“I have pleased myself with the thought of serving under you”

As discussed yesterday, sometime in the first week of May 1775 the Rhode Island legislature appointed Nathanael Greene to be the brigadier general of its army of observation.

In his biography of his grandfather, George Washington Greene wrote:

There is a tradition, but I will not vouch for it, that the first choice fell upon an Episcopalian, who declined; the second, on a Congregationalist, who also declined; and that, when the third vote was announced as having fallen on Greene, he rose in his place, and said: “Since the Episcopalian and Congregationalist won’t, I suppose the Quaker must.”

That’s about as tepid an endorsement for a “tradition” as a nineteenth-century biographer could provide. And the religious terms “Episcopalian” and “Congregationalist” weren’t standard in 1775, suggesting it wasn’t exact.

One recent biographer of Nathanael Greene has suggested that those first two candidates for command declined on religious grounds. I think that’s a misreading of the tradition. The first two faiths mentioned weren’t pacifist. That was the point of the anecdote—the irony of a (lapsed) Quaker leading an army instead of men from sects that didn’t object to military action. And the story might have some validity, though I doubt it happened in a legislative session.

The legislature’s first choice probably was Simeon Potter, already major general of the colony militia. At least, the body couldn’t ignore him. And Potter was an Anglican, even if he’d punched his minister in the face back in 1761. (Incidentally, the Rev. John Usher died on 30 Apr 1775, just as these discussions about the Rhode Island army were under way.)

Another candidate for command whom G. W. Greene and later biographers mentioned is James Mitchell Varnum (shown here), captain of the Kentish Guards. He’d grown up in Dracut, Massachusetts, as what people would later term a Congregationalist. That said, there were many others of that faith in Rhode Island as well, some probably quite senior to the twenty-six-year-old Varnum.

Varnum and Greene had worked together in the fall of 1774 to form the Guards, an independent militia company based in East Greenwich. Varnum, a rising young attorney, was chosen as the first captain. Encouraged by a cousin, Greene put his name forward to be a lieutenant, only to learn that some members thought his limp meant he didn’t look good marching in an elite company at all.

Sometime in October, it appears, Greene wrote to Varnum:

If I conceive right of the force of the objection of the gentlemen of the town, it was not as an officer, but as a soldier for that my halting was a blemish to the rest. I confess it is my misfortune to limp a little, but I did not conceive it to be so great; but we are not apt to discover our own defects. . . .

I have pleased myself with the thought of serving under you, but as it is the general opinion that I am unfit for such an undertaking, I shall desist. I feel not the less inclination to promote the good of the company, because I am not to be one of its members. I will do anything that's in my power to procure the charter.

Apparently Varnum had spoken of leaving the company himself if Greene was forced out because the letter continued:

Let me entreat you, Sir, if you have any regard for me, not to forsake the company at this critical season for I fear the consequences—if you mean to oblige me by it, I assure you it will not, I would not have the company break and disband for fifty Dollars

Varnum stayed with the company and apparently convinced Greene to do the same.

On 29 October, the legislature, with Greene as a delegate, issued a charter for the Kentish Guards. Its act listed the dozens of men who had petitioned for that charter, starting with Varnum and the other three designated as officers, including Christopher Greene. The fifth name on that list was Nathanael Greene. So officially he was a leading member.

It’s conceivable that some fallout from that affair influenced the choice of Greene as general in May 1775. If the legislature did approach Varnum, he may have thought it was Greene’s turn to lead. Or perhaps, with a real war looming, organizational skills seemed a lot more important than a slight limp.

TOMORROW: Hidden factors in the decision.

The Mysterious Rise of Nathanael Greene

In Massachusetts, the lower house of the General Court published annual detailed journals of what it (officially) discussed each day.

The clerk of the Provincial Congress kept similarly detailed notes, and that record was published in 1838.

Rhode Island’s assembly, in contrast, issued a bare-bones record of each legislative session: lists of elected and appointed officials, texts of resolutions and new laws. No specific dates between the day the assembly convened and when the session ended. No mention of failed petitions, disagreements with the upper house, committee reports, or the like.

As a result, Rhode Island’s legislative process is opaque. We know a session started on 22 April to wrap up the fiscal year and, in response to news from Massachusetts, to form a 1,500-man “army of observation.” But the only official clue to the date of that crucial resolution was how Gov. Joseph Wanton and Lt. Gov. Darius Sessions’s protest against it was dated 25 April.

Among the last actions of that legislature was:

IT is Voted and Resolved, That Mr. Nathaniel Greene be, and he is hereby, appointed in the Room of the Honorable Samuel Ward, Esq; (who is going to the Continental Congress) to wait on the General Assembly of the Colony of Connecticut, to consult upon Measures for the common Defence of the Four New-England Governments.

A new assembly convened on “the First Wednesday in May,” or 3 May. The legislature continued to build up the army. With Gov. Wanton staying home, lawmakers established a committee of safety to oversee that process.

