Considerations on the Society or Order of Cincinnati (Charleston, S.C.: A. Timothy, ), ; John C. Meleney, The Public Life of Aedanus Burke: Revolutionary Republican in Post-Revolutionary South Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina, ), ; Minor Myers, Jr., Liberty Without Anarchy: A History of the Society of Cincinnati (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ), ; Jensen, New Nation, –. . Burke, Considerations, . . Meleney, Burke, ; Richard Walsh, Charleston’s Sons of Liberty: A Study of the Artisans, – (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, ), . . Burke, Considerations, . Burke advised the officers to stop seeking artificial distinction and ‘‘sit down contented with the love and veneration of their fellow citizens,’’ . . Ibid., . . Ibid., , . . The pamphlet appeared in New York, New Haven, Hartford, Newport, and Philadelphia and in newspapers in Charleston, Worcester, Boston, Hartford, and Philadelphia; Meleney, Burke, ; Myers, Liberty, , ; Wallace Evan Davies,


Notes to Pages –



‘‘The Society of Cincinnati in New England, –,’’ WMQ  (): –; Edgar Earskine Hume, ‘‘Early Opposition to the Cincinnati,’’ Americana  (): –; John D. Kilbourne, ‘‘The Society of the Cincinnati of Maryland: Its First One Hundred Years, –,’’ Maryland Historical Magazine  (): . . Independent Chronicle, April , ; Davies, ‘‘Society of Cincinnati,’’ . . Independent Chronicle, March , ; Davies, ‘‘Society of Cincinnati,’’ . . Independent Chronicle, January , February , ; Myers, Liberty, . . ‘‘From the Pennsylvania Independent Gazetteer,’’ (Annapolis) Maryland Gazette, June , . . ‘‘Member of the Society of the Cincinnati,’’ A Reply to a Pamphlet, Entitled, Considerations on the Society or Order of Cincinnati, &c. (Annapolis, Md.: Frederick Green, ), . The ‘‘Member’’ also argued that no matter ‘‘how loudly’’ historians might sing the praise of military heroes, only the emblems of the Society could truly grant them ‘‘immortality,’’ . . The Society of Cincinnati immediately began trying to reinstate the hereditary nature of its membership in , and by the s most of the state chapters had approved the hereditary claim; Myers, Liberty, –. . David Humphreys quoted in Myers, Liberty, . . Burke did not necessarily agree with the democratic consequences of the rhetorical style he helped pioneer; Meleney, Burke, ; Andrew W. Robertson, The Language of Democracy: Political Rhetoric in the United States and Britain, – (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ), –.

Chapter 

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

. Leigh Eric Schmidt, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), ; Gazette of the United States, November , . . Gazette of the United States, November  and , . . Josiah Bartlett, An Oration, Delivered at the Meeting-House in Charlestown, Massachusetts, June , A.D.  (Boston: Benjamin Edes, ), . . James Roger Sharp, Politics in the Early American Republic: The New Nation in Crisis (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, ); Richard Buel, Jr., Securing the Revolution: Ideology in American Politics, – (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ); John Zvesper, Political Philosophy and Rhetoric: A Study of the Origins of American Party Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, ); William N. Chambers, ed., The First Party System: Federalists and Republicans (New York: John Wiley & Sons, ); Alfred F. Young, The Democratic Republicans of New York: The Origins, – (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ). . Samuel Thacher, An Oration, Pronounced July , , at the Request of the Inhabitants of the Town of Concord, In Commemoration of the Twentieth Anniversary of American Independence (Boston: Samuel Hall, ), . . Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ); Stanley Elkins




Notes to Pages –

and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism (New York: Oxford University Press, ); Sharp, Politics, –; Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, ‘‘The French Revolution in America,’’ in Age of Federalism, –; Lawrence S. Kaplan, Jefferson and France: An Essay on Politics and Political Ideas (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, ); David Brion Davis, ‘‘America, Fame, and the Anxieties of Influence,’’ in Revolution: Reflections on American Equality and Foreign Liberations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ), –; Charles Downer Hazen, Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, ). . Oliver Hart, America’s Remembrancer, With Respect to Her Blessedness and Duty, A Sermon, Delivered in Hopewell, New Jersey, On Thanksgiving Day, November ,  (Philadelphia: T. Dobson, ), . . Marshall Fishwick, The Hero, American Style (New York: David McKay, ), , . . National Gazette, March , , quoted in Philip M. Marsh, The Works of Philip Freneau: A Critical Study (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, ), ; Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, –. . Richard Norton Smith, Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ); Paul K. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). . Simon Newman, ‘‘Principles or Men? George Washington and the Political Culture of National Leadership, –,’’ JER  (): –; Simon Newman, Parades and Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ), –; Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol (New York: Free Press, ), – ; (Boston) Columbian Centinel, April , ; (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, January , . . Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, –. . Gazette of the United States & Philadelphia Advertiser, March , ; March , . . Original italics. See Newman, Parades and Politics, . . Len Travers, Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Relics of Nationalism in the Early Republic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, ). . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, July , . . Samuel Thacher, Oration, . . The Herald: A Gazette for the Country, July  and , . . See, for example, The Herald: A Gazette for the Country, July , , July , , July , , July , , July , ; Gazette of the United States July , , July , , July , ; (Bennington) Vermont Gazette July , , July , , July , ; (Boston) Columbian Centinel July , , July , , July , ; Boston Gazette and Weekly Republican Journal July , , July , , September , . . The Herald: A Gazette for the Country, July , . . Benjamin T. Spencer, ‘‘The Search for National Modes and Principles (– ),’’ in The Quest for Nationality: An American Literary Campaign (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, ), –; Sarah M. Corse, Nationalism and Literature: The Politics of Culture in Canada and the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), –.


Notes to Pages –



. U. Von Wilamowitz-Mollendorf, ‘‘Plutarch as Biographer,’’ in Essays on Plutarch’s Lives, ed. Barbara Scardigli (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), ; Alan Wardman, Plutarch’s Lives (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), –; Martha Walling Howard, The Influence of Plutarch in the Major European Literatures of the Eighteenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), –, –; Anna Makolkin, Name, Hero, Icon: Semiotics of Nationalism Through Heroic Biography (New York: Mouton de Gruyter, ), ; Douglass Adair, Fame and the Founding Fathers, ed. Trevor Colbourn (New York: W. W. Norton for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, ), ; Machubin T. Owens, Jr., ‘‘A Further Note on Certain of Hamilton’s Pseudonyms: The ‘Love of Fame’ and the Uses of Plutarch,’’ JER  (): –. . Mason Locke Weems to Matthew Carey, January , , quoted in Marcus Cunliffe, ‘‘The Man,’’ introduction to The Life of George Washington (Reprint, Cambridge: Belknap Press, ), xiv. . Ann Fabian, The Unvarnished Truth: Personal Narratives in NineteenthCentury America (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), ; Mason Locke Weems, The Life of George Washington (Reprint, Cambridge: Belknap Press, ), ; Weems’s biography went through at least three editions in . . Jedidah Morse, A True and Authentic History of His Excellency George Washington . . . Also, of the Brave Generals Montgomery and Greene, and the Celebrated Marquis de La Fayette (Philadelphia: Peter Stewart, ), , . David Humphreys also reprinted his Essay on the Life of the Late and Honorable Major General Israel Putnam (Catskill, N.Y.: T. and M. Crosswell, ). . Noah Webster, A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv [sic] Writings On Moral, Historical, Political and Literary Subjects (Boston: I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews, ). . Ibid., vii. . Ibid., , –. . Charles Lee and his supporters actively tried to combat this view of him. See Memoirs of the Life of the Late Charles Lee, esq. Second in Command in the Service of the United States of America During the Revolution: to Which are Added His Political and Military Essays (London: J. S. Jordan, ). . Webster, Collection of Essays, , , , ; Robert K. Peters, ‘‘Introduction,’’ A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings (Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, ); Richard M. Rollins, The Long Journey of Noah Webster (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ). . Thomas Thornton, ‘‘Ode on General Washington’s Birth-Day’’ in A True and Authentic History of His Excellency George Washington, ed. Jedidiah Morse (Philadelphia: Peter Stewart, ), . The same ode appears under the headline ‘‘From the Virginia Independent Chronicle’’ in the Gazette of the United States, February , . Similar Roman imagery appears in an ‘‘Ode, to the Memory of Dr. Joseph Warren,’’ Gazette of the United States, July , . . ‘‘An Ode: for the Birth Day of the President of the United States,’’ Gazette of the United States, February , . . Benjamin Young Prime, Columbia’s Glory, or British Pride Humbled (New York: Thomas Greenleaf, ), ; ‘‘To General Washington,’’ (Charleston) Columbian Herald, January , ; Ann Eliza Schuyler Bleecker, ‘‘Thaumantia and Fame,’’ in




Notes to Pages –

The Posthumous Works of Ann Eliza Bleecker in Prose and Verse . . . (New York: T. and J. Swords, ), . . Cathy Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (New York: Oxford University Press, ), –. . See James M. Mayo, War Memorials as Political Landscape: The American Experience and Beyond (New York: Praeger, ), –; Alan Borg, War Memorials: From Antiquity to the Present (London: Leo Cooper, ). . On the ‘‘silencing’’ tendency of monuments, see Philippe Joutard, ‘‘The Museum of the Desert: The Protestant Minority,’’ in Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, ed. Pierre Nora, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Press, ), :. . ‘‘On the National Monument, Designed to Perpetuate American Liberty . . . ,’’ Gazette of the United States, April , . . Hal T. Shelton, General Richard Montgomery and the American Revolution (New York: New York University Press, ), ; A. L. Todd, Richard Montgomery: Rebel of  (New York: David McKay, ), ; G. Kurt Piehler, Remembering War the American Way (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, ), . . Donald Martin Reynolds, Monuments and Masterpieces: Histories and Views of Public Sculpture in New York City (New York: Macmillan, ), . . Borg, War Memorials, –, –. . Morse, True and Authentic History, . . Ann Eliza Schuyler Bleecker, ‘‘Elegy on General Montgomery,’’ in Posthumous Works, . . Janet Livingston Montgomery letter, January , , Thomas Addis Emmet Collection, Manuscript Divison, NYPL. . Geneviève Fabre, ‘‘Pinkster Festival, –: An African-American Celebration,’’ in Feasts and Celebrations in North American Ethnic Communities, ed. Ramón Gutiérrez and Geneviève Fabre (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, ), . . Makolkin, Name, Hero, Icon, ; J. M. C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ); Borg, War Memorials, –. . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , , original italics. . Hartford Putnam Phalanx, Excursion . . . to the Grave of Gen. Israel Putnam, at Brooklyn, Connecticut June th and th,  . . . (Hartford, Conn.: John L. Boswell, ); A History of the Equestrian Statue of Israel Putnam at Brooklyn, Connecticut (Hartford, Conn.: n.p., ), . . George Washington Warren, The History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association During the First Century of the United States of America (Boston: James R. Osgood, ), ; Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brothers: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the Social Order, – (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Kenneth E. Foote, Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy (Austin: University of Texas Press, ), . . Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, ; Dorothy Ann Lipson, Freemasonry in Federalist Connecticut, – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), .


Notes to Pages –



. John Soley, Jr., [‘‘Oration’’], in Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Assocation, –. . Inscription quoted in Richard Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston (New York: Da Capo Press, ), . . Andrew W. Robertson, ‘‘Demi-Aristocratical Democracy: The Persistence of Anglo-American Culture, –,’’ The Language of Democracy: Political Rhetoric in the United States and Britain, – (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ), . . Joyce Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the s (New York: New York University Press, ), –. . Freeman’s Journal, September , , quoted in Appleby, Capitalism, . . Albert Gallatin, An Examination of the Conduct of the Executive . . . , quoted in Banning, Jeffersonian Persuasion, . . Woods’s Newark Gazette, March , , quoted in Philip S. Foner, The Democratic-Republican Societies, – (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, ), v. . James Harrington, The Oceana and Other Works of James Harrington, Esq., ed. John Toland (London: A. Millar, ), ; J. G. A. Pocock, ‘‘Oceana: Its Argument and Character,’’ in The Political Works of James Harrington, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), –. . Original italics. Morton, Beacon Hill, , ; Emily Pendleton and Milton Ellis, Philenia: The Life and Works of Sarah Wentworth Morton, – (Orono: University of Maine Press, ); William K. Bottorff, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Sarah Wentworth Morton, My Mind and Thoughts, in Sketches, Fragments, and Essays (Reprint, Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, ). . Lemuel Haynes, The Nature and Importance of True Republicanism (), reprinted in Black Preacher to White America: The Collected Writings of Lemuel Haynes, –, ed. Richard Newman (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishing, ), . . Catherine Allgor, Parlor Politics (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ). . Judith Sargent Murray, ‘‘Eulogy on the Present Times,’’ The Gleaner: A Miscellaneous Production (Boston: I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews, ), ed. Nina Baym (Reprint, Schenectady, N.Y.: Union College Press, ), . Murray had a negative, rather than a glorious, view of ancient warfare: ‘‘How dreadful are the preparations for war, which the page of antiquity recounts! their terrific habiliments; their deathful chariots; their elephants, with all the shocking apparatus! scarcely are they exceeded by the arrangement of an American savage, and hardly are the tortures which he mediates, more fearfully tremendous. What scenes of blood and devastation doth the annals of ancient history exhibit! how frequently are the feelings of humanity pierced to the very soul! what fratricide! what patricide!’’ . . Judith Sargent Murray, ‘‘Sketch of the Present Situation of America, ,’’ Gleaner, –. I have benefited from the work of Sheila Skemp on Judith Sargent Murray’s view of war, ‘‘Judith Sargent Murray and the American Revolution: Virtue, War and the Development of Feminist Ideology,’’ paper delivered at the Tenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, June , ; Sheila Skemp, Judith Sargent Murray (New York: Bedford, ).




