TRAVELS THROUGH THE LETTERS OF NO COMMONPLACE MAN Looking into the use of epistolary formulas by Benjamin Rush, an eighteenth-century

American letter writer

Lyda Fens-de Zeeuw 2006

Acknowledgements I am very much indebted to Professor Douglas Biber of Northern Arizona University for allowing me access to the digital Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers ARCHER, during my visit in October 2005. This led to my discovery of the letters of Benjamin Rush, the subject of this thesis. I am no less grateful to his associate professor Randi Reppen. Although I visited her on an occasion that she was very busy, she took all the time I needed to explain to me why and how ARCHER had been created, and how to access the corpus. Moreover, she kindly directed my husband Bert to some very interesting museums in Flagstaff.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... ii 1. Introduction and methodology ............................................................................................ 1 1.1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 1.2. Letter writing in the eighteenth century .......................................................................... 4 1.3. Methodology .................................................................................................................... 7 2. Benjamin Rush: an overview of his life ............................................................................ 11 2.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 11 2.1.1. Eighteenth-century Philadelphia ............................................................................ 12 2.2. Formative years ............................................................................................................. 12 2.3. Professional years ......................................................................................................... 22 2.4. A husband and father .................................................................................................... 25 2.5. Concluding remarks ...................................................................................................... 26 3. The correspondence ........................................................................................................... 29 3.1. Analysis of epistolary formulas in ARCHER................................................................. 29 3.2. Introduction to the letters of Benjamin Rush ................................................................ 33 3.3. Editorial treatment of the published letters................................................................... 36 3.4. Analysis of epistolary formulas as used by Benjamin Rush .......................................... 37 3.4.1. Methodology .......................................................................................................... 37 3.4.2. Love letters to Julia Stockton ................................................................................. 39 3.4.3. Letters to Mrs Julia Rush ....................................................................................... 42 3.4.4. Letters to other women ........................................................................................... 43 3.4.5. Letters to John Adams ............................................................................................ 53 3.4.6. Letters to John Coakley Lettsom ............................................................................ 54 3.4.7. Letters to John Montgomery .................................................................................. 55 3.4.8. Letters to Ebenezer Hazard .................................................................................... 56 3.4.9. Letters to and from Granville Sharp ....................................................................... 57 3.4.10. Letters to Noah Webster ....................................................................................... 60 3.4.11. Other selected letters ............................................................................................ 61 3.5. Summary and conclusions ............................................................................................. 65 4. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 75 References ............................................................................................................................... 81

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APPENDICES ........................................................................................................................ 85 Appendix A: Chronology of events in the second half of the eighteenth century ................. 87 Appendix B: A selection of Benjamin Rushs publications .................................................. 90 Appendix C: Correspondents of Benjamin Rush .................................................................. 93 Appendix D: Salutations and conclusions to the correspondence of Benjamin Rush .......... 97 Appendix E: Eighteenth-century American letters from ARCHER .................................... 105

ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Photograph of the plaque placed on Benjamin Rushs grave (Barton, 1999: 35).... cover 2. Politeness continuum as presented by Raumolin-Brunberg (1996: 171) 7 3. Portrait of Benjamin Rush, painted by Charles Wilson Peale (Barton, 1999: cover)... 10 4. Copy of a holograph letter to Julia Stockton, 12 November 1775, (eds Bell & Butterfield, 1979) ... 28

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1. Introduction and methodology

1.1. Introduction When asked which people stood at the cradle of their country, Americans usually mention the names of men like John Adams (1735-1826), Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), and George Washington (1732-1799). Hardly ever will they include the name of a man called Benjamin Rush (1746-1813). Yet, this Benjamin Rush, although educated to be a physician, had been no less influential and vital to a smooth birth of the young nation. On 19 April 1965, a metal plaque was placed on a grave in Christ Churchs graveyard in Philadelphia. It reads: BENJAMIN RUSH.M.D. FATHER OF AMERICAN PSYCHIATRY SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE HEROIC PHYSICIAN, TEACHER, HUMANITARIAN PHYSICIAN GENERAL OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY PHYSICIAN TO THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL PROFESSOR OF PHYSIC, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ERECTED APRIL 19, 1965 (Barton 1999: 35) This plaque engraved as late as 1965! only provided room for mentioning what were considered Rushs major achievements, but a detailed study of his life will reveal many other, sometimes very brave, activities (see Chapter 2 for an overview of his life). To this purpose, a few excellent biographies have been written, such as Benjamin Rush. Patriot and Physician by Alyn Brodsky (2004), Benjamin Rush: Philosopher of the American Revolution by Donald J. dElia (1974), and Benjamin Rush: Revolutionary Gadfly by David F. Hawke (1971). Together with Benjamin Rushs Lectures on the Mind by Eric Carlson et al. (1981), they are able to give a thorough insight into the man, his character, and his feelings, or in other words: what drove him. These works also invariably include a discussion of Rushs vast correspondence, his autobiography and his commonplace books.

I discovered Benjamin Rush and his correspondence when searching the digital corpus ARCHER. ARCHER stands for A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers ARCHER. It is an electronic corpus which is being assembled as part of a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation, and in its original form it has been compiled under the direction of Douglas Biber at the University of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff. The participants of the project come from the universities of Northern Arizona, Southern California, Freiburg, Helsinki, Manchester, and Uppsala. When I visited Bibers department in October 2005 to access the corpus, I was informed that it contains already thousands of texts taken from various registers, such as: fiction, drama, letters, news, medicine, journals-diaries, sermons, and legal, making a total of over 2 million words. It includes texts in different British English and American English dialects. The project is an ongoing one and its purpose is to add new texts and develop the grammatical tagging in a corpus of English text samples dating between 1650 and 1990. In its completed form, the diachronic corpus will consist of British and American English texts representing ten genres from 1750 to 1990, in addition to British English texts from 1650 to 1750. For linguists, and especially historical sociolinguists, the writings of Benjamin Rush can be a goldmine. Besides being a prolific pamphleteer, he was a very productive correspondent according to Brodsky (2004: 95), his published letters run to more than two thousand pages, while a goodly number of unpublished epistles are scattered round the world in university libraries and private collections. Rush had sent these to countless correspondents, groups as well as individuals, not only within his own country, but also across the Atlantic to Scotland, England, and France. 660 of these letters are published in Butterfields (ed. 1951) Letters of Benjamin Rush, Vols. I and II. Rush wrote the first of these letters at the age of fifteen and never stopped letter

writing until his death in 1813. The letters deal with a huge variety of subjects. Thus we can read how he handled issues dealing with love, friendship, and losses, about his political opinions and religious views, and how arguments between friends and rivalry among colleagues affected him. Benjamin Rushs autobiography Travels Through Life and his two Commonplace Books, published together in Corner (ed. 1948), offer a wealth of background information on many of these matters, significant as well as trivial ones. A smaller corpus of seventeen letters is made up by My Dearest Julia. The Love Letters of Dr. Benjamin Rush to Julia Stockton (eds Bell & Butterfield 1979). These letters were written during the months Rush was engaged to be married to Julia Stockton (1759?1848). In addition, there is The Correspondence of Benjamin Rush and Granville Sharp 1773-1809 (ed. Woods 1967), which produces an additional fourteen letters from Rush, together with seven from Granville Sharp (1735-1813). All put together, the information that this material offers enables us to get a fairly good understanding of how Rushs set of connections originating from such widely varying fields of interest as medicine, politics, education, or religion developed into a huge social network. This extensive set of social connections is a major reason why I felt it would be essential to analyse the letters of Benjamin Rush and to compare them to those already examined for the eighteenth century, such as John Gays (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 1999), Robert Lowths (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2003), or Queeney Thraless (Navest 2003). Stretching across both sides of the Atlantic, Rushs network allowed me to include the perspective of his national background to my analysis of his language, and even more so because Rush lived in England and Scotland for almost three years (see Chapter 2).

1.2. Letter writing in the eighteenth century When referring to the eighteenth century as the great age of the personal letter, Anderson et al. (1966: 269), focus on British English letter writing. Similarly, Austin (1973, 2004), investigating the use of epistolary conventions and language of an eighteenth-century Cornish family, and Tieken-Boon van Ostade (2005) in her search for evidence of the eighteenthcentury vernacular usage do so within the context of British English letter writers and the framework of British English. Besides these studies, in the past few decades several other sociolinguistic explorations of eighteenth-century private letters have been carried out but, until now, I have not been able to locate any studies on epistolary formulas that have explicitly included American English letter writers from the eighteenth century. Therefore I felt it would be interesting to see if and how the letters of Benjamin Rush would fit into this framework of British English. Grlach (2001: 211) states that letter writing increased dramatically in the eighteenth century, which resulted in private letters becoming a major text type. Under the eighteenthcenturys doctrine of correctness (Beal 2004: 101) and in an age when printed matter had become available to a degree unknown before propriety and decorum were highly regarded and letter-writing manuals had become popular tools for learning how to construct a proper letter (Grlach 2001: 13). A separate section in these manuals was usually reserved for the various rules of address to superiors as well as inferiors. How to use salutations and conclusions to more private letters letters of love and friendship with which we usually associate the term familiar, according to Fitzmaurice (2002: 5) however, had to be extracted from the model letters themselves. Dierks (2000: 31) defines the term familiar letter as a mode of letter writing devoted to the expression of affection and duty among kin, family and friends. Dierks (2000) further states that in the 1740s letter-writing manuals were beginning to emerge on the American

continent, focussing on the genre of the familiar letter which would become the prevailing one for the remainder of the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century. This made sure that the American reading public would be able to choose from a growing number of manuals, the most popular writer of which was, according to Dierks (2000), the Englishman W.H. Dilworth.1 Dilworths Complete Letter-Writer: Or, Young Secretarys Instructor ensured that Americans, just like their English counterparts from across the Atlantic, could familiarize themselves with the idea that letters should be like conversation (1794: 3-4). During a trial period in October 2005, the University of Leiden was allowed access to Thomson Gales digital library of eighteenth-century printed books Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), which enabled me to study the letter-writing manuals referred to above. It appears that these guidebooks all have in common that they give numerous and detailed prescriptions on how to write a proper letter. We find that in general, and not necessarily in this order, they consist of: contents pages; a sometimes very concise, but on other occasions all-embracing grammar section, as well as a section comprising orthographical directions; an introduction containing general directions for writing letters; some pages on how to address Persons of Distinction in Writing, or Discourse, &c. (Anon. 1756: 45); plus a usually extensive chapter showing the actual model letters and notes. As an instance of what could be found under a heading general directions, manuals taught that letters should be like conversation, meaning that we should write as we speak (Anon. 1756: 45). After all, it was argued, letter writing is most agreeable, when most familiar (Anon. 1756: 46). The readers were also instructed that Postscripts should be avoided as much as possible ; especially complimentary postscripts to any of the persons family or relations to whom you write ; as it shews disrespect in neglecting such persons in the body of your Letter (Hogg & Brown 1800: 4). With regard to the general rules of

I was unable to further identify W.H. Dilworth.

address, one of the lessons most letter-writing manuals taught was that letters should be concluded with the same address as you began (Hogg & Brown 1800: 4). The idea expressed in these manuals that a persons social position was reflected in his or her style of writing and adherence to these directions or as The Compleat Letter Writer: or, New and Polite English Secretary would have it, it lays open his Breeding, his Sense, and his Abilities (Anon. 1756: 45) would later in the eighteenth century develop somewhat differently in America compared to what happened in England. The middling sort in America, as stated by Dierks (2000: 31), became subjected to a less rigid social hierarchy than their English counterparts, and American publishers therefore started to revise the available letter-writing manuals to reflect those different cultural circumstances, sometimes by merely substituting extensive lists of social titles for those of a few government officials. That Benjamin Rush had become aware of a distinction between American and English social ranking is clearly noticeable where he describes the manners of the people of England (ed. Corner 1948: 66) in his autobiography (see Section 2.2), as well as in a letter he wrote to John Adams (see also Section 3.4.5): I have no objection to men being accosted by the titles which they derive from their offices. Mr. President, Mr. Vice-President, Senator, Councilor [sic], Judge, or even Constable may all be used with propriety, but why should we prefix noble, honorable, or elective to them? . The very atmosphere of London is impregnated with the sounds of my Lord, my Lady, Right honorable, your Honor, Sir John and Sir Jamesand yet where will you find more profligate manners than among the citizens of London? (ed. Butterfield 1951: 523) Rush stressed his Quaker background in this letter, remarking that [a]mong the Quakers the highest degrees of order are preserved without titles. Current research into epistolary formulas includes a study by Raumolin-Brunberg (1996) on pragmatization and politeness in forms of address. The term pragmatization is explained here as referring to linguistic developments leading to the creation of new conventionalised pragmatic elements in language, and opening formulas in letters, such as

dear Sir and my honoured Lady, are given as examples of pragmatization (RaumolinBrunberg 1996: 167). In her paper, Raumolin-Brunberg presents a politeness continuum, showing a sliding scale of values from Negative to Positive, with honorific titles indicating a persons social status placed on the utmost negative end, and nicknames and terms of endearment on the extreme positive end (1996: 171). This continuum is shown in Illustration 2 below.

2. Politeness continuum as presented by Raumolin-Brunberg (1996: 171).

Raumolin-Brunbergs (1996) approach applies Brown & Levinsons (1987) model of politeness theory which is based on the notion of face an individuals self-esteem. Brown & Levinson (1987) distinguish three main strategies of politeness, positive politeness (roughly, the expression of solidarity), negative politeness (roughly, the expression of restraint) and off-record politeness (roughly, the avoidance of unequivocal impositions), and they claim that the use of each is tied to the relationship between speaker (or writer) and addressee (Brown & Levinson 1987: 2). The letters of Benjamin Rush may prove to be an interesting testing ground for Raumolin-Brunbergs (1996) theory.

1.3. Methodology For this study, I decided to look into the correspondence of Benjamin Rush and to analyse how Rush made use of epistolary formulas salutations and conclusions. My study will deal with letters sent to male as well as female correspondents, to see if a different style of writing

can be discovered, for instance more or less formal. Of special interest will be those letters that were written to correspondents over a longer period of time, to find if a change of relationship was accompanied by a change of style, as may be expected (Bax 2000: 281-284). I hope to be able to notice if Rushs general style of letter writing changed, for instance during his three-year stay in Edinburgh and London or after his return to America, and if it might be possible to observe a development of stylistic aspects that could be described as typical American. Together, this correspondence studied makes a corpus of 204 letters. I limited my research to a selection of out-letters written by Rush up to and including the year 1800. 2 This means that my investigation will cover a part of his correspondence that had been sent during the eighteenth century: the age in which private letters became a major text type (Grlach 2001: 211). Since the first of these letters by Rush was written in 1761, this concerns a fortyyear period. This thesis is organised as follows. In Chapter 2, I will provide an extensive overview of the life of Benjamin Rush, focussing especially on his formative years, and preceded by a brief outline of eighteenth-century society in Philadelphia, the place where Benjamin Rush lived during the greater part of his life. For easy reference, in Appendix A, I will include a timeline synchronically showing events happening in Great Britain, the United States and in Rushs private life during the second half of the eighteenth century, which is the period under discussion in the present study. I will continue in Chapter 3 with a concise analysis of epistolary formulas found in a selection of letters taken from the Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers ARCHER. This will be followed by a detailed analysis of the epistolary formulas used in a large part of Rushs published correspondence. Both analyses will be performed along the

I borrowed the term out-letter from Baker (1980: 123).

hierarchical model presented by Baker (1980),3 and I will compare the results to Wesleys usage and to the usage prescribed in contemporary British English letter-writing manuals. In the conclusion to this chapter, the results of this analysis will briefly be compared to the outcome of earlier research on the use of epistolary formulas in the letters of John Gay (16851732), Robert Lowth (1710-1787), and Queeny Thrale (1764-1857) (see Introduction above). I will do so with reference to Raumolin-Brunbergs (1996) approach to pragmatization and politeness in forms of address. To conclude, Chapter 4 will contain my final conclusions and some recommendations for future research. This thesis will further hold five Appendices. The first will contain a table showing historical events. The next two will show a selection of the publications of Benjamin Rush and an overview of his correspondents. These are followed by tables illustrating the salutations and conclusions in the selection of Rushs correspondence discussed in the present study, and in a selection of the other eighteen-century American letters found in ARCHER, as also discussed in this thesis.

According to Tieken-Boon van Ostade, this work serves as an excellent introduction to the eighteenth -century letter (2003: 242n2).

3. Portrait of Benjamin Rush, painted by Charles Wilson Peale

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2. Benjamin Rush: an overview of his life

2.1. Introduction When John Adams wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson that he knew of [n]o Character living or dead, who has done more real good in America, (eds Bell & Butterfield 1979: xvii), he referred to the Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush. As described by himself in his revealing autobiography Travels Through Life (ed. Corner 1948: 23), written in 1800, this Benjamin Rush led a variegated life during an extremely turbulent period in America. His talent for observing peoples characters and credibly describing his judgements are recognized in dElia (1974: 50) who refers to Rush as the Boswellian American. Moreover, Osgood (1944) titled his paper about Rushs biography An American Boswell. This kind of information that Rush provided would be, as Tieken-Boon van Ostade (2005: 122) puts it, essential in trying to reconstruct eighteenth-century society and its networks. The combined recordings of his life and letters show that the expression variegated is, however, somewhat of an understatement. In this respect, dElia (1974: 5) quotes the historian Harry C. Good who writes that Rushs diversified activities afforded material enough for four lives of ordinary men. A brief overview of his extraordinarily active and varied life and career is given below. As mentioned above, Benjamin Rush lived in times of turmoil. In 1776 the secession of the American colonies took place and within thirteen years the country, as the United States of America, obtained a constitution and its first president. Meanwhile, in England, the battle of Culloden had definitely ended the Jacobite rebellion in the year Rush was born and, towards the end of the eighteenth century, France had declared war against Britain, and vice versa. For easy reference, and to show Rushs personal life within the context of eighteent hcentury history, I will include Table 2 in Appendix A, giving an overview of major events that took place in Benjamin Rushs life, in the United States, as well as in Great Britain, starting the year Rush was born and ending in 1800.

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2.1.1. Eighteenth-century Philadelphia Benjamin Rush grew up in the city of Philadelphia and he lived there for most of his life. During the previous century, in 1682 to be exact, this city had been founded by William Penn (1644-1718), a Quaker. During Rushs lifetime, Philadelphia, which had been a planned city from the beginning and which was at that time the largest city in the country and the second largest English speaking city of the world, after London (Tindall & Shi 2004: 138) had become the capital of the young nation, and its number of inhabitants had grown from approximately 15,000 to well over 40,000, the majority of Quaker and German descent (Brodsky 2004: 83, 323). In 1774, Americas first general representative body, the Continental Congress, assembled in Philadelphia. Furthermore, it is in Philadelphia that fiftysix signatures, one of these being Rushs, were deposited under the Declaration of Independence in 1776, officially announcing America to be an independent republic. By the end of the eighteenth century, the city was considered by many as the cultural centre of the United States, and the inhabitants felt this was particularly owing to Dr Benjamin Franklin whom they considered the citys patron saint (Brodsky 2004: 13).

2.2. Formative years Rush was born on 4 January 17464 in Byberry Township, Philadelphia county, Pennsylvania.5 In his memoirs, he describes himself as the eldest son of the 5th generation descended (ed. Corner 1948: 25) from the original Quaker settlers John and Susanna Rush,6 who had come to Pennsylvania from England (probably Oxfordshire) in 1683 with eight children and several grandchildren. Rush remembers his grandfather James as an amiable and industrious

This is according to our contemporary Gregorian calendar, which was introduced into the American colonies in 1752. By the Julian calendar Rush was born on 24 December 1745. 5 Unless mentioned otherwise, for information about Rushs life, I relied on his memoirs, as recorded in his autobiography Travels Through Life. An Account of sundry Incidents & Events in the life of Benjamin Rush (ed. Corner 1948) and on Butterfields (1951) introduction to the Letters of Benjamin Rush, Vols I and II. 6 Rushs older brother James had died in the twenty-first year of his age (ed. Corner 1948: 28).

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man who, when he died in about 1726, left his considerable property . unencumbered with a single debt (ed. Corner 1948: 25) to his children. Benjamins father John Rush then succeeded to his business, which was that of a gunsmith, and inherited the farm. In 1685, the grandfather of Benjamins mothers, Jacob Hall, had arrived from England in Pennsylvania, where he had acquired a large tract of land on the Delaware (ed. Corner 1948: 25). After Jacobs death, his son Joseph succeeded to the estate. This Joseph fathered no less than twelve children, one of which was Susanna, Benjamins mother. Susannas first marriage was to a man named Joseph Harvey, with whom she had one daughter. This unfortunate marriage lasted only three or four years due to the extravagance and intemperance of her young husband (ed. Corner 1948: 167). Shortly after his death she married John Rush. John and Susanna Rush had six children together: James, Rachel, Rebecca, Benjamin, Jacob and John. All of them were baptized in the Episcopal Church their parents attended. On 26 July 1751, when Benjamin was only six years old, his father died, leaving the family with very little property.7 Shortly after this, his youngest brother John died. His mother was then forced to go into business and started a small country store, which soon developed into a successful enterprise, enabling her to educate her children agreeable to her wishes [as well as] to save money (ed. Corner 1948: 27). Nevertheless, a few years after his fathers death, Benjamins mother remarried a man named Richard Morris, a distiller. Like her first marriage, this third one, which would last sixteen years, was not a happy union either. According to Rush, Morris had been a rough and unkind man, who often abused his mother. Rush thought highly of his parents. He describes his mother as an energetic woman with an extraordinary mind, well educated at a boarding school in Philadelphia and well acquainted with the common branches of female education. He continues to observe that
7

That is, according to Rush (ed. Corner 1948: 27). He did not mention what had happened to the considerable property his grandfather from fathers side had left.

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[a]s a mother she had no superior in kindness, generosity, and attention to the morals and religious principles of her children (ed. Corner 1948: 26). He says of his father that his person and manners were agreeable and engaging and that he was a very ingenious man, and so strictly just that one of his neighbours used to say of him, that the highest character that could be given of a man was to say he was as honest as John Rush (ed. Corner 1948: 25). At the age of seven or eight, Benjamin, together with his one year younger brother Jacob, was sent to West Nottingham Academy and he would remain a pupil there for about six years.8 Rush retells many fond memories of this period. The school was run by a man named Dr Samuel Finley. This Reverend Finley was married to a sister of Benjamins mother and would later become President of the College of New Jersey. Very admiringly, Rush remarks about the qualifications of this excellent man (ed. Corner 1948: 34) as a teacher of an academy, and a master of a family: Few men have ever possessed or displayed greater talents in both those capacities. His government over his boys was strict but never severe nor arbitrary (ed. Corner 1948: 29). Benjamins report describing his schooldays shows that, depending on the offence, a form of physical punishment was considered quite acceptable and just. The instrument with which Dr Finley corrected was a small switch which he broke from a tree. The part he struck was the palm of the hand, and that never more than three times (ed. Corner 1948: 29). Giving us some insight into the eighteenth-century American school curriculum, Rush says the following about his preceptors methods of teaching: He inculcated at all times a regard to the common forms of good breeding. For this purpose, he frequently exercised his pupils in delivering and receiving letters, and in asking and receiving favors. He extended his attention to forms, to the composition, folding, and direction of letters. These had their rules, and were applied by him to different ranks and subjects according as they were upon business, or mere letters of friendship.
8

Benjamin Rush refers to this institute as a country school. It was then located in a village in the state of Maryland.

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His method of teaching the Latin and Greek languages was simple. He taught several of the Arts and Sciences usually taught in Colleges. In these he was unfortunately tied down to the principles and forms that were common in the Schools of that day. He had studied the English language, and taught the reading, writing, and speaking of it with great care and success. (ed. Corner 1948: 31) From Rushs autobiography, we can also learn that the practice and instruction of Christian religion was considered of the utmost importance by his teacher, and that Rush was convinced that it could be attributed to this man that he not at any time of [his] life ever entertained a doubt of the divine origin of the Bible. He expresses his wish that this mode of fortifying the reason of young people in the principles of Christianity were more general (ed. Corner 1948: 31). Another subject that was taught in the Doctors family, and that would prove to be of great assistance in Benjamins later career as a physician, was practical agriculture. Rush ascribes it as possibly partly to the influence of plants that not a single instance of death and hardly any of illness occurred in Finleys family, which consisted of about thirty persons. Early 1759, when he was thirteen, Rush left West Nottingham Academy to attend the College of New Jersey.9 The president of this college at that time was a man named Samuel Davies who, according to Rush, had a great reputation for classical literature, philosophy and oratory, and who in earlier years had travelled to Britain to successfully solicit contributions for building the College. While being there, Davies had enlarged his mind and qualifications [f]rom his intercourse with the most eminent Scholars and Divines among the dissenters (ed. Corner 1948: 35). This was also the man who taught Benjamin the method of reading by making notes about the material in a common place book in order to imprint it more deeply in the memory (ed. Corner 1948: 36). Rush would do so in two volumes covering the years 1789-1813 (ed. Corner 1948).

