What to Expect at the Battle of Camden

Later this month a new book will appear in the Emerging Revolutionary War series: All That Can be Expected: The Battle of Camden and the British High Tide in the South, August 16, 1780, by Rob Orrison and Mark Wilcox.

With the Battle of Camden, Britain seemed to find a strategy to win back the rebellious southern colonies. Crown forces took Savannah, Georgia, in the fall of 1779, then Charleston, South Carolina, in May 1780. The king’s army, which hadn’t penetrated far inland from the northern ports, now began to set up outposts in the Carolina backcountry.

The Continental Congress assigned Gen. Horatio Gates, victor at Saratoga, to rebuild its army in the south from Continental regiments in the middle states and militia from Virginia and North Carolina. He moved against Gen. Cornwallis’s troops near Camden, South Carolina. The two forces met on 16 Aug 1780.

The title of this new book comes from a report by Lt. Col. Benjamin Ford of Maryland: The British “have done all that can be expected of them; we are outnumbered and outflanked.” Gates’s career would never recover.

At 7:00 P.M. this Sunday, 6 August, Orrison and Wilcox will chat about All That Can be Expected with series editor Dan Welch live on the Emerging Revolutionary War Facebook page. The recorded conversation will be posted on the allied YouTube and Spotify a week later.

Botto Sculteus Aeneae’s American War

At the Age of Revolutions site, Tessa de Boer shared a new source on the latter years of the American War for Independence through the eyes of a youth.

In August 1781, Botto Sculteus Aeneae was “a twelve-year-old boy from Amsterdam, feverishly excited about his fanciful midshipman job.”

He was serving on a ship called the South Carolina, ferrying military supplies from the Dutch island of Texel to Charleston in the young United States of America.

On 25 Nov 1783, Botto was back in Amsterdam. He described his previous two and a half years to a notary. The intervening experiences included:

• shying away from the Charleston port on learning that it had been recaptured by the British. 
• sailing the Caribbean on the South Carolina, taking prizes.
• helping the Spanish military seize the Bahamas in May 1782. 
• reaching Philadelphia, where the ship had to be restaffed with “mostly inexperienced youth desiring adventure, and Germans recruited out of British prisoner camps.” 
• quickly being captured by three British warships. 
• being sent as a prisoner onto the infamous Jersey prison ship in New York harbor. 

Of course, the existence of the manuscript shows that Botto Sculteus Aeneae survived the Jersey and the war, making it back to his home town. However, the same document suggests he was preparing a lawsuit of some sort, possibly seeking compensation for his service better than the Continental bond and grants of land in North America that American authorities had offered.

That purpose also makes Botto’s deposition somewhat frustrating. He didn’t tell his story to inform his family what he went through, to entertain readers, or to create meaning for himself. He was simply getting his experiences and basic suffering down on paper for the record. The account doesn’t have a lot of daily detail or emotion beyond frustration and suffering. 

Still, it’s a side of the war we rarely see from an even more unusual witness and participant. De Boer’s translation of the text appears under the notes for her essay about it.

“Leslie’s Retreat” Commemorations, 21 Feb.

On 21 Feb 1775, Dr. Benjamin Church secretly told Gen. Thomas Gage that “Twelve pieces of Brass Cannon mounted, are at Salem, & lodged near the North River, on the back of the Town.”

Gage was hunting for the brass cannon of the Boston militia train, which had disappeared from armories under redcoat watch the previous September. He therefore ordered Lt.-Col. Alexander Leslie to lead an expedition to Salem on Sunday, 26 February.

That mission got the name “Leslie’s Retreat,” which shows how well it went for Lt.-Col. Leslie. It’s an episode in many books, including my own The Road to Concord. I’m pleased with two contributions to the story:

• showing the event through the eyes of nine-year-old Samuel Gray.
• debunking the familial claim that John Pedrick was crucial to spreading the alarm; he was actually a Loyalist at the time.

In recent years, Salem has revived the celebration of Leslie’s Retreat, not as a period reenactment like some others but as a community event. Unfortunately, the pandemic makes all such events harder.

This year, the Leslie’s Retreat coalition has various ways to commemorate set up for Sunday, 21 February, all designed for safely distanced households.

2:30-2:45 P.M.
City-wide Bell Ringing
And general noise-making.

3:00-4:00 P.M.
Bridging the Divide: Civil Conflict, Violence, and Negotiation in 1775 & Today
An online conversation among historians Robert Allison, Peter Charles Hoffer, and Chenoh Sesay, Jr., moderated by Diana Dunlap. Register to listen here.

