A Redcoat Deserter and a Salem Captain

I’ve looked for more sources about the British army deserter who reached the Continental lines around Boston on the night of 8–9 Mar 1776 and evidently spoke to Gen. George Washington on 10 March.

So far I haven’t found anything besides the reports I’ve quoted from Maj. Samuel Blachley Webb and James Bowdoin.

Neither Washington nor his aide Stephen Moylan mentioned that man in their 10 March letters reporting that the British were planning to leave Boston. I believe they wrote those dispatches before the deserter arrived at the Cambridge headquarters. His information corroborated what they had already heard, so they saw no need to send additional reports about him.

It’s possible that a British army muster roll might identify a soldier who deserted on 8 March. Then we could look for evidence of where that regiment was stationed, and we could look for that man’s name in American records.

Those bits of information could be useful in assessing the man’s credibility when he quoted Gen. William Howe as saying about the works on Dorchester heights, “Good God! These fellows have done more work in one night than I could have made my army do in 3 months. What shall I do?” Was this enlisted man actually in a position to hear the commander speak frankly like that? Or was he flattering the American commander with a story? For now, those are still open questions for me.

As for the person whose information Washington and Moylan did cite in their 10 March letters, that was a sea captain from Salem whose name different American officers rendered as Erving, Irvine, Irwin, and Erwin. Only the form Ervin (or Earven) appears in the Salem vital records.

At least one man from Salem with that surname was reported as commanding a merchant ship before the war. Those maritime records don’t come with first names, but the best candidate is George Ervin. After he died in 1816, his administrator identified him as a “Mariner.”

Calculating back from his reported age at death, George Ervin was probably born in 1749. He married Mehitabel Gardner at Danvers on 12 Oct 1773. She had been baptized on 31 Jan 1748. They started having children a little more than nine months later:

• George Gardner Ervin, born 31 July 1774, died 12 Oct 1781.
• Hetty, born 21 Jan 1777, died in May.
• another Hetty (Mehitable), born 11 Oct 1778, married Joseph Felt (not the Salem chronicler) in 1799, and died in 1843.
• Joseph, born 8 Dec 1780, died in Martinique in 1816.
• another George, born 8 Sept 1782.
• Sally (Sarah), born 5 Sept 1784, died 15 Oct 1813.
• Betsy, born 23 July 1786.
• Ernest Augustus, born 25 Jan 1789, a privateer captain in the War of 1812, died in December 1860.

According to Washington’s letters, he spoke to “A Captain of a Transport” who told him “That the Ship he commanded was taken up, places fitted & fitting for Officers to lodge, and Several Shot, Shells & Cannon already on board” for the evacuation of Boston. That of course meant that the captain, his ship, and his crew were all in Boston harbor, either voluntarily or by force. I haven’t found any sources putting George Ervin in that situation.

George Ervin served as first lieutenant on the privateering sloop Rhodes, commanded by Nehemiah Buffington and sailing out of Salem in the summer of 1780. He was listed as thirty-one years old, 5'8" tall, with a light complexion.

In 1785 Salem elected George Ervin as one of the town tax collectors. When he died decades later, he owned two houses on Mill Street. His estate was a few hundred dollars in debt.

There were other men named Erwin in Salem, including Samuel, “heretofore of Bristol in England, now of Salem,” who married Lydia Chever in 1770; John, who married twice in the 1770s; and Joseph, who had twin girls with his wife Mary baptized in July 1774. But I can’t connect any of those men with the sea like George.

TOMORROW: Gen. Washington’s dinner with “Captain Irving.”

“Came to Head Quarters and gave the following Intelligence”

After Continental troops moved onto Dorchester heights on the night of 4–5 March 1776, Gen. George Washington and his commanders waited anxiously for the British response.

As of 8 March, Gen. Horatio Gates was telling John Adams that headquarters still didn’t know what was going on inside Boston “as neither Townsman, nor Deserter, has yet come in to acquaint us!”

But some men were making their way out of Boston, bringing intelligence. Maj. Samuel Blachley Webb (shown above, courtesy of the New-York Historical Society), stationed with Gen. Israel Putnam’s brigade in Cambridge, wrote in his journal on 8 March about “Capt. Erving, of Salem, who last night stole out of Boston.”