Notes to Pages –

. Rosemarie Zagarri, ‘‘Gender and the First Party System,’’ in Federalists Reconsidered, ed. Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara Oberg (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ), . . Cynthia, ‘‘On the Evils of War,’’ (Lexington) Kentucky Gazette, May , . . Allison Giffen, ‘‘ ‘Till Grief Melodious Grow’: The Poems and Letters of Ann Eliza Bleecker,’’ EAL  (): . . Margaretta V. Faugares, ed., The Posthumous Works of Ann Eliza Bleecker in Prose and Verse . . . (New York: T. and J. Swords, ), vii. . Bleecker, ‘‘A Pastoral Dialogue,’’ Posthumous Works, . . Giffen, ‘‘Till Grief,’’ . . (Charleston) City Gazette, March , . . Gazette of the United States, February , . . Anthony Haswell, Haswell’s Vermont and New York Almanack for the Year of Our Lord  (Bennington, Vt.: Anthony Haswell, ). . Fabian, Unvarnished Truth. . Davidson, Revolution and the Word, ; Fred Anderson, A People’s Army; Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years’ War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ). . William Heath, Memoirs of Major-General Heath: Containing Anecdotes, Details of Skirmishes, Battles and Other Military Events During the American War (Boston: I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews, ); Levi Redfield, A Succinct Account of Some Memorable Events and Occurrences in the Life of Levi Redfield, Late of Connecticut, Now Residing in Brattleborough, Vermont (Brattleborough, Vt.: B. Smead, ). . Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Charles Patrick Neimeyer, America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army (New York: New York University Press, ). For a similar process during the Seven Years’ War, during which soldiers and militiamen extended their sense of agency by recording their experiences in diaries, see Anderson, A People’s Army. . Ebenezer Fletcher, A Narrative of the Captivity and Sufferings of Mr. Ebenezer Fletcher of New-Ipswich, Who Was Wounded at Hubbardston, in the Year  and Taken Prisoner by the British . . . . Written by Himself (Amherst, N. H.: Samuel Preston, ), . . See also William Scudder, The Journal of William Scudder, an Officer in the Late New York Line: Who Was Taken Captive by the Indians at Fort Stanwix (New York: William Scudder, ); Samuel Younglove, Battle of Oriskany Record of the Narrative of Dr. Moses Younglove, Giving an Account of the Battle of Oriskany and of His Experience After Being Taken Prisoner (n.p., ). . Heath, Memoirs, vi. . Redfield, Succinct Account, , –. . Herman Mann, The Female Review: or, Memoirs of an American Young Lady (Dedham, Mass.: Nathaniel and Benjamin Heaton, ). See also notices of publication in Mann’s newspaper, The (Dedham) Minerva, May , ; June , ; September , . I thank Alfred Young for sharing his considerable insights into Deborah Sampson with me.


Notes to Pages –



. Original italics. (Dedham) Minerva, May , ; Mann, Female Review, xiv. . Original italics. (Dedham) Minerva, May , ; June , . . Mann, Female Review, , Preface. In the Minerva, Mann wrote that ‘‘one cannot desire to see the like paradigm again adopted by the fair sex’’; May , ; June , ; Mann, Female Review, viii. . Mann, Female Review, . . Ibid., xii. . Ibid., title page, x, . . Ibid., . . Ibid., , . . Ibid., vi. Mann believed that the war was ‘‘well known to have affected the minds, even of both sexes, throughout the Colonies, with sensations and emotions different from whatever they had before experienced’’; . . Ibid., . . Ibid., , . The narrative also hints that the pay of a Continental soldier was a welcome addition to the meager income Sampson earned as a farm worker; , . . Charles Smith, The American War, From  to  (New York: C. Smith, ); Jeremy Belknap, The Foresters (Boston: I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews, ). For the description of Belknap’s play as a ‘‘popular’’ entertainment, see the publication notice in the Gazette of the United States, July , . . David R. Brigham, Public Culture in the Early Republic: Peale’s Museum and Its Audience (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, ), –. . Gazette of the United States, April , , and , December , , and , ; ‘‘Receipt,’’ John Trumbull to Anthony Joseph, Jr., December , , John Trumbull Manuscripts, CL. . Gazette of the United States, January , . . Gazette of the United States, April , . . Borg, War Memorials, –; Ann Uhry Abrams, The Valiant Hero: Benjamin West and Grand-Style History Painting (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, ), ; Irma B. Jaffe, John Trumbull, Patriot-Artist of the American Revolution (Boston: New York Graphic Society, ); Helen A. Cooper, ed., John Trumbull: The Hand and Spirit of a Painter (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, ); Theodore Sizer, The Works of Colonel John Trumbull: Artist of the American Revolution rev. ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, ). . John Trumbull to John Eliot, March , , Andrews-Eliot Papers, MHS. . ‘‘The Theatre,’’ Columbian Centinel, June , ; S. E. Wilmer, ‘‘Partisan Theatre in the Early Years of the United States,’’ Theatre Survey  (). It is important to note that theater, while a much more popular and open entertainment than had ever been available before, was not totally open to all social classes. Even though many of the ‘‘lower sort’’ attended the theater, the poorest classes were often excluded. Servants, for example, were prohibited from attending plays with their employers; Brigham, Public Culture, –. . David R. Palmer, : America, Its Army, and the Birth of the Nation (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, ).




Notes to Pages –

. Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, –. . Karl-Friedrich Walling, Republican Empire: Alexander Hamilton on War and Free Government (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, ), , . . William Dunlap, André: A Tragedy, in Five Acts: As Performed by the Old American Company, New-York, March ,  (New York: T. & J. Swords, ); William Dunlap, The Diary of William Dunlap: The Memoirs of a Dramatist, Theatrical Manager, Painter, Critic, Novelist, and Historian (New York: Benjamin Blom, ), :–. . Robert McConnell Hatch, Major John André: A Gallant in Spy’s Clothing (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ); Anna Seward, Monody on the Unfortunate Major Andre, nd ed. (New York: T. Allen, ). . Dunlap, André, iii. . Dunlap, André, viii; Dunlap, Diary, . . On cockades, see Newman, Parades and Politics, –. The only other example of black and white cockades that I have found were worn as a sign of union by New Yorkers during the British evacuation of the city in ; see Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to  (New York: Oxford University Press, ), . . On the scholarly debate over André, see Wilmer, ‘‘Partisan Theatre,’’ –. . Dunlap, André, iii. . Jared Brown, The Theatre in America During the Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), . . Boston Gazette, April , . See ‘‘Boston [Federal Street] Theatre Company,’’ in American Theatre Companies, –, ed. Weldon B. Durham (New York: Greenwood Press, ), . . Independence Day provided another occasion for theaters to present patriotic pageants. For example, the New Theatre in Philadelphia erected ‘‘a beautiful transparency, ,’’ on July , ; Gazette of the United States, July , . . (Charleston) City and Daily Advertiser, February , , and , . . Gazette of the United States, March , . . Larry D. Clark, ‘‘The Haymarket Theatre Company,’’ in American Theatre Companies, . The play was also performed and printed in New York; John Burk, Bunker-Hill; or The Death of General Warren: an Historic Tragedy, in Five Acts (New York: T. Greenleaf, ). . Burk, Bunker-Hill, , , . . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, March , ; Wilmer, ‘‘Partisan Theatre,’’ –. . Charles Hudson, History of the Town of Lexington, vol.  (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ), –. . Ibid., . The monument still stands on the battle green in Lexington, Massachusetts, and the inscription can be clearly read. . Gary Wills, Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, ). . The Early American Imprints Collection contains printed versions of eulogies to Washington by  separate individuals; Clifford K. Shipton, The American


Notes to Pages –



Bibliography of Charles Evans (Reprint, Worcester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, ), :–; Margaret Bingham Stillwell collected a bibliography of  Washington eulogies (both printed and manuscript) for the New York Public Library, Washington Eulogies: A Checklist of Eulogies and Funeral Orations on the Death of George Washington (New York: New York Public Library, ); Gary Laderman, The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, – (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, ). . Newport Mercury, December , ; Richard D. Brown, Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, – (New York: Oxford University Press, ), –, –. . (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, January , . . Schwartz, George Washington, –; Newman, ‘‘Principles,’’ –. . Weems, Life of Washington, , original italics. . Sharp, Politics, ; John Spargo, Anthony Haswell: Printer, Patriot, Ballader (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle, ), –; Judah Adelson, ‘‘Vermont Newspapers and the French Revolution,’’ Vermont History  (): –. . Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ); Lynne A. Hunt; The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). . (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, August , . A large pageant held in Bennington to celebrate the French Republic in July  incorporated French Revolutionary songs written by Haswell to the tunes of popular Revolutionary War ballads; (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, July , . On reactions to the French Revolution in Bennington, see Robert Shalhope, Bennington and the Green Mountain Boys: The Emergence of Liberal Democracy in Vermont, – (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, ), –. . (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, August , . The  commemoration included a full-scale ceremonial wolf hunt; (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, August , . . (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, September , ; (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, August , . See Ozouf, Festivals, –. In the French context, liberty poles could incite revolutionary violence, while Americans had traditionally adopted the peasant maypole tradition as sign of unity and patriotism. . (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, August , . . Anthony Haswell, An Oration, Delivered at Bennington, Vermont, August , : In Commemoration of the Battle of Bennington (Bennington, Vt.: Anthony Haswell, ), . A rival Bennington battle anniversary celebration was held by conservatives in  in obvious opposition to Haswell; see (Bennington) Ploughman, August , . . (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, January , . Copies of the handbill appear in the Vermont Gazette and at the end of Anthony Haswell’s An Oration, Delivered by Request by Temple Lodge . . . in Honor of the Memory of General George Washington (Bennington, Vt.: Anthony Haswell, ), . . Haswell, Oration, . The arm bands were generally recommended by Congress as a sign of respect and mourning; Newport Mercury, December , . . Haswell, Oration, ; (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, January , .




Notes to Pages –

. (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, January , . Anthony Haswell directly addressed the women in the audience in his Oration, –; he printed the songs as poetry at the end of his Oration and in the January  Vermont Gazette. . Haswell, ‘‘Song in Honor of General George Washington’’ and ‘‘Tribute of Respect to Washington’’ in (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, January , ; Morse Peckham, ‘‘The Romantic Hero,’’ in Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Heroism, ed. Sara M. Putzell and David C. Leonard (Potomac, Md.: Studia Humanitatis, ), –. . Haswell, Oration, . The Feast of St. John the Evangelist was the traditional December celebration of freemasons throughout the United States but some also celebrated St. John the Baptist in December. See Albert G. Mackey, A Lexicon of Freemasonry (Philadelphia: Moss, Brother & Co., ), , , –; Edith J. Steblecki, Paul Revere and Freemasonry (n.p.: Richter Associates for the Paul Revere Memorial Association, ), ; Lipson, Freemasonry, –. . Haswell, Oration, , –. . Spargo, Anthony Haswell, . . Haswell, Oration, . . Ibid., . . (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, January , .

Chapter 

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

. Kentucky Gazette, July , . . Ibid. . Ibid., the Gazette reported that Pope was again burned in effigy on July . . David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (Trenton, N.J.: James J. Wilson, ), :; Lester H. Cohen, The Revolutionary Histories: Contemporary Histories of the American Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ), . . Ramsay, History of the American Revolution, :. . William Emerson, An Oration Pronounced July , , At the Request of the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston (Boston: Manning & Loring, ), . . James M. Banner, To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, – (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ); Robert Allen Rutland, The Presidency of James Madison (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, ); Roger H. Brown, The Republic in Peril:  (New York: Columbia University Press, ). . William Moultrie, Memoirs of the American Revolution, So Far As It Related to the States of North and South Carolina and Georgia, (New York: D. Longworth, ), :vii. . Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, – (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ); Allan Kulikoff, The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ), ; Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, – (New York: Oxford University Press, ), .