Nathanael Greene and fellow delegate William Bradford were reimbursed for “their Service, Horse-Hire and Expences” on that Connecticut trip. Simeon Potter, Greene, and Daniel Owen were made a committee to audit the accounts of a man making “Six Gun-Carriages” for the colony. There was more activity.

And then suddenly the records shows a long list of new appointments. Simeon Potter was elevated to the upper house. William Bradford went onto the committee of safety. And atop the first list of “Officers of the Army of Observation” was:

Nathaniel Greene, jun. Esq; Brigadier-General.

Greene’s commission was dated 8 May, so the discussion that led to the creation of that handsome formal document must have taken place over the preceding week. But we know next to nothing about it.

We know Greene had represented the town of Coventry in the assembly for a few years. (For a while historians thought this was a different man, and indeed there were other Nathaniel Greenes active in Rhode Island affairs, but documents came to light to confirm his service.) The Greene family was enmeshed in the colony‘s politics.

We know Greene was particularly involved in the formation and training of the Kentish Guards, in Rhode Islanders’ initial response to the Lexington Alarm, and on the military committees listed above.

On the other hand, Nathanael Greene didn’t have a high rank in the colony militia. Indeed, he was only a private in the Kentish Guards, as I’ll discuss tomorrow.

Nonetheless, when the time came to go to war, the legislature promoted Greene above that unit’s captain, James Mitchell Varnum, and all other militia colonels to command its army. How that happened is an enduring mystery.

TOMORROW: Other candidates.

Simeon Potter and Rhode Island’s Army of Observation

Capt. Simeon Potter’s appeal to Rhode Island’s top court to overturn the verdict against him for assaulting the Rev. John Usher in 1761 didn’t work, despite having Robert Treat Paine to represent him.

So Potter appealed to an even higher court: the Privy Council in London.

According to Bruce Campbell MacGunnigle, who published the surviving record of this case in the Rhode Island Historical Society’s journal in 2006:

Usher won again, but under the condition that [he] come to England to collect [the judgement]. As Usher couldn’t afford the voyage, Potter never paid a cent.

Clifford K. Shipton likewise reported that Usher never collected any damages.

Capt. Potter continued to command respect in his home town of Bristol because of his wealth. He continued to serve in public offices. Usher continued to be the minister of St. Michael’s Church in the same neighborhood.

In 1772 Potter personally helped to attack H.M.S. Gaspee. When the Crown started an inquiry and found some witnesses, the captain apparently leaned on people to ensure he wasn’t identified. That whole affair seems to have made him only more popular.

At the end of 1774, Rhode Island made Potter the first major general of its militia forces. He looked like the right man to stand up to the Crown. By then people knew he was violent, possessive, and extremely stubborn—but those were pluses. Nobody could make Simeon Potter do what he didn’t want to do.

Come spring, Simeon Potter didn’t want to fight in the Revolutionary War.

On the evening of 19 April, according to American newspapers, Continental Congress delegate Stephen Hopkins wrote to Potter, calling on him to report to Providence in his capacity as major general; “The King’s troops are actually engaged butchering and destroying our brethren in the most inhuman manner, the inhabitants oppose them with great zeal and courage.”

Potter stayed home. In Beggarman, Spy: The Secret Life and Times of Israel Potter, David Chacko and Alexander Kulcsar wrote that Potter “claimed to have received a letter from the commanding general of the Massachusetts Militia telling him that no troops were needed,” but I can’t trace that reference and don’t trust the claim.

By 22 April Rhode Island’s legislature, having sidelined Gov. Joseph Wanton, was voting to form an “army of observation” which might march into Massachusetts. But the government had no one to lead those men.

TOMORROW: Finding a general.

“The said Potter, said it was not worth a Cussing”

At the civil trial of the Rev. John Usher v. Capt. Simeon Potter in November 1761, eight witnesses from Bristol, Rhode Island, testified through sworn depositions followed by questioning in court.

Those witnesses for the plaintiff agreed that both Usher and Potter were angry. They described Usher gesticulating with his cane. They all said Potter struck the first blow. One even said that about ten days later he’d asked Potter “if he thought Mr. Usher struck him,” and Potter said no.

Capt. Potter participated in part of that trial, cross-examining Usher’s witnesses. But he appears not to have tried to mount a defense with his own evidence. The court found him in default and awarded Usher £1,000 plus costs.

Potter actually had three witnesses lined up on his side. Jeremiah Bosworth claimed in a deposition, “once I plainly see said Usher strike sd. Potter over the head with his Cane.” Bosworth also accused the minister’s son Hezekiah of hitting and knocking down the captain’s father, Hopestill Potter—the same sort of assault that Capt. Potter was accused of.

A second witness testified to seeing Usher hit Potter. However, that witness was Capt. Potter’s father, obviously an interested party. The third witness said Usher was “aiming as I thought at striking sd. Potter,” but because of a tree he didn’t see any blow before Potter hit Usher. (Potter actually had a fourth deposition, but it came from someone whom Usher’s lawyer had already called.)

