THIS issue marks the close of our ninety-sixth volume, a year of some transition and much flourishing at The Quarterly. In this number, we offer Myra Glenn's essay on Charlotte Forten's formative time in Salem, Massachusetts. Daughter of renowned activist elites in Philadelphia, Forten's struggles as a young Black woman in New England shaped her writing and later work in the Reconstruction South, as Glenn reveals. We are also pleased to present the second installment of papers delivered at our co-sponsored American Political Cultures Forum at the Massachusetts Historical Society. These engaging essays by John Stauffer and Douglas Egerton offer rich and revealing accounts of how Charles Sumner's personal relationships with friends and neighbors shaped his consequential political career.
In the Reviews section, we take a first foray beyond the scholarly monograph to highlight an online tool created by the Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Boston Public Library. This site offers an easy and enjoyable way to access over one hundred layered historical real estate and fire insurance atlases, which hold crucial information but are cumbersome for researchers in their paper form. At atlascope.org, one can slide an 1888 overlay over a contemporary map of Back Bay, for example, to see the Mass Pike revert to a network of Boston and Albany Railroad tracks or discover the forgotten Working Union of Spiritualists on Newbury Street. If you live in Greater Boston, I encourage you to look up your home address and favorite haunts in this digital palimpsest to explore the shifting urban landscape over 150 years.
As for the changes to our masthead, The Quarterly is honored to announce the appointment of Joseph Adelman, associate professor of history at Framingham State University, to our staff as Associate Editor. Professor Adelman is an esteemed scholar of media, communications, and politics in the Revolutionary Era. Welcome, Joe! We are also delighted to introduce two new graduate assistants, Katie Lipman and Lauren Shirley, students in the master's programs in English and public history at UMass Boston, respectively. We look forward to great work ahead with this new editorial team.
Thank you for reading.