“Otis got into a mad freak to-night”

With everything else going on in Boston in the wake of the Boston Massacre, I don’t want to lose track of James Otis’s mental state.

In early September 1769, Otis was speaking extravagantly, monopolizing conversation, and annoying even his fan John Adams. Then he got into a coffee-house fight with royal appointee John Robinson, suffering a severe blow on the head. The following month, Adams wrote rather favorably of the result.

But early in the new year, Otis went into another manic period. Adams wrote in his diary on 16 Jan 1770:

Last Evening at Dr. Peckers with the Clubb.—Otis is in Confusion yet. He looses himself. He rambles and wanders like a Ship without an Helm. Attempted to tell a Story which took up almost all the Evening. The Story may at any Time be told in 3 minutes with all the Graces it is capable of, but he took an Hour.

I fear he is not in his perfect Mind. The Nervous, Concise, and pithy were his Character, till lately. Now the verbose, roundabout and rambling, and long winded. He once said He hoped he should never see T[homas].H[utchinson]. in Heaven. Dan. Waldo took offence at it, and made a serious Affair of it, said Otis very often bordered upon Prophaneness, if he was not strictly profane. Otis said, if he did see H. there he hoped it would be behind the Door.—In my fathers House are many Mansions, some more and some less honourable.

In one Word, Otis will spoil the Clubb. He talkes so much and takes up so much of our Time, and fills it with Trash, Obsceneness, Profaneness, Nonsense and Distraction, that We have no [time] left for rational Amusements or Enquiries.

He mentioned his Wife—said she was a good Wife, too good for him—but she was a tory, an high Tory. She gave him such Curtain Lectures, &c.

In short, I never saw such an Object of Admiration, Reverence, Contempt and Compassion all at once as this. I fear, I tremble, I mourn for the Man, and for his Country. Many others mourne over him with Tears in their Eyes.

The turmoil in Boston after the Massacre appears to have riled Otis more. On 16 March, the merchant John Rowe wrote in his diary: “Mr. Otis got into a mad freak to-night, and broke a great many windows in the Town House.”

At the time, Otis was still officially one of Boston’s representatives to the House of Representatives that met in that building. Obviously, he was in no condition to remain in that seat.

“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.

A Tea Party Rumor Reaches Brookfield

Today I braved the roads outside the American Antiquarian Society again—twice!—to look at documents and attend a lecture. And what have I learned? Well, if one asks a question from underneath the center of the dome above the reading room, the lecturer can barely hear it. However, questions asked more softly from seats further away, on the edge of the dome, are perfectly audible.

Oh, yeah, there was an interesting document, too. It came from Joseph Gilbert (1733-1776), a farmer in Brookfield, Massachusetts, who was active in town government and the local militia. When he died, he held the rank of colonel.

Daniel Waldo (1724-1808) was a Boston merchant until 1775. (This is a different Daniel Waldo from the one who told a story about George Washington.) After the war, he moved to Worcester, probably because his wife was a Salisbury, from one of that town’s leading business families. His portrait shown here, by Denmark-born artist Christian Gullager, is now in the Worcester Art Museum. In 1773, it appears Waldo might have been one of the principal purveyors of goods out to Gilbert and his neighbors, their contact with Boston’s merchant community.

On 22 Dec 1773, Gilbert wrote to Waldo—or “Waldow,” as he rendered it in his frequently phonetic spelling. Brookfield had heard big news about the Boston Tea Party, but some disturbing rumors had followed:

We have a Current Report that the Past friday teas is all throd into the Dock By a Number of Indians from Diffrint parts of the Countery and all Destroyed &C[.] if true We are very glad———

But of Late there is a Nother Report which Surprises us that Is the marchents of Boston has privately Convaied sd Tea a whay and are Determind to sell the same & have filled thee same Chists whith thare old mustea tea hay Chafe & such Like on purpos to mak a profitt to them selves & Decve the Cuntrey.

Can this Be so[?] I Cannot Belive it[.] if true I say no more In your favr nor Can any But Bid a Due to you and all your prosidings[.] pray send me a Line By the next post the Truth of the matter Dont faill & you oblige your frind & homil S[ervan]t

Joseph Gilbert

PS. This Last Report is Indousterisly spreding By your Enemyes throw the Cuntery that it stands you In hand to Clear up the matter for if true the Cuntery will not stand by you[;] if not true they Will Resque thear Lives & fortuens in your Care

And Gilbert wrote yet another postscript vertically beside the letter:

We Have a Town meating Worned to be on nex mondy at one O Clock that make it [word ripped away but obviously something like “important”] that Wee should know the Sartinte of this matter Befor that

Which confirms that it’s not just a modern tactic to spread completely false rumors when it looks like your political opponents are winning. Since the friends of the royal government were in the minority and controlled few newspapers or town meetings, we don’t see as many of their rumors as we see from the Whigs. But obviously they resorted to the tactic as well.

