INTRODUCTION T the Time of His Death, in April I8I3, Benjamin Rush Was a at the Zenith of His Fame and Influence

INTRODUCTION T the time of his death, in April I8I3, Benjamin Rush was A at the zenith of his fame and influence. Long regarded by everyone except himself and perhaps a few other Philadelphians as the leading citizen of Philadelphia, the recipient of uncounted honors from his countrymen and from European courts and learned societies, Rush had achieved a reputation not surpassed by that of any other American physician for a century or more to come. If eulogists are to be distrusted, we have the testimony of a pupil, who was himself to become a great physician, writing a few months before his teacher died. In January I8IJ Charles D. Meigs re ported to his father in Georgia: "Dr. Rush looks like an angel of light, his words bear in them, and his looks too, irresistable per suasion and conviction :-in fact, to me he seems more than mortal. If ever a human being deserved Deification, it is Dr. Rush.m Rush's fame sprang from his own vigorous and magnetic person ality; from his substantial accomplishments in medicine, psychiatry, education, and social reform; from the great body of his published writings; from his gifts as a teacher and lecturer; and, finally, from the letters he wrote to scores of friends, relatives, patients, pupils, and colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic. In I 8 I 6 a former puyil, Dr. James Mease of Philadelphia, was happily inspired to gather and publish cca volume or more of the letters of my late friend Dr Rush to various persons on political, religious, and mis cellaneous subjects." For this purpose Mease solicited the aid of two of Rush's intimate correspondents, ex-Presidents Adams and Jefferson. Both men promptly consulted Rush's son Richard. Rich ard replied to Adams that he thought ccthere may be more good intention than good judgment" in the proposal, and a little later he added, with finality, cci find it to be as decidedly the opinion of my mother and brothers, as I confess it was my own, that my fathers letters should not be given up to the press." To Jefferson, Richard wrote much the same thing, and thus the earliest attempt to collect Rush's letters ended before it was well started. 2 This decision was in accord with the family's stand on the pub- 1 Extract furnished to the Rush family by A. Emlen Meigs, I903; Rush Family Papers, deposited in Princeton University Library. 2 Mease to Jefferson, 7 Aug. I8r6, L.C., Jefferson Papers; Jefferson to Mease, I 7 Aug. I 8r6, same; Richard Rush to Adams, 29 Sep. and 31 Oct. r8 I 6, PMHB, LXI (1937), I53-5; Adams to Richard Rush, 13 Nov. 1816, Hist. Soc. Penna., Gratz Coli.; Richard Rush to Jefferson, I 3 Nov. 18 I 6, Mass. Hist. Soc., Jefferson Papers. [ lxi ] INTRODUCTION lication of Rush's "Travels through Life," the charming and re vealing autobiography he had composed in I 8oo as a sort of memoire justificatif of his career. It was public knowledge at the time of Rush's death that he had left an autobiography, and the highest expectations were entertained regarding its publication. But after preparing the manuscript for the press, Richard and James Rush reconsidered. The work was not published; access to it was steadily denied to historians; and it did not reach print until the present century.3 The brothers rested content with the biographical account of their father in David Ramsay's Eulogium (Philadelphia, 1 8 I 3), a work more substantial and useful than most works of its class, but uniformly laudatory. They had furnished information from the family papers to Ramsay, but this courtesy was not re peated for others, and it was to be long before the public would learn anything further about Dr. Rush from the voluminous papers he had left. 4 The principal reason for the family's reticence was Rush's quar rel, during his service as physician general in the Continental army, with his commander, George Washington. Though Rush's papers contained indisputable and overwhelming evidence of his patriot ism, it simply seemed best to James, who had inherited the papers, and to Richard, who had attained eminence in public life, to keep silent. This policy certainly in jured rather than enhanced Rusf!.'s reputation while the history of the Revolution was being written, for it allowed free range to speculation and gossip. If Washington was an immaculate hero, the savior of his country, what then was Rush, who had criticized and opposed him? The almost automatic answer to this question explains why Rush, for all his stature, waited well over a century for an adequate biography.5 A large proportion of the materials essential to Rush's biogra pher or to the editor of his letters had meanwhile become available by the terms of James Rush's will. James, who had married Phoebe Ridgway, heiress of one of Philadelphia's great mercantile fortunes, 5 See G. W. Corner's Introduction to Rush's Autobiography as definitively edited (Princeton University Press for the American Philosophical Society, I 948), p. 3-8. 