We Still Need to Fix the Electoral College

Hillary Clinton won our vote.

“Our” meaning the choice of us the people of the United States of America. Everyone agrees that she won the plurality of the votes we cast leading up to Tuesday, 8 November.

But because of the Electoral College, our choice was distorted, and a man who was demonstrably the preference of fewer Americans will take the Presidency. Under some analyses, the distortion will be strikingly large, turning a 1-2% loss in our vote into a 20% win in the Electoral College. This isn’t the way democracies are supposed to work. As the Declaration of Independence says, the hallmark of legitimate governments is “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Without that consent, governmental powers are unjust.

I wrote about this problem with the U.S. Constitution in 2008 and again in 2012. As I said in the latter posting, I expressed the same worry shortly before the election of 2000, when the Electoral College hadn’t overruled the popular vote in more than a century and the hypothetical under discussion would actually favor my candidate. That would be illegitimate, I said.

So I’m not one of those complacent hypocrites who condemns the Electoral College when it doesn’t go his way and then happily accepts its results when it does.

As I wrote again at the beginning of this month, the first generation of U.S. politicians almost immediately starting gaming the Elector system to benefit their preferred parties and candidates. The Framers’ initial conception of the Electors as independent statesmen who would deliberate on the choice of President for the good of the whole nation quickly went out the window.

With the passage of the Twelfth Amendment blocking the Electors from meeting as a deliberative body able to discuss issues and forge deals, the benefits of representative democracy no longer applied. The Electoral College hung on simply as a vestige of the Constitutional Convention’s compromises to preserve the inflated influence of slaveholders and small states.

Now we’ve had two elections over sixteen years in which the Electoral College frustrated our national choice. Not as bad as two over twelve years in the late nineteenth century, but bad enough that we should realize this isn’t a very rare problem we can safely ignore.

Many politicians have incentives to do nothing. All five of the candidates who won pluralities but were kept from the Presidency have been Democrats, but that party, its policies, and its bases have changed greatly over the last two centuries. The Electoral College’s two most recent distortions are the only ones that derive from the current party rivalries. In 2000 and 2016 the Republican Party found the system rigged in its favor, and its partisans are reluctant to give up that advantage.

Furthermore, since the Electoral College preserves disproportionate power for smaller-population states, those states’ legislatures also have incentives to avoid fixing the system. The National Popular Vote initiative is an easier fix than a constitutional amendment, but still requires legislatures to give up their extra power.

Nonetheless, we need to fix the U.S. Presidential election to ensure that the Electoral College ratifies rather than overturns our national vote. That will ensure our government retains full legitimacy. So the big question is whether enough American politicians will be willing to sacrifice some short-term, unfair advantages for the good of our nation as a whole.

Dr. Cooper Shares a Creation Myth from Africa

On 14 May 1771, John Adams went into Boston from Braintree and spent the evening at Capt. John Bradford’s.

Among the other gentlemen meeting there as a club were James Otis, Jr. (apparently, but not really, recovered from his head wound and subsequent mental problems); town clerk William Cooper; his brother, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper; the Rev. John Lathrop; Dr. Joseph Warren; and Adams’s own cousin Samuel. In other words, a selection of the town’s leading Whigs. “A very pleasant Evening,” Adams wrote in his diary.

At one point the conversation turned to old sayings:

Dr. Cooper mentioned an old Proverb that an Ounce of Mother Wit, is worth a Pound of Clergy. Mr. Otis mentioned another which he said conveyed the same Sentiment—an Ounce of Prudence is worth a Pound of Wit.

This produced a Dispute, and the sense of the Company was that the Word Wit in the 2d. Proverb, meant, the faculty of suddenly raising pleasant Pictures in the Fancy, but that the Phrase Mother Wit in the first Proverb meant, natural Parts, and Clergy acquired Learning—Book Learning.

Okay, that’s not the interesting part. But that discussion led into this:

Dr. Cooper quoted another Proverb, from his Negro Glasgow—a Mouse can build an House without Timble [timber?]—and then told us another Instance of Glasgows Intellect, of which I had before thought him entirely destitute. The Dr. was speaking to Glasgow about Adams Fall and the Introduction of natural and moral Evil into the World, and Glasgow said they had in his Country a different Account of this matter.

The Tradition was that a Dog and a Toad were to run a Race, and if the Dog reached the Goal first, the World was to continue innocent and happy, but if the Toad should outstrip the Dog, the world was to become sinfull and miserable. Every Body thought there could be no danger. But in the Midst of the Career the Dog found a bone by the Way and stopped to knaw it, and while he was interrupted by his Bone, the Toad, constant in his Malevolence, hopped on, reached the Mark, and spoiled the World

The story Glasgow told is a variation (perhaps his own culture’s version, perhaps because of Cooper’s filter) of a myth from eastern Africa. Here’s a version of the myth from a 2008 New Yorker essay on Chinua Achebe, and another from a textbook, linked to the Igbo people of southern Nigeria. Here’s a similar story from the Mende of Sierra Leone.

This passage is thus evidence of the transmission of an African tradition across the Atlantic to Boston. The phrase “in his Country” suggests that Glasgow was born and raised in east Africa before being kidnapped to the New World.

The anecdote also provides an interesting picture of Boston’s Sons of Liberty discussing African culture. Though we don’t have their commentary on the story, the tale was obviously of enough interest for Cooper to pass it on and for Adams to write it down.

“Glasgow Cooper[,] Negro” appears on Boston’s tax list for 1780 in Ward 7, assessed a poll tax. In other words, by that year he was a free man.

“The Rich never head a movement against tyranny”

From The New England History (1857), by the horticulturalist, industrialist, and author Charles Wyllys Elliott (1817-1883):

It is well enough here, to recall to mind that the Rich never head a movement against tyranny, or risk any thing in defence of a principle; and among cultivated men and scholars, the expression of sympathy with Right is commonly in words rather than deeds.

