13 Revolutions +1

June 22, 2016 By Sara Georgini in Digital History, Interview, Public History Tags: 13 colonies, 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, 21st century, academia, Adams, African-American history, American Revolution, American Revolutionary War, Archives, Atlantic History, Constitution, cultural history, Data, DH, Digital History, digital humanities, digital technology, Early Republic, Founders, Franklin, Gender, Independence, Jefferson, law, museums, pedagogy, Popular History, Print Culture, Public History, Publishing, race, religion, research, science and technology, Slavery, Smithsonian Institution, teaching, Technology, UX, Washington Leave a comment

Diego Rivera and Bertram D. Wolfe, “Portrait of America,” 1934

When John Adams looked back on the American Revolution (something he liked to do), he reflected that, “The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People.” The colonists’ drive to independence marked a new era of American history, Adams thought, when “Thirteen Clocks were made to Strike together; a perfection of Mechanism which no Artist had ever before effected.” Scholars have struggled to frame the experience of the Revolution in picture and on the page. How can we use digital tools to curate collections of revolutionary culture and #vastearlyamerica for use in the classroom?

Today, The Junto chats with Darren Milligan, Senior Digital Strategist at the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access, about the Smithsonian Learning Lab, which encourages us to make, use, and share new galleries of history. Continue reading →

James Rivington: Printer, Loyalist, Spy?

April 20, 2016 By Christopher F. Minty in Academia, Commentary Tags: Alexander McDougall, American Revolution, American Revolutionary War, Association, Continental Congress, espionage, james rivington, Loyalist, New York, New York City, Print Culture, Royal Coat of Arms, spies, Spy, War of American Independence 4 Comments

A fabulous but somewhat ominous engraving of Rivington hanging in effigy from a tree in New Brunswick, N.J.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the printer of the New-York Journal, John Holt. I focused on his newspaper’s mastheads, arguing that those mastheads were an effective medium through which he could shape political ideas and, subsequently, mobilize support. What I did not fully explain, however, was that he was not the only printer in New York City to change his masthead—James Rivington did it, too.[1] Continue reading →

An Interview with Carl Robert Keyes, creator of Adverts250

January 26, 2016 By Sara Damiano in Digital History, Interview, Interviews with Historians, Uncategorized Tags: Carl Robert Keyes, Digital History, digital humanities, Interview, newspapers, Print Culture 4 Comments

Carl Robert Keyes (@TradeCardCarl) is an associate professor of history at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts. Keyes is currently writing a book on advertising practices and consumer culture in eighteenth-century America, and in Fall 2016 he will become the director of Assumption College’s Women’s Studies Program. Keyes has previously written several guest posts for The Junto. Today, Keyes speaks with The Junto about his new digital humanities initiative, The Adverts 250 Project. Continue reading →

“UNITE OR DIE”: John Holt’s New-York Journal; or, the General Advertiser and the Imagery of Allegiance

January 21, 2016 By Christopher F. Minty in From the Archives, Methodology, Research Tags: Ben Franklin, historiography, james rivington, John Holt, Join or Die, Loyalists, mastheads, New York history, newspapers, patriots, Print Culture 9 Comments

Colonial Williamsburg—reconstruction of Holt’s storehouse, sometimes referred to as John Holt’s “new store.”

A short while ago, I wrote on the importance of political caricatures within eighteenth-century British America. I called for an increased focus on how caricatures affected, and in some cases represented, politics during the American Revolution. In today’s post, I’d like to do something similar—I’d like to call for an increased focus on newspaper mastheads. An increased exploration on what they meant, and how they were used for political mobilization. Continue reading →

Early America Comic Con: Drawing the American Revolution

November 23, 2015 By Christopher F. Minty in Academia, Methodology, Pedagogy Tags: academia, American Revolution, British Atlantic world, British perspectives, caricatures, cartoons, Comic Con, Comic Con early America, digital pedagogy, Eighteenth Century, images, James Gillray, Long eighteenth century, pedagogy, Print Culture, Satire, scholarship, teaching 1 Comment

Chan Lowe/Tribune Content Agency

“Welders make more money than philosophers,” Marco Rubio said in a recent G.O.P. debate. “We need more welders and less philosophers,” he continued, proudly. It was a decent line from the presidential hopeful. But not long after these words echoed around the Milwaukee Theatre, it was shown to be a somewhat clumsy statement, not least when seen alongside figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (comparative wages: philosophers & welders). Thus over the days following Rubio’s line, it was caricatured, with one cartoonist picking up on Rubio’s wording. This G.O.P. presidential candidate is not alone: All of the 2016 presidential candidates, Democrat and Republican, have been caricatured. So, too, are their worldwide equivalents on a regular basis. Continue reading →

The Day the Presses Went Silent

November 2, 2015 By Joseph M. Adelman in Historiography, Research Tags: American Revolution, Edmund S. Morgan, Politics, Print Culture, Stamp Act 1 Comment

250 years ago today, the Stamp Act was in legal effect throughout the British North American colonies—including not only the “Thirteen Colonies” but also British possessions in Canada and the West Indies. As those who study the American Revolution know, the matter was rather different when it came to the on-the-ground impact.

