Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 212

December 27, 2018: The Year in Review: Kavanaugh

[2018 feels like it’s been about ten years in one, but it’s almost done, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of the biggest stories from the year that was. I’d love to hear your year in review thoughts as well!]On what’s always been true about the Supreme Court, and what’s frustratingly new.Back in those halcyon days of February 2016, when none of us (other than federal judgeship completists and his immediate family) even knew the name Merrick Garland yet, I wrote a piece for the Huffington Post on the Supreme Court’s foundational political nature. I’ve learned a lot more about Supreme Court history and precedent in the last couple years, as unfortunately have nearly all of us, but I nonetheless stand by my main point from the piece: that since George Washington and the first nominees to the Supreme Court, that highest judicial body has been tied to, influenced by, and part of the nation’s political concerns and debates. We like to think of the Court as outside of or above politics, and of course the justices’ lifetime appointments do mean that once on the bench they are not as directly tied to immediate political concerns or changes in government or the like (although Clarence Thomas’s various conflicts of interest reflect another kind of definite such tie); but these are human beings, nominated by presidents and confirmed by Congress, and in those and many other ways have always been part of the partisan and political realities of their moments.What followed Obama’s early 2016 nomination of Garland to that vacant Court seat was nonetheless unprecedented, and set us on a course that has continued to feature uncharted territory in many ways over the nearly three years since (and not at all limited to the Supreme Court, of course). That starts with Senator Mitch McConnell and the Senate GOP holding the seat vacant for the remainder of Obama’s term (nearly a year after the Garland nomination), an action that McConnell erroneously attributed to normal election-year contexts but in reality violated longstanding precedent and norms. They succeeded at holding the seat until the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2016 election, and then helped Trump usher through his own nominee, Neil Gorsuch, thus ensuring that the seat would be held by an extreme conservative rather than the moderate justice Garland promised to be. The treatment of this seat thus represented a deviation from the Court’s histories on multiple levels, and brought partisan politics into the nomination and confirmation process in a far fuller way than had been the case with prior nominees and justices (which is particularly ironic since McConnell had initially accused Obama of playing politics with the seat and Court, prompting my HuffPost piece in the first place).Trump’s second Supreme Court appointee, Brett Kavanaugh, reached the Court in a seemingly more traditional manner: a sitting justice, Anthony Kennedy, announced his retirement; Trump nominated Kavanaugh to replace him; and after a contentious confirmation debate the Senate voted to confirm Kavanaugh as the newest Supreme Court Justice. Details that Trump had worked behind the scenes for months with Kennedy to coordinate his retirement were less typical, however, and indicated that this seat was likewise being treated as an entirely political pawn. But it was the confirmation process itself which represented a thoroughgoing break from Court and American history: in the past nominations for the Court or other high offices have been withdrawn for such relatively minor revelations as smoking marijuana (in 1987!) or hiring an undocumented worker as a nanny; whereas Kavanaugh was credibly accused by multiple women of sexual assault, and not only was his nomination not withdrawn but he was confirmed for the nation’s highest Court and one of its highest civic honors. I’m well aware of the echoes of the Clarence Thomas confirmation, but the Kavanaugh accusations are many steps beyond those directed by Anita Hill at Thomas, and reflect one more step in the politicization (and, to my mind, demeaning) of the Supreme Court.Last reflection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? 2018 reflections you’d share?

