Holly Dugan
14 February 2001, 11:23 AM

Thankstaking
While I agree with Ms. Kamensky's overall point that the cultural politics of Thanksgiving must be read through its various historical celebrations, one must question what are Thanksgiving's symbolic significances in the contemporary American celebrations she describes. The difference between whether Columbus is a symbol of racist genocide or of Italian pride seems to me to point to the similar problem in marking Thanksgiving as the commemoration of America's origins in our national myths. Both images of Columbus (as either an Italian folk hero or as an evil murderer) point to those left out of that first pilgrim's table. Italian pride celebrations must be read within the broader context of the immigrant experience of America-- celebrating Columbus as an Italian is an attempt to read that immigrant experience back into history. The racist politics of such a move, however, point to contemporary American failures to deal with its own imperialist histories. As Kamensky suggests, reading those histories along side each other may shed light on the complex cultural work Thanksgiving does in contemporary American culture.

Keith Green
12 February 2001, 3:47 PM

thanks
I found Jane Kamensky's article on Thanksgiving a bit too light-hearted. While she makes an interesting point about contemporary reappropriations of the day, I think she does so at the expense of continuing contemporary concerns. In her flippant remark about making more room for turkey at the Thanksgiving table (which is what we are led to believe is the real object of concern), Kamensky suggests that concerns about imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, racism, etc. are merely remnants of a historical past that must now make room for livestock. However, the reality of inequality is one that is experienced on a daily basis by many groups and individuals. The teleology that Kamensky sets up places each successive generation at a point that revises (but remains complicit) in the logic of the previous one. We thus become more enlightneend and are able to digest our turkey more freely. Thus, somehow, one would be able to understand the imperial connotations of Columbus' discovery and still eat Thanksgiving dinner. But this is a position that seems untenable for those groups that still live on the modern- day plantations and reservations of America. For when one is sorrounded by the squalor of government run housing projects, there seems to be little room indeed left over for turkey on Thanksgiving day.

Dave Peterson
9 February 2001, 6:36 PM

Thankstaking
It is good to see the author of this article attempt to record some of the controversy surrounding Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. It may be helpful to remind students that these actually ARE CELEBRATIONS OF GENOCIDE.

Richard Wightman Fox
3 February 2001, 11:24 AM

Richard Fox replies:
My thanks to Bradley R. Plummer (1 Jan.), Parker Brown Nesbit (6 Jan.), and G. M. Curtis III (26 Jan.) for their responses to my essay "These Hours of Backward Clearness." I certainly agree with Nesbit that one can't understand everything about what people thought in the past, even when (like Beecher and Tiltons, and unlike the slaves or other dispossessed people) they leave behind voluminous written records of their thinking. Pursuing the unattainable goal of complete knowledge, as Nesbit points out, is part of what keeps us historians going back for more. But I'm surprised to hear Nesbit say that "we don't know much about what the slaves thought about their lives" or even about "what the owners thought about the slaves and their lives." I suppose it's a question of what one calls "much" and what one means by "thought." But several generations of accomplished historians have told us a tremendous amount about the slaves' "experience" and "culture"--family, community, religion, folklore, material culture, and other aspects of their lives--and about their masters' thinking about them (which was not always clear-sighted or well-informed). Nesbit's main point remains: there's more to know, and even then we'll depend on creative interpreters like him to go inventively into the shadowy areas beyond what we can know.

Plummer and Curtis raise the intriguing question of "genealogy" and "archaeology" in relation to my strategy of backward-moving narrative in Trials of Intimacy. To the extent that genealogists are trying to construct exact family trees, their enterprise is different from mine. But if some of them are going beyond bloodlines to patterns of cultural influence and transmission through families across time, then their work is like mine. Nietzsche's "genealogical" interest, akin to Foucault's "archaeological" pursuit, is a lot like my approach too, since it presumes that each era or culture has its own way of arranging the elements of social and intellectual existence--building on the past, but effecting mysterious epistemological breaks as well. But the implication of much of Nietzsche and Foucault is that the march of cultural epistemes forces us to abandon "objectivity," since our own position is no more normative than any other.

Plummer appears to concur with them that "objectivity" is passé because of the "biases of the present." I'd rather save the word "objectivity" to describe something that we can and should continue to embrace, even though we know (and we've known this since Emerson and Marx and Darwin and Nietzsche and James and Freud taught us to think this way) that our own culture has no fixity or finality to it. Objectivity means using all the critical tools at one's disposal, doing one's best to consult all the available evidence on whatever question one is examining, and being willing to change one's position when someone comes along with a better argument based on a better method or better reading of the evidence. Objectivity, as Thomas Haskell has pointed out, is fully compatible with passionate engagement (it's not "neutrality"), and with an open-ended ("pragmatic" in James's and Dewey's sense), adaptive sense of cultural development. Objectivity is a goal we can aim for even when we know that our personal and cultural biases will influence both our judgment and our choice of topics to investigate. That's what we depend on friends and colleagues for--to tell us when we're letting our biases get the better of us. If we don't hold out for objectivity in this sense, if we assume that all "argument" is a reflection of social position, an emanation of personal feeling, or a jockeying for power, then history-writing will be nothing more than fiction. History will stay on the non-fiction side, where it belongs, if we insist on both the ideal of objectivity and the community of scholars and readers who can call one another on their lapses from it.