Now Princeton University.

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Within about sixteen months young Rush earned the degree of Batchelor of Arts and by this time he had formed an intention to study the law. Previous to these studies, he made a short trip to the country, stopping for a few days at Dr Finleys. His former teacher advised him to study physic the current term for medicine at the time (Brodsky 2004: 19) instead, since the practice of the law was full of temptations (ed. Corner 1948: 37). Rush followed this advice and applied for an apprenticeship to Dr John Redman, at that time Philadelphias leading physician (Brodsky 2004: 26).10 Although all his friends objected to his choice and he says to have sometimes regretted it himself at the moment of writing his memoirs, in 1800, Rush rejoice[d] (ed. Corner 1948: 37) to have followed Finleys counsel. In February 1761 Rush started his medical studies, and continued it constantly in [his] masters family and shop till July 1766 (ed. Corner 1948: 38). He mentions that his master had the most extensive business of any physician in the city of Philadelphia, yet never kept more than two apprentices at one time. Their duties were preparing and compounding medicines, visiting the sick and performing many little offices of a nurse to them, and Benjamin, moreover, took exclusive charge of [the] books and accompts (ed. Corner 1948: 38). He was also introduced by Dr Redman to the Pennsylvania hospital, where at that time the medical school of Philadelphia had just been established. This provided him access to lectures on anatomy and other material medica (ed. Corner 1948: 39). Rush read a lot and recorded everything that he thought worthwhile in his commonplace book. During his years with Dr Redman, Benjamin Rush had decided that he would continue his medical studies in Edinburgh, which had succeeded Leiden as the worlds foremost medical center (Corner 1948: 362) in the second half of the eighteenth century. Thus he sailed to Liverpool in August 1766, having a stormy and dangerous passage that caused him to suffer much from seasickness. Laudanum apparently offered him some relief. The voyage
10

John Redman had studied medicine in Leiden, training under the influence of Boerhaave. According to Corner (1948: 362), at that time, i.e. the first half of the eighteenth century, Leiden was considered to be the headquarters of European medicine.

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took about two months and Rush disembarked in England on 21 October. He brought letters of introduction with him and was kindly entertained by several families (ed. Corner 1948: 40) before continuing his travels that same month towards Edinburgh, together with a friend, where he arrived on 3 November. Rush spent two years in Edinburgh and he describes this period as the most important in their influence upon [his] character and conduct of any period of [his] life (ed. Corner 1948: 43). He would later claim that long talks he held there with a fellow student named John Bostock had laid the basis for his conversion to republicanism. Besides attending lectures in subjects like anatomy, chemistry, natural philosophy and the practice of the infirmary, he found time to acquire some knowledge of Italian and Spanish, to rev ive his knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages essential for his medical studies and to make himself master of the French language (ed. Corner 1948: 42). Rush describes the method his French teacher used as follows: I was taught the French by a man of uncommon genius of the name of Coumans who strictly forbad me to commit a grammar rule to memory. He obliged me from the beginning to read and translate passages from a French book, and to write a French version every day. This I could not do without the help of a grammar. By referring to its rules, at the time I required their application, they adhered to memory without the least act of my will to imprint them there, so that at the end of one month, I could repeat them with great facility. I well recollect the triumph my master enjoyed over me in perceiving the success of his mode of teaching the principles of his language, for I had objected to it on the day I became his pupil. (ed. Corner 1948: 43) It was Dr William Cullen, however, one of his medical professors, who made the greatest impression on the young man. This inspiring and pleasant teacher, according to Rush, had the boldness to give his lectures in English and not in Latin, as was customary at that time which greatly pleased his American student who was much less enthusiastic about having to brush up his Greek and Latin. In a letter, dated 21 July 1789, to his close friend John Adams, at that time the vice-president of the United States, he would remark: Upon the subject of the Latin and Greek languages, I shall only ask two questions.

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Who are guilty of the greatest absurdity the Chinese who press the feet into deformity by small shoes, or the Europeans and Americans who press the brain into obliquity by Greek and Latin? Do not men use Latin and Greek as the scuttlefish emit their ink, on purpose to conceal themselves from an intercourse with the common people? Indeed, my friend, I owe nothing to the Latin and Greek classics but the turgid and affected style of my youthful compositions and a neglect of English grammar. At 22 years of age I read Lowths Introduction to the grammar of our language and also some of Swifts works.11 By means of these I learned to put words together, and if I possess at this time any knowledge of style or language, I owe it to my having nearly forgotten the Greek . (ed. Butterfield 1951: 524) During these two years in Edinburgh, the young American got to meet many interesting people. Among these were the celebrated Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume (1711-1776), Thomas Blacklock (1721-1791), a poet and scholar, the prominent physician Sir Alexander Dick (1703-1785), as well as an American lawyer named Richard Stockton (1730-1781), less than a decade later to become his father-in-law. He befriended the family of the sixth Earl of Leven getting mortally smitten (Butterfield 1947: 4) by the eldest daughter Lady Jane and he met the Scottish Presbyterian minister Dr John Witherspoon (1723-1794),12 whom he was able to persuade to accept the position of president of the College of New Jersey that had been offered to him.13 Rush in line with his upbringing highly appreciated the moral order that prevailed in Edinburgh. He remarks how silent the streets are after 10 oclock at night, and how full the churches on Sundays. He noticed that swearing was rarely heard in genteel life, and that he never saw a pack of cards in either a public or private house. He further observed that this universal morality is not restricted to polite society but had also descended still lower among the humble ranks of life (ed. Corner 1948: 52).

11

If Rush remembered correctly, this reading of Lowths grammar would have been in 1768, and he must therefore have read this either in Edinburgh or in London. 12 Witherspoon would later be one of the fifty-six co-signers of the American Declaration of Independence, as were Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton. 13 To attest to the social acceptance of Rush by Edinburgh polite society, Corner (1948: 49) informs us that his list of Edinburgh acquaintances includes many of those who would entertain or meet Samuel Johnson during his visit there on the way to the Hebrides a few years later.

18

Nevertheless,14 the American physician as he was by then allowed to call himself felt he had to leave Edinburgh in September 1768 to go to London, where he soon found acceptable lodgings in the Hay Market, situated suitably to the hospitals and lectures [he] propose[d] to attend. One of such a series of lectures and dissections was given by the anatomist, surgeon and obstetrician William Hunter (1718-1783) whose lectures Rush considered entertaining as well as instructing [sic] (ed. Corner 1948: 52).15 Besides becoming acquainted with many celebrated surgeons and physicians while in London, the young Dr Rush got to meet quite a few other people who are nowadays wellknown for their achievements in other fields of expertise. One of them is Benjamin Franklin, who was at that time, with his family, in this city to act as agent to several of the then American Colonies (ed. Corner 1948: 55). Being a religious man, Benjamin Rush mentions that he often visited the Episcopal Church and that he enjoyed listening to dissenters preaching. Thus he recalls to have heard William Dodd (1729-1777) and James Fordyce (1720-1796).16 He was introduced to Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1793) and soon invited to the painters house for dinner, where he would meet Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), Dr Oliver Goldsmith (1724-1774), and several other distinguished literary characters (ed. Corner 1948: 58). In the following passage, Rush describes a part of the conversation that took place at that occasion, and which developed after it was remarked to one of them, that the Reviewers had been very severe upon a work he had lately published as follows: What then, said Dr. Johnson to the gentleman, where is the advantage of having a great deal of money, but that the loss of a little will not hurt you? In like manner, where is the advantage of having a great deal of reputation but that the loss of a little will not hurt you? You can bear the censures of the Reviewers. At dinner the Doctor spoke a good deal, and always in a manner that commanded respect. Upon being asked what his opinion was of Mr. Boswell, he said he was much given to asking
14 15

Rush wrote in a letter to a friend: The happiest part of my life is now over (ed. C orner, 1948: 49). William Hunter, together with his brother John Hunter (1728-1793), conducted a school of anatomy in Great Windmill Street, where, according to Corner (1948: 52), many of the best British surgeons were trained. 16 The latter was a long-time friend of Samuel Johnson (Corner 1948: 57).

19

questions and that they were not always of the most interesting nature. For instance, he will sometimes ask Pray, Doctor, why is an apple round, and why is not a pear so? He treated Dr. Goldsmith, who was a man of gentle and unoffending manners, with great rudeness in the course of the day. After dinner Mr. Eaton Wilkes, brother of Jno. Wilkes17 came into Sir Joshuas. Dr. Johnson and he soon engaged in a dispute upon the propriety of the military being ordered lately to fire upon a mob in St. Georges Field, by which a man of the name of Allen was killed. Mr. Wilkes condemned the measure, and said Col.- (whose name I do not recollect) had said, he could have dispersed the mob without firing a gun. I have no doubt of it, said Dr. Johnson. Some men have a method of quelling mobs which others have not, just as you have a method of defending them which I have not. The Doctors conversation was highly respectful to religion, and though he was now and then offensive in his manners, I left his company under an impression that I had passed a day which deserved always to be remembered with pleasure. (ed. Corner 1948: 59-60) This is one of the few passages in Benjamin Rushs autobiography that reflects a conversation this extensively, which suggests that Dr Johnson must indeed have made a great impression on him. On an other occasion, Rush dined with Dr Oliver Goldsmith in the Temple, where he had rooms and during that meal, Goldsmith confided in him that the vicars wife in his Vicar of Wakefield was intended for his [Goldsmiths] mother (ed. Corner 1948: 60). Rush found the man, who spoke with the Irish accent entertaining, but lacking the usual marks of great and original genius. Mrs Macaulay (1731-1791),18 the celebrated republican historian of England, became another acquaintance of his and he visited her weekly evening Coterie where subjects of a literary and political nature were discussed with elegance and good breeding (ed. Corner 1948: 60). Rush recalls how he once took the liberty of telling her that some grammatical errors had been made by the printers of her history. No (said she), they are my errors, and not the printers. I have

17

John Wilkes (1725?-1797) was a member of the opposition to the government. Earlier that same year he had been imprisoned and subsequently expelled from the House of Commons. Since Rush had become curious about this man, he arranged to be invited to a dinner prepared in prison for about fourteen or fifteen of Wilkess friends. Rush was surprised to find that Wilkes was perfectly well bred, as he had been represented a monster of immorality. Describing Wilkess library he saw in an adjoining room, he remarked that [a] mans pictures and books are generally pretty correct copies of the intellectual and moral qualities of the mind (ed. Corner 1948: 62). 18 Catherine Macaulay, British historian and advocate of republicanism, was at that time writing her 8-volume History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line (1763-1783) (source: ODNB).

20

constantly refused to have them corrected, least it should be suspected that my history was not altogether my own. (ed. Corner 1948: 61) In 1783, Catherine Macaulay met Benjamin Rush again, when she visited Philadelphia. Rushs impressions about the English nation that were formed during the five months he stayed in its capital are worth quoting here.19 His observations must be interpreted bearing in mind that his hometown Philadelphia contained one of the largest Quaker communities, as well as the fact that Rushs own ancestors were Quakers: Quakers do not differentiate between people of different rank or class; to them all individuals are equal (see also Section 1.2). Without apparently wishing to omit a single occupation or profession, he describes the English population as follows: There was in my view at the time I was in London, a variety in the manners of the people of England, as great as their ranks and occupations. The nobleman, the commoner, the countryman, gentleman of large and moderate fortune, the common farmer, the merchant, the shopkeeper, the tavern keeper, the Tradesman of a large capital, and his journeyman, the Lawyer, the Physician, the Bishop, the unbeneficed clergyman, the dissenting minister, the military offer, and soldier, the sailor, the water man, the lamp lighter, the hackney coachman, the hawkers, the beggars had each a specific character. They were all, it is true, in some points Englishmen, but in many more they were as dissimilar from each other as if they had belonged to different nations.20 (ed. Corner 1948: 66) The next leg of his travels brought Benjamin Rush to Paris in France, to which he carried with him letters of introduction and credit from his friend Benjamin Franklin. There he attended meetings with several Frenchmen who later would have an active part during the first years of the French Revolution (1789-1799).21 He visited all the public hospitals in Paris (ed. Corner 1948: 70) and was entertained by Denis Diderot (1713-1784) in his library. Rush could not resist contemplating the French character as well, and he found himself:
19

Rush may have been a bit prejudiced here. Algeo (2001: 3) claims that equality of life in A merica has often been exaggerated. 20 In a letter dated 8 June 1810 to his son James, who was about to travel to London, Rush advised him that he should Be all eye, all ear, all grasp in [his] intercourse with the citizens of London of all descriptions and he remarked: [it] is certain no such variety obtains in other European countries. The history of one Frenchman, whether a nobleman, a cook, or a hairdresser, is the history of the whole nation. Nearly the same remark applies to all the other nations in Europe. Even in Scotland and Ireland there seems to be but one species of character pervading all ranks and classes of people (ed. Butterfield 1951: 1050 -51). 21 The seeds of the Revolution, it has been said by one of its enemies, were sowed by the[se] meetings (ed. Corner 1948: 68), according to Benjamin Rush.

21

struck with its immense difference from that which [he] had observed in the character of the English nation. There appeared to me but one Frenchman in Paris. There was no variety in their manners. The same taste in dress pervaded all classes from the nobleman down to the beggar. The same phraseology was heard in their language. Honor and pleasure were the hackneyed words that composed a material part of it. The subjects of conversation, except among literary men, had no variety. Amusements and anecdotes of the Court formed a principal part of them. The King was at this time the idol of the nation. . Civilians divide mankind into three great classes, viz, savages, barbarians and civilized people.22 (ed. Corner 1948: 71) On the way back to his home in Philadelphia, Benjamin Rush stayed two more months in London, before, on 26 May 1769, he would leave Britain, that celebrated and highly favoured island and the first country in the world (ed. Corner 1948: 75). He embarked on a ship that would sail from Gravesend to New York, where he arrived on 14 July. Having been abroad for almost three years, Rush immediately noticed a difference in the appearance of his fellow countrymen compared to that of the citizens of London. Thus he observes that 1, They ha[ve] less color; 2, they walk[..] less erect; and 3, they move[.] with a less quick step than [the Londoners] (ed. Corner 1948: 78). According to Butterfield (1947: 12), Rush had come back from Europe a changed man: having left America as a somewhat stiff -necked Calvinist, he had undergone the liberalizing influence of his contacts with European scientists and philosophers upon his mind, and the many social contacts abroad resulted in refined manners and character.

2.3. Professional years Upon his return to America, Rush, at the age of twenty-three, settled as a physician in Philadelphia. His brother Jacob, who by then had become a lawyer, lived with him, as did his sister Rebecca who kept house for them. Claiming that he had at that time no patronage of a great man and no powerful family connections, Dr Rush began his career by attending the poor, since he had a natural sympathy with distress of every kind (ed. Corner 1948: 79).
22

In his autobiography, Rush mentions seven traits of resemblance between the French, whom he calls the most civilized of any nation in the world, and the Indians in North America.

22

Almost immediately, he was appointed professor of chemistry at the College of Philadelphia. He started publishing medical tracts and textbooks, and soon gave lectures at the new University of Pennsylvania. In the beginning, his newfangled ideas about medical treatments did not always meet with the approval of the older and established physicians of the city, but Rush wrote that he lived to see [them] adopted by all the physicians who had opposed earlier (ed. Corner 1948: 82). By 1783, at the age of thirty-seven, he had achieved the reputation of being one of the foremost physicians in the United States (Brodsky 2004: 275) and at the time of his death in 1813, Rush held three professorships simultaneously (Barton 1999: 68). Benjamin Rush would soon be well-liked by his patients in Philadelphia and this popularity reached its zenith during the extremely severe yellow fever epidemic that stroke Philadelphia in 1793, killing thousands of its inhabitants. By this time he had become a family man with a wife and seven children, the youngest only one year old. Many government officials and wealthier citizens, as well as panicking physicians, fled the city (Barton 1999: 81-83). Explaining his decision with the words I had resolved to stick to my principles, my practice, and my patients, to the last extremity (Barton 1999: 83), Dr Rush, however , together with a few of his pupils, chose to stay and help the victims, taking the precaution to send most of the members of his family to a safer place. His sister Rebecca, who had decided to remain with her brother, and three of his pupils died of this plague. Dr Rushs tireless and dutiful efforts to relieve his patients suffering, earning him the admiration and gratitude of many, are depicted in the series of letters he wrote to his wife Julia during that period (see Section 3.4.3 below). His activities were by no means restricted to medical duties only. An extremely versatile man, Benjamin Rush devoted himself to countless other causes, writing numerous

23

newspaper articles and tracts about a variety of subjects.23 He became an active member of the anti-slavery movement as well as a keen prison reformer and fervent opponent of capital punishment. He was convinced that the future of his country relied on a sound educational system and he participated in many activities such as formulating curriculum plans and authorising textbooks, arguing that modern English books should cease to be the models of stile in the United States (Fisher 2001: 61). He furthermore helped establishing no less than five colleges and universities (Barton 1999: 37-8). Dr Rush was a close friend of Abigail Adams (1744-1818), the wife of John Adams, who advocated education for women, and he assisted her in realising her dream by helping to establish one of Americas first institutions for women (Barton 1999: 43).24 Towards the end of his life, from 1807 onwards, Rush started pioneering in American veterinary medicine, proposing its addition to the formal curriculum of Americas medical schools (Brodsky 2004: 278-9). Already in the year of his return, 1769, Rush was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. Immediately after his homecoming, he had begun writing pamphlets advocating American independence, earning him the approval and friendship of several prominent statesmen.25 Rush, then in his twenties, found himself admitted into the confidence (Brodsky 2004: 106) of some of the more fervent nationalists, such as John Adams and John Dickinson (1732-1808). Together they formed a group of people that would become known as the Founding Fathers of America: the creators of the American Constitution. Feelings of nationalism among the thirteen American colonies had been triggered by resentment of Britains economic policies, particularly about taxing the colonies. Benjamin Rush became one of the fifty-six men who signed the Declaration of Independence
23 24

For a list containing many but by no means all of his works, see Appendix B. One of the pamphlets Benjamin Rush wrote on this subject is titled Thoughts upon Female Education, Accommodated to the Present State of Society, Manners, and Government in the United States of America (1787; see also Chapter 4). 25 Rush wrote the most famous of these pamphlets, Common Sense, in 1776 together with Thomas Paine (17371809) who is usually credited for it. This pamphlet had made a huge impact on the American people and is said to be perhaps the single work most responsible for turning the tide of American public opinion toward independence. (Barton 1999: 18).

24

on 4 July 1776, whereupon he took a seat in Congress. Rushs strong ideas about freedom and the abolition of slavery made him view resistance to Britain as a holy crusade with the welfare not only of the colonials but of all mankind at stake (Brodsky 2004: 119). Towards the end of the eighteenth century, President Adams offered Rush the lifetime position of Treasurer of the Mint. Rushs military career was brief. In December 1776, resolved to stand or fall (ed. Corner 1948: 124) with his country, he voluntarily joined the Philadelphia militia that was on its way to reinforce General Washingtons army to fight the British army. Until January 1778, Rush served first as a physician with the Pennsylvania troops, and then as Surgeon General and next Physician General in the Continental Army (Barton 1999: 260-1). He retired from the army because his complaints to Congress about corruption and malpractice within the army hospital system, although heard, had not made him too popular with his superiors.

2.4. A husband and father When Benjamin Rush was about twenty-seven years old, he briefly got engaged to be married to a woman named Sarah Eve, who had died before the wedding could take place. Within a year, when invited for a visit to Mr and Mrs Richard Stocktons house, Benjamin fell in love with their eldest daughter Julia, who was at that time sixteen or seventeen years old. Although Rush had immediately felt attracted to her, it would be her favourable opinion of a sermon given the next day by Dr Witherspoon that determined [Rush] to offer her [his] hand (ed. Corner 1948: 116). Five months later, early 1776, they were married by the same Dr Witherspoon, and the marriage would last for more than thirty-seven years until his death. Together they became the parents of thirteen children eight sons and five daughters. Four of these would not live to celebrate their first birthday their son Will dying of an illness when merely two months old and only eight of them outlived their father.

25

The Rushes firstborn son, John, had suffered from a nervous disease since he was a small child. His naval experiences worsened this condition, leading to clinical insanity and death at the age of twenty-one. It was Johns fate that induced his father to devote himself to studying the treatment of insanity. He would be among the first to recognize that mental disorders must be treated, instead of merely locking away the afflicted, which earned him the epithet of father of American psychiatry (Brodsky 2004: 5). In the spring of 1813, Benjamin Rush came down with a fever, which was according to Brodsky (2004: 363) probably due to a tuberculosis that had been slumbering since long, and after a short illness he died on 19 April 1813. Julia survived her husband for thirty-five years and died in 1848 at the age of ninety (Brodsky 2004: 104). Benjamin Rushs letters show us a concerned and loving parent, and a tender and affectionate husband, whose allegiance to professional duties, nevertheless, prevailed him from spending much time with his family. To a question once asked him about how he had made time for doing all of his business, Rush answered that he never lost time in [his] own house. The scraps of time which interposed between the hour I returned from visiting my patients and the times of eating, I spent in light reading, or answering letters, or such pieces of business as required but little abstractions of mind. The evenings from 7, 8 or 9 oclock when not engaged in business or company were always spent in study, sometimes in the same room with my wife and children, but latterly in a room appropriated to my use. I seldom left it till 11 or 12 oclock at night. (ed. Corner 1948: 90) Rush appears to have believed that it was by serving his country that he could best serve and protect the family, and he was anxious to impart to his children the high moral standard his mother had set for him.

2.5. Concluding remarks In the overview given above of Benjamin Rushs life, I have paid relatively much attention to his formative years, since it would have been in this period that his style of letter writing

26

primarily developed. Moreover, I have focussed on those events in particular and chosen to reflect those specific views and feelings that may have further influenced this style, omitting many other details about his life that in a different context might have been worthwhile to be related. It appears from his autobiography Travels Through Life that throughout these years, but later as well, religion played a major role in his life, dictating his choice of friends, and even of a wife (see Section 2.4 above). On the basis of the account presented in this chapter, and following the definition of Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg (2003: 37), we may very well characterise Rush as a social aspirer. Born the son of a gunsmith, he was not satisfied with the opportunity for easy middle-class respectability that a position as an ordinary physician would offer. As he described it himself, his visit abroad had fashioned his character and conduct (ed. Corner 1948: 43), which eventually led to the placing of the epitaph on his grave, as referred to in Section 1.1. With regard to these memoirs of Rush, we must bear in mind, however, that he wrote them as late as 1800, which means that events were related in retrospect, and he meant them for the Use of his Children [his underlining] to afford entertainment and instruction to them, wishing explicitly that they would not be read out of the circle of [his] family (ed. Corner 1948: 21-23).26 Every description of a persons character provided by Rush, who was raised a Presbyterian, contains details about its degree of piety and Christian love, and many of the men belonging to his social network were clergymen. In his letters as well as in his autobiography, Rush shows himself as a very hardworking, self-conscious, and dutiful although occasionally inflexible and moralistic man, who was, however, not without compassion and who practised what he preached.

26

According to Corner (1948: 104n), the editor of the Letters of Benjamin Rush (1951), Butterfield, believes that vicious attacks of William Cobbett (1763-1835) on Rushs professional activities had provoked the writing of Travels Through Life. After being fined $5,000 for libel against Rush in December 1799, this journalist, using the pseudonym Peter Porcupine, had even devoted a periodical called The Rush-Light entirely to the abuse of Rush, before he returned to England.