As People Choose
Traveling the Leslie’s Retreat Trail
There are two routes mapped, 3.0 and 5.3 miles long, which individuals and families can walk or run when the weather is amenable. One could even award oneself a badge.

As for Lt.-Col. Leslie, he was promoted to general in 1776 and saw action in many campaigns of the war, ending up as the last British commander of Charleston, South Carolina.

Hagist and Johnson on History Author Talks, 26 Jan.

Tomorrow’s History Author Talk features three scholars who’ve written about the British army and its effects on the civilian population of the colonies. The session has the theme of “All the King’s Men Who Tried to Put British America Back Together Again.”

The first featured author is Don Hagist, expert on the British enlisted men and editor of the Journal of the American Revolution. He’ll discuss his latest book, Noble Volunteers: The British Soldiers Who Fought the American Revolution.

Joining in the conversation will be Donald F. Johnson, author of Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution. Johnson is a professor of history at North Dakota State University. His study focuses on the ports that the British military held for extended periods of the Revolutionary War: Boston (1774-1776), New York (1776-1783), Newport (1776-1779), Philadelphia (1777-1778), Savannah (1779-1782), and Charleston (1780-1783).

Moderating the conversation will be Todd Braisted, himself the author of Grand Forage 1778: The Battleground Around New York City and an expert on the Loyalist armed forces in the war. He’ll represent the Bergen County (New Jersey) Historical Society Historic New Bridge Landing.

As I recall, these conversations usually begin with short prepared presentations by the two featured artists followed by questions from the moderator. They can be viewed on Roger Williams’s History Author Talks website without preregistration and are archived there later. The live session is scheduled to start on Tuesday, 26 January, at 7:00 P.M.

The Power of Preserved Iconoclasm

Back in December 2015 I wrote several postings on incorporating the power of iconoclasm—the destruction of images—into historical monuments and commemorations.

Those thoughts were provoked by a talk by Wendy Bellion, author of Iconoclasm in New York: Revolution to Reenactment, who started with New Yorkers pulling down a statue of King George III after their first public reading of the Declaration of Independence.

Then, she noted, the city kept that plinth empty for decades, reenacted the destruction in ceremonies (which entailed creating new statues of George III), and collected and displayed the surviving bits of statuary. The remnants and recreations kept that destructive act and its meaning fresh in people’s eyes.

Incorporating the power of such iconoclasm is more than the one-time, permanent destruction of a statue or monument. It means finding a way to preserve the act of iconoclasm itself, thus recognizing the original object, the popular objections to it, and how society changed.

One of my favorite examples of this approach is in the Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield, where updated cloth panels now hang over the original stone panels on a memorial to the 1704 raid on the town. Visitors can thus learn about that event, about how it was understood in the late 1800s, and about how we can view it today with added knowledge and multiple perspectives.

There are spontaneous examples of such iconoclasm, as when college students feathered a statue of Thomas Jefferson with Post-It notes registering their distaste with some aspects of his life. The result recognizes both Jefferson’s lasting importance and how he exploited other people. This year the plinth of the giant statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond was likewise turned into an expression of community rejection of what Confederate general fought for.

Lasting iconoclasm can even be built into a monument from the start, as in the Saratoga Battle Monument, which has niches for four statues of American commanders but only three statues (of Horatio Gates, Philip Schuyler, and Daniel Morgan). Nearby is the Boot Monument, erected in 1887 in honor of an American general wounded in the Battle of Saratoga but never named on the stone. The missing man is Benedict Arnold, and the way he’s erased shows the national distaste for how he betrayed the Continental Army.

Vulture just highlighted another example of monumental iconoclasm from Australia, an outdoor exhibit that ends this weekend. This year is the Sestercentennial of Capt. James Cook’s first landfall on Australia. Statues of him have become controversial not so much for what he himself did on that continent but for the imperial conquest that his arrival launched and the idea that he “discovered” and “claimed” an already populated continent.

As a response to that 250th anniversary, Nicholas Galanin, an Alaskan artist, dug a hole in a field on Cockatoo Island (shown above) that matches the prominent statue of Capt. Cook elsewhere in Sydney. The work is called “Shadow on the Land.” It’s also a symbolic grave for the monument. This work certainly doesn’t celebrate Cook, of course, but it can’t help but acknowledge his historic significance. Imagine it dug permanently at the foot of the actual statue.

Closer to home, the city of Charleston removed its large statue of slavery advocate John C. Calhoun and more recently pulled down the towering pillar it rested on. Segments of the granite column buried themselves in the ground. I believe the city has already started moving those stones away, but I think for a moment the spontaneous ruin formed a more powerful monument to historical change than anything the city could build in that spot.

