Reading Roman History to Understand the French Revolution: Rufus King’s Commonplacing of Edward Gibbon, 1799–1803

Abstract

From 1799 to 1803, the American Minister to Great Britain, Rufus King, kept two commonplace books recording extracts on Roman history mostly culled from the works of Edward Gibbon. King adapted Gibbon’s texts for his own means and used them in an attempt to understand the confusing events of the French Revolutionary period. The commonplace books show an anxious, yet hopeful, diplomat reading with three questions in mind: How could he be the best possible representative for his nation? How could he defend republican government from the challenges presented by the French Revolution? And, lastly, what was the nature of the new Atlantic-world revolutions and how could they be avoided or constrained?

Keywords:

• Rufus King
• Federalist
• commonplace books
• Roman history
• reading
• note-taking
• information management
• Edward Gibbon
• French Revolution
• diplomacy
• Napoleon

Long before 1799, when he started keeping a commonplace book, Rufus King, the American Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain, was anxious about the French Revolution. Like his Federalist Party colleagues, he was fearful of the wide-ranging changes it wrought on the Atlantic system of trade and treaties that had been in place since the end of the Thirty Years War.¹ His worries appear in the guarded correspondence and dispatches he sent back to Philadelphia and, later, Washington, but in mid-1799 the sheer extent of King’s anxiety comes to the fore through his commonplace book, which can be best described as a notebook of manuscript extracts culled from reading.² King selected most of these extracts from the Enlightenment historian Edward Gibbon’s Memoirs of My Life and Writings and The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but there are also selections copied from Conyers Middleton’s History of the Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero and the works of Homer, Cicero, and Suetonius.³ Taken individually, most of the citations do not obviously demonstrate King’s concerns for American interests in a dangerous time, but one in particular comes very close. Under the heading of ‘Democracy’, which King wrote scornfully, he copied part of a letter Gibbon sent to Abigail Way Holroyd, the wife of Lord Sheffield, after she had returned to England from Switzerland via the Rhine River in 1792, noting:

I am delighted with yr remark concerning the Rhine; lest the Rhine alas after some temporary wanderings will be content to flow in his own Channel; while Man, man is the greatest fool of the whole creation —

The happy comparison of the Rhine who had heard so much of Liberty on both his Banks, that he wandered with mischievous licentiousness over the adjacent meadows: the inundation alas, has spread much wider, and it is sadly to be feared that the Elbe, the Po, and the Danube may imitate the vile Example of the Rhine

I shall be content if our own Thames preserves his fair Character.

Strong without rage, without o’er flowing full

Gibbon to Miss Holroyd Nov^r: 92⁴

Holroyd’s letter to Gibbon anthropomorphically described the Rhine reaching beyond its normal confines when word of the Revolution spread. Gibbon was delighted by the metaphor and expanded it to express his concerns that rivers deeper in Europe were also reaching beyond their usual routes because of the Revolution’s siren call of liberty.

King had similar fears of the metastasizing nature of the Revolution, and could it be that he was worried that the Hudson and Delaware were also wandering beyond their banks? He had witnessed the democratic political forces of the Jeffersonian Republican-Democrats challenging the Federalist administration of George Washington before coming to London and followed the opposition to the John Adams administration from afar.⁵ Like Gibbon and the Federalists, King understood the British as a bastion against the pernicious French. If America could remain true to its republican ideals, avoid falling into the war, and follow the British example of strength without rage, King felt it would be possible to survive the ordeal he was witnessing.

King’s observations required processing because the Revolution was so unique, and one of the primary vehicles through which he could sort out his fears was a history book that examined one of the most cautionary periods of history in the West, the decline of the Roman Empire in the third to fifth centuries.⁶ The extracts in the commonplace book, along with another one he started in 1802 or 1803, helped him think through the problems of the present by looking at the extremes of the past.⁷ Together, these two notebooks allow us to understand political and diplomatic history in ways that are rarely possible when only correspondence and dispatches are used as evidence. By combining diplomatic history with the cultural history of reading, we gain more than a better understanding of King’s ministry: we learn more about the politics and diplomacy of the early American republic.⁸

King’s diplomatic mission

Since context is essential to understand how he read Gibbon’s history of exceptional times, we must have some sense of King’s diplomatic mission. Serving in London from 1796 to 1803, King was responsible for implementing the contentious Jay Treaty and keeping America as far away from the volatile French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars as possible. The primary goal of his mission was the protection of American neutral and commercial rights during the wars. King was constantly formulating lists of impressed sailors who were arguably American citizens, and assisting merchants manoeuvring their way through the admiralty courts in the hopes of receiving compensation for ship seizures. In most instances, the British disregarded American neutral interests, although they understood that placating their former colonies was necessary on occasion. For instance, they offered Royal Navy escorts to American ships during the Quasi-War with France in 1798–1800, and after 1800 British admiralty courts made it more difficult for British ships to capture American ships legally. But, in general, the British did what they needed or wanted to do during these years, and King knew he could do little to change their course.

More successfully, he worked with the commission formed under the seventh article of the Jay Treaty to negotiate a settlement for the ship seizures of November 1794. After initial setbacks, the two nations came to an amicable agreement in 1804, whereby the Americans received $6 million in compensation. In addition to these primary issues, King dealt with important, and often troublesome, ancillary issues like the settlement of the Maine–Canada borderline, procuring jewels to pay for the peace with the Barbary States, blocking the emigration of the leaders of the 1798 Irish rebellion to America, acquiring thousands of rifles for the New York militia, finding and returning the archives of Georgia captured during the Revolutionary War, and dealing with South American Revolutionaries trying to throw off the Spanish yoke.⁹

Beyond his official duties, King spent vast amounts of time and funds to acquire a comprehensive gentleman’s library. After the death of his father-in-law, John Alsop, in November 1794, King had the means, and his ministry gave him the opportunity, to buy hundreds of books and pamphlets a year. London was the fashionable hub of book-buying in the English-speaking world, and King, who lived at 1 Great Cumberland Place for the vast majority of his ministry, was within two miles of the central concentration of late eighteenth-century retailers on the Strand in the neighbourhoods of the West End, Westminster, and Piccadilly. In addition to those shops, King probably patronized the law booksellers and used bookshops on Fleet Street, just east of the Strand, near the Inns of Court. The core of the wholesale and publishing side of the industry, including magazine and periodicals, centred upon Stationers’ Hall on Paternoster Row and the area around St Paul’s Cathedral, about three miles from King’s home.¹⁰ King could have purchased the wares of well-known booksellers Thomas Cadell and William Davies, James Robson, John Bell, George Robinson, Thomas Longman, Charles Dilly, John Murray, James Lackington, and many lesser-known figures, simply by walking to their stores, and there is evidence that he wandered the streets and entered establishments on a whim.¹¹

King owned just over 3700 volumes at the time of his death in 1827, and he bought more than half of those volumes while abroad, most in London, but with large secondary purchases from Paris throughout his ministry and smaller purchases from bookstores in the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland, and the provinces of France during a visit to the Continent in 1802.¹² King not only bought volumes at traditional shops, he sought out antiquarian bookshops, bought books and manuscripts from the estate auctions of London gentlemen who died while he was abroad, and received presentation volumes from many authors and publishers.¹³ In addition, King bought thousands of pamphlets in London, purchased and received newspapers from all over Great Britain, the Continent, and America, and formed a large map collection.¹⁴ If books or pamphlets could not be found to purchase, King was known to borrow volumes from circulating libraries or send a member of his staff to a coffee house to report on them.¹⁵

It is clear that King was managing a wide array of issues, both public and private, so why would he take the time to read Gibbon so closely during such a busy and stressful mission? What did he hope to gain? How did he read these books? Since each commonplace book is not a random gathering of snippets, what themes can be discerned from a reading of these commonplace books and what filters did he use to interpret the texts? What does this tell us about the world view of a Federalist and a diplomat? Can we observe a statesman’s mind at work?

