Here, according to the dust flap, are “The
Year’s Best Articles from the Most Important Contemporary Resource for
American Revolution Studies.” Amazon reviewers Gary Shattuck and Gene
Procknow and I will not challenge that assertion, nor the paragraph
which follows: “The Journal of the American Revolution, at
allthingsliberty.com, is an online resource that provides educational,
peer-reviewed articles by professional historians and experts in
American Revolution studies. The Journal of the American Revolution,
Annual Volume 2015 presents the journal’s best historical research and
writing of the previous year. Designed for institutions, scholars, and
enthusiasts alike, the annual volume provides a convenient overview of
the latest research and scholarship about the founding of the United
States of America.”
The editors of the three and a half year old webzine JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION set high standards: “We strive to publish meticulous, ideally ground-breaking research and well-written narratives about unknown or lesser-known topics.” In the 2015 volume you have, to name only a few, Bob Ruppert on the Currency Act; Elizabeth M. Covart on Revolutionary Albany; J. L. Bell on Washington’s supply of gunpowder; Thomas Verenna on “Disarming the Disaffected”; Todd Andrlik on how the news of the Declaration of Independence spread;Todd W. Braisted on a "Patriot-Loyalist"; Daniel Murphy on "Infantry vs. Cavalry"; Wayne Lynch on resistance to the British in Georgia; Mary V. Thompson on Washington and Slavery; and Joseph Manca on the landscape of Mount Vernon. The range of topics in the present volume by “professional historians and experts” is impressive, and indeed a little overawing: my first piece here immediately follows Ray Raphael’s on Paul Revere’s rides, plural. I think the articles will inevitably send readers back to the web site to see, for example, what else the author of A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION has contributed to the webzine.
I came across the webzine in 2013 when hunting for information about my Uncle John Pyle, the younger Doctor Pyle, who lost an eye and part of a hand in the 1781 Hacking Party. Google directed me to Jim Piecuch’s very helpful article in JAR about “Light Horse Harry” Lee and “Pyle’s Massacre.” (Now Piecuch has two pieces in the present volume.) After that, Google sent me to more JAR articles as I continued to research my family for ORNERY PEOPLE: WHO WERE THE DEPRESSION OKIES? In April 2014 I followed Google to Wayne Lynch's even-handed article about my controvesial Step-GGGG Grandfather William Cocke. (Lynch is represented in this 2015 volume by the article already mentioned and one on General James Screven.) I learned to expect gorgeous illustrations and readable articles. Some articles, even ground-breaking ones, were lighthearted, so in May 2014, after working on the Tryon County “Association” of 1775, the so-called “Tryon Resolves,” which several of my kinfolk had signed, I emailed Don N. Hagist proposing to write for JAR on an amusing topic. I would expose a signer of the Tryon document as non-existent: there was no such man in North Carolina as the “Robert Hulclip” who had been immortalized as a signer of the Association in history and in a brass monument. Heslep, yes.
Hagist replied cautiously: “My recommendation would be to devote a substantial portion of the article to the Tryon Resolves, because most casual students of the era probably aren't familiar with them and could use a primer. Then include the information about the misidentified signer as an anecdote to compliment this primer, as well as to give the useful lessons on being suspicious of secondary sources. You can, of course, begin with your discovery of the misidentified signer, then talk about the resolves and their importance, and conclude with something about how unfortunate it is that some people who made big contributions to social changes end up being remembered so poorly. Or something like that--the key is to give a good general lesson on a useful topic in addition to bringing out this story of a single individual. You've probably seen our submission guidelines already - under 3000 words including notes, Chicago Manual of Style, etc. We look forward to receiving your draft.”
With such clear instructions from Hagist and a web publication in prospect, I went to work. I sent for a scan of the original of the Association, which, it turned out, looked nothing like the image that was on the web already. (The editors reproduce the true image here, somewhat reduced, so that going online will get you a clearer view. You see why some readers who welcome this compact volume regret the trade-off, the loss of the coffee table format of the first two in the series.) My purpose in the article changed the more I learned. I used newspaper databases including America’s Historical Newspapers, 19th Century U. S. Newspapers, and GenealogyBank for hundreds of articles on the Tryon “Association” as well as the Halifax Resolves and the Liberty Point Resolves. (I should have paid for Newspapers.com, I now know.) I had to spend a whole week on the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence in order to understand why it sucked almost all attention away from the other brave proclamations. Keeping under 3000 words was the biggest challenge.
