www.TheAmericanMuseum.org

Introduction

The American Museum was founded in Philadelphia by Mathew Carey. The first issue came off the press in 1787 under its original full title, The American Museum, or Repository, of Ancient and Modern Fugitive Pieces &c., Prose and Poetical. In the fourth year of publication, Carey changed the title to The American Museum, or, Universal Magazine, Containing Essays on Agriculture, Commerce, Manufactures, Politics, Morals, and Manners. The initial run of the magazine spanned 72 consecutive monthly issues, or "numbers", as Carey referred to them. The last number in this initial run was issued in December, 1792. Carey resurrected the magazine five years later, publishing what would be the final 12 issues under his editorship, under the title The American Museum: or, Annual Register of Fugitive Pieces, Ancient and Modern, for the Year 1798.

After an almost 211-year hiatus, we resume publication of the magazine with the April, 2009, edition. It will again be published monthly, and will only appear online. The purpose of the magazine is to provide well written material that is informative, interesting, thought-provoking, and enjoyable. Each number will contain no more than 15 pieces that can be read at leisure over the course of the month. The magazine has no theme or agenda other than to furnish stimulating words and images for thoughtful minds. Mathew Carey, at age 73, wrote his autobiography in the form of 26 letters. These letters were printed by Carey's friend, Park Benjamin, in the New-England Magazine, over the course of the years 1833 and 1834. In addition to the articles reprinted in this magazine, the letters will also be printed seriatim here, beginning with the first letter, in the April, 2009, edition. The letters give an interesting perspective on some of the history of the newly independent and recently organized United States of America.

I toyed with the idea of restarting the magazine, on and off, for about a decade, and now time and circumstance permit the effort. The first step was to teach myself to build a website. I read the 930 pages of the eight-books-in-one tome written by Andy Harris, HTML, XHTML, and CSS for Dummies (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc.; 2008), and Simon Collison's Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional (Berkeley, CA: Apress; 2006). Both men, in addition to being good writers with strong knowledge of their subjects, have the ability to convey clearly that knowledge to readers. Each man also drives home the proposition that web-page markup should be done in compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines set out by the Web Accessibility Initiative. Adhering to these design standards insures that the content of websites can be perceived by people with visual disabilities.

I used Matthew James Taylor's (freely given) code for a three-column-with-header-and-footer liquid-layout web page with percentage widths as a model for this site. This truly elegant and beautiful design (nicknamed "The Holy Grail") is accomplished in conformity with all W.C.A. guidelines, and is fully cross-browser and i-phone compatible. And it was done without CSS or JavaScript hacks. (I think I know enough about the subject to say these are good things.) I consulted with Boutell.com in Philadelphia and XHTML4U in Sydney for answers to specific questions. Both companies fashioned elegant solutions to specific problems that I had encountered, and also were generous in offering additional advice that turned out to be quite valuable.

I spent a lot of time experimenting with colors, with the intention of making the site as easy on the eyes as possible. I also tried out various typeface sizes and line-height dimensions, with the same goal, and hope the combination I settled on is pleasing. The left and right columns are reserved solely for navigation links, and the center column will contain only substantive content. No advertisements will be set in those places so the eyes and mind are not distracted from the words. In fact, we won't have any advertising for the first few issues, and when we do accept offers to showcase products and services, they will be featured on their own dedicated pages.

Historians have had a difficult time in determining why and how Mathew Carey selected the articles that he published in the original magazine. Most suggest that the range simply cannot be properly characterized. I suspect that Carey published what was interesting to him, and there was little that did not at some time in his life catch his interest. At the beginning of his autobiography, Carey declares as his own principle the words of the Roman writer, Terence: "I am a human being. I consider nothing human irrelevant to me." I will publish, in this modern version of the magazine, what is interesting to me, in high hope that it also interests you.

Carey described his magazine as a repository for fugitive pieces. By his use of the word 'fugitive,' I believe he meant that, because of the degradable and evanescent nature of the paper on which the articles were printed, they would eventually be lost for all time if not reprinted and bound in his magazine. In this modern world, the word 'fugitive' has the same meaning, but for a fundamentally different reason. We have the technological means to preserve the written word perfectly for thousands of years. However, the sheer number of words produced now in contrast to that of Carey's time renders it impossible for a person today to read even a tiny fraction of them.

In the inaugural issue of 1787, Carey reprinted Thomas Paine's pamphlet, Common Sense. Several papers of The Federalist first appeared in circulation in editions of The American Museum, and the proposed Constitution of the United States was (by two days) first published in its pages. The text of the speech given by George Washington to the Congress of the United States [beginning the tradition of the "State of the Union" address] was printed in 1790. Contributors to the magazine included George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Rush, Noah Webster, and Thomas Jefferson. Carey also published literary selections and poetry from, among many others, Francis Hopkinson, Philip Freneau, David Humphreys, Timothy Dwight, and John Trumbull.

Mathew Carey lived an interesting life in interesting times in interesting places. He was born in 1760 to a Catholic family in Dublin, Ireland. When 17 years old, he wrote and circulated a treatise railing against the discrimination Dublin Catholics suffered at the hands of the Irish Parliament and the English government that controlled it. A charge of libel was filed against him and a warrant issued for his arrest. Carey's father, a respected and somewhat influential member of the Catholic minority, arranged for his son to flee the country. Young Mathew found his way to Passy, a village near Paris, where he secured a job in a print shop in the home of Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin, then the unofficial American ambassador to France, was engaged in securing French aid for the colonies in their war for independence from England. Mathew Carey, no doubt because he shared their political views, became friends with many of those who visited Franklin, perhaps most importantly to Carey, the Marquis de Lafayette. Benjamin Franklin became a mentor and lifelong friend to Carey, as did eventually the Marquis de Lafayette.

