THE ANXIOUS ATLANTIC: WAR, MURDER, AND A “MONSTER OF A MAN” IN REVOLUTIONARY NEW ENGLAND A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by David W. Thomas December 2018 Examining Committee Members: Travis Glasson, Advisory Chair, Department of History Mónica Ricketts, Department of History Jessica Roney, Department of History David Waldstreicher, External Member, The Graduate Center, CUNY Richard Bell, External Member, University of Maryland ii © Copyright 2018 by David W. Thomas All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT On December 11, 1782 in Wethersfield, Connecticut, a fifty-two year old English immigrant named William Beadle murdered his wife and four children and took his own life. Beadle’s erstwhile friends were aghast. William was no drunk. He was not abusive, foul-tempered, or manifestly unstable. Since arriving in 1772, Beadle had been a respected merchant in Wethersfield good society. Newspapers, pamphlets, and sermons carried the story up and down the coast. Writers quoted from a packet of letters Beadle left at the scene. Those letters disclosed Beadle’s secret allegiance to deism and the fact that the War for Independence had ruined Beadle financially, in his mind because he had acted like a patriot not a profiteer. Authors were especially unnerved with Beadle’s mysterious past. In a widely published pamphlet, Stephen Mix Mitchell, Wethersfield luminary and Beadle’s one-time closest friend, sought answers in Beadle’s youth only to admit that in ten years he had learned almost nothing about the man print dubbed a “monster.” This macabre story of family murder, and the fretful writing that carried the tale up and down the coast, is the heart of my dissertation. A microhistory, the project uses the transatlantic life, death, and print “afterlife” of William Beadle to explore alienation, anonymity, and unease in Britain’s Atlantic empire. The very characteristics that made the Atlantic world a vibrant, dynamic space—migration, commercial expansion, intellectual exchange, and revolutionary politics, to name a few—also made anxiety and failure ubiquitous in that world. Atlantic historians have described a world where white iv migrants crisscrossed the ocean to improve their lives, merchants created new wealth that eroded the power of landed gentry, and ideas fueled Enlightenment and engendered revolutions. The Atlantic world was indeed such a place. Aside from conquest and slavery, however, Atlantic historians have tended to elide the uglier sides of that early modern Atlantic world. William Beadle crossed the ocean three times and recreated himself in Barbados and New England, but migrations also left him rootless—unknown and perhaps unknowable. Transatlantic commerce brought exotic goods to provincial Connecticut and extended promises of social climbing, but amid imperial turmoil, the same Atlantic economy rapidly left such individuals financially bereft. Innovative ideas like deism crossed oceans in the minds of migrants, but these ideas were not always welcome. Beadle joined the cause of the American Revolution, but amid civil war, it was easy to run afoul of neighboring patriots always on the lookout for Loyalists. Beadle was far from the only person to suffer these anxieties. In the aftermath of the tragedy, commentators strained to make sense of the incident and Beadle’s writings in light of similar Atlantic fears. The story resonated precisely because it raised worries that had long bubbled beneath the surface: the anonymous neighbor from afar, the economic crash out of nowhere, modern ideas that some found exhilarating but others found distressing, and violent conflict between American and English. In his print afterlife, William Beadle became a specter of the Atlantic world. As independence was won, he haunted Americans as well, as commentators worried he was a sign that the American project was doomed to fail. v To Dyana. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS By design, this dissertation is full of anxiety, alienation, and failure, and those sentiments could have easily overwhelmed my life at any step of the process were it not for the many people and institutions who supported me. To start, I have had a wonderful dissertation committee. Travis Glasson has been a consummate advisor from our first phone call, offering a perfect blend of scholarly guidance, organizational attention, and sociability. He somehow always knew what I needed most—incisive critique, encouraging remark, or just some time and space to think and write. No one has had to spend as much time with William Beadle, and many of the good ideas in these pages arose in our conversations. Travis read the drafts when I didn’t yet know what the project should look like, and he helped me figure out how to tell the story with emotion and curiosity without getting mired in Beadle’s mind or the gory details of the crime scene. David Waldstreicher has been a