Charting the National Debt

Among the charts in William Playfair’s Commercial and Political Atlas was a graph of Britain’s national debt, which I found very helpful for understanding the mindset in London in the 1760s.

Playfair first published that book in 1786, but the chart above, which comes courtesy of the Junto, takes the figures up through 1800, so it must be a reissue.

Politicians like George Grenville, and many historians since, pointed to Great Britain’s debt at the end of the Seven Years’ War as justifying the need for more revenue from the American colonies. Just how bad was that figure?

This chart shows that the national debt did rise to an unprecedented level after 1755. It had never topped £80 million since the Glorious Revolution, but in 1762 it was at £150 million. No wonder politicians in London were worried.

That debt declined by 1775, though it still wasn’t close to the pre-war level. In those years the North American Stamp Act ended up costing money, and of the several Townshend duties only the tax on tea produced significant revenue. I surmise that Britain was paying its bills because of economic growth, not new taxes.

Then the American War sent the debt soaring to almost £250 million in 1784. Another decade, and war with Revolutionary France set it off again. At the end of Playfair’s chart, Britain owed £400 million, and there were more war years to come.

Did that presage Britain’s financial default? Was the next century ruinous? Of course not. The British economy grew tremendously through industrialization, funding and being funded by a new colonial empire which extended around the globe. The country had never been more prosperous or more dominant.

As scary as the national debt looked in the early 1760s, the British state was in solid economic shape then. Nobody knew steam power was just about to change everything, but even the old system of agriculture, trade, and small manufactures was probably working well enough to maintain national prosperity.

The Crown might not have needed the revenue measures that caused all the trouble in North America. But to many statesmen watching the national debt rise much higher than it had ever been before, taxes seemed imperative.

Playfair’s Charts

Like Joseph Priestley, William Playfair (1759–1823) was a brilliant thinker and a restless soul.

He was born to a genteel Scottish family, with older brothers who became a noted mathematician and a noted architect.

Playfair’s Wikipedia entry says he worked variously as “a millwright, engineer, draftsman, accountant, inventor, silversmith, merchant, investment broker, economist, statistician, pamphleteer, translator, publicist, land speculator, banker, ardent royalist, de facto intelligence officer, convict, editor, blackmailer and journalist.”

I bring up William Playfair here because he gets credit for introducing several of the infographics we’re used to. In 1786 his Commercial and Political Atlas introduced the line, area, and bar charts to show economic data.

Fifteen years later, in The Statistical Breviary, Playfair published what seems to be the first pie chart. Denis François Donnant translated that book into French, adding his own information on the U.S. of A.

In 1805 Playfair translated Donnant’s additions into English as a Statistical Account of the United States of America, adding this pie chart to show the relative land areas of the American states and territories after the Louisiana Purchase.

Priestley’s Timelines

Growing up in a family of chemists, I thought of Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) as the natural philosopher who discovered oxygen.

Later I learned Priestley was also a political radical, supporting both the American and French Revolutions. He was a religious explorer, championing Unitarianism.

Not until recently did I learn that Priestley invented the timeline graphic with a uniform scale. In 1765, he published his Chart of Biography as a poster-sized appendix to a series of lectures.

That’s the sample of Priestley’s chart showing the lives of “Statesmen” and “Men of Learning” from before 600 B.C.E. to a few years into the common era. Those men are from the Greek and Roman worlds, of course.

In 1769 Priestley applied the same approach to empires with A New Chart of History. This graphic tucked the “English” empire in North America into the upper right corner. The revision shown here adds the label “United States.”

A team at the University of Oregon has created digital versions of Priestley’s timelines, offering a way to dig into them online.

“All our difficulties in forming the Militia”

In colonial Massachusetts, it was common for wealthy landowners to hold several positions of authority at once.

Gentlemen might represent their towns in the Massachusetts General Court, hold a high rank in the local militia regiment, and receive a royal appointment as a justice of the peace or the like.

