Megan Melvin's Thesis Invoking America with Signatures
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INVOKING AMERICA: REPRESENTATION, REVOLUTION, AND REPUBLICAN MOTHERHOOD IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN ICONOGRAPHY by MEGAN SCALLAN MELVIN A THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in The Department of History to The School of Graduate Studies of The University of Alabama in Huntsville HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA 2014 !ii !iii !iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is an incredible feeling to finally have the opportunity to thank the people who helped make this project possible. My first debt is to my advisor, Christine Sears, for the following pages would not have been possible without her guidance and constant encouragement. My sincerest gratitude to my thesis committee Molly Johnson, John Kvach, and Stephen Waring for their advice, comments, and support. I am also very grateful to the numerous teachers and colleagues who helped me create this project. Thank you to Elizabeth Sherman at American University and Carolyn Ravenscroft of the Drew Archives who provided me with many insights into gender, republican ideological, and the nature of the American Revolution. And, the staff of Peabody Essex Museum and the Duxbury Rural & Historical Society for allowing me to use their collections during and after my time as an employee. I am so blessed that my best readers were my exceptionally gifted friends and colleagues. For that privilege, I thank Betty Bolte, Meg Davey, Jan Fowler, Chris LeQuieu, Carly Olson, and Rob Wilkison. Not only did they provided excellent criticism and editorial advice, they provided me with encouraging words and enthusiasm all along the way. I cannot forget my family and friends who have patiently endured, supported, and championed me throughout this entire process. Most importantly, I have to thank my husband, Ben Melvin, and my grandparents, Pat & Bud Reuffer, who have believed in my every step of the way! !v !vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page List of Illustrations ix Chapter I. INTRODUCTION IMAGE AS ARGUMENT 1 A. Historiography 3 B. Methodology 10 II. THE ORIGINS OF AMERICA”S FEMALE ALLEGORIES: ANCIENT LIBERTAS TO COLUMBIA 17 A. Ancient Britannia and Libertas 19 B. America as the Indian Princess 22 C. American Liberty 32 D. Miss Columbia 38 III. REPUBLICAN MOTHERS, SONS OF LIBERTY, AND COLUMBIA’S DAUGHTERS 51 A. Spartan Mothers and Roman Matrons 52 B. Daughters of Liberty and Columbia’s Sons 63 IV. CONCLUSION 77 PRIMARY SOURCE WORKS CITED 81 SECONDARY SOURCE WORKS CITED 83 BIBLIOGRAPHY 89 !vii !viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 2.1 Paul Revere, “Obelisk of Liberty,” copperplate engraving, Boston, MA, 1766. 25 2.2 Anonymous, The Female Combatants, engraving, London, 1776. 28 2.3 Thomas Colley, The Reconciliation Between Britania (sic) and Her Daughter America, etching, published by W. Richardson, London, May 11, 1782. 30 2.4 Paul Revere, Mr. Samuel Adams, frontispiece from the Royal American Magazine, engraving, April 1774. 34 2.5 John Downman, Liberty I am, and Liberty is Wright / And Slavery do distain, with all my Might, charcoal and black chalk touched with red chalk, London, 1777. 36 2.6 W.D. Cooper, America Trampling on Oppression, engraving London, 1789. 38 2.7-9 Late 18th century transfer-print creamware jug, Liverpool. 44 2.10 Mahogany chest-on-chest with wooden sculptures of Columbia flanked by the goddesses of Peace and Plenty on the pediment. Made by Stephen Badlam of Salem and John Skillin and Simeon Skillin of Boston, 1791. 46 2.11-12 Mahogany chest-on-chest with pediment depicting Columbia designed and carved by Samuel McIntire, Salem, MA, ca. 1806-09. 48 3.1 Pierre Eugene Du Simitiere, Goddess America or The Congress, frontispiece of the Pennsylvania Magazine: or, American Monthly Museum, engraving, 1775. 54 3.2 C.W. Peale frontispiece of The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine, 1790. 54 !ix 3.3 Paul Revere, The Hon. John Hancock, Esq., frontispiece from the Royal American Magazine, engraving, March 1774. 57 3.4 Frontispiece from the Columbian Magazine, or Monthly Miscellany, engraving, Philadelphia, PA, 1787. 61 3.5 John Adams and Liberty, English creamware black transfer printed quart mug, probably Liverpool, ca. 1798-1801. 66 3.6 Edward Savage, Liberty in the Form of the Goddess of Youth: Giving Support to the Bald Eagle, oil on canvas, Philadelphia, 1796. 69 3.7 Mary Green, embroidery based on Edward Savage’s Liberty in the Form of the Goddess of Youth, Worcester, MA, 1804. 69 3.8 Gown with white needlework, American gown made of textiles from either Asia, India, or England, ca. 1795-1810. 72 3.9 Gilbert Stuart, Portrait of Anne Willing Bingham, oil on canvas, Philadelphia, 1797. 72 3.10 Genius of the Ladies Magazine, frontispiece from the Ladies Magazine and Repository of Entertaining Knowledge, Philadelphia, PA, 1792. 