S8 Ep277: JEFFERSON'S DEFENSE OF AMERICA AND THE MCGUFFEY READER Colleague Professor Robert G. Parkinson. Thomas Jefferson discovered Logan's Lament in 1774 and later used it in his Notes on the State of Virginia to refute French claims that everything in America w

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🗓️ 4 January 2026

⏱️ 10 minutes

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JEFFERSON'S DEFENSE OF AMERICA AND THE MCGUFFEY READER Colleague Professor Robert G. Parkinson. Thomas Jefferson discovered Logan's Lament in 1774 and later used it in his Notes on the State of Virginia to refute French claims that everything in America was "degenerate." Jefferson presented Logan as proof of Native American intellectual equality, effectively cementing the story of Cresap's guilt in the public mind. This sparked a feud with Luther Martin, a Cresap in-law who attacked Jefferson to clear the family name. Consequently, the lament became a standard recitation text for schoolchildren in the McGuffey Readers, embedding the narrative of the "vanishing Indian" into American culture. NUMBER 7

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0:00.0	I'm John Batchew with Professor Rob Parkinson. His book is Heart of American Darkness,
0:05.0	Bewilderment and Horror on the early frontier. We fought the French and Indian wars, three of them.
0:10.0	We fought the American Revolution. We certainly have survived through the war of 1812.
0:16.0	McGuffie's reader into the 1840s, 1850s. I've got one. I sent away for one. And the school children across
0:23.6	America are learning Logan's lament. However, that does not satisfy the battling families, the
0:31.4	crescups in particular. There's a tree called Logan's tree. Where is it? It is just outside of Circleville, Ohio today.
0:40.3	And under that tree, there are ceremonies.
0:44.3	There are also battling monuments.
0:46.3	I lost track of how many monuments.
0:48.3	It was like you put up a monument and it's like a monument war.
0:52.3	We put up a monument.
0:53.3	It is. There's four there. There are We put up a monument. It is. The original...
0:55.0	There's four there.
0:56.0	There are four of them. One of them is the tall mingo chieftain.
1:00.0	And the families are still not satisfied. What is it that they want?
1:04.0	What will end this dispute that's beyond the grave?
1:08.0	Well, so they're trying to...
1:10.0	So what Luther Martin tries to do with newspapers and print
1:14.9	is to try to clear the Crescent name.
1:16.9	And that doesn't really work because of this sort of tide of popularity with a lament.
1:25.6	And so by the end of the 19th century, 1880s and 90s,
1:30.3	Americans go on this bender about remembering their past, right?
	...

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