Carsten Junker, Assistant Professor of English and American Studies, University of Bremen, Germany

Ebeling Fellowship Project: “Reading Affect in 18th-Century Abolitionist Debates”

Professor Junker’s project examines late eighteenth-century texts that envisioned an end to the enslavement of African-diasporic people in the North American colonies and early republic. The struggle to overcome slavery was fought by many – by the enslaved themselves and by white abolitionists – and in many different genres. Essays, letters, pamphlets, and other short texts are the genres Carsten Junker plans to analyze closely at the American Antiquarian Society. Within this framework, the question of how abolitionists sought to provoke affective responses in their audiences – from empathy, guilt and shame to fear, outrage and grief – will be central to his analysis.

While Professor Junker is at AAS on an Ebeling Fellowship, he also intends to learn more about the namesake of his fellowship – Christoph Daniel Ebeling (1741-1817). The Christoph Daniel Ebeling Fellowship is jointly administered by the German Association for American Studies (DGfA) and AAS. Application for this short-term fellowship is made through the DGfA. The AAS-DGfA Fellowship is open to German citizens or permanent residents at the post-graduate or postdoctoral stages of their careers. The Fellow will be selected on the basis of the applicant’s scholarly qualifications, the scholarly significance or importance of the project within the field of American studies in general and its German context, and the appropriateness of the proposed study to the Society’s collections. For more information about applying for the Ebeling Fellowship, see the German Association for American Studies website.

More information about fellowships at AAS, including a directory of fellows and their work, is available on our website.

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Have you ever wondered what your shopping receipts say about you?  What sort of conclusions would someone make about you by examining the sorts of food, clothing or books you purchased?  Recently, I had the opportunity to explore some 200 year old receipts, to try and find out what books the citizens of Baltimore were buying.  During my stint as a short-term fellow of the AAS I was able to spend some time with the Mathew Carey papers, a collection of 27  boxes of accounts from the various Carey publishing firms of Philadelphia, to see if I could trace the books available for sale in early nineteenth century Baltimore.  In these papers I found something unexpected but amazing.  Mathew Carey opened a branch of his bookstore in Baltimore during the first few years of the nineteenth century, the daily sales of which survive nearly intact from 1804 to 1808.

These ledgers record the purchases of books and stationery by everyday citizens and other retail booksellers day by day and week by week over this period.  They also include lists of stock sent to the store by Carey from Philadelphia.  These types of records are quite rare, and are the only items I know of their kind for Baltimore.  Here we have a glimpse into the purchasing habits of early Americans.  What these records reveal is a very practical approach to book buying.  Most of the books sold to individuals were educational: school books, dictionaries, primers, or catechisms.  Even the other retail booksellers were mostly just purchasing larger numbers of these same items from Carey.  Bibles and small chapbooks were also common purchases along with wax, paper and quills.  Most purchases cost less than $1, with many costing less than fifty cents.

What then does this tell us about the readers of Baltimore?  They purchased books which served practical purposes in their home, books which could be passed down from one family member to the next: primers, spelling books and dictionaries to teach children to read and Bibles and catechisms to instill religion.  These books were relatively inexpensive, and it seems that many people were unwilling to spend too much on the purchase of books.  If these individuals were interested in reading the latest novels they were unlikely to purchase them from Carey’s shop.  Perhaps instead they rented them from a local circulating library, or borrowed them from friends.  This unique source opens up a world of opportunities for exploring the purchasing decisions of Baltimore’s book-buying public, one in which I intend to continue my investigations.

Recent AAS fellow Hugh McIntosh recently spent some time with our Valentines Collection.  This collection includes some of the frilly, lovey-dovey valentines one would expect, but also some unexpected gems!  The comic valentines of the 19th century in particular caught Hugh’s eye, and he shares the following about his look at the 19th century’s sense of humor.

