Aerostatic, Air Balloon, Freedom: The Adams Family’s Interest in Balloon-powered Flight

by Heather Rockwood, Communications Manager

John Adams (JA) and John Quincy Adams (JQA) were fascinated by the hottest flight invention of the 1780s: hot air balloons. Their fascination rivals present-day Parisian’s enjoyment of the Olympic and Paralympic cauldron. Paris citizens are currently collecting signatures to keep the Olympic and Paralympic cauldron as a permanent display representing the French national motto, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.” Since this Olympic flame uses no fossil fuels, only water and light, it could possibly be on display long term.

Color photograph aimed upwards from the ground on a dark night. What is visible is a large inflated balloon tethered by many strings to a basket holding light and giving off steam which lights the balloon from below with a lovely glow. A row of old-style streetlamps are in a line from the top left to the bottom right lit up to match the balloon.
The Olympic Flame rises on a balloon after being lit in Paris, France during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, 26 July 2024. Credit: Francisco Seco

JA and JQA were in Paris in 1783 when Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier developed their “aerostatique” hot air balloons. These flight experiments caught the fancy of Parisians and the Adamses. On 27 August 1783, JQA wrote in his diary:

“after dinner I went to see the experiment, of the flying globe. A Mr: Montgolfier of late has discovered that, if one fills a ball with inflammable air, much lighter than common air, the ball of itself will go up to an immense height of itself. This was the first publick experiment of it. at Paris. a Subscription was opened some time agone and filled at once for making a globe; it was of taffeta glued together with gum, and lined with parchment: filled with inflammable air: it was of a spherical form; and was 14 foot size in Diameter. it was placed in the Champ de Mars. at 5. o’clock 2. great guns fired from the Ecole Militaire, were the signal given for its going, it rose at once, for some time perpendicular, and then slanted. the weather, was unluckily very Cloudy, so that in less than 2. minutes it was out of sight: it went up very regularly and with a great swiftness. as soon as it was out of sight. 2. more cannon were fired from the Ecole Militaire to announce it. this discovery is a very important one, and if it succeeds it may become very useful to mankind.”

Although this wasn’t the first experiment of flight with the balloon, which occurred 4 June 1783, this was the first public exhibition of it. JA wrote to Abigail Adams on 7 September 1783, “The Moment I hear of it [AA’s arrival in Europe], I will fly with Post Horses to receive you at least, and if the Ballon, Should be carried to such Perfection in the mean time as to give Mankind the safe navigation of the Air, I will fly in one of them at the Rate of thirty Knots an hour.”

A black ink printed engraving of a large round balloon netted and tethered by many ropes to a small boat style basket with many carved decorations and two figures holding flags in the ship. At the bottom are words in French.
“Aerostatic Experiments” in Paris 1783, French colored engraving of a balloon flight in 1783

This fascination continued and spread! On 10 November 1784, JQA wrote to his friend Peter Jay Munro:

“Messieurs Roberts made their third experiment, the 19th of September, and with more success than any aerostatic travellers have had before. They went up from the Thuileries, amidst a concourse of I suppose 10,000 persons. At noon, and at forty minutes past six in the Evening they descended at Beuory in Artois fifty leagues from Paris. This is expeditious travelling, and I heartily wish they would bring balloons to such a perfection, as that I might go to N. York, Philadelphia, or Boston in five days time. M.M. Roberts have publish’d a whole Volume of Observations upon their Voyage, or Journey or whatever it may be called, but I judge from the abstracts I have seen of it that they have taken a few traveller’s Licenses, and have given some little play to their Imaginations. . . . They have established somewhere in Paris, a machine which they call une tour aërostatique where for a small price, any curious person may mount as high as he pleases, and so ‘look down upon the pendent world.’ ”

On 21 January 1785, JQA dined at Thomas Jefferson’s house in Paris and he wrote in his diary the story of the flight Dr. John Jeffries had taken earlier that month: “Mr. Blanchard cross’d from Dover to Calais in an air balloon, the 7th. of the month. accompanied by Dr: Jefferies. they were obliged to throw over their cloathes to lighten their balloon. Mr: Blanchard met with a very flattering reception at Calais, and at Paris…. All that has as yet been done relative to this discovery, is the work of the French. Montgolfier. Pilâtre de Rozier, & Blanchard, will go down, hand in hand to Posterity.”