Notes to Pages –



. The French also seized  vessels between  and ; Spencer C. Tucker and Frank T. Reuter, Injured Honor: The Chesapeake-Leopard Affair, June ,  (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, ), . . Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Reprint, New York: W. W. Norton, ), –; Reginald Horsman, The Causes of the War of  (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ), . . Companion to the Historical Paintings of the Ever Memorable Battle of Bunker’s Hill by the Americans and Regular British Forces . . . (Boston: B. True, ), . . Joseph Barker, An Address to a Respectable Number of Citizens . . . Convened in Halifax, July th,  (Boston: Manning & Loring, ), ; Len Travers, ‘‘Hurrah for the Fourth: Patriotism, Politics, and Independence Day in Federalist Boston,’’ Essex Institute Historical Collections  (), –; Len Travers, Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, ), –. . Washington Society, records –, vol. , MHS. . Washington Society, Historical View of the Public Celebrations of the Washington Society, and Those of the Young Republicans, from  to  (Boston: True and Greene, ), , , , . . Benjamin Gleason, An Oration, Pronounced, at the Request of the Charlestown Light Infantry . . . on the Anniversary of American Independence, July ,  (Boston: True & Parks, ), . . The Washington Society received no answer; Washington Society, Historical View, . . Jonathan Russell, An Oration, Pronounced in the Baptist Meeting-House, in Providence, on the Anniversary of American Independence, July th, , rd ed. (Worcester, Mass.: Sewall Goodridge, ), ; Deborah Sampson Gannett, Adrss [sic] Delivered With Applause at the Federal-Street Theatre, Boston . . . And After, At Other Principle Towns . . . (Dedham, Mass.: H. Mann, ), ; Stephen Farley, An Oration, Pronounced at Hanover, N.H. July ,  (Hanover, N.H.: Moses David, ), –. . Richard M. Johnson, ‘‘Oration, On the Fourth of July,  . . .’’ Kentucky Gazette, July [], . . Paul Baepler, White Slaves, African Masters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), ; James Fulton Zimmerman, Impressment of American Seamen (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, ); Donald R. Hickey, The War of : A Forgotten Conflict (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ), , , . . Nathaniel Fanning, Narrative of the Adventures of an American Navy Officer: Who Served During Part of the American Revolution Under the Command of John Paul Jones, Esq. (New York: Nathaniel Fanning, ), . . John R. Sellars, ‘‘Introduction,’’ John Paul Jones’ Memoir of the American Revolution, Presented to King Louis XVI of France, trans. and ed. Gerrard W. Gewalt (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, ), xvi–xvii. . Peter K. Wagner, ed., An Account of the Celebrated Commodore Paul Jones: Translated From a Manuscript, Written by Himself (Philadelphia: Peter K. Wagner, ), , . On the reprint, see Sellers, ‘‘Introduction,’’ xvii. . For a more successful effort at heroic self-promotion, see Glenn LaFantasie,




Notes to Pages –

‘‘Joshua Chamberlain and the American Dream,’’ in The Gettysburg Nobody Knows, ed. Gabor S. Boritt (New York: Oxford University Press, ), –. . Joshua Davis, A Narrative of Joshua Davis, an American Citizen, Who Was Pressed and Served on Board Six Ships of the British Navy (Baltimore: B. Edes, ), , –, . . Russell, Oration, ; The Historical Catalogue of Brown University, – (Providence, R.I.: Brown University, ), . . Philip Morin Freneau, ‘‘The Prison Ship,’’ in An Historical Sketch to the End of the Revolutionary War of the Life of Silas Talbot (New York: G. & R. White, ), ; Philip M. Marsh, The Works of Philip Freneau: A Critical Study (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, ), –. Mary Weatherspoon Bowden questions Freneau’s accuracy in ‘‘In Search of Freneau’s Prison Ships,’’ EAL  (): –. . Milton Lomask, Aaron Burr: The Years from Princeton to Vice President, –  (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, ), –; Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to  (New York: Oxford University Press, ), –; Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, ). A different take on the Tammany Society’s activities can be found in Robert E. Cray, Jr., ‘‘Commemorating the Prison Ship Dead: Revolutionary Memory and the Politics of Sepulture in the Early Republic, –,’’ WMQ  (): –. . See Robert John Denn, ‘‘Prison Narratives of the American Revolution’’ (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, ), . . Larry G. Bowman, Captive Americans: Prisoners During the American Revolution (Athens: Ohio University Press, ), –; Charles Jenrich, ‘‘The Old ‘Jersey’ Prison Ship,’’ Proceedings of the United States Naval Institution  (): –. . Russell, Oration, ; Denn, ‘‘Prison Narratives,’’ –. . December  and , , Tammany Society Minute Book of March ,  to February , , Tammany Society or Columbian Order (New York, N.Y.) Records, Manuscripts and Archives Divison, NYPL, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations; Tammany Society, An Account of the Interment of the Remains of , American Seamen, Soldiers and Citizens, Who Fell Victims to the Cruelties of the British . . . (New York: M. D. Frank, White, ), ; Nicholas Varga, ‘‘America’s Patron Saint: Tammany,’’ Journal of American Culture  (): –; E. Vale Blake, History of the Tammany Society from its Organization to the Present Time (New York: Souvenir Publishing, []). . Tammany Society, Account of the Interment, , . . November , , Tammany Society Minute Book, NYPL. . Freneau, ‘‘Prison Ship,’’ . In a lengthy footnote about efforts to deal with the remains, Freneau reports that ‘‘a great quantities of these bones had been collected and interred by a gentleman in the neighborhood’’; Tammany Society, Account of the Interment, , . . Tammany Society, Account of the Interment, . . Ibid., . . February  and March , , Tammany Society Minute Book, NYPL. . Tammany Society, Account of the Interment, , , . See the long report of the Wallabout committee, February , , Tammany Society Minute Book, NYPL.


Notes to Pages –



. Tammany Society, Account of the Interment, ; January  and February , , Tammany Society Minute Book, NYPL. . Tammany Society, ‘‘Circular Letter,’’ February , , attached to Robert Townsend, Jr., to Thomas Jefferson, March , , Photostats, MHS. . Tammany Society, Account of the Interment, –. . Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York and the Rise of the American Working Class, – (New York: Oxford University Press, ), , , . . Evening Post, quoted in Jerome Mushkat, Tammany: The Evolution of a Political Machine, – (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, ), ; Tammany Society, Account of the Interment, , –, . It was remarkable that Clinton would help the Tammany Society because it became one of his most strenuous political enemies after he turned to Federalists for support; see Crag R. Hanyan, ‘‘DeWitt Clinton and Partisanship: The Development of Clintonianism from  to ,’’ New York Historical Society Quarterly  (): –. . Denn, ‘‘Prison Narratives,’’ . . An Account of Procession . . . April, th,  On Laying the Corner Stone of the Vault, which is to Contain the Relics of that Portion of  , ,   Who Perished . . . on board the Prison Ships of the British . . . (New York: John Low, ), , , , . . Fanning, Narrative, . . Account of Procession, . . Tammany Society, Account of the Interment, ; Tammany Society, Arrangement for the Grand and Solemn Funeral Procession . . . at the Interment of the Remains of Eleven Thousand Five Hundred American Seamen, Soldiers, and Citizens Who Suffered Martyrdom . . . (New York: n.p., ). . Tammany Society, Account of the Interment, , , –, , . . Benjamin DeWitt’s oration, quoted in ibid., . . Tammany Society, Arrangement for the Grand; Tammany Society, Account of the Interment, , . On De Witt, see Nathan Miller, The Enterprise of a Free People: Aspects of Economic Development in New York State During the Canal Period, – (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ), , . . Tammany Society, Account of the Interment, ; August , , Sachems in Grand Council, Tammany Society Minute Book, NYPL. . This numerical estimate is my own, combining information in Charles Evans, American Bibliography,  vols. (New York: P. Smith, –); Todd J. White and Charles H. Lesser, eds. Fighters for Independence: A Guide to Sources of Biographical Information on Soldiers and Sailors of the American Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ); and other bibliographies. . John Gano, Biographical Memoirs of the Late Rev. John Gano . . . Written Principally by Himself (New York: Southwick and Hardcastle, ), iii. . Ann Fabian, The Unvarnished Truth: Personal Narratives in NineteenthCentury America (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), . . Anthony Haswell, ed., Memoirs and Adventures of Captain Matthew Phelps; Formerly of Harwington in Connecticut (Bennington, Vt.: Anthony Haswell, ), iv. . George Morison, An Interesting Journal of Occurrences During the Expedition to Quebec (Hagerstown, Md.: James Magee, ), iv, vi. Morison also wanted to




Notes to Pages –

make some money while educating the public: ‘‘Pamphlets are a species of publication, which, being cheap, are useful, and for the most part convey much instruction; and the money laid out for them is neither missed nor lost’’; vi. . John Joseph Henry, An Accurate and Interesting Account of the Hardships and Sufferings of That Band of Heroes, Who Traversed the Wilderness in the Campaign against Quebec in  (Lancaster, Pa.: William Greer, ), . . Gannett, Address, , . . Moultrie, Memoirs, :. . Morison, Interesting Journal, iv. . Fanning, Narrative, . . Silas Talbot, An Historical Sketch to the End of the Revolutionary War of the Life of Silas Talbot, Esq. Lately Commander of the United States Frigate, Constitution, and of an American Squadron in the West-Indies (New York: G. & R. Waite, ), . . Anthony F. C. Wallace, ‘‘The Obtaining Lands’ Thomas Jefferson and the Native Americans,’’ in Thomas Jefferson and the Changing West, ed. James P. Ronda (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, ), . On growing tensions between the French and English in Canada, as well as tensions with Americans, see J. Mackay Hitsman, The Incredible War of : A Military History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ), –. . Henry, Accurate and Interesting Account, . . Ibid., . . Abner Stocking, Interesting Journal of Abner Stocking of Chatham, Connecticut: Detailing the Distressing Events of the Expedition Against Quebec (Catskill, N.Y.: Eagle Office, ), . Michael Simpson wrote that the expedition to Quebec was ‘‘perhaps, the most arduous during the revolutionary war’’; Henry, Accurate and Interesting Account, . . Henry remarked: ‘‘Many of our sergeants, and even of our privates, were, with good educations, substantial freeholders in our own country’’; Accurate and Interesting Account, . . Ramsay, History, :. . William Allen, An American Biographical and Historical Dictionary (Cambridge, Mass.: Hilliard & Metcalf, ), . Abner Stocking noted that Montgomery was able to persuade the men to accept strict military discipline by sharing their hardships; Interesting Journal of Abner Stocking, . . Morison, Interesting Journal of Occurrences, –. . Henry, Accurate and Interesting Account, , . . Ibid., . . Morison, Interesting Journal of Occurrences, . . See Joanne B. Freeman, ‘‘Dueling as Politics: Reinterpreting the BurrHamilton Duel,’’ WMQ  (): –. . John Leland, An Oration, Delivered at Bennington, August the Sixteenth, ; Being the st Anniversary of Bennington Battle (Bennington, Vt.: Anthony Haswell, ), , , . . Ibid., –. For other comments on the virtues of homespun, see Anthony Haswell, The Matter Recited, and the Cause Advocated, in a Series of Airs, Composed for the Performance of the Band of Music . . . in Celebrating the Thirty Second Anni-


Notes to Pages –



versary of American Independence (Bennington, Vt.: Haswell & Smead, ), , ; Kentucky Gazette, July , ; Charleston Courier, June , ; Anthony Haswell, Songs, Written for the Celebration of the th of August,  . . . (Bennington, Vt.: Anthony Haswell, ), ; Alexander Coffin, Jr., The Battle of Bunker Hill, or, The Death of Warren (New York: J. Seymour, ), . . Leland, Oration, , . . Daniel Marsh, A Sermon, Delivered on the th of August, , in Commemoration of Bennington Battle (Bennington, Vt.: Anthony Haswell, ), . . Benjamin A. Markley, An Oration, on the Victory Obtained at Sullivan’s Island . . . Delivered Twenty-Eighth of June, , Before the Palmetto Society (Charleston, S.C.: Gabriel Manigault Bounetheau, ), ; J. C. A. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), . . Charleston Courier, June  and , ; Markley, Oration, . . Markley, Oration, –, . . Brown, Republic in Peril, –; Charleston Courier, June , . . Joseph Johnson, An Oration, Delivered Before the Palmetto Society, on the th June  (Charleston, S.C.: Gabriel Manigault Bounetheau, ), , , , . . Jesse Bledsoe, Kentucky Gazette, July , . . Original italics. Felix Grundy to Andrew Jackson, quoted in Brown, Republic in Peril, . . ‘‘Monody, On the Death of George Clinton,’’ The Rural Visitor & Saratoga Advertiser, May , . . (New York) National Advocate, December , . For other references to the War of  as a ‘‘second War of Independence,’’ see Kentucky Gazette, July , ; Steven Watts, The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America, – (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, ). . (New York) National Advocate, December , . . Original italics. Diary of William Dunlap: The Memoirs of a Dramatist, Theatrical Manager, Painter, Critic, Novelist, and Historian (New York: Benjamin Blom, ), :. The rest of the verse, which Dunlap had adapted several times during the war, was published separately as Yankee Chronology: or, Huzzah for the Constitution (New York: David Longworth, ). . David Ramsay, Life of George Washington, rd ed. (Baltimore: Joseph Cushing, ), iii. . The crowds in the Baltimore riots branded their Federalist publisher enemies as ‘‘damned tories’’ before they broke open the jail and beat them; Hickey, War of , . . Haswell, ‘‘Air V,’’ Matter Recited. . Nathaniel Whitaker, An Antidote Against, and The Reward of, Toryism (Salem, Mass.: Pool & Palfray, ), . . (Albany) Geographical and Military Museum, March , . . S. Taggart, ‘‘From the Alexandria Gazette, June , ,’’ The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, th Cong., st sess. (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, ), . . Coffin, Battle of Bunker Hill, .




Notes to Pages –

. See William Gribben, The Churches Militant: The War of  and American Religion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, ); Sarah J. Purcell, ‘‘ ‘Spread This Martial Fire’: The New England Patriot Clergy and Civil Military Inspiration,’’ Journal of Church and State  (): –. . John Lathrop, The Present War Unexpected, Unnecessary, and Ruinous (Boston: J. W. Burditt, ), quoted in Gribben, Churches Militant, . . David Osgood, A Solemn Protest Against the Late Declaration of War (Cambridge, Mass.: Hilliard and Metcalf, ), . . Osgood, Solemn Protest, . See also John Lathrop, Peace and War, In Relation to the United States of America . . . (Boston: J. Belcher, ); Walter Harris, A Discourse Delivered at Dunbarton, New Hampshire (Concord, N.H.: George Hough, ). . Horsman, War of , –. . Jared Ingersoll, Historical Sketch, quoted in Hickey, War of , . . William Gaston, ‘‘Mr. Gaston’s Circular Letter,’’ Newport Mercury, April , . . James Wilkinson, Memoirs of My Own Times (Philadelphia: Abraham Small, ), :v, viii. . Ibid., . . Ibid., xi, , , . . Ibid., , , . . Noble Cunningham, Jr., The Presidency of James Monroe (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, ), –. . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, quoted in Cunningham, Presidency, . For the same passage, see ‘‘The Battle of Bunker’s Hill,’’ Analectic Magazine  (): . David Longworth staged a special performance of John Burk’s play about Bunker Hill in honor of Madison’s inauguration in March; John Burk, Bunker-Hill: Or, The Death of General Warren: An Historic Tragedy, in Five Acts (New York: D. Longworth, ). . The Independent Chronicle and Boston Patriot, quoted in Cunningham, Presidency, . Monroe wrote to Jefferson that he observed a ‘‘union between the parties’’ that had opposed one another in the War of ; quoted in John P. Resch, ‘‘Politics and Public Culture: The Revolutionary War Pension Act of ,’’ JER  (), . . In fact, the Analectic Magazine quoted from Wilkinson’s memoirs, –. . ‘‘The Tomb of Warren,’’ Analectic Magazine  (): ; John F. Sears, Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, ). . Richard Alton Erney, The Public Life of Henry Dearborn (New York: Arno Press, ), . In an  letter, James Wilkinson himself had asked Dearborn’s opinion of the accuracy of a map of the battle in Stedman’s history of the war, and this may have started Dearborn thinking; James Wilkinson to Henry Dearborn, June , , James Wilkinson Manuscripts, FHS. . (Boston) Independent Chronicle, February , , quoted in Erney, Public Life, ; Who is the Hero of Saratoga, General Dearborn or Brooks? Let the Official Report of the Commander in Chief of the Republican Army Answer!! (n.p., ). . Henry Dearborn, An Account of the Battle of Bunker Hill (Philadelphia: Harrison Hall, ), , , , , .


