Reardon on Benedict Arnold’s New London Raid, 10 Sept.

Matthew Reardon will speak at the Ledyard, Connecticut, Public Library on 10 September about his new book, The Traitor’s Homecoming: Benedict Arnold’s Raid on New London, Connecticut, September 4-13, 1781.

The background:

By 1781, the war in North America had reached a stalemate. Throughout the summer the combined Franco-American armies of Generals George Washington and Jean-Baptiste comte de Rochambeau deceived British General Sir Henry Clinton into believing they were about to lay siege to New York City. When in fact, they were moving south toward Yorktown, Virginia, in a bid to trap Lord Cornwallis’ army against the sea.

Clinton, falling for the deception, dispatched former American General Benedict Arnold to attack New London, hoping the move would derail militia reinforcements and supplies headed from Connecticut to the allied armies outside New York City, as well as destroy the privateers which operated out of its harbor.

Situated in southeastern Connecticut, New London was the center of the state’s wartime naval activities. State and Continental naval vessels operated out of its harbor, which doubled as a haven for American privateers. Arnold landed on September 6 and, in a textbook operation, defeated local militia, took possession of the town, harbor, and forts, and set New London's waterfront ablaze.

But that is not how it is remembered. The Connecticut governor’s vicious propaganda campaign against the British and Arnold, who was already infamous for his treachery, created a narrative of partial truths and embellishments that persist to this day. As such, most of the attention remains on the bloody fighting and supposed “massacre” at Fort Griswold. There is much more to the story.

Based on years of research, this book dismantles myths that have cemented around Arnold’s raid and offers a major reinterpretation of what’s significant about it.

Matthew Reardon is a native of northeastern Connecticut with degrees from Sacred Heart University. He served as executive director of the New England Civil War Museum & Research Center for more than fifteen years. He currently works as a middle school teacher in Vernon and serves as a command historian for the Connecticut Military Department.

Raphael on “The Massachusetts Revolution of 1774,” 10 Sept.

On Tuesday, 10 September, the Paul Revere House will host an online talk by Ray Raphael on “The Massachusetts Revolution of 1774.”

Ray is based in California and doesn’t come to Massachusetts as often as he once did [I’ve asked him twice this year!], so this is the best opportunity to hear him speak about the momentous events 250 years ago this month.

The event description says:

In response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament not only shut down the port of Boston but also revoked the Massachusetts Charter of 1691, which guaranteed the people considerable say in their government. Their sacred rights withdrawn, the people rose up as a body and rebelled. They forced all crown-appointed officers to resign. Everywhere except Boston, where British troops were stationed, they shut down county courts, which administered British authority, executive as well as judicial, on the local level. To fill the vacuum, they formed a Provincial Congress that levied taxes, gathered arms, and raised an army.

When British soldiers marched on Lexington and Concord the following spring, they were trying to take back a province they had just lost. That’s when other colonies joined in, broadening the Massachusetts Revolution of 1774 into the American Revolution of 1775.

Ray wrote about these events in The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord and with his wife Marie in The Spirit of ’74: How the American Revolution Began. He’s written many other books on the Revolutionary period, including A People’s History of the American Revolution, Founding Myths, and Founders.

The Paul Revere House says its lectures this season will focus on the silversmith’s lesser-known express assignments. Speakers will share the importance of Revere’s courier work not only as an individual act of patriotism but also as part of communications systems.

Ray Raphael’s lecture will be livestreamed by the GBH forum network here on YouTube. Though not every webpage agrees, this event will start at 6:30 P.M. Anyone can log on.

Gunshots in the Countryside

On 7 Sept 1774, 250 years ago today, Henry Vassall was riding in Lincoln when he heard a gunshot.

The only Henry Vassall I was able to find on the family tree at this time was a nineteen-year-old son of William Vassall, discussed yesterday.

Henry was either visiting or staying with his cousin Elizabeth, wife of Dr. Charles Russell (1739–1780, shown here). I wonder if he was studying medicine.

Later that month Henry Vassall told the Charlestown committee of correspondence about his experience. He then wrote out an account for two Middlesex County magistrates, Henry Gardner of Stow and Dr. John Cuming of Concord:

Passing between the House of Mrs. Rebecca Barons [?] & Doct. Russell’s between the Hours of 7 & 9 in the Evening of the 7 instant [i.e., this month] & to the best of my Knowledge as I rose [?] a little Hill a little a past the first Canopy [?] I heard the report of a Gun saw the light and a Ball Enter’d the Carriage which I was in being Doct. Russells.

I immediately step’d out of the Carriage & stood about five or six Minutes & then stepp’d into the Carriage Again & road in haste to the Doctor when I had gone a small Distance from the Place where the Gun was discharged I met a person on Horse back

when I had past a small Distance further I met several Persons riding on two Horses,

whether the Ball was aim’d at the Carriage I can’t say I further declare I do not know or even suspect who the Person was that Discharg’d the Gun as above mentioned . . .

NB. The above affair I declar’d to no person in Lincoln but the Revd. Mr. [William] Lawrence & desired him to keep it secret—Till the Friday Following.

