John Adams Research Paper

“Facts are stubborn things.” 

When America’s Founding Fathers are thought of, many people automatically think of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Hancock. While they were great men with lasting contributions to our country, John Adams is sometimes overlooked in favor of the more famous Founding Fathers. It is important that today’s Americans remember Adams not only for his participation in the founding of our country, but also for his legacy in the American legal system. Adams’ virtuoso defense of the British soldiers charged with murder in what later became known as the Boston Massacre remains one of America’s supreme legal performances in history. The Boston Massacre trials launched Adams into Early National American politics, and laid a foundation for his belief in democratic government and liberty. This essay will briefly examine the events leading up to the Boston Massacre, the trial of British Captain Thomas Preston, and the trial of the British soldiers, all with Adams serving as the connecting cornerstone. 

After the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766 and the passage of the Townshend Acts in 1767, British troops were sent to Boston to attempt to keep order in the city (Zobel 65). Not only did the British soldiers patrol the city, many lived and worked part time in Boston warehouses and barracks. Because of the taxation and presence of British soldiers on the streets of Boston, riots and protests were common in those tempestuous times (John Adams Heritage Blog). Matters culminated on the night of March 5, 1770, on King Street in Boston. A lone sentry, posted in front of the Custom House, was being taunted by a group of men and boys. After a church bell started ringing (a signal for fire), the streets were suddenly filled with several hundred citizens. The sentry was reinforced by eight British soldiers and their captain. The crowd quickly began shouting, cursing, and throwing ice, snowballs, sticks, oyster shells, and stones at the soldiers (McCullough 65). One soldier, Hugh Montgomery, was struck twice, the second time so hard that he was knocked to the ground. With tensions rising, “Fire!” was heard and the soldiers began shooting at the citizens. When the smoke finally cleared, four citizens were shot dead and one more died five days later. Captain Preston was afterward remembered as furious that his men had fired a single shot without his order (Zobel 287). So who gave the command to fire? 

The day after the shootings, the British soldiers began to seek legal representation. Given the sour taste of British relations, Boston attorneys did not want to represent the soldiers and their captain. After several tries at obtaining council, Josiah Quincy, Jr. agreed to assist in the representation under the condition that John Adams would join him (Donovan 23). “Adams accepted, firm in the belief, as he said, that no man in a a free country should be denied the right to counsel and a fair trial, and convinced on principle, that the case was of utmost importance” (McCullough 66). Robert Auchmuty created the triumvirate of the Captain’s defense team as he joined Quincy and Adams in the biggest trial any of the men had ever been involved (John Adams Heritage Blog). 

Three weeks after the shooting, the British soldiers and their captain were indicted for the murder of the Americans, including the mixed-race mulatto Crispus Attucks (John Adams Heritage Blog). Waiting for tensions to cool, the trials did not begin until late-November. In the meantime, a propaganda war began. A committee in charge of submitting an official account of the murders produced a one-sided account, entitled A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston (John Adams Heritage Blog). The Narrative spanned an ocean in readership. In addition, Samuel Adams, a distant cousin of John Adams, co-authored another heavily prejudiced account of the shootings. Another example of this early-American propaganda war is Paul Revere’s poignant engraving of the massacre, notable for it’s lasting emotional significance. Within a few days of the shootings, a young man named Henry Pelham produced a dramatic drawing depicting the events on King Street on the night of March 5, 1770. Never mind that the drawing was grossly inaccurate, Paul Revere was somehow able to obtain, without permission or attribution, the drawing and engrave it for mass reproduction (Zobel 211). The engraving, coupled with heavily biased accounts of the shootings on King Street, fanned a flurry of anti-British sentiment. Adams later remarked that representing the soldiers and their captain caused him to be the target of “suspicions and prejudices” from the people of Boston (McCullough 66). Above all, Adams hated public scorn. 

Adams and his team of two councilors immediately faced a dilemma that if not handled properly, could potentially cost Captain Preston and his men their lives. The problem arose from one major fact: Captain Preston had not killed anyone. He stood accused of ordering his men to fire without enough reason. Captain Preston needed to argue in court that he had never given a command to fire. On the other hand, the soldiers needed to show that in pulling their triggers, they had only followed orders (Zobel 241). Against some of the soldier’s wishes, Adams decided on the legal strategy of holding two trials, one for Captain Preston and one for his soldiers. John Phillip Reid has argued that John Adams separated the trials in order to prevent any mutual finger-pointing by either the soldiers or Captain Preston (Reid 196).

