Get the full ebook with Bonus Features for a Better Reading Experience on ebookgate.

com

Major Problems in the Era of the American

Revolution 1760 1791 3rd Edition Richard D. Brown

https://ebookgate.com/product/major-problems-in-the-era-of-
the-american-revolution-1760-1791-3rd-edition-richard-d-
brown/

OR CLICK HERE

DOWLOAD NOW

Download more ebook instantly today at https://ebookgate.com

Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Major Problems in the History of American Workers

Documents and Essays 2nd Edition Eileen Boris

https://ebookgate.com/product/major-problems-in-the-history-of-
american-workers-documents-and-essays-2nd-edition-eileen-boris/

ebookgate.com

The American Temper Richard D. Mosier

https://ebookgate.com/product/the-american-temper-richard-d-mosier/

ebookgate.com

Major Problems in American Foreign Relations Volume I To

1920 7th Edition Dennis Merrill

https://ebookgate.com/product/major-problems-in-american-foreign-
relations-volume-i-to-1920-7th-edition-dennis-merrill/

ebookgate.com

The State in Contemporary Islamic Thought A Historical

Survey of the Major Muslim Political Thinkers of the
Modern Era 1st Edition Abdelilah Belkeziz. Abdullah
Richard Lux
https://ebookgate.com/product/the-state-in-contemporary-islamic-
thought-a-historical-survey-of-the-major-muslim-political-thinkers-of-
the-modern-era-1st-edition-abdelilah-belkeziz-abdullah-richard-lux/
ebookgate.com
The American West in 2000 Essays in Honor of Gerald D Nash
1st Edition Richard W. Etulain

https://ebookgate.com/product/the-american-west-in-2000-essays-in-
honor-of-gerald-d-nash-1st-edition-richard-w-etulain/

ebookgate.com

Franklin D Roosevelt and the Third American Revolution 1st

Edition Mario R. Dinunzio

https://ebookgate.com/product/franklin-d-roosevelt-and-the-third-
american-revolution-1st-edition-mario-r-dinunzio/

ebookgate.com

Origins and ideologies of the American Revolution Mancall

https://ebookgate.com/product/origins-and-ideologies-of-the-american-
revolution-mancall/

ebookgate.com

Franklin D Roosevelt and the Third American Revolution 1st

Edition Mario R Di Nunzio

https://ebookgate.com/product/franklin-d-roosevelt-and-the-third-
american-revolution-1st-edition-mario-r-di-nunzio/

ebookgate.com

The White Umbrella D. Mackenzie Brown

https://ebookgate.com/product/the-white-umbrella-d-mackenzie-brown/

ebookgate.com
 I

MAJOR PROBLEMS IN
AMERICAN k HISTORY

lOughton Mifflin

Major Problems in the Era

of the American Revolution,
1 760-1 791
SECOND EDITION

DOCUMENTS AND ESSAYS EDITED B\

RICHARD D. BROWN
 ) ) )

Major Problems in American History Series

Titles Currently Available

Allitt, Major Problems in American Religious History, 2000 (ISBN 0-395-96419-9)

Boris/Lichtenstein, Major Problems in the History of American Workers, 1991 (ISBN 0-669-
19925-7)
Brown, Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1760-1791, 2nd ed., 2000 (ISBN
0-395-90344-0)
Chambers/Piehler, Major Problems in American Military History, 1999 (ISBN 0-669-33538-X)
Chan/Olin, Major Problems in California History, 1997 (ISBN 0-669-27588-3)
Chudacoff, Major Problems in American Urban History, 1994 (ISBN 0-669-24376-0)
Escott/Goldfield/McMillen/Turner, Major Problems in the History of the American South, 2nd
ed., 1999
Volume I: The Old South (ISBN 0-395-87139-5)
Volume II: The New South (ISBN 0-395-87140-9)
Fink, Major Problems in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, 1 993 (ISBN 0-669-2 1 680- 1
Gjerde, Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History, 1998 (ISBN 0-395-81 532-0)
Gordon, Major Problems in American History, 1920-1945, 1999 (ISBN 0-395-87074-7)
Griffith, Major Problems in American History Since 1945, 2nd ed., 2000 (ISBN 0-395-86850-5)
Hall, Major Problems in American Constitutional History, 1992

Volume I: From the Colonial Era Through Reconstruction (ISBN 0-669-2 1209- 1

Volume II: From 1870 to the Present (ISBN 0-669-21210-5)

Haynes/Wintz, Major Problems in Texas History, 2000 (ISBN 0-395-85833-X)
Holt/Barkley Brown, Major Problems in African American History, 2000
Volume I: From Slavery to Freedom, 1619-1877 (ISBN 0-669-24991-2)

Volume II: From Freedom to "Freedom Now, " 1865-1990s (ISBN 0-669-46293-4)
Hurtado/Iverson, Major Problems in American Indian History, 1994 (ISBN 0-669-27049-0)
Kupperman, Major Problems in American Colonial History, 2nd ed., 2000 (ISBN 0-395-93676-4)
McMahon, Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War, 2nd ed., 1995 (ISBN 0-669-
35252-7)
Merchant, Major Problems in American Environmental History, 1993 (ISBN 0-669-24993-9)
Merrill/Paterson, Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, 5th ed., 2000
Volume I: To 1920 (ISBN 0-395-93884-8)

Volume II: Since 1914 (ISBN 0-395-93885-6)

Milner/Butler/Lewis, Major Problems in the History of the American West, 2nd ed., 1997 (ISBN
0-669-41580-4)
Norton/Alexander, Major Problems in American Women's History, 2nd ed., 1996 (ISBN 0-669-
35390-6)
Peiss, Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality, 2000 (ISBN 0-395-90384-X)
Perman, Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction, 2nd ed., 1 998 (ISBN 0-395-86849- 1
Riess, Major Problems in American Sport History, 1997 (ISBN 0-669-35380-9)
Smith/Clancey, Major Problems in the History of American Technology, 1998 (ISBN 0-669-
35472-4)
Vargas, Major Problems in Mexican American History, 1999 (ISBN 0-395-84555-6)
Wilentz, Major Problems in the Early Republic, 1787-1848, 1992 (ISBN 0-669-24332-9)
 ^^^^^ * gc^, o

Major Problems Era of the

in the

American Revolution, I 760-1 7 U

(
MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY SERIES

GENERAL EDITOR
THOMAS G. PATERSON
 Major Problems
in the Era of the
American Revolution,
1760-1791

DOCUMENTS AND ESSAYS

SECOND I DITION

EDIT1 I) VA

RICHARD 1). BROWN

r\i\ i Rsrn oi i onni i ncui

HOI GH TON Mil FLINi OMPAOT

'nil \ ( w >
i t 'I k
Editor in Chief: Jean L. Woy
Senior Associate Editor: Frances Gay
Project Editor: Rebecca Bennett
Associate Production/Design Coordinator: Jodi O'Rourke
Associate Manufacturing Coordinator: Andrea Wagner
Senior Marketing Manager: Sandra McGuire

Cover Image: John Trumbull, The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill,
June 1775, Yale University Art Gallery, Trumbull Collection.

Back Cover Photo: Peter Morenus/UConn

Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information
storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the copyright owner unless
such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. With the exception of nonprofit
transcription in Braille, Houghton Mifflin is not authorized to grant permission for further
uses of copyrighted selections reprinted in this text without the permission of their owners.
Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein.
Address requests for permission to make copies of Houghton Mifflin material to College
Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 222 Berkeley Street, Boston, MA 021 16-3764.

Printed in the U.S.A.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-72005

ISBN: 0-395-90344-0

6789-CRS-03
For my students
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2011

http://www.archive.org/details/majorproblemsineOOrich
 Com cms

Preface xiii

CHAPTER 1

Interpreting the American Revolution

Page 1

ESSAYS
Barbara Clark Smith • The Revolution Preserved Social Inequality 4

Gordons. Wood The Revolution Destroyed Monarch} and Paved the

•

Way for Democracy 8

E H. Breen • Boycotts Made the Revolution Radical 13

CHAPTER 2

Society and Politics on the Eve o) the Revoluti

Page 27

DOCUMENTS
1. Venture Smith, a Connecticut slave-. Earns His I reedom, 1729- 1766
2. John Adams, a College Graduate, Views Rural Massachusetts, 1760 ^2

5. Anna Green Winslow, a Schoolgirl, I earns Ahmii (,m\\ Ing I

p in
Boston, 1771 37

4. Philip Vickers Fithian, a Nevt Jersey tutor, Admires the Tidewatei

Gentry, 1773 40
/ S S AY S

Jack P. Greene • The Preconditions of the American Revolution 17

,v)
Richard R Beeman • The! mergenceol Populaj Politics

CHAPTER *

The British I mi

DO I I M / V TS
i i i.mk I in, (•/ a/ Devise Albany Plan of Colonial Union
2. Benjamin i rank 1 in Predicts the Plan ol i nion Will i all

'..
Ordei in ( ouncil on the Reform ol the ( ustoma § 6

l. Rev. rhomas Barnard i

ooks lo i uturc Glories I
Vlll Contents

ESSAYS
Fred Anderson • Friction Between Colonial Troops and British
Regulars 79

P. J. Marshall • Britain Defined by Its Empire 88

CHAPTER 4
British Reforms and Colonial Resistance
Page 98

DOCUMENTS
1. Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions, 1765 99
2. Governor Francis Bernard Describes the Boston Riot, 1765 100
3. The Declarations of the Stamp Act Congress, 1765 102

4. "William Pym" Asserts Parliamentary Supremacy, 1765 103

5. The House of Commons Questions Benjamin Franklin, 1766 105

6. Lord Camden (Charles Pratt) Exhorts Parliament to Change Direction,

1766 110
7. Parliament Repeals the Stamp Act but Declares Its Authority,
1766 112

8. John Dickinson Exhorts the Colonists to Opposition, 1767-1768 113

9. Charleston Merchants Propose a Plan of Nonimportation, 1769 117

ESSAYS
Edmund S. and Helen M. Morgan • The Assertion of Parliamentary Control
and Its Significance 119
Pauline Maier • The Townshend Acts and the Consolidation of Colonial
Resistance 128

CHAPTER 5

The Imperial Crisis: From the Tea Act to

the Declaration of Independence
Page 138

DOCUMENTS
1. John Adams Reflects on the Boston Tea Party, 1773 140
2. Parliament Debates the Coercive Acts, 1774 140
3. The Coercive Acts, 1774 143
4. Thomas Jefferson Asserts American Rights, 1774 146
5. Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, 1774 152

6. King George Proclaims America in Rebellion, 1775 154

7. Thomas Paine Calls for Common Sense, 1776 155

8. The Declaration of Independence, 1776 170

 1\

ESSAYS
Thomas M. Doerflinger • The Mixed Motives of Merchant Revolutionaries 173

Pauline Maier • Declaring Independence 180

CHAPTER 6
Fighting for Independence
Page 189

DOCUMENTS
1. John Adams Discusses Military Preparations, 1776 191

2. General George Washington Asks Congress for ,-\n Effective Army,

1776 194

3. Congress Calls on States to Support Continental Army, 1776 197

4. A Soldier Views Mutiny Among American Troops, 1780 198

5. General George Washington Explains Army Problems anil Calls for Help,
1780 200
6. A Veteran Remembers the Battle of Saratoga, 1777 201

7. Two Views of the Battle of Yorktown, 1781 202

ESSAYS
John W. Shy • Hearts and Minds: The Case of "Long Bill" Scott 205

Don Higginbotham • The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Militia 212

CHAPTER 7
Outsiders and Enemies: Native Americans an
Page 224

DOCUMENTS
1. Oneida Indians Declare Neutrality, 1775 225

2. John Adams Reports on Congress's Strategy Tow an! the Native Anuruans
1775 226
3. Chickasaw Indians Seek Help, L783 227
4. Patriots Intimidate a New Jersey Loyalist, 229
5. a Pairioi Urges Congress to I xecutc i oyaltsts 1776 229

6. i Newspaper Attack on Loyalists, 17 22»

i . Thomas Hutchinson < riticizes the Declaration ol Lndependeno 231

8. Loyalists Plead Their Cause to King Parliament and th< British Peop
L782 2n
9. Benjamin Rush Contrasts Loyalists and Patriots 171 236

ESSAYS
Gregory I vans Dowd • rherc Was No Winning Strategy foi ihc Indians

Robert w ( alhoon • rhe Loyalists Confront Civil Revolutionary *nd Pai :

Warfare 2 jt
X Contents

CHAPTER 8
Are All Men Equal? The African- American Challenge
Page 256

DOCUMENTS
1. Massachusetts Slaves Argue for Freedom, 1773 257
2. Worcester County, Massachusetts, Calls for the Abolition of Slavery,
1775 258
3. Lemuel Haynes, a New England Mulatto, Attacks Slavery, 1776 258
4. Lord Dunmore Promises Freedom to Slaves Who Fight for Britain,
1775 259
5. Three Virginia Counties Defend Slavery, 1785 260
6. Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, 1863 261
ESSAYS
Sylvia R. Frey • Slavery Attacked and Defended 262
Ira Berlin • The Revolution in Black Life 275

CHAPTER 9
Gender and Citizenship in a Revolutionary Republic
Page 287

DOCUMENTS
1. Thomas Paine Admits Women Have Some Rights 288
2. Abigail and John Adams Debate Women's Rights, 1776 290
3. An American Woman Asserts Women's Rights, 1780 293
4. The Declaration of Sentiments of the Seneca Falls Convention, 1848 294
ESSAYS
Linda K. Kerber • The Revolution and Women's Rights 296
Jan Lewis • Women Were Recognized in the Constitution 306

CHAPTER 10
Toleration Versus Religious Freedom in a Protestant Republic
Page 311

DOCUMENTS
1. Toleration Can Be Joined to Religious Establishment, 1776 312
2. The Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, 1780 314
3. Boston Supports Religion for the Sake of Order, 1780 315
4. Ashby, Massachusetts, Opposes Religious Establishment, 1780 316
5. Rev. Ezra Stiles, America Will Sustain Christian Truth, 1783 317
6. Philadelphia Jews Seek Equality Before the Law, 1783 319
7. James Madison Protests Religious Taxes, 1785 320
 /
nts \1

8. Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty, 1786 324

9. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, 1791 326
ESSAYS
Jon Butler • Was There a Revolutionary Millennium? 326
William G. McLoughlin • The Role of Religion in the Revolution 3 34

CHAPTER 11
Peacetime Government nder the (
T

Articles of Confederation
Page 341

DOCUMENTS
1. The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, 1781 343
2. Congress Passes an Ordinance on Western Lands, 1785 349
3. The Northwest Ordinance, 1787 350
4. Congressman Charles Pinckney Admonishes the New Jersey Legislature,
1786 353
5. Delegates Report from a Demoralized Congress, 1787 355
_
6. Hampshire County, Massachusetts, Farmers Call for Help. 1 357
7. Regulators Call for Popular Support, 1786 358
8. The Massachusetts Legislature Advises Thrift, Virtue, and Patience,
1786 359
ESSAYS
Jack N. Rakove • American Federalism Before the Constitution 364

John /.. Brooke • In Massachusetts All Politics Was 1 ocal in the 1780a 174

CHAPTER L 2
Making the Constitu 787

DOCUMENTS
l. Fames Madison on the Vices ol the Political System ol the i aited States
1787 190

i. l dmund Randolph Presents the \ Irginla Plan * os

*>.
William Patterson Proposes the New lerse^ Plan 197

i. ( ongress Debates the Nevt Jersey and \ irginla Plans 199

'

5. ( ongress Debates the Issues

ongress i
I
f
S 102
M>2
Demo* ra< \ and the I ov* ei House 102
Sectional Interests and Legislative tpportlonm< i nt M>3
Qua] it l< .it ions foi Voters 106
sl.i\ ei\ .Hid the Importation ol Sla\ es 109

<». rhe ( onstitution ol the I nlted States ol tmerl< ii i

Xll Contents

ESSAYS
Lance G. Banning • What Happened at the Constitutional Convention 419
Jack N. Rakove • Ideas and Interests Drove Constitution-Making 428

CHAPTER 13
Ratification Politics and the Bill of Rights
Page 439

DOCUMENTS
1 The Federalist Expounds the Advantages of the Constitution, 1787-1 788 440
Factions and Their Remedy (James Madison, No. 10) 440
The Constitution Is National and Federal (James Madison, No. 39) 444
The System of Checks and Balances (Alexander Hamilton or James
Madison, No. 51) 447
No Bill of Rights Is Needed (Alexander Hamilton, No. 84) 448
2. Antifederalists Attack the Constitution, 1787-1788 451
Richard Henry Lee on Why a National Government Will Be
Unrepresentative and Despotic 451
James Winthrop Explains Why a Large Republic Cannot Work 452
Mercy Otis Warren Offers Eighteen Reasons to Reject the
Constitution 453
3. Proceedings in the State Ratifying Conventions, 1788 454
Massachusetts Proposes Amendments to the Constitution 454
Patrick Henry of Virginia Denounces the Constitution 456
Virginia's Declaration of Rights and Proposed Amendments to the
Constitution 458
4. The Constitutional Amendments, 1791 (The Bill of Rights) 462
ESSAYS
Isaac Kramnick • The Main Themes of Constitutional Discussion 464
Leonard W. Levy • The Politics of the Bill of Rights 473

CHAPTER 14
The Consequences of the Revolution
Page 483

ESSAYS
Rosemarie Zagarri • The Revolution Advanced Men's and Women's
Rights 484
Alfred F. Young • The Revolution Was Radical in Some Ways, Not in
Others 494
Edward Countryman • The Revolution Rearranged North America's Human
Landscape 512
 Preface

As we begin a new century in a new millennium, the American Revolution and the
formation of the Constitution remain central in the history of the United S
because they continue to influence our understanding of American government,
society, and culture. Although historians agree
that the events of the decades from

1760 to 1790 were seminal for American development, when historians explore the
meaning of these events and their causes and consequences, agreement yield
controversy. Because the Revolution and the Constitution stand at the foundation of
the history of the United States and are essential to establishing the legiti :

of American political and social viewpoints, Americans of all region- . and

origins have argued about their significance for generations. The events themsc
are complex and multifaceted; moreover, they have been susceptible to dr -

interpretations that are at once reasonable yet conflicting. For the student, this may
be a source of confusion or, worse, cynicism. If, after all, scholars cannot ag
if the meaning of history itself changes from one decade to the next. wh) bother?
Why bother? This is a serious question that every teacher and student
confront. The first reason is that knowledge of the foundation o\ the UniU N
is an essential part of being an educated citizen. By studying classic American his-

torical texts such as the Declaration of Independence and the First Amendment, a

citizen can begin to master the vocabulary of American culture and to understand
the issues that face Americans today.
A second, even more important reason to stud) the Revolution m^ the Consti-
tution is to position oneself to evaluate the public claims thai politicians, journal-
ists, lawyers, the clergy, educators, and others make regarding the meaning
historical events. Anyone who listens to public discussion will find as
the Resolution and the Constitution employed to justif) a wid<
domestic policies abortion rnchts. affirmative action, gun COntl
tax support tor prh ate schools, censorship questions, em ironmcntal pi

national programs lor health and old age insurance In the realn

human rights, democracy, and freedom are regular!) invoked to justif) the

or withholding ol foreign aid and to support decisions

who seeks to judge the legitimacy ol these claims 01 who wants t<

reservou ol principles expressed in the Revolution and Constitution I

own arguments must possess a genuine familiarit) with what happei

\ thud and more personal reason foi studying the Revoluti
I nited States is to |o< ale onesell better in the nun ing Streai
Because the stud) ol the Revolution and (
'constitution permits on<
the essential features ol American politic nd cultun
xiv Preface

make informed judgments about where we stand personally in relation to the past.
As with all other historical study, it enables us to distinguish what is fundamental
and durable from what is transitory.
This new, second edition differs from the old edition in two important ways.

