Vermont's Appeal...

...well, this time of the year it is the weather and the blueberries, but Stephen Bradley had something different in mind in 1779. At the time, the newly independent states of New Hampshire, New York, and Massachusetts all had various claims on chunks of land in Vermont. It had not been one of the original colonies, but was being actively settled and contested, and of course was the site of several major Revolutionary War battles.

Bradley advocated for Vermont's standing as an independent state and the arguments laid out in this pamphlet were instrumental in Vermont's eventual admittance to the Union as the 14th state in 1790. Our copy is inscribed by the author to Colonel Charles Sims of Virginia, a lawyer with considerable political clout in the new republic whose support Bradley would need.

To see our copy, ask for McGregor 23.

The Attorney General of Fugitive Slaves

With Congress taking a break for August after a series of failed efforts to legislate, we thought the following note especially apropos. Written by Salmon P. Chase in 1873, it says very simply, "Can Congress make wrong right?" Chase famously was the Secretary of the Treasury during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln and will be familiar to anyone who has read Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. After winning the election of 1860, Lincoln reportedly said, "The very first thing that I settled in my mind was that two great leaders of the [Republican] party should occupy the two first places in my cabinet -- Seward and Chase." At the time, Chase was a newly-minted United States senator from Ohio who had been one of Lincoln's chief competitors at the Republican National Convention.

Before Chase became Secretary of the Treasury and then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he was simply a local boy from Cornish, New Hampshire. The town, now associated with Augustus Saint Gaudens and the Cornish Colony, was originally settled by Chase's grandparents. When Chase was sixteen years old, he enrolled at Dartmouth College as a junior and graduated two years later at the age of eighteen as a member of the class of 1826. Eventually, he would move to Cincinnati and be pejoratively known as the "Attorney General of Fugitive Slaves" because of his fierce anti-slavery views and willing defense of fugitive slaves. He went on to organize the Liberty and Free Soil parties in Ohio and eventually became governor of that state.

Here at Rauner, we have a small collection of correspondence from Chase as well as an alumni file.
One of the letters, written to a Judge Smith in August of 1860, several months after Chase's defeat at the convention, states that he holds no ill will for any of the people who voted for Lincoln. Rather, he prefers "the triumph of the cause to the success of any body, whether myself or another." He goes on to say that "the characters and abilities of Mr. Lincoln " provide some measure of hope for the party and its goals. Roughly a year later, he would join Lincoln's team of rivals.

To explore the Salmon P. Chase letters, come to Rauner and ask for MS-103. You can also have a look at his significant alumni file while you're here.

Versatile Spuddy

This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the United States' formal involvement in World War I. However, many Americans had already been serving in Europe, either in the Foreign Legion or in support roles such as ambulance or supply truck drivers. By the time the war had officially ended on November 11, 1918, over a hundred Dartmouth men had died as a result of the war. One of those who lost his life was Sturgis "Spuddy" Pishon, a member of the class of 1910 and a lieutenant in the U. S. Army's 341st Aero Squadron. Pishon's plane crashed during a training mission and he died soon afterward in the Post Hospital.

Spuddy was the epitome of heteronormative masculinity: he was a quarterback on the football team and regarded as one of the greatest Dartmouth football players of his time. Captain Galiher, Pishon's commanding officer, takes great pains to emphasize the manliness of his death. In his letter to Spuddy's sister Elizabeth, he claims that the young lieutenant "died like an American; he went down with his machine and retained consciousness up to the time of his death." Later in the letter, Galiher underscores that Pishon "died like a man."

Interestingly enough, none of the obituaries about or memorials to Spuddy mention his involvement with the Dartmouth Players, the drama club on campus. In the spring of his senior year, he played the role of Caroline, the daughter of the Earl of Dartmouth, in an operetta titled "The Pea Green Earl." Apparently, dressing as a woman for Dartmouth productions was hardly a one-time lark for the quarterback and future aviator; in the review for the operetta, it states that Pishon "contributes a three-year experience in female roles to the performance." One of the reasons Spuddy might have had so many female parts is because he was fairly short at five feet three inches. On the back of the photograph of him in costume, someone wrote, "Versatile Spuddy" and "The beloved Spuddy Pishon whose gridiron, stage and war records are part of Dartmouth's history."

To learn more about Spuddy Pishon's life, come to Rauner and ask to see his alumni file. To learn more about the Dartmouth Players, come explore their records (DO-60).

Enlightenment

This summer has been really rainy and dreary, but we are about to celebrate Sophomore Summer Family Weekend and the forecast is perfect. Today at 3:00, we will be having a tour showing off some of the highlights of the collection. In honor of the fabulous weather, we are working on the theme of "light." So, we will have illumination, spiritual enlightenment, "light" reading, a particularly bright spot from Dartmouth's history, and, of course, the Enlightenment.