No generous man can fail to give his heartfelt thanks to the Poor, who have always begun and fought the Revolutions against tyranny and usurpation, and in fighting for liberty have nobly sacrificed what they had—their Lives. Nor will any one be surprised if they should be led away by the heat of their hatreds, nor shall we be harsh and cruel in our judgment of them, when they have been betrayed into unwarrantable excesses; a sound public opinion will see to it, that when the excitement is passed the reaction against them does not bring about a like or greater excess in punishments, thus sustaining force and wrong.

It was by the poor, the day laborers in Boston and elsewhere, that the struggle was begun against Aristocratic oppression; and by them that the Work of the fight was done.

This is from Elliott’s chapter on the Stamp Act.

“As they were not reasoned up, they cannot be reasoned down”

In 1721, the Rev. Jonathan Swift published A Letter to a Young Clergyman, Lately Enter’d Into Holy Orders, by a Person of Quality. It included this sentence about men wasting their college education by thinking in new ways and thus making such education look bad for everyone else:

It is from such seminaries as these, that the world is provided with the several tribes and denominations of freethinkers, who, in my judgment, are not to be reformed by arguments offered to prove the truth of the christian religion, because reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired: for in the course of things, men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers; but if you would once convince the town or country profligate, by topics drawn from the view of their own quiet, reputation, health, and advantage, their infidelity would soon drop off: This I confess is no easy task, because it is almost in a literal sense, to fight with beasts.

Eventually the clause “Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired” was pulled out of that sentence as wisdom on its own. Ironically, Swift wasn’t extolling reasoning so much as faith.

In the letter dated 21 Mar 1778 in The American Crisis, Thomas Paine offered a variation on that idea in a public letter to Gen. Sir William Howe:

To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture. Enjoy, sir, your insensibility of feeling and reflecting. It is the prerogative of animals. And no man will envy you these honors, in which a savage only can be your rival and a bear your master.

You always knew where you stood with Paine.

In the 12 Oct 1786 Independent Chronicle, young Fisher Ames (shown above) published an essay about the Shays’ Rebellion then roiling Massachusetts. He restated the same thought about the futility of reasoning with the unreasonable, this time calling that older wisdom.

It may be very proper to use arguments, to publish addresses, and fulminate proclamations, against high treason: but the man who expects to disperse a mob of a thousand men, by ten thousand arguments, has certainly never been in one. I have heard it remarked, that men are not to be reasoned out of an opinion that they have not reasoned themselves into. The case, though important, is simple. Government does not subsist by making proselytes to sound reason, or by compromise and arbitration with its members; but by the power of the community compelling the obedience of individuals.

Ten years later, on 28 Apr 1796, Ames was a member of the House of Representatives. He spoke in favor of the Jay Treaty, repeating the thought in new terms:

We hear it said, that this is a struggle for liberty, a manly resistance against the design to nullify this assembly, and to make it a cypher in the government: that the president and senate, the numerous meetings in the cities, and the influence of the general alarm of the country, are the agents and instruments of a scheme of coercion and terrour, to force the treaty down our throats, though we loath it, and in spite of the clearest convictions of duty and conscience.

It is necessary to pause here, and inquire, whether suggestions of this kind be not unfair in their very texture and fabrick, and pernicious in all their influences. They oppose an obstacle in the path of inquiry, not simply discouraging, but absolutely insurmountable. They will not yield to argument; for, as they were not reasoned up, they cannot be reasoned down. They are higher than a Chinese wall in truth’s way, and built of materials that are indestructible. While this remains, it is vain to say to this mountain, be thou cast into the sea.

Ames was known for his Federalist oratory, and that speech was reprinted many times in the nineteenth century. Several more American writers echoed Ames’s “reasoned up/reasoned down” phrase.

(This posting was aided by the inquiry at Quote Investigator.)

Events at the N.E.H.G.S. in November

The New England Historic Genealogical Society is hosting two free events this month with Revolutionary roots.

Saturday, 12 November, 2:00-3:30 P.M.
General Lafayette’s Farewell Tour
Alan Hoffman and Dorothea Jensen

Between August 1824 and September 1825, General Lafayette—famed Revolutionary War hero—said a final farewell to America during a 24-state tour. Alan Hoffman—President of the American Friends of Lafayette and the Massachusetts Lafayette Society—will speak about Lafayette’s tour. Author Dorothea Jensen will then discuss the portrayal of Lafayette’s arrival in a small New Hampshire town in her recently published young-adult historical novel, A Buss from Lafayette. Diaries and correspondence from N.E.H.G.S. special collections documenting the farewell tour will be on display.

Wednesday, 16 November, 6:00-7:30 P.M.
“The Lord Alone Shall be King of America”: Hebraism and the Republican Turn of 1776
Eric Nelson

In this lecture, Eric Nelson, author of The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought, will demonstrate how the history of American constitutionalism and the history of Christian Hebraism are deeply intertwined. A conversation with Barry Shrage, President of the Combined Jewish Philanthrophies of Greater Boston, will follow the lecture.

Nelson is the Robert M. Beren Professor of Government at Harvard University, focusing on early modern political thought. He is also author of The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding, which makes a contrarian argument about the American Patriots’ support for monarchical power.

Knox “kept the Sacred image erect”

Given the concatenation of the Fifth of November and yesterday’s discussion of Henry Knox’s childhood, I’ll repeat an anecdote that pertains to both.

On 21 July 1848 a Cambridge man named George Ingersoll sent Charles Daveis, who was trying to write a biography of Knox, a letter setting down a story about the man. Ingersoll said he’d heard the tale from “Mr. Charles Hayward of Boston heard it from the lips of an Eye-witness Mr. Richard Chamberlain, who had been in someway connected with the army” before becoming an import merchant.

The South & North ends of Boston were, in old times, (that is that exceedgly wise & important [?] portion of the Population the boys) in decided and unceasing opposition to each other. In celebration of that immortal day the fifth of Nov. each Party had its Pope accompanied by the “gentleman in black”—there were thus the South End Pope & the North End Pope.