G. M. Curtis III
26 January 2001, 9:58 AM

The Fox Essay
As someone who has wandered in the labyrinth of historical narrative, I found this essay fascinating. An observation on the q.t., if I may: does the inventiveness of this approach have something in common with some methods that genealogy and genealogical family historians employ with some regularity?

Parker Brown Nesbit
6 January 2001, 11:11 AM

Richard W. Fox "Ask the Author"
First of all, I want to compliment you on your site. It's really nice! In Richard W. Fox's article, he mentions that he wanted to know everything about the trial and what the people were thinking. I'm not sure one can know "everything" about history. I interpret slavery history (18th-19th Centuries) on a historic rice plantation. We don't know much about what the slaves thought about their lives--we don't even know what the owners thought about the slaves and their lives. Yet we still manage to interpret quite successfully, IMO. I also think that it's boring if one knows everything--where's the challenge to keep exploring??

Nancy H. Marshall
4 January 2001, 2:26 PM

Reply to: There Arose Such a Clatter
Thank you, Stephen Nissenbaum, for your powerful arguments in support of Clement Clarke Moore as the rightful author of "The Night Before Christmas." In my opinion, also, Don Foster's arguments are weak, and his scholarship decidedly incomplete in supporting the claims of the Henry M. Livingston Jr. heirs in his recently published book "Author Unknown."

Holly Cowan Shulman
3 January 2001, 9:51 AM

"Consuming History?"
I am writing to add my comments about ebay as a resource for researchers. While according to what I have read in the New York TImes ebay is economically most valuable as a way for small venders to market small numbers of items, it is of course also a national flea market. As such it is one way to search for a variety of items that range from the costly to the cheap.

My own research interest centers on a first lady, Dolley Payne Madison. I am co-editing a selection of her letters with the Senior Associate Editor of the Papers of James Madison and in addition have created a web page, "The Dolley Madison Project," which interested readers can access at http://moderntimes.vcdh.virginia.edu/madison/. In the course of my research I wondered one day what I might find about Dolley Madison on ebay. I discovered an enormous amount of material there which has been produced over the years to celebrate her and to use her as an advertising icon. THese items range from sheet music to ice cream (Dolly Madison Ice Cream) to women's wear to first day coversk and dolls. Some, in other words, commodifies her, some does not. All of these items, however, reveal the ways in which Dolley Madison has been seen by Americans over the past one hundred and twenty five years.

In response I have added a section of my website devoted to what I have called Dolley Madison in "Popular Culture," and both virtually and actually collected more than I have currently put up on the site. I have also added short explanatory essays. I intend to write at least an article if not a book on this subject as well. Ultimately I would like to put it all up as an exhibit as well as research archive. In this regard I have found purchasing is sometimes important in order to obtain a clearer image than the usual 72 dpi ebay sellers use, or in order to include the text inside of a pamphlet, and so on. A good exhibit will, of course, require some hard thinking about the ways in which such objects should be data based, and I am hoping that a greater consensus on this subject will soon emerge.

Historical evidence ranges over many sorts of areas. One person's detritus is another's find. It depends on what you do with it, or what question you want to ask as a professional historian. In this sense ebay gives us a treasure trove of material culture -- as well, of course, as the occasional book we are seeking or manuscript we never knew existed.

I would be interested in hearing further from anyone interested in the broad range of questions "Consuming History?" raises and specifically from anyone with suggestions for my own work.

Jennifer Davis Heaps
2 January 2001, 11:23 AM

Thankstaking
For another, lengthier view on the myth of the first Thanksgiving and the National Day of Mourning, readers may be interested in viewing an excerpt from the late James Deetz and Patricia Scott Deetz's book, The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony (publ. 2000) at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/users/deetz/Plymouth/deetzexcerpt.html

Michael Barbieri
1 January 2001, 8:43 PM

thanks & "Thankstaking"
First things first--thank you for creating COMMON-PLACE. I have long said that the telling of our history tends to begin with the invention of the photograph. Now some professionals have created a site with that as one of its basic premises. I seem to be in good company. I must admit that I had some misgivings about ever seeing a second issue of your creation. So many sites are created with grand intentions and then succumb to the demands of the real world. I am happy you put my fears to rest.

Secondly, I would like to expand a bit on Jane Kamenky's "Thankstaking" column. In it she comments that the Continental Congress passed a resolution in 1777 declaring a "Forefathers Day." While I do not have that resolve in front of me, I do have Washington's general orders to the army regarding that resolution. He makes no mention of such a reason for the resolution. The orders say:

"Forasmuch as it is the indespensible duty of all men, to adore the superintending providence of Amighty God; to acknowledge with gratitude their obligations to him for benefits received, and to implore such further blessings as they stand in need of; and it having pleased him in his abundant mercy, not only to continue to us the innumberable bounties of his common providence, but also, to smile upon us in the prosecution of a just and necessary war, for the defence of our unalienable rights and liberties. It is therefore recommeneded by Congress, that Thursday the 18th. day of December next be set apart for Solemn Thanksgiving and Praise; that at one time, and with one voice, the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor; and that, together with their sincere acknowledgments and offerings they may join the penitent confession of their sins; and supplications for such further blessings as they stand in need of. The Chaplains will properly notice this recommendation, that the day of thanksgiving may be duly observed in the army, agreeably to the intentions of Congress."