December 26, 2018: The Year in Review: Parkland

[2018 feels like it’s been about ten years in one, but it’s almost done, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of the biggest stories from the year that was. I’d love to hear your year in review thoughts as well!]On what’s not new, kind of new, and entirely new about our worst contemporary tragedies.Seven years ago to the day, I wrote a year in review piece on the January 2011 Gabrielle Giffords shooting, and on how pioneering scholar Richard Slotkin’s AmericanStudies analyses of violence and guns in American history and identity could help us understand such shocking and disturbing acts of political and social violence. The fact that I’m writing a year in review piece seven years later about another mass shooting—and, more exactly, the fact that I could have picked any one of the almost literally countless other 2018 mass shootings as a starting point for this post; although we must keep counting, and must keep thinking about each of them and their victims individually—proves Slotkin’s theses and then some. The final book of Slotkin’s trilogy called America a “gunfighter nation,” and hardly a day has gone by in 2018 that hasn’t featured literal, painfully exemplary acts of gun-fighting. Indeed, one of the most frustratingly common responses to such mass shootings—the idea that we just need more guns and shooters to intervene—represents yet another layer to that symbolic but all-too-real gunfighter nation mythos.So we’ve always been a nation deeply linked to images and realities of violence and guns, and mass shootings like the February 14th, 2018 massacre at Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have to be put in that longstanding and foundational American context. But at the same time, no AmericanStudier or American historian (or even slightly knowledgeable and engaged observer of American society) could possibly argue that mass shootings have not become more ubiquitous, more of a fact of American daily life, over the last few years; that whatever the longstanding impulses or inclinations to which they connect, these horrific acts of mass violence have not found more consistent outlets in the 21st century. Or, to put it more exactly and crucially, that white Americans have not been forced to deal with the threat of mass violence more fully—as African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans(among other groups) can attest, such threats have been part of the American experience of too many communities for centuries. But in 2018, the threat of mass violence has for the first time become a genuine possibility for every American community at every moment and in every space, from night clubs to synagogues, supermarketsto high schools. That constant threat comprises a dark new reality, perhaps especially for American parents (my sons have to do monthly active shooter drills in their schools, something I can’t quite bear to dwell on). But in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, young students at the high school also modeled another and very different new reality: a generation willing and able to use their voices, their social media presence, and their activist acumen to challenge such dark histories and their causes. We’ve only just begun to see the potential effects of this group of young people and the broader generation they represent, although the November midterm elections certainly exemplified the kinds of victories this cohort can help produce. But while electoral and political results are certainly important, the fundamental truth is that the Parkland students have already and significantly changed the conversation, making clear that both gun victims and student communities will have a say in the ongoing debate around mass shootings and guns in the United States.Next reflection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? 2018 reflections you’d share?

December 25, 2018: The Year in Review: Black Panther

[2018 feels like it’s been about ten years in one, but it’s almost done, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of the biggest stories from the year that was. I’d love to hear your year in review thoughts as well!]On one more takeaway from one of the year’s (and history’s!) biggest films.I wrote an entire weeklong series back in March on Black Panther, and am not going to pretend I have a ton more to say about the blockbuster (seriously, per this AMC articleit’s currently the third-highest grossing film of all time!), groundbreaking Marvel superhero film. But most of the subjects in this year in review series are gonna be pretty serious and kinda dark, so I thought for Christmas Day it made sense to highlight one of the year’s most feel-good stories instead. That feel-good side to Black Panther’s uber-success is what I wanted to focus on in this additional BP post. A year and a half ago I wrote about the effects of broadening ethnic and cultural representations in the recent Star Wars films, particularly the strikingly multi-national Rogue One. Black Panther comprises a parallel but also distinct case, as it’s a mega-blockbuster Hollywood film featuring a cast that is striking due to its largely shared African and African American cultural heritage. As that last hyperlinked article illustrates, it’s difficult to overstate the effect of such a cast on audiences around the world, from those viewers who see themselves represented so fully in a blockbuster film to those who see a wider range of African and African American performers than they have perhaps ever encountered in any other cultural work. In each of those and many other cases, Black Panther has helped expand not only the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but also the horizon of cultural possibilities for superhero stories, action films, and popular culture overall.That’s most of what I have to say about that, but for one more holiday season present for you all, here are some pictures of kids dressed as Black Panther characters. Enjoy, and happy holidays, fellow AmericanStudiers!Next reflection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? 2018 reflections you’d share?