Ranging from satirical to insulting, these cartoons offer a window into the belligerent side of nineteenth-century romance. Most are accompanied by short, comic poems, many of them ending with some variation on the line, “You will never be my Valentine.” The collection includes caricatures of several professions, such as country newspaper editors, “quack” doctors, and a sadistic dentist, “Dr. Forcepts,” grinning over a huge tooth he’s just pulled. Barroom characters are popular targets as well—“topers,” “bummers,” and “sots.”

Cards depicting females make fun of overly fashionable young women and overbearing wives. One especially memorable example is addressed to “The Broom,” portrayed as a domestic weapon with an angry woman’s face. In contrast, many of the Civil-War-themed comic valentines depict soldiers who are either too timid or too clumsy to fight. In a parody of sentimentalized wartime romance, one Union soldier, crouching down to propose to his sweetheart, ends up sitting on one of his riding spurs. Alongside these specific cartoons, a few of the cards ridicule love more abstractly, such as this simple image of a hammer about to crush a heart.

Not knowing if Jennifer had even looked at the game, I started to wonder why AAS had a children’s game dating to 1898, produced at the height of controversy over U.S. involvement in the Cuban insurrection.   The game encouraged children to actively hypothesize who blew up the Maine, a question that pervaded news reports in February of 1898—and blow up printed reproductions of the Maine in the process. Regardless, the game was probably pure fun to play.

Instead of playing the game (and, in the process, blowing it up), Jennifer, Lauren, and I decided to have a bit of fun gathering different views of “The Maine Question” for Past is Present. Later in the week, we will post Jennifer’s thoughts on patriotism and images in children’s games and books and then Lauren’s ideas about inexpensive paper and the manufacture of the game.

In the meantime, please enjoy the photographic ‘reenactment’ below courtesy of Jon Benoit, AAS’s imaging coordinator.

Music religious thoughts inspires,
And kindles in us pure desires;
Gives pleasure to a well-tun’d mind,
The most exalted and refin’d

Music the coldest heart can warm,
The hardest melt, the fiercest charm;
Disarm the savage of his rage,
Dispel our cares, and pains assuage:

With joy it can our souls inspire,
And tune our tempers to the lyre;
Our passions like the notes agree,
And stand subdu’d by harmony.

~ from Select Psalms and Hymns for the use of Mr. Adgate’s Pupils

These verses serve as part of an introduction to a hymnal produced in Philadelphia in 1787. The rhetoric regarding music’s affective power is familiar – music soothing the savage beast – but its use here further highlights the many roles that sacred music filled in early America. In addition to rousing religious devotion, music was supposed to uplift the spirit, please the mind, and bring diverse forces into harmony. It was both art and science, duty and offering, individual and communal, education and entertainment, transcendent and easy.

Music was also a commodity. Music instruction books had been published in the colonies from early in the eighteenth century, although the tunebook proper is usually traced to James Lyon’s Urania of 1760. Tunebooks were increasingly published locally or regionally, sometimes for use by a particular group or traveling singing master. They were oblong in format, neatly holding one or two psalm tunes per page. Most followed a pattern of prefatory material, introductory explanations of musical knowledge (often called “rudiments”), and repertoire, which may be further divided according to difficulty. Credit for the first sacred music book set in type in America goes to the press of Christoph Saur, and by century’s end the majority of sacred music publications were printed from type while the more expensive engraving process was generally reserved for secular sheet music.

Friends of AAS may not be surprised to know that Isaiah Thomas recognized the potential of sacred music, even though he described himself as “unskilled in musick.” He was editor and publisher of the influential The Worcester Collection, which went to eight editions from 1786 to 1803. Thomas writes of his own motivation for entering the sacred music scene in the Collection’s preface:

Having observed with pleasure the attention paid to Church Musick, by most classes of people in the New-England States, and knowing many of the books now in use, necessarily high-charged, owing to their being printed from Copper-plates, he was induced both by inclination, and at the request of several friends to attempt a work of this kind from types; hoping to afford it somewhat cheaper than any other book of its bigness printed after the usual manner.