Captain Preston’s trial began on October 24, 1770, a mere seven months after the Boston Massacre (John Adams Heritage Blog). Until Captain Preston’s trial, no criminal case had ever required more than one day to try (excluding jury deliberations) (Zobel 248). Attorneys for the crown (the prosecution in modern terms) opened the case. The crown needed to prove that Preston gave the order to fire, or in the very least, could have prevented the shootings all together (Zobel 248). Over two days, the crown called fifteen witnesses alone who testified that they heard Captain Preston give the order to fire. However, on cross-examination their testimony appeared contradictory (ja historical society). If anything, the testimony of the crown’s witnesses strengthened the upcoming defense’s argument “that the crowd’s violence and taunting had provoked the tragedy” (Zobel 251).

Next, as junior attorney to the defense, John Adams was tasked with opening the defense’s case and questioning witnesses. No notes or transcripts remain of Adams’ opening, but his initial tactic was to set the scene of the event: a cold March evening, where British soldiers were being taunted and heckled beyond bearing, that finally culminated in the deaths of Boston citizens (Zobel 254). Calling twenty-two witnesses on day three of Captain Preston’s trial, Adams created a scene of confusion, noise, and verbal threats (Zobel 256). Adams did not call Captain Preston’s men to testify on his behalf even though they could have done so. Hiller B. Zobel points out that the men could have provided accounts that the townspeople had provoked the soldiers and Captain Preston was left with no other option that to command the soldiers to fire (Zobel 255). 

Finally, on October 27, 1770, the defense rested (Zobel 260). Adams next rose to give his summation. Beginning the legendary summation Adams laid a framework rooted in law. “It is better five guilty persons should escape unpunished, than one innocent person should die” (Zobel 260). Following that, Adams dissected the crown’s evidence. With a legal finesse, Adams had an answer for the witnesses of the crown who claimed they had heard Captain Preston issue the order for fire: instead, townspeople had not heard Captain Preston’s entire command of “Fire by no means!” (Zobel 261). Whether truth or merely speculation, with this simple suggestion Adams was able to raise serious doubts of Captain Preston’s utterance of that infamous command. Adams also had an answer for the conflicts of evidence on who actually issued the order to fire. He argued that since the mob caused the soldiers to fire, then the mob could have also caused witness accounts to be unreliable (Zobel 262). Perhaps sensing defeat, the attorney for the crown who gave the prosecution’s summation, Robert Treat Paine, could barely be heard during the summation (Zobel 264). 

On October 30, 1770, the jury returned with a verdict in the case of Captain Thomas Preston: not guilty (Zobel 265). John Adams had successfully defended his client, but now the work began to save Captain Preston’s men from execution. The Captain’s acquittal made the soldiers’ defense more difficult (Zobel 268). The crown had an easier time proving that the soldier’s acted on their own accord by firing into the townspeople. 

Samuel Quincy led off for the crown in the trial of the soldiers that began on November 27, 1770 (John Adams Heritage Blog). With the five deaths that occurred as a result of gunshot wounds on March 5, 1770, the crown was faced with a much easier job by only having to prove that the soldiers were there and that they fire their weapons (Zobel 271). Unfortunately for the crown, several of its witnesses hit sour notes. One witness recalled that it was the townspeople who were yelling “Fire!” (Zobel 273). The majority of the crown’s witnesses testified to a crowd of armed sailors and missile-throwing boys attacking and possibly knocking down an armed soldier (Zobel 274). 

As the crown’s case came to an end, Quincy kept his closing remarks simple. He named each soldier individually, and reminded the jurors of each witness who was able to identify each. He reviewed in explicit detail each witnesses testimony (Zobel 276). Quincy closed, “confident on the evidence as it now stands” (Zobel 277). 