December 24, 2018: The Year in Review: #MeToo

[2018 feels like it’s been about ten years in one, but it’s almost done, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of the biggest stories from the year that was. I’d love to hear your year in review thoughts as well!]On two historical applications of the contemporary activist movement.As illustrated by nearly all of its most prominent cases to date, the #MeToo movementhas focused at least as much on the past as on the present. That is, while of course disgraced offenders like Harvey Weinstein, Les Moonves, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Louis C.K., Kevin Spacey, and many others remain very much with us in the present (often in evolving and particularly complicated ways), their cases have tended to address actions and assaults from the past, sometimes indeed the quite distant past. I’m not suggesting in any way that their timing makes the allegations any less serious or significant—even if there are at times legal statutes of limitations on pursuing these accusations through the justice system, the social and cultural conversations and responses need to occur in any case—but rather noting that as much as this movement feels specifically illustrative of our own moment, it has at least as much to tell us about historical periods and contexts.If we take that lesson to heart, we can also extend #MeToo to help us think about other historical periods and figures as well. I wrote about one such historical application in my second piece for my Saturday Evening Post Considering History column (itself one of my favorite things about my own 2018), on the #MeToo movement that helped launch the Montgomery bus boycott and the Civil Rights Movement. (For more, see this We’re History column and this great book by historian Danielle McGuire.) This is a bit of a tricky comparison, as the current #MeToo movement has been frequently and to my mind rightly accused of minimizing the experiences and voices of women of color. But one clear way to challenge those narratives would be to note a historical example like this one, when women of color led their own #MeToo movement to counter histories of sexual assault and violence, histories in which both race and gender intersected. Perhaps that example can help us think further about the intersections (as well as the differences) between race and gender (among other identity categories) in our own moment’s unfolding #MeToo histories.As I wrote about in this Fall preview post, there’s another thread of #MeToo accusations, the kind directed at figures like Junot Díaz and (especially) Sherman Alexie. As far as I know, Alexie isn’t accused of sexual assault or even harassment exactly, so much as having used his clout to keep Native American women writers from advancing in their own careers (or to make them dependent on him for any such advancement). That might seem far less significant than assault allegations, and of course any and all such situations should be seen as part of a spectrum, rather than necessarily parallel to one another. But if we examine the historical cases of women who were never able to advance or succeed in their chosen careers due to sexism and oppression—women like the groundbreaking architect Sophia Hayden, for example—we can begin to understand both what such treatment meant to these women and the broader societal loss effected by their absence. One more way to think about the historical legacies and lessons of the 2018 #MeToo movement.Next reflection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? 2018 reflections you’d share?

December 22-23, 2018: A Wish for the Elves

For many years now I’ve made holiday wishes for the AmericanStudies Elves, that mischievous crew of interdisciplinary imps who make American(Studies) Dreams come true. I’ve got lots more wishes I could make this year, including very personal ones for my sons and my parents, for the people I care most about, for my forthcoming book and other projects.But I’m gonna make just one very public wish instead: that we better remember our history. It doesn’t quite say it in the description up top, but if there’s been one constant goal in my 8+ years of blogging in this space, as well as my books and online writing and most everything else in my evolving career, it’s been to add to our collective memories. To highlight and think about the histories and stories, the figures and voices, the texts and contexts without which our contemporary conversations are so impoverished. They offer lessons, they offer warnings, they offer inspirations, and most of all they offer us a better sense of who and what we’ve been, who and we are, and who and what we might be. So Elves, I’m doing what I can, but this is a collective wish and it needs all of us. Help us better remember our history in 2019.Year in review series starts Monday,BenPS. Wishes you’d share?