74 !x CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION: IMAGE AS ARGUMENT America’s first national allegories, Liberty and Columbia, captured American imaginations during the Revolutionary period and inspired men and women of the early republic. Throughout the late eighteenth-century visual depictions of Liberty and Columbia appeared on magazine frontispieces, newspaper mastheads, and broadsides. They were also sculpted into furniture, woven in textiles, painted on porcelain, transferred onto creamware, and printed on wallpapers. While some objects were expensive private commissions, others were mass produced items purchased at market with little intrinsic value. For middle and upper class families, these consumer goods made daily life more pleasant regardless of their actual cost. The true value of these objects rested not in their monetary worth, but in what the objects communicated about the people who owned and used them. Early republican images of the goddesses of Liberty and Columbia represented republican virtue and public spiritedness, the primary principles required of citizens for the success of the new nation. It was commonly believed, the republic could only survive !1 if its citizens, both men and women, acted virtuously both publicly and privately, through willingly sacrificing their private interests for the greater good of the nation. Citizens were asked to eradicate all forms of selfishness, to forgo personal profit, choosing instead to work for the best interests of the republic. The nation could only be secure and strong when its citizens “seriously set himself to root out his Passions, Prejudges (sic) and Attachments” for “only reputable Principle and Doctrine must be that all Things must give Way to the public.”1 Patriots, politicians, and the middle and upper classes believed that the republic would collapse unless its citizens were virtuous, replacing vice with sober republican values. John Adams wrote to Mercy Warren, “public virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private [virtue], and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.”2 A Harvard student in 1785 echoed Adams’s sentiments about the centrality of virtue to the republic and citizenship, writing that virtue was “the national characteristic” and “to be destitute of virtue, is to cease to be a citizen.”3 Both Adams and the Harvard student refer to virtue on a national level regarding men and women, a collective whole of American citizens regardless of their voting and legal status. 1 Excerpt from Adams and Warren, Warren-Adams Letters, 1:223 seen in John Agresto, “Liberty, Virtue, and Republicanism: 1776-1787,” The Review of Politics, vol. 39, no. 4 (Oct., 1977), 474. 2 John Adams to Mercy Otis Warren on April 16, 1776, Warren-Adams Letters, vol. 12 (Boston, 1917, 1925), 222-223. 3 “The Competitor, XII,” Boston Magazine, III (November, 1785), 428. See Boston Magazine Sept. 1785, 347 for the Harvard identification. excerpt found in Mary Beth Norton’s Daughters of Liberty (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980), 243. !2 In this study I push the current historiography further and use images and objects together with a range of rich documentation to provide another way to understand and evaluate the past.4 The combination of a study of artifacts and relatable contemporary text can help illuminate the interrelationships between social and cultural history and material culture of early America. I argue that not only did early republicans see themselves in the roles of their ancient forbearers, they also saw themselves as the children of Liberty and Columbia. As the direct descendants of these powerful allegorical figures, Americans were the heirs of virtue and liberty. The primary text and images used in the pages that follow relate to Liberty’s and Columbia’s American children and their duty to defend liberty and be virtuous citizens of the new republic. Historiography Image makers and consumers were influenced by the political, cultural, and social concerns, as reflected in the artwork, the designs on particular objects, and in print. Liberty’s and Columbia’s relevance to the present was a concern of artists since they were “endlessly redefined” to gain new meaning according to the contemporary social and political issues they related.5 Artists used a combination of real and allegorical imagery 4 Samuel Thomas, “Teaching America’s GAPE (Or Any Other Period) with Political Cartoons: A Systematic Approach to Primary Sources Analysis,” The History Teacher 37, no. 4 (Aug., 2004), 426-427. 5 David Hackett Fischer, Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America’s Founding Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 233. !3 to shape culture through symbols, as well.6 They depicted freedom and republicanism through compositions of Liberty and Columbia dressed in flowing gowns and grabbing onto a staff topped with a liberty cap as an eagle flies overhead. Three types of analysis have informed my research and argument: material culture theory, visual chronological categorization, and social meaning of images. The first stresses that objects, whether they be a print or creamware pitcher, are vehicles of communication vital to understanding not just the item itself but the culture and social environment it was created and used in.