Papist Patriots: Maura Jane Farrelly’s interview in Historically Speaking

Chris Beneke 

Among the gems in the latest issue of Historically Speaking is Randall Stephens’ interview(yes, we shamelessly shill for one another on this blog) with Brandeis University historian Maura Jane Farrelly.

Farrelly’s book Papist Patriots: The Making of an American Catholic Identity was published earlier this year with Oxford University Press. She focuses on colonial Maryland, which was home to British America’s largest concentration of Roman Catholics, including the influential Carroll family.

Anti-Catholicism in early Maryland was a complex phenomenon, Farrelly notes, not easily reducible to hostility toward Roman Catholics. Papist Patriots shows how a dual Roman Catholic identity -- distinguished by its compatibility with broader American understandings of religious liberty and its commitment to a hierarchal and communal church -- were reconciled in this largely Protestant country.

Excerpted below are a few tidbits from Stephens’ interview with Farrelly.

On her historical dissent from the Roman Catholic priest and theologian John Courtney Murray’s pivotal postwar argument that “there was a natural fit between Catholicism and a commitment to individual rights and religious pluralism”:

Farrelly: I agree with him that the Catholics living in the British colonies in the 1770s had embraced the American consensus, but I’m not sure their natural-law mindset was the reason why. I think it was their unique experiences as a politically -- but not economically -- oppressed minority in an English colony where Catholicism had been tolerated -- and then wasn’t that ‘prepared’ colonial Catholics to accept the ideology of the founding.

On the dual challenge faced by early Catholics:

Some Catholics rebelled more strongly against their government; others rebelled more strongly against their church. But most pushed against both with equal weight, telling their king that he could not have dominion over their religious consciences and telling their church that it could not determine their civil loyalties or behavior.

On the similarities between seventeenth-century Maryland and twenty first-century Iraq:

In 2006 nearly 235,000 people in Iraq fled their homes because of sectarian fighting. As staggering and disturbing as that statistic is, it still represents less than 1% of the entire Iraqi population. In contrast, 80% of the settlers in St. Mary’s County either fled or were killed in what is known as the ‘Ingle-Claiborne Rebellion’ of 1645-46.

On the formation of an American Catholic identity:

. . . Maryland’s Catholics understood after 1689 that English identity alone was not going to provide them with the liberty they sought. To claim the rights of Englishmen, they were going to have to assume the mantle not of English identity, but ‘Marylandian” identity, since religious toleration had been a fundamental component of Maryland’s founding. In 1776 that is precisely what they did.

Farrelly isn’t the first historian to offer an explanation of how early Roman Catholics became Americans (or more properly, first Marylanders, and then Americans), but she may have just provided us with the most persuasive one.

New England's "Maruellous" Pine Trees

Heather Cox Richardson

How many people today have heard of the King’s Broad Arrow?

Not many, I’d wager, and yet it was once the key to settling a continent and the spark to a revolution. It’s a simple mark: three quick swings with an ax, one straight up and two in a V at the top, to make an arrow. After 1711, the King’s Mark branded old-growth New England white pines as the property of the King of England.

Those old-growth white pines were key to British interest in settling New England. In 1605, Captain George Weymouth explored the coast of what is now Maine, sailing the Archangel to Monhegan, Camden, and up the Kennebec River. He discovered vast shoals of fish and, as one of his comrades recorded, giant “firre-trees,” “out of which issueth Turpentine in so maruellous plenty, and so sweet, as our Chirurgeon and others affirmed they neuer saw so good in England. We pulled off much Gumme congealed on the outside of the barke, which smelted like Frankincense. This would be a great benefit for making Tarre and Pitch.”

The trees that so impressed Weymouth and his men were White Pines, (Pinus Strobus), still known in England as the Weymouth Pine.

These huge trees dominated the coastline where Weymouth sailed. They were the tallest trees in eastern North America, standing up to 230 feet. Their wood is soft, easy to cut, straight, and generally without knots. Unlike hardwood, it can stand for years without cracking, and it bends, rather than breaks, in a high wind. It was a perfect tree to make masts, and if there was one thing the Royal Navy needed, it was its own source of mast wood. As William R. Carlton put it in his 1939 New England Quarterly article titled “New England Masts and the King’s Navy”: “Masts, in the days of wooden ships, played a far greater part in world affairs than merely that of supporting canvas. They were of vital necessity to the lives of nations. Statesmen plotted to obtain them; ships of the line fought to procure them. . . .” They were vital to the well being of the British Navy . . . and thus to Britain itself.