December 21, 2018: Revolutionary Writings: Judith Sargent Murray

[On December 19th, 1776 Thomas Paine’s pamphlet The Crisis was published in Philadelphia. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy The Crisis and other American Revolutionary writings, leading up to a special weekend wish for the AmericanStudies Elves!]On the relatively nondescript home that served as both prison and liberation for the Revolutionary writer Judith Sargent.I’ve often thought that to be far ahead of one’s time, especially when it comes to one’s own rights and freedoms, likely feels both confining and liberating—a combination of recognizing things which one is frustratingly denied and yet seeing a broader and more open world beyond them. Certainly we can feel both sides to that coin in “On the Equality of the Sexes” (1790), the poem and essay written by Gloucester’s own Judith Sargent Murray. Like her close contemporary (English) feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, Murray was extremely intelligent, and she ironically but crucially opens “Equality” with an argument for why people are not equal—for why, indeed, certain minds are far more destined for greatness than others. Seeing herself in that light (as she seems to have, and deservedly so) would, again, have likely made Murray feel both good and bad—like part of a Talented Tenth of sorts, but one arbitrarily held back due solely to the biological accident of gender.The (at the time; over the next century the waterfront was significantly shifted) waterfront Gloucester home built in 1782 for Sargent and her first husband, Captain John Stevens, served first as a direct remainder of such arbitrary and frustrating limitations. Stevens was at the time enjoying a brief period of prosperity as a local merchant, but his fortunes would shortly and permanently decline (thanks in part to the Revolution and in part to his own shortcomings as a businessman); by 1785 Stevens was so deeply in debt that the house was turned into a debtor’s prison, one in which both Stevens and Judith (who was of course literally married to his debt and legally powerless to control her own finances in any way) were held as collateral for those debts. A year later Stevens fled the city and tried to start fresh in the West Indies, but he ended up similarly indebted and imprisoned there, and died in prison. It was during these same years that Judith began to write her articles and essays (under the pseudonym “Constantia”), and such efforts reflect quite literally the only way that she could escape the prison into which her husband’s failures had cast her.Yet the same period, and the same house, also contained a man who would, on multiple levels, help Judith achieve a far freer and happier existence. John and Judith were among America’s earliest supporters of Unitarian Universalism, the controversial new religion that represented a direct challenge to New England’s ruling Puritanism; they expressed that support by, among other things, providing a home for John Murray, the founder of the religion’s American church and its most prominent preacher. Murray and Judith developed a close friendship and relationship, and by the time of her husband’s death it was clearly something more; a few years later they were married and began a new life together, in the same Gloucester home. Judith’s final years were marked by a series of tragedies, culminating in the 1820 deaths of Judith, her daughter, and her grandson; but for the thirty years prior to those tragedies she had lived in a home and marriage—and philosophy—that were far closer to the social, political, and human ideals she espoused in her writings. Gloucester’s Sargent House contains and --interprets all those sides to her life—and also includes some paintings and pictures donated by her most famous descendent, John Singer Sargent!Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other Revolutionary writings or writers you’d highlight?

December 20, 2018: Revolutionary Writings: Wheatley to the Earl of Dartmouth

[On December 19th, 1776 Thomas Paine’s pamphlet The Crisis was published in Philadelphia. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy The Crisis and other American Revolutionary writings, leading up to a special weekend wish for the AmericanStudies Elves!]On the poetic letter that both anticipates the Declaration and helps us remember a vital figure.No American creative writer (unless we define Thomas Paine’s pamphlets such as yesterday’s subject The Crisis as creative writing, but despite Paine’s unquestionable rhetorical talents I would call those texts political documents first and foremost) played a larger role in the developing American Revolution than did African American slave and poet Phillis Wheatley. As I highlighted in this post, Wheatley’s poetic celebration of and subsequent meeting with General George Washington represent two interconnected, exemplary Revolutionary moments. And her 1773 poem “To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth,” about a portion of which I wrote in this post on Wheatley’s seemingly contradictory poetic constructions of slavery and race, comprises perhaps the single clearest literary argument for the unfolding Revolution, anticipating quite strikingly the language of the Declaration of Independence.That’s particularly the case with the poem’s most overt argument for independence, contained in one long sentence that takes up the final five lines of the ten-line second stanza: “No more, America, in mournful strain/Of wrongs, and grievance unredress’d complain,/No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain,/Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand/Had made, and with it meant t’ enslave the land.” Although the poem as a whole is addressed to a specific English audience member (on whom more in a moment), in this crucial section Wheatley shifts her address to all of “America,” personifying this developing political entity as “thou” and making the case for “the Goddess … Fair Freedom” (the similarly personified subject of the poem’s opening stanza) as the logical and necessary mechanism through which to push back on and overturn all of the negative elements included in this sentence (wrongs, grievance, iron chain, Tyranny, lawless hand, enslavement). Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense” has been described as a direct predecessor to the Declaration, but to my mind no text fits that description better than Wheatley’s poem.Wheatley’s addressee is quite different from the Declaration’s, however. While the latter text is aimed at King George III, not to convince him of anything so much as to use a critique of the king to make the case for independence, Wheatley’s poetic letter seeks precisely to persuade her singular audience member of the value and necessity of freedom. That audience member was William Legge, the 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies between 1772 and 1775, and a man whom Wheatley had met in London and believed sympathetic to the cause (perhaps in part because of his opposition to the Stamp Act). Legge did not succumb to Wheatley’s poetic charms, and by 1776 was entirely opposed to the Revolution and an ardent supporter of the use of military force to quash it. Yet nevertheless, he—like Wheatley’s address to him—reminds us that the English community in this period was no more unified nor certain of its future than was the American. And in his contributions toward the founding of Eleazar Wheelock’s evangelical college for Native Americans, an institution that would become Dartmouth College, Legge also illustrates the complex, multi-layered relationship that so many in England had toward the colonies and their peoples.Last writing tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Revolutionary writings or writers you’d highlight?

