“I fear’d young HAMILTON’S unshaken soul“

As David Humphreys and his fellow Hartford Wits composed the early installments of their Anarchiad, states were deciding whether to send delegations to a constitutional convention in Philadelphia.

The stated purpose of that convention was to revise the Articles of Confederation, but many people hoped—or worried—that the gathering might make very deep revisions indeed.

The Hartford Wits supported big change. Their fellow citizens of Connecticut were not so sure. The middle installments of the Anarchiad spent a lot of lines attacking James Wadsworth, state comptroller and a strong opponent of a new national constitution.

In March 1787 Humphreys wrote to his former boss George Washington that Connecticut might not send a delegation to Philadelphia at all. But most other states had committed by then, so the poets saw reason for optimism.

The 5 April installment of the Anarchiad depicted the villain Anarch lamenting his defeat, as in these lines:

Ardent and bold, the sinking land to save,
In council sapient as in action brave,
I fear’d young HAMILTON’S unshaken soul,
And saw his arm our wayward host control;
Yet, while the Senate with his accents rung,
Fire in his eye, and thunder on his tongue,
My band of mutes in dumb confusion throng,
Convinc’d of right, yet obstinate in wrong,
With stupid reverence lift the guided hand,
And yield an empire to thy wild command.

Allegorically this referred to New York’s choice to name a delegation, as Alexander Hamilton championed. The Hartford Wits thus lauded Hamilton’s political speeches in verse more than two centuries before Lin-Manuel Miranda.

On 12 May, Connecticut finally voted to send William Samuel Johnson, Oliver Ellsworth, and Erastus Wolcott to Philadelphia. Wolcott declined, citing fear of smallpox, so four days later the legislature chose Roger Sherman instead. Their mandate was “for the Sole and express Purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.”

The Hartford Wits saw that as a win, and the Anarchiad lines published on 24 May expressed Hesper’s hopes for a better future. But there were still dire warnings about what might happen if people didn’t support significant change:

Yet, what the hope? The dreams of Congress fade,
The federal UNION sinks in endless shade;
Each feeble call, that warns the realms around,
Seems the faint echo of a dying sound;
Each requisition wastes in fleeting air,
And not one State regards the powerless prayer.

Ye wanton States, by heaven’s best blessings curst,
Long on the lap of softening luxury nurst,
What fickle frenzy raves! what visions strange
Inspire your bosoms with the lust of change,
And flames the wish to fly from fancy’s ill,
And yield your freedom to a monarch’s will?

The Anarchiad’s last installment appeared in September 1787 as the Constitutional Convention was wrapping up. Because of the body’s secrecy, no one yet knew the scope of the changes it would recommend. Sherman and Ellsworth had proposed the critical “Connecticut Compromise,” and Hamilton maneuvered to make the final vote appear unanimous.

In November, the Connecticut government called a state convention to discuss whether to ratify the new and very different U.S Constitution. During that debate Amos Doolittle issued a year-end-review cartoon titled “The Looking Glass for 1787.” In one section it showed three Hartford Wits on a hill labeled “Parnassus” reading their “American Antiquities”—the supposed fragments of The Anarchiad. At least in Connecticut, they had been a prominent voice of the debate.

“Bateman, he thinks, could not have made the deposition”

When the Rev. William Gordon visited British prisoners of war in Concord in the spring of 1775, he reported that Pvt. John Bateman was “too ill to admit of my conversing with him.”

Bateman didn’t get any better. In 1835 local historian Lemuel Shattuck wrote that this wounded redcoat “died and was buried on the hill.” That was Concord’s elevated burying-ground, shown in the right foreground of the Amos Doolittle print of regulars searching the town.

In 1825 Elias Phinney’s History of the Battle of Lexington argued that the militiamen of Lexington were the first to shoot back at the redcoats. Two years later, the Rev. Ezra Ripley of Concord published A History of the Fight at Concord to refute that claim; five years later, Ripley brought out an expanded edition.

Both Phinney and Ripley gathered new testimony from veterans of the battle to support their case. Ripley also republished John Bateman’s deposition from 1775, which had said, “I testify, that I never heard any of the [Lexington] inhabitants so much as fire one gun on said troops.”