After the Revolutionary War began, citizens became concerned about such “plural office-holding.” That was partly a practical concern since men away at the Continental Congress or in the army couldn’t also do vital work in provincial and local government. But the concern also reflected a general reformist mood, spreading out power.

Legislators began to write rules forbidding men to hold multiple positions. At the same time, they wanted to keep their friends and political allies in important roles. The result was a muddle. Sometimes politicians seem to have ignored the new rules against plural office-holding while at other times they seized on those rules as an excuse to block rivals.

On 14 Feb 1776 assembly speaker James Warren wrote to his ally Samuel Adams about how the General Court’s choice of militia major generals was working out:

We have not surmounted all our difficulties in forming the Militia by Compleating the Bill, the House chose Coll. [John] Hancock the first, your Humble Servant the Second and Coll. [Azor] Orne the third Major Generals.

the Board [Council] nonconcurred the second, because they think, as they say, the Choice militates with a Clause in the Act, forgetting it did as much so with the Choice of several of their Honours, as military Officers, Brigadiers, etc.

the Vote by means of the nonconcurrence is again before us. I am unable to say what the House will do with it. Orne refuses. Coll. Hancock is objected to as being unable to attend, etc. it lays for the present and will till next Session. . . .

I am glad to be out of the List, but the Council have done it in a manner as ungracious and Indelicate as [royal governors Francis] Bernard or [Thomas] Hutchinson would have done; for which reason I have serious thoughts of quiting my civil commission…

Warren didn’t step down as speaker of the Massachusetts house or representative from Plymouth. (Nor as Continental Army paymaster general—until the army moved south.)

A lot of quiet wrangling followed. As speaker, Warren had a lot of influence over who the assembly voted to be major generals. If he hadn’t wanted the appointment, he could have told his colleagues not to nominate him. But he didn’t.

The house scheduled its vote for the three major generals multiple times that spring, only to postpone. Meanwhile, the British left, followed by the Continentals. Not until 8 May did the house state its new choice:

• John Hancock
• James Warren
• Benjamin Lincoln

Having reestablished his standing, as least in his own chamber, Warren then declined the appointment. The representatives chose Azor Orne to replace him as second major general.

A new legislative session with a new house began later that May. On 11 June, the Council reported that Hancock and Lincoln had accepted their appointments, the former writing from Philadelphia. Orne once again declined. The next day, the house named its replacement for Orne:

• James Warren

I don’t see an official concurrence with this decision by the Council in the house records. Nonetheless, after that James Warren had the militia rank of general and thus could be called “General Warren” for the rest of his life. (This compounds the ease of confusing him with Dr. Joseph Warren, also named a general just before he died.)

Speaker Warren was offered the chance to command troops sent to support Gen. George Washington at New York in September. He declined on account of his health. Lincoln went instead and eventually became a Continental Army commander.

COMING UP: The question of independency.

“The Appointment of the three Major Generals”

One big task confronting the Massachusetts General Court in January 1776 as they convened in the Watertown meetinghouse was reestablishing the province’s militia system.

The legislature needed to make clear that the authority for that military force came from the colony’s people (well, the men of property speaking for the people), through their elected representatives.

The General Court also needed to select commanders at every level since so many men were now in the Continental Army. Early on the legislators agreed the militia needed three major generals, as well as a brigadier for each county.

On 30 January, the Massachusetts house voted for these three major generals:

• John Hancock of Boston, then serving as chairman of the Continental Congress.
• James Warren of Plymouth, the house’s own speaker.
• Azor Orne of Marblehead, a member of the Council.

That slate was “Sent up for Concurrence” to the Council.

The chamber’s record for Thursday, 8 February, reads:

Thomas Cushing, Esq; bro’t down the Resolve of this House of the 30th January last, containing the Appointment of the three Major Generals, with the following Vote of Council thereon, viz.

In Council, February 8, 1776.
Read and concurred with the Amendment at A. viz. at A dele[te] the name of “Hon. James Warren, Esq; second Major General.”