These two parties always continued to meet at some half way spot where a regular fight ensued (an annual battle)—which lasted until one Party drove off the other & took possession of its Pope—the victorious Party then took both Popes to some particular place—generally the Mill Pond, & then burnt them both together.

On the present occasion, one of the wheels which supported the Platform of the South End Pope came off—or broke down—this, of course, would tend to Slide off his Holiness into the Street or at least compel him to lower his head before the rival Pope which would be regarded as a Sign of Submission.

To prevent this awful catastrophe, Knox immediately placed his Shoulder under the platform & kept the Sacred image erect until the fight was over. Which way the victory turnd Mr. Hayward does not remember.

Knox at the time was not—properly speaking—a boy, but rather as Mr. Chamberlain said, a dashing young man, about 18 or so. The belligerents—by the way—on these occasions were not by any means mere boys only, but were composed also of young men.

The South End Party was then commanded by a certain Abraham Foley—usually known as Niddy-Noddy, a nickname given him from a peculiar motion of the head. This man afterwards became a Servant and at last died in the Hospital [i.e., was poor and possibly insane]. Knox as Pope man was Subject to his orders—among others of the South End Party. And here, as the Showman says, is the illustration which the anecdote affords—Foley the comander, dying in the Hospital—Knox, the dashing young man, at last the Major-General.

Over the next two years, Daveis collected similar versions of this anecdote from two other men, but no one could say he’d seen the event himself. If this event did happen as described, it was in the late 1760s, when Knox was in his late teens.

Daveis’s papers went into the files of another unsuccessful Knox biographer, Joseph Willard, now at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The anecdote about Pope Night made its way into Francis S. Drake’s 1873 Life and Correspondence of Henry Knox. From there it’s been repeated by every Knox biographer in turn, but I believe this letter is the earliest source.

The “juvenile sports” of Two Boston Boys in the Late 1750s

In 22 Dec 1788, the Rev. David McClure wrote from Windsor, Connecticut, to one of his childhood friends from Boston:

Dear Sir,—On the footing of that juvenile friendship and acquaintance with you with which I have been honored, and which was kept alive to our riper years, I now do myself the pleasure to address a line to you, to assure you of my respectful and affectionate remembrance of you, and of the satisfaction with which I sometimes call to mind those scenes of innocent amusement and play in which we were mutually engaged when we were boys.

I have often thought of our attempts to imitate the man who flew from the steeple of the North Church, by sliding down an oar from the small buildings in your father’s house-yard at Wheeler’s Point; and by letting fly little wooden men from the garret window on strings. Have you forgotten that diversion?

McClure was recalling how a traveling daredevil named John Childs had “flown” from Christ Church in the North End in September 1757, as discussed way back here. Childs actually slid face-first down a rope, which is why the boys at Wheeler’s Point tried “sliding down an oar” and “letting letting fly little wooden men from the garret window on strings” to replicate his feat.

The minister’s old playmate was Henry Knox (shown above), then in New York as Secretary of War. He replied on 25 Jan 1789:

Our juvenile sports, and the joyful sensations they excited, are fresh in my mind; and what to me renders the remembrance particularly precious is, that I always flattered myself that our hearts and minds were similarly constructed.

This is one of our few authentic glimpses of Henry Knox as a boy in the 1750s. Within a few years, Henry’s father suffered business reversals and left his family, dying in the Caribbean in 1762. Henry became indentured to a bookseller, his first career.

On Monday, 7 November, I’ll speak to the Sudbury Companies of Militia & Minute about the events that allowed the launch of Henry Knox’s second career, as an artillery officer in the Continental Army. How did Gen. George Washington come to view his artillery regiment as in dire need of a shakeup? That talk will take place at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury at 8:00 or so, and I’ll have copies of The Road to Concord for signing.

Massachusetts National Parks Film Screening, 9 Nov.

On Wednesday, 9 November, the National Parks Conservations Association and the Pew Charitable Trusts will host a reception and screening of the film Massachusetts National Parks: Treasures Worth Protecting at the Old State House in Boston.

The invitation says:

The evening will include an original short film produced by the National Parks Conservation Association to get inspired and ensure our Revolutionary War national parks, which tell our nation’s earliest history, and park staff have the resources they need to take on the next hundred years.

This video highlights several examples of how the deferred maintenance and repair backlog threatens these treasured places and our shared American history.

Following the video, attendees will be invited to participate in an open discussion and Q&A session with some of the main characters featured in the video.

“Deferred maintenance” means putting off repairs and recommended upkeep because of budget limits. Or, as this government website explains it:

DM is maintenance that was not performed at the required intervals to ensure an acceptable facility condition to support the expected life cycle of an asset. It is the total of unfunded facilities deficiencies. These deficiencies require work to raise facilities and collateral equipment to a condition that meets accepted codes, laws and standards and to achieve service life expectancies.

Each year the National Park Service issues a report totaling what funds the agency budget would need to tackle all the deferred maintenance projects in all its parks. This is the 2015 report on parks in Massachusetts.

Over half of that total is at parks associated with the American Revolution, particularly Boston. Sometimes such projects can be put off for years, but in the end those repairs usually require even more spending than originally. In the meantime, facilities are closed, access is limited, and irreplaceable buildings suffer worse damage.

This film screening and discussion is scheduled for 5:30 to 7:30 P.M. There will be light refreshments and a demonstration by historical reenactors, and it’s all free and open to the public. The N.P.C.A. encourages fans and supporters of Revolutionary history in Massachusetts to come and bring friends. Use this site to R.S.V.P.

Liz Covart on History Podcasting at Framingham, 7 Nov.

On the afternoon of Monday, 7 November, Framingham State University will host a conversation with Liz Covart, the host and producer of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast.

The event description says:

Ben Franklin’s World is one of the most popular podcasts focused on history, with nearly one million downloads since its launch in 2014. Its host, Dr. Liz Covart, has become a pioneering guru at the intersection of history and social media. Join us for a conversation about how we communicate about the past, how to connect academic and public audiences, and how to start a business online.