COMING UP: What do we do with a problem like Faneuil?

Michael Angelo Warwell, Bit Player in the Boston Massacre

In 1741, in the English market town of Totnes, a baby was baptized with the name Michael Angelo Warwell.

The reason for such a baroque name was that the boy’s parents, John and Maria Warwell, were artists. According to the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, writing in 1740, John Warwell was “a painter and a player.” He was the first professional visual artist to confirm the “very great genius for drawing” of the minister’s son Joshua.

Warwell wasn’t a portraitist, as Sir Joshua Reynolds would be. Instead, he specialized in decorative painting, particularly as architectural accent. In the 1750s he did some sort of work for the the shellwork grotto at Goldney Hall, shown above.

Michael Angelo Warwell followed his father’s other career path, into the theater. Sometime before 1765, he sailed for North America. We know this because his parents followed, putting an advertisement in the 19-31 Oct 1765 South Carolina Gazette:

THIS IS TO INFORM Mr. MICHAEL ANGELO WARWELL…that his father and mother are arrived in the Planters Adventure, Miles Lowley, commander, at Charles-Town, South Carolina, with intent to settle there…

The Warwells set up a household in Charleston near Gov. Thomas Boone’s. John advertised that he painted “HISTORY PIECES: HERALDRY: ALTAR PIECES: COACHES, LANDSCAPES: WINDOW BLINDS, SEA PIECES: CHIMNEY BLINDS, FLOWERS: SKREENS, FRUIT: GILDING.” He also offered to mend and clean pictures, paint rooms, and construct “Deceptive Temples, Triumphal Arches, Obelisks, Statues, &c. for Groves or Gardens.”

On 9 June 1767, the South Carolina Gazette reported that “Mr. Warwell, Sr., a noted limner,” had died. The “Sr.” indicated that the younger Mr. Warwell, still only in his mid-twenties, had made a name for himself locally.

On 11 August, Maria Warwell announced that she was planning to leave South Carolina and wanted to settle her debts. She added:

And while she waits for a passage, she will be much obliged to those who will employ her, in mending in the neatest and most durable manner, all sorts of useful and ornamental china, viz. beakers, tureens, jars, vases, and busts; statues, either in china, glass, plaster, bronze, or marble; should a piece be wanting, she will substitute a composition in its room, and copy the pattern as nigh as possible.

By April 1768, the Warwells’ Charleston house had become the new Customs House. That agency might have been expanding as it collected new revenue through the Townshend duties. I have no idea whether the Warwell family owned the house and thus dealt with the Customs service themselves, but that link seems notable in light of Michael Angelo Warwell’s future friendship with a Customs officer.

The younger Warwell became part of David Douglass’s American Company, a set of theatrical entertainers who came together to perform plays and also offered concerts solo or in small groups. The company was in New York in July 1769.

Warwell collaborated with an actor named Hudgson and a tavern owner named Burns to deliver, “By Permission of his Excellency the GOVERNOR,…an Attic Evenings ENTERTAINMENT.” The two performers read extracts of poetry and plays and sang songs. Admission cost five shillings. According to advertisements in the New-York Gazette and New-York Journal, Warwell’s repertoire included “Bright Author of my present Flame,” “A Song in the Anacreonick Taste,” “A Song set by Dr. Henry Purcel,” “A Martial Song, in Character,” and “a Two Part Song by Mr. Warwell and Mr. Hudgson.”

Warwell then headed north. New England wasn’t a fertile field for theater. In fact, in Boston it was illegal. But that meant there was an upper-class set curious about theater-adjacent entertainment. Performers like Warwell could offer “lectures” and “concerts” that gave people just a taste of the London stage.

On 5 Jan 1770, the New-Hampshire Gazette ran this item, sent from Marblehead on New Year’s Day:

Mr. Hall, by giving the following a Place in your useful Paper, you will oblige one of your Readers.

GENEROSITY and COMPASSION united.

ON Monday the 18th Instant, in the Evening, Mr. M. A. Warwell, Gent. read (at the Assembly Room in this Town) the Beggar’s Opera, to a Number of Gentlemen and Ladies, and to universal satisfaction. His Tickets amounting to £.7-6-9 lawful Money, the whole of which he generously gave as a Charity to the poor and distressed Widows & Orphans of this Place, who are real Objects of Pity and Commiseration.—May the above Example excite others, in their several Capacities, to go and do likewise.