As I described last month, just a few weeks earlier Cushing had the shock of reading a letter in which Warren had sneered at him and Robert Treat Paine. Then Cushing learned the General Court had replaced him as a Congress delegate. Ostensibly the reason for bringing him back home from Philadelphia was that he was needed on the Council.

Cushing indeed quickly became an influential member of that Council. He may have swayed the vote on the major generals. But he certainly had the pleasure of reporting that the Council had vetoed an appointment for Warren.

TOMORROW: Who wants to be a general anyhow? 

Examining the President’s Pardon Power

In September, Lindsay M. Chervinsky wrote about the President’s power to pardon people at her Imperfect Union website:

The Constitution says that the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” This language is unlike many other powers granted in the Constitution. The language is fairly absolute and the pardon power is one of the president’s most unlimited. The courts have largely rejected attempts to limit this power. And yet, the time has come to address this constitutional blind spot.

Chervinsky’s essay noted the roots of the pardon power in traditional monarchy, and how “We are the only democracy with such unfettered pardon power.”

She offered the example of how President George Washington deployed this power.

Washington’s pardons of [David] Blair and the whiskey rebels suggest that there were four factors that he considered when contemplating clemency.

First, he considered whether the petitioners had lived a reputable life prior to the conviction. Was this case a one-off or were they problematic citizens? Most of the people Washington pardoned, including Blair, were veterans of the Revolutionary War.

Second, Washington considered whether the conviction would prevent the petitioner from making a living or providing for their family.

Third, Washington required the petitioners to take responsibility for their actions.

Fourth, Washington expected the petition[er]s to swear loyalty to the Constitution if the charges called into question their patriotism.

I should specify that Washington never wrote a single letter outlining these four factors (history would be much easier if he did write down his thoughts in such articulate fashion). Instead, we can see what mattered to him through a series of letters and questions about the potential pardons.

There are many proposals on the table to limit the pardon power, or at least to ensure its use doesn’t depend on one person’s whims. Those reforms range from a constitutional amendment to various laws defining procedures (laws that a Supreme Court might decide violate the Constitution) to a requirement for simple transparency from the executive branch.

Herrera on “Treason at West Point,” 5 Nov.

On Thursday, 5 November, Ricardo A. Herrera will appear online as part of the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s “Inside the Vault” series. Rick’s topic will be “Treason at West Point—Benedict Arnold, John André, and the Spies of the American Revolution.”

The institute’s curator will bring out these items from its collection:

• Maj. John André’s letter from June 1780, asking a contact to keep watch on “Arnold the Rebel General,” three months before the plot came apart
• The note sent to André on the morning of his death: “His Excellency Genl. Washington has fixed the Hour at 12 o Clock this Day”
• A Continental officer’s letter written the day after the hanging, condemning Arnold for leaving André “to pay the forfeiture that should have fallen on the traitor”
• An eyewitness’s account of why André’s last request, to be shot instead of hanged, was refused

Ricardo Herrera is senior historian at the George Washington Leadership Institute and George Washington Presidential Library. Previously he was a professor at the U.S. Army War College, and before that an army officer. Rick’s most recent book is The New York Campaign, 1776.

The institute says, “This event is for teachers, students, and their families—and everyone with an interest in history!” Folks who attend the whole program can sign up to receive professional development credits. The program is due to start at 7 P.M. For more information, go to this registration page.

The day after this online event, Rick and I will be cohosting “The British Empire Strikes Back,” the Pursuit of History’s latest weekend exploration of Revolutionary events 250 years later. We’ll be in the Old Barracks Museum in Trenton, New Jersey, a structure used by both Crown and Continental forces as they fought over that region in late 1776 and early 1777.

Freeman at the Concord Museum, 6 Nov.

On Friday, 6 November, the Concord Museum will host Joanne Freeman, the Alan Boles, Class of 1929 Professor of History at Yale.

The event description promises:

a compelling exploration of the Revolutionary era and the ideas, conflicts, and personalities that shaped the founding of the United States.

Drawing on her extensive research into early American politics and public life, Freeman will examine how debates over power, democracy, and citizenship continue to resonate today. This engaging conversation offers new perspectives on the people and choices behind the nation’s beginnings.

