We won't brag about our prediction of a memorable evening coming true in April - all our evenings are memorable, right? But April was special because we got two speakers for the price of one. First, Arthur Lefkowitz regaled us on his gripping new book, Benedict Arnold's Army. His research took him into the Maine woods, following Arnold and his starving men in their incredible march up the Kennebec and Chaudiere Rivers. Then Art introduced us to Duluth E "Dude" Wing, a retired state of Maine Ranger who escorted him through the wilderness and shared his knowledge of the march, gathered in over 40 years of personal exploration. Dude told us how the plan to use boats to ferry their heavy equipment, supplies and ammunition was a major blunder. The boats were made from green wood and fell apart. Dude could only shake his head and point out that almost all the men were farmers, with no experience in trekking through forests. "No woodsman in his right mind would have depended on boats," he said. He described the near collapse of the expedition when 300 men at the rear of the column, under the command of Lt. Colonel John Enos, decided to turn back. Art surprised us at this point by saying he thought Enos made the right decision, even though General Washington insisted Enos be court martialed. (He was acquitted.) Dude's details, his Maine accent, his quietly authoritative style, made us all feel history was being reborn in front of our eyes and in our ears. Best of all, at the end of the talk, he produced a veritable treasure trove of items he had discovered in his years of prowling Arnold's trail. There were enough musket balls to fill a bucket, shoe buckles, musket parts, colonial coins and the iron tips from bateaux setting poles. As these desperate men reeled forward under the indomitable leadership of Arnold and Daniel Morgan, they seem to have been coming apart, literally. But they emerged from their forest ordeal to stun the British garrison and French Canadians in Quebec, who thought they must have supernatural powers. What a story! If only it had ended in the capture of Quebec, the victory these brave men deserved.
Although Lynne Saginaw has sternly warned us not to repeat our gag about her being a "Simone Legree" we can't resist it one more time. (Put down that whip, Lynne, please!) What else explains the way she parades so many reviewers to the podium to regale us with their takes on the latest books?
Belen Cookinham opened the evening with The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution by Gary B. Nash. This much admired historian of the less known participants in the Revolution gives us a graphic account the black Americans' role in the struggle for freedom. He adds some fascinating details on how some later Americans avoided telling the whole story. The first chroniclers omitted how many blacks joined the British. Recent historians suggest the number may be as high as 100,000. Mr. Nash closes the book with a fascinating discussion of whether the Revolutionary generation could have abolished slavery. He thinks it was a possibility but the Founding Fathers "didn't risk their political capital." He blames both the North and the South for this tragic hesitation.
Jack Buchanan reported on American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the American Republic by Joseph Ellis. Jack praised Ellis for remaining interested in the Founders. In recent years, most academic historians have abandoned them for the poor, women, slaves and Indians. According to Ellis, they view the Founders as a "cast of villains who collectively comprise the deadest whitest males in history." The book opens with an account of the year 1776 and then moves to Valley Forge then to the creation of the Constitution, which Jack called the best chapter in book. Another chapter deals with Washington's failed attempt to forge a working relationship with the Indians. The book ends with "The Conspiracy," about the 1800 election, followed by the story of the Louisiana Purchase. Ellis laments the failure to ban slavery in the trans-Mississippi lands. But he admits that the nation that grew to colossal strength in the 20th Century might have disintegrated if the attempt had been made. Then there would have been no one around to defeat the totalitarians of the 20th Century.
Maria Deering told us about Infamous Scribblers:The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism by Eric Burns. She called it a handy reference guide to colonial printers and their trade. But the author doesn't fully deliver on the promise of his title. Burns' favorite early printer is James Franklin, Ben's older brother, who has been overshadowed by his famous sibling. James was a crusader ahead of his time, an innovator who may have been the first editor to hire reporters. Burns also gives us a lively account of The American Magazine, the first colonial magazine, begun by Ben Franklin's rival, William Bradford, in 1741. But the second half of the book is dull and padded with conventional accounts of scandals such as Alexander Hamilton's affair with Maria Reynolds. To liven things up, Maria suggested a visit to the Society Library, where you can eye the first paper published in the Province of New York, William Bradford's Gazette.
Jon Carriel closed the evening with a fascinating account of The King's Three Faces; The Rise and Fall of Royal America by Brendan McConville of Boston University. The book traces American thinking about the monarchy from 1688 to the Revolution. Jon found the book "impressive." The author's cool objectivity perfectly matches his theme - the historical neglect of what people were really thinking in the eight decades before the breakup of the empire. His new look finds Americans were "decidedly monarchical and imperial, Protestant and virulently anti-Catholic almost to the moment of independence." That's a pretty amazing statement, but Jon thought Mr. McConville made a very strong case for his thesis.
On May 13, an impressive roundup of the descendants of the original founders of the Society of the Cincinnati met at Mount Gulian, the house near Fishkill that served as Baron Von Steuben's headquarters, to celebrate the 225th anniversary of their hereditary organization. The Cincinnati are proud owners of Anderson House, a magnificent mansion on Connecticut Avenue in Washington DC which serves as their national headquarters. They have flourishing chapters in all the 13 original states, plus an equally active chapter in France. The Anderson House library contains a treasure trove of original material on the Revolution. Their museum exhibits are one of Washington DC's must visits for history buffs. They also reach out to schools. This year they are giving away thousands of "jackdaw kits" which contain unique artifacts from their library and museum collections. Each year they invite a distinguished historian to come to Anderson House to give the George Rogers Clark lecture. The speakers have included Ron Chernow, David McCullough and our own Tom Fleming, who is an honorary member of the New York chapter. He is their Washington Scholar for 2008, required to give an original talk on Washington at some point in the year. Happy 225th Birthday, Cincinattians! Long may you commemorate!
