Commonplace: the journal of early American life

Edgar Allan Poe: Pioneering Mollusk Scientist - Commonplace Poe’s work reminds us that the separation of “Arts” and “Sciences” into discrete discourses of knowledge is itself a quite recent invention.

Poet, editor, and author of all things terrifying and macabre, Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps the perfect author to revisit in the lead up to Halloween. So on this All Hallow's Eve Eve, we present Edgar Allan Poe...the mollusk specialist? From James D. Lilley in 2022: commonplace.online/article/edga...

How Eli Whitney Single-handedly Started the Civil War . . . and Why That’s Not True - Commonplace The real Whitney story is less grand than the legend, but more interesting and, ultimately, more edifying.

NEW on Commonplace: Think you know the full story of Eli Whitney's role in the road leading to the Civil War? Think again. Get the full story in Ariel Ron's latest essay for Commonplace:

commonplace.online/article/how-...

Gaps in the Record: Teaching with the Constitutional Convention - Commonplace Too often, historians turn to records of constituent or legislative deliberations from the eighteenth century as a source to draw quotations from early American political figures, without questioning ...

Need some teaching inspiration for this Constitution Day? Check out Katlyn Marie Carter's 2024 essay on teaching the Constitutional Convention through the strategic silences and gaps in the historic record:
commonplace.online/article/gaps...

We have a brand new essay @commonplacejrnl.bsky.social today! Jordan Smith writes on his forthcoming history of rum and responds to the question "where all the pirates???"

Where’s the Pirate? Or, why I wrote a history of rum with only a few pirates in it - Commonplace Over time, the history of what was consumed in those taverns became more interesting to me than a rather limited subset of drinkers.

NEW on Commonplace: Jordan Smith asks and answers "where've all the pirates gone?" Check out the latest from Commonplace to learn more about the reasons for this piratical absence in Smith's forthcoming book "The Invention of Rum." commonplace.online/article/wher...

How to Read a Book: The X-Ray Method for Achieving a Sustainable “Book-Life Balance” - Commonplace This is why you need a plan: to read attentively but efficiently, and sustainably, without surrendering your book-life balance.

Tis the season to make plans to reclaim and cherish your book-life balance! See my 10-step handout “How to Read a Book” @commonplacejrnl.bsky.social

#skystorians #gradstudents
#howtoreadabook #bibliophiles #selfcare

commonplace.online/article/how-...

Commonplace Save to PDF

I see more Bluesky discussion, so here is some @commonplacejrnl.bsky.social data (I am the editor). In the past month Bluesky ranked third on how people came to Commonplace.online (twitter was not in top ten). Same month two years ago, Twitter ranked third, but with fewer than half the referrals.

Headed to Providence for #SHEAR2025???

Headed to #SHEAR2025? Let's connect!

Hot Tennessee Sun - Commonplace Silence is never something I manage very well.

NEW on Commonplace: A reflection on the work of family history and the stakes involved in facing your family's past. Lisa Roney shares an essay and original poems excavating her family's Confederate forbearer and the corrective potential of genealogical work. commonplace.online/article/hot-...

What’s the most asked question about the Declaration of Independence?

Emily Sneff has heard them all—and answers some of yours in our latest episode.

📜 Myths, manuscripts, missing minutes—it’s all here.

#USHistory #History #America250 #Rev250 #July4th

🎧 www.benfranklinsworld.com/415

Exeter’s Declaration of Independence: A Festival, a Broadside, and a Lesson in Public History - Commonplace It turns out that, in legal terms, the mystery of who found the broadside matters a lot less than who lost it.

Looking to read some history this fourth of July? Commonplace has you covered. We start with a 2016 piece from Jessica Lepler, all about Exeter's annual American Independence Festival...celebrated on July 16! commonplace.online/article/vol-...

I'll be adding to this thread throughout the day, but here's just a smidgen of Revolutionary content from the @commonplacejrnl.bsky.social archives. If you don't know what to do today--if you don't know what to do WITH today--here's some history to keep you company.

What Freedom Meant to Prince Whipple, The Black Revolutionary Soldier Famous for Rowing Across the Delaware - Commonplace Prince and the other enslaved men had no fondness for their fetters and felt acutely the contradiction between American ideals and their condition.

From August 2024, Timothy Messer-Krause shared the story of Prince Whipple and others who felt the disconnect between Revolutionary ideals and those who claimed to practice them most acutely: commonplace.online/article/what...

Starving Memory: Joseph Plumb Martin Un-tells the Story of the American Revolution - Commonplace In conjuring an audience for which the rules of fictional narrative are more immediately recognizable and count as surer argumentative proof than the empirical facts of the everyday, Martin neatly dis...

In 2010, William Huntting Howell declared that "the American Revolution narrates beautifully." Huntting Howell's essay looked at Joseph Plumb Martin to caution against glazing over the artificiality that such narratives produce: commonplace.online/article/star...

“On the list of free nations”: Haitian Foreign Relations in the Revolutionary Atlantic - Commonplace We talkwith Julia Gaffield about Haiti’s foreign relations in its early years of independence, the place of the Haitian Revolution, and the impact of the Haitian Declaration of Independence.

How does our understanding of American independence deepen when we stay firmly entrenched in the broader Age of Revolutions? From 2017, Julia Gaffield discusses considers the relationship between America and Revolutionary Haiti: commonplace.online/article/on-t...