Gardner and Cuming also gathered statements from a local man named Joseph Peirce and Luck, enslaved to Dr. Russell. Both declared that they had been traveling near young Vassall and had heard no gunshot.

Three members of the Lincoln committee of correspondence then wrote back to Charlestown agreeing that they detested “the Crime of Assassination” but casting doubt on Vassall’s complaint:

We shall only add that as the evening on which this event was said to have happened was very calm it is the general opinion here that it is very improbable if not utterly impossible that a gun should be Discharged at that time & place without being heard by many persons, you have Doubtless seen the impression in the Carriage & are able to judge & Declare whether it is the efect of a Bullet Discharged from a Gun or Not as well as any person in this town

This incident provided yet another reason for members of the Vassall family to seek safety surrounded by the king’s soldiers. (And on the same day that the magistrates wrapped up their investigation, people in Bristol, Rhode Island, threw stones at the chaise of Henry’s father and stepmother, William and Margaret Vassall. Newspapers reported that “next morning [they] set out for Boston.”)

This shot in Lincoln is only the second example I’ve found of someone in Massachusetts firing a gun at a supporter of the royal government. The first had occurred a couple of weeks earlier in Taunton.

According to Daniel Leonard, a veteran of the last war named Job Williams came to his house with a warning that “the People were to assemble” to protest how he had joined the mandamus Council. Leonard left, thinking that would head off the problem. Instead, on 22 August , or perhaps make it clear he wouldn’t be welcomed back. That crowd did arrive. Leonard wrote:

about five hundred persons assembled, many of them Freeholders and some of them Officers in the Militia, and formed themselves into a Battalion before my house; they had then no Fire-arms, but generally had clubs. . . .

My Family supposing all would remain quiet, went to bed at their usual hour; at 11 o’Clock in the evening a Party fixed upon the house with small arms and run off; how many they consisted of is uncertain, I suppose not many; four bullets and some Swan-shot entered the house at the windows, part in a lower room and part in the chamber above, where one Capt. Job Williams lodged. The balls that were fired into the lower room were in a direction to his bed, but were obstructed by the Chamber floor. . . . I conclude it possible that the attack upon the house was principally designed for him.

Back in 1769–1770, there had been three increasingly notorious incidents of government supporters shooting at crowds of protestors: the “Neck Riot,” Ebenezer Richardson killing Christopher Seider, and of course the Boston Massacre. But even in that period Massachusetts protestors had never shot at royal officials or their supporters.

These untraceable gunshots in the late summer of 1774 show that some people in Massachusetts were starting to think it was acceptable to use that level of violence against Loyalists.

The Flight of the Cambridge Loyalists, part 3

When the ministry in London chose supportive gentlemen for the Council under the Massachusetts Government Act, one was William Vassall (1715–1800, shown here with his son Leonard wanting help with homework).

William was the last male in his generation of Vassalls, thus the head of a wealthy Anglican family that generally supported the Crown.

However, he wasn’t a politician, and former governor Thomas Hutchinson called him “naturally timid.” And since marrying Margaret Hubbard, he was living on her very nice estate in Bristol, Rhode Island.

On 25 August, Gov. Thomas Gage wrote to Secretary of State Dartmouth that William Vassall was among three men who “plead age and infirmities, but I believe choose to avoid the present disputes.” Those disputes were taking the form of angry rural crowds pressuring the new-fangled mandamus Councilors to resign or leave town.

Some of William’s relatives witnessed the even bigger crowds in Cambridge on 2 Sept 1774, later dubbed the “Powder Alarm.” His niece Elizabeth was married to Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver, and his sisters Susanna and Anna were the wives of George Ruggles and John Borland, respectively.

And then there was William’s nephew John Vassall, owner of the richest estate in Cambridge—now the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site.

As a rich country gentleman, John Vassall had the usual appointments of justice of the peace and militia colonel. But he’d never sought to serve in a political office.

Until that week. On the morning of 2 September, Gov. Gage wrote to Dartmouth:

I have given Your Lordship in my letter of this date, the names of several of the New Council who desire to resign their Seats; and I have now the honour to transmit you the names of Three Gentlemen who desire to be of the Council, vizt.—Mr. John Vassall of Cambridge, Mr. Eliakim Hutchinson, and Mr. Nathaniel Hatch.

John Vassall probably thought that by joining the Council he would not only be supporting his king but also stepping up act as head of the family.

When he wrote, Gage didn’t know that thousands of men with sticks were marching along the road in front of John Vassall’s house. Nor did those men know that John Vassall had volunteered to be on the Council.

At that moment only John Vassall knew how close he was to receiving a summons from those thousands of men, as Joseph Lee and Samuel Danforth did. By the end of the day, he and his wife must have heard from their siblings, Elizabeth and Thomas Oliver, about the threatening crowd that surrounded the lieutenant governor’s house and demanded he resign.

In 1784, John Vassall told the British government’s Loyalists Commission: “He was afraid of the Mob who knew his principles & he went to Boston a Day or two after Govr. Oliver’s House was attacked.” 

