A Philosophical Sketch on Archival Research in the Field of Early America

By Bianca Laliberté, Andrew Oliver Fellow, 2025-2026

I have not yet encountered a philosopher dealing with the reality of archival research who has not confessed to me the ache and discomfort they experienced once actually immersed in the work. Fair enough: the Foucauldian confrontation of the philosophical tradition with the messy realm of the archives would not come about without irritation. Archival research breaks the flow of the tightly configured reading processes that inform this tradition. It cracks open the philosophical experience, leaving much room for emotional and cognitive dissonance, opening the door to a sort of chaotic sentiment.

Photo of an open diary on a foam book cradle, with handwriting on left side and a printed page reading "Almanac" on the right side.
Figure 1. Jeremy Belknap Diary, 1786. Massachusetts Historical Society, Ms. N-1827; P-380, Boxes A.1.10-11 III.

I wish to bring attention to the fact that such a Western philosophical narrative holds space for a rather European point of view. Unless we think of the development of American thought as a mere extension of European thought—which I can’t resign myself to doing for critical reasons analogous to the ones put forward by Ned Blackhawk, we must admit that, on the other side of the Atlantic, the logic of archival research somewhat follows an inverted logic. When facing the intellectual history of early America, one could argue that the chaotic sentiment is not experienced as the product of a philosophical breakthrough. It appears to me to be much more accurately perceived as the effect of an intrinsic quality. For researchers looking into materials from the seventeenth and eighteen centuries, the cognitive need to confront and defeat the dispersion of what we could call “American thought” through the grey world of archives and documents tends to feel rather unavoidable. Chronologically speaking, first comes the dissemination of the body of modern American thought, then come its otherwise structured forms.

Close up photo of the sides of pages
Figure 2. Jeremy Belknap Diary, 1786. Massachusetts Historical Society, Ms. N-1827; P-380, Boxes A.1.10-11 III

Gérard Deledalle, the French philosopher who introduced American pragmatism in France during the golden years of continental philosophy, did not share these preoccupations. His framing of the beginnings of American philosophy (1954) led him no further back than to written oeuvres that could arguably be compared to textual forms that are familiar to the philosophical tradition. After rapidly covering contributions from individual thinkers like Samuel Johnson, Jonathan Edwards, or Thomas Jefferson, he rushes to address the emergence of American transcendentalism. Many early Americanists, on the other hand, have tended to be much more generous—sometimes too much so. Following patterns observable in early American discourses, many of them willingly identify the unarticulated philosophies of the seventeenth and eighteen-century American context as “practical” and even as “pragmatic” ones, sometimes without giving the notion of philosophy itself any further thought. This loosening of the notion of philosophy is not only the fruit of academic developments, however. The approaches to knowledge that drove eighteenth-century-born American learned societies certainly contributed to it.

Photo of a diary open on a foam book cradle. A hand holds the pages open.
Figure 3. Jeremy Belknap Diary, 1787. Massachusetts Historical Society, Ms. N-1827; P-380, Boxes A.1.10-11 III.

In Jeremy Belknap’s annotated almanacs, calendar pages and blank pages covered with manuscript notes drastically alternate (Figures 1–4). These artefacts convey a powerful image of his personal experience of the disruption of continuous time. And so does the gathering of the first collections of the MHS, through which he certainly dealt with the interrupting rhythm of archival dissemination, even more so given that the organizing principles that led his endeavor surpassed the bibliographical and archival categories. His approach could, in that sense, be called “intermedial”: the spectrum of material he embraced included objects, maps, images, and so-called “curiosities”. Belknap never bestowed his collecting philosophy with a formal theorization, and it would be quite dubious to frame him as a philosopher. However, to build on a statement articulated by Abram C. Van Engen (2023) in relation to the discipline of history, the impact that individuals like Belknap, Ebenezer Hazard, and John Pintard have had on the development of American intellectual history at large has yet been overlooked by scholars attached to the various disciplines that draw on the gigantic pool of early texts and artefacts that they collected. This postulate includes—or should include—philosophy and intellectual history.

