Saturday, Philadelphia: Washington and 'real Revolution'

From Philadelphia Inquirer: Washington and 'real Revolution'
Historian Jane Hampton Cook will speak at National Constitution Center.

Presidential historian and children's author Jane Hampton Cook will come to the National Constitution Center on Saturday to discuss George Washington and the "real American Revolution."
At 1 and 2 p.m., Hampton Cook will discuss Washington, drawing from her book Stories of Faith and Courage from the Revolutionary War, which gives insight into what the Founding Fathers faced in their fight for freedom. She will also talk about her children's story, "What Does the President Look Like?," which shows how technology influences the way we perceive our presidents and the ways the public discovered what they looked like. (There was a time when Americans had no way of knowing how our presidents looked unless they had met them in person.)

The author will speak at the center's "Discover the Real George Washington: New Views from Mount Vernon" exhibition gallery and sign copies of her books. At the exhibit, which runs through Sept. 5, children can learn about Washington's early life growing up on a Virginia plantation and participate in Colonial-era crafts, including paper- and candle-making.

Under the center's Kids Free Summer promotion through Sept. 5, up to four children 12 or under get free admission with one paying adult.

"George Washington and the Real American Revolution" with Jane Hampton Cook, 1 and 2 p.m. Saturday at the National Constitution Center, 525 Arch St., Independence Mall. Saturday hours of operation: 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. General admission: $12; $11 for ages 65 and older; free for ages 12 and younger (up to 4 children accompanied by an adult) through Sept. 5, and for active military with ID and members. For reservations for the event with Cook, call 215-409-6700. Information: 215-409-6600 or www.constitutioncenter.org.

Book Reviews: The Uniters of America

From The American Spectator: The Uniters of America By Rev. Michael P. Orsi
Robert Morris: Financier of the American RevolutionBy Charles Rappleye
(Simon & Schuster, 530 pages, $30)

The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American CultureBy Joshua Kendall
(G.P. Putnam's Sons, 355 pages, $26.95)

Robert Morris and Noah Webster are Founders of the American Republic. In Charles Rappleye's Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution and Joshua Kendall's The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture, we are presented with two men of vastly different personalities and talents who helped to shape our nation. Their patriotism, entrepreneurial skills and self-interest has provided a model for our common culture. Though their contributions differed radically, both appreciated capitalism and used the free market to create a truly United States.

Morris and Webster both wanted a strong federal government. The former saw it coming through a common currency regulated by a national treasury. The latter envisioned a nation bound by a common language which would form an American identity.

Winning the American Revolution required money which the colonial government did not have. The stories of Washington's ragtag army, with its lack of provisions and minor mutinies, are part of the lore surrounding the colonists' victory over their well-supplied British counterparts. This original financial crisis was due to the Continental Congress's inability to tax the colonies and the worthless Continental script that was being printed to pay the army. The present decline in the value of the dollar is similar to the monetary crisis of the Revolution since now, as then, we have fiat money with neither gold nor silver to back it up.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that without the financial acumen and personal credit risks taken by Robert Morris of Philadelphia (1734-1806) the Revolution would have failed. Charles Rappleye says, "Morris committed his own fortune to the demands of the national cause" and quotes Morris as saying:

"My personal Credit, which thank Heaven I have preserved through all the tempests of the War, has been substituted for that which the Country had lost," Morris explained to a friend. "I am now striving to transfer that Credit to the Public."

Noah Webster (1758-1843), meanwhile, was instrumental in strengthening our national identity by compiling a truly American vocabulary with words, definitions, spelling and grammar germane to the new nation. Kendall writes, "But Webster had done more than just improve on the spelling books of his British predecessors. He had also helped give birth to a new language, which in turn would soon unite a fledgling nation."

Webster told George Washington, "our nation is but a name and our confederation a cobweb." He gained Washington's support for his projects because Washington realized that nothing better unites a people than a common tongue. His insights and contribution helped to meld the Colonies into one nation. As Kendall states:

Together, Noah Webster, Jr., the man of words, and George Washington, the man of action, would continue to work to unify America. Recognizing Webster's remarkable knack for getting Americans to think of themselves as American, Washington relied time and time again on his trusted policy advisor.

Kendall describes Webster as having a penchant for demography, collecting data and studying the etymology of words. His obsessive-compulsive behavior was perfectly suited for his magnum opus -- Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). Those who are seeking legislation, i.e., The English Language Unity Act, 2011, to make English the official language of the U.S. can claim both Webster and Washington as supporters.