First, it opens up a wider variety of interpretations of the Revolutionary era by

using Gordon S.Wood's Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992) as a point
of departure and by concluding with new essays by Rosemarie Zagarri, Alfred F.

Young, and Edward Countryman that consider the long-range consequences of the
Revolution for American society. Second, the new edition devotes more space to
culture and society in the Revolutionary era. One new chapter treats colonial soci-
ety on the eve of the Revolution (Chapter 2). In addition, new chapters on women
and African Americans supply fuller consideration of the complex ways in which
the Revolution generated change in some ways but reinforced continuity in others
(Chapters 8 and 9). Throughout, new essays have been added to introduce students

to the leading scholarship of the field.

Among the essays new to this second edition are works by Barbara Clark Smith
and Gordon S. Wood in a follow-up discussion of Radicalism of the American Revo-

lution in Chapter 1. Also in Chapter 1, T. H. Breen recognizes the power of ideology

and economic interest in the independence movement. In Chapter 2, Richard R.
Beeman writes on the emergence of popular politics on the eve of the Revolution.
Fred Anderson investigates the friction between colonial troops and British regulars
in Chapter 3, where P. J. Marshall explores ways the colonies helped define the
British Empire. Pauline Maier explains the complicated interplay of external events
and political manuevering that produced the Declaration of Independence (Chap-
ter 5). In Chapter 7, Gregory Evans Dowd explains the impact of the interplay of
warfare and diplomacy on the Indians of the Ohio region, and Robert M. Calhoon
considers the Loyalist dimension of the fighting. Sylvia R. Frey explains the con-
flicts over slavery and the different meanings of the Revolution generated by the
war and its politics in Chapter 8. Chapter 9 includes Linda K. Kerber, who shows
how deeply unsettling the Revolution was for the politics of the sexes and the home,
and Jan Lewis who suggests the Revolution opened a path toward equality for
women and African Americans that was later closed. Jack N. Rakove analyzes the
national political issues of the 1780s that led from reform of the Articles of Confed-
eration to a new Constitution, while John L. Brooke tackles local and state politics
in Massachusetts during the 1780s that provided a catalyst for constitutional reform
(Chapter 11). Lastly, in Chapter 12, Rakove focuses on the profound conflicts over
federalism that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention faced. The path-
breaking work of these scholars stimulates fresh understanding and interpretation.
Like the other volumes in the series, Major Problems in the Era of the Ameri-
can Revolution, 1760-1791 approaches its subject in two ways: through primary
sources and through the interpretations of distinguished scholars. In both cases,
head notes provide background information to enhance the reader's understanding
of the documents and essays. Enabling students to confront documents from the
period directly is essential for grasping control of the subject. Nothing is so em-
powering, for by reading the sources, students can form their own opinions and
measure the explanations of others against their own first-hand knowledge of the
subject. The essays supply interpretive possibilities. Because they are written by
 x\

scholars who have conducted research and read widel) and deeply, the) bring a
sophistication to their topics that enables students to appreciate the complexity of
events and to form discriminating judgments. Such active challenges between
students, the primary sources, and the secondary texts encourage students to reach
a lasting level of mastery of the Revolution and Constitution. When hour exams
and finals have long faded from memory, knowledge of key texts nicfa as Common
Sense, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights endures, as does the
understanding that the Revolution and the Constitution represent more than simple
statements of democracy and freedom. Finally, further reading lists at the end of
each chapter will provide guidance for students who want to explore this period in

more depth.
I am grateful to the following reviewers for suggestions on revising the table
of contents for this new edition: Michael A. Bellesiles, Emory University; Holly
Brewer, North Carolina State University; Eric Hinderaker. University of Utah; and
Dane Morrison, Salem State College. Their ideas and those of Series Editor
Thomas G. Paterson and Editor in Chief Jean Woy helped shape the direction of
this second edition. I would also like to thank those who helped with the first edi-

tion: Fred Anderson, Uance Banning, Bernard Bailyn. Richard R. Beeman, Richard
Buel, Richard L. Bushman, Paul Bowers, Robert M. Calhoon. Jere R. Darnell.
Linda Grant De Pauw, Robert L. Ganyard, Paul A. Gilje, Robert Gilmore, Robert
A. Gross, Donald R. Hickey, Ronald Hoffman, Richard R. Johnson. Pauline Maier.
Gary David W. Robson, James Ronda, Thomas P. Slaughter. Alan Taylor.
B. Nash,
Gordon S. Wood, and Alfred F. Young. Regarding the actual preparation of the
Frances Gay of Houghton Mifflin's College Division has been a model editor. She
and her colleagues, Rebecca Bennett, project editor, and Maria [.cor, Main
permissions editor, have been cordial, constructive, and competent at every step
Finally, Iam grateful to my students, both graduate and undergraduate. The>
have taught me more than they imagine about teaching and about histOT} through
their questions, their smiles, their frowns, and even their blank stares. 1 dedicate
the book to them because they make it a pleasure to walk into the classroom.

R D B
Major Problems in the Era of the
American Revolution, 1760-1791
 .

CHAPTER
1

Interpreting the American

Revolution

The meaning of the American Revolution, and even a pn

itwas, can never be established with absolute finality. The n
dence and tor the creation of the national republic which — U
front about 1 763 to about 1 789 —
was too rich in its variety .

in its workings, and too heterogeneous in its participant

allow for a single incontestable and definitive interpreter.
the Revolution was the crucial event for the format:,
our current sense of the l 'uited States must always influence the wee, s in :
we see and understand the Revolution. Americans, who ha\
thoroughly investigated the Revolution, cannot view it with .

We can and do learn more about what happened, but we

meaning of events permanently.
Yet certain coherent schools ofgeneral re
accepted during the past two centuries
tinuing vitality of some themes and helps w
in perspective. It is reasonable to begin with th
was the earliest, most durable viewpoint i

Hon from the era of its first appearance in \

The Whig view was initially articulated r

pendence movement like David Ramst
otis Warren, the Massachusetts write' .

writings presented the Revel u tie

tyranny In the Whig interpreter,
expression, the historian am
Revolution as a heron strug*
chants andplantei
they fashioned a dem
the rest of the
American nation,
beginning of the twent

1
2 Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution

Although the Whig view has never been wholly swept away from popular cul-
ture, it was effectively challenged at the turn of the twentieth century by university

scholars such as George Louis Beer and Charles McLean Andrews, who, together
with their students, most notably Lawrence Henry Gipson, formulated a new
"imperial" interpretation based on British archival sources. They "discovered"
that Britain had never intended to impose tyranny in the colonies, and they agreed
with eighteenth-century British officials that in fact the colonists were a free people
flourishing under imperial rule. Independence, these scholars explained, resulted
from transatlantic misunderstandings and bureaucratic and parliamentary mis-
management. Although Britain was generally well intentioned, its system was
haphazard, and its officials were clumsy. This interpretation did not erase notions
of patriotic idealism or heroics, but it made them incidental. The key to under-
standing the Revolution, according to this school, lay in grasping British political
culture on both sides of the Atlantic and the inadequacies of the imperial system
for responding to changing issues and demands.
About the same time that the imperial school took root among American
scholars, a new, critical viewpoint was articulated by political scientists, essayists,
and historians, among them Charles A. Beard, CarlM. Becker, and Arthur M.
Schlesinger. Their views, which came to be labeled "Progressive, "focused on
economic and political self-interest as the central motives propelling the Revolu-
tion. Indeed, the dynamic forces that shaped the movement for independence and
the formation of state and national government were conflicts between merchants
and farmers, easterners and westerners, city dwellers and country folk, aristocrats
and democrats, creditors and debtors. Pulling patriotic icons like Washington,
Hamilton, and Jefferson down from their pedestals, Progressive interpreters main-
tained that the same kinds offlesh- and-blood political contests characteristic of
their own era were also operating at the nation 's founding.
During the 1930s and 1940s this interpretation became widely established,
in both academe through the writings of such scholars as Merrill M. Jensen and
popular culture, where the novelist Kenneth Roberts used Progressive ideas in
several best-selling novels about the Revolution. This interpretation made the Revo-
lution relevant to contemporary political struggles. Like the older Whig interpreta-
tion, it has retained vitality and is particularly attractive to critics of national
complacency and the status quo. But during the generation following World War
1 1 and in the 1950s especially, it was effectively challenged by scholars such as the

political scientist Louis M. Hartz and the historian Richard E. Hofstadter.

Their works, influenced by a more global perspective and by a comparison
of the American Revolution with the revolutions of France, Russia, and China,
emphasized the broad republican consensus that the Revolutionaries shared, their
commitment to pragmatic politics, and their affinity for practical compromises.
Here there was no significant right-wing party that favored a hereditary system,
just as there was no substantial support for social leveling and attacks on private
property. American Revolutionaries might argue over tactics, but they were, it
was said, generally united around the liberal, Lockean idea of a republic grounded
on widespread property ownership and a state committed to fostering individual
rights and opportunities. Because a mood of national unity prevailed during the
postwar and cold war eras, this "consensus " interpretation had an appeal that
made it popular far beyond the campus. As with the older Whig interpretation,
it was popular among journalists, politicians, and schoolteachers.

During the past generation, starting in the 1960s, various scholars have chal-
lenged this consensus view. One group, whose criticism of the consensus interpre-
tation is oblique, has been labeled "neo-Whig. " In the neo-Whig view, both the
 ItU: '
1

Progressive and consensu failed to take Revolution

Both regarded ideas as secondary, as mere propaganda or ration*
to manipulation in a political struggle where th

and political advantages were settled by pragmati —

whom Bernard Bailyn has been most inflm
the historian
material interests and practical politics but emphasize thi
Ideas, they maintain, shaped the Revolutionary*
thus guided their actions, hike the first Whig interpi
Whigs regard its rhetoric as expressing the actual belli !

a "public relations " smokescreen intended to mask their -

A second challenge to the consensus school has been

targeted the neo-Whigs as well. Labeled 'neo-Pi
historian Gary B. Wish has most powerfully articulaU
a republican consensus in the Revolutionary era and an influential re..

But the crux of the Revolution. neo-Progressives belii

rooted in the material interests first identify .

Jensen. When it came to mobilizing common men and women, the

not suffice. And the movement for republicanism, they m.
ongoing battle between democratic and elitist

consensus interpretation is too placid and the /:.

rately the blood, sweat, tears, and hard interests that the /'

In the 1990s, Cordon S. Wood proposed an in

that creatively combined themes front both neo-Whig and neo
p relations. His synthesis re-cast the time span of the Re.
the IToos to the IS ids. Wood's fw argument-
—
democracy was thai longed immediately as being I

men and too provincial, inasmuch as it was constn

winners. Yet it is a measure of \\ ood's achievement th
serves as the point of departure
'

final word, it

There is no agreement about how best to interpret the R

to new perspectives, elements of all the earlier interp
xpressedin books, speeches, anddramatu
and judgment, not only information, shape
hion their own interpretation of the
documents and essays that follow.

ESSAYS
( iordon s Wood, a professoi at Brown University, won .1 1

synthesis, The Radicalism oj th I

praised, bui n has also been criti< mse, in the judgment

celebrator) vie* ol .1 revolution thai laid the foundation I

imperial expansion, while perpetuating patriarch) and sla

ol earl) American history, the H

eral scholars ol V\

Clark Smith. .1 curatoi .11 the National Museum

from thai publication 1 he tm.il
torian who heads the Centei foi the Humanity
fresh interpretation ol the independei
and economic int<

American revolutionary community

4 Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution

The Revolution Preserved Social Inequality

BARBARA CLARK SMITH

The Radicalism of the American Revolution is a powerful and ambitious work, a syn-
thesis that aspires to reinterpret events that Americans have long seen as central to
their identity as a nation. Gordon Wood states his purpose in the title: his book will
explicate ways in which the American Revolution was radical, establishing that it
was, in fact, "as radical and as revolutionary as any [such unheaval] in history." But if

the radicalism of the era is crucial to Wood, it remains in his hands an elusive and un-
satisfying characterization. Seventeenth-century English revolutionaries toppled a
king and embraced startling, leveling, and millennial ideas. Eighteenth-century
French revolutionaries went so far as to abolish slavery and consider the rights of
women as citizens of the republic. And in early nineteenth-century Peru, an anticolo-
nial revolution produced the impulse to include Native Americans as "Peruvians." In
the light of such events, how are we to understand Wood's repeated emphasis on the
radicalism of the American case? . .

What were made the Revolution radical? Most obvi-

the characteristics that
ously, perhaps, was extensive and sweeping. No quick explosion
Wood means that it

of colonial resentment, American Independence had roots deep in the colonial past
and came to fruition in the experience of subsequent generations. As Wood con-
structs American Revolution consisted of more than the two decades of tur-
it, the
moil that consume a full semester in many college courses. His synthetic account,
he suggests, will offer a larger view. Some historians cite John Adams, who said that
the Revolution took place well before Independence in the hearts and minds of the
American people; others quote Benjamin Rush, who declared that the Revolution
would not be complete until the institutions of American society were transformed
in accordance with the premises of liberty. Wood deftly and ambitiously incorpo-
rates both emphases; his revolution is a long revolution, and it happens twice.
It happens first to a society steeped in the principles of monarchy. Colonial
America was obsessed with dependencies, premised on patriarchal authority, caught
up with degrees and subordinations, organized around personal connections and
political influence, committed above all to hierarchy. That society had republican
aspects nonetheless, for the colonies suffered from a weak aristocracy, unruly com-
moners, and a mobile population increasingly given to commerce and consuming.
These elements of republicanism became so pronounced that the Revolutionaries
were able to slough off monarchy rather effortlessly when the time came. But . . .

Wood's revolution occurs decades later as well, in a democratic phase, as republi-

canism (which, after all, was already pervasive in American society and, as such, is
not easily posed as an agent of sweeping change) yielded to democracy, as the pre-
tensions of aristocracy fell and the defense of gentlemanly merit increasingly fell

on deaf ears. In this moment Wood finds the "real revolution," a transformation
that took place in the nineteenth century. . . .

"The Revolution Preserved Social by Barbara Clark Smith. The William and Mary Quar-
Inequality,"
terly, 3d Series, Volume LI, Number October 1994. Copyright © 1994. Reprinted by permission of
4,
the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.
 Interpreting the American Revolution 5

As to what was radical about this, readers receive various and conflicting indi-
cations. Patriot leaders. Wood points out. adopted a radical!) new wa> of seeing
themselves and their world. Born in a society that reserved political authority tor
men of birth and breeding, the) imagined and dared to embrace the notion that men
of humble origins might merit political rule. . . .

Within pages, however, those patriots' achievement melts into air. Readers learn
that theRevolution was not republican at all. ... In the aftermath of the Revolution,
with the coming o\ the Jacksonian age. Americans faced the limits o( human virtue,
dismissed their Utopian ideals, and accepted the invisible hand of self-interest as the
basis for social and political life. The radicalism of the Revolution, it emerges, was
no! republicanism but its abandonment. . . .

Reserving the term "revolutionaries*' for an elite makes it possible, even nec-
essary, for Wood to leave out significant parts of the resistance movement. There is
a gap at the middle, at the heart. o\' his dual revolution. If he offers more than the
usual college course on Revolutionary America, he also otters less. A section en-
titled "Revolution" occupies twenty out of 369 pages oi text. Neither there nor
elsewhere do readers learn substantial amounts about these topics and events: the
Boston Tea Party, the Boston Massacre: the gathering o\ Sons of Liberty; women
mobilizing to disuse tea and lake up the spinning wheel: merchants and artisans ne-
gotiating over terms of nonimportation: committees of correspondence feverishl)
linking inland villages and seaports; committees o\' inspection cementing a cross-
class patriot coalition bv enforcing the Continental Association o\ 1774: wartime
antitorv mobs and struggles against monopolists and price gOUgers. In this revolu-
tion there is no heroism, delinquency, or treason; no one fought this revolution

i save George Washington, who took no salarv tor it). Although the federal Consti-
tutioncomes in lor discussion, the bulk of what counts as (he Revolution" in

many courses and monographs is barelv here.

Readers receive no picture of the unfolding of resistance, the moves and coun-
termoves of different actors, the reluctance of merchants and the energv ol arti-

sans; the tears of indebted slaveholders as thev faced fervent evangelicals and
unrulv African-American workers. Wood doesn't march us through the familiar
course of events, and tor thai we might well be grateful, save tor this effect: he has
therein omitted the means bv w Inch the patriot coalition, a coalition across region.
rank, interest, and belief, was achieved. . . .

There is tOO little here, lor example, about popular ideas

o! hbertv and popular

political tonus. Wood does not consider whether the relative!) humble patriots
who joined the Revolution activelv shaped the coalition And contributed then own
understanding ol events. II there was something radical about the eia. it seems, n
could not be the plebeian capacity lor interracial alliance, toi running away, rising
up. contesting the law, and others ise presuming then ow n competence to occup) a

public terrain, it there was something radical about patriot leaders, it could not be
theii capacity to all) themselves and hence negotiate with those beneath them on
the soeial scale So the long sweep ot Wood's Revolution, from colonial society to
Jacksonian America, lakes place at the surface, absent a careful account ol revolu-
tionarv events, absent the agenc) ol artisans, sailois. and foot soldiers, absent the
lull daring ol clue patriots, who staked then .ill on then inferiors' competent
resist constituted aul hoi it v and to commit themselves io hbeitv
6 Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution

... To accept much of Wood's argument, to follow his use of terms, readers
must absorb an imperative: although many things have happened in this history, we
allow only some of them to count. . . .

Indeed, it is noteworthy that what interests Wood most about African-American

slavery is whether that institution was conspicuous to eighteenth-century Euro-
Americans. Most slaveholders and others saw no evil, Wood tells us, as if that
. . .

were all we need

to know about them or as if theirs were the only subjectivities that
mattered. Surely African- American slavery was conspicuous to some Americans: it
depends on who was looking. . .

We might imagine a radical revolution in the eighteenth century, centered in the

vision and the acts of those Americans — patriot and tory, black and white —who
extended the imperatives of liberty from the imperial controversy to relationships at

home. The radical moment in some Americans' revolution came when they looked
anew at slavery. Although some Founding Fathers would still figure as revolution-
aries in this story and although the narrative would still unfold in the nineteenth cen-
tury, its center would substantially shift outside elite hands and elite vision.

One is left with the impression that Wood's purpose is less to discover Ameri-
can radicalism than to avoid acknowledging radicalisms of the wrong kind. He
plays down historical reservations about the market to suggest an unproblematic
relationship between ordinary people and consumption. . . . Yet in one crucial
decade, from 1765 to 1775, colonists high and low sought liberty by rallying
around a critique of consumption and withdrawing from the British market. . . .

Antebellum Americans were strongly evangelical, Wood says, but he does not note
that many looked to religion — as to trade unionism, political participation, and social
reform —precisely to give their individualistic, consuming society some moral
compass. Instead, Wood resolves the Revolution into a comfortable, democractic
nineteenth-century society that was, after all, good enough for everyone. What, in
the end, does Wood means when he characterizes the American Revolution as radi-
cal? At means that it was adequate.
heart, I think, he
Edmund Morgan once noted that most Americans seem to think that the
S.

American Revolution was "a good thing." Morgan's characteristic understatement

contains a wealth of insight. Few historians or others approach the Revolution
freshly. . . . Revolutionary ideas and events lay claim to Americans' loyalty. . . .

