The Fabric of America

by Andro Linklater

  243 “One held one’s breath”: See Education of Henry Adams.

  244 Mahan’s question “What harm can we do Canada?” expresses eloquently the depth of the strategic rivalry with the British empire.

  244 “I went down on my knees”: First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power by Warren Zimmermann (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002).

  245 Theodore Roosevelt’s Berkeley speech is quoted in David McCullough’s Mornings on Horseback:The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982).

  246 Mahan’s remark comparing the Philippines with Britain’s Boer War appeared in his essay “The Transvaal and the Philippine Islands,” Independent 52 (February 1900).

  247 The evidence of atrocities in the Philippines was quoted in a petition addressed to Secretary of War Elihu Root, dated February 4, 1902, and signed by, among others, Mark Twain.

  248 The judgment of Justice Edward White and the dissent of Justice John Marshall Harlan were given in the case of Dorr v. United States, 195 U.S. 138 (1904).

  CHAPTER 12

  250 Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis continues to tower like a battle-scarred colossus over the history of the west, however much its shortcomings are exposed. It seems useful, therefore, to be reminded of the context in which it was originally made, and how confrontational it must have sounded.

  252 Woodrow Wilson responded in his essay “The Making of the Nation,” Atlantic Monthly.

  253 The artistic response to the frontier can be found in American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States, 1820–1880 by Andrew Wilton and Tim Barringer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).

  253 The literary response emerges generally in Main Currents in American Thought:An interpretation of American Literature from the beginning to 1920 by Vernon Louis Parrington (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co, 1930); a more focused source is another classic, Virgin Land:The American West as Symbol and Myth by Henry Nash Smith (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950, 1978). The mythic reality of Kit Carson is well covered in Virgin Land.

  255 Edwin Godkin is quoted in Parrington’s Main Currents.

  256 The values of the new western school of history were brought together in Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western Past, ed. William Cronon, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992).

  258 Dawes’s 1887 speech: Angie Debo, And Still the Waters Run (New York: Gordian, 1966).

  259 Mayor T. C. Henry’s opinion of Wild Bill Hickok: “Myths and Realities of Frontier Violence: A Look at the Gunfighter Saga” by Rainer Eisfeld, Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 3, no. 5 (1995): 106–22.

  259 The realities of the Chisholm Trail and other cattle drives are revealed in numerous interviews with cowboys, held in the Library of Congress. Entitled “The Chisholm Trail,” they are also available online at http://www.thechisholmtrail.com/boy1.htm.

  CHAPTER 13

  261 The intolerance of the Puritans toward Catholics was the major reason why French Canadians failed to join in the revolution against British rule despite a personal plea by Benjamin Franklin.

  261 Franklin’s own protests against German immigration came in his pamphlet “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind.”

  262 Ellis Island records reveal unequivocally that among the crowd of Irish immigrants who disembarked from the Nevada, Ellie King was first, and the more newsworthy Annie Moore came next with her brothers.

  262 The role of the railroads in encouraging settlement in the west is covered in my Measuring America.

  263 The articles in New York Independent were clearly rewritten, but the details have a firsthand authenticity. They have been republished in The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, as Told by Themselves by Hamilton Holt (New York: Routledge, 2000).

  265 The appendix to Israel Zangwill’s Melting Pot is worth quoting if only because it is almost invariably ignored.

  265 James Michael Curley’s 1914 comments about the Irish making Massachusetts were delivered against the background whir of thousands of Puritans turning in their graves; he is quoted in William V. Shannon’s “Boston’s Irish Mayors: An Ethnic Perspective,” in Boston, 1700–1980: The Evolution of Urban Politics, ed. Ronald P. Formisano and Constance K. Burns (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984).

  267 The Du Bois–Washington split is significant in demonstrating that African-Americans had to accept the same dynamics as that of other outside groups intent on sharing power. The statistics of lynching compiled by the Tuskegee Institute are evidence of how the civil rights movement differed in the ferocity with which it was resisted.