This religious attitude is repeated in the general orders for days of thanksgiving in subsequent years. In like manner, the religious tone reflects a 1775 resolution of the Massachusetts legislature for a day of public thanksgiving. Washington issued very similar general orders for the army surrounding Boston in November of that year to those from 1777 quoted above. Oddly enough, the resolution called for the day of public thanksgiving to be on Thursday, November 23d--the same date and day for Thanksgiving just past but 225 years later! How many people realized that?

My point is that it would seem that the veneration given the Pilgims at modern Thanksgiving/taking time may be a creation of the 19th century rather than the Revolutionary generation. Nevertheless, that is a minor point to pick on in an otherwise interesting column.

Mike Barbieri

Bradley R. Plummer
1 January 2001, 4:53 PM

Richard W. Fox's "Ask the Author"
RE:Richard Wightman Fox's "Ask the Author" article, "These hours of backward clearness"

Fox describes his strategy of backward chronology in writing his book "Trials of Intimacy" as a means of understanding the ways "in which our own vantage point has been constructed out of earlier strands." While I am not a historian, this is an intriguing if not somewhat obivous strategy, reminiscent of Michel Foucault's "archaeologies" of knowledge (insanity, sexuality, criminal justice, etc.) Should not this method, which doesn't presuppose the objectivity of the present, be a standard tecnique of modern historians? How can we hope to accurately understand the past without correcting for the biases of the present?

Abraham Hoffman
1 January 2001, 1:54 PM

Uncle Tom
Well, gee, thanks, a fascinating article on a new web site on Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture, only someone forgot to list the web site. I suppose I can find it with my search engine, but unless I am going blind (I read the article twice), I really think it would have been more convenient for readers to have been given the site in the first place. Thank you.

John McCoy, Designer for Common-place, replies: Our house style is to link to Web pages within the body of a piece, which is what we did in Ezra Greenspan's review of "Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive". Standards for how to format a reference to a Web site are still emerging; the staff spent some time discussing how best to handle this. "Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture" was particularly troublesome in that its title contained a title. In the future you can expect Web site references to be in quotes, and to link directly to the site when first mentioned on a page. (We considered linking every time a site was mentioned, but that proved distracting.)

Janet Lowry
22 December 2000, 11:38 AM

The Night Before Christmas
It doesn't convince me. For one thing, Nissenbaum does a little spin doctoring of his own (the use of "Professor" as an epithet is originally a quote from one of Moore's contemporaries, later quoted wryly by Foster). Also, sponge or not, the use of a Dutch phrase in the earliest published version that later went out (I believe repeatedly) from Moore as by him with the phrase totally mangled, would argue against him being the author. Plus, Moore checked with the paper that early on printed the poem to check if the author had come forth (the letter is extant). Then, a short time later, after receiving word that the author hadn't, claimed it as his own. He also laid claim (in writing) as translator to a book on merino sheep that, in the back of the appendix, in print, names another translator. I think Nissenbaum may be trying to be a devil's advocate. His objections in this essay are really weak compared to Foster's assertions.

Melanie Cain
5 December 2000, 12:37 PM

1900 House
I have to respond to Mr. Goodhart's observation that "Victorians LIKED to dress that way." Dress, like many other aspects of Victorian life, were a convention, not a personal preference.

Christopher Rose
29 November 2000, 3:31 PM

The Crucible of War
The discussion on Fred Anderson's Crucible of War indicates that a good scholarly work on the Seven Years' War was wanting among the academic community and that its publication has revealed widespread interest in all aspects of this very important war of the 18th century.

In Canada, various specialized studies have been published but no major synthesis with the sweep of Anderson's work has been published since Guy Fregault's, War of Conquest. Ian Steele has written excellent works including Betrayal and Warpaths. The latter covers an enormous period of aboriginal-European contact and both works attempt to integrate ethnohistory and military history. The aboriginal emphasis of much work emanating from Canadian academics has reached its height in Peter McLeod's The Canadian Iroquois in the Seven Years' War.

Professor Anderson's interest in having a more inclusive narrative featuring more aboriginal voices could have changed the book to a large degree and created a study which may have excluded important aspects of European diplomacy and the dynamics of English parliamentary government which are crucial to understanding some of the larger questions of the war which he discusses so well. For example, why did Pitt decide to emphasize the war in North America concurrently with the war in Germany, possibly jeopardizing both efforts?

The generalship of Montcalm is my only point of disagreement with Professor Anderson's excellent work. Perhaps because he juxtaposes him to Dieskau and Levis, I tend to have a divergent view. Neither general was in a comparable position to Montcalm nor did either general exhibit a superior understanding of aboriginal allies or North American conditions. Levis may have more readily adapted to using Canadien militia, (he had gone on raids with them), especially after the fall of Quebec, however he was in desperate straights, as the colony was starving and he had few forces with which to fight. As Levis himself wroteÖ"Canada must be treated like a desperately ill soul that one treats with cordials while waiting for him to perish, or for some crisis to save him". Perhaps Levis was waiting for a crisis in English politics, such as that which brought in the Bolingbrook Tories in 1711 and brought an end to Marlborough wars in the Low Countries.