Commonplace books as sources

Commonplace books have a long history of theory and practice that can be traced to antiquity. Aristotle compiled koinoi topoi, or general topics, as a part of his system of logical examination of philosophical truths, while Cicero and Quintilian gathered loci communes, or common places, to promote memory in support of rhetoric. During the medieval era, the importance of refined rhetoric declined and the practice of crafting persuasive arguments through commonplacing was seen as less useful in light of scholasticism’s strategy of overwhelming opponents with evidence. The tradition was revived in the Renaissance and early modern period when humanists focused on the careful reconstruction of ancient languages and texts to find evidence of morality and human achievement. Desiderius Erasmus and Philip Melancthon popularized the creation of commonplace books to efficiently collect excerpts under headings, while John Locke subdued the disorderly aspects of commonplace books through the use of an index and careful source referencing at the end of the seventeenth century. King’s commonplace books drew upon each of these cultural legacies without being completely identifiable with any single one.¹⁶

Citations in commonplace books were often witty phrases or expressions of morality or wisdom usually culled from printed sources and divided into specific categories by unique headings created by the reader. Traditional commonplace theory, popularized by humanist pedagogy, called for each page to have a broad heading at the top, be it ‘virtue’, ‘freedom’, or ‘sin’, and the reader would take pertinent quotations from the books he was examining and place each of them on the proper page. Each individual copied his extracts for specific purposes, often to aid memory during conversation, public speaking, or writing, and to discipline the mind while reading. Many factors influenced the selection of quotations, including personal ideology, previous reading experiences, and the circumstances of the reading.¹⁷ When one understands that the harvesting and reorganizing of these citations is not wholly random, it becomes possible to understand how a particular reader examined a text and repurposed and redefined it for his own needs. To put it in more specific terms, King was poaching the knowledge his books provided, taking it out of context, repackaging it, and deploying it to achieve personal goals.¹⁸

This essay describes an enlightenment of the consumer and not the producer by focusing on the reader and not the author. The texts King read confined him in some ways, but it is not essential for us to be concerned with what Gibbon wanted to convey. King read Gibbon with his own filter and used the books in ways that would have infuriated the historian. Gibbon created one set of meanings when he wrote his works, but King created a new one through the repurposing of the extracts in his commonplace book. By examining the organization of the extracts, we can begin to see what concerned King, how he thought about the world, and how he organized those thoughts. The commonplace books demonstrate that he was worried, but ultimately hopeful, about America and its place in the world.¹⁹

King did not read Gibbon to win debates with his diplomatic counterparts. While Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton described how the Elizabethan thinker Gabriel Harvey assisted his employer, the diplomat and poet Philip Sidney, with a reading of Livy’s History of Rome in order for Sidney to take action at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, King’s reading did not lead him to make any explicit decisions. His use of books allowed him to consider the problems of his time in a strategic fashion, by viewing them broadly as a statesman. The commonplace books were a space where complicated responses to problems could be developed in his mind, but not where measures were enacted. That being said, King’s commonplace books, like Harvey’s marginalia, allow us capture a fuller view of political and diplomatic culture that almost never appears in traditional sources.²⁰

The commonplace books contain both short phrases and longer extracts, some of which are several paragraphs in length, with headings for most entries. In contrast to the traditional practice, King did not provide general categories on each page with many entries underneath.²¹ He gave a heading to each individual extract, with some exceptions, as he recorded it in the notebooks. There is no index in either book, but King did provide sources for most of his excerpts.²² Occasionally he would intervene with his own commentary, but he mainly copied or paraphrased text without explanation. Since King’s entries follow one another linearly, we can be confident that King was reading Gibbon’s works in a slow, careful, and intense way from the beginning through to the end. As he read, he filtered out particular phrases and paragraphs, and, if his summaries and misquotations are an indication, he would read and turn directly to his commonplace book to write out the material from memory, disciplining and exercising his mind in an attempt to master the material upon first reading.

Context for the commonplace books themselves is necessary in order to interpret the themes that emerged through King’s reading filter. The first commonplace book contains forty-five unnumbered pages. It can be dated from an inscription written on the inside front cover by his third son, ‘James King July 31 1799’. James began attending a London boarding school around this time and may have accidentally left the book at home, where his father commandeered it for his own use. Most of the extracts seem to have been copied into the commonplace book before King left London in mid-1803, but the entries towards the end make reference to Alexander Hamilton’s death in 1804 and Francisco de Miranda’s 1806 filibuster expedition against Spanish Venezuela. This commonplace book has material from the first volume and the beginning of the second volume of King’s twelve-volume copy of Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as well as material from Middleton, Homer, Cicero, and Suetonius.²³

In the second commonplace book, which has sixty-one unnumbered pages, King recopied all of the material from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that he had written in the first commonplace book, with a few minor revisions. He then continued taking notes up to the beginning of the seventh volume of his copy of Gibbon’s classic. At the other end of this commonplace book, King flipped it over and started a new set of notes on British and French negotiations from March to May 1803. It is not clear if King read Gibbon’s work at the very end of his ministry and then set it aside when news of the negotiations reached him, or if he read Gibbon on his return voyage or back in America after May 1803. Regardless, both commonplace books date to the first years of the nineteenth century, when the Atlantic world was in the midst of confusion generated by wars and revolutions.²⁴

These commonplace books are the work of a man reading from the perspective of a statesman who wanted to overcome uncertainty. King needed to look at events from a larger perspective and had to account for American interests in a perpetually shifting political, diplomatic, and military landscape.²⁵ The entries in the books demonstrate the fear, doubt, and anxiety of a diplomat having difficulty in trying to understand and adjust to these changes.²⁶ In the books, King acknowledged that anxiety, but clearly felt he could control it through reading. The process of overcoming that anxiety involved examining respected models from the past and reading trusted authors and authorities. History became an instrument to master present-day politics and diplomacy in King’s commonplace books.²⁷ When this is understood, King’s reading choices make better sense. Gibbon’s work on the decline of the Roman Empire was widely acknowledged as a historiographical masterpiece by the 1790s, and as a reliable guide to the disorder of the crumbling Empire. Gibbon’s expertise offered King a shortcut to manage this difficult history. It is unclear why King turned specifically to Gibbon in 1799, but he was corresponding with his two eldest sons, who were attending the Harrow School, about Roman history around this time. This may have led him to pick up the volumes. In a more general sense, King recommended that other diplomats read history books to prepare for their missions, just as he read David Hume’s The History of England before travelling to London in 1796.²⁸

In order to better see this present-minded reading of Gibbon and ancient history, it is necessary to make explicit the categories that King implicitly embedded in his commonplace books. He organized the books around three questions that each extract helped answer in a small way. The first question examined King’s attempt to understand his individual role as a representative of his nation abroad. How could he be the best possible diplomat and preserve the honour, respect, and interests of a new and relatively weak American nation? His next batch of quotations focused on the urgency to defend republican government from the challenges of the new world order confronting America after the French Revolution. What was the best way to govern a nation, utilize power, and divide authority in the face of the momentous changes wrought by wars and revolutions in Europe? Lastly, King needed counsel to manage the new type of revolution he was living through. What was the nature of the new Atlantic-world revolutions, and how could they be avoided or constrained? These three broad categories represent the filters through which King read and provide an entrée into how he thought about himself and his situation in London.

Promoting individual statesmanship

King was conscious of his need to think strategically as a statesman when abroad, and felt he was responsible for the defence of American legitimacy. He needed to be both strong and wary, because America had to avoid the European conflagration in order to provide time for the nation to mature as a power. If he allowed American honour to become tarnished, France and Britain would perceive weakness and act accordingly, but he had to balance that with the inadequacy of American power. King felt he needed to be prepared to pivot as a minister, and he revealed this when he extracted material from Middleton’s biography of Cicero. One important instance involved Middleton’s appraisal of the actions of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a tyrant who revoked the power of the Plebian Tribunal in 81 bce. The tribunal was the branch of Roman government that defended the interests of the average citizen against the aristocracy through its powers to initiate legislation and veto Senate acts. As consuls in 70 bce, Pompey and Crassus restored the powers of the tribunal, and King recorded and used a manicule to emphasize that,

[a] Statesman must consider not only what is but, but what is necessary to the Times, Pompey knew the Impatience of the People, and that the loss of the tribunitial power c^d. not be much longer borne: it was therefore the Part of a good Citizen, not to leave to a bad one, the Credit of doing what was too popular to be withstood.²⁹

King perceived that it was essential to be informed about the realities of the moment to make the best decisions in complex situations. If those decisions had to be made and ultimately were not, there was a concern that someone with less virtue could fill the vacuum and gain a following.

