Revolutionary Generation: Harvard Men and the Consequences of Independence, and: The Gardiners of Massachusetts: Provincial Ambition and the British-American Career, and: The Athens of America: Boston, 1825-1845, and: The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism (review)

Abstract

Revolutionary Generation: Harvard Men and the Consequences of Independence. By Conrad Edick Wright. (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. Pp. 298. Cloth, $34.95.)The Gardiners of Massachusetts: Provincial Ambition and the British-American Career. By T. A. Milford. (Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire Press, 2005. Pp. 306. Paper, $26.00.)The Athens of America: Boston, 1825-1845. By Thomas H. O'Connor. (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006. Pp. 218. Paper, $22.95.)The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism. By Megan Marshall. (Boston, MA: Mariner Books, 2006. Pp. 602. Paper, $16.95.)Reviewed by Susan RadomskyThe story of Boston after the Revolution is a story of decline and regeneration. Its decline was not to be measured in terms of population or wealth, but in terms of political influence and cultural certainty. Before the Revolution, Boston was the big fish in the pond of New England; afterward, it had to reconcile itself to being a hatchery of talent and ideas in a new, boisterous nation disinclined to stand in awe of its excellencies. Boston's culture was, of course, the creation of its inhabitants-an accretion of religious, civic, social, and intellectual predispositions that, in the course of time, had achieved an impressive organic vitality. Yet its character, like that of all cities, owed something to the roles that it played, first within a colonial and imperial world, then within a republican society. These shifting frames of reference, which opened up new prospects and opportunities, were also to cause Bostonians much difficulty. War, independence, and the eventual reconstitution of the states into a new kind of nation disrupted certain patterns of engagement that elite Bostonians had formerly relied on as sources of prestige, order, and meaning.Uncertainty stalks the subjects of Conrad Wright's prosopographical study of young men who graduated from Harvard in the years just before the Revolutionary War.1 Wright uses the relatively abundant data available for this small group of privileged young people to trace the subtle and dramatic changes that the Revolution wrought on their prospects and culture. His close-focus approach carefully registers the dangers and doubts these young men faced at each stage, in careers that stretched from the outset of conflict into the 1820s. A resolute emphasis on the individual life course leads to an account of war and peace largely stripped of the comforts of ideology. Each man, not knowing what awaits, must carve out a path as old governments crumble, divides, and comfortable certainties fail.The men of the classes of 1771-1774, Wright tells us, had only a few unifying features. Most were born in the early to mid-1750s, were from New England, and came from the echelon of families who had the means and inclination to pay for the special preparatory schooling that was the high hurdle to Harvard admission. Only a tiny percentage of the population (estimated at one-tenth of one percent) attended college in those days. After graduation, Harvard men could hope to attain comfortable positions of respect and authority and to stand at the very pinnacle of provincial Massachusetts society (19). The boys became more alike as they were groomed to be members of a leading cadre.Yet no sooner had they graduated than they faced the weighty choice of how to align themselves in a political struggle that had turned bloody. We watch as the revolutionary generation of graduates divides, with some 28 of 204 siding at some point with the loyalist cause. Another small group took up arms with the patriots, about a dozen serving as officers in the Continental Army. Most graduates, however, took no part in the military struggle; for them, the Revolution remained an event occurring off-stage. Yet after the war, Wright tells us, their and prospects were greatly changed. …