Four different letters sent from Washington’s headquarters on 9 March, the next day, described that man in slightly different ways:

• “A Captain of a Transport who made his escape from Boston the night before last” —Washington’s letter to Connecticut governor Jonathan Trumbull
• “a Captain Irvine who escaped from Boston the night before with Six of his Crew” —Washington’s letter to John Hancock and the Continental Congress
• “Captain Irwin of Salem escaped from town the night before last” —aide Stephen Moylan to the president of the New Hampshire assembly (in the Provincial and State Papers of New Hampshire)
• “Captain Erwin escaped from Town the Night before last” —Moylan to the commanding officer in New York (in the Naval Documents of the American Revolution)

After looking at Salem vital records, which provide yet more variant spellings, I think this captain was most likely named Ervin, so I’m going to refer to him that way.

At first I thought Capt. Ervin was the most likely person to have reported Gen. William Howe’s exclamation on seeing the Dorchester heights fortifications. His rank as a captain in command of a “Transport,” or troop ship, suggested that the general was more likely to have spoken frankly in front of him.

However, the timing doesn’t quite work. In one of his 9 March letters Gen. Washington wrote that it was “Yesterday evening,” or 8 March, when this captain “came to Head Quarters and gave the following Intelligence.” James Bowdoin understood that the general questioned the source we’re looking for at or after midday dinner on 9 March.

In addition, Bowdoin used the term “deserter.” None of the headquarters letters used that word for the sea captain, even when Washington described him as “A Captain of a Transport,” presumably working for the Crown.

But Maj. Webb did use that language in describing another man in his diary on 9 March: “Three Inhabitants and one Soldier last night deserted to us from Boston—they confirmed the accounts Rec’d yesterday…” If that soldier reached Washington’s Cambridge headquarters on 9 March, then the general would have seen him as an army deserter and questioned him that day, as Bowdoin described.

Finally, while Ervin and the deserter told the same basic story about the British authorities preparing to leave, they provided different details—about numbers, hospital ships, and so on.

It therefore looks like Gen. Washington spoke to Capt. Ervin on the evening of 8 March, received a letter from the Boston selectmen with similar news (as discussed here), and dispatched reports based on all that information to the Congress and nearby colonies in the middle of 9 March. Later on that day the deserting soldier arrived, offering yet more corroboration and the story of Gen. Howe exclaiming, “Good God! These fellows have done more work in one night than I could have made my army do in 3 months. What shall I do?”

TOMORROW: Digging into these intelligence sources.

“I hear that General How said…”

For decades authors have quoted Gen. William Howe seeing the Continental fortifications on Dorchester heights and remarking: “These fellows have done more work in one night than I could have made my army do in three months.”

Few if any of those authors cited a primary source for that remark. Many presented the quotation with variations on the phrase “It is said…,” admitting they have no direct source and/or acknowledging some doubt.

Indeed, when seeing pre-20th-century American authors report what a British commander said privately within a besieged town, we should be skeptical. How did they know? Americans had access to only a few sources from the British side in those years. 

In this case, however, I traced the quotation back to March 1776, with a provenance pointing to Gen. Howe. On 10 March, Massachusetts Council member James Bowdoin wrote:

Mr. [John] Murray, a clergyman, din’d with the General [George Washington] yesterday, and was present at the examination of a deserter, who upon oath says that 5 or 600 [British] troops embarked the night before without any order or regularity; the baggage was hurried on board without an inventory; that he himself helped the General’s [Howe’s] baggage on board, and that two hospital ships were filled with sick soldiers, and the utmost horror and confusion amongst them all.

The General [Washington] recd. a l[ette]r. from the selectmen informing him that in the midst of their confusion they apply’d to Mr. Howe, who told them that if Mr. Washington woud order a cessation of arms and engage not to molest him in his embarkation, he woud leave the town without injuring it; otherwise he would set it on fire. To which the General replyed that there was nothing in the application binding on Mr. Howe. He therefore could not take any notice of it.

The deserter further says that Mr. Howe went upon a hill in Boston the morning after our people took possession of Dorchester Neck, when he made this exclamation: “Good God! These fellows have done more work in one night than I could have made my army do in 3 months. What shall I do?”

