This book and its four volumes are copyrighted by Frederick William Dame © 2014. All rights reserved. The author researched the material for the four volumes of this book. The opinions and conclusions expressed therein are those of the author whose goal it is to educate Americans about the Judeo-Christian, ethical, moral, and philosophical origins of their character identity. Furthermore, the contention is that American character identity is slowly, but surely and intentionally being destroyed by corrupt and immoral political forces and politicians.
The writings in this book's four volumes consist of a fair use of the researched and quoted material as provided for in Section 107 of the United States Copyright Law in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107/.shtml.
All proceeds from the sale of these volumes will be used for noncommercial purposes to be used to assist in covering the costs for the administration, the research, and the education of Americans concerning their roots and the status of their American character identity.
Bibliographical Information of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
This publication is listed in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek; detailed bibliographical information can be accessed under http://dnb.d-nb.de
© 2014 Frederick William Dame
Printing and Production: BoD – Books on Demand GmbH
ISBN: 978-3-7357-1324-7
I dedicate this book to my dearest Elisabeth.
She knows all of the reasons why.
Fig. 1.1 Anne Hutchinson on Trial
Fig. 1.2 Statue of Anne Hutchinson with her daughter
Fig. 1.3 Anne Dudley Bradstreet (1612?-1672)
Fig. 1.4 Sarah Kemble Knight (1666-1727)
Fig. 1.5 Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814)
Fig. 1.6 Abigail Adams (1744-1814)
Fig. 1.7 Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820)
Fig. 1.8 Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784)
Fig. 1.9. Hannah Webster Foster (1758-1840)
Fig. 1.10 Susanna Rowson (1762-1824)
Fig. 3.1 Romanticism and Classicism compared
Fig. 4.1 Title page of William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy 1789
Fig. 5.1 Philip Morin Freneau (1752-1832)
Fig. 6.1 Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1801)
Fig. 7.1 Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Fig. 8.1 William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
Fig. 9.1. Photo of the oil-on-canvas portrait of David Crockett in the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.
Fig. 10.1 James Fenimore Cooper, (1789-1851)
Fig. 11.1 Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
I thank Don Fredrick for writing his views in the Commendatory Preface. It is to Don Fredrick that I owe my debut and continued presence in writing essays and books. His support and counsel are inestimable.
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Critical and constructive assistance is absolutely necessary for the writing and completion of any book. It is fortunate that such persons with an objective eye and opinion have assisted me in the research and compilation of material essential for the execution of these volumes. They are the personnel of the Pfalzbibliothek, Bezirksverband Pfalz, Bismarckstraße 17, 67655 Kaiserslautern, Federal Republic of Germany. I give them full credit and appreciation by naming them: Frau Renate Flesch, Direktorin der Abteilungsleitung, Einkauf, Veranstaltungen (Director of the Library Division, Purchases, and Events); Frau Claudia Germann, Leiterin für Austellungen, EDV, Katologisierung (Director for Exhibitions, Electronic Data Processing, Cataloging); Frau Elisabeth Erb, Auskunft, Fernleihe (Information, Interlibrary Loans); Nadja Seifert Ausleihe, Zeitschriftenverwaltung (Library Loans, Newspapers-Magazines); Herr Fabian Striehl, Ausleihe, Zeitschriftenverwaltung (Library Loans, Newspapers-Magazines); and Frau Tina Koplin, Auskunft, Fernleihe (Information, Interlibrary Loans).
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This author acknowledges the fact that this book is no different from all books in the sense that they are all like a perfect Persian carpet. Somewhere there is a mistake. Indeed, in the first rough edition there was more than just a mistake. That detail and the fact that some new research has uncovered relative information as it applies to America's Indomitable Character are the reasons for this revised edition. Albeit, should there be any deficiencies in the manuscript, the author again acknowledges his responsibility. Such imperfections are not wonted and no slightness is intended.
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The cover design is by Kay Fretwurst, Graphics Division, Books on Demand, based on a suggestion by the author. Front: American Elm with the background image Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, painting by Howard Chandler Christy, 1940. Back: A cut-out of Anne Hutchinson preaching in her home, by Howard Pyle, 1901. Both images are in the public domain.
by
Don Fredrick
Knowing Frederick William Dame as I do from his insightful and thought provoking essays and his prior book, I was at first somewhat apprehensive about the task of writing a commendatory preface for Volume III of his monumental work, America's Indomitable Character. It was like being asked to “make a few comments” about the life of Leonardo da Vinci. But I welcomed the opportunity, because it is important for Americans to understand the roots of their character identity if it is to be preserved.
