The Whites of their Eyes (23 page)

³⁷
John Eliot,
Biographical Dictionary
(Salem and Boston, 1809), 191–92; Edwin Monroe Bacon,
Boston: A Guide Book
. (Boston, 1903), 59. On Eliot, see Clifford K. Shipton, “Andrew Eliot,” in
New England Life in the Eighteenth Century
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 397–428.

³⁸
New York Gazette
, August 29, 1765.

³⁹
John Singleton Copley to Captain R. C. Bruce, September 10, 1765,
Letters and Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, 1739–1776
(Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1914), 36; Jennifer Roberts, “Copley’s Cargo:
Boy with a Squirrel
and the Dilemma of Transit,”
American Art
21 (2007): 21–41. On Copley, see Jules Prown,
John Singleton Copley
, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966).

⁴⁰
Burns,
Infamous Scribblers
, 353.

⁴¹
Works of John Adams
, 2:219.

⁴²
Fischer,
Paul Revere’s Ride
, 53.

⁴³
Important critiques of popular biographies of Founding Fathers include Sean Wilentz, “America Made Easy: David McCullough, John Adams, and the Decline of Popular History,”
New Republic
, July 2, 2001; and David Waldstreicher, “Founders’ Chic as Culture War,”
Radical History Review
84 (Fall 2002): 185–94. See also Ray Raphael,
Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation
(New York: Free Press, 2009); Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher, eds.,
Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic
(Chapel Hill: Univer
sity of North Carolina Press, 2004); and Gary Nash, Ray Raphael, and Alfred F. Young, eds.,
Revolutionary Founders
(New York: Knopf, forth-coming). On the family feud between biographers and historians, see Jill Lepore, “Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory
and Biography,”
Journal of American History
88 (June 2001): 129–44; and on a related feud between historians and novelists, see Jill Lepore, “Just the Facts, Ma’am,”
New Yorker
, March 24, 2008. On history and biography in the nineteenth century, see Scott E. Casper,
Constructing American Lives: Biography and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); and Gregory M. Pfitzer,
Popular History and the Literary Marketplace, 1840–1920
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008).

⁴⁴
Warren,
History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination
, 1:3.

⁴⁵
Oliver Wendell Holmes, “A Ballad of the Boston Tea-Party,” in
The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910), 247–48.

⁴⁶
That poll is reported in Brian Stelter, “Fox Canceled Hannity’s Attendance at Tea Party’s Tax Day Rally in Cincinnati,”
New York Times
, April 16, 2010.

⁴⁷
Arthur M. Schlesinger, “The Colonial Newspapers and the Stamp Act,”
New England Quarterly
8 (March 1935): 63–83. See also Bernard Bailyn and John B. Hench, eds.,
The Press and the American Revolution
(Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1980).

⁴⁸
Burns,
Infamous Scribblers
, 137.

⁴⁹
Schlesinger, “Colonial Newspapers,” 65; Ramsay,
History
, 1:61–62.

⁵⁰
James Parker to Benjamin Franklin, June 14, 1765,
Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings
16 (1902): 198.

⁵¹
The Declarations of the Stamp Act Congress, October 7–24, 1765, in Edmund S. Morgan,
Prologue to Revolution: Sources and Documents on the Stamp Act Crisis, 1764–1766
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 62–63.

⁵²
Pennsylvania Gazette
, October 31, 1765;
Maryland Gazette
, October 10, 1765;
Connecticut Courant
, July 24, 1765. Printers’ responses to the Stamp Act are also discussed in Tebbel,
Compact History
, 35–37; and in Jeffery A. Smith,
Printers and Press Freedom: The Ideology of Early American Journalism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 136–41.

⁵³
New-Hampshire Gazette
, October 31, 1765;
Connecticut Courant
, July 24, 1765.

⁵⁴
Boston Gazette
, November 11, 1765; Hannah Adams,
Summary History of New England
(Dedham, MA, 1799), 249–50.

⁵⁵
The standard account of the rise of objectivity in journalism remains Michael Schudson,
Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers
(New York: Basic Books, 1978). Pasley, who
counters Schudson, offers a summary of more recent literature in
Tyranny of Printers
, chap. 1.