Abigail Adams told the same story in a letter to her husband on 17 March:

I hear that General How said upon going upon some Eminence in Town to view our Troops who had taken Dorchester Hill unperceived by them till sun rise, “My God these fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my Army do in three months” and he might well say so for in one night two forts and long Breast Works were sprung up besides several Barracks. 300 & 70 teems were imployed most of which went 3 load in the night, beside 4000 men who worked with good Hearts.

The Adams letters were widely reprinted in the 1800s. That put the quotation into circulation among American authors, with “My God” quoted more often than Bowdoin’s “Good God!” 

Of course, the reliability of the Howe quotation still rests on believing the Rev. John Murray and that unidentified “deserter.” But as far as Revolutionary traditions go, tracing this story back to within five days of when it reportedly took place is about as good as we get.

TOMORROW: Digging for that “deserter.”

“Two Redoubts on the Heights of Dorchester”

On 5 Mar 1776, the British military and their supporters inside Boston got their first look at the brand-new Continental fortification on Dorchester heights.

We have remarks on this sight from several British army officers. Capt. John Barker of the 4th Regiment wrote: “This Morning Works were perceived to be thrown up on Dorchester Heights, very strong ones tho’ only the labour of one night”.

Lt. Col. Stephen Kemble recorded:

Discovered the Rebels had raised two Redoubts on the Heights of Dorchester, at which they were at Work very hard, and had raised to the height of a Man’s head, and had as many Men as could be employed on them.

The 15 May Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser quoted a letter from “an Officer of Distinction at Boston” writing more hyperbolically:

This is, I believe, likely to prove as important a day to the British Empire as any in our annals. . . .

This morning at day-break we discovered two redoubts on the hills on Dorchester Point, and two smaller works on their flanks. They were all raised during the night, with an expedition equal to that of the Genii belonging to Aladin’s wonderful lamp. From these hills they commanded the whole town, so that we must drive them from their post, or desert the place.

Probably the most perceptive observations came from Capt.-Lt. Archibald Robertson (1745–1813, shown above), who focused an engineer’s eyes on the works:

About 10 o’clock at night [on 4 March] Lieutenant Colonel [John] Campbell reported to Brigadier [Francis] Smith that the Rebels were at work on Dorchester heights, and by day break we discovered that they had taken possession of the two highest hills, the Tableland between the necks, and run a Parapet across the two necks, besides a kind of Redout at the Bottom of Centry Box hill near the neck. The Materials for the whole Works must all have been carried, Chandeleers, fascines, Gabions, Trusses of hay pressed and Barrels, a most astonshing nights work must have Employ’d from 15 to 20,000 men.

The Continental force was large but not that large. Nonetheless, Robertson was right that fortifying the high points of the Dorchester peninsula was the most impressive logistical feat the New England army had carried off so far.

TOMORROW: Gen. William Howe’s response.

John Sawbridge, M.P.

John Sawbridge (1732–1795) was of the radical Whigs who joined the Rev. John Horne in supporting John Wilkes during the 1760s, forming the Society of Gentlemen Supporters of the Bill of Rights, and then leaving that group to form the Constitutional Society instead, as discussed yesterday.

Sawbridge first tried to run for Parliament in 1763, but bowed out when a more prominent Kentish gentleman wanted the seat. Reportedly, Tories tried to keep him in the race in hopes he’d split the Whig vote—the first time he had to deal with the rough and tumble of genteel Georgian politics.

Five years later, Sawbridge entered Parliament as a member for the town of Hythe, succeeding Lord George Sackville (Germain). At first he appeared to be one of the Duke of Grafton’s men, but he started to push Wilkes’s cause. As a result, Lord Grafton dropped Sawbridge, but the city of London adopted him, making him a sheriff and an alderman.

Then came the split with Wilkes. In 1771 Sawbridge was up for the post of Lord Mayor of London, but Wilkes threw his weight behind the incumbent instead. That year, the ministry’s preferred candidate won the office—Wilkes and Sawbridge had split the Whig vote.

Wilkes became increasingly vituperative, saying that “in politics [Sawbridge], poor man,…[could] see no farther than his nose.” Sawbridge had a big nose, but the cross-eyed Wilkes was hardly the one to criticize someone else’s vision. When that didn’t work, Wilkes complained that Sawbridge was a “proud Colossus of pretended public virtue.”