Montcalm was realistic about his ability to defend Canada. His treatment of his aboriginal allies has been maligned particularly following the siege of Fort William Henry. He knew the importance of singing war-songs and feasting with the Iroquois, Nipissings and Ottawas. One cannot imagine Amherst or even Forbes behaving in a similar manner.

These comments, however, are quibbles concerning a magnificent work.

John Gottlieb
26 November 2000, 3:46 PM

format
Although threading might be a convenience in some ways, the value of colloquial discourse and the cross-fertility of ideas is, I think, too useful to bind at all times. Perhaps some dedicated insomniac could tinker up an optional threader, so as to link directed items when desired yet still allow those of us with more wandering minds to wallow unfettered in the sties of polyideation. Ality.

Speaking of sties, I note that some there are who yet avoid the suspicion of sources, the veracity of facts, especially when tendentiously purveyed. When did critical thinking become a criticality of the others' ideologies, rather than a cautious approach to statements and their purported evidence? A delicious advantage to history is that we may go beyond the courtroom forensics of the present to better (hopefuly) evaluate statements of fact, opinion, propaganda, etc., and their presenters. To assume (as some are still doing) that B's disarming facts ARE facts in the broader sense they purport is but a small case of the larger, and more common, error.

Which this Internet seems to deepen more than expose.

Apologies for belaboring this mood of the day.

By the way, does anyone know of good, in-depth sources for nineteenth-century saddlery specifications? My collection has suddenly exceeded my resources. Thanks, all!

Dick Goodhart
21 November 2000, 4:44 PM

your site and 1900 House
I saw a reference to your website in Brill Report and am most impressed with your efforts. I hope you will continue to publish as I think you offer an important, as well as very interesting, service.

1900 House

As a history teacher who has lived through most (since 1930) of the twentieth century and who spent every summer for twelve years in a cabin without electricity or running water, lit by alladin lamps, cooking on a wood stove, and who still shaves using a brush and mug, (but I do use a safty razor);

I cringed through most of the 1900 series. I would comment that the serries was really not much more realistic than the Patriot, but for different reasons.

If the point was to show the difficulties a modern family would have with turn of the (last) century living, the series succeeded, but it really wasn't very realistic in showing life in 1900.

The stove and cooking was a good example. The stove was much too small for it's purpose and the excuse that they couldn't find a larger or more appropriate one was specious. They should have tried Canada or the US where they not only could get the right size, but probably could even find a new one cast from the origional molds. Selecting a family with a dedicated vegetarian cook was certainly not typical and caused other family members much hardship, especially as she apparently lacked the imagination to check out who the vegitarians of London in 1900 were. There were lots of them, mostly Indian.

As far as dress went, remember, the late victorians LIKED to dress that way. Those who didn't, didn't. Incidentially, using the toilet wasn't that much of a problem for victorian women; check out the Sears 1902 catalog, page 977-978 where they discuss "open' and "closed" drawers. The 1900 house producers forced the husband to shave with a straight razor, as they claimed the safty razor wasn't invented until 1901. Maybe so, but the same 1902 catalog offers them. Invented in 1901, offered to North Dakota farmers in 1902...hmmm.

Most of my complaints about the otherwise facinating program series are those of a seventy-year-old who is suprised that history is catching up with him. Incidentially I've shaved with a straight razor. Not hard, just slow.

Melanie Cain
17 November 2000, 11:59 AM

1900 House
First of all, when is your next issue?!

Secondly, I don't need to point out that the "Disarming America" article drew the most responses. However, I would like to register my apprecation for the article on 1900 House. The author was completely on the mark in her observations of Hollywood's representations of the historical past. These movies either insult one's intelligence or mislead those who know no better. I did not see "The Patriot," but was not surprised to read about some of the egregiously modern sentiments shamelessly injected into the movie. I think this is why I did not bother to see the movie. Hollywood is so predictable and their approach to such subjects so formulaic that I had a feeling this movie would be no better than the standard fare. Producers and directors seem to believe that we all want to see beautiful, well-groomed folks, regardless of the period depicted. In addition, "squishy", Lifetime moments, such as the Gibson's speeches about spending more time with his family, are a must to satisfy the perceived public appetite for such drivel and, thus, make lots of money. I do wish I had seen 1900 House. It sounds fascinating, unlike the "Survivor" shows to which it apparently was compared.

I love this site. I've done a lot of searching on the Web, looking for information on the common ways of life throughout history. Indeed, I realize the ordinary man of history is difficult to research and, thus, write about, as expressed in your introduction to the site. I began to feel, "what's the use?", until I read about and visited your site. After reading some of the articles and taking note of the diligent research done in support of same, I was encouraged. I'm no scholar, as you can tell, and have no research skills, but I do have an insatiable appetite for the truth about the "common" past. This history of the "common people" has been neglected. Thank you for producing such a refreshing, intelligent, and readable publication.