What better way to show the process of printing than with a stick of type and Diderot's Encyclopedia! Both spread enlightenment and they will brighten up our tour.

They will be out for today's tour, but you can see these anytime by asking for AE25.E53 1770 Vol. 7.

Creepy!

We couldn't let this go by without comment. Last week we worked with a group of health care professionals looking at the history of medications and the establishment of medical authority. Among the materials were several patent medicine advertisements from the early 1900s. This one for Beecham's Pills just gave us all the creeps.

First of all, the quote "The Best Wife I Ever Had!" Okay, does that mean he has had many wives and this is the best ever? Also, is it supposed to imply some kind of ownership? He seems a bit possessive in his stance. Then there is the look on his face. "Look" is too nice a word, let's say leer in his eye. She is a little worrisome as well with her sly grin and holding the little bottle of pills to make the OK sign.

Just what were Beecham's to cause such a wondrous transformation? According to Wikipedia, they were a laxative made up primarily of aloe, ginger and soap. At least they seem pretty harmless unlike some of the other medicines that were advertised. Their message, though, was more disturbing.

To see it ask for the December 1907 issue of Pearson's, Sine Serials PA4.P35 V. 24 1907:Dec.

Faces of Aeneas

Ogilby's Aeneas

You don't really think of classical characters being altered by 17th-century political turmoil, but the face of Aeneas, Virgil's hero in the Aeneid, was transformed toward the end of the century based on the political leanings of two publishers: John Ogilby and Jacob Tonson. 

Tonson's Aeneas

At least one scholar has suggested that Ogilby’s 

Aeneid, printed in 1654, pays homage to Charles II in its representations of Aeneas, whose round face and black mustache bears a strong resemblance to the king in his youth. It is probably not a coincidence that Ogilby was tapped to participate in the planning of Charles’s coronation in 1660; that same year, he also published his translation of Homer’s Iliad, which he dedicated to Charles.

Tonson’s edition of the Aeneid is a more complex political creature than Ogilby’s for many reasons. As a founder of the Whig Kit-Cat Club, he would not have been an eager supporter of Charles II. However, Tonson purchased the original engraving plates from Ogilby’s Aeneid for use in Dryden’s translation of Virgil’s works, which meant potentially including images of Charles II in his 1697 edition. As a result, Tonson paid an anonymous engraver to alter the images of Aeneas that looked most like Charles II so that the monarch’s tell-tale mustache was eliminated or obscured.

Charles II as Aeneas

William III as Aeneas

Moreover, John Dryden was Catholic and a staunch supporter of the recently deposed James II, to the extent that he had openly refused to take the oaths of allegiance to William III and Mary II when they took the throne in 1689. As such, Dryden refused to dedicate his translation of the Aeneid to William. This introduced a potential problem for Tonson, whose ability to publish in England relied on the king’s explicit approval. As a solution, to counteract Dryden’s Jacobite leanings in the text, Tonson hired an anonymous engraver to alter further some of Ogilby’s original plates of Aeneas so that the Trojan hero would share William III’s distinctive Roman nose.

The Ogilby edition is Rare PA6807 .A1 O4 1654, and you can see the Tonson edition by asking for Rare PA6807.A1D7 1697.

Rocks and a Hard Place

Farming in New Hampshire has never been an easy proposition. Although the overwhelming number of boulders that fill the fields have been a great source of stone for house foundations and picturesque walls, they've also made clearing and planting particularly difficult. In addition, New Hampshire soil is acidic and thin, which makes growing anything a supremely challenging endeavor. It makes sense, then, that most traditional farms in New Hampshire in the 1800s were slowly abandoned by their owners, either for mill jobs in urban centers or for a new farming life in the west where rich soil abounded.

At Rauner, we have a wonderful broadside that is a perfect illustration of how farming in New Hampshire became a dead end for all but a few hearty (and perhaps foolhardy) souls. In March of 1847, the Dow family of Hanover, New Hampshire, had had enough of the struggle. With plans to head west for better climes, they commissioned a broadside advertising the auction of their farm, including several fruit and maple trees, "one valuable mare," farming implements, and even books.

Our copy of this broadside has personal relevance for the Dow family beyond the sale of their property: on the back of the single sheet are numerous letters written to two of the Dow sisters who were currently working in the mills in Methuen, Massachusetts. Their sister Julia, mother Polly, father A. D. (Agrippa Dow) and brother Lewis all take some time and space to jot down messages to the girls, and their distinct personalities emerge from their words. Julia teases one of her sisters by asking if she wouldn't like to come home and help her with spinning now that she's been a "factory girl" for so long. Their mother says that she can't say much because it's washing day but frets that her daughters won't think much of the log cabin that the family will be living in after the move. The younger brother, Lewis, is happy that school is over. The patriarch of the family, Agrippa Dow, simply asks, "Will you go? Will you go?"

To see the Dow family's group letter and auction poster, come to Rauner and ask for MSS 847214.