January 2011

The American Antiquarian Society, which houses two-thirds of all the material known to have been published in this country from 1640 to 1821, this year is celebrating its 175th anniversary. Located in Worcester, Massachusetts, it is an organization of great distinction as well as unique gentility. Its membership, limited to five hundred at any one time, has included twelve Presidents of the United States and forty-eight Pulitzer Prize-winning authors.

The work as well as the atmosphere of this superlative depository of our history was described by an appreciative English scholar of children’s literature who originally published her impressions of the society in the London Times Literary Supplement:
 

1787 Two Hundred Years Ago 1837 One Hundred and Fifty Years Ago 1937 Fifty Years Ago

On July 13 the Northwest Ordinance became law, establishing a system of government for settlers in the wild territory west of the Ohio River. For years the Congress of the Confederation had wrestled with the question of how to govern new territories, but it remained indecisive until pressured to act by a representative of the Ohio Company of Associates, the Reverend Manasseh Cutler of Ipswich, Massachusetts.

Reverend Cutler was a tall, stout man of shrewd intellect and polished manners who earned his keep as the pastor of Ipswich’s Congregational church. Despite his calling, he felt no compunction about speculating in land and had joined the Ohio Company of Associates at its founding at Boston’s Bunch of Grapes Tavern on March 1, 1786. The company intended to buy from the government a vast plot of land for colonization in the Ohio wilderness with nothing more than a pile of depreciated Continental certificates from the Revolutionary War. Only after Reverend Cutler argued the company’s cause before Congress—and agreed to a profit-sharing scheme involving public officials—did the government agree to sell the land.

July 16: The Constitutional Convention adopts the Great Compromise, in which proportional representation exists in one branch of the legislature and an equal vote for each state exists in the other.

The small states feared for their autonomy; the big ones thought it reasonable that their size and wealth justified doing whatever they saw fit. Matters of trade, law, taxation, slavery, and westward expansion were in dispute or disarray. Foreign powers refused to make treaties with us. Property owners hated the mob. Farmers hated bankers and lawyers. All agreed that the Articles of Confederation were too weak to unite, defend, or run the country—but just strong enough to be a nagging reminder of how unfulfilled were the hopes of a free people who had sacrificed so much in the Revolution a few years before. For George Washington, it appeared that the “political concerns of this country are in a manner suspended from a thread....”

Two hundred years ago Philadelphia was the natural place for the constitution-makers. There was nothing unexpected about that. Philadelphia had one hundred years behind her that were as respectable as they were impressive. Two generations after her solitary founder, William Penn, had set foot on the right bank of the Delaware, Philadelphia had become the largest city in North America, and the fourth (perhaps the third) largest city in the entire British Empire. She was the seat of the Continental Congress, the focus of the declaration of American independence, the unofficial capital of the Colonies.

A calendar of national events taking place in the bicentennial year appears elsewhere in this issue.

Travelers who visit Philadelphia in 1987 will be rewarded with a variety of special events designed to commemorate the bicentennial of the Constitution. The city began celebrating a year early with “Miracle at Philadelphia,” an exhibit that opened at the Second Bank of the United States on September 17, 1986. That exhibit will continue until December 31,1987, and future plans include the following:

MAY 23–25

A festival called “All Roads Lead to Philadelphia” will be held on Independence Mall, with colonial foods, crafts, and music. Visitors can attend mock trials and exercise their freedom of speech on a specially constructed soapbox.

JUNE 25–26

His red judge’s robe looked faded and theatrical by daylight. People at the bus stop stared at him, and his face flushed near the color of the robe. But he busily ignored them.

“There were market sheds here, where we assembled.” Judge Wilson is trying to re-create the route of the Grand Procession that marched through Philadelphia on July 4, 1788, to celebrate the ratification of the Constitution by ten states. We have started, where the parade did, at South and Third streets. “At ten piers along the way we had ships representing each new state; they saluted us with their cannon.” He glanced absentmindedly back and forth across the street, trying to find a familiar building. “There’s St. Peter’s. It has not changed.”

I tell him there is a house farther on, on the left, that he must have visited: the Powel House. “Is that it? It looks smaller now that it does not stand alone.”

“And your house was just beyond, at Walnut?”

“Yes.”