Rev. Waldo and Gen. Washington

On Wednesday I promised an 1846 version of the story of Gen. George Washington greeting his new New England troops by reading from the 101st Psalm. (I started tracing that story back through sources in this posting.)

The following article appeared in Boston’s Emancipator newspaper (also called the Emancipator and Republican) on 29 July 1846. It may have appeared even earlier in the Boston Journal, which is the newspaper that the Southern Patriot of Charleston, South Carolina, credited when it picked up the piece. The article was also reprinted over the next year in the Connecticut Courant and the Friend of Salem, Massachusetts. Harriet Beecher Stowe might have read the tale in a newspaper before she retold in Oldtown Fireside Stories, though in 1846 she was living in Ohio.

WASHINGTON’S PSALM.

The Rev. Mr. Waldo, an old revolutionary veteran from Connecticut, who attended the celebration at Westfield [Massachusetts?] on the 4th, made himself quite interesting at the dinner table. He is now nearly ninety years old, but is in the vigor of a green old age and was able to preach two sermons last Sabbath.

(There were probably not a lot of ministers from Connecticut named Waldo who had fought in the Revolutionary War and were in their late eighties in 1846. Those clues point to the long-lived Rev. Daniel Waldo as the subject of this newspaper article. The photograph of him above comes from the Clements Library website.)

In his remarks he referred to the allusion made by the orator to Washington, and observed that he never heard even the name of that glorious chieftain and good man, “without feeling the cold chills through his whole system.”

He remarked that there was a single incident that came within his personal knowledge which he believed was not generally known. It was that Washington, on the day that he assumed the command of the American Army at Cambridge, read and caused to be sung the 101st Psalm, a portion of which we publish... [verses 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7 of the version in this book]

This psalm the reverend worthy deaconed off to the company in true primitive style, a line at a time, which was sung to the tune of “Old Hundred,” that tune being as the old veteran said, “just the thing for it.”

Modern improvements in Psalmody have almost obliterated the good old Psalms and Hymns with many of the tunes that the fathers sang with so much spirit and understanding. Such a Psalm as the one quoted above would be deemed a political one now a-days, and sorry are we to say it, very many ministers would hardly deem it a proper one to be sung on public occasions.

(Since the Emancipator was an Abolitionist paper, my first interpretation of the last paragraph was that it alluded to criticism that Abolitionism mixed politics and religion. However, the Southern Patriot printed that paragraph as well.)

Where did Waldo come by this story of Washington in Cambridge? He reportedly said that it “came within his personal knowledge [but] was not generally known,” implying that he had not seen it published. But Waldo could not have witnessed the event himself. He was only twelve years old when Washington took command of the troops, and many miles from Cambridge. Waldo joined the Continental Army in 1778 and, according to his profile in E. B. Hillard’s The Last Men of the Revolution (1864), “never saw either Washington or La Fayette.” I’ve found no connection between Waldo and the area of New Hampshire where Andrew Leavitt was reportedly telling the same story until his death earlier in 1846.

An even earlier printed version of this tale may yet surface, which would require revising some of the following thoughts. But for now here are some speculations about the truth behind this tale.

One possibility is that Washington really did read the 101st Psalm as a way to win over his New England troops. Yet no one recorded this impressive (and uncharacteristic) event in newspapers, letters, or diaries of the time. No one outside one small area of southern New Hampshire claimed to have witnessed it. And, even as the story was somehow spreading far enough to reach Waldo (who lived in Connecticut until 1835 and then in upstate New York), no one put it into print until more than seventy years after the event. That scenario strikes me as unlikely.

Another possibility is that Capt. Josiah Crosby’s company greeted Washington by singing Isaac Watts’s psalm; he responded with polite, dignified thanks; and the story got polished in retelling to have the general read the psalm first. Such a story might well have seemed like a fine way to inspire children and/or congregants with faith and patriotism (mixing religion and politics, some would have said back then). That scenario would fit with all we know about Washington and the pious New England army he came to command. But it wouldn’t explain how the story got to Waldo.

Here’s my pet theory. Andrew Leavitt, known for his religious fervor, told this story to his grandchildren, improving it over time. Some of those children grew up to be the Hutchinson Singers. They traveled around the U.S. of A., speaking against slavery and singing—maybe even using Grandpa Leavitt’s tale to introduce performances of the 101st Psalm. They carried the story to the Rev. Waldo in Syracuse and Mrs. Stowe in Cincinnati. (I must acknowledge, however, that the “Washington’s Psalm” tale doesn’t appear when this 1896 biography of the Hutchinsons describes Grandpa Leavitt’s service in the Revolutionary War, where this scenario implies it should.)

COMING UP: A completely different legend of Washington and the 101st Psalm, and how historians have dealt with that.