Rebekah Matthews
7 November 2000, 9:12 AM

This is the first time I have visited this site and I have found it to be very interesting and important. I am in my first year at university studying for a degree in American Studies. This site has been extremely helpful and easy to access, I will be using it to aid my studies more often! Keep up the good work.

Robert Gally
1 November 2000, 11:43 AM

Disarming American History

This article laboriously describes the cyclical arming and disarming of civilians by, and for, the benefit of the governing authority du jour.

The establishment of our libertarian republic demarked an abatement of that cycle because the pentultimate governing authority became the electorate ... either by voluntary political deference to the ballot box, or by the last resort reliance upon the politically uninfringed ammo box.

John Maass
26 October 2000, 7:17 PM

Disarming Colonial America
Mr. Bellesiles article is an interesting one, as is his new book "Arming America." I have read most of book and skimmed the rest, and find that he really has done a thorough and painstaking job in debunking the myth of an thoroughly armed populace before the Civil War, and America's unfamiliarity with guns. The book probably suffers from this very painstaking approach, as many sections seem redundant, belabored and frankly, just too much. It is as if Mr. Bellesiles felt he had to keep making the same point over and over and over and over until I finally felt like yelling "OK--I get it! The book also has one major flaw-scant attention to the 2nd Ammendment origins and the gun ownership & possessions positions of the founders. It is not enough to say in the book that colonists did not own guns and few knew how to use them. The book fails to address how this relates to 2nd Ammendment issues such as private posession of guns, standing armies in America, etc. The author missed his chance.

Phillip D. Troutman
18 October 2000, 9:49 AM

format of message board
First off: Wonderful journal!--I plan to assign it for my distance-learning U.S. Survey students this winter quarter (for KaplanCollege.com).

One suggestion: it would be helpful if you could organize the "Republic of Letters" as threaded messages, so that all responses to one article will appear together under one heading. Also, when I clicked on "Index" I did not get an index.

This is a minor problem at this point but one that will compound itself as discussions grow--as I expect they will as the journal is stimulating. Keep up the good work.

Harold Taler
3 October 2000, 8:09 AM

the font/readability
Just to let you know that I would suggest either a bolder or slightly larger font. Your font is aestethetically pleasing and in keeping with a "Colonial" look, but is is not easy on the eye for prolonged periods of reading time. It's too small and it blends in the brownish background too easily IMO.

Thank you.

David Bricker
28 September 2000, 10:46 AM

Fallen Timbers location
It was not I495 BUT I-475 and Rt 23(A.Wayne Trail) Sorry . I want to be accurate.

David D. Bricker
28 September 2000, 10:33 AM

Crucible of War correction
I read a synopsis of the book in the local Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The author quoted Prof. Anderson as saying that the4 Battle of Fallen Timbers was in Indiana. It was actually fought at the intersection of Anthony Wayne Trail and I 495 near Maumee ,Ohio. There is a monument about a mile away honoring the dead. It is not in the proper place where the battle occurred

Richard Brown Irene Quenzler Brown and Richard D. Brown
27 September 2000, 11:57 AM

Race, Rape, Incest, and Criminal Prosecution in Early America
We are grateful for the comments of Portia and Athena and will welcome others regarding the role of race in the Wheeler family and its consequences for the public trial. The record on race is so meager that one is forced to speculate. From the 1800 U.S. Census we know that just over one percent of Berkshire County's 34,000 people were in the non-white, non-Indian category. None of the period pamphlets or newspapers touching the case make any racial reference at all.

We cannot believe, however, that although Hannah and Betsy Wheeler probably appeared white, local contemporaries were unaware of the non-white, non-Indian status of their Odel kin, kin with whom they identified. We think that race bears on the case, but not in a clear, determinative way. Portia is probably correct in assuming that Ephraim became "socially less 'white'" by entering a mixed-race family. We surmise that his marriage is a marker of his own limitations in the marriage marketplace. In court, however, he was vulnerable for other reasons as well: his work record was not exemplary; no former employers gave testimony on behalf of his character; and he was credibly charged with a heinous crime.

Initially we, too, thought it remarkable that a white father, with race and the ideology of patriarchy on his side, could be convicted on the testimony of a mixed race girl and sent to the gallows by a white jury and court. But as we probed the case we learned that Wheeler's violation of his patriarchal role, not race issues, made him an exemplary candidate for the gallows. On behalf of the injured child, officials could justify the legitimacy of patriarchy by punishing Wheeler's egregious betrayal of his paternal role.

To Athena we must reply that while rape prosecutions were disproportionately associated with non-whites in early America, the cases we have investigated in the early republic do not turn on race in any simple way. Massachusetts authorities in 1800 were cautious about employing the death penalty for non-whites as well as whites. In New York and Massachusetts black men and women were tried and acquitted in some capital cases.