The Navy had been getting its masts from the Baltic countries and Norway, but the masts they supplied had to be spliced, and the supply was always susceptible to disruption. The discovery of a new source of masts was enough to spur interest in settling New England. By 1623, entrepreneurs in Maine and New Hampshire were milling pine masts for British navy yards, a trade centered out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s “Strawberry Bank.”

After a war with the Dutch closed off British access to the Baltic in 1654, England began to rely on the Colonies to supply masts. The resulting boom in mast wood created a frenzy of cutting which threatened to decimate the old-growth trees. By 1691, the Crown had protected almost all white pines more than 24 inches in diameter at 12 inches above the ground. Surveyors marked these potential masts with the King’s Broad Arrow.

Colonists were outraged. Pine wood was valuable—very valuable—not only for masts but also for boards. Men routinely poached the pines, sawing the old-growth trunks into widths no more than 22 inches wide to get around the new laws. They also protested the restrictions, which were a real hardship in a region where wood was imperative for everything from houses to heat. They began to mutter that the Parliament had no right to intrude on their private property.

In 1772, a New Hampshire official tasked with protecting the King’s Trees charged six sawmill owners with milling trunks that had been marked with the King’s Broad Arrow. One of the owners refused to pay the resulting fine. He was arrested and then released with the promise that he would provide bail the next day. Instead, the following morning he and 30 to 40 men, their faces disguised with soot, assaulted the government officials and ran them out of town. While eight of the men were later charged with assault, the local judges who sentenced them let them off so lightly the verdict could easily be seen as support for their actions.

The Pine Tree Riot, as it came to be called, has often been cited as a precursor to the Boston Tea Party. The latter is the more famous occasion when New Englanders challenged royal authority, but it is worth noting that the first flag of the American Revolutionaries bore the image of a White Pine in the upper lefthand corner.

4th of July Roundup

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Jim Cullen, "The Declaration of Independence and the American Dream," HNN, June 29, 2011

"America is a young country," people sometimes say. What they really seem to mean is: "the United States is a young nation." Such a statement makes some sense if one thinks of a political entity that came into existence circa July 4, 1776. It makes less sense when one considers that the Constitution that followed about a dozen years later is the oldest written functioning one in the world. Compared with a traditional nation-state like France or Spain, sure—the United States is a young nation, even if France has had a few republics since then.>>>

"American civil war re-enactment in South Yorkshire - in pictures," Guardian, July 4, 2011

Enthusiasts from all walks of life took part in re-enacting scenes from the American Civil War and in 'living history' events in the grounds of Cusworth Hall, near Doncaster, which are as authentic as possible.>>>

Peter Rothberg, "What Is Patriotism," Nation, July 1, 2011

The first sentence of The Nation's prospectus, dated July 6, 1865, promised "the maintenance and diffusion of true democratic principles in society and government," surely a patriotic sentiment, as was the magazine's name.

Since that time The Nation has attempted to represent and give voice to the best of American values and culture and has steadfastly resisted all efforts through the years to brand dissent as unpatriotic.>>>

Amy Bingham, "Almost a Fourth of Americans Do Not Know When the U.S. Declared Independence," ABC News, July 4, 2011

American Fourth of July traditions are tightly woven into the fabric of U.S. society, but the history of the country’s independence seems to have slipped through the seams.

A Marist poll released Friday shows that only 58 percent of Americans know when the country declared independence. Nearly a fourth of respondents said they were unsure and sixteen percent said a date other than 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed.>>>

Brian Handwerk, "Fourth of July: Nine Myths Debunked," National Geographic, July 4, 2011

Many time-honored patriotic tales turn out to be more fiction than fact. On the Fourth of July—today marked by a continent-spanning Google doodle—here's a look at some memorable myths from the birth of the United States.>>>

Revere, Revisited

Chris Beneke

Now that public interest has shifted to the contents of Sarah Palin's email account, it appears that the dust has settled on her imaginative reconstruction of Paul Revere’s Ride. It was fun while it lasted. The high point may have been Steven Colbert’s demonstration of how Revere could have rung a bell and fired multiple warning shots from a front-loading (single shot) musket, while riding on a rocking, coin-operated steed.

The editors of Revere’s once relatively sedate Wikipedia page were kept very busy with this extra attention. Palin supporters descended upon them with Palin-friendly edits. Then the gawkers, like me, stopped for a look. The page saw as many as 140,000 visitors on June 6.

