Washington Writing in the Archival Space of Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s The Linwoods (1835) The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation O'Leary, Derek Kane. 2020. Washington Writing in the Archival Space of Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s The Linwoods (1835). Harvard Library Bulletin 2020, https://nrs.harvard.edu/ URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37366611. Citable link https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37366611 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Harvard Library Bulletin, December 2020 https://harvardlibrarybulletin.org Washington Writing in the Archival Space of Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s The Linwoods (1835) By Derek Kane O’Leary [ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8562-1647] I find myself in the situation nearly of a new beginner; for, although I have not houses to build (except one, which I must erect for the accommodation and security of my military, civil, and private papers, which are voluminous and may be interesting), yet I have scarcely any thing else about me, that does not require considerable repairs. George Washington to James McHenry, Secretary of War. Mount Vernon, 3 April 1797.1 I. INTRODUCTION On a “Novemberish” day in 1835, Catherine Maria Sedgwick joined her teenaged niece and her friend John Gorham Palfrey, editor of the North American Review, on a visit to the Cambridge, Massachusetts residence of the leading antebellum collector and editor of American historical documents, Jared Sparks. Sparks was in the midst of finishing his mammoth eleven- volume compilation of The Writings of George Washington (1834–1837).2 Sedgwick had recently published her second historical novel, The Linwoods or, “Sixty Year Since” in America, in which George Washington made regular appearances. Mostly, her fictionalized depictions of the General cast him in the act of writing his wartime correspondence, the very archival material at the core of the volumes that Sparks was then editing. For a decade, Sparks had gathered an unparalleled archive of Washington’s papers, which included a mix of manuscripts and documents copied from record offices in the 13 original states and British and French state archives, as well as the masses of materials Washington bequeathed I would like to thank Professor Samuel Otter for introducing me to The Linwoods and sparking this idea; the two anonymous reviewers of the submitted manuscript; J.T. Jamieson for his thoughtful reading of this draft; Mitch Nakaue for her exceptional editorial guidance; and Houghton Library for its generous support of this work. 1 Reprinted in Jared Sparks, The Writings of George Washington, vol. XI (Boston, 1836), 197. 2 In August 1835, Sedgwick received the first positive responses to her new novel, though she remained anxious about its popular reception. 10 August 1835, Journals, MS Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers: Part I. Catharine Maria Sedgwick papers I, 1798-1897 Reel 7; Box 11; Folder 10, Massachusetts Historical Society, Nineteenth Century Collections Online. HLB 1 to his nephew, Supreme Court Justice Bushrod Washington.3 Promoting the project to the Marquis de Lafayette in 1827, Sparks envisioned this compilation as “a monument for posterity reared by the hands of our great hero himself.”4 In the first volume, Sparks explained to readers that his guiding principle was “to exhibit the writings of Washington in a manner, that will render strict justice to the imperishable name of the author, and contribute the greatest advantage to his countrymen, both at the present time and in future ages.”5 Although in such statements Sparks presented himself as an impartial editor, in practice he was deeply concerned with how this “monument” and the “imperishable name” of Washington appeared. Much seemed at stake. In Sparks’ eyes, Washington’s papers were the nation’s single most important set of historical papers. The US Congress, many readers in the US and abroad, and members of US historical societies agreed. In 1834, George Corbin Washington, who inherited the papers, consented that they would be “deposited in the Archives of the nation” at the State Department once Sparks had finished editing them, in exchange for $25,000 appropriated by Congress.6 This was an unprecedented federal expenditure for an archival acquisition, which inaugurated the antebellum congressional practice of purchasing other founders’ papers. Over the following years, the volumes of Washington papers selected, edited, and annotated by Sparks met considerable acclaim. They were distributed to Congress, subscribers, libraries, universities, and learned societies throughout the United States. Abridged versions were spun off in Britain and in French, German, and Italian translations for foreign readers. Mourning Sparks’ death at a special meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1866, Harvard law professor Theophilus Parsons proclaimed that “his word-painting of Washington, for example, will carry down to distant generations the intellectual and moral features of the Father of his country, as Stuart’s portrait will carry down the lineaments and expression of his face. And Sparks’ word-painting will endure when Stuart’s canvas is dust.”7 3 The history of Washington’s papers from the revolution to the 20th century is helpfully surveyed in “Provenance,” Index to the George Washington Papers (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1964). 