It is often said that the United States of America is a “nation of immigrants.” But it is, in fact, a nation of former immigrants. The immigrant’s goal has long been to become an American, not to become an Irishman or a Brit or a German living in America. This stands in sharp contrast, for example, to communities of Muslims in London, Paris, or Malmo, where many, if not most, of the residents have no intention of “assimilating.” Their goal is not to become British, French, or Swedish. Their goal is to establish a global caliphate by making as many Islamist babies as possible in as short a time as possible. There is a reason why the most popular name for infant boys in England and Wales is no longer Jack or John but is now Mohammed—or some variation of that spelling. The Islamization of America is also taking place, but at a much slower pace. The “American character” is being diluted but still exists, while the characters of the European nations are slowly being destroyed.
Getting back to the period of note in Volume III of Mr. Dame’s collection, my mother’s fourth great-grandfather risked his life crossing the Atlantic—in a ship he built—in 1763. He endured hardships beyond what most people today could even imagine, and he did so to build a life for his new American family. His dream was to own a farm in Pennsylvania and freely practice his Protestant religion, not to establish a “French-Irish presence” in the Colonies. He fought in the Pennsylvania Regiment during the War of Independence to establish a new nation of liberties, not to replicate an old nation. My father’s ancestors, who emigrated from Germany and Switzerland, quickly learned English and worked as blacksmiths in east-central Illinois. They brought with them not sausage, sauerkraut, cheese, and chocolate but a work ethic. They ceased to be Germans and Swiss. They became Americans. Unlike far too many of today’s immigrants, they came not to angrily waive Mexican flags on the fifth of May, but to proudly waive American flags on the Fourth of July.
Here, in Volume III of his impressive study, Mr. Dame examines the formation of the American character by analyzing the works of important American authors from colonial times through the period before the war of secession (which most people inaccurately refer to as a “Civil War”). Probably like me, most readers will encounter writers of whom they had never heard—particularly several female writers—and they will be the better for it. Mr. Dame introduces us to Ann Cotton, who “was an early Colonial writer of eye-witness accounts of the contemporary history of Virginia,” and Mercy Otis Warren, who “wrote the only contemporary history of the American Revolution, a three-volume work History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution…” Cotton and Warren are now on my next-to-read list, as I am eager to learn more about our nation’s history from those who experienced it firsthand.
Abigail Adams, wife of the nation’s second president, was certainly prescient when, “[i]n March, 1776, she wrote her husband at the Continental Congress, ‘remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.’” (So, today, would more than a few women in Congress and one with her eyes on the White House.) Judith Sargent Murray was “an early American advocate for women’s rights” who argued in her essay, On the Equality of the Sexes, “that women, just like their male counterparts, have the capability of intellectual accomplishment and have the legal and moral right to achieve economic independence.”
Phillis Wheatley is a name most readers will encounter for the first time. We learn from Mr. Dame that she “was the first African-American woman and poet to publish her work.” Overcoming the fact that she was a slave in 18th century Boston, she nevertheless learned to read and write, “was influenced by the works of Alexander Pope, John Milton, Homer, and Virgil, [and] could read Greek and Latin classics…” Despite her death in childbirth at the early age of 31, Wheatley—who was granted her freedom at age 25—has an admirably long list of published works. (Some might suggest that Black History Month would be better served by focusing on people like Wheatley, rather than Jesse Owens or Jackie Robinson.) One of the nation’s first professional novelists was Susanna Haswell Rowson. “Among the seven novels that she wrote is Charlotte Temple (1791), mainly a story of seduction.” Mr. Dame notes, “It was the most popular American novel until the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852.” (A good “answer” for the television game show Jeopardy would be, “It was a favorite American novel for 50 years.”)
The discussion of female authors by Mr. Dame is worth noting because the average American believes “women’s rights” were not much of an issue until the appearance of Susan B. Anthony. In fact, women had strong voices in defense of liberty and equality long before the mid-nineteenth century. If many are not aware of that it is likely because men have written most of the history books.