27

4. Copy of a holograph letter to Julia Stockton, 12 November 1775.

28

3. The correspondence

3.1. Analysis of epistolary formulas in ARCHER Before turning to the letters of Benjamin Rush, in this section, I intend to discuss briefly the epistolary formulas I found in the other American letters dating from the second half of the eighteenth century that had been incorporated in the Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers ARCHER. In October 2005, ARCHER contained only thirty-one of them. Two of these letters were written by Benjamin Rush, and being the subject of this study they will be included in my analysis in Section 3.4 below. As for the remaining twenty-nine letters, I have listed all salutations and concluding formulas I found in this correspondence in Appendix E, Table 3.10 to this thesis, numbering them from (1) to (29). ARCHER does not provide information about the context of the letters included, and only very limited background information regarding the correspondents. Nevertheless, a few observations can be made on the epistolary formulas in these letters which I have added to the present study. I will mention here the names of the twelve correspondents involved, in alphabetical order, each followed by the number of letters written by him or her: Abigail Adams John Adams Andrew Ellicott Benjamin Franklin Andrew Jackson (1767-1845)27 Thomas Jefferson Rufus King (1755-1827) Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814) Eunice Paine John Rowe Elizabeth Smith George Washington -2 -2 -4 -2 -3 -3 -3 -1 -2 -3 -1 -3

The two letters written by John Adams, who as will be shown in Section 3.4.5 below was a close friend and frequent correspondent of Benjamin Rush, illustrate that in some

27

The seventh president of the United States (source: ODNB)

29

aspects his style of letter writing was not dissimilar to Rushs. One instance is the long builtin complimentary close in letter (3) to Richard Cranch:28 To tell you a secret, I dont know how to conclude neatly without invoking assistance but as truth has an higher place in your esteem than any ingenious conceit, I shall please you, as well as my self, most by subscribing myself your affectionate Friend, | John Adams (ARCHER 1755) Another example is his informal salutation My old Friend in (4) to Zabdiel Adams. As Rush often did, Adams wrote a P.S. under this letter, and even an N.B. below it to make sure that the P.S. would not be seen by anyone who was not meant to read it: I hope to see you soon at Braintree and am your assed. Friend & most hml. sert. | John Adams | P.S. If you should not come soon to Braintree write me, - I am in great Haste. Hay, Corn, Barley, Law, Love, and Politicks, plague me to death, coming all together so in a Huddle. | N.B. dont let this P.S. be seen by Girl nor Politician, nor heard of, by Either (ARCHER 1763) Adamss wife Abigail appears to have favoured these built-in closes as well, as can be seen in her letters (1) and (2), the latter version to Mercy Otis Warren being highly theatrical: Adieu my Friend. I hope soon to have the pleasure of seeing you at Braintree, and of a social Evening beside our fire. How happy should I esteem myself could the dear Friend of my Heart join us. I think I make a greater Sacrifice to the publick than I could by Gold and Silver, had I it to bestow. Does not Marcia join in this Sentiment with her | Portia. (ARCHER 1775) In the epistolary formulas extracted from ARCHER, I found two instances of a prayer included for the recipient in the conclusion: one in letter (6) written by Ellicott to his wife, the other in Jacksons letter (12), to his. As can be seen, this last concluding sentence is another striking example of a built-in complimentary close: May the great I am bless and protect you until that happy and wished for moment arrives when I am restored to your sweet embrace which is the Nightly prayer of your affectionate husband, | Andrew Jackson (ARCHER 1796) This same Jackson wrote a very formal letter (11) in terms of Bakers (1980) hierarchy (shown in Section 3.4.1 below) to a man named Smith, and a rather informal letter (13) to

28

I borrowed the term built-in complimentary close from Navest (2003).

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another man named Hayes, whom he addressed as Dr. Col, an indication that the relationships between him and each of these two men were of a different nature. Also in terms of Bakers (1980: 48) hierarchy, it appears that Thomas Jeffersons style of letter writing was somewhat more formal than that of either Rush or Adams. His letters (14) - (16) show that to his brothers as well as to his eleven-year-old daughter, he adhered to what letter-writing manuals of those days considered appropriate usage, by saluting them: Dear Brother and My dear Patsy respectively. His closing formulas show an even greater formality, especially the one (14) to his young daughter: I am my Dear Patsy | Yours sincerely & affectionately | Th: Jefferson (ARCHER 1783). This is very different from the fatherly way in which Rush concluded the letter to his son Richard (see Section 3.4.11 below) who was of the same age at the time of writing. A further remark that could be made is the extreme briefness of the epistolary formulas in a letter (19) written by the revolutionary lawyer and politician Rufus King. 29 With the salutation omitted, it comprises no more than: R.K. (ARCHER 1789). Considering the fact that in an earlier letter to the same addressee, King had saluted him as My Dear Friend (ARCHER 1776), which is a quite informal salutation according to Bakers (1980: 48) hierarchy, we might interpret this briefness as a token of extreme intimacy of their relationship. This agrees with Tieken-Boon van Ostades (2003: 248) observation that the use of initials to sign a letter was an indication of informality. Of all writers in this small corpus, judging by the salutations and conclusions, the merchant John Rowe would seem the least educated. ARCHER tells us no more than that Rowe was born in England and had arrived in Boston at the age of twenty-one. In his letters we see frequent abbreviations a usage condemned by letter-writing manuals, advising to avoid these Contractions of Words as much as possible (Anon. 1756), as well as by Rush

29

Source: ODNB.

31

(see Chapter 4) hardly any punctuation, and inconsistent capitalization. An example of this can be observed in letter (25) to Frances Robins: Dr Bror . Let me now tell you that I am very well as is Mrs Rowe & both of us Joyne in hearty Wishes for Your own & Your Family's health & prosperity & that I Remain Your Sincere & affectionate Bror & most hum Servt | JOHN ROWE (ARCHER 1761) It further appears that between husband and wife terms of endearment were not uncommon in salutations, as illustrated earlier by Tieken-Boon van Ostade (2003: 247) and as also will be shown in Sections 3.4.1 and 3.4.2 below. We see that Andrew Ellicott referred to his wife as My dear Girl (6), Benjamin Franklin addressed his wife Debby as My dear Child (9), and Andrew Jackson called his wife My Dearest Heart (12). A more remarkable way of saluting, however, can be found in the correspondence between Abigail Adams and two women named Mercy Otis Warren and Eunice Paine. In July 1773, Mercy Otis Warren wrote to Abigail Adams, addressing her as Dear Mrs. Adams and subscribing as Mercy Warren (20). According to Bakers (1980: 48) hierarchy, this form of address is only slightly less formal than Dear Madam. A little over two years later, Abigail Adams sent a letter to this Mercy Warren in which she addressed her as Dear Marcia, and subscribed as Portia (2). Apparently by then the women had adopted epistolary roles. To make matters even more confusing, in two letters, (21) and (22), written by Eunice Paine in May and June 1775 to Abigail Adams, Adams was addressed as Dear Portia and My Dear Portia respectively, while Paine signed both letters as Silvia. The mystery is solved by Hicks (2005) who explains that these names had been selected as an homage to the classical world. Abigail Adams chose as her pen name which she also used to sign her letters to her husband Portia, the wife of Roman statesman Brutus, whereas Mercy Warren, a historian, preferred to be the orator Hortensiuss wife Marcia. The women, according to Hicks (2005), even discussed matters of state. Eunice Paine also

32

belonged to Adamss coterie, but her pen name Silvia is not confirmed by Hicks (2005). As shown in these two examples of the correspondence between Warren and Adams, the salutations and conclusions indicate that within about two years their relationship had changed from being slightly informal acquaintances into an intimate friendship. To what extent can it be said that the selection of correspondence as found in ARCHER is representative of the period I studied, as its title claims? The eight male writers of these letters are mostly politically influential and generally well-known characters, with the exception of the merchant Rowe and the surveyor Ellicott. As concerns the four female writers, they all belong to Abigail Adamss circle and as can be deducted from the contents of the letters as discussed above, three of them at least appear to be educated women, Abigail being one of them. This means that, as regards the second half of the eighteenth century, ARCHER does not accurately represent all American text genres yet, and inclusion to the corpus of additional letters from all classes of society seems called for.

3.2. Introduction to the letters of Benjamin Rush As referred to in Chapter 1, Benjamin Rush conducted a voluminous correspondence with almost every major person of his time. As is clearly depicted in Butterfield (ed. 1951), these letters deal with a wide range of subjects in various fields such as politics, medical science, philosophy, history, the community, or horticulture. In the course of time, his social network grew to reach huge proportions, comprising people as diverse as the publisher and postmastergeneral Ebenezer Hazard (1744-1817), the publisher and grammarian Noah Webster (17581843), the scientist, dissenting minister and grammarian Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), president John Adams and his wife Abigail, the French philosopher Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg (1709-1779), the British abolitionist Granville Sharp (1735-1813), American military leaders, such as Anthony Wayne (1745-1796) and the Irish-born Charles Lee (1732-1782), the British

33

republican and historian Catherine Macaulay, and the American, pro-British, writer Elizabeth Graeme Ferguson (1737-1801). Rush could refer to many of these people as friends. Joseph Priestley, for instance, who wrote to him that I have not in this country met with any person whose mind seems to be so congenial to my own (ed. Carrington Bolton 1892: 140), not only thought highly of Rushs scientific qualities, he also considered himself a personal friend of his, as appears from the letter that Thomas Cooper wrote to Rush on 6 February 1804 to inform him of the death of Priestley: 30 I am sure you will sincerely regret the decease of a man so highly eminent and useful in the literary and philosophical world, and so much personally your friend. (ed. Carrington Bolton 1892: 162) Noah Webster became another of Rushs close friends according to Monaghan (1983: 62), and Joseph Priestley was aware of Rush corresponding with Webster, as we can read in Priestleys letter dated 7 May 1801: if you correspond with Mr. Webster, you may tell him how well satisfied I am with his work (ed. Carrington Bolton 1892: 159). Regrettably, Priestley did not specify which of Websters works it was that he admired, and since Noah Websters writings were already numerous by this date, we can only guess. Five of Rushs letters to Webster can be found in Butterfield (ed. 1951), and they are discussed in Section 3.4.10 below. A complete list of Rushs correspondents who are included in Butterfields (1951) compilation can be found in Appendix C. Rushs letters are by no means dull. Carlson et al. (1981: 3) note about them that they are forceful, interesting, and lively, but often appear no more than quaint. With the exception of the last part of this remark, this was also felt by the historian David Ramsay (1749-1815), who wrote a eulogy upon Benjamin Rushs death in 1813: His letters were peculiarly excellent; for they were dictated by a feeling heart, and adorned with the effusions of a brilliant imagination. His correspondence was
30

Dr Thomas Cooper (1759-1839), lawyer and political writer, was a friend of Joseph Priestley and had emigrated with him to America in 1794 (Newman 2004).

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extensive and his letters numerous; but every one of them, as far as can be known to an individual, contained something original, pleasant, and sprightly. I can truly say, that in the course of thirty-five years correspondence and friendly intercourse, I never received a letter from his without being delighted and improved, nor left his company without learning something [my underlining].31 (ed. Butterfield 1951: lx) As quoted in Section 2.2 above, already as a schoolboy, Benjamin Rush had learned how to write letters, observing the different ranks in society and distinguishing between business and family letters. As mentioned in Section 2.2, Rush himself was rather unhappy with his youthful compositions, which show what he himself called a neglect of English grammar and the style of which he considered turgid and affected (ed. Butterfield 1951: 524). Indeed, the writing technique Rush employed in his early letters illustrates, as also observed by Brodsky (2004), an immense pretentiousness and verbosity. Thus, in the very first letter in Butterfield (1951), Benjamin, at the age of fifteen, wrote as follows to a former classmate, Enoch Green (1735-1776), to inquire about the health of the president of their college: I imagine Davies still lives, for how can the state of the Church be presented to my mind? But its wound strikes my heart. Alas, its mightiest branch is lopt off. An awful, mysterious Providence! Our poor parent Nassau-Hall again left desolate and melancholy. Oh, it is a wound too fatalthe stroke is almost too severe. (ed. Butterfield 1951: 3-5) It is possible that in this letter Rushs dramatic verbosity which he was aware of, considering his P.S. in which he asks to be excused for errors and prolixity was triggered by the fact that Green, although he had graduated together with him, was eleven years older and would be ordained within a few months. Fortunately for his correspondents, already within a few years, Rush would manage to curb this artificial long-windedness.

31

David Ramsay appears not quite as original as Rush though, since he copied here some words that Rush had written about Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography: I never visited him without learning something [my underlining] (ed. Corner 1948: 55).

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3.3. Editorial treatment of the published letters In this section I will turn to Butterfields (1951) two-volume edition The Letters of Benjamin Rush. Butterfield states in his chapter on scope and method (1951: lxxiv-lxxx) that the books comprise over 650 letters written by Benjamin Rush, deriving from more than sixty sources, institutional as well as private, and found in America as well as in Europe. The editor further claims to believe that almost exactly (1951: lxxv) two-thirds of the letters have now been printed for the first time, adding that these 650 letters are not quite half of the total number of letters located at the date of publishing. I have limited my research for this thesis to a selection of these published letters. It is somewhat unfortunate, at least for the purpose of this study, that the editor felt he had to make a selection of letters for this edition, meaning that he did indeed choose or reject individual letters with a free hand and a free conscience. He clarifies that his choice had been the printing of all available letters having some literary distinction or that tell something significant about the writer or his times (Butterfield 1951: lxxv). This means that routine professional letters, containing medical prescriptions, or letters of introduction were omitted, as were letters that merely repeated the substance of other letters. Most of the letters selected are personal letters. The majority of the published letters were copied from holograph originals; however, some derived from other sources, including contemporary but also later transcripts, or were taken from newspapers and periodicals dating from Rushs time to Butterfields (i.e. 1951), and memoirs. None of these had been able to give the editor any clue as to where the originals might be located. With regard to the textual treatment of the published correspondence, the editor explains that the need to reach some measure of uniformity compelled him to standardize its spelling (Butterfield 1951: lxxvii), giving a representative list of Rushs spellings not in agreement with modern i.e. then current usage. He further standardized

36

the letters punctuation, though only where it greatly strain[ed] accepted rules, and capitalisation, both according to this modern usage. Moreover, obvious slips of the pen have been silently corrected (1951: lxxix). Dialect and colloquial forms, on the other hand, have been retained, as well as errors in grammar [my emphasis] (1951: lxxix). Regrettably, this treatment will render these letters unsuitable for analyses of many sociolinguistic aspects, for instance the development of American English eighteenth-century spelling compared to British English spelling, but I trust it will not obscure the results of the analysis I carried out for this thesis, namely how Benjamin Rush incorporated opening and closing formulas in his correspondence. It is fortunate in this respect that signatures, because of their sentimental interest, and addresses, because of their documentary importance (Butterfield 1951: lxxix) are rendered literally.

3.4. Analysis of epistolary formulas as used by Benjamin Rush

3.4.1. Methodology In this section, I intend to examine the epistolary formulas in Benjamin Rushs letters. The salutations will be analysed according to the hierarchy for arranging the various opening formulas that Baker (1980: 48) describes in his introduction to John Wesleys (1703-1791) correspondence. Bakers hierarchy of terms, in descending order of formality, is as follows: Sir/Madam; Dear sir/Dear madam; My dear Mr./Mrs./Miss X; My dear brother/sister; Dear James/Anne, etc.; Dear Jemmy/Jenny, etc. Moreover, I will examine how Wesleys closing formulas compare to Rushs. With regard to the concluding formulas in Wesleys correspondence, Baker (1980: 59) states that the majority of them contain the following three elements: the address (usually repeated from

37

the opening salutation), the compliments or services (normally introduced by the phrase, I am or I remain), and the signature. According to Baker (1980), Wesley only rarely deviated from this pattern, and then only to family or close friends, although he allowed himself to vary remarkably upon the formula, indicating thus the state of his rapport with the recipient. With these analyses I hope to find an answer to the question if and how the various forms of address and conclusion that Benjamin Rush used in his letters, can serve as a guide to the functional or social relationships between him and his addressees. Will changes in a particular relationship, as far as can be established on the basis of external sources, be reflected by possible adaptations of an epistolary formula Rush had been accustomed to use until then? Furthermore, I hope to find out how formal or informal, conventionalised or not, his letter-writing style with respect to these formulas can be considered to be in general. Did Rush usually write according to the directions that contemporary letter-writing manuals provided? How does his use compare to Bakers (1980) hierarchy as mentioned above? The conclusions to my analyses will be presented in Section 3.5. In this chapter, to the letters of Benjamin Rush that are included in Butterfield (1951) I have added two other published letter collections for discussion. The first is a unique set of letters titled My Dearest Julia. The Love Letters of Dr. Benjamin Rush to Julia Stockton (Bell & Butterfield 1979). This publication contains seventeen love letters written by Rush to his wife-to-be Julia Stockton and will be dealt with in Section 3.4.2 below. The second letter collection can be found in a paper by Woods (1967), titled The Correspondence of Benjamin Rush and Granville Sharp 1773-1809. I have decided to add this set of letters to my analysis as well, because in this paper, besides letters from Benjamin Rush, seven unfortunately, sometimes partial letters from Granville Sharp to Rush are included. The letters will be discussed in Section 3.4.9 below.

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3.4.2. Love letters to Julia Stockton In the introduction to My Dearest Julia (Bell & Butterfield 1979), it is mentioned that Julia Rush had kept Rushs love letters at the explicit desire of her husband (Bell & Butterfield 1979: xvii). Some weeks after his death, she apparently selected those she wished to preserve, and destroyed the ones, his and hers, which she judged to be too intimate to be read by others. It is fortunate that she seems to have overlooked some, which she later considered useful in order to show to her daughters how affectionate a man their father had been when young and in love. After Mrs Rush had died in 1848, the letters remained in the family until a greatgranddaughter, Mrs Julia Rush Biddle Henry, presented them to the Rosenbach Company; this subsequently led to their publication in 1979. The volume (Bell & Butterfield 1979) contains seventeen letters. No editorial comments are provided to indicate how the texts were treated. To be considered suitable for linguistic analysis, editions should contain explanations on editorial principles (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2005: 122), and therefore I have decided not to include the results from my analysis in this section to the conclusions that may be drawn from analysing the letters under discussion in the other sections of this chapter. Nevertheless, since these love letters form part of Rushs published epistolary legacy, and because they reveal a completely different side of his character, compared to the more serious professional personality as shown in his other correspondence, I will discuss the letters briefly, and I have thus analysed them along the same lines as the correspondence dealt with in the rest of this chapter. For this purpose I have numbered the letters, presented in Table 3.1 in Appendix D, from (1) to (17). They were written during a less than three-month-period previous to the couples marriage on 11 January 1776, and although this period coincides with the first months of the American war, it is striking that in these letters Rush hardly referred to matters of politics.

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Eighteenth-century letter-writing manuals, such as The Compleat Letter Writer (Anon. 1756: 133-149), usually prescribed love letters to begin with Madam or Sir. Baker (1980: 49) noted that before his marriage, Wesley saluted his wife slightly formally with My dear sister. Rushs typical salutation to his future wife, however, the engagement had already been announced was even more informal: My dearest Julia. He used this exact phrase on fifteen successive occasions. Letter (16) starts with My Love, and the last in this volume, written six days before their marriage, begins with My dearest Girl. In these letters, Rush did not use any phrases that may be defined as opening formulas (Austin 1973: 323), but more or less plunged into them immediately after the salutation, as in (5): It is a received opinion among many people that there is no medium in matrimony between extreme happiness & misery (eds Bell & Butterfield 1979: 16), which almost sounds like the beginning of a lecture. Sometimes, however, he referred to a letter he received from his fiance, as in (4) I am almost afraid to tell you how much pleasure your letter afforded me (eds Bell & Butterfield 1979:12), in (8) Your letter of last evening pleased & distressed me (eds Bell & Butterfield 1979: 24), and in (14), slightly reprimanding: You will find from my letter to your Papa that I have been uneasy least some of our letters had been intercepted. Your letter of this evening convinced me that my fears were without foundation. I accept of your apollogy [sic] for not writing to me by the two last posts. But my dearest girl, be more punctual hereafter if you have any regard for my happiness. (eds Bell & Butterfield 1979: 37) Invariably, the body texts of Rushs letters abound with terms of endearment, such as O! my love my hope my joy my life my Julia my Julia! (eds Bell & Butterfield 1979: 12), You have sublimed [love] into a new species of friendship (eds Bell & Butterfield 1979: 25), or Continue my dearest Julia to pour of the fullness of your heart into my bosom. Would to heaven I could wipe every tear from your eyes that you shed on my account (eds Bell & Butterfield 1979: 38). In almost every letter we find a few my dear Julias, as well as references to the blessed state of marriage. In (5), for instance, Rush li sted

40

no less than eight degrees of conjugal happiness, increasing from animal love via sympathy of manners, sympathy of opinions, sympathy of tastes, sympathy of sentiments, sympathy of understandings, sympathy of tempers to sympathy in religion (eds Bell & Butterfield 1979: 16-18). He appears to have been impatient to get married, the more so since Julia remained reluctant to set a date. According to Dierks (2000: 34), familiar letters were supposed to be written with conversational warmth rather than oratorical elegance. As can been seen in Table 3.1, Rushs conclusions, besides being much more varied than his salutations, are indeed often highly emphatic and emotional, and in addition quite informal. This appears to have been common practice for Wesley too (Baker 1980: 61). Contrary to Wesley, however, Rush never used a full signature. I have found no evidence that Benjamin Rush ever consulted a letter-writing manual to find proper endings to his love letters, but if he did, it will almost certainly not have been one like The New, and Complete Universal Letter-Writer (Hogg & Brown 1800). This book gives, for instance, the following rather dispassionate example conclusion to a letter From a Lover, to the Object of his Affection: Permit me then, on any day that may be convenient, and in the presence of whatever friend may be deemed most proper, personally to assure you, how much I am, with all due respect, Your sincere friend, and ardent lover. (Hogg & Brown 1800: 45-46) It is unfortunate that no letters from Julia Stockton have survived, the more so, since we now cannot verify Rushs remarks written in a letter to her, dated 12 November 1775, that she wrote an excellent letter. He continued with: You have a most happy way of comprising a great many ideas in a small compass. Your stile is an exact copy of Dr Swifts definition of stile. It consists of proper words in their proper places. You stand in need my dear Julia of nothing but practice to make a shining figure among the most accomplished female letter writers I have ever known in my life. (eds Bell & Butterfield 1979: 12)

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3.4.3. Letters to Mrs Julia Rush Butterfield (1951) included eighty-eight letters, written during the years 1776-1798, to Julia Stockton, by then Benjamins wife Mrs Rush: that is from all correspondents the most letters by far. There are a few reasons why at irregular intervals there had been such extensive correspondence between the two: Mrs Rush commonly spent parts of the summer, as well as the greater parts of her many pregnancies, at her parents homestead Morven, and she stayed there during the recurring yellow fever epidemics too; moreover, her husband was often away from home for political or military reasons. In Table 3.2 in Appendix D I have registered all salutations and conclusions in these eighty-eight letters, numbered from (1) to (88). As can be seen, there is hardly any variation in the salutations. It is only in the first few years of their marriage that Rush addressed his wife occasionally with terms of endearment such as My Dearest Life or My dearest Jewel. From 1787 onwards, he resorted to My dear Julia, alternated only with three instances of My dearest Julia. It can be observed that the year 1793 shows relat ively many letters. These, numbers (26) to (85), were all written during the period that an extremely severe yellow fever epidemic struck Philadelphia, and they are all dated between 21 August and 12 November of that year. In these letters, Rush saluted his wife invariably with My dear Julia, except in the last one which highly emotionally announced that after their long separation the couple was now within only three miles of each other, and that Rush would finally see his beloved again the next day. In this announcement, beginning with My dearest Julia, Rush described the anticipated homecoming of his adored wife thus: If you come to town, you shall have the front room (now the purest in the house) to yourself. I will sleep in the room adjoining you with the door open between us (ed. Butterfield 1951: 746-747). When considering Rushs salutations to his wife, it appears that when their relationship had become less turbulent and more stable, this is reflected in the constant way he addressed her.