Americans do not have to accord sacred status to the intentions of the Founders to
feel implicated in the American Revolution or obligated by its commitments and
aspirations. ... In this culture, the Revolution has claims.
It is because of that context, I think, that The Radicalism of the American Revo-
lution remains insistent that for Revolutionaries we look to the Founders and for rad-
icalism we ultimately look to impersonal demographic and commercial forces. . . .

This book invokes the American Revolution as a powerful legitimating narrative and
attaches it to the socioeconomic changes of the early nineteenth century. There is

more to this than harnessing our approval of the Revolution to nineteenth-century

capitalism, making mobile, competitive, and individualistic elements of the Jackson-
ian era not just revolutionary but American Revolutionary, hence worthy of celebra-
tion and deference. . .

. . . Wood commits himself to overstating the impact of Revolution, constructing

a unidimensional, fully adequate revolutionary legacy. That commitment renders
the relationship between the Revolution and the freedom of people not initially
 Interpreting the Ann- 7

included in its blessing far too transparent, linear, and simple than it was and
remains. Wood's revolution takes too much credit. It slights the agenc> of those
who did struggle to end slaver) and makes it difficult to comprehend or even
credit those who opposed abolition. "American now recognized that slavery in a
republic of workers was an aberration, 'a peculiar institution.' and that if an>
Americans were to retain it. as southern Americans eventually did. they would
have to explain and justif) it m new racial and anthropological ways. . . . The
Revolution in effect set in motion ideological and social forces that doomed the
institution of slavery in the North and led ine\orabl\ to the Civil War." But Revo-
lutionaries and their followers defended slaver) too. Those who believed that
slavery was the bedrock of the republic were drawing on their Revolutionary
heritage every bit as surel) as those who cast the Constitution as a compact with
the devil. . . .

Wood silently rejects the argument that slaver) and freedom were less coinci-

dent, contradictor) growths than two formations that implied and assumed each
other, phenomena "joined at the hip." . . . Wood does not attend to the ways that the

bonds of slavery loosened and then tightened again in the late eighteenth and earl)
nineteenth centuries. . . .
[MJaking a defense of slaver) necessar) was not the same
as making a defense of slaver) impossible.
Yet Wood persists in constructing a Revolution and a Jacksoman SOCiet) suffi-
cient to all. In his account, women of an) circumstance figure largel) as an absence.
The Revolution failed to liberate women in this period, he notes, although it would
do so later. But the Revolution was not a transhistorical agent that could go march-
ing through the ages to bestow economic, social, or political rights on waiting
womankind. Women's inequality was a presence m the nineteenth century, and
present with were ideological versions o\ women's nature that have profoundl)
it

affected female Americans tor over a century. Take women's responsibilit) for
\ irtue. As Wood himself notes. ha\ mg adopted self-interest as the basis o\ politics

and society, American culture did not dispense with virtue but placed it under the
custodial care o\ middle-class women. At the same time that self-interest became
what participation in public life was about, women were given the virtue that made
it crucial that the) not participate.
Thus neither women nor enslaved African Vmericans were left out ot Ameri-
can freedom; both were included in it within critical, untree. a\)^\ arguahK n<
1
sar\ roles. . . .
This Revolution did not bung "a full-scale assault on dependency*
so much as a reformulation Ol dependence that banished it from the consciousness
oi the public world, set apart African Americans, children, women, tenants. mk\
other poor people, remade the \mciican state, recast tonus of participation, and
constructed a narrative ot the Revolution and ^\ Vmerican-ness without then .

rations, experiences, and agency. Such omission was necessar) and real, in part as

a denial ol the dependence ot the heads o! households, the SUppOSedl) independent

and sometimes even sell made men of the nineteenth century, who m tact relied on
the labor the) Controlled and denied in the home, the fields, and the mills
1 01 Wood. 1 thmk. such arguments appeal to be quibbling, stressing the things
the Revolution did not d(>. when in tact it accomplished so much 1 he Revolution
made possible latei movements tor abolition and women's rights -\uk\ m fact all our
current egalitarian thinking." he writes. Others would suggest that those movements
and that thinking ha\e also taken place against the weight of the
8 Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution

the Revolution extended and contained liberty. It offered a particular heritage of par-
ticipation, particular possibilities for public life, but not others ....

The Revolution Destroyed Monarchy and

Paved the Way for Democracy
GORDON S. WOOD
Smith, like other neo-Progressive or New Left historians, believes that radicalism
means "substantive change in the lot of those who were most oppressed, subjugated,
or marginal in the society." In her opinion, these most oppressed, subjugated, or
marginal were African-American slaves, women, and other "have-nots" on the very
bottom of American society.

No one denies that these groups were oppressed in various ways, as most people
were in premodern times, and that black slaves especially endured a subjugation
rarely duplicated in the history of the world. ... I do not ignore issues of slavery and
gender or of ethnicity. ... To be sure, I do not repeat . . . dozens of monographs on
race and gender over the past few decades, but I believe I have set these issues in their

proper context for fully understanding them . . . and have correctly set forth the essen-

tial challenges the Revolution made to the position of women and to slavery, includ-
ing explaining the origins of the first emancipation and the abolition movement. . . .

No doubt I would have liked or expected on the

spent less time than Smith . . .

lot of slaves and women in the Revolution. But I never intended merely to syn- . . .

thesize contemporary scholarship. Of course, my book does rely heavily on the

writing of many historians. But it tries to be much more than a simple summing
. . .

up of existing scholarship; it also aims to say something new and original about the
Revolution, to see it from an unconventional, if not unfashionable, perspective
which is why "the bulk of what counts as 'the Revolution' in many courses and
. . .

monographs is barely here."

What I hoped to do was press beyond the issues of contemporary scholarship,
which often deal with past oppressions of women and blacks in a very present-
minded manner, to retrieve a kind of oppression that has been lost to us. There
existed in the premodern world another, more general sort of oppression that I be-
lieve the Revolution eliminated, a comprehensive oppression that subsumed the
oppression of both slaves and women and in which all ordinary people had a stake.
This oppression involved all common ordinary Americans, including not only
blacks and women but white males as well. This oppression was, of course, scarcely
comparable to the particular degradation suffered by African- American slaves;
nevertheless, its elimination had to precede the elimination of the oppression of
women. The age-old humiliation felt by all commoners in the premodern
blacks and
world by no means as well known today as that experienced by black slaves and
is

women, and for that reason I thought it was worth emphasizing. Because this . . .

oppression of all ordinary people is not an issue of our own time in the way race,
gender, and ethnicity are, it is not easy to get present-minded historians ... to

From Gordon S. Wood, "Equality and Social Conflict in the American Revolution" William and Mary-
Quarterly, 3d Series, Vol. 51, 1994, pp. 703-716. Reprinted by permission.
 Interpreting the American 9

understand it. In fact, so absorbed in the present cultural wars are they that it is

inconceivable to them that any white males in the past, unless they were sailors or
homeless or very poor, could ever have been oppressed or have tell oppressed. The)
imply that only those who are oppressed or marginalized in our own time were
capable of being oppressed two centuries ago. It the Revolution did not total 1\ abol-
ish slavery and fundamentally change the lot of women, then it eould not possibly
have been radical. In other words, there is something profoundly anachronistic
about their conception of the Revolution, as far as it is expressed in their critiques:

they indict the Americans of the past tor not thinking as we think and tor not behav-
ing as we would behave today. Consequently they are unable to understand a docu-
ment as fundamental to the Revolution as the Declaration of Independence.
We cannot appreciate the radical significance in 1776 o\ the Declaration's ring-
ing affirmation that all men were created equal and had certain inalienable rights
unless we understand the earlier presumptions o\' Inequality and the contempt in

which ordinary people, white as well as black, were held throughout previous his-

tory. What was radical about the Declaration in 1776.' We know it did not mean that

blacks and women were created equal to white men (although it would in time be
used to justify those equalities too). It was radical in 1776 because it meant that all

white men were equal. ... In my book I wanted to get that point clear: tor once the
claim of equality by all white males was established in the eighteenth century (no
mean teat since it took a lew thousand years of Western history to accomplish), then
the other claims to equality could follow and. relative to the total span of Western
history, although not to our brief American past, follow rather rapidly.

So when Smith says that developments concerning social leveling are not cen-
tral to my story, or . . . that I exclude from my account the Ideals and passions ot

ordinary Americans, they could not be more mistaken. Central to my story is the
struggle of ordinary people to emerge into consciousness and prominence: indeed,
their emergence ultimately is what the radicalism ot the Revolution is all about.
Contrary to what these critics say. my account is not written out ot" elite archives
and is not merely a reflection ot northeastern aristocrats. They assume that I am tak-

ing the point ot \iew only of the Revolutionary leaders and the belter sort and ignor-
ing that of common ordinary people because I i.U) not talk about Jack Tars or women
in food riots or the homeless. The only ordinary people they can really conceive ot

are those on the \ery bottom whom they

ot the society, usually the society's victims,

sentimentalize and wrap in a nostalgic mantle ot romantic communalism. Common

farmers, artisans, shopkeepers, petty merchants, protobusinessmen those whom
today we might label "lowci-middlc class'* or 'middle class" these oidinary people
have no real place m then Consciousness.
Yet these sorts ot ordinal) people are the majOl actors m the Revolution A\\d
the majOl actors m m\ StOT) I he demographic and economic forces that I

talked about are not some supeihuman entities. Ihe\ are merely shorthand terms
lor the actions o! hundreds ol thousands ot these oulinar\ woikada\ people.
These common people did have spokesmen among the Revolutionary elitt

Jefferson was the most important ot these spokesmen Hettei than anyone else
had. Jefferson articulated out basic Vmerican ideolog) our belie! in liberty a\k\

equality, oui confidence in education, and out faith in the common sens
people Hut Jefferson was not aw ordinary working pcison he was a slave-owning
1 Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution

aristocrat who never really worked a day in his life — and consequently he never
fully saw the explosive implications of what he was saying. His words outran many
of his intentions, and his common people became far more money-loving and relig-
ious than he ever imagined. Certainly, he had little awareness of the commercial
nature of the popular forces he was leading.
But ordinary people themselves also became spokesmen for their cause, and
they spoke with a degree of anger and feeling that the liberal intellectual Jefferson
could never muster. I am thinking of middling men like William Findley, Matthew
Lyon, and William Manning, men to whom I devote a good deal of attention in my
book. These Scots-Irish immigrants, ex-weavers, ex-servants, uneducated farmers,
and all the hundreds of thousands of lowly and middling folk they spoke for
these are the real heroes and principal agents of my story. . . . These men were in-

telligent and tough-minded exponents of the emerging democractic ideology. . . .

They were the principal actors in Jefferson's democratic assault on the Federalist
establishment and other remnants of an older hierarchical society. These ordinary
people did not need the French Revolution to give their democratic movement its

momentum. They had enough indigenous rage and resentment to make their revo-
lution without the aid of a foreign model. They were determined to destroy the social
pretensions of so-called or would-be aristocrats like Hugh Henry Brackenridge or
Nathaniel Chipman or James Bowdoin and to establish the moral superiority of
their hitherto despised labor. . . .

. . . But Smith . . . can scarcely admit the existence of men like Findley, Lyon,
and Manning because such white males do not fit the modern definition of oppressed
people. Since the Revolution did not totally abolish black slavery or free women
from patriarchal dependency, it could not have been radical; it could only have
been, in Smith's word, "adequate."
How the Revolution could have been merely adequate if it transformed some-
thing as important as people's sense of equality and self-worth and their conceptions
of property and labor is not addressed by these critics. . . . The British historian and
socialist R. H. Tawney, for example, realized that America "is marked indeed by
much economic inequality; but it is also marked by much social equality." In his
classic 1906 account Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? German econ-
omist Werner Sombart illustrated this social equality by contrasting the American
worker with the European one: "He carries his head high, walks with a lissom stride,

and is as open and cheerful in his member of the middle class.

expression as any
There is nothing oppressed or submissive about him." More important than equal-
ity of wealth, says [Mickey] Kaus, is this social equality, this equal sense of self-

worth and dignity among people, a feeling of equality that allows people, regardless

of differences of wealth, to look others in the eye and treat them as equals and to ex-
pect to be treated as equals in return. Americans generally have had more of this

feeling of equality than other peoples, and the Revolution was crucial in creating it.

Correspondingly important were changes that the Revolution brought about in

people's conceptions of property and labor. These changes were linked and were
based on substantial transformations in the society. . . . Eighteenth-century gentry
were eager to acquire landed property or any other form of property that would
give them Such wealth was composed of static forms
the desired independence. . . .

of property that generated what we might call "unearned income" rents from ten- —
ants, returns on bonds, interest from money out on loan sufficient to allow its —
 Interpreting the Ante) 1 1

holders not to have to work for a living so thai they had leisure to assume the burdens
of publie office without expecting high salaries. . . . Their static proprietary wealth
was of eourse very vulnerable to inflation, which is wh> the printing of paper money
was so frightening to these gentry: inflation threatened not simply their Livelihood
but their very identity and social position. . . .

Not only was this kind oi proprietary wealth very hard to come by in America.
where, compared to England, land was so plentiful and rent-paying tenants so rare.
but commerce and trade were creating new forms o\ property that gave wealth and
power to new sorts o( people. The Revolution accelerated the creation of this kind

of property. This new property was anything but static: it was risk-taking, entrepre-
neurial capital —
not money out on loan, but money borrowed; was in fact all the it

paper money that enterprising people clamored for m these years. This was the . . .

property of businessmen and protobusinessmen — of commercial farmers, artisan-

manufacturers, traders, shopkeepers, and all who labored tor a li\ Ing and produced
and exchanged things, no matter how poor or wealthy they might be.

Unlike proprietary wealth, this new kind of dynamic, fluid, and evanescent
property could not create personal authority or identity; it was. said Joseph Story,
"continually changing like the waves of the sea.'" Hence it could not be relied on as

a source of independence. Once this was understood, then property qualifications

for participation m public life either as voters or as officerholders lost their rele-
vance and rapidly tell away.
This radical change m people's idea of property during the Revolution is

linked with similarly radical changes that took place m their conception of labor.
But this seems to be the wrong kind of radicalism tor my critics. . . .

In a world where aristocratic leisure was valued above all leisure being de-

fined as the freedom from the need to labor or to have an occupation the necessit)

ol earning a livelihood and working directly lor money was traditionally seen as con-
temptible. In fact, this need ol common people to work, particularly to work with
their hands, was what lay behind then degraded and oppressed position throughout
history. Even Native American males had an aristocratic contempt for common labor;
the) hunted ami fought and regarded ordinary work as belonging exclusively to their

women. Before the American Revolution, labor, as it had been lor ages m Western
culture, was still widely associated with toil, trouble, and pain i which is why
women's experience ol Childbirth was called labor in all European languages i. lo be
sure, industriousness and the \kx\\ tor a calling were every where extolled in the
colonies, and the Puritan ethic was widely preached but only tor ordinary people.

not for the aristocratic gentry, and only for moral reasons, not foi the sake ol inci
ing an individual's prosperity or the society s productivity. Hard work was good foe
common people; it lifted them out Ol idleness and barbarism and kept them out of
trouble. . . .
People labored out ol necessity, out ot poverty, it was said, and
and poverty bred the contempt in which working people had been held tor cent,

Hut changes had long been in the air, and enlightened cighlccnth-ccniui v &]

condescended to exi«>l the value ot labor much as thev condescended I e the

equality ot all men Just as the Revolution bee.une the occasion tor the w QOlesaU
pression ot the new importance to be granted to equality, so too was it the
lor the lull expression ot tins new moral value to be given to laboi
Ibis transformation in the meaning ol labor is a majoi part of what I mean b>
the radicalism ol the Revolution. Suddenly, all who worked foi .1 li
1 Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution

longer willing to put up with their hitherto degraded and oppressed condition. The
Revolution became an important expression of their strenuous and angry struggle
to establish their moral superiority over those they labeled leisured aristocrats
over those who work for a living or have occupations, over those
did not have to
whose income came from proprietary wealth, came, in other words, without exer-
tion or manual labor: landed gentry, rentiers, and those we today would call profes-
sionals. Many of these leisured aristocrats, having themselves so recently praised
the virtues of labor and equality, were in no position to resist this assault, and in the

North they were overwhelmed.

This struggle was what the farmer William Manning and the rich manufacturer
Matthew Lyon meant when they said the essential social conflict was between
"those that Labour for a Living and those that git a Living without Bodily Labour"
or between "the industrious part of the community" and those brought up in "idle-
ness, dissipation, and extravagance." Manning and Lyon are not yet talking about
the later nineteenth-century class conflict between a modern proletariat and busi-
nessmen. In the eighteenth century, hard as it may be for us to accept, rich business-
men like Lyon with many employees and struggling single shoemakers like William
Brewster of Connecticut saw themselves in a similar category as laborers, sharing a
common resentment of a genteel aristocratic world that had humiliated and dis-
dained them since the beginning of time because of their need to work. Eventually,
of course, this common category of laborers would break apart into employers and
employees, into manual and nonmanual, and into blue-collar and white-collar
workers — into, in other words, the modern categories and classes that New Left his-
torians like Smith are more comfortable with. . . . Presentist prejudices . . . prevent
them from seeing that my book is all about social and class conflict; it is just not the
social and class conflict that they have been conditioned to expect.
They are unable to see the social conflict and the radicalism of the Revolution
that I describe because the Findleys, Lyons, and Mannings and other ordinary white
males who are featured in my story were not opposed to the development of capital-
ism, and everyone today knows that one has to be opposed to capitalism in order to

be truly radical. This assumption that the eighteenth-century proponents and practi-
tioners of capitalism could never have been radical is probably the ultimate anachro-
nism. . . . There was a time, however, . . . when the development of capitalism was
regarded as very radical indeed. But to link the Revolution, which, as Smith says,
was "a good thing," with capitalism, which is "a bad thing" — well, that's going too
far: this "harnessing our approval of the Revolution to nineteenth-century capital-
ism" is to make "mobile, competitive, and individualistic elements of the Jacksonian
era not just revolutionary but American Revolutionary, hence worthy of celebration
and deference." Smith needs realize that what Americans thought about poli-
to . . .

tics and the economy in 1800 is no longer much with us in the late twentieth century.

It is quite possible for us to recognize that the Revolution and capitalism were linked

and that early nineteenth-century contemporaries considered both to be good things,

and yet at the same time for us to believe that capitalism today might need control-
ling by the government. That is what doing history is all about recovering different, —
lost worlds and showing how they developed into our present. . .

The democratic world of the early nineteenth century that I attempted to de-
scribe was not a world only of crass material strivings and obsessive consumers.
Throughout the book I was concerned with the different ways people related to one
 Interp reting the 1 3

another. By the early nineteenth century, it is my opinion that, with the general de-
nunciation of the monarchial adhesives of blood, family, and patronage and with the
perceived weakness of republican virtue and sociability as a means of trying people
together, many people had come to rel\ on interest as the principal and strongest
source of attachment between people. This is not the same thing as sa\ing that the)
cared only about money or consumer goods. . . .

This new liberal society of the early nineteenth century ma\ have been held
together largely by interest, which was no mean adhesive, but interest was not the
only adhesive. Not only did the older bonds, both monarchical and republican,
linger on into the nineteenth century and even into our own da\. but the Re\olu-
tionary explosion of evangelical religious passion worked to tie people together in

new ways and to temper and control the scramble for pri\ ate wealth — a point

my book spends some time on, despite Smith's statement to the contrary. M
evangelicals were not unworldK and anticapitalist. Quite the contrary: there is

considerable evidence that religion increased people's energ) as it restrained their

liberty, got them on with their work as it disciplined their acquisitive urges, and
gave them confidence that even self-interested individuals subscribed to absolute

standards of right and wrong and thus could be trusted in market exchange and
contractual relationships. . . .