At least we were all motivated to learn something about Paul Revere and the American Revolution (how many of those 140,000 were history professors and teachers making sure they had their stories straight?). The chief authority on this topic might be David Hackett Fischer, author of the magisterial book with the deceptively quaint title Paul Revere’s Ride. But Fischer appears to have (wisely) made himself scarce during this controversy.

Though the subject was one on which very few, outside of the Minute Man National History Park, are expert, Palin’s Revere comments gave some very respectable historians and pundits a chance to address the public on an early American history topic and to reflect more broadly on our commitment to education.

Here, forthwith, is a brief snapshot of the historically informed media attention:

In the New Yorker, Jill Lepore described Revere’s ride as a form of “hyperlore, which passes from one computer to the next, along a path best called hyperbolic.” Lepore provides a helpful link to Revere’s 1775 deposition for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, which is held at the venerable Massachusetts Historical Society. It’s well worth the few minutes it takes to read Revere’s account, charmingly laden with contemporary expressions and the variety of spellings for which early Americans are justly known.

On Salon.com, Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg were in grading mode, awarding Palin an "'F' on the Paul Revere quiz." They continue: "Okay, Sarah. Here's your guide to what you need to know about Paul Revere. He did not ring bells or fire warning shots. He did not warn the British. He did not defend ‘freedom.’ And he did not yell, ‘The British are coming!’ because he was a British subject in 1775. As Professor David Hackett Fischer explained in his book 'Paul Revere's Ride,' Revere would have shouted, ‘The regulars are coming!’ That is, the regular army. Americans in and around Boston were called ‘country people.’ Revere was not defending a nation, because the nation we became did not exist yet. Before the phrase ‘United States of America’ was born with the Declaration of Independence, those resisting British power, identifying with the Continental Congress, were collectively known as the ‘United Colonies.’"

Burstein and Isenberg’s larger point is that Palin, who lacks “a basic respect for knowledge” should be, but is decidedly not, “embarrassed by her ignorance.”

Robert Allison, was more sympathetic to Palin in his New York Daily News oped, finding several nuggets of truth in her understanding of Revere’s Ride: “[S]he was, in a sense [right]. Revere, in fact, was warning the British Empire—of which Massachusetts was part—that it could not invade the rights of Americans. Revere himself did not ring bells or fire shots, but the colonists he alerted did. The British troops beginning their march westward heard the bells, and knew the alarm was out. The rest of it—the warning about being secure and being free, was metaphorical . . .”

Allison’s larger point is that historians should take responsibility for failing to educate the public and be grateful for this opportunity to share what they know. "Sarah Palin is not a historian. . . . She is a politician, and quite emphatically a representative of ‘ordinary Americans.’ If her reading of Revere is too subtle for the professoriate, and if she comes across to many as woefully misinformed after visiting these sites, whose fault is it? Hers, or ours, as tour guides and historians?"

Acknowledging how much we all could do with more learning, Pulitzer-Prize winning commentator Leonard Pitts, Jr., observes that "while it is comforting to think Palin’s gaffe speaks only to her own considerable limitations, it is also short-sighted. The evidence suggests that she is less an exception to, than a reflection of, a nation that is in the process of forgetting itself."

Which, I now editorialize, makes Congress’ recent decision to gut the Teaching American History (TAH) program especially disappointing. I just assisted with a TAH proposal and was looking forward, as part of the proposed program, to take local elementary school teachers on a tour of the battle sites at Lexington and Concord, showing them where Paul Revere was likely to have been captured—and where he warned the Regulars that colonial militia were mustering—as well as discussing Paul Revere’s Ride with them.

The alarm has rung, but getting the actual message out will now be more challenging.

The Generalist

Chris Beneke

Gordon Wood’s favorable review (“The Real Washington at Last”) of Ron Chernow’s massive new biography of George Washington appears in the latest New York Review of Books.* For a man who said so little and wrote so economically, Washington has inspired an avalanche of words. As Wood notes:

[W]e now have assessments of Washington’s political philosophy, his constitutionalism, his religion, his private life, his portraits, his leadership, his physical appearance, his interest in the Virginia backcountry, his concern for the decorative arts, his enlightenment, his place in popular culture, his view of the Union, and his relations with his wife Martha, Lafayette, James Madison, Henry Knox, Nathanael Greene, Benedict Arnold, his other generals, and various other revolutionaries. There are studies of Washington as a president, as a slaveholder, as a man of the West, as a general, as a partisan fighter, as an American symbol, as the modern Cincinnatus, as a Freemason, as a young man, as a patriarch, as a visionary, as a spymaster, as the architect and owner of Mount Vernon, as the designer of the nation’s capital, as the French saw him, and as the master manipulator of public opinion.

