Mary Quarterly Research Articles

Marbury v. Madison and Judicial Review. By Robert Lowry Clinton. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas, 1989. 332p. $35.00.

Few Supreme Court decisions are as well known or loom as large in our nation's history as v. Madison. 1803 decision is widely viewed as having established the doctrine of judicial review, which permits the Court to overturn acts of Congress that violate the Constitution; moreover, such judicial decisions are final, not subject to further appeal. Robert contends that few decisions have been more misunderstood, or misused, in the debates over judicial He argues that the accepted view of is ahistorical and emerges from nearly a century of misinterpretation both by historians and by legal scholars. This book is without doubt one of the half dozen recent works that will be central to the scholarly dispute about judicial review. Political Science Quarterly. Clinton offers a resounding correction of the prevailing orthodoxy on the case that has dominated scholarship in law, history, and political science for roughly the last century. . . . If he contended only 'that Marbury was not a political decision but was based on sound constitutional doctrine and existing legal precedent', this book would still make a quite valuable contribution to the literature. . . . But there is more: the constitutional doctrine and legal precedents has rediscovered, in which the Marbury ruling is firmly grounded, reveal judicial review to be . . . of profoundly narrower scope than is admitted today by right or left, by originalists or nonoriginalists. . . . has done [much] to blow away a good deal of fog surrounding Marshall, Marbury, and the scope of judicial power. Review of Politics. Every student of judicial review should read this book. Even those who disagree with its main thesis will find it very stimulating. Christopher Wolfe, author of The Rise of Modern Judicial Review: From Constitutional Interpretation to Judge-Made Law. An important book. new and unorthodox look at Marbury v. Madison is interesting, provocative, and controversial. He presents clearly, forcefully, and persuasively a great amount of evidence to support his thesis. Social Science Quarterly. Clinton's reconstruction of the legal academicians' wrangling over Marbury makes delightful reading. . . . He is witty, subtle, and makes points with great deftness. William and Mary Quarterly. A coherent, provocative, and welcome challenge to the liberal-Progressive interpretation of judicial review. Journal of American History.

The War of 1812 Revisited

It has been two decades since the last wave of studies of the War of 1812 brought the publication of major books by Bradford Perkins, Reginald Horsman, and Roger Brown.' In view of all that previously had been written on the subject, from Henry Adams to Irving Brant, the assumption that there was not much more to be said about that conflict was widely shared. Now J. C. A. Stagg's Mr. Madison's War makes it abundantly clear that such a conclusion was unwarranted. This ambitious study has much new to say and is so comprehensive, so analytical, and based on such exhaustive research that it promises to be not simply an important addition to an already distinguished literature but the indispensable work on the War of 1812. Some of Stagg's findings and interpretations relating to the causes of the War of 1812 have previously been offered in two articles in the William and Mary Quarterly,2 but his arguments are even more compelling as an integral part of a broader study of the politics, diplomacy, and warfare of the era. While Stagg's probing of the background of the War of 1812 is deep, he dwells only briefly on the years after the war. An epilogue on the years 1815 to 1830 fills out the coverage promised in the subtitle. In treating the coming of the war, Stagg seeks to shift the attention of historians away from Congress, where most historians have seen the decision for war being made even when challenging the role of the War Hawks. Viewing Madison as the key to why and when the decision to resort to war was made, he seeks to explain how Madison, a systematic and analytical thinker, conscious of the relation of means and ends in politics and diplomacy, reached that decision. Stagg puts Canada in the center of Madison's thinking that culminated in his message to Congress in June 1812 asking for a declaration of war. Tracing Madison's ideas and policy positions ir regard to Great Britain from the Peace

Consciousness in New England: from Puritanism and ideas to psychoanalysis and semiotic

A recognized authority of American intellectual history, James Hoopes concerns himself in this study with the eighteenth and nineteenth-century secularization of Puritanism's philosophical underpinnings... [A]n important book in intellectual history. Those who read it will be challenged; those who understand it will be rewarded.--H. Roger King, History: Reviews of New Books.One of the dozen or so most intriguing books that I have read in the past decade.--Theodore Dwight Bozeman, William and Mary Quarterly.