The French enthusiasm for ballooning waned after a major accident in June 1785 when aeronauts Pilâtre de Rozier and Dr. Pierre Ange Romain crashed their balloon on the French shore while attempting to cross the English Channel. Their aéro-Montgolfier, a gas double balloon, exploded over a thousand feet in the air and the two fell to their gruesome deaths. On the 23 June 1785, Abigail Adams 2nd wrote to her cousin Lucy Cranch, “You talk of comeing to see us in a Balloon. Why my Dear as Americans sometimes are capable of as imprudent and unadvised things as any other People perhaps, I think it but Prudent to advise you against it. There has lately a most terible accident taken place by a Balloons taking fire in the Air in which were two Men. Both of them were killed by their fall, and there limbs exceedingly Broken. Indeed the account is dreadfull. I confess I have no partiallity for them in any way.”

Like the Eiffel Tower, created to be a temporary exhibition piece for the 1889 World Expo in Paris, I do hope the Olympic and Paralympic cauldron becomes a permanent display.

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged ,

Join Us for Lunch!

By Alexis Buckley, Research Department

If you’ve been by the Massachusetts Historical Society on a Wednesday, or if you follow us on Twitter, you’ve probably come across an invitation to attend a brown bag lunch talk. “Join us for Kate McIntyre’s brown bag lunch, and learn about the intersections of #race and #ecology!” the tweet might read. Or you’ve passed the sign in the lobby that says: “Madeline Kearin’s Brown Bag lunch talk at 12 pm—all are welcome.” But what exactly is a brown bag lunch talk?

Good question! A brown bag lunch talk offers our MHS researchers and research fellows a chance to present on the work they’re doing here at the Society. The presenter speaks for about twenty minutes on their research. They talk about the dissertation or book project that they’re working on, and about why they’ve come to the MHS. Then they focus in on a specific chapter or section of their project. They discuss the sources they’ve found—or haven’t found yet!—and perhaps some of the challenges this chapter has offered. Then the floor is opened to questions and suggestions, and for the next forty minutes we have a discussion about the presenter’s project.

Our most recent brown bag lunch talk was with Ian Saxine, whose second book project has brought him back to the Massachusetts Historical Society on a short-term W.B.H. Dowse Fellowship. (For a list of this year’s research fellows, go here.) He discussed the fourth Anglo-Wabanaki War, 1722-1725, the many names for the war, and how the war’s unexpected outcomes influenced colonial policy in Maine for next several decades. The discussion was lively, involving such questions as: “How do you define a war?”; “How are you looking at the memory of the war?”; and “What was the role of religion in the war?”

Upcoming brown bag talks will focus on a wide array of topics, from tomorrow’s talk on partisanship and the origins of the American Revolution to New England hospitals for the insane to the United Fruit Company and 20th-century revolutions.

Interested in attending? Brown bag talks are free and open to all. Bring a lunch or show up and enjoy a coffee or soda while you listen to the talk. The talks are always at noon. For our upcoming talks, keep an eye on the calendar, pack a lunch, and join us for the chance to learn about what our researchers are doing at MHS, and for a lively discussion about their work. We look forward to seeing you there!

 

[Photo from Alexandra Montgomery’s (University of Pennsylvania) brown bag lunch, June 6, 2018.]