4 Sparks to Gen. Lafayette, 14 May 1827. Jared Sparks personal papers I.C: Miscellaneous drafts of letters and papers, 1808–1842 (MS Sparks 132). Houghton Library, Harvard University. https://id.lib.harvard.edu/ead/c/hou02771c19893/ 5 Jared Sparks, The Writings of George Washington, vol. II (Boston, 1834), xiii. 6 George Corbin Washington to Louis McLane, 3 January 1834, Box 57, Mount Vernon Historic Manuscript Collection, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington, Mount Vernon, Va. 7 Robert C. Winthrop, John C. Gray, Theophilus Parsons, Charles G. Loring, and Thomas Aspinwall, “Special Meeting. Tribute to Jared Sparks,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 9 (1866-1867), 168. HLB 2 Calling on Sparks that day in 1835, Sedgwick hoped to glimpse the “word-painter” at work on Washington’s archive. Sedgwick’s was a bookish, New England version of the pilgrimage that tens of thousands of Americans and foreign visitors performed throughout that decade to Washington’s home and tomb at Mount Vernon.8 In doing so, she showed her fascination with both Washington and the process of manipulating his papers for publication. In her journal, Sedgwick recalled finding “Mr. Sparks in his room surrounded with the records of the revolution—he showed us the wonderful voluminous copies—journals, memos etc. of this most wonderful man.”9 Sedgwick’s observation reveals the close bond that she, like Sparks and many others, perceived between Washington’s archive and Washington himself: the “wonderful voluminous copies” of the original documents in Sparks’ office had been made by Washington, but as recorded in her diary they could be conflated with copies of “the most wonderful man.” Ensconced as the intermediary between Washington’s papers and the public was Sparks, appearing to Sedgwick like a “rich country squire” with his private manuscript collection.10 The choreography of Sparks in the middle of Washington’s papers, Washington’s papers between Sparks and Sedgwick, and Sedgwick at an ambivalent distance observing this scene provides a helpful metaphor for this essay’s re-examination of The Linwoods.11 Unlike Sparks, Sedgwick did not physically gather primary documents or enter the archives of the nation’s many new historical societies while conceiving this work. Nor did she formally present the book as an 8 “Pilgrimages” to Mount Vernon, as they were often called, began during Washington’s life but became popular in the antebellum. Earlier that year, Joseph Balestier, the newly appointed US consul to Singapore, recounted to Sedgwick that his “liberal curiosity to see the General” led him to “the sacred mount” of the Washington estate following a visit to the State Department in Washington, D.C. Joseph Balestier to Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Reel 17; Box 4; Folder 3, Undated Letters to Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Massachusetts Historical Society. Mount Vernon as a national tourist site has been analyzed recently by Scott Casper, Sarah Johnson’s Mount Vernon: The Forgotten History of an American Shrine (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008); Lydia Mattice Brandt, First in the Homes of His Countrymen: George Washington’s Mount Vernon in the American Imagination (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016); Jean B. Lee, “Historical Memory, Sectional Strife, and the American Mecca: Mount Vernon, 1783–1853,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 109, no. 3 (2001): 255-300; and Matthew R. Costello, The Property of the Nation: George Washington’s Tomb, Mount Vernon, and the Memory of the First President (University of Kansas Press, 2019). 9 3 November 1835, Journals, Part I, Reel 7; Box 11; Folder 10, MS Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers. 10 The depiction of Sparks by Sedgwick is a surprising reference to the documentary landscape of nineteenth-century Britain, in which aristocratic homes often housed copious manuscript collections in addition to broader collections of antiquities. This peculiar transposition— across class, time, and geography—reframes the New Englander’s state- funded, nationalist, and widely published undertaking as the reclusive pursuit of a European nobleman. Here, Sparks resembles the archetype of the antiquarian that British and American critics had lampooned for decades. Discussed, for instance, in Philippa Levine, The Amateur and the Professional: Antiquities, Historians and Archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–1886 (Cambridge University Press, 1986). 11 This essay uses the major recent republication: Catharine Maria Sedgwick, The Linwoods; or, Sixty Years since in America, ed.