The Constitution and Culture

FOR the William and Mary Quarterly to commemorate the bicentennial of the United States Constitution by reappraising Gordon S. Wood's The Creation of the American Republic is in itself a revealing indication of the state of the field. Wood's work so overshadows all others on the historical background of the Constitution that it is virtually the only book on the subject (apart from Charles A. Beard's classic) that all American historians know they must know. One reason for its preeminence is surely that it marks a pivotal moment in American historiography. To reevaluate it from the vantage point of the 198os is necessarily to take stock of major trends in American historical writing since the Second World War as well as to assess the state of our knowledge about political developments in the I78os. At the time of its appearance Creation of the American Republic was pivotal not only in the sense that it broke conceptual ground but in its faithfulness to certain historical perspectives of the preceding era. One of the book's many triumphs was its ability to straddle the ideological and interpretive boundaries being drawn in the late i96os and I970s, to combine the old and the new. It was, on the one hand, a work of political and intellectual history, published at the moment when the new social history was gaining ascendency. It was, moreover, on a classic topic, addressing perennial questions about the making of the American state. In method, too, Wood's work was fully in keeping with the broad approach to the history of ideas that had been developed (especially within American Studies) in the postwar period. Yet in other respects Wood's approach was undeniably new. Following the lead of Bernard Bailyn, who in turn had been influenced by Clifford Geertz, Wood was instrumental in turning the attention of intellectual historians to ideology as a cultural system (emphasis added). Unlike Perry Miller, Henry Nash Smith, and other major earlier interpreters of American culture-who approached social and political values indirectly through ideas about religion and nature-Bailyn and Wood presented political beliefs themselves as a unified expression of culture. Their work went beyond the conventional intellectual history of political ideas in stressing the mythic, nonrational components of political thought. Perhaps

Improving Political Science Education in the Schools: College-School Connections

Diggins, John P. 1984. The Lost Soul of American Politics, Virtue, Self-Interest and the Foundations of Liberalism. New York: Basic Books. Hartz, Louis. 1955. The Liberal Tradition in America, An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Kramnick, Isaac. 1982. Republican Revisionism Revisited. The American Historical Review, 87: 629-664. McCoy, Drew R. 1980. The Elusive Republic, Political Economy in Jeffersonian America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Matthews, Richard K. 1984. The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Murrin, John. 1980. The Great Inversion, Court Versus Country: A Comparison of the Revolution Settlements in England (1688-1771) and America (1776-1816). In J. G. A. Pocock, ed., Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. Pocock, J. G. A. 1975. The Machiavellian Moment, Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Shalhope, Robert. 1972. Toward a Republican Synthesis: The Emergence of an Understanding of Republicanism in American Historiography. William and Mary Quarterly, 29: 49-80. Wills, Garry. 1978. Inventing America, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. Garden City: Doubleday. Wood, Gordon. 1969. The Creation of the American Republic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. anning, Lance. 1986. Jeffersonian Ideology Improving Political Science Education in the Schools: College-School Connections