 

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged

Massachusetts Students at National History Day

By Kate Melchior, Education

On June 10th, 64 middle and high school students from 25 different Massachusetts schools set out to the University of Maryland, College Park for the 2018 NHD National Contest. There they joined a group of over 3,000 students representing all fifty United States, Washington, D.C., Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and international schools in China, Korea, and South Asia.  Once at College Park, they spent the week presenting the history projects they’ve worked on all year, traded state pins and stories with students from around the world, and shared in the incredible experience that is National History Day.

Students bring pins from their state to National History Day, which they trade during the week. The goal is to collect every state and territory!


The annual National History Day contest serves as the final stage for a series of smaller NHD contests at the local and state/affiliate levels. There, students who have spent the year working on primary source-based research papers, exhibits, performances, documentaries, and websites and have made it through local, regional, and state contests compete against hundreds of other national and international projects. Massachusetts prize-winning projects explored this year’s theme of “Conflict and Compromise” through topics and historical figures including Deborah Sampson, the Treaty of Portsmouth, The Philippine-American War, Desmond Doss, and the Civilian Public Service.

Students visited the Lincoln Memorial during their D. C. Monuments Tour.


During their four day stay in College Park, students experienced life on a college campus, staying in dorms and eating in the school dining halls with students from around the world.  They viewed the exhibits and performances of other students and explained their own topics of research to new friends.  They also participated in a variety of activities with their Massachusetts cohort, including a monument tour of D.C., a trip to the National Zoo, and a Red Sox-Orioles baseball game at Camden Yards.  Finally, on the last day they participated in a massive parade and award ceremony in the UMD Stadium.

The MA students are wearing blue t-shirts with our tricorn hat logo on them.

 

The Massachusetts Historical Society is incredibly proud to recognize the following winners from the 2018 National Competition:

 

First Place – Senior Group Website

Tucker Apgar, Lily Ting, Sean Li

“‘By Winter We Will Know Everything’: The Prague Spring and Conflict over Control”

 Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School, Wenham MA

 

Outstanding Junior Entry from Massachusetts – Junior Paper

Heather Anderson

“The Penny War: How Children Fought to Compromise with Millionaires”

Hanscom Middle School, Lincoln MA

 

Outstanding Senior Entry from Massachusetts – Senior Group Website

Zijian Niu, Robert Sucholeiki

“The Geneva Accords: The Compromise That Sparked the Vietnam War”

Winchester High School, Winchester MA

 

We’d also like to extend a special shout out to William Sutton of Hingham High School for his selection as the Legacy Award nominee for Massachusetts, and to Massachusetts students who made it into the top ten finalists at NHD 2018: Angela McKenzie (Stoneham HS), Ben Franco and Massimo Mitchell (Applewild School), Nora Sullivan Horner (Hamilton Wenham HS), Arda Cataltepe (Weston HS), Robert Sucholeiki and Zijian Niu (Winchester HS), and Heather Anderson (Hanscom MS). Congratulations to all of our student historians!

If you are interested in learning more about NHD or joining us as a teacher, student, or judge for Massachusetts History Day 2018, please visit our website at www.masshistoryday.com.   


Posted in Uncategorized Tagged ,

MHS Programs Explore Aspects of African American History

By Gavin Kleespies, Public Programs

This past November, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Maria Tatar spoke at the MHS about their new book The Annotated African American Folktales. This publication presents nearly 150 African American stories, among them familiar Brer Rabbit classics, but also stories like “The Talking Skull” and “Witches Who Ride,” as well as out-of-print tales from the 1890s’ Southern Workman. Professor Gates’ reflections on how folktales weaved into his own personal history made the power of these stories very real, while professor Tatar helped place these stories in historical context and as a part of the American literary tradition.

Both Gates and Tatar are faculty members at Harvard University. Professor Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures. She chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology, where she teaches courses in German Studies, Folklore, and Children’s Literature. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. He is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, a literary scholar, a journalist, a cultural critic, and an Overseer and long term friend to the MHS.