Photo of a diary open on a foam book cradle. The open pages have been divided into a table called "Ratification of the Constitution by the States" with columns of States, Time, Pro, Con, and Majority.
Figure 4. Jeremy Belknap Diary, 1787. Massachusetts Historical Society, Ms. N-1827; P-380, Boxes A.1.10-11 III.

One way to think of this interdisciplinary phenomenon in general terms would be to verify to what extent it sheds light on the horizon of a troubling possibility, which Van Engen touches upon: the disseminative logic that determines the making of the various fields of Early America to this day stood at the heart of Belknap’s nationalist project. This is, at least, what I want to leave for the reader of this blog post to think about. Continental standpoints of philosophy fed the critique of American nationalism from the 1970s on. We need a philosophy of archival research which recognizes that the unreflective application of these standpoints to the American proto-imperial context runs the risk of blinding us to the task here at hand. From the perspective of the study of Early America, the study of institutional history and the critique of structures of power that motivated Michel Foucault’s engagement with archival research cannot target a monolithic form of philosophy alone. It must be capable of weighing the fact that the American nationalist metaphysic, which Belknap and his associates translated into a practice of gathering, embodies a sort of democratic and inclusive quality. One could speak, using the terms of Jacques Rancière—and not without a touch of irony—of a democracy of the sensible, where sheets of paper, records, images, and Indigenous art pieces, are put together for the State’s and citizen’s eye to see and exhibit. This invites us to acknowledge that our defense of democratic approaches to research thus requires deeper thinking and renewed forms of investigation, which might prove necessary to face the symptomatic return of nationalism.

And of course, following this path, one should expect to experience a certain level of ache and discomfort.

Further Reading:

For a critique of the denial of the cost of political and imperial “independence” of the United States, view Blackhawk, Ned. The Rediscovery of America. Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. New Haven, Yale University, 2023—and p.1 in particular, where he writes: “Historians have largely followed suit in focusing on Europeans and their descendants: Puritans governing a commonwealth in a wilderness; pioneers settling western frontiers; and European immigrants huddled upon Atlantic shores. Scholars have long conflated U.S. history with Europeans, maintaining that the United States evolved from its British settlements”.

Deledalle, Gérard. Histoire de la philosophie américaine, Presses universitaires de France, Paris, 1954.

For a critique of unreflective applications of philosophical interpretation to the Early American context, view Beard, Charles. The Supreme Court and the Constitution. New York, Paisley Press, 1912. On p.79, Beard argued that the Founding Fathers and the Framers of the Constitution, “were not philosophers, but men of business and property . . . and had no problem with the system of class rule and the strong centralization of government which existed in England”.

Van Engen, Abram C. (2023). “Pursuing the “True History” of America” in The Massachusetts Historical Review, Published by the Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol 21, 2020.  I wish to thank Ondine Le Blanc for referring this brilliant article to me.

Posted in Research fellow

Adams Family Spotlight: Susanna Boylston Adams

By Miriam Liebman, Assistant Editor, Adams Papers

Adams Family Correspondence, volume 17, forthcoming in 2027, is filled with politics, diplomacy, war, and strong opinions, but also many personal changes for the Adams family. Several beloved Adams family members and dear friends die between 1809 and 1812, the years covered in this volume. In the midst of this sorrow, John and Abigail watch their grandchildren develop into teenagers and young adults. Letters of the third generation first appeared in volume 16, but their correspondence plays a more prominent role in the series as they grow older. While some of the grandchildren are more famous than others due to their own careers or family drama, I want to highlight one of the lesser-known Adams grandchildren, Susanna Boylston Adams.

Susanna Boylston Adams (1796–1884) was the eldest daughter of Charles and Sarah Smith Adams (Sarah Smith Adams was the sister of William Stephens Smith, who married Charles’ sister Nabby!) Susanna and her younger sister, Abigail Louisa Smith Adams, spent much of their youth with grandparents John and Abigail after their father’s death in 1800.

Profile of woman with her hair up in a black silhouette on white paper
Silhouette of Susanna Boylston Adams, by Boston artist Henry Williams

In 1817, Susanna married Lt. Charles Thomas Clark, who died two years later. She remarried in 1833 to William R. H. Treadway, who died in 1836. The Adams family provided her with financial support until her death. The first letter to Susanna in our collection is an 1808 letter from her grandmother, printed in volume 16, with most of her early correspondence falling into the timeline of volume 17. Her writings are even more frequent in the Adams Papers as she gets older.