Desacralizing the American Gothic: An Iconographic Approach to Edgar Huntly

DESACRALIZING THE AMERICAN GOTHIC: AN ICONOGRAPHIC APPROACH TO EDGAR HUNTLY Dennis Berthold* It is commonplace to consider the figures and landscapes in American gothic fiction as simple transformations of English motifs and images . Thus, the mouldering castle becomes the rude log cabin, banditti become Indians, the lonely moor becomes the dark forest, and the dungeon becomes the pit or cave. These parallels and many others have been widely noted in the fiction of Charles Brockden Brown, particularly in Edgar Huntly, a novel generally considered the first to exploit the American frontier for fictive purposes.1 In fact, these gothic conventions are so evident in Edgar Huntly that some critics believe the landscapes owe less to the American frontier than to the novels of Ann Radcliffe.2 The cliché "American gothic" is thus weighted toward "gothic," with all the mythic, symbolic, and psychological associations that term has come to imply, while "Americanness" is secondary, a simple modification of the substantive term. Such a label inevitably steers the critic and reader toward European, specifically English, sources and models for Brown's peculiar brand of fiction and away from native materials and images, except as those images reify English patterns and motifs. The images in a pioneering novel such as Edgar Huntly are consequently valued primarily as symbols, outward, physical representations of the hero's inner psychic state. It seems safe to say this is the established approach to the tale.3 The grounds for the psycho-symbolic interpretation are too narrow for consensus, however, as some recent critics have noticed. Norman S.' Grabo, who generally relishes the psychological complexity of Brown's narratives, recognizes that "there is an obvious reciprocity between [Edgar Huntly's] mental states and external conditions. The reciprocity is such that each seems to inform and symbolize the other, and we never quite know whether nature is being internalized or his emotional and mental states are being externalized. The process seems to work both ways at once."4 Grabo's observation implicitly grants at least a fifty percent reality to nature and suggests that, despite all the projections of deranged emotional states on the landscape, there may in fact be some actual "derangement" in the landscape itself. Gothic terror may inhere 'Dennis Berthold is a Professor of English at Texas A & M University. He has published on American fiction in The William and Mary Quarterly, Arizona Quarterly, and other journals. He is currently completing a book on the picturesque in nineteenthcentury American letters. 128Dennis Berthold in the American scene, not just in the narrator's vision, what George Toles calls a "distorted neurasthenic perception of the wilderness."5 If this is so, the phrase "American gothic" unduly emphasizes European artistic forms over American realities. By linking and subordinating place to genre, the label presupposes a distinction in form conditioned by place. One may, however, recast this as a link between genres, following the lead of such critics as Ursula Brumm and Paul Witherington, who have seen in Edgar Huntly elements of the picaresque and the realistic. Witherington, for example, suggests that the novel's structure owes something to Hugh Henry Brackenridge's Modern Chivalry, while Brumm thinks its scenery functions simultaneously as gothic antagonist and realistic setting. According to Brumm, "Edgar Huntly is not a gothic romance according to English models; nor is Brown's nature simply a haunted forest transplanted to America."6 Neither Witherington nor Brumm develops this thesis in detail, but both understand that Brown's symbolism is often subordinated to an early realism that portrays figures and scenes from the actual American landscape. Viewed this way, Edgar Huntly may be seen as enlisting other genres in the service of translating the gothic for American needs and purposes. This admixture distinguishes many American novels, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables to William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, in which gothic terror springs from carefully described , particularized American locales and regions. "American gothic" readily subdivides into "New England gothic" or "Southern gothic" and develops subsets of conventional images and motifs: the ruined plantation or the stern Puritan, for example. Gothicism in America has been subject to those same nationalist demands for local and regional landscapes...

Republicanism in Old and New Contexts

W rHAT did Americans in late eighteenth century mean when they spoke about republicanism? This is question that Lance Banning addresses in foregoing article and one that I shall explore in this companion piece requested by editor of William and Mary Quarterly. For many men-and this was primarily a male discourse-republicanism represented something new. Thus Thomas Paine in Common Sense referred to new republican materials of House of Commons on whose virtue depended freedom of England. Eight years later, Paine defined a republic as a sovereignty of justice, in contrast to a sovereignty of will.1 Writing at about same time, an angry critic denounced Philadelphia stage for insidiously fostering aristocratic values and alluded sarcastically to our present state of imaginary republican equality.2 In this man's mind, republicanism entailed reformation of social mores along democratic lines. Addressing American Philosophical Society on subject of innovative farming techniques, Timothy Matlack spoke of the great Republican Virtues of Industry and Economy.3 Here Matlack associated republicanism with private virtues and linked them to productivity. For John Adams, republicanism retained its historical connection with classical and Renaissance texts. Abigail Adams described her husband's immersion in those texts as his travelling through Itallian Republicks.4 The results of Adams's scholarly perambulations-his Defence of Constitutions of Government of United States of America-did not, however, restore pristine meaning of republicanism. We can read James Madison, an equally learned man, lamenting presence in

