INTRODUCTION: MAKING HISTORY MATTER

      “Truth is shaped strictly by the needs of those who wish to receive it.”

      —Russell Banks, Cloudsplitter (1996)

      “Men of literary tastes … are always apt to overlook the working classes and to confine the records they make of their own time, in great degree, to the habits and fortunes of their own associates.… This has made it nearly impossible to discern the very real influence their character and condition has had on the fortune and fate of the nation.”

      —Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (1859)

      As many Americans know, the two most important documents in the history of the United States, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 1787, were drafted and signed at the State House in Philadelphia, now Independence Hall. The city was also the site of the first American paper mill, hospital, medical college, subscription library, street lighting, scientific and intellectual society, bank, and government mint. The city served on and off as the official capital of the country until 1800. Today, we remember less about the significance of Philadelphia to the history of the nation than the record shows. But even the memories lodged in the public mind cannot be taken for granted, and they are far from complete. Indeed, the Philadelphia story could have been written another way; in fact, it has been rewritten many times. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the unearthing of Philadelphia’s past is a thriving business. Today, the long look backward by historians is renovating the public recollection of the city’s past.

      Remembering Philadelphia’s bygone days existed from the beginning, as soon as a mother told her children a story about olden times or a father reminded his offspring of his arrival in Penn’s woods. But for a long time the city’s history was passed only informally from one generation to another. No biography of Philadelphia’s founder appeared for almost a century after his death. No city history appeared until Philadelphia was on the verge of celebrating its 150th birthday. Not until Jefferson and Madison had retired from their presidencies did Philadelphians witness the advent of calculated, organized memory-making.

      In 1816, just after the Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812, Pennsylvania’s legislators eyed the venerable State House building in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution had been signed. Razing the building and selling the land for commercial development in the fast-growing, forward-looking city seemed like a practical idea, for the state government had moved to Harrisburg seventeen years before and legislators knew that tax-shy citizens would appreciate how the sale of the property could underwrite the costs of a new capitol building on the banks of the Susquehanna. Sentimental attachment to the site of the nation’s birth did not figure much in the legislature’s planning because the public itself was indifferent to preserving what would later become a national icon. Even the Liberty Bell seemed nothing more than a rusty relic. As a later preservationist commented ruefully, the old bell was not thought worth mentioning in the plan to raze the State House, “but left to