For the audience, it was a captivating opportunity to hear new tales and revisit some familiar stories. These folktales are so full of wisdom, humor, whimsy, and intelligence that anyone who reads or hears them must understand that they should hold a prominent place in the Western literary canon. However, the personal stories of when these tales were first heard or memories of them being shared made the evening truly special.

Kicking off African American History Month, we have made this program available to all on our website. Over the course of the month we are hosting several programs that explore aspects of African American history.

 

February 8 – 6:00 pm

Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments that Redeemed America with Douglas Edgarton (Le Moyne College)

One of the most treasured objects belonging to the Society’s collection is the battle sword of Robert Gould Shaw, the leader of the courageous 54th Massachusetts infantry, the first black regiment in the north. The prominent Shaw family of Boston and New York had long been involved in reform, from antislavery to feminism, and their son, Robert, took up the mantle of his family’s progressive stances, though perhaps more reluctantly. In this lecture, historian Douglas R. Egerton focuses on the entire Shaw family during the war years and how preceding generations have dealt with their legacy.

$10 (free for MHS members)

 

February 20 – 6:00 pm

Growing Up with the Country with Kendra Field (Tufts University)

Following the lead of her own ancestors, Kendra Field’s epic family history chronicles the westward migration of freedom’s first generation in the fifty years after emancipation. Field traces their journey out of the South to Indian Territory, where they participated in the development of black towns and settlements. When statehood, oil speculation, and segregation imperiled their lives, some launched a back-to-Africa movement, while others moved on to Canada and Mexico. Interweaving black, white, and Indian histories, Field’s narrative explores how ideas about race and color powerfully shaped the pursuit of freedom.

$10 (free for MHS members)

 

February 26 – 6:00 pm

Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court with Paul Finkelman (Gratz College)

The three most important Supreme Court Justices before the Civil War—Chief Justices John Marshall and Roger B. Taney and Associate Justice Joseph Story—upheld the institution of slavery in ruling after ruling. These opinions cast a shadow over the Court and the legacies of these men, but historians have rarely delved deeply into the personal and political ideas and motivations they held. In Supreme Injustice Paul Finkelman establishes an authoritative account of each justice’s proslavery position, the reasoning behind his opposition to black freedom, and the incentives created by his private life.

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged ,

History by the Numbers: A Gomes Prize Ceremony conversation between 2017 recipient Tamara Thornton and MHS President Catherine Allgor

By Alexis Buckley, Research Department

In 2016, the MHS founded the Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize, awarded annually for the best book on the history of Massachusetts. The prize honors the memory of the Reverend Professor Gomes, a Harvard scholar and a respected and beloved Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society for almost thirty-five years. Peter Gomes believed in the transformative power of engaging with the past, and held an especial fondness for the history of his native state. He extolled the role of the imagination in creating a better world.

About two centuries earlier, another Massachusetts native himself set out to create a better world. His name was Nathaniel Bowditch, and above all he believed in the power of numbers. Thus it’s only fitting that the 2017 Gomes Book Prize was awarded to historian Tamara Plakins Thornton for her biography, Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life. Thornton brings to life the Atlantic-facing maritime world of Bowditch’s hometown, the bustling port of Salem. She also reveals Bowditch’s role in creating the numbered and sorted bureaucratic society familiar to us today, from creating navigational tables, to organizing the collections of Salem’s East India Marine Society—now the Peabody Essex Museum—and the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company, to introducing a numerical grading system at Harvard. As Thornton demonstrates, Bowditch took his faith in numbers and transformed the world.

Thornton joined us at the Society on Thursday, Jan. 25, to receive the 2017 prize. Like any good historian, she came in early to spend the day in our reading room, diving into the research for her next project. (Not to mention using collections well numbered and sorted! Our library staff would make Bowditch proud.) Come evening, after Ellis Hall had been transformed for the award ceremony, she received her award check and a certificate beautifully framed and matted with century-old French endpaper. She then took to the stage to commence a conversation on what it means to be a historian and a biographer.