The Republican Synthesis and Thaddeus Stevens

THE REPUBLICAN SYNTHESIS AND THADDEUS STEVENS Donald K. Pickens THE REPUBLICAN SYNTHESIS has added rich insights and explanatory power to American historiography. Beginning with Caroline Robbin's work, The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthmen (1959), scholars such as Bernard Bailyn, Trevor Colbourn, and Gordon Wood have explored the impact of republican thought upon American ideas and institutions. In 1972 Robert E. Shalhope named this school of interpretation republican synthesis. Three years later in a very significant study, J. G. A. Pocock traced this republican creed from Renaissance Florence to the eve of the American War of Independence. He called this republican tradition civic humanism, and stressed the classical and Renaissance origins. Other historians—Robbins, Bailyn, and Hatch for example—have emphasized the Protestant contributions. In a recent paper, Daniel Walker Howe has clearly demonstrated the intellectual complexity of this republicanism in his evaluation of recent scholarly attempts to extend this creed's influence beyond 1789. This republicanism consisted of Scottish common sense philosophy, Adam Smith's laissez-faire creed, John Locke's philosophy, and Puritan religious sentiments. In addition, this synthesis provided the basis for Robert Kelley's conception of cultural politics and for understanding the transformation of the American War of Independence into the American Revolution from 1776 to 1865 and beyond.1 1 The bibliography is vast; the following items are to the scholars cited in this paragraph. Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthmen (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1959); Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1967); Trevor Colbourn, The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of theAmerican Revolution (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1965); Nathan O. Hatch, The Sacred Course of Liberty (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1977); Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1 776-1787 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1969); Robert E. Shalhope, "Toward a Republican Synthesis: The Emergence of an Understanding of Republicanism in American Historiography," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser. , 29 (1972): 49-80; J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Movement: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1975); Robert Kelley, The Cultural Pattern in American Politics, The First Century (New York: Knopf, 1979). Daniel Walker Howe graciously shared his insights with me in his unpublished manuscript, "American Republicanism and Scottish Influence in the Age of Jefferson." 58CIVIL WAR HISTORY Republicanism—the creed of self-determination—was a vital ideological element in the rise of possessive individualism, that complex historical process by which the medieval idea of rank and order, of estates, changed into the modern ideal of the autonomous being capable of individual advancement and public improvement. An important element in the rise of individualism was the assumption that a natural order existed by which men could judge their individual efforts and successes. Men must be free—as citizens—to pursue their private and legal objectives. Under the rubric of liberty—equality of opportunity—each man would have his natural place in the order of things. As free agents their status was achieved by individual enterprise not acquired by the inherited circumstances of history. Little wonder, therefore, that the laissez-faire philosophy of the Enlightenment was a liberating force. As a community of citizens, men were equal in the political realm and free to define their status with free labor in the free market. Of course any study of Thaddeus Stevens's opinion about Reconstruction reveals serious institutional and ideological tensions in this Americanization of the ideals of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Essentially it was a question of defining the pale and who was in it and who was beyond it. The objective of pre-Reconstruction republicanism was the creation of a just society.2 Using Thaddeus Stevens's vision of a just society as a case in point, this essay demonstrates how this complex ideology provided a dynamic context and historic continuity for the Pennsylvania congressman 's program for Reconstruction; his Lancaster speech of September 1865, for example, was his affirmation of the eighteenth-century creed's validity for his time and the future. It reflects a turning point in the cultural evolution of republicanism. Much earlier, the English political philosopher James...

The Historical Atlas of Canada: A Preview

IN the spring of I979 the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada provided funds for a historical atlas of Canada. Under the general direction of historical geographers, the project would be an interdisciplinary research undertaking to create a scholarly reference atlas that would also serve the general public. The atlas would emphasize the economic and social evolution of early Canada in three volumes of seventy plates each (a plate being a pair of open pages). Along with maps and graphs drawn at different scales as required and printed in color, there would be 8o,ooo words of text per volume, an average of 500 words on each plate and the rest in essays introducing groups of plates. Each volume would comprise approximately 200 pages (each page 26.5 cm x 36.5 cm) and would be published in separate French and English editions; the last volume (Canada from I 890 to I 960) would appear in the late i g80s. Audacious in conception and courageously funded, the project is now nearly four years old, and parts of it are nearing completion. Readers of the William and Mary Quarterly should find volume I of the Atlas, treating Canada before i 8oo, of particular interest. Following is a short account of that volume at mid-stream and a suggestion of what can be expected when it is published in i985. The challenge for volume 1, as for the other volumes, has been to determine what aspects of Canada's socioeconomic past should be treated and where emphases should lie. Like any account of the past, a historical atlas is an interpretation grounded in the points of view of its creators. But each volume of this atlas has many authors-for volume I there are forty from seven disciplines-and overall pattern has had to be imposed on individual enthusiasm. At a time when there is no accepted interpretation of the Canadian past that could begin to encompass the range of possible atlas topics, patterning has been the work of the editors and the editorial boards of each volume. Volume I's editorial board comprises some of the most able scholars in Canada: Louise Dechene, historian, McGill University; W. J. Eccles, historian, University of Toronto; Conrad Heidenreich, geographer, York University; Alan MacPherson, geographer, Memorial University; Wayne Moodie, geographer, University of Manitoba; Richard Ruggles, geographer, Queen's University; Bruce Trigger, anthropologist, McGill University; and James Wright, archaeologist, Archaeological Survey of Canada. Among this group there is as much disagreement as consensus, but within the discussion some principles have seemed self-