In the three decades between the 1760s and the 1790s the religious landscape o\

America was transformed. The older state churches that had dominated colonial
society for a century and a half — the Anglican. Congregational, and Presbyterian
were surrounded or supplanted b) new and in some cases unheard o\ religious

nominations and sects. B\ 1790 the Baptists had already become the largest
denomination in the country, and the Methodists, who had no adherents m America
in 1760, were moving up last, soon to outstrip ever) group. . . .

These religions changes represented a radical shift in the American people's

social relationships and cultural consciousness. Because religion (and not the ideas
oi Bacon, Locke, and Newton as issued from the heights o\ Monticello) was still
the major means h\ which most ordinal") people made sense of the world, these
startling religious changes are some of (he best signs we have of the radicall) social
and class-ridden character Ol the Revolution. But there is more work to be done,
particular!) on this matter o\ religion. I have no doubt that the more we explore the
social and cultural histor) of the Revolution, the more we w ill discover just what a

radicall) transforming event it was. And it is not oxer yet

Boycotts Made the Revolution Radical

I H BR] l N

On the eve ot Independence, Parliament aggressively asserted

b) (a\mg the colonists at about the same tune that a \\ooA ot British manufactl
items transformed the American marketplace. . . .

B) reconstructing the mental framework that informed one ot the central

lives of the mid eighteenth centun in this case, an elaborate ston ol misundersi

I H Breen
No I, Jul) 1993 Copyright 1993 Reprinted by permissioi
14 in the Era of the American E i

American consumers — we shall better understand how the colonists came to imag-
ine themselves within an expanding empire of how at a moment of extreme
trade,
political crisis a bundle of popular ideas and assumptions about commerce sug-
gested specific styles of resistance, and finally, how a boycott movement organized
to counter British policy allowed scattered colonists to reach out to each other and
to reimagine themselves within an independent commercial empire.
In 1763. no one could have foreseen that the translation of a "Genius of Com-
merce"" into political protest would produce radical new forms of liberal community
in America. It was the unintended consequences of commercial ideas that made the

Revolution genuinely revolutionary. We shall look initially at the evolution of a pop-

ular narrative of commercial life and then explore the broad expenential and ideolog-
ical context in which this bizarre account briefly but powerfully flourished. . .

The first troubled response appeared in Boston. Although the author of an

anonymous pamphlet of 1764 entitled Considerations Upon the Act of Parliament
did not proclaim a full-blown conspiracy, he suggested that American themselves
bore responsibility for deteriorating relations with England. During the Seven Years*
War, the colonists not only have lived too well but had done so too publicly. Their
opulent consumption of British manufactures strongly impressed "'the gentlemen
of the army and others at present and lately residing in the maritime towns." These
outsiders learned that the Americans "spend full as much [on] the luxurious British
imports a> prudence will countenance, and often much more.*"
The next year, the commercial interpretation of parliamentary taxation acquired
fuller definition. John Dickinson, a respected Pennsylvania lawyer, traced the imper-
ial crisis in pan to a stunning misinterpretation in Great Britain of American con-
sumer habits. "W "e are informed." Dickinson noted in The Late Regulations, "that an
opinion has been industriously propagated in Great-Britain that the colonies are wal-
lowing in wealth and luxury." That conclusion, he insisted, represented a pernicious
misreading of colonial culture. . . . Americans. Dickinson claimed, were ordinarily
and mostly quite poor. British observers had been misled because the colonists,
"having a number of strangers among us."' were too generous and hospitable for their

own good. The Americans had "indulged themselves in many uncommon expenses."*
This "imprudent excess of kindness" was simply an ill-conceived attempt to impress
British visitors.
Other writers took up the narrative of commercial life, adding innovative ele-
ments of their own. In 1768. for example, an anonymous New York pamphleteer
situated Anglo-American consumption within a larger historical framework. . . .

Like other colonial authors, the New Yorker described the Seven Years" War as the
crucial moment in the development of an empire of goods. In its aftermath. Britain
turned the ingenuity of American consumers into a justification for parliamentary
taxation, based on the reports of visitors "who saw a great display of luxury, aris-

ing from the wealth, which many had suddenly acquired during the wars." . . .

In 1*768. William Hicks of Philadelphia heightened the conspiratorial element in

this broad folk discourse. It was no accident, he announced, that ordinary English

people accepted inflated estimates of colonial prosperity as truth, for unnamed

sources had systematically distorted reports of economic conditions in America.
Hicks protested that "the estimates of our wealth which have been received from
ignorant or prejudiced persons, are. in every calculation, grossly erroneous. These
 Interpreting Ou 1 5

misrepresentations, which have been so industriousl) propagated, are \er> possibl)

the offspring of politieal invention, as the) form the best apolog) lor imposing upon
us burthens to which we are altogether unequal."" This interpretive framework —what
was becoming for Hicks as conspirac) of commerce—carried extremel) sinister
implications for the colonists' happiness within a commercial empire. Boldl> linking
consumption and remember exact!) how Parlia-
politics. Hicks asked Americans to

ment had first wealth. Had that bod) not immediate!)

reacted to the false reports ()\

imposed new taxes.' Were not these revenue acts an ominous hint of future assaults?
Without money, what would the colonists be able to afford.' The plot was obvious.
The British wanted to keep the Americans poor, marginal consumers just able to pa)
1
the rising taxes but never "suffered to riot in a SUperfluit) o\ wealth.' . . .

Narratives o\ commercial life — a fluid assemblage <^( popular notions about

consumption and politics- echoed through the colonial newspapers, indicating that
the tale o\ hospitable American consumers and bemused British visitors. o\ luxui)
and poverty in a changing economy, had become a staple o\ popular culture on the
eve of Independence. ... By 1771, the argument for disjunctive between appear-
ance and reality had become standard fare. "A Friend of the Colon) of Connecticut"
explained in the New-Haven Post-Boy that "a large consumption of unnecessar)
foreign articles . . . has given us the false and deceitful appearance o\ riches, m
buildings, at or tables, and on our bodies. Which has attracted the attention it not
raised the envy of our neighbours, and perhaps had Us influence in making the late

grievous unconstitutional revenue acts."

Even as the contest with Great Britain intensified and the possibility of armed
conflict loomed, Americans maintained that the political crisis was somehow
related to their own participation in a new Anglo-American marketplace. Oik
ample appeared in 1774. The Reverend Ebenezer Baldwin ol Danbury, Connecti-
cut, published a short sermon explicitly directed to ordinal") farmers living in

isolated communities. . . .

. . . "In a COUntT) like this" Baldw in reminded the farmers, "w here property is so
equall) divided, ever) one will be disposed to rival his neighbour in goodness ol

dress. sumptUOUSness Ol furniture. eVc. All our little earnings therefore went to Brit-

ain to purchase mam!) the superfluities o\ life." Economic leveling in the colonies
stimulated status competition; consumer goods were the primai) means b\ which
men and women sotted themselves out in society. "Hence the common people here
make a show, much above w hat the) ^\^ in England" Baldw in asserted. 1 leie w as the

sourceOl profound cultural misunderstanding. '"The luxUT) and superfluities in

.i

1
which even the lower ranks oi people here indulge themselves,* the Connecticut
ministei observed, "being reported in England b) the officers au^i soldiers upon then
return, excited m the people there a \ci\ exalted idea ol the riches o\ this country, and
1
the abilities ol die inhabitants to beai taxes.* .
, .
Americans could still save the polit-
ical situation Ml the) had to ^U> was reform theii buying habits, putting aside the
imported goods thai had made them seem richei than the) actuall) were
rhe narrative of commercial life gamed w hai ma) have been a final reformula-
tion in I >.i\ id Ramsa) *s His tor) oj the Amerii an Revolution 1 1 789] I he South
( arolina physician and arm) veteran found ii difficult to understand wh) Parlia
men! decided to tax the Americans in the first place He located the answer in

Britain's willingness to accept "exaggerated accounts" ol Americans' wealth *'It

1 Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution

was said," Ramsay explained, "'that the American planters lived in affluence, and
with inconsiderable taxes, while the inhabitants of Great-Britain were borne
down.' " The culprits again seem to have been British soldiers serving in America.
"Their observations were founded on what they had seen in cities, and at a time,

when large sums were spent by government, in support of fleets and armies, and
when American commodities were in great demand." Kind Americans spared no
expense in feting their British allies in the great struggle against France. "To treat
with attention those, who came to fight for them," Ramsay asserted, "and also to
gratify their own pride, the colonists had made a parade of their riches, by fre-

quently and sumptuously entertaining the gentlemen of the British army." The vis-
itors mistakenly concluded that the colonists lived very well. It was a natural error.

These officers "judging from what they saw, without considering the general state
of the country, concurred in representing the colonists, as very able to contribute,
largely, towards defraying the common expenses of empire."
These various versions of the commercial narrative joined other discourses that
Americans invented to explain to themselves why relations with England had soured
so suddenly. Although other tales circulated widely throughout the colonies during
this period — for example, stories of massive political corruption in Great Britain
this largely overlooked account of eager, misunderstood colonial consumers pos-
sesses unusual interest. It represents an imaginative, often entirely plausible response
to two distinct crises in theAnglo-American world of the mid-eighteenth century.
The colonists had accommodate not only the demands of a new consumer market-
to
place that inundated the homes of free men and women with alluring goods but also
the aggressive Parliament that threatened to destroy a delicate commercial system
that made it possible to pay for these goods.
The commercial narrative that enjoyed popularity for over two decades effec-
tively linked these separate challenges. For one thing, it established a shared
chronology. Change accelerated during the Seven Years' War, setting the stage for a
cultural misinterpretation so profound that the Americans could never again per-
suade Parliament that they were in fact poor. The interpretation turned on the con-
sumption of English manufactures by Americans who were overly hospitable,
remarkably self-indulgent, and socially insecure. Versions of the story came from
all regions of the continent, from different classes and backgrounds, from people
who seemed in retrospect to have felt a little guilty that their own excesses had
given off such confusing signals. The narrative of commercial life explained that it

was not the goods that had hurt the Americans but, rather, their misuse; not the pur-
chase, but the vulgarity.

Historians have failed to give the commercial perspective proper interpretive

standing. Another body of thought has long dominated the search for the ideological
origins of the American Revolution. According to Bernard Bailyn, who more than
any other has set the terms of this debate, eighteenth-century colonists subscribed
to a controlling set of "assumptions, beliefs, and ideas — the articulated world
view — that lay behind the manifest events of the time." This complex mental frame-
work, often labeled "republican" marginalized the language and experience of
commercial capitalism. In this interpretive perspective, colonial Americans were
not trying to accommodate to a rapidly changing world economic system; instead,
 Interpreting the 1 7

they resisted it. The) condemned the modern commercial mentality. The) were
backward looking, suspicious of trade and banking, fearful of spreading political
corruption produced b) financial revolution in Great Britain. . . .

Historians critical of this dominant interpretation have argued that the colonists"
political ideolog) before the Revolution was more liberal and Lockean than we had
been led to believe. Others have tried to restore elements of traditional Protestant
theology to the ideological mix. but . . . tew seem comfortable with a political dis-
course that owed much to the experiences of ordinal) men and women in a new con-
sumer marketplace. To construct a persuasive explanation of the dialectic between
experience and ideolog) on the eve of Independence, one would need to address two
separate interpretive problems about which current historiograph) has little to say.

hirst, we should focus on the elusive relation between the events of everyda)
life and the stories that contemporaries invented to make sense of those events. . . .

Second, we should consider how artisans and farmers the sort o\ folk who
may have heard the Reverend Baldwin — confronted a mid-eightecnth-centur\
world that impinged ever more insistent!) on their sense o\ self. . . .

Local analysis, however, cannot be its own reward. Throughout recorded his-
tory, ordinary people have found that the) must express agencv within larger
frameworks, such as capitalism and nationalism forces that puzzled and fright-
ened, that demanded personal response, and that presented an unprecedented range
of choice. In mid-cighteenth-ccnturv America, the outside world often spoke most
seductivel) through imported consumer goods, and because the) imagined them-
selves within an empire of commerce, colonists who had previousl) not had much
to do with each other came to see it a matter of common sense to respond to the

disruption of their economic and political lives through specific commercial strate-
gies such as an ever-w uler boycott movement. Political actions grew out o\ popular
ideology. What no one anticipated was that mass political mobilization within a
consumer marketplace would radicallv transform how Americans construed com-
munity so that bv the 1770s their experience provoked them to imagine a powerful
commercial empire o\ their own.

Americans brought to the final political crisis a complex bundle of ideas about
the British empire that were products ol long commercial experience This set of
popular assumptions provided an interpretive lens through which the colonists
v iewed parliamentar) claims to absolute sovereignty. . . .

( )ii one pomt Americans expressed near universal agreement. Rie) believed
that the empire owed its ascendance almost cntiiclv to international comn l

that trade was the indispensable source Ol national wealth A\\d mihtarv power, and
thai trade even sustained political liberty. , .
,

Colonial newspapers regularl) reaffirmed the lesson Commerce distinguished

the British empire from othei empires, from despotic systems that could nevei
livei the peace, security, and coherence that eighteenth centur) Americans now
took foi granted ( ommerce is the most solid foundation oi civil the
Boston Evenin innounced in 'M iu this out necessities, convenien<
l

and pleasures aic supplied from distant shores; ever) region is amazed to find itselt
abounding in foreign productions, and enriched with a thousand commodities
known to it sell, and promoting its welfare and seiv in;' to make lite mo
1 8 Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution

Mid-century Americans imagined themselves within a great circulation of money

and goods, a practically Newtonian marketing system connecting them in mutually
beneficial ways to strangers throughout the empire. . . .

While the commercial model assumed balance and fairness within the empire,
the colonists —even before the crisis over parliamentary taxation —routinely be-
trayed a sense of their own vulnerability. American rhetoric often sounded more
anxious than descriptive. Writers seemed overly eager to persuade the British
perhaps their fellow colonists also — that trade did in fact benefit the metropolitan
core as well as the distant peripheries. The key to any positive assessment of impe-
rial trade was
the Americans" rising consumption of manufactured goods. In 1764,
for example.Governor Thomas Fitch lectured the people of Connecticut that "the
Colonies and Plantations in America are, indeed, of great Importance to their
Mother Country and an Interest worthy of her most tender Regard." The provinces
were partners, not competitors. "The more they prosper and increase in Number.
Riches and Commerce," Fitch noted defensively, "the greater will be the Advan-
tage not only to them but also to the Nation at Home." . . .

Colonial observers understood something fundamental about the imperial con-

nection that modern historians have generally ignored: mid-century Americans
confronted a situation that was genuinely new. Before the 1740s, few would have de-
scribed their relation with Great Britain within the framework of a rapidly expanding
consumer marketplace. After that date, the commercial connection became much
—
more invasive, more manifest a development demanding adjustment and accom-
modation and one that touched the lives of people living in all parts of America.
Contemporaries were fully aware of the changes that had dramatically trans-
formed the face of a provincial material culture. A quotidian world had taken on a
different appearance. People dressed more opulently and more colorfully. They
purchased more manufactured items that made them feel happier, warmer, or better
looking. ... "I am now forty-four years old," a "Countryman" told the readers of
the Boston Gazette in 1769. "and to see the difference in the times really astonishes
me. I never had, Mr. Printers, believe me, nothing better to go to meeting in, than a
pair of sheepskin breeches, a felt hatt, and homespun-made coat with horn buttons."
According to the Countryman, his neighbors now demanded "English-made cloth
that cost ... a guinea a yard."
Statistical evidence abundantly supports contemporary impressions. Trade
figures compiled for the eighteenth century reveal that England's exports to the
mainland colonies increased over 50 percent between 1720 and 1770. The sharpest
rise occurred between 1750 and 1770. . . .

Increasing opportunities to consume triggered intense print controversies about

the character and limits of luxury, the moral implications of credit, the role of per-
sonal choice in a liberal society, and the relevance of traditional status hierarchies in
a commercial world that encouraged people to fashion protean public identities.

Heated debates on these issues represented an initial effort by large numbers of

Americans throughout the colonies to gain intellectual control over the marketplace,
to make sense of their new experiences, and to bring ideology into line with a com-
mercial system that they found inviting as well as intimidating. . . .

This developing commercial mentality was neither premodern nor anticapital-

ist. Americans welcomed improved living standards, and they would have regarded
 Interpreting tht 1
^

calls to restore an earlier, largely subsistence economy as sheer lunacy. ... In 1761

[James] Otis observed that "luxury is a very vague & loose term, [and] it' by ii >
s

meant the important of many foreign commodities, the more we have the better. . . .

I know it is the maxim of some, that the common people in this town and country
lie too well; however I am of a quite different opinion. I do not think they live halt
well enough."

During the 1760s. Parliament revised the rules of empire in an effort to reduce
a huge national debt. For Americans, the revenue acts came as a shock. They could
see no compelling reason to tinker with a commercial system that seemed to he
working well enough. . . .

The escalating dispute raised fundamental constitutional issues, and while

Americans passionately defended their positions on rights and representation, they
also worried about their continued participation in the consumer marketplace. In
their attempts to comprehend the sudden shift m British policy, they drew as much

on their own recent commercial experience as they did on abstract theories of repub-
lican governance. The stories they told themselves about prodigal American con-
sumers entertaining British soldiers were a part of this general response. So. too.
were decisions about specific forms o\ political mobilization. The colonists evolved
instruments o\ protest w ithm a mental framework that was largely a product of li\ -

ing in a commercial empire.

The most striking aspect of the Revolutionary boycotts is their utter novelty.

No previous popular rebellion had organized itself so centrally around the con-
sumer. That the Americans did so is an additional indication o\ their modernity. Yet
historians have not viewed the boycott movement as problematic: it just happened:
it was a reflexive response to taxation without representation. And so u must have

seemed to most colonial Americans. . . .

The first boycotts o\ 1765 1766 contested the Stamp Act. Similar protests OC
curred in 1768 1770 and 1774-1776. Over time, the nonimportation movement
grew larger, more successful, and more democratic. Groups o( local merchants usu-
ally planned and executed the initial efforts, but the dri\ ing force behind the various
committees ami associations gradually passed to the people. Throughout the colonies,
extralegal bodies seized control Ol the boycott movement; as they did so. their mem-
bers increasingly spoke in the name ol a new ly constituted American public.
\\ bile the boycott was rapidly becoming the distinctive signature ol Vmerican
political protest, colonists began to resituate themselves in an evolving com mere ml
discourse. Then locus shifted away from reciprocity, away from a mutually benefi-
cial exchange w nh Great Britain, to outright claims ol American preeminence "I

think it may justly be said.*' boldly declared a Philadelphia writer, "that mi r

"'

|)\ll()\ol nil POWER VNDGLOIO < >l GRJ \l BRITAIN \Kl l UD IN VMERK \

II nots m the Midlands oi | Hi-land tailed to win parliamentary concessions,

American had anothei card to play: they could go into manufacturing themselves
I his had nol been a topic ot broad colonial interest before the passage ol the Mamp
\ci. but once ii became pan ot a general commercial conversation, n opened up new
creative possibilities Insistence thai Americans were capable ot satisfying the,;

consumei demand something that they would nol achieve foi many decades
made it easiei loi people to imagine genuine economic independence
20 Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution

Such plausible, though exaggerated, economic claims fed the boycott move-
ment, continuously strengthening the political resolve of individual consumers.
Local associations organized to promote nonimportation and manufacturing repre-
sented initial, often tentative steps toward a radical reconstitution of civil society. For
in point of fact, Americans of the time were experimenting with new forms of com-
munity, founded not on traditional religious affiliations but on shared commercial
interests. Only those who insist that preindustrial capitalism inevitably sparked de-
structive individualism will be surprised by popular attempts to construct interpretive

communities around a temporary withdrawal from an Atlantic marketplace.