In order to be an informed statesman, King built sophisticated networks with British officials and intelligentsia, corresponded with consuls, and listened to gossip. But his notes signal that books also played an important role. While diplomats collected printed materials from the fifteenth century, massive ambassadorial collections of books and maps became essential during the congresses at Westphalia in the 1640s. Ministers also had to collect all juridical deductions and pamphlets created during negotiations, which meant that they went home with large amounts of print.³⁰ King followed in this robust collecting tradition, perhaps adding as many 2500 volumes to his library during his mission. In other words, he bought roughly one volume per day for his seven years abroad, but his commonplace books illustrate his belief that collections had to be judiciously used.³¹ Recounting Gibbon’s description of Emperor Gordian II, who led the Empire with his father Gordian I for one month in 238, King copied,

Gordian the younger, his 22. [sic] concubines, and library of 62,000 books attested the variety of his taste — and from his Productions it appears that both the one and the other were designed for use, rather than ostentation. [H]e left by each Concubine three or four Children.³²

King also commented on the value of consuming texts when he copied Pliny the Elder’s famous dictum that ‘No book is so bad that no part of it is useful’ from Gibbon’s Memoirs.³³ King’s emphasis of the word ‘use’ demonstrates that the mere ownership of books and print was unavailing to King. They had to be mined for information to solve problems.

But books had to be used properly, and King stressed the importance of discernment by the counter-examples he selected from Gibbon’s history. The first model that King criticized in his commonplace books was Emperor Gallienus, who ruled the Empire with his father Valerian from 253 to 260 and as sole emperor from 260 to 268. Gibbon looked unfavourably on Gallienus’s abilities, stressing that ‘Gallienus (son of y^e. Emperor Valerian) was master of several curious but useless sciences: a ready orator, an Elegant poet, a skilful Gardener, an excellent cook, and most contemptible Prince’.³⁴ King valued Gibbon’s description of Gallienus because it succinctly illuminated the need to improve skills and gather information that would be useful to a statesman.

Another counter-example King extracted from his reading of Gibbon was Emperor Honorius, whose reign of the Western Roman Empire from 395 to 423 was particularly chaotic. Honorius was a child of ten when he took control of his part of the Empire, and his weakness led to Gothic invasions of Italy and the rise of a series of usurpers who tried to seize control of the state. Part of that weakness came from Honorius’s inability to develop useful skills and knowledge, Gibbon argued. King copied Gibbon’s remark that ‘Honorius[’s] most serious Employment was the daily call of feeding the Poultry — &c’ while his Empire collapsed around him. King also recorded Gibbon’s comment that Honorius was not educated properly before receiving the crown, and, ‘the subjects of the feeble Honorius soon discovered that he was without passions & consequently (says Gibbon) without Talents’.³⁵ In his Memoirs, Gibbon, citing Samuel Johnson, noted that it took hard work and conscious choice to improve an individual’s skills in the proper fashion. King appropriated this sentiment, writing that ‘D^r. Johnson denies all original genius any natural propensity of the mind to one art or Science rather than another’.³⁶ The important part to King was making good choices about what to read and learn, and working hard to make those choices productive. King saw Galleinus and Honorius as bad examples of statesmen because they did not discipline themselves. By extracting these quotations, King argued that statesmen and diplomats needed to ignore trivial matters and focus on important information in stressful times.

Several important attributes of a statesman needed attention in King’s mind. They included the promotion of virtue, dignity, and honesty as well as the necessity of discreet reserve and strength in the face of adversity. Gibbon gave King an opportunity to consider these critical values. To King, virtue was not strictly a moral quality. His reading of Gibbon demonstrated that he thought virtue should be a guide to actions, but that it allowed flexibility. When reading about the philosopher Boethius, who was accused of a treasonous crime after publicly defending a colleague against the same charge, King noted that such pure dedication to virtue was a mistake. King recorded that:

This Philosopher the last of the Romans worthy of Cato or Tully, was executed by order of Theodoric on a charge of Treason; Posterity acquits him of the charge tho not of extreme imprudence. and we may learn from Cato’s Example as well as from his, that a character of pure & inflexible virtue is the most apt to be misled by prejudice, to be healed by Enthusiasm, & to confound private Enmities with public Justice.³⁷

A true statesman or diplomat could not act with such a rigid outlook if he was to fulfil the obligations of his appointment.

King perceived that flexible actions would be respected if a diplomat had a reputation for dignity and reserve. Once a moral foundation had been established, a diplomat had more room to manoeuvre to protect national interests. King’s reading of Gibbon shows that he thought reputation could be built in a number of ways. One batch of extracts involved negative examples of ambassadors receiving inappropriate gifts, while another set recorded the unseemliness of all forms of bribery.³⁸ A diplomat should be above reproach while attending to his duties, but also possess a gravitas appropriate to deserving respect without appearing haughty or distant. After reading in Gibbon’s history about Cicero’s purchase of a home, King created the heading ‘A House’, and noted that the Roman lawyer’s ‘[r]ule in regard to the Habitation of a principal Citizen, [is] [t]hat his dignity should be adorned by his house, but not derived from it’.³⁹ King thought a diplomat needed to be a gentleman whose nobility was natural but obvious to all.

Lastly, King expressed a belief in the necessity of discreet reserve of any diplomat. He wanted to be seen, but to say only what was necessary, while listening to everything.⁴⁰ King recorded this in an uncomplicated fashion under the heading ‘Language of Ministers’, where ‘[t]he vague professions, that in every court and in every occasion impose the language of discreet Ministers’.⁴¹ Also, echoing Cicero’s desire for a moderated image of dignity, King took a line from Gibbon’s Memoirs which stated, ‘the experience of the world inculcates a discreet reserve on the subject of our Person and Estate — we soon learn that a free disclosure of our Riches or poverty would provoke malice or Envy, or encourage insolence or Contempt’.⁴²

Promoting republican government

King’s use of Gibbon’s works to defend the experiment of republican government demonstrates the power of the reader to appropriate meaning. Gibbon opposed the revolutionary movement in America, and would have grasped the irony of King using his texts to support such ends. While reading Gibbon, King mused on political philosophy and posed questions on the best way to manage a government in a tumultuous world. He also considered the nature of power and authority, and how to deploy them to preserve republican government and American legitimacy. Roughly half of the entries that focus on the defence of republican government offer examples to avoid, while the other half discuss the virtues of a good government that can best manage the roiling world of the Napoleonic era.

King probably copied the vast majority of the entries in his commonplace books after the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul of France in December 1799. While King had been dissatisfied with the trajectory of the French Revolution from its beginning, developments after the coup of 18 Brumaire particularly disturbed him. King admired the talents of Bonaparte, but feared the massive ambition that motivated his behaviour. Such ambition would result in tyranny and despotism that would affect not only the Continent, but American interests as well.⁴³ King thought about Bonaparte’s designs as he read Gibbon’s history, which commented on ‘the jealous, and unsociable nature of Ambition’.⁴⁴ King’s previous readings of Enlightenment-era philosophy and political economy helped him come to the belief that sociability represented a calming of ferocity.⁴⁵ When nations interacted with good intentions and desire for fair exchange, they would be more likely to manage conflict through diplomatic channels instead of warfare. King saw France quickly devolving into the most dangerous polity on earth because of its aggressive intentions.

