The Whites of their Eyes (22 page)

²⁹
Warren G. Harding, “Inaugural Address: Friday, March 4, 1921,” in
Fellow Citizens: The Penguin Book of U.S. Presidential Addresses
, ed. Robert Vincent Remini (New York: Penguin Group, 2008), 298; Richard B. Bernstein,
The Founding Fathers Reconsidered
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3–4. Harding had earlier referred to “founding American fathers” (1912) and “American founding fathers” (1916). H. L. Mencken, “Gamalielese,” in
On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe
, ed. Malcolm Moos (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1956), 42.

³⁰
The Spirit of Seventy-Six; Or, the Coming Woman
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1868), 51. What leads the founders to wake from the dead is always changing. In 1920, it was Woodrow Wilson (“fast leading the country to the eternal bowwows”): “Washington and the fathers are turning in their graves” (“Keynote and Platform,”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, June 9, 1920).

³¹
Turning:
Cobbett’s Weekly Register
, August 20, 1825, 470; rolling over: Robert Harborough Sherard,
A Bartered Honour
(London, 1883), 138. With thanks to Caitlin Galante-DeAngelis Hopkins.

³²
Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in
The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent
. (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1864), 455.

³³
For a reflection on this subject, see Charles Beard, “Written History as an Act of Faith,”
American Historical Review
39 (1933): 219–31.

¹
The Scallywag was sold by a hat company called elope, based in Colorado Springs.

²
Austin Hess, e-mail message to the author, March 23, 2010.

³
John Adams to Thomas Jefferson and Thomas McKean, July 30, 1815, and Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, August 10, 1815,
The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and John and Abigail Adams
, ed. Lester J. Cappon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 2:451–52.

⁴
Oliver’s history wasn’t published until 1961. Peter Oliver,
Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View
, ed. Douglas Adair and John A. Schulz (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1961). See also Linda Ayers, “Peter Oliver’s Portrait Gallery,” in
Harvard Divided
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 17–40.

⁵
David Ramsay,
The History of the American Revolution
(Philadelphia, 1789), 2:323.

⁶
Thomas Jefferson to Williams Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787,
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, ed. Julian Boyd (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950), 12:356.

⁷
Garry Wills,
A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 205.

⁸
William Pencak, “Samuel Adams and Shays’ Rebellion,”
New England Quarterly
62 (1989): 64; Marvin Meyers, “Founding and Revolution: A Commentary on Publius-Madison,” in
The Hofstadter Aegis: A Memorial
, ed. Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick (New York: Knopf, 1974), 35.

⁹
A suggestive collection is Philip Foner, ed.,
We, the Other People: Alternative Declarations of Independence by Labor Groups, Farmers, Woman’s Rights Advocates, Socialists, and Blacks, 1829–1975
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976).

¹⁰
“Divergent Views of Public Men,”
Life
, September 17, 1956, 119–20. Martin Luther King Jr., “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience (1961),” in
A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King
, ed. James Melvin Washington (San Francisco: Harper-SanFrancisco, 1991), 50. Lyndon B. Johnson, Special Message to the Congress, March 15, 1965,
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1966), 1:281.
Washington Afro-American
, September 20, 1966.

¹¹
John E. Bodnar,
Remaking America: Public Memory, Patriotism, and Commemoration in Twentieth-Century America
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 229. On the Bicentennial, see American Revolution Bicentennial Administration (ARBA),
The Bicentennial of the United States of America: A Final Report to the People
, 5 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1977).
Massachusetts had formed its own bicentennial commission in 1964 (ARBA,
Bicentennial of the United States of America
, 1:58). On memory and the Revolution, see also David Lowenthal, “The Bicentennial Landscape: A Mirror Held Up to the Past,”
Geographical Review
67 (1977): 253–67; Milton M. Klein, “Commemorating the American Revolution: The Bicentennial and Its Predecessors,”
New York History
58 (1977): 257–76; Michael G. Kammen,
A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination
(New York: Knopf, 1978); and Alfred F. Young,
The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1981). On history
and memory, more broadly, see David Lowenthal,
The Past Is a Foreign Country
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

¹²
Martin Luther King Jr., “Where Do We Go from Here? (1967),” in
A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
., ed. Clayborne Carson and Chris Shepherd (New York: IPM, 2001), 182.

¹³
John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, August 24, 1815, in
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, 2:455.

¹⁴
Oliver,
Origin and Progress
, 9.

¹⁵
Accounts of Boston in the 1760s and 1770s include Carl Bridenbaugh,
Cities in Revolt: Urban Life in America, 1743–1776
(New York: Knopf, 1955); Gary Nash,
Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986); and Benjamin Carp,
Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). On the fire, see William Pencak, “The Social Structure of Revolutionary Boston: Evidence from the Great Fire of 1760,”
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
10 (Autumn 1979): 267–78. On the ef
fects of the French and Indian War, see Fred Anderson,
A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society and the Seven Years’ War
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984).

¹⁶
On Otis, see William Tudor,
The Life of James Otis of Massachusetts
(Boston, 1823). On Bernard: Colin Nicholson,
The “Infamas Govener”: Francis Bernard and the Origins of the American Revolution
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000). But the best account of the conflicts among these men can be found in Bernard Bailyn’s masterful study,
The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974).