As to Wheeler's view of his behavior, he always claimed, even at the gallows, that he was innocent, the victim of his wife and children's conspiracy. There is no reason to suppose that he thought his white status enabled him to commit crimes against his non-white family. Indeed in the larger story it is evident that he was periodically dependent on his mixed-race brothers-in-law for shelter and perhaps other assistance. Our general sense is that at the lowest margin of Massachusetts society, people did not separate sharply according to lineage. Wheeler was, we believe, part of the southern New England laboring underclass, which both on land and sea included people of various origins. The boldest interpretive generalization on race in our book concerns precisely this porous interracial boundary. We can, we think, illuminate the complex interplay of race, class, and gender in a society in which these categories, as well as other ideas, values, and customs influenced behavior. We are working in a borderland where scholars like Jeffrey Bolster, Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Thomas Doughton, Ruth Herndon, James Oliver and Lois E. Horton, Daniel Mandell, Joanne Pope Melish, Jean M. O'Brien, Ann-Marie Plane, and Louis Wilson have been opening a path toward greater understanding of race, class, gender, and the complexities of social and cultural realities.

A. P. Sloan
26 September 2000, 1:21 PM

Incest Article
Massachusetts, after all, had not executed anyone for rape in twenty-seven years, and it had never executed a Yankee for the crime.

What does this mean? Who had the state executed for rape? Southerners? Foreigners? Native Americans?

Keith A. Lehman
26 September 2000, 12:26 PM

Disarming America?
September 26, 2000

"Disarming Early America" is really an argument to disarm modern America. Hidden among Michael Belesiles article are innuendoes that point out this fact. I do not profess to come close to Mr. Belesiles credentials as an historian, being an amateur historian, but I do find it displeasing that his arguments are pinpointed in a period of history where citizens had more limited individual freedom than they did after the American Revolution. When he is not jumping back and forth between eras, i.e. the American Civil War, he fails to realize that the attitude of John Q. Public, not to mention society in itself had changed since the colonial period. No general interpretation of this period can rely on specific incidents on the subject of the reluctance of early colonial America wishing to arm themselves in a rebellion. They were forced later to do so, as the American Revolution reveals. I am new at this website and chose to check it out because it professed to interest modern American students to pay more attention to history. Wouldn't this be less of a challenge if it was required study, just as American Civics should be? Many institutions have now abandoned history, specifically American History as a required study - mostly in higher educational institutions like colleges and universities. This is a big mistake. For, as George Santayana aptly put it: "Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it."

In the leading paragraph, Belesiles writes: "There is a powerful and pervasive myth that America has always had a gun culture." Offhand, this statement is true - colonial America didn't have the freedom of the 2nd Amendment. There is also a modern "pervasive" myth inspired by sociocrats that the Constitution is irrelevant to modern society and is designed to be stretched and cut like some piece of cloth - but it is the modern society and its "elected" officials that require reform - not the Constitution. It is the 2nd Amendment that is continually attacked for an underlying reason. But I digress.

Gun collectors and firearm historians would disagree with Bellesiles interpretation of a "gun ownership myth." Some historians may slip romanticism in their representations of this period, but never confuse Hollywood film myths we grew up with about America's history with the reality of life and society in colonial America.

When jumping from colonial America to the Civil War between the states, the author fails to note that the south was victorious in the beginning because of their citizen armies familiarity with firearms - a different scenario in the industrial North, where many who joined or were drafted in the Union Army did not know which end of a rifle was which. There are other factors, of course. But this points out the author's misconception.

Humans are responsible, as a group, for their society and its behavior. It is today when we deny this fact, and then blame crime, etc. on inanimate objects instead of looking inwardly to ourselves and others in our communities and society itself. With all of our guns you say we have today, do you still think Americans have the desire to begin an armed revolution against tyranny of government - local, state or federal? Some of the reasons or circumstances may have changed since the 17th and 18th centuries, but the gist of the reluctance is the same - we would rather negotiate and urge reform instead.

There were few gunsmiths for reasons you claim and others you do not point out. Firearms in the colonial period was a luxury item for various reasons: (1) the availability; (2) the English ruling law; and (3) economic reasons. Early Americans were restricted, not as much as their English counterparts, but still restricted as to the use and amount of firearms available. The author may be correct when discussing that certain homes may not have had firearms at all - especially those who lived on farms and localities of larger cities. The author also forgot to mention that during this period, dueling was still legal. While not necessarily true that the choice of weapon was a firearm, but shot and ball was used more than swordplay.

The author fails to mention and take into consideration the political atmosphere during this period. Benjamin Franklin, one of the signers of The Declaration of Independence, tried to use diplomatic means to reach an agreement concerning the American colonies' grievance settlement. Originally it was intended to settle the grievances and differences without separating from "Mother England." They were not originally "treasonists" but in fact loyal with an insistence of England listening to their complaints and treating colonists like other English citizens.

Then the author throws in the racial argument. It isn't really an argument because slavery was wrong and it shouldn't have existed any time after the declaration that "all men are created equal" and that Americans should not be subjected to involuntary and unjust servitude - like was custom under English law at the time. In fact, we should be ashamed for such hypocrisy because it was England, the very country we swore was unjust, to be the first to free its slaves - and it took a Civil War to do even that. . The European-Americans and the African-Americans were two separate societies. And, of course, a slave insurrection would have been alarming to slave owners and non-slave owners alike - because of the society's attitude toward the slave. Do I think the slaves had the right to revolt? Positively. They wanted freedom. The same reason their masters fought against the British. So this piece of Bellesiles article reeks of racial arguments that early Americans enjoyed the slaughter of African slaves .

