Meredith M. Brown - Touching Americas history : from the Pequot War through World War II

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Touching Americas History

Touching Americas History

From the Pequot War through World War II

MEREDITH MASON BROWN

Indiana University Press Bloomington and Indianapolis

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

601 North Morton Street

Bloomington, Indiana 474043797 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

Telephone orders 800-842-6796

Fax orders 812-855-7931

2013 by Meredith Mason Brown

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brown, Meredith Mason, [date]-

Touching Americas history : from the Pequot War through World War II / Meredith Mason Brown.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-253-00833-6 (cl : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-253-00844-2 (eb) 1. United StatesAntiquities. 2. United StatesHistory. 3. Material cultureUnited States. I. Title.

E159.5.B76 2013

973--dc23

2012033294

1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13

To my familyincluding several forebears whom, as I met them working on this book, I came to know, like, and esteem

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

All maps drawn by Mary Lee Eggart

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I could not have attempted this survey of more than 300 years of American history without the help of many others, including the authors cited in the bibliography. Jim Boylan, professor emeritus of the University of Massachusetts, brought his deep knowledge of the history of Stonington, Connecticut to his editing of an article I wrote some years ago for the Stonington Historical Societys Historical Footnotes that discusses the Pequot war and the torching of the Pequot fort in Mystic. The article was a precursor to the first chapter of this book.

For Kentucky history, I have drawn on the Kentucky Historical Society, the Filson Historical Society (particular thanks to James J. Holmberg, curator of special collections), Liberty Hall Historic Site, and Neal O. Hammons deep knowledge of early Kentucky and its land laws. Hugh G. Campbell and his colleagues at The Smithfield Review helped my attempt to describe the role played by leaders of western Virginia in the opening of Kentucky, from which of this book.

DeAnne Blanton, archivist in the Old Military Records section of the National Archives in Washington, D.C., provided invaluable assistance in finding materials relating to the court-martial of Preston Brown for homicide during the Philippine War and to Browns service and rise through the ranks during the First World War and thereafter. Kenneth H. Williams, who was then the editor of The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, guided me in revising an article I wrote for that journal on that court-martial, which is the subject matter of .

My father, John Mason Brown, although he died in 1969, was close to me in thought and in his writing as I sought to describe his uncle General Preston Brown, as well as D-Day as Dad saw it. John F. Thornton kindly reviewed drafts of the book with his expert eye and broad experience in the literary world and encouraged my efforts.

Many libraries shared their broad resources and skillsamong them Stonington Free Library, Westerly Public Library (special thanks to Caroline Kreck, reference librarian), and the Library of Congress. Mary Lee Eggarts talents in cartography shine in the maps. I thank ABC PhotoLab, whose skilled employees took the photographs of objects (including earlier photographs) that are not otherwise credited. Thanks also to Bob Sloan and his colleagues at Indiana University Press for their expert guidance.

For all of this, deep thanks. I alone am responsible for errors in the book.

Touching Americas History

PROLOGUE

History through Things You Can Touch

As a nation, were not that old. I count back five generations before me, and the Constitution is being written. Another four or five generations before that, and the Europeans are just starting to settle New England and Virginia and to interact and trade with the Indians: rum and guns for tobacco and furs, smallpox for syphilis.

I do better in history when it becomes concrete and personal to me. Maybe we all do. History is not abstract ideas or theoriesmercantilism or imperialism or racism or Marxism. History is the sum of actions of individual human beings. Ideas and theories shape history only to the extent they influence actions by individual human beings. If we can be in touch with those human beingsif they become concrete to ushistory comes alive.

This is where relics come into the picture for me. I use relics not in the sense of things that work miracles, as the credulous in the medieval Church believedthat doctrine I hold, in the words of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of the Protestant Episcopal Church, as a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripturebut rather relics in the sense of things left behind, things we can touch, that may not be extraordinary in themselves, but that bring powerfully to mind what was here before, the way a sock or an undershirt can put a bloodhound on the scent of a man on the run.

Henry Ford had the same idea for the Henry Ford Museum. He decided, as one of his biographers put it, that real history is the stuff you can see

What follows is a reliquary approach to American historynot all American history, not a Grand Unified Theory of American History, but a series of moments in history that have been brought home to me by things I can touch and that together paint an overview of America from 1600 through the Second World War.

Heres my list of relics:

• A stone axe head and a stone adze head
• A compass
• A Kentucky rifle
• A letter from George Washington
• A daguerreotype and the sword of the man who looks sternly out at me from the daguerreotype
• Wood shavings
• Two leather-bound pocket diaries
• A pistol from the 1850s
• A transcript of a 1901 court-martial for homicide
• A citation awarding the Distinguished Service Medal, at the command of General Pershing
• A Western novel called The Czar of Halfaday Creek
• A piece of toilet bowl

It may not sound like much of a list. Many of the items are unexceptional in appearance, and many of them could fit in a file drawer, although the rifle and the sword would stick out. But to me, these things I can touch bring to life the killing by and of the Pequots, the opening of the old West, the framing of the Constitution and the election of Washington as Americas first president, the forced removal of the Cherokees and the Seminoles from their homeland, the Mexican War, the raid on Harpers Ferry and the hanging of John Brown, the fratricide of the Civil War, the bloodiness of the American fight against the

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