Freeman is known for her award-winning books Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic and The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War. Her 2010 lecture course on the American Revolution can be watched here, and the 2025 course on America at 250 that she taught with David Blight and Beverly Gage is preserved here.

A seat for Freeman’s appearance at the Concord Museum costs $10, but is free to members and to people tuning in online. The event will start at 7 P.M.

“Their little, low, dirty, and sly insinuating arts and machinations”

As I recounted yesterday, as 1776 began the Massachusetts General Court was in the process of replacing Thomas Cushing as a Continental Congress delegate with Elbridge Gerry.

When he heard that news, John Hancock wrote to Cushing from Philadelphia on 17 January:

I hope this will find you safe arrivd and in the Enjoyment of Domestic Ease and happiness, that you found all your particular Connections well, and not Destitute of many Friends, altho’ some would gladly have it thought that you are totally deserted, but by no means, My Good Friend, let the Circumstance of the Election discourage you from the noble pursuit in which you are engaged, your Cause is just, and I am Confident your Conscience will acquit you.

I can tell you for a truth that you have left in Congress many who are peculiarly friendly to you, and who, had they a Suspicion that you would not have Returnd to Congress, would have given you many Expressions of their Friendship previous to your Departure. I never flatter, but shall ever in future unbosom my self to you, and write freely in Confidence that I can Rely on your Friendship, and from a Conviction that you are Deserving of the Esteem I have for you, and I shall ever feel a pleasure in doing any thing that can Contribute to your Ease or Reputation, as I must say I have Reason to think Endeavours have been made to Disturb both, and which I will not let pass over unnotic’d, for it may Operate further and be the means of stirring up Jealousies and Animosities which had better be nipt in the Bud; of which more in my next.

Severall Members of Congress have mention’d to me the Desire they have to Establish you in that agreeable point of light which your Conduct in their Estimation merits, for that purpose they are framing a Letter to you, to be made such use of as you think best, to be sign’d by a number of them, as they have some how an Opinion that undue Methods have been practic’d which have Operated to your Disadvantage in the late Election, they are very sanguine in this matter, and I assure you that you are mention’d by Respectable Members in the most Advantageous and Agreeable Light, and you may Rely I do not throw any Contradictory Strokes in the way; of this more in my next.

That outreach confirmed an alliance between the two men, both Boston merchants of moderate political instincts. Cushing was now on the Massachusetts Council, helping to exercise executive power in the colony outside Boston. He and Hancock had lots to correspond about, including their political rivals.

Here’s some of Cushing’s 30 January letter, as quoted in Herbert S. Allen’s John Hancock, Patriot in Purple:

Am sincerely obliged to you for your kind offers of…friendship…at a time when I am represented to you as deserted by all others. . . .

Soon after I arrived here, I found you, as well as myself, had been placed in a disagreeable light and measures taken to hurt our influence. I instantly endeavored to remove every impression of this kind. I think I have succeeded and…I shall leave no stone unturned to serve you here. . . .

It is true, I am informed, some few whom…you are well acquainted with…have endeavored by their little, low, dirty, and sly insinuating arts and machinations to destroy my influence among the new members of the House.

Hancock replied to that on 13 February:

…am glad to hear the Reception you met with, and have no Doubt but you will ever Acquit your self the honest Man, and be superior to the Arts and Cunning of Designing Men. I am Oblig’d to you for the hints you give respecting the Designs of some against me, and wish in your next [you] would be as particular as possible, and let me know every thing passing in your Quarter, by the State of the Elections neither you or I were much Neglected.