The American Revolution and the Testimony of British Quakers Against the Slave Trade

THE AMERICAN REVOLUWON AND THE TESTIMONY OF BRITISH QUAKERS AGAINSTTHESLAVE TRADE By Judith Jennings* Some years ago, Sydney James observed that the Revolution had a decisive impact on the American Society of Friends. Because of it, James argued, American Quakers were forced to rethink and then to redefine their position in the life of the newly independent nation. American Friends concluded that "they must take a more responsible role in propagating virtue and practicing benevolence, both as individuals and as a Society."1 The Revolution had a similar effect on British Quakers in at least one very important instance . After the break with America, British Friends politicized their opposition to the slave trade and began a campaign to end it which was to have far-ranging consequences. It was American Friends who first brought the problems of slavery and the slave trade to the attention of the British Quaker organization. As early as 1712, Pennsylvania Friends requested the London Yearly Meeting to make some official statement regarding the holding and selling of slaves by Quakers.2 The British Friends were not eager to get involved in what they had evidently considered a colonial problem because it was not until 1727 that the London Yearly Meeting pronounced the slave trade a "Practice . . . not commendable nor Allowable" for Friends.3 With that, the British Society was content to let the subject rest for another thirty years, until 1757 when two London Friends visited the Colonies and reported "That in some places great injury seems to arise to our Society from the keeping of Negroes ... as well as *Associate Professor of History, Union College, Barbourville, Kentucky. 1.Sydney James, "The Impact of the American Rev/olution on Quakers' Ideas about their Sect." William and Mary Quarterly, XIX (1962), 382. 2.Thomas Drake, Quakers and Slavery in America (Gloucester, Mass., 1965), 25. 3.London Yearly Meeting, Minutes of the Yearly Meeting held in London , vol. 11, 4 June 1757, in the Friends Reference Library, Friends House, London. 99 100Quaker History dealing in them. . . ." The London Yearly Meeting of 1758 was moved to warn "Friends everywhere, that they endeavour to keep their hands clear" of the slave trade.4 Three years later, at the urging of the newly-formed Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, London Yearly Meeting decreed that any British Friend participating in the trade would be disowned by the Society.5 American Friends were pleased but prodded the British Society to make a public statement. In May 1767, Philadelphia sent the London Meeting for Sufferings an anti-slave trade tract by Anthony Benezet and suggested that it be printed and distributed. The request wasn't as strange as it may seem; the Meeting for Sufferings was experienced in distributing literature, and in drafting proposed legislation and for making personal applications to Members of Parliament as well. London granted Philadelphia's request and delivered Benezet's pamphlet to every Member of both Houses of Parliament.6 The testimony against the slave trade became public. Then Maryland Friends hinted that London might try to persuade the Government to abolish the slave trade to that colony. Uneasy that slaveholding had "crept in, and got deep Root amongst us," the Maryland Yearly Meeting thought that if London Quakers would "communicate the Concern of Friends in general on this Account, to those in Authority with you . . . [it] might be instrumental to prevent . . . further importation amongst us."7 London approved the sentiment but balked at action. Lacking the benefit of the Holy Experiment, the British Society distrusted political activity more than its transatlantic offspring. The parent organization had always limited political involvement to cases directly affecting the Society and was not accustomed to seeking political remedies to the ills of the world. 4.Ibid., 17 May 1758. Epistles from the Yearly Meeting of Friends, held in London, to the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings in Great Britain, Ireland and Elsewhere from 1681 to 1857 (2 vols., London, 1858), vol. 1, 307-308. 5.London Yearly Meeting, Minutes, vol. 12, 14 May 1761. 6.London Meeting for Sufferings, Minute Book of the Meeting for Sufferings , vol. 32, 22 & 29 May 1767, in the Friends Reference Library, Friends House, London. For a discussion of...