Throughout the young nation’s early decades, a substantial amount of its literary output was, not surprisingly, influenced by Europe. America was expanding and “feeling its oats,” but it took some time before literature developed a decidedly “American flavor.” That was perhaps mostly because Americans were engaged in “doing” rather than “contemplating.” Additionally, much of the non-political writing was religious in nature or in the form of morality plays. An example is William Hill Brown’s novel, The Power of Sympathy: or, The Triumph of Nature, a “tragic tale of unintended incest and the death of lovers,” in which characters have descriptive names like “Mrs. Sententious.” Fiction may have been meant to entertain, but it could also promote or discourage certain philosophies.
When one had acres to plow and game to hunt and firewood to gather, of course, there was hardly time to write the “great American novel.” But there eventually was an appearance of Romanticism in American literature, and Mr. Dame examines the works of several Romantic authors, such as Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and Edgar Allan Poe (whose melancholy tomes and tones have led me to call him “the Rachmaninoff of American literature”). Unlike European literature, early American literature was more likely to focus on individualism and tales of “man against nature” than societal concerns. After all, Americans were busy “taming the wilderness” and “fighting off Indians,” while Europeans were wearing powdered wigs and playing card games in drafty castles. Knights jousted in England, but Americans trapped beavers in the Adirondacks. The Brits wrote of chivalrous adventures, while the Americans wrote of surviving harsh winters and burying women who died in childbirth.
American author Washington Irving spent considerable time in Europe and chronicled his travels. But he eventually visited America’s farthest territories and wrote about prairies, fur trading, and exploring the Rocky Mountains. Irving is known for many short stories, such as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. Mr. Dame writes that Irving “was able to absorb legends and folk stories of any culture and turn them into popular historical romances” and “was so adept at such borrowings and so clever in combining them with the character, the language, the setting, and the tone that he stands at the beginning of the development of the short story in America. No other American author before him can claim this position.”
James Fenimore Cooper is perhaps best known for his Leatherstocking Tales and the character Natty Bumppo. Cooper, who “considered individuality to be the most valued trait in an American character identity,” introduced many Americans in the growing cities of the east to the rugged life in the expanding west. Many Americans have never read his books but have seen movies based on those books, such as The Deerslayer (1957) and The Last of the Mohicans (1936 and 1992). But it is far more enjoyable to read the books, which include wonderful writing like this: “Across the tract of wilderness… it seemed as if the foot of man had never trodden, so breathing and deep was the silence in which it lay.”
A chapter on Davy Crockett may surprise some readers because they think of him not as an author but only as a coonskin cap-wearing frontiersman who died at the Alamo. But Mr. Dame includes Crockett because, “…in both folklore and in historical reality, Crockett stands as an important figure who helped to define American character identity in the nineteenth century and beyond. …Crockett’s political philosophies are very much germane in today’s world, just as they played a vital role in America’s past.” Those not familiar with Crockett’s Not Yours to Give speech owe it to themselves to study his words carefully, for they are as important and appropriate today as they were almost two centuries ago. The Tennessee Congressman’s belief that political party discipline was a threat to democracy is certainly a thought that may cross the minds of many as they watch the actions of today’s White House and Congress. Mr. Dame writes, “In every respect, as a man, a politician, and even as a folk myth, Crockett stands as a symbol of fierce antielitism.”
Individualism and anti-elitism make up a great portion of America’s character. It was that character that led the new nation to reject an aristocracy and have an elected president rather than a king. Add an element of cockiness and irreverence and it is what led U.S. Army General Anthony Clement McAuliffe to respond, “Nuts!” when the Germans demanded U.S. surrender at the Battle of the Bulge. It is what causes (legitimate) U.S. presidents to shake the hands of foreign leaders, rather than bow to them. It is also what angers Americans when they witness unconscionable arrogance from the current temporary occupant of their Oval Office.