After a year, Carey's father determined that the furor generated by Mathew's diatribe against the government had subsided, and that the young man could come home without fear of prosecution. On his return, Carey edited the Freeman's Journal (an anti-English newspaper) for four years, and later established the Volunteer's Journal, a weekly publication advocating the violent ouster of the occupying English forces. In 1784, with his newspaper having the second highest circulation in the country, Carey published a particularly hostile diatribe against the English parliament and prime minister. Again, a prosecution for libel was instituted, and Carey was thrown into Newgate Prison to await trial. Carey's friends secured his temporary release on bail after some months, dressed him in women's clothing, and smuggled him onto a ship soon to sail for the United States. Carey arrived in Philadelphia on September 7, 1784, with 12 guineas in his pocket, having lost half his money to card sharpers on the voyage.

A few days after his arrival, Carey was summoned to meet with the Marquis de LaFayette. They talked and dined, and the next day Carey was astounded to find in his mail four one-hundred dollar notes drawn on the Bank of North America. Carey had not asked the marquis for funds, and when he immediately called on the marquis for an explanation, was informed that the money was a gift and not a loan. With this money, Carey outfitted and began publication of the Pennsylvania Herald, a twice-weekly newspaper committed to extensive political coverage.

Mathew Carey flourished in his adopted country. The Pennsylvania Herald became the most influential newspaper in Pennsylvania. Carey next decided to publish a monthly magazine, first founding the Columbian Magazine, or Monthly Miscellany (with partners T. Siddons, Charles Cist, C. Talbot, W. Spotswood, and J. Trenchard) in 1786, and in 1787 founded, as sole proprietor, editor, and publisher, The American Museum.

In 1790, while still publishing The American Museum, Carey founded the first publishing house in the United States. It became the focus of Carey's interest, and the major source of his income, until his retirement in 1822. The enterprise remained a force in the literary world for more than 200 years. Its successive names were Carey, Stewart & Co., 1792-1817; M. Carey & Sons, 1817-1822; H. C. Carey & I. Lea, 1822-1827; Carey, Lea, & Carey, 1827-1833; Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1833-1838; Lea & Blanchard, 1838-1850; Blanchard & Lea, 1851-1865; Henry C. Lea, 1865-1885; Lea Brothers & Co., 1885-1908; Lea & Febiger, 1908-1995.

Under Carey's leadership the publishing firm flourished. Its authors included, among many others, Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Parson Mason Locke Weems. [The latter was first a "hawker" for Carey's books, and the most productive of the firm's traveling sales force. He decided that he could make more money writing books than selling them, and undertook a series of biographies of prominent men. Into the fifth edition of Weems' biography of George Washington crept the tale, fanciful and apocryphal, of young George chopping down a cherry tree, then manfully admitting the act to his father.] Carey's firm printed the first Douay Bible issued in the Unites States, and the second King James version. He also printed the American Edition of Guthrie's Geography, a beautiful work. All of these books went through many editions and printings.

Mathew Carey's many and varied achievements are all characterized by an element of service to his adopted city, state, and country. Carey

* in 1793, founded the Hibernian Society, an organization dedicated to improving the plight of Irish immigrants to the United States;

* also in 1793, as a member of the Committee of Health, volunteered to care for the sick and dying people of Philadelphia during the Yellow Fever epidemic, and after investigating the disease, published A Short Account of the Malignant Fever, Lately Prevalent in Philadelphia, a treatise that helped major cities limit the spread of the disease in future outbreaks,

* in 1796, with several others, established the first "Sunday School Society," an organization dedicated to educating, in the absence of free public schools, boys whose families couldn't afford tuition for private education;

* in 1802, established and sponsored the first "literary fair" in the United States, where the country's publishers and booksellers convened in New York to share information and showcase their inventories;

* in 1806, published his pamphlet titled Cursory Reflections on the System of Taxation established in Philadelphia, with a brief sketch of its unequal and unjust operation, a treatise advocating relief from high real-property taxation for middle- and low-income homeowners;

* in 1814, wrote and published The Olive Branch, a book designed to unite the bitterly divided American political parties in the cause of maintaining independence from England in the ongoing War of 1812;

* also in 1814, published Thomas Clark's Naval History of the United States in furtherance of his campaign to persuade the United States that maintaining a strong naval force was in its best interest;

* in 1824, was a founding member of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, one of the first such organizations in the United States.

The very broad range of subject matter of the articles published in The American Museum reflected Mathew Carey's wide ranging intellect and interests. The eclectic content of the magazine is quaintly demonstrated by the appearance of a series of essays and letters regarding the so-called 'Hessian Fly,' crop-destroying insects that were then spreading south and westward from New York state. Carey caused The American Museum to serve as a clearinghouse for information about the pest. Those with information and opinions about the fly weighed in on the subject through articles in successive issues of the magazine, and Carey ultimately published a letter outlining a solution to the problem from a farmer who had discovered that his crops would resist ruination by the fly if the seeds were soaked in elderberry juice prior to planting.

I hope that you savor the articles in this modern incarnation of the magazine. Some notable person [whose name I can't remember] said on his deathbed that, if he had his life to live over again, the only change he would make would be to set aside more time to read for pleasure. If you find his counsel worth following, perhaps this small venture can be one of your sources.

George L. McDowell