The man that was used up: Poetry, particularity, and the politics of remembering George Washington

American Literature

Volumn 75, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 247-274

  Cavitch, Max ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950282430     PISSN: 00029831     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00029831-75-2-247     Document Type: Review

References (44)

1. Bruce Bürgert reads the intricate "logic of corporeal nationalism" in the Farewell Address and shows how the Address helped set the terms for later struggles over Washington's memorialization (Sentimental Bodies: Sex, Gender, and Citizenship in the Early Republic [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998])
2. For the full text of the doctors' report on Washington's deathbed scene from which I quote in the epigraph, see James Craik and Elisha C. Dick, "Gen. Washington's Illness," Dedham (Mass.) Columbian Minerva, 16 January 1800, 4
3. The Power and the Glory: George Washington and the Birth of Fame in America (New-York Historical Society, New York City)
4. Washington in Glory: America in Tears (Fraunces Tavern Museum, New York City)
5. See James Fenimore Cooper, The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground (New York: Wiley and Halstead, 1821)
6. William Makepeace Thackeray, The Virginians (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1859)
7. Gertrude Stein, Four in America (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1947)
8. and Gore Vidal, Burr (New York: Random House, 1973)
9. Michael T. Gilmore, "The Literature of the Revolutionary and Early National Periods," in The Cambridge History of American Literature, Volume One: 1590-1820, ed. Sacvan Bercovitch (Cambridge, Eng: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994), 593
10. E. P. Thompson, "Commitment in Poetry," in Making History: Writings on History and Culture (New York: New Press, 1994), 339
11. M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1981), 5-8
12. Julia A. Stern, The Plight of Feeling: Sympathy and Dissent in the Early American Novel (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1997), 3. Further references to this source will be cited parenthetically as PF
13. Elizabeth Barnes, States of Sympathy: Seduction and Democracy in the American Novel (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1997), 63
14. Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser, 8 January 1800, 2
15. Thomas Pemberton, "Massachusetts Chronology," vol. 71.9, 30.42, 50; Thomas Pemberton Papers, Box 1, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. Another example comes from Surinam, where Turell Tufts was (unhappily) stationed as U.S. consul. In January 1800, Tufts wrote President Adams a long letter fishing for a secretaryship in France. Toward the end of the letter, he accounted for the poem he had enclosed: "I take the liberty to enclose the efforts of a Creole Muse to brighten the glories of our departed Washington. It would seem there must be an uncommon cause to excite in this state of the degradation of man-veneration for virtue-and to teach the uncouth & unfeeling Holland Faal to flow in beauteous and Elegiac Rhyme" (Turell Tufts, letter to John Adams, January 1800, Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston)
16. [John?] Elliot, "Illustrious Shade, Accept These Artless Lays," Boston Columbian Centinel and Massachusetts Federalist, 8 January 1800, 1
17. "Monody, Performed at the New-Theatre, in Honour of the Late Commander in Chief of the Armies of the United States," Philadelphia Gazette & Universal Daily Advertiser, 28 December 1799, 3
18. "On the Death of Washington," Providence Journal, and Town and Country Advertiser, 1 January 1800, 4
19. New York Commercial Advertiser, 11 January 1800, 3
20. See Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Henry Reeve, rev. ed., 2 vols. (New York: Vintage, 1990), 1: 241-44
21. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991), 9-12
22. David Humphreys, "Poem on the Death of General Washington," Miscellaneous Works (New York: T. and J. Swords, 1804), 179. Further references to this poem are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically as "P," using line, rather than page, numbers. Further references to Miscellaneous Works will be cited as MW
23. George Washington, Farewell Address, Writings, ed. John Rhodehamel (New York: Library of America, 1997), 963. Further references will be cited parenthetically as FA
24. "Theatrical Communication," New York Spectator, 4 January 1800, 4
25. Charles Brockden Brown, "Monody, On the Death of Gen. George Washington, Delivered at the New-York Theater, On Monday Evening, Dec. 30, '99," New York Commercial Advertiser, 2 January 1800, 3. Further quotations from this poem will be cited parenthetically as "M," using line, rather than page, numbers
26. "Elegiac Ode," Centinel of Liberty, or George-town and Washington Advertiser, 31 December 1799, 2
27. David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1997), 18
28. The reference to "Elocutionary Exercises" is a sign of poetry's contemporary status as both a spoken and a written genre. It is also a reminder that late-eighteenth-century rhetorical studies emphasized oral delivery and that the neoclassical ode was part of a rhetorical as well as a poetic tradition. On the eighteenth-century "elocutionary revolution" and its impact in America, see Jay Fliegelman, Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural Language, and the Culture of Performance (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1993), 28-35
29. Gordon Bigelow discusses the extravagance of figure and gesture in the neoclassical ode in Rhetoric and American Poetry of the Early National Period (Gainesville: Univ. of Florida Press, 1960), 70-72
30. On epitaphic address, see Richmond Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1942), 230-37
31. Waldstreicher, Perpetual Fetes, 74
32. John Adams, letter to Colonel William Smith, 3 March 1800, Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston
33. Theodore Dwight, "Far, far from hence be satire's aspect rude...," (Hartford) Connecticut Courant, 6 January 1800, 3
34. Eva Cherniavsky, That Pale Mother Rising: Sentimental Discourse and the Imitation of Motherhood in 19th-century America (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1995), 11
35. Lady Washington's Lamentation for the Death of Her Husband (Boston: Nathaniel Coverly Jr. [1800])
36. See Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers and Pictorial Needlework, 1650-1850, 2 vols. (New York: Knopf, 1993)
37. see also, Sally Ripley, "Diary of Sally Ripley, 1799-1801," Women's History Sources, vol. 1, Collection 7671, 36-37, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass
38. In a letter to his wife, Hannah, Thomas Dwight marks how sympathy's nationalizing power unravels amidst the commodification of Washington's memory. While participating in Washington mourning ceremonies in Boston in late January, Dwight is mindful of the need to acquire souvenirs for his children and young relations: "Major [William?] Pynchon will carry you four Washington medals of white metal - one of which Miss Nancy Archbald presents to Mary - another is for my son John - another for Henry Bliss my little son - another for William B. Bliss, who I am sure will accuse his uncle of barbarous partiality, if forgotten in regard to the medal" (letter to Hannah Dwight, 29 January 1800, Dwight-Howard Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston)
39. Charles Brockden Brown, review of Charles Caldwell, "An Elegiac Poem on the Death of General Washington," Monthly Magazine, and American Review, March 1800, 218
40. See also Rembrandt Peale, "The Person and Mien of Washington," Crayon 3 (April 1856): 100-101
41. and Gilbert Chinard, ed., George Washington as the French Knew Him: A Collection of Texts (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1940)
42. Susanna Rowson, "Eulogy to the Memory of George Washington,quot; Miscellaneous Poems (Boston: Gilbert and Dean, 1804), 44; further references to this poem are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically by line number as "E."
43. Rowson, Miscellaneous Poems, 53
44. Susanna Rowson, preface to Charlotte Temple, ed. Cathy N. Davidson (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986), 5