The American Legion magazine wrote, “America is strengthened by ideals that were not conjured by kings or dictators. These ideals were not contrived to protect the rich, rank one religion over another or to support an elite minority. Rather, these ideals were founded on freedom—the principle that society is better off when ordinary people are given the ways and means to achieve extraordinary goals. And we are a nation of such people.” America is a place where individuals are the architects of their own destiny; where “society” means nothing more than a collection of many individual citizens in the same place; where there exist not many rules telling a person what he is permitted to do, but only a few rules telling him what he cannot do. Or, at least, that is what America was when the aforementioned authors wrote about the nation. Unfortunately, America is less so today. I encourage Mr. Dame to keep writing about American character. Perhaps it will stage a wellneeded re-emergence.
Don Fredrick
March 2, 2014
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Don Fredrick is the author of the novel, Colony 14; the economic primer, What You Don’t Know About Economics Can Hurt You; Can It All Be A Concidence? Barack Obama's Lifelong associations With Shady Characters And How He Is Destroying America; and The Obama Timeline, the most comprehensive compilation of information about the life of Barack Obama and his actions in the Oval Office. His web site, www.colony14.net, includes essays by Frederick William Dame.
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The legal foundations for the existence of American character identity are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution for the United States of America.
-The Author
In medias res! The framework for the first two volumes of America's Indomitable Character will be used in Volume III. To bring the reader into a recall, that framework was the philosophy of the Genevan-French political and social philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and particularly his thoughts on Nature Human Nature, Society, the Social Contract, and Education. Volumes I and II have shown the degree to which Rousseau's philosophy regarding these matters influenced Colonial America and the beginnings of the Republic of the United States of America and an American character identity. Volume III will continue with this modus operandi. There will be emphasis upon two important documents that followed the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation (and Perpetual Union) discussed in Volume II. They are the Constitution for the United States of America and the Monroe Doctrine, the latter of which has never been discussed in connection with American character identity. Additionally, Volume III will show the extent to which the Enlightenment philosophy provided a framework for the further development of an American literature and an American character identity in the age of Romanticism, particularly its development in the United States of America.
There is, however, a necessity for this perspective to fill in a gap that is often overlooked in American Literature. This literature cavity concerns the presentation of female authors from the Colonial Period to the beginnings of Federalism. A short presentation of selected female authors will show that their gender contributed to some specific principles of a developing American character identity. Of course, the female authors were more plentiful than the ten presented in the following selection. Nevertheless, there is no conscious decision to belittle their contributions to American Literature and the development of a homo americanus in the beginnings of a new nation. As will be pointed out, other authors have handled their contributions adequately.
The outpouring of the nationalistic emotions during the thrilling revolutionary age, which stimulated the first of the Connecticut Wits, especially Joel Barlow (1754-1812), to warn and comment on the downfall of an old-fashioned leverage from Europe, and dream of a special, unique destiny for the new American nation, found expression at the end of the nineteenth century. But in contrast to their cherished political lives, the educated classes, mainly in New England, were very close to giving up of the idea that the first American literary compositions presenting character identities could even come close to representing the innate genius of the new citizens in the former British Colonies.
As for women, not many of their contemporaries and presentday literary historians would even consider that females could make a contribution to a new identity in American Literature as it emerged in the Age of Federalism (approximately 1787-1801), even though there had been female literati in the past. Sharon M. Harris writes about 106 relatively unknown women authors, including Native American women, and their works in her book American Women Writers to 1800.1 There were several women writers that were known in the early American Colonial Period. However, with the onset of the American Revolution, only a few such as Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643), Anne Dudley Bradstreet (1612?-1672), Sarah Kemble Knight (1666-1727), Ann Cotton, (Ann Dunbar?) Cotton (no dates), Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814), Abigail Adams (1744-1814), Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820), Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784), Hannah Foster (1758-1840), and Susanna Rowson (1762-1824), were known authors in the American Colonies. At least for the sake of respect, it behooves us to summarize their contributions to American Literature in its early phases. From the writings of the presented female authors of Early Colonial America we can deduce that there were observations by them on what would eventually contribute to positive American character identity. These deductions on an American character identity are listed at the end of the respective author presentation.
Anne Hutchinson2 (1591-1643), born Anne Marbury in Alford, Lincolnshire, England, in July, 1591, received her strong beliefs concerning religious toleration and separation of church and state from her father Francis Marbury, who spent some years in prison for his views, but eventually became rector of St. Martin's Vintry, rector of St. Pancras, and finally rector of St. Margaret's, all located in London, England.
