A Nation Rising (29 page)

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In a curious bit of American lore, Theodosia Burr and Alston are said to be the first couple to have honeymooned in Niagara Falls.

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Often shortened to “Republican” at the time, this party was actually the forerunner of the modern Democratic Party, the name taken in 1828 during the era of Andrew Jackson. The first Democratic national convention was held in 1832.

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A grandson of Edwards's, Timothy Dwight, would become the president of Yale in 1795. An influential theologian, Dwight was also a prominent Federalist Party leader. He was at the forefront of what would become known as the “Second Great Awakening” at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

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In another delicious historical connection, one of Shippen's young relatives, Peggy Shippen, would later become the second Mrs. Benedict Arnold, the teenage wife who was totally complicit in Arnold's betrayal of the patriot cause.

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Uncle Timothy Edwards later became a military contractor during the Revolution and a successful land speculator after the war.

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Under the original Constitution, United States senators were elected by state legislatures. In April 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment, which provided for direct election of senators by popular vote, was ratified.

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To avoid repeating such an outcome, the Twelfth Amendment was proposed in 1803 and quickly ratified in 1804. It called for separate elections of the president and vice president.

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The modern meaning of “filibuster” is talking nonstop to block legislation in the Senate.

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The first president to die in office, Harrison was also the grandfather of Benjamin Harrison, the twenty-third President.

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Derived from the same word as “barracks,” “barracoon” also entered the American vernacular. Although some people think that the slur “coon” for blacks was derived from the word “raccoon,” barracoon is the more likely origin.

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The island is today divided between the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

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Both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis (later president of the Confederacy) served during the Black Hawk War.

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Gray's interviews were published as
The Confessions of Nat Turner
, the same title used by the novelist William Styron for his fictionalized version of these events, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1967.

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The first John Cadwalader arrived in the Pennsylvania colony with William Penn. His grandson, General John Cadwalader, was a hero of the American Revolution whose epitaph was composed by Thomas Paine: “His early and inflexible patriotism will endear his memory to all true friends of the American Revolution. It may with strictest justice be said of him, that he possessed a heart incapable of deceiving. His manners were formed on the nicest sense of honor and the whole tenor of his life was governed by this principle.” That general's grandson, John Cadwalader, who helped suppress the Bible Riots, was also a general, and a prominent attorney.

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Junípero Serra is still highly regarded in California history, a virtual icon of the Spanish colonial era; his statues stand in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park and in the U.S. Capitol. In 1987, Serra was beatified by Pope John Paul II, the second of three steps necessary for eventual sainthood. Many Indians and academics condemned the decision, pointing to the conditions of mission life, equivalent in some ways to life in a concentration camp; these critics also noted Serra's own justification of beating the Indians as necessary for their religious instruction and obedience.

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A few years later in 1852, that claim might rightfully belong to Harriet Beecher Stowe, after
Uncle Tom's Cabin
was published.

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Thomas Hart Benton, the senator, was the great-uncle of another notable American by that name, the painter and muralist Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975), best known for his scenes of everyday life in the Midwest.