From: Bob Garringer
Question: Some people assign John Quincy Adams
a place among the Founders. Others do not.
Viewing the Founding Era as ending in the period following
the War of 1812, as foundations of our federal system
and sense of nationalism were still being laid, it seems
to me that Adams would have to be regarded as very closely
tied to the Founders at least.
I am inclined to say he spoke "with them" as
one of their number. He at least spoke "of them"
with a firsthand experience that is significant.
With his experience as ambassador in many places, his
commendations from Washington and others, his role as
secretary to his father negotiating an end to the Revolution,
and his subsequent service in the House, Senate, as Secretary
of State, and as President, his place among the Founders
seems secure to me.
How do you respond?
Answer: Assigning John Quincy Adams
(or "JQA" as he was known to us when I was an
editor of the Adams Papers) to "Founding Fathers"
status depends, of course, on your definition of the "Founding
Era." If you extend it through Monroe's administration,
then you'd certainly have to include JQA. If you end it
at 1801, then he's out.
Have you looked at the recent biographies of JQA? I think
you'll find them interesting -- there's been a real flurry
in interest in him in the past few years:
John Quincy Adams, by Lynn Hudson Parsons (1998),
John Quincy Adams : Policymaker for the Union,
by James E. Lewis, Jr. (2001), and John Quincy Adams,
by Robert V. Remini (2002).
From:
John McNeil
Question: Of the thirteen original colonies,
what were the general qualifications for voting on elective
officials at the time of the revolution and perhaps
just afterwards? I was under the impression that only
white males who owned property could do so, albeit one
or two colonies may have had looser rules.
Answer: You may be interested in
reading this comprehensive history of voting rights
that appeared in the first issue of History Now:
http://www.historynow.org/preview/09_2004/historian.html
This article should give you a good overview. In addition,
the following books would be your best sources for specifics
on voting qualifications in the colonies and the early
states:
American
Suffrage; from Property to Democracy, by Chilton
Williamson (1960)
The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy
in the United States, by Alexander Keyssar (2000)
The First Liberty; a History of the Right to Vote
in America, 1619-1850, by Marchette Gaylord Chute
(1969)
From: Mai Lien Nguyen
Question: I'm a history teacher. I love to use
primary sources in the classroom, but sometimes even I'm
stumped when it comes to giving a clear and complete definition
of what a primary source is. For example, if I make a
xerox copy of a document, is the copy a primary or secondary
source? If something has been translated from its original
language into another one, is it still a primary source?
If I don't have the actual Declaration of Independence
or Constitution in front of me to analyze, then is any
other facsimile a secondary source?
Answer: A primary source if any piece
of "evidence" rather than "any piece of
information" that can be used for "constructing
history." Primary sources are
sometimes wrong and that you have to go to secondary materials
for reliable information (for instance, a man writing
in 1825 about the number of people who showed up for the
opening the Erie Canal might have been dead wrong in his
estimate. An author writing a secondary source 150 years
later, relying on several contemporary accounts, could
give a more accurate number).
You ask, very sensibly, how "primary" the form
of your source needs to be. This is a question that far
too few people, classroom teachers or academic historians,
bother to raise. The most hard and fast rule to use here
is: employ your common sense.
For historic documents like the Constitution or Declaration
of Independence, for instance, no one can get "closer"
to the original than a facsimile of the manuscript. In
fact, the original manuscript of the Declaration became
so faded by the mid-nineteenth century that we now must
rely on reproductions based on an engraved facsimile made
in the 1820s! Eighteenth century handwriting is a little
hard to handle for most modern readers, so a reliable
printed text is perfectly acceptable as a primary source.
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