In response, Sawbridge kept talking about the importance of remaining politically independent of parties and, more radically, serving the people by voting the way they wanted. Most politicians preferred the approach Edmund Burke argued for, voting the way that you knew was best for them.

In the spring of 1774 Sawbridge and Wilkes reconciled. Sawbridge bowed out of the race for Lord Mayor in favor of Wilkes, who promised support in the fall’s parliamentary election. Sawbridge lost his seat in Hythe but won one in London. The next year, he also succeeded Wilkes as Lord Mayor.

Both men opposed Lord North’s policy toward the American colonies, but they were part of a small minority in Parliament. Over the next few years, Sawbridge allied with the Marquess of Rockingham and the Earls of Shelburne and Chatham rather than the more radical opposition. As Charles James Fox rose to lead the Whigs in the House of Commons, Sawbridge deferred to him.

In 1780, Sawbridge supported the Roman Catholic Relief Act. That proved to be wildly unpopular; the Gordon Riots paralyzed the city. Sawbridge lost support among Londoners, apologized humbly for taking a position that they didn’t like, and still came in fifth in a race for four seats.

However, one of the four frontrunners, John Kirkman, died on the day the polls closed. There was a special by-election, and this time Sawbridge won with no contest.

Four years later, the new prime minister, William Pitt, spent £2,000 supporting his own candidate in London. His party called Sawbridge a “republican” and “an avowed enemy to the constitution, to monarchy.” It didn’t help that Sawbridge’s older sister was the celebrated republican historian (and now married widow) Catharine Macaulay Graham.

Sawbridge insisted he wanted only reform in the Commons and protection for “the Rights of the People.” He pulled out a win in 1784 by only a mere votes. He promptly resumed pushing for parliamentary reforms, which still went nowhere.

In 1790, Sawbridge sought reelection mainly for old times’ sake, even asking for the privilege to die in political service to the city of London. Voters chose him overwhelmingly. But then he suffered a stroke, so while he remained an M.P. until his death he was at least partially paralyzed.

Though contemporaries and historians agree that John Sawbridge was an ambitious man, he also stuck to his principles, which were ahead of his time.

Splitters!

At the History of Parliament blog, Dr. Robin Eagles just discussed a development I’d been curious about: the rift between John Wilkes and his fellow radical English Whigs in the 1770s.

Eagles focuses on the dispute between Wilkes and the Rev. John Horne (later John Horne Tooke). When Wilkes became the bane of the royal government in the late 1760s, Horne helped to found the Society of Gentlemen Supporters of the Bill of Rights. (The painting above shows, from right, Horne, Wilkes, and Wilkes’s lawyer, John Glynn.)

Horne viewed that organization as devoted to protecting citizens’ rights, with Wilkes happening to be the most prominent man being oppressed at the time. Wilkes seems to have seen it as his personal fan club. Eagles writes:

By the spring of 1770, the Society had managed to secure the funds necessary to keep Wilkes out of debtors’ prison, allowing him to walk free on 17 April without fear of being rearrested. With its original object now satisfied, the Society turned to campaigning on other reforming issues and helping to co-ordinate the nationwide petitioning movement. Here, though, lay the beginnings of its downfall. . . .

as Alexander Stephens, author of a memoir of Horne suggested, Wilkes and Horne were fundamentally incompatible:

It was almost impossible, from the nature of human affairs, that two such men as Mr Wilkes and Mr Horne could agree during any long period; for their characters, dispositions, and ultimate aims, were entirely dissimilar. [Memoirs, i. 176]

Horne thought Wilkes feckless. Wilkes found Horne overly serious and complained he ‘cast a gloom’ wherever he went. By December 1770 the two had fallen out dramatically. Horne wanted the Society to publish the details of all Wilkes’s debts, so they might be settled once and for all. He also pushed for other deserving causes to be underwritten by the Society. Wilkes counter-attacked, securing an agreement that nothing more would be done until his own finances had been straightened out.

Then came the Printers’ Case of 1771, which I discussed back here. At a meeting that Wilkes didn’t attend, Horne convinced the Bill of Rights Society to give those printers some money. At the next meeting, there was a blow-up.