After the piece appeared in the August 2014 JAR the editor of the Gaston-Lincoln FOOTPRINTS IN TIME asked to reprint it, for he was a Carpenter (and a Costner) and the secretary of the journal was a Dellinger, both descendants of signers and North Carolina cousins of mine. They welcomed a slightly expanded version with, of course, more on the family. Descendants of the signers are thick on the ground in the Charlotte area still. The trimmer version is in the present volume, and fits well into the lean troop of articles. What a pleasure! [P.S. In the 1960s I had no idea that David Dellinger of the “Chicago 7” was a cousin. How my social status would have soared in Los Angeles! When I wrote the JAR piece I did not know that Cousin David himself thought Boston was the center of the American Revolution and had no idea that the Dellingers in Tryon County were the real “moral dissenters” among his ancestors.] After my Tryon piece made #8 of the top 10 JAR articles for August 2014, I was addicted. Yes, I have Melville work to finish, but joining the throng of real historians at JAR was thrilling. Number 8!
As I had learned while working steadily on Melville, the way I did research when I finished the second volume of my biography in 2002 had been transformed by the Internet by the time I was writing MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE, out early in 2013. In 2000 and 2001 (although I had copied almost all the relevant manuscripts already) I was constantly begging people in the East to run to their libraries to check books, magazines, and newspapers for me. In 2011 and 2012, so much was available online that only a few times did I have to beg for help. When I blundered onto the JAR webzine from the outside I could see that not everyone had caught up with the riches that were strewn on the Internet. For instance, some historians were not making the fullest use of newspaper resources. The absolutely fabulous resource of the Southern Campaign pensions applications under the 1832 law was not always being exploited. The riches are such that every historian now has to play catch-up all the time.
Before 2014 I had been accumulating pension applications under the 1832 law from men who might have ranged out against Tories in North Carolina with my GGGG Grandfather Ezekiel Henderson. Their stories deflected me toward the Tory David Fanning. My second piece in JAR was an account of Fanning’s abrupt abandonment of his murderous rampage in North Carolina in order to make his way past Francis Marion to Charleston so he could evacuate with the British troops. That piece, also reprinted here, reached #2 on the October 2014 JAR hit parade, and I became so intrigued with Fanning than ORNERY PEOPLE was temporarily pushed aside.
JAR does not claim to offer instant gratification every time, but for someone who waited months for his first article to be accepted in 1960 and 2 more years for it to appear, gratification comes quick! The editors boast a little: “The Journal of the American Revolution is a popular online history magazine for scholars and enthusiasts alike. Our writers rave about our expedited peer review process—frequently going from pitch to publication in less than four weeks—and the exciting ability to build large, loyal readerships among our 440,000+ annual readers. More so, our authors benefit from thoughtful and respectful reader commentary following each article.” I quote again Hagist’s advice: “My recommendation would be to devote a substantial portion of the article to the Tryon Resolves, because most casual students of the era probably aren't familiar with them and could use a primer.” This was the best possible advice, and I gather that it is characteristic of the straightforward help contributors can expect from the editors of the JAR.
What a good group of editors and contributors work at JAR, and what a pleasure to be among the contributors selected to go into the new volume! And what an advantage, in the long run, to have the editors impose that 3000 word limit! My Carolina cousins understandably wanted a couple of paragraphs more on our kinfolks when they reprinted the Tryon article, but readers of the pieces in the present volume will be grateful to the editors! This volume is, as everyone is saying, a feast, not a stultifying one but a satisfying one. We push the plate away from us after a meal and still have the spirit to go online to allthingsliberty.com if we want to check something we thought of as we were reading in the 2015 annual.