Junior attorney Josiah Quincy, and younger brother to the crown’s junior attorney Samuel Quincy, started the defense case for the soldiers. His job was to desensitize the emotions which the crown’s testimony was able to incite (Zobel 278). Not every citizen on King Street on the night of the shootings witnessed the soldiers acting out of hatred by firing on the citizens. In fact, the defense witnesses nearly all testified that the British soldiers were in real peril (Zobel 283). One witness specifically remembered seeing the now-dead Crispus Attucks reach into a woodpile and pull out two large clubs (Zobel 283). The defense’s climax came in the form of star witness Dr. John Jeffries. Dr. Jeffries was present on the deathbed of the soldier who died five days after the shooting (Zobel 285). According to Dr. Jeffries, the soldier stated that he did not blame the British soldiers for firing into the crowd. He seemed incredulous that the soldiers had not fired sooner than they actually had. Not only that, but the dying citizen did not blame the soldier who fired the bullet that would ultimately kill him (Zobel 286). This testimony wrapped up the defense’s case, powerfully aided the defense, and happened to be John Adams’ exact legal strategy (Zobel 284). 

Unlike the first trial, Adams did not play the role of junior attorney. He did not call and question witnesses, but he did give one of history’s greatest speeches with his summation. Returning in part to strategy used in Captain Preston’s case, Adams again reminded the jury that innocence be protected at the expense of guilt being punished (Zobel 289). It is worthy to note that by conceding this point, Adams admitted to the guilt of at least some of the soldiers. Furthermore, Adams was faced with the problem of bloodshed. Eighteenth-century Americans were convinced that blood required blood. Adams reminded the jury of a time in Colonial American history where enemy forces had been slain, but colonists did not call for the blood of the aggressors (Zobel 289). 

In another strategic move, Adams addressed the law of self-defense. Adams argued that if the mob had throated the lives of the soldiers, then the soldiers had a right to deprive the lives of the mob. Making an exact legal point, Adams posited that even if the killings might not have been entirely justifiable, still they were no more than manslaughter (Zobel 291). After making this point, court adjourned for the day. 

The next morning, Adams turned to the evidence and testimony from the trial. He left no stone unturned as he examined each witness’s testimony in minute detail. Nothing escaped his attention. At no point did Adams explicitly call witnesses liars, but he inferred that given the mob mentality, it was no wonder that few of the crown’s witness’s testimony reliably matched. Regarding Montgomery, the British soldier who had been knocked to the ground Adams asked: “What could he do? Do you expect he should behave like a Stoick Philosopher lost in Apathy?” (Zobel 292). Adams closed his summation with his famous lines that “Facts are stubborn things.” He coasted to the finish by reminding the jury that the law is “deaf, inexorable, inflexible” (Zobel 293). 

Finally, it was Paine’s turn to provide the summation for the crown’s prosecution. Almost comically, rather than establishing his own legal points, Paine refuted or denied the defense’s. Paine’s attempts were not enough. On the afternoon of December 5, 1770, the jury returned its verdict in the case of the Boston soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre. Six soldiers were found not guilty, while two soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter. Because they had never been in any legal trouble before, both guilty soldiers claimed benefit of the clergy, had their thumbs branded with an “M”, and were released (John Adams Heritage Blog). 

John Adams’ successful representation of Captain Preston and his soldiers made Adams in the long run more respected than ever (McCollough 68). Just a short time later, Adams was elected to the Boston city legislature, an appointment which clearly indicates the respect the thirty-four-year old had earned the previous Fall (Zobel 298). The trials earned Adams much esteem not only in the courtroom, but in New England and abroad. His defense of liberty remains one of America’s greatest treasures. 

Bibliography

Adams, John, and Frank Donovan, ed. The John Adams Papers. Cornwall, New York: The Cornwall Press, Inc., 1965.

McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Touchstone, 2001. 

Reid, John Phillip. “A Lawyer Acquitted: John Adams and the Boston Massacre Trials.” The American Journal of Legal History, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Jul., 1974). pp. 189-207. 

The John Adams Historical Society Blog; “Events that led to the Boston Massacre.” www.john-adams-heritage.com/events-that-led-to-the-boston-massacre/ (accessed May 4, 2015).

Zobel, Hiller B. The Boston Massacre. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Ltd, 1970. 