The truth of the matter is that a liberal market ideology proved capable of . . .

mobilizing ordinary men and women into associations unequivocally dedicated to

the common good. As a "Tradesman" writing for the Pennsylvania Chronicle in
1770 well understood, civil society in America could develop from sources other
than republicanism. He explained that "as we form a considerable, independent,
and respectable Body of the People, we certainly have an equal Right to enter into

Agreements and Resolutions with others for the public Good, in a sober, orderly
Manner, becoming Freemen and loyal Subjects. [L]et us determine, for the . . .

Good of the Whole, to strengthen the Hands of the Patriotic Majority, by agreeing
not to purchase British Goods" . . .

The nonimportation movement — in effect, a communal experiment in applied

ideology —exposed To
a radical egalitarian strand within the commercial discourse.
appreciate this development one must remember
consumer market of the that the
mid-eighteenth century was open to almost any white person able to pay the price.
Generous credit, paper currency, and newspaper advertisements encouraged broad
participation. Usually, free producers were also consumers. And on the eve of Rev-
olution, the success of the colonial boycotts depended on all these consumers
temporarily deciding to become nonconsumers. The argument for the liberating
possibilities of agency in the new Anglo-American marketplace is not intended to
mitigate the exploitative and oppressive effects of eighteenth-century capitalism.
The development of an Atlantic economy meant that African-American slaves and
indentured servants —indeed, unfree people of all sorts —worked very hard, often un-
der extremely harsh conditions. New forms of self- fashioning were built on the suf-
fering of laborers in England and America who made mass consumption possible.
Since in the politicization of private economic choice every free voice counted,
it is not surprising that the promoters of the boycott movement tried to legitimate
their activities through appeals to the popular will. They presumed to speak for the
majority, however defined. Exclusiveness ran counter to the spirit of this powerful
mobilizing. discourse, and it was a happy moment when a town could report as —
did Norwich, Connecticut, in September 1770-that "there was as full a Town
Meeting as [was] ever known when the Town voted, almost unanimously, to adhere
to their .Non-Importation Agreement."
. .

The so-called subscription lists also testify to the egalitarian thrust of eighteenth-
century commercial thought. These instruments extended the boycott movement to
large numbers of people who normally would not have had a voice in public affairs.
The lists presented individual consumers with a formal declaration of purpose, fol-
lowed by an oath or pledge. The goal of subscription was in part indoctrination.
The forms reviewed a growing catalogue of grievances and announced that in the
 Interpreting the American Revolution 21

short term only nonimportation could preserve liberty and property. More signifi-
cant, the ritual of signing gave birth to new collectivities. The ordinary consumer
who accepted the logic of the argument and signed the paper thereby volunteered
to support a community protest.

Surviving subscriptions resonate with religious as well as contractual lan-

guage. A Boston agreement drafted in 1767 announced that all signers: "do
promise and engage, to and with each other,
encourage the Use and that we will

(Onsumption of all Articles manufactured in any of the British American Colonies.

and more especially in this Province: and that we will not purchase Articles . . . . . .

from abroad." A 1773 South Carolina subscription sounded remarkably similar to

that o( Boston. . . .

The subscription campaign caught the public interest. Numbers provide an

index of political success. . . .

One person's signature seems to have been as desirable an another's. In 1767,

Boston town officials specifically urged "Persons o\' all Ranks"* to come forward.
and in Annapolis. Maryland, people circulating "our Association-Paper" predicted
that colonists o\ "every Degree" would sign it. The South-Carolina Gazette even re-

ported that New York, "The Sense of the People was taken b\ Subscription, and
in

near 800 Names got. about 300 oi' the People without a single Shilling Property"
Even more significant, the subscription movement actively involved women. It
was as consumers participating in new interpretive communities thai American
women first gained a political voice. Although men amy have pushed women to the
margins ol formal protest, so that they had to organize their own subscriptions,
women made the most of this opportunity. In 1770. for example, a group o\ Boston
women drew up an agreement "against drinking foreign One hundred n \.""

twenty-six "young Ladies'* announced: "We the Daughters of those Patriots who
have and now do appear for the public Interest . . . do with Pleasure engage with
them m denying ourselves the drinking o\ foreign lea. in hopes to frustrate a Plan
that tends to deprive the whole Community o\ their all that is valuable in Life."
Another Boston subscription gained the signatures o\ 300 "Mistresses of the

Spective families.*" The next week. I 10 more names appeared. In I 774, the women
of Charleston, South Carolina, formed an association and. according to the local

newspaper, "are subscribing to it very fast."

These innovative efforts to bring people into the boycott remind us that

COnsumer-based actions were inherently more open than were the traditional polit-
ical ones accessible only to white males with property Peter Oliver, the Boston
loyalist . . . was highly diverting, to see the names & maiks. to the
claimed that "it

Subset iption, el Porters & Washing Women." Oliver ridiculed SUCh aeti\ Hies How
could persons outside polities evei hope to have then opinions on important issues
taken seriously? But the poor laborers o! Boston women as well as men knew
what they weie doing. Iheu "names & marks*' testify to their membership in a new
volitional community that people of Oliver's status could nevei comprehend.
Subscription should he seen, therefore, as an instrument through which the
colonists explored the limits ol democratic participation Vppearing on the mai
ol mainstream political discourse, the populai lists raised the issue ol politics
elusi\it\. Did the men and women who signed the papers, fol c\amp uil\

represent the people '

ii they did not, then foi whom did they speak
'
22 Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution

During the summer of 1770, the New York boycott movement hotly debated the
issue of democratic participation. After Parliament repealed the Townshend duties,
thus dropping all taxes except that on tea, the major import merchants of the city
agitated to renew trade as soon as possible. Delays in reestablishing English con-
tacts might give competitors in Philadelphia or Boston a huge advantage. But how-
ever much the New York merchants wanted to turn a profit, they could not bring
themselves unilaterally to break the local nonimportant agreement. What they
needed at this decisive moment was authorization from the people, and this they de-
termined to obtain through a public opinion poll of consumers —perhaps the first
such effort conducted in America. If they could demonstrate with quantitative evi-
dence that the public wanted to rescind the boycott, the merchants knew they would
be safe. The tactic worked. Polling papers carried though the city wards revealed
that a majority of the people of New York supported a greatly modified boycott that
allowed the merchants to import virtually everything except British tea.

The radical leaders of New York found themselves confronted with a quandary
that has haunted democratic theorists since ancient Greece. How does a minority
respond when it is certain that the majority has made a mistake? The obvious ploy
was to declare the poll a fraud, and over several months the supporters of a contin-
ued boycott did just that. They happened away at the merchants' sham democ-
total

racy. The author of "A Protest" in the New-York Mercury argued that the reported
numbers were not credible. "It appears from the Ward-Lists," the writer charged,
"that only 794 Persons in this populous City, including all Ranks, and both Sexes;
declared for the Affirmative of the Question." It is particularly significant for my
argument that this writer assumed that a true canvass of colonial consumers —even
one involving complex political issues —required inclusiveness, full participation
by women as well as men, the poor as well as the rich. . . .

During "A Citizen" produced a pointed defense of open, egali-

this contest,

tarian procedures in a politicized consumer marketplace. To appreciate fully his

contribution to the liberal discourse, we must remember that A Citizen was dis-
cussing civic responsibility within a commercial public sphere of quite recent
invention — in other words, within a popular political arena that was just begin-
ning to express itself apart from traditional institutions of governance. The mer-
chant canvass of New York brought theory into contact with events, helping
ordinary men and women better to appreciate the interdependence of liberty and
commerce. "Will it excuse this City to the rest of the World," A Citizen asked, "if
it should appear that a Majority of the Inhabitants concurred in desiring to break
thro' the [nonimportation] Agreement?" He argued through interrogation, with
hard questions leading to harder ones until the logic of the performance seemed
irrefutable. "Supposing there is a Majority, (which is not admitted)," he inquired
of the merchants,

was it fairly and properly obtained? Was that Opinion given and subscribed with due
Deliberation, Knowledge and Freedom? Or were not a very considerable Number of
the Subscribers, influenced and determined, by your Persuasions and Representations,
or by submitting their Opinions to be guided by your Advice and superior Judgment?
Can opinions so given and obtained, properly be called the Voice of the People,
or given a Sanction to the Dissolution of an Agreement of such immense Weight and
Importance? . . .
 Interpreting the Ame r
23

Americans of different backgrounds and regions regularl) insisted that with-

out "virtue" their cause had no chance whatsoever. Virtue was the social glue that
kept the newly formed liberal communities from fragmenting. Colonists who
signed the subscriptions, supported the boycotts of British goods, and marched the
streets carrying banners proclaiming "Liberty and Non-ImpOltation" assumed that
their protests mobilized virtuous people.
Eighteenth-century virtue claims two distinguished genealogies. J G \ \'

traces it back to the Florentine world o\ \\^l-o\o Maehiavelh. arguing that the sinu-
ous citizen was man whose landed wealth enabled him to rise above the corn.:
a

influences of commerce and therehv preserve the puritv ol republican government.

Such historians as Edmund S. Morgan associate eighteenth-centur) virtue with the
so-called Protestant Ethic. While both positions possess merit — indeed, political
discourse on the eve of the Revolution seems to have drawn on both traditions — the
virtue that resonated through the entire boycott movement was closer to what I \

Home provocatively labels •"bourgeois virtue.*'

When advocates o( nonimportation spoke of virtue, the) referred pnmanlv to

a personal attribute. A virtuous man or woman was one who voluntanlv {

self-restraint in the consumer marketplace. Such behavior represented a -

No one denied the desirability of the new manufactured items. But however ap:

ing the British imports were, the virtuous person exercised self-control tor the
common good. . . .

This rather straightforward sense o\ market v irtue that developed throughout the
colonies before Independence had important implications tor political mohili/..
Anyone who regularly purchased manufactured goods from Great Britain could be-
come virtuous simply by Controlling consumption. The concept thus linked ever',
experience and behav ioi w ith a hroadlv shared sense of the comn
did with one's monev mattered VCT) much to the entire community, tor in this highlx
charged atmosphere, economic self-indulgence became a glaring pub! |
t like

CincinnatUS, the bourgeois patriot did not reach immediatelv tor the - . first

examined the household budget. . The H translated market v irtue into

"
a direct all to action: "Save yOUI Monev and you save yoill Countrv
for all their insistence on voluntarism, the proponents ol nommpe
v eloped a potentiallv coercive understanding ol political obligat:

individual consumer COUld exercise his or her tree will and ignore
those who supported the boveotts. But one therebv surrender
others for the destruction ol political liberty. Membership m a comn
implied responsibilities to the largei collects it)

Withm the framework ol bourgeois virtue, organizer

subscription drives created a new political abstraction thai

nificance in the coming ol the Ann"

mem constructed a "public," mii imagined

bv renouncing British goods and thUS earned the light

less virtuous In the American colonies this ma

to creating what I

space was an arena in which intellectuals

pares ol the new Iv founded Ult
24 Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution

the absolutist state. These independent critics addressed a growing audience of

literate men and women name of the public. The public an abstract body
in the —
that never actually —
assembled was composed of reasonable persons, individuals
open to liberal argument and hostile to the arbitrary exercise of power. . . .

When vicious consumers were caught with British manufactured goods, it was
bourgeois virtue that held them accountable, often demanding full confession and
restitution. A New York City merchant, Alexander Robertson, who violated the boy-
cott, had to publish a broadside addressed specifically "To the publick." A chas-
tened Robertson stated, "As I have justly incurred the Resentment of my Fellow
Citizens, from my Behaviour, as set forth in an Advertisement, of great Importance
to the Publick, assuring them that I am truly sorry for the Part I have acted; declare
and promise that I never will again attempt an Act contrary to the true Interest and
Resolutions of the People zealous in the Cause of Virtue and Liberty." He closed
with a pathetic appeal to "the Publick in general to believe me."
Such local conversations —however painful for the likes of Robertson
encouraged virtuous consumers to imagine even larger collectivities. The process
was slow, halting, punctuated by self-doubt and mutual recrimination, but during
the run-up to Independence, Americans living in scattered communities managed to
reach out convincingly to distant strangers, to persons not directly known but
assumed to share in the development of a new consumer marketplace. The initial

boycott experiments of the 1760s persuaded the colonists of the need for broader,
more effective alliances. They learned about each other through the weekly news-
papers that were themselves both a product and a voice of expanding commerce. . .

The collapse of nonimportation in 1770 left Americans in a sour mood. As they

assessed the failure to wean themselves from British goods, they momentarily
doubted their moral ability to create a truly virtuous state. Their self-deprecatory
statements during this period seem to echo the anticommercial rhetoric of republi-
can discourse, persuading some modern historians, at least, that preindustrial capi-
talism and the public good were in fact incompatible. What, inquired one newspaper
essay, can the colonists learn from recent defection from the boycott?

That self-interest is irresistible.

That liberty and public good can stand no change among men when self-interest is

its rival.

That self-interest recommends the most underhanded schemes to every man's

good conscience. . . .

—
Such statements and they were common should not be interpreted as evi- —
dence that Americans rejected either preindustrial capitalism or the consumer mar-
ketplace. The renunciation of excess in the market made sense only in a society
that took consumption for granted. The challenge for Revolutionary Americans was
to negotiate between extreme self-indulgence and primitive simplicity. It involved
mediation, not repudiation. . . .

In any case, the cries of the pessimists were unfounded. They misread the com-
mercial changes sweeping American society and therefore underestimated the capac-
ity of men and women to translate individual market behavior into mass political

protest. The delegates to the First Continental Congress did not make that mistake.

They appreciated the centrality of consumption in mobilizing persons of different

 Interpreting the American ;

regions and social backgrounds. On October 20. 1774. Congress authorized the
Association, a broad network o\' local elected committees entrusted with the total

enforcement of nonimportation. These bodies became in effect, "'committees of pub-

lic safety." At the moment of decision about ultimate political loyalties, the colonists'

friends and neighbors were bus) monitoring commercial behavior and enforcing
bourgeois virtue in the name o\ the common \io(k\. "We need only fight our Own
selves," announced "A Carolinian"' in 1774, "suppress tor a while our Lu\ur> and
Corruption, and wield the Arms of Sell Denial in our own Houses, to obtain the
tory. . . . And the Man who would not refuse himself a fine Coat, to save his Country,
deserves to be hanged."

We have traced a complex flow o\ ideas into actions, of shared assumptions

about a commercial empire into forms of political resistance. This was most eertaml)
not the only route from experience and ideolog) to revolution. Other, more cele-
brated political discourses helped Americans make sense out o\ rapidl) changing
social and economic conditions within the British empire. In this particular explo-
ration, however, we have reconstituted a frame of reference that defined itself around
participation in a newly established consumer marketplace. This focus powerfully
illuminates how the great shaping forces o\ histor) - -commercial capitalism, tor

example — impinged on the lives of ordinary men and women, compelling them to

reimagine themselves within a larger polity, lor consuming Americans, the mental
process had unintended results: the creation of political instruments open to pel S

o\ "all ranks." thedevelopment o( a concept ol virtue that included an\ man or

woman capable of economic self-restraint, and the formation of new lnireprctivc
communities based on shared, secular interests.

FURTHER READING
Bernard Bailyn, Faces oj Revolution: Persona
Independence 1 1990)
. I he Ideological Origins <>t th
Thomas C. Barrow, "The American Revolution ( onsidei
dence" William one
Richard Hud Jr., "Democracy and the American Revolution \ I i

Edwin G Humous and Michael Walli

/'
tional Liberation,"
1 dward c lountr) man
Jaj I liegelman, Prodigah

William M I ovi ler, Ji . and Walla< i I

Jack P ( rreene, ed
Ronald Hoffman an
I

J I ranklin Jameson, /

Merrill Jensen, "Th

Hist
26 Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution

"Historians and the Nature of the American Revolution," in The Reinterpretation

,

of Early American History, R. A. Billington, ed. (1966)

Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Hutson, eds., Essays on the American Revolution (1973)
Jesse Lemisch, "The American Revolution Seen from the Bottom Up," in Towards a New
Past, Barton Bernstein, ed. (1968)
Kenneth A. Lockridge, "Social Change and the Meaning of the American Revolution,"
Journal of Social History 4 ( 973), 403-439 1

Michael McGiffert, ed., "Forum: Rethinking the American Revolution," William and Marx
Quarterly, 3d Ser., 53 (1996), 341-386
Edmund S. Morgan, The Challenge of the American Revolution (1976)
Richard B. Morris, The American Revolution Reconsidered (1967)
Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the
Origins of the American Revolution (1979)
Robert R. Palmer, "The Revolution," in The Comparative Approach to American History,
C. Vann Woodward, ed. (1968)
Frederick B. Tolles, "The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement: A Re-
Evaluation," American Historical Review 60 (1954-55), 1-12
Gordon S.Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992)
, "Rhetoric and Reality in the American Revolution," William and Man' Quarterly,
3d 23 (1966), 3-32
ser.,

Alfred F. Young, ed., The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American
Radicalism (1993)
 .

CHAPTER
2

Society and Politics

on the

Eve of the Revolution

Colonial American society in the 760s and 770s was neitht

I I

static, and have identified long

in retrospect scholars
propelled the conflict with Britain. Yet most people of the tinn
that theirs was an unusual era. at leas: not until I 7\
Concerned chiefly with their own well-being, their famil
they thought more often and more deeply about religion
they did about imperial politics. Only men who wei
transatlantic trade or military affairs gave their att
people occupied themselves with earning a livi

children, and making a career in communities whi

education, and manners mostly determined one
The model lor colonial society :•

i ustoms supplied miu h ot the 1 ontent

in their speech, dress, tastes and living ai
sembled the people ofprovim
differences, property in I
Britain there was no
'

, .

\ [
• •

j _j ___

bored in the Jiu>:o ~

who saw Penns

pointed out the he:
growth By the
> million inhabit,; ;

were doubling t
ust the empii
\me\
 28 Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution

>*\
V
<l
DOCUMENTS
The personal writings excerpted here provide some clues about the values and structure
"
of colonial society, especially from the perspective of the better sor t" on the eve of the
Revolution. Such private documents are quite scarce, especially for African Americans,
women, and common people generally. The first selection, taken from the only known
account by a long-time colonial slave, Venture Smith, gives us a glimpse of New England
slave experiences. The passage from John Adams's diary when he was a young, unknown
lawyer, offers an insider's perspective on the same society. The Boston schoolgirl's experi-
ences reveal genteel female socialization in a commercial center that resembled New York
and Philadelphia in many respects. Philip V. Fithian was a New Jersey native who, upon
graduation from Princeton, worked in Virginia as a tutor in the highest echelon of colonial
American society. Because personal documents are necessarily highly individual, they do
not lead us to easy generalizations. Yet at the same time they cannot escape the influences
of the time and place of their origin, and so they often express indirectly some of the
widely shared characteristics of that society.

