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When Michael Sparrow ’04 (Pen Argyl, Pa.) graduated high school, his plans for the future were vague and he had little interest in higher education. Twelve years later, he’s working on a yearlong independent research project in history and is planning to pursue a Ph.D.
Sparrow, a history major, is studying two separate post-Revolutionary War events — a sedition trial in Dedham, Mass., and an uprising of Pennsylvania German citizens, called Fries’ Rebellion, which occurred in and around Bethlehem, Pa. If successful, the project will enable him to graduate with honors in history.
“I’m looking at the political climate of the late 1790s by examining these two events,” Sparrow says, explaining that both involved citizens protesting a new federal tax on their homes and land by refusing to pay it and by erecting “liberty poles” — early political billboards — that described their grievances.
Sparrow notes that in Bethlehem, “women were throwing hot water out of second-story windows onto the tax assessors,” prompting local authorities to ask for federal assistance in arresting protest leaders and detaining them at the Sun Inn on Main Street.
“A group of 140 Pennsylvania German men came in and freed the prisoners,” Sparrow says, adding that the men, led by John Fries, dispersed after the prisoners were freed, but many were later arrested by federal troops sent by President John Adams long after the rebellion had ended.
Sparrow says that while many accounts portray the Pennsylvania Germans as crude and unsophisticated, his research shows otherwise.
“I’m hoping to show that it wasn’t just an ignorant mob,” he says. “In my opinion, they were politically sophisticated.”
In Dedham, a wealthy landowner and a traveling dissident erected a liberty pole denouncing both the direct tax and the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1799, leading to their arrest and imprisonment — and a trial for sedition. In the end, Benjamin Fairbanks, the landowner, was freed and given a small fine. In contrast, David Brown, the “vagrant,” was fined several thousand dollars and kept in prison until 1801, when Thomas Jefferson took office and pardoned him.
“My argument in that case is that laws didn’t apply to gentlemen as much as they did to the common man,” Sparrow says.
Sparrow spent the summer conducting research on 18th- and 19th-century American Indian citizenship rights with Deborah Rosen, associate professor of history, who is advising him on his thesis. The work involved examining copies of primary-source documents from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, including transcripts of legislative debates, and highlighting areas most relevant to the subject.
Sparrow and Rosen worked through Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, in which students assist faculty with research while earning a stipend. Lafayette is a national leader in undergraduate research. Many of the 180 students who participate in EXCEL each year go on to publish papers in scholarly journals and/or present their research at conferences.
“They didn’t know what status to give Native Americans,” Sparrow says, explaining that one popular opinion held that if Indians learned to farm and dress like white men, then they could be considered American citizens. “There was an Anglo-centric viewpoint of what constitutes a civilized person. I thought it was interesting that merely by dressing a certain way and participating in a ‘civilized’ vocation, someone who had been deemed a savage could be deemed a civilized person.”
Rosen, who has taught Sparrow in several courses, says she chose him as an EXCEL Scholar because “he was an excellent student in those courses and displayed strong research skills and a keen analytical ability.”
Since then, she says, “he has shown tremendous initiative.”
Sparrow says he respects Rosen as a professor and mentor.
“She gives you enough rope to go out and find your own sources, but she doesn’t give you enough to hang yourself with,” he says.
Sparrow adds that while he chose Lafayette for its reputation as a liberal arts school and its proximity to his family, he wasn’t aware of the many opportunities for advanced research or the close interaction with faculty.
“It’s been a pleasant surprise,” he says.
Sparrow serves as a writing associate for the College Writing Program and is participating in a Technology Clinic in which he and five other students are creating a driving tour of the historical areas of Northampton County outside the cities of Bethlehem and Easton, including everything from slate quarries to the Martin Guitar factory in Nazareth.
He is a graduate of Pen Argyl High School.
As a national leader in undergraduate research, Lafayette sends one of the largest contingents to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research each year. Over the past five years, more than 130 Lafayette students have presented results from research conducted with faculty mentors, or under their guidance, at the conference.