Morris was an English émigré and an experienced merchant. He became a partner of Thomas Willing and Co., a famous Philadelphia Trading Company. Although he was originally hesitant to break with England he eventually signed the Declaration of Independence. His international connections lent itself to aiding the financial crisis in his home colony of Pennsylvania and the Continental Government during the Revolution. He became a key player as a member of the Secret Committee which funded the munitions for the Colonies. Later, under the Articles of the Confederation (1781-1782), he was made the Superintendent of Finance. Washington called him "The most powerful man in America."

Morris and Webster are models of the entrepreneurial spirit present at the nation's beginning. Both showed creativity and a willingness to work, as well as to take the risks necessary to succeed. Rappleye states, "To Morris, the primary role government should take in affairs of commerce was to get out of the way." Morris is quoted as saying "I assert boldly that commerce ought to be as free as the air, to place it in the most advantageous state to mankind in general." This stands as an indictment against the present government interventions in our financial system. The Dodd-Frank Act, 2011, for example, expanded government regulation of the market which causes a decline in U.S. competitiveness, innovation, and economic growth.

Morris was a pivotal figure in establishing a Bank of North America (1781). He knew that if the young nation was to flourish then private credit had to be established. Many feared that the banks were only a tool for the rich to grow richer. Because of this, the State of Pennsylvania was on the precipice of revoking its charter. Morris, however, according to Rappleye, "helped turn the tide of popular opinion against state intervention in the market." He says, Morris "opened the door to a new era of commerce, limited state sovereignty, and social mobility."

Webster also contributed to American enterprise through his persistence in getting copyright laws passed in his home state of Connecticut and through his prodding in six other states. He strongly supported the new Constitution because, he said, "This constitution will place the regulation of literary property in the power of Congress and of course the existing laws of the several states will be superseded by a federal law." With Webster's support, a national copyright law passed Congress in 1790. This of course protected intellectual property and encouraged Americans to develop their talents and grow in wealth for their efforts.

Toward the end of his life, Kendall believes that Webster lost touch with the promise of America because of his acceptance of inequality. As Kendall puts it:

Inequality, an embittered Webster had come to believe, was inherently good. While, as the papers reported, he still "retained the full power of his faculties," Webster had lost touch with the promise of America, which he himself had championed a half century earlier. It was the expert definer rather than his fellow countrymen who could no longer appreciate the true meaning of "liberty" and "equality."

But it is more likely that Webster was only being faithful to the Founders' belief in a meritocracy where equal opportunity, as opposed to equal distribution, was the key to national greatness and personal fulfillment.

Reflecting on his own life, Webster saw that being poor need not be a permanent condition in America. The present egalitarian ethos now regnant in our country discourages personal initiative and (as Alexis de Tocqueville feared) encourages mediocrity. It also creates serial poverty. The tragedy of this equalizing philosophy is seen in the 2011 Budget Crisis which was brought about by an entitlements mentality and relies on taxing the rich for its sustainability.

Morris seems to have a handle on the essence of America which is based on the truth of American capitalism in which financial inequality is a fact of life. As Rappleley puts it:

More than that, Morris installed his pragmatic, realist, modernist vision of a free people united by the principles of economic self-interest and not by bonds of state or political authority. For better or worse, that is the feature that distinguishes America from every other nation established in the New World, and set America on its course to becoming the economic powerhouse we know today.

Politicians would do well to read both books.

Daughters of the American Revolution take history field trip to visit early settler’s grave

From Independent Mail.com (Anderson, South Caroolina): Daughters of the American Revolution take history field trip to visit early settler’s grave
ANDERSON COUNTY — Members of two Anderson County chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution took a field trip on June 11 to visit the grave of an early settler of Anderson County. David Pressley, a soldier of the American Revolution, was born in Scotland and brought to America as an infant. He entered the service of the United States at the age of 13 as a volunteer under Capt. Andrew Hamilton in 1776 in the 96 District to combat Cherokee Indians.

In 1780, he served under General Francis Marion during what was called the “Indian Campaign.” He later settled in what is now Anderson County, becoming a postmaster for the area. He married Ann Edmiston in 1784 in the Abbeville District, eventually having 11 children.