At the age of 21, Anne married Will Hutchinson. They had fifteen children. The Hutchinsons became involved in the new Puritan Movement, the goal of which was to purify the National Church of all Roman Catholic influence. In 1634 the family relocated to Massachusetts Bay Colony out of reasons of religious freedom. Anne soon realized that the Colony did not tolerate religious freedom and an independent thinker, particularly an educated woman. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony there may have been freedom to worship, but not freedom to think. She believed that one needed to have only a personal closeness with the Almighty and that the prerequisite to be admitted into Heaven was faith alone.
This position was a threat to the Puritan Church because it did not allow the Church to become involved in governing the souls and lives of the congregation. Anne Hutchinson knew that the oppressed in England, the Puritans, were becoming the oppressors in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Freedom of religion there meant only that other colonies could exercise their religion as they desired, but in Massachusetts Bay, the freedom of religion was the Puritan Church only; there was no need for a different belief. One could have the freedom to worship according to the strict dictates of the Bible, but one could not think freely.
Fig. 1.1 Anne Hutchinson on Trial (1901) by Edwin Austin Abbey, (1852-1911). The image is in the public domain. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anne_Hutchinson_on_Trial.jpg.
Anne Hutchinson started to organize small prayer groups, which were allowed by Puritan law. However, these groups began to grow and Anne Hutchinson began to develop a large following. Sensing a threat to the Puritans' existence as the chosen children of God, John Winthrop took legal action against Anne and arrested her for being disorderly.
The marshal of Roxbury, Massachusetts, took Anne Hutchinson into custody. Her beliefs were examined by a court and she was tried according to the dictates of John Winthrop who had already made up his mind that Anne was guilty. In his diary John Winthrop had written that Anne Hutchinson was "an American Jezebel, who had gone a-whoring from God", and should be "tried as a heretic; so much for John Winthrop's misogyny.
Anne was accused of Antinomianism, a concept developed by Martin Luther who argued that with the dispensation of grace, moral laws are of no use or obligation. Only faith is necessary for salvation. John Winthrop and many Puritans were convinced that this was pure heresy. She was convicted and banned from the Colony. Some of her followers went with her into banishment. They settled on the small island of Aquidneck. After the death of her husband, Anne, her servants, and five of her children were massacred by a group of Mahican Indians in East Chester, New York in 1643. When news of her death reached Massachusetts Bay Colony, it was viewed as God's last judgment of Anne Hutchinson.
In front of the State House in Boston, Massachusetts is a statue of Anne Hutchinson with her daughter. The memorial statue was executed by Cyrus Edwin Dalin (1861-1944).
Dedicated in 1922, the statue has a memorial inscription emphasizing Anne Hutchinson's courage as a fighter for civil liberty and religious toleration.
Anne Marbury Hutchinson
Baptized at Alford
Lincolnshire England
20 - July 1595
Killed by the Indians
at East Chester New York 1643
Courageous Exponent
of Civil Liberty
and Religious Toleration
Fig. 1.2 Statue of Anne Hutchinson with her daughter by Cyrus Dallin (1861-1944). State House in Boston, Massachusetts. The statue was unveiled in 1915. The image is in the public domain. Source: http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Anne_Hutchinson_statue.jpeg.
Although there are not many surviving pieces of writing from Anne Hutchinson, the reports of her life, beliefs, and trial and conviction are a reminder of how valuable freedom is and that our foremothers also suffered for the liberty we take for granted. It is to her that the American Colonials owe their gratitude for their right to have a dissenting opinion.
Indeed, there are no known existing collections of Anne Hutchinson's writings. What we know about her and her opinions must be collated from biographies and the court record of her trial.3
In her trial, Anne Hutchinson's character was inverted by the prosecution in order to find her guilty of mothering antinomianism, which was not the case. However, she stood her ground in spite of the fact that she was found guilty and banished. Herein is Anne Hutchinson's contribution to American character identity. She is the example of maintaining one's stance for the truth of freedom of conscience and religion in the face of all possible defeat.
