Happy Birthday, James McCune Smith!
...and, we're back!
Hello all!
It’s the 212th anniversary of James McCune Smith’s birthday, and so an excellent day to say that I’ll be discussing his life, ideas, and the world he lived in here at Substack again. There’s been a slow but steady stream of new subscribers since I’ve had this site on pause and I’ve been so pleased to see this continued and growing interest! Thanks to all you new and old subscribers, both!
I’m also happy to report that I’ve submitted a complete manuscript of McCune Smith’s biography to my publisher, and my project to compile and edit his complete (as possible) written and spoken works is coming along nicely. But especially until I’ve worked with my editor to get the biography much closer to its final form (right now, it’s massive!), I’ll be posting here sporadically, whenever I can find the time without neglecting my obligations. Therefore, I’ve decided to make this site free, for now.
I’ve started by renaming it ‘The World of James McCune Smith’ from ‘The Transatlantic World of James McCune Smith.’ I think the simplified title works better for what I’ll be doing from here on out. Originally, I had planned to focus more on connections between McCune Smith’s world in the United States and the strong influences on him from across the Atlantic - from his five years in Glasgow (with brief sojourns in England and Paris) to the European and British works of medicine, science, history, literature, philosophy, and so on that he read avidly and engaged with throughout his decades of writing and speaking. I was also planning to discuss transatlantic connections of these kinds in the lives of people connected to McCune Smith. Such connections will certainly come up in my posts for TWOJMS. But many others, perhaps most, won’t have a transatlantic context.
Lastly, I’ll be presenting a paper at the British Association for American Studies’ annual conference at the University of Hertfordshire next week. I’ll be part of a panel with my wonderful postdoctoral mentor Clare Elliott (who’s doing exciting work on Phillis Wheatley Peters) and Bridget Bennett, another scholar I’m looking forward to meeting. My paper, ‘The American Black Press and the Founding of the Weekly Anglo-African’ explores a little mystery that presented itself when I was writing the biography. McCune Smith’s old friend Thomas Hamilton founded the paper in the summer of 1859, a paper for which McCune Smith would go on to serve many stints as co-editor or temporary editor. The Weekly’s statement of purpose almost seems to imply that it was founded to fill an unmet need for a black press. Yet Frederick Douglass was still publishing Frederick Douglass’ Paper at the time. So I wondered - was Hamilton critical of Douglass’ Paper? Did he just intend it to fill an unmet need for a black press in the New York City area specifically? Or something else? The paper explores these and other possibilities.
More soon to follow… and in the meantime, happy James McCune Smith’s birthday once again!
Welcome back! And good luck with all the endeavours!