On October 7, the American Revolution Round Table of New York will celebrate its Fiftieth Anniversary. It is a day we hope all our members will join us in hailing with pride and pleasure. Fifty years is a long time for any American organization. It is nothing less than amazing for one like the AART, whose officers and committee heads are all volunteers. It is a tribute to the enduring fascination of our subject, the founding of the American republic, an enterprise that has changed the world. It is also a tribute to our members’ stubborn faith that it was important for the Americans of the Twentieth Century – and now, the Twenty First Century – to know as much as possible about this tremendous event. We can take some credit for the remarkable and ongoing growth of interest in the Revolution. When Thomas Fleming published Now We Are Enemies in 1960, it was the first book on the Battle of Bunker Hill in 90 years. The Revolution had been overshadowed in the public mind by the Civil War and World Wars I and II. Today, books on the Revolution frequently make the bestseller list. HBO, PBS and CBS have produced major television shows on George Washington, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, the latter written by ARRT member Ron Blumer. Ron’s 1997 PBS film, Liberty! The American Revolution, won numerous awards and praise from all quarters. Tom Fleming’s book version won the AART award for the best book of the year and similar recognition from the History Book Club. Meanwhile, the number of Round Tables has grown steadily until there are now ten following our lead. In Pennsylvania the American Revolution Center at Valley Forge is raising $250 million dollars to build a state of the art museum that will tell the entire story of the Revolution for the first time in exhibit form. The building has been designed by famed architect Robert A. M. Stern of Yale. Ralph A. Applebaum, creator of the Holocaust Museum, the World War I Museum and dozens of other museums around the world, is in charge of the exhibits. They will tell the story using the latest dramatic techniques and technology from Microsoft and other wizards, utilizing a unique collection of artifacts, including George Washington’s wartime tent. We are proud to note that Tom Fleming is playing a major role in this project, as the senior member of the ARC’s board of scholars.
The ARRT was founded in 1958 by North Callahan of NYU, a prolific author of books on the Revolution. Francis S. Ronalds, Director of Morristown National Historical Park, was another early leader. Another early and enthusiastic member was Dr. Walter Jacobs, a multi-talentedd dentist with a gift for giving vivid reports of visits to battlefields and historic houses. By happy coincidence, his son, David W. Jacobs, is our current chairman. Another son, Dan, is one of our most faithful members. Many other members have 30 and 40 year pedigrees. For most of its first four decades, the ARRT met at historic Fraunces Tavern at Broad and Pearl Street. The restaurant side of the tavern went bankrupt in the late 1990s and we were forced to look elsewhere. After some wandering, we found a congenial home at the Williams Club.
In the early days, the RT membership was resolutely all male. Women were permitted to attend meetings only as invited guests of members. But when Tom Fleming became chairman in 1970, he proposed admitting women as members. It was one of our better ideas. Our membership is now about fifty fifty, genderwise, and women have served with distinction as chairpersons and committee members. They have also been notably insightful in their book reviews. Is a woman ARRT Chair in the future? There are some strong currents flowing in that logical direction.
Originally the Round Table planned to sponsor trips to battlefields in and around New York City and even to distant sites, such as Saratoga and Yorktown. But a few experiments revealed that most members were ready and eager to listen to qualified speakers and buy their books but they had little enthusiasm for group travel. The speakers and their books became the focus of our attention. Each year we have given a prize for the best book on the Revolution, an award that has attracted a great deal of attention among publishers as well as historians. As our awards make clear, we stand ready to support many points of view on the Revolution. In the 1970s, we gave the prize to a favorable biography of George III by an English historian and a few years later to an equally favorable biography of his great antagonist, Tom Paine.
Among our notable speakers over the years have been David McCullough, James Thomas Flexner, Joanne Freeman, Mary Beth Norton, Eric Foner, Carol Berkin and Don Higginbotham. The list has had very few lemons on it. An exception was the night we invited Marvin Kitman, author of George Washington’s Expense Account. The moment he finished his talk, a half dozen members were on their feet, furiously attacking the book. "Ah fellas," said this distinguished pseudo scholar. "Can’t you take a joke? I’m not serious about this." We let Marvin escape alive, if not well.
We have also enjoyed presentations by actors portraying General Washington and other leaders, as well as music by performers such as Arthur Schrader, ballad singer at Old Sturbridge Village. Another memorable evening was a visit from Wallace Gusler, Colonial Williamsburg’s master gunsmith, who brought a film showing in fascinating detail how the rifles of the Revolution were made. There is literally nothing about the American Revolution that has not interested us!
It seems fitting that this fall we are celebrating perhaps the most important anniversary on the Revolutionary calendar. Two hundred and twenty five years ago, on September 3, 1783, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John Adams went to the Hotel D’Yorke in Paris and signed the Treaty of Paris with the British diplomat, David Hartley. The document formally and finally ended eight years of warfare with Great Britain and established the United States of America as a nation.
