Quiara Alegría Hudes and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s stage musical, now turned feature film, has brought increased attention to northern Manhattan above 155th Street. In the Heights depicts a vibrant Latinx community facing the challenges of gentrification, immigration policy, educational and economic inequality, and stereotyping. If we were to travel back in time to the northern Manhattan of Alexander Hamilton’s era, we would find a very different landscape than the one we see today in Washington Heights and neighboring Inwood to the north and Harlem to the south. That is true whether our observations are based on actual encounters with place or representations on the stage or screen.
The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War
Van Gosse interviewed by Jessica Georges
It may be difficult to imagine that a consequential black electoral politics evolved in the United States before the Civil War, for as of 1860, the overwhelming majority of African Americans remained in bondage. Yet free black men, many of them escaped slaves, steadily increased their influence in electoral politics over the course of the early American republic. Despite efforts to disfranchise them, black men voted across much of the North, sometimes in numbers sufficient to swing elections.
A Celebrity Orator in the Early Republic: Carolyn Eastman’s The Strange Genius of Mr. O
Reviewed by Mark Boonshoft
I have never had to worry about spoiler alerts when writing a book review. Until now. (I’ll try to confine them to the footnotes). Carolyn Eastman’s new book tells the tale of a Scottish-born, melancholic, laudanum-using celebrity who barnstormed the early-19th century United States and drew crowds to his eloquent oratorical performances. Who was this omnipresent, opium-addicted, opinionated, oracle of oratory? Mr. O, of course. The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States’ First Forgotten Celebrity is a mesmerizing biography of an early American celebrity who, for a decade, was seemingly everywhere, and then everywhere forgotten.
Mastering Paradox: John Jay as a Slaveholding Abolitionist
By David N. Gellman
“Alexander Hamilton, Enslaver? New Research Says Yes” announced the New York Times in a November 2020 news story. A paper published online by Jessie Serfilippi, a researcher at the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site, uncovered striking new evidence to clarify long muddied waters about Hamilton’s personal connections to this deep-seated New York institution. Serfilippi’s dogged research is proof once again that even traditional archives still hold revelations.
Dyckman Discovered: Generations of Slavery on the Dyckman Property in Inwood, 1661-1827
By Richard Tomzack
On Tuesday, May 21, 1765, an enslaved African American named Will escaped the estate of Jacob Dyckman in Kingsbridge, New York. Taking nothing but his clothes, described by Dyckman as a “blue Broad Cloth Coat,” and “Homespun Trowsers, a Beaver Hat, halfworn, with a hole through the rim,” Will made his escape under the cover of darkness. Like many of the 10,000 enslaved individuals living in the province of New York, Will had been bought and sold multiple times, passing from the ownership of both the Alsop and Keteltas families in New York City, before Jacob Dyckman purchased him and relocated him to his property in Kingsbridge.
New York and the Death of the Atlantic Slave Trade
Reviewed by Samantha Payne
John Harris’s The Last Slave Ships: New York City and the End of the Middle Passage reveals how and why the long survival of the slave trade in the United States was related to the politics of slavery across the Atlantic World. During the first half of the 19th century, more than seventy-five percent of enslaved Africans transported to the New World arrived in Brazil. In 1850, Brazil abolished the slave trade — an act which, Harris argues, transformed the inner workings of the illegal traffic in the United States.
In Service to the New Nation: An Interview with Robb K. Haberman of The John Jay Papers Project
Interviewed by Helena Yoo Roth
Few political leaders in the revolutionary and early nationals eras were more influential than John Jay (1745-1829). A New Yorker born and bred and a 1765 graduate of the nascent King’s College, this austere lawyer of Huguenot and Dutch descent went on to lead a life marked by continuous service and a steadfast devotion to his family, state, and country. The John Jay Papers Project based at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University has documented Jay’s life through a series of published volumes containing his personal correspondence and public papers.
Monuments of Colonial New York: George III and Liberty Poles
Wendy Bellion and Shira Lurie
For the last installment in our six-part series on monuments in / about colonial Gotham, Wendy Bellion and Shira Lurie discuss NYC’s rebellion against British rule during the volatile decade before the War for Independence. Bellion begins with a story of destruction — the tearing down of the statue of George III in Bowling Green. Lurie tells of construction — the raising of five liberty poles on the Common (present day City Hall Park).
In the summer of 1795, New Yorkers were protesting in the streets over the ratification of the controversial treaty John Jay had signed with Great Britain the previous fall.[1] Suddenly, the city’s soaring political fevers collided with the real thing. Around July 19, the British ship Zephyr arrived at New York from Port-au-Prince and unloaded most of its cargo at the foot of William Street before sailing out into the East River to dump 22 barrels of spoiled coffee.
A Long and Complex Legacy: An Interview with Thai Jones on the Columbia University and Slavery Project
Interviewed by Robb K. Haberman
Today on the blog, editor Robb Haberman speaks with Thai Jones, who co-taught the Columbia University and Slavery Seminar in 2020, about the history of slavery and its continuing legacy at King’s College and Columbia University.