Horne and some supporters left that group and founded the rival Constitutional Society. He and Wilkes started to snipe at each other in the press. Horne trumpeted Wilkes’s personal failings, but, as Eagles writes, those were already public knowledge; “Most of Wilkes’s supporters and admirers did so in full knowledge that their hero was a very fallible character.”

“Rhetoric(s) of Freedom” Conversation, 6 Mar.

On Monday, March 6, the National Council on Public History will host a virtual conversation on “Rhetoric(s) of Freedom: A Conversation about the Conditions of Black Life in the Age of the American Revolution.”

The event description says:

Our group of public humanities scholars and practitioners will examine this theme with a care for what it means to leverage recent scholarship, while also doing this work within public history spaces. It considers the social, economic, political, and intellectual worlds of African Americans in their quest to live out the full meaning of freedom.

The program pays attention to nuances and various ways that geography and ecology shaped the idea of black freedom. In so doing, presenters also will foreground the important place that shifting methodologies play in this discussion.

“Public history” was defined as a field in the late 1970s, with the Public Historian journal launched in 1978 and the N.C.P.H. formally founded in 1980. People in the field focus on communicating historical knowledge to the public in an accurate and empowering way. Therefore, I expect this discussion won’t be about the “Conditions of Black Life” in the Revolutionary period per se but about how to interpret, communicate, and discuss those conditions with today’s public. 

The panelists in this discussion will be:

• Sylvea Hollis, Montgomery College, facilitator
• Yveline Alexis, Oberlin College
• Ista Clarke, Charleston County Parks Department
• Maya Davis, Riversdale House Museum
• Marcus Nevius, University of Missouri

This event is scheduled to run 9:00 to 10:00 P.M. To register, follow this link.

There are further conversations in this series scheduled, but it looks like they’ll be part of conferences and not livestreamed for the public.

Call for Papers on “Empire and Its Discontent”

On 1–2 Dec 2023, the Massachusetts Historical Society and the David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society will host a conference in Boston on the theme “Empire and Its Discontent, 1763-1773.” This conference is part of a series of scholarly meetings designed to ”re-examine the origins, course, and consequences of the American Revolution.”

This year sees the 260th anniversary of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years’ War and the Sestercentennial of the Boston Tea Party—two milestone events in workings of the British Empire.

The program committee is now inviting historians and scholars working in connected fields on questions of empire, revolution, and independence between 1763 and 1773 to submit papers for this conference. Possible topics include:

• Imperial rivalries and shifting power within North America
• The structures of empire within the metropole and on the peripheries
• Policy and practice in the 18th century
• The political, diplomatic, and military challenges of governing a diverse and far flung polity
• Global trade networks within and outside the empire and their influence on imperial policy and colonial practice
• The shifting nature of boundaries, borders, authority, and sovereignty and their role in the local and global geopolitics of the era
• The imperial origins of the outbreak of sustained unrest in British America after 1763 and the impact of that unrest on settler, native, and enslaved populations
• The Tea Party and its immediate aftermath

Applicants should submit a title and a 250-word proposal along with a c.v. by 1 May via this Interfolio link. All scholars invited to participate will be contacted by 30 May, and there will be travel subsidies and hotel accommodations available. Papers should be no longer than 20 double-spaced pages. Presenters must submit their papers by 1 November, a month before the conference, to be pre-circulated to registrants. There will be an edited volume of papers in their final form.

More information will appear on the American Philosophical Society’s website, and questions may be addressed to Adrianna Link, Head of Scholarly Programs there.

History Camp Boston 2023—Time to Propose Your Presentation!

History Camp Boston 2023 has been scheduled for Saturday, 12 August, at Suffolk University.

Now’s the time to submit proposals for presentations. Slots get filled in as qualifying presentations arrive, so while the final submission deadline is 12 June it’s likely that all the spaces will be reserved before then.

If, therefore, you have a historical topic you want to share with fellow history buffs, public historians, reenactors, educators, students, and others in the field, visit History Camp’s call for presentations page. That explains the process in great detail and what organizers need to hear from you before they can assign a slot.