Book Review: Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market

Walter Johnson’s Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market provides an incredibly in-depth look at the interstices of Antebellum slave pens, mainly those in New Orleans, Louisiana. He examines the daily activity of the slave pens, from the perspective of all participants: the slaves, slave buyers, and slave sellers. Johnson demonstrates how the sale of human beings was a complicated process and he guides readers through the motions of the typical transactions. While many historians focus on the plantations as the center of slave life, Soul by Soul provides a new perspective with the slave pens taking center stage in the history of the antebellum South. 

To begin, slave narratives played a dominant role in the evidence used by Johnson to recreate the slave pens. Johnson cited three strategies he employed to decipher the three versions of the slave pens: slave narratives read in tandem with sources produced by slaveholders and visitors to the South; slave narratives read for traces of the experience of slavery antecedent to the ideology of slavery; and the slave narratives read for symbolic truths that stretch beyond the facticity of specific events. In short, Johnson did not solely rely on the words of former slaves themselves, but instead analyzed the slave narratives while fact-checking with other versions of the same story (10).  In addition, judicial records were an invaluable source, even though slaves themselves were never allowed to physically testify in a court of law (11). Many slaveholders communicated in letters to family and acquaintances about the intricacies of slavery, and Johnson combed through these for correlations (13). Relying on the most “chillingly economical descriptions of slave sales,” Johnson used the notarized Acts of Sale to reconstruct a historical point of view (14). Truly, no stone is left unturned in Johnson’s rendition of the transaction process within slave pens.  

Johnson brings into sharp focus the human reality of the Southern slave trade by explaining the chattel principle. “Any slave’s identity could be disrupted as easily as a price could be set and a piece of paper passed from one hand to another” (19). Slaves were dehumanized based on the price they would bring at a slave sale. These humans had a value that could be abstracted from their bodies and cashed in when the occasion arose (26). Children were not exempt from this facet of chattel-life, either. In fact, Johnson argues that the bodies of slave children were forcibly shaped to their slavery (21). Whippings were designed to correct slave children’s deficits in “character”, or their vices. These slave children would have lived in daily fear of being separated from their families and sent to a slave pen.   

One of the most interesting facets of Soul by Soul is Johnson’s claim that antebellum whites used slavery, slave ownership, and slave auctions to assert themselves into Southern society. Undoubtedly, slaveholders were looked upon by their contemporary antebellum counterparts as the elite social class of the time period. In general slaveholders had more money, more property, better housing, more luxury personal items, and more slaves than any other social group. Many slaveholding men and women viewed slave ownership as an indicator of wealth. Johnson’s example of a probable newly-acquired slaveowner aboard the steamship F. W. Downes is a perfect example of slaveholders using slavery as a means to climb the antebellum social ladder. A Mr. J. B. Alexander was witnessed frantically shuttling around the steamship bragging about his recent purchase of “negroes.” Johnson claims that “one of the ways white men made friends with one another was by talking about the slaves they had just bought or sold” (198). White men would also judge other white men on their supposed ability to purchase worthy slaves. Again aboard the F. R. Downes, Mr. Alexander was judged to have made a poor business decision. “When he boarded the F. R. Downes with his new slave, a man he did not know walked up and “remarked to him that he had bought a dead Negro” (201). Slaveholders daily gambled their own fantasies of freedom on the behavior of people whom they could never fully commodify (214). 

In addition, slaveholding women were not to be left out of projecting a higher social class based on their ownership of slaves either. One woman had her twelve-year-old slave beaten when his nose dripped blood on dinner napkins (206). A slave’s bloody mess would have been mortifyingly embarrassing for a white woman. 

Soul by Soul hits its stride when Johnson explores the various ways in which the slaves themselves were sometimes able to subtly control their own destinies. Historically, slaves in a slave pen have been looked upon as helpless when it came to their sale or salability. Johnson contends that slaves would intentionally try to manipulate slave buyers and sellers. Some slaves used their own skin color to resist slavery. Johnson provides the story of Robert, a light-skinned slave who boarded a steamboat out of New Orleans and escaped slavery. His fellow passengers thought he could have been of Spanish origin. Robert’s skin color, along with his general comportment, allowed him to pass into white society and out of slavery. Another slave, Alexina Morrison, was described as being too white to be a slave. Her blue eyes and blonde hair helped as well. Alexina was able to escape her buyer and sue him for her freedom in the courts of Louisiana. “One after another, her supporters came into court to testify that she was white in ‘her conduct and her actions’ (156). 