Thomas proved accurate in his claims; Karl Kroeger, who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on The Worcester Collection, cites it as the first mass market tunebook publication due to its reduced cost and repertoire selected to appeal to a broad audience. The process of printing also aided in this pursuit, since the repertoire could change with every edition to keep up with new developments and user feedback. Perhaps we should suggest music as business venture as a suitable verse to add to the lofty sentiments above.

Ursula Crosslin is a Ph.D. Candidate in Musicology at Ohio State University. She was awarded a 2009-10 Reese Fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society to research her project: “The Institution of the American Church Choir in Philadelphia, 1760-1860.”

Further reading: Karl Douglas Kroeger, “The Worcester Collection of Sacred Harmony and Sacred Music in America, 1786-1803” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1977).

Item: A letter from AAS member and prominent Worcester lawyer William Lincoln to statesman and AAS member John Davis written August 16, [1829].

Found by: AAS-NEH Fellow Mary Beth Sievens, Associate Professor of History, SUNY-Fredonia.

Location: Lincoln Family Papers, Box 5, Folder 1.

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Hon John Davis.

By night.

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Worcester August 16

Dear Major

Two or three weeks since, in pursuance of an understanding with the members of the Antiquarian Council, I took from the Antiquarian Library three or four volumes which I considered as so indecent and vile that they should not be kept by a decent Society or read by any respectable person. Among them were “Wilkes Essay on Women” and “Rochesters Poems.” I took them, for the purpose of burning them and brought them home, and, unfortunately left them in a drawer in my chamber, intending to purge the earth of such polluted shapes of conception on the earliest opportunity. Still more unfortunately, I left them covered with my clothes, in the drawer when I removed—I cannot express to you the mingled feelings of shame and sorrow I have [felt] this evening on finding all of them missing—I would not for slight consideration be suspected of having such works of damnation in my possession—still less of keeping the accursed trash for my private study—and least of all of being accessory to its circulation. I ask it as a special favor that you will remove them and keep them safely in your own own [sic] most safe deposit until I can consign them to a more secure resting place.

Obliged to be absent early in the morning and coming like a thief, by night, I have no other means of communication than pen and paper afford or I should personally and bodily express to you my grief for the consequences of my carelessness in this matter. Baldwin will confirm my story, and exonerate me from the disgrace of having ever begged, bought or stolen this base coinage of prostituted genius.

Good Night Dear Sir, and accept the assurances of the unqualified regard of respect of your distressed friend

William Lincoln.

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PastIsPresent Postscript: The AAS archives do not reveal how John Wilkes’ “Essay on Women” or the Earl of Rochester’s Poems might have arrived in the stacks.  Lincoln would have been consoled to learn that today the library no longer collects such items — that is, books published in Britain instead of the United States.  But he would undoubtedly be horrified to learn of our recent acquisition of American risque literature: twelve 19th century translations of the work of French novelist Paul de Kock.

However, an AAS fellowship can also serve as a valuable exercise in professionalization, exposing young scholars to people from other institutions and disciplines and preparing them for the rigors of the academic job search. But given the current depressed state of the economy, the job market in most humanities fields is tighter than ever before. How is AAS responding to this crisis in academic hiring? Why, by reconfiguring its fellowship programs to include valuable vocational training. For example, in the footage below, current AAS-NEH long-term fellow Emily Pawley can be seen preparing herself for an agricultural career.

While this idea may need some additional fine-tuning, we hope that you will consider applying for a fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society. More information and application materials are available here.

Background: The American Antiquarian Society began as an institution created to “encourage the collection and preservation of the Antiquities of our country.” “Antiquities” didn’t just mean books and paper, it also meant artifacts. The collecting focus of the library was revised by the early 20^th century and the large, disjointed museum collection was donated to appropriate institutions. Here we have a reminder of just the sort of thing a 19^th century researcher might have encountered in the old Antiquarian Hall.