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Compared to the salutations, there is a much greater diversity in the conclusions to Rushs letters, which, besides, are sometimes quite elaborately phrased, as for instance in letters (14) and (20), or even dramatically, as in (85). That the actual concluding sentences are not always complicated, sometimes even being very brief, was often caused by lack of time, as Rush himself explained very vividly in (33): Hark! A knock at the door! Alas, it is called [sic] to Mrs. Boggs at Bishop Whites. Again adieu. The delay of a minute seems a year to a patient after a physician is sent for. From yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH (ed. Butterfield 1951: 649) Rush even managed to include a P.S. to this letter, advising his wife to impose a system of reading on [their sons].32 Later that same day, he wrote yet a second letter (34), which had to be brief, since the post is on the wing, and was therefore only concluded with Adieu (ed. Butterfield 1951: 650). Rushs usual elaborate style when writing to his wife has already been discussed with respect to the conclusions to the love letters he sent her (see Section 3.4.2 above). Rush very frequently added a P.S. to the letters addressed to his wife. The most striking example is the one in letter (17), which immediately follows the salutation My dear Julia as follows: P.S. I have just received your letter by Mr. Green. You will please to read the enclosed letters according to their numbers (ed. Butterfield 1951: 396). Of this numbering of his letters I have not been able to find any other evidence. Many of the other postscripts placed in the more usual position at the end of the letter include, or even consist solely of, the phrase love as usual.

3.4.4. Letters to other women Judging by Butterfields (1951) selection, and apart from the above-mentioned letters to his wife, Benjamin Rush apparently did not often write to women. We find letters to only ten of

32

At that time, the youngest was but one year old and the oldest, John, would soon turn seventeen.

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them, making a total of probably sixteen letters. Three of these women were relatives, namely his mother-in-law, his sister-in-law, and his sister Rachel. I will first discuss Rushs letters to them, before turning to the other letters that will be looked at in the order of their recipients first appearance in Butterfield (1951). To his mother-in-law, Annis Boudinot Stockton, Rush wrote a letter on 19 June 1787, since she was apparently very interested in his doings, or as he put it: she took so kind a part in everything that relates to your son-in-law, and to the welfare of Pennsylvania, that I cannot help gratifying your benevolence in both cases by giving you a short account (ed. Butterfield 1951: 420). This report, however, was anything but brief. It takes up nine pages in Butterfield (ed. 1951: 420-429) and includes a newspaper clipping from the Pennsylvania Gazette of 13 June 1787. Rush shows the respect he had for his mother-in-law, by starting his letter rather formally with My dear Madam and concluding with With love to our good sisters and brothers at Morven, and most respectful compliments to our worthy friend Dr. Smith, I am, my dear madam, your dutiful and affectionate son, | BENJN RUSH. As required by letter-writing manuals, such as for instance Hogg & Browns The New, and Complete Universal Letter-Writer (1800), and as usually followed by Wesley too (Baker 1980: 59), Rush incorporated the exact opening salutation here. On 7 September 1788 Rush wrote a letter to Mary Stockton, his sister-in-law, on the subject of matrimony. He started it with My dear Sister (ed. Butterfield 1951: 483), before acknowledging receipt of an earlier letter from her to him. In the letter, Rush discussed his method of reading the Bible as a work of nature, explaining various passages on marriage, divorce, and celibacy. He concluded his discussion as follows: [t]he remarks I have made I believe apply only to our sex. Women, from not having matrimony in their choice, are kindly exempted from the necessity of marrying as a preventive from s[in]. Perhaps this may be the reason why the want of chastity in a women is condemned so severely by her own sexthey know how much she sins without temptation. I shall make no apology for the subject of this letter. I write to you as a Christian and a philosopher, and not as a woman. (ed. Butterfield 1951: 486)

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Rush ended this letter by writing: With respectful compliments to my good friend Mrs. Wallace, I am, my dear sister, yours affectionately, | BENJN RUSH (ed. Butterfield 1951: 486).33 Again, and as considered proper usage, the closing salutation is a repetition of the one starting the letter. Rachel Rush Montgomery is the third of Rushs family-members correspondence to whom is included in Butterfield (1951). Rush wrote two letters to her, his sister, in September and October 1793. This is the period in which a severe yellow fever epidemic struck Philadelphia. My dear Sister, Rush began the first, Your affectionate letter found me preparing to go out after a recovery from an attack of the yellow fever, rendered [] by my previous regimen and by the use of the new remedies (ed. Butterfield 1951: 666). He continued by describing the situation in Philadelphia and the negative role another physician played, and ended with a biblical quotation:34 Adieu! Brethren, pray for us. From your affectionate brother, | BENJN RUSH (ed. Butterfield 1951: 667). The second letter to Rachel, giving an account of the death of their sister Rebecca who according to Rush gave her life to save [his], again starts with My dear Sister. Next, Rush wrote: Your affectionate letter drew tears from our eyes. Never did a brother feel more for the loss of a sister than I felt for ours. She was my friend and counsellor in the difficult and distressing duties I was called upon to perform to my fellow citizens (ed. Butterfield 1951: 730) He ended his tragic narrative with: With love to Mr. Montgomery, Miss Betsey, Mr. and Mrs. Forster, and John, in which our dear mother joins, I am, my dear and alas! now my only sister, your affectionate brother, | BENJN RUSH (ed. Butterfield 1951: 731). This built-in complimentary close is an original way of including the required repetition of the address in the concluding sentence. When Wesley sometimes used a personal name to address some of
33

According to Butterfield (ed. 1951), Mrs Wallace was the sister of Thomas and William Bradford, two good friends of Benjamin Rush. 34 I Thessalonians 5: 25.

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his sisters (Baker 1980: 49), we see in these three letters that Rush did not, although the content of especially the last letter shows his extreme fondness of Rachel. To Catherine Macaulay (see also Section 2.2 above), a letter was written on 18 January 1769 (ed. Butterfield 1951: 69-71).35 Saluting her formally with Madam, Rush opened: I have taken the liberty to interrupt you for a few minutes with a letter, as the present situation of my affairs will not admit of my paying you a formal visit. This was hardly surprising, since at that time Rush had just started his medical practice in Philadelphia, while Macaulay still lived in London. Rush then reflected on the discussions they had when he visited her at her place, admiring her observations on political freedom and military actions, and adding You, madam, will shine among the brightest throng of these [illustrious souls who have employed their pens in defence of liberty] with double luster, inasmuch as you are the only individual of your sex who has hitherto been distinguished in this noble cause. Rush ended the letter with Allow me to conclude in the same words in which you have addressed the illustrious Corsican general, and to assure you that I am, with the utmost respect, your great admirer and very humble servant, | ******** ****. In this letter, Rush had heavily criticised military discipline and this may be the reason why he preferred to sign with asterisks instead of his own name. We can see that the number of them fits his full name. In this concluding sentence, no repetition of the opening salutation was included, and of the other two required elements (Baker 1980: 59) only the compliments were properly added. Between 1777 and 1793, Rush wrote at least three, but possibly four (see below), letters to Mrs Elizabeth Graeme Ferguson (see also Section 3.2 above). They are included in Butterfield (1951) who describes Mrs Graeme Ferguson as an eminent bluestocking of preRevolutionary Philadelphia, a close friend of the Rush and Stockton families, and a victim of the events of the Revolution (ed. Butterfield 1951: 179). The misfortunes referred to were
35

That Benjamin Rush is the author of this letter is not fully proven. According to Butterfield (1951: 71n1), it could be assigned to Rush upon internal evidence alone. Proof was found in the asterisks representing the signature, below which, in another hand, the name Benjamin Rush had been written.

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owing to her secret marriage to a Scot named Henry Hugh Ferguson, who, according to Butterfield, unscrupulously involved his wife in unsuccessful peace negotiations, as a result of which the estate she had inherited from her parents was confiscated and her remaining property forfeited. The first of these three or four letters which was not the very first letter Rush wrote to her, since he referred in this letter to a previous one is dated 24 December 1777. After the salutation My dear Madam which according to Bakers (1980) classification is not highly formal, Rush continued with: My worthy and dear mother-in-law has lately favored me with a sight of a copy of some original letters written to you by your mother. He explained that these letters only added to the compassion he already felt for her, feelings that he also very eloquently expressed in the following extract: In the meantime, my dear afflicted friend, rest assured that you possess an unbounded share of the sympathy of your friends and of every friend of human excellency, and that your name will never be mentioned in company or upon any other occasion without exciting (with an involuntary sigh) a glow of the highest esteem and warmest affection from everyone that has ever known you. (ed. Butterfield 1951: 177-179) Rush concluded this letter with thanks for a pound of green tea that she had presented his wife with and as might be expected considering the empathy expressed above quite informally: [w]ith the best compliments to Miss Stedman, I am, dear madam, yours sincerely, | B RUSH.36 It is questionable if the next letter was addressed by Benjamin Rush to Mrs Ferguson as well, since according to Butterfield (ed. 1951: 278-284) no manuscript has survived.37 This is rather a long letter, sent almost five years after the one discussed above, in July 1782. Dear Madam, it begins, before giving an extensive description of the festivities in Philadelphia in celebration of the birthday of the Dauphin of France. The author did this, as he wrote, to
36

Miss Stedman, first name probably Eliza, was a relative by marriage to Mrs Ferguson and apparently living with her, according to Butterfield (ed. 1951). 37 The letter appeared in two printings, the first dated February 1787, and the second dated 1817, under the caption Account of a French Fete in Philadelphia, in Honour of the Dauphins Birth-Day. In a Letter from Dr. Rush to (ed. Butterfield 1951: 282n1).

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divert [her] thoughts for an hour of two, concluding the letter [with] great respect, I am, madam, your sincere friend, and most humble servant, | *******. We can only guess here what name Rush had intended these asterisks to represent. It can be observed that, in this case, when following Bakers (1980) hierarchy, the closing salutation can be considered as slightly more formal than the opening one, which differs from how Wesley applied them in his letters, where the closing salutations tended to be slightly less formal (Baker 1980: 48). Butterfields (1951) edition includes two more letters that are identified as being written by Benjamin Rush to Elizabeth Graeme Ferguson.38 In the one dated December 1787, the salutation is My dear Madam, and the author next apologized for not answering any letters sooner, since [a]n unusual hurry from business and company prevented (ed. Butterfield 1951: 446-447) it; five years later, in January 1793, Rush addressed Mrs Ferguson, much more informally than before, as My dear Friend (ed. Butterfield 1951: 627-629). This form of address reflects the fact that, by this time, she had become Rushs principal feminine correspondent (1951: 628n1). The conclusion to the first of these two letters is [w]ith respectful and affectionate compliments to Miss Stedman, and a thousand wishes for your happiness, I am, dear madam, your sincere friend and humble servant, | BENJN RUSH; the one to the latter reads [w]e have a Benjamin in our family a stout, healthy, noisy fellow of 2 years old, so that there is now no impediment to your kind wishes to Mrs. Rush, who joins in love to you with, my dear madam, your very affectionate friend, | BENJN RUSH. Considering the fact that Rush informed Mrs Ferguson about his son when the child was already two years old, we may conclude that at this point in time at least, they did not correspond very frequently. We see that Rush repeated the opening salutation in its exact form in the first letter, and more formally in the second.

38

The addressee of the 1787 letter was identified from internal evidence only, according to Butterfield (1951: 447n1).

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Another female correspondent of Rush was Abigail Smith Adams, the wife of John Adams. At the time this one letter to her that is included in Butterfield (ed. 1951: 217-218) was written, namely 3 September 1778, her husband had recently accepted the position of commissioner to the Court of France. Formally beginning his letter with Madam, Rush acknowledged receipt of a letter from Adams to him, before he remarked on Adamss safe arrival in France and congratulated them both upon the recent events. He briefly alluded to political affairs in Europe and Britains attitude towards America, and described his own current situation. Ending with offering an enclosed little book to Miss Adams, Rush wrote: My dear Mrs. Rush joins in best compliments to you and your little family with, madam, your most obedient, humble servant, | B RUSH. In this case the opening salutation is repeated exactly, and the closing formula is complete. Butterfields (1951) edition also includes two letters from Benjamin Rush to Lady Jane Wishart Belsches (1753-1829), eldest daughter of the sixth Earl of Leven (see also Section 3.2 above). She and her entire family had befriended Rush when he visited their estate during his stay in Scotland, and Rush had been profoundly impressed with their hospitality, piety, and domestic happiness, according to Butterfield (1947: 3). In the first letter, dated 21 April 1784, Rush gave an account of the death and burial of Lady Janes brother William Leslie who had fought and died in a battle near Princeton, and he related his own marriage, family, and practice. The letter begins as follows:39 Madam, The long delay of your ladyships polite and friendly letter I am afraid has given your ladyship occasion to suspect that I have been deficient in friendship or good manners. It did not come to hand (though dated in May 1783) till the latter end of last month. Accept of my thanks for your kind remembrance of me, The very soul of friendship breathes in every line of your letter. Rush ended his report with his:

39

The manuscript of this letter is a remarkable document, since, according to Butterfield (1947: 7), it is mostly in his wife Julias handwriting: the orthography and punctuation through the first paragraphs are hers.

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Most respectful compliments to your honoured parents and all the family of Melville, as also to Sir John (though I have not the honor of his acquaintance), I am, madam, with the greatest respect and most perfect esteem, your ladyships sincere friend and most humble servant, | BENJN RUSH (ed. Butterfield 1951: 325-329) Enclosed in the second letter, written fourteen months later, Rush sent Lady Jane a representation of Captain William Leslies tomb, which until then she had never seen. Saluting her, again, with Madam, he: Beg[s] leave to request your ladyships acceptance of a small picture set with hair on the back of a miniature portrait of Mrs. Rush. The device represents your ladyship as having arrived in America and visiting your brothers tomb. The figures of the monument, the urn, the lady, the willow, and all the letters are composed of your ladyships hair. The figure of the gentleman is composed of mine. (ed. Butterfield 1951: 357-358) It would have been interesting to know how and where Rush had got hold of a lock of Lady Janes hair, but, regrettably, this is not disclosed. This letter lacks a concluding sentence. We see that, contrary to what eighteenth-century letter-writing manuals such as The Accomplished Letter-Writer (Caslon & Ashburner 1779) prescribed,40 Rushs opening salutation to Lady Jane in both cases is Madam which, although being highly formal, does not refer to her rank. Wesleys (Baker 1980: 47) salutations to nobility alwa ys did. I have already illustrated that Rush, when in Scotland, had apparently been smitten with the lady (see Section 2.2), which may have caused him to address her in this way, reducing thus a distance that the use of a title would show. On the other hand, Rushs Quaker background may have influenced him as well (see Sections 2.1 and 2.2). It is only in the body of the letters and in the one closing formula that Rush called her your ladyship, which was perhaps meant to illustrate the personal esteem he felt towards her. Another two letters are included that were written to a woman named Rebecca Smith. This young daughter of a Provost she received the first of both letters when she was nineteen was, according to Butterfield (1951: 586n1), well-known for her wit and beauty.
40

This and other letter-writing manuals, such as for instance The Ladies Complete Letter-Writer (Anon. 1763), dictated that the title of Lady and Right Honourable (Caslon & Ashburner 1779 : 27) should be used to address all daughters of earls.

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Rush wrote to her in July 1791 to give advice on young peoples behaviour, since she had apparently misbehaved. It is worthwhile to include a short excerpt here: My dear Madam, . When I consider you, my dear girl, as the only surviving daughter of two aged and affectionate parents I view you as living under peculiar obligations to act properly and wisely upon all occasions. Try to do as well as to say clever things You say (for you do not do) unkind things only because you wish to sparkle as a wit, not because you love to give pain. . Thus have I, agreeably to my promise, written a letter at [sic; his emphasis] you. I have only to add to it that my dear Mrs. Rush and your favorite Emely join in most affectionate regard to you with, my dear madam, your sincere friend, | BENJN RUSH (ed. Butterfield 1951: 585-586; my emphasis) It can be seen that in the body text Rush switched to my dear girl, possibly to underline that his reproach had to be considered to be a fatherly advice, and in the closing formula returned to my dear madam, thus properly repeating the opening salutation. The second letter again, relatively formally, addressed Rebecca Smith as My dear Madam, and is dated almost a year later. It contains advice at her request, according to its contents upon her conduct after her forthcoming marriage. The letter unfortunately lacks a concluding sentence. Once more, I will quote here a passage which may give some insight into Rushs thoughts on proper eighteenth-century behaviour for women: I shall begin my letter without any further introduction by remarking that by becoming a wife you will sustain a new relationship to society. The world will bear a hundred follies in a girl which they will not pardon in a married woman. The defenseless state of virgin life often disarms scandal and resentment, and youth and beauty in a young woman are the common charge of a whole community, but this tenderness will cease as soon as you acquire the protection of a husband. . In your conduct to Mr. Blodget [the intended husband], endeavor to command his esteem and respect. From these you will derive both honor and happiness; a woman owes nothing to a man for loving herfor if she has personal charms, he cannot withhold his love. Besides, love is a selfish passion, and men yield to it for the sake of receiving, not imparting pleasure. Men often insult the women they love when they are angry, but never the women whom they respect and esteem. . Dont be offended when I add that from the day you marry you must have no will of your own. The subordination of your sex to ours is enforced by nature, by reason and by revelation. Of course it must produce the most happiness to both parties. Mr. B, if

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he is like others of his sex, will often require unreasonable sacrifices of your will to his. (ed. Butterfield 1951: 616-618) These words were written in all sincerity by the very man who, as mentioned above in Section 2.3, advocated education for women and assisted in establishing an educational institution for women. We can see that, despite the fatherly and instructive contents of the letters, Rebecca Smith remains Madam to Rush. Butterfield (1951) gives no concluding sentence to this second letter, but in the conclusion to the first we can see an exact repetition of the opening salutation. The yellow fever epidemic had caused other deaths within Rushs circle. One of these was that of his apprentice John Stall. In February 1794, Rush wrote a letter to Johns mother Frances Stall, urging her to accept an engraved silver cup as a token of his appreciation for her sons work. He began by writing: My dear Madam, and concluded: With great regard and unabating sympathy with you and your family, I am, my dear madam, your sincere friend, | BENJN RUSH (ed. Butterfield 1951: 747). As can be expected considering the topic of the letter, Rush wrote formally, using the proper epistolary formulas. Finally, one letter to Rachel Bradford Boudinot, the wife of the Philadelphia lawyer and Supreme Court judge Elisha Boudinot (1749-1819),41 is included in Butterfields edition (1951: 814). Rush wrote on 18 July 1799 to their New Jersey address: My dear Madam, The swellings in Mr. Boudinots feet are occasioned by what is called the dumb gout. I have often seen them and seldom with any danger to health or life. He continued with directions for treatment, and hinted at the possibility that the yellow fever might have returned to Philadelphia once again. He concluded: Adieu. With love to Mr. Boudinot and the children, I am ever yours, | BENJN: RUSH. The relatively formal opening salutation is not repeated here.

41

Source: http://www.jerseyhistory.org.

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3.4.5. Letters to John Adams John Adams, who became the second president of the United States (from 1797 to 1801), is without a doubt one of the best-known men that Benjamin Rush corresponded with. In November 1777, Adams, a New England lawyer, had left Congress, and early in 1778 he set sail for Paris, where he was to become an envoy. He briefly returned home a year later, and in 1780 again went to France and next to Holland to secure recognition for the United States. Adams returned to Massachusetts in 1788 and from 1789 onwards he would serve two terms as vice-president under George Washington before he was elected president in 1797 (Ryerson 2004). Twenty-six of Rushs letters included in Butterfield (1951) were written to John Adams between 1777 and 1790. The edition includes another eighty-six letters to Adams that are dated between 1805 and 1813, which is the year Rush died, leaving a gap of fifteen years. These latter letters are excluded from my analysis, since they are outside the scope of the present study. Table 3.3 in Appendix D shows the salutations and conclusions found in these twentysix letters, numbered from (1) to (26). The table illustrates that, to salute Adams, Rush used My dear Friend quite often: nine times out of twenty-six. This saluting term, however, is not listed in Bakers (1980) hierarchy but, as I will argue in the conclusion to this chapter, it can probably be considered the equivalent of My dear brother/sister (1980: 48). It can further be noted that there appears to have been no growing intimacy between the two men, if we judge the letters by the salutations alone: slightly formal Dear Sir, My dear Sir, and rather informal My dear Friend seem to occur almost randomly throughout all these letters. Yet, as Rushs autobiography as well as the many biographies about him testify, already a few years after their first meeting in 1774, when Rush took a quick liking to John Adams (Hawke 1971: 117), John Adams had grown into a close friend (Hawke 1971: 215).

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This close relationship is indeed shown in the remarkably unusual conclusions to the letters (6), (7), (10), and (11), in which Rush emphatically wrote: Yoursyoursyours before adding his signature. This concluding phrase can also be found in several letters to his wife for instance in letters (8), (13), or (78) in Table 3.2 in which cases it would appear a normal affectionate expression between husband and wife.42 That Rush continued to regard Adams as a friend, even after a political disagreement had arisen between the two men in 1789, becomes clear in the conclusion to a letter (20) dated June 1789 which he had started, to explain his political views: I find you and I must agree not to disagree, or we must cease to discuss political questions. It is obvious that Rush while this disagreement came to pass felt it important to stress his warm personal feelings towards Adams when he assured him that: To this detail of my principles I have only to add one feeling, and that is that I am, with as much affection and respect as I was in 1775 (notwithstanding our present contrariety of sentiment upon some subjects), your sincere friend and humble servant, | BENJN RUSH (ed. Butterfield 1951: 513) Baker (1980: 59) found that the majority of Wesleys letters usually repeated the opening salutation in the concluding sentence, however, as Table 3.3 shows, this is not the case in Rushs letters to John Adams. It appears Rush did not consider it a rule to give salutations again, but if he did repeat them, then unlike Wesleys closing salutations that tended to be slightly less formal (Baker 1980: 48) they could be equally, less, or even more formal than the ones used earlier.

3.4.6. Letters to John Coakley Lettsom When he first visited London, Benjamin Rush met John Coakley Lettsom (1744-1815), a young Quaker physician, who had been raised in the West Indies and lived in London. According to Hawke (1971), the warm friendship that developed between the two men would
42

As I have illustrated in Table 3.5 in Appendix D, Rush likewise wrote a similar yoursyours to conclude his letters (7) and (10) to John Montgomery, see also Section 3.4.7.

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be the closest that Rush was to make in that city: The two resembled each other strikingly in character, temperament, and energy (Hawke 1971: 69). Both liked and attracted pretty women, and both were ambitious men, while at the same time full of idealistic intentions to make the world a better place. When Rush returned to America, the two continued their friendship until Rushs death. Butterfield (1951) included ten letters of Rush to Coakley Lettsom, written between 1783 and 1793. Table 3.4 in Appendix D gives an overview of the salutations and concluding sentences in these letters. From the evidence in Table 3.4, and taking Bakers (1980) hierarchy of terms into account, the style of the ten letters appears rather formal, especially when compared to those to Adams (Section 3.4.5 above) and Montgomery (Section 3.4.7 below). We see for instance that all of these letters start with Dear Sir, giving thus no indication that the relations hip between Rush and Coakley Lettsom became more intimate over the years. In spite of their friendship being described as warm (see above) the conclusions to these letters are far less varied than many others discussed in this study. Yet, according to Baker (1980: 59), it is variation upon the formula that constitutes a guide both to the general relationship with the recipient, as well as to sensitive changes within that relationship.

3.4.7. Letters to John Montgomery John Montgomery (1722-1808) was born in Ireland and emigrated to America when he was about eighteen. According to Butterfield (1951), he was hardly literate, but, nevertheless, a friendship developed between him and Rush that time and tribulations cemented ever more strongly (1951: 290-291n1). When Rush and Montgomery first met at a mutual friends house in Philadelphia in 1782, the two men set up a plan to build a college over Susquehannah [i.e. on the frontier] (ed. Butterfield 1951: 290). This would develop into Dickinson College, for which they shared feelings like those of a fond though sometimes

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exasperated parent toward a wayward child (Butterfield 1951: 291n1). Butterfield (1951) included twenty-five letters from Rush to Montgomery, written between 1782 and 1799. The salutations and conclusions to these letters are listed in Table 3.5 in Appendix D. As Table 3.5 shows, most of the letters begin with a rather formal Dear Sir or My dear Sir. In (2), (6), (9) and (25) Rush, as in his letters to John Adams, switched to the less formal My dear Friend, and even to the very informal My dear old Friend in (24). Similar to the letters to Adams, these salutations appear quite randomly through the letters, thus seemingly giving no indication that changes within their relationship had occurred. With respect to the conclusions, it can be seen that many of them do not contain all of the three elements discussed in Baker (1980: 59): address, compliments, and signature. The conclusions to letters (7) and (10) are striking. Analogous to the letters to John Adams (Section 3.4.5 above), Rush concluded here with: Yoursyours before writing his signature. It is tempting to speculate on why this yours might be repeated twice in the letters to Montgomery, and three times in the letters to Adams. We have seen that in the concluding formulas to the letters to Adams feelings of friendships are generally stressed quite a few times, and they are extremely varied and emotional. Could it mean that three times yours was meant to be more intimate than two?