Triangulating Religion and the American Revolution through Jedidiah Morse - Commonplace “Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the blessings […]

From 2015, Kate Carté Engel connects the historiographies of religion, American Revolution, and the Early Republic to contextualize an anxious 1799 sermon from Jedidiah Morse: commonplace.online/article/tria...

Bewilderment as a Way of Understanding America’s Present – and Past - Commonplace Circumstances in which people are feeling extreme disorientation are potent breeding grounds for people who are willing to exploit it to take advantage in moments of crisis.

Feeling bewildered by today's political climate and "unprecedented times"? You're not alone. From February of this year, Robert Parkinson writes on bewilderment as a means of understanding the past:
commonplace.online/article/bewi...

Freedom Seekers: Stories of Black Liberation in the American Revolutionary Era and Beyond - Commonplace Freedom Seekers will show how all kinds of men, women, and children who escaped were important actors in the challenge not just to their own enslavement but to slavery more broadly.

From September 2024, Antonio T. Bly, Simon P. Newman, Billy G. Smith, and Gloria McMahon Whiting wrote on the importance of centering histories of Black liberation in the Revolutionary Era and beyond:

commonplace.online/article/free...

Exeter’s Declaration of Independence: A Festival, a Broadside, and a Lesson in Public History - Commonplace It turns out that, in legal terms, the mystery of who found the broadside matters a lot less than who lost it.

Looking to read some history this fourth of July? Commonplace has you covered. We start with a 2016 piece from Jessica Lepler, all about Exeter's annual American Independence Festival...celebrated on July 16! commonplace.online/article/vol-...

NEW @commonplacejrnl.bsky.social, Jayne Ptolemy shares a fascinating essay on unexpected archival discoveries and the crucial details they provide on the life of William Ansah Sessarakoo.

The Record Scratch: Uncovering Documents Relating to William Ansah Sessarakoo - Commonplace Because as it turns out, as much as this clutch of papers is about a specific story of Atlantic slavery it still absolutely relates to British finance and national politics.

NEW on Commonplace: Jayne Ptolemy explores an unexpected bundle of documents in the Charles Townshend Papers and the insights they share on the life of William Ansah Sessarakoo. commonplace.online/article/the-...

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Jigsaw Puzzle: Jumbling the Pieces of Stowe’s Story - Commonplace Understanding puzzles as agents of disorder runs counter to a common interpretation that associates puzzles with the quest for and ultimate affirmation of order.

OTD in 1851, Uncle Tom's Cabin's first installment appeared in The National Era. Here are six @commonplacejrnl.bsky.social articles about Harriet Beecher Stowe's work. Patricia Jane Roylance explored how a 19th century jigsaw puzzle jumbled Stowe's story: (1/6) 🗃️

commonplace.online/article/uncl...

The Spoilsman's Progress - Commonplace Ambitious office seekers during the nineteenth century experienced wild swings of fortune that depended on the public’s mood and party benevolence.

NEW on Commonplace: In the 1840s and 50s, the quest for spoils could lead men to despair. In his latest essay for Commonplace, Jeffrey Broxmeyer tracks the spoilsman's progress--and pain--through the political careers of George H. Proffit and Robert Dale Owens.
commonplace.online/article/the-...

NEW essay on @commonplacejrnl.bsky.social! Jeffrey Broxmeyer explores the spoils system and antebellum politics.

The Spoilsman's Progress - Commonplace Ambitious office seekers during the nineteenth century experienced wild swings of fortune that depended on the public’s mood and party benevolence.

NEW on Commonplace: In the 1840s and 50s, the quest for spoils could lead men to despair. In his latest essay for Commonplace, Jeffrey Broxmeyer tracks the spoilsman's progress--and pain--through the political careers of George H. Proffit and Robert Dale Owens.
commonplace.online/article/the-...

The Spoilsman's Progress - Commonplace Ambitious office seekers during the nineteenth century experienced wild swings of fortune that depended on the public’s mood and party benevolence.

Did you ever wonder how patronage and political spoils worked in antebellum party politics? Jeffrey Broxmeyer has a great new piece up @commonplacejrnl.bsky.social that explores this world and the careers of Robert Dale Owen and George H. Profitt. Check it out:🗃️

commonplace.online/article/the-...

Coffee Nation | American Philosophical Society Join us on June 5, 2025 to celebrate the publication of Director of the APS's Library & Museum Michelle McDonald's book Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States.

NEXT WEEK: Michelle McDonald will discuss her forthcoming book COFFEE NATION, which illuminates how coffee tied the economic future of the early US to the wider Atlantic world, in a hybrid event at the @amphilsociety.bsky.social on Thursday, June 5. Register today!

A Subject of Unique Interest: Mary Freeman Heuston Lewis and William Dean Howells - Commonplace Howells makes it clear that Mary Lewis was interviewing them rather than the other way around.

Interesting things are sometimes hiding in plain sight. Newly up on @commonplacejrnl.bsky.social, Leslie Brunetta investigates the fascinating life and family of Mary Lewis, a Black housekeeper for William Dean Howells and the subject of his essay, "Mrs. Johnson".🗃️
commonplace.online/article/a-su...

We're starting the day with a NEW essay on @commonplacejrnl.bsky.social, courtesy of Leslie Brunetta!