Notes to Pages –



. Ibid., . . Henry Dearborn and Daniel Putnam, An Account of the Battle of Bunker’s Hill: With a Letter to Maj. Gen. Dearborn Repelling His Unprovoked Attack on the Character of the Late Maj. Gen. Israel Putnam (Boston: Munroe & Francis, ). See also ‘‘Bunker Hill,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, May , . . Putnam, Letter, , , –. . ‘‘General Putnam Vindicated,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, May , ; Columbian Centinel, May , . . ‘‘General Putnam. Letter from President Adams,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , . . David Humphreys, An Essay on the Life of the Honourable Major General Israel Putnam . . . With an Appendix, Containing an Historical and Topographical Sketch of Bunker Hill Battle by S. Swett (Boston: Samuel Avery, ). See also Scott E. Casper, Constructing American Lives: Biography and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), . . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , . See also June  and ; June  was the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill. . Swett, Appendix, in Humphreys, An Essay on the Life of Putnam, . . Ibid., . . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, July , , , , , , and , ; Charles M. Wiltse attributes these anonymous editorials to Daniel Webster; The Papers of Daniel Webster, ed. Charles M. Wiltse, Correspondence, vol.  (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, ), . Daniel Putnam might also be the author. He refers to ‘‘mine Nos. published in the Centinel’’ in a July  letter; Daniel Putnam to John Lowell, July , , Putnam-Jackson-Lowell Family Papers, MHS. . Abel Parker, ‘‘To the Anonymous Reviewer of General Dearborn’s defence of his attack on General Putnam . . .’’ July , , Joel Parker Papers, MHS; Deposition of Josiah Hill, May , , Miscellaneous Bound Manuscripts, MHS. . Deposition of Abner Allen, May , , Miscellaneous Bound Manuscripts, MHS. . David Lee Child, An Enquiry into the Conduct of General Putnam in Relation to the Battle of Bunker, or Breed’s Hill: And Remarks Upon Mr. S. Swett’s Sketch of That Battle (Boston: T. G. Bangs, ); David Lee Child went with Dearborn on his diplomatic mission to Portugal a year later. He married Lydia Maria Child upon his return. On David Lee Child’s relationship with Dearborn, see Carolyn L. Karcher, The First Woman of the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, ), , . . Child, Enquiry, , –, , , . . Ibid., . . [Daniel Webster], review of An Account of the Battle of Bunker Hill by Henry Dearborn and A Letter to Major General Dearborn . . . , North American Review  (): , . . Ibid., , . See also Charles Caldwell, Memoirs of the Life and Campaigns of the Hon. Nathaniel Greene (Philadelphia: Robert Desilver, ). . [Webster], ‘‘Review,’’ –. . John Knapp, ‘‘National Poetry,’’ North American Review  (): , .




Notes to Pages –

. Knapp, National Poetry, ; John C. Dann, ed., The Revolution Remembered: Eyewitness Accounts of the War for Independence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ). . Resch, ‘‘Politics and Public Culture’’; John Resch, Suffering Soldiers: Revolutionary War Veterans, Moral Sentiment, and Political Culture in the Early Republic (Boston: Northeastern University Press, ).

Chapter  . (Baltimore) American and Commercial Daily Advertiser, October , ; ‘‘Lafayette’s Arrival at Yorktown,’’ Alexandria Gazette and Advertiser, October , ; ‘‘From the Richmond Enquirer,’’ Alexandria Gazette and Advertiser, October , ; Frederick Butler, Memoirs of the Marquis De La Fayette . . . Together with His Tour Through the United States (Wethersfield, Conn.: Deming & Francis, ), –; Norfolk and Portsmouth Herald, October , , in Lafayette, Guest of the Nation: A Contemporary Account of the ‘‘Triumphal Tour’’ of General Lafayette . . . as Reported by the Local Newspapers, ed. Edgar Ewing Brandon (Oxford, Ohio: Oxford Historical Press, ), :–. Brandon’s three-volume compilation of newspaper stories about Lafayette’s visit provides a good place to start any investigation of the topic. While his treatment is exhaustive, it is not complete; ‘‘Fete at York-Town,’’ Alexandria Gazette and Advertiser, October , . . Samuel Snowdon, ‘‘York Town,’’ Alexandria Gazette and Advertiser, October , . The tent had also been paraded through the streets of Alexandria upon Lafayette’s arrival there; see Richmond Enquirer, October , , in Brandon, Guest of the Nation, :; Alexandria Gazette and Advertiser, October , . . Snowden, ‘‘York Town.’’ . Fred Somkin, Unquiet Eagle: Memory and Desire in the Idea of American Freedom, – (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ), . . Snowdon, ‘‘York Town’’; ‘‘From the Richmond Enquirer,’’ Alexandria Gazette and Advertiser, October , ; ‘‘Fete at York-Town,’’ Alexandria Gazette and Advertiser, October , . . Daniel Webster, ‘‘An Address Delivered at the Laying of the Corner-stone of the Bunker Hill Monument at Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the th of June, ,’’ in The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown, ), :–. . Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ). . ‘‘Circular,’’ September , , in George Washington Warren, The History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association (Boston: James R. Osgood, ), . . Michael Kammen, A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ). . David Perry, Recollections of an Old Soldier: The Life of Captain David Perry (Windsor, Vt.: Republican & Yeoman Printing Office, ), , ; Edward Everett, An Oration Pronounced at Cambridge, Before the Society of Phi Beta Kappa, August ,  (Boston: Oliver Everett, ), –; ‘‘American Literature,’’ Charleston Courier,


Notes to Pages –



May , ; ‘‘Everett’s Oration,’’ Richmond Compiler, December , ; New York Commercial Advertiser, September , , in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :; William Crafts, Address Delivered Before the Palmetto Society of South-Carolina in Commemoration of the Defence of the Palmetto Fort on Sullivan’s Island . . . (Charleston, S.C.: A. E. Miller, ), . . Charles Doolittle, ‘‘Commemorative Festivals,’’ (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, June , . Doolittle did frequent business with the editors of the Vermont Gazette; Solomon Clark Account Book, –, Manuscript Collection, AAS. . Doolittle, ‘‘Commemorative Festivals.’’ . Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, – (New York: Oxford University Press, ), . . Nathan Miller, The Enterprise of a Free People: Aspects of Economic Development in New York State during the Canal Period, – (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ); Carl H. Scheele, A Short History of the Mail Service (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, ), –; Christopher Clark, ‘‘The Consequences of the Market Revolution in the American North,’’ in The Market Revolution in America: Social, Political, and Religious Expressions, –, ed. Melvyn Stokes and Stephen Conway (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ), –. . Wood, Radicalism, –; Richard Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ); Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). On the working class, see Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, – (New York: Oxford University Press, ); Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, – (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ). . Everett, Oration Pronounced at Cambridge, . On the other ‘‘jubilee’’ celebrating the Declaration of Independence the following year, see Andrew Burstein, America’s Jubilee: How in  a Generation Remembered Fifty Years of Independence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ). . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, August , , in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :; Evening Gazette, August , , in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :, –. . The most nuanced treatments of Lafayette’s visit include Somkin, ‘‘The Greatest Man in the World,’’ in Unquiet Eagle, –; Lloyd Kramer, Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Anne C. Loveland, Emblem of Liberty: The Image of Lafayette in the American Mind (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, ); Sylvia Neely, ‘‘The Politics of Liberty in the Old World and the New: Lafayette’s Return to America in ,’’ JER  (): –; Robert P. Hay, ‘‘The American Revolution Twice Recalled: Lafayette’s Visit and the Election of ,’’ Indiana Magazine of History  (): –. The best bibliography of Lafayette’s visit is Janina W. Hoskins, Lafayette in America: A Selective List of Reading Materials in English (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, ).




Notes to Pages –

. James Monroe to Lafayette, January , quoted in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :. . (New York) Commercial Advertiser, August , , quoted in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :. . Daniel Sargent to Paul Dudley Sargent, August , , Paul Dudley Sargent Papers, MHS. . Sarah Graham to Lucy Ridgely, May , , Charles W. Short Papers, FHS. . Samuel Lord, Jr., to Frederick Lord, July , , Frederick Lord Letterbook, –, Lord Family Papers, AAS. . (New York) Commercial Advertiser, August , , quoted in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :; Sylvia Neely, Lafayette and the Liberal Ideal, – : Politics and Conspiracy in an Age of Reaction (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, ). Gary Wills has written of Lafayette’s visit to America: ‘‘That return occasioned one of this country’s great outpourings of romantic feeling. Here was a warrior from the age of General Washington surviving into the age of Byron’’; Lincoln at Gettysburg (New York: Simon and Schuster, ), ; David Brion Davis, Revolutions: Reflections on American Equality and Foreign Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ), ; Louis R. Gottschalk and Margaret Maddox, Lafayette in the French Revolution from the October Days Through the Federation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ). . Washington Society Record Book, :–, Manuscript Collections, MHS. . Charles Willson Peale, Marquis de Lafayette, , Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va.; Rembrandt Peale, Marquis de Lafayette, –, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. . Niles Register, August , , quoted in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :. . Edward Jarvis, Traditions and Reminiscences of Concord, Massachusetts, – , ed. Sarah Chapin (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, ), , . For an elite perspective, see Eliza C. Shattuck’s letters to her son about her desire to stay out of the ‘‘hustle’’ of Lafayette’s entrance into Boston, August , , Shattuck Papers, MHS. . ‘‘Volunteer Address to Gen. Lafayette, by Miss Maria Brown Duncan’’ and ‘‘Address of the Pupils of Lafayette Female Academy to the General Lafayette,’’ in Visit of General Lafayette to the Lafayette Female Academy, in Lexington, Kentucky, May ,  . . . (Lexington, Ky.: John Bradford, ), , . . Connecticut Journal, August , , in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :. . Marc H. Miller, ‘‘Lafayette’s Farewell Tour and American Art,’’ in Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds: The Art and Pageantry of His Farewell Tour of America, –, ed. Stanley J. Idzerda, Anne C. Loveland, and Marc H. Miller (Hanover, N.H.: Queens Museum, ), . See the advertising for manufactured bunting and flags ‘‘suitable for decorating public or private Edifices’’ that appeared during Lafayette’s trip to Virginia in the Richmond Compiler, October , . . The best guides to Lafayette souvenirs are Idzerda, Loveland, and Miller, Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds; Marian Klamkin, The Return of Lafayette: –


Notes to Pages –



(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, ); John A. H. Sweeney, ‘‘Lafayette in the Decorative Arts,’’ Antiques August (): –. . Connecticut Journal, August , , quoted in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :. . See the collection of loosely bound sheet music from Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, and New York in the Clements Library at the University of Michigan. . Notable among them were the flasks produced by the Mount Vernon Glass, Thomas Stebbins, and Coventry glass works that had Masonic devices or liberty caps on the reverse side; Klamkin, Return, , . On glassware with cameo portraits, see Arlene M. Palmer, ‘‘American Heroes in Glass: The Bakewell Sulphide Portraits,’’ American Art Journal  (): –. . See Klamkin, Return of Lafayette, –, –, . . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, May , . The Rhode Island Historical Society owns a pair of kid leather gloves with Lafayette’s head embossed on the knuckles; see Marc H. Miller, ‘‘Lafayette’s Farewell Tour,’’ in Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds, . Many American manufacturing firms also fabricated goods to present to Lafayette as tokens of their esteem and examples of their good work. These gifts could also be used in advertising: ‘‘Messrs. Martinot & Roe, umbrella manufacturers of this city, have made a superb umbrella, to be presented to the Marquis as a token of their respect for his character and services. It is one of the patent kind, the shaft of beautiful curl maple, and mounted with fine ivory and gold. It is not the intrinsic value of such presents that constitutes their worth but the feelings of the hearts that prompt them’’; (New York) Commercial Advertiser, August , , quoted in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :; Charleston Courier, October , . . (New York) Commercial Advertiser, August , , quoted in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :. . Lafayette ribbon in the collection of Jan and Larry Malis, see Klamkin, Return of Lafayette, . See also ‘‘Welcome La Fayette, the Nation’s Guest,’’ white silk ribbon engraved by Myron King of Troy, New York, in the De Witt Collection, University of Hartford; Klamkin, Return of Lafayette, . . Lafayette ribbon in the De Witt Collection, University of Hartford, Klamkin, Return of Lafayette, . . See Bushman, Refinement of America, –. . Women also gave orations, made ceremonial presentations, and sent delegations to greet Lafayette during his visit. On women’s participation in public ceremony and their particular control over commercialized celebrations, see Leigh Eric Schmidt, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), . My view of women’s participation in Lafayette’s visit differs from that of Mary Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, –  (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, ), –; Mary Ryan, Civic Wars: Democracy and Public Life in the American City during the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), –. See ‘‘The Fete at Castle Garden,’’ New-York American, September , , in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :–; Salem Gazette, September , ; ‘‘Public Dinner, Given at the Ex-




