The Republic’s Attic

Forgotten, strange, and very human moments from the American story

Benson Lossing’s Centennial history of the United States runs from Vinland to the Corliss engine — and along the way it keeps the oddest company: witch-panics broken by lawsuits, a president mistaken for his own servant, a battle of floating powder-kegs. Forty-five of them, each linking to the chapter it comes from.

Eric the Red skipped discovering America because his HORSE STUMBLED: riding to join Leif's Vinland voyage, he took the stumble as an evil omen — "I do not believe it is given to me to discover any more lands, and here I will abide."Read it: The Extent and Character of Our Country
The first potatoes ever seen in Europe: Governor John White, sailing home from Roanoke in 1587, "touched Ireland, where he left some potato plants, the first ever seen in Europe." (Same voyage-cycle as the birth of Virginia Dare.)Read it: Bad Leaders Produce Great Disasters
Salem witchcraft in Andover ended by LAWSUIT: an accused citizen had his accuser arrested for defamation and claimed $5,000 in damages — "The spell was instantly broken, and witchcraft was no more heard of in Andover."Read it: Witchcraft: Andover and Mathers
Thomas Jefferson was mistaken for a SERVANT in the White House: a senator describes the President in an old brown coat, "corduroy small clothes much soiled, woolen hose, and slippers without heels. I thought him a servant."Read it: Seat of the National Government
In 1863 Virginia had THREE simultaneous governors, each claiming legitimacy: Letcher at Richmond, Pierpont at Alexandria, and Boreman at Wheeling.Read it: The First Battle on Land
The "secession bonnet" worn in the streets of Charleston in 1860 was the invention of a NORTHERN milliner.Read it: Secession Convention in South Carolina
Richard Wagner — yes, that Wagner — composed the "Grand Centennial March" that opened America's 1876 Centennial Exhibition.Read it: A Centennial Exhibition Proposed
The Centennial closed like a bedtime story: the President said ten words, the message flashed by telegraph "all over the Union and across the seas" at 3:37 P.M., and the giant Corliss engine that had driven acres of machinery for six months "gave one or two strokes, when the giant fell asleep and ceased to move."Read it: Exhibition Buildings and their Extent
Quaker missionary Mary Fisher — arrested in Boston, searched for witch-marks, her books burned by the common hangman — later walked unharmed into the court of the Sultan of Turkey "because his people reverenced a crazy person, for such they took her to be."Read it: Charles I. Beheaded
A Danbury man outran British cavalry thanks to his own shopping: his roll of cloth unfurled "fluttering like a streamer behind him," spooked the pursuers' horses, and he escaped. The troopers had shouted "Stop, old Daddy, stop!"Read it: The Congress Returns to Philadelphia
The Battle of the Kegs: Whigs floated powder-keg torpedoes down the Delaware toward the British fleet; one blew up against ice, panic followed, and Francis Hopkinson turned the fiasco into the Revolution's most famous satirical poem.Read it: Public Confidence in Washington and the Army
Captain Kidd tried to buy his life by telling Lord Bellamont where the treasure was buried. Kidd hanged; the earl collected the treasure — "and at his coffers its history ends in impenetrable mystery."Read it: Captain Kidd, his Associates and Career-Governor Hyde and his Administration
In 1758 Massachusetts taxpayers paid war taxes of up to TWO-THIRDS of their income — "levied by their own chosen representatives, and the people were content."Read it: Public Discontent in England
Andros seized Rhode Island's government and broke the colony's seal (an anchor and the word HOPE) — but never managed to take the parchment charter itself.Read it: New Jersey Considered
Fort New Amsterdam contained, inside its walls: the governor's house, barracks, a gambrel-roofed church, a WINDMILL, a gallows, a pillory, a whipping-post, a prison, and a flagstaff.Read it: The Dutch Re Possess and Re-Surrender the Province
For one year New York City was named NEW ORANGE: the Dutch retook it in 1673, renamed it for the Prince of Orange — "The Dutch had taken New York!"Read it: The Government of New Netherland
The Virginia Company shipped "one hundred virtuous and attractive young English women" to the colony as brides — the planter who chose one paid the cost of her passage.Read it: The Virginia Colonists
The spinning-wheel was believed in Britain and Ireland to be "a special gift from heaven" — and in American women's hands it became a weapon of revolutionary politics.Read it: Disturbance in New York
Boston's tea boycott was run by women: the mistresses of THREE HUNDRED households signed a no-tea league, and days later the "daughters of those patriots" held their own convention and signed their own pledge.Read it: Troops in Boston
Major Anderson's garrison slipped into Fort Sumter by moonlight using a three-gun signal; the men left behind spiked the cannon and CUT DOWN Fort Moultrie's flagstaff so no secession banner could ever fly from the National flag's peak.Read it: Signing the Ordinance
Hi-a-wat-ha's exit, as the Iroquois told it: he stepped into his mysterious canoe, the air filled with music "like the warbling of innumerable birds," and canoe and prophet rose into the sky until they vanished.Read it: Indian Population at the Beginning of the Sixteenth: You and Hi-a-wat-ha's