3.4.8. Letters to Ebenezer Hazard Fourteen of the letters that Rush wrote to Ebenezer Hazard (1744-1817) between 1762 and 1768, when aged sixteen to twenty, can be found in Butterfield (1951). I have listed them in Table 3.6 in Appendix D. As can be seen in this table, the forms of address vary from My dear Ebenezer in the first letter and very informal My dear old Friend probably not referring to age, since Hazard was only two years older than Rush in the second, to more formal Dear Sir, My dear Sir, and My very dear Sir, to again less formal My dearest

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Ebenezer. Looking at the order in which these variants occur, it appears that, once again, Bakers (1980: 48) hierarchy with respect to the degree of formality of forms of address does not apply in these letters. This is also apparent from the contents. For instance, in the last letter to Hazard, written from London, Rush continued after the rather formal salutation with Was I condemned to the galleys of France and allowed but one hours liberty in the whole year, I think I would employ part of it in writing to you (ed. Butterfield 1951: 67), indicating a very warm and close relationship. Furthermore, in an apparently consoling letter written earlier that same year from Edinburgh, also beginning with My dear Sir, Rush went on to write Are you afflicted, my friend? I share in your affliction (ed. Butterfield 1951: 56). Once more, this passage indicates a very affectionate friendship. Moreover, already in 1766, Rush himself had confirmed in letter (11) to Hazard the depth of his feelings towards him with: You see by this that I am no normal friend and that I love you too well to be in the least jealous of your friendship, although I have not received a line from you these many weeks (ed. Butterfield 1951: 23). Only some of the conclusions in Rushs letters to Hazard contain the three elements address, compliments, and signature as prescribed by the letter-writing manuals, but some of them merely end with Adieu, followed by the signature. One letter, beginning with Dear Sir, Rush ended thus: Haste thy revolution Summerand come, thou pleasing season when I shall be blest with an interview with my good friend Ebenezer. | Adieu, | BENJAMIN RUSH (ed. Butterfield 1951: 15). This is another example of an ingenious built-in complimentary close.

3.4.9. Letters to and from Granville Sharp The first letter that Benjamin Rush sent to the English liberal and early abolitionist Granville Sharp (1735-1813) who was the grandson of John Sharp, the Archbishop of York initiated

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a correspondence that would last more than thirty-five years, until the year both men died. This initial letter, written on 1 May 1773, goes as follows: Sir, From the amiable character which I have received of you from my worthy friend Mr. Anth. Benezet, I have taken the liberty of introducing myself to your correspondence by sending you a pamphlet entitled An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America. . The pamphlet will be left at the Pennsylvania Coffeehouse in Birchin Lane. Should you incline to reprint it in London, please to make such alterations in it as you think proper, still concealing the authors name from the public. With esteem for your virtues, and in particular for your zeal in [sic] behalf of the Negro slaves in America, I am, sir, with great respect, your most obedient, humble servant, | BENJAMIN RUSH (ed. Butterfield 1951: 80-81) When considering the period until 1801, only three of Rushs out-letters to Sharp are published in Butterfield (1951). Two of those, together with eleven others, are included in Woodss (1967) paper as well. Woods (1967) added seven sometimes partial letters from Sharp to Rush, to the thirteen letters from Rush to Sharp. Woods (1967: 1) informs us that the letters from Rush are printed with the original punctuation and spelling, and that the letters from Sharp are reproduced with the original punctuation, spelling and capitalization. In Appendix D, I have listed Rushs epistolary formulas in Table 3.7, and those of Sharp in Table 3.8. As can be seen above, Rush started his introductory letter to Sharp with Sir. He began a second letter dated later that year in the same way. But exactly one year later, in May 1774, Rush had changed his salutation into less formal Dear Sir and continued doing so in subsequent correspondence, with the exception of a letter (8) written in 1783 that he began with an informal My dear Friend.43 In this letter, besides the subjects usually discussed, Rush expressed his sincere gratitude for kindness extended to a kinsman of his, since this person was very dear to [him] (ed. Woods 1967: 20-21). Thus, in terms of Bakers hierarchy, what we see here is an accurate reflection of an acquaintance having grown closer. With respect to closing formulas, we see that in his correspondence with Sharp, Rush varied
43

The beginning of one other letter, dated August 1791, is missing.

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his conclusions much more than his salutations, a habit that has already become apparent from the analysis of the various series of letters in the sections above. With regard to Granville Sharps correspondence, from his seven published letters, the salutations and conclusions are omitted in three cases. The other four letters all start with Dear Sir. The first of these numbered (S1) - (S4) in Table 3.8 was sent to Rush in July 1774, which is shortly after Rush had changed his salutation to Sharp into Dear Sir. When limiting consideration of the letters of the two men to the same period of writing, we can see that the salutations used by both were identical, with the exception of the one instance of My dear friend (8) that Rush used to address Sharp. It was mutual respect that very possibly caused the two men to adapt to each others formulas. From the epistolary formulas in Sharps letters in Table 3.8, it can be seen that, with the exception of one added expression of friendship in one of the conclusions (S2), they are essentially identical. The closing formulas contain all three elements expected for closing courtesies, as observed by Baker (1980: 61): exact repetition of the address, the services introduced by the phrase I remain, and the signature, showing full first and last name. Again, in terms of Bakers (1980) hierarchy, Sharps style of writing appears more formal than Rushs when we consider both openings and conclusions to their letters. One reason for this might be that because Sharp was the grandson of a bishop, he would have received a more formal education than Rush; the other might be the fact that Sharp was an Englishman and therefore may have been more class-conscious than his American correspondent who, as we know, had already perceived a distinction between the manners of the people of England and of his own country (see Section 2.2).

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3.4.10. Letters to Noah Webster In 1783-1785, the American Noah Webster (1758-1843) set about compiling books on grammar and spelling under the collective title A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, which proved a successful enterprise. These books were part of an attempt to set up a national school curriculum, and to mold the national character (Monaghan 1983: 13). In an article on the role of education, published in 1787, Webster echoed some of the views of Benjamin Rush, who, a year before, had advocated that schooling could be used as a force for converting men into republican machines (Monaghan 1983: 12). Webster argued in favour of a spelling reform on the grounds that this would be of vast political consequence to the American Revolution, since [a] national language is a band of national union (Baugh & Cable 2002: 368). According to Monaghan (1983: 14), the first part of Websters series on grammar, which he retitled The American Spelling Book in 1787, should be considered the most popular textbook of its day for the instruction of reading. Considering Noah Websters background as a former schoolmaster and grammarian (see also Section 3.2 above), I feel that the five letters in Butterfield (1951) from Benjamin Rush to Webster, written between 1788 and 1800, should not be omitted from this analysis. For this purpose I have listed the salutations and conclusions to these letters in Table 3.9 in Appendix D to this study. Butterfield (1951: 451n1) informs us that Webster apparently met Rush while lecturing at the University of the State of Pennsylvania in 1786-1787, and that their subsequent correspondence, although on friendly terms, was professional and mainly dealt with medical subjects. As Table 3.9 shows, three of the five letters begin with Dear Sir. Unfortunately, a fourth letter has been printed only partly, so that the first part, containing the salutation, is missing. The remaining letter starts with Sir. In this letter (4), Rush informed Webster that he had tried in vain to convince Philadelphia booksellers and printers to sell Websters A Brief

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History of Epidemic and Pestilential diseases. He advised Webster to send it to London to be printed there, promising that he would make each of his pupils, (generally from 80 to 100 yearly) purchas[e] a copy (ed. Butterfield 1951: 812). Table 3.9 illustrates that the first four of the five conclusions in particular are rather formal in terms of Bakers (1980) hierarchy, mostly brief, and less exuberant or emphatic than many others shown earlier, especially those to John Adams, John Montgomery, but also to Granville Sharp. This is not surprising considering the subjects dealt with: in another letter (1) for instance, Rush gave a professional reaction to Websters outline for a periodical titled American Magazine (Butterfield 1951: 451n2). It also agrees with Wesleys usage who, according to Baker (1980: 60) remained very formal when addressing correspondents in the professions class. Yet, in this very outline, Webster had apparently given his compliments to Rushs wife and to his own students, since Rush replied: Mrs. Rush and your little pupils were much obliged by your kind remembrance of them (ed. Butterfield 1951: 451) and he gave their best wishes in return. This passing on of greetings as noted above, can be considered as an indication of close friendship according to Tieken-Boon van Ostade (2003: 250). Furthermore, as also noted in Section 3.2 above, Monaghan (1983: 62) refers to Webster as a close friend of Rush. Since it was only after twelve years of corresponding that Rush incorporated more personal closing sentences, it could be that Websters professional background, as mentioned above, had been an influential factor for Rush to adhere to a more restrained style of letter writing.

3.4.11. Other selected letters Quite a few of the letters that Rush wrote were more like pamphlets and were meant for publication, such as the one to a certain Thomas Percival, M.D. in Manchester, England, titled An Account of the Progress of Population, Agriculture, Manners, and Government in

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Pennsylvania (ed. Butterfield 1951: 400). Other examples are: a letter to Thomas Henry, a surgeon-apothecary, also in Manchester, regarding Observations as Physician General in the Revolution (ed. Butterfield 1951: 358); one to Andrew Brown Sr, the owner of the Philadelphia Gazette, containing Directions for Conducting a Newspaper in Such a Manner as to Make It Innocent, Useful, and Entertaining (ed. Butterfield 1951: 487); and even one to Thomas Jefferson, giving An Account of the Sugar Maple Tree (ed. Butterfield 1951: 587). For various reasons, a few other letters from Butterfields (1951) edition are worth mentioning here. The first of these is also the very first one included in Butterfield (ed. 1951: 3-5) and has already been referred to in the introduction to this chapter. At the age of fifteen, Rush wrote this letter beginning with My dear former Classmate while finishing it with I am now, dear sir, your very humble servant and sincere friend, | BENJAMIN RUSH. Rush did not repeat his opening salutation, which can be considered rather informal, as I will argue in the conclusion to this chapter; his closing salutation is far more formal and contains all three elements that closing courtesy expected, according to Baker (1980). This is not surprising, considering the general style of the letter (see Section 3.1 above). Another correspondent was Dr John Witherspoon (see also Sections 2.2 and 2.4 above). As discussed, Witherspoon was a member of the clergy and highly respected by Rush. This high regard is especially apparent in the salutation of the second of the five letters all written within one year: 1767-1768 that is included in Butterfield (1951). Rush wrote here: Much esteemed Sir (ed. Butterfield 1951: 36). This admiration is also clear from conclusions as: I am, reverend and esteemed sir, with all due respect, your most obedient, humble servant, | BENJAMIN RUSH (ed. Butterfield 1951: 35), and Pray excuse the freedom I have assumed, and attribute it entirely to my zeal for the College and to the very great esteem with which I am your most obedient, humble servant, | BENJAMIN RUSH (ed. Butterfield 1951: 38).

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In the first of the published letters, which was also the first letter that Rush had sent Witherspoon and in which we can read that by that time Rush had not met him yet, Rush had still used the neutral Reverend Sir (ed. Butterfield 1951: 33), which was the proper salutation to members of the clergy, according to contemporary letter-writing manuals. It is only after they had become more intimately acquainted, that Rush changed his salutation to Very dear Sir (ed. Butterfield 1951: 45) once, and Dear Sir (ed. Butterfield 1951: 46, 57) twice. The conclusion to the last of the five letters is Be assured that m y happiness will ever be inseparably connected with yours through life. Adieu. | B R (ed. Butterfield 1951: 59). It can be seen that the style of this conclusion is completely different from that of the earlier two, namely more informal and personal in terms of Bakers (1980) hierarchy, which reflects the change in their relationship that had taken place within that single year. The one letter in Butterfield (ed. 1951: 63-64) in which Rush used a diminutive form of his addressees first name is to a man named Samuel Fisher (1745-1834). Of the same age as Rush and living in London, in the summer of 1768 this My dear Samey received a letter from Rush in Edinburgh. In this letter, Rush talked about his studies and his hope of meeting Fisher later that year in London, and he concluded his writing: I am, dear Samey, yours, &c., | B: RUSH. As was appropriate, according to The New, and Complete Universal Letter-Writer (Hogg & Brown 1800: 4; see also Section 1.2), the salutation is repeated in the conclusion. To Rush, this use of a diminutive was apparently less common, since it can only be found this one occasion in his letters examined for this study. Baker (1980) notes that Wesley only applied it in those cases when he hoped for a deepening friendship. Unfortunately it cannot be said if Rush had used it more than once in his correspondence to Fisher, since Butterfield (1951) only contains this one letter addressed to him. At least two of Rushs male correspondents belonged to the nobility. One of them was David Leslie (1755-1838), third son of the Scottish Earl of Leven and Melville. In the one

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letter to Leslie that Butterfield (ed. 1951: 64-65) incorporated in his edition, Rush addressed the young man who was thirteen at the time nevertheless as Dear Sir. By doing so he did not use the form of address that the English letter-writing manuals of those days, for instance The Accomplished Letter-Writer (Caslon & Ashburner 1779: 28), deemed appropriate for younger Sons of Earls, who are all Honourable and Esquires and who consequently should be addressed as such. Rushs usage here is different from that of Wesley who, according to Baker (1980: 49), was sensitive to position and always saluted members of the nobility formally. In his letter, Rush acknowledged their earlier correspondence and announced his leaving Edinburgh to go to London. Not repeating the salutation on this occasion, but adding a closing address that was much more informal, according to Bakers hierarchy (1980: 48), Rush concluded with: Farewell, my dear David. My heart is fullI can add no more. Again farewell. | B: RUSH. It appears that Rush must have been very fond of the boy. The other aristocrat among Rushs correspondents in Butterfield (1951) was the Earl of Buchan.44 It is unfortunate that from the one letter addressed to him the salutation is missing and consequently Butterfield (1951) shows no evidence of Rushs adherence to the eighteenth-century manuals Directions for Superscriptions (Caslon & Ashburner 1779: 28) with respect to letters to the nobility. Finally, the youngest correspondent of Benjamin Rush that I found is his second son Richard Rush (1780-1859), one letter to whom was included by Butterfield (1951) in his edition. On 17 May 1792, when Richard was almost twelve, his father wrote to him: My dear Son, I enclose you herewith half a dollar for spending money. Your shoes shall be sent next week. Rush continued with giving advice to his son on his studies, and corrected a few words that Richard had misspelled in his last letter, namely hear for here, and their for
44

Considering the date of the letter, this was probably David Erskine (1742-1829), the eleventh Earl of Buchan (Vincent Macleod 2004).

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there. He concluded by writing: Your Grandmama and the children all join in love to you with your affectionate father, | BENJN RUSH (ed. Butterfield 1951: 619). His letters discussed above show that Rush hardly ever used a first name to address someone in a letter, and even when writing to his son he did not. This last instance was, however, common usage, according to most example letters to a son that we find in contemporary letter-writing manuals. Rushs conclusion to this letter shows another built-in complimentary close, a loving and fatherly one this time.

3.5. Summary and conclusions In the present chapter I have illustrated that Rush appears an almost compulsive letter writer. Although he was not professionally involved with writing, being a physician and a statesman, his professional activities would require him to correspond frequently. Rush was, however, equally productive when it came to private, or familiar, letters. A distinction between formal and informal letters must be made, since it is this latter genre, that is usually written spontaneously and not copied before being posted, the thoughtless outpourings as referred to by Tieken-Boon van Ostade (2005: 128), that will best provide insight into Rushs written vernacular. Nevertheless, no matter how impulsive some of Rushs epistolary outbursts may appear and indeed, although rarely, Butterfield (1951: 536n6) notes that a word was overwritten by another one, for example 1777 over 1778 or vice versa, or a line was heavily scratched out (1951: 710n7) his letters give evidence that he was often conscious that they would be read by third parties. This is not surprising, since letters received were usually meant to be read by relatives and friends (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2005: 129). This can also be concluded from Rushs letter (5) to John Adams (Table 3.3) for instance, or from a P.S. to a letter to his sister Rachel, dated 18 September 1793 and discussed in Section 3.4.4

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above. He wrote here: P.S. No part of this letter must be published. The truths contained in it will expose me (ed. Butterfield 1951: 667). This awareness must undoubtedly have influenced his style of writing and we might expect this to have curbed his spontaneity, yet this appears not to be the case in many of the letters examined here. Besides the passionate letters to Julia, the letters to John Adams especially show a Benjamin Rush nearly bursting with emotion. The 204 letters analysed for the present study can be divided into the eighty-eight letters that Benjamin Rush wrote to his wife Julia, and 116 to other correspondents. In these 116 letters, I have counted the following salutations: Sir/Madam Reverend Sir (My) Dear Sir/Madam My dear Mr./Mrs. Much esteemed Sir My dear brother/sister/friend/son My dear former Classmate My very dear Sir My dear old Friend My dear / dearest Ebenezer My dear Samey No salutation 7 1 80 -1 19 1 2 2 1/1 1 --

In the above overview I have tried to arrange the opening formulas that Benjamin Rush used by following Bakers (1980) analysis, adding the few other salutations of Rush that I found in the letters examined. One of these additions is a salutation he frequently used: My dear friend. Another one is My dear son. I feel that these forms of address can be considered to be similar to Wesleys My dear brother/sister, since both forms reveal after My dear the relationship of the author with the addressee. I have therefore ranked them as being on the same level of informality. Analogous to this, perhaps the same degree of informality can be read in My dear former Classmate. A greater degree of informality could however be argued for it this case, when considering that by including the adjective former this form of address deviates further from the prescribed terms to be used when addressing someone.

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Similarly, taking into consideration that the interpretation of the use of a given term depends on the context, as stated by Raumolin-Brunberg (1996: 171), in Benjamin Rushs out-letters, the intensifier very before dear Sir, and the adjective old before Friend both signal greater intimacy with the recipient. It appears from his letters that often Rush did not distinguish between the various terms he used, such as Sir and Friend. I therefore feel that the choice of adjective or adverb must be considered to be a stronger indicator for the degree of formality than the choice of noun. Having already illustrated in Section 3.4.11 above that the term Reverend Sir was used appropriately by Rush to address Dr. Witherspoon, I believe this reasoning holds also for the term Much esteemed Sir which Rush used to address Witherspoon in a subsequent letter, which term I have therefore categorized as slightly less formal than Reverend Sir. How does this hierarchy employed by Rush compare to that by Wesley in his letters? The two forms most frequently used by Rush are (My) Dear Sir/Madam and My dear brother/sister/friend/son. We find instances of isolated Sir/Madam in four letters to women and in only three to men. According to Baker (1980: 48), Wesley indicated no greater degree of intimacy between Dear and My dear. When writing to his male correspondents, it appears that Rush stretched this indifference even further by using Dear or My dear, followed by Sir or friend or even a first name, all interchangeably, even when addressing his closest friends . Lowth, on the other hand, as a result of his social ambitions, was very careful in the ways in which he addressed people (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2003: 244) and his hierarchy of terms was rather similar to Wesleys, though both more elaborate and more limited (Tieken -Boon van Ostade 2003: 246). I noted that in the letters examined Rush never used a single surname. Furthermore, and with the exception of the letters to Julia, Rush neither used a first name to any of the relatives he wrote to, nor to his other correspondents, apart from three instances

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found in letters to friends written when relatively young, one of these names in a diminutive form. Contrary to Wesley (Baker 1980: 48) Rush never omitted salutations. Julia, based on her status as a wife, belongs to a category of her own, as the contents of the correspondence to her clearly illustrate. Rushs addressing Julia in these eighty-eight letters adds another eight variants to his opening salutations: My dear Julia (75), My dearest Julia (7), My very dear Julia (1), My Dearest (1), My Dearest Life (1), My dearest Jewel (1), My loveliest Girl (1), and My best beloved (1). These salutations can be considered highly informal, and we can see that Rushs usage was very similar to Wesleys in his letters to his Molly (Baker 1980: 49). It is only during their periods of courtship, that we can see a difference between the style of writing of the two men, with Wesley in the one letter that he wrote before his marriage being more formal than Rush was. To women other than Julia Stockton-Rush, Rush almost invariably wrote either Madam or (My) Dear Madam, no matter what the contents of the letters were, except to his sister Rachel and his sister-in-law Mary, whom he refers to as My dear Sister. We have seen that Rush made only one other exception in his last of the four letters to Graeme Ferguson, namely My dear Friend, which occurred when their relationship had deepened considerably. Thus it appears that, in general, Rush preferred to salute his female correspondents more formally than his male ones. How do the conclusions as used by Rush generally compare to those employed by Wesley? In Section 1.2 above I mentioned that one of the instructions that letter-writing manuals such as Hogg & Browns (1800: 4) gave was that letters should be concluded with the same address as you began. We have seen that Rush, however, neglected this rule more often than not. With respect to the closing courtesies, (see also Section 3.4.1), Baker (1980: 58) states that when writing to strangers of high social standing, Wesley usually followed the accepted pattern of including the expected three elements, i.e. (repetition of) address,

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compliments or services, and signature. Again, in many instances this usage was no common rule for Rush. I have further illustrated that in Rushs letters, when his closing salutations differed from the opening salutations, they could be either more, less, or equally formal. This is in contrast with Wesley (Baker 1980: 48) who, when his closing salutations differed, was invariably less formal. It is also different from how Lowth made use of closing formulas, which are very consistent (Tieken-Boon-van Ostade 2003: 248). I have shown that in general Rushs conclusions, like his salutations, are more formal when writing to women besides Julia no matter what the contents of the letter were compared to when he corresponded with men. Rush always concluded his letters. Half a century after Gays introduction of yours sincerely in his literary circle (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 1999: 108) Rush frequently chose a conclusion of the type yours (most) sincerely followed by his signature. Variants of this type occur as yours (most) affectionately, which was also used by John Gay (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 1999: 106) and combinations such as yours very affectionately and sincerely, yours most sincerely and respectfully (once to John Adams in 1781), and respectfully and humbly yours (once to Ebenezer Hazard as early as 1762) (see Tables 3.3 and 3.6 respectively in Appendix D). The OED does not record yours respectfully until 1812, while humbly yours or vice versa is not discussed in the OED at all. Especially in his later letters, Rush did not distinguish between this type of conclusion and the pragmatised standard epistolary formula Your most humble Servant (as referred to by Bijkerk 2004: 297) with which he also ended his letters quite often; not even when writing to his closest friends, male or female. This might suggest that for Rush to use yours sincerely was on its way to become a pragmatization. In contrast, Gay only broke with the standard form in letters to his closest friends (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 1999: 107). Likewise, Wesley did distinguish in his conclusions between friends in the professions and others (Baker

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1980: 60). In his conclusions to someone belonging to the first category, Wesley almost always included the noun Servant; when writing to the others the basic compliment would often be yours affectionately. The letters analysed in Chapter 3 show that Rush often signed his letters with BENJN RUSH, but also decided to sign, in no particular chronological order and varying for no apparent reason, with B(:)RUSH, BENJ. RUSH, B R, as well as his full name BENJAMIN RUSH. It seems that when Rush was less intimate with the addressee he more often preferred to write his full first name, but he apparently did not consider it to be a rule. This is, however, only the case when it concerns male correspondents, since I did not find his full first name under any letter to a woman. All letters with the exclusion of some that were incomplete because they were damaged are signed, with the exception of those to Julia. When writing to her, in two cases at least (in other cases signatures were probably cut off) Rush did not sign his letters. His signature under the other letters varied until 1793 from B(:) RUSH to BR, to BENJA(:) RUSH, and to BENJN RUSH, but from then onwards he invariably signed as BENJN RUSH. In this respect, Wesley (Baker 1980: 61-62) often signed his letters in full, not only those to his wife, but most formal letters as well. He also signed as J. Wesley, and occasionally used no signature at all in more informal correspondence. To his male correspondents, Rush frequently wrote Adieu as an indication that his letter was about to end. He did so not only when writing to close friends, as Gay did (TiekenBoon van Ostade 1999), but also, in three out of five letters, to a business friend such as Webster was. He wrote it to his mentor Dr John Morgan (1735-1789): Adieu, my dear sir, and believe me to be, with my best compliments to Mrs. Morgan, yours, &c., | B: RUSH (ed. Butterfield 1951: 67) as well as to Dr Witherspoon: Adieu. B R (ed. Butterfield 1951: 59). Rachel Bradford Boudinot was the only one of his female recipients Rush wrote Adieu to (see Section 3.4.4). Wesley (Baker 1980: 61-62), on the other hand, usually ended letters to his

