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On the Western Reserve...
On the Western Reserve...
Item # 708178
May 16, 1800
GAZETTE OF THE UNITED STATES & PHILADELPHIA DAILY ADVERTISER, May 16, 1800 The front page has two advertisements for "A Poem" in memory of the late President George Washington who died jest a few months earlier.
Page 2 begins with a very notable, full column "Act, to Authorize the President...to Accept for the United States, a Cession of Jurisdiction of the Territory west of Pennsylvania, Commonly called the Western Reserve of Connecticut." It is signed in type by John Adams as President, and Thomas Jefferson as Vice President.
Four pages, good condition.
AI notes: In 1800, the death of George Washington inspired elegiac poetry that helped define his posthumous image, including works by Richard Alsop and John Blair Linn, each reflecting a different strand of early American thought. Alsop, a member of the Hartford Wits, cast Washington in a classical republican mold, portraying him as a modern Cincinnatus whose greatness lay not in conquest but in his voluntary surrender of power, using elevated language and Greco-Roman allusions to fix him as the ideal citizen-leader for the new republic. By contrast, John Blair Linn, a young Presbyterian minister, offered a more emotional and religious response in “Valerian; a Narrative Poem” (1800), where Washington’s death is treated as a moment of national trial and divine significance, presenting him as both the nation’s father and an instrument of Providence whose moral example must guide America’s future. Together, these poems show how Washington’s death was quickly transformed into a unifying civic event, blending classical virtue and Christian morality to elevate him from revered leader to enduring national symbol.
Category: Pre-Civil War
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