When I say spaces might fill up early, I’m thinking about the first History Camp Valley Forge, which will take place on Saturday, 20 May. The announced final deadline for presentations was 10 April. However, all the slots were filled by 15 February, or almost two months ahead of time!

Check out the current lineup on the History Camp Valley Forge webpage.

Among those scheduled sessions is mine:

“A Republic, If You Can Keep It”: Franklin’s Warning and How It’s Been Misused

According to an oft-retold anecdote, at the end of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what the result was. “A republic,” he replied, “if you can keep it.” This talk looks at the evidence for that exchange, as recorded by another convention delegate in Philadelphia. It then traces how that anecdote has been distorted in the retelling, starting with that delegate’s own newspaper essays in the early republic and blossoming in the twentieth century. As a result, we have lost sight of the circumstances of the conversation, the accomplished woman Franklin spoke with, and the real political concern they shared.

Yes, in May I’m taking Boston 1775 on the road to Pennsylvania.

“Rebellion or Revolution?” from the U.K. National Archives, 3 Mar.

On the morning of Friday, 3 March, the National Archives of Great Britain will host an online discussion on the topic “Rebellion or Revolution?: Understanding the American Revolutionary War.”

This event is connected to the institution’s current exhibit “Treason: People, Power & Plot,” looking at documents and artifacts related to treason cases throughout British history.

The American Revolution presents a challenging case, given that modern British culture regards the U.S. of A. as generally a Good Thing, even if we do take things too far sometimes, and feels parental pride in the American republic. Nonetheless, there were a lot of laws broken.

The event description asks:

How do we define loyalty? Rebellion? Resistance?

And how were these concepts understood in the context of the American Revolutionary War?

Join 18th-century record specialists, Philippa Hellawell at The National Archives and Corinne Porter of the USA’s National Archive & Record Administration (NARA), for a unique collaboration discussing devotion and duplicity during the American Revolutionary War.

This talk uses highlights from both collections to help us understand both British and American perspectives, including the British reaction to the Boston Tea Party, George III’s Proclamation of Rebellion following Congress’ initial petition for independence, and the subsequent American Declaration of Independence accusing the British King of being the traitor.

A traitor to the natural rights of men and the constitutional rights of Britons, that is. Or was the royal government’s betrayal far outweighed by the Americans’ rebellion and secession?

I like the idea of sitting in on a discussion from the U.K. National Archives, where I’ve had some of my happiest archive moments finding documents that connect to stories I’d started researching in American libraries.

Still, there’s the time difference to bear in mind. This event is scheduled for 14:00 G.M.T., which I believe is 9:00 A.M. Boston time.

Pay-what-you-can tickets are available through this page. As of this evening, the British pound is worth $1.20.

The Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy’s “Letter[s] to a Friend”

Yesterday I took note of a pamphlet that the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy published in 1774 about the Boston Port Bill couched as a “Letter to a Friend…” and ascribed to “T.W. A Bostonian.”

The form of a friendly letter to a fellow gentleman was a common trope for framing such commentary on current events and issues. Chauncy had published his first such essay nearly twenty years before.

That pamphlet appeared in August 1755 under the title:

A Letter to a Friend; Giving a concise, but just, Account, according to the Advices hitherto received, of the Ohio-Defeat; and Pointing out also the many good Ends, this inglorious Event is naturally adapted to promote: or, Shewing wherein it is fitted to advance the Interest of all the American British Colonies. To which is added, Some general Account of the New-England Forces, with what they have already done, counter-ballancing the above Loss.

That was a political and theological response to Gen. Edward Braddock’s defeat at the start of the French & Indian War. As in his 1774 essay, Chauncy adopted the signature “T.W.”

That publication was such a hit, or rather military affairs moved so quickly, that before the end of the year Chauncy added:

A Second Letter to a Friend; Giving a more particular Narrative of the Defeat of the French Army at Lake-George, By the New-England Troops, than has yet been published: Representing also the vast Importance of this Conquest to the American-British-Colonies. To which is added, Such an Account of what the New-England Governments have done to carry into Effect their Design against Crown-Point, as will shew the Necessity of their being help’d by Great-Britain, in Point of Money.

Even that title page makes clear “T.W.” was commenting on political matters.