Liz organizes her podcast around extended interviews with historians specializing in early America. This year she started working with the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture to create a series within the series on how historians work, with episodes devoted to archives, sources, publication, and more.

This event will be hosted by history professor Joseph Adelman. Joe also interviewed Liz herself for her 100th episode, and last month they did a joint presentation on “Digital Humanities and Early American History” at the Huntington Library.

The conversation will take place from 4:30 to 6:00 P.M. in the Alumni Room of the university’s McCarthy Center. It is co-sponsored by the Departments of History, Communication Arts, and Art & Music. Go here to reserve a space.

In other local history podcasting news, Jake Sconyers and Nikki Stewart have launched their HUB History podcast with a short episode on Pope Night.

Keyssar on the Electoral College, 3 Nov.

On Thursday, 3 November, the Massachusetts Historical Society will host the Pauline Maier Memorial Lecture, named after the eminent and well-loved historian of early America who died in 2013.

This year’s talk is “Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?” by Alex Keyssar of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Every four years, millions of Americans find themselves asking why they choose their presidents through the peculiar mechanism called the Electoral College—an arcane institution that narrows election campaigns to swing states and can permit the loser of the popular vote to become president. It has had critics since the early 19th century. Over the years, Congress has considered hundreds of constitutional amendments aimed at transforming the system.

Harvard University Press has just published Keyssar’s book of the same title.

“Publius” essay number 58, written by Alexander Hamilton, laid out the Federalist case for Electors, but it wasn’t written to refute any particular argument. Hamilton began:

The mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents. The most plausible of these, who has appeared in print, has even deigned to admit that the election of the President is pretty well guarded. I venture somewhat further, and hesitate not to affirm, that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent. . . .

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.

However, within just a few years many states were requiring Electors not to deploy their “information and discernment” but to vote for whichever candidate had won in those states. And then the Twelfth Amendment ensured that the Electors wouldn’t all assemble for “deliberation”; each group was to meet in their own state. The original system never worked as the Framers hoped.

This event will start with a reception at 5:30 P.M., and Prof. Keyssar will speak at 6:30. It is free to M.H.S. Fellows and Members, $20 for others. Register here.

Furstenberg on Washington’s Abolitionist Pamphlets, 2 Nov.

On Wednesday, 2 November, the Boston Athenaeum will host a lecture on one highlight of its collection: George Washington’s library.

As explained on this webpage, a nephew of a nephew of the President sold much of the family library to “a flamboyant American bookseller” named Henry Stevens in 1848.

Stevens tried to sell the collection to the U.S. government, then to Harvard University. With no takers, he began to point out loudly that the British Museum had hired him to buy American books, hinting that it might also want Washington’s library.

About seventy Massachusetts men pooled their money to buy the collection and keep it in the U.S. of A. They never managed to hit Stevens’s asking price after sending their first installment. But he’d spent some of that money and couldn’t send a refund, so he had to compromise and send the books. The group then donated them to the Athenaeum.

The full title for this lecture is “George Washington’s Library at the Athenaeum: Transatlantic Dialogues of Slavery and Freedom.” Here’s the description:

Why might an obscure pamphlet collection housed in the Boston Athenæum archives offer new insights on the abolition movement of the late eighteenth century? It's simple: the tract collection belonged to George Washington. In this lecture, Professor of History François Furstenberg will explore the early history of abolitionist debates from the perspective of book history, using these leaflets to link Mount Vernon to a broad transatlantic conversation about slavery and freedom.

Furstenberg, who grew up in Boston, is author of In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation and When the United States Spoke French: Five Refugees who Shaped a Nation.

Admission to this event costs $15 for Athenaeum members, $30 for others. Advance registration is required. The talk is scheduled from 6:00 to 7:00 P.M., and a reception will follow.

Further lectures in this program, “Rookie Republic: Early America and Its Place on the Global Stage,” will include “Black Pepper: Taste a Revolutionary Story” by Sarah Lohman on 16 November and “Muslims in America since 1619” by Shareda Hosein on 13 December.

(Shown above: Washington’s nicely bound 1790 collection of writings by his former aide de camp and secretary, David Humphreys.)

“ADAMS, greater far than he, Took rigid honour for his guide”

A few days back I shared Susanna Rowson’s paean to George Washington in honor of his birthday in February 1798—an early indication that America would keep celebrating that day even though the man was no longer President.

In October 1799, Rowson got around to writing a similar ode to President John Adams. She was a Massachusetts Federalist, after all. And to make up for missing earlier birthdays, it seems, she made her “On the Birth Day of John Adams, Esquire, President of the United States of America, 1799” extra long.

The poem starts in heroic blank verse:

WHEN great ALCIDES, JOVE’s immortal son,
Attain’d the dawn of manhood, life’s spring tide,
Rushing impetuous through his agile frame,
Light bade his spirits dance, whilst health and joy
Crimson’d his cheek and revel’d in his eye;
And yet restraint the youth had never known.

And it goes on like that for four pages, all about Alcides (a variation on another name for Heracles) rejecting Vice and choosing Virtue. That story finishes, leaving you to wonder what any of it had to do with John Adams, Esquire, and then the poet herself enters the scene.

“Blest was the choice he made,” I eager cried,
As rapt I lay; the volume by my side,
And mus’d on what I had read. It was the hour
“When church yards yawn,” and fancy has the power,
To raise incongruous phantoms to our view,
And almost make us think her airy visions true.
“But where in these degenerate ages,
Can we a mortal find,
Like this recorded by the sages;
Who, when vice tempts and passion rages,
With an unshaken mind,
Will boldly quit without a sigh,
Pleasure’s enamel’d meads;
To mount the path, rugged and high,
Where virtue points, and honour leads?[”]

“Peace,” cried a voice, “ungrateful mortal, peace.”
I rais’d my eyes, a vision stood beside me;
Fair as the tints of opening day,
Her eye was chaste as DIAN’s ray,
Her smile so soft, I knew no evil could betide me.
A cæstus bound her lovely waist,
On which was INDEPENDENCE graven;
Bare were her arms, or only brac’d
By circlets, where these words I trac’d:
WE TRUST IN UNITY AND HEAVEN.
In her right hand she held a spear,
And from her left an iron chain depended.
By which, more bound by guilt and servile fear,
Hung lawless ANARCHY and SHAME,
AMBITION, who usurp’d a patriot’s name,
And ENVY slyly seeking to defame
The WARRIOR, by whose arm, her children were defended.