Who better to join Thornton in this conversation than our new president, Catherine Allgor, another historian cum biographer? Allgor’s biography of Dolley Madison followed her work Parlor Politics, on the founding women of the early republic, much as Thornton’s biography of Bowditch followed her monographs on handwriting and the making of country life by the nineteenth-century Boston elite.

Fortunately for those too far away—or too cold!—to attend the program, the conversation was filmed and is now available for you to watch online. Allgor and Thornton spoke about transitioning from writing monographs to writing biographies, and the advantages they had in having already written books that made them familiar with their subject’s world: in Dolley Madison’s case, it was Washington D.C. and all its politicking; for Nathanial Bowditch, it was the surprisingly cosmopolitan city of Salem. More specifically, Bowditch lived in a world of merchants and shipping, where—instead of the Latin and Greek needed for Harvard—young men bound for occupations as clerks and navigators learned math and penmanship. Of course, Thornton and Allgor continued, writing biography also means considering the role of inborn personality and temperament in relation to the influence of the subject’s era.

MHS President Catherine Allgor and Gomes Prize recipient Tamara Thornton, in conversation.


Thornton and Allgor also discussed their efforts to find points of familiarity with their subjects while keeping in mind that the past remains a foreign country. Allgor enjoyed taking a fresh look at Washington politics in its infancy through Dolley Madison, and considering how the politics we know today are contingent on so many nineteenth-century choices that people such as Madison made. Thornton described the uncategorized society that Bowditch transformed, with numbers and forms, into the world we live in today.

And, of course, the two biographers discussed Bowditch’s love of numbers. He was inspired by the rules and regularity of the solar system, and sought to recreate that wherever he could. He saw the world, Thornton said, in “pluses and minuses.” He loved the certainty of numbers. If you were incorrect, inaccurate, immoral, wrong: all of these things were the same to him.

There is more to be heard on the video, about finding sources and excluding them, about Bowditch’s views on the places he sailed to around the world, and about strange and unexpected discoveries in the archives! But I will keep this entry short enough to fit on one of Bowditch’s blank forms, and merely suggest that you watch the video, then pick up Tamara Thornton’s award-winning book and take your own trip to Nathaniel Bowditch’s ordered world.

If you’ve published a book on Massachusetts history copyrighted in 2017, we invite you to submit your work for consideration to receive this year’s Gomes Prize, and we look forward to telling all of you what the 2018 competition brings!

 

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged ,

Abigail’s Window

By Sara Georgini, Adams Papers

The First Lady was lost. Nine miles off the main road, Abigail Adams, 56, hacked her way through the thick woods bordering Baltimore and the “wilderness city” of Washington, D.C. Eager to join husband John in the new capital, Abigail had left Quincy in early November 1800 with two servants. By Saturday the 15th, they had fallen a few days off course. For two hours, a frustrated Abigail circled the same forest paths—a precious gulf of travel time gone, since they only rode in daylight, and local inns were scarce. Abigail (accurately) reckoned that 36 miles of rough and lonely land lay ahead. She forged on, “holding down & breaking bows of trees which we could not pass,” as she told sister Mary Smith Cranch, “untill we met a Solitary black fellow with a horse and cart. We inquired of him our way, and he kindly offered to conduct us.” Abigail hired him on the spot. Following his directions, by Sunday afternoon she reached her new home, “a Castle of a House…in a beautifull Situation” with a “romantic” view of the Potomac River.

