Tea at Trianon: A Journey to Ohio's Past

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, June 9, 2019

A Journey to Ohio's Past

From The Telegraph:

As McCullough notes in his book, Marietta was named for royalty, Marie Antoinette of France. But it was established under the more egalitarian principles of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which Manasseh Cutler lobbied for. The ordinance called for religious freedom, trial by jury, the encouragement of education and, most dramatically, a ban on slavery at a time when all the original 13 colonies permitted it. Ephraim Cutler was later a local delegate who left his sick bed and cast a key vote that ensured blacks would have full rights in Ohio's constitution. "We don't know precisely how he got there," McCullough says. "One story is he was carried in on a stretcher. I couldn't confirm that but anyway he got there, gave a speech, sick as he was, and cast his vote."

McCullough has now written two books, "The Pioneers" and "The Wright Brothers," about Ohio's past, and he feels a strong attachment to the state that neighbors his native Pennsylvania. He notes that some of the country's most prominent adventurer-explorers come from Ohio: the Wrights, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong. McCullough himself had an Ohio adventure, an unexpected one, when years ago he shared a ride in Glenn's plane while working on a magazine piece about him. (Read more.)