By Jeremy Dibbell
We’d like to congratulate MHS Fellow Gordon S. Wood, whose book Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (Oxford University Press, 2009) was named a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in History. The winner in that category this year was Liaquat Ahamed, for Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. Joining Wood as a finalist was Greg Grandin, the author of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City.
By Jeremy Dibbell
On the eve of Thomas Jefferson’s 267th birthday, we at MHS are delighted to annouce a new web presentation of the manuscript copy of Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, his only full-length book. Read more about the manuscript here.
By way of introduction to the new site: “When Jefferson was in Paris in 1785 representing the United States as a diplomat, he paid to have 200 copies of Notes printed for private distribution. Prior to publication, Jefferson reworked an earlier version of his manuscript by using sealing wax to attach corrections and changes written on small additional pieces of paper to full handwritten pages. He also expanded the text by inserting additional full pages. These changes show the evolution of Jefferson’s ideas on a number of topics, and the supplemental information he gathered as he wrote. This website allows the reader to interact directly with Jefferson’s complex manuscript by reading the original manuscript and by following all the changes that he made to the text before it was first published – including the opportunity to see passages written by Jefferson that have been hidden by attachments for more than two centuries.”
Our digital projects team has really worked some pretty amazing magic with this presentation – you can literally lift attachments off the page and see what Jefferson wrote underneath – or flip up additions and check out what’s on the back. It’s a little complicated at first, so I encourage you to use the Tutorial before you begin. It helps, believe me! Once you’ve mastered the navigation, you can start browsing at page 1, select your chapter, choose a selected passage, or search.
Also check out the list of sources for further reading, and some additional documents compiled by Jefferson during the composition of this work (including a table of Virginia birds).
Enjoy!
By Jeremy Dibbell
Just one public event this week:
On Tuesday, 13 April, the Boston Environmental History Seminar series continues with a 5:15 p.m. talk by Anya Zilberstein of Concordia University, “Cold Comfort: The Benefits of Climate Change in Early Northern America.” Brian Donahue of Brandeis University will give the comment. Please read the Seminars @ MHS blog post for more information on attending seminars, including how to make reservations and receive the papers in advance.
By Jeremy Dibbell
You’ve probably heard of Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (and if you haven’t, just wait until next week, and watch this space!), but you may not have heard that Jefferson’s text was an expanded version of answers to a set of questions posed by François Marbois, the secretary to the minister from France, Anne-César, Chevalier de La Luzerne. In late 1780 and early 1781, Marbois sent lists of queries to representatives of each state (some with 16 questions, some with 22), requesting information ranging from “descriptions of the state boundaries and natural resources to the religion and social customs of its people. He asked for information about state history, population (including Native American peoples), manufacturing, and colleges, as well as specific information about how each state handled estates taken from Tories.”
Our April Object of the Month is a draft of Roger Sherman’s reply to Marbois, which he wrote in November 1782. Sherman, a Connecticut representative to the Continental Congress from 1774-81 and again in 1783-84, notes in his letter that he has delayed answering until he was “able to obtain an account of all the articles about which you desire to be informed.” He goes on to provide answers to Marbois’ questions, and enclosing several additional lists and texts. Of the principal manufactures, he writes: “Coarse linens & Woolens. Potash. Salt Petre, of which more than 100 Tons has been made in Connecticut Since the present war. & a Sufficient quantity of G. powder. Most kinds of Iron ware is also manufactured here, such as Cannon, & Cast Iron of all kinds & Edge Tools Such as Axes Sythes &c.” Of Tory property: “The Estates of the Rebels who have joined the Enemy or voluntarily taken probation under them are forfeited to the State, & disposed of for the expence of the war.” You can see images of the full draft letter, or read a transcription, here.
In her Object of the Month essay, Digital Projects Coordinator Nancy Heywood also touches on the other known responses to Marbois. John Witherspoon penned “A Description of the State of New-Jersey” (viewable here via Google Books), and we have a copy of Marbois’ queries regarding that state in the William Livingston papers II (viewable online here). And General John Sullivan answered Marbois in December 1780 regarding the state of New Hampshire, of which the original is at the Huntington Library (we have copies of both Marbois’ queries and Sullivan’s reply in our Miscellaneous Bound collection). The Historical Society of Pennsylvania holds Marbois’ letter to Thomas McKean with queries about Delaware, although we don’t know if any response exists. Of course the most famous reply, which was what grew into Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (the original manuscript copy of which is part of the Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson manuscripts at MHS, and is now viewable online here).