dedicated mentor and unofficial second advisor throughout my years at Temple. He was the first to suggest my essay on the Beadle tragedy could grow to a dissertation. When I worried it might not be “Atlantic” enough, he patiently pointed out just how Atlantic every aspect of the story was. David, more than anyone, taught me how to read historiography creatively and passionately, and that was essential to this project. David left Temple for CUNY Graduate Center just as I finished my prospectus, and I cannot thank him enough for remaining centrally involved with my work. That generosity has made this dissertation better. It has made me a better historian, and, I hope, a better future mentor myself. vii Three other excellent historians also served on the committee. From our first meeting, Monica Ricketts has offered insight and encouragement. In making sure I never lost sight of the Iberian Atlantic, she made me a better Atlanticist and, thus, made this a better Atlantic history dissertation. Jessica Roney joined the committee enthusiastically even though she arrived at Temple after the project was well under way. Her comments on anxiety as a historical subject alone have sent me forward as excited about this project as I was at the beginning. Finally, I was thrilled when Richard Bell agreed to serve as outsider reader. I first read the name William Beadle in Rick’s book We Shall Be No More. Without that book, and without him, I would have never thought to write a word about the Beadles. Many other members of the Temple University community deserve mention. Eileen Ryan joined Travis, David, and Monica on my comprehensive exams committee; reading on European nationalism and modern empire with her sharpened my take on national identity and colonialism in colonial America. Jay Lockenour, as department chair during my ABD years, extended funding for conference travel. The staff of the history department, namely Vangeline Campbell and the late Patricia Williams, assisted me innumerable times with forms, signatures, and the like, which I came to appreciate even more once I moved across the country. Outside the history department, Shawn Schurr and the College of Liberal Arts supported me with conference funding; the Graduate School provided a Dissertation Completion Grant that allowed me to finish the project. viii My fellow graduate students offered unwavering support and plenty of fun along the way. Thanks to all of you, especially Carly Goodman, Brenna Holland, Brad Horst, Justin Hubbard, Tom Reinstein, Grant Scribner, and Seth Tannenbaum. Patrice Laurent offered encouragement and ideas on many train trips and happy hours; she gave me that all-important first ride to Wethersfield, CT. Jessica Bird and John Worsencroft were good friends and colleagues in Philadelphia; over the last year, from opposite sides of the country, they helped me through the final phase of this Ph.D. ordeal (and the simultaneous leap into job applications) with a lengthy email chain of laughter, commiseration, and encouragement in the archive to prove it. Finally, most of what I learned about Philly and much of what I found engaging about colonial America, came thanks to Tommy Richards, my office mate and fellow East Fallser. Our countless car rides to campus, walks to the pizza truck, and meet-ups at local pubs made grad school fun even when it wasn’t. I owe thanks to a few teachers who were in my life when all I knew of Temple was its basketball team. As an undergraduate, I learned to read critically and to construct and analyze arguments from Dr. Brad Frazier. Years before I'd ever hear the name William Beadle, Brad gave me my first readings on deism, and I’ve kept an eye out for it ever since. During those same years, Dr. Robert Barnett, a history professor, showed me how studying history could open the world to new interpretations and be a source of both profound joy and sorrow. He was the first person to encourage me to pursue a Ph.D. It was in his classroom that I first learned a lesson that proved essential for this project, namely, that a story also makes an argument. ix History dissertations don’t happen without archives. The hard-working staffs at the following institutions have my gratitude for aiding my search for William Beadle: the American Philosophical Society, the Congregational Library & Archives, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Connecticut State Library, the David Library of the American Revolution, the Harvard Law School Library, the Library of Congress, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and the Wethersfield Historical Society. Additionally, thanks to the town clerks in Derby, Fairfield, Stratford, and Wethersfield for dusting off the old records for me. Well before I knew of William Beadle, a Princeton history student named James Smart looked at many of these archives and wrote a wonderful undergraduate thesis that was an early guide into Beadle.