The graves of the Pressley family are in the old Generostee Presbyterian cemetery, in a wooded area about one mile from the present-day Generostee A.R.P. Presbyterian Church. The tour was led by Marcus and Alice Campbell, well known experts in the early history of the “dark corner” of Anderson County.

UC Students Hope To Find Revolutionary War Hero's Grave

From News 5 WLWT.com: UC Students Hope To Find Revolutionary War Hero's Grave
CINCINNATI -- Many of those walking or riding along the bike trail near Lunken Airport likely have no idea that they are going right past the grave site of one of America's greatest war heroes.

For people cruising by, the only way to get a handle on the history here is with a little sign along the trail.

But archaeology students from the University of Cincinnati were working Monday to shine a light on the past.

Somewhere in this graveyard lies Sgt. William Brown, a hero of the Revolutionary War. Wounded, he was given what would someday become the Purple Heart, stitched by Martha Washington.



Images: Search For Lost War Hero


"He was injured while trying to save many others, as a result, he was awarded the Medal of Merit,” Dr. Ken Tankersley said.

The students had some hi-tech tools, like ground penetrating radar to help as they try to map this graveyard, but it's a difficult bit of detective work to piece together the past like so many shattered headstones.

“They look at historical documents from the time period, documents that have gone along with the property, and more importantly, the physical evidence that they're getting today," Paul Muller said.

Newer tombstones are here for other Revolutionary War veterans, but no one knows exactly where these men are buried either.

After more than 200 years of time and neglect, students said honoring Brown is something that's way overdue.

“If we can, find where he's located and make sure that the site is protected,” Mark Gerken said.

Identifying all the graves in this graveyard is one challenge, which will be followed by a separate challenge -- getting people to stop and recognize their significance in Cincinnati and American history.

According to Wikipedia:
William Brown (1759–1808)[1] was a soldier for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He was born in Stamford and enlisted in the 5th Connecticut Regiment as a corporal on 23 May 1775, and re-enlisted as a private on 9 April 1777, for the duration of the war in the 8th Connecticut Regiment. He was promoted to corporal on 8 May 1779, and to sergeant on 1 August 1780, transferring with the consolidation of units to the 5th Connecticut Regiment on 1 January 1781, and to the 2nd Connecticut Regiment on 1 January 1783. He was awarded the Badge of Military Merit, one of only three people to be awarded the medal that later became the Purple Heart. No record of his citation has been uncovered, but it is believed that he participated in the assault on Redoubt No. 10 during the siege of Yorktown.

After the war he moved west to a newly developed river town called Cincinnati, Ohio. He lived out his days there, his original tombstone was lost to time; possibly stolen or destroyed. On 24 July 2004, at a cemetery across the street from what is known as Lunken Airport, a new tombstone was laid out in remembrance to Sgt. William Brown.

Brian Helgeland to Write Warner/Legendary's 'Here There Be Monsters'

Perhaps this movie, if made, will do for the American Revolution what Pirates of the Caribbean did for pirates...who knows?

Brian Helgeland to Write Warner/Legendary's 'Here There Be Monsters'

Brian Helgeland has been hired to write "Here There Be Monsters," a movie about Revolutionary War naval hero John Paul Jones -- except with sea monsters, individuals close to the project confirmed.

Producers of the Warner Bros./Legendary project are in talks with Robert Zemeckis to direct.

"Here There Be Monsters" is based on an concept by Legendary Pictures CEO Thomas Tull.

Tull is producing along with Legendary's Jon Jashni and Mandeville's Todd Lieberman and David Hoberman.

Helgeland, who won the Academy Award for 1997's "L.A. Confidential," also wrote the 2003 "Mystic River," the 2010 "Green Zone" and 2010's "Robin Hood."

Zemeckis directed a string of 1980s hits, including "Romancing the Stone," "Back to the Future" and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," as well as 1994's "Forrest Gump."

His track record of late has been less solid.

His most recent 3D animated feature for Disney, "Mars Needs Moms," grossed just $40 million worldwide on a production budget of over $150 million. Zemeckis' producing deal with Disney subsequently was not renewed.

He also produced DreamWorks' upcoming boxing drama "Real Steel," and is directing Paramount's 2012 "Flight," starring Denzel Washington.

Revolutionary NJ: The rest of the story

From My Central Jersey, an OPINION PIECE: Revolutionary NJ: The rest of the story

Cate Litvack’s article on New Jersey’s role in the American Revolution that appeared on July 17 was both entertaining and informative. New Jersey certainly was the crossroads of the Revolution, as a number of historians have dubbed the state. But perhaps your readers also would be interested to know that, by some estimates, New Jersey sent more of its sons to defend the Crown than it sent to support the rebellion.

