Graves Library

With the help of Vice Admiral (ret.) George W. Emery, we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Joshua Smith to the Louis T. Graves Memorial Public Library located at 18 Maine Street, Kennebunkport on Saturday, March 18th at 2:00 pm for a discussion and book signing. Making Maine: Statehood and the War of 1812 is an innovative history of the war focusing on how it specifically affected what was then called the District of Maine. Drawing on archival materials from the United States, Britain, and Canada, Smith exposes the bitter experience of Maine’s citizens during that conflict as they endured multiple hardships, including starvation, burdensome taxation, smuggling, treason, and enemy occupation. War’s inherent miseries, along with a changing relationship between regional and national identities, gave rise to a statehood movement that rejected a Boston-centric worldview in favor of a broad American identity. [Pub. Note] “Based on impressive research, Smith provides a fascinating history of the bitter disputes

that bedeviled the prosecution of the war in an area that shared a border with British territory but was politically subordinate to Massachusetts. Making Maine is a significant addition to regional accounts of the War of 1812.”—J. C. A. Stagg, author of The War of 1812: Conflict for a Continent. Dr. Smith is currently the Director of the American Merchant Marine Museum. He grew up on the coast of Maine and Cape Cod. He holds degrees from the University of St. Andrews, Maine Maritime Academy, East Carolina University, and the University of Maine. His other books include Borderland Smuggling: Patriots, Loyalists and Illicit Trade in the Northeast, 1783-1820 (University Press of Florida), which won the John Lyman Award in American Maritime History in 2007, and Battle for the Bay: the Naval War of 1812. Copies of the book will be available for purchase. Light refreshments will be served. Doors open at 1:30 pm. For more information, please call (207) 967-2778.