Instead of putting up an argument in the county court, Capt. Potter appealed the verdict to Rhode Island’s highest court. The case was scheduled for September 1762. In preparation, Potter collected more testimony. Now his sister Hope claimed, “I saw Mr. John Usher Clerk Strike att Capt. Simeon Potter with his Cane several times.”

Another new witness was Jonathan Fales, who owned the house on the corner where the fracas occurred. Several months after the fight, Fales signed off on this account:

Usher run from off the Causeway up to said Potter with his Cane lifted up as tho’ he was going to strike at him, said Potter not having before said Usher run up to him taken any notice of said Usher nor so much as turned towards him,

Upon said Usher’s coming up to said Potter I saw him shake his Cane over said Potter several times aiming as I thought at striking him

Interestingly, Jemima Gorham and William Lindsey signed depositions describing how they’d seen the same thing in almost exactly the same language.

What’s more, Richard Smith, a witness at the original trial, came forward to say Gorham had told a grand jury in January that she’d gone “into hur hous” and hadn’t seen anyone hit anybody.

And the Bristol justice of the peace who recorded those three new depositions, Daniel Bradford, also took the stand to say he’d asked Fales why he hadn’t testified back in November 1761. Bradford said that Fales

Answered that he went out of the way for fear of being called upon, as an Evidence. . . . Fales further said that a few days before ye Court said Potter asked him for his evidence and that he was in his Calm hours Wrote One and Shend ye same to said Potter, and that the said Potter, said it was not worth a Cussing and then Went and Sent ye Said Fales one already wrote, which said [Fales] Refused to sign.

In sum, it looks like Simeon Potter had leaned on or rewarded some of his neighbors to sign off on testimony he or his lawyer had prepared. I suspect if we knew more about employment and trade in Bristol, we’d see the levers of power that the captain was pulling.

TOMORROW: And did all that effort succeed?  

[The photo above shows a fist-headed walking stick owned by Thomas Hancock and displayed at the Massachusetts Historical Society several years back. It has no link to this case, but I thought the design was appropriate.]

“Success in this troublesome affair”?

When I broke off yesterday, Capt. Simeon Potter of Bristol, Rhode Island, had just hit the Rev. John Usher in the face.

And then he did it again.

According to the minister’s son, Hezekiah Usher, that “made the blood fly out of his Mouth.”

The younger Usher described rushing out from his doorway:

I run and catch him [Potter] by the collar & took him off from my Father and received two blows in my Face from sd. Potter.

The captain’s father, Hopestill Potter, aged about seventy-one, also joined the fray. Eventually the minister and captain were pulled apart.

In the fall of 1761, the Rev. John Usher sued Capt. Simeon Potter for the punches “…And also the left Thumb of the Plaintiff at said Time & Place did Sprain by all which the Plaintiffs Life was despaired of.” He asked for “Fifty Thousand Pounds current Money of New England” in damages.

Capt. Potter threw up every roadblock. He argued that he’d been an unarmed man acting in self-defense. That Usher shouldn’t have sued in Newport. That “this Cause might be continued to next Court as he is not provided with an Attorney and his principal Evidence is at Sea.” Ultimately Potter put up no defense and defaulted, and the county court awarded Usher £1,000 plus costs.

Both parties appealed to the Rhode Island Superior Court of Judicature, Usher “because the Damages given were not adequate to the Injury recd.” and Potter because the verdict was “wrong and erroneous and ought to be reversed.”

Meanwhile in January 1762 a grand jury in Bristol County considered criminal assault charges against Capt. Potter. I can’t tell how far that process got.

In the summer of 1762 Potter called in a big legal gun from Massachusetts: Robert Treat Paine (shown above, later in life). Paine’s 6 August letter assured Potter that he could appeal both criminal and civil cases with “the Deposition you have of the Jurys dissatisfaction in their Verdict.” Paine called Usher “a Crafty powerfull Antagonist” and closed “wishing you success in this troublesome affair & that you may finally prevail against Ecclesiastical or Political Tyranny.”

On 10 September, Paine traveled to Newport to argue for Potter. The captain was presenting testimony from several witnesses not heard at the original civil trial.

TOMORROW: Examining the evidence. 

“You shake it within an Inch of my Nose”

Some years back, I mentioned Simeon Potter’s dispute with John Usher, but I was relying on a secondary source that I’ve come to see as unreliable.

I’m therefore retelling that story in more detail using the court documents published by the Rhode Island Historical Society in 2006 (available as a P.D.F. from Family Search) and other sources.

In 1761 Potter was a wealthy gentleman in Bristol, Rhode Island. He’d been born in that town forty-one years earlier to a poor or middling family. He’d therefore grown up without much schooling, trained to be a cooper. But because of a privateering windfall at the start of King George’s War, Potter had made himself into one of the richest men in the whole colony.