According to Dennis P. Ryan’s report written for the New Jersey Historical Commission, the state’s population of 140,000 was sharply divided, with as many as 50,000 considered to be loyalists and approximately one-third of the population working hard to remain neutral. Slaves were especially eager to support the Crown in return for its promises of their freedom.

Among others, Gov. William Franklin, the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, threw in his lot with the British. And New Jersey’s Richard Stockton was the only signer of the Declaration of Independence who also signed a British loyalty oath.

This, of course, would not be the last time that New Jersey has gone against the grain, as it also shares the distinction with two other states (Kentucky and Delaware) of having rejected Abraham Lincoln’s bid for the presidency both times, in 1860 and 1864.

Gordon S. Wood, Historian of the American Revolution

From THe New York Times: Gordon S. Wood, Historian of the American Revolution

Gordon S. Wood is more than an American historian. He is almost an American institution. Of all the many teachers and writers of history in this Republic, few are held in such high esteem. Part of his reputation rises from his productivity — a stream of books, monographs, articles, lectures and commentary. Now he has added “The Idea of America” (along with a new edition of John Adams’s Revolutionary writings in two volumes for the Library of America series).

More important than his productivity is the quality of his work, and its broad appeal to readers of the right, left and center — a rare and happy combination. Specially striking is Wood’s rapport with the young. In the film “Good Will Hunting,” Matt Damon and Ben Affleck centered a lively scene at a student hangout on an impassioned discussion of Wood’s work. The television sitcom “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” made “Gordon Wood” into an adjective, and used it as a synonym for serious scholarship in general. “Wicked awesome,” one character said, “all that Gordon Wood business!” Through it all, the man himself preserves a quiet modesty, and even a humility that is central to his work. He is respected not only for what he does but for who he is.

Wood’s latest book is a collection of 11 essays, along with an introduction and conclusion, that encompass his entire career. It reveals more of the author than any of his other work and creates the opportunity for an overall assessment of his achievement. Wood introduces himself with a familiar line from the poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” He celebrates the foxes who flourish in his field, and adds in his modest way, “By contrast, as a historian I fear I am a simple hedgehog. . . . Nearly all of my publications have dealt with the American Revolution and its consequences.”

That one subject has occupied Wood for half a century — a concentration span that few can match. And after many years of labor in that field, he has transformed it. Scholars before Wood had offered many interpretations of the Revolution, but none seemed quite right to him. He concentrated his work on the years from 1776 to 1828, an unusual choice. When he began, Wood remembers, this period had “a reputation for dreariness and insignificance,” as “the most boring part of American history to study and teach.” Historians of early America tended to think of the Revolution as a colonial insurgency and lost interest after 1776. Scholars of the “middle period” believed that the real revolution happened in the Age of Jackson, and thought of the preceding years merely as prologue.

Progressives like Charles Beard and Carl Becker had tried to bring life to the history of the early Republic by writing about a transition from aristocracy to democracy, but Wood did not share what he called “their preoccupation with economic and other underlying interests.” He also disliked “the partiality that plagued their histories, a partiality that was prompted by the need to find antecedents for the divisions of their own time.”

Even less satisfactory to Wood was the scholarship of the mid-1950s. It was a time when liberals followed Tocqueville’s idea that America was born free without having to become so. Conservatives took up the argument of Edmund Burke (and John Quincy Adams) that the purpose of the American Revolution was not to promote social change, but to prevent it. Radicals compared the Revolution with the French and Russian Revolutions, and proclaimed that it was not a genuine revolution at all.

Wood rejected all of these approaches. He went deep into primary materials and made an open-minded effort to understand the language and thought of 18th-century Americans in their own terms. After 10 years of research he reported his results, first in a short essay reprinted in this collection, then in the 1969 book “The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787.” Leading his readers into the ­sources, Wood demonstrated that Americans in those years invented “not simply new forms of government, but an entirely new conception of politics.” They rejected ancient and medieval ideas of a polity as a set of orders or estates. In their place they created a model of a state that existed to represent individual interests, and to protect individual rights. To those ends, Americans invented radically new ideas of representation, and new models for the “parceling of power.”