In between the imperial crises of 1755 and 1774 Chauncy used the “letter to a friend” trope differently in a couple of his religious pamphlets:

The Opinion of one that has perused the Summer Morning’s Conversation, concerning Original Sin, wrote by the Rev. Mr. Peter Clark, In TWO Things principally: FIRST, That he has offered that, which has rendered it impossible the doctrine of the imputation of Adam’s guilt to his posterity, should be true in the sense it is held by Calvinists. SECONDLY, That tho’ he pretends to be a friend to the Calvinistical doctrine of imputed guilt, yet he has deserted this doctrine and given it up into the hands of its enemies, as it teaches the liableness of all mankind, without exception, to the torments of hell, on account of the first Sin. To which is added, A few remarks on the recommendatory preface by five reverend Clergymen. In a Letter to a Friend.

That one, from 1758, was signed “A.B.”

A Letter to a Friend, Containing Remarks on certain Passages in a Sermon Preached, by the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord Bishop of Landaff, before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow, February 20. 1767. In which the highest Reproach is undeservedly cast upon the American Colonies.

This one actually had Chauncy’s name on the title page and his own initials at the end.

Finally, toward the end of 1783 Dr. Chauncy published:

Divine Glory Brought to View in the Final Salvation of All Men: A Letter to the Friend to Truth

This pamphlet had no author’s name or initials, but it laid out the liberal theological ideas Chauncy had become known for in Boston. By labeling this “A Letter to the Friend to Truth,” he turned the label from suggesting a friendly private letter between gentlemen into a challenge to the reader. Don’t you want to be a “Friend to Truth”?

Exploring the Sid Lapidus Collection Online

Princeton University announced this month that alumnus Sidney Lapidus had completed the gift of a large collection of pamphlets and other political material from the broadly defined Revolutionary Era.

Lapidus started his collection in 1959 as a recent graduate, well before entering what turned out to be the rewarding field of private equity. He first bought a copy of Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man from a London bookshop. (Paine’s cottage in New Rochelle, New York, was across the street from Lapidus’s high school.)

The Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution at Princeton now includes “more than 2,700 original books, atlases, pamphlets, newspapers, and magazines relating to human and political rights, liberty, and independence around the time of the American Revolution.”

In addition, Lapidus provided funds to digitize the material and make the collection keyword-searchable for anyone.

I tried out the site by asking to see all the material that used the phrase “Intolerable Acts.” That search produced several hits, but the phrase didn’t appear in the original texts, only in the dealers’ descriptions and other metadata attached to those items. As I wrote years ago, the phrase “Intolerable Acts” didn’t become widely used until the late 1800s.

One writer in Revolutionary America who used the word “intolerable” a lot was the Rev. Thomas Bradbury Chandler, author of A Free Examination of the Critical Commentary on Archbishop Secker’s Letter to Mr. Walpole, published by Hugh Gaine of New York in 1774. Chandler was a Loyalist, and what he found intolerable wasn’t a stricter Parliament but the “Hardship” of an ocean voyage, the “Licentiousness” of a totally free press, and the writer he was responding to.

I also searched for all material published in 1774 and mentioning Boston. That brought up the official texts of Parliament’s new Coercive Acts, the responses from the First Continental Congress, sermons and almanacs with commentary on current events, and so on.

One item that caught my eyes was A Letter to a Friend. Giving a Concise, But Just, Representation of the Hardships and Sufferings the Town of Boston is Exposed to and Must Undergo in Consequence of the Late Act of the British-Parliament; Which, by Shutting Up It’s Port, Has Put a Fatal Bar in the Way of that Commercial Business on which it Depended for It’s Support, published by Joseph Greenleaf.

That pamphlet from the summer of 1774 is signed “T.W. A Bostonian.” However, it was widely known that the author was the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy. Usually ministers stayed out of secular political disputes, preferring to work behind the scenes or through sermons, but Chauncy felt no compunction when the economic well-being of his town was in danger.

On page 22 of this pamphlet Chauncy embarked on a long footnote complaining about a Customs service policy that required firewood ships signing into Marblehead to completely unload and reload before going on to Boston. So he really was writing about earthly concerns.

Now the text of this Letter to a Friend is already scanned and transcribed on the web. So the arrival of this digital version from Princeton isn’t a revelation. But anything that makes research easier is welcome.