In particular, Hancock encouraged Cushing to push the Massachusetts government forward in outfitting two warships. On 7 March he wrote:

I must most earnestly entreat and Beg of you that you exert every Nerve in forwarding our two Ships, & that you Employ as many Men in every Department as can possibly work & be of Service in expediting them, in short spare no Expence in forwarding them, for inter nos [between us] some here who are not very friendly to you & I (& of our province you know who) begin publickly to Say that the Massachusetts Ships will be the last finish’d, that they are in no forwardness &c. I want to Counteract them, in order to which you must Exert your self,…

In that letter Hancock also asked, “how were Mr. P— Letters Relish’d”? Hancock evidently wanted to hear how people had reacted to Robert Treat Paine’s bitter complaints in early January about how James Warren had written about him (and Cushing).

Back here I noted how Massachusetts Patriots had urged Paine to let the dispute die. Hancock either hadn’t gotten that message or wanted to hear what people were saying privately.

COMING UP: Wrangling in the General Court.

“Some low dirty arts made use of privately”

Soon after Thomas Cushing read James Warren’s letter sneering at him and Robert Treat Paine, as discussed back here, he received more bad news from Massachusetts.

On 15 Dec 1775 the assembly, with Warren presiding as speaker, listed its choice of “Five Gentlemen to represent this Colony in the Continental Congress…until the last Day of December next”:

the Hon. John Hancock, Esq; Hon. Samuel Adams, Esq; Hon. John Adams, Esq; Hon. Robert Treat Payne, Esq; and Elbridge Gerry, Esq

The Council approved that choice on 18 Jan 1776.

Cushing was out of the Congress, replaced by Gerry of Marblehead, a more aggressive Patriot and an ally of the Adamses. That tipped the balance of Massachusetts’s delegation from moderate to radical for the coming year.

Cushing returned to Massachusetts and took up duties as a member of the Council, then meeting in the Edmund Fowle house in Watertown. He wrote two letters to Paine in February:

At the Election of Delegates for the Congress for the year 1776, we were both struck at. I must refer you to Mr. Hancock for a state of the Votes upon this occasion as I sent them to him; Endeavors have been used to hurt us both in our Influence at Court, by those whom I need not mention as their names & characters are well known to you; It seems we are not men to suit their Turn. We are not subservient enough, we do not pay an implicit obedience to their Sovereign Dictates. . . .

I am sinsible attempts were made to dismiss you as a Delegate. I could never learn the particular objections that were urged against you. The ostensible reason was that it was best to make some alteration annually at least of two of the members; with respect to me, they urged, I should be wanted in the County of Suffolk & that my presence there could not be dispensed with; with respect to you It was said you was appointed a judge of the Superior Court & it was necessary you should be in the province; however with respect to both of us there were, as I am Informed, some low dirty arts made use of privately with some of the new members insinuating that we were timid cautious irresolute & so not fit to answer their purpose in the present day. However I have endeavoured to vindicate your Character & have said what I thought was just & proper with respect to your Conduct at the Congress, & you may depend upon the Continuance of my Freindship.

Cushing’s political career was far from over. He still wielded considerable power in Massachusetts as a leader on the Council, and he was still allied to the province’s most popular politician.

TOMORROW: The words of Chairman Hancock.

Following the Freedom 250 Money

Back in September 2025, I passed on news of how a Trump adherent had tried to gain control of the messaging of America250, the congressionally-chartered organization celebrating the Sestercentennial, and gotten fired.

The Trump White House then converted its Task Force 250 initiative within the Department of Defense to become Freedom 250, its own Sestercentennial organization controlled by the executive branch.

The administration had already diverted nearly $14 million from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to America250 for “Freedom Trucks.” But then those became Freedom 250 vehicles, and about $10 million was rerouted in that direction.

In November 2025, the Department of the Interior’s National Park Service asked its congressionally-designated nonprofit partner, the National Park Foundation, to set up a conduit for funds for Freedom 250. The foundation established a subsidiary, Freedom 250 L.L.C., headed by a veteran of the first Trump administration.

Freedom 250 L.L.C. is funded mostly with taxpayer money. The New Republic cites testimony to the House Natural Resources Committee from the N.P.F.’s chief executive officer: “The majority of Freedom 250’s operating funds come from federal funds appropriated by Congress specifically for the 250th anniversary commemorations.” Mother Jones says that was in the form of a grant “to the tune of $86 million so far, that won’t expire until the end of 2028.”