1. Venture Smith, a Connecticut Slave,

Earns His Freedom, 1729-1766
I was born at Dukandarra, in Guinea, about the year 1729. My father's name was
Saungm Furro, Prince of the Tribe of Dukandarra. My father had three wives.
Polygamy was not uncommon in that country, especially among the rich, as every
man was allowed to keep as many wives as he could maintain. By his first wife he
had three children. The eldest of them was myself, named by my father, Broteer. The
other two were named Cundazo and Soozaduka. My father had two children by his
second wife, and one by his third. I descended from a very large, tall and stout race of
much larger than the generality of people in other parts of the globe, being
beings,
commonly considerable above six feet in height, and every way well proportioned.
The first thing worthy of notice which I remember was, a contention betwee n
my father and mother, on account of mv fathers marrying his third wife without the
cons ent 6f his first and eldest, which was contrary to the custom generally observed
among my countrymen . In consequence of this rupture, my mother left her husband
and country, and traveled away with her three children to the eastward. I was then
five years old. [ He then relates how he was captured in warfare. 1 . . . On a certai n
t ime I and other prisoners were put on board a canoe, under our master, and rowe d
away to a vessel belonging to Rhode Island, commanded by capt. Collin^wood, an d
the mate Thomas Mumford While we were going . to the vessel, our master told us
all to appear to the best possible advantage for sale. I was bought on board by one
Robert Mumford, steward of said vessel, for four gallons of rum, and a piece of cal-
ico, and called Venture, on account of his having purchased me with his own private
venture. Thus I came by my name. All the slaves that were bought for that vessel's
cargo, were two hundred and sixty. . . .

From [Venture Smith], A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, A Native of Africa, But resi-

dent above sixty years in the United States of America (New London, 1798), 3-24.
 29

After all the business was ended on the coast ot Africa, the ship sailed from
thence to Barhadoe s. Alter an ordinary passage, except great mOTtalit) h\ the small
pox, which broke out on board, we arrived at the island ol Barhadoes: but when WC
reached it. there were found out ot the two h undred an d sixt\ that sailed from Africa,
—
not more than two hundred ah\ e. These were all sold, except myself and three more.
to the planters there. The vessel then sailed foi Rhode Island [ca. 1736 ]. . . .

At my master's own place. was prett) much employed in the house at cardin g
1

wool and other household business. [Ventu re uas now 8 years old.] In this situation
Icontinued tor some years, alter w Inch m\ master put me to work out ol doors. Alter
many proofs o\' m> faithfulness and honesty, m> master began to put great confi-

dence in me. \1> beha\ him had

ior to as yet been submissive and obedient I then be-
gan to have hard tests imposed on me. Some of these were to pound tour bushels of
ears of corn every night in a barrel for the poultry, Of be vigorousl) punished. At
other seasons of the year I had to card wool unit a \er\ late hour. These tasks I had
to perform when was about nine years old. I . . .

.Alter had li\ed with m\ master thirteen years, being then about twenty-two
I

years old. married Meg, a sla\e of his who was about m\ a*jc.
1 At the elf- . . .

that >ear 1752 or 17531 [

was sold to a Thomas Stanton, and had to be separate d
1

from my wife and one daughter, who was about one month old. He resided at Ston-
-

ington point. To this place I brought with me from m\ late master's, two Johannes,
three old Spanish dollars, and two thousand of coppers, besides five pounds of m\
wife's money. This money I got b> cleaning gentlemen's shoes a\k\ drawing K
by catching muskrats and minks, raising potatoes and carrots. Sec. and b\ fishil

the night, and at odd spells.

All this money amounting to near twenty-one pounds York currency, m\ mas
ter's brother. Robert Stanton, hired ol me. for which he lm\c me his n,»\

one year and a half after that lime. m\ master purchased m\ w ife and her child, tor

seven hundred pounds old tenor. . . .

Towards the close o\ the time hat t 1 resided with this masiei. 1 had a lalli:

with my mistress This happened one time when m> master was gone to ong Island
. 1

a gunning. At first the quarrel began between m\ wile and her mistress was then at I

work in the barn, and hearing a racket m the house, induced me to run there an,

what had broken out. When I entered the house. I found m\ mistress m a violent

passion with m\ w ife, lor what she informed me was a meie trifle; such a small .

thai I forbear to put m\ mistress to the shame ot having it known I earnestly

quested mj w ife to beg pardon ot her mistress fo] the sake ol 5VCn it she

given no jusi occasion foi offence But whilst was thus saying* m) mistress turned I

the blows which she was repeating on m\ w ile to me She took down her horsewhip.
ami while she was glutting hei fur) with n. I reached out m\ great black I

raised it up and received the blows ot ihe whip on it which I m\

head, I hen I immediatel) committed the whip to the devout
When m\ mastet re turned horn the island, his uile told him ol the alia

I oi the piesent he seemed lo lake ii" noiu > ol il. and mentis nil 1 1

tome Some days after his return, in the morning as I was pi

harm from an)

place, not suspecting most violent n the
eiow m\ head u nh a club tv.
n Ol

blow ven badl\ wounded in\ head, and I

.'mains to this
30 Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution

blow made me have my wits about me you may suppose, for as soon as he went to
renew it, I snatched the club out of his hands and dragged him out of the door. He
then sent for his brother to come and assist him, but I presently left my master, took
the club he wounded me with, carried it to a neighboring Justice of the Peace, and
complained of my master. He finally advised me to return to my master, and live
contented with him till me again, and then complain. I consented to do
he abused
accordingly. But before I my master's, up he come and his brother Robert
set out for

after me. The Justice improved this convenient opportunity to caution my master.
He asked him for what he treated his slave thus hastily and unjustly, and told him
what would be the consequence if he continued the same treatment towards me.
After the Justice had ended his discourse with my master, he and his brother set out
with me for home, one before and the other behind me. When they had come to a
bye place, they both dismounted their respective horses, and fell to beating me with
great violence. I became enraged at this and immediately turned them both under
me, laid one of them across the other, and stamped both with my feet what I would.
This occasioned my master's brother to advisehim to put me off. A short time
after this I was taken by a constable and two men. They carried me to a blacksmith's
shop and had me handcuffed. When I returned home my mistress enquired much of
her waiters, whether Venture was handcuffed. When she was informed that I was, she
appeared to be very contented and was much transported with the news. In the midst
of this content and joy, I my mistress, showed her my hand-
presented myself before
cuffs, and gave her thanks for my master commanded a negro
my gold rings. For this
of his to fetch him a large ox chain. This my master locked on my legs with two pad-
locks. I continued to wear the chain peaceably for two or three days, when my master
asked me with contemptuous hard names whether I had not better be freed from my
chains and go to work. I answered him, No. Well then, said he, I will send you to

the West Indies or banish you, for I am resolved not to keep you. I answered him I
crossed the waters to come here, and I am willing to cross them to return.
For a day or two after this not any one said much to me, until one Hempste d
Mi ner, of Stonington, asked me if I would live with h^m I answered him that I .

would. He then requested me to make myself discontented and to appear as un-

reconciled to my master as I could before that he bargained with him for me; and
that in return he would give me a good chance to gain my freedom when I came to
live with him. I did as he requested me. Not long after Hempsted Miner purchased

me of my master for fifty six pounds lawful. He took the chain and padlocks from
off me immediately after. . . .

A short time after my master carried me to Hartford, and first proposed to sell

me to one William Hooker of that place. . . .

My master next offered me to Daniel Edwards. Esq. of Hartford, for sal e. But
not purchasing me, my master pawned mehim for ten pounds, and returned to
to
Stonington. After some trial of my honesty, Mr. Edwards placed considerable trust
and confidence in me. He put me to serve as his cupbearer and waiter. When there
was company at his house, he would send me into the cellar and other parts of his
house to fetch wine and other articles occasionally for them. When had I been with
him some me why my master wished to part with such an honest
time, he asked
negro, and why he did not keep me himself. I replied that I could not give him the
reason, unless it was to convert me into cash, and speculate with me as with other
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
very remunerative business, but proving to such as employed him
that he possessed industry, energy, and tact. During this period he
ran down to Leeds, at four distinct intervals, to pass a couple of days
with Emily, whose uncle had died, and who remained in the house of
her helpless bed-ridden aunt. At the end of this time Mr. Statham
died, leaving in his will a sum of 10,000l. to his son, "as a
recognition of his attempt to gain a livelihood for himself;" and
bequeathing the rest of his fortune to various charities.

So at last Humphrey Statham saw his way to bringing Emily home

in triumph as his wife, and with this object he started: for Leeds,
immediately after his father's funeral. He had written to her to
announce his arrival, and was surprised not to find her awaiting him
on the platform. Then he jumped into a cab, and hurried out to
Headingley. On his arrival at the little house, the stupid girl who
attended on the bed-ridden old woman seemed astonished at seeing
him, and answered his inquiries after Emily inconsequently, and with
manifest terror. With a sudden sinking of the heart Humphrey made
his way to the old lady's bedside, and from her quivering lips learned
that Emily had disappeared.

Yes! Emily had fled from her home, so said her aunt, and so said
the few neighbours who, roused at the sight of a cab, had come
crowding into the cottage. About a week ago, they told him, she had
gone out in the morning to her work as usual, and had never
returned. She left no letter of explanation, and no trace of her flight
had been discovered; there was no slur upon her character, and, so
far as their knowledge went, she had made no strange
acquaintance. She received a number of letters, which she had
always said were from Mr. Statham. What did he come down there
for speering after Emily, when, of all persons in the world, he was
the likeliest to tell them where she had been?

Humphrey Statham fell back like a man stunned by a heavy blow.

He had come down there to carry out the wish of his life; to tell the
woman whom, in the inmost depths of his big manly heart he
worshipped, that the hope of his life was at last accomplished, and
that he was at length enabled to take her away, to give her a good
position, and to devote the remainder of his existence to her service.
She was not there to hear his triumphant avowal--she had fled, no
one knew where, and he saw plainly enough that, not merely was all
sympathy withheld from him, but that he was suspected by the
neighbours to have been privy to, and probably the accomplice of,
her flight, and that his arrival there a few days afterwards with the
apparent view of making inquiries was merely an attempt to
hoodwink them, and to divert the search which might possibly be
made after her into another direction.

Under such circumstances, an ordinary man would have fallen

into a fury, and burst out into wild lamentation or passionate
invective; but Humphrey Statham was not an ordinary man. He
knew himself guiltless of the crime of which by Emily's friends and
neighbours he was evidently suspected, but he also knew that the
mere fact of her elopement, or at all events of her quitting her home
without consulting him on the subject, showed that she had no love
for him, and that therefore he had no right to interfere with her
actions. He told the neighbours this in hard, measured accents, with
stony eyes and colourless cheeks. But when he saw that even then
they disbelieved him, that even then they thought he knew more of
Emily Mitchell's whereabouts than he cared to say, he instructed the
local authorities to make such inquiries as lay in their power, and,
offered a reward for Emily Mitchell's discovery to the police. He
returned, to London an altered man; his one hope in life had been
rudely extinguished, and there was nothing now left for him to care
for. He had a competency, but it was valueless to him now; the only
one way left to him of temporarily putting aside his great grief was
by plunging into work, and busying his mind with those commercial
details which at one time he had so fervently abhorred, and now,
when it was no longer a necessity for him, business came to him in
galore, his name and fame were established in the great City
community, and no man in his position was more respected, or had
a larger number of clients.
 "Too late comes this apple to me," muttered Humphrey Statham,
quoting Owen Meredith, as he shook himself out of the reverie into
which he had fallen. "Nearly four years ago since I paid my last visit
to Leeds; more than three since, as a last resource, I consulted the
Scotland-yard people, and instructed them to do their best in
elucidating the mystery. The Scotland-yard people are humbugs; I
have never heard of them since, and shall never hear of Emily again.
Good God, how I loved her! how I love her still! Was it that she
stands out in my memory as my first and only real love, lit up
perhaps by boyish fancy--the same fancy that makes me imagine
that my old bare cock-loft in the Adelphi was better than my present
comfortable rooms in Sackville-street. Dans un grenier qu'on est bien
à vingt ans. No, she was more than that. She was the only woman
that ever inspired me with anything like real affection, and I worship
her--her memory I suppose I must call it now--as I worshipped her
own sweet self an hour before I learned of her flight. There, there is
an end of that. Now let me finish-up this lot, and leave all in decent
order, so that if I end my career in a snipe-bog, or one of the Tresco
pilot-boats goes down while I am on board of her, old Collins may
have no difficulty in disposing of the contents of the safe."

Out of the mass of papers which had originally been lying before
him, only two were left. He took up one of them and read the
indorsement, "T. Durham--to be delivered to him or his written order
(Akhbar K)." This paper he threw into the second drawer of the safe;
then he took up the last, inscribed "Copy of instructions to Tatlow in
regard to E. M."

"Instructions to Tatlow, indeed!" said Humphrey Statham, with

curling lip; "it is more than three years since those instructions were
given, but hitherto they have borne no fruit. I have half a mind to
destroy them; it is scarcely possible--"

His reflections were interrupted by a knock at the door. Bidden to

come in, Mr. Collins, the confidential clerk, put in his head, and
murmured, "Mr. Tatlow, from Scotland-yard."
 "In the very nick of time," said Humphrey Statham, with a half-
smile; "send Mr. Tatlow in at once."

CHAPTER X.

MR. TATLOW ON THE TRACK.

"Mr. Tatlow?" said Humphrey Statham, as his visitor entered.

"Servant, sir," said Mr. Tatlow, a Somewhat ordinary-looking man,

dressed in black.

"I had no idea this case had been placed in your hands, Mr.
Tatlow," said Humphrey. "I have heard of you, though I have never
met you before in business, and have always understood you to be
an experienced officer."

"Thank you, sir," said Mr. Tatlow, with a short bow. "What may
have altered your opinion in that respect now?"

"The length of time which has elapsed since I first mentioned this
matter in Scotland-yard. That was three years ago, and from that
day to this I have had no communication with the authorities."

"Well, sir, you see," said Mr. Tatlow, "different people have
different ways of doing business; and when the inspector put this
case into my hands, he said to me, 'Tatlow,' said he, 'this is a case
which will most likely take considerable time to unravel, and it's one
in which there will be a great many ups and downs, and the scent
will grow warm and the scent will grow cold, and you will think you
have got the whole explanation of the story at one moment, and the
next you'll think you know nothing at all about it. The young woman
is gone,' the inspector says, 'and you'll hear of her here and you'll
hear of her there, and you'll be quite sure you've got hold of the
right party, and then you'll find it's nothing of the sort, and be
inclined to give up the business in despair; and then suddenly,
perhaps, when you're engaged on something else, you'll strike into
the right track, and bring it home in the end. Now, it's no good
worrying the gentleman,' said the inspector, 'with every little bit of
news you hear, or with anything that may happen to strike you in
the inquiry, for you'll be raising his spirits at one time, and rendering
him more wretched in another; and my advice to you is, not to go
near him until you have got something like a clear and complete
case to lay before him.' Those were the inspector's words to me, sir-
-upon which advice I acted."

"Very good counsel, Mr. Tatlow, and very sensible of you to follow
it," said Humphrey Statham. "Am I to understand from this visit that
your case is now complete?"

"Well, sir, as complete as I can make it at present," said Mr.

Tatlow.

"You have found her?" cried Humphrey Statham eagerly, the

blood flushing into his cheeks.

"I know where the young woman is now," said Mr. Tatlow
evasively; "but do not build upon that, sir," he added, as he marked
his questioner's look of anxiety. "We were too late, sir; you will never
see her again."

"Too late!" echoed Humphrey. "What do you mean? Where is she?

I insist upon knowing!"

"In Hendon churchyard, sir," said Mr. Tatlow quietly; "that's where
the young woman is now."
 Humphrey Statham bowed his head, and remained, silent for
some few moments; then, without raising his eyes, he said: "Tell me
about it, Mr. Tatlow, please; I should like to have all details from first
to last."

"Don't you think," said Mr. Tatlow kindly--"don't you think I might
look in some other time, sir?--you don't seem very strong just now;
and it's no use a man trying his nerves when there is no occasion for
it."

"Thank you," said Humphrey Statham, "I would sooner hear the
story now. I have been ill, and am going out of town, and it may be
some little-time before I return, and I should like, while I am away,
to be able to think over what has--to know about--tell me, please, at
once."

"The story is not a long one, sir," said Mr. Tatlow; "and when you
see how plain and clear it tells, I daresay you will think the case was
not a difficult one, for all it took so long to work out; but you see
this is fancy-work, as I may call it, that one has to take up in the
intervals of regular business, and to lay aside again whenever a
great robbery or a murder crops up, and just as one is warm and
interested in it, one may be sent off to Paris or New York, and when
you come back you have almost to begin again. There was one
advantage in this case, that I had it to myself from the start, and
hadn't to work up anybody else's line. I began," continued Mr.
Tatlow, after a momentary pause, taking a notebook from his pocket
and reading from its pages, "at the very beginning, and first saw the
draper people at Leeds, where Miss Mitchell was employed. They
spoke very highly of her, as a good, industrious girl, and were very
sorry when she went away. She gave them a regular month's notice,
stating that she had an opportunity of bettering herself by getting an
engagement at a first-class house in London. Did the Leeds drapers,
Hodder by name, say anything to Miss M.'s friends? No, they did
not," continued Mr. Tatlow, answering himself; "most likely they
would have mentioned it if the uncle had been alive--a brisk,
intelligent man--but he was dead at that time, and no one was left
but the bedridden old woman. After her niece's flight she sent down
to Hodder and Company, and they told her what Miss M. had told
them, though the old woman and her friends plainly did not believe
it. It was not until some weeks afterwards that one of Hodder's girls
had a letter from a friend of hers, who had previously been with
their firm, but was now engaged at Mivenson's, the great drapers in
Oxford-street, London, to say that Emily Mitchell had joined their
establishment; she was passing under the name of Moore, but this
girl knew her at once, and agreed to keep her confidence. Now to
page forty-nine. That's only a private memorandum for my own
information," said Mr. Tatlow, turning over the leaves of his book.
"Page forty-nine. Here you are! Mivenson's, in Oxford-street--old
gentleman out of town--laid up with the gout--saw eldest son,
partner in the house--recollected Miss Moore perfectly, and had
come to them with some recommendation--never took young
persons into their house unless they were properly recommended,
and always kept register of reference. Looking into register found
Emily M. had been recommended by Mrs. Calverley, one of their
customers, most respectable lady, living in Great Walpole-street.
Made inquiry myself about Mrs. C., and made her out to be a prim,
elderly, evangelical party, wife of City man in large way of business.
Emily M. did not remain long at Mivenson's. Not a strong girl; had
had a fainting fit or two while in their employ, and one day she
wrote to say she was too ill to come to work, and they never saw
her again. Could they give him the address from which she wrote?"
Certainly. Address-book sent for; 143 Great College-street, Camden
Town. Go to page sixty. Landlady at Great College-street perfectly
recollected Miss Moore. Quiet, delicate girl, regular in her habits;
never out later than ten at night; keeping no company, and giving no
trouble. Used to be brought home regular every night by a
gentleman--always the same gentleman, landlady thought, but
couldn't swear, as she had never made him out properly, though she
had often tried. Seen from the area, landlady remarked, people
looked so different. Gentleman always took leave of Miss Moore at
the door, and was never seen again in the neighbourhood until he
brought her back the next night. Landlady recollected Miss Moore's
going away. When she gave notice about leaving, explained to
landlady that she was ill and was ordered change of air; didn't seem
to be any worse than she had been all along, but, of course, it was
not her (the landlady's) place to make any objection. At the end of
the week a cab was sent for, Miss Moore's boxes were put into it,
and she drove away. Did the landlady hear the address given to the
cabman? She did. 'Waterloo Station, Richmond line.' That answer
seemed to me to screw up the whole proceedings; trying to find the
clue to a person, who, months before, had gone away from the
Waterloo Station, seemed as likely as feeling for a threepenny-piece
in a corn-sack. I made one or two inquiries, but heard nothing, and
had given the whole thing up for as good as lost, when--let me see,
page two hundred and one.