“And who art thou, bright vision?” I enquired;
“My name,” she smiling cried, “is LIBERTY;”
“Oh nymph, by all beloved, by all desired,
And art thou come,” I cried, “to dwell with me?”
“No,” said the goddess, “I am come to chide.”
“Why dost thou wonder at ALCIDES’ worth?
Columbia boasts, and she may boast with pride,
An equal hero’s birth.
The morn which dapples in the east,
And makes all nature gay,
Speaks what should be by all exprest;
Let every face in smiles be drest,
For ’tis his natal day.

“ALICIDES mighty feats has done,
Wonders perform’d and conquests won;
But ADAMS, greater far than he,
Took rigid honour for his guide;
Stern truth and virtue on his side;
And soaring on superior worth,
Trod base detraction to the earth;
Firm to her cause,
Enforc’d the laws,
That made his country free.

“Then rise, and tune the vocal lay,
Invoke the Muse’s aid;
Small is the tribute thou canst pay,
Yet be that tribute paid,
And thousands in that tribute will bear part,
For all conspire to raise the festive lay,
And as they joyful hail his natal day,
Pour forth the offerings of a grateful heart.”

So Rowson’s message was that President Adams was greater than Heracles because he was no fun at all.

And thus Boston 1775 wishes John Adams a happy birthday.

“The birthday of our beloved President John Adams”

After the controversy over celebrating George Washington’s birthday in February 1798, President John Adams reconciled himself to such ceremonies. Indeed, we’re still celebrating the first President’s birthday today, in a way.

But Adams’s Federalist supporters also appear to have stepped up their efforts to celebrate his own birthday, so long as he was in office. (This whole series of postings started with me wondering whether the U.S. of A. celebrated President Adams’s birthday the way it celebrated President Washington’s, and before him King George’s. And the answer is yes, in a way.)

Balls and banquets weren’t to Adams’s taste, of course. The preferred method of honoring him, particularly during the Quasi-War of the late 1790s, became a militia parade. The Columbian Mirror and Alexandria Gazette reported on a ceremony in Alexandria, Virginia, on 30 Oct 1798:

Tuesday last, being the anniversary of the birthday of our beloved President John Adams, was observed in this town with military honors. The uniform companies of Militia, and the company of Silver Grays, went through a variety of maneuvers and evolutions, under the command of George Deneale. After firing several rounds in evidence of their attachment to this good man, as well as to shew that they approbated his conduct towards the insidious French Directory, they retired in the evening with the utmost decorum and harmony.

Even then, however, Adams’s predecessor hovered over the ceremony. Martha Washington presented a banner (regrettably incomplete) to the company. On it, “The Golden Eagle of America has a portrait of General Washington suspended from its beak.”

And of course Washington’s birthday balls continued. On 20 February 1799, Abigail Adams wrote from Quincy:

I have received an invitation to the Ball in honour of Gen’ll. Washington but my health is so precarious, and sufferd such a Shock last Summer, that I am obliged to be very circumspect and cautious in all my movements. Thomas will go, and that will be sufficient.

Thomas was the couple’s son Thomas Boylston Adams. He liked balls. In fact, one day after he had arrived in Philadelphia following years in Europe, the President reported to his wife, “This Evening he goes with me to the Ball. I had rather spend it with him at home.”

But now President Adams knew what he had to do to maintain party unity. On 22 Feb 1799, Washington’s birthday, he wrote home to Abigail:

To night I must go to the Ball: where I Suppose I shall get a cold, and have to eat Gruel for Breakfast for a Week afterwards. This will be no Punishment.

Adams enjoyed gruel more than balls, it seems.

The picture above shows Boston’s celebration of the President’s birthday in October 1799: “The Boston troops, as reviewed on President Adams’s birth day on the Common by his Honr. Lieut. Governor [Moses] Gill & Major Genl. [Simon] Elliot, under the command of Brigadier Genl. [John] Winslow. Also a view of the new State House.” In fact, this is said to be the earliest printed picture of the new Massachusetts State House designed by Charles Bulfinch.

TOMORROW: Mrs. Rowson’s reprise.

Mr. Jefferson’s Respects on the President’s Birthday

Amid the controversy over the birthday ball for George Washington in Philadelphia in 1798, Abigail Adams wrote home to a relative:

I have heard that there is a design to shift this matter off upon the Vice President, but in Justice to him, he had no hand in it further than to subscribe to it, being told that the President would certainly attend. when he found that he would not go, he refused also, this I am sure of so that let no more be laid upon him than he deserves.

Thomas Jefferson had indeed bought a ticket to support the ball on 2 February. That suggests the Vice President had early word of the event. The organizers didn’t send an invitation to President John Adams for another ten days.

Furthermore, on 15 February Jefferson wrote to his friend James Madison from Philadelphia about the celebration and its political implications:

A great ball is to be given here on the 22d. and in other great towns of the Union. This is at least very indelicate, & probably excites uneasy sensations in some. I see in it however this useful deduction, that the birthdays which have been kept have been, not those of the President, but of the General.

As a republican, Jefferson viewed balls honoring officeholders on their birthdays as monarchical. But he was ready to make an exception for one that tweaked his rival.