  267 President Roosevelt’s meeting with Walter White of the NAACP had been arranged by Eleanor Roosevelt. The result of FDR’s conservative approach to civil rights was the internment of Japanese-Americans in 1941 and the decision to go to war with a segregated army.

  268 The postwar civil rights movement is covered in Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1982 by Manning Marable (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1984).

  CHAPTER 14

  271 The growth of barriers on either side of the San Ysidro crossing, and awareness of the intensity of the immigration debate, make the banality of the actual frontier even more striking.

  272 Curzon’s observation that “frontiers are indeed the razor’s edge” was made in the 1907 Romanes Lecture delivered at Oxford University.

  272 Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 essay “The End of History?” was published in the National Interest.

  272 Kenichi Ohmae’s The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy(New York: Harper Business, 1990).

  273 Thomas L. Friedman’s The World Is Flat:A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005).

  275 Elena Poniatowski’s remarks were made in an interview in Venezuela, August 15, 2001.

  275 Professor Samuel P. Huntington’s warnings came first in his article “The Hispanic Challenge,” Foreign Policy, March/April 2004, and were later amplified in his book Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004).

  275 Professor Rubén Rumbaut, codirector of the Center for Research on Immigration, Population, and Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine; his conclusions appear in the recently updated and expanded Immigrant America: A Portrait, written with Alejandro Portes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).

  ENVOI

  278 The account of AE’s final years is derived from the West Point archive and letters in Papers.

  Select Bibliography

  Andrew Ellicott’s own writing is to be found in the following forms:

  Papers of Andrew Ellicott—the Library of Congress’s archive collection of correspondence, maps, charts, and reports of astronomical observations, chiefly concerning Ellicott’s work in surveying the boundary between the United States and Florida under the San Lorenzo Treaty (1795) and also his surveys of the city of Washington, the boundary between Georgia and North Carolina, the town of Presque Isle (later Erie), Pennsylvania, and the boundary between the United States and Canada under the Treaty of Ghent (1814). LC Control Number: mm 75019679. Original papers in the Manuscript Division, 1975: MSS19679. Microfilm edition available: no. 16,232.

  The Journal of Andrew Ellicott, late Commissioner on behalf of the United States… for determining the boundary between the United States and the possessions of his Catholic Majesty in America… With six maps… To which is added an appendix containing all the astronomical observations made, etc. Philadelphia, 1803.

  Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (TAPS) from 1793 through 1818:

  —“Accurate Determination of the Right Ascension and Declination of b Bootes, and the Pole Star: In a Letter from Mr. Andrew Ellicott to Mr. R. Patterson.” TAPS 3 (1793): 116–18.

&n
bsp; —“A Letter from Mr. Andrew Ellicott, to Robert Patterson; In Two Parts. Part First Contains a Number of Astronomical Observations. Part Second Contains the Theory and Method of Calculating the Aberration of the Stars, the Nutation of the Earth’s Axis, and the Semiannual Equation.” TAPS 4 (1799): 32–66.

  —“A Letter from Mr. Andrew Ellicott, to Mr. Robert Patterson. A Method of Calculating the Eccentric Anomaly of the Planets.” TAPS 4 (1799): 67–69.

  —“Miscellaneous Observations Relative to the Western Parts of Pennsylvania, Particularly Those in the Neighbourhood of Lake Erie.” TAPS 4 (1799): 224–30.

  —“Observations Made on the Old French Landing at Presqu’ Isle, to Determine the Latitude of the Town of Erie. In a Letter from Andrew Ellicott, to Robert Patterson, Secretary of the Society.” TAPS 4 (1799): 231–32.

  —“Astronomical, and Thermometrical Observations, Made at the Confluence of the Mississippi, and Ohio Rivers.” TAPS 5 (1802): 162–202.

  —“Astronomical, and Thermometrical Observations, Made on the Boundary between the United States and His Catholic Majesty.” TAPS 5 (1802): 203–311.