Reflecting his new genteel status, Capt. Potter took on prestigious positions in politics and the church. He became a warden of the local Anglican church, St. Michael’s. Few New England towns of Bristol’s size—about 1,200 people in 1774—had an Anglican church, but this was at the coast and therefore served mariners.

The minister of St. Michael’s was the Rev. John Usher. He was the son of a wealthy bookseller who had risen to be lieutenant governor of New Hampshire. After graduating from Harvard College, Usher had joined the Church of England, defying the New England orthodoxy. The missionary Society for the Propagation of the Gospel paid part of his salary, and his congregants sometimes paid the rest.

In 1761 Usher was over sixty years old. His exact age is unclear since his tombstone says he was seventy-five when he died in 1775, but a memorial plaque later installed in his church says he was eighty. Either way, he’d been the minister at St. Michael’s since 1724, when Simeon Potter was still a little boy.

According to Usher’s report back to the S.P.G., the trouble started because

Notwithstanding he [Potter] has an agreeable wife, he has by report for some years back kept a criminal conversation with a young woman, one of my parish. . . . After many general hints from the Pulpit…I told her what reason I had to suggest she was guilty of the notorious sin of Adultery. . . . Upon this she told the man immediately what I had said

Frankly the minister shouldn’t have been surprised by that.

On the morning of 14 August, Charles Munro said, “the Rev. Mr. John Usher and Capt. Simeon Potter…engaged in warm words or Differing” on the street. Richard Smith added that Usher told Potter, “wherever he went there was whoring carried on.” Smith also quoted the men as saying:

[Potter:] if it wont for your Age and Gown I would not have your Cane shook over my head

[Usher:] I don’t shake it over your head nor mean to shake it over

[Potter:] you shake it within an Inch of my Nose

Simeon Potter, despite his fearsome reputation, was “small in stature,” according to Father Elzear Fauque. Also, in the manners of the time clubbing another man with a cane implied that the caner was a gentleman and the canee was not; given Potter’s background, his class status might have been a sensitive spot.

The minister’s son, Hezekiah Usher, called this “Ill treatment” of his father. Potter may also have said something about the minister’s daughter, but I can’t find another trace of her.

On 18 August, Usher and Potter met yet again on Church Lane. They picked up where they had left off. Hezekiah Usher stated:

I heard my Father say to sd. Potter if ever he cast any more reflections on his Family especially on his daughter twould cause him to reflect on his family and upon that the said Potter came up to my Father who was then on the edge of the Gravell’d Walk and said who of my Family and my Father said Your Father

Potter’s father, Hopestill Potter, was in fact sitting in a chair at his own front door nearby.

The quarrel caught the ears of several neighbors, though trees along the street blocked some people’s views. Witnesses agreed that Usher was holding his walking-stick in the middle, waving it around as he spoke. Some said this was “Usher’s naturall way of Shaking his Cane at any Person when he is earnest in talk.” One said the cane was “up as if he was agoing to strike.” But all the trial witnesses agreed they never saw the minister actually touch the captain.

According to Hezekiah Usher, after his father mentioned the captain’s father, Capt. Potter “rusht close up to my Father and said what reflections can you cast on him”? Usher replied, “I’ll blow him up.”

The captain then punched his sexagenarian minister in the face.

TOMORROW: In court.

“Capt. Potter answered that he would share none”

Rhode Island actually began its military build-up back in December 1774, as detailed in a letter from former governor Samuel Ward that I quoted back here.

At that time the colony appointed its first ever major general: Simeon Potter (1720–1806).

Potter was a militia colonel, representative of the town of Bristol in the colonial assembly, and veteran privateer captain.

Indeed, Potter had already helped to lead one attack on the British military: while several fellow merchants supported the assault on H.M.S. Gaspee in 1772, he actually commanded one of the boats.

Now in fact, Potter’s most successful privateering haul came in 1744 not from attacking enemy ships but from raiding a poorly defended settlement in French Guyana that hadn’t even heard the empires were at war.

According to one of his captives, he sailed away with:

seven Indians and three negroes [none previously enslaved], twenty large spoons or ladles, nine large ladles, one gold and one silver hilted sword, one gold and one silver watch, two bags of money, quantity uncertain; chests and trunks of goods, etc., gold rings, buckles and buttons, silver candlesticks, church plate both gold and silver, swords, four cannon, sixty small arms, ammunition, provisions, etc.

Father Elzéar Fauque reported that the looting included “tearing off the locks and the hinges of the doors, particularly those which were made of brass,” before burning everything to the ground.