On 23 Feb 1775, the Boston News-Letter published a long article about how various Loyalists had been driven from their homes. It said: “Col. Vassall, of Cambridge, from intolerable threats, and insolent treatment to his friends and himself, has left his elegant seat there, and retired to Boston, with his amiable family, for protection.”

The lack of specific examples of “insolent treatment” and Vassall’s report of leaving Cambridge within a couple of days after the “Powder Alarm” suggest that there may not have been many real confrontations. But there was a lot of real fear.

In the fall of 1774 the London government sent a writ of mandamus appointing John Vassall and others to the Council. On 15 December, Gov. Gage wrote back: “Messrs. Erving, Vassal and Hatch have accepted the honour conferred upon them, but desire that it may be kept secret for a time, and that they may not be called upon till they are prepared.”

The next Council meeting Gage convened was on 17 July. But Vassall didn’t participate. In 1784 he told the Loyalists Commission that “he was never sworn in owing to an Accident which made him lame.” Natural timidity might have run in the family. 

The Flight of the Cambridge Loyalists, part 2

One direct target of the “Powder Alarm” protest in Cambridge on 2 Sept 1774 was Joseph Lee, a judge and appointee to the mandamus Council.

He tried to get ahead of the crowd’s demands by writing out a resignation from that Council in the morning, then reading it aloud on Cambridge common at midday.

But Lee and his wife Rebecca were still nervous. Her brother, Sheriff David Phips, and her niece’s husband, Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver, took refuge in Boston, as recounted yesterday. Toward the middle of the month, the Lees decided to leave town, too.

Instead of seeking the protection of the troops, the Lees headed south. To make their journey secure, they obtained this certificate from Isaac Foster, Jr., on 16 September:

To our Bretheren the Friends of Liberty

Whereas the honourable Joseph Lee Esqr has proposed to take a Tour through the Country for his [insert: Ladys] health, and it is possible that some Persons unacquainted with the Transactions at Cambridge on the 2d. instant, (when so great a Part of this County were collected there) may still be uneasy at his having taken the Oath as Councellor, on the intended new and unconstitutional Plan; these may certify that the said honourable Joseph Lee Esqr. had voluntarily, before he was called upon, and as we trust from a Conviction of the unconstitutionality of his Appointments, resigned his seat at the Council Board; which resignation he publickly and politely declared to the respectable Inhabitants of this County, with a promise that in future he would accept of no Office inconsistent with the Charter of this Province; and that the said Declaration and Promise was by the People assembled as aforesaid, unanimously voted satisfactory, having given such ample Satisfaction, we doubt not he will be treated by all the Friends of our happy Constitution, with such Civility and Respect, as shall do honour to our common Cause.

By order of the Committee of Correspondence for Charlstown

That’s another document from the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Miscellaneous Bound Manuscripts collection.

During Monday’s commemoration of the “Powder Alarm” in Charlestown, Karen Falb alerted me to a glimpse of Joseph and Rebecca Lee on their journey south. It appears in a letter from Henry Pelham to his half-brother John Singleton Copley, dated 2 November from Philadelphia. Pelham wrote:

I wish I had a more satisfactory account to give than that I have taken this Journey in search of lost Health; but still Happy should I be could I say I had entirely recovered it. I have been for near 10 Months [i.e., pretty much since the Tea Party] past very subject to nervous complaints which shewed themselves in an almost continued Dizziness, Headack, Loss of Appetite, Trembling of the Nerves, and Lowness of Spiritts. for these I early put myself under the Care of Doct’r [William Lee or Nathaniel] Perkins, who ordered me a course of Steel and frequent Riding, and recommended a long journey in the fall which my friends much advised too.

Mr. and Mrs. [Charles and Sarah] Startin [Susanna Copley’s sister and her husband] returning home, I thought it a favourable time for the excursion, and have come thus far in Company with them and Judge Lee and Lady, our Cambridge Friends, who propose passing the winter here. In a few days I intend to sett out for home, stoping for about a fortnight at New Haven, where Mr. [Adam] Babcock has engaged me to do two or three minature Pictures.

This letter shows that Pelham was friendly with the Lees before he drew his monumental map of the siege of Boston. (Another letter in the collection shows that Copley had visited Judge Lee at his home.) That has a bearing on the question of how much accuracy we can assign to Pelham’s rendering of the “Tory Row” estates, shown above.

Joseph and Rebecca Lee sat out the first years of the war in New Jersey and returned to their Cambridge home in 1777. Since they were no longer ”absentees,” Massachusetts did not confiscate that property.

The next mansion west from the Lees belonged to George and Susanna Ruggles. She was a Vassall by birth, thus a paternal aunt to Elizabeth Oliver.

George Ruggles made a unique arrangement for leaving the neighborhood: he swapped houses with the Boston merchant Thomas Fayerweather. On 31 October, Fayerweather deeded his house on Summer Street to Ruggles, and Ruggles deeded his estate on the Watertown road to Fayerweather. That estate included more than fifty acres of land, and Fayerweather paid Ruggles £2,000 to make an even swap.

