From Hawthorne to History: The Mythologizing of John Endecott A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Abigail F. Davis IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Edward M. Griffin June 2009 copyright Abigail F. Davis 2009 i DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to Dr. Edward M. Griffin advisor, mentor, friend ii ABSTRACT Since the Revolutionary War, American historians, literary artists, and social commentators have undertaken a retroactive search for an acceptable myth of origin predating the Revolution. While the war itself has been endlessly and successfully deployed as a sterling founding moment, that claim alone has proved insufficient for several reasons. First, Americans have long been ambivalent about their pre-Revolution Puritan heritage. The new republic emerging from the revolutionary effort rested on ground previously inhabited by British colonists (and others) since the 1620s, but the colonial past did not readily speak to the feisty, independent, and distinctively AAmerican” self-image that mythologized during and after the war . Additionally, by the 19 th century, when the writing of New England history came prominently into vogue, quite a few pages of the Puritan chapter had become embarrassing. Something else was needed: an event earlier than the shot heard round the world in 1775, and a governing image more manly than the standard figure of the pious Puritans. When Nathaniel Hawthorne =s stories AEndicott and the Red Cross @ and AThe May- Pole of Merry Mount @ entered the nubile world of American literature in the 1830s, Hawthorne seemed to have answered that call. Reaching back to1634, he made historical John Endecott a central fictional figure: a man “wrought of iron” wielding a mighty sword against the idolatrous May-Pole and slashing the red cross from the English flag—precisely the needed image. Typically, Hawthorne’s readers, then and now, have generally missed his ironic signals and interpreted Endecott’s sword-play as the first declaration of independence. Hawthorne’s slippery tone has seldom produced more long-lasting literary and historical consequences than it has in his Endecott stories. This study analyzes their manifestations in a gallery of colonial and American historians, annalist, and folklorists (Hutchinson, Johnson, Parkman, Bancroft, Motley, Felt, Drake), through Longfellow and Whittier, to scholarly and family biographies of Endecott, and into the 20 th century in Lowell’s plays and the Merry Mount opera of Hanson and Stokes. Endecott’s case dramatizes literature’s power to perform “cultural work” by trumping history when a nation needs to create its myths of origin from accounts of a dubious past. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures v Introduction 1 CHAPTER ONE: HAWTHORNE AND ENDECOTT 1830-1838 7 1. “The May-Pole of Merry Mount” (1836) 2. “Endicott and the Red Cross” (1838) 3. “The Gentle Boy” (1832) 4. Conclusion CHAPTER TWO: HISTORY, LEGEND & FOLKLORE: THE SHADOWS OF JOHNSON AND HAWTHORNE FALL UPON 19 TH CENTURY HISTORIANS AND FOLKLORISTS 69 1. Introduction: Accountability and Erasure 2. The Problem with Historical Truth 3. Colonial Historians Edward Johnson, Thomas Morton, and Thomas Hutchinson on Endecott: A Fit Instrument or Great Swelling Fellow? 4. The Imaginative Historians: Parkman, Bancroft, Motley 5. The Anthologists as Historians: Griswold and the Duyckink Brothers to the American Literature Survey 6. Endecott in Legends, Annals & Folklore: Drake, Felt, Hawkes, the Flag, and the U.S. Congress iv CHAPTER THREE: ENDECOTT’S TEMPTATION: WHITTIER, LONGFELLOW, AND THE QUAKERS 125 1. Introduction 2. John Greenleaf Whittier (1802-1892) 3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) 4. Conclusion CHAPTER FOUR: THE LURE OF GENEALOGY 157 1. Story as Primogeniture 2. The Irony of John Endecott’s Offspring 3. Biography, Glory & Honor 4. Portraiture as Historical Artifact 5. Myth, Blasted: The Future of Family Memoir CHAPTER FIVE: ENDECOTT ON STAGE IN THE 20 TH CENTURY 195 1. Introduction 2. Merry Mount: The Opera 3. The Old Glory EPILOGUE: JOHN ENDECOTT’S SWORD 226 1. The History of the Sword: 1634-1991 2. The Search for the Sword: 2003 3. The Search Continued: 2009 4. Conclusion Bibliography 236 v LIST OF FIGURES 2.1 Portrait of John Endecott 96 2.2 The British Union Jack and the Flag of England 116 2.3 1600 flag of the British East India Company 116 2.4 Flag of the British Virgin Islands 116 2.5 English Red Ensign 116 2.6 Flag of New Zealand 117 2.7 Flag of Scotland 117 4.1 Portrait of John Endecott 157 4.2 Portrait of John Endecott 157 4.3 Portrait of John Endecott 157 4.4 Judge’s Cave, New Haven, CT 173 4.5 John Endecott: Image from an unidentified copy of Magnalia Christi Americana 187 4.6 John Endecott: From the portrait painted in Boston in 1665 and now in possession of William Crowninshield Endicott 188 4.7 Reproduction by Michele Felice Corne, 1802, now in possession of the