December 19, 2018: Revolutionary Writings: The Crisis

[On December 19th, 1776 Thomas Paine’s pamphlet The Crisis was published in Philadelphia. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy The Crisis and other American Revolutionary writings, leading up to a special weekend wish for the AmericanStudies Elves!]On the importance of contexts, and what they can help us see in a crucial historical text.The December 19th, 1776 first number of Thomas Paine’s (eventually) sixteen pamphlets titled The Crisisbegins this way: “These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: ‘Tis dearness only that gives everything its value.” As I transcribe those words I’m looking at them in the same place I imagine most of us students of American literature and history have encountered and read them: an anthology. In this particular case, the Norton Anthology of American Literature Shorter Eighth Edition , where Paine’s words and excerpted pamphlet sit between excerpts from his other famous pamphlet “Common Sense” and the start of Thomas Jefferson’s entry.We’ve got to read historical texts somewhere (especially in the pre-intertubes days of my high school and college education), and anthologies are a handy place to do so. But it’s not always easy, when encountering them in that way, to think sufficiently about the contexts of their publication. In the case of Paine’s text, he had a very specific such context for “these are the times”: the ongoing defeat of George Washington and the Continental Army in the New York and New Jersey campaign. By early December, 1776 Washington had lost a number of engagements with the forces of British General William Howe, and the American troops had withdrawn across the Delaware River, leaving New York and New Jersey in mostly British hands. Congress had even withdrawn from the city of Philadelphia, and it seemed quite possible that both the Continental Army and the Revolution itself would not survive this first post-Declaration winter. Certainly not a time or place when summer soldiers and sunshine patriots could hope to find much warmth, and certainly a particularly fraught moment that makes clear why Paine capitalizes “NOW” in his first paragraph (his only such capitalization there).It’s not just that Paine’s pamphlet was so directly inspired by its historical context, though—it also quite possibly influenced that unfolding context. A few days after the pamphlet’s initial publication, Washington may have read a reprint aloud to his men, with whom he was camped in Pennsylvania (the historical record is ambiguous on this score, as this article traces, but Washington and the army at least knew of the pamphlet soon after its publication). On the night of December 25th, Washington led many of those troops in the famous crossing of the Delaware, a surprise attack on the British forces at Trenton that significantly shifted the course of not only this campaign but the whole early Revolutionary conflict. It’s easy to see such historical moments as inevitable in hindsight, but of course it was anything but, just as the outcome of the Revolution was far from certain in December 1776 (and would remain far from certain for many years to come). Those uncertainties help us understand the existence and tone of Paine’s pamphlet—and also help us see recognize the role that Paine’s inspiring words played in helping carry those Revolutionary efforts forward.Next writing tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Revolutionary writings or writers you’d highlight?