Potter’s lieutenant Daniel Vaughan testified in 1746 that at Suriname

Capt. Potter put a Quantity of sd. Merchandize up at Vendue on board a Vessel in the Harbour and purchased the most of them himself and ship’t them to Rhode Island on his own account; then said Sloop Sailed for Barbadoes on wch. passage the men demanded that Capt. Potter would Share the Money taken, according to the Articles, to which Capt. Potter answered that he would share none until his Return for all the Men were indebted to the Owners more than that amounted to and Swore at and Damn’d them threatning them with his drawn sword at their Breasts, which Treatment Obliged the Men to hold their Peace and when said Sloop arrived at Barbadoes Capt. Potter without consulting the Men put part of the afore mentioned Effects into the Hands of Mr. Charles Bolton and kept the other part in his own Hands and Supply’d the Men only with Rum and Sugar for their own drinking, and further this Deponent saith that Capt. Potter refusing to let the men have their Shares and his Ill Treatment of them by beating them occasioned about twenty-four to leave the Vessel whose Shares Capt. Potter retained in his Hands

Simeon Potter came home to Bristol a rich man. A few years later, in 1747, the peninsula that contained that town was shifted from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, making Potter one of the richest men in the small colony.

Potter launched various maritime businesses: a ropewalk, a distillery, a wharf, a store, and so on. He invested in slaving voyages to Africa. By the 1770s he owned more enslaved people than anyone else in Bristol. According to a nephew, Potter declared, “I would plow the ocean into pea-porridge to make money.”

In those years, Potter’s neighbors recognized his status by electing him to the legislature and to militia commands, and he was happy with the power.

TOMORROW: A fighting man.

Rhode Island’s “vote for raising men”

As soon as he heard about the shooting at Lexington, James Warren, delegate from Plymouth to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, passed the news on to Patriots in Rhode Island.

On 20 April the elite militia company called the Kentish Guards mustered and marched toward Massachusetts.

Before those men reached the border, a message arrived from Gov. Joseph Wanton (shown here), ordering the unit to stand down.

Four members continued on horseback, three of them being Nathanael Greene and his brothers. But once those men heard that the British troops were back inside Boston and the emergency had passed, they went home to Rhode Island to sort things out.

The colony’s first step came quickly. On 22 April the assembly passed an act to raise 1,500 men

properly armed and disciplined, to continue in this colony, as an army of observation, to repel any insult or violence that may be offered to the inhabitants. And also, if it be necessary for the safety and preservation of any of the colonies, to march out of this colony and join and co-operate with the forces of the neighboring colonies.

The Massachusetts Provincial Congress had also used the phrase “army of observation” in early April, implying a purely defensive force. Once the fighting began, however, it dropped that phrase entirely. Even as the Rhode Island assembly called its new troops an “army of observation,” it was clearly opening the door to sending those men off to help Massachusetts in its war.

Top officials in the colony resisted. Though Gov. Wanton had been crucial to stymieing the Crown’s Gaspee inquiry a couple of years before, he filed a protest against the legislature’s vote. Deputy Governor Darius Sessions joined him along with two members of the Council of Assistants (the upper house), Thomas Wickes and William Potter. On 25 April they declared their opposition to the new army

Because we are of opinion that such a measure will be attended with the most fatal consequences to our charter privileges, involve the Colony in all the horrors of a civil war, and, as we conceive, is an open violation of the oath of allegiance, which we have severally taken upon our admission into the respective offices we now hold in the Colony.

Coincidentally, Rhode Island’s charter called for a new legislative session to start on the first Wednesday of each May. In that spring’s annual election, Sessions, Wickes, and Potter all lost their seats. (Potter would recant and apologize in June, and then return to the Council of Assistants.) Nicholas Cooke became the new deputy governor.

Rhode Island’s freemen reelected Joseph Wanton as governor, but on 2 May he sent a letter to the assembly saying, “indisposition prevents me from meeting you.” Instead he enclosed what Lord Dartmouth, the British Secretary of State, considered a conciliatory offer. Wanton thought that was a more promising route to resolving the crisis. He told the legislators:

The prosperity and happiness of this colony, is founded in its connexion with Great Britain; “for if once we are separated, where shall we find another Britain to supply our loss? Torn from the body to which we are united by religion, liberty, laws and commerce, we must bleed at every vein.”

That passage quoted from John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania. (Some authors miss the quote marks and attribute those words to Wanton himself.)

On 5 May the legislative speaker, Metcalf Bowler, tried to force the governor’s hand. He sent a blank commission for an officer in the new army and asked Wanton whether he would sign such a form. The governor replied:

I cannot comply with it; having heretofore protested against the vote for raising men, as a measure inconsistent with my duty to the King, and repugnant to the true and real interest of this government.

At that point the assembly bypassed Gov. Wanton and started treating Nicholas Cooke as the colony’s chief executive. Wanton wouldn’t be officially replaced until November, but he could no longer stand in the way of Rhode Island’s army.

TOMORROW: Finding a general.

“The Colony of Connecticut must raise 6,000”

As I quoted last week, on 23 Apr 1775 the Massachusetts Provincial Congress resolved to raise an army of 30,000 men, 16,400 of them coming from outside the province.

In this Journal of the American Revolution article from last year, I discussed how early in 1775 the congress had set up liaisons with the governments of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire in case war broke out.

The Massachusetts Patriots had alerted their colleagues in those colonies about the fighting on 19 April. And now they asked for troops.

