“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.)

The Source of the “Huzzah” Anecdote

Yesterday I completed tracing the story of Gen. George Washington’s admonition to his troops not to cheer at Yorktown to Dr. Thomas McCalla, intendant (mayor) of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1810-11. The last step is determining if McCalla was at Yorktown and thus had the chance to hear Washington’s words, or a report of them, at the time.

There are at least two men named Thomas McCalla connected to the American forces. (And with the number of ways people spelled that surname—McCalla, M’Caula, Macaulay, McCauley, and so on—there are probably more.)

One Thomas McCalla appears in Elizabeth Ellet’s profile of his wife Sarah in Women of the American Revolution (1848-1850). That man did live in South Carolina, but wasn’t at Yorktown and wasn’t a physician.

The other man was Thomas Harrison McCalla, who graduated from Princeton in 1777 and joined Col. Stephen Moylan’s regiment of dragoons in Philadelphia as a surgeon’s mate the next spring. He remained with the unit through the end of the war, becoming a surgeon on 1 June 1780. (In some war records, McCalla’s middle initial has been transcribed as an M instead of an H.)

Moylan’s regiment was part of the American forces at Yorktown. Dr. McCalla was therefore on the scene when the British surrendered. Whether or not he was close enough to Gen. Washington to hear what the commander said, he could have learned the upshot of the orders soon afterward.

At the end of 1783, Dr. McCalla joined the Pennsylvania division of the Society of the Cincinnati. But the “Dr. M’Caula” whom Alexander Garden quoted in 1822 was from Charleston, South Carolina. And there were a few states in between those places.

Fortunately, in 1871 the Transactions of the Medical Society of New Jersey published this profile of the man—clearly the same one, even though it says nothing of his military activity:

THOMAS HARRISON McCALLA, son of John McCalla and Jane Harrison, was born in the city of Philadelphia, where he was educated. He pursued medical studies with so much zeal and success as ultimately to gain for himself an enviable standing as a physician. He practiced medicine in Greenwich, Cumberland County, N. J., some time between the years 1790 and 1800. He changed his residence to Charleston, South Carolina, where he soon became distinguished as a physician. He was for some years Poor Physician of that city. He was married to Miss Barksdale, of Charleston, by whom he had a daughter, who died a few days after her marriage, and left him childless. He did not long survive her. Like the most of his family, he was possessed of more than ordinary mental endowments. It is regretted that no further account of this distinguished physician has been obtained.

Now we can add that Dr. McCalla was elected to Charleston’s highest office in 1810 and 1811. According to Ancestry.com, his daughter Sarah Barksdale McCalla died in 1809 at the age of twenty. The Pennsylvania Society of the Cincinnati records that Dr. McCalla himself died in January 1813.

It’s striking how the different periods of Dr. McCalla’s career—his army years, his New Jersey medical practice, and his life in Charleston, including local government service—are preserved in wholly separate sources. I think that reflects how he died without descendants who could have pulled everything together and put it in print. It’s likely that the profile of McCalla in Princetonians, the reference to that college’s early graduates, has a more complete picture.

In any event, we can say that the anecdote about Gen. Washington telling his men, “Let history huzzah for you,” is a garbled version of the original quotation; but that story did come from a regimental surgeon in the Continental Army at Yorktown.

“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.)