John Barnwell Letters Analysis

JOHN BARNWELL’S LETTERS FROM THE FIRST AND SECOND TUSCARORA EXPEDITIONS

Reading the 1908 journal articles featuring Col. John Barnwell’s and Col. James Moore’s letters and journal entries concerning various military expeditions during what has been come to be called the Tuscarora War, present numerous challenges when determining their authenticity as primary sources. Before even diving into Barnwell’s own narrative in the first journal article of January 1908, the reader is met by an extended introduction ruminating about the fact that Col. Barnwell’s letters from his military expeditions, though “important,” are copies made in a blank book “many years ago” from originals. Many are apparently missing from the account. On a similar note,
Barnwell’s letters: how “authentic” is the document? Howell and Prevenier parse the question of a document’s authenticity by two standards: by both considering how “genuine” (produced directly by the original author/artist/agency) the document is, as well as whether the information contained in the document is accurate. This immediate editorial acknowledgement of the documents having been transcribed by others would seem to address the first question of whether a primary source is “genuine,” although this would not necessarily preclude it being a faithful transcription of the author’s (Barnwell’s) intentions or
With time and context, historians are able to understand cultural practices and beliefs that may explain practices and tactics that may have seemed inscrutable to participants at the time, lending unavoidable bias to their perhaps sincere and earnest attempts to document events. In an attempt to put Barnwell’s “Tuscarora Expedition” letters in any kind of context as a reliable primary source, it is incumbent on the historian to read others’ serious research on the larger events and conditions surrounding these few events. After reading first the primary documents, then Howell’s Introduction to Historical Sources, it was very helpful and reassuring to see that several contemporary historians have used the Barnwell letters as research sources, and in many cases, putting them into a clearer context that could only be possible with the diligent scholarship and research done over the past hundred-plus years since the publication of the “original” articles in 1908 and