“Examining Dr. Church” in Watertown, 9 Nov.

As previously announced, on Sunday, 9 November, the Historical Society of Watertown and Watertown Free Public Library will host me speaking about “Examining Dr. Church: The Trials of the Revolutionary War’s First Notorious Spy.”

Our event description:

In October 1775, Massachusetts politicians gathered in Watertown to try one of their own on the charge of supplying intelligence to the king’s army.

Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., had been a leader of Boston’s resistance and then Surgeon-General of the Continental Army. The rebel authorities had collected the reluctant testimony of Church’s mistress and a letter written in cipher—but was that evidence strong enough to impeach the doctor as an enemy spy?

This Sestercentennial talk will start at 2 P.M. in the Watertown Savings Bank Room on the library’s first floor. It will be free and open to the public, thanks to a grant from the Watertown Community Foundation.

Here’s how this inquiry into the Continental Surgeon-General’s actions came to be held in Watertown.

On 14 June, 1775, the Continental Congress created a committee “to bring in a dra’t of Rules and regulations for the government of the army.” To chair that committee, the delegates chose George Washington, formerly colonel in charge of the Virginia regiment, just as they had put him in charge of previous committees on military topics.

However, the next day the Congress voted to make Washington commander-in-chief of that army. So the task of completing those rules shifted to other committee members—probably Silas Deane, Thomas Cushing, and Joseph Hewes. On 17 July the Pennsylvania Packet printed “the rules and articles of war agreed to by the Congress.”

Among those articles was:

Art. XXVIII. Whosoever belonging to the continental army, shall be convicted of holding correspondence with, or of giving intelligence to, the enemy, either directly or indirectly, shall suffer such punishment as by a general court-martial shall be ordered.

In late September, Gen. Washington learned that Dr. Church had broken that rule, at least the part about secretly corresponding with people inside Boston. As serious as that charge was, a Continental court-martial couldn’t order just any punishment. Its options were limited by another article:

Art. LI. That no persons shall be sentenced by a court-martial to suffer death, except in the cases expressly mentioned in the foregoing articles; nor shall any punishment be inflicted at the discretion of a court-martial, other than degrading, cashiering, drumming out of the army, whipping not exceeding thirty-nine lashes, fine not exceeding two months pay of the offender, imprisonment not exceeding one month.

The commander-in-chief called his generals together as a council of war on 4 October. According to the notes of that meeting:

after examining the Regulations of the Continental Army & particularly the Articles 28 & 51—

It was determined from the Enormity of the Crime, & the very inadequate Punishment pointed out that it should be referr’d to the General Congress for their special Direction & that in the mean Time he be closely confined, & no Person visit him but by special Direction.

The Continental commanders couldn’t ignore what Church had done. But they also couldn’t proceed against him, lest they have to let him off with punishment that would be, though degrading to a gentleman, far less than they thought a traitor deserved.

TOMORROW: Passing the buck.