The next month, Warwell was in Plymouth, sitting in on the 7 February meeting of the Old Colony Club. The record of the next day’s meeting says:

This evening was read at the Hall the “Provoked Husband,” a comedy, by Mr. M. A. Warwel, to a company of about forty gentlemen and ladies, by invitation of the Club.

Warwell sat in on two more club meetings that month.

But on 5 March, he was in Boston. And that’s how Warwell got involved in the legal maneuverings around the Boston Massacre.

(I haven’t found any trace of Michael Angelo Warwell after March 1770. However, in the spring of 1771 a Thomas Warwell read The Provoked Husband and sang songs on the Caribbean island of St. Croix—maybe that was a brother.)

COMING UP: Warwell’s memorable fifth of March.

Why I’m Dubious about the “letter from an officer in Charles-Town”

Yesterday I quoted a letter published in the Pennsylvania Packet in December 1781, reportedly written by a British army officer to a friend back home in May of that year.

Some American newspapers reprinted the letter, stating it had appeared in the London press. If indeed a London newspaper first published the letter, that suggests it’s authentic. But I haven’t seen any citation pointing that way. All the paths lead back to Philadelphia.

The content of the letter makes me suspect it wasn’t written by British army officer at all, but rather by an American propagandist. Here’s why:

• There isn’t a single personal remark, either about writer or recipient. Granted, such comments might have been edited out before publication.
• The writer explains a classical allusion: “like Antæus, of whom it was fabled, that being the son of the goddess Tellus, or the earth, every fall which he received from Hercules gave him more strength, so that the hero was forced to strangle him in his arms at last.” The whole point of a gentleman referring to a classical myth that he wouldn’t have to explain it—other gentlemen shared the same knowledge. Indeed, implying that one’s genteel correspondent wouldn’t recognize a story of Hercules’s labors would be insulting. If, on the other hand, someone is writing for the American public, then it would be important to ensure the allusion is clear.
• The writer complains about all the genteel men and women inside Charleston supporting the American cause, to the point of the women wearing “in their breast knots, and even on their shoes, something that resembles their flag of thirteen stripes.” The British military took Charleston in early 1780 and held it until the end of the war. It became a haven for southern Loyalists; thousands were evacuated after the peace treaty. But this letter describes the entire city in May 1781 as hostile to the British officers, to the point of exhibiting the enemy’s emblem.
• The phrase “retrograde progress” in the opening line feels like an allusion to a widely published report from Lafayette earlier in 1781, describing the British army with that term.

All in all, the letter seems composed to assure American readers that everything they might hear about the British hold on Charleston is a lie: the press there is publishing fake news, the locals toast the king only under duress, the women are defiant and committed to the American cause, the British officers are grumpy and undersexed and eager to go home.

I see this letter cited as evidence for American women’s dedication to the new nation, and particularly in how they showed that feeling in their clothing. But unless someone turns up an earlier publication in the London press, I don’t think it’s real, and thus I don’t think anything it describes actually happened.

“An officer told Lord Cornwallis not long ago…”

On 11 Dec 1781 the Pennsylvania Packet newspaper published some news under the dateline “London, July 28.” That was the usual signal to readers that the following items were copied from the latest London newspaper to arrive in Philadelphia.

Then after a bit of white space came this item:

Extract of a letter from an officer in Charles-Town, to his friend in London, dated May 20th.

“The retrograde progress of our arms in this country, you have seen in your news-papers, if they dare tell you the truth. This precious commodity is not to be had in the government paper which is printed here, for a fell licenser hangs over the press, and will suffer nothing to pass but what is palatable, that is, in plain terms what is false. Our victories have been dearly bought, for the rebels seem to grow stronger by every defeat, like Antæus, of whom it was fabled, that being the son of the goddess Tellus, or the earth, every fall which he received from Hercules gave him more strength, so that the hero was forced to strangle him in his arms at last. I wish our ministry would send us a Hercules to conquer these obstinate Americans, whose aversion to the cause of Britain grows stronger every day.

“If you go into company with any of them occasionally, they are barely civil; and that is, as Jack Falstaff says, by compulsion. They are in general sullen, silent, and thoughtful. The king’s health they dare not refuse, but they drink it in such a manner, as if they expected it would choak them.

“The assemblies which the officers have opened, in hopes to give an air of gaiety and chearfulness to themselves and the inhabitants, are but dull and gloomy meetings; the men play at cards, indeed to avoid talking, the women are seldom or never to be persuaded to dance. Even in their dresses the females seem to bid us defiance; the gay toys which are imported here, they despise: they wear their own homespun manufactures, and take care to have in their breast knots, and even on their shoes, something that resembles their flag of thirteen stripes. An officer told lord Cornwallis not long ago, that he believed if he had destroyed all the men in North-America, we should have enough to do to conquer the women.—I am heartily tired of this country, and wish myself at home.”