A few weeks back, I quoted some statements that Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote into his diary after a visit from Thaddeus Blood, a long-lived veteran, on 5 Aug 1835. (Thanks to Joel Bohy for alerting me to this latter-day source.) After recording Blood’s recollection of Lt. Isaac Potter, Emerson wrote:

Bateman, he thinks, could not have made the deposition in Dr. R[ipley]’s History. A ball passed through his cap and he cried, “A miss is as good as a mile.” Immediately another ball struck his ear and passed out at the side of his mouth, knocking out two teeth. He lived about three weeks, and his wounds stunk intolerably. It was probably Carr’s or Starr’s deposition.

Evidently Bateman’s wound became infected, and he died in American custody. Don Hagist tells me the muster rolls of Bateman’s regiment, the 52nd, state he died on 21 April, but his deposition was dated 23 April and Gordon encountered him after that. He probably died in early May.

Was Blood correct in saying that Bateman was never well enough to give the testimony published over his name? Probably not. In addition to magistrates Dr. John Cuming and Duncan Ingraham on 23 April, four other people told Gordon that they “heard the said Bateman say, that the Regulars fired first, and saw him go through the solemnity of confirming the same by an oath on the bible.” Those four reported witnesses were Bateman’s fellow prisoners in Concord.

I therefore think Bateman’s 23 April deposition was authentic, though he may well have been under the duress of being a prisoner and needing medical care.

TOMORROW: So who was “Carr” or “Starr”?

September Events at Minute Man National Historical Park

Minute Man National Historical Park has a busy schedule of events for the rest of the month. They’re all free, and I’m definitely going to attend the last one.

Sunday, 11 September
Revolutionary Dogs walking tour from the visitor center at the Lexington/Lincoln line, 2:00 P.M.
Colonial Music at Hartwell Tavern, 2:40 P.M.

Saturday, 17 September
Battle Road Homes Open House, 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M.
The Lincoln Minute Men will be drilling at the Captain William Smith House, “Sophia Hawthorne” will greet visitors at the Wayside, and other homes will host historic tradesmen.

Sunday, 18 September
Amos Doolittle, Combat Artist walking tour from Old Hill Burying Ground, Concord, 2:00 P.M.

Saturday, 24 September
Warlike Preparations at the Barrett Farm, 455 Barrett’s Mill Road, Concord, 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M.

Sunday, 25 September
The British Redcoat at the Lexington/Lincoln visitor center, 1:00 and 3:00 P.M.

Thursday, 29 September
“Cannons in Concord, and Why the Regulars Came Looking” at the Lexington/Lincoln visitor center, 7:00 P.M.

Massachusetts’s military preparation in 1774-75 went beyond militia elections and infantry drills. The Provincial Congress also assembled an artillery force, with several cannon and mortars stored in Concord—including the “Hancock” gun now on display at the North Bridge visitor center.

J. L. Bell, author of The Road to Concord, describes how those cannon came to the town, how Gen. Thomas Gage learned about them, and what happened next.

Map Talk and Exhibit Updates at the Boston Public Library

On Tuesday, 8 September, the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library will host an event titled “Rebels, Redcoats, and Revolutionary Maps.”

It will start with a talk by Richard Brown and Paul Cohen about their book Revolution: Mapping the Road to American Independence, which “looks at the spectacular legacy and importance of early American cartographers.” Of course, some of the most accomplished mapmakers of that time were British.

After the talk there will be a book sale and author signing, and Dr. Ron Grim, Curator of the Leventhal Map Center, will offer a special tour of the “We Are One” exhibition.

That exhibit, which I reviewed back here, was recently revamped with four new items from the King George III Topographical Collection and other collections at the British Library. These include:

• William Brasier’s color manuscript survey of Fort Ticonderoga shortly after the British captured the French fort.
• Lt. Richard Williams’s “Plan of Boston and its Environs”, hand drawn with watercolor.
• Two more sections of Williams’s luscious watercolor panorama painted from Beacon Hill.

The British Library recently shared a blog post about the Williams images.

Also new to the exhibit are a cantonment map from the mid-1760s showing the deployment of British troops in North America, loaned by the Clements Library in Michigan; and one of Amos Doolittle’s hand-colored prints of the British soldiers in Concord in April 1775, loaned by the Connecticut Historical Society.

A lot of the other fine items in the B.P.L. display come from Richard Brown’s collection. His book talk with Paul Cohen is scheduled to start at 6:00 in the Abbey Room on the second floor of the Boston Public Library. It will be preceded by a reception at 5:30 P.M.