“He particularly enlarged his accounts of our ammunition”?

On 28 Oct 1775, the Massachusetts House put Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., on trial for corresponding with the British military inside Boston.

In his defense, the doctor pointed to a passage in the allegedly incriminating letter, dated 23 July (copy shown here):

20 Tons of Powder arroved at Philad. Connecticut and Providence, upwards of 20 Tons are now in Camp, salt petre is made in every Colony. Powder mills are erected and constantly employed in Philada & New York.

That wasn’t giving sensitive information to the enemy, Church told the legislators. Instead, he

declared that the only motive he had in writing was the publick good; that he took care to exaggerate our strength and firmness, with a view to dishearten and intimidate; that he particularly enlarged his accounts of our ammunition, at a time when an attack might have proved fatal, on account of the scarcity of that article…

Nobody believed that. But nobody could refute it, either. The deciphered letter certainly did declare that the Continental Army had a lot of gunpowder.

Some historians have wondered if Church was writing in a code, in addition to cipher—perhaps the men who received his letter would know by previous arrangement he was actually communicating the opposite of what it said. Or maybe the doctor was sincerely trying to reconcile the royal authorities to the provincial cause.

In fact, Church’s 23 July writing reflected a common understanding around the camp that summer. On 2 July, Ezekiel Price, living in Milton, wrote in his diary: “Mr. E[dmund]. Quincy reports that eighteen hundred barrels of powder is arrived at Philadelphia or New York.”

On 10 August, the Boston Gazette reported, “the Needfull is said to be not wanting,” probably a reference to gunpowder.

Down in Newport, on 15 August the Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles noted: “I am told so that I rely on it, that our Army now have Fifty Tons of Powder.”

In fact, on 3 August Gen. George Washington had learned that the army was facing a gunpowder shortage. He and his generals were writing desperately—but secretly—to various governments asking for more. They were coming up with wild plans to grab powder from colonies still loyal to the Crown. But of course the commander worked to keep that news from spreading. (I wrote about that effort in this article for the Journal of the American Revolution.)

By late October, more gunpowder had arrived in the American camp, making it safe to acknowledge there had been a shortage a couple of months before. But when Dr. Church wrote his letter in late July, nobody knew about that shortage, not even Gen. Washington. So the doctor’s claim that he was deliberately trying to fool his correspondents on that point was plausible only if his listeners didn’t remember what happened when.

And those Massachusetts legislators wouldn’t have believed Dr. Church for an instant if they’d seen his next letter.

TOMORROW: Out of the files of Gen. Gage.