Furthermore, Johnson points out that slaves were the people with the information. “Slaves were the information brokers in the slave market” (176). Slaves knew what the traders wished them to say and what the holders wished to hear. Sickness would have been the easiest form of resistance many slaves could carry out. Slave buyers had an eye out for even the smallest signs of illness in slaves. “Buyers were searching for vitality and responsiveness” (178). Rather than constant acts of rebellion, slaves used subtle, calculated methods to resist the “peculiar institution.”

Many slaves were bought on a trial basis. This would have provided some with an excellent opportunity to feel their new slave holder out for temperament, anticipated abuse or lack thereof, and general welfare, as well as allowed the buyer to determine if they had made a smart purchase. An advertised cook could have decided to cook poorly. Johnson speculates that one slave, Daniel, may have faked his deafness in order to be brought back from Texas to New Orleans. Johnson also argues that purchasing slaves on a trial basis gave white women an opportunity to participate in the slave trade. Though not able to accompany men to the slave pens, if bought on trial slaves could be brought home and tested out  (182). 

Soul by Soul brings back to life the New Orleans slave market. As the largest slave market in the South, New Orleans served as the shining example of slave pen life. What Walter Johnson is able to recreate is a testament to his intensive research and his exemplary writing ability. Soul by Soul is a balanced and readable account of America’s most shameful days. I highly recommend!

Book Review: Trail of Tears

By John Ehle, Reviewed by Jaycie Smith

Stepping away from his usual fiction work, John Ehle penned what some have called the definitive story on the Cherokee Indian removal. Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation gives a strong voice to the Cherokee Indians. Ehle describes the events leading up to the Trail of Tears and details the lives of the important Cherokee Indians who led them. At times sweeping and at times poignant, Trail of Tears provides modern readers with perhaps their first in-depth look at the largest Indian removal of the nineteenth century. Overall, Ehle’s Trail of Tears is a powerful book that evaluates the Indian removal that took place in the 1830s. 

The beginning of the eighteenth century saw a new nation embrace many changes in society. In addition, white settlers had an insatiable appetite for land and gold. Ehle points out that Native American Indians, and specifically the Cherokee Indians, did not realize that change was inevitable (97). Ehle argues that for the most part, full-blooded Cherokee Indians were more resistant to assimilation into the white culture (137). While some Indians wanted to remain in the East, given the hostile circumstances and drastic differences in white culture and Indian culture, monumental change was imminent. While Andrew Jackson’s removal of the “civilized indian” tribes was anything but peaceful, by the time he took office removal was unavoidable. The Cherokee Indians were at every disadvantage in a white man’s world. 

In addition, internal division wrecked the Cherokee Indians. A small handful of Cherokee leaders were interested in working with the United States government to negotiate a mutually beneficial compromise. But, there were Cherokee leaders who would accept personal bribes instead of keeping the Indian’s best interests at heart. Ehle is able to differentiate between the two groups and provide understanding behind each’s motives. 

Although best known for his fiction, Ehle branched out to the historical drama known today as the Trail of Tears. In an attempt to set the story straight on the Cherokee Trail of Tears and despite using hundreds of historical sources, Ehle’s Trail of Tears disappointingly reads like fiction. No sources are cited within the reading, so the reader must rely on Ehle’s narrative interpretation to distinguish fact from what is indeed fiction. “Sad are the lullabies an Indian mother sings to her baby as she measures the time from day to day, danger to danger” (8). While this writing style makes for a beautiful sentence, Ehle should leave the undocumented imagery to his fiction writing. 

The core Cherokee characters in Trail of Tears are undoubtedly elite Cherokee men. John Ross. Major Ridge. John Ridge. Very few times does Ehle allude to what the average Cherokee Indian would have experienced leading up to the mass immigration. Not to mention, Andrew Jackson’s Removal Act did not just remove the Cherokee Indians from their homeland, but five “civilized” tribes were removed: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole. However, Ehle barely speaks of these other four tribes, and certainly depicts them as having very little to do with negotiations or government before their forced removal. In order to complete an accurate representation of the Trail of Tears, more information on non-elite Indians and the other four Indians tribes must be given. 

