good morning jessicca

  

 

 

The Mayflower drops anchor in Plymouth Harbor, unloading 102 immigrants near Cape Cod in 1620 after ten grueling weeks at sea.  It was November 21, and the first of these English Puritans were not well prepared for the New England winter about to greet them.

 

Adventurers and tradesmen were among the passengers let off at Plymouth Rock.  On the day of their arrival they signed the Mayflower Compact - rules for governance to insure functioning social order.

Puritans shaped the northeast with their rigorous moralizing and their skill at building institutions of learning, with schools like Harvard and Yale.  At a time when England had two universities the colonies already had over twenty.

Here is a ticket to revivalist Jonathan Edwards.   He was recognized as one of America's top protestant intellects and had just assumed the presidency of Princeton College when he died from his smallpox inoculation. 

 

In 1607 the Virginia Company of London founded Jamestown, a fortified settlement atop a mosquito infested swamp with poor prospects for farming.  Most of its inhabitants died that first year but, with help from the local tribe, it survived to become England's first permanent settlement in North America.

Tobacco was the cash crop that brought investment money to the Virginia colony.  Between the years 1600 - 1766 the American colonies had the world's fastest growth rate - twice that of mother England - fueled by a vast continent of untapped wealth. 

 

The People of the Longhouse, Iroquois, were the indigenous people of the northeast United States.  Among this confederacy of five nations were the Seneca and Mohawk tribes.

Benjamin Hawkins was tasked with persuading the Creek and Cherokee people of the southeast to open up their vast hunting tracts of land to European immigrant development in exchange for having their own small farm.  What was referred to as the "Indian Problem" in the 1790s would remain an ongoing issue as settlers pushed west through tribal lands until reaching the Pacific Ocean.

Seneca chief Cornplanter allied his tribe with the British in both the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War.  Later he briefly welcomed Quakers to educate his people but their adverse reaction to this westernization caused him to scrap the experiment and return his tribe to traditional beliefs and values.

New Amsterdam was too valuable a location for the Dutch to defend from the covetous British.  The greatest natural port on the east coast would now be known as New York.

The drink of choice in most any colonial tavern was rum.  Beer and hard cider were also popular.  Benjamin Franklin published a "Drinker's Dictionary" in his Pennsylvania Gazette that listed 228 slang terms used to describe drunkenness in Philadelphia.

Three thousand miles protected a young United States from a querulous Europe.  Besides being a rich fishery for the eastern seaboard, the Atlantic Ocean provided for efficient, albeit dangerous, trade routes to world markets.

Boston was one of only three colonial cities having a population of over fifteen thousand citizens.  The other two, Philadelphia and New York, both had populations well under a hundred thousand.  London, on the other hand, had over three quarters of a million inhabitants ...where muddy ditches qualified as an urban sewage system.

The old Tun (Beer Keg) Tavern in Philadelphia was commissioned by the Second Continental Congress to raise two battalions of Marines with Robert Mullan, the tavern's manager, named chief Marine Recruiter.  The date of the first recruit, 10 November 1775, remains today as the Corps' official birthday.

Near the outbreak of the Revolutionary War the Continental Congress printed $242 million in currency that was used by Washington to feed and arm his army.  The value of the note steadily declined over the course of the war until, by 1780, it had lost nearly all its value, or as people were wont to say, "It wasn't worth a Continental."

Whaling was big business through much of the 19th century with New Bedford, Massachusetts homeport to many in the fleet.  The demand for whale oil, though expensive, was insatiable.  Gideon Allen & Sons, whalers, had a return each year of sixty percent on their investment.

Thomas Jefferson saw himself the Revolution's natural leader having authored the Declaration of Independence.  Still he was often of the mind to bury himself in his books at his Monticello mountaintop home in Virginia.  He would always be runner-up to Alexander Hamilton in Washington's estimation when it came to companionship and ideas about the future.

Whereas Hamilton imagined a future America of dynamic commerce and industry, Jefferson placed his faith in the yeoman farmer - someone with the integrity to protect the workings of republican democracy.  Jefferson wanted to preserve an agrarian nation while Hamilton's priorities made this reality a sideshow.

The North, funded by a Hamiltonian Wall Street, developed into an industrial region.  In contrast, the South rode its prosperity in cotton trade into an ever increasing slave economy.  There undoubtedly would have been little tolerance given to the idea of owning people as property were it not for the racial element.  

What free man would willingly work the open fields in the South's sweltering heat?  Who would rejoice in being denied basic rights to an education or the relationship of marriage?  Imagine the devastation of having a loved one sold down the river, never to be heard from again.  There are a good many reasons to be a fugitive from this racist form of capitalism.

