RESOURCES:
University of Michigan William L. Clements Library
Michigan News: "The order that launched the Revolutionary War, 250 years later"
TRANSCRIPTION:
Caroline MacGregor: My guest today is Cheney Schopieray, the curator of the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. We're talking about a collection that includes the original draft orders that set in motion events that ultimately led to the beginning of the Revolutionary War.
Cheney J. Schopieray: Thank you very much!
Caroline MacGregor: When did you actually receive this collection that is housed at the library?
Cheney J. Schopieray: So, this collection that we're talking about are the papers of Thomas Gage. He was the commander-in-chief of the British army in North America from 1763 until the outbreak of the revolution in 1775 and, prior to that, had been a military officer in America as well. Just before the outbreak of the Revolution, he was also, for nearly a year, simultaneously the royal governor of Massachusetts. So, in colonial America, it's British governance over their American colonies until the Revolution sort of splits that. The papers are over 23,000 letters and documents and financial papers and otherwise related to especially the military administration of the colonies. The collection that's here at the Clements Library is enormous. It's the most utilized collection at the library year after year and generation after generation. So, when I thought about creating the exhibit for this commemoration of this event, I wanted to narrow the focus to the time immediately preceding Lexington and Concord, essentially February through April of 1775 and concluding with two pieces that mark the results of the conflict. And this is where I think the aspects of the exhibit really play to the humanity of those experiences that people had in 1775. So, on February 9th, Parliament addresses the King to state that Massachusetts Bay is in rebellion. And in March and in early April, the tension that's experienced outside of Boston among the provincials, tensions inside Boston, were also very high. Boston is essentially the only real seat of royal governance left. The provincial congress outside the city is in opposition to the royal government. So, everyday people outside of the city, whether they're prominent individuals such as John Hancock, for example, there are two letters written in the hand of John Hancock. The title of the exhibit, "Bloody Work," is also from Dr. Miland's collection, which is a letter from Jonathan Hosmer, a deacon in Acton, which is outside of Boston. He remarks on a false alarm ride that Paul Revere had in early April. And since it was a false alarm, Hosmer notes that if the regular army does come out to Concord, he anticipates that there will be, and this is a quotation, "there will be bloody work." So, there is this atmosphere of tension and the feeling that violence potentially on the horizon. To sort of draw on that, I chose materials that are manuscripts, which are notoriously difficult to put into displays for an audience because they're hard to read. For someone to sit in a gallery and look at handwritten materials, even if they're transcribed in their entirety, can be a real challenge. But one of the things I wanted to emphasize is that these are in the hands of the people who wrote them. When you look closely at Thomas Gage's draft for those orders, you can see the ways in which he dips his quill pen into his inkwell ,and he starts to write, sometimes with harder pressure, sometimes with light, and you can see him cross things out and add insertions in different places where he wants to revise the text that he had written. And you can see a little place, for example, where the pen nib he's pressing, it snaps a little bit. So, you can feel the little splatter of ink. And when you have those in front of you, it puts you about as close as you can get to being at the desk with this person, or the table, or where they're writing on their knee. It is so intimately tied to them as a physical person, as a body with anatomy and a physiology and a set of skills for writing, and it's that person! It's one of the reasons why manuscripts are so powerful, despite the fact that they're often a challenge to display. And we get that with Thomas Gage's orders. We get with John Hancock's letters. We get in other pieces in the collection. In those weeks leading up to this order that Gage certainly didn't intend to result in a nearly eight-year war. The people who are writing and that I've chosen letters from really capture that anticipation. They capture the anger and the fear. The letters from within Boston, whether they're from British regular army soldiers who were recounting their experiences fighting, the fear that they have as well, those sorts of experiences of uncertainty and anger and fear, those aspects of human beings, still permeate. It's still something we can relate to.
Caroline MacGregor: I'm speaking with Cheney Schopieray. He's the curator of the William L. Clements Library at University of Michigan, and we're talking about the Thomas Gage draft orders immediately preceding the Revolutionary War. What parallels can we draw from that time to today, politically speaking, and perhaps in the communication styles that were present then versus now?