King read Gibbon with this deep concern about France at the forefront of his mind. A large part of this concern involved the seizure of power by Bonaparte. While reading, King compared Bonaparte to the Roman Emperors Severus and Macrinus. Severus was Emperor from 193 to 211, and his legacy of decisive leadership and expanded borders came at the expense of an increased military establishment, resentment from the Roman Senate, and the persecution of minorities. Bonaparte, like Severus, provided expert guidance for the state, but the larger strategic goals of the Frenchman seemed flawed to King, who noted that

The ascent to Greatness, however steep and dangerous, may entertain an active Spirit with the Consciousness & exercise of its own power — [‘]but the possession of a Throne could never yet afford a lasting satisfaction to an ambitious mind’. fortune & merit from an humble station elevated Severus to the first place among men. he had been all things, as he said, and all was of little value. ‘omnia fui, & nihil expedit’.⁴⁶

King’s underlining suggests that he felt ambition was not inherently bad, and only that a defined moral framework must limit it. The desire for a crown fell outside the limits that King placed on ambition, which was where Bonaparte went astray. The fulfilment provided by total power was fleeting in King’s mind, and the desire for new projects by a monarch or emperor would lead to corruption and tyranny, and it was only a matter of time before a project would involve the United States.

By noting ‘ Bonaparte’ after his reading notes on the Emperor Macrinus, King explicitly indicated his fear of the First Consul’s ambitions. Macrinus took power after involvement with the murder of Emperor Caracalla, Severus’s successor, in 217. Like Bonaparte, Macrinus was a man of military talents who strove for political power. Gibbon wrote, and King recorded, that Macrinus’s ‘rash Ambition had climbed a height, where it was difficult to stand with firmness and impossible to fall without destruction’.⁴⁷ Macrinus ruled for less than a year after military defeats in Mesopotamia and unpopular military reforms gave the family of Severus an opportunity to seize control of the Empire again.

Such ambition led to instability in the Roman Empire, and King worried that a similar trend would occur after Bonaparte’s ascension. Instability in the Atlantic world would create further problems for American commercial interests and increased the likelihood of American entry into the war. King recorded a passage from Gibbon that stressed that decline occurred in the Roman Empire because ‘[t]here are no Examples of 3 successive Generations (at the time of Maximin[us]) on the throne, and only three instances of sons who succeeded their Fathers’.⁴⁸ King stressed that this instability contributed to the smallpox epidemic, known as the Plague of Cyprian, which began in 250 and raged across the Empire for fifteen years. Under the heading ‘AD. 250 Great Famine & Plague’, King wrote:

Famine almost always followed the Pestilence, the effect of scanty and unwholesome food. other causes are supposed to have contributed to the Pestilence that raged in Asia & Europe from the year 250 to 265 and which appeared in every Province, every City, and almost in every family of the Roman Empire. during some time 5000 died daily in Rome, and some towns were entirely depopulated — and if the city of Alexandria may be taken as a Standard, it might be inferred that war pestilence & famine, had consumed in a few years the moiety of the human Species.⁴⁹

King’s emphasis of the words ‘other causes’, shows that he clearly agreed with Gibbon’s assessment that political instability exacerbated any difficulty confronting the state. The citation represents King’s fear of the worst that could happen in an uncertain world.

It is possible to glimpse the concern King felt for the world he lived in while reading about the decline of the Roman Empire. If he was not hyper-vigilant, civil wars, public scandals, and corrupt laws would destroy the society of nations that America had worked so hard to join.⁵⁰ The jealousy and discord that France’s aggression promoted could bring an abrupt end to the American experiment of republican government. While the Romans could not solve their problems, King felt he could take the lessons of their demise and help America avoid the same fate.

One way in which America could evade European complications was to be virtuous in the face of adversity. Virtue in this context involved morality and strength. A state could not expect to be weak and remain among the treaty-worthy nations of the world.⁵¹ King noted that a nation needed to be prepared to manage challenges and copied one of Gibbon’s footnotes that expressed the disgust of the Emperor Julian, who ruled in the mid-fourth century, when he reviewed his army. King commonplaced Gibbon’s citation of the fourth-century Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who ‘observes that they [soldiers since early fourth century Emperor Constantine’s victories] loved downy beds & houses of Marble; & that their cups were heavier than their Swords’.⁵² Such weakness was contemptible in King’s mind.

In Gibbon, King found worthy examples of leaders who confronted the challenges of their time in an honourable fashion. One such figure was Emperor Gordian I, who ‘possessed the uncommon advantage of deserving the Esteem of virtuous Princes, without alarming the jealousy of Tyrants’.⁵³ While Gordian only ruled for one month in 238, he had a good reputation as a literary man, an able administrator, and a leader who shunned intrigue. Power was foisted on him after a revolt against Emperor Maximinus in the province of Africa, but, after his son Gordian II was killed in battle outside Carthage, Gordian I committed suicide. King also expressed favourable views toward another principled figure, the jurist Papinian. When Caracalla killed his brother Geta to consolidate Rome under his own individual rule in 211, he tried to force Papinian to write an apology for the crime. Gibbon reported that Papinian refused, proclaiming, ‘“[i]t is easier to commit than to justify a Parricide” was the Glorious reply of Papinian, who preferred the loss of life to that of honour’.⁵⁴

While Gordian’s and Papinian’s reputations deserved admiration and offered examples to emulate, King found an instance of a stronger leader whose actions united a nation in the face of adversity. That ruler was Clovis I, the Frankish King of Tournai from 481 until 509, when he unified the Frankish tribes and ruled over them until his death in 511. King’s commonplace notes contain Gibbon’s positive remarks about Clovis’s father, Childeric, who debauched Basina, the Queen of the Thuringans, and made her his own wife. Basina expressed satisfaction with her decision to marry Childeric, ‘freely declaring that if she had known a man wiser, stronger, or more beautiful that man sh^d. have been the object of her Preference’. Gibbon implies that Clovis inherited these virtues, noting, ‘[t]he valour of Clovis was directed by cool & consummate Prudence. In all his Transactions with Mankind he calculated the weight of Interest, of passion, & of Opinion’.⁵⁵ By strength and cunning, Clovis unified the Frankish tribes and created a lasting polity based upon Christianity, to which he converted in 496. Such a model of success deserved recognition in King’s mind, and offered clues on how to weather the changes wrought by the French Revolution.

Strong Christian leadership, like that exemplified by Clovis, under an American form of republican government, was a system that, King felt, was capable of surviving the complicated circumstances of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. King’s internal filter rejected Gibbon’s claims against Christianity, disagreeing with the historian’s opinion that ancient polytheism was tolerant of Judaism and Christianity until their followers refused to pay tribute to the Roman government.⁵⁶ King intervened after commonplacing Gibbon’s view, and noted:

[William] Melmoth, — Translator of Pliny[’]s Letter’s [sic] observes that the Persecution of y[e]. X^tians. [Christians] Proceed[ed] from the constitution of the state, or ancient Laws. The Senate says he was jealous of y^e. innovations in point of pub[lic]. Worship, and the magistrates under the republic interposed to prevent them.⁵⁷

Gibbon claimed that Christianity was responsible for the decline of the Empire, but King’s citations show that he thought the initial rejection of Christianity in the first century led to the decline. By embedding anti-Christian sentiments in the fundamental law of the state, the Romans precipitated their own decline. In the same way, the French rejected religion and fostered instability in their state and the continent. King felt that the American system of freedom of worship in a republic based on the Christian religion provided the best way to achieve stability.⁵⁸

This religious foundation became the basis of a government by the people, which King believed was another source of stability. Reading about the reign of Decius from 249 to 251, King noted that the Emperor ‘desired to revive the consulate [Gibbon wrote “censor” in his published text], conscious that the favour of the Sovereign may confer power, but that the Esteem of the People can alone bestow Authority’.⁵⁹ This was placed under the heading ‘Power & Authority’, and referenced the decision by the soldiers of Decius, who was serving as a general on the Danube in early 249, to give their commander power after Emperor Philip signed an unpopular treaty. Decius accepted reluctantly, and King was making the point that it took the confidence of the people to wield power properly. Decius also promoted a revival of state religion at the expense of Christianity and for a return of the censor, the office that regulated public morality in the Republican era. While King would not have supported the oppression of Christianity, he maintained that government required a religious foundation and moral guidance, both of which Decius attempted to institute. The lesson King gleaned was that a government of the people using religion as a conduit to morality would be able to weather the storms of what he considered an era of radical revolutions.