That’s why Henry Pelham’s map of the siege of Boston labels that property as belonging to “Mr. Fairwather”—the one “Tory Row” estate no longer legally owned by a Loyalist at the start of the war.

TOMORROW: John Vassall’s secret.

The Flight of the Cambridge Loyalists, part 1

The Cambridge neighborhood later dubbed “Tory Row” became a lot less populous after the “Powder Alarm” of 1774—which was only natural since all of those estates’ owners were either targets of the crowds or related to targets.

Attorney general Jonathan Sewall was the first to depart. He arrived in Boston “between 12 & one” on 1 September, having been “advised to leave his house,” according to a letter from his father-in-law, Edmund Quincy. (That letter is in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Miscellaneous Bound Manuscripts collection.) 

William Brattle also left Cambridge on 1 September after learning that his letter to Gov. Thomas Gage, quoted here, had become public in Boston that afternoon. And that evening, a local crowd came looking for Brattle and Sewall.

Late the next afternoon, Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver faced off against what he counted as 4,000 men demanding his resignation from the Council. After signing their document under protest, he also hightailed it to Boston.

If Elizabeth Oliver and her children didn’t accompany Thomas to Boston then, they followed within days. So did Esther Sewall and her children.

William Brattle’s daughter, the widow Katherine Wendell, remained in the family’s Cambridge home—not only for the next several months but through the siege of Boston. She thus kept ownership of the house for the family while several nearby properties were confiscated by the state during the war.

Thomas Oliver’s wife Elizabeth was a Vassall by birth, and thus related to several other families in the area. One of her maternal uncles was David Phips, the royal sheriff of Middlesex County. Notes taken by the Loyalists Commission say:

He apprehended that his Life was in danger after he had removed the Gunpowder to Boston. . . . In Consequence of this treatment he removed himself to Boston & his family soon followed him.

Elizabeth Vassall’s paternal aunt Anna had married her stepbrother John Borland when she was thirteen and he twenty. In 1774 they lived in a Cambridge mansion originally commissioned by the Rev. East Apthorp, not counted as part of “Tory Row” since it wasn’t on the road to Watertown but near Harvard College. (In fact, today that house, shown above, is in the middle of the university’s Adams House.)

The Borlands also felt the “Powder Alarm” was too close for their comfort and moved into Boston. The 8 June 1775 New-England Chronicle reported:

DIED ] At Boston, on the 5th Instant [i.e., of this month], John Borland, Esq; aged 47 [actually 46]. His Death was occasioned by the sudden breaking of a Ladder, on which he stood, leading from the Garret Floor to the Top of his House.

According to none other than Jonathan Sewall, Borland “lost his life by a fall in attempting to get upon the top of his house to see an expedition to Hog Island.”

TOMORROW: More departures.

“Hostilitys have commenced at Cambridge”?

Here’s another primary source on the “Powder Alarm” of 1774 that I’ve quoted before, but only eight years ago.

These are two entries from the diary of the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman of Westboro.

Parkman really didn’t like conflict, so he hung back from political actions his parishioners and even his sons advocated. I recently traced his losing battle to keep people in town from committing to the Solemn League and Covenant boycott; that comes up here, too.

Naturally, Parkman was most uncomfortable with the idea of his farmworker, neighbors, son, and others marching off to confront the redcoats.

But the real story of these entries is how much misinformation and confusion the people of central Massachusetts were dealing with. The false rumor that the regulars had killed people in Cambridge on 1 September ended up reaching Westboro first as a false rumor that there was shooting on 2 September and “Some [victims] at least may be of Westborough.” That wasn’t completely refuted until the next day.

1774 September 2 (Friday). This morning was ushered in with Alarms from every Quarter, to get ready and run down to Boston or Cambridge. The Contents Magazine of Powder at Winter Hill had been carryed off — namely [550?] Barrells; by Treachery; etc. This is told as the Chief Affair.

72 of our Neighbours marched from Gales (tis said) by break of Day; and others are continuely going. My young man [Asa Ware] goes armed, with them.

About 5 p.m. Grafton Company, nigh 80, under Capt. Golding, march by us.

N.B. Squire [Francis] Whipple here. Says he is ready to sign [the Solemn League and Covenant] etc.

It is a Day of peculiar Anxiety and Distress! Such as we have not had — Will the Lord graciously look upon us; and grant us Deliverance — for we would hope and trust in His Name! We send for Mrs. Spring and her two Children to be here with us, while her husband is gone with the People. Breck [the minister’s son] returned from Lancaster.

At Eve we have most sorrowful News that Hostilitys have commenced at Cambridge, and that Six of our people are killed; that probably Some at least may be of Westborough. Joshua Chamberlin stood next (as it is related) to one that was slain. We have many Vague accounts and indeed are left in uncertaintys about Every Thing that has occurred.

Sutton soldiers — about 250, pass along by us — but after midnight are returning by reason of a Contrary Report. Mr. Zech. Hicks stops here. Breck is employed in the night to cast Bulletts. A Watch at the Meeting House to guard the Town stock etc. Some Towns, we hear, have lost much of theirs, as Dedham, Wrentham etc.