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brother Charles with Adieu, and only occasionally did so when writing to other close friends or to his wife. Furthermore, when using Adieu, Wesley seemed to have rendered a signature superfluous. Rush apparently did not think so. With regard to the use of Adieu, Navest (2003) concludes that men and women appear to have used this word differently when ending their letters. Quoting Austin (1973: 129), she found that whereas men employed it as a closing formula, women tended to use Adieu as an introductory intimation that the letters [sic] is about to end. My analysis shows that in this respect Rushs usage of Adieu is idiosyncratic, since he used it in both ways. He could be extremely brief and write a single Adieu before his signature, or add a simple yours sincerely before signing. But also, in letters to his wife Julia, as well as to men like John Adams, John Montgomery, and Granville Sharp, Rush wrote long concluding sentences or even paragraphs, starting with Adieu, such as this one to Sharp: Adieuall your publications are highly acceptable to me. If you have collected the sweepings of a few of your friends [sic] libraries together, agreably to my late request for the benefit of our new College at Carlisle, Captain Smiththe bearer of this letterwill take charge of them and convey them to dear Sir yours | sincerely Benjn Rush. (ed. Woods 1967: 26) Perhaps Navests (2003) suggestion that women did not plan their letters and therefore? did not follow advice given by letter-writing manuals is also applicable to Benjamin Rush. Or maybe he is the exception to the rule Holmes (1995) suggests, that: Women tend to pay more attention than men to the face needs of others, especially their positive face needs [the need to be liked and admired]. Partings are occasions which provide opportunities for attention to positive face needs, for example reassurances that the participants regret the need to part and that they wish to meet again soon. (Holmes 1995: 151) Considering the words of praise his letters often received, as I discussed in Section 3.2 above, and the warmth and attention Rush expressed towards his addressees, as well as his emotional outbursts yoursyoursyours, I tend to agree with the latter idea. This leaves room for suggesting that Rush had perhaps a more feminine style of letter writing than the men whose

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letters have been studied thus far, although Rush himself, as we have seen, denied this proposition in his letter to Mary Stockton: I write not as a woman (ed. Butterfield 1951: 486; see also Section 3.4.4). This suggestion seems more interesting when we consider the fact that Rush appears to have applied a more formal style when writing to women than when writing to male correspondents (as shown above). Navest (2003: 96) remarks that what she refers to as the built-in complimentary close was a special feature in the letters of Queeney and her correspondents. My analysis in Chapter 3 of Benjamin Rushs letters has illustrated that for Rush too, the implementation of this characteristic appears to have been a common way of expressing himself in his letters to friends, and it seems he often made every effort to find the appropriate one for the occasion. This statement appears equally valid when considering the letters to his wife as well as other ones, especially to close friends. This seems consistent with the ideas on appropriate conclusions that Wesley had, whose variations upon the formula are remarkable, according to Baker (1980: 59), and in themselves constitute a useful guide both to his general relationships with the recipient, and to sensitive changes in that relationship. Although we have seen that in some series of letters by Rush a change of rapport was reflected in the forms of address he used, from other series where Rush switched back and forth between for instance Dear Sir and My dear old Friend it cannot be concluded that this alternation in distance meant that a change of relationship had been established. In these cases the contents of the letters gave no reason to expect increased or decreased formality. Nevertheless, and as shown in Section 3.4.6 above, after comparison of Rushs use of epistolary formulas, indications are that John Coakley Lettsom was perhaps not such a close friend as Hawkes biography (1971) about Rush claims him to be, since, in terms of Baker (1980: 59), hardly any variations upon the formula occurred.

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When comparing the results of my analysis with the politeness continuum as described in Raumolin-Brunbergs study (1996: 171; see also Illustration 2 in Section 1.2 above) on pragmatization and politeness in forms of address, it appears that all forms of address used by Rush in the letters examined could be placed to the right, or positive, side of the scale. No honorific or other titles are used. Although Raumolin-Brunberg (1996: 172) states that the adjective reverend had been conventionalised by the time Rush wrote his letters, and therefore must be considered to be a token of relative negative politeness, this does not seem to be the case in Rushs letter to Witherspoon (see Section 3.4.11). My argument is supported by Carlson (1981: 4; see also Chapter 4 below) who states that Rushs mode of thought is in many ways archaic and conservative for its time. Rush often used pragmatised forms such as Dear Sir/Madam, and since they were so often alternated with kinship terms we might place these slightly to the right side of the scale. At the extreme right we find the diminutive Samey, all terms of endearment, and the first names, this last category apparently being what Raumolin-Brunberg (1996: 171) refers to as in-group identity markers for Rush. Rushs usage of closing formulas, as shown in this chapter, gives further arguments for a general wish to express positive politeness. Here too we can find frequent alternations between a long complicated closing formula in one letter and a brief ending in the next, such as for instance in letters (11) and (12) to John Montgomery (see Table 3.5). For no obvious reason, Rush varies between using a pragmatised formula as Your most humble Servant, the possibly already pragmatised form yours sincerely, and exclaiming yoursyoursyours in letters to Adams. The degree of variation indicates close relationships with his recipients. Very clear examples of positive politeness can be found in letter (18) to Adams (Table 3.3) where Rush wrote: From yours very [his emphasis] sincerely, and in letter (21) to Adams where Rush after a disagreement with Adams on political issues emphasised to be his

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affectionate and steady [my italics] friend. Considering Lowths usage of epistolary formulas, Tieken-Boon-van Ostade (2003: 248) found that when signing his letters, Lowths use of a first name was an indication of formality, and a signature consisting of initials only, as in the letters to his wife, could therefore be considered a token of positive politeness. The many variants, as described above, that Rush used as a signature, also often in various letters to one single correspondent, indicate that, again, no negative politeness can be assumed. Summarized, when we consider the context in which his epistolary formulas appear, no clear examples of negative politeness strategy can be found in Rushs letters. As a postscript to this chapter, in Section 1.2. above I noted that one of the things eighteenth-century letter-writing manuals taught their readers was that postscripts and not only to superiors had to be avoided whenever possible, especially complimentary postscripts to third parties. I have illustrated Rushs frequent use of postscripts when writing to his wife in Section 3.4.3, but it appears likewise from the other correspondence examined in this chapter that Rush had no hesitations about adding a P.S. to a letter. We can find postscripts in correspondence to relatives, such as to his sister Rachel (see above), to close friends such as Adams and Montgomery, and to lesser acquaintances, male and female, such as Webster and Mrs Ferguson. Even in a letter, the first, to Dr Morgan, Rush added after his signature: My best respects to the Medical Society (ed. Butterfield 1951: 29), the addition of which was considered a definite token of disrespect, according to The New, and Complete Universal Letter-Writer (Hogg & Brown 1800: 4). Obviously, Rush felt differently about it and he apparently shared this feelings with Wesley who, according to Baker (1980: 62) found this advice regarding the use of postscripts too much a council of perfection.

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4. Conclusion In the present study, I have tried to find out if and how the letters of the American jack-of alltrades Benjamin Rush conform to what was commonly considered to be proper letter writing in the eighteenth century. His keen interest in educating languages, and the use of the English language in particular, has been revealed in various letters and in his Travels Through Life (ed. Corner 1948). As we know from this autobiography, Benjamin Rush had learned his letter writing skills in the 1750s. Besides the generally accepted authority of contemporary letter-writing manuals, Rush, a few decades later, apparently considered himself to have become somewhat of an authority on letter writing. In this respect, I have already quoted his judgement on his future wifes correspondence (see Section 3.4.2). Another instance underlining his interest in the subjects of grammar and letter writing can be found in Rushs Thoughts upon Female Education (Rush, 1787), an address he directed at a male audience visiting the Young Ladies Academy in Philadelphia on 28 July, 1787. I will quote here a few passages from this address, revealing Rushs ideas: The branches of literature most essential for a young lady in this country appear to be, 1. A knowledge of the English language. She should not only read, but speak and spell it correctly. And to enable her to do this, she should be taught the English grammar, and be frequently examined in applying its rules in common conversation. 2. Pleasure and interest consprie [sic] to make the writing of a fair and legible hand, a necessary branch of female education. Fur this purpose she should be taught not only to shape every letter properly, but to pay the strictest regard to points and capitals. 45 [in a footnote is explained that The present mode of writing among persons of taste, is to use a capital letter only for the first word of a sentence, and for names of persons, places, and months, and for the first word of every line in poetry. The words should be so shaped, that a streight [sic] line may be drawn between two lines, without touching the extremities of the words in either of them.] I once heard of a man who professed to discover the temper and disposition of persons by looking at their hand writing. Without enquiring into the probability of this story, I shall only remark, that there is one thing in which all mankind agree upon this subject, and that is, in considering writing that is blotted, crooked, or illegible, as a mark of vulgar education. I know of few things more rude or illiberal, than to obtrude a letter upon a person of rank or business, which cannot be easily read. Peculiar care should be taken to avoid every kind of ambiguity and affectation in writing names [his
45

Carlson et al. (1981), however, are less enthusiastic about exactly this aspect, i.e. punctuation, of Rushs language. Admitting that Rush must be considered a well-educated man, they judge this to be even by contemporary standards, [is] not very good (Carlson 1981: xiv).

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emphasis]. I have now a letter in my possession upon business, from a gentleman of a liberal profession in a neighbouring State, which I am unable to answer because I cannot discover the name which is subscribed to it. For obvious reasons I would recommend the writing of the first or Christian name at full length, where it does not consist of more than two syllables. Abbreviations of all kinds in letter writing, which always denote either haste or carelessness should likewise be avoided. (Rush 1787: 266-267) Rush had not always followed his own recommendations about signing the first name at full length, but instead appears to have changed his signatures at random when writing to almost every one of his correspondents. This has also been discussed in Section 3.5 above and is illustrated in the tables in Appendix D. We can see, however, that from 1787 onwards i.e. when the speech was held Rush generally signed BENJN RUSH, which was from then on only occasionally alternated by BENJAMIN RUSH. Taking Rushs frequently expressed ideas on language usage into consideration, this sort of rebellion is remarkable, yet seems to have been typical for him. From his letters it appears that he did not have much use for letter-writing manuals: the accepted pattern for closing formulas was either followed or not; formal salutations and conclusions were alternated with informal ones for no apparent reason; long concluding formulas were succeeded by short ones, which were again followed by longer ones, or none at all. He showed himself to have been quite inventive with respect to these conclusions, the most notable being yoursyoursyours. In summary, it might be concluded that Benjamin Rush, the revolutionary gadfly as referred to by Hawke (1971), in some aspects could be called a linguistic revolutionary as well. Butterfield claims that Rushs stay in Europe and the resulting social contacts had refined his manners and character (1947: 12; see also Section 2.2 above). As we have seen, this coincides with changes in his letter-writing style, his youthful compositions becoming less turgid and affected (ed. Butterfield 1951: 524). Furthermore, his style of writing shows that Rush was less class-conscious than eighteenth-century letter writers examined thus far,

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such as John Gay, Robert Lowth, and John Wesley. This could be because of his Quaker background. On the other hand, it may be that his unfavourable observations regarding the English class system (see also Section 2.2 above) had further influenced Rush in this respect. 204 letters were studied for this thesis. This means that from Butterfield (1951) alone, more than 450 letters remain to be examined. However, as already mentioned in Section 1.1, Rushs out-letters, published as well as unpublished, can be found around the world. This is equally valid for his in-letters,46 the majority of them unpublished still. Ideally, therefore, the present study should be considered as merely the onset of a full-scale research of his entire correspondence in its linguistic and social context. Butterfield (1951) states that his perspective when collecting and editing Rushs letters was mainly a historical one. As TiekenBoon van Ostade (2005: 117) argues, the availability of good scholarly editions would enable historical sociolinguists to analyse the language of the letters from various sociolinguistic viewpoints. Given the sheer size of the corpus that Rushs complete correspondence would make, his activities and expertise in a great many areas, as well as the vastness of his open social network,47 his letters might prove valuable tools for an analysis of a social network that I feel would be well worth studying; they might be equally valuable for studies into the effect of gender roles upon language usage, combined or not with ruling thoughts on education. As examples for my argument may serve a letter that Rush wrote to a man called James Abercrombie (ed. Butterfield 1951: 632) about his meeting with Dr Goldsmith and the

46 47

I borrowed the term in-letter from Baker (1980: 123). Given the dimensions of Rushs social circle and his great interest in the English language and let ter writing, it is remarkable that in all biographies, letters, and pamphlets that I read for this study, I have never once come across the name of the grammarian and lawyer Lindley Murray (1745-1826) who, albeit briefly, lived in Philadelphia as an apprentice to a Quaker merchant around 1758 or 1759, which is during the period that Rush lived there too (source: http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/faculty/westbury/Paradigm/monaghan2.html). Being approximately the same age as Rush, Murray was born in Pennsylvania as the son of a Quaker merchant, and earlier he had spent his first school years at an academy in Philadelphia before moving to New York. It was not until after the American Revolution in 1784 that he went to live near York, England, where he started writing school textbooks. His English Grammar (1795) and even more his English Reader (1799) would become immensely popular in his country of birth (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2004).

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celebrated Dr Johnson, another letter to Benjamin Franklin (ed. Butterfield 1951: 78-80) about Joseph Priestleys observations on fixed air, and one to James Muir (1757-1820) (ed. Butterfield 1951: 604-608) about educating languages including Indian to male and female pupils. Furthermore, as mentioned in Section 2.5 above, Benjamin Rush, although he was not class-conscious, might be defined as a social aspirer, which implicates a linguistic sensitivity. In this respect, Carlson (1981: 4) refers to Rushs indebtedness to English and Scottish thinkers and states that His mode of thought is in many ways archaic and conservati ve for its time, and thus typically Colonial, while its content is reformatory and progressive, full of the spirit of the American revolution (1981: 4). These characteristics, combined with Rushs huge social network and his being a fifth generation American of British descent, would make a comparative synchronic analysis of his language with respect to developments of the English language during the second part of the eighteenth century, worthwhile indeed. Besides mentioning Rushs numerous out-letters, Butterfield (1951) refers to the many collections of in-letters. Several of these manuscripts are located at the Library Company of Philadelphia, Ridgway Branch, such as letters from Julia Rush-Stockton, from Mary Stockton, from John Coakley Lettsom, from Richard Price, from Noah Webster, and also what is referred to in Butterfield (1951: 358) as letter-books. Furthermore, in this library we can find both sides of the great bulk of [the] extensive correspondence (Butterfield 1951: 291n1) between Rush and Montgomery. These letters to and from John Montgomery appear especially interesting, since Montgomerys letters show him to be barely literate (Butterfield 1951: 291n1). In the context of the social network model, how would the two men possibly have influenced each others style of writing? Moreover, these letters especially would make a welcome addition to the database that Tieken-Boon van Ostade is in the process of compiling, consisting of

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material that is available and suitable for analysis, since she argues that there should be more uneducated writers represented in this letter corpus (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2005: 124). As referred to in Section 1.2, from the 1740s onwards the American people could choose from a growing number of letter-writing manuals. For a study of how and if other American letter writers besides Rush or British ones for that matter would conform to the instructions for proper letter writing given by these guidebooks, an expansion of the digital corpus ARCHER (see Section 1.1 above) would seem equally valuable, particularly with American eighteenth-century letters, since these form only a minor part of the whole. This way, extensive comparisons could be made with Rushs letters, making it perhaps possible to determine whether Rush was the only American to deviate from the opening and closing courtesies as prescribed by eighteenth-century letter writers, or if perhaps other American authors wrote their letters incorporating epistolary formulas the way he did. In this respect, I have already demonstrated that both John Adams and his wife Abigail, as well as Andrew Jackson, did indeed implement complimentary built-in closes (see also Table 3.10 in Appendix E). As I quoted in Section 1.2 above, Dilworths (1794) The Complete Letter-Writer: Or, Young Secretarys Instructor, was highly popular in America in the last decade of the eighteenth century. Its first edition published in America appeared in 1793, but Dilworth had already had a letter-writing manual published in England although under a different title: The Familiar Letter-Writer; or Young Secretarys Complete Instructor as early as 1758. A detailed comparison between American and English letter-writing manuals printed in the eighteenth century might be a worthwhile undertaking to discover to what extent letterwriting manuals were revised, besides merely substituting social titles. I feel it would be justified to extend this research to the early nineteenth century as well.

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I hope the present study of Rushs epistolary formulas will prove to be a useful addition to the desired large-scale sociolinguistic analysis of the language of the eighteenth century (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 1999: 100). In view of his character and aspirations, I sense that Rush would have been pleased as well to find out that his letters might still be able to serve a purpose. After all, already at the age of fifteen, Rush expressed in the very first of his published letters his wish that: to spend and be spent for the Good of Mankind is what I chiefly aim at (ed. Butterfield 1951: 3). Now, almost 250 years later, through his letters he may have reached this goal again.

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References Primary sources: ARCHER: A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers ARCHER. Bell, Whitfield J. & L.H. Butterfield, eds, (1979), My Dearest Julia. The Love Letters of Dr. Benjamin Rush to Julia Stockton, New York: Watson Academic Publications. Butterfield, L.H., ed., (1951), Letters of Benjamin Rush, Vols I and II, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Corner, George W., ed., (1948), The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush. His Travels Through Life together with his Commonplace Book for 1789-1813, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Rush, Benjamin (1787), Thoughts upon Female Education, The English Lyceum, Vol. II, Hamburgh: Archenholtz, 264-75. Woods, John A., ed., (1967), The Correspondence of Benjamin Rush and Granville Sharp 1773-1809, Journal of American Studies 1, 1-38. Secondary works: Algeo, John, ed., (2001), The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. VI: English in North America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anderson, Howard, Philip B. Daghlian & Irvin Ehrenpreis, eds, (1966), The Familiar Letter in the Eighteenth Century, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Anon. (1756), The Compleat Letter Writer: or, New and Polite English Secretary, London: Crowder & Woodgate, 3rd improved ed. Anon. (1763), The Ladies Complete Letter-Writer, London: Lownds. Austin, Frances (1973), Epistolary Conventions in the Clift Family Correspondence, in Mats Rydn, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade & Merja Kyt (eds) (1998), A Reader in Early Modern English, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 319-47. Austin, Frances (2004), Heaving this importunity: The survival of opening formulas in letters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics 2004: 4, online edition:<http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/hsl_shl/ heaving_this_importunity.htm> (28.9.2005). Baker, Frank, ed., (1980), The Works of John Wesley, Vol. 25, Letters I, 1721-1739, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Barton, David (1999), Benjamin Rush. Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Aledo TX: WallBuilders. Baugh, Albert C. & Thomas Cable (2002), A History of the English Language, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Bax, Randy C. (2000), A Network Strength Scale for the Study of Eighteenth-Century English, in Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Terttu Nevalainen and Luisella Caon (eds), Social Network Analysis and the History of English, special issue of European Journal of English Studies, 4/3, 277-289. Beal, Joan C. (2004), English in Modern Times 1700-1945, London: Arnold. Brodsky, Alyn (2004), Benjamin Rush. Patriot and Physician, New York: St. Martins Press. Brown, Penelope & Stephen C. Levinson (1978, 1987), Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Butterfield, L.H. (1947), Love and Valor; or, Benjamin Rush and the Leslies of Edinburgh, The Princeton University Library Chronicle IX, 1, 1-12. Bijkerk, Annemieke (2004), Yours Sincerely and Yours Affectionately: On the Origin and Development of Two Positive Politeness Markers, in Andreas H. Jucker & Irma Taavitsainen (eds), Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 5/2, 297-311.

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Carlson, Eric T., M.D., Jeffrey L. Wollock & Patricia S. Noel, eds, (1981), Benjamin Rushs Lectures on the Mind, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. Carrington Bolton, Henry (1892, repr. 1969), Scientific Correspondence of Joseph Priestley, New York: Kraus Reprint Co. Caslon, T. & J. Ashburner (1779), The Accomplished Letter-Writer; or Universal Correspondent, London: Stationers-Court. Dierks, Konstantin (2000), The Familiar Letter and Social Refinement in America, 17501800, in Barton, David & Nigel Hall (eds) (2000), Letter Writing as a Social Practice, Amsterdam: Benjamins, 31-41. Dilworth, H. W. (1758), The Familiar Letter-Writer; or Young Secretarys Complete Instructor, London: Wright. Dilworth, H.W. (1794), The Complete Letter-Writer: Or, Young Secretarys Instructor, New York: Allen. dElia, Donald J. (1974), Benjamin Rush: Philosopher of the American Revolution, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 64, 5. Fisher, John Hurt (2001), British and American, Continuity and Divergence, in Algeo (2001), 59-85. Fitzmaurice, Susan M. (2002), The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English. A Pragmatic Approach, Amsterdam: Benjamins. Grlach, Manfred (2001), Eighteenth-century English, Heidelberg: Winter. Hawke, David Freeman (1971), Benjamin Rush: Revolutionary Gadfly, Indianapolis: BobsMerrill Company, Inc. Hicks, Philip (2005), Portia and Marcia: Female Political Identity and the Historical Imagination, 1770-1800, The William and Mary Quarterly 62, 2, 265-295 <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/wm/62.2/hicks.html> (3.5.2006). Hogg, Henry & George Brown (1800), The New, and Complete Universal Letter-Writer: or, Whole Art of General and Polite Correspondence, London: Taylor. Holmes, Janet (1995), Women, Men and Politeness, New York: Longman. Monaghan, E. Jennifer (1983), A Common Heritage. Noah Websters Blue-Back Speller, Hamden, CT: Archon Books. Navest, Karlijn (2003), Epistolary Formulas in Queeney Thraless Letters, MA thesis presented at the English Department, University of Leiden. Nevalainen, Terttu & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (2003), Historical sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England, Harlow: Pearson Educated Limited. Newman, Stephen L., (2004), Cooper, Thomas (1759-1839), in H. C. G. Matthew & Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: OUP, online edition: <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6231> (10.4.2006). ODNB: The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: OUP, online edition: <http://www.oxforddnb.com>. OED: The Oxford English Dictionary, online edition: <http://www.oed.com>. Osgood, Charles Grosvenor (1944), An American Boswell, The Princeton University Library Chronicle V, 3, 85-91. Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena (1996), Forms of Address in Early English Correspondence, in Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg (eds), Sociolinguistics and Language History, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 167-181. Ryerson, Richard Alan (2004), Adams, John (17351826), in H. C. G. Matthew & Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: OUP, online edition: <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/68575> (10.4.2006). Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid (1999), Of formulas and friends: expressions of politeness in John Gays letters, in Guy A.J. Tops, Betty Devriendt & Steven Geukens (eds),

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Thinking English Grammar. To Honour Xavier Dekeyser, Professor Emeritus, Leuven and Paris: Peeters, 99-112. Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid (2003), Lowths Language, in Marina Dossena & Charles Jones (eds), Insights into Late Modern English, Bern: Peter Lang, 241-264. Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid (2004), Murray, Lindley (1745-1826), in H. C. G. Matthew & Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: OUP, online edition: <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19640> (10.5.2006). Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid (2005), Eighteenth-century English letters: in search of the vernacular, Linguistica e Filologia 21, Bergamo: universit degli Studi di Bergamo, 113-146. Tindall, George Brown & David E. Shi (2004), America: A Narrative History, 6th ed., New York: Norton. Vincent Macleod, Emma (2004), Erskine, David Steuart, eleventh earl of Buchan (17421829), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: OUP, online edition: <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8852> (3.6.2006). Websites: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party> (12.3.2006) <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history> (12.3.2006) <http://www.bostonmassacre.net> (12.3.2006) <http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/faculty/westbury/Paradigm/monaghan2.html> (30-3-2006) <http://www.galeuk.com/trialsite/> (15.10.2005) <http://www.history.org> (12.3.2006) <http://www.historyguide.org> (12.3.2006) <http://www.history1700s.com> (12.3.2006) <http://www.jerseyhistory.org> (4.4.2006)

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APPENDICES

85

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Appendix A: Chronology of events in the second half of the eighteenth century

Table 2: Chronology of events, 1746-180048 Year Benjamin Rush (1746-1813) 1746 Born on 4 January in Byberry township, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1750 1751 On 26 July his father John Rush dies; family moves to the city of Philadelphia 1755 1754(?)-1759: At his uncle James Finleys school in West Nottingham, Maryland 1756 1757 1759 1759-60: College of New Jersey; Graduates B.A. 1760 1760-66: Apprentice to Dr John Redman, Philadelphia 1761 United States Great Britain Battle of Culloden definitely ends Jacobite rebellion Appr. beginnings of the Industrial Revolution Prelude to English control of China: Robert Clive seizes Arcot Samuel Johnsons Dictionary is published

Benjamin Franklin invents lightning conductor Start of the Seven Years (French and Indian) War in America49

Start of the Seven Years War in Europe (-1763) British Rule in India James Wolfes (1727-1759) capture of Quebec assures British control of Canada Succession of George III (1738-1820)

First life insurance policy issued (Philadelphia) 1762 Outbreak of yellow fever in Louisiana ceded to Spain by Philadelphia; Rush attends lectures France in an attempt to fight on anatomy British control of the region 1763 Canada and some parts of America east of the Mississippi ceded to Britain by France

1765 Begins medical courses at College Stamp Act50 imposed of Philadelphia 1766 31 August: Sails from Philadelphia Stamp Act revoked to Liverpool; November 1766 to June 1768: Medical courses University of Edinburgh, graduates M.D.