"Here you are! Memoranda in the case of Benjamin Biggs, cashier

in the Limpid Water Company, charged with embezzlement. Fine
game he kept up, did Mr. Biggs. Salary about two hundred a year,
and lived at the rate of ten thousand. Beautiful place out of town,
just opposite Bobbington Lock, horses, carriages, and what you
please. I was engaged in Biggs' matter, and I had been up to
Bobbington one afternoon--for there was a notion just then that
Biggs hadn't got clear off and might come home again--so I thought
I'd take a lodging and hang about the village for a week or two. It
was pleasant summer weather, and I've a liking for the river and for
such a place as Bushey Park, though not with many opportunities of
seeing much of either. I had been through Biggs' house, and was
standing in Messenger's boat-yard, looking at the parties putting off
in the water, when a voice close to my ear says, 'Hallo, Tatlow!
What's up?' and looking round I saw Mr. Netherton Whiffle, the
leading junior at the Bailey, and the most rising man at the C.C.C. I
scarcely knew him at first, for he had got on a round straw hat
instead of his wig, and a tight-fitting jersey instead of his gown; and
when I recognised him and told him what business I had come down
upon, he only laughed, and said that Biggs knew more than me and
all Scotland-yard put together; and the best thing that I could do
was to go into the 'Anglers' and put my name to what I liked at his
expense. He's a very pleasant fellow, Mr. Whiffle; and while I was
drinking something iced I told him about my wanting a lodging, and
he recommended me to a very respectable little cottage kept by the
mother of his gardener. A pretty place it was to not looking on the
river, but standing in a nice neatly-kept garden, with the big trees of
Bushey Park at the back of you, and the birds singing beautiful. I
fancy, when I am superannuated I should like a place of that sort for
myself and Mrs. T. Nice rooms too; the lodgings, a bedroom and
sitting-room, but a cut above my means. I was saying so to the old
woman--motherly old creature she was--as we were looking round
the bedroom, when I caught sight of something which fixed my
attention at once. It was an old black box, like a child's school-trunk,
with on the outside lid 'E. M.' in brass letters, and a railway label of
the G.N.R., 'Leeds to London,' still sticking on it. Something told me I
had 'struck ile,' as the Yankees say; and I asked the old woman to
whom that box belonged. 'To her,' she said, she supposed;
'leastways it had been there for many months, left behind by a
lodger who had gone away and never sent for it.' It took a little hot
rum-and-water to get the lodger's story out of that old lady, sir; not
a refreshing drink on a summer's day, but required to be gone
through in the course of duty, and it was worth it, as you will see.

"In the previous summer the rooms had been taken by a

gentleman who gave the name of Smith, and who the next day
brought down the young lady and her boxes. She was pretty but
very delicate-looking, and seemed to have very bad health. He came
down three or four times a week, and then she brightened up a bit,
and seemed a little more cheerful; but when she was alone she was
dreadfully down, and the landlady had seen her crying by the hour
together. They lived very quietly; no going out, no water-parties, no
people to see them, bills of lodging paid for every week; quite the
regular thing. This went on for two or three months; then the
gentleman's visits grew less frequent, he only came down once or
twice a week, and, on more than one occasion, the old woman
sitting in the kitchen thought she heard high words between them.
One Saturday afternoon, when Mr. Smith had gone away, about an
hour after his departure the lady packed all her things, paid up the
few shillings which remained after his settlement, and ordered a fly
to take her to the station. There was no room on the fly for the little
box which I had seen, and she said she would send an address to
which it could be forwarded. On the Monday evening Mr. Smith came
down as usual; he was very much astonished to find the lady gone,
but, after; reading a letter which she had left for him, he seemed
very much agitated, and sent out for some brandy; then he paid the
week's rent, which was demanded instead of the notice, and left the
place. The box had never been sent for, nor had the old woman ever
heard anything farther of the lady or the gentleman.

"The story hangs together pretty well, don't it, sir? E. M. and the
railway ticket on the box (r forgot to say that I looked inside, and
saw the maker's, name, 'Hudspeth, of Boar-lane, Leeds') looked
pretty much like Emily Mitchell, and the old woman's description of
Mr. Smith tallied tolerably with that given by the lodging-house
keeper in Camden Town, who used to notice the gentleman from the
area. But there we were shut up tight again. The flyman recollected
taking the lady to the station, but no one saw her take her ticket;
and there was I at a standstill.

"It is not above a fortnight ago, sir," said Mr. Tatlow, in

continuation, "that I struck on the scent again; not that I had
forgotten it, or hadn't taken the trouble to pull at anything which I
thought might be one of its threads when it came in my way. A
twelvemonth ago I was down at Leeds, after a light-hearted chap
who had forgotten his own name, and written his master's across
the back of a three-and-sixpenny bill-stamp; and I thought I'd take
the opportunity of looking in at Hodder the draper's, and ask
whether anything had been heard of Miss M. The firm hadn't heard
of her, and was rather grumpy about being asked; but I saw the girl
from whom I had got some information before--she, you recollect,
sir, who had a friend at Mivenson's in Oxford-street, and told me
about E. M. being there--and I asked her and her young man to tea,
and set the pumps agoing. But she was very bashful and
shamefaced, and would not say a word, though evidently she knew
something; and it was only when she had gone up to put her bonnet
on, that I got out of the young man that Emily Mitchell had been
down there, and had been seen in the dusk of the evening going up
to the old cottage at Headingley, and carrying a baby in her arms."

"A baby!" cried Humphrey Statham.

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Tatlow, "a female child a few weeks old. She
was going up to her aunt, no doubt, but the old woman was dead.
When they heard at Hodder's that Emily was about the place, and
with a child too, the firm was furious, and gave orders that none of
their people should speak to or have any communication with her;
but this girl--Mary Keith she's called; I made a note of her name, sir,
thinking you would like to know it--she found out where the poor
creature was, and offered to share her wages with her and the child
to save them from starvation."

"Good God!" groaned Humphrey Statham; "was she in want,

then?"

"Pretty nearly destitute, sir," said Tatlow; "would have starved

probably, if it had not been for Mary Keith. She owned up to that
girl, sir, all her story, told her everything, except the name of the
child's father, and that she could not get out of her anyhow. She
spoke about you too, and said you were the only person in the world
who had really loved her, and that she had treated you shamefully.
Miss Keith wanted her to write to the child's father, and tell him how
badly off she was; but she said she would sooner die in the streets
than ask him for money. What she would do, she said, would be to
go to you--she wanted to see you once more before she died--and
to ask you to be a friend to her child! She knew you would do it, she
said--though she had behaved to you so badly--for the sake of old
days.
 "I sha'n't have to try you with very much more, sir," said Tatlow
kindly, as he heard a deep groan break from Humphrey Statham's
lips, and saw his head sink deeper on his breast. "Miss Keith advised
E. M. to write to you; but she said no--she wanted to look upon your
face again before she died, she said, and she knew that event was
not far off. So she parted with her old friend, taking a little money,
just enough to pay her fare up to town. She must have changed her
mind about that, from what I learned afterwards. I made inquiries
here and there for her in London in what I thought likely places, but
I could hear nothing of her, so the scent grew cold, and still my case
was incomplete. I settled it up at last, as I say, about a fortnight
ago. I had occasion to make some inquiries at Hendon workhouse
about a young man who was out on the tramp, and who, as I
learned, had slept there for a night or two in the previous week; and
I was talking matters over with the master, an affable kind of man,
with more common-sense than one usually finds in officials of his
sort, who are for the most part pig-headed and bad-tempered. The
chap that I was after had been shopman to a grocer in the City, and
had run away with his master's daughter, having all the time another
wife; and this I suppose led the conversation to such matters; and I,
always with your case floating in my head, asked him whether there
were many instances of foundlings and suchlike being left upon their
hands? He said no; that they had been very lucky--only had one
since he had been master there, and that one they had been
fortunate enough to get rid of. How was that, I asked him; what was
the case? Case of a party"--and here Mr. Tatlow referred to his note-
book again--"found the winter before last by Squire Mullins' hind
lying against a haystack in the four-acre meadow, pressing her baby
to her breast--both of them half-frozen. She was taken to the
workhouse, but only lived two days, and never spoke during that
time. Her shoes were worn very thin, and she had parted with most
of her clothing, though what she kept had been good, and still was
decent. No wedding-ring, of course. One thing she hadn't parted
with; the master's wife saw the old woman try to crib it from the
dead body round whose neck it hung, and took it from her hand. It
was a tiny gold cross--yes, sir, I see you know it all now--inscribed
'H. to E., 30th March 1864'--the very trinket which you had described
to our people; and when I heard that, I knew I had tracked Emily
Mitchell home at last."

Mr. Tatlow ceased speaking; but it was some minutes before

Humphrey Statham raised his head. When at length he looked up,
there were traces of tears on his cheeks, and his voice was broken
with emotion as he said, "The child--what about it? did it live?"

"Yes, sir," replied Tatlow, "the child lived, and fell very comfortably
upon its legs. It was a bright, pretty little creature, and one day it
attracted the notice of a lady who had no children of her own, and,
after some inquiries, persuaded her husband to adopt it."

"What is her name, and where does she live?" asked Mr. Statham.

"She lives at Hendon, sir, and her name is Claxton. Mr. Claxton is,
oddly enough, a sleeping partner in the house of Mr. Calverley,
whose good lady first recommended E. M. to Mivenson's, as you may
recollect."

There was silence for full ten minutes--a period which Mr. Tatlow
occupied in a deep consultation with his note-book, in looking out of
window, at the tips of his boots, at the wall in front of him;
anywhere rather than at the bowed head of Humphrey Statham,
who remained motionless, with his chin buried in his chest. Mr.
Tatlow had seen a good deal of suffering in his time, and as he
noticed, without apparently looking at the tremulous emotion of Mr.
Statham's hands, tremulous despite their closely-interlaced fingers,
and the shudder which from time to time ran through his massive
frame, he knew what silent anguish was being bravely undergone,
and would on no account have allowed the sufferer to imagine that
his mental tortures were either seen or understood. When
Humphrey Statham at length raised his head, he found his visitor
intently watching the feeble gyrations of a belated fly, and
apparently perfectly astonished at hearing his name mentioned.
 "Mr. Tatlow," said Humphrey, in a voice which, despite his
exertions to raise it, sounded low and muffled, "I am very much your
debtor; what I said at the commencement of our interview about the
delay which, as I imagined, had occurred in clearing-up this mystery,
was spoken in ignorance, and without any knowledge of the facts. I
now see the difficulties attendant upon the inquiry, and I am only
astonished that they should have been so successfully surmounted,
and that you should have been enabled to clear-up the case as
perfectly as you have done. That the result of your inquiries has
been to arouse in me the most painful memories, and to--and to
reduce me in fact to the state in which you see me--is no fault of
yours. You have discharged your duty with great ability and
wondrous perseverance, and I have to thank you more than all for
the delicacy which you have shown during the inquiry, and during
the narration to me of its results."

Mr. Tatlow bowed, but said nothing.

"For the ordinary charges of the investigation," continued

Humphrey Statham, "your travelling expenses and suchlike, I settle,
I believe, with the people at Scotland-yard; but," he added, as he
took his cheque-book from the right-hand drawer of his desk, "I wish
you to accept for yourself this cheque for fifty pounds, together with
my hearty thanks."

He filled-up the cheque, tore it from the book, and pushed it over
to the detective as he spoke, at the same time holding out his hand.

Mr. Tatlow rose to his feet, looking somewhat embarrassed. It had

often been his good fortune to be well paid for his services, but to
be shaken hands with by a man in the position of Mr. Statham, had
not previously come in his way. He was confused for an instant, but
compromised the matter by gravely saluting after the military
fashion with his left hand, while he gave his right to his employer.
 "Proud, sir, and grateful," he said. "It has been a long case,
though not a particularly stiff one, and I think it has been worked
clean out to the end. I could have wished--but, however, that is
neither here nor there," said Mr. Tatlow, checking himself with a
cough. "About the child, sir; don't you wish any farther particulars
about the child?"

"No," said Humphrey Statham, who was fast relapsing into his
moody state; "no, nothing now, at all events. If I want any farther
information, I shall send to you, Tatlow, direct; you may depend
upon that. Now, once more, thanks, and good-bye."

Half an hour had elapsed since Mr. Tatlow had taken his
departure, and still Humphrey Statham sat at his desk buried in
profound reverie, his chin resting on his breast, his arms plunged
almost elbow-deep into his pockets. At length he roused himself,
locked away the cheque-book which lay fluttering open before him,
and passing his hand dreamily through the fringe of hair on his
temples, muttered to himself:

"And so there is an end of it. To die numbed and frozen in a

workhouse-bed. To bear a child to a man for whom she ruined my
life, and who in his turn ruined hers. My Emily perishing with cold
and want! I shall meet him yet, I know I shall. Long before I heard
of this story, when I looked upon him only as a successful rival, who
was living with her in comfort and luxury, and laughing over my
disappointment, even then I felt convinced that the hour would
come when I should hold him by the throat and make him beg his
miserable life at my hands. Now, when I know that his treatment of
her has been worse even than his treatment of me, he will need to
beg hard indeed for mercy, if I once come across his path. Calverley,
eh?" he continued, after a moment's pause, and in a softer voice,
"the husband of the lady who has adopted the child, is a partner in
Calverley's house, Tatlow said. That is the house for which Tom
Durham has gone out as agent. How strangely things come about!
for surely Mrs. Calverley, doubtless the wife of the senior partner of
the firm, is the mother of my old friend Martin Garwood? What two
totally different men! Without doubt unacquainted with each other,
and yet with this curious link of association in my mind. Her child!
Emily's child within a couple of hours' ride! I could easily find some
excuse to introduce myself to this Mrs. Claxton, and to get a glimpse
of the girl--she is Emily's flesh and blood, and most probably would
be like her. I have half a mind to--No, I am not well enough for any
extra excitement or exertion, and the child, Tatlow says, is happy
and well-cared for; I can see her on my return--I can then manage
the introduction in a more proper and formal manner; I can hunt-up
Martin Gurwood, and through him and his mother I can obtain an
introduction to this partner in Calverley's house, and must trust to
my own powers of making myself agreeable to continue the
acquaintance on a footing of intimacy, which will give me constant
opportunities of seeing Emily's child. Now there is more than ever
necessity to get out of this at once. All clear now, except those two
packets; one Tom Durham's memorandum, which must be kept
anyhow, so in it goes into the safe. The other, the instructions for
Tatlow--that can be destroyed--no, there is no harm in keeping that
for a little; one never knows how things may turn out--in it goes
too." And as he spoke he placed the two packets in the drawer,
closed and locked the safe. "Collins!" he called; and the confidential
clerk appeared. "You have all that you want--the cheques, the
duplicate key of the safe, the pass-book?"

"Yes, sir," said Collins; "everything except your address."

"By Jove," said Humphrey Statham, "I had forgotten that! even
now I am undecided. Tossing shall do it. Heads the Drumnovara
snipe-bog; tails the Tresco pilot-boat. Tails it is! the pilot-boat has
won. So, Collins, my address--never to be used except in most
urgent necessity--is, 'P.O., Tresco, Scilly,' left till called for. Now you
have my traps in the outer office; tell them to put them on a hansom
cab, and you will see no more of me for six weeks."
 As the four-fifty "galloper" for Exeter glided out of the Paddington
Station, Humphrey Statham was seated in it, leisurely cutting the
leaves of the evening paper which he had just purchased. The first
paragraph which met his eye ran as follows:

"(REUTER'S TELEGRAM.)

"Gibraltar.

"The captain of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's steam-ship

Masillia, just arrived here, announces the supposed death, by
drowning, of a passenger named Durham, agent to Messrs.
Calverley and Company, of Mincing-lane, who was proceeding to
Ceylon. The unfortunate gentleman retired to bed on the first night
of the vessel's sailing from Southampton, and as he was never seen
afterwards, it is supposed he must have fallen overboard during the
night, when the Masillia was at anchor off Hurst Castle."

CHAPTER XI.

L'AMIE DE LA MAISON.

The breakfasts in Great Walpole-street, looked upon as meals,

were neither satisfactory nor satisfying. Of all social gatherings a
breakfast is perhaps the one most difficult to make agreeable to
yourself and your guests. There are men, at other periods of the day
bright, sociable, and chatty, who insist upon breakfasting by
themselves, who glower over their tea and toast, and growl audibly
if their solitude is broken in upon; there are women capable of
everything in the way of self-sacrifice and devotion except getting up
to breakfast. A breakfast after the Scotch fashion, with enormous
quantities of Finnan-haddy, chops, steaks, eggs and ham, jam and
marmalade, tea and coffee, is a good thing; so is a French breakfast
with two delicate cutlets, or a succulent filet, a savoury omelette, a
pint bottle of Nuits, a chasse, and a cigarette. But the morning
meals in Great Walpole-street were not after either of these
fashions. After the servants had risen from their knees, and shuffled
out of the room in Indian file at the conclusion of morning prayers,
the butler re-entered bearing a hissing silver urn, behind which Mrs.
Calverley took up her position, and proceeded to brew a tepid
amber-coloured fluid, which she afterwards dispensed to her guests.
The footman had followed the butler, bearing, in his turn, a dish
containing four thin greasy strips of bacon, laid out side by side in
meek resignation, with a portion of kidney keeping guard over them
at either end. There was a rack filled with dry toast, which looked
and tasted like the cover of an old Latin dictionary; there was a huge
bread-platter, with a scriptural text round its margin, and a huge
bread-knife with a scriptural text on its blade; and on the sideboard,
far away in the distance, was the shadowy outline of what had once
been a ham, and a mountain and a promontory of flesh, with the
connecting link between them almost cut away, representing what
had once been a tongue. On two or three occasions, shortly after
Madame Du Tertre had first joined the household, she mentioned to
Mrs. Calverley that she was subject to headaches, which were only
to be gotten rid of by taking a sharp half-hour's walk in the air
immediately after breakfast; the fact being that Pauline was simply
starved, and that if she had been followed she would have been
found in the small room of Monsieur Verrey's café in Regent-street
engaged with a cutlet, a pint of Beaune, and the Siècle newspaper.
To John Calverley, also, these gruesome repasts were most
detestable, but he made up for his enforced starvation by a
substantial and early luncheon in the City.

On the morning after Humphrey Statham's departure for

Cornwall, the breakfast-party was assembled in Great Walpole-
street. But the host was not among them. He had gone away to his
ironworks in the North, as he told his guest: "on his own vagaries,"
as his wife had phrased it, with a defiant snort: and Mrs. Calverley,
Madame Du Tertre, and Martin Gurwood were gathered round the
festive board. The two ladies were sipping the doubtful tea, and
nibbling the leathery toast, while Mr. Garwood, who was an early
riser, and who, before taking his morning constitutional in Guelph
Park, had solaced himself with a bowl of bread-and-milk, had pushed
aside his plate, and was reading out from the Times such scraps of
intelligence as he thought might prove interesting. On a sudden he
stopped, the aspect of his face growing rather grave, as he said:

"Here is some news, mother, which I am sure will prove

distressing to Mr. Calverley, even if his interests do not suffer from
the event which it records."

"I can guess what it is," said Mrs. Calverley, in her thin acid voice;
"I have an intuitive idea of what has occurred. I always predicted it,
and I took care to let Mr. Calverley know my opinion--the Swartmoor
Iron works have failed?"