Westboro was using its meetinghouse as its militia armory, as Lexington would do in April 1775.

1774 September 3 (Saturday). Capt. Benjamin Fay came here between 2 and 3 o’Clock in the morn in much Concern and knew not what to do. After Light and through most of the forenoon, vague uncertain Reports. Sutton men that had gone to Deacon Wood, came back to go down the Road again.

My son Breck with provisions, Bread, Meat, etc., Coats, Blanket etc., for it was rainy, rides down towards Cambridge to relieve Asa Ware, Mr. Spring, and others who were unprovided.

About noon the Sutton Companys come back again and go home, Rev. [Ebenezer] Chaplin among them. So do the Grafton men.

Mr. Abraham Temple relates to me, that he, having been as far as to Cambridge and himself Seen many of the Transactions, that there were no Regulars there, no Artillery, no body Slain — but that Lt. Gov. [Thomas] Oliver, Messrs. [Samuel] Danforth, Joseph Lee, Col. [David] Phips (the high Sheriff) had resigned and promised that they would not act as Counsellors — that Mr. Samuel Winthrop computed there were about 7000 of the Country people had gathered into Cambridge on this Occasion — that it was probable, as he (Mr. Temple) conceived, that the Troubles would subside.

N.B. When the Sun run low, Our Company returned (consisting of Horse and Foot about 150). With them were my Son and my young man — all without any Evil Occurrance. To God be Praise and Glory! I Suppose Capt. [Jonathan] Maynard and those who were with him are returned also.

It’s also notable that the Sutton minister Ebenezer Chaplin accompanied men on this militia alarm. He was much more politically active than Parkman, chosen for the 1779 convention to write a constitution for Massachusetts and the 1788 convention to consider the new U.S. Constitition.

Chaplin also seems to have been a volatile man. In 1775 Isaiah Thomas declined to run some of his essays in the Massachusetts Spy, and the minister responded by preaching that the printer was an atheist and a Tory.

In 1791, the Rev. Mr. Chaplin locked up his daughter when she wanted to marry a popular young man. She died. The parish (which eventually became Millbury) dismissed Chaplin from their pulpit. Quite a change from seventeen years earlier, when they went off to possible war together.

”Marched 8 Miles towards Boston on the late Alarm”

The third of Boston’s politically active physicians, Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., also wrote to Samuel Adams on 4 Sept 1774.

Church hadn’t been among the Whig leaders who went out to Cambridge in an attempt to calm the militia men who responded to the “Powder Alarm” before the situation became violent.

Instead, he passed on information from central Massachusetts:

Mr. Stearns just arrived from Paxton informs me that the Inhabitants of Springfield, Leicester, Paxton, Spencer and the Towns adjacent had risen in one body armed & equipped and had proceeded on their March as far as Shrewsbury on their way to Boston to the Number of Twenty Thousand, and were with difficulty perswaded to return, and would not till from many Passengers from this way they were convinced that there was no necessity for their Assistance at this time.

Church’s informant was likely Dr. Samuel Stearns (1741–1809), a physician and almanac-maker who lived in Paxton in this period. During the war he was accused of being a Tory and jailed for passing counterfeit bills, and then he fled to British-occupied New York.

The number of 20,000 militia men is clearly an exaggeration. A few days later, a head count of the turnout to close the Worcester County court session totaled 4,722 men, including 180 from Leicester, 80 from Paxton, and 164 from Spencer—and that was deemed a large number.

Other Boston Whigs told similar stories of rural companies feeling disappointed that they didn’t reach the scene of action in Cambridge on 2 September.

For some people, that emotion lasted a while longer. On 6 November, John Adams was coming back from the First Continental Congress when he stopped in Palmer, Massachusetts (not yet incorporated and therefore still referred to as “Kingsfield” or “Kingston” after an early settler, John King).

New England laws forbade travel from one town to another on the Sabbath except in emergencies. Adams and his colleagues therefore had to spend that whole day in Palmer. In his diary he wrote:

We walked to Meeting above 2 Miles at Noon. We walked 1/4 of a Mile and staid at one Quintouns an old Irishman, and a friendly cordial Reception we had. The old Man was so rejoiced to see us he could hardly speak—more glad to see Us he said than he should to see [Thomas] Gage and all his Train.—

I saw a Gun. The young Man said that Gun marched 8 Miles towards Boston on the late Alarm. Almost the whole Parish marched off, and the People seemed really disappointed, when the News was contradicted.

Adams’s host appears to have been Duncan Quinton, born in Ireland in 1694 and dying in 1776. He and his wife Eunice had sons John (1743–) and Thomas (1746—), who married a month apart in 1771 (Thomas because his son Robert arrived seven months later). One of those young Quintons probably told Adams about the gun.

Given the spirit evident in the fall of 1774, it’s disappointing that there are few if any first-hand accounts from men who marched in the Powder Alarm. One factor is that those same men probably marched at the news from Lexington, and perhaps when Gen. John Burgoyne approached from the north. Therefore, the memory of a march that didn’t go anywhere or end in any fighting could easily be overshadowed.

