January 2011

Elijah Lovejoy, abolitionist editor of the Alton (III.) Observer , was killed on the night of November 7 while defending his printing press from a mob. Lovejoy had already lost numerous presses to vandals who sought to silence him; he was determined to protect the one that arrived early on November 7. Hidden in a massive stone warehouse and guarded by a small volunteer militia, it seemed safe, but by nightfall an angry crowd had gathered nearby. Shots were exchanged, and the roof was torched. When Lovejoy rushed out to stop the fire, he was riddled with bullets and died soon after. No one was ever convicted for his murder. Lovejoy’s death aroused resentment in the North and greatly strengthened the abolitionist cause.

On November 4 Richard Jordan Gatling received Patent Number 36,836 for a rapid-fire gun. Catling’s previous inventions were mostly agricultural ones, including a rice-sowing machine, a wheat drill, and a steam plow, but the advent of the Civil War turned his thoughts to ordnance. Adopting principies used in earlier rapid-fire guns, Gatling created the first weapon that took advantage of modern machine tooling to guarantee reliable fire.

Catling’s purpose in devising the deadly weapon was avowedly benign. Stunned by the number of soldiers who died not from wounds but from illness, he wrote, “It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine—a gun—that would by its rapidity of fire enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred it would to a great extent, supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently exposure to battle and disease would be greatly diminished.”

After years of photographing animals, birds, and nude men and women, Eadweard Muybridge selected 781 of his 100,000 pictures and compiled an elevenvolume work, published in November under the title Animal Locomotion: An Electro-photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements, 1872–1885 . “This work,” Muybridge wrote that year, “is the only basis of accurate criticism of the movements incidental to life as depicted in art designs.” At six hundred dollars a copy, only thirty-seven perfect sets of the opus were made. It stirred great excitement in the scientific and artistic worlds. Today a copy of Animal Locomotion costs about forty-four thousand dollars.

Harper’s Weekly of November 19 announced that “Mr. Edison has completed his phonograph, and unless he talks at random it is the most marvelous of his inventions. … These wonderful instruments can be manufactured so that they may be sold for $60, and five hundred will be on the market within two months.”

Among recently published books that fall within our bailiwick, the editors of American Heritage have selected some outstanding titles.

Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War Painted Ponies: American Carousel Art The Adams Women

THE FINAL MOMENT CAME ON MONDAY MORNING, September 17,1787. The heat of summer had given way to a hint of autumn crispness. A weekend rain had cleared the air in Philadelphia and left the city fresh. In Independence Hall a newly engrossed copy of the finished Constitution—written in a fine hand on four large pieces of parchment—lay on the green baize of the presiding officer’s table. There would be a few ceremonial speeches, and then the delegates would line up to put their signatures to the document that would shape their new country for the next two centuries and more. Who could resist being overwhelmed by a wave of sentiment at the thought of participating in such a momentous occasion? Certainly not Ben Franklin, who—so it is said—wept as he put his signature to the Constitution.

SINCE NEW YORK CITY IS WHERE, AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER, MOST OF THE MONEY IN THE COUNTRY tends to migrate, it is not surprising that it seems to have almost as many jewelry stores as it does restaurants. Of these many are excellent, and a few—Cartier, Harry Winston, Van Cleef & Arpels—are grand by any standards. But only one of them has lodged itself in the national consciousness as being something beyond a purveyor of luxury goods.

Tiffany’s is one hundred and fifty years old this year, and during its century and a half, it has come to represent more than china and stationery and, of course, jewelry; it suggests, even to people who have never set foot in the store, a sense of ease, well-being, and an especially American kind of luxury. It also connotes quality—and to such a pervasive degree that World War II Navy pilots never thought they were wildly out of context when they told each other happily that seeing the name Grumman on their planes was like seeing the Tiffany hallmark on sterling.

The “Special Constitution Issue” of American Heritage (May/June) is a masterpiece. It is outstanding. It deserves a place in the National Archives of the Library of Congress. As an avid student (for the past fifty years) of American history, 1 delighted in the many articles. Especially “A Few Parchment Pages “Unexpected Philadelphia,” and the interesting, well-done “The British View.”

I am delighted to receive the bicentennial edition of American Heritage. I am reading it with great interest and appreciation. The photographs are wonderful. Congratulations.