British seize Cuba and the Philippines from Spain British return Cuba and the Philippines in exchange for Florida; Treaty of Paris signed by France and Britain, ending the Seven Years War Parliament passes the Stamp Act

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Sources: Butterfield (ed. 1951); Tindall & Shi (2004); http://www.historyguide.org; http://eng.wikipedia.org; http://www.history.org; http://www.bbc.co.uk/history; http://www.history1700s.com; http://www.bostonmassacre.net. 49 During this war the British drove the French from the northern and eastern parts of America. Numerous Indians, many of whom had chosen the side of the French, awaited the same fate. 50 The Stamp Act was passed by British Parliament on 22 March. The new tax was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used. Ship's papers, legal documents, licenses, newspapers, other publications, and even playing cards were taxed.

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Year Benjamin Rush (1746-1813) 1768 Elected member of the American Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge; Sept. 1768-May 1769: visits London hospitals and physicians; meets Franklin; visits Paris

United States

Great Britain Joshua Reynolds (17231792) 1st president of the Royal Academy; 1768-69: Captain James Cooks (1728-1779) voyages to Australia and New Zealand

1769 July: Returns from Europe and begins practice in Philadelphia; August: Elected professor of chemistry in the College of Philadelphia; Elected member of the American Philosophical Society 1770 1773 1774 1775

1776

1777

1778 1780 1783

Boston Massacre51 Boston Tea Party52 Rhode Island first colony to Joseph Priestley (1733abolish slavery 1804) isolates oxygen Begins courtship of Miss Julia American Revolution/War of James Watt (1736-1819) Stockton; appointed physician and Independence (-1783); builds steam engine surgeon to the Pennsylvania armed Founding of the US Army boats 11 January: Marries Julia 4 July: Stockton; Signing of the American Declaration of Independence July: Resigns from his position to the Pennsylvania armed boats; Drafts a resolution urging independence; Elected a delegate to the Continental Congress; Co-signs the Declaration of Independence; Dec.76 Jan.77: serves with the Pennsylvania troops Appointed first surgeon general, then physician general in the Continental Army Resigns as physician general Gordon Riots53 in London Joins staff of Pennsylvania William Pitt (1708-1778) Hospital becomes Prime Minister

51

The Boston Massacre was the killing of five Boston citizens by British soldiers on 5 March and the culmination of civilian-military tensions that were growing since royal troops had first appeared in Massachusetts. The soldiers were in Boston to keep order, but townspeople viewed them as potential oppressors, competitors for jobs, and threats to social mores. 52 The Boston Tea Party was a protest of American colonists against the tax policies of the British government on 16 December. That night, 60 Bostonians, dressed as Mohawk Indians, destroyed the cargo of three British tea ships that were anchored in their harbour. 53 Violent anti-Catholic riots lasting ten days in June and intended to undo the repeal of the Relief Act which softened harsh anti-Catholic legislation.

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Year Benjamin Rush (1746-1813) 1786 Co-founder of Philadelphia Dispensary for treating the poor 1787 Elected secretary of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery 1788

United States

Great Britain

Signing of the US Constitution

1789

The Londons Daily Universal Register from now on called The Times George Washington (17321799) elected 1st President of the US (-97)

Colonisation of the antipodes: penal colonies

1791 Becomes professor of the institutes of medicine and clinical medicine in the new University of Pennsylvania; Active in founding the First African Church in Philadelphia 1792 1793 Aug-Nov: Great epidemic of yellow fever in Philadelphia causing his sister and three of his apprentices to die; Resigns from the College of Physicians because of disagreement over treatment on yellow fever 1794 The fever reappears in Philadelphia 1797 Assumes duties of chair of theory and practice of medicine at the University; November: Appointed treasurer of the United States Mint; Renewed epidemic of yellow fever; -1801: vice-president of the American Philosophical Society 1800 Begins his autobiography Travels Through Life (ed. Corner 1948) Founding of the New York Stock Exchange

Rioting in Birmingham. Main targets were Joseph Priestleys home, church and laboratory, since Priestley openly supported the American and French revolutions Gas light introduced in Britain France declares war against Britain (and then Britain against France)

A commerce and navigation treaty is signed by the US and the UK John Adams President of the First 1 bank notes US (-1801) issued

Highland clearances, causing widespread immigration to America

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Appendix B: A selection of Benjamin Rushs publications The biographies written about Benjamin Rush all provide, to greater or lesser extent, bibliographical information. To give an idea of how wide-ranging Rushs writings were, I will present here a sampling of his works, based on an overview given in Barton (1999: 253-257): Account of a Case of Small-Pox after Variolous Inoculation (1809) Account of the Bilious Remitting Yellow Fever, as it Appeared in the City of Philadelphia, in the Year 1793 (1794) (Translated to Spanish, 1804) Account of the Causes of Longevity (1793) Account of the Climate of Pennsylvania and its Influence upon the Human Body (1789) Account of the Disease Occasioned by Drinking Cold Water in Warm Weather and the Method of Curing it (1789) Account of the Effects of the Late American Revolution upon the Human Body (1789) Account of the Influenza as It Appeared in Philadelphia in the Years 1790-1791 (1793) Account of the Late Dr. John Morgan (1789) Account of the Progress of Population, Agriculture, Manners, and Government in Pennsylvania (1786) Account of the Scarlatina Anginosa as it Appeared in Philadelphia in the Years 1783 and 1784 (1789) Account of the State of the Body and Mind in Old Age, with Observations on Its Diseases and Their Remedies (1793) Account of the Sugar Maple-Tree of the United States (1792) Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America upon Slave-Keeping (1773) Address to the Ministers of the Gospel of Every Denomination in the United States upon Subjects Interesting to Morals (1788) Address to the People of the United States . On the Defects of the Confederation (1787) Advice to American Farmers about to Settle in New Countries (1789) Comparison between the Prospects of Advantage in the Unsettled and Unimproved Parts of Pennsylvania and in the New Countries at Niagara, Kentucky &c. (1789) Considerations on the Injustice and Impolicy of Punishing Murder by Death (1792) Considerations upon the Current Test-Law of Pennsylvania (1784) Contrast between the Death of a Deist and a Christian, David Hume, and Samuel Finley (1779) Defence of Blood-letting as a Remedy in Certain Diseases (1796) Defence of the Use of the Bible as a School Book (1791) Directions for Preserving the Health of Soldiers (1778) Directions for Recovering Persons Who Are Supposed to Be Dead from Drowning, also for Preventing and Curing the Disorders Produced by Drinking Cold Water or Other Liquors, and by the Actions of Noxious Vapours, Lightening, and Excessive Heat and Cold (1790) Dissertation on the Spasmodic Asthma of Children (1770) Duty and Advantages of Studying the Diseases of Domestic Animals and the Remedies Proper to Cure Them (1807) Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical (1798) Eulogium in Honor of the Late Dr. William Cullen (1790) Eulogium Intended to Perpetuate the Memory of David Rittenhouse (1776) Fatal Effects of Ardent Spirits, Containing Serious Thoughts on the Traffic in Distilled Spiritous Liquors and on the Customary Use of that Article as Common Drink (1813) Free Thoughts on Pulmonary Consumptions (1789)

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Funeral Eulogy, Sacred to the Memory of the Late Reverend Gilbert Tennent, A.M., Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church, In Philadelphia (1764) Information to Europeans Disposed to Migrate to the United States (1790) Inquiry into the Consistency of Oaths with Reason and Christianity (1789) Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits upon the Human Body and Mind, with an Account of the Means of Preventing, and the Remedies for Curing Them (1804) Inquiry into the Effects of Public Punishments upon Criminals and upon Society (1787) Inquiry into the Justice and Policy of Punishing Murder by Death (1788) Inquiry into the Natural History of Medicine Among the Indians of North America and a Comparative View of their Diseases and Remedies with those of Civilized Nations (1789) Inquiry into the Utility of a Knowledge of the Latin and Greek Languages, as a Branch of Liberal Education, with Hints of a Plan of Liberal Instruction without Them (1789) Inquiry into the Various Sources of the Usual Forms of the Summer and Autumnal Diseases in the United States and the Means of Preventing Them (1805) Medical Inquiries and Observations on the Diseases of the Mind (1812) Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vols I-IV (1789-1796) Moral and Physical Thermometer: Or, A Scale of the Progress of Temperance and Intemperance (1789) New Method of Inoculating for the Small-Pox (1781) Observations on the Duties of a Physician and the methods of Improving Medicine Accommodated to the Present State of Society and Manners in the United States (1789) Observations on the Federal Procession in Philadelphia (1788) Observations upon the Cause and Cure of Tetanus (1785) Observations upon the Influence of the Habitual Use of Tobacco upon Health, Morals, and Property (1798) Observations upon the Nature and Cure of Gout (1798) Observations upon the Origin of the Malignant Bilious, or Yellow Fever in Philadelphia, and upon the Means of Preventing It: Addressed to the Citizens of Philadelphia (1799) Observations upon the Symptoms and Cure of Dropsies (1793) Observations upon Worms in the Alimentary Canal and upon Anthelmintic Medicines (1789) Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic (1784) On the Character of Dr. Sydenham (1793) On the Means of Acquiring Business in the Profession of Medicine (1807) On the Medical Opinions and Practice of Hippocrates (1806) On the Study of Medical Jurisprudence (1810) Oration [on] the Physical Causes upon the Moral Faculty (1786) Outlines of a Theory of Fever (1805) Plan for Establishing Public Schools in Pennsylvania and for Conducting Education Agreeably to a Republican Form of Government, Addressed to the Legislature and Citizens of Pennsylvania, in the Year 1786 (1786) Plan of a Peace-Office for the United States (1793) Process for Making Salt-Petre (1775) Rejoinder to a Reply to the Inquiry into the Justice and Policy of Punishing Murder by Death (1789) Sermons to Gentlemen upon Temperance and Exercise (1772) Sixteen Introductory Lectures to Courses of Lectures upon the Institutes and Practice of Medicine, With a Syllabus of the Latter. To Which are added Two Lectures upon the Pleasures of the Senses (1811)

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Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry (1770) Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on the Institutes of Medicine (1795) Syllabus of Lectures Containing the Application of the Principles of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry to Domestic and Culinary Purposes (1787) Thoughts upon Female Education, Accommodated to the Present State of Society, Manners, and Government in the United States of America (1787) Thoughts upon the Amusements and Punishments which are Proper for Schools (1790) Three Lectures upon Animal Life (1799) To Andrew Brown: Directions for Conducting a Newspaper in Such a Manner as to Make It Innocent, Useful, and Entertaining (1888) To Friends of the Federal Government: A Plan for a Federal University (1788) To the Citizens of Philadelphia: A Plan for Free Schools (1787) Vindication of the Address, in Answer to a Pamphlet Entitled, Slavery Not Forbidden in Scripture; or a Defense of the West India Planters (1773)

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Appendix C: Correspondents of Benjamin Rush Below, I have listed all correspondents of Benjamin Rush (abbreviated to BR), as included in Butterfield (ed. 1951). The correspondents are shown in alphabetical order. Furthermore, the total number of letters written by Rush up to and including 1800 is given, as well as the dates of the first and last letter. The names of the people whose letters are dealt with in Chapter 3 of this thesis are shown in bold italics. Name No. of letters Date of 1st-Date of last

Anon. 6 James Abercrombie: Philadelphia Episcopal clergyman 1 John Adams: lawyer, member of Congress, diplomat, US president 1797-1801 26 Ashton Alexander: presidential physician 2 John Armstrong: pioneer, general, member of Congress 1 Jacques Barbeu Dubourg: French physician and botanist 2 John Bayard: Philadelphia merchant and revolutionary 1 Jonathan Bayard Smith: former classmate 2 Samuel Bayard: lawyer, son of Rushs friend John Bayard 2 James Beattie: Scottish philosophy professor and poet 1 Jeremy Belknap: Congregational minister in Boston 17 Nicholas Belville: French-born physician 1 Owen Biddle: Quaker, chairman to the Governors office 1 Elias Boudinot: lawyer, member of Congress, Julias uncle 5 (+1?) Annis Boudinot Stockton: Rushs mother-in-law 1 Thomas Bradford: son of a patriot-printer 4 Rachel Bradford Boudinot: wife of Elisha Boudinot 1 Henry Brockholst Livingston: lawyer, son of the Governor of New Jersey 1 Andrew Brown: owner of the Philadelphia Gazette 1 Andrew Brown, Jr: son of Andrew Brown, Sr, the former proprietor of the Philadelphia Gazette 1 Earl of Buchan: at Dryburgh Palace, Scotland 1 Aaron Burr: then US Senator from New York 1 Richard Bushe Jr: not identified 1 Mathew Carey: Irish-born author and publisher 1 William Claypool: physician, pupil of Rush 1 John Coakley Lettsom: eccentric UK Quaker physician 10 Samuel Coates: not identified 1 John N. Cowan: New York physician 1 James Craik: then physician general of the US Army 1 William Cullen: Rushs medical professor in Edinburgh 3 James Currie: Scottish physician practising in Liverpool 2 Armand John DeRosset: North Carolina physician 1 John Dickinson: US patriot and politician 9 William H. Drayton, Samuel Huntington, & John Banister: formed a committee to investigate Shippens hospital
54

1793 1777 179054 1795 - 1798 1783 1773 - 1776 1783 1767 - 1778 1796 1786 1788 - 1794 1793 1775? 1781 - 1793 1787 1766 - 1768 1799 1800 1788 1797 1795 1792 1798 1798 1782 1783 - 1793 1798 1795 1798 1783 - 1786 1787 - 1796 1790 1776 - 1797

Butterfield (ed. 1951) included another 86 letters to John Adams that were written between 1805 and 1813.

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administration William Duer: member of Congress John Dunlap: Philadelphia printer and publisher John Erskine: minister in Edinburgh Griffith Evans: minor politician in Pennsylvania Samuel Fisher: English Quaker, exiled to Virginia Thomas Fitzsimons: Irish-born, delegate to Congress, would become founder of Bank of North America John Foulke: Quaker, physician Benjamin Franklin: politician, diplomat Horatio Gates: English-born US general William Gordon: clergyman and historian Elizabeth Graeme Ferguson: author and bluestocking Ashbel Green: Pennsylvania Presbyterian minister Enoch Green: former, 11 yrs older, classmate Nathanael Greene: US general Elisha Hall: son of Rushs aunt Ruth Hall Ebenezer Hazard: childhood friend Patrick Henry: governor of Virginia Thomas Henry: Mancunian surgeon-apothecary Enos Hitchcock: Congregational clergyman John Howard: UK philanthropist, dissenter & prison reformer Thomas Jefferson: US vice-president under John Adams, would become president in 1801 Lewis Johnson: physician of Scottish origin Walter Jones: US physician and politician James Kidd: Irish-born professor of Oriental languages John King: Presbyterian pastor Henry Knox: then Secretary of War Henry Laurens: merchant, patriot, member of Congress Arthur Lee: US diplomat stationed in London Charles Lee: US general Richard Henry Lee: US revolutionary leader David Leslie: son of the Earl of Leven William Linn: Pennsylvania Presbyterian minister Catherine Macaulay: British historian James Madison: then in the US House of Representatives, would become 4th president of the US in 1808 William Marshall: Scottish-born Presbyterian minister James McHenry: surgeon, Irish-born, pupil of Rush Walter Minto: Scottish-born mathematician at Princeton John Montgomery: Irish-born, member of Congress George Morgan: US colonel, brother of Dr John Morgan John Morgan: Philadelphia physician Thomas Morris: businessman Robert Morris: financier of the US revolution G.H.E. Muhlenberg: Pennsylvania botanist and Lutheran minister from German descent James Muir: Scottish-born Presbyterian pastor in Virginia

1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 10 2 3 (+1?) 3 1 4 (+1?) 1 14 1 1 1 1 8 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 3 6 1 1 1 3 1 4 4 25 1 5 1 2 1 1

1778 1777 1779 1785 1796 1768 1790 1780 1766 - 1773 1778 - 1797 1773 - 1778 1777 - 1793 1787 - 1797 1761 1777 - 1782 1789 1762 - 1768 1778 1785 1789 1789 1791 - 1800 1774 1776 1793 - 1794 1783 1792 1778 1774 1776 - 1779 1776 - 1777 1768 1784 1769 1790 1798 1778 - 1800 1792 1782 - 1799 1779 1766 - 1779 1776 1777 1788 1791

94

John Nicholson: then comptroller general of Pennsylvania 2 Charles Nisbet: Scottish Presbyterian clergyman 5 Thomas Percival: physician in Manchester, UK 1? Timothy Pickering: lawyer, Massachusetts senator 5 Richard Price: English nonconformist minister 7 David Ramsay: historian and surgeon, pupil of Rush 2 Jacob Read: lawyer, member of Congress 1 John K. Read: physician, nephew of Mrs Benjamin Franklin 1 John Redman: physician and Rushs mentor 1 John Redman Coxe: loyalist, lawyer, grandson of Redman 9 John Richardson Bayard Rodgers: physician 5 Daniel Roberdeau: member of Congress 1 John Rush: son of B. Rush, then surgeon on a ship 1 Richard Rush: son of B. Rush, then twelve years old 1 Rachel Rush Montgomery: sister of B. Rush 2 Mrs Rush: Rushs wife 88 Thomas Ruston: US physician, practising in London 1 James Searle: Philadelphia merchant and politician 2 John Seward: clergyman and physician in Virginia 1 Granville Sharp: English liberal and humanitarian 3 William Shippen: physician and member of Congress 3 Rebecca Smith: daughter of Provost William Smith 2 Thomas Smith : delegate to Congress 2 Abigail Smith Adams: wife of John Adams 1 Frances Stall: mother of Rushs apprentice John Stall 1 Mary Stockton: Rushs sister-in-law 1 Walter Stone: wealthy US merchant 3 James Thornton: Quaker preacher in Rushs birthplace 1 John Warren: leading surgeon in Boston 1 George Washington: first US president 3 Anthony Wayne: US colonel 9 Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America55 5 Elhanan Winchester: Calvinistic clergyman 2 Lady Jane Wishart Belsches: daughter of Earl of Leven 2 John Witherspoon: Presbyterian minister 5 Oliver Wolcott: then Governor of Connecticut 1 American Farmers About to Settle Citizens of Pennsylvania of German birth ... Citizens of Philadelphia: a Plan for Free Schools College of Physicians Editor of the Pennsylvania Journal Fellow Citizens Fellow Countrymen Friends of the Federal Government Human Society of Massachusetts Managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital
55

1792 - 1793 1783 - 1784 1786 1787 - 1799 1785 - 1790 1778 - 1788 1782 1800 1793 1794 - 1796 1793 - 1797 1778 1796 1792 1793 1776 - 1798 1775 1777 - 1778 1796 1773 - 1791 1777 - 1780 1791 - 1792 1790 - 1793 1778 1794 1788 1791 1792 1782 1777 - 1788 1776 - 1782 1788 - 1800 1791 1784 - 1785 1767 - 1768 1793 1789 1785 1787 1793 1782 1793 1773 1788 1793 1789

1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1

Butterfield (ed. 1951: 451)

95

Ministers of the Gospel of all denominations Officers in the US army (the President of the) Pennsylvania Abolition Society Philadelphia Committee of Health Trustees of Dickinson College Trustees of Philadelphia College

1 1 3 1 3 1

1788 1777 1788 - 1795 1794 1785 1769

96

Appendix D: Salutations and conclusions to the correspondence of Benjamin Rush In Tables 3.1 to 3.9 below, I have listed salutations and concluding sentences to the correspondence of Benjamin Rush that was analysed in Chapter 3. In each table, the letters are shown in chronological sequence.
Table 3.1: salutations and conclusions in Rushs love letters to Julia Stockton, 1775-1776 Letter Salutation Conclusion (1) My dearest Julia God bless you my dearest girl! | Yours wholly. | B Rush (2) My dearest Julia [missing]56 (3) My dearest Julia O!my love my hope my joy my life my Julia my Julia! | Yours. yours. | B Rush (4) My dearest Julia how delightful the words! [i.e. the closing of Julias previous letter] her heart! her hand! tis eno I am satisfied. | B Rush (5) My dearest Julia & how ardently you are beloved by your own. | B Rush (6) My dearest Julia Adieu. Adieu. | B Rush (7) My dearest Julia Adieu thou girl of my soul! |From your most | affectionate | B Rush. (8) My dearest Julia Adieu, thou girl of my soul! yours. | BR: (9) My dearest Julia Yours my dearest Julia | BR: (10) My dearest Julia Adieu thou dear girl of my Soul! How are your spirits? | Yours most affectionately | BR. (11) My dearest Julia Adieu thou delight of my heart! (12) My dearest Julia Adieu my dearest girl. My whole soul consents when I add that I am yours wholly. | B Rush. (13) My dearest Julia Mrs Stamper joins in tenderest love to the whole family with your own BR. (14) My dearest Julia Adieu thou dear girl of my soul. Love & compliments to all your family. Miss Sukey Levingston shares largely in my friendship. Yours. B Rush. (15) My dearest Julia Adieu my love my Julia. | Yours. B R (16) My Love Adieu my Julia. | B R (17) My dearest Girl Adieu my own Julia. I hope it is not too late for the compliments of the season. | Long may the new years morn with lustre rise | And find thee still more happy & more wise. | Once more adieu my own Julia. | From your own | B. Rush. Table 3.2: salutations and conclusions in Rushs letters to his wife, 1776-1798 Letter Salutation Conclusion 1776 (1) My Dearest Yours most affectionately, | B RUSH (2) My Dearest Life Adieu. Love to all the family. Yours, | BR (3) My dearest Julia Love to all the family.Yours, &c., | B RUSH (4) My dearest Jewel Yours, my dearest, | B RUSH (5) My dear Julia Much love to everybody.Yoursyours, | B RUSH (6) My dearest Julia Mrs. Stamper joins in love to you and your Mama with yours, | B RUSH 1777 (7) My dear Julia Yoursyours, my dear Julia.
56

From the second letter the conclusion and signature are cut off. This may be done by Julia Stockton herself, to prevent disclosure of expressions that she might have felt would be too personal.