Cheney J. Schopieray: One of the things that is dramatically different from 1775 and now is how long it takes for information to travel. You know, London is making decisions and giving instructions to the colonial governors and to General Gage. And, I mean, we're talking six weeks minimum between the time they issue their orders and their letters. They have to get on a ship. They've got to travel over the Atlantic Ocean. They can make it to their destination. So, those orders that address from Parliament to the King announcing that Massachusetts is in rebellion doesn't even reach Thomas Gage until April. It's a significant amount of time. And this is also in the exhibit is a letter from Parliament on January 27th of 1775 telling Gage that he's being far too reticent to use the military at his disposal and that he needs to be a little bit more aggressive in putting down the rabble-rousing that they believe is going on. And then, they give him instructions, and it's very condescending. It's a really harsh sort of letter. I would not have wanted to receive it because it's the secretary's kind of telling the general what to you know, in terms of, like, "If it were my army, here is what I would do." It was very much encouragement for him to use the military not to promote violence, but to seize those military stores and Gage himself. I mean, one of the things the provincials were lacking was gunpowder. So, if they take away the gunpowder, the likelihood of this fomenting the violence would have been minimized. But of course, it didn't turn out that way. That letter didn't arrive until April 14th. That's when Gage pulls out this detachment of truth, grenadiers and light infantry and then, just a couple days later, issues the order to start the Revolution. So, that is something that's wildly different than now because we are receiving information often instantaneously. So, in 1775, an awful lot can happen between January and April. So, the orders from above can be off kilter. And then, the last case of the exhibit, I'll say immediately afterwards, there's a lot of injured people, people who need to be treated. Thomas Gage shuts the city down, Boston down, so that people can't come and go because of the violence that ensued. And everyone is attempting to find out exactly what happened. And that's particularly significant in the political sense and in the social sense. The question of who fired first is something that matters in the 18th century, right? Like, if the other guy fired first, then you're only defending yourself, and it shows the barbarity of the people who are committing violence against you. But if you're the one who fired the first shot, you aren't able to claim that moral high ground. So, depositions are taken by the provincial Congress, reports are being delivered to Thomas Gage, and then that reaches newspapers. It has to go out into the world, and the Massachusetts Provincials put out an extraordinary amount of highly outraged press and tried to get it out as quickly as possible, so that it could create the story before Thomas Gage was able to consolidate the information and get that side of the story out. So, there are examples of like a manuscript trying to have multiple different people passing this paper and trying to create lists of the casualties, which are then printed on broad sheets and then sold or distributed again to foster that outrage against the Royal government--"Look at what they've done!" The depositions of the provincials, not surprisingly, are that the British regular army fired first, the reports from the British soldiers are the opposite for the most part. And so, sorting out what really happened is something that has continued to be debated on who fired first over the years and years, but what we really have to do is look at the evidence, and that's in the type of paperwork that the Clements Library collects.
Caroline MacGregor: You mentioned earlier that manuscripts can often be very difficult to read. And so, as part of this exhibition, I believe you have students helping to narrate the actual manuscript to make it more accessible to the general public.
Cheney J. Schopieray: Yeah, that's right! We're experimenting with many different ways to help make manuscript materials, especially more accessible to the widest number of potential visitors and people who will look at the online version of the exhibit. And they had students who were doing coursework and voice acting. And so, multiple students read the letters. Another student read the captions, and the audio versions of those will be available for visitors as they're going through the exhibit.
Caroline MacGregor: I've been talking today with Cheney Joshua Schopieray. He's the curator of manuscripts at the University of Michigan's William L. Clements Library. Thank you so much for joining me today!
Cheney J. Schopieray: Thank you very much for talking with me!
Caroline MacGregor: I'm Caroline McGregor, and you're listening to 89.1 WEMU-FM Ypsilanti.
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