Finally, where is your evidence that firearms were not used for other purposes besides a militia? You claim that the facts are hard to sift from the historical documents, yet you make such statements. Do you really think settlers would move westward into the frontier without proper protection? Would they be frugal with their gun powder, shot and flint/caps? Of course. Would they use trapping for game meat whenever possible? Of course. General stores and trading posts were too far away to make regular visits, so they had to watch their firearm supplies.

If you are trying to encourage young people to be more interested in American history and our heritage, your are welcome. If you are going to insert anti-firearm policy in relation to historical accounts, you don't circumvent the discussion of society, political atmosphere nor further research in order to make the point in the guise of finding "truth" in history. Yes, Americans are notorious for inflaming interest in legends and myths concerning our history. But we used to know the difference between romantic history and "true" history.

If personally owned firearms were inconsequential to early Americans, why was it deemed so important as to make it the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution?

Keith A. Lehman

Good Hope, Georgia

Michael McCreedy
25 September 2000, 11:15 PM

Crucible of War
This is an excellent book. I cited this as a bibliographical reference in a paper entitled: "The First Containment Theory: Fort Toulouse As A Linchpin In The French Plan To Encircle The English Colonies". I cannot say enough good about this book. I especially liked how the author covered not only the English viewpoint, but he managed to give the reader the outlook a bit of the French viewpoint as well. I recommend this book for any research paper - it is well done!

Michael McCreedy
25 September 2000, 11:02 PM

Where are all the Guns?
Mr. Bellesiles totally ignores the fact that the Alabama Creeks, being one of the most influential of the band of Creeks in the Lower Mississippi Valley, took up the French cause in 1717 with the establishment of trading posts in the Creek territory.The establishment of Fort Toulouse was a major factor in this trade network. Deerskins were traded for many items, but it was French trade muskets that were the most traded item. Granted, English muskets were of better quality, but the French did not hesitate to provide a blacksmith or gunsmith to fix any Indian musket. The French also provided powder and shot, either as presents or in trade, whereas the English were hesitant to do so. French Colonial Marines were paid in powder and shot, along with flour,and uniform items (clothing). Where Mr. Bellesiles gets the information that the colonial frontier was not armed is beyond me. There was more than one colonial frontier, until about 1763.

Randall Wilkins
24 September 2000, 9:45 PM

Disarming Early American History
9/24/2000

Congratulations on a wonderful on-line historical magazine. It's wonderful to see a forum for articles on Early America. I was quite interested in Michael Bellesiles article on firearms in the early colonies but find some of his conclusions quite erroneous. Mr Bellesiles seems to have taken mid 17th century archival material from the eastern seaboard and concluded that the same situation held true for the entire continent thoughout the following 100 years. The situation on the frontier was nothing like that of the cities or their respective rural areas in regards to gun ownership. He seems to base much of his proof of percentage of gun ownership on the available evidence of existing gunsmiths, which is misleading. Gunsmiths often listed their occupation as 'blacksmith' particularly in Pennsylvania where the Quaker-founded legislature was not too fond of being thought of as the gun-production center of the colonies, and levied heavy taxes on gunmakers and their product. Furthermore the idea that all hunting was done by Native Americans is simply ridiculous. A look through the ledgers of traders such as Baynton, Wharton and Morgan are proof of this. And I can assure him that none of the tens of thousands of buffalo, elk and deer were ever killed by trapping. Also, gunpowder is not the fragile item Mr. Bellesiles would have us believe. Although suseptible to moisture, it does not 'rot' and will dry out. I have a small horn of powder at least 100 years old which is quite servicable. One important item he points out is how fantastically expensive firearms were at that time, sometimes costing as much as 4 months salary. But the gun was considered a tool, and a very necessary one at that. While we will certainly never know exactly how many firearms were in existence then, their prevalence on the frontier is undisputable. Having grown up in the Ohio River Valley I spent many weekends walking plowed fields and found huge amounts of gunflints, gun locks, ect. Unless there was a largely unknown period where farmers were fertilizing their fields with gun parts, they seem to make a fairly good case for the widespread existence of firearms in the late 18th century. Randall Wilkins

John Gottlieb
22 September 2000, 6:40 PM

"Disarming" the inattentive mind
While it is heartening to see that several others have a certain acquaintance with facts, and a proper respect for material conditions in history, I haven't yet seen -- nor elsewhere either, for that matter, a commentary on the central fraud to the piece, from whence all the rest derives.

In fact, unless you are willing to ignore the milleniae of organized slaughter all these ascriptive societies have inflicted upon their subjects and upon their neighbors, and are now so doing, you must come to a logical conclusion that ours is a remarkably peaceful society, comparatively.

Thanks, all, for thoughtful and material commentary; no doubt the colonials did not go nude into the New England winters! and, by the way, has anyone compared the costs of importation of complete arms with that of gunlocks? As the colonials themselves did?

The temptation to analogize this piece to the alimentary process is strong; please, never think to arrive at the meat of a subject by commencing at the end-product, since even careful gardening will only arrive at the meat of another subject.