American Antiquarian Society 188 4.8 Copy by T. Mitchell after the portrait in the Council Chamber, Boston. In possession of the Essex Institute, Salem, MA 189 4.9 Image from www.mass.gov: “Portrait by an unknown artist, 1665" 190 4.10 An unidentified copy from www.salemfocus.com 190 4.11 Image from www.hawthorneinsalem.com 191 4.12 One of two dissimilar copies by James Frothingham 191 Epilogue.1 English flag with Red Cross of St. George 226 Epilogue.2 John Endecott’s sword 229 1 Introduction Since the Revolutionary War, American historians, literary artists, and social commentators have undertaken a retroactive search for an acceptable myth of origin that predates the Revolution. While the war itself has been endlessly and successfully deployed as a sterling founding moment, that claim alone has proved insufficient for several reasons. First, Americans—especially those of white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant heritage—have been ambivalent about their pre-Revolution Puritan heritage nearly since the last pumpkin-shell haircut grew out. The new republic that emerged from the revolutionary effort was built on ground that had been inhabited by British colonists (and others) since the 1620s, but the colonial past did not readily speak to the feisty, independent, and distinctively AAmerican” self-image that mythologized during and after the war . Additionally, by the nineteenth century, when the writing of New England history came prominently into vogue, quite a few pages of the Puritan chapter had become embarrassing. America, alas, did not suddenly materialize in 1776, like Athena bursting fully formed from the head of Zeus, although that transformation would have been very convenient. Something else was needed: an event earlier than the shot heard round the world in 1775, and a governing image more manly than the standard figure of the pious Puritans. 2 When Nathaniel Hawthorne =s stories AEndicott and the Red Cross @ and AThe May- Pole of Merry Mount @ entered the nubile world of American literature in the 1830s, Hawthorne seemed to have answered that call. He had reached back to 1634, positioning John Endecott as central figure in those fictions, calling him a man “wrought of iron,” supplying him with a mighty sword to wield against the idolatrous May-Pole and to slash against the red cross in the flag of England, and suggesting that Endecott’s attack on the flag was the first blow to prefigure the eventual American revolt from the mother country more than two centuries later. It was precisely the image that was needed . As was so often the case with Hawthorne, readers missed his ironic signals and interpreted Endecott’s sword-play as a deadly serious (and historically accurate) moment in American history- making, and this study demonstrates that Hawthorne’s slippery tone has seldom produced more long-lasting literary and historical consequences than it has in his Endecott stories. Endecott was perfect for several reasons. Before being immortalized by Hawthorne, Endecott was a historical personage—the first Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1628—about whom little was known prior to his arrival in New England at the age of forty, the gap in his background thus providing a gap in the record that could be filled selectively and often apocryphally with Endecott’s alleged deeds, ideology, and, despite his Puritanism, demonstrations of hot-headed manliness. Combined with this absence of verifiable personal information was the fact that Endecott conveniently wrote almost nothing, even during the seventeen years he served as governor of the Bay Colony. Hence, he was ripe for imaginative creation as a character in fiction. I suggest that the incorporation of Endecott is a process of cultural reinvention that relies on either 3 rendering past events “accountable @ or erasing them from public memory. 1 The appropriation of Endecott enabled the creation of a national literary narrative including the highlights of America’s colonial past while ignoring the embarrassments, such as Endecott’s persecution of the Quakers. The construction of the governing myth was necessarily a two-step process: the American Revolution was the nation’s myth of origin, and the revolution’s myth of origin was the red cross incident. The search for myths of origin bears upon the uneasy dance that has ensued in recent years between theorists regarding America =s status as either colonized or colonizer. Edward Watts argues persuasively in Writing and Postcolonialism in the Early Republic that a country can be both at once. 2 Watts correctly points out that the debate about the nation =s ambivalence toward its colonial legacy has never been resolved. 3 Moreover, the symptoms of America =s cultural anxiety over the issue of its colonial origins have taken many forms. The construct of particular interest in this study is the demonstrated power of literature to distort the historical record.