Of course, this administration isn’t shy about asking corporations and people for more money. In 2025 the Secretary of the Interior appointed the National Finance Director for Trump’s 2024 campaign, Meredith O’Rourke, to the N.P.F. board. In February 2026, the New York Times reported that O’Rourke was “amassing private donations for Freedom 250,” promising big donors “bespoke packages” like private receptions with the President. That leaves the N.P.F.’s website assuring its donors, “Individual and corporate partner donations made to the National Park Foundation are not utilized for Freedom 250 events.”

Wendy Siegelman at NewsTRACS just noted a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from the Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns the online social network Truth Social. For some reason, it’s trying to merge with a company pursuing fusion power. O’Rourke is also on the board of Trump Media.

Trump Media’s new filing discloses that it’s billed Freedom 250 L.L.C. $350,000 for advertising Sestercentennial events. Back in July, Meidas News reported that Freedom 250 was promoting its “2026 Patriot Games scholarship competition” on Truth Social.

That competition for high-school athletes ended with two students each receiving a scholarship worth $125,000.

More money went to Donald J. Trump. The Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust owns a little over 40% of Trump Media, so Freedom 250 L.L.C.’s ad buy, using money mostly collected from taxpayers, put over $140,000 into the President’s pocket.

“Care for the Wounded and the Dead” in Lincoln, 30 Oct.

On Friday, 30 October, Minute Man National Historical Park will present a program called “Care for the Wounded and the Dead.”

The event description says:

When the fighting ended on April 19, 1775 a road of carnage stretched over 16 miles from Concord to Boston. Join park staff at the historic Hartwell Tavern in Lincoln, to learn the harrowing stories of those who buried the dead, cared for the wounded and faced an uncertain world in the days following.

Some towns hastily buried the fallen redcoats, even fearing the army would come after them, but they also offered medical care to the British wounded. That care fed into an argument that the Patriots were the more civilized side of the conflict, particularly to refute charges of atrocities after reports of the hatcheted soldier at Concord’s North Bridge.

In the same days, wagons carried the bodies of dead militiamen back to their home towns. I sense that the local wounded also headed home for care. It took a while before the provincial force set up its own hospital, and even then a lot of soldiers preferred sick leave with their mothers and wives to those institutions. Unfortunately, that helped to spread “camp fever” through the countryside.

This Minute Man Park program will tell stories about individuals caught up in that action, starting at 3 P.M. at the Hartwell Tavern site.

The next day, Saturday, 31 October, the park staff will roll out their cannon for presentations on “The King of Battle: Artillery in the American Revolution” at 11 A.M. and 2 P.M.

All these programs are free to anyone visiting the park at the time.

The Need for Checks and Balances on an Executive Branch

Back in July Boston 1775 passed on how the federal government installed new signs at the President’s House site in Philadelphia during the night of the All-Star Game.

The National Park Service unveiled a website displaying eleven of those signs, but not all of them.

Among the other panels at the site is one with the subhead “The Need for an Executive Branch.” It quotes from the Publius/Federalist essays, number 70: “Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” Except that the panel gets that wrong, as Georgetown professor Adam Rothman just pointed out; the panels says energy is “the leading character.”

That essay, written by Alexander Hamilton, argued for investing the government’s executive power in one man, not a pair or a triumvirate or a council, as some of the states were trying. When he wrote of the superiority of one executive over a “greater number,” as the panel goes on to quote, Hamilton wasn’t referring to the legislature or courts. He was referring to imaginary co-Presidents.

The unspoken assumption undergirding Hamilton’s argument was that the executive would carry out the law, not try to dictate it. Only in that way would a vigorous executive secure “liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.”

At the Broad Street Review, Alaina Johns pointed out another inaccuracy in the new signage:

One panel on executive power lauds [George] Washington for relinquishing the presidency, claiming that “this peaceful transfer of power from Washington to [John] Adams, and every president since, ensures the stability of the government and places the power back where it belongs: in the hands of the American people.”