With his chilling sentences, Ehle points to gold as the definitive defining moment in the Cherokee’s own ability to control their lands: “Gold was the great elevator of men’s fortunes. Luck and gold. Gold and luck. Lucky gold. Golden luck. (222)” Not long after in his inaugural speech, Andrew Jackson proclaimed it time for the Indians to remove themselves from eastern America.

If not an Indian removal, what would have been an acceptable alternative to the Indian “problem?” Ehle hardly touches the surface of this question, but does admit that “a practical alternative to Indian removal never ams before the government” (395). Ehle quotes a lengthy paragraph to Indian agent Return J. Meigs, who suggested that each Cherokee Indian be personally deeded over six hundred acres apiece of lands claimed by the Cherokee, leaving a surplus of over eight million acres that could be sold to benefit the Indians. 

Trail of Tears is a personal book revealing much about men such as John Ross and Major Ridge. Ehle presents these men and their families as real people, much like their counterparts the white settlers. These Cherokee Indians were not the tee-pee living Indians whom children learn about in grade school. These Indians were tribes, families, and friends who hunted, farmed, and supported their communities. Many Cherokees could read and they were certainly intelligent. Ehle’s work would be a great starting point from someone interested in learning more about the Cherokee Indians or the Indian removal, but those interested in a more precise and historical interpretation should perhaps look elsewhere. 

God's Strange Work - Review

Twenty three years after writing Thunder and Trumpets: Millerites and Dissenting Religion in Upstate New York, 1800-1850, David L. Rowe attempts to set the record straight on William Miller and his Millerite religious movement. God’s Strange Work: William Miller and the End of the World not only investigates William Miller, but also describes events during the Second Great Awakening and recounts the establishment of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Often compared with other American religious figures such as Joseph Smith and Mary Baker Eddy, William Miller has been historically misunderstood as an early-American prophet of Christ’s second-coming. In God’s Strange Work, Rowe argues that Miller was in many ways a normal figure of both politics and religion in the early nineteenth century. 

Rowe faced an arduous task when attempting to reconstruct the true William Miller. Preceding generations have portrayed Miller as an atypical prophet who duped his followers into believing his timeline of the return of Christ. Many have depicted Miller as an egotist and unbalanced religious renegade. Rowe faces this legacy head on and for the most part, allows Miller to speak for himself, making use of Miller’s poetry, notes, lectures, sermons, and extant letters. Along with these sources, Rowe employs a variety of contemporary sources, including local newspapers and gazettes. 

Throughout his lifetime, Miller rose from the bottom up through the ranks. Earlier historians classified this aspect of Miller’s life as an attempt to gain fame. Rowe contends that Miller “was clearly ambitious, but he could not appear to be eager for acclaim. He boldly moved away from hearth and home to seek his fortune in a new town, but he reluctantly took public steps to get noticed, a trait that would become more pronounced with age” (33). Ambition does not indicate a search or desire for renown. Rowe is able to show that Miller’s attempts at being virtuous and humble in most aspects of his life argue against an effort to become famous. In fact, Rowe suggests that Miller doubted himself. “Doubt did not flow like a stream from one landmark to another but swirled like a whirlpool, catching him up and moving him as often in circles as forward” (84). 

The fact that Miller experienced a religious conversion while a soldier cannot be denied. However, that Miller’s conversion occurred simultaneously with America’s Second Great Awakening is interesting. Up to his military experience Miller was a self-proclaimed deist. In a short time span Miller lost several close relatives and friends. Rowe declares that through Miller’s grief, deism became unjustifiable - “cold, comfortless, inconvenient.” Miller wanted to believe in a life after death, and more importantly, he wanted to “cling to that hope which warrants a never-ending existence” (56). Rowe points to Baptist pastor Clark Kendrick as the commander in the attack against Miller’s deism. Kendrick worked to remind Miller that he was worthy of his parents and deserving of his children. As the Second Great Awakening dawned, and revivals swept the area, Rowe sets the scene for Miller’s conversion. 

