New to the Reference Collection

Below are titles newly received or purchased for the library’s collection of contemporary historical scholarship and reference works. All of these books will be available for use in our library once we reopen to the public on Monday, 4 January 2016. In the meantime, enjoy the end of year holidays with family and friends. May you enter the new year renewed -- and excited to pick your research back up in our cozy reading room while the winter snow piles up outside!

Cleves, Rachel Hope. Charity & Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Crabtree, Sarah. Holy Nation: The Transatlantic Quaker Ministry in an Age of Revolution. University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Downs, Jacques M. with a new introduction by Frederic D. Grant, Jr. The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784-1844. Hong Kong University Press, 2014.

Free, Laura E. Suffrage Reconstructed: Gender, Race, and Voting Rights in the Civil War Era. Cornell University Press, 2015.

Graves, Donald E., ed. First Campaign of the A.D.C.: The War of 1812 Memoir of Lieutenant William Jenkins Worth, United States Army. Old Fort Niagra Association, 2012.

Hamlin, Kimberly A. From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women’s Rights in Gilded Age America. University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Hemphill, C. Dallett. Siblings: Brothers and Sisters in American History. Oxford University Press, 2011.

Jefferson and Palladio: Constructing a New World. Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, 2015.

Johnson, Marilynn S. The New Bostonians: How Immigrants Have Transformed The Metro Region Since the 1960s. University of Massachusetts Press, 2015.

Lockwood, J. Samaine. Archives of Desire: The Queer Historical Work of New England Regionalism. University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

Nicolson, Colin, ed. The Papers of Francis Bernard: Governor of Colonial Massachusetts, 1760-69. Volume IV: 1768. Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts vol. 87. The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2015.

Prieto, Laura R. At Home in the Studio The Professionalization of Women Artists in America. Harvard University Press, 2001.

Rex, Cathy. Anglo-American Women Writers and Representations of Indainness, 1629-1824. Ashgate Press, 2015.

Schiff, Stacy. The Witches: Salem, 1692. Little, Brown and Co., 2015.

New Titles in the MHS Library’s Reference Collection

Here in the MHS library it is always a pleasure to see the fruits of scholarly labor pursued in our reading room come back to us as the form of publications hot off the presses. In recent months, we have been delighted to add a number of titles to our collection gifted to us by their authors.

The following recently-published titles have been cataloged and are now available for use as part of our reference collection:

Amestoy, Jeffrey L. Slavish Shore: The Odyssey of Richard Henry Dana Jr. (Harvard University Press, 2015).

Balik, Shelby. Rally the Scattered Believers: Northern New England’s Religious Geography (Indiana University Press, 2014).

Berry, Stephen. A Path in the Mighty Waters : Shipboard Life & Atlantic Crossings to the New World (Yale University Press, 2015).

Blanck, Emily. Tyrannicide: Forging an American Law of Slavery in Revolutionary South Carolina and Massachusetts (University of Georgia Press, 2014).

Fisher, Julie A. and David J. Silverman. Ninigret, Sachem of the Niantics and Narragansetts : Diplomacy, War, and the Balance of Power in Seventeenth-century New England and Indian Country (Cornell University Press, 2014).

Gaskill, Malcolm. Between Two Worlds : how the English became Americans (New York: Basic Books, 2014).

Hodes, Martha. Mourning Lincoln (Yale University Press, 2015).

Kopelson, Heather Miyano. Faithful Bodies: Performing Religion and Race in the Puritan Atlantic (New York University Press, 2014).

Morrison, Dane. True Yankees: Sea Captains, the South Seas, and the Discovery of American Identity (Johns Hopkins, 2014).

Researchers are welcome to visit the MHS library during our regular business hours to consult these and other titles. If you are an author who has written a work drawing on research done at the MHS, we invite you to send a copy of your book to the Reference Librarian for inclusion in the Society’s collection. 

Military Manuscripts at the MHS and Beyond

It is not uncommon for the MHS library to receive copies of new publications from authors that did research here. In fact, we have an entire set of shelves devoted to displaying this type of new publication. After some time on display, these volumes are typically moved to our closed stacks and then available by request. Less often, we receive a new publication from a researcher that we deem appropriate to move immediately into our reference collection.

We recently received a newly published book called Military Manuscripts at the State Historical Societies in New England (2014). This volume, put together by Paul Friday, provides extensive documentation of manuscript collections relevant to military history in New England. Each chapter shines a spotlight on one individual institution and provides detailed lists of manuscript collections that contain materials related to military matters.

Since I started working at the MHS in 2011, Mr. Friday’s face has been one of the more familiar ones in the reading room. Over the years he placed scores of requests to consult manuscript materials from myriad collections in our holdings. The result is a box-level, sometimes folder-level inventory of military-related papers that the Society preserves. The sources include a large variety of material types, from maps and charts to correspondence and orderly books to printed materials like broadsides. The materials he worked with encompass a large chronology, going back as far as the Pequot War of the 1630s all the way up to the Vietnam War.

The countless hours of work that Mr. Friday did result in extremely valuable identifications of military papers held here. From documenting a single letter by Gen. John Burgoyne in the Bromfield family papers, to identifying thirty-five boxes, seven volumes, and three oversize items in the Clarence Ransom Edwards papers.

