“Soldiers Gathered Around the Tree Under Which the General Sat”

As I quoted back in 2007, as early as 1846 a story circulated about Gen. George Washington reading aloud the 101st Psalm as he took command of the Continental Army. The Rev. Daniel Waldo (shown here) told that story at an Independence Day gathering in Westfield, and it was picked up by the Abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator. Waldo was a Revolutionary veteran, but he wasn’t in the army in 1775 and never saw Washington.

In 1872 Harriet Beecher Stowe retold the tale in one of her books through the voice of a fictional character. In 1878 the Farmer’s Cabinet magazine quoted a description of the event, said to have taken place on 2 July 1775. The reported eyewitness was the late Amherst, New Hampshire, farmer Andrew Leavitt:

After the officers had succeeded in getting the men into tolerable order, Gen. Washington came upon the field and reviewed them [the soldiers], he was a large noble looking man, apparently in the full strength of manhood, mounted upon a magnificent black horse, in whose shining coat you could almost see your face, so carefully was he groomed. After the review the soldiers gathered around the tree under which the General sat, and listened to his address. At the conclusion he read to them from his Psalm book the 101st Psalm.

The local historian who wrote that passage said he’d heard the story from Leavitt about 1842. Descendants of another veteran from the same company, Joseph Wallace, recalled him telling a similar anecdote.

Leavitt and Wallace were in Capt. Josiah Crosby’s company in Col. James Reed’s New Hampshire regiment. On 21 June, according to that state’s Provincial and State Papers, that whole regiment was camped at Winter Hill in modern Somerville, and they seem to have stayed there. There’s no evidence that they were pulled away from the front line so that Gen. Washington could review them on Cambridge common. On the other hand, those two psalm-singing stories didn’t actually claim that event took place on the common, or that the “tree under which the General sat” was the Washington Elm.

The big problem with that tale is that anyone who’s studied Washington recognizes that it would be completely out of his usual pattern to sit under a tree and read a psalm to soldiers gathered around him. He valued hierarchy and rank, especially when he first arrived in Cambridge. His religious behavior was not demonstrative. His main concern on arriving in Massachusetts was to review and strengthen the siege lines.

This sort of behavior might make sense coming from Gen. Artemas Ward or some other New England officer who valued his work as a church deacon. From the new, closely-watched Virginian commander-in-chief the act would have been remarkable—yet nobody remarked on it for more than seventy years.

Another religiously tinged account of Washington taking command appeared in The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States, published in 1864 by a minister named Benjamin Franklin Morris. Morris claimed to quote “from the journal of a chaplain in the American army”:

July 4th, 1775.—I have seen the new general appointed by Congress to command the armies of the colonies. On seeing him I am not surprised at the choice. I expected to see an ardent, heroic-looking man; but such a mingled sweetness, dignity, firmness, and self-possession I never before saw in any man. The expression “born to command” is peculiarly applicable to him. Day before yesterday, when under the great elm in Cambridge he drew his sword and formally took command of the army of seventeen thousand men, his look and bearing impressed every one, and I could not but feel that he was reserved for some great destiny.

Even among ardent Patriots around Boston, this would be an enraptured description of Washington.

Morris never stated the name of this chaplain. The manuscript has never surfaced. No other author that I’ve found has relied on that journal entry. The diary says the event took place on 2 July (“Day before yesterday”), but authentic contemporaneous sources indicate that Washington and Gen. Charles Lee arrived in Cambridge that day in the middle of the afternoon, when it was raining. The traditional date for Washington taking formal command or reviewing American troops is 3 July.

Morris obviously wrote his book to argue that Christianity underpins the government of the United States—a familiar claim today. He seems to have been overly credulous about, or simply invented, a quotation to support his position—again, a familiar situation today. And Morris’s book is still being cited by people who share its core idea.

COMING UP: George Washington’s treehouse.

Another Version of Andrew Leavitt's Story

I’ve been discussing the tale that Gen. George Washington read the 101st Psalm to the Continental Army troops he met at Cambridge in 1775, a tale that I traced to Daniel F. Secomb’s 1883 history of Amherst, New Hampshire. Yesterday I promised to reveal a widely distributed version of that story printed before Secomb’s book, which I thought might have given rise to the local tradition. But I did some more research, found some more sources, and changed my thinking and my plans.

Yesterday I found another version of the same anecdote attributed to Secomb’s main source, the New Hampshire carpenter and veteran Andrew Leavitt, but published six years earlier. It comes from the Amherst, New Hampshire, newspaper titled The Farmer’s Cabinet.

