“He would take no notice of it”

On 8 Mar 1776, 250 years ago today, three Loyalists walked out of Boston under a flag of truce.

Peter Johonnot and the brothers Thomas and Jonathan Amory handed a letter to the Continental Army officer commanding at the bottom of the Neck, Col. Ebenezer Learned (1728–1801) of Oxford.

That letter was signed by four Boston selectmen, and I quoted it in full here, a mere eighteen years ago.

The gist of the message was that “Genl [William] Howe…has no intention of destroying the Town Unless the Troops under his command are molested during their Embarkation.” The British army was ready to leave.

However, that gist was coated in verbiage and layers of intermediaries: the three gentlemen who brought the message, the four selectmen, Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver, Gen. James Robertson. It wasn’t a letter from Gen. Howe himself or anyone he’d designated as his representative.

The next day, Col. Learned wrote back from Roxbury to the three Loyalists:

Agreeably to a promise made to you at the Lines Yesterday I waited upon his Excellency Genl [George] Washington and presented to him the Paper (handed to me by you) from the Select Men of Boston.

The Answer I receiv’d from him was to this effect “That as it was an unauthenticated Paper; without an address and not obligatory upon General Howe he would take no notice of it”

As Washington noted, Gen. Howe had put no promise in writing. He had also avoided acknowledging any legitimacy to Washington’s claim to be a fellow general.

Nonetheless, the reply Learned sent back assured the Loyalists, and the British officials behind them, that Gen. Washington had read the message.

Indeed, even as the Continental commander-in-chief was officially taking no notice of the letter, his staff was making several copies of it, and he was conveying its contents to Gov. Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut and the Continental Congress.

When I spoke in Acton last month, someone asked if Washington and Howe had made an agreement about letting the British depart. This exchange of letters that wasn’t officially an exchange was why I had to answer, “Yes and no.”