Notes to Pages –

change Coffee House . . .’’ in Klamkin, Return of Lafayette, ; ‘‘Journey of Lafayette,’’ (Newark) Eagle, October , ; Idzerda, Loveland, and Miller, Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds. . Sarah Graham to Lucy Ridgely, April , , Sarah Graham Ridgely Manuscripts, FHS. . Caroline Clark, Lafayette’s March: Composed by Miss Caroline Clark for the Boston Independent Cadets (Boston: n.p., ), in the collection of the Clements Library and the Newberry Library; Susannah Buckingham, ‘‘Lafayette Quilt,’’ , Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, in Loveland, ‘‘Lafayette’s Farewell Tour,’’ figs. , . . ‘‘La Fayette in Trenton,’’ The True American, October , , in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :; (Philadelphia) United States Gazette, September , , in Brandon, :–. . New York American, August , , in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :. . (New York) Commercial Advertiser, August , , in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :. On the politicization of women’s public activities, I benefited greatly from Rosemary Zagarri, ‘‘Female Politicians and Concurrent Patriots: Gender and the First Party System,’’ paper presented at the New England Seminar on American History, American Antiquarian Society, November , . . ‘‘Honors to Lafayette . . . from the Franklin Gazette,’’ Richmond Compiler, October , . . Charleston Courier, June , ; Charleston Courier, June , . . Charleston Courier, June , . . See the toast to the ‘‘rising generation’’ in Shaftsbury, Vermont, on July , , (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, July , ; Hay, ‘‘Twice Recalled,’’ –. . (Millegeville) Georgia Journal, July , , quoted in Hay, ‘‘American Revolution,’’ . . Thomas Gray, Sermon on the Death of His Excellency, William Eustis . . . Preached in the First Church in Roxbury, February ,  (Boston: Francis Y. Carlisle, ), . . Alexander Graydon, Memoirs of a Life Chiefly Passed in Pennsylvania, Within the Last Sixty Years (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, ), ; Peter Charles Hoffer, Revolution and Regeneration: Life Cycle and the Historical Vision of the Generation of  (Athens: University of Georgia Press, ). See the dinner in honor of William Hull in Watertown, Massachusetts. The orator of the evening proclaimed to Hull, ‘‘You are now, sir, among the very few survivers [sic] of those to whom we are indebted for the blessings of civil freedom. It is from the exertions and sacrifices of these few, and the many who are gone, but whose fame remains to us that the men of these days live, not in a degraded and oppressed colony, but in a free, prosperous, and happy republic’’; (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , . . Israel Potter, The Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter, A Native of Cranston, Rhode Island (Providence, R.I.: Henry Trumbull, ), –; David Chacko and Alexander Kulscar, ‘‘Israel Potter: Genesis of a Legend,’’ WMQ  (): –. . Lydia Maria Child, The Rebels (Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, ); Eliza


Notes to Pages –



Lanesford Foster Cushing, Saratoga: A Tale of the Revolution (Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, ); Eliza Lanesford Foster Cushing, Yorktown: An Historical Romance (Boston: Wells and Lilly, ); James Fenimore Cooper, The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea (New York: C. Wiley, ); James Fenimore Cooper, The Spy: A Tale of Neutral Ground,  vols. (New York: Wiley and Halsted, ). See also the character based on Israel Potter in Herman Melville, Israel Potter: His Fifty Years in Exile (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, ). . (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, August , . . On Darius Clark, see Robert E. Shalhope, Bennington and the Green Mountain Boys: The Emergence of Liberal Democracy in Vermont, – (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, ), –. In promoting the celebrations of the Battle of Bennington, Clark had taken over for Haswell as the democratically minded printer of the town; see George Witherell, An Oration, Delivered at Bennington, August th, A.D. : In Commemoration . . . (Bennington, Vt.: Darius Clark, ). . (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, August , . . ‘‘General Lafayette—From the Catskill Recorder,’’ in Bass Otis Account Book, Manuscript Collections, AAS; (New York) Commercial Advertiser, August [], , quoted in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :. . Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, – (New York: Oxford University Press, ). . (New York) Commercial Advertiser, August , , quoted in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :; ‘‘Honors to Lafayette, from the Franklin Gazette,’’ Richmond Compiler, October , . . (New York) Commercial Advertiser, August , , quoted in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :. . For example, see (Boston) Columbian Centinel, August , September , ; Salem Gazette, September , ; (Newburyport) Herald, September , ; New Hampshire Gazette, September , ; Massachusetts Spy, September , ; Connecticut Courant, September , ; (New York) Commercial Advertiser, September  and , ; Troy Sentinel, September , ; Washington Gazette, October  and , ; Richmond Enquirer, October , ; Virginia Herald, November , ; all available in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, vols.  and . . The New York American, August , , quoted in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :. See the description of the old soldier ‘‘with the silver wreaths of time upon his brow’’ who cried ‘‘aloud like a child’’ after shaking Lafayette’s hand in the Richmond Compiler, October , . . ‘‘La Fayette—The Levee, from the Philadelphia Daily Advertiser,’’ Richmond Compiler, October , . . (New York) Commercial Advertiser, August , , quoted in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :. . Bridgeport Courier, August , , quoted in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :. . Bridgeport Courier, August , , quoted in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :. . William Gibbes Hunt, An Oration in Honor of General Lafayette, Delivered in His Presence, At Nashville, May ,  . . . (Nashville, Tenn.: Joseph Norvell, ), .




Notes to Pages –

. United States Gazette, October , , in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :. . Kramer, Lafayette in Two Worlds, –; John T. Gillard, ‘‘Lafayette, Friend of the Negro,’’ Journal of Negro History  (): –; Loveland, Emblem of Liberty, . . ‘‘Arrangements for the Reception of General La Fayette, in Fredericksburg,’’ Virginia Herald, November , , in Brandon, Lafayette, Guest of the Nation, :; Loveland, Emblem of Liberty, ; Edgar Ewing Brandon, ed., A Pilgrimage of Liberty: A Contemporary Account of the Triumphal Tour of General Lafayette Through the Southern and Western States, in , as Reported by the Local Newspapers (Athens, Ohio: Athens Historical Press, ), , . . Original italics. American Sketches, ; Loveland, Emblem of Liberty, ; Brandon, Pilgrimage, –. . Sidney Kaplan and Emma Nogrady Kaplan, The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution, rev. ed. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, ), . . Auguste Levasseur, Lafayette in America in  and , or Journal of a Voyage to the United States, vol.  (Philadelphia: Carey and Lee, ), ; Kramer, Lafayette in Two Worlds, . . Samuel Knapp to Edward Everett, October , , quoted in Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, ; Warren’s history is the best central source for information on the Bunker Hill Monument Association. Much of Warren’s volume is more anthology than history, as he reprints extensive numbers of the papers of the Monument Association. Other information can be found in the Laommi Baldwin papers at the MHS. See also G. Rodger Evans and Charles W. Snell, Historic Structure Report: Bunker Hill Monument,  vols. (Denver: Branch of Historic Preservation of the National Parks Service, ); William Wheildon, Memoir of Solomon Willard (Boston: Monument Association, ). I thank Marty Blatt, Chief of Cultural Resource and Supervisory Historian at the Boston National Historical Park, for his help. . Everett, Oration Pronounced at Cambridge, . . Gray, ‘‘Sermon,’’ . . ‘‘Interesting Jubilee,’’ (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, July , . . ‘‘Military Biography of the Late Governor Brooks,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, March , ; James Barnaby, A Sermon, Delivered at Salisbury, Massachusetts on the Death of His Excellency William Eustis (Newburyport: W. & J. Gilman, ), . . Gray, ‘‘Sermon,’’ ; Edward Everett, An Oration Delivered at Concord, April the Nineteenth,  (Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, ), . . ‘‘Public Calamity. Another Patriot Statesman Gone,’’ February , , John Newhall Commonplace-book and diary, MHS. . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, February , . . Daniel Sharp, A Sermon, Preached at the Funeral of His Excellency William Eustis, Esq . . . February ,  (Boston: True & Greene, ), . . ‘‘Biographical Sketch of the Life of the Hon. John Brooks,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, March , . . Everett, Oration Delivered at Concord, .


Notes to Pages –



. Crafts, Address Delivered, . . John Dixwell, A Memoir of the Late Hon. John Brooks, MD LLD (n.p., ); Sharp, Sermon, ; Crafts, Address Delivered, . . J. Jefferson Miller, The Washington Monument in Baltimore (Baltimore: Peale Museum, ); Robert Mills, Statistics, quoted in Rhodri Windsor Liscombe, Altogether American: Robert Mills, Architect and Engineer, – (New York: Oxford University Press, ), . . Robert Mills, quoted in Blanche Marsh, Robert Mills: Architect in South Carolina (Columbia, S.C.: R. L. Bryan, ), ; Miller, ‘‘Lafayette’s Farewell Tour,’’ – ; An Account of the Reception of General Lafayette in Savannah . . . Of the Entertainments Given Him; and of the Ceremonies, Masonic & Civic, on Laying the Corner Stones of Monument to the Memory of Generals Greene and Pulaski (Savannah, Ga.: W. T. Williams, ); Liscombe, Altogether American, ; ‘‘A Sketch of the Interesting Ceremony of Laying the Corner Stones of the Monuments of Greene and Pulaski, at Savannah,’’ John Newhall Commonplace-book, MHS. . Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, –; Harlow Sheidley, Sectional Nationalism: Massachusetts Conservative Leaders and the Transformation of America, – (Boston: Northeastern University Press, ), –; Maurice G. Baxter, One and Inseparable: Daniel Webster and the Union (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, ), . Ironically, Henry Dearborn was also one of the charter members of the Association, even though he had been the major attacker of Israel Putnam in the  pamphlet war. Dearborn may have decided to repair his public image by becoming involved with the monument. . Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, . See Charles M. Wiltse, ed., The Papers of Daniel Webster: Correspondence, (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, ), :. . On the efforts to erect the equine statue, see Washington Monument Association Records, Manuscript Division, BPL; Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, . The Bunker Hill Monument Association did eventually correspond with the Washington Benevolent Association of Baltimore, which was sponsoring the -foot-high triumphal column designed by Robert Mills. The two groups, though rivals, eventually shared some financial support. See Miller, ‘‘Lafayette’s Farewell Tour,’’ . . Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, . . Ibid. . ‘‘Circular,’’ September , , in Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, . . Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, ; Edward Everett to Thomas J. Goodwin, April , , quoted in Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, . . W. Tudor, R. D. Sullivan, F. C. Gray, quoted in Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, . . Ibid., . . See the letters of response in Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, –. . Caleb Stark to Edward Everett, April , , in Warren, History of the




Notes to Pages –

Bunker Hill Monument Association, . R. H. Osgood reported to Edward Everett that the New Englanders in Baltimore received the call for contributions ‘‘in so cold a manner that I hardly knew in what way to answer it.’’ But he thought they were mainly discouraged for financial reasons; R. H. Osgood to Edward Everett, April , , in Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, . . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , . . Original italics. ‘‘Bunker Hill Monument,’’ in John Newhall Commonplacebook, MHS. . ‘‘To the Selectmen,’’ October , , in Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, , ; (Boston) Columbian Centinel, August , September , . . See Pamela Scott, ‘‘Robert Mills and American Monuments,’’ in Robert Mills, Architect, ed. John M. Bryan (Washington, D.C.: American Institute of Architects Press, ), ; Alison Yarrington, The Commemoration of the Hero, –: Monuments to the British Victors of the Napoleonic Wars (New York: Garland, ); John Seelye, Memory’s Nation: The Place of Plymouth Rock (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), –. . See Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, ; [Solomon Willard], ‘‘Of the Obelisk; Its Origin &c,’’ Solomon Willard Papers, MHS. . ‘‘M’’ (Robert Mills), ‘‘Essay on Architectural Monuments,’’ Analectic Magazine  (): ; Marc H. Miller, ‘‘Lafayette’s Farewell Tour,’’ . . ‘‘Resolutions, April , ,’’ in Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, –; Marc H. Miller, ‘‘Lafayette’s Farewell Tour,’’ . . Original italics. Scott, ‘‘Robert Mills,’’ ; Robert Mills to the Bunker Hill Monument Association, quoted in Liscombe, Altogether American, . . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, April , . . ‘‘Monumental Miscellany,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, May , . . Horatio Greenough, The Travels, Observations, and Experience of a Yankee Stonecutter (New York: G. P. Putnam, ); reprint, Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, ), . The monument, which was not finished until later in the nineteenth century, is  feet high. . ‘‘Monument on Bunker Hill,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , ; ‘‘Bunker Hill Obelisk,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , . Solomon Willard was appointed architect of the monument, and he is sometimes attributed as the monument’s designer because of changes he made in Greenough’s plan. . William Eustis, ‘‘Address to the Legislature, January , ,’’ in Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, . . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, January , . Notice that ‘‘P.’’ doesn’t mention Vermont. . ‘‘An Act to Aid the Bunker Hill Monument Association,’’ in Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, –. . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, January , January , March , . . Henry Dearborn, ‘‘Bunker Hill Monument Association,’’ in Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, . See also ibid., –. On a similar effort by elite southern women to commemorate George Washington, see Elizabeth Varon,