  —“A Short and Easy Rule for Finding the Equation for the Change of the Sun’s Declination When Equal Altitudes Are Used to Regulate a Clock or Other Time Keeper. Communicated by Andrew Ellicott Esq” (in Part I). TAPS 6 (1809): 26–28.

  —“Improved Method of Projecting and Measuring Plane Angles by Mr. Robert Patterson Communicated by Mr. Andrew Ellicott” (in Part I). Robert Patterson and Andrew Ellicott. TAPS 6 (1809): 29–32.

  —“Astronomical Observations Made at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Chiefly with a View to Ascertain the Longitude of That Borough, and as a Test of the Accuracy with Which the Longitude May Be Found by Lunar Observation; In a Letter from Andrew Ellicott to Robert Patterson” (in Part I). TAPS 6 (1809): 61–69.

  —“Continuation of Astronomical Observations, Made at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In a Letter from Andrew Ellicott, Esq. to R. Patterson” (in Part I). TAPS 6 (1809): 113–19.

  —“The Geographical Position of Sundry Places in North America, and in the W. Indies, Calculated by J. J. de Ferrer” (in Part II). Jose Joaquin de Ferrer, Andrew Ellicott, Julian Ortis de Canelas, and M. Mechain. TAPS 6 (1809): 221–32.

  —“Continuation of the Astronomical Observations Made at Lancaster, in Pennsylvania” (in Part II). TAPS6 (1809): 233–35.

  —“Observations of the Eclipse of the Sun, June 16th, 1806; Made at Lancaster” (in Part II). TAPS 6 (1809): 255–60.

  —“Astronomical Observations, &c. Communicated by Andrew Ellicott, Esq.” TAPSn. s., 1 (1818): 93–101.

  Catherine Van Cortlandt Matthews. Andrew Ellicott. His life and letters. New York: Grafton Press, 1908. This contains many of the letters and personal journals contained in the Papers of Andrew Ellicott.

  Other unpublished Ellicott family records are contained in the Holland Land Company archive held in the Daniel A. Reed Library, State University of New York at Fredonia. Archives of the Holland Land Company, 1789–1869. Microform/HD/195/H64/H6, 1984. 202 reels. This contains correspondence of Joseph Ellicott, agent of the Holland Land Company, with Andrew Ellicott, Benjamin Ellicott, Sally Ellicott, Judith

  Ellicott, and other relatives. It also contains a typescript account of Joseph Ellicott Sr.’s “Journal to England from December 18, 1766, to September 21, 1767.” Microfilm HD/195/H64/H65 /1986a/guide. 25 reels.

  PUBLISHED ELLICOTT FAMILY RECORDS

  Evans, Charles W. Biographical and Historical Accounts of the Fox, Ellicott and Evans Families. Buffalo: Baker Jones, 1882.

  Tyson, Martha E. A Brief Account of the Settlement of Ellicott’s Mills. With fragments of history therewith connected. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society. Peabody Fund Publication no. 4. 1867.

  PUBLISHED WORKS DIRECTLY REFERRING TO ANDREW ELLICOTT

  Bedini, Silvio. “Ellicott and Banneker.” Washington History 3, no. 1 (1991).

  ———. The Life of Benjamin Banneker. New York: Scribner, 1972.

  Crim, R. D. Andrew Ellicott and the North Georgia Boundary of 1811. Paper submitted to the ACSM/FIG Conference in April 2002 in Washington, D.C.

  Davies, N. M. Andrew Ellicott:Astronomer, mathematician, surveyor. Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia Chapter, 2001.

  Gallalee, Jack C. Andrew Ellicott and the Ellicott Stone. Alabama Review 18, no. 2 (1965).

  Register, Robert. “Andrew Ellicott’s Observations While Serving on the Southern Boundary Commission: 1796–1800.” Gulf Coast Historical Review 12, no. 2 (1997).

  Van Horne, John C. “Andrew Ellicott and Natchez.” Journal of Mississippi History 45, no. 3 (1983).