In addition to identifying such relevant collections, Mr. Friday also provides explanations in each chapter about the various organization schemes used by the different institutions, catalogs available for researchers (online and physical), procedures for requesting materials, hours of operation, and so forth.

At the back of the volume there are four appendices made up of several glossaries and complementary information. Also, there are five separate indices and a section introducing them.

Because he used available finding aids and collection guides to locate collections with military papers, Mr. Friday acknowledges that each historical society holds additional relevant collections that did not have companion finding aids and so did not show up in the volume. Despite this limitation, the volume as a whole will surely prove a tremendous help for researchers performing primary source research into the military history of New England and the United States. 

The King of the Filibusters

Filibuster, n. 1. An irregular military adventurer, esp. one in quest of plunder; a freebooter; -- orig. applied to buccaneers infesting the Spanish American coasts; later, an organizer or member of a hostile expedition to some country or countries with which his own is at peace, in contravention of international law.

On September 12, 1860, an American lawyer and journalist, an adventurer and filibuster, was executed by firing squad in Trujillo, Honduras. This is his story in brief.

William Walker was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1824. Pushed by his parents to a good education, he graduated from the University of Nashville at the age of 14. By 1843, at 19, Walker received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He continued his medical education in Paris and toured several cities in Europe before returning to Nashville to practice.

Dissatisfied with his career in medicine, Walker changed his focus to law and, shortly after taking up studies, moved to New Orleans. While he attained the bar in Louisiana, his practice there was even briefer than his medical practice and he soon moved into the field of journalism. In the winter of 1848, Walker became an editor and proprietor of the conservative New Orleans Crescent.

The following year, like so many other intrepid young men, Walker responded to the lure of the West and settled in San Francisco, arriving in June, 1850. He continued his work as a journalist, speaking loudly against the judicial authorities in San Francisco for failure to roll back a tide of lawlessness and crime. His vocal stance raised the ire of district judge Levi Parsons who declared the press a nuisance and, after much wrangling, judged Walker guilty of contempt and set a fine on him. Now, Walker’s legal experience came to the fore as he defended himself in open court against the charges, with much popular support, and was ultimately vindicated.

Shortly after, Walker moved to the nearby and quickly growing town of Marysville where he practiced law with Henry Watkins. By this time, many men of California were already engaging in filibustering in Latin America. This practice, prominent during the 1850s, was an aggressive and idealized effort to expand the influence of the United States in fulfillment of manifest destiny.

Over the next several years, Walker pursued this activity with fervor. In 1853 he attempted an invasion of Mexico with a small band of men, barely escaping alive. The United States tried him in violation of the neutrality act but he was quickly exonerated. In 1855, he set his sights on Nicaragua. This locale was coveted by many as the key to linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. No less a man than Cornelius Vanderbilt invested heavily in transporting goods across the narrow country. 

Landing with a small force of Americans, Walker supplemented his force with sympathetic liberal Nicaraguans and demanded independent command. With a lot of luck and small amount of daring, Walker and his men took the city of Granada and made hostages of its conservative leaders. 

Over the next several months, Walker used various schemes and local proxies to consolidate power in his own hands, eventually raising the alarm in neighboring Central American countries. In April 1856, Costa Rica occupied the Nicaraguan city of Rivas in order to drive Walker out but, with the aid of an outbreak of cholera, he forced them into retreat.

Throughout the next year, Walker’s course of action greatly alienated him from his supporters in American business. So it was with the financial backing of Vanderbilt that, in spring of 1857, an alliance of Central American countries besieged him at Rivas, forcing him to surrender to an American naval officer, at which time he and his men were delivered out of the country.

Still, he was not finished. By this time, Walker was something of a folk hero in the United States, meeting acclaim wherever he went. In November 1857, he tried to invade and was met by the US Navy which forced a quick surrender. In 1860 he made one last effort. This time, the Royal Navy captured him and delivered him to the nearest authorities, the Hondurans. In September of that year, William Walker finally met his end. 

The story of William Walker was unknown to me until I recently watched a film from 1987 called simply Walker, with Ed Harris in the title role and directed by Alex Cox. Though a fictional take on the actions of the man, it raised my awareness and piqued my curiosity. If you are interested in learning more about Walker and other 19^th century filibusters, see below for some resources 

Sources at the MHS

-        The destiny of Nicaragua: Central America as it was, is, and may be, Boston: S.A. Bent & Co., 1856.

-        Scroggs, William O., Filibusters and financiers: the story of William Walker and his associates. New York: Macmillan, c1916.

-        Wells, William V., Walker’s expedition to Nicaragua…, New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1856.

Useful online resources

-        Stiles, T.J., “The Filibuster King: The Strange Career of William Walker, the Most Dangerous International Criminal of the Nineteenth Century,” History Now 20 (Summer 2009). The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Accessed March 12, 2015. http://www.gilerlehrman.org/history-by-era/jackson-lincoln/essays/filibuster-king-strange-career-william-walker-most-danerous-i  

-        Tirmenstein, Lisa, “Costa Rica in 1856: Defeating William Walker While Creating a National Identity,” Accessed March 12, 2015. http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/FieldCourses00/PapersCostaRicaArticles/CostaRicain1856.Defeating.html  

-        Judy, Fanna, “William Walker,” The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco, Accessed March 12, 2015. http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/walker.html