As president of the United States you certainly want to always look your best.  What better way to charm your guests at the next gala reception than with this winsome smile of finely crafted wooden teeth.  To be sure Washington found his teeth challenging.

Americans were considered the richest people on Earth in 1776, with an average individual's income being $4.71 a day in 2017 dollars.  Settlers were two to three inches taller than their European counterparts.  Women in North America had a significantly higher birthrate, as well.  However rustic frontier life may be it was still better than European peasantry.

It was a hard slog for most people living off the land.  Besides growing their own food, they spun their own cloth, made the clothes on their back, cobbled their shoes and boiled soap from animal fat.  

Politics is a calling in a democracy.  People come to know who you are and what it is you stand for.  If you are any good as a politician your argument only gets better with every telling.

Alexis de Tocqueville, aristocrat and diplomat is best known in the United States for his two volume political study titled, Democracy in America, first published in 1835.  It remains in print to this day as a political science classic.

Celebrating America's first locomotive, an import from Great Britain.  Yankee industrialists took this opportunity to reverse engineer the steam locomotive and soon the States would have a speedy rail-bound contraption of its own.  

love

   dad

©  Tom Taylor

 

coldValentine

good morning jeremy

  

William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England was must reading for any American colonist seriously considering a career in the law.  

You don't fabricate a new country's legal system from imaginative vapors.  To do so would be to break with the prevailing culture of its people and the legitimacy of continuing  to do what works.  Laws governing one's everyday life are generally followed, no matter the disruption that envelopes the top of the political pyramid.

John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, reflects the pride and personal ownership he gives to his English heritage.

 America's first leaders, Federalists like Washington, Adams and Hamilton, chose independence from Great Britain while remaining loyal to much that was English, particularly its legal system.  Republicans, led by Jefferson, characterized this mindset as being Torey, too enamored with monarchy.  Federalists, in turn, condemned Jefferson and his followers as being Jacobins - demagogues, rallying mobs of dangerous democrats.  The era around 1800 was described as bitterly partisan.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, a Federalist, found himself impeached by the House of Representatives for rendering politically biased verdicts.  His subsequent acquittal by the Senate helped set precedence for judicial independence. 

Judges around the time of Thomas Jefferson's presidency were more openly political than they generally are today.  It was understood that politics prevailed when appointing judges.  Laws express the view of those in power and the role of the judge is to enforce these democratically arrived at statutes.  Someone will always have a thumb on the scale so it might as well be you, if you've got the power.

A family bids farewell and Godspeed to loved ones venturing across the Atlantic to the new, rising nation of America. 

The character of the new nation was changing rapidly as large numbers of people left behind loved ones in Ireland and France to seek greater fortune in America.  The country was energized by this steady infusion of those braving danger for a chance at personal freedom and economic opportunity.  It made for a rambunctious political climate as ruthless individuals took every advantage democracy provided to achieve electoral victory.  The old-school wise man above the fray Federalist politician was deeply offended by what he saw as vulgar vote-buying tactics employed by Jeffersonian Republicans - and with great success.

Oliver Ellsworth and his wife, Abigail, relax at home.  After a term as a Federalist Senator from Connecticut Ellsworth became the third Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, preceding John Marshall.

The early Federalist dominance in Congress and the presidency was being quickly pushed aside as state legislation became increasingly democratic.  The road to elected office required behavior beneath anyone considered to be a gentleman.  In 1801 when Jefferson entered the White House and his Democratic-Republicans swept the Congress, the new president saw his judicial branch populated exclusively with Federalist judges, the last bastion of a swiftly dying party.

 

Of the three branches of the federal government - executive, legislative and judicial - the judges were made to feel the runt of the litter when it came to obtaining power, prestige and accommodations.  The nation's Supreme Court held their proceedings in a Congressional committee room and the six justices, when not in session, were expected to ride circuit over frontier backroads to preside over local court trials.

Thomas Jefferson's view of the Constitution was that it was more a political document than a legal one - which would carry with it the added authority of being the final word on all matters government.  From his viewpoint, Federalist judges were a potentially despotic veto power that could move to block the voting will of those giving him the right to legislate.  In any event, such abuse from the bench has no Constitutional protection. 

William Marbury just wanted the law to be obeyed.  His commission to be Justice of the Peace for the District of Columbia never arrived, despite having both Senate approval and the signature of the President himself, John Adams.  The Jefferson administration's refusal to honor this legal obligation would send Marbury to the Supreme Court for remedy.

James Madison, Jefferson's secretary of state, saw Marbury's appointment as one of Adam's midnight filling of a judgeship, part of a last-ditch Federalist effort to obstruct the Republican agenda.  Marbury's suit would be heard by six justices, all Federalists, on the Supreme Court.  The question became whether the executive branch of the government would honor a verdict favoring Marbury or would it ignore the Supreme Court's ruling as being judicial overreach - outside the court's constitutional authority.

