“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?