"No, not so bad as that," said Mr. Gurwood, "nor, indeed, is it any
question of the Swartmoor Ironworks. I will tell you what is said, and
you will be able to judge for yourself how far Mr. Calverley may be
interested." And in the calm, measured tone habitual to him from
constant pulpit practice, Martin Gurwood read out the paragraph
which had so startled Humphrey Statham on the previous evening.

When Martin Gurwood finished reading, Madame Du Tertre, who

had listened attentively, wheeled round in her chair and looked hard
at Mrs. Calverley. That lady's placidity was, however, perfectly
undisturbed. With her thin bony hand she still continued her
employment of arranging into fantastic shapes the crumbs on the
table-cloth, nor did she seem inclined to speak until Pauline said:

"To me this seems a sad and terrible calamity. If I, knowing

nothing of this unfortunate gentleman, am grieved at what I hear,
surely you, madame, to whom he was doubtless well known, must
feel the shock acutely."

"I am glad to say," said Mrs. Calverley coldly, "that I am not called
upon to exhibit any emotion in the present instance. So little does
Mr. Calverley think fit to acquaint me with the details of his business,
that I was not aware that it was in contemplation to establish an
agency at Ceylon, nor did I ever hear of the name of the person
who, doubtless by his own imprudence, seems to have lost his life."

"You never saw Mr.--Mr.--how is he called, Monsieur Gurwood?"

"Durham is the name given here," said Martin, referring to the

newspaper.

"Ah, you never saw Mr. Durham, madame?"

"I never saw him; I never even heard Mr. Calverley mention his
name."

"Poor man, poor man!" murmured Madame Du Tertre with

downcast eyes; "lost so suddenly, as your Shakespeare says--'sent to
his account with all his imperfections on his head.' It is terrible to
think of; is it not Monsieur Martin?"

"To be cut off with our sins yet inexpiated," said Martin Gurwood,
not meeting the searching glance riveted upon him, "is, as you say,
Madame Du Tertre, a terrible thing. Let us trust this unfortunate man
was not wholly unprepared."
 "If he were a friend of Mr. Calverley's," hissed the lady at the end
of the table, "and he must have been to have been placed in a
position of trust, it is, I should say, most improbable that he was
fitted for the sudden change."

That morning Madame Du Tertre, although her breakfast had

been of the scantiest, did not find it necessary to repair to Verrey's.
When the party broke up she retired to her room, took the
precaution of locking the door, and having something to think out, at
once adopted her old resource of walking up and down.

She said to herself: "The news has arrived, and just at the time
that I expected it. He has been bold, and everything has turned out
exactly as he could have wished. People will speak kindly of him and
mourn over his fate, while he is far away and living happily, and
laughing in his sleeve at the fools whose compassion he evokes.
What would I give to be there with him on the same terms as those
of the old days! I hate this dull British life, this ghastly house, these
people, precise, exact, and terrible. I loathe the state of formality in
which I live, the restraint and reticence I am obliged to observe!
What is it to me to ride in a carriage by the side of that puppet
downstairs, to sit in the huge dull rooms, to be waited upon by the
silent solemn servants?" And her eyes blazed with fire as she sang in
a soft low voice:

"Les gueux, les gueux Sont les gens heureux; Ils s'aiment entre
eux. Vivent les gueux!"

As she ceased singing she stopped suddenly in her walk, and

said, "What a fool I am to think of such things, to dream of what
might have been, when all my hope and desire is to destroy what is,
to discover the scene of Tom Durham's retreat, and to drive him
from the enchanted land where he and she are now residing! And
this can only be done by steady continuance in my present life, by
passive endurance, by never-flagging energy and perpetual
observation. Tiens! Have I not done some good this morning, even
in listening to the bêtise talk of that silly woman and her sombre
son? She had never seen Tom Durham," she said, "had never heard
of him, he has never been brought to the house: this, then, gives
colour to all that I have suspected. It is, as I imagined, through the
influence of the old man Claxton that Tom was nominated as agent
of the house of Calverley. Mr. Calverley himself probably knows
nothing of him, or he would most assuredly have mentioned the
name to his wife, have asked him to dinner, after the English
fashion, before sending him out to such a position. But no, his very
name is unknown to her, and it is evident that he is the sole protégé
of Monsieur Claxton--Claxton, from whom the pale-faced woman
who is his wife, his mistress--what do I know or care--obtained the
money with which Tom Durham thought to buy my silence and his
freedom. Not yet, my dear friend, not yet! The game between us
promises to be long, and to play it properly with a chance of success
will require all my brains and all my patience. But the cards are
already beginning to get shuffled into their places, and the luck has
already declared on my side."

A few mornings afterwards Mrs. Calverley, on coming down to

breakfast, held an open paper in her hand; laying it on the table and
pointing at it with her bony finger, when the servants had left the
room, she said, "I have an intimation here that Mr. Calverley will
return this evening. He has not thought fit to write to me, but a
telegram has been received from him at the office; and the head-
clerk, who, I am thankful to say, still preserves some notion of what
is due to me, has forwarded the information."

"Is not this return somewhat unexpected?" asked Pauline, looking

inquisitively at her hostess.

"Mr. Calverley's return is never either unexpected or expected by

me," said the lady; "he is immersed in business, which I trust may
prove as profitable as he expects, though in my father's time--"
 "Perhaps," interrupted Martin Gurwood, cutting in to prevent the
repetition of that wail over the decadence of the ancient firm which
he had heard a thousand times, "perhaps Mr. Calverley's return has
on this occasion been hastened by the news of the loss of his agent,
which I read out to you the other day. There is more about it in the
paper this morning."

"More! What more?" cried Pauline, eagerly.

"Nothing satisfactory, I am sorry to say. The body has not been

found, nor is there any credible account of how the accident
happened; the farther news is contained in a letter from one of the
passengers. It seems that this unfortunate gentleman, Mr. Durham,
had, even during the short time which he was on board the ship,
succeeded in making himself very popular with the passengers. He
had talked to some of them of the importance of the position which
he was going out to fill, of his devotion to business and to his
employer; and it is agreed on all sides that the well-known firm of
which he was the agent will find it difficult to replace him, so zealous
and so interested in their behalf did he show himself. He was one of
the last who retired to rest; and when in the morning he did not put
in an appearance, nothing was thought of it, as it was imagined--not
that he had succumbed to sea-sickness, as he had described himself
as an old sailor, who had made many voyages--but that he was
fatigued by the exertions of the previous day. Late in the evening, as
nothing had been heard of him, the captain resolved to send the
steward to his cabin; and the man returned with the report that the
door was unlocked, the berth unoccupied, and Mr. Durham not to be
found. An inquiry was at once set on foot, and a search made
throughout the ship; but without any result. The only idea that could
be arrived at was, that, finding the heat oppressive, or being unable
to sleep, he made his way to the deck, and, in the darkness of the
night, had missed his footing and fallen overboard. Against this
supposition was the fact that Mr. Durham was not in the least the
worse for liquor when last seen, and that neither the officers nor the
men on duty throughout the night had heard any splash in the water
or any cry for help. The one thing certain was, that the man was
gone; and all that could now be done was to transship his baggage
at Gibraltar, that it might be returned to England, and to make public
the circumstances for the information of his friends."

"It seems to me," said Martin Gurwood, as he finished reading,

"that unless the drowning of this poor man had actually been
witnessed, nothing could be much clearer. He is seen to retire to rest
in the night; he is never heard of again; there is no reason why he
should attempt self-destruction; on the contrary, he is represented
as glorying in the position to which he had been appointed, and full
of life, health, and spirits."

"There is one point," said Mrs. Calverley, "to which I think

exception may be taken, and that is, that he was sober. These sort
of persons have, I am given to understand, a great tendency to
drink and vice of every description, and the fact that he was
probably a boon companion of Mr. Calverley's, and on that account
appointed to this agency, makes me think it more than likely that he
had a private store of liquor, and was drowned when in a state of
intoxication."

"There is nothing in the evidence which has been made public,"

said Martin Gurwood, in a hard caustic tone, "to warrant any
supposition of that kind. In any case, it is not for us to judge the
dead and--"

"Perhaps," said Pauline, interposing, to avert the storm which she

saw gathering in Mrs. Calverley's knitted brows, "perhaps when Mr.
Calverley returns to-night, he will be able to give us some
information on the subject. A man so trusted, and appointed to such
a position, must naturally be well known to his employer."

The lamps were lit in the drawing-room, and the solemn servants
were handing round the tea, when a cab rattled up to the door, and
immediately afterwards John Calverley, enveloped in his travelling-
coat and many wrappers, burst into the apartment. He made his way
to his wife, who was seated at the Berlin-wool frame, on which the
Jael and Sisera had been supplanted by a new and equally
interesting subject, and bending down offered her a salute, which
she received on the tip of her ear; he shook hands heartily with
Martin Garwood, politely with Pauline, and then discarding his outer
garments, planted himself in the middle of the room, smiling
pleasantly, and inquired, "Well, what's the news?"

"There is no news here," said Mrs. Calverley, looking across the

top of the Berlin-wool frame with stony glance; "those who have
been careering about the country are most likely to gather light and
frivolous gossip. Do you desire any refreshment, Mr. Calverley?"

"No, thank you, my dear," said John. "I had dinner at six o'clock,
at Peterborough--swallowed it standing--cold meat, roll, glass of ale.
You know the sort of thing, Martin--hurried, but not bad, you know--
not bad."

"But after such a slight refreshment, Monsieur Calverley," said

Pauline, rising and going towards him, "you would surely like some
tea?"

"No, thank you, Madame Du Tertre; no tea for me. I will have a
little--a little something hot later on, perhaps--and you too, Martin,
eh?--no, I forgot, you are no good at that sort of thing. And so," he
added, turning to his wife, "you have, you say, no news?"

"Mrs. Calverley does herself injustice in saying any such thing,"

said Pauline, interposing; "the interests of the husband are the
interests of the wife, and, when it is permitted, of the wife's friends;
and we have all been distressed beyond measure to hear of the sad
fate which has befallen your trusted agent."

"Eh," said John Calverley, looking at her blankly, "my trusted

agent? I don't understand you."
 "These celebrated Swartmoor Ironworks are not beyond the reach
of the post-office, I presume?" said Mrs. Calverley, with a vicious
chuckle.

"Certainly not," said John.

"And telegrams occasionally find their way there, I suppose?"

"Undoubtedly."

"How is it, then, Mr. Calverley, that you have not heard what has
been in all the newspapers, that some man named Durham, calling
himself your agent, has been drowned on his way to India, where he
was going in your employ?"

"Drowned!" said John Calverley, turning very pale, "Tom Durham

drowned! Is it possible?"

"Not merely possible, but strictly true," said his wife. "And what I
want to know is, how is it that you, buried down at your
Swartmoors, or whatever you call them, have not heard of it
before?"

"It is precisely because I was buried down there that the news
failed to reach me. When I am at the ironworks I have so short a
time at my disposal that I never look at the newspapers, and the
people at Mincing-lane have strict instructions never to communicate
with me by letter or telegram except in the most pressing cases; and
Mr. Jeffreys, I imagine, with that shrewdness which distinguishes
him, saw that the reception of such news as this would only distress
me, while I could be of no possible assistance, and so wisely kept it
back until my return."

"I am sure I don't see why you should be so distressed because

one of your clerks got drunk and fell overboard," said Mrs. Calverley.
"I know that in my father's time--"
 "This Mr. Durham must have been an especially gifted man, I
suppose, or you would scarcely have appointed him to such an
important berth? Was it not so?" asked Pauline.

"Yes," said Mr. Calverley, hesitating. "Tom Durham was a smart

fellow enough."

"What I told you," said Mrs. Calverley, looking round. "A smart
fellow, indeed! but not company for his employer's wife, whatever he
may have been for--"

"He was a man whom I knew but little of Jane," said John
Calverley, with a certain amount of sternness in his voice; "but he
was introduced to me by a person of whom I have the highest
opinion, and whom I wished to serve. On this recommendation I
took Mr. Durham, and the little I saw of him was certainly in favour
of his zeal and brightness. Now, if you please, we will change the
conversation."

That night, again, Madame Du Tertre might have been seen

pacing her room. "The more I see of these people," she said to
herself, "the more I learn of the events with which my life is bound
up, so much the more am I convinced that my first theory was the
right one. This Monsieur Calverley, the master of this house--what
was his reason for being annoyed, contrarié, as he evidently was, at
being questioned about Durham? Simply because he himself knew
nothing about him, and could not truthfully reply to the pestering
inquiries of that anatomie vivante, his wife, as to who he was, and
why he had not been presented to her, the reigning queen of the
great firm. Was I not right there in my anticipations? 'He was
introduced to me,' he said, 'by a person of whom I have the highest
opinion, and whom I wished to serve;' that person, without doubt,
was Claxton--Claxton, the old man, who, in his turn, was the slave of
the pale-faced woman, whom Tom Durham had befooled! A bon
chat, bon rat! They are well suited, these others, and Messrs.
Calverley and Claxton are the dupes, though perhaps"--and she
stopped pondering, with knitted brow--"Mr. Calverley knows all, or
rather half, and is helping his friend and partner in the matter. I will
take advantage of the first opportunity to press this subject farther
home with Monsieur Calverley, who is a sufficiently simple bon
homme; and perhaps I may learn something that may be useful to
me from him."

The opportunity which Pauline sought occurred sooner than she

expected. On the very next evening, Martin Gurwood being away
from home, attending some public meeting on a religious question,
and Mrs. Calverley being detained in her room finishing some letters
which she was anxious to dispatch, Pauline found herself in the
drawing-room before dinner, with her host as her sole companion.

When she entered she saw that Mr. Calverley had the newspaper
in his hand, but his eyes were half closed and his head was nodding
desperately. "You are fatigued, monsieur, by the toils of the day," she
said. "I fear I interrupted you?"

"No," said John Calverley, jumping up, "not at all, Madame Du

Tertre; I was having just forty Winks, as we say in English; but I am
quite refreshed and all right now, and am very glad to see you."

"It must be hard work for you, having all the responsibility of that
great establishment in the City on your shoulders."

"Well, you see, Madame Du Tertre," said John, with a pleasant

smile, "the fact is I am not so young as I used to be, and though I
work no more, indeed considerably less, I find myself more tired at
the end of the day."

"Ah, monsieur," said Pauline, "that is the great difference between

the French and English commerce, as it appears to me. In France
our négociants have not merely trusted clerks such as you have
here, but they have partners who enjoy their utmost confidence,
who are as themselves, in fact, in all matters of their business."
 "Yes, madame, but that is not confined to France; we have
exactly the same thing in England. My house is Calverley and Co.;
Co. stands for 'company,' vous savvy," said John, with a great dash
at airing his French.

"Ah, you have partners?" asked Pauline. "Well, no, not exactly,"
said John evasively, looking over her bead, and rattling the keys in
his trousers-pockets.

"I think I heard of one Monsieur Claxton."

"Eh," said John, looking at her disconcertedly, "Claxton, eh? O

yes, of course."

"And yet it is strange that, intimate, lié, bound up as this

Monsieur Claxton must be with you in your affairs, you have never
brought him to this house--Madame Calverley has never seen him. I
should like to see this Monsieur Claxton, do you know? I should--"

But John Calverley stepped hurriedly forward and laid his hand
upon her arm. "Stay, for God's sake," he said, with an expression of
terror in every feature; "I hear Mrs. Calverley's step on the stairs. Do
not mention Mr. Claxton's name in this house; I will tell you why
some other time--only--don't mention it!"

"I understand," said Pauline quietly; and when Mrs. Calverley

entered the room, she found her guest deeply absorbed in the
photographic album.

That night the party broke up early. Mr. Calverley, though he used
every means in his power to disguise the agitation into which his
conversation with Pauline had thrown him, was absent and
embarrassed; while Pauline herself was so occupied in thought over
what had occurred, and so desirous to be alone, in order that she
might have the opportunity for full reflection, that she did not, as
usual, encourage her hostess in the small and spiteful talk in which
that lady delighted, and none were sorry when the clock, striking
ten, gave them an excuse for an adjournment.

"Allons donc," said Pauline, when she had once more regained her
own chamber, "I have made a great success to-night, by mere
chance-work too, arising from my keeping my eyes and ears always
open. See now! It is evident, from some cause or other--why, I
cannot at present comprehend--that this man, Monsieur Calverley, is
frightened to death lest his wife should see his partner! What does it
matter to me, the why or the wherefore? The mere fact of its being
so is sufficient to give me power over him. He is no fool; he sees the
influence which I have already acquired over Mrs. Calverley, and he
knows that were I just to drop a hint to that querulous being, that
jealous wretch, she would insist on being made known to Claxton,
and having all the business transactions between them explained to
her. Threaten Monsieur Calverley with that, and I can obtain from
him what I will, can be put on Tom Durham's track, and then left to
myself to work out my revenge in my own way! Ah, Monsieur and
Madame Mogg, of Poland-street, how can I ever be sufficiently
grateful for the chance which sent me to lodge in your mansarde,
and first gave me the idea of making the acquaintance of the head
of the great firm of Calverley and Company!"

The next morning, when, after breakfast, and before starting for
the City, Mr. Calverley went into the dull square apartment behind
the dining-room, dimly lighted by a window, overlooking the leads,
which he called his study, where some score of unreadable books lay
half reclining against each other on shelves, but the most used
objects in which were a hat and clothes-brush, some walking-canes
and umbrellas, he was surprised to find himself closely followed by
Madame Du Tertre; more surprised when that lady closed the door
quietly, and turning to him said, with meaning:

"Now, monsieur, five words with you."

 "Certainly, madame," said John very much taken aback; "but is
not this rather an odd place--would not Mrs. Calverley think--?"

"Ah, bah," said Pauline, with a shrug and a gesture very much
more reminiscent of the dame du comptoir than of the dame de
compagnie. "Mrs. Calverley has gone down-stairs to battle with
those wretched servants, and she is, as you know, safe to be there
for half an hour. What I have to say will not take ten minutes--shall I
speak?"

John bowed in silence, looking at the same time anxiously

towards the study-door.

"You do not know much of me, Monsieur Calverley, but you will
before I have done. I am at present--and am, I fancy, likely to
remain--an inmate of your house; I have established myself in Mrs.
Calverley's good graces, and have, as you must know very well, a
certain amount of influence with her; but it was you to whom I
made my original appeal; it is you whom I wish to retain as my
friend."

John Calverley, with flushing cheeks, and constantly-recurring

glance towards the door, said, "that he was very proud, and that if
he only knew what Madame Du Tertre desired--"

"You shall know at once, Monsieur Calverley: I want you to accept

me as your friend, and to prove that you do so by giving me your
confidence."

John Calverley started.

"Yes, your confidence," continued Pauline. "I have talent and

energy, and, when I am trusted, could prove myself a friend worth
having; but I am too proud to accept half-confidences, and where no
trust is reposed in me I am apt to ally myself with the opposite
faction. Why not trust in me, Monsieur Calverley--why not tell me
all?"
Welcome to Our Bookstore - The Ultimate Destination for Book Lovers
Are you passionate about books and eager to explore new worlds of
knowledge? At our website, we offer a vast collection of books that
cater to every interest and age group. From classic literature to
specialized publications, self-help books, and children’s stories, we
have it all! Each book is a gateway to new adventures, helping you
expand your knowledge and nourish your soul
Experience Convenient and Enjoyable Book Shopping Our website is more
than just an online bookstore—it’s a bridge connecting readers to the
timeless values of culture and wisdom. With a sleek and user-friendly
interface and a smart search system, you can find your favorite books
quickly and easily. Enjoy special promotions, fast home delivery, and
a seamless shopping experience that saves you time and enhances your
love for reading.
Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and
personal growth!

ebookgate.com