⁵⁶
Benjamin Franklin, “Apology for Printers,”
Papers of Franklin
, 1:194–99. On Franklin’s printing career, see James N. Green and Peter Stallybrass,
Benjamin Franklin: Writer and Printer
(Philadelphia: Oak Knoll Press, 2006).

⁵⁷
Coverage, tallies, and predictions include
USA Today
’s Newspaper Death Watch, 2009; Paper Cuts,
http://newspaperlayoffs.com/maps/closed/
; Newspaper Death Watch,
http://newspaperdeathwatch.com/
; Mike Doyle, “The Newspaper Is Dead, Long Live the Newspaper,”
Huffington Post
, August 14, 2008; Bill Keller, “Not Dead Yet: The Newspaper in the Days of Digital Anarchy,” November 29, 2007,
Guardian Weekly
,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/nov/29/pressandpublishing
.digitalmedial
; and “Newspapers: Not Dead Yet?”
Seattle Times
, June 7, 2008,
http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/dailydemocracy/
2008/06/newspapers_not_dead_yet.html
. See also Leonard Downie Jr. and Michael Schudson, “The Reconstruction of American Journalism,”
Columbia Journalism Review
, October 19, 2009,
http://www.cjr.org/reconstruction/the_reconstruction_of_american.php
.

¹
John Adams to Benjamin Rush, April 4, 1790, Adams Papers, Letterbook, May 20, 1789–January 7, 1793, Massachusetts Historical Society, Reel 115.

²
John Adams,
Diary and Autobiography of John Adams
, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 1:100.

³
John Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, July 11, 1807; Adams to Warren, July 30, 1807; Adams to Warren, August 8, 1807; Warren to Adams, August 7, 1807, in John Adams and Mercy Otis Warren,
Correspondence between John Adams and Mercy Warren
, ed. Charles Francis Adams (New York: Arno Press, 1972), 21, 381, 429, 422–23.

⁴
John Adams to Timothy Pickering, August 6, 1822,
Works of John Adams
, 2:514; John Adams to Benjamin Rush, June 21, 1811, in
The Spur of Fame: Dialogues of John Adams and Benjamin Rush, 1805–1813
, ed. John A. Schultz and Douglas Adair (1966; repr., Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000), 197.

⁵
John Adams
, HBO, New York, 2008.

⁶
John Adams to Elbridge Gerry, April 17, 1813, in
Warren-Adams Letters
(Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1925), 2:380.

⁷
Jane Mecom to Benjamin Franklin, December 30, 1765; Mecom to Franklin, October 21, 1784; Franklin to Mecom, July 7, 1773; Mecom to Franklin, July 21, 1786, in
The Letters of Benjamin Franklin and Jane Mecom
, ed. Carl Van Doren (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950), 86, 232, 275, 139. On Mecom, see Carl Van Doren,
Jane Mecom, the Favorite Sister of Benjamin Franklin
(New York: Viking, 1950); Anne Firor Scott,
Making the Invisible Woman Visible
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 3–13; and
Neremy A. Stern, “Jane Franklin Mecom: A Boston Woman in Revolutionary Times,”
Early American Studies
4 (2006): 147–91.

⁸
Anne Bradstreet, “The Prologue,” in
The Works of Anne Bradstreet
, ed. Jeannine Hensley (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 16;
Boston Evening Post
, December 10, 1744;
American Magazine, or General Repository
, August 1769, 243–44; E. Jennifer Monaghan, “Literacy Instruction and Gender in Colonial America,”
American Quarterly
40 (1988): 18–41; E. Jennifer Monaghan,
Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005); Thomas Woody,
A History of Women’s Education in the United States
(New York: Science Press, 1924), 1:146; K
enneth Lockridge,
Literacy in Colonial New England
(New York: Norton, 1974); Gloria L. Main, “An Inquiry into When and Why Women Learned to Write in Colonial New England,”
Journal of Social History
24 (Spring 1991): 579–89; Joel Perlmann and Dennis Shirley, “When Did New England Women Acquire Literacy?”
William and Mary Quarterly
48 (1991): 50–67.

⁹
Jane Mecom, “The Book of Ages” in
Letters of Franklin and Mecom
, 100–101.