  GENERAL WORKS

  Abernethy, Thomas P. Western Lands and the American Revolution. New York: Appleton-Century Co., 1937.

  Adams, Charles F. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, vol. 11. 12 vols. Philadelphia, 1874–77.

  Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918.

  Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Press, 1983.

  Bailey, Kenneth P. Thomas Cresap: Maryland Frontiersman. Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1944.

  Beard, Charles A. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. New York: Macmillan, 1935.

  Bedini, Silvio. With Compass and Chain:American Surveyors and Their Instruments. Frederick, MD: Professional Surveyor Publishing, 2001.

  Bemis, Samuel Flagg. John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy. New York: Knopf, 1949.

  ———. John Quincy Adams and the Union. New York: Knopf, 1956.

  Bezanson, Anne, Robert D. Gray, and Miriam Hussey. Wholesale Prices in Philadelphia, 1780–1861. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936.

  Bowling, Kenneth R. The Creation of Washington, D.C.:The Idea and Location of the American Capital. Fairfax: George Mason University Press, 1991.

  Boyd, Julian P., ed. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950 onward.

  Buchanan, Allen, and Margaret Moore, eds. States, Nations and Borders: The ethics of making boundaries. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

  Caemmerer, Hans Paul. The Life of Pierre Charles L’Enfant. New York: Da Capo Press, 1970.

  Clark, Daniel. Proofs of the Corruption of General James Wilkinson and of His Connexion with Aaron Burr. Philadelphia: Hall & Pierie, 1809.

  Clark, Thomas D., and John W. Guice. Frontiers in Conflict: The Old Southwest, 1795–1830. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989.

  Cronon, William, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin, eds. Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western Past. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.

  Danson, Edwin. Drawing the Line: How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in America. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001.

  Davis, David Brion. Slavery and Human Progress. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.

  Davis, W. H. The History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, 1905.

  Dusen, Alfred Van. Connecticut. New York: Random House, 1961.

  Ellis, David M., ed. The Frontier in American Development: Essays in Honor of Paul Wallace Gates. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969.

  Ellis, Joseph. American Sphinx. New York: Knopf, 1997.

  Ferling, John. A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

  Fischer, David Hackett. Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

  Flint, Timothy. Recollections of the Last Ten Years, Passed in Occasional Residences and Journeyings in the Valley of Mississippi. Boston: Cummings, Hilliard and Company, 1826.

  Fogel, Robert W., and Stanley L. Engerman. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. Reissue edition, New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1995.

  Ford, Paul L., ed. The Works of Thomas Jefferson. New York and London: G.
P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904–5.

  Foster, Thomas, ed. The Collected Works of Benjamin Hawkins, 1796–1810. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003.

  Friedman, Thomas L. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005.

  Gates, Paul W. History of the Public Land Law Development. Washington, DC, 1968.

  Grant, Ulysses S. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1885–86.

  Guy, Donna J., and Thomas E. Sheridan, eds. Contested Ground: Comparative Frontiers on the Northern and Southern Edges of the Spanish Empire. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998.

  Hall, Basil. Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828. Philadelphia, 1829.

  Halliday, E. M. Understanding Thomas Jefferson. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

  Harris, Michael. Origin of the Land Tenure System in the United States. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State College Press, 1953.

  Henderson, Archibald. The Conquest of the Old Southwest. New York: Century Company, 1920.

  Hindle, Brooke. David Rittenhouse. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964.

  Holmes, Jack D. L. Gayoso: The Life of a Spanish Governor in the Mississippi Valley, 1789–1799. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965.

  Houston, James L. Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

  Jackson, Donald, ed. The Diaries of George Washington. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976.

  Jaffa, Harry V., and Robert Johannsen, eds. In the Name of the People: Speeches and Writings of Lincoln and Douglas in the Ohio Campaign of 1859. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1959.

  Johnson, Allen. Stephen Douglas: A Study in American Politics. New York: Macmillan Company, 1908.

  Jones, Landon Y. The Essential Lewis and Clark. New York: ECCO Press; HarperCollins, 2000.