Are there other “Notes on the state of ___” still out there? We suspect it’s entirely possible, and welcome news on any of them!
By Jeremy Dibbell
While our own events calendar remains jam-packed (and we hope you’ll visit often), our friends at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester have some really stellar public programs coming up too, so please check out their calendar and take advantage of these offerings. Some of the upcoming events include:
– A conversation between National Endowment for the Humanities chair Jim Leach and historian Jill Lepore, “Uncivil Discourse”, “a public discussion on the state of political discourse in America, past and present. This program is part of a fifty-state American Civility Tour that Leach is conducting to raise awareness of how divisive and potentially dangerous harsh and hateful language can be. Leach believes that the exchange of ideas and the consideration of other viewpoints are central to the humanities and that we need to bring this spirit of reason back into politics.” Wednesday, 14 April at 7:30 p.m.
– Author talks by Gordon S. Wood, Ezra Greenspan, Walter W. Woodward, and Lori Ginzburg, among others.
Full calendar here.
By Jeremy Dibbell
The MHS awards a wide variety of research fellowships each year, and I’m happy to be able to pass along the list for the 2010-11 season. Please pardon the lengthy list. For more information about each type of fellowship, click the link in the heading. We look forward to welcoming back longtime friends and meeting new ones from among this exciting group.
MHS-NEH Long-Term Research Fellowships:
Rachel Van, Columbia University, Free Trade and Family Values: Kinship Networks and the Culture of Early American Capitalism
Joanne van der Woude, Harvard University, American Aeneids: Conquest and Conversion in Poetry from the Americas
Suzanne and Caleb Loring Research Fellowship (with the Boston Athenaeum):
Peter Wirzbicki, New York University, Black Intellectuals, White Abolitionists, and Revolutionary Transcendentalists: Creating the Radical Intellectual Tradition in Antebellum Boston
New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC) Awards (with 16 other institutions)*
Thomas Adams, Tulane University, The Servicing of America: Service Work, Political Economy, and the Making of Modern America
*Rachel Cope, Brigham Young University, Drops of Grace and Mercy: How Women Cultivated Personal Change through Conversion Processes
Christine DeLucia, Yale University, The Memory Frontier: Making Past and Place in the Northeast after King Philip’s War
Allison Elias, University of Virginia, Gendering the Problems of Working Women: Clerical Workers, Labor Organizing, and Second-Wave Feminism
Hayley Glaholt, Northwestern University, ‘Reversing the Chivalry of Christ’: Quaker Women Challenge the ‘Species Line’ of Pacifist Ethics
Jane Fiegen Green, Washington University St. Louis, The Boundary of Youth: Adulthood and Civil Society in Early America, 1780-1850
Yu-ling Huang, State University of New York at Binghamton, The United States and Reproductive Politics in Postwar East Asia: A Transnational Network of Demographic Knowledge, Contraceptive Technologies, and Population Control Policies
*Robert Mussey, ‘To Seek a Better Country’: A Biography of Richard Cranch and Family
*Nicholas Osborne, Columbia University, Little Capitalists: Savings Institutions in United States History, 1816-1941
Christopher Pastore, University of New Hampshire, From Sweetwater to Seawater: An Environmental and Atlantic History of Narragansett Bay, 1636-1836
*Joshua Smith, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Yankee Doodle Upset: New England’s Yankee Identity in the War of 1812
Peter Wirzbicki, New York University, Black Intellectuals, White Abolitionists, and Revolutionary Transcendentalists: Creating the Radical Intellectual Tradition in Antebellum Boston
* Note: Those names marked with a * will be conducting research at MHS through this award.
