“When the stakes are as significant as life and liberty”

Earlier this week the president of Yale, Marie McInnis, offered inspiration to the graduating class from a work by much earlier graduate.

Here’s an article from the university:

A Yale-trained art historian, McInnis turned to an artwork from the Yale University Art Gallery collection for answers, focusing on John Trumbull’s celebrated painting “The Battle of Bunker’s Hill.” The canvas marks that moment, 250 years ago in June, when a band of American rebels stood their ground on a hillside in Charlestown, then just north of Boston, against the might of the British military.

In Trumbull’s painting, the scene unfolds beneath acrid plumes of smoke as British forces breach the revolutionaries’ lines. Joseph Warren, an American major general, lies mortally wounded in the arms of a comrade. A redcoat tries to bayonet the fallen general — but British Major John Small has stepped in to stop him.

“In that moment, one man preserves the dignity of a dying foe with an unexpected gesture of compassion amid chaos,” McInnis said. “One man, taming the passions of war, chooses mercy. Chooses to see the man who was his friend, instead of the general of an opposing force.”

In highlighting Small’s intervention, McInnis said, Trumbull invites viewers to recognize a frequently overlooked kind of courage: The ability to show compassion to a bitter adversary.

“Compassion, as I suspect Major Small understood, is not the absence of conviction. It is not weakness,” she said. “And it is certainly not retreat. It is, in fact, an act of radical strength in its rarest form. It is the idea that even in our most consequential disagreements — that even when the stakes are as significant as life and liberty — we must find ways to recognize our common humanity.”

And displaying compassion does not mean avoiding conflict or denying differences, McInnis said.

“In a vibrant, pluralistic society, disagreement is inevitable, indeed welcomed,” she said in her speech, titled “Overcoming divides and embracing our shared humanity.”

“But what I would like to impress on you today is that compassion can coexist with our most deeply held beliefs.”

Here’s the full text of President McInnis’s speech.

Historically, I have to point out that Trumbull constructed his scene to convey just such a message. According to Alexander Garden, Maj. Small himself said that the artist “paid me the compliment of trying to save the life of Warren; but the fact is, that life had fled before I saw his remains.”

Also, Trumbull produced multiple copies of this scene with subtle differences. The image shown above from Yale is one of his preliminary studies. The university also owns a finished, full-color version, as do the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Wadsworth Athenaeum. (Notably, the colors aren’t the same on those two canvases, particularly in the flags Trumbull inserted into the scene.)

“The march they chose was…”

My postings on the story about Gen. George Washington’s “huzzah” remark at Yorktown stopped at identifying Dr. Thomas H. McCalla as the source, partially identified in Alexander Garden’s Anecdotes of the American Revolution.

I didn‘t explore the question of how reliable that story itself was, particularly to the level of the words it credited to the commander-in-chief. That prompted a thoughtful message from martial-music expert Susan Cifaldi, which with permission I’m running as a “guest blogger” column.

The problem I have with Alexander Garden’s Anecdotes of the American Revolution (1822 and 1828) is embodied in the title; what he presents are simply anecdotes, which had a large oral circulation but are supported by vague second- and third-hand documentation. While this may confirm the peripheral circumstances, it leaves us frustrated for actual proof.

Perhaps Dr. M’Calla did recall hearing the Commander-in-Chief say some ponderous, lofty, and encouraging things while “addressing himself to the division of the army to which he was attached.” But in addition to the lack of written notation of such a lengthy statement, there is the physical factor of the problems associated with recall 40+ years after the fact. Who among us can recall 46 words of of anything that happened 40+ years ago, verbatim or otherwise?

“Huzzah” isn’t the only legend accepted as fact simply because the historical buck stops with Alexander Garden. Take the tune “World turned up side down,” commonly but erroneously assumed to have been played at Yorktown (Anecdotes, 1828, p. 17).

Quoting such luminaries as John Laurens, Garden tells the story how, during negotiations of the surrender terms, Laurens apparently insisted that “The [British] Troops shall march out with colours cased, and drums beating a British or a German march.” A “harsh article,” according to a British representative, who felt the surrendering troops should have been accorded the honors of war and thus march out with drums beating an American or French march. However, Laurens would not consider argument, “This remains an article, or I cease to be a Commissioner.”

The result was conformed to this just retribution. The British army marched out with colours cased, and drums beating a British or a German march. The march they chose was—“The world turned up side down.”

The late Arthur Schrader did a much better job than I could in explaining why there is nothing but Alexander Garden to support this theory at this stage in the game.

I like my copy of Garden, which I paid quite a bit for some years ago so I could have both the 1822 and 1828 issues in their original marbled boards, but I think we have to use it as we would a coffee-table book or maybe a 19th-century version of the Reader’s Digest.

Indeed, even when we’ve got a source on the scene, we must consider how reliable that source might be, and how reliably his or her testimony has been transmitted to us.

Thanks, Sue!

(The image above, courtesy of the Library of Congress, is sheet music for a piece genuinely associated with Yorktown. It’s a piano composition created to commemorate the siege a century later.)

“Posterity will huzza for us!”

So where would a little boy in Hagerstown, Maryland, in 1838 have heard what Gen. George Washington supposedly told his troops at the surrender of Yorktown?

Continental Army veteran Alexander Garden (1757-1829) published his Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War in America in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1822. Among the stories Garden collected was:

Dr. M’Caula, sometime since Intendant of Charleston, who served with distinction during the war of the Revolution, has frequently declared, that after the surrender of York-Town, while the Continental Troops were preparing to receive the British, who were to march forth from the garrison, and deliver up their arms, that he heard the Commander in Chief say, (addressing himself to the division of the army to which he was attached) “My brave fellows, let no sensation of satisfaction for the triumphs you have gained, induce you to insult your fallen enemy—let no shouting, no clamourous huzzaing increase their mortification. It is sufficient satisfaction to us, that we witness their humiliation. Posterity will huzza for us!”

That was reprinted with slight changes in punctuation in William Bailey’s Records of Patriotism and Love of Country, issued in Washington, D.C., in 1826. It was also quoted nearly word for word, with no mention of Garden, in Robert W. Lincoln’s Lives of the Presidents of the United States (1833). Benson J. Lossing simplified the wording in 1848, as I quoted a couple of days ago, but other authors maintained Garden’s Latinate language.

Most subsequent versions of the story, however, silently omit the line “It is sufficient that we witness their humiliation.” That part does seem to rub it in a bit, in a way that undercuts the story’s overall moral.

This webpage from Charleston confirms that physician Thomas McCalla was elected intendant (equivalent of mayor) of the city in 1810 and 1811.

TOMORROW: But was Dr. Thomas McCalla at Yorktown?

(The photo above, which comes courtesy of the National Park Service, shows Charleston’s city hall, built in 1800-04. But Dr. McCalla didn’t presided over city council meetings there. The building was originally the state’s branch of the Bank of the United States, and became city property only in 1818. It has been somewhat altered inside and out since then.)