TOMORROW: Charles Chauncy’s friends.

Two Deaths in Pondichéry

At Nursing Clio, Jakob Burnham examines two deaths in the French colony at Pondichéry, India, in 1726.

One was a French soldier named Le Bel who had thrown himself into a well and drowned. The other was a 75-year-old local man named Canagesabay, found hanging from a tree.

Both men had been ill, Le Bel with a “lung abcess” and Canagesabay with debilitating stomach pains. The soldier had made arrangements for his death days earlier while the local man’s sons reported that he had spoken of throwing himself into the street. So it appears both men became physically ill, despaired of recovering, and killed themselves.

Burnham writes that French law required “French subjects who were determined to have committed suicide to hang by their feet in the gallows; have their bodies dragged through the street; be denied Christian burial; as well as have their personal goods and assets confiscated.” Not that this was always applied to the letter.

However, there was a changing attitude:

By the seventeenth century, public officials in France and elsewhere increasingly concerned themselves with suicide as a matter of public order and as part of a larger effort to investigate the circumstances around suspicious deaths. This greater attention to the circumstances of death contributed to what has been called a “medicalization” of suicide, especially at the turn of the eighteenth century. Testimonies from investigations into reported suicides revealed that witnesses and family members began amplifying connections between chronic illness and suicide during this period. Official reports, witness statements, and even interviews with survivors made references to “melancholy, mental and physical maladies over which they reputedly had no control.”

This led to the thinking that someone’s illness may have “transport au cerveau” (gone to his head) and led to suicide.

In Pondichéry, the surgeon-general used just that phrase to explain the soldier Le Bel’s death. However, the same doctor said nothing about the medical conditions preceding Canagesabay’s suicide. And this different approach continued with how the authorities treated the two men’s corpses.

The Minutemen and Robert A. Gross Panel, 26 Feb.

On the afternoon of Sunday, 26 February, I’ll be part of the Friends of Minute Man Park’s 2023 Winter Lecture, “Minutemen Revisited: Rethinking Concord’s Role in the Revolution. A Conversation with Robert Gross and Friends.”

The event description says:

The Minutemen and Their World, first published during the Bicentennial year of 1776, offered a novel view of Concord’s path to Revolution. The book, which won the Bancroft Prize, showed that the townspeople took a moderate stance on British taxes and enforcement measures until the summer of 1774; only when the royal government threatened to seize the right of local self-government did the community rise up and mobilize for war. The reasons why were deeply rooted in the social history of the town.

Does this interpretation still hold up? In 2022, the author published a revised and expanded edition of The Minutemen and views Concord more broadly in relation to its neighboring towns, introduces new details on the tense atmosphere in the run-up to April 19, 1775, and adds fresh material about Concord’s role as a center for incarcerating Loyalist and British prisoners of war. In this talk, he will discuss the additions and changes of The Minutemen in conversation with leading American Revolution experts.

Those folks posing questions to Bob Gross will be:

• Joel Bohy, expert in militaria at Bruneau & Co., frequent appraiser on Antiques Roadshow, and contributor to the Concord Museum’s April 19 exhibits.
• Jim Hollister, lead interpreter at Minute Man National Historical Park, organizer of many reenactments and historical demonstrations, and recent recipient of the Robert Gross Award for service to Concord history.
• myself. 

But the real star of this event is of course Robert A. Gross, the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Professor of Early American History Emeritus at the University of Connecticut. In addition to The Minutemen and Their World, he wrote a sequel The Transcendentalists and Their World (2021), which won the most recent Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize.

Bob Gross is a former assistant editor of Newsweek and has written for such periodicals as Esquire, Harper’s Magazine, the Boston Globe and New York Times, The American Scholar, The New England Quarterly, Raritan, and The Yale Review. For several years he was the book review editor of the William & Mary Quarterly. After working at various universities, for the past several years he has lived in Concord.

This is an online panel discussion scheduled to start at 2:00 P.M. on Sunday, 26 February, and to run about ninety minutes with questions. It’s free, but viewers must register through this link.

This program is co-sponsored by the Friends of Minute Man and Minute Man National Historical Park. It’s supported in part by a grant from the Concord Cultural Council, which in turn is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.