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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 April 2015
The commemoration of the Battle of Saratoga (1777) a century after the pivotal Revolutionary victory illuminates the imbrication of public and personal memory in the politics of late nineteenth-century patriotic commemoration. The fiscal challenges faced by the white elites who stewarded the project and the compromises they were forced to make expose the uncertainties of public commemorative projects, a theme overlooked in foundational scholarship on patriotic public memory. Given the frequent failure of monument projects in an era before governments led heritage planning, the significance of individuals to the fulfillment of ambitions warrants greater consideration. Using a microhistorical approach, this paper analyzes the Saratoga Monument Board members’ ambitions, promotional strategies, and improvisations, prompted in part by an issue unique to this Battle: how to deal with Benedict Arnold's significant role in the Americans’ victory over the English? The Board's sole female trustee, Ellen Hardin Walworth, confronted a similar challenge: how to remake her life after surviving a scandalous domestic tragedy? The interweaving of their stories and strategies highlights the ways in which the cultivation of Revolutionary memory served both political and personal attempts at reconstruction without fully managing to resolve the conflicted past. Thus, scholars must factor individuals’ unique connections to the past into the broader structural characteristics of patriotic commemoration in histories of public memory and its orchestration.
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23 The federal government did take an early lead in the preservation of Civil War graves. See Piehler, Remembering War, 49–52.
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27 For an excellent example of this approach applied to the founders of the Daughters of the American Revolution, see Woden S. Teachout, “Founding Daughters” in “Forging Memory: Hereditary Societies, Patriotism, and the American Past, 1876–1898” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2003), 81–111.
28 According to Kirk Savage, historical monuments are inherently conservative because they attempt to “plunge” events “into a past secured against the vicissitudes of the present”; Savage, Standing Soldiers, 4.
29 The State officially assumed control of the site in 1897, and in 1980 the National Park Service assumed responsibility for the site and its interpretation. The monument is in the village of Victory, on the outskirts of Schuylerville. For a virtual tour see “Saratoga Monument Virtual Tour,” www.nps.gov/sara/photosmultimedia/saratoga-monument-virtual-tour.htm (accessed Sep. 2, 2011).
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41 Stone, History of the Saratoga Monument Association, 9. The Washington Monument fell into bankruptcy in 1854, partly because of the Society's takeover by the nativist Know Nothing Party in 1853. Work did not resume until 1877; Savage, Monument Wars, 76–77.
42 Petition to the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York, quoted in Stone, History of the Saratoga Monument Association, 10.
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46 Stone, Memoir of the Centennial Celebration, 22.
47 Sylvester, History of Saratoga County, 122–24. Stevens had just founded the Sons of the Revolution in 1876, frustrated that he could not become a member of the Society of the Cincinnati because his father was not an eldest son. “History of the Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York,” http://frauncestavernmuseum.org/history-and-education/history-of-srny/ (accessed Aug. 10, 2013).
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50 Stone claimed that “persons whose experience in large gatherings of a like nature rendered them competent judges” had provided the attendance estimate; Stone, Memoir of the Centennial Celebration, 8.
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62 Kammen, Mystic Chords, 318.
63 “Pine Grove,” on the main street of Saratoga Springs, was named by Chancellor Walworth. The couple had lived there with their parents, children, and an African American maid, Dolly Smith. Ellen Walworth called her school the Walworth Academy and her boarding home advertised as The Walworth Mansion; O'Brien, The Fall of the House of Walworth, 278.
64 Piehler, Remembering War, 47–48.
65 Davies, Patriotism on Parade, 45–46; Teachout, “Forging Memory,” 10–11; Foner, Reconstruction, 410.
66 Ellen Walworth, Private Journal, July 18, 1880, Walworth Memorial Museum and Archives (hereafter Walworth Journal).
67 Hardin was appointed State's Attorney in 1832, served in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1836 to 1842, and was elected a Whig congressman from 1843 to 1845. A colonel in the state militia, he recruited a volunteer regiment in the Mexican-American War. On Feb. 23, 1847, he was killed in the Battle of Buena Vista; Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774–1949 (Washington, 1950), 1265Google Scholar.
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75 Walworth sued for divorce in Jan. 1871, and the decree of separation was granted four months later; Superior Court, New York County, Ellen H. Walworth v. Mansfield T. Walworth, New York City Municipal Archives.
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77 New York Herald, June 28, 1873, 4; New York Times, June 26, 1873, 2.
78 “Another Sentimental Murder,” Brooklyn Eagle, June 4, 1873.
79 “Discriminating Justice,” Christian Advocate (New York), Aug. 7, 1873.
80 Auburn Daily Bulletin, Aug. 2, 1877.
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82 Walworth Journal, Mar. 14, 1880.
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84 Kammen, Mystic Chords, 12. Kammen periodizes this phase as 1870 to 1915.
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104 An adulatory biography, written by a member of the DAR, posits a romantic relationship between Markham and Walworth; Simkovich, Patricia Joy, Indomitable Spirit: The Life of Ellen Hardin Walworth (Washington, 1990), 218–19Google Scholar.
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106 Ellen Walworth, “The Battles of Saratoga—Burgoyne and the Northern Campaign” in Walworth, Saratoga, 28. On battlefield tourism see Seaton, Anthony V., “Guided by the Dark: From Thanatopsis to Thanatourism,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 2 (1996): 234–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Seaton, “War and Thanatourism: Waterloo, 1815–1914,” Annals of Tourism Research 26 (1999): 130–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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109 Seven of the markers (also designed by Markham) were pictured in the 1891 edition of Walworth's Guide.
110 Walworth, Battles of Saratoga, preface, n.p.
111 Walworth, Battles of Saratoga, 99. Martin D. Hardin (1837–1923) was a brigadier general in the Union Army and subsequently a lawyer; “Hardin, Martin, D.,” http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=H000186 (accessed Aug. 20, 2013).
112 Samuel S. Cox, “Address to the House of Representatives,” Feb., 1884, in Walworth, Saratoga, 89.
113 Giles Slocum to William Stone, June 27, 1881, in Walworth, Battles of Saratoga, 64–65. Slocum was a Michigan representative on the Association, a former Saratogian, and a direct descendent of a volunteer in the Revolutionary war.
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126 White to SMA Executive member, P. C. Ford, May 5, 1884, in Walworth, Battles of Saratoga, 76. White (1832–1918) became the AHA's first president in 1884, after serving as the first president of Cornell University.
127 Walworth, Battles of Saratoga, 82. The official title of the bas-relief was “Wounding of Arnold.”
128 The Joint Committee on the Library was officially charged to consider the statuary and art of the capitol, but it also considered funding requests for the Revolution's commemoration by the early 1880s. The appropriation of $40,000 was approved by the SMA's Feb. 1885 meeting. Walworth, Battles of Saratoga, 80.
129 Allaben, John Watts de Peyster, 22.
130 Allaben, John Watts de Peyster, preface.
131 Walworth, Battles of Saratoga, 98–99.
132 Walworth, Battles of Saratoga, 107.
133 Stone, Visits to the Saratoga Battle-Grounds, 10.
134 Walworth, Battles of Saratoga, 113.
135 Stone, Memoir of the Centennial Celebration, 18.
136 Savage notes that slavery's abolition was more difficult to represent sculpturally than the violence of slavery; Savage, Standing Soldiers, 65.
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