Bibliometric analysis of isi's Arts & Humanities Citation index

Bibliometrics, the quantitative study of literature, has made a considerable contribution to the management of scientific libraries and to the understanding of the sociology of science. It has joined operations research as effective management tools in making substantial impact on optimization of library services, resources sharing and allocation in library networks. With the common belief that humanistic literatures are different, these analytic techniques have not been applied to any extent. We believe that although sociological factors may impact on the humanities in different ways, patterns of regularity in communication, individual contribution, and literature growth shall be studied. Knowledge of the characteristics of humanistic literatures may enable us to improve information access and to maximize available resources in space, manpower, and funds for books. A pilot study has been attempted on a bibliography of the history of the American Revolution.The data base is constructed from the Writings on American History: A Subject Bibliography of Articles under the heading "Revolution & Confederation (1763-1789)". To facilitate the analysis, the data management program FAMULUS was used. Selected Results : 1095 articles were published between 1962-1976 by 790 authors in 224 journals or publishing sources. The average author productivity is 1.39 which is similar to other fields studied. As expected, a few highly prolific authors dominated the field, and their productivity distribution follows the well-known Lotka's Law. The dispersion of publications over journals also adheres to Bradford's distribution, identifying the most productive journal in this field as the William and Mary Quarterly . Thus, scholarship in general assumes certain common characteristics regardless of the discipline. Yet differences exist. There are only 77 (10%) authors who have ever co-authored in a mere 47 (4%) of the total literature. This is a dramatic departure from the intensely collaborative enterprise of science in which almost all scientific writers co-author.From our experience, FAMULUS is a useful tool in bibliometric analysis in addition to being a good personal documentation system to replace our shoebox of cards. We have also used it in the teaching of indexing and retrieval of documents.

The Franchise in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts: Dedham and Cambridge

Tn the April I976 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly there appeared * an essay entitled The Controversy over the Franchise in Puritan MasAsachusetts, I954 to I974. In this essay, the author, B. Katherine Brown, surveys the literature of the subject and advocates a point of view with which I have disagreed and continue to disagree. I do not wish at this time to enter another debate with Mrs. Brown. I doubt that either of us would succeed in converting the other, and in the effort we might succeed in boring the entire profession. Nevertheless, Mrs. Brown does comment on some of my work in such a manner that not to respond might leave the impression that I agree with her evaluations. On page 226 Mrs. Brown states:

The Newburgh Conspiracy Reconsidered

T t t HE events that occurred while American army was in its last encampment at Newburgh, New York, in winter of 1782-1783 have never been fully understood by historians. Two recent articles in The William and Mary Quarterly have revealed again how historians have divided in their interpretation of motives of those involved in so-called Newburgh conspiracy. Richard H. Kohn related fully and clearly how crisis had developed. However, his contention that a clique of army officers led by Major General Horatio Gates actually plotted a coup d'etat was challenged by Paul David Nelson. While he did not deny that Gates was involved in perpetration of anonymous Newburgh Addresses, Nelson asserted that motive of Gates and his group was simply to obtain justice from Congress and a resolution of army's grievances. In rebutting Nelson, Kohn remained unshaken in his belief that there was a premeditated conspiracy.1 The questions raised in these two articles are indeed very important. If we accept Kohn's argument, this would be, as he phrased it, the only known instance of an attempted coup in American history. However, as Nelson noted, the burden of argument must rest with those who would prove such a cabal.2 Kohn presented a strong case for his interpretation. My concern is that historians will overlook his disclaimers that his was circumstantial, although corroborated by a mass of other evidence, and that his view was, and still is, an educated guess.3 Certainly we should remain skeptical of a narrative that used evidence that probably never existed.4 A great deal of Kohn's interpretation, in

Horatio Gates at Newburgh, 1783: A Misunderstood Role

A great deal of effort has been expended by scholars of the American Revolutionary War in trying to understand the nature of the events that transpired in I783 in the Continental Army's encampment at Newburgh. latest attempt was an article by Richard H. Kohn, The Inside Story of the Newburgh Conspiracy: America and the Coup d'Etat, in the April I970 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly.' Without questioning the broader aspects of civil-military relations that Kohn raised in his article, I must disagree with his conclusions about the role that Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates played in the army discontent at Newburgh. To understand his arguments about Gates, we must first view them in the broader perspective of his entire discussion. According to Kohn, the Newburgh conspiracy was an attempt by individuals in Congress and the military to use army discontent to bolster the power of the central government under the Articles of Confederation. In fact, some men were willing to risk a coup d'etat in order to achieve their aims. Money was the source of the greatest unhappiness in the army. Soldiers had not been reimbursed for weeks. But more importantly, there was a fear among many officers that Congress would disband the army without settling the issue of half pay, which had been promised to them in I780. officers realized that pressures from the civilian populace were being put on the legislators to deny them this reward, for the idea of giving salaries to unemployed soldiers was unpopular. Hence, in late I782 the officers, in a petition to Congress, declared their willingness to settle for commutation of half pay into a fixed sum to be given them at once. At the same time, they showed their irritation with congressional foot dragging on the issue by declaring that any further experiments on the patience of the troops may have