Wood’s title isn’t ironic. He contends that Chernow gets us closer to the “real Washington” than any of the legions of earlier biographers. Chernow is the beneficiary of a series of herculean archival efforts, including the ongoing project at the University of Virginia to publish all of Washington’s papers, which will eventually consist of ninety volumes.

Chernow benefits from another fortuitous circumstance, according to Wood—he’s not an academic. It isn’t that academic historians write especially bad. By comparison with other fields, our prose is not wholly dull, nor completely impenetrable. The problem lies, says Wood, in our tendency to write for one another and to publish books on “specialized problems” that few readers outside of History Departments will ever comprehend, never mind enjoy at the beach.

As Wood notes, we share this internal orientation with chemists and literary theorists alike. Like theirs, ours is an “accumulative science.” We are sunk in its immensity. “[T]he monographs have become so numerous and so refined and so specialized that most academic historians have tended to throw up their hands at the possibility of synthesizing all these studies, of bringing them together in comprehensive narratives. Thus the academics have generally left narrative history-writing to the nonacademic historians and independent scholars who unfortunately often write without much concern for or much knowledge of the extensive monographic literature that exists.”

Not Chernow. Wood says that he writes well and knows the secondary literature. The result is a very big and illuminating portrait of our national icon of sincerity, the general who always managed to elude his pursuers.**

******

* Barnet Schecter’s book, George Washington’s America: A Biography Through His Maps is also reviewed here. But the focus is on Chernow.

** For a sharp and less reverent account of both Chernow’s book and Washington’s life, see Jill Lepore’s “His Highness” in The New Yorker (September 27). Lepore isn’t persuaded that Chernow has made Washington more comprehensible.

July 4, 1826

Randall Stephens

It was fifty years to the day after the 13 colonies declared independence from Great Britain.

President John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary about the festivities in Washington. "The volunteer companies assembled on the square," he observed, "fronting the house and paid the passing salute by marching through the yard."

Arriving at the door of the Capitol, I was there met by Mr. Anderson, the Comptroller, with whom we entered the hall of the House of Representatives. The Reverend Mr. Ryland made an introductory prayer.

Joseph Anderson, the Comptroller, read the Declaration of Independence; Walter Jones delivered an oration commemorative of the fiftieth anniversary; the Reverend Mr. Post, Chaplain of H. R. U. S., made a concluding prayer.

After which, Governor Barbour delivered an address to the citizens assembled, soliciting subscriptions for the relief of Mr. Jefferson. . .

News traveled slowly over bad roads. Members of congress knew of Jefferson's troubles, but the severity of his situation was unclear. Few could have guessed that Jefferson's one-time rival and on-again/off-again friend John Adams was also in his last throes. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on that hot July day.

Four days later John Quincy received a batch of letters. One brought bad news. A missive "from my brother, written on the morning of the 4th, announcing that, in the opinion of those who surrounded my father's couch, he was rapidly sinking; that they were sending an express for my son in Boston, who might perhaps arrive in time to receive his last breath. The third was from my brother's wife to her daughter Elizabeth to the same purport, and written in much distress." On his way north to Boston, while in Waterloo, MD, he heard that his father had died. It was July 9th. He was stricken with grief. "My father had nearly closed the ninety-first year of his life," he confided to his diary, "a life illustrious in the annals of his country and of the world."

He had served to great and useful purpose his nation, his age, and his God. He is gone, and may the blessing of Almighty Grace have attended him to his account! I say not, May my last end be like his!—it were presumptuous. The time, the manner, the coincidence with the decease of Jefferson, are visible and palpable marks of Divine favor, for which I would humble myself in grateful and silent adoration before the Ruler of the Universe. For myself, all that I dare to ask is, that I may live the remnant of my days in a manner worthy of him from whom I came, and, at the appointed hour of my Maker, die as my father has died, in peace with God and man, sped to the regions of futurity with the blessings of my fellow-men.

Plenty of Americans in 1826 had something to say about the death of two lions of the Revolution. Prone to view the world through the eyes of faith, and to read signs in the sky and on the ground, newspaper editors, clergy, and laypeople were astounded. On July 11 the Massachusetts Salem Gazette lamented "We know not in what language to express ourselves in announcing . . . another event which has transpired to render the late glorious anniversary, the national jubilee, in some respects the most memorable day in the history of our country." That was no hollow encomium. It rang true across the young nation. The New York Commercial Advertiser rhapsodized: "it seems as though Divine Providence had determined that the spirits of these great men, which were kindled at the same altar, and glowed with the same patriotic fervor . . . should be united in death, and travel into the unknown regions of eternity together!"