The treaty also meant the end of the two years of menacing uncertainty that followed the American victory at Yorktown in 1781. Far from ending the war, Yorktown left the United States bankrupt and deeply divided about its future. The Continental Congress owed millions of dollars in back pay and pensions to George Washington’s soldiers. The congressmen could not persuade the 13 states of the shaky union to give them the power to raise so much as a penny in taxes. Meanwhile, inflation ravaged the millions of paper dollars issued by Congress until "not worth a Continental" became a wry synonym for worthlessness.
The Treaty of Paris rescued America from these embarrassments. On December 2, 1783, when news of the treaty reached Philadelphia, elation swept the city. The woes of the present receded and people began remembering the Revolution’s glory days. That unforgettable first week in July, 776, when Congress defiantly ratified Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence even though they knew a huge British fleet and army were about to attack New York. The wild excitement of the last week of that tumultuous year, when General Washington’s do or die victories at Trenton and Princeton rescued Philadelphia from capture by a seemingly unbeatable British army. The heroic patience of the suffering army at Valley Forge in the following year and its emergence from that ordeal on the highest imaginable point: Ben Franklin had negotiated an alliance with France!
To celebrate the Treaty of Paris, the Pennsylvania Assembly voted to erect a triumphal arch that spanned Market Street between Sixth and Seventh Streets. On it were thirteen paintings by Charles Willson Peale. Some honored General Washington and the alliance with France. Others hailed the future prosperity of the United States. The arch soon became the centerpiece of a boisterous celebration, with fireworks, oratory, parading soldiers and martial music.
On September 10, 2008, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts launched a visual celebration of the Treaty of Paris, in collaboration with the American Revolution Center. It is a veritable feast of historic paintings and fascinating artifacts that bring the Revolution to life in all its variety and drama. On September 12, Tom Fleming spoke on "The Mind and Heart of the Indispensable Man, George Washington." He was joined by Peter Lillbach, who has written a fascinating book, The Sacred Fire, about Washington’s religious faith.
Round Tabler Joe Nemeth has told us about a terrific celebration last June in New Jersey – the 230th Anniversary of the Battle of Monmouth. The Friends of Monmouth Battlefield have produced a superb booklet, with full color photographs of cannoneers and musket men blasting away. and a striking picture of the monument to General von Steuben, which was erected by the Steuben Society with some help from the FOMB in 2004. Joe Nemeth contributed an interesting essay, "They Were at Monmouth," telling what Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton and James Monroe did on that murderously hot June day.
One of the most important Revolutionary War sites in New York State may be on the brink of collapse. There was no hint of trouble as the summer began. Attendance was climbing for the first time in years, with a lively new education center wowing visitors. Moreover, this was Fort Ti’s 100th anniversary as a public attraction. But the Fort fell $2,500,000 short of paying for the education center and fingers began pointing in all directions. The Fort’s recent chief benefactors, billionaire Forrest E. Mars and his wife, Deborah, resigned from the board of directors and not a few people are asking for the head of the long time executive director, Nicholas Westbrook. He has announced he will retire next year. Perhaps most disturbed by the turmoil are the descendants of William Ferris Pell, who bought the fort’s ruins in 1820. The Pells eventually restored it and opened it to the public in 1909. Veteran Round Tablers fondly recall John Pell, who was a member, and his frequent invitations to visit Fort Ti. New York State has issued a statement, saying they are committed to the Fort’s survival. "This is only a hiccup in its history," a spokesman said. Let’s hope he’s right.
For years, state governments have created trails uniting sites of related historic interest: New York has one dedicated to the French and Indian War, while Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina have trails linking various Civil War campaign sites. But, if Congress and the White House actually come through with their promises, the American Revolution may have the longest and best trail of them all. As passed by the House of Representatives and proposed in the Senate, a bill (already supported by President Bush) will establish the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route, a 650 mile trail running from Newport, Rhode Island to Yorktown, Virginia following the movements of the French Army from its landing in New England in July, 1781, to its joining with Washington's American forces at Phillipsburg, New York, and their joint march to lay siege against Cornwallis. Signs will be posted at encampment sites, a brochure will be printed and a website created. While only a few persons are expected to travel the entire route, states see this as a way to encourage people to spend more time within their borders visiting historic sites that they would not consider if such a trail linking them together didn't exist.
Those of us in the know concerning the economic activities of our Founding Fathers realize that some of their business operations have evolved into modern major financial institutions. Alexander Hamilton has his Bank of New York Mellon, and Aaron Burr his JPMorgan Chase. But sometimes it is an offspring, many generations removed, who has the business ability.
A recent obituary recorded the life of Henry B. R. Brown, who with partner Bruce R. Bent, created the money-market mutual fund concept. They established the "Reserve Fund" in 1969 but it failed to catch on and they fell $250,000 in debt, until a NY Times article in 1973 sparked the imagination of investors, and by the end of the year the fund had $100 million in deposits. Today "Reserve Fund" assets are $62 billion: total money-market mutual fund assets total $3.5 trillion. Mr. Brown died at 82 on his farm in Leesburg, Virginia, which is very appropriate since he is a great great great grandson of Richard Henry Lee and thus also a collateral descendant of Francis Lightfoot Lee, and of Lighthorse Harry Lee. Ah, the Lees of Old (Money) Virginia.