Abigail Adams’ trove of letters, as national convention-watchers have recently reminded us, supply a unique view of slavery and of the African-American experience in the new republic. When First Lady Michelle Obama reiterated on Monday that slave labor built the White House, many viewers turned to founding-era papers, including those of the Adams family, for details. Enter Abigail. One of the second First Lady’s D.C. dispatches, back in popular circulation again this week, lists her candid observation of slaves at work outside the President’s House window. Here’s an extract of the 28 Nov. 1800 letter to Cotton Tufts that got Abigail Adams trending on Facebook and lighting up Twitter:

“The effects of Slavery are visible every where; and I have amused myself from day to day in looking at the labour of 12 negroes from my window, who are employd with four small Horse carts to remove some dirt in front of the house. The four carts are all loaded at the Same time, and whilst four carry this rubish about half a mile, the remaining eight rest upon their Shovels, two of our hardy N England men would do as much work in a day, as the whole 12; but it is true Republicanism that drive the Slaves half fed, and destitute of cloathing, or fit for May faire, to labour, whilst the owner waches about Idle, tho his one Slave is all the property he can boast. Such is the case of many of the inhabitants of this place.”

 

Such a public display of slavery in the nation’s capital distressed Abigail Adams, although a New England upbringing had not shielded her from its misery. Her father William Smith, a Weymouth clergyman, owned several slaves who were freed upon his death in 1783.“I wish most sincerely there was not a Slave in the province,” Abigail wrote to her husband in 1774, as demands for American liberty grew. A staunch antislavery advocate, Abigail was furious when the Declaration of Independence’s “most Manly Sentiments,” denouncing the slave trade, were, after debate, heavily struck from the final draft. Plain-spoken about the need for African-American freedom on paper, Abigail’s actions also merit a quick review. She employed her father’s former slave, Phoebe Abdee, to run the family farm. She educated African-American servants in her Quincy parlor. When a neighbor balked at Abigail sending one of her staff, James, to school, she argued for him in a letter to John: “The Boy is a Freeman as much as any of the young Men, and merely because his Face is Black, is he to be denied instruction? How is he to be qualified to procure a livelihood? Is this the Christian principle of doing to others, as we would have others do to us?” Then Abigail pivoted to quash James’ toughest critic: “Tell them Mr. Faxon that I hope we shall all go to Heaven together. Upon which Faxon laugh’d, and thus ended the conversation. I have not heard any more upon the subject.” The question of James’ education was settled in 1797. Three busy years later, Abigail set out for the President’s House.

Abigail, a hardy traveler, took advantage of every panorama and every person she met. Given a new window on the world, Abigail used it. Barely a month into her D.C. stay, Abigail accepted an invitation to visit Martha Washington, now the General’s widow, at Mount Vernon. The rooms she found “small and low,” and the “greatest Ornament” to the visitor’s eye, Abigail decided, was a long piazza that knit together the Potomac’s gauzy blue-grey with lush green lawn. Signs of decay, the New Englander wrote, now threatened parts of the plantation’s beauty. Abigail’s unique summit with her old friend and colleague is worth a ponder. What did the two First Ladies discuss? We know one topic for certain: Slaves. Specifically, Abigail wrote to her sister Mary Smith Cranch on 21 December 1800, the deepening anxiety that Martha, “with all her fortune finds it difficult to support her family, which consists of three Hundred souls.” With 150 Mount Vernon slaves on the brink of emancipation, Abigail wrote that Martha was “distrest” for the fate of “Men with wives & young children who have never Seen an acre, beyond the farm. are now about to quit it, and go adrift into the world without house Home or Friend.”

 

This rich letter, held in the Adams-Cranch Papers here at the Massachusetts Historical Society, contains Abigail’s description of plantation life and underlines her antislavery creed. “If any person wishes to see the banefull effects of slavery. as it creates a torpor and an indolence and a Spirit of domination,” Abigail wrote, “let them come and take a view of the cultivation of this part of the United States. I shall have reason to Say. that my Lot hath fallen to me in a pleasant place. and that verily I have a goodly Heritage.” Mount Vernon gave Abigail another President’s House window from which to see America’s slaves, and the thorny road ahead. 

