Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
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A Miller\u27s Tale of Captivity, Ransom, and Remembrance, 1758-1811
No full textRichard Bard, or Baird, (1736–99) was one of 1,054 captives and prisoners of war taken in Pennsylvania during a generation of Anglo-French and Indian conflict (1744–65). Of course, captives were not chosen for their ability to write, and only twenty-seven of them left depositions, accounts, or memoirs of their experiences. Two narratives that were not printed until two generations after their authors’ captivities, those of Mary Jemison and James Smith, have rightly become classics of early American literature and major sources for understanding life among the Indians of the upper Ohio Valley. Richard Bard’s captivity has not received such attention, even though his account is inherently interesting, was promptly reported, and is uniquely revealing in other ways. First, Richard’s private ransom of his wife, Ketty (Katherine, née Poe, 1737–1811), directly from the Delawares was the only successful negotiation of that sort during the uneasy truce of 1759–62. Second, Richard’s story evolved rapidly through the three separate parts or versions he offered to different audiences and the long poem he wrote two years later. Third, Richard’s son assembled a family remembrance of his parents’ captivity and his mother’s ransom half a century later. These various accounts hint at some of the factors that shaped and reshaped captivity narratives, those early American literary icons
Book Reviews
Get PDFOn Records: Delaware Indians, Colonists, and the Media of History and Memory; The True Image: Gravestone Art and the Culture of Scotch Irish Settlers in the Pennsylvania and Carolina Backcountry; The Unfinished Life of Benjamin Franklin; From Liberty to Liberality: The Transformation of the Pennsylvania Legislature, 1776–1820; Mortals with Tremendous Responsibilities: A History of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania; Freedom’s Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War; Lincoln and Leadership: Military, Political, and Religious Decision Making; The Struggle for Equality: Essays on Sectional Conflict, the Civil War, and the Long Reconstruction; Capital of the World: The Race to Host the United Nations; In the Crossfire: Marcus Foster and the Troubled History of American School Reform; Allegheny City: A History of Pittsburgh’s North Side; 
The Age of Emancipating Proclamations: Early Civil War Abolitionism and Its Discontents
Get PDFWell before Lincoln issued any Emancipation Proclamation—preliminary or otherwise—Civil War Americans were involved in a robust debate about the broader social and ideological dimensions of black wartime freedom. Indeed, it is fair to say that even without the Great Emancipator’s liberating deed, pre-1863 Americans would still have been engaged in the most serious discussion of emancipation since the postrevolutionary period. Much like the so-called “First Emancipation,” when the exigencies of war and nation building compelled the founding generation of statesmen, reformers, and citizens to reexamine slavery’s place in American life (culminating in a series of gradual abolition laws above the Mason-Dixon Line), pre-Proclamation emancipation debate flowed from a complex matrix of wartime concerns. Prompted by a half-dozen “emancipating proclamations,” or proto-abolitionist edicts, issued by military and political officials during the first year and a half of sectional battle, this debate illuminated much more than strategic concerns of the moment. Rather, it reflected continuing concerns about black freedom in the United States
"God is Settleing the Account": African American Reaction to Lincoln\u27s Emancipation Proclamation
Get PDFThe history of emancipation is often told with little mention of how African Americans viewed Lincoln before his September promise and in the hundred days that followed. Overlooking those reactions starves the story of its street-level impact; heeding those voices enriches it and, furthermore, offers a glimpse into the hopes, fears, conflicts, and complexities of the African American community at that historic hour
Book Reviews
Get PDFNew Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty; A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania; Knowing Nature: Art and Science in Philadelphia, 1740–1840; The Pennsylvania Associators, 1747–1777; Dear Friend: Letters and Essays of Elias Hicks; A Democracy of Facts: Natural History in the Early Republic; Mrs. Goodfellow: The Story of America’s First Cooking School; America’s First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder after the Panic of 1837; James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War; The Fishing Creek Confederacy: A Story of Civil War Draft Resistanc
We"Now Have Taken up the Hatchet against Them": Braddock\u27s Defeat and the Martial Liberation of the Western Delawares
Get PDFIn 1755 western Pennsylvania became the setting for a series of transforming events that resonated throughout the colonial world of North America. On July 9, on the banks of the Monongahela River— seven miles from the French stronghold of Fort Duquesne—two regiments of the British army, together with over five companies of colonial militia, suffered a historic mauling at the hands of a smaller force of French marines, Canadian militia, and Great Lakes Indians. With nearly one thousand casualties, the defeat of General Edward Braddock’s command signified the breakdown of British presence on the northern Appalachian frontier. This rout of British-American forces also had an immense effect on the future of Indians in the Ohio Country, particularly the peoples of western Pennsylvania referred to as the Delawares