Some years back Margaret P. Battin wrote in Historically Speaking about the strange coincidence of Jefferson's and Adam's deaths on the same day. "Although the fact that Adams and Jefferson died the same day is taught to practically every schoolchild, asking why is not," Battin noted. "What could explain this? There are at least six principal avenues to explore, but all of them raise further issues." She then offered some of the explanations given over the ages for their demise on that same anniversary.

It makes me wonder about the comparison and contrast between our age and the beginning of the Jacksonian era. Do Americans now have similar ideas linking nation, patriotism, and providence? Do Americans esteem their leaders and the political giants of our day in any way like they did 184 years ago? How have citizens understood God and country from one era to the next?

National Park Service, the New American Revolution Center, and Bruce Cole

Randall Stephens

Wilfred McClay has alerted us to a new National Park Service initiative under Bruce Cole's leadership (more below). The Historical Society is proud to announce the appointment of Cole to its Board of Governors. Cole, who served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2001 to 2008, presently serves as the president and chief executive officer of The American Revolution Center. During his tenure at the NEH, he launched a number of programs to improve the teaching of history and the humanities, including We the People and Picturing America. Cole is distinguished professor emeritus of comparative literature at Indiana University.

The National Park Service has issued the following news release just in time for the fourth!

AMERICAN REVOLUTION CENTER WORKS WITH NATIONAL PARK SERVICE TO RELOCATE TO HISTORIC PHILADELPHIA

PHILADELPHIA – July 1, 2009 – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and the American Revolution Center (ARC) today announced that the National Park Service (NPS) has reached a historic agreement to develop a national museum dedicated to the American Revolution. The National Park Service signed a land-exchange agreement with ARC to establish this museum at Independence National Historical Park.

“This is wonderful news for both the National Park Service and the American Revolution Center,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. “Visitors to our Nation’s birthplace will now be able to enjoy a world-class museum dedicated to the story of the American Revolution within the shadow of Independence Hall.”

The new American Revolution Center will be located at 3rd and Chestnut Streets in downtown Philadelphia, within the 55-acre park. In exchange for the site, the National Park Service will receive a 78-acre parcel of private land owned by the Center within the boundary of Valley Forge National Historical Park.

“The American Revolution Center is a critical project for our Nation, and I am extremely pleased with this latest development,” said H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest, Chairman of the Board of Directors of ARC. "We have expended extraordinary time and resources to locate the Center in Valley Forge, and I believe that our vision there could have been achieved. We now believe that it is in our best interest to begin a new chapter for ARC, and I cannot think of a more appropriate setting than at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia.”

At Independence National Historical Park, the National Park Service manages several sites associated with the American Revolution, including the Liberty Bell Center, the National Constitution Center and Independence Hall. ARC will work together with these and other institutions around the country and the world to further the understanding of the American Revolution.

The American Revolution Center will be the first national museum to commemorate the entire story of the American Revolution. The museum will display its distinguished collection of objects, artifacts and manuscripts from the American Revolution era and will offer educational programming, lectures, symposia, and interactive learning for teachers, students, and the general public.

“I applaud the mission of The American Revolution Center and fully support the decision to relocate,” said Governor Edward G. Rendell. “I am thrilled that Gerry Lenfest, Dr. Bruce Cole and ARC’s Board have selected Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for the new home of this national museum and I believe it will be a terrific complement to Independence National Historical Park area.”

“The National Park Service has long supported the concept of The American Revolution Center,” said Dan Wenk, acting NPS Director. “What better place than Philadelphia, the ‘cradle of liberty’ for a museum about the American Revolution.”

“This is a promising time for The American Revolution Center,” said Dr. Bruce Cole, ARC’s new president and chief executive officer. “We are committed to the creation of a living memorial to the American Revolution. We look forward to developing a museum to commemorate the legacy of the American Revolution in our Nation’s birthplace.”

Representatives from The American Revolution Center and the National Park Service will work jointly on appraisals, title searches, surveys, and other matters to move the land exchange process forward as quickly as possible.

About The American Revolution Center:

The American Revolution Center (ARC) will establish the first national museum to commemorate the entire story of the American Revolution. The Museum will display its distinguished collection of objects, artifacts and manuscripts from the American Revolution era and will offer programming, lectures, symposia, and interactive learning for teachers, students, and the general public.