Managing a revolutionary world

In Gibbon’s history King found guidance on how to be the best possible diplomat as well as support for the American form of government, but he also used the text to grasp the meaning of the extraordinary circumstances of the French Revolution. To understand these unprecedented events King had to examine hundreds of years of catastrophic history. The nature of the revolution that King was trying to understand was beyond his comprehension, but Gibbon taught him that societies rotted if revolutions were not brought under control. King found a close parallel with events of his own time in the Age of Thirty Tyrants, when the Roman Empire almost fell apart in 251–68 directly after the Plague of Cyprian. The thirty tyrants were a group of usurpers, described in the notoriously inaccurate Augustan History, who attempted to assume power in a time of chaos and barbarian invasions. The authors of the Augustan History embellished the number of usurpers to mirror the thirty tyrants who took control of Athens after the Peloponnesian War. King, under the heading ‘Revolutions’, noted that Gibbon said the tyrants were of ‘obscure origin’, but the lesson to be learned ‘[i]n Time[s] of confusion, [is that] every active genius finds the Place assigned him by nature: in a state of war military merit is the road to Glory and to Greatness’.⁶⁰ The longer the French Revolutionary wars continued, the longer the Atlantic world would be dominated by men trying to find greatness through force instead of more rational channels of peace and commerce. The need to end these wars as soon as possible was crucial to America’s survival as a member of the treaty-worthy European nations.

Revolutions should be swift and decisive in King’s mind. He believed that the less radical the reorganization of a polity, the faster it could return to traditional concerns. King praised the moderation of ‘[t]he Generous Swiss’ for their example in revolutions, because they ‘have never shed the blood of their Tyrants but in the field of Battle’.⁶¹ Also, King selected the story of Ricimer, the Gothic general who effectively led the Western Roman Empire through a series of puppet emperors from 457 to 472, to illustrate the rewards of self-restraint. When Anthemius, the last of Ricimer’s puppet emperors, moved to assert his independent rule in 472, Ricimer ‘marched ag^t. Rome, murdered the Emperor & sacked the City’. What King neglected to record in his commonplace book was that the siege took five months, caused great destruction, and led to the beheading of Anthemius. King intervened after copying the quote on Ricimer in order to contrast the viciousness of the Roman revolution with the relatively quick and peaceful events of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when ‘King William treated his father in law with rather more moderation’. This moderation had deep historical roots in Britain according to King, who used Gibbon to observe,

[t]he Independence of Britain was soon conferred by Honorius the Emperor [in 409], and the separation was not embittered by the reproach of Tyranny or Rebellion, but the claims of allegiance & Protection were executed by the mutual & voluntary offices of the national friendship.⁶²

Despite the success of the Britons, even revolutions conducted with moderation could quickly deteriorate without vigilance. King understood that America was still young and trying to establish itself in the world after its revolution. The nation needed to avoid all tumults if it was to succeed in becoming a strong nation that deserved the respect of other nations. The agitation of the French Revolution could quickly nullify the victories of republicans in America, and King maintained he was trying to avert such a result. He demonstrated this through his commonplacing of Gibbon’s description of an independent Britain after 409. Gibbon reported that the Romans had left Britannia with an ordered government and society based on powers given to the major cities:

[a]nd the management of a common revenue, the exercise of civil and criminal jurisdiction, and the habits of public counsel and command were inherent to these petty Republics [the major cities in Britannia]. but the desire of obtaining the Advantages, and of escaping the burthens, of political society is a perpetual & inexhaustible source of discord; nor was the Restoration of Br freedom exempt from tumult and faction. The preeminence of Birth and fortune was frequently violated by the bold & popular Citizens, and the haughty nobles who explained that they had become the subjects of their own Servants sometimes regretted the Reign of an arbitrary Monarch — The intestine divisions between different Cities and between them & the chiefs of the villages kept the Country in uninterrupted confusion, and subjected it to the numerous Chiefs which arise in every quarter of it.

The bishops and synods of the church did their best to work with the leaders of the government, but the state of affairs was too precarious. The consequence was that good government failed, ‘and there is reason to believe, that in moments of extreme danger, a Pendragon, or Dictator was elected by the general consent of the Britons’. Such devolution of good government startled King, and, thinking of the present, he worried that if the French Revolution was allowed to continue it could result in the destruction of the American nation. The Britons experienced such destruction, the result being that their ‘state of Independence lasted ab^t. 40 years when the country was overrun by the Saxons’. America had been independent for just over twenty-five years when King recorded this comment, and the chaos of the French Revolution threatened to put America in the same situation as the Britons in the fifth century if leaders like him were not attentive.⁶³

In King’s mind the French Revolution was equated with the terrible upheavals of the late Roman Empire, not the more moderate versions of revolutions in Britannia, England, or Switzerland. Specifically, he equated the French Revolution’s radical and lengthy nature with the devastation caused by Attila and the Huns in the mid-fifth century. King commonplaced that:

In all the wars by the S[c]ythians upon the civilized Empires of the south, the Conquerors have been actuated by a savage & destructive Spirit. The Laws of war wh[ich] restrain the exercise of rapine & murder, are founded on palpable Interest, the Benefits to be obtained by moderation, & the security ag^t. reverses, when retaliation w^d. be measured by the Excesses of the conquered when conquerors, but these considerations were not applicable to the S[c]ythians, the Huns of Atila [sic] resembled the Mogals [sic] and Tartars before their manners were softened.⁶⁴

One of Attila’s greatest transgressions was spurning the laws of war and the moderation they brought to the world.⁶⁵ By equating Bonaparte and French aggression with Attila and the Huns, King demonstrated he feared the long-term consequences of a new type of revolution. The failure to stem the actions of France would lead to a new catastrophic reality and an unfamiliar set of rules in which America would have less room to manoeuvre. King’s fear of these shocking events was real, and it is impossible to understand his political and diplomatic actions without considering them.

King’s alarm was great because he knew that the consequences of failure would be extensive. Continued warfare and destruction would undermine the fabric of society and lead to anarchy. Such a situation emerged during the reign of Theodosius I in the late fourth century. The Emperor had to fend off Gothic invasions from the north and suppress two usurpers during a decade of civil wars. The clamour of these years led King to copy Gibbon’s reflection that

A long period of calamity & decays must check the industry & diminish the wealth of the people, and their luxury must be the result of that indolent despair, which enjoys the present hour and declines the thoughts of futurity — the uncertain condition of property discourages engagements in those useful and laborious undertakings, which require an immediate expence, and promise a low and distant advantage — and the mad prodigality wh[ich] prevails in the confusion of a Shipwreck, or a siege, may serve to explain the Progress of Luxury amidst the misfortunes and terrors of a sinking state.⁶⁶

King found an outlet to express his Federalist ideology, which promoted order and property as the basis of civilized society, by copying this passage. In his conception of the world, regularity created progress, and his emphasis of the words ‘uncertain condition’ makes apparent his anxiety about the new world order emerging from seemingly never-ending wars. He was uneasy that everyone was grasping for short-term advantage in an era of disorder when America, more than any other nation of the world, needed to have a long-term plan to mature as a power by utilizing resources that the North American continent offered.

King was especially afraid of the speed at which events were occurring. Circumstances were changing with such rapidity that places that had avoided war and revolution for centuries were being pulled into this new order; for example, ‘[s]peaking of Lausanne [in Switzerland] Gibbon says — The frantic missionaries of Sedition have scattered the seeds of discontent in our Cities and villages, wh. had flourished above 250 years, without fearing the approach of war, or feeling the weight of Gov^t’.⁶⁷ If a place like Switzerland was being radicalized, King feared that the United States might be next.