Anne Dudley Bradstreet4 (1612?-1672), born in England, was America's first published poet. She arrived in the New England Colony in 1630 with John Winthrop's fleet. Her father Thomas Dudley /1576-1653) was governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony (1634, 1640, 1645 and 1650) and her husband Simon Bradstreet (1603/04-1697) was also a governor of that colony (1679-1686 and 1689-1692). She gave birth to eight children.
Among her famous poems are The Tenth Muse (15650), To My Dear and Loving Husband (1678), Upon The Burning of Our House (1678), Contemplations (1678), and the early incomplete poem The Four Monarchies, based on Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World (1616).
Fig. 1.3 Anne Dudley Bradstreet (1612?-1672), artist unknown. There are many paintings of Anne Dudley Bradstreet. This image at http://de.slideshare.net/mnoggle/the-puritan-poetry-of-anne-bradstreet-prologue is a reverse drawing of the image at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Annebradstreet.jpg. which is in the public domain.
Her works reveal l'air de vivre of the first New England generation. Throughout, her tone is simple, unassuming, yet emotionally penetrating. Her purpose in writing was to show the glory of God. In the study of American Literature, Anne Bradstreet is considered to be an example of an American woman poet and writer famous for her personal, lyrical poems, which show the influence of Edmund Spenser (1522-1599), John Donne (1572-1631), Francis Quarles (1592-1644), and George Herbert (1593-1633).
The following list of Anne Bradstreet's works indicate her religious orientation, her concern with the small matters of life, eternity and life, death, the concern of childbirth, illness, the centrality of God and her husband, and the destruction of her home by fire in 1666, which destroyed 800 books in the Bradstreet family library.5
Meditations Divine and Moral
Poems
Earth Air
Blood Phlegm
Middle Age Old Age
Autumn Winter
The Grecian An Explanation
The Roman An Apology
Posthumous Poems
In her works Anne Dudley Bradstreet maintained her character right to compose works and to offset the criticism of what she wrote by men who surely had talent and skills, proprieties that society needs. Nevertheless, she recognized and judged their criticisms as being unjust and unfair. Women have the same rights, duties, and privileges as men. This would be an important cornerstone in the future suffrage movements.
Sarah Kemble Knight,6 an educator and businesswoman, is remembered in Colonial literary history for her diary of a journey she took in 1704-1705 from Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, to New York City, Province of New York. In 1689 she married John Wright. They had one child, Elisabeth.
After the untimely death of her husband at a young age, Sarah Kemble Knight took a journey to New York City on horseback. She wrote of her experiences in her journals, which was first printed in 1825 under the title The Journal of Madame Knight. She presents herself as a larger-than-life literary figure by telling of a journey not before then taken by a woman. Her descriptions of primitive traveling are lively and interspersed with humor. The journal is a mainstay of American Colonial life.
When she returned to Boston in 1705, Sarah started a school for Boston's youth. One of her students was Benjamin Franklin. When her daughter Elisabeth married John Livingston, of Connecticut, Madam Knight moved with them to New London. There she became a prosperous realty businesswoman. She was known for her shrewdness and business skills. Upon her death in 1727, she left her daughter a very large estate. Her only writing was The Journal of Madame Knight.7
Fig. 1.4. Sarah Kemble Knight (1666-1727), artist unknown. The image is in the public domain. Source: http://www.colonialsense.com/Regional_History/journals/Journal_of_Madam_Knight/Biography.php.
Sarah Kemble Knight is the personification of a character identity that was not uncommon for men in Colonial America, but quite anti-norm for women: the independence of the person and the drive to take on hardships to achieve one’s goals. Her difficult journey from Boston to New York was not a normal undertaking for a Colonial woman. Nevertheless, she writes an account of her journey that paints the people, places, and circumstances as racy. She is the settler’s character and identity par excellence, for she accepts the wilderness as romantic before romanticism became established as a philosophical and literary movement. What other Puritans saw of as being dangerous hardships, Sarah Kemble Knight perceived as being challenges.
Ann Cotton, Ann Dunbar(?) Cotton8 (no dates, no image available), the wife of attorney and plantation owner John Cotton, was an early Colonial writer of eye-witness accounts of the contemporary history of Virginia. Her most important contribution is an eleven-page tract on Nathaniel Bacon's rebellion in Virginia entitled An Account of Our Late Troubles in Virginia. Written in 1676, By Mrs. An. Cotton, of Q. Creeke, which was finally edited and commented on, and published in Peter Force's compendium Tracts and Other Papers, Relating Principally to the Origin, Settlement, and Progress of the Colonies in North America, Vol. I., (1835).9 Ann Cotton thus established the genre of eye-witness reporting in American Colonial history.