97

(8) (9) (10) 1778(11) (12)

My dearest Julia My very dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia

1779(13) My loveliest Girl 1780(14) My dear Julia 1783(15) My dearest Julia 1786(16) My best beloved (17) My dear Julia, P.S. 1787(18) My dear Julia (19) My dear Julia (20) My dear Julia

(21) My dear Julia 1791(22) My dear Julia (23) My dear Julia (24) My dear Julia (25) My dear Julia 1793(26) My dear Julia (27) My dear Julia (28) (29) (30) (31) My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia

(32) My dear Julia (33) (34) (35) (36) (37) (38) My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia

(39) My dear Julia (40) My dear Julia (41) My dear Julia (42) My dear Julia

Adieu, my dearest. Yoursyoursyours, | B RUSH From, my very dear girl, your affectionate husband, | B RUSH Adieu. A kiss for Jack [their 1st son], and love as usual. | B RUSH Adieu. Love as usual. Kiss Jack for me. Yours sincerely, | B RUSH Adieu. Love as usual, and an hundred kisses for our dearest Jack. I am, my dear Julia, yoursyours, | B RUSH Love and kisses as usual. Yoursyoursyours, | B RUSH you lay constantly within the heart of your ever affectionate, | B RUSH Adieu. Yours, my better half, | BENJN RUSH With love to all the family of Morven, I am, my dearest Julia, yours, | B RUSH [not signed] Adieu. With love to your Mama, sisters, and brothers, and to our dear children, I am your affectionate husband, | B: RUSH With love as usual, I am, my dear Julia, yours affectionately, | BENJN RUSH Adieu, thou dear right side of my heart. With all my passions, infirmities, and enemies, I know you believe that [several words were cut out with the signature] Adieu. Think of me often, and be assured of the steady affection of yours [signature cut out] With love to both families and to all the children, I am, my dear Julia, yours very affectionately, | BENJN: RUSH [Complimentary close and signature cut out] Yours, with love to all, | BENJN RUSH A sudden call to visit a dying patient obliges me to conclude. | B RUSH With love as usual, I am, my dear Julia, yours affectionately, | BENJN RUSH The family continue well, and none of them more so than yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. From your sincere and affectionate | BENJN RUSH Adieu. From, my dear Julia, yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH From your affectionate | BENJN RUSH Adieuwith love to I am, my dear Julia, your faithful and affectionate | BENJN RUSH With love as usual, I am, my dear Julia, yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH From yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. | BENJN RUSH Adieu again. Yoursyoursyours, | BENJN RUSH Your ever affectionate | BENJN RUSH [Not signed] Adieu. Continue to love and pray for your affectionate friend, | BENJN RUSH Again adieu. From, my dear Julia, your ever affectionate | BENJN RUSH Adieu. Adieu. Yours affectionately, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. With love as usual, I am, my dear Julia, yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Continue not only to pray for, but to give thanks for, my dear Julia, your ever affectionate | BENJN RUSH

98

(43) (44) (45) (46)

My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia

(47) My dear Julia (48) My dear Julia (49) My dear Julia (50) My dear Julia (51) My dear Julia (52) My dear Julia (53) (54) (55) (56) My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia

(57) My dear Julia (58) My dear Julia (59) My dear Julia (60) (61) (62) (63) My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia

(64) My dear Julia (65) My dear Julia (66) My dear Julia (67) My dear Julia (68) My dear Julia (69) My dear Julia (70) My dear Julia (71) My dear Julia (72) My dear Julia (73) My dear Julia (74) My dear Julia (75) (76) (77) (78) (79) My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia My dear Julia

Yoursyoursyours, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. Love as usual. Yours very affectionately, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. Love as usual. Yours most affectionately, | BENJN RUSH There [i.e NewArk] patiently and humbly wait for the deliverance of our city and the life and health of your affectionate husband, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. Yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Love as usual. Yoursyours, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. Love as usual. I am, my dear Julia, yours affectionately, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. With love as usual, I am yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. Continue to pray for us, and for none more earnestly than your ever faithful friend, | BENJN RUSH With love as usual, I am, my dear Julia, yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. Love as usual. Yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. Love as usual. Yours affectionately, | BENJN RUSH [portion of text and signature torn off] Adieu. With love as usual, I am, my dear, dear Julia, yours very affectionately, | BENJN RUSH Love as usual. Yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Adieu once more. From your affectionate [signature cut out] Adieu my dear Julia. Love to all friends. Yours very affectionately, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. Love to all the family. Yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Again adieu. Yours very affectionately, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. From, my dear Julia, yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. With love to each of the family and the dear children, I am, my dear Julia, your ever affectionate | BENJN RUSH With love as usual, I am, my dear Julia, your ever affectionate | BENJN RUSH Adieu, my dear Julia. From your ever affectionate | BENJN RUSH Adieu, my dear Julia. Continue to pray for your ever affectionate | BENJN RUSH Adieu. With much love as usual to all friends, I am, my dear Julia, your sincere [a word of two plus signature are cut out] Adieu, my dear friend. My best love to all friends. From your sincere and affectionate friend, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. Yours most affectionately, | BENJN RUSH and that I am, with much love to and to each of the children, your sincere and affectionate | BENJN RUSH Adieu. With love to all surrounding friends, I am, my dear Julia, yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. Yours affectionately, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. From yours affectionately, | BENJN RUSH With love to all our Princeton friends and to each of the children, I am, my dear Julia, your ever faithful friend, | BENJN RUSH Adieu from yours, with usual love and sincerity, | BENJN RUSH With love as usual, I am ever yours, | BENJN RUSH Adieu, my dear friend. From yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Love as usual. Yoursyoursyours, | BENJN RUSH With love as usual, I am yours most affectionately, | BENJN RUSH

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(80) My dear Julia (81) My dear Julia (82) My dear Julia (83) My dear Julia (84) My dear Julia (85) My dearest Julia 1798(86) My dearest Julia (87) My dear Julia (88) My dearest Julia

Adieu. Love as usual. Yours sincerely and affectionately, | BENJN RUSH My mother joins in much love to you and the children and all friends. [signature cut away] From your sincere friend, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. Love as usual. Yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. My tenderest love to all the family. Yoursyoursyours, my faithful Julia, | BENJN RUSH Kiss Ben. Butahwho will kiss my dear Julia? Her most affectionate husband, | BENJN RUSH All the family in hut57 join in love to you and all our dear children and friends with your affectionately, | BENJN RUSH Adieu.All here join in love to you. Richd. is useful to me in putting up medicines for my patients. Love as usual. | BENJN RUSH With love to all your brothers family, I am ever yours, | BENJN RUSH

Table 3.3: salutations and conclusions in Rushs letters to John Adams, 1777-1790 Letter Salutation Conclusion 1777 (1) Dear Sir Adieu, my dear friend. May you long live to enjoy the fruits of your disinterested love to mankind! Yours, | B: RUSH (2) Dear Sir Adieu, my dear friend. May you never sleep sound till you project and execute something to extricate and save your country. My love to . Yours, &c., | B: RUSH (3) Dear Sir Adieu. Yours sincerely, | B: RUSH (4) My dear Friend God bless you! Yours sincerely, | B RUSH (5) Dear Sir Adieu, my dear friend. Best compliments to . Should you think it worth while to read any parts of this letter to any of them, it will perhaps give some weight to them if you conceal the name of your friend and humble servant, | B: RUSH 1778 (6) Dear Sir Once more adieu. Yoursyoursyours, | B: RUSH (7) My dear Sir Adieu. A safe and successful voyage to you! Yoursyoursyours, | B: RUSH 1779 (8) My dear Sir With best compliments to Mrs. Adams, I am, my dear sir, your sincere and affectionate friend, | BENJN RUSH (9) My dear Friend A patient calls for me in a hurry, and obliges me to conclude your most affectionate friend and humble servant, | BENJN RUSH (10) My dear Friend With most respectful compliments to Mrs. Adams, in which my dear Mrs. Rush joins, I am, my dear sir, yoursyoursyours, | B RUSH 1780(11) My dear Friend Adieu. Compliments to Mr. Dana. Yoursyoursyours, | BENJN RUSH (12) Dear Sir Adieu. From, my dear friend, yours most sincerely, | BENJN RUSH (13) My dear Friend Adieu. From your most affectionate humble servant, | BENJN RUSH (14) Dear Sir With respectful compliments to Mr. Dana, I am, my dear sir, yours most affectionately, | BENJN RUSH 1781(15) My dear Sir Adieu, my dear friend. Yours most sincerely and respectfully, | BENJN RUSH 1788(16) Dear Sir With every possible mark of respect and esteem, I am, dear sir, your affectionate old friend and humble servant, | BENJN RUSH

57

I.e. Sydenham, Rushs summer retreat (Butterfield, 1951: 8 04n2).

100

1789(17) My dear Friend

(18) My dear Friend (19) My dear Friend (20) Dear Sir

(21) Dear Sir (22) Dear Sir (23) My dear Friend

1790(24) Dear Sir (25) Dear Sir

(26) Dear Sir

With sincere wishes for the increase of your domestic happiness and public usefulness, I am, my dear friend, yours affectionately, | BENJN RUSH Adieu, my dear friend. From yours very sincerely, | BENJN RUSH With great respect and sincere regard, I am, dear sir, your affectionate and tried old friend, | BENJN RUSH To this detail of my principles I have only to add one feeling, and that is that I am, with as much affection and respect as I was in 1775 (notwithstanding our present contrariety of sentiment upon some subjects), your sincere friend and humble servant, | BENJN RUSH I am, dear sir, with great regard, your affectionate and steady friend, | BENJN RUSH In a few days I shall reply to other parts of your letter. From, dear sir, yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH I have only to beg your pardon for the length of this letter, and to assure you that no difference of sentiment upon any subject can alter the respect and regard with which I am, my dear sir, your sincere friend, | BENJN: RUSH With great regard I continue, dear sir, yours very affectionately and sincerely, | BENJN: RUSH I have only now to beg your pardon for the length of this letter, and to request you to destroy all that part of it which relates the private history of, my dear sir, yours very affectionately, | BENJN: RUSH Adieu. Yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH

Table 3.4: salutations and conclusions in Rushs letters to John Coakley Lettsom, 1783-1793 Letter Salutation Conclusion 1783 (1) Dear Sir With great respect for your useful and eminent character, I am, dear sir, your sincere and affectionate friend, | BENJ. RUSH 1785 (2) Dear Sir Your assured friend and humble servant, | B. RUSH 1786 (3) Dear Sir Adieu. Yours sincerely, | BENJN: RUSH 1787 (4) Dear Sir Yours sincerely, | BENJAMIN RUSH (5) Dear Sir With great respect, I am, dear sir, your sincere friend and humble servant, | BENJN: RUSH 1788 (6) Dear Sir With great respect for your zeal and activity in the business of the Abolition Society in London, I am, dear sir, your affectionate friend and humble servant, | BENJAMIN RUSH (7) Dear Sir I am, dear sir, your affectionate friend, | BENJAMIN RUSH 1789 (8) Dear Sir I am, &c., | BENJAMIN RUSH 1790 (9) Dear Sir This task [i.e. writing a eulogy for Dr Cullen] has unfortunately fallen upon, dear sir, your sincere friend, | BENJ. RUSH 1793(10) Dear Sir I am, &c., | BENJAMIN RUSH Table 3.5: salutations and conclusions in Rushs letters to John Montgomery, 1782-1799 Letter Salutation Conclusion 1782 (1) Dear Sir With compliments to Colonel Magaw, I am, my dear sir, your sincere friend and humble servant, | BENJN: RUSH (2) My dear Friend Dont forget the child of our affections, John and Marys College.58 Adieu. Yours sincerely, | B: RUSH 1783 (3) Dear Sir Yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH (4) My dear Sir Adieu. Remember anodynes, not blisters, are the proper remedies for Pennsylvania in the present stage of her disorder.Yours
58

Later called Dickinson College

101

(5) (6) 1784 (7) (8)

Dear Sir My dear Friend Dear Sir Dear Sir

(9) My dear Friend 1785(10) Dear Sir (11) Dear Sir

(12) Dear Sir (13) Dear Sir

(14) Dear Sir (15) Dear Sir (16) My dear Sir (17) Dear Sir 1786(18) Dear Sir

(19) 1787(20) (21) 1788(22) 1789(23) 1797(24) 1799(25)

Dear Sir Dear Sir Dear Sir Dear Sir My dear Sir My dear old Friend My dear Friend

sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Yours sincerely, | B RUSH Adieu. Compliments to . Yours sincerely, | BENJN: RUSH Adieu. Yoursyours, | BENJN RUSH With most respectful compliments to the gentlemen of our board in Carlisle, I am, dear sir, yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. Yours, &c., | BENJN RUSH Adieu. Yoursyours, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. O! VirtueVirtue! Who would not follow the blindfold! With compliments to your worthy pastor, as also to all our friends, I am, dear sir, yours sincerely, | B RUSH Adieu. Yours sincerely, | B RUSH Mrs. Rush joins in compliments to the ladies of your family with a high sense of their politeness to her, with, dear sir, yours sincerely, | B RUSH Adieu. Compliments to your family. | B RUSH With compliments to your family, in which Mrs. Rush joins, I am, dear sir, yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Adieu. Yours, &c., | B RUSH Adieu. Yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Compliments to Dr. Davidson.He has not a better friend nor a warmer advocate in all companies in our board, nor in our city, than yours sincerely, | B RUSH Adieu. Yours sincerely, | B: RUSH Adieu. Yours sincerely, | B RUSH Adieu. Yours sincerely, | B: RUSH Adieu. Yours sincerely, | BENJN: RUSH Adieu. Yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Adieu, my dear friend. From yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH Adieu, my dear friend. From yours very affectionately, | BENJN: RUSH

Table 3.6: salutations and conclusions in Rushs letters to Ebenezer Hazard, 1762-1768 Letter Salutation Conclusion 1762 (1) My dear Ebenezer May Happiness, Peace, and Prosperity attend you. I bid you adieu and am respectfully and humbly yours, | BENJAMIN RUSH 1764 (2) My dear old Friend Mrs. Flint and Samey Treat join their cordial respects with, dear sir, your affectionate friend and humble servant, | BENJA: RUSH (3) My dear Sir Mrs. Flint and your sisters are well and desire to be remembered to you and your family. I am yours affectionately, | BENJA RUSH 1765 (4) My very dear Sir, Adieu, | BENJA RUSH (5) Dear Sir [Ending with a quote from Youngs The Complaint (see to Mrs Rush as well)]. I am, my dearest Ebenezer, yours, &c., | BENJAMIN RUSH (6) Dear Sir Haste thy revolution, Summer and come, thou pleasing season when I shall be blest with an interview with my good friend Ebenezer. Adieu, | BENJAMIN RUSH (7) Dear Sir Adieu. Yours, | BENJAMIN RUSH (8) Dear Sir Adieu, dear Ebenezer. Inform me of all your political occurrences, and tell me, have you made a peace offering of Governor Colden to appease the indignation of your citizens? My Love to dear Dr. Treat. | BENJAMIN RUSH (9) My dearest Adieu. My love to Dr. Treat. Pray write often, very often, every

102

Ebenezer (10) Dear Sir

1766 (11) Dear Sir (12) My dear Sir 1768 (13) My dear Sir (14) My dear Sir

day, to your sincere friend and humble servant, | BENJAMIN RUSH Your sister Polly and other relations are well. I am, my dear friend, your most affectionate, humble servant, | BENJAMIN RUSH Adieu, my dear friend, adieu. | BENJAMIN RUSH Adieu. | BENJA: RUSH From, my dear sir, your most affectionate friend and humble servant, | BEN: RUSH You see my paper obliges me to conclude myself, as usual, yours most affectionately, | B: RUSH

Table 3.7: salutations and conclusions in Rushs letters to Granville Sharp until 1801 Letter Salutation Conclusion 1773 (1) Sir With esteem I am sir with great respect | your | most | obedient | humble | servant | Benjamin Rush. (2) Sir I am Sir with the highest esteem for your character | your | most | obedient | humble | servant | B. Rush. 1774 (3) Dear Sir With sincere wishes for your health and happiness I am dear Sir with the utmost respect your sincere friend and | most | obedient | humble | servant | B: Rush (4) Dear Sir Yours affectionatelyB: Rush. (5) Dear Sir Adieumy dear friend. [quotation of unknown source included] | I am yours [sic] most affectionately | B Rush (6) Dear Sir I am dear Sir | your affectionate | humble | servant | B. Rush 1783 (7) Dear Sir With great respect I am dear Sir your sincere friend and | humble | servant | Benjn Rush (8) My dear Friend With great respect and the sincerest friendship, I am my dear Sir your most | obedient and | humble | servant | Benjn Rush 1784 (9) Dear Sir With great regard I am dear Sir your truly affectionate | humble | servant | Benjn Rush 1785 (10) Dear Sir Adieu . If you have collected Captain Smiththe bearer of this letterwill take charge of them and convey them to dear Sir yours | sincerely Benjn Rush. 1786 (11) Dear Sir Adieu. Dr Hall joins in respectful compliments to you with dear Sir your sincere friend, and | humble servant | (signed) Benjn Rush 59 1791(12) Dear Sir From, my dear friend, your affectionate fellow laborer and sincere friend and servant, | Benjamin Rush 1797 13) Dear Sir With great regard I am dear Sir your sincere old friend | Benjn Rush 1799 (14) Dear Sir From my dear friend, your brother in the Gospel of our common Lord and Saviour | Benjn Rush Table 3.8: salutations and conclusions in Sharps letters to Benjamin Rush until 1801 Letter Salutation Conclusion 1774 (S1) Dear Sir I remain with great esteem, Dear Sir | Your much obliged humble Servant | Granville Sharp 1783 (S2) Dear Sir I remain with great esteem, Dear Sir | Your affectionate friend and humble Servant | Granville Sharp 1784 (S3) Dear Sir I remain with great esteem | Dear Sir | Your much obliged humble Servant | Granville Sharp
59

In Butterfield (ed. 1951: 608-09).

103

1785 (S4) Dear Sir

I remain with great esteem, Dear Sir | Your obliged humble Servant | Granville Sharp

Table 3.9: salutations and conclusions in Rushs letters to Noah Webster, 1788-1800 Letter Salutation Conclusion 1788 (1) Dear Sir They [Rushs wife and his pupils] join in best wishes for your prosperity, with, dear sir, yours sincerely, | BENJN: RUSH 1789 (2) Dear Sir Yours sincerely, | BENJN RUSH 1798 (3) [missing] Adieu. Yours sincerely. 1799 (4) Sir Adieu, | BENJN: RUSH 1800 (5) Dear Sir Adieu. Your fellow labourer and friend, | BENJN: RUSH

104

Appendix E: Eighteenth-century American letters from ARCHER In Table 3.10 below, I have registered all salutations and concluding sentences to the twentynine American letters, written in the second half of the eighteenth century, that were included in The Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers ARCHER in October 2005. This is excluding the letters sent by Benjamin Rush that are discussed in this thesis, which are listed in Appendix D. The letters from ARCHER are shown in alphabetical order of the writers last names.
Table 3.10: Salutations and conclusions to letters from ARCHER, 1750-1800 Letter Salutation Conclusion From Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, on 6 October 1766 (1) Dear Sister But tis dinner time, and I must bid you good by, may be I shall find time to add more than that I am your affectionate Sister, | Abigail Adams From Abigail Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, on 5 November 1775 (2) Dear Marcia Adieu my Friend. I hope soon to have the pleasure of seeing you at Braintree, and of a social Evening beside our fire. How happy should I esteem myself could the dear Friend of my Heart join us. I think I make a greater Sacrifice to the publick than I could by Gold and Silver, had I it to bestow. Does not Marcia join in this Sentiment with her | Portia From John Adams to Richard Cranch, on 2 September 1755 (3) Dear Sir To tell you a secret, I dont know how to conclude neatly without invoking assistance but as truth has an higher place in your esteem than any ingenious conceit, I shall please you, as well as my self, most by subscribing myself your affectionate Friend, | John Adams From John Adams to Zabdiel Adams, on 23 July 1763 (4) My old Friend I hope to see you soon at Braintree and am your assed. Friend & most hml. sert. | John Adams P.S. If you should not come soon to Braintree write me, - I am in great Haste. Hay, Corn, Barley, Law, Love, and Politicks, plague me to death, coming all together so in a Huddle. N.B. dont let this P.S. be seen by Girl nor Politician, nor heard of, by Either From Andrew Ellicott, a surveyor and astronomer and native born American, to his wife, on 3 October 1784 (5) My Dear I am My Dear Your Affe- [sic] | tionate Husband From Andrew Ellicott to his wife, on 17 February 1799 (6) My dear Girl My love to our connections and compliments to our friends. - May God preserve you and our dear children | is the devout prayer of your | Loving and affectionate | Husband From Andrew Ellicott to his wife, not dated (7) My Dear Sally I am My Dear Sally your | Affectionate Husband From Andrew Ellicott to Thomas Jefferson, not dated (8) Sir I am Sir | with much Esteem | Your real Friend | ANDw ELLICOTT From Benjamin Franklin to his wife Deborah Franklin, on 14 February 1765 (9) My dear Child I am, my dear Debby, your ever affectionate Husband | B FRANKLIN Love to Sally and our other Children. I have seen Amelia Evans. She complains that Sally does not write to her. I have wrote to Messrs Thomas and Samuel Wharton per Capt. McPharson, under Care of Mr. Meredith From Benjamin Franklin to David Hall, on 14 September 1765

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I can now only add that I am as ever Yours affectionately | B FRANKLIN From Andrew Jackson to a man named Daniel Smith, on 13 February 1789 (11) Sir this Sir from your Very Humble servant, | Andrew Jackson From Andrew Jackson to his wife Rachel Jackson, on 9 May 1796 (12) My Dearest Heart May the great I am bless and protect you until that happy and wished for moment arrives when I am restored to your sweet embrace which is the Nightly prayer of your affectionate husband, | Andrew Jackson From Andrew Jackson to a man named Robert Hays, on 2 November 1797 (13) Dr. Col I will Expect to hear from you by the first post and Every post. My respects to Mrs. Hays and believe me to be with Esteem your friend Sincerely | Andrew Jackson From Thomas Jefferson to Patsy Jefferson, his 11-year-old daughter, on 22 December 1783 (14) My dear Patsy I am my Dear Patsy | Yours sincerely & affectionately | Th: Jefferson From Thomas Jefferson to his brother Randolph Jefferson, on 11 January 1789 (15) Dear Brother Remember me affectionately to my sister, joining my daughters therein, who present their affectionate duty to you also: and accept ;yourself assurances of the sincere attachment and esteem of Dear brother Your's [sic] affectionately, Th: Jefferson From Thomas Jefferson to his brother (unnamed), on 25 September 1792 (16) Dear Brother My love to my sister, and I am dear brother | Yours affectionately | Th: Jefferson From Rufus King to a Dr. Southgate, on 1 July 1776 (17) My Dear Friend: With greatest sincerity your's, [sic] | R. K. From Rufus King to someone named E. Gerry, on 8 May 1785 (18) Dear Gerry Adieu your real friend, | R. KING From Rufus King to Dr. Southgate, on 7 June 1789 (19) R.K. From Mercy Otis Warren to Abigail Adams, on 25 July 1773 (20) Dear Mrs. Adams I subscribe with Great regard both his [=Mr Adams] & your unfeigned Friend & Humble servant, | Mercy Warren From a woman named Eunice Paine to Abigail Adams, on 14 May 1775 (21) Dear Portia Give my love to all of them and accept the sincerest Affection from your Obliged & Evermindfull | Servt., Silvia From Eunice Paine to Abigail Adams, on 4 June 1775 (22) My Dear Portia My Love & Duty to All your Good friends. This from your Rusticated | Silvia From John Rowe, a Boston merchant, to a Mrs Mary Tolcher, on 23 February 1760 (23): Dear Sister Pray give my Compliments to your Husband & I remain with Esteem, Dear Sister, your very affectionate Brother From John Rowe to his uncle, on 5 May 1760 (24) Hond Sir in the meantime please to accept of my best Regards & give my compliments to my Aunt & Cousins. I Remain, Hond Sir | Your affectionate Kinsman | & very hume Servt | JOHN ROWE From John Rowe to a Francis Robins, Esquire, Exeter, on 30 January 1761 (25) Dr Bror Let me now tell you that I am very well as is Mrs Rowe & both of us Joyne in hearty Wishes for Your own & Your Family's health & prosperity & that I Remain Your Sincere & affectionate Bror & most hum Servt | JOHN ROWE From Elizabeth Smith to her sister Abigail Adams, on 8 February 1774 (26) My Dear Sister Your Affectionate Sister, | Betsy Smith From George Washington to Tobias Lear, Washington's secretary, on 12 November 1790

Dear Mr Hall

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I shall add no more at this time - the house being full of Company than our best wishes to you and Mrs. Lear - and that | I am Yr. Affecte From George Washington to a man named William Pearce, on 27 October 1793 (28) Mr. Pearce I am Your friend &ct | Go. WASHINGTON From George Washington to a man named James McHenry, on 14 August 1797 (29) Dear Sir Mrs. Washington & Miss Custis thanks you for your kind remembrance of them, and join with me in best regards for Mrs. McHenry and yourself and family. - With much truth I am | Your sincere friend and | affectionate Servant | G. WASHINGTON P. S. I shall rely on you to present the Coolers in my name to the Gentlemen above named. + I think there are three of them.

Dear Sir

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