The Case for a New Historical Atlas of Early America

O NE of the stated objectives of the Institute of Early American History and Culture is encourage and assist writers and scholars in their studies and research.' Since I944 the Institute has been providing assistance chiefly through the editorial work in its publication program. The product of this effort is some sixty books by historians throughout the United States and twenty-seven volumes of the William and Mary Quarterly in its Third Series. In the course of our editing, as well as in personal research by the staff, we have encountered numerous questions that one would expect to find answered in a comprehensive historical atlas of the United States. Yet, among the atlases published during the last few decades, only Paullin and Wright2 serves the more demanding user with a high degree of satisfaction, though not without serious limitations. Atlases of world history, like Palmer' or Shepherd,4 give perforce little attention to American history, and even in a general work on the United States, e.g., The American Heritage Atlas of United States History (New York, i966), only limited space can be devoted to the early period. Within that narrow range the compiler cannot cover the essentials, let alone indulge much in innovation. In all of the atlases the sins of omission are far greater than those of commission, and the scholar is more likely to be disappointed than satisfied in seeking information beyond the usual diluted historical fare. Recognizing the real need for an atlas of early American history, the Institute in partnership with the Newberry Library proposes to undertake

Popular Uprisings and Civil Authority in Eighteenth-Century America

T is only natural that the riots and civil turbulence of the past decade J and a half have awakened a new interest in the history of American mobs. It should be emphasized, however, that scholarly attention to the subject has roots independent of contemporary events and founded in long-developing historiographical trends. George Rude's studies of pre-industrial crowds in France and England, E. J. Hobsbawm's discussion of archaic social movements, and recent works linking eighteenth-century American thought with English revolutionary tradition have all, in different ways, inspired a new concern among historians with colonial uprisings.1 This discovery of the early American mob promises to have a significant effect upon historical interpretation. Particularly affected are the Revolutionary struggle and the early decades of the new nation, when events often turned upon well-known popular insurrections. * Mrs. Maier is a member of the Department of History, University of Massachusetts. 1 See the following by George Rude: Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford, I959); The London 'Mob' of the Eighteenth Century, Journal, II (959), i-i8; Wilkes and Liberty: Social Study of 1763 to 1774 (Oxford, i962); Crowd in History: Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730-i848 (New York, i964). See also E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the s9th and 20th Centuries (New York, I959), esp. The City Mob, i08-I25. For recent discussions of the colonial mob see: Bernard Bailyn, Pamphlets of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., i965), I, 58I-584; Jesse Lemisch, Jack Tar in the Street: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America, William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., XXV (i968), 371-407; Gordon S. Wood, A Note on Mobs in the American Revolution, Wm. and Mary Qtly., 3d Ser., XXIII (i966), 635-642, and more recently Wood's Creation of the American Republic, 5776-i787 (Chapel Hill, i969), passim, but esp. 319-328. Wood offers an excellent analysis of the place of mobs and extralegal assemblies in the development of American constitutionalism. Hugh D. Graham and Ted R. Gurr, Violence in America: and Comparative Perspectives (New York, i969) primarily discusses uprisings of the i9th and 20th centuries, but see the chapters by Richard M. Brown, Historical Patterns of Violence in America, 45-84, and The American Vigilante Tradition, I54-226.