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged

MHS Staff Meet with Librarians from Uzbekistan

By Nancy Heywood, Collection Services

Although there are many miles between Boston, Massachusetts and Tashkent, Uzbekistan (6,148 miles according to Google) and although the English language is quite different from the Uzbek language, librarians from the National Library of Uzbekistan and staff of the Massachusetts Historical Society found much common ground and camaraderie during a recent meeting at MHS. 

The scheduling logistics for the group – comprised of the Director, Deputy Director, Head, Reading Halls Lead Specialist, and Head of IT and Access to Foreign Library Collections – were handled by WorldBoston. The focus of the meeting and tour, which took place on 5 June, was on how the MHS makes special collections materials available to researchers both remotely and on-site.  During the visit, with the aid of two highly skilled interpreters, we were able to convey information about cataloging, archival storage, and collections management issues.

Following Librarian Elaine Heavey’s  brief introduction to the MHS’s history and collections, Digital Projects Coordinator Nancy Heywood and Web Developer Bill Beck showed some examples of how we make selections of our collections available online. The MHS website features a few different types of digital presentations—some sections of the website present sets of materials comprised of relatively small numbers of items with lots of contextual information and transcriptions, but other sections of the website present large sets of documents and/or fully digitized collection with minimal descriptive information and usually without transcriptions.

Elaine Heavey then conveyed information about how researchers use online catalogs and collection guides to prepare for their research visit and she demonstrated Portal1791, our new researcher request system.  The group toured the building and saw the spaces that researchers use (orientation room, reading room, catalog room) as well as some staff areas including the conservation lab and one of the larger stack floors.  They also saw a few highlights from the collections.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged ,

Margaret Hall’s WWI Memoir: The Book, the Talk, the Exhibition

By Jim Connolly, Publications

I’ve posted on the Beehive a few times about Margaret Hall, a Massachusetts woman who volunteered with the American Red Cross in France during World War I. So you may know (and if you didn’t, now you do!) that her memoir and selected photographs from her war experience will be published for the first time in the Society’s forthcoming book, Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country: The World War I Memoir of Margaret Hall. The MHS will publish the volume on 14 July 2014.

Come celebrate the release of Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country on Tuesday, 15 July 2014, when the volume’s editor, Margaret R. Higonnet, will give a talk titled “‘What is Focus?’ Margaret Hall’s Battle Country.” The program will run from 6:00 to 7:30 PM following a pre-talk reception at 5:30 PM. This event is free but requires an RSVP. Register online or call the MHS reservations line at 617-646-0560.

And while you’re in the Society’s 1154 Boylston Street building, you can take in our current exhibition, Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country: Massachusetts Women in the First World War. Until then, you can get your Margaret Hall fix from July’s Object of the Month.

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged , ,

Margaret Fuller’s Italy Comes to Life

By Emilie Haertsch, Publications

Author and MHS Fellow Megan Marshall recently published a new biography of Margaret Fuller titled Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2013), and on the evening of Wednesday, 13 March, she joined with Italian folk musicians Newpoli to honor Margaret Fuller’s time in Italy.

A Massachusetts native, Fuller was, in Marshall’s words, an “intellectual prodigy and brilliant conversationalist.” In the 1840s, Fuller organized the “Conversations” discussion group in what is now the Jamaica Plains neighborhood of Boston, and came to know many prominent intellectuals in the Boston area. Fuller befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and joined the growing American Transcendentalist movement. An accomplished writer, she cofounded the Transcendentalist publication the Dial, and became its first editor. Horace Greeley then hired Fuller to be a front-page columnist for the New York Tribune and eventually sent her to Europe as a correspondent.

Fuller’s travels led her to Italy in 1847 when she met a young Italian man named Giovanni Angelo Ossoli and they became lovers. They had a child together and then married. Fuller lived in Italy until 1849, and this period of her life was the focus of the MHS event. Marshall spoke of Fuller’s feelings of contentment during her respite in Italy. “Rome fulfills my hopes,” Fuller wrote. She witnessed the Roman revolution of 1848 and became enamored of Italian culture.

