I first wrote Chapter 16 of the first volume of Documenting America five or six years ago. Well, it’s chapter 16 now that I added some before it. I think it was eleven or twelve originally. The documents of the chapter were two letters written by Benjamin Franklin from Paris on May 1, 1777. He was ambassador for the thirteen colonies, then fighting for their independence from Great Britain.

Franklin had been there less than three months, but he already had measured the political landscape and formed conclusions. England was having trouble recruiting troops. Mercenaries from Germany were available, but hard to come by. France, and her ally Spain, were preparing for war against England, but for the moment would not move. Since reports from America told him of improved prospects for Washington’s army, Franklin was optimistic that the American forces could hold off the British.

Franklin also concluded that continental Europe was on the side of the colonies. Even those nations and people who did not live in liberty were pulling for us. We were “the cause of all mankind.” If we won our liberty, formed a government, and stayed free among the roll call of nations, perhaps liberty for them was possible.

As I reviewed this chapter last night in preparation for expanding to full length this week, I knew I needed to see the Franklin letters again. So, through the miracle of Google Books, I found an 1818 volume that had them. They really weren’t much longer than the excerpts I had planned to use as a newspaper column, so I decided to use the full letters (minus salutations and closings). However, I saw in the old book that Franklin wrote a short letter to a third man that day. It was just as good as the other two, so into the chapter it went.

The longer amounts of letters, and some expansion of my commentary, brought the chapter up to 1478 words, and the book up to 35,447. I have one more chapter to expand, and I think two more to add, bringing the total chapters to thirty, and the word count to around 39,000. That doesn’t include an obligatory introduction, or table of contents, title page, copyright page, etc. Nor does it include some advance notice of volume two. I’ve learned recently that novelists who e-self-publish a series will add something of the plot of the next volume to the one at hand, creating some anticipation. Sounds like a good idea to me.

So, my first e-self-published book comes closer to completion. I project I’ll have it done by Saturday or Sunday. I’ll then print it and begin a couple of weeks of proofreading while waiting for my beta readers to review it and give me feedback. At least, I hope they do that. So far, no word.

It’s late, and I really need to get to bed. I want to read a little, however, and prepare for tomorrow’s writing work.

Last night I spent nearly three hours in The Dungeon, writing on Documenting America. Having just written and type two new chapters over previous days, I decided to spend last night expanding some chapters that were either newspaper column length or that I started years ago but never really completed.

The three I picked were chapters I drew out of a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to his Virginia colleague Samuel Kercheval on July 12, 1816. [Note: A couple of transcriptions of this on the Internet erroneously have the date June 12, 1816.] Kercheval had written Jefferson, asking for his opinions on changing the Virginia constitution. Kercheval thought certain parts of it were not as good as they should be, and seems to have been one pushing for a constitutional convention. But, the Virginia constitution was Jefferson’s baby, having been based on his own work. Heck, he may have even written most of it. What would Jefferson think about his baby being revised?

Jefferson wrote back in detail, saying he agreed with most of what Kercheval did (which must have been based on something Kercheval wrote in his letter; haven’t seen it yet) and so he didn’t mind weighing in privately, but didn’t want his views showing up in the newspaper. In his letter, Jefferson threw his “baby” under the bus, saying it was indeed time to change it.

This is such a good letter that I was able to draw three chapters from it, on the following themes:
1. Constitutions might be good, but they are not perfect, and should be subject to change at regular intervals. Flaws in constitutions are overcome by active participation in government by an informed citizenry.

2. The best republican government is that which includes the broadest possible electorate, the most equitable representation, and fairly frequent elections.

3. Public debt is a bad thing, because it results in higher taxes, which results in citizens having to work so much to pay their taxes that they have no time to participate in government.

This letter is, in my opinion, one of the most important documents from United States history. Everyone should read it, internalize it, and remember what Jefferson was saying. A good transcription can be found here. A scan of the original letter starts here and continues for several pages. The same Library of Congress collection says it has the Kercheval letter, but I checked it and it was signed by a Thompkins. Perhaps Kercheval published under an alias the pamphlet he sent to Jefferson, but Jefferson knew who he was.

Close reading of the Jefferson letter last night and today convinced me that I have some more work to do on these three chapters, not so much my analysis but the quoted portions of the letter. I’ve got a lot of overlap between the three chapters, and I need to separate them a little more. I guess that’s part of tonight’s work.

Meanwhile, a little bit of easy browsing turned up more sources, outside the Annals of America. One of those is a collection of letters sent to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P Chase at the outbreak of the civil war. I skimmed a couple of them, and found good fodder for other chapters. The other is a series of letters written by Ebenezer Huntington from 1774-1781, when he was first a law student and then an officer in the Revolutionary War. I skimmed some of these too. They seem kind of drab, simple reports of what’s going on where this soldier happened to be. But drab during a war for independence is historical, so maybe I’ll be able to use these as well.

So, the research continues apace. There’s so much out there it’s almost frightening.

Documenting America, Volume 1, is coming along very well. I’m up to 26,300 words, en route to somewhere between 35,000-40,000. I have 26 or 27 chapters, planning on about 32 all together, though I may have my word count in just 30.

Before I decided to do this as an e-book, I was preparing it to be newspaper columns. In fact, as I’ve mentioned before, the first four were published by our local newspaper as part of a guest editorial program. I received good, if limited feedback. I stopped submitting them when the editor in charge of the program left, even though the program continued. I kept writing them for a while, accumulating eighteen separate columns, though a couple of them probably weren’t really done. When it was a newspaper column, I aimed to have 500-750 words.

Now that I’m doing it as an e-book, I have no restriction on word count. What was an individual column is now a chapter. The only limit is how many words I would consider to be “history in sound-bite sized chunks.” I consider that between 1000 to 1250 words. So I’m expanding those eighteen chapters to full length, as well as adding columns. I think I have seven or eight more to expand. I found, as I worked through many documents, that they deserved multiple columns/now chapters. I thought I’d do them widely separated, then decided to do them in pairs. So I’m adding chapters within the eighteen already written as well as at the end.

It’s time, I think, to get this in the hands of some beta readers. I’ve contacted some by e-mail, receiving positive responses, but I need a couple of more people. A beta reader could be another writer, or an industry pro who has a critical eye. Or, they could come from the target audience, the people I hope to sell books to. The things I’m interested in are:

1. Is this a sound concept, i.e. the idea of breaking USA history down into small segments as the chapters do?
2. Is it likely to have commercial success, i.e. would you want to buy something like this?
3. Is the writing any good? I have a very thick skin. If someone says my writing is crap, I take that as useful criticism and attempt to do better.
4. Does the chapter complete a thought, or is the reader left hanging wondering “why the heck did he bother to write that?”
5. Any of what we call “in-line” comments are appreciated from a beta reader, but certainly not expected. This could be anything from: identifying grammar errors; catching typos; pointing out some bad writing in the midst of otherwise good writing; pointing out incomplete thoughts, where I might have meant to say something more, was interrupted while writing, then never came back to it.

So, if anyone has any desire to be a beta reader for this project, let me know by posting a comment, or e-mailing me at norman_d_gutter at yahoo dot com.