When Charleston seceded, young men formed a circle around John C. Calhoun's grave and solemnly vowed their "lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor" to South Carolina's independence.Read it: Secession Convention in South Carolina
An act of Parliament (Dec. 1775) forced captured American sailors to fight AGAINST their own countrymen — denounced on Parliament's own floor as "a refinement of cruelty unknown among savage nations."Read it: Declaration of Independence
Hannah Dustin's captors told her she would be stripped and made to "run the gauntlet" between two files armed with hatchets — so she, her nurse and a boy planned an escape the Indians never thought to guard against.Read it: Capture of Pemaquid
Punishment-refugees seeded the colonies: in England's turmoil, "women were often burnt in the cheek, and men marked by cutting off their ears" — and thousands of the marked and persecuted fled to America.Read it: New Netherland Restored to the British-Andros: Van Dam and Journal
General Howe officially reported the great New York fire of 1776 as a Whig conspiracy "without a shadow of truth" — it had started in a low "groggery" near Whitehall; soldiers threw suspected citizens into the flames.Read it: Fire-Ships
At Louisbourg's surrender the captured stores and prizes were worth nearly five million dollars — and a New England minister preached from the fortress chapel pulpit that God had gone "out of the way of his common providence" to hand it over.Read it: Struggle with the French and Indians
Samuel Adams, hearing the first volley at Lexington: "What a glorious morning for America is this!" — words now on the Lexington Centennial Medal.Read it: The Spirit of Independence
Barbara Frietchie, "a very old woman," kept her Union flag flying from a dormer window as Stonewall Jackson's army marched into Frederick — the incident Whittier put into verse.Read it: Call for Volunteers
Morse first showed the telegraph publicly in January 1838 — intelligence sent "instantly" through ten miles of wire and recorded on a cylinder.Read it: Pacific Railway
Georgia's founding ship Anne carried 35 families — and a team of Piedmontese silk-workers, because the trustees' great scheme for Georgia was SILK.Read it: Charter for Georgia Granted
Oglethorpe-era Savannah heard this from the aged Creek chief Tomochichi: "I am come over in my old days, although I cannot live to see any advantage to myself."Read it: Their Reception There
The author's 1876 scorecard: the Republic had grown from 800,000 to 3,500,000 square miles and from 1.5 million people to 42 million in one century.Read it: Growth, Extent and Population of Our Domain
The women's relief network of the Civil War (Sanitary and Christian Commissions) collected supplies and money worth SIX MILLION dollars — "mostly collected by the women."Read it: Peace: Commission and Vincent Colyer·Women's Work
Santa Anna's surrender summons at Buena Vista assured Taylor he was "surrounded by 20,000 men" and would be "cut to pieces" — signed, with perfect courtesy, "God and Liberty!"Read it: President Polk: Santa Anna and Taylor
John Adams claimed American independence was founded on the night of the Boston Massacre; Webster dated "the severance of the British empire" from the same moment.Read it: American Affairs in Europe
The Fourteenth Amendment defines citizens "without an allusion to sex" — and the book (1876) argues this already makes women full citizens: "do women less deserve the privilege?"Read it: Public Affairs: Isthmus and Darien
Peregrine White was born aboard the Mayflower as it lay in Plymouth harbor — the first English child of New England, named for the pilgrimage itself.Read it: Explorations in New England
William Penn's Friends, 1684: "We have done better than if, with the proud Spaniards, we had gained the mines of Potosi… To the poor, dark souls round about us, we teach their rights as MEN."Read it: The Swedes on the Delaware
Cotton Mather's defense of witch evidence, verbatim: "Flashy people may burlesque these things, but when hundreds of the most sober people… know them to be true, nothing but the absurd and froward spirit of sadducism can question them."Read it: Superstition and Wickedness Hand-in-Hand
On the day the Declaration-era Congress first resolved association, the resolution was read as "luminous writing on the wall, warning Belshazzar" — and the king, "too blind to perceive the ominous light," declared his subjects rebels.Read it: Meeting of the General Congress
Colonial growth stat: New England went from 75,000 to 425,000 people in 66 years after 1688.Read it: Newspapers in the Colonies
Gist's 1750–51 scouting trip for the Ohio Company: seven months alone through the Ohio and blue-grass country, ending at Mount Vernon's door with "a vast amount of valuable information."Read it: The Treaty of Aix-La-Chapelle
The Carolinas rejected their own aristocratic constitution (Locke's "Fundamental Constitutions," with titles and classes) "as absurd in its details" and governed themselves with their own laws for sixty years.Read it: Government for the Carolinas Framed
William and Mary's joint profiles on English coins gave lovers a byword — the couplet the book quotes about facing effigies.Read it: Political Troubles in England