Not only did Miller experience a religious conversion, but he continued down the religious spectrum and became a zealot of end-times prophecy. Rowe points to three influences that surrounded and heavily influenced Miller’s end-times theories. The first influence was a culture steeped in apocalyptic speculation. In conjunction with several end-of-day sermons given by visiting preachers noted by Miller in his diary, rare environmental occurrences such as the New Madrid earthquakes, and local end-of-the-world sects like the Shakers, Miller and other nineteenth century Americans were faced with a society who’s interest could be easily piqued by apocalyptic happenings. Rowe points to politics as a second powerful influence on Miller’s apocalyptic leanings. Rowe is not able to tie Miller directly to apocalyptic politics, but Miller’s former preacher Kendrick can be linked. This close association is the likely source of Miller’s conjectures on the second coming of Christ. The third influence credited with sparking Miller’s end-of-the-world speculation is history. As a young boy, Miller enjoyed reading heroic stories of the past. Rowe contends that “conversion allowed Miller to reconcile fascination with the past and disgust over its lessons” (77-81). To facilitate a religious movement that would bear his name, William Miller was in the right place at the right time. 

Rowe argues that the reason Millerism became one of the leading movements during America’s Second Great Awakening cannot solely be attributed to its namesake. Miller refused to speak publicly on his apocalyptic message for fourteen years. However, when he decided to “Go and Tell It to the World,” as the title of chapter five suggests, Rowe defends Miller by claiming that Miller had locality in mind. “Miller was preaching to his family, lecturing among fellow Baptists, seeking confirmation from his pastor”,  and not actively pushing the message beyond the Lake Champlain region (102). Rowe credits, among others, Joshua Himes for taking the Millerite message out of the local sphere to the national stage. Rowe compares Miller to Moses in his old age, allowing his Joshua to make day-to-day decisions while Miller provided guidance and wisdom that came with age and his religious experiences (172). Although the relationship would be strained at times, Miller and Himes transformed Millerism for better or worse into the movement as it is remembered today.  As Miller’s complicated life came to an end he and Himes held onto a father and son relationship. Not only did Himes provide occasional financial assistance to Miller, but Miller treated Himes “the same way he treated his own sons” (221). 

In reading God’s Strange Work, there is at least one obvious omission from both Miller and Rowe. What made Miller unquestionably famous was his exact date of the second coming of Christ. However, neither Miller nor Rowe address the inconsistencies with Miller’s predictions and Matthew 24, specifically Matthew 24:36, where Jesus proclaims “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only” (The Holy Bible). Miller spent and entire two-year time period combing the Bible for ‘inconsistencies.’ How did Matthew 24 not present at least a mentionable inconsistency for Miller? In his scholarship, Rowe needed to have addressed this issue in order to give readers a better understanding of Miller. This type of understanding could have helped answer the question of whether Miller was unbalanced or not. 

In meticulous detail and apocalyptic arithmetic, Rowe retraces Miller’s conversion, hermeneutics, and chronology of the Bible. Rowe leaves readers with an in-depth discovery of a truly American product, however enigmatic Miller may have been. God’s Strange Work is a must-read for anyone looking to better understand one of the most important religious time periods in American history. 

The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society: 1999; bartleby.com, 2000. www.bartleby.com/108/. April 6, 2015. 

Rowe, David L. God’s Strange Work: William Miller and the End of the World. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008. 

Discussion: Affairs of Honor

I just have a few thoughts.. I enjoyed Affairs of Honor much more than Forced Founders.

I loved reading about Maclay. As a marginal actor in the politics of the 1790s, I had never heard of him. His diary is an invaluable source to the inner workings of his time spent in the Senate, and Freeman spends a good deal of time making this clear. Freeman uses Maclay's diary as the opening to her thesis on honor in the lives of eighteenth century politicians. I think those men used honor as a rule book in their politics. In the early years of the new nation, men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams (my favorite) carried more weight than the actual government. By being an 'honorable' man early American politicans could gain support and followers. Freeman indicates everything about a man's life could be subject to the honor test: dress, food, comportment, writings, etc.

I loved the paragraphs on caning and nose tweaking. It's funny to think of old men pinching each other's noses, but we have to remember the extreme insult nose tweaking would have been to a man of honor.