That Italian culture was on display at this event in the form of traditional Italian folk music. After a reading by Marshall, Newpoli took the stage and serenaded a captivated audience with songs ranging from tarantellas to ballads. The songs touched on subjects as diverse as funny tongue-twisters about fish to sad tales of corruption in church and government.

In a great tragedy, Margaret Fuller, her husband, and their young son died in a shipwreck just off the coast of Fire Island, New York, on their return voyage from Italy. But in listening to her story and hearing the music she experienced on the streets of Rome, it was easy to feel her presence still inspiring the Boston intellectual and cultural scene.

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged

Historian Ray Raphael on that Flummoxing Electoral College

By Emilie Haertsch, Publications

Twelve years ago at this time Vice President Al Gore ran against governor of Texas George W. Bush, leading to chaotic election results. The votes were so close that one candidate won the popular vote while another won the electoral vote. That was right about the time that people across America began asking, what is the Electoral College, and how can a candidate win the popular vote and still lose the election? Who would create such a system? Many are still asking these questions as we approach another close presidential election in November, and historian Ray Raphael has the answers.

 Raphael is currently a Senior Research Fellow with Humboldt State University in Northern California. He authored the acclaimed People’s History of the American Revolution as well as many other books on the founding of the United States, and his latest book is Mr. President: How and Why the Founders Created a Chief Executive. Raphael visited the Society on Monday, September 24, to present “The Curious Creation of the Electoral College: What the Founders Didn’t Want and Didn’t See Coming.” 

 “Welcome, fans of the Electoral College,” Raphael began, to the laughter of the audience. He went on to explain the roots of the electoral system in the Federal Convention of 1787 and the ways in which even the founders viewed it as an imperfect solution. The Virginia Plan, an outline of government proposed by the Virginia delegates, called for an undetermined number of members of an executive branch chosen by the legislature. James Wilson of Virginia, however, proposed a single executive elected by the people. Although the members of the convention agreed upon the idea of a single executive, with very limited powers, they disliked the idea of a popular vote to decide the election. Wilson outlined an electoral system as an alternative, but it was rejected. The feeling of the convention was that Congress should be involved in selecting the president. Why the opposition to a popular vote?

 “They wanted government by the people,” Raphael said, “but not the people ruling on a daily basis.”

Finally, the question of how to elect the executive was referred to a committee, which became known as the “Grand Committee.” They created the electoral system we know today, which does not involve Congress directly in presidential elections. The committee also gave the president powers of treaty and appointment. The electoral system and the greater powers allocated to the president were contrary to the sentiments of the convention as a whole, but nonetheless the electoral system was ratified as part of a final effort to complete the Constitution. As a result, electors representing each state, which are equal in number to its Congressional representation, elect the president. Although Maine and Nebraska count their electoral votes proportionally, the rest have a winner-take-all system. In winner-take-all states all the electoral votes go to the candidate who had the most votes in that state, which in four cases has resulted in a candidate winning the popular vote and losing the electoral vote, as we saw in 2000—and which came very close to happening again in 2004.

The committee designed the Electoral College to avoid corruption. They believed that if the electors, who were chosen by the state legislatures, voted at a distance they would be less likely to succumb to the dangers of intrigue and faction. The founders expected the electors to behave nobly and do what was best for the nation. But it only took eight years for national political parties to take hold, resulting in electors having no discretion in voting. Their votes were pre-committed to their parties.

“It’s Oedipal,” said Raphael. “In trying to escape your fate, you create it.”

The Electoral College has evolved considerably from the original intent of the founders, which was to protect the election of the executive from corruption. But even after the collapse of the election process in 2000, Raphael believes it is unlikely to be changed by a constitutional amendment. Voters in rural states, with small populations, and voters in swing states are courted because their votes have added electoral weight, so they prefer this electoral system.

“Isn’t it amazing?” asks Raphael. “Humans are stuck with their own contrivances for centuries.”

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged