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Inspired by the 11 Tony awards won by the smash Broadway hit Hamilton, last month I wrote about Alexander Hamilton as the father of the US national debt and discussed the huge benefit the United States derives from having paid its debts promptly for more than two hundred years. Despite that post, no complementary tickets to Hamilton have arrived in my mailbox. And so this month, I will discuss Hamilton’s role as the founding father of American central banking.
Nowadays letter-writing appeals to our more romantic sensibilities. It is quaint, old-fashioned, and decidedly slower than sending off a winking emoji with barely half a thought. But it wasn't even that long ago that letter-writing dominated and served as a practical means of communication.
Theatergoers have been dazzled by the new Broadway hit Hamilton, and not just by its titular lead: the Schuyler women often steal the show. While Alexander Hamilton’s wife Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton provides heart and pathos, her sister Angelica Schuyler Church is sassy, witty, and flirtatious.
Today, the international community has its hands full with a host of global challenges; from rising numbers of refugees, international terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation, to pandemics, cyber-attacks, organized crime, drug trafficking, and others. Where do such global challenges originate? Two primary sources are rogue states like North Korea or Iran and failed states like Afghanistan or Somalia.
Martial adores sexy boys. He craves their kisses, all the more so if they play hard to get, "… buffed amber, a fire yellow-green with Eastern incense… That, Diadumenus, is how your kisses smell, you cruel boy. What if you gave me all of them, without holding back?" (3.65) and "I only want struggling kisses – kisses I’ve seized; I get more of a kick out of your bad temper than your good looks…" (5.46).
Since the 17th century Western thinkers have struggled with the problem of how to stop conflicts over religious differences. Not long ago, we mostly thought that the problem had been solved. Two rather different solutions served widely as paradigms, with many variations. One was the American Separation of Church and State, and the other French laïcité, usually if misleadingly translated as “secularism”.
On Valentine’s Day, we usually think of romance and great love stories. But there is another type of love we often overlook: love between friends, particularly between men and women in a platonic friendship. This is not a new phenomenon: loving friendships were possible and even fairly common among elite men and women in America’s founding era. These were affectionate relationships of mutual respect, emotional support, and love that had to carefully skirt the boundaries of romance. While extravagant declarations of love would have raised eyebrows, these friends found socially acceptable ways to express their affection for one another. Learn more about some special pairs of platonic friends from early America, including some very familiar names.
Eloise Payne and William Ellery Channing
William was best known as a Unitarian minister and early transcendentalist, but to a bright young teacher named Eloise he was “my dear friend.” Eloise looked to William, seven years her senior, for religious and professional advice, but she wasn’t afraid to rebuke him when he became too critical. When she worried that his affections were waning after he started courting the woman who would become his wife, he replied, “You hold the same place in my heart as ever, and I can now say to you with more propriety than before, that few hold a higher.” (Photo credit: Public Domain via The Frick Collection.)
George Washington and Elizabeth Powel
George and Elizabeth met while George was in Elizabeth’s hometown of Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention. George often spent the evening with Elizabeth and she later visited him at Mount Vernon. They had frank political discussions and exchanged gifts for over a decade. For her fiftieth birthday, George sent her a poetic tribute written by a friend of Elizabeth’s, and he signed one of his last letters to her before his death, “I am truly yours.” (Photo credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.)
Thomas Jefferson and Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams called her friend Thomas Jefferson “one of the choice ones on earth,” and Thomas greatly admired the wife of his long-time friend John Adams. They both lived in Paris in the 1780’s and attended plays and other events together. Later, he jokingly referred to her as Venus; he wrote from Paris that while selecting Roman busts to send for the Adams’ London home, he passed over the figure of Venus because he “thought it out of taste to have two at table at the same time.” (Photo credit: Public Domain via Library of Congress.)
Margaret Bayard Smith and Anthony Bleecker
Margaret and Anthony first met as young adults in New York City as part of the same circle of writers and intellectuals. Some twenty-five years later, Margaret wrote a novel which Anthony helped to edit. The novel’s central love story was based upon her friendship with Anthony. “Has not friendship recollections as sweet and dear as those of love?” she wrote to him. Her answer: “Yes, indeed it has—at least in my heart.” (Photo credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.)
John Rodgers and Anne Pinkney
John Rodgers is best remembered as a navel hero who fought the Barbary pirates and fired the first shots of the War of 1812. But while he was across the Atlantic fighting pirates, he relied on his friend Ann Pinkney at home in Maryland to help further his courtship of a young woman named Minerva Denison. Ann reported back to John on his “goddess” and was pleased to extract a confession of Minerva’s love for John which she passed along. John and Minerva married, while John and Ann remained friends. (Photo credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.)
Benjamin Franklin and Georgiana Shipley
Benjamin Franklin was notorious for his flirtations with women, but it’s likely that most of his flirting was merely part of playful friendships. Such appears to be the case with a teenage girl he befriended in London in 1772, Georgiana Shipley. He gave her a pet squirrel named Mungo as well as a snuff box with his portrait painted on the lid. He declared himself “your affectionate friend” and she was even more effusive: “The love and respect I feel for my much-valued friend are sentiments so habitual to my heart that no time nor circumstance can lessen the affection.” (Photo credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.)
Gilbert Stuart and Sarah Wentworth Morton
Gilbert Stuart is best known for his portraits of presidents, but his friendship with Boston writer Sarah Wentworth Morton prompted his only known poetry. Gilbert created three portraits of Sarah, one of which he kept for himself. She published a poem praising his artistry, beginning with “Stuart, thy portraits speak with skill divine.” He replied that her poetry created “a cheering influence at my heart” and that ultimately poetry was superior to painting. This was a friendship between a very talented pair! (Photo credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.)
Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson and Benjamin Rush
The doctor and writer Benjamin Rush had a long friendship with one of Philadelphia’s smartest women, Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson. Elizabeth wrote Benjamin frequently from her country estate but sometimes worried she didn’t receive enough letters in return. As she wrote in a poem she sent him in 1793, “One Letter a week she surely might claim,/ To keep alive Friendship; and fan its pure Flame.” He may not have written as often as she would like, but he admired her greatly. She was, he said after her death, “a woman of uncommon talents and virtues” who was “beloved by a numerous circle of friends and acquaintances.” (Photo credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.)
Eliza Parke Custis and Marquis de Lafayette
The Marquis de Lafayette formed a lasting bond with George Washington during the American Revolution, and his affections later extended to Washington’s step-granddaughter Eliza Parke Custis. Lafayette was a father figure for Eliza, whose own father died when she was young. Eliza confided her troubles in him and he wrote long letters in reply offering advice and affection. The pair wrote each other for years, with Lafayette conveying his “paternal love” and “most affectionate respectful attachments.” (Photo credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.)
Featured image: Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, Howard Chandler Christy (1940). Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
It comes as a surprise to many people that landscapes can be designed. The assumption is that landscapes just happen; they emerge, by accident almost, from the countless activities and uses that occur on the land. But this ignores innumerable instances where people have intervened in landscape with aesthetic intent, where the landscape isn’t just happenstance, but the outcome of considered planning and design. Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner Calvert Vaux coined a name for this activity in 1857 when they described themselves as ‘landscape architects’ on their winning competition entry for New York’s Central Park; but ‘landscape architecture’ had been going on for centuries under different designations, including master-gardening’, ‘place-making’, and ‘landscape gardening’. To avoid anachronism, I’m going to call the entire field ‘landscape design’. The ‘top ten’ designers that follow are those I think have been the most influential. These people have shaped your everyday world.
André Le Nôtre (1613 –1700). France’s most famous gardener was employed by Louis XIV to create, at the palace of Versailles, the most extensive gardens in the Western world. Le Nôtre brought the Renaissance style, based upon symmetry and order, to its zenith. Versailles was copied, not only by the designers of other princely gardens, such as those at La Granja in Spain, the Peterhof near St. Petersburg or the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, but by city planners who appropriated its geometry of intersecting axes. The most surprising example is the influential plan for Washington D.C. produced in 1791 by the French engineer Pierre-Charles L’Enfant, who had grown up at Versailles.
The palace of Versailles gardens
Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716 –1783). Lancelot Brown is credited with changing the face of eighteenth century England. From humble origins, he become the most sought-after landscape designer in the country, undertaking over 250 commissions, including Temple Newsam in Yorkshire, Petworth in West Sussex and Compton Verney in Warwickshire. He swept away many formal gardens to create the naturalistic parkland which subsequently become an icon of Englishness. The style has been emulated worldwide: Munich has its Englischer Garten, while Stockholm has the Hagaparken and Paris the Parc Monceau.
Compton Verney gardens, Warwickshire
Thomas Jefferson (1743 –1826) Yes, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the third President of the United States was also a landscape designer. Not only did he lay out the grounds of his own property at Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia as an ornamental farm, but he also created the influential masterplan for the campus of the University of Virginia. However, his greatest impact upon the American landscape, for better or worse, was his advocacy of the grid for the subdivision of territory and for rational town planning.
Drawing of Pavilion III, The Lawn, University of Virginia campus
William Wordsworth (1770-1850). The poet might seem an unlikely selection, but Wordsworth designed several gardens, not just for his own houses, but also for those of friends. However, my principal reason for including him in this list is that he wrote the Guide to the Lakes, first published in 1810, which was notionally a travel guide, but was just as much a design guide, full of thoughtful advice about how to build – and when not to build – in a sensitive cultural landscape. Wordsworthian values were a significant influence upon the founders of the National Trust and continue to inform thinking about landscape conservation.
Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) Olmsted is often seen as the founding father of the landscape architecture profession. He thought that the creation of pastoral parks within teeming cities could counteract the adverse effects of industrialization and urbanization. In addition to Central Park, New York City, he was the designer of Prospect Park in Brooklyn and the system of linked parks in Boston known as the ‘Emerald Necklace’. His plan for the residential community of Riverside, Illinois, became the template for innumerable suburbs, not all of the same quality. He was also prominent in the campaign to preserve scenic landscapes, such as the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove from development and commercial disfigurement.
The 1894 plan for the Emerald Necklace Park System in Boston, Massachusetts
Thomas Dolliver Church (1902-1978)When a style becomes ubiquitous, we sometimes forget that someone pioneered it. Church was a Californian designer who created elegantly functional ‘outdoor rooms’ for a sybaritic West Coast lifestyle. Those curvaceous, free form swimming pools that appear in American movies and TV shows from the 1950s onwards are Church’s principal contribution to cultural history, but he was an important figure in the rise of Modernist landscape design in the mid twentieth century.
Ian McHarg (1920-2001) Scottish-born McHarg was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania when he wrote Design with Nature, published 1969, the most influential book ever written by a landscape architect. McHarg’s thesis was that we should design our environment in harmony with natural forces, rather than in opposition to them. He pointed out the foolishness of such practices as building houses on floodplains. His advice seems ever more prescient as the world begins to cope with the consequences of climate change.
Peter Latz (1939 -) Landscape designers in many countries have been involved in the reclamation of derelict industrial sites. Latz’s office recognized that reclamation does not need to mean the complete erasure of all history. Instead it can recognise the value of what remains. Most famously, Latz turned a rusting Ruhr valley steelworks into the Landschaftspark Duisburg Nord, where gardens flourish in former ore bunkers, rock-climbers practice on old concrete walls, and scuba-divers plunge into pools created within onetime gasholders. This approach to reclamation, which works with memory and aims to preserve as much of the existing site as possible, is rapidly becoming mainstream.
Landschaftspark Duisburg Nord
James Corner (1961 -) English-born Corner is now Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and principal of the New York based practice, Field Operations. He is perhaps the world’s most celebrated landscape architect, following the extraordinary success of the High Line project on Manhattan, which turned an abandoned railway viaduct into a linear park, visited by around four million people per year. Field Operations are also working on the Freshkills Landfill on Staten Island, transforming it into one of the world’s biggest urban parks.
Kongjian Yu(1963-) Educated at Beijing Forestry University and Harvard Graduate School of Design, Professor Yu now heads the innovative Turenscape practice which has created many remarkable new landscapes in China, including the Zhongshan Shipyard Park, a reclamation project similar in philosophy to Landschaftspark Duisburg Nord. Turenscape makes use of vernacular features of the Chinese agricultural landscape, such as paddy fields and irrigation channels, to create striking new urban parks. Many of Yu’s park designs, such as the Floating Garden at Yongning River Park, demonstrate an ecological approach to flood control.
Ian Thompson is a Chartered Landscape Architect and Reader in Landscape Architecture in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University. He worked as a landscape architect from 1979 to 1992, mostly on work related to environmental improvement, derelict land reclamation and urban renewal, before taking up a lecturing post at Newcastle University. He is the author of many books including Landscape Architecture: A Very Short Introduction.
The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday, subscribe to Very Short Introductions articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS, and like Very Short Introductions on Facebook.
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Surprisingly, in a country that cares about its founding history, few Americans know of Thomas Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom, a document that Harvard’s distinguished (emeritus) history professor, Bernard Bailyn called, “the most important document in American history, bar none.”
Yet that document is not found in most school standards, so it’s rarely taught. How come? Maybe because it is a Virginia document, passed by Virginia’s General Assembly. Or maybe because its ideas found their way directly into the Constitution’s First Amendment and that seems enough for most Americans.
Why do Bailyn and some others think it so important? Because it was radical, trailblazing, and uniquely American: no government before had ever taken the astonishing stand that it takes. In essence it says that religious belief is a personal thing, a matter of heart and soul, and that government has no right to meddle with beliefs, or tax citizens to support churches they may disavow. That wasn’t the way governments were expected to operate.
Imagine you live in 18th century Virginia: According to a law on the books you have to go to church—every day–usually for both morning and evening prayer. If you don’t go you could be whipped, sentenced to work on an oceangoing galley, or worse. And you don’t have a choice of churches. In Virginia the established church is Anglican. That means you are assessed taxes to support that church whether you believed in it or not. You couldn’t be a member of the legislature unless you are a member of the Established Church. So the legislation of the House of Burgesses reflect the world of its Anglican delegates.
But the colonies are home to independent folk who braved a turbulent ocean to be able to think for themselves. Roger Williams, kicked out of Puritan Massachusetts, talks of “freedom of conscience” and lets anyone who wishes settle in the colony he founds on Rhode Island. The Long Island town of Flushing has a charter that promises settlers freedom of conscience, so leaders there petition New York Governor Peter Stuyvesant concerning the public torturing of Quaker preacher Robert Hodgson. In the Flushing Remonstrance they write, “We desire in this case not to judge lest we be judged.” In Virginia, Jemmy Madison stands outside the Orange County jail and listens as a Methodist preacher, behind bars, spreads the word of the Gospel. Why are Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians being put in jail, Madison asks?
In 1777 Jefferson writes the eloquent Statute for Religious Freedom, introducing it into the legislature in 1779. This is a Revolutionary time and England’s church has to go. Will an established American church succeed it?
Patrick Henry, popular and powerful, introduces a bill that seems enlightened: it calls for public assessments to support all Christian worship. James Madison counters in his remarkable Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, arguing the case for full religious freedom. Most legislators are perplexed. Every nation has its state church. George Washington is on the fence. If citizens are not forced to go to church will they sink into immorality? What is the role of government?
John Locke has written a famous letter on religious tolerance, but Jefferson and Madison are clear: this statute is not about tolerance, it is about full acceptance — and jurisdiction. Jefferson’s point is that governments have no business telling people what they should believe. In his Notes on Virginia he says,
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or one god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. […] To suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion. . .is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty.”
Meanwhile Patrick Henry’s bill passes its first two readings. A third and it becomes law. Jefferson writes to Madison from Paris where he is ambassador, “What we have to do is devotedly pray for his death.” (He’s talking about Henry.) Madison takes a pragmatic path. He gets Patrick Henry kicked upstairs into the governor’s chair, where he has no vote. Then he reintroduces Jefferson’s bill for establishing religious freedom. It finally passes, on 16 January 1786.
It turns out that Virginians are no more, nor less, moral than they were when they were forced to go to church. George Washington becomes one of the biggest fans of the idea of religious freedom. In a famous letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport Rhode Island, he says,
“The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy–a policy worthy of imitation. . .It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”
Joy Hakim, a former teacher, editor, and writer won the prestigious James Michener Prize for her series, A History of US, which has sold over 5 million copies nationwide. From Colonies to Country, one of the volumes in that series, includes the full text of Jefferson’s statute. Hakim is also the author of The Story of Science, published by Smithsonian Books. A graduate of Smith College and Goucher College she has been an Associate Editor at Norfolk’s Virginian-Pilot, and was Assistant Editor at McGraw-Hill’s World News.
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Image Credit: Official Presidential portrait of Thomas Jefferson. 1800. By the White House Historical Association. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The best way to capture the past is to step back into it -- visiting the places you are writing about. Last week Fran and I toured Monticello, the mountaintop home of Thomas Jefferson. There is no better way to get into a person's head than to walk the red Piedmont soil and marvel at the blue rolling hills off in the distance. Now I know why he called it his "sea view."
But stepping back in time also takes a healthy dose of imagination, too. Mulberry row, where slaves lived and worked, is empty now. I have to imagine the lane busy with boys making nails, and the air thick with smoke from the forge and the cook house. Instead of the two white women driving a four-wheeler from tree to tree in the orchard, I have to envision perhaps two black men carrying a ladder and saws to trim the branches.
The past is not black and white, either. Old photos make everyone look somber and give the impression that history was fuzzy and dull. But people wore shades of red and blue, laughed and danced. One of the more startling things I noticed at Monticello was the neon yellow dining room. Not what I would have expected had I not known how much he appreciated light and air.
Hustled through the house with other tourists it was hard to really see everything, but then again, it gave me a more accurate portrayal of a house filled with children, servants, and family. And when I return, I can dig deeper, look closer, and reveal even more.
0 Comments on Walking in Their Footsteps as of 4/8/2013 7:14:00 AM
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a 6-3 opinion that “ first sale doctrine” applies to books purchased overseas.
The court decided that Supap Kirtsaeng did not violate copyright when he purchased textbooks overseas to sell to friends and families in the United States. Textbook publisher Wiley had sued Kirtsaeng for reselling these books.
Jefferson's Sons - A Founding Father's Secret Children Kimberly Brubaker Bradley Grades 6 - 9
Brubaker Bradley brings to life the story of the four children - Beverly, Harriet, Madison and Eston - that researchers have, after much prodding, historical research and DNA analysis, acknowledged Thomas Jefferson had with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings.
Brubaker Bradley's story begins through the eyes of Beverly Jefferson, the eldest of the four children who survived into adulthood, and follows the story through Madison Jefferson, the middle son, and finally, Peter Fossett, the son of the blacksmith, Joe Fossett, who was sold after Jefferson's death.
It is told from close third from just one character's POV at a time. When Beverly becomes a teenager, Brubaker makes an ingenious transition from his POV to Madison's. So much so, my ten year old exclaimed, "Mama, it's Maddy's story now!" It was like a magic trick that the audience sees but still marvels at. Brubaker Bradley is a pro. I learned a few new tricks.
The story revolves around family. In this particular case, a mother, Sally, who was a slave, yet became, for all intents and purposes, the second wife of Thomas Jefferson after his first wife died. And a father, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote all men were created equal yet kept his own children as slaves. And four children who were the slaves and children of one of the United States' most revered but, as we learn through walking in these children's shoes, hypocritical founding fathers.
Brubaker Bradley spent three years working on this book. It shows. She has taken so much material and blended it so seamlessly. The story is suffused with childhood, slavery, history, philosophy, politics, historical figures. They all come to life.
My youngest daughter and I listened to the audio of this book while in DC and Charlottesville for Spring Break. About halfway through the book, we went to Monticello, Jefferson's home. My daughter's been there before, but it hadn't stuck. This time, though, the home wasn't just one more historical building we walked through. My daughter looked for traces of Hemmings' family members, and Fossetts and Hearns. History wasn't boring. It was alive and had faces. It was so cool. We even listened to a part of the story while sitting on a bench on Mulberry Row, where the slave quarters were at Monticello. Afterwards, when we were listening to Jefferson's Sons again in the car, my daughter said over and over, "oh, yeah", as she remembered the places that were a part of the story.
This is a book you don't want to miss. The writing is superb. The subject matter begs to be discussed. And the last scene is unforgettable. Read it.
There are so many excellent books that have come out for children that take historical facts and weave them into fiction that breathes with life. Another, for slightly younger readers, that embraces an African American wedding tradition, jumping the broom, that is inherently tied to slavery but may actually predate it is Ellen's Broom by Kelly Starling Lyons.
I've never been much of a history fan, until now. Through these two books, I feel as if I've discover
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In celebration of the New York Public Library’s centennial festival weekend, game designer Jane McGonigal has crafted the “Find the Future” scavenger hunt.
500 players will join the “Write All Night” event on May 20th. Inside the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, they will use laptops and smartphones to find 100 objects from the library’s collection of treasures and perform a related-writing challenge.
The video embedded above features a promo clip for the event; it seems to mimic The Da Vinci Code‘s film trailer. If you want to participate, just answer this question: “In the year 2021, I will become the first person to __________.” Submit your answer before 11:59 PM Pacific Time on April 21st.
Did you know that President Thomas Jefferson, novelist Mark Twain, and evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin all wrote in the margins? According to the New York Times, marginalia was denounced in the 20th century as a form of graffiti. These days, scholars love marked up books.
The article offers these observations from University of Toronto professor Heather Jackson: “Books with markings are increasingly seen these days as more valuable, not just for a celebrity connection but also for what they reveal about the community of people associated with a work…examining marginalia reveals a pattern of emotional reactions among everyday readers that might otherwise be missed, even by literary professionals.”
The Caxton Club and the Newberry Library will host a symposium in March to debate this subject; Jackson will be speaking there as well. The event will spotlight on a new essay collection entitled Other People’s Books: Association Copies and the Stories They Tell. This title contains 52 essays and 112 illustrations.
Wordle is a fun web tool that allows people to make artistic text collages or “word clouds” from any text.
Here’s more from the site: “Wordle is a toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.”
This GalleyCat contributor took eBookNewser’s “Free eBook of the Day” (Rudyard Kipling‘s The Jungle Book) and created a word cloud–the image is embedded above. Other literary projects on Wordle include the U.S. Constitution, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and Stephenie Meyer’sBreaking Dawn.
In the book, her portrait of Lincoln includes the words: “I looked deep into his eyes and found.” Kalman added: “I thought he would be the most incredible boyfriend. If I were married to him instead of Mary Todd Lincoln, the whole history would’ve been a whole different thing.”
In a list of the colonies’ grievances against King George III Jefferson wrote, “he has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow-subjects, with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property.” But the future president, whose image now graces the two-dollar bill, must have realized right away that “fellow-subjects” was the language of monarchy, not democracy, because “while the ink was still wet” Jefferson took out “subjects” and put in “citizens.”
In a eureka moment, a document expert at the Library of Congress examining the rough draft late at night suddenly noticed that there seemed to be something written under the word citizens. It was no Da Vinci code or treasure map, but Jefferson’s original wording, soon uncovered using a technique called “hyperspectral imaging,” a kind of digital archeology that lets us view the different layers of a text. The rough draft of the Declaration was digitally photographed using different wavelengths of the visible and invisible spectrum. Comparing and blending the different images revealed the word that Jefferson wrote, then rubbed out and wrote over.
Above: Jefferson’s rough draft reads, “he has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow-citizens”; followed by a detail of “fellow-citizens” with underwriting visible in ordinary light. Below: a series of hyperspectral images made by the Library of Congress showing that Jefferson’s initial impulse was to write “fellow-subjects.” [Hi-res images of the rough draft are available at the Library of Congress website.] Elsewhere in the draft Jefferson doesn’t hesitate to cross out and squeeze words and even whole lines in as necessary, but in this case he manages to fit his emendation neatly into the same space as the word it replaces.
The news story this July 4 is that Thomas Jefferson didn’t get it all right on his first try! Seems when Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence he erased some words and substituted others. It’s a writer’s biggest nightmare. Imagine readers being able to compare your sad looking first draft with the polished, and often completely different, final draft. If Jefferson could, I’m sure he would swoop down and tell those nosy historians, “No, no. Don’t look at that stuff. Here’s the finished piece.”
Jefferson thought he was effectively destroying those mistakes by erasing words and writing new words in place. Welcome to the world of hyperspectral imaging, Tom! It seems nothing is gone forever.
Being a neurotic person(what writer isn’t?), I “save” any large sections I cut out of my work—just in case I change my mind and want to put it back into my writing. I worry that eventually I’ll decide those original sentences were brilliant and be unable to recreate their perfection. Funny thing is, I rarely look at the “miscellaneous” file where I store the sections that don’t make the cut. If I do decide to reinsert the original work I usually write it fresh. Perhaps having the “miscellaneous” file is more of a superstition. If I don’t have it I may need it. Be prepared. And I was never even a Boy Scout!
When a piece is finished I normally save the “miscellaneous” file along with the finished piece on a disc. Of course, now that I’ve heard about Tom’s dilemma I’m rethinking that habit. Do I really want people reading my first drafts and terrible mistakes when I’m a famous(dead) writer and not here to defend myself?
So how about you? How to you treat the paragraphs, sentences, and chapters you cut out of your work? Save them? Run them through the shredder? Toss them in a bonfire?
If you want to learn more about Jodi's weird writing habits stop by her blog Words by Webb
4 Comments on What Happens to the First Draft?, last added: 7/6/2010
I am afraid that I don't have a misc folder for my cuts. I would probably forget that they were there. Instead I just rename a story I am working on with rev1 etc..
OMG I am not alone! I totally do the same thing! And I never even look at them again. The "random related writing" file is a very lonely file. But better safe than sorry, right? If I am so lucky as to have anyone pour over that file one day, I think I'll live (or at least not roll over in my grave). At least somebody's reading. I'm writing my first memoir now and blogging about the process at www.dufflyn.blogspot.com It's tough enough just getting anyone to pour over a chapter!
Saw Jefferson's Declaration of Independence 'reveal' on the evening news yesterday and marvelled at what technology can do.
I've saved the majority of my 'leftovers' in a 'Writing Drafts' folder on my computer and reuse them as needed. Hard copies are also filed away for future use. I do a review after a few years and if I can't use the remnants, then I delete or shred.
When I make major revisions, I save the whole document to a separate file. I include either a date or a version number in the file name. Hard drive space is cheap for word documents!
I have been thinking long and hard about what happens after I finish grad school in writing. What is the expectation? I'm already published, so it's not getting published per se, although I would like to move out of the minor, small press houses and up to the major, bigger houses. Is grad school a surefire method of doing that?
How I wish.
Still, there is a certain level of expectation that grad school will help me figure out how to make my writing better.
So I was kind of surprised to read a rant on MFA writers the other day by an anonymous editor. God knows, we writers have enough paranoia about the world of publication, but now to read that educating ourselves in writing is a waste of time? Yeesh.
As a university educator in an entirely different field, political science, please let me say that I wish, wish, wish, it were required that politicians have a degree in political science, rather than law--as most do--or maybe even both. Perhaps then, they might have a deeper understanding of the history of interaction among nations and how best not to repeat past failures, rather than repeatedly making them.
Clearly, I'm all for educating yourself, which is probably why I'm in a writing MFA program. What I'm not for, and probably what an anonymous editor has against those with MFAs in writing, is attitude. I've had students who believe that just because they sat in my classroom, they had a right to a passing grade. Maybe that's what the anonymous editor has seen, writers who feel that since they have the MFA they deserve to be published.
If only it were that easy. Like any job, writing takes lots of hard work. In my experience so far, getting an MFA in the field means putting in more hours in a shorter time period and thus shortening the time spent figuring out how to write publishable stuff. Do you need an MFA to write? Absolutely not. A person can teach herself any craft. ANY. Thomas Jefferson was a self-taught architect and his home, Monticello, is still standing. But I wouldn't hire an architect today who went only to the school of hard knocks (unless, maybe, he were Thomas Jefferson).
So what does an MFA get you if it's not a pass-go-and-head-straight-for-publication card? A lot of experience in a condensed period of time. It's another option in the learning-the-craft scenario. In the end, it might-like any degree-get you a little more notice from editors and agents (say, 5 seconds instead of 3), but really, it's for me, the writer, not them, the outside world. Unless I figure out how to improve my craft, and then everybody wins. I'm guessing a lot of writers see it this way. I hope more and more will as we continue to educate ourselves. I hope, too, that the anonymous editor runs across some of them and changes her position on MFAs in writing. Education isn't a bad thing. It's what we do with it that measures what we've learned.
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I read this book for pleasure. Having just visited Virginia and having visited Monticello in the past, I grabbed it when I saw it on the Just In library shelf. What really struck me about the book, is how much it explained to me what was going on in the recent Presidential campaign in regards to Obama’s race.
Jefferson thought that white blood mixed with African blood was what improved the African people. The white blood elevated the person to intelligence, good looks, creativity, etc. Now when I worked for the Obama campaign a few times, some of the people we canvassed talked about that they couldn’t vote for Senator Obama because he was black. Some of the campaign workers would answer, “But, he’s half-white.” And believe it or not, this seemed to settle them. A disturbing but true experience.
It is mostly an interesting read. Gordon-Reed does tend to repeat herself throughout, making and reiterating the same arguments so that I began to skim through many sections of the 662 page book. She had already convinced me the first time she’d made the argument so it became annoying for it to take up much space in another section and then sometimes, yet another section.
She also made a statement that bothers me still. She stated in regards to the Hemings’ women when Jefferson wasn’t at Monticello, “Indeed, it is hard to imagine just how these women occupied themselves during the many months when there were no daily household duties to perform.” My response to this is, “What? The other slaves took care of the Hemings’ enslaved women and they sat around eating bon bons, bored silly?” Life wasn’t easy then. Cooking took hours and hours. There were no grocery stores. What about all of the routine tasks that must have consumed them, tasks that we no longer have to do, just to have daily needs met? Making their own clothes, washing those clothes, taking care of their children, nursing their sick and injured family, gathering food, cooking that food, cleaning up the mess. My only conclusion is that Gordon-Reed has so removed herself from what it is like to be a housekeeper and stay-at-home mother, that she cannot see how demanding the role would be, especially 200 years ago. If you have children, how much “spare time” do you have, even when someone else cleans your house?
Not to mention the fact that most of the Hemingses could read and were intelligent and probably had a lot of things they wanted to do with their time when they weren’t burdened down with mundane mindless household chores.
This is why Virginia Woolf said every woman writer should have a room of her own and with a view. A room she can lock and keep the responsibilities of being the one who raises up the next generation at bay for a spare moment or two. Why is that women’s real work is the household chores and when relieved of that work, which I doubt the Hemingses really were, they can’t keep themselves occupied?
Jefferson didn’t free all of his slaves. He only freed a few. He was in terrible debt and so he treated most of them as property and they endured the horror of the auction after his death. Even the little children, being seperated from their parents. Children who had probably always thought they’d be kept with their parents since Jefferson kept most of the Hemingses together.
0 Comments on The Hemingses of Monticello as of 11/12/2008 12:29:00 PM
Our new President may be African American to you, but he's Hawaiian to me! Added to that particular point of pride is that, this time, Virginia stepped up to the plate. All hail the Commonwealth!
Today, I'm celebrating with a poetic serving from my favorite Virginian, Thomas Jefferson. I mean no disrespect to the other seven Presidents from Virginia -- Washington, Madison, Monroe, Harrison, Tyler, Taylor, and Wilson. It's just that in addition to all his other talents, Jefferson was a devoted foodie :).
While reading about his gastronomic adventures recently, I discovered he was also an ardent scrapbooker. Who knew? While in office between 1801-1809, he apparently cut and pasted poems from newspapers and periodicals, arranged them thematically, then sent the books as gifts to his granddaughters.
This is just as endearing as his practice of writing down favorite recipes while he traveled in Europe!
The poems in Thomas Jefferson's Scrapbooks, edited by Jonathan Gross (Steerforth Press, 2006), are arranged in three broad categories: Nation, Family, and RomanticLove. Though not composed by Jefferson (he wrote very little poetry himself), they offer great historical context and insight into the idiosyncratic nature of his interests. Since the majority are sentimental love poems, they also reveal aspects of his personality not examined in traditional biographies, illuminating his inner emotional life.
At first, I was surprised to learn that the man who penned the Declaration of Independence seemed equally enamored with the decidedly literary as he was with poems of a more pedestrian nature. But this actually makes perfect sense, since Jefferson was known to eschew formality, greeting ambassadors in corduroy and house slippers.
The South Square Room at Monticello doubled as a family sitting room and school room for his grandchildren, who are pictured here with Jefferson's daughter, Martha (standing), and Israel, a slave. Painting by G.B. McIntosh.
While fulfilling his duties as President, Jefferson missed domestic life. He wrote endearing letters to his granddaughters (often enclosing poems), and was ever the benevolent tutor when it came to guiding their intellectual and social development. He advised them to "strengthen your memory by getting pieces of poetry by heart." The practice of saving personally meaningful poems follows the romantic tradition described by Wordsworth in the closing lines of ThePrelude:
"what we have loved,/others will love, and we will teach them how."
That sort of sums up the purpose of Poetry Friday, don't you think?
While there are many overly sentimental, erudite, and ho-hum poems in the collection, there are also many gems, including odes, epigrams, satires, parodies, songs, and elegies, written by known, unknown, young and female poets. Who can resist titles like, "On a Long Nose," "A Squint at the Ladies," or this one, which intimates Jefferson's well-known love of gardening and food:
ODE ON POTATOES (by Anonymous)
Where lies the sterling taste in eating? In the costly French ragout? I say No, but in Potatoes; What my gentle friend, say you?
Sordid Epicures may glory, In the joys their feast afford; May Contentment and Potatoes, Ever spread my humble board.
O thou honest Irish sirloin! How I chuckle when I see Social on the table smoking, Hot Potatoes stand by thee!
Here, ye nauseous frog destroyers, Here the feasts of health behold; Feed on these, ye wiser Irish, If ye covet to be old.
Happiest produce are Potatoes, Of Hibernia's happy Isle; The support of toiling millions, And the glory of her sail.
These refin'd to snowy whiteness, With Munditia's bosom vie, Please at once her nicest palate, And delight the wand'ring eye.
These, in bread, in pie, or pudding. Scallop'd, roasted, boil'd excel; All their uses, all their value, Not the Muse herself can tell.
Never may those virtuous Irish, Who their King and Country serve, Never may they want Potatoes Who those noble roots deserve.
Yes, I would have liked this one, if I had been a Jefferson granddaughter. The best I can do is cook some potatoes tonight. Scalloped or mashed?
Enjoy your weekend. We have a brand new, totally cool President!!
To read Jonathan Gross' intro, in which he details how he discovered the scrapbooks, click here. Fascinating.
~ This is the fifth in a series of posts about Presidential Food.
Jefferson Miniature by John Trumbull
No President outshines Thomas Jefferson when it comes to food and wine -- the appreciation, consumption, and cultivation of it were for him lifelong passions.
An enlightened epicure, his table included Southern staples such as Virginia ham, black-eyed peas, corn, venison, sweet potatoes, and turnip greens, alongside the many French dishes he first tasted in Paris while serving as foreign minister for four years. He loved entertaining, and impressed his guests with "sinful feasts," featuring as many as a dozen desserts, including blanc mange, meringues, and macaroons.
He was a connoisseur of fine wines, and considered it, along with olive oil, to be a necessity of life. Four to six wines (imported by the barrel from France, Italy, Spain and Portugal) were served at his dinners. He was attentive and particular when it came to food preparation, and insisted on serving seasonal produce at its peak. Of course he grew everything on his estate, practicing a very scientific approach to horticulture.
In his Garden Notebook, Jefferson meticulously recorded information about everything he planted -- facts about all the seeds he imported from Europe or acquired from neighbors, to include dates of planting, first leaves, first harvest, first appearance at table, etc.
Monticello grapes
You probably know about his 1000-foot long vegetable garden at Monticello, where he cultivated over 300 varieties of about 70 species of vegetables, including at least 30 varieties of peas (his favorite). His garden was his laboratory: "I am curious to select one or two of the best species or variety of every garden vegetable, and to reject all others from the garden to avoid the dangers of mixing or degeneracy."
Monticello vegetable garden and pavillion
Though he's not considered a vegetarian by today's standards, vegetables did make up much of his diet. Salads were especially important to him, as was the cultivation of sesame and olives (to make dressings). Besides English peas, he loved asparagus, artichokes, eggplant, tomatoes, broccoli and cauliflower.
He also had an eight-acre "Fruitery," which included a South Orchard of 400 trees (peach, apple, cherry), two vineyards,"berry squares" of currants, gooseberries, and raspberries, and a nursery where he propagated fruit trees and special garden plants. His North Orchard consisted of only apple and peach trees, and was more a "farm orchard," since the fruit was harvested for cider, brandy, or livestock feed. Together, the fruitery and farm orchard represented "the best of the European heritage combined with a distinctive New World vitality and personality."
Because Jefferson was a widower when he was elected President, his daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph, along with Dolley Madison, often served as hostesses for gatherings at the President's House (White House). Martha included many of her father's favorite recipes in her 1824 cookbook, The Virginia Housewife.
What I found especially interesting was Jefferson's preference for small, private dinners, served daily at 4 p.m. He favored the more relaxed nature of these over the aristocratic levees of the Federalists. His guests were carefully chosen to facilitate social harmony -- he never mixed political parties, or invited Cabinet members along with Congressmen. They were seated at round or oval tables to promote conviviality and a feeling of equality, and were encouraged to speak freely on all subjects. The use of a dumb waiter insured privacy.
Monticello Dining Room
Jefferson was most famous for the policy of "pell-mell," which allowed for diplomats or foreign ministers to sit next to family members or strangers, without precedence. He said, "When brought together in society, all are perfectly equal, whether foreign or domestic, titled or untitled, in or out of office."
One of his guests remarked: "Never before had such dinners been given in the President's house, nor such a variety of the finest and most costly wines. In his entertainments republican simplicity was united with epicurean delicacy; while the absence of splendor, ornament and profusion was more than compensated by the neatness, order, and elegant sufficiency that prevaded the whole establishment . . . "
Though none of Jefferson's dinner menus has survived, there are private accounts such as this one, by the Reverend Cutler, who said the menu included:
"rice soup, round of beef, turkey, mutton, ham, loin of veal, cutlet of mutton or veal, fried eggs, fried beef..." and "a pie called macaroni." For dessert there was "Ice-cream very good, crust wholly dried, crumbled into thin flakes; a dish somewhat like a pudding - inside white as milk or curd, very porous and light, covered with creamsauce - very fine." In addition to all of this, Jefferson served "other jimcracks, a variety of fruit, plenty of wines, and good."
Monticello kitchen
Speaking of ice cream, Jefferson has been credited with recording the first American recipe for it (which he brought back from France), although it was Washington who supposedly owned the first ice cream freezer. Jefferson also introduced macaroni and vanilla to the U.S., and purchased a waffle maker from Holland. Wherever he traveled in Europe, he tasted the local cuisine, recorded recipes, and once back in the U.S., imported the delicacies he especially favored.
The Jeffersonian tradition of fine cuisine was inherited by all six of his granddaughters, who hand-copied recipes -- whether from old family cookbooks, or the chef, the steward, or neighbors -- into notebooks. These were considered to be one of their greatest treasures as they set up their own households as new brides.
Monticello Tea Room
Some of these recipes, along with recipes Jefferson brought back from Paris, are included in Thomas Jefferson's Cook Book, by Marie Kimball, considered by Craig Claiborne to be "the most comprehensive work yet compiled on Jefferson's gastronomic adventures." It's a fascinating read, with an excellent essay,"Thomas Jefferson . . . Gourmet," by Helen D. Bullock.
Only ten recipes survived in Jefferson's own handwriting; I was especially happy to see this one:
Observations on Soups
Always observe to lay your meat in the bottom of the pan with a lump of butter. Cut the herbs and vegetables very fine and lay over the meat. Cover it close and set over a slow fire. This will draw the virtue out of the herbs and roots and give the soup a different flavour from what it would have from putting the water in at first. When the gravy produced from the meat is almost dried up, fill your pan up with water. When your soup is done, take it up and when cool enough, skim off the grease quite clean. Put it on again to heat and then dish it up. When you make white soups, never put in the cream until you take it off the fire. Soup is better the second day in cool weather.
In case you'd like to breakfast with Mr. Jefferson, read about and try this recipe for English muffins. Or, if you prefer a sinful dessert, make some macaroons!
MORE:
Monticello.org is a veritable gold mine of information about Thomas Jefferson, comprehensive and beautifully presented. The resources for kids and teachers are invaluable, especially the Jefferson Encyclopedia and the Monticello classroom.
Also check out:
Dining at Monticello: In Good Taste and Abundance, edited by Damon Lee Fowler (University of North Carolina Press, 2005). A gorgeous book with background essays by experts about how Monticello cooks were trained, what part African Americans played in Monticello's food culture, and how Jefferson mixed diplomacy with food. Recipes too!
My favorite picture book biographies of Jefferson:
And a thoroughly delightful, funny story kids will love:
A Big Cheese for the White House: The True Tale of a Tremendous Cheddar, by Candace Fleming, pictures by S.D. Schindler (DK Ink, 1999). The people of Cheshire attempt to make the country's biggest cheese when they hear Jefferson was serving Norton cheese at the White House. The result? A wheel that stood four feet high and weighed 1,235 pounds! Needless to say, Jefferson served Cheshire cheese for a long time after that.
Thomas Tidbit: Jefferson can also be considered to be the bravest gourmet President, since he once smuggled Italian rice in his coat pockets. This was a crime punishable by death, but he liked the rice so much he took his chances!
*All photos and quotes from Monticello.org website.
"'Awesome' was a word we used a lot in Iraq. How to use 'Awesome': If someone says, 'Dude, it's your turn again to do shit-burning detail,' you say: 'Awesome.' 'Holy shit, those idiots in Delta company shot at second platoon,' 'Awesome!'"
That's a grim vocabulary lesson from soldier and writer Jason Christopher Hartley, our special guest this week and author of Just Another Soldier.
Ever since I read about the deaths of Andrew Olmsted (a soldier and blogger) and Scott Lange Kirkpatrick (a poet and soldier), the stories of soldiers have haunted me.
All week Hartley has reminded us how writings by soldiers in Iraq get misunderstood or buried under political rhetoric. Spend some time reading the writers who are caught up in this war.
If you want to even go farther, tonight, Kirkpatrick's family is holding a fundraising event to support wounded soldiers. As we end this week's writing interview, take a few minutes to remember the soldiers writing about this war: the active soldiers, the veterans, the wounded and the fallen.
Jason Boog: How has the military blog community evolved since 2005? What do we need to be reading about?
Jason Christopher Hartley: War is f**king weird as hell and if you don't feel conflicted and confused after reading about it, it's bad writing. Continue reading...
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The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a 6-3 opinion that “ first sale doctrine” applies to books purchased overseas.
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Today, the international community has its hands full with a host of global challenges; from rising numbers of refugees, international terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation, to pandemics, cyber-attacks, organized crime, drug trafficking, and others. Where do such global challenges originate? Two primary sources are rogue states like North Korea or Iran and failed states like Afghanistan or Somalia.
The post Failed versus rogue states: which are worse? appeared first on OUPblog.
Martial adores sexy boys. He craves their kisses, all the more so if they play hard to get, "… buffed amber, a fire yellow-green with Eastern incense… That, Diadumenus, is how your kisses smell, you cruel boy. What if you gave me all of them, without holding back?" (3.65) and "I only want struggling kisses – kisses I’ve seized; I get more of a kick out of your bad temper than your good looks…" (5.46).
The post ‘I get more of a kick out of your bad temper than your good looks': Martial’s guide to getting boys appeared first on OUPblog.