From Indian Killer to Worthy Citizen

HE graveyard at Trinity Church is a veritable who's who of eighteenth-century American heroes. At the corner of Broadway and Wall streets in Manhattan, Trinity Churchyard was the burial ground for many of early America's famous politicians, generals, inventors, and magnates. The gravestones of John Peter Zenger, Alexander Hamilton, Albert Gallatin, Horatio Gates, Robert Fulton, and John Jacob Astor litter this urban cemetery now dwarfed by New York's skyscrapers. In the shadow of these giants lies another grave, that of Michael Cresap, a militia captain from western Maryland who died in New York in October 1775. Cresap was an unusual figure to be buried with full military honors in one of the most prestigious colonial burial grounds: his notoriety came from his expertise in killing Indians, especially for murdering the family of Mingo Indian Chief Logan in the Ohio valley the summer before. How, then, did the whom Thomas Jefferson labeled a man infamous for the many murders he has committed on the frontier get to Trinity?1 The answer lies in the particular needs of the revolutionary project itself. As colonial rebels watched by the candid world, Whig leaders had to initiate and shape interpretations that explained what they were doing and, ultimately, who they were, a process that largely took place

Biology · Media studies · Political science · Sociology · Transformation (genetics · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture

• Indian warfare, household competency, and the settlement of the western Virginia frontier, 1749 to 1794

  John M Boback•2007

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• Revolution in the Quarterly? A Historiographical Analysis

  Michael A Mcdonnell, David Waldstreicher et al.•The William and Mary Quarterly•2017

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