In Connecticut, Gov. Jonathan Trumbull supported the Patriots. As soon as he heard the news from Lexington, he agreed to call the legislature into session to take official action. On 21 April, William Williams, the Connecticut assembly speaker and Trumbull’s son-in-law, wrote with two other politicians to the Massachusetts congress:

Every preparation is making to Support your Province— . . . the Ardour of Our People is such that they can’t be kept back;—The Colonels are to forward part of the best men & most Ready, as fast as possible; the remainder to be ready at a Moments warning

Some militia officers were already on the move. Israel Putnam was in Concord on 21 April as the Massachusetts congress met. He wrote back:

I have waited on the Committee of the Provincial Congress, and it is their Determination to have a standing Army of 22,000 men from the New-England Colonies, of which, it is supposed, the Colony of Connecticut must raise 6,000, and begs they would be at Cambridge as speedily as possible, with Conveniences; together with Provisions, and a Sufficiency of Ammunition for their own Use.

Col. Benedict Arnold and his volunteers left New Haven on 22 April and arrived in Cambridge one week later. On 23 April a letter from Wethersfield to New York said:

We are all in motion here, and equipt from the Town, yesterday, one hundred young men, who cheerfully offered their service; twenty days provision, and sixty-four rounds, per man. They are all well armed, and in high spirits. . . . Our neighbouring Towns are all aiming and moving. Men of the first character and property shoulder their arms and march off for the field of action. We shall, by night, have several thousands from this Colony on their march. . . .

We fix on our Standards and Drums, the Colony Arms, with the motto, “qui transtulit sustinet,” round it in letters of gold, which we construe thus: “God, who transplanted us hither, will support us.”

On 27 April the Connecticut legislature voted to enlist 6,000 soldiers—six regiments of about a thousand men each. Joseph Spencer was appointed general of this army with Putnam next in seniority. (David Wooster remained in Connecticut to oversee defending its coast or New York as needed.)

Notably, Connecticut asked men to enlist in its army only until 10 December, not the end of the year as other New England colonies did. That became a problem when December rolled around and lots of Connecticut companies wanted to leave early (as Gen. George Washington viewed it) or on time (as their enlistment papers said). I discussed that conflict back here.

TOMORROW: Rhode Island’s observers.

“To submit myself to all the orders and regulations of the army”

On 21 April 1775, two days after fatal fighting began, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of safety adopted this oath for men enlisting in the provincial army:

I, A. B. do hereby solemnly engage and enlist myself as a soldier in the Massachusetts service, from the day of my enlistment to the last day of December next, unless the service should admit of a discharge of a part or the whole sooner, which shall be at the discretion of the committee of safety; and, I hereby promise, to submit myself to all the orders and regulations of the army, and faithfully to observe and obey all such orders as I shall receive from any superior officer.

Most men were already required to serve in the militia, but the committee was now thinking about “the army.”

It took until 1 May before another committee of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress came up with language for an officer’s commission:

THE CONGRESS OF THE COLONY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY.

To                 Greeting:

We, reposing especial trust and confidence in your courage and good conduct, do, by these presents, constitute and appoint you, the said                 to be                 of the regiment of foot                 raised by the Congress aforesaid for the defence of said colony.

You are, therefore, carefully and diligently to discharge the duty of a                 in leading, ordering and exercising the said                 in arms, both inferior officers and soldiers, and to keep them in good order and discipline; and they are hereby commanded to obey you as their                 ; and you are yourself to observe and follow such orders and instructions as you shall, from time to time, receive from the general and commander in chief of the forces raised in the colony aforesaid, for the defence of the same, or any other your superior officers, according to the military rules and discipline in war, in pursuance of the trust reposed in you.

By order of the Congress,                 the                 , of A. D. 1775.

The congress ordered a thousand copies of that form to be printed.

The Massachusetts Historical Society shares the image of one of those forms, given to Lt. Gamaliel Whiting of Great Barrington on 19 May.

The provincial congress listed Whiting as an ensign when it issued commissions for Col. John Fellows’s regiment on 7 June. It looks like “Ensign” was scraped off and the word “Lieutenant” inserted in three places, and by August the province did list Whiting as a lieutenant.

Someone added a note to this document about an “officer resigning and leaving the company at Springfield on the march to Boston,” allowing/necessitating Whiting’s promotion. Contrary to that note, there’s no evidence he achieved another promotion to captain before the end of the year. So I think family members recalled him stepping in for another man, but they mistakenly thought that happened after this commission rather than before.

(Until recently, the webpage for this document identified it as “Appointment as lieutenant in Massachusetts militia,” but now it correctly says, “Appointment as lieutenant in Massachusetts Bay Colony Regiment of Foot.” That reflects the misconception I discussed back here, that until Gen. George Washington arrived the Americans at the siege of Boston were all militia men. We’re all working on getting that transition right!)

TOMORROW: In the neighboring colonies.

“Siege and Liberation of Boston,” 7–8 Aug.