But what are the economics here when we go from webzine to print? Will there be mutual enrichment, so that volumes for 2016, 2017, and later can continue to be printed and bound tidily, as this one is, while the web site (where we ignore the ads in the middle of our articles) becomes even more ambitiously selective and still lavishly decorated with paintings and maps? There’s a comforting solidity about a printed and bound book as well as a thrill at the immediacy of an online magazine.
The editors of the three and a half year old webzine JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION set high standards: “We strive to publish meticulous, ideally ground-breaking research and well-written narratives about unknown or lesser-known topics.” In the 2015 volume you have, to name only a few, Bob Ruppert on the Currency Act; Elizabeth M. Covart on Revolutionary Albany; J. L. Bell on Washington’s supply of gunpowder; Thomas Verenna on “Disarming the Disaffected”; Todd Andrlik on how the news of the Declaration of Independence spread;Todd W. Braisted on a "Patriot-Loyalist"; Daniel Murphy on "Infantry vs. Cavalry"; Wayne Lynch on resistance to the British in Georgia; Mary V. Thompson on Washington and Slavery; and Joseph Manca on the landscape of Mount Vernon. The range of topics in the present volume by “professional historians and experts” is impressive, and indeed a little overawing: my first piece here immediately follows Ray Raphael’s on Paul Revere’s rides, plural. I think the articles will inevitably send readers back to the web site to see, for example, what else the author of A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION has contributed to the webzine.
I came across the webzine in 2013 when hunting for information about my Uncle John Pyle, the younger Doctor Pyle, who lost an eye and part of a hand in the 1781 Hacking Party. Google directed me to Jim Piecuch’s very helpful article in JAR about “Light Horse Harry” Lee and “Pyle’s Massacre.” (Now Piecuch has two pieces in the present volume.) After that, Google sent me to more JAR articles as I continued to research my family for ORNERY PEOPLE: WHO WERE THE DEPRESSION OKIES? In April 2014 I followed Google to Wayne Lynch's even-handed article about my controvesial Step-GGGG Grandfather William Cocke. (Lynch is represented in this 2015 volume by the article already mentioned and one on General James Screven.) I learned to expect gorgeous illustrations and readable articles. Some articles, even ground-breaking ones, were lighthearted, so in May 2014, after working on the Tryon County “Association” of 1775, the so-called “Tryon Resolves,” which several of my kinfolk had signed, I emailed Don N. Hagist proposing to write for JAR on an amusing topic. I would expose a signer of the Tryon document as non-existent: there was no such man in North Carolina as the “Robert Hulclip” who had been immortalized as a signer of the Association in history and in a brass monument. Heslep, yes.
Hagist replied cautiously: “My recommendation would be to devote a substantial portion of the article to the Tryon Resolves, because most casual students of the era probably aren't familiar with them and could use a primer. Then include the information about the misidentified signer as an anecdote to compliment this primer, as well as to give the useful lessons on being suspicious of secondary sources. You can, of course, begin with your discovery of the misidentified signer, then talk about the resolves and their importance, and conclude with something about how unfortunate it is that some people who made big contributions to social changes end up being remembered so poorly. Or something like that--the key is to give a good general lesson on a useful topic in addition to bringing out this story of a single individual. You've probably seen our submission guidelines already - under 3000 words including notes, Chicago Manual of Style, etc. We look forward to receiving your draft.”
With such clear instructions from Hagist and a web publication in prospect, I went to work. I sent for a scan of the original of the Association, which, it turned out, looked nothing like the image that was on the web already. (The editors reproduce the true image here, somewhat reduced, so that going online will get you a clearer view. You see why some readers who welcome this compact volume regret the trade-off, the loss of the coffee table format of the first two in the series.) My purpose in the article changed the more I learned. I used newspaper databases including America’s Historical Newspapers, 19th Century U. S. Newspapers, and GenealogyBank for hundreds of articles on the Tryon “Association” as well as the Halifax Resolves and the Liberty Point Resolves. (I should have paid for Newspapers.com, I now know.) I had to spend a whole week on the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence in order to understand why it sucked almost all attention away from the other brave proclamations. Keeping under 3000 words was the biggest challenge.
