President George Washington’s First Inaugural Speech
As a follow up to the previous post about the eyewitness account of George Washington’s 1789 inauguration, below are excerpts from the May 6, 1789 Massachusetts Centinel, which contains descriptions of the inauguration as well as the full text of Washington’s first inaugural speech, one of America’s 100 milestone documents.
Griswold’s Only Eyewitness Account of George Washington’s 1789 Inauguration
A lot has been written about George Washington’s 1789 inauguration and whether he actual said “So help me God” at the conclusion of his oath. John Bell of Boston 1775 has a great piece on the inauguration. And so does Ben Edwards of Teach History. In 1854, Rufus Wilmot Griswold first published The Republican Court; ...
The War of the Gazettes and the Dark Ages of the American Newspaper
“From the vantage point of the twentieth century, journalism historians look back on the period between 1789 and 1808 as the ‘dark ages’ of the American newspaper.” This great line leads the third chapter — titled Weapons in the Great Debate — of John Tebbel’s Compact History of the American Newspaper. “The golden age of ...
The Arrivial of the Second Continental Congress
The May 9, 1775 Pennsylvania Evening Post (Philadelphia) included a short description of the Massachusetts and Connecticut delegates arriving in New York en route to Philadelphia for the Second Continental Congress, which was the congress that managed colonial affairs during the Revolutionary War and declared independence from Britain 14 months later. Dateline: New York, May ...
Gen. George Washington’s Arrival in Cambridge: The Public and Private Exchanges
Last week, J.L. Bell wrote on his Boston 1775 blog about Gen. George Washington’s arrival in Cambridge to take command of the Continental Army. Washington was accompanied by Gen. Charles Lee, an experienced British officer who was bitter about not being appointed Commander in Chief and, according to Wikipedia, had nothing but the utmost disdain ...
Sons of Liberty: An Intercolonial Network of Organized Resistance
Stamp duty. When these two words touched American soil in April 1764 — as a teaser of the internal tax coming after the Sugar Act — they set in motion a chain of events that forever altered the course of American history. One ripple effect was the formation of the Sons of Liberty. To some, ...
A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston
At a town meeting on March 12, 1770 — one week after the Boston Massacre — James Bowdoin, Joseph Warren and Samuel Pemberton were appointed to a committee to prepare the Patriot account of the massacre. According to John Doggett Jr.’s 1849 enhanced edition of the Patriot account, during that March 12 meeting a “report ...
B. Franklin’s Confession to Leaking Hutchinson’s Letters
If a finger had to be pointed at one person for causing the American Revolutionary War, a strong case can be made for pointing it at Thomas Hutchinson. According to the Origins of the American Revolution by Andrew Stephen Walmsley (1999): Rarely in American history has a political figure been so pilloried and despised by ...
The Deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died only hours apart on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. One of the best newspaper reports covering their deaths was the July 15, 1826 Niles’ Weekly Register, which also included biographical backgrounds and respects for each. Here are the first few ...
The Charters of Freedom: No Photos Allowed
Thanks to the tip from @bostonhistory, we learned today that photographs and video will be banned in the Rotunda of the National Archives, home to the original Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. The ban goes into effect February 24, 2010. For an excellent history on the conservation and preservation of the ...
Milestone Document: Washington’s Farewell Address
The Declaration of Independence (1776), the Treaty of Paris (1783), the Constitution of the United States (1787), the Bill of Rights (1791) — all of these are widely recognized for being among the most important documents in American history. Another milestone document was President George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796), in which Washington declared he would ...
The 12 Letters That Preceded The Burr-Hamilton Duel
On the morning of July 11, 1804, a sitting Vice President of the United States shot and subsequently killed a Founding Father. Imagine the headlines and talk shows if that happened today!? There are plenty of books and websites — even films and humorous web videos — to browse for background and analysis on the famous ...