“You have heard of the taking ye. Windmill”

In The Road to Concord I quoted a lot from accounts of the “Powder Alarm” that Dr. Joseph Warren and Dr. Thomas Young sent to Samuel Adams on 4 Sept 1774. (Warren’s letter is undated, so that date is a guess based on context.)

Both those physicians had gone out to Cambridge common on 2 September along with other genteel Boston Whig leaders, hoping to calm the crowd and prevent violence. They could therefore share eyewitness details with Adams.

(In fact, the crowd was already calm, though determined. It didn’t verge on violence until later in the afternoon when Customs Commissioner Benjamin Hallowell, Jr., happened to roll by. And the inland farmers wouldn’t have recognized Hallowell if Bostonians like printer Isaiah Thomas hadn’t pointed him out, calling, “Dam you how doe you like us now, you Tory Son of a Bitch[?]” Needless to say, Thomas wasn’t part of the Boston committee.)

Adams also received a 5 September letter from the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper describing the “Powder Alarm.” That minister was not an eyewitness, so all his information was second-hand at best and inaccurate in some details. But that letter offers a look at what the Whigs were telling each other about the event.

You have heard of the taking ye. Windmill, at Cambridg [sic—Charlestown] with the Province Powder there by a Detachment.

The next Morning three thousand assembled at Cambridg. They conducted with Order & great Firmness. [Samuel] Danforth & [Joseph] Lee, expecting a Storm had resign’d the Day before. Sheriff [David] Phips has promis’d not to act upon ye. new Laws. Even the Lt. Governor [Thomas Oliver] resign’d his Seat at ye. Board [i.e., the Council].

The Assembly having done their Business, retir’d.

Hallowell pass’d on that Day thro Cambridg from Salem. When he had got a little Way fro the Assembly, one or two Horsemen follow’d him. He gallop’d with all the Speed he could make thro the blazing Heat to Boston.

When he got upon ye. Neck, as if all the Sons of Liberty in the Province had been at his Heels, He scream’d for the Guard: They ran from their Station to meet him. The Alarm was soon given to the Camp—and an apprehension instantly propagated of a Visit from Cambridg. The Soldiers lay on their arms thro the Night.

They have since doubled their Guard at the Fortification, and planted four Pieces of Cannon there.

Dr. Cooper had other things to say about the mandamus Councilors and what Gen. Thomas Gage was writing to his superiors in London. (How could the minister know?)

Cooper signed this letter “Amicus,” adding, “If you are at a Loss, Mr. [Thomas] Cushing will explain my Signature—conceal my name.”

“Mr. Brattle presents his Duty to Governor Gage.”

In August 1774, Gen. Thomas Gage asked William Brattle, general overseeing the Middlesex County militia, for an inventory of the gunpowder in the Charlestown powderhouse.

I’ve quoted Brattle’s reply before, but that was an astonishing seventeen years ago, so I’m running that text again, as it appeared in the 5 September Boston Gazette. Apologies to anyone who remembers it exactly from before.

On 27 August, Brattle wrote:

Mr. Brattle presents his Duty to Governor Gage. He apprehends it his Duty to acquaint his Excellency from Time to Time with every Thing he hears and knows to be true and is of Importance in these troublesome Times, which is the Apology Mr. Brattle makes for troubling the General with this Letter.

Capt. [Jonas] Minot of Concord, a very worthy Man, this Minute informed Mr. Brattle that there had been repeatedly made pressing Applications to him to warn his Company to meet at one Minute’s Warning, equipt with Arms and Ammunition, according to law, he had constantly denied them, adding, if he did not gratify them he should be constrained to quit his Farms and Town;

Mr. Brattle told him he had better do that than lose his Life and be hanged for a Rebel, he observed that many Captains had done it, though not in the Regiment to which he belonged, which was and is under Col. Elisha Jones, but in a neighbouring Regiment.

Mr. Brattle begs Leave humbly to quere, Whether it would not be best that there should not be one Commission Officer of the Militia in the Province.

This morning the Select Men of Medford, came and received their Town Stock of Powder, which was in the Arsenal on Quarry-Hill, so that there is now therein, the King’s Powder only, which shall remain there as a sacred Depositum till ordered out by the Capt. General.

To his Excellency General Gage, &c. &c. &c.

This time around, I’m struck by the phrase “warn his company to meet at one minute’s warning, equipt with arms and ammunition.” This was weeks before the Worcester County Convention issued a call for towns to prepare a third of their militia members ”to be ready to act at a minute’s warning.” When the Massachusetts Provincial Congress endorsed that call in October, it left out the reference to a minute. Nonetheless, the popular term for those units became “minute companies” and “minute men.”

This 27 August letter shows that the proposal to have fighting men ready in a minute was already in the air before it became a formal proposal and before it reached print.

Indeed, because Brattle’s letter was transcribed into a lot of newspapers that September, it might well have played a role in popularizing the “minute’s warning” metric. And of course, that letter set off the chain of events that produced the “Powder Alarm.”