This eye-witness reporting of the development of history in Virginia in 1676 is Ann Cotton’s singular contribution to American Colonial Literature. Herein is found her contribution to character identity: the perseverance in being impartial in historical reporting. With Ann Cotton such a stance is predominant and often reflected in her work. Although not much is known about Ann Cotton, eyewitness reporting and the maintaining of an intellectual impartiality can be traced directly to An Account of Our Late Troubles in Virginia.
Mercy Otis Warren10 (1728-1814), dramatist, historian, poet, satirist, and patriot, hosted pre-revolutionary gatherings in her home. Her claim to literary fame was as a political writer who propagandized for the American Revolution.
Fig. 1.5 Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814), painting completed in 1763 by John Singleton Copley (1738-1815). The image is in the public domain. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mercy_Otis_Warren.jpg.
She wrote the only contemporary history of the American Revolution, a three-volume work History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, published in 1805, which was the culmination of her political writing career. This was an extremely unusual stance for a woman in the eighteenth century, a time when views on politics, revolution, and war were considered to be intellectual capacities reserved for men.
There were not many persons who had the education or the capability to voice their opinions publicly or to write them down on paper and have them published. Already before the American Revolution Mercy Otis Warren had published poems and plays. The subject matter was always an attack on British royal authority in Massachusetts. She incited Colonists to resist British violations of Colonial rights and liberties. Warren corresponded regularly with important Colonials. Among them were Abigail Adams, Martha Washington, Hannah Winthrop, whose husband John Winthrop was a famous astronomer, mathematician, and physicist, as well President of Harvard College (1769, 1793), a probate judge in Middlesex County, and a member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor's Council in 1773-1774. Furthermore, Mercy Otis Warren corresponded with Colonial political leaders to include Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and John Adams. Indeed, she became their unofficial advisor concerning many political questions. It is via this correspondence and advisory function that leading Colonials became aware of women's issues.
Throughout her life she was politically active as a writer. In 1788 when a national debate erupted over whether or not the Constitution should be ratified, she published a pamphlet, written under the pseudonym A Columbian Patriot, in which she opposed ratification of the document as long as it did not contain a Bill of Rights.
Although Warren argued and maintained that women were as intellectual and capable as men, she was not an early suffragette. Important and historical works by Mercy Otis Warren are:11
The History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, completed in 1791 is perhaps the only work by Mercy Otis Warren that describes the essential character identity that was necessary for Colonials to revolt against Great Britain. As an anti-federalist, she used the principles of the Whigs to justify the American Revolution, a time when the word Whig meant any Colonial, American patriot man or woman who supported independence from Great Britain. Such personalities are the Founding Fathers John Adams, John Dickinson, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, Paul Revere, General Nathaniel Greene, Nathan Hale, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. The principles of the Whig character identity are: the fight for freedom over tyranny; a government established by the people from the people and for the people, in essence representative government, with guarantees for individual liberties, in short, a democratic republic.
Abigail Adams12 (1744-1814) was the wife of John Adams, the second President of the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams the sixth President of the United States of America. Abigail Adams wrote many letters containing intellectual discussions on government and politics to her husband during his stay in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the Continental Congresses. John Adams very often sought Abigail's advice and logic on many matters. Their vast correspondence can be regarded as personal eye witness accounts on the political backdrop of the American Revolutionary War.
Fig. 1.6 Abigail Adams (1744-1814), painting by Benjamin Blythe (1746-1786), completed in 1766. The image is in the public domain: Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Abigail_Adams.jpg:
Abigail Adams was a staunch advocate of women's rights, specifically property rights. She also argued that women should have the same opportunities in education that men had. She was of the opinion that laws should have the same meaning for both men and women and that laws should not discriminate against women. Indeed, women were more than the wives of their husbands.
In March, 1776, she wrote her husband at the Continental Congress, "remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation."13 As pro-women's rights as she was, we cannot consider her to be of the active suffragette type that was to protest for women's rights at the end of the nineteenth century.