After the piece appeared in the August 2014 JAR the editor of the Gaston-Lincoln FOOTPRINTS IN TIME asked to reprint it, for he was a Carpenter (and a Costner) and the secretary of the journal was a Dellinger, both descendants of signers and North Carolina cousins of mine. They welcomed a slightly expanded version with, of course, more on the family. Descendants of the signers are thick on the ground in the Charlotte area still. The trimmer version is in the present volume, and fits well into the lean troop of articles. What a pleasure! [P.S. In the 1960s I had no idea that David Dellinger of the “Chicago 7” was a cousin. How my social status would have soared in Los Angeles! When I wrote the JAR piece I did not know that Cousin David himself thought Boston was the center of the American Revolution and had no idea that the Dellingers in Tryon County were the real “moral dissenters” among his ancestors.] After my Tryon piece made #8 of the top 10 JAR articles for August 2014, I was addicted. Yes, I have Melville work to finish, but joining the throng of real historians at JAR was thrilling. Number 8!
As I had learned while working steadily on Melville, the way I did research when I finished the second volume of my biography in 2002 had been transformed by the Internet by the time I was writing MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE, out early in 2013. In 2000 and 2001 (although I had copied almost all the relevant manuscripts already) I was constantly begging people in the East to run to their libraries to check books, magazines, and newspapers for me. In 2011 and 2012, so much was available online that only a few times did I have to beg for help. When I blundered onto the JAR webzine from the outside I could see that not everyone had caught up with the riches that were strewn on the Internet. For instance, some historians were not making the fullest use of newspaper resources. The absolutely fabulous resource of the Southern Campaign pensions applications under the 1832 law was not always being exploited. The riches are such that every historian now has to play catch-up all the time.
Before 2014 I had been accumulating pension applications under the 1832 law from men who might have ranged out against Tories in North Carolina with my GGGG Grandfather Ezekiel Henderson. Their stories deflected me toward the Tory David Fanning. My second piece in JAR was an account of Fanning’s abrupt abandonment of his murderous rampage in North Carolina in order to make his way past Francis Marion to Charleston so he could evacuate with the British troops. That piece, also reprinted here, reached #2 on the October 2014 JAR hit parade, and I became so intrigued with Fanning than ORNERY PEOPLE was temporarily pushed aside.
JAR does not claim to offer instant gratification every time, but for someone who waited months for his first article to be accepted in 1960 and 2 more years for it to appear, gratification comes quick! The editors boast a little: “The Journal of the American Revolution is a popular online history magazine for scholars and enthusiasts alike. Our writers rave about our expedited peer review process—frequently going from pitch to publication in less than four weeks—and the exciting ability to build large, loyal readerships among our 440,000+ annual readers. More so, our authors benefit from thoughtful and respectful reader commentary following each article.” I quote again Hagist’s advice: “My recommendation would be to devote a substantial portion of the article to the Tryon Resolves, because most casual students of the era probably aren't familiar with them and could use a primer.” This was the best possible advice, and I gather that it is characteristic of the straightforward help contributors can expect from the editors of the JAR.
What a good group of editors and contributors work at JAR, and what a pleasure to be among the contributors selected to go into the new volume! And what an advantage, in the long run, to have the editors impose that 3000 word limit! My Carolina cousins understandably wanted a couple of paragraphs more on our kinfolks when they reprinted the Tryon article, but readers of the pieces in the present volume will be grateful to the editors! This volume is, as everyone is saying, a feast, not a stultifying one but a satisfying one. We push the plate away from us after a meal and still have the spirit to go online to allthingsliberty.com if we want to check something we thought of as we were reading in the 2015 annual.
But what are the economics here when we go from webzine to print? Will there be mutual enrichment, so that volumes for 2016, 2017, and later can continue to be printed and bound tidily, as this one is, while the web site (where we ignore the ads in the middle of our articles) becomes even more ambitiously selective and still lavishly decorated with paintings and maps? There’s a comforting solidity about a printed and bound book as well as a thrill at the immediacy of an online magazine.
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