For more about that “Powder Alarm” and its Sestercentennial significance, you can listen to my conversation with Tiziana Dearing on WBUR’s Radio Boston show. And come out to the commemorations this Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday.

Commemorating the Suffolk Resolves in Milton, 31 Aug.

On 6 July 1774, sixty men from towns in Berkshire County met in Stockbridge as a county convention.

On the colony’s western end, that gathering was far from the royal governor’s troops, and also beyond the powerful Loyalists of the Connecticut River valley.

I don’t think those men had been elected by their towns, so this might have been a self-appointed group of activists. They endorsed the Solemn League and Covenant boycott, and they provided a model for a new form of resistance.

County conventions thus became another way to protest Parliament’s Coercive Acts. Like court closings, they moved from west to east, moving closer to Boston and the redcoats.

The Massachusetts Government Act arrived during that time, putting new restrictions on town meetings. But that law said nothing about county meetings because there hadn’t been any before.

On 16 August 1774, men from “Every Town & District in the County of Suffolk, Except Weymouth, Cohasset, Needham & Chelsea” met at Thomas Doty’s tavern in Stoughton. (That part of town later became Canton.) At that time Suffolk County included not only Boston but also all of modern Norfolk County extending to the Rhode Island border.

However, those men decided not to proceed formally “as Several Towns Had not Appointed Delegates for the Special Purpose of a County Meeting.” Instead, they issued a call for all towns to send such delegates to a meeting “at the House of Mr. Woodward Innholder in Dedham on Tuesday the Sixth day of September.”

The owner and likely manager of that inn was actually Richard Woodward’s wife, formerly Mrs. Deborah Ames. She had run the place as a widow from 1764 to 1772, and would run it again after she and Woodward divorced in 1784.

On 6 September, the Suffolk County delegates convened and named a large committee headed by Dr. Joseph Warren, one of the several Boston delegates, to write its resolutions. Warren was a practiced newspaper essayist, and he could also build on the resolutions adopted by Berkshire, Worcester, and Middlesex Counties.

On 9 September, the Suffolk County Convention met in Milton “at the house of Mr. Daniel Vose”—another tavern. The delegates unanimously approved the resolutions Dr. Warren had drafted.

Warren then had Paul Revere carry Suffolk County Resolutions to Samuel Adams and his other colleagues in Philadelphia. There the Continental Congress had been startled by the “Powder Alarm” scare, and its members no doubt welcomed Revere’s confirmation that Boston wasn’t in ashes and was still resisting. They endorsed the resolutions, elevating that document above the other Massachusetts county declarations.

Of the three taverns associated with the Suffolk County Convention, only the Vose house survives, albeit in a different place. It’s now headquarters of the Milton Historical Society and is called the Suffolk Resolves House. 

On Sunday, 31 August, the Milton Historical Society, the Massachusetts Freemasons, and the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Suffolk Resolves with guided tours of the Vose house, speakers, and reenactors. This event is scheduled to run from 9:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. Tickets are $10 per adult, $20 for a family of two adults and children under eighteen. Proceeds will benefit the Milton Historical Society.

“Humourously call’d the Little Pope”

Here’s one more detail from the merchant John Andrews’s 22 July 1774 letter about how over a hundred Boston merchants came to sign one of two protests against the Boston committee of correspondence.

Andrews wrote that the shorter, milder protest that he signed was “humourously call’d the Little Pope.”

That’s a Pope Night reference! Joshua Coffin’s 1845 Sketch of the History of Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury stated:

In the day time, companies of little boys might be seen, in various parts of the town, with their little popes, dressed up in the most grotesque and fantastic manner, which they carried about, some on boards, and some on little carriages, for their own and others’ amusement.

Pierre Eugène du Simitière drew a Boston boy with such a “little pope” on a board in 1767. It’s a miniature version of one of the big wagons rolled around on the night of 5 November with (from left) a horned devil holding a lantern, the papal effigy, and a big lantern.

The milder protest was thus like a miniature effigy carried by little boys while the larger, broader protest was like a full Pope Night wagon. That might not reflect well on Andrews and his cohort, but he had enough of a sense of humor to share the joke. 

“To sell according to the tenor of the Covenant”?

John Andrews’s 22 July 1774 letter to his relative in Philadelphia offers an inside look at why he and some other merchants who generally supported the Whigs ended up signing protests against the Boston committee of correspondence.

According to Andrews, he had “countermanded my orders [from Britain] by the first opportunity after the Port Bill arriv’d, and of consequence acquiesced with a non-importation agreement when propos’d about three or four weeks after.”

But then Andrews heard that merchants in Newport, New York, Philadelphia, and points south hadn’t agreed to such an agreement. He figured that boycott wouldn’t take hold, and he’d lose money if he continued to abstain. So he “embrac’d the first opportunity and re-ordered about one fourth part of such goods as I thought would be most in demand.”

But a month or so later, Andrews saw rural towns signing onto the Solemn League and Covenant, a non-consumption agreement—people were promising not to buy those goods he had ordered. That’s why he felt the covenant “has serv’d rather to create dissentions among ourselves than to answer any valuable purpose.” It would cost him money!

