Original articles by academic faculty, librarians and other researchers.

Thomas Hamblin’s House of Blood and Thunder: The Transformation of New York’s Bowery Theatre in the Early 19th Century

Robert Davis, Adjunct Assistant Professor, English Department, John Jay College (CUNY)

Thomas Hamblin (1800-1853) was arguably the most influential—and contradictory—figure in antebellum U.S. theater. An English actor and manager, he became synonymous with American working-class nativist culture. He transformed New York City’s Bowery Theatre from a failed venue for refined drama to what became known as “The House of Blood and Thunder.” Hamblin excelled at producing successful melodramas, tragedies, and farces that appealed to the city’s working classes while not alienating the elite. Despite being repeatedly mired in scandals of adultery, divorce, as well as rumors of murder, Hamblin remained an influential figure. As a man who literally traded blows with his critics, Hamblin remains a fascinating, if overlooked figure, in nineteenth-century American culture.

 

Hamblin came to the United States in 1825, launching his American career as Hamlet at the respectable Park Theatre. Although he became known as a fine Shakespearean actor, Hamblin stepped into management in 1830 when he took the reins of the re-opened Bowery Theatre, a house that would go on to revolutionize New York theater. A letter to the editor during his opening tour in New York shows a confident and proud, if arrogant, approach to dealing with the public that would remain a hallmark of his career.

Thomas Hamblin’s House of Blood and Thunder: The Transformation of New York’s Bowery Theatre in the Early 19th Century


Speaking Out in Thunder Tones: Black Chosenness and “Our Government” in the Earliest African American Newspapers

By Benjamin Fagan, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Auburn University

In the fall of 1836, a fastidiously well-dressed New Yorker was elected President of the United States. One year later, the country was in the midst of a devastating economic depression, the forced removal of Native Americans from the southeastern states was in full swing, and the regime of slavery seemed more secure than ever.

On November 4, 1837, the Colored American, a black newspaper based in New York City, weighed in on the political state of the country. In a letter titled “Our Government,” the paper’s white printer Robert Sears took a dim view of the present and future state of the nation. “It requires but a very superficial acquaintance with the state of ‘men and parties’ in this country,” lamented Sears, “to convince the most unbelieving, that PATRIOTISM among us at the present day, is but an empty name, and that the days of our Republic are numbered.” Lambasting the moral character of the men ostensibly governing the country, Sears wrote that “Swindlers and drunkards are appointed to office” and “Licentiousness exists to a most alarming extent among our men in power.” “Extravagance and speculation seem to be the order of the day,” he continued, “and MONEY—not intellectual and moral worth—is the true standard of character and respectability among us!” Acting as a “sentinel on the walls seeing the enemy approaching,” the Colored American used Sears’s letter to “sound the alarm” and warn its readers, “Our Nation is corrupt to the very core.”

Speaking Out in Thunder Tones: Black Chosenness and “Our Government” in the Earliest African American Newspapers


Anticipating a National History for a New Republic

Michael D. Hattem, The New-York Historical Society and Lang College at The New School

Historical writing in the eighteenth century has not received much attention from scholars of the period in recent years. Nevertheless, the long revolutionary era witnessed an unprecedented explosion of historical cultural production, both in the form of traditional histories and in other emerging cultural forms such as early American poetry, fiction, and art. Before the Revolution, there was as yet no sense of a shared “American” or “colonial” history, i.e., one that incorporated the histories of all of the British American colonies into a coherent narrative. Therefore, when the new nation found itself on the other side of the War for Independence, Americans had the beginnings of a nation but no national history.

 

Cultural nationalists in the early republic, which included historians, antiquarians, writers, and artists of all kinds, understood the importance of crafting a national history as a way of fostering the shared national sentiment they believed crucial to the new republic’s survival. Politicians and military officials such as George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Knox, and others also keenly understood the importance of developing a new national history. As early as 1786, Washington “regretted” that a “comprehensive view of the war” had not yet been published. As a result, these public officials offered encouragement and support (as well a bit of caution) in the 1780s to those seeking to craft the first histories of the Revolution and the new nation.[1]

Anticipating a National History for a New Republic


Two Women Who Spied During the American Civil War: Going Undercover with Belle Boyd and Pauline Cushman in the Archive of Americana

Bruce D. Roberts, author of Clipper Ship Sailing Cards

In July 1861—just three months after the bombardment of Fort Sumter—unabashed Southern sympathizer Rose O’Neal Greenhow of Washington, D.C., was already engaged in espionage on behalf of the Confederacy.  Well-placed in Washington society—and adept at bleeding information from the many men who found her attractive—Greenhow learned that Union troops under General Irvin McDowell would attack Rebel forces in Manassas, Virginia, within days.

Rose got a message via courier to the Confederate commander, General P. G. T. Beauregard, informing him of the Union’s plans.  With this advance notice, the Confederates had time to bring up General Joseph Johnston’s troops from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley to augment Beauregard’s army.  After crossing Bull Run Creek on July 21, McDowell’s men encountered thousands more enemy soldiers than expected.  By day’s end, the Confederates had routed the Union forces and sent them into a panicked retreat back toward Washington.

Rose Greenhow was justifiably proud of her intelligence effort, which contributed to a stunning Rebel victory in the first major battle of the war.  But this triumph all but guaranteed a long and bloody struggle ahead.  A decisive Union victory at Bull Run, followed by a push toward Richmond, the Confederate capital, might have brought the war to a quick end, thus sparing hundreds of thousands from death and disfigurement.

Two Women Who Spied During the American Civil War: Going Undercover with Belle Boyd and Pauline Cushman in the Archive of Americana


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