Registration is open for the third Pursuit of History Weekend that I’ve helped to program, this one on “The Siege and Liberation of Boston” on 7–8 August.

Organized with the folks who manage History Camp, these sessions are designed to offer in-depth looks at developments 250 years ago through expert speakers and visits to the actual sites where the history happened.

We’ll start on the slope of Breed’s Hill in Charlestown, exploring what turned out to be the decisive battle of the first campaign of the Revolutionary War. Sam Forman and Mary Adams will introduce two of the leaders of the American forces, Dr. Joseph Warren and John Stark. We’ll walk the battlefield and hear about ongoing investigations of the landscape from Boston City Archaeologist Joe Bagley. Then we’ll take a road trip to other places that the Continental Army fortified, which few visitors see. That day we plan to have meals at two restaurants that go back to the eighteenth century.

On the following day, we’ll move into the North End, collaborating with the Paul Revere House, the Old North Church, and veteran tour guide Charles Bahne to offer an in-depth look at the experience of living inside besieged Boston. Finally, I’ll speak about George Washington as a new commander-in-chief, what he thought his job was, and what he really learned.

The Pursuit of History webpage for this event has a video of me explaining more. Sam Forman and I are also scheduled to talk about the siege and this event in the History Camp discussion series on Thursday, 10 July, at 8:00 P.M.

This Pursuit of History Weekend is not, in fact, on a weekend but on a Thursday and Friday. That’s to allow people to also attend History Camp Boston on Saturday, 9 August, and even the related tours the next day if their history interests are still unsated.

And speaking of History Camp Boston 2025, I’ll be speaking there, too. My topic is related to the end of the Boston siege. That talk is called “Henry Knox, Loyalist?” It offers a new interpretation of that American general’s rise to prominence.

“Two hundred and forty-nine years later…”

Mother Jones just shared David Corn and Tim Murphy’s article “Here are the Declaration of Independence’s Grievances Against King George III. Many Apply to Trump.”

It begins:

When Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence in the weeks leading up July 4, 1776, he wanted to not only rely on just high-falutin enlightenment ideals to justify the case for separation from Great Britain. His aim was also to present a slam-dunk indictment of King George III—to prove that the royal was a “tyrant” and that he and Parliament had forfeited their right to rule the Americans by breaking their own laws and trampling on the rights of their people. This is why about half of the Declaration is a list of 27 specific grievances lodged against the King and his regime.

Two hundred and forty-nine years later, many of these grievances apply to the reign of Donald Trump. Here’s a look at how Trump stacks up against the Mad King.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

This grievance refers to the King refusing to approve laws passed by the colonies. Trump used his veto power a few times during his first presidency and has not had to do so this year. But he’s shown his disregard for Congress by simply ignoring existing laws. The Elon Musk-led DOGE attack on the government violated numerous laws—including those governing privacy and data. Trump paid no heed to the War Powers Resolution when he launched a military attack on Iran. He illegally impounded funds approved by Congress. He has misinterpreted the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to claim powers not afforded the president. Legal experts have said that Trump’s firing of inspectors general and commissioners of independent government commissions is illegal—though some of these cases are still being litigated in the courts. He has also issued an executive order to end birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the Constitution.

On the Mother Jones site, that last paragraph includes lots of links for reports on the violations. And it goes on, all the way down to “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us…”

This record is all the more remarkable for two reasons. First, several of the Congress’s complaints about George III referred to things the royal government did while it was openly waging war against the people of America for over a year. And secondly, Britain didn’t have a written Constitution to render the violations so clear.

“Necessary that the regiments be immediately settled”

Many accounts of George Washington’s arrival in Cambridge in 1775 say that he converted the ragtag New England militia into the Continental Army.

That’s a misconception. It’s common enough that I might have expressed that understanding myself when I first wrote about the beginning of the war. But it misses an important development that I now see more clearly, and see as more important.

The New England colonies had already formed armies in the spring of 1775. Militia companies were designed to respond to emergencies, such as the Lexington Alarm. When an emergency was over, men expected to go home. Enlisting in an army meant a man agreed to serve for a defined time.

That was a different legal relationship between a government and its citizens, and for New Englanders military service was all about that maintaining that covenant. As Fred Anderson has written, British army officers (who were used to enlisting for life and commanding men who had done the same) and later Gen. Washington ran into trouble because they didn’t share that outlook.

On 19 April and shortly afterward, about 20,000 militia men mobilized, ending up in camps ringing the peninsula of Boston. But with all the regulars back inside the town, the immediate emergency had passed. Some men wanted to go home.

Two days later, Gen. Artemas Ward wrote to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress:

My situation is such that, if I have not enlisting orders immediately, I shall be left all alone: it is impossible to keep the men here, excepting something be done. I therefore pray that the plan may be completed and handed to me this morning, that you, gentlemen of the Congress, issue orders for enlisting men.

The committee of safety responded with a proposal to sign up “out of the Massachusetts forces, eight thousand effective men,” to serve for seven months.