Chief Justice John Marshall isolated the fundamental risks to the Supreme Court's authority, which were the other political, elected, branches of government - Congress, the President.  The Court's viability lie with the willingness of these competing branches to abide with an unfavorable ruling.  Marshall believed William Marbury had every right to his commission based on Congressional law.  This is where the politically savvy Chief Justice saw his opening.  He could establish, for the first time, the Court's authority to be the last word on what the law says and what it means.  

In this instance the Congressional statute sending Marbury to the Supreme Court for remedy was in clear violation of the Constitution's Section III - the highest court is an appellate court and does not hear original trial cases except in the rarest of instances.  Marbury had no standing before the Supreme Court because the law legislated was unconstitutional and, therefore, void.  

Marshall saw the win-win nature of the verdict.  Jefferson and his Republicans would cede an important power to the Court in exchange for celebrating their victory over the Federalists.  When it comes to the Constitution, reality is what the Supreme Court says it is. If rule of law is to mean anything then the Court's decision must be honored.  To do otherwise would be to remove the boundaries restricting the powers of those governing.

love

   dad

©  Tom Taylor

coldValentine

good morning justin

   

 

Benjamin Franklin

1816

Benjamin West

1738 - 1820

A future of great promise.  This could be a detail of a mural at the pavilion celebrating science and industry, except that this is also stage lighting the birth of a nation.  It feels good to believe sky's the limit! when it comes to this young nation's future.  Democracy is always an experiment, though.  Just ahead, four years down the road, is Andrew Jackson's generational shake free of the status quo.  Forty more years and the experiment cracks open into total war between states.  

The artist Benjamin West resided in London and was good friends with Benjamin Franklin, subject of this painting.  

 

Self-Portrait

1791

Charles Willson Peale 

1741 - 1827 

Charles Peale tried saddle-making then clock repair before discovering his aptitude for portraiture.  He raised money to sail to England at twenty-five to study under Benjamin West.  After three years he returned to Philadelphia and eventually joined the Pennsylvania militia and rose to captain during the Revolutionary War.  Peale outlived three wives, having ten children by his first, six by his second.  His third wife, a Quaker woman, although sparred from serial childbirth, nonetheless died with Peale a still vibrant seventy.  He frequently named his children after his favorite artists, including Titian, Rubens and Rembrandt, whose portrait of Thomas Jefferson currently hangs in the White House.

George Washington

1788

Charles W. Peale 

Peale painted Washington sixty times, all based upon an initial seven in-person portraits beginning in 1772.  Compare this portrait of Washington, done the year he became president, with West's rendition of Franklin.  One, bigger than life mythological Ben, the other sober republican, matter of fact patriot George.  Peale's no big deal rationalism would lose favor to more heroic renderings of Washington as the great man's acclaim grew to legendary heights.

 

Self-Portrait

1777

John Trumbull

1756 - 1843

Four of John Trumbull's works hang in the Capitol Rotunda, yet for all his contemporary success he would always be hustling for money.  The son of Connecticut's governor, a Harvard graduate at seventeen and, briefly, an officer under Washington early in the Revolutionary War.  In 1780, while the war continued in the colonies, Trumbull sailed to England to also study under Benjamin West, as did Charles Peale.  While there Trumbull would be imprisoned in retaliation for Washington having hanged a British officer as a spy.  Trumbell would return to America upon his release several months later. 

 

Declaration of Independence

1819

John Trumbull

The Declaration of Independence, one of Trumbull's Rotunda paintings was a group portrait as much as it was celebrating the central event of the American revolution.  Compare this revolutionary gathering with that of Eugene Delacroix's depiction of the French Revolution below.  With Trumbull we have wealthy men presiding over an upheaval in restrained legal fashion while Delacroix's brotherhood of humanity are storming the barricades.

 

Liberty Leading the People
1830
Eugene Delacroix
1798 - 1863

 

Self-Portrait

1850

Thomas Sully

1782 - 1872 

Thomas Sully was born in England but at the age of nine moved with his actor parents to Charleston, South Carolina where his uncle managed a theatre.  Sully's artistic talent was discovered early and by eighteen he was painting professionally.  His career required he move first to Virginia, then Boston, New York and finally settling for good in Philadelphia at age twenty-three, during Jefferson's second presidential term.

 

 

Marquis de Lafayette   (1757 - 1834)

1825

Thomas Sully

Born an aristocrat, Lafayette embraced the words of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and made his way to America in 1776.  Already a skilled French officer Washington made Lafayette a major general in the Continental Army at the age of nineteen.  He was wounded at Brandywine and later he commanded troops that trapped the British forces at Yorktown, leading to the Cornwallis surrender to Washington and subsequent freeing of the colonies from English rule.

