Editorial Statement

THE Massachusetts Historical Review has reached its third year of publication. Although the first volume is still fresh in our minds, we are now winding up contributions to volume 4 (2002), a promising issue that will be devoted entirely to the history of race and slavery in the Commonwealth. Designing a journal from the ground up has been an exciting and rewarding experience. Rarely do editors have the chance to create a wholly new enterprise and shape its mission. We have aimed our journal at the widest possible audience, always seeking to combine the sound scholarship that professional historians demand with the good writing that general readers deserve. While this can be a challenging goal, the authors who have given us the fruit of their hard work approached the publication process with the highest professional standards and made our task infinitely easier. We could not be more grateful.

We remain committed, as the first volume's editorial statement declares, "to recovering the legacy of the forgotten." In each issue we have had the good fortune to publish essays on accomplished individuals, eminent in their day but largely unknown today. If every volume of the MHR resurrected the career of a neglected historical figure, we will have achieved some enviable success. This year's journal includes illuminating essays on Caroline Healey Dall, a nineteenth-century reformer, lecturer, author, and neglected diarist, and on Sarah Gooll Putnam, a Boston Brahmin once recognized as an important portrait artist. We are also fortunate to have a brief portion of David McCullough's new biography of John Adams that focuses on his wife Abigail's experiences in France. But the MHR should move beyond those of power and influence to include individuals of all races and classes that possess differing historical experiences. Towards that end, we look forward to next year's issue on race and slavery and this volume makes available fresh examinations of two understudied topics: gender relations and the status of women in the world of John Winthrop and the hardships of colonial American soldiers in the British army. We challenge our readers to help us maintain this level of accomplishment and issue our thanks to those who have gotten us this far.

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.