Blog / 2026 / History Belongs to Us (If We Can Keep It)
January 13, 2026
As I painted this portrait of the Secretary of the Continental Congress Charles Thomson, I liked to try to imagine how he’d understand America today. He was a dedicated public servant and thoroughly committed to indigenous rights—so much so that his efforts were acknowledged by the Lenape, who adopted him into their tribe and gave him the name Wegh-wu-law-mo-end, which means “the man who speaks the truth.”
How would Thomson react to the current administration’s habit of insisting on what it calls “alternative facts” in the way it recounts its actions? What would he do, for example, with a leader who’s forever harping on about being the “Peace President” while stoking conflict at every turn? By renaming the Department of Defense the “Department of War.” By repeatedly threatening to take over other nations. By sending hundreds American soldiers into a foreign country to arrest one drug dealer while passing out pardons to other large-scale traffickers. By deploying the military along with undertrained and overly emotional ICE agents to American cities again and again. By murdering an American citizen who was volunteering as a legal observer to keep ICE accountable to the law as the agency enacts the cruel immigration policies of the pretended “Peace President.”
Thomson himself immigrated to the colonies from Ireland as a ten-year-old. His father died in transit across the Atlantic and young Charles was separated from his siblings on arrival. Without any money or protections, his story could have ended there, as the stories of so many vulnerable people do, but he was lucky.
My portrait of Thomson is based on Joseph Wright’s image from circa 1785. In the video, the Thomson quote about destroying his own writing comes from an article by Kenneth Bowling called “Good-by ‘Charle’: The Lee-Adams Interest and the Political Demise of Charles Thomson, Secretary of Congress, 1774-1789” published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography in July 1976. The footage of the First Continental Congress installed in Philadelphia was taken by David Vanadia.
You can see First Continental Congress at Carpenters’ Hall right now. It’s one of five #1 pieces by a number of different artists installed in a one-block radius and there are many more nearby as well. To plan your art-and-history tour of Philadelphia, check out the 52 Weeks of Firsts interactive map.
There will be a special celebration for the First Continental Congress—both the history of that gathering and the artwork I created—later this year!
Carpenters’ Hall
320 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Open: all the time (the piece is outside, to the right of the main entrance)
Firstival: Saturday September 12th from 11a to 1p
Learn about all my work for 52 Weeks of Firsts here!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
This is one of the pieces I made for Mural Arts Philadelphia, the National Constitution Center, and Historic Philadelphia to celebrate the US’s 250th anniversary. Its theme is the First Continental Congress, and it includes this portrait of Charles Thomson, Secretary of the Continental Congress—AKA Secretary to the American Revolution—a position that gave him extraordinary power, though not the fame that many of his fellow founding fathers enjoy.
In his time though, Thomson’s influence was recognized. He was the one who decided what to include in the official record of the Continental Congress, and fights over how he represented what people said were common, as the delegates understood Thomson’s power to shape the immediate future of the colonies.
What’s more, after leaving office, Thomson destroyed some of his own writing, specifically a thousand-page document telling the political history of the War of Independence. He said that he didn’t want to—quote—“contradict all the histories of the great events of the Revolution. Let the world admire the supposed wisdom and valor of our great men. Perhaps they may adopt the qualities that have been ascribed to them, and thus good may be done. I shall not undeceive future generations”—unquote.
In what he published and in what he kept from us, Thomson has influenced who we are today, and puzzling out all the ways his choices affect us should be considered basic media literacy. But, though many of us grew up writing essays dissecting the imagery of ads and evaluating sources of information, Americans today are falling down on the job when it comes to analyzing the content we consume. I painted Thomson as a reminder to all of us to do better, to look more closely at our story and at the motives of the people telling it.
Maybe this post made you think of something you want to tell me? Or perhaps you have a question about my art? I’d love to hear from you!
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