Wood also made another discovery: This revolutionary way of thinking did not derive from small elites or large treatises. He wrote that it was “not delineated in a single book; it was peculiarly the product of a democratic society.” In newspapers and pamphlets he found evidence that Americans of all conditions joined this great debate — men like William Findley, a weaver and farmer in Pennsylvania, and William Thompson, a tavern keeper in South Carolina.

To all this, Wood added a third finding. From the start, this new way of thinking was consciously conceived as an open process. Wood quoted Samuel Williams, a country clergyman in Vermont, who observed in 1794 that the American system “contains within itself the means of its own improvement.” It created a process of permanent reform that proved more durable than Trotsky’s permanent revolution.

“The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787” was much admired for its craftsmanship and for its substantive contribution. It won both the Bancroft and John H. Dunning Prizes. But Wood did not rest on his laurels. In 1969 he also published a small book on the founders’ complex and highly creative thinking about political representation — a pivotal problem in the American Revolution. Other short pieces followed, and many appear together for the first time in this new volume. One essay included here, originally presented as a lecture in 1974 on democracy and voting in the new Republic, reversed the customary wisdom on that subject. Wood found that “it is not suffrage that gives life to democracy; it is our democratic society that gives life to suffrage.” That theme has important implications in our own world. Other essays in this book take up problems on constitutions and constitutionalism, democracies and republics, political power and human rights, always in Wood’s careful and very creative way.

In 1992 these small essays led to another big book, “The Radicalism of the American Revolution.” Here Wood enlarged his earlier idea of a political thought-­revolution, circa 1776-87, into a model of a sweeping social revolution from 1760 to 1825. He argued that this transformation “was as radical and social as any revolution in history, but it was radical and social in a very special 18th-century sense.” Wood wrote that “one class did not overthrow another; the poor did not supplant the rich. But social relationships — the way people were connected one to another — were changed, and decisively so.” The book altered the way historians thought about their field. It won a Pulitzer Prize for history.

In the 1990s, Wood followed it with another wave of small studies on the large figures who dominate our memory of the Revolution. Several of these essays appear in this volume. A piece on Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine rescues them from “some very brutal and often deserved bashing” by exploring an idea of humanity that these very different men shared. Another empathetic essay studies Alexander Hamilton and George Washington on the problem of monarchy in the new Republic.

Wood published many other articles on the founders in 2006, in a lively collection called “Revolutionary Characters.” He added a separate volume on Benjamin Franklin, the most complicated founder of them all. Always, Wood’s purpose was not to celebrate or condemn these leaders, but to understand them. His results lead us beyond the hagiographers who celebrate the founders as demigods, and iconoclasts who revile them as racists and sexists, an approach Wood believes to be inaccurate and anachronistic.

Wood expanded the scale of his inquiries yet again in 2009 in another big book, “Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815,” a volume in the excellent Oxford History of the United States. Here he links his earlier themes to an even larger transformation of an entire culture in its deepest values and purposes. This year he was awarded the National Humanities Medal. Altogether, Wood has done more than anyone to make the era of the Revolution and early Republic into one of the liveliest periods in American history.

His work has made a difference in one more way. It reinforced the center when it was under heavy attack from both extremes. In a gentle reproof to scholars on the left, Wood has offered evidence that “what is extraordinary about the American Revolution is not . . . the continual deprivation and repression of the mass of ordinary people, but rather their release and liberation.” To conservatives on the right he makes very clear that the Constitution and Bill of Rights were conceived by their framers in dynamic terms, and were intended to grow.

In all of this work, the strength of Wood’s scholarship derives from qualities of caution, balance and restraint that are uniquely his own. He avoids questions that cannot be answered by research, even questions of causation that engage most of his colleagues. Wood writes that “it is difficult, if not impossible, to apply the physical notion of ‘cause’ to human action.” He is mistaken here; other causal ideas go far beyond that physical model. But Wood’s approach is fundamental to his success. As a historian he asks not why people do things, but what they think they are doing, and how their thoughts have changed through time. Ideas are studied not as underlying motives for action, but in another way. Wood believes that “ideas and language give meaning to our actions, and there is almost nothing that we humans do to which we do not attribute meaning.”

And on the “lessons of the past,” Wood is even more restrained. In his new book he observes: “If the study of history teaches anything, it teaches us the limitations of life. It ought to produce prudence and humility.” Gordon Wood teaches that lesson by the strength of his own example.