The musical I recently took part in, 1776, tells the story of the creation of the Declaration of Independence. The conventional wisdom is that the story is fairly accurate historically on the large scale but not so much on the small scale. That's about right, but I think it's a bit generous.

Of the main protagonists, the characters of Adams and Franklin feel pretty accurate. If you set aside the subplot about his wife, which is pure fabrication, Jefferson feels pretty true as well. Of the 16 other members of Congress in the supporting cast, several are given vivid personality traits. This is smart dramatically, creating lively distinctions within what might otherwise be a dull and unmemorable crowd of men, but historically it's almost entirely rubbish. James Wilson was not a timid soul who didn't want responsibility, Thomas McKean was not a blustering Scot with a heavy accent, and while Caesar Rodney did eventually die of cancer, he was not ill at the time of the Continental Congress. I'm not familiar with Richard Henry Lee, but I'll bet he wasn't a vain buffoon.

Like most of the actors, I did quite a bit of reading on my own character (Edward Rutledge of South Carolina). It was interesting, and I'm glad I did it, but I found that in terms of developing the character it was little help beyond the bare essentials, since the story was clearly moving in a different direction.

Since most of you aren't familiar with the story anyway, I'll resist the urge to analyze Rutledge any further except to note that it was dramatically convenient to group him with the "conservative" faction, where historically he doesn't really belong. The premise in the play, not entirely accurate, is that certain wealthy members of the Congress, notwithstanding their grievances with the British government, are nevertheless pretty content with the status quo and averse to having it disrupted by anything radical. They therefore stand in opposition to the firebrand John Adams, the protagonist of the show, who is on stage for nearly all of it. On a rare occasion when he is away, they celebrate his absence in a song-and-dance number, "Cool, Conservative Men", a stately paean to the joys of maintaining the status quo.

Sometimes, a phrase which originated as a pun or double-entendre becomes so commonplace that the secondary meaning takes over as the dominant one. If the original meaning fades so far that it is completely forgotten, the phrase can become a double-entendre again simply by being used in its original sense. For example, if something is bugging you, and that something is an annoying insect, it becomes a sort of reverse pun. It's not funny because of the double meaning. It's funny because the idiom is so common that we expect it to be used metaphorically, and when it turns out it really is literal that's a bonus.

In "Cool, Conservative Men", the conservative leader John Dickinson sings:

In the theater, any reference to boobs is usually good for a laugh, but here the double-entendre goes the other direction. Nowadays if we hear that a woman is "well-endowed" we immediately assume she has a large bosom and rarely think any further, but once upon a time the phrase was a euphemistic circumlocution. Here the joke is not that the singers' all have busty wives, which has nothing to do with the theme of the song. Rather, it is that their wives are literally well-endowed.

To endow someone is to provide her with a resource. Typically this resource is a stream of income, but it needn't necessarily be. The show's central document famous Declares that the Creator has endowed His children with certain inalienable rights. Among mortals, the endowment is more likely to be in the form of money, and it is typically given either to a public institution such as a university or to one's daughter. If a daughter is endowed by her father with a share in his fortune, we call it a "dowry", and it makes her more attractive to potential suitors. If the dowry is large, she is well-endowed.

In interviews during the campaign season, Vice President Elect Joe Biden sometimes mentions how he started his career. He says he always knew he wanted to be in politics, but coming from an ordinary middle-class family, he wasn't born to the business like a Bush or a Gore. Reading a bit of history, he looked for successful political leaders who came from humble backgrounds and discovered (he says) that nearly all of them were lawyers. Young Joe therefore decided to become a lawyer.

He might just as well have decided to marry money. It is a time-honored tradition among ambitious young politicians to rise to power by way of a well-endowèd wife. Perhaps the most successful was the inveterate schemer Alexander Hamilton, he of the ten-dollar bill, who used the technique to take over the Schuyler political machine in New York. Hamilton's compatriots on the lower-denominated bills — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln — all married well as well, as did more recent presidential aspirants John McCain and John Kerry.

Edward Rutledge was blessed with both a well-endowèd wife and a well-endowèd mother. His wife was Henrietta Middleton, of the premier family of South Carolina. (Another Middleton daughter married Edward Rutledge's future law partner Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who went on to run twice as Federalist candidate for president, opposing first Jefferson and then James Madison.) His mother's endowment connects to one of the more titillating facts I discovered in my reading about Edward Rutledge. As I liked to summarize to the amusement of fellow cast members, his grandmother was also his aunt.

It's not quite as inbred as it sounds. In an earlier generation, a young Englishman named Andrew Rutledge came to America. After establishing his reputation as a lawyer, he married one Sarah Boone Hext. Widow Hext was a single mother, raising her young daughter, also named Sarah, with the help of a substantial fortune left by her wealthy but deceased husband Hugh Hext.

The terms of Hugh Hext's will specified that his fortune would go first to his wife, Sarah Boone Hext, and upon her death would revert to his daughter, Sarah Hext, who was only eight years old at the time of her father's death. The will further specified that when young Sarah either married or reached age 21 the lion's share of the estate would go to her then and there.

Andrew Rutledge's hold on the Hext fortune thus was not quite secure. Some young fellow might come along and marry the daughter and end up with everything. Fortunately for Andrew, his own younger brother had crossed the sea and joined him in America. Their exact ages aren't documented, but he seems to have been about 10 years younger. Young enough to marry his brother's stepdaughter. Dr John Rutledge thus married young Sarah and the entire Hext fortune remained in the Rutledge family. Andrew and Sarah mère had no children, but John and Sarah fille had several, including another John and Edward, both of whom served in the Continental Congress.

To Edward, then, Sarah Boone Hext Rutledge was his grandmother (mother of his mother) and also his aunt (wife of his father's brother).

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