Despite this fear, King still felt the French Revolution was an anomaly of history. The laws of nature, the rules instituted by God to direct the universe, could only be flaunted for so long before God’s higher plan would be put back on the right course. Eventually, King believed, circumstances would return to normal and the Revolution would fail. It would take strong leadership to guide the world through such an eruption of violence, but if America’s leaders could play their part with vigour, King felt, the nation could overcome the problems of the early nineteenth century and emerge as a powerful nation when the world returned to the stable place it once was. He testified to this thought in an extract placed under the heading ‘Law of Nature’:

Referring to the desolation of the gothic invasion, Gibbon observes, that the Providence wh had decreed, or foreseen, or permitted such a train of natural & moral Evils, was rashly weighed in the imperfect & salacious balance of human Reason, overlooking in the zeal of controversy, the invariable Laws of nature, which have connected Peace with innocence, plenty with industry, and Safety with valour.⁶⁸

The commonplacing of this passage demonstrates that King was anxious about the political situation of the early nineteenth century, but optimistic of ultimately overcoming the problems of his age. King believed he had found the formula for long-term peace and prosperity through strong diplomatic leadership and good republican government, along with vigilance to moderate revolutions. Reading ancient history gave him a guide to modern problems, as well as hope that America could prevail.

Conclusion

King’s commonplace books provide an entrée into his psychological identity during a particularly demanding phase of his career. They also show how unstable texts are when put in the hands of readers. An understanding of what, when, why, and how King poached from Gibbon reveals King’s self-fashioning and identity creation.⁶⁹ He needed help to understand events that were unprecedented in recent history, and he turned to the ancients, like so many in the early republic, to find a parallel with current events and interpret them morally. In his commonplace books, we gain an additional layer of insight into King’s thinking that is not obvious when we read his official correspondence and dispatches. He was anxious and concerned about the turbulent events transpiring around him, and books helped him to manage that fear. They also helped him discover how to be an exemplary diplomat, prepare his thoughts on the importance of republican government, and see the French Revolution from a macro-perspective. While his reading appropriations did not lead to any obvious actions, the commonplace books allow us to understand the filters through which he interpreted and understood events, providing a cultural history of politics and diplomacy. These notebooks allow us to add to traditional diplomatic history, without taking away from its salience.

The commonplace books offer a particular reading by King of a set of books in a specific context. King read Gibbon in the way he did because of his past experiences and present needs, and he would have read the historian differently in other circumstances. King read as a statesman and a diplomat in 1799–1803, looking at events from a strategic perspective. After returning to America in mid-1803, he read quite differently. He considered national interests upon his return, but his other commonplace books indicate that he did so from a more partisan and tactical perspective. He read widely to promote specific political ends, namely to challenge the Republican drift towards war with Britain in the years before 1812, to defend American fishing rights in the Treaty of Ghent in 1815, and to attack the extension of slavery into Missouri during the Congressional debates of 1819–20.⁷⁰ When read closely in context, these seemingly opaque collections of gathered quotations offer a richer way to understand politics and diplomacy in the early American republic. Reading history, generally an underdeveloped field in early American history, offers a number of ways to improve our understanding of the period.

Notes on contributor

David J. Gary is the Kaplanoff Librarian for American History at Yale University Library, where he develops collections and assists with research and teaching in the fields of American history, American studies, and African American studies. He has a PhD in American history, with a focus on early America and the history of the book, from the City University of New York-Graduate Center. In addition, he has an MLS from the City University of New York-Queens College. He would like to thank the CUNY Early American Republic Seminar and the Yale Early American History colloquium for their criticism of and suggestions on earlier drafts of this essay. In particular, he would like to thank Aaron Pratt for his insightful reading of this essay. His assistance was essential

Notes

1 Rachel Hope Cleves describes a Federalist culture that adopted anti-Jacobin language because of the fear of violence associated with the French Revolution. R. H. Cleves, The Reign of Terror in America: Visions of Violence from Anti-Jacobinism to Antislavery (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

2 New York, New-York Historical Society (hereafter N-YHS), Rufus King Papers, Commonplace Book, c. 1799–1806, vol. 102 (hereafter King, vol. 102). The vast majority of the entries in this commonplace book were likely written from mid-1799 to 1802.

3 All of the books that King cited in the commonplace books examined for this essay can be found in the inventory taken of King’s library at his death in 1827, although not all of them could be found at N-YHS, where the library resides. See N-YHS, Rufus King Papers, Inventory of Rufus King Library, 1827, vol. 74, and N-YHS, N-YHS Archives, Catalogue of the King Library, c. 1906, 8 vols.

4 King, vol. 102. King did not cite a volume or page number. The definitive discussion of Gibbon’s historical approach can be found in J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, 5 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999–2010).

5 For an overview of the Democratic-Republican challenge to the Federalists in the 1790s, see S. Elkins and E. McKitrick,or an overview of the Democratic-Republican challenge to the Federalists in the 1790s, see S. Elkins and E. McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

6 King was part of a wider culture of reading classical history in early America. See E. Shalev, Rome Reborn on Western Shores: Historical Imagination and the Creation of the American Republic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009); R. J. Carl, The Golden Age of the Classics in America: Greece, Rome, and the Antebellum United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); C. Winterer, The Mirror of Antiquity: American Women and the Classical Tradition, 1750–1900 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007); C. Winterer, The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780–1910 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); C. J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).

7 This present-minded reading of history is particularly developed in Shalev and in D. R. Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

8 The second commonplace book that King kept during his mission in London can be found at N-YHS, Rufus King Papers, Commonplace Book, c. 1802–03, vol. 75 (hereafter King, vol. 75).

9 For an overview of King’s diplomatic mission of 1796–1803, see R. Ernst, Rufus King: American Federalist (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 219–73; A. Broadwater, ‘Rufus King and American Foreign Policy: Minister to England in the Administration of George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, 1796–1803’ (Master’s thesis, Kent State University, 1961); B. Perkins, The First Rapprochement: England and the United States 1795–1805 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1955).

10 J. Raven, The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 157–67, esp. 157–58; J. Raven, Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England, 1750–1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 43.

11 Raven, The Business of Books, pp. 154–92 and 288–93, esp. 158–60, 175–76, 179–80, and 184–85. For shop addresses for each bookseller during 1796–1803, see the British Book Trade Index http://www.bbti.bham.ac.ukx [accessed 28 July 2014]. King owned books sold by or printed for each of these shop owners, although it is impossible to conjecture whether he bought them himself in London or not. For an example of King randomly perusing establishments in London, see the annotation on the verso of the title page of King’s copy of J. Cranch, Narrative Relating to the Real Embalmed Head of Oliver Cromwell, Now Exhibiting in Mead-Court, in Old Bond-Street (London(?), 1799).

12 In a brief travel diary, King mentioned rummaging through the bookshops in Leiden, the Hague, and Amsterdam. N-YHS, Rufus King Papers, Notebook on Journey through Europe, 1802, vol. 78. For more details of King’s Continental European travels, see D. Gary, ‘Rufus King and the History of Reading: The Use of Print in the Early American Republic’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, City University of New York, 2013), pp. 128–29, 163–64.

13 King bought a manuscript of Thomas Mathew’s history of the Bacon Rebellion at an auction in 1801. See King to Thomas Jefferson, 20 December 1803, N-YHS, Rufus King Papers, Box 9, Folder 6. Also see Catalogue, (Part II), of the Stock in Trade of the late Mr W. Collins, Bookseller, deceased … which will be sold by auction … by Mr King, at his Great Room, King Street, Covent Garden, on Monday, July 27, 1801, and 11 following days (on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 1801, and 23 following days), etc. ([London, 1801]). The manuscript can be found at lot 5781, ‘Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia, 12mo, 1675,6’.

14 For details of King’s map collection, see Gary, pp. 129, 164.

15 For example, see King’s copy of A. F. B. Deslandes, An Essay on Maritime Power and Commerce; Particularly those of France (London: Printed for Paul Vaillant, 1743). A printed label on the front pastedown notes that it was from ‘Thomas’s Circulating Library, Brighthelmston’; King and his family occasionally vacationed nearby. Also see King’s copy of J. F. D. Smyth, A Tour in the United States of America, 2 vols (London: Printed for G. Robinson, Pater-noster Row; J. Robson, New Bond-Streeet; and J. Sewell, Cornhill, 1784). The front pastedown of the first volume contains the bookplate of W. and J. Morton, and underneath in a manuscript hand is written, ‘Circulating Library New Brentford’. This library was near Mill Hill, about ten miles outside London, where the King family rented a summer home. For King’s staff going to coffee houses to read newspapers and pamphlets, see Christopher Gore to King, 20 October 1802, in N-YHS, Erving–King Papers, Box 24, Folder K53, Rufus King Domestic Letter Book 1799–180.

