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Thoughts of not-exactly-two-centuries ago:

One of the benefits of showing a newcomer around town is reminding myself of what I have come to overlook.  In New York, the obvious places that locals never go include the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.  In Boston, Faneuil Hall is pretty high up on that list, but we were able to break at least one of my old habits by sneaking in to visit for a few minutes near closing time.

I had definitely forgotten, if I’d ever noticed, how difficult it is to comprehend the Great Hall’s size.  While shorter front-to-back than Boston’s Symphony Hall, it is nearly square and thus holds a deceptively large number of people.  Especially when combined with its intimate dimensions, this seating capacity would have contributed in no small degree to the boisterousness of the town meeting that rattled Gallison’s nerves in August, 1812.

That meeting was held to discuss a convention as a possible response to the Baltimore Riots, in which a Republican mob had attacked a Federalist newspaper after the declaration of war against Britain.  The rioters assaulted and nearly killed, among others, “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, the Revolutionary War hero and father of young Robert Edward.

While the meeting approved selection of delegates by an overwhelming majority—Gallison’s was one of only six votes against—not much came out of it until two years later at the end of 1814, when the Hartford Convention met. By that time, Gallison was less worried about the potential outcome. His patriotism and enthusiasm for national union hadn’t changed, but he had a better sense of who the delegates might be and what would be on their agenda. In spite of a lot of wild talk in the radical Federalist press, moderates were calling the shots, and their final report was tame to the point of anti-climax.

Gallison’s report of the 1812 meeting is quite consistent with newspaper accounts.  Still, it offers scraps of conversation not printed in the papers, and uses a pleasingly vivid style of writing, epitomized by a quote from Walter Scott toward the end.  Taken in all at once, it leaves a searing impression of one man’s emotions as he contemplated the potential dissolution of union, led by the party that had only a short time before been most in favor of a strong national government.

Not too long ago, a colleague was commenting on how much Americans revere political quotations– sound bites, others might say– to the point of carving them in stone, not to mention placing them on the inevitable bumper stickers.

Many of these come from our Old Testament texts, of course—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  We also honor the language of our New Testament prophets.  In Washington, DC, you can find a monument filled with words from one who worked to fulfill the more cheerful prophecies of the Declaration, while pushing the three-fifths compromise onto the back shelf next to the famous bits of Deuteronomy.  All before being murdered on Good Friday, 1865.

But the original question was: why not Edmund Burke, the famous British parliamentarian?  Or other pre-Revolutionary figures, many of whom made important contributions to what eventually became American law and society?

A related question might be when Americans started ossifying sound bites from our heritage.  Perhaps that habit began with Washington’s death in 1800, although that is only a semi-educated guess.

Going back to the original question, Gallison’s journals do add a little color to Burke’s posthumous fame in America.  He put Burke on his self-imposed reading list, even in his very first entry, when he was just coming to grips with how little Harvard was teaching him.  He revisited Burke’s speech on reconciliation with America several times, showing signs of having memorized some of the juicier passages a few years later.  (Memoriter = from memory, as for a school assignment.)  Interestingly, the other speech he saw fit to memorize concerned the Nabob of Arcot’s debts.

Focusing more on Burke’s speaking voice than his language or politics,  President Adams’s recollection is a pleasant byway in a memorable luncheon just one month before Gallison’s death in 1820.

All of this suggests that Burke was well-known to Gallison’s educated circle.  If nothing else, Burke’s oratory would have provided a useful model for debate and public speaking to a young law student, even one who didn’t share Gallison’s patriotism and conservative Whiggish temperament.

Nevertheless, the lengths of the later journal entries, in comparison to their mentions of Burke, show that even though Burke’s reputation remained solid, he wasn’t necessarily at the top of everyone’s mind.

I ran across this document while searching in Harvard’s archives for information on John Gallison’s time there. Its only connection to my topic was his signature at the bottom, but it nevertheless opens a breathtaking view into a corner of his college years. As fun as it can be to dream about changing historical paradigms from the top down, even a master landscaper should take time to smell the roses once in a while. Craftsmanship matters, and we do have it here, on so many levels.

It shows the calculation of a lunar eclipse: a mathematical thesis that would have been part of John Gallison’s undergraduate curriculum, probably as part of his application for graduation honors. It is one of a series of similar documents, made between 1782 and 1839, that Harvard keeps in its increasingly-digitized archives.

(http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hua17004, or http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.ARCH:4880552 .)

Made from ink on a 17 x 22¾” piece of paper (43 x 58 cm), this document would have would have taken hours to prepare even after the math was completed. According to the archivists, many students were insecure enough in their penmanship that they would farm their final draft out to a professional before handing it in. The handwriting on this paper, however, is imperfect enough, and similar enough to Gallison’s other manuscripts, that he likely sweated it out himself.
The math behind the drawing makes its own statement about craft. GPS and inexpensive software packages mean that most people no longer have to make these kinds of calculations. Up into the 20th century, however, many more people than the odd software engineer needed to know how this all worked if they were to think of travelling the world—which they did in great quantities.
The Archives’ web page lists Henry Badger as having led the way in 1888. A longer list—conservators Christina Amato, Bill Hanscom, and Adam Novak (all from the Harvard University Libraries’ Weissman Preservation Center), Colin Lukens, and Jennifer Pelose—all contributed to cleaning, stabilizing, and re-housing all of these documents in 2010. And they cannot have done what they did without considerable institutional support, not to mention the engineers and scientists who make it possible for you to see all this work on your smart phone. The rosters above don’t even start to account for the small, but vital group who still know how to read what is on this page, and write their own history about it.

Enjoy!