Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally Belletristic .
from political domination which was one of Jefferson's proudest boasts.
A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774) is not satire
per se any more than Henry's speeches or Madison's later numbers of The
Federalist, but the indignant and reasoned argument of all three has some
of its origins in the earlier colonial expressions of resentment in some
variations of the satiric, especially in forceful irony.
But the story of the southern colonial satiric tradition must return to
mid-eighteenth-century Maryland, for there was developed a sophisticated
southern humor, usually satirical but rarely political, which is obviously
art, or belles lettres. Much of the best of it has not yet appeared in print,
although it is destined to create when it does so a new concept of the colonial
Maryland mind. Though two men composed most of the prose and poetry,
one or two dozen, or perhaps one or two score, of others contributed puns,
anecdotes, mocking and ribald songs, narratives, and a variety of verses,
and even composed music to be used with the songs. Its story is essentially
the story of a coffeehouse club of the eighteenth-century British variety
which lasted for ten or eleven years and, induced by two moving spirits,
developed an elaborate and complex edifice of the mock-heroic which has
yet to be fully analyzed and to be published.
The social group known as the Tuesday Club held regular weekly and
later biweekly meetings from 1745 to 1756, had anniversary celebrations
each year, ordered engraved silver medals or badges for its members, and
over this decade carried on its program of literary and social gaiety. Its
regular membership, citizens of Annapolis and its environs, was set at fifteen,
the honorary membership (principally other Marylanders from more
distant spots but also persons from outside the province including a London
representative) was unlimited. Annapolis and other American cities and
towns were "much addicted to clubbing," but this particular group was
unusual in several respects. Its membership came from the upper strata
of society but by no means principally from the wealthy planters and official
classes. Its moving spirits were the local printer-publisher Jonas
Green and the &ottish physician who had not reached the New W orId
until I738/9, Dr. Alexander Hamilton. The resident regular members
included clergymen, attorneys, and merchants as well as some provincial
minor officials and neighboring planters. Whatever their occupation, resident
or honorary members formed an assembly of wits of considerable
ability, "who satirized every one {and thing}, and did it successfully." 90
Unlike many contemporary and later clubs in Maryland and other places,
there was a rule ("the gelastic law" ) forbidding discussion of politics,
though some commentators have felt that it was not adhered to or was
simply part of the fun. As it is, the surviving records, kept or composed by
club secretary Alexander Hamilton for each "Sederunt" or meeting, consist