Abigail Adams also believed, as did her husband, that slavery was evil. More than that, it was a threat to the experiment of democracy in the American republic. She wrote in a letter dated March 31, 1776 that if the Virginians have a "passion for Liberty", why do they "deprive their fellow Creatures (slaves) of freedom."
All totaled, there are 1200 letters between John and Abigail Adams. They definitely constitute "a treasure trove of unexpected intimacy and candor, more revealing than any other correspondence between a prominent American husband and wife in American history."14 Joseph J. Ellis in First Family: Abigail and John (2011) maintains that "Abigail, although self-educated, was a better and more colorful letter-writer than John, even though John was one of the best letter-writers of the age.15 Ellis argues that Abigail was the more resilient and more emotionally balanced of the two, and calls her one of the most extraordinary women in American history.
When her husband John Adams was elected President of the United States, Abigail became the First Lady to live in the White House, which at that time was called the President's House.
Abigail Adams advocated property rights for married women, yet she was not a suffragette. Her main interest appears to have been in the field of education and political guarantees that women would be able to partake of an education on the same par with men. She also considered part of women's education to be self-education because they knew their capabilities better than male teachers who probably would not recognize their intellectual qualifications. Moreover, such an education would allow women to better influence the lives of their families. Abigail Adams was adamant in her belief that women should no subjugate themselves to laws that did not reflect women's interest and she definitely abhorred the thought that women should be a companion to their husbands only.
The letters of Abigail and John Adams are catalogued by the Massachusetts Historical Society as follows:16
Collectively speaking, the writings of Abigail Adams, particularly the correspondence with her husband John Adams exemplify the emerging American character identity traits of adversity towards fatalism; the effecting of personal energy in solving problems, limitless self-confidence, a staunch faith in free-market economics, the importance of education for both women and men, religious liberty, an unfaltering belief in equality for everybody, not the mere existence of a verbal shell with no core substance.
Judith Sargent Murray17 (1751-1820), an early American advocate for women's rights, essayist, playwright, poet, and letter writer, initially published her writings under a man's name to be sure of recognition and attention.
In her essay On the Equality of the Sexes, published in the Massachusetts Magazine in March and April 1790, she argued her position for the equality of the sexes: that women, just like their male counterparts, have the capability of intellectual accomplishment and have the legal and moral right to achieve economic independence.
Judith Sargent Murray wanted her ideas to become a fixed part of Colonial literature. She did not want to be recognized as an interesting female author. Although she used the female pseudonyms Constantia and Honora Martesia, she also wrote under the name The Reaper. One of her favorite pen names was a male persona Mr. Vigilius. She is also known as the author The Gleanor. It was under this name that she published her three-volume 1798 book of essays and plays titled The Gleaner (1798). This publication was so successful that it established her as a leading American author.
Judith Sargent Murray was a very early active proponent of women's equality, women's education, and women's economic independence. The Gleaner contains essays that argued in favor of the new American Republic, discussed American citizenship, virtues, and philanthropy. She protested against war and violence of all kinds, maintaining that her personal faith of Universalism was the key belief for humankind.
Fig. 1.7 Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820), painting by John Singleton Copley, (1738-1815), completed 1770-1772. The image is in the public domain. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Singleton_Copley_Portrait_de_Madame_John_Stevens.jpg.
Judith Sargent Murray was the voice concerning the proper role for women in the newly-established Republic of the United States of America. She was the Colonial and federal republic feminist. Particularly from her essay On the Equality of the Sexes (1779), we can conclude that women are worthy to contradict the stereotyped distinctions between male and female. Judith Sargent Murray would only concede that men had more physical strength, but not in every case. Women are imaginative, use reasoning, have a better memory, and are capable of moral and legal judgment. She was emphatic in denying "corporeal conjunction" between male and female minds and bodies. She was the educator's educator. Even as a child she demanded that her parents give her an equal education to that of her brothers. For her, education is the foundation for independence. She attempted to release feminism from the constrains of the elites and to educate the federal youth in an appreciation for the moral virtues of republican society, gentility, self-reliance, and sociability.
Judith Sargent Murray wrote on a wide variety of topics as the following list compiled by the Judith Sargent Murray Society indicates.18
Books
Essays