“Like a shock of electricity upon a morbid system”

Yesterday I discussed how An Authentic Narrative of the Life of Joshua Slocum was anything but an authentic memoir of a Revolutionary War soldier.

Joshua Slocum had spent time in the Continental Army, to be sure, but the book his son John published in 1844 went into great detail about events his father had nothing to do with, producing bogus stories based on preceding books and popular lore.

When the war began, Joshua Slocum was about fifteen years old, probably living in the part of Wrentham that became Franklin. Although there are cases of boys that young serving in the siege of Boston—as musicians, servants, clerks, substitutes for older brothers—there’s no documentation that Joshua did. He probably stayed in the countryside and worked on the farm. Four years later, when he reached the typical age for military service, he enlisted for one of the Rhode Island campaigns.

Because John Slocum wanted to connect his father to the famous events of the Revolutionary War, he wrote about 1775: the Lexington alarm, the siege of Boston, the capture of Fort Ticonderoga. When he created the book, in the middle of the nineteenth century, one of the most celebrated events from that year was Gen. George Washington taking command of the Continental Army.

This is how the Authentic Narrative treats that moment:

When this heart-cheering intelligence [of George Washington’s appointment] reached Cambridge, my father informed me that one long, loud and joyful acclamation rent the skies—each successive post catching the sound, till it was wafted through the entire line of the arm, operating upon it like a shock of electricity upon a morbid system.

If, continues he, the mere announcement of his appointment could create so much enthusiasm and awaken such joyous sensations through our ranks, what must have been the feelings inspired when, on the 2d of July, fifteen days from the date of his commission, Washington, in company with Gen. [Charles] Lee, arrived at Head Quarters in Cambridge—when, for the first time, we were permitted to see, face to face, the great man who, under God, was destined to achieve the Independence of his country, and to lay broad and deep the foundation of this stupendous republic? For myself I shall not attempt to describe it—language would fail in the attempt.

As eyewitness testimony, this is worthless. Indeed, Slocum didn’t even try to provide details of the generalissimo’s arrival.

As a reflection of how Americans of 1844 wanted to think about Washington, however, it’s very interesting. Since John Slocum was writing without any reliable input from his father, this passage is entirely untainted by what the fighting men of 1775 actually thought. It’s a pure expression of myth.

Slocum depicted the provincial troops around Boston as “a morbid system” needing a jolt of power. Ordinary men were excited to learn about the new commander-in-chief, not because he represented support from colonies outside New England but because they somehow sensed he was the “great man who, under God, was destined to achieve the Independence of his country.”

Actual diaries from July 1775 show much less emotion. Some barely mention Washington. Most of the soldiers had probably never heard of the man. Few entertained thoughts of independence yet.

Those newly dubbed Continental soldiers probably did share the nineteenth-century Americans’ wish to believe their success was destined and protected by God, but so have many other groups in history. Stories like this are one way to reinforce that belief.

John Slocum might come up in Tuesday’s panel discussion at the Cambridge Public Library about “The First Commander Remembered.”