PROPERTY OF THE NATICK HISTORICAL SOCIETY
MADISON. James. Autograph letter signed ("James Madison") to George A. Otis, Montpellier, 3 July 1820. 2 pages, 4to, closed tear at crease, neat repair on blank page, pencil markings by a later hand.
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MADISON. James. Autograph letter signed ("James Madison") to George A. Otis, Montpellier, 3 July 1820. 2 pages, 4to, closed tear at crease, neat repair on blank page, pencil markings by a later hand.
THE REVOLUTION THROUGH EUROPEAN EYES: MADISON HOPES A NEW HISTORY WILL DO "FULL JUSTICE TO THE AMERICAN CAUSE & CHARACTER"
Madison congratulates Otis for creating an English language version of Botta's 1809 history of the Revolutionary War. To American readers "the subject must always be deeply interesting" and they "cannot but feel a curiosity to see the picture of it as presented to Europe by so able a hand. The author seems to know the merit of adding to his other qualifications much industry and care in his researches into the best sources of information, and may readily be supposed that he did not fail to make the most of his access to those in France not yet generally laid open." Long before social historians made the discovery that history is made by followers as well as leaders, Madison remarks on the broad range of actors involved in making up the Revolutionary story. "A compleat view of our revolutionary context," he writes, "involves transaction in & out of the Cabinets of the several nations who directly or indirectly participated in it..."
"I sincerely wish Sir that you may meet with all the encouragement due to your laudable undertaking, which besides the gratification it will afford to readers in general, will enable the more critical part of them to mark & correct errors which all the care & candor of Mr. Botta may not have avoided, and which either do injustice or not full justice to the American cause & character."
THE REVOLUTION THROUGH EUROPEAN EYES: MADISON HOPES A NEW HISTORY WILL DO "FULL JUSTICE TO THE AMERICAN CAUSE & CHARACTER"
Madison congratulates Otis for creating an English language version of Botta's 1809 history of the Revolutionary War. To American readers "the subject must always be deeply interesting" and they "cannot but feel a curiosity to see the picture of it as presented to Europe by so able a hand. The author seems to know the merit of adding to his other qualifications much industry and care in his researches into the best sources of information, and may readily be supposed that he did not fail to make the most of his access to those in France not yet generally laid open." Long before social historians made the discovery that history is made by followers as well as leaders, Madison remarks on the broad range of actors involved in making up the Revolutionary story. "A compleat view of our revolutionary context," he writes, "involves transaction in & out of the Cabinets of the several nations who directly or indirectly participated in it..."
"I sincerely wish Sir that you may meet with all the encouragement due to your laudable undertaking, which besides the gratification it will afford to readers in general, will enable the more critical part of them to mark & correct errors which all the care & candor of Mr. Botta may not have avoided, and which either do injustice or not full justice to the American cause & character."