Lastly, Freemen uses the duel as a final study of honor. For me, the most interesting claim is how a man could engage in a duel for the sake of honor, win the duel, but come out of the duel less honorable, like Aaron Burr.

Discussion: The Hemingses of Monticello

The Hemingses of Monticello

Even though most people are preoccupied with the relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, The Hemingses of Monticello doesn’t solely focus on those two main characters. One of the best aspects of this book is the attention to the other members of the Hemings family who are usually overlooked by historians and readers. Gordon-Reed spends a great deal of time documenting the lives of Robert and James, Sally’s older brothers. I was fascinated to read about the lives of these two men, considering the vast difference in their lives compared to the lives of their contemporaries. 

Gordon-Reed is able to piece together an intimate relationship between Hemings and Jefferson from scant evidence. Of course Thomas Jefferson wasn’t explicit in his personal writing about Sally Hemings; but Gordon-Reed uses vague diary or ledger entries as substantiating proof of an intimate relationship between the two. Short of diary entries from Sally Hemings herself, Gordon-Reed brings Sally Hemings to life, and not just with her relationship with Thomas Jefferson. 

I think the debate over the Jefferson-Hemings relationship has captured American imaginations because of who Jefferson was as a Founding Father. Most people look at Jefferson as an American hero, and to have DNA proof that he carried on a relationship with one of his slaves makes him more interesting. How could the man who wrote those famous lines in the Declaration of Independence attempt to have a secret family with one of his slaves? This contradiction is fascinating alone, not to mention, Sally Hemings was the half-sister to Jefferson’s deceased wife. Now that DNA technology can prove without a doubt that Jefferson was the father of Hemings’ children, historians can prove the proof, just as Gordon-Reed has done by reconstructing the lives of the Hemings family in relation to Jefferson. 

In retelling the lives of the Hemings family and Jefferson, Gordon-Reed gives a clear picture of race relations in Virginia during the late 1800s, but also in France during this same time period. We may never know why Sally Hemings decided to sail back to Virginia with Jefferson, but Gordon-Reed is able to deconstruct much of the mystery. I thought many of the best parts of this book were about the time the main characters spent in France. 

Discussion: Woody Holton's "Forced Founders"

For me, the most fascinating part of Holton's book was his focus on the smallholders in the Nonimportation and Nonexportation chapters. Elite Vriginians really were in a difficult social position when lower social groups were able to purchase the same luxury items as they. Nonimportation gave debtors an honorable excuse to reduce conspicuous consumption (p. 79). However, it's obvious that initially nonimportation had more to do with the wealthy's social fear than economics. Nonexportation gives an enormous group of people a new voice in the struggle for American Independence. I'm usually always for the underdog, and to me, the smallholders of the eighteenth century were the underdogs. Although nonexportation had been talked of and attempted previously, the smallholders in 1774-1776 finally put the plan into action. It seems like elite Virginians wanted something to happen to instigate a separation with Britain. When the smallholders developed nonexportation, combined with the gentry classes' feeble attempts at nonimportation, elite Virginians took action to cut off trade with Britain.

With the actions of Native Americans, smallholders, and enslaved blacks, elite Virginians weilded political power. Without elite Virginians, these three marginal groups stood little chance of anything except indebtedness against Britain. As others have mentioned, without these groups and their actions the gentry class had few reasons to declare Independence from Britain.

My problem with Forced Founders is the exclusion of the majority of the Thirteen Colonies in Holton's analysis of the push for American Independence. The author almost exclusively focuses on Virginia, with a few nods to Maryland and Massachusettes. I don't mean to diminish Virginian influence, think George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but there were thirteen colonies who united against Britain.

History 5372 - Early National America

Discussions:

1. Forced Founders

2. Affairs of Honor

3. The Hemingses of Monticello


Review of Reviews:

The Hemingses of Monticello, by Annette Gordon-Reed

Reactions Papers:

1. God's Strange Work, by David L. Rowe

2. Trail of Tears, by John Ehle

3. Soul by Soul, by Walter Johnson

Research Paper:

1. Facts are Stubborn Things: John Adams and His Defense of the British Soldiers Charged in the Boston Massacre, by Jaycie Smith