Susanna was born during her grandfather’s presidency but grew up in the idyll of her grandparents’ farm in Quincy. Her social circle was filled with cousins (including Nabby’s daughter, Caroline Amelia Smith) as well as young women in the greater Quincy area, including Ann Hall, an orphan raised by the Adamses’ neighbors, and Ann Gerry, daughter of Elbridge and Ann Thompson Gerry. She also traveled locally, including to Newburyport to spend time with friends. In October 1810, Abigail wrote to her in Newburyport that this was the “first time you have gone so far from home without a guide.” She reminded Susanna about proper etiquette and social behavior.

Most of the extant correspondence is comprised of letters that Susanna received rather than those she wrote, but we are able to learn quite a bit about Susanna from her incoming mail and how often she addressed letters as her grandmother’s assistant. She had an especially close relationship with John Adams; Abigail noted he loved reading Susanna’s letters, hearing her sing and play guitar, and going on outings together, including a visit to the First Church of Weymouth.

For more on Susanna Boylston Adams, be sure to check out Adams Family Correspondence, volume 17, when it is published in 2027!

The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors. Major funding of the edition is currently provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Packard Humanities Institute. Volume 16 and 17 of the Adams Family Correspondence also received support from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged

My Archival Surprise, Or, Charles Sumner’s Views on the Birthright Citizenship Case

By Michael A. Schoeppner, Andrew W. Mellon Short-Term Fellow, Associate Professor and Trustee Research Professor University of Maine-Farmington

Historians often go into the archives with specific questions in mind, and we can exhibit obscene levels of patience as we sift through materials in search of historical evidence to answer those questions. Many research trips yield more frustration than insight. But other times, not only do we find what we are looking for, we come across an item that speaks directly to us about our contemporary historical moment. I call this fortunate event an “archival surprise.”

During my first week at the Massachusetts Historical Society, I was scrolling through the Winthrop Papers, a sprawling collection that contains multiple volumes from Robert C. Winthrop, former US Senator and US Speaker of the House. In 1843, Winthrop wrote a report about the imprisonment of Black people in Southern port cities. This report was central to my current research on the movement of free Black people before the Civil War and their ideas about citizenship. As I scrolled through Winthrop’s personal correspondence, I came across a letter from Charles Sumner, who was just cutting his teeth in public service when he wrote it. In the letter, he applauded Winthrop’s argument about Black people’s citizenship rights. I did not read the entire letter at first; I made an electronic copy to read later.

Two days afterwards, I was in the MHS reading room, exhausted from the previous evening’s doomscrolling over the recently argued birthright citizenship case currently before the Supreme Court. While I was waiting for a set of documents to be delivered, I read that letter from Charles Sumner. As I suspected, he held similar views as Winthrop regarding the citizenship rights that Black travelers ought to be entitled. But then, completely unsolicited, Charles Sumner wrote,

“The genius of our institutions invites immigration, but it does not say “come,” then add “but all who come must be of the purest white, and you cannot have offspring entitled to privileges + immunities of citizenship.” For whatever may be the conditions of the foreign immigrant under the Acts of Congress, I cannot doubt that his children, born in the United States, are citizens thereof.”

And just in case I was misreading Sumner’s rather deplorable handwriting, he reiterated in no uncertain terms,

“The accident of birth impresses upon the infant this indelible character. He becomes a citizen by birth within the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth, for then the C’wealth treats him as owing allegiance. He is one of her children. He is not a resident, but a citizen.”

I was shellshocked at how pertinent and precise Sumner’s position was. Given how essential he and other Radical Republicans were in the drafting and passage of the Reconstruction Amendments and the 1866 Civil Rights Act while Sumner was a US Senator, his views on immigrants’ birthright citizenship should be required reading for legal theorists. If anyone cared what the Radical Republicans meant when they proposed the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship clause, here was a powerful enunciation.

