Report from the Trenches

My secret history spy reports on his most recent archival research. You may remember his previous trip to Square State Archives. Or maybe you remember when the history spy visited Peach State Archives.

Now he's in the Land of John Winthrop, finding that the more things change, the more they stay the same:

"The Commonwealth of [Winthrop] requires the adjutant general to maintain the state's military archives, so that stuff isn't in the boring state archives in [Capital City]-- it's in the state military museum in [Smaller Inland City], which is run by the effing National Guard. Their archives are **&&^ STUNNING, and I'll be spending months of my life there at some point, because they have thousands and thousands of amazing documents from the early republic. Which, okay, check it out: most white men were in the militia, so when the middling militia dudes of (Town X) petition the governor for relief from the oppressive and dissolute dandies of the despised officer class or whatevs, you get a whole social picture of the, you know, white guy community. A couple hundred court martial records! Detailed transcripts of testimony! Social picture! Blaaargh!

Anyway, the [Winthrop] Military Museum...is dark. Apparently they don't get many visitors, so they don't turn on the lights. You ring a doorbell to get in. And there are three staffers, only one of whom is an archivist and cares that you're in his reading room. It's a huuuuuuuge 19th-century artillery armory, with gunports and good fields of fire for when the s*** goes down, and the staff wanders off and leaves me alone with my swanky messenger bag and the irreplaceable handwritten correspondence of, like, Samuel Adams and John Hancock. And Elbridge Gerry, who nobody cares about, but still. And so then I have to go to the bathroom, and I wander alone through the dark building and across the wooden drill floor, my footsteps echoing against the stone walls. It &*^^-ing rocks."

This is a good life, dude.

-me

P.S. Oh! Oh! And they just bring out everything I want all at once, so I'm sitting there alone with huge piles of irreplaceable handwritten correspondence from the late-18th century! I must have a trustworthy face, because my god."

Yes, dude. You do have a trustworthy face. And a potty mouth. [Note kettle calling pot black.]