If French shipbuilders can get the job done, the frigate that carried the Marquis de Lafayette to America will make a return voyage soon. September 6, 2007 was the 250th anniversary of the Marquis birth. As RT know-it-alls are well aware, he sneaked out of France against the orders of his king and hired a ship that took him to America where he served without pay as a major general. But how many people know anything about the next ship he took to America? That was after he had returned to France to try to serve under Louis XVI in a proposed invasion of England and incidentally persuade the King to do more for Washingtons collapsing army. When the invasion turned out to be a comedy of errors, he sailed back to our Revolution, traveling on the 146 -foot man of war Hermione. It took only 11 months to build the original ship. The builders of the reborn Hermione number only a dozen and they are urging patience. But they vow that within four years, the replica will heave to in American waters, after following the exact route Lafayette took to return to help achieve the greatest victory in his long and somewhat tragic career.
Some people are handwringing about the perpetual motion machine that seems to have developed around publishing the founders' papers. They have been laboring since Harry Truman was president to compile and annotate the letters and related documents of George Washington, John Adams, James Madison Benjamin Franklin Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, spending about $58 million. But the National Historical Publications Commission reports that Washington's papers will not be finished until 2023. The Adams papers will take until 2050. Only the Hamilton Papers have been finished, largely, they say because he conveniently got himself gunned down at 49. Various highbrow lobbyists have been urging Congress to allocate more funds - and also insist that the scholars pick up speed and distribute the papers more widely, online. Scholars in charge of the five remaining sets of papers are resisting the lobbyists' push. They insist more money would not appreciably increase their pace. "This is not an industrial process, this is a skilled process," says Professor Stanley Katz of Princeton. The important thing, Katz adds, is to "maintain the general character" of the remaining volumes. One of the lobbyists, Rebecca Rimel of the Pew Trust, which is leading the fight for increased speed and access, notes that a recent poll of public libraries found very few if any of the already published volumes on their shelves. The reason is the cost. The 26 volume Hamilton papers sells for $2600. David McCullough blames the slow pace on "the little fiefdoms in each project, which have been working in their own way....for two generations." He compares the situation to the Washington Monument which ran out of money and "sat there on the Mall like a giant marble stump."
An Italian wrote the most popular history of the Revolution published in the first half of the 19th Century? So says Art Lefkowitz, who has a copy of the 1820 first American translation in his library. Art says collectors are selling it for as much as $600. The title is: History of the War of Independence of the United States of America. The author was Charles Botta, a wealthy Italian physician and merchant who supported the French Revolution and saw Napoleon's Italian campaign as a war of liberation. He published his Italian edition in 1809 to inspired his countrymen to imitate Washington's example. "All nations admired the prudence, the constancy, the noble intrepidity of General Washington," he wrote. Botta interviewed numerous American and British war veterans and diplomats who came to Europe for business or political reasons, and also used published sources, such as Edmund Burke's Annual Register. Thomas Jefferson bought a copy of the Italian edition and told John Adams it had "more detail, precision and candor than any writer that I have met with." He said it was "the most valuable history of the Revolution up to its date."
John Nagy, the chairman of the Philadelphia Round Table, reports that we have two more Round Tables. The North Jersey American Revolution Round Table of Morristown had its first meeting in February. The American Revolution Round Table of the Backcountry is meeting at Spartanburg, S.C.
What's the hottest site on the web for history buffs? It's starting to look more and more like History News Network. Its range is mind blowing, from the ancient Egyptians to the War in Iraq. Top writers such as Eric Foner, Tom Fleming, Harlow Giles Unger appear frequently. In the month of April viewership leaped from 8 million hits a month to 13 million! Take a look at HNN.us.
The National Park Service has recently announced that Alexander Hamilton's home "The Grange" is, literally, about to have a moving sale. The 18 room,1802 building, designed by AH with the aid of architect John McComb, Jr. (of NY City Hall fame,) will be raised 45 feet and moved from its present location at Convent Avenue & 141st Street, around the corner to St. Nicholas Park. It will then undergo a extensive renovation and reopen in 2009 to serve, once again, as a museum and memorial.
This will be the building's second move. Originally placed in a small section of Hamilton's former property in 1893 as an adjustment to Hamilton Heights' newly designed street grid system, it has found itself wanting space and visitors for many years. In fact, the 45 foot lifting is unusual: buildings rarely are lifted more than a few feet off the ground when moved. This extreme measure became necessary to move it around St. Luke's Episcopal Church, to which The Grange was given, and since ceded to the NPS. After several years of negotiations, NYC granted an easement to move the house onto city park land (which was also, at one time, Hamilton family property.) And herein lies an interesting situation. The NYC Dept. of Parks and Recreation, through its offshoot, the Historic House Trust, oversees the management of 22 historic sites located in city parks, among which are Gracie Mansion, and several revolutionary sites including The Conference House in Staten Island, The Old Stone House in Brooklyn, two Washington's Headquarters buildings: Morris-Jumel Mansion in Manhattan, and Van Cortlandt House in The Bronx, as well as King Manor in Jamaica, home of Constitution signer Rufus King. While Federal management of monuments located in City Parks is not unknown (Grant's Tomb in Riverside Park, and Castle Clinton in Battery Park) the placement of The Grange in St. Nicholas Park would make it eligible to become city property as a member of the Historic House Trust. Will the NPS eventually hand it over? Only time will tell: but what a wonderful addition The Grange would make to the Big Apple's fabulous collection.
John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, & Chester Alan Arthur are the only members of this group, who have a unique place in Presidential history: what is it? A free dinner to all with the correct answer sent by phone, email or snail mail. Special Notice: For our 50th Anniversary meeting in October, 2008 the Trivia Treat will be taking a break. It will return in December.