4 Ramsay to James Rush, 5 May and IO July I8I3 (Libr. Co. Phila., James Rush Mss); Richard Rush to James Rush, I7 July I8I3, Rush Mss, XLIV. 5 Dr. Corner has summarized the protracted controversy over Rush's reputation that was part of "the War of the Grandfathers"; see Rush's Autobiography, p. 7-8, I 24. Appendix I in the present work is an attempt to present Rush's relations with Washington in the light of all the evidence now available. I have written more fully on the history of Rush's reputation in general in an article entitled "The Reputation of Benjamin Rush," Pennsylvania History, XVII (I95o), 3-22. [ lxii ] INTRODUCTION died in I 869 and left his estate to build a library as a memorial to his wife. His purpose was realized a decade later in the opening of the great granite building on South Broad Street in Philadelphia known as the Ridgway Branch of the Library Company of Phila delphia. Therein were deposited, in further accord with the terms of James' will, his own books and papers "and also those of my father, Dr. Benjamin Rush (in my possession)."6 The Benjamin Rush MSS, amounting to perhaps IO,ooo pieces, comprise the great bulk of the letters he received throughout his lifetime, drafts and copies of some of the letters he wrote, his lecture notes, literary manuscripts, business papers and ledgers, memorandum books, diplomas, &c., &c. Probably no comparable body of records for an eighteenth-century medical practitioner and teacher's career exists elsewhere in the world. Even so, these records are not complete. At some undetermined time before the transfer of the main body of Rush's archives to the Library Company, a large and valuable segment was selected and removed from them. This segment in cluded the manuscript of Rush's autobiography, a run of his com monplace books, most of the surviving letters Rush wrote his wife, and most of the letters written to Rush by the statesmen and gen erals of the early republic. As was afterwards to appear (though the explanation of this circumstance is not known to the present writer), the selected group had come into the possession of Julia Williams Rush (1832-1898), the only surviving daughter of Sam uel Rush (!795-1859), seventh son of Dr. Benjamin Rush. Julia Rush in 1855 had married Alexander Biddle (1819-I899), and the papers thereafter descended in the Biddle family until 1943, when they were dispersed in a series of auction sales in New York City.1 Viewed at large, their dispersal was a tragedy, but it was not with out some good effects. For a moment at least, these long-hidden letters and documents were brought out into the open; some of them have since been published; and their exceptional importance and literary quality, both collectively and individually, have caused a marked revival of interest in Benjamin Rush. Evidently he was a man of much greater gifts, achievement, and attractiveness than one could gather from the meager and usually unfavorable notices of him in the histories of his age. From time to time members of the Biddle family had seen fit to select portions of the Rush papers in their possession and to 6 James Rush's Last Will and Testament, as published, Phila., I 869, p. I4. 7 See The Alexander Biddle Papers: American Historical Autographs, N.Y.: Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., I 943, pts. i-iii. [ lxiii ] INTRODUCTION print them in small editions for private circulation. One of the volumes so issued bore the title Old Family Letters Relating to the Yellow Fever (Philadelphia, 1892). It contained the long series of daily letters Rush wrote to his wife while he kept his post in Philadelphia during the murderous epidemic of yellow fever in 1793. In spite of its scarcity and its editorial defects, this slight volume achieved a sort of underground celebrity, for Rush's letters written that fall provide the most graphic record of the city's agony that survives. 8 The sole collection of Rush's letters that has hither to appeared in print, this volume was an earnest of what was in store for the reader of Rush's letters at large. Benjamin Rush was a major letter writer in a letter-writing age. Writing letters was almost as natural a function for him as eating, and on the whole he preferred the former activity to the latter.

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