Item: An 1817 letter from the first superintendent of the United States Patent Office, William Thornton, to American Antiquarian Society member, Benjamin Russell, editor of the Columbia Centinel.

Found by: Peterson Fellow James Snead, Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, George Mason University.

Location: American Antiquarian Society Records, Correspondence 1812-1819, Box 2.

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Patent Office Washington –April 30^th—1817—

To the Honorable Benjamin Russell

Editor of the Columbian Centinel

Sir

You being one of the members of the Massachusetts Antiquarian Society, I have, not knowing the proper officer taken the liberty of doing myself the honor of forwarding to your care the celebrated courser’s head, one which, General Ross rode, and was killed at the capture of this City in 1814.—The first vessel that leaves Alexandria will convey it with this to you.

The Horse whose head this was, was the first blood in England, and highly prized by his master who had rode him during two campaigns in Spain, his color was of a glossy jet black, and he was of the finest form and [simeture]. But the manner of his death the time, the occasion and some other circumstances which I will relate, render in my opinion, his head a worthy trophy for the Antiquarian shelf.

After the American forces were routed and had fled in all directions, the enemy refreshed himself and then took up an unmolested march for the City.

The gallant Ross mounted on his charger with a few light troops (Riflemen) formed the advance, having arrived near to a brick house about an eighth of a mile from the Capital and being rashly one mile in advance from the main body of his army, he was shot at from the windows of the brick house by some sailors then belonging to Com. Barneys Flotilla.

His horse received two wounds thro’ the body and fell. Gen. Ross after ordering a part of his detachment to surround the house, seeing the wounds were mortal, gave orders to a platoon of his men to shoot the agonising animal, in order to curtail the period of his misery, which circumstances account for the five shot holes through the head, as you will perceive.—

The brave General was no less considerate for the mad tars who had shot in the first place, his valued beast. At first, considering how dastardly it was for three or four men to shoot at him from a house, he ordered his Soldiers to surround it and put them to death. But when he saw those men in the stair way gallantly defending themselves against numbers, he relented, and ordered them spared; adding that they were the only brave Yankees he had met with that day. His horses body was removed a few rods from the road where he fell to an adjoining field where the birds of prey and the elements soon left nothing but the bleached skeleton. — No notice was after taken of the remains, until on the fourth of March last, (the day of inauguration) when at the time the President was reading his speech, a bird called the Turkey Buzzard, after scaling round and over the throng of People that were collected, made a pitch towards the bones of this horse, and taking the top part of the head which I send you in his claws carried it nearly half a mile, when he let it fall on the Penn[sylvania] Avenue near the little bridge thrown over the insignificant stream, called the Tyber. – On the return of the President his horses took fright at it, and came very near baptising his new hatched dignity by running off the bridge and thereby emptying him into the stream.—

An event so novel, fastened my attention, having noticed the Buzzards taking it up, and letting it fall, with the fright of the Presidents horses I was led to examine it and on ascertaining it to be the head of Genl. Ross’s horse, I ordered it to be carried to my office where I kept it until a thought suggested itself to me of presenting it to your Society, the foregoing will add one conclusive proof to controvert the ridiculous assertions of some of our prints, wherein the bird in question has been represented as an Eagle, which kind of birds are never seen in this section of the U.S. excepting in print or paint—

Were I given to superstition I could we<<writing obscured>> an endless number of evil forebodings; at least it seems as if the English had left a kind of instinct behind them, when we see the harmless head of their General’s horse, the cause of throwing a new born Chief into a second panic. However I will abstain from any further remarks and leave you to please your fancy if you are disposed. Permit me to ask your pardon for the presumption of sending it to you as I have not the honor of being personally acquainted with any Gentlemen of your Institution.—

B. I amused myself occasionally by writing mottos upon it which I have left on.

Yours with high Consideration ,

Thornton.

Honorable Benjamin Russell.

(You are at liberty to make use of this communication as you think proper, however save my remarks on the P. if you attach my name.)