Notes to Pages –



We Mean to Be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ). . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, January , February , ; Bushman, Refinement of America, –. . Address of the Bunker Hill Monument Association to the Selectmen of the Several Small Towns in Massachusetts (Boston: A. Sampson, ), . . See Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, . . See the list of contributors in Act of Incorporation and By-Laws, and a List of the Original Members of the Bunker Hill Monument Association . . . (Boston: Samuel N. Dickinson, ), –; Bunker Hill Monument Membership Certificate, James Savage, Esq., Papers, MHS. . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, March , . . Crafts, Address Delivered, . . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, May , . See also Daniel Webster to [John] Warren, August , , in Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, . . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, May , . The same notice appears in the (Bennington) Vermont Gazette, May , . . ‘‘Interesting Law Case . . . Lexington vs. Bunker Hill’’ and ‘‘Monument at Concord,’’ John Newhall Commonplace-book, MHS. On the efforts to construct a monument at Concord that continued through the s, see Ezra Ripley Papers, Manuscript Collections, Concord, Massachusetts, Free Library. . Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg, ; Paul Revere Frothingham, Edward Everett, Orator and Statesman (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ), . . Daniel Webster to Edward Everett, February , , quoted in Irving H. Bartlett, Daniel Webster (New York: W. W. Norton, ), . See Edward Tabor Linenthal, Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ), ; William Emmons, An Address in Commemoration of the Battle of Bunker Hill!! Delivered on the Evening of June th,  . . . (Boston: n.p., ), . . See Warren, History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association; Bartlett, Daniel Webster, . . Everett, Oration, Delivered at Concord, . . ‘‘From the Essex Register, Celebration of the Nineteenth of April, ,’’ Charleston Courier, May , . . ‘‘The Old Farmer, Westford, March , ,’’ in John Newhall Commonplace-book, MHS. . Concord Celebration, The Order of Proceedings, at the Celebration on the Nineteenth of April, , of the Fiftieth Anniversary of Concord & Lexington Battles (Concord, Mass.: Allen & Lamson, ), ; (Boston) Columbian Centinel, April , . . Everett, Oration, Delivered at Concord, , . . Ibid., . In a comment that seemed to hint at Everett’s future as a public speaker, most notably at Gettysburg where he spoke for two hours before Lincoln’s Address, the Columbian Centinel pronounced the following judgment on Everett’s speech: ‘‘No better panegyric can be pronounced on this performance, than that it




Notes to Pages –

enchained for two hours the fixed attention of thronged auditory, who had been in the seats from four to six hours,’’ April , . . ‘‘From the Essex Register,’’ Charleston Courier, May , . . James G. Percival, ‘‘Ode,’’ in Concord Celebration, . . (Boston) Columbian Centinel, April , . . (Baltimore) American and Commercial Daily Advertiser, June , ; Emmons, Address in Commemoration, . The exact number of spectators and participants is difficult to assess, but Benjamin Russell offered the following guess at the time: ‘‘it is believed to be no exaggeration to estimate at one hundred and fifty thousand, collected from every State of the Union,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , . The celebration was truly colossal because in  the population of Boston was only ,; Peter R. Knights, The Plain People of Boston, –: A Study in City Growth (New York: Oxford University Press, ), . . Emmons, Address in Commemoration, ; ‘‘Interesting Anniversary,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , June , . For national examples of stories covering the fiftieth anniversary of Bunker Hill, see New York Gazette, June , ; Boston Courier on Bunker Hill; Charleston Courier, April  and July , ; (Baltimore) American and Commercial Daily Advertiser, June , . . ‘‘Bunker Hill Monument Association, Special Notice,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , . . Charleston Courier, June , July , . . Benjamin Russell said of the veterans, ‘‘Of the surviving officers of the battle, no field or staff officer is now living. There were present on Friday, seven Captains, three Lieutenants, and one Ensign’’; ‘‘Bunker Hill Jubilee,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , . . ‘‘Recollections of a Bostonian,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , . . Charleston Courier, July , ; ‘‘Heroes of Bunker Hill,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , . . ‘‘Old Soldiers,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , . . Charleston Courier, July , . . ‘‘To Our Friends,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , . . Benjamin Russell, ‘‘Bunker Hill Celebration,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , . . The full order of procession appears in the Columbian Centinel, June , ; Bunker Hill Monument Association, Corrected Order of Procession, for the Seventeenth of June,  (Boston: n.p., ). . Ezra Green to Bernard Green, August , , miscellaneous Manuscripts Collections, MHS. . Corrected Order of Procession, ‘‘Bunker Hill Jubilee,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , ; Miller, ‘‘Lafayette’s Farewell Tour,’’ ; Services on Bunker Hill, for  June  (Boston: n.p., ); Benjamin Russell, ‘‘Bunker Hill Battle Celebration,’’ (Boston) Columbian Centinel, June , . . Webster, ‘‘Address Delivered at the Laying of the Cornerstone,’’ . . See Emmons, Address in Commemoration, . . Webster, ‘‘Address Delivered at the Laying of the Cornerstone,’’ , , –, , . A week later in Charleston, South Carolina, William Crafts told his


Notes to Pages –



Palmetto Day oration audience that ‘‘there was nothing sectional, however, in the revolutionary times or spirit,’’ as he strove to link the importance of Fort Moultrie and Bunker Hill; William Crafts, Address Delivered, .

Afterword . On the more destructive path of intertwined sectionalism and nationalism, see Susan-Mary Grant, North over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era (Lawrence: University Press, of Kansas, ). . Henry Highland Garnet, An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America (Troy, N.Y.: Henry Highland Garnet, ; reprint, New York: Arno Press, ), . . Ibid., , . . For the beginnings of this transition in Palmetto Day, see Len Travers, Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, ), . . William E. Martin, The South: Its Dangers and Its Resources, An Address Delivered at the Celebration of the Battle of Fort Moultrie (Charleston, S.C.: Edward C. Councell, ), . . Ibid., –, –. . See Reid Mitchell, Civil War Soldiers (New York: Oxford University Press, ).



Index

Adams, Abigail,  Adams, John, , , ; on gratitude, ; party leader, ; president, ; on Putnam, Israel, ; and republicanism,  Adams, John Quincy,  Adams, Zabdiel, –,  Addison, Joseph,  ‘‘Aethiopian,’’ ,  African Americans, , –; celebrations, ; gratitude, –, ; heroism, – , –; and Lafayette, –; and memory, , ; and national identity, , , ; orators, –; Palmetto Day, ; preachers, , , , ; revolutionary participation, , ; soldiers, ; veterans, , –. See also slavery Alden, Judah,  Allen, Abner,  Allen, Ethan,  Allston, Washington,  American Magazine,  American Revolution, , –; politics, , . See also Revolutionary War ‘‘American Soldier, A Picture from the Life, The,’’  American Theater,  American War, From –, The,  Analectic Magazine, ,  Anderson, Benedict,  André (Dunlap), – André, John, – Anglo-French Wars, , ,  Annapolis, Md., ,  Anti-Britannic Society, – Arnold, Benedict, , ,  Attucks, Crispus,  audience, ; celebrations, –; democratization, –, –; and heroes, ; and patriotism, ; and politics, ; theater, – Austin, Jonathan Williams, 

Avery, David,  Avery, Samuel,  Baldwin, Loammi,  Baltimore, Md., ; monuments, , , – Barbary captives,  Barbary states, , , ,  Bastille,  battlefields, , –, , , , – Battle of Bunkers-Hill, The (Brackenridge),  Beacon Hill,  Belknap, Jeremy, ,  Bennington, Battle of,  Bennington, Battle of, commemoration, , –, , , –; and French Revolution, –; and War of , – Bennington, Vt., , , –, ; Washington funeral, – Binney, Barnabas, ,  biography. See heroic literature, biography Blacks. See African Americans ‘‘Black Whig,’’ – Blatchford, John,  Bledsoe, Jesse,  Bleecker, Abella,  Bleecker, Ann Eliza Schuyler, ,  Blight, David,  blood, , ; African Americans, ; commemoration of, –, , ; of heroes, ; memory, ; and national identity, ; and patriotism, –; and unity,  Blue Licks, Battle of,  Bonaparte, Napoleon, ,  Boone, Daniel,  Boston, Mass., , , , ; Fourth of July, ; printers in, ; theater, , ; Washington’s Birthday,  Boston Athanaeum,  Boston Independent Cadets, 




Index

Boston Massacre, , ; commemoration,  Boston Tea Party,  Boudinot, Elias, ,  Brackenridge, Hugh Henry: eulogies by, –, , ; theater, ; on women,  Brandywine, Battle of,  Breckenridge, Joseph C.,  Breed’s Hill, . See also Bunker Hill, Battle of British empire, ,  Brockway, Thomas, ,  Brookfield, Mass.,  Brooklyn, Conn.,  Brooklyn (N.Y.) Navy Yard,  Brooks, John, , – Buckminster, Joseph, –,  Buffalo, N.Y.,  Bunker Hill, Battle of, , –; battlefield, , ; commemoration, , , –, ; death of Warren, –, ; fiftieth anniversary, –, , , –; memory, , ; memory and controversy, – Bunker Hill (Burk),  Bunker Hill Monument, –; cornerstone ceremony, , – Bunker Hill Monument Association, – Burr, Aaron,  Burgoyne, John,  Burk, John, – Burke, Aedanus, –

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Caffieri, Jean-Jacques, ,  Camden, S.C.,  Campbell, Arthur,  Canada: martyrs, ; U.S. invasion of (), , , , –, ; U.S. invasion of (), , –, ,  Carey, Matthew,  Carolina Coffee-House,  Caswell, Richard,  Cato (Addison),  celebrations, –, , –; heroes, ; Lafayette, ; national identity and, , –, ; patriotism and, ; politics and, –; theater and, – Charleston, S.C., , , , ; Bunker Hill Monument and, –, ; celebrations, –, , –; committee of corre-

spondence, ; Lafayette, ; Loyalists in, –; naval memory, ; theater,  Charleston Courier, , ,  Charlestown, Mass., , , ; Light Infantry Company, ; during Revolutionary War, – Cheesman, Jacob,  Child, David Lee,  Child, Lydia Maria,  Cicero,  Cincinnati, Ohio,  Cincinnatus, ,  Cinque, Joseph,  Circular Church (Charleston, S.C.),  citizen-soldiers,  City Gazette (Charleston, S.C.),  City Theater (Charleston, S.C.),  Civil War, –,  ‘‘Civis,’’  ‘‘Civis’’ (Everett),  Clark, Caroline,  Clark, Darius,  Clarke, Jonas, ,  Clarkson, Matthew,  class, , –, –, , ; celebrations and, –; conflict, –; heroes and, –, , ; memory and, ; monuments and, –, –, ; national identity and, , , , , ; patriotism and, –, ; veterans and, – Clarendon, Vt., ,  Clinton, DeWitt,  Clinton, George,  cockades,  Coleman, William,  College of Philadelphia,  Colley, Linda,  Columbian Centinel (Boston, Mass.), , , , , , , ; and Putnam, Israel, – commemoration, , , , ; audience, ; democratic, , ; as entertainment, – ; and the future, –; heroes, , ; and national identity, –, , , ; naval, –; renewed importance, –; republican, , ; ritual, ; and violence, ; and War of , – ‘‘Commemorative Festivals’’ (Doolittle), – Commercial Advertiser (Boston, Mass.), 


Index Commercial Advertiser (New York, N.Y.), – commercialization: of celebrations, – ; and class, ; and heroism, ; of memory, –; and national identity,  Concord, Battle of, ; commemoration, , ; fiftieth anniversary, – Concord, Mass.: Fourth of July, ; and Lafayette, – Concord Bridge,  Confederate flag,  Congress: commercial conflict, ; and Kentucky statehood, –; and Lafayette, ; and monuments, –, , ; and the president, ; thanksgiving proclamations, , ; toasts to, ; and Vermont statehood, ; and veterans,  Connecticut, ; General Assembly, ; peace thanksgiving celebrations in, ; Society of the Cincinnati, ,  Connecticut Journal,  Considerations on the Society or Order of Cincinnati, –,  Continental Army, ; African Americans in, , ; chaplains, , ; enlistments, , –; disbanding, ; gratitude for, ; military performance, ; officers, , , , , –, , –, ; toasts to, ; and women,  Continental Congress: and commemoration, ; and Montgomery, Richard, –, , , ; military strategy, ; toasts to, ; and Warren, Joseph,  Cook, Samuel,  Cooper, James Fenimore,  Cooper’s Society (New York, N.Y.),  Cornelia,  Cornwallis, Charles, Earl, , , ; surrender, ,  Countryman, Edward,  Crafts, William, , ,  cross-dressing, – Cumings, Henry,  Cushing, Eliza Lanesford Foster,  Cushing, Jacob, ,  ‘‘Cynthia,’’ , 

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Davidson, William Lee,  Davis, Joshua,  Dearborn, Henry, –



Death of Dr. Warren at the Battle of BunkersHill, The, ,  Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton, The,  Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, The,  Death of Wolfe, The,  Decatur, Stephen,  Declaration of Independence, , ,  Dedham, Mass.,  deference,  Democratic-Republican Party, , , –; and Bunker Hill controversy, ; commemorations and, –; commercial conflict, –, , , , ; and Fourth of July, ; and French Revolution, ; and history, ; and national identity, ; newspapers, , ; during Quasi-War with France, ; and Tammany Society, –, , ; and theater, – ; Vermont, ; and veterans, –; and War of , , , , –, ; and Washington, George, , , , ; and women,  Democratic-Republican societies, ,  democratization, , ; of commemorations, ; of gratitude, –, –, , , ; of heroism, –, , –, ; and memoirs, –; of memory, , , , –, –, –, , , , , , , , –, ; of print culture, , –; and theater, –; and women,  Demosthenes,  DeWitt, Benjamin,  Dickinson, John,  Doolittle, Charles, – Duncan, Maria Brown,  Dunlap, William, –,  Dunmore, John Murray, Earl of,  Dwight, Timothy,  economic change, , , –, ,  Egypt, ,  Elegiac Poem . . . ,  Eliot, John,  elocution,  Embargo, the, , –, ,  Emerson, William,  Emma Corbett, 