MHS Short-Term Research Fellowships:
Richard Boles, The George Washington University, Divided Faiths: The Rise of Segregated Northern Churches (African American Studies Fellowship)
Annie Rudd, Columbia University, The Performance of Everyday Life: A History of the Photographic Pose (Andrew Oliver Research Fellowship)
Anthony Antonucci, University of Connecticut, ‘When in Rome’: American Relations with the Italian States from Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1790-1860 (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Matthew Bahar, University of Oklahoma, The People of the Dawnland and Their Atlantic World (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Irene Cheng, Columbia University, Forms of Function: Self Culture, Geometry, and Octagon Architecture in Antebellum America (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Rachel Herrmann, University of Texas at Austin, Food and War: Indians, Slaves, and the American Revolution (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Sarah Keyes, University of Southern California, Circling Back: Migration to the Pacific and the Reconfiguration of America, 1820-1900 (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Susan Pearson, Northwestern University, Registering Birth: Population and Personhood in American History (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, Columbia University, Corresponding Republics: Private Letters and Patriot Societies in the American, Dutch and French Revolutions, ca. 1765-1792 (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Marc Selverstone, University of Virginia, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Withdrawal of American Troops from Vietnam (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
David Silverman, The George Washington University, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Transformation of Native America (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Eric Hinderaker, University of Utah, Boston’s Massacre: Authority and Violence in the British Empire (Benjamin F. Stevens Fellowship)
Mary Kelley, University of Michigan, American Reading and Writing Practices, 1760-1860 (Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellowship)
Marc-William Palen, University of Texas at Austin, The Cleveland ‘Conspiracy’: Mugwumpery, Free Trade Ideology, and Foreign Policy in Gilded-Age America (Marc Friedlaender Fellowship)
David Preston, The Citadel, Braddock’s Veterans: Paths of Loyalty in the British Empire, 1755-1775 (Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship)
Nora Doyle, University of North Carolina, ‘A Higher Place in the Scale of Being’: Experience and Representation of the Maternal Body in America, 1750-1865 (Ruth R. & Alyson R. Miller Fellowship)
Laura Prieto, Simmons College, New Woman: New Empire: 1898 and Its Legacies for Women in the United States (Ruth R. & Alyson R. Miller Fellowship)
Edward Hanson, The Papers of Robert Treat Paine (Paine Publication Fund Fellowship)
Brian Gratton, Arizona State University, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Politics of Immigration Restriction (Twentieth Century Fellowship)
Sara Damiano, The Johns Hopkins University, Financial Credit and Professional Credibility: Lawyers and Laypeople in New England Ports, 1700-1776 (W.B.H. Dowse Fellowship)
Neal Dugre, Northwestern University, Creating New England: Intercolonial Political Culture and the Birth of a Region in the Seventeenth-Century English Atlantic (W.B.H. Dowse Fellowship)
By Jeremy Dibbell
Please join us on Wednesday, 7 April for a brown-bag lunch talk by Robert J. Robertson of Lamar University, “Louisa Adams and her brother, Henry, in Italy – A brief glimpse.” This event will begin at 12 noon. More info here.
And the “Margaret Fuller and Her Circles” conference kicks off on Thursday, 8 April with a keynote address at 6 p.m. by Mary Kelley of the University of Michigan, “‘The Measure of my Footprint’: Margaret Fuller’s Unfinished Revolution.” A reception will follow. The conference will continue on Friday and Saturday here at MHS.
By Jeremy Dibbell
The Sarah Gooll Putnam diaries (finding guide) will be unavailable from 8 April through approximately 1 May 2010; they are headed offsite to be microfilmed. In July 2009 the MHS received a $16,771 Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners to conserve, microfilm and digitize portions of the diaries.
Putnam, a Boston portrait artist, began her diary on Thanksgiving Day in 1860 when she was nine years old and maintained it until her death in 1912, filling 27 volumes. The diaries are richly illustrated with approximately 400 watercolor paintings and chronicle Putnam’s career as an artist as well as her extensive travels throughout the United States and abroad.
By MHS
Upon learning that he was one of only three presidents for whom the MHS does not have manuscript holdings, Barack Obama announced this morning that he’ll be dropping by the Historical Society this evening (he’ll be in town for two DNC fundraisers) to personally deliver a handwritten draft copy of his 2004 Democratic convention keynote address, delivered here in Boston.
In a statement announcing the trip, Obama promised that he would ask his two immediate predecessors to follow his example.
[Note: Please note the date of this post]
By Jeremy Dibbell
We hope you’ll join us on Wednesday, 31 March for an author talk with Michael O’Brien about his new (and delightful) book Mrs. Adams in Winter. Refreshments will be served at 5:30 p.m., with the talk set to start at 6 p.m. Reservations are now required for this event, and it’s filling up fast! You can sign up here.
On Thursday, 2 April, as part of the Boston Early American History seminar series, Jeannine DeLombard of the University of Toronto will present a talk, “The Ignominious Cord: Abraham Johnstone’s Address and the New Black Politics.” Edward Rugemer of Yale University will deliver a comment. Please read the Seminars @ MHS blog post for more information on attending seminars, including how to make reservations and receive the papers in advance. The seminar will begin at 5:15 p.m.