16 E. Havens, Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 2001), p. 10. J. M. Hess describes the change that began to take place in Enlightenment and Romantic-era commonplace books, and argues against the tendency to deny the label of ‘commonplace book’ to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s notebooks in ‘Coleridge’s Fly-Catchers: Adopting Commonplace-Book Form’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 73.3 (July 2012), 467–71. Similarly, the catalogue of N-YHS refers to King’s ‘notebooks’, but they should be labelled as commonplace books.

17 The literature on commonplace books is large and has flourished in recent years. Some important books and articles include Hess, pp. 463–83; A. Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 69, 72–73, 89–90; David Allan, Commonplace Books and Reading in Georgian England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), esp. pp. 62–63; R. Darnton, ‘The Mysteries of Reading’, in The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future (New York: PublicAffairs, 2009), pp. 149–73; D. Allan, Making British Culture: English Readers and the Scottish Enlightenment, 1740–1830 (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 134–53; S. Colclough, Consuming Texts: Readers and Reading Communities, 1695–1870 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Havens; S. Colclough, ‘Recovering the Reader: Commonplace Books and Diaries as Sources of Reading Experience’, Publishing History, 44 (1998), 5–37.

18 The notion that the reader creates the meaning of the text is central to the history of reading. See R. Darnton, ‘First Steps towards a History of Reading’, Australian Journal of French Studies, 23.1 (January 1986), 5–30; R. Chartier, ‘Texts, Printing, Readings’, in The New Cultural History, ed. by L. Hunt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 154–75; D. D. Hall, Cultures of Print: Essays in the History of the Book (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), pp. 10–12, 29–35, 40–41, 184–87; J. Rose, ‘Arriving at a History of Reading’, Historically Speaking, 5 (January 2004), 36–39; L. Price, ‘Reading: The State of the Discipline’, Book History, 7 (2004), 303–20. This essay focuses on empirical instances of reading instead of theory. For arguments that rely on evidence of actual readers, see D. Allan, Making British Culture; H. J. Jackson, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).

19 Allan discusses the consumer and producer versions of the Enlightenment at Making British Culture, p. 240.

20 L. Jardine and A. Grafton, ‘“Studied for Action”: How Gabriel Harvey Read his Livy’, Past and Present, 129.1 (November 1990), 30–78.

21 King did create a commonplace book with one overarching category at N-YHS, Rufus King Papers, Commonplace Book, c. 1803–18, vol. 77 (hereafter King, vol. 77). On the first page of the commonplace book King asked, ‘May Subjects without permission, separate themselves from their Country, and become members of another State?’. He proceeded to answer the question by citing a variety of law of nations scholars.

22 While King did not create an index for the two commonplace books examined here, there are examples of his creation of indexes in the large volumes that consist of copies of his correspondence of his diplomatic mission. See N-YHS, Rufus King Papers, Letter Books A–E, 1796–1803, vols 63–67.

23 King, vol. 102.

24 King, vol. 75.

25 C. Hill, Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).

26 On other figures using commonplace books to manage change and anxiety, see Darnton, ‘The Mysteries of Reading’, pp. 149–73; K. Sharpe, Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 170–252, esp. 181–98; K. A. Lockridge, On the Sources of Patriarchal Rage: The Commonplace Books of William Byrd and Thomas Jefferson and the Gendering of Power in the Eighteenth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1992).

27 See n. 6 above.

28 For letters involving King’s children John and Charles reading Roman history, see N-YHS, Erving–King Papers, Box 24, Folder K53, Rufus King Domestic Letter Book 1799–1803, passim; for King acquiring books for other diplomats, see William Vans Murray to King, 26 August 1797, William Loughton Smith to King, 12 May 1799, and Smith to King, 5 June 1799, in San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, Rufus King Papers, Boxes 4 and 6. Marginalia evidence relating to politics in the mid-1790s shows that King was likely reading David Hume’s history just before travelling to Britain in 1796. See King’s copy of The History of England: From the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Revolution in 1688, i (London: Printed for T. Cadell, 1796), 330–31.

29 King, vol. 102, under the heading ‘Popular Concessions’. The underlining is King’s here, and throughout.

30 H. Duchhardt, ‘Peace Treaties from Westphalia to the Revolutionary Era’, in Peace Treaties and International Law in European History from the Middle Ages to World War One, ed. by R. Lesaffer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 58.

31 For details of King’s library at the end of his mission, including its estimated size, see Gary, pp. 15, 27.

32 This quotation can be found in King, both vols 75 and 102, but the citation is from vol. 75. In vol. 75 King did not give it a heading and recorded that it could be found at ‘1 Gibbon 255’. In vol. 102 King gave it the heading ‘Gordian the younger’ and noted that it came from ‘1 Gibbon 253’.

33 King, vol. 102. This can be found under the heading ‘Extracts &c’. King recorded the Latin in his commonplace book, ‘Nullum esse librum tam malum ut non ex aliquâ parte prodesset’.

34 This can be found in King, both vols 75 and 102. The quotation used here is from vol. 75. In both commonplace books, King noted that this could be found at ‘1 Gibbon 392’. In vol. 75 this can be found under the heading ‘A character’. In vol. 102, King gave it the heading ‘Character of Gallienus Son of Valerian’, and copied it with slight differences from vol. 75, ‘He was å master of several curious & [above the ampersand King wrote, “but”] useless sciences, a ready orator, an Elegant poet, a skillful Gardner, an excellent cook, & most contemptible Prince’.

35 All material on Honorius can be found at King, vol. 75, under the heading ‘Talents’. King noted that it came from ‘5 Gib. 160’.

36 King, vol. 102, under the heading ‘Scholar & Soldier’. King noted that this came from ‘Gibbons Memrs’. Also in vol. 102, King copied that it was easy to waste time, energy, and talents, ‘[i]n the investigation of the origin of [the] Nation, “our Curiosity consumes itself in toilsome and disappointed Efforts”’. King noted that this came from ‘1 Gib. 314’.

37 King, vol. 75, under the heading ‘Boethius AD 524’. King noted that this came form ‘7 Gib. 43’. Also see King, vol. 75, under the heading ‘Virtue’, where King recorded, ‘True virtue says Aristotle is placed at an equal distance between opposite vices’. King noted that this came from ‘4 Gib. 34’.

38 See extracts in King, vol. 75, under the headings ‘Presents to Ambassadors’ and ‘Presents’. King did not provide a volume and page number for the former heading, but noted that the latter could be found at ‘1 Gibbon 328’. Vol. 102 has the same extracts on presents under the same headings, and King noted that the former could be found at ‘1 Gibbon 361’ and the latter at ‘1 Gib. 328’. See vol. 102 for material on bribery. King recorded material under the headings ‘Bribery in Politics’, and ‘Bribery’, both of which reference a discussion King had with Sir John Dalrymple about bribery during the English Civil War. Also see the headings ‘Political Bribery’, which King extracted from ‘Sueton. j. Cæsar. 19’, and ‘Military Bribery’, which King noted could be found at ‘Cicero ad Att. 1. 16’.

39 King, vol. 102, under the heading ‘A House’. After this extract, King wrote the Latin from Gibbon’s text, ‘Ornanda est enim Dignitas domo, non ex domo tota quærenda. De Offic. 1. 39’.

40 In an undated scrap note, King recorded, ‘“There is Language in the Eye, the Cheek, the lip, nay [t]he foot speaks” — Shakespeare’. This line from Troilus and Cressida, iv, 5 reflects King’s desire to remove the veil of political events to see the truth of any situation. King stressed gathering information around him throughout his life.

41 King, vol. 75, under the heading ‘Language of Ministers’. King noted that this came from ‘7 Gib. 26’.

42 King, vol. 102, under the heading ‘Extracts &c’. King noted that this came from ‘Gibbon’s Memrs’. Under this same heading, King also extracted, ‘Cicero’s Epistles afford models of every form of correspondence, from the careless Effusions of friendship, to the well guarded declaration of discreet and dignified Resentment’. This was also from ‘Gibbon’s Memrs’.