By the day of the ball, it had blown up into a big controversy of both politics and politesse. Jefferson ducked out of attending with a note to one of the organizers:

Th: Jefferson presents his respects to mr Willing, and other gentlemen managers of the ball of this evening. he hopes his non-attendance will not be misconstrued. he has not been at a ball these twenty years, nor for a long time permitted himself to go to any entertainments of the evening, from motives of attention to health. on these grounds he excused to Genl. Washington when living in the city his not going to his birthnights, to mrs Washington not attending her evenings, to mrs Adams the same, and to all his friends who have been so good as to invite him to tea- & card parties, the declining to go to them. it is an indulgence which his age and habits will he hopes obtain and continue to him. he has always testified his homage to the occasion by his subscription to it.

From his safe distance, Jefferson seems to have rather enjoyed the turmoil. He wrote again to Madison on 2 March:

The late birthnight has certainly sown tares among the exclusive federals. It has winnowed the grain from the chaff. The sincerely Adamites did not go. The Washingtonians went religiously, & took the secession of the others in high dudgeon. The one sex threaten to desert the levees, the other the evening-parties. The whigs went in number, to encourage the idea that the birthnights hitherto kept had been for the General & not the President, and of course that time would bring an end to them. [Benjamin] Goodhue, [Nathaniel?] Tracy, [Theodore] Sedgwick &c did not attend: but the three Secretaries & Attorney General [Charles Lee] did.

Abigail Adams’s assessment of the event was based on the small number of ladies she heard had attended. Jefferson gave more attention to how President Adams’s Cabinet—which included Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, Secretary of War James McHenry, and Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Jr.—was acting more loyal to Washington than to him. Which was indeed a problem.

“It would mortify Mr. Adams and please Mr. Washington”

The Philadelphia Dancing Assembly planned to honor George Washington’s birthday with a ball on 22 Feb 1798, but then elections were scheduled on that Thursday. So the group postponed their event for a day.

Meanwhile, President John Adams had declined his invitation. On 23 February, the Aurora General Advertiser published that response with some editorial commentary about Adams’s “impolite & arrogant terms.” Its printer, Benjamin Franklin Bache, wrote sarcastically that he did not expect “that the president of the U. States would so far forget the dignity of his station as to mingle with shop keepers.”

Adams had privately written that one problem with such birthday balls was “those Things give offence to the plain People of our Country, upon whose Friendship I have always depended. They are practised by the Elegant and the rich for their own Ends, which are not always the best.” So each side was accusing the other of being elitist.

The dispute also had a personal dimension. Eliza Custis Law, Martha Washington’s eldest granddaughter, was in Philadelphia that month, urging all gentlemen to attend the birthday ball. The Federalists would normally have been happy to do so, but now that seemed disloyal to President Adams. Meanwhile, their Jeffersonian rivals were for once all about having a big party for Washington.

On the evening after the ball, the Swiss-born businessman Albert Gallatin (shown here) wrote to his wife about the situation:

Do you want to know the fashionable news of the day? The President of the United States has written, in answer to the managers of the ball in honor of G. Washington’s birthday, that he took the earliest opportunity of informing them that he declined going.

The court is in a prodigious uproar about that important event. The ministers and their wives do not know how to act upon the occasion; the friends of the old court say it is dreadful, a monstrous insult to the late President; the officers and office-seekers try to apologize for Mr. Adams by insisting that he feels conscientious scruples against going to places of that description, but it is proven against him that he used to go when Vice-President.

How they will finally settle it I do not know; but to come to my own share of the business. A most powerful battery was opened against me to induce me to go to the said ball; it would be remarked; it would look well; it would show that we democrats, and I specially, felt no reluctance in showing my respect to the person of Mr. Washington, but that our objections to levees and to birthday balls applied only to its being a Presidential, anti-republican establishment, and that we were only afraid of its being made a precedent; and then it would mortify Mr. Adams and please Mr. Washington.

All those arguments will appear very weak to you when on paper, but they were urged by a fine lady, by Mrs. Law, and when supported by her handsome black eyes they appeared very formidable. Yet I resisted and came off conqueror, although I was, as a reward, to lead her in the room, to dance with her, &c.; all which, by the by, were additional reasons for my staying at home. Our club have given me great credit for my firmness, and we have agreed that two or three of us who are accustomed to go to these places, [John] Langdon, [Richard] Brent, &c., will go this time to please the Law family.

Gallatin was pleased to have won the respect of his Jeffersonian colleagues, but he seems to have been equally eager to gain credit from his wife for resisting Law’s “handsome black eyes.”

The young, first-term Massachusetts Congressman Harrison Gray Otis explained the Federalist side of the controversy to his wife:

The Birth night ball of last evening was I am told respectably attended, tho by no means equal in splendour & numbers to the last. . . . The President did not attend, & his refusal has given considerable offence, even to some of the federal party.

To be sure his apology was rather formal, but I think he acted rightly upon principle. As President, he ought to know of no distinction among private citizens, whatever may be their merit or virtue; & having never received from the Philadelphians, the slightest mark of attention, he was in my mind quite excusable for declining to be the pageant, to do honor to another.

Many families who usually increase the flutter of the beau monde were absent. The Morrisites of course. The Binghams who have lately lost a relation, & the Chews on account of a Mrs. Pemberton who died last Sunday; I am told too that the whole house was very damp and believe I have not lost much.

Abigail Adams declared that by leaking her husband’s note the Jeffersonians had “defeated their own plans. as soon as it was known, it went through the city like an Electrical shock—and the Ball was meager enough, so much so, that tho it was by subscription I have heard but 15 Ladies were present.”

TOMORROW: What Jefferson himself thought of this all.

“Celebrating Birth Nights, not of a President, but a Private citizen?”

When we left President John Adams in 1797, he had privately expressed disapproval of the balls that Philadelphians had regularly held on George Washington’s birthday.

“In Countries where Birth is respected and where Authority goes with it, there is congruity enough in such Feast: But in Elective Governments the Question is more doubtful,” Adams wrote; and “those Things give offence to the plain People of our Country.”

As a result, when President Adams’s first birthday in office came on 30 Oct 1797, there was no birthday ball in Philadelphia.

Then February 1798 rolled around. Even in Boston there was another public celebration of Washington—a public dinner with music.

On 12 February the leaders of the Philadelphia Dancing Assembly sent Adams an invitation to the Washington’s birthday ball they had scheduled for the 22nd.

The President quickly responded, in his wife’s words, “that he had received the card of invitation, and took the earliest opportunity to inform them, that he declined accepting it.” That was all he had to say about the subject.

Abigail Adams said more in a private letter to her sister Mary Cranch on 15 February. For the First Lady, whether such a celebration was appropriate in a republic was less important than how it made the second President seem secondary.

These Philadelphians are a strange set of people, making pretensions to give Laws of politeness and propriety to the union. they have the least feeling of real genuine politeness of any people with whom I am acquainted.

as an instance of it, they are about to celebrate, not the Birth day of the first Majestrate of the union as such, but of General Washingtons Birth day, and have had the politeness to send invitations to the President Lady and family to attend it. The President of the united states to attend the celebration of the birth day in his publick Character, of a private Citizen!

for in no other light can General Washington be now considerd, how ever Good how ever great his Character, which no person more respects than his successor, but how could the President appear at their Ball and assembly, but in a secondary Character, when invited there, to be held up in that light by all foreign Nations.

but these people look not beyond their own important selves. I do not know when my feelings of contempt have been more calld forth. . . . that the Virginians should celebrate the day is natural & proper if they please, and so may any others who chuse, but the propriety of doing it in the Capital in the Metropolis of America as these proud Phylidelphians have publickly named it, and inviting the Head of the Nation to come and do it too, in my view is ludicrous beyond compare.

I however bite my Lips, and say nothing, but I wanted to vent my indignation upon paper. you must not however expose it, nor me. it will be call’d pride it will be calld mortification. I despise them both, as it respects myself—but as it respects the Character I hold—I will not knowingly degrade it—

To her son-in-law William Smith, Abigail later added:

In what light would such a step be looked upon by foreign Nations? The President the chief Majestrate of an independant Nation, placing himself in a secondary Character, celebrating Birth Nights, not of a President, but a Private citizen?

However, the organizers of that ball and Washington’s relatives in town were determined to go through with the celebration. And the Adams administration’s rivals were determined to make his response into a political issue.

TOMORROW: Birthday bashing.

Call for Papers on “The Adams Family and the American Revolution”

The Sons of the American Revolution has announced that its 2017 Annual Conference on the American Revolution will take place in Quincy. In honor of the 250th anniversary of the birth of John Quincy Adams, the theme will be “The Adams Family and the American Revolution.” The gathering will also honor Lyman H. Butterfield, founding editor of the Adams Papers.

Here’s the call for papers:

John Adams famously wrote that “I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.” The comment seems to describe the story of the family in the generations from John to Henry Adams.

Yet the Adamses, whatever else they did, were political men and women. In 1821, an aging John Adams wrote his grandson George Washington Adams, an aspiring poet, that he must study politics, for “without some knowledge of it you will be always in confusion, blown about by every wind.” Politics were central to the story of the Adams family from the start, and at the foundation of the family’s politics was the American Revolution, a revolution that would create an American republic.

With that in mind, this conference proposes to explore the Adams family’s understanding of the nature, meaning, and significance of the American Revolution over the generations from John and Abigail to Henry and Brooks Adams. It will focus on the way their understanding of the American Revolution shaped their writings and their works from the Writs of Assistance Case in 1761 to Henry Adams’s death in the early 20th Century.

In support of their Congressional mandate to encourage historical research, the Sons of the American Revolution invites paper proposals from graduate students and advanced scholars in history and political science on any topic relating to the Adams family and the American Revolution.

Proposals should include a 250-word abstract of the paper and a short curriculum vitae for the author. They should be submitted to Richard Samuelson, Associate Professor of History, California State University, San Bernardino, by 15 Dec 2016.

The conference is scheduled to take place on 9-11 June 2017. The organizers will cover presenters’ travel and lodging expenses, and offer a $500 stipend. They anticipate collecting the papers in a subsequent printed volume.

TOMORROW: Back to our extended discussion of John Adams and birthday celebrations.

Susanna Rowson’s Birthday Song for Washington

February 1798 was the U.S. of A.’s first February for eight years without George Washington as head of state. As described in recent postings, his birthday the previous year, coming near the end of his second term as President, served as a national send-off.

But in 1798 John Adams was President, and he didn’t think such birthday celebrations were appropriate for a republic. So that February passed quietly, right?

Nope. Americans went on celebrating Washington’s birthday in many ways, as if he were the most important and respected person in the country or something.

Among those celebrants was Susanna Rowson, born in Portsmouth, England, and raised in Hull. After publishing the blockbuster novel Charlotte Temple, she had gone on the stage as an actress and playwright. She made the Federal Street Theatre in Boston her base in 1796, but that business failed the next year. After a brief tour to Rhode Island, Rowson decided to change professions again and start a school for girls.

Thus, it was as a respectable Boston schoolmistress that Susanna Rowson published her “Song. Written for the Celebration of the Birth Day of George Washington, Esq., and Sung on That Occasion, in Boston, February 11th, 1798.” That was the date on the calendar when Washington was born. He’d taken to celebrating the equivalent on the Gregorian calendar, 22 February, but not everyone followed suit.

The song went:

WHEN rising from ocean Columbia appear’d,
MINERVA to JOVE, humbly kneeling, requested
That she, as its patroness, might be rever’d,
And the pow’r to protect it, in her be invested.
Jove nodded assent, pleasure glow’d in her breast,
As rising, the goddess: her will thus exprest
“The sons of Columbia forever shall be
From oppression secure, and from anarchy free.”

Rapture flash’d through the spheres as the mandate went forth,
When MARS and APOLLO, together uniting,
Cried, Sister, thy sons shall be fam’d for their worth,
Their wisdom in peace, and their valour in fighting;
Besides, from among them a chief shall arise,
As a soldier, or statesman, undaunted and wise;
Who would shed his best blood, that Columbia might be,
From oppression secure, and from anarchy free.

Jove, pleas’d with the prospect, majestic arose,
And said, “By ourself, they shall not be neglected;
But ever secure, tho’ surrounded by foes,
By WASHINGTON bravely upheld and protected.
And while Peace and Plenty preside o’er their plains,
While mem’ry exists, or while gratitude reigns,
His name ever lov’d, and remember’d shall be,
While Columbians remain INDEPENDENT and FREE.”

Rowson had written those words to the well-known air “Anacreon in Heaven”—which we’re more familiar with as “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

COMING UP: Meanwhile, in Philadelphia…

President Adams’s Birthday Celebrated—in Lisbon

Though there was no public observation of President John Adams’s birthday in Philadelphia in 1797, one branch of the small U.S. government definitely celebrated it.

William Loughton Smith was a fervent Federalist from Charleston, South Carolina. I was going to say he was one of the few men named William Smith in early America not related to Abigail Adams, but then I found that they were distant cousins; Abigail’s first patrilineal ancestor in America was William Loughton Smith’s great-great-grandfather.

During the election of 1796, Smith wrote (or perhaps collaborated with Oliver Wolcott, Jr., in writing) an attack on Thomas Jefferson signed “Phocion.” (Lately that has been ascribed to Alexander Hamilton, but contemporaries seem largely agreed that Smith was responsible; Jefferson and his circle even referred to him as “Phocion Smith.”)

As a reward for Smith, President Adams made him the U.S. minister to Portugal. On 21 Oct 1797 Smith wrote back from his new posting to James McHenry, the Secretary of War:

I wrote you since my return to Lisbon, & have therefore nothing to communicate but the account of the Dinner I gave on the 19th. to the Americans here to celebrate the President’s birth-day: I was not perfectly prepared for such an occasion having been only a fortnight in my house; thinking however that it was best to do the thing even imperfectly than to let the Day pass unnoticed, I exerted myself, & made out tolerably well. I enclose you an account of the Celebration which Fenno will publish I am sure with pleasure; the Toasts are on a Separate paper for your information; you will think them not worth publishing.

Among my Guests was a Captain Israel who informed me that he was the Son of the famous Israel Israel:—we were the best friends in the world; I have been told that there were two or three Jacobins [Democratic-Republicans?] present, but they all behaved extremely well; they joined in the Toasts with great zeal & we sang & were very merry; at first they were bashful, but when I set them the example of singing, they threw aside reserve & were very convivial.

The item that Smith wanted McHenry to give to John Fenno, the Boston-born editor of the Federalist Gazette of the United States, reported:

Thursday the 19th. October being the Anniversary of the President’s Birth, was celebrated at Lisbon by Mr. Smith, the Minister of the United States at that Court, who gave on the Occasion an Entertainment at his Hotel at Buenos-Ayres to a numerous and respectable Company of American Captains & Citizens. After sixteen patriotic Toasts intermixed with convivial songs, the Company, having spent the day with great good humor and festivity, broke up at nine o’clock, much pleased with the occasion, which had collected together so many Americans at such a distance from home. All the American vessels in the Harbour were gayly decorated during the day & at twelve o’clock a federal salute of sixteen guns was fired by some of them in honor of the day, and at five in the afternoon was repeated. This Anniversary occurring on a day, highly distinguished in the Annals of the American Revolution by the Surrender of York-town, the recollection of so auspicious an event could not fail to increase the happiness of the Company.

Of course, Smith was celebrating the 19th of October while Adams had long before adopted 30 October as his Gregorian-calendar birthday.

(Smith’s letter was undated when published in the Sewanee Review, but he must have written it in 1797 because that’s the only year in Adams’s administration when “the 19th. October” was a Thursday.)

Celebrating the President’s Birthday One Last Time

On 22 Feb 1797, Philadelphia celebrated George Washington’s last birthday as President. He had declined to serve another term in the office. After the U.S. of A.’s first partisan election, Vice President John Adams had been elected in his place.

Washington furnished the Dancing Assembly of Philadelphia with this toast:

May the members thereof and the Fair who honor it with their presence long continue in the enjoyment of an amusement so innocent and agreeable.

(Well, the Fitzpatrick edition of Washington’s writings assigned that toast to that year. It may have been earlier.)

On 24 February, John wrote home to his wife Abigail, “The Birthday was affecting and the Night Splendid but tedious to those who were too old to dance.” Which no doubt included himself—though Washington, who enjoyed dancing, was older.

On 4 March, Adams became President. Almost immediately he began to tell people he didn’t want people to make such a big fuss about him. For example, six days later he wrote to Thomas Welsh:

The noisy Clamorous praises are not my object. If they come they will come unsolicited and unwished for, nay deprecated, Birth Night Balls and City dinners would be to me the most humiliating thing in the world, the Votes of Lancaster and York in Pennsylvania have to me a divine Charm than all the treats and Shows that Ever Existed, If any of them are bestowed on me it will be much against the inclination of your friend

J.A

You must keep these things in perfect Confidence.

And the day after that he wrote to Abigail about the inaugural ceremony and similar celebrations:

The Feast that Succeeded was one of those Things which are not to my Taste. I am glad you went—I went too. —But those Things give offence to the plain People of our Country, upon whose Friendship I have always depended. They are practised by the Elegant and the rich for their own Ends, which are not always the best. If I could have my Wish there should never be a Show or a feast made for the P. while I hold the office.—My Birth day happens when Congress will never Sit: so that I hope it will never be talked of. These are hints entre nous

Though Adams felt strongly about this issue, he wanted his disapproval to remain private. He might have feared that the people who had organized past ceremonies and Washington himself would feel slighted if they knew.

But the message must have gotten through because when 30 Oct 1797 came around there was no ball to celebrate President Adams’s birthday in Philadelphia.

TOMORROW: Traditions are hard to kill.