This article was reprinted in 29 Dec 1781 Boston Evening-Post and the 31 Jan 1782 Salem Gazette, as well as other American newspapers. In early 1782 American printers began to label the letter as having appeared in a London newspaper, as the layout in the Packet had merely implied.

In 1860 Frank Moore transcribed that article with reasonable accuracy into his Diary of the American Revolution, citing the Packet.

The penultimate sentence, as it appeared in Moore’s book, is undoubtedly the source of the passage from Mary Elizabeth Springer in 1896 that I quoted yesterday: “A British officer once remarked to him [Cornwallis], ‘If we destroy all the men in America, we still would have enough to do to conquer the women.’” And Springer’s article in turn gave birth to slightly different versions of the line, down to the present day, when some authors attribute that statement to Cornwallis himself.

TOMORROW: Who wrote this letter?

A Filled-In Trench in Charleston?

Here’s an archeological find that caught my eye several weeks back, as reported in the Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina:

The Historic Charleston Foundation has been researching the rear yard behind its Aiken Rhett House property [from 1820] to learn more about how wealthy residents and their slaves shared the large area, which might have contained an ornamental garden as well as work space.

Recent ground-penetrating radar showed evidence of a pit and possibly pathways of brick, shell or compacted earth.

But it also found evidence “consistent with a filled ditch.”

That was significant because military historians knew that the British army built trenches on the peninsula during their campaign to take the port city in the spring of 1780.

A later Post and Courier story continued:

In the late 18th century, the city was mostly concentrated below present-day Calhoun Street. British troops dug trenches in the uninhabited areas farther north, allowing them to stealthily move troops across the city from the east to capture the patriots’ fortification in the area now known as Marion Square.

After the British forces seized control of the city, they filled in the trenches to keep them from being used in a counter-attack.

In the decades after the war, new streets and suburban homes, such as the Aiken-Rhett House, were built on top of the filled-in trenches, making it especially difficult for today’s historians to pinpoint where they were.

Martha Zierden, curator of historical archaeology at the Charleston Museum, said if they can verify the location of one trench, they can use old maps to estimate where all the others are buried.

On Friday, the team of archaeologists and students on Elizabeth Street got one step closer to that goal. After they finally finished removing a layer of old bricks and slate in the excavation pit, they reached the soil dating back to the 1780s that indicated the dirt had been disturbed, most likely for a trench.

“There would have been no other reason for anybody to be digging in that area because it was uninhabited in the late 18th century,” said Carl Borick, director of the Charleston Museum.

He said the area also lines up with a map of the trenches drawn by [Charles Blaskowitz,] the British Army’s chief mapmaker for the Siege of Charleston.

Uniforms Less Than Uniform

Last year Prof. Ashli White of the University of Miami wrote on the Omohundro Institute’s blog about her research at the institute and nearby Colonial Williamsburg.

As armies and navies were deployed throughout the Atlantic, they took with them uniforms, flags, banners, and even dinnerware, emblazoned with insignia that declared where they stood on the ideological spectrum of revolution. . . .

Sources show that soldiers were not wearing uniforms as we tend to think of them—snappy, carefully coordinated sets with various accoutrements and details that adhered to clear codes. Rather, soldiers’ and even officers’ clothing was much more mixed, if not at times downright ad-hoc. This situation resulted because of the difficulties of distributing clothing and its constant wear-and-tear. What’s more, armies appropriated their enemy’s clothing as spoils of war and then incorporated it into their kits. And whenever possible, soldiers exerted their own sartorial preferences, too.

Take, for example, a uniform coat in CW’s collections that had worn by a British Field officer in North America. I had the privilege to meet with Linda Baumgarten, curator of textiles, to look at examples of both civilian and military clothing, including this remarkable coat. It dates from about 1790, but as Erik Goldstein, the curator of mechanical arts and numismatics, has demonstrated, it is stylistically in keeping with coats worn during the American Revolution. So while gearing up for war with France, this British officer chose a cut for his coat that harkened to his service almost twenty years before, even though it was out of step with the latest trends.

I couldn’t find a picture of the coat White described, but this waistcoat (shown above) came into the Colonial Williamsburg collection with it.

The museum curators understand that the coat and waistcoat were made for Col. James Moncrieff, who had become a young army engineer in 1763 in time for the siege of Havana. During the Revolutionary War he served at Brandywine, Stono Ferry, Savannah (from the inside), and Charleston (from the outside). The museum says, “He attained the appointment to deputy adjutant general in 1790. The style of this coat is specific to deputy adjutant general and quartermaster general.” Moncrieff was mortally wounded at Dunkirk in 1793.

The Career of Capt. the Hon. Lionel Smythe

As I described yesterday, the identity of the “Captain Smythe, of the Royal Army” whom Frank Moore quoted several times in the Diary of the American Revolution compilation is a mystery. The manuscript diary Moore said he worked with has not been found since.

The Army List for 1778 shows only one Captain Smythe in the royal army, though there were plenty of Smyths and Smiths who might have attained that rank by the end of the war.

That one candidate for the diarist was the Hon. Lionel Smythe (1753-1801), younger son of Viscount Strangford. He started the war as a lieutenant in the 49th Regiment. In May 1776, Smythe became an aide de camp to Gen. Percy, who made himself the young man’s patron. In fact, in Fusiliers: The Saga of a British Redcoat Regiment in the American Revolution, Mark Urban wrote that Smythe was one of a couple of handsome young officers that Percy had crushes on.

Percy paid the £550 Smythe needed to buy Smythe the rank of captain of the light infantry company in the 23rd Regiment, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, in October 1777. In return, Smythe wrote “monthly” letters home to his benefactor, which Urban used as sources for his history of that regiment during the Revolutionary War.

I therefore hoped that we could line up what Urban reported from Capt. Lionel Smythe and what the diarist wrote and decisive evidence that they were or weren’t the same man. Unfortunately, the published sources just don’t offer enough material to confirm or eliminate that possibility. Maybe the additional letters contain more evidence.

According to Urban, Lionel Smythe “eschewed army politics or gossip” in his letters to Percy, “confining himself to factual accounts of what he had seen.” In contrast, many of the diarist’s entries are consumed with gossip about the Americans. But that could simply reflect what Moore and Urban were looking for in their respective sources. Lionel Smythe referred to the American commander as “Mr. Washington” in a letter during that winter, and the diarist also referred to Washington without a military rank. But that was also the British commanders’ policy, so it may not be a useful clue.

Going back to the summer of 1776, Lionel Smythe was an aide to Percy during the British reconquest of New York City. Smythe the diarist wrote about John Hancock’s exhortations to the New York defenders in June and added a remark about Hancock’s “gouty legs, that were so shamefully overworked on the morning the gallant Percy marched to Lexington.” So there’s some connection.

Lionel Smythe was presumably with Earl Percy when he helped to take Newport, Rhode Island, that December. Percy remained in Newport into the spring of 1777 while the diarist was in New York by 1 March. Yet it’s possible that Percy had sent Smythe back to Gen. Sir William Howe with news of the victory in hopes the general would reward the young aide. We know that by March there were rumors in New York about Percy and Howe being at odds.

Percy quit in a huff and returned to England by the middle of the year. Lionel Smythe presumably returned to the 49th Regiment. Debrett’s Peerage states that the young officer was “severely wounded at the battle of Brandywine” on 11 Sept 1777. I haven’t found any other mention of this, even in a family biography, but the 49th was in that battle. Capt. Lionel Smythe was in Philadelphia that winter, sending Percy a description of the Mischianza. Meanwhile, Moore didn’t quote any diary entries from his Capt. Smythe for over a year after May 1777.

On 1 July 1778, the diarist complained about the Continental Congress. On 29 July, Capt. Lionel Smythe and his light infantrymen went on board the Isis to sail back to Newport, where the British expected an attack from the French fleet. On 11 September he wrote to Percy about the British victory. The 23rd was back in New York a few weeks later. The diarist’s next entry, from greater New York, is dated 8 November.

On 13 Aug 1779, the diarist wrote about Alexander Hamilton reportedly penning an epic poem to preserve the memory of the Revolution “in case Clinton’s light bob should extirpate the whole race of rebels.” Capt. Lionel Smythe was, of course, a commander of “light bobs” under Gen. Sir Henry Clinton.

The next month, on 5 September, the young captain married Maria Eliza Phillipse, from an upper-class Loyalist family. (Urban dated the marriage to 5 August, but New York and family records agree that it happened in September.) As explained in Lives of the Lords Strangford, Smythe’s family was titled but no longer wealthy. In fact, his father had taken holy orders and become dean of Derry. Urban treated this as a classic example of American money marrying a handsome European aristocrat, but there was a catch: a lot of the Phillipse wealth was behind enemy lines and at risk in the event of an American win.

In October 1779 the 23rd Regiment, including the light infantry company, sailed for Charleston. The regiment was in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia all through 1780 and 1781 until Yorktown. Meanwhile, the diarist wrote twice from the New York area in 1781, on 10 March and 16 September. So is that the proof we want that the two men aren’t the same? Unfortunately, not all the 23rd’s officers went south. Capt. Frederick Mackenzie, for example, remained in New York as one of Clinton’s staff officers. Urban didn’t quote any letters from Capt. Lionel Smythe about the southern campaign or anything else after his marriage, so we can’t be sure where he was.

Capt. Lionel Smythe retired from the army after the war and followed his father into a clerical vocation. Two years later, the older man died, and as the only surviving son Lionel Smythe became the seventh Viscount Strangford. He continued to hold “the living of Kilbrew, in the diocese of Meath,” in Ireland. He also had a royal pension to make ends meet, though he lost it for a while after voting in the Irish House of Lords against a bill the government favored.

In 1801 the Gentlemen’s Magazine reported that the seventh Viscount Strangford died on 1 October “At Bristol hot wells, in his 48th year.” He and his American wife had four children, the eldest of whom became the new viscount. (A couple of years later, he published a volume of translations of poetry from the Portuguese.)

As I said, it’s possible that Capt. Lionel Smythe’s letters to Percy contain more information that could give a clear answer to whether he was Moore’s “Capt. Smythe.” It’s also possible that research on the career of another British officer whose name was almost Smythe could make a better match for the diary entries. But right now it’s still a mystery.

Fowler on the Crises after Yorktown in Lexington, Jan. 29

On Friday, 29 January, the Lexington Historical Society will host a free talk by William Fowler, Jr., on the topic of his book American Crisis: George Washington and the Dangerous Two Years After Yorktown, 1781-1783.

The publisher’s description:

Most people believe the American Revolution ended in October, 1781, after the battle of Yorktown; in fact the war continued for two more traumatic years. During that time, the Revolution came closer to being lost than at any time in the previous half dozen.

The British still held New York, Savannah, Wilmington, and Charleston; the Royal Navy controlled the seas; the states—despite having signed the Articles of Confederation earlier that year—retained their individual sovereignty and, largely bankrupt themselves, refused to send any money in the new nation's interest; members of Congress were in constant disagreement; and the Continental army was on the verge of mutiny.

William Fowler’s An American Crisis chronicles these tumultuous and dramatic two years, from Yorktown until the British left New York in November 1783. At their heart was the remarkable speech Gen. George Washington gave to his troops encamped north of New York in Newburgh, quelling a brewing rebellion that could have overturned the nascent government.

Fowler is a a professor at Northeastern University and a former director of the Massachusetts Historical Society. His short biography of Samuel Adams was the spur that got me into studying Revolutionary history intently about eighteen years ago, so he might have a lot to answer for.

This talk is in the historical society’s Cronin Lecture series. It will take place at the Lexington Depot starting at 8:00 P.M. It is free and open to the public.

4th Conference on the American Revolution, 20-22 Mar.

On 20-22 March, America’s History, L.L.C., will host its fourth annual Conference on the American Revolution in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Scheduled speakers include:

• Edward G. Lengel, Head of Faculty: “Enigmatic Warrior: Light-Horse Harry Lee [shown here] at the Battle of Eutaw Springs”
• Rick Atkinson: “Bringing Back the Dead: History, Memory, and Writing About War”
• John “Jack” Buchanan: “‘A Great and Good Man’: Nathanael Greene and the Road to Charleston”
• Don N. Hagist: “The Revolution’s Last Men: The Soldiers Behind the Photographs”
• James Kirby Martin: “The Man Who Wouldn’t Be King: George Washington and the Newburgh Conspiracy”
• Holly Mayer: “Command and Control of Congress’s Own: Hazen’s 2nd Canadian Regiment”
• Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy: “Hot Weather and Heavy Casualties: The Revolutionary War in the Caribbean”
• Julia Anne Osman: “From Greatest Enemies to Greatest Allies: France and America in the War for Independence”

There are two panel discussions planned:

• What are the most overrated and underrated battles or campaigns of the Revolutionary War?
• Who is the most underrated or overlooked individual (on either side) who had an impact on the American Revolution?

The conference package, including lunch and refreshments, costs $225. The conference has arranged for a block of rooms at the Colonial Williamsburg Woodlands Hotel and discounted tickets to the Colonial Williamsburg Historic Area. For more information, call America’s History at 703-785-4373 or check its website. Featured sponsors include Westholme Publishing Company and Tim Sampson’s Battlemaps.us.

Top Ten Turning-Points?

All Things Liberty recently featured new co-editor Don Hagist’s list of “Top 10 Battles of the Revolutionary War.” The only certainty about that sort of list is that it won’t please everybody, and indeed I was among commenters asking about other “turning-point” battles that didn’t make the cut.

In a lot of those Revolutionary War lists, I’ve observed, most of the turning-points turn one way—usually for the Americans. But surely the Crown forces enjoyed some turning-points as well. Otherwise, the Americans wouldn’t have needed to turn anything. Don’s list does include some British triumphs, though not a couple that I think are significant.

It turned out, as Don explained his thinking in comments, that he went looking for battles that changed the course of campaigns. In other words, the arrival of the British in New York in 1776 and their victories at Brooklyn and White Plains all furthered a successful campaign, but the turning-point came at Trenton, where the Continentals finally slowed the British advance.

Thus, Don’s list included the first British attack on Charleston, South Carolina, in 1776, when their campaign was defeated; but not the second in 1780, when they took over America’s principal southern port, captured 5,000 Continental soldiers, and established a second garrison within the U.S. of A. that lasted to the end of the war.

I realized I approach turning-points differently, looking for events that changed people’s thinking about the war. But before I continue quibbling, I have to acknowledge that Top Ten lists require cutting things out. It’s all very well to complain that a movie critic left your favorites off her Top Ten Films of the Year, but to play the same game you have to cross out as many items as you add.

So I’ll start by striking the first battle off Don’s chronological list: the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Obviously significant in starting the war, it was nevertheless not a turning-point. It just solidified what each side thought about the situation. For months Gov. Thomas Gage knew his political authority stopped at the gates of Boston; the siege militarized the isolation that already existed.

Before 19 Apr 1775, Massachusetts Patriots were already convinced that the royal authorities were out to destroy their ability to defend themselves. The royal forces already believed most New Englanders were a swarm of rebellious zealots. I’m not sure the actual fighting changed many minds. Some provincial militiamen were pleasantly surprised they could shoot regulars, but they’d been hearing stories about their region’s triumph at Louisbourg for months. After the battle, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s communications didn’t emphasize the battlefield victory but the new set of grievances, which they said confirmed what they’d been warning about the Crown all along.

I think the Battle of Bunker Hill (#2 on Don’s list) was a turning-point—even though the immediate result in the field also looks small. The British took control of a second peninsula in Boston harbor, but one that the provincials had occupied for less than twenty hours, and then sat on it for nine months. But that bloody fight made both sides rethink things. The Americans were scared, then gradually reassured about their ability to inflict damage on a regular army. The British commanders became convinced that there was no reason to stay in Boston. It took months for the London government to approve their plans to leave, and then winter came on, but the Battle of Bunker Hill really decided the first campaign of the war and changed people’s thinking.

Unfortunately, I think Gen. George Washington came away from hearing about Bunker Hill with the wrong thinking. As I wrote back here, he thought the key to the war would be another Bunker Hill—another big battle with lots of enemy casualties that would make the London government pull back. He kept proposing that strategy to his generals around Boston, he hoped the fortification of Dorchester Heights would lead to such a battle, he waited for the same thing at Brooklyn, and so on.

Which brings me to the Battle of Brandywine on 11 Sept 1777. That battle didn’t fit Don’s “turning-point” criteria because it was part of Gen. William Howe’s successful campaign to take Philadelphia; he never had to turn around. The battlefield isn’t part of our National Park Service system, probably because the Americans lost. (It’s a Pennsylvania state park instead.) But boy, did it change people’s thinking!

Brandywine was the battle Washington wanted: a direct confrontation with Howe. Huge numbers in the field. The British attacking the Continental position, leaving themselves open to heavy casualties. And it all went horribly wrong. Howe surprised Washington by sneaking around to the left. The Continentals had to fall back. Within weeks, the Crown forces were in Philadelphia.

Now when a country loses its largest city and capital to the enemy a year and a half after declaring independence, that’s bound to change people’s thinking. Combined with the news of Saratoga (#6 on Don’s list), Brandywine made some members of the Continental Congress rethink whether Washington should remain commander-in-chief. And frankly, when they had hastily evacuated to Lancaster and York, who could blame them? Washington himself was rethinking. We remember the winter at Valley Forge for Gen. Steuben’s training of the Continental core, but that was also when Gen. Washington came around to his “Fabian” strategy. That’s why I see Brandywine as a very big turning-point.

Of course, that won’t please everybody.