When Leavitt died in 1846, that newspaper’s death notice was unusually long—a full paragraph. But it said nothing about his military experience, concentrating instead on his work as a builder and his religious faith. Over three decades later, on 22 Jan 1878, the Farmer’s Cabinet ran a profile titled “Andrew Leavitt,” which started with the man’s status as “probably the last survivor of the workmen who assisted in building the Congregational meeting house at Amherst.” The first three paragraphs were all about that local construction project.

The next three paragraphs concerned Leavitt’s recollections of the Revolutionary War:

On the breaking out of the war of the revolution he repaired to Cambridge and enlisted in the company commanded by his townsman, Capt. Josiah Crosby. For his subsistence on the march he took two loaves of brown bread, and a generous slice of good, thick, salt pork, the pork he cut in thin slices, of which he placed one upon a slice of bread and covered it with another slice of bread, his teeth being good he bit through all three slices; he said, “it was the sweetest morsel he ever ate.”

He was probably in the battle of Bunker Hill, as Capt. Crosby reports among the articles lost by his company, 1 coverlid, 1 pair stockings, 1 knapsack and handkerchief lost by Andrew Leavitt, the date of his enlistment is given on the company roll call as two days later, 19th Jun. 1775. [The newspaper had printed Crosby’s report on 23 June 1875.]

He was present at Cambridge when Gen. Washington assumed command of the army, 2nd July 1775, and narrated the events of that day to the writer who called on him one day after he had passed his ninetieth year [i.e., after 1842]. Said he “the men were clad in their every day dress, scarcely any two alike, their arms were of all sorts, sizes, and shapes, some were provided with bayonets, but the most were without, and the soldiers had but a poor idea of military discipline. After the officers had succeeded in getting the men into tolerable order, Gen. Washington came upon the field and reviewed them, he was a large noble looking man, apparently in the full strength of manhood, mounted upon a magnificent black horse, in whose shining coat you could almost see your face, so carefully was he groomed. After the review the soldiers gathered around the tree under which the General sat, and listened to his address. At the conclusion he read to them from his Psalm book the 101st Psalm.[”?] Here the vete[r]an paused, and stepping into the adjoining room, appeared, bringing two Psalm books, one of which he handed his visitor, and finding the place in the other, he read in tones tremulous with age and emotion, the “Magistrate’s,” Psalm [i.e., the 101st], the father of his country, read to his fellow countrymen, seventy years before while they were gathered around him at Cambridge.

Mr. Leavitt was quite a musician in his day, and his musical talent is inherited by many of his descendants, among whom are the celebrated “Hutchinson family, of the tribe of Jesse.” He died at the great age of 94 years, 24th of August 1846.

The Hutchinson family were very popular singers of the mid-1800s, known especially for their support of Abolitionism and other reform movements. The picture of the Hutchinsons above comes from this fan page, which also provides links for more information on them.

As you can see in yesterday’s posting, this 1878 account overlaps a lot with Secomb’s on details, including the wrong date for when Washington reviewed troops in Cambridge, but the two share only a little of the same phrasing (“a large noble looking man”). That implies that Secomb did not write both, which in turn supports the statements that Leavitt had told this story to various people in the mid-1840s.

That said, the details of this version make the story less credible, not more so. I’m already dubious about the notion of Washington pulling out a psalm book and reading to his soldiers. It’s well documented that as President he walked out of church rather than take communion. He never used the word “psalm” in his correspondence or speeches. His private letters show faith in “Providence” but no rhetoric or tenets pointing to orthodox Christianity.

But the image of the new generalissimo sitting under a tree surrounded by those men as he reads the 101st Psalm like an itinerant preacher is so completely incongruous that I can’t even picture it. It doesn’t fit Washington’s personal style throughout his lifetime. It doesn’t fit all the concerns about discipline and hierarchy that he wrote about in the summer of 1775. The Farmer’s Cabinet article tells us that Leavitt habitually told this story, but it also provides far more reason to think of the story as a legend.

TOMORROW: This time I really will have an earlier, widely published version of the tale.

Probing Andrew Leavitt's Story of Gen. Washington

Yesterday I quoted how a recent study of George Washington’s military experiences depicted him introducing himself to the Continental Army troops at Cambridge by reading the 101st Psalm from his psalm-book. I traced that unsourced anecdote back to a biography of Washington’s predecessor, Artemas Ward, which presented it with unmistakable skepticism. (I also couldn’t resist quoting another historian who called the tale “the maunderings of a nonagenarian”; we just don’t see that sort of language in scholarship anymore.)

That biography of Ward in turn cited an earlier source as the first print appearance of this tale: Daniel F. Secomb’s History of the Town of Amherst, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, published in 1883. Secomb (1820-1895) wrote:

Capt. [Josiah] Crosby’s company was present when Washington took command of the army, 2 July, 1775, of which Andrew Leavitt, one of the survivors, gave the following account to the writer many years since:

The officers placed their men in as good shape as they could, but they were a motley looking set, no two dressed alike. Some were armed with fowling pieces, some with rifles, others with muskets without bayonets. When all was in readiness, Washington and his staff advanced to the square prepared for their reception. He was a large, noble looking man, in the prime of life, and was mounted on a powerful black horse over which he seemed to have perfect control.

After a short address to the soldiers, he took from his pocket a Psalm book, from which he read the one hundred and first Psalm (another account says it was then sung by the soldiers to the tune of Old Hundred).

There are some historical glitches here. Washington reviewed troops at Cambridge on 3 July, not 2 July. “Rifles” were very rare, possibly non-existent, in the New England army in mid-1775. But we might expect such discrepancies to crop up after many years.

And it was many years—about half a century—between Washington’s arrival at Cambridge and when Secomb was old enough to have heard that story from Leavitt. There were also at least thirty-seven years between the last time Leavitt could have told the story, given his death in 1846, and Secomb’s publication. The phrase “many years since” shows that Secomb actually didn’t remember how long it had been.

George Allen Ramsdell’s History of Milford, New Hampshire, published in 1901, offers a parallel statement with a little more information:

Andrew Leavitt, at this time of Amherst, but a member of Captain Crosby’s company, repeatedly stated in his lifetime that after Washington had made a short address he read the one hundred and first Psalm. There is a tradition in the Wallace family, then represented by the soldier, Joseph Wallace, that when Washington had finished reading the psalm the company took up the matter and sang or chanted it to an appropriate tune.

Ramsdell (1834-1900, shown above courtesy of the Milford Historical Society) was a native of Milford, where most of Crosby’s company came from. He seems to have relied on family and local traditions rather than hearing the two veterans themselves, and probably also knew of Secomb’s book.

Documents from 1775 confirm that Andrew Leavitt and “Joseph Wallis” were members of Crosby’s company as early as June. There’s no contemporaneous record that their company was on the parade when Washington (and Gen. Charles Lee) first reviewed troops in Cambridge, nor have I found any evidence to contradict that belief. As twentieth-century scholars have pointed out, the army didn’t make that much of Washington’s arrival in 1775, so there’s very little documentation about it.

I think the biggest problem with accepting Secomb’s apparent quotation as a reliable first-person account of a Revolutionary event lies in the words themselves. A veteran describing an event he had personally witnessed would not have added, “another account says...,” at least not without stating whether that rival account squared with his own recollection. Indeed, what Secomb presented as Leavitt’s story is notable for being entirely in the third person: it calls the soldiers “they” instead of “we.” Rather than treat those paragraphs as a direct quotation from Andrew Leavitt, I think we must take these words as Secomb’s own description, written “many years” later, of what he recalled hearing Leavitt describe to him as a child or youth, along with Secomb’s note on “another account” he had heard.

This anecdote is therefore equivalent to us now learning new details about a notable public event involving hundreds of people in 1899, and a very notable public personage, based on a secondhand account committed to paper years after the storytelling. Those details have never been in the record before, are based on oral transmission and memory, and conform to many people’s beliefs about how the past should be. I think the account therefore needs strong supporting evidence to be credible.

One possible source for such support would be Leavitt’s pension application, if one survives. In 1840, at the age of 87, Leavitt was receiving a federal pension while living in the home of his son William. To receive that pension, he would have filed a deposition with the federal government, relating his Revolutionary War experiences with notable memories to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. Did Leavitt describe parading for the new commander-in-chief when he applied for a pension, perhaps half a century before Secomb wrote? Did he then describe Washington reading the 101st Psalm?

Otherwise, we’re in the difficult position of assessing the authenticity of oral traditions. According to Ramsdell, people remembered Andrew Leavitt telling his story on multiple occasions. Another family in a nearby town told a similar (though not identical) story. Those traditions may not really be independent of each other, but they do strengthen each other; I think it would be unlikely for two families to come up with such similar tales without a common source.

TOMORROW: A common source—in popular fiction? [ADDENDUM: Change of plans.]