Two days later, on 23 April, the full congress went further with two votes:

Resolved, unanimously, that it is necessary for the defence of the colony, that an army of 30,000 men be immediately raised and established.

Resolved, That 13,600 men be raised immediately by this province.

The rest were expected to come from the neighboring colonies.

That Massachusetts army would have fewer men per company and fewer companies per regiment than the Massachusetts militia. The Patriot authorities expected some men to go home and hoped to keep units as cohesive as possible.

In the following weeks, there must have been a lot of discussion within the ranks. Some companies enlisted nearly en masse under their familiar officers. Other men chose to go home to their wives, children, and farms. Some went home and came back. To fill holes, there was some shuffling of officers’ ranks and which companies belonged to which regiments (i.e., reported to which colonels).

Ward and his top officers were worried enough about the war to recommend a formal militia call on 9 May so there would be enough armed men to protect Roxbury and Dorchester. Ten days later the general wrote to Dr. Joseph Warren as president of the congress:

It appears to me absolutely necessary that the regiments be immediately settled, the officers commissioned, the soldiers mustered and paid agreeable to what has been proposed by the Congress—if we would save our Country.

That day the provincial congress approved its first Massachusetts army commission, to Col. Samuel Gerrish.

Gradually more pieces were put into place. Ward was sworn in as an army general, not just a militia general, the next day. By the end of the month, what Patriot newspapers started calling “the Grand American Army” had about 16,000 men from four colonies.

To be sure, not all those forces were formally enrolled yet. In Moses Little’s regiment from Essex County, Moses Sleeper had signed on as a corporal on 9 May. But the committee of safety didn’t approve paperwork for the whole regiment until 26 June, the last regimental commission of the spring. By then some of Col. Little’s companies had already fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill.

For more about the process of creating this provincial army, see Mike Cecere’s article “The Army of Observation Forms: Spring 1775 in Massachusetts” at the Journal of the American Revolution.

COMING UP: Taking the oath.

“Alarmed that the Regulars were advancing towards Our Entrencment”

Among the presentations at this Saturday’s commemoration of Gen. George Washington’s arrival in Cambridge is a talk by Longfellow House archivist Kate Hanson Plass on the diary of Moses Sleeper.

Hanson Plass and her team have recently shared the diary online: transcription with annotations and illustrations, plus a link to page images on Archive.org.

The introduction explains:

In the museum collection of the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site is a diary written by a soldier who participated in the early days of the American Revolution. No one knows how the diary got to the house, though it seems likely that a collector in the Longfellow family acquired it for its Revolutionary War connection in the early 20th century.

The book itself is small (5” by 8”), pocket size; its cover and the first and last three pages are missing. There is no indication of the identity of the writer of the diary; at first reading it seems to be anonymous. Using clues inside the diary – references to family members and locations of military service – the author has been established as Corporal Moses Sleeper of Newburyport, Massachusetts, who served for 19 months in Colonel Moses Little’s Regiment (later the 12th Continental Regiment).

Sleeper and Sgt. Paul Lunt of the same regiment obviously shared their diaries since many of their entries are the same. They weren’t keeping private, personal notes but making a record of their military service for people back home and in the future.

Cpl. Sleeper’s surviving pages start right before the Bunker Hill battle, which his regiment wasn’t involved in. Here’s his terse account of those days:

Friday 16 our Men went to Charlestown and Intrenched on a hill beyond Bunker hill they fired from the Ships and Copps hill all the time.

Saturday 17 1775 the Regulars Came out upon the Back of Charlestown and Set fire to It & burnt It down & Came to our Entrenen[?] forced It with the Loss 896 of the Regulars and about 50 of ours The fire began at 3 o Clock and held till 6

Sund 18 we Entrinched on prospect hill alarmed that the Regulars were advancing towards Our Entrencment but found It to be false Returned to Quarters

Mondy 19 Wee killed Some of there Guard

T 20 Went upon Picquet

W 21 past musters

Thirsday 22 Received our month pay

You wouldn’t know from those entries that Capt. Benjamin Perkins’s company, including Cpl. Sleeper, went onto the Charlestown peninsula on 17 June and saw combat. I’ve quoted later recollections of the Bunker Hill fight from other men in that company: Lt. Joseph Whitmore and Pvt. Philip Johnson.

Sgt. Lunt’s description of the battle offered a little more detail:

Saturday, 17th. - The Regulars landed a number of troops, and we engaged them. They drove us off the hill, and burnt Charlestown. Dr. [Joseph] Warren was lost in the battle: the siege lasted about three hours. They killed about 50 of our men, wounded about 80: we killed of the king’s troops 896, - 92 officers, 104 sergeants.

Both Sleeper and Lunt listed an exact number of enemy casualties—a piece of intelligence it usually takes days or weeks to acquire. In Sleeper’s case, we can see that number was written right into the entry, not inserted later. That suggests these provincial soldiers didn’t write their diary entries on the evening after the battle but after time had passed, they had recovered, and they might have had less to do.