43 In scrap notes made in preparation for the 1821 New York state constitutional convention, King created the heading ‘Bonaparte’ and said, ‘[g]reat and extraordinary as Bonaparte was he combined in his own character Elements of his own Destruction’. N-YHS, Rufus King Papers, Box 19, Folder 1.

44 King, vol. 75, under the heading ‘Phrase’. He did not note where this came from in the commonplace books, but it can be found at the discussion of Flavius Rufinius, consul and praetorian prefect under Emperor Theodosius I, in Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 29.

45 Gary, pp. 11–14.

46 King, vol. 75, under the heading ‘Thrones’. King noted that this came from ‘1 Gib. 181’. The underlining is King’s. It is also recorded in vol. 102, under the heading ‘Reign of Severus’. King noted that this passage came from ‘Gib. 1 V. 181’. The quotation comes from the version at vol. 75.

47 Quotation and reference to Bonaparte from King, vol. 102. King did not give this a heading, but noted that it came from ‘1 Gib. 200’. This passage is also in King, vol. 75, under the heading ‘Usurpers’. Bonaparte is not referenced in the extract from vol. 75.

48 King, vol. 75, under the heading ‘Roman Imperial Succession’. King noted that this came from ‘Gibbon’, but did not provide page numbers. This quotation can also be found in vol. 102 with no heading. In that commonplace book, King noted that the passage came from ‘1 Gib. 242’.

49 King, vol. 75, under the heading ‘AD. 250 Great Famine & Plague’. King noted that this came from ‘1 Gib. 403’.

50 E. H. Gould, Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); D. J. Hulsebosch and D. M. Golove, ‘A Civilized Nation: The Early American Constitution, the Law of Nations, and the Pursuit of International Recognition’, New York University Law Review, 85 (2010), 932–1066; L. J. Sodosky, Revolutionary Negotiations: Indians, Empires, and Diplomats in the Founding of America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009); D. Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); D. C. Hendrickson, Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003); P. Onuf and N. Onuf, Federal Union, Modern World: The Law of Nations in an Age of Revolutions, 1776–1814 (Madison, WI: Madison House, 1993).

51 Gould, pp. 12–13.

52 Quotation from King, vol. 75, under heading ‘Soldiers of Justinian’. King incorrectly noted that Gibbon was discussing soldiers under Justinian, who ruled in the sixth century. Gibbon really discussed Julian in the passage King copied. King recorded the first half of the footnote under the same heading, ‘Ferox erat in suos miles et rapax, ignavus vero in Hostes et fractus’. King noted that this came from ‘Ammian L. 22. C 4’.

53 Quotation from King, vol. 102, under heading ‘Gordianus (or Gordian)’. King noted that this came from ‘1 Gibbon 252’. This can also be found in vol. 75 without a heading.

54 Quotation from King, vol. 75, under the heading ‘Papinian’. King noted that this came from ‘1 Gib. 192’. The extract can also be found in vol. 102 without a heading. Also see the heading ‘Reputation’ in vol. 75, underneath which King extracted Gibbon’s comment about Mellobaudes, a fourth-century Frankish King, ‘who maintained (speaking of a chief of the Franks), to the last moment of his life, the ambiguous Reputation which is the just recompense of obscure & subtle Policy’. King noted that this came from ‘5 Gib. 9’.

55 King, vol. 75, both quotations under the heading, ‘Origin of y[e] french Monarchy A.D. 481’. King noted that that both quotations came from ‘6 Gib. 277’.

56 King, vol. 75, under the heading ‘Toleration of Polytheism’. King noted that this came from ‘2 Gibbon p. 316’. After King turned the page and continued his commonplacing of this passage, he changed the heading to ‘Roman Popular Assemblies not permitted — without the presence of a magistrate’. See King’s copy of Pliny the Younger, The Letters of Pliny the Consul: with Occasional Remarks, trans. by William Melmoth, 2 vols (Dublin: Printed for Thomas Ewing, 1765).

57 King, vol. 75, a ‘Remark’ after the extract under ‘Toleration of Polytheism’. Part-way through his ‘Remark’, King began writing on a new page and provided the heading ‘Roman Popular Assemblies not permitted — without the presence of a magistrate’ for the last section. In his ‘Remark’, King also cited ‘Valerius maximus L. 1. C. 3’ and quoted Latin extracts from ‘L. 39. C. 16’ and ‘L. 36. C. 25’ of Livy’s History of Rome to support his view that the Roman Constitution was the reason why Judaism and Christianity were persecuted. See King’s copy of Pliny the Younger, The Letters of Pliny the Consul; T. Livius, The History of Rome, trans. by George Baker, 6 vols (London: Printed for A. Strahan, and T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1797); T. Livius, Titi Livii patavini historiarum ab ure condita, 7 vols (Paris: Typis Barbou, 1775); and T. Livius, The Roman History Written in Latine by Titus Livius (London: Printed for Awnsham Churchill, 1686). The catalogues of King’s library do not record anything by Valerius Maximus.

58 King felt Gibbon was on better ground when he wrote about religion in general. He approvingly cited Gibbon’s comment that ‘according to the Principles upon which the Roman Republic was founded [t]he fidelity of the Citizens to each other, and to the state, was confirmed by the habits of Education and the prejudices of Religion’. This quotation is from vol. 75 and does not have a heading, but King noted that it came from ‘6 Gibbon 363’.

59 Quotation from King, vol. 75, under the heading ‘Power & Authority’. King noted that this came from ‘1 Gib. 356’. This was also extracted at vol. 102, under the same heading. In this version, King noted that Gibbon was referring to Emperor Decius. At vol. 102, King recorded, ‘[c]onscious that the favour of the Sovereign may confer power, but that the Esteem of the People can alone bestow Authority’ — he submitted the choice of ye Censor to the unbiased view of the Senate’. King noted that this came from ‘1 Gibbon 356’.

60 King, vol. 75, under the heading ‘Revolutions’. King did not note a volume or page number, although this extract is between two paginated passages, the first from ‘1 Gibbon 392’ and the latter from ‘1 Gibbon 395’.

61 Material on the Swiss can be found in King, vol. 102, under the headings ‘Revolutions’ and ‘Swiss!’ King did not provide page numbers.

62 Material on Ricimer and Anthemius can be found at King, vol. 75, under the heading ‘Anthemius ye. Emp. dethroned by his Son in Law Ricimer’. King did not provide volume or page numbers, although the extract can be found between two passages with citations of ‘6 G. 171’ and ‘6 Gib. 261’. The quotation on the separation of Britannia from the Roman Empire can be found in vol. 75, under the heading ‘Independence of Britain’. King noted that it came from ‘5 Gib. 338.39’.

63 All quotations from King, vol. 75. The passage on Britannia does not have a heading. King noted that it came from ‘5 G. 343’.

64 King, vol. 75, with the heading ‘Ravages and Depopulation of War’. King did not provide a volume or page number for this extract, although it is between passages cited at ‘6 Gibbon 128’ and ‘6 Vol. 160’.

65 On the laws of war in American history see J. F. Witt, Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (New York: Free Press, 2012); B. M. Carnahan, Act of Justice: Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Law of War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007).

66 King, vol. 75. This commonplace had no heading, although King noted that it came from ‘5 Gib. 81’. M. R. Hale has noted how events of the French Revolution seemed to speed up time for contemporary Americans. See ‘On their Tiptoes: Political Time and Newspapers during the Advent of the Radicalized French Revolution, circa 1792–1793’, Journal of the Early Republic, 29 (Summer 2009), 191–218.

67 King, vol. 102, under the heading ‘Pay de Vaut’. This was taken from Gibbon’s Memoirs by King.

68 King, vol. 75, under the heading ‘Law of Nature’. King noted that it came from ‘5 G. 208’.

69 On the role of commonplace books in self-fashioning and identity formation, see Allan, Commonplace Books and Reading in Georgian England, pp. 2–5, 19, 57, 61–63, 251–52; Allan, Making British Culture, pp. 143, 177, 182, 197; Colclough, Consuming Texts, p. 17; Havens, p. 30.

70 Gary, pp. 100–07, 182–88, 211–39.