Lafayette was instrumental in overturning French monarchy in 1789 but was later imprisoned for five years by more radical elements of the French Revolution.  President James Monroe brought about Lafayette's return visit to America in 1824 where he toured all twenty-four states, hailed with affection as an American revolutionary hero.  Upon his death he was buried in Paris under soil imported from Bunker Hill.

 

Self-Portrait

1769

John Singleton Copley

1738 - 1815 

American born John Copley moved to London at thirty-four and never returned to his homeland.  As his son said, "he was entirely self-taught, and never saw a decent picture, with the exception of his own, until he was nearly thirty years of age."  A wealthy English clientele happily engaged Copley's services over the next couple of decades enabling him to be both financially comfortable and personally rewarded with honors bestowed upon him by those of esteemed cultural European taste.  Although his career kept the artist in Britain, Copley's political heart remained with the more egalitarian American society.  With this in mind he would paint his country's revolutionary heroes.  

 

Samuel Adams

1772

John S. Copley

Copley uses dramatic lighting to electrify this climatic moment of Samuel Adams demanding the Royal Governor remove British troops from the area on the day following the Boston Massacre in March, 1770.  Copley kept the focus on Adam's character by minimizing detail and keeping his pallet simple.

 

Paul Revere

1768

John S. Copley

A casually dressed Paul Revere mulls the silver teapot he has crafted prior to engraving it with decoration.  This would be the only teapot Revere made in 1768 because anything having to do with tea was considered provocative during this stormy period with Britain that would lead shortly to revolution.  The Revere family kept the painting in the attic, hidden from public view because they believed his artisan attire was inappropriate for a man of his historic stature.  The poem Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Longfellow brought renewed appreciation of the painting and it was displayed in 1928 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, now its permanent home.

 

Boston Massacre

1770

Paul Revere

1734 - 1818

Revere's copper engraving titled The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5th, 1770 and beneath the picture is the inscription that reads, in part:

If scalding drops from Rage from Anguish Wrung
If speechless Sorrows lab'ring for a Tongue, 
Or if a weeping World can ought appease  
The plaintive Ghosts of Victims such as these,
The Patriots copious tears for each are shed,
A glorious Tribute which embalms the Dead 

 

Despite the passions of the time John Adams as defense attorney for these British soldiers was able to persuade a Boston jury to acquit the King's men of all charges.

 

Rembrandt Peale

1859

Thomas Sully

Rembrandt Peale was the third of six surviving children, eleven having died, of his mother Rachel Brewer and his artist father Charles Willson Peale.  He would father nine children of his own and despite his noteworthy accomplishments as a painter money could be a problem.  At one point Thomas Jefferson recommended he relocate to Europe as "we have genius among us but no unemployed wealth to reward it."

 

Thomas Jefferson

1800

Rembrandt Peale

1778 - 1860 

This official presidential portrait of Thomas Jefferson resides at the White House.  The next president sits for this portrait despite his immersion in a months' long competition with John Adams for votes followed by Aaron Burr's treacherous attempt to usurp the process once an election day tie is proclaimed.  Nothing in this portrait gives away any hint to Jefferson's concern his future and that of the nation's may hang in the balance.

 

Self-Portrait

1786

Gilbert Stuart

1755 - 1828

Gilbert Stuart, whose iconic image of George Washington has resided on the one dollar bill for over a century, was in fact a loyalist to the crown and fled the colonies for England in 1775.  Despite his financial success Stuart continually spent more than he made and returned to the United States in 1793 one step ahead of Debtors' Prison.  Once stateside Stuart's goal was to entice George Washington into a portrait sitting from which he could make copies at one hundred dollars apiece.  Two years later Washington came to Philadelphia to sit for the portrait that became the basis for the engraved image on today's dollar bill.  Stuart's continued success could never match his spending, leaving his family deeply in debt upon his death.  With no money for a proper burial Stuart's body was placed in an unmarked grave that has since never been found.

 

Abigail Adams

1815

Gilbert Stuart 

Wife and closest advisor to John Adams and mother to John Quincy Adams, Abigail Adams was also a close, valued friend to Thomas Jefferson.  She had an active role in guiding the politics and policies of her husband's presidency to the point where his opponents would refer to her as Mrs. President.  Historian John Ellis characterizes the twelve hundred letters exchanged between Abigail and John a "treasure trove of unexpected intimacy and candor, more revealing of any other correspondence between a prominent American husband and wife in American history."

love

   dad

©  Tom Taylor

coldValentine