December 18, 2018: Revolutionary Writings: The Adams Letters

[On December 19th, 1776 Thomas Paine’s pamphlet The Crisis was published in Philadelphia. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy The Crisis and other American Revolutionary writings, leading up to a special weekend wish for the AmericanStudies Elves!]On the myths, and the realities, revealed about the Revolution and its leaders in the Adams letters.Writing to his wife Abigail on July 3rd, 1776 (she was back at home in Braintree managing the family farm and raising their children), the day after the Continental Congress had drafted the Declaration of Independence, John Adams argued that “the Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epoch, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”On one level, the letter reveals just how much myth-making is inherent in any national celebration—we celebrate independence on July 4th because the Declaration was signed, dated, and sent out to the American public for the first time on that day; but Adams’ emphasis makes clear that the date was and is an arbitrary one, and of course that Revolutionary acts, like all historical moments, develop over time. On another level, however, Adams’ letter reveals quite impressively how aware the Congress was of the significance of what was happening: not only in his quite thorough prediction of the celebrations that would come to commemorate the event; but also in his recognition of all that would follow the Declaration. “You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not,” he wrote. “I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means.”Reading the Adams’ correspondence offers even more Revolutionary realities than those. For one thing, it deeply humanizes the second President (and by extension all the framers); I defy anyone to read John’s heartfelt July 20th, 1776 letter of concern for both his ailing family and his own separation from them and not feel differently about the man and moment. For another, the letters provide a visceral and compelling argument for the Revolutionary era’s hugely impressive community of American women—Abigail was not as publicly minded as peers such as Judith Sargent Murray and Annis Boudinot Stockton, but she makes a thoroughly convincing case for what Murray called the equality of the sexes: in her overt arguments for such equality, but just as much in her intelligence, her eloquence, and her strength in supporting both the family and its business and her husband and the nation’s. Many of my posts in this space have sought to complicate our idealizing national myths, but the Adams letters remind us that some of our realities have been just as ideal.Next writing tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Revolutionary writings or writers you’d highlight?

December 17, 2018: Revolutionary Writings: Jefferson’s Paragraph

[On December 19th, 1776 Thomas Paine’s pamphlet The Crisis was published in Philadelphia. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy The Crisis and other American Revolutionary writings, leading up to a special weekend wish for the AmericanStudies Elves!]On important historical contexts for a frustrating founding text, and why the frustrations remain nonetheless.In this July 4th, 2015 piece for Talking Points Memo, my second-most viewed piece in my year and a bit of contributing bi-monthly columns to TPM, I highlighted and analyzed the cut paragraph on slavery and King George from Thomas Jefferson’s draft version of the Declaration of Independence. Rather than repeat what I said there, I’d ask you to take a look at that piece (or at least the opening half of it, as the second half focuses on other histories and figures) and then come back here for a couple important follow-ups.Welcome back! As a couple commenters on that post noted (and as I tried to discuss further in my responses to their good comments), I didn’t engage in the piece with a definitely relevant historical context: that the English Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, had in November 1775 issued (from on board a warship anchored just off the Virginia coast) a prominent Proclamation both condemning Virginian and American revolutionaries, declaring martial law in the colony, and offering the prospect of freedom to any African American slaves who left their owners and joined the English forces opposing them. A number of slaves apparently took Dunmore up on the offer, and so when Jefferson writes that “he [King George] is now exciting these very people to rise in arms among us,” he might have been attributing the idea to the wrong Englishman but was generally accurate about those English efforts. Yet of course Jefferson’s misattribution is no small error, as it turns a wartime decision by one English leader (and a somewhat unofficial one at that, as it’s not at all clear to me that Dunmore had the authority to make such an offer nor that the Crown would necessarily or consistently have upheld it) into a defining feature of the relationship between England and the colonies.There are significantly bigger problems with Jefferson’s paragraph than that misattribution, however. And to my mind, by far the biggest is his definition of African American slaves as a foreign, “distant people,” not simply in their African origins (and of course many late 18th century slaves had been born in the colonies) but in their continued identity here in America. Moreover, Jefferson describes this distant people as having been “obtruded” upon the colonists, an obscure word that means “to impose or force on someone in an intrusive way.” And moreover moreover, Jefferson then directly contrasts the slaves’ desire for liberty with the colonists’ Revolutionary efforts (and thus their desire for liberty), a philosophical opposition that excludes these Americans from the moment and its histories just as fully as his definitions and descriptions exclude them from the developing American community. As I’ve highlighted elsewhere, a number of prominent slaves—from Crispus Attucks and Phillis Wheatley to Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker—had already proved and would continue to prove Jefferson quite wrong. But for as smart and thoughtful a person as TJ, it shouldn’t have required such individuals to help him see how much African American slaves were an integral, inclusive part of Revolutionary Virginia and America.Next writing tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Revolutionary writings or writers you’d highlight?