Index

emulation: of common soldiers, ; of heroes, , , . See also heroes, emulation of England. See Great Britain engravings, –. See also prints Enos, Roger, ,  Erie Canal, ,  Essay Concerning Gratitude,  Essay on the Life of the Honourable Major General Israel Putnam,  Eulogium on Major General Joseph Warren, An,  eulogy,  Europe,  Eustis, William, –,  Evacuation Day, , , –,  Evans, Israel, ; on gratitude, –; on heroes, ; thanksgiving sermons, –, , , –; on women, – Evening Post (New York, N.Y.),  Everett, Edward, ; Bunker Hill Monument Association, , , ; Concord oration, –; on gratitude, ; on heroes, ; orator, , 

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Fallen Timers, Battle of,  Fall of British Tyranny, The, –,  fame, , , , ,  Fanning, Nathaniel, ,  fast days, – Fate of Blood-Thirsty Oppressors . . . ,  Faugares, Margaretta,  Fay, Benjamin, – Federal Street Theater,  Federalist Party, , , –; and Bunker Hill controversy, ; and commemoration, –; commercial conflict, –, , ; and Fourth of July, ; and French Revolution, –; and literature, , ; and monuments, –; and national identity, ; and newspapers, , ; during Quasi-War with France, ; and soldiers, ; and theater, –; and War of , –, ; and Washington, George, , , ; Washington’s Birthday, ; and women, – federalists (Constitution), , – Female Review, The, – fireworks, , , ,  Fiske, Nathan, 

Fletcher, Ebenezer,  Flint, James,  Foresters, The,  Fort Moultrie, ,  Fourth of July, ; celebrations, , ; Charleston, S.C., , –; and heroes, , –; and Lafayette, –, ; and national identity, ; orations, , , ; and Palmetto Day, –; and partisanship, , –, ; and statehood, ; toasts, , , ; and U.S. Constitution, ; and War of , – Foxe, John,  France, ; alliance, , ; comercial tensions, , , ; monuments, , ; navy, –, ; Quasi-War with, –, , , ; and Revolutionary War, ; and War of ,  Franklin, Benjamin, , ,  Franklin: statehood movement, –; Council, ,  Franklin Gazette,  Fraunces’ Tavern,  Freeman’s Journal,  French and Indian War, , . See also Seven Years’ War French Revolution: and American commemoration, –, ; and American politics, , –; and DemocraticRepublican party, ; festival, ; Lafayette, ,  Freneau, Philip, ,  funerals, ; for heroes, –; public celebrations, ; Tammany Society, –. See also Montgomery, Richard, funeral; Washington, George, death of Gallatin, Albert,  Gannett, Deborah Sampson, . See also Sampson, Deborah Gano, John,  Garnet, Henry Highland, – Gaston, William,  Gates, Horatio,  Gauttier’s tavern,  Gazette of the United States, , –, ,  gender, , –, , ; and heroes, ; and patriotism, , ; and national identity, ; soldiers, –


Index General Lafayette’s Visit,  generations, , , , , , , , , , ,  Genet, Edmond Charles,  gentility, –, , , ,  Genuine Narratives . . . , – George, Daniel, –, , , ,  George’s Cambridge Almanack, –, ,  Georgia, – Ghent, Treaty of,  Gleaner, The, ,  Glory of America, The,  Gordon, William,  Graham, Sarah,  gratitude: and art, ; and celebrations, , ; and class, –, ; in culture, – ; and death, ; defined, –, ; democratic, , , , –, ; devalued, ; division over, ; and Fourth of July, ; and gender, –; and heroes, , ; for Lafayette, ; Lexington and Concord, ; for martyrs, –; military, ; for Montgomery, Richard, ; and monuments, , ; and national identity, –, , ; patriotism, ; prisoners of war, ; and politics, ; and public memory, –; and republicanism, , ; sacrifice, ; sermons, ; and statehood, , ; and thanksgiving, – ; veterans, –, ; for Washington, George, ,  graves, ,  Gray, Thomas, ,  Graydon, Alexander,  Great Britain, , ; allegiance to, , ; army, , ; commercial conflict, , , ; heroes, ; memory of, –; navy, , –, ; Revolution, ; soldiers, , ; spies, –; surrender, ; and War of ,  Greece: monuments, ; oratory, ,  Green, Ezra,  Green Mountain Boys,  Greene, John Morley,  Greene, Nathanael, , , , , ; monument to,  Greenfeld, Liah,  Greenleaf, William,  Greenough, Horatio, – Greenville, Treaty of, 



Greenwich, Conn.,  grief, ,  Grundy, Felix,  Hamilton, Alexander, , , ; Federalist Party, ; on France, ; on Loyalists, ; military strategy, ; toasts to,  Hammon, Jupiter,  ‘‘Harrington,’’  Harrington, James,  Harrison, William Henry,  Hart, Oliver,  Hartford, Conn.,  Hartford Convention,  Haswell, Anthony, , ; death of, ; as editor, ; on soldiers, ; and Vermont statehood, –; death of Washington, –; and women, – Haymarket Theater (Boston, Mass.),  Haynes, Lemuel,  Hazard, Ebenezer,  Heath, William, ,  Henry, John Joseph, , – Herald (New York),  Herkimer, Nicholas, ,  heroes, , , –; African American, – , –; in art, , , –; Civil War, ; and class, ; commemoration, , ; community praise for, –; death of, ; defined, , –, , –, –, –; democratic, , , , –, , ; emulation of, –; European, ; gratitude, –, ; graves, , , ; as martyrs, ; and material culture, ; and memoirs, –; and memory, ; monuments, , –, ; names, , ; and national identity, , ; naval, – ; officers as, –, , ; Plutarchian, –; and public memory, ; race, – ; regional, ; republican, , , –, –, , , , –, –, , – , –, , , ; in theater, –; toasts to, , , , ; and War of , –, –; women,  heroic literature, –, ; biography, , –; poetry, –,  Hewes, George Robert Twelves,  Hibernian Provident Society (New York, N.Y.),  history, –, , 




Index

History of the American Revolution (Ramsay), – History of the Revolution of South Carolina (Ramsay),  Hobsbawm, Eric,  holidays, , , , , –,  Hooper, William,  Howe, William,  Hudson’s Hotel,  Humphreys, David, , ; biographer, ; on Society of the Cinncinnati, ; on U.S. Constitution, ; on women,  Hutchinson, Thomas,  ideology, ,  Imagined Communities,  impressment, , , ,  Independence Day. See Fourth of July Independent Chronicle (Boston, Mass.),  Independent New York Gazette,  Indiana,  Indians, , ; American attitudes toward, ; artifacts, ; Miami, ; and national identity, ; Shawnee, ; warfare,  J. Goulds Military Warehouse,  Jackson, Andrew, ,  Jackson, John,  Jacob, Stephen,  Jamaica, Queens (N.Y.),  Jarvis, Edward,  Jasper, William, ,  Jay, John,  Jay’s Treaty,  Jefferson, Thomas, , , ; commercial policy, ; and military, ; party leader, , ; president, , , ,  Joan of Arc,  Johnson, Joseph, – Johnson, Richard Mentor,  Johnson, William,  Jones, John Paul, –, , ,  Jove, 

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Kalb, Johann de, ,  Kammen, Michael, ,  Kentucky, –,  Kentucky Gazette, ,  King Philip’s War,  King’s Mountain, Battle of, , 

King Solomon’s Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons, –,  Kinsel, Amy J.,  Knapp, John, ,  Knox, Henry, ,  Kulikoff, Allan,  Lafayette, James Armistead,  Lafayette, Marie Joseph du Motier, Marquis de, ; and African Americans, –; and Bunker Hill Monument, , –; gratitude for, –, ; as hero, – , ; Lexington and Concord, ; in literature, ; and monuments, ; and patriotism, –; and public memory, ; souvenirs, –, ; tour described, –; and veterans, –; return to Yorktown, – Lafayette Corps,  ‘‘Lafayette’s March,’’  Late Magnanimous and Heroic General Joseph Warren,  Lathrop, John,  Laurens, Henry, ,  Leacock, John, –,  Lebanon, Conn.,  Lee, Charles, , , ,  Leland, John, – Lepore, Jill,  Lexington, Battle of, ; anniversary sermons, –; casualties at, ; commemorations, , , –, , –, ; fiftieth anniversary, –; funerals, ; monument, –,  Lexington, Ky., ; Fourth of July, –, , ; Lafayette, ; and War of ,  Lexington, Mass., , ,  Lexington Green,  liberalism, , , –; and memoirs, –,  liberty caps,  liberty poles,  Life of George Washington,  Lincoln, Benjamin,  Little Turtle,  Livingston, William,  Lossing, Benson,  L’Overteur, Touissant,  Loyalists, ; African American, ;


Index comparisons to, ; evacuation, ; in fiction, ; history, ; military service, , , –; reintegration, , , –. See also toryism MacPherson, John,  Madison, Dolley,  Madison, James, , , , , ,  Maine,  Mann, Herman, – Markley, Benjamin, – Mars,  Marsh, Daniel,  Martin, William E., – martyrs, , , ; in art, ; Civil War, ; commemoration, –; creation of, , –, , ; democratic, –; emulation, –; funerals for, –; gratitude for, ; heroes as, , , , ; memory of, ; monuments to, , ; names, ; and national identity, ; and patriotism, , –; and public memory, ; toasts to, ; and Washington, George,  Maryland,  masculinity, . See also gender Masonry, –, , ,  Massachusetts, , ; and Bunker Hill Monument, –, , , , , ; and Concord battle anniversary, –; legislature, ; peace thanksgiving celebrations in, ; Provincial Congress of,  Massachusetts Spy, ,  material culture, , –,  Mather, Cotton,  Mather, Samuel,  Maxwell’s Spring, ,  McAlpine, John, – McIntosh, Mary,  Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York,  memoirs, –, –, , , ; as lessons, –; naval, –,  memory: and consensus, ; democratization of, , ; and forgetting, , ; and the future, , , , , , , , , , ; and gratitude, –, ; and material culture, –; military, , , , , , –, , , , , , ; as military motivation, ; and national



identity, , ; and patriotism, , , ; and politics, –, –; private, ; republican, , ; and sensibility, . See also public memory Mercer, Hugh, , , , ,  Mexican War,  Mexico,  Michigan,  middle class, ; formation, ; values, ,  Middlesex, Mass.,  militia, , . See also names of individual states Mills, Robert, ,  Minerva,  Minot, George Richards, ,  Mitchell, Jonathan Sewell,  Mitchell, Samuel,  monarchialism,  Monroe, James, ,  Monroe-Pinckney Treaty,  Montgomery, Janet Livingston, , , , , , ,  Montgomery, Richard: commemoration, ; as example, ; funeral, –, , ; gratitude for, ; as hero, , , , , , , , , ; in literature, ; as martyr, –, –, , , ; in memoirs, – ; memory, ; monument to, –, , –, ; toasts to, , , , ,  monuments, , ; democratic, –; democratization, ; form , , , , , , –, , –; and gratitude, –; and national identity, ; paintings, compared to, ; purpose, , –, , –; republican, , , . See also Bunker Hill Monument; Montgomery, Richard; Warren, Joseph; Washington, George Morgan, W. H.,  Morgan’s Spring, Md.,  Morison, George, , ,  Morrill, Isaac,  Morris, Gouveneur,  Morris, William,  Morse, Jedidiah, –, ,  Morton, Perez,  Morton, Sarah Wentworth,  Moses,  Mosse, George, 




Index

Motta, L. A., – Motte, Isaac,  Moultrie, William, , , , ; as hero, ; on women,  Mount Vernon, ,  mourning, , –; Lexington and Concord, ; Warren, Joseph,  Murray, James,  Murray, Judith Sargent Stevens, , ,  Nash, Francis,  Nashville, Tenn.,  Natchez, Miss.,  National Advocate, The,  national identity, , , , , ; celebrations, , ; and class, ; and consensus, , , , , ; contested, –, , , , , –; defined, , ; democratic, ; and gratitude, –; heroes, , , , ; and literature, – ; and memoirs, –; and memory, ; monuments, ; and partisan politics, –; and public memory, –; and region, , , , , , , –, , , , –, , –, –, –; and religion, ; Revolutionary War, , ; and sacrifice, –; scholarship on, –; and warfare, –; and women,  Native Americans. See Indians New England, , , –, , ; and battle anniversaries, , , , , , –, ; cause of Revolution, ; heroes, ; partisan politics in, , ; Society of the Cincinnati, ; and War of , –,  New England Museum,  New Epilogue to Cato, A,  New Hampshire, ; militia, ; peace thanksgiving celebrations in,  New Haven, Conn., ,  Newman, Simon,  New Orleans, Battle of,  New Orleans, La., – Newport Mercury,  New Rochelle, N.Y.,  Newspapers, , . See also individual titles New York, N.Y., , ; British evacuation of, –, , , ; militia, , ; peace thanksgiving celebrations in, –; poli-

tics, , ; in Revolutionary War, ; theater, –,  New York (state), Continental troops, ; peace thanksgiving celebrations in, ; and Vermont statehood,  New York American,  New York Commercial Advertiser,  New York Gazetteer,  New York Magazine,  Niemeyer, Charles Patrick,  Niles Weekly Register, ,  North American Review, ,  North Carolina: Assembly, ; and state of Franklin, –,  North Church (Portsmouth, N.H.),  North-Haven, Conn.,  Norwalk, Conn.,  obelisks, , ,  objectivity, , ,  Ohio,  ‘‘Old Jersey,’’ ,  Old Southwest,  Oliver, Peter,  ‘‘On the Evils of War,’’  Oration in Honor of General Montgomery,  oratory, , ,  Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion,  Osgood, David, – Paine, Thomas, ,  painting,  Palmetto Day, , –, , , ; in , –; in , ; in , –; in , –; in , –; in , ; in , –; in , ; in , , ; in , –; heroes, –; toasts,  Palmetto Society, , , , ; and gratitude,  panegyric, , , , ,  Paris, Treaty of, . See also peace partisan politics, , –, ; and military power, ; and theater, –; and veterans, –; and war, –; and War of , –, ,  patriotism: celebrations, ; creation of, – ; and death, ; disenfranchised groups, ; and emulation, ; and gratitude, , –; and heroes, , , , ; and