H. R. Tracy
21 September 2000, 3:31 PM

Disarming whom?
Dear Editor,

The article "Disarming American History" is so startling that it deserves comment. The author's contention that "everybody else got it wrong" is astounding.

Even the most cursory response to some of the straightforward statements in the article refutes this allegation of a "gunless Early America."

"That frontiers elsewhere did not replicate America's violent culture is thought irrelevant."

Frontiers elsewhere -- of every era -- were every bit as bloody as America, and often more so. For a historical context South Africa and Australia are two obvious examples.

"The startling truth is that very little research has been undertaken into the history of America's gun culture."

On the contrary, a great deal of research has been undertaken, much of it by the many very fine modern gunsmiths who make excellent reproductions of the arms of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. They have extensive private collections of arms, correspondence, parts, accoutrements and books of the era, all of which are utilized to satisfy their customers, who are among the best historically educated and demanding in the world. Perhaps a conversation with the Curator of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming would be illuminating for the author; they have one of the finest collections of "Early American" firearms in the world.

"Gun ownership was exceptional in the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, even on the frontier."

In the 17th century, yes, gun ownership was not common; this was so worldwide. By the time of the American Revolution, gun makers began to produce thousands of very fine rifles in North America, thanks to a brisk demand. The vast majority of these were not intended for military use, but they were certainly used as such when needed. In fact, the British soldier had a very healthy respect for the long-range accuracy of "The Pennsylvania Rifle." (Note the name.) In fact, historians now call the last quarter of the 18th century "The Golden Age" of the Pennsylvania Rifle.

"Guns became a common commodity only with the industrialization of the mid-nineteenth century."

Guns were in fact a very common commodity all through the late 18th and early 19th century. Modern collections, private and public, contain literally tens of thousands of rifles from this era, and these are just the surviving arms that were not lost or destroyed through mischance, or neglected and discarded when they became obsolete.

"The industrialization of the arms industry allowed the government to move toward its goal with ever-increasing speed, in spite of public indifference and even resistance to gun ownership."

The vast majority of arms sold were, in fact, to the public. This rather discounts the notion of "resistance" to gun ownership.

"Firearm usage was strictly limited for most of the colonial period."

During the earliest period of North American colonization, gun ownership was about as common as it was in other parts of the world for people of similar means facing similar situations. No more, no less.

"There were no gun manufactories in North America in the colonia

Portia
4 September 2000, 7:59 PM

Race and Incest
Like Athena, I wondered how the Browns see the significance of race in this case. In saying that, by marrying Hannah, Ephraim "entered a mixed race family" are they suggesting that he became socially less "white" and therefore more vulnerable to execution for rape? If so, why choose that interpretation over one that would see the case as even more surprising because it involved a white man being executed for raping a non-white woman? Or did the race of the victim matter less in 18th century capital cases than it does today?

Athena
2 September 2000, 4:42 PM

Race and Rape in Early America
Richard and Irene Quenzler Brown paint a fascinating portrait of incest and rape in early America. Their willingness to share their odyssey is equally compelling. The Browns touch on race a few times in their piece. They reveal that Ephraim Wheeler's wife, Hannah, was of mixed race, and that knowing this gave them a "deeper understanding of Wheeler's identity at the time of the marriage and during his troubled relationship with his wife." Further down in the article, the Browns refer to a pardon in an 1802 rape case whose defendant was a "Hindoo." I wish the Browns had spun out these threads so that readers might have a clearer sense of the connections between race and rape in early America. Did the Browns mean to imply that early Americans were more likely to accuse non-whites of rape? Did they want to suggest that in Wheeler's mind he was justified in committing his crimes because of the racial categories binding his wife and children? Sign me, Athena

Bob Arnebeck
1 September 2000, 11:22 PM

Guns in Colonial America
With goose hunting season just beginning up here in the St. Lawrence River Valley, my heart sings right-on with the thesis of the article on there not being a gun culture in colonial America. The author seems to contend that the killing of wild animals which was so widespread was all done by the Indians, which I find hard to believe. Were there enough Indians to accomplish that? I'm inclined to think the scene painted by Cooper in The Pioneers, which was set in 1793, in which the great slaughter of migrating birds was described, is accurate. Then I keep running into these curious gun-toting scenes in my own research. According to one of C.W. Peale's letters in the midst of one of the great yellow fever epidemics in the 1790s in Philadelphia, one of the drawbacks of that crisis was that apprentices were not working and they were spending their idle days killing birds just outside the diseased city. Another image I can't get out of my mind, painted in the diary of John Quincy Adams: all the times when the Adams brothers, while in their late teens, went out to shoot birds. Simply put, all the statistics amassed to prove that guns and hunting were not important don't seem to jibe with the decimation of wildlife, and none of the statistics seem to address what teenagers and young men (I'll see not a few of them going off in boats with guns in the next few months) did with great passion certainly in the 1780s and 90s and most likely as long as guns were available. Granted their fathers may have been too busy for guns and hunting, but boys were boys even back then. Bob Arnebeck Wellesley Island, NY

John McCoy
14 August 2000, 8:42 AM

Welcome
A word from the Designer

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