¹⁰
For admission and discharge records of the almshouse, see Eric Nellis and Anne Decker Cecere, eds.,
The Eighteenth-Century Records of the Boston Overseers of the Poor
(Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2007). Edward Mecom’s troubles with creditors can be traced in the Suffolk Files of the Massachusetts Archives, Boston. See, for instance,
Collson v. Mecom
, January 1737, Document 45414, Reel 163;
Perkins v. Mecom
, July 1739, Document 49481, Reel 175; and
Ruddock v. Mecom
, January 1765, Document 85880, Reel 274. Jane Mecom to Deborah Franklin, September 28, 1765; Mecom to Fr
anklin, December 30, 1765, in
Letters of Franklin and Mecom
, 83, 87. See
also
Papers of Franklin
5:67. Jane’s son Peter Franklin Mecom was the only one of her children to whom she gave a middle name.

¹¹
Papers of Franklin
, 3:306–8.

¹²
Franklin to Mecom, undated but 1748,
Letters of Franklin and Mecom
, 43.

¹³
Franklin to Edward and Jane Mecom, November 30, 1752,
Letters of Franklin and Mecom
, 50.

¹⁴
Articles of Agreement with David Hall” [January 1, 1748],
Papers of Franklin
3:263–67; Franklin to Mecom, June 28, 1756,
Letters of Franklin and Mecom
, 53.

¹⁵
Franklin to William Strahan, April 18, 1754,
Papers of Franklin
, 5:82. See also Wilberforce Eames,
The Antigua Press and Benjamin Mecom, 1748–1765
(Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1929).

¹⁶
These transactions are recounted in notes and correspondence in
Letters of Franklin and Mecom
, 57–64.

¹⁷
Papers of Franklin
, 1:311; 2:300–301; Lemay,
Life of Franklin
, 2:172.

¹⁸
Papers of Franklin
, 3:30–31; 6:123.

¹⁹
Papers of Franklin
, 7:326–50.

²⁰
Poor Richard’s almanacs for 1737, 1751, 1753, 1740.

²¹
Papers of Franklin
, 7:328–29.

²²
Thomas,
History of Printing
, 2:142–44.

²³
Gary Nash,
The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America
(New York: Viking, 2005), 62–63.

²⁴
On the Butter Rebellion, see Clement Weeks, Commonplace Book containing “The Book of Harvard,” c. 1772, Harvard University Archives; “Meeting of the President and Tutors,” September 23, 1766, Harvard University Archives, Faculty Records III, resolution 6, 4; Samuel Eliot Morison,
Three Centuries of Harvard: 1636–1936
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 117–18; William Coolidge Lane,
The Rebellion of 1766 in Harvard College
(Cambridge, MA: J. Wilson, 1906).

²⁵
Nathaniel Appleton,
Considerations on Slavery
(Boston: Edes and Gill, 1767), 19.

²⁶
Mecom to Franklin, October 23, 1767,
Letters of Franklin and Mecom
, 98; Mecom, “The Book of Ages.”

²⁷
Mecom to Franklin, December 1, 1767,
Letters of Franklin and Mecom
, 99; Van Doren,
Jane Mecom
, 90–91.

²⁸
Andrew Eliot to Thomas Hollis, September 27, 1768, in
Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society
, 4
^th
ser., 4 (1858): 428.

²⁹
Oliver Morton Dickerson, compiler,
Boston Under Military Rule, As Revealed in a Journal of the Times
(1936; repr., New York: Da Capo, 1970), 78.

³⁰
Benjamin West to Copley, September 10, 1768, in
Letters of Copley and Pelham
, 72.

³¹
Mecom to Franklin, November 7, 1768, in
Letters of Franklin and Mecom
, 106–7.

³²
Robinson,
Wheatley
, 17.

³³
Dickerson,
Boston Under Military Rule
, 15–17.

³⁴
Abner Cheney Goodell,
The Trial and Execution, for Petit Treason, of Mark and Phillis
(Cambridge, 1883). On slave rebellion and the politics of fear, see Jill Lepore,
New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan
(New York: Knopf, 2005); Vincent Brown,
The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); and Trevor G. Burnard,
Mastery, Tyranny and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).