¹⁷
“Portraiture in the Old State House” and “Furnishings in the Old State House,” typescript, Old State House Files, Bostonian Society, Boston.

¹⁸
John Adams to William Tudor, March 29, 1817,
The Works of John Adams
, ed. Charles Francis Adams (1856; repr., New York: Arno Press, 1971), 10:247. See also James M. Farrell, “The Writs of Assistance and Public Memory: John Adams and the Legacy of James Otis,”
New England Quarterly
79 (2006): 533–66.

¹⁹
On Wheatley’s life, see William H. Robinson,
Phillis Wheatley and Her Writings
(New York: Garland, 1984); and Phillis Wheatley,
Complete Writings
, ed. Vincent Carretta (New York: Penguin, 2001). A traveler’s account of the harbor is reprinted in Horace E. Scudder, “Life in Boston in the Provincial Period,” in
The Memorial History of Boston
, ed. Justin Winsor (Boston, 1882), 2:440.

²⁰
Robinson,
Wheatley
, 8.

²¹
Boston Gazette
, July 13, 1761; Henry Louis Gates,
The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America’s First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers
(New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2000), 17.

²²
Wheatley, “To His Excellency General Washington,” in
Complete Writings
, 89.

²³
Mercy Otis Warren,
History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution
, ed. Lester Cohen (1805; repr., Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1988), 1:xliii. On Warren, see Nancy Rubin Stuart,
The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of the Revolution
(Boston: Beacon, 2008); and Rosemarie Zagarri,
A Woman’s Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution
(Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1995). A valuable sample of Warren’s correspondence is Mercy Otis Warren,
Mercy Otis Warren: Selected Letters
, ed. Jeffrey H. Rich
ards and Sharon M. Harris (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009).

²⁴
John Dickinson, “An Address to ‘Friends and Countrymen’ on the Stamp Act (1765),” in
Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
14 (1895): 204.

²⁵
On this relationship, see David Waldstreicher,
Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification
(New York: Norton, 2008).

²⁶
Stephen Hopkins,
The Rights of the Colonies Examined
(Providence, RI: William Goddard, 1764), 4.

²⁷
James Otis,
The Rights of the British Colonies
(Boston: Edes and Gill, 1764), 4, 29.

²⁸
Boston Gazette
October 14, 1765. On the Stamp Act, see Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan,
The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution
(New York: Collier Books, 1963). On the resistance movement, see Pauline Maier,
From Resistance to Revolution:
Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776
(New York: Knopf, 1972).

²⁹
On the early history of newsletters, newsbooks, and newspapers, see Joad Raymond,
The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks, 1641–1649
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Charles E. Clark,
The Public Prints: The Newspaper in Anglo-American Culture, 1665–1740
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); and James Raven,
The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade, 1450–1850
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), especially chap. 9. On the early history of American newspapers, see John Hench, ed.,
Three Hundred Years of American Newspapers
(Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1990); Isaiah Thomas,
The History of Printing in America
, 2 vols. (Albany,1874); Clarence S. Brigham,
A History and Bibliography of American Newspapers
(Worcester, 1947); David A. Copeland,
Colonial American Newspapers: Character and Content
(Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997); John Tebbel,
The Compact History of the American Newspaper
, rev. ed. (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1969); Richard D. Brown,
Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700–1865
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); David Paul Nord,
Communities of Journa
lism: A History of American Newspapers and Their Readers
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001); and Eric Burns,
Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism
(New York: Public Affairs, 2006).

³⁰
On the making of newspapers, see Lawrence Wroth,
The Colonial Printer
(New York: Grolier Club, 1931); and Jeffrey L. Pasley,
The Tyranny of Printers: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001).

³¹
On the importance of the
New-England Courant
, see Perry Miller, introduction to
The New-England Courant: A Selection of Certain Issues
(Boston: Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1956), 5–9; Nord,
Communities of Journalism
, 52; and Thomas C. Leonard,
The Power of the Press: The Birth of American Political Reporting
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), chap. 1.

³²
See David Shields,
Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1997); and J. A. Leo Lemay,
The Life of Benjamin Franklin
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), vol. 1, chap. 6. Mather is quoted in Lemay,
Life of Franklin
, 1:119.
New-England Courant
, December 4, 1721.

³³
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin
, ed. Leonard W. Larabee et al. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1958–2008), 1:13, 17, 19.

³⁴
Lemay,
Life of Franklin
, 1:185.

³⁵
Benjamin Franklin,
Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography: An Authoritative Text
, ed. J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall (New York: Norton, 1986), 14–17.

³⁶
Edes’s career is most fully recounted in Rollo G. Silver, “Benjamin Edes: Trumpeter of Sedition,”
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America
47 (1953): 248–68. But see also Isaiah Thomas,
The History of Printing in America
(Worcester, 1810), 1:136–39, 2:53–56; Tebbel,
Compact History
, 37–39; Joseph T. Buckingham,
Specimens of Newspaper Literature: With Personal Memoirs, Anecdotes, and Reminiscences
(Boston, 1850), 1:165–205; and Pasley,
Tyranny of Printers
, 37–40.