This Month at the MHS

In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863, this exhibition features the pen Abraham Lincoln used to sign the document. Visitors can learn how the MHS acquired this extraordinary pen as well as view paintings, broadsides, engravings, and manuscripts that tell the story of how Boston celebrated Emancipation.

View documents and artifacts related to Abraham Lincoln. Featured items include Lincoln's letter to Joshua F. Speed explaining his evolving views on slavery as well as the casts of the life mask and hands of Lincoln made by Leonard Volk in the spring of 1860.

The exhibition will display many important manuscripts, photographs, and artifacts from the Society's collections related to the Abolitionist movement in Boston. Visitors can view items such as the imposing table for The Liberator that has not been on display in the Society's building for many years.

This case study focuses on how Americans understood the workings of the natural world as they imperfectly made gunpowder for the Continental Army. It argues that paying attention to the interactions between humans and the natural environment leads to a richer understanding of the war, and that modern American attitudes towards the environment have important roots in the Revolutionary period.

Reading private letters and journals, this book-in-progress investigates personal responses to Lincoln’s assassination, encompassing Union and Confederate, black and white, men and women, soldiers and civilians, rich and poor, the well-known and the unknown. What can these responses to such a cataclysmic event tell us about the aftermath of the Civil War, and what can we learn about understanding a transformative event on a human scale?

Prof. Stauffer’s lecture on Thursday evening will open a conference that will consider almost every major aspect of Massachusetts’ participation in the war: reform activities and the origins of the war; military life; the war, politics, and the economy; slavery and emancipation; and how the citizens of Massachusetts came to terms with the consequences of the conflict. It will feature established scholars as well as up-and-coming historians who will tackle new areas of emphasis, including the radical intellectual tradition, health and the environment, and the memory of the war.

Conference papers will be made available in advance to those who preregister. In six sessions on Friday and Saturday, panelists and commentators will offer brief remarks; a discussion with the audience will follow. Registration fee required to attend sessions. Registration available in late 2012. For information, contact kviens@masshist.org.

View the conference program.

Prof. Stauffer is a member of Harvard’s English Department and the chair of the university’s graduate program on the History of American Civilization. He will speak on the contribution of the Bay State’s black and white abolitionists and political leaders to secession, freedom, and equality under the law. He will also discuss briefly how the state responded to the "counter-Revolution" that stripped away these new rights after Reconstruction. This lecture and the reception that will follow will be free and open to the public. This program is also the keynote address for the MHS conference Massachusetts and the Civil War: The Commonwealth and National Disunion.

The search for a heterogeneous menu of game animals allowed northeastern Indians a flexible pattern of winter mobility. After 1704, however, English soldiers patrolled Indians’ winter hunting grounds, interfering with native reliance on wild animals. Political ecology—how power affects people’s access to routes and resources—mattered more than environmental degradation to the fate of the winter hunt on the Maritime Peninsula.

How did the marriages to Benedict Arnold and Henry Knox change the lives and personal development of their brides, Peggy Shippen and Lucy Knox? Nancy Rubin Stuart’s talk reveals the contradictory paths two young women followed subsequent to their passionate marriages to patriotic men during the American Revolution and the early Federal era. Using historical correspondence and historical drawings and portraits, Ms. Stuart will shed light on how these defiant brides affected the course of the Revolution. Ms. Stuart is an award-winning author and journalist who specializes in women and social history.

Reservations requested. Please click on the ticket icon above, or contact the education department at 617-646-0560 / education@masshist.org.

MHS Associate Members (age 40 and under) are invited to join us for a cocktail and some delightful discourse immediately following the talk by Nancy Rubin Stuart. RSVP required.

Evening Lecture

Defiant Brides of the American Revolution
6:00 PM
Nancy Rubin Stuart
Part of the "New Books/New Looks: Revisiting the Past" series

How did the marriages to Benedict Arnold and Henry Knox change the lives and personal development of their brides, Peggy Shippen and Lucy Knox? Nancy Rubin Stuart’s talk reveals the contradictory paths two young women followed subsequent to their passionate marriages to patriotic men during the American Revolution and the early Federal era. Using historical correspondence and historical drawings and portraits, Ms. Stuart will shed light on how these defiant brides affected the course of the Revolution. Ms. Stuart is an award-winning author and journalist who specializes in women and social history.

Focusing on the text of the August 1855 letter Lincoln wrote to his friend Joshua Fry Speed, Elaine Grublin, MHS Head of Reader Services, will discuss Lincoln’s early thoughts on slavery in America and his reaction to the rise of the American (“Know-Nothing”) Party.

This special event is open to Members of the MHS Fund Paine through Adams Circles. Enjoy a special lunch and behind-the-scenes tour of the Museum of World War II with Founder and Director Kenneth Rendell. The museum houses the most comprehensive collection of WWII artifacts on display anywhere in the world. A bus will leave from the MHS at 11 AM and return by 5 PM.  Space is limited. RSVP required. Fee: $50. Part of the MHS Local Travel Series.

For more information or to register, contact Katy Capó at kcapo@masshist.org or 617-646-0518.

Slavery was the great social and moral issue of the 19th century, and Concord was a hotbed of abolitionist sentiment. Residents Emerson, Thoreau, and the Alcotts confronted slavery head-on in their writings and actions, as indignation turned to outrage. This leisurely two-mile walking tour explores the involvement of these authors and their neighbors in antislavery efforts in Concord and beyond. It begins and ends at the Concord train depot (an easy ride out from Boston and Cambridge) and is coordinated with the Sunday train schedule. Walk leader Jayne Gordon, MHS Director of Education and Public Programs, is a resident of Concord who has worked at most of the town’s historic sites. She teaches the Concord history course required for all town guides.

Registration Required. Fee $25/$15 (F/M); Free for MHS Fund Giving Circle members. Light refrehsments included. Please click on the ticket icon above, or contact the education department at 617-646-0557 / education@masshist.org.

This discussion will focus on two papers, “Honorable Citizens, Ethnic Militias in Chicago, 1855-1879,” by Mimi Cowan of Boston College, and "African American and Irish Political Coalitions in Boston, Massachusetts, 1881-1890,” by Millington Bergeson-Lockwood of George Mason University. Cowan’s paper highlights the ways in which participation in volunteer military groups sometimes helped immigrants to combat nativism and, at other times, fueled nativists’ concerns about foreigners. Bergeson-Lockwood’s paper identifies three areas where African Americans and Irish immigrants established coalitions and laid claim, not only to a historic resistance to oppression, but also to participation in the founding events of the United States.