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Guest Post: The Art of Absconding: Slave Fugitivity in the Early Republic

August 24, 2015 By Christopher F. Minty in Academia, Guest Posts, Research, Special Features Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, academia, Confidence men, Digital History, Early Republic, Guest Posts, historiography, Politics, Print Culture, race, Slave runaway, Slavery 3 Comments

Guest Poster Shaun Wallace (@Shaun_Wallace_) is an Economic and Social Research Council-funded Ph.D. candidate at the University of Stirling. His dissertation examines how reading and writing influenced and aided slave decision-making in the early republic. Shaun holds a B.A. (Hons.) and a MRes. from the University of Stirling and is president of Historical Perspectives, a Glasgow-based historical society run by and for graduate students in the United Kingdom.

A “very ingenious artful fellow” appears a peculiar description of a runaway advertised for recapture. The advertisement, for Harry or Harry Johnstone, featured in Baltimore’s Federal Gazette newspaper, on May 2, 1800, at the request of Nicholas Reynolds, overseer of criminals for Baltimore County. Harry had absconded from Gotham gaol, near Baltimore. Reynolds described Harry as a “tolerable good blacksmith” and a “rough carpenter.” A “very talkative” slave, he was a man of “great address.” On first impression a relatively congenial description; in actuality, Reynolds’s use of the term “artful” condemned the runaway.[1]
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Autumn Reads

August 19, 2015 By Sara Georgini in Lists, Recent Scholarship Tags: 19th Century, Adams, Africa, American Indians, American Revolution, Amistad, Antebellum South, Archives, Atlantic World, braddock, Caribbean, Charleston, Civil War, Confederacy, cultural history, Democracy, Diplomacy, diplomatic history, Early Republic, Founders, French Atlantic, Gender, George Washington, historiography, History of Medicine, Jefferson, John Adams, legal history, London, Methodology, museums, Nat Turner, Native Americans, New England, New York, Pirates, Politics, Print Culture, prisoners, Publishing, Quaker, Quakers, religion, religious history, renaissance, Romanticism, Slavery, southern history, Spanish Empire, theatre, Thomas Jefferson, university press, Virginia, visual culture, War of 1812, Washington Leave a comment

“Valley of the Catawissa in Autumn,” Thomas Moran (ca. 1862)

Fall brings new early American titles to explore. Enjoy our Spring Reads 2015 list, too, and share your finds below!

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Personal Networks and a First Draft of the Literary Canon

July 8, 2015 By Jonathan Wilson in From the Archives, Research Tags: 19th Century, Boston Public Library, canon formation, information networks, literary scholarship, Print Culture, reprinting, Rufus W. Griswold 1 Comment

RufusWGriswold Antebellum editors were bulk retailers. Whatever else their business involved, it happened at scale, and I’m often astonished by how much prose a nineteenth-century newspaper or magazine editor could churn out in a day. Of course, most of that prose was recycled, and much of it was banal. As a forthcoming article by Ryan Cordell, based on research by the Viral Texts Project at Northeastern University, observes, the most-reprinted antebellum newspaper articles were pieces of “information literature”—not news, but scrapbookable things like an 1853 starch recipe or a clipping about the dietary value of tomatoes.[1] Apparently, antebellum readers welcomed such textual flotsam—but it was especially useful to editors, who needed a steady flood of context-free, easily resized gobbets of writing for their pages.

The bulk-retail principle applied to literary editors, too, and the difference between “literary” and other kinds of antebellum periodical work is hard to define. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about what that meant for the formation of an American literary canon in the antebellum period.

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The Many & the One

June 15, 2015 By Sara Georgini in From the Archives, Public History Tags: 1775, American Revolution, Amos Doolittle, Antebellum, Atlantic World, Boston, Boston Public Library, Brita, British Empire, British Museum, cartography, Colonial Williamsburg, Concord, Connecticut Historical Society, D.C., empire, engraving, George Washington, imperial history, John Adams, Lexington, mapping, maps, New-York Historical Society, Paul Revere, Print Culture, Slavery, Washington Leave a comment

Like many, Amos Doolittle struggled to turn in a decent first draft of American history. The 21 year-old engraver, later known as the “Paul Revere of Connecticut,” arrived in Lexington and Concord shortly after April 1775. Anxious to capture the battles’ action and aftermath, he chatted with local residents. He sketched terrain. For Doolittle, a trained silversmith, it was a chance to experiment with a craft he had yet to master. Part of what he produced, a set of four views storyboarding the “shot heard round the world,” hangs in the Boston Public Library’s new exhibit, “We Are One: Mapping America’s Road from Revolution to Independence.” By Doolittle’s lights, Massachusetts makes for a furious and frenzied tableau: gusts of redcoats’ gunpowder hazing the sky, and colonial ranks splintering on the advance. On the American side, it is hardly a picture of union. Patriots scatter, racing blindly to frame’s edge. In his rough draft of Revolution, Amos Doolittle demands that we unlock all hopes of what might come next. Continue reading →