T. A. MILFORD. The Gardiners of Massachusetts: Provincial Ambition and the British-American Career. (Revisiting New England: The New Regionalism.) Hanover, N.H.: University of New Hampshire Press. 2005. Pp. xi, 306. Cloth $65.00, paper $26.00
2006; Oxford University Press; Volume: 111; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1086/ahr.111.5.1501
ISSN1937-5239
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoThe title of this book might better be Three Gardiners, since it concerns only one member in each generation: Silvester Gardiner, his son, John, and John's son, John Sylvester John. T. A. Milford makes good use of a trove of family papers to reconstruct each man's public career and has read widely in manuscripts, newspapers, and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic in order to situate his subjects in their place and times. Milford views the Gardiners as simultaneously British and American because they were active participants in the intellectual and economic life of the empire. The first two Gardiners were moderately successful in their business endeavors. Silvester grew up as an Anglican in Rhode Island, went to Paris and London to study medicine, made a good living selling drugs in New England, and invested in land in Maine. He was a Loyalist whose property was confiscated when he fled to England, but he returned after the war to pursue his claims in Maine. Son John, the most interesting of the three men, went to Britain to learn the law and, while there, absorbed the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment. He practiced in Wales, where he married and settled down, but found his income wanting and sought a post in the West Indies. He eventually returned to the newly independent states, first to Philadelphia, then to Boston. His father cut him out of his will when John helped turn the Anglican King's Chapel into a Unitarian church. John served in the legislature but failed in most of his political endeavors. He enjoyed controversy, was frequently quoted in the newspapers, and published a string of contentious pamphlets and articles over the years. Eccentric and curmudgeonly, John seemed to delight in making enemies and embarrassing his friends. When he disappeared at sea during a storm in 1793, this typically acid eulogy appeared in a Boston newspaper: “Better, far better, had it been for thee / Had mill-stones drown'd thee in the depth of sea” (p. 171).
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