It’s been an exciting week for history in the news. First, we learned that Karen Nipps has discovered buried treasure in Harvard’s Houghton Library–650 signatures of Boston citizens pledging to boycott British goods taxed by the Townshend Acts in 1767. The signatories include Paul Revere, John Wheatley (owner of Phillis), and several of Boston’s women.
Tag Archives: Thomas Jefferson
Remembering “Jefferson’s Statute”
Few documents in the history of American religious freedom are as famous as Virginia’s “[A]ct for establishing religious freedom” – also known as Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom or (more colloquially) as Jefferson’s Statute. A quick glance at Jefferson’s text (carefully edited by the Virginia General Assembly) shows us why. Few other documents are such a clear and powerful exposition on the need for freedom of conscience.[1] The text has also aged well and appeals both sides of our modern church-state conflicts. On one hand the Statute suggests that religious freedom is a gift from god, for the “Almighty God hath created the mind free,” and on the other argues that religious beliefs are no different from “our opinions in physics or geometry.” In the Statute what the twenty-first century reader would think of as distinct “religious” and “secular” discourses are melded with spiritual coercion denounced as both “sinful and tyrannical.”[2] Who can disagree with that? It is no wonder why, then, that Jefferson had his role in drafting Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom engraved on his tombstone. Continue reading
A Library for the Digital Republic: The DPLA Is Launched
Four years ago, Robert Darnton, historian and librarian at Harvard, wrote in the New York Review that “we [had] missed a great opportunity.” Instead of digitizing America’s print heritage in a public project, perhaps managed by “a grand alliance of research libraries,” the United States had allowed a private corporation to control the scanning and storing of books. Depending on the outcome of federal lawsuits, Google Books would enjoy a virtual monopoly on books still in copyright.
“We could have created a National Digital Library—the twenty-first-century equivalent of the Library of Alexandria,” Darnton wrote. “It is too late now. Not only have we failed to realize that possibility, but, even worse, we are allowing a question of public policy—the control of access to information—to be determined by private lawsuit.”
The Week in Early American History
It seems to have become a tradition to open this post with a weather report for New England. This morning we’re looking at a slushy Sunday, which while annoying is quite an improvement over the snowpocalypse of a few weeks ago. In any case, a little sleet/snow won’t stand any longer between you and your weekly supply of links. On we go!
Jeffersongate: The Case of Henry Wiencek
On October 16, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Henry Wiencek’s third book, Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves. His previous works both dealt with slavery, most notably his well-received An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. By contrast, his latest work has come under fire from leading Jefferson scholars around the country. Within days of the book’s release, highly critical reviews by academics appeared in online magazines. These reviews started online exchanges that have played out over the last two months and continue to do so.
Historians much more up to the task than myself—including Annette Gordon-Reed, Jan Lewis, and Lucia (Cinder) Stanton—have called into question Wiencek’s use of sources (both primary and secondary), his overall interpretation, and his motives. Therefore, I will not recapitulate all of them here. I have included a chronology with links to all the relevant articles below, with J.L. Bell’s posts at Boston 1775 providing excellent summaries of the most contentious points. Instead, I want to touch on two things: the main part of Wiencek’s argument and how it reflects his broader approach to history and the effects of Wiencek’s treatment of the historiography, both having to do with the larger relationship between popular and academic history. Continue reading
The Junto 