Index memory, , ; and taste, ; and war,  Payson, Philips,  ‘‘P.B.P.,’’  peace, ; and national identity, ; thanksgiving celebrations, –; thanksgiving days, –; thanksgiving sermons, –, –, – Peale, Charles Willson, –, , , ; and Lafayette,  Peale, Rembrandt,  Peck, Jabez,  Pennsylvania: Assembly, , , , ; Council of Censors, ; governmental changes, –; peace thanksgiving celebrations in,  Pennsylvania Evening Gazette,  pensions, . See also Revolutionary War, pensions; veterans, pensions Percival, James,  Perry, David,  Persian Gulf War,  Phi Beta Kappa, , ,  Philadelphia, Pa., ; army officers, ; City Association, ; commemoration, ; Committees of Safety and Inspection, ; Corporation, ; Council of Safety, ; funerals, , ; Lafayette, ; peace thanksgiving celebrations in, –; print makers, ; Society of the Cincinnati,  Philadelphia Daily Advertiser,  Philadelphia Museum,  Phoebus,  Pickering, Timothy,  Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution,  Piehler, Kurt,  Pinkster,  Plato,  Plutarch,  Plutarch’s Lives,  Plymouth Rock,  Pokay, Adam,  political culture, –, ,  Pope, John, ,  Pope’s Day, ,  popular culture,  popular political culture, ,  popular politics, ,  Port Folio,  Potter, Israel, 



Pratt, Samuel Jackson,  Present War Unexpected, Unnecessary, and Ruinous, The,  print culture, , , , , , , ; growth of,  prints, –. See also engravings prisoners of war, – prison ships, –,  propaganda,  Providence, R.I.,  public memory, , ; audience, ; battlefields, –; blood, ; commemoration, ; commercialized, –; contested, –, –; democratization of, ; destabilized, –; and heroes, , ; Loyalists, ; and national identity, , , –, , ; patriotism, ; and politics, ; Revolutionary War, ; veterans, , –; women, – Pulaski, Kasimir,  Putnam, Daniel, – Putnam, Israel, ; biography of, ; controversy over, , –, ; as fictional character, ; monument to, – Quasi-War. See France, Quasi-War with Quebec, , ; invasion of (see Canada, U.S. invasion of []; U.S. invasion of []) race, ,  Ramsay, David, , –; biographer, ; historian, – Recollections of an Old Soldier,  Redfield, Levi, ,  Reed, Esther De Berdt,  region, , –, . See also national identity, and region; sectionalism Remsen, George,  Renan, Ernest,  Republican Greens,  republicanism, –, , , , , ; commemoration, ; and glory, ; and gratitude, ; national identity, ; and women,  Republican Motherhood,  reputation, , –, , ,  Resch, John,  Revere, Paul,  Revolutionary War, , , ; aftermath, ; in art, ; casualties, , ; conclu-




Index

Revolutionary War (continued ) sion, , ; and gratitude, , ; heroes in, , ; and later American wars, ; in literature, ; in memoirs, –; and national identity, , –, , , , ; and patriotism, ; pensions, ; in popular culture, ; public memory during, ; in theater, –; and War of , , – Rhode Island,  Rich, Elisha,  Richmond, Va.: Lafayette, ; Washington’s Birthday,  Ripley, Ezra, ,  romanticism,  Rome, , ; gods, ; heroes, , , –, ; matrons, ; monuments, , , , , ; oratory, ; republicanism, , ; in theater,  Royal Arch Masons,  Rush, Benjamin,  Russell, Benjamin, ,  Russell, Ezekiel, ,  Russell, Jonathan,  Rutledge, John, 

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Sacred to the Memory of the Illustrious George Washington,  sacrifice, , , ; and consensus, ; for country, ; gratitude for, –; of heroes, , ; as lesson, ; and national identity, , , ; and patriotism, ; and political culture, ; and war,  St. George’s Chapel (New York, N.Y.),  St. John the Baptist, Feast of,  Sampson, Deborah, –. See also Gannett, Deborah Sampson; Shurtleff, Robert Saratoga, Battle of, , ,  Sargent, Daniel,  Savannah, Ga.,  Schuyler, Philip,  Season of Youth, A,  Second Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia,  sectionalism, –. See also region Sedition Act, ,  sentimentality, –,  sentimental literature,  Sentiments of an American Women, The, 

Seven Years’ War, . See also French and Indian War Sevier, John, –,  Sharp, Daniel, – Shays, Daniel, ,  Shays’s Rebellion, , , ,  sheet music,  shopping, – Shreve, Israel, – Shreve, Mary, – Shurtleff, Robert, . See also Sampson, Deborah Silber, Nina,  Simonds, Joseph,  slavery, –, , , –; emancipation, –. See also African Americans Smith, Charles,  Smith, Margaret Bayard,  Smith, Noah, ,  Smith, William, –, ,  Society of the Cincinnati, , ; controversy over, –; founding, ; membership certificate, ; and memory,  Soley, John, Jr., – Sons of Liberty,  South Carolina, , , , , ; and Bunker Hill Monument, , –; celebrations, ; and New England, ; Provincial Congress, ; Revolutionary War in, ; slavery,  Spain, –,  Spanish-American War,  Springfield, Mass.,  Stark, Caleb,  Stark, John, , ,  statehood movements, – Staten Island, N.Y.,  Steuben, Friedrich Wilhelm von,  Strickland, William,  Stuart, Gilbert,  Sullivan’s Island, Battle of, , , , , , , ; memory of, , . See also Palmetto Day Swett, Samuel, ,  sympathy,  Tammany Hall,  Tammany Prisoner of War Monument, –, , 


Index Tammany Society, –, , , ; Wallabout Committee,  Taylor, John, of Caroline,  tears, , – Tennessee,  Tenskatwa (‘‘The Prophet’’),  Tent of Washington, ,  Thacher, Samuel,  theater, , –, – Thomas, Isaiah, ,  Thornton, Thomas,  Ticknor, George,  Tippecanoe, Battle of,  Tomb of Warren, The,  toryism, . See also Loyalists tourism, ,  tradecards,  Trajan’s Column,  Transylvania University,  Travers, Len,  Trenton, Battle of, ,  Trinity Episcopal Church (New York, N.Y.), ,  Tripoli, ; Pasha of,  triumphal arches, –, , –,  True and Authentic History of His Excellency George Washington . . . ,  Trumbull, John, , , , ; prints, – Trumbull, Jonathan,  Tudor, William,  Turner, Nat,  U.S. Constitution, , 

Tseng 2002.6.19 07:55

Valk’s Long Room,  Van Cortland, Philip,  Vermont, ; and Loyalists, ; militia, , ; peace thanksgiving celebrations in, ; statehood movement, , – Vermont Gazette, , , , ,  Vesey, Denmark,  veterans: African Americans, , –; Bunker Hill, , –; death of, –; gratitude for, , –, , , –; Lafayette and, ; Lexington and Concord, ; in literature, ; and memoirs, –; and monuments, ; and national identity, ; naval, ; and patriotism, ; pensions, –; and politics, , ; poor,



, , –; and public memory, , , –; reintegration, ; and statehood, –, ; and theater, ; venerated, , –; and women,  Vietnam War, ,  violence, ; glorified, , ; and public memory, ; sentimentalization of, , , , ,  Virginia, , , ; peace thanksgiving celebrations in, ; Revolutionary War in,  ‘‘Virginia Federalist,’’  virtue,  Wagner, Peter K.,  Waldo, Albigence,  Waldstreicher, David,  Walke, Anthony,  Wallabout Bay,  Wallace, William,  War Hawks, , ,  War of , , ; African American veterans, –; declaration, , ; division, ; heroes, –; and national identity, ; and public memory, ; and Revolutionary War memory, – War of Independence. See Revolutionary War Warren, John Collins,  Warren, Joseph: and Bunker Hill Monument, , , , , ; death of, , – ; as example, ; gratitude for, ; as hero, , , , , , , , , ; in literature, ; as martyr, , –, ; memory of, ; monument to, –; in theater, –; toasts to, , , , ; visual depiction, , , , , ; and War of ,  Warren, Mercy Otis,  Washington, George: biography of, ; death of, –; entry into New York, ; as example, , ; as general, ; gratitude for, ; as hero, , , –, , –, , , , , , ; in literature, –, ; and material culture, , , ; monuments to, , , – ; and partisanship, , ; president, , , , ; retirement, , ; in Revolution, ; and Society of the Cincinnati, –; in theater, ; toasts to, , , 




Index

Washington, Madison,  Washington, Martha, – Washington’s Birthday, , –, ; partisan politics,  Washington Society, ,  Watertown, Mass.,  Wayne, Anthony,  Webster, Daniel, , ; Bunker Hill Monument Association, , ; oration, , , – Webster, Noah,  Weems, Mason Locke, ,  West, Benjamin,  westerners and politics, –,  ‘‘What Is a Nation?’’  Wheatley, Phillis,  Whiskey Rebellion,  Whitaker, Nathaniel,  White Plains, N.Y., ,  Wilkinson, James, –, –,  Willet, Marinus,  Williams, Samuel,  Winter, Jay,  Wolcott, William,  Wolfe, James,  women: as audience, ; commemoration

of Lafayette, , –, , , –; heroism, ; and memoirs, –; and memory, –, ; mourning, –, ; and national identity, , ; Palmetto Day, ; participation in celebrations, , , –, , , , , –; partisan politics, ; patriotism, ; in Revolutionary War, ; skeptical view of war, –; and theater, ; and Washington, George, ; as widows,  Woods’s Newark Gazette,  Woodward, Samuel,  Wooster, David, , , , ,  Worcester, Mass., –,  World War I, ,  World War II, ,  XYZ Affair, ,  Yale College,  Young, Anna,  Yorktown, Battle of, , ; commemoration, –,  Yorktown, Va., – Young, Alfred, 


Acknowledgments

Gratitude is an important theme in this book, and I am filled with my own sense of gratitude for the people and institutions that have helped me write it. I have been given invaluable help from friends, colleagues, and relatives, all of whom deserve heartfelt thanks, if not parades and monuments. This project began as a dissertation at Brown University, where I received the support and insight of great advisers—Gordon S. Wood, Tim Harris, and Mari Jo Buhle—and a wonderful dissertation-writing group—Laura Prieto, Marie Myers, Sarah Leavitt, Jane Lancaster, Caroline Cortina, Donna Curtin, and Laura Briggs. Other friends made at Brown and in Providence have provided long-term insight and support, most especially Ed Rafferty, Sara Errington, Martha King, and Maria Castellanos. Librarians and archivists all over the country have aided my research efforts, and without them this book would not exist. I would particularly like to thank staff members at the Rockefeller Library at Brown University, the John Hay Library (especially Peter Harrington at the Anne S. K. Brown Military History Collection), the John Carter Brown Library, the Clements Library, the New York Public Library Manuscript Collection, the Schlesinger Library, the South Carolina Historical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Carey Memorial Library, the Kentucky Room at the Lexington Public Library, the University of Kentucky Special Collections, the Transylvania University Special Collections, the Filson Historical Society, the Newberry Library, the Central Michigan University Libraries, and Burling Library at Grinnell College. For useful and much-needed financial support, I thank Brown University, the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Culture, the John Carter Brown Library, the Filson Historical Society, the College of Humanities and Social & Behavioral Sciences at Central Michigan University, and the Committee for the Support of Faculty Research at Grinnell College. A number of scholars have read parts of this manuscript or provided needed insight and advice along the way. Alfred Young has been tremendously supportive and has shared his opinions, his research materials, and several tasty bag lunches with me. Marty Blatt, Chief of Cultural Resources




Acknowledgments

and Supervisory Historian of the Boston National Historical Park, shared material on the Bunker Hill Monument and has also provided excellent advice and conversation. I would also like to thank David Waldstreicher, Simon Newman, Andrew O’Shaughnessy, Daniel Richter, and the anonymous readers of the manuscript for their suggestions. My colleagues and students at Central Michigan University and Grinnell College deserve thanks for their support and for letting me try out ideas on them. I thank Bob Lockhart, my editor at the University of Pennsylvania Press, for his careful reading and editing. The reserve of my gratitude is devoted to my parents, Ed and Mary Purcell. They have provided love, support, friendship, and intellectual stimulation beyond measure. My mother has sustained me with her enthusiasm and her advice and my father has blessed me with his editing, patience, and good humor.

Sealed with Blood: War, Sacrifice, and Memory in Revolutionary America (Early American Studies)

Sealed with Blood: War, Sacrifice, and Memory in Revolutionary America

Sealed In Blood

Sealed In Blood

Blood Sacrifice

Blood Sacrifice

Blood Sacrifice

Blood Sacrifice

Blood Sacrifice

Blood Sacrifice

Blood Sacrifice

Blood Sacrifice

Blood Sacrifice

Blood Sacrifice

The American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812: People, Politics, and Power (America at War)

Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China

Sealed With Care

SEALed with a Ring

Sealed With A Wish

Sealed with a Diss

SEALed with a Promise

SEALed with a Ring

Blood and Memory

Sealed With a Curse

Sealed with a Fist

Blood and Memory

American Revolutionary War Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary

Blood Memory

Revolutionary War Almanac (Almanacs of American Wars)

Revolutionary War Almanac (Almanacs of American Wars)

Emery, Clayton - Blood Sacrifice

Sealed with Blood: War, Sacrifice, and Memory in Revolutionary America (Early American Studies)