I swore Sumner was talking to me. Then I remembered the portrait hanging directly behind my table in the MHS reading room. I turned around, and Old Charles was there, sitting in his chair, staring down. His smug glare confirmed my suspicion. He wrote that letter to us as much as he wrote it to Winthrop. Here was an archival surprise, courtesy of Charles Sumner.

painting of man in a suit framed in a gold frame
Portrait of Charles Sumner in the MHS reading room

Anyone who has spent considerable time in the archives has met with similar moments. Archival surprises are special rewards, a reminder that the past is not ever really past. It also confirms that public archives, such as the Massachusetts Historical Society, are invaluable cultural repositories.

Posted in From Our Collections, Research fellow Tagged

Remembering Fernald: Uncovering the Hidden History of Disability in Massachusetts

by Meg Szydlik, Visitor Services Coordinator

On February 12, 2026, the MHS welcomed Alex Green of the Harvard Kennedy School to give a talk on his book, A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald School and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled. Green’s research has been ongoing, so he included information in his talk that he has uncovered since publication. It was a fascinating glimpse into a subject I have been researching in the MHS collection with my Disability in the Archive series, which you can check out in the further reading section. Green’s work looks at the ways disability was treated in Boston’s own backyard at the Walter E. Fernald State School in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Book cover is a grid of images. Most grids show a three-story stone building, which is placed differently and rotated in each box. One box is a photograph of an older man in a hat.
Green’s book A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald School and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled.

Green took us through the context around the creation of the Fernald School. He complicated the narrative of Walter Fernald, the man who founded the school, who was neither good nor evil. Through Green, the audience understood that Fernald was a man who was trying his best, even when his best failed people. Fernald was a eugenicist who eventually changed his opinion and fought against his prior beliefs. Green discussed the way the Fernald School was set up and the impact this particular school had on the education of disabled children in the United States, and later the world. Fernald believed that hard work and busyness could improve disabilities. Green pointed to the way the theories Fernald espoused are still present in special education practices around the United States today, and even presented his own rather radical idea that there should be no separation of disabled and abled children in schools.

However, Green did not shy away from the damage that Fernald’s theories created. He showed image after image of truly horrifying ways the students were treated, including being locked up, chained, and other brutalizations. Much of what he described was remarkably similar to the things I read in Dorothea Dix’s texts about the treatment of disabled people in jails and almshouses. The cruelty is still startling to me, no matter how many descriptions of it I read or images I see. And Green was clear about how cruel these things were. He was clear too about how that cruelty extended to the way the school handled the health and safety of these students. Those who died while attending the Fernald School, as well as the Metropolitan State Hospital, are buried in a cemetery on the grounds. I have been to the cemetery myself and the anonymity of the graves is as striking as Green said. It is not meant to be a place for loved ones to come and weep. And that is even more clear from Green’s explanation that sometimes families were never told what happened to their loved one who entered the school.

The research Green has done is not without controversy or challenges. Even accessing the records of the Fernald School at the Massachusetts State Archives was difficult, as a state law requires that an individual’s medical records remain private after their death, even to family members. He was able to get a court order to unseal them, but he noted his belief that these records should be accessible to survivors and family members without such extreme measures and described his frustration that only an Ivy League professor could access them. He also emphasized that much of the restricted material did not seem to be medical records at all, including drawings done by residents of the school and hospital. The issue of access to information is further complicated by the lack of centralization. As hospitals and schools closed, many of the records did not go to a single location or even an archive at all. In fact, many of these records have been sold on eBay and other similar sites in the ensuing years. It is a multi-pronged problem with no clear solution.

Green shared an important story. The brutality of what happened in these schools should not be forgotten or swept under the rug. The same ideas that formed the Fernald School are still present in American society today, as Green pointed out by linking the philosophy of Fernald to modern special education. Green demanded an unflinching look at the treatment of disabled people, one with compassion towards all but particularly towards the victims of an abusive system. It was a good reminder, and one we should take care to listen to.

Further Reading of the Disability in the Archive Series

Freaks and Geeks

Insanity and Institutions

Veteran Voices

Fairies or Workers?

The Mind Shudders With Disgust

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged ,