One-Night Stands with American History Page 2

  A LOCAL SOLUTION FOR A LOCAL PROBLEM

  The colonial towns of Lyme and New-London, Connecticut, once held conflicting claims to the same piece of land. Its value, at that time, was regarded as a trifling amount—certainly not enough to warrant the appointment of representatives from the two towns to present their cases before the colonial legislature. Instead, the towns agreed on a local solution. Champions were selected—Griswold and Ely for Lyme, and Ricket and Latimer for New-London—and on the appointed day these four met on a designated field and slugged it out with their fists. Griswold and Ely beat up Ricket and Latimer, and Lyme took possession of the disputed tract.

  SOURCE: Leonard Deming, A Collection of Useful, Interesting, and Remarkable Events (Middlebury, Conn.: J. W. Copeland, 1825), p. 314.

  THE TRANSVESTITE GOVERNOR

  There once was a governor of New York who was a transvestite. His name was Lord Cornbury, and he served from 1702 to 1708. A favorite of the Queen, he appeared at public ceremonies in full drag, wearing a dress, silk stockings, and an elaborate hairdo. He let his nails grow long and customarily donned high-heeled boots. He remained as governor for six years until the American colonists, outraged by his behavior, finally forced his recall.

  Portrait of Lord Cornbury by an unidentified artist. (The New-York Historical Society.)

  THE SLAVES GET THEIR DAY

  In the eighteenth century the slave was hardly better off than he was in the nineteenth century. But there were times when it seemed that he was. When the governor of Virginia wanted to make sure that his slaves did not get drunk on the Queen’s Birthday in 1711, he had to strike a bargain with them. In exchange for their good behavior on that day, he promised to allow them to become as drunk as they wished the following day. The bargain worked well for both parties: the governor had well-behaved servants on the Queen’s Birthday; the slaves enjoyed an extraordinary feast the next day. In the nineteenth century the master would probably never have bargained with his slaves; he would simply have ordered them to do as he wished.

  The slaves who worked for William Byrd of Westover, one of Virginia’s most prominent landowners, were not half as fortunate as those who labored for the governor. Byrd often whipped his slaves, many times for no good reason. Once he whipped a slave to punish his wife. She had whipped one of his slaves after he warned her not to. So he retaliated by whipping one of her slaves. In his diary, where he tells about this incident, he does not say if his whipping had a chastening effect on his wife.

  SOURCES: Edmund S. Morgan, Victorians at Home (Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg, Inc., 1952), p. 67; Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling, eds., The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709–1712 (Richmond, Va.: Dietz Press, 1941), p. 533.

  FUNERAL GIFTS

  In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was customary to provide guests at funerals with gifts, including a black scarf, a pair of black gloves, and a mourning ring. Eventually people accumulated large collections of these items. One Boston minister noted that he possessed several hundred rings and pairs of black gloves. Even people who did not attend a particular funeral were sometimes sent one or more of these symbols of death. When Judge Samuel Sewall refused to go to the funeral of the notoriously wicked John Ive, he still received a pair of gloves. “I staid at home,” he wrote in his diary, “and by that means lost a Ring.” In 1721 laws began to be passed limiting the gifts to pallbearers and clergymen. During the Revolution the custom of giving scarves and gloves was abandoned, since the items could no longer be imported. Instead, people began using black armbands as a sign of mourning.

  SOURCE: Mary Cable, American Manners and Morals (New York: American Heritage Publishing Company, 1969), p. 45.

  FRANKLIN’S MAGAZINE

  Ben Franklin was certain he had hit upon another great idea. He would publish the first magazine in America and make it as much a success as England’s Gentleman’s Magazine and the London Magazine. But he could not do all of the work himself, so he hired John Webbe, a contributor to his newspaper, to do the heavy work. Unfortunately, Webbe was not an honest man. Before Ben even wrote one article, Webbe secretly went to a printer and arranged for the publication of his own magazine. On February 13, 1741, the first issue of Webbe’s American Magazine went on sale. Just three days later, the General Magazine and Historical Chronicle, for all the British Plantations in America, published by Franklin, made its debut.

  SOURCE: Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines (New York: D. Appleton, 1930), I, 73–74.

  CLASS STATUS AT COLONIAL HARVARD AND YALE

  According to Samuel Eliot Morison, who wrote a three-volume history of Harvard, before the early 1700s the college probably ranked students on the basis of an educated guess as to their academic performance. Afterward, at the insistence of Brahmin parents, the college adopted a policy of using family status to define class rank. The jeunesse dorée of New England, therefore, were automatically put at the top of the class, leading the way in academic processions, prayer, and other functions. As the size of both the college and the community increased, however, the new ranking system proved too unwieldy for the “egalitarian” New Englanders. The college abandoned the practice in 1769, when a man named Phillips protested loudly about the ranking of a boy ahead of his own whose father had not been a justice of the peace as long as the elder Phillips. About the same time Yale, which had also ranked students according to family status, adopted an alphabetical arrangement.

  At the College of William and Mary, second oldest college in the United States, the question of “placing” students by any other criterion than performance did not arise. As Jane Carson, research assistant at Colonial Williamsburg, explained, “Where status is clearly understood, there is no need for formal labels.”

  SOURCE: Gerald Carson, The Polite Americans (New York: William Morrow, 1966), p. 33.

  NO DAY FOR A HANGING

  In 1768 the French colony of New Orleans rebelled against its new Spanish owners. By July 24, 1769, when the Spanish army arrived to put things back in order, the rebellion had faltered. Its leaders then fell over one another attempting to be first in line to explain away their regrettable actions and to promise unceasing loyalty to Spain. A trial ensued, and on October 24 five of the defendants were sentenced “to the ordinary pain of the gallows.” The verdict was to be carried out the next day.

  But the official hangman of New Orleans in 1769 was a black man. Spanish officials felt that under the circumstances a white man should conduct the executions. After all, these were former leaders of the French colony, not simply common criminals. A reward was offered, but by the next day no whites had volunteered to act as hangman. Spanish leaders, however, did not want to postpone the execution. So, rather than have a black man hang the traitors, they substituted a firing squad. At three o’clock on October 25 the five condemned men were shot in the New Orleans public square. The Spanish commander, Alejandro O’Reilly, has since been known in Louisiana history as “Bloody O’Reilly.”

  SOURCE: Herbert E. Bolton, The Spanish Borderlands (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921), p. 248.

  POOR RICHARD DISCUSSES DISEASES

  “This Year the Stone-blind shall see but very little; the Deaf shall hear but poorly; and the Dumb shan’t speak very plain. And it’s much, if my Dame Bridget talks at all this Year. Whole Flocks, Herds and Droves of Sheep, Swine and Oxen, Cocks and Hens, Ducks and Drakes, Geese and Ganders shall go to pot; but the Mortality will not be altogether so great among Cats, Dogs and Horses. As for old Age, ’twill be incurable this Year, because of the Years past. And towards the Fall some people will be seiz’d with an unaccountable Inclination to roast and eat their own Ears: Should this be call’d Madness, Doctors? I think not.—But the worst Disease of all will be a certain most horrid, dreadful, malignant, catching, perverse and odious Malady, almost epidemical, insomuch that many shall run Mad upon it; I quake for very Fear when I think on’t; for I assure you very few will escape this Disease; which
is called by the learned Albumazar Lacko’mony.”

  SOURCE: Van Wyck Brooks, ed., Poor Richard (New York: Paddington Press, 1976), p. 73.

  AS POOR RICHARD SAYS . . .

  Some striking quotations from Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack:

  • “He that lies down with Dogs, shall rise up with fleas.”

  • “Men & Melons are hard to know.”

  • “God works wonders now & then; Behold! a Lawyer, an honest Man!”

  • “Three may keep a Secret, if two of them are dead.”

  • “Fish & Visitors stink in 3 days.”

  • “He that lives upon Hope, dies farting.”

  • “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.”

  SOURCE: Van Wyck Brooks, ed., Poor Richard (New York: Paddington Press, 1976), passim.

  FRANKLIN ADVOCATES DRINKING MADEIRA

  “‘Friend Franklin,’ said Myers Fisher, a celebrated Quaker lawyer of Philadelpia, one day, ‘thee knows almost everything; can thee tell me how I am to preserve my small-beer in the back-yard? my neighbours are often tapping it of nights.’

  “‘Put a barrel of old Madeira by the side of it,’ replied the doctor; ‘let them but get a taste of the Madeira, and I’ll engage they will never trouble thy small-beer any more.’”

  SOURCE: Reuben Percy, ed., The Percy Anecdotes (London and New York: Frederick Warne & Company, [1887]), IV, 124.

  Inventing a Country

  “A monarchy is like a merchantman. You get on board and ride the wind and tide in safety and elation but, by and by, you strike a reef and go down. But democracy is like a raft. You never sink, but, damn it, your feet are always in the water.”

  —MASSACHUSETTS FEDERALIST FISHER AMES

  SCRAPBOOK OF THE TIMES

  • When Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, the first book ever published by an American Negro, appeared in London in 1773, someone bound a copy of the book in Negro skin.

  • The Boston Tea Party fixed in the American mind the belief that the British tax on tea was an appalling burden. But it was not. Tea actually cost less in America than in Britain—even with the tax.

  • Despite the important matters it had to consider, the Continental Congress often wasted hours discussing trivial concerns. Once it debated whether one James Whitehead ought to receive $64 in compensation for feeding British prisoners (they paid him). Another time they argued about the case of a wagonmaster who wanted $222.60 for transporting goods for the army to Dobbs Ferry and Cambridge. After much debate they finally agreed to pay him, too.

  • The best-selling book in 1783 was Noah Webster’s American Spelling Book.

  • Thomas Jefferson once described the White House as “a great stone house, big enough for two emperors, one pope and the grand lama in the bargain.”

  • The median age of Americans in 1800 was sixteen.

  • When Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in 1804, Burr was vice president of the United States.

  • In 1805 half the Harvard student body was suspended after rioting against the poor quality of dormitory food.

  • In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother, Joseph, exiled king of Spain, arrived in America and established a home on a 211-acre estate near Bordentown, New Jersey. He lived there for seventeen years before returning to Europe.

  • The word “buncombe” and its derivative, “bunk,” both meaning “speechmaking to please constituents” or “nonsense,” were coined during the debate over the Missouri Compromise of 1820, when Felix Walker, congressman from Buncombe County, North Carolina, stood up in the House and said he wanted “to make a speech for Buncombe.” The speech was irrelevant and rambling and transformed the name of the county he represented into a word.

  • On the day Thomas Jefferson died, friends were soliciting money for his relief at a ceremony in the House of Representatives marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The former president’s assets had dwindled considerably and he desperately needed cash. Had he lived, however, he would not have been able to depend on this solicitation. According to John Quincy Adams, only four or five people at the ceremony contributed to Jefferson’s relief.

  • James Madison’s last words were: “I always talk better lying down.”

  • In 1820, when Captain John White, the first American to make contact with Vietnam, sailed into Saigon Harbor the Vietnamese asked him for uniforms and guns.

  • The worst day in the history of the New York Stock Exchange was March 16, 1830, when a mere thirty-one shares, valued at $3,470.25, were traded.

  THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL

  The Battle of Bunker Hill was the first major conflict of the American Revolution. Unfortunately, it did not occur on Bunker Hill. The revolutionary Committee of Safety ordered colonial officers to seize and fortify Bunker Hill against possible attack from British regiments attempting to control Boston Harbor. But colonial military leaders, for reasons still unknown, entrenched instead on Breed’s Hill, a smaller mound some two thousand feet away. The famous battle occurred on that hill, on June 17, 1775, but popularly became known as the Battle of Bunker Hill.

  Today, Breed’s Hill, where the battle took place, is known as Bunker Hill. The original Bunker Hill is covered with houses.

  SOURCE: George W. Stimpson, Nuggets of Knowledge (New York: A. L. Burt, 1934), p. 162.

  REVOLUTIONARY AID FROM A TRANSVESTITE

  In 1775, Arthur Lee, a colonial agent for Massachusetts, met French playwright Caron de Beaumarchais in England. With the American Revolution already in its infant stages, Lee lost no time trying to persuade Beaumarchais that the French government should strike at its old enemy, the English, by aiding the colonies. When Beaumarchais returned home, he carried Lee’s message to the French court. Spurred on by his efforts, the French government supplied approximately 90 percent of the munitions used by the colonists in the first two years of war. Eventually, of course, the French entered the war on the side of the Americans. Almost every contemporary observer and historian agrees that without the aid of the French the American Revolution would have taken a very different course.

  But why was Beaumarchais in England? The man who was instrumental in persuading the French to help the colonies was traveling on a secret mission to retrieve stolen documents from the Chevalier d’Éon, a transvestite, about whose sex no one was certain. D’Éon was a championship fencer—in the female competition. Once a captain of the Grenadiers proposed to d’Éon. Some contemporaries even reported that Beaumarchais believed d’Éon was in love with the playwright. On the other hand, d’Éon was also a captain of the French dragoons and was a former diplomatic agent—both male occupations. At d’Éon’s death in 1810, over thirty-five years later, an autopsy found “the male organs of generation perfectly formed in every respect.”

  Sources: Samuel Flagg Bemis, A Diplomatic History of the United States, 3d ed. (New York: Holt, 1950), p. 19n; Louis de Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Time (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1857), p. 226.

  FRANKLIN PREDICTS A HANGING

  When the Declaration of Independence was adopted, the chances that the Revolution would actually succeed were slim. At the signing ceremony John Hancock remarked, “We must be unanimous—we must all hang together.” “We must indeed all hang together,” agreed Ben Franklin, “or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

  SOURCE: Daniel George, ed., A Book of Anecdotes (n.p.: Hulton Press, 1957), p. 147.

  AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE NOT DECLARED ON JULY FOURTH

  The second of July and not the fourth should be celebrated as the anniversary of American independence. It is true that the Declaration of Independence was dated “July 4, 1776,” but independence itself had been declared two days earlier. All that happened on the fourth was the approval of the final draft of the document in a vote that was not even unanimous, despite the claim made in the opening of the declaration that it was; New York did not agree to the declaration until
July 19. The signing of the document did not take place on the fourth, though many people believe it did. John Hancock and the secretary of the Congress did sign one copy of the declaration that day, but the official signing ceremony occurred on the second of August, with six members signing later, one not until 1781.

  On July 3, 1776, John Adams predicted in a letter to his wife that “the Second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival.” When this letter was published in the nineteenth century, an editor changed the date of the letter to July 5, and had Adams advising his wife that “the Fourth day of July, 1776” would be honored as the anniversary of U.S. independence.

  The signing of the Declaration of Independence. (Harper’s Weekly, July 3, 1858, p. 417.)

  SOURCE: Catherine Drinker Bowen, John Adams (Boston: Little, Brown, 1950), p. 598n.

  THE LIBERTY BELL HOAX

  Until George Lippard, a Philadelphia journalist, immortalized the Liberty Bell in 1847 in his Legends of the American Revolution, Americans did not care about the bell. Lippard, a latter-day Parson Weems, invented the whole story about the bell ringing in American independence. The only thing true about his story was that the bell did hang in the Philadelphia statehouse in 1776 when the Founding Fathers drafted the Declaration of Independence. But no one thought of ringing it. In 1828 the city of Philadelphia tried to sell the bell as scrap, but could find no buyers: the bell simply was not worth the expense of removing it from the building. The first time anyone referred to the bell as the Liberty Bell was in a pamphlet entitled “The Liberty Bell, by Friends of Freedom,” distributed at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Fair in 1839. In the pamphlet the bell symbolized the freedom of black slaves, not the independence of white Americans from Britain.

  SOURCES: Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience (New York: Random House, 1965), pp. 381–82; American Heritage, June 1973, p. 104.