In truth, that tradition of peaceful transfer lasted from 1797 until 2021, when Trump’s supporters responded to his election loss by storming the US Capitol while waving Confederate flags, carrying guns and zip ties, wounding and killing police officers, smearing the walls of the Capitol with filth, and erecting a noose and scaffold for the vice president as he fled for his life alongside Congress, all while Trump watched in satisfaction.

On returning to power, Trump used the President’s control over federal pardons to erase the charges against his supporters. That is what George Mason feared when he spoke at Virginia’s ratifying convention:

I conceive that the President ought not to have the power of pardoning, because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself. It may happen, at some future day, that he will establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic. 

White Plains Has Fallen

On 28 Oct 1776, 250 years ago today, the Continental Army had another face-off against the Crown. This time the action happened north of Manhattan Island near a town called White Plains.

On 6 Nov 1776, the Connecticut Journal of New Haven published a long “Extract if a letter from a Gentleman in the army, dated Camp near the Mills, about three miles North of White-Plains, Nov. 1.”

That dispatch described events since the middle of October. In copying this news into his diary, the Rev. Ezra Stiles guessed that the writer was the Rev. Benjamin Trumbull (1735–1820), a chaplain with the Connecticut troops, reporting to his relative, Gov. Jonathan Trumbull. This account certainly focused on Connecticut units and officers.

For the action on 28 October the letter said:

We had intelligence that the enemy with their whole body were advancing towards us; the army were immediately alarmed, and part of Gen. [James] Wadsworth’s brigade, with some other regiments under the command of Gen. [Joseph] Spencer, consisting in the whole of 5 or 600 men were sent out as an advanced party to skirmish with the enemy, and harass them in their march.

We marched on to a hill about one mile & a half from our lines, with an artillery company and two field pieces, and placed ourselves behind walls and fences, in the best manner we could to give the enemy trouble.

About half after nine o’clock our advanced parties all came retreating in before the enemy, and the light parties of the enemy, with their advanced guard, consisting of 2 or 3000 come in sight, and marched on briskly towards us, keeping the high grounds; and the light-horse pranced on a little, in the rear, making a very martial appearance; as our light parties came on to the hills and discovered [i.e., revealed] where we were, the enemy began to cannonade us, and to fling shells from their hobits, and small mortars.

Their light parties soon came on and we fired upon them from the walls and fences, broke and scattered them at once; but they would run from our front and get round upon our wings to flank us, and as soon as our fire discovered where we were, the enemy’s artillery would at once begin to play upon us in the most furious manner.

We kept the walls until the enemy were just ready to surround us, and then we would retreat from one wall and hill to another, and maintain our ground there in the same manner, till numbers were just ready to surround us.

Once the Hessian grenadiers came up in the front of Col. [William] Douglass’s regiment, and we fired a general volley upon them, at about 20 rods distance, and scattered them like leaves in a whirlwind; and they ran off so far, that some of the regiment ran out to the ground where they were, when we fired upon them, and bro’t off their arms and accoutrements, and rum that the men who fell, had with them, which we had time to drink round with, before they came on again.

They formed at a distance, and waited till their artillery and main body came on, when they advanced in solid columns upon us, and were gathering all around us, ten to our one; col. Douglas’s and [Gold Selleck] Silliman’s regiments fired 4 or 5 times on them as they were advancing, and then retreated, but not till the enemy began to fire on their flanks.

Colonels Silliman, Douglas and [James] Arnold behaved nobly, and the men gained much applause. Colonels [Charles] Webb’s, Silliman’s, and Douglas’s regiments had the principal share in the action.

This report estimated that the American forces had lost “may be 70 or 80 killed and wounded” compared to 300 of the enemy. As usual, those figures skewed toward the author’s side; historians now think both sides suffered between 200 and 300 casualties.

Supporters of the Continental cause emphasized how its army had kept up the fight for a while and withdrawn in order instead of running away. But they couldn’t deny that Gen. George Washington’s forces had lost more territory to the king.