Likewise, Andrews wrote, the merchant Samuel Elliot (shown above in later life) was

expecting a large quantity of goods which, should they arrive, he can’t possibly qualify himself to sell according to the tenor of the Covenant, having countermanded ’em no other ways than to have ’em shipped, provided your place, with New York. Rhode Island, &c., should have their goods as usual: and from the determination of those places, he has all the reason in the world to expect them.

Elliot had committed to non-importation only if the merchants in other ports did the same, and he’d told his contacts in Britain to keep shipping him goods if they didn’t. Therefore, he was now expecting to receive lots of stuff that more and more folks in New England were swearing not to buy.

Andrews reported that at the 27 June town meeting in Old South

Eliot display’d his eloquence in a long speech upon the subject, deliver’d in so masterly a stile and manner as to gain ye. plaudits of perhaps the largest assembly ever conven’d here, by an almost universal clap: wherein he deliver’d his sentiments with that freedom and manliness peculiar only to himself.

However, the formal vote at that town meeting was shaped by another set of gentlemen: those who had signed the complimentary addresses to departing governor Thomas Hutchinson and incoming governor Thomas Gage. They were upset by “hearing the letters read that were sent to your place [Philadelphia] and New York (the latter in particular) in regard to that part of their conduct.” Resenting that criticism, those merchants and professional men demanded a vote “to censure and dismiss ye. Committee.” And they lost big.

Andrews said he had expected a motion “to suspend ye. Covenant till ye. [Continental] Congress should meet.” He insisted, “We don’t mean to oppose any general measure that maybe adopted by the Congress, but are well dispos’d in the cause of Freedom as any of our opponents, and would equally oppose and detest Tyranny exerciz’d either in England or America.”

Likewise, some towns considering the Solemn League and Covenant decided to take no action until seeing what the Congress would do, or added clauses reserving the leeway to adjust the terms based on that Congress’s recommendations. But that didn’t make merchants like Elliot and Andrews any happier.

TOMORROW: One last detail.

“An oath, certified by a magistrate to be by them taken”

Earlier this summer, I spent a few days discussing Albert Matthews’s 1915 analysis of two forms of the Solemn League and Covenant, and then laying out how I came to the opposite conclusion about which text came from Boston and which from Worcester.

Part of Matthews’s argument was that one of the texts was “more drastic.” But the main pledge of both texts is:

we will not buy, purchase or consume, or suffer any person, by, for or under us to purchase or consume, in any manner whatever, any goods, wares, or merchandize which shall arrive in America from Great Britain aforesaid, from and after the last day of August next ensuing.

In that regard, the two versions were equally strict.

One text had this additional promise:

That from and after the first day of October next ensuing, we will, not by ourselves, or any for, by, or under us, purchase or use any goods, wares, manufactures or merchandize, whensoever or howsoever imported from Great Britain, until the harbour of Boston shall be opened, and our charter rights restored.

That left the month of September to buy and use goods from Britain imported before 31 August. But nobody seems to have complained about that clause, or the lack of it.

Instead, the sticking point for some opponents was language that appeared in the other text (language which I believe was added to the Boston draft by Worcester’s committee of correspondence, and then endorsed by Boston and adopted by other towns):

That such persons may not have it in their power to impose upon us by any pretence whatever, we further agree to purchase no article of merchandize from them, or any of them, who shall not have signed this, or a similar covenant, or will not produce an oath, certified by a magistrate to be by them taken to the following purpose: viz.

I —————— of —————— in the county of —————— do solemnly swear that the goods I have now on hand, and propose for sale, have not, to the best of my knowledge, been imported from Great Britain, into any port of America since the last day of August, one thousand seven hundred and seventy four, and that I will not, contrary to the spirit of an agreement entering into through this province import or purchase of any person so importing any goods as aforesaid, until the port or harbour of Boston, shall be opened, and we are fully restored to the free use of our constitutional and charter rights.

The newspaper letter I quoted yesterday specifically complained about “The multiplication of Oaths.” Bringing sworn oaths into this boycott was a step too far for that writer (even though people who signed any form of the covenant didn’t need to swear separate oaths).

In a devout society like colonial New England, sworn oaths carried more weight than other sorts of public promises. Bringing up an oath therefore made this text stronger, thus more radical than the other.

The letter writer seems to have expected people to break their strict non-importation promises, offering excuses or seeking exceptions as many Boston merchants had done in 1769–70. Having people swear to strictly adhere to this boycott wouldn’t make them any more careful about its terms, that writer suggested—it would simply give them an incentive to “disregard” an oath. The letter concluded:

…Society cannot exist when Oaths shall cease to be religiously observed. When that dreadful Event happens among any People, their Lives, Liberties and Properties cannot be safe.

Evidently, society depends on us being able to shade the truth in front of our neighbors without worrying about the hereafter.

(The engraving above is “Woman Swearing a Child to a grave Citizen” by William Hogarth, courtesy of the New York Public Library.)