Journal of the Early Republic

Hellos and Goodbyes

Greetings from Philadelphia, where we have successfully migrated to the role of editors proper of the JER. Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg of Louisiana State University have taken over the book review section. The great number of our readers who are familiar with their scholarship and their book reviews—and their recent crossover pieces for Salon.-com—will know how fortunate we are to have such an accomplished and well-read team for this integral part of the journal.

This year will inaugurate a small but significant expansion of the number of pages in the journal, which we expect will allow us to expand the editors’ pages to an article length feature. No, just kidding—wanted to see if you were paying attention! Rather, we expect to print several more articles per year—something that will be helpful because the number and quality of submissions continues to rise. We also hope to publish more historiographical pieces, review essays, and perhaps shorter research notes as opportunities and inspiration allow.

We salute our colleague Susan Klepp upon her retirement for her outstanding service to the field in editing the journal for three years (and bringing the JER to Temple University). Susan concluded her long teaching career with a gaggle of scholarly accomplishments: Besides editing the journal, she won the AHA’s Joan Kelly prize for Revolutionary Conceptions (2009). At a celebration of Susan’s career held by the history department last spring, we were moved by the testimony her colleagues offered about Susan’s steadfast support and insistence upon high standards over the years. Around the dizzying heights of Gladfelter Hall’s eighth and ninth floors, we will miss her friendly wave from behind her desk as we passed by, her carefully chosen words of advice, and her wicked sense of irony in the wake of academic and bureaucratic absurdities.

At press time we learned of the death of our friend and colleague [End Page 133] Alfred F. Young. No one had a more salutary influence on the historiography of the Revolution and early republic during the past half-century—through his writings, of course, from The Democratic-Republicans of New York (1967) to The Shoemaker and the Tea Party (1999), Masquerade (2004), Liberty Tree (2006) and also through anthologies like Dissent (1968), The American Revolution (1976), Beyond the American Revolution (1993), Whose American Revolution Was It? (2011), and Revolutionary Founders (2011). His edited books and curatorial work testify to his remarkable patience and rigor in response to others’ work and his inspiring ability to connect historians across professional and even political divides. He was, profoundly, an organizer as well as a craftsman who relished in the social and collaborative as well as the archival and writerly aspects of the historian’s labors. A letter or email from Al was like a gift: a combination of purpose and concern, gentle prodding mixed with careful praise, useful news, and mild self-criticism. As a colleague and friend as much as historian, he excelled at putting himself in another’s shoes. True to his origins, his predilections, and his training, he stayed always on guard for creeping pretension, pride, illogic, or ill humor. While he identified himself as an outsider, he kept all lines of communication open, and was always as generous and friendly with younger scholars as with his old friends. ¹ We can only hope to do as well, and to see his like again.