Paradise and the Noble Savage in Jeffersonian Thought

vision, a mythic ordering of reality. Though his conceptualization might have had impressive affinities to agricultural life in the American colonies, it probably had little to do with how the Indian really lived. Just as the primitivist convention presented an unreal idealization of savage existence, so also did the pastoral garden. The Farmer and the Indian were portrayed as nicely synchronized with the natural condition; their style of life was relatively simple, and they had acquired only a small complement of artificial desires. Similarly, as the paradisaic ideal was progressive, the pastoral vision offered a satisfactory consummation for the deepest yearnings of the human spirit. In one sense the Farmer fled to it, away from a world that was pressing him closely with violence. Just so the utopian urge had impelled men to leave the imperfections of civilization in search of paradise. It was a primitivistic optimism, so easily transposed into a utopian future, that gave to the middling landscape its aura of unfolding perfectionism. There were also mundane implications to the pastoral convention. Without denying its perfectionist flavor, it had the stamp of common sense meliorism. Jefferson, after all, and many of his generation, believed that the yeoman farmer, living in a setting very close to the pastoral ideal, was the very best of men. They wanted the new nation to use its ample resources to create the middling social condition. The Indian, it seemed, 83 Cravecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, 300-30L. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.104 on Mon, 20 Jun 2016 05:46:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 342 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY already possessed many of the needed virtues to spend his days in the uncluttered tranquility of the American garden. Skeptical of the possibility of educating the Indian outside of his native element and conscious always that there were important differences between white and native, Crevecoeur did think that the two races would inevitably mix and he wanted to encourage the Indian to a further adoption of agriculture.34 There was no doubt that progress included the Indian and with the pastoral convention he possessed unique qualifications to take his part

The Mysterious Mr. Digges

homas Attwood Digges of Warburton, Maryland, was portrayed in a recent article in the Williaam and Mary Quarterly as an agent in the transit of technology from the Old World to the New. About Digges has always swirled a minor eddy of controversy concerning the exact nature of his performance as go-between in London during the years of the American War for Independence, Digges being accused by Benjamin Franklin of dishonesty in his dealings regarding American prisoners of war. He was, however, defended by his friend and neighbor George Washington, whose home was situated just across the Potomac from that of Digges. After the end of the war Digges went to Ireland where he assisted in the smuggling of the inventor-artisan William Pearce out of the country to America, defying British law on the subject of emigration of artisans and exportation of industrial knowledge.' Largely on the basis of Dr. Franklin's accusations, certain historians went so far as to accuse Digges of being a double agent working for the British from I779 to I782. Such was his general reputation until I953, when William Bell Clark pointed out correctly that while Franklin had denounced Digges as a scoundrel he had never directly or indirectly accused him of spying, and that therefore the conclusions of later historians were not justified by anything Franklin had written. Clark's article dealt almost exclusively with Digges's career in England during the time of the Revolution, explaining that afterwards there is a long silence from and about Thomas Digges.2 Pursell's article has since indicated that Digges was by no means quiescent during his subsequent stay in Ireland. Furthermore, certain information drawn from printed sources relating to Irish history makes clear that the smuggling of inventors was not the only activity of Digges.3 It also suggests that further research might well reopen the case of his loyalty.

A Peculiar Monument: The Third Series of the William and Mary Quarterly

N the July I952 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly there appears an article entitled George Wythe Courts the Muses: In Which, to the Astonishment of Everyone, That Silent, Selfless Pedant Is Found to Have Had a Sense of Humor. Something of the same kind might be said of the third series of the Quarterly. For twenty years, since the inauguration of the third series, the Quarterly has courted the Muses; and its contributors, to the astonishment and delight of a growing list of subscribers, have managed to enliven historical scholarship with wit, with humor, and even with a sense of its relevance to contemporary affairs. Few scholarly journals have offered so much to the nonspecialist. Trivia, with its Advices, both Forreign & Domestick; offered by the PRINTER for the delectation of his Readers, is the conspicuous example. Occasionally, indeed, the items in Trivia have attained the heights of true satire, as in Douglass Adair's pungent comment on philatelic revisionism, Behold How Low the Mighty Have Fallen: The Post Office Degrades leflerson from a 3? to a 2 Status (April I955). Issue after issue has offered articles and documents with a human interest appeal, and the reviews have dealt often, if not always kindly, with popular and semipopular works. A fair number of articles have been attractively illustrated; a few, like Trevor Colbourn's Madison Eulogized: The Hearst Tournament of Orators glorifies (one year early) the anniversary of the birth of the Father of the Constitution (January I951), have presented the historian in the role of light essayist and social critic. Yet the Quarterly is first of all a medium of scholarly discourse. The

Scientific Enquiry in Eighteenth‐Century Virginia

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsRichard M. JellisonThe author, a member of Delta Epsilon chapter, is Associate Professor of History at Miami University. He was granted his Ph.D. (1952) by Indiana University, He has published articles on various aspects of paper currency in the colonies in the William and Mary Quarterly and the South Carolina Historical Magazine. An article of his on Dr. John Tennent will soon appear in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine. In another version this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association. Chattanooga, Tennessee, in November 1961. The study was made possible by a grant from Colonial Williamsburg, Inc.